Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Vukorep.3081:

maddoctor.2738:

Why can’t we use Geodes outside Dry Top? Bandit Crests outside Silverwastes? I doubt we will use those in Heart of Thorns, HoT will use their own new Currencies. Why?

Why cant se use AC tokens outside AC? CM tokens outside CM? Dungeon tokens outside dungeons? Why?

Geodes and Bandit Crests could both be replaced by karma. A universal non-gold currency that is used on all other open world maps in the game.

The problem with that is that then you have very little incentive to explore a new area, or, conversely, to replay old ones.

Let’s say that, hypothetically, all the crests, geodes, etc, are replaced with karma and there’s a cap put in place. Items are rebalanced, and all that.

Now a patch comes along with a new area with new items. First of all, anyone not new to the game that week can instantly go and get at least one new item because they knew the patch was coming and went and capped their karma. Even with an array of items, without an additional gating mechanism, players aren’t stupid. They’ll stockpile in advance so they can get the new stuff first.

And then, you have the problem that even if you put exclusive rewards in each area, the players don’t actually have to play that area to get them. They can just explore, get the waypoints, and then just port to the merchant and farm their karma elsewhere. Making the new zone more profitable doesn’t fix the issue because then it just becomes a designated farming zone and players abandon other areas of the game.

The reason for all the different currencies isn’t just to avoid the stockpile issue. It’s because it keeps players active in different areas of the map. If you have a universal currency you get areas which will be devoid of players because there’s no point playing them. As the system stands, if you want the Dry Top rewards you have to play in Dry Top. Same for crests.

The only problem, as has been mentioned, is the issue of bank space with stacks of all the different currencies. And that could be fixed by making the wallet have two tabs. One for general currencies such as gold, karma, and dungeon tokens, so that they can all be displayed with ease, and then an additional tab for open world currencies, with, as one poster suggested, new currencies pushing older ones further down.

It’s not perfect, but a cap won’t fix all the problems either. It will simply bring along different ones.

Yeah, I do have epilepsy. I’m lucky in that I’m not photosensitive (at least to the point of instant seizures, although looking at that for too long would make me have a fit), but it’s giving me serious eye/head pain when I peek at it now and then. I can only look at it in short bursts.

I’ve restarted it a few times after getting to that 99%, 1 file left part, and it seems to be hovering at 40kb/s. It’s super frustrating because I can’t look at it long enough to see if there’s any progress,. Not that I think it would show anyway. I’ve stuck with it simply because other people have reported eventual success.

Virgin is cable, so it’s one of the few that doesn’t, generally. So, it’s not the ISP, it’s the client.

In the UK, stuck on last two files. Have closed the client now as it’s flickering and making my head unhappy (I have epilepsy so the strobe effect is not fun).

It had downloaded 1,103MB when I stopped. I was getting under 100kb/s for the last hour or so. Somewhere between 2-400 before that.

I’m okay with the change, personally. At least for world completion, getting all the WvW maps was a pain.

But I would really like there to be an acknowledgement for players who do have completion there. With the new WvW map coming soon, will there be a Mists Exploration title? I mean, it doesn’t have to give a big chunk of points, or a flashy gift. But just having something, some kind of box to say “Yeah, you did that” would be nice.

Evermore.5649:

I literally fail to understand how anyone could find this boss even remotely difficult. Let alone dying so many times that you run around naked.

BIG RED SHAPE UNDER YOU, telegraphed 2-3 seconds in advance. Don’t stand in it. Win.

Heck, the dragon barely has any hp either.

Unless you play with 2000ms and 5fps, I honestly don’t know how anyone could fail. If this makes me an “elitist” then so be it.
This boss fight is on the same difficulty level as crossing the street in real life. How are you people still alive?

Here’s my problem with it. I play Ele, and I’m not a dungeon crawler. I don’t have ascended armour (just trinkets from laurels), and frankly, I’m way off them. I just don’t get time to play much, and mostly what I’m doing at the moment is trying to play the story elements.

Do I expect to complete challenge mode at my level? Not really. That game mode? Pretty clearly not for me. Do I expect to cakewalk every boss in the PS? Again, nope. I get that it’s meant to be harder than roaming around the world.

My problem with the fight isn’t that I died, or that I got stuff wrong. It’s not even that I ended up running out in the buff. It’s the sheer frustration and boredom of a fight in which I can’t oneshot enemies, so spend a fair old time taking the tentacles down while dodging the boss attacks, only to get one-shotted myself and know that there’s no hope of reviving myself. So that’s more dead time while my downed bar ticks away, and then I’m gated on how much damage I can deal to the boss before it all starts again.

Is it super duper hard? Well, no. It’s a pattern which I need to get into the groove of. Is it fun? Also no. Because the challenge isn’t in me overcoming the mechanics. It’s in me pounding away at it six times over to stretch it out into something suitably lasting for a final fight. I would far rather the section where you have to rescue the dignitaries lasted longer, or that you had to attack the wings and disable it, or that heck, at least the enemies you faced in each cooldown period weren’t the same three vines, over and over. I’m dreading finishing it not because it’s hard, but because it’s boring. It drags out well past its welcome for “story mode”.

Missions being repeatable. Not all of the story was amazing, but being able to go back and relive your favourite missions was a nice touch.

Being the sort of person who comes and goes and doesn’t really have any contacts, per se, the concern I have is not the principle behind megaservers. That all seems fine and dandy to me. Underpopulated areas get a boost, and overpopulated areas get a chance to have more people from the same sever in them, so you have almost a “TC main” and “TC overflow” rather than “TC main” and three overflows with TC people in.

That’s great. The problem is, at the moment if you’re in an overflow, you get a warning, and the base server is always there, no matter what time of day or night. Even if there are only three people in TC’s DR, it’s still there, so when prime time approaches, it’s all ready for people to fill up, and those who don’t make it in are aware of that.

Now, we’re getting a system where an off-peak DR with three people in will start taking on people from other servers, to lift it to the soft cap. Well, that’s great for the off-peak players (such as myself, really, seeing as I live in the UK but play on TC). But then, when peak starts rolling around, that soft cap will be hit an awful lot sooner, and the bulk of the TC players will be placed in what for sake of convenience I’ll call a “Peak TC” instance. But there’s no warning of this. So, how do the people who got there early know that the rest of the RPers are in the Peak instance? And how do the people in the Peak instance know about the off-peak one, or Peak2 when it appears? For those who have everyone on a friends list, no doubt it will be easier to spot that they’re in a different instance. But this problem has never been about the already inter-connected community.

This is a problem which will affect newcomers. This is a problem which will affect walk-by RP. It’s not going to mess with established RPers. They already have guilds and friendslists to keep them together as an added integer in the algorithm. But for people who don’t already know where and who the RPers are, there isn’t going to be any way of knowing if they’re in the right place any more.

Did they get there too early and wind up in the off-Peak instance? Did they get there too late and feed into Peak2? Is it just that no one is RPing in this place today? There isn’t going to be any way for those players to know. This is the concern that the level-headed people are raising. We know that TC already generates overflows in DR, so we know that at peak times there are going to be multiple versions of the city with TC players in them. But after the patch, there won’t be a way to distinguish between them.

