Guild Wars 2

How do you know it’s the same guy each time?

If you’re flipping I assume you’re using commonly traded materials so it seems unlikely there’s just 2 of you listing them for sale, and undercutting by 1c is pretty much standard practice.

You can complete dungeons with any combination of professions. Some are easier than others, but it can be done. But it’s not so much that you can do it with 5 DPS profession as that there are no DPS professions, just like there are no healers or tanks. Everyone can do a bit of everything and every profession can be customised to be primarily a support role or primarily a DPS role or whatever.

However support and DPS are pretty broad terms and there’s still considerable differences between professions. A support warrior is completely different from a support elementalist, or even a guardian. A warrior can’t really act as a group healer, but they can add a lot of boons which reduce or prevent incoming damage and allow their allies to recover faster and deal more damage. Whereas an elementalist could be almost a pure healer. Although not to the point where they can keep their party alive no matter what they do, even with a healer in the group you still need to dodge attacks, stay out of AoE and generally make an effort to keep yourself alive.

I think other people than me could give you much better advice than me on what profession to play, but I’d definitely recommend you check out the elementalist. They check every box on your list: magic, crowd control, support, can fight at range although they have melee options too and they’re sometimes considered one of the more complicated professions to get really good at.

joshc.3129:

or give us an option to turn them off so they won’t appear in the chat.

This is already possible. Click the little arrow next to the name of the chat tab you’re using (called Tab Options) and uncheck Emotes, the 3rd option up from the bottom of the list.

I think it would look better fixed. It looks a bit weird(er than it should) now.

Edit: Also thank you for asking our opinions.

Vavume.8065:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

. I’m also happy to see people get a chance to to check out the VIP areas for ‘free’.

I insta deleted it, I do not appreciate them trying to coax me into buying something and calling it a birthday present…

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Amazing 5th birthday rewards, thank you for everything you do, you guys are 2nd to none.

They are 2nd to Blizzard.

Just out of curiosity do you also delete any Black Lion Keys and chests that drop and refuse to get any of the gem store items that are put up for free?

Because it’s the exact same idea there.

Alternatively you could have used your free gift, safe in the knowledge that the marketing strategy will not work on you and therefore you lose nothing by taking advantage of the offer.

I was really disappointed by this change. I’ve often said one of the best things about Black Lion Chests – the thing which sets them apart from RNG boxes in other games – is that everything in them is either available elsewhere or tradable so you don’t have to gamble unless you want to.

Now that’s gone. If you want the glider or the other exclusive items (like the Mini Mushroom Stomper) your only option is to buy keys and if you don’t get it…buy more keys and just hope that sooner or later you get lucky.

I realise it probably makes more of a profit in the short-term because people who wouldn’t normally choose to buy keys will now have to if they want those items, but in the long term it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it ends up putting a lot of people off.

If it required a subscription to play? I think they would lose a lot of players and therefore a lot of income. The buy-to-play business model is a major selling point for many people. (Me included.)

They could possibly get away with an optional subscription like Elder Scrolls Online has now, but the trouble with that is it either has to be so minor it’s not really worth having (ESO currently IMO) or it’s basically pay-to-win or creating 2nd tier players where those who pay the sub have a big advantage over those who don’t. Which would also be hugely controversial and cause a lot of people to leave.

(Also I think you mean “pointing out it’s flaws”. Pointing out it’s floors would simply be pointing to the surfaces we walk on in-game.)

I agree, this would be very welcome.

Something like the ‘A noble soul is healing you’ message which comes up if you open the map while being revived.

lockheedlight.5910:

Axialbloom.8109:

Does that show ever actually get funny?

No, it really doesn’t. When I first heard about the show I really hoped it would be funny. People told me it was funny, but I did not find the show amusing even. I was hoping for a geeky comedy but it all felt like geek “humor” written by non-geeks writing what they thought was geek humor.

Exactly how I feel about it too. I’m not sure what they intended but my impression is that it’s a show for non-geeks to laugh at how they imagine we talk and act.

I haven’t watching it much myself but every physicist I know hates it, and the only person who claims to relate to the characters is my hipster brother.

