Guild Wars 2

So, I have been playing since launch, but didn’t play any of the Betas of HoT, and here is how I feel about the expansion so far.

HOLY CRAP! It’s like discovering the game all over again, I’m loving it.
The Verdant Brink is awesome, so chaotic and interesting. Gliding is a joy, masteies, the new elite specs (even if I only have it 1/3 unlocked so far on my Dragonhunter), I have nearly no complaints. I ran around with a friend for almost 4 hours, and few things match the joy of him calling out that he needs help, and me jumping off some high ledge or tree to glide over to him, drop into the middle of a group of nasties, and just start going at them. Or to just run wildly into an unexplored region of the map, just throw caution to the wind and jump off into an abyss, glide around and find some mastery point I didn’t know existed. The verticality of the new areas are just mind blowing and incredible and give such a feeling of exploration.

The feeling of discovery when you get a new mastery point, or more hero points is just like when you gained your first levels. It’s awesome.

I know there are lots of complaints out there, but for me, this was everything I wanted and more. My only slight worry is that because you only gain mastery xp in central Tyria when you’re level 80 is that it will make leveling alts unappealing. But other than that, it’s amazing.

Thanks for reading, and now feel free to call me a fanboy and say my experience is invalid, I’ll be busy having fun in the trees.

I plan to make my revenant right away, making sure I get the name I want for it, and then take a good long look at the mastery information that I have, and probably any new achievements and collections that are opened up. After drinking that in for a bit, I’ll probably switch to my main and play some of the new area’s, taking a break when i feel like it to work up my Rev. I plan on leveling it nice and slow, doing the personal story whenever I can, and just enjoying the feel of having a new character again.

It’s not like these people are just lucky or are “favored”. They put in real work to get the followings that they do, and get minimal to no compensation. IMO they deserve what they get, especially if all that is is just being able to hear the new news firsthand.

If you want to be “favored”, put in the work.

TL;DR

I made a choice to prioritize life over games, and now I’m sad I don’t have everything in the game.

When they came up with and released Season 1, the concept was that in order to make a world that felt alive, they needed to have it change and to have new things happen each chapter. These things were often zone wide events. In order for the story to progress and in order to feel like things were actually happening ‘live’ in the story, this content turned out to be temporary. A really neat and fun idea, but it left out people who weren’t on at the time, and people who joined after.

After a lot of talk (and complaining, let’s not forget that), ANET decided on a new route for Season 2. More instanced chapters that held the story and were solo-able. But to encourage players to be active for each new chapter so that again, the world felt living and breathing, they only make them available to unlock for free temporarily, which is a fair compromise IMO. And this is coming from someone who took a break from right before the end of Season 1 and until halfway through Season 2 (and bought the back story chapters after realizing how much fun the newer ones were).

I guess what I’m trying to say is ANET is trying to do it’s best to listen to the constructive comments of the community and evolve their story delivery, and this is a fair system. I’m sorry if it feels crappy to you, and that you took a bad time off. But honestly, did you really expect to quit for a year and a half and have the exact same game experience as people who have been playing that entire time? This is an MMO. If you want to enjoy yourself and still be somewhat casual (or be willing to take time off of the game), you need to throw away the completion side of your brain, and accept that you will be unable to have everything without putting in the time.

I found the battle incredibly reasonable. And as offensive and elitest as it sounds, a little “learn to play” might be in order.

I’m going to assume a few things. One is that this is not the first LS from season 2 you’ve played. The other is that this is not the first video game you’ve played. If this is the first time you’ve ever played a game, then I’m sorry, all my points are invalid.

Yes, the boss had some mechanics that weren’t explicitly brought up, but so has every boss this LS. Should this be expected by now? Shouldn’t we know it’s not going to be a straight DPS fight? So going in, you should be looking around, checking your buffs and reading the descriptions of your enemies. Next, there are lots of clues given to you by the NPCs. Did you not hear when they shout, “Use the fire!” and then see the ‘white light’ get thrown into the ring with you? Certainly that would be a clue that it wasn’t just your normal AoE. Lastly, with the invunerable shadows. Yeah, they got me confused for about 30 seconds to a minute. But like you, I was soloing the boss, and I quickly realized that they must be beatable, because otherwise they would put out fires at the exact rate I lit them. And they seemed to die when the ate the fire… so maybe I needed to use the divine fire against them.

