Guild Wars 2

bri.2359:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The topic will be around Player Progression: Horizontal vs Vertical Progression.

This horse left the barn Nov 2012 …

This is true, but I’d like to be sure the corral gate is closed. Plus, it’s about much more than gear to me. I can no longer be an effective combatant in WvW because I don’t already have the ranks and abilities that others have there.

I’m okay with vertical progression in some, very limited, parts of the game — for example Fractals of the Mist and the gear required there — but in other parts of the game it is seeping in and it really needs to be stopped.

I have the AoE auto-loot feature assigned to my “L” key (for Loot). The poor mini would have an aneurysm trying to be faster than I can hit “L”. Although the idea isn’t bad, it really doesn’t add anything of value here.

Now if minipets didn’t get dumped into the collection tabs when you hit “Deposit all collectibles”, that would be wonderful!

I’ve noticed over the past year that people have began to expect more and more out of Arena Net when developing Guild Wars 2.

While I can understand the desire to have more, I think people tend to forget all the great things Arena Net has accomplished with Guild Wars 2 and I think it would be a good idea to have a little reminder to that. Once something becomes the ‘norm’ in a game, it’s quite frequently overlooked, which is what I think happened with a lot of the features Guild Wars 2 has to offer.

Therefore, I decided to put this here on the Guild Wars 2 forum to remind players of all the good things Arena Net has done. Or rather, not all the good things, but 20 of them.

==

1) No Monthly Fee. Let’s face it, most MMOs available these days are either pay to play or free to play w/ subscriptions optional. If you’ve ever been someone who has played a game like WoW or SWTOR, you know as well as anybody that these games offer a free to play option, but they restrict you with the amount of the game that you can play. These games will often neuter your entertainment in the game and force you to want to pay for the game. With Guild Wars 2, you can certainly purchase gems… but you can play the game without restrictions entirely for free, after buying the game itself of course.

2) No Fetch Quests. There are still some people who don’t mind doing fetch quests, but a lot of people have grown tired of the concept and want something new. With Guild Wars 2, having hearts that appear around the map is a much better alternative than talking to someone, then going to slay a certain number of mobs, and then come running back to talk to that person. No longer do I need to spend an hour running from somebody to a field and then back to that somebody, I can just walk into the field and spend ten minutes doing the heart quest before going on my way.

3) Instant Travel. Most games, if they have a travel feature (blimps, waypoints, etc.) will make you sit there and ride a vehicle or an animal before you reach your destination. While I’m one of those people who doesn’t mind doing this because you get to see the beautiful world the company has designed for you, I understand some people don’t want to wait 10 – 15 minutes to go from Point A to Point B. You still have to pay a travel fee like you would in other games, but it’s much easier to travel from Point A to Point B with waypoints in Guild Wars 2 than say, riding around on a speeder in SWTOR.

4) Dynamic Events. Similar to the Heart Quests, Dynamic Events are events that take place around the map at random times and you can join in to get experience. So again eliminating the need to have fetch quests, they make the world seem more alive by having these events occur, and some events will have chains that become different events and are a possibility to level even if you are in a low level zone.

5) No Kill Stealing. Yeah anyone who’s played an MMO is familiar with this concept. You’ve started attacking a mob, but then someone who does more damage appears out of nowhere and attacks the mob too. By doing more damage, they manage to take the experience, the loot, and the kill from you. This mechanic is what made it difficult for someone to level a Healer character because they didn’t do as much damage as pure DPS classes. With spontaneous grouping during dynamic events and everyone getting credit for attacking a single mob, it reduces the level of headache you might get when someone appears to help you kill something. It’s much easier to feel like you’re helping somebody when you appear to fight something and it doesn’t take experience away from them in the process.

6) The downed state. Anyone who’s fought a major boss in another MMO is familiar with the scenario where you and the boss are both at a sliver of health and then suddenly, the boss is able to defeat you and their health immediately refills to max, thus eliminating all the hard work you had just done. Having a chance to beat the boss and get back on your feet is a win in my book.

7) Plentiful variety of dyes & ability to dye armor. Most games didn’t adopt the ability to change the color of armor until long after launch, while as with Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, there has always been an option to dye your armor. In Guild Wars 2, every color of the rainbow and then some is available AND you are given a number of dyes upon character creation to make your character have a unique-ish look to them. In other games, you would have to find armor that looks exactly alike in order to ensure that you didn’t look like you were made of rainbows. With the ability to freely dye your armor as much as you like, and having the dye saved in your hero panel after you’ve unlocked it, is a MUCH better alternative than what other games have made us deal with.

