Guild Wars 2

The idea that the maps would have to be rebuilt from the ground up is simply wrong, no matter how much it’s repeated. At the most a bit of collision data would have to be added because there are actually very few facades in GW2, with the notable exception of Divinity’s Reach and a few other cities and places beyond the edge of the map. Anet already has a system in HOT which kills you if you leave the edges of the map in place to stop map breaking, it just hasn’t been fully implemented yet. If you want to see it for yourself, go to the Asura home instance and try to leave that map. You instantly die. Collision data is also pretty well implemented even in areas not normally accessible as has been found by a large number of map breakers and explorers. The biggest problems would be the main cities, especially Rata Sum, and I could see gliding being restricted there. Also jumping puzzles would need some sort of downdraft condition to prevent gliding, but would be entirely doable.

Since you can never glide higher then your starting position without updrafts (which there wouldn’t be in the core game) there is a pretty hard limit to what you can reach, especially since in the main game most maps don’t change in elevation very much. And again most buildings and other structures you would now be able to land on have collision data even if you aren’t supposed to be able to reach them. I’ve gone to a lot of places you aren’t supposed to reach through creative and patient jumping and I can’t think of a time when I’ve found a place that was just a facade. Some places are not very detailed but that’s no big deal. In fact I was shocked how much was completed of areas you never were supposed to reach. The map that stands out to me is the Eye of the North map. Back when it was easy to break out of there using teleportation you could explore the area around it and the map was remarkably built (with the exception of underneath the structure of the eye which required some work to get to), even including collision data and trees even though you weren’t ever supposed to go there or even really see it.

And honestly I don’t understand why people care about map breaking anyway. If you’re doing it on purpose then you expect to see some things messed up, and when it happens accidentally it’s more funny than anything else. The Skyhammer map has a bug which drops you out into the trippy watery world below on respawn that’s fairly common; it’s happened to me twice and while annoying because I couldn’t participate in the match, it didn’t destroy the game for me.

And while it probably seems like a small thing to some people, for me bringing gliding into the core game would be huge. I doubt it will happen, which is a shame because gliding is my favorite thing this game has added in three years, but to experience it I’m forced to stay in the HOT maps. And I’ll be honest, the HOT maps are starting to wear a bit thin.

I bought two early on and regret having wasted 800 gems on them. After three years I have 13 characters so there’s no way I’m every going to spend gems on more bag slots for another character. If they were account bound, even at a higher price, I would consider getting them. As they are now Anet just won’t get my money, they’re basically useless to me if they only apply to one character.

Which is fine, if Anet doesn’t want my money I can probably find something else to do with it.

Donari.5237:

Guys. It will break the map. Break it. Expose gaps and floating structures without foundations and two dimensional facades you thought were actual buildings. Thread after thread on this … it can’t happen unless they literally rebuild the maps from the start. They don’t have thousands of extra employees they can toss at this.

I honestly don’t think this is true because gliding will never take you higher than you can already go and will only ever take you on a diagonal down. The places where they’ve used two dimensional structures or haven’t finished entirely are usually places out of reach from gliding too, because if you can look down on them you would see the broken structure. And those things are pretty rare to begin with, consigned mostly to incredibly high peaks and the edges of maps where they are again too high to get to, even by gliding.

Tyria is actually quite flat and spread out so your ability to get to those places that you were never supposed to go is limited. Like the buildings on the wall of Divinity’s Reach, gliding won’t make it any easier to get there. Even jumping off mountains in the Shiverpeaks wouldn’t really be a problem; I can’t think of a settlement that you would be able to get to by gliding you wouldn’t also be able to get to another way. Rata Sum is about the only place where I could foresee a problem with this. But I think it’s exaggerating the problem to say it would break the maps. If I could get above a settlement and look down on it by walking the developers already had to make that a full three dimensional building with collision data and everything (with the possible exception of Rata Sum).

Vistas it wouldn’t effect much, and the 100% map completion would fix the few (none that I can think of, but there could be one or two) that could be trivialized by gliding. The jumping puzzle problem could be solved by adding some sort of downdraft condition to the puzzle that doesn’t allow the gliders to open, although for most jumping puzzles it wouldn’t matter much either (except it would make making a mistake less deadly in some cases).

As far as exiting the map, HOT already has a solution of a sort implemented. Twice I’ve hit the edge of the map, gliding where I normally wouldn’t have been able to get to. There’s a warning that if you don’t return you will die and then if you ignore it you do die. The same system could be brought to the rest of Tyria to prevent map breaking, honestly I’m surprised it hasn’t already. Most maps extend some ways past the borders you can see already, using the neighboring terrain without any npcs or enemies. I doubt it would really break much at all, and the worst exploits would be possible map breaking which isn’t a big deal. This isn’t a game where you can node or kill steal, and I honestly don’t know what exploits would be possible that wouldn’t have been revealed in the HOT maps.

