Guild Wars 2

Domaik.2591:

@drkwvlf yes i hve im i verdant brink already

@Popeurba thank you lot! will do and try it looks amazing, im eager to explore the map

The big thing with Verdant Brink is to follow the event chains. If you’re still at the beginning of the map, when day starts, find the Pale Reaver event chain, which starts around the first waypoint in VB and just follow it all the way through. Or go to the Itzel village to the north and do the chain there. They are 7-9 events long or so, and should get you plenty of xp. If it’s night, just look for a nearby rally point and do the events that trigger there.

Domaik.2591:

@drkwvlf yes i hve im i verdant brink already

@Popeurba thank you lot! will do and try it looks amazing, im eager to explore the map

The big thing with Verdant Brink is to follow the event chains. If you’re still at the beginning of the map, when day starts, find the Pale Reaver event chain, which starts around the first waypoint in VB and just follow it all the way through. Or go to the Itzel village to the north and do the chain there. They are 7-9 events long or so, and should get you plenty of xp. If it’s night, just look for a nearby rally point and do the events that trigger there.

Bombastic.1428:

Jeeebus, how can people possibly consider hot content elitist. I am not even an average player and don’t find it a deal breaker at all. Frustrating at times, sure but that is what makes it a bit of a challenge. I only have 1 ascended (zerker btw) set so I swap between my mesmer and a new necro. The necro still has green and yellow jewelry while I patiently wait for laurels and I run him solo almost exclusively and have no major issues. Sure I do my fair share of dying but come on, if I wanted easy content I would go back to Tyria and play.

This is pretty much me. I’m playing on my Ranger, who has 1 ascended amulet, 1-2 exotic armor pieces, and everything else is a mix of greens and yellows. I die sometimes, but for the most part everything is fine, even running around by myself. I don’t totally get all the complaints. And I’m not a particularly good player—I don’t PvP, I don’t even do dungeons. And I suck at Super Mario Bros.

The only thing necessary to succeed in HoT is awareness and observation. Pay attention to your surroundings, study the mobs, figure out how to beat each one, and then you can explore the jungle safely. It doesn’t take hours of grinding, it doesn’t take leet gaming skills. You just have to be aware and use your head. This is EXACTLY the kind of content I like to see BECAUSE I am a non-elite, casual player. And if you can’t figure out how to beat smokescales or something, ask around and people will be happy to give advice.

And exploring the jungle becomes much more fun once you get your first few masteries done. Having the glider makes jumping around the jungle much more forgiving.

Mike.7263:

If the elitist grinders keep telling the casual explorers to just play another game, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

That worked wonders for Wildstar.

I’m a casual explorer, and I’m loving HoT so far. I think the challenge level in the open world content is great. I think it is pretty silly to describe it as ‘hardcore’, IMO. So don’t presume that all casuals have the same objections you do.

I also think Wildstar has really nice open world content. Their problem was the marketing was all about dungeons and raids.

Capped.4675:

So i have no friends in GW2, i bought HoT thinking this wouldnt be a problem since pre-HoT everything was easily doable with random players on the map – OR SOLO.

In HoT, i spend hours running around looking for something —ANYTHING-- to do and when i finally do find it its impossible to complete without a group of 5-10-20+ people, people that arent anywhere nearby because the maps are so sprawling and vast.

Now the game is beautiful and the massive intricate maps are cool, its just a shame i seem to be unable to find ANYTHING to do on them.

So, how am i supposed to start enjoying HoT? Where do i find the content ?

If you’re in Verdant Brink, it depends on whether it’s day or night. If it’s day, and you are there at the beginning of the day, you can follow Laranthir and the Pale Reaver event chain, which will usually gather people as it goes. Or you can head to the Itzel village and try to pick up that event chain there. These are both places to start if you are learning the map. If you miss both of those, it’s a good time to explore, learn the map and look for Mastery and Hero Points. As you do so, you will come across other events.

If it’s night, it’s easier. Pick a rally point or two to defend. Those will be the focal points of events and other players will gravitate to them. The two just inside Verdant Brink are close together and you can focus on reinforcing, defending, and recapturing them as necessary. In between events, look for Pact Supplies to bring to the rally points to boost their defenses.

