Guild Wars 2

It appears the 64 bit ‘installer’ is not an installer, but is the 64 bit version’s bootstrapper which automatically downloads the game into it’s current directory. : / Would be nice for instructions. It also probably won’t make shortcuts so you have to do that manually too.

The game does not depend on any other installations, so if you get rid of the original folder, the game will still work from any new folder just fine.

Also, this game shouldn’t be able to update itself (without admin elevation) if it is installed in one of the protected program files folder, so it probably won’t work well in that folder and is best to place it in an unrestricted folder.

If you need to remove something from the program files folder, you need to login using a administrator account, if you still can’t do that, then your windows folder permissions may be messed up.

Brahm is going to be so mad. I think he could kill a dormant dragon with how mad he is going to be… He already hates the commander…

Ayrilana.1396:

Fiddlestyx.9714:

I don’t really think this is about players not having money for it. It’s about the discrepancy between light/heavy and medium. Why should it cost more for a medium armored character to get geared? Aren’t we all supposed to be on a level playing field.

Have you calculated the actual cost differences? Not saying they’re the same but I’ve yet to see anyone in any of these threads to do a cost comparison.

A certain type of item makes it very easy to compile this data if you look at certain sites.
http://www.gw2spidy.com/search/of%20knight%27s/2?rarity_filter=5&min_level=&max_level=
http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/2796
http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/1956
http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/1099

Did you notice the difference in leather consumption between medium and heavy armor is 78 vs 60 pieces of Cured Hardened Leather Squares?
I guess our armor are mostly made of patches…

Ascended price differences are nastier, Even though they don’t use t6 leather materials.

Sartharina.3542:

There are three major problems I see with the JP:
1. Geometric Disconnect – What you see is not what you get. There are visible ledges that punt you off, and slopes that don’t. People keep comparing this to SAB tribulation mode – but from what I’ve seen of that (I ran all of world 1 tribulation mode, but world 2’s length put me off), at least SAB has clean jumps (Aside from “GOTCHA” traps) – Every point you can stand on is flat, and jumps that require awkward positioning have a bevel indicating such. To get through Chalice of Tears, you have to use map-breaking jump techniques.

Anet loves their dirty ledges. Those ledges that look legit, but fling you off if you dare land on them. Also, the ledges, where you can land on them fine, but if you dare try to walk up them or you land on them with any kind of horizontal momentum, you will suddenly be flung in the downwards direction and start sliding uncontrollably.

The worst part is Anet, just loves to use these dirty ledges to create difficulty. SAB’s visual design pre-empted such ledges. But if you look in the silverwastes, that one kitten upwards tightrope climb (Gold badge #30) (I did that one by doing a bunch of hops up the rope making sure to stop horizontal movement before landing)… they seem to do it on purpose, use some of the shoddiest parts of their movement mechanics to make something ‘hard’.

Then there are the ledges that are so thing that you slide off, unless you keep on moving ‘up’ them (or against the wall) after you have landed on them. That is the opposite to the ledges that fling you off when you walk on them, and is just one more piece of trial and error to get through.

And against it all, the slope going up to the wyvern cliffs in the verdant brink map, is so steep that if I saw it in a jumping puzzle it would clearly be an invalid surface to land, on. But for this one instance, it is rock solid ground to move and bunny hop on all day long, no sliding or getting flung off at all.

Anet’s player movement and physics systems is just so… so bi-polar. You first have to meet every single platform and shake hands, then you have to ask them how they are and bring up some small talk to judge how they feel. Then you have to have them introduce you to their family (the walls that they attach to). Finally after learning about them and their temperament and family, then you can proceed to cross them.
There is just so much complexity to have to consider for each and every ledge you stand on, it seems so, so, silly.

Eh, don’t mind me just ranting on GW2 terrain geometry.

Once you understand the personality of all the parts of the jumping puzzle, it ain’t too bad (especially with the checkpoints). Not that you won’t go flying off the edge a lot for one random reason or another.

If the skirmishes are the only source of points, then
4,3,2
3,2,1
2,1,0
Each and all will results in the same exact placement results all the time. The differential between scores are the same in each situation, and the differentials in score is what determines 1st 2nd and 3rd. It has psychological differences, but the are in reality the same.

If Anet is saying that the skirmishes will keep scores closer together, I would have to suppose they have run scoring simulations on historical data to prove it factual? I dunno, but they should be able to easily do that if they keep the per tick scores.

This score systems means, that blowing out a two hour period, having a massive point differential for two hours doesn’t mean as much as having lower point differentials spread across the whole day. So in theory:

Having +1 War Score differential (between 1st and 2nd) over 2 hours (maybe during your server’s prime time) will end with you having +1 Victory point (over 2nd place). If for another two hours (say your server’s off time) you have a war score differential of -150 between first and second (ignore 3rd place in this example they are doing poorly :p) You will have a victory point differential of -1 between 2nd and first. Combined you have a victory point difference of 0.

Where as the old scoring system if you have +1 over 2 hours gives you +8 overall and then -150 over 2 hours gives you -12000 or -11991 difference between the two servers. The new point system means you are +0 overall. So being blown out for 2 hours doesn’t doom the match.

Blowouts occur because the teams are imbalanced. With the old system Blowouts are also the most influential in determining point spread and victory. So the most influential times where the most imbalanced times. This new system stops that.