I agree, it’s my absolute favorite part of the expansion and it makes me sad every time I go to the rest of the world and can’t jump off and sail.

I know it’s unlikely, but I would love if they opened it up to the rest of the world. The problem with opening it up seems to be that it would break some jumping puzzles that weren’t designed with that in mind (although many wouldn’t be a problem because they involve going up not down) and maybe some map breaking (although I honestly don’t care about map breaking). To fix this I’m thinking that Anet could implement something like a conditional downdraft that prevents you from opening your glider in certain areas. That way jumping puzzles wouldn’t have to rebuilt (which would never happen anyway since it would be way too much work for developers) and you could still enjoy jumping off the cliffs of Orr or Kryta or the Shiverpeaks.

I’ve been waiting forever for a miniature Snow Leopard Cub. They have a mini Snow Leopard, they have a mini Snow Cougar Cub (with stripes, not spots), but no mini Snow Leopard Cub. The model is in the game, they have them at Snow Leopard Shrines. Still waiting for a cub to follow around my main pet in game.

That no longer exists, it was replaced by the current Specializations screen under Hero/Build. You used to be able to spread your traits across all five traits but they recently changed this so you can only pick three traits and got rid of trait points in the process.

Happyfool.8951:

what happens if you have a shield backpiece and a shield equipped at the same time? massive clipping that’s what happens

Then don’t equip them at the same time. It’s not like you’re being forced to, and there are plenty of weapons already like greatswords and hammers and staffs that already clip through back-pieces, this would be no different.

Personally I would like to see more weapons than just shields to be allowed to be equipped as back-pieces, if only for RP or decorative purposes. Like carrying a ceremonial or family sword that you never actually use in day to day combat.

It’s gone. They did increase the range and number of people effected though.

thehipone.6812:

Calcanius.5048:

Stop the white knight.
Two people go into same shop to buy a bundle made out of 2 items, lets call the item BOB, Person 1 already have a BOB and person two dont.
Bundle contains BOB and a expansion for BOB.

The Problem is when you leave the store, a store clerk come running after you and say to the one: Sorry Sir, but i see that you already have BOB at home and takes your BOB away.

Both payed the same amount, How do you think person 1 feels now ?

This is the main reason people are getting so angry. We hate when other steal from us

Only in the mind of MMO players is someone else getting something equal to you having something stolen from you.

Better:
Nearly every day Customer A goes to a cafe that has great coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Some days he gets coffee and a sandwich, some days just coffee. Yesterday he went in and bought a coffee and sandwich. Today customer A goes in and just buys a coffee. At the same time, Customer B walks in and orders the same coffee too. The cafe owner notices that Customer B has never been there before and asks, “Is this your first time here? Our specialty is the bacon and egg sandwich.” Sensing an opportunity to create a repeat customer, the cafe owner offers Customer B a sandwich for free with his coffee purchase.

Normal world thinking: The cafe owner is using a promotion to try to create a new “regular” customer.

MMO forum thinking: Customer A had the sandwich that he ate yesterday stolen from him.

Really? That’s your counter?

If I saw this happen in real life I would assume that the cafe owner didn’t care much about my patronage. Every first year business student knows that it costs a business five times as much to sign a new customer as it does to retain the business of a current customer. If this cafe owner was offering free sandwiches to new customers while ignoring his loyal customers, I would probably be looking for a different cafe.

It’s not that I think that the customer stole my sandwich. It’s that I think the business owner doesn’t value my continued loyalty, and so I would be better off spending my money elsewhere.

Which speaks to the deeper concern, which is that HOT simply has not shown a lot of content for the money they’re charging. At announcement they said there would be three “content dense” pve zones, one WVW map and one new PVP map, along with a new class. The problem is, “content dense” sounds a little like marketing speak. Like when a real estate agent is trying to sell you a “cozy” house, what they’re saying is it’s cramped. Maybe there’s a huge amount of content that hasn’t been revealed in all the videos and betas, in which case this is just a situation where Anet has been failing at marketing.

But it seems more likely that Anet is like the Cafe owner in your little example, and it’s taking my continued patronage for granted. Those who are raising objections on the forums and elsewhere are doing so because they want to remind Anet that our continued patronage is not guaranteed and HOT has failed to impress.

Tirien.1326:

Pickles.9436:

So, although people bought gw2 for cheap to get into the game, they could’ve waited this whole time to just buy the expansion and get the core game for free….

Just wow….

As for people who bought the game from the beginning, we basically are buying the whole game all over again.

I don’t think words can express how much of a rip off this is…

Yeah 50$ for a game you played for 2-3 years and another 50$ to get the expansion and the core game as a BONUS.
You don’t even know what a rip off is, young one.

Seriously, stop calling it a bonus. It doesn’t mean what you think it means. By definition the core game cannot be a bonus if you already own and paid money for the core game.

