Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

no its not artificial if thats what the theme of the area needs.

i live in a big city, mass transit is generally better than cars, bikes are better in the city proper. walking is effecient.

in venice, a city of canals, 2 person boats make sense.

in california highways and cars dominate.

if you want variation in map design that matter you must use different means of travel. If you have the same travel limitations, you have to design similar maps.

its not a cash grab, gliders are not an after thought in hot maps. they werent made to sell skins.

the mounts are there for the gameplay opportunities they present on the maps as well as setting a different feel and tone. they wanted the maps to be exciting and different, with new ways to interact with the zone.

you are thinking of mounts in other games, which are primarily speed boosts and skin sales.
these are map mechanics

i dont want elona maps to have updrafts and ley lines, i already did that in hot. having super vertical maps was cool, but having a horizontal map may be fun.

waypoints as main means of travel is boring as hell, its good in small doses, but its best use imo is as good respawn position.

opinions on which is the best way to handle maps may vary, thats why its a good idea to have map variation

We just have a differing opinion. I see no good reasons to implement mounts. I don’t think they fit into Guild Wars, and I feel that not having them was one of the things that made it the game it was, and showed a level of artistic and design integrity that I respected. Regardless of map design. I’d be fine navigating a large horizontal map without them, and I’ll be disappointed and upset every time I see one of them on my screen. I don’t have faith that they are somehow miraculously going to be implemented so much “better” than every other MMO out there that it will negate my concerns or dislike. I do think they will essentially be increased mobility speed with a slew of gem store prestige skins and accessories. I do expect the mechanic part of them to make their use essential. There will be parts of the expansion that you simply won’t be able to get to without using them regardless of your desire and or feelings on the matter. They won’t be optional in any way shape or form. All the worst things about glider monetization with the addition of being completely out of place and contrary to Guild Wars core design. I get that they will sell lots of shiny, glittery, winged super happy fun time skins for the rabbit mount in the gem store, with an additional up sale of rainbow tack, and I’m happy they’ll make money and be able to continue developing the game. I’m just concerned that it won’t be a game I have any interest in playing.

phys.7689:

point is different themed areas, different movement means

No, the point is artificially introducing a problem that the game already had a solution to in order to create a niche for the introduction of mounts which will undoubtedly be a massive cash shop success for them, at the cost of permanently losing part of the identity that makes Guild Wars 2 a Guild Wars game. Which they have every right to do, but don’t pretend they couldn’t have done the exact same thing with properly used waypoints and strategically places updrafts and ley lines. The only reason they aren’t is so that they can make mounts a desirable item and sell more gems.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

I think the end result will be closer to the junundu wurms from Nightfall than the traditional MMO mount.

We can only hope and pray. I personally think we’re going to see a storm of winged glitter ponies the size of an SUV, just like every other MMO out there. I don’t care how big the new zone is, I can’t see a single reason it couldn’t have been handled just fine with waypoints and gliders, other than pushing cash shop mounts and accessories in the gem store.

I don’t know if I can make myself buy an expansion with mounts. I don’t expect them to care too terribly much, losing one player isn’t going to end them after all, but this may be it for me. I’m finding myself having a visceral response. I am disgusted. I actually feel vaguely nauseous just thinking about those leaked images. I’m not even sure why I feel so strongly about it, but I can’t deny that I do.

Mean while, my asura engineer is over here wishing for anything that’s not pants. they could throw in more than one PvP aquired non butt-cape/trench-coat chest armor while they’re at it. But I agree, I’ve got those awful harem pants on my Ele right now, but I’d love some better options.

Thelgar.7214:

I will humbly suggest changing all soulbound items to account bound and eliminating soulbinding as a fix.

So much this. Soulbound items have never been anything but terrible and annoying. It’s a game mechanic that more developers should have the courage to throw away.

Yes, change it.

I don’t enjoy Tangled Depths at all. I want to be able to look at my map, head towards an objective, and actually get there. Tangled Depths is just frustrating trash. You head towards a point and end up somewhere else entirely. Sure, you can complete it all slowly circling around like a blind idiot in a haunted house, but I would say it is by far the least fun I’ve ever had in any map in the game. I think the most frustrating part is that I love all the other new maps, have no problems with the multiple layers at all, but I don’t just dislike Tangled Depths, I HATE it.

You know, the game is free to play now. Anyone with a personal guild really should take the time to register a second account and add them to the guild for safety. Save the login info somewhere safe, and you will always be able to recover if you should find yourself in such a situation, because as the OP mentioned, support can’t/won’t help you.

Then they couldn’t sell people identical skins with different shades on them, like all the people who bought white and black wings.

