Guild Wars 2

I think if they’re going to take people out of the MMO open world for adventures, they should do solo-able dungeons instead.

Of course, I’m taking for granted that people play GW2 for fantasy RPG style things like dungeons, rather than mini-games.

Hint: symmetry can help!

Tip: throwing a bloodstone fragment not only flips the glyph you target but the two beside it. Watch how they bounce. You need to turn all remaining glyphs off at once, so you need 3 in a row on.

Malediktus.3740:

I dont think that 1-2 hours for a title is too much effort. It should have been more grindy to be honest

As others have said, it’s not the 1-2 hours that’s the problem. The issue is that it is 1-2 hours of a repetitive boring activity. If it was 1-2 hours of a repetitive fun activity (e.g., slaying monsters) no one would complain.

If the game is not fun, we should not play it, so we should not support this kind of design.

Hi, there may be spoilers below:

I’m stuck on the salvage turret path of “Torn from the Sky”. Following the green star leads you to a hill top where you encounter a Sylvari fighting Mordremoth’s influence. After you deal with him, the map updates with a green circle around the hilltop. After you go there, and fend off some raptors, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to do there, but the hilltop is still circled. I’ve ventured down from the hill were I found Mr. Sparkle’s remains, and I got some dialog, but the objective circle remains fixed on the hill top and I can’t progress the mission. I’ve restarted it with the same result.

Yup, I kept crashing after talking to Taimi and trying to get into Maguuma. After getting frustrated I left for Lion’s Arch, only now I can’t start the Prologue again to make progress.

What ever happened to Ascent to Madness, the mini-dungeon that was available during Halloween 2012? That was one of the coolest parts of the original Halloween release, why hasn’t it been back since?

Positives

• Dry Top map – I’ve really enjoyed this map, and I think it’s well designed. Though I know some people dislike the Zephyrite crystals, the vertical dimension adds a lot of uniqueness and depth to the zone. The sandstorms every hour provide incentive for people on the map to work together, while the general difficulty of the area is not quite as hard as Southsun to solo, so I think we will retain the critical mass required to do the events. I also like that there is a unique weapon skin set associated with Dry Top. Hopefully every new zone will have this feature.
  Edit: the vine bridge was a nice nod to GW1!

• The Ambrite weapon skins deserve their own hurrah! It’s nice to see a new and good looking weapon set available in-game and not through the Trading Post. My only suggestion is maybe make the fossilized insects available to buy for ~500 geodes so that it isn’t completely dependent on random number generation.

• Rewards and achievements available after the mission is played through the first time is a good idea, especially if they’re difficult. It encourages people to group for the missions, like in GW1. It would be nice if the rewards were a little more unique, but I think this has great potential to be turned into a “hard mode”.

Negatives

• No Experience Lootless Mobs – I disliked them in the personal story (e.g., Battle of Fort Trinity) and I dislike them now. I understand there is a need to prevent the repeated farming of large groups of enemies, but having them give no loot, no experience, and not trigger on-death mechanics just makes them feel… artificial. Like they’re not real enemies, they’re just extras thrown in to create a sense of drama. I suggest letting them give XP and loot during a normal length single play through, but have rapid diminishing returns to prevent abuse like repeated play throughs everyday.

• Taking away character skills – This only happened during Discovering Scarlet’s Breakthough, but I want to caution against taking away a player’s chosen set of skills and replacing them with a canned set that’s foreign to the player and may not be enjoyable (no matter how powerful they are). For a game that is often criticized for only having to spam the #1 skill, I was not pleased to be transformed into a steam creature where I only had 2 skills! I disliked using the desert wurms in Nightfall, I have a character stuck on the personal story mission Air Drop because I detest it so much, and feel the same way about the cannon and steam creature in Discovering Scarlet’s Breakthough. Please let us play how we want, which is how we have set up our characters. The unique mechanics can be included in the enemy instead.

• Waiting for events to occur in Dragon’s Reach Part 1 – This was the low point of Season 2 for me. The Iron Marches and Frostgorge events should have been instanced. Nothing is gained by turning these parts into open world zerg events, either you don’t have enough people to complete them, or there are so many people that your contribution counts for nothing (or they don’t start properly because events often get stuck).

