Guild Wars 2

Aegis.9724:

i don’t know if i agree to the other points, but loot is seriously lacking

Right now, for 99% of the drops, its either:
-blue, greens -> vendor junk
-rare -> either salvage for ecto, or mystic toilet fodder
-exo -> directly to trading post, unless it’s a pre or i like the skin ( in which case i probably already have one )

There is just no excitement to it, feels like i’m just dropping money in physical form..

Just out of interest have you played a game where you get regular loot drops and most of them are things you can use? Because whilst I agree that it would be nice I can’t think of a way they could do it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done.

All I can think of is either your armor and weapons decay over time so you’re always looking for replacements (which I have seen done and IMO it’s a terrible system), or all the drops are money or some other token that you exchange for things you need, and whilst it would make them all useful I think it would also be fairly boring.

Alternatively they could have a system like the Zelda games where most of the items you find are either money or ammunition for various weapons, but that would require a major re-vamp of the weapon and combat system and again I don’t think it would really solve the problem. I know I don’t need the majority of things I find in Zelda games.

All hearts and other map completion things can be completed by all races/genders/professions.

Assuming the dialogue options for humans are the same as for my charr (I think they are) you need to speak to Warden Spy Alarin and pick “What can I do to help?”, “I’ll do whatever needs to be done” and then “I’m ready”.

Also, Don’t skip the cinematic. I skipped it the first time and wound up stood outside, still in my charr form. I watched it the second time and ended up inside disguised as a sylvari.

(I’m sending a bug report in-game because they should either make sure it works both ways or remove the skip button.)

Are you on an NA server? I’ve only very rarely seen map chat as bad as you’re describing, and that’s usually groups of people who know each other and don’t seem to have considered that there are other people in map chat.

I have no idea what Anet have said about it, but if they ever do add it I’ll turn it off as soon as I log in.

90% would be the nonsense spam-chat we get in LA, the rest would be all the people in all the zones who currently spam map with “Can anyone tell me how to get this vista?” “How do I do this?” “Where is the next story” etc. with no hint of where they are or what they’re talking about, but even more confusing because now you won’t even know what map they’re on and can’t even narrow it down to the ones most people struggle with.

Anyone wanting to actually have a conversation or get practical help will need to stick to /say and /map in order to restrict it to people actually doing similar things.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If a rare item is made available for sale in the Gem Store, it is no longer “rare”.

That’s true. But it should really be one or the other – either you pay real money and get a guarenteed sale, or you take a chance on a rare item. Not pay real money to gamble for a chance at a rare item.

Cappy.2786:

Now you can make the quaggan mini pet in the mistic forge,combine 3 of any gem store minis and 250 stuffing.

Which is exactly what the OP was trying to do. They clearly said they didn’t get any of the 3 minis needed to make the Quaggan.

kurfu.5623:

What would they even gain from doing that?

I thought I read somewhere that pet-only kills give nothing in return…

One possibility is that they simply went afk and were relying on the pet to keep them alive, rather than trying to get anything from it. I main a ranger and I have to admit I have a bad habit of doing that. As long as you don’t get more than 1 or 2 enemies attacking at once (they have to attack you for the pet to start attacking them) and you have time to heal in between it can work.

But if I remember correctly there have been times when I’ve come back and found loot from enemies my pet killed. I’m not sure if it requires any more than them killing something for that to happen though.

But even so it would be a very inefficient way to obtain anything. As mentioned above the pet can only handle a couple of enemies at a time and takes a while to kill them (and this is using cats, which have reasonable DPS). So you’d have to be sure there was going to be a steady stream of enemies but never more than a couple at a time. Which in turn means you have to be there for a long time to get anything from it, and loot will disappear if you don’t pick it up quickly enough so you can’t just go away for hours and come back to get it. (And as soon as you add anything like a macro to push F periodically to collect it that’s botting and you can be banned for it.)

As other people said free accounts have a lot of restrictions. Not only because they don’t have any access to the expansion areas and masteries/elite specialisations. They also have a lot of restrictions on basic things – for example only having 2 character slots and no access to map chat.

To me it’s more like a demo version without a time limit than a true free to play game. In theory you could just play the free version and never pay anything, but I think it would get extremely frustrating.

I’m pretty sure they’ve said all characters will get birthday gifts, but they will get them on their own birthday.

So if your character is 10 months old you’ll have to wait another 2 months, if they’re 6 months old you’ll have to wait another 6 months, if you’ve only just created them then you’ll have to wait a year etc. but you will get the gift eventually.

Edit: Also look at it this way: If you had known for a fact, right from launch, that they’d be giving out birthday gifts and they would be based on the characters birthday would you have kept that character you didn’t like? Or would you have decided one mini wasn’t worth it and deleted them anyway because playing a character you like is more important?

I really enjoy doing the story and I would have liked more of it but I don’t think gating it to drag the same amount of story over a longer time period is a good solution.

