Guild Wars 2

John.8507:

A similar thread was started two years ago

here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Color-Blind-Mode-merged/first

Gaile Gray.6029:

I have confidence that the team will be looking at the benefits as well as the “cost” in time and resources in relation to this situation. Members of our own team are colorblind and are able to offer suggestions on this topic.

And thanks for the updated figure, Siphaed.

Maybe someday, as it would be very good to have this in game.

Meanwhile they keep making things worse, like with the extra colours for commander tags…

Rauderi.8706:

marelooke.9708:

But seriously, I feel that many epic hanging threads were pulled into LS3, got rather superficial treatment and then they grabbed something else from the “hanging threads”-bag just to try to outdo the previous reveal (Omg, White Mantle! Omg, Lazarus! Omg, Caudecus!, Omg, Balthazar! Omg, Livia!). I really hope this isn’t going to be a continuing trend and that the story gets some room to breathe in LS4 (and PoF, of course, but I’m slightly less worried about an expansion than the episodic nature of the Living World).

As someone who didn’t play Guild Wars, it feels like the constant reveals were a checklist titled:

How Many Plot Points Can We Kill/“Resolve” In One Season?

I didn’t know who these characters were, except Caudacus, and his resolution came with the death of another loose end that felt really ungratifying.

So maybe that’s part of it. The deaths feel cheap. Belinda, Demmi, Lazarus . . These “surprise” deaths are just narratively unnecessary, meant to provoke angst or tie up loose plot threads that don’t need resolution, rather than taking a single plotline to completion.

Yup, revisiting plotlines without actually resolving them in a final way is also an option, many of the resultions were just plain unnecessary.
Eg. I’d much have preferred if Lazarus had stayed a (possible) threat after the Balthazar reveal thing rather than the entirely cheap “resolution” we had in Ep6. Especially for us raiders who have seen the power of the Mursaat on full terrifying display and then we just resurrect one and kill it like any other mook, because we can… I mean, seriously, which sane PC would take that risk? After going through the raids I sure as hell would never have agreed to resurrect Lazarus. (most definitely not with some wise-cracking jerk of a stranger my PC had never heard of before)

My main gripe with Living World content is that Anet actually sees it as a TV series (as they themselves stated in a recent interview) and shoehorn “epic reveals”, “epic bossfights”, “epic drama” in at the end of every episode, I feel this has become decidedly much worse in LS3 when compared to LS2 (which I’m in the process of replaying).

I don’t usually watch TV series for this reason (the constant cliffhangers and mounting over-the-top-ness just to outdo previous episodes’ “epic moments” tends to get on my nerves. Especially given how characters tend to act totally out of character (or just tend to act unlike any sane person) just to the writers can shoehorn something in (“Wassup Braham?”)

I mean, at this rate I’m expecting LS4 to be fighting Balthazar riding a sharkkarka with laserbeam eyes mounted on top of Kralkatorrik while Marjory and Kasmeer are having a fighting divorce (or Balthy runs off into the sunrise with Marjory/Kasmeer who, shocking reveal, is actually bi gasp) and Braham is still crying in a corner over Eir’s death listening to cliché Goth music all while Taimi’s experiments with bloodstone drugs are quickly spiraling out of control. Rox and Rytlock are fighting some epic war in the Mists against Menzies and/or a not-so-dead-after-all Abaddon (gasp). All while the PC is playing fetch with Aurene.

But seriously, I feel that many epic hanging threads were pulled into LS3, got rather superficial treatment and then they grabbed something else from the “hanging threads”-bag just to try to outdo the previous reveal (Omg, White Mantle! Omg, Lazarus! Omg, Caudecus!, Omg, Balthazar! Omg, Livia!). I really hope this isn’t going to be a continuing trend and that the story gets some room to breathe in LS4 (and PoF, of course, but I’m slightly less worried about an expansion than the episodic nature of the Living World).

There’s barely any story in the raids. Unlike in WoW’s old raids (no idea about the new ones) where they basically wrapped up or continued the single player story. Even the white mantle stuff is so minor that they don’t tell you anything you aren’t told through the Living World (I mean, I do hope most people figured out that the White Mantle was trying to revive Lazarus, which is all I’ve gleamed from the raid story so far.)

Which is a good thing imho, this way as Anet doesn’t have to bother doing the extra work of making an “easy” version of the raids (which they probably don’t have the manpower for anyway) as the only thing you are missing out on is the bossfights and some minor ambient dialogue.

People that think the raids somehow plug the plentiful holes in the LS3 narrative are in for a huge disappointment.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

synergy.5809:

i for one will not use discord for privacy reasons

I recommend that you remove your probably modern intel processor, and uninstall your copy of either windows or OSX. And you should probably unplug your router.

Oh, and never use your phone. In fact, you should probably avoid VOIP entirely, at least for another few years.

