Guild Wars 2

I concur, this is the best update in a long way with regard to the overarching effects to the game world as a whole.

As for some people already with ascended, well keep in mind the chests can drop. Even if they are a low drop rate you are looking at tens of thousands of players. People are going to get them. Then you have the money bags that could boost progress by buying everything they could to help hit 500 as quick as possible. None of that makes the tier irrelevant. There were people out there that managed to get legendaries within weeks of launch.

It was a brilliant way to get people to sink gold, choose between selling/salvaging high end items and liquidate excess low tier materials while also requiring a decent time commitment. Lots of characters need 2-4 ascended weapons. Multiplied by every alt you intend to gear up. To get BiS for all my characters I would need 11 weapons. I may be able to get one or two quickly through crafting, but once I have blown through my resources, the rest of them are going to take time and effort and playing diverse content.

As convoluted and confusing to casual/new players as the process might be, it was a much needed addition.

Now I am just hoping they start focusing on content that makes those stats everyone is working so hard for relevant. I mentioned in another post that right now, even in the hardest content the game has to offer, you cant pick out an ally and tell if they are using masterwork, rare, exotic, or ascended trinkets.

Whats the point in devoting hours to getting BiS if 100% of the game can be done, efficiently, entirely using a tier or two below it? If we burn dozens of hours to get exotic weapons that amount to saving 8 minutes on a dungeon run, how many dungeon runs must we do for that investment to pay off? I think a fair question to ask in the hunt for ascended weapons (and soon armor) is, “Does my character need this to meet the challenges the game throws at me?”, if the answer is no, then why bother with it at all?

The OPS perspective is very reasonable to have. Especially for a GW1 player.

The motivation in GW2 really is chiefly AP score and super expensive gear. And as players we feel that’s what we need to play for because that’s what they give us.

But why? Honestly there isn’t much of a difference between rare, exotic and ascended. Sure higher stats speed things up slightly. You might finish a dungeon ten minutes or so quicker but all of the content is still “do-able” with gear that isn’t even close to top tier.

AP score gives you nice little boosts to stats, but is 1-5% more XP or Karma really that important when the game gives it out like candy for nearly every single thing you could possibly be doing?

Once you have the skins you want, asking yourself why you need ascended gear, or why you need that next 500 AP for a 1% boost, is a legitimate question.

In other MMOs you need the +5 belt buckle of greater uberness because it could very well mean group success or failure in a piece of content. That’s the treadmill. Get the thing from dungeon X so you can do dungeon Y to get its thing so you can go to dungeon Z. Gear has a very significant impact and can gate you out of content. I’m not saying GW2 should ever go that route. Just wanted to point out how crucial gear tiers are in other games and how irrelevant it is in GW2. For example, can you tell in that 30 person zerg if one player is wearing masterwork trinkets or ascended? No. And it doesn’t particularly matter.

In GW you could look at a players health and know what runes they were packing. You could see an allies skill hit a mob and know if they were or weren’t runed into that trait. There were very few runes, there were very few gear tiers and very few trait lines. But every single point mattered and was apparent.

What we are missing is the difficulty gradient that makes you really need and notice those traits or that makes that 1% matter. GW has been going for nearly a decade because of its challenge. Hard-mode, Zaishen Missions, Dungeons. Those moments when you get a bad pull and the whole party thinks “oh kitten, oh kitten, oh kitten” and you overcome it by the skin of your teeth. One simple mistake, could cause all hell to break loose and failure actually made the next attempt harder, forcing you to be better. Every last player and skill decision mattered. And you played the content first and foremost to beat it. Then hoped for something cool from the chest at the end.

Compare that to GW2. We zerg from mob to mob with little regard for the content to get as many boxes as we can for a skin or material for a low impact item, or we check the achievement panel to see what we need to do in an update to get points before we even start it.

Add to all this the fact Professions and secondary professions were all important to group composition. Does your profession matter, at all, now with the zerg nature of content? Not really. So what is the point of having multiple characters in PvE? They all serve the exact same function and in the cloud of ability spam it really makes no difference what profession you are. Why gear up and master a Thief and a Warrior? There will never be a situation where one can make or break the run. You never have to say “Oh we have this, let me switch to that”. No one will ask you “Hey can you bring your <profession> for this run so that other guy can play <profession>?”.

A serious question would be how could Anet change that and is it even possible at this point? I think GW was lightning in a bottle. And now Anet is stuck somewhere in between trying to appeal to the general MMO market and please their die-hard fans, and they just lost somewhere all of the things that made their franchise, historically, so great.

GW2 is an incredible MMO. But IMO it’s not a very good GW game…yet. I still have some faith.

The only thing we ever seen of Bubbles was a two second teaser at the end of the manifesto trailer years ago. Back then Cantha had a district, dyes were account wide unlocks, there was an entire team devoted to extended experience, and the Dragons were the main antagonist and immediate threat to the world that we battled via evolving dynamic event chains that shaped the surrounding area.

Cantha is not a district, dyes unlock per character, extended experience was reduced to a bare bones API and put in the hands of the community, the Dragons went back to sleep and we are battling cartoon characters via temporary content while ignored dynamic events have left the world static.

I’m personally never really expecting anything related to Bubbles to materialize in the game.

Each elder Dragon has one or more generals. Tequatl is Zhaitan’s general. He spawns as a meta event in Sparkfly Fen on a timer, and you fight a very similar dragon in story mode.

The wiki is a good source for all of this stuff if you are looking for it’s place in lore.

Awe.1096:

It still boggles my mind how people are ready to enter the public forums and ask to support their selfish agendas without shame. Your rhetoric is meaningless and your evidence is only handpicked to support the claim. All I really see is “I got it and I dont want anyone else to have it!”. Defending your right to be able to obtain something – sure, go ahead. Actively appealing to block good stuff from other people becouse you are not willing to share… cant describe it without triggering adult filter.