8) Bot Hunting & Banning. When’s the last time you saw a bot advertising gold sales in map chat? When’s the last time you saw a group of bots running around in circles out in the wilderness to kill mobs? In other major MMOs, bots are generally ignored by the developers and you need to add them to your Ignore list yourself if you want them to go away. In Guild Wars 2, Arena Net has taken the fight to the Botters directly by acting on the reports they get and banning anyone who uses bots for any purpose.

9) In-Game Gold Transfer Option. Arena Net understands that gold sellers and gold farmers are scammers out to steal your account from you. So rather than making you rely on some third party website to get money in the game, they let you buy it directly from them. Granted with Guild Wars 2, the amount of gold you get fluctuates based on how much gems are worth at the time of purchase, but you’re still given the option to buy gold without the risk of losing your account or being hacked.

10) Armor transmutation stones. Don’t you hate when you get a really wicked awesome looking piece of armor in a game, but it doesn’t have the stats you want or need? I HATE when that happens. Arena Net allows us the option to take the appearance of another piece of armor, the stats and the rune inside to ensure that we look and fight the way we want to. Now while I am a bit annoyed that we’re still restricted to armor appearances that are light, medium or heavy, it’s still better than being forced to wear a set of armor that I don’t like at all that has the stats I need.

11) Server-wide trade post. Anything you’ve ever needed and some things you never cared to have but will buy anyway. Having a trade post that connects to all servers ensures that whatever it is you’re looking for (for the most part) is available to you when you need it. And if it’s not available, or if you can’t afford to pay the asking price, you can put in a buy order that anyone on any server can fill. That’s a LOT of people filling orders and trading gear.

12) Skill use while moving. Standing still and pressing numbers gets boring after a while, but in most MMOs, you have to be standing still in order to activate a skill. With Guild Wars 2, we are allowed to move around and cast skills. We still have to stand still for some skills, but we’re able to remain mobile which is something the gaming community has needed for a while.

13) Initiative to explore. In other games, exploration seems like something you would do only if you were interested in seeing the entire world the developers have created. Most people would focus more on content than they would on exploring. With Guild Wars 2, you’re encouraged to explore AND you get rewarded for it. What’s not to like?

gidorah.4960:

I dont think a same day implementation of the idea’s in the cdi is too much to ask.

Erm, I think a same day intention to implement would still take months to become visible to us on this side of the glass.

Besides the obvious challenges of coding something, I kinda like my game to be tested for more than an hour or two before being pushed to live severs .

…and the forums are, like the game, still bugged in the same old annoying ways. Clicking on this thread shows me nothing but a reply box.

So here are my thoughts on it: Fix the bug where when the person who makes the post that causes the thread to go to a second page, that person can read the thread without having to make another post. Already.

/sigh

Grileenor.1497:

zMajc.4659:

If you put all content released this year together you get an expansion’s worth of content, maybe more.

This is a joke?

No? I’m playing MMO’s since EQ more than 10 years ago and i think i have see my share of content additions and expansions over the years in most major MMO’s. Everything together added since release is more than most MMO’s get in full expansion.

Most modern MMO’s get a moderate sized expansion once a year or every two years and mini content patches every two months. In between you get bored senseless for months whereas here you get somethin to do every two weeks.

Oh wow this was a glitch?! I opened a ton of boxes, hoping for other stuff…. I really hope no one gets banned or whatever…. I really didn’t want it anyway!

By Odgen’s Hammer. What a waste.

yes to horizontal progression

no to vertical progression

I like Scarlet. And I’d be rather annoyed if I didn’t get to the end of the story that was started. It would be like going through Orr and finding a fast food restaurant where Zhaitan was supposed to be.

I would like to offer some corrections over the self-gratifying nonsense that is being raised in this thread:

- Just because you dislike Scarlet, that does not mean everyone dislikes Scarlet. Not even if there are people who agree with you.

- Just because someone does not share your opinion, does not mean that that person is “one of the very few” who do.

- People who like what is going on have little reason to go post about it, which is why “I hate X” threads are more common than “I like X” threads.

