Guild Wars 2

Big Erk.2058:

Obsidian.1328:

I think they should drop all gems and gold too.

And perhaps their credit card #.

This made me spit my coffee. LOL!

I had a similar reaction.

On topic: Bad idea since that would alienate anyone who put time and effort into equipping themselves with end-game gear.

Zil.3071:

took me 2-3hours to complete the tower meta. MMO genre is not for u, more so GW2 who updates so much which i love, cos i get bored easy.

By your argument the MMO genre isn’t for many MMO players. I have many friends as well as myself who have been totally turned off by the rapid implementations of LS. You can’t play the LS content at your leisure. If you have finals to study for or a heavy workload in your career during the first few days or week of the newest LS implementation (Nightmare Tower, for instance) then you completely miss out. The zerg zones become dead after the masses get their achievements and then you have a very real blockade in the Tower between you and completing the LS (or even seeing the story) which requires you to pass up to 3 gateways which also require zergs due to events and elites/champions guarding the event-sealed exits. Where I’ve been able to complete these within the naturally optimum time slot, I’ve felt a great pressure to do so without being able to stop and enjoy the experience. Meanwhile, my friends from other MMOs and the first Guild Wars just start sitting the game out because they feel like they can’t keep up and that there’s no point anymore since all the “new” stuff goes away after a few weeks or a month. A couple of my friends even returned to the original game because the flexible gameplay was better for them than the time-crunch of GW2 — their idea of MMO is being able to play the same content together with 4-10 other friends during the short time window when everyone has the same evening or day free.

As for me, I’m so burned out from the LS-fest and the disappointment with the Halloween stacked on top, I just can’t bring myself to log in anymore, even though it’s Wintersday and I’ve always loved the Wintersday events since the first one that came out in 2005. I guess MMOs aren’t for me, but I’m currently enjoying a few other MMOs where my friends and I can play at our leisure and new content is released regularly with true permanence — not just lingering “activities” that aren’t available daily or a single event from a previous LS… or tweaking existing content and calling it “new” or “added.” Perhaps it’s not that MMOs aren’t for me and my friends. Maybe it’s just that Guild Wars 2 isn’t for us anymore, which is a shame since my household alone has probably dropped $40-80/mo on the silly but entertaining cosmetic items in the cash shop. Pennies, I know, but when enough people decide their money’s best spent elsewhere, they add up.

I love this line of thought and the OP. The lore in this game is so deep and there’s so much one can do in congruence with that lore. The pacing might still be a bit fast, but with progression it’d be great, especially if people have a way to go back and see how we get from Point A (the introduction instance every new character goes through) to “today.” I’ve lost interest in the story and even the game itself, sadly, but something like this would definitely pull me back in drooling for more.

I sorta care… Sorta. Maybe. Barely.

It’s basically been: excitement at the new stuff —> some of this stuff isn’t that fun but there seems to be some cool items and the story’s still sort of interesting —> getting the cool items is now a grind and the story’s not fulfilling —> getting tired of the temporary, time-limited content; when’s some permanent stuff coming out besides nodes? —> grinding for items and AP is now as desirable as having all my teeth pulled with pliers and no painkillers.

Initially, I was excited. DYNAMIC WORLD! — LIVING STORY! — Viva La Environmental Evolution! I thought, “Yeah! This is like that War in Kryta stuff in Guild Wars!” which, for those who haven’t played it, was introduced as permanent content into the original game where you’d go back through the old familiar places but new stuff was happening and you could play it at your leisure, even repeat some of the quests if you wanted, or repeat the whole thing on another character (the only drawback in my opinion). So, War in Kryta was the first Living Story and it was very cool. The NPC’s had an evolving story and it unfolded every few months with stuff to collect, challenging missions, and no “only available for 2-4 weeks so hurry now!” infomercial nonsense.

I want to care. I want to still love GW2. I want to be drawn back in for reasons other than “If you don’t log in and do this stuff you’ll never see this content again!” Even now that’s lost its allure to me. It’s temporary and you get a “T-shirt” to show for grinding some LS-AP that nobody who buys the game next year will understand or care about.

Amiceli.3847:

True story guys it also could help at jumping puzzles and other things where the camera is bugging all the time because you can’t get a correct angle to see where you are heading!

