Guild Wars 2

I’d like it if jumping were an option. However, it’s the only way to proceed. If you have bad latency, it would hypothetically be completely impossible to access the rest of the zone simply because the lightning leap has leashing issues.

I’ve been fishing through the forums and I think I’ve found a sentiment that a lot of people are feeling; that the Living Story, at the moment, doesn’t really offer the player very much room to roleplay, to flesh out their own character’s personality or to have much influence on their relationship with the other characters in the story, like the biconics. Personally, I find that these are really big problems when my character can’t quite act how I think they’d act- or they can’t act at all. I don’t know how good I’ll be at making an actual suggestion, but I think I might be able to proffer a few ideas which will maybe help with the lack of dialogue options.

The player character’s personality
So we already have a system for this in-game, which is the Charisma/Dignity/Ferocity triangle which you can see on your character chart. At the moment, it doesn’t really do a hell of a lot; there’s the occasional Personal Story element that can be expedited by using an appropriate personality conversation option, and there are a few dynamic events that interact with it, but these are really very few and far between, and the system at the moment is really not very relevant to the game as a whole. It’s, for better or worse, a tiny bit of fluff which doesn’t actually do much, and it has absolutely no bearing on the Living Story at the moment.

During the current Living Story release, we have a dialogue option which has come under quite a bit of flak recently; the discussion with Marjory about your character’s thoughts on landing the final blow on Scarlet. There aren’t enough options for what every character might want to say or do. There’s no option to show remorse for having to kill someone who wasn’t acting under their own power, and there’s no option to chastise your ‘friends’ for showing such a sentiment. But, there’s only so much space for dialogue.

So, where I’m going with this; we have a system that’s not really doing anything and we have a problem in the Living Story. Why not stick the two together; allow a lot more dialogue options, but with some order or slight modification behind them which depends on the character’s personality?

Onto actual implementation; I drew up this quick triangle of personalities in GW2 and a set of lines to join them up; nevermind the jagged edges, I did this in MSpaint. My very rough idea for this would be to allow a player to pick an option from their own personality, and any personalities which are connected with a line. For example, a Charming character would be able to pick any Charming, Captivating, Scoundrel, Unpredictable and Diplomatic options which appear, and by picking an option, they’ll move along the line towards that personality; that Charming character will get Ferocity points from picking Scoundrel options, or they’ll lose Charisma by picking Unpredictable options, or they’ll gain more Charisma by picking Captivating options. This opens up a potentially huge number of dialogue options which could possibly all be covered by text, which is fairly cheap to do.

This isn’t really very useful on its own, we need actual relationships with the other characters, so continuing in next post

I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.

I have a better idea.

Make WvW rank/abilities account-wide.

Ta-da!

FateOmega.9601:

Such a cliche storyline. Its as if anet just took the speculation and say “hey, why not?”
Was really hoping for something surprising.

I think that was kind of the point. If they tried to do a plot twist, that would only leave a lot more questions. The ending was low-risk and idiot-proof, which is a decision I agree with- We’ve been strung out on kitten -pulls for a while now, and having a conclusive end to Scarlet’s arc was the right decision.

-

My general thoughts on the patch- It’s the best that they possibly could have done (minus the Knights screwing over conditions). It doesn’t solve the ridiculous problems already in the plot (like how Scarlet managed to build a UFO without anybody noticing), but it does a good job of both wrapping up Scarlet’s arc and furthering the overall plot.

Other characters’ personalities
At the moment, we’re kinda sorta forced into being the Biconics’ friends. I don’t like that because I am a mean person by nature. I want to have the option to make them not like me. This is an RPG, and an RPG isn’t complete unless you’re able to act like a big jerk- But how do I make them not like me?

