Guild Wars 2

Hey, kind of hit a point of diminishing returns in Guild Wars 2 and thought it might be fun to try the original. I see their were a lot of deals back before Guild Wars 2 was released, but not quite as much these days. Anyone have any tips for getting into Guild Wars and it’s expansions as cheaply as possible?

I spend more of my time in the super adventure box than any other part of the game. I’ve basically gotten all the skins I want, and all the achievements, at this point I’m playing for the pure fun of the game. Tribulation mode has become fun in and of itself for me. While I’d welcome more practical rewards so I could spend my baubles and make progress I can take back to the rest of the game it’s far from necessary. Yeah, it would draw other people back in but I’ve gotta wonder if they’d just be grinding or actually enjoying it.

The only jump that I still can’t get every time in all of the super adventure box is that ice jump after the first save cloud in world 2 zone 3. Well, that and those jumps where the physics are weird and you have to rotate your character like a quarter turn to actually make them, but those are always immediately repeatable.

You know what? I agree with you. In tribulation mode longer, harder levels do feel like bigger accomplishments and slowly clipping down my time gives me a sense of getting better, even if I’m just slowly memorizing it. The problem is normal mode, which shouldn’t be designed around tribulation mode. If they’d taken almost all of world 2, halved the length and made the other half into optional areas I don’t think there would be quite as many complaints. Instead of being long people would see the levels as being dense and they’d have less problem accepting that achievements aren’t meant to be easy.

I’m on an NA server in NA and I’m seeing the lag too. Ever since Tuesday it’s been killing me, especially spring jumps near spikes/acid/lava and any jump that has to be at all precise with spikes/acid/lava in between where I start and land. Weirdly though the thwomp rocks have become much more manageable, if not perhaps more random. If I try to run through the gauntlet in world 1 zone 1 it’s a crapshoot between either them not activating at all or them behaving in a psychic manner or knocking me back from an entire platform away. But largely if I take my time with them they just don’t activate at all, which has been nice.

But yeah, I gotta figure that if someone in NA with a good connection is having this issue Oceanic players must be having it even worse than usual.

I’d love to take part if you’d be so kind as to shoot me an invite.

I want back into Jade Quarry so bad. I’ve been waiting in the queue for about 3 hours now. No kidding, I would pay money just to be able to save my place in line while I go do other things like Super Adventure Box. Not pay to get in without a wait mind you, just to reserve a place in the line.

From what I’ve seen of the fight so far, I love it. A boss with lots of interesting mechanics, multiple phases and and all around just a fun way to spend 15 minutes is a welcome addition to the game. There are just way too many outside variables that keep it from being an enjoyable experience. Overflows, an emerging mindset of “if you’re not Power/Toughness/Vitality you’re a liability” and a vital mechanic that rests the fate of the fight on a very limited number of people. The first two will certainly get better with time, although overflows will likely continue to be a limited problem following each major re-working and during peak hours on high population servers. The third thing, well, please just give us some means of quality control concerning which people are in charge of the vital mechanic in the future.

You know what might be cool concerning overflow? Being able to reserve your spot in your home server without having to sit in the same map for several hours. It could even be a gem store item if you’d like to make some dosh off people who don’t want to have to wait for off-peak hours. That’s going to cause some outrage of course, but there doesn’t seem to be a good way of fixing this problem given the current limits of the technology at hand, may as well make some money off the bandage right?

As far as the current attitude towards condition damage/precision/critical damage in boss fights, if the boss can’t be critically hit and conditions damage remains a mess continuing to give people with an emphasis on those stats an alternate means of being utilized would be appreciated. Right now we have turret protection duty which is alright but still feels pretty minor, maybe there could be a bigger role for those with stat focuses that aren’t ideal for world bosses in future re-workings.

As far as the six random people in control of a large portion of the encounter goes, I’ve actually seen a lot of potentially good ideas being thrown around. Voting seems like a terrible and time consuming mechanic, but maybe the mechanic could periodically knock off those vital few and offer a window for other people to take hold. That idea is certainly not without flaws as it could knock-off a good player and let in a bad one who just sits there and does nothing, but it’s better than risking having that bad player have it the whole time.

AbeLincoln.3091:

I was not trying to be condescending. I was simply saying that you dont have to quantify the boss by what he gives you… but take pride in being able to say that you did it.

You didn’t beat him by yourself though, individually there’s very little to be proud of. You just happened to be on a server with 499 other people who were competent and organized (I’m assuming that’s the map limit). In a 25 person raid there’s still some pride to be had because you were good enough to be in the group and chosen for the purpose, in a world event it’s largely just up to luck.