Yeah, I agree with everyone else (not the OP :-)

For the past year we’ve had too much content that’s dependent on other people (or rather, getting into the right instance): Tequatl, Evolved Jungle Wurm, the Marionette fight, racing up the Tower of Nightmares, Crown Pavilion, triple Assault Knights, etc.

Dry Top is a nice balance.

Trahearne should be corrupted for one reason: make the player’s character the leader of the Pact and the center of the personal/living story once again.

I got suppressed trying to lead a round of Crown Pavilion.

“Say when to burn Boom!”
…
Me: Everyone burn!
[Message Suppressed]
Me: Grrrrr!

Yeah, the system needs to be smarter. For emails, if the recipient has you on their contact list, if they are in your party, or there are attached consumables, dyes, etc. the message should go through. If, on the other hand, there are a ton of numbers, special characters, etc., in the email, it should be less likely to go through.

For some reason I cringed when it talked about her evil taking root. She did it because she was evil! Sounds so cliche and reminded me of the bad writing all over again.

I think this is great news. As long as the content is good (like real expansion content) I have no problem paying for it if I miss it. I also have a baby on the way, so I would have missed most of Season 2 anyways, if not for the journal. Now I have options!

Yes, I find temporary content repugnant. I have a baby on the way, so I won’t be playing to Anet’s bi-weekly schedule. I could conceivably find chunks of time to play in the future, but I won’t be coming back if there isn’t any significant new permanent content to enjoy (e.g., new zones, campaigns like Factions & Nightfall).

Forgive me if this point has already been mentioned (as I stopped reading 100% of the posts after page 4) but while a 1c undercut may be insignificant to the buyer if it only happens once, it becomes more significant if many sellers start undercutting by 1c (or more than 1c each, but less than 1%).

E.g., suppose an item is listed at 1g, and 50 sellers view that 99s is lower than what they want to sell at (maybe it eats too much into their margin, whatever), the result is that you get 51 listings at 1g. Now if each seller is allowed to undercut the previous by 1c, the result is that a buyer can purchase the item @ 99s 50c. The net result is a lower price for the buyer(s) that eventually may become significant because all those 1c’s add up.

One gripe I have with the Dye and Wardrobe (and indeed a lot of GW2’s selection menus) is you can’t sort it Alphabetically.

If I know the name of a dye, I should be able to sort them in alphabetical order so I can find it quickly, instead of hunting around for it because I don’t know it’s rarity, material, etc.

I have been autobalanced 4 times in the last 3 games of sPvP I played. Let me tell ya, it’s pretty sucky and makes me not really want to play PvP.

Anet: please implement Rank LOSS for quitting a match mid-game. Either that, or give anyone who is autobalanced to the other side bonus rank points equal to half of what they would have earned for winning (because chances are they would have won had they stayed on their original team).

Thank you!

Yes, I am getting the same crafting bug. According to the timer, I last crafted at 5pm today (which is impossible because I was still at work).

I think the premise of your disgruntlement is erroneous.

From the dye FAQ (linked at the end of the dye article):

“With the new dye system, how will dyes be unlocked?

Each dye that one of your characters currently has unlocked will become available to every character on your account when you log in with that character. This means that if Character A has Green Dye unlocked, it will not be available to the rest of your characters until you log in with Character A. Once you do that, any character may use the dye."

One of the annoying things I’ve found with the PvP skin locker is that it’s hard to find the skin you’re looking for if you want to equip say a bunch of weapon skins from one set. Please allow us to sort the skins by their set name (e.g., all Forge/Ghastly weapons next to each other) or simply alphabetized them in their categorizes. This would make navigating the wardrobe much easier!

Thank you!

Boon duration is also good on elementalist Aura Sharing builds. They said they would make a rune for every build. Let’s hope that’s true.

1. New permanent maps.
2. Better written story. (Scarlet was too much of a cartoon character villain.)
3. More solo or 5-man instance content :o) Less zerging. That’s great that there are so many people playing this game, don’t forces us to play with them all at once.

Here is what I think would improve dungeons:

1. Create a kill counter for non-respawning monsters. Make the kill count a magic find bonus to promote clearing instead of running.

