Guild Wars 2

hi,

yes, I know, your reminders of the difficulties are true

But still some of it may be possible. For example as a compromise with the Tower of Nightmare they could have continued with the story (Scarlet learns about the super-poison…) and still leave the Tower in Kessex Hills until the players destroy it sooner or later or even the players decide to keep it.

Anet is imho quite innovative so I hope they find solutions to some of the problems you both described

Nyti

Hi,

I hope Season 2 will bring us more opportunities where player-actions may have an impact on the world.

The only time this was truely the case in Season 1 was the Kiel/Gnashblade election. In all other cases the players participated in the story, but could not really change the outcome. We could never have prevented Scarlet’s Invasion or the destruction of Lions Arch. And even if noone injected poison into the Tower of Nightmare it would be destroyed after the set period of 28 days was over.

So I hope Arenanet will be true to their MMO Manifesto and include elements of choice into the Season 2 story.

At small scale it could be sandbox elements where players can build stuff, which stays in the world.

At large scale, the timing of the Living World story could be changed by players. E.g. if players don’t inject enough poison into the Tower of Nightmare, it will still stand there in Kessex Hills and mobs will attack players (and have other negative consequences for the whole world) until the player-base decides at some point to put an end to it…

Allthough I really enjoy the Living World (please no LW vs Expansion discussion), I nevertheless like to post this reminder of Arenanet’s MMO Manifesto.

Nyti

hi,

adapt the map selection algorithm so when user A links a location of a map in guild chat, whisper, team chat … and user B clicks on that link, he/she will be very likely put onto the same map as user A.

Nyti

hi,

OK, i see…

As it should be:
1. People from NA servers could be sorted together.
2. All people from EU English speaking servers could be sorted together (14 worlds)
3. All German speaking servers should be sorted together (7 worlds)
4. All French servers… (5 worlds)
5. Unfortunately only 1 Spanish world.

This would mean at least the people in the Spanish world should get the option of being sorted together with the EU English words. And maybe, while already on it, offer this option to the Germans and French too. Then, when these players are really joined with an English map, they should get a warning and my above language filter idea be applied.

Nity

hi,

as I understand it, the megaserver system used the language of your home world. So if you are on a, say French home world, like Jade Sea, you will get sorted with other players who are on other French worlds.

See the megaserver blog: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/

>> This new system takes your party, guild, language, home world, and other factors into account to match you to a version of the map you’re entering.

At least this is the way I understand it

Nyti

hi,

> “Added a chat option – enabled by default – that shows only the messages coming from players sharing your client’s text language.”

I disabled this option and encountered German language in map chat of Straits of Devastation trying to coordinate something. Since I came from Underworld (English server) I think they were not aware they could not be read by the majority of other players because their chat messages are disabled by default. So they may have wondered why nobody listed to them

So I suggest to implement a little language detection feature in the game client which warns people if they use a language which is foreign to the language of the megaserver map they are currently in, e.g. warn if German language is detected on a megaserver map which is filled with players from English worlds.

This language detection could be implemented fairly easy by counting the characters the player used. Here are the special characters used in the different languages:

German: ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü ß

French: é à è ù â ê î ô û ë ï ü ÿ ç
É À È Ù Â Ê Î Ô Û Ë Ï Ü Ÿ Ç

Spanish: á é í ó ú ü ñ ¿ ¡
Á É Í Ó Ú Ü Ñ

Chinese: check for the Simplified Chinese Unicode points, see http://unicode.org/charts/unihan.html

Note that ü and Ü appear in all three European languages. Also é and É appear in French and Spanish. But otherwise these 3 languages use different special characters and can therefore be distinguished by their presence.

Now you can (for each sentence the user types) count how many German, French, Spanish and Chinese characters are used and if more than, say 30% Chinese characters are used, decide it’s Chinese; if more than, say 3, German characters are used decide it’s German, if more than 3 French characters are used, decide it’s French and the same for Spanish. The exact character counts should be found quickly by extracting some chat from German, French and Spanish servers.

Then if the detected language doesn’t match the mega server map language, warn the player that many people may not understand their message.

You could then change the new chat option to “show only the messages coming from players sharing your mega server map language”.

I’m not comfortable with blocking messages from unknown players who have some client language settings and also they may not know their messages are not read by many players. So I think the above could be a better solution.

Nyti

P.S. Megaservers rock! Really enjoyed playing on the megaserver maps

hi,

I’d like to thank Anet for the giving us this lovely Living World story arc – and even for free I also like the conclusion of it and the prospects for the next arc.