I agree. First Person would be awesome for the jumping puzzles. As it is, I can’t do some of them on my charr or norn because their shoulders BLOCK all view of the camera. I actually hosted a “guild event” where all guild members have to race to the end of Troll’s Garden (removes the need for leveling for the event) because it’s just so difficult. The reward to the winner of the blind jumping contest was a mini-pack. :P

I love the jumping puzzles and to explore, but it’s such a pain on my norn/charr to do them, especially the ones with limited space, so I usually skip them on those races. :/

I agree with the OP’s remark about the real problem. I wish I could give some real feedback for the Tequatl event itself, but I’ve only had one kind of experience with it, which involves at least 1/4 of the players AFK, 1/4 perma-dead, and usually half the turrets down. I’ve never been able to leave the 10th circle of hell otherwise known as Overflow.

I have a friend who keeps telling me, “You should try again. Join [ insert Tequatl specialty guild ] and they’ll help you win and it’s fun!” Then she goes on to explain the whole process of “taking over” either another server’s home-zone or an overflow… and the importance of getting in 1-3 hours early so you can actually get in to the right zone/overflow… and sitting through the organisational process which is comparable to hosting a real-life community expo or competition. Installing TS is optional, apparently, as long as most of said specialty guild has the majority on it. At that point, I realised just how broken the mechanics are for this event (including the AFK, trolls, basic overflow limitations, etc.).

Maybe the Tequatl fight is fun but I haven’t experienced any of that yet and I don’t like feeling that my only choice to experience this “success” and “fun” is to join a specialty guild for what is open world content and devote 1-3 hours of my free time to waiting. This is like standing in line for 1-3 hours just to go to a ‘B’ movie, read a book, play disc golf, or any other activity that’s supposed to be fun and easy to access.

Notice how I never mentioned difficulty. I can’t even complain about how “hard” it is or isn’t since I’ve never experienced anything other than Tequatl battles with, at best, 50% of players present actually participating.

SaltyDave.7346:

So many replies and attention!

I guess everyone is out there farming. Well, goodbye GW2.

Well, supposedly the suggestions thread is more closely watched by the people that matter (ArenaNet) even if they don’t respond. As for other people responding, well, they don’t follow this sub-forum as closely as the others.

My view: The idea’s interesting and I’d love the option to re-do reknown hearts. The current dailies, I think, are intended to repopulate certain areas after people have “beaten” the game. This would be a more structured version of it. I wouldn’t mind a bit of choices offered each day, either. For instance, you (or your group) talks to the NPC in an instanced area and you get a choice of which “quest” to do, much like in the explorable dungeon options.

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

People ress the AFKers on purpose to break their armor. A little payback I suppose.

I’m guilty of doing that, too. It serves two purposes. 1.) It breaks their armour and 2.) the broken armour gives visual notice to everyone else — because they’re only wearing underwear after a point — that there’s a perma-AFK person.

+1
I was actually surprised to not see a last login date since the first game had the feature and it was very helpful in keeping the guilds clean.

pantus.8539:

And I don’t agree on making turrets afk proof that’s just patching things up, using a report afk system can help in the longrun. Especially if there will be more and more world bosses amped up and require some people to interact with crazy inventions in order to succeed.

Nowhere in the ToS is there a rule against Akitteng. I don’t see why reporting seemingly AFK people is needed when you have the automated checks in the system to begin with. Maybe those checks need to be tweaked for something like the Tequatl event, but with things as they are now, the GMs would be overwhelmed with hundreds of reports for the duration of this event. It’s more work than a living person needs when you have an automated system, already.

As for the turrets, my suggestion wasn’t just for the AFKers but also for the reported trolls who camp the turrets, mock the players, and shoot those very same turrets in the opposite direction of the dragon & players. Assuming the GMs are already being flooded with abuse reports (maybe some people are reporting AFK people as I’ve seen people talking about reporting other players who kill champs “outside of rotation” in farming areas), a timer on the turrets would also lessen the need, plus give other players who need the turret-based achievement a chance to get it. My turret suggestion would cover 3 separate issues.

hermescragsniper.2713:

I would be behind this. Simple and effective.

