I would counter your definition of end-game by using counter-examples, but my previous post, which you quoted, already did it.
Well, sorry, but I don’t see any counter-examples in your first post, only buzz-words. I have yet to see any example of any endgame in any game that is not based upon repeating the same content again and again. And if you think you know any such example, please explain why that would be endgame and not, you know, non-endgame.
I agree. Apart from any actual difference in chance to get a ticket, these crates have a much better psychological effect. When you find one you think “maybe something good is inside”, but if it isn’t, you’re not disappointed much because the next crate is just seconds away.
Well as I understood it (Colin explained the system a while ago) players only count as participating (and make the event scale) when they do a minimum damage to the event-mobs. This means: the event scales only for the number of people who actually fight.
Maybe it was intended that way, but inactive people do scale up events.
Evon Gnashblade just tells me stuff about the Black Lion Trading Company, but I don’t have any ticket. I guess that’s the reason for not talking about any tickets?
Today, I was beaten to death in WvWvW by a Charr using a candy-cane hammer… I have also seen Charr with purple main, glowing tails not to mention Quaggan backpacks… I don’t think the quaggan-hat would be out of place. I’ll just have a story of how I was beaten to death by a Charr with a Candy Cane hammer, wearing a Quaggan hat with Quaggan backpack and pink armour…
I’d rather see those other strange things being restricted for out-of-combat, too. Townsclothing was a design decision made by ArenaNet, it has advantages and disadvantages, but I wish they would either change the system or stick to their idea instead of following it only half-heartedly.
Buying an item in the shop and then wearing it in combat doesn’t qualify as end game content. But investing an enormous amount of time and effort into crafting a silly looking weapon and then carrying it in combat does qualify as end game content, which justifies legendaries.
As I said before, it’s not important to me. If the letter said that we should talk to Kiel at Pearl, that would be fine for me. What I’m trying to explain is that it wouldn’t help. Maybe you would have found it then right away, but others wouldn’t. Maybe you would be on our side now, saying here in the forum that it was perfectly clear where it was, but there would still be two sides.
It’s completely ok to say ‘maybe the letter from Kiel should have been a bit clearer’. Maybe it should have. But the reason I’m wrighting in this topic is that people are saying ‘we had no way of knowing this’. This is obviously not true. We did know it, so you could have, too. No big deal that you didn’t, but you could have.
Playing a game against a machine is always rather a puzzle than a game. Once you figure out how you can beat the machine, it becomes easy. Thus, videos games that let you play solely against AI will become easy after a while, unless it requires reaction times that cannot humanly be achieved. Take the most casual player and train him to beat any existing video game and he will succeed sooner or later. That’s just human psychology.
Demanding more challenges becomes therefore a moot point when you’re part of a minority that feels not challenged, because such a minority will always exist. That doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize with the OP, but one must realize that he’s part of a minority and ArenaNet has no reason to invest any resources until this minority becomes large enough. What is also important to realize is that GW2 was never meant to be the sole pastime activity anyone should have. In fact GW2 was meant, unlike P2P models to be a game you play when you feel like it and put aside when not.
Are you for real? Did you seriously not understand the connection to the how the Dungeons and Divinity’s Edge are handled compared to how this story mission is handled? And then you belittle other people for not grasping what you concider to be obvious? Really?
Yes, I’m for real. Yes, I understood your comparison between dungeons and this instance. I even actually know that you mean Destiny’s Edge when you say Divinity’s Edge (you probably confused it with Divinity’s Reach). But your comparison is irrelevant, because this instance isn’t a dungeon. It’s not permanent. And even if it were the same, it has to be started somewhere. So all you had to do was think about “where could the instance in which we help Inspector Kiel destroy the contracts possibly be started?”. Tell me just how the idea “at Inspector Kiel’s place” can not come up? This is what I don’t understand.
Let’s cool it with the insults. I made this thread for constructive discussion.
I didn’t mean to insult anyone. I also didn’t mean to say that those who didn’t realise that they should talk to Kiel are in some way stupid. I only believe that they didn’t follow the story very concentrated. It happens to me too, in fact I can be scatterbrained like the best of us.
But I also think that there shouldn’t be a colored marker on the map for every step of the story. Some things should be left to be figured out. And for those who don’t want that, the guide should explain everything.
Alright, maybe there are people who enjoy the story and need a colored marker on the map. But tell me, if you care and undertand so much of the story, why do you fail every single time to wright the name of the NPC we’re talking about here correctly and invent things like “Divinity’s Edge”? Mistakes happen, of course, but the impression that leaves isn’t of someone who follows the story with much concentration.
And no, it’s no trouble to accept that a little more information may be usefull. No one would have a problem with it if the letter said “come talk to me”. But I assure you, there would still be people here in the forum who would complain that it’s not clear and they need better directions.
