Guild Wars 2

You’re welcome
Thanks for saying something here, I didn’t even realise she had seen my comment to her until I saw this and went back to check :P

ananda.5946:

I think they are intertwined. Not all hero points will be accessible without filling in some masteries one would guess. I didn’t say I like it, but I think this is the ‘leveling up’ they came up with.

My main concern is that hot launches in a couple of days and the Mac client is still broken. Playing the new areas in beta, the game crashed every ten mins or so. I guess I won’t be getting hero or mastery points to fill my spec till it is fixed. :P

Yeah, they are most likely related. The elite specs is also a stated part of their horizontal progression stuff. It being horizontal does make it quite a bit different to the entirely vertical treadmill of WoW. They have some similarities, but they’re very different.

See, that is a pretty kitten solid thing to worry about.
Good luck, and I hope it’s something they’ve managed to fix since the last BWE

Random.4691:

You clearly misses the point, it takes less then 5 seconds to acknowledge the community.

And you missed my point. Sometimes a simple response is not the right move.
They may be holding off on responding because the correct people are not currently in office (they have a midnight launch followed by launch weekend, they may be having time off now so as to be on hand for as much of that as possible). They may be choosing to wait and see if this is a big enough issue for enough people that it warrants looking into (as I’ve said, this thread is long, but it’s mostly the same people complaining).
Public/community relations is a complicated and sometimes delicate thing. Look at their response to the “expansion includes the base game” shenanigans. They saw the problem but they took their time looking at the community, the problem and potential solutions, then they made an announcement. That is often how they do things. And while I too sometimes wish they’d respond more, I don’t blame them for not. Given the internet’s skill at misunderstanding and taking things out of context. Heck, while there are some potentially valid issues in this thread, a whole lot of it is people complaining about their own assumptions based on incomplete and misunderstood/misquoted information.

ananda.5946:

They didn’t raise the level cap, so this is the way they’re having you level up with all characters. Just pretend the level cap was raised, but all of your gear will still be fine.

And you’re already at max level, you just need to do some new challenges before you can use some new, but not necessary abilities. If you choose to replace you old one with them.
Your description more accurately fits the Masteries system. In fact it is the intended purpose of the masteries system.

Kaiser.9873:

See the PvE players keep saying, “You can get it done in a few hours.”, but the truth is no one knows how long it will take. What if 30 of the 40 Hero Challenges you need are xp gated behind masteries?

See, I keep seeing the opposite.
I keep seeing WvW players going, “this is bulkitten, we are going to have to gain 400 WvW levels per character” and people assuming the new HP will be ten much harder because they are worth more. And that they’re going to have to complete all the expansion maps to unlock the elite spec.
As I’ve said, we don’t know.
“We have no idea how many HP are in the expansion map, all we know is that there are more than enough for a level 80 with no other HP. We don’t know how many more. We also don’t know if they’re any more difficult than the normal world ones. We know that you can gain HP from doing WvW now, which is good, but we don’t know how many Proofs of Heroics you get from WvW levels. It could be one per level (which would suck), it could be ten per level. It could have some sort of alternating amount. They could be lootable items on top of the level up ones.”

I can’t say it will take no time at all, but neither can you say it will take forever.
We just don’t know yet.

Random.4691:

As always a simple “we are looking into this but no promises” takes less then 5 sec to post. It’s not a time issue its a cowardness issue.

Nice. If I were one of the devs comments like that would just give me incentive to let people like you stew longer. To actually look into it, but to not give you a comment like that.
There are myriad reasons they may not be responding.

Menadena.7482:

Really? Not high? You DO realize we are on page 28 already, right? This is also not the only thread or forum discussing this.

Yes. There are lots of pages because so many of the people complaining are complaining a lot. Plus people like me who are responding with comments that aren’t complaints. I’ve had time to sleep and come back and still see mostly the same names complaining.
Page number offers no indication on how many people are bothered by this. Oh, and forum admins have been merging threads on this topic into this thread, so there aren’t that many others.

Endlos.4852:

Until Colin’s post yesterday, we had no idea that the elite spec would require us to 100% unlock the base class before letting us touch the new toys.

I expected a huge hero point investment. That’s why I saved 100-220 points on my level 80s in anticipation of elite specs. What I did not expect was that I’d have to dump literally hundreds of points into traits and skills that I will never use just to get the ability to start spending points on the fun new thing I paid for.

It doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t fit the pre-existing philosophy of the game. An engineer doesn’t have to learn elixirs before he or she can learn turrets, but for some reason has to learn both elixirs and turrets (as well as everything else) before being able to learn how to use drones?

These elite specs were touted by the development staff as “alternatives, not direct upgrades” and yet their pricing and unlock structure fits exactly what an “upgrade” would constitute: Completely max out your class, then you can experiment with the so-called side-grade/optional playstyle; The “optional playstyle” requires you to first invest hundreds of points into stuff that you literally cannot even use all at once in a single build. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Actually it does make sense.
Think of it like becoming a doctor. You have to do your time learning general medicine. Once you have learnt all the basics, then, if you wish, you can choose to further specialise in a specific area (cardiologist, neurosurgeon, etc). The “Core specialisations” are the fundamentals of your class, you must learn all of them before you can specialise in something further.
This has been how they have talked about elite vs core spec for pretty much the whole time.
Elite specs are alternatives, but they are treated differently. You earn enough HP while levelling to gain all of your core specs, and you cannot even start an elite specialisation until you’re level 80. This has been known for quite some time. And when you remember that more are coming and to think of them as different to the core specs it continues to make sense. You didn’t need to learn elixars to unlock turrets, sure. But you need a good grounding in all of the core parts of your class before you can go on to to learn fancier different stuff. Once the next elite spec is out it’s almost certain you won’t need to learn scrapper before you can learn it. The elite specs are another tier of specialisation.

