Guild Wars 2

I’m looking forward to when they can let us relive Season 1 by experiencing it again through the journal, even if that takes a long time. Perhaps in the meantime we could be given an item in our inventory that will allow us to watch all of the official cutscenes. It could be an item that every character gets, kind of like how players whose account is linked with their GW1 account automatically get a Hall of Monuments Portal Stone in their new character’s inventory. It’s a quick fix since the cutscenes already exist and they won’t have to be changed, and it would greatly benefit the new players like Maxwell who didn’t experience the first season but who want to know what’s going on and to see what happened (without having to search YouTube for video clips).

But until we can relive Season 1, I suggest reading the summary here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1 and then going ahead with Season 2. That way at least you’ll know who the main characters are, how they were introduced to the game, and why they’re important to the story.

It sounds like you’ve completed your personal story, and I found that helped me with Season 2 for one of my characters. I created my latest character shortly before Season 2 came out, and when she started doing Season 2 all of the main NPCs were calling her “boss” and I was like, “My other characters did Season 1 with you guys but this character didn’t; you have no reason to call her ‘boss’,” and I felt out of place with that character. So I decided I would finish her personal story first so she could at least have the esteem and honor from completing that with Destiny’s Edge— most of whom have links to the current main characters— and then the current main characters would have a believable reason to regard me as their leader despite her not having done Season 1 with them.

I found the Content Terms of Use

It sounds like he could print and sell copies of the book as long as he put the proper copyright information on there, and as long as he was only charging the buyers for the price of printing and shipping the book and nothing more.

Does that sound like a correct interpretation of the terms of use regarding a book like this?

Making a book like this for yourself is legal as long as you’re not using the game’s material to make a profit for yourself. But I’m sure that if he got permission from ArenaNet and together they released this to the public, then there would be a lot of sales, especially since so much of what makes this game unique among MMOs is the Living Story and many players would love to be able to see Season 1 again. I’d buy this book for sure! Great job, Odinius! (and thank you, Point of Interest team, for showcasing this on your Twitch episode).

I noticed tonight that the heavy moldy bags are dropping in Malchor’s Leap now, and the number of Giant Eyes on the trading post is up to 209. I doubt they’ve changed the rate that the Eyes will drop from those bags, but at least the bags are no longer only in the Cursed Shore.

Or maybe something like 50 Bloodstone Bricks.

I just noticed on the trading post that Giant Eyes are up to 4 gold each (and those are the cheapest ones). Immobulus is one of the best looking scepters in the game, but the ability to make it is now impossible given that the drop rate for the Giant Eyes is extremely low and there are only 116 left on the trading post, and the requirement is 250 of them.

I just did the math, and currently the 116 Giant Eyes available on the TP will cost a person approximately 700 gold to buy— as much as a precursor— and they’ll still be 134 eyes short. And given the drop rate of the eyes, there is no way a person could farm the other 134 eyes.

I know that a lot of weapons created in the Mystic Forge require a stack of 250 of some item, but given the horrible drop rate of Giant Eyes, I propose that this requirement for Immobulus be changed. The drop rate for the Giant Eyes needs to be increased (especially since there are 3 other weapons that call for them as well), and please decrease the quantity required for Immobulus down to 25 or 30, something more reasonable.

Immobulus is a beautiful weapon and it shouldn’t be impossible to acquire.

My group was doing the Molten Facility fractal last night at level 10. The bosses at the end were hitting our group with agony strength of what felt like level 40, downing us in about 2-3 ticks. Please scale back the agony to fit the level. Thank you!

All of the weapons on the Mystic Forge Recipes list now show up on the TP when I search for them. Thank you for fixing the issue!

Recently I searched for Cooguloosh on the trading post so I could preview it to see if I want it for my character, and the TP says No Results Found. So I crafted it today and tried to sell it on the trading post to see how much I could get for it, and it gave me the option to “Add to lowest seller” for 3.5 gold.

So my question is: Why can’t I see an item that clearly is still on the trading post?

There are other weapons that when I’ve done a search for them, they show up as No Results Found (Immobulus, for example); I used to think there were none available, but now I’m not so sure. Why are these weapons invisible on the TP?

(last continuation, I promise!)

4th main issue: Fighting Zhaitan
Solutions:

1. Keep graphics the same, they’re awesome.
2. Make this soloable as well, with the option to have up to 4 other players join if they want to, but it’s not a requirement.
3. Have with you in the fight:
   — Destiny’s Edge (back together and now you know who they are and why they’re a big deal because we’ve done the story mode of the dungeons)
   — the leaders of the Orders
   — your mentor in the Order you chose (who can have a glorious death in this fight)
   — the NPCs that were important in the story arcs so far.
   All together that’s anywhere from 13 to 16 or so characters depending on your previous choices, and that’s a full raid. A fight with allies like that can have the same epic feel of an end-game raid in other MMOs where you need at least a dozen players. Give each one of those NPCs the stats of an average level 80 character so they can do their part.
4. Fight Zhaitan on the ground, not in an airship, using the weapons and skills that we’ve worked hard to get, learn, and perfect while playing the game. This fight should have the epic feel and attainability that fighting a World Boss (like Claw of Jormag, Tequatl, or the Shatterer) currently does, but on a much grander scale.
5. Have strengths of Destiny’s Edge members play a part in the Zhaitan fight, so that fighting him on the ground is possible. They were Tyria’s “Dream Team”— the six of them almost took out an elder dragon by themselves; with the five of them, our character, and the NPCs from our previous story arcs, we can take down Zhaitan if the dungeon is designed to allow that.
   — Side suggestion on that last point: after the Crucible of Eternity story mode dungeon is done and we’ve headed into Orr, have your herald tell you that Destiny’s Edge has gotten back together and that they’re forming some kind of plan, and he heard them talking about Zhaitan. When the Zhaitan fight comes, this would explain what they’ve been up to for the past 20 levels or so while we’ve been in Orr, and how they all come prepared with something that plays to their strengths and helps us find and defeat Zhaitan.

A minor issue but an easy fix: Personal story rewards
Currently the rewards for completing sections of the personal story are underwhelming, specifically armor and weapons, whose skins you can get on the TP for really cheap.
Solutions:

1. Create an armor set and a weapons set that are unique personal storyline rewards.
2. Rather than getting only 3 Black Lion chest keys throughout the entire storyline, give us one at the end of each arc of the story. It’ll be, what, 8 or 9 total? It’s not much, but it would be nice perk for us as players who have dozens or even hundreds of Black Lion chests sitting in our bank.
3. With the decrease in the amount of karma we’re now getting from dailies, monthlies, etc., at the end of each story arc give us a keg of karma. Many of us, myself included, still want to buy things that cost a lot of karma (cultural weapons, Orr temple items, etc.), and the keg of karma every 10 levels or so (or wherever the natural breaks in storyline end up taking place) would be a nice treat.

A long post, I know, but believe me when I say that these are the solutions we need to fix the personal story problems, and everyone in the PvE community who cares about storyline will be glad to give up a month or two of living story in order for this to be done. When it’s all done, everyone’s personal story will be reset to the beginning regardless of our character level or the place we’re at in our story, and we can play through the stories again on our characters and see what a great job you’ve done. It will definitely increase the reputation of ArenaNet: not only does GW2 have great gameplay, but the devs listen to what’s important to their players, and they’ve revamped their personal story part of the game to make it AMAZING, a great game all around.

2nd main issue: Early story arcs play no role in later storyline
Solutions:

1. Once we are close to fighting Zhaitan (say, level 70 or so), have our character go recruit the people from our previous storyline choices to come help us:
   — our Order mentor (who doesn’t die at Claw Island, but rather has been with us since we joined their Order and perhaps has a glorious and meaningful death while fighting Zhaitan)
   — our contact and their second- and third-in-command from the tribal race we helped
   — the ally or allies we chose for retaking Claw Island
   — Destiny’s Edge (more on that in the next section)
   — the NPCs close to our character in Parts 1 and 2 of our race arc (if they lived). Those can be people we didn’t actively recruit, but they show up and volunteer to help, which is a surprise to our character and means a lot to them.
2. The quest we have, based on our “A Light in the Darkness” choice, is a good one and I think it’s well-done. At the end of that arc of the story, don’t just talk about honoring the NPC affected by our decisions, but have a short 5-minute scene where you go to their race’s main city and you actually do honor them and we can see our character being truly sad and grateful for them, like they actually meant something to our character.

3rd main issue: Destiny’s Edge and the story mode dungeons
Solutions:

1. Have meeting between Destiny’s Edge in Lion’s Arch lead right into the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon story mode, and have our Order introduction happen after that.
2. Make the story mode dungeons a required part of the personal story rather than a separate option, and make the story mode dungeon soloable.
3. In the soloable story mode of the dungeons, make part of the quest, for example, “Talk to Logan and Rytlock”, because it’s only in those dungeons where we really see and understand the conflict between those characters. As the dungeons are now— optional and needing 4 other people who often want to rush through it— we don’t get the depth of understanding into what happened between Destiny’s Edge members and how they are feeling unless we take the time (and hold up our group) to talk to them on our own while in the dungeon.
4. Spread out the storylines evenly to make room for the dungeon story modes, and so that the level 80 quest of the story isn’t comprised of about 5 separate quests.
5. To help with the flow of the story, have the story mode dungeons happen closer together, and spread out within the part of the story before we go into Orr. That way our character isn’t taking a break from Orr business to go chasing after Destiny’s Edge members around Tyria. Also, this will give the reunited Destiny’s Edge time to come up with something epic to help us fight Zhaitan (I get into that in the next section).

(continued again)

Let me say right off the bat that I’m not here to bash on the living story at all, nor am I here to rant about the flaws in the personal story— I’m here to advocate a redo of the personal story by offering well-thought-out and practical solutions for how to make the second half of the story (Claw Island and beyond) as great as the first half was.