Again, none of us has said that it was impossible to find Kiel and/or the contract mission, because if it was, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. The criticism is that the whole experience could have been a lot more seemless.
Of course if you’re just busy hunting trophies and farming gold, that’s none of your concern, but please respect that there are people who are actually enjoying the story and the plot and who are trying to make this a better experience for everyone to enjoy.
I think those who are really enjoying the story don’t need a colored marker on the map to point them in the right direction. The guide is there for people who want concise information without investing too much time ingame. I think it’s entirely ok when a guide (that you don’t need when you follow the story closely) is not in the game itself but on the official website. That’s actually better for immersion.
Honestly, visiting Kiel was the first thing I thought about when I finished downloading the patch.
@Elbegast
We know that you have a reading disability that interferes with following the story closely since it has too few cutscenes. You can complain that ArenaNet doesn’t do enough for people with reading disabilities, but please spare us the trope that there was no story. It’s getting boring.
You mean one of the many versions of the NPC inside the giant anachronism that Southsun Cove currently is?
I personally did check back with Kiel (the one at Pearl Islet). That was a week ago, after the Canach Dungeon went live. When the latest patch went live I didn’t check, simply because there was now indication that at that specific time the contract event went live and therefore I do agree with the OP that ANet could have done a better job of comunicating said fact in game.
“Contractually Obligated: Complete the story finale instance between June 4 and June 11 as described in the above section.”
The guide was a pretty good indication, I would say.
Of course, the new instance could have been in the Hall of the Raven in Hoelbrak for whatever reason. But if one doesn’t know where it is, wouldn’t the NPC that must be involved be the first place one would look? It would be for me…
I know that. You have to buy Karma armor with the gained Karma and the armor is soul bound, obviously, the Karma is soul bound. How can be soul bound an armor bought with golds and karka shells that are not even account bound?
Cant even put it on mystic forge… 36 golds and 1260karka shell to the dump.
Whether the currency is soulbound or not doesn’t matter. Some things are bought with karma but are account bound. A lot of things that can be bought with gold are soulbound.
It happens to me that I overlook perfectly obvious information and then wonder how to go on. It’s embarassing and afterwards I ask myself how I could be so blind. What I don’t do is whine on the forum about it.
Playing 1 day a week for 10 hours and playing 5 days a week for 2 hours should yield the same reward.
No, it shouldn’t. And it doesn’t in any MMO I know of.
Yes, it should, and it does in most good games. If other mmos don’t do it it just means that they’re also wrong.
Non-mmos aren’t as time-consuming as mmos and in non-mmos a gap between casual players and hardcore players is less problematic. That’s why mmos reward repeated but short playing sessions by offering dailies or rest bonus. These features are there to help casuals on the way. Without such features MMOs would just lose many casuals because they would feel left behind.
Later on I notice the NPCs around her were supposed (maybe they weren’t and all this rant is for nothing) to have a special dialogue that they don’t have anymore, because they act as if I already completed the instance (which I did, of course).
But now I’ve missed that dialogue forever, unless I find someone who took screenshots or recorded it. Being account-bound, I can’t check it with other characters.
You didn’t miss any dialogue if you have spoken to the npcs before the patch. The dialogue the NPCs have doesn’t change when you do the instance, it changed with the patch. Only Kiel reacts differently whether you did the instance or not.
Basically, there’s the same end game content in GW2 as in other MMOs: grind, lots of grind (and PvP).
It’s not possible to have end game content without grind. Whether you farm endless mobs or dungeons or whatever, you will always repeat the same content over and over until you have everything you want to have. Then either new content is released or you’re getting bored. And in every MMO there will be people that get everything they want to have faster than new content can be released. If you have any problem with this fact, you should not play MMOs.
I never understood the argument “play the game to enjoy it because it’s supposed to be fun”. The problem I have with this is that mmo’s are never just fun to play. The game mechanics are usually completely awful. I don’t know about anyone else but clicking on an enemy and pressing the same numbers over and over again until it is dead isn’t my idea of a fun time.
MMO’s are built around the carrot on a stick. Humans like being rewarded and mmo’s do that. That’s what makes them fun, not the incredible game mechanics of spamming 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 over and over again until your enemy is dead. If I want to play an rpg just for the fun of it without good rewards being necessary I’ll play skyrim or dark souls, not guild wars 2.
The main problem of this whole topic lies hidden in your post. Never. Ever. Play a game with gameplay you don’t like. A game can have a great story, interesting characters, good graphics and fitting rewards, it’s still not worth wasting your time if the gameplay isn’t fun. Good gameplay isn’t everything but without good gameplay, everything is nothing. So if you think that mmos aren’t supposed to be fun, don’t play mmos. Everything else is just cheating yourself.
Which brings the question:
What are the other people doing then? We haven’t had any real, permanent content besides Lost Shores & Fractals. It’s been 8+ months already.
