Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

And since the personal story technically begins in the introduction and then you get it again an hour later, it should work for most people.

You may get it an hour later, but many players don’t. It’s reasonable to say that new players will take significantly longer to reach the next part of the story.

Avinz.2456:

Story Instances Level lock:
I personally found the story instances to be incredibly easy now. Too easy and really not very fun to play. You have to be over leveled in order to play the instances. When I first played through I would try to get as far in the story as I could because I enjoyed the challenge of enemies being a higher level then me. Now you’re forced to play as a higher level then the enemies. Why not make the story 1-10 unlock at level 1, then story instance 10-20 unlock at level 10? The way it is now just seems silly to me (Is this a bug?).

This is also how I thought they would do it. Now the stories are auto-attack only easy. It’s to the point where why they even need to worry about how they introduce new skills if there is never a need to use them.

I disagree. The Personal Story was a selling point for me as it helped give me a reason to give a kitten about this game out of all the MMOs in existence. I will acknowledge that PS isn’t the best in terms of writing and implementation, but it at least kept me interested in playing.

+1 Hamfast. Yellow targets/non enemies should NEVER be targeted unless the player chooses to. I love it in Grimworm pits when the vet spider infront of the chest spawns and the system targets the massive egg sac on the level below. (and there are so many other other examples).
It really needs an overhaul.

It’s bad enough that our “nearest enemy” (as it is called in the Control Options) has always included non-enemies (yellow targets, specifically designated as neutral). It should only be targeting red objects, because those are “enemies”. But aside from targeting non-enemies, and regularly targeting things outside my field of view, it also does not seem to care about proximity. I have had instances where it selects targets that are out of range before targets within aggro distance.

Targeting is arguably the most important thing in a game revolving around combat. This needs to be addressed before Guild Halls, the NPE, or anything else currently considered to be a high focus area. This is of much higher importance. And it is totally messed up since 9/9.

Yup, inventory keeps resizing on it’s own accord (getting smaller on row at a time). A fix would be appreciated, I’d love to decide the size of the window myself.

Ascalonian Catacombs today path 3
2 bugs
1) Tzark got stuck in the hall of champions after first burrow, we could not progress to end boss, and had to restart
2) After burrows in the hall of champions, skills became locked and could not be changed

WvW-
1) Friendship with the Hylek event did not spawn, hylek npcs lay there with half fill red bars, while the other npcs never respawned, cannot get this trait unlock done

Devouring of the Brand Chain-
STILL bugged, leads to trait unlock which cannot be done since this has been bugged for I dont know how long, chain never starts, even if it did, would probably cause the npcs to attack and get wiped by the mordrem like during that living story

Mesmer-
Harmonious Mantras- Bugged, losing a charge when level changes in a zone

Necromancer-
Minions still at random times do not attack, and simply stand there

Engineer-
Rocket boots, at random times instead of flying straight, midway it suddenly veers to the side for a right angle flight, quite funny, but annoying at times, espcecially wvw, long standing bug

Combat-
The uptick arrows that show you as out of combat always show, making it difficult to know when actually out of combat, cannot switch skills with this bug in combat, so it is visual, but very inconvenient

THE LAG-
has been absolutely terrible since the features patch, everywhere I go and everything I do I am lagging badly as are many others, simply running alone on a map, and my character stutters all over the screen, at karka queen my fps drops to 1-5 now

Anet PLEASE push out bug fixes more often

anet put a lot of level barrier for new players in the last patch but trial account and new players can instantly go in ranked match in soloqueue/teamqueue.

And it’ sa major problem because is not fun for them because they don’t know what to do and it’s not fun for their team mates.

It’s necessary a little level barrier for ranked matches, it’s a contraddiction with the new npe system.

Dynamic Events are fairly ingenious way to deliver content, sadly what makes them good also makes them bad. My all time favorite dynamic events are the Fort Salma chain, as it appeared originally, or the setup going on in Bloodtide Coast dealing with pirates, booze and some down on their luck Priory researcher.

