Guild Wars 2

I really loved banners and am really upset over the nerfs. The cooldown thing I can understand and begrudgingly accept, as well as removing banners doing damage (boy did I love to bomb a boss with all 4 banners)…but range? I feel like banners are next to useless without some kind of range buff. Having the party bunch up next to a banner becomes a hazard in a fight with lots of AoEs, and thus they wouldn’t be standing next to the banners long enough for the regen to be any big help. I loved doing dungeons with my banner warrior but now I’m not sure how viable they even are anymore.

IGN: Vinryl
Thief Type: Artisan
Server: Ferguson’s Crossing
Experience with thief: I normally roll rogue/thief when I start an MMO and GW2 is no exception. I’ve been playing since launch, mostly PvE and sometimes WvW. 100% map completion, been through all the dungeons and some fractals. I like to play around with build ideas, because why would I stick with “meta” when there are so many possibilities? Right now I’m interested potentially making a supporty thief build, but right now I’m running one with absurdly high crit rate (it hit 80% once…can you say “overkill”). I’d definitely like to learn tips and see what other kinds of builds everyone is running! I think one of the coolest things about GW2 is how two people with the same class can play them completely differently.

there’s definitely going to be tons day one, like in any MMO when they introduce a new class or race. everyone’s gotta play with the new toy (me included)! after a few months, everyone will be used to it and decide if they like it or not, and the numbers will thin out to match the other classes.

Cacharadon.5681:

So does this mean that anyone who have completed up to the “light in the darkness” is stuck on the botched personal storyline? Or can we still experience the content we paid for even if we have completed the “light in the darkness” mission as it stands now and nothing else?

My character has completed all the way to “forging the pact”, before I put the story on hold till it gets fixed. Would the new changes be unavailable for all of my characters? Not trying to be mean or snarky but I’m really digging my characters ps and it kills me that a significant chunk of it is denied to them.

I was just worrying about this too! I have a character right up to The Battle of Fort Trinity, which was technically after the fear arc originally. I would really like to be able to go through that arc with her though! I’m not going to play her PS at all until this gets fixed, here’s to hoping the quests get inserted in front of her current one, so to speak…technically if she was playing the old PS, then she WOULD be on those quests…

But also thank you, Anet, for listening. Hearing that these questlines will come back has made my night.

I will admit to spamming the horn.

I promise I’ll learn how to play actual songs next time.

I hate the new NPE. I never had a problem getting into the game’s various systems back at launch, but playing a new character nowadays is just frustrating. I like the new level up rewards, but that’s about all I like.

The way to solve the problems that caused this change (iirc, that new players were overwhelmed) would be better tutorials or more helpful NPCs and early-character goals that lead to tutorials. While such things have been implemented, sort of (the dodgeroll trainers, the hint popups), the addition of locking things off to certain levels (often absurdly high) is ridiculous.

Instead of, say, only revealing vistas at a certain level, perhaps have a hint popup when a new player mouses over a vista on the map. Or include a new vista that’s very easy to get to in a new player area, and make a hint pop up once the player views it. Et cetera. Don’t lock it off, because new players will catch on that things are being restricted, and they will feel insulted.

The change I hate the most is weapon skills. Really? You don’t think players can handle five skills they get through gradual use of a weapon? That counts as overwhelming, too?

I really, REALLY liked how weapon skills worked before. Having to unlock each progressive skill through use made me get used to the weapon and its skills’ effects as I unlocked each and every one. Then I would switch to a new weapon, unlock those skills, and in the end figure out which one I liked best, because I had adequate time to use every weapon.

With this new system, skills are unlocked instantly. There’s no telling if a new player actually bothered to get all their other weapons by the time a new skill unlocks (and they probably haven’t). Say a player only changes weapons out once they’ve unlocked all five skills. Suddenly—they have all five skills on this new weapon! And no time to get used to them gradually. Isn’t that the “overwhelming” you guys were trying to avoid in the first place…? It makes no sense to me.