I have a few rough thoughts on this, but my main one so far is that key NPCs have two things:
1. A simple relationship bar with the player character; a scale from 0 to 100. If your relationship with a character is 0, they really, really dislike you; they might fear you, they might hate you, etc etc. If your relationship with a character is 100, you two are best bros and they will totally buy you drinks when you go to the pub.
2. Characters have action classes which they like and dislike. A character likes and dislikes certain actions, and linked actions, and performing actions which a character approves or disapproves on moves that relationship bar up or down. Let’s say that any direct action they like or dislike moves the relationship by 4, and any action linked to a like or dislike moves the relationship by 2.

With that in mind, let’s look at a character like Kasmeer. Kasmeer likes Charming, Diplomatic and Noble actions, and dislikes Barbaric, Brute and Militant actions. This makes Diplomatic actions her absolute favorite, and if you do one of those, you’ll get +4 from the direct action and another +4 from the two actions linked to it which she likes; so if you’re a diplomatic character who uses diplomatic options a lot, you two will get along like a house on fire. If you do a Barbaric option, on the other hand, she won’t be very fond of you at all; your relationship will go down by 8.

With that in mind, what should actually change as a result of being friends or not-so-friends with someone? This depends on the character in question, but as a character likes or dislikes you more, they might be more or less reluctant to talk to you, they might be more antagonistic or affectionate towards you, or certain actions might be more or less likely to gain positive results.

If, for example, Evon Gnashblade has a 60 or less score to to you, he’ll be more or less how he is right now; not very appreciative of you knocking off Scarlet. If he has a 20 or less score, he might refuse to talk to you altogether, saying something like “buy something or go away”. If, on the other hand, he’s really keen on you (say, 75+), you get additional dialogue options- You might be able to ask him whether he plans on moving back into Lion’s Arch and setting up the BLTC there again, or whether he plans on moving elsewhere. If you’re good friends with Ellen Kiel, you might be able to go talk to her and try to convince her to discharge Evon from the Lionguard. We had the voting system back in the day, and people were really keen on those choices; maybe this’d be a good opportunity to slide in little choices here and there.

I wrote up a huge spiel and I don’t know how to stop, send help
That’s more or less everything I had in mind and I think that these are really big problem areas in the Living Story. Being able to have your character actually express themselves would make your character feel a lot more of a part of the story, and immersion can make or break an RPG.

So yeah. In short, personality unlocks more conversation options, and unlocked options affect NPCs’ opinions of you and open up more dialogue options. Thoughts?

Sure I’ll play devil’s advocate

Kings.7491:

- Order time limit. An order should have a time limit to keep the market up to date and better represent the current state of the in-game market.

But this only affects representations. It wouldn’t actually provide any real benefit to the game. What is gained other than a minute amount of clarity from this change? Secondarily, this feature from other games- at least, WoW and SWTOR- if it’s a really tightly limited timescale, constantly listing and relisting items that the game has sent back to you is beyond annoying. Even with longer scale items, this could be the case- Someone might explicitly put up say, a Tormented skin at a much higher price because they know they’ll get it at some point in the distant future.

Kings.7491:

- Edit current orders. If I have an order listed this order should be able to be modified. Currently the only way to do this is to remove the listing and make a new one. Editing orders is a vital part of market competition and will create more accurate pricing. Of course an editing fee will be added to cover the missing listing fee but I should not have to pay the whole listing fee again only to lower the price by one copper.

This seems like something of an oddity considering the velocity at which a lot of items move. This doesn’t so much speak on the idea of an edit mode itself- that could be very useful- it’s kinda like… If you don’t want to risk being undercut, you use the buy order feature instead.

Kings.7491:

- Price history. An in-game graph for price history and moving average can greatly help in determine the real market value for an item.

Anet’s gone on the record here saying that they’d prefer to outsource development for this sort of feature by granting APIs to the community and allowing them to create and manage tools of this sort. It makes a lot of sense to simply give the data to someone else rather than put it in the game client- not only does it add a lot to the workload of the dev team, but it also puts a lot of bloat in the client. A basic user doesn’t want or need a price history, and filling the UI with buttons doesn’t work- a web client like gw2spidy services that need much better.

Kings.7491:

If there is a good reason for why these features aren’t in the game I would be very interested to hear them.