Hexinx.1872:

Just make em pay … 1 core + 1 xpac cost… I mean the skins are not worth it. I used to use the heritage heavy on my norn just as a unique skin. But it was so ugly.

If someone wants to spend 80 bucks or so to unlock 30 relatively skins, have at er. Supports Anet, gives you accessibility. It’s not like they are the ‘goblet of everlasting life’

IMO the best thing about the armour sets (and to a lesser extent the weapons) is that they’re free to apply. That makes them great to use when levelling up to cover an ugly skin, or just for variety.

Whether they look good or not is a matter of opinion (I actually like the heavy skins, not a big fan of the light ones though, at least not as a full set) but at least it’s another option.

Of course the downside of doing that is that by max level I’m bored with most of them and excited to use other skins instead. I think the only one I regularly use on a level 80 character is the Fiery God’s Vambraces which my main wears.

Honestly I don’t think there’s anything exceptional about that. I’ve been part of a lot of online communities and you always get arguments over the most trivial things, whether it’s balance in a game, which songs ‘deserve’ to have been on an album 25 years ago or which movie has the best tag line.

I know of one Internet community entirely devoted to people rescuing and rehabilitating abandoned baby animals where certain people won’t even speak to each other because they’ve had screaming arguments over which brand of puppy milk is best. I think it’s safe to say they’re all good people and there’s nothing wrong with them or their community, but when you’re talking about something you’re passionate about feelings tend to run high and then you add the anonymity of responding to words onba screen instead of a person and its not surprising people get worked up.

At the moment not using the wings would make you stand out more, it seems like every other player has them. Of course that will go down over time, but it’s still hardly exclusive.

Personally what makes a player stand out to me isn’t any single item but more putting together a really good combination.

For example I saw someone in Silverwastes the other day wearing luminescent armor and using The Bifrost. I’d seen both dozens of times before, even several times that day, but that particular character caught my attention because they had also put together a colour scheme that tied the whole set together and made it look exceptionally pretty.

Later on I was admiring someone else’s character for much the same reason even though they were wearing a combination of crafted and dungeon armor. There was nothing special about those particular skins, but they had made them look special.

If you want to know why someone was banned you will have to contact Support.

Anet don’t make the reasons individual accounts are banned public, so none of us will be able to tell you. For all we know they were banned for repeatedly harassing other players in chat and the fact that they’d just made and sold a legendary was a complete coincidence.

(But if it is related to this process and they definitely didn’t buy or sell gold or items then I’d guess it’s because Anet spotted a lot of one-sided high value transactions – items or gold being mailed without anything being sent in return – which is exactly the behaviour they see from gold sellers and mistook them for a gold seller/buyer.)

If you want to discuss it because you don’t think they did anything wrong and should be unbanned you’ll definitely have to contact support because even if we agreed with you we couldn’t do anything about it.

I’m another one who was really disappointed by this.

The first WvW tournament is what got me into WvW. I’d always meant to try it, but kept thinking I’d do it later. The tournament is what got me to not only enter the maps but actually join in, learn the mechanics of the different activities and understand what it was all about.

If it had been like this I’d probably never have done that. I’d have gone in, probably found 5 PvE events or lone check points to capture, gotten the achievement and been free to leave without ever actually seeing what WvW is all about.

They change what’s in the gem store periodically. Some things like the ghostly outfit are tied to specific festivals – in that case Halloween. Others just come and go periodically throughout the year.

Strange as it sounds it actually increases sales, for 3 reasons:
1) Less stuff to sort through so less risk of players getting bored or overwhelmed trying to find something to buy.
2) Gets people like me who might spend forever thinking we’ll maybe buy it one day to get on and make a decision because it’s going to be gone soon.
3) Gives the and excuse to advertise stuff again – when items are brought back they’re on the promotions page, and often mentioned in the news posts on the main site and on Facebook and Twitter. Which draws attention to them.

Of course they could do 3 anyway, but it has less impact when it’s simply “Hey don’t forget we’re selling this thing”.

Yes it sucks if you want to buy something which isn’t currently available and yes that does mean they might lose sales (e.g. I wanted to buy the Strider’s armour, once it was back I couldn’t remember why I wanted it and didn’t get it), but in spite of that it’s a very common marketing strategy precisely because it works.

