Agreed with many of the sentiments against the OP. ANet’s game is aimed for cooperative playing, and having inspection of gear and fractal levels or AR only opens the door to elitism and gated gameplay.

jsduke.6537:

Man, I respect the time you took to put this together, but I disagree with pretty much every suggestion you make.

I’m glad the current Living World content is not about dragons. I can’t think of a more boring MMO cliche than dragon-slaying. It’s done. I’m glad the setting has enough diversity of life and lore that we can engage other, more interesting, conflicts.

Yeah, there is some meta conflict between Personal Story and Living World, but the problem is the PS, not the LW. Living World is a great concept that deserves to stay and become the focus of the game moving forward. Personal Story was a neat idea that was poorly implemented and needs to accept the back seat for the duration of the ride. Personal story should never have been about slaying Zhaitan. That was short-sighted.

PS should have limited it’s scope to the area where the character starts their journey, with perhaps some brief forays out into the wider world. The Human PS should have been about Queen Jenna’s tenuous grasp of power in Divinity’s Reach. The Sylvari PS should have been about dealing with the Nightmare Court and Caithe’s ties to their leadership. The Norn PS should have been about… Norn stuff… ale or something… That way PS could have developed the NPCs and lore of the respective races and left Zhaitan for the first “dragon campaign” to kick off the start of the Living World content. That’s the fix it needs. That’s the fix that works.

What we do not need is any scheme that tries to cram the Living World into the Personal Story so that you can play all the content whenever you get around to it. That is not a Living World.

If you are terribly worried about the conflict between Personal Story and Living World, then focus on fixing Personal Story so that Living World can continue to be the amazing and unique experience that it is.

I don’t think you grasped what the OP was saying…. He wasn’t saying to get rid of the LS, he was recommending a change to the PERSONAL STORY so that the developers did not have to worry about conflicts between the PS and the LS.

After which he recommended a format on how the LS will roll out from this point forward. A five or six month campaign dedicated to slaying a dragon and exploring a new zone. Then the remainder of the year is festivals, minor/major lore and new game mechanics.

Almost all of what he proposed is in line with what you were saying, except for the dragon slaying part. And as cliche as killing dragons may sound, these dragons are the biggest threat to Tyria. Once we get rid of them then we maybe can see a more unique threat and experience then what we have seen or read in other RPGs.

Understandably that some of the fractals are too long, or even not fun, and that is possibly something ANet is working on revisiting. It just would be nice to even see it for myself to decide whether or not I like it.

But with the million post thread on people complaining about the fractal level reset, I doubt this issue is even going to get addressed.

any chances that ANet will do something about people continuing to enter and reenter fractals to choose what fractals they want?

I haven’t seen over half the fractals because pugs refuse to do them, and it sucks not seeing all of the games content.

Besides, with this fractal leaderboard coming up I think it may be more fair if everyone was forced to do random fractals all the time rather then the fractals they are most comfortable with.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

The big question is how much of box sales and gem store sales goes back into gw2 and how much goes to aion 2 development?

The data we’ve seen from GW2 is still too new, and fluctuating too hard, to make a solid impression on what NCSoft is going to do with the profit from GW2. But based on the current trend from the last 2 years of earning reports, I would say ANet is in a safe place. GW2 is still out-performing both Aion 1 and B&S in terms of sales.

What we’re missing is data on the expenses for maintaining each of these three projects. For example, if Aion costs less then GW2 to maintain then most likely less of GW2 profit is being (or going to be) put back into GW2.

Sendra.5709:

Something like the harder the difficulty chosen, the higher the drop rate of a event specific rare item. But the item would still be available at the lower difficulties too, just a lower drop rate.
So like…
Easy 1%
Medium 3%
Hard 6%

I like this idea. An incentive to do harder content, but not too big of a gap that would cause too many to complain about.

But of course this is the internet, and people are going to complain even if you give them free candy

Sendra.5709:

While I loved Liadri and got both of her achievements (Regular and 8 orb), I feel it wasn’t fair to those who didn’t have the gold to buy new gear or didn’t have classes that were best for beating her.

I agree that Liadri is possibly not the best comparison due to the fact that there were only certain classes and certain builds tied to those classes that could beat her. What I meant was the difficulty scaling in the encounter and the gratification tied to beating such a hard content.

I understand the idea that GW2 is designed for casual players and it should remain so. I just hope that there is a little extra added in every patch for players that also want “tribulation” mode content with their casual stuff.

