Guild Wars 2

I think they’re trying to test out content to see how they can make the world feel more ‘alive’ in that it changes and isn’t constantly the same. This new temporary dungeon (the living story) is the first of its kind, so I think of it mostly as a big experiment to see how well it’s received and whether or not it accomplishes the goal they had in mind for it. As for the Super Adventure Box, I have my suspicions that it will be making a return next year around this time, perhaps with additional levels and weapon skins… but all of this is just my own speculation, haha.

Also a big fan of the dervish and bard suggestions! Was going to make those myself, haha. =D

Aside from those two I’ve also always loved brawlers (fist weapons/barehanded styles). There’s something awesome about seeing someone rushing at you with this big ol’ weapon and just shouting back “I SMASH YOUR ARMORS WITH MY FISTS!!!” Not realistic in any sense of course, but so very fun!

My Norn ranger, who is a blend of dark themes and cutesy accessories. Can’t see it from this picture but she’s wearing the charr backpack, and I’m just dying to someday get her the brony bow (aka Dreamer). Usually runs with Felblade greatsword skin, from the HoM.

Helmet: Anonymity Hood (thief special accessory)
Coat: Noble
Pants: Noble
Gloves: Prowler
Boots: Prowler
Shoulders: [Not shown]

Primary Dye: Midnight Ice
Accent Dyes: Midnight Rose, Ebony

Zephuros.5073:

2) I’m an ele so I have a lot of AOE’s, it’s hard for me to see my green AOE rings. So most of the time while I’m trying to cast an AOE, I’m moving my mouse around the screen like crazy just trying to catch a glimpse of where the circle is at so I can position it correctly.

I’m not colorblind myself, but there’s a trick that might help with this. Under settings, look for a toggle – I think it’s labeled something about placing a ground cursor. The toggle will allow you to place ground objects (AOEs) directly where your mouse is instead of having to select the spell and then choose where the circle is. The next step is to always be able to find your mouse.

When I play, I stick my mouse somewhere easy to see and toward the middle of the screen- like a certain distance above my Asura elementalist. I’ve also known someone who uses his character’s head as a target and places the cursor directly over it. Then, hold down the right mouse button and keep it held down while you move and cast. If you do that, your cursor will stay in its last position and with practice you can use that knowledge of where the cursor is to place ground AOEs without having to see anything; just use that particular spot on your screen as a target and, voila – no more trouble not being able to see your own AOE rings!

Hope that helps some. Also, I’d like to add in my vote for more colorblind-friendly options.

Anything that gives players more choice and customization options is usually a great thing in my book. The developers have done a great job of supplying armor in many different styles to suit a wide variety of tastes, and it would definitely be nice if they could expand on that further and give more choice as to which design you prefer. For example, the male human cabalist light armor set looks fantastic in my opinion. I know there are lots of people who like the female version of it and they’re welcome to have it, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was a little disappointed at the drastic difference between what I hoped I would get and what I actually received (saw a male character sporting the set first and hoped the female version would be similar). I’m sure there are things that seem “better” on the female version but would work just as well for males; I think I heard someone commenting about a hat that only looked good on females, or something like that, but that could have looked really great on a male character as well.

Aww, that’s a shame. You still seem to be getting some voters at least though, so it’s not doing too bad. Thanks for checking in any case!

On the one hand, I can see the appeal of an event that only happens one time; it adds a bit of “specialness” to the game world to have a boss or event that actually stays gone once players manage to kill it. (Anyone who naively thought they could really clear out Gnomeregan in the old WoW days will understand how silly it can feel when the thing you just killed immediately pops back to life again.) And, occasionally, I believe some things should be “special”, even though the act of being so will inevitably exclude people who wish to be included.

However, I definitely agree that events such as this one should repeat for at least some amount of time so that more people (specifically those in other time zones, as you’ve mentioned) can have a chance to participate. Repeating the event over the course of one or two days shouldn’t drastically affect the “one-time-only” feel of it but could go a long way toward keeping players happy, so I think this suggestion is a good one.