You guys have moved gliders from server-side to client side and allowed client prediction for movement so that is great. Now that that is done, can you guys look into and possibly eliminating (and providing an option for) the minimum deployment time, or undeploy and re-deploy delay whichever exists (they don’t so just talking about minimum deployment)? Without the server lag, and the automatic deploy when holding the spacebar, the minimum glide/debouncing of the spacebar is really unnecessary I feel that it simply delays the stopping/restarting gliding and makes the experience of controlling your descent or quickly canceling unintended deployments unnecessarily clumsy.

Blue Hare.8612:

On the functionality part, I would like to be able to dive with my glider. Now if I want to lose altitude I have to turn off the glider and open it again later, sure it works but it feels weird. No idea how that could be implemented tho, might need another key, since forward and back are for lean techniques.

On top of that, if the previous can be done, can we have an option for hold to glide on the jump button so that diving (intentional falling) can be done by smoothly pulsing the spacebar instead of frantically tapping the spacebar in quick succession (and then add separate bind for toggle/holding glide for when we are feeling lazy).

Thanks

The Greyhawk.9107:

PseudoNewb.5468:

Inflation hurts the rich and helps the poor. So deflation is probably the opposite of that?

How do you figure? I’ve never seen inflation as any benefit to those with lower income.

Well the assumption, in my statement, is that inflation is caused by increased money in general including wages across the board. Say someone has $500 saved vs $10 saved and average income was $1. Say suddenly inflation x 100 occurs. then, Still they have $500 saved vs $10 saved and now income is $100. The gap between people seems much smaller now. In general inflation moves to flatten savings amounts.

Of course inflation, and massive inflation usually occurs with other server problems in economies, which could be much worse for people with low income. Such problems as unemployment. etc… But if inflation existed by itself, its direct affects would only be on people with large currency savings.

In an MMO someone can survive with 0 income of in game currency, so there is not much to talk about in socioeconomic issues etc… so I am just coming from a numbers based perspective.

Of course most people invest instead of having cash on hand (leveraging items in the trading post)… so that is something else too that I should probably considered before I opened my mouth.

Inflation hurts the rich more than the poor (% wise). So deflation is probably the opposite of that?

It is probably true. Depends on how the deflation is occurring. How much has income been impacted? Lowered incomes makes the value gap between players wider.

Well for what it is worth, the gem to gold ratio seems to follow gem demand and gold supply fairly normally. When there is a gemstore promotion, gems rise in demand and value because people need the gems to make purchases and claim the discounts or desired cosmetic. As gold has progressively gotten easier to obtain in the past few years gold has lost it’s value compared to gems in step. Since HoT’s constriction/sinking of gold supply, gems have fallen in value vs gold. Seems reasonable to me.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

According to the Anet version of its workings, if there is an abundance of gems in the world, then the gold to gems cost will be lower. If there is a low amount of gems available then demand is higher than the supply so the gold to gems cost will be higher.
This hits a number of problems, one being that Anet would never let the amount of gems get low in any shape or form as it would affect their ability to make real cash from selling gems to players via credit card.
This then highlights another problem, if Anet would never limit the amount of gems in circulation, then how come over the past year and a half, 800 gems has gone from 64g for 800 to 150g for 800?

The gem exchange is based on the number of gems IN the exchange, rather than what is in player’s hands. But you can’t really think of the gem exchange containing gems either, rather it has a balance. You are right that the gem exchange likely has an ‘unlimited’ supply of gems.

I think the exchange works by having an internal balance of gems that could be positive or negative (mostly negative). Currently there is a very negative balance of gems in the gem exchange meaning that the exchange has produced more gems, than it has consumed. The exchange rate with gold is then based on this balance, and with a negative balance of gems, gems will exchange for more and more gold. The gem exchange works by discouraging the balance from moving. So the negative balance discourages further ‘loaning’ or creation of gems by making gems worth/cost/sell for more. The gem exchange isn’t like the trading post, because the gem exchange can contain a negative amount of gems while the trading post can’t have negative balance of objects.

The negative balance, means it takes more and more gold to get gems, and it means that it is more likely for people to buy gems so that they can get an increasing amount of gold from the exchange.’

Monk Tank.5897:

“Bad RNG” got buffed 50%

For ectos, I feel like I am seeing more occurrences of 0 AND more occurrences of 3 ectos per rare.

Maybe they increased randomness to make everybody paranoid…

I could use a guild to do HoT content etc… I won’t forgive you for throwing me off a cliff in a costume brawl once, but the new HoT content seems to demand more or less organized groups and guilds. I would appreciate an invite.

My tag… well it is right there on the left of this post. But I guess I will mail you in-game too.

Thanks.

Daroon.1736:

They also desperately need to add a known issues section so players know what problems/bugs they are aware of and which have been fixed but not mentioned in the patch notes.

For example: No rewards for VB completion when character has Tyria 100% – Updrafts in final story chapter not working etc etc Have these things been fixed? Are Anet aware of them and are working on it or do they not even know about these things?

Better communication needed all round.

They need to use a real bug tracker, so that when people submit bugs, they can check if it already is submitted. The bug forums just get so many reports, repeated reports, and spam that it is mostly useless to know if the developers actually know about all the bugs. It also is bad that the forum search is just broken, so the bug forum is just a mess.

flesh of the master seems to track horrors with death nova fine, but yeah, horrors that come from the rune of the litch put the count out of whack.

This is the first story where it actually feels like the pact commander is giving out the orders, choosing parties, etc. That’s great. I firmly believe that the complaints about other people that take the player character’s credit is certainly false. But I have the alternate believe that too much of the previous stories had other character’s holding the hand of the pact commander, leading them around. This story puts the pact commander in charge. Only thing I would have added, was that when brahm calls you commander commenting that it is the player’s rank, the player should be allowed to give brahm a smack to the head and tell everybody to never call you “boss” again. Well.. except taimi, because well, she’s cute enough to pull it off.

