Guild Wars 2

While nothing has been announced, LS2 did introduce a number of new stat sets, so it’s certainly possible that LS3 will introduce some.

While nothing has been announced, LS2 did introduce a number of new stat sets, so it’s certainly possible that LS3 will introduce some.

Sweet! I’m glad you were able to have such an amazing run of good luck! o_o

I wouldn’t call the ability to buy gold pay-to-win. Earning gold is a goal for most people, and you can just buy your way to that goal, but when you buy gold, you’re selling gems to other players, which is almost universally regarded as a good thing. Compare this situation to, say, an endless runner where you can buy extra lives, or a game that would sell you stronger weapons and armor than you can obtain in-game.

The involvement of real-world money at all will never sit well with some people, but I’ve never been displeased by GW2’s implementation of it. For example, I’ve never heard of a party demanding players to bring revive orbs to a dungeon or raid.

To add to RoseofGilead’s answer, you can’t buy Heart of Thorns for gems. Along with base game’s “Deluxe” upgrade, there’s another for HoT (Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns—Digital Deluxe Upgrade) but it only gives you some bonus goodies, not the expansion itself.

You might need to be a little more clear about what you’re doing and asking.

Are you extracting the music from the game, or talking about the official CD release? Are you doing this for personal use, to put up on YouTube, etc?

I’m usually against changing old skins, especially extremely expensive skins like legendaries, but it’s hard to imagine anyone arguing against this.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Either way, I’m glad they gave us the option to still get the ‘legendary’ skins. And it makes sense. Don’t want all that work to be for nothing.

Yes, these were meant to be legendaries, but we all know what happened.

FrizzFreston touched on this above, but I think it bears repeating: We already got the legendary staff with Nevermore, so it doesn’t seem likely that the Emissary’s Staff is a canceled legendary. We have no idea what the new Longbow would have been, but as this is based on a GW1 skin and none of the other legendaries have been GW1 weapons, I have my doubts about this being a canceled legendary.

The important thing is to identify what you enjoy doing.

You can start working towards ascended gear if you like, but you can do perfectly well with exotics, and they’re far less of a commitment. Figure out what build you want for your character(s) , make an exotic set, and then you can figure out ascended gear later on as a long-term goal. If you really, really want top-tier equipment, you can, of course, prioritize this higher, but exotics are seriously fine.

If you enjoy the story, you can obviously finish up Heart of Thorn’s story, and do the new Living World Season 3 story. If you don’t already have it, you can get the Season 2 storyline from the gem store, if you want more story sequences.

If you want to farm, the Heart of Thorns maps are good, as is the new map introduced in LS3 (and you can level masteries, too.) If you want to farm in Central Tyria (raising those masteries,) Silverwastes is a fun map to hang out in. If you’re leveling masteries, but running low on mastery points to unlock them with, look up achievements with mastery points (marked with a red or green star) and go after them. Look them up on the official wiki, or on Dulfy if you need more help.

If you haven’t tried dungeons, I recommend checking out them out. Either pick one that interests you, or work your way through them in order. Doing them will expose you to some high-level tactics, and you might enjoy them, or move on to Fractals of the Mists, which are like mini-dungeons that scale up to very high difficulty/rewards. Just be sure to find a group that plays at the same pace as you do. Some people like to play ULTRA EFFICIENTLY, and that’s fine, but they can get cranky if you slow them down, so finding the right group makes a difference.

If you just like to explore the world, go for 100% World Completion with a character or look up jumping puzzles and dive spots.

There are many other things to do, but hopefully that gives you some ideas.

I think it’s fine the way it is. It might not be perfectly realistic right now, but I can’t say it’s ever bothered me, and I’m wary of intentionally making my actions less responsive by adding a transition.

Really, though, I think this suggestion is too much work for too little gain. It’s a minor issue (if it is an issue) about a feature that I don’t think a lot of people use. On the scale of animation additions I, personally, would like to see, this comes in below a single new emote.

Sir Auris.3476:

Can anyone provide a screenshot of how to get there? I did Tequatl for the third Twilight collection and wasn’t able to find the acces point for the grave.

It’s right over the edge of the beach. The portal itself isn’t labeled, but there’s Krewe Researcher NPC to mark the spot.

Spyritdragon.6048:

LS updates too. I understand they want to put quality in everything, but how were they able to put out the Nightmare Tower, Flame and Frost, Dragon Bash, the Attack on LA, the Marionette encounter, the Breachmaker fight, and all that with two-weeks period before when now in three-months periods we’ve barely got a few hours of playtime.

People forget that during LS1 and LS2, they generally weren’t working on an expansion. Then they switched over to the expansion, and we got the long drought between LS2 and HoT. Currently, they’re trying to avoid either extreme, with some people working on LS3 and some people working on Expansion 2.

