Guild Wars 2

TheDaiBish.9735:

digiowl.9620:

Do ANet expects us to play the game with a detectives eye to every last scenery item we pass by while battling a champion, with entourage, solo?

You’re constantly battling Champions? With no respite?

To the contrary, you magically knew the route each of the NPC’s took with such an ambiguous statement as not on the roads.

I find this either completely and utterly luck based, a lie, or an attempt to stroke your ego so much as to hide the fact that you let someone else do the work for you and merely followed along.

TheDaiBish.9735:

No story fully makes sense until you get to the end. That’s where the vagueness comes from.

This has kitten all to do with the overall story tho, this is about how the NPCs relay information about where said macguffin is likely found so we can progress our fedex achievement.

Healix.5819:

The NPCs lost their items during their travels from X to Y, which is basically somewhere inbetween the zone portals and the city. Some were attacked, which basically means they ran off the direct path you would normally take. It is also mentioned that some don’t follow the road and instead cut across. You could also assume some don’t know where they’re going, so they may go the wrong way for a bit, and their items way have been taken, rather than dropped.

All of that combined, along with knowledge of the mobs and friendly NPCs in the zone should give you a general idea of where they could have lost their items.

Do ANet expects us to play the game with a detectives eye to every last scenery item we pass by while battling a champion, with entourage, solo?

I may be called a walking encyclopedia, but this is beyond even my capabilities to internalize.

Between that and certain responses i have seen from devs regarding the personal story missions, i wonder if the devs have lived and breathed the game so long that they can’t take a step back and see it in the same way that players see it.

Healix.5819:

The NPCs lost their items during their travels from X to Y, which is basically somewhere inbetween the zone portals and the city. Some were attacked, which basically means they ran off the direct path you would normally take. It is also mentioned that some don’t follow the road and instead cut across.

Unfortunately for ANet its not as fun as going back across the scenes in Where’s Waldo to find everything in the check lists after you’ve found Waldo . If we had alot more items or things to do it would make it more interesting .

Well, this Living Story is certainly not causing anything close to a buzz of excitement on these forums…I’ve seen everything from vague curiosity to bored indifference. Something seems to be missing in the imagination and execution department here.

I gotta wonder if they are still writing whatever the next piece is going to be, and generally making it up as they go along…

For me the main issue with this and everything up to this point is the lack of rewards. Barring the fractal weapon skin drops, Anet has failed to add any new weapons, armours, potential reward dyes etc.outside of holiday theme gimmick items. It is all very disappointing. When they mentioned the Karka events I saw these big crab monsters and thought about the great looking items we would make with their shells and we receive another stat combo. Lionguard Lyns and her commendations was simply rehashed Lionguard weaponry.

With FoTM I was expecting a new set of token options and while the addition of back pieces and unique weapon skins was a step in the right direction, the variety was far too limited imo (in the case of weapons being simply skins was extremely tight pursed).

We should be having real reasons to go out and involving ourselves in this event, perhaps each stage grants parts to a one time craft of our choice at the end. Maybe new armour design recipes with distinctive hot and cold appearances, the trinkets we find might be actual usable items of some sort, fresh pets for rangers or unique elemental models for elementalists. Give the players a real motivation to get involved and stop with this demoralising habit of piquing our interest in BIG upcoming changes with EPIC scale, only to add essentially nothing to show our characters were involved.

The problem I have is that all the Living Story “content” so far could have fit into 2-3 weeks. It’s really not much of anything 2 months is stretching this stuff out like an episode of Dragonkitten.

Also, making such a big deal about it makes it WAY worse. If they just put the content in & said NOTHING, it would have been far far more effective & mysterious.

Red Falcon.8257:

I’m still not understanding why this is a “living story” and why I should care for it.

This is me exactly, one i dislike mysteries (they annoy me) so if i’m looking for stuff with no info or very little i get frustrated fast, i stop doing it.. two i had zero intro middle and i guess end to this living story..

So i’m lost and have no hard facts, i go do something else, i care little for refugees because they are all static objects with zero personality, they tell me zero of their plight and walk right past badly scripted (sorry but true)..

