Guild Wars 2

You’re doing the math wrong. The damage number IS the co-efficient, you don’t take both into account.
IE:
Barrage: Damage (12x): 1,692 (coefficient=4.8)
Meteor shower: Damage: 481 (coefficient=1.30) (24 meteors)

1692/12 = 141, damage from 1 hit.
141, each hit uses a 0.4 co-efficient.
0.4 * 12 = 4.8
141 * 12 = 1692

tada!

Barrage does 1692 damage.

Each meteor hits for 481, 24 * 481 = 11544

More specifically, if you take armor into account, lets say toughness + armor in a low powered opponent is 2000, and your power (does meteor use power?) is 2000, then

Damage = {Co-Efficient * Weapon * Power)}/Defense = 4.8 * 2000 * 1000 / 2000
Damage = 4800 for barrage

each meteor would be hitting for 1300

24 meteors could do up to 31,400 damage, so I’m assuming they land randomly and don’t hit everyone in the AOE?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

LittleLepton.8915:

I would posit that encouraging a newbie to waste gold and time on gear and strategies that are not efficient or as good (I’m assuming that he does not want to spend hours in a single dungeon) is a terrible thing and you should get in trouble for griefing.

This implies that all people play for the same reasons you do… to do the content in the fastest, more efficient means possible. However, it’s downright foolish to assume such. Some people play simply to play, and therefore have just as much right to play how they please as you do. So what if it’s not the most efficient, or provides the most DPS. If the group as a whole is enjoying itself (after all, this is supposed to be a game about the ‘journey’ not the ‘destination’ as I keep being told), then what is the issue?

Shocked by the anger in this forum. Obvious problems like pets dying because they don’t dodge aside, I would ask most Rangers if they’ve played another class, and if they’ve played dungeons with that class, and if they’ve been kicked for poor play while doing so. If yes, you really shouldn’t be complaining in this thread.

And to those of you who are getting mad at Rangers because you’ve got evidence that a certain build or a certain class is 3% more efficient than another, I understand elite players playing like that, but most people don’t find that fun. I’m not saying I’m trying to suck, but if I like the greatsword and the longbow, i’ll use the best build that uses the greatsword and the longbow. You can all go to kitten.

Really, compared to the other classes I’ve played, Ranger seems extremely powerful.

I’d be interested in your comments on why my power ranger (posted in the build thread) won’t work. You might save me a lot of time and effort.

Go go power rangers?

I particularly enjoyed hitting with maul last night for 4500 and seeing the little asura turn tail and run.

Monkeys, apes, etc.

Fling poo skill optional.

Started writing down my build and I realized I’m a power ranger. That’s so lame, I might change my class

kiwituatara.6053:

Durzlla.6295:

What exactly is a PU Mesmer? I figure it’s prismatic understanding based but idk much else about it.

As of now, there is no counter against PU mesmers if you play ranger. You will lose 100% of the time. I’ve been experimenting around just to make sure if I’ve missed any potential counters for it on a ranger.

I don’t play mesmer so I can’t cover everything. But the most generic PU mesmer is the blackwater PU mesmer build (http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNArfWnUEVUbYNy0wWbEx0jgD5AOSKKtXrkiZ7CB). A short explanation to the build is that it has a lot of clones and conditions. The mesmer is able to gain lots of random boons coupled with a 100% uptime of either aegis, regeneration, or protection. They are also able to invis when they’re low on hp and their signet of ether rivals warriors healing signet. This is probably the most OP build/class in gw2 right now.

Better explained here: http://qq.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tr7pa/lets_talk_about_the_pu_mesmer/

Thanks for linking that. Fought one of these guys yesterday and was wondering what the heck was going on (since when do Mesmer’s use so much stealth?).

My power build is particularly vulnerable to this build, luckily I have a counter built in. Shouts give me 13 seconds of swiftness, guard for instance, has a 15 second cooldown. I guess if a Mesmer disappears I’m just running the other way.

Looked a bit and didn’t see this so I’ll post what I’m doing at the moment.

Pets: Using Raven and Owl.
Equipment: All Valkyrie (Power (Primary), Vitality, Critical Damage)
Weapons: Greatsword/Longbow
Skills:
-Healing Spring
-Sic Em
-Protect Me
-Signet of Stone or Guard or Search and Rescue
-Rampage as One

M 30, II, X, XII
S 10, I
W 0
N 30, V, IX, XII
B 0

Defensive strategies:
-Protect Me + Signet of stone will give you time to heal/run. Even protect me by itself can be a great sacrificial survival strategy.

Offensive strategies:
-Opening strike gives you a guaranteed crit. Best used with Maul, but on the longbow the best attack is a long range regular attack (or point blank shot if they’re close).
-Starting the fight from range, use your guaranteed crit regular attack, hit RaO, and Sic Em. Use rapid fire and barrage to get up the stacks of might. Pet attacks will give you a stack of might, which will be shared back with the pet due to NM Master, so he gains might twice as fast as you.
-Use Hunters shot to stealth then switch to greatsword and maul for a guaranteed crit.

Support Strategies:
-Regen + Swiftness from shouts, so if you’re not using the defensive skills then Guard will keep up regen+swiftness (almost) all by itself.

