Guild Wars 2

I just bought gems two days ago. I spent a bunch and had 500 left over. Rather than buy something already in the gem store, I saved it and figured if the new outfit(s) I wanted cost more than 500, i’d trade gold for gems.

Skarg.6834:

Ah so it was intentional.
Had been debating if I was going to spend cash or exchange for Courtier outfit since that_shaman’s preview. But instead Anet found the point I am unwilling to spend money on this game anymore.

That is my reaction exactly. There have been problems in the past, annoyances, things that have been unfair or whatever, but never in the two years that this game has existed has there been anything so egregiously moneygrabbing at the expense [pun intended] of the player. This is sucking the fun out of this update for me- I discovered the exchange thing just before I was about to go and play some of the mini games, and I am seething, so mad that I can’t even calm down to have the fun I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.

I am not an Anet hater, and most of the things I have complained about, they have either fixed or it turned out to be a good thing.

This had better be in the former category. There is no way, NO WAY, I am going to exchange for 400 gems at a time when I don’t need that much. There is no explanation that will satisfy me as to why they didn’t make the exchange be for 1, 10, 100, 400 gems instead of 400, 800, 1200, 2000. The ONLY reason that even makes SENSE is “so people don’t have to click the 400-gem button so much”. That is ludicrous.

I am so incredibly disappointed and frustrated, especially since I just supported the game by buying gems in expectation of cool stuff coming out that I was excited to see, and I don’t have any way of “taking back” that financial statement of support. Writing this and hoping to god a dev sees it is my best chance.

Sarisa.4731:

If this current system MUST stay….

Sarisa perfectly sums up how the system SHOULD work. Traits are essential to playing the game, and should be simple AND easy to acquire at the lower levels, simple to acquire at the mid levels, and a challenge to acquire at the higher levels. However, that “challenge” should be in terms of event or achievement difficulty, not in terms of how difficult it is to find the event running or find people to complete the event.

And the unlock costs are prohibitive enough to be barriers to gameplay. Sure, a level 80 has dozens, if not hundreds of extra skill points, but a level 60 player does not.

loneknight.8425:

“Apple of Tybalt’s eyes”, “Seiran’s Cherry Blossom” “Herald of Forgal’s legend” on completion respective Order’s story arc

That brought a happy tear to my eye :’)

Hear, hear! This is a fantabulous idea and would cost next to nothing in coding time.

I would spend the next 12 months delicately crafting five new legendaries of each weapon type, at least a dozen more armor styles per weight (paying particular attention to styles that already exist and making the new styles be as different as possible), and another city as big as divinity’s reach, with all buildings enter-able, voiced dialogue with all NPCs and delivery heart quests crisscrossing that sucker until your run path on the map looked like a dreamcatcher.

Why would this ruin the game? Because with all that crap, who has time for living story content?

At this stage there isn’t really anything for me to add, espeically in the proposal format, but I wanted to participate. Items that are important to our (large, 300+ member) guild that have been suggested would be (roughly in descending order of importance):

• MotD visibility, whether as a upon-login email once daily, or a popup on login (latter preferred).
• In-game event calendar. Even better if it has pre-populated items (e.g. dungeon runs) as well as custom ones, and WAY better if it can handle signups.
• Additional tabs, e.g. Guildchat2, Guildchat3, for different purposes. Or better yet, custom chat tabs, which is not a guild issue.
• Guild Roster sortability improvements for different ranks as described by many in this thread
• Diversity of guild missions
• Guild buff improvements, including Instant Buy instead of slow build
• Additional permissions for different ranks, including sending guild emails, adding items to guild calendar, bank access, and triggering of guild missions (both in the menu and in the world at the guild mission location)
• Leadership tags, ie. Charname Lastname, Character Title Here, Guild Officer, [TAG]
• Member note, visible in roster
• Ability to see names of all characters for a given account name or search by character name even when offline

As far as reporting trolls goes, just having a “report —> siege trolling” button doesn’t give the system or a gm quite enough information. I think it would be more useful to have a system similar to /bug, where you have to put in a description of what is happening. Maybe requiring at least 50 characters of text.

Also, what protections would be in place for a jerk who calls out in map chat “OMG! Player-A is siege trolling! Quick, everyone report them!” when Player-A is doing no such thing; the jerk just happens to someone who has a grudge against Player-A?

Other than that, I do like the ideas that:

• all siege contain the name of the person who dropped it
• the interact dialogue for siege contain the name of the siege (“build flame ram” rather than “build”)

Also, this discussion is clearly marked as being about “siege trolls”; is there any possibility of discussing command trolling? In EotM there are often commander trolls who DELIBERATELY try to misdirect the masses by putting instructions in team chat, tagging up and leading people off a hard-to-see cliff, splitting the zerg because they don’t know which dorito is the right one to follow, etc. I’m not trying to start that discussion here, and if we focus on the reporting functions rather than siege changes, it will help with command trolls. I just want to be sure that alternate forms of wvw trolling will be addressed along with the siege trolling.

Gonna start by explaining my experience; I’ve been in since beta and have five level 80 characters, a couple mid-levels and a couple still-20 characters (birthday bonus). After the furor erupted, I created a new guardian and worked through Plains of Ashford for about an hour to experience the NPE for myself and see if it was really that bad.

Much of what I noticed has been posted in this thread, and I’m going to expand on those things a little:

Nokaru.7831:

Here is perhaps the biggest and most subtle problem with the NPE that’s technically “working as intended” – The “stat burst” and the “stat slump" effect.

I am actually having a hard time understanding why this was considered good in the first place. The only idea I could come up with was that on those burst levels, you suddenly feel super strong – but if the tradeoff is feeling super wimpy in the meantime, it’s not worth it. Why not gain a little bit of stats every level? It would also serve to fill up the level-up menu, so it’s better in that way, as well.

eyestrain.3056:

1. Unlocking skills all at once per weapon was … more boring. Previously fights didnt feel like grind because I was unlocking skills along the way

I had the advantage of creating a new character in a class I already play, so I couldn’t speak to whether chunks of new skills are confusing. However, running around with only one skill, or maybe two after the opening instance, was boring as all get-out, and since killing bad guys barely made a dent in my XP bar, it did make the fights feel more grindy. I knew I would be doing this for a long time.

eyestrain.3056:

4. Some world-building dialogue/heart quest options have been removed… *What drew me to gw2 was its world, characters, visuals. These charming details help it stand out…

My guildies and regular play-mates can tell you how determined I have always been to complete hearts by non-combat methods as much as possible. Having to kill stuff is just not what thrills me.