If possible, it might be a good idea to change the title of this thread. It isn’t really eye-catching and I only navigated to it by mistake, but it has a great poll and I’d really like for this thread to succeed in its purpose and give us some numbers to work with. Maybe include the word “poll” in it or something similar?

Thanks for making this!

MissClara.6847:

Thank you Ostra.3927, Hilko.1760, Zaxares.5419, and Sirge.8934 . It’s been so easy to find photos of gear, but a lot harder to come across solid information.

I guess this doesn’t really affect me personally as a player too much (not a big fan of WvW), except that I really like to craft things, so it’s too bad they can’t be crafted right now (hope to see that changed!).

Sirge – I can see how this gear may make one player slightly stronger in WvW, and frustrate people as a result since it is competitive, but my question is why do you (and many others who share your opinion) find it concerning that a player may have a few extra stats in PvE? It’s not like anyone is ever rooting for the E to beat the P (okay, maybe with a few exceptions for the especially annoying people out there). Just playing. Also, thank you for your very informative response (and please don’t misconstrue this as trolling or baiting, I guess I just don’t see why people are too upset outside of the effects this may have in WvW).

PvE players are upset because they see this as the beginning of a “gear treadmill” – basically, players will have to play through hours and hours and hours (90 for one piece last someone calculated) just to gear themselves out to be able to have the “best stats”. Eventually people will begin to plateau and you’ll hit groups that demand that everyone involved have those stats; if you don’t, you’re kicked from the group. Then new content comes out that gives even better stats, and if you don’t have the previous “best stats”, you can’t play that content or you get kicked from groups a lot (the content becomes “gated”), and the cycle repeats. This is the basic formula of many MMOs such as WoW and while some players enjoy it, others are getting very tired of always having to grind through content they hate just to be eligible for the content they do want to see. Also, many players are upset on principle because they were promised at the launch of GW2 that there would never be such a gear grind. It wouldn’t be so irritating if there were more MMOs that don’t require players to grind for gear, but sadly, those are few and far between.

Probably not the best explanation ever but I hope that cleared things up a bit. Of course, everyone has their own reasons for liking or not liking something, and can probably expand on what I’ve written here.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

what did you guys do from 1 to 80? Sit on the same gear for 80 levels? Get used to it: GW and GW2 were always games where you got better gear while playing the content. Now that there is new content, there is new gear. It’s a reward mechanism; you get your shiny because you do well.

Except that in GW1, the new gear you got was for looks only. So no, there is no comparing the horizontal progression of the original GW to the stat-increasing vertical progression they’ve just added.

I would have been happy if they had added a form of grinding so long as it didn’t add any stats to armor. With stat increases at end-game you always risk creating gated content and requiring players to grind long hours (even if they don’t enjoy that playstyle at all) just to see the parts of the game they do enjoy.

Out of the two I’ve only played the elementalist so I can’t comment on the necromancer, and even then I didn’t get particularly close to 80. However, I can tell you that the elementalist has some great versatility if you “stance dance” (or attunement dancing as it’s sometimes called, swapping from one attunement to another multiple times within a fight). It will take skill to play either class really well since you won’t have much survivability depending on your build and play style, but those I know who have played these classes seem to think they’re both rewarding. Sorry I can’t help more. I suggest you take Sion’s advice and try both for a little while to see what style of combat you’d prefer between the two.

Namu.5712:

the only people not excited are really the ones in the forums complaining because everyone I talk to in game is thinking it was a great addition and cant wait to work towards them. Forum folk are the vocal minority in GW2.

I love how people say a group is a ‘vocal minority’ whenever the obvious majority does not support their point of view. Especially considering how only a small handful of people ever asked for this.

So yes, I can see how you consider the 10-15 people you asked in game to be a majority over the 9,000+ users who have voiced their disdain over this move.