Notes:
-You pretty much have the max power available, so your greatsword attacks do tons of damage. Longbow does less damage, so it is only to be used if being at range is giving you an advantage somehow.

-If I get attacked by a thief I like to ‘sic ’em’, point blank shot, hunters shot, switch to greatsword, maul.

Tips/Questions/Critiques welcome.

Im pretty sure it does? Pets don’t die much, of they do just swap em. No big deal.

If you use protect me and sig of stone then it wont kill the pet, now i feel the need to log in and confirm that…

Oh, and I might have got one trait wrong, I think I went with marksman — 2 instead of 1 so that my owl’s chill effect lasts longer.

Durzlla.6295:

@Anthony, 2 questions, 1) what pets do you use? I’m very curious since you have protect me and that destroys most pets. And 2) what do you do about fights wher RaO is on CD? Because it’ll happen quite a bit I’d imagine.

Birds, haven’t had a problem with them dying any faster than I do, but that’s in SPVP and they’re a * to target. I usually swap them out before they die and don’t have any problems. If I’m using the guard thing its usually desperation time so I’m also healing/etc. and hoping help arrives. Surviving for an extra 6 seconds when a whole group is attacking you is a big deal in spvp.

Yeah RaO is on cooldown pretty much constantly, I’d guess I get to use it once every 3-4 fights? I still have enough power to do serious damage though. My main is a level 80 guardian, so the high damage from regular attacks are something I’m DEFINATELY not used to. Notice I have no precision too, which makes things a little trickier, but I like the synergy with the guaranteed crits from marksman.

I’ve tried a condition build and a spirit build and this is the best one of the group so far… But I like coming up with them on my own so its not like i’m comparing to the established stuff online.

Edit: oh, signet of stone cancels the protect me damage. Forgot to mention that.

I can’t read your link (my fault, not yours) but since you’re talking about power builds, here is what I went with: (new to ranger, but not the game, comments welcome, I came up with this myself, like to use the same build(not necessarily skills) for everything if possible, but this has been tested most in spvp since im not 80 yet)

Valkyrie equipment.
Long bow + Greatsword
Healing Spring
Sic Em
Protect Me
Signet of Stone
Rampage As One

M 30 1, 10, 12
S 10 1
W 0
N 30 5, 9, 12
B 0

Like to start off with rampage as one and sic em. Hit a regular shot for guaranteed crit then barrage and rapid fire to get your pets might up. Pet attacks gives you might, and your buffs get transferred to the pet in addition to might from your hits, so the pet will go up in might twice as fast as you. I usually get it up to 12 stacks or so.

Then hit hunters shot to stealth, switch to greatsword, and maul with guaranteed crit. Greatsword is better damage so unless I have a reason to stay ranged, I usually don’t at this point.

No condition damage at all.

Rarely is it the only thing that happens when you use that skill. Many blind skills are instant cast and can be cast in rapid succession with other skills, or aoe repeating casts, tied to another skill or proc., etc.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Now before folks get excited in terms of this being a statement of attention, hold your horses! I am simply calling out that Nike has clearly displayed one of the directions we could go with the platform but more importantly he has proven out how Collaborative Development can work without having to be told exactly what we are working on now or in the future.

I can say however, that this is a direction we have discussed and that i have discussed in public before.

Chris

And he managed to do it without adding:

“Defend the forts in order to collect achievement points which will give you a unique pioneer backpack item!”

I don’t see why we cant just use Karma and Gold…

:angel:

Taushullu.6180:

In my opinion, you should try to keep the Living Story as the driving force behind Living World. What I mean by this is that Living Story should direct our focus to specific areas of the game (much like how it does currently) ultimately leading to changes in the open world itself. Most significant change to current system would be that more time is given for each story step to play out. I don’t mean slower releases I mean longer storylines and more individual releases within them. You shouldn’t rush story, ever.

How this translates into releases is that anything major happening in the world is first introduced in living story instances. Lets say we have a Living World storyline involving the brand. To keep this short we fast forward to the point where we have a release that reworks Shatterer. When we first enter the zone we will be put into Story instance with Rox and Braham, for example. To flesh out things a little let’s say that we’ve given a mission to secure a supply line to the Steeleye Span. We start working our way through branded from the Span to nearby village. When we get to the village we might have to defend a packdolyak while the villagers pack the supplies. After defeating the larger wave of branded everything seems fine and we’re starting to move back to Span. Before we get to leave however, lighting clouds start to gather and from the clouds comes the Shatterer. This is the first time ever where we’ve seen Shatterer attacking something outside the brand and the NPCs also show their surprise yelling and screaming that this isn’t normal. So we gather the troops we can and start to fight back. As the leader of the pact me, the player, is given the task to lead this assault (together with Rox and Braham). And so we fight, shoot the dragon with cannons, dodge his deadly breath and force him to eventually retreat. But he won’t go peacefully. As he rises to the sky he wipes the village to the ground with his tail. Many die and my group is mortified by this sudden attack. After a while we get a messenger to told us that Shatterer is seen flying all around the Ascalon and we eventually leave the instance.

