Guild Wars 2

Im not sure dead means what you all think it means. NC just had quarterly earnings. They legally have to disclose earning and performance reports. Those numbers have to be accounted for and verified. They can’t just pull numbers out of their kittens and blatantly misrepresent the performance of a product to shareholders without serious repercussions.

Across the board GW2 is performing better than projected. In new box sales and gem sales. Player concurrency is up, living story participation is up. Those are facts. If those are facts…then how is it “officially” dead?

If anything, I think more people are getting involved in the living story. Because it got interesting and is more rewarding than grinding glory for skins, which has diminishing returns the more skins you unlock.

Also, wth are you doing solo queue? Everyone is either in hot join or team queue. Team matches rarely take longer than two minutes to pop. I’d think someone with over 2k hours of pvp would know where people are playing.

Seems like more of a case of player “officially” not knowing what he is doing or talking about.

SonicTHI.3217:

You obviously have no clue what you are talking about and are trying to present this as my issue when it is clearly an issue for many if not the majority of the playerbase.
If you are having so much fun with the content then why are you posting here and wasting time? What is your agenda? Trying to prove someone wrong on the internet when you have no good arguments so you have to resort to presenting them as incompetent? Maybe it will get you somewhere one day.

Majority of the playerbase? Man you are really far out there. This game has sold over four million copies now. That technical issue sub forum is barely over 450 pages, after two years. The first three pages are connection issues that can be traced back to firewall or network issues. After that you start getting into hardware configuration problems.

Name one triple A pc game that has ever come out that did not have issues with some configurations or drivers? That’s the curse of PC gaming and hardware fragmentation and is not at all unique to Anet or GW2.

For a little perspective, WoW’s technical support forum is over 2,700 posts. Old Republic, over 1000 and didnt predate GW2 by very much. Tera, 2,483. And much like GW, the first few pages are connection related and very very often come down to user error or setting. Here is a resource you can use to improve your experience: http://www.logicalincrements.com/

I don’t have to present anyone as incompetent when they do such a superb job themselves. Especially someone that has such a huge miscomprehension of the term “majority”.

With that, i’m done. Good chatting with you.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Since you asked…

• Flesh worm -max range- Killed by large AOE in 1 hit
• Rigor -max range – Your solution is to have me apply a condition to him?
• summon minions and putrid explosion- guess you’ve never used these guys, they die before they can get into explosion range
• Signet of undeath- with the 3 second cast time and 180s CD I suppose I could use this once or twice during the whole fight if someone else casts stability on me.
• Spectral Wall- Again… a condition…
• Well of Power- This one is actually useful. I have been using this, but with a 50s CD it leaves a lot of down time
• Lich Form 1,4,5- This elite skill is useable but it only lasts 20s in a 10 minute fight with a 3 min CD, again not too useful.
• Well of Blood- A heal skill, I guess technically this can be useful to people.
• Reapers Touch- net gain of 0 since it applies a condition again that is reflected.
• Mark of Blood- More conditions, 4 stacks of bleeds at my condition damage is almost 3k dmg over the duration, more than the regen.
• Spinal Shivers- another condition…
• Corrupt Boon- He doesn’t have any boons so….
• Plague Signet- sends conditions to my foe… yep real winner there…

Putrid explosion is awesome, even not traited the damage on it is nice and I have never had a problem getting them to hit; The spectral wall isn’t for the bad guy, allies can run through it for protection; Reaper’s Touch bounces to allies and grants regen the vulnerability means nothing to you; Mark of blood is again placed for allies, intelligently it can be used to assist where an enemy wont trigger it; Spinal Shivers was for boon removal, the chill means nothing to you (haven’t played them enough yet to know none ever have boons); Plague Signet, passively remove conditions from allies and cleanse them, its not to activate on boss in phase one.

Most skills have a primary and secondary utility. A lot of the Necros cover regen, protection and cleansing. Its not always about what you can directly do to the bad guy. Sometime you have to look at what you can do to the people that can better affect the bad guy in the current situation.

Like the Engi’s complaining they have nothing to do. Wth guys? Why aren’t you packing elixir gun, support turrets, elixirs, med packs? Be a team player for phase 1 and then do what you do on phase two knowing, without you there more people would be downed or dying in one stage and the other would take forever.

An encounter that makes players think about their approach is in no way a bad thing and very much a welcome addition to the game. We dont want to end up with a reskinned Shatterer fight every two weeks.

SonicTHI.3217:

Brah, how about ANET fixes their code or actually designs fights that dont involve 100 people spamming attacks on a single target or a ball of enemies with ridiculous visual effects so you cant even see what they are doing half the time?
Inconceivable for you brah?

Yeah, nope. See, if people could sit and spam attacks mindlessly (one would say in a zerg like fashion), then you wouldn’t have folks here QQing about having to play outside their comfort zone. Like Marionette did, once again, to Zerk players and like Wurm does in a similar fashion during phase 2, and like Husks do during phase 1.

And you are talking about code again, for a lot of people the game runs fine. And for those that don’t like the effects there is a graphics option to tone them down. If you cant make out whats going on on the screen, and your having performance issues…that’s a personal problem you should work out instead of putting the onus on strangers.

But you go ahead, keep up that whole “Anet not listening to anyone” and “they need to fix their code!” angle. Maybe it will get you somewhere one day. The vast majority of players, we are going to be enjoying the game or doing something else we enjoy if we are not enjoying the game. Because thats more fun than carrying an agenda and expecting a game dev to come fix your computer or internet.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I await your all knowing power to enlighten me on how I need to L2P.