This is why so many people are asking for RP tags. At the moment, there’s nothing in the game to tell RPers apart from the regular lot who loiter by the bank chatting OOC. They’re all TCers, so what does it matter to the algorithm? They’ll get prioritised together, but there’s no way for the game to sort RPers into one instance and OOCers into another, so it’s likely that a degree of mixing will happen. Again, not with those already linked by guilds and friends, but the new players, or the sporadic ones. And it’s worth pointing out that a lot of RPers have non-RPing friends as well.

The predominant cries here aren’t: “This is terrible, don’t change anything”, they’re: “The system as planned has flaws, adding manual tags would help alleviate this”. Yes, a degree of whining has emerged too, but there’s a strong, consistent voice asking for a system where the players themselves can choose how they’re sorted instead of leaving it to AI. I don’t think that asking for a better version of what is planned is crying “doom”, or panicking without reason. This is a problem which has been spotted, and instead of just crying and wailing, people are offering an alternative. I don’t think it helps to shoot that suggestion down as unwarranted when it would be an improvement, and akin to something RPers at least have been asking for since launch.

The RP community is just like any other. You have a core of those who stick around for a long time, and then you have the more transient people, who are probably the larger contingent. The megaserver will be fine for the current RPers – the core, and the current batch of transient players – because they already have their connections established. But for new people joining, well. TC is full, and they have no one on their friends list yet. How are they supposed to get into the same version of the areas as the other RPers?

I don’t understand why the thought of having manual tags instead of letting algorithms sort people is getting such negative press.

Surely, this would be a way of doing things which would be simpler for everyone? Rather than trust to an automated system to weight things correctly and guess how we want to play each day, why not leave it up to players? Add a bar in F11 for sorting filters, and let the players choose what’s important to them.

When I’m playing casually, do I particularly care if I end up with other people from TC? Not really. I’m more or less soloing. When I want to do boss chains, do I want to be stuck in an instance with people who, sure, are on my server, but are standing idle at WPs, or pottering around on the other side of the map, soloing? Again. Not really.

Grouping with guildmates is fine, and grouping with friends list people is fine, but as many people have pointed out, just because you friended someone doesn’t mean you have the same playstyle. If I’m in DR to craft and I’m not RPing tonight, does it help to take up a “space” in the instance that someone else could use for RPing? There’s no way for the game to tell what the RPers are doing. According to the metrics they’re just idling.

If we could select how we wanted to be sorted, this would almost certainly fix 99% of the problems everyone has with the system. Yes, we’re asking for it for RP reasons because there’s no way for the game to identify who is RPing and who is loitering by the TP chatting about random stuff. But it’s not something which just benefits RPers.

The fact is, TC has a high population, and often has overflows. Currently, if you’re on an overflow you get a notification, a queue, that stuff. You know when you’re in one, and that you’re not on the “main” version. You know you have to wait or ferry people.

What way will there be to tell with the new system? How will we know which is the “extra” version of the city? If I walk around DR post-patch and see no one RPing, is that because the version with the RPers in is full, or because no one’s around? At least with a filter you would have the knowledge that the game is attempting to match you with like-minded individuals. At the moment, the only hope we have is “Guild up”, which is spectacularly unhelpful to new players, and very limiting to existing players as no guild will be large enough to contain every RPer, even on the assumption that people even have an extra space to join an additional guild.

With TC full, no one else can join the server to get that metric. How then, are new players to find RPers, and how are existing RPers to know whether anyone else is around or not?

I’m focusing on the issues as they relate to the RP community here because this is the purpose of the thread. But it goes beyond that. I don’t always want to do boss events, but when I do, I don’t care which server people are from so long as they want to do the events as well. If there were a system of tags, then people could manually select their filters: “RP”, “Casual Play”, “Meta Events”, “Guildmates”, “Server Community”, “Friends List”. Which one or three are you focusing on today? The system as described seems to assume people always have the same goals when they log in, and that simply isn’t true of a lot of players.

If the default was for “Guildmates”, “Server Community” and “Friends List” to already be selected, but players had the option to select or deselect alternatives, the system could be implemented in a later patch, as it is clearly too late to change for the 15th April update. This way, it would leave players happy with the changes pretty much unaffected, but would allow players who have concerns to get the additional functionality they would like.

(Of course, I would far and away prefer a GW1-style system where you could select your district via a drop-down menu, but I accept that this isn’t happening any time soon.)

What they should have done, is make it cost 1 Transmutation charge to unlock a skin into the wardrobe, after which you can access it at any time.

Heck, if it was going to risk their income so much, I wouldn’t even have minded if you then had to use one more charge to make it account wide; if the wardrobe had a soulbound and account-bound tier, and it took two in total to make it accessible to any character. Because after that, I would be able to use it freely.

As it is, this isn’t going to make me want to experiment with looks any more. The items I put in the Wardrobe will be the event-based skins I never get around to using, so I can free up space in my bank and not worry about them. Honestly, the number of times ANet have just completely missed the mark, in my opinion, is beginning to get rather staggering.

What I can’t understand is how a system which worked so darn well in GW1 could be mangled so badly for GW2. I am almost the last of my friends playing this game, and with every patch I get nearer and nearer to dropping it and walking away. And it’s moves like this which are doing it, sadly. I love the lore, love the world. But I hate how dominated it has become by the cash shop – as everyone feared, and as the developers promised it would not be. Very sad.

Seras.5702:

I’m down for Southsun City.

As for the karka, I’d like to see a giant wall built…like the one in the north in Game of Thrones. 700ft high!! No karka can breach it!!

You mean like the one around the Dominion of Winds, which is already in the game? (As a lore-existing city, I mean.) Along with an established race who have given hints that they are considering opening up and engaging with the world again soon?

I mean, I’m no Tengu, but I would imagine the airships kinda put a kink in their whole: “This wall keeps everyone out” plan.

Is it worth hypothesising that if Mordremoth is a plant dragon and is stirring, then some of the leylines could be roots, tapping and sucking magic towards him from beneath the surface?

We saw Zhaitan actively having magical artefacts brought to him. Could Mordremoth be doing the same, just like a tree? If that’s the case, the Pale Tree, along with other trees like it, could have been planted along one of these lines, currently dormant because the dragon is asleep, but which tap into the magic that flows along them. It could account for how they gained sentience and their widespread believe that they are there to fight dragons.

As for LA, I like the bloodstone theory at the moment. The CTC was under the Shiverpeaks, which, tbh, puts the Priory and Marionette closer to his location than LA. If it’s too much of a stretch to say an attack on LA is an attack on Mordremoth, how is Primordious any better? Neither dragon is based in the city.

I also found it remarkably coincidental that the only beacon to flash green happens to do so in LA, and at a point where our character is conveniently looking at it. Just because LA turned green, does that preclude the same thing having happened elsewhere?