Importantly, you cannot refund hero points spent. So, assuming allowing hero point refunds is off the table, and it most certainly seems to be for them, then they had two choices:
- require full core specs and skills to be unlocked, which you can do just for reaching level 80 with no extra effort and keep elite specs as a new tier of specs.
- don’t require the base class to be fully completed making it harder for people who made irrevocable choices to spend their points before they knew this was an option.

The second option has a further design issue, it acts as a disincentive for people to try out the different possibilities of their class as they level.

Endlos.4852:

It’s made even more frustrating the way that “old world” hero challenges are completely invalidated since they are only worth 1/10th of the Jungle hero challenges, effectively funneling everyone that wants an elite spec into the new zone and trivializing the value of the old world content.

Basically, every single way this is set up reeks of “traditional linear theme park MMO expansion” where “increased level cap from 80 to 90” is replaced with “grind hero points in the new zones” and I thought Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be the different, special snowflake, not a grindy content funnel into the new parts of the map.

No it is not really like a level cap increase at all.
The major difference here is that optional part you mentioned earlier. The key part of level and gear treadmill model is that all progress previously is essentially now pointless except for having you be a high enough level to start the new content.
Your HP can still be spent, but the new stuff is just expensive. Arguably, that has a little bit of the treadmill flavour to it. A little bit. However, that’s the only part. Your character is still just as strong as it was and it won’t get any stronger. Your gear is just as strong as it was and you still can’t get any better.
As per below, they had a design issue existing hero points. Getting them faster/easier in the new content was their answer to that problem.

Daddar.5971:

I have been here since before core game launch. I have 17 lv 80 toons. I spend almost all my time in WvW. I know I can earn the elites there, but doing the math leads me to the conclusion that I simply need to find another game. We have been asking forever for hard numbers on hero points needed for unlock. I bought the ultimate edition despite the lack of info because I trusted A-Net to be reasonable. I was wrong.

The problem with asking for hard numbers is that they’ve most likely known for sometime what the design goal was with how many HP it would take, but had not settled on a specific number until very recently. So they couldn’t give you a hard number count.
I’m almost certain the design goal was “we want people with world completion to have a good portion of the elite spec line unlocked, but we do not want them to have it instantly completed”. Then it’s a matter of settling specifically how they do that.

When “doing the math” remember that we have no idea what most of the important numbers in that math are at the moment. We have no idea how many HP are in the expansion map, all we know is that there are more than enough for a level 80 with no other HP. We don’t know how many more. We also don’t know if they’re any more difficult than the normal world ones. We know that you can gain HP from doing WvW now, which is good, but we don’t know how many Proofs of Heroics you get from WvW levels. It could be one per level (which would suck), it could be ten per level. It could have some sort of alternating amount. They could be lootable items on top of the level up ones.

Random.4691:

Seriously the lack of red post, not that I should be surprised, it’s like that child that was caught doing something they shouldn’t so they just hide because that makes everything better. I guess they really didn’t learn from their FAQ scandal.

Given that the vast majority of the complaints in this thread are by a small handful of people and that most of it was posted during Anet’s downtime, this really shouldn’t be a surprise.
People are trying to be very loud about their complaints, but so far the actual number of people complaining really isn’t that high.

Black Box.9312:

A HoT hero challenge is worth 10 points. A base-game hero challenge is worth 1 point. For anyone who hasn’t already completed the existing challenges, they serve absolutely no purpose. Why waste your time doing things for 1 point, when you can just go to the jungle and do things for 10 points? “Devaluing” doesn’t get any more black and white than that.

Prior to the elite specs those extra hero points served no purpose whatsoever. So in a way it has added value. Prior to that they were really only useful for getting legendaries. And even then only because you needed the item for 100% map completion, given you could earn the skills points by doing anything that gave you XP.

Black Box.9312:

This is the exact reason why people were in such outcry when Anet made their original proposal that hero challenges would be required to max out a character, which they then changed because hey, maybe it actually makes more sense to not do that.

Except that, as other people have pointed out, you don’t need to rush those points. Playing through the maps ordinarily will likely get you what you need.
Yes the little number next to your character doesn’t increase, but that’s the point of turning the progression horizontal. From here it’s all about unlocking new options, getting stuff you might want because you want it, not because you need the increase to become more powerful. Horizontal levelling is just a form of progression, so horizontal progression is basically a form of levelling.
You also have to get specific points around the place to be able to progress gliding, you even have to do that in the new maps. Elite specs are basically the same, except that once unlocked you can use them everywhere. Heck, I was half expecting a mastery to be required to unlock the elite specs, at least this way you can unlock masteries and elite specs at the same time.

Black Box.9312:

Mastering a build comes by playing with it, not by unlocking it. You don’t magically acquire the skills to excel with a new character in a fighting game just by unlocking him. You have to fight with him, learn how his moves and combos work, and figure out what works best in a given situation.

Nobody is going to master an elite spec as soon as they have access to all of the skills and traits. It makes no difference whether this point is reached instantaneously, or with a grind through specific content that some people might not be so inclined to do. Either way, they’re going to have to put time and effort into playing THE WHOLE THING in order to become skilled with THE WHOLE THING.

That same argument could be made for any system where you have to play to unlock parts at a time. Like the entire levelling up process. And the same counter arguments are just as valid here.

Black Box.9312:

It’s absolutely not an illusion. Nobody will be doing any sort of group content that doesn’t involve the hero challenges, because why would they? The reward that they want isn’t there. It may not be directly caused by the decision to gate elite specs, but the beauty of cause and effect is that it does not have to be direct. There’s no denying that the pressure wouldn’t still be there if the elite specs weren’t gated.

Lol. My partner and I will be entering the expansion together at launch.
She is entering first on a character where she doesn’t even plan to play the elite spec… And I on one I am not in a hurry to unlock.
So yeah. We will be doing all of the things we come across. Perhaps don’t assume every player is you.

Random.4691:

Once again, just because Anet slapped the word Elite onto it doesn’t make it Elite. They themselves have stated multiple times that it is not meant to over shadow the core specs it is simply an optional addition.