Since you asked…

• Flesh worm -max range
• Rigor -max range
• summon minions and putrid explosion
• Signet of undeath
• Spectral Wall
• Well of Power
• Lich Form 1,4,5
• Well of Blood
• Reapers Touch
• Mark of Blood
• Spinal Shivers
• Corrupt Boon
• Plague Signet

And because this dude is awesome…

Delvoire.8930:

All of the following are weapon skills you can use that don’t apply Conditions.

Scepter Skill 3
Axe Skill 2
Staff Skill 1
Dagger Skill 1
Dagger Skill 2

Also, you could apply conditions and when they reflect back use Consume Conditions for a heal and thus cleanse yourself.

So the real question is have you ever looked at your skills? Its like you are voluntarily blind to any skills that have support utility or aren’t directly related to you own DPS. They just don’t physically show up to you in the skill list.

Edit: Nb4 “it doesn’t matter I was wrong, I shouldn’t have to swap skills brawr brawr rawr”. Except that…you should.

SonicTHI.3217:

These fights are horrible, boring and another zerglag fest.
ANET proves yet again that they do not listen to player feedback but keep putting out the same trash and presenting it as content.

Funny I am seeing mostly opposite comments from other people in this thread trying to explain that the fight isn’t a zergfest and how to handle the phases without zerging as to avoid repair cost.

Also, people in the game are having a blast if you are reading mapchat.

Far as I can tell, they are listening to fans. Maybe just not listening completely to you or the rest of the vocal minority that can never be pleased.

About that lag…smooth as silk on my end. The last few updates have been remarkably so. Maybe time to upgrade that PC brah.

Major knee-jerk reaction to the fight.

There are stages. Melee handles DPS and condi players should be supporting them instead of stacking damage. Phase 2 the condi players stack as many unique conditions as long and as high as they can to make the boss weaker.

Try adapting to the fight instead of jump-the-gun raging because all builds cant face-roll win the encounter the exact same way.

I remember all of the QQ from zerker players that Wardens 3 in Marionette couldn’t just be face tanked and 4 required moving around and weapon swapping.

Put on your big kid pants folks, after a year and a half Anet is making you learn how to actually play the game.

Well, you have two weeks to make one and it wont cost you a single gold. Every mat could be realistically gathered in plenty of time.

Sweetbread.2679:

Yes I consider using a skill 3-4 times in a row (and with init regen being what it is, it’s more than 3-4 times and we all know it), because do you know what happens when you use an ability with every other class? IT GOES ON COOLDOWN.

Lets look at the other side of that. As a thief when you use the 3 skill, your 5 skill effectively goes on cool down. If you use your 3 skill again, then your four skill goes on cool down. If you use your 3 skill one final time, your 3 skill and 2 skill go on cool down.

Once again, Thieves are not spammy. A misunderstanding of non thief players and the initiative mechanic is what is causing that entire misconception. Every time a thief uses a skill, one or more things go on CD. Init recharge is no different than being able to trait faster recharge on weapon sets for other classes. But whereas other classes can save their cool downs for appropriate times and maximum effect, thieves have to play further ahead because every skill costs them something.

For a working example, a Guardian can sit on Shield of Absorption as a clutch knockback to get a revive or finish or push off a warrior or thief defensively. That option is available until he uses it, period. As a Thief, if I use infiltrators strike to set up pistol whip, I have now lost access to black powder shot and headshot which are my defensive gtfo skills if the encounter goes wrong. Could you imagine losing Shield of Absorption in exchange for using Zealot’s Defense? Thats how a Thief works.

For the guy a few comments up saying you can’t CC a thief, you absolutely can. They can try to get away, but conditions affect the distance that leaps travel, so a chilled Thief isn’t just heart seeking away. Other options involve a target, so you just jump from being CCd in front of one enemy to being in front of another.They can infiltrator’s arrow 900 units away for half of their initiative (if not dazed, petrified, knocked down or feared); which is absolutely no different than a necro hitting life force and soaking while CCd, using AOE fear to keep you from capitalizing, Engineers triggering Elixer S or any knock back for that matter, or Ele using mistform.

Sweetbread.2679:

Stop deluding yourself. You picked the class who’s core mechanics are: counterless invisibility, spam, massive solo burst damage, and running away. Literally no part of that combination makes for a good pvp experience. People are right to think the class is a failure of design and it’s not because their class is underwhelming, it’s because thief is just flat out awful to fight against in almost every way, it gives a huge leg up to kittenty players, and is essentially unkillable in the hands of a pro player.

Its not counterless. To begin with, thieves still take full damage in stealth, and move slower for it. If you read my first post stealth can be countered with aoe, conditions, stuns, and knockdowns.

The initiative resource does not allow spamming, you only have 12 initiative. Its possible to trait to 15, but that’s a huge waste of points. To put that in perspective, it means Heart-seeker, assuming you use no other initiative, can only be used 4 times and it locks you out of using any other weapon skills. Add to that, it only does max damage if the opponent is under 25% health. A thief “spamming” Heartseeker while you are at 50% HP or more is doing you a favor. Leaping Death Blossom? Three times with low base damage. Its mostly used to apply conditions.

How exactly is using a skill 3-4 times “spamming”? Considering to do that the thief can use nothing else and one of those skills if spammed is useless on high health characters? Can you honestly tell me that while fighting for a CP you don’t use any of your skills 3-4 times in that duration?

