Guild Wars 2

I’ve been looking around the forums, and I’m seeing a lot of negative feedback. Some of the big things I’ve seen are dissapointment over Scarlet’s involvement in fractals, outrage over Human light T3 being available as a gem store skin, and a lot of mixed opinions over the sylvari cultural armor, which has once again had its textures and colors changed. So overall, on a 1 to 10 scale, 1 being awful and 10 being amazing, how would you guys rate this update?

My opinions are below, so skip my ranting if you want, but be sure to share your ratings!

Personally, I’d give it a 3/10. Scarlet being behind it all once again is just…ugh. We had a chance to learn something new and interesting with this fractal, but no. Scarlet did it. Again.The new gem store armors annoy me as well, not just because they rehashed the human T3, but because once again we get gem store exclusive armor, that like many other sets, is on fire. We have a ton of gear with a fire theme, why do we need more? And honestly are we ever going to get new skins that aren’t tied to the gem store? I can’t even remember ever getting a new, full set of armor that didn’t cost gems.

The change to sylvari cultural armor is what personally annoyed me the most though. I spent a ton of gold outfitting my sylvari, only to log on today to find her looking MUCH worse. This has happened before, anet. I get that a lot of people complained, and changes were made to get the old looks back. I understand that a lot of people like how it is now. But please, in a game so heavily focused on aesthetics, don’t just change how a sets textures and dye scheme work so suddenly like that. Changing it again hasn’t pleased everyone, it’s just aggravated a new group of people.

The one good thing to me, and the only thing that earned this update a 3/10, is the new gvg arena. Finally we have an area without bloodlust, allowing us to have legitimate duels and gvgs. Yeah there’s people trolling in it, but that’s just people, I can’t entirely blame anet for that one.

I love GW2. I really do. I’ve played since the first week it released and have had a blast doing so. But I mean, lately…there’s new mmos on the horizon, anet. They’re gradually starting to look more and more appealing.

Please stop spoonfeeding us Scarlet Briar! For the love of all that is holy, we’re sick of her! She’s not a fun character, she’s not a “love to hate” type of villain. She’s bad and terrible and we want to fight Dragons again! Why is that so hard to write about? You left us hanging with Zhaitan after Arah? Why is it so hard to go back and continue that storyline?

I play a sylvari. I’m even a roleplayer. I appreciate the idea of a sylvari villain, but Scarlet is not a good character. She’s just annoying, so why did you inject her into Thaumanova’s story? The story of the Living Story is just not fun anymore. Please stop with Scarlet – lets kill her and fight the dragons (or even the White Mantle again), please.

It would be nice to have different combinations of stats on the cultural armor. One size doesn’t fit all. Yeah, I know you can transmute, but that can get expensive…

In all honesty, I’d also love to see 5 tiers to the cultural armor starting at level 30 and ending at 80, with proper and attainable costs for each appropriate level.

What do y’all think?

LoreChief.8391:

Asura don’t wear skirts. Skirts are designed for the fashionable feature of attracting a lover, in places where potential lovers are into that kind of thing; “Showing skin”. Asura do not attract lovers with skin, as it is neither functional, nor efficient. They attract each other with intelligent designs and brilliantly functional fashions.

Just saying have you seen the light armor for Asura they have skirts on, or at least skirt like outfits. Sure there is pants under the skirts, but they are wearing skirts. So your point that Asuras don’t wear skirts, isn’t true.

LoreChief.8391:

Human females may show off their thighs in an attempt at attracting the attention of potential mates, because in human culture = physical beauty/appearance is the desired trait. In Asuran society, both Asuran males and females will attract mates by being scientifically creative, inventive, and possessing of mental qualities that are capable of sustaining a professional/philosophical partnership.

I do agree with you how lore-wise they shouldn’t show skin. On another note the fact that they do have child-like body structures (short, no boobs) it does kind of blur the line as to how far can they/should they take it. Because of that is why I wouldn’t want the exact same human female skins redone to the Asura.

That being said I don’t see a reason why there can’t be a distinction in clothes whether you are male or female. Obviously they are not “identical” to each other since they have gender based hairstyles. So I say what’s wrong with female asuras having armor the same as female humans but slightly modified. For example…

• Phoenix: Add pants under the feather skirt and maybe make it a tank top instead of the tube top.
• Magitech: Have part over the belt corset solid/no boob emphasis and add leggins/tights to hide the skin of the thigh
• Braham: (First off slightly silly since female is showing half their chest with the male version) The top can not have straps highlighting the boobs and be turned into a tank top instead of a tube tope and again add pants/tights under the skirt to hide the skin.

Really the main things on all the armors they would have to change is adding tights/pants under the skirts that are a bit too much, removing all straps/lines/stitching that emphasizes boobs, and possibly elongating tops to cover more of the belly.