I recommend getting an old thinkpad, you know. One of the ones that has been fully reverse engineered. And running OpenBSD on it.

Oh, and by the way.

The TeamSpeak privacy policy isn’t the only privacy policy you agree to when using TeamSpeak.

The server host? You know, the third party server host?

The one that stores & transfers all your messages & VOIP communication?

Yeah. Every server you hop onto is a gamble as to whether or not they sell your information.

Have fun with that!

That’s why you host your own Mumble server on that OpenBSD laptop, duh.

FWIW gems bought “normally” (iow not part of the expansion) are delivered as soon as payment is processed (which is as good as “instantly” in most cases). Not really sure why these are an exception tbh, especially since I used the same means to pay for them.

Squee.7829:

The mounts aren’t useless in the zone we got them in. They added a unique way around uniquely built challenges.
They are useless in core Tyria, for all the reasons you mentioned, but whatever.

Actually they are not. They’ll allow a great many classes to free up utility slots/traits for more useful ones than mobility. Some even can stop gearing to just not be slow as molasses on top of the above (Guardians represent)

After playing the demo for a bit (only played a few hours to not spoil too much) I quickly started missing the mount when I went back to HoT Tyria…

Consider this naysayer converted (that said, I do really hope they will be disabled in cities)

I started GW1 mostly because of lore reasons (only figured out the link rewards when researching what/how to buy it and consider those just a bonus)

The game is definitely still very much playable, just follow one of the guides on builds and how to acquire/set-up your henchmen and you should be good.

Also don’t make the mistake of starting with Prophecies, as I did, while the start is really cool (pre-Searing Ascalon!) and definitely worth playing through (if only to meet Logan’s ancestor) the campaign is really really slow (quests give very little XP compared to the other campaigns) and it also very much shows it’s the oldest of the bunch (the landscapes early on, after the Searing, being extremely bleak and monotonous doesn’t help either)

That said, if the graphics, the fairly “static” (almost all skills root you in place) and inability to jump are turn-offs then I’d advise not to bother. If the only reason to play through is for the rewards then I don’t think it’s worth it, the game is huge after all and if you’re not going to enjoy the time spent on it…

Zylonite.5913:

Another Ex-WoW elitist player complaining why the mobs don’t one shot him…

That statement doesn’t even make sense since WoW’s open world content has been face-roll since Wrath of the Lich King. (unless the last expansions suddenly took a 180 degrees turn and made stuff hard again, which I rather doubt)

That said, personally I wouldn’t mind if the new expansion started a bit “easier” introducing new mechanics (like the barrier). HoT really threw you in at the deep end and people coming from PS were in for a very rude awakening. Though, honestly, I’m not sure if PoF is the right place to “ease” people into the more challenging content since the majority will (try to) play through HoT first anyway. I know my sister will likely go PS -> LS2 -> HoT -> LS3 -> PoF, but then again we’re both cRPG players, so we do care about the story…

Personally I wish they’d add something between PS and LS2 to gradually ramp up the difficulty to avoid “HoT-shock” and, y’know, maybe bridge the story-gap between those two bits as well since the summary of LS1 is woefully insufficient. I really think this would be healthy for player retention, and as such, the longevity of the game as well, but I digress…

nicknamenick.2437:

2. Uuh they are mounts.. what should they do more? A mobile trade market??

Errr, WoW has mounts like that (well, at least mounts including vendors), so be careful of what you wish for But I suspect you are well aware of that fact

nicknamenick.2437:

4 flying?? If WoW could redo that they would have removed it from there game instandly..

I like to think so too, it absolutely killed the exploration aspect of the game and made it far too easy for people to just rush through content (fly to objective, dismount, do stuff, mount up again, fly back skipping every single mob/hinderness inbetween…). Not to mention it absolutely killed world PvP (if you were into that sort of thing, that is)

flog.3485:

Actually it is possible to get the keys without doing the heart. Personally I completed the little achievement of opening 20 chests and i only bought 5 keys from the vendor (5 is maximum per day I guess)

I’m aware you can get them from drops (and/or event rewards, possibly) but given the amount of chests I saw while cruising around I fear just getting them from events will mean you’re always short.

When they started adding these repeatable hearts I feared this day might come.

Currently in the demo two necessary things are locked behind repeatable hearts: gear identification and the acquisition of keys for the (plentiful) chests strewn around the world. And we can only guess at what else will require doing dailies later on.

In my humble opinion one of the worst misfeatures introduced (or at least “popularized”) by WoW were daily quests, which quickly ended up mandatory for progression as well as a crutch and substitute for actual quality content. And now these things appear to be creeping into GW2

I get that some people enjoy redoing hearts, but I don’t. I’ve had enough of boring daily quests from my years of playing WoW to last me a lifetime (or more).