I do agree that LA is looking as though it will get a restructure, one which will probably destroy the asura gates (and hopefully not too much of Old Lion’s Arch, because nostalgia). Quite probably the ones in Eastern Ward are backups made ready against an eventuality of this sort, although it’s interesting that there are more than strictly necessary for the five racial cities we have at present. Preparations for a sixth race’s city at the very least?

Finally, I buy more readily into the theory that if Scarlet is any kind of dragon champion, it would be Mordremoth. So far, although not absolutely, the dragons have patterns in the minions they create/corrupt. Destroyers are almost all made purely from lava, imitations of creatures. Icebrood are frozen, literally transformed into corrupted ice in order to be minions. Minions of Zhaitain die or are already dead. Kralky has the brand, and morphs creatures into crystal. Mordremoth is presumably a plant dragon, so it would make sense that plants are his preferred minion.

I don’t think the Pale Tree is a Champion, but the Nightmare Court being unable to return to Dreamer status is very reminiscent of the Svanir passing a point and becoming Icebrood, from which there is no return. The difference is that so far, Mordremoth appears to still be dormant, which would explain the Court’s continuing free will.

On that theme, and especially with the dialogue from the current LS update, the theory seems to be that whatever she saw was connected to her mind. If there’s a dragon involved, the only one close enough to her nature which fits the hints is Mordremoth. It would, too, explain her dismissal of the court and how she uses them as a tool – if she becomes a Champion, they are quite literally beneath her, especially if they’re on the road to becoming minions themselves.

Well, okay, obvious answer is obvious.

Still. I read the letter from my inbox. I have heard from other players about how the Wurm requires massive coordination, not for casuals, etc. I’ve not been playing so much recently due to life, illness, that sort of thing. I figure, there’s no point in me worrying about the wurm until I’ve at least tried the Marionette, as that is more central to the LS, or so I have gathered from the patch notes, and from word of mouth.

So I get to Lornar’s Pass and… what? Rox and Braham are stood there with a generic line about how we have to stop the weapons test, and then there are inactive portals. Ooooh, I realise. It’s not running. Except there’s no warning as to when it will run again, and there’s no other information on what I’m supposed to do. No lead-up events, no other NPCs giving any background, no signposts to anything else.

I played the last few days of the previous patch, and in that time, despite having missed the majority of the Toxic alliance stuff, I was at least able to go to the area, see the effects, kill some relevant mobs, and generally feel like there was something I could be doing whenever I logged in, however minor.

There I was thinking maybe this patch would get me back into GW2 after months of indifference, and yet within ten minutes of logging in I’m ready to log out again, wondering if the next patch will be worth it. I can’t sit around all day waiting for a boss event to respawn, and, in all honesty, I find it somewhat irritating that all the pertinent information about what to do isn’t in the game itself.

I mean, sure I can check the forums, or a 3rd party site for a cooldown. I could even get a walkthrough while I’m there. But that’s not what I want. That’s not what I used to love about GW. What I used to love was logging in and knowing I could pick up where I left off. Now it feels as though unless I am available on patch day, every patch day, there isn’t even a playerbase around to ask.

To my mind, when you have to tab out of a game to find out what to do in the game, that’s where something is going wrong. And yes, I know what people are going to say: “Casual”. If I don’t have time, why am I complaining, it’s life, etc. The thing is, I do technically have time to play. I do have time to wait out a boss cycle and then do the event. But I don’t enjoy feeling that if this is the new content, only here a limited time, that I want to do, I have to rely on out-of-game hints or other players to be able to do it.

NinjaChris.9340:

2. Looking at Your 2014 for GW2 I’m concerned about its second half. The Off-Season is basically just like the Living Story now, but it still contains important to me lore elements, like The Wizards Tower, The Tengu, The Origin of the Asura, and the Vaettir.
I’m not concerned with running out of lore, but by giving each of those elements only a month or so to develop, you don’t have enough time for build up and for them to have any impact, which makes interesting lore basically into filler content.
Since the Off Season is full of Holiday events that would interrupt good pacing, it’d be better to stick with new, short stories that don’t have to have a lot of impact.

Lastly, I want to tell you that your post is great, and anet should definitely have a look at this. I want to thank you for all the effort and thought you put into this.

I just wanted to point out that it was a hypothetical year. I mean, it’s not like that’s a real proposal. You’re right that large lore elements would really benefit from more than a month of attention, but this was a placeholder. As much effort as the OP has put into it, it’s still easier to talk about things players recognise than the sort of one-shot plots the devs could actually put into an “off season”.

I do think that five months is a bit short to be taking on a dragon start to finish, so I think if anything, the proposed “off season” would be an excellent time to have the rumblings of progress towards the upcoming plot. I mean, if we are going to go after Jormag, say, in the off-season before it would make sense for the Icebrood to pick up the pace, even if it’s just in November. That way, it sets up the foreshadowing rather than it being this neat and tidy start and finish. Maybe you could even have September’s plot be unrelated, but the heralds note that the Icebrood are on the rise, and then it picks up in the background of Halloween, and then November’s is “Drive back X incursion”, with time off for Wintersday due to that specific victory, and then the pickup in January of “Well, this is getting worse now, time to take on Jormag and be done with it.”

This is just fantastic in scope and detail.

Sure, the game doesn’t have to go this way, but as a general premise? It’s completely solid. The Pact are a large, awkward elephant in the room that the current LS sort of ignores, hands clasped behind its back, innocent whistle at the ready.

It was fine for the PS (maybe. Opinions vary, but I feel it served a good symbolic purpose even if the execution was a little lacklustre), but it’s just cumbersome now. Over half the battle of the PS was just making it happen. Would it really stick around, waiting happily in the wings until needed? I mean, heck, even if it wasn’t physically wiped out, surely petty infighting and racial tensions wouldn’t take long to eat away at all the goodwill built up from victory.

You might put aside suspicion in a time of need, but it comes bouncing back after not all that long. And heck, if you want to tie off Scarlet & co., isn’t it odd how the Aetherblades are handily mixed race? I mean, gosh, I wonder where they found all those soldiers willing to put aside racial prejudices, not to mention the Aetherships to retrofit. They all look suspiciously familiar to me…

And of course, the benefit there is that there’s no immediate reason for the races to work together again. Zhaitan kills the pact, and everyone sits up and says “These dragons are the enemy!” The Pact turn to piracy, and suddenly everyone’s at each other’s throats again. It also levels powerful Pact Commanders down a peg to be taken with the same seriousness as newer players.

I went off on a bit of a textwall before, because I was focusing on what, for me, is the main barrier to my re-entry into GW2 (along with few friends playing any more – but they have stopped playing for similar reasons!) So, here is a more concise post, a bullet-point list of things I would love in this game, or that I think would help:

1 – Don’t tie into an ironclad guarantee of fortnightly releases. I mean, sure, aim for them, have bugfixes in patches that often, sure thing. But forcing yourselves to that schedule when you cannot keep up is daft. You keep saying how you’re limited by fortnightly delivery – well, why tie hamstring your game like that! You should be going for an optimal format, not a “limited” one.

