Guild Wars 2

I’m sure you’re on the fast track to being hired by Anet with this quality post.

CrystalSpire.7283:

To the Arena Net Team,
Now, I realize thematically, it doesn’t make sense to have sand related skills underwater

Thematically it does make sense to have sand (or mud) related skills underwater; as sand is a common aggregate found in most waterways. Underwater “sandstorms”, etc. do happen even. The lack of underwater abilities for this spec is a grievous oversight; in my opinion. I think it comes down to Ground Targeting and being underwater… They should just make it work finally or make it work like engi grenade kit.

Id noticed that it was an old thread, but since the conversation seemed to simply pick up where it left off and kept going, I joined it.

It does make sense to simply reuse a relevant old thread rather than having 3 or 6 new ones made for the same topic.

Vyrulisse.1246:

They write every “commander” from a Human perspective and it’s truly annoying if you don’t play Human, I agree.

Sylvari Commander actually. The writers even told us to play Heart of Thorns as a sylvari to get the best experience. Up until we complete the reforging of Caladbolg (another sylvari tale), the whole story is sylvari centric. Only the sylvari PC is fated to slay Zaitan and Mordremoth by their wyld hunt, and only they get the full picture of the story by being so intimately tied to the most important story elements from the very start.

Only a sylvari commander is immune to the influence of Zhaitan, only they get the full Trahearne story. Only a sylvari commander is so keenly affected by Mordremoth and the events of Season 1 and 2. I’m playing through Season 2 again right now, and I’ll tell you, it’s a much more intimate story as a sylvari then it was on my initial playthrough on a norn. There are lots of subtle changes that are not there for any other race. It’s all about sylvari wyld hunts and being fated characters, and that includes the wyld hunts of Trahearne and Caithe.

Certain plot devices in Season 2 make more sense as a sylvari and even beating Mordremoth from inside its own mind makes more sense as 3 sylvari (you, Canach, Caithe) because of Mordremoth’s link to sylvari minds in particular. Even the way you’re treated as a naive child all the time as the commander makes sense as a sylvari, because you are quite literally only a few years old.

Every time Taimi pulls a new plot device out of thin air or talks about how amazing she is, well, maybe that’s how she looks to a 5 year old – which is what the sylvari commander actually is. To an Asura? The SNAFF SAVANT?! Pfft, hey the Snaff Savant is wondering what the hell they’re doing being a kid’s mook. The Snaff Savant is wondering why they’re putting out fires in the PoF demo with a fire extinguisher instead of getting their golem to do that for them. Oh right, no golem, because the role isn’t really meant for an asuran Snaff Savant.

Humans are likewise just random mooks in this game. You’re a no-name noble, commoner or street urchin, possibly with ties to the Shining Blade and the White Mantle storyline but certainly without any dragon-slaying destiny from the get-go. The human PC ties in very well with Season 3 and PoF’s Balthazar angle, which makes me think the story needs some sort of reset with respect to the player character’s identity.

Charr and norn are total side-shows, much like the asura. Those sorts of player characters would be better of as no-name Warmasters, Magisters and Lightbringers of the Pact army (if even that). What the “commander” really needed to do was step back into their order at the end of Heart of Thorns and more or less vanish from the script.

What really bugs new players is having all this stuff their characters are supposed to have done, when they haven’t done any of it. In Guild Wars 1 there were fresh starts for character identities with each release. Maybe your character was Ascalonian, but later you could start as a Canthan, or an Elonian. There was space for characters to be the individuals their players imagined them to be. Not so in Guild Wars 2 the way the story is written, and it suffers for it.

The current player character’s identity as imagined by the writers is way too straight-jacketed. It made sense to be sylvari up until the reforging of Caladbolg, but now with the human-centric White Mantle arc and Balthazar, it makes no sense to make an oath to the Shining Blade and pledge yourself to defend Kryta if you’re also a charr centurion of the Ash Legion.

Personally my main character is a norn who’s wondering why Braham (of all norn) is off doing the very things that I would rather be doing. And what’s this Dragon’s Watch guild? Again, being the sylvari of the group makes sense, but my norn does not care one iota for these people. My norn would rather be back at the Priory off on Lara Croft-type adventures for ancient scrolls and magical bows so I can finally slay Jormag and be the hero of my people… ohhh, like Braham is doing!

