Guild Wars 2

Sadly, a sorely disappointed 1/10.

I’ve not enjoyed any of the 3 maps I’ve been on (beyond admiring the amount of design work that obviously went in to the construction), and my stomach turns at the amount of event repetition demanded to level my Maguuma Masteries here.

Obviously the past few years have lowered expectations concerning loot drops, but as a GW1 player it still feels hollow to have a new expansion’s drops & endless varieties of containers yield zero of interest (I don’t really consider the Makeshift weapon set to be of interest, considering they’re designed specifically so to look like L1 trash drops).

Terrible disappointment to open the bank wardrobe first minute I got in post-release, to find the only armour sets – for all weights – are ‘shredder’ (GW1 assassin says hi) and ‘rocks with stink waves’; no intention to use them on any of my characters.

Most disappointing of all that the devs have had all this time and never said that post-HoT guilds would be unable to function with fewer than 3 active members; my brother & I have been our own GW guild for 10 years now (w/ every possible hall upgrade in GW1), and so to have that journey come to end so abruptly with no acknowledgement (much less justification) from Anet was a sad find on Friday.

Upshot: we cannot play in the evenings anyway due to our ISP (EE), until we switch over to the new one November 4th. I’ll see if 5 workdays till my next play session lessens the disappointment, and if it doesn’t then rather than start the 50m XP slog I’ll just have to have a frank conversation with my brother about whether he still wants to play this game & when my own jumping-off point will be for it.

I miss GW1 – and its gameplay/design ethos – more than ever… 8 (

Afraid I’ve got to plump for the negative side here.

I’ve taken a month off to play other (non-MMO) games, and jumping back into GW2 with this it’s just /ThrowsHandsUp baffling.

First it’s landscape changes (excited-ooh!) and spaceships (ooh? when did we get those?), then it’s waiting & waiting & waiting some more.
I was out at work 08:30 till 18:00; if I was ever in the habit of waiting on a game, I got out of it again this past month.
When the event does start it’s a barrage of instructions plus a bar and n/5 count plus another n/5 count for chains, that it’s not discussing.
Then there’s a screen full of people and everything’s a slideshow, but I keep pressing 1 so I think I must be hitting/helping?
A team has failed.
Was it me? Am I in a team?
Spam 1 so more and interact with a box and I can suddenly move again, in a party fight against an easy champion – am I supposed to be dodging the puppet-thing somehow?
Is it doing anything for that matter – it’s not on my screen…
Then some more waiting around – A team has failed.
Wha?
Kill/lag-spam-1-at some more grunts – Event failed.
Cut to a cinematic camera on the puppet, then it disappears abruptly and camera is back on character showing everyone defeated – was there supposed to be a cinematic attack there?
Is the spaceship a raygun?
Waypoint and review loot – 5 new stacks of event-specific tokens…
STOP THE RIDE, I WANT TO GET OFF.

I don’t know; perhaps this would make a lick of sense & provide a quantum of enjoyment if I hadn’t put GW2 down for a month – but if my brother wasn’t playing (and big on the co-ordination/event tracking side that I am not), I honestly think I would have uninstalled and not looked back.
I’m not sure how my simple desire for “more GW1 please!” led me to whatever I ‘played’ tonight, but I think I’m just done with GW2 outside of co-op.
Family gaming time trumps all, but honestly I have no words for what this is right now – highlight of my evening: exchanging silly chat with my brother, and I don’t have to log-in for that.
/WrapsUpInNostalgiaBlanketAndWeepsForWhatMightHaveBeen

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION

Skins
I must agree with the poster a few above me that transmuting has had it’s day; when the game moved to 1-1.5 ‘max. level’ appearances, my own good will towards transmutation stones did bottom out.
Assuming PvE skin-lockers aren’t a practical option and other skins cannot be dropped into the loot table as L80 exotics because of the auction house, I suggest:

1. Transmutation Stones function as Transmutation Crystals do now, and become available for karma/laurels/etc.

2. Transmutation Crystals be instead applied to put an item into a single-use ‘choose your stat’ state (soulbinding it in the process).

Visual achievements
As a huge GW1 fan, I’d really like to see the GW1 HoM reincarnated in any form – be it the home instance, the HoM itself, a trophy instance, whatever.
More lightly-functional things like the nodes we already have would be great, but even just static displays and fun stuff like Shing Jea Sherman (in GW1 he was a character who randomly shouted out comments for every achievement you had).

