Guild Wars 2

UnrealUK.9506:

Yes, but Malafide specifically said, in her last post, that they were inspired by Season One of the show Game of Thrones.

I’m not saying the GW2 writers hadn’t read ASOIAF, I’m just saying it’s unlikely the show was the source of inspiration for that.

It’s a shame they can’t actually write intriguing political stuff.

There’s so much potential what with the different Asura colleges, the different Charr legions, a chance to make Krytan politics interesting…but nah none of this. I literally see NO ASoIaF in the plot/lore which sucks cos GW2 could do with a bit of that.

How are new players going to be able to afford expensive cultural weapons now.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

They need to do what they did in Orr, on a larger level.

If you go to Orr, the entire region is progressive. It’s literally, get to the coast of Orr, get to ML and take Balthazar on the way, get to Lyssa temple and fix a few places on the way, get to Dwayna and fix more stuff, get to the last spot, get into CS, then work your way through CS and secure locations, get into Arah and blast Zhaitan out of the sky.

Problem is, hardly any of the other zones have any progression in them like that. And none of them influence eachother like how Orrian temples do, so yeah .-.

Maybe for example, while the Shatterer is up, Branded enemies will be found outside of the dragonbrand in Ascalonian zones, for example? That’d be a bit of a step in the right direction.

Shame that everyone just crowds in CS and Straits and ML are left as ghost towns new players have to walk alone through to get to the zerg of CS, the events unfinished and enemies untouched.

Eluveitie.1290:

Zhaitan IS dead. Confirmed (perhaps not strongly enough for some apparently) in-game and by devs.

In the video it says he’s been gathering power and that it has returned. Ignoring that it spawns every three hours… the first time we confront Tequatl, we defeat him and he returns to the water, as seen upon his defeat. But not killed.

Probably meaning all this time he has been harnessing power from something, perhaps Zhaitan’s renmant magic, magical artifacts in the depths or something else to be thrown at us.

I do hope there’s a logical explanation to this change and not just a random buff.

Of course the devs will say Zhaitan is dead if they want to surprise us!!

The title “Tequatl Rising” clearly says to me that the Risen’s power is increasing once again. Maybe future update will revamp Orr and extend the personal story with a proper final battle against a risen Zhaitan (raid-like content).

Saelune.5316:

People who dont like the silly side of GW2 clearly never met Tybalt.

Characters like Tybalt are cool when they are scarce and not overused, but every single thing in the world is silly at the moment.

There’s no “silly side”, the entire game is just “silly”.

Yargesh.4965:

Do you know who Spike Milligan was?
Do you know when he was popular?
Easy-going and fun is not always a bad thing.

It is when it contradicts entirely with the plot and setting of the world we’re playing in.

Gizmo.8623:

As I’ve said in another post:
The game tells one thing and shows completely another.
Says: World in peril, Shows: Partying. There’s nothing to support that Tyria is in danger.
Says: Humanity on verge of extinction, Shows: few centaur attacks here and there. Besides humans have exactly the same everything as other races – big capital, smaller towns. And the rest isn’t supposedly on the edge…
Says: invasions, Shows: Mobs teleporting in swamps doing nothing.
Says: Dragons awoke. Shows: Zhaitan. That’s a dragon, not dragons.

Presentation is horrible. We have beautiful festivals full of details, but one important detail is ALWAYS missing – that we are in Tyria on which dragons are real and deadly threat, that humanity is fighting for survival, that other races are enduring dragon corruption.
Instead “baaash the dragon, baash the dragon, bla bla bla bla”. We have Karka, we have pirates (yarr!), we have Flame Legion and Dredge, we have Zephyrites, we have Kiel, we had Evon. We are full of everything but it’s like different road on the crossroad which is distant from the road we were taking.
Why even one trailer didn’t show Scarlet, invasions, dredge, Karka? It’s always been dragons. Dragons with the power of enslaving all. Instead we have miss pseudo-genius aka “diediediediediediediedie”. And pirates (yarr!).

