Guild Wars 2

1) it’s the weekend
2) Colin doesn’t do bug fixes anyway

Come on.

Colin-

The question for you to answer is (and I mean this in the sense of “answer this question with your game” and not “I demand an answer to this…”):

What kind of television show do you want to be?

Right now, the Living Story feels a bit like a sitcom. Every “episode” stands on its own. Sure, some new characters come along as regulars. Some characters skip episodes, they go away for a bit, then they show up again! The story mostly is per-episode with some general themes that run over time.

I’d suggest this is the wrong type of show. Suggesting the right type of show is harder.

I saw Breaking Bad as an example above and that’s probably a good suggestion. Breaking Bad had relatively strong seasonal arcs that were introduced quickly, but the story played out over many episodes. I think this is what you’re trying to do, but I’m not sure it’s working.

Because of the way your development teams are structured, let me suggest another format: Lost.

In Lost, there was an overarching story, but the characters and storylines frequently split. You’d have two groups with two separate stories (the beach vs the caves, for example…) along with side stories which stretched multiple episodes.

What I think you should do – and there’s maybe some evidence you’re doing this – is have each of your teams work on a particular storyline. Kasmeer/Marjory is one – I’m assuming the Dragon Bash team is also the Tower of Nightmares team? So we can see them again in 4 months. Rox and Braham seem to be another.

You need to establish characters and storylines which will last years and be based on the same characters with a progression of content. There needs to be STRONG AND OBVIOUS connections between what they’re doing – Rox’s “reason” for being around Tequatl was pretty weak, to be honest. And their stories have to tie into a larger narrative about the world of Tyria. (Right now, this “larger narrative” seems to be Scarlet, but I’d much prefer her to be one of the 4 storylines.)

I probably have more to say about this, but curious what others think so I’m going to post and read all the stuff people have been saying while I’ve been typing this.

anzenketh.3759:

Curious what server are you on?

As for your living world comment. I think they are giving themselves time to figure out the MegaServer before they release a Living World event. This is why it is out on all the maps to test it in a environment as close as possible to that as they make adjustments.

My server is in my signature! ;-) It’s Sanctum of Rall.

We’re a pretty big server, but remember, any server that is big enough to hit overflow levels will have this same problem as overflows are shared between all servers.

I absolutely agree the timing of Megaserver was meant to be in the middle of Living World releases to provide a safer way to test it. I do wish we could be providing better feedback than “this game is hell, I’m quitting.”

Feedback like… “I was doing guild missions, we had X people trying to get into Y map, but it took us Z minutes to get everybody together… almost everybody, that is, because Q people never made it in because the map filled up.”

That’s useful feedback for the devs and the kind that I wish more people would give.

People are complaining because this is the internet and apparently that’s what people do on the internet.

There’s no argument to be found here other than “I want it the way it used to be/the way it never was/the way I want it.”

I’d love to hear an argument why you should receive “Achievement Points” and complete your “Daily Achievements” simply for logging on and doing Tequatl. (And let’s be honest, half of the time you’d get the full set doing Teq. Even on bad days, it was like 3/5.)

I think the dailies should be HARDER or MORE TIME CONSUMING. You want something for logging in? Fine, here’s your login rewards. You want a daily 10 achievement points? Do something for real.

You don’t pick 3/12. You do this one thing. For example:

Jan 1: Capture an enemy keep in WvW
Jan 2: Complete an Arah exporable path
Jan 3: Win three PvP matches in a row
Jan 4: Complete a level 34 Fractal

etc.

Conski is correct. My point is that subclasses represent AT BEST a wasted opportunity to develop something better. They add nothing which cannot be added within the existing structures. At worst, they force players to grind out a subclass which they are more-or-less required to use because it is “ideal.”

I see it far more likely to reduce, rather than expand, build diversity.

I wonder if Chris would be willing to post a report showing the percentage use of each trait. For example, 25% of Engineers use Grenadier. 35% use Speedy Kits. That sort of data.