I don’t have the backpack. Actually I missed SAB the first time around and most of Frost and Flame; I entirely agree with the OP. Some things are meant to be exclusive. They are a visual indicator of “I was here when…”.

It adds an intrinsic value and meaning to the item rather than just being another random piece of pixel crack.

At the same time, late comers shouldn’t be totally denied access to something equivalent. Thus alternate rewards. Players that were there for the premier of SAB could get a neat backpack. Players that came after can get a different color or variation. I think it would be neat to bring the old weapon skins back but add the flavor text “Replica Edition 1”. Then you have this neat weird market where SAB premier skins are worth more than replicas and older replicas might be worth more than newer ones just because that text is visible to the user and in gear pings.

Anyway, point here being your judgement on the OPs character could be very quickly turned back to you. Because I could say it sounds to me like you have a selfish agenda that makes you think you are entitled to everything everyone else has.

Look at it this way, if the OP went to the premier of a movie and they were giving out signed posters to those specific attendees, would you rage on the theater for not giving you the same thing the next weekend? If a game has special midnight release swag do you ask for the manager of the store when you cant get it the next day? Do you begrudge those that made arrangements and stood in line for either of those things? A reasonable person answers no to all of those. A selfish person with a false sense of consumer entitlement would answer yes.

Would I like a Frog skinned backpack? Sure. Do I have to have the exact same one as the people that were there for the launch of the event, diminishing the personal value that that item’s history and exclusivity holds for them? No, I’m not nine anymore. My mommy doesn’t need to buy me the same toy as my brother to keep us from fighting. So Ill happily take whatever backpack reward item this year has for completing the meta.

Have to concur with the OP. It really is heartbreaking to see the direction the game is going.

To speak to the farming updates and users posting that people do it, so they must enjoy it: I represent the type of player that dislikes farming outright unless it is cleverly disguised behind compelling game play. Circle-zerging does not qualify. But I farmed QP, I farmed Embers and I farmed Scarlet.

Why?

Because I felt like I had to. Achievements encouraged it, the rest of the world was abandoned en masse, market prices were shifting towards a higher average player wealth. With my play options already limited, I might as well just do something I don’t enjoy while everyone else is doing it so I don’t fall behind in more ways than one.

It really sucks the games new direction can make players feel obligated to do activities they don’t enjoy that are contrary to the games core philosophy and design because it is counter productive to do anything else. Dungeons seen a reward revamp, for example, along with the farming updates. Even with the new rewards and if I manged to find a group to continually run dungeon paths that we enjoyed, it would not have been 1/10th as profitable or beneficial from an account wide perspective.

So, if you are of the mind that there is a zerg farming, so everyone must enjoy farming, then you would be incorrect. I am positive that I am not the only player that feels this way.

And as a die-hard GW fan and Anet supporter, the whole zerg mentality, corralling players from zone to zone and constant changes in direction and focus are really putting me off. I am giving Anet the benefit of the doubt here that they can piece everything together and are listening to community concerns with regard to Living Story but if the zerg farm that was passed off as content for the last two updates is the direction they are going to stubbornly cling to, myself and my money are likely to be lured into the next game that I can ever quest in.

I finished my legendary not too long ago, and even though I was shooting rainbow unicorn goodness, I was a bit envious of the characters that had footfall effects on their legendaries or passive effects. There really isn’t anything special about the Dreamer until you shoot it. No idle or stowed effect at all.

Now I leave a trail of rainbow horseshoe prints in my wake. And it is glorious.

I have a legendary on my main. My other characters and my main’s offhand can make due with ascended.

TBH most of the legendary wasn’t that bad at all. I still have enough skill points and karma to get enough clovers, I still have a gift of exploration and enough badges for the gift of battle. And I’m sure I have enough dungeon tokens for just about anything. The gifts of might and magic are where it lost me. I don’t see farming/buying/saving up a stack of each T6 mat again any time soon.

Nuka Cola.8520:

What are we supposed to craft from 400 to 500? I made some ori ingots, got to 423 and now have no idea what to craft? Are we supposed to craft freaking exotics we’ve unlocked at 400? Do not compute.

Exotic discoveries. Same way you leveled up through every other tier.

MikaHR.1978:

AcidicVision.5498:

GOSU.9574:

Welcome to FLASHBACK 2012.

This is what happens to the peeps who say “LOL you noob if you think GW2 is a grind you don’t know what a grind is”. Yeah, all that “We don’t make grindy games”, ‘we don’t have a gear treadmill’, etc. All the peeps that harped on those of us who complained when the first implementations of all this began to surface. Yeah…

To all those peeps who said it wasn’t a grindy game…LOL.

To be fair, when Ascended was announced we were told that armor and weapons would also be coming. You cant really call it a treadmill, or mind blowing news, when its the same tier we have known about for a year. They just took their time introducing trinkets through various means.

Just as they told they dont make grindy games and all the crap before launch
Just like that they could just drop whole ascended crap and leave it at trinkets, or even better reduce ascended trinkets to exotic with infusion slot
Just as they could have implement it not as a joke that doesnt serve any intent or purpose they say it serves and only increases the grind for people that dont want grind in the first place.

Yes, just like that they could have done a lot much better things but they implemented a joke for GW2 players.

Fairly obvious you didn’t bother reading past the portion you quoted. If you can’t be bothered to read the discussion, don’t bother trying to reply. It just clutters the board.

GOSU.9574:

Welcome to FLASHBACK 2012.

This is what happens to the peeps who say “LOL you noob if you think GW2 is a grind you don’t know what a grind is”. Yeah, all that “We don’t make grindy games”, ‘we don’t have a gear treadmill’, etc. All the peeps that harped on those of us who complained when the first implementations of all this began to surface. Yeah…

To all those peeps who said it wasn’t a grindy game…LOL.

