Guild Wars 2

The next living story update will introduce a cycling schedule of mini-games (it’s in both candidates promises, so we know it’s coming). That means these minigames aren’t going to be thrown away, but rather introduced into a permanent, repeating cycle.

The Wintersday and Dragon Bash minigames will reoccur annually, while Crab Toss, Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survival, and Aspect Arena will be the start of the new cycling minigames.

Players wanted the living story content to be more permanent, so Anet is creating a way to make any living story minigames that get added permanent content, without getting too stale. They need a variety of minigames to start that off, so we’ve gotten a lot of minigames for the last few living story chapters. I agree that it’s been an overload of minigames recently, but I expect it to balance out soon.

It looks like I’m going to have to continue down here from now on. Please report these posts to be moved up to the top of the thread! I don’t want to annoy the mods too much, so I’m going to try to finish this soon so they aren’t still bothered by this guide weeks from now.

4. Freeze Grenade (20) – Throw a grenade that chills enemies with a frigid blast.

Standard AoE chill. Landing this ability in the middle of a teamfight can land your team some really solid hits, especially if your enemies have already wasted all of their endurance. Try following up Freeze Grenade with your Grenade Barrage for a really solid hit. If you want to get really fancy, save Freeze Grenade for after your enemy has used their heal or another critical cooldown – with the 66% increased cooldown time, it’ll be awhile before they get it back again.

5. Poison Grenade (25) – Throws a grenade that explodes in a poisonous cloud.

Solid AoE poison ability. Once again, try saving this for when you think your enemy is going to be healing soon, as poison will cut the heal’s effectiveness by 33%. Poison Grenade and Freeze Grenade are both very effective tools against Guardians, who need their heals and active cooldowns in order to stay alive. Tip: Poison Grenade causes a poison field. Use a blast finisher inside of it to apply AoE weakness, and further help your team!

Tool Kit: The Tool Kit is a melee-range kit which is rather strange. It can be used to heal your turrets, stack vulnerability, or be used for some extra control or defense. It doesn’t really have a set niche, but it still finds its way into some of my builds due to its toolbelt ability and the defense it offers.

• Throw Wrench (20) – Throw your wrench so that it returns to you, striking foes each way. Repair any turrets that the wrench hits.

This ability functions similar to Throw Shield in that it is a boomerang ability that fires out and returns to you. It also deals a significant amount of damage if you can land both the outgoing and returning hit, so positioning is important. I don’t suggest using this to heal your turrets – the damage is significant enough that you should really be using this on your enemies. Don’t underestimate this!

1. Smack – Smack your foe. Repair turrets.
—-> 1a. Whack – Whack your foe.
—-> 2a. Thwack – Thwack your foe.

Smack and Whack both apply vulnerability. Thwack has a bit of a windup time, but actually deals considerable damage! Regardless, I don’t suggest using the Tool Kit to actually melee people. Without the benefit from the stats or sigils of your main weapon, the damage and danger of being in melee range is just really not worth it. Smack heals turrets for a minor amount as well.

2. Box of Nails (10) – Scatter nails that bleed and cripple foes.

This is okay for some AoE pressure in teamfights. However, Box of Nails really shines when you’re trying to make an escape. Turn tail, equip your Tool Kit, and drop the nails behind you! Enemies will have a hard time chasing you through the crippling field.

3. Pry Bar (15) – Confuse your foe by smacking them with a pry bar.

A rather strange skill. Although confusion is obviously powerful with condamage builds, Pry Bar actually hits relatively hard on its own as well. If for some reason I ever find myself in melee range with the Tool Kit, this is the one ability I use before dodging back to safety.

4. Gear Shield (20) – Block attacks.

This ability, along with Throw Wrench, is what makes the Tool Kit viable in sPvP. I can’t count the amount of times Gear Shield has saved my life from a thief or warrior’s burst, or just when I need to run out of a teamfight to heal up. This is a great defensive ability.

5. Magnet (25) – Pull your target to you.

Magnet is a short-range pull. It has a relatively long windup, so I don’t find myself using it often. However, it is useful in teamfights to pull prime targets or interrupt revives/stomps, as well as pulling people off of points. What I use it for most is pulling people off of higher ground – off the balconies in Clocktower or the elevated areas in the Keep, for example.

What about a “coin purse” that receives all tokens?

Spoilers! /closes blue notebook No but really, the ties arent clear because we can’t see the big picture just yet. If it was obvious form the start, that wouldn’t be much of a story would it ?

azizul.8469:

how about granting gems to losing servers, for participating… see how that goes….

As has been stated before, it is difficult for people on low pop servers to get world completion so unless this is changed, those gems are going to get stashed until there’s enough for a transfer meaning it could actually make the situation worse in the long term.