I bet you’d find there are a couple very popular builds in each profession and probably 1/2 to 2/3 of traits are under 1% usage.

If you want new builds and better roles, fix the problems with control, support, and conditions and overhaul traits to allow additional build options. Don’t tack on some new random subclass structure because some other game has it and you liked it there.

It’s tough for me. I love this game. I’ve logged 1350 hours and just made my legendary Monday night (Moot!!!!) after a grind-free farm-free process. (I hate grinding. I hate farming. Getting a legendary, then, was quite the process!)

I want to do these events. I want to coordinate and organize and gather people and beat them. I love that concept!

But guess what? Yelling at people on mapchat and hoping they listen to you is not a fun or compelling game mode. No matter how many commanders or how much explaining we do, there will still be people who ignore it. As far as I can tell, this event is pretty unforgiving, especially when dealing with the portal/champ fights.

There were some issues with the Tequatl fight and I hoped that would prompt some re-evaluation, but this fight seems to have all the same issues.

(That said, the execution of this flawed idea was tremendous. The fight is really cool, the design is great, the music is great, etc. So props for that.)

windyweather.1238:

I’m surprised and annoyed that Collection Expander only changes the collection pages and not the bank and bag slots. Much less useful if it’s not a real upgrade to the whole thing.
Sigh…

Makes sense to me on bagged inventory, but I would have liked to see it update stacks on bank slots as well. Still think it’s worth the cash, though.

I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.

I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.

If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?

The problem is that I also see lots of people arguing this:

1) We’re tired of doing the same thing over and over!
2) Why did you change Pavilion!?! It should be exactly the same as last year!

Let’s say every successful completion of Boss Blitz offered… 10g for Bronze Reward Level, 25g for Silver Reward Level, Ascended box for Gold Reward Level. Guaranteed.

How many would be complaining about the change? Zero.

How many would be complaining that you can’t just zerg around? Zero.

How many would be complaining that the event doesn’t have obvious enough goals? Zero.

There are many issues with the way this event has been built. Sadly, the player satisfaction for an event is so highly tied to rewards, that can make the discussion of the underlying content or systems very challenging.

I find it a bit funny that the discussion has gone in two completely different directions:

1) Reduce the number of guilds people can be in.
2) Let people earn influence for all five of their guilds.

I don’t think either of these are helpful. It makes sense to have representation tied to influence. It also makes sense to give people flexibility to play with diverse groups of players.

As a guild leader, I have several guild members that bounce between guilds. This is for a variety of reasons. We’re a primetime-NA guild, mostly, but we have a handful of players who play during the daytime here. Well guess what… a guild with only 2 members online isn’t all that much fun! So some of our members have an alternate guild they join during the day and then they come back and rep us at night.

This isn’t a problem. This is a GOOD thing.

If you want to make guilds more useful, you need to give guilds things to do together. GvG is helpful for guilds that enjoy PvP. I doubt I’d be able to get my guild to GvG much.

There’s probably some sort of equivalent for PvE, but I don’t want to say the “r” word here. At least not yet.

I know this isn’t a nice thing to say, but if people don’t see a point in being in your guild, it’s probably because your guild doesn’t offer anything. Instead of pointing fingers at missing mechanics, perhaps you should talk to your guild members and see what it is they want and whether you’re providing it. I just ran a guild survey recently to identify what people like and dislike about my guild. I asked what activities they’d like to do more of. I took that feedback and scheduled new events to meet that demand.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any shortage of reasons to be in a GOOD guild. I just see so many guilds that are “join for buffs, 400+ members, everybody welcome, [I just want your influence and numbers so I can feel important].” Those guilds – to me, at least – have zero value. But it’s not the game’s fault.

Boy, are you going to be disappointed.

I’d expect it to be August or September.

Your weekly position is based on your Glicko +/- a random number… up to 100, I think? Maybe it’s smaller, that seems too big.

So, for example, Ebay’s 1489 glicko could have been adjusted up to 1564 making them blue for the week.