To be fair, when Ascended was announced we were told that armor and weapons would also be coming. You cant really call it a treadmill, or mind blowing news, when its the same tier we have known about for a year. They just took their time introducing trinkets through various means.

That said, everything in any game, or life for that matter, is a grind. That term itself is very very subjective and could be applied to anything. It has no standard definition that anyone can agree on and gamers especially just throw it at anything they don’t like. Especially if they are unfavorably disposed towards the concept of the thing to begin with.

I, for one, don’t believe the Ascended weapons are a grind. This is mainly because I don’t feel the need to have one immediately. But I do regularly map clear on alts, do jumping puzzles, mini dungeons, world events, dungeons and Fractals. So I will get what I need to make an ascended weapon, probably within a few weeks, without even consciously seeking out the materials. The game will provide what you need through casual play, or the gold to get what you need for the bits that are out of the way. I cannot perceive grind in making progress towards new weapons by doing what I was doing already anyways.

Now, if I felt I had to have one now, and did it by doing twelve jumping puzzles back to back, speed clearing the same dungeon, or running the same champ circuit for hours, then sure…I would feel like that was grindy and I would burn out. But that is more of a symptom of how you are playing the game than how the game is designed.

To break it down, if I wanted to catch up with Breaking Bad before watching the last half of the last season and made myself sit through a day of watching every episode back to back on Netflix, then found myself completely burnt out on and apathetic towards the show…is that the shows fault or my own fault for “grinding” through it just to get to the end, instead of consuming the content at a pace that would have kept it enjoyable?

I think I can see where they are trying to go with this. When the game was shiny and new, to get exotics you had to max a craft and make them, which was choked up by low T6 mat drop rates; buy with Karma in Orr; or do some heavy dungeon runs.

Now a year out, people have stockpiled so much karma thakittens trivial to run to Orr and buy a set without blinking an eye. We have world events, laurels, or salvaged dungeon items to flip instantly for T6 mats to craft what we want. The player base got highly efficient at speed clearing dungeons for tokens. And retro achievement chests left people sitting on stacks of badges of honor.

Basically, even if you have little to no gold at all, its dumb easy to gear out a character as soon as you hit 80. There is little to no investment in time or effort at all. We get best in slot gear for a new alt with the crap we have laying around.

It was so easy to get exotics that every other piece of gear in the game was trivialized. Merch food and ecto salvage.

Ascended gear remedies this by making the crafts available from random elements of the game. Instead of farming Orr for moldy bags, we go do a few jumping puzzles, some world events, a mini dungeon or two and kill some champs. Meanwhile, we are also getting rid of the stockpile of hundreds of thousands of lower tier mats that are clogging up the trading post and our inventories. Exotics remain useful as gear and get more valuable as salvage.

Ascended also require fewer T6 materials and Ecto than they do any other material. To lend to the idea of getting rid of excess lower tier mats while letting you hold on to the majority of your high end materials for legendary progress.

This is how exotics should have been. Require time, investment and a diverse style of play in order to gear out a character; while still being able to progress towards your ultimate goal but not deprecating the quality below it.

The philosophy and implementation are rock solid. With exception to one bit…
Ascended materials should be daily bound to a character, not to an account. The way it sounds to me, if I have a hunstman and a weaponsmith at 500, if one refines a material then the other is locked out. My characters shouldn’t be stepping on each others toes in pursuit of their individual crafts. My Thief should be able to craft a bow for my Ranger, while my ranger is crafting a staff for my Mesmer, while my Mesmer is crafting a sword for my Thief. I don’t mind each of them having an individual cooldown. But all of them sharing a cooldown is overly limiting.

Bumping this because some sort of response would be nice and I am in the exact same position.

I had 8 done just from playing over the past year. No idea which ones, so I went down the list in the wiki and did them all again. Finished with 36/38. Thought maybe I hit something, missed a trick or bugged when I hit the water, so I looked up the Dulfy guide and then went down that list. Still 36/38 with 94%. Some of them I did multiple times if the dive was iffy (cursed shore birds attacking / short dives where trick might not finish animation).

Are the problem puzzles going to be identified so people don’t spend 49s+ checking each one? Is there a solution being implemented that will list what goggles have been completed?

Since the achievement isn’t really complete-able and there is no way for players to identify which areas are trouble you may want to consider temporarily hiding it to keep others from pursuing it. It does amount to a decent time investment and good bit of pocket change.

Inspired.6730:

You make a lot of seemingly well thought out statements; however, they don’t lead to your conclusion.

Whether you like the living story content or not is irrelevant to whether more extensive content should be released via living story type updates or via an expansion. Otherwise, it would be like arguing that because you didn’t like Factions they should never have released another expansion and should just have released Nightfall though living story type content updates.

The content and method of release are two different things.

Also, you’re kidding yourself if you think that existing zones would be any less dead than you’re finding them while players are off playing new living story content than they would be if players were off playing new expansion content. If the new content is something the players like playing, they will be off playing it. All the dead zones you describe are is evidence that most players like the new content and are thus off playing it.

There was a point I guess I didn’t do a good job of explaining. In living story we see small updates that are largely temporary and may add some small permanent feature that players are generally over in about a week. The entire player base is corralled to one location, leaving the majority of the world barren.

Consider expansion content released in a living story format…

Lets say an event leads of to Dominion of the winds.
Every nook and cranny of that zone will be turned over in a matter of days. At the end of the first two weeks players will have reduced the content to the most profitable/repeatable activity or grinding out whatever list they have to in order to get a back piece. The second two weeks of this content introduces new skills and weapons. These will all be unlocked in minutes. The event ends with a reveal the Tengu are playable. Well by this point everyone is burnt out on the Dominion, has played with the new skills, and will probably roll a Tengu, pop a insta-twenty scroll and then craft to 80, because the next update is starting so they don’t have time to appreciate anything new. And this whooooole mess is wrapped up in a throw away story and salted with a dozen or more minor but very apparent bugs.

