Guild Wars 2

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum.

I was talking to some friends earlier and an idea came up on how Anet can make a metric kitten ton of money without being unfair to players or impacting the game mechanics.

One of the better ideas was having Anet sell recolored skills on the gemstore. For instance, there could be a “recolored skill pack” that will recolor all of a mesmer’s skills to blue (instead of pink), or one that will recolor all of a guardian’s skills to black.

What do you all think?

To echo what some above posters said, even though prices of BL drops have increased, they’re pretty much where they were 2 months ago.

http://i.imgur.com/t7kf6qc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UoMZvzf.jpg

Illusionary Inspiration, traited with Blurred Inscriptions, does not work with Phantasmal Disenchanter or Phantasmal Defender.

It does work, however, with all the phantasms summoned via weapons skills (ie: Phantasmal Berserker, Phantasmal Duelist, Phantasmal Swordsman, etc…).

I can collect money, but I can’t place any buy/sell orders. Anyone else having this problem?

What is your favorite UNLOCKED title you don in this game (optional: why)?

The Blazing Light, Grand Artisan, Dungeoneer, Legendary Champion, Emissary of the Mad King. They’re all descriptive GW2 titles that took some time to accomplish.

If you could choose to wear ANY title what would it be?
Distinction and Honors in Applied Jumping. I have some toons with which that title would be a great fit. Unfortunately, I suck at JPs.

Pick a title you dislike seeing on a player and provide a reason why this title impacts you negatively.
The Be-All and the End-All. It’s such a long and pretentious title; especially considering how easily you can get it (ie: kill 4 bosses).

Make up ONE title you would like to see implemented into the game and provide a brief description/objective on how to obtain it or why you would like to see it as a new title to obtain.
Champion of Champions. Unlock all the profession champion titles in sPvP.

GWAMM actually comes from maxing title tracks in GW1. Getting 50/50 in your HOM unlocks the “Champion of the Gods” title.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

• If I could wear any title I guess it would be GWAMM as that actually was a ton of work in many different areas to achieve. Sadly I am at 49 out of the required 50 points with no plan to go back to GW1 so it will forever be beyond my reach.
• God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, see above

How are the bells different than doing the meta-achievements for the living story (ie: for the glowing armor pieces)?

If you want the gear/skin/mini/etc… you have to go through the gate.

I actually have alot of trust and respect for the devs, but with the recent PVP change of ONLY being able to queue up in the mist leads me to believe that the Devs are unaware that people do not play games to wait.

For those unaware, the old system allowed people to run events, kill champs, and what not while they’re queued up for a PVP match. That helped take the sting away from bad queue times because, you know, waiting upwards of 10-15 minutes for a match to start isn’t THAT bad if you’re doing something else in game.

I understand the the PVP-queue change was made in order to put everyone in the zone at the start of the match. But instead of forcing people to wait in the mists, why not revert to the old system, but have people force pop in ~20-30 seconds before the match starts?

Similarly, trait hunting. The fun of “skill captures” in GW1 has been removed from most “trait hunting” situations in GW2. The major difference is that in GW1, the players can go ON THEIR OWN TIME. They’re not forced to sit around waiting for an event to start.

In an ideal situation, acquiring a trait should reflect what the trait does (i.e: falling to your death unlocks the 1/2 damage from falling trait). But failing that, a possible solution for needlessly waiting for events to start is to move all of the traits dependent on champions/events into skill challenges/communes.

If people are forced to do something outside of game while waiting for queue times/events to start, then why would they play the game?

What do you all think?

I also have verizon. 2-3 sec lag and random disconnects. was ~5 sec of lag about an hour ago. so seems like it’s getting better.

that said, I don’t really want to fight the lag, guess I have an excuse to go out. =p

There shouldn’t be any reason why anet can’t price an expansion in gems. It doesn’t matter if someone farmed gold and converts it to gems. Ultimately, those gems came from someone who spent RL money on them.

ThFH.6048:

May I drop a suggestion :

Being able to buy an expansion by using gems.