ArrogantHero.4965:

People on these forums are complaining about the value of the GW2 expansion. I believe that everyone is titled to there opinion, fair enough. BUT if you have ever went to go see a movie when it first came out YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE!!! You say GW2 expansion cost too much but you will spend $10-$20 to see a 2 hour movie.

Pro-tip: Never drink and post.

Pimsley.6087:

K. Don’t buy it. If fifty bucks is going to stress people this much, perhaps they need a break from gaming to find better jobs. It’s a steak dinner. Buy it or don’t but stop whining about it. The price is the price.

It’s also the price I paid for Nightfall and Factions, which were full campaigns with huge maps, new professions, extra character slots and a long storyline that offered far more than HOT promises to.

It’s also about the price of a lot of brand new games coming out that offer me a full gaming experience, not just the chance to play Living Story Part 3 in three new areas.

The question is one of relative value. If I’m paying only $10 less than I did on the full game and receiving only tiny fraction of what the full game offered, then it isn’t worth my time. Your quip that if we don’t want to pay extra we should get a better job is childish: it’s not that we can’t afford it, it’s that we’re not careless and stupid with our money.

Also, you pay too much for your steak.

Vayne.8563:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

GW1 campaigns had two new professions apiece and entire maps as big as the base Tyria map in Prophecies. There’s nothing to suggest HoT even has as much content as GW1’s actual expansion had (which cost less than $50, btw), let alone as much as Factions or Nightfall.

But the most recent Guild Wars 1 expansion, Eye of the North, came with no new profession, no character slots and basically a handful of zones. The fact is, the other games were full games, and only Eye of the North was an expansion. This is, by and large, along the same format as Eye of the North.

And it cost half of what this is costing.

Also, you say handful of zones, and I say 14 zones and 18 dungeons. Compared to 3 zones, 0 dungeons. It’s not even comparable. You’re paying twice as much for HOT for a tiny fraction of the content.

Geoff Fey.1035:

I’ve been a GW player since Prophecies, and I must admit that this is the very first time ANet has done something that has actually made me feel sad to have supported them for so long… maybe they’ll release just the HoT upgrade soon?

This. Completely this. I’ve been playing Guild Wars for 10 years. This is a huge middle finger to their fans. I bought every campaign, every expansion, and I tried to buy gems regularly just to support the game. It’s insulting.

I guess the bright side is I have money to buy Batman: Arkham Knight now. It will only cost $10 more than HOT, and it’s, you know, an entire game.

chemiclord.3978:

No. They won’t. And they shouldn’t.

The price is right in line with what MMO expansions cost. Deal with it.

Last expansion for SWTOR was $20. Last expansion for GW1 was $25.

Don’t have to deal with anything, just not wasting $50 on three new areas.

I’m stunned. Eye of the North was between $25-$30 and offered 14 new areas and 18 new dungeons. That was nine years ago, yes, but inflation isn’t that bad. $30 in 2007 is now only $34 adjusted for inflation.

$50 is almost what I paid for the base game at release. For three areas and no additional character slots? Are you kidding me?

This isn’t a campaign like Nightfall or Factions with two new character slots and twenty or thirty new areas along with all the skins and skills associated with it. I feel like we’re being trolled.

Anet essentially killed whatever faith I had left in them. Three new areas and a new profession with no new character slots isn’t worth $50. I have better things to spend my money on. I’ll pick it up in a couple of years when they finally lower it to a reasonable price.

I love this idea and really would like to see Anet implement something like this. GW1 had services in those guild halls, I think it would be great to include some sort of statue/monument that the guild can come together and choose and dedicate in a place of prominence.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t missed the Living Story and the minuscule updates that came with it at all. I mean, sure, it was nice every few weeks or so getting something new to do for a half hour, but honestly I’ve barely noticed it was gone.

Rhyse.8179:

Steinpilz.5078:

Is this game meant for role-players or is it not?

No.

Quaggan backpacks say “hi.”

You know, that’s been complained about as immersion breaking or anti-roleplaying since they came out, but from where I’m sitting that’s just a lack of imagination.

I don’t RP much, but I do have backstories for all of my characters. One of my characters is a big hulking charr, and according to his backstory he was once a drunk pretty vile mercenary. The turning point came for him when he was hired, along with several other mercenaries, to escort a rich family through hostile territory. That family had a child with a pink quaggan doll. During the job, my charr character grew close to the girl and her family, but due to his negligence and stupidity the family was massacred by the assassins he had been hired to protect them from. Now he carries that doll with him on his back as a reminder of the failure that now drives him to be better.

So I think the Quaggan backpack is perfect for roleplaying.

I hate jumping puzzles. Fortunately most can be avoided, I’m sure there are jumping puzzles I’m not even aware of even though I’ve done world completion nine times. Although I did enjoy the new one in the Silverwastes…. except for the last part with all the skrit tunnels.