I don’t think this will happen considering your character has fully voiced cutscenes. that’s a lot of time and money spent to hire new voice actors. I’d like variety too, but most games that have voice variety as an option usually just use them for combat grunts and the like instead of fully voiced lines, like Monster Hunter.

I would like more options for the other details in each race, like charr horns, norn tats, asura ears, etc.

more body types would be great. there are some stocky builds but nothing I’d really consider fat, and especially not for girls. it’s more diverse than some other MMOs out there but it could still be even better.

extra details for humans or norn could be good too, like scars or freckles. seems odd you couldn’t just add that as another overlay, like the fur/skin/tattoo patterns we already have for characters.

yeah, I don’t understand that change at all. it’d make more sense if they at least tried to change dialogue or events that happen or something, but no, they literally just moved the penultimate quest to the beginning, creating a ton of inconsistencies. instead of being a powerful scene like it was before, it just feels jarring and confusing.

here’s my charr thief! the boots and the gloves are tier 1 racial armor, the coat and mask are tier 2 racial armor, and the shoulderpad and pants are whispers armor.

this topic is hilarious. the dreamer is probably my favorite weapon in the game. if you can’t tolerate some rainbows and flowers here and there, grow up, seriously. it must be sad to be so closeminded as to be personally offended by an item’s existence because it hurts some man-feelings, or something.

I really don’t want humans to get norn faces and vice versa. Just because norn can be seen as oversized humans does not make them so, racially. Norn and humans have their own separate identities, customs, culture, etc, and thus their appearances should be distinct to reflect that. If they pulled from the same set of faces then it’d be confusing and remove uniqueness from both races.

I agree with both lordkrall and Bruno. I have a feeling the future expacs are going to be focused on both one dragon and one playable race, but at the same time the sylvari have already had the focus…in the former human kingdom of Orr, no less!

I’m sure once the expac hits it will ease a bit, though. we just got through a revelation about sylvari in-story, but I highly doubt that will be the whole expac story. we have all these new races to meet and a whole new dragon to fight, after all.

it’d be ridiculous not to have a new OST. we already got new tunes with holidays and living story events, so there’s enough there to also supplement an expac OST. I could see a soundtrack having those new LS tunes along with HoT songs.

I wouldn’t mind a solo path for dungeons. I mostly solo in MMOs, or stick to people I already knew before we played the game. and oftentimes that number of friends doesn’t hit five, so we barely ever get to do dungeons. but as others have said above I think it would be trickly to implement. perhaps a path unique to the solo experience, so that multiplayer still has a benefit for those that prefer it.

Randulf.7614:

You can never redo missions.

However, you can join a friend on the journey (ie particpate in their personal story instances) and experience the lore w/o ever having to level a toon

To be honest, I wouldn’t say you missed a massive amount – the wiki is by far a better source of lore and background info. That will help you catch up. Also your story journal will give you all the lore highlights you need in an abridged form

agree with this! read your story journal (hit H) and go wiki the name of whatever quest catches your eye. there’ll be a more in-depth plot summary there.

I like what the new dailies are trying to do. Events in specific maps have definitely dragged me to places I had almost forgotten about, and only having to do three definitely speeds dailies up for me. But I agree that it’s prohibitive to new players, especially since I’ve seen Orr and Frostgorge Sound up there.

Also, I feel like the “events” PvE dailies specifically aren’t very fun. Everyone zergs on the map specified and events are over very quickly. It’s hard to get participation when there are many players about, killing enemies as soon as they appear. It becomes more of a chore to run around and hope to find an event that isn’t already almost done.

Thus, I feel like the event PvE dailies should be vaguer, like the gathering ones. Shiverpeaks instead of Frostgorge Sound, for example. That way it spreads players out and new players can get them done, too.

I’m just echoing what everyone else has said in this thread, as hopefully the sheer amount of people here will help you change your minds. The greatest fear arc was a great way to give our characters weakness, and I miss it terribly.

Also, please put the remaining story steps back where they were. I cried when I originally played Source of Orr in its proper place; having it so near the beginning with no buildup really kills the mood it tries to set.