Now when we return to the open world the things we’ve learned from the story instance can be seen. Shatterer is attacking villages around Ascalon, branded are continuing their spread from the brand. Steeleye Span is desperately trying to fight back but is in constant need of supplies which are brought with caravans that need defending, the destroyed village from the instance remains destroyed in the open world and has some DEs happening around it. All over Ascalon villages are being reinforced so that something as horrible what had happened wouldn’t have to happen again.

The thing I’m trying to tell here is that even after the Living Story moves on, we are still left with the story instance. This instance holds everything we have to know about what have happened and making it replayable allows people who missed the event to still experience that. I think we should have more of these instances per release so that the story is properly fleshed out. In this context it would be nice to see another instance about Steeleye Span and maybe even something tying things back to older GW1 lore with an instance about Searing Crystal. Key here is that everything of importance (especially things that aren’t left behind when the story moves on) are told in these instances.

Couldn’t decide between a /bow, /applause, or /slowclap… Anyway, I was extremely excited reading what you wrote, and hope it gets in game.

I loved the story mission for tower of nightmares.

Maybe phasing makes the game seem more “living” to you, the developers, but to me, the player, its a more “living” world when I go from pre-searing to searing ascalon than when I defeat Zhiatan (despite the fact that I haven’t because it takes so kitten long) and the area stays the same.

edit: used the wrong word.

Jaken.6801:

Anthony.7219:

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

I have to agree.

We need to stop suplementing “archievments” for “storyprogression.”

While in theory Vorps archievment were better ones, since they actually had a narrative, they were dreadfull, since you still needed to grind for 5 hours the archievements to complete it.
Furthermore, it actually blocked you from progressing the story and resuming the new activities and events that were still active from the patch before, the queens jubilee.
As long as you didn`t finished at least five invasions, you weren`t able to kick Scarlet out of the arena and enjoy the jubilee again.

the little narrative for context just felt like a bit of flavour text to play the otherwise short “clockwork chaos”.

We had the same again with the “Bloody Madness” helloween right now.
Story progession, blocked by archievments.

Archievments should enhance the experience, give you extra goals to strive for. Let you look for hidden stuff (secrets). Give you an insentive to explore the content more aside from the mainstory you are presented.

In the past, where no archievments were involved in the industrie, we made our goals ourself. We looked for hidden stuff and were excited if we found something hidden.

However the modern gaming mind is going a step backwards. Archievements took over and now work as a checklist.
I don`t mind. It has a guiding role for less versed player. For the casual.
however it should not be a neccity to enjoy content.
It should pop up while you play, giving you the tingle that you have done something right, something special.
You found a hidden room, a hidden message, or better, all of them.
You completed the backstory of the Toxic Alliance, because you finished your own little obelisc with the shards you gathered…

We aren`t quite there yet. We bounce back from good to bad archievements.

For all i can say:
- grind archievements —> bad
- story blocking archievements --> bad
- rewarding players for finding hidden stuff —> good
- for completing an the whole event --> good
- to complete a difficult secondary step —> good

They should feel natural, not “brainless”, or “just for the heck of it” because we need them.

Completely agree with this.

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Change the dynamic events in the region to reflect whats going on. Instead of centaurs simply battling with humans, have each side switch their focus to what is going on at the center of the lake. New DEs…Humans and Centaurs are vying for resources..spin something off of that.

I haven’t had a ton of time in game, but aren’t the centaurs fighting the spores when they’re nearby in this release? That’s a step in the right direction IMO.

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

Hi Colin,
I wanted to quickly respond to this, then I will read the rest of your post. Have you guys considered using phasing? Keep the content in the game for everyone and use phasing to phase the world into the different changes that the Living Story dictates.

For people that are playing alts, if they have unlocked the last, or most current phase, of the Living Story with a previous character, they have a choice to kick off the LS from the beginning or at the current point in the story.

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

I have 0 problem with the open world progressing if some of the other issues are properly taken care of. Let me know what happened, let me re-live the instanced story missions, maybe the dungeons, maybe tweak the rewards system, etc.

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

I would love to see a living story menu separate from the character menu and achievements menu that is laid out similar to the personal story menu and has everything written up so you can catch up on the story. I don’t mind the open world progressing (content being removed), but it seems to be a huge waste when something like a dungeon (or story instance) disappears. Can’t we keep access to these areas and just give access through an NPC or entrance with a “FLASHBACK” tag?

I’d also like to see all of the living world achievements pulled out and put into this menu (if you don’t like my idea from my other post) so that it feels like a proper, major area of the game instead of a side show.

I wish I had more time, but this baby just won’t sleep for me

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Hi Randulf,

I agree that we should and will have a separate discussion thread for DE’s foundational design, evolution and quality. What i am interested in here however is how DE’s can relate to story telling and game play synergy and the overall evolution of Living World. Therefore within these bounds i think it is a great topic for this thread.

Hope this makes sense?

Chris

Hi Chris,

I’m a little strapped for time, so I’m sorry if I’ve missed this already being discussed elsewhere.

Has any thought been put into the consistency of the delivery of the content you’re providing? The main game revolves around heart quests and dynamic events. The personal story and missions for the living story quests have the little starbursts that lead you to a location/instance, and there are the in-game emails that point you towards instances/etc..

