Guild Wars 2

I like the idea of a single path, local story dungeon tied to a meta event. Basically put a world boss in a dungeon. There are a lot of world bosses that work well with hundreds of players, but others feel crowded and poorly utilized for large groups. My best example of this would be the modnir centaur world boss. If the events leading up to that opened up an instance for 5-player parties to get into the main camp and take down the boss, that would work better than the current system for that boss in particular. Personal opinion, I think they should take that route in the next couple new zones.

Some other bosses I think would work better as dungeons would be the Karka Queen, Admiral Covington and the Dredge Commissar.

I can dye any piece of clothing without charge except for the hair accessories? How am I supposed to create a matching outfit if I can’t make my hair ties match my dress, the color of which changes almost daily depending on my mood.

I get that I can change their color with a makeover kit, but why is that needed for this piece of, what I would classify as, clothing alone? I just want my tiara to match my shield as I swap skins, is that too much to ask for?

I often like to reflect on then and now type things, so I went hunting for pictures of the original design of the Sylvari, but this is the best I could do.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/1b/2009_December_sylvari_03.jpg

I found it disturbing though that you can no longer reach the original article which described the redesign however. Anyone know what happened with it? I found a link, but it’s broken, and it doesn’t look like ANet maintain a blog anymore.

http://www.arena.net/blog/kristen-perry-on-designing-and-redesigning-the-sylvari

I’m confused by this. What are they selling exactly? I’m also not familiar with AP in this context.
I get that people are joining mid-dungeon parties and kicking the original members, but why?

I would say that the Gods likely arrived at Tyria, and setup in Orr in order to siphon power from Zhaitan. Beyond that I don’t think there’s much of a connection.
One more problem in your theory that I’d like to point out is that it seems to imply that the dragons are divine and capable of creating their own realms in the mists.

Icing+Royal Blue with a dash of Blood, and I love the Koda Armor because it’s as close to a clean trench as heavy armor gets. I’ve attached a picture of my Asura. It’s a bit old, and I recently started using hot pink for the glowing crystals, but it’s still the same skin and colors other than that.

Don’t be afraid to mix and match armor sets, I have yet to find a single set that I love completely, but mixing and matching always looks great in the end.

I CANNOT emphasize how much I do NOT want to know what Orr smells like.

I think wielding a staff as a melee would be ultimately kitten. Silly casters and their spells, we’ll show them how you use a stick.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/gallery/data/500/medium/lookitthisway.jpg

It is the solid ocean fractal.

Fractals are subsections of the dungeon Fractals of the Mist. The Fractals of the Mist is the only dungeon that has levels of difficulty that you unlock with each playthrough. Higher levels apply the condition “Agony” which can only be negated with Ascended gear, but eventually the agony can be too much for that as well. The dungeon is great because the difficulty scales up, it has a good variety of content and you get some good drops from it as well. It still follows the same 5-member party setup though, so not a raid.

As a story telling element the dungeon is REALLY cool. Essentially every Fractal is a random location in time and space that you are sent into to stabilize for researchers. You go to places such as freeing an enslaved Giant, battling the Jade Maw (A Lovecraftian monster), being a Charr during the Searing… pretty much any point in Tyrian history. They also periodically add new Fractals as a way for future players to experience some of the previous living world story.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

I feel like the Season 1 issue is because Anet was still getting on stable footing on how to release new content. I remember during Southsun Cove nothing was instanced which made some parts of it almost impossible, but they’ve learned from that and come a long way I think.
I’m okay with not seeing the whole Scarlet thing, I can cope with that, my problem with being thrust into Season 2 is suddenly I’m the leader of a hodgepodge guild that’s previously saved Tyria? Who are these people? Why do they all seem to be in some sort of romantic relationship with each other? What is up with this limping asuran and why is she so tiny?

GW2 is a microtransaction game, except all the microtransactions are vanity only. You don’t NEED to finish the living world personal story to reach the actual content which was added during that period. the LWPS is just extra fluff to help you understand the lore and what’s going on if that’s what you’re into, which some people are not.

Ascalon Catacombs Story Mode is lvl 30, Exploration mode is lvl 35, and it’s a tad unusual for players under 80 to have all their gear up to snuff.