Skills & traits
As a sizeable GW2 fan also, I’m afraid the one thing that makes me fear it’s not going to be an ongoing hobby for me is when I visit the forums and see the skill & trait devs agonizing over +/-1 stack of Might on a trait I wouldn’t give a second look or +/-1 initiative cost on a skill that’s largely ignored.
It is great that the devs care so deeply, but at this rate it feels like there will never be a skill/trait expansion on par with anything from GW1…
I have had a ton of fun with my cleric warrior main (to each his own!), but seriously I designed his build before release and 15 months later the biggest change to it is 1 trait moved from tier II to tier I.
I appreciate that there a sacrifices to pursuing balance in PvP (massive, game-constraining, sacrifices), but I cannot judge if hamstringing skill expansion actually achieves perfect balance any better than throwing more & more skills in and seeing what settles – all I can say is that this model cannot sustain my own interest indefinitely.
What good is new content, if how characters play stays frozen in time?

VERTICAL PROGRESSION

Ascended gear
While I don’t particularly see why ascended gear needed to happen (GW1 roots showing again), I didn’t mind the trinkets – collected a full set myself, then overcome with “meh” and just buy amulets for the magic find infusion.
However; the appeal of weapon and armor completely eludes me…
Every build has 8-10 such items in it, every character has at least 1 build, my account has 8 characters = I’m never going to reach that objective, and it would be a Grenth-awful grind to even contemplate, so why bother spending everything I have taking the first step down that route?

I’m afraid that the appeal on the front page for feedback on “drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game” boggles me also – there is essentially zero drop rate for ascended gear, any more than the National Lottery (in the UK) organizers could ring me up and ask my opinion on the win rate of Lottery jackpots.
You’d have to put a lot of digits after zero for the rate, rounded to the nearest number to not be zero – I could continue at my hour-a-day gaming average for years and never see one such drop.
If one were to somehow drop for me, statistically it’s likely to be absolutely worthless to me anyway since across my whole account I favour just 4 attribute combos (cleric, rabid, berserker, rampager) – an ascended item for any other combination would harm my builds more than it helps.

I do have a few suggestions to follow the grumbling though, and it spans ascended & skins with a dash of gameplay too:

1. Follow the suggestion in this thread up to make ascended gear stat-adjustable like legendaries are – crafted ascended gear only, however.

2. Embrace the name “ascended” with a new method of acquisition that also addresses the skin issue…
Assign a special NPC and place of power (e.g. HoM, Divinity reach priests, reclaimed Orrian location), where players can go to prove their ascension worthiness:
> Pay xx laurels.
> Pay xxx honour.
> Pay xxxx glory-replacement.
> Pay xxxxx karma.
This opens up a window (like the forge) into which 1 L80 item can be dropped.
(Cue divine light effect.)
Out pops the item (soulbound) with ascended stats but the same attribute combination, appearance and upgrades!

Crafting-grind ascended gear retains an edge (in versatility, not power) and it’s unique appearance, but simply ‘ascending’ your characters’ favourite gear to remain competitive is just a matter of keeping on doing whatever you like doing.
Maybe with a few co-operative entry requirements thrown in, to make it feel more epic e.g. a quest chain (or full temple control?) to access karma ascender, control of a specific WvW location to access honour ascender.

Single most favourite release: Shadow of the Mad King
A close contest, but SotMK was the complete package I feel:

> Definite escalation & arc – with a villain, no less.
> Storytelling with a side of lore.
> New mini-map.
> New mini-games.
> New JP (that I was less good at but my brother loved).
> Finale boss fight that was both PUG and duo-able-with-effort.
+ Items rare but with a few distribution channels.
+ Interesting quality-of-life improvements (e.g. open world achievements).

Single least favourite release: Tequatl Rising
Thankfully not as many contenders for this distinction – reasons much like a few posts back:

> No sense of escalation or story.
> No sense of peril or individual significance.
> Negligible non-cash-shop loot – ultra kablillion-to-one drops for farming guilds.
> Over-abundance of cash shop items (minus points for boombox & overpriced dye).
> Perm. content, but designed to offer minimal reward for most participation and become untenable as soon as interest shifts.

But most importantly it created that unpleasant “so this is what I do for fun, huh?” feeling right about 45 minutes into waiting in an instance, unwilling to leave for a probable no-hoper assignment, standing on one spot, while people chatted endlessly about standing on one spot & bidding that everyone stack…

That’s the kind of World I can see myself Living without.
(Though seriously; I won’t do that again even if Scarlet-empowered Claw of Jormag drops the key to a new map 0.00000000001% of the time.)

[Continued from above]
As an alternative to expansion

I think that the logistics of permanent content vs temporary content is over my head, but if I can make one suggestion it would be this; draw up a list of all the non-story content that an expansion would have (skills, weapons, armor sets, upgrades, etc.), divide it into 26 chunks, and start putting one chunk into each LS update.