What I’m saying, is instead of getting angry, pay more attention to your surroundings. Arenanet has been doing a superb job of showing and not telling when it comes to teaching new mechanics this season. But that requires you to be invested in the game and doing your part to pay attention.

Screw percursors for Legendary armor.

The same sort of recipe for armor as there is with legendary weapons would be ok-ish with me, but with a few small tweaks. Something would have to be done about gifts of exploration. Only being able to get 2 on a character, but needing 6 for for a full set would be an issue. I’m sure there are easy ways around this though.
Also, instead of traditional precursors, maybe it should just require a piece of the appropriate Ascended level gear, maybe even with Celestial stats.

I enjoy having a few outfits available for seasonal things, PvPing on alts, and just general leveling for the most part. It’s also good for a quick switch up for my looks when I don’t feel like tinkering for an hour.

So yeah, I enjoy the outfits a lot. And I really enjoy the fact I can just click a button and switch in and out of them at will.

I want more regular armor sets (and ones that aren’t gemstore only) but I don’t mind getting some outfits here and there.

Raising the level cap is a terrible idea.

Not to bring up the past, but GW1 had no issues keeping it’s level cap of 20 through all of it’s expansions, so that should at least the idea of a static level cap is feasible.

Power and level creep are just artificial ways of making it look like you are having progression when really you aren’t. But the good news is that they have been experimenting with new enemy mechanics and zone mechanics, so new areas will likely actually have a real feel of progression when beating them. As long as the upcoming expansion has a significant amount of zones and story in it, then we have no need for a level cap increase.

That being said, I’m not against a little bit of power creep such as making ascended easier to achieve and adding a new gear level on top of it. But… that’s mostly just me wanting bigger numbers when I hit things. Which is a terrible reason.

I wouldn’t mind seeing it upped to 5 options in each category and for PvE adding specific dungeons (the reward could be a rare loot chest, 2 writ of xp, and bonus tokens for that dungeon) or specific JP puzzle completion (perhaps having obi shards as that reward?)

I don’t know about any other ones I would like for PvP or WvW because I don’t play them deeply enough.

Play as you want is not gone.

You can play this game however you’d like (within the actual confines of the game and it’s mechanics of course).

Getting item/reward you want any time you want does not equal play as you want.

I like the new dailies.

They give me an incentive to break my routines. I have a habit of just playing the same couple of things every day, and that leads to tedium and boredom. And while it’s of my own making, it is one of the things that makes me take breaks from the game. The new dailies give me a reason to do things a bit different, to visit places I haven’t been in a while, or level a character I’ve neglected, or if I really want to get it done and not do those things, jump in PvP for a bit (something I rarely do, but enjoy occasionally when I have a reason to do it).

So, I don’t know who these changes are meant to target, but they hit me dead on and will just make me less likely to find a reason not to play the game.

Plus, I like the rewards quite a bit. They seem pretty well thought out and well done.

Well, I for one enjoy the new dailies. But this is with the mindset that I won’t do them every day, which is ok.

I like it because I find myself getting bored to log in and do the exact same couple of things every day while I wait for new LS, and as much as I like farming, it can get dull after a while.

The new dailies give me a reason to break my routines. The PvE ones seem like a good way to get a little bit of time in on alts, maybe do some more map exploration I haven’t lately on them, and generally let me level them up without wandering around or just zerging through EOTM. I have no thoughts on WvW ones because I rarely do that mode, and the PvP ones seem like a fun way to get used to other characters (or you know, just play the one you like and get 2 done pretty easy.)

Honestly, they seem to actually reward non-PvE people the quickest. So there’s a thought for you.

If you just want to knock them out fast, just do a quick match in PvP, and you’ll probably get 2, then jump on someone who can get to a vista quickly and boom, you’re done. 10 minutes max.

I like your idea… but think it will go a little differently. The more I think about it, the more I think that it will come sort of in pieces, and most likely between seasons 3 and 4.

