Guild Wars 2

Mike O Brien.4613:

We can’t wait to play Path of Fire with you!

Rein it in there, sunshine. You don’t want to be anywhere near us when we start to play.

Why?

Because you know what’s out there, and are waiting to see our reactions to your favorite parts. All of the devs are, I’m sure. And we… we’re going to go over and poke that random bush. Or talk to that NPC for the tenth time. Or go AFK right before the nifty event goes off. And so on.

Hang around with us on launch day, and I promise you some of you will break down into screaming fits of frustration.

Needless to say, I can’t wait for launch day.
::innocent grin::

Ranger with tank pet (aka: Bearbow).

Necromancer with minions (aka: Minion Master).

I would also like to mention Engineer with turrets. They’re not as strong as the other two, but in many defensive events, you can drop a turret or two in one area, then move to another and help defend both points.

I’d say that in this case, the rock glider makes perfect sense.

You have Elementalists out there using their magic to glide. There’s the lighting glider, a couple of options for fire, and even a water bubble one. Rock was the obvious next one, and it’s not so odd to think of an Elementalist using their magic for something like that.

With some others, like the SAB cloud? There I’ll grant you the point and even agree with you. (Even though I wound up buying it. I now wish I’d waited.)

I still say “No” to the idea of a corgi mount. But… may we please have a mini of a skritt kit riding a corgi? It would be wonderfully adorable, and yet still easy to ignore. Perfect compromise.

The solution isn’t “less auras”, it’s “more aura choices”.

Right now, we have a few different aura choices and … well … they don’t go together very well, do they? It quickly becomes something very ugly.

So, let’s take what auras we have, and add in others that are made to mesh with them, and build in the same theme. Take the Koda’s Flame one, for example. It’s an inner fire in the person’s chest. Not bad, right? Now, add in shoulders that make a burning halo above the head. Add in the glowing red eyes mask, and suddenly you have a look that works, and is more than just visual screen clutter.

Just about every aura could be worked with in this way. It would allow people to more fully customize their characters while showing off their hard work, and make more coherent style choices while doing so. Fashion choice, instead of visual static.

First of all, I’m a role player with a ton of characters. Second, I play both male and female. Whatever fits the concept I’ve come up with for that character.

Every character you make is a character in a story. If you’re a RPer, then they’re going to be a main character. If you’re not, then they’re still at least a background character in someone else’s story, right?

You, the player, are the author writing these characters. The game may place some limits on you, but you’re still writing them. They may represent you, the may carry just some aspect of yourself, or they may not have anything in common with you at all, but they’re still characters in a story. And in most stories, it’s one person writing the dialog and actions for all the characters, male and female. Stephen King, J K Rowling, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne McCaffrey… All of them write for both genders of characters.

At least, this is how I view it. And if someone makes a pass at one of my characters, how they respond will depend on what character it is. But if I get the feeling that they’re confusing the character with the player, I make sure to set them straight.

No thanks.

Part of the appeal of a Corgi is that they’re small. Running into one five times larger than you are would not be as cute.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I had been rendered speechless precisely four times in my entire life.

That count is now five.

Given that you have a job that basically combines retail and dealing with people on the internet, I find that very hard to believe. That, or you’re REALLY good at blocking out memories. (That’s a valuable skill, these days.)

Besides, they do kind of have a point. They paid to play this game (free accounts can’t post here). They gave money to get what they wanted. To turn around and ask them to give up their possibly limited play time for free isn’t something that will feel fair to everyone. BUT most of those people are tactful enough to simply and quietly not say anything and just not log into the test.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get some housework done so I can have the free time to jump into the test. I, personally, think it will be fun.

Alin.2468:

Will I get payed? Will I get any rewards? Will I get anything for my time spent on testing your product or content?

Aside from a possibly less crashy/glitchy game when it goes live, you do gain something. Knowledge.