Overall that would make many female Asura happy and wouldn’t be too far out of reach or over the line. Same goes for Charr for that matter, but they have their own issues when it comes to armor.

I mean come onnnn. Do I really need to type paragraphs & paragraphs of why? The living world is only good as long as people are waiting for an expansion. Otherwise it just gets boring and old. Alone, it’s not sufficient and it doesn’t stand a chance against these new MMOs coming out.

Arena Net needs sometime to advertise. Something to make some real profit on. The gem store is not going to suffice in the near future. I guarantee it. If you’re active in the community you can tell that people are getting more and more bored and talking more and more about these other MMOs coming out.

This game needs some real new to it. Real content, real story, real endgame…I could go on and on. It needs a real reason to keep the player’s interest in the game, other than just to hold them off until these new MMOs come out. I played Guild Wars for 6 years until this game came out, then I switched over. I was always a huge fan of the lore, style, and philosophy, but now I’m contemplating switching to something new from the direction this game is heading in.

Get it together, Arena Net. This game needs an expansion.

Post-thoughts on Tower of Nightmares/Nightmare Within:
Concerned

Okay, so I love my Asura Engineer. I use her all the time. And I constantly see Mesmer humans running around looking like Sailor Moon. I see other species wearing clothes that look like they pretty much got out of bed in their lingerie and immediately ran out the front door into Lion’s Arch. Even the humanoid Engineers are wearing sexy tight-fitting leather outfits.

So why do the Asura always have to dress like nasty little trolls? It feels very unfair. My Asura is pretty awesome looking… except the only armor I can ever get for her is a depressing trench coat.

No kidding, I would pay like $30 for a skirt outfit skin. Since it’s leather armor, how about some leather hotpants, a half jacket, and a tanktop? I’m GIVING YOU FREE REIN TO RIP ME OFF FOR THIS. I won’t even complain. I’m sick of everything making her look like an ugly troll.

It feels like the Asura are pretty much hated, their styles are so limited and frumpy.

Please? I keep waiting for something to happen and I’ve been disappointed for a year.

:(

This is probably the single best, most well-thought out suggestion for getting the story back on track and making sense that I have ever read. I love the way you formatted it and tied in a lot of the old lore. Your idea of having 5 months of ‘dragonslayer campaign’ followed by 7 months of lore-centric, one-off content is brilliant, and the time capsule is absolutely crucial to allow future players to experience all of the dragon-related content. Sure, they might miss out on some of the one-off content, but at least the meat-and-potatoes, dragon-related content will be permanently accessible.

However, I suggest you dial back just how much of the old lore is expanded on in the first year. Your suggestion covers a lot of things, certainly things I (and I’m sure others) would dearly love to see, but I fear it covers too much, too quickly. Leaving some things till later would give longevity to the game.

Also, your suggested structure of dragon-slaying content, if strictly adhered to, would only permit 5 more years of guaranteed game longevity. Kralkatorrik in 2014, then in no particular order Primordus, Jormag, Bubbles & Mordremoth, 2015 thru 2018. After that there are no more dragons to kill. What then? Perhaps Anet would finally decide to open up Cantha and let us see what has happened there, but I digress. The other big MMO has been around for almost 9 years now and shows no signs of stopping, so getting 6 years total out of GW2 isn’t impossible, but I’d like to see some thought given to what would be done after we run out of dragons to bash.

Overall I love what you’ve done, and I think ArenaNet would be wise to take a long, hard look at it, discuss it with the various leads and directors, and then reply here with their opinions. This is too good a concept to ignore.

1. +1 forum feature
Is this reviewed? I used this on a few posts in the CDI thread, but wasn’t sure if it was used when posts were read. It could be a helpful feature for future discussions as a way to determine popular ideas.

2. Anet posts
More of them would be nice, even if just getting summaries indicating what has been taken away up to that point. However, it would be very helpful to include a follow-up as to what has been well received and what isn’t possible within that summary later. I’m sure that not everything can be delivered as feedback due to specific restrictions on communicating, but even saying that you can’t comment is better than not knowing anything.
I don’t know that I agree with the idea that negative posts should be responded to with the same frequency as positive ones because depending on the response it could foster more negativity and it might not be constructive to the thread. However, if several posters have the same criticism, maybe a question or comment on that critique could be used to make sure that the understanding of why it is generating negative feelings is a take away.

3. CDI sub-forum
If this is an ongoing project, it would make sense to have it more organized than it is currently. Even with one topic every two weeks, it will have about 26 topics per year for PvE, not including the additional threads like this one. Add in WvW and PvP and there are a lot of threads specific to CDI.

