Guild Wars 2

illutian.7630:

Why not just remove traits….ya know. Cause it’s so hard to build a Trait Set.

/eyeroll

Major traits will now be unlocked via traits guides, a new in-game item. Double-clicking on a trait guide will unlock its associated trait. You can find trait guides by completing specific content in the world, like story dungeons, minidungeons, WvW, personal story, specific bosses, and discovering certain areas on the world map. As excited as we are to let players earn traits with feats of bravery and cunning, we know not everyone is the exploring or adventure type—which is why we’ve included the option for you to buy trait guides from profession trainers!

You’ve just completely ruined your game. Good job on that.

Traits will now be learned by: Coin sinks (thus facilitating Gem buying). And Play-time sinks.

As opposed to now where traits are a gold sink to buy the books, and then a gold sink to reset your traits because you accidentally put too many points in, or want to try a new build?

Also, do not understand the time sink thing…. you seriously want to have fewer reasons to do events and such? This will give people reason to go outside their comfort zone of Frostsound and Queensdale, to me that is a great thing.

Crossplay.2067:

I only see one downside to this change. Some professions, such as mesmers, rely heavily on traits just to, “not suck”. Moving them 20 levels up will make the already painful task of leveling a mesmer nearly unbearable.

On the other hand, I do agree with consolidating the trait points from 70 to 14. That just makes a lot more sense.

I think they are going to be re-balancing a lot of classes. Wait for the rest of the updates to post before leaping to conclusions.

First off… only ‘adult males’ will understand your analogy? Yeah, no. Most women I know drink more than most guys I know (though that just may say something about my circle of friends). Still, a statement like that is just starting off on the wrong foot.

Second, Living Story is not just temporary content. Season 1 predominantly was I’ll give you that. The most we had in terms of new locations was Southsun and Zephyr Santum (one of which is a traveling merchant group and will return regularly), but you can’t think for a second that Season 2 will follow that pattern the whole time. Season 1 had to get us to a point that the need to expand the world was there… could it have been done differently and sooner… sure, of course. However the need to expand will be there in the story and ANet is not going to make whole maps that are temporary content. We go west of Brisban Highlands in Season 2, that map will still be there at the end of Season 2. It may not look the same as when we first get there, but it will be there as will all the jumping puzzles, vistas, etc. they put there.

Third, not everyone plays for AP. In fact I’d say most players don’t play for AP in and of itself, they just don’t mind getting it. It’s a normally useless system in most games that they have tied some rewards to. AP in and of itself though is just for those who feel the need to base their enjoyment of the game on an arbitrary number. (raises flame shield)

Fourth… “As soon as GW2 has all of it’s expansions and the living world updates are no more ANET will make more infinite achievements and remove the limiters from the current ones. Why? Because all players must have an equal chance at getting all the rewards including those who only start playing at that point.” makes no sense what so ever. There is no need to remove limitations at all because when ANet moves on from GW2 (who knows when that will be, GW1 is still running), there is nothing stopping them from just releasing all LS updates (holidays aside) and have a historian in a city to tell you what happened and you play them, much like they did with the special missions in GW1. May need some tweaking, but I think they may even do that for content as they go as they have mentioned they were looking into ways for players to play content they missed.

Sixth, temporary content can have the opposite affect that you are claiming because a lot of more casual players, hell, the fact this game had a living world got like 3 of my friends off of WoW and into GW2, simply because WoW never changes. Been There, Done That. Yes, I know, anecdotal evidence, but there is something to that. Once you finish the latest WoW expansion or get to max level there’s nothing to do other than grind with your guild doing raids and then go level an alt. In GW2 thanks to the LS there is always something going on. Is it always the best stuff? No, but I don’t expect it to be.

So far, this is exactly what I wanted from this game, more reasons to explore and more traits to diversify builds (So my guildies who have left (due to lack of a trinity) may come back if combat allows for builds that aren’t as dps focused all the time). Looking forward to the next blog posts.

This is what I get for reading theories when half asleep. Though I still think this may be true from some Living Story chapters. Certainly the battle for LA didn’t take 2 weeks, nor did the chapter before it. And there’s no way Flame and Frost took 4 months. I think maybe we have to accept there is some flexible timeline here in general that is stretched or compacted to comform to the release schedule.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

As to the in-game time frame, take each update that happened roughly every two weeks and count that as a day that is repeated constantly for two weeks then you’d might be able to handle the story a tiny bit better knowing that from the end of the Personal Story to the end of the Living Story (including the Karka) only 26 days have passed in-game.

This would actually explain away most, if not all of the plot holes seeing as how the Living Story was less than a month from start to finish and therefore the plot holes “technically” are not there. Example, the probes were only there for about a day or two before they ’sploded and a full investigation could not be done in time.

