Guild Wars 2

Hmmm… this is interesting. Gotta check mine when I get home because I did every story step with every race (see my signature ahahha), Jumping Puzzles, Explorers and such and I keep myself thinking that I have few Masteries indeed.

I am typically a forum lurker, frequenting the forums but not responding. After playing through the HoT story and reading many forum threads and watching videos about the topic, I decided it was time to talk.

ArenaNet,
Ever since you released the expansion, you have been flooded with criticism and complaints. It is understandable that right now is very stressful, trying to fix all the problems that weren’t caught in the beta, and finding some equal ground with the player base.

As I explored this new world, I felt as I had when I first started playing. I was vulnerable again, not yet knowing what to expect of this strange new land. The jungle and Ley-line Confluence was beautiful, expansive, and dangerous. The new gameplay of the Revenant and specializations put new life into repetitive builds. Gliding and bouncing around on mushrooms was a joy. Being a music nerd, I would just sit in certain locations and just close my eyes and listen, taking time to enjoy the musical art.

The new lands and environments are amazing, and people who worked on them deserve a standing ovation. My own personal let-down was the Personal Story.

This is nothing new. I have lurked the forums and know that lore-geek criticism has been prevalent. I don’t agree with everything, but there are a few common themes that I did agree with.

There was much anticipation about the new story and all the new lore that would be discovered in this strange land, but the story was rushed, and the lore was not as explored and flesh out as it could have been. I understand that there was a sense of urgency, but “urgency” and “short” are not synonyms. Using a classic example, in Lord of the Rings, there was a sense of urgency to destroy The One Ring. It was the one thing that could save or condemn all that was good, but the journey was drawn out in three long books. In HoT, we are Frodo, especially true of Sylvari resisting the dragon’s power, and the dragon’s mind is our Mount Doom. Sadly, we threw the ring into Mount Doom at chapter 3.

Personally, I was hoping for even more struggle against Mordremoth. I wanted him to be a dragon I would love to hate. He had more character than Zhaitan, but I was hoping for more mind games, and more characters turning on one another. The fight mechanics were satisfying, but I felt that I didn’t hate him enough in the end. When it came to Zhaitan, though the battle was not as satisfying mechanic-wise, I hated him enough to not be too worried about that. Zhaitan took many of my favorite characters away, mocked their sacrifice, and told me that I could easily join them if I died. Seeing Zhaitan fall in such a pitiful state was better than he deserved.

The whole part about Rata Novus and seeing Rata Sum in the distance felt like a lost opportunity. Rata Sum is a magical floating city. Mordremoth was already attacking and destroying simple waypoints, so Rata Sum should have been a magical all-you-can-eat buffet. There was a chance to explore Asuran politics and their collective resentment towards the elder dragons, but there was nothing.

Rata Novus was beautiful and I loved how the city was built using the ley-lines as a super charge station. The scientific Cave Johnson/bioshock feel of the area made me chuckle. There is so much that can be done with Rata Novus in the future, so I remain hopeful. When we go to the dragon lab, the “discovery” was terrible. “All the elder dragons have a weakness.” That is a line taken straight from the Water is Wet News Station. We are talking about Asura. They are a race of geniuses, save the one in prison. I’m pretty sure there was more to their data and studies than a simple “there is a weakness.” Even if there was nothing about Mordremoth, I would have gladly taken some Primordus lore in its place.

Now, for discovering the weakness of one of the greatest forces of nature, Mordremoth. I can accept that his weakness is his mind, his body is too large and resilient to keep down. The problem was the discovery, or lack there of. Struggling to find the weakness with the threat of destruction at any moment was a missed story chance. Knowing that the player character and group of comrades are trying to pin down his weakness, character development would happen. Both sides would have interesting interactions. Mordremoth trying to hide his mortal weakness and maybe even trying to convince the players that killing him will result in greater danger. The player could question for what purpose the elder dragons exist, still seeing them as too great a problem in the end. There could have been uncertainty that his weakness was even his mind. Everyone was too sure about his weakness in the end.

