Guild Wars 2

corrupted Bifrost makes no sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifr%C3%B6st

OK, so, here are my two cents. I didn´t read the whole thread, so maybe I will repeat something that was said. I´ve read some of the dev responses, so I´ll try to adress some things they pointed out. This will also probably be a huge wall of text, so please excuse me for it. Without further delay, here we go:

- First of all, to add to what has been said. Bi-weekly schedule is good, there is not that much content. The major tasks and instance is doable within a few hours of gameplay. Only problem is, you make it seem that people have to do the meta-achievemnt and all other achievements to complete the content (more about achievements and LS in the next point). If it´d be monthly, there would have to be more of the content anyway, so I don´t see a point in doing it. As long as you will go for quality, I´m good. You have much to work in this field, but you have also done so much to bring the quality up. All I can say for this subject is „keep up the good work and make it even better“ ?.

- Biggest problem of LS (gameplay-wise) is that it is too much achievement focused, all tasks, all things that have to be done are in the achievements and therefore, each release is basically “Story instance → Achievements grind →; Done”. In Tower of Nightmares, you at least done it so the release UI directs players better. But it is not enough. As I see it, you need to introduce something like Renown Hearts (or whatever is it called now. Tasks? you know what I mean), or some other form of traditional quests. Hearts will be probably best option, as they already exist in game.
How I picture it (I will use Tower of Nightmares as an example): After completing the instance, you have to collect the samples. It is said to you by Marjory, she can repeat it to you when you speak to her, but to track how many you brought, you have to open achievements tab. As oposed to this, Marjory could be also a Renown Heart NPC (with a Heart over her head, perhaps with a small golden star to indicate it is a LS content). If a player is close to her, there will be also standard Heart UI that tells him what to do and he also sees a progress bar. (Since the player can collect the samples in multiple zones and such, it would be only close to her). This way, player will be sure as to what to do and you would untie the core story content out of the achievements.
Now don´t get me wrong, the achievements should be there (even the spore sample collector could be there as achievement too) but you need to have the core “story” things (as collecting the samples) to be in the world, not just in achievement tab. Achievements should be just supplementary content, something you do if you want after you´ve done the main task tied to the story (thats why I think it was a mistake to do them obligatory in the Blood and Madness. Some people just don´t have time to do the meta. If they don´t, they will miss out story content here. Please, don´t do it again). Some players are not used to check achievements for what to actually do. Try to make it so achievements are not Alpha and Omega of LS releases.

- It needs to be Living Story, not just Living World. For now, there is very little of actual story. First of all, all story instances schould be repeatable as it was with F&F (or as you done it with this release). If it is possible, there could be at least two story instances, the second one with conclusion. Something along the Blood and Madmess patch (just don´t make it as "First instance – a little of lore and a fight; Second Instance – fight, both done in a moment and at one place). As I envision it. You have Tower of Nightmares story instance as it is. After it, you have to collect the spores. And after, you have to know it was for something. Now, you give Marjory spores and thats it, nothing is said, nothing happens. It don´t have to be story instance per se, but at least give her dialogue that now she could come up with and antidote or something like that.

(more to come in next post)

- Lore, lore and lore! We need lore in-game! Web site stories are good, lore interviews are great. BUT…those are ours one nad only lore sources. Minimum of it goes to game. I´ve seen it getting better with two last releases (Mad King and Bloody Prince talking in Labyrinth, existing Krait lore in after talking with NPCs). But I can´t stress this enough. We need it in actual game.
Examples: Trek of Zephyrites – you could give us parts of those memoires into the Labyrinthine cliffs as books/letters. You could put them in scattered like the crystals we were collecting, or just put them into Zephyr sanctum for us to read.
Blood and Madness – Scavanger hunt similar to what we had last year – find ghosts that would tell you history of Bloody Prince (maybe Bloody Memories as reward? )
And that brings me to

- Scavenger Hunts. Some love them, some hates them. I´m in the first bunch. But, with the last scavenger hunts, I see two problems. First – they are there just so they are there and we have something to do. If we find a krait obelisk, we interact and continue. Give us lore with them, so finding them makes sense for PC and for players alike (see? Lore. It´s important! ). There should be another incentive then achievement points. (this also goes for Tequatl rising hunt…find ten scales/teeth/crystals. Why? Because!)
Also regarding this. Please, at least give us some hints. Stop with „there are some items in the zone (or worse, in the world) you have to find“. Last year´s Halloween is the way to go – every ghost give us another clue where should we go. This years scavenger hunt is good to some extend, most of the obelisks are where krait towers are in the world, that´s good. But other obelisks? Just roam the world and be lucky, or go to dulfy and read a guide (especialy with those not even close to any „original“ krait locations). Thats not fun. I know that you want us in the world, finding stuff but I need at least a clue, however cryptic, so I may have a chance of finding it without having to read a guide or just be lucky.