It doesn’t add anything for people who enjoy the story and will frustrate those who just want to get it out of the way as soon as possible.

If you want to spend longer on the story my advice would be to do it yourself. Spend time exploring the map in between, especially now we’re getting new ones regularly, and exploring the instances (did you check out the upper deck of the Dragon Lab?)

Or even take breaks to do other things entirely and come back to the story when you’re ready.

That’s the upside of it being permanent content, you can do it as and when you want. You could even wait until all the episodes are released and then play them all in one go.

Firstly I’m not convinced this would work at all. I’ve worked customer service for years and I’ve seen adults behaving worse in person than I’ve ever seen on this forum. The fact that someone can (and will) be held accountable for their actions doesn’t always make a difference in how they act.

Secondly there are a lot of reasons it’s a bad idea. There are many people with very good reasons not to want their real name on the internet. People who don’t want certain people from their past to find them for example (which can sometimes literally be a matter of life and death) or people whose career might be affected – someone found out a US politician also plays WoW and her opponents tried to turn it against her by claiming it somehow made her a terrible person who could not be trusted in government.

There’s also a risk of things going wrong if people can’t find you using your real name. For example if someone knew my real name and decided to argue with me on Facebook, or in real life, they wouldn’t find me. They’d find some random woman with the same name and end up harassing them over something they know nothing about. (Not because I keep my name secret, but I got married 2 years ago and changed it so there’s not many hits related to me and they’re all quite far down.)

People are already held accountable within the GW2 community. You have to use the same name every time you post on the forum and it’s the same one you’re identified by in-game so your actions in one can and do impact how people treat you in the other. There’s no need to take it out into the wider world.

You already own GW2, you can play it yourself and see what the game is like and what items they sell in the cash shop.

There is no reason to think any of that is going to change now just because NCSoft own the company that makes GW2.

If you are trying to contact Arenanet directly (to get an answer from someone who can actually tell you what happened) you need to use the Support link at the top of the page, this forum is for players to talk to each other.

Having said that we could probably help you if you can provide some more information.

What had happened before you logged in and found you had to make new characters? Had you taken a break from the game? Had your account been banned? Were you playing on a free account before and then bought the game?

Gene Archer.8560:

Wow, look at all those restrictions put in place just to be able to play for free.

If you have to lock the game up that much, why even bother?

Because it will still get people to try the game out. It’s basically a demo version, you can do enough to get a feel for the game and make an informed decision (Which is what’s put some people off buying it before) but can’t make dozens of free accounts for betting, gold selling, or other activities which could ruin the game for other people.

For people who genuinely just want to play the restrictions are a lot less of an issue than for people looking for an exploit, but probably still frustrating enough that it gives them an incentive To buy the game if they like it.

I will only ever buy a bundle if the items I want from it add up to the same or more than the bundle price. Edit: This applies even if certain items are exclusive to the bundle (in which case I estimate their value based on similar items). If the bundle is the only way to get an item I want and I don’t think the bundle is worth it then I won’t buy it.

So far this has meant I haven’t bought any.

For example if I wanted 2 bank tabs and 2 bag slots then I’d buy the Account Jump Start because those items individually add up to 2000 gems, so I’d be getting the items I want at the normal price and the other stuff for free.

But if I just want 2 bank tabs I’d buy them on their own because that would cost me 400 gems less. (Even less since I only ever buy them when they’re on sale.) I’ve never needed to buy transmutation charges, refuse to buy black lion keys and never buy unidentified dyes so whilst they might be nice freebies I won’t factor them into the cost of the bundle.

(I apply the same logic to things like ‘buy 2 get 1 free’ offers in real life. If I’m going to buy 2 things anyway then great, I’ll find a 3rd. But if I only want 1 then I’ll stick to my 1 instead of getting 2 things I don’t want or need just because it’s a package.)

I’m another one who loves the sylvari, especially because of the sheer variety in the character creation. Sylvari and charr are way ahead of the other races in that respect, and I think the sylvari have the charr beaten.

I think it helps a lot if you don’t think of them as GW2’s elves. They’re not elves, and they have very little in common with any kind of elf. (Pretty much just they live in a forest and have names based on old English and celtic languages.) So yeah, if you take it as ‘oh, these are the elves, they will look like elves, they will act like elves and I can play them like elves’ then you’re going to be very disappointed because it doesn’t work.

They’re a relatively original creation and if you take them as they are and stop worrying about what they’re not then they’re a lot more fun.

(If you want a character that looks like an elf your best bet is actually to make a human, and if you want the lore to resemble typical fantasy elves as well norn is probably the best you’re going to get since they have the whole nature based religion thing going for them.)

(Having said all that I admit I did call my sylvari Alleria Wildrunner, but I wanted to carry the name over from GW1 and my sylvari character was the one it fit best. My norn is an engineer so that wouldn’t work.)

Raids are basically an extension of dungeons (instanced content designed to be harder than the open-world), so they’ve done the obvious thing and copied GW2’s dungeon reward system to raids.