In fact, even simply numbering overflows would solve some organization issues

So true. I had forgotten about how easy it was to get a full party of 12 into the same channel in GW1 to do one of the harder missions or dungeons as a unit. That channel system was fantastic!

gotem.5284:

You can keep complaining for pages on end they aren’t going to change the system. Adapt.

As Miku.6297 mentioned, “adapt[ing]” makes no sense when it’s inherent that the system isn’t working as intended. Player feedback is vital as well as developers working to resolve the issue. The overflow system combined with Tequatl’s specific Living Story segment is just exasperating an existing flaw. In previous versions of the Living Story it wasn’t so vital to have full coordination on such a massive scale. Now, planning teams are having to work around the overflow limitations in order to succeed at this event. Yes, Tequatl’s popularity will die down in a couple of weeks, but this problem can and will happen again and again with future Living Story events should ArenaNet release more Living Story content that has similar requirements of the players.

I don’t think that’s a very good idea. This suggestion is based on the Tequatl population-handling problem and is a unique situation. The event itself needs to be adjusted to accommodate the situation rather than forcing people into a situation of “failure” in the first place. I know I would be angry if I had put in some 35 minutes in doing Scarlet’s Invasion with a cross-server guild and either they or I got booted out because someone decided to join last minute, for instance.

I can complain about guesting right now, too, but it wouldn’t mean anything. Right now, I can’t fight Tequatl on my home server because other natives of my server have more than flooded that zone. Perhaps priority should be changed so that people who don’t have the achievements should get first dibs and people who’ve succeeded before be booted out in order to accommodate my needs. It would be the same amount of “fairness” but would not solve the issue and instead cause more strife between the people who want achievements, people who want the content itself, and the people trying to farm for unique skins.

Personally, I’d like to see the event changed into a large-scale instance, since that’s what overflows are anyway, but with more control. Pre-formed groups and raids would get the priority you mentioned to the point that their spots are reserved for the first couple of minutes of the event and whatever that particular instance is lacking in population is then filled with ungrouped or small groups of people. I covered it in my own suggestion (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Thinking-about-a-hybrid-Tequatl-encounter/first#post2876290) but don’t feel obligated to read it as it’s rather long. :P

FenrirSlakt.3692:

If there were no guests there would be five Overflows instead of ten.

Every map has a player cap. Once the limit is reached, players are allocated in an overflow. If you’re late, you’ll be thrown in an overflow anyway.

Come online earlier next time.

I just wanted to point out that the overflows are shared cross-server as well. I’ve had friends from other “full” servers appear in the same overflow as me while trying to get into their home-server’s zone. The increase in number of overflows just means that many overflow zones are also overflowing regardless of server-origin. In short, if you’re cycling through 20 overflows, that doesn’t mean there are 20 overflows’ worth of guests on your home server.

As for getting on earlier, I’ve spent one evening camping an overflow and actively participating while waiting through 2 Tequatl cycles without ever making it into my home server. Sometimes “coming on earlier” means getting in an 8-hour line which most people don’t have the free time for.

Yeah, before long I’ll have 8 Queen Jennahs and she refuses to swim with me, argh! I really loved the GW1 birthday minis since you had a chance for some really neat minis. My white rabbit was one I was immensely proud of. Perhaps a Birthday Mini Box (one mini pet inside) would be good? Like the MiniPack Sets 1 & 2, it would have its own set of minis that can only be obtained by birthday presents, but also make them trade-able for people who end up with duplicates so they can sell and complete their collection in other ways.

I can say the same for my server, but I can’t point fingers at guests. My server’s got a high population of active guilds and players. Sometimes I get pushed into an overflow when other world bosses (pre-boss patch, anyway) activate and have to miss out on those bosses that night since the overflows didn’t mirror the original zones. I think the problem is that there’s only one zone where the big, new Tequatl fight is at and everyone who’s lvl 50+ (yes, some under-leveled people attempt it, too) want to get a piece of the Living Story action.

Honestly, I’d like to see a list of the servers with averages of native vs. guest populations that way people saying “It’s guests’ fault!” and those who disagree (which would include me) can see the truth of what’s going on in this population mess. Speculation’s really not getting us anywhere.

Of course, regardless of the numbers shown, something needs to be fixed since every iteration of the Living Story pushes masses and masses of people into overflows in the zones that LS focuses on, often splitting grouped people into different ones as each overflow created gets capped. In previous versions of the LS the winning or failing of events wasn’t as heavily affected, with only Scarlet’s Invasions (which was more of farm vs succeed) and Tequatl truly showing the limitations of the overflow system.