The reasons why I like these two is because while one of them is easy to follow and grasp it is a nice example what what a DE is in simple terms. Meanwhile the one in Blootide Coast is a fairly complex setup that few ever see as a whole but if they do it can really show what Dynamic Events can be when they play to their strengths.

For those who don’t know what I am referring to below is a short summary. It has been a while since I played all the events though

If we start with the Priory group who, as one might expect, go looking for some artifacts and eventually end up finding some rare beverages in crates, they bring it all back to their camp decide to sample their find (though the decision is not entirely unanimous) get drunk and as they sleep it off get attacked by bandits. Fairly standard affair nothing out of ordinary here yet.

However, lets look at things from a different direction, what happened before Priory made their remarkable find. Well, in an entirely different part of the map there are events tied to a bunch of Pirates who also at one point happen upon a selection of rare beverages (there is probably an event that deals with their origin as well but sadly my memory fails me here). However, this kind of treasure is not to the liking of our good pirate captain (who is an excellent performer btw.) so he orders it to be disposed of, cue your average escort event to a site to dump this “treasure” this site just so happens to be where the Priory will in time come to make their remarkable find.

These events that appear at glance to be two simple chains consisting of couple of events each. Yet, when looked at a bit closer the connection can be made. There is no meta event shouting that there is a small story here as a matter of fact, unless you actually look really closely at the world around you and listen to what the people say there is no way you could ever make the connection between the two events because they never happen close enough together to make the link obvious.

This is only one of the many examples where seemingly random events end up being connected, if you run from event marker to event marker or don’t pay attention to what is actually happening and instead just read the UI you will miss out on so much.

The kid with his snow Norn army in one early Norn zones is another good example, follow the kid into an opposite direction of some often active nearby dynamic events and you see connections between events that you can’t see if you just follow your map blindly.

Compare this to Dry Top, while it is a fun map with nice gameplay elements there is nothing to it like any of the above examples. It is merely an area stuck in a loop void of any deeper meaning to what is going on. Outside of its living world tie ins the zone is void of any personality. It is endgame content so I can forgive it for that, however, to be honest I miss events with these fun little hidden stories to discover and all the flavor that they bring.

It is truly unfortunate that most of the well known events such as world bosses do not have the events surrounding them crafted with the same level of attention to detail as some of the examples I have given here. I guess the logic is because they want to cut downtime because world bosses are sort of repeatable content, however, they really do not do right by the Dynamic Event system at all, yet they are the stuff that most people see and gravitate towards.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what Anet can do better to “sell” DE’s over hearts to new players but I feel it’s important. Hearts were only put in to keep people in the areas DE’s spawn.

I’ve come to believe that DEs are a terrible way to deliver content. They require either luck (running into them) or standing around waiting for them to happen. I’ve been playing a new character since the latest FP, and the amount of events I’ve never ran into while in the areas I know them to be in is staggering.

DEs seem like a good idea, until you realize that with little else to do in zones, they lead to dead zones where people only pass through once, because very few people enjoy wandering around aimlessly or standing around occasionally killing a respawned mob, waiting for an event to happen. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of events are trivial, unchallenging affairs with little reward.

While you are correct regarding dynamic events filling hearts that is only if a dynamic event that adds contribution happens to be ongoing while you are doing said heart. All I am saying is what they did to earlier zones in fact does not encourage doing dynamic events when it comes to someone who has no idea what a dynamic event is.

I know you level faster doing events, at least after level 15 that is, but based on my rather limited experience with the new low level zones if they are unlucky or simply coming from another more traditional MMO a new player likely has less chance to realize that before he reaches level 15 because of the accelerated leveling.

I said earlier in this topic that it seems strange they would postpone personal story until level 10 and then make the content before it is available wholly insignificant because it is over so fast. I am not saying they don’t have the right idea here, just that the execution is not very good.

