Showing Posts For blackheartgary.8605:
In living world, season 3, episode 1, we encounter the white mantle. Apparently, they were the cause of the Bloodstone expoding in the “fen”, and that Minister Caudecus was definately involved in the event. We assistsed Canach in his “acquisition” of Caudecus, but when we finally go to him, even with Lazarus interfering(on our behalf?) Caudecus managed to escape.
But that’s it. So far, that’s all we know. I am sure that Caudecus has intentions on Ruling Kryta, and his champions positioned all over the land prove it…. not to mention the propaganda strewn everywhere. However, the story takes a much different turn for our beloved Commander and Dragon’s Watch… Primordus, Jormag… maybe even Kralkatorrik are active, feeding off the energies of Moredremoth and Zhaitan’s demise.
Aurene is hatched, active, and quite curious, and we are trying to bond with her so she may be able to work on our side.
But…. what of the White Mantle?
After Caudecus disappeared, we haven’t seen or heard from this dastardly man since, not to mention any of his cohorts. Are they up to something? Is a major event in the works? or are they biding their time, waiting for us to get so enthralled with chasing dragons that we will be distracted enough for a coup?
a little Clarity, if you please, Anet. Thanks.
Hailsa!
I have been slowly but surely recovering from a nasty flu-like virus over the past 48 hours and, during that time, i had a LOT of time to revisit some lore, play the game, and watch some videos posted on YouTube. What i did notice,though, whilst watching and reading and playing, is how much of a distinct difference in difficulty that Core Tyria has to offer versus the Heart of Thorns maps, as well as the newly created Living world maps. Mind you, I understand why this is obvious… Heart of Thorns is considered “endgame” content, while Core Tyria (people call it “vanilla” for some reason) is a combination of slightly challenging content and what i would consider “training”. I also understand that there are, in fact, areas and events that are proven to be quite difficult and sometimes nigh impossible to solo in “core Tyria”, such as the world bosses, Current events, etc., but these moments are Meant for group participation…. in Other words, they are designed so that multiple players will be able to work together to tackle the event.
My question here, however, is that as this game progresses through the years, and while I highly commend the amazingly talented staff at ArenaNet for this beautifully stunning, highly competitive and vast world we are so humbly allowed to play in…
Could Core Tyria Be made to be more challenging?
For example, I remember, way back when, that we had a series of champions to defeat in Queensdale. The content was brilliant in design, even requiring cooperative play amongst people in the zone, and it even had a title: The Queensdale Champ Train.
But the most important part of those events was that they posed a significant threat… we simply had to learn our characters’ abilities, and we had to learn to work as a team.. and we had to look out for each other, and yes, they were quite difficult!
the excitement in those type of challenges should be felt Tyria-wide, however. I’m not saying have a champion-train in every zone. Moments like the invading Centaur army in Gendarren, for example, is an amazing event, that actually puts your skills to the test, (and if you are unfortunately alone in that event, then heavens help you) as well as prepares you for the later moments in the game where you have to face nigh-impossible odds in order to complete an event.
But that’s just it… that is where Core Loses it’s steam. people get used to hitting 111111, and assume that’s all they have to do to survive, other than dodging. Once they hit level 80 and potentially unlock Heart of Thorns, however, it becomes a whole new ballgame, and the player must now rely on their wit and ability to modify and even use all of the skills in their kitten nal to just get through Verdant Brink.
How… then, could we make Core Tyria harder? Could we give some mobs the ability to have the skills of the Revnant? perhaps give them the ability to use combinations the same way we use ours? would it be possible, nay plausible, to have one or two events in each zone scale up such as the Centaur Invasion in Gendarren of even the Hirathi Hinterlands? for example, a Flame legion Invasion in the Plains of Ashford, where the Legion take over an area en mass and set up their own operations? These are just thoughts, mind you, and I am in no way stating that the content is faceroll. I am, however, asking readers to complete the following sentence:
“Core Tyria could be a bit more difficult if…..”
Blessed be!
