Guild Wars 2

Kashrlyyk.5364:

It’s really astonishing how narrow minded and stupid most people are on this thread maybe even the entire forum.

“I have no problem with those enemy therefore everyone else should not have any problems with them, too.”

You’re inability to realize that people are different and may have technical problems too is digusting.
I really hope ANet does NOT listen to any of you.

Uh. There’s one person who is complaining that they are too tough and people point in general they are not. If no one points out that they are fine then anet probably nerfs the mobs which is again clearly something people do not want.

It has less to do with insulting the OP and more to do with the fact that mobs should not be nerfed just because a few people can’t handle them, and letting anet know that. There are even really good pointers about how to approach the situation. If anything the OP has very aggressive attitude towards anyone who disagrees.

The OP is playing a class which should have very little trouble with them and still has trouble. I don’t see too many posts which actually outright insult the OP unless you somehow count L2P as insult. We have had very little time to play and adjust our builds to new challenges so it’s a L2P situation for a lot of folks. Nothing bad in that.

Out of curiosity if all you want to do is reach a waypoint why stop fighting the mobs? When I first explored HoT map I just ran past them. Even in spots where you can’t circle around them (which there are many) you can just run past them. All it takes is a stun breaker and stability which to my knowledge every profession has. They don’t do that much damage after all but if you want to play it safe add a block skill into the mix.

I mean it’s not like it even requires specific running builds like GW did. Just a few skills.

Ah. You are correct. It says 25% of the first map. I misread it originally.

Still 25% would seem to mean there will be only 4 maps in total. Somehow four maps doesn’t feel like expansion but maybe my view on expansions is skewed by original guild wars. For example Nightfall introduced 350 new skills, two new professions, hero customization, new armor and weapons, five regions each with 10-12 explorable areas, and 20 co-op missions etc. All for the price of around $40 if I remember correctly.

I have to disagree on the Snipers being OP. I had a bit difficulty running my tempest with pure zerker so I switched to combination of zerker, valkyrie and celestial. After that the only time I had any trouble with the snipers was when escorting Skybreaker and that’s only because we faced an elite sniper along with a horde of other mobs with just four players. Still we prevailed in the end so it was actually fun.

What the game needs is more enemies like this. The difficulty here seems like a good change and something that needs to be propagated to all level 80 zones. Otherwise no one is going to play the new maguuma content as it is much easier to earn (currently) better rewards from easier zones. Difficulty alone is not a good reason to play a zone even if it makes playing more fun.

If anything the content is still too easy as it’s still relatively difficult to get downed. Even less to actually die.

Tengu schmengu… give me playable snake-tailed Naga! There’s plenty of water so they could pop up anywhere! Maybe in the underwater expansion… assuming the sea dragon doesn’t decide to be lame and actually surface for us to fight it, or the ArenaNet not go the easy route and merely shove us into “submarine” (portal) that ports us to some cave with it. Now that would be underwhelming!

My issue with the megaserver is that I seem to be shunted into instances with German folks all the time. I’m not sure why this happens since I’m not german, I don’t play in any of the german servers (I’m based on piken square), and I’m not in a guild that has presence in any of the language specific servers.

This wouldn’t be as huge issue if it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t even converse with the folks on mapchat because my language has been set to english and theirs defaults to german. It doesn’t even matter if I write in german because they still don’t see it because of the language settings. If I changed my language to german then the folks who have english settings don’t see my chat – and I speak english a lot better than german even if neither are my native languages.

So I’d like to have a control that allows the megaserver selection to ignore folks from german and french servers, and places me with folks whom I can actually chat with.

It could be that only germans are interested in jumping puzzles where I spent most of my time nowadays but this still seems odd.

Ah thanks. I didn’t know they changed it so that you actually have to carry the scraps. The specialist used to show the option even if you were not carrying any. Now it doesn’t. Time to unlock that lightning catcher.

Yeah I was talking about Bloodstone, Empyreal & Dragonite. I hope they figure out some other use for those except your regular ascended stuff. They are not very cost effective way to use them. Especially now that the ascended items are account bound. I’ve a mule whose bags are filled with stacks of them.

There are only two things that majorly disappoint me:

1. You are not able to turn in ascended mats into supply boxes. I have so many stacks of those useless things and I was eagerly waiting for the festival to start hoping I’d get a chance to turn them something useful. Seems I need to start deleting them.

2. Fortune Scraps gone and so is the option to turn them in. I’ve exactly 205 fortune scraps left. I was storing them in case new rewards would pop up but not only you introduced new tokens but the specialist also no longer accepts them. Maybe I missed a note about this so my bad. Still annoying. Should I delete them or will they ever be useful again?

Actually what disappoints me most is that I’ve to always scour the forum or the wiki for this info. As far as I can tell the web blurb did not mention anything about this.

Well there are still good things. I loved the crystal hunt as much this year as I did last year. I could spend days on those but unfortunately I got all of them in a few days. Please add more similar “scavenger puzzles” around the world and a title with them. Not just regular JPs.

Actually I want to see an extremely high JP with narrow ledges, wind, storms, and other obstacles. Something that takes hours to scale but also has unlockable waypoints like the tower of nightmares so it can be done over multiple days. The waypoints should stay unlocked even if you log off until you complete the puzzle. Think Tequatl level jumping challenge – without the need to organize whole map.

Necro might be a good option for me. I already have close to power necro so I think I’m going to try that. Got any specific build links?