The one that kills me every time when doing world completion is Tribulation Scaffolding, in part because the battle raging below with all the npcs and particle effects from the shelling and explosions lags my computer just enough that some of the jumps become much harder than they should be. That and there are lots of enemies at the base that occasionally take shots at you. Vizier tower used to give me fits too but after doing it enough I find it pretty easy now. Doing jumping puzzles using a char is by far the worst, followed by norn. But once you learn the tricks they’re not nearly as bad.

Ultimately I’m creating characters, I’m not trying to recreate who I am in video game form. So for me its the same reason I create Norn or Sylvari or Char characters rather then sticking exclusively with humans. Every character I have, I created with a back story, personality and a particular look that I had imagined and tested beforehand. Out of eleven characters, six are male and five are female. I don’t think that’s particularly strange because none of my characters are representations of me, they’re characters I play, just like I might play Lara Croft or Mario in other games.

When I play RPG video games it’s a little bit different, because I find I become more emotionally invested when the main character is more representative of who I am and the choices I would make, although sometimes it is fun to play against type. Either way I don’t see the big deal

It’s not nearly as bad as you say, for two reasons. One, bear in mind that the damage does not accumulate on Rapid. So when you see those numbers that go 3000, 6000, 9000, 1200, you’ve actually only done 12,000, not 30,000. When you take into account that the skill takes 2 1/2 seconds to get to its highest damage, that damage really isn’t as bad as people seem to think. In fact it’s only a little better than the #1 skill, but it does apply vulnerability and isn’t dependent on distance, which is nice because mobs rarely like to stay far enough to get the full damage out of skill #1.

In my experience on a full zerker Ranger with ascended everything, I average between 10,000 and 15,000 on skill #2. That works out to be between 4000 and 6000 dps for a short burst with a ten second recharge, which isn’t game breaking. Skill #1 averages (assuming the best circumstances) around 3,000 dps, so not a huge difference unless you get lucky. Now bear in mind that can significantly change if you use piercing, which every Ranger should be, and you learn how to line up your shots correctly. Then every shot has the potential to hit two or three targets at once, which then will put your dps much higher, but that’s a separate issue (and ideal conditions are not consistent enough to really worry about it being overpowered).

I’m all for this, especially for my norn and char characters. The char fur pattern is almost entirely covered up and the norn have these great massive tattoos that are often completely hidden.

Worrying about whether it would be realistic seems silly to me in a game where a good portion of the armor shows a tremendous amount of skin as it is, especially since the exposed area is almost always around the stomach or chest leaving the most vital organs completely exposed. Major arteries are also consistently exposed, while the shoulders and ankles and wrists are almost ridiculously well guarded. And that isn’t immersion breaking? Some people find strange things to care about.

If we’re going to get really silly about it, we need to get rid of any armor that has a lot of ridges, especially any armor that conforms to the breasts. Ancient armor was designed to deflect the blade away from the body so most of the power of the swing is wasted and directed away. Designing armor so that it wraps around the breasts like a bra would be deadly because it would catch the blade and force a majority of the power of the swing inward, a design flaw that is quite frankly deadly. Honestly if anything it might be more realistic for female warriors not to wear this terribly unrealistic armor that directs the blow into their chests; the added mobility would probably be more useful than the critically vulnerable armor. The same is true although to a lesser extent with all the male armor with sculpted chest pieces.

Honestly opposing this option seems like drawing an arbitrary line when we’ve already crossed so far over the line of realism it isn’t even visible anymore.

I would like it, if just to save me from having to backtrack every time I see experience flash in front of me from a kill I participated in ten seconds ago and moved on from. I’ve had enough valuable loot drop behind me to fuel my paranoia. Especially as Anet adds larger events like the Silverwastes that require a lot of moving from place to place from enemy wave to enemy wave it seems like a good idea.

I can’t imagine it would break immersion. You can already gather a large amount of loot from a wide adjacent area without actually having to loot the bodies. It works well in WvW and because it makes it less likely we’ll miss drops it’s generally superior to what we have in PvE.

It’s always weird for me when I switch from playing WvW for a long time to PvE and remember that I have to go get the drops on my nonmelee characters. I’m sure I’ve missed some just because you get out of the habit of it while playing in the mists.

I’ve seen this too, I thought I was going crazy at first. The first time it happened a Son of Svanir attacked me while I was working on inventory. I attacked back, knocked down most of its health, and suddenly it started backing away from me like it realized it had bitten off more than it could chew. I thought it was hilarious. Definitely would like to see more involved AI across the game.