2. Improve the AI of monsters so that when a ranged enemy turns a corner and finds itself in melee with a stacked party, it knows to retreat out of melee range, moving radially from the party so it still has line of sight. I think the Margonite Clerics did this in GW1.

3. Implement difficulty scaling in dungeons to allow parties of less than 5 people (or more than 5!!!)

-Tranc

I think the biggest problem with a map like Southsun Cove is that it doesn’t scale well. Many of the events are not solo-able, and so people get frustrated that they can’t explore alone and leave, making it even harder to find groups there. There’s never enough “critical mass”.

I think Orr is actually pretty good for a high level map. It’s dead because the current LS has made most places dead except for Lion’s Arch and Gendarran Fields. There are still events that you can solo, though they may culminate in ones that you can’t. At least there are events people can do while waiting for the critical mass to do, say a Temple event.

My biggest gripe with some areas is that monsters may be too densely pact and re-spawn too quickly, especially if you’re by yourself. This doesn’t make the game harder or more exciting, just annoying and frustrating. You want to be able to take a breather and talk to an NPC or salvage some loot without continually being interrupted by monsters.

I’d like most events to solo-able (they can be hard to solo, but it should be possible). Then, as more people join, they should scale up so that they’re still challenging for a zerg.

Let me start off by saying I am in general against the whole limited access/prestige item thing, where people don’t want others to have what they have so they can feel good about themselves.

That said, I think GW1 players have every right to be upset. Here’s why:

When GW2 was announced, GW1 was still doing very well. To placate the player base who wanted to keep their characters, gear, etc., Arena Net told us there would be a Hall of Monuments that would allow us to transfer certain items to GW2. The original description, back in the day, was that we could put a sword on display in the Hall of Monuments, and 250 years later, our GW1 character’s ancestor could crack open the case to retrieve the weapon. Tormented Weapons were one of those few endgame items that could be placed on display in the HoM.

As time went on, the story changed to we would only be getting points for our HoM contributions, though some of those points would unlock various skins (though not the things we specifically put on display).

You would think that if anything carried over it would be the hard to get endgame items: zodiac & tormented weapons. Nope, those go straight to the cash shop.

Yup, this happened to me. I got the popup from another party member who’s section defeated Prime early, not realizing they were in a completely different battle (cuz you can still see their portrait, and the Zerg is huge), I thought this was a continuation of my fight and joined him. Lost out on achievement and loot.

Here’s a tangent problem I encountered: I’m with a group of 3 guild mates. We get partitioned into different sections. One of us defeats prime before the others and starts the instance. My prime just split into 3 separate versions when I get the join dungeon instance dialog box. Not knowing this isn’t a continuation of the fight I click join like everyone else in my party. So no loot or achievement for me, because I exited the fight prematurely.

I am also unable to log back in. Had trouble loading these forums as well.

I think it was a bad idea to re-skin tier 3 human armor to begin with, but once people had purchased it, I think it’s an even worse idea to take their purchase away from them. It sets a really bad precedence that anything you buy from the gem store can disappear and be replaced at Anet’s whim. That might have always been true legally, but it really makes the buyer beware. What’s next? Will Anet cave to the folks who cry that the new Watchwork mining pick is unfair (because it’s pay-to-win) and replace those already bought?

I know I will be more cautious about my gemstore purchases in the future…

What annoys me is the error message. I have gotten these messages (usually on patch day) since launch and it has NEVER been my firewall, router settings or security program.

Lomar’s Pass during Marionette fight. We would have won, and then the lag kicked in during the final champ battle. My messages were appearing 60+ seconds after I’d type them. Worse lag I’ve seen in this game.

This was the subject of the GW1 expansion Eye of the North. Ogden was a hero from that expansion that could be added to your party.

HiddenNick.7206:

Ok, so just think for minute about what they’ve managed to add this year… After thinking about that do you still think that it’s possible for them to develop a whole continent in place of LS?

Absolutely I do. Just think for a minute how much “junk” content we’ve had in the past year (the dozen mini games, two worlds of Super Adventure Box, etc.). I know there are people who like mini-games, jumping puzzles, celebrations, and hell — I even liked Super Adventure Box. But I don’t think most of us bought this game for those things, and when Anet says they want to focus on the “core” game, that list is not what comes to my mind.