I agree that everything that was in the Gem Store (or Black Lion Chests) should come back, at least periodically. Maybe have a few returning items each month, and it can just cycle through all of them and then start over.

For monthly crafter you have to craft masterwork (green) or better items.

And the overall monthly tracker only counts monthly titles you’ve completed. It will show 0 until you complete one of the 4 achievements, then jump to 1/4 and the bar will be 25% full. Same as the daily tracker.

I also prefer the masteries to a level cap increase.

For me the main thing is that it doesn’t invalidate my gear. I’d just recently settled on a new build for my main (using a mix of ascended and exotic gear because I can’t be bothered with getting full ascended yet) following the specialisation update so if all that was invalidated by the expansion it’d be really annoying. Same with having to re-gear all my other characters.

But I also find masteries more interesting. The way GW2 works a level cap increase wouldn’t mean much at all because the new maps would be balanced around the new cap and the old maps would downscale you so the bigger numbers wouldn’t mean anything. Even if it came with new skills and traits (which we got anyway) we’d still be restricted to picking 10 skills and 3 specialisations so we wouldn’t actually have anything more available.

I’ve actually thought for a long time that 80 levels was too much for this game. If they’d made it 40, or even 20 like GW1 they wouldn’t have needed to pad out level ups with items and other random things because we’d be unlocking skills and traits regularly throughout the whole process, and since we’re down-levelled in most maps it doesn’t really matter what the difference between the lowest and highest levels is.

Masteries are more interesting to me because they actually add new functions we can use, without messing up balance in the rest of the game.

And in spite of all this the biggest benefit of the TP by far, for me anyway, is the convenience.

In GW1 I once spent a week looking for a particular bow I wanted. It was a rare (gold) item but a relatively common drop, available in a few zones. But because it wasn’t a hugely popular skin (and like GW2 good stats were widely available) very few people bothered to sell it. So I had to stand in towns where I thought people were likely to go to empty their bags after playing in those zones and spam chat hoping to catch someone who had one before they sold or salvaged it. And even when I did find one the seller naturally wanted far more than it was really worth, and I was so sick of trying to find one I agreed to pay it.

In GW2 it would have taken me 30 seconds to search the TP and buy it.

Same with selling. In GW1 I currently have about 2/3 of a bank tab full of minis, green weapons and upgrades I’m holding onto because I know they’re worth a fair bit of gold, but I cannot be bothered standing in town spamming chat to try and sell them.

It’s the same in Elder Scrolls Online which has a weird middle-ground system that’s sort of like the TP but only available to members of the same guild. It’s not too bad for selling things, if you don’t mind not always getting the best price, but trying to buy from other players is often far more hassle than it’s worth because you have to go all around different guilds traders trying to find one that has the right item.

For ease of use, which is my main priority, I absolutely prefer the Trading Post.

cesmode.4257:

Doesn’t sound like ascended armor is too popular here.
I returned to the game a few weeks ago. Im vastly behind in the ascended weapon department, I don’t even have a single ascended weapon yet.

However, if I am lucky, I’ll craft one complete set before this spring (which at this time would determine if I stay with GW2 or finally move onto other releases).

I wouldn’t say you’re really behind. A lot of people don’t have ascended weapons, including some who have been playing since launch.

I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it coming back, but I think a lot of the people who keep asking for it would be disappointed.

I think the big difference to the Vinewrath fight isn’t the mechanics involved to fight the boss, it’s that it wasn’t around long enough for that to be familiar. The Vinewrath bosses also have special mechanics which everyone needs to understand and use to beat them and early on that felt like a real challenge. Now almost everyone knows it to the point where they don’t even think about it.

If the Marionette was permanent the exact same thing would happen. It wouldn’t be this special, epic fight, it would just be another world boss.

The sale goes on until at least the end of August, we’ve only seen the first half, or less.

In previous years they’ve held back the most popular items like bank tabs and shared inventory slots until the end of the sale – probably because that way the gold to gems exchange rate has gone up, people have spent gems they’ve been holding onto and so people are more likely to spend real money to get gems. If they did it the other way around people would buy the ‘must have’ items and skip the fluff.

Edit: Also insert usual disclaimer about personal preference, some people really like this stuff, people say the same thing every year etc.