- I´ll come back to the Lore bit again. You should expand on already established lore (from GW2 and GW1), not just comming with new factions/aliances/stuff. Zephirites and their ties to Glint was a step in right direction. I know you said that you are looking at all the lore already established, I just had to say it is important (and cannot be stressed enough too)

- We need new zones. You tried it with the Southsun, but there were two mistakes – low risk/reward opportunities. You designed karka to be a chalange, but reward for this chalenge are none. Also, they are difficult mainly because of them having two health-pools. More HP is not a fun chalenge.
Second mistake, Southsun is isolated from the world. You could get there by a ship (now by a gate), not with a portal from another zone. Most people that wasn´t around the first event, or second, have no idea how to get there. If you make new zones, make them so they will be connected to existing ones please.
And why we need new zones? Of course, getting updates to the old ones, Kessex changing for example is great, I love it. But I seen every zone dozen times, I know most of the events…it´s just „I´ve seen that, no point of doing it again“ all over the place. If we get something new, the „wow“ element is back in the game. I know that it would divide community more, but we need this (as we need the old zones chagning too, don´t get me wrong. We need both, to some extend ? )

- I don´t mind story not evolving around Dragons for a change, but we need to feel they are there (and I´m so glad to hear you have plans with them!). It´s really OK to have other story arcs, but you have to acknowlege they are there and they are threat. Otherwise, they are just a bad joke.
Talking of vilains – Scarlet. I want to like her, I really do. Personally, I don´t have so much problem with how „vilain-sue“ she is (even though she does know maybe too much). The whole problem is the projection of her character into the game.
First – fact in game were very scetchy. For example, we learned (in game) that sche graduated all ASURAN colleges and she also studiet under hylek, norn, charr and like. Only in short story and interview we find out that she took only basic courses of the colleges, studiet briefly under one norn, one charr and one hylek (again, improtant lore out of game).
Second – her character. You envisioned her really good. Sylvari with love for technologies, great intelect, goes crazy. How it is portrayed in game so far? She looks like spoiled brat with childish catch phrases and childish manners. This is not an interesting portreyal of „personal nemesis“ so many were hoping for. And I´m not mentioning that we don´t know any of her motives. And that brings us to:

(even more comming in the next post)

- Pacing of the story is way too slow. The story arc is going for almost a year now and we know next to nothing as of why is this happening, other than „Scarlet did it!“. We keep hearing that all thing are connected, but we are 10 months in and we still don´t see how (again, other then „Scarlet did it.“). We need to know more, otherwise it will trully be known only as Random Story. It´s good you realize the mistakes, so just learn from them and we will be fine.

- Special mention – SAB. Many people love it (I don´t, but it´s ok). All I ask is – don´t make it canon, don´t make it part of actual lore and world. Let it be there for people enjoy but let it stay how it came to be – a joke. A fun content that is there just for fun. A game within a game that we can play, but don´t tie it into the Tyria. This way, all who like it can play it and all who don´t (or all who care about lore) are good without it. I for one don´t like it not because of jumping (Jumping puzzles being favourite part of the game). It breaks my immersion. Nuff said.

And now, regarding some other point that were discussed:
- Most of the DEs (especially the escort ones) are just impossible to fail. NPC you were escorting dies? DE don´t fail, you just have to revive NPC and continue. You can even find long dead NPC, revive him and you are good to continue. It takes away the need to actually protect the NPC, it takes away chalenge, immersion, consequences, you name it. Des should fail if you don´t try hard enough. And that goes not only for escort events, there needs to be fail condition in some of them too. And please, no time conditions. It makes it feel that it is on a timer just because you can´t come up with anything better. But you can! Take Temple of Grenth. It has a condition and it can be hard because of it, you can fail it easily. More of this!