2 – More permanent stuff, less transient. We know that this is coming, on the 4 month delay, but it really can’t be said enough. It’s only fun if you’re the narrow-band player who isn’t too casual, but isn’t too hardcore either. Which means it caters to as many people as raids do in other games.

3 – Make the lore you add visible in-game. I mean, heck. You posted a story about Scarlet studying in Rata Sum? Why can’t we read that story in Rata Sum! Why does no one in Hoelbrak or Black Citadel talk about when she was there? If you add characters, add teasers in-game that they’re coming. Or, you’re telling me she was known about years ago in Rata Sum and no one ever said anything? Nope, not buying it.

4 – Make story re-playable. “Journals”, items you click which take us to instances, NPCs who open instances, all that stuff. We had mission books in GW1, and they worked.

5 – Reduce or remove the grind-based achievements. Farming mobs and opening chest after chest in a cycle around a map is boring. We don’t need 20 achievements in a patch if they all suck. What about 5 or 6 that are different and challenging? Find one hidden item, kill one mob in a particular circumstance, that sort of thing. Achievements turn to grind when they are too commonplace, because there’s only so much variety they can have. Far better to get three different ones which take skill or you have fun doing than ten, eight of which are just killing the same mobs in different places.

6 – Use the lore that already exists. I mean, come on, there’s so much of it! There seems this focus on adding new stuff, new characters; it’s new new new. But there are so many existing characters that could be used instead. Or as well as; it doesn’t have to be either or.

7 – Expand. So far we’ve a focus on revisiting existing places, and sure, that’s fun. But there’s a whole world out there, and so far we’re still stuck in the same place we started, save one new zone, and another which flies in for an annual hi-and-goodbye. Tyria is bigger than this. I want to see it!

8 – Tie existing components together. So, here’s my question. What are the Pact up to? I mean, Zhaitan is done with for now, we’ve seen no signs that they’re going after another dragon just yet, so what are they doing? Heck, why haven’t they turned that nice, big army on Scarlet yet? It’s a pact to protect the world, and right now she seems to be one of the biggest threats. You’re telling me the army that took out a dragon can’t bombard her into oblivion?

9 – Part of Expand really, but, well. Zhaitan’s gone. What about news from Elona, or Cantha. Maybe Bubbles is in the way of Cantha, but Zhaitan was the main reason no one could hear from Elona. You’re telling me no one’s even curious? Even if we can’t go there yet, surely someone would have tried it? Can’t we get the odd NPC with a bit of news? A different textbox, or, say, a “newspaper” in LA with a global summary of what’ going on. You say you want to make this like a TV show? Well, a TV show has unity and depth. In the good ones, nothing happens in complete isolation. Even filler episodes show us something to give greater context to the world and characters. Where’s this depth?

10 – Playability. So, all those tokens, back-items, minipets, and other fluff we get. Where do we put them? I have a Zephyr item taking up bank space, I have gauntlet tokens too, and those election support thingies which I bought but never got round to using. It’s all so gosh-darned confusing trying to sort out what items are worth keeping, and what is junk. Likewise, finding out what you need to do if you join a LS patch halfway through. I can’t play all the time, and when I do come in, I get three letters, some of which are outdated, and I spend the first few minutes thinking “Umm, what’s going not now?” If I’m like that and I usually read the website, what about the people who don’t? I shouldn’t be left looking at 3rd party sites to try and work out what I have to do.

I’ve been taking a break from GW2 recently. Before people crowd onto me with the (understandable) viewpoint that seeing as I haven’t been playing, what’s the point in me commenting, let me explain.

I have two children, and I’ve just separated from my husband. As much as I love gaming, and GW in particular (I have loved the world since shortly before Nightfall launched, and have a real passion for the lore and gameplay of GW1 and 2), life takes precedence.

One of the things I really loved about GW was that, unlike other MMOs, I wasn’t penalised for taking that stance. With GW1, the three campaigns and EotN meant that life could throw me a curved ball (say, getting pregnant) and I could still play. The content was there, waiting for me to play it through. NPCs and quests could be completed in order, and there was no rush. If other people were ahead of me, so be it! They completed things faster, got rewards more quickly, had better armour because they could coughcough grind out faction points for EotN skins.

Now, here I am with GW2. And there’s all this living story content which I have missed, and it feels like a barrier. Suddenly, I log into the game and I have a countdown to finish content I might have found out about halfway through its fortnight of availability, and I feel like I can’t play the way I want to or I’ll lose the opportunity to experience the story.

I don’t especially mind about missing out on weapon skins, although I love to collect them. I want to play through story, I want cutscenes, I want lore. I want to walk around the world and see the impact of events, past or present, upon that world.

Something I loved about GW1, that I think would work for GW2, was what I experienced from bringing characters across campaigns. When I took my Prophecies-born monk into Elona, and went back to try and complete all the missions, I was able to. And the most simple device explained how I could be playing content which clearly I hadn’t been there for: A line of text telling me I was essentially taking part in a retelling of events past.

This device was used across campaigns and handily sidestepped the passing of time, allowing two years to fall between Prophecies and Factions, and the events of Nightfall. It allowed for EotN and the GW:B content too. Some of it was gated until you had completed the main campaign bosses, some of it simply had that caveat, but it all allowed players to complete content which altered the world, while still allowing for those who hadn’t bought the game yet a chance to play through as well.

How was this technique overlooked in GW2? All of the Living Story events could be kept in-game by a well-placed NPC or interactable item which allows players to “relive” past events much as we can the personal story. The storytelling elements of the LS are mostly instanced anyway, so why not leave those instances there for people who want to play through the world’s story?

It would remove a huge barrier to re-entry – something that GW2 developers once stated they did not want to exist in the first place. I can’t be the only one put-off getting into GW2 again because of the 2-week pace. It’s punitive, in a game that was supposed to focus on fun.

I can’t help but think that the quality of writing has suffered from trying to make it okay to “miss” parts of the story. By tying it all together in this way, people can still catch up on the plot, and it can allow for a more cohesive narrative – fixing many different problems with a solution the studio has already employed elsewhere.

Agreed. I’ve banked all of mine for now (I actually have the space thanks to the Badges of Honour and Karma consumables not being there now), but it would be nice to know if they really are just oversights that I can safely delete, or if they will ever have a value.

I didn’t get to play that part of the LS very much, due to family emergencies, so I have a lot which I traded for and then never got the chance to use.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Kal Spiro.9745:

So do you think Norn women are more masculine? I don’t. Just because they’re bigger doesn’t make them masculine, it just takes them away from the danty flower appearance they have. I don’t care if they’re robots and therefore their form has no impact on anything, they look like underwear models.

At least if they were big they would look like they were designed to crack skulls, which they were, not to whip you and tell you that you’re a naughty boy.

LOL, wut?

These robots are taller than Norn. They’re carrying giant blades, and they can transform into anything they want.

The problem here is that you have a gender stereotype problem. You equate certain traits with certain qualities. So, because someone looks like an underwear model, they can’t be strong and, “crack heads.”

Because someone is wearing high heels, they automatically want to whip you sexually and call you a naughty boy?

Are you seeing how these generalizations are hurting the argument here?

