Guild Wars 2

pretty cool outfit. The aura leaves a flame trail when you run. The aura is awesome.

MetalGirl.2370:

I really like the cape … looks like im the only one.

Nope, Anet designers like it too… XD

I really like the cape … looks like im the only one.

I bought it and have no complaints. Love this outfit.

This outfit was especially well done and the aura effect was a really nice addition, one of the few outfits I would wear over my armor sets and hope legendary armor follows the same path!

This will be a general long talk about the game’s focus on how to reward the differently commited parts of the community (casual <-> hardcore)

So please try to understand the both sides of the coin and dont bring hate on the replies.

I consider following points to be the main pillars of defining GW2’s gameplay :

No treadmill-Gearing -> Which results in players reaching the end of vertical progression very fast and thus makes it a game of horizontal progression. This is where the skins come in play.
Easy to reach LevelCap -> Which shifts the focus a of a player to be better in using his/her profession than running after infinite stats and ever higher DPS.
No Holy Trinity -> Along with not permanent builds, this encourages players to play with many alts and explore the different builds. Also enables players to clear most PvE
content Solo as each profession is capable of tanking/dps/utility.
Shared Loot and Dynamic Grouping -> Enables players to Solo content more easily, eliminates trolling and griefing in PvE and encourages grouping while making it as easy as standing near someone without even talking to him.

I can add more to this but I think you can follow where I want to point at.
GW2 is in its core a very very Solo friendly MMO, in fact I strongly believe this is why this game has such a high success.
I also believe that the core playerbase of GW2 are players who mainly Solo content but are also in a Guild and have friends in game, but use the community only to clear content which is otherwise not soloable. What I mean by this, I believe GW2 players do not play in groups If the content doesnt need it.

To add to this, as the horizontal progressive nature of the Game is dominant, that creates a “completionist” mind in the core solo playars. With other words, I believe, Achievement hunting, skin collecting, and world completion are the main goal of this veteran solo player base.

Now, If you accept that analysis I put forward about the veteran player base, the worst type of content you can add to the game is the type which awards exclusive content that not obtainable through solo/casual PUG play.

Rais for an example, I understand completely the need of having content for a hardcore minorty of the players. I am happy about it, In fact I even consider myself not casual and want to do raids myself.

But do you really need to add otherwise unobtainable content to the raids (i.e. Legendary Armor) to reward this players? Every other skin/item in the game is obtainable through gold farming. Why do I need suddenly commit myself to a hardcore 10 man content to get an armor-set? I can PUG WvW skins, I can pug PvP skins, I can Pug Dungeon skins, I can pug Fractal skins.
Why can’t I pug Raid skins?

You could reward Raid players 100 gold per Wing clear I wouldnt care. But do not reward minorities with exclusive content please.
If the Raid minority demands exclusive content, that means only that their original motivation was only to show off and not really challenging content.

Please add legendary armor to be obtainable out of Raids, and do not reward minorities withe exclusive skins/items.

PS: Raids here is just an example, that mindset should be maintained through all future content.

I agree with everything you said.

Having more time in hand to play or lucky to be in a Raid guild or have friends who play GW2 should not be the reason for rewarding players or punishing others.

Why not? Becaue rest of the game is like that.

I agree with each game mode needs its own rewards and I am okay with that. What i am not okay with is Legendary Armor just being in Raids. I would like to hope that in the future they have a set for WvW and PvP and hopefully another set for the rest of PvE. I also agree you need to put work into these very nice rewards, but it would be nice to have something for the people that can’t get to a certain degree of skill but can still work towards slowly and over time.

Dadnir.5038:

If there is no reward for minority, there is no minority.
If there is no minority to look up to everyone is equal.
If everyone is equal the game end up in a stand still.
If the game is in a stand still, player end up with no goal.
Players with no goal are quickly bored.
Bored player quit the game.
Eventually the game lacking in player will die out like the vast majority of the games out there.