Now consider a proper expansion a year in development with a dedicated team…

A profession is introduced. The Tengu are introduced as playable. The dominion of winds contains their home city, 1-15 starting area, and a 75-80 zone with dungeon. Existing professions get a new main and hand offhand weapon and perhaps some skills. This hits everyone at the same time.

Most players will probably roll a Tengu with the new profession, do their starting area and then hop into the rest of the world. Why craft or scroll to 80 when everything is new to experience? A lot of players will roll the new profession of their favorite race. Then they have a new high level area to jump in to when they need a change of scenery, each of their existing characters will play slightly different and there is a new dungeon to attempt. The population is spread out, doing new things or doing old things in a new way. And instead of being rushed through it in two weeks and then having something else thrown at us before we can digest the changes, we would have a few months to let the meta evolve, let the market settle in and really get familiar and comfortable with the new stuff.

That’s a beautiful thing.

I may be wrong. In fact, I would welcome being wrong. But I do not see, given what we have seen so far, how Living story can really provide that expansion experience, freshness and re-invigoration.

I don’t like it.

Actually starting to become less and less of a fan. Other posters that recognize me know I have been supportive of the game and Anets design decisions since beta. My posting history reflects that, with my only real criticisms being the black lion chest/key scam, that live action trailer, and the damage WvW still suffers from caused by months of free guesting.

But this living story stuff…while it was interesting and novel to begin with is just starting to feel pointless. We started the Hero’s Journey cycle with the Dragons. And then that just stopped and left us hanging. Then we are dropped into the middle of another Hero’s Journey cycle that seems extremely disjointed and random.

The worst part is Tyria as a whole is just left to whither because the bulk of players run off to do the living story stuff. Not because they might particularly want to, but because they are afraid they will up being penalized if they don’t.

I have seen the villagers outside of DR in QD sick more in the past few weeks than I ever have. In the living story we are trying to keep someone from murdering Krytans, while out in the world we are letting them get poisoned to death by bandits. This is a perfect allegory for the current state of the game. Living story zones see overflow, while the rest of the world dies.

So it’s extremely sad there will be no traditional expansions (and even sadder that apparently no expansion content seems to be in production since they don’t even have a delivery method settled upon). Traditional expansions have their place in MMOs. For instance, new classes and races will cause people to revisit low/mid level zones on alts and allow them to experience old content in a new way. While new high level areas, dungeons and prestige awards give current players large new chunks of content to experience and explore. Instead we get living story: every player in the same place, doing the same thing, getting the same stuff neglecting an enormous, gorgeous world and rich lore that is lucky to hold on to a crumb from living story’s temporary content plate.

For myself, the draw away from expansions and move towards Living story, temporary content and focus on corralling players to one tiny area have me more inclined to give another game a grab at my allotted MMO play time. A few months ago, I never would have considered it.

Fox.8957:

MithranArkanere.8957:

I want them to become Adventure-tron & his sidekick, ultimately becoming something like Nicholas the Traveler all over the world.

This, 1000 times this.

Im beginning to wonder if a Nicholas type NPC is even possible. That was a big deal in GW. It was pretty much on the daily routine for everyone. I’d think if it was something they could do without framework changes, then it would be done already.

There was a story about a girl who walked her dog across country to visit the Studio in Seattle (http://goo.gl/efq4o). Anet were going to dedicate an NPC to her that walked with its pet all over Tyria (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ameranth). A lot of people expected her to be the Nicholas replacement; however, an NPC who’s first line of dialog is “I’m walking from one end of Tyria to the other”, dedicated to a player that didnt sit still, hasn’t moved since pre-launch

ArenaNet expected too much from players. They had a built in audience that would have ate the game up as designed. A very dedicated fanbase. But that fanbase was probably not large enough to sustain GW2.

So they drew in the general MMO crowd. And honestly, we are dealing with types of players and behavior that we never really had to in GW. If UW were in GW2 now, as it was in GW, the only people that would touch it would be veterans. The forums would explode with complaints about how it takes too long, the rewards are random and not good enough, its too kittenly specific builds and classes can farm it, Dhuum isn’t “real difficulty”, Dryders are OP, and many many more. Yet, that was a brilliant piece of content that GW players enjoyed for over half a decade and would still enjoy.

Unfortunately Anet needs more than just their fans and the content we know and love from them as a studio isn’t well received by the influx of players that want hard content that doesn’t require effort, want progression that doesn’t require time, want rewards that do not require investment. So we go from 40+ events that add depth and activity to world, to being thrown into an instance and told to just kill all the things.

I can understand what Anet has done to GW2 and why. But what GW2 did to Anet sort of makes me sad.

I am mostly a PvE commander (I only ever tag up in WvW when a commander buddy needs a quick break) and I find the tag incredibly useful.

I personally use it for…

LS events to rally players

IMO, the invasions would be nearly impossible without commanders. Sure there are some bad ones, but generally the players figure pretty quick who is advancing the event and who is a vanity commander or farmer. Pavilion farming was much more efficient with a commander leading the pack. In Lost Shores it indicated leadership present at outposts or support in route to one.

DE chains to keep players on the critical path

There are plenty but the first that come to mind are the escort event for Shatterer or Plinx chain. Commander tags give players a quick, visual way to know the event is active, what stage its on, and a beacon to the action when they WP.

Organizing temples

It’s easier as a commander to rally players for temples. And players that see a temple event with a commander icon (usually correctly) assume that event is being played and jump in. Whereas with no Commander they may just ask in /m and get no response until five minutes later when people are screaming for help at Grenth.

