Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

I spent $60 on something the newbies are getting free. If you think that’s fair, you go right on supporting ANet as they keep kittening you.

You also spent $60 on something that new players could get for $50 a year or so later, and for $10 a year after that. Videogames depreciate, often fast. It’s preposterous to expect otherwise. Every player that buys Fallout 4 for XBone in the fall will be getting Fallout 3 for free, that doesn’t mean that people who bought Fallout 3 for full price have reason to be salty about it. They got the game they paid for and had years to play it before these new players are getting it, Bethesda owes them nothing more than that.

.

Every player? Or only the ones that didn’t had Fallout 3 already?

Was Fallot 4 announced as “you’ll need Fallout 3 to play Fallout 4” months ago?

If they make a Cantha expansion, will be free for new players, and 200$ for existing accounts (without additional slots, Deluxe pack will be 250$)

Greymelken.1892:

This is a community that decided it was appropriate to get up in arms about an april fools day joke that had our characters making airplane noises, and this was somehow bad because a single plane somewhere on the planet just happened to crash ‘recently’.

There is no pleasing people, and no matter what you give them, they will find something to complain about. Me? I complain about people complaining.

I’m from the region from where that plane took off. Several people from nearby cities were dead.

I welcome you to find my complains in this forum. Because there are none.

But I expressed my concerns with this issue.

Why are you assuming that I was not only complaining back then, but get up in arms about that thing, if is not true?

Putting all complains that happens over time in the same bag, as you’re doing, only serves one function. To divide the community between “we, the good ones” and “you, the whinny whinny complainers”

Nobody knows, but as ANet communication is….well, not the best, until someone confirms something we can guess that there will be not so much new areas.

The emphasis so far has been in telling us how crowded the new map will be, with 3 areas that are almost 3 different maps, so whatever size has the HoT map would count as three times the same area in core GW2.

This leads me to think that this new area(s) will be not very, very big, and not very numerous. I’d be surprised if there is more than one map, actually.

My guess, in PvE mode, is that there will be one single map, half the size of Queensdale or equivalent area, but that counts triple because the “areas” thing, so roughlt Queensdale and a half.

If I’m optimistic, I can go up to 2 maps, so if we count the triple area thing as true, we would get something the size of Orr.

With the little information available, and how they have been doing updates until now, I cannot be more optimistic than that.

I think that almost everyone can agree that yes, ANet developers/content creators/musicians/etc.. are people, and they sure work hard and are passioante about what they do.

But at some point in the ANet/NCsoft structure, there is someone, or some group of people that has not done their job, or that is actively working for throwing away the rest of ANet job.

Whoever has been thinking in those bundles, in the FAQ editing, in not being able to provide any single thing to existing accounts when linking HoT to them, in providing much more value to new, unknown customers than to people who has been giving support since pre-launch… whoever is that person or group, they have been responsible of throwing away the hard job of those people who feels hurt.

They have a better position than us to told that group that this have been enough. That they are passionate and they want to share their passion with players, not to dismiss players and insult them.

They can locate exactly which persons had this crazy ideas and told them how wrong they are.

We cannot know if it has been NCsoft management, or ANet sales, or Public Relationships, or investors or whatever name they have, but at some point, someone decided to do that FAQ edit, to told people during months to buy the game, to make a huge paywall, to not include enough slots and to give the core copy only if you’re not already a customer.

People at ANet can known exactly who are this people, and told them about our outrage, and about how their poor thinking is dismissing their work.

They can act to make ANet better, the ANet in which they deserve to work.

The sad part is that, from a current player point-of-view (that doubts to give away 60$), not only is not an expansion, but a barrier to core game.

Core game is now old gw2core+HoT, if you’re new, core game includes HoT.

If you’re not new, core game doesn’t include HoT, you’ve to spend 60$ (50 + additional slot for Revenant, as it will be the most typical case) or more.

So, ANet put a (high) pay barrier to veteran/current players in order for them to get in touch with the new players, who receive all the content.

Also, new players have the excellent opportunity to totally ignore the Scarlett mess, they get the best deal ever!!!!!!

Joking aside, the prices/bundle construction does little sense, and most people wonder what the hell were they thinking when decided this. They should know that this would cause, at least, some confussion.

It doesn’t make sense that they dropped this while they were showing some content on E3, this totally blocks whetever they were saying. The only way this weird bundles/prices would not block the content news would be that the content news announced Cantha being included in HoT. I can’t think on any other think with enough power to justify this packs.

So, we have people here confused about whoe xactly in ANet has lost their minds.

This assumes that, for example, I complained to Megaserver while it was reverse, megaserver was a change I welcomed, and the difference between how GW1 acted to veteran players when releasing expansions and how they act now is not a change I welcome.

Different people react differently to different things.

Terrahero.9358:

Guildwars 1 did NOT have a precedent of always giving a free character slot with it’s non-stand alone expansions.

The Campaigns added free character slots because they were stand alone. The Eye of the North was an expansion, was not stand alone and did not add a free character slot.

Only the stand alone products added character slots because if they didn’t, how could someone who only bought Nightfall play the game?

The stand-alone campaigns could be installed alone, which gave 4 slots, or be tied in a pre-existing campaign, giving +2 slots to that account, so you can try the two new professions available.

This way, existing costumers were happy to add the campaigns, because it made sense for them (for us). You could use your existing characters in that new lands, or start new characters there with the 2 slots.

Eye of the North didn’t add professions, and was a truly expansion instead of stand-alone. it has a price tag lower than the full campaigns, and for that price added an amount of content that looked fair for players at that time.

Now we have a weird thing, that is an expansion but adds professions, that requires the core game but really doesn’t require the core game because is included, but is not included if you already have it, and requires buy extra slots if your slots are full, and have a price similar to a full campaign instead of an expansion. And for what is seen, it doesn’t adds a lot of content.

Marketing, hype generation, costumer satisfaction and price structure clearly failed here.