I’ll admit it, I’m really upset over this recent change. But there are still lots of things I love about the game and want to compliment the developers on.

Love the ability to help other players without penalty, gather every item, and complete jumping puzzles over and over again for fun and reward (feels good to make use of my old platformer skills on occasion, lol =D).

Whichever you like. Roll both for a minute and see what you think about their voices and animations.

You’ll be more ‘unique’ as a male human since female humans are pretty abundant at the moment, though.

Exciting? The opposite for me. I’ve lost all motivation to log in after this. And after 186 pages of of near unanimous cries saying similarly, I’d say it’s safe to assume that ‘exciting’ isn’t the term anyone would use.

I haven’t seen this many people raging on forums since the Blizzard Real ID fiasco. What a change! Arenanet went from trying to create a unique gaming experience, different from the rest, to attempting to clone the WoW experience even down to the forum PR disasters.

There was so much room here to take the middle ground. Grinding is a valid playstyle – not one I like myself but hey, to each his own – and there are all kinds of ways that it could have been inserted without making it a requirement for all players and without impacting WvWvW or risking gated content (for example, there could have been grinding for fluff items only or increased difficulty options added to dungeons with greater rewards for completing them but without any stat-boosting gear required or rewarded for it). Basically, they could have done anything other than add stats to the gear and had things work out fine for most people. Really disappointed that they went with a gear grind instead when so many other viable options were available to them.

No wonder players are feeling a bit cheated at the moment considering how the original Guild Wars was, and considering that Arenanet is still saying they won’t have a gear grind even as they are inserting a pretty large gear grind, haha.

I also agree with this idea. People who don’t want to look for a group could easily disable it, thus clearing up map chat in places like LA, and as you said it would help people scattered across multiple maps to find groups. Win all around.

I wouldn’t mind if they added high-heeled shoes for future heavy armor sets, but I can’t see them changing the armor sets that are currently in place since that would upset all of the people who like the way that armor currently looks (and who spent a lot of karma getting the full set). Personally, I also prefer more realistic armors. (I can’t imagine strutting out into a battlefield or trekking across uneven terrain for hours at a time wearing a pair of high heels; just the thought of it makes my feet ache! Haha. =)) But, I’m all for adding style variations for those that want them.

I would like this for elementalists. I would say I’d like it for engineers, but I actually rely pretty heavily on my swap weapon button when playing my engineer for quickly dropping any kit to return to my rifle. I guess it would be a change I could get used to if other engineers really wanted it, though.

A friend of mine recently managed to get in around 2am EST on a weekday. The times others have mentioned are all great to try, but I would add on the advice of trying during these times on a weekday if possible (early Monday/ late Sunday through late Thursday/ early Friday).

Hateborne.7942:

Simplicity.7208:

Oh, yeah. That would work too. Keep the caps in place, but make the stacks on damaging conditions limited to 25 for each specific player, instead of one giant pool that all conditions have to fight over. That would require more coding that simply removing the cap, but I do agree it would be greatly beneficial to poison/burning users. I wasn’t quite sure how burning/poison mechanics worked.

Not quite, keep the “communal” Bleed/Vulnerability/Confusion stack in place. Allow Burning and Poison per character. That is all. :-)

-Hate

I agree with these suggestions; people dealing primarily in condition damage do tend to receive less credit for kills and events. Additionally, sometimes players who haven’t put anything into condition damage will accidentally take spots that condition-damage players are really counting on (for example, my some of my direct-damage engineer’s most powerful bombs or grenades will also inflict burning or other conditions).

The only advice I can really offer is to do what you were doing before – explore areas as long as they are around your level, completing hearts and DE’s for added experience. Complete story quests when you get to the appropriate level because they also give pretty good experience, and gather everything in sight (doing this will also help you to get more XP later on by crafting with whatever you found). On top of this, make sure to eat food and perhaps check the main towns to see if any guilds have dropped XP banners before you go out to level.