Leveling quickly in GW2 is really about exploring and taking part in whatever you find. If you see a heart, do the heart, if an event springs up, take part in that event, if there’s a vista climb to that vista. If you find a jumping puzzle do the puzzle. Story Mode actually gives the most experience outside of hunting down untouched mobs that have accumulated bonus experience. It’s also worth it to go to lower level areas you haven’t been to yet, since you’ll scale down and most of the experience will still scale up.

I level pretty quickly doing group support during events and dailies. It’s recommended that when you solo focus more on dealing damage than taking damage, since you can offset the unbalance with well timed dodges. I recommend you play with whatever style you enjoy, I know when I was leveling my main I would try 3 unique builds a day depending on what skills I was unlocking, what weapons I had were closest to my level and what I was enjoying most.

Since you’re a Guardian as well, you’ll be doing plenty of self heals no matter what direction you go, so extra toughness is like reinforcing a brick wall with aluminum, the extra bit helps but not unless you’re tackling champions solo. And where most games have likely trained you that bigger kills give bigger experience, it’s actually the opposite in gw2 since mobs accumulate bonus xp the longer they’re around, which the champs don’t do since they usually don’t last 10 minutes.

As corny and overdone as it sounds, I’m kind of hoping the Guardians Specialization is a darker twist on the abilities, a “Dark Guardian” if you will. Along with this I’m hoping to get access to a dagger in the way a Necromancer or a Thief does. Having more offense wouldn’t be a bad thing in my book.

I managed to assemble a decent shout/symbol support build based around using the staff and hammer that I’ve used successfully since launch.
The hammer offers nice control for veterans
while the staff gives some crowd damage and just enough distance from champions to feel comfortable.

I also keep “Retreat”, Merciful Intervention, and Contemplation of Purity on, unless I need to break more stuns in which case I replace “Retreat” with “Save Yourselves”. I also utilize Renewed Focus so I can further buff my allies and myself with my virtues.

2 Zeal – Shattered Aegis
6 Valor – Strength in Numbers, Meditation Mastery, Altruistic Healing
6 Honor – Pure of Heart, Writ of the Merciful, Pure of Voice

Occasionally I will respec on the spot if the party needs to be more spread out than I can effectively support, but even then I keep my hammer and a few other details so I can still intervene if someone needs backup.

From what I remember of season 1 (and I was busy too for most of it, so I missed a lot), they weren’t doing it as a personal story like they should have, which is a mistake they fixed with season 2… sorta. So the only way I could see them redoing those events is if they had a month where all those season 1 events were condensed.

Alternatively it would be neat to see the essence of those events recreated in fractals, like the Marionette Battle is something I wish I could have taken part in, but again real life beckons away from fun distractions, so that being a fractal would be perfect for me.

I’m going to disagree with your statement on the pay wall, considering the scope and cost of the game, I’d say an extra $2.50 for accessing old content out of sequence isn’t too bad.

Confirm Canach working on Blackgate. It’s on a timer.

New build just launched.

Tooks.8701:

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

After enough personal instances, you have to ask yourself, “Why am I not playing Skyrim?”

Because Skyrim doesn’t have WvW

He’s trying to make the point out that after too much instanced content it feels like a single player game. So maybe they should pace the amount of Personal Story Quests they use. I still think they should use more though, I completed my personal story a couple months ago now, and giving me some instanced content again would put me back in touch with my characters personality.

In GW2 they have 2 story telling tools
1. Dynamic Events
2. Personal Story Quests

They’ve stated before that the Dynamic events reflect the worlds story, while the Personal Story Quests reflect your story and that of the Destiny’s Edge. I think this view has been lost with this weekends event.

In this first part we witnessed a quest to research a weakness in the Karka, and to find the connection between the Consortium and the Karka (which I am still waiting on a broken Event to finish as of this writing). These are executed as Dynamic Events or Environment Puzzles, yet when you are doing these events are are doing them for yourself, other players are around you, but the NPC’s only talk to you, and they never reference getting help from other players, only you.