Agreed entirely. What we’re told does not just match up to what we see.

Divinity’s Reach should be full of refugees and slums, under military rule. Instead it’s a gleaming white city where they can afford to build a pavilion for a speech and a celebration, and the human lands in general should be more poverty stricken and bleak, in comparison to a maybe more thriving Charr community.

Raine.1394:

If you are asking for a dark tone in a game with Quaggan plushie backpacks, I think you’ve got the wrong game.

I bought the game for an epic story fighting against a world destroying force of nature and their evil servants.

I end up in a game with Quaggan backpacks and Harley Quinn rip offs.

inazuma.7021:

Geikamir.6329:

Yeah, I agree. The short story about Scarlet made her sound actually dark and menacing. In-game she’s closer to a Disney villain.

Did you guys miss the part in the Closing Ceremony instance where she blew up all those innocent civilians and the Seraph protecting them? The fifth bomb, remember?

Shame we didn’t see that in game, and no one actually seemed to care.

Geikamir.6329:

Yeah, I agree. The short story about Scarlet made her sound actually dark and menacing. In-game she’s closer to a Disney villain.

It’s not just with Scarlet. It’s with everything from the Nightmare Court, to Kralkk and Jormag.

The only truly horrifying thing I’ve seen in this game was when the Hylek’s Champions’ brother got corrupted and turned into a Risen…we need more stuff like that.

Confirmed Bachelor.3508:

Personally, I enjoy the humor and mostly light-hearted tone of Gw2. I feel like if the game was just wallowing in it’s own pit of despair it’d be a bit of a turn off.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I feel like the game has struck a nice balance between stark moments of hopelessness and small flashes okittenwardly delivered humour.

I reckon we need a dark tone, with flashes of humour. At the moment it’s the other way round. This would make the humourers bits far more endearing and actually funny, instead of just goofy.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I disagree. I am 100% for characters from the personal story returning to the scene, especially those who dropped off the face of Tyria after their arc was finished. It’d go a long way towards rectifying one of the biggest shortcomings of the personal story.

I think this would be cool. If they’ve got characters already they might as well have them return instead of making up new ones.

fnordette.4139:

I think there is a personal connection with Faren at least. With the noble human story line, he really feels like… that -one- friend who has always gotten by on having looks and/or money and has no common sense or real world skills whatsoever—but for some reason, you always have fun with him.

Honestly, I think that someone should have at least been -injured-. I partially feel as though there is an inference that Scarlet might have forcefully taken advantage of Faren (‘Scarlet likes to play with her toys, and she plays rough.’) but everything about the situation is such nonsense, its not like he’s going to have PTS or anything. It’d be cool if a character, I don’t know, lost an eye or a hand or something, and from now on had a hook hand or an eye patch or a SCAR, even in new personal story threads. Anything to show that it doesn’t wrap up neatly like a sitcom every two weeks.

Faren is a human noble storyline character?

Wow that’s news.

I mean, we get to know Jennah, Anise and Logan, if we’re lucky enough to be humans, but only the nobles get to know Farah.

They need to pick a strong cast of recurring characters that everyone can get attached to, like Destiny’s Edge + the major players for each faction/race + some background characters to add flavour and emotion.

Rhaegar.1203:

Who? I don’t have a connection to Faren, I don’t have a connection to Jennah, I don’t have a connection to anyone in Destiny’s Edge. Why? Because they did not bridge us to them.

The only character that I felt a connection to was the Vigil norn, Warmaster Forgal.

I think someone said it best, above: “missed opportunities”. I remember in my human story, I had a sister who I rescued rather early on. Where is she now? Why can’t she be involved?

I agree that personal touch is lost.

At least for us humans, Jennah, Anise and Logan have been around since early levels in the story. I don’t know how the other races must feel!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I disagree that GW2 has a dark undertone. It’s all pretty upbeat and light hearted. And many of the villains and evil groups in the game, are not all that cruel, and fall into bad-guy cliches a lot (including twirling their mustache). I don’t see a dark crumbling world at all. It all seems rather tame if you ask me.