Marking the map to give people a quick reference point

If I happen across a champion or rewarding event in the middle of the zone its just easier for me to use my tag and say “Champ X on me”. Then everyone can find the closest waypoint or route from where they are. Same goes for Keepers to the Hidden Garden, Skritt Burglar chest, Guild bounties (usually that im not even involved in) or whatever else I think might be of interest or needed by players in the zone.

Community events

On Occasion I will go into LA and gather a squad of people that need a map cleared, a vista tour of an zone, or zone jumping puzzles and mini dungeons. These squads are usually bigger than standard party size. Being a commander makes it easy for me to lead the group to and show them through the content.

PvE commanders definitely have their place in the game.

All that said, if you aren’t leading a squad, you should tag out. When people check the map for commanders or are looking for a squad to jump into, having random commander tags on the map gums up the works.

Also, if you are just following another commander, you should tag out. People get confused as to who is actually leading that squad and who they should be listening to. You could run off to harvest some wood and half the squad will follow you, then miss directions on where the other half is going. Some people are of the mind that more commander tags in one spot is a better indicator to players looking for where to go. Well, one or two suffice. A commander party on one event just misdirects players in that area and leaves other events ignored.

Anet will never respond to these posts. They never have. The strategy is ignore the problem until it goes away or people just accept it.

EA did much the same thing with the Simcity fiasco. They just refused to answer questions, make statements or grant interviews regarding the obfuscated DRM.

Really, they know we hate it. Most of the people that work there are gamers also, and they know they would hate it. But in the end its someone above their pay-grade making the decisions and the developers are just doing their jobs.

As far as I know, we haven’t heard from Mike O’Brien in a long time now. And he used to be decently active in promoting the game and the community. I would like a statement from him regarding the current cash-shop practices and outright disregard to the comments that pop up after every one of these updates from hundreds of players. But given the game is going on a year now and the cash shop skin business just keeps getting grosser*, I would be very surprised if the “cover their ears and go ‘la-la-la-la-la’ before hiding head in pile of money” strategy ever changes.

*There was a time that weapon skins were one very rare drop. Now they require ten individual rare drops or one very rare drop. The psychology there is disgusting. Someone may spend $50 on keys and stop if they didn’t get a skin. But what if they spend $50 on keys and get seven ticket scraps? Well they have to keep going…

Compare this to the cash shop skins from GW. You purchased armor and costume skins outright. The bonus mission pack had unique weapons skins for each section of the story. 0 randomness. 0 gambling. 100% getting what you paid for.

Hell Avenger.7021:

Ok, this is enough. I will not support Anet with RNG boxes. I did it last time with $100, but this has gone too far.

The increasingly monetization with lack of decent content is not working out for me.

Likewise. This strategy is burning lots of good faith and consumer confidence. I’m not sure the trade-off is worth it in the long run.

Beloved skins locked behind very very large random paywall instead of reasonable direct purchase…

:: opens torch and pitchfork stand ::

Well, I guess we should get this party started.

Always neat to see players discover stuff, either inside the game or in outside media. There was a reddit the other day by a new player that discovered the Not so Secret Aetherblade jumping puzzle and was mind blown.

He also got the opposite reaction that Zepher got here. People let the OP know what update added it and that there was stuff like that to find all over the game, then the conversation proceeded to talk about the jumping puzzle.

Gotta say, i’m a bit disappointed that an outside player community treats each other better than the players on the official forums treat each other a lot of the time.

Zepher, keep up the enthusiasm, its refreshing to see.

I thought they were pretty helpful. While getting clovers I ended up getting a bunch of the T6 mats I needed.

Attempt = clover (win because I need 77)
Attempt = 2 ecto (win because of free retry, ecto towards gift of fortune or 18+s.)
Attempt = 2-4 T6 mats (win because you need 250 each)
Attempt = Lodestone (win because $$)
Attempt = 1-5 T6 refined (could be win/wash/loss depending on if your legendary needs them)

Attempt = Coins or shards (loss. Gained extra attempts, but lost an ecto)
Attempt = Crystals or treasure (loss. 10 clover recipe item for single clover recipe botch?)

Clovers should be the first thing that players go for in their legendary hunt since even tries that don’t result in clovers themselves lend progress towards the other gifts you need.

ColinJohanson.2394:

… we’ll have some other reveals you’re not going to want to miss…stay tuned!

Playable Largos and new underwater capital confirmed. Bubbles Imminent.

There’s an active Livia conspiracy? I have one of those! Livia used the Scepter of Orr to grant herself and Evennia immortality and they are now lovers, living in seclusion in a secret tropical paradise that was once Quarrel Falls.

Ask me about my Vampire Gwen conspiracy theory and content suggestion sometime.

White Mantle…maybe. They have been pretty much reduced to little more than bandits though, so its hard to see a large scale attack of any sort.

And a little while ago Anthony Robert H. had already discounted the Mursaat as a possibility. Paraphrased, he said knowing the entrance the Mursaat should have make it a bit too intensive design, art and budget wise for an incremental living story release.

They will be around eventually. But probably has part of one of the larger yearly releases.

BTW, when they eventually do show up…I think they are hiding in the Wizard’s Tower.

Everyone doesn’t use Mystic salvage kits?

The orbs are not luck. They have one of the largest, most obvious start up animations in the game. You have about three seconds of a huge pulsing purple cloud, and then another two to three seconds of the orb just sitting there before it does anything. If you are kiting Liandri in a circle and looking in towards the center of the dome so you can see her, the aoe, and the clones, then its literally impossible to not see their warm-up animation.

You are in a circle, meaning the furthest the orb could possibly spawn is the diameter of the dome, which seems to be right around 1200 units since I can scorpion wire from one end to the other. And that is with the orb directly opposite your location. Normally it will be closer. Within 600 to 900 range.