HiddenNick.7206:

Current map purpose is to level up characters and to make place for living world releases. And it serves that purpose. But take note that all maps are pretty dead besides those that are hosts for current LS release. So LS releases makes people play… Not the vast world.

Wow, that is the most false statement about this game that I can think of. A vast world makes people want to play because it’s like getting a new game. LS releases have me on the verge of quitting, and I know many friends who are quite bored with it too. If you’re going to try to hook people with just story, it better be a very good (cable TV quality) story. Instead, the living story tries to force people to play using gimmicks like time gating, temporary content, achievement points, mindless repetitive grind, gambling, etc.

Again, gotta disagree. It took them 6 years to develop the graphics engine, design the 8 professions, skill & trait system, combat mechanics, how WvW and sPvP would work, the setting/background, the personal story, 32 dungeon paths, and I bet a ton of developer tools, infrastructure & foundational code, in addition to the 25 open world maps. All from scratch. Now that those things are in place, they could certainly put out 25 maps in a year, or year and a half, if they wanted to. But their priorities where elsewhere. How could you think that essentially adding a whole new world would not help the game?

HiddenNick.7206:

How much does it take to explore a single map in gw2? 3-4 hours? That’s not so much for a MMO game… And AN have to spend a lot of time developing it. So I don’t think that adding new maps to just explore them is going to make the game any better.

Then I think we have to disagree, because I believe it makes all the difference.

GW2 is 16 months old. When GW1 was 18 months old, it had expanded to 3 continents, nearly tripling its original size. This also included two very lengthy story lines, which were much much better than the living story.

So I’m not talking about just 1 new map to explore, I’m talking about 50. It took me 6 years to get as bored with GW1 as I am with GW2 right now. The development time has not been better spent on jumping puzzles, mini-games, and Scarlet.

Because running in a huge zerg over old and tired ground, no matter how much they dress it up, has nothing on the thrill of exploring new land and wondering what’s coming up over the next hill, even if I have to do it solo!

I would much rather have a world as big as GW1 that is sparsely populated, than a densely populated world that retreads the same ground over and over. The latter would become depopulated anyways as people get bored and leave.

The reason Southsun is empty is the same reason Tequatl and the new Aetherblade TA path are abandoned: they’re too hard. I know there have been people claiming the game needs harder content, but they don’t speak for everyone, and I think evidence shows they don’t speak for most.

The problem has never been at the game is too easy, the problem is that it doesn’t scale so that what’s challenging for a Zerg is doable for solo players.

I agree with the original poster, Anet should be concentrating on (many) more permanent zones. If they absolutely have to keep the population density up, start merging servers.

From the release notes:

“Thaumanova Reactor: Embark on a brand-new historical adventure, and travel to the ill-fated power facility moments before it explodes. As the fractal scale increases, more potential outcomes will unlock.”

What does the last sentence mean? At first I thought it meant Scarlet being the cause was only 1 possibility, and that cooler ones would turn up at the higher difficulties. Sort of like the ending of Clue: the Movie, where the culprit varied. But I haven’t heard any reports from the folks doing Fractals 30+, so thought I’d ask!

Whether they sell, it or give it away for free to not split their customer base, the point is we want the game to expand in a significant way, like Factions, instead of re-treading old ground under the banner of a living/changing world.

PvE:

1) New open-world Zones
2) Next Dragon
3) New Dungeons

This is a story that’s begging to be told. A tale of betrayal and folly, and man vs self.

It’s the evening of Oct 14th, and who knows if the Twilight Assault meta-achievement will be around when Blood and Madness launches the next day. I am 9/10 and one point from getting my Slickpack back item. (I would have gotten it over the weekend had it not been for the Keymaker bug.)

I bring up the Looking For Group tool in a last ditch effort to get that last achievement point. I find a group, I luck out. There’s a commander in the party; we’ll call him Ares (not his full name).

Ares seems to know his way around Twilight Assault. Not only do I get the achievement point that I needed, but we’re getting further into the dungeon than I could have hoped. He’s leading us by the nose, and essentially handing us all of the achievements!

There’s one member of the party, let’s call him Quin (also not his full name). Quin doesn’t seem to be following Ares’ instructions very well, and one of the other party members is getting angry with him. Perhaps the person who’s upset feels he is speaking out on Ares’ behalf. But Ares himself is playing it cool, and doesn’t say much about it.