- Just because there is a Living Story, players are not forced to participate in it. Just go do your WvW or dungeon runs or guild missions as usual. If something annoys you, don’t expose yourself to it.

So please stop proclaiming: “I hate Scarlet, which means that everyone hates Scarlet, which means that Living Story is a failure, which means that I get to tell ArenaNet what to do.” Because even if the first thing is true, none of the others necessarily follow. Basic faulty logic.

Personally, I don’t think Scarlet is that great of a character (as she has been badly written), but that does not diminish my enjoyment of the Living Story in the slightest. And I do not have the opinion that “Scarlet needs to go”. I am confident that the Living Story will provide Scarlet with an appropriate exit eventually. Probably involving the unleashing of some terrible threat to Tyria.

I personally liked Scarlet. She will be leaving shortly. Your demands are a little stamping foot variety aren’t they?

Minis, Back items, tonics and tittles are great ways to reward a player for others look at him and say “look! he did that stuff”, I’m a bit jealous of people that have the mini Liadri for example.

We’ll see more dragons, but that’s “personal” story content. Scarlet is “living” story content. The story of the crap going on in the world outside and beyond the dragons. What, you think bad stuff stops happening just because some other threat already exists? I would have liked to see additional things happening in the world, on top of Scarlet’s insanity. Really make the world feel like its alive. After all, just because there’s a war on in one part of the world, doesn’t meant the rest of the world simply stops going about its business.

Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t. I’m still sticking by my ‘wait and see’ approach.

I really like the new faces. I use one of the male nose-less ones (the one with smaller eyes) and it really suits the way I wanted to change my Sylvari. My only suggestion is that since they don’t have a nose, maybe they could use the nose size sliders to modify something else? Like additional tree-like extensions somewhere on the face that would have been hidden if the sliders were at the lowest point and only visible if you wanted them to be, and controlled with the nose sliders. Just an idea

Looks like we have only last years weapon skins, oh well nvm, for fun as I promised Bow, no snow globe this time but spinning flakes inside handle makes your arrows frosty

I have 2 Total Makeover Kits in my bank, both from BLC opened with keys from personal story/daily , as others mentioned you can also buy with in game gold, and it is just an aesthetic change, besides all that, many will even use a helmet and hide his uniqueness …
In other words, I’m totally fine with this.

Siobhan.6027:

Four more releases centered around Scarlet is quite nauseating. At this point I don’t care what it builds towards unless it retcons Scarlet and everything she’s done.

So, what if the whole Scarlet story leads up to the awakening of a new Elder Dragon (Mordremoth), would it still be totally worthless and be retconned?

There are after all things that do point towards it, so it is not completely impossible.

JohnnySupernova.9182:

lordkrall.7241:

Jakzor.4160:

so basicly, from 21th Jan we’ll have FOUR living story only release.

that means 2 freaking months(3 starting from 10th dec) without any feature update…

that makes me very sad…..

That is not what he is saying.
He is saying that there will be no MAJOR feature release during those 4 updates.

Which makes sense.
Major features are after all stuff like the WPX system, new maps types, new systems over all and so on.

The living story should not take precedent over actually improving the game, to be honest. If it has to be one or the other, features should come first, always.

Ever think that maybe some of the features might not be ready yet? So the living story buys time to complete them?

Perhaps some of the features are lead into by the living story, and thus the story needs to come first.

Several reason why they might do the story first. At least we know that they will be doing a large feature release in a few months. That’s at least positive news.

Another boring day at work.. Crush your opponents with giggle hammer bell, sow terror with Merry Wintersday style, ho ho ho ho, freeze hammer time…

Edit: now with lighting

Block or slide, wanna fight with style?…Shield?…Sledge? Time to share… So who distributes gifts this year? Ho ho ho

Here we go again, is it Snowman? Is it Snow Globe, no its staff. I hope you get old or new winter weapons. This is probably my last winter in GW2, so have fun ppl and Merry Wintersday, ho ho ho…

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Hard to say, I got 2 very nice ones right now. My sylvari elementalist is semi biker chick (least as much as gaia outfits allow) and then my norn engineer with a very nice Space marine look going thanks to his new gas mask.

That sounds amazing!

Show them both?

Congrats! At least you got one~ 4200 hours of GW 2 now and NEVER looted a precursor. THIS right here is bad luck. =/