God bless you, Tank Sinatra.

it’d also be a nice way to repurpose armor you love the look of but just don’t want to use transmutation stones on anymore.

I personally like the female charr voices. It’s hard for human female voice actors to sound deep and snarly without also sounding incredibly forced, trying to sound “male,” and just generally bad. It’s just hard to do that sort of voice when your natural timbre is relatively high pitched and decidedly un-growly. Take it from a girl; males are just always going to be able to do that thing better.

So to me they sound like a good balance of “still being able to keep a natural range of emotion” and “intimidating.”

As for the actual topic though, I like them. I think having actual Mass Effecty cutscenes might get distracting in an MMO. Plus, you get the nice painterly backgrounds. I do love GW2’s art style.

Set to Blow was easily the worst for me. It was the only time I died so much in a row without repairs that my armor started breaking. I play thief, and even switching to shortbow and kiting the destroyers around didn’t help much, as five enemies’ lava AoE would box me in, or I would run into the boss, etc.

I won when I was downed, after poisoning the boss and waiting impatiently to see if it would kill it off or if it would reset. Thank god, somehow I managed to pull it off.

Afterwards there was a hilarious glitch (probably because I was “defeated” when the next cutscene happened) where I was laid on the floor as if dead but could still walk (slide?) and jump and stuff. The hilarity of it almost made it worth it.

I didn’t find AC ridiculously hard but it was certainly a wake up call before I got used to it. for me the hardest parts were the mobs bottlenecking in hallways and the traps (usually in combination).

pre-patch CM right after was a complete joke in comparison. the difficulty of story modes is definitely all over the place.

seconding the idea of auto-turning off the lights. it took me a couple character recreations to realize what “glow” actually meant (thank goodness for being picky and redoing a character before I really used him…), and this thread is proof enough that it’s bound to happen to every new player who doesn’t know any better.

oh man OP you are so right, give me my xxtreeeeeeeeeeme hardcore games where I have to pour my blood and tears into the game in order to get anything decent! where I have to treat it like a second job and get no fun out of the experience! hell yes I am so hardcore!!!!

grow up. anyone who uses the terms “hardcore” and “casual” seriously needs to get a life. games are games. if you don’t like GW2’s approach, play something else.

without complaints a game cannot improve.

that being said, some people ARE being unnecessarily rude.

home instances could use a lot of work. I got really excited when I fully explored mine at later levels and found various characters from my personal story quests, but then my heart sank as all of them said generic NPC responses. why can’t I chat it up with these characters I interacted with in quests?

No way! This is one of my favorite features about this game. I love going to help my friends who just got the game, and still being able to play on their level. I always felt bored in MMOs where I had friends help me, but they were 20 levels over, so I wouldn’t get experience from what they did, didn’t get a challenge from the enemies, etc. I don’t want higher level players running in and nuking everything. I want to COOPERATE!

Levels matter in terms of stat boosts and skills and traits. While those get scaled down too, you still reap their benefits far more than a person of a lower level and it does show. It’s just not a oneshot fest, is all. If you want that, go play any other MMO.

The rewards could use some balancing, I agree there. I do occasionally get drops that are my level but in terms of coinage and exp, yeah.

The system can stay—no, needs to stay—but it could use some tweaks!

yeah, I’ve experienced this from a fall too. always funny when it happens.

aw, lighten up guys. I crack up every time I see a norn dancing. their expressions are priceless!

3 female, 2 male, one of each race. balance!

Anet is really bad with their news. why is it scattered across the Wiki and Twitter and Reddit? what is the main site for, then? if you’re going to have a consistently updated game, the information for it should be in one easy to access place, not stretched across various social media that the whole userbase isn’t going to check out.

while I agree that perhaps there could be more customization, so that any class could change to fit the role they’re needed in, I really don’t want the traditional trinity back. there are thousands of MMOs out there with those roles—go play them if you want that.

there’s no way Anet is just going to do away with the system they created and tested and balanced. can you imagine the chaos that’d cause?

but I do like the idea of further customization. minor changes and tweaks, not major overhauls, are the way to go to perfect their new ideas.