In other games you do dungeons and/or raids for a chance at the boss dropping and armor piece (and hope that if it happens it’s also the one you need and your party grants you permission to have it). In GW2 you’re guaranteed to get tokens on every attempt (more if you complete a successful run) which you can then spend to get the item/s you want.

Whether or not the same system should be applied to other areas of the game is up for debate (although I’m definitely in favour of tokens over RNG), but the fact that they’ve made their instanced content consistent doesn’t have anything to do with what they will or won’t do in other areas of the game.

FrostDraco.8306:

Doggie.3184:

Most important re-balance is armor designs. Replace the designers please with people who aren’t anti-diversity.

Anti-diversity? I please hope this is in regard to armor, and not something political.

Considering the entire post was about armour design I think any political interpretation is your own.

A common complaint about armour designs in GW2 is that the overall ‘theme’ is always the same for each armour weight:

• Heavy is plate, chain or scale mail over a tunic (aka ‘butt cape’)
• Medium is a trench coat trousers and boots
• Light is a long tunic (aka ‘butt cape’/dress) over trousers or leggings.
• Males are fully covered from neck to wrists and feet, females have random patches missing.

Which limits players choices. If you want a light armoured character in plain trousers you’ve got one, maybe 2 choices. If you’ve got a medium armoured character you’ll have a hard time finding anything else, but you’re also going to have a hard time seeing it under the coat.

Palador.2170:

We’re talking costume parts here, that’s all. I really don’t care when or how you got something, what I care about is what I think when I see you. Is it “that looks totally bad-kitten”, or “that idiot has no sense of style”.

If I see you charging into battle with the gasmask, molten gloves, jetpack, and The Moot, I’m going to think you’re a total idiot. Wearing trophies is pointless if you wind up looking like you covered yourself in Crazy Glue and then rolled around in a junkyard to dress yourself. By the same token, getting an item that really builds a look is great, and I don’t really care how you get it.

So… yeah. More costume options, less limitations on how you get them. I like seeing characters that look awesome, however they manage to go about it.

Agreed!

The first time I saw a level 80 player was the 3rd day of Headstart. Apparently they’d reached level 80 the day before and did it mainly by crafting. First time I saw people complaining that there weren’t enough people in the level 80 maps, and claiming “most people” would have reached the higher levels was within the first week.

Levelling in GW2 has never been that difficult or time consuming (especially compared to older MMOs where you’d occasionally meet someone who claimed to have once seen a max level player) so I don’t see this as a big problem.

And I don’t think it devalues exploration and discovery at all. Sure it unlocks a few waypoints but that’s nothing compared to the amount of stuff out there to find. If you mean because you don’t need the XP from it (except for masteries) then I’m not convinced you were actually interested in exploring to begin with, except as a means to an end. And if that’s the case all this means is you now have 4 options to reach that end – exploration, WvW, tomes or (once) the booster, instead of just the first 3.

Personally I’m planning to use it on my Warrior because I want one of each profession at level 80 but I always get bored levelling a warrior. Then I’m going to play though his personal story and do map completion with him. Whether I need the XP or not.

I’m still not convinced LA is going to be gone forever, or even very long.

Even if the city is almost completely destroyed I can’t see the surviving residents just accepting that and moving somewhere else. I think with or without us they’d fight to keep their city and rebuild it once it’s safe.

That’s what happens with a lot of real life cities. Take London, England for example (just because I happen to be looking at it now). This place has been invaded, conquered, abandoned, knocked down, burned down, blown up etc. etc. repeatedly. But when it’s over people come back and rebuild.

Same with LA in the past, even before GW1 it had been through some pretty rough times, but as long as it’s a relatively central location with a good harbour and building land people are going to want to live there.

This gets suggested periodically. It’s never popular.

Firstly, what makes you think a lack of money is what’s stopping them making new Halloween content every year? Maybe they want the festival to be standardised?

Secondly if you want to give them money every month the option is already there. Buy gems each month and then use them to buy whatever you think should be included in your ‘membership’.

Anet only made Guild Wars 2 because there were things they wanted to do which were impossible to do in Guild Wars 1 (dynamic events for example). And even then they kept the servers going so anyone who wants to keep playing GW1 can do.

There is no reason to think they will make another game any time soon. They’ve not said anything about it (last time we were told 5 years in advance) and have said they are working on another expansion for GW2.

Another thing to bear in mind is that people leaving is not in itself a sign of anything wrong with the company. Some industries have very high staff turn-over, even when companies are doing brilliantly, and it’s actually good for both the staff and the companies because it allows ideas and ways of working to move around with the people.

I was thinking when I wrote my post above that some people would think I was just unable to stick with anything – leaving a perfectly good job after just 4 years and already talking about leaving my new one. But in my industry that’s completely normal. If anything it’s unusual to stay in one role that long.

