Guild Wars 2

What a kind soul

StinVec.3621:

I never went from that side. Is it really hard to get it from there?
I jumped across to the rock on the other side of the water wheel, boost jump up onto a post, lightning or boost jump over to the plank that is on the left side of the water wheel, jump on top of the water wheel and then drop down onto the master crystal.

It was considerably more straightforward from this side. “Easy” I wouldn’t say, but straightforward. I do believe the direction I came from is the one Anet intended, so I’m surprised to see there even is any other way to do it. Now that the word is out, you can expect a patch removing it tomorrow.

Anyway, yeah, you just stand on the sky crystal below and air jump up onto the rock depicted in the screenshot there, then it’s a short (very easy to mess up) hop over. After enough failures I just lightning jumped over.

Rage Train will be departing shortly. Tickets cost 1s 39c each.

All abooooaaaard!

Ionut.2307:

What gold dude? Everyone is dirt poor unless they open their wallet.

Once you get to level 80 and do stuff you can get money fairly quickly.

The problem is that there’s not much to do at level 80, so you have to be comfortable with doing the same thing over and over for virtual money. Which, I guess, is a defining characteristic of the MMORPG. But GW2 definitely exemplifies it well.

Dean Calaway.9718:

And people say the game is imbalanced now, what do you think would happen then?

It would continue to be imbalanced because this game is already too complex to balance perfectly.

I also think it would be a better game.

I’m always intrigued by the things that are broken in GW2. Reading the change logs is always fun, because there’s always one tiny bug that I remember from beta, and I’m like “wow, you just now fixed that?”

Fortunately most of the bugs in the game aren’t too bad..

The only one I know of is a PvP rifle. Rather disappointing. I want that skin so badly.

That’s cool and all, but loot is kind of important to a lot of people.. I’m excited to see all festival content, but I worry there will be little for a solo player to do, and if the loot isn’t significant enough, anything legitimately challenging will lose its appeal to me. I’ll play as much of the content as I can without too much difficulty, but I, at least, have little reason to repeatedly attempt something challenging if the only payoff is saying I did it.

Though AP and titles are a pretty good motivator. I spent hours on Mad King’s Clock Tower for that achievement.

I’m excited about the new festival content, since I haven’t been able to play since it came out, but I get the feeling there won’t be much for me to do solo..

I really want to keep playing this game, and if I can get some friends to play with me then I’m sure it’ll be much more fun, but currently there’s just so little to do compared to where it could be by now.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you anet! I cannot express my gratitude for fixing my favourite map. You found the best possible solution(I think). Now I can finally run around the map like a lunatic without reading hateful comments.
Dwayna bless you!

You could do that before… it’s called turning off map chat. Which, honestly, I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing by default, because most of map chat is obnoxious nonsense.

Well anyway, now that the Queensdale train is no longer running, let’s take a moment to look back and analyze why people were doing it, and what possible implications Anet’s decision to destroy it may have:

Why do people do champ trains?
I would posit that the primary reason for the existence of the champ trains is the tendency of mob mentality to find and take the path of least resistance. But this does not explain why players were drawn to participate in them, rather than doing other, more engaging content. The reason for that, I think, is rather simple: GW2 in NA/EU is stale. Whether Anet likes it or not, without a clearly defined end-game, players are quickly getting bored when they reach max level. After all, if “the end-game starts at level 1” then you’ve likely experienced most of the content by the time you hit 80. And what’s to do then? You could make a new character, but you’ve already done most of the things in the game, and let’s face it, personal story is bland enough once through; doing it again is a mind-numbing chore. So, at a loss for exciting PvE content, but still yearning to have good loot for future play experiences, players found a way to invest their time into getting better gear / making money / leveling new characters, in preparation for the future, when there would hopefully be something else to do.

Also, daily / monthly achievements are usually most quickly accomplished via zerg.

Why Queensdale though?
The only reason I can imagine for the Queensdale train is ease of access, specifically to low-level characters. Before the April 15 update it was a very feasible way to supplement other activities like gathering and crafting for leveling up. After that update, the Queensdale train became much slower for progression, and now it is completely dead.

