Guild Wars 2

BUMP. 15chars15chars

I don’t think it’ll stay fun. I really loathe the new focus on zerg events where you need a full map to even have a chance of doing it properly. They nerfed dungeons to the point where nobody does them, so that’s variety gone.

The new 50-100 fractals are lazy. They didn’t add any new content, new maps, new challenges… it’s just more HP and more damage. They bragged about how they could deliver small chunks of content but it has been well over 18 months since the last map addition. OTOH, the changes make them more accessible, so it cancels out the lack of new content a bit. The rewards are still crap.

PvP – Strongholds NEED a tutorial. Otherwise, PvP is really kittening great at the moment. There’s a lot of variety and it feels rewarding.

WvW: new maps are beautiful and complex. But it didn’t address the core issues; WvW hasn’t had a tourney in a year, people are starting to quit because the meta is still stale AF and there isn’t anything to do. It now feels like you can’t siege properly, e.g. cutting off supply to prevent upgrades. No sense of competition and rewards are balls. Badges seem to have stopped dropping.

I like collections. I like scavenger hunts and jumping puzzles.

Personal story: Buggy and it really ruins the fun. There doesn’t seem to be any significant differences in story paths. It feels so linear and like there aren’t any choices. I do like that the achievements are pretty functional, however. It’s like – walk about, fight mobs, cutscene, what do baws? fight!, cutscene and reward. OTOH it’s well voice acted and interesting, so it can have that.

I also like the new skins, but I feel like there are some really hideous things in there, e.g. leystone armour looks AWFUL.

I really like adventures. I really wish that they were bigger and were available more. Maybe once you’ve done the meta with it, you can queue for it? (pref. in a group) I wish the adventures could have some story, like a side-PS where you have a Faren-esque adventure.

So… maybe a 7/10. It’s good. That’s it. It doesn’t feel worth $40. I hope the next patch is ASAP and each have meaningful content, story and skins.

So, this bug is STILL there. It’s completely blocking my progress through the story. I don’t want to move forward simply because it’ll spoil the story.

Every time my partner and I do this mission, she glitches out walking up the stairs (the ones with the laser defense turrets). Failing that, she bugs out before activating the PC console… or after defeating the Chak veteran thing that spawns. She simply stops responding and nothing will fix it, e.g. moving away, getting her killed. Please, please fix this or just stop needing NPCs to trigger events. They glitch out so often that it’s not funny when you get 90 minutes to play at night. At least add a checkpoint to stories that you can go back to. It’s a long mission and having done this ~7-8 times hoping it’ll work, it’s not acceptable.

On the story step ‘Buried Insight’, Taimi repeatedly glitches out randomly and stops triggering events. Once just walking up the tunnel to the computer/gate room, once at the very start and then once after summoning the Chak Blitzer. It’s kind of ridiculous because it means I don’t want to go deeper into the next zone for fear of spoilering everything. Thanks.

Proposal Overview
Guild Zone

Goal of Proposal

One of the main goals is to enhance guild cohesion and to provide an area of focus for guilds to work on for a long time. I also believe player housing should be inside a guild zone, providing some solo/small group content that is outside to norm.

In addition to this, guild halls would mean a return of traditional GvG to prevent GvG taking up slots in WvW.

Proposal Functionality

+Player housing.
+Competing to see who has the nicest halls/housing.
+Unlockable merchants.
+Special guild ‘events’ that double as new guild missions. For example, a guild quest then the hand-in summons a boss that requires coordination.

+Main guild hall used for PvP; able to arrange/challenge other guilds by typing in their name.
+Zone mini-dungeons and proper jumping puzzles.
- No mystic forge or banks.

How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2

-Works well for every skill level.
-Player guild/housing can serve as a kind of ‘sink’ for karma, fractal relics, dungeon tokens, gems etc., in order to buy items and customise their area.
-Low initial access cost, can be done at any level and continues through max level.

Associated Risks

-People may worry that cities will become deadzones.
-Initially labour intensive to develop.
-Some people may feel forced into a guild.

Location: England
Time and date: Around 21:30 BST
Game world: Piken Square
What I’m seeing: I start to have skill lag, then I can’t see where people are/people run off into the distance, after around five minutes of this, I disconnected from the server. This seems to primarily happen in WvW and has happened for the last two weeks. My flatmate was unaffected and then suddenly dc’d at the same time as I did. Our internet didn’t drop and we were getting 37MB dl/17mb UL.

ISP: Plus net.