One thing that seems to disappoint me is that, there doesn’t seem to be any ambiguity to whether any sylvari are working for mordremoth. In some of the pre-launch lore discussion the idea that mordremoth can creep into the minds of sylvari and subtly affect their mind is thrown around. In the story, there are those who try to kill you on sight and there are sylvari that seem all but immune to his influence.

Even with Trahearn at the end. Trahearn goes from, I still have control of what I am saying, and instantly flips to, I am totally mordremoth incarnate so you have permission to kill me. I would have expected trahearn to go “wait, never mind I feel fine” when mordremoth overcomes him and have the commander go through a tense moment trying to read what is going on.

Did caithe take the egg due to prodding form mordremoth? Nah, it is explained off with being overzealous in her wild hunt.

Even canach is like, my resolve only gets stronger as we get closer and closer to mordremoth.

Most of the tension with the sylvari, is simply I don’t trust your, you can totally trust me! Or, oh well I guess we need someone to babysit you! It just seems to simplistic.

It seems that mordremoth’s one and only mind trick is to torment his opponents into submission. Which is kinda sad for an elder dragon of mind. To only have one methods of assault.

But speaking of which, little thing… WTF did mordremoth torment zojja with? If you rescue her in consciousnesses, she asks about and receives an answer about taimi three full times before coming to her senses…

I went to the auric basin portal and was ask to download the files, when i confirmed i was placed on the wrong side of the portal and outside of the verdant brink level.

Your link is down.
GW2 streams are always available on demand at twitch fyi, http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/20972084.

I watch the action camera portion. Looks awesome. But one suggestion.

Can we have a snap ground target to hard (right click) locks only mode? So that instead of using yet another button to toggle snap ground target, we can simply use the hard lock and have snap ground target only work with that? In this case auto targets will not have ground target snap, so we can lead our ground targets as long as we do not have a hard lock.

PopeUrban.2578:

I honestly don’t see the nightmare court turning to Mordy. The entire ethos Faolain ascribes to is one of self determination. Mordy, just like the pale tree, is a force that claims to know what’s best for sylvari and denies them true free will.

See, both Mordy and the Pale Tree teach that all sylvari have a sort of innate destiny and it’s their duty to persue that destiny.

Faolain and the nightmare court hold to the philosophy that sylvari should determine for themselves their destiny by exploring all the facets of their being.

I dunno, I think/theorize:

The nigthmare court won’t “work” for Mordremoth, but it doesn’t mean they won’t do things that help Mordremoth.

It is free will that allowed Mordremoth to infiltrate the minds of Scarlet and Aerin. They wanted to be independent, but, as it seems, Sylvari may not be capable of independence, as long as Mordremoth lives. Mordremoth hides in the Syvari’s free will. When the Pale Tree guides the Sylvari to serve Ventari’s teaching, she pulls them away from free will. That guidance is the Pale Tree’s protection. The dream gives each Sylvari an identity before they can form an ‘independent’ one which will most certainly be one susceptible to become servant’s to Mordremoth.

Mordrem guards are Sylvari that willing serve the dragon, who follow the ‘destiny’ of Mordremoth. But Scarlet (maybe Aerin), clearly did not initially willingly server and are clearly not Mordrem Guard. The Mordrem guard are powerful, but they know who they server. Sylvari who reject Mordremoth, on the other hand, may not want to serve, but it is impossible to know if any ideas they have come up with will unknowingly help Mordremoth. If that last though they had was from free will, or an idea implanted by the dragon.

Mordremoth is a dragon of mind. It may easily force it’s way to break the will of some Sylvari to convert them to the Mordrem Guard. But it has shown that it can work in more subversive ways. Possibly to push even it’s enemies to do it’s own bidding.

Season 2 may not be a full sized expansion, but it is at least story based DLC. It is very different than the cosmetic or booster stuff the gem store normally holds, so thinking of it the same as all of the other gem store stuff, it not being honest about the nature of Season 2. I believe that Season 2 should be considered a mini expansion due to it having additional story and game play elements in it.

A player can play Season 2 without unlocking it by playing inside a Season 2 instance created by someone else. But this does not mean that the story and game play content are free. It just means that the content is behind a sort of soft paywall. One that can be somewhat subverted. It is still however something someone had to have paid for, especially if one doesn’t know people who got it for free.

Of course in the context of Mike O’Brien’s statements he does say “What should you have to already own so that you are allowed to buy the new expansion pack?” It is true that you don’t have to own Season 2 to buy the latest expansion pack, so there is only one thing to buy if you want the latest expansion pack.

He, however, also provides a question prospective players could ask, “Should I buy the base game and also every single expansion?” The answer to this question is not, “there is only one thing to buy.” The answer to this second question is you buy HOT, and you can optionally buy Season 2 to get the bridge content between the original and expansion story.

My biggest problem is Mike O’Brien talks about all of the content you get with a single purchase. By saying “there is just one thing to buy” he implies that buying HOT gives you the complete experience. He, however, ignores the fact that even after streamlining the buying process, there is still this thing called Season 2 and that buying HOT leaves out that portion of the content. He emphasizes what is included in the purchase price without mentioning the thing that is left out, and can be purchased separately.

Now you did catch me. He doesn’t have a direct lie. But he dances around how much content they released, and how they simplified purchasing without mentioning Season 2. Of course they wouldn’t want to mention Season 2 as a complicating factor to your purchase decision when they talk about how simple buying in is. And they wouldn’t want to mention how there is additional paid content in addition to the past and future ‘free’ (included in base price) content they release.

