At certain times of day on my main server there are often a whole lot of familiar names on, some of whom may or may not, at other times, tag up and command. Most of those people have been playing for years and have a fair idea what to do without needing to be told. It often happens that, as they read the map and the situation, they come to similar conclusions about what needs to be done and enough of them may arrive in the same place at the same time to make it look as though a zerg is forming.
But it isn’t. It’s just players doing what needs to be done. They don’t necessarily need a tag and the erstwhile commanders among them may be enjoying a bit of a break from the responsibility. I’ve never known anyone to complain if someone does tag up at that point, although there’s no certainty anyone will follow someone who does. That would depend on whether that tag actually seemed to know what they were doing. If not, the bulk of the players would just carry on as they were and the tag would be left running around on their own. Seen that often enough!
(edited by Tiny Doom.4380)
So you transferred off a stable server on to one of the tiny servers that, depending on the whims of chance, can get linked with anyone ?
And then complain that you don’t like your new host link ?
face palm
The links are not a good thing for WvW.
Never have been.
Never will be.
I beg to differ. Links are excellent fun. I have one account on a linked server and my wife transferred her third account from a Host to a Linked server precisely because of the variety and interest it offers. Every two months you get to meet a load of new people, see different tactics and attitudes and generally have a completely refreshed experience.
The only thing I don’t like about the system is when the same link is repeated. That happened in June and it was disappointing. Luckily this time we moved and its been great so far.
Also, in my experience so far, most linked servers have been able to retain a strong identity, which they carry with them from linking to relinking. I think it’s a superior system to the original, although that’s not to say it couldn’t be improved.
1) Could we please not be re-linked with the same host this time around?
Seconded. Variety is the spice of life, doncha know?
Appearance: Loved the area of the map we could explore. The size of the maps is going to be more what I have wanted in games. Still not quite as bit as the Qa River Valley in Vanguard:SoH, but it was definitely a good size. (note: yeah, I know, vanguard was a different structure for zones).
Amnoon is beautiful. Moreover it feels big. To dig up Vanguard again, it reminded me of running around in Ahgram or Khal. Big plus for me in that.
Just wanted to second this. I got an immediate Vanguard vibe the moment I arrived and that’s a very good thing.
Please stop gating demos behind story instances. Just start the demo in the new map.
Visuals are stunning. Detail is fascinating. Exploring is going to be fun.
Raptor mount looks good but movement is annoying. Can’t imagine using it other than when absolutely necessary. Hope other mounts move more efficiently and less “realistically”.
Music is cliched, what little I heard so far. Pleasant enough, though.
Didn’t do much of the content but it looked very much like “more of the same”. Fair enough. Hope there’s something at least a little unexpected further in, though.
All in all this looks very much like a “don’t frighten the horses” expansion after the shock to the system that was Heart of Thorns.
Two years is too long to wait between expansions, though. I’d rather have less ambitious XPacks more often any day.
The real question is why start a promo demo for an expansion sold on the promise of open maps and mounts with a solo instance in the first place? Yes, current players who are up to speed on the LS will have no issues but they are going to buy the expansion already! That’s not who the thing is being marketed to, is it?
I know two people who are not huge GW2 fans but who used to play and who were thinking of buying the expansion. They both tried the demo with tat thought in mind and they both loathed the instanced introduction. One didn’t even try to finish it and the other logged out as soon as she got to the Crystal Oasis.
Just start people in the main map! What’s more, just start people in the main map in the actual expansion when it comes. The Personal Story in the original game was 100% optional (after the tutorial) and five years and 20 level 80s later I have still never finished it! Keep the story separate from the rest of the game and everyone will be happy. (Well, no-one is ever happy but you know what I mean…)
I don’t suffer from motion sickness but I was aware immediately on first mounting the raptor that something was “off”. Far from the movement feeling convincing or realistic as several people in the thread have suggested, I found it unconvincing, artificial and “gamey”. The slalom stop is particularly show-offy and unrealistic – that’s something a driver might do with a car, maybe, but can you imagine an animal actually doing that? Either its legs would snap or it would go end over end in a heap.
Regardless of whether the movement style is or isn’t “realistic”, though, if it causes health issues to players it should be changed. It’s a gimmick that’s not worth losing customers for.
Okay, I have tested this fairly thoroughly now:
1. The Magic Carpet glider is not visible in either PvE or WvW. Maps I have tested are Alpine and Desert Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds, Wayfarer Foothills, Straits of Devastation and Verdant Brink.