You’ll notice the randomization take effect more when you’re closer in glicko to other servers. Since Ebay is ~50 behind NSP and about 80 ahead of DB, they’re not switching much.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

I like the randomization. I think, especially if there were a larger number of Fractals, it leads to a bit more of a unique experience each time. (To a point.) What could be useful is if you could choose how many Fractals you get. If not any number, then from a list. Do you want 1+1, 3+1, 5+1, 5+2, etc. Higher numbers in a set would lead to higher chances to loot Ascended gear or Fractal skins from the end chest.

I haven’t hit instabilities yet, so I’d obviously prefer more Fractals rather than more instabilities, but I certainly could understand the argument for instabilities.

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I find this very, very disappointing. Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand that you most likely have your reasons for this, but just as you are being honest about this, I will be honest too.

One of the hardest (yet most rewarding) things to do is to question something about which you feel very certain. All we can hope is that, with quite a few ArenaNet folks reading this thread, they’ll continue to discuss release cadence in the future and consider alternatives.

I’d pose it as two questions for them to think about:

1) Is it feasible for us to lengthen the cadence? Can we, as an organization, switch to a three-week cycle? Is it worth the negative press (because you know its coming, even if the players want it)?

2) If we lengthen the cadence, can we make DRAMATICALLY better content with the new schedule? Does it allow us to undertake projects which we cannot do now? Does it mean that we can include more high-quality content (voice acting, for example)? Does it lead to a RICHER experience, or is it just more of the same per cycle?

I’m an engineer, but I’ve never worked in the gaming industry, so I might be missing something. But those are the questions I’d be asking myself if I were in their position.

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback, Chris, it has been very interesting! I think that it’s very helpful for us to hear where you’re coming from and why you’ve made the decisions you’ve made, even if we don’t agree with all of them. Cheers!

To piggyback on Kimeekat, I also see this:

“God, Trahearne gets all the credit! I’m the hero! Why don’t I get treated like it!”

“UGH why aren’t there more people attacking the marionette? Where’s Destiny’s Edge? And the Pact? Why don’t they see her as a threat?”

If you fight as a team, it means sharing credit. So you can either 1) have little involvement from iconic/biconic/Order characters and be the hero or 2) you can be part of a team and share credit. You can’t have both.

You don’t dodge in a stack? That’s news to me.

I’m an engineer, so maybe this is WAY too data-driven of a way to look at it, but here’s what I think would be interesting: build a list of types of content. Cut scenes, “find X rocks,” “kill Y things,” dungeon paths, new maps, etc. Rate each activity on three measures: effort to create, fun for players, replayability for players. Make a 3D graph.

I get the feeling that certain things are being done because they are quick to create, like the “fix signposts” and “find these things scattered around” kind of activities. Those aren’t very fun, though, nor are they the sort of thing you’d like to do over and over and over.

I’m curious if there’s a few activities that stand out as having only moderate effort to build but are lots of fun to do. Jumping puzzles and mini-dungeons seem most likely to fit the bill, but it’d be interesting to see what the full dataset looks like if you have, I dunno, 20 or 30 different content types listed.

Simon.3106:

So can anyone here give an example of how to bring all friends/guildies in one server without passing the map’s cap by ten fold? (example of having a super super large guild of course).

I had the suggestion before that allowing a Join in <Server> from the guild menu (instead of just the party menu) would make it way easier to move the guild. Nobody responded with feedback.

Allowing guild leaders to spawn a guild map would be another option. If you are a guild leader or perhaps officer with appropriate permission, you 1) have everybody map into a zone. 2) right-click your name and select “Invite Guild to <Server>” 3) space is reserved on a Megaserver for the number of online, representing guild members currently on the same map 4) a popup appears, similar to the one for Personal Story, inviting guild members to join the map. This popup would go to all online, representing guild members currently in the appropriate map.

Astralporing.1957:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Frankly, they have nothing to gain from posting anything that is not in FINAL stages of implementation.

Yes. On the other hand, they have something to lose by not posting. They can lose their players – and they are losing them. I personally knwo people that left the game not because it changed in a way they didn’t like, but because communication policy alone made them think that Anet either does not care about community, or doesn’t have a clue about what they are doing, or both. And frankly, i tend to slide more and more towards that last (“both”) opinion myself.

