Guild Wars 2

Stormleaf.1769:

She’s a member of the race that raises itself to be as hilariously arrogant and overconfident as possible. It would be a “stretch” for her to care about safety at all.

Ah! You beat me to it!

Warning: Story Spoilers
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This was sent via an observation by someone via PM. (Thanks ZeftheWicked!!)

Anyone noticed that the victims on Dry Top were killed via a blade.
YET during Aerin’s fight, he used grenades exclusively against us.

Abit of a clue that maybe Aerin wasn’t the one behind it?
Or did Anet fudge that up?

Interesting huh?

Who was Aerin? Many who didn’t take that much opportunity to re-explore the Labyrinthine Cliffs upon the zephyrite’s return might have missed this now notable NPC entirely. He seems to pop up entirely out of the blue from the opening to Season 2.

He actually was quite busy this last living story patch, but let’s flash back to the first time the zephyrites showed up. Aerin was down at Bazaar Docks as an NPC you could speak with. All he had to say was, “These Zephyrite people are truly amazing to have created such a mysterious airship home.” That’s all Arenanet wrote for him at the time.

At their second arrival, Aerin was absolutely -GIDDY- to get aboard and become a fellow zephyrite. Once getting permission to become a member, he proceeds to run absolutely amok on board just losing his mind over how absolutely amazing everything is! So I decided to take screenshots, simply because I thought this chucklehead was adorably hilarious and wanted to save it for posterity. O_O

Little would I have guessed what would happen next and he’d actually become an important plot point. What I find interesting that the hints in Season 2 implies that Aerin was Soundless, yet this doesn’t really seem to be the case when he’s gibbering with himself on board the ship. He’s actively begging for the Pale Tree’s guidance during one dialogue and he even says his journal is for those who do not have access to the Dream. Was he driven mad in the middle of the ride to Maguuma or was he already possessed with terrible plans? Did he try to become Soundless during the trip? You be the judge.

Screenshots of all the dialogue are here:
http://hyacinth-vale.tumblr.com/post/90532935832/spoilers-for-season-2-chapter-1-who-was-aerin

Love the new machanics in the map. This gives the game a bit more variety and this game needs a lot. The personal story has still some lame enemies and sometimes not good placed animation but the atmosphere, new mystery enviroment and characters i care about… awesome!

You are getting better keep it up!

I have no problems on my laptop, I’m using i3 and GT740M
I think I’m even getting better fps in sandstorm

Gw2 is a beautiful MMO, and as patches or expansions come along chances are the devs will add little enhancements which will tax your pc. I’m sure there are players that spend a lot of money on gems, that money could go towards a new gfx card, or cpu. Playing anything below 60 frames drives me up a wall lol, sorry if that makes me sound like I’m bragging, but I’m not.

GW2 is one of my favorite games because it nearly always performs perfectly. Has for about a year and a half since I bought it.

YET TODAY.
Everything went to kitten. I crash to desktop every five to twenty minutes. If not CTD, it says that I lost connection and boots me to character screen. This all happens very suddenly, no prior warning, no real reason. Just boom.

On top of this, the lag is OUT OF THIS kittenING WORLD. Everyones teleporting, everything will freeze…I don’t understand this bulldog. What the hell has happened? Am I the only one experiencing this?

Any tips on how to fix this? I want my smooth GW2 experience back.

hello

since the feature patch i had on big maps like wvw or bossfights from time to time some rubberband spikes like 4-5 sec (most time on eotm)

i never had this before

and since patch from last week i have this even in spvp matches – in all matches

game looks like everyone dont cast anything anymore and just move straight forward and 4-5 secs later they all jump around and are on other postitions and casted alot stuff on me

plz – this is not playable anymore

Why can’t people see that criticism and feedback is necessary for a game’s development?
Why can’t people differentiate between criticism and whining?
Why are you complaining about complaining?

I criticise the game because I care.

Thank you ArenaNet for implementing this. This will allow me to enjoy GW2 on a whole new level and at my own pace. I’m looking forward to season 2 of living story.

Thanks for the feedback guys…
I guess my love for this game is dying if this keeps up…

When ArenaNet doesnt respond to posts like this, it makes me worried about the future of the game.