The drawback to the small & steady pace of updates we are enjoying is that it never feels like their is going to be a ‘big bang’ update where you will pull back the curtain and say “5 new utility skills for every profession!”, " new playable race!" etc. – and I think this is a key reason the LS can feel quite ephemeral.

Yes there will be complaints if not all professions gain equally from each update, but the current peripheral-armour piece centric system of progression wears thin with time.
The LS is of course partially about story (shocker!) but performing the role of keeping the world/game alive it needs to also be concerned with all the mechanical growth people expect of an MMO too.

E.g. Sky Pirates of Tyria could have bought technological advances to add 1 utility of each type for the engineer and unlocked rifle for the thief, Teqatl Rising could have given the necromancer an elite whirlpool-well and added new leadership-themed shouts for warrior & guardian.

If there could be a middle-ground between big bang and standing still, I think that would be the healthiest way forward.
I do love a constant stream of free content, but a year on from release were I offered what we’ve had vs a purchased content package on par with a GW1 expansion… it would not be a hard choice.

Thanks for this opportunity.

Pacing of the living story

I’m a big fan of fortnightly updates (particularly when working weeks are less fun), but I do think individual stories may work better spread across 4, 6, 8, X weeks.
Not lowering the content density to stretch it out if it can be avoided, just following individual stories for further.

For instance Blood and Madness had the Thorn family history overlapping with Tassi opening the box overlapping with The Bloody Prince feuding with Thorn…
I’m sure that I am not alone in seeing The Bloody Prince in the labyrinth before playing the 1st Tassi instance that released him; instead one whole LS update could have been dedicated to lore & hunting for the tomb, another for the confrontation between Thorns.

Storytelling

I do like GW2 storytelling (why else would I be here!), but it has suffered a little on two fronts recently:

1. The in-game storytelling has been highly variable, with quite a few bare-bones efforts e.g. a perfunctory “go here” letter + a familiar NPC with a couple of chat lines at best.
There are still some great efforts – such as the jubilee party w/ Faren scene – but some LS updates do skimp on the story.

2. Scarlet has had her day, for now – sorry!
I do think she had/has potential as a steampunk villain (especially if we ever get to portal to the steamworld!), but her mastery of everything and dominion over all villain factions was OTT and she needs to be benched for a while.

It’s not just that she is a ‘marmite’ character (though that is a risky quality for the leading villain of LS), but her omnipotence is sucking the intrigue out of the LS now e.g. there’s a big honking neon sign overhead proclaiming that she is behind Teqatl and the Tower of Nightmare, for no discernable reason beyond her Pokemon-like ambition.
Contrary to the air of mystery that the devs do try to foster (with an admirably united front), the fact that these aren’t simply attributed to Scarlet up front just makes me fear that ‘the big reveal’ down the line means more & more Scarlet LS is ahead of as well as behind us.

P.S. It’s too late for the krait, but please abandon plans for an inevitable ‘Scarlet unites the centaurs and Svanir’ LS.

As for recommendations then:

1. Establish a baseline storytelling commitment for LS.

2. As I’m sure you’re tired of hearing; some way to get the stories off the website and into the game.

3. A villain arc for a villain/faction who a] isn’t Scarlet b] has a clear motive (ideally one that they can or will achieve) and c] will die/disband at the end of it.
Sadly the personal story makes a lot of stories/change off limit, but the current LS content is just perfect for giving (non-omnipotent) LS villains a proper send-off.

4. Integration for player dialogue options, with or without personality choices.
Not asking for choose-your-own-adventure because of the inherent obstacles to that, just a few ways to make instances – or ideally plot – play out differently.

E.g. In the 2nd Bloody Prince instance, rather than simply choosing “I’m ready” and have Tassi & The Bloody Prince banter, how about choosing a personality option and having the player character be an active participant.
Choose the charm option and the player character trades (scripted) puns with The Bloody Prince, which enrages him enough to make him vulnerable while launching wild attacks.
Choose the dignity option and the player character tries to make him feel guilt, which ends the battle early after the 2nd door summon.
Choose ferocity and it sparks his daddy-issues, causing him to summon only one door and stay in the fight personally.

I do think that will make such encounters more memorable.
[Continued…]

Great news for a great update.

My top pick for an account upgrade: Home District Teleport Device – that quartz won’t mine itself!

Very proud of my resolve, as these were the first chests which I did not buy any of from the store.

I did end up with 1 ticket though from a dropped crate, after about 20 or so – farmed quite a lot initially, marine life under the lovely 200% Magic Find buff.

Sadly I recently stopped levelling my necro alt though, and while I was excited to get an elusive ticket the weapons looked absolutely out of place on my warrior & ranger – ended up picking the staff skin (thought that & scepter looked best) to bank just-in-case.