What does that mean for the zergers?
Well, if the players participating in the champ trains were indeed doing so out of sheer lack of compelling alternatives, then nerfing the champ trains seems a poor decision in the short term, without introducing substantial content to fill the gap that those players were filling with the zerg. Of course, Queensdale was perhaps a necessity; a starter zone really shouldn’t look like that, after all. But I am only left to wonder what those many players will do now, without that to occupy their play time? (once they finish the new LS, that is)

Mounts are pretty ugly too. Imagine how much you hate every 15th person you see in town having a legendary weapon. Now imagine they are all sitting on something that is 3-4x larger than they are and is surrounded by particle effects.

That is GW2 with mounts.

Zefram.8945:

I honestly dont understand this, i can not even remember when i had my last “exotic” drop.

Played 1000h + not a single precursor.

Whatever.

You can buy the precursors on the TP if you make the gold. Though the only real ways to get that kind of money is through market flipping or gem→gold conversion

Megaservers are alright; what we really need is districts, a la GW1. I’m pretty certain that was a megaserver system, but it allowed you to pick which megaserver you were on, which was nice.

I get that the new system will supposedly always put you in the same instance as your friends / guildies, but why forcibly automate something so trivial when players could just as easily make sure of it themselves?

Wouldn’t be unreasonable for the Norn to provide guild halls and Asura to provide gate transfers.

I say those two because Sylvari and Charr likely have no cultural interest, and the humans of Kryta and Ascalon actually banned guilds from owning land after the Guild Wars, which is why the guild halls in GW1 were only on land owned by Cantha.

That said, I don’t think Anet has any interest in it, for whatever reason.

Tao.5096:

Mounts?
Another money sink which will please kids for next 5 mins.

Then Anet should be all over it!

Engies have a lot of options for PvE. I run a berserker rifle build for high crit damage and range advantage. The trick is that you have to specialize as much as possible if you want to get the most out of a build. Since rifle is already sort of focused on high damage and slight CC/mobility, I centered my traits around high DPS and made the rest of my skills about CC/mobility.

What that means is that this build is really good at 1v1 encounters. Lots of crits + burning/bleeding on crits + more damage to bleeding foes + more damage / higher crit chance against foes <50% health = high spike damage on one target and fairly quick takedowns.

And there are so many other, completely different builds for engineers. Kits are frequently focused on multiple targets, and there are traits to complement that. Turrets are about… well I don’t really know, I guess they’re for distracting enemies / general self-support. Elixirs… I’m sure they have some use if you slot the right traits.

What it’s all about is picking a role you want to play, and figuring out which things mesh together well to achieve that goal. Picking the best traits for your build is crucial.

EDIT: I have never tried this build in dungeons, and I honestly don’t think it would work very well, unless it somehow combo’s well with other team members. It’s more of an open world build.

ricky.2679:

Play to win, don’t be a Scrub

This guy assigns way too much value to winning.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

lordkrall.7241:

I would say that the pain of loss is a very good opportunity in the coming chapters, and that will be much stronger if there is an actual partnership between the two characters, and there are already hints that something will happen to Kasmeer.

It’s anet, when you start to like a character, they kill the character off.

It’s probably one of the oldest literary devices for getting the audience emotionally invested in the story.

lordkrall.7241:

rhodoc.2381:

You will make gazzilions of money from China release yet you dont hire enough people for it. That sounds wrong

Your post make no sense.
You talk about them GOING to make money, but at the same time complaining about them not hiring people for those money that they haven’t gotten yet.

While the post you quoted is rather silly, business is very much about investments in future earnings. You can’t run a largely successful business without occasionally spending money you don’t have.

pdavis.8031:

Its what all good story tellers do, they leave stuff unexplained as it adds to the mystery and intrigue.

Good story-tellers leave the future unexplained; that’s where the audience’s imagination comes into play. The past is pretty important to give as much depth as possible. Guild Wars has a history of rich lore, so much so that most players will never know the half of it. Hopefully Anet will elaborate significantly on the history of the Elder Dragons at some point, even if they really are just destructive forces.

I don’t really think this is how the Q&A feature is supposed to be used…

Asmodeus.5782:

Sometimes you run down a slope on the Edge and get a truckload of instakilling damage in 0,5 secs because you dared to use swiftness. ;D

Yes. There are places in this game that were not designed for anyone going faster than normal speed. I took my elementalist over the big hill in Wayfarer Foothills going +25%, and on the way down it was rek city. Took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening as there was no immediate indication that I should be taking fall damage.

