Guild Wars 2

Word cannot describe the horror of what happened in Paris, again.

This is not the usual type of post for this forum, but then again, this is not a usual event. I’m sure everyone has heard of the terrible attacks in France. My hopes and prayers are with the victims. I hope that all the people of Aurora Glade, all the players that usually attend our events, and just everyone is safe. Our thoughts are with you.

I know that a lot of French players attend our community events regularly, and so I pray to Grenth that you are all safe, and that we’ll see you again at Wintersday.

My apologies, I am usually better with words. But in light of such a tragedy, what can you really say?

Please be safe darlings.

Rose darling, thank you so much for making that wonderful video. That must have been a lot of work. The Queen is so glad that you were there to document our Halloween event.

Unrelated, but to all our fans and all the players, I hope you are all alright in light of the recent attacks in Paris. It is a terrible tragedy, and I pray to Grenth that none of you were in the middle of this horrible real world event. Please be safe.

Beast.9053:

I won first place in the Art Contest and I did not get the reward. Unfortunately, I was not online when the event was. I will get a reward or not? I would like to ask i will get mini lama code or mini? I have one mini lama, because last year I won the same art contest. I would like to give mini lama as a gift for my daughter.

Of course you’ll receive it darling, you don’t need to be online for the art contest. I’ll notify the snowman, and we’ll make sure you receive your prize. I’m sure there was a mix up or something.

Thank you all for attending, and making this such an amazing celebration. I was really impressed by the art submissions too. Thanks also to all our staff, who worked really hard. We may have been a little understaffed, so everyone was doing dozens of things simultaneously. But it all worked out just great in the end. I hope you all had a ghoulish time, and see you at Wintersday!

Sure thing NoisyBoy dearest! My minions shall make note of it right away!

Stay strong darling, and keep fighting! Both me and my snowman companion, along with the Aurora Glade Fun SIG (special interests group) are rooting for you. And I hope you get to enjoy Halloween with us.

Its way too easy without the bomb requirement. Play it in hard mode!

How many Asura does it take to blow up a reactor?
Three! One to bring up safety concerns, and two more to disagree with him.

Too soon?

Alright, another:

A bunch of dragons are sitting in a bar, discussing their worst fears. “Giant lawnmowers”, Mordremoth confesses. “Exploding golems”, The Claw of Jormag says. “Laser guns!”, admits Tequatl The Sunless. “Laser guns are way worse than any lawnmower or exploding golem.”

For a moment there’s a silence. Then Tequatl notices Zhaitan sitting over in a corner. “Hey boss, you should join us. Tell us what you’re most afraid of”. Zhaitan shakes his many heads. “Nah, I think I’ll just stay right here and not move at all.”

The Queen suspects that this event might turn out way bigger than ever before. I’d better gift-wrap some more fiendish bats, and angry devourers. Its so much work to get an angry devourer to wear a red ribbon though. Maybe I can ask Miya to hold them still. Blast! Where is that girl hiding?

Raz.1632:

Don’t really think it fits. Necros are all about the deaths of OTHER things, they’re not really the martyr type.

We sacrifice our own blood all the time though.

Excellent Rose my dear! That is an amazing video. Thank you so much for recording it all.

The Griffonrook Run is a delightfully sadistic jumping puzzle. The Queen once dragged one of her allies into it, and we spent hours trying to complete it.

My only gripe is that the griffon hit detection can sometimes be a bit dodgy, and the one time that I did complete it, the bomb didn’t open the chest. But that was a long time ago.

Griffonrook Run is awesome, and its downright cruel at the same time.

Zalani.9827:

And of course there was also: Horrorween.

Fortunately, Horrorween returns once again to Tyria!

Check out the event page!

fizzypetal.7936:

And a massive, massive thank you to the “close ally of the Queen” for becoming a scientist specializing in cancer research. Without our scientists, I would not be here. My kids wouldn’t have their mom and my friends and family wouldn’t have their pain in the butt wife or partner in crime soul sister….thank you, thank you, thank you…. <3

I shall pass your thanks along to him. I’m sure that will put a big smile to his face. Researching new methods to treat cancer, with as little damage to healthy cells, is one of his primary jobs. And my personal thanks to you, for sharing such a touching and personal story. It helps put things in perspective.