The most stark difference I’ve seen in Guild Wars 2 is the difference between the emergent storytelling of the open world vs. the instanced personal story. The story that manifests naturally in the open world is 10/10 in Heart of Thorns in particular. Just brilliant, from Laranthir and the Pale Reavers being right there after you liberated them all the way up to the massive battle through Dragon’s Stand. But freeing Laranthir is the only personal story step I can recommend. It sets the scene for the rest of the story to emerge beautifully like an Elder Scrolls game. Just great.

The HoT personal story was awful 3/10 level drivel and terrible single player gameplay that will NEVER match a bespoke single player game such as The Witcher or at least a dozen other games I could mention. GW2 is a great MMO but a terrible (with a few well made exeptions) single player instanced experience. It’s dated, tired and outshone.

Almost all of the story in Guild Wars 2 could be better told in the open world with client-side storytelling (tech well deployed in Heart of Thorns), with a more inclusive, open ended identity for the player to occupy. The emergent story in HoT’s open world was Elder Scrolls-level of excellence, and ArenaNet would do well to stick to what they’re genuinely strong at there going forward.

TL;DR: Well, that was a bit more than 2c worth. Maybe I’m a bit too passionate about a game that has 10/10 elements right next to 1/10 elements and the contrast is just… well it’s enough to make me write a really long post on the forums apparently.

edited a typo :o)

BoogerSammich.7189:

Daddicus.6128:

BoogerSammich.7189:

Daddicus.6128:

BoogerSammich.7189:

This mechanic saves bag space.
I don’t see a downside.

How? You still need those same slots after identifying the items.

That is an entirely separate conversation.
Maybe you will randomly ID gear while in the middle of playing.
I would ID/salvage near a vendor.

That’s irrelevant. When you ID them, they separate out into individual slots. So, you need exactly the same number of slots you did before.

It’s not irrelevant.
In fact, it’s entirely relevant.
we are talking about carrying around gear.
ID’ing the gear and/or salvaging it is a completely different conversation.

I used to just salvage on the spot and sell things to tp or put it in mats storage while running around. If I had a problem (ie sigils/runes that were worthless, then I’d see a vendor). It was never really a problem since I’d immediately begin the process as soon as an event was over or immediately after I opened a chest. Carrying around salvaging kits got to be frustrating so I bought the silver-matic/copper-matic and then paid to have extra shared inventory slots so that all of my chars could use them immediately. I realize that’s not an option for everyone but I still think it’s way better than the options we’ve been given. Especially since the unidentified gear comes in 1 color and you have to “guess” whether or not you’re getting rare/exotic/precursor style loot or green/blue loot.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Djinn.9245:

The cost of materials doesn’t matter. What will ultimately happen is less rare & exotic (including precursors?) because a certain percentage of them are hidden behind Unidentified Gear. Only those with high Magic Find have a good chance of getting rares & exotics, so screw the new players. The new players get to either just salvage their UnID or pay exorbitantly in both $ and time to ID it for a not-good chance at better stuff.

Sounds great for the old players with high Magic Find. Too bad for everyone else.

They’ll make even more money than they would by salvaging the rares they rarely get by either selling the unid directly or salvaging and selling the materials, allowing them to just buy ecto.

This system is the best of both worlds since it allows new players with little MF to turn an even better profit (since they will still be getting fewer rares from drops because of their low MF) or generate a lot more materials for themselves. And it also gives Magic Find more value, for those that do have high MF, buying the unids on the TP, IDing them is likely to result in greater numbers of ecto being available as well as exotics and rares. The drop rate of rares from these ID’d with high MF is orders of magnitude better than mob drops.

Not only that, but the gold sink in IDing the items is needed and the increased use of the TP to sell the unids is also another gold sink. Gold sinks are needed to prevent hyper-inflation.

Rares and Exotics/precursor etc are mixed into the bunch and the loot from salvaging those is the same as salvaging a blue/green minus the sigils/runes. So no they will not make “even more money”. As has been discussed previously there isn’t a way to determine what is of value for “sale/mats” and what isn’t. When you salvage you do not get ecto/sigils/anything (but eyes of Kormir and no one knows what those are for).

So no it’s a gold sink and it’s mats aren’t separating into types (rare/exotic etc). In both cases these choices don’t feel meaningful or good. They feel like gambling and I don’t want to trade knowing what something is worth for “paying/spending time” for the same thing. I also do not want to buy an id mechanic (either gem store or otherwise) for new zones when all of the old zones don’t require it. I don’t like having an innate ability removed just to make me spend gold, your idea that it will fix inflation is wrong people with HoT will just go to those maps for loot, it will make it so those maps are still inhabited and rather then bother with the new mechanic you can continue to do AB or some of the other maps. Not all of the playerbase is going to buy the new expac and it’s unlikely that this new mechanic is going to be a “selling point” I would personally put it on the “con” list. Mounts are nice and perhaps fun but I can buy the expac, get the mounts and then stay in HoT areas for the loot. The cost is cheaper and the rewards for getting the loot are not “taxed”.