If 5 seconds is too short of a time to close a 900 unit gap and hit a target as you run by, then you are not losing because of the orb or luck or chance. You are losing because you aren’t reacting fast enough or not properly managing resources and endurance.

Crown Pavillion is a farmers paradise. Lodestones and T6 mats from destroyers. Bags of T6 mats from bandits, pirates and ogres. High drop rate for rares. Integrated magic find and a least two champions per five minutes.

However people would rather abuse the new champ loot system so events and champions all see a nerf rather than farm the area the was placed there specifically to farm.

I think there is a subtle point here Anet is trying to prove after all of the excuses that events are only sabotaged because farming areas a nerfed. And that is, it doesn’t matter how much they can give us legitimately, if players can abuse something to get more then they will. Even if it is to the detriment of the developers, game and community.

Not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, I appreciate the mini and experience scrolls. I think I might still have a character under 20…

But someone at Anet sort of missed the mark on why birthday presents were functionally awesome. Every year was a set, obviously the older the character was, the more unique it’s set was.

Collecting, hunting and selling minis was a big deal for people because, while it was easy to find first year minis, getting an entire set of 4th and 5th years were more difficult. You could run around with it and people would recognize that the character was five years old, or had been around since launch. Or maybe they bought it, because we always had the option to sell them if we needed to gold, or trade them around like baseball cards.

The Jenna mini is neat, but everyone will have the same one (some of us will have eight of them O.o), we probably wont be able to trade it but even if we can it wont have any value because its so common, and dollars to donuts it wont count towards the achievement.

Im glad they are still doing character birthdays. But this is another feature (and what GW1 players would consider tradition) that they really had right the first time around and took an inexplicable step backwards on.

Has anyone heard anything from Anet about being at Gamescom this year?

I know that’s historically their favorite convention. There is a long history of fan parties, exclusive items, big reveals, tournament stations, demos and swag.

With it being right up against the 1 year anniversary of GW2 I would expect them to be there in grand fashion.

Just to speculate a bit, I think the next Dragon reveal will happen at Gamescom, along with a new PvP map and Dev vs. Player tournament.

I prefer Pavillion farming while the event is active. I have a current need for T6 mats and a ton of ecto, and QP just seems better for it. With 300% MF rares I can salvage come at a pretty steady stream and claws/dust/scales/blood come at a fairly even pace also.

Now I Understand that Cursed/Frost can yield triple the boxes in the amount of time. And one drop from those could be a few 100 gold to buy whatever I need. I’ll definitely be doing that after the Pavilion shuts down. But I know I can go into Pavilion and score 10-15+ T6 and 5-10+ rares, on top of silver and vendor trash within an hour. I gave Cursed Shore and Frostgorge an hour each yesterday, opened over 100 boxes, and got less than 10 T6, 1 rare, 0 exotic.

And one point I would criticize in the OP is thakittens a waste to farm detroyers between every boss cycle. And its progressively getting worse. Their main drops are claws and destroyer lodestones, and those have both crashed in value because of the farm. Lodestones from 1.2g to 55s, Claws from 16s to 8s. It is more lucrative to farm bags from Bandits and Pirates.

GW2 is a pretty demanding PC game as far as MMOs are concerned; it’s also absolutely gorgeous, so a common problem is for people to try to run the game beyond their rigs capabilities and sabotaging their own FPS. It really doesn’t matter that a card(s) could run game X on extreme-ultra-mega-settings-rawr. There are a lot of other factors to take into consideration.

That said, if you are having performance issue, check and see what auto-detect recommends for graphics settings at balanced. And then drop a few things. Or check what it recommends for performance, and bump up texture detail or aliasing one setting.

Shadows have an immediate impact on FPS and, while pretty, have no functional value. If that is enabled, turning them off is a cheap way to get a few more frames.

Not to say everyone here made that oversight, but more often than not people want to crank up the shiny and then wonder why their FPS drops when things get busy.

Thief.
Traits and utilities are in the screen shot.

P/D (in hindsight P/P would have worked also) and Sword/Pistol in the second weapon set to kill orbs and spam headshot until I could switch back to P/D.

I used Orrian meat soup for the 40% endurance regen speed and might.

Kited her around in a circle in phase 2 and just applied poisons. She hardly ever stops moving, so Torment burnt her down pretty quick.

She had about 10% health left and lept at me as I switched to sword set to kill an orb. I was crippled had 2k health left, could only dodge once and was right in the middle of an aoe with four clones running for me. Spammed pistol whip. The first use dodged the AOE and took her down to a sliver, the second use evaded the shadow explosions and killed her.

Had I tried to heal then dodge, the AoE would have killed me. Had I dodged the AoE and tried to heal, her or a shadow would have killed me. It was pretty intense. Well worth the effort.

About 50 attempts on a mesmer because a lot of people in the Pavilion were saying that was the way to go. Got frustrated, switched back to my main, and finished in about 8 tries.

Dude…this was the best, most proper rant I have seen in a good while. I felt like I needed a nap after I finished reading it.

I may not agree with everything you’ve said, but well done.

My suggestion is to pick a goal for your character. That’s what a lot of people end up missing.

Other MMOs and games explicitly point out to you Do this thing→ you should have this now → once you do, go do this.

That direction might be tedious or totally up to random drops in repeated content. But the goal is specifically there and you have a fair idea of what to do next.

Adversely, ArenaNet drops the leash. You finish your story and the world is open for you to do what you want to do and accomplish what you want to accomplish. This can easily leave people lacking motivation and attachment to their characters.

When I made my guardian I wanted her to have very specific armor, with very specific weapons, one particular title and she was going to play a certain way. Everything I did led towards creating that character. Now I use her to lead temple runs in Orr because that’s what she was made for. When im done doing that I jump on my Thief and create a squad to lead players through new event content, because thats what she was made for.