Season 2 is just such a little nagging counterpoint to everything he says in that announcement that it feel less than honest. I guess they always want to only talk about the good. It is marketing. It is to be expected.

eisberg.2379:

PseudoNewb.5468:

Is false.
Sorry to call out on this. But Anet shouldn’t mis-represent things…

There is also Season 2 to buy, so you can buy. HOT, then, if you want, you can buy Season 2. 2 things to buy, not one.

Am I being unreasonable in saying that this statement is false?

Source for your quote in your title? Your whole thread rests on this very fact, so you need to provide the source of the said quote.

Mike O’Brien @PAX Prime 2015
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/13454741?t=22m52s

Is false.
Sorry to call out on this. But Anet shouldn’t mis-represent things…

There is also Season 2 to buy, so you can buy. HOT, then, if you want, you can buy Season 2. 2 things to buy, not one.

Am I being unreasonable in saying that this statement is false?

YOUNGaz.5690:

daredevil is a real word and was long before the comic book hero. Evel Knievel was a daredevil. It wasn’t named after the marvel hero

But Evel Knievel was a person who used a motorcycle to perform deadly stunts to impress an audience. That kind of daredevil has a very high level conceptual relationship to the specialization of being daring. While Daredevil, the marvel hero embodies several aspects of the class’ abilities.

Menadena.7482:

Whether people hate them or not on others was not what I asked, read the OP again. It comes down to 2 observations if people will not do so:

1) when black wings were introduced they were everywhere

2) people have been asking for white wings on the forums ever since

So again, given (1) and (2) why did we see lots of the black wings right after release but almost no white ones?

Because Arena Net screwed with how they released white wings. They made it available for a single day a while back so that many people missed them, and now, there really isn’t all that much interest in it anymore. It isn’t new and shiny anymore.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/white-feather-wings-gallant-weapon-set-and-black-lion-chest-update-in-the-gem-store/

It is an interesting proposition. Instead of just a few pieces, If it could be done for every armor piece (without needing a massive amount of manual tuning to fix clipping issues), then the norn, human, sylvari races, could have nearly 2x as many pieces to mix and match and try making interesting combinations with. Charr and asura are unisex in most armour, so there are not many things to be gained for them…

There are of course things to consider about the technology Arena Net uses to put clothes on the players. Namely, it seems to be very incapable of handing varying body sizes and types very well without someone manually ensuring it fits for all body types. I hear a bunch of clipping issues and complaints about this and that about clothes not fitting. It seems like the technology itself is a limiting factor.

Consume conditions, removes conditions so I can’t transfer them. But gives conditions so I can’t cleanse them. Uhm…

I have a few questions about mesmer mantras.

Does Harmonious Mantras retain the extra 3rd readied mantra when you are downed. In the current live build, the 3rd activation is lost when you go down, but nobody has ever indicated if this was a bug or intentional when it was reported in the bug forum.

It looks like Mantra Master is both gone, and not made baseline. Is that correct?

Zaklex.6308:

I think you’ll be surprised at just how many spirit shards you have."

So is Anet saying we will get more shards that we are thinking… ?

Sounds like to me, they are going to do this. Refund all skill points spent on utilities (and possibly refund currencies spent on traits). Convert the final amount to shards straight up. Done.

Any skill points received from leveling and skill challenges from before the change will simply be considered eligible for conversion to shards as a bonus to people playing before the conversion. Hero Challenges and Levels done in the future will then only grant hero points.
If this is the case then each character can get the equivalent of 202 + 76 possible bonus shards from the respective activities that will no longer give shards in the future.

So we potentially will have 278 more shards per character than we might think right now.

This makes sense to me, because it is always easier to give extra than to make some convoluted set of rules that can take something away from people.

When Anet change refinement ratios, they don’t retroactively re-adjust people’s quantities of refined materials to reflect it’s new cost, they just let them keep the materials made at the lower costs as a bonus. The same philosophy should be used for this transition.

If this is the case, then farming skill challenges at this time to unlock both the future hero points and get a bonus shard could be a thing you would want to do. But…. you only need 65 Skill challenges for the foreseeable future… and it is really, much easier to farm scrolls than skill challenges anyways.

I am just speculating, so don’t let my purely unsubstantiated speculations alter how you play the game. (But then again farming skill challenges for speculation over extra shards wouldn’t be as bad as that beta portal thing).

Ayrilana.1396:

Skill points, regardless of the sources, are converted to shards.

Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge.

I would like to point out that the old article does put a stipulation on shard conversion based on its sources, but you claim it is regardless of the source.
The stipulation of “in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges” seems to be very problematic to implement, so I hope Anet simply removes it like you suggest and gives everyone bonus shards.

Good thing that Anet is toying with the condition nullification boon, which is much more useful than cleanses when there is a constant stream of conditions coming in. Combined with a cleanse the condition nullification will certainly help a lot against heavy condition pressure including immobilize.

I guess I can live with death nova and training of the master being mutually exclusive. I guess Anet wants to better control how much damage you can stack up (although broken AI already breaks any damage you are supposed to do). But I do have one comment. Do we lose the Minion Master trait? 20% reduction on minion cooldowns. Is cooldowns being reduced by 20% default? Reduced cooldowns is important for keeping minions up and doing damage. Not being able to pick up the cooldown reduction would be disappointing.

Targuil.3741:

Now that health and traits are fixed in downed state, what downed state bugs will be discovered next?

inb4 Deathshroud jokes.