GW1 was a lot darker. Human sacrifice, the realm of torment, the underworld, and war in Kryta.

I mean the lore implies pretty dark things but doesn’t carry through with the actual storylines and gameplay.

Yeah this happened to me, I realised I’d been playing with no traits for like 2 weeks…wondering why I was quite ineffective.

I also think a lot of plot threads should be delved into more.

Stuff in the personal story and dungeons like the White Mantle, Cadeceus, research on Dragons, Baelfire etc. just seemed to get brought up a lot of time and then abandoned. I want more godkitten it!

But yeah…darker tone please…the world is collapsing around the races of Tyria, humans are nearly extinct, Sylvari are in civil war, Inquest trying to take over the Elder Dragons…can we please have this reflected in the world?

What’s cool in GW2 is the dark undertone to lore and the dungeons – there’s some seriously twisted stuff there like that Inquest dudes Dragon research, and Baelfire turning himself into a god, and all of the Orr stuff and Jormah/Kralk stuff. The world is literally collapsing and going to the kitten around people.

However I think GW2 focuses too much on being funny and cutesie, which boxes of fun and celebrations and toymakers all of the time.

This world should be dark and dangerous – humanity lives in 2 cities, the Norn have been driven South, the Charr are struggling against the Dragonbrand and Flame Legion and the Sylvari are having a civil war. The world doesn’t reflect the actual lore we are told which is a big shame I think.

I like the event chain which leads into taking down Ulgoth, and also the fight against the Ogres in the Field of Ruin.

What’s cool in GW2 is the dark undertone to lore and the dungeons – there’s some seriously twisted stuff there like that Inquest dudes Dragon research, and Baelfire turning himself into a god, and all of the Orr stuff and Jormah/Kralk stuff.

However I think GW2 focuses too much on being funny and cutesie, which boxes of fun and celebrations and toymakers all of the time.

This world should be dark and dangerous – humanity lives in 2 cities, the Norn have been driven South, the Charr are struggling against the Dragonbrand and Flame Legion and the Sylvari are having a civil war. The world doesn’t reflect the actual lore we are told which is a big shame I think.

Daywolf.2630:

Soronthar.7236:

Last night I had a very weird experience: I did Maw with less than 20 people (it was way past midnight). For the first time I saw the Shaman moving, I discovered that it actually transform into something after some damage, ans noticed the red circles that needs to be evaded. It still lasted less than a minute, but more than the usual 20 seconds.

Same. Did MAW like 14hrs ago or something, about 6 or 8 people that responded to my chat alert. Soloing Teq for a bit with my fire ele. Stared at Golem pre-event by myself until I left. Temples contested for two weeks. fun-fun…

What I just don’t miss are the farming zergs rushing in at the last moment of the boss to grab their hard earned loot while I’m trying to log back in after a DC from their huge sudden swarm. Of course the same people that were talking trash to you a little while before when you were asking on chat the boss pre-event status and they calling you noob and all that crud for doing boss events and not zergling with them. Need more punctuation? …!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, yeah, 20 people instanced raids, I’m game. Long raids with good loots. Even longer raids, spanning multi-days/sessions but with the same people for each part, as in you cant join once it’s already progressed past session 1 so that people don’t just get in at the end to farm. And not just raids you start whenever you wish, but need to find a key (1 per raid group) such as from a related boss event or temple assault with a 1 in 50 chance to drop the key. Scaling off, but choose difficulty one at the beginning, then end no matter how many hours or days are still locked to that first choice. Not choices by vote but by the key holder who is raid leader.

Long raids with guaranteed Precusor drops maybe?
Would make it seriously worthwhile, but unfarmable.

Rewards should really depend on how challenging the content is.

Same as when you’re in a party, show where the guild mates are when you’re in a zone, so you can group up and take on content together if you’re both exploring a zone.

Maybe they could make champs become exponentially stronger depending on the amount of players there, forcing people to split up? But that’d make people even meaner to tag-alongs…it’s a tough issue.