2. The bug only affects Asura characters. I can see the carpet-glider in PvE and WvW on a Charr, Sylvari and Human character. I don’t have a Norn who has access to the Carpet to test.
3. The Carpet Glider is not visible to other players when I use it.
4. I have run -repair. It makes no difference.
5. The Magic Carpet is visible and works normally when used as in the original manner (as a Toy providing a ground “mount”) but if I run off a cliff on the carpet and then enable the glider the Carpet disappears and I glide with no visible means of support.
As far as I am aware the Carpet Glider was working in PvE maps before the patch that enabled gliding in WvW but I can’t be absolutely sure of this as I can’t remember for certain when I last used it in PvE. I do usually use it every day though.
Hope this is helpful and that it gets fixed soon – the Carpet is literally the only glider I have ever had any interest in using!
I think the gliding is an interesting innovation and I’m enjoying experimenting with it. I do think there will be a lot of teething problems that will need to be sorted out but on balance I think it will end up being a net positive.
I also suspect that the complaints we’re hearing about gliding being added would be dwarfed by the complaints we’d hear if it was taken away.
Title pretty much says it all. With the carpet equipped as my glider skin I can glide perfectly well but there’s no sign of what I’m gliding on!
As an asura I appear to be levitating, standing bolt upright. It looks quite cool but presumably it’s not intended. At first I though it was lag but it’s not – it’s consistent. Same on both Alpine and Desert BLs.
Meh. I hate changing builds so I never wanted the stat-swapping ability in the first place. Probably won’t even bother with this. Nice for people that wanted it but I dread the day Commanders insist on people changing to a specific build before they want them in squad. It’ll be like “join TS” only on steroids.
The idea that “no-one asked for this” is fatuous. People have been consistently asking for gliding to be enabled in DBL since the day it appeared. Not only on this forum but it comes up over and over again in map and team chat as something people wish could happen – although I doubt many ever thought it would.
Gliding in ABL hasn’t really come up much. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of point to it since most of the maps are flat. Would make for a few short cuts down from the northern towers perhaps and at least I might avoid dying by miscalculating the drop when running from Citadel to defend NET. The place it would obviously have the most potential for mischief would be Hills.
I wonder what previously inaccessible spots will be found for mesmers to hide in and for siege to be placed. I foresee a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of entertainment before this gets either nerfed or removed.
No. I’d sooner they deleted WvW altogether than delete the servers.
Server pride doesn’t just matter. It’s the only thing that matters. Without it the game mode is Nothing vs Nothing.
Story – Mediocre. Confused, incoherent, too focused on GW1 lore.
Voice Acting – Wooden. Sub-par. Lackluster. Noticeably more so than any previous episode.
Dialog – Stilted. Unnatural. Ironic humor entirely inappropriate for circumstances. Again, noticeably worse than usual.
Instances – Tedious, repetitive, annoying. No different to usual. Puzzles were okayish but I would hugely prefer only to use my character’s class skills at all times. Combat less awful than some previous instances but fights too slow, long-winded and repetitive.
Instance design – Good, if somewhat reminiscent of previous instances in places.
Map – Very good. Personally, I would take two maps like this (or a larger map) and no instances every single time.
Fractal – Don’t do fractals.
Okay, that’s the short version.
My main complaint is the complete removal of agency from the player character. There is now no point at which my character feels like I have any say over what he says or does. He’s entirely and completely a plot device and what’s more his dialog now reflects that in an irritatingly post-modern, self-referential way. I get the strong feeling that whoever is writing the PC dialog has lost interest in even paying lip-service to pretending it’s a player character. It’s a plot device, nothing more.
Luckily I was playing my Asura – any “oath” he took is going to be about as binding on him as the promises Taimi gives Phlunt. If I’d been playing my Charr I’d probably be shopping for a new monitor about now.
I realize this isn’t BioWare and we don’t get dialog trees but is it really too much to ask that whoever writes this stuff follows some very basic guidelines at least? If you’re going to veer off in these completely unexpected directions, at least give us the chance to get off the bus without having to give up on the Living Story altogether.
It’s not a question of the puzzles being difficult to figure out. Of course they aren’t difficult. Even with the poor presentation of in-game information (mouse-over is not a great choice at the best of times, let alone in combat) these are all very straightforward, even simple puzzles.