Let me tell you a small story. When I and some friends wound up going to Orlando, Florida many years ago, we took some time to go to Disney World. When we got to DW/Epcot, someone gave us some free advice: That big shiny ball-thing that everyone sees whenever they see anything about Epcot? EVERYONE heads there first, because they think that’s the big thing. So, avoid it until later, when those crowds have thinned out. Head right past it, and get on as many other rides/attractions as you can before the main crowd gets past the ball, and you’ll have a better time.

Get in there. Look around. Find the “Epcot Ball” of the zone, and then find the stuff you want to do past it. Everyone’s going to be in the city. Looking around, racing raptors, and trying to make stew. Go past that. Did you know there’s a Mastery Point beyond the city, surrounded by deadly quicksand? If you know where and how, you can reach it with advanced gliding. Or how about the Point on the roofs of the city? There’s a way up to it, if you can find it. Find it now, avoid the crowd that will form once the mob notices it. Go back for the early stuff later.

Part of the problem is that hats and hair are pretty much the same thing as far as the game is concerned, and not two separate items.

To do what you’re suggesting, they’d have to change it into two items. Hair below hat, and hair above hat line/hat. Not only would that take a lot of work, but then you’ll run into some hair styles not looking right when they suddenly cut off at the hat. You’ll also have to make the hat area consistent on every hat you want to do this with, every hat would have to sit on the head the exact same way.

In the end, it just doesn’t work very well. Our best hope is for them to keep releasing a good range of hats, with different hair styles built into them. Eventually something will be good enough, which is really the best we can hope for.

Do you remember how in HoT they said they wanted progress through the maps/story to have a “Metroidvania” type of feel? And you may have noticed that they kind of messed that up, with some of the masteries needed for movement, and others barely used.

By focusing on the mounts, they’re trying to keep the masteries more focused on that “Metroidvania” idea. They’re also trying to avoid any mastery that’s useful in just one area or just one map, a complaint that can be fired at the Exalted line, or half of the Ancient Magics line from LS3.

If we need to survive in a special area, I think they’ll take a cue from Bitterfrost (as well as other games such as Breath of the Wild), and let us get potions or something that will protect us. Heck, maybe there will be a special rune set where equipping all 6 gives you the protection you need, so everyone will start looking into getting a second set of cheap armor to survive in that area? (Personally, I’d prefer if both options were available.)

Anyway, I see the masteries being focused on only the mounts to be a good thing.

The personal story takes you from the newbie zones all the way to the original end-game areas. It also gives you a good feel for whichever race you’re playing as, and some of the big groups in the game. It will also introduce you to some important characters.

The one thing the personal story will NOT do is give you the full story. Originally, part of the story was put into the dungeons that unlock for you as you level. Those dungeons are all but abandoned content now, though. (Yes, there are rewards for running them, but the devs no longer work on them.) So, you might want to hit Youtube or the wiki to find out what story you’re missing if you skip them.

(Dungeons were intended for 5 player teams, by the way.)

Aurene is like a living bloodstone. And we know how well those go with food. (Hint: They don’t.)

But if she starts to breathe fire, then we can introduce her to hot dogs and marshmallows and campout cooking!

I wonder if we’ll be able to get the Frostbite dye with this one.

That face is effing creepy. The other shoulder’s just impractical, but that face… It reminds me of that charm Griffith carries around in Berserk.

That’s too small. Anyone have a close up of her face?

Conncept.7638:

They should have taken this chance to do what players suggested years ago.

Engineers don’t have weapon swap, because at some point kits were an integral part of the class mechanic they had no choice in using. When they were disintegrated from the class mechanic, for some reason engineer never got weapon swap back, likely because with so few weapons there really was no point. Adding weapon swap to a class with three weapon combinations would really add nothing to the class.

To fix that problem, reintegrate kits in to the class mechanic. Give engineers a “kit” slot, where the weapon swap is for the remaining classes, in this slot they can choose a single kit to swap to as if it were a weapon, giving them access to at least one single kit at all times.

That’s… actually a pretty neat idea. It may be far too late to do it by now, but I do like that idea!

It’s a bit late to add now.