I think ANet just need to balance everything, make Champions worth doing but less exploitable, somehow nerf the zerg-farm method, making it worth doing Champions in smaller groups, and just make stuff challenging, fun and profitable all at the same time.

Scrambles.2604:

hollowcrown.4872:

Scrambles.2604:

There seems to be a sweet spot for encounters—too few people and it wont work, too many people and it’s colorful snoozefest, you need just the right amount of people to hit the threshold of feasibility vs challenge.

While i admit there is something novel about seeing 100 people run around as a group— it really is cool to see that, but eventually you forget about that because you’re frantically trying to tag mobs and wade through the spell effects.

I’ll compare it to a 40 man raid in WoW. 40 people was the right amount of people to keep the encounter challenging while also give you the epic spectacle of 40 people working together for the same goal.

In GW2, you have the equivalent of a 40 man raid being accomplished by either 4 people or 80 people. The encounters run best when you hit the sweet spot of just the right amount of people, but there are no controls in place to ensure you have the right amount of people participating.

Too many people just ruins all challenge and is boring, but too few people really make it too slow/impossible, for example 2 people is definitely not enough to take on a Champion.

They should make bigger dungeons like “raids” as I’ve heard them called, when you get a medium size group doing a dynamic event chain, but not too many people, so it’s still a challenge, that’s pretty much the pinnacle of enjoyment in the game for me.

There really isn’t any reason you can’t do that now. Take a not-so-popular event like Karka Queen, organize i guild run (if you guild has enough people, or team with other guilds), and drop the Karka Queen.

The only issue is there is no framework for doing this and no explicit design. You can’t make a raid group (beyond a squad), you have no idea how many people you need to hit the sweet spot for fighting the Karka Queen. And I imagine when all is said and done, the payoff for completing it doesn’t compare the effort that went into organizing it.

So, you can do this in theory, but in practice, it’s easier to roll with a zerg through popular/profitable encounters.

Yeah but zergs aren’t challenging gameplay and mechanics wise. It’d be cool to have content requiring groups larger than dungeons with some complicated mechanics, requiring skills, positioning etc. that won’t be mobbed by hundreds of players farming it.

Scrambles.2604:

There seems to be a sweet spot for encounters—too few people and it wont work, too many people and it’s colorful snoozefest, you need just the right amount of people to hit the threshold of feasibility vs challenge.

While i admit there is something novel about seeing 100 people run around as a group— it really is cool to see that, but eventually you forget about that because you’re frantically trying to tag mobs and wade through the spell effects.

I’ll compare it to a 40 man raid in WoW. 40 people was the right amount of people to keep the encounter challenging while also give you the epic spectacle of 40 people working together for the same goal.

In GW2, you have the equivalent of a 40 man raid being accomplished by either 4 people or 80 people. The encounters run best when you hit the sweet spot of just the right amount of people, but there are no controls in place to ensure you have the right amount of people participating.

Too many people just ruins all challenge and is boring, but too few people really make it too slow/impossible, for example 2 people is definitely not enough to take on a Champion.

They should make bigger dungeons like “raids” as I’ve heard them called, when you get a medium size group doing a dynamic event chain, but not too many people, so it’s still a challenge, that’s pretty much the pinnacle of enjoyment in the game for me.

Do you prefer zerging around and fighting mobs and champions with large zergs of players, or the smaller groups of maybe 5-15 players?

In the recent invasions I’ve almost always had more fun with the smaller groups. Not only do the Champions have less HP, but everything is generally a lot faster and more tactical rather and just sitting there spamming 1. You have to dodge more, manage agro to an extent, and focus down the smaller, bigger damage enemies.

About 4 of us took down an Aetherblade captain in an invasion yesterday much faster than in the giant zerg, even if the rewards were worse.

Algreg.3629:

hollowcrown.4872:

This happens with me for almost every event, it’s pretty poo.

and how exactly can this be resolved? Conjure enough partaking players from thin air the second you enter the event?