Zendra.4509:

You guys are making Halloween fun! Hopefully I can try it out this year!

Thank you ever so kindly darling! This year’s Horrorween promises to be huge! We have some very special new activities, that will send chills down your spine! You can join at any time, and stay as long as you like (and are able). We have dozens of amazing prizes, and perhaps we will even be surprised by some special guests…

fizzypetal.7936:

Since originally being diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 2008, I have reaped the benefits of Global research and am currently on a fairly new chemotherapy agent that is targeted so it nukes the mutated cells, and not my healthy ones. The hope is that I will have fewer side effects and all of the mutations will get picked up thus keeping me in remission for a much longer time than previously.

A close ally of the Queen happens to be working in this field (and on developing this specific type of treatment), and I can say that initiatives such as this really do help. Cancer research has improved a lot over the past few years, and with the right amount of support, eventually cancer will be vanquished.

Our undead scribes are writing down your raffle numbers as we speak, my darlings. Worry not if you accidentally pick a number that was already taken. Our scribes will simply select the next available number for you.

By the way Gaile my dearest, you are of course formally invited to The Horrorween. After all, you’ve been a regular since its very early beginnings (or perhaps I should say, your ancestors from 250 years ago were). And by all means, bring a friend! Because this year’s Horrorween promises to be quite special. So get ready for a spooktastic adventure!

We have fun, games, corpses, riddles, chainsaws, fabulous prizes, and clowns with chainsaws… basically everything to make a Halloween celebration unforgettable!

It wouldn’t be Halloween without the Horrorween, with the Queen of Halloween and the King of the Snowmen. 10 year anniversary, woooot!

Can I get a golden bathtub, and a bag full of live rabbits? Don’t tell the snowman!

If they brought back hexes, that could fix the necromancer in GW2.

Necromancer

• Fleshgolem: Fixed Tooltip to better reflect the skills functionality:
  “Summon a Fleshgolem that has a 50% chance to get stuck on terrain and a 30% chance of attacking a random nearby Moa”

It looks like Anet originally started work on the Fissure of Woe for GW2, but maybe it was abandoned, due to time constraints or budget constraints. This would also explain the sloppy dungeons, and the missing endgame content in general.

Was the Underworld ever on the agenda? I’d like to think so, but as far as we know, they never got that far. I really hope we’ll see the return of both areas eventually.

I have a better idea:

Design proper dungeons!

Nyawk.7834:

the grindfest! its simply horrible and unrewarding (worst I’ve experienced in an mmo).

Are you talking about grinding for gold, grinding for levels, or grinding for special items?

Nyawk.7834:

Dungeon grouping! there is a general lack of direction when it comes to roles in a group environment

Not a whole lot of thought was put into dungeon roles in GW2. They wanted to get rid of the constant “LF Monk” spam from GW1, and make all classes flexible in what role they want to play. But the design is not entirely solid, which is why the game seems to revolve purely around dealing damage at the moment. This makes dungeons, and combat in general, very tedious. Hopefully this will be addressed in Heart of Thorns.

Nyawk.7834:

and it tends to be very disappointing to new players who find themselves in a downed state all the time. It’s made me feel hopeless and helpless several times and that was even in the early dungeons where the game should be very forgiving.

The dungeons were rushed, and are very sloppy in this game. There is no real difficulty curve to them, which makes them very inconsistent in difficulty, and very unfriendly to new players. This criticism is entirely valid.

Nyawk.7834:

The world feels amazingly small and boring. The lore is plain boring for me, so much that I skip all cut scenes and dialogues.

Guild Wars 1 had a very rich lore, but with GW2 a lot of the edges seem to have been removed. All races kind of feel the same, and bland. And yes, the cut scenes and dialogue, in the personal story are best skipped. It’s incredibly dull. Its better in the Living Story though.