This is a change that should have been made at the beginning. At this point, two and a half years in, this just feels like a slight to those who jumped through the hoops to get World Completion in the first place. Most of us who have done it have done it multiple times. Not all of us were blessed with the best WvW servers, but honestly it was just a matter of patience and persistence even with the worst server, especially now that servers change more often. If you were paying attention, completing WvW could easily require no combat at all beyond the skill points, just strolling in while your world controlled those areas. The way tiers work meant that no server would be in a difficult position for long, even if some weeks were harder than others. It just took patience and the ability to hold a goal for more than a week. Lowering the bar for this achievement to appease those who couldn’t be bothered in the first place makes the achievement and title as cheap as most of the achievements and titles in GW2.

I think a better compromise would be to link the borderlands points of interest, skill points and vistas. Doing those three times over and over was tedious. I did world completion eight times which means I had to complete that map 24 times. It was boring and repetitive (although not by any stretch of the imagination difficult).

It’s inconceivable that in two and a half years someone would not have had the opportunity to complete this easily if they had simply checked the WvW menu once a day. I honestly don’t see the point of making a change like this so late in the game. But I guess everyone gets a star by their name now, so, yay.

For me the biggest problem with the whole everyone needs to “look it up on Dulfy” thing is that 99% of the content doesn’t require that. Even the new living story with added mechanics walks you through what you’re supposed to do by introducing those mechanics in stages. In almost every case except for a few places, looking up guides on Dulfy or the Wiki would actually take more time and be less productive then just jumping into the content and figuring it out quickly.

Dungeon speed runs were once all that were in the game that needed a guide. Now there are a few more, like Teq, Worm and now Vinewraith, but even with those the vast majority of old and new content is pretty easily understood, especially if what is required is a good knowledge of your own profession and skills. Quite honestly I enjoy encounters much more that rely on my knowledge of my profession rather than encounters relying on my knowledge of where to stand at certain moments.

I think its also important to remember that most players aren’t camped out in the Silverwastes. I know players who spend every waking moment farming that territory and know every encounter like the back of their hand, but there are a lot of players, I’m guessing a majority of players, who only stop into the Silverwastes occasionally when they’re looking for something to do. That’s my experience, I’ve done vinewraith maybe a handful of times. I get bored by repetition easily, which is why I’m a terrible gold farmer. Fortunately when I’ve gone I’ve had a few good commanders who made the event easy, but I can see how bewildering it could be to someone expecting a few more typical visual cues and instructions during an event. I doubt a majority of the game population is even aware of Dulfy.

You could equip any weapon in GW1, but most were not useful at all if you tried to play with them. They were essentially for aesthetics at that point. I personally found GW1 much more limiting as far as weapon choice went. Castors had to use either a staff or scepter/focus, Rangers had to use bows and only bows, Paragons had to use spears and shields and that was it; unless you wanted your character seriously kitten as far as damage/energy/bonuses, you had to stick with one to three weapon choices.

I doubt it will require an update to your computer, unless you’re barely able to run GW2 as it is. All the expansions/campaigns in the past came with some visual upgrades like better shaders and textures, but I didn’t have to update my computer to play GWEN.

Honestly, I would like just any elite that I could use regularly. The only elites I use occasionally are the ones that help resurrect other players like the warrior banner. For the most part elites in GW2 are so useless, I would rather have just another slot for a non-elite utility skill.

Or maybe I just miss GW1 elites that were the cornerstone of most builds.

I love PvP.

It concentrates the immature, hyper-competitive, generally unpleasant gamers in one handy section cordoned off from the rest of the game where they can spew slurs at each other while freeing up PvE and WvW from their toxicity and making a majority of the game much more enjoyable.

Honestly, if it isn’t an expansion I might go pick up Dragon Age Inquisition finally and give that a go for a few weeks until my disappointment fades. Really not trying to get hyped, but I’ve wanted an expansion for a long time now so it’s hard not to be a bit hopeful.

Filaha.1678:

Moldur.6275:

Knighthonor.4061:

Please no more animal races

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Humans are animals.

Too bad there’s a completely legit definition of animal that precludes humans that they could have been using.

Although for all you know, maybe they want more plant races like the Sylvari. They didn’t say anything about humans.

Or maybe they want mineral races, like golems.

Or maybe they don’t want any new races period, since they didn’t say anything about adding any races at all.

Above all, whether humans are or are not considered animals is irrelevant, as the person clearly wasn’t suggesting they add humans instead, as that’d be a dumb suggestion since they already exist. They said “no more”, not “take them all out”.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Read what you’re responding to next time before trying to make some witty comeback.

It was obviously a joke. You’re a lot of fun at parties, aren’t you?

I think it may be nostalgia. Or just a desire for an expansion. Personally I felt Factions was the worst campaign between Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall. I even liked EOTM quite a bit more. The voice acting was very poor, the story was dull, and I hate hate hate the slums of Kaineng. The saving grace of the campaign for me was the Kurzick armor, by far my favorite in game.

If there were to be an expansion, I would much rather go back to Elona, honestly. Although I think the petrified Kurzick forests or the Jade Sea could be pretty spectacular with GW2’s level of detail.