From the little I know of the games industry it’s the same, if not even more extreme. I have a few friends who work on games and it sometimes seems like every time I see them they’re working on something different. Especially the ones who are concept artists or what most people would think of as actual developers, because they’ll often be hired for 1 project and when it ends they move on to the next one, if the same company happens to have another project for them to do then that’s great, if not they’ll go somewhere else and no one thinks anything of it.

I have no interest in getting them myself but I completely support the idea that they should be available for those who want them.

I chose to celebrate the end of the SAB festival (and getting home early) by playing through every single zone in normal mode.

Which I realise is just a normal part of daily play for many people, but for me that’s a lot of time to spend on one activity. But it was worth it to see them all one last time before they go away for a year.

There’s a lot Anet does right.

I think it’s telling that even when people complain or talk about how bored they are with the game they’ll often throw in some variant of ‘there is no better game for me to go to’.

This one isn’t perfect, I don’t think any game is perfect, but there are a lot of good points. Even if it’s as simple as the lack of subscription making it a game you can pick up and drop as you feel like it, there’s obviously something that keeps people coming back.

Well you could already get married in-game. Get (or better yet craft) a couple of rings, pick a location, round up some friends and hold a ceremony. People did it all the time in Ultima Online with absolutely no mechanics for it.

My sister even ran a wedding planning business where she’d hire out cloth and flowers and things to decorate a venue, make cake and rings and recommend websites to find ceremony suggestions.

asterix.9614:

Pity I main an asura

I was thinking that. My character most likely to use this is an asura and I’m worried it might be too small to appreciate on her.

Djinn.9245:

Batelle.1680:

I have never been a fan of shields in any game, so when I feel like I have to equip them, I tend to favor the less traditional ones (SAB and Lovestruck are my faves). For me, Quaggan Shield is absolutely perfect.

Now I have to decide if making a legendary for a weapon that I only use on two alts is worth the time and effort.

@Felahr: You are being ridiculously overdramatic. Just because you find the shield’s theme to be silly doesn’t mean that it’s “ruining” the idea of legendaries. If you think a collection of weapons that includes a glorified pop gun, a rainbow unicorn spewing toy bow, and an actual disco ball hasn’t already shown its hand as being for a wide range of players, then you haven’t been paying very much attention.

While I am not going to be over-dramatic about it, I do wonder sometimes about Anet’s perspective on Legendaries. On one hand, they are probably the most difficult things to get in-game and that is why they are called “Legendary”, but on the other hand the goofy ones are not very “Legendary” in a Fantasy way.

I don’t mind the introduction of really silly things in the game (vs the story), but I think what Felahr might be objecting to is Anet taking a group of incredibly rare and hard to get items and trivializing some of them in this way. Some of us really like the story and want our characters to be Heroic. Now a percentage of these already super-rare weapons are not a choice for us.

I think that goofy things should be exclusively Festival, Gemstore, or BL ticket items, not something a character actively pursues in the game world. I can’t see “The Commander” taking time away from saving the world in order to obtain a toy “quaggan in a bowl”.

Meanwhile I’m wondering what’s trivial and non-heroic about a bow that shoots unicorns. Can you imagine how it’d feel to be hit by a projectile unicorn? It’s like the crazy, magical equivalent of a hand-held ballista.

You’re absolutely right that it’s silly. But to me that makes it even more special. It is the single most absurdly over the top weapon I have ever seen in any game I’ve ever played, or heard of. That’s pretty legendary to my mind.

This shield is working along the same lines. No it might not fit the stereotypical fantasy hero concept, but honestly neither do my characters and it appeals to my personality and theirs.

To me a disappointing legendary is something like Frostfang. It’s an axe that’s…cold…and spikey. End of story. There’s nothing particularly special about it. But other people love it, and that’s their opinion and no more right or wrong than mine.

As for excluding some people from some weapons that’s true of any design they could come up with. I couldn’t use Frostfang because as well as finding it dull it’s too blocky to suit the character I’d give it to. I can’t use incinerator because my elementalist is a sylvari and the nature theme extends to her weapons (she uses a primordius dagger and a corrupted shard, which look like they’re forged from fire and ice) – an obviously manufactured weapon would look completely wrong on her.

And then there’s weapons where the weapon type doesn’t fit. I can’t use the Minstrel or Moot/Eureka because I don’t use foci or maces on any of my characters. If I really loved the design I might push myself into it, but it’d be a trade-off. (And I know one guy who crafted two Moots, back before the wardrobe, purely to dual wield while standing in LA, he never uses them in combat.)

Other people will have their own lists of legendaries and weapon types they don’t use. And in that sense more variety can only be a good thing I think. Even if you personally won’t use this exact weapon the fact that they’re making more legendaries (and adding more weapon types to each profession) means there’s far more chance that eventually there will be new ones you can use.

naiasonod.9265:

I’m of the opinion that the human home instance it’s the only one with looking at. The sylvari one makes sense, I guess, what with yen being rather communal and all, but… The norn home instance seems more like a homeless shelter than a proper lodge.

