Guild Wars 2

John Smith.4610:

A lot of people put a lot of work into the new TP and they deserve to get some airtime to talk about their work. I’m no expert on UI by any means.

I am excited about the new buying and selling UI the most. It’s designed to reduce information asymmetry (it’s designed to give all users easy access to more information) and I think it will be really helpful for new players or players that are less studied on prices.

Well since your not spending time on the podcast, you should test the new TP UI by taking say 200g-500g and challenging yourself to make as much profit as possible in a week (use every dirty trick you can think of to squeeze out a profit, your also testing how the market reacts to super secret commerce stuff). Post your results at the end of the week and gloat how you just emptied the market of thick leather sections(which at more than 10k gold would be insane).

Since Chris’s thread “The CDI is coming back! Topics” has a misleading title as it is all about who/how the topics should be picked, we need a thread for us to list ideas.

First up ITS A LIST, NOT A DISSCUSION!!!

And to keep things readable and to the point it would be sensible to have a bit of a guide.

-Give it a proper title that indicates the focus and scope of the subject. We all want to talk about dungeons, wvw and spvp but they are very open ended topics. The best CDI topics are ones that focus discussion into key areas.

-Then break the topic down into a few SHORT bullet points. The small specific areas used to kickstart the discussion.

Here’s my example:

The implementation of new gemstore cosmetics and the balance with “ingame” cosmetics.

-The duration of availability for gemstore cosmetics and the associated pricing models.

-The ingame implementation(marketing) of gemstore cosmetics and its relevance to content (think Belinda’s greatsword in living story).

-The balance of quantity and quality, between new gemstore cosmetics and new “ingame” cosmetics. Creating and/or defining clear, reasonable expectations.

So start listing your topics with starting points, so that we can have ideas for more structured and effective CDIs.

Option 3.

Anet chooses, while they add polling functionality to webpage/client. Then Anet provides a list of subjects each week, with the focus changing each week to cover another area of the game and we choose our preferred topic.

Granted the expectation is that the CDIs Anet choose, are core problem/improvement areas of the game instead of smoke and mirror topics (ESPECIALLY THE INITIAL ONES).

John Smith.4610:

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I will treasure this.

Well its obvious that you deserve it. With this recent backlash I’ve seen plenty of references to the effort you put into this section.

“While some forums get Anet attention and dev interaction (ex: BLTC forum)…”

“I’ve loved the back and forth with John Smith in the q&a thread over there, it’s been pretty fascinating even with the understanding that he WILL NOT answer questions about anything specific that might affect the current economy or future releases.”

That was just in the last 2 hours and if the search function worked properly I could probably find the rest.

Also for Christmas, can you convince Anet to rebuild Fort Marriner Waypoint. I’ll donate all my bloodstone bricks and some gold to have it reconstructed.

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

My opinion was that the patch suffered from plot holes and an obvious disconnect between the quests and the storyline.

First trying to get everyone to attend a meeting. The iron marches could’ve easily been enough reason for the Charr to attend the meeting, yet it wasn’t till Rytlock’s actions that they decided to join. This pretty much made it a time sink that did little to advance the story, while the zerg nature of the event chains made Mordremoth seem more of a nuisance than a threat when as soon as an enemy spawned it was drowned by the weight of the zerg.

The Asura reasoning was also poor, considering they have a council. Even if Phlunt was needed in his lab, they could’ve sent someone else.

Only the Norn had a suitable reason not to go since they’re already dealing with Jormag and since Mordremoth hasn’t affected them yet, it not really a concern for them.

Second, they should’ve added a couple of text boxes explaining more about the crown and how they located the pieces. Also would’ve helped if the pieces were “hidden” and not lying in the open.

Though this patch was the best for S2 so far in terms of actual characterisation. The banter between Braham/Eir after destroying the totem was great as well as Rox and Rytlock’s exchange before the final fight. These moments, though small, are the polish needed to actually bring character to the team and make them interesting.

Lastly, the final boss was a good fight and Rytlock is awesome. The vet ooze in Taimi’s bit, with his surprise cc, was also quite a nice mechanic.

Found this guy inside of a story instance.

Put’s tinfoil hat on My theory is that Menzies was left in the realm of torment. With the planting of the pale tree, it provided Menzies with a link into Tyria. The dragons are the generals of the gods, whose role is to raise an army in order to destroy the pale tree to close the link. Also the dragons feeding on magic is so that they can gain power to help accomplish this goal.

We are being used by Menzies to destroy the elder dragons so that he can absorb their magic. This is seen by the orb(Zaitans) being incorporated into the light orb(the Pale Tree). Menzies needs this magic in order to create a gateway from the realm of torment into Tyria.

The Pale Tree appearing to represent light fits, as shadows only exist with the presence of light after all.

When comparing it to a lot of the characters in the original release, yes. Though this could likely be fixed with better dialogue to allow the VA’s the chance to better explore and express the emotions of their characters.

My criticisms for Belinda’s death scene in particular was Kasmeer came off almost as whiney (though the dialogue didn’t allow for much), whereas for Jory the struggle to keep it together over her sisters death had the potential to be explored more in both the dialogue and the portrayal of emotion in her voice. Unfortunately what we got was more tired and flat.

Going forward what I would like to see is the members of the group to have a more defined role or purpose. For Kasmeer, she needs to be portrayed as bit more intelligent while retaining her playfulness and have her role in the group be the ‘people person’ and use her ability to read emotions to provide solutions in the story where characters outside the group need to be convinced. This would allow her to explore her charisma/charm as a character and provide the VA with the opportunity to express the emotions of Kasmeer as more than Jory’s shoulder to cry on.

For Jory, when she comes back, she should be expressed as a darker character, consumed by her path for revenge. Hurt by the loss of her sister, we need to see the rage/anger in her expressed in her dealings with enemies in both her voice and her necromancer powers. It would be good to see her blur the lines between how she deals with innocents and enemies and to show a blind determination to carry, indifferent to her fallen allies. This should allow the VA to explore Jory’s new found emotions(yay!), and develop her expression of them over successive patches.

From this what could happen is almost a role reversal in Jory and Kasmeer’s relationship. Where Jory’s quest provides strain on the relationship (goodbye honeymoon/school girl phase, hello adult relationship) but Kasmeer disturbed by some of the actions, powers on and uses her persuasion to control some decisions and act as almost a restraint on Jory, stopping her from destroying everything in her way.

So is this a expression of opinion then me wanting to poke dead bodies with a stick?

They should hide a stick somewhere every time they have their drama, so that when you find it, you can go around poking dead bodies till the dialogue is over. Add an achievement to poke all the dead bodies and I won’t even care that the dialogue and voice acting for these scenes is bad.

In all seriousness, they could’ve cut a minute out by ditching most of Kasmeer wanting to stay with Jory.