Try crafting a character as opposed to rolling one and just following it along. It can be immensely satisfying.

Swilt.8415:

I know that’s not much of a point – cos ’Murica and tough kittens….

Quote of the day. Made me choke on my tea.

Kind of have to agree. Max level farming in lowbie areas was already an issue before. From Dulfy it looks like most of the new skins drop from Queensdale champions and that has just made it much much worse.

I suggest anyone that doesn’t think this is an inconvenience to low level alts or new players roll a human character and try to play through your home zone. You will most literally not be able to participate in anything.

Now people know I’m not really one to call foul on much that’s not contained to RNG cash-shop shenanigans, but this is pretty broken. 80s have the entire game available to them. Levels 1-15 only have four zones and those are tied to their personal story.

Unless this was done intentionally for some strange reason, those skins should be yanked from the baby champ’s loot tables. The level 15+ areas would probably be ok. At least in those zones everyone across the board has some levels, skill points and a few traits behind them so it’s easier for everyone to be able to contribute and get credit.

Dahkeus.8243:

I should pause here and say, that if humanity were in a different place, there would be absolutely nothing problematic with putting watchbots like this into GW2. The problem is inherently culture itself.

1. Not every culture shares this issue.
2. By crying “over sexuliazation!” and “Exploitation!” at every model of the male or female form, you are perpetuating the issue and holding culture back.

Instead you should look at artistic expression for the merits it provides. In this case, the Watchknights symbolize confidence, empowerment, advancement, elegance, and protection.

Seeing one and saying “errmahgawd it haz bewbz! BOOO!” trivializes everything about it and encourages the exact perception that you are vehemently opposed to. You are quite literally the Biagio da Cesena to Anet’s Michaelangelo.

Humanity isn’t where you think it is, so you propose censorship over education and expression. How do you ever expect anything to evolve?

Not content with just complaining about every update and change, trivializing the creativity and effort required cyclical updates and attacking developers ability to competently do their jobs…we are now trying to beat down how they express themselves artistically?

I know a few women that walk on men in heels and hit them with things as a full time job and they would say that, if anything, the WatchKnights would be an empowering symbol rather than exploitative …

(15 min later)

…I just sent one an image of the WatchKnights and asked about it and she confirmed my assumption and added that people who see them as sexbots should have more pride and respect for the female form instead of seeing a representation and assuming it is a symbol of objectification instead of confidence.

So there you have it. Anet, is actually more forward thinking than most of its critics (The sylvari having totally gender independent sexuality and visible relationships between Sylvari of the same “gender” showcased in the story also lend to this). Jenna’s Watchknights are an obvious symbol of strength, dominance, and grace. A lot of you are just too uptight to see the more progressive expression.

Helps to know what class you are.

During the Ravenous stage you cannot stealth. I’m not sure about the rest of the fights, but I can tell you in all certainty that you do not need it. Lots of the thief’s utilities make the challenges a cake-walk. If you are using utils or wasting init to stealth, you are making things much harder on yourself and may have become a bit too dependent on it.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

And why is there waiting: so people can watch other fights. Does anyone care? No, because they are busy with their boss. Nobody cares about the other fighting basically. No one cares for this gimmick.

It would work, if it would be like PvP spectating where you can actually see what someone is doing and see their build! That would be fun to see how others are doing it and learning something. But watching through the dome is just stupid, you don’t really see anything of interest.

You don’t speak for the entire player base. And in general you shouldn’t make such sweeping generalizations.

In my experience, in one day of the event, people were getting into spectating. Players were cheering each other on in /s and doing emotes. If someone was having trouble with a boss, the people that were watching what they were doing and how they died would give advice or suggestions. In an overflow, I and a few others spent easily over an hour at a single dome, having a blast. Someone got Liandri and we had a little dance party.Those people added me to their friends lists.

To summarize, its working as intended. And my single experience, invalidates your entire generalization.

In fact, we learned something valuable recently that you should keep in mind…
during the election, the forums heavily favored Evon and the Abaddon Fractal. Yes, there were Kiel supporters also, but the Evon support was overwhelming. There were even threads based on how there would be no way Evon could lose because all of the events and rewards were skewed his way. There were screen shots of forum goers with stacks of Evon buttons that had used boosters. Despite all of that, Evon lost. The lesson there is that not only is the forum community smaller than it thinks it is, but it is also totally out of touch with what the majority of the player base thinks, wants and enjoys.

Just because you don’t like it, it doesn’t mean no one does. Just because forum monsters are mad they cant rush through the gauntlet without interacting with anyone, doesn’t mean a large amount of users aren’t having fun with the spectation and social aspect of it.

Elbegast.6970:

Kiono.6187:

Elbegast.6970:

Vahkris.6847:

Elbegast.6970:

Vahkris.6847:

Elbegast.6970:

Vahkris.6847:

Honestly, I think players are focusing too much on the achievements and not enough on just playing the game.

Achievements have become the entirety of the game. Go try to kill the bosses in Orr or ask for a group to do Arah Story Mode. You won’t find anyone because they are all outside chasing balloons. ArenaNet is moving piles of populace to new locations each week while leaving the majority of the world as empty as Kessex Peak from Guild Wars 1.

The release just dropped, it’s not surprising you don’t see players doing pre-existing content when new content is now here. Everyone’s checking it out.

Outside of this, I certainly do see people killing the bosses in Orr.

Yes, it just dropped, I already have 9/16 achievements and I’m finished with this update. I have no need nor desire to log on until the next content update. Even then, I will log on only long enough to grab the new back item or perma-toy and repeat the cycle over again.

And in regards to the Orr bosses, your server must be far more active than mine. Orr is dead for me, no pun intended.