I guess FF11, FF14 and SWTOR are the only MMOs I know that continue taking Story telling seriously in an epic adventure through missions and exploring… Only problem with those games is Combat sucks… and no Jumping Puzzles and such content I liked from GW2.

I dont play games just for story, I play games with good story and gameplay together. GW2 could have been that game for me if it stayed with Personal Story, Story Dungeons, and Story Missions formula but they didn’t… =(

Nat.4029:

This is no excuse for a mediocre storyline. There have been many games with Teen Ratings that have had awesome stories. Knights of the Old Republic? Morrowind? Baldurs Gate 2? None of those are MMOs, but saying that a Teen rating is hindering a writing staff is a bit of a stretch.

I have never said it is. I was just responding to the people talking about target audience and such by pointing out that they CAN’T TARGET an older audience specifically because they are tied by the rating.

Randulf.7614:

I agree with not having to read yet another post on the same topic posted multiple times a day, but can you clarify where the devs said “fully permanent”? I’m not disputing it, but I don’t follow any comms outside of the forums or website, so anything said on Reddit/ready up/social media/interviews, I will have missed.

A developer in game said it. The above post’s link was to a gallery with screenshots of the discussion.

A fixed link (because pdavis copied two urls on top of each other): http://i.imgur.com/JL4js7E.jpg Lady Avant is the dev.

It isn’t “absolute proof” but it’s kitten better than the pure speculation that drives these threads’ creation.

I would personally like to see an entire series of living world content devoted to, arguably the best race in the Guild Wars universe, the Skritt. I’m thinking maybe there could be some kind of Skritt rescue society, who respond to various issues in Tyria that no other organisation really considers, such as mysterious disappearances and kidnap. So my totally not plagiarised idea:

So it turns out that an orphan girl has been kidnapped by a woman who is really obsessed with like… orichalcum? The woman has discovered that there are rich orichalcum veins in a particularly dangerous part of Orr, but it is only accessible by a small hole, which only a child could fit through. In the meantime, the girl is locked away in the evil woman’s fortress.

So anyway, the rescue society finds out and opts to send two Skritt members (let’s call them… err Bernard and Bianca) to investigate and bring her back. These Skritt secretly have a crush on each other. So we happen to come across the pair, who are being attacked by something? We save them and become involved in the adventure.
Eventually it turns out, that the woman is actually an evil Orr dragon in disguise, and wanted the orichalcum ore to like… power up a super giant dragon robot. Incidentally, the girl has made friends with the super giant dragon robot and she’s all like

“You are not a projectile device, you are who you choose to be”

The dragon robot then becomes good, and attacks the evil Orr dragon. However, the Orr dragon, enraged, attacks the orphan girl. In a brave and loyal act, the dragon robot sacrifices itself to save the girl.

We then step in and fight the dragon. The Skritt deliver the finishing blow and they have a passionate moment together. However, Bernard gets corrupted by the dragon’s soul, and there is cutscene of him giving a very evil grin. However, the characters don’t know this, which sets the stage for follow up stories. Kasmeer and Marjory decide to adopt the girl.

Or something.

I can’t play any single game year-round. I know there are many others like me. I get hooked on a game and I usually play it for about 5 months at a time before I grow tired of it and move on to something else, but I will eventually come back. For instance, I played GW2 from October of last year to mid January before I got a little burned out and decided to go play Diablo 3 for a while. The Living Story model is a neat idea, but it really does punish those of us who don’t play your game exclusively. You have bi-weekly content added to the game, and then taken away. If you aren’t on at some point during those two weeks, then that’s just tough. You missed it. The Living Story has been compared to Game of Thrones. Well you know what? If I miss episodes of GoT, I can actually go back and watch them. If you miss Living Story content though? Well that’s just your problem…..sorry about that.

I’m going to use the dreaded WoW comparison here, but I think it’s appropriate for my argument. I’ve played WoW off and on for the last several years. What I love about it is that I can come and go as I please and still play all the content that’s ever been available. They added the Thunder Isles and a new raid shortly after the release of MoP. Well guess what? I can still go and do all the content there. It wasn’t added and then taken away. You just can’t do that with GW2, and it’s sad. I LOVED Guild Wars and I had such high hopes for GW2. I guess the added campaigns in Guild Wars just spoiled me over the years. GW2 is a great game. I’m not saying it isn’t. But it just doesn’t have the lasting appeal that it’s predecessor did, or that other MMOs have.