The price is fair if you’re a new player.

Not even a character slot for $50 is insulting veteran players, who will need to spent more to be able to try new class.

Shadowly changing the FAQ to remove the “you’ll need core to play HoT” to a “core is included!” may even be illegal, they lied people who bought the game since the FAQ appeared until now.

AMAdictus.7245:

The issue here isn’t about the price really. The issue here is that the way that Anet is presenting this expansion is greatly catered towards new players that will buy the game after the HoT pre-purchase announcement.

For the price of 50$, they will get the expansion plus a FREE bonus which is the core game. The existing players however will get no bonus whatsoever but will also be paying the same price of 50$.

This is really unfair towards the existing players especially those that have been supporting them for years. They should really treat their playerbase equally.

For me that’s the point, also.

This price setup shows us that existing players are something ANet doesn’t care.

It would have been easy to think in something in the lines of “if you add the key to an existing GW2 account, you receive x extra character slots instead of a new copy of core”

so in this way, both new users and existing users get something besides the expansion, in the currect way, only new users have a (huge) bonus, also, new users will have -for the same tag price that 1st wave users- new zones in which existing users that doesn’t buy expansion aren’t allowed to go. It feels like a “hey sucker! I entered the game years later than you, so now you’ve to pay extra to get as many stuff as me!”

A Guild Zoo/Combat Arena, where you put several Champion-level monsters your guild has captured in PvE

Another note. I think Guild Halls should offer enough “space” (rooms, buildings, areas, landscapes… whatever) and functionality, to be useful for Roleplaying-focused Guilds.

This way, if it’s instanced, and people can be invited, it can improve the Roleplay possibilities for those inclined to it. If the GH is a huge wasteland that cannot be used until a ton of member-hours are dedicated in form of gold, influence or whatever, it may become useless for other than larger Guilds dedicated to WvWvW or whatever forms of gaining influence exists.

As commented before:

Guild Airships

Pros:

The concept is awesome.
It allows to introduce awesome airship GvG battles.
It exists in the current lore.

Cons:

It can be limited for small guilds.
It can detract Guild-less players from airship battles experience.

I think it can be tied with the Guild Islands in the Mists. The Guild has an island, small at first (or barely interesting), that can be connected, expanded (adding big floating rocks) and populated. An instance in the Mists, with the constructions the Guild can put (using a build queue, with resources added by guild members).

The island may have a port with a single small airship first. Every (small) airship may contain up to n guild members (5, for example).

If the Guild is big enough, the Island may start with more Airships, or a bigger Airship.

The Airships can go to explore or battle.

In explore mode, the airship navigates through the Mists, it needs a minimum crew of 2 (a Pilot and a Turret Crew). There are some missions, battle against pirates, defending locations, etc… this part can be expanded later.

In battle mode, the Airships participates in a GvG battle, (bigger airships can have more crew, like 20 for medium, or 50 for Big).

Both the islands and the airships may be customizable. Putting the Guild Emblem here and there, creating buildings and fortress like in the WvWvW, adding weapons and systems to the airships, etc etc.

I would not add nodes or other resource sources there, only the Guild-related merchants and access to the Guild Vault.

Retro.6831:

kitten.9065:

Retro.6831:

“Samurai” doesn’t work for the same reason; adding Japanese swords to the game means the other Solider professions are likely to get them and can fill that role much easier. Likewise with Barbarian / Berserker: the Warrior already possesses a lot of that archetype’s trademarks

Just wanted to add that dismissing a “class” because the weapon can be used by another class fails to understand how GW skill system works.

1. a “japanese sword” is a 2 handed sword which already exist in game, so yeah, warriors would use them (and guardians and rangers and mesmers) since they already do…

2. The weapon itself means nothing as the skills are what the determine the play style. Warrior GS vs Mesmer GS are two completely different weapons (melee vs ranged) they basically just share a skin.

You misunderstand; a “Samurai” class is basically a “Warrior with Japanese flavor”; even if there is a unique mechanic present, the two are incredibly similar. You make a point of referencing how different Warrior and Mesmer versions of Greatsword function, but that’s because the Warrior (heavily armored non-magical melee-centric class) and Mesmer (lightly armored magical ranged-centric class) are different as well. Samurai is just too similar to Warrior, and I haven’t seen any posts in this thread that suggest how they could be made different (and at that point, is it even worth calling it “Samurai” anymore?).

Well, as the class is based in “we need another heavy armor class”, I expect something similar, in looks, to already existing heavy classes. Nothin could prevent this Canthan Samurai to wear already existing skins for heavy armor, swords, etc…

The differences should come from play style, weapons available, elite skills, etc…

The first difference I can see is that Samurai wouldn’t wear shields, their defensive options need to focus in avoid being hit, ignore hits, reduce damage or similar tricks. It should be heavy, but somehow “agile”.

Unique mechanics can be present as fighting techniques, stances, or ancestors. Invoking ancestors could be a mechanic, different than current Guardian invocations. It could point to a “aggressive spirituality”, I invoke the ancestors of my family, who appear here, in full armour, ready to slash all of you.

Elite skills based on ancestor invocations could use some diversity. You invoke warriors, or healers, or ninjas, or mages. The weapon abilities could also use some difference, the same way sword skills in warrior and guardian are different.

Another vote for Canthan Samurai.

Sword, short sword, greatsword, longbow, yari (spear) or a more generic “polearm” (naginata-like).

Both sword and short sword may be off-hand.

Short sword and yari/naginata/polearm may be introduced to other classes.

Vayne.8563:

This is more akin to a health spa selling a membership, and you suddenly change the equipment in the spa.

The thing is, if you used your membership for a period of time and got something out of it, the law probably couldn’t do anything for you, even though I understand why you feel the way you do.

But it depends a lot of the changes, both their nature and the perceived impact.

If the spa is changing the receptionist, the way the lockers are handled and the brand of oil used in the massages, it’s unlikely that the Court would decide the changes are enough to make them refund you, or to force the previous receptionist to return.