I’ve tried to focus my 2 ideas focused on 3 rather-grounded principles – nothing too grandiose I’m afraid, but hopefully not already posted by anyone!

1. Keep it practical.
2. Keep it simple enough to fit in a small tooltip, like existing conditions.
3. Make it a “dark” DoT like the devs requested, but also applicable to other professions.

Wracked

Deals damage every second. Bleeding and burning take effect twice as fast. Stacks in duration.

This accelerates bleeding and burning on the target, so they both tick 100% quicker but also expire 100% quicker – the aims being to make condition damage more immediately impactful, and to make condition removal more pressing.
When wracked expires/is removed, those conditions just continue as normal from whatever fraction of a second they were on at the time.

The damage per second only on par with a bleed, because this condition needs to have a decent duration to make an impact.

For an icon, thinking a generic jagged ‘explosion’ as was popular with GW1 mesmer skills e.g. Aneurysm.

Necromancer simply inflicts as a curse, but applications on other profs would be:
> Mesmer as a mental effect.
> Thief/engineer as a chemical effect.
> Ele/guardian/ranger/warrior (maybe) as an exclamation mark on a burning attack – conceptually serious burns rather than burning.

Marked

Deals damage every second. Nearby foes gain might every second. Stacks in duration.

The aim of this one is to provide a fresh group dynamic, specifically challenging the current many vs 1 group dynamic of conditions under-performing and almost everyone standing well back (don’t have to lure people into melee – just skirmishing close enough to gain).
Hopefully might would be sufficiently tempting for more finely-tuned 1 v 1 encounters too, though I’m no expert on that…

The damage per second only on par with a bleed, because this condition also needs to have a decent duration to make an impact.
Perhaps 1 stack of might with a 5s duration per tick, so it would take a decent clump of foes to Epidemic up to the might cap.

The icon would of course be an archer’s target of concentric circles.

Necromancer simply inflicts as a curse/hex/doom, but applications on other profs would be:
> Ranger/warrior/guardian (maybe) as a tactical maneuver.
> Thief as a more literal marking of target with an attack.
> Mesmer also utilizing as a hex, or alternatively a form of inspiration.

I rather suspect these threads don’t have any effect, but I cannot pass up any opportunity to support calls for solo versions of content.

Fully support designing of 5+ person content for the teaming-inclined, but cannot support that group-only content has 8 of the 11 end-game item sets & is about to get a 9th.

If the team-play experience is indeed it’s own reward, start opening the loot up to other models!

P.S. Much appreciated the solo living story instances we did get, even though they didn’t stretch all the way to the finale. New areas of maps – you’re pushing the boat out, living story team!

I assume someone would have posted somewhere if a discovery had been made, but (optimistically) does anyone know of a solution or a workaround for this?

My best friend has whatever-this-thing-is extremely bad on his main, and it’s ruining the game for him.
Understandable since it’s barely a step above logging in to find his main erased – that would be more upsetting of course, but at least it would be over where-as with this fault he’s stuck in a constant cycle of hoping & being disappointed every single day.

Given past experience, it’s safe to predict that Tuesday’s patch will concentrate most the game’s population in one location (the new dungeon), and probably make any performance issues 10 times worse (hopefully not for the whole month!).
Are there any fresh ideas for tackling this before that happens?
If he just gives up GW2 then I’ll certainly be an unhappy camper too.

We’ve already tried the standard repair, diagnostic thing, deleting local.dat etc.
As with other posters, performance was fine a few weeks ago and internet/everything else works fine even while GW2 is frozen.

He can play alts and SAB (for 3 more days), but like me his alts are L30 at most – 20 of which were crafting – so he’s not going to buy into me suggesting we slog through 50 lootless levels with characters we’re not invested in, hoping the same thing doesn’t just happen again afterwards…

We do have to keep in mind also that the minis currently in-game haven’t necessarily replaced the birthday minis of GW1 – we’re still many months away from finding that out!

It could well be that there will be a full birthday set each year to receive for free & trade for off others, and that there’s simply additional store bought sets also – heck; minis from the current set may even be distributed in birthday presents next year!

Definitely give Frostgorge Sound a try – this Shiverpeak map is one of only two L80 zones outside of Orr (the other being The Lost Shores, which I cannot recommend in any way currently).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frostgorge_Sound

The enemies are much tamer than Orr, can be fought at your own pace, and are a good source of many rare materials.
You can get there from the first norn zone (Wayfarer Foothills), and will want to head up to the North-East corner to find the L80 mobs.