Mesmer would be fun and useful but I play only little my Mesmer so he is not very well geared up.

I primarily play elementalist in WvW but I’m slowly starting to get fed up with how bad elementalist feels. I can handle myself ok against a lot of professions but “ok” isn’t quite good enough considering how much effort you need to put to merely surviving.

Sure in zergs I crank a lot of kills since it’s just about AoE spam and running with the tail between my legs if things look bad. It’s decent enough but I’d like to have a bit more survivable profession. Warriors and thieves specifically are my bane. It’s a choice between instadeath (if stopping to fight) or delayed death (if trying to run) when facing them. From others I can at least run!

Does anyone have any tips which profession would be good for handling themselves both in groups and while roaming? Especially when faced with warriors and/or thieves? I know the “warrior” and “thief” are obvious answers but those are actually the only professions I don’t have at 80.

As mentioned I’ve all other professions leveled up to 80 except warrior and thief. Bonus points if you can link to training videos/builds.

Hmm. I thought they were going to change Dhuumfire and Terror to be within same tier and same trait line? What happened to it as it was a good suggestion?

Eh. If anet insists that Necros are supposed to be glass cannons then I guess that’s what I have to play. I guess it’s time to swap to that 30 spite and at least 20 curses.

Considering how squishy necros are I need to be able to kill foes faster than they can kill me.

Finally I’m going to copy paste a portion from 2 months old thread. This is using Tequatl as an example when I heard about the overhaul (but didn’t have details yet).

Note! Please understand that a lot of players are reward driven and those who are not are usually driven to spots where other people migrate as well. If there’s no reason to go to a zone it is abandoned. LW story brings these areas alive for its duration but if you wish people to spend time there after that you need to hang the carrot infront of us!

What I would like to see

Basically: focus on persistent changes to zones and make it worth to go there other than for farming champions. Make things exclusive. If something can be gotten easier from somewhere else that’s where players go. Below is an example of what I mean:

Thematic area: Maguuma Jungle
Thematic meta event: Rise of Tequatl the sunless
Thematic merchants: asura, sylvari
Buildup zones: Caledon Forest, Metria Province, Brisban Wildlands, Sparkfly Fen, Mount Maelstrom
Event monitor: Tool that shows how near completion the meta event is

Doing events in maguuma area reward player karma, gold, and deadly bloom(s) or knowledge crystal(s). Each area has a merchant which sells asura or sylvari themed gear, minipets, thematic items, crafting components in exchange for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals. These merchants must be unlocked for example through a reputation system. They sell weapon skin and other unique stuff that can’t be gotten anywhere else!

Once the build up events are done Tequatl assaults one of these zones with multiple hotspots for activity. Completing the event in any of these locations earns the final reward.

Goal: Players want to go to Maguuma areas for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals as an alternative to dungeons. They also want to earn the exclusive skins and other rewards that can be bought only with blooms/crystals.

Natural completion of these events spawns a world boss (Tequatl) instead of everyone swarming him based on a timer. Allowing him to appear in multiple zones makes it more interesting. Especially if each zone has unique defeat mechanic. Adding multiple spots that need to be simultaneously handled splits the players and reduces lag. Edit: Most importantly it allows better scaling for events. You can increase the number of these spots as player numbers increase without making T impossible to defeat.

Finally you can tie living world achievements and temporary content to zone overhauls allowing you to tell stories and introduce new enemies while still leaving behind interesting persistent content as events. Edit: However as mentioned previously these zone overhauls events should be detours from the anchor zone itself.

Edit Note! Simply adding a few dungeons or a world event does not make zone alive. It makes only those spots alive. You need to give a reason to do dynamic events. Thus the bloom/crystal thing. The reward numbers should be low but as the event chains forward you get more and more of them rewarding people who work on the chains instead of farming the initial events.

Then there are some glaring examples of “don’t get it”

Halloween and material requirements for rewards.

This is so contrary to player mentality that it baffles me. These are supposed to be casual events enjoyable for everyone. Are you surprised people are angry instead of buying the items from trading post?

You should have add items with 1k candy cost, 5k candy cost and 10k candy cost and it would have still drained excess candy corn from the market. For example selling exos with 1k candy. 5k for a pail would be reasonable. This would have resulted farmers farming for the candy corn which isn’t any different from now while casuals would have gotten some and bought the rest. Now I wager a lot of people didn’t bother.

New content and living world

Your problem is that you currently twofold. There hasn’t a LW content update that has truly left anything permanent without it significantly splitting from what players expect to be the living story. Even Twilight Arbor path isn’t truly new content. It’s just a new path.

Then you also pointed out you added a lot new mini content that no one played. More like you added a bunch of random stuff that in no way connected to the living world and to lower level zones when people have already outleveled those which essentially made it invisible to most. Again these were in no way connected to the living story.

Scarlet

You chose to anchor the story to a completely new random villainess who miraculously manages to pull together enemy groups. Instead of this you should have anchored the story to a zone OR an elder dragon. Elder Dragons are what this game is about. Not Scarlet.

Scarlet would be okay as a side villain and I like her antics but she can never be the key for pulling all living stories together. There are too many. It’s too split. Too haphazard. That’s just not what (I think) people want. Again she would be terrific villain as a “detour” villain. Not as someone who hogs the spotlight.

Somehow managed to add these to WvW thread… bleh.