My main problem with them is that they have been designed to suggest nudity, and they have been designed to emphasise and glorify a figure which a lot of women develop serious eating disorders and lifetime health problems attempting to emulate.

That they look “sexy” would also be less irritating were it not a phenomenon I encountered near enough at every turn. A break would be nice. I wonder how many men would be comfortable surrounded by scantily clad or nude men bearing large pelvic bulges, all with smouldering, thoughtful expressions; like they really care about you.

Likewise, I’m a practical person. I see someone running around in heels, and I wince. That much is maybe just me, I’ll admit, but dear lord. Heels for me equate to pain for the wearer, not some daft dominatrix image. What can I say. Fantasy or not it bugs me when something makes that little sense, even when it can’t be fetishised.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Honestly, I think everyone would have been perfectly happy with these fembots if they were at least twice as wide which huge muscles. Leave everything else exactly as it is, big boobs, tight butt and stilettos but make them giant monster women and everyone would have said amazon fighting women or norn, seems fine, moving on.

I wouldn’t have been.

I don’t think they need to make them more “masculine.” I don’t see them as being any less for being feminine. They’re giant robots with blade weapons. They are beautiful and capable at the same time.

Despite what some may want us to believe, being strong, and being sexy are not mutually exclusive. There is more to strength than your body type, what clothing you’re wearing, or what gender you are.

See, I don’t equate “muscular” with masculinity. I think a strong, muscular body can still be very feminine and very attractive, while embodying a lot more of the protective and strong qualities the Watchknights are supposed to display.

And I absolutely agree that there’s more to strength than body type. However, an exaggeratedly sexual female body just conveys “I am made to look attractive” as far as I can see.

I don’t mind that at all, in the right context. Ornamentation is fine by me, male or female. But as symbol of humanity’s endurance they fall very short. Quite an achievement for a 9ft robot.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

The question I have is why is this choice any more, or less valid than any other choice? Are we questioning it because they’re female?

Would we be asking the same questions if they were big “male” robots? Would be be asking why they’re big, muscular, and mean looking?

What does “big, muscular and mean looking” have to do specifically with masculinity?

I’ll be honest, if they were sexualised male robots, I absolutely would have a problem, because that wouldn’t be congruent with the design purpose. But I wouldn’t see a sexualised male figure as “mean-looking”, so perhaps that’s where I misunderstand.

A big, muscular, mean looking female form would be fantastic. That also is something that the Watchknights do not represent.

Masculine =/= sexualise, just as Feminine =/= sexualised.

I (along with many other posters here) feel that the specific model used by the Watchknights is indeed sexualised. That seems inappropriate for a combat unit no matter what the gender.

For the people claiming that they love the art deco style, you know an art deco model for the Watchknights would have looked like this right?

I mean, I actually quite like art deco figures. And I like the aesthetic of the filigree and such. It would have been nice to get them all together though.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I feel the problem with this conclusion is that you’re making assumptions about what people will think. These robots are not designed to represent the average female. These aren’t statues designed to comment on society, they are robots designed for protection and fighting.

While I understand where you are coming from, I think you’re taking the design of these robots out of context. Think of them as professional athletes with body types designed for that purpose.

I would think of them like athletes if they had a body structure which I considered athletic. Additionally, from a practical design point I would have thought that they would function better if they had a lower centre of gravity, which would require them to have a greater emphasis on their hips and legs. The slightness of the upper part of the body is understandable as they don’t have the same needs as living beings, but I would have thought that adding breasts to a combat unit would be more of an inconvenience than a boon. I certainly don’t see how providing them with stiletto heels would improve their balance and grace. It would be a nightmare of engineering.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Again, you are assuming the purpose of these Watchknights is to represent women. They are exaggerated representations of women. Like huge Norn, or Charr.

This is really hard to put into words without being insulting, but I’ll just come out and say it. You are making a sexist issue out of something that isn’t one. I can understand why you feel this way, but you are not being objective here.

Perhaps I’m not objective. I can accept that. I’m a woman, I’m biased, clearly. As are we all. None of us are looking at this objectively, because we all have our own slant, we all have our own way of seeing the world, shaped by our experiences.

The experiences I’ve had tell me that figures such as the ones the Watchknights represent are typically fetishised. Not by all men. I mean, obviously not. Everyone has different tastes and to find that figure a sexual ideal it would have to conform to your tastes.

And in all honesty, that they are a female figure with breasts doesn’t concern me as much as the fact that the designers have gone to the effort of adding details which go above and beyond implying that the figure is nude (nipples, and contoured buttocks, for example). Once you get into a “nude” figure wandering around, that tends towards sexualisation in my view, be that figure male or female. I would have just as much problem were they male robots with nipples and a suspiciously ornate package and buttocks.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

They’re not “Ugly” or “Fat” because that is not the point of them. They haven’t been designed with the purpose of making everyone feel included and nice inside. They are idealized representations, meant to convey strength and power.

The “strong women” I was referring to are the plethora of other female NPCs of all races and a variety of appearances whom the player can encounter about the world. GW2 did well there. The aside which referenced how they were all attractive was more of a reference to how heroic people must conform to visual stereotypes across the board as anything, and I apologise for not making this clearer. It was something of a deviation from my point.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I’m sorry, but you seem to be saying a few things here that I find quite insulting. You also seem to be making some pretty big generalizing assumptions about males, and the game designers.

I’m sorry, but if you want to get into name calling and labelling, we can do that, but I don’t think it is very good for conversation.

I’m not exactly sure what I have said to insult or offend if I’m honest. I’ve stated my point in as general a manner as I could, simply because that is the best way, in my opinion, to avoid going down a tangent towards personal attacks. My opinions differ from yours, yes, but that’s all they are. Different. I don’t see how my experience and viewpoint can be insulting.

Elsewhere on the forums are posters requesting screenshots of the Watchknights’ chests and backsides so that they can use them as wallpaper. That is ample evidence, so far as I can see, that these figures are being fetishised. Do I think all men and all the designers fetishise them in this manner? Of course not. Heck, my boyfriend saw them before I did and he was more irritated by them than I was.

Given ANet’s stated intention to not over-sexualise the game in the past, they are clearly a company aware of the potential for game assets to be taken in this fashion. I cannot imagine that this aspect of the Watchknights was something which no one brought up at any point in the design process.

cainejw.7142:

Tott, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. You ignore it and brush it under the patriarchy. Your feeling of offense is not because there’s some master plot to sexualize women and promote them only through the male gaze.

In fact, where you see gross, unrealistic shapes that could forever ruin femininity, others see beauty and power in SPITE of form. The Watchknights are powerful regardless of how they look. However, all you see is how they look (women) and suppose that it MUST be sexualization, abuse of women, making women weak, etc.

It’s perspective, and your perspective is colored by sex-negative radical critical feminism.

So, in order to be a rational person, I should be looking at them and seeing what they are in spite of how they look? Forget trivialities like what they actually look like, it’s what’s inside that counts?

It’s funny, because it almost sounds as though they didn’t need to have been made with the one female set of proportions which is held up as a standard for women across the world to attain or be deemed unattractive.