It’s a fairly rare occurrence, but definitely indicative of a problem in the fall damage calculation that needs to be addressed.

DelusionsOfGrandeur.9287:

I remember having to have a monk present for pretty much any story progression quest in GW1… as in most cases, the GW2 system is a vast improvement over its predecessor.

You gotta admit though, everyone having to be able to take care of themselves is limiting. Whereas in GW1, where monks and ritualists were usually dedicated healers, allowing other classes to specialize more heavily, GW2 insists that everybody must slot a healing skill, taking up space you could otherwise use for another utility skill.

Of course, that way is better for the way GW2 works; in GW1 you could always bring along AI heroes to back you up, and GW2 is a lot more lone-wolf style, so having a healing skill is a must anyway.

It has its pro’s and con’s.

Asmodeus.5782:

Stooperdale.3560:

- improved design of open world events with total scaling solutions rather than the haphazard scaling we have currently

Scaling, yes. Very scaling. Much needed. wow…

This would be pretty much the only way to restore my faith in this game. Heavy, zerg-punishing scaling.

Zerg-punishing is the wrong way to go. Players participating in the zerg do it because they have nothing else to do. Anet should be encouraging them not to do it by offering better options, rather than discouraging them from doing it, which is, in essence, telling them not to play.

I don’t think there is any such thing. As far as I know, worlds (and now megaserver instances) have never been separated by time zone.

I’m quite certain language is on the client-side…

Regardless, you can’t play on American servers from China or vice versa.

Hehe not bad, I approve

Skan.5301:

There is an endgame in GW2. It’s updated almost every 2 weeks with something ‘new and exciting’. True that it’s not very hard but the rewards that you get from it might not be worth that £10 price tag.

No one here can say ANet doesn’t put in hours to keep that endgame stocked and updated. The driving force behind the game: swiping your credit card. That’s your endgame, and that’s probably all we’ll get.

That hardly counts as end-game though, because if you miss out, you can’t ever have it. It’s like missing Wintersday, except instead of Wintersday, it’s the only progressive content in the game.

And what about times like now, when they’re too busy to put anything out for a month or longer? Just stop playing until they release something new, and stop playing again when you’re done with it? It’s a model, to be sure, but generally MMO’s don’t encourage you to play once every 2 weeks.

I think “Farmville” is a rather appropriate comparison; a fitting name for Queensdale even.

GW1 had the ability to save and load builds (traits and skills).

I am a strong advocate of this feature now that traits can be respec’d freely, and I think it is likely they will consider implementing it. Although, now that builds also depend on stats from armor and weapons, it may be a moot point.

I wouldn’t expect to see Cantha anytime soon due to reluctance on NCSoft’s part to allow it, though as best I can tell, Elona is fair game, as is the entirety of the map of Tyria currently in-game that does not have explorable areas in it.

inb4 “gem store is better for business”

Why not both?

Also, Colin Johanson has indicated that they are working on expansion-like content. They haven’t said whether or not it will be paid like a traditional expansion, but I think there are enough people expressing support for it that they should strongly consider it.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

GW2 would actually be really fun to play with a controller if they made a few small tweaks to it. I’ve used Pinnacle Game Profiler with it, and it feels just shy of being a great experience.

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

. . . but it’s a PC game. It’s not made for controllers. That’s not “how it’s meant to be played.” Wherever did you get that idea?

Lots of PC games are made to be used with controllers. If not, Steam machine wouldn’t be a thing.

wmtyrance.3571:

Lol, i could never play or would want to play a PC mmo with a controller. Its this generation of gamers that are qq for this. It would be a waste of resourses to spend time trying for controller surpport too.

“I don’t like that idea so it’s pretty obviously a stupid one”

Lil Puppy.5216:

I don’t know any PC only MMO’s that support controllers by default.

And I don’t know any MMO’s that release all their content via temporary story arcs every 2 weeks.

Brother Grimm.5176:

So…Gimme, Gimme, Gimme is a perfectly acceptable request now?

My favorite response! “You’re dissatisfied so clearly you’re a whiny kitten who deserves nothing!”

Fact is that drop rates for these items are so extraordinarily low that you could spend your entire play time in a day trying to get one to no avail; literally zero progress toward the goal. It’s not like you got some tokens, and it takes a lot of those tokens to get the item, so eventually you will get enough tokens. You made no progress toward the goal, and theoretically, this could happen every time you play.