Please consider making the vendor portion of a heart always available to anyone who’s completed the heart at least once on that character. (wouldn’t mind for this to also apply to LS3 but the issue appears to be a lot worse in PoF from what I have seen so far)

Jaken.6801:

I also don`t like the new system that much.

I get what they are trying to do, but aside from bagspace, I don`t really see the benefit for me as a player in terms of rewards.
I even loose money directly by identifying or inderectly in “salvaging”, as there are only green bags, which contain all rarities.

While the suprise of “oh cool a exotic” could be generated, it`s bad because you can easily use salvaging all to loose that oportunity.

It adds an extra step to a system that slightly improved in the past.

In the end it doesn`t even improve much, because you might identify all gearand then you have to salvage, whih results in clutter and I think you get where I am going…

It`s a very short term solution and a money sink, with implied gem-store aplication.
Not that thrilled about it.

Others have already offered much better sugestions

I doesn’t even help with bagspace because not all drops are replaced by Unidientified Gear, it’s just another “bag” to clutter your inventory that has a ridiculous cost and inconvenience (the heart vendor) associated with it.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

As I said in my original post/feedback regarding this: while I get where anet was going with this, if they insist on keeping this system in the game, they need to lower the cost of ID to no more than 50cp. This way they have a small coin investment that won’t break the bank, especially for new players who are going to 80 bump themselves into the game AND they get to keep their space saving/gamble thing in the game.

They need to remove the cost to ID and get rid of the requirement to go anywhere to do it. We didn’t need to identify before and I don’t see any reason to bring back that crappy GW1 system.

I barely ever have issues with bag space and since you also have to unlock a heart vendor (effectively bringing one of the worst misfeatures of WoW into GW2: mandatory dailies) this ends up being worse than it was before as far as I’m concerned: more busywork, more clicking and at a higher cost.

Kumion.7580:

It’s bad because rare and exotic items can hide in the “unidentified” label. If you just salvage, you’ll never know. If you ID, you have to go to a heart vendor (and I assume you have to have done the heart) then pay to ID them — by each, then pay to salvage.

IMO, it’s a lot of run around and extra fuss to save a bit of inventory space.

Ugh, this sounds absolutely horrific

I already disliked the repeatable hearts (“dailies”) during LS3, but they were optional, usually. But if they are really pushing the idea of “mandatory” dailies then … really it’s one of the major factors that drove me out of WoW… Not to mention the additional cost…

Just… no

Quickness and Alacrity are very different boons and having one and not the other can have a drastic effect on the dps balance in your group. For a Daredevil Alacrity is barely more damage, for an Elementalist it’s a massive dps boost…

Aegis and Protection are also extremely different in what they do, honestly tossing things on a heap like has been done by some people in this thread shows a clear lack of understanding of each (de)buff… One could argue that this is a failing of the game, but then again, there’s an official wiki for a reason…

Taberis.8341:

Apparently there is a new air ship that appeared in Lions Arch that people are guessing is going to be our way into the new zone. Either that or the locked gate at Ebonhawke.

It, unfortunately, has been confirmed (see WP’s videos about the expansion) we won’t be using the gate, at least in the story… Though I personally really hope they open up the gate as an alternate way in. Then again, they didn’t do that for Siren’s Landing either (other team, but still)

Sikil.9817:

Mmyeah, Not So Secret the jumping puzzle is fun in a somewhat frustrating kind of way but that dive is downright sadistic. At least you had a mesmer! I did it solo. My poor keyboard, hehe.

I’d love to say they don’t make them like that any more, but Chalice of Tears… I don’t even dare try!

At least Chalice of Tears doesn’t rely on gimmicks that have been broken for ages like those platforms in Not So Secret…

Faaris.8013:

Danikat.8537:

New players already get a level 80 boost for free when they purchase the game. 2 if they buy HoT and PoF together.

Wait, how can they get it for free when they purchased it? Do you get 4000 gems for free when you buy the ultimate version?

Since this item doesn’t provide an advantage over other players, it’s fine for me. It saves time, just like other convenience items. You could collect tomes of knowledge and buy equipment on the market, it just takes longer. A new player already gets a L80 boost, so even if you just started, you have the means to collect tomes of knowledge and gold (or buy gems and exchange for gold).

No game breaker

The point of the OP is lvl80 boosts shouldn’t be usable until you already have at least one character at lvl80. Which seems like a pretty sensible thing to do imho.

Cyrin.1035:

Zeivu.3615:

Honestly, I think an account should have at least one level 80 before it unlocks as an option for gems. If they are going to sell them as is, then they should undo all the level gating design changes they implemented in fear of ‘confusing new users’.

I was thinking that as well. It’s certainly fair, but what about vets playing on new accounts that just want to get their chars to 80 quick?

Vets on new accounts should be able to level one character to 80 pretty darn fast… Linking accounts could be a thing, of course, but given reward/effort ratio for Anet I’d say we’re all better off if the multi-account vets just take one for the team here.