In the case of my example from above, add one or two more levels above the current 3 levels that is much harder to accomplish. Something the devs themselves have a harder time beating (or can’t beat) with some of the bells and whistles of what I recommended.

Of course, if no one else support this thread (or others like it) then most likely we’ll most likely not see this tower concept again. Too many of the other threads are saying that this tower is too difficult as it stands.

I’d like to start off by saying I love this update, and that this is one of the few LS patches that I don’t feel like I am logging on to complete the achievements because its a chore to do.

My favorite aspects of this content is:

• The golems that save your progress
• The difficulty scaling
• Open world non-zerging content
• The unique mechanics tied to each level

My dislikes:

• Useless new healing skill
• Too short

It would be nice to see this tower return (or something akin to the idea) with some new additions.
Some examples would be:

• Keep the LS story attached to the update and difficulty level as we see so far up to level 3 (4?)
• Add on additional levels that progressively becomes harder, but not linked with the story
• Attach achievements and loot for each level defeated
• Add a mini 5-man dungeon at the end of each level to be defeated before the player can progress
• Have a skill to be purchased with skill points that is actually useful for the related content

It’d be nice to see the return of Liadri difficulty level npcs that could be accomplished as a bonus but not truly necessary for the player to gain their meta achievement.

Likes:

• Elementalist “Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.” I don’t play a condition build on my ele, but I feel this makes a player more willing to go deep into the earth line.

• Elementalist The base cooldown of the attunement changes from 16s to 13s. I feel this is a huge move in opening up build diversity.

Clarification on some skills:

• Engineer “Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%” Is there an internal cooldown for this skill? How long does it last?

• Engineer “Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.” Is this an increase in regular damage or condition damage?

The following list of likes/dislikes is to the best of my memory, and concerns the story, gameplay, dungeons, etc that deals with the Living World itself. It does not include the quality of life updates, WvW/SPvP changes, skill readjustments, etc.

Likes

• Holiday Events- I am enjoying them as they are. I feel ANet is going in the right direction with these events. Only improvement I feel is needed is a hard mode for Clock Tower with scale able rewards.

• Molten Alliance- Dungeon was great! Especially the boss fight. I think the only improvement is to make it a bit shorter. 30 – 40 min sounds like a reasonable amount of time to complete a dungeon.
• SAB- Great job, loving this mini holiday event. My only concern was how long the new world was and the issues it caused when people disconnected. There wasn’t a save mode or back up system.

• Sky Pirates- the Dungeon was great. I love the difficulty and how hard it was to get the last few achievements. I also loved the la Noir cinematic.

• Bazaar of the Four Winds- My favorite was spending the time to get the jumping achievement all around the new city.

• Cutthroats Politics- Voting was a great concept in this LS update. The only issue was the multiple votes casted per player felt like it skewed the results to me.

• Queen’s Pavilion- Queen’s Gauntlet: bring this back, and continue to add onto it. The challenge was perfect for me. Hard enough that I wanted to try again and again. But not overly hard where I felt that it was impossible to do.

• Tequatl- the Dragon improvement is heading in the right direction.

• Twilight Assault- The new dungeon is great, but a bit long. I think making a dungeon take 30 – 40 min sounds more reasonable then an hour to an hour and a half.

• Nightmare Tower- Stomping and Finishers. This is needed in the PvE world. This needs to be improved upon a bit, but so far I love the direction you guys are going. The in-game cinematic was definitely a nice touch in the personal story.

Dislike

• Zerging- Its fun the first couple of times, and then you go into zombie mode. Once that happens, this is no longer fun.

• Lost Shore / Secret of Southsun- I don’t know why, but I hate Southsun Cove.

• Flame and Frost- Everything except for the dungeon.

• Clockwork Chaos- see above about zerging

• Difficulty scaling- Many of GW2’s player base is possibly fully geared 80s. I think it may be better to make the majority of the LS difficult, as opposed to the majority being easy. That way the level 80 players have something that feels like a real achievement rather then what it is right now. Secondly, it will give the new players an incentive to see level 80. That way they can enjoy what they are missing out.

• Scavenger Hunt- The concept is great, but I think the delivery needs work. For example the recent one, Krait Historian, had zero information on where to look for these Obelisks. We were forced to use an outside source for this, and I don’t think that is going in the right direction. Hints and clues, better then what we have gotten before, is necessary for a Scavenger Hunt to feel fun. Instead of feeling like a choir to do to get your Achievement Points.