Generally, you want to defend during the night and explore during the day.

Edit: Honestly, I don’t think the difficulty is as bad as it is being made out to be. I’m a pretty casual player, I have terrible old person reflexes, and I was running around Verdant Brink all weekend doing events and having fun. Just take your time, pay attention to your surroundings, and figure out the trick to beating the various mob types. Get a feel for what you can handle and what you can’t, and keep an eye out for other players. Usually they will show up for the big event chains and rally points.

sharkswithlazers.7632:

They directly said somewhere that players with map completion would be able to play their elite specs

People in this thread keep saying this.

Anyone have a link?

Rauderi.8706:

Yeeeah, I don’t even want to hear a WvW-centric kewing about this. -_- I’ll admit the system for WvW is pretty fantastic, but PvE side, locking the elite spec that way is inexcusable.

400 points. 100% world completion only gives half an elite spec. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as salty about this if I didn’t have to buy everything including stuff I didn’t want with the free 400 I get for hitting level 80.

Maguuma Hero Challenges give ten points apiece. So, its 40 skill challenges to get 400 points.

Labjax.2465:

We will have a potluck picnic, hosted by Mordremoth. It will be anti-vegetarian. Not sure why. Something about Mordremoth being against eating plants.

Jormag is supposed to come, but you know how he is. Always sending an assistant in his place. He IS the CEO of Frostgorge Oppression Enterprises though. Gotta cut the guy some slack for being busy.

“Mordremoth, Inc. is an official sponsor of Meatoberfest 2015!”

Nike.2631:

Because Stonehenge has nothing to do with observing celestial bodies…
No, wait. It does.

So much this. OMG.

Well, that kind of went away with the Daredevil, did it not?

Edit: kittening filter.

Honestly, that particular spoiler—pretty much all of the end of Season 2—has been discussed all throughout the marketing for HoT. I doubt there are any spoilers left to be had at this point. I was taking a break from the game during Season 2, came back after the HoT announcement, am still trying to finish the last couple chapters—and I already know pretty much everything that happens. And I normally hate spoilers. It’s pretty much unavoidable at this point. Season 2 ended 9 months ago. It’s hard to complain about spoilers after that long.

OP, are you talking about refunding the Hero Points you used to train your traits and utility skills, or re-assigning your traits and Specializations? They are two different things, and newbies sometimes mix them up. Hero Points can’t be refunded, but traits and Specializations can be changed at anytime. If you mis-spent your Hero Points, you will earn more through leveling and Hero Challenges, so you’ll be able to get the build you want eventually.

Is there any phrase more overused on the Internet than “a slap in the face”? I can’t even take you seriously after that.

I was just in the Silverwastes and getting about 10 FPS, sometimes even less. It was awful. This machine usually isn’t great—about 30 FPS is normal—but its not that bad. There weren’t even that many people around.

I was assuming they meant sodas and hot dogs.

I would guess that whatever blog posts, etc., we get next week will be focused on whatever gets announced at Pax. BWE2 the following weekend, and then hopefully another Elite spec reveal the week after that.

Paulytnz.7619:

This is exactly my point tho….. "a reckless person ". I would not class a thief as reckless, especially how I should imagine the way they will use the staff. I would consider thieves to be cunning, calculated and very precise at what they do. As for the staff I should imagine they will be very dangerous with them, again very skillful, a master one could say more like a Martial Arts type thing. So why not go down that road for a name?

Direct from Wikipedia (yes I know they are not the most reliable but this gives a good basic idea and is close to even what my Oxford Dictionary says):

“A stunt performer, often referred to as a stuntman, or daredevil, is someone who performs dangerous stunts, often as a career”.

So to me a daredevil is less skillful or planning than what I would perceive a thief/assassin to be. More riskful, but they would take calculated risks where as a thief/assassin/martial artist type thing is VERY precise to the point they are not taking a risk, it is just pure skill/talent for them.