Also. One of my problems is that ANet tends to swing from one end to another when it comes to living story. All signs point to this. For example.

People complain about time gated content —> Remove time gated content

When the real issue is not time gated content. The issue is that you were missing rewards, there was no clear info what we could expect on a specific day, and you gated the content into specific days and hours instead of letting each time gated piece to run a few days. Missing a precursor or unique item reward because you couldn’t make it? Too bad! Of course there are complaints.

People request for tougher content —> Make something that requires a full map

I honestly like new Tequatl. However I’d like it even more if there were people doing it. My impression is that when people request for tougher content they basically mean something comparable to Temple of Grenth. More than failure itself people want an illusion of failure.

Fire elemental and Temple of Grenth are some of the best examples because they are both doable with small teams and large groups. For Grenth there’s a chance for failure and you get downed a lot. The difference is that it can be done with a few people AND the failure is because of your actions. Not because of a timer. Fire elemental is pretty fail proof but you have significant personal illusion of failure because you get downed a lot. Both also require mobile gameplay. Stay in one spot and you die.

Dragon fights earn(ed) complaints because people can autoattack them to death. For example the shatty fight is boring. The fact is that open world is the best for Grenth level content.

I’m a bit late to the game because I’m a casual forumite but basically my issue with the game is mostly living world related. You can see my thoughts in this thread (I probably shouldn’t copy paste everything I said there here?).

Anyhow it’s mostly that the living world:

1. Lacks anchor zone where we keep returning
2. Lacks time phased content within the two weeks release period
3. Doesn’t leave anything persistent behind
4. Gives way too many chances to miss actual rewards (including achievements)
5. Doesn’t progress the story of elder dragons

One of the key quotes would be: “It doesn’t matter how wonderful internal roadmap you have when for players they all feel separate instances that seem to have no connection whatsoever”

Please read the thread for better explanation. I dedicated two posts to explaining my point of view with some examples (especially the second post).

Morbridae.8607:

First of all, the LS should not focus on only one thing, but should affect a lot of zones. Some invasions with Tyria’s Joker, something new at Southsun, and a new pirates attack, all in the same update. The world doesn’t change one part at a time, do you know?

I prefer to have major focus on a single anchor zone as that way you can easily also update that zone with permanent content over multiple updates. For example by now Southsun should have significant amount of permanent content – including a dungeon. That hasn’t materialized.

However as I mentioned things should happen on other zones as well but the key is that every update should somehow use the anchor zone for something until the story comes into conclusion. See my second post for a sample.

I’m not seeing how Tempest Defense is that great even after the proposed change. I mean it looks okay especially with the +damage against stunned or otherwise controlled foes but that has been there for a while.

Shocking aura itself stuns in melee only. Does it not? And judging from the description it doesn’t actually counter the stun effect targetting you? Merely tries to turn the table so you still need to use condition removal to get rid off of the effect and even then you only stun the melee guys.

If it actually also counters the effect then I’m likely to agree that it’s really powerful. Currently it looks like a skill that is more useful in PvP than for example PvE or even WvW.

Edit: ok. apparently I’m not allowed to write doesn’t it after a dot or something as it turns into a kitten.

I’m not sure if anyone is going to take anything I say into heart because I’m a PvE player that dabbles in WvW but…

I usually use scepter/dagger but also swap to staff in WvW. I use the +all stats accessories and I’m pretty sure I switch to my staff as one as well. There are currently a few things I consider mandatory:

Signet of Air because the movement is otherwise ungodly slow, and seems even slower on a Charr. I pretty much only play profs that have this passive movement boost (ranger, ele, necro). I wish all professions had option for a passive out-of-combat movement speed increase.

30 Arcana. As long as evasive arcana is grandmaster it’s going to be 30 arcana for me.

20 Water. Healing ripple & cleansing wave are currently mandatory as far as I’m concerned. Sure I could get this with 15 but 20 allows me to get arcane abatement with it (though I’m also currently testing shards of ice as I use only signet + arcane).

Thoughts about traits

I’d consider changing that 20 water setup if we got something that comes even close to healing ripple+cleansing wave combination in effectiveness. You would need to significantly improve other trait lines or toughness of the elementalist for me to consider the tradeoff worth it.

Soothing speed. Now if soothing winds converted 10% of perception to healing and Zephyr’s speed or One with the Air was set to instantly remove immobilize, crippled and chilled (like windborne speed) the moment they are applied I’d at least consider dabbling a bit in the air. I doubt even this would be enough but it’s an etertaining thought.

Air Traits. Honestly the only interesting trait in air line is Zephyr’s Boon and maybe Bolt to the Heart. Quick Glyphs is likely to be useful for Glyph users but inscription just feels too weak for its tier. The rest are either outright bad, too situational or options in other trait lines significantly outshine them. For example why would anyone pick One with the Air because air has horrendously low damage. Similarly I can’t think of any spot where Zephyr’s Focus would be useful.

Alacrity traits. Alacrity traits are not really good for ele since you don’t really spend much time in a single attunement. I’d only pick this for fire as that’s the attunement you end up spending most time in.

Damage Traits. Honestly you should combine the 10% damage increase from current Strength of Stone with what you are proposing as I certainly would not pick a master tier trait just to increase my condition damage by 10%. Combine One with the Air and Air Training and I start consider picking the trait but only if you also improve air damage which is pathetic. Combine Piercing Shards with Vital Striking and I again might be persuaded to pick the trait. On their own all these traits are undesireable.