The asura krewe lab is bland and very uninteresting.

The charr barracks makes sense, but like the sylvari home instance, is boring and uninspired.

I wish they people that designed these things actually cared to make stuff that had even the vaguest hint of interest in what was being made demonstrated.

The human home instance is the only one that seems like it wasn’t spat out in ten minutes by a disinterested party, in sum.

I don’t expect that to ever change.

I would have said almost the exact opposite.

The human home instance looks like they just made the city as a whole, picked a random section and instanced it. And there’s no part of it that’s actually your home. They could swap it with any other part of the city (except the middle and the Crown Pavillion) without making any real difference.

Whereas the sylvari one is fairly unique, even within the Grove. It’s easily the biggest free-standing structure (excluding the Pale Tree herself) and the only one where it looks like you’ve got an actual house. Sure there’s various other people in there and you’re not assigned any particular part of it to be ‘yours’ but there’s several empty bedrooms which you could claim if you wanted to.

The asuran one admittedly doesn’t look like a house, but I’m not sure asura have houses exactly, more a bed in their lab so they can sleep when they’re too tired to keep working. And the fact that our krewe gets an entire area on the edge of the city fits perfectly with the idea that we’re the ‘next big thing’ Snaff Prize Winners as shown in the personal story.

Palador.2170:

Very, very “No” on both of those, thank you.

What I would like to see is a description field that the player can fill out, that others can read by right clicking on the character.

If you’re a RPer, you can fill it with a brief backstory or RP notes. If you want people to know what kind of gear or build you have, you can list it there for them to read. And if you want to duel people, you can start/join a guild made for that (with a guild hall arena), and put in your description that you’ll gladly accept all challenges by going to the arena in your guildhall and fighting.

This one I would love to have.

It’s one thing I miss from Ultima Online. I really enjoyed reading the backstories people made up for their characters and I know a lot of people add to the background you get in GW2 (or completely disregard it and make up their own).

As far as I know Anet have never said they have any intention of adding player housing.

Which doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen (I don’t remember them talking about planning to add gliding to the game either), but it does mean you shouldn’t assume they’re working on it, or even considering working on it, regardless of how many people have asked.

I realise I’m the odd one out here but I’ve never seen leveling up and getting equipment as the purpose of the game.

To me that’s like saying the purpose of going on holiday is to go on a plane and stay in a hotel. That’s not why you go on holiday, it’s the practicalities you have to do in order to get to the fun stuff.

Of course the practicalities can be enjoyable too. I’m 31 and frequently travel for work but when I first get to a hotel I’ll still bounce around like a child looking in all the cupboards, test out the bed etc. And when I do level up in GW2 I’ll still go “ooh, new level, I wonder what I’ve unlocked this time?”.

But I wouldn’t go on holiday just to see a hotel and I don’t play a game just to level up. Otherwise I’d never have played my main character after I got her to level 80, or any of the others I’ve leveled since then.

I’ve actually spend more time on my main than all my other characters put together, the vast majority of it after getting to level 80. Why? Because I’ve been playing the game. I did it ye olde slow way, no tomes, no XP boosters, nothing. And even then I’d barely scratched the surface by the time I hit 80. I hadn’t finished my story, hadn’t entered a single dungeon, played WvW or PvP, the Living Story was just starting, if the wardrobe existed I’d have only unlocked a small selection of mostly boring skins, I had about 500 achievement points…

People who buy the game now and use the level 80 boost right away will have even more than that. They won’t have any achievement points (as far as I remember GW2 doesn’t consider levelling up an achievement), won’t have started the story, completed anything in any map except the handful of waypoints they’re given, won’t have any other equipment or skins or laurels/dungeon tokens/WvW badges etc. etc.

Far from skipping the whole game and having nothing to do and no motivation to do it they’ll have the entire game to play through. It basically changes it from an initially linear game to an open-world one where they can do anything or everything they want. Which I don’t see as a bad thing.

Most things actually don’t bother me. When a world has wide-spread use of magic, and magitech it’s not that hard to include things like holographic wings, tiny robot pets and crazy fashion into the lore.

Certainly easier than when I used to do crazy role-play where people could make their character anything they wanted – including the god of insanity, a blob of sentient slime and a mutant cat/bat/human hybrid riding a dragon (that one was mine).

Oddly enough it’s mainly little things that bother me. Like running over to a tree or plant node I want to harvest, using a bunch of fire skills to clear the enemies and then realising if the game was more realistic I’d have just utterly destroyed the materials I came to get.

Or being able to walk/swim calmly through freezing cold rapids without being swept away or frozen to death. (This one gets me in several games, I’ve wasted a lot of time in Skyrim looking for safe places to cross rivers before I remember I can just walk across the deepest, fastest, rockiest part.)

Also my main character has very similar hair to me (waist length, mostly straight, worn loose) and yet she never gets it blowing in her face or tangled in her clothes/weapons or caught in bushes….