All of the suggestions I’ve seen in this thread are good, and like most, I remapped most of my keys to whatever felt most comfortable. In my case, F1-F4 have been remapped to Shift+1, Shift+2, Shift+3, and Shift+4. I also have 6-8 mapped to one button: the button itself, Shift+that button, and Ctrl+that button. My best advice is to see how far your fingers are comfortable reaching and then try a variety of key mappings until you find one that is comfortable and makes the most sense to you – and never feel bad for asking questions!

Another helpful thing for some professions is to look for a toggle in the options menu (I forget exactly what it’s called) that lets you instantly throw/cast ground-placement skills where your cursor is, rather than having to activate the skill, position the cursor, and then press a button to complete the cast. It’s overall much faster and if you position your cursor somewhere easy to find , like near the center of the screen, you can use that location as a target and more easily use such skills while on the move. It might take a little practice to get used to it, though, so use whatever is most comfortable for you.

Because of all the shrines and other oddities, Norn land is a great place to start out if you’re a ranger since you’ll have your pick of easy-to-find tameable pets! I personally haven’t experienced a great deal of Charr land so I can’t vouch for which questing experience is preferable, though I’m sure they both have their strong points.

The game would probably look really great through a first-person perspective, though it may or may not mess with my engie’s grenade targeting (I have that target-where-your-cursor-is option enabled). I would definitely love to see a toggle for it put into the game though; it would be especially helpful in tight places where you can’t quite get a good grip on your camera anyway. It’s also fun to occasionally get your character out of the way and just look at the world.

Mightwolf.1968

Thanks Jeff, a long explaination is sometimes hard/boring to do, especially with this kind of issues and speaking to our kind of people (theoretically non-IT people), but it’s definitely worthing it on the result.

Lol! You can’t throw a rock into a crowd of gamers without hitting two IT people and at least as many programmers. =)

To Jeffrey, thank you so much for the update! It always helps to have detailed information about what has gone wrong when confronted with a long-term bug like this, and I appreciate you taking the time to come and post again. Many thanks for that.

Wow, this thread lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. I guess I’ll toss in my two cents as well.

I don’t think it matters much what gender someone chooses to play, and there are any number of reasons for designing a character to look a particular way. Some people who will only play one gender because they find it to be more comfortable, or simply prefer being called a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. Not all of these people are necessarily trying to role-play or become their character (though some do); it’s often more a matter of “this is familiar” or “this suits me”. Other people have a specific design in mind for their character (this necro should look scary, this mesmer should look haughty, this warrior should look tough and battle-worn, etc.) and choose whatever gender has the options that best allow them to match the character to their original design concept. Others design characters that they hope will be perceived in a particular way (a comical character to make people laugh for instance), and still others go in without any design concept at all and just run with whatever looks best from their point of view at the character creation screen. Then there are people who leave their character decisions completely up to the random number generator – and the list goes on. There really is no wrong reason for picking a certain gender, so long as you have fun playing the game.

castlemanic.3198

That would actually be a great solution. Content isn’t gated because there is no prerequisite gear. the dungeons are available to everyone to enjoy, and different difficulties allows a progression that isn’t available anywhere else in game and also doesnt interfere with other people’s ability to play the dungeon either.

My friend, you’ve found the middle ground, a feat no one could have imagined.

Thank you very much, I’m glad someone likes the idea! (Though I think I mostly just elaborated on Lutharr’s proposal, haha.) As someone else mentioned earlier, I would love to see at least a test run of this put into the game at some point so that players can get a feel for whether or not they’d enjoy it.

@Lutharr
Thank you for the reply; I’m doing my best to understand where people are coming from. It would be great if we could hit on a solution that might keep everyone happy.

When you mention the tier system, how exactly do you picture it working in GW2? Would there basically be three different versions of each dungeon, all with duplicate content but varying degrees of difficulty? (For example, three versions of CM that all have the same layout, the same story, the same bosses, etc. but vary in how much health the mobs have or mechanics the bosses might use?)