Oh, yes please!

While I’m not sure if this is an issue that only affects us, colourblind people, but for example the teleport circles on Cairn are horribly hard to spot when there’s Chrono fields around.

Atma.5198:

This section of the zone is not fun in any measure and is easily the most frustrating content in the game that I’ve encountered in 3+ years of playing. The combination of an air current forcing you in one direction, disappearing updrafts, and uninterruptible artifact abilities (so you overshoot your target spot) are not challenging in a rewarding sense, just an aggravating one.

All of this makes getting around in general or reaching the spider at the top incredibly frustrating and a bit disheartening.

I’m not suggesting all of the challenge of this area be removed but if you would at least make the artifact moves interruptible it will go a long way towards making this area playable. Thank you.

Based on the tips of another player here I found another path to the spider.

Make sure you have a Ley-line organ,
1. go to the Siren Training area and head behind the choir.
2. climb the boat wreckage and get to the higest point of the mast (I jumped from the boat’s deck to the mast)
3. from the mast glide to the slope on the tower next to you, edge upwards as much as possible on that tower (you’ll be forced to the left, just make sure you don’t fall off)
4. glide to a small slope in the corner between the tower and the cliff
5. use the super jump ability to get up on the cliff. You should now be right next to the champion spider den.
From there you can clamber up the “roofs” and move around (or just jump to the spider and get murdered, I guess)

warmonkey.3709:

How many extra mastery points are there? I am currently looking into pushing towards 193 but still need to know how many total extra points there are so I can pick and choose what to do.

Did you check the Wiki? The information is on there.

Ardid.7203:

How big is the speed boon for the mounts? Is it stackable with character built speed boons?

40% from what I hear and while not confirmed I’d be willing to take a bet on the answer to the second question being “no”.

Hannelore.8153:

Even in Core and HoT, there’s alot of boon corruption (such as Necro), yet the mobs still barely used boons, so honestly I wouldn’t count on it.

People would constantly complain “NOO!! AN AI THAT IS SMART!! NOOO!!”.

Otoh it would fix much of the balancing woes related to WvW since both modes would be equivalent, as far as mob (whether they be AI or zerglings) skill use is concerned. It might take some adjustment (just like HoT did with the upped difficulty) but I think it would be healthy in the long run.

Mirage.6754:

It would give an incentive to completionists to do Mastery-related content, or reward those who did already a bit.

If completionists require an incentive then they, by definition, are not.

And I pretty much agree with all the points previously brought up of why this would be a bad idea.

It just felt like a terrible tv-series, hopping from “awesome reveal” to “awesome reveal” in each episode without a thought to the overarching story. Clearly LS2 had its problems but the writing and direction of the story were much more coherent and the characters were a lot more maturely written (compare Braham from LS2 to Braham from LS3, for example), moreover the plot was revealed at a much more sane pace.

I simply have no idea why Livia and Lazarus had to be dragged into this last episode at all, they were badly introduced and the entire thing just felt horribly convoluted and just plain unnecessary.

They simply crammed way too much into LS3 episodes and half of it doesn’t even make any sense without watching WP’s lore videos and/or extensive use of the Wiki.

This JP requires just too much “blind jumps” where you can’t even see (or even know) where you need to go unless you try it (or watch a video). That’s not even “puzzling” (unless you consider just brute forcing every possible combination “solving a puzzle”, I guess). It’s also the only reason this thing is “hard”.

It’s just a terrible JP and “Clusterkitten of Trial and Error” would have been a way better name than “Chalice of Tears” (better to rename “Not So Secret” to that).

themillwater.5846:

Attempting this devil of a puzzle again. I’ve used Dulfy’s guide before. Was just wondering if there were any other guides that were as good or better?

I generally use Ayin’s guides for JPs when I need one.

starlinvf.1358:

Its a combination of server side physics and latency. When the client gets too out of sync, it creates rebounding as both sides try to figure out where you are in the world space.

The best trick to doing the JP is finding a Mesmer to port you where you need to go. A fairly large amount of people keep a Mesmer parked there to farm the chest. If you ask around LA during busy hours, theres a good chance you’ll find someone willing to help out.

I don’t really have high latency (ping’s around 70 usually). Still kind of sad that they decided to use something so … broken in such a punishing JP especially so close to the end and then decided to make it a requirement for a bunch of things to top it off.

But yeah, I guess it’s been like this for years so Arenanet clearly doesn’t care. I’ll be sure to be a tad more careful in avoiding this JP in the future.

(also, all you Mesmers making portals there, there’s no words to describe how awesome you are)

Is it just me or do these abominable things massively overshoot you all the time? I’ve been trying to get up there for the Dawn collection and after taking ages to get up there the jump pad just shoots me waaaay past next platform so I die, gg.