The issue is with the replacement of Class and Weapon skills with one-off or temporary skills. It’s with playing the character as you, the player, conceived, and built it.
When the new skills become something that’s permanently added to the character, like the additional Downed skill, for example, that’s another matter. That adds depth and options to the character and the class. Temporary skills that are never seen or used outside of the specific instance do the opposite.
If you didn’t play all the way through the original Guild Wars and don’t know (or remember) its story and lore then the current LS storyline probably has no resonance and not much meaning. I did play a fair bit of GW but I can’t remember much of this stuff – it must have been in the expansions I skipped.
As a GW2 player from beta I feel shortchanged in the way GW1 vets felt shortchanged by LS1 and 2. I’d take the Scarlet storyline over this in a heartbeat, for all its flaws but its clear that, as a GW2 player, I’m no longer the writers’ target audience.
I took my Asura druid through it and I actually shouted “No I don’t!” at the screen when he agreed to take the oath. Who writes this stuff? Do they even think about what they are making our characters say and do?
Fatuous nonsense.
I did it as a full heal druid. I chain healed her and she still died a lot but I just rezzed her and kept going. It was taking so long I tabbed out to read the forums for hints, leaving the druid standing there on auto-attack with Staff 1. Came back none the wiser and the druid was still standing so dying isn’t a problem.
I kept rezzing her and rezzing her and after a while the number of sparks decreased and she finally did whatever she was doing and the Aspect became attackable. Took no skill or thought at all – just a lot of patience. Remember the part where Livia asks your character if they brought a book? Well, she wasn’t kidding.
He got seconded to Master X Master.
Seriously, though, this is a major issue with the whole LS project. It’s structured like a long-running TV show but instead of a season of 20-30 episodes that we watch every week it comes in 4-6 episodes a year. You cannot sustain the number of characters and sub-plots of a long-running tv show on that kind of schedule.
Needs new format entirely for LS4. Linked, complete short stories, where each episode stands on its own. Or a rolling single, linear storyline like LS1. Current version is incoherent.
Here’s a suggestion: for the next LS (if it follows the format of this one, which I sincerely hop it does not) make a second version of every instanced fight in which all the “mechanics” are absent and players have to complete the instance using only the regular abilities of the class they are playing. That shouldn’t be too resource-intensive – it’s just the same map with all the tricks and puzzles switched off and, if necessary, the enemies toughened up a bit.
Then check your metrics on how many players choose to play through the puzzle/gimmick maps and how many opt for the straight fights. Open forum threads for feedback on each and do some polling.
Find out how many players actually enjoy or prefer this stuff and how many just want to play the classes they chose the way those classes were designed to be played. Then use that information to inform future design choices.
At the moment it very much seems as though the instances are designed to entertain the designers not the audience but maybe that’s just me and most players really love having to learn new abilities every episode and then never use them again. Would be nice to find out once and for all.
I just brute-forced it. It was utterly tedious. If I’d done it the way it’s supposed to be done it would have been shorter but no less tedious.
Who is this supposed to entertain?
So you will get illusions of Caithe, Eir etc around the room, talk to the illusions you will get a special action hotkey.
This seriously needs better in-game explanation. It’s very easy when you figure it out but there’s no reason you should try to talk to these apparitions so why would you bother? Who tries to reason with ghosts?
It really is. Makes me jump. Very annoying.
This thread was locked in error, and I have reopened it.
When someone makes a relevant, contributing comment in an older thread, we should leave the thread open to see how it develops. Naturally, valueless comments wouldn’t be great, and they might result in a thread closure. But what happened here was perfectly fine. Someone actually went to the trouble of finding a thread (which ain’t easy without a search engine!) and adding meaningful content, and that’s just fine.
I will make sure that the moderator team is aware of our practices, so that a necro post without value is acted upon but relevant comments remain.
Apologies for the error!
Just wanted to say that this is one of the most positive statements about forum use I’ve heard for a long while. I play quite a few MMOs and I’m often starting a new one or going back to one i haven’t played for years. There’s little more discouraging than having a question or a problem, googling for an answer, finding a link to a forum thread that’s directly relevant and then going there only to find it locked.
Yes, you can start a new thread but a) that’s more daunting for a new player than simply posting on an existing one and b) a new thread from a new player is less likely to be noticed or receive replies.
I wish all MMO forums operated a policy of “is this comment still relevant?” rather than simply looking at the date-stamp on the thread.
Thanks, Gaile !