Hello.
now while I agree that there are a lot of players in the community that will see a “free___ reward if you ____” game and instantly say “nope… yer a troll”, I have had a different experience.
I am one of the players that actually plays the “come find me” game. If i have a good exotic weapon or x amount of gold that i want to let loose into the world, what I do is I hit the next zones above the starter zones. why, you may ask? well, for one thing, The starter zones have a split group of people… the group that actually are starting out and those that are either rolling another toon out the gate or doing world bosses/world completion. now, depending on the day, one might see 10-20 different new players actually playing their first toon, but this is not the majority of the populace, it seems, in the starter zones as of late. Helping people and getting people to participate in the starter zones, while quite fulfilling in my experience, also kind of sets them away from getting used to the many systems involved in actual playing.
So, Instead, I will enter a secondary zone, find one of those nice hidey spots that i have found in my travels, and have then announced in map chat about the game and what the reward is. i even so much as go Invisible in game so they cannot friend me and obtain my location somehow. Now, above i read that it’s great for one person to win the reward, but for everyone else it’s meh after the first wins. I do something just a wee bit different. I give it a 1,2,3 approach, with the first player reaching me getting the big prize and the next 2 a smaller prize. this way, players will not be so discouraged for all that running around. and when i do hide, while it seems nigh impossible to find me, most of the time i stage in places that people often overlook when playing, such as the POI in Kessex (you know… that one everyone asks about), or the top of that particular vista in Diessa Plateau (that people fall to their deaths constantly over.)
I guess… perhaps The point here is that a Community is always going to have their anti-social players that don’t believe a single thing they see or read. but that is not the majority. If we all tried just a wee bit harder to make our community an actual community instead of a bunch of peeps playing hack-n-slash for hours, not saying a single thing to each other, perhaps these games we invent won’t be such a bad thing after all.
I will join and march with you. I may not be a member of the LGBT community, but I am an avid supporter of human rights and equality for all of humanity regardless of who they are. Orlando tore me up inside, not because of the fact that it was an LGBT bar, but because it was a gathering of human beings out to have a good time and be themselves without fear of oppression and persecution. No human, regardless of who they are, deserved what happened in Orlando. for that reason alone, I will march with you.
Okay, let’s think outside the “Kiel is white mantle” box for a moment, and since we are doing conspiracy theories, lemme wax on one for a moment.
Evon Gnashblade has closed a vault in his office…. a vault that has an abundance of ley energy inside. so much so that a trained ear can hear the energy crackling. Why is he storing this? Where did he get it from? don’t tell me Lion’s arch is teeming with it as LA is a ley line hub. I know that already. but we would also be seeing his workers taking ley energy, placing it in some sort of container and moving it into the vault. he may not be doing this, and he isn’t getting anyone to do it for him…. or is he?
The Consortium has been doing this for a bit over in the eastern lands of the Charr and there’s talk that it might spread into other regions where the congruences keep appearing. Why would the consortium need this energy? certainly not research… they are all about the profit, or how soon we forget Southsun Cove? Now hear me out on this one, as it might actually make sense. Kiel is not White Mantle at all, but rather a member of the Shining Blade, always keeping a close eye on Gnashblade, who is clearly gaining ley energy from someone who has the ability to gather, store, and profit from the sale of ley energy to the highest bidder. and While I won’t state that Gnashblade is White Mantle, which seems a bit silly because, after all, he is Charr, Perhaps He is playing the Middleman for the Mantle and the Consortium in order to keep the Mantle from coming anywhere near Lion’s arch, a place where he is keeping shop and making gold hand over paw. and What is Ellen doing about all this? nothing. she’s waiting for the right moment to blow the whistle.
I have a few ideas for a future elite spec, but i’m not as specific as some that have posted above so forgive me for that.