Overall, there may be more but I think I have taken up of your guys time. Thank you for taking the time to reading this, and keep up the great work!

I had the same problem. Was stuck on 23/24.

Solution:
RELOG. Then go back and redo all 24 again.
Worked like a charm for me.

Arrow.3856:

Who are u showing your finisher to because I really dont care for other peoples finishers. Nor do I care for the mine which I’ve seen a million times.

The 3 minute convo between Logan thackery in the bar a few months ago crushes this one into pieces.

I dont get whats so HUGE about a landscape change? If that tower was a JP or a dungeon…that would have been impressive.

Part of showing off the finisher feels like a mini-game to me: Its a race to see who can get theirs off first. Granted this may not be the case for everyone, but when you see 10+ players all crowded around one NPC trying to finish him off, I think that I might not be the only one that feels this way.

True, the la Noir Cinematic was great and definitely the best. BUT I did say the solo story instance was mixture of cinematic combined with combat. Which is to say this recent one is the best in its category.

Lastly, Zanshin is correct. This is only phase 1 of the Living Story for the Nightmare tower. And I liked what they did with it.

Loving the new Living Story. Much much better then what we have been seeing this last 11 months.

Pros

• Stomping the downed player- I really am enjoying showing off my finisher. I would like to see this in all the High level zones, along with downed NPCs be a little bit more difficult to take out .
  • For example, some NPCs rez quicker, some do knock backs, some summon help, etc.

• Solo Story Instance- This was fun, and I liked the mix of cinematic storytelling and combat.

• Zone Touchup- THIS WAS HUGE. The fact that the zone is green on your mini map, and how the whole zone changed caught me by surprise. I loved it, and I hope to see more of this in future LS updates.

Cons

• Healing Skill- I am not sure how I feel about a utility skill that is only useful for one particular content.

• Aggro Range- I think to bump the difficulty level, is it possible to increase the aggro range of enemy NPCs when a scaled down level 80 is killing one of their companions?
  • For example, I was killing NPCs that were within 900 (meters? feet?) of one another and they just stood there waiting to get picked off. It would be nice if the NPCs actually noticed their buddies dying and come to the rescue to boost the challenge of PvE for a scaled down level 80.

Me too. My favorite living story personal instance by far. ANet is on the right track and keeps up with this style, and improve upon it

I like the Finisher. It adds an extra mechanic in fighting PvE mobs. Normally PvE in GW2 is something a person does while watching a movie or something. You spam a bunch of keys at the biggest group, and hope that you are killing enough monsters for the loot.

With a Finisher, you actually have to pay a bit more attention because if you don’t Finish them there is a slight chance they can come back to life.

I think ANet is on the right track, and only needs to add more onto this.

I think the common trend I am seeing in these posts are that we are asking for actual numbers posted. Nothing can be resolved until we get a more clear picture of what is going on.

In example:

-Ratio numbers of WvW players to actual Server Population per world

-Number of hours each world puts into WvW, and the timezones

-The number of players allowed into a given map per world

Since reset last night, the expected skill lag from a 3 hour fight may have broken our Blue WvW in the Tier 1 (BG, SOR, JQ) battle group. The skill lag hit and stayed with the map.

From what I can tell, it was still going at 730am server time, and from what I hear from my guildies it has stayed laggy throughout the day. Even during small engagements.

I am not sure if anyone else is experiencing this on other maps, but its definitely happening on blue borderland.

WvW list:

1: Population Imbalance: Mainly focused on spreading the wvw players across all the servers.

2: Maps: Revamp of the wvw maps to better promote strategical game play.

3: Mechanics/Meta: If my first two gets addressed, then ignore this last one. It will naturally change to adapt to them.

PVE list:

1: Expansion
2: Dungeon
3: Living Story

A video to coincide with my thoughts on PVE:
Extra Credits: When Difficult Is Fun

edited to move WvW related items into the WvW thread

You think ANet would have changed the game plan by now if it wasn’t a working business model?

Xystus.3241:

Markadis.9012:

ATT UVERSE: US WEST (California)
Its been choppy here and there since the Tequatl patch, but today is practically unplayable.

I tested to see if it was my own internet, and its not. Checked speed of websites, games, streamed HD movies and porno. Everything is fine, except for GW2. =(

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Tracing route to 64.25.33.54 over a maximum of 30 hops

0 Tomosan-PC.gateway.2wire.net [192.xxx.×.xx]
1 homeportal [192.xxx.×.xxx]
2 * * *
Computing statistics for 25 seconds…
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 Tomosan-PC.gateway.2wire.net [192.
168.1.70]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 1ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% homeportal [192.168.1.254]

Trace complete.