Instead, BG was opened and a group of guilds moved on. Look at the T1 matchup results last week, and you’ll see that it is a blowout, with no other server able to match the coverage that BG has as a result of those guilds moving on. Now, ask yourself how that server as FULL is the same as HOD as FULL. And, many of the questions that I’ve listed become logical followups from thinking about that.
Does HoD have 4 map’s queued during NA?
Does HoD have 2 map’s queued during PST?
Does HoD have 1 map queued during OCX?No, neither of the times??? Well, then you do not have the population BG has. In fact, no world has the population BG has. This imbalance is going to cause harm and the Dev’s are unaware there’s even an issue. So if you’re looking for clarity, it’s likely to not appear any time soon.
Thing is, as per the dev explanation linked by Swagger above, ANet don’t balance WvW by “population”. They balance it by “play hours”. Yaks Bend was marked “Full” for a long time and didn’t get a link because, as far as we can tell, we have a lot of players who are on for many, many hours pretty much every day. We always have had. We have a very consistent and determined core of WvW players who pretty much live there.
That, apparently, equates to a much larger number of more casual players, who perhaps only log in a few times a week for an hour or two and don’t, perhaps, do much very effective while they are there (i.e. gain Ranks, the other metric ANet uses). Blackgate have a vast sea of players but if those are mostly different players cycling in for short periods then being replaced by other short-term players then the server itself will show a lower activity rating than a server with a smaller number of players who stay in WvW all day long.
As to whether that works for “balancing” the game mode… obviously not. According to the dev statement above, though, it’s the best they’ve been able to come up with.
I must have missed the part where it’s written that you must hit the ticket cap each week. lol
Would be nice if we could all be rewarded fairly for doing the same activities, instead of giving huge advantages to those who played mindlessly for years with no clear objective or gain. Who argue that they play not for rewards but for fun but instantly turn on a dime to defend not giving out said rewards which they don’t care about to others.
Personally I wouldn’t care if ANet added a button that let anyone have any – or every – item in the entire item database, at will, as often as they wanted. I don’t care what stuff other people have and there’s been virtually nothing in the entire game in the five years it’s been running that I’ve wanted (I do like my Magic Carpet and a couple of the hats but that’s pretty much it). If you want it then you can have it as far as I’m concerned. Anet on the other hand seem to want to make money out of the game so they probably have other ideas…
I’m not defending any system that makes it hard for anyone to get what they want – I’m saying WvW is fun without any of that at all. If it isn’t then why bother with it in the first place? Surely having the gear isn’t fun in and of itself?
I must be missing something because I can’t see why people play this mode. I really want to like it and I’m purely a pvp player in all MMOs I play, but this is not PvP…it’s PvE with the (seemingly) annoyance of PvP that slows down your PvE.
A few other MMOs have PvP servers or other faction abilities which allow players to flag up that they are available for PvP in the PvE open world maps. WvW is roughly GW2’s version of that.
Exactly. WvW is what most MMOs would call PvPvE. ANet confuse matters by referring to it as “PvP” when they already have an actual PvP mode.
If you are only interested in PvP then WvW is not a sensible option.
I play all game modes, I played extensively on every wvw tournament. I play only for rewards, I have 7K hours in gw2 and 8K hours in gw1. I’ve played over 10 mmos since 2001 and I’ve been playing games for 25 years, that sum it up for u guys?
I played all the WvW tournaments, have 6k hours one just one of my three GW2 accounts and I’ve played well over 100 MMOs since 1999 (and yes, I can name them – I made a list…). What’s that got to do with the price of milk?
WvW is fun. That’s why I played all weekend. The rewards are irrelevant. Just forget about them and concentrate on winning the Match. If you can’t win the Match, win the Skirmish. If you can’t win the Skirmish try to keep your stuff. That’s where the fun is.
I never even spent the tickets I got in the Seasons. It’s always seemed to me that you get all the gear you need to play WvW in WvW. Exotics and Ascended jewellery is plenty for regular play and if you play regularly you’ll get some Ascended weapons/Armor chests here and there.
I’m fine with no rewards in WvW other than the random drops from kills and rank chests. The pip system is quite amusing to play with but I won’t spend the tickets so it’s all a bit meaningless.
I’d rather WvW had far fewer players – maybe enough to fill just one tier – but all of those players were there because they cared about the Match, the outcome, the score, their server and all the stuff that makes WvW about something more than just your personal status and your character’s gear. I’d like to see a lot more focus on building unique server or team identities and a lot less on individual rewards.
