Guild Wars 2

You’re not “that guy”. Each class in this game has a drastically different play style (Guardian being one of the most straightforward) and the skills/weapons you chose greatly affect how you play the game. Playing thief with two daggers and 3 poisons, for example, will get you killed a lot. Playing thief with two pistols and a few shadowstep/smoke screen/stealth skills will lower your dps, but make you feel unstoppable.

Just keep playing, you’ll get it.

Oh, and dodge.

I just laugh at some of these forum people. Really, nowadays if you buy a console game, you might get 60 hours of play out of it, if its good. If you’re unlucky, or you own a Wii, it’ll be 15. A game that has multiplayer value, achievements, creativity, you might get a little more out of. This game lasts way beyond most, if you’ve seriously beat the game and done everything, you’ve probably played 2000 hours. What more do you expect out of a game?

I have a level 80 Guardian, most wouldn’t consider me a hardcore player since I’m extremely time-constricted on play. Lately I’ve been working on leveling a thief. (took a break for a few months as well)

The difference between the classes for me is the feel you get while playing them.

Guardian being slow, methodical, and simple, with many valid build combinations and many useful skills. My guardian does medium-damage, can take a hit, and is excellent at providing passive buffs and whatever healing this game allows from a support character (which isn’t much).

I found the thief can’t take a hit in melee (no, I didn’t come to this conclusion wearing all zerker gear), can move around the battlefield like a ******-******. Feels like a higher difficulty rating, if you come into a pvp match with dagger-dagger and use the wrong skill against a warrior you’ll be down in two hits. Use the right skills and they won’t be able to touch you. Can provide support, but it is much less of an emphasis. Ranged gear is lower range than other classes but combined with their mobility is extremely effective.

Ranger — I usually like rangers, something is off about the ranger in this game.

Engineer — more of a nieche character, I have one at level 20, they’re extremely neat to play, but they’re such a mishmash of crap that I’d say only play one if you know you want to play one.

Mesmer — Higher degree of difficulty, very interesting playstyle, kind of a mix between the specialization of an engineer and the high-risk high-reward of a thief. If you love clones, play this, you cant play a Mesmer without clones, all their powerful skills are tied to them.

Necromancer, Elementalist — No interest. If you like casters you’d know more about these than I do. I like how the elementalist has (25?) spells per weapon, but I just can’t bring myself to play a magic-only class.

Warrior — Haven’t played one (such a basic concept…) — hit like trucks, hard to take down, and their banners/shouts provide great support. Basically they’re a guardian with more damage, comparable support, and less healing.

Hope that helped

Summon Sylvan Hound (and summon druid spirit) last 60 seconds… They aren’t the strongest summons but they last twice as long as most others.

They’d have to do an extra patch the day before the patch to put in the patch-norn riding the yak.

It’d be worth it.

I haven’t even visited the mountain zones yet (currently leveling my second major character) and mountains/snow are almost always my favorite area in video games. I am so excited that the priory has led me into the mountain areas!

I cared until someone pointed out that the story would have ended the exact same way whether or not you were in it. The kitten’s find the arc, and they all die. You are completely irrelevant to the story.

Edit: Seriously? I can’t even post a quote from the Big Bang Theory without part of it being replaced by the word “kitten”? Come on!

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Ethics.4519:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Ethics.4519:

Just like Lanfear said, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. There are instances like this all over GW2.

Who knows, maybe even one day we can pick two classes, like GW1

Is Guild Wars 1 gonna stay open or will it be closing soon ? I might check it out because I’ve never played it.

There has been nothing hinting or implying that the servers will be closing any time in the near future.

In fact I would say the opposite. Just last week I decided to instal and log on. I couldn’t remember my name/password so I emailed support. They got back to me within a day, had a back and forth conversation, and reset my password.

So, the support is still very much there. (It’s possible it’s the same support, so not sure)

I’m gonna check it out then since I’m such a big fan of guild wars 2. How are the graphics and gameplay on guild wars 1 ? Do they have a monthly sub and if so what are the limitations for the free to play people assuming it’s free to play.

Haha, thanks for proving my point (in another unrelated thread) about F2P and subscriptions scaring off customers!

GW1 works like GW2, you buy the game. Done.