The problem is that there’s no shortcut to home instance and home instance doesn’t have all services available that the hubs have. I don’t even gather the CC and Crystal nodes that are in the home instance.

For me the issue is all the zoning and lack of services. Home instance does not have bank so I have to first zone to racial capital, then visit bank to pull shards off of it and then zone to instance, and only then I can use the obelisk.

Mining a few candy corn or crystals is just not good enough reason to go there. I could consider it if the crystal node provided enough crystals to use the obelisk on the same run or if it pulled them directly from bank but it’s unlikely even then as the crystals just aren’t that useful and it’s just faster to use a place of power on a regular map.

There’s no BLTC or Bank, or crafting stations or merchants so I rather zone to a hub where I can sell junk, purchase salvage kits, trading, crafting, and even complete some dailies at times. I rarely even visit racial capitals because LA often has faster access to services plus it has the mystic toilet, laurel vendors etc.

This coupled with the fact that the home instance does not feel at all like a home. There’s nothing that feels personal to me. It’s a random zone within a zone with random NPCs that spout generic lines. It doesn’t differ in any way from the surrounding city. I can’t customize it at all.

Besides none of the NPCs that are part of the living story or personal story ever pop up to even say “Hi” even less to provide some personal quest.

There’s just not enough reasons to go there at the moment. Obelisk or not. I still do hope they put more focus to home instances. Maybe all the quests for potential legendary crafting should start from there? Maybe it should actually get involved in the living story? But even these would be temporary distractions.

Home instance portal would be handy…

I’m all for skimpy and covering armor both. What I personally don’t get it is why an armor that is fully covering on a male has to have pokey holes when worn by a female. Even worse are the sets where male and female armor can’t be recognized as part of the same set.

If the armor is skimpy it should be skimpy for both genders. If the armor is covering it should be covering for both genders. It doesn’t mean they have to look exactly alike as long as the changes make sense. You can still emphasize the female form with textures and armor shape without carving holes to the armor.

For example look the basic apprentice light armor set. I initially considered creating a female elementalist but the female version of the starting armor turns into a micro skirt, bikini top and garter belt (of all things) which quickly put the thought out of my head.

It felt insulting to be honest. Not because there was a skimpy armor set for females. It felt insulting because you automatically assumed I wouldn’t want female characters to have a similar look as the males have. That I somehow needed a fully covering, robe-like armor to turn into a few straps of cloth or I wouldn’t roll a female light armor character.

Why couldn’t this get the same treatment as acolyte armor or comparatively why not make the apprentice armor skimpy for both? What if the female apprentice armor had been basis for apprentice armor design? If you had turned it into a kilt and a few chest straps on a male.

I think there are room for both types of armors but all I’m asking is a little bit of consistency. I think it’s pretty insulting that the default assumption seems to be players would not use the armor set if it fully covers the female form OR that players would not use the armor set if it is skimpy on a male character. I don’t like the double standard presented here.

Kal Spiro.9745:

They don’t, actually. They’re plants. They don’t reproduce. They have forms they find appealing and even those forms have no baring on anything relating to their outlooks, emotions nor attitudes. They simply are. They don’t even have gender identities because that would be a pointless notion to them, having no concept of what gender really is, nor what it’s for.

…and now you are just baiting. Nice try though.

Kal Spiro.9745:

They we’re done here. I thought we were having a friendly argument between two, at least somewhat, passionate people. If you don’t care about what I think why should I care about anything you have to say about the situation?

You absolutely should not. I’m not some evangelist trying to convert you to my world view. I don’t see any point to be honest.

My original comment was to your post where you (correctly in my opinion) stated that gender should not matter. Then you suddenly pulled the sylvari are girls card and made it pretty clear that gender roles matter to you. You view Sylvari as girls because they don’t fall to masculine gender role or because they appear girly.

My point was for those who thought it might be a valid argument to say Sylvari are not male. You have made your opinion clear on the issue and that’s your opinion. I merely pointed out that it is based on false logic and should have nothing to do with gender imbalance discussion. Sylvari, like elves, have genders.

That should have been end of the discussion but you came back with the “deal with it” post. After this I started wondering what this guy has been smoking to make such an outlandish argument.

Kal Spiro.9745:

So I’ll skip ahead to your end argument. Your problem here is you seem to think that equality and balance are the same thing, or even relevant in comparison to each other. If you would go on to quote me you would see I said it isn’t the quantity of them that matters, it’s the quality. They could be all female, as long as they’re all well made, defined and represented characters then the number doesn’t matter.

Except it in so far matters because that’s the exact argument of the OP. I don’t care about how you view the situation. Only how what you say affects the perceived balance. The title of this thread is “no male heroes?” and the OP goes around ranting about perceived equality (or lack of there of) of male leads.

You basically support this by saying Sylvari don’t count because they are girls which they obviously are not. By saying something you instantly negate two significant male personalities: Canach and Trahernia.

Incidentally I am really enjoying how invested you apparently are in this whole dwarves are dudes and elves are chicks debate. I really hope you’re female because it would totally mess with my outlook of the world if you turned out to be a guy. Mostly cause I’m only ever seen other women make these kinds of outbursts against the idea, while guys typically just accept it in stride.

Consider your outlook messed. Also you are missing the point totally. You are pretty good example of a person who says gender stereotypes don’t matter and then goes and says something completely opposite.