Also a huge praise for the wonderfully choreographed final boss fight. I really enjoy it. I must also say, over the last year, the encounters became better and better. Sure here and there some bugs / quirkies, but overall real progress! Keep up your good work!

Nyti

Found one in Harathi Hinterlands. Looks like Scarlets work…

It would also give nice explanations for the reason of the invasions…

There should be more discussion summaries, not only from the devs. Whenever a topic is discussed for a few pages, the guy who brought up the topic should post a summary. For example, someone suggested event failures should have consequences and we discussed that. Then after a few days / a few pages the person who brought up the idea should post a summary.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

It could be like buying food in the supermarket. You tend to always buy the same stuff over and over again until someone suggests or wishes a specific item you also enjoy but would not normally buy.

[quote=3170957;ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.
[/quote]

Create daily achievements to play n events around a certain theme in a certain map, e.g. “Complete 5 events in Harathi Hinterlands to help Seraph fight against Centaurs”. Reward 1 AP

This can lead players to the beautiful little stories which are told in the different maps. You can even select the daily events so that the character can complete events in maps where he/she has done the least exploring, yet.

Best LS update: Zephyr Sanctum
I agree with JohnnySupernova, the zone is fantastic, interesting new mechanics, superb scavenger hunt which tied in with the new mechanics and this wonderful laid-back atmosphere which provided a contrast to other areas of the game.

No real “worst” update, but SAB is a very special type of gameplay and I’m not such a great fan of it. Tequatl Rising had major quality issues with the overflow system, hour-long boss camping and AFK’ers. But this new open-world coordinated fight is imho very innovative. I tried to fight him a few times but then I took this as an opportunity to play other areas of the game. So please continue to be innovative and do experiments. I can live with a few rough edges on the way.

Living World vs. TV series:

Feedback: Difficult for TV series to get views feedback. In GW2 there are plenty of
ways to get player feedback. Did players like this episode? Was the plot well understood? Do they know this character? Do they know this fact about the world? … Like the metrics for game balance, instance difficulty, TP prices, etc. you can also gather a ton of information about the reception of the Living World episodes.

Living World vs. TV series:

TV series has a few very simple, clear cut characters + story elements recognizable even by the most casual viewer. Translated to GW2: “In Guild Wars the arch-enemy is Zhaitan”.

TV series has a main cast and gives viewers choice whom they like most and whom they hate. There is no real main cast in GW2 (yet). And as a viewer I have to live with the characters I love and also with the characters I hate. I know I won’t get rid of the hated characters until the very end of the show.

In a TV series, when a character is introduced or replaced, more than one episode is completely dedicated to flesh out the new character(s). Better introduced characters in GW2 Living World story are…? (maybe Roxy, maybe Lord Faren)

@Bobby Stein: Thanks for the explanations of the story development and the restrictions. But for a TV series, this would be faaaaaaaar tooooo complicated. I estimate 70% of the players have already forgotten 70% of the finer points in next update.

Take a detective story TV series: Each episode deals with a very simple plot: X committed crime Y and has to be apprehended by main cast. This story element is used to develop main cast and villain characters or one interesting aspect of the world. Then, after this is accomplished, maybe in season 2, in each episode a small part is dedicated to advance the over-arcing conspiracy story. And special care is taken to tell this story element.

In TV series most characters are so well fleshed out, people can (to a degree) predict their actions or reactions. If players don’t care about the characters they use the LS updates as another opportunity to grind, make gold, etc.

hi,

here my 10 cents of how to improve the Living World updates:

Living World/story cadence:
GW2 is this MMO with the flat levelling curve, thus the danger is that people run out of stuff to do (except grinding and all kinds of repetitive stuff). The most honest solution is to add new content and do it fast, so players are not bored. A new episode every 2 weeks for free is imho really, really great! Other MMOs try to occupy people with cheap pseudo-content, like gear treadmill, etc.

Heros and villains:
why do so many forum readers hate Scarlet now? They didn’t hate her, when she was was new. Because she is only hysterical, doesn’t show much personality. If I were Scarlet, I would be seriously angry after being beaten back during the invasions, but no, she is exactly the same hysterical woman in the new Aether Path in TA. Like Trahearne, if Anet had given this poor guy some humor and not only this boring heroism character attribute, he would be liked much more. You don’t need to kill Scarlet, but make her a deeper character, make her more interesting.