I think dividing up the story is the logical conclusion of the story journal being added anyways and besides the personal story was episodic from the get go, so in that respect highlighting the fact can’t hurt. I still think there is absolutely no reason for them to not figure out a way to put the removed content back in, the story does suffer for those bits not being their (albeit I am slightly bitter in part because I had yet to experience 2 of the 3 fears available and now I can no longer do that).

Something should be done with the trait system because the current system that was implemented really discourages new players from trying out different builds. For new players sinking gold just to unlock a trait they may or may not want or being forced to do content that they don’t want to do is a really stupid way to set it up.

Maybe have a few locked like all of the grandmaster traits but having all of the traits locked is just ridiculous and promotes people just finding one build and not experimenting with it.

Vayne.8563:

First of all, it’s not just hearts…because events exist and events are an important part of this game. And I believe Anet wants people to think that events are an important part of the game.

Yeah but their changes at least for the first 15 levels with their new accelerated leveling seems to contradict that when each heart gives almost a full level. In other words until you reach level 15 under the new system the effective way to level directly contradicts with their goal of familiarizing users with the concept of events.

Then the XP gain normalizes and hearts give the usual amount of XP as far as I know. So the shift in focus on what a player should actually be doing or what appears intuitive to them is more jarring than it ever was under the old system.

Vayne.8563:

You’re right that the personal story gave you variety for leveling, and when leveling those levels was much slower, that was important. Now, I’m not thinking it is.

For the first 15 levels maybe but after that you’ll still have stretches with no personal story that I would guess are far longer than they would be under the old story delivery.

Story Instances Level lock:
I personally found the story instances to be incredibly easy now. Too easy and really not very fun to play. You have to be over leveled in order to play the instances. When I first played through I would try to get as far in the story as I could because I enjoyed the challenge of enemies being a higher level then me. Now you’re forced to play as a higher level then the enemies. Why not make the story 1-10 unlock at level 1, then story instance 10-20 unlock at level 10? The way it is now just seems silly to me (Is this a bug?).

Story instance Bug:
I would also like to mention that if you do the level 20 story with a friend and accept the advance you will not get your rewards if you are under level 30. It’s happened to me twice now since the patch. I don’t know if it will give me the rewards when I hit 30 on those characters or not but really I should get them right away. I mean my friend did.

Vayne.8563:

I played with my friend. I just didn’t feel the need to preempt the game for him. I hung out, let him take the lead and explore. I didn’t say you should wait. But trying to show him a bunch of stuff he doesn’t have access to, doesn’t help him or you. It’s not giving the NPE a chance even.

Fair points, however, is there a reason to so heavily restrict access in the first place. I mean they take away access to PS for the first 10 levels all the while making that first 10 levels lack in variety.

I mean the idea should be to get people away from the heart to heart to heart checklist mindset and get them into the whole events thing, but right now with these changes the first 10 levels do the exact opposite (because you have nothing to do but hearts that give you almost a level per heart, if anything I’d call that misleading).

Right now, the first 10-15 levels feel like they exist in a vacuum, the focus changes so drastically after the starting zones.

Edit: hiding stuff on the minimap makes sense to me, weapon skills too (even if it makes initial combat dull), but this whole oversimplification of the initial 15 levels as a whole combined with the lack of personal story for the first 10 doesn’t because it results in play style that is counterproductive later on.

Vayne.8563:

So let him alone to explore the game for an hour —- How is showing your friend a bunch of stuff he could discover helpful anyway?

Why should two friends have to feel like they have to wait an hour to play together when they didn’t have to do so before the last feature pack.

As for how is showing a friend bunch of stuff helpful, well it is about playing together in the end. Maybe he could discover all of it on his own as well but this is an MMO and playing with friends is always more fun.

Mind you, there are also things in this game that a player coming for example from a different MMO wouldn’t even know to look for.

I had a friend play during the free trial weekend and I was there to help him out with stuff. The problem? I very rapidly ran out of things to show him, because it was all blocked off for low level characters.

I wanted to introduce him to a great game, but I just couldn’t. There wasn’t anything interesting I could show him because he was only level 2.

shadow.6174:

I can’t see what was wrong with the story before

Subjectively unless you either went through at least two different paths at the end or happened to go through one very specific set of choices, or better yet both, in particular the end of the story was rather badly represented in-game (and I am not talking about Arah story mode obviously, as that is not personal story technically).

In any case, the changes they made fail to address either of these problems in terms of the narrative leading up to Arah story mode while they do add new ones and objectively make it worse.

Splitting the story into chapters is a logical follow up to the introduction of the story journal and the current form of living story I assume the reason they did it was for the sake of consistency going forward (or maybe they have plans to allow replaying personal story chapters, it could be done if they simply prevent you from making conflicting choices on replays, how much added value that would be beats me though). The needless juggling and removal of story instances, however, makes no sense whatsoever beyond having a single focus per chapter but to remove content to achieve that makes no sense either.

Ok, so now that the free trial and a sale are ongoing, would be nice to hear from a dev or anyone with access to how this new NPE has affected actual new players. Especially, since we have heard nothing about this for a little while. I don’t think it is unreasonable to want an update once the trial winds down this weekend.

Likewise, more discussion on any potential plans to address the plot holes you introduced would be nice, even if only on a very high level. In part because one of the more popular theories about the recent Living Story closing cinematic just so happens to do with what some of the removed stuff pertains to.

If it turns out to be an orb, a la the deep sea orb in Fort Trinity… I have to say I fail to see what the logic behind them removing the very step of personal story where you retrieve said Orb.

It just feels strange to remove in-game exposition about these orbs just as you might be preparing to pursue another one of them. Especially when lore represented in-game has been one of the more popular criticism of GW2, in particular post launch content.? Are we to take this to mean that the lore about these Orbs is no longer important enough to warrant that exposition.

Why couldn’t there be two chapters of personal story at either 70 or 80? Why do every chapter have to have its own level range? It certainly is not a technical limitation that is for sure.

OK, so, after some of the more recent updates to the NPE: Does the NPE really affect me as a vet poorly? Nope. not at all. I can disable the infernal compass and go about my leveling as i always have on my main account. Do I think the weapon skill gating is dumb? Yup. Why? Because it went from people learning and getting familiar with what a skill did and how it might be used with the prior skill and having to do that with each weapon set to, you have 5 skills on this weapon by level 10 and ZOMGYOUHAVEALLTHESEOTHERSKILLS on your weapons that if you are new won’t have any clue what they do. have fun learning them all now. While doing your personal story. After vaguely being told about dodges. And nothing about combo fields and finishers. Hope you also enjoy that heal skill you’ll have for a bit. But don’t worry, they levels come hard and fast and soon you will be level 15 and can take on the world. So no, the NPE doesn’t hurt vets in any way. It just doesn’t really help new players much when it comes to learning anything either. (Kudos on the rewards though. They are pretty neat for starting toons.) Sadly the NPE also hurts every new player/alt when it comes to traits and the getting thereof. So, in essence, you’ve made the act of leveling up a touch more engaging (ignoring the power spikes and valleys issue for now), but have further crippled the ability to buy traits and instead force exploration and group play just to have a well rounded character.

I have numerous toons at lv 80 and numerous toons that were recently started prior to the September release. I really need an option to skip any tutorial in the New Player Experience as I don’t need any tutorial after playing this game for 2 years. I am exclusively a PvE player. I have no desire to play this game again until you fix this New Player Experience/Personal Story Breaks, let alone all the other skill related issues. Please fix quickly. I’m keeping an eye on the updates as they come out. I want to play but I want the game to be great again. And no, its not great right now.

It’s really sad to see the people in this thread try so hard to improve the game and get their ideas going after all the times ANet has slapped us in the face…

Does anyone here actually believe anything is going to change? There have been “Of course we hear you!” threads all the time every couple of months but nothing ever improved, it only got worse because it’s just damage control.
ANet has worked themselves into a corner and for all I care they can crash and burn for their arrogance.