It’s not until the final boss fight that I noticed Ares and Quin have the same guild tag. The fight proves difficult, and after a wipe, someone has nominated Quin to be kicked. I am taken aback by this. I understand my party’s frustration but we’re on the final boss! Do we really want to start in-fighting while in the middle of battle with a rampaging Clockheart?!? I ignore the the kick nomination, but someone else doesn’t…

All of a sudden, we are in Caledon Forest. Apparently, two of my party succeeded in kicking the game host

I am laughing at the sheer stupidity of the thing. I find out, after the other 2 members had left, that the only reason Ares was doing the dungeon in the first place was because Quin (his guildmate) had asked for his help.

I got my achievement point, so I wasn’t upset, but let this be a cautionary tale to any who would kick prematurely ;-)

There’s that. They want to “incentivize” people to continue logging in, but I also think there’s another reason which I tried to start a discussion about here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Living-World-vs-Expanding-World/first#post3003980

From what I’ve observed, they’re afraid to expand the game and would rather remove something every time they add something else. This keeps us all penned up together so we see more people on the set of maps that we have and activities that already exist in the game.

I think New Permanent Zones has been one of the top requested additions to the game, yet it hasn’t happened (aside from Southsun) for this reason. And I think it’s going to be the Achilles heel of GW2 unless they find a better solution then their current one, which is to try and change up old maps/dungeons. People want more options, a literal expansion!

tl;dr summary: expand the game world, merge servers if you need to keep population density high!

When I first heard about the living story, I was intrigued. A world where everything keeps changing sounded exciting, and meant unlimited replayability! Then I learned that change meant content could also be removed. I’ve seen the question asked on these forums numerous times: why would Arena Net spend money to develop content only to remove it from the game after a week, or a month?

The only rationale I could come up with was population density.

I think many game developers are aware of the caveat “don’t split your customer base”, and for good reason. I’ve seen game companies sell PvP maps that no one could play, because not enough people had purchased them. I think this is the reason Anet has suggested it may never sell a traditional expansion for GW2, because it divides their player pool between those who purchased the expansion and those who haven’t.

But it appears that Anet has also interpretted this concept to mean “don’t allow your player base to spread itself thin of its own accord”. I mean playing in a huge group is what makes the game fun, right? …right?

It’s the reason they haven’t added any additional PvP modes, and I presume the reason they

1. added but then removed the Molten Weapon Facility and Aetherblade dungeons,
2. added a new permanent path to Twilight Arbor only to remove one of the original explorable paths,
3. have not released a new permanent zone other than Southsun Cove
4. seem to focus on content that funnels people into certain areas (Scarlett invasions, Queen’s Jubilee)

I believe the fear is that if the game gets bigger, people will spread out and the population density will shrinking, making it

• appear as though not many people are playing GW2, and
• harder to find other people willing to do the same particular content you want to do (because there are now more options).

Apparently, keeping us all corralled to stave off loneliness is more important than giving us more options and the freedom to play how we want. I don’t think this is how everyone feels, otherwise single player RPGs would have died off a long time ago. But GW2 is an MMORPG, so perhaps a balance should be struck?

Someone on these forums (sorry, I didn’t pay attention as to who) once said that no Guild Wars 1 player will be satisfied staying in Tyria. We want to go to Cantha and Elona, since we had that in the first game. I believe there is truth to this. Heck, we haven’t even been to all of Tyria: the Far Shiverpeaks, Maguuma Wastes, Fire Island Chain, Crystal Desert, etc. I, personally, don’t think retreading the same ground, no matter how much it changes, is as interesting as exploring new ground. Centaurs taking Fort Salma or Shaemoor is as much a loss as your server losing control of Stonemist Castle in WvW.

So how do we counteract lower population density if we expand the game?

The new Looking For Group tool helps. If you can’t find a group doing the dungeon you had hoped to do, you can post it on the LFG tool, or at least browse the other listings to see what else might be going on.

But I think there’s a simple solution (at least in concept): start merging servers. If you double the area of the world, halve the number of servers so the average density remains the same. Merge the most populated server with the least populated, the second most populated with the second least populated, etc.