I don’t give a kitten about patriarchy. I care about the fact that the “celebration of femininity and strength” they display is one which millions of women starve themselves in an attempt to obtain, when it’s not even a body shape held by most of the poster women who flaunt it via photoshopped images across the world’s media.

And as for a plot? Of course it’s not a plot! We’re just so used to seeing that figure as representing “what women look like” that it’s the default go-to when designing a female character.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I guess for me, I don’t see being female/feminine as a weakness. I’m not the kind of person who judges ones value or capabilities based on what they are, or aren’t wearing.

That being said, I’m going to switch gears for a moment here.

Lets be honest with what is happening here. There are some players in this thread that are claiming sexism. They are projecting their personal beliefs onto these characters and looking for reasons to support those beliefs.

I appreciate that femininity can be seen as a strength, and I am certainly not ashamed of my own femininity, but there is a difference between appreciating it and fetishising it, and I am of the opinion that the Watchknights represent the latter.

A woman’s breasts and backside are far too often objectified for their emphasis in the models to be automatically put down to “embracing the strength of women”. I’m not a self-hating woman at all, and I would relish the sight of strong female figures in the postion of defending humanity. But that’s not what the Watchknights are. They are highly sexualised figures. And what’s wrong with that, you ask? What’s wrong is that it is a body shape which is glamourised to such excess that women are shamed for not possessing it. It is an unrealistic, disproportionate representation of what real women actually look like.

Real women have curves, yes. They might have slender waists and large breasts and comparatively long legs. But they still don’t look like the Watchknights. They still have far wider waists, shorter legs. A nude woman with breasts that size is not that perky, trust me. And what about women who don’t have that wonderful “sexy” figure? Do they just get airbrushed out of life in the same way that wrinkles and cellulite are? Either this is a sexualised fantasy, in which case it is “logical” (though still distasteful IMO) that they do not appear, or it is a “celebration of femininity” in which case, why is it only “celebrating” the women who conform to the most narrow, unrealistic version of beauty which exists?

If there were a genuine celebration of the strength of women in the game I would be all for it. And heck, there is, in places. You have female characters getting stuff done as opposed to simply being the damsel in distress. (Though let’s be honest, none of them are ugly or too fat, because that doesn’t sell. All the heroes and heroines in games must also be appealing to the eye.)

Yes, people here are of the “opinion” that the Watchknights are sexist, unrealistic depictions of women put there because they are attractive to the male eye. That’s because there is very, very little evidence to the contrary.

I agree. The idea of mechanised people, even mechanised women, is fine. But the degree to which they appear to be a “Male Gamer aged 17-35” fantasy is excessive.

I can’t stand them personally. What happened to ANet supporting a less sexualised game than many others? I think 9ft tall women with ornately detailed buttocks and nipples is sexualised by anyone’s standard.

They don’t look as though they were designed to defend, rather that they were designed to titillate. If they spend the majority of their functional time under mesmer spell anyway, why not go for a more mannequin-esque design?

They could have appeared feminine or human or exotic or interesting in many ways without resorting to the simulation of a naked female in stiletto heels. I do not like this appearance for them at all.

See, I went to Queensdale on a character and halfway up the chest opened and I got no reward. I hadn’t visited that tower before at any point or on a different character.

It’s tricky when there seem to be two problems at hand – a misunderstanding of how they work and a genuine bug.

See, one of my favourite staves is actually this one: Channeling Staff from GW1

It’s primal and simple without looking as though it’s held together by prayers alone. Or even the Bo Staff – it’s all about variety for me, and an understated staff like that would be amazing. These are designs from GW1. There’s such a wealth of inspiration there, why not make the most of it?

Shiren.9532:

I actually liked the bit where you follow Rox to each of the spots and protect her so she can snipe the sylvari. It wasn’t difficult but it was more engaging than “kill the mobs until the game says its ok to stop”.

Oh, so there were supposed to be enemies attacking at that point. In my instance they were all dead and no more spawned, so it was just “run and stand in that circle”.

I thought it seemed a little overblown…

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

TottWriter.8591:

And yeah, daggers could use some love too. I want a dagger that looks sharp, not just like a wedge of stone/metal.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/Dagger-Skin-Disappointment/2573155

Well, I was referring more to the Sovereign skin.

That Komalie dagger does look nice (I’ll own up – I hadn’t seen that one yet) but I still don’t think it makes the Cinquedea any prettier. And those wedge-daggers seem to have been far more common in added skins than daggers which actually look what they are.

And the Monsoon staff is pretty underwhelming from the preview, especially by comparison to the other new skins.

I agree. Pretty much every new weapon skin appearance is marked by me looking at the skins and thinking “Oh. May as well not fuss about that then.”

It’s such a shame because GW1 had some gorgeous staves. Are they really that averse to echoing those looks?

I know this is how the staff selection looked after a few more years than we’ve had GW2, but even so, this is a huge selection of pretty and interesting staves, and I just..I don’t get that from a lot of their GW2 counterparts. I often prefer the basic skins to the exotic ones, and that’s a real shame.

And yeah, daggers could use some love too. I want a dagger that looks sharp, not just like a wedge of stone/metal.

I love this idea. There’s so much lore about Tyria (the world, not just the continent) that doesn’t come across in GW2. Fractals hint, and dialogue near ruins here and there touches lightly as well, but I would dearly love to see some of the more famous GW events revisited or explored more fully GW2-style. There’s such a wealth, it really is a shame that only the lore-hounds know about it.

Come on guys, the OP isn’t asking for a lot, just some more variety in the ways to complete this meta. If it was for an exotic bit of armour, or something that is super valuable and game-changing I could almost agree, but this is for a mini. A memento of the event, that’s all.

I think, sure, have harder achievements that not everyone can get. Go ahead and tie gear drops into it if you like, whatever. But everyone should be able to get something. He’s not asking for it for free. He’s already got 11 achievements, that’s three more than the last meta was, and these achievements were all harder to get, where the last ones were just “go here and press F”. It’s not a free ride for anyone.

I’m all for hard stuff that not everyone can get, but this content patch was crazy for all but a small proportion of the playerbase, one way or another. And every time people get demoralised and quit, that’s fewer players to fund the cash shop running of the game.

If the Living Story is being touted as the future of the game, it’s no good saying “Well you don’t have to play it”, because you are basically saying “Well don’t play the game”. And if that’s the answer to everything, the game starts to fall apart.

People are entitled to make criticisms if they think there is a problem. Will it change anything? I don’t know. But there’s no call to go around saying that people’s opinions are invalid because they’re not up to some arbitrary standard that other people are setting.

Urgh. a plague. It took me a while to realise at first, because it seemed crazy. And then when I went to report the player for inactivity, there wasn’t an option, only the usual “scammer, goldseller offensive language” category.

As a more general request, can we not get a “PvP – Inactivity” report function? Even if it shows up in PvE content, it should be hard to abuse because the game logs will clearly show if it’s the case. That would help with Dragon Ball and any future PvP games which people might wish to exploit.

lordkrall.7241:

But then again the release had been out for about 6 hours before that very post.