I hope I’ve helped!

>stack on server
>surprised when population increases lock you out of wvw

While I don’t really have much sympathy, having those server transfers at a reduced price for another week certainly wouldn’t be taken poorly.

lil devils x.6071:

It is essentially a new " which servers have less players that hate the DBL?" win mechanic that did not exist in the game before.

It’s not new. There are players who dislike EBG. There are players who dislike ABL. There are players who like DBL. It’s not a new idea, it’s a new variable.

Yeaaaah.

This doesn’t really cut it as a GM trait compared to the other options, and even the existing options. Maybe as an Adept trait, or baked into another trait, but no way is this worth a Grandmaster.

I was very disappointed when they stuck with this decision. It seems like it’d be a bit too late for them to revert their decision, though; on the one hand, you have players who explicitly bought the pick to gain economic power, and on the other, you have people without the pick who are calling for the removal of that economic power.

Watchwork Sprockets are far from trivial, and they were still far from trivial back when Sprockets were at their bottom price. Basic math implies that the Watchwork Pick increases the value of every mining swing you make by 64 copper- 60 from watchwork sprockets, 4 from not using Ori pick charges. To compare, the Molten and Bone picks save you 4 copper, if you would otherwise use an Orichalcum pick. This is far, far, far from an aesthetic choice. The Watchwork pick will pay itself off roughly 15 times as quickly.

Stormleaf.1769:

I find it amusing that the game is suddenly shattered for so many over something as insignificant as a 0-150 point increase in stats. I simply can’t believe that people who honestly and legitimately enjoyed the game prior to the buff are unable to logically enjoy it now. It seems far more likely that they’re simply being disingenuous, for effect.

“Insignificant” is not what I would call 4 ascended trinkets’ worth of stats.

Take the inverse of Bloodlust; if the other realms could get a bonus which, upon getting it, would let them go “nope, you’re not allowed to equip any accessories”, would that shed any light on it for you then? Can you understand why they might think that completely invalidates WvW? Because that is 2/3rds of what this system does.

It’s even worse than everything else that imbalances WvW because you can’t both have those orb bonuses at the same time; if someone else is eating, you can eat too. If someone else has stacked Guard Killer, you can stack Guard Killer. If you’re outmanned and you want to roam for some fun fights? Enjoy your (even more) uphill battle.

Egon Vidar.9125:

A.. gay agenda?

Emphasis on the shoehorned, not the agenda. All stories need to be trimmed to include only the relevant details. Unless the Marjory + Kasmeer relationship is going to end up relevant in some way, it doesn’t really need to be there.

Caithe and Faolain are in a lesbian relationship but it’s relevant because it’s the relationship between the main protagonist and antagonist in the Nightmare Court/Twilight Arbor, and their previous intimacy more or less establishes why Caithe has an interest in the Nightmare Court at all. It serves a purpose.

Logan and Jennah’s relationship is the basis for the entire story of Destiny’s Edge in GW2. If it wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be a story.

Does Marjory and Kasmeer’s relationship have the same importance to the story? We don’t know yet, but so far, it hasn’t any importance whatsoever.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m also not sold on them being a fully closed couple, considering how Marjory can sometimes flirt with my (male) ranger.

And my female Norn.

You know what’d be funny? If Kasmeer thinks that Marjory’s interested in her, but Marjory doesn’t have any feelings for Kasmeer and just flirts because it’s fun. A hole might be poked into this theory by them cuddling on the beach, but still.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I lost a LOT of respect for Mike O’brien when he posted and specifically named people in order to humiliate, embarrass, and shame them for their opinions. There are a lot of valid, demonstrable reasons why players see HoT as incomplete.

But for a professional to name and shame when Anet’s policy for their own players is not to allow this is just pathetic. And totally unprofessional. He needs to get a grip on his emotions and step back and look at all points of view objectively, politely, and professionally.

But he wasn’t naming and shaming he was making a direct response to those people :x

Saying he was naming and shaming them is like if you were to say I’m naming and shaming you right now by quoting you directly.