Concept of time could help make this palatable for many.

Quoting because many people seem to not be aware of this, and it makes complete sense.

Konrad Knox.5162:

Um, someone bothers to actually read all that text the NPCs say? Click the guys, get the rewards, buy gems, go back to PvP.

Seriously, when will people learn to not expect devs to give you stories? This is not TV. If you want to experience good roleplay, roleplay yourself with each other. Shocking.

That’s one way to play the game… a frankly very shallow way. You just miss out on so much lore and world building that way. I for one don’t play for the rewards, I play for story and exploration.

Also, game stories are usually better than the stuff on TV. Not always, but usually.

Cotheer.2806:

LA is now Kessex Hills 2.0

I wouldn’t go that far yet, Kessex Hills was like the high point of the story so far, maybe tied with Zephyr Sanctum. LA changes still need to be implemented to rank it.

Wow, people went into this expecting way too much exposition and seriousness for a party that’s probably like the next day in the timeline.

I found the scene in Dead End worked well enough, if a little bit long on some of the pauses (which were NOT 2 minutes like some have posted and bolded). The best parts of the game are the character stories and this just provides little epilogues for the characters in Season 1, much like Dragon Age: Origins did, except here it’s taken care of in a scene rather than just arbitrarily put on screen. I was perfectly happy with how the conversation flowed. Spoken dialog may not have been the best written, but it was better than most of the fantasy shows on TV, and non spoken dialog gave enough glimpses for me to be happy with this resolution to the character story lines.

Also, they never actually name the dragon, just that it was a dragon, they handled why they thought it was a dragon well enough, and the whole Brisban Wildlands thing is not even related to a Dragon as far as the characters and storyline are concerned at this point… People need to calm down and remember player knowledge is different from character knowledge. It’s like nobody ever played a real RPG here.

Bring on Season 2 (which I hope will have new races to play, new locations to explore, and most importantly, a ton of new jumping puzzles! Releasing them free through LS is the best way, keeps it free, keeps people engadged, and stops the player base from fracturing as much as an expansion. Let’s just have a lot more permanence this time so it seems like we actually did something to grow the game rather than simply entertain the player base already in game.)

P.S. I’ve been writing this while my character is standing in Dead End… the ambient dialog is so kitten annoying… “So then he says to me…” WHAT? What does he say to you?!

Tom Gore.4035:

Hell, it took a serious kittenstorm to convince them to add walking into the game.

Good to know that I have other players to thank for the walking mechanic. I don’t RP much, but I like to take things slow and just observer the world I’m playing in (which may lead to RP eventually… though I’ve never seen people RPing on Ehmry Bay… then again RPing to me is very much rooted to pen, paper, and dice)

Gated items are a pain, especially when you are “level 80” and still can’t use level 80 stuff. I think they should stop leveling everyone up to 80 for so many of these, cause it’s never a true level up, a level 10 player leveled to 80 may have the HP and such… but they still die pretty kitten quick because they lack traits, armor buffs, weapons, etc. Ideally have content in a variety of locations across a variety of level ranges. If ArenaNet does better jobs of balancing and removing zerging from the LS updates it may go very well.

Heck, I kinda wish that being leveled down in lower end areas actually leveled down a little more because when I’m trying to help newer players (and yes, I am one of those players who tries to help everyone, guild member or not) I have to intentionally hang back and let them get their kills in because even leveled down a true 80 character kills so many things too easily. Feels like I’m being condescending to them like “oh, here, I’ll let you kill these guys”

My Lvl 80 Ranger Nisami… in jail in Rata Sum for jumping off edge of the city. Hate how so much Light/Medium armor for females shows way too much skin, very limiting when you want a realistic character design… still better than some MMOs out there though (Looking at you TERA)

So very tired of Zerging as well. I miss the more restrained content. I don’t mind adventuring with people who just happen to be there, in fact I find that tends to be the most fun usually. But the massive planning required for over a hundred people is so tiring. Tower of Nightmares even you just had to wait for the next big group to come through because it was basically impossible solo. (cue people coming in talling everyone who couldn’t solo Tower of Nightmares n00bs). Also, that’s another problem of the Zerging, it’s causing a large rift amongst “hardcore” players, “casual” players, and people who are not here for the combat but story or exploration. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people complain or want to have their own instance because “THEY DON”T KNOW WHEN TO DODGE, CAN WE JUST GET RIG OF THEM?"

Another problem is the leveled content, everything is level 80… which when soloing is the exact opposite of fun most of the time in zerg heavy maps.