When applicable you use dynamic events within the living story as a tool, but the reward system and quests are provided in large part through the achievements panel. I’m not sure what the intent of this was, or if it is working as intended, but it feels clunky to have large parts of the experience tied to a system that has always been intended to be in the background. Achievements are immersion breaking. When you make the only real goal for playing the living story buried inside of this system I feel like I’m playing solitaire instead of a RPG.

Part of the issue, I suppose, is that there is a goal here to try to reward players who can accomplish a certain amount within a certain time limit. I don’t really have a problem with this, but if I’m going to admit that it is a stretch for me to be able to accomplish those goals in the time allotted, then there is absolutely no point in investigating/collecting/participating in anything to do with the living story whatsoever.

Perhaps another currency is in order? Or could there be karma-merchants providing event-specific consumables? It just seems like there is only one goal, the back piece (or the krait obelisk, or the candy corn elemental). I would love to see something that is independent of the amount of time you’ve spent on a specific living story event (2-week period) so that if I run out of time after achieving 10/13 points towards my candy corn elemental, its not time completely wasted.

I feel like more creative use of dynamic events might be part of the solution. I know there are mixed feelings towards the shrines in Orr but I feel like the tower of nightmares could use something like this. Instead of little independent events, they could lead towards one giant event with a merchant at the end that sells you the obelisk shard for living story points.

Just an idea.

rizzo.1079:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also please also be aware that there is a lot of judgment around Scarlet when the arc has not completed yet. I agree with many of the points being made at a foundational level but please don’t assume that the direction of the arc is understood by all just yet.

Chris

I think the point is that her story so far is less an arc and more of a line.

They keep hinting at an awesome conclusion. I wish I could go back and read the story so I know what it is thats concluding.

Chidori.9483:

Epicness

Nike.2631:

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

…

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

I feel the story itself is pretty good, but the content is designed in such a way to take away from the story. It feels difficult to experience and enjoy.

I LOVED how the NPCs at the end of the story for tower of nightmares would heal me back up if I was downed. Nice touch.

Blade Syphon.4325:

Continued from last post

Except than came Dragon Bash, and this is where it became clear of the direction your living story update would take in the future, though we didn’t know it at the time. Ask anyone about Dragon Bash, and the first words out of their mouth will be “Grind for Achievements!”. The story content was minimal, and the emphasis was on clicking 100 of these, 250 of those, 50 of that, and also 100 of those as well. That was literally the content. Dragon Ball was an alright diversion, but beyond Dragon Ball and the 10 minute long story instance, there was nothing else.

Sky Pirates of Tyria at-least began to remedy things, even if the dungeon was no where as well polished or balanced as the Molten Facility. But it was atleat content with some meat on it’s bones in comparison to Dragon Bash.

Than we had Zepyhr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee, both of which were amazing updates, rekindled my interest in the game, and made me think “You know what, Anet’s learned from their mistakes, it’s nothing but gravy going forward!”.

I was wrong.

After Clockwork Chaos and SAB 2, which I personally believe was the last of your pre-made content that you had on hand before starting full throttle with the idea of bi-weekly updates, your content patches quality has gone down, horribly.

Let’s take a gander at each living story update after that, shall we? I warn, it will not look pretty.

Tequatl Rising involved a revamp of a world boss that was clearly neither balanced, nor was the concept well understood by your team, as we now have a world boss no one runs anymore on most servers, essentially killing one chunk of content. Outside of that, we had a scavanger hunt and an achievement grind. Following that was Twilight Assault, a fun enough dungeon, but with no real reason to run multiple times, and also had, once again, an achievement grind as the focal point.

Blood and Madness was even worst, with two story instances that each were 5 minutes long, a gutted version of the previous year’s event, and once more, an emphasis on grinding achievements for a meta.

Tower of Nightmares is, without a doubt, the worst of these thus far. You redid an entire zone, yet the actual meat of the content update is, well, bad. You have three events, the majority of which are more or less the same (Kill adds while defending NPCs who will blow up the offshoot), copy-pasted into a few other maps with no uniqueness between them, a story instance that lasted 10 minutes, yet ANOTHER scavenger hunt with no challenge to it what so ever, or even any real depth to it other than a pointless collect ’em all-a-thon, and an emphasis on Achievement Grinding once again.

The other problem is the achievements aren’t even comeplling anymore. Almost everyone in Tower of Nightmares is “Kill X of these, destroy Y of these, and collect Z of those”.

Tell me, how is this compelling content? The answer is it’s not. You’ve begun to use Achievements as a way to skip making deep content, and I know it’s not because you don’t want to, but because of the two week release schedule.

If you remained on a monthly release schedule, we’d be getting MUCH better content, of this I am positive, and less filler content that involves grinding achievements, none of which are even remotely compelling anymore.

The Living Story idea was a nice experiment, as was the two-week release structure. But it’s become very obvious that your team simply cannot keep up with it. You’re trying to get so much out at any given time, that the content’s no longer compelling, fun, or even worth doing to me and a lot of others that are echoing this same statement on the forums.

A big problem for me is that I’ve always hated achievements. I’ve been gaming long before they arrived as the “hip” thing to do and I’ve hated them ever since they arrived. I am doing them, however, and hating it, but they’re time-limited, this bumps them to the head of my priorities, and makes me do them even if I’d rather be doing something else in game that I find more fun.