I think they should have handled these “dynamic events”, where it’s your goal to interact with a single NPC and get his information, as an instanced Personal Storyline quest. Why have 30 people gangbang on the same guy for the same information every 3 seconds? That’s not fun, that’s not interesting. They should have played it up a bit by having each of these instanced. Then the investigation becomes more personal to me, and I become more involved in what’s happening, and while I can’t be certain, I do get the feeling that progress would be halted less often.

Long before launch I was under the impression that was their goal, to make me feel involved, like I was a part of a developing story. When I see 30 people waiting around to do the same thing I’m doing, I don’t feel involved in a story, I feel involved in a group that’s only together for 3 seconds, which is just an empty experience.

Personal Story Quests should not just be Me vs The Dragons. It’s a tool that could be used to make these monthly events that much more personal to me. Instead of saying “Hey guys, remember running around and getting those.. DE’s… I think?” I would be saying “It was so awesome to track down that Consortium conspiracy person by person and figure out what they were up to. Do you guys remember such and such conversation, I laughed so hard.”

Hopefully Anet will prove to be a company that learns from it’s mistakes in developing this game, and will learn to use the tools it’s creative more effectively in the future.

The Priory has set up camps in Queensdale, Metrica Province, the Plains of Ashford, Caledon Forest, and Wayfarer Foothills

Most of my concerns have been brushed away by this statement. I’m still worried about how wintersday will be pulled off though. They’re tied down by lore set in place before there were 5 races, and I can’t imagine the writers are liking that tie down much more than I am.

Danikat.8537:

The only two that could be tricky are Canthan New Year and the Dragon Festival. If they’re even included before we get an expansion adding Cantha to the game.

Not unless the Tengu want to let us in.

Box Face.2041:

Public matches:-

Do:-

- “tag” as many enemies as possible with damage so that when they die you get credit for the kill.

- run away to some other random objective after taking the point.

- rush the boss in the Forest of Niflhel – as long as you get the 25 points, who gives a kitten about anyone else?

- focus the tank in teamfights

- type “/laugh” after you finish an opponent – this will help to disperse the tension of the moment and after reading your jovial emote, hilarity will ensue for both teams.

Don’t:-

- take down the trebuchet in Khylo – who cares if they have a bit of “air support”?

- res teammates – they’re obviously skrubs if they’re downed so why help them? You’ve got important spamming of your “1” skill to get on with.

- play anything but backstab thief – no other burst build in the game compares to you whatsoever, so go crazy!

- defend points – points are for LOSERS. Sitting on them makes you look like a nerd. If you’re not mindlessly following everyone else around the map, you’re doing it wrong.

- use dodge roll. It’s a pretty useless game mechanic with no real effectiveness – holding down the “s” key is far more effective at getting out of enemy AoE.

- play support. What fun is the game when your job is helping other people? News for you pal – OTHER PEOPLE are LOSERS. You are the most important person on the map, so build to reflect that.

- bother with stupid stuff like amulets, sigils, and armor enchantments. These things are totally peripheral, and only super-TRYHARDS bother with them. You aren’t a boss if you can’t dominate skrubs without trying too hard on your build.

You sound like a right proper kitten.

I like Halloween, and I love how Anet chooses to celebrate it with all of the puzzles, and mats, and recipes, and minigames and events. It’s all extremely fun and fascinating to me.

HOWEVER, one thing that constantly nags at me is how human-centric this holiday is, and it has me worried that future holidays will be the same. All of the events happen in human zones where you normally would be dealing with human issues. Where do the Asura fall into this? Or the Charr?

Come Wintersday are we going to be dealing with the human gods? Do the Norn spirits have no part in it? Will the Pale Tree ignoring the festivities?

What I’m trying to get at is that I feel like I’m being punished for not choosing to play a human. Someone chooses to create a human during this week, and they’re instantly involved in halloween. If that person chose to play a Norn though they would have to deviate from their personal story and go through the various asuran portals to get to the festivities.

I do know that this is the first holiday with this new game, and they’re likely to expand in the future. I’m just curious if anyone else is sharing this concern.

I’m trying to get into SPvP, and I’m not particularly good at it on anything but a Necro, and I’ve never really been too involved in PvP in any other game before. What are some of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to being productive in an SPvP Match?

You could just buy extra bank/inventory slots with gems. I kinda think that’s what they intended. You have to realize that you’re discussing a convenience, and most conveniences are obtained through the gem shop.