Safari.3021:

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW

Guild halls? no. Guild Airships!!!!!!

GOAL OF PROPOSAL

To give the idea of guild halls more functionality than just a meeting place

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY

GvG airship battles with characters jumping accross to each other, Pirates of the carribean style, siege cannons blasting, mid flight battles through clouds, the epicness we all hoped for when we first saw airships in the trailer.

Upgrade and kit your Guild airship out with siege, repair crews, medical crews, pilots and the like to ready yourselves to set sail!

Take your guild on an airship journy through the mists to discover new undiscovered lands and dungeons! Explore the mysteries and dangers within as a guild group! Beware enemy guilds also discovering these pockets of reality!

Possibilities for expansion are pretty awesome.

ASSOCIATED RISKS

I might explode.

This is the most awesome proposal I’ve seen.

The Guild Endgame could be. Fund a Guild. Take a ship. Keep flying.

It’s so Firefly, and it resonates with Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, with the Minerva’s crew.

It’s something worth an expansion.

Proposal Overview

A competition system in which Guilds, and associations of Guilds, compete each other for certain goals, missions and objectives both in WvWvW and PvE maps.

Goal of Proposal

The goal is to allow smaller Guilds to associate versus bigger Guilds, and also to stablish competitions between Guilds, different than a GvG arena in which the only objective is to fight each other. Another goal is to stablish something similar to “Guild politics” in which involved players can play on long-term goals. A small Guild could opt to participate in a Alliance, and work towards that alliance’s objectives, and change the membership the next month or proposed period of time.

Another goal is to make a bridge between Guilds and Overall Narrative.

Proposal Functionality

There should be a cap number of members, for example 2 Big Guilds, or 3. Big Guilds could still form an alliance. There should be a UI managing automatic acceptance in alliances, and alliance membership should be public. 1 Guild = 1 Alliance. This could be similar to a LFG tool, Guild leaders could propose and post alliances, select from a menu of objective’s options, and select a NPC (from a list?) who patronize or represent the alliance. They also select a time limit to get the creation objectives (minimum # of members, minimum # of guild rank, minimum gold contribution, etc)

Other Guilds join, establishing a time in which their offer is valid. If objectives are get, the alliance is formed. Every Guild gets a message from the patron NPC, and a new set of objectives and missions are added to the daily/monthly (Alliance objectives), with corresponding AP. The selected NPC can dictate missions according to their nature (it can be member of an order, a Pact general, etc…), and missions and objectives can be tied to overall game narrative. Other options are objectives set by the game that are rewarded to the first alliance that accomplish them, so you are not directly fighting the other guilds, but competing in being the first to get there.

Finally, one of the objectives/missions could be a battle or series of battles in the GvG Arena, it could be a instance in an existing PvE or WvWvW map, with part of the UI dedicated to show possible battles and join.

An alliance that survives n months (a season? 3 months? a self-defined time?) may allow other NPC to join, or “improve” levels of the Alliance patrons, this Alliances can be part of the Narrative and affect or vote on future events.

Associated Risks

Infiltrators (which could be a feature, allowing some “realpolitik” making spies and sabotage coming from untrusted Guilds), complexity too high, could be exploited by 1-person Guilds.

I also think that some building and construction could take place in order to change Tyria without using only a clear path of destruction. Unless the intention is to play in a postapocalypse Tyria in the next years.

For example, we had the tower of nightmares in kessex hills (for those who spent some time there the 2 or 4 weeks it existed), destroying/changing some environment and then being destroyed itself.

With a “change without destroying everything” state of mind, we could have now a city/fortress in the ruins of the tower, using it’s base as the foundations of a new fortress, town, small city or whatever. It could be the starting point to a series of tunnels underground, the now destroyed roots of the towers , populated by weird creatures, but source of some unique reward (maybe a champion, a chain of events, a portal, an underground jump puzzle…). The fortress itself may be started by centaurs just after the destruction of the tower, in an effort to gain terrain while the humans were busy in L.A., the fortress may be taken and occupied by Pact forces as an event, or as a part of the Living Story. At the end, you have a unique city built upon the ruins of a big tree-like tower.

Lots of things, but basically, if thinking in a full expansion, sold at 20$ tag price for example, I’d like:

New zones, minimum 4 zones in size similar to the current ones. One of them a level 80 zone, other a starting area.

New race starting in that starting area, plus a city for that race (so, 5 zones if we count the new city).

A new personal history for that race.

A new General history, in Journal mode, similar to current LS, maybe at some point the new personal history and that new journal meet, in a similar way the missions in GW1’s Factions, etc

New armours, skins, weapons…. for all races

New enemies on that zones

New enemies from that zones “invading” current zones, maybe creating some events/hearts, or altering existing ones.

Features like “build your team”, a whole set of characters, including biconics, existing characters and new characters that are your allies appear as modificable, so you can alter their skins, some changes in looks, etc.. maybe some predefined sets of skills/weapons to able some change in playstile. Not as configurable as heroes in GW1, but something that allows to customize them in their apparitions in the Journal-related missions.

New skills may be nice, but probably a difficult thing to balance, and the level of almost-identical abilities that we had in GW1 was too much. But maybe 2-3 new abilities for every profession is safe, not all of them high-level abilities.

New dungeons in the new areas, for example 2.

Shanks.2907:

edit: Not sure if this is the overall suggestion though, OP said in each major thread but it sounds more like he’s talking about subforums.

If “major thread” is equal to subforum, then yes, the opening post has much more sense (to me). I was wondering what that major thread could be.

Zok.4956:

Randall.7306:

I’m waiting for my first child to be born next month

Then why are you posting here? In the months after the birth you will not have time to play GW2.

Just kidding.^^ I wish you and your new family the best.

It’s a good point, indeed. (and thanks!)

In the next months (year, maybe years), my interaction with the game will be basically to read things here or in the occasional article found in any gaming website, probably in the train in my way to home, or in the lunch time if things are getting quiet and boring at work.