WatchTheShow.7203:

clint.5681:

WatchTheShow.7203:

Ranger longbow #2 (rapid fire) will kill yourself if you use it on an enemy with retaliation. Every time that arrow comes back and hits you, you get hit with vulnerability, so every attack hits progressively harder and harder until you’re dead. Fun stuff.

You can also turn away and deselect to stop it

Yes, I know. I got confused with retaliation and reflection though. Either way, they both hurt.

Reflection tends to be easier to spot (giant shimmering shields and such with your own attacks flying back in your face) where as retaliation is just a condition/numbers thing. Retaliation being the much more common effect.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

I just came across this post and I find this an interesting direction for ArenaNet to be taking. I hope they can find a way to work out this approach to communicating with the community. I’ve always been struck by the balance game developers need to manage between listening to the often contradictory community and presenting the game design envisioned by the company.

On the subject of prioritizing topics polls seem like a good way to determine which topics shoudl get the highest priority as well as finding the real topics of interest of the GW2 community rather than just the ones that occupy the attention of forum-posters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

\
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris

Would a topic on the UI need a place? I was thinking about subjects like build-loading or ability bar schemes that might be of interest.

Good point. We could discuss global topics such as bugs and UI on separate threads once we get our collaborative process down after we have tried 1 round of PVE, WvW and PVP threads?

Chris

Is there a team working on content like new dragons and large new areas (keep them secret if you want)/etc, or is the team concentrating on the ever progressing story line presented via the living story? I think some clarity regarding the vision here would be appreciated. (and might help direct some discussion topics)

Kingmutez.4931:

Anthony.7219:

How do you guys have time to keep up with this stuff? I don’t get the online community at all. However you’re managing to feed yourself, play this video game 40+ hours a week, and stay sane is beyond me.

ArenaNet better be working on some permanent content, because these updates hold absolutely no value to me whatsoever.

kinda off topic but ok,

i don’t understand how you cant? i work 40+ hrs a week and still do the content. You have 14 days, 336 hrs to play the content, i play maybe 8-10hr a week, mostly on weekends. that’s 20 hrs to play the content which only takes maybe 3-4hr tops? They have been moving to more permanent anyway wit the last 2 patches.

Yes, I suppose my problem is that I cant have a slot of allotted time to actually finish anything that takes longer than 30 minutes.

I suppose it was this post that got me worked up:

Draknar.5748:

Zetta.5102:

I can understand some content being temporary, but locking players out of things like Super Adventure Box and the Crown Pavilion is absolutely deplorable. It’s an absolute waste of your development time to release temporary content, especially in a case like Super Adventure Box. My friend was thinking about picking the game up solely to play Super Adventure Box, but that won’t be happening now.

Man, you must have really loved SAB and Crown Pavilion is you feel it is deplorable that they are recurring temporary content. Deplorable? Really?

Sure it would be nice if it were permanent, but I wouldn’t say it is deplorable that it is only recurring. Think of it as a holiday event. When W3 is done it will come back, then go away after a month, then when W4 is done it will come back, then go away after a month, or perhaps they will make it permanent once the SAB is actually complete, who really knows, it isn’t even finished why complain about it?

If you missed something because you took a hiatus, then that’s a shame. I think having temporary content is designed to keep people from taking hiatuses in the first place. You don’t want to take long breaks in case you miss something fun/interesting. I mean honestly, they’ve been doing these 2-week/1month releases since Flame and Frost back in January, if you didn’t know by now that taking long breaks would likely result in missing content then I don’t know what to tell you.

And please don’t try to talk people into buying GW2 just so they can play SAB, that would be the biggest waste of money I’ve ever heard. It’s fun and all, but there are 6 zones….that’s not worth 50.00USD. Plus you knew it was temporary from the first go around, so why would you assume it would be permanent the second? Quite illogical.

Kind of an ignorant thing to say.

locoman.1974:

There were two dungeons added and removed, aetherblade retreat and molten facility, they’re supposed to be making a comeback before the end of the year as new fractals.