When you guys say you want a compass I assume you want to know which way is north on your mini-map. The fact that you don’t know which way is north makes me assume it’s rotating when you turn your character.
On your minimap there is a “toggle rotation” button you can click so that you always know what way is up.

Keep in mind that for every holiday celebration they’ve had competitions to design the headgear awarded for participation at the end of the event in Guild Wars 1. They’ve also had similar competitions for weapons periodically, including just before the release of EOTN.
I would not be surprised if this is a tradition they plan on continuing in the future as the game becomes more stable, because lets face it, they’re probably stressing about executing the upcoming holidays as seamlessly as possible.

I said it from the very beginning that they’ll start with the mundane weapons the game already has.
Then they’ll add more exotic weapons like scythes, nunchucks, whips, dual blades, and throwing stars.
Finally they’ll add the bizarre weapons like broken bottles, rusty poles, and… oh wait.

In WvW I want to say to my guild “We should take this fort for our own, and keep it the entire weekend.” Unfortunately this means that someone would have to keep a watch on it to let the others know when it needs to be defended.

The problem with the above statement is that I even used the word unfortunately. This is a fun concept, but there is nothing to do while holding the fort and making sure it upgrades. If I leave and get too involved in a zerg mob, then I might miss it when another server steam rolls the fort. I need a reason to STAY IN the fort after we have it, because otherwise I’m just sitting around waiting.

The first idea I have that could help with this is crafting. If the forts had crafting tables I could do something while holding the fort. Or a portable crafting table could be sold in the gem shop.

Another idea is making upgrading more interactive. If there were some hoops I could jump through to speed up the construction process I would gladly jump through those hoops.

Moonpuncher.7250:

I also worry about motivation for gear. I have all crafted exotics, and I don’t see much of an “appearance” difference in other gear, which means I’m either farming for legendary, or I’m “done” getting gear. I miss the prospect of cooler items trickling in. I miss searching for gear with better stats.

Did you look at the exotic dungeon armor? I think it’s weird, but they have a rare set of dungeon armor that has the name but a very generic and common skill, then they have the exotic set which has the unique skin.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

Where did they say Cantha was going to be the next expansion?

It’s more or less been accepted as a fact since the tengu in the Dominion of Winds are refugees from Cantha, and killing Zhaitan will open trade with Cantha again. There’s just so much in game at the moment that already points at Cantha being next on the list that it would be terribly confusing if we suddenly go to Elona to deal with Palawa Joko.

Personally I’d rather deal with chinese nazi’s than a lich trying to run an oasis resort with undead slave labor.

I go to Orr and I instantly notice 2 things.
1. The background noise it the same you hear when you die.
2. It’s hell risen from the ocean.
Seriously Orr is hell, I refuse to go there unless I have 1 or 2 friends to back me up. But I love that about it. Orr isn’t easy, it isn’t a grocery store you can just stroll through, it’s a war zone. I go there and I suddenly feel like a human in a war against the machines.

In the future when I have more time to play again I can see it being a thing for me to do party runs through the zones to gather up some of the rare mats and get some karma.

If they’re asking that then they didn’t bother looking into the game.

Mounts weren’t included because they let you skip past content that you might have actually wanted to see. Waypoints were included so that players could easily get around, without missing any of the content in between the points on their first time through.

Armor drops aren’t like they are in WoW because that’s the gear grind. Anet didn’t want players to feel like they had to do Dungeon A a hundred times to get a full set of gear so they could move on to Dungeon B. They designed it so you do the dungeons to get the rewards that you want, not that you need.

Combat was designed to be more interactive. Instead of standing in one place and spamming a quick chain of attacks to maximize damage they wanted combat to be fluid and for you the player to feel more involved as you kite and dodge attacks while using your own attacks to move the target into the most strategic position.

It’s a known fact that people don’t like change, but will continue to ask for it regardless. If they wanted a WoW clone then they can go have Tera, SWTOR, Rift, or any number of “WoW clones with a twist”.

The game has nearly been out for a month now. Players have hit 80, Dungeons have been completed, and Zhaitan has been slain (unfortunately).