I feel like I generally don’t understand the OP’s suggestion. I disagree with the three orders being labeled good/neutral/evil, I’m not sure how class alignment with the orders is supposed to work, and I’m not sure if the OP is suggesting that Paladin, etc. be new classes, or simply new labels on old classes that indicate your reset path.

I’d like the option to replay personal story missions, but I’ve never wanted to reset a character rather than making a new one.

johnnycosmic.9130:

Its no wonder people aren’t buying it, anets still trying to sell the expansion for 50 bucks here more then a year later.

Heart of Thorns launched in October. Without getting into whether $50 is the right price for it or not, we’re currently in August.

Well, that’s surprisingly worthless. :\

Thanks for clearing me up on that.

What, does standing in Braham’s shield not work? It was my understanding that you have a choice between the shield or a much riskier round in the air.

I usually go for air, because I still need the achievement (curse those black dots!) but I thought this worked. Does it not?

Arnox.5128:

So with two factor authentication, how exactly are accounts getting stolen? Or are you guys saying there are still a lot of people that don’t have that yet?

Besides stealing accounts from other players, there are also accounts purchased with stolen credit card information.Those can be shut down once the fraud is discovered, but by then the thieves have already been reported for gold selling anyway.

F2P accounts, on the other hand, have enough restrictions on chat that I can’t see them as part of the problem. None of the people who whisper-spam you are F2P accounts, since you have to be mutual friends with a F2P account to get their whispers.

Flatly, I don’t think it’s possible to do it in a way that would make sense for Anet. The process is more complicated than some people give it credit for. Beyond basic modeling and texturing, there are dye channels, weight painting, and whatever else needs to be done to get it into the engine. They don’t have tools to let players do that all that themselves or test it, and I don’t think it would be practical to write those tools. That’s just to get the tools out there, aside form managing such a program.

Besides the technical question, I have mixed feelings about this more generally. It’s cool for a game to have an “anything goes” modding scene where people can create whatever and use it if they want, or to do a design contest, but that’s different to me than farming out work to volunteers. “See your content in game!” is a pretty cool reward, but it also walks a fine line between celebrating players and using them. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I don’t love it.

From today’s patch notes:

Improvements

The Black Lion Trading Company has hired additional aestheticians for the Havoc’s Heir airship, the Royal Terrace, and all cities. Aestheticians allow players to preview new hairstyles, faces, and other appearance details without needing to own a Total Makeover Kit. In order to confirm any changes, players must have a Total Makeover Kit in their inventory.

<3

From patch notes:

Sparkfly Fen

An access point for Tequatl’s Watery Grave will appear after Tequatl has been defeated. It will stay open for fifteen minutes and is located off the coast, southwest of Fabled Djannor.

Thanks for this! I do Tequatl frequently, and every now and then you’ll have someone who just can’t get hit by the whirlpools. People will give them advice like what to look for, when to arrive for the fight, etc., but ultimately it comes down to “just keep trying.”

I don’t need this, but I’m looking forward to telling people about it, instead of telling them to cross their fingers and hope to get sucked down into the murky depths.

The Shiverpeaks were cold (thus the name) even during GW1, before the dragons began reawakening, so it’s a safe bet that he’s just making the far north even colder than it already was.

Moyayuki.3619:

Khisanth.2948:

Are you sure this isn’t simply a case of Soule music?

What is “Soule music”, may I ask?

Jeremy Soule was the composer for Guild Wars music from GW1 through the release version of GW2. He’s also known for his work on other games, including The Elder Scrolls, although he hasn’t done any post-release music for GW2.

I assume “a case of Soule music” implies that much of his music sounds the same, but Final Fantasy X was composed by Nobuo Uemetsu and a couple other Japanese artists. Uemetsu is pretty well known among JRPG fans, having composed a lot of Final Fantasy games, among others. (Edit: As Inculpatus cedo points out, this track in particular is by Masashi Hamauzu.)

Fancypants.9705:

Why would you need one, can’t you just click on the Makeover Kit and view them there, or just see the new looks online?

You’re overlooking why this NPC exists in the first place: If I’m considering buying a makeover kit, but don’t already have one, it’s nice to be able to view my options another way. Looking them up online sorta works, but if I want to see how a certain hair color goes with a particular hair style, on my particular face, with my skin color / markings / horns / etc., a screenshot of another character isn’t nearly as good.

I don’t know why they don’t add the new NPCs to the old locations and just differentiate them by theme and location. They might miss some upgrade sales, but they might make up for it with people buying old passes when they’re available, instead of waiting for the “best” one to return. That seems as likely to be an oversight as it is to be a sales maneuver.