- Now, you aked us to say our Bstt/Worst release and why.
Best one – Zephyrite Sanctum. Gorgeous zone, much things to do (zone being big Jumping puzzle – only problem was tieing all to achievements, but I discussed already ? ), tieing it to already established lore…perfect.
Worst one – Tequatl Rising. This was a though one. I´d say SAB, but even though I don´t like it, it´s a good content (but me wanting it just as a joke and not a part of the lore still stands). I say Tequatl Rising just because of the actual content in it. I love the change and you deffinetely rework other bosses as well (but maybe let the lower level ones alone, for the sake of learning curve for new players). I didn´t like it because there was this change and thats it. OK, there was a scavenger hunt, but I already told you what I think of THAT kind of scavenger hunt.

So there you go, this was mine Great Wall (of Text) with my insight and opinions. In conclusion, I just want to say that I love the game and I hope it will go in the right direction. Take care Anet and good luck with doing the game better. Have a good one!

Fine, I’ll give it a try.

About Scarlet:

The issue isn’t just with pacing. Revealing a villain and then waiting months to add some depth is a bad idea, of course, but this isn’t even the main issue I have with her. IMO, the most cringe-worth aspect of her introduction wasn’t the “OMG it’s Scarlet!!! …Who’s that again?” aspect, but rather how it was followed by a NPC going on about “Oh right, THAT Scarlet! The world famous Sylvari who has been the only outsider to master all Asura colleges and who the player characters had never heard about!”.

The world of Tyria is huge. We have explored everything that can currently be seen there, so it doesn’t make sense that a character so important would appear out of completely nowhere. This looks like bad writing, but worse, bad planning – as if the idea had just come from a meeting last week, as opposed to a years-long plan we are told exist.

Meanwhile, other areas of the game do a much better work in foreshadowing. If we were told an evil mage has appeared in the south of Kessex Hills turning humans into slaved elementals, our reaction wouldn’t be “…Who’s that?”. No, we would realize it’s the wizard from Wizard Fief, who has been set as a future antagonist, and who’s currently a dangling plot point.

Scarlet should have been the same thing. It’s not (only) a matter of not giving us depth after the character had been revealed – we should have been given hints way before that. During the “Flame & Frost” release, for example, an ambient dialogue could have been added to Rata Sum in which some NPCs talk about the weird Sylvari going around. If ArenaNet is saving on voice acting, it could have been some text-based talk with NPCs in which they mention an outsider excelling on everything in the Asura Colleges. Something done with subtlety so it would be hidden clues, but it would make the Living World characters exist in the world before appearing out of nowhere as they do today.

On voice acting:

Bobby Stein has talked about this, but I want to use it as an example of ArenaNet’s poor planning: it was cool and all to get popular voice actors to voice our characters, but now the price we pay is the incredible cost linked to our characters saying anything at all. Considering how even cheaper voice actors would still be expensive, considering the voice actors’ union, this is something in which ArenaNet should have compromised in the beginning.

Was it really useful to localize spoken dialogue into all those multiple languages? Was it really worth using different voice actors for multiple races? The result is what we have today – the original game was incredibly cripped since characters from every race and every background had to say the exact same thing in every mission dialogue, which means every previous choice means absolutely nothing in the later parts of the storyline. For a so-called “personal” story, this is a disaster. Worse, this means all future stories are crippled, since our characters cannot say anything.

The lack of player agency isn’t new. We had the exact same issue with Master Togo and Mhenlo in Guild Wars: Factions, not to mention Kormir in Guild Wars: Nightfall. The situation here is only worse, due to how ArenaNet has placed itself in a technical trap instead of a purely design-based one.

And this lack of long term planning is very old, too. Taking short-term solutions with long term negative impact was exactly what destroyed the skill system in the original Guild Wars – adding so many skills to the game could have pleased players who wanted “moar and moar” on the short term, but it only led to the massive numbers of skills which ArenaNet would never be able to balance. You should know how to plan better this time.

On the quality of the content itself:

Remember that article about “Is it fun? How ArenaNet measures success”? That was obviously not true. Multiple times we have been told how ArenaNet considered an update to be successful or not based on how much played it has been.

The issue with using that metric is that it leads to false conclusions. You can think the Scarlet invasions were a success, since a lot of people were playing it – but it was just a lot of people farming the event, while creating a rift in the community as people fought among themselves over whether they would finish the event or farm.