So, no I haven’t given up on the rewards because I never cared for them in the first place.
but but, i thought WvWer don’t care about ascended…. the difference is minimal…. exo is sufficient….
Unless you do a lot of 1v1 fighting or you’re the kind of min-maxer who makes a spreadsheet to record his crits you’ll barely see any difference in actual gameplay between a character in full exotics and one in full ascended. There is a difference but no-one running in a zerg as their normal mode of WvW play is going to notice.
I have full ascended on the Ele I play on my main account but the Ele on my second account is mostly in Exotics and the Engi I play on my third account has no Ascended at all. The only difference between them, that I notice, comes from the abilities you get from ranks. Leaving that aside, in terms of how enjoyable they are to play, having exotic or ascended makes no discernible difference.
I’ve been playing since launch. I’ve always done a fair amount of WvW and for the last 2-3 years, outside of a few months when HoT was new, I’ve played more WvW than anything else. I used to play 4+ hours pretty much every day, a lot more on weekends. These days maybe 1-2 hours on average (again, more at weekends).
I have three accounts (four if you count the F2P one) and I switched from one account to another as my “focus” WvW account about 18 months after launch. I rarely remember to use boosters.
I still don’t have any of the accounts above rank 2000 although my main account is now very close. My current medium term goal is to get out of Silver and into Gold, which is less than 200 ranks away. I reckon to get 2-3 ranks in a session if I zerg. If I just scout and roam I’m lucky to get even one.
I have no interest whatsoever in any of the new rewards. I have no interest in skins. I dressed my characters how I wanted them to look when they dinged 80, which was mostly years ago now, and as far as I’m concerned they will stay that way until the game closes down. I already have Ascended armor, which is far easier to get in other ways, and I have no interest whatsoever in Legendary weapons or armor (I don’t change my builds unless there is some radical change in the game – has only happened once or twice in five years).
What I do care about is progression. GW2 hardly has any real progression in the way other MMOs do so I have to make the most of it where I can find it and WvW ranks are a great substitute for leveling (Masteries are good too). What I’d really like is some non-random means of boosting ranks in the way we get all those potions to boost reward tracks (I have hundreds of those unused in my bank because those rewards are something else I don’t have much interest in).
I like the new rewards (Pips) system because of the effect it’s had on both population and attitude (more people actually look at the score now and some of them even change tactics accordingly) but I don’t personally want any of the actual rewards. I just want more ranks!
This topic was discussed in enormous detail long ago, back when ANet were actively gathering ideas for WvW on these forums. All these suggestions and many more were considered by ANet and rejected. You can find the thread still buried here somewhere, I’m sure.
The conclusion was that every solution was potentially more problematic than the problem itself so nothing was going to change.
As for IP bans or confining all alt accounts to a single server that’s like using a cruise missile to kill a wasp. Not going to happen.
The best thing you can do is to video the saboteur in action (getting them on film repeatedly jumping golems off a cliff is quite a convincing piece of evidence – pulling a tactivator is harder to contextualize) and submit the file with a Report. That might get investigated and acted upon. Maybe.
Meh, everyone knows YB are siege humpers
If only. Sadly, those days died when DK and most of the Commanders and long-timers that supported him drifted away at the beginning of this year. We seem to have few people left who know how to place siege effectively and even fewer who care to try. The culture of keeping most structures fully sieged throughout a match is long, long in the past and if there are any Commanders left who care about holding what they take for more than a single skirmish then they certainly aren’t playing in my time zones.
I can’t speak for NA primetime, which I never see, but for the other 16 hours of the day it’s mainly Commanders looking for fights, be that open field or over structures. The purpose of taking or defending structures in order to own them for the maximum amount of time throughout each match, which I have always taken to be the essential and intended mechanic of the game mode, appears to have fallen by the wayside and without that goal there is no particular reason to favor siege engines.
Although I’ll never move my YB account, having played there since beta, I am increasing playing my other accounts on servers that, these days, seem to have a much greater appreciation and understanding of siegecraft. YB may always retain the reputation of the “siege server” but unless something changes it will be a reputation based on ancient glories not present practices.
You seem to be confusing WvW with PvP. Of course EOTM isn’t exactly WvW either but PvP it very definitely is not.
It’s true the map could be repurposed but then so could any other map. Why pick that one?