For the thief, I propose we go old school, and bring them back to assassin status. I know I know, it’s been done, and thieves already have almost all of the assassin’s skills and weapons. however, perhaps the assassin has a different tool, a new tool at their disposal. I present my version of the off hand axe-weilding assassin:
skill 4 would be a skill called tomahawk. it would be similar to the ranger’s throwing axe skill, but this version would inflict poison or cripple for x amount of seconds(pick a number that’s reasonable).
skill 5 would be called sling-blade. the assassin would launch an axe out of their hands attached to a “rope” knocking down the opponent, and unlike scorpion wire where it pulls the mob to the thief, slingblade would pull the assassin to the mob, giving it a second strike that would inflict bleeding.
skill 3, typically used in combination with main hand weapons, would be the variant:
Pistol main hand: (i don’t have a name for this one) use the butt of the axe to stun the mob… the assassin spins behind the mob and shoots the mob in the back at point blank range.
Sword main hand: sideswipe… stab the mob with the sword, flanking to the left or right and crippling them with an axe chop to the legs.
Dagger main hand: throw the axe towards the mob, shadow-stepping to the mob then stabbing them 3 times, inflicting 3 stacks of bleeding/poison. (no name for this one).
like i said, not too much detail. just a few ideas on the thief.
I think the problems here all center around one word: communication. Ever hear the phrase “you can catch more bees with honey than you can with vinegar”? Now before the typical responses of “we shouldn’t have to because ____” arise, think about this. When guilds that typically do Triple trouble begin to set up their teams, they often ask if anyone wishes to a: join the map, b: join the squads, c: learn condi/block/reflect and join that aspect, and c: please stack on the campfire for a headcount. now, no one argues about this because they want the boss kill. the commanders or hosts ask, and people answer yay or nay. the majority, at that point, asks questions pertaining to the teams, if teams are set up, and when will it begin. At the moment the commanders split, people will generally go to their desired wurms, no harm no foul. and during the setup, the commanders will nicely give explanations of how each wurm is to go down. at that point, most commanders will even go as far as ask if there are any questions. hell, I’ve seen even the silliest of questions answered as best as possible. and win or lose, people have a generally good time.
now…
when the wurm fails… an interesting thing happens. people don’t complain. why? because it takesw a lot of coordination and everyone doing their part on the wurm to take it down and even with all that in place, sometimes it goes haywire. what you don’t see? is a lot of complaining or qq or anything like that because everyone playing knows how hard it is to kill that boss.
taking that into consideration, let’s look at teq.
Tequatil requires coordination as well. it requires solid defense teams as well as the pew pew crowd to take the beast down. and that’s just the setup. if the battery defense goes south, the event has an even greater chance at failure. if turret operators don’t descale or cleanse, the beast will make everyone have a bad day. and most who command know this.
but here’s where it gets wonky. if tag is doing the same work as the rest of the people there, there shouldn’t be any ill concieved notions that people aren’t doing their assigned roles. and when someone uses one or two-word commands, like stack, descale, etc, it’s not demanding you to do it… if you put yourself in that position, that’s what you are required to do for a successful kill. Can the tags get mean? yes. and that sucks, because if they are tagging they are automatically giving themselves a bullseye on their heads for people to rage towards. can the other players get upset? yes… because sadly these days it’s all about the win and the ap, not about the battle itself.
and i get it… all that effort to win goes down the tubes if the event fails. and that is frustrating. but Guess what, the events repeat themselves, giving us a chance to try again. and it gets frustrating to constantly see people hollering in map or in say or even in squad to do this or that. generally it’s because they see kitten and are trying to fill it quickly while doing their part. does this mean being rude and elitist is required? no. but it happens. and you can respond to it in two ways. first, you can ignore it and focus on what you are doing, and accept the defeat as a learning experience, or you can fire back, causing more drama and either making yourself look like a horses’ patoot or cause unwanted attention to yourself from the trolls of the game.
Honestly, I think the old addage in the game in general is the same at the bosses. Don’t be a _______ (expletive intentionally left blank), and that includes the guys and gals leading the charge as well as those following.
and worse comes to worse? if it continues and keeps annoying you? pick another map and another timeslot. or… start a taxi of your own and try to take the bosses down your way. that’s the beauty of this community.
Greetings and Salutations.