So, I’m going to preface this by saying that it’s incredibly disappointing to see a developer miss the point of almost every post so completely and entirely. It’s also worrying that in recent months and days, we’ve seen people at ArenaNet complain about how ‘heartbreaking’ it is to communicate. So what? Every company gets criticized and they deal with it. It’d be like if Microsoft stopped giving consumers what they want because they were made fun of in the late 90s/200×.

It also amazes me that the developers say they don’t have enough resources or that it’s ‘too hard’ to actually revamp content or add more permanent content outside the Living Story. God forbid if Anet had a fanbase like WoW’s fans; blizzard cut two cities to save time and people were livid. When ArenaNet has no concrete plans for a significant chunk of the player base, we’re told to suck it up. Or to create specific threads… which have been created over and over again.

Almost nobody I have ever met logs in most days for the living story. They log in for WvW, SPvP and dungeons. Most people I know keep hoping that the next update will have a surprise dungeon to go with the living world… and every time, it’s a disappointing ‘click the dialogue’ game. That’s the main reason I find people still logging in – because they hope the LS will lead to content they like, such as dungeons. Which really should be added, imo because the story dungeons in GW2 were actually fantastic, if unbalanced.

Something that baffles me is that they refuse to acknowledge the issues that made TA Aetherpath so infrequently run. They don’t acknowledge the slime and fire part as being supremely irritating – especially when the majority of skills cleave/bounce/arc/pierce. They don’t acknowledge that it’s now completely out of place. They don’t acknowledge that it takes too much time and effort versus the reward you get and they don’t acknowledge that the achievements just don’t reward enough points for it to be worth doing them.

I would much rather have them revamp the way champion combat works and then add additional achievements to encourage replay, e.g. a daily achievement to speed-run a dungeon, a monthly achievement to do a boss in x way, adding a gambit system, etc. Make them worth more APs and let the community have at ‘em. They could also add weapon skin recolours for doing the meta per character. I don’t think we need new dungeons really – it only spreads the community further apart.

Hi there. I’m looking for a new EU server for myself and some extra company I’ll be bringing. We’re currently on Ruins of Surmia and it’s so incredibly dead, no blobs, no good guild groups or roaming groups, nobody really cares about winning and there aren’t even players or commanders 90% of the time. We’d even be willing to transfer to a US server, as long as there was activity and lag wasn’t an issue.

What we’re looking for is a server which is friendly to PuGs, as we don’t have time to really schedule effectively due to work/university. It’s preferable that people use tags as it’s not fun attempting to find the ‘commander’ by hunting them down and that there is some activity at non-peak times. So far I’ve seen Gandara, SFR and Desolation suggested, as well as Piken. So if you’re from one of those servers I would appreciate your opinion on it. ^^

(Also, no bronze, I’m in bronze already and it really sucks.)

Thankyou!

Hi!

My current realm is extremely dead, we barely have any commanders, most of whom are bad. This means that we always have no players and there are some guilds who refuse to let a non-guildie follow them. So there is absolutely nothing to do.

Because of this, I was wondering which server (EU only) has the friendliest and/or the most active WvW communities? Bonus points if you can point out a good PvX guild, as well!

Thanks in advance.

(PS. Sorry if this double posts, internet is being a butt.)

I wanted to add some input into the proposal, mostly concerning your player housing idea. I would first advise looking at how other games handle player housing. The main games that player housing enthusiasts enjoy are Everquest 2 and Rift, so I would suggest examining how they implemented theirs. I would also like to emphasize that you should make true player housing, where you can place, resize and move items. Another essential thing is the ability to add permissions for certain players, allowing them the ability to move and add items in your house.

Secondly, I think that gaining items through the open world is an excellent idea but it is also a golden opportunity to add housing items to existing trade-skills, for example, armorsmiths could create decorative suits of armor, tailors could create cushions, beds, etc. These items could then be a way for these trade-skills to make a profit. In addition to this, consider allowing people to add crafting stations to their houses, which would add utility.

I would also suggest that housing items should be tied into other parts of the game. For example, adding achievements to kill certain world bosses could give a trophy, as well as completing slayer achievements. Zone completion should also unlock vendors with unique items from the zone.

Another area which would benefit from this is the living world and personal story – whether through drops, meta and achievement rewards or through a Zenith Weapon style locker. This would enrich the feeling of actually gaining meaningful items. When you implement the ‘grail quest’ idea, housing items could be rewards, ’cause it would be awesome to have trophies and mementos.