It is possible to complete all your dailies there (unlike Orr):

> You’ll find a good concentration of events and enemy types in the central North region – kodan to be rescued in the water near constantly, a quaggan village just north of it under constant attack also, and just south of those there are 2 common events to defeat lone veterans.
> For kill variety, be sure to take out moa, moose, dolyak, birds, salmon & rabbit as you go (they’d do the same to you if they only could!).

N.B. Ancient Sapling = Orrian Sapling (T6 wood) on this map.

I’m afraid that Anet never reveal the odds of prizes in their lottery items, but I can tell you that from my own experience (I’ve bought 3 bundles of 10 boxes) and what people have been saying on the forums:

> With a bundle of 10 boxes you stand a decent chance of getting 1 of the basic minis.
> The odds of getting Foostivoo are very very slim.

9 Times out of 10 boxes will only get you tonics or mortars (sadly those both have no special use or value) – as well as some ugly wool items – so they are not good value unless you are happy to pay 800 gems for a chance of a random uncommon mini.

However Mystery Boxes can drop off enemies & exploding-present-encounters around the world – it’s just extremely rare – so anything you do in PvE will give you an incredibly small chance of getting a miniature for free.

We don’t know what Toypocalypse (the final event of Wintersday – due tomorrow) will offer in the way of rewards, so possibly it will be a better source of boxes; I wouldn’t spend gems till we know more about that.

N.B. It’s not possible to trade any of the Wintersday minis.

Hmm; I’ve been tempted by the AC mace, I’m just not into socializing enough to earn them – maybe as a long-term goal though, or pinning hopes on <5 person dungoen change in Feb.

I have been put off by the size of the Glyphic Maul, but as you says there so cheap I’d be silly not to buy a pair and actually give them a go in action!
If I do like them, that’ll be an excuse to makeover my armor too from knightly to something more sci-fi…

Thank you both.

I love mace/mace fighting on my warrior main, but so far I’ve only found one mace that actually looks interesting – the Charr T3 spinning cog, that I’ve been using for months until the recent patch retconned the heart reward ones.

Instead of rushing out & replacing them, I’ve been looking for something fresh – it’s not going well…

Now I know that mace is the lowest of the non-aquatic weapons in terms of interest & support – zero event skins, zero Mystic Forge recipes, HoM skin is a rusty lump, Energizer precursor is just a common Peacemaker etc. – but on the plus side this makes the full arsenal visible in the PvP locker and fairly accessible.

What I can’t see there is any animations or visual effects (e.g. weapon trails); can anyone please provide a lowdown on such details (outside of Charr culturals of course), so I don’t have to start buying them all optimistically?

How easy/hard do you find it to get the new minis? (Mystery Box & Giant Wintersday Gift droprate)
PvE: Too Hard currently, since between myself and my brother we’ve never drawn a mini nor had a box drop – still plenty of time left though…
Purchase: Too Hard – I impulsively bought 2 sets of 10 and then 1 more after, and my results were exactly the same as a poster above; snowman, airship, nothing.
That the rest of the contents of course turned out to be of zero value (4 days in I’ve already more wool garments than I need) has only driven home to me that I was a sucker to ever chase RNG minis given the money spent vs Halloween’s set.

Are you satisfied with the given options to get the minipets?
No, not for these ones – see aforementioned sap realization.
The boxes themselves are of dismayingly low standard, given the tonics have no redeeming features (e.g. forging into more boxes or special tonics) and the gifts are two-a-penny in game.
I do like that any 3 of the minis can be exchanged for the top-rarity (and top desirability) quaggan though, and of course the generous centrepiece build-a-bear minis.

Have you bought/Will you buy any Mystery Boxes from the gemstore this Wintersday?
Yes I did – 3 bundles in all – won’t be doing so again.

Would you have bought the minipets from the gemstore if you were able to buy them? (No random drop from chest – You simply buy the minipet you want.)
Heck yes!
Though probably only as a a trio plus another trio for reforging (Halloween style), as the snowman is adorable but the other 2 I’d only want to store away for completeness.
The quaggan I would have paid 350 gems for, the snowman maybe that much, the others would have to be 100 or less to even appeal to my completionist instinct.

Not terribly original contributions, but my own input would be…

Solo-duo scaling or mode
GW1 was my favorite game ever (certainly outnumbered the rest combined in hours played!), and I do greatly miss being able to play independently – I love the open ‘living world’ of GW2, but there’s essentially zero solo PvE end-game currently and that is a real shame.
Money and rare materials are the only solo pursuits after earning the exploration/jumping achievements, which just doesn’t have the staying-power that GW1 offered.