Kal Spiro.9745:

All instances of dwarves without beards is a reprehensible travesty and you should be ashamed of yourself for even acknowledging them, let alone actually use them as an argument in your post.

And I never said elves weren’t guys nor anything about girls, obviously roughly half of all the elves have to be male since they’re probably mammals. The Sylvari don’t, and technically none of them are male nor female because they’re all plants, not animals. I just said they’re all chicks.

It’s a bit too late to make it out too look as an argument you made for “fun”. The fact that you used a bad argument. They have established gender identity in lore as well as in appearance.

Also that’s not what you said. You said “I still subscribe to the idea that Sylvari are elves and all elves are chicks, so Trehearn, Scarlet, Caithe, it makes no difference if they’re male or female they’re Sylvari so they’re girls.”.

Are you saying that chicks is a gender neutral term for elves. I mean you said all elves are chicks but apparently that includes male elves now? Fascinating. You learn new things every day in the wonderful world of the Internet. However you also compared Sylvari to Elves and then proceed to say Sylvari are all girls. If this is true wouldn’t that mean that all elves are also girls? Now I’m confused!

You also said “Funny thing about equality. In order for it to exist this debate needs to not matter. Because if there was equality no one would care.”

Then you make an argument that basically supports the idea that there’s a gender imbalance because apparently Trahernia and Canach fall into female camp just because they are Sylvari and all Sylvari are “chicks”.

Kal Spiro.9745:

No no, I’ll bite. As for dwarves, mainly it’s the beard. Any proper dwarf has a beard. Dwarves are supposed to have beards and quaff and sing songs about gold. The most important aspect in any Dwarven romance is first determining if the Dwarf you fancy is actually of the opposite sex. Dwarves are dudes. It’s what defines them as a race, along with being short, dirty and perpetually mining for precious minerals.

Elves are in every way the opposite of dwarves. They do not have beards or facial hair of any kind, ever. They are lithe and graceful and do not quaff. (Not that they have a beard to store their spilled ale in anyway.) As such, Dwarves being dudes as represented before, Elves are chicks.

I hope this has been educational.

Ok so your argument is that because elves are lithe and graceful they are not guys because apparently guys can not be lithe and graceful? Umm ok. Also DnD has a long tradition of female dwarves that do not have beards. I recommend doing a google search.

It was certainly educational to how your mind works but I doubt it should be used as a basis to judge how many male or female characters given living story has which is what this thread is about.

Your argument was that the gender of Trahernia, Scarlet, Caithe, Canach etc can be ignored because they are Sylvari and by your logic all Sylvari are girls. This is not true.

I could make an argument all Norn are male because you know. They are large, brash, boasty, competitive and aggressive which for some is what “real men” are about. That would be equally bad justification though.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I think Kal’s post was not meant to be as serious as you’re making it, but I could be wrong!

Then it shouldn’t have been used to back an argument to be honest.

Khisanth.2948:

That is not very nice but those people are “just playing the game” as well. Ultimately the blame falls on whoever designed this.

This should never ever be used to justify spoiling the fun of others. There are plenty of champs to farm so courteous people would move to other spots if they are not interested in achievements.

People expect developers to take responsibility but are not willing to take any themselves. Then again this is nothing new. I see it in politics every day.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Um, I’ll just throw the rest of that out because this right here… I’m arguing that no one should have a problem with this. And I say explicitly that I do not have a problem with it. So where exactly does this come from?

My point about Elves and Sylvari is that their physical gender is irrelevant, like dwarves. All dwarves are dudes and all elves are chicks, they just are, deal with it.

Well apparently you do have a problem because your comment about elves and dwarves is so absurd I’ve a hard time comperehending how anyone could have that view.

What exactly makes all Dwarves “dudes” and all Elves “chicks”? I don’t need to “deal with it” since the whole argument is absurd and I wager most people don’t see it like this.

There’s nothing in elves or dwarves that makes them gender neutral. I don’t think I’ve seen any game or fantasy piece where this is the case. I can’t even compherend how anyone could reach this conclusion? Please enlighten me what exactly makes elves “chicks” or dwarves “dudes”?

- Other updates and lost focus -

After this I think you lost focus. You introduced yet another villain, massive zerg farms, and now I’m completely lost about what you are trying to tell me?

After Clockworks we got this Tower of Nightmares and the weird alliance that is likely to be gone again soon only to be replaced with another villain group.

Please focus. Don’t jump from one spot to another. I’m more puzzled than ever what the heck you are actually trying to do with the living story?

- What I’d like to see -

Stick to one story and one continuity. For example what happens in Southsun could have been a continuity.

Unwrap the content slowly over the two weeks update with cutscenes, instances and new world events. At no point should players lose access to achievements or any rewards. People should be able to replay the cut scenes and instances. Events should clminate to a “peak” event. The peak itself should leave behind something permanent.

I envision something like this:
1. Opening scene (like we have now) and investigation stuff
2. Some world events start popping up on the zone and persist for a few days
3. New world events get chained off of those further carrying the story
4. Second scene around first weekend, something significant in the story unwraps
5. “Peaks” to something permanent around mid of the second week

Weekends are the best spots for “hotspots” but any event associated with the “peak” absolutely should not happen only within a single day!

Try to pace so that people have both combat and investigative stuff in beginning and middle of the event. Not unlike the 10 minutes investigation and then zerg zerg zerg for two weeks.