Finally, I think an important thing is to realise that some people like building from scratch, while others will just want to decorate. Add housing in cities first, then add housing in the open world. I would also like to suggest tying housing into the gem store in some way. Just don’t make all the cool stuff gems only.

This is happening to me, too. I’m in the UK, on Virgin internet and playing on Ruins of Surmia with no overflows. Getting DC’d constantly, every minute almost.

So, in the majority of my favourite MMO’s, they have player housing and it is a feature I really miss and feel would integrate extremely well into GW2. I understand that some people have an aversion to it and often tell people who want this to get back to the Sims, that it’s for girls, etc., but I strongly disagree. I feel it would be a good idea because:

*It adds horizontal progression, the house is an extension of your character when it is done well, for example in EQ2 you could get trophies from things you killed to display in your home.

*Some housing items/houses could be bought with gems. In RIFT and EQ2, both of their stores have housing items that sell well.

*Items can be added to crafting, hearts, dynamic events, chests, RNG drops and if they aren’t soulbound, they provide a good gold sink and goals.

*It’s a feature which requires no balancing and wouldn’t detract from the balance/bug fix teams too much.

*It can be a social or solo activity and allows people to be creative, this video is an example of that. A couple made the entire town from scratch.

*For players who don’t want housing or prefer to be more practical, in other games you can turn your home into a portal hub/crafting room/storage space.

*Designing this would enable guild halls that guilds could band together and decorate, which would be great for nights when nobody wants to dungeon or WvW.

I understand that some people have concerns that this would lead to people only being in their houses but I never saw this in RIFT, EQ2 or LOTRO. I feel like housing has a lot of advantages, more than I can even list here. This game is so beautiful and has so many things that I wish I could decorate with and has amazing locations just crying out for a house.

Thank you!

So – if the instance owner/anyone disconnects and/or crashes, they can’t get back in (even to the last checkpoint they reached) and if they leave the party everyone else gets kicked out. That is just bloody ridiculous; why the hell doesn’t it save checkpoints temporarily server-side? -_- I don’t want to enable boosting, I don’t even like that there are guides up but this just feels like bad design that doesn’t account for inevitabilities.

Just to add my two cents, I find crafting unbelievably boring. I never craft in any game and in order to get gear, I need to grind mats over and over, which isn’t that awful because at least you’re interacting with the world and being active.

Then I need to stand in front of a crafting station when I would rather actually be doing actual content – challenging content- to get my weapons. Fractals are meant to be hard content and should reward these items as well as the rest of the jewelry.

On top of that, it looks like we’re going to be forced to craft armour as well. You can’t say that you don’t need to because if you don’t have ascended eventually, you’re just dragging your group down, locked out of high level fractals and locked out of the skins. Add in other ways to get gear that requires actual skill, please. Make it kitten hard.

I can’t get one, either and it doesn’t register on characters without the device.

SharadSun.3089:

Why is everyone so fixated on the Cluster Bomb nerf? It’s not even our main source of DPS. Shortbow was REALLY strong, and this nerf put Cluster Bomb in line with the rest of our stuff.

The reason people are fixated on it is because it means Thief is the only class that does NOT have a 1.2k range weapon attack that they can use and there are some bosses where this is actually a huge disadvantage. Not to mention, it means they won’t really have ANYTHING to do in WvW when defending a tower, other than manning an Arrow Cart and it means they can’t nip to the back of a zerg and do good on low HP. It also seems like a pointless nerf because Cluster Bomb is most powerful when a thief is standing fairly close to their target because of the reduced travel time.

I’m thinking that the notes are either fake or not all of the changes are going through because some of them seem like overkill and far too much, too fast, e.g. for warriors. Ofc, I SPvP and PvE on a Mesmer/Necro and I was sorta expecting a slight damage nerf, condition spec damage buffs and a few survivability tweaks… I don’t really know why thief even needed nerfing.

(I do have a Thief as my WvW character, with quite a chunk of hours racked up.)

I really don’t like this – why are we being FORCED to group alone? It’s the same issue as being forced to group – forcing a part of the playerbase to do something they just don’t enjoy. Why can’t you just allow people in your party to attend the instance you open? What is wrong with the personal story method? I actually want to play with my friends AND my partner for new content. If I wanted a solo RPG experience I could play any of the countless COMPLETELY SOLO roleplaying games.

You can say that we can just all talk about our experience over TS or whatever but that is just a band-aid fix; there needs to be scaling content or content that you can do solo or with people if you please.