Then to account for when everyone wants to be in the same place (e.g., Lion’s Arch during Dragon Bash), adopt the District system from GW1. Have numbered Districts/Overflows so that people can rejoin the same Overflow they were in if they got disconnected, or want to meet up with friends who aren’t in the same party.

Without expanding the world, however, I fear the population density is going to fall anyways, as players get bored and join a mass exodus!

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I agree. My guild was set to do the F/U path this month. Looks like we were a couple weeks too late and will now never get the chance.

Those who don’t like the path don’t have to do it. Why remove it for people who want to play it? And having a contrary opinion is not whining.

Gee, I wish they had announced long in advance that they were removing one of the original Twilight Arbor paths. I’ve never done this F/U path. My guild was suppose to do it this month, now I guess we never will.

What is up with this company? Expand you world like everyone wants you to instead of taking away content to simulate change. Merge servers if you have to keep the population density high but no one wants to take one foot forward in content just to take one foot back, etc.

Watchknights do not titillate. I agree with you on some female (especially light) armor (feathers, really?)

Moto seems like an extremely interesting character from the short story on the GW website. I wonder what happened to the real “princess”. To bad the lore isn’t in-game.

I’m curious what other people think are the best and worst aspects of the first year of releases for GW2 (up to but not including Queen’s Jubilee). Here is my list

Best

1. Fractals of the Mists – I think this was the most significant update we’ve had to the core game: 9 short dungeons but with great variety. Best of all it was permanent, and fun.

2. Southsun Cove – People complain that Southsun is not a proper zone, because it lacks hearts, skill points, vistas, etc., but it’s the only permanent new zone we’ve received since release. (Labyrinthine Cliffs doesn’t count as it was more of a town/jumping puzzle-ish.)

3. Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon – This was a good one, and the climactic fight with the two simultaneous bosses that ended differently depending on which boss you killed first was solid gold. Too bad it was available for so short a time.

4. Shadows of the Mad King – Seemed like there was something for everyone in this release, from the Mad King’s Clock Tower to Descent into Madness, which was really fun despite being just a boss fight than a real dungeon.

5. Super Adventure Box – I usually hate mini-games, and this one isn’t for everyone, but Super Adventure Box is hefty, has substance, and polish.

Worst

1. Flame & Frost: Prelude – Fixing signs for refugees? Why was this even released independently?

2. Canach “Dungeon” – After the Molten Weapons Facility, I was exciting to see what was in store for the Southsun dungeon. Unfortunately, Canach’s Lair was simply a boss fight in a cave, and a gimmicky one at that. Whenever they take our normal open world skills away, it’s generally a bad sign, because it becomes like a mini-game.

3. Random Number Chests – Too many cool skins (Sclerite, Fused, Zodiac, etc.) locked behind gambling chests.

4. Moa Racing, Crab Toss, Belcher’s Bluff, etc., etc. – A lot of talk about improving the “core” game, yet so many updates focused on mini-games which is everything except the actual game.

5. Grind – Had to kill how many holograms? When the driving force behind an activity is not the enjoyment of the activity, but the reward, it means people are not having a good time even if they’re logging in and playing. Most people will figure out they have better things to do.

I also have to agree. There’s nothing wrong with the Living Story as a vehicle to deliver content, but it needs to be more meaningful content and not just random as the OP mentioned.

There are plenty of pre-existing areas of lore that the living story could have delved into that would have hook and enthralled the player base. Instead of inventing new enemies like charr crossed with dredge, sky pirates and the witch from the Bugs Bunny cartoons (a.k.a Scarlet), we could have been exploring

1. The White Mantle and the Mursaat
2. The Crystal Desert, the Forgotten & Glint’s baby
3. What happened to the 6 missing human gods?
4. Cantha
5. The next Elder Dragon (We don’t need to be fighting it yet, just seeing that the story is moving in that direction would be good enough.)

I have been getting constant lag since the evening of 8/22. Skills will often take 10 sec before they activate (although I can sometimes force them to execute sooner if I Dodge). This does not seem to be a graphics issue, as I still get this delay when I turn my graphics settings all the way down, when I am in a solo instance, or even standing in town crafting. The game was running fine prior to yesterday with all settings set high, but now it’s borderline unplayable.