Had a thought re: this today. I remember when the game came out and everyone was praising the subtle improvements over other games with things like progress bars instead of ‘x/x collected’.

Why not tweak the achievement system and bump it towards heart-like events and dynamic events. Change the heart color so it doesn’t need to be a part of map completion. The achievements screen as it exists today could track how many of these you’ve finished and although it is a subtle change, I feel like it would make me much happier to be getting my missions in a traditional fashion rather than going into a sub-menu to click the eye button beside the daily kill _/_ goal for the latest living world release and desperately trying to finish it in my 30 min that I get to play each day.

runeblade.7514:

• Quality Dynamic events, not Quantitative. Quality Dynamic event is one of the strength of Guild Wars 2 and it is extremely fun. Do not abandon this design. Story-driven Dynamic events makes it less like a grind and more of a adventure. Why do Aetherblades appear out of nowhere? Dialogues helps a lot. I rather have 20 good Dynamic events every week than 100 grindy ones. Have those 20 DE be the achievements required to finish the Living Story achievements instead of killing 100 stuff.
• I found that exploration in Zephyr Sanctum fun. I didn’t like finding the Tequalt stuff in Tequalt rising.
• First Halloween scavenger hunt was fun because of quality Dynamic events. I prefer if it was linear so that I don’t have to port as much. Waypointing is immersion breaking.
• No more Scarlet, she is the Jar Jar Binks of GW2. Instead, I want to kill more Dragons.

I hope someone is reading this stuff. Most of these posts have been hitting the same point home from subtly different angles. The living story isn’t enjoyable. You’re introducing some grindy new activity to keep hardcore players busy for a few weeks, casual players can’t enjoy it, the story isn’t very good, and its far from fun.

For instance: Something like “Centaurs invade Lions Arch/Divinity’s Reach” would be way more fun than “Tequatl is more difficult. Please run around 4/5 zones looking for something for a few days. Thanks.”

You could unlock items by participating more in the event, but you could participate and enjoy the story without defeating 350 centaur waves.

Like, why am I closing the doors? Aren’t the mad king and the bloody prince fighting? Why aren’t their minions fighting each other?

I’m a casual player, not by choice (baby), and I find that I’m missing a lot of the content because it is behind achievement walls or for a limited time only. I’m currently trying to finish the Halloween story (the content itself is great) but I’m not sure I’ll finish in time (Nov 11th or something?) — currently at 7/13 achievements.

It doesn’t feel like a living world to me. I wasn’t able to beat Tequatal(tried a few times and failed), I wasn’t able to finish Scarlet (tried a few times and failed), I did catch the start mission for closing ceremonies and this was GREAT. Everything before that I’ve missed.

I’m not asking you to make content easier, but right now I’m just not sure that you’re really accomplishing anything.

Dee Jay.2460:

The problem with starting with a Warrior is that everything thereafter will feel weak and slow.

Most classes are very easy in GW2 and don’t have much depth compared to other MMOs. Engineers, Mesmers, and to a slightly lesser extent, Elementalists are the exception.

So true. Mesmers, for some people, make them think “WTF IS GOING ON” before the end of the day, but anyone who has played normal MMOs should be fine with the other classes.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

So just a quick (slightly off-topic) question: did anyone else notice the bunk warr in the video from page 1 was actually clicking on his skill icons to activate them? Do people really play this game with a normal mouse? I mean that’s impressive for any of you that play with a mouse that has anything less than 15 buttons on it. I tried it and pretty much suck at it.

I used to do this in other MMOs but switched to a specialty 1 handed keyboard years ago (still use a regular mouse) and it made me a much better player.

Karizee.8076:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ojgdr/what_class_should_i_play_a_summary_of_each/

Some people that may not have a very comprehensive understanding of the game will tell you Warrior, but rest assured all classes are viable and some like thiefs and elementalists do more damage than warriors.

That link should give you an idea of what kind of playstyle you might like.

(RE: the OP) Just read this for the first time, and it is an EXTREMELY good guide. Use your past MMO experience to determine how easy/complex and weak/durable you like to be, and you’ll get a shortlist of good candidates for a class.

Since you’ve already said you want something easy and durable, that means that your best bet (according to the guide, and my recommendation as well) would be to start with a warrior (or according to the guide, Necro) then when you get a better feel for the game and decide (possibly) that you want more of a challenge you can change to something else.

For instance, I started with Guardian and I’d agree with its medium difficulty and high survivability rank. I then switched to thief and I’d also agree with the medium difficulty and low survivability ranks it got. Thief really requires careful use and planning or you’re on your face a lot, but I find it very rewarding (and I don’t even care for stealth)

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

@LanfearShadowflame
ok i changed the title from “icons” into “images” since i originally want images.

@Stormcrow
ok.jpg

@Player Character
but i want images! then i understand there are issues so images will be hard.
now i want names besides the roman numerals.
and a enlarged pop up traits selection window to fit the names.

@Rouven
yes! if they let us to save builds then i think i will be complaining less.

@Teckos
you turned both the Arabic numeral and Roman numeral into English words!