Y’know what bothers me about the living story?

We had maybe a dozen characters introduced in season one which have simply fallen off the radar. We have an entire destroyed city which is still not having anything change in it.

It’s not a living world. It’s one living zone and the rest of the world is trapped in stasis, including the plot threads left dangling at the end of S1. It’s been 4 months since scarlet attacks and the bridges around LA are still not even worthy for basic travel. Come on. Come onnnn.

Turamarth.3248:

And how would you define a wvwer?

I love threads in which the first post is a slam dunk

Seriously though it seems like anyone who dislikes the results of a poll just defines “wvwer” as anyone who agrees with them and everyone who disagrees with them, including and especially when their opinions are losing by a supermajority, is conveniently “not a wvwer”.

Because PvE balance is relatively easy to do compared to PvP balance. If damage is too low because of these Might changes, they can do a blanket tuning down of NPC HP. I suspect, though, that ANet won’t do this, because stacking damage is a very dominant strategy in PvE and making an adjustment to Might helps to address this dominance.

lordkrall.7241:

The fact remains that it is fully possible to train up jumping ability and as such this is basically a non-issue. Especially since it is permanent.

TIL I can practice jumping so much that the leashing issues which all of the zephyrite skills have because I have 400 MS for living in Australia will go away if just GIT GUD!

Ok I Did It.2854:

The DBL will either give a server a massive advantage over others as no one will go near it, or a disadvantage if the server that gets it, has there playerbase avoid it,

This makes no sense to me.

Nobody wants to defend the BL so it’s a weakness
But nobody wants to attack the BL so it’s a strength.

Don’t they kinda cancel one another out?

I have two big problems with this trait.
1- It’s RNG. You could block an absolutely excellent ability like Point-Blank Shot, Pin Down or Magic Bullet which will put your enemy at a huge disadvantage. You could block nothing at all during a fight. Personally, this makes this skill absolutely utter rubbish in my opinion from a design standpoint- It’s an RNG element that counteracts clutch plays.
2- It only affects projectiles. Projectiles are a very specific class of attack and it won’t do anything against a nice big pile of abilities. This tied with the 15% chance proc rate makes it really, really tricky to justify picking up.
3- No counterplay. If you’re dependent on your ranged attacks, you can’t do anything about the fact that you’re rolling the dice when you’re fighting a Strider’s Defense ranger.

My suggestion:
Strider’s Defense: When you land a melee attack, gain 20 seconds of Aegis. 20 second CD
This nails these problems right in the face; it removes the RNG element, makes the ability more practical to use against everyone, and Aegis already has bunches of systems to support and counter it. Duration and ICD are debatable, of course; I would personally put it somewhere between 15 and 25 seconds.

Phaeton.9582:

It’s the worst trait change on rangers for sure.

What about ‘your pet f2 blinds and cripples nearby foes’

This double dips with Intimidation Training, so I’m kind of skeptical of it.

This is an absolutely horrible idea and I’m genuinely amazed that somebody gave it the go-ahead.

Celtic Lady.3729:

This has already been addressed repeatedly. Guess you just like being a parrot?

We like it when people tell the truth. We don’t like it when people lie or mischaracterize like you have.

Directing a response to an individual is not naming and shaming.

While I don’t care one bit about legendary weapons I do wonder about what sort of economic impacts this will have in the long term.

I don’t mind Spirit Watch. Skyhammer is just blerrh.

she’s a skritt in a caithe suit

I don’t like large group content. I haven’t touched Wurms or Teq because of it.

I want 5-man dungeons. They are fun, and with a healthy meta which respects GW2’s trinity, they’d be even better.

Also I want TA spiderpath back, because it’s silly that it got removed.

laokoko.7403:

The problem is some of Anet’s living story events, the chance to “success” on the event if you just “wonder in” the map is very low. For example: Lion’s Arch save citizen, or Boss Blitz.