While I absolutely agree that communication is an area of comparatively poor performance for ArenaNet (in a lot of ways), quitting the game because the devs don’t show up on the forums and go, “yeah, we know?”

That makes me think these individuals didn’t like the game much to begin with and are just using this as a convenient excuse to leave.

I hope they don’t listen. The QQ on the forums right now is intense. Much of it is wrong. There isn’t much good they can get from all this nonsense.

Have you guys asked the guilds that left why they left? There’s a lot of speculation here, but why not just reach out and ask?

I think it’s awesome that ArenaNet would not just include all these Youtubers, but I assume they’re also paying their way there? Knowing a lot of these guys are scraping by/in college, I can’t imagine they could all afford to fly out to Seattle for a few days.

This is going ABOVE AND BEYOND to include the community, not just the traditional gaming press, and it’s something we should all be cheering.

So no, OP, I do not agree with you. As much as I’d like to be there, I’m ecstatic that these guys and gals were given the opportunity.

I’ve never heard of somebody who has everything for their Legendary but map completion.

I have heard of people who have everything but the precursor. Or people who have 20 or 30 Gifts of Exploration.

The map completion is in no way the worst part of the Legendary process.

Proposal Overview

Guild Hall of Heroes

Goal of Proposal

Guild Halls should allow guild leaders/officers to recognize the contribution of guild members. This could be done through either automatic or manually-awarded statues or portraits.

Proposal Functionality

Guild Statues would be one tier of guild hall unlocks. Statues would recognize players by creating a “statue” version of their character model in the guild hall. There would be a limited number of statues, but GH functionality would allow guild leadership to choose between a variety of automatic (most influence earned, most influence purchased, most gold donated to bank) and manual (you set toon and description manually) statues.

Guild Portraits would work the same, but instead of a 3D model of the character, you get a portrait on the wall. Portraits would likely be a lower level unlock, but more portrait spaces would be available than statues.

Think 8 portraits, 3 statues.

Associated Risks

This is a large hit in regards to development time and there’s always the concern players may “game” the automatic rewards. Also, consideration needs to be taken in regards to how players pose their statues. Statues and Portraits could also be used by guild leadership to call out members in a negative way, potentially increasing intra-guild toxicity.

Immensus.9732:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fantastic.

We had to move this idea to another table, but you should be happy to know that it is still on a table.

I couldn’t stop laughing at this one, and all of the table-themed statements.

Too bad some people dont have sense of humor and just removed it from reddit…

Or maybe somebody is kind enough to remove it after finding out that Rubi just lost a pet and maybe today isn’t the best day for an entire thread making fun of her?

cesmode.4257:

Chris, thanks for the summary. One thing I wanted to point out was the bit about zerging: I think zerging really took off during Queens Jub and Clockwork Chaos. You were correct that giving us different areas to work on in the open world at once, thus kind of fixing the “champ train”, if you will…this still encouraged and fostered the ‘zerg for profit’ mentality that is literally one of the only forms of open world PVE in the game right now.

There can be positives to zerging, but it is only happening on a small handfil of zones, people do not care for events outside of their train, and I feel this takes people out of other areas of the game.

I hope this becomes a large topic you guys discuss and encourage us to spread out into all of the zones, not just one or two. Giving a shameless plug to my Global Dominace system I laid out…it would be good to explore something like this to get us into all zones.

Yep. I’d add this:

1) If at all possible, mindless zerging should not be the most profitable activity in the game. (Coordinated zerging a la Tequatl seems fine.)

2) If mindless zerging is going to be the most profitable activity in the game, it should be temporary and not a part of every patch.

3) It’d be better to buff rewards for doing solo/small group/difficult content than to nerf champ bags.

4) The only nerf I think you should consider is the Queensdale champ train and only because it creates such a huge opportunity to give a terrible impression of the game to new players.

Thanks again Chris! Can’t wait to hear from Bobby!