I wonder if they fixed the Mesmer’s Harmonious Mantras which also appears to deactivate when you enter the down state. (I don’t think they even fixed Harmonious Mantras deactivating when your level scaled (as the Necro’s traits suffered from too) so probably not).

I don’t see anything about it in the patch notes, but it seems to be a similar issue to Necro’s down state.

I think I understand what implementation you are asking for. When the camera gets up close to the character there is a character fade/transparency effect so that you can see through your character.

We should be able to adjust the parameters for that feature so that we can completely turn it off. With this, the first person camera can catch glimpses of the character, either when animation moves character parts in front of the camera, or when you aim the camera in a way that that forces parts of the character to be in front of it.

A simple implementation may be odd/broken for first person, because the game is pretty loose with how the camera is facing in relation to the character’s facing, but it would still be nice to simply be able to turn off the character transparency.

On the other hand, increasing the sensitivity of the fade effect would be nice, since this effect seems to be inconsistent with larger characters (or perhaps it has to do with specific race/size combinations). With some characters, my camera can be zoomed in all the way, and my character has >80% opacity even though they take up half the screen.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I mised the stream can someone explain the change?

Just FYI.

All of GW2’s twitch streams are immediately available on demand after streaming on Twitch TV. Go to the GW2 chanel’s profile page and select past broadcasts from the video list at the bottom. This stream is (at least currently) is found here.
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/627401366
If you can’t view Anet’s streams live, you can still get it on demand from their twitch channel (even before it is uploaded to youtube).

Aomine.5012:

All these anticipation leading to one big BOOM is really nice.

The problem is, you should be talking in the future tense. As is, season 2 is an incomplete story. And that is a fact. We can, so far, only judge is as an incomplete story, and incompleteness is not a good thing. It may be my opinion that Season 2 should have contained at least one complete story arc, instead of having only a few arcs that are all left unfinished till the expansion pack. But I think that my belief that something that is called a season should be considered a complete set and is something that should have some conclusion is rational.

I think A-net decided they where doing an X-pack sometime during the first half of season 2. The second half of season 2 started to go nowhere, fast, and now we know why. All of it is just set up for the HoT expansion pack instead of actually having its own independent story. The 2nd video at the end kinda annoyed me, because it reinforced the fact that the end of season 2, it’s payout, climax and conclusion, is to hype up the expansion pack.

I like the fight though, and stomping on the shadow of the dragon face while imbued with that fire was a cool touch. If only the shadow of the dragon meant something, other than I pop up out of nowhere to fight you for no discernable reason.

Replace Trahearne as pact Marshall, or replace Trahearne as the guy who moves the story along because Anet can’t figure out how to make the player character be central to the story. Trahearne has already been replaced by the B-Iconics in the 2nd role, and people are already getting annoyed at them. This role doesn’t just support the bridge, they are the support, structure, and roadtop, while the player character is just a car driving along it.

Tyloric.7520:

I don’t want Trahearne replaced, just his voice actor. The guy has no sense of urgency or personality when reciting his lines.

But… that IS Trahearne’s personality. If the lines where overacted, then it would be contrary to his character. Trahearne’s voice is subdued and cold at time. He acting is consistent and has variance for the situation. The voicework appropriately moves between Trahearne’s range from bored to slightly agitated in the right situations.

Twitch TV seems to automatically create VoD (videos on demand) of everything if the streamer allows it.
GW2 channel is set up to allow VoDs, so it is already there
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/profile/past_broadcasts
Original broadcast:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/5954011
Apparently they re-broadcasted it so you can see the original live or an edited version:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/615524086

So does the double exp affect personal story/chest EXP rewards? I wonder if the game is freaking out when any story reward is accepted during the double EXP time.

Huh, so it is tied to accepting Point of No Return rewards? If it is, I think it is causing the whole map’s gamestate to get corrupted and everybody on the map to crash and roll back.
I suspect it has something to do with the video item reward, that probably isn’t supposed to drop after the PAX event.
So apparently it is actually happening for ANY rewards screens (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bug-Personal-story-Armor-Guard-disconnects/first#post4720968).

Andraus.3874:

Some type of major issue going on. Lots of posts like this are piling up but it’s a bigger thing than just this point of no return reward. It’s happening across most maps.

Unfortunately if it is indeed connected to the reward, it is also possible to change maps before accepting the reward. And if especially malicious players have caught on…

My problem with season 2 is a complete lack of agency, for the player character and the player. I think Season 2 failed and is worse than the personal story and even season 1.

Season one, no matter how bad you believe it was actually has proper objectives and resolutions throughout the story. Destroy the molten facility, disrupt the aether blades (multiple times), destroy the tower of nightmares, kill scarlet. These are all things you are introduced to, that you were given the context and drives what you are doing in the game. It gave the player agency.

In season two there are ‘conclusions’. You gain more support to fight Mordremoth, you kill a few powerful minions (bosses), and you kill the shadow of the dragon. You also discover a revelation about sylvari.
Rallying support, and the Sylvari revelation is not really a resolution, they are building blocks for future content. A small step on the way to something supposedly bigger.

They Sylvari revelation isn’t even something that was on the radar, action wise for you character. It wasn’t something the player was looking into or taking actions towards. You were using the memory seeds to find the egg, not to investigate Sylvari history. That is pretty much how the whole season flowed, you are doing one thing, but get interrupted by something even more important.

Killing the minions and shadow are the closest thing that we get to a accomplishing something meaningful, but they are not developed. Instead of writing a compelling narrative for the shadow of the dragon and give it importance so that the player character can drive the narrative of defeating it, it is just shoved to the side so that anet can go, hey look, glint, forgotten, sylvari and mordremoth, hey look! “Heart of Thorns”. LOOK, Anet… The shadow of the dragon is your season finale boss… we use an item of extraordinary value and significance to kill it… but as far as we know, it is just on champion in hundreds that are ready to replace it.