God forbid somebody expect to get tangible results from sinking hours of their time into something they don’t even have to be doing! I mean it’s not like Anet has a vested interested in people continuing to play the game.

Belenwyn.8674:

Devata.6589:

Belenwyn.8674:

Devata.6589:

Nah, just go for expansions and drop the cash-shop. If it is expansion content that means we need to pay for it and then Anet can drop there cash-shop or at lease for 99% putting all those items in the game in stead of in a cash-shop. It would simply be better for the quality of the game. If it’s expansion-like they would need to keep focusing on the cash-shop for money with all the negative side-effects we have seen for over a year now.

Cash-Shop is aiming players willing to pay 15 € or much more per month. Expansion with costs is aiming players willing to spend 50 € each 12 or 24 months.. Depending on the numbers I would rather drop expansion with costs.

For a B2P game that would be every 12 months. The big question here however is how many people you would be able to keep (again, in the long run) with expansion vs with cash-shop.

I don’t know where you get the number of 15 from. But lets say that is correct then in the long run you would want to have 4 times the amount of players. And then I am not even talking about the fact that a more popular product (of a higher quality) will also sell more merchandise and royalties and be more asured of better sales of other games and so on.

For a company your goal is to keep as much people as possible, who pay as much as possible for your product. If you remove or reduce the cash-shop you will lose the money from people willing to pay more money than for expansions only. You can’t raise the price for the expansion to compensate this. This would cause even less people playing the game. As compensation you have to try to attract much more people, who are willing to buy an expansion or the game itself.

If you remove traditional expansions with costs and provide content for free or modules via cash-shop you avoid the problems mentioned above. In this scenario you can keep both factions: the expansion buyers and the cash-shop fans. The company can satisfy both

Everybody keeps talking about expansions and cash shop as if they’re incompatible business models. You could dedicate 3 people to keeping the cash shop stocked with fresh bullkitten for idiots to buy while the rest of the team works on real stuff. Not to mention the gems→gold conversion allows you to buy almost anything in the game with real money, an offer that many, many people will continue to take.

Zylonite.5913:

Devata.6589:

I did not ask for both. Just expansions is fine.

I have worked in enough software companies to know that ANet doesn’t have the budget to sit back and develop an expansion while having little to zero cash flow for that period of time.

So all this talk of expansion is really a waste of time…..

They’ve already indicated that they are working on expansion-like content.

Also, it’s not like keeping the gem store stocked with pretty cash fodder is a full-time job. I’m certain they could keep most of their income from gem purchases while still working on an expansion if they didn’t couple each new set of items with a Living Story update.

Shen Slayer.3058:

sMihaly.1492:

Shen Slayer.3058:

Bartosz.2013:

kitten i miss FoW DoA and underworld

It’s been a while, was DoA the one you run with a group of BP rangers…if that’s it, I remember it being so much fun, even tho it took like an hour to complete.

No, BP team was for Tombs of the Primeval Kings.
DoA was the “LBr6+ URSAN ONLY” before ursan got nerfed.

That’s right, I forgot about Ursan…such good memories. Doesn’t everything about GW1 seems so much fun, while GW2 seems more like a chore.

Strangely yes, and I played GW1 the same way I play GW2: grinding for gear while I wait for my friends to play with me though they probably never will.

Actually I think it was the amount of story completion there was to do. 3 campaigns was a lot, especially with all the missions having secondary objectives, and then there was hard mode. GW2 has beans compared to that.

Anet works in mysterious ways

LunaticSerenade.7615:

Why isn’t there one of these threads for Elona? Cantha was cool and all, but I really loved Elona.

That said, I just want the map to expand. Be it further in to Tyria (Crystal Desert, deeper into Maguuma, etc), Elona, or Cantha, give me more!

True enough. Crystal Desert, Ring of Fire, most of the upper third of the map.

I hear rumor that the Maguuma Jungle is the next place the story is going. Perhaps that’s been confirmed somewhere and I don’t know, but just in case I’ll leave it at “rumor.”

Nick.6972:

Is Factions main theme more Chinese, Japanese or Korean sounding, just wondering.