This is all just semantics, but I would say that a professional stuntman or daredevil is going to be a highly skilled individual who prepares for his performances with meticulous planning to minimize risk as much as possible. After all, that’s how you get to stay a professional stuntman/daredevil.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

“Elite” was probably a poor word choice on ANet’s part. There’s nothing ‘better’ about the new trait line, except that it allows use of a new weapon. It’s more of an ‘extra’ or ‘bonus’ trait line rather than an ‘elite’ one.

My guess is they chose “Elite Specialization” to echo the “Elite skills” of GW1—in the sense that you could have only one of the possible Elite skills in your build at a time, just like with Elite Specs. But yeah, it does sort of suggest that the Elite spec line is going to be stronger than the core ones, which leads to posts like the OP.

It’s already been said, but… there are too many people in this thread who haven’t seen Kill Bill.

TheHeretic.3529:

I don’t mind if I lose the progress I had made, Im going to lose it anyways since it’s just a beta. I just want my builds ironed out.

The purpose of the beta is not for you to figure out your builds before the expansion is out. The purpose of the beta is to provide feedback on the game before release. One of the things Anet has specifically requested feedback on is the pace of training masteries. Which is exactly why they have said they are not resetting account progress between BWEs.

This thread is hilarious.

Silicato.4603:

Ardid.7203:

Please accept a little poetry on your life: Words like “Moissonneuse” and “Segador” are metaphors.

Sure, but metaphors… of what? I answer the question: metaphors of the Reaper. metaphors of La Parca or La Muerte.

The thing is that in english there is no metaphor at all.
The toon is a clear reaper, with scythe and all. 0 metaphor.

You realize that using the term ‘reaper’ to refer to Death, the Grim Reaper, is 100% metaphor, right? That in English, we envision Death as a cutting down the living the same way harvesters reap grain? And so we refer to him as the Reaper of Men? It’s totally metaphor. The problem here is that the same metaphor doesn’t appear to have resonance in French or Spanish, or someone is using the wrong way of phrasing it, in the same way that the English version doesn’t call the spec “The Harvester,” because that would just sound silly. But it’s still a metaphor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaper

Wren.8470:

Hello, I decided to check out the update on my lvl 80 Ele which had all the skills for it unlocked previously, but now when I look it is asking me to spend points to unlock all my glyph and signets skills again. I already spent the skill points once to unlocked it, I should not have to do so again.

Those points only exist for you to unlock all your skills and traits. They have no other purpose, until elite specs come out in HoT. So you aren’t losing anything by spending those points to unlock everything again. All its costing you is the time it takes to click through the menus.

One idea that would solve this, although it would probably be a lot of work on A.net’s end: when you turn off the HUD, have the game also suppress the visual indicators for boons and conditions. That would make for clean screen shots, leave Aegis alone for the rest of the game, and take care of any similar effects that could get in the way of screenshotting characters. However, I suspect this would not be an easy thing to implement.

I like the way that Aegis looks, especially when I am using a greatsword or hammer.

If that makes me a troll, then so be it.

Usually the announcement goes up on Thursday, though, FWIW.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

Now you’re saying that’ll be wiped out and I’ll need to throw away my ascended armour with Travellers runes, weapons and trinkets and then start again? Multiply that by 8 as it’s similar for all my chars.

Wow, I’ll wait and see but if that’s true it may just be enough to end my 9 year commitment to GW and ANet.

No. If your goal is to have exactly 50% crit, you will need to swap out a few pieces of your gear set to get your crit percentage up or down to 50% again. Since your existing gear is all getting buffed, you may find yourself with more precision than you feel you need, and you can replace some pieces with other gear to give you stats you were getting from your traits before.

I’m pretty (99%) sure they have said specifically that they are for level 80s only. Don’t have link handy, though.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

GummiBear.2756:

Invictus.1503:

They don’t want you to be able to buy these features without giving the company money.

This is such a flawed argument i see time and again for getting things in gemstore, if you have gems you are giving ANet money, just not necessarily your own money(okay there is the 400gems for every 10k AP you get, but AFAIK that is the ONLY way the game generate free gems, so that is a minuscule amount in the big scheme for things), but the gem exchange works as a player trade post for gems only, if noone sells gems, then there would eventually be no gems to buy there either. That said i still do doubt you will able to buy the specs separately, if you lucky MAYBE there will be a pack with all elite specs but no other HoT content, but most likely the best you can hope for is the whole expansion for gems, and likely not from day 1 if anything like it goes this way

Player A buys gems and sells them to Player B
Player B bought the gems from Player A with gold
Player B uses the gems to buy a specialization

Player B provided Anet with no income.
Player A provided Anet with income.