I’m just assuming that Arenanet is doing what they can with what little budget NCSoft is giving them, and I guess that’s understandable. It sucks…. but it’s understandable. I’m still going to hope for an Expansion one day though. A good chunk of permanent content that I can actually return to in a year and still play. Maybe Season 2 will bring that? That would definitely be a pleasant surprise.

P.S. I know that anyone who argues my points here will say that the Living Story DID add an expansion’s worth of content. My answer to you is, No it didn’t. If it had then that content would still be playable. What the Living Story does is constantly add Holiday-like events, that if you aren’t on during that holiday, you miss it. For those of you who play Guild Wars 2 exclusively, I’m sure the LS is great. This thread isn’t really for you.

The writing on Living Story Season 1 left something to be desired. However, once it started, it could no longer be changed. The entire story had already been written by the time the first negative feedback about the writing started trickling in.

At that point, they would have had two options:
1. Continue rolling out the original story as planned, and taking notes to improve the quality of any content to come after that.
2. Cancel the original story immediately, leaving players without a conclusion, and hope the game survives 4-6 months of no updates at all (not even a feature patch) while the writers and developers scramble to start over from scratch on a new story.

Which do you think would be worse for the game?

From December 2013 onwards, ArenaNet took time to at least give Season One a decent ending that did not contain the writing mistakes of the previous chapters, and
to better prepare for Season Two.

The four month hiatus after the end of Season One was probably not only used for the China launch, but also for the writers and developers to use all the Season One feedback to create a better Season Two. Remember, it took them 2 months on average of development time on a single LS update in 2013, and they needed 4 development teams to keep up with the updating pace. Writing and preparing Season Two from scratch (as well as developing the first few LS content updates) will take at least as long, if not longer, and I believe it is a good sign that they took the time to draw and incorporate all lessons learned from Season One (including the finale) into the preparations for their new Season Two project.

Make the game experience even more exclusive to big guilds? Hm, no thanks.

I’m the first person to jump on the writers how bad they are doing their job. But for the next living story let’s give them a chance to prove they are not fresh out of some community college or home schooled writing class. Sure they made some ridiculously simple and glaring mistakes any rookie would avoid but I have hope.

IF they deliver some boring story then unleash hell, go broadside and open all barrels. But until then I say give them a chance to prove that the first chapter was more of a lesson than their best attempt.

TL;DR – give them a chance…

I suppose it’s a good time to buy ncsoft stock.

Dont’ let me down GW2 and WildStar!

I was probably about 50/50 on LS stuff once it started. I didn’t love it in the beginning, so there was a lot of stuff I missed until I started doing it just for achievements. I found a bunch of content in the LS that I ended up liking, but there was still some that I was never really in love with.

I feel like there should be some way to make the LS replayable, or at least parts of it. The content is already created so couldn’t it be modified and put into some sort of dungeon instance? It seems like they could have a lot of fun with it and maybe give the Asuras a little more story and pull by figuring out a way to send people to past content, even PS instances. A LOT of stuff happened, and it really is a shame that it can’t be revisited. That’s a lot of hard work that existed once never to be seen again, except in the memories of the people that played it.

I am cautiously optimistic about LS S2, hoping that the devs have listened to our complaints, praises, and input and put together something really spectacular. Maybe they are even working on some way to replay former content and just haven’t told us yet because they don’t want the speculation to bubble up into an uncontrollable mess yet. I know that’s not the most LIKELY scenario, but I’d like to hope we are being heard, at least.

Season 1 was an experiment, and I, for one, am not yet willing to call it a complete failure worthy of total abandonment. There were certain things done correctly and other things not done so well, but either way they have a ton of feedback to sift through and, best case scenario, they are taking what we’ve said seriously. I like to hope that maybe, just maybe, parts of the LS S1 were just too far into development to take into account a lot of what the forum-goers were saying and they chose sticking to the schedule over repackaging the content while taking those suggestions into account.

I am excited and apprehensive about S2, but continuing to hope for the best. If anything, experiments take a little while to get right. I think they deserve at least this second chance to improve on S1 mistakes.