Totally reiterating player housing, more cultural armors, classes using new weapons (elementalist pistols!), new classes (no trinity, go crazy!), new races (which would of course require a whole new starting area and maybe a new continent)…

This is going to be a weird one… several people in my guild have brought up the idea of Explorer’s Mode… you are basically a ghost, you get no achievements, you get no loot, you can’t affect battles, you can’t unlock anything or even get map complete or anything. also, to enter or exit this mode you have to be in a town/population area with a waypoint. This is for players who sometimes just want to roam and explore without having to worry about combat or events or anything. Heck, I’m at 95% complete and level 80 and I want to sometimes just go out and look around and such without having to worry about all that.

as for a ‘simpler’ fix… have Charr armor actually be made with the tail in mind… so annoyed that Charr armor has to be modeled for the race… but the tail is always clipping through a flat piece of armor. I’d even take a hole for the tail… just… something.

Lastly… First Person mode like GW1 or a key command to hide the character. some of us like doing videogame photography and getting shots without the player character in them isn’t always easy. (If I am missing some obvious option for this let me know via message or something)

Hisuichan.7983:

I feel like I shouldn’t need to say this, but the various patches to this event have made it clear that I have to: not every server has the population to max this event, so please try not to design and scale it based on the assumption that they do.

Please understand that the “zerg assault knights individually” strategy did not develop (entirely) out of greed, but of necessity. On Ehmry, at least, I can say that we weren’t doing it to get 3x the loot. We were doing it to clear the event at all……

Finally seeing someone else from EBay on here discussing a very real problem on the server (though I’m sure it’s not the first time). We’re either low population or low engagement. I think I’ve seen the Knights go down once, maybe twice. I think I’ve seen us do middle to decent in WvW, once (we did awesome for like 18 hours a few months ago with having the 90% of 3 of the 4 WvW maps…) People show up for most world bosses… unless something like the LS Fight is going on at the same time, then it’s a ghost town anywhere but the LS fight… and even then we don’t win in those LS fights lately. I remember we took out the Marionette once the whole time. I still don’t know if we’ve beaten Teq though, I assume at some point we have.

All that said, I love Ebay as a server. Very friendly in chat most of the time, if you do need help in a map people will usually help out, heck, I’ve had people just up and send me crafting mats and stuff before just because I said I was trying to get to 200 at the time.

People saying “just guest!”. Guesting in that case is a bandage to cover for poor scaling. It’s great when you want to play across servers with friends, it should not be the way to actually play the game simply to beat story events.

While we’re on the topic of badly designed armor and items for the races… how about Charr armor always having the tail clip through the armor?

Even though I liked the storyline of the LS… I have to agree that this whole huge guild / high server population stuff is getting annoying.

ANet should keep the battles if they want, but for petes sake get some downward scaling in there when there’s fewer people online or it’s off peak hours.

PASS, 6.5/10

End fight was way too long and frustrating, a freaking hour of fighting with the rest of the players on the map. Also, the fight with the knights is near impossible at night during off peak hours (or at least was, haven’t tried it since they removed zerging). Still, the fight had a great epic feel to it even if it was dragging on way too long.

Outside of gameplay frustration the story was a nice end to the season and Scarlet’s arc… dialog needed some work as did delivery, but I have come to accept that from MMOs in general. Very happy to see the kiss between Marjory and Kasmeer. ANet is certainly one of the most inclusive developers with their characters and it’s certainly a good thing that I applaud, between LGB and also disabled characters I’m loving it. Just wish Kasmeer’s dialog was a little better delivered.

Ending cutscene was great though and I can’t wait for Season 2

I know I said 6.5/10 and, but 5/10 is average… 6.5/10 is above average.

Ghettoblade.7962:

Living stories are just their way of getting people to play a game thats getting to be as boring as watching paint dry.

Only boring if you are one of those people who rushes through the game to lvl 80 and then think you are done. There’s so much more to the game then getting to lvl 80 and getting rares… I intentionally make myself walk sometimes just to see the sights and absorb the world rather than have it flash by as I run from point to point. Makes the game so much more enjoyable.

I’d love to see a new expansion, even though I’ve barely seen the whole world as it exists in the game currently (then again I only have 397 hours since launch, can’t even compare to some people).

Cantha was pretty amazing in GW1, so I’d love to see it again.

I think ANet have said they have multiple teams working and the largest is actually the team doing permanent world expansion with the second largest being the living content. I could be mistaken though.

wow, now I feel bad for missing the last month of Flame and Frost

Wait… there is a personal nemesis somewhere? Or am I mis-interpreting what is a potential storyline?

I keep having this problem as well in that area. Was going to post my own pics but Ronah.2869 pretty much covered it. Happens during all times of day as well.

Wonder if this is tied in with NPC characters glitching like this (keeps seeing parts of people disappear and then reappear).