I mean, there’s a special feeling for hauling out a big AoE and thrashing 6 guys at once, or finally taking down a champ by yourself for the first time – I’m not opposed to combat per se, but in general, killing is what I do on my way between other bits of content, or to grind out particular things I need (achievements, drops, etc).

Having the majority of those non-combat options taken away was a huge disappointment to me. Probably my biggest annoyance about the entire NPE. Especially with fewer fighting skills available, I’d so much rather be able to do some of those clicky, immersion-providing tasks. Exactly as stated here:

Eh, some rage and hyperbole is justified, I think… When I found out that the Metrica Inquest/shark event chain has been removed, I was dumbfounded. ….

What is left instead? Instead of feeding cows, running around with water, turning into a repair golem? Some generic combat without most conditions and pressing F for 10-15 levels. I mean… How does that even compare?

Exactly.

eyestrain.3056:

3. The level up menu gives vague, incomplete information…

The fact that devs had to come and explain that many of those things were not being UNLOCKED but just EXPLAINED in the level up menu should illustrate how unclear the menu is. Even putting the words “Learn about…” in front of the tutorial options would help out with that. (e.g. instead of just “Waypoints” make it say “Learn about Waypoints”). Luckily, I read the disclaimers about misinformation prior to rolling that character, and armed with that info, I was able to discern the difference between items that were just named, and items that had the words “You have unlocked” in front – because I was looking for it. Otherwise, in the midst of running around the world, I probably would not have noticed the “Unlocked” was present on some things and not on others.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

praise where praise is due:

• The dodge tutorial.
• The new hearts
• The idea of making each level feel rewarding.

This was spot on.

As far as things that I haven’t seen mentioned:

1. Not being able to acquire skill points, even when you were standing right at a skill point person/location, was INFURIATING. I do not see why new players cannot collect skill points from the get-go. Sure, they can’t USE any of the skill points until they unlock skill number seven, but to be standing right there at the skill guy and have him say " I’m busy right now…" that really rubbed me the wrong way.

2. The arrow when your hit points are low is probably useful for lowbies, but man, you only need it for a couple levels. Ideally once it has been flashed 3-5 times, regardless of level, don’t flash it again. It comes across rather insulting!

Thanks for listening!

This is really long, but it’s correct. My biggest beef is having the “wrong” choice selected when buying and selling (ie, I want to match lowest seller when selling, but buy instantly when buying)

pasted from reddit post by NornGuardian:
I’ve seen tons of people posting to Reddit & [Map] Chat about this so the more people know the better.
I first noticed it when I hit level 29 myself (though I’d been told about it) at this point. Basically the Hearts in the level 29 areas (eg Genderren Fields) Vistas, Skillpoints, etc — All give minimal amounts of experience ranging from (70-80).
Best thing you can do is go to another map and pass into the 30’s. Crafting is also another big offender; in that people will unknowingly try and craft past these levels, waste gold and get stuck at a much earlier level than planned.

Additional comments from redditors in that thread:

• Can confirm, experience was significantly lower percentage than it should be.
• Also can confirm. Was leveling a new ele before patch via crafting. Got my 7 levels maxing cooking (20-27). Only got 2 levels maxing jewel crafting (27-29) after the patch. Tried the edge of the mist karma train after and got about 100 xp per completed event. :/
• I just got to 30 and at 29 I was getting 2 or 3 xp for killing same level monsters
• Map completion of Lion’s Arch was also messed up for me at level 29. I noticed I was getting way less XP than normal while discovering POIs/Vistas/WP in Lion’s Arch. I got to 100% completion and the reward chest gave me something like 600 XP (can’t remember exact value).

And then the OP came back and mentioned:

• Mmmm you don’t need to avoid them after level 29; just while level 29. I tested that earlier after I went back to Genderren at level 32/33 and got full EXP values.

So….

If you have any way to get a Tome of Knowledge from achievements, PvP reward tracks, or any other method, it is highly suggested that you use this to skip level 29 rather than grinding it. Or just set the character aside until the bug is resolved.

sunset.3056:

1 FLAW WITH YOUR POST. Your son is 6 and not this 5yo I intended to read about in the title.

He’s six now. He was four when he started playing the game “the old way” and it was fine. He was five when he got his own account, playing the game “the old way” and it was fine.

Now the game is dumbed down past where he needed it when he was five years old.

If merging, please don’t miss this one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-lvling-system-literally-too-easy-for-5yo/

In the past year and a half, his reading and map skills have increased exponentially. If we were sports fans, I know he’d have collected and memorized every single baseball card in existence; since we’re not, he pores over the GW2 Official Player Guide book and memorizes the names of skills :P. Like, for fun. When he’s supposed to be putting on his pajamas. rolleyes

Other than that, I would consider him a really normal 6 year old kid. He’s CRAZY about Legos, likes to watch Wild Kratts and Timmy Time, enjoys gymnastics, makes his bed nicely but complains about picking up the crayons after coloring, loves to ride his bike but can’t quite do it without training wheels because our sidewalk is all tilty… you know the type.

• He has figured out how to deposit his materials (which I periodically go in and sell on the TP for him since he doesn’t do crafting).
• He understands targeting a little better, but can still get confused if there are same-named foes around.
• He’s started to figure out how to send /say messages and /tells, although we have a rule that he can’t talk to anyone that I haven’t put on his friends list.
• He is amazing at watching for buffs and debuffs, both on you and on your foes (walking by while I’m in the middle of a boss fight: “wow! 25 stacks of bleeding! And 15 stacks of vrunalarblilty! [ sic ] you guys are so good at this, mommy.”
• He’s as annoying as heck about giving play advice, especially when you are downed. (He still would rather try to rez you than kill the thing you have targeted when you’re downed, so there are limits to his understanding of that whole mechanic.)
• He still doesn’t have a true understanding of which stats are most useful to him, but he does have a general idea what the stats do and how to pick equipment that works for him.
• Similarly, he is able to alter his traits whenever he is in the mood to do so.
• He is familiar enough with his right-side skills (7-9) that he can swap them out to fit the occasion or his mood.
• He is able to change his look in the wardrobe and frequently runs out of transmutation stones.
• He has learned that it’s not really helpful to keep things for his alts, and got a copper fed salvage kit, so he salvages anything green and under that he doesn’t want for the present character, and sells or banks yellows.