What will happen is that season 3 will focus on finally taking down Moredremoth, and after he’s done, we will move onto the next elder dragon. Durring the off time between the seasons, a feature pack will be released introducing a new race, with it’s own new starter zone and probably a level 15-25 zone. The race will probably be Tengu (because I think this process will be repeated later and at the same time introduce Largo, but they will probably be introduced to take on Bubbles, who I don’t think we are ready for story wise yet).

I would not be surprised if between seasons 2 and 3 we get some updates to the current professions (new skills and weapon combos), something with legendaries (whether it’s precursor collections or new legendaries), and a new dungeon (maybe in the silverwastes or dry top).

Call me optimistic, but it just feels like the right progression of things.

Thanatos.2691:

Living story is passable for free content, but is it enough to keep players interested and invested in the game? Everyone has differing opinions about whether or not the game is suffering from lack of substantial content development, leading many hoping for an expansion. A subscription fee could serve as an alternative to an expansion, giving paying subscribers more content which they desire while leaving the current free content (including Living Story) for the players who aren’t interested in a subscription.

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No. No no no. Please, just no.

This is a terrible idea IMO. It would require stupid amounts of resources (not saying a lot, just some that aren’t necessary) to gate of content from the non-payers, and would alienate a ton of the playerbase. A pay wall is just a horrible way to manage a game, and that’s what this would be. I can barely describe how horrible something like this would be to the game.

I think any sort of subscription is extremely unnecessary, and have a strong feeling that the ‘expansion’ everyone wants is going to come either between seasons 2 and 3 or 3 and 4. After that, most of this subscription talk should finally die down.

But, if anything like a superscription or a member service or something were to ever go down, I think it would have to be focused on cosmetics and convenience. For example, for $15 a month, you get a 7 dye pack, 12-18 transmutation stones, one of the newly released skins, and maybe access to the airship thing or some BL keys. Maybe throw in a finisher or mail carrier or mini or title every once in a while. As useless as that sounds… I would probably buy it. Heck, if you threw in a 10%-20% gemstore discount into it, I would actually end up spending more money than if I didn’t have it.

It’s neat to see this put in the game, since I know there was a pretty fervent group who wanted it. And it’s nice to see some more cosmetic things, because honestly, playing dress up and customizing my characters is the only reason I play this game instead of others. (That is a sincere comment, not sarcastic, and when I explain it to friends, usually they end up getting interested enough to buy the game).

That being said, I really don’t care much about mail carriers, and would love to see some obtainable through the game via drops or collections. But to be fair, that’s mainly because I don’t want to pay for them, lol.

Though, if a snow owl is released, I’d probably be forced to buy it since my GF is a crazy Harry Potter fan. So keep that in mind guys.

For people who can’t find the option to turn off the hilighting of new items, in your inventory, click on the option gears in the top corner of your inventory window, and you should find the option there.

As for my 2 cents, I HATE the new glow for the new items, but it’s a non-issue since I immediately turned it off, lol.

Well, I found it challenging for a bit, and did have to brute force my way through after making a few mistakes, but even that was very manageable.

For the people complaining about a lack of direction and instruction on how to do things like this, I’m not sure I agree with what you seem to want. Personally, I don’t want to feel like I’m playing in a tutorial when I’m doing the new level 80 content, and I don’t want the game to just hand me a walkthrough or manual on this stuff.

I think the game gives us plenty of information and visual cues that someone with gaming experience, patience, and thought can figure out and work through. They do explain everything you need to do, just not in words. They do it in animations, targeting recticles, descriptions of buffs and debuffs when you target an enemy, etc… To me, that’s the right way to do things.

Uh… guys? The OP is gone. Hasn’t posted since the original posts. Maybe arguing about what he meant is a waste of everyone’s time?

Just a thought.

(P.S. – Feel free to interpret this any way you’d like)

I think it’s well balanced as well, and as far as unfair for people who only focus one one character… well, I like to think of it as one of the few bonuses to playing multiple characters. And it’s not like this is a time limited item, it’s going to be around permenenatly. So if you just don’t wanna get the crests, when you DO level another character, which you might, you can just do it then. No hurry.

Yes, LS currencies should definitely be put into the wallet.
In fact, I would also be a fan of having a key ring type of thing as well, that way we don’t have to take up bag space with lockpicks, bandit keys, dwarven keys, etc….

I disagree with the overtuned comment. I played it the night it came out, and while maybe a few were a tad long, it was very doable and figure out-able.

And even the ones that seemed kinda long the first time were a complete breeze and completable in a reasonable amount of time when I redid the story for the rewards.

My 2 cents. I only read about 2/3 of this thread at most, so hopefully there aren’t too many repeats.

I enjoy the living story, and the destruction of things in the world has been interesting to me. But I do think that in regards to an ever-changing world, it is a little one note.

Someone earlier on the first page mentioned the slow rebuilding of Lion’s Arch and cleanup of Kessex Hills, and I couldn’t agree more. That was exactly what I had been thinking. A slow re-building and cleaning, just a little bit at a time (such as each LS update) would be amazing.

Tyria is in a constant state of war in nearly every region, between Centaurs and Humans, Char and Flame Legion, and so much more. We see this all the time in our dynamic events. I know this would require resources at Anet, but I would like to see it taken a bit further. I’d love to see some strongholds in the world, the little forts, sometimes be damaged or destroyed, and other ones built up. Again, it can be slow. I’d love to see small settlements being made or established. Throw a new group of explores somewhere in the world and have them build up a small outpost. Have a group have traveling merchants trying to expand trade. Doing a small bit of this in somewhere like Dry Top after season 2 is over would be great, since most of our known world has been unable to go there until now, but it would work in every region.

And now that the story journal shows dates and we know that time is truly passing in game, have some NPCs have kids. Have some old NPCs die. Have temporary funerals in the grave yards. These things would make the world feel truly alive.

I love the big events and updates and large scale story. But I think that the small scale story get’s overlooked a lot (mainly by the players, there is a ton there already if you just take the time to look around and talk to NPCs). You’ve created the body of a world, and with the living story given it a heart, now you just need small things like these to be the blood that flows through it’s veins.

If you want a comparison for communication, look to Marvel Heroes, and it’s been live for about a year and a half. Yes, it’s a FTP more in the line of a Diablo clone than a true MMO, but the dev to community communication and interaction there is stronger than I’ve ever seen anywhere else. It’s something special.

That being said, there are just as many people complaining about not being heard and the game going in the wrong direction and blah blah blah there as well. The biggest difference is there is a TON of people saying things like “Well, you said you were working on this but it came out different/didn’t come out yet/ you lied to us” and all that, so I don’t know if them being as open as they are is something I would consider good. But hey, you were looking for examples.

I honestly don’t care about the consortium’s bonus, I mean, it’d be cool if other ones got a speed enhancement, but ever since the watchwork pick came out I had a bad taste in my mouth about it.
It really felt like I was being punished for buying the other unlimited tools as soon as they came out. If I had never bought a pick before then I would have just bought the watchwork and been happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend the extra just for sprockets when I already had an unlimited tool.

I would love to see a rotation of about 4 different bonus weekends
I for one would really enjoy double track credit weekends for PvP.
Maybe a bonus champ bag at the end of every dungeon weekend
Something involving world bosses or bonus Karma from PVE stuff weekend.
And lastly, something involving WvW.

Yes. Just about everything with guild wars (minus the bugs that are being worked on) is good.

Unless you count the community and the forums. They suck. Seriously, this is the most hateful of the game community I’ve ever been a part of.

Shalloe.4867:

The information should of been released to everyone by anet at the same time.

Not just to a select few who could preview the patch.

Yes they shared the info with all and made guides ect but I bet most of the prices had shot up by the time any of the info was published online to see. As that guy said the first comment on the dulfy guide was made 14 hours ago but most collectables needed were bought out 24 hours ago (probably about the same time the patch went live for the select few with early access seeing as the servers are about to go down for patch now)

How could they do this? How could the get the info to everyone at the same time? Not through the forums, most people don’t read them. Patch notes? We all know a lot of people don’t read those either. They could wait until the patch releases, with absolutely no info given out before hand, but how long would the playerbase go along with that? We all demand to have the info early, plus, they need to generate some buzz.

Maybe they should just mail out a letter to every player with the info in it? Text the info to every person’s phone?

C’mon, they did the best they could with giving the info to the most prolific and watched guide and video makers. That’s the way they told “everyone” at once.

I think you are blowing this whole insider trading thing out of proportion. Maybe a few people made a fine bit of money, but the market was going to skyrocket either way, most people complaining are just mad because they didn’t get the early jump to take advantage of other people.

Hi, I’m looking for some suggestions for stats, traits, and weapon sets for running fractals. And am accepting tips for when different weapons would be useful.

I do not want to get into a discussion about zerker, so for my sanity’s sake, it is off the table. I know all about it and how wonderful it is. I want other ideas.

This is going to be used primarily for running between levels 21-35 or so.

I’ve been playing guardian since launch, and usually focus on PvE, mostly just building whatever seems to be best for surviving and doing some damage, I’ve been using GS and Sword+Focus for quite a while now, but I feel like that might not be the best for running fractals, and as for stats, I run a mix of soldiers and zerkers and celestial, just using whatever seems to be most likely to help me.

Anyhow, (almost) any suggestions are welcome.

Final note: I’m going to start using this info to make an ascended armor set.

Thank you.

I wasn’t even going to bother with this, but those are AWESOME. I want to be an anomaly like WHOA!

I say the only things that maybe need changed are the following:

1. Lower the respawn rate in the first room.
2. Make the bombs respawn faster.
3. Make it so the dredge in the bomb room only respawn when the bombs do.

Otherwise, it’s fine as is.

I love the dredge fractal if you have a group that doesn’t try to kitten around and exploit it and is halfways decent. More enemies equals more loot, and it’s not overly hard or long IMO. The length is made up for in the amount of drops I get out of it. I don’t know if there is any other one I’d rather have as my third fractal.

Blast it. Guess I’m gonna just have to stop buying gems from now on and just use gold instead. I like to support Anet, but I’m getting tired of getting screwed out of things just because they drop stuff like this on me.

I’d like to throw in a quick follow up question in hopes it gets answered as well.

When does it start counting purchases? Because I just spent $35 for gems on the 29th or 30th, and I’m going to be really bummed if I miss out because I spent my money a day or two before the special. I would have waited, I didn’t actually need the gems, just felt like contributing.

I’m really against mounts, for the reason stated above.

But titles, god yes. I love titles and I want more.

I’d like to see 5 teams instead of 4 personally. With the 5th team working on something like a quarterly update, which would release a larger chunk of permanent content. Sometimes that could be adding a zone. Sometimes it could be a further piece of the Personal story (maybe not the best idea, just an idea), perhaps a new race, a new real dungeon, who knows? But their focus could be those things that typically define an expansion, and they could just roll them out one piece at a time. It still wouldn’t be the same, but it fits more into what they are doing, and still gives an expansion feel.

Just my 2 cents.

So, I skipped page 2, so some of this may have been said.

Just to point something out, Guardians have a very low HP pool. So conditions absolutely suck (if you don’t play to get rid of them, which everyone should be prepared to deal with some conditions).

As for them being easy to play, well sure, if you don’t want to play well. It’s true, they have a lot going in favor of them, but if you want to be more than just that guy who survives kinda sorta but doesn’t do anything to help the team, you need to do a whole lot more than just hit 1 and 2.

I main my Guardian, and I utilize shouts and reflect wall and blinds and party regens and anything else I can to help my party survive, and let me tell you, it’s a whole lot more involved than just standing there. Plus, even with the heavy armor, it only means like 1, maybe 2 extra hits before I go down, so dodging is just as important.

Nearly every class has ways to play to deal with the newer content, it’s just about making survivablity is something plan for, and by that I mean way more than just having more toughness or vit, but actually look at your skills and see if you’re doing what you need to to survive.

I got 8 quartz today. So no, I don’t think it was nerfed.

Hate to say it, but RNG is RNG.

I am perfectly ok with BL skins not being unlimited. I understand why ANet wouldn’t want that, and agree with it from a business standpoint.

BUT! Any skin tied to an achievement should have unlimited uses. We already have the infrastructure in place with the achievement panel and the achievement chest skins. It should allow all living world skins to exist there. There is no need to completely change the system that exists for a ‘skin bank’ (Which by the way, sounds disgusting if you say it out loud), just use the tools already in place to do something that looks like it was already considered.

(Also, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but this whole issue seems to have reached a fever pitch lately. Call me naive, but I fully expect this to addressed by the end of the first quarter of next year, and for there to be an announcement about it in the next “What we have planned for the next year” update they are sure to have in December.)

Yes to OP. A hundred times yes. I’ve wanted this forever.

As for Pache, I’m up in the air on BL skins, I understand your grievance, but I’m just not totally swayed on it.

I’m against this idea. I mean, it would be awesome and I would actually start buying gem store skins, but I do understand why they should be one use.

Although, now that I think of it, I have a different solution. Have both one use and infinite versions, the infinite versions would work in the achievement panel. Then lower the price of one use versions to, oh, I dunno, about 2/3rds the current price, and make the infinite versions cost 50% more to double the current price.

OR! Maybe they could use those resources to make achievement related skins work in the achievement panel instead! Please please please!

Seriously, if they added ways to get permanent skins like this, I would change my primary focus to find a way to get every permanent skin that can be used. I would love it soooo much.

I disagree with taxing gold period. It is too easy to exploit the member of your guild, and guilds should be about co-operation, not extortment.

But I do agree tenatively with the idea to use influence to cause bonus gold to be added, where the player get’s the same amount as they would without it, and the bonus going straight to the bank.

But I MOST agree with guild related purchases not using gold at all. Have them use influence or karma. I think using karma would be the best. And anytime a member would gain karma, a little would be added to the guilds karma ratting. You know, how doing good things will reflect well on your organization. And then use that to buy your WvW stuff or whatever. That way there can be no actual abuse, the average member is not being punished because of what the guild leader wants to do, and everyone in the guild helps a little everytime they play.

Or better yet, just leave as is.

(1) Companions could be nice. Feels like there could be a pretty big balancing issue with them though. But having more things to customize for my character is always fun for me.

(2) Please god no. Just no. Mounts are a terrible idea for this game. With the exception of Mesmers, all the characters move fast enough around IMO, and there are too many people who just run through everything and go from point A to point B without actually experiencing what they are going through, which is more than half of the fun of this game. The game is meant to be experienced as a whole, not just dash for the next loot drop. That’s why so much effort is put into things like jumping puzzles and vistas. So please, for the love of the 6 gods, just no.

(3) I’m torn on dye options for weapons. I like the idea quite a bit most of the time, but then again, I don’t think it should be available for the weapons with more particle effects, stuff with flames and sparkles and whatnot. I kind of like getting a cool new weapon, then changing my look to go with it. But meh, that’s just me.

(4) Heh. Sure, why not?
Actually, I rescind that support. I think it’s a terrible idea as well, it’s just exploitative, and there is already some pretty revealing stuff out there. I mean, look at the medium human cultural for females, you’ve got freaking underboob! That’s a bit much to me. If I wanna see bare bodies, I’ll go somewhere else, thank you.

Try starting the instance yourself, or asking your party to stick around.

I have little trouble with people leaving me in the lurch if I politely ask at the beginning.

I think he is super easy with 2 people, and has the potential to be a challenge with 5, if you don’t have a group that knows how to play their class. Mostly just time consuming, but I don’t know about you, but time consuming battles are something i’m rough with. I tend to lose focus halfway through and make a fatal mistake.

I played through the whole tower today helping a friend of mine out, we purposely avoided zergs, did as little running through as we could, and tried to play it as intended, and had very few problems. It was far slower going, but it was a lot of fun. Really, the first floor’s the toughest, IMO, the rest is just careful killing. Well, the 3rd floor got a little tough too.

It definitely counts for the finisher achievement in the halloween tab, if you use the mad king or scarecrow finisher.

I think it’s more likely because the price of them on the TP is the same price as vendoring them, which is dirt cheap. I’ve been vendoring those items for months now, I would love it if they went up in price by like, 4 copper even because of this.

It really depends on the day. If there is something I want done quickly (like on only need a few more laurels for something, or the LS achieves) and I don’t have much time (like crazy days where I only have a small amount of time, I’ll jump on, use my main, and knock them out ASAP.

On a regular day, I’ll get on an alt I’m leveling, and see which ones most coincide with what I’m already working on, and do those as I do what I wanted to, maybe jumping into Queensdale for a quick champ or two if that works with the dailies.

Or if it’s a jumping puzzle day, I definitely do that right away as an excuse to get another notch in my jumping puzzle list, lol.