I don’t have a lot of gold, I’ve only been playing for a year and I don’t generally sell mats on the TP because I like having them for crafting items. I like the fact that every time I do an event I get loot that I can see and decide whether I want to salvage it or if it has value. The RNG happens with my knowledge. I don’t like the idea that I now have to make a catch 22 choice “Do I have enough gold to really risk looking at all this or do I just salvage it and wonder what I could have gotten”.. Neither of those feel like good choices. If I choose to salvage it then I always wonder if I could have gotten something useful. If I choose to ID the items and I spend the 2s60-2s90 copper and I get 2 mithril worth 60 copper… I will wish I’d just salvaged. Neither of these choices are "good options.

What’s the point of upping your “luck” if you never have enough money to spend to see what your “luck” got you? All of I sudden I now have to switch my focus from playing the game and just doing things, deciding what I want to keep or salvage or sell, to “which of two bad options do I go with and how can I get more gold so that I can continue to feel bad about these options”.

This isn’t a “best of both worlds”, I’ve been playing for a year and it feels like instead of encouraging me to want to keep playing they’re punishing me for not playing as long as someone else with a ton of gold to spend. This “catch22” is unnecessary and it’s not a useful mechanic, this will not fix inflation (You can still go to every other area and not have to pay to id items so the “glut” will still be there for mats), it’s not going to fix the inventory space issue, in general it just feels like it’s supposed to be a call-back to GW1 (also unnecessary).

I went through the entire season 3 to do some achievements and it was such a chore to actually stick with it. Please let us skip endless, monotonous npc dialogue. At one point I actually had time to go to the toilet and make a coffee and a sandwhich and two npc’s were STILL yaking!

So as you launch the expansion and move into the 4th season of living story, please give us the option of skipping this borefest. It’s painful enough having to sit through the juvenile writing once, but on achievement runs, it becomes absolutely excruciating.

Now that season 3 has come to a close, I have to say: I’m disappointed. Season 3 is a mess. It’s incoherent. The story lacked focus and was clearly rushed to promote the expansion. Honestly, it failed. It didn’t promote me and hold my interest. It was juggling too many plot elements at once. Dragons, Dragon’s Watch, Lazarus, Balthazar, Shining Blade!! Frankly, I’m burnt out. Livia was just…meh. I just didn’t care as much anymore.

In comparison, season 2, imo, was much better. First-off, the story had a clear focus and theme: Mordremoth. All the events in season 2 revolved around Mordremoth. The exposition of Scarlet, the rise of Mordrem, the assisting and gathering of world leaders to combat Mordremoth, the Pact campaign into Maguuma Wastes, access to Priory’s Special Collections, the exposition of the Zephrite mission to protect Glint’s offspring. The story was told pretty well. It took its time, it was not rushed. It was detailed and easier to follow. It was engaging.

I worry for the story in this next expansion. In any RPG, even MMOs, you just can’t be reckless with your story. It breaks immersion. Do not think that players don’t notice. We may not say it, but we know it. The story doesn’t have to have all these plot twists and turns, it just needs to be engaging and coherent. The personal story, for example, had a simple goal: Kill Zhaitan. That’s it! It had a magnificent ending. ‘Fear Not This Night’ brings a tear for me to this day.

Had to do the dance again yesterday:
Show up 10 minutes before.
Pray LFG gets posted.
Yay, LFG posted, join.
Go to map.
“Join” the other map.
…Success. This time.
Wait for timer to run out.

DIE

Get unlucky and end up in a second map. Oh No!
“Join” the other map, AGAIN.
Proceed to moderately successful Dragon Stand run.

Bonus: At no point, out of 40 caches/pods, do I get more than 1 Crystalline Ore. Not a 3-drop, and certainly not a 10-drop.
ANet, I love you, but this needs to be fixed! It’s easier on the code to give ceil(sqrt(rand()*100)) ore than to contrive a 2% drop rate for anything more than 1.

This trend towards a movement skill based game is what turns me off. Most of these skills(bouncing mushrooms, updrafts, mount skills, etc.) are necessary to reach platforms or vertical levels of maps. I don’t care for the Nintendo creep in the game.

In my opinion, the pinnacle of this game was during season 1 with the Marionette events and defend Lion’s Arch events………. This is the type of thing I am looking for from gw2.

