Guild Wars 2

I have never played the first Guild Wars, but I know a lot of people that have strong feelings about it’s lore. So my question is, what made you guys decide to try something new instead of following GW1’s course of events? How did you come up with two centuries of difference, the shift from a human-centric narrative, etc?

Also, thanks for reading and answering these questions! It’s awesome to have this kind of interaction with you

I have just spent A LOT of Karma consumables (about 3 millions worth) as soon as I realized and accepted that my karma items were nerfed. Now I read this and it makes me even more sorrowful for that.

I can understand if not, but can we expect something, ANYTHING to help mitigate this feeling? Or it’s just a “we screwed up and we’re making sure it won’t happen again”?

:(

I don’t believe adding 2 seconds to Unrelenting Assault’s cooldown is the solution; I’d suggest making its execution faster so the built-in evade is more tactical and a single dodge can avoid its damage entirely. Reducing its range to 900 or even 600 could make it more grounded as well, as a 1200 range attack with 12s cooldown feels really strong.

I can totally see why you’ve changed Mallyx, but I can’t help but feel we lost a bit of flavor in the process… This Legend had a very unique gameplay that felt pretty interesting when fully grasped, and it’s much more bland now.

The other changes overall are very welcome, although I was really expecting Hammer #2 to be nerfed. It’s kitten OP against crowds.

Hey Mike, is this change live yet?

I just tested this with a 240ms ping using Disabling Shot (Thief’s shortbow #3 skill) about 50 times and while the skill activation seems more responsive, I rubberbanded exactly to half the distance travelled 100% of the time. I belive this is a great skill to measure this fix as it’s basically the reason I’ve stopped playing my thief.

I’m currently looking for other skills to test, but so far I haven’t seen a significant difference in my case. Will also test with Zephyrite Crystals and its skills later, as those are also a completely traumatizing experience.

I absolutely love this initiative! I already think some devs are very participative in game, but letting you guys in direct contact with multiple guilds with different views of the game in an official way is awesome. I’m sure you will have a blast and all the fun will turn into some very productive feedback. Kudos for the studio for doing this!

PS: Sorry for the wonky english, I’m from Brazil and never did any english classes. All my knowledge came from gaming

Hi fellow dungeon crawlers!

I’ve just done every single path and got my title. Since now I know almost everything there is to know about dungeons, I would like to give some feedback about my journey and hear what you all think about it. I am sure most of these words have already been said in this forum, but if then it will at least serve to reinforce our points.

First of all, I love the scenario of every single dungeon. It’s nice to come back to a place and discover all its mysteries, helping people according to their plans and such. I definitely think it’s the right way to lead the whole system, and it’s way better than just repeating the same content with a higher difficulty.

That said, after our path is chosen there is very little dynamism in the system, and for me this is the biggest downside of it. We choose a path and know exactly wich foes we will face, where they will be, and how they will try to stop us, and it just need to end. In my opinion, Story Mode is where a cohesive, guided narrative should be – while exploring, things must be wild. How can it be achieved? Some ideas:

1) Don’t let us know what we will face

This is what explore means, period. We can’t explore something if we already know everything about it, so don’t let us. Make random mobs attack us at random times along the way – that troll in Ascalon Catacombs is awesome, and there definitely should be more things like it along the way. Don’t just put a pull patrolling the corridor in every situation, but let randomly generated groups trully ambush us.. You know, that’s totally what gravelings, spiders and brigand would do.

Also, don’t specify wich bosses we will find in each path. We can have epic moments, but they can come in a variety of manners – that giant Moria-like hall in Ascalon Catacombs is awesome to house a big boss fight, but also appropriated for a massive graveling burrow spawn with an epic escape to that giant door at the end, you know? Like “I feel something bad is about to happen, guys. But I don’t have any clue what is it”. In a related note, Alpha could also become some sort of Nemesis, attacking us along the way in random places and making us flee or weaken him until the very right moment to finish him off..

2) Give us more options along the way.

I love how we can “mix” paths in Twilight Arbor, and I think we should do it not just more often but better. You should totally let us decide how we will approach some obstacles on the go! There is a big foe in our way, are we going to face it or walk around it in the shadows? Are we activating cannons and traps or use brute force to deal with that horde of minions? Are we going to steal the key to that door, or blast it using powder kegs? Our party could split up in some moments, maybe?

Also, these decisions should matter. That big foe may come back and get us in a harder situation, and that blast from the door could draw attention of the bad kitten janitor. Some NPC or even temporary player sacrifices along the way would also be awesome and give us something to care about. Give us some more Bills and Tybalts!

3) Let us use that geography

Some dungeons are so big and good looking that I wish we could explore them at once, so let us do that instead of finishing a path and starting other from scratch. Don’t make predefined paths, but rather let us chose wich way to go at that intersection. We are exploring, after all.