You realize this doesn’t discount what he was saying, right?

Player A bought gems, sold them to B, who use the gems to get a specialization. One purchase of gems, one specialization unlocked. Player A provided Anet with income, but didn’t get anything from them. He got something from Player B instead.

It would be the same if A bought gems, used them to buy a specialization, and then could somehow sell the specialization to B for gold. One purchase of gems, one sale of a specialization.

This is not me advocating for any part of HoT to be sold for gems. I couldn’t care less about that. But trading gold to get gems doesn’t mean you are buying things for Anet and they aren’t getting paid. Those gems had to get paid for somewhere.

My most recent 80 was my ranger, a couple months ago. I was working on leveling one evening after work, and I was really close to hitting 80. I was in Frostgorge, in the water outside HotW, when my wife and daughter come home. My daughter comes into the room, checks on what I’m doing, then goes into the next room. At the time, I was doing the DE to protect the quaggan village from the icebrood minions, which always seems to take forever. While I’m trying to finish it off, I hear my daughter asking for help with something. So I go help her in other room, figuring I can leave my character parked in an out of the way spot, with my pet to protect me. Come back 5 minutes later, and the screen is covered with messages and level up rewards. While I was gone, my pet had gotten the last kills necessary to finish the event, and the xp from the event had pushed me over 80. I hit it without even being in the room.

I saw that too. It must be the name of the new Elite Spec.

Galeskyring.9617:

Thanks to these blogs we know now that instead of having some simple new UI toggle to flip between base profession and specialization profession we come to find that we are going to be forced into a tight hole.

That’s right, specializations like the druid won’t be so easily blended with current or future builds without some form of big brothering. So not only do we have to basically throw our builds through a shredder, then try and stitch new ones together via the 3 line restriction, we also have to decide weather or not we TRULY want our profession’s specialization, because all their skills the weapons and what not will be locked behind a special line we have to include in our three line choices.

A mesmer might say hey I wanna be a dueling domination illusionist toting a shield and making an utter mess of things NOPE stop right there, shield usage redistricted unless you forget one of those things, you can only be a [dueling chorno illusionist] or an [illusionary dominator of time] or a [chronological dueling dominator].

So on top of the 3 lines limiting our choices for builds it also severely restricts how we could play our specializations if we choose to take them. Specifically because they will be given to us in the from of trait lines which means if there is anything about it we want we have to sever an arm or a leg of our build to nit pick a few things out of it.

I don’t know why you are complaining about this now. They said from Day 1 that specializations would be a trade off—that you might want to be a Druid one day and Ranger the next, and now we know why. It was always stated that gaining the new spec meant losing something from the original class. The good news is, you still get to pick which specs you want to combine with the new Elite spec line, instead of the new trait line replacing the old class trait line, as some speculated.

Based on what was in the blog post, it sounds like we get Hero Points for leveling and doing skill challenges. The game keeps track of how many levels you have and how many skill challenges you’ve done. So I would guess that after the expac hits and you log in for the first time, you get access to the new trait specs and are automatically given a pile of Hero Points based on your level and the number of skill challenges you’ve done. You can spend those on the new reward tracks, giving you access to which ever traits, skills, etc. you want, up to the number of Hero Points you have available. So you may not have access to everything right off the bat, but I imagine that you will get a lot, and you will be able to decide what things you want to unlock first. So I don’t imagine it will be that bad.

ZerFrost.3542:

I think it would be cool to get some of the gold back we spend on TP, like a tax refund. It could be a yearly or monthly refund.
this thought came to me after spending 500g for materials to craft my legendary.

Tax refunds exist in order to make sure that each person pays the correct amount of income tax at the end of the year.

The trading post taxes exactly the correct amount of tax on each transaction. Thus, there is no need for a refund.