This is one of the reasons many Living World updates were poor – they were not designed to be fun content, they were designed to be content people would grind over and over and thus play a lot. This strategy works… If all you want to play your games are farmers, grinders, exploiters and addicts. If you want normal human beings as players, well…

Event technology question to Devs:

Is it possible to enable NPC A to give a player a unique inventory “ticket” item via dialogue choices, then allow player to approach NPC B (likely in an entirely different zone!) and turn in/turn over that ticket item to NPC B to launch a Dynamic Event? (I’m presuming the dynamic event has a brief internal cooldown after completion and cannot be re-initiated while it is running – so players don’t trip over each other)

Why I ask: If this can be done, you can totally reinvigorate the non-LA home cities as places to go around and talk to NPCs in search of ticket items that will then let players open up/activate new activities out in the surround countryside. But even NPCs out on the land scape would have potential functionality as same-map or cross-map event starters that respect the player’s schedule. The event never starts unless a player has put in the prep -but other players can become involved and it creates the natural interplay as they ask “how did you start this?”

In some way I suppose it already exists in game: The matrix key puzzle used to unlock the steam ogre in the Thaumatova Reactor area. Since that works by advancing a series of unique items, I guess I’m primarily asking if the starting point can be an NPC dialogue rather than a item found on the ground, and would you consider similar permanent new activities that actually reached across zones?

Hey Arenanet,
First of all thx for doing this. It’s wonderfull you ask the opinion of the community and even more so you are prepared to read trough all this to improve your game.So bear with me here. This is gonna be quite the post but i’m passionate about this game and i only want the best for it. So let’s kick it off.

1. Content Vs Noncontent.
Ok the first point i would like to bring to your attention, is that living world at this time has to much noncontent. I don’t mean to be rude in any way but the way your system works atm is that you release a new update every 2 weeks and while some of them are awesome and good(tequatl, new dungeon), most of the updates can be described as achievement hunts. I don’t have a problem with achievements in general, but if 20 minutes into a new update, you start looking at your achievement list, then there is a problem. Content that is being released should keep the player busy before they want to check all the achievements out. But for example with the last update, tower of nightmares, once you realise this is gonna be a map zerg fest, you can’t help it, cause you don’t want to be in there longer then needed. And that’s the problem, i have a feeling some of the content is being done just for achievements, and that’s not ok. Achievements should be optional and not the main type of content. But be honest, what other reason is there to go to kessex hills atm, it’s overcrowded, it doesn’t offer any decent rewards (in fact far less then other “zerg zones”) and it’s simply not really fun to play imo. Same with Blood and Madness, where you even gate content behind achievements… I’m an achievement hunter by heart so i do busy myself completing every single thing, but that doesn’t excuse achievements from becoming content, they shouldn’t be, and main rewards shouldn’t be attatched to them either. Making achievements this important just takes away from the general story you guys are trying to deliver. It disconnects you from the content. And making daily achievements required for completing the meta ones is just rediculous. This brings me to the next problem.

2.Time-Gating
This is one of the things that irritates me the most in GW2, the time gate. So what do i mean?For example stuff like the daily requirement for meta achievements (wich you’re making content so i’m considering it content). The laurel system (wich isn’t living world i know) and many other things in the game. Blood and madness was a perfect example of this. The blood prince instance just locked behind a wall of achievements wich you can’t complete in a day. I don’t get this fear of people completing content super fast, why should you care tbh, if they want to, let them. The only thing that time gate created, is for people who don’t have allot of time around haloween (it’s a busy time irl, also for me) to not be able to complete content cause they need to do daily’s for it. I do get the mad king only shows at haloween to do his game, wich is ok, but the meta (again if considered content, wich you do since you lock other content behind it) should be obtainable without daily’s.