Are these things still just broken as I remember reading about this issue when I was trying to do the JP the last time? I mean, I’m sure there’s a trick as some people make it to the end but I kinda don’t feel like doing this entire frustration of a JP 50times until I figure it out…certainly seems like it wasn’t a problem when Ayin made here video years ago

(on a totally related note, if I’d realized this JP was a requirement for Dawn I’d never ever have started the collection. I like JP’s but these overlong abominations without savepoints are anything but “fun”)

EDIT: a friendly Mesmer gave me a hand in the end, still kind of annoyed I got so close but fell just short due to dicey mechanics.

I would also be extremely bad for us colourblind people. It’s already hard enough for me to tell some of the colours apart as it is.

Balthazzarr.1349:

Agreed that it’s too aggressive… BUT… Perhaps that will filter out the big amount of people that seem to hang around spawn for 10-15 minutes gathering their pips before logging out of WvW.

Just calculate the rewards left based on the current state of the map and pay them out, give debuff that makes one ineligible for WvW rewards for the time it’d have taken for the participation to run out (to avoid hopping in and out of WvW) and be done with it.

Like, fix the problem instead of tossing in a half baked “fix” and breaking everything else…

Aury.1367:

Curse You.9514:

I don’t see why these “new” servers can’t start with a mid tier rank and let the system move them up or down until they get to the right place. At least then the other servers are likely to actually stand a change at least 50% of the time.

If you create a new sport team, regardless of the sport. You start at the bottom. Doesnt matter if you have top players or not. You start at the bottom.

Which is ridiculous. Switching GH + Vabbi to Vabbi + GH doesn’t magically a new team make…

mauried.5608:

This is more of a technical question than anything else.
Are there any MMOs where the game content can be altered in real time .
ie no need for anyone to have to log off , and then log on again when there is a game upgrade?

Are there? I dunno. There’s a bunch of especially older ones that at least stream their assets during play, greatly reducing the initial download (GW1 and EQ2 both did this to some extent)

Outside of MMOs there’s enough massive and complex systems that are capable of this (obvious example: Google), so the technology is definitely there. It’s just a matter of time vs reward, same as why many MMOs have daily/weekly “reboots”: can software run for years without reboots? Of course. Is it more time-efficient to just build it fast and reboot the stuff before it breaks? Yup.

Have been getting quite a few bits and pieces from WvW (just statswap them if they have undesirable stats), raids are also a decent source, decent chance at insignias and inscriptions as well (which you can then use to statswap your WvW acquired gear, or just cut down on the crafting costs).

Haven’t really done much fractals (still not even completed T1) so can’t really comment on that.

And of course there’s the Caladbolg quest after you finish HoT for a guaranteed free ascended weapon (well, requires some running around). Now that they fixed th last HoT quest running through HoT if you haven’t already shouldn’t be too time consuming/painful even if you generally dislike PvE.

Faaris.8013:

It’s tough, but I like the small exclusiveness it gives to the Leadership runes I collect for my Chronomancer. Only 120 Crystalline Ore left, or two DS runs. I just lack the aurillium to buy machetes, and I also need ariliium to buy a Viper’s inscription recipe for my other toon ^^

It shows that I was dedicated enough to get the best out of my character and that it’s not just a Chronomancer that uses the stuff from the L80 boost.

Would be nice to make runes visible on armor, with a check box.

Meanwhile many a dedicated WvW-er can probably take a bath in those runes if they feel so inclined.

I like DS but I feel it’s way too time consuming to run with any regularity and as a consequence I’ll be getting as much of the DS stuff through other means (like the Leadership runes through WvW) that don’t require me to plan blocks of like 2 hours.

For rewards they treat DS as just another map, which it clearly isn’t.

Kinda wish they’d improve the Vista rewards but require a specific Vista, maybe use game data and send people to the least visited ones first. As it is now it’s pretty much always the same ones that get visited… I mean, it’s easy, but not very engaging…

Ayrilana.1396:

Yakez.7561:

It was always quite puzzling why in the first place after having this feature in GW1 it was not implemented in 2012 release.

Considering all that 2012 manifesto jazz and flexible support/damage/heal system.

Maybe it’s more complicated than in GW1 or that the game wouldn’t require players to change builds that often as before. Honestly, how many people change builds often rather than just stick with whatever the existing meta is for their game mode?

On my Chronomancer I very often swap between builds (I have 2 already for WvW: a boonbot build and a roaming build), for PvE I have one for soloing and one for general PvE, I expect to use yet another build for fractals (haven’t bothered with those much yet on my Mesmer). sPvP already has its own system but I can imagine multiple builds being useful there as well depending on team composition.

Silmar Alech.4305:

Djinn.9245:

Here’s a question for you: did being forced to do Adventures if you wanted to get the collections done make you like Adventures? Do you do them for fun now that you’ve been forced to try them?