This is a child who is just entering first grade, playing his first MMO.

So in case it wasn’t obvious, let me sum up the point here:

TL;DR: My kid got this game when he was five, and he could play it functionally, although he leveled slowly. Now he is six, and he plays well enough that he could probably fool a pug into thinking he was just a non-verbal medium-noob adult. He did not need the ridiculous leveling changes that were made, and many of them would have probably caused confusion as the gameplay changed as he went along.

If a five year old can do it, it’s not too complicated. They shouldn’t have changed it, because it wasn’t broken. When the only justification for your “improvements” are that leveling isn’t fun because you took away the trait-at-every-level fun, maybe you need to rethink that, too.

Removing the ability for new characters to learn at their own pace is ridiculous in the most literal sense (e.g. enjoy this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y ridiculing the changes). Furthermore, making these backwards steps apply to new characters on existing accounts with higher-level characters is, in a word, painful.

PS. Don’t even bother commenting on my parenting skills. I give less than zero cares about your opinion, will ignore your advice/opinion and continue doing what my husband and I feel is best for our individual family, and will not respond to you. Unless you’re supportive, in which case… :-D But regardless, this post is not about that, it’s about the game being so easy a caveman little kid can do it, and about the game staying “smarter than a first grader.”

A little bit of perspective on this:

My six year old has his own account. We bought him one for his fifth birthday, because when he was four, he kept begging to come play on my account, and one day he spent all my money on buying bronze harvesting tools (that was before the account wide bank). Well, I was sick of that, so I just got him his own account, and if he wanted to spend all his copper and karma on garbage, fine.

Obviously at age just-turned-five, he was not familiar with MMOs. I had let him play my ranger in LOTRO a bit but it was way too hard for him because there was so much back-and-forth on the quests and at that time he was just beginning to read; he couldn’t follow the quest instructions and he didn’t have the intuitive understanding of how a map corresponds to where you are in the real world. He basically would run until he found a body of water and could swim around. :-P

I figured GW2 would be an improvement, because you could complete quests (hearts) just by being in the area, and it only told you about the stuff that was nearby. GW2 is also pretty good about having the NPCs shout at you if they want you to talk to them, which reduces the need to read.

SO.

When he first got the account, here are the things he could not understand:

1. Traits – how they afffected his stats, which ones were useful, how they triggered
2. Targeting enemies (e.g. the fact that you could have two Inquest Assassins in your field of view, so the one you’re looking at might not be the one you’re actually hitting)
3. Purposefully moving the camera to have a better view of what he was doing / understanding how the camera interacts with the terrain and being able to correct it
4. Armor and weapon stats, including runes and sigils
5. Buying and selling strategies (ie what to keep, what to sell/salvage, whatever)
6. Skill cast times and how they affected skill cooldowns
7. Conditions
8. The chat function (thank goodness)

Here are the things he was capable of understanding when I took the time to explain them (not an exhaustive list):

1. Gathering, and how you have to have a gathering tool equipped
2. Talking to people with icons to get stuff (hearts, karma)
3. Talking to skill point guys would trigger a fight
4. Use skill points to buy special skills
5. To compare armor, highlight it and compare the tooltips, keep the one with the higher number (oversimplified, but that’s what he could handle at the time)
6. Yellow name foes are not aggro but can be fought; red name foes are aggro.
7. The downed state and rallying
8. Waypoints
9. Changing what is in your hand changes your skills.’
10. Push down button twice to dodge
11. Sending items via mail to mommy or daddy

Here are the things he came in understanding intuitively:

1. Click on something to fight it, push icons on screen to fight it.
2. When you start out, you don’t have many skills, but you learn more as you go.
3. Hey look! there is a shiny light up there! Maybe I can jump up to it. I’m here, what does it do? Says push F. Ooh, a video! I can replay the video a lot! Cool!! (aka, he freaking loved vistas)
4. When you walk past something, it opens up on the map and says discovered. oh hey look! I see a diamond! a square! A heart, I need to help that guy!
5. Every time I do something “grown up”, flashy lights make this red bar on my screen get bigger. Ooh, I am level 2 now!

I just logged him in and did /age on his biggest character, a level 68 engineer, and got the following:

You have played this character for 152 hours 48 minutes over the past 578 days.
Across all characters, you have played for 294 hours 10 minutes over the past 644 days.

For those who can’t do the math, that comes out to 27 minutes a day, which is actually more like 2.5 hours once a week. My guildmates have run him through the story dungeons up through Sorrow’s Embrace; he’s leveled high enough for CoF but hasn’t had computer time since then. He’s able to follow along well enough that he gets credit for killing things, doesn’t die any more than the adults do, doesn’t wipe the group.

His other characters (one of each profession) range from level 13 to level 26. I regretfully had to tell him, when he walked by and saw me making this post, that he has probably lost access to some of his skills on most of his characters. His answer was “well, that’s okay, I’m still really strong without those skills, because I have good armor and weapons.” But realistically, I expect him to be frustrated at how many things he cannot access on some characters when he CAN access them on others.
[character limit, contd below]

Honestly, I don’t have anything to contribute other than my sincere thanks for listening and hope (like everyone here) for alternate FoVs and 1st person camera.

In case you guys need to see more input on this and have missed the threads that crop up occasionally, all these reddit threads have 150+ upvotes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dwl46/about_first_person_view/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/yyin2/gw2_needs_a_first_person_camera_option/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15yc6v/if_you_could_argue_the_case_to_anet_for_just_3/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gcrat/how_are_we_supposed_to_enjoy_a_fireworks_show_if/

dev trigger warning (teasing- but this was when the kitten hit the fan about SAB, commander tags, and camera views) http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2dx5c9/i_feel_anet_has_lost_touch/

Ian.1349:

Who needs pants anyway? Pistol Shield Engineer.