What has stuck so far between southsun and last month (that I remember):
- Several new minigame (sanctum sprint, crab toss, southsun survival) added to the activity rotation.
- 3 new jumping puzzles (not so secret in gendarran fields, and 2 more in southsun)
- Karka Queen in southsun. Basically you have to take the 4 camps in southsun and it’ll make a karka queen boss spawn that gives bonus chests. When karka queen is defeated new vendors show up that sell exotic gear.
- Some new achievements (marriner plaques in Lion’s Arch tied to the latest novel, speedy reader and cleaning up the neighbourhood in Ebonhawke)
- New champion loot. Killing champions now give you bags that contain crafting materials and blue/greens with a chance at some unique weapon skins.
- VIP area in divinity’s reach with all crafting stations, bank, TP and asura gates to all cities in a small room, 2 weeks access bought on gem store (personally I prefer ebonhawke, all crafting, banks and TP all close together for free).
- Several gem store weapon sets (aetherized, zodiac…). Basically you get the chance of a rare ticket in the black lion chests (or a little less rare ticket scrap, 5 scraps and you get a ticket), you can trade 5 tickets for any of these weapons. It used to be 1 ticket while their relevant living story was running.

I’ll keep adding if I remember anything else.

Ah, so that’s how you get those tickets. I suppose I should buy a bunch of keys and chests with gems then (haha). Saw the VIP ticket for sale yesterday… Gem store pushing (/yawn).

Haven’t tried many jumping puzzles because they’re so kitten hard to find. Maybe I should google a few.

Edit: And I just figured out why everyone keeps typing kitten. See? I’m catching on.

I was going to check out Southsun but I wasn’t sure what there was to do there? If the Queen drops chests and you can get some important mats/etc. there then maybe its a place I’ll hang out once I finish leveling my second character. I was there once when you accessed it by ship but I’m just finding out it has changed since then.

Lonesamurai.4852:

Issues that need fixing…

Expansions
More indepth LFG system
Trading System (massively inflated prices on some, but LOADS of items on sell prices under vendor price)
International District (Bring the community back together)
PvP ranking system account bound
Craftable Precursors

There is more to the list on my desk, but they are personal things

Cantha and Elona are a must, but make them EXPANSIONS, not stand alone, even unhappy, most of us will still buy them for the areas and new places to see

GW1 Armour skins… Now c’mon Chris, you must admit having a female dervish armour in the armour vendors hut in WvW is a horrible tease…

If you really don’t want to charge us for them, just calling them expansions may appease a few people

StarbornStriker.6493:

I’ve debated with myself for some time whether or not I wanted to write a post on this forum about the current method of living story updates. This thread seems to be asking for community feedback, thus it would be silly to waste a golden opportunity.

Some context: My husband and I are Canadian (both of us play the game). My husband recently accepted a job across the pond in the UK. I’m sure you can imagine the long, complicated process of moving from one country to another, with an ocean in between. Our moving process has been going on for almost two months now.

In terms of living story updates that’s four updates. Four. Two of them we missed completely due to lack of Internet connectivity. One of those updates happened to introduce the main antagonist.

Now here’s where I could complain about all the items and rewards we both missed an opportunity to earn, but I’m not going to. Because in the vast scheme of things, that bothers me less than missing the story.

At this point, I have no idea what’s going on in the living world story. I was sketchy on it at best (and I’ll go into that in a moment) but at this point I’m totally lost. I don’t know who Scarlet is. I have no idea what she’s up to or what she’s been doing, nor any concept of why. And one of the questions I’m beginning to ask myself is; should I even care? (And as a writer I can tell you, it’s never good when your audience starts to ask this question)

I understand that you want to create a living breathing world. What writer, what creator, doesn’t? BUT, you’re trying to create that world within a game, which people have to schedule time for around their real lives (not the opposite way). I hate to say it, but I feel punished for having to make a major life-changing move because there’s no way for me to catch up on the story I missed.

I could read a wiki, or a blog or a walk-through, I suppose. But I’m not going to. I play games, especially RPGs, to experience the story. I don’t want to read pages and pages of wiki background lore. I don’t even want to read the short stories on your website (though I’m sure someone put a lot of effort into them and they’re perfectly lovely).

I want to experience the story IN the game.

Arena net, you build such beautiful worlds. You create such fantastic lore. When it comes to setting the stage, you’re fantastic at it. But when it comes to utilizing those foundations, somehow you fall short. It seems so often players have to resort to outside sources to fill in the gaps they can’t find in the game. It’s my biggest complaint, overall, about GW2.