I cannot say too much about the new races, simply because there was not much to go on. I would love to know much more about the Itzel, Nuhoch, and Exalted. What are they like as individuals? Do any Exalted dislike the Charr? What does it sound like when the Itzel sing? Are the Nuhoch really as xenophobic and distrusting of strangers as the devs said? There are so many questions that could simply be answered with simple text boxes with npcs and a little more atmospheric chatter.

Those are my main issues with the story and lore. There will be people telling me that if I, or any other lore-geek critic, doesn’t like the game, we shouldn’t play. And here I confess my own personal reason for raising notice on things I felt were unsatisfactory: I love Guild Wars 2. I, lore-geek, love this game, its story, lore, and history. The reason I write my concerns down, the reason I take time out of my day to type up this page, is because I love the game enough to care deeply about it. If I did not care at all, I would not even bother.

Every time I log in, I enter a magical world and watch over my character. There is nothing that can compare to this feeling of playing the game. I know that the creators of this game are imaginative, smart, hardworking people that can bring fantasy to life. They made me laugh when the Asura were insulting each other about the calibration of an experimental portal. They made me smile when I found a Sylvari working hard to help some spiders find peace. They made me cry when Tybalt/Sieran/Forgal ran in to hold back the hoards of risen, with no hope of survival.

I know the developers, artists, composers, voice actors, story writers and more are brilliant, and that is why I place high hopes on you. I cannot speak for everyone, but I know I want your creation to succeed and become one of the greatest games out there.
Sincerely,
DuskyInsanePoet the Lore-Geek

TL;DR There are some problems with the HoT personal story, and I point them out because I care about the game.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

SirServed.5693:

Can I have your stuff?

kitten it im too late again

I know right… If he’s going to make this big self-indulgent spectacle of leaving he could at least give us some loot. Else what’s the point?

I’m sure the artists who do Black Lion Weapons will make working on the Scribe crafting discipline a top-priority.

While you can make all kinds of arguments about what gets prioritized, I don’t see Black Lion weapons as part of that equation. I assume each set of Black Lion weapons makes enough money to cover their own development costs, (so they wouldn’t be taking away from other priorities if they’re self-funding.) It’s relatively easy to keep pumping them out because they don’t require economic planning, difficulty/grind balancing, or even a lot of bug checking, compared to most other things you could add.

Legendary weapons are a waaaay more involved process. They can have significant economic impact, they require a lot more development to create the scavenger hunt for precursors, and if the old precursor hunts are any indication, there’s a lot of room for bugs that need to be dealt with. Comparing Black Lion weapons to legendary weapons is like comparing buying a cake to baking one.

HOMG. The content will be launched a few weeks late.

Yes, the priority of any company is to support itself, pay it’s employees and in general make a profit. You can bet the people who make weapon skins for the BLTC are a specific team that pays for themselves with the profits from those sales.

Legendary weapons is a completely different team, doing completely different things. This has nothing at all to do with priority. It has everything to do with what’s involved in the creation/testing process.

The legendaries are all part of the collections, which we’ve already seen bug out in a couple of cases. That’s not true of BLTC weapons.

Have you even paid attention to what goes on in this industry?

Archeage told founding members they’d get a discount in their cash shop, a promise which they never delivered on. SWToR went free to play. Apparently you need to subscribe to get a second skill bar and to remove your helm. Lotro is a free to play game with entire areas and professions locked behind a pay wall.

Anet is taking a bit more time to get some legendaries out. Oh the horror.

There hasn’t been an MMO shipped complete in I don’t remember how long. Rift shipped complete but the game was tiny (and they still had a massive security flaw that saw tens of thousands of accounts hacked).

I’m just not sure why you think this is such a big deal.

So you’ve been enjoying your Power Reaper build, but you want to try something a little different. Maybe you’re tired of having to dodge those nasty Modrem all the time and their heavy Toughness is making it look like you’re hitting them with wet spaghetti even when you crit. You’d kinda like to try out a Condi build but you dread the thought of dropping 40 or more gold on another set of armor and weapons, and how do Condi reapers work, anyway?

Well, fear not, my fine Necromancer friends! Turns out there’s a budget-conscious way to gear yourself up in level 80 Exotics for the low, low price of 6 gold. Yes, just 6! Aaaaaaand half a million Karma, but it’s not like you were using that for much anyway, were you?