If you just want to play the story once you can form a party with a friend, guild member or anyone else who has it unlocked and you’ll be able to play it that way, completely free.

Buying it is only if you want to go in solo or do the achievements. But since you said you’d only do them once I assume you’re not interested in those.

I think what they should do is keep the current system of having lots of dailies to choose from but cap the achievement points at a relatively low number like 5 or 8. So once you’ve hit that you can still do the achievement but won’t get any points.

Most people won’t care about the cap because at most they’ll lose the odd point here and there and the obsessive leaderboard fanatics can stop grinding every single daily for a few extra points and then complaining that they’re doing it.

I think when they decided to have 3 armour weights part of the reasoning was they wanted them to be distinctive, so you could always tell what kind of character you were fighting (at least generally) by looking at them.

Of course that went out the window with outfits being added, so it’s not really relevant any more. But they haven’t created many armour sets since then.

I’m really hoping the next expansion is going to include some more varied armor, like trousers for light armoured characters, less long coats for medium and…I don’t really know what I want for heavy, other than something a little bit feminine my asura can wear. (The carapace shoulder with the butterfly would be perfect, but she gets the male version.)

(BTW am I the only British-English speaker who always finds these topics a bit amusing? Over here pants is short for underpants, so I get this image of warriors running around in their boxer shorts.)

I think it depends on how you play.

I like to have some toughness in my builds because I’m not the best player to begin with and I don’t want to have to be at 100% all the time. In most situations if I time a dodge badly, or I’m trying to follow chat as well as fight and don’t notice an AoE right away, or I get attacked while speaking to an NPC and want to finish the conversation before I fight back that extra armour will help keep me alive. It means that the only fights where I really have to concentrate and go all-out are the ones that are supposed to be that hard.

Also I like to make my own builds which I know aren’t ‘meta approved’ optimal, max DPS so fights are going to take me longer anyway and it makes sense to plan for that.

(I realise that to some people this is going to sound like I’m deliberately crippling myself and then making it worse in an attempt to compensate, but you’ll just have to trust me that it suits how I want to play the game and the overall result is I have more fun.)

I’m trying out full beserker on my thief and I find I keep having to remind myself that I cannot do things I’m used to doing on my other characters. I can’t run through an AoE, or ignore attacks while I rally a downed player and I have to make sure I’m using my dodges and heal skill only when they’ll be most effective. It’s a lot more work and I’m not sure I’m going to stick with it.

The OPs suggestion would not allow anyone to get a Birthday Blaster early, or to get one when they shouldn’t have it. It would just mean that once you’ve got one all your characters can use it.

It seems silly that if I create a new character right now I can give them the Queen Jennah mini, the 3rd birthday finisher, the 4th Birthday backpack and mail carrier, two 5th birthday weapons and the 5th birthday title…but they can’t have a cake gun that gives a very short, basic food buff for 2 years.

Personally I’d love to have it account bound. It would enable me to free up 8 inventory spaces by deleting the extras I have and putting the 1 I keep into a shared slot. But also because I actually find it’s more useful when the characters are below level 80, when it’s not really worth buying food for them. But even I don’t have many 2 year old characters below level 80 and I make a lot of alts and level them ridiculously slowly.

Look at the tooltip for the starter gear (the window that pops up if you mouse over it): if it says ‘skin unlocked’ then you can safely get rid of it and the skin is saved in your wardrobe. If you want to unlock a skin you can do it by equipping or salvaging the item.

The other thing to look out for is ‘account bound’, that means other characters on your account can use that item, and it might be worth keeping for them.

As for microtransactions they’re not required. My husband has finished the entire game and never bought a single thing from the gem store. The bank tabs are certainly the most useful thing sold but even they are optional. (You can also buy gems with gold and get things that way, it’s not cheap but neither is bank space in games where it’s only bought with gold.)

Yes you will still be able to play everything that’s in the game now.

You won’t have access to the new maps, elite specialisations, new items earned in the new maps etc. but you will have some of the new stuff like the WvW and PvP maps.

martin.1653:

Most of the new hairstyles are just plain ugly and gimmicky. Instead of adding exclusively Elona-styled hairs and faces they could have added a mix of everything.