Wait… is she seriously pantsless? where are her petal panties? How’d you do thaaat?

I got sucked into the previous key deals as well.

Then someone pointed out that with the standard drop rate, you would need 45 keys to get 10 scraps. You can get 50/4200 or start with 25/2100 and add five at a time for 450, totalling 3900 gems. That’s $60 or $50 depending on how many keys you want, or something in the neighborhood of 500 gold if you are buying keys with gold.

On the flip side, you could spend $10 on gems, convert those 800 gems to gold, end up with something like 80 gold, and voila, you have enough to buy one ley line skin, all of which are sitting at around 60 gold.

Are the extra garbage items that you get from the chests, like 50 luck or a speed booster, worth the extra $40 it will cost to acquire that single skin?!

The problem is, we’re getting screwed with a 25% drop rate (takes approx 40 keys to get a ticket) and the players are dissatisfied.

For a similar situation, think about the changes to the dyes. The former, per-character dye system was working as intended, and dye kit gem store purchases were bringing in money to the devs. However, despite that it was more lucrative for them to keep the system per-character, so many people were dissatisfied that they chose to take a potential hit financially to keep their player base happy – which is lucrative in the long run.

I have a proposed solution to the RNG issue that is bothering everyone.

The main complaint is that you aren’t guaranteed to get a BLT scrap, let alone a ticket, when opening the ONLY source of scraps/tickets in the game.

My solution is: make a raffle-type gem store item that grants a random number of scraps, guaranteed at least one and possibly up to X scraps. This would put a cap on the number of items that needed to be bought, and make guaranteed acquisition of the RNG skins possible. No matter how bad your luck is, WORST case scenario is that you buy ten of these raffle items and get ten scraps.

Instead of the worst-case scenario I recently encountered: buying a pack of 25 keys and getting 9 ticket scraps out of those 25 chests.
Buying gems with gold, that is 250+ gold only to not receive enough scraps for a single weapon.
Buying gems with cash, that is $35 plus tax, only to not receive enough scraps for a single weapon.

And this is for a current-run weapon! Just imagine if I was hoping to get one of the old weapons that costs multiple tickets!

It seems that Anet is not willing to make the weapon skins directly purchasable with gems, nor to replace scraps with whole tickets, leaving the drop rate the same, because they’re raking in the cash from hopeful buyers.

My solution will allow them to continue selling RNG items, while putting a cap on the cost of acquiring a weapon skin.

The funny thing is, I never even noticed the music changing – I’m always so busy talking over it in Mumble.

My [elementary school age] son, though, spent a lot of time in his “hiding place” under the water – the area of the sunken city where they played Sands of Kryta.

He noticed the new song immediately and has mentioned the “sad Lion’s Arch song” several times and I had sort of puzzled over it, assumed they changed the music and never paid attention. When reading this article, I had the soundcloud file playing. Now I know why he likes it so much.

I’m glad the background info got posted today, it was really need to have the themes identified.

RoRo.8270:

Seriously you get around in this game quickly enough. Instant gratification generation

No kidding. Go try to play anything else. Try LOTRO or SWTOR. Try getting to the opposite end of the map in those games!

LOTRO: Best case scenario, you have set your home marker near the place you wanted to go; now you have to get back to the place you just left to return the quest.

Worst case? Run to a stable, to ride a horse to a hub in one zone, to ride a horse to a hub in the other zone, to ride a horse to the nearest specific stable so you can run to your location.

SWTOR: Best case scenario, there is a “port to here” location near the place you wanted to go and it’s on the same planet you’re on. Now there’s a 30 minute wait until you can use the port-anywhere orb thing, so if you want to return, or go somewhere else, you have to run to speeder, take speeder, run to location.

Almost-as-likely scenario: Run to a speeder, take speeder to spaceport, run inside spaceport elevator, go up/down in elevator (loading screen), run to shuttle (loading screen), run out of shuttle landing dock, take elevator (loading screen), run out of spaceport, take speeder near where you want to go, run to location. Good luck if this takes less than 15 minutes.

In GW2: Open map, double click waypoint, run to location.

The waypoints are fairly well spaced in this game and it should take you under 5 minutes to get anywhere you want to go.

YES, I have been having this problem as well. It’s quite aggravating. I think RoyHarmon is right on track – I recall thinking that the flash triggers when I WOULD HAVE had a notification, but didn’t (sorry I can’t think of an exact example, but I’ll come back and edit post if I think of it).

By notification, I mean something appearing above my mini map, such as receiving loot, unlocking a skin, or finishing an achievement.

I have a couple of customer service tickets open right now. Neither of them is urgent enough for me to post in the Tickets for Review thread, just outfit refund requests.

But I was hoping that there was some place I could look to see the status of those tickets, and so on.

Thanks guys.

My favorite dialogue now is in the start of AC. After you get ambushed by a skelk upon entering the dungeon, the NPCs go something like:

Asura: See? This is why we need a cohesive plan – people just wander in here and get attacked!
Charr: Nobody’s arguing about the need for a plan. YOUR plan is just stupid and won’t work!

The text is funny enough, but their delivery has risen this to my favorite conversation in the game.

How would one rearrange them?! I am dying to know this. Just trying to drag the category to the top does not work.

If you search for “ingot” it brings up any recipe that has ingot as an ingredient PLUS the ingot recipes. That is still a problem.

If I turn off ones that I don’t want to see on one crafting profession, those settings remain on another crafting profession (e.g. I only want to see ascended rarity recipes in Tailor, and then I switch alts and open Chef and it only wants to show me ascended recipes).

If I tell it to only show me apprentice level recipes, I have to manually uncheck five other levels of recipes, and I STILL have to scroll down to the refinement section.

All sections/categories are open by default, so if I close them by clicking the collapse arrow, when I reopen the UI the next time, they are expanded instead of collapsed the way I left them.

Like Runeblade, I would be 100% happier, if not completely satisfied, if they just put refinement at the top, obsidian and ecto refinement together in one category, crafting components, insignias, and then the actual items. And upgrade components, including jewel transmute/upgrades, at the bottom.