Unfortunately your pingpath doesn’t show anything; because its blocked past your router.

Just for reference, speed tests mean jack squat. Its all about the “roads” your internet “traffic” takes. The streaming HD maybe coming from Seattle, porno from Wisconson. While GW2 is Texas. Therefore it is not a good comparison.

I’m not saying it isn’t guild wars; but at the same time, there are other people who aren’t lagging.

We’ve seen a lot of issues from Level3 and Verizon over the past few weeks. Level3 mainly coming from the west coast to Texas. Verizon/Anet having peering issues.

Okay, fair enough. So I am assuming this applies to every other game; such as battle.net, LOL, Steam online games as well?

Because GW2 honestly is the only thing that is lagging horribly bad for me at the moment. I have had zero issues with GW2 the last couple days, and before that I had random spikes here and there before that since the Tequatl patch.

ATT UVERSE: US WEST (California)
Its been choppy here and there since the Tequatl patch, but today is practically unplayable.

I tested to see if it was my own internet, and its not. Checked speed of websites, games, streamed HD movies and porno. Everything is fine, except for GW2. =(

go to your graphics settings, and set your thing to auto works too. If you start lagging, adjust your settings from this point.

On my warrior I, and pretty much everyone else I know, run -40% condition. Without it, I would get face rolled by any condition player.

On my engineer I would run the +40% condition duration to counter a warrior. Otherwise I would get face rolled because none of my conditions would tick longer then a second or two.

If neither had the food buff, then they both would get face rolled.

What does that mean? Well, food is a pretty vital part of the game and it defines probably half of whatever build you had made.

I’m running Bomb & Nade Kit, with all Dire Set (condi, tough, vit). 30/0/0/30/10

My greatest weakness seems to be condi Necros. I can handle anyone else, but constant fears with heavy conditions put me down quick.

You think running Protection Inj and Elixir C would be a better choice for me? Right now I’m traited for AR and my last utility swaps between RB, and Elixir C.

ellesee.8297:

yes tested with a dhuumfire necro running hemophelia and nightmare runes, which is +40% condi duration and +60% bleed. though as soon as i healed he was able to instantly put more conditions on me. and if i didn’t heal i was sitting in the red zone in health. i still would not get this ability.

To summarize what I think you are saying: you are saying is that there is an internal cooldown. After this procs once, there’s some sort of time limit before it can proc again?

Pakki.4175:

There’s master trait in alchemy that allow you to cure condition when you use elixir.

Also, med kits, and overcharged healing turret cure condition.

edited: spelling coz of the censor >.>

Cool ty.

Last questions:

How long does Alchemy Grandmaster Trait XII last?

For example, let’s say I drop below the 25% threshold and cleanse all conditions on me with Elixir C. Elixir C then gives me regen as one of the buffs, and the regen pushes me up to 25% health 2 seconds later. Does that mean I was semi-immune to new conditions for the brief 2 seconds?

What happens if I get hit and my life goes down to 24% health another second later? Is there an internal cooldown on Trait XII? If so, does anybody know how long it is?

Sorry about the multiple questions.

Dirame.8521:

You become immune to condis applied AFTER you reach 6k health.

I see…. Is Elixir C, and Cleaning Formula 409 (GM Trait X) our only condition removals?

Alchemy Grandmaster Trait XII:
“Condition duration is reduced by 100% when health is below 25%”

How does this trait work? I have a health pool of over 24k, and 25% of that is 6k. When I reach 6k whatever conditions that are on me are still ticking. Is this trait broken?

Ever since Tuesday’s patch, I have had some serious lag issues. Some others in my guild are experiencing it as well, but their’s seems to be coming an going. Mine is constant.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Small request:

Allow us to keybind directly to the LFG Tool.
This isn’t anything major, just something to improve an already great game.

Azure Prower.8701:

Harder? Sure.

Longer? No.

Devoting hours of play time that can be wiped away by a single disconnect is not the way to go.

I’m up to World 2 – 2 on Tribulation more and I’m dreading it. Not because of how hard it is. But because of how loooong it is along with 2 – 3.

Hard and challenging content is fun.

Long content on the other hand would only be fun if there was suitable save spots. Being disconnected, or forced away from your computer due to real life concerns, and coming back and having to restart something a level you had previously invested multiple hours in is a bit frustrating.