Elbegast.6970:

Raine.1394:

Teq seems to be tracking according to my predictions. As with all content targeted to the mythical ‘hardcore’ player, it will have some initial interest, but then will simply discourage and demoralize the player base and empty the open world where it occurs.

I’m already feeling very discouraged.

That screenshot has been my experience for almost every Teq event I’ve been in. I’m stuck in overflow and it seems like there’s a constant population of 20+ dead people on my minimap by Teq’s feet, another some 20 downed (which isn’t as bad), and not even a 10% dent in Teq’s health at the end of the failed event. A few players, including myself, would attempt to get all of the broken turrets back up and try to play properly, but every overflow short of one that happened to have some TKS guys in it, never got Teq below 90% health. The one overflow that had a handful of TKS guys actually got him down to ~60% which was pretty awesome, if only a one-time experience for me.

While this Living Story is active, I figure I’ll just get my meta finished and go back to SAB while it lasts. My only consolation about Boss Week is that you can literally fail your way to success for the meta achievement — which speaks volumes about this iteration of the LS.

I support this topic! +1

I’d also like to be able to guest to my EU friends’ server now and then. In GW1, due to my schedule, I ended up making friends with and joining an EUguild, which I’ve played with in GW1 for years. I was so excited when guesting was finally implemented since everyone from that guild got the new game. ‘Lo and behold, I can’t guest to an EU server since I’m tied to an American account. I was a bit surprised since after a year of GW1’s release, one was allowed to swap home server locations once or twice, total; then after two years, it was converted into an easy channel swap system. I’m still in the remade guild but can’t join in any of their activities on the weekends. Le sigh.

In GW1 there were also Hero’s Handbooks (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero's_Handbook) for redoing the story in the Eye of the North expansion. You redid them and if you completed every “chapter” you could turn them in to a historian who would pay you for each completed book (you could only have one on your person at a time, of course). It’d be cool to have something similar to that.

One would expect (keyword) that your “spot” in the main server is actively reserved during the duration of the option to join, re-enter, or leave queue dialogue. Since the dialogue is up for a limited time before automatically re-queuing, anyway, I see no reason why it shouldn’t reserve your spot.

Sometimes I just want to shake my fist futilely.

I’ve suggested this in another topic but I’ll say it here, too. Rather than giving commanders a “kick” ability, why not give the turrets that ability?

To prevent a constant “trolling” of the turrets, the turrets would have a 10-15 second usage timer and a 5-second player-specific cooldown between uses — those crazy Hyleks deal in some potent potions, after all. Players would have to cycle as turret users, increasing the chances for individuals to get their achievements and to prevent a troll from camping a turret. While a troll could still try to get back on, it’s no longer a guaranteed lock-down, especially with 2-3 people standing by to use it while (s)he is on cooldown.

I’ve been thinking about “what if Tequatl was converted into a hybrid encounter in order to handle population issues?” (Disclaimer: I have no credibility as a game designer and the following are just my non-technical musings.)

Phase One (a pre-Tequatl event involving fighting its forces or shooting it out of the sky, or stopping an initial attack) would be open world and scaled to the current population so that if people are actually fighting it’d be pushed into Phase Two, where it opens up a limited time boat or portal (like dungeon unlocking events) where you can “chase after” or set up for the big Tequatl encounter — maybe the dragon’s retreated to a mountain top to drench Sparkfly in a miasma, or is attacking some nearby inhabited island. During Phase One the battle would be more of a warm-up so that people can group up, raid up, whatever, and prepare for the “real” battle in Phase Two. AFKers, explorers, and otherwise non-participants would be left behind as the dragon slayers travel to a dragon-specific “battleground” (or high-population instance/ controlled overflow) with grouped/raided participants being moved as a single unit to the battleground then partially-grouped & non-grouped people filling in the population holes. Unless trolls are creating full-sized groups, this could actually lessen their influence on a battle since it would spread them across multiple instances as “fillers” and a raid-sized group of trolls will have less other people to “troll” outside of themselves. Low-population server groups would be merged automatically. Then the groups/raids fight Tequatl’s new-and-improved battle in this Phase Two battleground. Perhaps, if a player dies, (s)he is sucked into a bog then transported to solid ground by triage quaggan where players can be revived by them (like the Coddler’s Cove JP), or pay to instantly revive at the battleground’s WP. If players win, they have 5 or 10 minutes to loot and escape before Tequatl’s body explodes in a player-killing miasma before expelling the dead players back into Sparkfly; if they lose then it’s 2-5 minutes minutes before Tequatl’s unleashed “ultimate attack” also instantly kill-expels players and spreads to infect Sparkfly, eliminating the ability to camp this instanced area.