Another annoying fact is i go to the next map to see where the refugees are coming from, zero changes, nothing happening, very immersion breaking and adds to my frustration.

Honestly there are only so many signs to fix, looted items to recover and portals i will kill before i think why am i bothering with this..i also totally hate the dredge so that kinda helped me lose interest fast..

Like I’ve said in other threads, their live team is too small. They are putting so much of their force working on expansion content that they don’t have enough man power to do anything substantial. So to try and make it ‘feel’ like we are getting content, they time-gate everything. And they give us pseudo content in the form of checklists that don’t add anything new to do at all, but just a quest log for existing content.

The whole strategy seems to be ‘less is more’. So they give us very few options up front and slowly seed new things in to make us more likely to do/buy each new addition. Gem store is a perfect example of this. There could be so many things done with it that players would love to buy, but if they gave us more options how many people would actually be spending money on such lack luster items like the cooking outfit and a sleeveless hoodie? Not many. Since there isn’t really much to spend money on, they add something small like that every couple months and through scarcity alone players jump on it to purchase. It’s great for business, bad for players.

I 100% agree with OP living story is just far to vague and stupidly confusing to be worth any time spent on it. I ended up completing the latest living story and didn’t feel accomplished at all.

I was like…hmm ok well thats done -.-

It has good promise but poor execution so far (seems to be a trend). I think the whole thing will eventually just end up being “fight more karka”. You know something is wrong with the “living” story when there’s more life in Orr.

The idea is great. I also love the fact that there’s a story that slowly progresses.

My only problem with it is that I have to rely on wiki to see what’s actually changing, and that I have to go out for another momento…I’m just well, missing the info ingame.

Red Falcon.8257:

I’m still not understanding why this is a “living story” and why I should care for it.

I agree. The ‘Razing’ is supposed to be the ‘third’ installment, but the first two were short, inconsequential, and boring. Running around and clicking on 75 things, then finding two random items is too meager to count as the ‘first two parts’ in anything much less a ‘living story’. Camping spawn points to kill the exact same timed spawn went out of fashion with Everquest.

The plot so far is paper thin and extremely disappointing.

Red Falcon.8257:

I’m still not understanding why this is a “living story” and why I should care for it.

It’s living in the sense that it’s changing without any “update”. That is to say while on the surface it may appear you’re progressing it, but in actuality its just a time activated computer script.

I’m glad the world is changing however, i’d rather it change in a more one-time event fashion than a slow rolling script.

I’m still not understanding why this is a “living story” and why I should care for it.

I think you are suppose to be lost.

My problem is that , so far, it hasn’t been fun. I don’t like looking for some guys car keys in the snow. The enemies are exactly the same as the other ones in the world.

Meh.

In regards to Sotg, I can’t really talk about it yet, but I should be able to soon. I’m listening to player feedback regarding the show, and we’re hoping it pleases the majority of you guys.

“But Grouch, you can’t please everyone!”

Fair enough.

Astral Projections.7320:

Pirlipat.2479:

Are they townclothes or armorskins?

Town clothes. Useless town clothes.

sigh I thought I finally found some leggins for my mesmer.

Pirlipat.2479:

Are they townclothes or armorskins?

Town clothes. Useless town clothes.

Astral Projections.7320:

As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another way for me to save money by not buying items in a failed cosmetic system. Every time I look at the town clothes I remember how much money I spent on costumes in Guild Wars 1 versus the zero money I have spent here. I’m voting with my dollars and if everyone did that, maybe they would change the way they handle costumes.

I bought the Halloween costumes because I liked them. I regretted the decision when I realized they were stuck on just one character unless I went through the hassle of moving them around via the bank and shuffling around the default town clothes I did not want to destroy.

Those were the first and last costumes I will have in GW2 until this system is fixed to at least be on par with the one they managed to wedge/hack into GW1 years after release. This is coming from someone that bought every GW1 costume. Just another lesson learned in GW1 that seems to have been thrown out the window for no good reason.