This is what ignoring key problems for well over 2 years (and a ton of laziness) gets you and we shouldn’t be sitting here and even doing their job for them if they don’t even care. Let them milk china for as long as they can and realize they messed up when it’s too late.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So how does ANet get solid, detailed, informed feedback from the other 70%+?

The way they usually do – by voting with their feet.

The bottom line is you can’t make anyone do a survey. This 70%+ are probably too engrossed in the game, going along with the ride. New players, while being freshly handheld and spoonfed, are subjected to toxic in-game text from other disgruntled players. Before you know it, these new players lose interest, not because of the content/story/etc. but because of the other players, either in map chat or within a given guild.

Behaviour breeds behaviour.

Players new into an environment such as an MMO are easily influenced. If the overall feel is positive, they’re likely to stay longer and enjoy the game for what it is. However it won’t take too long for the veil to be pulled back on the real state of the game. No survey will stop people from abandonning a skinking ship.

@OP:

just create a “repair post” next time, pointing out that the pagination is still broken and link to the existing threads:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/forum/Thread-loaded-as-Empty/first#post2149426
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/forum/No-posts-in-a-thread/first#post2693455

As you hopefully know, there is a bug when a new page in thread get created. To avoid this bug, I wrote a useless message in a thread, so that the posts get shown as normal. Unfortunately, this post got infracted. I would like to know if someone can “undo” this infraction since it’s, let’s be honest, pretty silly to infract users for circumventing this bug.

You are correct, sure I have 2 of the same.

But, when I do my selling spree (emptying my pockets of everything) I assume that only stuff outside my invis bag is showing up. This bug defeats the purpose of the invisibility.

To be honest, this is only a concern for my leveling characters, as I get random drops, I constantly switch out for best in slot. My 80s hardly every get a drop that’s identical or better than what I have already.

It’s just a sneaky bug and people could sell without realizing it.

Vayne.8563:

There was misinformation. It was coming from players.

Players claimed you couldn’t dodge, or used the TP, or use an Asuran gate even at level 2. They were wrong to say it, because when tested it was obvious you could. People were confusing what you could do and when you were told about it.

People said you couldn’t get vistas, when what was true was they didn’t appear on your map. That’s the misinformation being referred to.

Since I’m sure that changes are being made to both a roadmap and player feedback I’m not sure how the original plan is going to help you much.

But that is part of my point. Why not just flat out state what is actually supposed to happen and when it is supposed to occur? No one from Anet has clarified anything other than to say ‘misinformation, bugs, incorrect implementation’. If we don’t know how it is supposed to work how do we know that what we have now is correct? Just because you logged in and did some stuff? They have made changes since the original patch. Are they done? Is the current state the intended state?

The original roadmap is what they wanted to be in the game. There has been a ton of feedback regarding what actually made it into the game. What made it into the game, the original roadmap and what we have not do not match each other.

All I’m trying to get is a simple list from an official source that says ‘X’ is correct and how we wanted it and we still plan on tweaking ‘Y’ etc. It can’t really be that hard.

WRT to the personal story, I actually have a different issue concerning the character I have that’s most recently finished it (my Norn female engineer). Since I started her a couple of weeks before the NPE went live, by the time of the 9/9 patch she’d already gotten through the “My Greatest Fear” part of the storyline, so that wasn’t the problem. The actual problem is that the “cleansing of Orr” part seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle somehow for at least that character. After I completed the chain ov events involving the invasion of Cursed Shore, I got moved forward directly to “Victory or Death” without an intervening segment involving the cleansing of Orr. Based on what I’d heard elsewhere, I assumed that it had gotten moved forward to after “Victory Or Death”. However, I did the Arah dungeon story mode last night, thus completing “Victory or Death”, and that’s it. No cleansing of Orr. But I got “My Greatest Fear” earlier on.

Something is way off here.