I understand why none of the huge storyline issues have been resolved in the year that the game has been out. It would be a major expense to get all the voice actors back here to read a new script, and it would take a lot of people, time, and money to redo the entire second half of the storyline. Plus, the devs are taking the game in the direction of the living stories in an ever-changing world, which is a fine idea and I have no complaints about it, except that the living stories are coming at the expense of fixing the personal storyline.

I care a lot about storyline and so does everyone else who has posted on this forum section. On behalf of the entire community who cares anything about storyline, I can say with confidence that everyone would gladly go for one month or even two months without a living story at all if it meant that half of the living story design teams would instead revamp the personal storyline and fix the issues that have been there since Day 1.

I will not spend this post complaining, and the issues are already well-known; rather, I will lay out some practical solutions for how to improve the story in 4 categories (not necessarily in order of importance, as that differs from person to person).

1st main issue: Our story is taken over by Trahearne’s story
Solutions:

1. Let us be the person to unite the three Orders and be in charge, not Trahearne. Yes, Trahearne is a neutral party— never having allied with a specific Order— but all three Orders actively wanted my character to join them, meaning they’ve all heard of me and they all respect me. Back when deciding on an Order, we had the chance to work with each one to solve a problem, so we know what they’re all about, they know us, and we have a good reputation with them. With some good writing, our character can convince the Orders (either through charm, dignity, or ferocity depending on our character creation choice) that although I chose this particular Order, I can and will respect all three and we can work together to defeat Zhaitan. And show this throughout the Orr quests by having the Order representatives give us the options for which paths we choose, and alternate between which two Orders present us with options (i.e. Vigil and Durmand Priory, Durmand Priory and Order of Whispers, etc.) the way they did when we were deciding which Order to join.
2. No need for a Pact, we only need the 3 Orders to work together for this time, and our character is the glue that accomplishes this. Fort Trinity is still a good headquarters and will still be an appropriate name for the fort.
3. Keep Trahearne in the story and keep his Wyld Hunt the same, but keep him in the adviser/scholar role and as the expert on Orr. We can still help him in his quest to cleanse Orr, which is a really good quest in my opinion, but he doesn’t need to become the leader of a Pact to do so. His role can also be to tell us more about the lore of the game, of Sylvari, and of Orr specifically, showing his expertise and freeing us as players from having to search wiki posts to find out about the basics of the lore.
4. Especially once we are in charge and we are in Orr, change dialogue slightly so that rather than someone telling us, “These are your options; which one will you choose?”, it’s our character saying, “Let’s hear the options,” and then our character chooses one. It changes our character to being proactive rather than reactive, which makes our character more of a leader and more in control of the situation.

(continued in the comments below due to length restriction).

That is a beautiful picture; you can see the elements of Sunrise and Twilight in it while at the same time it has its own unique look. Very nice concept.

And for those who already have Eternity, they could be given the option to keep it like it is currently with the day/night change, to split it back into Sunrise and Twilight and reforge them into the new look, or to keep them separate and unsoulbind them so they can sell them if they want to. That way those who have already put in all that hard work for Eternity can choose what they want to do with it.

My thoughts here are about crafted legendary weapon components, though this could apply to anything that’s been crafted.

For almost 4 months now I’ve been working toward getting my first legendary weapon: The Dreamer. About 3 weeks ago I looked closer at another legendary— The Flameseeker Prophesies— and I LOVE it. I recently started playing Guild Wars and now I know what the Flameseeker Prophesies were, and the shield is PERFECT for my guardian.

Here is where I’m torn.

I still like The Dreamer and I smile every time I see someone’s unicorn-rainbow projectiles shoot across my screen; but last night I found another short bow that fits my character’s look better, and so I would rather use my legendary components to craft The Flameseeker Prophesies instead. But, with my husband’s help, I’ve gathered and crafted almost everything I need for The Dreamer, including the Gift of The Dreamer, which can only be used for The Dreamer and nothing else. This means that all the time, effort, and materials that both my husband and I spent on getting me the Gift of The Dreamer will be lost and completely wasted, because I can’t get those materials back for either of us to use for something else.

So here is my idea.
We’ve recently gotten the option in the Gem Store for a Transmutation Splitter, which I think is a fantastic idea; what if we took it a step further and had something like a Crafted Item Splitter? It would split something you’ve crafted and it’ll give you back all the components on the level below it that went into making it.
In my case that would mean I could use this splitter on my Gift of The Dreamer and I would get back the 100 Icy Runestones, the Superior Sigil of Purity, the Gift of Wood, and the Unicorn Statue. And with another splitter I could break down some of those things one level further— for example, my Unicorn Statue would give me back the Gift of Thorns, the 250 Orichalcum Ingots, the 100 Opal Orbs, and the 100 Chrysocola Orbs. Maybe a splitter like this could also turn the Gift of Thorns back into 500 TA tokens?

I would gladly pay real money for gems to buy an item like this from the Gem Store. Since something like this would involve high-end materials and a reversal of some serious crafting decisions, I could see it being slightly more expensive than the cost of the new Transmutation Splitters. Perhaps something like 1 for 400 gems, 5 for 1600, and 10 for 2800, somewhere around there.

What do you think?