The fight has a lot of really cool mechanics, this is something I won’t deny. As a dungeon boss I would absolutely love it, once enough people know the fight that being in overflow isn’t an automatic loss I may even learn to love it the way it is. Anet has had a very serious issue with the past few living story updates which all have some really excellent challenging ideas that are poorly executed. Liadri was a really fun fight, but the zerging at crown pavilion made it kind of sucky (also, the camera, but I’m willing to accept that as part of the challenge). Super Adventure Box world 2 was just way too much in normal mode, it made perfect sense in tribulation mode though. Now we have Tequatl, a very cool fight worthy of a giant dragon boss but it’s an open world boss and it’s just way too difficult for the average player.

I like the more challenging content Anet has been rolling out lately, I did kind of hate Liadri but that was purely a camera complaint. This Tequatl fight though, it’s a matter of waiting around for the privilege of banging one’s head against the wall because the majority of the people present for the event don’t know how to do it. It’s not like a traditional MMO raid where you can remove useless people and replace them, here you’re stuck with them and they serve no purpose but to scale the boss up and make it even harder or at worst end up on a turret doing nothing. In a WvW setting where organization is key, this fight would be right at home, but out in the PvE open world this whole thing feels very out of place.

He’s a minion of Zhaitan, and Zhaitan goes down like a chump. How’s that for story consistency?

I’ve been really disappointed with the bosses I’ve tried so far. The jungle wurm was beefier but whether his attacks hit or not was still a crap shoot, it just took longer making it more boring. The Shatterer didn’t feel any different at all, took a little bit longer to kill, but I wasn’t seeing anyone get hit by crystals. Tequatl… well, let’s just say I’m waiting for a patch before even trying it again. Golem was definitely more of a challenge, but with so many people unwilling to waypoint and rejoin the fight it ended up just being one giant chore. The only one I liked was the Fire Elemental. There was enough motion required that it wasn’t boring but it still died within a reasonable time frame. I was kind of disappointed to see the new embers were so tiny and visually unimpressive though.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

So having extra power is not an added bonus? If I’m in full cleric or rabid gear, will I be doing the same damage as someone in zerker (solider or valkyrie) gear? I don’t think so.

You can’t critically hit world bosses, for the moment at least. So yes, any set of stats with an emphasis on power does equal damage for the time being. Precision and critical damage are basically useless stats against world bosses right now.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s called a “Challenge”. If you’re unable to answer to that “Challenge”, there’s always Bandits in Queensdale.

Here’s why that is a dumb statement. This is a world event, the best GW2 player could still be hampered by a bunch of other participants who aren’t very good. Dungeons and solo instances are a great place for challenge, not the world where you have no quality control where your team mates are concerned. Even if you’re good enough to get the fight done you have to depend on everyone else with you to also be at a minimum skill level. It’s really frustrating to have to wait for everyone else to get with the program before you can complete a world boss.

This bugged the hell out of me as well. I like tribulation mode largely because you can overcome almost everything through a combination of skill and memorization. Buggy bits like the waterfall on the other hand are just a matter of banging your head against the wall until the stars align and for whatever reasons things just magically work out. I feel much the same way about the thwomp rocks, particularly the gauntlet in 1-1. I’m really hoping that when world 3 comes out we’ll see a reduction in elements made drastically harder due to relatively minor latency issues.

I kind of like the spikes, sure they can be annoying when you forget where they are but the majority of the time I find them to be quite funny. The exploding flowers kind of bug me a bit though, they’re quite novel at first but inevitably one of them always gets me when I start 1-1 again for my daily run because I forget about them.

I was kind of wondering this myself. I thought I’d try tribulation mode on my asura main to see if it was any easier as I’d always felt it made certain jumps easier but after seeing I’d have to start from scratch in terms of upgrades and weapons I gave up. I’m grateful I at least chose to play through as a sylvari rather than a charr or a norn which have always given me great trouble with camera angles and gauging jump distances.

The rewards this time around feel very minor. I’m OK with losing the crystals and philosopher’s stones, but only having access to minis and half the skins kind of sucks. The baubles just don’t seem all that useful, especially if you’re a tribulation mode player. You can get a green and yellow skin once per day, and a world 1 tribulation mode run can take less than an hour once you know what you’re doing. The time or grind involved in getting just one skin from a limited selection is ridiculous by comparison.

I had to master dodge jump for tribulation mode, those thwomp rocks necessitated it. Basically anytime I know I’m going to need to use it I switch for controlling my movements with a combination of keyboard and mouse (W + Mouse 2 for camera control) to just clicking both mouse buttons to move forward and keeping the index finger on my left hand on the space and V buttons. I keep the tip on the V button and middle of my finger on the space bar. Works every time. I’m using a compaq presario pack-in keyboard that’s more than a decade old and severely worn, I’m fairly sure your hardware won’t be the deciding factor in learning how to use this glitch.

