Guild Wars 2

First things first, I love the concept of map bonuses and I really like the mix of rewards available. This system will be great for getting those annoying materials that are a pain to farm. Just looking at those icons on my world map makes me excited to go places and do things.

However, there’s a few, how to put it, oddities with the current implementation.

To start with, I was confused by the UI at first. I saw a few ways to interpret it:

• It could be that I’d get the “Next Reward” on my next event, with the “Other Rewards” cycling upwards to become the new “Next”.
• It could be a high percentage of receiving the “Next” reward on triggering, with lower percentage chances of getting the “Other” options.
• It could be a time based system, where I’d only get the “Next” option today, and the “Other” options were showing you what would come in the future.

It would be great if there was a way to tell that it’s the cycling option without having to go out to the World Map, mouse over the icon, and read the hover menu that pops up to see if it changes after getting a bonus. That’s the only place that the list updates (or exists, for that matter), and the map icon never changes.

Next, the reward system feels, well, unrewarding. It triggers on every other event which, instead of making me feel like I got an awesome bonus every so often, makes me feel disappointed by normal event rewards. And I was confused for a bit, wondering why I didn’t get anything for an event before I figured out the pattern. I thought it was bugged for a while. The items themselves just fall in your inventory, so it’s quite easy to miss it happening. It’s a serious let-down when you lose track of if you’re due a bonus, open your inventory to see your new shiny, and there’s nothing there.

The amount of loot you get feels decent, so I’m not suggesting doubling it. But either something needs to happen every time (perhaps a lower-value piece of loot?) or there needs to be something extra to say “You got a bonus!”

The system’s also weighted in favor of events rather than the other, tougher, options. I love jumping puzzles and often go on giant cross-Tyria excursions, doing half of the JPs in the game one after another. With the current system, I could spend hours on eligible maps, participating in eligible content, but not get even one bonus because there’s only a single puzzle on most maps. Events, on the other hand, are often part of chains. Follow the chain to its end and you’ve got several bonuses in the time it can take you to do just one of the longer puzzles.

I was most excited for this system as a way to make doing jump puzzles and mini-dungeons feel properly rewarding. I want to see other people in those places, and loot’s a good motivator. But right now, it’s where you feel the awkwardness of the current system the most.

Perhaps the way to go would be making it so once-a-day chests always give you the reward? That does run the risk of chest-camping, but there’s already a natural limit to how much farming you can do with once-a-day chests.

Another thing: the system seems to track if you’re due a bonus by character. I did a puzzle on one beta character, hopped on a beta alt and ran it again, and got no bonus either time. This is oddly alt-unfriendly for this game. Or maybe that puzzle was bugged. I have no way of telling the difference, after all.

I was also disappointed that doing the jumping puzzles in the starting areas won’t give you anything extra. Especially since some of the toughest puzzles in the game are in those zones. There’s 13 puzzles in Central Tyria in non-bonus maps! That’s 30% of them! Nearly a third! Surely encouraging people who know the puzzles to do them wouldn’t hurt the new player experience, and might even help by providing teachers? And why don’t the little hidden chests out in the world give you a chance at the bonus as well? Some of them are real tough to get to, you know, and it’d encourage exploration!

The real issue I have with this system, though, is that the every-other-event thing reminds me that I’m playing a game. Having to keep track of if I got a bonus the last time so I can know if I’m due one makes me focus on the mechanics of gameplay, instead of, you know, enjoying doing things in Tyria.
There’s a chance that it’s just because I was testing the system, but I’m not so sure. If you’re trying to farm a specific material, you’ll also be encouraged to keep that count in the back of your head, so you know when to expect the next bit of loot. I can easily see myself hunting for events, supremely frustrated that they’re nowhere to be seen, just one short of getting that precious silver doubloon. At that point, I’d be playing the mechanics of the system, not the game itself, and that doesn’t sound fun.

So yeah, great system, nice loot, user experience needs some tweaking.

Can you make sure to include a way to disable the city speed boost, or at least turn off the visuals for it?

I really don’t want to have swiftness lines coming out of my calves all the time, to the extent that I won’t be taking this mastery line at all if they’re enforced. And that’s as someone who’s really interested in the helping-others elements, who already helps people a fair bit, and who was planning on taking this mastery line first, right up until I saw those swiftness lines.

I already use 25% speed boosts on all my characters for running around the non-city maps and having forced visuals for something that won’t even be useful for me until I take the last tier of the mastery line really irritates me.
It’s just not a look I care for in the least, especially since in the cities I want to show off what I look like, not what mastery track I’ve gone down.

Also, as both a roleplayer and a jump puzzle fanatic, I’m less than fond of the speed for other reasons. Sprinting around all the time breaks my immersion a bit when wandering around the city in-character, and having it enforced removes the option to tailor your movement speed to how your character acts.
For the jumping puzzles, having a different speed level in the cities than in the other parts of the world will likely cause me to miss a bunch of jumps when doing the Lion’s Arch puzzles. I already have to pause and wait should someone puts swiftness on me to let that clear, to ensure I don’t over-jump.

Perhaps I shall add another voice to the pile of those who don’t like being the One True Hero all the time. We are out there, after all, even if we’re quiet.

I’ve been feeling very awkward in every Living Story cutscene that paints me as the “Leader”. I do not feel like I earned the title, nor do I particularly want it. I would much rather be, say, a researcher who’s helping figure out the puzzle, or a soldier fighting against a dangerous enemy, assisting as I can.