Maybe you want to argue for an earned income tax credit instead?

psizone.8437:

They’ve said in a few interviews that Druid can use “a lot of” the ranger skills and traits or “some” of them. Implying we’ll lose out on using some Ranger skills and traits when specialising as a Druid.

I don’t remember which interview it was, but there was one where the devs said that you could, and might want to, switch between specializations on a regular basis—one day deciding to be a Druid and the next day switching back to play as a Ranger, to get back the things you lost by becoming a Druid. So there definitely seemed to be advantages to just playing as the base profession, depending on the situation.

The Jumping Puzzle doesn’t count either. Anything that says it is Infinite doesn’t count. There are non-Infinite Toypocalypse achievements, though, so you do need to do it to complete the meta.

Basically, you need to do 11 achievements to complete the meta and there are 11 achievements that count. Which means that if you can’t do the 500 notes in Bell Choir, then yes, you are out of luck. It sucks but that’s the way it is this year. I’ve been playing one round of Bell Choir a night for the daily so I don’t get too bored doing it. The main thing I have left to do is the Infinarium now (and about 150 Bell Choir notes).

This really sucks. Adding in the dailies that counted toward meta achievements was one of the best changes they made to the Living Story. It meant you could work around achievements you were bad at or didn’t like and still get the meta done. What on earth is the rationale for changing this?

It looks like you have to do every single non-infinite achievement to get the meta now. That’s just obnoxious.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The actual issue here is that you feel you should be able to get max rewards in Group Content, because you know what you’re doing (as per your previous posts). That is the reason why I feel you don’t understand the argument you’re making. Top tier Group Content rewards means various requirements are met by various people. If 1 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 groups aren’t successful, you still get a reward, but at a lesser level. Max rewards are for when everyone is successful.

I can get behind changes that allow large groups to organize better. The dropdown box with server IPs would make things work well with our TTS runs. Rather than taxiing to get everyone in, we could secretly pick a specific map IP to use. The Megaserver formula can’t take into account large community groups that have 5,000 players across multiple guilds.

No, the actual issue here is that he wants tools that allow people to organize better. For like-minded individuals to find each other in the same not-an-instance of the megaserver to work together towards common goals. Buy, say, having a drop down allowing you to to select which instance you want to go to, where you know other people are trying to organize a run. Or where you now people aren’t organizing a run, so you can pick flowers in peace.

This is about having tools for people to group together, in the context of the megaserver. Which is something people can do, currently, by creating overflows, taxi-ing, etc., but it should not be that complicated. This type of organization is a major aspect of certain types o content now. The game should provide tools for people to organize themselves, without having to use convoluted workaround to all end up in the same spot. What we have here is essentially an open world raid, so give the raid members the ability to find each other and get into the same instance. That’s what it boils down to.

Is there any part of this event that doesn’t suck?

Lankybrit.4598:

Seras.5702:

Lankybrit.4598:

Victory.2879:

Lvling without traits isn’t fun.

In your opinion.

Leveling 1-11 is fine without, but 11-30 isn’t? Even though the health of mobs has been adjusted accordingly?

I don’t even notice I’m not getting traits 11-30 now.

It’s not about needing traits cuz the content is hard. It’s about having access to traits to further enrich the gameplay. Traits are the defining factor to how your build plays. If you’re not noticing not getting traits, then your playstyle must be pretty dull. That’s not meant to be offensive. But you’re clearly not utilizing your toon to its fullest potential if you don’t miss your traits.

I don’t look at it as what they took away or that I’m missing. Instead I look at it as – what is the design of the game currently. Oh – no traits until 30. OK, I won’t bother about them until I get to 30 then. My gameplay is quite rich enough, thanks.

The design of the game currently is BORING. There is too little to do with making a character at low levels. It used to take until level 40 for some builds to click—now that has been pushed out until 60. That is just painful.

I think this new system sucks.

I have 1 level 80 character and 6 alts right now. Those alts all got hammered by this change. They have all lost a ton of trait points and access to traits; my level 48 Guardian had a fully functional build that just got trashed and won’t be workable again until at least level 60. This patch has completely screwed leveling characters. The worst part is that levels now feel totally useless. By the time you are in your 30s or so, most of the skills you want are already unlocked. The ONLY thing you gain every level now is a skill point. Which most of the time I don’t care about anyway, or i’m saving up for something expensive. Thhe one thing you got to do when leveling was spend your trait point, something that only happens once ever 6 levels now. That sucks. It makes leveling far less interesting and low level builds are much lamer now that the trait tiers are so much higher. It really kills my interest in leveling the characters I have left. And since I was already bored with my main anyway, well, it doesn’t leave me with a whole lot I want to be doing right now.

Now, I do like the idea of adding new traits that need to be unlocked by doing certain content. But some of the requirements for unlocks seem kind of ridiculous. Every class has a new trait tied to beating the Karka queen. Seriously? Screw that.

Zaxares.5419:

Armor restrictions are staying based on what the Wardrobe post revealed.

Personally I’m hoping that it means Soulbound functionality is removed and replaced with Account Bound.

There’s a separate blog post coming up (same day) called “Account Bound.” Presumably “Removing Restrictions” is something else.

IndigoSundown.5419:

One benefit for the new system is that if I set a “look” for an under-80, I don’t have to transmute at all when changing gear, which I do frequently while leveling. At least for me, I will be using less charges on under-80’s than I did stones.

How do you figure? If you are keeping a set look as you level, how do you do that without transmuting?

I was really excited at first. Then after thinking about it, I realized that this new system doesn’t do anything to help leveling characters who are regularly upgrading their gear, and in fact it has tripled the cost of transmuting gear on any sub-80 character. So that has dimmed my enthusiasm a lot, because those are the ones who would most benefit from a different system (appearance slots, unlimited use skins, etc.)

phys.7689:

Vol.7601:

I really don’t understand the people who are annoyed that this will cost money.

Do you honestly think Anet would be willing to sacrifice a huge chunk of sales? Transmutation crystals are more than likely their #1 selling item, and probably their highest grossing one. It’s an item that is constantly in demand.

there is a return on sale, as it is, most people only use transmutation stones rarely, maybe once or twice per character per year. If each item required one unlock, people would unlock as many items as they like, or plan to use, or all of them just to collect. Essentially right now they are leasing looks, when most people would prefer to buy them.

Essentially for me, i will probably pick one look per charachter and stay there probably for months or years, in the other system i would probably work toward full unlocks. So essentially more spent, however i feel better about each purpose, because it isnt for rent till the next costume change.

so looking at my system.
they lose on profit from repeat users who swap between same sets often
they gain on people who would now unlock multiple sets instead of 1 look per charachter
they stay the same on people who keep one look forever.

Id say the profit and happiness of the consumer is greater with my system than the rent a look system.

On the other hand, I’m looking forward to collecting and unlocking more looks now, which I can do for free—and that might result in me finding something I like so much, I want to spend for the charges to transmute.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m glad they’ve decided to add a semi-wardrobe to the game. It’s not a real wardrobe since you still need transmutation items. Ideally, once you unlock a gear piece, you’d be able to apply that anyway you like, on whoever you like, whenever you like – infinitely. Still, for a game whose appearance system has thus far been in the Dark Ages compared with most other MMOs, this is at least a little something.

It still doesn’t seem to solve the ridiculous limiting of the town clothes system unless I’ve missed something, we still can’t switch up town clothes looks to armor and back again.

That’s the price we pay for playing a B2P game. The money has to come from somewhere. LotRO and Rift have great appearance systems and are F2P—but they get their money from somewhere else. So if we weren’t paying here, Anet would be taking the loss of t-stone income from somewhere.

As to the town clothes, I went back and re-read this:

Town Clothes sold through the gem store as outfits, such as the Pirate Captain’s Outfit, will be usable as a single outfit skin through the Wardrobe. Purchasing an outfit will unlock it for all characters on your account to use. Outfits will replace the look of equipped armors, are equipped in a separate appearance slot, and do not require Transmutation Charges to use. Single items, such as the Fuzzy Hats and Scarlet’s Spaulders, will be unlocked for your entire account and usable with any armor weight. Some basic clothing items that are no longer available for purchase will be converted into endless tonics.