Just because content isn’t permanent, it doesn’t mean people don’t have to work to create it.
Canach has a buff that makes him immune to your attacks. The “toy gun” you have, isn’t a weapon, it’s a tool with which you can control the mines in the dungeon. The mines are in fact the only way to damage Canach. You have three activation skills (2-4) for three different types of mines. Use the right skill for any mine and it will turn green. Once a mine is green, make Canach touch the mine – either by kiting him over the mine or by kicking him with skill 5. The mine will explode and deal damage to Canach. Repeat it until his health bar is gone. Takes about 5 mines.
But I’m not trolling. I’m dyslexic. I can’t read huge walls of text, on websites, and make sense of them. I need audio and video. Heck, it takes me 30 minutes just to type a simple reply like this one. I have to go over it again and again to remove mistakes.
I understand. But you need to understand that there is a story, just not in a form that is easily accessible for you. We DID meet Canach and Noll before and they HAVE a story. I can see that it is frustrating for you, not to be able to follow it, but it’s called LIVING story. It happens in the open world ingame, and those parts of it that are over, are over.
The best example for this is the Ancient Karka. For you and others that came later to the game, the Ancient Karka is just a corpse lying there in the hive. But for us, those that were there in november to fight it, it was the most epic adversary that attacked Lion’s Arch and which we fought for hours, all over Southsun Cove. Naturally, it can’t have the same meaning for you as it has for us, but it has a story.
That said, more cutscenes would certainly be a way to improve the storytelling.
Which is EXACTLY what Canach is doing at the moment in Southsun.
He don’t care about civilian casualties as long as he can spread fear and damage the Consortium.
Can you give any source that shows that he is actually trying to cause fear and use this fear for his purposes?
And he’s attacking the Consortium property not because of the civilians there. The civilians just happen to be there where his targets are, the contracts. If civilians live at a military base, it’s still a lawful act of war to attack that base (not that Canach’s deeds are lawful acts of war).
So.. causing dangerous creates to attack and destroy settlements is not using terror as a weapon?
No, it’s not. It’s using the wildlife as a weapon. He’s targeting Consortium property because he wants it destroyed, not because he wants to instill fear in civilians. Dead civilians are not his targets, they are collateral damage.
And I’m not biased towards Canach, I think he’s a dangerous criminal. But I’m biased against opportunistic definitions of terrorism.
The story doesn’t talk about Canach. The only mention of him is on a tooltip on a back slot item.
I get it now, you’re just trolling.
I now that you’re late to the show, but that doesn’t mean the story of Lost Shores didn’t happen. It happened in the open world, so it can’t be conserved just for you. Except that it’s all on GuildWiki for you to read. But you don’t read it because you don’t care about the story. You just come here for trolling those who do.
No, it’s the storyline I find lacking. I have read everything I have come across, witnessed dialogue, ran the solo instance, etc. I still have no clue as to what is going on and why.
How can you have read everything of the story and still not know who Canach is? Sorry, but if you read Lord of the Rings and still don’t know who Frodo is, that is not the storytelling’s fault.
If you cared for the story, you would know who Noll, Canach and Kiel are, because everyone who follows the story knows that. They are part of the story of Southsun Cove from the very beginning. Which isn’t YOUR story, obviously. You can go to Ebonhawke and breed pigs, for all Tyria cares.
A story is still a story if you’re not the central person in it, but it is obvious that you care only about YOUR story. What you find lacking in Southsun isn’t storytelling, it’s you standing on a pedestal.
Are we supposed to go out and buy books to get the story? I don’t understand the lack of meaningful, in-game storytelling.
No, you don’t need to buy any books. It would help to talk to NPCs, read your letters or do the story mission, which you obviously didn’t. If all you do on Southsun is farming Champion chests, it’s small surprise you don’t notice any story.
You are obviously not interested in any story. That’s ok, but it entirely destroys your argument.
I like the storytelling so far, but I also think there could be more. Not everything collected at one place, but more tidpits around Southsun. Faren and Kasmeer for example, apart from their arrival, they have played no role on Southsun.
Helping a terrorist just because they might look like they are right is quite dangerous.
That is what breeds new terrorists after all.
And no matter how you twist it, Canach is very much a terrorist.
A terrorist ist someone who uses terror as a weapon. Attacking civilians in order to force a government to accept a certain agenda. Canach on the other hand uses the karka and other wildlife to target the Consortium contracts and propaganda to stirr unrest. So Canach is a demagoge and an unscrupulous guerilla fighter, but a terrorist only if you use an opportunistic definition of terrorist.
By the way, the only reason rangers couldn’t use greatswords in GW1 is that there were no greatswords in GW1. Both hammer and scyth were valid weapon choices though.
As a player from Drakkar Lake, I can only say: Tear down this wall!