Make a good use of the progress bar. You remember the little bar, right? The one that among other things showed in last Halloween how close the mad king’s approach is.

I don’t mind if within two week period we have to visit other zones as long as there is a key zone and enemy group that is the anchor for the story. Something we keep returning to in every update until some significant change happens.

Take temporary breaks with things like holiday events, SAB and even introduce things like the Bazaar but try to keep the primary focus on the anchor zone and villain group. I can’t stress how frustrating current design is.

- Southsun Story -

As mentioned you already have permanent zone to tell the story. An anchor. All updates should somehow involve this anchor. All traces should lead back to there.

Southsun story should have been:

1. Karka appear and assault (like it was but less buggy, no time gated reward content)

2. Elements from flame and frost as detour within two weeks period to explain how refugees ended there which culminates but primary focus would have been the refugee trouble of the secret of southsun. Mostly investigative stuff but also some zone events. This is where Karka Queen should have appeared as permanent content.

3. Further investigation and zone events lead to Canachs lair which should have been another piece of permanent content. What was learned from lair would point towards dragon threat and reason why Karka appeared.

4. Bazaar appears but at the same time there are reports of “underwater dragon” sighting on southsun. Content is split between bazaar and southsun. Elections start.

5. Krait and more Karka appear in southsun. Elections ongoing but primary focus is pulled back to southsun with candidate trials being open both in bazaar and southsun. Culminates to dragon liutenant making a visit to southsun with both Ellen and Evon being involved heavily in it.

6. Sanctum leaves but the zone itself becomes permanent with vendors you can try excess junk for rare mats and skins from previous events. Hunt for Dragon liutenant’s underwater lair starts in southsun and eventually culminates to fight against it. LT gets destroyed but the lair remains. Temporarily closed but back as part of future updates turning into yet another piece of permanent content.

7. This is carried on until something significant happens such as opening of new underwater zone. Expansion. New race unlocked etc. Then switch focus because now people are used to the cove and it has two permanent dungeons AND karka queen.

This is what it should have been anyway.

My issue with the living world is that it’s all over the place. Instead of multiple updates that chain to each other we have very disconnected updates.

It doesn’t matter how wonderful internal roadmap you have when for players they all feel separate instances that seem to have no connection whatsoever. There’s no continuity. It doesn’t feel like the living story is building towards… well… anything really.

- Holiday Events -

Please do not even try to marry these to real living story and I’ve to say this year’s Halloween is a big disappointment. They should be distractions that buy time for you to further develop living story.

As far as I can tell Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash and Queen’s Jubilee all fall to this category.

- Lost Shores -

Lost shores was actually the first major living story content. It earned you guys a lot flack and for a good reason:

a) it was buggy and laggy
b) poorly informed (never knew what would happen on a specific date and time)
c) the content didn’t come in sufficient quantities
d) the new zone had no purpose after the event and even now very little

I don’t believe at all that majority of people complained because some content was staggered. People complained because it happened only on specific time and you missed rewards. Great potential. Badly executed. Instead of building on the zone you forgot it until the secret of southsun.

- Flame and Frost -

Flame and Frost introduced a fun new dungeon. The problem is that the dungeon was temporary. Of all the F&F content it would have made most sense to leave that dungeon behind.

Flame and Frost also initially lacked stuff to do which was a major complaint as well but it had the continuity thing going – until it flopped in the end and was forgotten.

- Secret of Southsun & Last Stand of Southsun -

You actually dedicated two updates for the content so I got my hopes up. I liked the story in fact. Maybe this was getting somewhere? Maybe this would be a path to the dragon that drove away Karka? Ok. So it wasn’t.

This should have been direct continuation of the Lost Shores. Not something that happens almost a year later. It should have also carried the story to some significant end. Instead of a great dungeon like in flame & frost we had a very small instance and even that is gone now. Again the end flopped.

At least it left the Karka Queen event behind but you missed an opportunity to create a new dungeon location and to actually anchor the story to some existing zone.

- Sky Pirates of Tyria, Bazaar of the Four Winds & Cutthroat Politics -

Ok. You switched gears again. Instead of carrying on with the lost shores you suddenly introduced a new enemy group, a new villain, pulled out a political campaign which has not produced anything concrete, and introduced a new temporary zone.

I could have gotten behind introducing merely Bazaar. The zone was beautiful and jumping there was fun. Still even if you had left it behind it would have been abandoned the moment vendors had disappeared.

You should have left behind the zone & vendors. There’s still a huge excess of materials so having a permanent location where you can exchange it for stuff would be great.

Converting stacks of mats to rare crafting materials would have been great addition. Even better if you could trade excess materials to any skin from older living world updates. Add a world event there and people would visit the zone daily. This is what Bazaar should have been about and would have resulted into something permanent.

I like it. Especially that other enemies assist. It makes sense and it adds a bit more tactics to combat when you actually have to make sure the enemy is down before his allies revive him. Of course it’s pointless if it’s just a single foe you are facing.

DarcShriek.5829:

I don’t get it. How is 10 minutes to complete a daily to long? The problem here is not the daily, it’s you. You decided to do it the hard way and limit your spore gathering to events. You could have walked up to Fort Salma, found the patch there and harvested the toxic seedlings, but you didn’t.