I did like being able to only go part way into a trait line and put the remaining points into a different line, or put a lower ranked trait into the grandmaster slot, but I do also agree that people choosing to do that probably just means the grandmaster traits are badly designed and need to be fixed.

On the other hand I think the early version where you could for example put 3 points into a trait line and not even reach the first minor trait was pointless – there was no benefit to doing that so simplifying it so that every point unlocked something was a definite improvement.

I also didn’t like having to pay gold to unlock later traits. I get that it was supposed to be a gold sink but it just meant I ran without traits until I was sure I’d be keeping the character.

Similarly I’m glad they seperated traits and stats because it was extremely frustrating to have to compromise my build – either using traits I didn’t want so I could have the stats or vice versa – just because the seemingly arbitrary pairings didn’t match what I wanted to do. This way I have a lot more freedom over my builds.

So overall I think I prefer the new system.

As for the other stuff I still collect materials, because I still need them, and all the gear progression is still in the game.

I think it’s one of those weird video game timing things. Nothing actually progresses in real time in most games, even ones with long-term progression like this, instead things kind of leap-frog.

So right now the Living Story is frozen in time at the end of Season 2, but the rebuilding of LA has been frozen in it’s early stages for about a year, since the Battle of LA ended.

If the game was able to run in real time the stage we’re at now would have happened weeks or months ago (and there would have been a gradual progression from the early stage to where we are now, to the final rebuilding) and it would just happen that the official end of the rebuilding would coincide with the Pact assault on Mordremoth.

I think of it as working like how I used to play The Sims before they added their awkward ‘real time’ thing in Sims 3. All my families were in the same town and I wanted them to progress together, but that wouldn’t actually happen. So I’d play one for a week of in-game time, then switch to another and catch them up, then switch to a 3rd, and so on. Some events would happen out of sync (two kids who are supposed to be born at the same time would actually be born a week apart for example), but I knew how the story actually ran in my head, and once I’d caught all the families up it all matched up properly.

So at the moment the Living Story has been running for a few months and is ahead, but now it’s frozen and LA is playing catch-up. Then LA will be frozen again and maybe the story will progress or maybe other areas will catch up (it’d be nice to see the clean-up in Kessex Hills getting somewhere for example). Then one will push ahead, and so on.

Meridian.4983:

I may get this one for my wife, but I’ll pass. It’s great that anet is putting some fun costume pieces in the game, the hook hand that was released a while back was just what I’d been wanting! I feel an uneasy shudder building though, how long until we see someone RP a human pretending to be a charr with those ears?

Oh some people are way ahead of you. Here’s a charr pretending to be a hylek. I took this screenshot back in January and they’d been working on the idea for some time apparently.

What they actually said is you wouldn’t be required to grind.

You’ll never reach a point in GW2 where your only option to gain XP and level up is to kill enemies in the same area over and over again, or where you need new equipment so you have to run the same dungeon over and over hoping the right piece will drop.

They never said there would be no need to repeat activities at all in the entire course of playing the game.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s a bit of local color. I would have preferred to see the characters appear in the game, but I like the idea of having more stories appear (the original Living Story was partly meant to do this, see e.g. The Modus Sceleris)

That update still frustrates me. They added a whole load of new Dynamic Events, many with little storylines to them and others, like these ones, which could have been built into something really interesting.

Then later they said they weren’t going to build on it or do it again because their data showed players were only completing them if they happened to be nearby when it started and weren’t showing any interest in seeking them out.

Which could be an understandable complaint if it wasn’t for the fact that we had no other option. The patch notes literally just said “Added over 30 events across the game” and the game was only 2 months old – the Wiki didn’t even have info on all the hearts, let alone all the events that had been in the game since launch.

I’m still not sure of all the events that were added in that update (and I’ve spent a lot of time looking), some were easy to identify as being new, others might just be rarely seen and hadn’t been documented before then.

It’s a classic example of relying too much on quantitative data and not considering other factors which can’t be documented that way.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Now, why is there more melee hate in GW2 PvE than was true at the start of the game? A long standing complaint about dungeons was that groups would stack in melee, max out offensive buffs and burn bosses down in little time. Accusations like “face-roll.” “boring,” “silly,” and “stupid,” flew regularly. Add in that core PvE in the open world was also labelled too easy. ANet apparently decided to do something about the situation. Thus, we see a lot more AoE starting with the introduction of the Mordrem army in LS2.

It’s also because at launch the situation was pretty much the opposite of what the OP claims it is now. Many groups would kick anyone using a ranged, condition build, no questions asked. The simple fact that you attempted to use such a build was considered proof that you had no idea what you were doing and should not be allowed into group content.

It wasn’t any more accurate than the OPs claim that melee builds are useless now. (Ok at launch ranged, condition builds weren’t as good as melee power builds, but they were still good enough to get the content done.)