4. Additional topic threads
If the CDI is in its own sub-forum, it would be a good way to organize topics that come up for further discussion in new threads. A good example for this was the question on favorite/least favorite living world releases. It was jumbled in the main thread and made both difficult to follow by being lumped together.
New topics can be created and locked until the end of the original topic or left open. However, if left open, it will create more threads to follow and possibly fewer posts by Anet since there will most likely be more to read. These new posts would be linked to by Anet with information regarding the commenting period, i.e. over the next three days the post will be open or until the end of the original topic, etc.

5. Clarity of the topic
I believe that the LW was a good discussion, but lacked an overall point to the discussion. I realize that we gave the topics and it was generally what everyone wanted to discuss, but it seems that there were different reasons why it should be discussed. If you use the previous thread to get the second most popular topic or create a new thread for the next topic, it would be helpful to have the top 5 (or less) reasons for discussion.
For example, using the LW, discussion should revolve around: a. Scarlet as a villain, b. Story pacing, c. Future story lines, d. Temporary versus Permanent content, and e. Revisiting past releases. Thread posts should use those as the heading of the post and then the ideas to follow. This would help keep posts more clearly relating to one thing for the discussion, rather than everything in one (or five) jumbled posts. It would help with shorter posts, although not less frequent.

6. Shorter commenting period
Since the first discussion has been done and ended, it is easy to see why it was extended, but also that is was probably unnecessary. The main post should clearly define the end date and time for the thread and stick to it. If further discussion on something needs/wants to happen, then a new thread can be opened and linked to in the original thread. My suggestion is eight to ten days depending on when it started to encompass at least one full weekend.

7. Surveys
In game surveys would be helpful to get more players aware of the CDI and interactive with the topic at hand. A before survey and an after survey for the current CDI would be nice. This could provide information on where people stood before the discussion and afterwards if anything changed their perspective. Also, a survey on the takeaways to get a larger picture of what ideas were actually thought of as good by the players.

I think we could use more sexy armors in the game for males of all the armor types. Anyone else think so too? things like the gladiator set are what im thinking along the lines of.

I’m sorry, but this Scarlet Briar thing is getting slightly obnoxious. Every living story seems to follow the plotline of “NEW GROUP OF ENEMIES SIGHTED… FIGHT IN HIDEOUT.. THEN SCARLET!” (Sorry if this seems harsh, it’s just a bit tiresome.)

I’ve appreciated all of the current references to the previous GW games, but I feel there are way more areas that could be touched upon, such as Maguuma, Crystal Desert, Ring of Fire, etc, etc. Please note I’m not trying to trash the creative ideas of our current story dev teams, but I for one would appreciate more things related to the past, epic stories Anet has developed over the years.

PS; please don’t put finishers on normal mobs. Just please, don’t. Please.

Here’s an idea:

You should have allowed the players to lift the illusion around the tower.

Here’s how it would work:

The illusion around the tower responds to certain spells or attacks, but only with a cooperative effort of dozens of players, can the illusion be lifted. You don’t tell the players how to do it, you just let them figure it out for themselves.

It is far more engaging to get the players involved, and have them be the heroes, then to have an npc lift the illusion for them in a cut scene (This once again enforces this idea that the npc’s in the game have powers that the players do not have).

Lifting the curtain would be server-specific. In other words, each server has to organize and do it individually. Don’t tell us how to do it on the website, and don’t tell us what’s inside. Allow us to discover it for ourselves, but get us involved! Allow the players to do these epic things together.

Would be nice to see some GW1 Hairstyles and Skin replicas :P
Could we get some of those ? : )

The Mad King Thorn costume is one of the best looking sets ever. Lemme use it as armor, kthx.

I think it would be great if we would get new cultural armor sets (t4 and t5). T3 is simply too cheap and almost everyone is running around with it.
I suggest 750g for a set of T4 and 2000g for a set of T5. It would be a great gold sink. Its a bit silly that the most expensive armor costs 119g for 6 pieces, but the most expensive weapons (one item) cost upto several thousand gold.

I am slowly becoming bored with Guild Wars 2. I played Guild Wars 1 for 5 years and love all the content that made the world. Now I have found out that there may not be any paid addons, or expansions. I enjoyed GW1 and had no problem running out and buying Factions, Nightfall. and Eye of the North. I bought GW2 and have been impatiently waiting to return to Cantha and Elona.

So, does this mean that mean those regions are lost to us??? I sure hope not. But I also don’t want a slow role out of the entire map. I want to push through at my own speed. If I decide to push through, I don’t want to hit a road block, and wait.

As a player of the GW legacy for six years. I am hoping NC soft doesn’t ruin it for me. It is the one and only game I play. Sad isn’kitten I want my ritualist, assassins, dervish and paragons back. I want to travel to the lands we once knew. I don’t care if I have to pay. I didn’t mind then, and I won’t mind now.

