Guild Wars 2

Also, if the expectation for every time we receive a level booster like the Experience Scroll is that we get a new character slot, then, excluding this year and accounting for 5 characters created at release, that’s 20 slots. It seems unreasonable to think that we’d have a use for all of these scrolls and boosters, especially as our account’s grow older. This doesn’t even take into account the two lvl 80 boosters and character slots from the expansion purchases.

I don’t mean to complain about free stuff, but this is like someone dumping a free car on your lawn that isn’t drive-able and can’t be repaired, re-gifted, salvaged, or sold. You’re grateful for the free car, but now you’re just kind of stuck with it.

My army of Queen Jennahs recommend not getting hung up over the early anniversary gifts giving you things you already have.

tl;dr: It would be great if Experience Scrolls gave spirit shards if used on lvl 80 characters.

I really enjoyed the anniversary gift this year. It was very well done. My only complaint is that I already have a lvl 80 of every profession and don’t desire or see a purpose for multiple alts of the same profession, as I’m sure many others don’t as well. I also like getting the higher level birthday gifts, so I don’t intend to re-roll any characters or buy an extra slot for a temporary key-farming character that gets used once a year for anniversaries.

This is disappointing b/c I see how amazing the item would be if I actually had a use for it. I’m sure there are a great many people who have made it to the 5 year mark that are already in the same boat as I am. So, instead of being like “Awesome! A lvl 50 Experience Scroll!” my reaction was instead, “Oh, great. Another thing to take up space and never get used in my bank. I’ll stack them with the others.” Which I’m sure isn’t the desired reaction when the item was placed in as part of the gift.

That being said, I see the value in having the scrolls not add a flat 10, 20, … 50 levels on top of the user’s current level. What I would see as being a useful addition to their functionality is the addition of an equivalent number of spirit shards when used by lvl 80 characters. Spirit Shards and the items they buy are largely exclusive to the account purchasing them, so it shouldn’t really impact the economy that much, we might just see a spike in core prices and a drop in lodestone prices for a bit around anniversary time (or something similar) due to an increase in upgrade conversions. But even then, there are enough sinks in the game now for Spirit Shards that it shouldn’t be that much of an issue.

In regards to Colin’s Question: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

My favorite shows, not necessarily television as I primarily watch anime online, are characterized primarily by steady weekly releases that progress the story with a heavy focus on character development while staying loyal to the general rules of the worlds they take place in as they were introduced toward the beginning of their stories. I am often driven to re-watch certain episodes due to the amount of story progression present in the episodes and due to the use of cliffhangers, which drive me to want to know what happens next, so I seek to either spoil it for myself by reading how it happens, or watch the episode until I have a good feeling of what might happen.

Obviously, with the amount of resources that appear to be available, the prospect of weekly story progression would be madness (unless this is Sparta), and shouldn’t be expected by any means. However, the current amount of story that is given with each release seems to be on the scale of a chapter or two of a manga, rather than the four to six chapters that are typically covered in anime every two weeks (it does depend on the anime, though, as One Piece uses about one chapter an episode and is painfully slow if you’ve already read what happens)(so I guess I’m putting it more on the scale of something like Naruto). Increasing the amount of story in each release by increasing the amount of story content by four to six fold, would also be pretty ridiculous for the amount of apparent resources. However, it may be possible to give the illusion of more story content, without necessarily giving more story content on the main release. This would help to address the issue of the slow story pace, while keeping the current release pace and minimizing the use of resources for story content (maybe).

In many of the shows I watch, the story usually shifts around between different characters during chapters or episodes, without those characters necessarily having any direct involvement in the current primary action of the story. The actions happening with these background events focus on comedy, character development, or lead up to those characters joining in on the primary action of the current story arc. What I propose to simulate a similar effect with the living story, that would also help to generate the feeling of a living world with multiple events happening at once, would be to continue to have primary story releases using roughly the same amount of resources as they do now, but also make use of the NPCs that were created for the Living Story and that may re-appear in the Living Story in creating background stories. This would be similar to what was done with Braham and his love interest, but would make use of more of the characters to the ends of small stories that would be set up to develop the characters, lead up to new content (like what was done with Marjory and Lady Kasmeer in Kessex Hills during the Bloody Prince release), or resolve minor story elements (such as Mai Trin still saying the same thing in her cell, finding out more about Mendel and Marjory from someone like Logan, or Ellen Kiel’s actions after being elected and out of the limelight).