Most of the minions only show up to be killed, with the shadow showing up once to say hi, and once more to die. We never set out to kill these things, we barely understand if they are anything special. They aren’t even connected to the story in any way, they are just randomly appearing obstacles. The player character just stumbles on them, and their entire purpose is to provide some sort of gameplay as a boss battle.

In season 2 there is no context or agency. We don’t really ever know why we are doing anything. You feel like you are being LEAD to do things, being told to do things. You feel like the player character is reactionary and dependent on other characters to drive the story instead of the player character. It is one thing to be unable to voice the player character, it is another thing to make the player character a complete bystander by having their actions be dictated by someone else. In the end of season 2 we are wildly chasing after some stupid egg, because we are told it is important, and that we must have it, but we barely know why it is important and how it helps.

All of this leads to a whole host of problems. Everything is a cliffhanger, because we never have anything course of action to stand on. The most important character, the player character, is turned into a bystander by not having any sense of self motivation to drive action. There is nothing to pace or make cohesive because there is nothing to unify any of the actions. And worst yet, the story and gameplay separate and become distinct parts.

Some people might call season 1s story terrible, but it was a had a complete story arc about meeting, fighting, and killing scarlet. Season 2 may be miles better at building and using lore, characters, and the world, but season 2 is not a complete story. It lacks the build up to a final battle and conclusion. Season 1 closed with Lions Arch is being attacked and we help end it in a dramatic boss battle conclusion. Season 2 closes with, why are we chasing an egg? and, here is a very significant revelation, but that is for the future.

I consider the player character’s, agency and proactiveness in a story to be paramount in a video game. It bring the player into the narrative and is what makes videogames distinct as a medium. It the foundation. Season 2s writing may do a lot of other narrative things better, but it fails on what makes a good videogame.
From this perspective I would rate.
Personal Story B-
Season 1 C
Season 2 D-
Too many times, season 2 just cuts the player out of narrative action. We are there just to do what we are told and beat on the occasional bosses. As a videogame narrative, this is too much of a failure to overlook and even being to consider the quality of other elements.

It is going in the wrong direction, lets Hope Hearth of Thorns, uses everything invested in Season 2 to bring things back around.

I imagine a story about a pact commander who gets too close to the new dragon’s shadow in an unfortunate accident with experimental technology in a ley line. The shadow of the dragon is hinted at in the first cutscene where we see into the “Eternal alchemy.” We eventually learn that the shadow is a way for Mordremoth’s corruption to expand beyond the confines of the it’s domain, to both break through the shield of the dream for sylvari and to influence other’s who have no innate connection to the dragon. The shadow then proves itself to be an enigma for the pact commander throughout season 2. Tormenting the mind and dreams as Mordremoth’s corruption is purported to do. If the shadow of the dragon was maintained as a primary force assailing the player character. If, by killing the shadow, meant the mind of the pact commander is saved, and there is hope that the dream can live another day to continue to shield the minds of the sylvari determined to stay free. Then, then this final episode would have been a great end point to the season.

Instead we kill this thing we barely even understood why we should have feared it. Why was it so important to be defeated? Why is it the final boss? We just don’t quite know. Season 2 suffered from too much attention paid to everything in the expanded world and story, and not enough development on what is immediately in front of us. And for everything else that was good about it. It’s lack of immediacy in any of it’s plot and resolutions is disappointing.

The greater plot development is great. But, despite what the assistant game director said in the recent POI. The episodes don’t stand on their own. The entire season doesn’t stand on it’s own. It stands on the future promise of a great story, while itself, being incomplete and fragmented. Its only purpose is to fill the gap between Season 1 and Heart of Thorns.

That is my opinion, and this is my best effort in describing my feelings on it.
Point of No Resolution.

Season 2… Was less successful at being a season than Season 1. Season 2 simply doesn’t work on it’s own. It has nothing to claim of it’s own. It keeps nothing for itself, everything it starts is shoved off for Hearth of Thorns. Everything else in the story is based off of stuff that has been around for a long time.

While integrating the past and future is great for a continuing chain of stories and episodes, this season, itself, has no value or story of it’s own. There are very few and very flimsy victories to be won. Everything is building up to something, but that something is for another time and place.

Point of no resolution is absolutely the best way to phrase this season’s shortcomings. Episodes that are simply chunks of stories awkwardly split along what is convenient for the production team. No real rhyme or rhythm to what plot points get addressed and how it should lay out. Nothing melds your series of actions together, it is all just a bunch of different threads to be addressed in the future, that pull you from one random location to another with no meaningful short term conclusions.

Overall, Season 2 may pay out (if you think THE revelation is pay off), but it fails to actually have a complete story of it’s own. Lets look at the final boss, this is the final encounter of the season and should cap off and conclude the major plot points of the season. Actually lets look at Season 1 first. We learn that Scarlet ties everything together and we defeat her. Direct, clean and maybe unsophisticated. We resolve Scarlet’s line by killing her. That is a conclusion, but we also have the revelation of the dragon’s awakening. Classic example of how to finish something up but keep the broader story moving. Not innovative but satisfying. Sticking with a clear villain and a clear resolution, but as a continuing story, a major unresolved question in the background with the awakening of an unknown dragon.