Nah. It’s just that people have the weirdest things they feel need to complain about. I can understand people complaining about insane amount of halloween mats because that is pretty much impossible to get but complaining about something that takes 10 minutes at most is silly.

I think it has much to do with the general negative tone of the forums. People are unhappy about living world updates so they find something to complain about. I’m quite unhappy myself but not this unhappy.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Funny thing about equality. In order for it to exist this debate needs to not matter. Because if there was equality no one would care. I choose to treat men and women equally, as such the quantities of men or women makes no difference to me, only the quality of them.

Actually this is often not at all true. Real life is good example. Should there be a situation where for example female is hired into a position that is normally “man’s job” they have to prove they can do the job where as the default assumption is that men can do it without much proofing. It’s not just work life but also in things like politics and games as is obvious in this thread.

Also your Sylvari comment is pretty close to certain real life ignorant comments I hear quite often. I think it demonstrates why you would have a problem with this situation where we have a lot strong female leads.

Elves have always had two genders by the way and so do Sylvari.

Eurhetemec.9052:

What about Kasmeer and Majory? Majory certainly is competent and sexually ambiguous, but the only one who clearly is. Kasmeer just seems kind of dim – like Lord Faren as others have said – has good instincts, but not a great thinker. That’s not flawless on any level.

I never got the impression Kasmeer is dim. However she seems a bit dainty but that’s how all GW mesmers have been played. Male or female.

I’m not sure I share this sentinement. I mean female leads have been pretty heavy in the living story yep but there are male characters elsewhere. Actually one of them plays key role in Zhaitan story arc. The male characters I can think of without looking up (both villains and heroes):

Tybalt Leftpaw (personal story)
Evon Gnashblade (living story)
Rytlock Brimsone (personal story … shown in living story but not very involved)
Lord Faren (living story & personal story)
Logan Thackeray (living story & personal story)
Canach (living story)
Trahernia (personal story)
Braham (living story)

I don’t know why people dislike Scarlet. She is a bit cartoony but I find her funny.

Hunter.4783:

If you think the female armor is inappropriate you are either taking things too seriously or haven’t realized this is a FANTANSY based MMO. If things were kept realistic there wouldn’t even be 99% of the current content in the game, including the other 4 races.

Agreed. This is why I want more skimpy male armor but sadly there are very few.

What’s with these “mary sue” discussions popping up every time some npc plays some role? I can sort of understand people calling Scarlet villain sue but Marjory? We have hardly seen her and this is the first time we see her in action.

We could ask the same thing about Kasmeer since she actually brought down the veil easily or queen Jennah who is master illusionist, queen, master diplomat etc etc.

Personally Marjory is one of my favorite characters along with Tybalt because she is capable without being outright annoying. Not to mention I love her voice.

Lorelei.7809:

On a side note: Can we please stop having Sylvari be the evil race? Pleeeease?! And same with Mesmers. After all it was illusion magic that covered the tower…. I am getting tired of my race and profession being the singularly most evil thing in the game besides the dragons from what I am told.

I can’t think any major villain mesmers outright. There are a few very significant mesmers on heroic side though. Like Kasmeer and Queen Jennah.

Also Sylvari as evil? I don’t see how they are represented any more evil than others. I can think only Canach, Faolain and Scarlet when it comes to “evil” Sylvari. It could be even argued that Canach is more misguided than evil. There are also good Sylvari in significant roles like Caithe, Trahernia and Sieran.

Finally got it on fourth character and I’m pretty sure he got the hat last year too.

1. Logged on with character (lvl2) that has been created this year
2. Gold star from events (no misses)
3. Got transformed into spider and when knocked out downed
4. Got up and opened the chest —> single candy corn?

This is third time I’ve run this. Doesn’t matter if I run with a new character or old character. Still not getting the mask.

I’ve an issue with Halloween this year as well.

Where’s the story for this Halloween? Bloody Prince instance was okay but that’s all? Am I just missing the build-up for something exciting on the 30th? I hope it’s more than just Mad King says.

Aside from achievements/dailies I see no point doing Labyrinth. I mean the bosses there don’t even count as champs for monthly? The rewards are just Halloween mats and those are unusable to me because you can’t use them for anything realistic.

Halloween “rewards” from Vendor are way out of normal player’s grasp. I used 1000 candy corn from previous year which amounts to a single gob. I have run pretty much every day a few runs of Labyrinth to complete the dailies and the amount of drops I have gotten from there aren’t even enough to form another cob. If the bail for example had cost something like 5 Cobs I could have maybe bought some candy to cover the rest of the expenses but now? Nah. Everything else on the Vendor is even more impossible.

Also speaking of achievements where are all the story ones? I see only dungeon achievements and stuff where you have to grind enemies or a few mats?

I guess I got the mini candy corn elemental and candy corn node out of this but… I’d rather have gotten something actually fun out of the event. Maybe the second coming of Mad King fixes this on the 30th?

Honestly. Halloween feels like an afterthought to WvW season when it should be star of the show in my opinion. Now I find myself doing just dailies and waiting to see if the next LW update is at all interesting. I guess there’s still Wintersday to wait for this year but I dread it will be as dissappointing as this is.

Well. I think this is one of those “can’t win” situations for them but for me Halloween event this year isn’t particularly fun. Below are the reasons:

Jumping puzzle. They removed other players from the jumping puzzle. A great deal of the fun came from jumping with other players. I tried it once this year and don’t see much reason to go back there for more.