Boss Blitz is, I think, an experiment to see whether they can successfully make a ‘boss fight’ with rewards which are dependent on your performance.

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

If I were a writer at ArenaNet, I’d really be congratulating myself on a job well done.
People claim that Scarlet is poorly written, but the truth is that over the past decades, thanks largely to Hollywood writing, we’ve become far to accustomed to sympathetic villains. Antagonists, who are often the antithesis of the hero, troubled by deep psychological trauma, whose actions are to a certain degree understandable or at leat comprehensible to the reader or viewer. This developement has lately reached a point, where the “gentleman” villains often become the protagonists themselves (e.g. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Pirates of the Carribean etc.)
Scarlet isn’t that. She isn’t likeable, her actions aren’t comprehensible, she’s annoying because she meddles with everything and people are spewing venom and bile because they don’t like her.
Here’s an update: You are not supposed to like the villain. You’re supposed to hate the villain, hate what they do, hate that you don’t understand why or how they’re doing it and get so emotional that you call for their early demise.
Judging from the majority of the reactions on these forums here, I think ANet have done a pretty good job with achieving that.
Kudos.

EDIT: I don’t want to say this is the case everyone. I can tell from reactions to this thread that there are also people who see right through what is actually happening here. But there are far more people on these boards who claim to be disinterested in the Scarlet story-arc, yet the emotionality in which their posts are usually written reveals that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Geez how do I tackle this

1. People do not hate Scarlet for what she is doing. People dislike Scarlet because she does not make sense in the context of the story.
2. ‘Villain’ or ‘antagonist’? (Also, which villain/antagonist character becomes a protagonist in Pirates of the Caribbean?)
3. By saying you are supposed to ‘hate’ the villain/antagonist, you are writing off a huge amount of villains who do not engender hate. A narrative causing an emotional connection with the player is good.
4. With Scarlet, we are not being angry with the story, we are being angry at the story.
5. The game is not a murder mystery. It does not invite us to solve the mystery it lays out, and it does not have the tools or build-up to do it. If it is trying to do that, it failed spectacularly as soon as Scarlet was introduced. Scarlet is no longer a useful tool for the narrative; she may as well be thrown out.
6. People are emotional because they like the game, think it has great potential, and it’s being spoiled on this muck.

Draknar.5748:

CTS surgery is pretty much out-patient these days and will cure you.

We’re not trying to avoid the fact that having to undergo surgery because you played a video game is ridiculous, right?

Also, @OP, I don’t know about the autotarget changes but the rest of them are just downright needed at this point.

mtpelion.4562:

Silver Lining: Your inconvenience means you are better at this game than the average person who needs all the handholding.

i do not believe any human being requires this level of handholding

imma go wake my cat up and see what she can do with it

OniGiri.9461:

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/raids/

“As part of rewards for raids, we’re introducing legendary armor.”

Does it say they’re going to perpetually be raid exclusive?

My thoughts.
1. Underflows. Gimme them
2. Living Story releases should try to push for more permanent, zone-spanning meta achievements.
3. We should get heart quests and skill points in Southsun Cove
4. World exploration NG+ maybe?

sophiewhite.3149:

Sarrs.4831:

Doom Blaze.6749:

6-8 hours of WvW to finish the track. That’s way more time than I and many others want to put into WvW. And its called the Gift of Battle not the Gift of WvW. So I see no reason to not put it into PvP.

And how many hours are you putting into PvE to get your legendary?

seeing how the subject isnt related to pve.but nice deflection. next your going to complain about how wvwers have to pve. cuz thats the main focus of the game right? wvw?

>accused of deflection
>you immediately deflect in the exact same way

sure m8

People with “lucky” accounts probably just play more.

hello i have a handcrafted guide to help you cope with desert borderlands

fwiw desert borderlands is plenty active, red team has been holding steady

I actually really enjoy Ricochet. Don’t care if it’s viable, it’s just a super fun trait.

This would be super duper nice yeah.