Besides, Sword/Shield is a classic combo. Sword/Pistol is a good secondary choice. I think that, with the main-hand sword, our two off-hand choices are fairly solid.

How did she look in GW1, though?

I think it’s awesome that people can get these old rewards again.

Consider all of these items to be work that the devs put into the game, that is no longer being “consumed” by new players. Compared to longer lasting work, this was very inefficient. Now, it’s back. New players (and some old ones) can make a goal of getting these things again. It’s active content once more. (Not as active as it was the first time, but still…)

Plus, these may be just the thing someone needs to make an awesome looking character. It’s always fun to see well designed and carried out character concepts. I don’t care when or how the items were first released, or gained currently.

Once a character is level 80, it will instead display the “Mastery Level” of the character. Basically, how many Mastery points they’ve spent so far.

Bard, huh? I guess it could work. Make instruments into kits like the engineer has, but mostly focused on support. One instrument for healing, one for offensive buffs, one for defensive buffs, one for debuffing, and one for inflicting status/conditions?

I love how the raptor moves, including the non-strafe part. Please, keep them like that!

Yes, some of it may seem annoying, like how you dismount for everything or are not as precise as you move, but I think that’s the point. There are times when you’ll not want to be on a mount, and that’s a good thing.

Murke.7193:

I had no issues with motion sickness, but there is one tiny thing I think would improve the experience with mounts. As the raptor’s jump uses a part of the endurance bar, it would be nice to have it marked with the number of jumps left available. The same way the bar is already has the black line for dodges, maybe we could have thinner lines for the jumps when we mount up?

If you just tap jump, it makes a shorter jump and uses less of the endurance bar. Sadly, this means that there’s not a set value for the cost of a jump, so they can’t set lines for it. I’m sure the longer jumps will cost more endurance too, once we can unlock them.

I’m going to have to agree with the people that are saying that this is an awful change.

First of all, my characters have been looting stuff like this for ages. Why do they now suddenly not know what the heck cloth gloves are?

Second is that this is just a disguised nerf to our loot, and it’s a poor disguise at that. Pay and get a chance at the full range of loot like you normally get, or save your money but you’ll never see anything better than what you’d get for salvaging blues and greens. That’s horrible.

If rare and above made their own stack, I might be able to see a player-friendly use to it? But as it is, this is simply player-hostile.

STIHL.2489:

Abraxxus.8971:

The devs of City of Heroes did this twice. They sent out emails to all players a couple weeks before hand saying that all characters on accounts that had not logged in in over a certain amount of time (I believe it was something like accounts that were inactive over 2 years) would have their character names up for grabs. This way, if a player wanted to keep their names, they could log in in the weeks before the “names release” happened.

City of Hero’s.. the mmo that was shut down? Hummmm not a good example of something to copy….

Actually, it’s a very good example of something to copy.

Why? Because they said that the effort and problems were not worth it in the end. The amount of names freed up was relatively small, and made very little impact. They never did it again after that. And CoH was, at the time, a monthly sub game. If it proved to not be worth it for CoH, then it really won’t be worth it for GW2. So, copy their hard earned wisdom.

You have to do the first or second mission of PoF. It may be the first, but there’s a feeling of something skipped…

Anyway, only minor spoilers as far as the plot goes. You see a couple of people show up, but they don’t really answer questions yet.

Why are you reading this? Go!

More advice? Okay.

You won’t see everything. Don’t stress about it.

There will be crowds. Things will be killed before you see them a lot of the time if you’re out in the world. Just accept that and move on, it’s not like you need to worry about EXP or loot during this.

Some loot may be disabled. If you find something odd, don’t go nuts trying to figure out what it is/was. It may be just a simple weapon or bit of armor that’s not unlocked for the preview.

Accept that any new skins you unlock during this will be lost when this gets wiped, and can’t go to your main account. Try to not be upset if you find an excellent skin during this, you’ll get another chance in a bit over a month.

Try to have fun.

Ashen.2907:

Why wouldnt people in WvW want to unlock elite specs?