To the President of Arena Net, I want to thank you for the news regarding the latest changes. I am certain that you are making the tough decisions (and judging from these rants and raves and whinings, taking it on the chin) with our best interests at heart.
If there is one thing I do understand, it is that in business when a change in the leadership of any company, no matter how big or small occurs, a ripple effect takes place. changes in corporate structure, direction of production, heck, even changes in hours of operation… everything gets placed on the table. While most do not notice these changes as consumers of the product(they just go on consuming as consumers do), in the video gaming industry in particular, when a change in direction on a product is revealed, consumers of that product will not only notice, they will most likely respond in either a highly positive or highly negative manner.
no truer example of this response can be found than right here in this forum on this particular thread.
consumers, players of GW2, be they players since the beginning, hardcore gamers, or casuals, or perhaps even new players, are responding to the statements you made, and personally i think they are being just a wee bit unfair and unrealistic.
As a player of Guild wars and Sequentially Guild Wars 2, I have watched as the story of the GW universe story line has progressed. when it got right down to the meat and bones of the game itself, the game was driven by 3 things, in this very order: content, story, and community. In other words, your company produced a product that we, the consumers actually had the opportunity to not only consume, but add our two and a half cents to to make it our own. On this fact alone, every player… every single player of this game that is still playing to this day, should be not only thanking themselves for playing, they should be thanking the company for producing. Concurrently, When a business decision is made and changes are taking place in production of the very product we consume, we as the consumers of said product should not only welcome the changes with open arms, but we should be thankful that the product is still going in the first place. Of course, for those that aren’t satisfied with this product, there are alternatives. that’s why we have Coca-cola AND Pepsi and not just one brand.
Now all business talk aside.
If Guild Wars 2 was all about seeing how many legendary weapons you could grind out and acquire in a given time frame, and the game was item-grind based, I could understand the flame rants that are taking place here. I could even understand the posters that are stating that they were promised a complete set of legendary weapons with the release of HoT. I mean, they read the same thing I did. But Mike, I also know one truth that people are overlooking, and if they were paying attention in the past months or so, they would have noticed it… and I also believe this is why you made the tough decision:
In the previous months, in Guild Chat, there were talks that the core content of the game, that WVW, PVP, HoT, and Fractals, all needed a bit of polishing. In other words, the car we are driving is getting a tune-up rather than some new set of shiny rims we really don’t need at this time and truthfully can do without. Mind you, I fully understand the points of view that people were expecting a full set of legendary weapons and armor. and for those of you that are only playing this game for the shinies, I am truly sorry but not only are you missing out, but the Skritt have you beat.
The Game is NOT about gear grinding. The element is there, as with all other MMOs, but that, unfortunately for all of you, is not the sole reason for playing Guild Wars 2 and if it is I am truly sorry but you are missing out on the rest of the world that was created by these hard working men and women. The game has a need for polishing and that’s exactly what Arena Net stated what they were going to focus on and that’s exactly what they are doing. and… for the record, Indefinately suspending does NOT mean cancelling. it means that the development of legendary weapons, for the time being, is halted until the time eventually comes when it is possible to start again, and that is not in the foreseeable future. I would think that if Mike was going to cancel plans on making legendary weapons he would have stated “making legendary weapons as of this time is cancelled”. Instead, I think Mike has chosen to follow the path that was set before him, which is to polish the game… to fine tune it… to get the systems that need to work actually work, and to, if there is a Living World S3 coming, get the world of Tyria ready for it.
Forgive My flippancy, but Cut the man some slack and stahp with the whining about not getting new legendary weapons. I would Think that If ArenaNet tells you they are going to do something, they will. You need to simply be patient and let the company(a company you are more than likely NOT working for and therefore do not know how they operate) handle the business of what they need to do presently before they submit to the peer pressure of gear hungry players.Trust me. You all paid for the product and ArenaNet will deliver. Just be patient.
Thank you for your time and attention.
I’m in the process of switching servers to fergueson’s crossing, and yet… one character remains and I cannot delete him due to this bug. strange, though, that I was able to delete the others.