@quaniesan
O_O

@Anthony
yup, roman numerals are indeed fancier than Arabic numbers.

for myself, i can read the roman numerals just fine. if i put in the effort, i can remember the roman numerals (as well as location) for the traits i wanna swap to often too.

@LanfearShadowflame
well, even if he is not joking, everyone is unique in a way.

@Anthony
ooooo. do u mean?
1. enlarge the traits selection pop up window
2. roman numerals in front, bold and large.
3. background art of trait in the back, faded out
4. roman numeral still very obvious and visible
5. nice roman numeral + faded background art of trait

well, a few people have stated budget / manpower issues but i like to dream about such things anyway. always have something to look forward to in guild wars 2!

@voidwater
well, its very subjective anyway. since it has been over a year, a lot of people have come to accept the roman numerals. for me, i process images better than roman numerals.

Yes that’s what I mean. So I think we have a design that would satisfy both the wants of the art people and the roman numeral people. Right now all that’s left is the “yeah but its functionally (if not aesthetically) perfect so why would they bother touching it?” argument. Isn’t there a red posting in the “clutter” thread that indicates they are working on revamping the ui to simplify things for the Chinese release? So they have a team that would already be working on this “area” they just need the suggestion. I’ll leave it up to you to make it

Hrm… Guardians are still better at this than warriors because their passive heal is a completely separate skill and they have access to several other sources of healing, the problem seems to be warriors larger damage output and health pool.

Wonder what would happen if he faced a Sword/Dagger Poison/Steal Thief ripping boons off and applying a poison to lower healing effectiveness? Probably wouldn’t be doing enough damage to take him out.

Hrm… Was going to post something about this being junk, but that’s one powerful healing skill.

Actually, healing surge is very powerful too, why do warriors have the most powerful healing skills? So weird.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm okay.

what if there is a option to show them as english words instead of roman numerals.

an option.

i.e. the pop up window shows a list of traits in their english words names.
or whatever language the client is in.

perhaps the roman numerals will finally be replaced with icons once they stop removing and merging traits.

i asked for stats swapping function since 2006 and this function appeared in 2013.
i can wait.

You seem to got this thing stuck in your head that they intend to change the Roman numerals to icons.

Removing, merging and changing traits will never stop happening as long as they keep adding traits, skills, weapons ect. Balance isn’t something that just stops (unless the game is shutting down / going into maintenance mode).

Also, unless they totally revamp the UI, the writing would be incredibly small, considering some of the trait names (eg, Inspiring Battle Standard, Thrill of the Kill, Destruction of the Empowered). Then you got the fact that Minor Trait icons are smaller (although they necessarily don’t need changing, but then you’re breaking the consistency of the UI).

yes, that’s stuck in my head since the first beta weekend.
i have been putting up with this for more than a year.
that does not stop me from playing guild wars 2 though.

well, it is not too hard to revamp the UI.
i think. i dunno really. i am not a programmer.

just make the pop up window much larger.
refer to attached image for example.

there we go.
now i’m asking for words, alongside the roman numerals.
not asking for too much now yes?

Missed this post the first time through. I would think that a nice popup like that would also provide a talented artist the space to put in some nice background art behind the wording if they did it right. Just don’t take away my roman numbers.

quaniesan.8497:

I’m roman number illiterate.

You’re probably joking, but I feel like writing this out anyway because a few people seem to have said the same thing.

I = 1
V = 5
X = 10
I before V or X = subrtract
I after V or X = add

I – 1
II – 2
III – 3
IV – 4
V – 5
VI – 6
VII – 7
VIII – 8
IX – 9
X – 10
XI – 11
XII – 12

You’re welcome.

Most people find this a more interesting way to write numbers. Its not supposed to be hard, just… Fancier?

Interesting point about toughness + armor vs power * weapon strength.

It inspired me to do some math, the basis of which was my first attempt at calculating all this months ago when I calculated that vs direct damage vitality > toughness when vitality < toughness + armor.

(Co-Eff * Power * Weapon Strength)/(Armor+Toughness) = Damage

But in order to incorporate things properly we’re going to takea look at this instead:

(Co-Eff * Power * Weapon Strength)/(Defense * Health)

Because:

Damage / Health => Percentage damage, and Frist Formula / Vitality => second formula.

I’m ignoring critical for now, I think we’ll see the results without another multiplying factor, just assume it is 0% for now.

So if you have 1000 weapon power, 2000 power, co-eff = 1, 2000 toughness, and 10000 vitality

10% damage.

Increase power by 100: 10.5%
Increase vitality by 100 (1000 health): 9.1% damage.

The problem then becomes putting this (and the values I’ve ignored) into a chart to consider all potential iterations and variables. The forumlas get more and more complex when you try to consider different skill exponents, critical rates, etc.

The real problem isn’t the numbers, the real problem is how they’re used. Killing faster means you take less damage. What happens to the numbers when both people are in groups? What about healing? Dodging? I’m not that much of a math pro! Intuition tells me:

-Dodging favors damage, since it doesn’t scale with defense, but you also can’t do direct damage and dodge at the same time…
-Healing is so situational and skill dependent, who knows?
-Groups would amplify the more damage = less damage effect I would think?

edit: Just so everyone knows I’m not bias on this, if you make the co-efficient 4, the damage becomes 40%, and increasing power by 100 increases that number to 42%.