What gets me the most is I don’t understand how a game which has a system already built into it to allow private story telling (personal story instances), can’t seem to find a way to catch people up on living story when they miss it. I get that maybe you don’t want people playing past events because they’re ‘in the past.’ I get that. But in the real world there are lots of ways for me to ‘experience’ past events – people make movies, for example. And your game has lots of opportunities to fill in the blanks this way too. Break the fourth wall a tiny bit. Have the Asura make some kind of interactive holographic re-enactment of past story points. Go crazy. Bring back the old dungeons with holographic bosses. Do something to keep your story in the game, even if you want the events to be temporary.

And please, please don’t say this is coming in the form of fractals. As someone who is probably never going to be good enough at this game to play fractals with any regularity, I can honestly say that doesn’t feel good enough. Give me an instance I can do with my friends. Make it cheesy if you want, I don’t care. But please let me live your story.

You and your friends should be able to do fractals 1… The difficulty scales up with the number, but I’ve done it back when it was released and I wasn’t level 80 yet (they were guesting players up to level 80 for its release). Its really neat to see the different stories.

Chris, can someone explain (and maybe sticky) the intent behind these living story updates that have content disappearing so rapidly? When is the next content update like Nov 2012 happening that introduces a new area, map, dungeon, etc.? I hope some of this content is being re-used (it seems to be 99% festivals so I don’t see why it couldn’t be tweaked and re-used annually, in which case a timeline could be posted in advance!)

Sorry, not really the spot, but I’m just trying to get back into the game (haven’t had much time lately due to a new baby) and this has been frustrating me today.

Thanks,

How do you guys have time to keep up with this stuff? I don’t get the online community at all. However you’re managing to feed yourself, play this video game 40+ hours a week, and stay sane is beyond me.

ArenaNet better be working on some permanent content, because these updates hold absolutely no value to me whatsoever.

It is pretty hard for a Guardian to get more than 424 damage out of reflection (198.45 + 0.075 * Power) @ 3000 power is roughly 424. If you have 15,000 health, that means you stood there and hit him 35 times without managing to kill him and in the process killing yourself.

Guardians don’t have availability to confuse so that shouldn’t have been an issue.

Other possibilities? Was he setting you on fire too?

rizzo.1079:

No the only things that have really stuck around are the Scarlet invasions, the Karka Queen meta, the Teq change and now the new TA path. There are some cosmetic changes to South Sun also…oh and there were a few mini games added which are on rotation in LA like Crab Toss, Southsun Survival and Sanctum Sprint.

Anyone can feel free to correct me though, I may be forgetting one or two things.

That’s what I was wondering, I keep hearing about content being removed, but I always assumed it was things like the queens tourney thing (I caught the end of that) not a full blown story-mode dungeon. Really sad, especially the single-player stuff, as I don’t always have the ability to set aside a block of time for a dungeon.

Read about these updates on the old release pages and patch notes since some of the item vendors were still around and was wondering if there was actual content I could go explore.

Guess not.

Had to leave GW2 for a few months for personal stuff, I’ve been back since September. How many of these living update things have stuck around? For example, I just recently read that there is (was?) a story mode dungeon out of LA where you fight the Aetherblade guys? I’ve obviously missed the story, but story mode dungeons do interest me (I’m not an elite player, so bear with me). I was around for the start of Southsun cove but I’ve missed some sort of single-player solo mission to kill Canuch that leads to a larger group mission?

Should I be looking for this new (to me) content?

biggs.4702:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Sorry, but this deserves it’s own thread. So it’s been said that there’s “probability of a new race or profession is high and so are the currently unreachable lands of the original Guild Wars”.

My speculation is quaggan playable race. As for profession, pure Ritualist would be nice to see. I miss my Spirit Spammer builds that would make an unending mini army of ranged attackers.

Sorry, but you really should search before posting, as this topic has been covered TO DEATH already.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/A-Case-Against-New-Playable-Races/first#post2305618

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/New-Races-Classes

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-race-races-will-likely-become-playable

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Future-Playable-Races

Etc, etc…

I wish I could find a source for this but I remember an interview where ArenaNet said that the “lesser” races (skritt, quaggan, hylek) were never going to become playable races. If anyone knows that source please link it?

Its a fun thread/topic. No need to get so worked up.

ArchonWing.9480:

Dyno.9467:

CMstorm.8679:

well now all you gotta do is dodge, dip, duck, dive and DODGE!

Welcome to GW2…….Patches O’Houlihan

Is this really necessary?