That massive burst you are talking about comes with 13k health. 13k health, very specific traits, and long cool downs. It is the definition of glass cannon. Hits hard, breaks easy, and takes forever to reload. If you let that nearly down you and get away, its honestly a ltp issue.

But thank you for your post, it’s a perfect example of knowing absolutely nothing about the class, how it works, its limitations or weaknesses but jumping on board the stealth QQ train because you assume defeat every time you see a thief stealth instead of just dealing with it.

Edit:

Amir.1570:

Amir.1570:

Thief takes more skill than Mesmer any time of the day.

Spamming Pistol Whip takes so much skill.

Pistol Whip costs five initiative. It can’t be spammed. It can be used twice. One more time if traited. It also has a long, very obvious start up, and roots the thief. Making it very very unsafe and punishable on dodge. Honestly people, do you even bother looking at how these things work or just parrot things you hear somewhere else?

Tatsuo.1478:

And was not surprised how powerful thief felt (at least compared with ranger as that is the profession I’m playing – not the spirit ranger though), and especially stealth.

Highlighted your problem for you. Rangers are pretty useless in PvP atm and arguably the worst class in the game right now. And you intentionally aren’t playing one of the builds that could give them presence on a team.

When CDI called for class that needed the most changes and updates, Ranger won overwhelmingly and generated over 20 pages of suggested improvements. Mostly because their traits are just all over the place (for example, all condition weapon set buffs, and minor traits in pre line, but condition dmg being in toughness) and issues with pets.

Ofc you are going to feel more powerful switching from a barely functional profession to the most mobile profession in the game. You might as well have said “I dunno, I tried playing a Guardian and it felt much tougher than my ele”. Next you’ll tell us you are playing zerk/bear/bow.

My suggestion is to start practicing with another class until Rangers see some tender love and care. Life will be much easier for you. If you insist on sticking with your bear/bow, I recommend looking into a condi trap build with axe/torch. Awesome for farming glory on waypoint zergs in sPvP and against thieves you can pretty much stand still while they kill themselves.

Sweetbread.2679:

AcidicVision.5498:

The options are there. I don’t want to sound condescending, but just play smarter, maybe?

Funny how the burden of skill is never on the player with the obviously kittened up gimmick ability that everyone hates.

That’s subjective. Thieves have a high skill cap for players that want to be good with them and effective in tPvP. Stealth harassment thieves are not good on a team. They are actually a detriment because you cant cap while stealthed.

The revealed buff means thieves can’t dance in and out of stealth like they used to and attacking out of stealth means we lose our best defensive option for four seconds, which can be an eternity in pvp.

Quickness/pistol whip thieves have nice burst DPS but then are useless for an entire minute while Haste cools down.

And initiative isn’t as spammable as people like to think. Gap closing heart seekers or a blocked/evaded death blossom is a huge drain.

A thief has to manage their stealth, manage revealed, manage initiative, manage cool downs, consider what to blow when for initiative defensively so they can still do their damage and survive. That doesn’t even touch steal which is a 35 sec cooldown gap closer that can miss easily and if it doesn’t miss, the items we get from it (besides necros) are very situational.

I would say over-all the class has as low a barrier to entry as a Warrior for things like hotjoin sPvP. But a much higher skill cap for team and solo queues. Just because Warriors are able to make a lot more mistakes and live through them and don’t have all of the direct offensive/defensive trade-off decisions to make on the fly.

tl;dr: There is a huge difference between burden of skill required to just poach kills and get a little easy glory before you are inevitably killed; using stealth to harass or run away and being worthless on a team; and being good enough at the class to contribute, support, and survive to minimize down time.

Hammer is the current melee meta. Knockdowns destroy a thief. Even if they stealth for a trait on hit, you know they are still on the ground.

Conditions destroy a thief.

AOE can destroy a thief.

Shadow refuge requires them to stay in a small area for four seconds. Very vulnerable to aoe, fear, or AOE pulls/knockbacks.

As a thief, the options are there and I am always impressed when I see clever players come up with ways to react to it with common utilities and normal weapon skills. For example, I had a necro lock me down a bit earlier for an entire stealth duration with warhorn because they knew even though I did cloak and dagger that I was still in range.

The options are there. I don’t want to sound condescending, but just play smarter, maybe? There was a time we had to learn how to deal with clones, make sure to look for aegis on guardians before wasting cool-downs, figure out how to survive hundred blades. That’s the depth of the system.

Stealth is incredibly easy to react to once you figure out how you are going to deal with it and get into that habit reflexively.

Here you go…

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1yk30t/a_new_guild_focused_on_saving_lions_arch_citizens/

Gah! My bad man. I thought you meant Triple Trouble. Triple Threat I am unsure of. I think there was a guild made that is devoted to 1200 citizen runs every opportunity they have, for the duration of that event. You would probably get it by running with them.

…one sec, Ill try to dig up that name and edit this spot…

Does it really matter that another MMO is coming out? Honestly? New MMOs remind me of those cell phone kiosks in the mall. They always have salesman there that try to get your attention and make you offers and promises; in my case it goes something like: “I get everything right now unlimited for less than $50 a month, can you beat that?” and they say “nope.” and I carry on.

With new MMOs its the same thing, but more along the lines of “Can you offer me all of that without a subscription?” they say “nope.” and I carry on.