Active playing (to any game) will be reduced to the minimum needed to help me distracting my mind for a short periods of time, unless we found that my daughter sleeps better (and quickly!) if there are cute Asurans jumping around in the screen.

Some communication can help people in this same situation to not feel totally disconnected to the community/game, I certainly will like to known what’s happening in the game, or around the game, or in the near future of the game.

Stuff like “we will add Cantha this night!” will be less exciting than “We are working in Cantha, check this early artwork!”, the less exciting will be to be checking the forums after some months of cleaning baby stuff and see a topic saying “what was the worst part of the Cantha Update past month?”

MMO communication has some particular qualities, IMHO. Developers are not expected to do the game and return home, but to work at a steady pace, doing new stuff/fixing things/developing story. In exchange, is expected that the players base keep growing, or at least that players keep playing and making purchases, cosmetic stuff, in-game items, expansions, etc…

This makes this relationship longer than the company-player relationship that a singleplayer game has, for example, I’m just there is no a crowded forum for Metal Gear Solid 2, or Uncharted. Communication should be in par of that particularity.

The two main intentions for communication here should be (always, IMHO), to gather information from the community, and to give information to this same community.

For the gather part, we can use the “freeform”, old-school, anarchic style of posting in forums (or blogs, reddit, etc), or any other structured way that ANet chooses to use, like the CDI

For the receiving part (as the players receiving info from ANet), we are limited to whatever ANet wants to give. The lasts months we’ve seen a “not to tell anything” policy. It seems weird, and probably it has reasons in favor of it, and also probably there are more groups other than ANet and the Players that actively impulse it (for example, distributor, or investors, or other obscure groups not seen by players).

From the player point of view, it depends mostly of the kind of player. Some people prefer to have information, some prefer to not have it, and some others don’t care. And either group can be divided by the amount and exact type of information we’re talking about.

I, for example, prefer to have some insight from ANet about what they are trying to accomplish, and what direction the game has. I don’t need exact dates, don’t even the exact year. Something like “we’re pointing to release new zones every year, our estimation right now is to deliver a new zone for each Season if Living Story, but it may change”.

More vagueness is acceptable, of course, but at some point, going so far in the vague direction will equal to say nothing.

Some players are adults, or at least growth people. I’m waiting for my first child to be born next month. I can handle that a new zone is not appearing in the vaguely promised time, or a new class, or race or expansion or weapon. And with communication, you can handle that by informing. Every x months (3, 6) just make the teams revise what hot topics were promised or appearing in informations, and check if the announcements need adjustments. “We said a new continent was in the works, is still in the works and it will not appear sooner than LS4, even LS4 is an roughly estimation date because there is some discussion going yet”

It’s far more better than nothing (for me, at least). It may lead to some rage and disappointments, but probably no more than saying nothing during an entire year.

nodachi != katana

I like character and story development, as a side effect of my RPG and LARP experiences, both in the player side and the GM and ‘writer’ side.

The ‘writer’ was to think and write around 60 characters for a LARP, their interactions, backstory and possible ramifications while in game, for 60 players, taking in consideration that all of them were players, we had only 3 or 4 NPC and we could not allow ourselves to make any of those 60 character a “background piece”. All of them should had enough background and previous history information to make informed decisions for their characters, and enough interactions, goals, desires and stuff to be done to not be bored for the whole event (usually a weekend).

It’s hard to do, and probably is unrealistic to be done in a MMO. But it may be done better (less focus on GM NPC, allow some antagonist to address your character instead of focus on the NPC, some options to configure the NPC’s group to fit player desires, etc).

I guess it depends on the views of the whole team, development times and cycles, and lots of internal stuff we are not aware of.

Little examples: Treaharne. The personal story could have been divided in two. It is in fact divided, but some external division could have been useful so we, the players, could have a less grieving look when our personal story transforms on Treaharne’s story. Just something advertising at us “and what follows is not exactly your story, but you took a part on it”.

Destiny 2.0 is tricky, it’s a pre-made group of people that you have to like (like it or not), and accept as best-buddy-friends forever. If the company had received some signal before saying “this may be a bad idea, what happens if someone dislike the characters so much?” they could have proceed to deliver it in another way. Maybe choosing their personality traits, or having the possibility of configure which members form “your Destiny”. So during a year, or half a year, the Living World could have consisted in missions, adventures and events that lead to the creation of ‘your’ Destiny 2.0 (that’s much more development, more models, more lore, more text, more possible interactions….), but it delivers a world that is more ‘yours’.

My main 80’s are a human thief and a norn guardian. The styles are different enough that I’ve been able to play them both, mostly levelling in PvE and without getting boring of repeating scenarios. I didn’t finished all map exploration yet with any of them but they are 80 and I’m on my way of getting proper weapons, armours, etc…

With the Norn Guardian I play more as a “big and strong” than with the thief, more based on mobility.

My other alts are Necro and Ranger, and it’s also fun to play them. For solo games the Ranger can be better just because the pet, although you have the Necro minions. If you want to change looks from your previos character, I’d go to light or heavy armours.

Most of the PvE content can be done solo-ing or joining the random players you can find in the maps.

Also, be sure to check the changes done yesterday, there are some stuff that is very different now.

If it’s a NCSoft cap, why not tell everyone, then? It takes less than 5 minutes to do a press note that says “NCSoft has decided, given that Cantha is an Asian-themed fantasy continent in a fantasy world, to ban all Cantha content from Guild Wars 2 to avoid furious masses to explode in rage, because as far as we can tell, never, ever, has an asian-themed fantasy world being produced in the entire world, including all Asian countries”.