I would be fine with the Living Story if it were introducing as much content as Factions and Nightfall did. The Living Story falls woefully short. I was an early defender of the Living Story, and I took them at their word when they said they would release an expansion’s worth of content through it. I mean, I’m not going to turn away something free like that. But it just hasn’t netted anything close to what we had before in GW1. I think a lot of people here who want expansions remember the early days of GW1 and wonder why we aren’t getting the same amount and quality of content, and long for an expansion because that was something Anet seemed really good at.

For instance Cantha introduced 33 explorable areas, Nightfall introduced 34. That means in the first two years they introduced 67 new areas.

That averages out as 2.8 areas per month. So if the Living Story started introducing two or three new areas per month, I think I would be satisfied. Some of those areas are smaller, fair enough. If they introduced one new area per month I would be happy as well. Even a new area every two months would be fine. But instead we’ve had three new areas in two years. It’s just not even comparable.

That’s not even looking at the raw numbers of new skills. Yes many were repeats in GW1 (although being able to equip the same skill twice became pretty significant in a lot of builds), but even not counting the repeats, GW2 has added only a tiny fraction of new skills in comparison. Many of them were never used, sure, but a lot were, and every release significantly changed the landscape of combat in Guild Wars. I know my skill bar transformed with every release, adding new skills and building around new elites. To pretend the new skills didn’t make a difference is just wrong. In comparison, none of the new skills released for GW2 have significantly changed the way anyone is playing and certainly hasn’t touched the meta.

And this isn’t even touching the four new professions that were added in those two years. And the scores of missions and side quests and elite areas.

What troubles me is why we aren’t getting the same content. From everything we’ve read, the Anet of GW2 is significantly larger than the company that made GW1. And yet there is far less content. Is GW2 harder to produce content for? Sure there is a higher level of detail in GW2, but Nightfall and Factions both had beautifully designed areas with a lot of carefully considered and planned details, you certainly couldn’t accuse those games of being thrown together or sloppy. So why does it take so much longer? I think some people think that an expansion will light a fire and bring a return to the level of production we used to get in the first game. I’m not as optimistic, this just isn’t the same Anet that made Nightfall and Factions.

It certainly isn’t new. But it only happens occasionally because it’s kind of self defeating. I’ve been on both sides of this, both as the zerg hunting other zergs and the zerg being hunted. The problem is, and the reason it doesn’t happen all the time, is it is ultimately less rewarding (in a quantitative sense, not a qualitative sense) even for the side who is hunting. Usually it’s Overgrowth going after Frostreach, just because EOTM tends to be a numbers game, but I’ve seen it happen on all sides. The problem is, when you hunt the enemy zerg you have two things happen. One, each time you go back there will be fewer bags, as people rage quite pretty quickly if they’re being hunted. Eventually the side being hunted will stop forming a Zerg at all as commanders will leave along with everyone else, and once the other side rage quits you also can’t do the Karma Train. The K-Train depends on the other teams retaking objectives that you’ve already taken, allowing you to take the same champions and objectives again and again. If you’re the only team playing, the K-Train runs dry, so to speak.

I know a lot of people wish EOTM was more, but I actually think it’s a fascinating example of economic equilibrium.

Sube Dai.8496:

Rose tinted glasses…all of the ‘new’ armors in the gw1 expansions were redskins of prophecies…and a lot of the new skills were just duplicates.

2 years in gw2 still has more than gw1 did at this stage.

As far as I remember, there were no (or at least very few) reskins of Prophesies armor in Factions. Nightfall did have a few, but most were not. Only GWEN had substantial reskins, in part because it was basically the salvaged remnants of a larger game, and still there were plenty of armor that weren’t reskins.

I was really disappointed this ended up being an outfit instead of genuine armor. Outfits, due to their lack of customization and mix and match, just aren’t worth it to me. I know that Anet said they’re doing this so they can produce content more quickly, but I would rather high quality content coming out more rarely then lower quality content coming out quickly. Anet won’t be getting my money this time around, and this would have been a must buy for me if it had come out as an armor skin. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way either.

I think event scaling and the megaserver helps cushion the blow of fewer people in zones… and honestly there are always going to be areas with high population and low population, even right now. Events still work for the most part, even in areas far from the heavily populated zones. Seeing how it has worked, I have almost no concerns anymore about the fracturing of the playerbase. With event scaling and megaservers, the problems that happened after the release of Nightfall and Factions wouldn’t be nearly as bad, and I never really had much of a problem with them to begin with, because like almost everything in GW2, you can do most things solo. The few things you couldn’t, like dungeons or elite areas, were usually easy to find help.