To prevent a constant “trolling” of the turrets, the turrets would have a 10-15 second usage timer and a 5-second player-specific cooldown between uses — those crazy Hyleks deal in some potent potions, after all. Players would have to cycle as turret users, increasing the chances for individuals to get their achievements and to prevent a troll from camping a turret. While a troll could still try to get back on, it’s no longer a guaranteed lock-down, especially with 2-3 people standing by to use it while (s)he is on cooldown.

Also, even though Phase Two is instanced, it could have a real-time effect on Sparkfly where said Island or Mountain is covered by an ominous cloud, flashes of magic, muffled voices shouting if you’re relatively near it, etc. The lasting effect on Sparkfly would be determined by whether the 50%+1 of the native server’s population succeeds in driving off Tequatl. This last part is a bit of a stretch, but with the way the open world fight is currently, most of us are pushed into overflows, anyway, and our success/failure in overflows don’t affect the server’s outcome.

That said, I don’t know if all of this is technically feasible or even an improvement at all. Also, when the popularity of Tequatl falls, all of these ideas may be moot since who knows how many people will still be flocking to Sparkfly after the Living Story moves on to “bigger and better things?”

Don’t disable guesting. Many of my real-life friends are on different servers. We all joined at different times and didn’t know at the time who all had the game — some of my friends I only kept in touch with a few times a month since we all moved to our jobs after college. Each of us had joined server-side guilds and developed separate relationships (guilds) in our own servers but also enjoy the freedom to hop over to another friend’s server to play together. One of the biggest factors in playing the game for many people, including myself, was the ability to guest over to other servers and play with friends on their servers. It was a selling point at game’s launch and had many, many, many people complaining when it wasn’t implemented for the first 6+ months.

Just because you’re being pushed into overflow, it doesn’t mean that guests are the reason, anyway, and people have been pushed into overflows at the beginning of every Living Story event, besides. My server has a 2-3 hour wait to queue into the main Sparkfly Fen area because there are just that many people camping and waiting and it’s not one of the “we’ve beat Tequatl!” servers, either.

Disabling guesting because of one Living Story event and a single, permanent world boss is stupid.

BlueSoda.6297:

I have to disagree with the idea of reporting people for going AFK within PvE. There is no real way for you to know if someone is truly AFK, or if they have just chosen that spot to stand and chat with their friends for a while (which is perfectly fine with me, people should be allowed to do whatever they want, that’s what makes it a living real world). For example, if I saw someone sleeping for an entire night cycle then maybe that is just their way of playing (role playing) and they should be allowed.

I strongly believe in letting players play the way they want to play, and experience the PvE environment in any way they wish. If players going AFK is affecting your ability to win at a boss fight then it is Anet’s responsibility to change the boss fight, not the fault of the person who is playing their way (as has been promoted by Anet itself).

I agree wholeheartedly here. There’s an AFK timer built into the client, anyway. I find reporting AFK people or people who “kill champions out of turn” to be abuse of the report feature since neither activity is breaking the ToS.

As for turrets, perhaps add in a timer feature where afk/trolling players can only be on the turret for 10 sec at a time and a 5-sec cooldown between using the turret again, thus preventing a non-participant from camping a turret. This would require more people to pay attention to the turrets, anyway; repairing them, defending them, and manning them.

Got hungry; logged off.
Got sleepy; logged off.
Had work; logged off.
New dailies; zoned out.
==
Friend(s) needed help elsewhere.
Wanted to read book.
Wanted to watch TV.
Family member got sick.
Other real life stuff.