Because the current way to unlock elite specs in WvW doesn’t actually have anything to do with WvW other than gathering the currency needed.

There are no Hero Points to channel/defeat, no NPCs you need to talk to, no events that need to be done, or whatever else will be required to unlock the PoF elites. For WvW, it will likely just come down to “pay the coins, get a step unlocked” again.

Nor will anyone expect there to be such a thing there.

I’d like a few versions of horns we already have, but with some decorations on them. Metal bands, runes carved into the horns, whatever.

You get a new shared slot with the level 80 item in it.

The level 80 item can not be removed until it is used for good. Once it is removed, then you have the extra shared slot to use as you see fit.

That character should stay and keep all their own progress until the end of the event. Then they’ll be deleted.

That’s how it worked in HoT’s previews, anyway.

Redden.5869:

this is not about testing either, it’s about advertisement and sell more copies..otherwise you would be able to test all the ontent not just the first map, but they have they own testers for that.

There’s one test their testers have not been able to perform. A stress test. That’s what this is, as well as an advertisement.

Next weekend is the PvP and WvW stress test.

Ephemiel.5694:

I’m still wondering why the items have such weird stats [like Healing Power on an item for the Warrior spec]

So that, after you go through all this to get a skin, you wind up with a weapon you may not want. To get the one you want, you still have to craft it. Gotta keep that economy rolling along, after all.

I think part of the reason is to get some beta testing done in the three main areas of the game. First weekend is the PvE beta, second is the PvP and WvW beta.

Second reason would be to keep the preview to a fairly short look. Three days is actually a lot of time to try the new area, and they don’t want people burning out on it before the expansion even goes live. Six days would be overkill.

And finally, nobody in PvP or WvW is going to be trying to unlock the elite specs, so whatever method is used won’t apply. If they did them in PvE, that might possibly be an issue, maybe? I’m not sure. But you can still just stand around in the PvP lobby and look at the options on the elite specs and think about a build you want to work towards. If nothing else, it may help me to decide what elite I’m going to work towards first.

With everything that appears to be happening in Elona, it makes sense that the Queen and the people of Ebonhawke would want that gate to remain very firmly closed.

Maybe in LS Season 4 we’ll see a map that takes us right to the other side of the gate, and it finally opening. Well… it may look open on the Elonan side, but I’m sure it will still look closed on the Ebonhawke side so that people without the expansion don’t wonder why they can’t walk through an open door.

Fractured.3928:

After reading through this thread, am I seriously the only person struggling with Mastery points? I’m training capped in every single category except Exalted and Gliding due to having those finished.

You may have skipped some posts in this thread, because you’re not the only one with this issue. Lots of us have it, myself included. And I have to admit, I look ahead to PoF with a bit of dread, because the new Masteries may be just as bad if not worse.

I hope they’re better, but we’ll have to wait and see. Even the limited glimpse from the preview weekend won’t really tell us all we need to know.

I see the mastery system as flawed. It could be greatly improved with three changes.

First: Lower the cost in mastery points for the masteries. The LS3 Mastery line was a step in the right direction, with much lower costs than most of the ones that came with HoT.

Second: Masteries should be useful beyond one thing. For an example of what I mean, look at the Exalted Mastery line. How much of that was of actual use beyond that one zone? And why would we need to know how to read Exalted to enter the city, when they REALLY wanted us to enter the city? That whole line could have been done without. A smaller example is the Flame of Koda, and how it’s used in only one zone.

Finally: There should be a Mastery line you can repeat, and each time you fill the bar, you get a Mastery point. Make it fill at the speed of a level 2 or level 3 Mastery. That way finding ways to unlock points will always be faster, but there’s another path for those that don’t want to or can’t do what those points require. Full mastery bars may be a long term goal, but nobody will ever hit a point where they no longer advance.

If you have the snow leopard and shoot it with water, it gets stuck in ice again.

I… I just wanted to tease it. Not kill it!

Thankfully, it was okay when I left the instance and returned.

No, it will not be possible to buy PoF with gems.