Story-telling:
For the last ca. 6 months the Living World updates were unrelated and had no real plot, e.g. Bazaar of the 4 Winds unrelated to Kiel/Gnashblade election unrelated to Queen’s Jubilee related (this time!) to Clockwork Chaos unrelated to SAB unrelated to Tequatl unrelated to Twighlight Assault. This is imho too difficult for people to follow. Story elements are too far spaced out.

Time needed to complete content:
Not every episode in the Living needs to give people the same amount of stuff to do.
Now that you have certain content elements in place, they can be run in parallel to the actual living story, e.g. SAB or Zephyrites Bazaar can be activated for a couple of weeks completely independantly of the Living Story. In real life (and TV shows) there are always multiple things going on simultaneously. Not every episode needs to give people equal amount of stuff to do.

Achievements:
People suffer from the delusion, they have to fulfill every single the achievements of a Living World update. And then they complain they don’t have enough time. Give the achievements a difficulty marker. Good example: The combat challenges in the Crown Pavilion were for the advanced players, while the story elements in Queen’s Jubilee/Clockwork Chaos could nicely been done by casual players. In other MMOs easy/medium/hard content is more clearly separated (e.g. open-world/dungeons/raids).

Finally:
Living World is a real innovation, only a few more tweaks needed. Don’t let the complainers discourage you from doing more of these experimental improvements to this already great game!

Can we also think a little “outside the box”?

My suggestions:

1. Personalized enemies. The game tracks the way I play my char and creates enemies (that e.g. exploit my weaknesses). And once a day, somewhere in Tyria, a special veteran jumps out of the crowd, says “You meddled with our affairs long enough…” and engages me. The veteran keeps statistics on how he is defeated and e.g. uses condition removers in next fight or another different mob is created for the next encounter.

2. Personalized tasks. Expand on the daily achievements and (maybe weekly) send players to areas they have not seen / seek out a certain mini dungeon / kill a certain boss, etc.

3. Player influenced content. Players earn tokens and rent NPCs to defend, say, a camp in Orr. As long as players spend tokens they can have NPCs hold a camp (lasting impact on the world). Over time mobs adapt to the NPC defense, so ppl have to change these NPCs / upgrade canons, etc. occasionally. Make a LEGO system to create JPs, escort events, challenges and other types of events.

hi,

two more suggestions for the LFG tool:

+ Allow the usual links in the party description as in the normal chat window. If I want to post something in the “open world” category, it would be nice to give ppl the exact location, therefore link waypoints.

+ Display the number of entries in a category, even if I don’t open it. I may be browsing the dungeon announcements and never look into “personal story” category, but if I notice that there is an announcement there, I would open it and help out with a personal story step.

And keep up your exceptional work, Anet. You are an amazing!

hi,

LFG tool is great. Let’s me find parties in seconds. I’d like 2 changes:

1. Abolish the “refresh” button and don’t show full parties. I’m not interested in parties I cannot join anymore. Makes heavily frequented categories unreadable.

2. When a party member leaves and we announce it again, auto-place it in the same category. I always accidently (re-)announce it in the “open world” category.

hi,

+1
After hours of new TA path the instance owner left at last boss. What on Tyria is an “instance owner” when everybody can invite, join, advertise a party??? Kill that concept and let the rest of the party members stay in the instance!

hi,

I heard SAB will stay until Sept. 30th, so I will probably try the Toad King again Thanks for the advice how to defeat him (now that I also found a good source for a continue coin in world 1). I can now learn to dodge his attacks. Bah!

But my argument still stands, that with each future update the new content becomes more and more difficult to access, so it will eventually preclude new players from playing it.

hi,

maybe you are right and in Mario-like games, you first have to complete level x to play level x+1. In this case however I regard the worlds more like different dungeons. I can play Twighlight Arbor without having to complete Ascalonian Catacombs.

Also: In a few months we may see SAB world 3 for, say, 30 days. Then players new to the game, who never played world 1 & 2, are required to play more and more old content only to be allowed to play the new stuff.

Nyti

hi,

developers & users can browser forums quicker when posts have useful, expressive titles. But the current limit to the title length prevents useful titles in many cases (at least for me). Please increase the maximum length of titles for forum posts.

Nyti

hi,

here my suggestion for future Super Adventure Box worlds: Please make the different worlds accessible independently of each other.

I would like to play world 2, but unfortunately I never could get past Toad Boss of world 1. (it’s in part because of lazyness). But now I cannot play world 2. And with world 3 of SAB coming some day in the future, I will be completely locked out of new SAB content. This is completely unlike the usual GW2 style as I know and love it.