This didn’t make me like adventures. I never play them again after the required collection item or mastery point was obtained.
After I tried my first adventure, Bugs in the Branches, I knew that this was not a game mode I would like. More tries were not required to find that out.

My feelings changed from dislike to hate only after I found out I was required to make adventures for mastery points and certain collections. Before, it was just a game mode I disliked – like pvp, for example, which I don’t play either, but I don’t hate pvp, because it isn’t forced upon me like the adventures.

I’m with Silmar. when I first encountered them I was like “Eww!” and I just ignored them and just thought they were quaint. And then I started working on precursors, specialization collections and trying to max out Maguuma masteries and now I actively loathe them.

Ever increasing stats results in less and less content being available since the old stuff becomes trivial and the gear useless.

This is why most of WoW is dead content only ever visited for mount/achievement farming. Blizzard can sort of compensate for this by sheer size since they can almost(*) push out new content fast enough to keep people interested, however they still needed an entire expansion to “fix” their game as half the “vanilla” areas were dead as were the areas of all expansions between “vanilla” and Cataclysm. This was a direct result of the gear and level threadmill (compounded by their tendency to fully redesign classes each expansion)

Anet just isn’t big enough to support something like that, so keeping old content relevant by providing horizontal progression is an extremely progressive and smart move (either that or you’d have to scale players down, and then what have you gained? An even bigger balancing nightmare?). It gives new (or returning players) years of content to wade through that all is still relevant (arguably they messed up here with LS1, but that’s another topic), unlike in treadmill games where only the stuff from the latest expansion or even content update is actually relevant.

• yes: almost, keeping people busy enough so they dont’get bored and quit before the next major update is something even Blizzard has been struggling with since vanilla WoW

draxynnic.3719:

You picked “Act with wisdom”, didn’t you?

I think sylvari lost a lot of what made them interesting when their origins were revealed. This has essentially turned them from being the most mysterious playable race in the game to the least – about the only thing left that isn’t known about them is how the Pale Tree came to be independent of Mordremoth, and whether the Pale Tree is capable of growing seeds for new Pale Trees. Basically everything else is known.

There’s still Malyk as well. Moreover knowing that Mordremoth has access to the Dream and was able to influence Sylvari’s thoughts through the Dream (even if he couldn’t dominate them, like with Caithe) I wouldn’t be all that surprised if our assumptions about their origin would turn out to be wrong and that their weakness to Mordremoth was inherent to their connection to the Dream rather than due to being Mordremoth’s “offspring” and that attempting to let them believe they were meant to serve him (by messing with Wynne’s Dream) was just a con to attempt to lower their resistance to such.

I don’t remember if the Pale Tree actually confirmed the Mordremoth link (how could she do so reliably anyway, seeing as she wouldn’t exactly know how she was created, for pretty obvious reasons) so all we have to go on are Wynne’s Dream and Mordremoth’s words.
The first could have been manipulated, the second is hardly a reliable source and the susceptibility to Mordremoth’s domination could be explained away through the shared connection to the Dream.

So yeah, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if the last word about the Sylvari’s origin hasn’t been said yet…

DiogoSilva.7089:

Obtena.7952:

If successful completion of the content and having fun with people you team with isn’t enough of an incentive to do the content, then you need to evaluate why you even play MMO’s in the first place, especially GW2.

GW2, yes. MMOs in general, no way.

The entire RPG genre’s gameplay is built around a reward-driven structure. RPGs are all about progression. Stats, items, collectibles, skills, levels, etc. This genre exists EXACTLY to attract the kind of players that enjoy a reward-driven structure.

It makes absolutely no sense for people to come and demand other to evaluate the RPG genre for not having the strong points of a RPG.

That’s like criticizing readers of horror novels that dislike a particular book because it had underwhelming horror elements in it. You can’t simply say “if you can’t enjoy a book simply because it’s fun, then you need to evaluate why you buy horror books”, which their reply will simply be “dude, I bought a horror book because I wanted a horror experience, and the book failed at that”. As simple as that.

The concept may seem alie too, but yes, rewards also contribute to how fun gameplay can be, and yes, there are players who enjoy reward-driven gameplay more, and yes, there are gaming genres that exist specifically for those kind of people: the RPG genre, which GW2 happens to be as well.

But even assuming the concept of a rewardless RPG that would be wonderfully fun, GW2 wouldn’t be it. We’re talking about a game with little to no difficulty in the open world. We’re talking about a game where most skills are useless, clumsy or balanced for pvp, which makes them feel underwhelming and unsatisfying to use in PvE. We’re talking about a game that still has repetitive grinds just as much as any other MMO, just with cosmetics instead of more powerful items. We’re talking about a game that forces you to go into jumping puzzles to complete map achievements, and then had a kitten bad game engine that puts invisible barriers and invisible ground everywhere you jump into.