These small stories could be the place for the comedy, the references, and the deeper level character development that would serve to get the player more emotionally invested in the main players of the Living Story, while helping to make the Living Story segments feel larger or more significant. The minimalist approach to these small stories would be text conversations with the NPCs that change with every release, so that we can catch up with what they’re doing/planning, or moving the location of the NPC to show that they are doing something, or a combination of both. The extreme of this would be to have some mini “quest” like things that involve the character, but don’t take as much. Some examples of this would be helping out Braham around Cragstead with some “press F” actions, helping Rox with some collect-a-thon assignment that Rytlock gave her while making a reference to grinding in video games and having Rox state her worries about ever getting into Rytlock’s warband, helping out one of the NPCs by going out and doing a certain existing dynamic event, picking up some kind of item from Rata Sum that Ellen Kiel’s endeavor into the Thaumanova fractal needs, or some random drop from a certain task in game that when given to the right NPC will trigger some special dialogue. Stuff like that, if given a context that helps develop the character, would, I feel, really go a long way. It’s the little things that often go the furthest.

Step 5: Base connective Living Story events between Elder Dragons on GW1 and GW2 established lore. I mean…ya’ll wrote the stuff….use it. Also, don’t leave loose-ended mysteries for us to draw our own conclusion to. It’s only satisfying for getting us engaged in the world and caring about the story if it is eventually resolved. We’ll only care enough to guess what’s next if there is a what’s next.

Step 6: Add in lore books for the personal housing to catch up players to living story. Send new lore books (newspapers?) to players in in-game mail (like those stories ya’ll post online that most people don’t pay attention to.)

Step 7: Listen to WoodenPotatoes and take into account his analysis and criticisms.

Step 8: Connect the personal story to the living story. Living personal story? Or at least give us a way to look at the story steps, such as with the lore books, or with a panel like the one for personal story. Heck, at the end of the personal story, add in a series of cut-scene like things (like the opening after character creation) that will bring the player up to speed on what happened in the world after the fall of Zhaitan. If you want to add in new areas with story related to living story and evolves with the story, keep it in the world and bar players who haven’t completed the personal story from entering the area. That way, at least everyone playing the content has an appropriate context of for the events and a grasp of the story prior top entering the living world.

Step 9: Keep the story steps consistent. No, “And now for something entirely different because we revamped Tequatl”, or, “It’s Halloween so Scarlet can’t be a part of this story, because we don’t mix our chaotic evil aligned characters with our comically mad characters (would Mad King Thorn be Chaotic Good?).” Honestly, Halloween would have been more interesting if it involved the story segments leading up to it. Scarlet would have gone well with the Mad King’s personality. She could have been his “Queen for a day” like the live stream comment for Valentine’s Day (making Scarlet scarlet). Scarlet could have been involved in uncovering the Bloody Prince. Tassi could have led us to the reliquary just in time for us to see Scarlet mess with it/steal it/etc causing the Bloody Prince to awaken.

Step 10: ??????

Step 11: Profit

Step 1: Kill Trahearne off before the next Elder Dragon. Or….let the next Elder Dragon kill him. That way we can take over our personal story (and possibly living story…if those are different things now) from the hijacker and feel conflicted when killing the dragon that did us such a favor.

Step 2: Add in player housing b/c there is almost literally no reason to visit the home instance. Why even call it the home instance, if I don’t have a home? I know I started as a street rat, but still, the Hero of Shaemoor should still have some kind of housing, right? Let our achievement points effect the quality of house that we have. Let us view trophies from living and personal story there. Let those nodes that have no business being randomly placed at a random locations inside of a sector of a city be placed in some kind of backyard area. Let us feel like our characters actually live in the world, instead of poofing in and out of existence. Let us see our impact, visually, in a nice, player housing area.