Here’s the build, and here’s your shopping list:

Armor (x6): 252,000 Karma total (from Lightbringer Brutefur at the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance)
Trinkets (x5) and back item: 252,000 Karma total (from Historian Vermoth at the Cathedral of Zephyrs)
Rabid Pearl Rod: 87 silver (buy order)
Rabid Pearl Carver: 1.53 gold (buy order)
Bramblethorne: 2.61 gold (buy order)
Superior Sigil of Earth: 4.45 silver
Superior Sigil of Hydromancy (x2): 15 silver total
Superior Rune of the Undead (x7): 5.4 silver total
Embellished Brilliant Chrysocola Jewel (x6): 61 silver total (buy orders)

(Those Embellished jewels are the one true cost concession I’ve made; you can go with Exquisite ones if you’d like for +2.2 gold, but personally I don’t think it’s worth it for such a minor difference in stats.)

Additionally, you can drive the cost down to just a 1 gold total if you have 990 tokens from Caudecus’s Manor, Twilight Arbor, or Honor of the Waves to spend on weapons… though obviously those are at more of a premium these days.

For Runes, Grenth, Krait, Necromancer, or Sunless could also all work nicely at a similar price point. I went with Runes of the Undead because they’re so simple to use, but feel free to experiment.

Now, the build works pretty simply: empty every weapon cooldown as quickly as possible in the general vicinity of whatever you want to kill, then autoattack in Scepter or Reaper’s Shroud until your cooldowns are back. When fighting a bunch of opponents, press Epidemic occasionally. You can also pop Corrosive Poison Cloud at will since you don’t really care about the self-Weakness very much and the Poison application will give you a tremendous amount of damage. You can save Dagger 4 and Staff 4 to clear yourself of condis, but you can also use Dagger 4 to apply a bit of extra Chill thanks to Chilling Darkness or Staff 4 for its Blast finisher for some more AoE Weakness.

The thing about this build is, every single skill except for the Staff autoattack can apply at least one damaging condition, and many skills will apply several. As such, it will be very difficult to screw up using it in general PvE. There’s absolutely room for nuance and skilled play here and proper use of your debuff skills to take advantage of everything they have to offer can and will allow you to take on bigger and bigger challenges, but the skill floor is really quite low. As long as you’re using skills, you’ll be dishing out serious damage.

The one weakness this build has is a lack of on-demand stunbreakers. You can swap from Dhuumfire to Foot in the Grave for an easy Stunbreaker (and then change Unyielding Blast to Speed of Shadows or Soul Marks) if you want the added defense, or you could swap in a stunbreaker Utility as the current utilities aren’t really necessary.

I’m not sure how this compares to your standard Power Reaper build (though it’s probably weaker overall) and it’s certainly not as tricked out as it could be if you were willing to spend some extra bank, but if you were interested in trying out something different, you could do worse.-V

I doubt Anet will add 2 weapons for elite spec. So far we have 1 ES = 1 weapon mainhand OR offhand (or 2-handed of course).
When i look at necro i feel that we lack solid range dps (staff is slow and more of control weapon and axe is single target and only 900 range) so my next guess would be:

Elite spec name: Ash
New weapon: Rifle
New class skill: Necronomicon
Summon 5-10 powerful zombies that attack your enemies as long as you have lifeforce. Pressing f1 while necronomicon is active will detonate your zombies for extra damage scaling with remaining lifeforce
New skill set: Gadget sets (Chainsaw for melee damage, Mechanical Gauntlet for close-mid control, Elixir book for healing)
Some new traits:
“Hail to the King, baby”- Your rifle damage is increased for every summon and your cd are reduced the same way
“Swallow This”- Enemies hit by your zombie explosion cause another explosion
“Groovy”- (minor) All gadgets skills share your shroud traits

Blaine Tog.8304:

I saw someone in map chat asking for anyone but a Necro for their raid pug… because they already had 5 Necros.

For some reason, I’m okay with this

Kraggy.4169:

Why?

Because it causes a group of people to NOT do what the map was intended to do, and thus cause the players who play the intended way to complain about the players playing the unintended way.