While I do agree that it was a rather silly move, they would really have to wait until the 9th (or whenever the story quests leave) to post anything about it, since some people won’t play it until later and would be spoiled, and that would more or less remove the whole point of the pictures.

Well, fine, some people are going to be spoiled. And hey, six hours meant it went up at an almost acceptable time in the UK – I saw it after playing GW2 and cursed that I had gone effigy hunting, thinking to leave the instances until the weekend. In America, that’s their own timezone, people saw it while still at work before they could even get home, seeing as the patch was in their morning. In Australia, people saw it in the morning before they logged in, with the patch arriving in the middle of their night.

Six hours is an excellent window if you were able to log in and play the patch straight away. Unfortunately, for a very large proportion of the playerbase, that wasn’t the case at all. Waiting until, say, Saturday or Sunday would at least give people a few days to get some free time. Is it as immediate? No. But it does prevent people being spoiled for what was supposed to be a Whodunit mystery.

Someone really dropped the ball on this one. Here’s hoping they learn from this?

Yeah. I play mostly at the weekend when my kids are with their father. I have the fb page for game updates. Just scrolling through before bed and oh, hey. Spoilered. It’s not even subtle.

The idea behind it is lovely and all, but having stuff on facebook that spoils ingame content is something I don’t see ever working. Not everyone can log in and instantly play through this content, and facebook news feeds mean you don’t deliberately go to the GW2 page to see the updates. There is no way of preventing people who haven’t played it yet from getting spoilers.

I will admit, I am disappointed by this. It seems a trivial thing, but if you’re going to go to the effort of making a whodunnit, then surely allowing people some glimmer of suspense as they play through would be the better option? A roundup at the weekend or after the content closes, hey, fine. If you haven’t done it by then, fair enough. But less than a day after the patch? There are people who haven’t even managed to log in yet who just check fb to see what friends are up to and…oh. There it is, no warning or anything.

Please, please read the feedback about facebook and never do something like this again. Even the wiki warns people about spoilers for storyline related content, so why splash spoilers over a site that people check for a multitude of reasons that don’t relate to the game?

Alice.8317:

The tickets are supposed to be rare, i gives a feel of achievement when getting one. I haven’t got one yet myself but i don’t think they should sell them on the TP, people were complaining about that last time. The drop rate is fine, just because you haven’t got one doesn’t mean it isn’t fair. There is still a few weeks ’til the event ends there is plenty of time to get one.

I could get behind there being an “achievement” to receiving a ticket if there were more than blind chance behind it. My boyfriend and I have between us opened hundreds of chests (we haven’t been keeping particular count but we both had more than 1000 sweets at last count.

I’ve gotten naught but cakes, and so has he. Now, RNG is fine sometimes and for some things. I don’t mind the normal Black Lion chests, for example. It’s mostly fluff and it’s a bit of a “hey, what is it this time?” when I get a key from my PS on one of my alts.

Even the Moa racing. It’s a little tedious trying to get three wins and having to wait so long in between options – I think that achievement might have been better served being, say, ten to fifteen podiums rather than three lots of first place.

However. It seems a little counter-intuitive to go to the effort of designing these weapon skins which will only be available for a limited amount of time, and then make it so that very, very few people (compared to those who want them and the game’s broader population) will ever get them.

My suggestion would be to keep the RNG on the chests as it is, but add another method of getting the tokens. Even if it’s saving up a few Jorbreakers as with the wings; at least that gives you something to do with all the candy from the chests.

I think anyone who has ever read a lot of books, played a lot of games or watched a lot of films is now jaded beyond all belief when it comes to suspiciously helpful strangers, especially when they warrant a name.

Either she is the saboteur or she will be accused thus and only prove her innocence after a long, convoluted series of events in which she reveals herself to secretly be a mole in the enemy agency putting her life at risk to bring word of the resistance within it to the ears of the Lionguard and allies races. Part of this series of events will involve her stating that if she had wanted to kill you she could have done so multiple times already, and then offering to let you kill her yourself to prove her dedication.

That’s when Lionguard Kiel reveals her true colours by wanting to execute this wanton criminal, because no truly good person would ever kill someone who is asking to be shot as a test of their loyalty! MWAHAHAHAHAHAA!

I logged in the other day to do the Canach storyline Seems I missed some of it that was only there for a week or so?

I dunno. Either way, I got to Southsun and just…it was a mess. I had no idea what I was doing, or where anything was. I guess I should have had a go last week, but time then was seriously lacking for me, and I didn’t realise that there were going to be two stages to the whole thing even within the couple of weeks this stage of proceedings was around. Or was it always that confusing?

I appreciate that things have to move on, but for something which is supposed to be storyline based, having instances and zones available for just a week or two seems…I dunno, kinda short, especially when the first arc of something with relatively little to do is there for a month, and then you have a fortnight to do what amounts to a lot more than the first part of the content.

I don’t mind short periods of content – heck, the festival events were just that and I’ve managed to be around for all of those. What I find confusing is that sudden switch between a month to do a short scavenger hunt and farm out a few events, and then half that time to do instanced stuff and have a dungeon. (I tried Crab toss once and gave up to to serious lag issues, so I had already resigned myself to missing out on that stuff.)

I love the concept of content that changes and provides a story that alters over time, I just think that for an MMO, it just…I don’t think it would hurt the game for some of this to run concurrently, even if it is less signposted. There are players in-game now who have yet to kill Zhaitan in their PS, and we’re still about to celebrate his offing with a festival. How would leaving the instances open for players be any different to that? Open world stuff, fine, it makes sense for that to go. But instances don’t affect anyone but the people participating.

Maybe I’m missing a point, but it just seems a tad illogical, especially when you have people complaining about missing content, and then people taking sabbaticals from the game only to come back and have little to do because the content came and went already.

/signed

One of the biggest barriers to RP at the moment is the lack of suitable places which aren’t filled with non-RPing players and therefore lots of /say chat which is OOC and in which IC chat can get lost very quickly.

With the absence of the (somewhat promised?) Guild Halls and Player Housing, and dearth of buildings which can be entered aside from a very few taverns and the odd building isolate in the rest of the world, blocking off one of the areas which was in regular, active use is a real shame.

We know it was an exploit, no one is disputing that. However, whilst I have never felt the need to use my home instance, the uninstanced version of that area was very popular for the reason that it didn’t get in anyone’s way and had a lot of accessible, empty buildings. No one wanted anything fancier done to it, it was fine just as it had been. Is there really no way that this area could be made accessible to those people who wish to generate their own content within the game?

GW2 is meant to be all about the community, all about fun. All about playing it your own way with your friends. Well, this is the way a lot of people enjoyed the game. Embracing the rich lore of the world and the beauty of the cities and being able to interact with them. Now some of that is being taken away, and it’s a real shame.

Having Salma back, or adding new, relatively unoccupied areas…the RP community is crying out for this. We’re not the loudest lot, but we’re not non-existent either. sPvP, WvW, PvE, all those aspects of the game have gotten their love. Do we get a turn, too?