Because it would make for an epic campaign story in which we believe we’re simply liberating Cantha from a racist and insane Emperor whose ideals of purity have divided even the human populations of Cantha into half a dozen subgroups and helping the Tengu reclaim their ancestral homes. And then we learn the Emperor of Cantha has been possessed by the will of the Deep Sea Dragon and our best way to defeat him involves summoning Shiro Tagachi back from the dead in a semi-faustian bargain.

The final mission/story dungeon involves sieging the Imperial Palace in Kaineng backed by the soul of Shiro Tagachi himself who, with each Imperial Loyalist/Deep Sea Dragon corrupted we kill, they are turned into an afflicted or Shiro’ken, as we get closer to the Emperor himself. Any concerns we have about about the fact that we’re undoing everything done to stop the Affliction is, literally, blasted away when the Deep Sea Dragon tears open the roof of the Palace to support his avatar while our weapons become infused with Shiro’s spirit in an epic clash to free Cantha and slay the Deep Sea Dragon.

I want this. Like, ASAP. Please

When Scarlet came out, it was interesting. Till we found she was linked to…ohh..everything but the dragons. Most people who like lore don’t like her. She is a lazy attempt to wrap everything into one tight basket and needs to go.

Colin-

I’ve suggested this a couple times, but just in case it’s been overlooked… If you want to make doing Dynamic Events more rewarding, just increase the rewards! They don’t need to be different. Gold, Experience, and Karma all have useful sinks/conversions in game already.

I think that, rather than flatly increasing the rewards, you should scale the rewards based on how long the event went uncompleted. For example, an event like Champ Boar that gets fired off as soon as it’s ready will give the same rewards. An event that is often neglected, failed, or uncompleted, (like most of the escort quests), would scale gold, experience, and karma up based on a timer.

For example, if it goes 30 minutes before completion, you get double the normal rewards. If it’s 4 hours, you get 5x rewards. If it’s 8 hours, you get 10x rewards. That kind of thing.

This means that zones with low player population suddenly become very rewarding for groups of players who want to run through and complete events. Suddenly, these zones which are mostly empty are full of people. Players on high-population servers are guesting down to less-populated servers for the extra rewards (and those on the low-pop servers suddenly have open-world friends).

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Here’s something that I would like to see:
1. Make chained events increasingly more difficult the further you are in the chain. For example, if after scouting an NPC to a specific place, the event ends and a new event starts where you have help that NPC retake their home, make the second event harder than the first. If after retaking their home, a new event starts with a boss to kill, make that event even more difficult than the second.
2. In addition to this, make events incresingly more difficult for each time players successfully complete them.
3. Finally, make rewards scale with difficulty.

This way, you’ll accomplish two things: you’ll make the open world’s difficulty a bit more unpredictable, which adds fun, excitement and a feeling of danger to exploration; and you’ll create opportunities where events might reward more than normal.

However, I am aware this might make people grind a specific event over and over. Perhaps randomly increase the difficulty/ reward of events that haven’t been completed for too long, too. This way, you’ll create incentives for players to explore the world, and hunt down ignored-and-harder-than-ever events for better rewards.

I personally would love for the rewards to be related to each even’t story. If we kill a mighty dark knight in an event, perhaps we could get a rare sword drop from him? It would help at world immersion if the rewards were more “predictable” but related to each event.

First, I want to thank ArenaNet for the hard work they have put into the game and these regular updates every couple of weeks.

That being said…

I feel you have spent to many months working on temporary content that comes and goes. I get the idea of having a “Living World” and it’s awesome sounding but these events are just that, events.

Since the introduction of Southsun Cove there has been no meaningful content update to include a new zone. We got close with the Bazaar but low and behold that was removed after a month as well.

What is the point of making all this content? The dungeons, world events, boss changes when we are just stuck in a rut? At some point you have to say “Screw the roundabout” and drive off road.

My suggestion, based on my assumptions that you have been working on new zones, is to start rolling them out sooner rather than later. The population of this game is constantly fluxing with people quitting and newbies joining, which is awesome, but will amount to a dead game.

Players crave real content that they can revisit on a whim and group up for some fun. Being 1 of 40 zombies just trailing behind a commander as the zerg plows through champions is not the ideal model to build towards.

Each dungeon has an armor/weapon set specific to that dungeon, explorable zones should too.

Discuss.

This makes me sad. Kessex was such a pretty zone before and now it’s an ugly mess. First they ruined lower Sparkfly and now this, and they still haven’t given us a restored Orr. Make the game world prettier, not uglier.

Maybe put that Lion’s Arch girl back out there to collect money to replant the trees.