I can go on, but GW2 isn’t exactly the champion of “fun” games. It has a lot of flaws in combat and exploration, and, for that reason, rewards are a wonderful tool the developers have (and need) to keep players interesting in the game.

GW2 had wonderful front-loaded sales, and then Anet went completely silent about their game’s popularity state after that, outside of developers admitting the game was bad at keeping players interesting and NCSoft expressing disappointment about HoT’s sales. Meanwhile, a game like FFXIV had a disastrous launch, it was rebuilt, and now it has surpassed GW2.

If GW2 was this “oh so wonderfully fun game, who needs rewards when this game is fun, fun, fun?”, it would likely have been at a better state. But it isn’t.

That’s your definition of what an RPG is supposed to be. I guarantee you that if you state your definition of an RPG as fact in an RPG forum there will be tar, feathers and a religious war on par with Vi vs Emacs in the old days. It’s not as clear cut as you like to make it out to be.

Moreover GW2 is a reward driven game, except the rewards don’t necessarily make you more powerful, rather they broadcast your achievements (do this thing, get this shiny to show off).

This is actually great since it keeps old content from becoming obsolete or trivial which is a big problem with level-grind/gearmill MMOs. Eg. newer WoW players will never understand how Sunwell Plateau, Ulduar or Ahn’Qirai, for example, were since power creep has made these raids trivial (Blizzard’ s tendency to entirely redo classes each expansion instead of building on them only confounds this issue). Moreover “revisiting” these old dungeons and raids fails to recreate what made them tick, the best examples being Naxxramas and the Temple of Atal’Hakkar which are pale imitations of what they used to be.

Clearly balance changes to GW2 also affect the available content to some extent, but the dungeons that were there at release are still very much relevant (despite them being “unsupported content”) and most definitely haven’t been turned trivial by extreme power creep as is the case in pretty much every other MMO.

This also highlights why MMOs have long since stopped being called MMORPGs: they no longer focus on providing an environment to role play and have fun in, rather they focus on abusing human psychology to keep players grinding forever. It’s why most of them focus on gear progression rather than on providing an environment for player character to “live” in, gear grind is much easier than shaping an actual “world” that is fun and engaging to be in. It’s also why people tend to drop MMOs once they get older: when the only fun is in the “endgame” which requires excessive amounts of time to stay up-to-date with then the only ones doing it are those with enough spare time on their hands.

A band-aid for a band-aid. Oh, the irony…

Faaris.8013:

Choose a class that has less issues with mobs. I only played thief until last week really, when I took my mesmer and maxed her levels and got her stuff. Running for hero points made me realize what a luxury I am used to with my thief. When a tiny spider throws its web on me, I cannot just ignore it and dash away like with my thief. When I’m crippled I’m crippled. With thief, you can basically ignore all mobs around you and go on with your farming business. I can even shadow step to a heavily guarded chest or wisp, pick it up and be gone before a mob can take a swing at me.

I like my chronomancer, but for daily business like farming, I will definitely use my thief. Berry-farming would probably take 3 times as long with mesmer.

I don’t find gathering with my Chrono to be that much of a hassle tbh. Use Well of Eternity if you get crippled and just spawn a clone/phantasm to keep a mob busy while you go about your business (on lower level maps your phantasm might even kill the mob while you’re gathering, or at least get it close enough that a shatter finishes it off). Also to approximate shadow step (Portal entre -> Blink -> Portal exit). Then again, on my Thief I often just go through the mobs (iow: kill them) as that’s often faster/less effort than trying to dodge them.

But yeah Bitterfrost Frontier is just a horrible horrible map, hell, it might even be the worst map in the game and I wager it would be pretty deserted if it weren’t for the berry farm.

Mobs in general could do with less CC and especially less ranged CC, it makes getting around many areas needlessly irritating. Even on classes with enough cleanses and stuff, it’s just annoying.

Rhiannon.1726:

You know that this thread is one year old?

Nope, only looked at the timestamp of the last few replies…

Tharizdun.3654:

Yeah, I zoned in, did some story part, now I’m at “unlocking glider mastery” and no direction on how to do that. My xp bar went back to 0, I still have a 0 on the level for it.

And when I explore, the mobs inevitably swarm and I die and am left with a huge walk-back. The zone seems deserted.

Couple of things here that haven’t been touched on yet (and some expansion on those that were touched on):
– HoT is hard compared to Central Tyria. Be prepared to die, often, until you learn how the mobs work, if in doubt, just ask in Map chat (just be prepared for idiots).
– bring AoE/Cleave in HoT or be prepared to get eaten by Pocket Raptors, I suffered a lot on my thief until I fully unlocked Daredevil (was playing sword/pistol before). One other enemy you defnitely want to research (since many players still don’t know how they work): Smokescale
– learn about breakbars and how to break them (iow: bring CC skills if at all possible)
– the zones are not empty, but they’re huge and multi-layered so you won’t be seeing many players until you know the zones and know where they are likely to congregate (or when, since many HoT zones revolve around huge meta events that are on timers)
– even if you unlock the mastery system by skipping ahead you’ll very quickly be “wasting” XP again as you’ll quickly run out of Mastery Points (which, as has been mentioned, are mostly obtained through HoT achievements). XP is not the limiting factor here. Iow, if you care about the story I’d just let it slide and just play through LS2, you’ll be better prepared for the HoT difficulty and you won’t spoil anything for yourself.