Their offers sound great, but not so much better than what I have now that it justifies another monthly bill. Also, in the history of MMOs (GW2 included), when has one launched and not left players thinking maybe they over exaggerated on a few of their promises? “We changed everything you hate and made it everything you love instead!!!111!!1” is the song of MMO release and that is never really what happens.

Anyway, yeah. I don’t expect anyone is especially nervous. But we will probably get some big projection update for future plans at the end of the living story.

TTS does Wurm runs at 6:00pm, 8:00pm, 2:00am, 4:00am server time*. List me and send a PM when you see me in game for more info.

*schedule subject to leader availability and changes weekly

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I miss the unique armor for each profession

No joke, this infuriates me every single time I log in and look at my characters. kitten, T3 profession specific armor is a thing that needs to happen.

The orders armors look cool, and were a great concept, but once you get past personal story (many don’t even bother with it any more), the orders and the Pact play such a minor, impersonal role and the story converges in such a way that your alliance choice doesn’t even matter.

I would have traded the entire existence of the orders for profession devoted NPC guilds that our heroes earned membership to , with guild hall outposts that are entry exclusive, and have tiered armor sets.

Why? Why, why why why why?! ugh.

I dunno, maybe its just my perspective from the “not everyone gets a trophy” generation. I fully believe there should be tiers of rewards for the levels of effort people are willing to make.

Content tourist, here you go, have some tonics, a basic backpiece you can forge, some tokens to trade for crafting materials or tools, a little luck and some achievement points.

Weekend warrior, level that backpack up, check out this mini, infinite tonics, a few sky ship passes, more achievement points, boxes of supplies for more luck and shards, yay!

Dedicated dailies, visit LA, do the rubble run, at the end of the week you might be able to buy yourself a halo, a few more days and score some horns. Premium reward, but you put in the effort buddy…way to go!

God bless them, got the halo, got the horns, making the back-pack glow and farming 1200 runs with a server recognized guild to farm that jetpack and monocle.

This is pretty much how I believe it should be. Its pretty much how other video games, and life in general works. Put more in, get more out.

—As a side note, I have the halo, and I like it a lot. One of the reasons I like it is because everyone doesn’t have it, it is still unique. Everyone doesn’t have it because they either didn’t want to do the runs or 10g was too much in their opinion. And both of those are perfectly reasonable. If the halo was just another LS “thanks for coming, have a prize” reward, it would probably go in my bank and end up never used because everyone would have it. Like holographic dragon wings. A horizontally progressing game means a huge emphasis on aesthetics, and uniqueness. The more people that have a thing, the less unique it is, the less desirable it is. Price and/or time requirements are the quickest and easiest ways to limit the amount of people that will acquire a thing.

Asura

/12char

Daroon.1736:

/shopping list

I said “up to exotic”. And yes, that mats required are totally reasonable. They can be salvaged, gathered, or bought off trading post if you are impatient. On top of that, every evolution is made in the mystic forge. So any character can make it without any pre-requisite crafting level.

You could actually make this backpeice for a low level character and evolve it as your character hits new level milestones.

That is awesome.

Can’t you make up to an exotic level event limited backpeice out of items that can be entirely gathered or salvaged…

And loot an event exclusive mini and infinite tonics from basic mob drops…

You can also trade 50 belongings and 2 silver for the cheapest source of obsidian shards in the game or free T6 harvesting tools.

Tbh, I thought that was the standard swag and the halo and horns were the fluff added to give people extra incentive that like farming or repeating events. Like the 1200 bag is the incentive for servers that like to coordinate.

The reward system for this release is probably the best one so far with regard to consideration and incentive to all different types of players.

Can’t please everyone.

The market now is flooded with Quaggan tonics. People are hoarding them, selling them, spamming them, throwing them away.

When I had extra the first thing I tried to do, since there were exactly four varieties, was throw them in the mystic forge. Like you could do minis, and xmas items, and so many other things.

But GASP, they do not work!

Here is what I expected:
50 of each color standard tonic = 1 engraged Quaggan tonic!
3 of each infinite regular Quaggan tonic = 1 infinite Mystery or Enraged Tonic

How did you guys overlook this!? Why no enraged Quaggans!?

Nat.4029:

QFT

The fact this game launched with neither UW or FoW is a travesty of monumental proportion. Even ToPk would have been welcome kitten . Ogre slaying daggers and all (since we actually have ogres now).

If those things aren’t in the works already in the background then it would be hard for me to believe Anet hasn’t totally lost touch with the fans that made this sequel a possibility.

What I like to think is that they have them in development and are just taking their time because launching those zones (and they should be full zones, not just dungeons) and having them be awful would be almost as bad as not launching them at all. Take Orr for example, you could draw a lot of parallels between open world Orr and FoW; likewise for Arah Explorable dungeons and UW. But those were both met with heavy criticism.

FoW and UW kept people busy for hundreds of hours. For what? Small chance at super rare mats you needed a lot of to craft rare items (T6, Orr), or end completion chest that had a few unique guaranteed items (Orr temple karma vendors) and super small chance at highly valuable items (Orr temple boss chests). And if your party wiped or failed at an event you got kicked and had to start all over again (Orr temple chains). But a large portion of people hate Orr. Anet had lightning in a bottle the first go’round and I think it’s just taking them a while to figure out how to reproduce it.

Well we can disagree on tower of nightmares. I thought the mix of story instance, along with multiple paths through the tower, instanced solo encounters for each floor, environmental debuffs based on quadrant, and random party for final boss managed to break up the zerg nicely and did an awesome job of having you coordinate with different small groups and NPCs on the fly. It was a very well done piece of content.