Awesome, good for you. Take advantage of the no subscription fee and only play when you like it. There’s something every two weeks so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to see if something grabs your interest. Whatever’s fun for you.

See that’s the kicker though. It’s not fun. I haven’t had fun in the game since this whole living story started. The core game was brilliant and then it just died with the introduction of the Living Story. I log on for new content in hopes of finding something fun but it never happens. The Living Story killed my game.

I didn’t realize they were holding an imaginary game-pistol to your temple and FORCING you to do the living story.

You don’t realize a lot of things…like the gating involved in the living story…you know, the gating that draws everyone away from the world events and funnels them into very specific areas. On my realm, I’ve seen lone players solo pre-events only to leave the bosses up because there aren’t enough people in the zone to kill them.

The living story is acting like a vampire, sucking the life out of the open world and the core game content.

Sounds to me like you are just a little hiney sore that all your friends ran off and are having fun at a shiny new playground, while you prefer the toys in the old one.

Here’s the thing, people en masse will always run off to see the new thing. It doesn’t matter what they add. When a new Fractal is added, most players will at least want to see it. New dungeon? Same. New zone world boss? Same. New jumping puzzle? Yuuup.

But once the shiny wears off, people will go back to doing what they enjoyed to begin with and all your friends will come back to play with you. Labyrinthe Cliffs got emptier and emptier the further into the event we got. There are usually no more than six-to-twelve people in the Aetherblade hide-out puzzle. Southsun was prominent in two living story events, now its a place for guild events and sometimes farming.

The neat thing is, that that content now becomes new core content for new players or annual content we can look forward to! Mindblown.

Some people are obviously very much enjoying themselves. If you personally do not like the update, then dont do it. Do the content you can do without a zerg behind you. Take a break. Go outside. Carefully craft a mixtape. Claiming the system is horrible because for a few days people are doing something they are excited about instead of what you like or think they should be doing instead is extremely selfish.

My favorite bug so far was when two people went in at the same time to fight Liadri. They were teleported into the arena and were just looking at each other confused while Liadri ran forward and dropped her AoE on both of them. It was the fastest match ever.

Definitely not a rant. More like a mildly agitated tweet.

Meriem.3504:

Was there an warning or anything in terms of changes to the the great collaspe were going to be made?

There were.

A lot of neat stuff goes by un-noticed by the players. There have been scaffolding and structures slowly growing in the collapse area for a while now. A definite indicator that something was progressively being built.

In Lions Arch there is an area with a little Asura that has been hard working on gates since head start began. When the game launched it was just piles of rocks and dismantled gate frames. Now they look like they are all but functional.

I’m sure there is a lot more that is actively going on and changing in the world but we don’t notice because the changes happen over time and Anet doesn’t point them out to us. Maybe at some point there will be consequence to us not noticing what NPCs are up to when they don’t have an orange circle around them. Maybe there already have been.

Just because a character is in the living story doesn’t mean they cant have an arc in personal story that doesn’t change their position in the game or their core character.

A stronger Mesmer could have come along and have Anise trapped so her identity can be assumed for the Jubilee. Maybe Anise was susceptible to this because it was a sort of Mesmer magic she is unfamiliar with (tada new Mesmer skills)

Gixx could fall under Jormag’s corruption, giving the dragon access to all of the alliance’s plans and knowledge of Tyria, past present and future. We find out we can reverse the corruption with the essence of an Eidolon, but one hasn’t been seen for 250 years (DUN DUN DUN)

Tegwen could be possessed by a spirit of a former priest of Abaddon, that was executed before the fall of Orr, who has no idea his God has been replaced and commences rituals to free him that instead release demons from the gates of Maddness. Players need to find an immortal, vaguely referred to in centuries old lore, that would know how to exercise the priest’s spirit from the Sylvari (needs more Razah)

As long as Anet restores them to where they were before the story arc, they can do just about anything with them in living story. It’s almost a waste not to.

I did it on a zerker thief with 13k HP on the first try

My weapon sets were s/p and sb.
Withdrawl, Caltrops, Tripwire, Assassin’s Signet, Basilisk Venom

What I did:
Kite the two melee around. Caltrops first, then tripwire when their cripple wears off and they get to close. I moved backwards, using dodge to avoid projectiles and SB 3 to hop out of the cannon AOE, while killing Stitches to get rid of enemy healing/regen.

Then I killed Captain, because it was the order Dulfy used, so why not? Next was cannon guy and finally first mate.

Projectile damage is pretty negligible. The cannon AoE is really easy to avoid without using up endurance. You can worry about it even less if you get health regen food. The melee can be rough but trip wire and caltrops keep them pretty much in check and you may as well use venom off the break to give you a few seconds so it can recharge and be used again before the end of the fight.

No reason to switch from SB. No reason to stop moving. Unless you want to pistol whip the first mate to death to speed things up.

Another thief that was having trouble with this fight watched me do it and beat it immediately after doing the same thing. I’m not sure what his armor or health was though.

But traditionally quests are a trail of breadcrumbs. They give you experience boots and lead you to the next area where you will find more quests. The traditional quest and its design goal are replaced by hearts and story missions. Experience is primarily gotten through dynamic events that activate near the hearts you are lured to. You don’t need achievements to progress at all, but you get them as a side effect of progressing.

I didn’t go out and hunt 500 skritt to fulfill a requirement. I killed 500 skritt over a course of months of playing different characters in different areas.

I didn’t get map completion because of the explorer achievement. But I got the explorer achievements for each region while getting map completion.

The OPs perspective of achievements as quests means he has whipped himself in to a mind set where he has to complete achievements. I would wager along with that, that he thinks he also has to get them as quickly as possible. Meaning, doing the same thing over and over to get in a few hours what was meant to get casually over the course of weeks. That doesn’t sound fun at all and it’s totally avoidable.