When ArenaNet finnally decides it is time to release an expansion worth of content in one go and ask money for it you are also able to buy it using gems. So next to buying from your retailer or online from the website you are able to buy it ingame using gems just like the upgrade to digital collector’s edition.

I don’t know what prices they would ask for content described above ( a new zone, a new dungeon) but you have to keep in mind they ask 1000 gems for a infinite gathering tool. And my gues is they will ask a bit more for a new zone then for a infinite gathering tool.

Chewablesleeptablet, thanks for your discussion on the heatmap.

Mirta & Algreg & co, thanks for your discussion on DLC.

Although I didn’t explicitly state it, I was hoping for a system in place so the devs can compare the current gemstore offerings (ie: boosters, gemstore armor) with things like dungeons and new zones.

edit: added a “& co” to capture people who talked about DLC as I was typing.

But let’s say that there are more account wide unlocks of a particular type of content as opposed to another type of content (ie: dungeons vs new zones), wouldn’t that give the devs more information on the type of content that people actually want?

I mean, like everyone else I wouldn’t want to be ripped off, but if the pricing is fair wouldn’t this make the playerbase happier?

Mirta.5029:

No. I know it’s odd but it just feels like being ripped off when company sells you one map at a time. I’m against small DLCs having in mind that they normally overcharge you. Then some DLCs are expansions in digital form and I don’t mind that. In other words I’m okay with paying for expansion’s worth of content and paying as much as expansion normally is worth at retail price (compared to other MMOs expansion price), I’m not okay with paying several pounds for every single dungeon, jumping puzzle, new map, etc.

I was talking to a friend about the how to make the gemstore more fair to both the players and Anet, and the idea of having specialized DLC (Downloadable content) as gemstore-purchased account unlocks came up.

Some ideas tossed around were selling gemstore unlocks of new-zones and new dungeons. I see alot of pros and not really alot of cons in this idea as the base game already gives us alot to do. And having more monetary value associated with new content would give the devs more incentive to develop the type of content the player-base desires.

Would you pay gems for an account wide unlock of a new zone?

Would you pay gems for an account wide unlock of a set of new dungeons?

I know I would (if the unlocks were reasonably priced), but what do you guys think about this?

Someone on my flist mentioned that there’s a recent bug that makes it ~1/2 as effective as it should be.

I use zerk on most of my jobs in PvE (and I haven’t WvW in a while) so I wouldn’t know if there was a difference; I was just curious if that bug was true.

Was there a patch or a bug that makes toughness not as effective as it was 3 months ago?

The new mining pick is definitely pay to win. Sure, it’s just (cheap) sprockets now, but it sets a bad trend.

What if sprockets go to up 1 silver? Or future tools have a chance to mine the equivalent of asurite or toxic samples?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

aocypher.9172:

ya. the mesmer in that video is not really taking advantage of the (6) bonus from scholar runes.

on some fights, yes, he hardly takes any damage. but on others, he spends most of it below 90%.

There are 3 boss fights.

Troll: over 90% the whole fight.

Frost magic guy: Over 90% about half the time

Ginva: Over 90% most of the fight.

It might be the video quality, but doesnt look that way to me. To me, it seems like he has 17582 health. 90% of that is 15823.

ya. the mesmer in that video is not really taking advantage of the (6) bonus from scholar runes.

on some fights, yes, he hardly takes any damage. but on others, he spends most of it below 90%.

As a GW1 player you should know that there has always been a grind for skins. This is no different.

Awesome dungeon. The pacing and teaching of the mechanics were great!

why aren’t extended potions of XXX slaying account bound?

Why are those potions soulbound?

I’m surprised your cousin didn’t make a character on an NA server to play with you; I regularly play with people from scotland, denmark, iraq, and taiwan. Heck! WvW practially requires coverage from those time-zones.

GW2 should have stuck with their original manifesto and never introduce ascended gear. Without ascended gear, there would be no need for laurels (in daily). Without laurels, dailys would have been totally optional.

Their original design was good. They’re just dealing with the fallout of their ascended gear hack.