The art director at A-Net has an infatuation with bustles and hoop skirts apparently.

TheOrlyFactor.8341:

Stop playing this game for the story and you will save yourself a lot of headaches.

This 100%. Coming from a time when video games consisted of three lives and one for every fifty thousand points thereafter, I read a lot of books. Really good books. Most story in games is written by people who are not writers, or by people who pretend to be, but don’t really have a good grounding in the art. Guild Wars 2 is no exception. Some games, notably the Witcher series (as mentioned), have exquisitely crafted lore and story, MMOs tend not to fall into this category for a variety of reasons, none of which really dispell the notion that writers for MMOs tend to be drawn from the B-list pool of talent.

All this is to say, that Guild War’s story and lore is just about the most cliched tripe one could ever come across. You’re almost always better off entirely skipping lines of dialog so that you don’t hurt your brain.

Incidentally, when I was playing the PoF demo and Taimi’s irritating, high pitched voice came over my “comms”, my heart sank so low that I thought I had a hernia.

Please, ANet. Just stop.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There’s nothing in the personal story about Elona and even if there were, ANet can’t retroactively edit characters — there are consequences behind the scenes.

If the expansion adds something like this (very doubtful), then you’d have to create a new toon.

For humans who said that they never found their sister, there is a point where you can state (talking to Logan) whether you were Canthan, Krytan, or Elonian. I’m guessing this wasn’t saved at all; after all, it is just dialogue.

SmirkDog.3160:

Here’s a wild idea — just go into WvW and try it out. You can still use the skills, and there’s random mobs that hang around that you can hit. Have none of you actually played WvW and just assumed?

Yes, many of us have tried WvW and have spent enough time in there to know what’s what. That doesn’t mean that is how we spend 95% of our hours in-game. How fun would it be for us who do NOT like it to go in and try the new builds only be dead in 20 seconds? Try the training dummies? Yeah, that is loads of fun. A good way to spend the weekend, right?

And, how fair would that be to the new specs themselves. We seldom participate in this form of play so how would we judge the fun factor or viability for each of them?

All we are asking is why the spec beta is not going to be available for the other large portion of the population. I remember trying the Revenant out in Frostgorge and other areas of Tyria. If that isn’t possible, why not just let us use the demo area to try them out?

After my weekend of trying to play as much as I could while not rapter riding, I was really looking forward to trying the specializations.

i think they look stupid, i’d rather anet give us something like guild tags instead that display your guild’s emblem.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. It seems… functional but the way it was advertised made it seem like more than I’m seeing here. I really hope A.net adds to it or at least makes it less cramped before release. I’m already seeing people upset at what they’re seeing and feeling like this is an afterthought compared to the previous exclusive areas they’ve put out.

It would also be cool to get some gw1 style armour: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ranger_armor

I agree though, the Ranger style of armour is lacking and makes me glad I rolled a Sylvari because I can avoid the poor armour choices via the cultural sets.

From my perceptions:

Pros:
-The Hydras seem to be what you must have always wanted them to be but couldn’t do in GW1, I felt the nostalgia + upgrade enjoyably there.
-The mount idle animations are cute.

Cons:
-No strafe on mount. I don’t care if it handles differently in weight and style than the PC’s movement does, go ahead and make it interesting an unique how ever you please, just make sure there IS some sort of response when I hit the basic movement commands: up, forward, backward, side to side, and turn.
-Not enough Waypoints – I should be able to decide which method of travel I desire to take, CORE waypointing, HOT gliding, or POF mount riding. Each is beneficial in uniquely different ways so the maps really should not be altered or “designed” to cater to only one method. That leaves me with the impression you are scrambling to justifying a design choice instead of genuinely making something unique and creative, something you are passionate about, as if you suddenly aren’t confident in any of the travel methods you have designed – why? all three are fine, so keep all three equally viable and available.
-That rage quit inducing Master Chef Laraib. Make him shut up or hold still or make the player character throw not have such a crazy slow cast time – it’s not a magical spell being conjured from some ethereal dimension. There are too many possible ingredients on screen to read at the same time as trying to figure out which of the words he is saying is the ingredient needed. OR just make it like all the other food based skill/hero/mastery point type things where we just sample the soup and give the NPC a “this tastes great” or “this is awful” feedback. As it stands it’s an unnecessarily annoying blend of a mini game and a build currency acquisition point.
-The story is awful. Please consider some courses or workshops in creative writing and literary history. You have creativity, wonderful ideas, but no skill in communicating them in a fulfilling and engaging experience for the recipient.
-Ever more currencies and ingredients.