And then they put a list of previous fantasy worlds with Asian themes that have been causing political disruption, havoc, chaos, destruction and wars, with some graphs of the disruption they caused, like “WoW, bamboo forests, pandas: 67% of non-asian population was killed on streets, wow sales declined because former players were killed, the company was sold to facebook”, “GW1, when Factions was released, Chinese population assaulted western companies, all ninjas were killed at sight, Chinese government reverted from monarchy to communism, NCSoft executives were executed in a generic asian-themed city and company was sold to apple” and all the terrible, horrible things that happened every time that some asian influence is propagated to videogames.

From all the plan told until now, my only concern is that the boss schedule seems quite tight, and those playing always in the same hours of the day, will likely never see some content.

The only solution I can think right now is to do some rotations over time, like every month the whole schedule is moved 3 hours further.

Not sure if I want the “charm and excitement” of play always in instances, not being allowed to jump (how I miss jumping when I re-enter GW1) and delete the non-human races for players. I’d not like to return to the GW1 dye system, I think.

Also, I’ve been vocal in my disappointments about LS and other things, but I try, even if English is not my natural language, to point to the exact source of disappointment, or at least the general direction from I think it’s coming.

The “everything you did is crap and all that is not done is good except when you do it, then it’s crap” attitude doesn’t help anyone.

Maybe a bit late to the party, but my 3 concerns, in no particular order.

1) Who is the protagonist?

The Personal History becomes, after join an Order, a travel about an NPC-that-is-more-important-than-you-and-will-ever-be.

I’ve seen it often in tabletop RPGs, the GM has a favourite NPC that uses to interact with the game, that NPC is immortal, has better abilities, is flawless, has better equipment, etc etc, the PC are their servants at best. They are the Players, they should shine as protagonists, not as background characters.

Then, in the Living Story main arc, the PC as protagonist is vanished again, until the end in which you kill a ¿bad person? who has not been a rival to the character directly. Also, missing any update may make you wonder who those people are, they who insist in call you ‘friend’ but you cannot remember any meaningful interaction with they.

At some point the NPC motivations, the characters presentation, the Personal History-that-get-cut-and-derived-to-Treaharne-history, etc can mess one with other and make the PC the most irrelevant part.

2) Villains and antagonist interaction.

If you want a feared Villain that doesn0t have an apparition until mid-season, the watchers/players have to, well, fear that antagonist somehow, prior to the presentation.

In Heroes (season 1), you have one of the most feared villains in fiction. Sylar. I stopped watching that show somewhere between season 3 and 4 and never looked again. But it will be difficult to me to forgot Sylar. There were only hints of his presence, but we could look at the results of his actions. Every character in that show had reasons to worry.

Scarlett stomped a public act, stating that she was better than us and that everyone should fear her. She ‘stole’ a robot army that was clearly put there just some days before in order to be stolen. Everything in that robot army was screaming “enemies! enemies!”. It was similar to Star Wars Episode 2, when they found “oh, a lost Jedi that probably is a Sith used a lot of untracked money to build a clone army, well, we will use that army anyway, what can be wrong?”

In order to make us angry about her stealing a robot army, we should have some empathy for those army. Be there when is constructed, express our concerns to the Order, watch how useful is at cleaning some area, make living story updates in which the clockwork army defeat centaurs wave after wave and events in the area are changed to reflect this. Meet the team building it. Start interacting with the young sylvari apprentice assisting in the lab, look how the Asura bully her, put her in a relationship with the PC, in which the player can select if he accepts or rejects her love experimentation, make another NPC jealous of this depending the outcome… then she can steal the army, present herself as the main antagonist and the players will say “no you kitten, this is personal”.

3) Content that vanish forever.

It feels weird, for me, to put the dev teams to develop content that will only last few weeks and that is not reused, revisited or added to exploration. I’m talking basically about PvE here. The karka zone is the only one that I can sign and clearly say “like this! permanent!”, but is an abandoned zone that is not linked to any other zone in PvE. It should be accessible from other zones and integrated in the world as any other zone.

More zones is something I expected, so if you have to left the game for some months, after login again you see the map and there is something new, somewhere to go. The last LS updates had interesting stuff in changing existing zones, but adding new ones, or new areas in the existing ones, is something that seems out of the scope of the game/LS. This and the early “there will be no expansion” statements probably make many players to worry if the updates will consist only in temporary grinding fest to get the whatever skins/equipment is available those weeks, using a material/currency that will not exist again. The last update had at least a note saying when one of that currencies was about to expire, and that we could hold on the other. But during the different updates I collected lot of stuff that I don’t have a way to know if it’s junk or not. It may help, for example, to convert it to junk items once the currency/material is not used never again.

My only concern is how long it will take to find another players, counting they are in friends lists, and some of them in friends + guild, but that I’m playing with settings in English and they in Spanish (just because I like to consider my gaming hours as XP I can put on English skill :P)

By information released, I should not be worried at all.

As PvE is my main played content, I hope this will bring more population in the maps, more events being done and more interaction.

Elbegast.6970:

lordkrall.7241:

Elbegast.6970:

It’s too late for answers, Colin. I’m done with this game. As soon as I saw the word ‘Megaserver’ I knew my time in GW2 was over. If I can’t play on the realm I chose, I don’t want to play at all.

To be fair you have been “done with this game” about 5 times since release, and yet you are still here. So clearly people won’t take your “threats” seriously.

Would you like me to reinstall the game and take screenshots of my empty achievement panel? I can, in fact, be done with the game and still post on the forums.

I think it should be too cruel to force you to reinstall, since you uninstalled just yesterday, after the April’s Fool boobleheads thing (or maybe I’m misremembering the posts about the problems presented by the oversized heads by another member with similar name tag, if that’s the case, I’m sorry)

Mishee.5719:

This is Anet doing right. Announcing stuff before they inplament it. There is serious nerd tears coming from my eyes atm. They are taking some major steps in the right directions. I got no bad things to say about this upcoming change in the trait system. It give me this fyzzie gw1 feeling all over again. I can only wait and see what they are having planed for us in the future.

I need to quote this because it’s exactly what I wanted to say here.