For the other bosses, those handful of mechanics are exactly what makes it impossible to zerg. The dps groups cannot succeed without teams working on those other objectives and micromanaging the groups cooldowns and consumables.

Otherwise, you basically corroborated what I said. There is a variety of content to appease players whether they want to farm, explore, do something very organized, or relax through something faceroll easy. Claiming that its all just “zerg style content” is extremely hyperbolic.

Also, I’d like to see how exactly you and your groups are face tanking Kholer and the Patriarch in AC.

Want to go from hive minded vegetables to hive minded mammals.

All Sylvari will be retconned to Skritt in the next release, confirmed.

There are a lot of technical issues and considerations that would have to go into allowing people to spawn their own instances or districts. Look no further than dungeons that have been having instance issues since launch to see the back end limitations and weird issues people keep discovering. These aren’t things you just “fix” in a few iterations work.

Also, I am not sure about TxS, but one of the things TTS does specifically is help other servers finish events so everyone can have a chance to complete content. We don’t constantly force overflows for every event and shuttle in our own to have a private TTS party. Tequatl runs are done on main servers, and as many overflows spawned from that server as we have leaders for. Marionette was done likewise. Wurm starts getting together on a main server and moves to an overflow to shed afkers. But when we move, everyone is told at the same time and players from that server and TTS members all have the same shot at getting into the overflow before it fills for the run.

Honestly, one of my favorite things about leading events like Teq or Marionette is the reaction when its over from people that just beat it for the first time or have never been involved in something that big and organized. I was part of a group that taught a specific lowpop server how to beat Marionette a week after it premiered. And after two or three runs, that server was beating it on their own consistently with their own commanders. They even had people posting on the forums and reddit, bragging about their victories after almost completely giving up on the event as a server. Stuff like that is awesome and I think is great for the entire community and can be beneficial to all players if they choose to participate, or take charge.

If you lock all of that behind instances, you lose that level of involvement with large guilds and their server, or guild networked communities and all servers.

I look forward to when Anet finally strikes that balance of being tough, but achievable by random people working together (Marionette), and requiring grueling organization and efficiency (Wurm). My ideal world boss would have Marionettes base difficulty for standard rewards with difficult optional objects that can completed for additional rewards. This would let servers scale up to the individual level of success they think they are capable of, without failing the event wholesame and intimidating most players.

*I am a TTS guild leader, but do not speak for the organization as a whole. The views and opinions expressed in this post are mine alone :p

Thedenofsin.7340:

What I don’t understand is how the PVE in this game is more profitable for ArenaNet than the WvW or the PvP?

The PVE in this game is not good. Open world content is nothing more than a massive zerg-fest.

Marionette was not zergy. Great Jungle Wurm is not zergy. Tequatl is not zergy. Tower of Nightmares was not zergy. 1200 Citizen runs in LA content are not zergy (in fact, being zergy ruins the 1200 run for your entire server). Very few dungeon encounters are tank and spank group zergs. Queens gauntlet was not zergy. Aetherblade retreat was not Zergy. New TA path was not zergy. And that is only combat. There is a ton out there to do exploration wise or solo, and there is a healthy portion of the playerbase that enjoys that style of content.

At the same time, Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains, Scarlet invasions and Queens Jubilee creature areas were allowed to exist because some people like that style of content.

If you want the slight to highly coordinated group play where composition, strategy, placement and skills matter, then that is there. If you want the mindless farming, that content is there.

If all you are doing in PvE is running with a herd to spam on whatever gets in their way, I’m sorry, but you are most definitely doing it wrong.

Dead on OP.

Unfortunately, this is the game we got and there is very little “Guild Wars” to it. Fortunately, what we got isn’t a bad game.

I will argue ’till the days the servers shut down that any grind people feel the need to do is 100% self imposed. Just to give a general example, in game X you may need to have Y stat/item before anyone will group with you for content Z. That is the basic design of vertical progression driven treadmills that lock content behind gear requirements, which ends up forcing you to grind for that gear as a way to artificially extend play time in order to generate more subscription revenue.

After playing GW2 for an extended period of time, its easy to forget how restricting other games are and how transparent the time syncs are. In GW2 you can effectively do everything (except higher level fractals, i’ll get to that) in the game with exotic gear. How do you get exotics? Well, if you like crafting then you can craft them; like open world PvP, then buy them with badges in WvW; like doing dungeons, then buy a set with tokens; like exploring and doing open world events, then buy them with karma; enjoy farming or trading, just buy them from TP.

Back to Fractals, that is the only content that would require ascended gear, but it provides what you need. If you enjoy, and want to do high level fractals, the dungeon either drops the rings you will need or gives you relics to buy the ones you want. It throws AR materials at you to either make AR infusions or ascended back pieces. Ascended amulets you can buy with Laurels that you can get from dailies, or monthlies, PvE or PvP; the activities are pretty generic and can easily be worked into doing something you enjoy. Trinkets can be bought with guild commendations and those are easy to come by.

Ascended armor and weapons and legendaries are virtually the only grindy aspect of the game, and they are also 100% optional and not required to do or complete a single piece of playable content. Again, this is where GW2 differs from other games. Its there to chase if you want to chase it. If you don’t, then exotics are plenty good enough. Just play the things you want to, do the content you enjoy, occasionally check your material storage and one day you will say “hey, look at that, I have enough stuff lying around to make ascended weapons”.