Do you think people might be more satisfied if they could choose a higher level of difficulty for instanced content like dungeons, without having more powerful gear being the reward? For instance, if a group ran a dungeon on maximum difficulty, they would still be fighting with the same exotics that anyone else in the game could attain without ever entering that difficult instance – but if they did manage to overcome that challenge, they could have much higher drop rates for rare materials, good-looking weapons or armor, and currency.

I’m just wondering if it would be possible to give gear grinding players the sort of playstyle they enjoy without having to introduce the gear buffs that often lead to gated content.

Personally I feel that to many people are just plain selfish and want what they want and kitten anyone else.

No offense but that’s exactly how a lot of the people who want gear grinding sound to people who don’t want it. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a single MMO yet that managed to stop content from becoming gated once gear grinding was introduced. All it takes is for a few people to start denying players on the grounds that their gear is sub-par (even if the difference is actually rather minimal) and the mentality spreads like wildfire; in other games, I have seen people rage, threaten others, and kick perfectly good players from groups just because they didn’t have that one armor piece with that tiny extra stat that might have made the dungeon go two minutes faster. It can get ridiculous and I can’t blame players in the slightest for being afraid that introducing vertical progression into the game would cause GW2 to sink into that same dismal abyss of problems that causes a large number of players to lose all fun from grouped content – content which they otherwise would have loved and enjoyed. (I’m also not a big fan of gear inspection options because of this; if your build is different from what someone perceives as the “best” build for your class, and therefore your stat distribution doesn’t meet their expectations, there are a ton of people out there who won’t think twice about screaming in your face and trying to rally the group to kick you. If they have more friends than you, you’re kicked – no matter how good your build actually might have been or how proficient you were at playing it.)

I can easily see how having something to work for would make the game more fun for people, and I support that mentality; everyone has fun in their own way, after all. Still, I thought that’s what legendaries, specialized armor looks, etc. were for – ‘fluff’ in a sense since they don’t actually boost your stats and therefore will never be required in order to access gated content, but still special and something that takes a long time and a lot of work to get. I don’t mind grind rewards at all for people who really just need something to work toward in order to enjoy the game, but what is wrong with those grinded-out items being fluff? If they’re fluff, they can still be really amazing and have effects that only a few people in the game will ever attain, but they have no chance at destroying other players’ enjoyment of the game. And if the fluff is an armor, weapon, or special effect, it’s not like it’s something you’ll never use.

If you just want to grind for the feeling of constantly becoming more powerful, then maybe some adjustments to the home instance would be nice – have the NPCs in there greet you like a hero and throw great parties in your honor or something. Deck your walls with trophies taken from your enemies or turn your humble shack into a magnificent castle. But surely there must be a way to insert something to grind for that doesn’t have to affect content to the extent that people will be able to gate it.

I’m honestly very curious about this and would like to know: is there anything at all non-stat related that would help you to enjoy the game more and give you something to work for? Or does it absolutely, without a doubt, have to have an impact on your statistics or ability to kill things such that it would give you a numbers advantage over a player who didn’t have it?

Sorry, I’m 100% against end-game gear progression. The thing I have always loved most about GW1 was that the progression was horizontal; you may not have had many choices when beginning the game, but after you were a decent way into it you could pretty much go wherever you wanted to do the content you actually wanted to do rather than being stuck on a grind that you didn’t even enjoy just to get to the parts of the game you actually wanted to play. I’m thrilled that they kept that mentality in GW2 and that I can finally play end-game for the fun of doing something I love to do rather than having to grind out things I really hate just to keep my stats up to par. In truth, I wish more MMOs would adopt this way of thinking, and try designing games more around “play this to have fun” and less around “play this or you’ll fall behind”.

Count me in as someone stuck on this story, as well. I honestly don’t mind waiting for the patch since I’m sure there’s some reason why it hasn’t been implemented yet, though of course it’s frustrating not being able to continue my storyline. I’m a lot more confused about the previous thread being closed, however; since the bug hasn’t been fixed yet, the thread should still be valid and I can’t see any logical reason to close it down. :\

It would be nice if we had more information about why the patch wasn’t implemented when so many other things have been patched recently, especially now that Halloween is at an end.