Seriously though, I rarely do RP in the uninstanced Salma, but I don’t know why it should be closed. Support already told us that it’s perfectly ok to go there, so there doesn’t seem to be a problem with it. If it works, why fix it?
The problem is that there is no choice. You cannot choose with whom you want to side.
It’s a good thing when the plot of a game forces you to choose between two morally questionable options, because it shows that many decisions are not black or white, but grey. But in GW2 there are no options. You aren’t asked which side you want to support, either you support the Consortium (by proxy through the Lionguard) or you don’t take part in the plot.
I think the creators of this plot wanted to have a moraly ambiguous situation in which you can decide for yourself who is right. But that is useless as long as your decision is pointless and you’re forced to be on one side. So it’s a good plot but for the wrong game.
If the reward is not intended to be character-bound but account-bound, it’s a bug. Using a bug to your advantage is exploit per definition. It’s your choice to exploit and ArenaNet’s choice to ban you for an exploit. Just don’t tell us afterwards that you didn’t know…
How can you access the story mode a second time? I did story mode before the patch and didn’t get a reward. But if I want to go in again, I can only select exploration mode.
So, you are saying that a mmoRPG should make the player feel generic and unimportant in the storyline? Sorry, but that is what real life is for. In a fantasy RPG, your character should feel important and powerful. You should feel as if your decisions have a direct impact on the game world as well as the characters around you.
I’ve never met anyone interested in role-playing a plumber, janitor, ditch-digger, etc.
In swtor, everyone (npcs) bowed and begged and groveled at my feet. They feared my very presence. As the 1st part of the storyline ended, I was just about to hunt down and kill the emperor, himself, usurp the throne and become emperor of the galaxy.
Firstly, only a small minority of players role-plays anything and those who do, don’t role-play to be emperor because that makes it hard to play with others. Games are called RPG when your avatar has character traits, it has little to do with actual role-play.
Further, so you can become emperor in SWTOR? That sounds… silly, and it certainly wouldn’t help me feeling immersed into the story, because I never heard of emperor Elbegast or whatever. In a MMO I would rather have a story in which I help the heroes achieve something, because that means I can share this story with all other players. Of course, if you need to have people grovel before you…
No, I didn’t play SWTOR. But the personal storyline of GW2 allows you to do many heroic things too, but that’s just illusion created by the need for gameplay. It’s not you that formed the Pact, it’s Trahearne. I don’t know how it’s handled in SWTOR, but in the ongoing story of a MMO, no player can be the hero.
And the NPCs don’t need to beg and grovel, there are a thousand other guys ready to do that footwork. You are not alone in the world of Tyria and you’re not by far the most powerful. Deal with it.
I very much want to feel powerful and important in a place like Southsun. I don’t want to feel like I’m the lackey, grunt or henchman of the NPCs.
This is supposed to be a RPG. I don’t role-play a slave so, please, stop treating me like one.
You play what you play in every MMO: the guy who helps out in times of trouble. Just like 1000000 other people. Southsun cove is meant to be challenging, if it’s too hard, go somewhere else. And if you want to be the hero of the story, play a single-player RPG, because you can’t in a MMO.
Gabby, athuria
What I read from the story is that Blingg doesn’t just recognise the voice.
The intruder struck a match, revealing his cold, expressionless face. It was indeed Canach, and the sylvari mercenary was every bit as grim as Blingg remembered.
Blingg recognised the voice, then saw Canach and seeing him confirmed tha_t _it was Canach. If Canach was changed totally, Blingg should rather be confused.
I could accept that sylvari can change dramatically under extreme circumstances, though he should still have been made somewhat similar, but that story just has too many holes.
Edit: Please people, let us write the words “that” and “it” after each other, for goodness sake.
Thank you Scott that you took time to answer these questions. Thats appreciated, even though I can’t really take that seriously. So we are meant to accept that “hardship” can change a sylvari’s appearance totally, including skin and eye color – I’m expecting that the new Canach will even be taller -, but Blingg recognises him instantly? And how did those freelance decommission teams even find him, considered that he fled southsun cove to cross the shiverpeaks, infiltrated a Molten Alliance Facility and sabotaged the Consortium headquarters? Obviously he was all over Tyria. Either he goes through the Asura gates in Lion’s Arch unrecognised or he was on his way through the wilderness for months.
Unless there is a very good story explanation for his change (and “sylvari can just do that” isn’t one), that’s just disappointing. Changing an important story NPC just because he doesn’t look mean enough or whatever, just shows that storytelling isn’t taken seriously by his creators. And ArenaNet even said explicitely that they wanted to create recognisable characters with the Living World. Way to go to make characters recognisable by changing their appearance.
To my knowledge, there’s no sylvari miniature yet, so Canach would add some variety. And miniatures of story characters are a good way to increase interest in upcoming story events.
And of course, miniature collectors will get any miniature whatever it is, anyway.