I can’t recall any one point where a decision I made, as a player, affected how the group I am “leading” actually decided to act, which seems to me to be the one key requirement for leading a group. There were times I brought important information or lead the charge, but still, without being able to actually lead, I feel like no “Leader”.

This makes the various celebratory cutscenes of the last few updates rather cringe-worthy to me. I feel like a fraud, or perhaps a mascot, a puppet leader they can point to when someone asks. It feels similar to a salesman calling you “friend”, a title that you want to be called by most people, but in that particular case brings up all the red flags. It actually makes me feel excluded from the group far more than if I was standing on the side, unmentioned.

I would much rather have the story bring in the power of a multiplayer game. Our characters live in a world full of adventurers, full of heroes. There are many who answer the call, who run into danger rather than away from it. Each of us brings our own part to the story and there should be no One True Hero, for we are all heroes. We should be working together to forge the future rather than commanding others to follow behind as we lead.

Many games tell us stories of the Power of One, but few manage the Power of Many. There are so many interesting political scenarios, large-scale endeavors, even massive armies clashing like in Season 1, the things that only work if there are many heroes who all think and act differently. I want to lose every so often, to have others support me, just as I want to support them, let them take the limelight for the great things they do.

That’s one of the strengths of WvW, how it tells its own stories of politics and warfare, but there the story ends every time the maps reset. The slates are wiped clean, and while the politics may change over time, the battlefield is the same. But in the Living Story, such epic stories can continue to grow and evolve.

Now, I know that there are many who do want to be the Hero, so I do not request that you get rid of all those story elements. Merely let us tailor it a bit more, let me choose to be the power behind the throne rather than the fool on top of it once in a while. If I wanted to play a game where I ruled everything, well, that’s what single-player games are for. And there are many ways to be a true hero without being the One True Hero.

In some ways, what I want is the storytelling equivalent of the fight against the Marionette. There are times when working as a team is what’s important, where you have to band together to hold the lane against enemies. And then there are times when it comes down to just a few, where one player can make the difference between winning and losing. Those times where I was fighting my hardest, buffing all my allies with Empower so we could kill that warden before the last seconds ran down, those are some of the most exhilarating moments I have ever had in any game. But it would have meant nothing if those on the lanes weren’t fighting their hardest too, giving us few on the platform the space we needed to finish the job. In the story as well, sometimes I want to be part of the crowd defending the lanes, sometimes fighting as a small team on the platform, sometimes the last one left standing and the fate of many resting on my small shoulders.

Many times this game has already delivered on this careful balance of having many heroes via gameplay. But the story doesn’t always follow the same pattern. We’re cast in the starring role, no matter what we did or want. Even when others take the lead, such as Traherne, they defer to us, unable to act without our reassurances. Not our decisions, though, since we make few true decisions, and none that change the patterns of the world.

Perhaps the ones like the OP who ask to become the Hero and those like me who want to stop being called one are reacting to the same things. This “Leader” role feels hollow, unearned. Some players want more real power, others want the fake title removed to better match our real actions.

TL;DR. I don’t want to be the “Leader” of the Biconics, not unless I truly earn it. I’d rather be their friend, and not their only one. Let the story match the world, with every player being their own form of hero.

At rare occasions, when I gather in Orr, I’ll find myself suddenly getting Ruined Ore or Wood when I should be getting Orichalcum or Ancient Wood. I have plenty of uses on my Orichalcum Tools, and I’m quite certain I was using them. And it’s always the second and third of the gather, while the first is just fine.

It also always happens when I’m under attack while gathering, surrounded by at least two Risen, and taking a lot of damage. Which makes it all the more irritating, since I’m already anxious about gathering as fast as I can and getting out of there before I die.

I had this happen to me twice today, and remembered to get a screenshot the second time. The first time I was gathering at an Orrian Sapling in Malchor’s Leap with my Guardian, and under attack by a Risen Thrall and a Risen Villager. The second time I was on my Engineer, at an Orichalcum node in Cursed Shore, under attack by two Risen Nobles and an Orrian Spectral Skirmisher. Both times I had taken at least half of my health bar in damage from the enemies around me. And both had the same pattern of one normal gather and two ruined ones.

Currently on Dragonbrand server, deep in the Cursed Shore, there’s a tree that got hit by a crashed airship. Alas, it is an Orrian Sapling, and as much as I would love to gather its wood right now, I cannot figure out how to get to it.

If you can’t tell from the image, it’s south of Meddler’s Waypoint, north northeast of Ancorage Waypoint, and south southwest of Telmat Knoll. And, of course, there’s a crashed airship at the spot.

The airship is bigger than it looks, with lots of invisible areas that keep you away from the tree. Where my lovely asura is standing is the closest you can get before you bump into the airship, and any closer requires jumping onto said ship. I’ve been all over that thing, trying every angle I could think of, to no avail. The tree is always just out of reach.

Would it be possible to shift this gathering node a wee bit so that it can actually be gathered despite the airship parked on top of it?

To the two FA Guardians of [Corp] who have been grabbing the DBBL supply camps (and my yaks!) for the past hour or so; excellent fighting skills!

Especially the one that I and three other people chased all the way from Godsword to south of Bluelake! I’m sorry we couldn’t kill you (I was set up for yak-escorting, not PvP, and you obviously built for defense), but my goodness was that a lot of fun!

(I’m the one who you kept killing at the camps, and who laughed and saluted when our group finally gave up the chase.)