Why not allow players to enter world 2 (and future worlds) independant of what they played in the past…

Nyti

hi,

I’d suggest to allow longer titles. I could not use
“Gnashblade vs. Kiel preliminary results, where?”
already too long
only “Gnashblade vs. Kiel preliminary results” worked.

If you allow longer titles you make it easier to browse forums when titles are expressive.

Nyti

hi,

could you please announce the preliminary voting results in the last days before the vote ends? Or did I miss something. I only found one page on facebook with one early poll several days old.

Nyti

I mainly play dungeons these days (any expl. mode with one char + fractals with another char).

I agree with other posters that fractals is a special case (you really need to fix that people can’t rejoin if they DCed or otherwise left the instance!!). The 9 fractals are refreshingly different from each other and often promote group play, e.g. by assigning small tasks to individual players. FotM can count as progress on dungeon quality. :-)

Here are my suggestions for improvement for the “normal” (non-fractal) dungeons.
- Every boss or champ feels the same. Debuff him, dodge, cure conditions, always the same skill rotation, more or less silent fight with no drama. In one dungeon it’s frost, the other it’s fire or poison, but it makes no difference.

- No drama: GW2 is so great about telling stories by letting them play out by events, actually experienced by players, instead of boring text to read or cinematics, which are skipped anyway, GW2, in the open world, tells the stories by events. Not so in the dungeons. Why?

- Bad culture: People leaving groups; calling other people names/noobs; too much rush, too much emphasis only on the tokens, only few ppl take the time to explain things to new-comers.

- Weak organization: People can skip trash and leave weaker players behind. It’s a bad sign people skip trash at all. It means, it’s boring. Too leave people behind is bad for the group play. So at least place WPs in between the skipped areas. I suggest to make the trash un-skippable (they follow the group through the whole dungeon) or make them an extra reward, i.e., you get more tokens when you don’t skip them (they could be in a separate optional room to be fought).

- Give individual members a special role, so they feel more vital to the success of the dungeon run. Some fractals are a good example where you need party members stand on pressure plate or pour hot iron, etc. Having an extra task makes ppl feel special.

I played LOTRO before GW2 and I must say a major part of their instances is more interesting/fun then the GW2 dungeons. Maybe watching videos of Moria/Isengard instances makes the differences clearer than I can describe them (it’s not the trinity, that makes them interesting).

- GW2 has superior tech: Level scaling, self-sufficient classes (no trinity), cross-server-parties which make finding groups and playing dungeons very easy. Keep that! :-)

My 10 cent of Community Voice. Hope I could be of help.

Solved! :-))) very embarrassing :-)

I accidently turn on auto-attack on skill 7 for one weapon combination. So when I used the ^ key to switch weapons skill 7 would be activated as auto-attack. since it has a long cooldown only every 30 secs. it would be activated again, while I pressed some 1-4 key….<blush>

Thanks for your advice :-)

hi,

- I verified I didn’t press Q accidently. At least only rarely :-)
- I deleted the Q key mapping and the error still persists.
- I also met at least one other player with problems with his key-bindings after the update.

So ANet pleeeeze look into it :-)
Can also contact me, so I can make addition tests for you…

hi,

Since October 7th update my utility skill (number 7) is activated randomly when I press number 1-5 or ^ (switch weapons). 1-5 and ^ have their intended function, but the 7 utility skill is activated in addition.

I have a German, Logitec Illuminated keyboard with English Win 7. Also I mapped Q as additional key to activate the utility skill on 7.

Please fix this. It greatly disturbs my gameplay. :-)

hi,

I’d like to suggest Arenanet or we as players create a list of encounters, which teach us how to group-play. Imho Guild Wars 2 sometimes needs a bit explaining, since there is no trinity (tank, healer, dps).

I saw several occasions, where either 5 person groups or big groups (15+ people) wipes, because the majority had no idea, how to fight this particular encounter, for example

- there is a spider queen, which seems to spawn spiderlings when low on health and heal with them. So you need to fight the spiderlings asap to succeed. (Harathi Hinterlands)

- there is a fight where bandits want cursed artifacts and big groups are wiped, because people fail to kill the ranged bandits first. (Bloodtide Coast)

- there are ettin champs, where I never saw a successful fight. Don’t kow what to do there :-)

But each of these encounters may perhaps teach us how to play, how to adapt to different situations. So maybe we or Arenanet would like to compile a list of such encounters.

With the game so new and so different from traditional MMOs, imho it takes a lot of explaining to get people to the new combat style…

Nyti