The questions from Clip and Coroner illustrate my issue/question:

Would you, devs, please release a post PRIOR to the patch that details all of the rules about how the wardrobe will work? People will want to take action prior to the patch.

For instance, if the Zenith weapons cost transmutation charges instead of being free-to-apply, I may want to go into my achievements panel now and grab out a couple skins to keep in my bank for the future.

Additionally, instruction on how EXACTLY the skins will be converted, ie “have in your inventory and click it, and XYZ will happen”, just as it will appear in the tutorial popups that I assume you’ll have in game, will help people figure out what they want to do / what is the best course of action for duplicate skins (should I equip them or leave them unused), transmuted skins (should I un-transmute them so that I get both appearances credited to my account? ) and so on.

I am also wondering:

Q. Will there be ANY skins that remain soulbound or available only for that particular character or class? For instance, if I chose a fire gem for my female ele at character creation, and a stone gem for my male ele, will they have access to each other’s headpieces? What about my mesmer and necro, will they have access to the ele headpieces?

Emotes, emotes, emotes.

http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Emote

Also, emotes. And especially, permanently unlockable emotes that do not require me to equip an item to use them.

Edited to add: looked up on the page and saw “mini suspicious bush”. Guffawed. +1 would pay money for.

Electro.4173:

If even the devs know that champ farming isn’t even that great a way to make money, why is it getting nerfed again? Not sure I quite understand the logic there.

Because some people thought it was a good way to make money, and others thought it was a reasonable way to earn SOME money while also getting xp/karma/whatever. It will encourage those people, specifically, to go do something else since the financial return is decreasing.

In other words, I think they’re doing it to get people spread out into doing other activities instead of grinding champs all the time.

Wanted to give a +1 to the thank-you.

Plus, reading the pre-release posts is like getting a list of most requested wishes/suggestions I’ve seen around here. I know there’s a lot of negativity and complaining about the specifics. Even I’m not claiming everything you’ve implemented is perfect. But I get a little flutter of happiness every time I see a new item that you will be implementing to fulfill a long-wished-for request.

I was in LOTRO before this, and one of the biggest reasons I left was the way they persistently disregarded people’s requests and suggestions. You guys are not like that, and I appreciate it.

xoxo

Serezenith.3501:

But we didn’t mind the fact that town clothing couldn’t be used in combat!

Careful with your “we”. I’ve been begging to use town clothing in combat since day 1.

Devs, I hope you aren’t feeling too downhearted by the negative feedback. I will admit I am disappointed about not being able to mix and match (and as I understand it, the problem would mainly be one of clipping/matching up, so I understand you wanting to avoid that whining too).

But reusable, account bound skins, easy to preview, had me texting my game friends in all caps and doing a literal victory dance. The voice chat for my guild was full of cheers last night, and a couple of former players dropped into our room in mumble and sounded like they might come check it out due to the changes. I know you guys will do better planning going forward, because you are illustrating that you listen to us. Thank you.

FWIW, I do not want permastow because of combat mechanics. I want it because I get sick of my pet

• running around in places where I don’t want it to go [VISUALLY],
• getting in my way when I do jumping puzzles and oooops I fell down and poof it’s back and I have to push a button again and ooops I fell again

and I suppose this might be considered a fight mechanic, but persisting in a fight when I aggro something – it goes and fights the mob while I try to run through a zone. Darn it, pet, just leave it alone and let’s get through this zone and pretend there are no baddies.

But like many others… since the pet is barely better than a dungeon NPC, I probably wouldn’t miss it if they were removed entirely.

Or, replaced like this:

Proposal Overview
Pets don’t have to always be NPCs. When brainstorming ways to allow the pet mechanic to handle situation where clumsy NPCs die horribly and hold the Ranger back, consider the ways you can design things that look like pets and sound like pets, but aren’t necessarily standard NPCs.

Which hearkens back to my earlier comments about making pets more user-controlled. If I have a pet, I don’t want a dungeon NPC escort in the form of an animal, I want a puppet.

I felt that just hitting +1 wasn’t strong enough to show how I feel about these items:

mtpelion.4562:

Sword – Power
2 Jumps should be reversed so that the first leaps into combat and the second leaps out of combat

Yes. I find this very confusing. I get the feeling it’s only the way it is so that people won’t go “heyyyy, that’s the same as that thief skill!”… but there are plenty of skills that basically do the same thing between functions. Who cares?

Roy.7405:

Combined Traits: Combine Rending Attacks, Stability Training, and Intimidation Training (Beast Mastery master tier traits) into a single trait. Introduce 2D family symbols for each pet type (ursine, feline, etc) to aid players in figuring out which bonus a specific pet would get. Give Moas an effect (they are currently excluded). Have the tooltip function like the Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana trait where you right-click to view all the effects.
Reasoning: Having these traits separated makes it unattractive to mix different types of pets, hurting build diversity. Combining them will allow for new build options and make space for new traits.

This really speaks for itself, but having the ui and tooltips cleaned up would be such a relief.

unleashed.8679:

Proposal Functionality

• Pets strength will now change depending on the players build
  The pets of the ranger should scale with their masters stats, making balancing different ranger builds possible, because pets won’t push in a different direction.
  Therefore every pet gets defined major and minor stats, that scale differently with the owners stats. Let’s say 70% and 30%.

Some examples:
cats: major (Power, precision) minor (vitality, toughness)
bears: major (tougness, power) minor (vitality, precsion)
spiders: major (condition damage, duration), minor (precision, vitality)

Again, it speaks for itself, and makes a lot of sense. Would also make choosing a pet more involved than just picking the one additional skill you want to have (e.g. chill foe, apply bleeding)

Frostfang.5109:

• Make it optional to HIDE/SHOW u’r pets NAME + GUILD-TAG. I still have the blue “edges” that shows that it’s u’rs for u… It loosk betetr IMO, reduces clutter info and is helpful in dungeons/instances etc.

• Make the PORTRAITS show the CORRECT PET and sort them by PET TYPE in the (K) – panel, Makes searching for a pet easier.