But that’s why there’s been so much focus on encouraging everything else, because for most of the games life a large chunk of the player base considered pure-power/beserkers DPS builds (which usually meant melee, or at least staying in melee range) to be the only option for every single profession.

Now there’s a lot more variety of ‘acceptable’ options. Which I guess if you favour power melee builds looks a lot like you’re being punished and forced to change.

Amaimon.7823:

Plus sometimes good guys gotta die so you don’t get the ‘oh, he’s the hero, he will survive’ sentiment. Now that Trahearne and Eir are dead, no main character is save anymore, meaning you will take the next elder dragon a little more seriously before they cut down more of your friends.

I agree with this.

I remember telling a friend who was complaining about all the characters killed off in A Song of Ice and Fire to read The Sword of Shannara and then see if she felt differently about it.

That book establishes early on that the main character absolutely, without question, cannot die or the entire thing is over. And after the 2nd or 3rd time the same secondary character seems to have died or was in a “no way he could have survived” situation and then makes a miraculous escape it becomes pretty clear all the rest of the party are invincible too. Which makes the story somewhat boring and predictable. Which is a shame because otherwise it’s a great book and the Shannara series generally is fantastic.

I do think Traherne was killed off partially because he was unpopular. But I think it would have had more of an emotional impact and therefore would be a better storyline for people who liked him.

Also you’re saying your character would have done something to stop him being corrupted, but remember the last time we saw him was in Camp Resolve before the Pact fleet launched. Then we don’t see him again until we find him at the base of Mordremoth’s tower/tree thingy at the start of Hearts and Minds, and by then it was too late. There was literally nothing we could have done.

And I don’t think it’s a sign of weakness that Traherne was being corrupted. Mordremoth put a lot more effort into corrupting him that he did with any other sylvari – the weak ones succumbed to a few whispered suggestions from miles away. Traherne was captured and beaten and physically absorbed by Mordremoth, all while being mentally bombarded.

It’s honestly amazing he was still mostly himself and able to help us fight the dragon. If he was weak we’d have arrived to find him fully corrupted and had to fight him as basically Mordremoths new body.

Personally I’m most excited about the Moa Racing track in LA and finding out what the giant targets out in the bay are for.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ack! According to the definitions provided in your link, I am a hardcore gamer. Perish the thought!

I’m pretty sure if you’re talking about games in general anyone who plays an MMO qualifies as a hardcore gamer. On a broad scale like that ‘casual gamer’ would be reserved for the people who play Angry Birds on the train to work, or have regular games of Facebook Scrabble with their friends.

I agree with all of the above. Making them available for badges is a very good idea.

I agree. I’m not a role-player but I was very surprised when I noticed this as well.

I don’t know exactly how Tyrian human beliefs work on this point but it seems like it should be at least mildly controversial to remove a shrine to one of the gods to create a ‘shopping area’. And if there’s one deity in Tyria I wouldn’t want to offend it’s Balthazar.

At the very least I feel like they should have added an NPC to comment on it or something. At least acknowledge that it’s gone. But really leaving it in place would have made sense with the giant fighting arena added just next to it.

Also we could just as easily pick points to reverse that list. For example:

1) GW1 is a trinity game.
2) You have to play PvE to be able to play PvP. You can create a PvP only character who starts at level 20 but you had to unlock the skills (and runes, insignias and weapon upgrades, ranger pets etc.) through PvE or (shock, horror) buy them from the in-game store.
3) It has traditional progression mechanics. You have to complete at least part of one area to unlock the next and complete most of the game to unlock the elite ‘end game’ areas.
4) It has a lot of grindy titles (Luxon/Kurzick, Eye of the North allegiances, lucky/unlucky, wisdom etc.) which give you tangible benefits like better skills and better chance of retaining salvaged upgrades. Some, like lucky/unlucky could take years to complete.
5) Loot is randomly assigned to a party member, if a party wants to distribute it fairly they need to design their own ‘need roll’ system like in traditional MMOs.

The thing about both games though (and any other game) is you don’t need to be completely re-inventing the wheel to do something new. There is nothing wrong with building on what’s come before, or picking and choosing the best bits to combine. It doesn’t mean your combination isn’t new and certainly doesn’t mean it’s not a good game.

According to the profession forums every single new elite is terrible and proof that Anet hates that profession. Yes, including the Deadeye.

I have to admit I don’t really get the Soulbeast, I can’t see what it offers that I’d be interested in having (other than maybe main hand dagger) but I thought the same about Druid and now I’m thinking I’d hate to give it up (and no, I don’t run a support build, it’s mainly condi DPS).

But just because you prefer one elite spec to another doesn’t mean it’s useless and certainly doesn’t mean the entire profession ‘died’.

I still don’t understand why those wings (and a few other LS1 rewards) weren’t added to the laurel vendor when all the others were.

I agree that they should be brought back. Ideally I’d like to see all of Season 1 come back as permanent content, but since that’s not likely to happen any time soon I think adding them to the laurel vendor along with the other rewards would be sensible.