World 2 is definitely too long and far too many instant deaths and tiny platforms for normal mode. The zone is really excellent in tribulation mode and I’ve learned to love it but I refuse to play world 2 past zone 1 in normal mode because it’s just so tedious. I was just angry the whole way through my first run through world 2 in normal mode because it was such a major leap in difficulty over world 1, this was before the nerf so it’s gotten a bit better but it’s still not enjoyable for me. I think a big fix they could make to it is to remove some of the repeat puzzles (feeding the octopus twice, two pagodas with dart trap puzzles, can’t think of any in zone 3) it’d make things a lot more tolerable.

Avalon.8436:

That is actually a not so subtle ad for infinite continue coin =p

You know, if it hadn’t been so long since it was reported I’d have written this off as the usual tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist nuttery, however after the last hot fix that didn’t rectify the issue I’m beginning to suspect you may be right.

Oh wow, I would LOVE for super adventure box to become a permanent fixture in the game. It is easily my favorite bit of content. Even if you stripped it of rewards and achievements in between wolrd/living story releases I’d still be there almost every day.

I was fully expecting that to be the subject of today’s hotfix, sorely disappointed to see otherwise. That long stretch of trampoline jumps and ice sliding is the only reason I haven’t gone through world 2 in tribulation mode a second time. Which is a shame because tribulation mode is the only way I enjoy world 2 at all.

Oh wow, that’s pretty brutal. The rainbow bridge in 1-2 is a kindness I believe exists largely because of the spike trap right in the middle of the post-boss bauble circle. Unexpected death there is a fairly foreseeable occurrence where-as a post-Wortt death just doesn’t seem as likely. It’s just a consequence of a 2-week development cycle I suppose, we are all beta testers.

Agreed. I hated World 2 in normal mode, it has these weird bursts of brutality that make no sense there. Playing in tribulation, on the other hand, really lets the zone shine. From world 1 tribulation to world 2 tribulation the jump in difficulty and stage length makes sense, whereas in normal mode it’s just infuriating. It’s a little better since the nerf patch, but it’s still far too great a leap from the very forgiving world 1 to the suddenly relentless world 2. While I’ve grown to love tribulation mode it seems very unkind to the playerbase at large to base the content around it.

All of the achievements are possible without the infinite continue coin, it just makes it much easier since you don’t need to farm continue coins. It’s not pay to win so much as it is pay to fun. It definitely offers an edge, a pretty serious one I won’t deny, but it doesn’t allow you to do anything you couldn’t do anyways with a sufficient supply of continue coins. I did all the world 1 achievements without one at the very least. I gave up on doing tribulation mode without one though, because I didn’t want to just follow a video guide. It’s kind of a lame move but it’s hard to blame anet considering it’s a mini-game that only offers aesthetic prizes (and a bunch of achievement points as well I suppose).

I bought the coin, I agree it’s definitely pay to win. I can screw around at my leisure and die without a care. The worst the game can throw at me in the Super Adventure Box is throwing me back to the last check point. Before I bought it lives were a very big concern, every lost life was a major waste. Now? I can just have fun. I paid to win fun. Also tribulation mode skins. Still gotta put in the work, but there’s no risk and all reward with the coin. I’m okay with rationalizing it as being purely a fun side game where the only prizes are aesthetic. Also a bunch of achievement points.

Yeah, the jump dodge has been an invaluable skill in dealing with the world 1 zone 2 rocks. I went from barely being able to pull it off to being decent at it pretty quick. Honing skills like that is the majority of the fun in Tribulation Mode. Mostly it’s the little rock gauntlet in world 1 zone 1 where they really bug me. Eventually I get through it but it really feels more like a matter of luck than knowing what to do. I suspect it’s a lag issue but I was kind of hoping there was a bit of secret to it. It’s fine if not, it’s not really tribulation mode if it doesn’t cause a little frustration after all.

These rocks give me trouble like nothing else in tribulation mode. Is there some kind of secret to getting by them? In my experience they’re very inconsistent in regards to whether they activate at all and how far away they’ll hit me from. For the next time around I’d really appreciate some visual feedback, a little cloud of dust or something, to let me know how wide their AoE is. I’m fine with them basically one hit killing me, this is tribulation mode after all, but having a more clear idea of their zone of death size would just be lovely.

I love my elementalist, it’s easily the most fun class to play, but I’m completely with you about the myth of the elementalist power house. It seems to be a high skill/high reward kind of deal because I’ve seen videos of people doing amazing things with them, but it seems kind of ridiculous that an unskilled warrior (I crafted mine to 80) should so easily outmatch a moderately skilled elementalist.

I found the best solution for conquering this fight as an elementalist was to switch to a warrior. No kidding. I gave up on finding the right balance between offense and defense. Either I was taking too long to kill them all and died to the time or I was way too squishy and got flattened. As a berserker clad warrior I just killed things without having to think about it. I then went back to an elementalist and breezed through the next two bosses.

Yeah, it’s a bit annoying. A lot of people get it unexpectedly and it’s frustrating when it’s your 12th kill and still no joy.