I’m not going to spend 5600-7200 gems (700-900 per char depending on hoodie type) for set of town clothes. Especially not when I have no place to store them while not in use, other than taking up valuable inventory/bank space. Putting an alternate set of gear/trinkets in that space is a much more important use.

We need one of two things (preferrably both of them) for these gemstore clothes to be reasonable options.
1) Something equal to the “Costume NPC” of Guild Wars. A way to retrieve a new copy of an outfit we have purchased.
2) A storage/collection section dedicated to town clothes so we have a place to store them without taking up valuable slot space.

The only “reason” I can figure out for not implementing a retrieval/re-creation mechanic is an expectation of us to buy multiple copies of a costume. But I doubt many people would do this. I think many of us (myself included) would be more likely to buy costumes with this mechanic in place. I didn’t buy the wintersday outfit because I did want to be forced to waste slot space on trivial/useless items. This isn’t an issue if I can retrieve the costume any time I want, or at least have a dedicated place to store it.

That’s a garbage statement. He may as well have said “We priced them high because we want you to be another face in the crown of a large guild”

Terrible implementation.

The OP merely uses spy kits as an anchor to his argument. It wasn’t the problem with spy kits he was addressing but the whole design itself.

But I guess for some of you, reading the topic and the first paragraph = comprehension.

Ursan.7846:

While it’s perfectly fine to express your opinions, please do it with a much more descriptive title that actually encompasses your entire topic.

….That is the topic. People use the spy kits to circumvent such time consuming endeavors. The only reason people don’t use spy kits in ascalon is because they don’t have to tank all the 2-shotting mobs thanks to the NPC’s.

Cato.3547:

What has this wall of text rly to do with spy kits? Basically you are just complaining how content get harder on higher lvl and this is new bcs? or that pretty much every fractal is done wrong, just stop doing it if you hate it that much. 500+ fractals and 60+ lvls later only real use for spy kits I had on dredge fractal just to cut out some time and
occasional stealth ressing.

Oh, shut the hell up. You’re not the only unique snowflake who has done lv60. Many people are sitting at max.

whoosh That’s the sound of the point going over your head.

The content is doable. It’s just nowhere as efficient as running other tasks, and why exploits like spy kits and 99% jade maw rez tricks are designed. Or leaving one target alive on cliffside so the full group doesn’t spawn on one side.

If anything, the post is a complaint about punishing players for doing the content proper instead of taking shortcuts like bugging a boss or bringing in outside items or stacking classes like the guardian.

The content is not hard — it is tedious and only a matter of armor repairs.

You do know there is no solo queue, and you are just as likely to meet premades as you are to meet pugs atm?

Especially now that matchmaking seems to be turned off (or reset or something, but i havent had 1 good match since the patch, and before it 4/5 were good, against similar level players)

Robert,

First, simple question. With AC difficulty the way it is, how is it expected new players will learn dungeoning? I am not criticizing what you did, but I think that trying to determine the direction this is going is a fair question. Colin said that you were looking for ways to better introduce the game to players.. I think this is a step backwards. Looking for your input here.

AC itself: I don’t mind the new AC mechanics, but your testing system, whatever that is, needs to get much better.

• This patch seems to have introduced some severe graphical lag, very evident at the P1 burrow event, or the P2 detha spikes/gravelings event. This lag is throughout the world now, please have this looked at.

• The new scavenger mechanic of them burrowing underground seems to be broken. They tend to just sit above ground invulnerable (maybe I am missing something).

• P2 Ghost boss can bug making him uncompletable.

• P3 Colossus drops his stones far too often, and kills the protector way too easily, and his knockback (which pushes you out of the circle) is silly.

• Knockbacks/knockdowns are out of control in AC now, it makes melee a real pain. I’m OK with some CC, but the level it is currently at is crazy.

I feel like changing AC was kind of an experiment, but by doing so you kind of trashed a really good training ground for new players. Again, thoughts on how new/inexperienced players should learn dungeon mechanics would be interesting to hear.

Thanks