I think you’ve pinned down what NCSoft’s problem is with Cantha

PUGs man. I’d rather just not do dungeons than deal with players I don’t know.

I’m sure they’re aware of it, and I’m sure they’re planning on doing something about it, once they do a laundry list of other things that they think are more important.

You can expect your fix in 3 – 6 months, along with a different horribly flawed system that won’t be addressed for weeks.

Dungeons are hard, but you’re using a lot of language that suggests it’s impossible, and that’s definitely not the case.

It’s just something you have to get accustomed to. I had a hard time my first few dungeon runs, then I figured out that you can’t play dungeons the same way you play the rest of the PvE content. They take serious team coordination, rather than everyone just doing whatever they want and hoping it works.

By the way, if you’re having trouble in AC, the boulders are OP. Keep picking those up and using them, and it’ll be a cakewalk.

So I found this article

I assume this is what people are referencing when they say Anet is considering expansion-like content. I sure hope that’s what they’re doing, and I sure hope it’s paid, because the cash shop shouldn’t be the primary source of income for a B2P game.

Vol.7601:

You boost drop rates too much, and then everyone and their cat end up with fractal skins. Once you get those skins, there really isn’t much incentive to run fractals anymore.

It’s a sad truth, but low RNG encourages business in the long-term. What’s the point of playing a game if you beat it within hours?

Flipside, what’s the point of playing a game if you don’t make progress within hours? Forcing a grind for gear is a cheap alternative to giving players new things to do.

lordkrall.7241:

Andred.1087:

China release. Also, that expansion money will go a long way.

And between the first and second expansion?

You are aware that paying 300+ employees does tend to cost a rather massive amount of money, right?

Without ongoing income there won’t be a company to make expansions.

You clearly will never be satisfied with any answer other than “you’re right.”

Regardless, cash shop is a losing game for developers. It’s great at the start, but you can’t keep depending on people to drop $10 for X and $10 for Y when they’ve already paid at least $50 to play the game. This isn’t a F2P where microtransactions are the only way to get money, but that’s how they’re apparently treating it.

I’m not saying they should stop cash shop either. But it definitely needs to stop being their primary source of income, because it will not last.

lordkrall.7241:

Andred.1087:

Expansions.

And what revenue should they use in order to pay for their employees between those expansions?

China release. Also, that expansion money will go a long way.

lordkrall.7241:

How would you suggest they fill the gap in revenue from removing the skins though?

Expansions.

Update: I found this article in another thread that seems to indicate that expansion-sized content is in the works

You Thought That Was It For Guild Wars 2

I don’t anticipate Anet will let the game fail because of lack of permanent content, but they really need to get it in gear.

azizul.8469:

current content release structure is fine.

what more do you want ?

be patient, huge content will come “when it’s ready….”

Not if they’re spending all their time working on temporary content. How can they work on huge content if they’re releasing nontrivial updates every 2 weeks? I sincerely hope they use the revenue from China release to substantially increase the size of their story and dev teams.

Steel Fenrir.2791:

Could they bring back Ree to the writing team? It feels like they are trying hard to become “Bioware”. Do you guys think that’s the “in” thing right now? Do you seriously think Dragon Age or even Mass Effect writing is good? Dragon Age story sucks. It’s as tasteless as watery soup. That goes for Mass Effect as well. They did have some interesting parts. The lore was interesting as well, but their execution was bland. The overall general feel, it’s like a short story stretched out to cover a novel. Don’t emulate them. Be real. Don’t put firstworldproblems into the game as well. Who the kitten cares about lesbo/gay BS? You want to be political? Then cover sexual violence, massacre, and torture into your story. Now that’s some Game of Thrones political fantasy realism right there. And don’t give me that black and white propaganda bullkitten we see in TV.

For your information (not that information is apparently among your interests), a lot of people care about sexuality in today’s world, and I don’t see why you have a problem with Anet expressing their views on it in a creative medium. And “first world problems?” This is a video game. One that requires Internet access. Everyone who will ever experience this is arguably living in the first world, so why is it bad that the game focuses on themes they can relate to? Sure, Anet could afford to tackle more serious issues like the ones you’ve mentioned, but an M rating would cut out a lot of their audience, and they just released this game in China; and you know that wouldn’t fly over there. This is a business, after all, one targeted at many millions of people with widely different ideals. Try to consider other people on occasion.