More importantly, like a truly exploration, reward those who go further. Make we feel rewarded to reach that room in the middle of the dungeon and come back home with nice treasure, but let us go further to confront even more dangerous situations in the promise of better spoils. Feel free to increase content difficulty the more we stick our noses into what we shouldn’t; Make us wake up the Balrog while we search for that Orichalcum..

.. and let us find it, literally. Why don’t you put some (rich?) crafting nodes inside dungeons? What about letting us find salvageable items in the dirty ground and loot corpses while we explore these places? What about meaning POIs, and even Vistas? Give a meaning to all those empty corners. It would blend wonderfuly with the whole “don’t let us know what we will face” thing.

Last words

You have proven more than capable of doing something like that before. Some Personal Story moments are really touching, and the Dynamic Event system is so awesome and powerful, being able to interact with players on the go. But more important than anything, you have talented people who can make amazing content possible. Thank you so much for what you have given us so far.. But also give us MOAR!

It started a couple of days ago. At totally random times, in various places (first time in Snowball Mayhem, but now just happened in Lion’s Arch 2 times in a row) my screen turn black and the only visible thing is the mouse cursor. The background music continues, but no skill activation nor anything else.

I can normally ALT+F4 and restart the game, so it’s a different, new problem other than the black screen hardware failure people are encountering.. But it’s still annoying since I’ve lost matches and other activities because of this.

Somebody else have seen it already? I’m using a Dell Vostro 3700 with 310.33 Nvidia Drivers, but it doesn’t seem to be hardware related and just started 2 days ago.

EDIT 1: Just happened in Queensdale, all of sudden. While in the black screen I can still hit F11 and change my settings, but the game will remain in the black screen.

This post isn’t a rant about the new Ascended gear, but a simply sugestion for the whole gear system in general. English isn’t my main language so forgive me if it gets poor sometimes.

When I first learned about gears in Guild Wars 2, I was excited because I knew that I would get to 80 looking for Masterwork pieces, and after reached the level cap, there would be a whole new world of gears to acquire. I could explore through the world and find rare gear, and then survive through a lot of dangers and challenges and someday get an exotic gear.

The problem is, the romance is over. Masterwork pieces (Masterwork!) are just vendored, pretty much like garbage. I would salvage tons of fine weapons – because that weren’t fine at all – and won’t even speak about basic items. Then the problem just got worse: I found that rare items had nothing rare about it, and everyone in Lion’s Arch were using exotic gear they bought for about 2 gold pieces from a merchant who had piles of it. The only truly rare gear, the Legendaries, the ones we could brag about having and that could breath away those who run past us in Lion’s Arch and give us hope about killing the dragon’s most powerful minions – they were just an elitist item, something that money can buy and lucky can bring. They were not related to our achievements and conquered challenges.

And then, after all the mess, a new item type is introducted. Instead of trying to relieve the current gear system, it’s creating a whole new class of items, wich will replace our gear and make it even more trivial. Nobody will touch rare items and exotics will be people’s underwear or pajamas.

So, why? I’m not just worried about the trend of keeping us replacing our gear periodically, wich is everybody’s concern at the moment, but mostly what it will happen to the current items and market. People already don’t give a kitten about items that SHOULD be rare, and what is an exotic? What is the excuse of creating a new, parallel item rarity, instead of boosting the existing ones and make them more appealing through one type and the other?

And then here comes my suggestion. I know it would not be easy to implement but would love to see that you guys at least “get the idea” around it for future content.

1. First of all, rare items should be truly rare and, hence, desirable. They should be attainable like cultural gear, but never trivial (not talking about how you get it, just how much it’s desirable). And above all, gear people would like to use. Even if outleveled, it would not be salvaged because it is rare, after all, and otherwise used to transmute for better stats while keeping those awesome look.

2. Similarly, Exotic items have to be something that catches people’s eyes as you pass by. I’m not talking only about particle effects, but just gear that you can not find easily. Something really exotic. It should be about aesthetics, as an “Exotic warrior” isn’t exactly a better warrior, it’s just.. Something exotic. Hard to get, it would be entirely optional, something wanted only for those who want to stand out in the crowd.

3. About the Legendary. They NEED to be about your story, not about your budget. The precursors need to be something really hard to get, but that can be reliably reached. The beginning of an optional journey. And this journey, in turn, need to be about your character and what he has done to make the world a better place. Speaking about journey, I would love to make the abyss between exotics and legendaries shorter. I am not talking about making legendaries easier to get, but to give the players the feel that they are getting there. For example, instead of collecting tons of mats and boxes of gifts that mean almost nothing for us, make us collecting equippable “legendary fragments”, something that people recognize as “this guy is getting there”.

Going on in this, valuing the system that is already in the game, we can make items that the hardcore crowd would like to have and get them busy. This post is already big enough, but if someone want to I can give my view about how that could be achieved. I would also love to see a feedback from a dev about this. Either way, thanks for your time and hope it meant something!

TLDR: Masterwork items are trivial, rare items aren’t rare, and exotics aren’t exotic because everybody is using those. The game don’t need the creation of a new tier right now, but a rework in the current gear system!