The mistake was including stealth of any form in the game in the first place. Always a bad idea.
I play EU hours on NA servers so I never see full NA primetime. I’m told that while I’m asleep there are multiple map queues so definitely busy then.
I only tend to see map queues at weekends and in the late evening but I can generally find a zerg running 20+ at most times of the day, growing to 40+ in my own (EU) prime time slot.
It does depend on the match – basically, if there’s a Mag in the month so to speak, a lot of people decide to have a week off. Other than that, I would say that WvW is very far from being dead on either of the NA servers I play on.
People on this forum tend to make a big deal of it but it doesn’t seem to me to be much more than you’d expect five years into the life-cycle of an MMO and in the doldrums between expansions. Yes, it was busier a couple of years ago but what does anyone expect?
As for ESO, the “action combat” there is unplayable as far as I’m concerned so it makes little difference how much better the matchmaking might be. Also the PvE is stultifyingly dull…
No. When map queues appear is when I log out.
I completely agree about the need for a strong, defined identity for each competing world but I can’t begin to imagine how that can be achieved by encouraging people to move about more freely.
Far from facilitating server transfers the option should simply be removed, permanently. If people want to play with friends on other worlds they can do so in every part of the game other than WvW at will. If they want to experience WvW from the perspective of other servers or tiers then let them buy another account (or get a free account and level to 60) and start over on the new server.
Server transfers are the root cause of most of WvW’s problems. Sadly they probably make too much money to be consigned to the bad idea bin where they belong.
It does depend a lot on your class and build. As a zerker staff ele, if I go full-out, I can pull about 20-25% of the damage of a Superior ram on gates. That’s obviously worth it. On the other hand, it’s a waste of my DPS to use it on the gate if there are cannons or arrow carts I could be killing instead so it’s important to be aware of the situation. Also, as Jerus says, don’t pop swords when your commander is trying to be sneaky or you won’t be very popular!
This is the idea ANet worked on for half a year and then abandoned. What makes anyone think they would go back and try again?
I think the supposed parlous state of WvW is highly overstated in any case. The game is coming up to five years old and deep in the trough between expansions. Under the circumstances WvW is about as busy as you might expect.
It seems highly unlikely ANet would spend any significant time, effort or money altering things in this corner of the game when they have an expansion coming in six months that will (they hope) see a major upturn in logins as many lapsed players return. That tide should lift all boats, WvW included.
Particularly when the inclusion of a major revamp of WvW in the previous expansion (DBL) went so disastrously badly it seems unthinkable that the developers would attempt another risky rewrite at the same stage of the development cycle.
Lot of good info and commentary in this thread. These days the fighting-for-the-sake-of-fighting crew seems to have taken charge of the argument over how WvW should progress. The increasing irrelevance of the score to any external outcome has led matchplay-oriented players to go find more satisfying things to do but to my way of thinking WvW is and always has been about taking and holding structures.
When and if we ever get back to a situation where either skirmish or match outcomes matter to a critical mass of players then these kinds of calculations will need to be made by both commanders and individuals as a matter of course. Until then I am just going to carry on enjoying myself by defending to the last second and running back from waypoint until the color changes. You can have my bags – I’ll have my fun.
I can’t stand guilds. One of the huge attractions of WvW is that it doesn’t pander to them. No thanks.
The entire tone of the game is like that though. Banter, quips and semi-serious-to-serious dialog is pretty much what everyone gets, even the passive-aggressive, narcissistic Asura.
You can do that with class, too, instead of childish humor that only a ten-year old would find hysterical…
Excellent point! This is one of those things where there really is no way to please everyone.
Like I stated many times in my previous posts: It can’t be that hard (as in, yes, it is feasible) to slightly differ the dialogue for every race to fit their racial demeanor and tone (so that, for instance, a Charr character wouldn’t come across as a teddy bear). It is not that hard to set flags in programming that say, “If character Charr, then select response #3.” They can speak the same in content, but phrase it according to their race. Not that difficult, really.
I’m nearly sixty and it makes me laugh. And my wife, who’s a couple of years behind me. Humor’s like that – appeals to some and not to others.
As for it being hard to do variant dialog, of course it’s not hard. What it is is expensive. Voice acting is one of the most costly aspects of video games. Don’t forget that it all needs to be done in several languages too.
Cost is the explanation for most of the things that seem easy to do but aren’t being done in this game, most likely.