A lot of people jumping over from other servers just for gems would jump again to the new lowest server next week. I think the devs would prefer the entire population evenly balanced out among all the servers rather than constantly jumping to whichever gives out gems each week.

The best idea imo may be to have a pool of gold shared out between all wvw players. If every pool had the same value, low pop wvw servers would get a bigger share per active player than high pop. A soldiers wage might encourage some of the PvE’ers into wvw if you had some requirements to get it (similar to the daily’s – play wvw for 1hr, help capture a tower, repair a wall, man siege etc.). If the PvE’ers decide not to stick around then at least the remaining wvw players end up with more gold for upgrades & siege.

Long term, wvw players might still decide to switch server but if they go to one with more wvw players, the pool provides them with a lower soldiers wage. The trick would be making it appeal just enough to encourage a few groups to transfer to lower servers without triggering a mass exodus. A system which pays people slightly more to back the underdog would help to provide more balance imo.

Adding a reward merely for winning is a VERY BAD IDEA. It will lead to server stacking just for the win.

However, rewarding based on how much rating your world gains. Now there is an idea.
Servers that are already roflstomping and over-populated dont have much to gain in terms of points. However, underdog servers do have a lot of potential points earn. This could very lead to (dedicated) WvW players hopping to places where there is glory to be had.

We’ve all heard the QQ’ing about the Living Story and how the content is limited time only.

• Players who can’t log on consistently or new players end up missing a lot of good content.
• Furthermore, they may be dropped into the middle of a narrative they never had the opportunity to begin.
• Lastly, some of the content like dungeons takes a lot of work to create and balance, just to have it disappear in a month – this may not be most efficient use of resources and creative talent.

However, limited time content also has it’s positives.

• It presents the world as living, breathing, and evolving rather than static.
• It encourages players who can log on consistently to do so – this keeps the persistent world alive and populated.
• And finally, it helps the gem store sales by increasing demand for items that are unique to the event while also giving them a context.

I propose the Historian as a compromise toward the first 3 points, without stealing the luster from the last 3 points.

The Historian is an NPC who records and offers to players his account of the past events in the Living Story.

The Historian’s account should include:

1. Story
The story is simply the Historian telling (voiced or written) in his own words the story that took place. This includes what happened in the dialogs, cutscenes, the open world activity, and the instanced parts. Concept art and screen shots should supplement the story. The story driven cutscenes may or may not be included.

2. “Flashback” Instanced Missions
This includes the very same dungeons and instanced story missions that ran during the event. These instances are arguably where the quality gameplay is in the Living Story. Though I won’t presume that it takes more developer resources than the open world activities, instanced content is the typically more fine tuned and replayable.

Because it is completely instanced it does not threaten the new state of the world for people who participated in the actual Living Story event, nor does it require participation of the world. For all intents and purposes, it is simply a playable “flashback”. But for those who missed it, this is a chance to experience without disrupting the world continuity for others.

The Historian’s account should NOT include:

1. Open World Activities
What can be considered the “Living” part of the Living Story – the activities that took place in cities and explorable areas. For example: killing the dredge sonars, helping the refugees, collecting southsun samples, and smacking piñatas.

These open world activities definitely have a place in the event making it feel like the story was really having an impact on the world. However, these activities didn’t really offer anything unique or challenging to the gameplay, rather most of it depended on community coming together to be meaningful. Even the boss events were just the same old damage spam for an hour.

Also, re-implementing open world activities that were supposed to have been in the past presents serious technical and continuity challenges in itself. Attempting to bring open world activities back to the world could destroy the permanence of the changed world that the developers were trying so hard to create, or split the playerbase more than necessary between shards.

2. Achievements, drops, cosmetics, and other exclusive items

One of the goals of the Living Story is to reward players with that prestige “I was there when it happened” titles, and exclusive cosmetics. Allowing others who weren’t there to easily pick them up later through the Historian would diminish that sense of pride. It would also decrease demand for the cash shop exclusives during the event, which doesn’t benefit the company financially.

I’m not saying certain rewards should never be offered again in the future, but that it should not be the purpose of the Historian.
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=== TL;DR ===
The Historian is intended as a compromise for new players or those who can’t make it to the live events, while remaining in line with the original purpose of the Living Story – a one time event with a permanent effect on the world.

Players will be able to read/listen to an account of the Living Story events and play the instanced missions/dungeons as flashbacks. Players will not be able to engage in the open world activities from the event (they will be summarized in the story) nor can any of the achievements or exclusive items from the event be earned through the Historian.

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The Historian is primarily aimed at the story related content, not exclusive drops and rewards.
If you wish to discuss ideas about bringing back previously exclusive items or achievements, PLEASE START A NEW TOPIC ! ! !