Ever since the next chapter of the living story was announced, I’ve been troubled by a real lack of enthusiasm I’ve felt at the thought of running through more of it. Which bothers me because I remember the excitement I used to feel before Nightfall and Factions were released. I remember the anticipation was huge for months before, and the content in those expansions kept me busy for the next three months at least. And the accumulation of those areas, missions, objectives kept me busy for years afterward; there was a freedom bouncing between different goals in Tyria, Elona and Cantha. I know for certain that I haven’t played Living Story content as much as even one of the GW1 expansions, what little there is to replay is mostly annoying point accumulation. There just isn’t a comparison between the two, the Living Story is nice but a pale shadow of the excitement and content we used to get from expansions every six months in GW1.

Words fail me. They would all come out as kitten anyway.

Yes you can be reported and banned, especially if it is behavior you repeat over and over again. And honestly I hope that you are.

Here’s the thing to understand about User Agreements and Rules of Conduct. They aren’t written to protect you, they’re written to protect the company who’s presenting them to you. It gives them legal cover to sanction or ban you from their service. Since they are worded by lawyers working for the company, they heavily favor the company. They are just vague enough that you have very few rights inside the game, and Anet can really ban you for any reason it wants. If you get upset about the ban, they may refund you the purchase of the game but that’s as far as they are legally required to go.

What you’re doing would fall under the very broad definition given in the “Rules of Conduct.” Right in the beginning, rule number 1: “While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players.” You are both defrauding them and causing them distress. Yes they’re very broad terms, but you signed the agreement and gave Anet the power to interpret those terms any way they want.

The only thing really keeping companies like Anet from being draconian with their bans is they want lots of people to keep on spending money, maintain a friendly environment, and avoid negative publicity.

Of course those things don’t apply to what you’re doing here since you’re creating an environment of distrust and malice. If anything it makes Anet look bad looking the other way on your activity and keeping you in the game, especially with the brazen and unrepentant way you talk about ruining other player’s experience, even admitting to it on the official forums. Have your lazy kitten buddy buy the right gear and learn to play the game, it isn’t that expensive or difficult.

I guess this is reason #278 why you should never PUG. Sad.

It wouldn’t really effect resource nodes at all. There is already a limited number you can harvest in a zone per day, and most people who farm these nodes harvest the maximum in an area whether they are convenient or not.

Back before the megaserver, resource nodes only changed when there was some sort of update and you could guest on other servers. So when one server had a good cluster of orichalcum or ancient saplings allowing you to harvest them quickly, people would just guest on those servers for weeks on end to grab them quickly. It didn’t change the price of orichalcum much, in fact they were far higher than they are now, because now most farmers still grab all the nodes they can from an area (in frostgorge there are two ori nodes and two ancient nodes, and you can only harvest those four nodes once a day whether you switch servers or go to different instances, it keeps track), it just takes a little bit longer.

Manasa Devi.7958:

laokoko.7403:

Obtena.7952:

Apology from Anet will look like this:

“We are sorry this game doesn’t attract smarter players.”

I’m not entirely sure what they changed on the transmuation stone, or the exchange rate etc.

But it’s not something he could foresee. Take for example Anet made legendary into a skin, and many people have been screwed to make two of the same legendary. (eventhough they are later rewarded with a title….)

That’s simply not something people could forsee.

One thing I disliked about the transmutation changes is that I used to have hundreds of the cheap stones that I could (and very much did) use to keep my leveling characters dressed nicely while at the same time taking useful runes over to the next armor upgrade. All of that is now a distant memory, and my leveling characters don’t transmute anymore except for the HoM skins that transmute for free. Oh, and I now have more transmutation charges than I’ll ever use.

I’d guess the OP has the same issue, and is taking it harder than I am.

I never really understood this. Do a lot of people have a large group of non-leveled characters? I’ve leveled ten to 80, some without trying very hard, because it’s kind of hard not to level them up… In fact it seems like the only way you could keep a character around long enough to actually have use for all the 79 and lower transmutations that used to drop is if you didn’t play that character very much anyway. (Especially now, with all the boosts available plus WvW and EOTM, leveling is incredibly fast if you’re in a hurry).

In my case, and I don’t think I’m alone, I had (back then) 8 characters who were level 80. I had something like 450 0-79 stones, while I only had 2 stones left for my level 80 characters. It was horribly imbalanced, and I actually considered dumping the 0-79 because they were pretty much useless to me (thankfully I didn’t). Transmutation stones were something I refused to pay money for, so I just never changed the look of my level 80s wardrobe. Transmutation chargers are still something I refuse to pay for, but after using nearly 80 since the update, I still have somewhere around 70 left and feel pretty comfortable with that. That’s huge for me. (I did have something like 20 level 80 stones early in the game, but the drop rate for those seemed to fall substantially in the first several months and I used them pretty quickly across eight characters, so that the year before the update I hadn’t used any).