This game, and most other games made in the history of video games are as grindy as you make them, a few others are grindy by design and business model.

Largos are my favorite race addition. I think everything about them is intriguing and that they have the most to offer in the way of variety. An underwater capitol city that functions differently based on whichever house currently holds the most influence? On top of their unique skills, variety of magic, weapons, and physically sprouting wings under water? There is just so much there that would add much needed spice to the game.

Its fun to kid, but we all know that Quaggan and Skritt were never conceptualized to be player races. They are victims by design. The Kodan aren’t exactly exciting, and barely have individual personalities; even listening to one talk for long enough could lull you to sleep. And the Tengu would just be another beast race that would use the same armor and weapons we have now, have the same clipping and stretching issues as the Charr.

Largos are the way to go. But if we get a new race it will probably be Tengu. Everyone wants a beast race. Just like everyone wanted Charr and they were hyped before launch. And now less than 10% of the entire games population uses them.

Relevant comic strip attached.

I’m not sure they have knees. Can penguins jump?

Back in ye olde days or yore, major events had weapons specific skins that could only be obtained through black lion chests for a limit time. Drop rates were abysmal and the system favored classes that had more weapon options, thusly players did rage.

So Anet delivered upon us a merchant that would trade black lion tickets for any event weapon skin we so choose. Said tickets and scraps of these tickets replaced the skins in the chests proper.

No longer will an Engi player spend $80 on Black Lion keys and end up with nothing or a focus, but instead will possibly receive a golden ticket that will exchange for a shiny rifle.

*Black Lion Keys are gambling. Please play responsibly. Seek support or counseling for addictions

Lord Kuru.3685:

• Any new map will have a paywall on its WPs. (White knights: “hey, you can just walk so it’s ok, right? Plus, I walk everywhere anyway, who needs WPs?”) Then:
• All WPs will be paywalled. (White knights: “hey, you can just walk so it’s ok, right? Plus, I walk everywhere anyway, who needs WPs?”)

More likely a personal waypoint you can place anywhere with a 1 hour cooldown. Hotdrop into zones line Aetherblades do.

Anyways, waypoints already have a paywall, when the game launched everyone was furious. “2s to WP across the map!? Who has two silver! Anet just want us to buy gems to convert so we can travel around and play!”. That actually happened.

Is anyone out there having to buy gems in order to travel? Did all of that freaking out end up meaning anything? Nope. People are real quick to scream “cash-grab” and discount all other possibilities, and then sort of slink away quietly when their concerns end up being unfounded.

mrstealth.6701:

I would find that to be a reasonable explanation, if they hadn’t remembered put all of those services into that airship. There are quite a few much less important NPCs/services that made it into that camp, as well.

By they you are assuming the same person worked on both? At this very moment I am working on a training simulation. I made a cable end spin as it connects. The person down the hall doing the same thing on another section of the vehicle didn’t make the end on his cable spin while connecting. There are dozens of these cables, like there are dozens of NPCs, and it would be very easy for something like that to slip all the way to acceptance testing.

I doubt living story updates have anything close to as rigorous as government acceptance testing. So it’s very very possible for one engineer on a time crunch to forget something that another might not. For all we know there could have been something that was supposed to be in the captains ship that slipped, but it goes un-noticed because we either didn’t expect it to begin with, or it’s visibility isn’t as high to players as crafting stations are.

As to questions about how I am chatting away on forums at work, see the attachment…

Liston.9708:

Technical/time issue I would but that. That wasn’t anet’s response was it?

No. And it hardly is. Because of the way the community responds. Look at precursor crafting, the slaying potions bug, or any other time there is some sort of transparency. When it doesn’t happen fast enough or the forums arent kept constantly in the loop, then they just attack the devs.

What if Mark came in and said “yeah, there was an issue with the size of the zone and number of NPCs and what player cap would be and we just hit a technical wall. We are working on getting crafting vendors in”, and then it didn’t happen? People would be throwing it in Anet’s face any time any little thing comes, indefinitely. And no one wants to deal with that type of abuse, non-stop, in their work place.

This isn’t unique to Anet. In game dev in general it’s better to stay quiet and manage expectations than it is to communicate intentions and then not be able deliver.

Once again, not saying that this was the case. But it is most definitely within the realm of possibility. Especially considering Mark was under the impression the crafters were there. If it were a big gem conspiracy I’d imagine he wouldn’t have been under that impression and just would not have said anything rather than come in here and be wrong. That smells to me like a last minute change and oversight.

Liston.9708:

It is clearly an issue with many of us…… Btw, I buy all kinds of stuff with gems with real $$, so I don’t mind supporting the game, but this was a slime move so less gem sales to 1 person anyway….

I like that you assume it was intentional. Even the dev came in and was under the impression all of the services were moved. What if the crafting stations were in the Vigil but had an issue and were the thing that caused the patch launch delay so they were temporarily removed?

What if services are being moved slowly over to reinforce the theme of the town being evacuated and outposts having to be established?

What if they just ran out of time and resources and the crafters were lower on the priority list than some of the other more frequently used vendors and services?

What is someone just plain forgot, has been feeling horrible about themselves and worried about being called into O’Brian’s office at any point this week?

Since you don’t know for a fact that crafters were strategically left out in order to sell ship passes, you can’t outright dismiss other possibilities. Just like I cant say for 100% certain that they weren’t left out for that reason. So flinging accusations is really inappropriate. You should at the very least qualify it with an “if they did this deliberately…”.