As Storm of the Ages said, you’re not supposed to use the shortcuts. In W2Z2, for instance, if you take the shortcut eagle, it’ll plop you at the very start of the zone. You either have to slowly make your way back or else just die so you can respawn at the correct checkpoint.

The problem with tribulation mode, at least in my opinion, is that it punishes group play. Waiting at the next checkpoint for a party member to catch up will kill you. In areas where there’s a tribulation cloud it generally becomes that much harder for more than one person to clear an area because it will hit the 2nd or 3rd person while chasing the 1st.

The gameplay in SAB is so different from the regular GW2 experience that I find it rather refreshing. If I’m not in the mood to do normal Save Tyria stuff, I usually find myself playing a round or two in SAB instead. I’d love to see it stick around as a permanent feature.

As far as limited availability skins go (I know a few people want to keep their event-based skins exclusive), perhaps put in a permanent version like what was done with the moa races.

I figure it’ll be a Gem Shop item next SAB release, honestly.

Snoflake.9087:

You should take less than half a heart of poison damage before getting in. Even with latency. If you do take damage, smash everything in the shop. You are bound to get food to regen yourself along with the baubles.

The Tough Customer achievement is for Tribulation Mode where any damage from the poison is an instant-death. Sadly, the OP has to be precise and clear it perfectly, taking no damage in order to succeed. It’s a rough spot because that particular lily pad seems super-sensitive to latency. I’ve actually died as soon as my feet have touched it a few times and I’ve died a few times more mid-air after jumping off. It’s just a nasty spot in the game, especially with TM.

That particular shop is just nasty to get to. It used to be easier a few patches ago, according to my husband when he got it last week. When he tried to help me get it a couple of days ago, we both were dying repeatedly. Finally he read a post somewhere where you land on the lily pad, immediately jump straight up, then tap forward after you’re already airborne again. After about 4 tries of that I finally got in.

This was very helpful, thanks!

A tip for the toad king: You can stand there on the center lily pad and let him hit you. The waves won’t insta-kill you, unlike that nasty pool. I go in with a full stack of health potions to use while I block his attacks with my face. Make sure you have the nunchucks though so you can kill him in two stun cycles otherwise the potion trick won’t work since you’d run out.

The damage number you see is the result of your chain (25,25,50) stacking up. The number over the head adds up if you hit something fast enough. So your screenshot is most likely the result of 25, 50, 25, 25, 50 in your combat log where your first attack missed but the second started the chain.

If you have any type of rapid attack skill you can test it out by opening up the combat tab and watch as the number increases over an enemy’s head, making it seem like you’re doing consecutively harder hits, but your combat log shows much smaller numbers that add up to the final number displayed at the end of the chain.

Dagraan.2854:

you’re having latency/lag issues

I was wondering if that was the cause of it. I really wish that wasn’t such a major issue when TM isn’t very forgiving to begin with. Good luck to OP and I hope you get a lucky, non-latent jump in soon!

There’s an issue where the game doesn’t always recognise where you’re at. Like if you’re jumping in the air over a deadly spot, sometimes it actually thinks you’re on the ground in the deadly spot. The lily pads later on are even more finicky since standing/landing on the edge pretty much kills you. W1Z2 is just kind of nasty about that, to be honest, as even sometimes standing on a normally safe branch will kill you if the game thinks you’re on the spiky ground below. I’ve also died while bouncing on a mushroom that was over a spike trap because the game thought I was under the mushroom for a moment.

Be careful with the edge of any surface over lava, poison, and spikes is all I can say.

SAB has its own gear and health system independent of the normal game. You can take any level character in without worry of disadvantage.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

5 years ago this would have been so obviously P2W that the game would have lost 90% of its playerbase and had to shut down.

Five years ago there was real “P2W” in Guild Wars. People who wanted to trick out their PvP characters but didn’t want to or couldn’t kill boss mobs in order to unlock elite skills could pay $10 to unlock ALL skills in the PvP side of the game, per campaign/expansion. Otherwise, you had to play a PvE character, complete all the maps, and actually succeed at killing the elite monsters in order to get an otherwise unobtainable skill. In Guild Wars, if you died you would also take a dramatic hit to your HP and “energy,” making you weaker each death, so you couldn’t “fail your way” towards killing an elite for the skill. The pet unlock option was almost the same way except that you actually had to tame the elite pets and couldn’t outright buy them, although elite pets were aesthetic and had no functional bonus.