I really hope that this event lasts as long as humanly possible. I’m inclined to say that the Marionette is probably the best open-world boss fight that they’ve made so far.

Raistlin.3210:

decided by the very small handful of people that actually use the forums you mean?

Decided by very basic reasoning.
If people don’t like the game, they leave it, and they leave the community.
The majority of the community must therefore either be new and not experienced, like you, or have already left.
The game is not young. It’s three years old. The dust has settled and it has a stable population of people who enjoy the game.

Raistlin.3210:

and if this is a on-going topic like you say , your point is null and void
that just proves this is something people want

If people have been saying this stuff for three years and Anet still haven’t put it in, they aren’t going to put it in.

Raistlin.3210:

either way warcraft is a dated game, so saying “go back to wow” is just plain ol kittened

Only as young as you feel.
WoW still provides a very strong PvE environment for raiding. If you want to play that raiding game with the structures you enjoy, go and play that.
If you want to play a new game that uses the base structure of WoW and expands upon it, and diverges less than GW2 does, go and try SWTOR. It didn’t do so well early on, but it’s a very healthy game at the moment. It has a very promising expansion being released soon as well.

Raistlin.3210:

and even if (which i doubt and would bet 1 mill bucks on) they added a few of these things and lost all of the people that they have had since launch , the amount of people they would gain would overshadow that amount x10

Evidence, please.

Raistlin.3210:

how many people play this game 200k?

Lol. Are you arguing for a better game or a more populous game?

Raistlin.3210:

another thing to consider is that when people arent happy with an MMO they just quit playing it, they dont post on the forums and give the devs a chance to hear them and fix/change things

From all the people I’ve met who stopped playing GW2, their answers generally fell into one of these two:
1. Too different from GW1
2. Simply didn’t grab their attention

Raistlin.3210:

and i never said i didnt like this game, i play it tons, it would just be nice for the rewards in the game to fit the time spent getting them

Keep in mind that it is an MMO with no level cap raise. If you get ascended gear, it lasts for ten years. The time investment compared to that is absolutely miniscule.

This is a ‘shave’ change, and it’s more or less directed at Sig of Rage being the only elite than anyone ever uses.

I whole-heartedly endorse this product or event.

Seriously though I’ve had friends who’ve accidentally deleted items, or locked items on an alt that was then deleted, etc. I would be far more eager to buy items from the gem store if I could ruse them on my alts, as I’ve got a lot of them.

Warriors get tons of stuff.

And by warriors I mean hambow.

And by stuff I mean sigils.

Character bound progression does more harm than good. It increases burnout and locks out anyone who primarily spends their time playing alts, and what does it give to the game?

So uh.

Where’s Canach?
Where’s Mai Trin?

Personally I don’t really like or care about the characters enough to care about their romance. Their “romance” started really quickly and without much trepidation, and the backdrop in front of which the romance undermines it(because it’s rubbish). They’re just two attractive people who are flirting with each other; it feels flat to me. Maybe it’s just because the story hasn’t finished yet, but most of the other relationships in the game have more oomph to them simply because there’s more going on in them. Logan and the Queen has the seperation in duty aspect, Caithe and Faolain has Faolain trying to WOLLOLO Caithe to the Nightmare, and Snaff/Kudu/Zojja is a love triangle but i dunno if thats canon.

IMHO these events need a few changes. Not big ones, but a few; chiefly, giving defense events and assault events identical rewards which share a cooldown. You shouldn’t want to leave the temple undefended for the sake of better rewards.

Desert BL is perfectly playable. It is nobody’s fault but your own if you cannot play on it or refuse to play on it.

Samhayn.2385:

honestly what could anet say to you that would make you happy? Sorry we will roll back this requested (yeah people asked for something like this) change that took months to complete because people raged on the forums? If they caved to every whiner after every patch we would be still playing the day one release version of this game.

If it seriously took them months of full-time work to put out this update they need to hire more than 2 dudes to do WvW stuff. If they lent a Living World team to the WvW team we’d probably have an entirely new map, not a remodelled section in the middle.