They have, however, also stated that the elite spec system is a part of their horizontal progression mechanics set moving forward. One of the primary goals of which is to give people something to work towards over time.
I’m not saying it’s set up as well as it could be, but I think expecting it to take a while to master the spec is pretty reasonable.

Menadena.7482:

That 250 was a huge part of why many thought the numbers were not to be trusted and were obviously too high.

To be fair, people thought that was far too high based on getting one hero point per hero challenge.
You now need to do even less hero challenges than the assumed 170. 100% world completion is devalued somewhat in this case, but otherwise it’s still less required work overall.

Vihar.5780:

40 heart quests is what we are basically talking about, right? By my reckoning, that adds up to about 15 hours at a VERY casual pace.

They’re not even heart quests, they’re Hero Points. The old Skill Points. Some are “beat this one enemy in a fight”, others are just “reach and interact with this thing”.

Swagger.1459:

Well that’s great for people who like pve… Buy hey look, you can level up 400 times per character in wvw right?

I’ve seen this complaint quite a lot.
I have an honest question: Where have they said how many Proofs of Heroics you’ll gain from each WvW rank?
I’ve seen a hell of a lot of people assume it’s just one. And they all seem to be saying it like it’s fact and simply making the same complaint you have, but I can’t find it. For all we know it’s five or ten per rank. Or three per rank and ten on every level multipliable by five or something.

Yeah, I think it was a design choice.
They didn’t want people with 100% world completion to immediately unlock the entire elite specialisation. But they don’t want people without world completion to have to do hundreds of hero points to be able to unlock the entire spec (60 just to start it).
I imagine this was the reason they were originally planning not to give you enough points just from levelling to unlock everything in your base class. They were probably planning for some of your base class to act as a hero point sink.

I think the route they’ve chosen was a fairly good one.

Zania.8461:

Gated content is a way of saying : we don’t really have that much content, so we have to make you jump through all these hoops to get to whatever little we have.

I disagree, entirely.
Yes, it can be used for that purpose.
But at it’s most basic, “gating” is an inescapable part of any game where your power increases.

- Having to do one story step before you do the one after that is a form of gating. But it’s there to make the story progression make sense.
- Not being strong enough to kill things in Orr at level 1 is a form of gating. That is partly there to extend gameplay, but also to give a sense of progression, a feeling of becoming more powerful as you can now compete with things you previously couldn’t.
- PvP matchmaking is a form of gating, as you HAVE to prove yourself against the less skilled before you can fight the more skilled.
- And of course the tower and keep walls and gates in WvW are a form of gating, as you can’t kill the lords behind them without first breaking through them :P

There are more. You can even have player skill based gating (and GW2 has some of that). Gating CAN be horrible. But good use of it is integral to this (and most) kinds of games.

As a good example:
Attuning to raids in some games is a horrible form of gating. It can be just excessively grind this one mob until we let you in.
VS
Gliding being required for the first raid. It is a form of gating. However I would argue it is considerably better. First off, you can get the XP and mastery points needed to unlock gliding in a variety of ways. And these are likely to be achieved while just doing other stuff (and wanting you to get it this way, rather than try and rush grind the access is the thinking behind having a delay before the first raid is accessible).

The other important part of the gliding example is that there are really only a few other options:
First, is to just not require it for the raids. But this would mean they couldn’t build fights and puzzles and challenges and exploration around any of their new mechanics, which defeats most of the point of those new things.
Second would be to just give everyone gliding immediately. But this breaks a lot of the rewards from their new end game progression mechanic. Especially when you remember that it’s not just about gliding. There will be other raids paths in future that will undoubtedly require jump mushroom and other various masteries.

So I think the way they have done it was a very good design decision.
And so yeah. Gating =/= bad. Bad use of gating = bad.
Good gating is necessary for this type of game.

TLDR: Noooooooope. Gating is necessary for almost all types of video games. Only poorly designed and/or executed gating is bad. Good use of it is pretty much what makes a video game.

“our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards”

They don’t say every way will be equally difficult, just that the most powerful rewards will be obtainable. Obtainable.
Whether you are playing PvP, PvE or WvW you will be able to unlock elite specialisations through rewards from your chosen section. That is what that oft quoted and usually misunderstood “play your own way” comment is about.

It was also, I believe, used in relation to being able to play the classes how you want. Each class can adequately fill the general roles. You can play a light armour wearing elementalist as a tank and a heavy armour wearing warrior as a glass cannon. Sure they have proclivities leaning them in certain directions (a warrior glass cannon is likely to be hardier than an elementalist glass canon thanks to heavy armour), but they can all do them at least fairly well with their own flavour.

But as far as I know, the quote was never meant as “dilly dally with whatever you want to do and we’ll give you everything in game”, which seems to be what a lot of people imply or say it means.

(PS – for anyone who complains about being forced into certain activities to get legendaries, the quote specifies the “most powerful rewards”, and legendaries are not a power gain over ascended)

Literally the first sentence of the news post is the major reveal from the end of Living World Season 2.
I really feel like this was a simple and quite stupid oversight. Especially given the number of new players you have (plus veterans coming back because of HoT). Players who will be working through their personal story and who, you would think, they’d want to encourage to purchase the LWS2 story steps. I even have some friends who got the story steps, but have been going through them recently because they know that they lead up to the expansion (they didn’t join in on the beta weekends so as to avoid spoilers).

Is there a fairly high chance people will get the spoiler from other players? Yes, but that’s still a long way from certain. This will spoil it for a massive amount more people.

Please say it’s a spoiler in the title (and, as should always be specified with a spoiler tag, what it’s a spoiler for). And maybe add a bit of extra space so that the spoiler is not immediately visible upon page load.

It’s probably too late for quite a lot of people, but this is a very easy change to make and as someone who enjoys story I’d really appreciate knowing it’ll be done properly in future.