Amaimon.7823:

Djinn.9245:

Amaimon.7823:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Takoyakii.2146:

How an “optional” jumping puzzle killing the game?

By not being optional.

I’ve yet to see a jumping puzzle implemented into a story step. and no, jumping over kitten isn’t a jumping puzzle

If you want to go the route of “that content isn’t required”, even the Story isn’t “required”. However there are certain types of content that are fundamental to most MMOs: not only Story, but exploration, and Achievements. In GW2, you can start many achievements only to find out that in order to complete them you need to complete, or at least make some progress in a JP(s). This is what I object to. JP should have their own Achievements that are not connected to other content so they are truly optional.

Of which I only know 2: mursaat tokens and LWS3:5: firestone shards.
Then there might be some association in the legendary weapons collection, like Dierdre’s Steps, but then again, it’s a legendary collection, you’re supposed to show a proof of skill in all aspects of the game

Diving Goggles achievement (and associated MP) requires the abomination that is Not So Secret

Vesuvius.9874:

Ashantara.8731:

Randulf.7614:

Sort of yes. To be fair most people are pointing this out in the thread. I think the OP is looking at LS1 through a condensed video rather than firsthand experience, which means it is understandable they might look upon it wistfully without knowing what we know.

Exactly. And I will say it a third time: Regardless of whether one liked S1 or didn’t, it still leaves a huuuuuge gap in the story at its current state that isn’t filled properly (neither with fractals nor with the lame summary by the LA NPC).

I am currently playing S2 for the 5th or 6th time, and it is also way better than anything that HoT and S3 provided (although S3 had the enjoyable “teaching Aurene” story mission as well the cool Divinity’s Reach story mission, and Canach, which is always a plus).

But that is beside the point, too. Like I said, as a dev, you need to do something to close that gap for newer players, because the current state is unacceptable.

In the end, it boils down to a business decision. If it doesn’t make business sense to divert resources from adding content that brings in revenue (like the new expansion) to adding content that will not bring additional revenue (like converting the S1 format to S2 and later format), then they’re simply not going to do it. Keep in mind that other than their playerbase, they are also answerable to their shareholders.

Should they add S1? Yes, I think they should.
Will they add S1? No, it is very unlikely.

But honestly I think LS1 being missing and LS2 being “optional” (and paid content that many do not get before getting into HoT) has cost them in a way. The jump in difficulty from PS to HoT is…massive and I honestly don’t want to make a guess as to how many people quit over that.

Even if adding some of that back for everyone isn’t feasible I do feel that they should do something to make the difficulty rise more gradually, if nothing else maybe re-tune the PS some.

Ben K.6238:

Bearhugger.4326:

Perhaps, but FFXIV has 5 to 10x more armor sets than GW2, they’re more varied, they’re about the same quality, and they’re 99% obtainable in-game without cash shop. That’s thanks to having relatively similar body shapes on all races.

Given that “nobody” plays Charr and Asuras in GW2 anyway, I consider that having so many widely different races at the detriment of customization and cosmetics was a HUGE mistake on Arenanet’s part, and I wouldn’t be surprised to catch a few devs say that they regret it off the record. The game is supposed to reward with cosmetics, and armor sets are the most important customization option for most people, but the devs themselves say that it’s too hard for them to pump as many as in the first game due to having so many different races. That super varied set of races holds back the rewards system, which is a huge problem in a MMO. I’d go as far as to say that they should have gone with only humans like in GW1. I mean everyone plays humans, big humans (norn) or green humans (sylvari) so why put the effort?

Of course that doesn’t mean that I disagree with your point about GW2 having more varied races than most other MMOs, I’m just saying that the cost was not worth it in my opinion.

It may have made the customization more difficult, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d have designed the races differently in hindsight. But there’s a couple counterpoints to that.

• GW2 is the only major game that I can think of that’s actually done heavily customizable player races that aren’t just reskinned humans. It’s an example to the rest of the industry in that sense, and if I ever have to move on from GW2 I’m going to miss that badly.

Euhm, EverQuest 2? I mean, if Charr and/or Asura don’t qualify as reskinned humans then I think Frogloks, Ratonga and especially Sarnak likely also qualify… Quite a few of those suffer the same problems of Charr/Asura though: (some parts of) armors look…dodgy on them. Main reason why I ditched my Sarnak Shadowknight back in the day.