The continue coin saves time and allows people to do stupid stuff, but it doesn’t guarantee anyone elite items or skins. You still have to collect baubles, buy upgrades, and beat the bosses in order to get skins, skills, and anything else. Neither version of the continue coin comes with a free torch to unlock an area in World 2, nor do either version of the continue coins give you any of the other upgrades which give you a tactical advantage in playing the game (e.g. sling shot for shooting alligators and toads from a distance).

Montyro.2450:

Guild Wars 2—— GW2——P2W—— Pay to Win (better skins, wich i repeat make you better than the rest becouse that are (the skins) the high end content of the game).

According to this argument, Aetherblade Heavy/Medium/Light, Braham’s Heavy, Magitech Medium, Phoenix Light, Krytan, Profane, and Primeval Armor skins are all “pay to win.”

From my experience in “Pay to win” games (which never kept my interest), you paid to get instant levels, superior gear either not available in the game or that required 100’s of hours of time (think putting Legendaries into the gem shop for $50 each), mounts/speed boosts that you can’t otherwise get, and instant skill unlocks.

That said, the closest Guild Wars has gotten to “Pay to win” was in the first game where people who only wanted to PvP could instantly unlock all of their skills by buying them for $10 instead of playing the PvE version of the game.

It helps if you stand back and watch the sheep’s jumping patterns. That’s the key point.

I think you have to play 1,2,3 twice since the log lists the sequence twice. At least that’s what I did and it revealed a pattern after that.

This is like complaining that there’s a “Seriously, you will die” or a “New Game Plus” mode included in a game. Tribulation is meant to be punishing. The devs have said as much and Moto also says as much. If you need more continue coins, invest in a bomb and run through World 1 on normal mode. Use the bombs to open sealed secret areas, get the keys off of the mobs and open the chests. Some secret areas have 20 baubles in them, most have 5, and a fair few have 10; while the locked chests each have 40 baubles (discounting the intro chest). One run, even without the dig spots and without killing the queen bees will still get you at least 100 baubles and probably closer to 200 (there have been a couple of runs where I got tired of looking for a chest key and I’m too miserly to buy one). If you don’t skip any of the secret areas, queen bees, the chests, or the boss fights, you can nearly fill up a 500 bauble purse just in world one. It takes more time but you don’t have to be rich to do it, just dedicated.

pswendel.8179:

In all seriousness – enjoy SAB if that’s your thing. I just feel disillusioned to the idea of “living story” and the word “living” or “story” and the direction for GW2. Had this been ab side project …wow that would be cool. Instead it’s “living story.”

I actually love the SAB and have really enjoyed the small fixes of World 1 (I’m stuck in the water spout part of World 2 so can’t say much for the rest of it). That said, I agree with you that SAB shouldn’t be part of the “Living Story.” While I’d love for it to be permanently available as a mini-game, it really adds nothing to the “Story” side of things or to Tyria. SAB doesn’t “[need] to go” but it shouldn’t have been re-introduced as its own Living Story content, either.

My hope is that the next installment of Living Story will have better quality “story” and less buggy events. I’m not holding my breath, however.

Banquetto.9521:

I’d like to see a future Living Story installment where something awful happens to one of the major cities, and it is explained in the story as being a result of the guards all running off to loot Aetherblades instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Lion’s Arch is the Tortuga of Tyria. Just wanted to point that out. :P

Perhaps the 13/13 AP requirement is for the “hard core” group. I have no idea, honestly. I don’t consider myself hard core but I do enjoy the challenging stuff a lot. Out of this version of the LS I haven’t really seen anything “challenging” even though ArenaNet’s made it a point to appeal to the “hard core” group in the previous releases, so I don’t know if devoting a minimum of 13 hours and probably double that due to the way the invasions cycle is the “challenge.”

On that note, I suppose it is a challenge to juggle Real Life around a game so you can put in that much time into it for an achievement. I’ve decided I’m not that dedicated.

frostyraziel.1854:

Farmers will find every possible excuse in the book to farm. I have nothing against farming, but when you’re ruining the experience for everyone else, then you deserve to be punished. You’re no different than botters. Why even play the game?