Announcing prior to change
Add variety instead of add raw power
Tie advancing with content
Make it easier to toy with the trait system, instead of restricting it.

Nothing bad to say here

It’s a complex problem. Dividing the zone in instances for personal story completed/personal story uncompleted characters may provoke both zones to be deserted.

Living Story could be used, making a chain of LS events dedicated to Orr reconstruction, with events tied to different races/Orders claims over zones, fortress, resources… main problem here is that those LS events would be opened and accessible (or logic) to characters who completed the Personal Story.

I’d think there could be a rethink of the zones. The zone could be closed to all characters who didn’t completed the PS, changing it for instanced versions to fit in the PS events. After Zhaitan is defeated, those players should be able to access the zones in the “new” state: Rebuild.

There could be shortcuts to allow alts to skip the whole PS, something similar to the items that allow to level up to level 20. The shortcut could be something you buy ingame or a (instanced) mission with cinematics that explain the whole affair.

So, a big % of players could play a whole LS season in which Orr is being reconquested, still dangerous of course, but not as annoying as in it’s current state. There should be some previous announcements in order to encourage people to finish their PS, and then some changes in the PS itself, like a new “path” or something that derives from the original, but not sure how this can be done.

Half hour after release, all players will never come back in an act of coordination unseen until now in the whole humanity, so then you can claim you predicted it and won a global-coordination-mind medal.

Basically, this whole “the map will be left abandoned” depends on the map itself, not on the fact that is a new map. If it is a new attractive good map, it will attract pplayers. If it has reason to players to stay, they will stay. If it’s unfair or bad designed, it will not maintain or attract enough people.

So, instead of make an statement that the map will be abandoned no matter what, it would be better to ask:

Which characteristics should a new map include in order to not be abandoned after initial exploration?

Another possibility, observing that you canonize about how the map will be abandoned, and how inevitable it is that fact, is to suppose that you have internal knowledge about map’s attributes and structure, and that using that internal knowledge, you can predict that the map is not worth to explore after half an hour.

So, how you did obtain that internal knowledge?

1. As is inevitable that Scarlett will return, because we’ve seen is the most awesome character ever, at least try to not make her dominate the Elder Dragon.

2. Delay Scarlet’s return as maximum as possible.

3. When She returns, put Scarlet in a lesbian relationship.

chemiclord.3978:

There’s a couple of factors, I suspect.

1) Simple familiarity. MMOs by and large are the only major genre of games that still cling to the expansion model. Most others have moved on to the DLC model that Arena.net is trying to modify for their use. Gamers don’t like it, because they don’t like change, and never really have. I’m sure there are a good many who reject the LS/DLC model for this reason (though they’ll never admit it).

2) For those that ARE willing to give this a legitimate shot… the problem is that while there’s no real reason the Living Story CAN’T provide expansion like content, the truth is that so far it HASN’T. Gamers are not only stagnant by nature, they are also IMPATIENT. They want more of the same, and they want it now NOW NOW!

I can give ANet any numbers of opportunities they want to prove that LS model model can provide the same content or similar than a traditional expansion would provide.

So far, they didn’t delivered anything close to 5% of an expansion the size of Eye of the North, I won’t start comparing with Factions to not cry.

And, as you said, technically they could have delivered a lot more of content aimed to stay in the game in a permanent way, so newer and older players can join it. But they decided (on purpose, we have to assume) otherwise, to release mainly temp content, or just change a permanent content for another permanent content (like LA destruction).

The hints in the interviews is that they aim to a tv-series, book-series, comic-book release pace, in which every release wants the spectator to known a little more, and stay tuned for next release.

If this model is a huge success, a middle success or a fail only they can tell. For me, as spectator-player, is a fail. Because I know that, technically (and story-wise) they could do better.

For example, let’s take Prometheus film. For me it’s a big mistake. If my small brother do the same film, without budget and in his spare time, then I would claim it a success. But for Ridley Scott? With those casting? Horrible, and much more horrible once you see they had a good script at hands and decided to throw it in favour of… well, of nothing.

So, now we don’t know what else could ANet had delivered instead of the LS-1, but we can look at the past and expect something, at least, similar to EOTN.

That amount of content, released over a year? Fine, where I a have to sign?

The amount of content delivered by LS-1, released over a year? mmhh for PvW, southsun cove, change LA map and slightly change some other zone. And some story not very much attractive in which I’m forced to miss elements (real life: wedding, honeymoon, house moving, job change, and soon I’ll factor parenting on it).

They could have delivered the LS-1 content with a epic, good, engaging story. Then (more) people would have been engaged to it. For this you need writing and character developing that aim to quality: Game of Thrones, Heroes S1, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, Cryptonomicon, Bone, True Detective, Buffy… even Lost managed to, using cheap tricks, make people to follow the series.

Would you follow a show or book or comic that consist on the LS stories? They might be some good story content hidden in those releases, but hiding it doesn’t make it good.

So, the current implementation of the LS doesn’t provide what some players were expecting, compared to GW1 expansions, and doesn’t deliver a brand new way of exciting content that make us vibrate.

nGumball.1283:

Just a notice, Anet announced before that they have been working since a while on projects with expansion-like content, they also stated that LS and An Expansion are two seperate projects, not connected to eachother. Which means that the statement saying that Anet can’t work on both is false. Not only that, it is literally so that Anet have been working on content for an expansion for a long time now.

On the other hand, Anet said clearly that the content may not be introduced as an expansion and that there are alot of options. Looking at the player-base however, they may as well release it as an expansion.

LS content and Expnasion content are seperate and Anet have been working on both with two different teams. It is already stated by Anet.

That’s weird, because they announced first that no expansions were made or even in the list of things to be made. Then they announced in offsite (eurogamer interview) that yes, of course, tons of new expansion-like materials were being made, and they just needed to find if give it for free or release an expansion or what.

So, one of the two announcements was a lie, but we don’t know yet which one. And they managed to put them in interviews so they can always declare “this was misinterpreted” as is not coming directly from their mouths/keyboards.