Well, not really. Look;
I do not need to see another player and say cool, I want his armor. Every skin in the game is listed in the wardrobe. Every achievement in the game is listen in the Hero Panel.
In extreme terms GW2 is nothing more than a Single Player game with a very very extensive amount of content you can collect, in a world shared with other players.
It is like playing All assasins creed games and collecting all the collectibles to reach 100% completion.
That should be your goal, not the “I want to have an armor just for myself”

The Game needs to decide in which direction it is going. Until now, Guild wars 2 succeeded in containing a healthy competitive motivation.
Motivation was the competition itself. You played PvP for the sake of fighting with other players. Not to get skins so you can show off.

At the time competition becomes “having more exclusives others cant get to show off”. You will basically turn down all the new players. If the casual player base gets the feeeling no matter how much time they invest, if they cant get some specific things, they will stop caring.

Maybe I am way too completionist minded.

Having exclusive rewards per Gamemode is fine it shows what you did to accomplish it, now they need to make sure all Gamemodes have access to the same quality rewards, i.e. New Legendary Armor for WvW, PvP and possibly a way to craft Legendary Armor for PvE all with Different Skins so that they are distinguished by what they did. Game modes having monopolies on quality of rewards is a problem, Anet shows they are slowly fixing that issue with the latest PvP update, they just need to expand the effort

I actually feel like a few changes would do the puzzle some good.
Background on me, (you mighta seen me on the jumping puzzle, the weird little asura the sidles back and forth all the time) I first played this puzzle back in 2012, when it first came out, and I can see it’s changed for the better. I was fairly competent back then and I’m even more competent at it now, but that’s simply because I am exceptional at jumping puzzles. (Although, I don’t think I’d ever want to do Troll’s Revenge again, for instance. Argh.)

Naturally this means I can’t really speak for the ones who have trouble.

Although these were my thoughts:
1. Have three different difficulties – Easy, Medium and Hard.
The difficulties could mean one of two things, or even more.
Option 1 – The Easy course is half as long and the Hard course is twice as long.
Option 2 – The difficulties determine the speed of the snowflake despawns, and perhaps the speed of the ice ball and present disappearances. Medium is the current.
Balancing would be, for instance, Easy earning 5 presents, Medium 10 and Hard 15 or 20.

2. Everyone gets their own set of snowflakes and presents.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to sit around waiting at specific locations across the jumping puzzle, simply waiting for things to spawn.

3. Remove the timer.
This is a personal opinion and may be shared but I find it detrimental to my pacing just like the snowflakes and presents to look at the timer and go “Oh only 2 minutes left? Guess I’ll reach the end then sleep or something in the final room til the timer ends.”

Perhaps these could be potential changes for next year, but the current form is fairly doable.

I’d say the rightmost path is the easiest, for people who are having trouble. Jump as late as possible in the middle fire to land on the present (as chances are you won’t be able to wait for the blue line) and head straight upwards, no left or right movements, with good timing. Dodge roll at the top to avoid the wind then take it one candy set at a time, being patient around the skritt snowball fire and the iceball rolling. You can do it.

Hope this helps, and hope my suggestions are at least taken into consideration. I’d love for this puzzle to improve.

Armor and outfits are not comparable in cost, time to make and profit per unit sold. They are not equivalent gemstore items for ANet to produce and sell for the same price.

Profits from outfits helps fund more content. Now, some will say armor would sell better but armor is one of the most expensive things they make. They would have to charge far more than 700-800 gems for each armor to even match the profit that cheap and easy to make outfits earn.

Stop making outfit threads. ANet has already explained the how and why of their armor and outfit development. Constantly making new threads about dead, beaten horses isn’t going to change that.

I noticed activating a herald skill creates some sort of music i heard somewhere before and then it hit me, Glint and her lair back in guild wars prophecies.