The 5 player gating of end-game is also compounded by the absence of rare cosmetic skin drops and the restriction to 1 end-game (L80 exotic) crafted skin set, 1 karma skin set and 1 loot skin set; between the 8 dungeon sets (73% of end-game gear!) and the mystic forge grindathons, there’s a huge gulf between easily obtained and never-going-to-obtain.

To people not interested in party gaming, GW2 PvE does lack the piñata factor at the moment – open world foes aren’t desirable for anything but money and craft items that are essentially just money-made or money-saved (depending on if you want to amass them); opening dungeoneering for those who won’t/can’t form parties would greatly expand solo content without requiring any new assets.

Party finder
I’m not on the edge of my seat for this personally – though I certainly would use it (for my remaining story modes & AC explorable) – but I don’t see how dungeon content has a long-term future without it; the barriers to group forming are already formidable, and will only become more so with further new content and the inevitable introduction of other hubs.

Super-mob swarms
There’s nothing fun about some of the lethal mob swarms currently in the game, thinking especially of Caudecus’s Manor (I haven’t seen many explorable modes!) – they don’t even allow for careful pulling or tanking, only avoidance tactics or waypoint-zerging.
Also; surely can something be done about the aesthetic design – player race enemies especially – because opening a door and having 20 cloned bandit ladies pour out isn’t atmospheric and does give the impression the game is glitched…

The Fractals are much better than the regular dungeons in this regard, in my opinion.

Health measured in millions
Just to echo many other contributors: I don’t find this fun.
Granted none of the dungeon bosses has ever given me 7 days of burnout like the Karka event (presumably graduates of the more exclusive Billions O’Health School of Monsters), but ultimate bosses can still drift over the tolerance threshold even on the first encounter,

I am playing rather less, for a fairly simple reason – there’s very little end-game content for solo & duo players.

The open world itself is very impressive and it was a lot of fun to play through, but there’s only Frostgorge Sound and Orr (I’m counting those zones as 1 big homogeneous map) to play in at L80 with any eye to productivity – and there’s no loot lottery to speak of, since the 3 solo end-game sets (1 craft, 1 karma, 1 loot) are quite readily available then everything else is restricted to 5 person content or insane Mystic Forge recipe grinds.

As someone who doesn’t enjoy teaming beyond the minimum (seeing every story mode & fractal map) and certainly wouldn’t make it the focus of my gaming, there’s really nothing to aim for between events beyond amassing materials & currencies in the hopes of future content – that isn’t very compelling day after day.

It’s also in the back of my mind that karma, ectoplasm & orichalcum won’t feature for any end-game rewards in the future anyway – because they are so readily available people would simply buy them the minute the rewards went live – so I don’t really think there’s any great point to end-game solo play besides watching my bank balance rise…
(money being the only constant resource)

If there’s ever Celestial attribute loot, level 85 gear or what-not I expect there’ll simply be a corresponding new token/drop/node (e.g. admantium ore) to start chasing anew – in which case there’s not really any difference between ‘building up’ my character/account now and simply dropping the game to pick it up again when there’s new content.

1. The first hour of headstart. : )
4. Yes – 1 (next highest only L19!).
5. Cursed Shore & Frostgorge Sound – Malchor’s Leap 3rd by default, I suppose.
6. [MF = Mystic Forge?] I use it combine 4 greens (for ecto salvage rares), and for special events.
[MF = Magic Find?] Just chef consumables, with no great enthusiasm – 30% more on 0.000001% only makes 0.0000013%! : )
7. I believe I have 2 such exotics – didn’t actually notice when I got them (both default skin and names), so assume must have been drops from hectic events.
8. No.
9. I would guess 3 looted on an epic play day.
10. Zero rares looted, but if play that hour in a L80 zone and don’t get a forged rare either then I would feel letdown. I don’t expect to ever get exotics I don’t craft or purchase.
11. I have 1 of each T6 lodestone I think, mainly from forged Halloween chests.
12. Yes; all my main’s gear is crafted. I have 3 L400 craft skills on my account, and rely on my brother for 2.
13. Only when I’ve 250 of them and don’t bothered to refine them, which is just the basic T2/3/4 nodes + T5 bones & dust.
14. In terms of items & income; no – my main is fully equipped with exotics but I (/my brother) crafted every single item, I crafted every superior sigil, I purchased 99% of the T6 rare materials required to do so, I purchased every superior rune, and I purchased or crafted every item skin I transmogrified on to them. Never had a single exotic drop I could use (stats, skin or upgrade), nor been able to adequately gather any exotic-grade crafting materials other than nodes & ecto.
Of course it’s not all about loot!
15. SELF-SUFFICIENCY
> Crafting & character-speccing-via-gear simply would not be possible in this game if the auction house weren’t there, which is a shame (and a problem if it ever goes dark again!).
> There’s nothing for solo/duo players to aim or even hope for after they have crafted-via-auction-house (or karma’d) their gear, because there is exactly 1 end-game craft skin set, 1 end-game loot skin set and 1 end-game karma skin set – the other 80% of end-game gear sets are only available to 5 man groups, while the dozens (or more) of unique weapon skins are reserved in the Mystic Forge for the 1% of richest/most-farming players.