I’m wondering what you guys think about it now after the fact. Is this the game you’re going to keep coming back to after a few weeks of ignoring it? Did the epic battles live up to your expectations? We know that Cantha is going to be the next expansion after a few content updates in Tyria, do you think they should change anything by then?

Personally I’m loving the entire game, I haven’t done every dungeon yet since I’m trying to do the story modes in proper order first. I just did Sorrow’s Embrace, and that is by far my favorite dungeon to date. I’ve also dabbled in SPvP and I noticed that the team dynamic still holds for tournaments, where coordinating your builds to work together is more important than maxing out their damage.

Having reached lvl 80 now, I spend my time exploring, trying to get 100% of the map completed at a casual pace as I take in all the sights. That is, I do that when I have time to play.

That’s awesome. Can you do something like that for a 1280×1024 resolution?

pamkhat.2985:

I’m about 50% complete with the entire map. I have to do the hearts to complete a map. I have one big problem with hearts.

The one thing that was supposed to not happen in this game happens all the time within a heart. You compete with those around you or they hinder your progress in some way. This happens in several ways but a few examples are:

A) There’s something to activate on the ground. When clicked it disappears for everyone for a period of time opposed to it being instanced/phased to everyone like crafting nodes.
B) People race each other to kill mobs and sometimes the mobs just don’t respawn like they should for the amount of people around.
C) If you’re playing in a group, these elements will directly force you to compete with your group. We don’t share a heart nor can we tag things for each other. If something is on the ground to click and I click it, it disappears for my groupmate.

Of course, not all hearts are like this. But the ones that make you compete with others, race against others, or wait on others are horrible. They’re boring and, yes, a more traditional quest might be better in those examples.

A) All items that are not bundles are supposed to be instanced for each player. If they are not then you should report it as a bug.
B) All players that contribute to killing an NPC, even if it’s a single hit, receive credit for that kills. They will then receive experience appropriate to their contribution in percentage of health, have a chance at receiving their own instanced loot table, and receive credit for any nearby events/hearts that the NPC was related to.

The idea is, as long as you’re on a populated server, that because of scaling, players of higher levels will easily be found playing side by side lower level players. So you should never find that the low level zones are ghost towns, however they might not be as populated as they were at launch. Either way Events scale with the number of players that are contributing.

At the moment server populations are still out of wack, and they’re working to balance them out, partly by making Server Transfers free until they are balanced. After the free transfers go away guesting should be enabled, meaning you’ll have more players from other servers playing on yours, so that will keep the population around the various zones stable as well.

Ojimaru.8970:

Unshakable in itself reduces the effectiveness of Blind to 10% and reduces the duration of Weakness and Immobilise by 50%. Additionally, when the Champion mob is affected by Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull it will gain X stacks of Defiant. The number of Defiant stacks is dependent on the number of players within a certain radius of the mob; it is default to 3 stacks for one player and scales up.

Defiant, in addition to Unshakable, will negate all sources of Stun, Daze, Knockback, Knockdown or Pull. For each of the above Crowd Control effect negated, one stack of Defiant is depleted, until zero at which point the Champion is susceptible to Crowd Control.

The purpose of these two buffs is to prevent Champion and higher level mobs from being steamrolled by the umpteen enemy players assaulting it with chain crowd control, thus forcing players to have to only use their Crowd Control effects only when they absolutely have to, e.g. interrupting a channeled attack. After applying Crowd Control, players will then have to work to deplete the Defiant stacks without needlessly going over the limit.

THIS needs to be on the wiki. How did you find out about the number of stacks?

Basically I’ve looked up the descriptions of these two buffs that appear on Champion level mobs and up, but I can’t seem to make sense of how exactly they work or what I should do about them.

Unshakable grants Defiant when the creature is targeted with Control Effects, and using Control Effects on the creature removes Defiant. I’m thinking of an infinite loop of silliness here.
The target is immune to Control Effects while Defiant is up, but does Unshakable stop working when Defiant is active? Can anyone elaborate on how I can remove Defiant, or if I should even bother?

Edit: I should clarify that I am also asking this question because it doesn’t appear to be a 1:1 when it comes to gaining Defiant per Control Effect. I saw a mob with a stack of 13, and according to the tooltips that doesn’t make sense.