Devata.6589:

When huge wings came in the game the anti-mount part of the community did not go wild because of the clutter while they clutter the screen more than most mounts.

Some of the community, me included, HATE those wings with a burning passion. In fact, there have been a huge number of requests for an option to toggle off showing other peoples back pieces as a result.

Oh, and we don’t hate mounts because WoW had them, we hate mounts because they are tacky enormous stupid status symbols in 99.9% of the MMOs they’re implemented in. They’re tasteless and immersion breaking unless the devs work really hard to keep them as low key as possible. I absolutely can’t stand seeing people pull ridiculous 5 ton winged lions out of their pockets by magic that then disappear in a flash the moment they go in to combat.

If you seriously can’t live without that kind of stupid, just go play almost every other MMO ever.

Eddie Mo.7169:

Race specific mounts, but then that could be a huge problem when the Charr decides they really like the Asura mounts.

Not as big of a problem as when the Asura decide they really like the Charr as mounts…

But seriously, this topic as been done to death. No, we don’t need two story tall mega glitter ponies like every other MMO in existence. The game is just fine without them. Better even.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Power_Grenadier

that’s a pretty simple meta PvE damage build for an engineer, which is honestly probably the highest damage option you are going to find.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Condition_Grenadier

is the pistol condition equivalent.

Both are likely to me more effective than a ranger or a thief in my opinion.

yep, 64 bit, no more crashes. I don’t even bother dropping my graphic settings for world bosses/events now. For people stuck on in 32bit or Windows XP, my heart goes out to you. Probably time to upgrade.

Realistic minimum requirements seem to be 64 bit Windows Vista or newer with atleast 8 gigs of ram, as GW2 64 bit client is using about 5.3 gb of ram in the most demanding situations. If you can’t meet those requirements, you’re gonna have a bad time.

I can agree that tagging up just to show off is stupid, and people shouldn’t do it, but that hardly means anything is wrong with the tags. As someone who saw some really, really terrible commanders leading labyrinths during the Halloween event(I seriously think some of them didn’t even realize that they were supposed to be checking the map for doors and were just going in random circles) I hardly think the bar is set terribly high. I used my shiny new mentor tag to lead labyrinth groups as well, something I’d never have been able to do without it since I’ve been completely unwilling to farm 300 gold and then throw it away for a commander tag.

I remember when commander tags came out and Queensdale had so many tags running around that it was a joke. People will get over the novelty soon enough. Mentor tags are just fine as they are, and don’t need fixing.

I agree with OP, as someone who thinks most of the legendary weapons just look tacky, the only reason I can imagine wanting them is to skin them as something more tasteful and use the stat swapping, but without the ability to swap sigils and runes it serves no purpose.

I’ve noticed strange event rewards in general. There’ve been a few now where I was there the entire time and got silver or bronze tier completion for no apparent reason. I’ve had other events that I didn’t even participate in consciously suddenly pop up gold completion while I’m half way across the map. Not sure what’s going on with them. This was in Orr yesterday.

Draknar.5748:

OP was saying that the precursor crafting still forces you to grind in SW essentially. Which is untrue.

It’s only untrue if you value your time less than he does, as it is more efficient to farm the gold and buy the materials, and even more efficient to farm the gold and just by the precursor. Basically the new way is more tedious. They didn’t come up with an interesting replacement for grinding. They just added an option to grind even more for mats instead of gold.

I find it hard to believe that anyone would feel like mindlessly farming thousands of materials following some wiki node guide is in any way less boring and grindy than farming chests in SW. Especially when you’ll be grinding longer doing the collecting than just farming the gold and buying the materials. Basically, all the precursor crafting does is say “Hey, you know those items you want that you can only get reliably by mindlessly grinding out a bunch of gold? How would like to mindlessly grind them out for an even longer amount of time only with materials instead of gold so you can say you didn’t buy it off the TP?”

TL;DR You can only say it doesn’t take gold if you ignore all the ways the time and materials spent could be converted to even more gold instead. Pretending that play time doesn’t have a gold value is ridiculous.

fireflyry.7023:

To reiterate it’s better that than having a full inventory every 2 minutes and using hypotheticals to justify losing the bag mechanic is redundant. We are talking here and now, with crap loads of crap loot.

I don’t disagree with you on that part, but I sure wish magic find did something when I started opening them. It really does feel like they just made an end run around their own mechanics.

Eh, you probably wouldn’t like it. They buffed condition builds considerably, and the new expansion content is difficult enough that some people are swapping in bits of survival gear here and there, but it’s never going to magically turn in to a trinity game for anyone looking for that. We did get dedicated healers in the new expansion, but they aren’t likely to be needed outside of the new raids. So, if you hated it 2 years ago, I doubt there’s been enough change to really satisfy you now.