“To put it in terms of what you think Anet should change: should this massively multiplayer game be turned into a solo game as happened with GW1”

This. ^

I do try to be super-friendly when I’m in a group, but I don’t enjoy grouping (particularly the act of actually building a group) and while I will group enough to play through content (e.g. completing all the explorable modes & fractals ones) I won’t do so sufficiently to farm/grind rewards from them.

GW1 was my favorite game ever, and I would have been happy as a clam if GW2 were solo-able instances and open world map – sadly of course it’s solo-able open world map and group-only instances.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except that the itemization has turned out to be rather disappointing with – transmuting aside – end-game rewards being hugely slanted towards group content (8 dungeon sets vs 1 karma & 1 craft & 1 loot) + the ludicrous demands of the Mystic Forge gating pretty much every other cosmetic reward.

I really really don’t think it’s on the cards, but if the announced dungeon overhaul were to be making them scale as low as solo player or introducing NPC instance party members I would be ecstatic!

Personally, I wouldn’t care one jot if Ascended rarity, ‘celestial’ attribute items and such were reserved only for group content rewards – just so long as the content itself & a proper share of the visual bounty were obtainable solo.

Compared to GW1, I’m very much in the like-it-not-love-it camp at the moment – optimistic though; if there’s one thing MMO fandom has taught us, it’s that games grow more solo-friendly as they mature..

1)graphics (1-bad…10-amazing) – ¹⁰
2)sound(1-bad…10-amazing) – ²
3)story concept/originality (1-boring…10-captivating) – ⁶
4)loot/reward (1-lost all my money…10-gained amazing items) – ¹⁰
5)stability (1-extremly buggy…10-no bugs) – ³
6)network connection/speed (1-laggy,disconnections, 10 – perfect connection) – ²
7)mini events length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – ⁶
8)overall event length (1-to long/short…10-just right) – ⁷
9)overall Satisfaction (1-worst experience ever,10-best experience ever) – ⁷

1) Love the island!
2) THAT asura, sylvari shark event guy in SE of island – terrible annoyances.
3) I expect it was good, but missed every LA event due to lag/crashes…
5) Did crash each day, lost quest progress once.
6) Unplayable LA events, had to quit & retry finale, “move to” erratic.
7) The finale length <> reward ratio was justified, but still beyond my own endurance.
8) Felt too short BUT the island wouldn’t really hold up for a longer campaign.
9) Super finale loot & new attribute sets were ace, but – besides not wanting to see a karka any time soon – finale has just burned me out for a while… glad Lego LotR out this week!

I don’t think I’ll be adding anything that’s not been said already, but shall contribute my feedback anyway:

- Book quests: Fun, lore packed and unique – thumbs up! My only grumble would be that there were plenty of more universal attribute combinations for the big reward than Condition Damage + Precision (zero use to my Cleric-geared main for instance). [A]

- Open world doors, nodes, hidden scan spots etc: I thought these were all great additions, that really elevated the event. Maybe different node icons for festive ones though… [A+]

- Labyrinth and mini-games: A bit of a mixed bag – lots of fun to be had, but some dreadfully unintuitive gameplay. Thinking particularly of the hide & seek game, though the absence of any instructions to throw pumpkins at mausoleums was a biggie. After a fair few games, I’ve still not any idea what fun there is in being a hide & seek courtier – felt very slow and random, particularly if you get converted late and there’s literally 1-2 villagers to look for.
Aside from the Clocktower’s initial exotic prize, I do think they were rather let-down by the absence of prizes though; labyrinth had a chest once per day but the foes themselves were essentially lootless besides a more generous festive drop rate, while the minigames had no loot at all (could make more ToT bags than even the winners got in the same time farming nodes & foes). It just made it hard to feel like it was time well spent, especially when the gathering requirements of the festive items was so immense. [B-]

- Mad King Dungeon: Definite highlight for me – I especially appreciated how it was flexible enough to be done solo at a greater time investment, or fast and frantic with a team. The chest of wondrous prizes was also welcome, though I do accept the only reason it wasn’t nerfed was that the dungeon had such a short lifespan – no way would it have been allowable for even a whole week.
Only criticism would be that again the festive foes were basically lootless themselves, so victories could feel a little hollow knowing that the loot could have been surpassed many times over just playing general PvE – was rather an all-or-nothing lottery. [A]