• Plz make PETS REMEMBER their NAMES!!!

• THE F2 FIRE TIMING… Either they fire instantly, causing miss (pet is not at target), not at all, or on contach with enemy. …

• I still get the “Charm” option if i get Close to somebody elses pet that I have not yet tamed. Plz get this fixed so that it goes away.

Quality of life improvements are always appreciated.

Doom.8647:

Goal of Proposal
Eliminate the AI headache that pets pose by changing them to be an additional “weapon” equipped by the player.

I’m new to the ranger profession, and had been feeling that something wasn’t quite the way I liked it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it (other than irritation that I couldn’t [a] map a key to stow my pet and/or [b] perma-stow the pet when I chose to do so).

Reading this suggestion shed some light on it. I hate only having one input into my pet’s actions every XX seconds. In the original Guild Wars, I did not actually have a guild (I know, weird), and I played the game solo. I was SO EXCITED when you introduced heroes in Nightfall. I felt like a symphony conductor, a puppeteer, and a battle commander all at one time when taking a full group of 7 heroes into a zone. I could control their actions by placing a flag for them to walk to, picking which skills they had available, indicating their targets, and even tell them which skills to use during the heat of battle.

I came into GW2 thinking that pets would work the same way, and now realize that is the source of much of my disappointment.

I haven’t played enough to have insightful suggestions, but I do support Doom’s suggestion and/or basically propose that rangers are given more control over the actions of their pets. Of the 4 F-skills, only one of them actually makes the pet do something in the fight. Rather than having an unpredictable NPC running around with me, I would love to have four extra skills (swappable, so actually 8 skills) available in the form of the “pet-weapon” as Doom suggested.

Also, could we pretty please have a cleaner, WHITE polar bear? I have a hard time telling the polar bear icon from the hyena in the pet selection window, and my actual pet is pretty dingy.

Aedil.1296:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/122127/4-0_concept_art_armors_beritra01.jpg

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/122128/song_content5_img1.jpg

Holy guacamole. I’d grind for a month to get any one of those armors, and would probably spend cash money on them, too.

PlagueParade.7942:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/122437/640x923_5049_Fnpc_2d_knight_warrior_girl_woman_fantasy_armor_picture_image_digital_art.jpg
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/122438/armor_temple_knight-723x1024.jpg

I like how these fit the female form.

Can the devs pull the info from the client/server end to form a list of all armors that are actually equipped?

I think a lot could be learned from a list that ranks the most to least popular pieces equipped across all light armor characters, and then individually ranked per race. Then maybe they could create some new pieces that share characteristics with the top existing pieces. For example, I like the starter light armor (the short skirt), but it (a) is everywhere and (b) gives the impression that I’m a new character. A couple different variations on the short ruffled skirt would allow people to have the same idea but different looks.

I would like to see more vests and long gloves, pants in tight AND loose styles, as well as shorts and short skirts.

Particularly for my charr and sylvari characters, I want to see their skin… but that doesn’t need to translate to sex appeal and/or bondage gear. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff can be nice too – I have the named medium set on one of my chicks, for example.

Specifically for males, I would like to see short (that is, waist length) jackets or regular shirts as opposed to robes and trench coats (“No buttcapes!”); something fitted (like a metal version of a leather catsuit) would be cool for heavy armor.

Specifically for females, I would like to look elegant or comfortable. Shorts and a blouse. Vest and pantaloons/knickerbockers. Tank top and a knee-length skirt.
And a handful of ball gowns with interchangeable tops and bottoms. Most importantly, though, I want pieces THAT ALL WORK TOGETHER… ohhh I hate when I have two pieces I love but they are different depths/shapes, so I can’t wear them together.

Also, I’d love to see some variation in backpieces. Butterfly or dragonfly wings (yes, I know there’s that one armor, but I am talking about a backpiece). Just plain spikes. A furry backpiece that looks like a hair extension/mohawk.

But here’s my actual, specific contribution in graphical form: A sari, or really (as it probably has to be implemented) lehenga.

I was puzzling over the idea, and it could appear as a proper sari for all practical purposes: top appears as crop top individually; bottom as a skirt with vertical pleats, shoulder armor as the shoulder drape from the center of the skirt across the shoulder (as the end of the sari), but even if that was too much work, as seen in the images below, there are lots of ways you could drape the shoulder with a lehenga and still evoke that image.

Sandals on the feet. Henna designs as gloves. And as a helm…. jewelry! Indian bridal jewelry can be very ornate, and I realize there are probably issues with clipping if you included all the nets and pieces, BUT… we know earrings are doable because they’re included on the aetherblade medium helm. I would love to see even a dangle and some earrings; including a necklace would be even better.

I sure hope the devs are reading this!

FWIW, my son (5) loves engineer the best.

We have the GW2 Official Strategy Guide book, and he likes to go through and read the skill descriptions literally for an hour at a time. (He’s weird, what can I say.) Anyway, it was given to me as a gift when it came out, and rather pricey at the time, but you might be able to find one for cheaper now that it’s been out a while.

Race: Charr
Gender: Male
Light Armor

I noticed that the newly introduced Trickster’s armor has tail clipping issues for the charr.

Louveepine.7630:

I also started imagining new hairstyles. This is much less attractive than the author of the pack …

But I really would like more work on the Asuras hairstyles.

(Male be working.)

Love bottom two on left!
Love the top left of the OP! Girly hair FTW!

Didn’t even have to read it (although I did), instant agree, +1.

I do wish that if I was spending money on costumes and armor skins, they would be reusable like the HoM or achievement armors. That would prevent the need for this suggestion, but if they won’t do what I wish, this is my second choice.

Well, I for one think this is fantastic. I love it when people not only think out the details, but listen to feedback and make balance adjustments where needed.

This is beautiful, and I think it would become my new favorite class. I just hope that they’ll be willing to listen and pick it back up to consider.

This is so simple, and so brilliant.

I am in favor of this – I rarely use my minis because I forget to equip them, and then accidentally deposit them into the bank.

If lag is a problem, institute mini culling.

I think the idea of letting them hold a stack of food and re-apply the food buff is neat; although I’m not sure how feasible it is, it would be a nice function.