Nyawk.7834:

Crafting and gathering, also very dull (after playing ffxiv arr its going to be hard to find better or equal crafting/gathering).

Agreed. GW2’s crafting could use a big overhaul. It just doesn’t feel fun or rewarding.

Nyawk.7834:

Gearing! From what I’ve seen so far (correct me if im wrong), gearing is horrible since basically you have two tiers of gear to choose from which is exotic and the upgrade, ascended.

It’s less about the stats in GW2, and more about the looks. But the disadvantage of this, is that there is very little tinkering with equipment to look forward to.

Nyawk.7834:

What I hate is that for example a karma berzerker exotic sword and a dungeon token exotic sword come with exactly the same stats and after that its all about different skins with no difference statwise.

This is by design. But I do agree that it feels a bit unrewarding when you never really feel like you are getting stronger. This is a bit of a flaw with the game, that already existed in GW1.

Nyawk.7834:

And finally I find ridiculous how the legendary weapon crafting concept works. You spend hundreds upon hundreds of gold and time to grind mats for a weapon with stats that are the same as an ascended weapon and all you truly get is a shiny skin

Crafting legendaries is an unholy blight upon the game, and I have not bothered with that tedious grind for but a second in all the years that I’ve been playing this game. What an inexcusable grind. So yes, I’m totally with you on that point.

Nyawk.7834:

I have played a bit WvW and it was also boring, basically all I did was follow a huge zerg in a map and capture bases and occasionally fought with enemy zergs in battles that werent remotely fun.

There’s more to it on a more organized level. But yes, most of the time you’ll just find zergs roaming the map, obliterating smaller zergs, and capturing bases over and over again. WvW is severely lacking in actual strategy, because most of the time the teams aren’t equal, so it’s blob against bigger blob.

Nyawk.7834:

No healers, no tanks, no dps, everyone is everything and everyone has to take care of themselves.

Which would be fine, if it worked. But what we have right now is mostly just DPS, and that’s it.

Nyawk.7834:

I havent felt once that feeling of “bonding” with my group, like you have my back and I have yours. It’s everyone for themselves.

This is something that GW1 did have, due to inter-class reliance, and it has to be said: because of the trinity.

They just haven’t explained what kind of challenging content we’re getting. So its kind of an empty statement. We haven’t heard them say “dungeons” or “raids”.

I don’t think it has ever been viable. Minion AI has been broken since release, and still is.

I have had entire mobs chase me in circles purely because of my high toughness, regardless of what everyone else in the party was doing. It probably differs from foe to foe though.

I wish the fight became more exciting near the end. The long pre event is one problem, and the terrible rewards are another. But ultimately what I’d love to see is more team work during the fight, and an epic climax.

SlyDevil.3952:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxD61WC57r4

Waterfalls working as intended, I was wet upon surviving the fall.

Well this is amazing, because I did exactly that, and fell to my death. Is it just very unreliable? Or is it randomized? I don’t get it.

Yo mama is so fat, Breach Maker is her middle name.
Yo mama is so fat, no one can rub her back unless Anet implements mounts first.
Yo mama is so fat, she has her own map marker!
Yo mama is so fat, that we worried about putting a giant stone lobster in Lion’s Arch.
Yo mama is so fat, herds of Dolyaks follow her around.
Yo mama is so fat, she can hold a keep in WvW by just sitting down.
Yo mama is so ugly, when she puts on diving goggles, people claw out their own eye balls in horror.

Hope to see you at our next event then my dear! Sorry to hear you missed this one.

I recently asked a dwarf how he felt about the new Lion’s Arch, and he said “I am not happy”, so I asked him “-Then which one are you?”

Haha, why thank you darling! There’s plenty more where that came from.

It’s kind of hard to sell your customers on the idea that the core game is free, when the expansion is so expensive. Existing players should at least be paying less for this than new players.

I have plenty more jokes about Asura being short.
But I don’t want to make a hobbit out of it.

Mourningcry.9428:

The reason AC was so hard then, or was perceived to be, and is trivial now, is, as I said, the mechanics are known. The only difficulty is in the execution.

I don’t think this is correct at all. To new players, the dungeon is still a huge leap in difficulty from normal PVE.

Mourningcry.9428:

One does not simply walk up to Mai Trin the first time and autoattack to win, nor likely even win at all. After a couple hundred times? Well, my money’s not on Mai any more. Same Mai, same player – only now she’s not a mystery, she’s known.

The difference here is that Mai originally was part of a Living Story and meant to be a bit harder than the usual dungeon bosses. She was never the first dungeon boss that players encounter in the game.

Mourningcry.9428:

The same logic applies to any non-evolving AI you want to implement. Once all the possible actions/reactions are know, it’s just a matter of execution, nothing more. Doesn’t matter if it’s one step, or five steps, or ten steps, once it’s figured out, it’s trivial.

People will always find solutions for any enemy behavior. That doesn’t mean that they should have no behavior at all.

Dark Saviour.9410:

Dolyaks.

Already got that Dolyak mount covered for ya!

My only real problem with the expansion is:

-It seems priced to include the price of the core game, which I already have. So it looks like a complete rip off, considering it is just a small expansion.
-It doesn’t include a free extra character slot, unless I preorder. And to Grenth with preordering! It is just a bad deal for me as a customer. I know that the expansion is really $10 bucks more expensive because of that missing character slot.

So, please offer existing players an upgrade to just the expansion, for around $35 bucks, which includes a free extra character slot. Now that is a good deal that I can be happy with.

Obtena.7952:

If that’s the case, then I would argue the OP is nitpicking. Find another game that doesn’t have bugs. I wish him luck. If they do exist, the don’t make the game unplayable or unpleasant.

Here’s an idea. Maybe read what the OP actually said, instead of reading someone elses biased recap? Its not like this discussion has reached that many pages yet.

Mourningcry.9428:

And if you’re just going to just pick and chose the opening statements I make, and ignore and not refute or address the explanations I provide following them, there isn’t much to discuss.

No. You are responding to something you quote-mined, without even reading what my initial discussion was about. If you can’t be bothered to actually read that discussion, then don’t quote-mine it, because you don’t know what you are talking about. Quote-mining is bad. You deliberately take things out of context, and then argue that point. It is silly and pointless. Either read the original discussion, or don’t quote-mine.

Now if you actually want to discuss that original topic on the difficulty curve of dungeons , then I suggest you make a seperate thread for it, and then I’ll be happy to discuss it with you. But right now it has nothing to do with the OP’s discussion, nor with my comments in this thread.

It’s painfully obvious when you fight the Claw of Jormag, that he’s not even aware of the players. He’s just a static object that goes through a rotation of attacks that is very repetitive, while trash mobs spawn. And that kind of takes away the feeling that you are fighting with a dragon.

You are not so much fighting with a dragon (because that implies the dragon is also fighting with you), as taking pod shots at a dragon-shaped object that is rooted in place. All of the players could be standing off to the right, and at no point does the dragon even look to his side. He keeps looking forward, and doing his attacks. He is kind of like a blind turret in the shape of a dragon, that can only face forwards.

It is rare for a fantasy MMO to actually do some research for their armor and weapon designs. I think if they studied real armors more, the armors would look much better, and not look like a costume for a Lady Gaga concert.

Sounds to me like the scaling is the real problem here.

maddoctor.2738:

You mean aggro management in this game is one of the best out there. No aggro management = best experience. There is nothing more idiotic than mobs preferring people with ultra heavy armor over the healer with cloth behind them,

That is what the mobs in GW2 do right now. Aggro worked much better in GW1. At least you’d see mobs try and attack the backline, and focus on squishy healer types in GW1.

In GW2 I’ve seen huge mobs chase me around in a circle because I had the highest toughness, while the rest of the party was standing in the middle, shooting at them.

maddoctor.2738:

It’s not the same, because those using just one skill in GW2 don’t just use 1 skill. They DODGE (you can’t dodge in GW1), they use TRAITS (there are no traits in GW1) and of course they rez.

Ressing in GW2 actually kind of dumbs the game down further. Anyone that falls down, can instantly be revived if the whole party just stacks on top of the victim. That is why we see so many players just stack on top of each other, spam their attacks and healing at random, and then everything is dead. You don’t really have to pay a lot of attention to what the enemies are doing (if you can see it at all with all the visual effects obscuring the action).

maddoctor.2738:

UW isn’t by any means challenging, aside from 2 quests (That involve protecting npcs) everything else isn’t hard at all.

-Says someone that has probably done UW several times, and knows the place by heart. That is not a good unbiased evaluation of the difficulty of the Underworld. UW is pretty tough, especially Four Horsemen, Ice King and the final battle. But the enemies as well, are far more punishing than anywhere else in Prophecies.

Unlike UW, DoA is actually hard

Yeah, you’re wrong. DoA is hard for top tier players, for whom Underworld is now a piece of cake. It was meant for the best of the best. It was meant to be harder than anything in the game. That doesn’t mean UW isn’t also challenging.

maddoctor.2738:

UW and FoW are both easy modes, I’d wish people would stop calling those two “hard” or “challenging”, they are CoF difficulty if not less.

If you are very familiar with them, they can be easy. But that is not a fair estimate of their actual difficulty. Unless you are a veteran, both areas can be quite a challenge.

Mourningcry.9428:

Well, maybe I’m just dense… if this whole thread is about how DPS, coupled with horrid AI resulting in brainless, harmless mobs has trivialized the game, well, how can things still be hard?

Like I said, if you don’t read the actual discussion in which I made those comments, you won’t understand. That is because you take things out of context. I just gave a basic recap of what my point in that discussion was, and I think it was a pretty clear explanation.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I never played DDO, but in GW2 the simple counter to the archer AI would be a stun, or an imbolize, or a blind, or a knockdown, or even a daze which would prevent the archer from running. Likewise for the mage – interrupt him before, or while, he’s casting the barrier.

Yes. Which would be nice, if the ai did SOMETHING so we could respond to it. IT doesn’t have to be complicated behavior, but it should at least do something.

Mourningcry.9428:

This is just a simple example of how a player would respond to that AI. Again, the first time you see it, wow, unbeatable. The next time, it’s trivial because you know what’s going to happen and are prepared to prevent it.

This is not about complexity. This is about action and reaction, which the current ai hardly does.

Mourningcry.9428:

Move, counter-move between player and AI won’t change, it’s just the depth of how far the programming can take it.

Why not?

Mourningcry.9428:

To expect a game AI to evolve along with the playerbase is a sci-fi fantasy at this stage, at least in regards to commercial gaming like GW2.

It doesn’t have to evolve. It just needs to have the bare minimum of interaction with the players. It needs to respond to what players are doing, to create an interesting fight.

A particle effects slider isn’t the solution. We shouldn’t have to turn the particles invisible in order to see what is going on. The art department should think of a way to make the action readable, regardless of how many players are spamming their fire fields. Find a way to have glorious visuals + readable action, not one or the other.

Hear hear! Death to all mesmers!

This was an amazing event, and it almost made the Queen forget that her keyboard was slowly melting into a puddle.

Thanks to everyone for attending, and please share your pictures with us!

Mourningcry.9428:

I thought the name was familiar…

Back when they introduced the AC revamp, I recall you singing a very different tune regarding how difficult the new PvE was…

Now you are taking things completely out of context. I criticized the fact that dungeons didn’t have a proper difficulty curve, since the first dungeon that players are introduced to, is very hard. AC is not a good starter dungeon. That criticism is still valid today.

People latch on too easily to easy answers. They see you criticize the difficulty of a dungeon (which is not unreasonable depending on the arguments) and they immediately yell out:

“See? You thought it was difficult! And now you think it is easy! You are inconsistent!”

Well yeah, if you don’t care to read the actual discussion.

Mourningcry.9428:

And fair, a few players may be able to beat all the content with a single key, this is far from the case for the majority of the player base and just silly to presume so.

That is NOT what my point was. It was regarding the AI being as dumb as a bag of rocks, which it is. If the AI doesn’t respond at all to what the players are doing, then the AI can be cheesed with the silliest of tactics (such as stacking).

Take DDO for example. In DDO if you fight an archer, the archer actually runs away once you get into melee range. They respond, and try to keep their distance. That is the bare minimum I think of what AI in an MMO should do.

Or they have mages that run away, and then cast Blade Barrier, and stand in the middle of it. This gives the players something to react to.

Or they have shamans that buff and heal their allies. So players have to focus on them first.

The bare bones of AI in an MMO.

Mourningcry.9428:

For what it’s worth, your example about toughness stacking – while you accurately described one of its effects (pulling agro), you failed to mention that this is actually a very useful tactic for some encounters where you want to control the Agro. Just because it doesn’t work the way you think it should, doesn’t mean that’s the only way it has to work.

Aggro management in this game is a mess. Which might be why they are now introducing a taunt mechanic.

serenke.4806:

Look at the Underworld in GW1. People have been soloing that for how many years? Challenging content? I bet you can make an 8-man party in GW1, everyone with one single skill and you can beat content there too.

Good luck. You will die at the very first enemy you encounter in UW. That very first Aatxe will steamroll your entire group if all you do is spam one skill. And see? That is the difference. You actually have to do something different in GW1.

Try it in FoW, you fail too (you get nuked by the shadow army, and Rastigan gets killed).
Try it in The Deep (your party is split up, and everyone dies)
Urgoz Warren (suicide vampires make short work of your party, as do the energy denial and health degen areas)
DOA (You will not survive any of the first enemies in any of the areas of DOA if you just spam one skill. You need good aggro management here).
Plenty of story missions also make more demands on strategy. Good luck spamming your way through Thunderhead Keep.

Why have people been soloing the Underworld? Because they figured out a clever skill combination that allows them to tank some of the enemies in the Underworld, but not all of them. UW is by no means an easy area. It is challenging, but you can overcome that challenge with a good build.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Mad Queen: From what i’ve read you’re a PvE player. And you seem to think that the balance is broken because tanky builds cannot compete with zerker builds in PvE.

Am I a PVE player? Yes, mostly. I occasionally do some WvW. Do I think balance is broken because tanky builds cannot compete with zerker? No. The discussion kind of went in the direction of zerkers, because I dared to mention it. But if you scroll up, my criticism on the combat system is much larger, and zerker is but a minor point among the criticism.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

As for PvE. The lack of a consisten aggro system has made people go for effficiency rather than diversity. It’s not a balance problem. Rather than asking for nerfed zerk damage, you should ask that your tanky builds get something else to be able to compete.

I never asked to nerf zerker damage. When did I state I was anti-zerker?

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Thirdly, the camera system. I didn’t find any specifics on what makes it so bad (maybe I just missed it) But I Think it’s just as good as any other mmo’s, it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s not somethign super special, but not bad.

The camera system is by far the worst camera system I have ever encountered in any game. And that’s taking into account other terrible camera systems, such as the one in Gex3D on the PS1, or the terrible camera in The Wind Waker on the gamecube. GW2’s camera is the most horrible of them all. It’s definitely worse than the one in GW1. It is downright unpleasant to look at. It fails on multiple levels:

-It constantly bounces back and forth whenever the player travels behind any object, thus causing this motion-sickness inducing behavior where the camera just zooms in and out.
-It doesn’t have a proper first person mode.
-In tight spaces the camera zooms into your character, so you can’t see anything at all.
-The FOV actually limits what players can see, so you can’t see a whole lot of the beautiful environment. Plus the FOV is zoomed all the way in, which can make many players nauseous. It feels like constantly wearing glasses that are too strong.
-The camera bumps into terrain, as if it was a physical object.