I certainly will be playing less (if at all) – and I never ran a champ train. I spent the last 18 months gearing my main (Guardian) – saving laurels, spent 200g on my dang spinal blades back (tailoring was my only 500 armor skill)…etc., etc.

A huge portion of my gear is Celestial, which took perhaps the biggest hit in this patch – coupled with the absolute war they declared on boon duration I pretty much just got nerfed into the ground. I guess they don’t like support toons in groups…

Coupled with the way the stripped new toons/alts of a huge portion of their character progression, I just don’t have any motivation to play.

8 years since I started the GW journey and this is by far the most disappointed and disenfranchised I have ever felt about this series.

I’m not mad, just very, very bummed…

Is this once daily per character or per account? Either way it’s MDUB as KUFC. Plain and simple for dungeons.

Why? You just removed any incentive to play repeatable content. Who does that?

NO OTHER GAME ON THE MARKET REMOVES THE ABILITY TO GET CHEST WHEN DOING THE CONTENT SYNONYMOUS WITH THEM, DUNGEONS BRO!

So, let’s see…DR on gold, DR on tokens and now DR on chest.

What’s next? DR on paths allowed per day? EG; You may only do 2 paths per day for any types of rewards.

I’ll say it over and over again. Be practical. I see Anet tags all the time, but they don’t seem to play the same game we are.

I hope this game keeps the success it claims to have, but I can’t defend this kitten anymore. Megaservers are a joke, townclothes tonics are a joke, world boss timers are a joke, 1 transmutation per zone completion is a joke…removing 8v8 hotjoin in spvp is a joke.

As an RPer, this system in its current form has truly damage the main sense of enjoyment I get from the game.

I like events, I enjoy the odd champ train. I’m glad Queensdale is so far unaffected (as far as I know, haven’t been on in a few hours so anything is possible), as I enjoy my servers banter and personalities. I put up with the (to me) kinda boring champ grind because it passes the time while chatting. While it will be great to have new people join the conversation, I don’t want to lose the chance to chew the fat with the great personalities and QD regulars who are there at the minute.

As a Roleplayer, I have seen an increase in the hustle and bustle of Black Citadel. That in itself is quite nice. But with that has come seemingly less RPers in my version as well as a notable increase in hostility towards roleplay from the new players I’m landed with. It is understandable. It is gameplay they don’t much care for, and haven’t encountered, by choice. They are now being exposed to roleplay and don’t want it, just as we are being exposed to increased hostilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means against the Megaserver concept. it is the appalling execution I am kittened about. Anet demonstrated at best misunderstanding and at worst willful ignorance at what it is to be an RPer in their interactions with us when announcing the feature. Just use the friendslist and guild up, the fellow said. Ignoring the dynamics of what roleplay is and how we organise ourselves. Not only that poor advice in light of who we are and what we do, that very inadequate little interaction has proven even more useless that the system seemingly takes no notice of such things and throws us all over the place.

The system was rushed through, with no real thought as to how to do it, and clearly not looking too much at the feedback before implementation. Until there was some guaranteed functionality that ensured people would be grouped together properly, this thing should have been nowhere near the live game.

And, even more worrying, is the trend away from player choice. Before we actively chose who we play with, with world selection. We could choose who we wanted to play with, and how to play with, and take steps to ensure we can get the most out of the choice. Away from megaservers for a moment, we could choose to wear townclothes as we wish, dyed and mixed. And now, Anet have decided they and some kittenpoor automated system knows more about what we like and want to do than we do. That is arrogant and more than a little condescending.

And to top it all off, this great community interaction Anet like to boast of, and in the very first days of the game was truly wonderful to see, has all but evaporated. I do not recall seeing any real engagement with us since before this released. We are talked to, being told how great everything is (going very nicely was their own phrase on farcebook), or just brushed aside and told to post elsewhere. Partly to avoid clutter on the forums, but also partly to make it look like there isn’t such an outcry as their is.

It comes down to two things ultimately. A premature system, that is great in concept, but needed a lot more work before it was released and absolutely needed an active choice on the part of the playerbase as to how they use it. The second is Anet’s transition from a community-friendly team to one that essentially dictates how we play because they absolutely and exclusively know best. I don’t like the system as it stands, and I definitely do not like this rather toxic attitude Anet seem to have acquired of late.