Season 2, and the finale, the shadow of the dragon is defeated. But what is the shadow of the dragon. It seems to be one champion amongst many, and doesn’t seem to be very special, except that it has the shape of the dragon. It seems to be the champion behind the attack on the pale tree, but what exactly made it so special to be the lead on that attack, why was it able to hurt the pale tree in ways that seem beyond physical? We don’t know, we don’t learn anything about the shadow of the dragon. For that reason, killing it seems like just killing another one of Mordremeoths champions. Just another bump on the road. Killing it, was unrewarding.

To Sylvari PC’s the shadow is of greater importance as it is the representation of the Sylvari PC’s wyld hunt, but even then it’s influence on the current story is hard to discern.

But, it seems like it should be something more important. It nearly killed the pale tree. You required the use a torch emitting pure magic, a relic of magic unlike anything else in the world, to keep it down and finally finish it off. Killing the shadow seems like it should be something important, it should be some sort of triumph over the overwhelming force of Mordremoth, but it just falls flat. The shadow appears twice, once to say hi, and once to die. Perhaps, in the future, we will learn the significance of the shadow of the dragon. If we do, then that is much too late to give us satisfaction with Season 2’s ending.

Now that this revelation is out of the way, they can finally complete DE2.0 or whatever we call them now.

Just in case you missed it:

Not unsurprisingly, Canach will round them off.

I think it kinda reveals too much about how the future story will play out, but Canach now, presumably, has plot armor.

Bottom Left: Canach being threatened by an angry mob (along with Canach’s voice in video).
Top: “DE2.0” 6 members, all 5 current races represented.
Bottom Right: Close up of “DE2.0” member clearly showing Canach’s shield, pauldron, and sword.

Probably not common, but the VOED from the college of statics finds an egg that the asura Kozzak adopts. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shrieksy

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem are not the cliffhangers but the episodic structure. The episodic structure doesn’t work, ergo cliffhangers don’t work either.

To claim that the problem is because of the episodic structure, you would first have to show that GW2 Living Story has an episodic structure.

At this point I would not call the GW2 Living Story Season 2 to be episodic. They are simply delivering a non-episodic story in piecemeal. In my mind episodic means self contained plots in each episode, with larger plots being addressed throughout the season. Season 2 just doesn’t properly introduce, develop, and conclude the multiple plot lines to really have episodes.

And the worst part is that, right now, Caithe’s plot line is simply cut right in the middle, at the worst point, seemingly right between the build up and the climax. A Cliffhanger is something that occurs during the climax and just before resolution. Caithe’s story is just awkwardly cut into two pieces without much regard to why it should be split there. There is no tension or immediate threat, just an, oh well, I guess we have to stop for a while.

DaMunky.6302:

WATER BAKLOG
BURN DOWN BOTILNEK

It sounds like the Skritt have a plan to get this boat floating once it’s done?

I really don’t need to hear about backlogs and burn downs in my video games.

They seems to have an issue with voicework. Cutscenes have already been reduced a significant amount in Living World because they require voicework which can’t seem to get done.

Lets hope they realize a better way to tell the story without relying on resources that they have a tough time with.

And in my opinion Gate of Magumma, and especially this instance http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prosperity%27s_Mystery was simply horryfying to me… Well, I wasn’t running around in terror, but it was just a whole bunch of VO and then more text for dumping a truck load of info, and it got tedious fast.

In the last episode Rox has a VO describing the condition of the master of peace, who is literally 2 feet away from you and Marjory has a VO stating what a certain person just did a second ago. And a player’s logic response is… Well, that was redundant.

Not everything has to be put into words. This is a videogame, not a movie.

There are many expressed tenants to GW2 design and even more ideologies found within the game itself. The success of the open world bosses, and of difficult, objective based, open world content is one of the strongest points of the game in its current state. The stated objective of this proposal is to bring into systems and to involve Guilds in order to enhance this existing gameplay and hopefully bring it up to the next level. Accessibility is enhanced by including a guild rally system and a instance browser giving players the ability to review and join content that suits what they desire at the time. This also helps reinforce one’s ability to play as they desire. They can examine what guild is hosting an instance or examine the instances MOTD to determine if they will enjoy participating in an event with a specific coordinator. The other goal is to bring the games namesake squarely into focus. Allow guilds an environment to share their ideas and brand with the community at large.

Risks
Some parts of my suggestion are easier to implement than others. Some of them have precedence in game, but others are probably ridiculously hard. And, they are only ideas. I can’t provide evidence that these systems could and would work. I only offer this proposal as ideas that have NO professional or even experiential backing. I just think they might be cool. So not knowing how, and if any of the included proposal could be beneficial to the game is the risk.

And sorry.
Conciseness, is not something I do very well.

Guild right to command… within a guild instance. When a guild opens up an instance for itself, or to invite the community at large to participate. The primary intent for guild reserved slots in a guild instance is not only to benefit guild members, but also to allow the guild a reasonable population to set up strategic and command structures for the instance. Within a guild instance the coordinator, or the officer who ‘buys’ the instance will have the right to designate squad leaders and to enforce membership counts for squads to direct how players should be directing their attention. Individual squads can be structured by the guild or be backfilled by public slots. Public squads may be assigned to objectives or, areas where they should operate, and players in the squad will then be restricted to waypoints pertaining to the objective, and locations on the map around the squad’s objective or allowed areas. This would be handled much like instance restrictions, with red hashed out areas of the map, but failure to stay in an area will result in being force to rally at the appropriate waypoint instead of being kicked from the instance. Potentially there should be a way for the game to detect if a player is making their best effort to following their commander closely and for the guild to determine what, if any, kind of enforcement they will use to encourage players to stay in a squad. The intent of this system is to allow the guild some control of the strategic play and progression of the instance. This, not only allows the guild to control and direct content to their liking, but it also allows guilds to establish a brand and can be used to establish concrete ideology or quality with respect to how they want to play and interact with the community at large.