And just in case you think of asking “Who says what the intended way is?”: ArenaNet does. The spiderfarm obviously was NOT the intended way to behave in that map, otherwise it would not have been nerfed to discourage it.

Little anecdote here: While I was trying to defend the rallypoint near the spiders, the farmzerg repeatedly rushed through, undoubtedly scaling up the event and making mobs spawn which were balanced for a number of about 20 defenders – while there were only about 5-6 real defenders. I then asked -politely- via mapchat if the spiderfarm people could please take some seconds to kill off the mordrems while passing through. The only reaction was one guy typing “nah”. This kind of attitude was probably also one of the causes for the complaints and in the end, the nerf.

Players: What the kitten is with all the visual clutter, i cant even see the enemy im fighting 90% of the time!
Devs: Ok we heard you, we’re going to nerf the visual clutter so its easier to see.
Players: WTF devs why did you nerf the visual clutter omgz u ruined the game why are the original devs gone the new ones suck kitten and they dont even respond to my threads omgz!!!
Devs: ………………………….

Problem
Currently damage is the only thing that gets you event participation. This leaves many supportive builds (especially those with the new elite specialisations) without rewards. Also the current system does not sufficiently reward active participation.

Solution
Reward a score for actively participating in the event and give rewards based on this score. The score should represent the sum of that player’s participation (dealing dmg, support, using eventspecific mechanics, etc) during the whole event.

Expected Effect on the Community
I expect these changes to change the way the community views support builds. One reason is that support builds could actually become viable in open world events. Another reason is that you have some kind of measurement of how effective a support build is and thus can strive to improve from there.

Also I intend to change the way people see event participation. I want hopping into an event as you see it (even if it’s close to completion) still be worth it, while rewarding sticking to an event from start to finish and especially rewarding putting super human efford into the event’s completion. I want the rewards to be fair depending on how much a player did to make the event succeed.

Look at it this way… At least the chests actually stack. Prior to returning to GW2 I was playing a game with a similar chest/key system, except those do not stack, which is infinitely more irritating.
Here, I have something like 200 happily sitting in my vault and only occupying one inventory slot (once they exceed a stack, I list them on the TP). When I acquire a key from map completion, personal story or an extremely rare drop, I open a chest, roll my eyes at the paltry contents and then carry on about my business. I really do not understand why people buy keys.. but then again, I’m a hard sell, to the point where I’ve actually had phone solicitors slam down their receivers on me. :P

If you go in expecting to make money on them, you’re an idiot.

pulls out soap box

Black Lion Chests were created to be a gem shop sampler of mostly minor items with an average gem shop value similar to that of the price of a key.

So mainly boosters, minor services, maybe the occasional hair or total makeover kit, minis, a backpack skin, mail delivery thing, finishers. But they also spiked the store with tickets (roughly 1 in 50) and ticket scraps (roughly 1 in 3, need 10) that you can use to get black lion weapon skins. Some are very nice looking even. But the “price” for one ticket is statistically, on average, 1 in 25 but if you start with zero scraps, 29 keys averages out to be your first ticket. However with 29 keys/chests there’s a 30% chance you will not get a ticket or 10 or more scraps and a 26% chance of getting 2 or more so it works out to 1, on average. It works out over the long haul to 1 in 25 because of those leftover ticket scraps accumulate until you get 10 for a key.

You can do the math on the cost of that many keys in cash or gold and check out the prices per ticket for skins and realize quickly it’s a bad investment if you are going for tickets. Hence the idiot comment.

However, if you can remove that motivation from the equation and like the “secret toy surprise” at the bottom of your CrackerJacks, then they can be a fun, occasional thing to buy if keys are on sale. This last anniversary sale and keys twice, one was a straight 25% off and the other time was a single 5 pack at 75% off.

But if you are only in it for the ticket and scraps … just walk away.

As I already saw in this thread, and in other threads, some people refuse to buy anymore ever again, including myself. So how does that make any money, or make any sense even

Because there is always another “you” coming along and buying keys. And that’s all that is needed, a continuous stream of people who either don’t know the odds or don’t believe the odds or get lucky the first time, so they keep on buying.

This is why we need 500 Jeweler.

Edit: also, the last two year old post is funny in hindsight.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

2 YEAR OLD POST NECROING?

If it’s still relevant, why the hell would it matter versus starting a new thread?