I actually really loved the clock tower! Yes, the first few hours were extremely frustrating – it’s a difficult jumping puzzle after all and my reaction times aren’t exactly top-notch. Still, it was very enjoyable and once I managed to beat it once, I turned it into a daily of sorts for all of my characters just because I had so much fun running it. Truth be told, I’m sad to see it go and I hope it returns next year.

I think the only real problem with this jumping puzzle was the time limit on it. By that, I don’t mean having to run it quickly: I mean players only had a few days in which to complete it. While I actually think a few days is plenty of time for most people to figure out and complete the jumping puzzle at their own pace, I believe this placed a psychological pressure that may have caused players to perform more poorly than if they were able to complete the puzzle on their own schedule. My reasoning for this is that platformer-style areas like jumping puzzles rely heavily on muscle memory and twitch reactions; what makes them more “difficult” often has more to do with the player’s emotional state and reaction times rather than an ability to analyze the situation and take the appropriate action. Even if someone knows the puzzle back and forth, if that person becomes nervous, angry, or frustrated, they may not be able to complete the puzzle because a natural reaction to all of these emotions is for the person’s fingers and hands to spasm or shake, making it that much harder for the player to control his or her character properly. To an extent, this sort of reaction is expected with any timed game, but it is usually offset somewhat by the knowledge that the player will at least be able to try again later. So, while “ramping” the content may in fact be a pretty good idea, I think another alternative would be to simply reserve extremely difficult puzzles like the clock tower for permanent installations into the game rather than something tied to a limited event.

Ah, this post was longer than I expected! In any case, I mostly wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the clock tower and would love to see more jumping puzzles of its caliber implemented in the future, hopefully in a more permanent capacity!

This is my engineer, Tsindrim. I’ve always loved coats so the abundance of leather coat-type armors in this game makes me very happy, haha! This is my most recent look and I’m not sure whether I’ll stay with or not, but I like it.

Human Engineer
Asura Elementalist

I know my human didn’t have a speed boost and I’m pretty sure my asura didn’t have one enabled either. A difficult but fun puzzle!

I guess I’m neutral on all of this. Personally I always use the “swap weapon” keybind when I want to drop my kits so I have no problem with this ‘bug’ and wouldn’t mind if it stayed, or if there were an option for all kits to behave this way. Still, I can see how it might get on someone’s nerves if they’re expecting the kit to behave a certain way and it suddenly behaves differently. I do agree that all kits should behave the same way, though; the med kit may be a healing skill, but it’s still a kit, so inconsistency between it and other kits could cause some confusion.

Have to say I’ve never had a problem running a power or condition based engineer; I’m only mediocre at PvP but I can still take people 1v1 a good amount of the time, sometimes 2v1 if I’m lucky. The engie is an extremely versatile class and there are a ton of builds for it that work well, but most of those builds do take more practice than some of the more popular builds of other classes (such as the thief’s heartseeker spammer build). As much as I’d love to log in one day and suddenly be more powerful, I have to agree with Tolmos; we can put out plenty of damage with the stats and abilities we already have.

It’s always seemed a bit odd to me that my human female engie will only stand properly with the flamethrower and elixir gun (and of course regular weapons like pistols and rifles). The crouching animation with the grenade kit causes it to basically cut her head in half and the bomb kit just about swallows it whole, whereas my male human engineer friend has none of these problems. Not exactly game-breaking and certainly nothing that needs to be fixed when there are actual bugs that should be addressed first, but strange and irritating nonetheless. Anyone else bugged about this or do you just ignore it / avoid using bulky kits?

For anyone who hasn’t seen this issue and thinks it might just be a poor hairstyle choice, it isn’t; when I say it eats the head, I really do mean the head.