- Original soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCpdHdw31qE – The one from Season 2 living world
Later i found someone even made a video about it as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySl6cBlMl0w

I know mesmers has its own special musical box soundtrack but the heralds sound is super subtle and it did took me a while. Nice job sneaking this in anet

That track is one of my very favorite Guild Wars pieces (I really prefer the original to the ‘reimagining’). And Glint’s Lair was my favorite mission of all.

Cool find. =)

Obtena.7952:

I don’t see why this is a re-occuring issue with this game. Since day 1 there have been items that people want that are obscenely expensive to craft because of an expensive material. This situation isn’t exceptional and I see no reason for Anet to do anything about it because it’s clearly not a mistake.

If you want something exceptional like this, you need to do something exceptional to get it. Not a new concept in this game.

They droped like candy last year why should we not think they would do so this year aswell?

Manasa Devi.7958:

Makes the skin more prestigious. Not that I like it or anything.

You bring an interesting topic. I will disagree that it’s not more prestigious but only because for the fact they had the currency (the sigils) implemented one way for one year then changed it drastically the next. I think if they had started out with it like this year as is, I personally wouldn’t have much of a complaint. I would look it and just see it as something of high gold value to go for and dismiss it. Not saying it as a bad thing at all, it would have been good for the people who wanted to go after it and the rest could just not worry about it. But you drastically change how to get an item and it’s AP achievement from one year to the next and not even say anything about reasoning. Something just seems really off putting about that.

Lahmia.2193:

Makes the skin more prestigious.

Nah. Merely more costly.

I did everything for Winter’s Presence last year, with the exception of the drinks. The runes and sigils dropped from gifts and could be bought for a dime a dozen.

This year, making Winter’s Presence is more expensive by an obscene amount. Not my problem, but quite ridiculous.

<—-is totally a hoarder.

I hang on to as many items as I can. I could have a lot of gold if I decided to completely sell off everything I could, but I’d rather hang on to those items to the point where it bothers me to use expensive items to create things. I even have my material storage maxed to 2k units.

Winter’s Presence? Yeah, I’ll pass and keep my hoard as full as possible this Wintersday.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, Mystic Coins are something one could have saved up over the past six months. Or over the next six months. One can use only the Daily Achievement Gold to purchase them, so that they would be free.

There is no time limit on creating Winter’s Presence. One only incurs a premium cost when one is impatient, no?

• You need 50 MC to create the Obsidian Crystal for the collection
• 50 MC and 50 Sup sigils of Mischief for the essence of Mischief
• 50 MC and 50 sup runes of snowfall for essence of Snowfall

At 6 MC needed to promote minor runes of snowfall to sup runes of Snowfall each, that would be 300 MC just for the runes of Snowfall. So if you already had all of the sigils, you would still need 450 MC for the rest of it.

Yes, you can totally obtain those by saving up the trickle you are handed in 6 months…..

What about if you didn’t have the sigils either? Since it requires 20 MC to upgrade minor sigils into sup sigils of Mischief, this would require an additional 1,000 MC just to acquire these 50 sigils.

That’s 1,450 MC needed to create Winter’s Pressence. That’s enough to create almost 6 core legendaries, almost 3 HoT legendaries assuming you have 0 clovers ahead of time. You think this is an ok amount for a non legendary item? Its absolutely ridiculous, and even if you hadn’t spend a single MC generated over the course of playing this game you still wouldn’t have enough from login rewards/old daily/monthly system to acquire this.

Irrelevant, the only race that matters is asura.

Rukia.9860:

Tengu would be most likely with least retcon, and most awesome obviously.

It’s ANets fault that they designed races in a way that you can’t race change and stuff, same reason they won’t add new races. Have to make a 1-80 story for it.

It is expansion material, but they’re too busy designing annoying vertical maps with unconventional traveling methods, because ‘different’.

We have TWO, TWO vertical maps. Why are people so hungover on that?

And they aren’t even complicated: Oh no, i maybe have to do more than press autorun and 1 every now and then.