Is player housing on the menu and if not, why? There are a lot of ways this could invigorate the game in many ways – for professions (e.g tailoring), for solo players, for RPers and provides a consistent way to display trophies as you won’t have your house become obsolete.

Are there plans for new weapon skins and is it ever going to be possible to earn new spell effects for more cosmetic differentiation?

Will the personal story continue? In patches or in expansions? Or is it being scrapped?

Will we visit Cantha or Elona or will the current map places be opened up first?

Thank you.

Issues with the personal story, just based on my opinion, which has resulted in what may be a sleepy clusterduckie but I don’t get time otherwise.

1. I feel as though the most enjoyable parts of the story are pre-pact; you aren’t sure where you’re going or what story you’re going to get for the most part. I wish this part had been longer, e.g doing missions with your sister, doing minor missions for Thackeray, getting drawn into the Vigil War Machine, more spying and subterfuge for Whispers folks. I feel as though these parts of the story get absolutely rushed so badly, you don’t end up with a connection to the organisation that your character is meant to choose, imo. I would much rather have the option to do lots of side stories and then have the choices made in those affect the main story. Or even have those side stories be optional and you choose when to advance the main plot, e.g elder scrolls style.

2. What I have a massive problem with is that none of the choices are meaningful. There isn’t a chance for failure and you can essentially guess the path you’ll take, an example of this being-

-You choose the ‘majority’ option in all three of the human stories and everything works out fine, minus a one character death in one story which there needs to be more of – a risk, an impact. If you choose the minority (your friends), it results in the city being fine. There isn’t a long lasting effect, you aren’t known as the hero who chooses their friends and isn’t trustworthy enough to save a city – you get regarded as being just the same. In a similar fashion, if you choose to save your city, the relatives of your friend don’t give you consequences that could affect your story.

-In the next bit of the story, you ALWAYS know that you’re going to end up in Kessex attempting to save children, you’re always up against Kellach. Why can’t one set of options branch out into a different story? The story is terrifically bland because it really is so predictable. Afaik, every bit of this bit ends up with you in the throne room… saving Jennah. No matter what the text says. You don’t try to cut him off elsewhere and succeed, resulting in saving a village/town in his path, etc.

-Ditto for the bits leading up to Claw Island. You will always lose your assigned BFF and then it feels forgotten, you could pack a horrific emotional punch by say, having a timed quest to rescue Tybalt who has managed to survive but with severe injuries/mental scarring, if you succeed, you keep him (or such, a happier ending), if you fail, you arrive to find his defenses down and it could result in burying your friend or losing their body to Orr. The emphasis here is to give the player an emotional punch in the face.

-Trehearne always turns up and I actually loathe him. It’s the Trehearne show, ya’ll. He has never even been mentioned as a famous scholar on Orr, he just gets jetted into your story and suddenly becomes the leader of the pact with very little character development. Combine this with a lack of humour, a boring accent (similar to my own!), a lack of feeling and growth of your characters bond with him.. It leaves much to be desired and feels a bit stilted, especially some of his generic insecure-hero-but-always-succeeds.

-Side characters are more interesting than some of the main characters, e.g the group of soldiers in Mount Maelstrom, your faction buddy, etc. They have humour, they feel more real – and just as the Destiny’s Edge story gets interesting/Logan becomes more interesting, he runs off. Bad Anet. Don’t drop character relationships like that.

3. Basically, I feel as though the story needs a tighter focus on the emotional side of story telling and the ability to roll a generic human and have their story be drastically different. You may always end up fighting Zhaitan but why are the main plot points the same? I feel as though what was promised was misleading. My character has no impact and none of the choices matter because I arrive at Kessex, at Queen Jennah’s room, Mount Maelstrom, etc every time.

4. Longer story. I want more. I love the traditional RPG hack n’ slash feel of the stories.

5. Can we please, please have the option to choose a voice for our character? Or even an age? I don’t know if this is possible but being called ‘young’ as an elderly wizard would be quite disconcerting and throws you out of the story, hehe.

6. Some class/race combinations make NO sense, e.g Asura have the engineer stereotype which is a bit crap when you want to be an Asura guardian. I think human engineer is another one that I have seen mentioned as not gelling. So basically, too much reliance on exaggerated stereotypes.

7. Lack of PC development. My character never advances beyond the same character she was at level 3. It seems a bit odd and I don’t know how you can fix it without redoing lots of diaglogue.

Sorry for ramble, is late. Thank you.