I know if I were posting like a lot of you and then tomorrow we got an update that said technical issue has been fixed and crafters were added to Vigil, I’d feel pretty bad about it.

Assuming makes an kitten of u and me.

Fungalfoot.7213:

People are leaving in droves and that’s the entire issue here. ANet has completely failed to keep to their standards and the game is suffering because of it. I don’t see why some of you feel so compelled to defend the direction they’re going in when it’s killing the product.

People have been leaving in droves since karma changes, and BLTC unique skins, and since WvW orb hacking, and since Fractals, and since ascended, and since their favorite class got nerfed, and since every other significant or insignificant change that has happened since launch.

Let me share a secret with you, 9/10 people that say they are quitting over something like this, on the scale of temporarily adding hopping through a waypoint to their town activities, you could add to your friends list and see them playing happily playing as usual.

That is why “game is dying, everyone is leaving!” hyperbole never gets a response and why it just gets laughed off. Anet actually has the numbers. You and I can actively watch the “quitters” mosey along in the game. NCSoft earnings report published that GW2 is making money. More than projected for this last quarter if I recall.

The game isn’t going to wither away because people have to hop through an Asura gate to do some crafting, and then hop back over to MF when they are done, until a new hub city is raised. These are people have every right to share their opinion, but is making a mountain of a mole hill and catastrophizing.

All of the controversy will mostly die down when people get used to having to move between MF and crafting and the rest will go away when a new hub comes around. Or when they realize they spent more time complaining on the forums than a they would have spent in a year of going between gates to get to craft-stations.

Raine.1394:

Rata Sum has the absolute best layout for doing just about anything. I have all the races and they all call RS home.

I get lost in Rata Sum. I believe I got 100% completion on it once and never went back. Im sure its just a personal problem, but Rata Sum and the Deathstar in Black Citadel are horribly frustrating to find anything in.

The Grove was my favorite when I needed to do city business and didn’t want to deal with the lag, map chat, and running around. Its nice and spacious, everything is in close proximity, and its always empty

Quarrel Falls was my absolute favorite outpost in GW and where I would AFK, log out, or hang out when I was just chatting with alliance. The Grove is the closest thing to Quarrel Falls in the game.

I think we are meant to choose between the halo or horns. The option is there to allow us to get both, but I am pretty sure the intention was to have the player choose one based on their style. Was your concern saving the citizens or leaving them and getting revenge instead?

With that in mind, I amount needed and time doesn’t bother me.

The bit that does bother me is that a good percentage of players won’t see it that way and they will take up space in the instance, ignoring events and just rushing around for rubble.

IMO the number required should be reduced by at least 50, the nodes should be cut down to maybe 1/3rd of what they are now and placed near out of the way caches of citizens to rewards roamers, and events should give heirlooms as completion rewards. Two for Miasma events, one for escorts.

That makes it more productive for people to participate in instance rather than ignore it and have a negative impact. Should someone be able to get a halo after ignoring all of the citizens that need help and defense in favor of looting the remains of the city for valuables?

I have a Royal Terrace pass. Barely use it because I forget to switch it between characters and don’t play the one that has it as much as I did previously.

Now, having had that “convenience” really hasn’t been a big deal. I still did most things in LA. Now I will do them at Vigil Keep. If I need to craft I will go to the Grove. To be perfectly honest, this is what I usually did anyways (much more than I used Royal pass), because all of the merchants, crafters and bank are in close proximity and its nice, wide open and quiet.

There seems to be a lot of QQ here over jumping through an Asura gate. Honestly, it seems like an improvement to quality of life. No more dropping to 20fps, having 100 simultaneous sound effects going off, your screen totally obscured by place holder or popping in models, NPCs repeating the same dialog over and over, network lag, or having to dig through a zerg to find a merchant. All for the trade off of a simple loading screen. People can pay $10 for the convenience of having one loading screen instead of two. You can quite literally zone into one of the other major cities and be on your way faster you could map into or anywhere within LA because of the overhead. Even though you have to walk through one additional gate, this is still a trade up.

I like it. Bought the light set for my ele and am seriously considering the medium set for my thief. The only thing holding me back is dat face.

So I have two criticisms:
The female face looks awkward. It looks pointy and…I dunno, androgynous and mannequin? A less spear-like nose and maybe some more defined lips would have gone a long way.

Second, what you see in the gem store is not reflective of what you buy. In the gem store, the skin looks darker with slight transparency. In the game it is much lighter and has a noise texture in it that you cant make out in the preview.

I think the latter issue comes from lack of light-sources in the preview window. Maybe add a light toggle? Or allow us to zoom?

Besides that I think the armor is great and there is a definite place for it. It reminds me a lot of the Envoy from factions. Also being called Zodiac and the return of the red Miasma, seems to be a lot of nods to Factions in this release.

But I do hope its not overdone. Between the radiant gear, flame set, and now the Zodiac set, it seems like you guys are going a bit crazy with the effects. It could really be toned down. A flashy set here and there is cool, but it seems to be becoming the norm. Subtle effects would be nice to see. Like the faint trails from Oppressor weapons or environmental reactions like the Ascalon dungeon stuff. The lovestruck skins were just about perfect. Apply those approaches to armor.