Item sets and build saving are literally two of the most requested features since launch. People who played the beta have said that it was regularly mentioned even then. Three years later and still nothing.

I wish it had been implemented better/improved instead of abandoned by Anet. It’s interesting, but between the limited weapon choices and few underwater skills with no real intuitive mechanic for handling AOEs and z axis combat it really just comes across as feeling unfinished to me.

I have to say the new crafting is disappointing because it doesn’t fill a niche. In spite of the argument that it fills a non RNG way of getting a precursor, we already had a non RNG way of getting a precursor, and the existing way is easier and cheaper time and effort wise than the new way. I think that’s the biggest complaint, people wanted an epic quest line that didn’t feel like a repetitive grind, the way collecting gold to buy a precursor does. Instead, they got a new grind that’s even longer. Not only is it longer, but the only way to speed it up is by doing the old grind instead and substitute gold farming for material farming. It’s just disappointing from beginning to end. If they had balanced the time cost of the new precursor crafting against the time cost of simply farming SW for the gold to buy it I don’t think there would be nearly as many complaints. Instead the question becomes, do I want to spend my time farming SW to buy a precursor, or do I want do a quest and farm SW to speed up that quest as much as possible, or do I want to just do the quest and collecting and ignore the TP no matter how long it takes. The problem is that the three aren’t comparable in amount of effort and time, but all have the exact same reward. Currently, you are going to be involved in a unpleasant grind no matter which option you choose, and one of them, farming the gold, turns out to be the least tedious of them. I know that I was hoping for something else. An epic world spanning quest, that felt legendary, and had a legendary reward at the end. But nope, legendary grind, worse than the old legendary grind. Lots of potential wasted.

Wasn’t the whole point of bags to completely subvert their own mechanics and make magic find useless. Oh, ya, it was. That’s the part that really burns me honestly, way more than the clicking.

Or, they could spend the same development time making anything else that had actual game play value.

Better yet, they could just make recipe unlocks account based and make the problem disappear completely.

yep, edges of the map just like in water, and for the JPs, I say you just don’t worry about them. Who really cares if it makes a few of them easier, they’re just AP fodder anyway.

This game just crashes sometimes. I figured out a long time ago that I could minimize how often it does it by making sure I had few or no other programs running with it. Seems counter intuitive, since I have plenty of ram and even with the game running there’s lots of it free, but for some reason if I have say chrome with 19 tabs open or something at the same time I’ll get crashes fairly regular. So long as I make a conscious effort to keep GW2 running by itself, I can go weeks without seeing a crash.

Another long time GW1 player here. I was disappointed in GW2 at release, but learned to stop comparing it to its predecessor eventually.

I was expecting something a lot more like GW1, and still think they made some poor decisions purely to appeal to people familiar with other MMOs. Now a days, my biggest complaint is probably the WoW influence in weapon size and design, and the tacky immersion breaking gem store items, but that mostly comes down to aesthetic preferences.

That said, I’m still playing it, and it’s not like I don’t have lots of other choices.

Am I the only one a little aggravated that we can’t glide in the old maps? I can’t help feeling like it wouldn’t really hurt anything, beyond maybe making a few jumping puzzles slightly less annoying.

fallacy.8024:

So we bought kitten expansion to play the same classes we have been playing the past 3 years slightly differently? Not to mention ALL of the expansion content is much harder, basically making the elite spec absolutely trivial as it is just as “strong” as non-elite specs.

So we paid for an expansion to play a slightly different harder game?

^name so appropriate.

Wanze.8410:

So much new rewards in one festival, you should be happy.
But you still find time to complain about the one thing you cant get.

That seems a little harsh, but yes. Of all the things you listed, the only ones that don’t look like sad jokes are The Crossing, poly-luminescent upgrades, and Nightfury. I guess you’re right, there are other, easy to obtain rewards. I suppose just because I think they look tacky and awful doesn’t mean everyone feels that way.

I will mention, as a long term, but perpetually poor player who rarely ever breaks over 20 gold on my account, your idea of what is reasonably priced might be a little out of touch with a portion of the player base. If you don’t really enjoy/force yourself to take part in the few lucrative activities in this game, ie dungeons, fractals, Silverwaste chests, or TP flipping, gold is a lot more scarce. What to you seems like really reasonable prices is to me all the gold on my account.

These are things that are a result of playing how I want and I’ll freely admit that, but for a game that is supposedly based around that philosophy it can feel a little frustrating to see “cool stuff” that’s out of my reach without ignoring that philosophy and playing somebody else’s way.

I miss getting cool stuff as a reward for being players and having fun at seasonal events like the old days. This is just one more piece of content that most players will never experience. Honestly, if they’re going to gate it behind this kind of RNG and price wall, they shouldn’t have wasted their time making it. File me as another player that was excited about the item when announced, and then promptly filed it under “never going to happen” when I saw the recipe.

Nothing time limited like these should ever be this ludicrously expensive to acquire. If you want mega grind prestige items in the game, fine, but event items should be cool, fun rewards that say “I was there”. Stick the fat wallet status symbols somewhere else.

Lagg.3960:

If need be, there can always be an extra Beta Weekend for people who have taken time off from work.

No, that really wouldn’t do a thing for those of us who have been quietly ignoring the beta weekends so we don’t spoil the new content for ourselves or waste our time in nothing really matters land.

freedomgeass.4756:

Ogden Stonehealer the last dwarf? can someone show me wherew they got this info?
i know hes the last dwarf of the surface but when did we get news on the rest of them being killed off?

It was actually part of the main story line for Eye of the North in the original Guild Wars. The last Dwarven king performed a ritual and turned himself and all of his people in to stone golems to fight the destroyers. In GW2 lore we discovered that the dwarves that originally weren’t part of the ritual later underwent the rite, by force if necessary, including Ogden. Also, they’re still down there, underground, battling destroyers constantly, without need to eat or sleep and with some strange kind of hive mind consciousness. Even the rebel stone summit dwarves all got converted to join the fight.

The lore is pretty definite on the subject, no playable dwarves, they’re all just the Great Dwarf now.

Orpheal.8263:

snip long uninformed post about horses being unable to swim

I am writing this currently from a horse ranch in Oklahoma. I have been riding and caring for horses since I was too young to remember. Horses swim just fine, they’ll swim across fast rivers with riders on their back. They’ll swim in the ocean, of their own volition, for fun. They have an enormous amount of stamina and buoyancy because of their lung capacity. When swimming they tend to rely on that buoyancy and just keep their heads above water, dog paddling to move across the water.

I’ll grant you, they don’t dive like ducks, although I have seen them lie down completely submerged to cool off. They also can’t swim forever, however, they have been known to out swim humans. Also, the length of time they can swim would seem to be a pretty pointless argument in a game where people can run and swim indefinitely without getting fatigued.

Long story short, that was an awful long post about something you don’t actually seem to know anything about.

keth.1836:

Fanboys make me laugh.

Like I said, with that definition there is literally no f2p in the world as virtually all of them boast ‘you can get that shiney eventually’……….. (five years later).

facepalm

I literally gave a perfect example of a true pay2win game in my post and you just ignored it to insult me and call me a fanboy. Yes, there are games out there where the pay for convenience model is so bad that it approaches pay2win in how terrible it is, this isn’t one of them, but even in them using the term pay2win is incorrect. I’m sorry the world won’t just let you change the definition of terms because you feel like it. It must be really hard for you.

P.S. You hardly see any actual pay2win games anymore because of how universally reviled they are. You’ve obviously never actually played one. Count yourself lucky.

SelenaDread.2814:

This is not a hard concept to understand

Don’t feel bad. Strange people have been trying to redefine and devalue the term to mean what they want it to mean for years now. They just can’t grasp the basic idea that pay2win by definition must involve items and advantages superior to anything else in the game that can only be obtained with real world money. By definition, the actual definition of the term and not their made up one, pay2win actually can’t exist in any game where cash shop currency is obtainable without actually spending cash.

It doesn’t matter though, these people just can’t grasp the basic idea. Some guy in another thread actually tried arguing that obtaining cosmetics through the cash shop made this game pay2win… I just don’t even. Seriously, I feel like anyone who misuses the term should be strapped down in a chair and forced to play Combat Arms for about three months, completely free. After three months, when the convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and induced tourette’s finally settle down they’d have a real understanding of what the term actually means, and how using it incorrectly devalues the weight of atrocity that it embodies.

No, enormous glittery war hippos etc. are just tacky and in poor taste. I love the fact that this game doesn’t have them. I don’t want them in my game, and that means not only do I not want to use them, but I don’t want to be forced to see them everywhere either.

If they wanted to add some more small, discrete mounts, like the three already in game, then I say go for it. Just keep them reasonably sized(not by your weapon sized idea of reasonable either Anet, actually reasonable) and not as tacky and cheap as those awful white and black wings, and make sure they’re just cosmetic, absolutely no speed boosts. A regular, plain old horse would be fine, maybe a Charr war bike, etc. So long as they fit lore, fit aesthetically, and give no measurable in game advantage I say do it.

The problem is, that’s not what you people want. You want glittery twelve feet tall pegasi with unicorn horns and sparkle auras that you magically pull out of your pocket for a free 100% speed boost whenever you feel like it. shudder No, just no, no forever, no for eternity, no times infinity plus one.

I personally love the idea of new races, I just don’t see it happening. They’d basically have to be the core that a new expansion was built around, with a new starting city, and a new starter zone. As I mentioned there would be an enormous amount of essentially repeat work for the devs to make all the existing items work with them. And in spite of them being pretty nifty, they would, as I mentioned, have zero real impact on gameplay.

I was slightly amused by the thought of quaggan or largos being added though. Access to every water weapon in the game and a bunch of elites, and one two handed weapon per class on land and one elite.

Linken.6345:

imsoenthused.1634:

If you all keep this up, this thread is going to get merged in to the purgatory that is the mount thread. Just saying.

And is that really a bad thing?

Indubitably not. Probably the best option, short of time traveling to slap the OPs hand with a ruler before they could post.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

-Why are all elder dragons dragon-shaped?

Well, I’m not sure they actually are. Mordremoth seems to be mostly shaped like lots of vines for instance.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

-Why were the gods humanoid (aside from being the “human gods”)

Because they are the race closest to gods, unlike the other inferior, barely sentient races that surround them, obviously.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

-Why do dragon minions take the form of existing beings (not corrupted, that’s obvious- Destroyers aren’t corrupted beings but still take the form of trolls, crabs, etc).

Probably just random coincidences of design. You build a low slung, armored, battle minion, and somebody says “it’s a Destroyer Crab!” You didn’t necessarily set out to copy a crab though.

risa.1382:

DX12 hype is just there to get you into Windows 10 so Microsoft can sell everything you do and type to marketers and… others.

Here’s your tinfoil hat, and remember, jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.

Racial skills, because of Anets standing policy of always balancing them to be ineffective fluff inferior in pretty much every situation to class skills, don’t really matter. They’re about as important as adding emotes.

As for the cosmetic thing, sure cosmetics are big, but why waste development time on so many OLD cosmetics? Any “new” race is going to be one we’ve seen plenty of. All that modeling and art work to re-make all the existing armors for them is just going to be extensions of themes that you’ve already seen. The only truly new thing you’d get out of it is the three racial armor sets.

Roleplay, I don’t know how many people are actually involved in, maybe Anet knows. If enough of them, which I find incredibly doubtful, then maybe the upsides of a new race would be bigger than the overwhelming landslide of downsides.

No, my bad. I actually hadn’t seen the new article at all. I was going off of most of the guesswork that had been passed around when the first screenshots of them appeared. They still remind me of the Mursaat design wise, but that article makes it pretty clear exactly what they are.

RoseofGilead.8907:

lioka qiao.8734:

We kind of do have this mission in the game. It’s the Quaggan rescue guild mission. Except here dumber than a bowl of tartar sauce doesn’t quite cut it. The quaggan I’m escorting to safety takes the long way around and attacks them like he’s sending a message to the krait. All the while im thinking: Just escape dude. Any way out of there, i’ll escort you back to your home (that’s literally 100 yards from the Krait base).

GW1 npcs were (at least in some cases, such as Jalis and Rurik) so much worse than those quaggans. They will Leeroy Jenkins to their death while you’re still finishing up the last mob from the group they just made angry. Every time.

Oh man, the pure unmitigated frustration I remember of replaying the early missions where you have to escort Rurik all around after they added Hard Mode. It was nearly kittening impossible to keep him alive in a few of them without gluing a protection monk to him for the entire duration.

Pretty sure they are Mursaat, not Margonites.

The problems with a new race, any new race, is the limited amount of new game play that it brings compared to how much work is required to add it. It brings nothing new mechanically to the game, at all. The only real addition would be the starting city, 1/3 of a personal story, and a whole lot of graphics. The graphical work of modeling every single non racial armor in the game for them is enormous, plus the three new racial armors they’d have to model. In the end, you end up with something that really has no impact on the game for months and months of labor. Seriously, all that work, and absolutely no impact whatsoever once you get out of the starter personal story and in to the factions part.

Why would they waste their limited development time on something so overwhelmingly cosmetic?

If you all keep this up, this thread is going to get merged in to the purgatory that is the mount thread. Just saying.

Almost as evil as which ever foul, putrid, lost and twisted soul decided jumping puzzles should be a “thing” to begin with…