Agreeing with this one! Would love it!

Pretty self explanatory. I would love to have a karka hatchling hat/mask. Maybe for halloween?

Mrs Mawi.6470:

I have to admit, one of the things I dislike about them is their animation. They do this really goofy looking thing where they smile and widen their eyes. In my mind, Sylvari are graceful beautiful creatures.

Since the sylvari are newly born, it seems natural to me that they make the child-like, wonder-full faces when looking around.

It sounds as if you subjectively simply don’t find any of the faces attractive; is that your only complaint (the fact that they are childlike, not mature), or is there something else concrete that you don’t like about the faces?

Pikachoo.9352:

I decided to take part in the dream up your own hairstyle. It seems fun.

Great point about the branch heads looking bald, and I like the “warrior ponytail!”

luxymonsteri.1078:

I really, really think that male sylvari have a huge lack of long and elegant(?) hairstyles, so I decided to doodle some for fun.

ZOMG FRECKLES NOM NOM NOM

I also agree with Vick.6805’s points. Also that absolutely we need beards and goatees of moss, leaves, roots, bark… very cool idea.

As far as people wanting Kodan… they are polar bears. You can choose white, cream, or off white, with black, light black, or dark black noses, and brown or black eyes. This being posted in the middle of a thread about how PLANT people can’t be customized enough?!!

Reivaxe.1358:

YES, they have a gold-mine of a concept here for this race but it’s soo … limited.
Hairstyles they could use!
Cotton Bloom head for Afro
Thick Vines for dreads/ mid sized ones for curly or long non-dread styled hair
Grass for buzz cuts/ short hair
Pig-tails that are actually just two large blooming flowers
Bulbs that can be buns.
Thorn bush branches for Mohawks/ dreads again
Aloe Leaf hair
You can also take fruit as an example. Berries Bush Branches.

Kaukomieli.6740:

I would love to have weeping willow style longer hair, or needly branches, and more non-tropical looks in general.

I just love all these.

Cattails, maple leaves (I grew up in Michigan and nothing says tree to me like maple leaves turning color), pinecones — I am absolutely in love with the pink flower ponytails someone drew — I like the long hair leaves with little decorations like lilac flowers, or lilies of the valley scattered through as shown above. I like my girly to be really, REALLY girly.

How about less standard plants, too, like a pitcher plant shaped "bun"’, or <a href=“http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/11/02-carnivorous-plants.jpg.492x0_q85_crop-smart.jpg”>these nifty sticky things</a>, or a <a href= “http://www.google.com/search?q=plants&safe=active&client=firefox-a&hs=gWX&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=zqUNUtvICeaR2wXew4GYCg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=873#bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&channel=fflb&fp=edee38d03212cb21&q=fern+frond&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&sa=1&safe=active&tbm=isch&imgdii=”>fern frond unfurling ponytail (seriously shocked nobody has mentioned that)</a> or broccoli/cauliflower (oh and hey if you’re going to do that, <a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXIMUkSXX0”>get your math right or we’ll tell Vi on ya</a>). I like bark and pinecones too.

One unfortunate aspect of the lore is that they’re all young, so there aren’t any old, wizened-looking faces or hair or bodies. But then… they get to make themselves, and they dream of old people, so why not choose to look like a wise elder?

I am a big fan of Aurelio’s guy. Two things I really like about it: (a) it has noticeably plant-like protrusions from the face, BUT in places that allow it to still be a humanoid profile* and (b) it looks a little mean. I think it’s reasonable that there are some undecided sylvari out there, working with humans and being heroes, but bordering on joining the nightmare court. Some mean guys would be good.

*I actually have the guy face that has the sticky-outiest bits, and it’s still nice [kind] looking and handsome. They’re not mutually exclusive, I guess I just ran the two points together.

I agree that ripped leaves and battle scars are reasonable, too. Yeah, it’s a little immersion-breaking during the introductory instance, but once you’ve been through that first fight, it makes sense that some would not come through unscathed.

As for my perspective on what I like: I want something that looks like a person, and pretty, but definitely not human. For my main sylvari, I was going to go with some pretty leaf hair, but I found that the artichoke hair felt the most natural extension of her head, and most plant-like to me. I have the flower ears to help soften it up a bit (I would have gone with the wood-knot ones otherwise). Still, I chose a very human like face because I wanted to look at a pretty face all the time.

Which brings me to my last point: I am SO with all these folks saying we need more leaf armor. When there are only four plant armors (well, technically twelve, but only four that a character can use), they get popular and then old really quick. Furthermore, I want to see my sylvari’s fantastically designed body, but I picked heavy armor…. It takes a bit of work to find something that fits those criteria.

Leaf armor!
Petal armor!!!!!
Bark armor!
LEAFY PETALLY OAKY MAPLEY BARKY SPIKEY TOWN CLOTHES!!!!!!!!!!

ahem, sorry, got carried away. I’ll be happy with pretty much anything you add

PS, why is the bald cap around my guy’s hair so plain? why no texture?

Ugh it cut me off.

I went back and read the OP’s post, and I agree with many that the balloons being one-way portals is a disappointment. I did expect them to be like vistas.

(as far as the quoted poster’s statement about dailies… I love them. I love having something to try for each day, that is basically part of what I would be doing anyway, but gives a little extra reward if I put some extra focus in to a couple areas).

Anyway, I love the game. I’m spending money on gems regularly – probably more than I’d be spending on a monthly sub’ for another game.

Oh and a side note: I like the new particle effects allowing me to see into the middle of the action, and I have grouped with several folks who expected lag due to the zerg and didn’t experience any. So any lag being experienced is case-by-case. It’s working fine for me and my groupies.

Elbegast.6970:

I find that I am much less vocal about the areas of the game that I enjoy…. If I am enjoying the game, I am playing it rather than posting here. As a result, when I post my concerns, I am marked as a ‘forum troll’ or a ‘hater’.

The reality is, I love this game….If I didn’t love it, I would say nothing about the aspects that annoy me and I would move on to another game. I see potential here.