GW1 had awesome expansion with Factions. I was able to buy factions 2 years after release and play all the content. I can even play it now if I want.

If they release a LS-like expansion stuff that is only playable when they want.. well, it can be weird. They already have a method to release story-like content that can be playable at will (personal story) and that resolves around missions, story and doing stuff, not getting achievements and collect random junk limited materials only usable for two weeks, and bosses scaled to be done with 150 participants at maximum DPS.

Behellagh.1468:

Is the world outside your window persistent, never changing? Are you living in the Fringe altverse where the twin towers are still standing? No. Then stuff happens and its over never to return.

In the world outside my window, I can get new armours, I can learn to make them myself, I can get new haircuts more or less whatever I want/my hair allow it and I can build a lot of stuff. I can experience the fresh air on the top of a mountain and the joy of sex with a lover, and I can contribute to the way things change.

If we start to compare real world with game world, game world will not have a chance to win.

Game worlds are compared, for convenience, with other game worlds, the same way you don’t compare a burger with fries with the joy a having a child or with the sadness of seeing your parents die. You compare it with other meals.

Vol.7601:

I agree, it’s the most infuriating thing in game for me.

A clear perfect example is Temple of Grenth.

Here’s what noobs do:
-Rush toward Grenth and DPS him
-Get immediately downed either from:
a.) Wraith aoes
b.) Grenth Shadow Storm (drop aoe)
c.) Ice Storm
-Heal aimlessly while another wave of icicles finishes him off
-And often, stand next to Jones which spawns icicles, eventually killing him

Here’s what pros do:
-kill the wraiths first
-Grab the debuff
-Rush toward Grenth and DPS him, also making sure to tag all mobs in vicinity in case of needing to rally
-Kite/LOS him near the altar and far in the back to prevent luring even more Shadows
-Dodge all Shadow Strikes and Ice Storms
-If downed (which you eventually will once you reach 25 stacks), tag the Ice Elementals since they are easy to kill and kill themselves when they reach the target player

Just to help me understand how the pro approaching is build in the game (because I like to look at how games are made/designed).

Is this pro behaviour something that a pro player can learn the very first time that reaches the event, without looking anywhere else?

Because, for me, that’s a good difficulty design. If the game/event/boss/combat engine(s) allow someone to reach such a skill than, the very first time an encounter is presented, it can be done -with skill, paying attention, observation…- without knowing anything else, and without relying on “got the exact proper build that was needed”.

I’m not sure because I never did Temple of Grenth, but I’d like (and that why I ask) if the chain of events/actions proposed here as pro is something that good players can learn themselves, or if it’s something that needs some repetition until they got the tricks.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Where in the world do you people find where they said anything about an ‘expansion sized’ patch recently?

Probably here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“We have a couple of really big Guild Wars projects cooking in the background,” Johanson told me.

Later, he added: "Some of our players believe that because we are doing this Living World seasons, and these features or these big feature-builds, that it means that the features you would traditionally get in an expansion, or the content you would traditionally get in an expansion, is not something that will get added to Guild Wars 2. And that is not true at all.

“Not only are we doing those things, new features and content you would traditionally get from a boxed expansion are also things that will be added to Guild Wars 2.

“The thing that we haven’t decided yet,” he went on, "is what form that type of content will take. Is it right for Guild Wars 2 for that kind of boxed expansion? Is it right for that to be something we add, live, through storylines in the game? Is that something we want to sell through our in-game store? There are a lot of different options available to us.

“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”

It does NOT say “next update is an expansion folks!”, but it talks, recently, about big projects, expansion-sized stuff, and adding things.

As Anet firmly believes in obscure communication, it got mixed with the previous statement linked some posts above about the “post Scarlet patch”.

If I do the same story to my regular RPG group, they will ask me to take a break and stop GM-ing for a while.

ValeN.3129:

Aajolea.8132:

An RPG is about personal choice, in this LS we had none, other than to participate or not. There were no dialogue choices with consequences or any roleplay choices at all. Our character doesn’t even talk with the other characters in the story (as in voiced dialogue). There is story but it is linear and occurs regardless of us as a player. That is by definition removing rpg from mmo, the only role we are playing in the living story is the mechanical role of our class build.

I understand where yo’re coming from and won’t deny it. As much as the notion of an RPG differs from person to person. The title was also more of a headline than a translation of what the post was about too haha

I have to disagree.

The RPG definition does not vary from person to person, the same way that water definition, Sun definition or what a Moa bird is does not vary from person to person.

RPG are Role Playing Games, there may be different flavours of it, but you should be able to play a role in a role playing game, by definition.

In GW2 we cannot play the role, or take any decisions on the role of the character. We can take, in a certain way, decide which combat role to practice during the already decided courses of action.

So, the only was GW2 is a succesful RPG is if we admit that an RPG that is so heavy railroaded that it doesn’t contain any roleplay may still be a roleplay game.

But that leads us to philosophy: A river without any drop of water, is still a river?

It may be a great game, but is not a roleplay game

SOULFLY.7942:

even tho they didnt write so in the patch note… the chests in the lair are back

Great, just after I destroyed all the cyphers.

It is so difficult to put some signal in the items themselves to mark if they are intended to not be usable anymore? It was a lot of space for all the cyphers and keys and power cores without any signal if that was even useful or not.

So, at the end, I was not able to make the Marionette, I had to check forums to known the lair location (which I hate to do, I’d like info to be in game), discover the chests were unable to open, destroy the keys, and then they are useful again?

Great. Just great.

Something is wrong when is more profitable and enjoyable to google and youtube the game than play the game.

I received a mail apparently coming from Arena Net, it’s the first phishing attempt that doesn’t go directly to gmail’s spam folder, so I think it’s relevant to inform here and let others to be aware.