I feel really bad for the RP guilds who do gatherings and events—the one I used to play with actually made a point of guesting to deserted servers for a lot of things specifically so they wouldn’t be harassed by other players. Now they’re completely screwed if they want to run an event with more than five people.

You guys really ought to put in guild halls or something if you’re going to squish all the servers together like this. Give large groups a place to gather in peace without random players crashing the party.

BloodFallsSilent, very well put.

The other day, while I was sitting out of wvw (the only thing I like doing anymore in gw2) after a transfer, unable to actually play anything other than eotm, I thought about getting a new game. Maybe go back to WoW, maybe try some D3, oh, I know, Wildstar. I’ve heard a lot about Wildstar. I go to pre-purchase it, but it’s an NCSoft game. Right there beside gw2. People tell me NCSoft is just the distributor, but after the “experience” of feeling ignored for two years in gw2, instead of pre-ordering like I do just about every other game that comes out, I hesitated. Did I really want to give money to people related to this? Did I really want to set myself up for another game of “Well I’ve put 1000 hours into this so I might as well stick with it?”. And the answer was “No”. No I do not feel like getting mired into another unrewarding gaming experience that sees my wallet like it has a bullseye painted on it. The only devs I’ve ever not bought games from based on past reputation are Peter Molyneux and EA, if that gives you any indication of how low my opinion is at this point, but just being associated with ANet now is enough to make me put my credit cards away and move on.

I know people are going to point out that I got my money’s worth from gw2. Fair enough, I certainly did. But it’s not 2012 anymore, and we’re still playing 2012’s mmo. That’s really clear to a lot of people. I’ve played mmo’s since everquest 1, been playing muds since they were back on compuserve and AOL online “was” the internet to most people. Only in the most pay-to-win games do I see new people join and drop out like they do in gw2. I see many, many new people (low ap scores) buy the game, join a guild, play for 20 or 30 levels and quit. They don’t even bother to max a single character, because everyone in their guild has told them, repeatedly “There’s nothing to do at 80, leveling is the fun part”. They don’t believe it at first. Surely there’s more to it. But eventually, after they’ve been told by several people “No, really, there’s nothing special at 80 except more dungeons” it finally sinks in that they’ve totally wasted their $25/$50/whatever.

I want to support this company. I feel strongly, however, that whatever made gw1 great (seriously, that’s my all time fave mmo, you really outdid yourselves in a lot of ways) has been watered down and neutered into something boring, formulaic, and so startchy-clean and perfect looking that there isn’t a spec of dirt on a norn. Giant sweaty dudes wearing leather and carrying axes, killing things all day, but every single one gleams like the top of Mr. Cleans bald head. That was ok in 2004 with 2004-era graphics, it’s not ok a decade later.

I can’t do it anymore. Between the writing (those hiccups to break what laughably little tension there was in the Scarlett final scene are a perfect example), the family friendly until it’s painful art style, the npc’s in major cities constant spouting about how wonderful war is (as a veteran, “I had a dream about a war, I must go fight in it” is the single stupidest reason I’ve ever heard to volunteer to be a body bag, fantasy situation or no), and now this… modifying of things, instead of adding content, and acting like it’s something special… It’s the last straw for me for a while. I’ve put a lot of hours into this game, waiting for it to get good. It’s not getting good. I understand that now. This update has been upsetting to a large portion of your userbase, and I think most of them are going to sigh quietly and either go back to wvw or just move on to another game. Normally I would join them, but things have been wrong (to me) for so long here, and I’ve abided it patiently, that I feel I should speak up.

I’ll come back for the next LS event. I won’t expect there to be more than an hour or two’s worth of new content, and I will expect to grind that content until it gets boring because it will be the only thing there is to do in gw2 that I haven’t already grinded into the dirt.

There are a lot of people out there with 3x/4x/5x the achievement points than I do. People who never stopped defending you. If you go to reddit and mention that you’re disappointed with gw2 you’ll be downvoted to oblivion. It still took you two years to give those fans account-bound legendaries and account bound WxP. The phrase “battered spouse syndrome” comes to mind.