In the end, I basically got all the fun I could get out of this from a youtube video showing me the Raptor’s idle animation. The experience of playing the demo (I gave it a full fair chance by thoroughly exploring every aspect of it) left me bored and agitated. I’ve been chased off as a customer. It’s as if it’s all just too little, too late. I’m sorry I lack industry or internal company lingo with which to give you extensively useful feedback with as opposed to my experience and impression of it as one of many possible customer perspectives. Tyria has so much potential which I feel would be worth time and resources invested into polishing. I hope you, ArenaNet, find your spark again someday. It might help to 1. consolidate who you are and what you want to do, and, 2. look to your contemporaries and the giants in the MMO/RPG/MMORPG markets and learn both from their successes and their failures.

Good Luck.

Ookamikun.6472:

I do agree that most of the outfits fit a rougue character than a ranger or even an engineer.

That’s sort of the thing. Thief gets all the design love for medium sets, generally.

They just don’t seem to know what to do with engineer or ranger, which is strange, because they have a whole previous game to draw upon.

Got in… did the first part of the story on it… then found “mastery point”. Yay a mastery point, right there in the city. Oh wait… it’s more like a “heart”…. and super pain in the butt exercise that I finally gave up on. I’m not sure why this was implemented this way but I finally gave up on it… went out into the desert for a few minutes… and I haven’t been back.

Probably won’t be back until the update comes out. For me at this point, I’m not seeing a compelling reason to go back there. I spent a bundle on it so I suppose I’ll have to go there when it comes out just to try that Mastery Point again and ride some mounts. But for now, it’s back to the ‘old world’ and WvW for me.

I’m not saying it’s a bad implementation…. but what I am saying is that by the time I got that far (which wasn’t very far) it didn’t hold my attention enough to stay.. and as a matter of fact that MP was enough to just make me leave.. But that’s just me, I’m sure that many others will go a lot further and have some fun, although I don’t see anyone on my long friends list in there anymore either so maybe they feel similar? not sure….

Please look into what you did on petswap + f2. It has a HUGE lagg atm and you can’t command kitten in combat, literally gotta spamm the f2 to make it work, not to mention the pet doesn’t do kitten the moment you change to the other for a few sec.

Ok back when GW2 came out the euro to US dollar ratio was almost the same, but we live in different times now where to US dollar had dropped significantly.
Yet we still pay as much in Euro as americans do in Dollars for micro transactions.
In fact currently even the brits are getting scammed as obviously the dollar to pound ratio has changed as well.
Current ratios are 1 USD = 0.85 Euro and 1 USD = 0.75 GBP.
Yet brits pay in GBP as much as it should be in Euro currently, while we still pay in Euro as much as americans do in USD.
That is not fair, as we would save up money by paying in USD even after exchange fees.

While the outfit (for females) may not be ANet’s finest costume artwork, at least it has simple lines and is without bizarre and extraneous protuberances.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

sorudo.9054:

so in short, ppl who don’t like to grind and can’t stand craft grinding will never ever get them.
also, in short, they’re so useless even the TP don’t want them.

I find it funny how some people think that everyone should be entitled to have everything… MMO is based on grind. If you don’t grind you get no juice. Simple as that.

no, an MMO is based on online play, nothing entales grind in MMO or do you not know what MMO stands for?

The price is way over the top for a single trinket…..
“but it has a killer aura, it is balanced” some will shout.

NO, it is NOT !

Whoever implemented it, take a queue from legendary armor, will you !

As it stands I will not make this, until the price is normalized.

This coming from someone that has made at least one full set of legendary armor.

Another grindfest expansion? Nice.

As far as the story, I ran out of kittens to give since the start of S2 (S1 I didn’t even get to play) simply because their characters are like straight out of cringy fan-fictions written by middle-school nerds:

- their obsession to ram kitten infatuation down our throats over and over like it’s something special and holy
- annoying and cringy blabbermouth Taimi
- emotionally incoherent emo wreck Braham
- dull and always tired/pissed-sounding wallflower Rox
- Canach, an utterly failed attempt at cool and witty
- Rytlok who’s always kittening and mourning and sighing

etc. etc. etc. This gets painful fast. I’m only playing the story bit just for shinies and to see Zojja again someday.

He’ll come back in the expansion with even more powers and even less explanation.

Traveller.7496:

It feels like they had this mechanic planned for a while but couldn’t find a good place for it so they went “kitten it” and just stuck it here. It feels really out of place.

That would certainly fit the theme of the rest of this episode!