I would rather not. It’s not an inherently bad idea, but as a player who plays with a guild only occasionally, I’d never interact with this system other than seeing some random name plastered on all of the maps. I don’t mind seeing guild names on other players, but I’d rather keep a world that feels wilder and more open.

Also, since you’ve been gone, you may have missed the change to megaservers. Instead of having Jade Quarry copy of Queensdale, a Blackgate copy, etc., everyone is mixed together in maps that are created/destroyed based on player population. This is important, because it means that a guild taking a map would apply across all servers, meaning only the 33 largest guilds in the whole game could really participate in the system, and that’s assuming they don’t take multiple maps.

I wouldn’t mind the rocks if I felt like I could do anything about them. In HoT, if you’re about to be sniped, a target icon appears and you know to dodge. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no indicator like that in Bloodstone Fen.

Sometimes I’ll manage to evade if I’m buzzing over a particular group of enemies, but most of the time, I have no idea where the rock came from, much less when it was about to hit me. It doesn’t ruin the map for me, but this aspect of it isn’t fun, either. I just spam evade, and whether I dodge or fall to my death, I don’t feel like I had any agency in the process.

So does Minstrels, but I doubt you’ll hear many people suggesting you swap it out. Celestial has even higher raw stat totals, but it’s important to consider whether your build can take full advantage of more rounded stats, and whether they’re useful for you.

If you find that staying alive isn’t a problem for you, for example, it might be worthwhile to trade Marauder’s toughness for a little extra offense. On the other hand, if you need a little extra toughness, it might not affect your DPS that much to make a trade-off…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

What about when they add new dyes? Why choose this number of dyes? The number of dyes has been steadily increasing since launch. Would it just be 403 of any dyes, or a specific 403 dyes?

Kristen.6475:

Why 403 unique dyes? Because 403 dyes is the maximum # of dyes you can obtain in game excluding the exclusive gemstore dyes (includes the 21 starter dyes).

It’s pretty well-thought out. You can collect all of the core dyes in the game, and the Black Lion dyes are treated as extra credit. That way people can complete the collection without breaking the bank, or worrying that the collection will expand on them over time.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I don’t much care for the title though. How about this title instead: “To dye for”

“Only the Good Dye Young” ?

Edit: “A Hero Dyes a Thousand Times?”

For once in my life, I’m glad I looked at YouTube comments:

How you got this mouse “skin”??

Dulfy”

It is called Yolomouse?

Apparently it’s some kind of overlay to make your mouse easier to see. I haven’t used it myself (or heard of it before now) so I can’t personally recommend or warn against it, but now you know.

Yoroiookami.3485:

My idea is about catching/hunting for various creatures around the world, so it should remind you of the concept of pokemon games. Of course they’re not a one time thing. I don’t know if you didn’t read all of it or if I didn’t word myself right, but the whole point was about these creatures hatching from eggs etc.

I did read it, but it’s about 12 paragraphs, and I feel like the idea itself is only really described in 4,6, 7,8, and part of 10. It’s a little meandering.

I’m not saying that to be snippy, but because I want people to be able to understand your idea, and to make sure I understand it. It has so many ideas and different spins that by the time I was finished, I wasn’t sure if it was one clear idea, or many possible directions. ^^;

When you actually describe your idea, I think it sounds nothing like Pokémon, and you’re only hurting your case by making the comparison. It’s distracting from your actual suggestion.

I know “more detail” seems like the way to go when making a suggestion, but by the time I got to the end, I wasn’t 100% sure what it was you were suggesting again. You want things hidden in the world that people can interact with to get small bonuses, but I’m not really sure if these things always follow you around (overlapping with mini-pets?) or one-time things (which could be implemented any number of ways.)

You don’t need to preface your idea with a lot of caveats, or tie it into what you think the dev team does well or poorly. Just explain it concisely, and you might find there’s an easier way to accomplish the changes you want to make.

Skigorn has a very solid point. With an (almost certain) anniversary sale right around the corner, I’d hang on to those gems.

I’d go for the wings, or hold on to them to see if there’s something you would like later, whether it’s a new seasonal item, a character slot when you want something new, etc. Gems don’t go bad, after all.

As for the salvaging kit, I just load up ~4 or so Basic Salvaging Kits whenever I expect to be away from a merchant for a while. I have enough inventory space (lots of 18 and 20 slot bags,) so as long as I’m salvaging stuff and depositing materials after a map event, I don’t have much trouble. With the new “right click to salvage blue/green or less” option on salvage kits, it’s never been easier to manage the constant flow of materials, with or without an infinite kit.

Change should be an expected part of any online-based game, especially an MMORPG. It’s unfortunate if you didn’t like certain changes, but that’s just a hazard of the genre, that the game is never “complete” until it’s ending.

I don’t work for Anet, but I’m pretty sure all of the OP’s changes are not things that can be provided as player options. Best I would hope for is a flashback Living Story instance for old LA, but that’s not what’s being asked for, either.