Coffietire.2783:

If your hunger to throw money at Anet still isn’t satiated, I recommend buying a shared inventory slot and the copper fed salvage-o-matic, it will help you out so much.

I want to second this, though if you have HoT and PoF, then you have two shared inventory slots already once you use the Level 80 Boosts in them.

But a Copper Fed Salvage-O-Matic all of your characters can access is a HUGE time and space saver. (Note: You can right click on salvage kits now, and do a ‘salvage all’ option.)

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

^ There’s really no need for the regular level-up effect either, so I wouldn’t object to that disappearing. But I like your idea with Miyani for its efficiency.

Actually, there is a reason for the normal level-up effect. You may not have noticed, but it’s actually an AoE with knock-back. It’s a lovely, often unexpected “boom” during an intense combat, when you’re lucky enough for it to happen at the right time.

Anyway, as it IS an attack, there has to be some visual effect to go with it. No “invisible” attacks is one of those unwritten rules.

kitsuneshoujo.5734:

What story quest gives this?

The final part of the level 10 personal story arc. It doesn’t matter which one, all of them give the key at the end. Just remember: Only once per week, no matter what story you run.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

And there you are. I said in my post that i can live with mounts. Especially in Elona. Cause they make sense. They make story there. However, as WoodenPotatoes clearly said in the campaign vid: He likes that tyria and elona have a distinction. Tyria learned to rely on magic (helo there waypoint, helo no loophole). Elona learned to rely on mounts (creatures). End good al good not? But for the love of god they had to trample tyria wich is used to magic, not mounts. That is immersion breaking.

I have two (Edit: three) arguments against that.

First, waypoints cost money. That’s part of the lore behind them, you generally pay to use them. Mounts also cost money (upkeep, vet care, ect.), but maybe not as much as the waypoint system? I mean, if waypointing was cheaper, why would there be people transporting things by pack animal?

Second, we’ve seen some of those magical waypoints get torn down and smashed. Anyone trusting their lives to the waypoint system should pause and consider how that happened, why that happened, and that it might happen again. What happens if you’re mid-transit when some White Mantle or Flame Legion decide to smash the waypoint you’re headed to? Do you really want to risk it?

(Edit) Third, don’t forget that the maps are supposed to be bigger than what we see. We get just the highlights. It doesn’t take just five minutes to run across the Wayfarer Foothills, after all. When you increase the scale to “real” size, you’ll see that the waypoints are pretty far apart, even in the old zones. For someone walking, a beast that can deliver them right to their destination might be better than a magical box that teleports them a day’s walk away.

I think that this is a case of “We made these for NPCs, but might as well let the players have them too.” If we ever have an expansion that takes us to Cantha, I’m sure we’ll see this again.

Agreed. Locking them out of major cities should be easy enough. Locking them out of the smaller cities may take a lot more work, going through each map and marking the areas where they’re not allowed because of smaller towns or caves, but I hope they’re working on it.

Perisemiotics.4579:

Also, I was very disappointed to learn a spider mount was ruled out – they’re such natural denizens of the desert and perfect to have the vertical jump ability… now, where did that bunny/badger springer come from, exactly? Seriously…

Kangaroo rats.

I made a similar request right after the PoF announcement, but with all the threads that were appearing, it was quickly buried.

Which just goes to show that, yes, we need a PoF forum. Now would be good, but it REALLY needs to be in before the trial weekend.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’ve never been interested in mounts for GW2 (NPCs haven’t used them, why should we?).

Until HoT, that is. Then we started to see NPCs riding mounts.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Codes.6870:

The Shining Blade should have their own outfit.

I don’t know – aren’t they kind of a secret organisation? Isn’t that why the have the super secret club house?

Look around the palace in DR. Shining Blade guards everywhere. And they DO have their own outfit, we just don’t get to wear it.

Shining Blade is basically the Queen’s own guard. Think of them like the Secret Service for the US President. Usually, they’re pretty obvious, and everyone knows they’re there despite the “secret” part of the name. Maybe some are hidden, but they’re hardly a secret organisation.