Well we already had a wide selection of styles for straight hair, and very little for curly hair (none for human females) and not many options for braids (again none for human females). Now we’ve got a good mix of different styles. I think the only hair type we’re missing is curly hair that hangs down – like Merida from Brave.

(There’s also the fact that they obviously made these for the Elonian NPCs and gave them to players because…well, they’ve made them already so why not?)

But I’m sure this isn’t the end of Anet adding new hair styles and more will come in future, for all hair types.

I normally avoid making human characters if I can because to me they’re kind of boring. Not helped by the fact that in many older RPGs humans were a kind of a jack of all trades ‘starter’ race – they had fairly mixed stats and skills and were ok at everything but didn’t really stand out. You’d pick a human first because you didn’t know how all the different stats worked together, then when you’d learned the game you’d re-roll something more specialised.

My main character is a human, but only because I wanted her to be descended from my GW1 characters. If it wasn’t for that she’d be a sylvari.

But I do also have one of each race, so I’d still have a human even if she wasn’t my main.

By finding groups that couldn’t care less what sigil you’re using.

Honestly even the elitist speed run groups only advertise for experienced players using beserker gear, and maybe specify professions. I’ve never seen anyone ask for specific sigils. They really don’t make that much of a difference.

I remember the karka event too. That’s why I’m glad they dropped that idea like a hot rock and never went back to it. (Except for whatever that thing last weekend was supposed to be.)

It sounds good on paper. In practice it was just frustrating and dull. Even on the day, when my group finally beat the Ancient Karka and got our rewards I was just relieved it was over so I could stop sitting at my computer waiting for the next ‘super exciting’ event to grind through until I got disconnected.

The 2 week long events were a decent compromise, but I much prefer permanent content.

It’s not worth it for the stats.

But if you like the skins they’re worth getting, although you do have to pay transmutation charges to keep using them.

Personally I just wear whatever armor I get until I reach level 80, then think about what I want the character to wear.

I think it would be a good idea to have another way to get these items. I’d prefer something that doesn’t involve 2 layers of RNG, but it’d be better than nothing.

I never understood why some things were left out when Season 1 rewards were added to the laurel vendor. That would be a better solution IMO. (Although they could also be included in the guaranteed wardrobe unlock so people might get lucky and get them ‘free’.)

Of course the best solution would be to bring back Season 1 and the missing festival stuff like the Mad Memories scavenger hunt, but that’s unlikely to happen.

I also don’t understand the benefit to this.

For one thing a bank tab holds 30 items while a character with no extra bag slots and 18 slot bags (at about 2g each) can hold 92 items. So converting a character slot into a bank slot actually loses you a lot of storage space.

And as people said it’s highly unlikely the number of bank characters in the game is a problem for Anet given they allow everyone to have about 70 characters each, if we’re willing to buy the slots.

It would also complicate a system that’s currently very straight forward. If you want another character you buy a character slot. If you want more bank space you buy a bank tab. If you have a spare character slot and want more space you can make a mule. Mixing them all up and making them interchangeable just confuses things.

As someone else said it’s a complicated solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Prices for food, like all items on the Trading Post, are not set by Anet. They’re set by the players selling the food and therefore based on supply and demand.

If you’re using a lot and especially if you want a wide variety of different types you’re probably better off levelling cooking and making your own rather than buying it.

Well I’ve never done raids and I’ve only ever played 21 PvP matches but I’ve managed to spend just over 4,000 hours in this game, and over half of that on one character.

I spend a lot of time playing through the various storylines and doing map completion. But I also collect mini pets which takes a lot of time because some come from specific achievements and others need specific currencies, or are just very expensive. I also complete achievements to get skins and items, or simply because an achievement sounds interesting. (I was literally in the middle of doing another one when I discovered there’s an achievement for finding a golden chicken in Tarir, so then I dropped everything to look for it, and refused to resort to using a guide.)

And then there’s random things like trying to break out of maps or reach points I don’t think you’re supposed to get to, taking screenshots of the scenery, replaying the personal story on alts so I can do every possible variation, helping friends with whatever they’re doing. At some point I’m going to finish doing all the dungeon paths and Fractals too…probably.