I mostly stick with defaults, but I like Shift+R to enable/disable walking speed. I already associate R with movement from the autorun command, so that was a really easy binding to get my head around.

I’m curious what other people did for the special action command, or whatever it’s called, that’s used for the new mastery against bloodstone magic. I used Numpad0, since it’s out of my normal way and relatively easy to bash when it comes up, but I’m sure there’s something better/closer I could be using.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Nero and Onevstheworld, you asked if this means that LW can come sooner than July.

Full story episodes have a long lead-time. But I don’t think LW content has to be all about the episodes. So… maybe.

This looks like a reference to the “Current Events” events we got leading up to LS3, including the Leyline and Bandit events. Having said that, MO also said that full story episodes have a long lead time, so it’s possible the Legendary team has been working on things that aren’t in this episode at all. We really don’t know.

I’m reserving my judgement about the new pacing until we’re further into LS3. This episode wasn’t super long, but I’m really enjoying what we got, quality-wise.

Iss perhapss oil made for Krait?

Krait doesss not feel different. Was ssupposed to drink oil or rub oil on Krait?

I don’t understand why there are arguments against it. They changed how it works for HoT, and it makes perfect sense.

Whether or not it’s practical in code, or something Anet can spare dev time for, I don’t know, but it’s a solid suggestion, and it doesn’t hurt to ask. Let’s not get fussy about it.

While I like the aesthetic idea of Celestial actually having all possible stats, I don’t want to have to make a balance trade-off for it when I’m happy with how it it’s performing right now.

If anything, I’d like to see recipe books drop less frequently, especially the jewelry books, simply because they have a low resell value and limited use for duplicates.

I’m not sure exactly what the OP means by giving them more options, but I don’t think that would help them retain much value, and that’s not something I’m worried about.

Thanks for the clarification, onevstheworld. That makes more sense. I was thinking about HoT’s achievements, since I’ve done those much more recently than LS2.

http://dulfy.net/2016/07/26/gw2-out-of-the-shadows-developer-ama-on-reddit/#Living_World

Number 7 addresses this. Lore-wise, it’s possible Sylvari don’t have an developed funeral/memorial culture. Practically speaking, it didn’t make sense to have two memorial sequences slowing down the start of LS3.

I like Trahearne as much as anyone, but Eir’s memorial was enough reflection to kick off the new season.

You can unlock a 10% XP boost in Bloodstone Fen, up to three times for a permanent 30% boost. Since Bloodstone Fen counts as a HoT map, I can’t help but wonder if this option is meant to help people grind mastery XP. I don’t know how efficient that would be compared to doing HoT maps, but without a big map meta, Bloodstone Fen is easier to jump in and out of.

+30% towards spirit shards could be useful, but it seems much more useful for masteries.

What I did was play through the storyline the first time with my main, then played through with an alt or two while getting achievements. This gave them something to do beyond simply replaying what I did with my main.

You can’t skip to a chapter in the middle with an alt, but you can get “second run” achievements their first time through, if you’ve played through it with another character.

I was hoping this wasn’t the case. I don’t mind the basic HoT masteries, but I never had any plans to raid, so needing to fill out the raid masteries was never even on my to-do list. Worse, I can’t even start them without raiding, unlike the Fractal masteries on Central Tyria.

Hrm. Not great.

They’re in fixed locations. Dulfy has a guide to them if you decide to use it.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

What they should really do is just get rid of half the ascended rings and trinkets (convert those you have to the equivalent). There is no purpose to having 2 of each stat combo anymore, since they don’t have either a gameplay or cosmetic purpose anymore.

I’d rather keep them and just get rid of the “unique” restriction. They offensive/defensive distinction might not be there anymore, but a lot of these items have fun, interesting flavor to them, and I think it would be a waste to toss out half of them. They might not make a change to the character model, but I’d be unhappy if, say, all my rings suddenly matched.

I think this would be a good idea. Before, it was confusing, but had a functional purpose. Now it doesn’t serve any purpose, but still causes problems for people who waste their laurels on duplicate trinkets.

We’ve had a bunch of threads on this issue over the years, and I’m sure we’ll continue to have them. I’ve argued before that “unique” needed a better explanation, but now that it doesn’t serve any useful purpose, we can do away with it entirely.

I’m pretty excited about this as well. No more picking up recipe books in Southsun or HoT maps, then having to pass them around between characters to figure out who actually needs it!

That’s not a lie. Each race-gender combination has three more options than they were before. Even if they’re the same between genders, or recycled from other races (humans/norn,) there’s three additional options they didn’t have before.

I know people have asked about hairstyles being unrestricted from a certain race/gender in the past. I’m totally fine with these additions.