While I get that a lot of people miss Ricochet, I actually think removing it was the sensible thing to do.
I’ve played since beta and I loved going P/P and Shortbow with my thief. An odd combination but for a while it made really good sense. P/P for higher single target damage, SB for taking out groups (and poisoning enemies that healed).
And then there was Ricochet. Once I had Ricochet there was no actual point to fighting with SB. I may use it to travel quicker or help blast a field pre fight, but the only reason to ever use it in a fight came to be for dropping a poison field, at which point I’d swap back to P/P and Unload through it twice to get the poison duration up and we’re good.

Clarity of purpose. Ricochet made P/P step on the toes of SB too much.
And in exchange for taking away P/Ps crowd damage potential they’ve upped it’s single target damage potential with the new trait.
I’m sad Ricochet is gone, because it was ridiculous. I’m glad it’s gone because it was ridiculous and a bad design choice when put next to SB.

I have also been wondering about this and came here entirely for this reason. It seems like the move was done entirely to allow shout healing warriors to get all their traits plus Inspiring Battle Standard. But it was done without much consideration for those of us who like to run the full sweet of banners. And as OP said, nothing in the Discipline line really fits with banners/support. Some of the traits there are good but other than Burst Mastery they’re not really ones I’d take given the choice.

I was really hoping there being no mention of banner CD or radius just meant it had been rolled into baseline for the skills, but alas…
You asked us to tell you if these things ruin the spirit of our builds. This kind of breaks half of mine somewhat. I mostly play PvE and I designed my character as an attrition support warrior. Extra damage for my team via banners of Strength and Discipline, extra survival via Banner of Tactics, regen and the damage mitigation of dual wielding maces.
It was really nice to be able to pretty much permanently have my banners up and was kind of integral. Now if I drop them all in a fight there’ll be an unforeseeable point 90 seconds later where my character is entirely out of all of her utility abilities for 30 seconds. Oh and now my party members are much less free to move around as they please (and I’m more likely to need to move banners or have to fight outside of them).
I don’t think rolling all the banner traits into one master slot (or rolling radius into base and CD into the trait) is too overpowered for that tier of major trait.

If there really was an intentional design choice behind all this, then I would very much appreciate an explanation, I am willing to be convinced but at the moment it feels more like an oversight.

imsoenthused.1634:

That’s the real question isn’kitten I for one, enjoyed almost none of the living story releases, and I also consider them funded by the cash shop, not my initial purchase. So my initial payment was really for the core game and enough slots to have one of every class. I don’t feel I paid for three years of enjoyment, what I did with the game I purchased was my business. I purchased the content. I feel that was money well spent. Now, I’m being asked to spend another $50 for, essentially, the content of the expansion. Unless the living story quality makes huge improvements I’m definitely not paying for that ridiculous mess. So, is there $50 worth of material in HoT alone? A whole new full retail games worth of content? We’ll see. My fear is that the $50 price tag was based on at least a $15 valuation of the core game, as it was available for not too long before this pre-purchase started. If that’s the case, then they think they’ve got about $35 worth of content in the expansion. Sounds reasonable to me, but asking existing players to pay $50 for it if that’s the case strikes me as wrong. So I’ll be keeping an eye on reviews, and if what I’m hearing is that the expansion includes as much content as an A+ retail release I might change my mind. Otherwise, they’re ripping people off, and I’ll wait until it hits a price I don’t feel insulted by.

I think your problem here is your assumptions. You are guessing. Perhaps they think they have $50 worth of expansion. But they sit there and know that if they sell them separately there will be lots of people who will continue to just buy the original game for $15 just to try it out. So what they do is they include the original in the expansion price, because they know lots of people will instead go straight for expansion if it nets them the original too. They write that $15 off as a loss so that they get more people spending $50.
It’s a common tactic in sales. Stuff like “buy two get one free” sales are predicated on it. They don’t randomly up the price of two to cover the three, they absorb the loss for the increased profit in selling more. And that’s a very profitable tactic even with tangible goods, it’s even more so with intangible goods like a digitally distributed game.

Yuki Honestcrest says: “We must soon determine with whom we will fight and with whom we will ally.”
This makes me wonder if the Tengu may be on the cards for the next expansion. The personal story involves getting the three Orders working together to take down Zhaitan. One of the key points with LS season two was getting the different kingdoms to work with each other and the Pact. If they can do so and bring down Mordremoth, then that would be a perfect time for the Tengu to open up more. All the other major players have allied with each other, so the choice of who to side with becomes easier. If so I would hope they’d bring in the Tengu as more active NPC allies through the LS by the end of the Mordremoth campaign to make them seem like more willing allies. Although, to be fair, there have been a few at most steps along the way.

As for the personal story there are two fairly easy options:
1) There have been Tengu outside the wall since the game began, you deal with them in several story steps (including some of the ones everyone does) and as Heart Vendors. The Tengu PS could take place when the other PS all take place and just have you be one of those agents sent out to scout, hinder the dragons and spread Tengu influence (the latter being one of the reasons a Tengu NPC has for being outside the Dominion). The story would then slide into the usual Order stuff and go from there. There are Tengu in some of the orders, that would work fine. Heck, there was at least one Tengu in the story instance where you finally kill Zhaitan.
2) Their PS could be set at when they open up (possibly including a little before they do and the moment at which they do) and deal with the ramifications of that (both more Tengu leaving and people coming in). They could warn people when making the character that the Tengu PS takes place later and contains spoilers for the stories of the other races. The PS could be shorter too as it would all be unique to them. This could be more interesting, but also much more annoying. And may make for some weirdness for those who want to play through previous LS seasons with their Tengu, especially if it’s their first (there would be ways around this of course, but it has more potential to be messy).

That’s my thoughts on the topic anyway
PS – a useful thing to know for whoever said it would make the armours and stuff more annoying; the Tengu have the same mesh as the Charr, so it while it would undoubtedly be some extra work, it may not be that much.

I will be going travelling overseas and I have the Mobile Authenticator activated.
I will be taking my laptop with GW2 installed.
I assume I will need to use the Mobile Authenticator each time we move between places with the laptop? That’s my guess, but I wanted to know if anyone was sure, or if there will be any potential problems? (either from the Authenticator side, or just in general with logging in/purchasing gems and stuff while in several different countries)

Thanks

In the Labyrinthine Cliffs there were merchants that had stuff you could look at. Some of it summoned an enemy if you kept touching it. One of these merchants part way up the cliffs always greatly amused me:
Unusual Merchant, says with deadpan sarcasm, “Oh, no. Woe is me. Look, messing around with unknown forces has unleashed deadly consequences. Because this has never happened before.”

Vlad Morbius.1759:

You completely misinterpreted my sarcasm, which is understandable. I’m laughing at all the hypocrisy regarding how to take the forum opinions. All we ever see is that these forums don’t represent the majority and that’s straight out or Anet employees, then they come here to solicit feedback through things like CDIs? Why do these things if they have no real merit and don’t represent the pulse of the players?

I’ve suggested multiple times a better forum for getting true game data feedback on certain items would be in game polls, at least there they can establish a true majority.

You are erroneously conflating majority opinion with ability to possibly make a good suggestion. CDI and forums “not representing the majority of players” are entirely unrelated. The CDIs are not about getting us to fix or change or improve the game as representatives of the majority. They are about brainstorming for cool and interesting ideas.
We merely share and discuss these ideas, ANet judge them and pick the ones they like/want/think will be good. We don’t vote the ideas in or anything.
Ideas should be judged on their merits, not the merits of the people who come up with them, so getting a whole bunch of randoms, most with a pretty solid working knowledge of at least part of the game is a great way to source ideas.

We provide ideas, they use them for inspiration, or not, as they choose. It’s really that simple.

TehPwnerer.7215:

The fact that my conditions, as a condition build, get overwritten as soon as someone auto attacks that has a condition is flawed. I can have +1000 condition damage and as soon as some zerker warrior with a rifle uses their auto attack, that 1000 damage bleed on the mob is now a 70 dmg bleed.

Uh, I don’t believe that’s true.
Greatest intensity is used first. Someone with low CD sets enemy on fire for 6 seconds, then someone with high CD also sets target on fire for 6 seconds 3 seconds later, the target takes the low damage for 3 seconds (when that is all it’s afflicted with), then the high damage for the 6 seconds, then the low damage finishes it’s last 3 seconds.
As for ones that stack intensity I believe it calculates your damages separately, just as it calculates the duration separately. Unsure about what happens when ones that stack intensity have full stacks though. Either way, I don’t think your scenario happens (unless that rifle auto attack is somehow inflicting 25 stacks).

A Massive Headache.1879:

200. actually that number might be wrong, but gw eotn there was svannir, corrupted by jormag FAR before he woke up. And from what I can gather, sylvari are immune to dragon corruption, while the dragon minions are not immune to such effects. I don’t think breeding is an issue

Oh and also the sylvari don’t corrupt things, nor does the pale tree.

The dragon minions aren’t immune to any sort of curruption by other dragons? Have we seen any creature that’s been the product of multiple dragons? (Subject alpha doesn’t count).
When I heard about this theory the Sylvari were likened to destroyers, Primordus’ minions. The destroyers don’t corrupt other things, they don’t breed, and unlike the other dragon minions they are created, rather than converted.
And as we see no Destroyers that are risen or corrupted by ice or crystal, the idea was that they can’t be. That one dragon generally can’t take the minions of another dragon. The Sylvari are the only major players we never see dragon minion versions of of. This is the crux (and I think it was the start) of the whole theory: The Sylvari are Mordremoth’s version of Destroyers.
There are plenty of variations you could take of course. Perhaps in a previous cycle one of Mordremoth’s champions was freed much as Glint was, and the Sylvari are the descendants of that, so they are a generation or more free. We know Glint was able to have offspring, though we don’t know what happened to them. If the human shaped Sylvari are the product of a rogue general, it would explain them not being seen by those fighting the dragons (especially if it all happened the cycle before the previous one, the seeds lying dormant since… although I have no idea how many cycles there have been…) and they’d have that immunity to dragon corruption.

There is also plenty of room for holes. We don’t know that the dragons CAN’T corrupt each other’s minions, maybe they just don’t? Maybe they generally consider each other allies, or at least neutral as long as they stay out of each other’s way.

Danikat & Behellagh, I salute you.
I was thinking similar things to points you made as I read this thread, and was planning my own response. It’s so nice to see other people thinking and responding along those lines.
Especially such eloquent and amusing responses :P

Personally, (and speaking on behalf of the growing number of friends who play GW2 I suppose) I am thoroughly enjoying GW2. It’s not perfect, there is still plenty of room for improvement and there are some things I’d do differently. But it’s fun, it’s stable and there’s usually some new stuff every few weeks to break things up.
It was amazingly stable at release and still followed by some swift patching (not everything was fixed, but it never is). I’ve never heard of another AAA MMO maintaining a free content release schedule even approaching GW2’s. And all of this is without a subscription.
It’s awesome and I feel safe expecting the game to improve overall at a pretty solid pace.

thaooo.5320:

Proved no such point, as I’m playing the game less than a casual, as I’ve proven on many threads. But you’re one of those people who mistakes posting and offering free advice to a failing company as ‘still playing’, so I can’t change your mind here.

The reason I said ‘formal education’ is because we don’t know about any self taught education, since the person of topic did not mention anything about it, I’d say it is non existent. Usually when a person rights a CV of themself, they include things like that to look their best. But you can argue against this all you like, to no effect.

Servers and networks cost next to nothing, so sorry but that’s a moot point.

Nooooo, no they don’t. I mean I don’t blame you for thinking that servers and network costs are tiny, to be honest I did too. Then I spoke to a friend who works in a related industry and I found out that for something like this, something commercial on this scale, those costs are significant. I mean GW2 is probably killing it and those costs are easily manageable for them currently, but they are so very far from “next to nothing”. And as he mentioned, employees need pay too. Companies like this do have a lot of expenses, if they didn’t far less would fail. Seriously, go check out how many major named game studios and companies have closed over the last year or two.
I don’t really understand the rest of your argument… It makes no sense. How would employing and paying someone to do a job they can’t do (as you claim is happening here) help their bottom line? If he’s not doing the job they’re paying him for and they just wanted more money, they’d simply fire him and not fill the position. The fact he got hired and is still employed makes VirtualTourist’s suggestion more likely. Just because it wasn’t on his resume, doesn’t mean he didn’t show his aptitude another way.
Your theory doesn’t imply “made by money grubbing corporates”, it implies “made by passionate people (who may overlook this person lack of coding skill for his passion/other skills)”. Because if it was made by those money grubbing corporates, they’d really friggin’ suck at their stereotype.

A Massive Headache.1879:

Except there are more sylvari that aren’t from the grove that aren’t evil. I really really hate the sylvari as minions theory, it just holds no water and I’m sick of it.

shrug
It may not be right, but it certainly holds water.

For instance what you’ve just said is easily countered by exploring “where is Mordremoth”. If he is imprisoned and his powers restrained, then all of the great trees that birth the Sylvari may be have their free will, not just the Pale Tree.
We don’t know that Ventari’s tablet is why the Pale tree isn’t evil, just that that’s where her teachings come from. She was free to to do as she pleased, she liked the teachings and so it’s why her Sylvari are so active in the world (act with wisdom, but act). Other trees made other choices. They may not even know for sure where they came from.
We know very little about how the high level dragon generals work. If they were planted/raised without their Elder Dragon’s influence they may have free will. It may be in shaping them as they grow that the elder dragons assert their control on their generals.

That all allows the Nightmare to be a part of the Sylvari that was locked away by their trees intentionally (because without their master around to back them up why would the other trees choose make waves and kitten people off in Mordremoth’s name, they’d be vulnerable and the major races would wipe them out). But there are also other possiblilities:
- The Nightmare is a deep part of the Sylvari the trees didn’t know about/didn’t have to actively affect, and after denying the dream the court eventually dug it up (either through soul searching, or dabbling in sadism which aligned with that deep agenda).
- The Nightmare is the influence of a dragon the Nightmare court has accessed, and while the Sylvari are dragon minions, they actually carried no “taint” of it, as their dragon is imprisoned/asleep. Heck there could be a dragon whose powers lie in nightmares and dreaming, and the Sylvari’s connection to their Dream just makes them more vulnerable to it’s power.

The theory in general allows for a lot of wiggle room on specifics kitten much is still unknown about the Elder Dragons and their limits/how they do things.

Their are other things that add some credence but don’t have much weight on their own (the way sylvari are bred), but the main piece of evidence and what I think is the key part of the theory is:
Why are their no dragon minion Sylvari? No corrupted, no undead, no branded. If we find another reason for that, or we find some of Primordus’s minions co-opted by another dragon (though a once off probably wouldn’t do, as with effort/luck Primordus ended up with a destroyer that could breed, doesn’t mean he can do it again easily) that is when the theory will no longer hold water.
Or, more likely at the moment, just finding out for sure one way or another in coming LS :P

Nerelith.7360:

tolunart.2095:

What about the 97% or so of players who never even read the forums, let alone start posting here?

Oh yes, I agree. Only about 3 % of players bother posting in the forums. about 97 % don’t.

Those that do not bother posting and are dissatisfied because they notice how the game is steering the average player to the gem store for gold… and nerfing any decent repeatable, consistent way to earn money, which means any of those Limited time only items on the cash shop will have to be bought with Gold Bought with gems, will skip steps 2 through whatever… and just leave.

I completely and utterly disagree with this.
I play this game with quite a few friends. About 15% of us read the forums. I probably post the most out of us, the others mostly just read.
So the other 85%, just don’t bother with the forums. Not because of anything like what you’ve said. They don’t bother with the forums because to them this is just a game that they enjoy playing. It’s not something they feel they need to spend time on other than actually playing the game. They have fun in game, that is the only side of this there is to them.
They’ll get excited about coming updates and LS. But they find out about this through Faceboob announcements from GW2, map chat, or obvious next steps found in the game (“LA is under attack, we’re evacuating and protecting people, this is awesome, I’m looking forward to when we go on the offensive!”), and I fill them in on the extra details and tidbits mentioned on the forums. Heck most of them don’t even read the patch notes, I fill most of them in on that info too.

I’d wager THIS is what most players are like. Probably the vast majority.
GW2 is a game, and to most of it’s players it’s that first and foremost, and to many it’s only that.

(Edit: Because I forgot to address my disagreement with the other stuff the quotee said)
Oh and I also entirely disagree with your assumptions about wealth. Only one or two of us have ever converted gems to gold, way more have done it the other way around. We play the game, have fun, get what we can afford. When people want more money we do some dungeon runs. Most of us who have spent money on the game have been for new character slots and things (in my case I did it with real money in part because I figured GW2 had entertained me enough to well and truly deserve it).
Quite a few of us have been playing since launch (several of us in the beta). And we have had more friends joining and staying along the way. Sure some people take a break for a bit, but in many cases that’s because something else is taking up their time not because GW2 drove them away. And that’s fine. It’s part of what makes this subscriptionless thing great, you’re free to do this. Only a couple of people have left and not come back.

Levelord.5746:

You’re going the “you’re not a programmer routine”. I’ve seen this line of reasoning before and in other circumstances, I would agree with you, but that’s ignoring the fact that they’ve already done this exact feature before and implemented it and done it very quickly. So they aren’t strangers to this and it’s very clear from their past actions that this is routine to them.

Yadda yadda.

Other than the examples of the Activities (which he listed and pointed out why that’s easy) and the LS dungeons that were re-added as fractals (again, these are things that were already stand alone instances for 5 people, and this still happened a while after they disappeared), what examples are you talking about? Because there are no examples I can think of in GW2 that counter several of the issues he brought up:

1- Many of the LS bits were designed and executed as open world events. A few people who feel like going back and fighting the marionette have absolutely zero chance of beating her if they were to just re-release it as was.

2- Some parts of the LS followed on from doing things within the LS. Such as accessing Scarlet’s lair.

3- Things added to areas after events can mess with repeats.

4- How do you do the rewards in flash-backs?

5- Player base spreading is also a valid issue.

6- You also have the problem that future changes/overhauls could greatly disrupt how many of these function. Big feature patches that make significant changes could simply get rid of ordinary PvE dynamic events that have problems with those changes, however these flash-backs would theoretically need to stay around.

As we’ve both said, it is MUCH easier to implement with certain content, and you may have noticed they have done it with the already packaged content (activities and dungeons). If you are thinking of examples from other games, then just stop right there. Those examples cannot be used to show ease or speed of implementation. They can be used for ideas of methods and examples of “done well/badly”, but for ease and speed; merely running on a different engine can completely throw that off. Seriously. A different game engine changes so very much from a dev standpoint.
I am going to re-iterate, none of these are insurmountable issues. There are plenty of potential solutions. In fact, here are some examples:

1- Not actually too sure about this. You could NPC the necessary number of others, but with some of the events that would make your input almost irrelevant. Which if you are allowing rewards and achievements is a big problem. Otherwise you are left with reworking those encounters.
2- You need to complete the relevant other flash-back to get to this part (or already have the achievement needed). Or they just grant you access to it (for something like Scarlet’s Lair), but you cannot gain the relevant achievement for doing so.
3- Keep actual instances of the area at the time of the LS and play it within those (would be the only way to do quite a few of them).
4- Do you allow them access to the same rewards from when it was live? That defeats the purpose of them being exclusive rewards. But you’ll need to give them some rewards for their efforts.
5- This could partially be resolved with your choice of rewards for flash-backs (or just certain ones). Make the rewards decent, but not great. This means mostly only people who want the achievements/story will be spread to them.
6- Just rework them, I guess.

The thing to remember: all of those things take time and people to implement. They are changes, and some of them will require significant work. And some parts of the LS would require several or all of those steps. The more of those required, the more balance and bug testing is required, on top of the actual re-designing/programming.
So yes, they could do it. In fact, I think it is very likely they will have something to this effect eventually. There will be too much content gone that it will eventually hit the point where it is too enticing not to necro that content. And I think it will be good when they do implement whatever form of this they choose to.
I do not expect it immediately though. It’d be nice, but I don’t expect it. And maybe they’ll move forward with this in mind, making LS2 more friendly to having this done, who knows. By the sound of it, they may be making LS2 need this sort of thing less.
Regardless, implementation of this for what’s gone so far is (at least if you want it done well) NOT a “very quick” and simple procedure. Especially as they have a backlog to do it with.

I very much like the way PvP and PvE now have much more crossover and I like the reward tracks

I am a bit disappointed that we need to complete the dungeon story modes again, and that the Area reward tracks aren’t unlocked by completing the whole area. Having Dungeon Master, 100% world exploration and all the area Explorer Achievements I was quite looking forward to logging in and having a slew of Reward tracks to choose from.

Ah well, not a huge gripe, I am, overall, quite pleased

The new wardrobe is awesome, thank you very much

The only real suggestion I’d make at the moment is to make it so that when you open the Hero window and are on the Equipment tab (where you then choose Equipment, Wardrobe, Dyes) that it shows your stats on the right hand side by default. Then just have them disappear if you open the Wardrobe or Dyes section. There is no reason to have it blank by default and it makes checking on stats extra simple (would come in quite handy when you are trying out trait builds).

Thanks again for adding the much wanted system that is the Wardrobe (the bank wardrobe was an extra nice touch).

I wanted to come on and say thanks for adding the Megaserver (among other things).
As I live in Australia and often play late at night I’m usually on at what must be the quietest time for the game, so I really appreciate the ability to encounter more people

As a few other people have mentioned, I’d like to see some sort of change for having to double waypoint on some maps. Possibly make it so that for 30 seconds after waypointing it’s free to travel to any other waypoint on your map? Not a huge deal, but is extra annoying when paired with the following issue.
The inability to see where party members are in the world if they’re on another map. This is fairly irritating, although it doesn’t always happen. Can’t work out if it’s just because not all maps are on the Megaserver yet, or if it’s a problem of the Megaserver. Either way, I hope it is something that won’t be a problem sometime soon.

Again, these are minor annoyances, I am far more pleased than anything

Arrion.2185:

Now before anyone rages, kittenes at me, or tries to troll me, yes I am aware of what MMO stands for, but I’m also aware that not every zone is going to have people in it at every moment of the day, and my friends/guild mates will not always be online, or available to come help out. So seriously, before you go doing the traits system over, redesigning Runes/sigils, and what ever else you are doing in this feature pack, make the game more playable, by fixing your monsters and events.

You, uh, you may want to have a look at a few of the other things they’re doing.
One of those things, the Megaserver tech, will greatly reduce this problem as the likely hood of you being on a map by yourself is going to drastically reduce.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/

I am wondering if anyone knows when the reset happens?
I mean do any of the devs/mods have something kind of precise? The updates usually come out at about 6 am Wednesday my time (GMT +10, it’s currently just after midnight Mon-Tues), so I assumed the reset happened then, but I am not positive.
I ask because I am trying to figure out if we have “tomorrow” my time to finish off some of them. I suppose the easiest way to work it out is; I have the current daily, is there another daily available to get before the reset?

This is awesome!
We are thoroughly enjoying going around looking for other NPCs that look hilarious
The progeny are pretty good :P

Try completely quitting the game and re-entering, that worked for my friend

Swagger.1459:

how so? please explain it in an economics for dummies way.

Because as you said, the market will find it’s equilibrium.
The value of those items is going to change as the methods for acquiring them change, that is as it should be. So if the market is going to find a new equilibrium on them then it’s working as intended.

I also agree this is pretty ridiculous.
As others have said; it should be based on your platform’s success, not the whole phase, getting downed by the boss should not invalidate it (which apparently is the case, despite the earlier dev comment not mentioning it), and at the VERY least, the achievement should actually tell you the requirements (can’t be downed, phase must succeed).
I realise plenty of other achievements are vague, but most of those are ones where you need to discover something. Ones like this should be fairly explicit, especially when they include unrelated caveats (such as not getting downed).
I also realise that the downed invalidation may be to make sure people don’t just get in and intentionally die to try and get the achievement. If that is the case, make defeated invalidate, not downed. Especially as many of these champs can 1 hit non-tank characters.
And yeah, requiring other platforms that you can in no way affect to succeed makes the achievement more about luck than skill.

Uvatha.5476:

4 dungeons run
6 meta bosses completed

Armor – 60
Weapons – 89
Total drops – 149

Silk Scrap – 43
Gossamer Scrap – 8
Elder Wood Log – 58
Ancient Wood Logs – 5
Thick Leather Section – 33
Hardened Leather Section – 2
Mithril Ore – 40
Orichalcum Ore – 9

Essence of Luck (fine 10) – 108
Essence of Luck (masterwork 50) – 22
Essence of Luck (rare 100) – 2

Let’s see:

• 3 scraps = 1 bolt. 100 bolts = 1 ascended mat. 300 scraps = 1 ascended mat.
• 3 logs = 1 plank. 50 planks = 1 ascended mat. 150 logs = 1 ascended mat.
• 3 sections = 1 square. 50 squares = 1 ascended mat. 150 sections = 1 ascended mat.
• 2 ore = 1 ingot. 50 ingots = 1 ascended mat. 100 ore = 1 ascended mat.

So for every 1 ore you get you should get 1.5 logs, 1.5 sections and 3 scraps.
You got about the same amount of ore and scraps. You got about the right amount of logs compared to ore. You got less sections than ore. As you mention, small sample size, but you seem to think it’s accurate, so how does this work out fair?
And all of that is purely looking at just breaking stuff down. It swings even wider away from being fair to tailors/leatherworkers when you take into account mining/lumbering. If you want more logs or ore there are several maps you can go to to specifically target gathering that mat. The only way to get scraps (or sections, but you only need half as many of them as scraps) is via the salvaging RNG, the loot RNG (the salvageable junk), or the loot bag RNG…

Chrispy.5641:

- For a System that affects every Profession, I have a different idea….

• Introduce a new Equipment Slot in the Hero Panel. Call it an “Artifact” slot or Something.

I really rather like the general idea of this sort of class based modification and pretty much every class has some things they could change with this.

To preface my examples I am going to mention that I’ve only given a short amount of thought to this, so the examples are unrefined, and it would not be an even playing field (some classes would have much more to do than others). Also, in some cases you could argue for either a single item to make several changes, or allow individual items to change individual things/instances (will include some examples below).
I am also aware that this may not be viable given some suggestions could require quite a bit of work, possibly beyond feasibility. And it could add a lot more to load, especially in really busy places, such as WvW.
Still, I’ll suggest and leave those decisions to others.

- Elementalist (this class has possibly the most potential): The effects around their hands that denote the element they are currently attuned to. There is a lot of room here for what you could do.

• Extend the effect to cover different body parts/be elsewhere (whole forearm and/or hands covered, haloes, floating bits, auras).
• Have different effects (water = dripping water or spiky ice, lighting = floating electricity or storm cloud)

This is where you could either have a single “themed slot” that changes all of it at once (Warmage Gauntlets = Agressive elemental effects covering hands and forearms), or two slots: one for where the effects are and one for what the effects look like. You could even go so far as to have either of those, but you pick for each element, allowing a lightning halo and icy gauntlets on the one character.

- Mesmer: Changing what their illusions (mostly the phantasms which are easily distinguishable from you anyway) look like and maybe the shatter effects. Especially for the phantasms; you could go all the way from allowing different colours (and colours with effects) through to making them look completely different (make them look like demons, or other creatures/monsters/specific known npcs).
Also, the general colour of their abilities (all the stuff that is that purple colour, even though I like purple).

- Necromancer: Different looking death shroud. Again colour changes through to completely changing the silhouette while it’s on. And possibly some minion stuff (see ranger pets). Maybe even Mark/Well cosmetics.

- Thief (this is one of the hardest to me): Their vapour trail (though I love it as is). The look of any called in thieves (for example you could pick their race, or call in Order of Whispers thieves). And maybe some of the stealth effects? Thief is hard to nail down as there is no one (or two) aspect that will be visible across all thief build types.

- Ranger: Pets. As original poster mentioned, various barding, pet “themes” (ghostly, undead), so on and so forth. Again, here is a spot where you could have a single item (Mistfire Barding of the Risen = undead skin with mistfire barding) and it gives that to whatever pet you have out. Or you could separate barding and skin. And you could possibly allow equipping two lots of whatever you allow, so your two active pets can have different looks.

- Engineer: Fairly obvious; kit weapon skins, pack skin, turret skins. And possibly effects for all those.

- Warrior (the other hard-ish one): Banner looks/effects (though that could be annoying for people in your party recognising the banner). Vapour trails/effects for Burst skills. Maybe shout effects?

- Guardian: The look of their Aegis (could be especially cool if it retained that look when passed to others, you’d be able to see whose aegis you had). And maybe some other colours for their blue/white attack effects.

Again, I will reiterate this is all fairly rough, and some of those things (colour of mesmer abilities for example) may be a bad idea to change as they mess with class recognition. But every class (bar thief and maybe warrior/guardian) has some easy to modify area/s that is/are visible for every build that won’t mess with class recognition.
It’d probably be a lot of work though, probably too much work. No harm in mentioning it though and maybe someone can refine it further so it isn’t.