The wardrobe change was, as far as I’m concerned, one of the better updates that Anet made, even if it made the UI a bit more clunky. It allowed my characters to share expensive gem store and cultural armor and dyes, I was quickly refunded for my duplicates, and it opened up outfitting my characters with far more freedom that just wasn’t possible before. For an altaholic like me, it was a godsend. And seriously, especially with EOTM, getting to level 80 is incredibly easy now (and with the tokens you get for doing that, you can buy level 80 exotic armor for a quarter of the price of the trading post).

I think there is a problem with Overgrowth assignment, on both sides. When my server is assigned to Overgrowth, it becomes almost impossible to play due to the number of people in the Zerg. The only time I’ve experienced lag in this game was in an Overgrowth Zerg. When playing against them, they do generally seem to have an advantage simply because of their numbers, especially when you’re playing in non-peak hours. There certainly does seem to be an imbalance.

As far as the living story breaking immersion for new players, I think at a certain point you have to prioritize the experience of veteran players over the experience of newcomers. While I’m sure there are people who are still buying the game, they surely are in the minority, and their experience shouldn’t trump one of the GW2’s better features: a living and changing world. Especially because the personal story is one of the weakest features of Guild Wars. As it stands I think there’s already too much in the game that can’t change in order to maintain the structure of hearts and the personal story. Removing the few (in most cases temporary) changes made to the game like the destruction of Lion’s Arch would be a big mistake.

As far as SAB is concerned, I’m not at all surprised it’s on hiatus this year, but it does concern me. It has been one of the more divisive features added to the game. Last year the forums were filled with people complaining about it returning, although I thought most of those complaints unjustified. SAB tends to be incredibly popular with a certain segment of the gaming population who see it as nostalgic fun, and incredibly unpopular with another segment who see it as childish and a waste of resources. I never really cared either way, but its not surprising that Anet would try to avoid controversy by letting it rest for a year. For whatever reason Anet seems to be in defensive mode lately, pulling back on public announcements and not reintroducing controversial features. Not necessarily a good sign I think, and it concerns me a bit.

Guhracie.3419:

Taygus.4571:

What about this,
lv80’s get access to combined skill points, chars below that level do not.

That doesn’t stop you from making throwaway characters to keyfarm/skill point farm.

Also, thanks for the clarification about the home instance skill point, above- I didn’t realize you had to be above level 10 to use it.

But if the skill points were character bound until level 80, and then added to the account pool once you reached level 80, then you would retain the convenience of having all your skill points in one place while also preventing people farming lower levels to gain a few.

This is a joke right?

nexxe.7081:

chemiclord.3978:

With the way the wardrobe is now, I honestly don’t think it’s that big of an issue. In fact, I think you’d find a lot of players would be very angry with more unique looks added to the “ascended grind.”

I disagree. The more variety of unique skins, the better. I’ll never understand why people want to settle for mediocrity. I’d rather have Anet improve and update their armor collections, instead of just settling for what we have.

Personally I’m all for Anet adding more armor. The more diversity the better, I already run into too many people with my sets of armor. However I wouldn’t want it locked behind ascended skins. Add more exotic skins, sure, but ascended is too much of a pain for too small a reward. Because an exotic piece can be skinned with an ascended skin and vice versa, the skin itself doesn’t mean much.

This drives me crazy, and its bad for all armor classes, although medium and light get the worst of it. It’s a baffling because the stretching and warping of dresses and long coats always looks awful when your characters move, and yet a vast majority of the armor in this game has this problem. For medium armored characters there are great pants options but very few coats that don’t entirely cover them, especially for females. I don’t know why they were so pants adverse, GW1 didn’t have a similar problem, there were plenty of pants for most of the professions (except maybe the Dervish).

I would actually give a lot for an option to turn off parts of armor like the lower dress and skirt portion, although I’m sure that’s technically near impossible. There are a few armors that I love the details of, like the male Whispers Medium armor, but are unwearable because of the dress that is attached to it. Every time I want to wear it I feel so frustrated because the top portion is probably my favorite design of the game, but the long skirt that accompanies it is weird, out of place and looks terrible when you move. Why is anet so afraid of showing our character’s butts?

I agree that the new system is a huge improvement. But I will never pay for transmutation charges; for whatever reason they seem too insubstantial to be worth the money. So far I haven’t needed to, but that is in part because I don’t use the system very much because of the cost. I set aside a little money each month to buy gems, but even when I have extra gems, transmutation charges fall into the category of things I would never consider buying like boosts or keys.

Because of this, I don’t use them very much and haven’t been able to use them to clear out my inventory on my main. I like to change armor frequently, and so it makes more sense to have an armor piece permanently transmuted that I can switch out than spend money on a transmutation charge. It’s a shame, it would be a lot nicer to just have to carry around armor types (zerk, knights, etc…), but I guess Anet is making money off of someone buying these things. Either way Anet isn’t making any money off of transmutations with me, and I would guess I’m not unique.