I originally took that to mean that outfits can be worn over armor, but reading it again, it’s not totally clear. But the picture under that paragraph shows someone wearing the Fancy Wintersday outfit and holding a rifle, so it looks like effectively you can change your armor appearance to look like Town Clothes. Similar to the costume outfit items in LotRO, if you’ve played that.

Well, this is certainly nice. I’ve been wanting a better costume/appearance system since before launch, nice that they finally were able to roll this out. This is a huge upgrade over what we had before.

That being said, while I was really giddy over it initially, I’m starting to realize the limitations. The thing this does not do is address the problem of gear churn for leveling characters. By putting the cost on the back end, when you transmute, rather than when you unlock, there is still a disincentive to maintain you look when your level 47 Guardian (or whatever) gets a new drop—because they may get a better drop in 15 minutes, and do you want to pay another transmute charge then too? My guard has been hauling around a set she picked up with karma for 20 levels now, because my gear set is never stable enough to justify using t-stones when I know she’ll be getting a new something any time now. It would be nice if there was a price break of some kind for lowbie characters, to get them into using the system early on. This is the situation where the traditional appearance slot system is still superior. But I understand they probably did this to keep from totally cannibalizing the income stream from t-stones, which I’m guessing is probably a decent chunk of Gem Store money.

For 80’s, on the other hand, it’s pretty sweet. I’m really looking forward to being able to surf through the wardrobe trying different combinations. I wonder if we’ll be able to preview dyes as well before committing to a transmutation? That would make it better than using the PvP locker now.

And I can finally start using all those LS skins and items, as well as the random bits of armor from the personal story that don’t show up anywhere else. This is really going to help my bank space.

And the town clothes change is pretty cool too. I never had any use for town clothes that couldn’t be worn in combat, so hopefully this will open the door for cool new outfits. Gem store armors and town clothes are WAY more appealing now—I will finally be shelling out some money when Halloween and Wintersday roll around this year!

It’s funny, I was playing the Wildstar beta this past weekend and thinking how much I wanted to steal their appearance system for GW2, and then this comes out. What are they going to introduce next, player housing?

I whole-heartedly agree. I find it absolutely MIND-BOGGLING that after all these months of players asking for clear end dates on every Living Story patch, we still don;t get any kind of information ahead of time. It certainly isn’t because the pattern never fluctuates, because if that was the case, Escape from LA would still be going on.

Surely the LS team and other folks at Anet know whether the first patch of the cycle is staying in or coming out well in advance of it dropping. That is not a decision being made at the last minute. So what is so kitten hard about just TELLING US that? This sort of thing should be included in the patch notes for every single patch that includes temporary content. If that isn’t possible for some reason, isn’t that what the community relations team is for? I mean, even if it’s a post on this forum or something, at least the information can be circulated amongst the players then. The silence is just bizarre. And (I hate to say this because it usually sounds overwrought) it’s just disrespectful to the players. I don’t get it. I could understand if it gets screwed up the first couple times, but this has been going on for months now.

TooBz.3065:

I don’t disagree with you. Having the TP allows for the drop rate of stuff to be reduced. While the goal may have been to allow you to do what you like, trade it for gold, and buy what you want, in reality, buying something just isn’t the same as finding it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

When the solution to every “where to I get…” question is “Champ farm gold and buy it off the TP,” the game has moved from being a game to being a real-life simulator.

While this thread has meandered a long way from the OP, I just want to say that I really agree with both these posts. The game HAS gotten too reliant on the TP. I don’t really care how it impacts things on the high end market, and I don’t care about how free the market is or whatever. But just playing through the game, it is very difficult to keep a character effective without relying on the TP to get gear. Because there is just no way to guarantee that you will get the gear you need before you outlevel what you have.

Example: I was leveling a guardian alt yesterday. She is currently level 42. I wanted to switch from whatever weapon she was wielding back to sword. Look in my bag, the most recent sword I have is a level 33 blue. Which is pretty much crap when I’m downleveled in Kessex Hills doing LS content. What’s the solution? Go to the TP and buy a new sword. Which is fine, and effective and convenient. But it isn’t fun or exciting. I already spend plenty of time grinding for cash to pay for necessities—that’s called real life.

There need to be more ways to get level and class appropriate rewards as you play through the game. In most MMOs, this is handled through quest rewards. The rewards are tailored to your class, so you always have a source of new gear that will keep you up to date, even if your drops suck. Since GW2 doesn’t have quests, you are stuck relying on drops, or just saving the gold to buy off the TP. Which is the much more common solution, but about as exciting as buying groceries.

So I do think there is too much reliance on the TP, not because it puts anyone at a disadvantage, but because it makes the game less fun.

Seriously, it’s hard to imagine any achievement could be lamer than this one. Unless they actually did make it infinitely repeating. Hard to believe someone at Arena.net thought this was actually a good idea.

A couple quick comments about gear progression, from the point of view of someone who plays regularly but is overall pretty casual (no farming, no Fractal running, etc.):

• Exotic Gear: Getting Exotic gear right now is easy. By the time you get to max level, you probably have enough gold to simply go onto the TP and buy whatever gear you want. On the one hand, this is nice, because it means that you can get on with the game. On the other hand, its lame, because it’s boring. There is nothing exciting about selling generic drops, making cash, and then buying good gear. Even if you are looking for cosmetics, a lot of those are on the TP as well, for cash. Get a few lucky drops, get rich, buy stuff. It’s accessible, but not fun. While I like (most of the time) the fact that GW2 doesn’t use quests, I find that I actually miss quest rewards—the feeling that I’ve earned a new piece of cool gear for my character. We really only get that in dungeons and Fractals here.

• Ascended Gear: As a casual player, I find Ascended gear to be so absurd in terms of material costs that it doesn’t even seem to be relevant to my gameplay. I collect my Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite, etc when I come across it and bank it, but Heaven knows if I’ll ever do anything with it. I liked the look of the new backpieces, but I looked up the materials on Dulfy and it was ridiculous. Which really is fine, because I don’t need Ascended gear for anything. I don’t do Fractals and I only dabble in WvW. But once I’ve bought all my exotics, which are easy to get, there’s still nothing else to do. I could work on buying some of the cooler skins off the TP, but that is again just accumulating money and forking it over for goods. So, again, boring. Too much of the gear progression in this game seems to go through the TP.

• Crafting: Finally, crafting is just not fun. Tying the best gear currently in the game to it, with no good alternatives (miniscule drop chance notwithstanding), is not cool. Crafting is expensive, time consuming, and most of all tedious, for little reward compared to simply buying crafted goods off the TP. Then in order to make crafting more desirable, we get Ascended gear that you must make for yourself. But this doesn’t fix the underlying problem that getting through levels 1-400 is a painful, unfun and unsatisfying slog.

Basically, I want to earn more of my gear, even at lower levels (before max levels, dungeons and Fractals) so that gearing myself up is interesting and satisfying. Right now, it feels like everything I’m wearing was mass produced in a sweatshop and bought off the shelf at Walmart. And Ascended gear doesn’t even enter the picture.

Also, I am a big fan of cosmetic rewards, both in appearances/skins and in titles. However, cosmetic rewards are always going to be handicapped in this game until we get a better appearance system than currently exists. I have tons of LS rewards skins sitting in my bank doing nothing because they are one time use items. The Zenith/Radiant/Hellfire skins were a baby step in the right direction, but the whole system needs to get fixed to really make cosmetic progression its own thing.

ETA: As far as obtainign gear goes, the new weapons skins introduced in the Champion bags were, I think, a step in the right direction—I thought they were a really cool addition when they first came out. But just like exotics, you either monotonously ride the champ training hoping to get one to drop, or you just farm up the gold through whatever means and buy it off the TP. Cool weapons? Yes. Satisfying experience? Not so much. Being able to complete a discrete piece of content and be given a Bonetti’s Rapier—or have the skin unlocked in my account-wide skin wardrobe—would be a big improvement. Even if it was simply completing one or more achievements, or something similar (since achievements are the closest thing to quests we have in this game). Something more engaging than what we have now.