The mail informs me to verify my account here (I separate the http: part from the rest just in case, the original URL obviously doesn’t have spaces)

Removed phishing link via Moderation

Which presents a very similar layout to official ArenaNet web, but with some weird details that may remain unnoticed to other people. The first of all the very long URL ending with .tk

At the bottom, there is another hint, a small image similar to a graph directing to some chinese? statistics site.

Once detected, and proved that I can login here with my account as usual, I’ve see some weird things in the mail itself, if I go to the “full headers/show original”. Not sure how they surpassed gmail’s spam filters.

I hope this helps someone else to not fall in phishing attempts

Randulf.7614:

Randall.7306:

Too bad, I didn’t managed to be in any Marionette defeat.

Maybe they put a video or summary somewhere else. But I hope this time there is no big event win requisite to access the summary.

You didn’t need to defeat Marionette, participation was enough. In fact I believe you could go there without even going near the bosses – it just wasn’t clear enough in the game that you could do so.

Fantastic, so I didn’t even need to try it the last times ^^

Is the Secret Lair also accessible somewhere if I participated but didn’t defetaed the Marionette? I was under strong assumption that you need to defeat that event to access both the story and the lair.

Too bad, I didn’t managed to be in any Marionette defeat.

Maybe they put a video or summary somewhere else. But I hope this time there is no big event win requisite to access the summary.

digiowl.9620:

Randall.7306:

For me, a not-hardcore-living-for-play any game, and with Demon Souls and Dark Souls as favorite games ever, just alongside the original X-COM, the Marionette event has a big issue to will make me not to care about it.

Funny how you mention games that are either wholly single player, or has multiplayer only as a secondary feature. When the competition is between player and game, ramping the difficulty to 11 is much more acceptable. But trying to emulate that in a primarily multiplayer world, especially one where people can come and go at random and their actions can help and hinder in equal measure, is bound to cause rivers of grief.

End result is that every time i see someone here or elsewhere compare GW2 to Dark Souls i cringe.

Maybe I didn’t expressed myself correctly in the rest of my post, but precisely what I say is that the comparison is unfair, and that the design in the event is totally causing the current rivers of grief, specially because all the “try to do it better now” times that some novice players want to tries, they are hindering other players, and one single platform with one single fail can drag everyone else to failure. And players only can try once every 2 hours at best, maybe twice if there is a way to be in 2 platforms.

So, if ANet wants to do content with Dark Souls difficulty in Open World, and linking the global failure to the current “1 player fails, everyone fail, nobody can help but watch the other fails” what they are doing is unfair for the players, compared with difficult content in single player games, where your fails are yours only, and you are not making someone’s else achievements or success to fail.

So, there is another concept besides difficulty: fairness, *Souls-style difficulty is more fair than this events in Living Story, and not only for the single player aspect, but because you have different ways to approach content, and different builds are useful and valid. In those events, there is only one possibility: evade/DPS, and the artificial and temporal escape to this has been to divide the zerg (which is good, I applaud this), to link the global failure to the single worst or more unlucky player, and to do it in a temporal event (two weeks to learn! sorry if you are out!), with only one opportunity to learn every 2 hours.

For me, a not-hardcore-living-for-play any game, and with Demon Souls and Dark Souls as favorite games ever, just alongside the original X-COM, the Marionette event has a big issue to will make me not to care about it.

It will gone away, like, this week. Or the week after (do we even have a date to know when it will fade away?).

I didn’t bothered about the the previous one, the tower, because knowing that it will go away in 2 weeks, I would not have time to complete it, and certainly not time to do any achievement except the most basic “participate once!” ones. Then we saw it lasted for 6 weeks or 2 months, so knowing that in advance maybe I would try it. Not sure if it was my fault to fail to see that information.

In this case, I didn’t find info about in which date the marionette will become unavailable, I tried 4 times now, in the last 3 I landed in a platform who completed their boss, not sure in the first one because when I realized what was happening the event was finished. No clue at all about what would happen after the teleport, and then suddenly “too bad! 2 minutes to kill! kill!kill!kill!kill! finish!” I don’t even remember if the champion was defeated.

I don’t think that is good for the content to depend exclusively on out-of-game clues to succeed, or on to make anyone else fail while you learn, in order to have a possibility. Not because I get frustrated by difficulty, but because any repetition in which I could fail will make fail all the other players, while the other watch from their completed platforms.

I repeated before, this configuration is getting close to promote bullying, because there are few weeks to complete this, so many players to want to complete it and so, so many opportunities to make them all fail without pretending.

Even to please the bullier players that don’t stop at the “get better or quit the game you stupid noob!” one needs to fail some times while trying or getting practice, and this trying is much likely making other people to fail. So the repetition becomes more yelling at players and more frustration, in circles.

In Dark Souls, I can fail 1000 times at a boss, get better or kick the kitten console away if I want, and nobody else is not getting their rewards or any “you fail and dies because Randall, blame him, we put him in a separate platform so you easily identify it and blame him”

A bit exaggerating, but I just want to prevent GW2 to become a bully-friendly platform.

Juunro.7082:

FateOmega.9601:

The marionette event would have been fine if Anet had allow people who finished their platforms to help out on the other platforms.

Ultimately, the acidic environment is a result of Anet fight design decisions.

Unfortunately, all that would do would be to make it so easy it becomes just another boring zerg-fight, or they would have to scale the champions up so much that it would become an extreme DPS test and be unfun.

The better solution is to read the fight mechanics, bring a weapon set that isn’t terrible for the fights, and make dang sure your dodge key is bound.

I think there is some fault in developers when your game needs to be learned outside the game itself, search the internets to read the event and which weapon sets someone else decided are the best ones etc…

All this should be possible to be learned in-game. Or just design the entire game to be mysterious and to need to search stuff elsewhere.

If the only valid way to play is to ruin yourself the Story by search all the event details before play, why to bother call it a Story at all? Reading spoilers doesn’t make one to enjoy more a series of books, or movies, or tv show, and should not be required.

Punishing people who just want to experience the game and learn in-game should not be a feature.