This is a common issue in fantasy and sci-fi, not just in Guild Wars 2, and not an easy one to resolve because it originates in reality.

In brief the problem is that in real life we are all human and the only “highly evolved”, “sentient” or whatever you want to call it race we know of is our own. Therefore we can only imagine what other similar races might be like, and the starting point for that is humanity. As a result humans tend to end up as a sort of generic ‘default’ race with all others being “like humans but with X” or “like humans if Y happened”.

I suppose it could be possible to create a world where all the other races are smaller than humans, or weaker but more intelligent or whatever so that humans are in some way exceptional, but I suspect it would come across as unrealistic.

Because the truth is we are generalists. At the risk of lapsing into biologist mode (which I especially don’t want to do now as I’m on my lunch break!) a big part of the reason humans have become the dominant species on Earth is because we aren’t really exceptional at anything but we’re good enough at a lot of things.

We’re not the fastest animal (or even the fastest medium sized land mammal), we can’t jump or climb the highest or swim the furthest, or lift the most or fly at all. But we can run and jump and climb and swim and lift and carry heavy objects…and in a round about way we’ve covered flying too.

We’re omnivores capable of eating a huge variety of different foods and when necessary surviving on a relatively small subset of those. We can survive a wide range of temperature, humidity etc. unaided and with the use of tools (something we do excel at) we can survive even more – from antarctic winters to the hottest deserts in midsummer. We’ve even managed to survive in space for relatively short periods of time. We can see in both extremely low light and bright light and can learn to navigate by sound or touch. I’m sure there’s others missing as well.

The problem when you shift into a fantasy world is that to create other races readers/watchers/players can relate to (and which writers can write interesting stories about) you have to carry over at least some of the tool-use and problem solving skills which I’d argue are our only exceptional traits in real life. I don’t imagine there would be much interest in playing charr if they had no cities, no weapons except their claws and teeth and no clothes. Or if the asura just cast magic and didn’t build anything with it (and were also naked and used no weapons). So humans become even more the generalists.

(There are exceptions – Watership Down is a prime example, although not technically sci-fi or fantasy. The characters are all animals and aside from a comprehensive language and an understanding of history and with it some folklore don’t copy anything from humans. But those kinds of stories are rare.)

But I’d argue that on it’s own can be an exceptional trait. In Tyria I think this comes across mainly as resilience. Of course all the races have suffered recently as a result of the Elder Dragons rising, and humanity is in a bad place at the moment (in Tyria at least, we don’t know what’s happening in Cantha and very little about Elona) but I think if they weren’t all designed to be about equal Divinity’s Reach would be the biggest, most populous city and Lion’s Arch still has more than it’s fair share of human influence. They’re generally seen as the race that can most believably be any profession and are often at the forefront of new developments. For example they’re credited equally with the charr and asura in the creation of the airships.

Ok it’s not as obvious as norn being bigger and stronger than everyone else or the asura being the best at magitech, but I think in the long-run it will come in a lot more useful.

As far as I can tell the only time you can see it is when you first log in.

It is annoying, but I’m hoping it’s just an oversight and it will be fixed at some point soon.

IMO a good solution would be to add it to the achievements tab, below the summary and watchlist so it’s distinct from the actual achievements.

I don’t think there’s much lore on any of the professions.

There may be odd facts here and there, but usually tied into other things, like the engineer becoming more prominent than in GW1 (where engineers did exist, but only as NPCs responsible for things like catapults) as a result of the influence of the charr, and especially the iron legion.

But there’s no definitive origin stories for any of them. Even in GW1 there were only really a few details on the Factions and Nightfall specific professions – mainly to explain why they weren’t found on other continents.

So for example Rangers are simply a profession which focus on surviving in and making use of the natural world, both through nature magic and practical aspects like taming wild animals. Warriors are a martial profession who focus on learning to use a wide range of weapons and supporting their allies on the battlefield.

And Thieves are people who focus on speed, stealth and the unpredictability of using a wide range of tools (weapons, traps, poisons, shadow magic and whatever they can pick up during a fight) to give them an advantage over more conventional fighters.

The rest is filled in by your other choices during character creation and your own imagination.

For example my charr thief is absolutely not a thief in the conventional sense – he’s a loyal soldier who makes his living serving the Legions and then the Pact and wouldn’t dream of stealing from his fellow soldiers (or anyone else he considers an ally). But he’s Ash Legion, so he prefers stealth and subterfuge over direct combat, he prides himself on getting in and getting his target down before anyone knows he’s there. (Getting back out can be a bit messier, but he is still a charr, even Ash Legion love a good fight sometimes.)

A human thief I had for a while was almost the complete opposite. He is absolutely a thief in the convention sense (honestly he belonged in an Elder Scrolls game where he could steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, or pen and paper DnD where he could take the nails too) and only ended up helping Logan because he does have some sense of loyalty to his friends and it seemed like fun at the time. (He was a temporary character who never got past the level 40 storyline however.)