3. The returning player problem, permanent vs non permanent.
Ok so in this part i speak out of my own experience, i missed so much stuff due to school, and i’m probally gonna miss much more, i simply don’t have the time in my life atm to complete everything. But i also was absent entirely from the game from the aetherblade pirate update till now. I basicly have no idea what’s going on. There is nothing to fill me in, no living story log, no movies i can watch to get me up to date to what happened, nothing. I’m just trying to figure out what happened by asking guildies and trying to read up online. But this isn’t ok. I feel there needs to be a way for players to watch if not replay what happened. Now i understand this isn’t something you can do easely, but it’s important for players who missed stuff (and with 2 week updates you will miss stuff). This hasn’t got to be related to any rewards whatsoever but we need some kind of connection to get back into the story. In the 4 months i was away, tequatl was changed, and a new dungeon path was added. At least that’s what it looks like to me. I understand that living world focusses on telling a story but there’s way to much non-permanent stuff going on atm. This is one of the reasons i am excited about the kessex hills storyline even while it’s a zergfest atm. It will change the world. Permanent changes or new content is good. Taking something away doesn’t make it exclusive or special, it makes it less viewed. I found it interesting that in the latest developper stream someone said they wanted living story to feel like a television series. May i put to your attention that tv series get the most views in reruns and dvd sales, or being ordered of things like netflix. You cannot make a game with a feeling like a tv series (wich is a Anet quote) and then say “well you missed it, to bad for you” when people missed an episode. This is not ok as a whole. I don’t know how but this is a problem with your current style of releases and it needs to be adressed.

4. To skin or not to skin.
Lastly, i would like to talk about something that’s very connected to the living story, as with each update, new skins seem to be released and i feel like you are shooting your own foot here. There needs to be a decent skin system, it’s really a hard requirement. The whole transmutation/skins doesn’t work. We need some sort of wardrobe system. Where SKIN is unrelated from STAT. You could still make this work like for example for adding a skin to this system you use transmutation stones, but then you can swap freely between them. It’s really stupid so many skins are lost cause you transmute other “newer” stuff over it, or you’d have to buy a new item for that skin, for example with backpacks, if you have an ascended backpack this is impossible and you are facing tough decisions. I don’t even care if every change requires a transmutation stone (wich would be expensive but ok) but right now you have to decide if you want to loose your previous stuff wich i don’t find to be ok. Especially with ascended armors comming up, i don’t want to loose the skin of that ascended armor since it’s not to bad of a skin, but i also bought tier 3 human armor to use it, not to be in my bank forever. Skins/stats should not be attached to one another and i’m hoping one day a system comes into place wich doens’t use them both.

5. Open world is important, zergs are not.
This is a difficult excersize, open world content is important, but it shouldn’t get zergy the way it is. At least you shouldn’t be forced to zerg. If i want to hop into an overflow with my guild i should get the option (in any map tbh) this doesn’t mean we don’t want others around, but zergs destroy what it means to play together. The system is in place (overflows work like a charm) but it’s not being used. For example last night in kessex i got into an overflow cause the main server was full, not many people in that overflow so i got about 10 guildies in there, and we had allot more fun then we would have had on the main server. Selecting an overflow should be a main feature, and i know there are a few problems with getting this in, but it’s worth it to improve gameplay and mostly improve guildplay imo. Especially in open world stuff like the last release.

6. The MMO in MMORPG
I’m keeping this short, an MMORPG should give you the option to play solo or in group for most things but should NEVER force you to play solo. This was a mistake last patch and with the wintersday stuff (where you couldn’t enter a team game as a team) and shouldn’t be repeated.

7. Risk vs Reward
Rewards are handed out like candy, if you are gonna tie certain rewards to achievements plz make them none grindy and challenging.

8. Keep on going.
Despite all this, i respect and admire what you guys are trying to do, so keep it up.

minbariguy.7504:

Why are you unwilling to adjust the release cadence? What is the reason that it must continue, no matter what anyone says? Can you at least help us understand that?

My gut feeling on this is it has to do with marketing and promotion. It’s already been billed as a prominent selling feature of the game. To suddenly back-track on those claims would be difficult to substantiate on a PR level.

Now, regarding the concept of evolving DE’s, methinks Nike hit it on the head. Failure to accomplish a DE at the moment is a simple hard reset. It should, however, set into motion another DE with another two options depending on success or failure. This is a wonderful vehicle to tell the LS. Drop a patch note that there’s a new DE in an area, and as the DE chain progresses, it reveals more of the story actively.

What would make it even more believable, is if the two options weren’t necessarily “succeed” or “fail.” But rather, “you have to escort one of these two caravans—you can’t save both.” So there’s a sense of personal decision making that would play into it.

Now, the problem with this concept is that it’s still lending itself to zerg fests. Important DE’s are always zerg fests. Thus, introducing component DE’s (a la the invasion of Orr DE’s which I believe are done better than many others), would go a long way toward helping with this.