Instance and squad message of the day. A guild instance belongs to the guild, and to the selected commanders who want to lead the instance. To further the establishment of guild ownership and to provide alternate methods of communication beyond the often confusing and flooded map chat. Guild instance should provide the interface and or hud elements to allow guilds to relay information to the participants of the map. This can be anything from guild advertisements and guild branding to messages explaining on how they want to run the boss event, and instructions on event mechanics and class strategies. Sauad messages, given by squad commanders can contain the commander’s own flair or specific instructions about the events and strategies that the squad will participate in.

Guild standing and noteriety. This is the most vague discussion about functionality, just a bunch of random thoughts, but… Individual rewards will help encourage individuals to play, but a guild raid should be about enriching the guild as a whole and not just it’s individual members. Influence allows guilds to buy small things like banners and banquets or crafting stations. In WvW, guilds can claim structures. There is not much else that guilds can do to increase their notoriety in the game. By participating in and providing guild instances to the community, guilds should be rewarded with ways to enhance their standing and visibility in game. Perhaps there can be leaderboards and announcements based on what guilds are the most active in creating and completing boss instances. Perhaps they can receive currency and earn spots around the map to place banners representing their guild for extended periods of time. The banners can contain announcements from them. Instead of locking the banner to a specific server instance it could be made so that the banners exists to all players base on their home server, a guild required to purchase a spot for each home server. This would allow for guilds to build notoriety in specific servers and to provide some server identity for guilds, even if it is no longer mandated.

Guild instances. in addition to being able to summon bosses, server resources permitting, guilds should be given the opportunity to generate a clean instance of the boss containing map, that is very much like any other instance, except it only contains event pertaining to the boss, and must can only be entered through a separate for which the intent to participate in the boss event is clear. The instance will have strict time constraints depending on the event being summoned, and will be terminated on a strict schedule to allow the server resources to be reallocated to further guild instances or other parts of the game demanding more resources. The guild instance has a short warm up time in which normal play can occur, including material gathering and mob kills, however no dynamic events will occur on the map except for the events pertaining to the boss battle, if there are pre-events. There is existing precedence for this in, existing game code with the code that allowed Scarlet to attack specific maps and suppress all dynamic events except for the ones relating to the attack. After the warm up time (or pre-event completion if there are such events), all players will be forcefully teleported to a waypoint specifically selected for the intended boss. The boss sequence will then begin, and hopefully organized play will commence. After the event completes, or the event times out, the map will enter the cool down phase to allow players time for discussion or to do any of the regular things people do. This will run until the instance’s scheduled closure.

Guild rally. The current incarnation of taxiing is a work around using the LFG that was never designed specifically for taxiing. Yet this work around is one of the biggest successes of the tool for helping with organizing open world content. The guild rally is a system that, on the one hand, allows guilds to control participation in their instance and tailor the participation structure to their needs. The guild rally is an interface that allows guilds to reserve space in a guild instance for guild members, or for specific invitees by the event coordinator. The guild rally then allows guilds to open public slots for the instance. Potentially the guild rally can allow the guild to customize the maximum participants to at or below the customary map cap for the zone in question. This may be dependent on how it can affect server utilization and the needs to optimize player served per server resources. More importantly the guild rally is a system designed specifically to build upon the idea of taxiing and to build a specific interface designed specifically for this practice. Guild members can have a specific interface to join on a guild rally and hud elements, such as guild controlled versions of other event advertisements that Anet has used in the past. This hud element can show the current participation rate for the event and should entice guild members to join events that need more players. For everybody else, there can be specific NPCs placed throughout the cities that allow access to an instance browser (like the pvp browser) except with the specific intent to allow players to join in on a guild rally. These interfaces exists with one goal in mind. To gather players, who intend to participate into a single map where the focus will be to complete the goal.

PROPOSAL
Description
Guild (boss) rallies, a proposal to bring instanced and open world to a medium with extra emphasis on Guilds and community involvement.

Goal
The general idea is to leverage existing, previous and future living story, open world, world boss style content, but to expand in games UI, tools, and capabilities to enhance the ability to organize, increase accessibility, and bring a renewed focused on the guilds, of Guild Wars 2, to all players even lone wolfs.

Problems being addressed
This proposal is not so much to address existing issues but is more of a suggestion to leverage existing ideologies evidenced in the type of content currently being produced and to enhance such content so that players can have a richer experience playing in a massively multiplayer community. There are, however, some areas where the games seems to have shortcomings and that this proposal would need to address to become successful. Namely, the absence features to allow even the basics of finding and grouping with players in game. The lacking incentivisation and tools for community learning and sharing of gameplay and tactics (in game). To address the challenge of making guilds important and crucial to the game’s community as a whole, and not simply insular sub-communities within the game. Finally, a potential benefit on Anet’s server by allowing greater predictability on player movement and server capacity needs and by reducing the occurrences of ‘dead’ maps.

Proposed functionality
Expansion of the guild open world boss functionality to enhance player organization, participation, and community engagement. All proposed functionality in the proposal intends to expand upon this base idea. Guilds can currently trigger world bosses at any time in open world maps. Some community oriented guilds will use this feature to hold community organized ‘raid’ events. Along with guild started bosses, the standard boss rotation, is accompanied with the prevalent practice of taxing in people using the LFG tool to promote player population and participation at such events. The proposed functionality involves multiple parts and enhancements to create a cohesive system that works to expand on the aforementioned practices.