I can’t remember anything about him other than his name but for that alone I’ll never forget Commander Commander Commander.
Well, the expansion’s going to be mostly desert so with luck that will see the high-tech stuff put to rest for a while.
I agree with the OP about the Jory/Kas relationship, which is problematic for a number of reasons, most of which can probably be explained by the fact that their entire onscreen time amounts to the equivalent of a couple of pages of script.
What I am surprised about in this thread, though, is the degree to which almost all commenters seem to feel the Player Character should be the central figure. I’m not interested in the slightest in having writers tell me or show me what my character thinks or feels – I can do all of that for myself. The further into the background my character fades the better I like it.
No, I want to watch and listen to the rest of the characters just as though I was watching a movie or reading a comic. My problem is with how difficult it is to see any of them as much more than sketches. They often look as though they could be interesting and then they turn out not to be.
Only Taimi and Rytlock seem to have developed over time. Marjory still seems like a character from a one-off parody, Kasmeer is a cypher, Braham is a cliche and Rox is an extra who somehow got a few lines. Zojja has the backstory and character development to take the narrative weight but for some inexplicable reason she seems to have been written out altogether. Logan…no, let’s stop there.
Guilds are as much the problem as they are the solution. WvW was intended to be army vs army not guild vs guild. They should have thought that through better pre-launch, though, because they advertised it that way but didn’t really firm up the mechanics for it. What they ended up with is neither one thing nor the other.
The problem with having threads like these confined to the WvW forums is that the few people left reading and posting here either have tunnel-vision or selective memories. GW2 was always advertised and promoted as a PvE MMO first and foremost. Most of the PR push in the year leading up to the game revolved around the Dynamic Event system and the Personal Story and almost all the information released about classes, races etc used PvE examples to demonstrate.
sPvP was supposed to be ANet’s entry into eSports, something they tried to keep going for far longer than interest merited and have now, thankfully, abandoned. It was designed not to require PvE at all. WvW seemed to be mostly planned as something PvE players could dip into as part of the wider “always 80” end-game. I don’t think WvW’s place was ever defined as clearly as either PvE or sPvP – it certainly did not feature heavily in any of the official promotional releases either before or after launch.
When Mike O’Brien says that all WvW players are PvE players he’s just describing the game his company intended to make. In general, PvE players either never took to WvW in the first place or have long since ceased to read or post on this forum so statements like that sound “off” to the people who do (still) play WvW, especially those who mostly or only play the game mode. Even a quick glance at almost every developmental change to WvW over five years will, however, demonstrate that it is still seen by its developers as a PvPvE option suited for large-scale fights. It’s an extrapolation of the PvE Dynamic Events system with the players providing the AI, in effect.
In terms of numbers, even at its peak, WvW was relatively sparsely attended compared to PvE. Now the disparity is huge. While GW2 in general may have a declining population (due to its age and the current between-expansions lull) anyone who plays PvE as well as WvW can easily attest that PvE is busier by orders of magnitude.
None of which means WvW is dead, or that it can’t be altered or improved. Whether anyone in a position to do so is interested in spending the money to make WvW into something new seems unlikely. From the point of view of the developers I’m sure it’s seen as a backwater, an idea that never really worked as intended, and probably one best left to fade away, like so many other parts of the game have done over the last five years.
Good episode. Interesting storyline, if a bit rushed.
Fighting in this episode was the best-judged for a long time. The final battle was, for once, reasonably clearly explained and didn’t outstay its welcome. For the first time in a very long time I feel I would enjoy doing this on a second character (I gave up doing that mid-LS2). Please keep future episodes to this scaled-down, less attritional format.
On the other hand it really was short, especially considering the repetition (three barriers, four shrines etc). I absolutely do not want you to pad these with tedious long boss fights and I realize voice acting is probably a major cost factor, but we could do with more actual story…
The new map is top-class. Far better than Lake Doric and probably the best of the season, although I like them all in their way.
The thing is, though, good as this was by the standards of previous episodes, it still took one short session to complete the narrative and one more to complete the map. Yes, I am going to go back to the map a few more times to get the currency to buy some of the minis but with the best will in the world there’s 7-10 days’ gameplay in this. That’s not much to stretch across 2-3 months, is it?
Keep knocking out those Current Events I say. I found one of those every two weeks made a huge difference to feeling we were getting regular content. In fact, if I had to choose between bi-weekly current events and Living Story I’d say scrap LS and focus on those events.