But the simple issue is that no DE should ever “end” upon completion or failure. There should always be a “next step.”

Nike.2631:

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Its in the game NOW. And it represents some of the best the DE system has to offer.

The pump house/waterworks in Queensdale. Bandits assault it with bombs. If you fail, it launches a new DE where you make repairs. If you succeed, the pump house is safe, but is potentially subject to the to toxin line of DEs (and visa versa). The two lines never overlap (You don’t have to stop bombs while there are oozes running amok), but they create tangibly different outcomes for winning or failing.

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

I second this. I see more of these types of success/failure scenarios in the early zones and less as you move through the rest of the world. I think you could do the game wonders if you would add more layers of success and failure.

Honestly, when I first looked at GW2 many moons ago, I thought that if we had failed an event, such as defend the water pumps from centaurs, they gain a foothold in the zone and their presence in the zone grows. After a short time they launch a new attack from these new footholds on other camps, such as farms and huts and whatnot. If we fail to defend those, they gain more footholds and their presence grows even more. It is up to the community to push back the centaur presence.

That, my friends, is what a living world really is. There is true fear of failure and success. If we continue to fail, heart NPCs and things are unavailable. No, I am not talking about Orr-difficulty unavailable. But you get the idea.

My Main Problem with the LivingStory is pretty simple:

Most LS-Updates are not improving and expanding the Heart of the original Game (Maps & Dungeons, Renown Hearts, Events, Exploration).
They are all Archievement-Driven and strongly focused on farming/grinding.

There is no sense of Exploration or Freedom anymore – just a ToDo-List asking you to do very specific things (“Close 5 Doors today…”)

Nike.2631:

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

From what I understand, ArenaNet made one attempt to add a batch of new Dynamic Events to the world. When nobody seemed to notice or care, that approach was abandoned.

The problem? You added them at the same time that we got the Halloween content, so lots of folks didn’t notice until later! Also, the 50 or so (I think that was the count) new DEs were spread all over the place, and it was close to launch, and you never listed out what the new events were in patch notes or anything, so a lot of us probably thought they were just events from launch we hadn’t seen before.

I don’t know what amount of effort this requires, but I’m curious as to whether you would consider trying to add at least 5-10 new DEs in one or two zones per patch cycle? That’d help to keep all the content fresh over time. This, plus scaled rewards (higher DE rewards the longer an event has gone uncompleted) would really help to revitalize zones that lots of us never visit anymore.

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Its in the game NOW. And it represents some of the best the DE system has to offer.

The pump house/waterworks in Queensdale. Bandits assault it with bombs. If you fail, it launches a new DE where you make repairs. If you succeed, the pump house is safe, but is potentially subject to the to toxin line of DEs (and visa versa). The two lines never overlap (You don’t have to stop bombs while there are oozes running amok), but they create tangibly different outcomes for winning or failing.

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

I think they look amazing. They are plants… they are not going to look normal… weirdness is a part of their beauty The more plant-like, the merrier, to me

What do you find off with the looks of the female sylvari? Also, what looks do you find that you think look cool with the male sylvari?

Some looks can look far more human and others can look very creature-like with the female sylvari.

In the end, though… I think the best-looking race is the Sylvari (Norn ladies are a close second). And I really do like the look of both genders of the sylvari.

I have a level 80 of every profession except engineer (working on that one now). I don’t use any of them for anything specific. I just play each one as I feel the need to change things up. I will use anyone of them for any content. The only thing that affects which one I use, is which one has the area mapped that I want to go play in.

For the most part I will not do content I do not enjoy. However if I’m an achievement or two from finishing the event and if I have time I might do the last few even if I don’t enjoy them and if they are not too time consuming. More often than not I won’t bother with it though. I play this game to have fun and there is no reward in the game that will get me to spend hours not having fun. I have plenty of obligations in real life that are not fun so I’m not going to do the same with my game time.

Scaling instances would be my preference – choice is always a plus.

I really wish that all of the story mode dungeons were scale-able from 1-5 players and awarded a fraction of that dungeon’s tokens once per day for completion (say, 10-15) That way someone who does not enjoy grouping or doesn’t have the time to commit to exploration mode dungeons can slowly work on dungeon armor.