Step 3: Focus on Elder Dragons. There are five (six) reasons that we shouldn’t be focusing on Scarlet as a major threat to the world, and they’re all dragons that are out to get our magic (hide yo kidz, hide yo wife.) Honestly, I thought Flame & Frost would be leading to Braham chipping Jormag’s Tooth and leading us to fight Jormag as was hinted at the end of the personal story, but it didn’t happen. Now there’s Scarlet, and she could potentially provoke a dragon to attack, but…like…that just kind of makes the elder dragons look like mindless animals, like they’re somehow inferior to Scarlet, even though they’re more compelling villains and were built up as the primary antagonists of GW2.

Step 4: Stop being so Sylvari-centric. I find it hard to enjoy a personal or living story that consistently seems to be more interesting if you’re a specific race. I’ve played the personal story with every race up until the part where Trahearne takes over, and the story seemed obviously more coherent and engaging when I played as a Sylvari. For Norn, it was more like, “Norn hero-intraining? Hope to defend Hoelbrak from the forces of Jormag? Here’s the Pale Tree, go kill Zhaitan. BTW This Sylvari is now the main character of your personal story.” Now it seems that the Living story is following this trend…just this time, they’re hijacking the role of main antagonist instead of min protagonist.

• Personal Story: Trahearne(the Kanye West of the GW2 story) hogs the spotlight.
• Southsun: Canach plays with giant crabs and plant pheromones (love makes people enraged, too…it works…right?)
• Flame & Frost: Oooooh a Norn and a Charr might be the focus. This lady with red hair who set up the Molten Alliance sounds interesting.
• Dragon Bash – Queen’s: Okay, some humans, too. Variety is the spice of life for the racial focus of this next story. I wonder who Scarlet is and why the Aetherblades are scared of her.
• Pretty much everything else: sees Scarlet…..%$#@, another Sylvari is the real focus of all of this. I bet she’s in cahoots with Canach and Trahearne. Time to go burn down the Pale Tree before it creates anymore of these role-stealing characters.

I have tabs set up, too, but the issue I’m addressing with this suggestion is that even if you set up a tab for just map chat, and there is a group of people having a long and passionate conversation about a certain topic in map chat, there’s no way of setting up the tabs so that the conversation isn’t present in map chat while still having other map chat comments visible in the feed. The map chat will still have the conversation in it unless you block the players so that their comments are filtered out. Basically, this suggested feature is for those who don’t want to turn off map chat, don’t want to block other players, but don’t want to see a particular conversation in the feed. It’s only really a problem in map chat.

The current chat system, tabs included, does not allow for the conversations to be taken elsewhere without using third party systems. You could block the people, but that doesn’t help to build community. You could turn off map chat, but that doesn’t allow you to see other comments that might interest you in map chat. You could take the conversation to party chat, but parties are limited to 5 people and others can’t join in on the conversation as readily. However, if there were a system that allowed for those conversing to leave map chat for somewhere else, so that others won’t have to be bothered by their conversation, while still enabling access of others to the conversation, then the problem would no longer really exist. Heck, the problem could even be addressed by simply putting in some kind of mute button that would temporarily block other players’ map chat comments, but that’s more of a bandage than a solution and doesn’t really help promote community. Silencing people for spamming text wouldn’t be a good solution either.

A lot of the conversations I have seen, particularly in Lion’s Arch, get to a point where the people involved in the conversation on map chat end up totally dominating the map chat window and other comments not related to their conversation get bumped up through the chat window so fast that they’re not really noticeable. Also, not everyone wants to see a conversation about politics flying through their map chat, they also don’t necessarily want to block people for chatting about politics, and they still want to keep map chat on. I’ve also noticed that a lot of people find it annoying when walls of text are just going through their map chat window that are unrelated to the game.

If there was a place for players to chat about specific things if they wanted to, and they could start the conversation in map chat and then move to a chat room type place where others could join in if they want to, then the number of text heavy conversations happening in map chat would be reduced. A player in Lion’s Arch the other day made a good point when asked by multiple people in Lion’s Arch to “please stop chatting about politics.” His reply was, “where else would I go to have a real-time conversation about politics with these people? Teamspeak? AOL? Too difficult.” If a chat room feature existed, instead of having to either block people, turn off map chat, or deal with it, players could request for the people to take their conversation to a chat room.