A few new in-game sets would go a long way to appeasing some people also. I think a lot of the negativity towards this set in general is based on the fact its a gem purchase. Even if some people may say otherwise. The toxic helmet was cool. I personally like the Ascended gear. But I dont think it would hurt to put something along those lines out there that players dont need to work a year towards.

Raine.1394:

Right. Player skill is always a hypothetical. Power on gear confers concrete advantage in any encounter.

To understand the effect of gear in, especially, a pvp encounter you always hold player skill constant and vary only the power on gear. Why is this done? Anyone who has taken any science 101 class will understand the scientific method employed here. If you want to understand the effects of gear, you hold player skill constant, i.e., assume two players of equal skill. Then you will know if and how much gear figures into the equation. And, btw, the verdict is already in, gear does matter.

You cant hold player skill constant and come to any objective conclusion. This debate is something the fighting game community solved ages ago. Since characters can be broken down into hp, attack power, and frame data you can always find the character that should be mathematically superior. Tiers are created isolating that data and pairing it with other characters in an “all things being equal” encounter to produce a chart that indicates how many matches out of ten each character would win.

The problem is that player skill is too much of a contributing factor in the result and cannot be a controlled variable. Even using AI programmed to be equal is flawed since it isn’t subject to input error or input lag.

Instead of tier charts being a be all end all “these characters are the best” list, they end up being a quick reference of good and bad matchups. Character A loses to B 7/10 times. That does not mean you have a 70% chance of losing, mathematically, it only means that it’s not a favorable matchup for you and your individual skill will need to make up for frame or archtype disadvantage. Which it can, especially as you become more familiar with the match.

Zero Day.2594:

:\ You know the idiom “beating a dead horse”… The forums are a little bit more morbid than that, we constantly keep digging up the dead horse and continually beating on it to later bury it and dig it up again.

If it were easy to get most of these people wouldn’t be complaining. Its the combination of being expensive, and having time gates so you cant just pay your way to it directly that gets folks riled up.

On the opposite side of the coin, if we didn’t have those hoops, then while these guys wouldn’t be complaining anymore, the forums would be flooded with the “I have legendaries and full ascended on all my characters and don’t like dungeons so I have nothing to do. game is dead” people.

It was a no win scenario for Anet. IMO the rollout was rocky and could have been handled better, but the strategy was sound. Have a tier that takes time to get, that isn’t crucial to completion of any PvE content, has minimal impact if any on WvW and is left out of sPvP entirely.

As demonstrated by Dark Catalyst some people would rather to come a games forums and complain about it than spend their time playing something they enjoy. Personally I would rather have added content and progressive goals and the occasional “Ascended is unfair” QQ thread, than no added content and “We need more progression” QQ threads. If we have to hear it, might as well get something out of it.

Aioros.4862:

Really? A player who is dealing 5 to 10% more damage than he would be while wearing exotics is not more effective?

More effective than what? Himself in lower tier gear? Of course. The same as he would be more effective in masterwork than himself in uncommon gear. More effective than other players? …

Consider the basic principle of disregarding the human element. You have two cars, one is 10% faster than the other. Neither car has a driver. Which is the more effective race car? Neither. Because neither is able to act on its own.

Now lets add drivers. We put you in the faster car. And we put Dale Earnhardt Jr in the car that is 10% slower. Jr is going to win 2/3 by virtue of skill, knowledge, and experience. That 10% will not be enough to overcome the drivers ability. Now which was the more effective race car? In this case, it was the slower one. Since we know that regardless of the cars specs, without a driver it has zero effectiveness.

Now lets swap drivers. We put the more skilled driver in the faster car and we put you in the slower car. Did this change the outcome? No. The outcome is the same because the better driver was still in charge of the equipment.

Lastly let’s suppose you are as good a driver as Jr. You are both perfectly matched. Now the car would make a difference on a level playing field. So define a level playing field in GW game modes. WvW is not balanced and was never intended to be. PvE is cooperative. That leaves sPvP. There is no ascended gear in sPvP.

There is no scenario that I can come up with, that could be reproduced, where ascended gear is the determining factor in putting one player overwhelmingly over another. It will always come down to the player.

IndigoSundown.5419:

…

• An increase in the overall effectiveness of the players’ characters (objectively provable; game effectiveness is determined by math; Ascended provides higher numbers)

I disagree with this because I think player ability and attitude plays as large, if not larger role in their character’s effectiveness.

We have all seen that scrubby bear/bow Ranger with Kudzu that leans on auto-attack, and we have all seen that warrior in Ascended with Dusk that causes a wipe or keeps getting downed because they can’t play with a team.

You are totally abstracting the player out of the equation. Well if you want to do that, then apply it to both sides (math principles, yay!). A character fully geared in Ascended, if you remove the player, has a total 0% effectiveness.

The only way you can use numerics, strictly, to create tiers of effectiveness in twitch, reflex, or memory based game play is to consider an environment where all things besides gear are equal. That includes player, profession, personal abilities, hardware and network connection. And that environment is impossible to create.

You cannot conclude objectively that player A is more effective than player B solely based on gear.

TTS beat Tequatl the other day in their underwear (http://goo.gl/LPhGZO). That is, arguably, the second hardest encounter in the game at the moment. End game raid style content, that requires coordination, cooperation and communication as well as survivability and DPS under pressure of a strict time limit.

Underwear.

So yes, Ascended gear is optional for high level play. The elitist attitude concerning other people’s gear choices and what can or can’t be done with them…that is detrimental to the community.

…But they dont look like Ascalonian military at all. :x

Hope it met your expectations.