Material grind. Those numbers are way out of my comfort zone so essentially there’s no point for me to even try gathering halloween materials which basically eliminates reason to do doors and labyrinth.

Remove the need to play the labyrinth and to door hunting and remove the jumping puzzle and there’s not really anything for me here. As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do this year is the mad king says when he pops up and that doesn’t carry for very long. I hope the dungeon at least returns.

Also as some have mentioned there was a build-up period last years. It was nice. What used to be not nice were the one day deals. Not the build up and pacing the event itself.

I guess it’s time for a wishlist again while I wait for Tequila the Gunless spawn. Split to sections for your convenience:

-Utility-

Alternate armor tab is something I keep requesting in every update until you guys implement one! Never forget this one!

Costume creator like in GW. I’m running out of bank space and I am at my personal bank tab limit (five). Still waiting for this as well!

Ability to hide boots slot This is for my Charr. Alternatively implement some Charr “shoes” that look like they are meant to wrap around paws and leave claws visible.

-Armor-

Pants and shirts I’d like to see more medium armored shirts and more light armored pants. Preferably unisex ones but definitely for males. Medium armor has many awesome looking pants while light armor has many awesome looking tops. My Charr has been stuck wearing embroidered pants which incidently have very mushy texture on a Charr. Similarly I’d love the Norn T3 medium armor if it wasn’t for that silly half-wrap-skirt-thingy.

Savage Light Armor is something my charr who is basically follows the theme of (mostly) reformed flame shaman needs. Please consider porting over the molten fire shaman look to PCs. Heck I’d like the furless skin too for more “evil” look.

Leather armor with cowl for my ranger. Basically something that looks like this

Orbitals such as traditional Ioun stones. I have mentioned this before but I really wish to see them. Ranging from effect-happy elemental headstones to gemstone pyramids and even runes. Head orbitals are a must. Body orbitals a nice option. Combining multiple individual orbitals to a single slot item even even better.

-Weapons-

I want leaner and meaner greatswords with magic effects but not over the board ones. For example I’m a huge fan of flame weapons (shatty one) which have nice subtle fire effect and krytan swords which don’t look like card-board swords but still have some decorations.

Glass Greatsword with a slimmer base model (i.e. krytan greatsword). Something like the jade weapons you have but more in the style of this and more transparent. Green is nice color but what I really would like to see is an amber blade, obsidian style black blade or even clear glass-blade with refraction. Even better if it has some non-particle effect such as “insects” trapped inside amber blade, veins of gold running along the obsidian blade, or cracks inside the clear blade.

Rune sword using krytan greatsword base but expand the decor “runes” to cover length of the blade and make them glow faintly. Not like infinite light but like flame weapons (the rare weapon set). Blue colored preferably. My guardian is wielding krytan greatsword but I’d like to wield a more magical counterpart to it.

Shortsword which length and size in general falls closer to daggers. I feel foolish dual wielding all those humongous swords with my mesmer so I don’t. Since this is a mesmer weapon it should be somewhat flashy but don’t make it a wide card-board weapon please!

-Races-

I still root for the Naga as a playable race. Snaketail style! No legs! I mean you guys didn’t give me Krait as the player race so now you are obliged to give me Naga!

That’s all for now folks!

I’m still waiting for my purple rose themed back item. I mean we have red and yellow. I want purple too!

…but I’m willing to trade that to a costume creator GW style! I’ve five bank slots and all full of stuff.

I would also like them to make the poison area a bit more visible. I’m red-green colorblind so I can’t often spot the poison area on the ground.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Aeros.2046:

This is what we asked for.

I never asked for this.

I did and it’s good that Anet provides something to us as well. All other world bosses are still out there for those who don’t wish to do the hard content even if they change all the dragon fights.

This is not like most living world releases. This is actually content that is completely optional as there are similar fights in the world and you can complete the LW category with dailies. The T achievements are in the boss achievement category so they most likely stay permanently.

Not to mention this is permanent content which is good. I’ve more trouble with their way of releasing content that can be experienced only within a very shot timeframe which is much, much worse and exclusive. Especially since some releases have had content that is extremely hard to complete and then never seen again.

I never asked for content like that but I seem to be getting it constantly. Hopefully this means we will get more permanent changes to the game in the future as well.

I know I got the chest but I was attacking the dragon. I wonder if it’s tied to the defend event somehow as well. It’s completely wrong if the turret people don’t get the reward chest. Those folks are critical for the success of the event and should be well rewarded.

style.6173:

ANET’s mistake here was in changing Tequatl. They should have left him alone and instead introduced a new dragon somewhere else in the world.

It is not a mistake. Many people specifically requested changes to the dragons. Me included. We thought they were too easy. I hope they revisit all the dragon fights and improve them in a similar manner.

I’ve run it 4 times now and the best we have managed so far is down to around 70% (the latest run that just finished). This is fine.

I can identify a few easy spots where things go wrong:
1. People who are defeated refuse to use the WP
2. People don’t defend turrets
3. Turrets don’t cleanse other turrets when they are hit by poison patch

There are also a few enemies that require immediate attention from turret defenders such as the champ grub. It does very nasty damage.

Finally once T gets hit by the megalazor it takes very significant amount of damage from all attacks. Basically the first phase is the most demoralizing one since all your attacks seem to do very little.

I recommend people analyzing the fight and their results a bit more and then figuring what they could do better.