Jesus Christ, i remember a time when things like a new approach to map design and traveling in a game would have been praised.
But no, it’s inconvenient to you because you have to think for a change or invest some time that you can still spend playing like usual.

On the topic at Hand:
It is unlikely a new race will come.
I would love it though, but i also would love it if the Living Stories wouldn’t add only Lvl 80 content but new zones for people to go into when leveling as well.
The map still has a lot of space and not everything needs to be filled with stuff for the “endgame” but maybe some harder areas inbetween for people to learn something about later mechanics etc. .

It’s not about having to get a two new voice actors. It’s about what kind of work they’ll actually have to do. They would have to perform through the entire dialogue of the game. That’s not just doing a quick monotone reading it in a girl and male version that is that race. It also means that a huge portion of the game has to written again through the perspective of the new race.

So I flat out do not want a new race to be worked on. I’ll be the one to say it. Being orange lizards for example isn’t content, and the amount of lore for the actual content would be immense. Plus I don’t want more low level zones. We already have a ton and they make sense.

However! If the new race is introduced as lvl 80 I’m all for it! It’ll mesh very well with the game. It’ll still be an immense undertaking for redoing every single voice line in a new light, but I can see it working. If their personal story for Zhaitan is more of a living history mote. But that’s sounds clunky in itself so I just don’t want another race. There’s no need for one, and we’re already slipping on how Norns are supposed to be.

It may be highly possible (anything is possible), but it is also highly improbable.

I wonder how many players wanted another race (or 4-5) in Guild Wars. It was just as highly possible there, as well.

Good luck.

electricwater.1572:

You can also tell some story using text and dialogue windows, no need to vocalise absolutely EVERYTHING. My point was that they wouldn’t need to look for NEW VA, not that they won’t have to pay the existing ones more money (I think more work = more money is obvious). And they can re-use some things that are already in the game.

Once again, no one is stopping anyone from creating more lore. Lore = the environments the new race lives in, what’s important to them, their religion (if any), their history, etc. Ever been to durmand priory, seen the books laying around there? There’s plenty of lore that is being told through plain text-on-screen windows. This is easy to do. No need to create difficulties where there are none.

As for fashion and hairstyles – of course they would need to design new ones, but so what? Few new sets of cultural armor is not that much effort I’d think (one is already in the game, the one they are wearing)

http://orig04.deviantart.net/100c/f/2014/194/e/8/talking_to_a_female_largos_by_weblawless-d7qkdc9.jpg

My point was, they wouldn’t need to jump through fire to adapt all the OLD armor to that body model (cause human-like), not that they shouldn’t create new armor for largos.

And creating new items? How’s new race preventing them from doing it?

Main point is, it’s really up to anet whether they want to add a new race or not. It IS possible, no need to act like it can never happen. A lot of people want a new race. In other MMOs certain races can only be certain classes/professions but that’s not stopping anyone. There’s really no reason to integrate a brand new expansion race into Zhaitan’s/Mordy’s story arcs (and re-record all dialogue for that). If they came later, then it’s only logical they were not a part of the previous events, and can’t access certain content.

People want Tengu, largos or koda. While tengu may seem neat, there would certainly be issues with clipping, and it would be hard to distinguish between male/female. Same with koda (and they all look too much alike to be a major race). It is possible to make largos work though. However only if underwater expansion/content ever becomes a thing, because otherwise it would indeed make no sense that a secretive underwater race suddenly appeared everywhere.

To me, it would be a disservice to players to add a new race, but say that it isn’t voiced, but the other races are. It also strikes me more as a money grab and not truly for the fans. Because they didn’t put the same time, money, and effort into it.

There would still need to be lore added for the personal story. None of the other races have as much lore in them as the player races. We don’t know anything of the day to day lives of the other races. Not enough to say that ANet wouldn’t have to do any extra work to create a new playable race. They may have a loose understanding so they don’t get things incredibly wrong or contradict each other but not enough details to focus on them.