Do something where the game doesn’t start until all 10 players have loaded or whatever…it works in Dota 2.

This happens with me for almost every event, it’s pretty poo.

sazberryftw.3809:

Well… it doesn’t really qualify as a dungeon in my opinion, and I don’t think it was really that challenging, but it was enjoyable. And let’s face it, anything beats Canach’s Lair.

A lot more challenging than zerging around a map pressing 11111111

The Dungeon was the best part of the new patch.

Invasions were cool for about 2 invasions then became a boring zerg-fest exploited by farmers.

The dungeon was challenging, and not easily farmable so it ticks all boxes for me. Fun content like this should be what you add, not over-scaled-up zerg fests.

Thumbs up from me.

Loading times seem to have been ruined by the last patch.

Lions Arch takes 5+ minutes to load plus time where your character isn’t rendered and the screen goes all weird.

Was completely fine before this patch, but all these issues started happening since the last update. Anyone else having problems?

colesy.8490:

Meanwhile, I get kicked from a group because I don’t have full zerke gear, then flamed.

Quite the opposite in my experience.

People don’t tend to like running dungeons with leeches.

Thanks for calling me a leech. And anyway I was just zerging around in Cursed Shore.

And are you seriously advocating flaming because someone doesn’t give in and decides to try out a different stat build? That’s ridiculous.

Grey Warden.2983:

hollowcrown.4872:

So I had my first experience of Cursed Shore today.

Everyones always posting “lfg farm” so I joined someone group and we got involved with a 100 person massive zerg. They asked to see my equipment so I pinged them my gear. I haven’t been playing long so I’ve got mainly rares with a couple of exotics, trying to get better gear obviously, hence me looking for a group.

They saw I didn’t have full zerker gear, called me a noob, kicked me, and started flaming me in private chat calling me a noob.

Seriously? This farming zerg thing has just gone too far. I reported them but I feel like the previously friendly GW2 community has become obsessed with farming, profits, and are no longer incorporating new players in their madness for farming.

Please fix this ANet, I beg you.

I don’t believe a word of that.
I have farmed that event chain from the start and never once had anyone ask for my gear stats, in fact, I have never seen anyone ask that in map chat. BTW, I do not and never have run full zerker gear, I could but I don’t need it.
All you had to do find another party and join them.
Why didn’t you do that instead of smearing every one farming that event chain?

What reason would I have to make it up and then post about it?

sub par.5278:

If I may make a random observation, when randomly joining a party for farming purposes, I suddenly become more protective of my team mates even though they are as much strangers to me as everyone else. I find myself standing in fire fields trying to revive someone thinking “Oh no! Not XxxPwns, he’s my friend!*” Kudos to Anet for fostering a psychology of selflessness. Am I alone here ?

*made up name for exemplary purposes, not meant to refer to an actual player

Meanwhile, I get kicked from a group because I don’t have full zerke gear, then flamed.

Quite the opposite in my experience.

So I had my first experience of Cursed Shore today.

Everyones always posting “lfg farm” so I joined someone group and we got involved with a 100 person massive zerg. They asked to see my equipment so I pinged them my gear. I haven’t been playing long so I’ve got mainly rares with a couple of exotics, trying to get better gear obviously, hence me looking for a group.

They saw I didn’t have full zerker gear, called me a noob, kicked me, and started flaming me in private chat calling me a noob.

Seriously? This farming zerg thing has just gone too far. I reported them but I feel like the previously friendly GW2 community has become obsessed with farming, profits, and are no longer incorporating new players in their madness for farming.

Please fix this ANet, I beg you.

Unable to see other players except for other observers so no spying goes on, sort of like a ghost, so people can go and do their map completion without the risk of being ganked, which is horribly annoying.

I like Desolation, every guild I’ve joined has been very friendly and I’ve often just got in random groups doing events and chatting and it’s been fun.

Here is my warrior in a load of random gear, some Vigil, some AC, and some random loot.

Why can’t they normalise loot depending on your current level and make the event chain simpler in Straits?