The same could be said about how precision and critical damage work with power. The more you increase the effectiveness of not only power, but weapon damage, and your coefficient. Its almost easier to ignore these factors, but when comparing % effectiveness of various stats, you simply CANT ignore them.

Sleel.8365:

Quarktastic.1027:

What you call fun, I call needless busy work. I like my waypoints just fine.

I’m just sitting here wondering who exactly is standing behind him, holding a gun to his head forcing him to use them. And why did he let him in the house?

I know right? I enjoy that sense of real-world distance, but the truth is that having that sense of distance comes at a cost. It is fun the first few times, but after that people get angry, really angry, and then they leave. If you had to run to the dungeon and it took 15 minutes, a lot of people simply wouldn’t bother. I left Lineage 2 because I kept failing a quest that required me to walk across the whole world. I believe they had really expensive waypoints in Lineage 2. Maybe I should have put a rock on the W key, I think it was a straight line for the most part…

I think its a mistake to think that ArenaNet made this design decision without carefully considering it. Maybe this thread should be called fun at the expense of a sense of distance.

Even the “one key for one action” thing isn’t a good guideline. You don’t want to play a game where macros are okay, or you’ll find you suck unless you’ve got the latest “code”. A one key-one action macro that wouldn’t be okay would be one that tries to perform several attacks in order (turn off action queue) knowing only one will succeed based on range or cooldown, etc.

Ex: Melee strong attack (fails on cooldown), melee normal attack (fails on range, this doesn’t work in this game, but go with it), ranged closer (success!)

Don’t know if its possible in this game, but it was an annoying built – in feature in rift.

Ezekiel.1985:

Anthony.7219:

Gotta ask:
1) Is there any reason why we couldn’t believe that the Sylvari are Mordremoth’s champion’s minions (not cleansed)? Do they have to be crazy? I mean, the undead, yeah, mindless zombies. Fire dragon? Yeah, raging crazies. Crystal dragon? Dominance, confusion, mind control. Why wouldn’t the “life” dragon be different? I have read that the dragon’s don’t get along, maybe Mordremoth is trying a different strategy? He wouldn’t really care that the Sylvari are killing the other dragons. We may have a huge disaster on our hands (I’m assuming that some of the Sylvari will resist when he awakes )
2) Well known and established parallel between the dragons and the gods. Perhaps they’re afraid/forced out because of the dragons? Now that Zihtan is dead, perhaps Kormir can make an appearance?

Yes, there is a reason. Because what we know of dragons, at present is
1. They are all evil.
2. They “gain” minions via corrupting them, not “making” them.

So while the whole dragon thing is a “cool conspiracy theory”, it doesn’t fit in with the current lore. It just doesn’t. For them to be dragon minions, two things which fly in the face of all we know about dragons and their minions and corruption would have to be true.

1. There is a superhero dragon that is benevolent.
2. Superhero dragon can make minions, he doesn’t corrupt them.

I think that’s just way too much of a jump to make, again because it goes against EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THEM RIGHT NOW.

Do I think these coincidences are all inter-related? Definitely. But to think that a dragon is the answer is too big of a leap to make. One shouldn’t theorize before having sufficient data – because inevitably, it leads to twisting facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts.

Maybe the dragon exists only in the dream, and will corrupt the sylvari from within. The asura will create a way for us to visit the dream to assist the sylvari by fighting the dragon inside the dream.

Naw, that cant be it

Lord Kuru.3685:

It’s one of the traditional ways of holding a sword:

http://www.thearma.org/essays/StancesIntro.htm (bottom of page)

If you’ve watched any samurai movie, you’ve seen it there as well.

Thanks, I was waiting for someone to post something like this. To assume that arenanet designed the stance with “I want them to look weak” in mind is silly.

/endthread

Aside: Can we please not call it a skin bag, or a bag full of skin, etc.? Its creeping me out

eisberg.2379:

Pariah.8506:

eisberg.2379:

Knote.2904:

Vayne.8563:

The entire game is about playing with your friends.

I busted out laughing.

I’ve never seen an MMO punish you for wanting to play with friends/guildies more than this one.

Umm ,what? How is that? This is the best MMO I have played that doesn’t punish you for wanting to play with your friends.

1- get the same XP and rewards in group as solo
2- Get to play with lower level friends without being so over powered that you one shot 5 monters all at once
3- Lower level friends don’t get less XP for having a higher level in the group
4- Higher level friends get rewards appropriate for ~ their level, ie they are not getting level 5 gear in a level 5 area
5- Higher level characters still get XP appropriate for their level when playing lower level areas with their friends.
6- Don’t have to spend so much time traveling around the world to get to your friends area.

So I am curious Guild Wars 2 punishes you for playing with your friends.

I got friends in NA, can I play with them?

That is all you can come up with? Hardly being punished more considering all the stuff I listed. Every other MMO I have played punishes you and your friend for grouping up with each other.

Forgot to add 1, I have friends on different servers, and I can take me character to different servers and play with them, in other MMOs, I have to at the very least have an additional character on my friends server. Plus I can gather friends from different servers and we can all play together at any time with any of our characters.