Considering how much effort and time it takes them to make the 3-5 sets of armor when they do make new sets, it would likely be a lot of work to make all of the sets of armor in game compatible with the new race’s model. Especially if they do not have the typical human appearance. And that’s not even going into the 3-6 sets of cultural armor (double the sets if the genders dress differently) that would have to be created.

Then each of the outfits would need a model. And the wedding dress would need two unique models (even the Asura and Charr which typically share models has unique versions for males and females).

And all people are pointing out is how much work is involved with making a new race and stating that that is why the chances aren’t high. No one that’s gone into any kind of detail has said it won’t ever happen.

Pache.9406:

All I’m gonna say is there’s dozens of MMO with high volumes of different races. Most of them feature different body types (take WoW for example). The only company looking for excuses because they don’t want to put up the work to please their customers/fans is ANet. Bottom line is, there is no excuse, there is no “too much work”, there is no “system doesn’t allow it”, none of that exist. At the end of the day, MMO history proves a new race is always possible. Whether or not they include one or more in the future comes down to one single thing. Do they want/care to do it, or not, period! Same goes for mounts, Armors instead of Outfits, Dyeing backpieces/weapons/etc., New Weapons, and every other highly requested addition they want to dismiss/ignore, for no real reason.

Now lets try this from the other side:

All I’m gonna say is there’s dozens of different people who enjoy MMOs with high volumes of different desires from the game. Most of them play many aspects of the game (take PvXers for example). The only players who think companies are making excuses because said players don’t understand operational management, financial constraints, and wanting your employees to have a decent work/life balance are uninformed players. Bottom line is you can only do so much in a 40 hour work week with extra hours coming from your personal time (taking it away from your outside interests, family, and friends), which is further impacted by needing to keep a game (with multiple game modes) up 24/7 while creating new content and dealing with bugs/exploits. At the end of the day, MMO history proves that uniformed gamers don’t care about how realistic something is, if they want it the facts don’t matter. Whether or not a company wants to include something in their game comes down to one simple thing, would allocating resources to something (like adding a new race) provide a greater benefit to the game then anything else the resources could be spent on. Same goes for allotting budget towards employees (supporting in game passion projects, pay raises, job training, benefits, company parties, etc). MMO gamers will always want things that interest them added to the game but unformed gamers dismiss/ignore resource restraints on the games creator for no real reason.

electricwater.1572:

About the voice actors. If new race would be largos (well I’d really like that) they wouldn’t need new voice actors. Since largos wear those breathing devices that transform their voice. So you could just use existing human/norn VA and then use some software to make it sound ‘robotic’.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So in your scenario, we’d have a “new” race that has no personal story, uses the same voices/expressions as humans, the same character models, the same armor. What, then, would make this a “new” race?

electricwater.1572:

Who said there’s no personal story?

You did, when you said, “they wouldn’t need new voice actors.” Unless you think the existing voice actors would take the same amount of pay for doing two sets of characters as they do now.

electricwater.1572:

What would make them a new race? Their lore, culture, fashion.

Those are all things that you said ANet wouldn’t need to do for a new race: fashion was the first thing the OP offered to take off the table (re-use human models). Plus, it’s not as lore & culture can be implemented in the game without new designs, new dialogue, new sets of items, etc.

electricwater.1572:

Do you necessarily need a giant ten-legged one-eyed creature with a high voice to call it a ‘new race’?

Of course not.

Neither do I pretend as if it’s hardly any trouble to add a new race, even with massive compromises to the things that make new races interesting to players.

Gwaihir.1745:

New races won’t happen. They’re struggling to create legendary armour skins a year and a half after they were due. They’re obviously understaffed and redoing all known skins would either not happen and you’d have hundreds of crashes bugs or it would be very shoddily done.

It’s impossible to say that it won’t happen.

The chances are currently slim that a new race will be added.