Spot on. I spend my time playing, and I almost never visit the forums here. I agree with a lot of the things this person says:

Elbegast.6970:

The ‘Living Story’ storyline is disjointed and incomprehensible. It lacks focus and a clear plot theme. It seems to be completely unrelated to the game’s core content. It seems as if the Living Story writers are attempting to create a virtual, living novel. However, the way a story is conveyed in a novel does not translate well to a mmorpg. By the time the in-game plot is fully revealed, the players will have forgotten most of it and will lose interest.
…
Ellen Kiel…oh, that crazy, angry woman from Southsun?
…
Lord Kaswhat? Lady Farsomething? Did they even do anything in Southsun?

I don’t like how the entire story isn’t told, exclusively, in-game. I don’t do 3rd party websites, digital short stories or book store novels. ….

I have to say the same thing. People were talking about Lord Faren and Lady Kasmeer and I was completely baffled who they were talking about; didn’t meet them until after people were chatting about the mini’s and I realized I was missing a key achievement [talking to the npcs]…. They talked to me for one dialogue and I don’t remember interacting with them otherwise.

I didn’t even make the connection between Ellen Kiel being the crazy southsun lady until reading this exact comment. I just assumed she was a randomly introduced NPC.

I recognized Rox and Braham in the opening ceremonies because I had actually done a full length story instance with them. I really enjoyed that. I actually did the opening ceremony a couple times because I went in it with others, and I caught myself saying “I just love those two” every time I went in. (literally saying it out loud!)

Elbegast.6970:

Currencies are, indeed, out of control. … I would suggest … normalizing all Living Story currencies into a single currency. Call it ‘Black Lion Claim Tickets’ or whatever you like but use them as the sole currency for every future living story update; one currency that players can save up throughout the course of any number of content updates and use to purchase any current or previous living story rewards.

Oh please yes. There is nothing more discouraging than knowing I’ll probably make it 2/3 of the way to collecting whatever new currency has been released, and then see it disappear and made useless. I can’t buy anything but boxes with fortune scraps because I didn’t even make it to 250. The other achievements took all of my time and I didn’t spend much time in the “real world” to acquire kite boxes.

Same with past living world events. I actually really enjoy them, but I have a hard time achieving the achievements in time to get credit/rewards/etc. I don’t play as much as some people do, and I’m not the most skilled player (especially at pvp coughGAUNTLET*cough*] and jumping). In fact, I’m pretty much resigned to not completing the gauntlet because it’s just outside my skill level. But that also means I’ll never get those rewards. Sigh.

Back to the point, I would enjoy living story rewards much better if they were just that: living story reward tokens, not event-specific tokens. If you want to make event specific tokens for immersion purposes, great, but let me convert them 1:1 to generic living story rewards. That way if I see something new that I can’t live without, I can get it. If there was something old that I never got around to getting, I’ll keep working in the future until I can get it.

Having a two week limit to get a particular reward is discouraging when I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to succeed. Even people who are great at that stuff might be discouraged that they had to get their computer fixed for a week and now have to spend ALL their time grinding it as fast as they can to get the rewards.

I realize you want us in game playing as much as possible, but we’re real people with lives and some of us have other obligations. If we miss a bunch of days, we might be screwed, and to me that’s not motivation to skip my other obligations and play every single day, it’s a setup for disappointment.

On Friday and Saturday morning, I ran around a friend that I’d invited to the free trial, working on leveling him up. Turns out that was a bad choice because I missed phase 1 of the event. Then, Saturday afternoon, I had been working on improving my highest level character, up to 54 from 50.

So I finally got around to FOM Saturday night. I was advertising myself available for a first time run. A group invited me, and as I was typing up a question, booted me. The reason? I wasn’t high enough level.

Seriously people? I can understand you don’t want a level 2 character coming along, but (a) I’m level 54 for crying out loud, and it brings up another question – (b) how are the folks playing the free trial supposed to join in? None of them are level 80!

I feel like the dev team wasn’t really thinking about this. “It’s okay, we’ll just sidekick people up to 80 and they can all play it”… but if the players won’t bring along someone that “isn’t good enough” (eg, maybe had to work the first day while the others were leveling up the dungeon, or just bought the game this week and don’t have a high level character yet, or whatever)… and I always dread when new “improved armor” gets released, because it means someone’s going to insist that you have the newest best thing before they’ll talk to you.

Also, I wish I could give Syringa a prize for saying this so well:

I wouldn’t mind doing a solo version that gave no loot but progressed my lvl so I could join higher lvl groups. At least I could get to my actual skill lvl and not some social lvl determined by if I have a lot of friends or luck in pugs.

I don’t need to be “run” through a lvl or have the dungeon be easy mode. I just want to be able to play and complete the content. And in dungeons you can’t do it by your self. And making most of the good players not want to play with you really hinders that.

So, I am a fairly casual player. I hit my highest number of karma EVER – 3000ish karma! go me! – last week. When the halloween thing came out, I bought all the tonic recipes in one fell swoop, on my character that had the greatest number of karma points to spend (aka the only character who could afford them all).

I forgot she wasn’t my artificer. I clicked on the recipes and consumed them all, then went to craft and went ooooops.
Now I have to
(a) drop one of my current crafting professions, pick up artificer (which I already have on another character), level up artificer (with crafting materials that I’d rather use leveling up my my OTHER character or my current profession [jeweler/tailor]), and then pay silver to switch back to the current crafting professions when I’m done.
or
(b) make enough karma to buy them again, and just write off the points I already lost
or
© just call it a loss and forget about it.

On the one hand, because of the new karma jugs, I’m going to go with option B. (seriously, zomg, I never saw that much karma in one place before!)

On the other hand, this whole mess (and my initial panic until I got that first karma jug 24 hours later) could have been avoided by a simple confirmation dialogue.

Character tries to use recipe. Game verifies whether appropriate crafting profession is currently ACTIVE. If so, recipe is learned. If NOT, a confirmation dialogue is triggered stating “You do not currently have the XYZ crafting profession active. Are you sure you want to learn this recipe? YES/NO/YES TO ALL FOR 10 MINUTES”

That way, if someone wants to pick up every recipe in the game and learn them all in a row until they get hand cramps, they only trigger the dialogue every 10 minutes. On the other hand, if someone picks up a recipe for their alt, they won’t accidentally consume it.