Mandatory can I have your stuff post

The grind mentality is your problem, not Anet’s, after the change my alt’s specializations just came by doing normal content.
The crashes are tecnical problems that could or could not be Anet’s fault, most of the time it’s usually related to the user’s system.

SkyShroud.2865:

Will it fix all the gameplay bugs that are complained vastly by the players or it will just only contain raid content?
Should we start writing bad reviews on HOT if it doesn’t contain any bugs fixing?

Reviews from players were already being posted 12 hours BEFORE Hot went live. Not sure how they complained about what they complained about when it wasn’t even live yet but they already had very large and long complaints ready to post BEFORE it went live. So I doubt we will have to wait long.

Tom Gore.4035:

Maris.3164:

Shylock.4653:

SkyShroud.2865:

Will it fix all the gameplay bugs that are complained vastly by the players or it will just only contain raid content?

After enjoying Guild Missions in the last few weeks.
My best guess is, it will mostly contain raid content, include a few bug fixes and introduce a lot of new bugs.

So optimistic^^ But yeah, the guild missions have been… Interesting. A whole new level of challenging content when trying to debug the missions to get rewards.

And a challenge to patience waiting for Rush to finish before you’ll get your rewards. Nothing like sitting on your kitten for 15+ minutes.

At least you could sit on your kitten. Half of my guild had to run in circles at the last checkpoint. Our rush should have failed but instead it finished and everyone got their chest. Even people that did not participate.

OP is trying to organize a compaign to write bad reviews. Mate, if you don’t like a game, by all means write bad reviews. Encouraging others to do so, on the forum of the game company, is just bad, bad taste.

You have an opinion, express it. Organizing others to do it? Give it a rest.

Sarie.1630:

Oopsxd.5481:

Hey do you guys like Tony the Tiger? He’s cool.

I was wondering if there are any tiger quests in this game

thx

Not a tiger, but the Snow Leopard transformation heart is still at the start of Wayfarer Foothills.

And, like the mossheart transformation, they simplified it so you no longer have all the abilities it used to give you.

An Iron Legion charr named Esso told me they used to have tigers in their tanks, but gave it up after a legion reorganization. (Yeah, I know. Only ancient crocks like me will get that reference. The rest of you will have to google it.)

I’m having a blast mapping core on my Revenant, hardly touched the new content outside a dozen hours on my mains. Putting it to the side to savor later.

If you decided to blow through the new content in under a month on every character like a fat kid gobbling down a 4 course meal I have zero compassion OP. One day you, and players like you, will come to realize it is not this game, or the expac, at fault (although it does have a few…not saying that).

It’s your expectations and style of blasting through new content, As a GW1 player I knew what to expect and hey man…it’s GW…go check out something else (Fallout 4 says howdy) or continue playing Skyrim.

Better that than shout at the mirror.

The game will still be here after you detox.

" I blew through the story in less than an hour"

And i got my legendary backpiece in one day.

Reaper.1239:

" I blew through the story in less than an hour"

And i got my legendary backpiece in one day.

^

Got all my Masteries done and learned my new elite professions, backwards and forwards, same day.

(Or maybe not)

lordhelmos.7623:

The expansion is pretty small, I blew through the story in less than an hour.

I agree with most of your points, but this I just can’t believe.

Turn off? Disable? What about simply, you know, not going there? o_O

Just don’t go to the HoT maps? You’ll still have Central Tyria masteries, but you can just ignore those if you’re not interested in them.

There is no way to just turn off HoT, but it sounds like your complaint is mostly that you don’t like the maps, which are easily avoided.

Maybe these fights should be changed so you have to complete at least one of the pre-events in order to qualify for loot?

I went to my first Karka yesterdey .. been several times but not enough people were clearing the camps so she never spawned in over an hour after her due time .. and the vast majority were AFKing or mindless spamming AoEs in the spawn area while seriously fewer were clearing the camps and it was still some time after her window opened that we went 4/4.

I feel for the guy above who was clearing camps and couldn’t get back before the AFKers had got her down.

Thanks for the initiative but we don’t actually need money. The only thing valuable we lost is people and money can’t help it.