Why are you assuming Konig is ranting? From my perspective he’s defending the Truth.

But I do agree with the statement that WoodenPotatoes lore is incorrect and he should not get representation as a serious “loremaster”.

If the devs want to give him representation as a “bard”/“storyteller”/“entertainer”, that’s a different story.

Because everyone else takes that as gospel. But if we only go via GW2 stuff, let’s look at his "Guild Wars 2 Mysteries, The Origins of Humanity " video.

in 13:02, he claims that “the gods also brought the forgotten” to tyria.

But if you played GW2 (arah explorables), you’ll find that it was the forgotten who freed glint and that glint was the one who help the elder races (jotun, mursaat, forgotten, seer, dwarf) fight against the dragons during their last awakening cycle.

But the “dragons’ last awakening cycle” was before the “human gods’ arrival” because the gods did not know of the elder dragons; heck! they built arah on top of zhaitan.

And I’m saying that there’s alot of “fluff” and interpretation in his videos. It’s not straight 100% facts. Giving him a reward for being a “loremaster” is like giving a conspiracy theorist a reward for being a “historian”.

While conspiracy theories are definately entertaining, it’s not history.

If the reward was for community involvement/outreach, you might have a different story.

KOPPER.1458:

aocypher:

“Ok. From off the top of my head; the aetherblades. He claims they are from the future, and that Kiel is their leader ? this leads to Kiel being from the future. But, according to the short stories, Kiel was rescued by Magus when she was really young.”

This was one of the speculation videos and the most recent one at that. There is a disclaimer in the video naming it as such. He doesn’t “claim” anything as you like to put it. Clearly there is not info that Kiel is their leader and that she is from the future, it’s about speculation and theorizing. Do I buy that? No I don’t but I didn’t walk away taking any of that as fact either. No sure why you did.

“From another thing something mentioned, Factions. It takes 30 minutes per episode on what actually happened when the wiki explains it in a sentence? And if you actually played that expansion, you’ll see the cutscene is quick – 45 secs (ie: the killing of Master Togo).”

So would you guess that more people got enjoyment from a single sentence / 45 sec cut scene or a detailed video about it and connections made to it? What about all those GW2 players who never experienced GW1? Do you think they will have seen that 45 sec cut scene or read that one line and understood it all?

Ok. From off the top of my head; the aetherblades. He claims they are from the future, and that Kiel is their leader → this leads to Kiel being from the future. But, according to the short stories, Kiel was rescued by Magus when she was really young.

From another thing something mentioned, Factions. It takes 30 minutes per episode on what actually happened when the wiki explains it in a sentence? And if you actually played that expansion, you’ll see the cutscene is quick – 45 secs (ie: the killing of Master Togo).

KOPPER.1458:

First Cecht: fantastic post

“I had no idea who he is. But after looking him up, I disagree.

He gets a significant amount of the lore wrong, and he takes over 30 minutes to explain something that the game’s cutscene does in 45 secs.
"

I have to ask how many videos you watched today after looking him up to make such an assessment? 2 videos? 3? What is he getting wrong about the lore? Because it’s so fresh I am sure you’ll be able to easily quote some things he is misrepresenting.

Does the games cut scenes really explain enough in 45 secs? I would argue that it does not. I have found myself lost and or confused at launch as to what was sometimes going on or references they were making.

I am not going to go over how I enjoy longer videos because that is a personal thing and I realize many people dislike the length. We are getting way off topic here now but I felt I should respond about the gaming giving you enough information and lore in 45 sec or however long those cut scenes are.

While I like many of them I feel as though they leave much to be desired and many players might be confused or care less because the don’t understand what is happening. Some simply don’t care as well.

I realize at this point I am probably sounding way too fan boyish and that isn’t something I really want to come across as. But for every post here that seems to almost blindingly say YES! There seems to be almost as many or at least some that blindingly say NO!

In the end none of us as players have this say. I have to agree with the post above that said something to the effect of making Dulfy an NPC might have been a mistake.

I like the idea of accessible and an inaccessible “bank” for money. But to be consistent, they should do that for tokens and karma.

I had no idea who he is. But after looking him up, I disagree.

He gets a significant amount of the lore wrong, and he takes over 30 minutes to explain something that the game’s cutscene does in 45 secs.

Using your AC rewards as the baseline, then
CM p1 and p3 should be 1.5 gold instead of 1.75 gold (p2 can stay at 1.75)
TA I agree with.
SE p2 should be 2 gold. SE p3 should be equal p1 at 1.25 gold.
CoF p1 should really be 50 silver. The other paths I agree with.
HotW p3 should be reduced to 1.75 gold.
CoE – really? I actually perfer to run p2 over p1/3 (it’s way faster if your party knows how to dodge), but I can see how some groups might have trouble. – no change.
Arah p3 drop to 2 gold. p1 and p2 dropped to 2.75 gold.

Arrow.3856:

The recent changes to dungeon reward and what they said they want seems to be completely out of sync and I honestly believe someone did a last minute job or they have not played this game at all. Here is what I believe should have been introduced.

AC-
P1: 1g
P2: 1.75g
P3: 1g

CM-
P1: 1.75g
P2: 1.75g
P3: 1.75g

TA-
U: 1.25g
F/F: 1.5g
F/U: 1.75g

SE-
P1: 1.25g
P2: 1.5g
P3: 1.5g

CoF-
P1: 1g
P2: 1g
P3: 1.75g

HoTw-
P1: 1g
P2: 2g
P3: 2g

CoE-
P1: 1.25g
P2: 1.75g
P3: 1.5g

Arah-
P1: 3g
P2: 3g
P3: 2.5g
P4: 3g

So on top of this, the 26s at the end of the dungeon should have been removed. With the 26s + the bag of wonderous goods(2-4s) + Champ bags (6-8s), they are not discouraging anyone from farming cof p1. However the removal of the 26s at the end + the above dungeon reward changes would encourage people to move away from farmed dungeons.

Let me know what you think

He did. When you re-enter the instance and talk to the Evon NPC, ask to “take it down a notch”. If it’s still too high, afk at the entrance until the event fails and talk to the NPC again to “take it down (another) notch”.

Dude. You already got the Champion of the Gods title for 50/50 HOM. Go wear that if you want recognition.

Xenon.4537:

aocypher.9172:

They could, however, still fix the problem by rolling ascended gear back down to exotic stats.

That would be an even bigger disaster to the community than when they first announced ascended gear. All that time and energy spent doing fractals, getting laurels, earning each piece… They can’t just remove an entire tier of equipment. Besides, I think it’s been well established that ascended gear is not all that hard to get, nor is it so powerful as to make exotics worthless.

While I agree with you that a rollback may cause massive unhappiness to people who grinded for ascended gear, I disagree with your last sentence.

For the first part, while it’s not hard for people who play daily to get ascended gear, it’s a huge burden for the people who could only play less than 5 hours a week in small chunks. They don’t have enough time to run fractral. They can’t run most guild missions. They don’t always do a daily. They don’t have enough time to do a monthly. That artifical time gate locks them out.

For the second part, going from a fully zerked warrior with exotic zerk accessories to the same warrior with ascended zerk accessories is ~6% increase in effective power; that’s more than a superior sigil of force.

For me, overall, it was a great patch. Of my 8 level 80s:

My necro got a huge buff and access to burning.

My elementalist got buffed. And there are some promising new traits.

My thief is better. I can actually use a signet as a stun break now!

My guardian is unchanged.

My engineer is unchanged. But there are some tempting new traits.

My mesmer is different; not being forced to spend 5 points opens up other build options.

My ranger’s shortbow range is reduced, but I tend to dart around anyway so I hardly notice it. That said, I do carry a longbow now if I need longer range.

My warrior got completely resetted.

Elbegast.6970:

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

Nick.6972:

Personally, I don’t think NCsoft wants Arena Net to release anything major this year – it could make Wildstart lose its potential players and thus lose money.

But, other than that, keep increasing the difficulty, add more different unique skins to the game (not to gem store), add more skills, add more PvP modes, increase the party size, add more instances and dungeons, the list goes on.

I agree with your assessment of NCSoft. However, I think there is a large group of players who, like myself, will NEVER spend money on another NCSoft game due to what they’ve done to this game and its players!

Blizzard messed up WoW and Diablo 3 and lost me as a customer. I still love to play Starcraft 2 but I will purchase no further expansions for that title. I refuse to make any further purchases of ActiBlizzard’s products.

Now, ANet and NCSoft are ruining Guild Wars 2. I still love Guild Wars 1 but I cannot bear to log in to Guild Wars 2 any longer. The Flame & Frost and Southsun patches/arcs ruined the game for me. Now there are pirates. I absolutely hate pirates. Pirates have no place in a fantasy, dragon-themed mmo. This unoriginal, mismatched content does nothing to inspire confidence regarding future ANet/NCSoft titles.

So I am now in mmo limbo, biding my time until some other company actually gets it right. It’s a shame, really. GW2 had so much more potential.

That’s a difference of opinion. To me, Air Pirates (ie: steampunk) totally fits in with the universe of GW2. I mean, look at the engineer profession; GW2 isn’t straight fantasy.

But I agree that the devs’ mis-stepped has cost players. They could, however, still fix the problem by rolling ascended gear back down to exotic stats.

all of the armor sets has alway been “complete sets”.
That said, I did buy a complete krytan set just for top, but would have probably brought 2-3 “tops” if they were sold cheaper seperately.

can’t log in at all.

If having 2 simutaneous sigils is critical to your build, just man up and equip a single hander and an off-hand.

Personally, my favorite weapon is the greatsword (on both my warrior and guardian). I specially choose greatsword for what the weapon can do and not for it’s sigil slot. I would imagine that everyone who currently uses a 2-hander is doing so because it works better for them; despite not having the extra sigil.

Doesn’t that imply that this situation is already balanced?

Alot of people on my friend’s list (including my brothers) left when they came out with that ascended crap.

I, personally, left for a bit. I came back a few months ago and tried FoTM. Yes it can get repetitive and grindy, but it opened my eyes to a new mode of playing GW2 (ie: FoTM and PvE dungeons). I actually do more dungeons than WvW nowadays; even got my Dungeon Master title.

Most of the people that I’ve met and played with since I came back still play pretty regularly. And my regularly, I mean they do more than just the dailys/monthlies.

I’m only speaking for myself, but I enjoyed the molten weapon facility alot more than canarch’s lair.

What I liked most about the molten weapon facility:
-it had excellent pacing
-the dungeon layout was nice and “told a story”
-the trash mobs had interesting mechanics
-the bosses were entertaining with a great cutscene, relevant tells, and interesting mechanics

in comparison, canach’s lair felt rushed; as it was essentially a large snaky room filled with mines.

What I dislike the most about canach’s lair:
-it felt very gimmicky.
*you couldn’t even use your normal weapon skills for the solo dungeon (post 5/30 GMT patch)
*for the group dungeon, you needed people to stop combat in order to pick up an environmental weapon (ie: the mine scanner), activate that environmental weapon (to reset a mine), and drop that environmental weapon to re-engage in combat. I found that very clunky.

I would much perfer to use my character’s weapon skills/attacks on an enemy.

If future dungeons were going to use environmental weapons, I would perfer those weapons to contain some relevant attack skills/ability on their own {maybe the boss becomes immune to damage unless you use the environmental weapon to set up a poison field (#1 skill in a select area) , lure the boss into the poison field, and attack the weakened boss with the weapon’s attacks (#2-5 skill)}.

Just a thought.

I swap my title arounds (i.e: “dungeon master” when I’m running dungeons, “master crafter” when I’m crafting, etc…)

My little brother, however, just keeps his “Champion of the Gods” up. His explanation is that GWAMM is only a few max titles tracks, Champion is actually 50 HOM points.

Ya. with people having to run the gauntlet of stuns and deadeyes, p2 is wayyyy harder than p4 now.