- Loot: Aside from the book and the fun ability to make festive items as chef & artificer, I’m afraid I did find the itemization extremely disappointing.
I should have known better than to try the Black Lion chests after swearing off them spending too much chasing permanent service contracts, but I still gave into the temptation – the drop rate was a massive disappointment, and I intend to (hopefully) steer clear for real in the future. Only 3 of the skins would I have been tempted to spend any gems on directly, and only the spectacular greatsaw could possibly command a price higher than what 5 keys cost – yet together they are unhappily alluring.
I’m not sure if pitching the items at cash store ‘whales’ was a good strategy – though maybe the internal metrics show it was – but I’d personally rather see future items as affordable souvenirs to tempt everyone to the store. If the BLC was the distribution method again though, I’d suggest tempering it by upgrading the Mystic Forged chests (a very clever idea btw) to take 15 tonics, 5 boosters & a whole stack of candy – but guaranteeing a festive skin; 60% of the time it’d have just been an armor-class specific shoulder pad anyway, but it would at least leave customers feeling like they got something exclusive. [E]

- Loot continued: The crafted skins were a misfire in my estimation also, I’m afraid – more visuals solely for the tiny legendary-pursuing super rich playerbase. I don’t think it would even have been logistically possible for anyone not already awash in wealth to construct any of the weapons in October.
This is consistent with the issue that itemization is very weak outside of extreme Mystic Forge recipes, but people tend to expect holiday events to be inclusive. I’d suggest the same solution as for the general issue of itemization; accessible skins in general circulation, special variants locked behind exhaustive Mystic Forge recipes (e.g. color variants, particle effects, glow in the dark).
The books are very nice, but realistically they were all 90%+ of players could obtain in this event; I intently focused on candy/craft drops, but even crafting so much as a set of runes out of them is gated behind tremendous lodestone cost… [D]

A big thank you to Anet for all the art & effort that went in to this event – and for responding so agilely to bugs and criticism that arose – though for myself the event never fully recovered after the initial disappointment of just what it would take to actually obtain any of the signature items.
My hope for future events would simply be greater accessibility, and for a bit more consistency in the pitch (not fun activities with near-zero loot efficiency competing for scarce time against loot targets demanding 110% hyper-efficiency).

I can confirm that Rune of the Soldier in aqua breather also does enable the 6th effect underwater (maybe helmet is disabled?) – thanks, Cogbyrn!

Sadly, I can also confirm that aqua breathers – or at least the 78(?) armor one I am using – currently are not salvageable, so make sure you put it on a good one one!

Part curiosity/part paranoia; has anyone seen or heard of names for the permanent versions?

I’m especially curious if:

1] Their summons have different appearances?

2] The merchant & trader are still usable by everyone, or just the owner – it would seem likely to make someone very popular in their guild if they are both permanent & public!

Being a slowcoach/explorer, I’ve only just started on the Risen maps.

Though I’ve been avoiding spoilers, I was already forewarned that the Risen are relentlessly joyless to fight (that forum theme is 100% correct! ) – however I’ve also avoided spoiling exactly where all the lovely named exotic sets came from…

I was expecting/hoping the specially rare stuff would just drop off Risen to give the hordes some appeal, but I’ve spend the whole evening on the 1st warfront map (70-75) and the Risen have only dropped stuff that is one tier below vendor trash (and that’s being generous) – when they drop anything at all!

If anyone can avoid giving too much away about the next areas, is it possible for Risen to drop anything of any value (even crafting regents e.g. bone & blood) or are they strictly there to make it challenging to get to the enemies/events/whatever that can drop the exotic goodies?

I don’t know if I should make any effort to fight them between events, or just give them a miss whenever possible.

P.S. Is there any way to get daily kill variety in Orrian territory, or is best just to map where-ever is cheapest then back in again? I think I’d still come out ahead financially, or at least get a Mystic Coin and chance of bonus store item.

Robwinter.2458:

I’m having the same problem and the Lifetime Survivor is stuck at 0.

I just assumed this was the case for everyone, as my track has always been at 0!
If it does vary from player to player, hopefully someone will figure out a solution.

The Grenade Kit is throwing out 2 grenades for me – both on land and underwater – even though I’m only level 11 and in PvE.
It’s not a case of Grenadier still being ‘on’, as I’ve never taken this character to The Mists or WvW – a completely fresh new character.

Also; should the Grenade Kit have a tool belt skill underwater?
None is showing up.

UPDATE
2 Grenades is the norm now?! Gracious!
Sorry then, Minilys – not a bug, just a very happy surprise for me.