Tired of sitting around in Lion’s Arch while reading the waterfall of text coming from the group of people discussing politics, television shows, religion, philosophy, conspiracy theories, etc.? Wanting to block them to stop the text waterfall, but hesitating because you don’t want to block people who maybe sound intelligent, you don’t want half a conversation on your chat feed, or the person isn’t really offending you? Well, you’re not alone. I, at least, also feel that these scenarios are an issue with the chat system currently in place in the game.

Why is it an issue?

1. The waterfall of text effectively cancels out the ability of any other conversations starting up that could potentially interest the player.
2. Certain types of conversations, though not necessarily offensive, can make being in the zone (i.e. Lion’s Arch) uncomfortable for the player. For example: Talking politics stresses out some people who play the game to escape from the subject.
3. Shotgun blocking large numbers of people to avoid walls of text in the chat feed runs counter to the game’s social aspect. It does not help to build a sense of community.
4. Some people prefer chatting about certain subjects in a more subject closed environment (i.e. Politics only, no anime discussion). Party chat and guild chat could potentially be used, but are too much effort to form for a closed topic chat, other’s can’t join in without first knowing about the group through another person, and party size is limited.

How can this problem be solved?
One potential solution for this problem is to add a feature to chat that functions similarly to a chat room. The feature would allow for the creation of chat topics that are visible to everyone within a chat zone, on a list in a UI window, and added to the chat window as a new chat tab.

Ideas for such a chat room feature:

• The feature would operate in a similar method as the new LFG tool and potentially be stored on the Contacts and LFG UI.
• Other chats, such as map chat, etc., would still function as they do now, but conversations that start in map chat would be able to be taken to a chat room.
• Players would create a chat room topic in a similar way as LFG group advertisements.
• Players would join chat rooms in a similar way as the LFG groups.
• Instead of joining a party automatically as with the LFG system, the chat room system would take the player’s ID, such as my Pi Slinger.5801, and place it into a chat room group under a topic heading. When it does this, it would open a new tab on the chat window with only chat from the chat room topic present on it.
• Players could be in multiple chat rooms at once.

Pros to such a feature:

• It would free up map chat so that new conversations could form and potentially be taken to new chat rooms.
• It would allow players to have topic-specific chats.
• It would allow players to avoid certain chat topics.
• It would help build a sense of community.
• It would be potentially useful for WvW.
• It would reduce the number of people that are blocked due to others not wanting to see their conversation.
• Regular chat could continue on as it always has, minus the waterfalls of texts for small group conversations.
• Players would potentially form guilds or add friends to their contact list based on interactions in the chat rooms.

Cons to such a feature:

• It would potentially spread the map chat to the point that zones would be full of players, but seem empty based on the amount of comments in the chat window if a player is not currently in a chat room (which some may enjoy, but new players who are unaware of the system might see it as a sign of the game being “dead”)
• Managing large numbers of tabs would potentially be troublesome.
• Players would have to trust the title of the topic or join the topic to view the true contents of the conversation.
• It would potentially reduce the ability of players to “jump in” to conversations when the topic hits a point of interest, limiting the ability to “add you two cents.”
  • A potential solution to this would be to create a checklist functionality that would allow players to turn on certain topic chats in their general chat, which would allow them to see the conversation, but not respond until fully joining the chat room for the topic.
    • This would potentially lead to increase in the frequency of, “Oops, wrong chat,” moments.
• It may lead to the formation of social cliques, which could either be seen as a good or bad thing, some of which would potentially have people hazing people who join that they don’t welcome. (But, hey, blocking the people who offend you is what that system is actually for, right? Not blocking people to not see conversations)

Well, those are my thoughts on the matter. Do ya’ll have any more ideas? I think a chat room feature would be a great addition to help build the community in this game.

Wouldn’t that only account for about 15 of them, though? Are there 25 WvW waypoints?

I’ve unlocked every waypoint in every zone, but when I go to my world map, it says that I have only unlocked 482/507.