I would really rather have their art department work on better looking armor and weapons than trait icons…

As an Engineer, I have no problems in the water thanks to automatically tossing grenades. :p No muss, no fuss.

I have 5 permanent characters and have made countless temporary ones. The levelling process has never bothered me.

I think a big part of that is that I’m primarily a PvE player. I enjoy playing the open-world content and I actually like doing the same parts multiple times because it’s always a bit different each time.

Which also means that levelling doesn’t bother me because I don’t look at it as a process to get out of the way ASAP so I can start playing that character. I start playing the character as soon as I create them and the fact that they’re levelling up is largely coincidental to what I’m doing with them.

[quote=3080939;locoman.1974:
Traits: My engineer, to use another example, is heavily built for flamethrower use…. but can’t use the flamethrower kit underwater so about half of my traits become useless. If I could select a different build while underwater (just like head armor and weapons switch when going into the water), then it would be MUCH better.
[/quote]

This. I agree with all of your post but this is clearly ArenaNet’s most egregious underwater mistake. It would require minimal effort on their part to have one set of traits for dry land and another for underwater. I’ve been asking for this since Beta.

1st – Gold to gem conversion is determined by supply & demand from the Player-base. This was clearly stated, even prior to the games official release. If you wish to vent your frustration on the gem inflation, please direct it toward the appropriate folks – the players.

2nd – Grinding for gold (profit) varies from individual to individual. Lucky RNG may give you a few sweet exotic drops in relatively short time, or you likely will end up grinding porous bones for long stretches of time. You may just need to accept that if you don’t have the Gems today, you may either have to grind, break out the credit card, or learn to go without.

It has been like this since Pre-release

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

tell me how is this better than unique icons identifiable at first glance?
with icons, i can know at first glance what each trait do.

Go ahead and draw me up an icon for Elemental Attunement that at first glance will tell me when I attune to an element that myself and nearby allies will gain a boon depending on the element: Fire – Might, 19.5s, 35 power, 35 condition damage; Water – Regen 6.5s, 855 heal; Air – Swiftness 6.5s 33% movement speed; Earth – Protection 6.5s -33% incoming damage; Number of targets 5; Radius 240.

Then make one for Evasive Arcana that shows how I will gain an attunement based spell at the end of a dodge, Fire: Flame Burst, Water: Cleansing Wave; Air Blinding Flash; Earth: Churning Earth.

Now make these 2 icons so unique that I can tell at a glance which one is which.

I have bunches more traits all with some variation of the fire, air, water, earth theme.

But how about difficult to picture traits like maintaining the passive effects of signets when activated, and how that would look different at a glance against reducing the recharge on signets or give a shot at cantrips granting me regeneration and vigor or cantrips grant me might when used.

I’ll wait.

I don’t get your hate with roman numerals. I can read them just fine.

This is a non issue that mainly exists with you, which is why no one is agreeing with you…

So, the existence of waypoints causes you to skip the intervening terrain. Is it that you don’t want to use them but do anyway because they’re there? You can’t just choose not to use them? Is it because you want to cross the intervening space but don’t want to travel at walking speed (hence mounts)? I’m trying to understand the thought process, because I totally have no problem ignoring waypoints to travel around on foot — when that’s what i want to do, and using waypoints when I want speed (e.g., for things like Guild Trek, because the time limits given don’t allow for taking the long route).

The “older audience” has gotten tired of the immature takeover of MMO’s starting when B-Net babies ran rampant all over WoW Beta.

Any game that harkens back to the old school common courtesy where reputation matters is a game a lot of us old timers are looking for.

Yes, the content in GW2 is a little light weight (comparatively speaking) in terms of fluff, lore, dungeons and RvR, I mean WvW. I will tolerate that any day over immature, unhelpful, self-focused entitled players.

56 year old hardcore player here (9 MMO’s in the last 13 years) and very young compared to folks I know in their mid-60’s, 70’s and a few 80 year-olds who play MMO’s.

I was playing the original D&D pen and paper when it came out and yes I played pong, adventure and used 8-track tapes.

Signed,
Life-long gamer

PS: Yes, I’m female. Retired fortune 20 software developer with plenty of disposable income and free time now that my kids are in college/grad school.

The populace is getting older because we did not stop playing video games when we expired like milk at age 30?

More armor skins please! Still hoping they’ll bring back the Mesmer FoW armor from GW1.

Or hoping they finally introduce this armor: