Guild Wars 2

Regular bosses can be on a timer because you can just jump in when they happen. Bosses that require zergs: better take one hour to wait, or else —> overflow.

• In order to avoid overflow, you have to stand around in the same map with nothing to do
• Since they all seem to spawn on the hour, they overlap with Tequatl, and probably more fights in the future.

I suggest to put big boss fights on a series of pre-events instead.

I don’t care if these take 20 minutes or longer to complete. I don’t care if they require 40+ players to do. But this way players could spawn the bosses on their own time. No pointless standing around doing nothing.

—> But they did this with the Karka Queen and people aren’t doing that!

The Karka Queen has other problems (size of the required zerg, difficulty to join the zerg due to hostile environment, and the reward doesn’t quite make it worth it). With a little bit of rebalancing (safe waypoint near the boss fight, better reward, smaller zerg required) people would be doing it a lot.

—> But without a 2 hour cooldown people are going to farm these like crazy!

People only farm events that give them repeated rewards (champ train). They don’t farm events that give them rewards only once per day (fire elemental).

The story instance was good. Unfortunately, my current balance is:

5 minutes of pretty good story instance.
30 minutes of boss fights that were more frustrating than fun, because nobody in the map understood the mechanics.
3+ hours of standing around, waiting for things to happen without a clue whether I was required to do anything.

After some 4 hours of playing on patch day, I want to go to bed with a feeling of “Yay, seen new things, done new things, found new things, have a list of achievements to do, can’t wait to log back in tomorrow!” – this is what usually happens to me on patch day. Sadly, today, I am now going to bed with a feeling of “GW2 just wasted 3 hours of my time.”

When clicking the event thingies in the HUD, they sent me to the waypoints, but the NPCs were not helpful at all. I assumed the bosses were on a timer, so my only choice was to stand around and get increasingly cranky. When the wurm fight finally happened, the lack of guidance managed to kill the mood entirely.

The story instance isn’t the problem in this patch.

My thoughts on the three new gemstore armor sets Flamekissed, Flamewalker and Flamewrath:

The good

• Love the names. They made me super-excited to see the new armor sets in the PvP locker.
• The price is ok. After the price for the unlimited gathering tools went up and the toxic skins were more expensive, I expected worse.

The not so good

• Fire… again? What’s with the fire fetish, ANet? That’s like the fourth or fifth set of burning gloves…
• Disappointed that it’s not new skins, but existing skins with added particle effects
• Disappointed that the armor sets have no relation to the living story update (unlike the toxic, aetherblade and belated Rox/Braham skins).
  I am even more disappointed when awesome new skins are created and no story goes with them (viper set, magitech set…)
• Using cultural armor was a poor choice for two reasons.
  One, Some people are understandably cranky that their already bought 100+ gold armor set is now in the gem store with added particle effects for less than half of what they spent (including transmutation crystals).
  And two, now the entire debate of making cultural armor sets available for all races will start again. So the concept of cultural armor is going out of the window, … when can I have heavy human T3 for my norn?

Room for improvement

• This entire armor set, despite being old skins, would sell like hot cakes if the particle effect could be died. Most people I know in game are really really over fire/lava by now, but it would be easy to dye this into ice, mist, shadow, green necro magic, pink mesmer magic, or to go with their fractal weapons, dreamthistle weapons, etc. etc. etc…. I guess I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t make that happen. Players would shower you in money.
• New gem store armor with particle effects could have been reskins of the PvP-only armor sets that players have been asking for for so long. (Soulmyr.8094)
• New gem store armor with particle effects could have been reskins using of some of the popular NPC town clothes sets that players have been asking for for so long. (Celestina.2894)
• Reskins of prestige armor such as cultural T3 could have been released (bit by bit) through mystic forge or crafting upgrades of existing (already bought) cultural armor pieces. (PopeUrban.2578)
  A gem store component used in the crafting/MF to enhance an existing piece of cultural armor to include particle effects would have been ok.
• If you must put cultural armor in the gem store, do it for all sets. (Creativewild.6319)
• While we don’t expect you to fix charr tail compatibility for every single existing armor set, we would ask you to take better care of this and other clipping issues for gem store sets (due to their price, and because only 1-3 new sets are made available at a time). (LadyRhonwyn.2501)

Edited to include valuable feedback from commenters
Cultural armor criticism is no longer valid, but the other points still stand!

For reference:
The light armor is based on human cultural T3
The medium armor is based on WvW / Invader’s
The heavy armor is based on the Pitfighter set

The respective pages for daily and monthly achievement categories come with a timer, so you know when the month ends.

I feel this timer would be infinitely more useful for the living story achievement categories.
We all know when October ends, but there is a lot of confusion (and research outside of the game required) about when the current living story meta achievement will be removed.

The Infinite Continue Coin does not win you the SAB.

All of us have infinite goes at the SAB to begin with; we just have to grind for them: daily jumping puzzles in PvE (and/or farm SAB world 1 for baubles to exchange).

What the Infinite Continue Coin does is

• remove the grind for extra lives outside of the SAB
• allow players to play solely SAB this month if they choose to ignore PvE

It is, like so many others, a pure convenience item.

You still have to actually play through the entire SAB yourself, exactly like you wouldst with normal Continue Coins.

I haven’t bought it yet as I m still using up Continue Coins I keep finding in PvE, but it’s good to know that I won’t have to grind for them if/when I run out. Secondly, I’ll probably buy it to support the SAB as an idea/concept and encourage ANet to continue to allow their devs and designers to be bold and creative.

If I remember correctly, he said that these were not American elections. And he went on to explain that the contestants might have a few dirty tricks up their sleeves.

I don’t remember him implying that players’ votes didn’t count; on the contrary.

Can we please have a sticky post that lists all achievement deadlines when that info is released?

Deadlines always seem to create confusion for players as currently there is no single one place to find the info.

Thank you.

This morning, the boyfriend and myself had a passionate discussing about GW2, like we do, and suddenly everything seemed so obvious.

The solution to all our woes (Achievement grind! RNG! Monthlies too easy bore-out! Monthlies too hard burn-out!) or How to shut up 90% of forum critics in 3 easy steps.
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Step 1: Reward players for looking at all the new content – at least once.

ANet is putting out new content for us and wants us to pay attention to it. This is fair enough, and it makes sense to motivate people to seek out the new stuff by tying achievements to it.

The current living story achievements are already pointing in that direction: tier 1 of pretty much any achievement is reached when you do something once: bash 1 pinata, light 1 effigy, win 1 game of Dragon Ball.

Let people admire the new content, free from any grind:

• Reward (special item like the dragon helmet) for players for achieving tier one (say, after between 1 and 5 actions) in all available achievements.

I know, too easy! So here comes step 2.
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Step 2: Reward players for grinding out more tiers by giving them the sodding weapon ticket

Yes, one guaranteed weapon ticket per player – if they go through all the achievements. They will suddenly feel a lot less grindy, because the holy grail of rewards is waiting on the other end. This will also end 90% of the I hate the RNG! threads.

Don’t have the time for 20 win in Dragon Ball? —> buy boxes
Don’t want to kill 250 holo creatures? --> buy boxes
Want more than 1 ticket? —> buy boxes
Want it right now? --> boy boxes

Plenty of people will still buy boxes, because they don’t have the time or patience.

• Reward (weapon ticket) for players who feel they want to complete all achievements and don’t mind the grind.

But what does “completing achievements” mean? How difficult should it be to get the weapon ticket?
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Step 3: Reward players for the amount they play – but reward them for doing things they like.

I’ve brought up the idea before for monthlies, but I might just as well apply it to Living Story achievements.

Say a specific Living Story achievement (or monthly…) has unlimited tiers, but each tier takes longer to complete than the last.
Tier 1: 1 action
Tier 2: 30 more actions
Tier 3: 90 more actions
Tier 4: 270 more actions

Now let’s say you need a total number of x achievement points in the Living Story chapter to get your weapon ticket. The fastest way to get them would be to work on all achievements in roughly equal amounts – achieve tier 4 (or whatever) in each category. OR you might pick the five things that you think are fun, and spend the entire month mainly playing Dragon Ball, and still accumulate achievement points towards your weapon ticket.

ANet would have complete control over how hard it would be to get the final reward by deciding how many total achievement points you need.

• Reward players for playing a lot, but let them choose where to put the focus – fully scalable with unlimited tiers (non-linear formula).

In case of monthlies, at the end of the month these counters would be reset and you could start over. And Living Story chapters only last roundabout a month anyway.
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TL;DR: This is what we could achieve by the three highlighted steps above:

• You hate achievement grinding but want the helmet/wings? You can have them, just appreciate the work that went into the new content at least once.
• You hate RNG and want a guaranteed weapon ticket? Work for it.
• You want more/faster tickets? Give ANet money.
• You hate Dragon Ball? Do something else instead, you’ll still get achievement points!
• You run out of things to do too quickly? There’s more tiers for you now!

Everybody wins.

… , for me, is the Consortium Dolyak.

It was always the last one standing when attacked by mobs.

Good, focused fighter. Excellent work ethics.

Well done, Dolyak.

Hi guys! There has been some discussion about whips as a possible new weapon type in various sub forums and other threads such as “which weapon types would you andd and why?”
But surely whips deserve a thread of its own!
(I know of the theard in the ranger subforum, but but but… other classes want whips too.)

Here’s my thoughts (this is just me dreaming up something I would love to be able to play with):

Whips (in real life) can be used with main hand, off hand and dual-wielded. Whips can be used for noise, damage, and control (i.e. wrap an item or person).

Main hand: (mainly) damage
- Smack (moderate damage)
- Slice (less damage + bleed)
- Knock down (least damage + knock + cripple)

Off-hand: control
- Wrap (immobilize)
- Pull

Disclaimer: most skills do more than just 1 or 2 things at a time, but I wanted to keep the above list simple. But there is a lot of room to be creative with additional conditions for the class-based skills…

Classes who can use the whip - What I think

Ranger: off-hand
Excuse: pet control, “beastmaster style”
Enhancing the axe or sword in main hand.

Thief: off-hand
Excuse: catburglar, “catwoman style”
Enhancing dagger or sword in main hand.

Engineer: damage
Excuse: non-magical ranged weapon (short range), adventuring “Indy style”
An alternative to the main hand pistol skills, combines with off-hand pistol or shield.

Necromancer: dual-wield
Excuse: minion control, “evil dominator style”
Dual whips will make the necro look like a total boss.

Total combinations overview (I think they all work):
Axe + Whip (Ranger, Necromancer)
Sword + Whip (Ranger)
Dagger + Whip (Thief, Necromancer)
Sword + Whip (Thief)
Pistol + Whip (Thief)
Whip + Pistol (Engineer)
Whip + Shield (Engineer)
Whip + Whip (Necromancer)
Whip + Dagger (Necromancer)
Scepter + Whip (Necromancer)
Whip + Focus (Necromancer)
Whip +Warhorn (Necromancer)

Classes who can use the whip - What others think

I also hear people want the whip for Warriors, Mesmers and Elementalists. I’m not personally a fan of these combinations so this is not a priority to me, but nobody should feel left out so early in the discussion, so here goes:

Warrior: off-hand
Excuse: “gladiator style”. I don’t see any warrior trading their high damage weapon for a whip, but I guess they could use it as an alternative to the warhorn / shield if they would prefer some control skills over boons / protection.

Elementalist: I have no idea
I have never played an elementalist so I really don’t know. My personal opinion is that whips are non-magical weapons; or if you would like a “magical whip” instead that’s already in the game (lightning whip), or could be, as previously suggested, a scepter skin which would automatically be available to elementalists.

Mesmer: I have no idea
I haven’t spent enough time playing my mesmer either to really have an opinion outside of that I don’t really see how a whip would suit the otherwise posh and elusive style of a mesmer. But: if it was a scepter skin would automatically be available to mesmers (same as with eles and necros).

Related discussions in other subforums:
Rangers – Whip mainhand
Southsun – Consortium Whip
General Discussion – if you could add any weapon