Since I’ve only just go to Orr, in the current state the game is in i doubt I’m ever going to do a full event chain in Straits or Malchor.

So I finally made my way through Orr today to Cursed Shore for the first time.

Straits is full of failing events, swarmed with Risen mobs very tough to kill and champions impossible to kill.

Malchor’s is an eerie area devoid of players utterly full of dead Pact members, lost to the undead and Risen chickens.

Then you go to CS and it’s just FULL of people. Zergs farming champions, it was quite a cheery atmosphere deep in Orr compared to the depressing, deserted previous two areas.

How should ANet get people out of CS and back into the other areas of Orr where events simply aren’t being completed?

dronzer.8392:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

easily soloable

Everyone has a different definition of this this term, something also tells me that you’ve went through the story on a heavy armor class character, the light armor class is such a different take on the game where you do die so much more often in the story.

The problem is not so much with the difficulty but more with ANET’s design where they like to overwhelm you with numbers, be it health %, damage % or sheer numbers – this has existed in the original GW too.

What also adds to the problem is that in this game you never ever really feel powerful, unlike traditional mmorpgs you can over level, and in each new zone/stage you visit you tend to more powerful than your foes – with the scaling (which makes you significantly more weaker if you over level and don’t wear that current level gear), you fall over much more often and frequent that you’d expect… especially when the NPC’s call you “hero” and given you their highest rank in the 3 factions….

What adds to the problem is “legendary” heroes like Caithe and Rytlock lying knocked out for 80% of a fight whilst I kite around an enemy. I am definitely the most powerful person in the world when the heroes of the fabled Destiny’s Edge can’t stay alive.

Personaly story should’ve been more about Destiny’s Edge than Trahearne, because we’d all been with our respective Destiny’s Edger since level 1.

I think world exploration is fine because it gets people back into the world.

However WvW shouldn’t really be included in this because people going in to scout out points of interests, vistas etc. will just annoy the WvWers who want them in the zerg.

Story mode difficulty is a joke.

The battles range from trivial and too short, to being sent against tides and tides of mobs on your own who output ridiculous damage and CC effects with horribly high HP so the entire thing is a boring grind fest.

It’s not helped by the fact if you die, you can just res and try again, and you might as well do that because the enemies don’t reset in the instance so you can go over and over again even if all your gear breaks.

The companions range from overpowered to being completely useless throughout the entire battle, dying too quickly and being pointless to res cos they’ll die in 20 seconds anyway.

The difficulty needs to be nerfed and the companions made stronger in some sections so we don’t have to ask for help from a friend because it’s PERSONAL story.

So loads of people seem to port in to the Straits of Devastation to do the Balthazar chain of events, ask if anyones around, there’s a lot of un-done events but the main chain isn’t up yet, and then just leave, and often complain about how no one is in the area.

Why don’t people group up and do the events? I’m on my first time going through Orr and I’m wondering if I’ll ever get some of these content done because no one wants to do the earlier events in the chains, just the ones with big loot reward.

Navi.7142:

jamesrobert.5087:

Once per day, per account, you get the guaranteed rare chest (the one that pops up in the corner of your screen)

Once per day, per character, you get the boss chest (the 3D one that’s typically filled with salvage fodder).

This. And there has to be a reset that the same character will get the chest again (= you can only get the big chest once a day per character).

If you decide to camp your character at a boss and do nothing in between (no pres, no other events) it is highly likely that you will not receive the chests the next time you fight the same boss (after a reset).

EDIT: Made clearer what I was talking about.

Oh I get it…so it’s really a waste of time unless you’re levelling to do a boss more than once per day?

I got the pop up 2D chest the first time as well as the 3D one, but the second time I didn’t get either.

Oh so you should be able to get a chest filed with greens and blues etc. multiple times but only the guaranteed rare should spawn once?

Since when? I swear you could get the chest more than once a day in the past…I remember doing Shatterer more than once in a day and getting more chests.

Maybe i’ve been away too long