Kitten it! I saw the title and picture and thought they’d actually added a mini Mistfire Wolf, then I read the post.

Anyway, I’d love a non-holographic branded mini. Charr would be my first choice, but any of them would be nice. I know they’re supposed to be horrible corrupted dragon minions but I actually find the black and purple colouring really pretty.

I was very happy to see this in the patch notes for today:

“Added an option called Disable Player Chatter to the Sound Options tab. Enabling this option will disable all player chatter VO, such as boon and condition gain, mantra and shout lines, reward acquisition commentary, and low-endurance notifications.”

I periodically turn the dialogue volume all the way down (and then get annoyed when a cut scene starts and I’ haven’t turned it up again) or even play with the sound off entirely, largely to avoid hearing the same few lines over and over and over.

Having the option to turn just those parts off and still hear the actual dialogue is brilliant.

I agree.

I’ve been lucky with my 2 free boxes – my only duplicate was an Endless Mystery Quaggan Tonic, which is tradable. But then the other stuff was a 2 week Captains Airship Pass and some consumables. So in a way I only got lucky because I was unlucky and didn’t get any of the rarer rewards.

I’m especially confused by the number of mini pets which are normally tradable but are account bound if you get them from these boxes. I can’t see any logic to that.

The existence of the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock makes it especially odd – that proves they have the tech to avoid giving players useless duplicates because it’s designed to only drop things you don’t already have (and even has a “hidden” drop – a black lion key – for players who have everything). I don’t understand why they didn’t do the same thing here.

How many maps did you complete on your Warrior? How many keys did you get in total? Across what period of time?

How many maps have you completed and how many keys did you get on your Guardian? What period of time was that?

To get anything close to a statistically significant sample you’d have to have done basically the entire world on each character within the same time period, one before and one after the point you believe the drop rate was reduced.

Even then it’d be a small sample and (assuming the drop rate wasn’t changed) not at all difficult to find someone who got exactly the opposite result at the same time.

All of which means there’s really no way you can tell for sure, unless you’ve got recorded data from multiple people showing a significant drop in the number of keys (not the pattern – i.e. 1 key every other map – the total number of keys for the number of maps you did) there’s no way to draw any conclusions.

And if multiple people had noticed a drop in the number of keys they were getting over the last few weeks we’d have a lot more topics about it by now.

Permanent teleport to friend – I never even use the regular ones, but for people who do this could be a good idea. Couldn’t hurt at least, since the functionality is already there the cost to Anet to create it would be minimal.

Permanent sex change – this is already covered by the Total Makeover Kit. It allows you to change everything about your characters appearance except their race. So gender, height, skin colour, face, hair etc.

Uploading your own music – I don’t think they could do this legally without paying a lot of money in fees, since it would be basically broadcasting the song to anyone who comes to the guildhall. If only you could here it it’d be legal, but then you may as well mute the games sound and play the song through another program.

In case you’re wondering yes radio stations, shops, cinemas and other places that play music to the public do have to pay fees, or at least they should. The same is true of websites, although there’s a lot of small sites which get away with breaking the law because they’re not caught. (I always find it amusing when I go to a website for a photographer or something and they’ve gone to extremes to protect their images from being stolen, then stolen a song to play, or sometimes a whole album.)

Unless by ‘your own music’ you mean literally music that person has written and recorded, but I don’t know how they could police that.

It’s over 9000!

(See attachment)

The problem isn’t just the removal of the Greatest Fear plotline though. The surviving plot was also rearranged so it makes no sense.

For example when you first meet Elli (during The Source of Orr) she talks about Zott’s death and how you helped her through it. Then later on you meet Zott (very much alive) and Elli doesn’t care for him at all.

That’s not the exception either, pretty much the entire story from level 70 onwards is like that.

Meanwhile my other MMO does lock characters in place – they’re always shown in the order they were created, and people are forever asking to be able to move them around, with one of the most common requests being to put the most played/most recently played at the top.

But I think in reality both communities are asking for the same thing – the ability to choose the order ourselves instead of having the game order our characters for us.

For some people order of creation is perfect, for others most > least played is perfect, but there’s a large group of people who don’t like either and would like them in alphabetical order, or by level, or by race/profession or a custom order that only makes sense to them.