This comment really bothers me. A “botter” is a person who uses a 3rd party program of some sort to automate the the game so that the person can walk away while the character collects items and gold for them. A “farmer” as you call it is actively playing the game in order to collect items and gold. One involves breaking ArenaNet’s Terms of Service with absolutely no effort on that person’s behalf while the other involves complying with the ToS as someone’s sitting at the computer and pushing buttons in order to obtain their stuff.

Why punish a person for playing the game within the rules? With the way legendaries work, you either have to farm for mats and money or else you have to shell out a couple thousand real-world dollars to quick-buy everything… That someone else farmed. Even normal exotics require farming of some sort; be it WvW honor badges, dungeon tokens, karma, materials for crafted exotics, or the raw drops. Farming is part of the game.

As for the zerg-failures, I’ve only seen this happen when the majority of the players are in it for the farming and/or most of the people don’t know to move on as soon as an event clears. In this case, you’re sadly in the minority, but the game makes up for it by still giving you a participation reward and credit towards your achievement (assuming you went to a unique area and not a repeat zone). It’s also very possible to counter zergs by breaking off and going to a different event within the zone. You can easily find other people doing the same. If there are 3 or more of you, give the event a try and you can usually succeed then move on to a new one as soon as that event succeeds. Another thing to keep in mind is that there’s no replay value in this event after you get your participation achievement credit for that zone, so there needs to be real incentive to bring people back for 40-minutes each time an invasion starts.

As Hebee.8460 said, you can’t be downed, either. Also, you need to sit through the npcs’ entire conversation at the end before the achievement pops up.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

The boss fight:

I enjoyed it. A lot.

(snipped the list)

I agree with everything listed. The Playhouse itself was very enjoyable. The extra achievements made for a fun challenge and added replay-value for me. Even without the achievements, I’m willing to go back in again because I like the instance so much.

Vol.5241:

KitaYumi.7048:

It would be if we could do that when we want to. As it is, we can not, since we need to wait on a ridiculously long cooldown for a measly five minutes of “uniqueness”.
Really, what is the problem with being able to use it for as long as you like? Does it break the game in any way?

Then you end up with the whole population wearing nothing but the watchknight skin. There’s nothing appealing looking at people wearing the same thing.

What’s wrong with having a toggle instead of a timer of 5 minutes? I think it would be awesome if a large guild could all coordinate and do one of the big guild events all in costume for the duration of their events. I know if a combat-friendly quaggan tonic came out, the vast majority of my guild would want to coordinate a quaggan-themed event, for instance. Someone else also mentioned a WvW watchknight rampage. That’d be cool, too. If ArenaNet releases more tonics then not everyone will choose to wear the watchknight skin later on, either.

Just putting in my support for the OP.
I’ve been rather disenchanted with the latest Living Story due to the mandatory zerg-fest. If it were an optional thing it wouldn’t bother me at all (since I could do something else instead), but you’re required to devote at least 6 invasions (or you can replace “invasions” with “hours” due to the structure of the events) in order to progress the “story” in the Living Story. I’ve managed to do it because I wanted to see the Playhouse, but none of it was enjoyable and I felt I couldn’t just not do it since it’s required for the more enjoyable playhouse and story progression.* This really felt like a grind to me, as though I were playing your standard MMO for the past couple of days, even down to a sense of “competition” against other people in order to reach an event first in order to get credit.

Also, I saw one interesting post:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Xae Isareth.1364:

It’s supposed to be a massive invasion, if said massive invasion can be repelled by 5 people, it’be more like a small skirmish.

Actually that would be truly heroic, imagine 5 people repelling a massive amount of enemies, then coming out victorious! It would feel like a real battle.

In original Guild Wars, there were some really crazy, challenging, and amazing massive fights using only a team of 8 to fend them off. You had to use strategy, change your builds around to manage the 10-to-1 odds, and even use the environment (funnel points, catapults, etc.) to win. Those were so hard but once you succeeded it left a real feeling of accomplishment and they felt like epic battles, as well. Two examples: Thunderhead Keep (Prophecies Campaign), Dzagonur Bastion (Nightfall Campaign).

• While I know you can just piggy back off of someone else who’s already done the necessary pre-requisites in order to access Playhouse, it’s obvious the devs intended for people to do the invasions first, otherwise why make them a pre-requisite in the story in the first place?