Just now, after spending 3 hours in 2-2 normal mode and I got disconnected right before I got to the boss, I logged back in to realize I couldn’t pick up right after where I started. This is painful to anyone that don’t have the time to invest into the game as much as the want to.

Simple request is to keep the game the way it is, but divide up more of the areas so that people can come and go. For example, make 2-2 into 2-2 and 2-3.

My guildy got an ascended chest from killing Tequatl… that is a not good enough reward?

Thanks to whoever made this epic website!

http://www.gw2lfg.com/

You are the best!! We wouldn’t have enjoyed GW2 as much as we did without you guys =D

Agreed. My WXP boosters are just taking up space in the bank at the moment. If the older boosters are not going to become account bound, it would be nice if ANet would let us know, so that I can just use it already and clear up my bank.

Nvm. I figured out what my issue was. Sorry

For the past couple of days I crafted both Lump of Mithrillium and Glob of Elder Spirit Residue. One of each for each day.

Today, I crafted the Glob of Elder Spirit Residue and it put both of my Glob and Lump on the same cooldown. What that means is that I gained a Glob but no Lump.

Which of these is the bug?

Hmm… it’d be nice if more people got on this so that ANet is aware of the issue

“World vs. World
The WXP Booster has been changed to be account bound rather than soulbound.”

All of my WXP boosters are still soul bound.

Anyways, I’m done with this convo. Everyone enjoy the video and I am going back to my SAB.

MikaHR.1978:

After playing so many MMOs out there GW2 became same as most MMOs out there. Even much worse in some aspects. And it will get ultra grindy very soon.

Oh? Fortune teller are you? Mind telling me my future?

Anyways, that comes down to what people define grindy. I don’t see how making Ascended weapons/armor grindy. You play the game like you normally do, you get mats as they come, and then you make the weapons/armor. Do you really need to get the new weapons Today??

When I get a bit bored, I grab one of my characters (80 or not) and go explore. Its amazing all the little details ANet has put into the game that people never seem to notice.

If exploring isn’t for you, grab a guild with a like-mind. WvW was what saved me from quitting the game back in January. I found a great WvW guild and have been dedicated to keeping my server in T1 since then.

There are things, and just like any other MMO, its not going to be given to you. You have to be willing to look for it.. i.e. know what type of player you really are and explore that aspect.

MikaHR.1978:

It took 2 months to cave in to whiners and produce ascended out of nothing.

And the only thing he does say is “he hopes they dont introduce new tier”

Ktnxbai

2 months? People were complaining that exotics were too easy to get within the first week of release. People were fully geared out with exotics and their legendaries by the end of the first month. It took ANet awhile to answer the gap between exotics and Legendaries.

And before anyone says “thats ANet’s problem for being lazy and slow” and whatever insult you can think of. You gotta keep in mind that ANet is trying to cater to four branches of players. WvWer, PvE (explorers), PvE (farmers) and SPvP players.

ANet isn’t perfect, but after playing so many MMOs out there, I believe this game is the best option I have currently.

MikaHR.1978:

Where does he state that there wont be new tier added to the game?

Did you watch the video? It’s within the first 1 minute. He states that he doesn’t want to add another tier, and if it does happen it will be because someone else is either in charge of the development team or will be about 7 years from now.

Draco.2806:

It’s the Ascended that’s the problem.

Exotics were barely manageable. Ascended is just an insult.

Did you watch the video? Play the game? It takes me 2 hours to get an exotic. How is getting exotics barely manageable?

Shelledfade.6435:

go back to enjoying grinding and a mystic toilet slot machine?

Why would I do that when I can simply stop playing.

Name ONE MMO that doesn’t have grinding?

Anyways…. Good bye! Good luck on your next MMO

Collen Brohanson specifically states in this interview that there won’t be any more gear past Ascended Gear, so all you doomsayers can chill and go back to enjoying the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy7CcwnfUdU

XII.9401:

Wonder how many slaps in the face the fan boys will get till they realize Anet doesn’t give a kitten about wvw..

If you don’t play… why come here and troll?

Xaielao.8510:

Individual or guild recognition would only lead to (even more) elitism. So IMHO there shouldn’t be any.

Agreed. No need for guild recognition by the game. The only recognition a guild deserves is that type that is given by the server’s players themselves.

Same, I am curious about this more for my back pieces that I wish to move from one character to the next.