Personally I’d like to be able to set a custom order because what makes the most sense to me is to have my ‘main’ character first and then all the others in order of priority, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with when they were created, their level or anything else quantifiable.

I suspect it’s one of those things which is not impossible but it’s harder than it might seem (bear in mind there is currently no UI or tech to allow you to change the order so it has to be built) and it’s too low priority for anyone to be able to allocate time to it. Rather like the website updates I need to do in my job. If I didn’t have everything else to do I could get it done in a day or so but I can’t justify delaying everything else by a day to get it done.

I’m another non-raider. I keep saying I may try it at some point but I’m highly unlikely to be any good at it if I do.

I think the only acceptable suggestion would be your Option 1.

Except I’d actually take it further: Make it work like the story instances so it can be completed by 1 person alone, or by a group of up to 10 (or whatever a normal raid group is).

And then remove all raid specific rewards, achievements, mastery tracks and points, legendary components, anything you can currently only get within the raid. If there are any drops it should be normal champion bags and other open-world drops, stuff you can get anywhere.

If you genuinely just want to play through the storyline then you’ve got exactly what you want. If you want the raid rewards then you do the raid.

I’d actually love that because I do want to see the story, and I want to see it in a format where I’d feel free to watch cut scenes instead of skipping them as quickly as possible to make sure the run is “efficient”, to talk to NPCs and explore any dialogue choices etc. I do want some of the raid rewards too (specifically the mini pets) but I accept that I need to actually complete the content to get them.

There’s a couple of useful things they’ve added to the game since you last played which will help you with this.

The first is the content guide, a little arrow in the top right corner that will direct you to things around you that give XP. You can customise it to show only the story, only map completion or turn it off completely if you want to but early on it may be a good way of getting a sense of what is available to you.

The second is level up notifications that gradually introduce you to new features. Some of this is stuff you actually unlock as you level up like new skills, others are things that are available to you all along like crafting and PvP but it’s another way of making sure you’re aware of what the game has to offer.

But in general I’d say the main thing you’ll want to look out for is dynamic events. These are like other games quests (killing things, protecting things, collecting things etc.) except that they start, continue and finish regardless of whether you or anyone else is participating. They’re shown on the map and on screen with orange text and you can drop in and drop out at any point and (as long as you’re still on the map when they end) you’ll be rewarded for your participation.

You want to get into the habit of doing them when you see them because they gradually replace hearts as you go through the game. The level 80 maps don’t have any hearts at all, but have long chains of events that can have map-wide effects.

I’d like to see the Mad Memories ‘quest’ come back. I did most of it the first year, but my main character was only level 30 so I couldn’t survive the higher level maps to get the final parts on my own. My guild offered to run me through it and I stupidly told them it’s ok, I’ll do it next year…

It would also be nice to have a Halloween event I don’t spend grinding for a rare/expensive item. 2013 it was the mini Bloody Prince Thorn, which cost 20 candy corn cobs at the time (I didn’t get it during Halloween, had to wait until the next year when the price dropped to 6 Cobs). In 2014 it was grinding Trick-or-Treat bags for a mini Gwynefyrdd, which I also didn’t get. Then 2015 was grinding 100,000 candy corn to buy the mini Gwynefyrdd. I did get it and it’s still one of my favourite minis, but I can’t say I enjoyed the process.

I understand in-game rewards are preferable to the gem store, and some people like in-game things to be rare and/or expensive so they can feel special if they get them. But I’d much rather have something everyone can obtain simply by participating in the events.

I suspect the current situation of precursors being cheaper on the TP than from collections isn’t going to last.

Precursor prices crashed as soon as the collections were announced because of people panic-selling. But as word gets around that the collections aren’t a cheap and easy way to get precursors (which Anet never said they would be) it will settle down.

It might not ever match up exactly because it will be affected by precursors from drops and the Forge and the price of materials which is affected by all kinds of other things, but everything is kind of in flux following HoT coming out (especially ascended mats) so it’s not surprising they don’t match now.

But collections were mainly aimed at people who hated relying on RNG (either directly or via buying from someone who got a lucky drop) and wanted a guaranteed way to get a precursor, not people who wanted cheap precursors.