Isslair.4908:

Wethospu.6437:

Apparently “ship” was fixed on Arah P2. Keep the info coming so we get real patch notes!

Nice one.

Any info about p4 exploits?

I was under the impression that Winterbite had always dropped from Jormag chest; similar to how Final Rest had always came from the shadow behemoth chest.

marnick.4305:

Rukia.4802:

Combat may be ‘fun’ or rather, active but it IS boring with extremely limited skills.. can’t deny that.

I do not agree on the premise that I actually use all 10 skills on my bar plus profession mechanic skills, alternate weapon kit, forms and the like. All of those skills have a use in the correct situation.

Compare to any other MMO where you just spam fireball. Oh yea there’s an optimal routine, but just spamming fireball gets you everywhere. WoW fans called GW1 the 8-skill game. The sad fact being that WoW is pretty much a 1-skill game regardless of how cluttered your screen is.

WoW may be effectively be more simplistic (ie: death knights have many skills that effectively do the same thing on different timers), but GW2’s skill selection is way worst than GW1. Just the fact that 5 of your skills (ie: the weapon skills) are effectively locked (although weaponswaps/attunements/kits helps mitigate that), your 6th skill is locked into “healing”, your 7th – 9th into "utility, and 10th into “elite” doesn’t really add as much build diversity as GW1. (well, that and the not having a 2nd class thing). I understand why the game was designed this way (ie: helps with balance issues), but I still miss the flexibility GW1 gave you in skill/build selection.

That’s obviously a difference of opinion. I personally have no issues with the leveling rate, but they do. They hate having to regear with higher level equipment every few days.

Hickeroar.9734:

aocypher.9172:

I played GW1 and I still find GW2 entertaining.

My brothers, however, who were more hardcore GW1 players than me (ie: they both vanquished all the zones, my little brother has the “GWAMM title” – farmed for hundreds of hours with his 55hp monk), don’t really play. They complain about how long it takes to level, and how bad the combat system is.

Ugh. Bad combat? This game has some of the most fun combat of any game I’ve played at all, let alone an MMO…

And how long it takes to level? I leveled to 80 in a week and a half. Most MMOs will take you up to months to hit their max level, especially with your first toon. GW1 allowed you to get to its abysmally tiny max level in a matter of HOURS…which is just flat-out stupid.

Your brothers’ excuses are kinda….silly.

I played GW1 and I still find GW2 entertaining.

My brothers, however, who were more hardcore GW1 players than me (ie: they both vanquished all the zones, my little brother has the “GWAMM title” – farmed for hundreds of hours with his 55hp monk), don’t really play. They complain about how long it takes to get to max level, and how bad the PvP/combat system is.

run dailys, chat, craft, kill dragon champions (if the online timers say they’re on). If I have more than 2 hours, I also WvW and play/level alts (I currently have 6 level 80s, a level 18 and a level 23). If I have more than 4 hours, I also run dungeons.

You can still grind dynamic events in orr. Once you hit DR, go grind in WvW.

Also, completing your daily/monthly will give you jugs of karma. Use those with a karma booster.

@phabby
your guild members can just deposit their funds into the guild stash. Change the permissions so only the commander can withdraw.

if the issue is who sent what, then sorry. I can’t help you there.

I disagree with the OP.

Unlike other MMO’s there is no feeling of need to have to log in to raid/etc… I think that’s a good thing.

If you really want to impart a similar sense of urgency and need to your guild, set goals such as, “keep all of the orrian temples uncontested” or “keep your server in control of stonesmist castle and all POI in EB”. You can even partition and assign time slots and zones to your guild members (ie: person A is required to be at stonemist from 1800 – 2000 GMT, person B is required to keep the temple of lyssa clear from 1200-1400 GMT, etc…)

I have transferred hundreds of gold to my alternate account (actually, my brother’s, but he’s not using it) via a guild bank. Just saying.

I think this is the solution you’re looking for. If someone is proven to be a gold seller, they can just ban everyone associated with that guild.