I miss my Imperial Ritualist armour, or the Elite Luxon gear I traded it in for.

More on topic perhaps, when it comes to town clothes I think what I find frustrating is that we have those basic clothing options, and then it seems that most of the ones available in the cash shop (and hey, that’s a small pool to start with at this stage), are 4th wall breaking items such as the peaked hat, and now hoodies.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these items being available for people to buy. If that’s what someone wants in their MMO, go for it. I guess what frustrates me a tad is that I would kill for some of the “town” clothes that NPCs have, and I had really hoped I would be able to purchase them.

These “skins” are already in the game, have already been designed and given character models for some of the races. Could they not be sold in the shop? I’d love some dresses like the ones I see on humans, or some honest to goodness trousers that I can put on my human Ele from time to time. (Seriously, casters really do have a shortage of trousers in the same way medium armour sets have a shortage of overall variety.)

I don’t mind the idea of town clothes that you have to buy with gems. As a money making exercise it really is way down there on my “things to grumble about in a game” list. They are fluff, you don’t need them. But one of the reasons I feel like I don’t need them at the moment is that there’s nothing I would want to dress my characters in. I like to keep my characters fitting the setting. Right now, that doesn’t leave me with much reason to switch over to town clothes at all.

Again, I’m not going to complain that “modern” or “silly” items are in the shop. Not at all. They all have a place. I’d just like the balance to offer some more of the sort of things you might actually see someone walking around Tyria in as well.

I think the jumping puzzles in WvW are fine. People who want to work it out for themselves kinda can if they’re that dedicated about it, or they can wait for a friendly zerg to rush them to the end if they just want the achievement (though of course, someone has to complete it to be able to portal people up, so the existence of these portal services kinda proves it’s totally doable).

The thing to remember is that it’s part of WvW because it is supposed to be unbalanced and a bit of a free for all. Do you complain that you can’t take Stonemist because some darned gankers are all sat on the walls with their AoE and mortars?

Yes, it has an achievement, yes it drops items. But hey, so do people in the form of loot., so do the keeps in terms of capturing them a number of times. There is crossover with the PvE jumping puzzles, but the very fact that traps are built into the puzzle surely should be a hint that this is not a sit and slowly work it out kinda deal, unless you log in at off-peak times.

I can’t get the achievement for capturing Stonemist unless I go and try to capture it with an army. So should I complain that the content is gated off because I need friends to help defend me and fend off attackers?

So many to choose from!

Here are a couple of my landscapey shots, plus one of my favourite chill-out moments with a couple of guildies. Our first time in Lornar’s Pass and we all sat on that rock for about half an hour, just captivated by the beauty and the general ambience.

iced cooly.5794:

Sorry to sound dumb

But what do you mean by role players in GW2? I ask because it is an RPG game and every time I log into the game I consider my self to be “role playing”, wheather I am running a dungeon, fractal, crafting, playing story mode or taking part in any dynamic event. I also consider everyone else who logs into the game to be role playing as that is exactly what they are doing, playing a “role playing game”.

So what is it that you consider to be role playing exactly? What is it you do in these taverns?

Thanks

Roleplaying is distinct in that it is playing “in character”, so, interacting with other characters/players as though you are the person your avatar represents. It involves creating a personality and/or backstory for your character that fits with the lore of the world, and talking/behaving as though you are that character.

There’s a lot of variation in how people go about that – some people are “In character” all the time, and will interact with everyone they meet as though they are their character, but those people are in the minority. Most RPers seek out RP when they want to, and PvE or PvP any other activity “out of character”, and some only RP occasionally.

If you see someone talking about in-game events as though they are real, walking, or longer, detailed emotes describing activities the game doesn’t support (such as sitting in a chair, or interacting with another character by shaking their hand or clapping them on the back etc.), chances are they’re a roleplayer.

All the people complaining about the price crashes on the TP, I think that’s less to do with chests being once per character instead of once per account, and more to do with the increase in the drop rates that went with it.

I have 9 characters myself, (though only 1 level 80 as RL means I have a “casual” playing style) and I think the cost of properly equipping those characters goes a long way to “compensating” for the financial rewards of levelling multiple characters to 80 and gearing them up for the events. If someone wants to put the effort into doing that, why should they then be handicapped to a once-per-day-per-account rule, especially as there is a limit to how many times a person can do an event per day and not lose out on other events they could be participating in.

I do agree that permitting characters to complete events on Guested servers is problematic given the lag that is resulting for native players on popular servers.

Would dearly love FPV for screenshots and the odd jumping puzzle moment.

Getting a connection error too. sigh

etiolate.9185:

I have two large guilds I belong to and I’m sure they can do the guild missions, but I have a small guild of my own for the purpose of playing with real life friends. We have no area of research above level 3 and zero influence spent in Art of War as WvWvW is not of importance to small guilds.

The rest of my small guild hasn’t been playing the past two months and the guild missions were something I was hoping to use to get some of us playing together again. If the first mission type is restricted behind a level 5 Art of War research wall then it’s unlikely that my friends and I will ever do them.

This is the position I’m in. We were looking forward to this as a way of connecting again ingame (several guildies are studying so holidays will still probably be the best playing times, but oh well). We recently switched servers, as well, to avoid having to pay for transfers in light of the fact that guesting is not cross region. All of our upgrades and Influence stayed behind on our old server, so we had to start from scratch. Which was clearly just perfect timing. (Can’t blame anyone for that, but it’s a bit galling all the same seeing as we had a lot of Influence on our old server.)

Now, well. We’re mostly inactive or repping other (bigger) guilds, and seeing as our other commitments mean we don’t get so much time to play simultaneously any more, we’re facing either grinding out influence solo over a period of weeks or months just to get the first Guild mission, and forego all other upgrades in that time, or to not bother and just merge with a bigger guild, or at least rep a bigger guild to join in with stuff.

All in all it’s a bit of a blow really. The thing that could have been a reason to log in and play together is actually looking more like a hurdle to put us off.

Could a developer pop in and give us some more details? A bit more light on this topic is looking rather needed. We’ve got a little information and a lot of speculation to go on at the moment, and that’s really not helping the matter.

Skylightmoon.1079:

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

Dude thats not discouraging people from joining small guilds. People don’t usually join a small guild over a large guild anyways. So don’t place the blame on this. Small guilds constantly spark into existence, usually by noobs, and its usually late in the game, like now. They also usually only last a few weeks anyway because of the slow member recruitment.

To counter your point, the small guild I am a member of has been in existence since pre-release and consists of a close-knit group of friends. We’re not interested in growing large, because that’s rather counter to the point of it being a guild of friends. Likewise, it seems counter-intuitive for us to all go join a bigger guild in order to play guild events together. What would be nice is for the guild events to tier in a way that doesn’t exclude us altogether.

No one is arguing that every teeny tiny guild should be able to complete all events; tjat they should be “handed out on a platter”. Not at all. But for even the first group of Guild Events to be gated behind the fifth tier of a non-PvE upgrade track? That seems a little over-the-top. Why not have at least some which are a tad more accessible?