I feel like turning off the voices completely would make the game feel too lonely to me. How about a frequency slider? The levels of repetition now could be 100% or something, and maybe default is 50%.

I’ve also observed this happening specifically with weapons drawn and walking bipedal.

I love annoying my friends with this bug, but it would be nice to see it fixed. Same with the backwards pawprints :P

a related bug I’ve found is that upgrades disappear in the queue sometimes, though they’re technically still there and complete on time. I believe this has to do with WvW, as the upgrades disappeared to me and my fellow guildmate after we entered/exited WvW, but anyone else in the guild could see them.

yeah, I don’t know why they call it “light” and not just “no offhand.” it’s really misleading and took me a while to figure out.

I assume they’re just gateway skills for newbies who don’t have an offhand yet, hence why there’s 3 skills instead of 5.

I’m a fan of monstery races, and I’m also a fan of warlike, militaristic societies. charr just combined them into one great package! plus, they’re cats. cats are awesome.

the giant frustrates me so much. his attacks are annoying, his sounds are annoying (his roars haunt my dreams), and even if we defeat him, he comes back like every 15 minutes!

I feel really bad for Naegling. they probably want to just give up and move somewhere else by now.

I second the idea that there should be a longer amount of time between events. that’s bound to frustrate players, but they’d definitely seem more “world changing” that way. how on earth does a village get repaired immediately after it was ransacked? perhaps the survivors could even build a small camp outside the village where they would regroup and collect their bearings for about an hour, and then go and attempt to restore their home.

perhaps there should be short, quick events, like most of the ones we have now, medium time events that seem more world-changing, and of course, the world events where the biggest bosses show up.

I figured that was intentional; you could easily make a shoe model that covers the toes/makes the toes “disappear.” but instead their toes show. it does look odd, but I consider it a racial quirk and it’s been growing on me.

the personal story’s like a reverse tree. vastly different for each character at the start, but once you join an Order your race doesn’t matter, and after those quests your Order doesn’t matter much anymore, either.

I can understand why this frustrates people but…personally I can see why they did it that way. there’s one definite goal in the game (deafeat Zhaitan), so naturally the story would head toward that goal. also including dozens of different story paths and outcomes would be a nightmare to develop and program.

so yeah, I’d love to see more uniqueness, but I can see why that isn’t the case.

I love the idea of taxes. instead of waiting for a generous soul to deposit some money in my (small) guild’s bank, it’d be really rewarding to see money build up over time through our hard work.

I guess they want to take a screenshot of their character as they show in the game, but find the character select screen to have the best view? that’s the only reason I’d think it’d be a bother. a very minor bother, but still a bother.

have fun exploring! I’ve levelled up far more in areas that were under my level because I love to check them out. if you’re having trouble in an area, try going to one that’s lower level or one you just haven’t seen yet. since the exp scales, it’s worth it!

help other people! there’s no kill stealing and you get exp for rezzing people. even if you never talk to anyone or form a party, you can still get lots of experience and karma for taking part in events with others.

and dodging is important—especially for bosses.

the first healing skill you get as a thief has always been my mainstay. it has the most healing power + regen + stealth + lose a condition. I’ve tried the others, but have always come back.

I never had this issue (iron legion charr) until I got up to meeting Trahearne and forming the Pact. now every quest has a missing line or two, usually from Trahearne himself. Blackpowder in the Syska quest had almost all his lines missing.

also seconding this. it’s always good knowing who needs protection, especially in GW2, since anyone can hold aggro and an enemy can change targets unpredictably.

I did find it odd that GW2 thieves didn’t have a perma-stealth (I almost always roll thieves in MMOs), but I can see why they did away with it. with a more active combat system and PvP anyone can get into instantly, adding indefinite invisibility would need major balancing. I’m willing to bet they already tried it very early on and did away with it due to issues.

I chose Iron even though I rolled thief. Ash thief seemed like the obvious choice, so I wanted to be a little different. I figure every legion has every class, anyway—what comes down to it is how each class acts in that legion. I always saw my thief as a sneaky gadgeteer type.