Your 1 restriction is hardly worthy of “busting out laughing” and calling it the most punishing MMO to play with your friends of all time. I bet the vast majority of the players don’t even have friends from across the pond so it is a non issue for most.

Forgive me for asking, but the problem here is that he has a character on a EU server and can’t guest to NA servers? Because he could log into a NA server and start a new character.

Ahlen.7591:

Lolyta.4582:

“I have to say that it irks me a little when people use the word ‘female’ as if it was a noun when it’s more of an adjective.”

The word “female” is both a noun and an adjective, depending on how it’s used.

“My father does not wear female underwear.” (adjective)
“Some females are more aggressive than many males.” (noun)

No charge for the tutoring.

I believe female would change to ‘feminine’ in the first case. As that particular sentence is painful just to read.

Definition of Female

Never used a greatsword on any character. (IMO the skills tied to them are tacky) Screenshots?

I understand where the OP is coming from, but they’re being shortsighted I think. I’ve played a lot of MMOs, and I know the feeling you’re talking about by being isolated. You think WoW travel was hard? They had waypoints, you just had to wait 30s for the flight. GW2 is the same way they just skipped the scenic part. I think it has freed them up to do more with the game to be honest.

1) Roleplay. Walk. WPs cost money, so you’re actually be rewarded a tiny bit for your time.
2) I get that exploration feeling the FIRST time I go somewhere. I don’t need to feel it again and again. Making travel cost a lot/take a lot of time will make things incredibly difficult at times and frustrate a lot of players.

That being said, I think there is a place for incorporating that sense of ‘exploration’ you’re talking about, but it isn’t from copying WoW. In fact, WoW isn’t even the game that had the most exploration I’ve played, far from it, its just the popular game.

How about accessing remote places in future expansions requires a long trek / voyage and creates a little separation? If you’re in Elona, for instance, you wouldn’t be able to instantly transport back and forth. Perhaps they could introduce some lore that made travelling back and forth between areas need recharge time. Your mission to elona, for instance, could need to take place before the asura gate gets installed. Trek through the desert.

Outright removing waypoints so that you can have a mount is silly.

Oh come on, its called the tower of NIGHTMARES… The only way they could have made it more obvious is if they said “Tower of HEY THIS IS SCARLETS TOWER YO!”

I suppose it could have something to do with the nightmare but not scarlet herself, but the only way that would happen is if the krait were corrupted by a plant dragon or something like that.

haha, took me a while to figure out what that kitten was covering up…

SundayTrash.9562:

It 40 sec if u don’t trait into it. Btw u know u can only carry 2 set of weapon and not 4. And even if u do close in the distance u will be lucky to get 2 strikes in before they dodge roll away. And what about going up against range condition build.

Wasn’t trying to mislead you. The thief doesn’t have an option to trait their heal time down. I was listing the weapons to demonstrate that they all have a gap closer or similar. Have you tried using contemplation of purity? Pair it up with Save Yourselves in WvW for a quick way to wipe off the conditions on everyone around you.

You’re making it sounds like your class is broken when really those players are traited specifically to defeat you because your class is one of the most powerful. Don’t believe me? Fight all the classes in the spvp mists area and tell me which one is the hardest to beat. I just took my thief there and the guardian downed me in 3 hits. I eventually tweaked/etkittenil I was able to beat him, but that NPC is way harder than any of the others (on any class I’ve played).

-Guardian’s heals are much larger than some of the other classes that I’ve played. It seems to make up for the cooldown. In fact, it almost seems to be proportional. The Thief can heal for 4500 every 15 seconds but the guardian can heal for 9000 every 32. In a shorter duration fight the Guardian’s heal is better.
-Wall of Reflection. (My personal favorite, as some of these classes really are designed to take out guardians, just put up a wall and fight someone else instead).
-Shield of Absorption.
-Hammer has an immobilize.
-Scepter has an immobilize and 1200 range.
-Sword has a gap closer
-Greatsword has a leap.

Mathias.9657:

No thanks underwater combat is terrible and can’t be fixed, it has always sucked in MMOs and will forever.

It has always sucked in MMOs, but they’re pretty close in this game. I have hope.

I’m sure they’ll give it a makeover if they ever decide to go ahead with the under sea dragon.

Underwater city/expansion? Definitely. Underwater combat would need a work-over though. Its not too bad now when you’re only in there for a little bit at a time. Its pretty, its playable, but if you were stuck under water for hours at a time your hair would fall out.

Lol at the guy able to read roman numerals since age 7, since when is this hard?

The trait system in GW2 is pretty unique. I like it. The combination of the skills themselves paired with significant stat changes based on the trait lines you’re speccing makes developing builds challenging and rewarding.

I spend a lot of time playing with the traits, and when I’m done I write them down like this:

(This isn’t a real build)

Z: 30, VI, VII, XI
R: 0
V: 30, VI, VIII, X
H: 0
V: 10, I

Makes for a nice looking build writeup!

And sometimes my brain just substitutes number in there instead of roman numerals.

I don’t see any problem… I look at the icons long enough to identify the number, if the numbers were smaller then I would be spending more time finding them, not less. The roman numerals add character. If I don’t know what the skill specifically does then I need to mouse over it, I would be doing the same thing if it was a picture of a bird/etc. instead of a number…