Sariel V.7024:

timmyf.1490:

I’m a dude and I’m sitting here in my sweet unicorn hat and just laughing so hard right now.

method of acquisition, pls ;D

It’s for my guild. It’s custom embroidery and I had 15 of them made. So… you have to be in my guild and favored enough that I ship you one. :-)

Pic attached for fun.

Here’s a fun thing to try: at 10 past the hour, go to Canal Ward and write down the names of all the players standing there. At 40 past the hour, go back and compare names.

You think it’s innocent, 5-minute AFKing? This should disabuse you of that notion.

Quick! Everybody pull up the logical fallacies page on Wikipedia and search for more options!

Evan Lesh.3295:

Random jumps: Glicko is used to make the best match possible. It does this by adjusting quickly which can result in very large jumps up and down before settling.

How long does it take to settle? Could the leaderboards simply filter out players who don’t yet have X games? (Where X is 50 or 100 in my mind? More than enough time for folks to settle, I would think?)

Evan Lesh.3295:

Decay: We can’t decay MMR directly, which causes the problem of people sitting inactive at the top of the leaderboard.

Similar to my suggestion above, could the LB just filter out players who don’t have Y games in the past 30 days? (Where Y could be 10, for example, I wouldn’t think it has to be large.)

You could absolutely still create another system, but I think there would be value in letting players see their raw Glicko number for tracking and comparison.

maxinion.8396:

This is a great post, and I think summarizes the concerns of high-difficulty players quite well. The example you guys came up with is also wonderful. A++ discussion!

I do very much appreciate this as the highest Fractal scale I’ve ever attempted/completed is 25. So thanks!

I’m a strong believer that our different perspectives, if used constructively, can build something better than each of us individually could build.

More minds means better ideas, but the CDI will require us to put down our swords and axes for a few moments and try to find common ground. Not normally the way we react to different opinions on online forums…

I’m especially interested in our next CDI on GUILDS! <prods Chris> You heard me? GUILDS! <prod prod> ;-)

Sinope.5630:

Because of this anti-zerg philosophy Arenanet should do like this in the game:

1. All goup events should be removed from the game. It might make players to feel tempted to zerging. That is really bad thing and it is against of anti-zerg philosophy.

2. All Meta events should be removed from the game, Teq and 3 Wurms. It totally makes players to zerg. Even it is organized zerg, but it is zerg anyways. It is against of anti-Zerg philosophy.

3. WvW and EotM should be removed from the game, it is zerging area, definetly huge zerg area. Yes this activity is totally against of anti-zerg philosophy.

4. All events should be removed from this game. They are gathering little zergs to specific area, and it is tempting to players to zerg. It is against anti-zerg philosophy too.

5. All champions from this game should be change to veterans, in everywhere. Champions attract more players and makes them zerg. And it is against anti-zerg philosophy.

6. Living Story should be removed from this game, it makes players to zerg and do things together. It is against anti-zerg philosophy

So how ArenaNet should change their game that it is not against anti-zerg philosophy. They should make it single player game. Then the zerg would never happens and anti-zerg philosophy is finally working

Yes ArenaNet, make this game Single Player MMO, then anti-zerg philosophy will work fine And everybody in this game would be happy. No more zergs anywhere. What a peace.

Hyperbole at its finest.

Let’s instead talk about good zergs and bad zergs.

GOOD ZERG: “Okay, guys, there’s three objectives, so let’s put ourselves into three groups based on who can best handle those three objectives while also balancing how many people go to each.”

BAD ZERG: “EVERYBODY IN MAP ON COMMANDER NOW NOW NOW NOW”

We could maybe make an exception for coordinated WvW as certain objectives really do require a map blob. In PvE, though, if the goal is for everybody to follow the Blue Dorito, that’s bad event design.

Eurhetemec.9052:

timmyf.1490:

The patch is fine. The community is not. Just my personal opinion.

I’m loving the patch so far.

Unjustifiable opinion, I’d suggest, as it requires ignoring the issues EU players are having entirely (easy from the US) and ignoring the issues the trait changes have caused for new players and characters.

Much of the patch is good. Some is dire. That is not the community’s fault, and it’s ridiculous and insulting to suggest that it is.

I don’t see how an opinion is “unjustifiable.” Personally, for me, ignoring the entirety of the world outside myself, I’m loving the patch. That I took steps to clearly label this as a “personal opinion” was supposed to serve as evidence that I recognize others are having problems.

I think those problems are legitimate. But they don’t affect me.

As others have said here, I think there are relatively simple fixes. Allow players to choose a “community” for sorting – Roleplay, World Bosses, Mega Bosses, Dungeons, Fractals, PvP, WvW, Server Chat, etc. If this can be changed on the fly (and take effect next time you map), that will solve some issues.

Language issues are tougher. I’m sure somebody could easily come up with a better solution for that than I could. It obviously needs to be changed.

What’s less obvious is that the best solution is completely dismantling Megaserver.

I get the feeling most of the people on these forums aren’t actually asking for potatoes, they’re asking for attention and validation.

…because they’ve released a couple sets of in-game armor skins?

Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.

Morrigan, that’s my point, though. There’s silence right now because this place is a madhouse and telling us “hey, we’re working on it” probably won’t make anything better.

Oh, and the people working on it are busy. You know… working on it.

They’ve already done a few hotfixes for the language issues and said they’re working on longer-term solutions. I don’t see what more people want from them.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

p.s. basing your view of the majority’s opinions on these forums or reddit is going to give you a wrong conclusion. If you’ve actually spent time playing the game, you might notice a vast number of people enjoy zerging up for champ trains. Never heard one person in game EVER say “man this champ train sucks”. But you will hear TONS of people asking where the train is. Did you get 1+1 or do I need to spell that out for you too?

1,784 hours over 634 days. I am, admittedly, relatively casual.

No need for all the hostility, though.

And I know plenty of people who hate the champ train and can only stand doing it because they’re watching TV at the same time or something.

savacli.8172:

If you want to consistently run fractals in a particular way (clean and non-exploity) you’re going to need a dedicated group or guild for that. No one is forcing you to run with PUG’s, but there are catches if you decide to do so.

It says a lot about the state of instanced content in this game that the expectation of pugs is that you’ll exploit. And that if you don’t want to exploit, you better find a dedicated group or guild.

Especially since the content is so easy.

Rezz.8019:

It is very, very unlikely that all overflows were full. Unless you were there 10 minutes before the event finished…
If you are all there in time, there is no way that overflows would be full so fast. That’s how overflow maps work. So yeah… pay attention next time.

I went through the portal at the same time as my girlfriend. Immediately when we loaded, I tried to join on her. Full. Then she tried to join on me. Full.

The overflows were filling within 10-15 seconds of creation, as best as I can tell.

Also, Megaserver is a great example of this. There are, in my eyes, two things they either missed or undervalued in the design of megaservers.

1) No way to “force affinity.” It’s nice that Megaserver has an affinity system for placement, but it seems the only affinity we received was for home world, guild, and party. Friendslist was supposed to be implemented but was not. But what about communities which stretch beyond? RP folks are one huge example, but there are many others. Having a “Role” flag (Role Playing, Dungeons, Fractals, WvW, PvP, Casual, etc options) would have gone a long way in allowing players to find communities of players who are similar.

2) Huge challenges for WvW/guild recruiting and development. This could have been helped with the addition of world chat or leaving certain areas megaserver free.

I like the megaserver overall, but these are huge unsolved problems. It’s now been, what, 4 months? And there’s no word that they’re even trying to fix these, much less implementing and testing fixes.

You didn’t answer my question: why do we need subclasses to gain access to new weapons and skills? Why can’t we just have those new weapons and skills with our existing classes?

I can call my Thief an “infiltrator” because I wield Chain Sickles without any sort of subclass structure. We have this already in game. Look at terms like Zerk Warrior, Healway, Bearbow – these all refer to specific builds and weapon choices without a subclass structure.

This thread is growing far too fast for any normal human being to keep up with. Chris, do you think it’d be appropriate at this point to ask slightly more focused questions? As somebody who pops in every day or so, I’m finding there are a few pages covering five topics whenever I come back. By the time I catch up, it’s typically too late to contribute. :-(

Sunshine.4680:

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

Don’t tell timmy that, it seems where he is from they do it in less then 8 minutes with everyone getting their chevos etc.. it must be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold and people only die from old age surrounded by loved ones.

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

I’m just saying that once all the people who showed up to farm figure out that farming isn’t an option, they’ll leave. The remaining people will trend more toward caring about completing the event and will have more success.

Iason Evan.3806:

The last few patches have given Jory and Kasmeer more dialog about themselves than the actual story and most of it is lusty, paperback romance novel stuff in my opinion.

What, the curtains?

No! Not the curtains!

;-)

I’ve seen enough people talk about Vanquishing and Hard Mode etc here, I have a new idea that might offer some fun opportunities:

Wilderness Zones

Unlike regular zones in the game, wilderness zones are instanced areas without waypoints and without respawning mobs. These zones exist at the edge of the current map and would serve as an introduction to soon-to-be-released new zones.

In wilderness zones, you and your party venture through the zone in an attempt to hunt down and defeat some sort of boss. Because there are no checkpoints, a full wipe means you have to waypoint out of the instance and start over.

This could even tie in with Order Missions: perhaps there are 3-4 different bosses per zone and every week your Order enlists you to defeat one.

Some examples…

“Bandit Territory” through the existing portal in Brisban Wildlands. This heavily fortified bandit training facility/barracks is home to many top officials and commanders. You must infiltrate the barracks and assassinate one of these officials.

“Crystal Desert” takes you south from Ebonhawke. A patrol of Ebonguard has gone missing and you must rescue them.

“Active Fissure” sends you below the surface of Tyria to clear out a pack of Destroyers wreaking havoc on Kessex Hills.

Something like that?

Atlas.9704:

If stopped then certain other DEs are disabled. It would give ANet more fluidity with events, but we’re still stuck with the dilemma of Personal versus Living story.

Now if they scrap Personal altogether that would solve one problem, but bring about more.

That’s kind of why I think we need to have new areas that are free from Personal Story conflicts. Don’t get rid of what’s there, but build new content now that we’ve all learned the lessons of the PS.

Slayer Lord.5023:

LS is supposed to be endless. Every two weeks.

Right. But there is a bit of a break here.

Sounds like we’ll get some closure to the story on the 18th. WvW Season 2 is starting up, I expect we’ll hear more about LS2 after that gets underway. For now, Anet will be quiet to give everybody a chance to experience the new content.

Harper.4173:

If a word is misused but the message transfer is complete and successful does it really matter?

The word means what it means to the community based on context – but if the message is clear then why does it matter if we do or don’t misuse it?

This is a good question and much bigger than this specific case. For example, Microsoft recently announced “HoloLens” and “Windows Holographic,” technologies which (based on name) would appear to be holograms.

They are not holograms.

Does it matter? Many would say “no,” they sort of feel hologram-like, and “augmented reality” is a terrible term, so this is a way to get the public excited about something. Personally, I think it’s a very bad idea for people who know better to willfully mislead the public about important technological breakthroughs. It’d be like Intel creating a “QuantumCPU” that doesn’t actually qualify as a quantum computing device.

But yeah, I think “meta” is okay so long as everybody realizes it’s just short-hand and doesn’t mean precisely what the dictionary definition says in this particular context.

If you’re willing to play WvW and PvP in addition to PvE, the dailies are extra loot and 10 AP for practically zero effort. The anger over the new system is a pretty good sign that I should never read these forums again.

As a player who acquired both Quip and The Dreamer primarily for the sound effects, I would be considerably upset if they were changed. That’s perhaps the ONLY appeal of Quip. The Dreamer still has sweet unicorn projectiles, but it’d certainly be a step down to lose those sounds.