P.S. We need a wrench dodging dungeon and the elitist speedclear crew of Globo Gym.

They’re already decked out in purples.

Seriously, centaurs. I don’t see why one band of centaurs (not all of them) couldn’t come to peace with the humans in exchange for land to build a city. It’ll never happen though, re-working the armor would take FOREVER.

I would be so excited about that. So many awesome possibilities.

Khisanth.2948:

Weapons are a mix.
Armor really need to have the right dyes and the preview system makes it hard to test properly. Well that is light armor on a sylvari anyway. The medium is still ‘…’ and I forgot how the heavy looks like.

Yeah, the right dyes help a lot. I previewed it on my character and was like “Wow, that looks amazing!” (I think the armor was Mithril and the checkered part was charcoal/blue?) he looked like a noble in his “show” armor. Then I saw someone post a pic of their char with a purple/pink/black version of the armor. Not exactly the same thing.

Mesket.5728:

Living world is a lie to push gem store buyers (which is fine since it’s their business after all) but as a sequel, they should focus more on continuing the main story every now and then instead of more birthday parties that little people care about.

How many party crashers are going to put the world at stake???? it is kind of silly…

Stupid addictive gem store. I just blew 20 bucks on dyes last night. I can resist everything but dyes! DARN YOU!

Seras.5702:

I’m hoping the LS evolves into an extension of the original gameplay rather than a temporary sidequest. Which means that eventually they can open up the Crystal Desert via a series of 2 week events that lead to a brand new group of permanent desert zones in an attempt to begin an offensive against Kraky. Much like Orr, they’d be level 80 zones.

They can do this with the northern Shivers too, against Jormag.

I don’t think they excluded these areas due to laziness. I think they were trying to be far-sighted and plan for the future. If you unlock the whole world at once, it gets stale at once. If you start with a large chunk, and then as we defeat a dragon, continue to unlock more areas, we get new permanent content every x months/years. That’s how I’d do it anyway.

The living story is a fixed structure! Its not just a buzz-word invented by Arenanet to advertise constant content updates! They can’t change the format! They can’t decide to release larger, permanent content (that they have said they have teams working on) and call it a living story update! We’re doomed!

Otaur.9268:

Because the dragon’s are actually friendly, and we are the bad guys… They land like, “Hey everyone, what’s going on? OMG OUCH STOP POKING ME!” and we are all like “Hahaha evil dragon, taste my awesome fury” and then it’s all like (in Tequatl’s case), “Man forget all of you fools, can’t even get me limping, I’m going swimming and this time I’m drop some dead fish heads on your land… You Tyrians are so mean…” and then he does a few leaps and is gone for a few hours hoping that when he returns, someone nicer may greet him.

The End.

You just made my day.

“Eat fish heads you meanies!”

Danikat.8537:

I think part of the problem is they never say where these new events have been added.

When they first added a load back in November I wanted to try them. I looked on the official site, the wiki, even 3rd party sites and I couldn’t find any information on what or where these events are and eventually I gave up.

(These weren’t the Lost Shores ones, which were one-time only and clearly announced when they started. They were normal, reoccuring dynamic events added just after the Halloween update.)

Since then I’ve probably done some of them. But I don’t know. Because of the way dynamic event work I think the only way you could know for sure one was new was if you’d spent so much time in the area before it was updated that you were certain you’d done every single one, and given some of them are relatively rare (or at least rarely triggered) that would be hard to do.

This makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure if its because the populations are lower in those starting areas, or if they’ve just filled in the holes that existed before, but the events flow together much better. I’ve noticed that there is always a chain, always something to do. At launch it felt like they were rarer and more disconnected and random.

+1 for the armor. I’ve only looked at one I saw linked in chat, and I loved it. I like it more than any of the exotic dungeon sets.

Two sets for each weapon would be a lot of work, but it shouldn’t be “impossible to balance” like a fully selectable set of 5 weapon skills would be. They could implement “set A” or “set B” selection I would think?

Katre.1084:

The Tengu do not need to be from Cantha (though I want to see that expansion too). There were Tengu in Prophesies before Factions was released.

There is Tengu in GW2. They have a whole city, they’re just waiting for something / isolationist.

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?

With 2 utility skills guardians can take all conditions from nearby allies then convert them all to boons. (cooldown on both is 60s)

PopeUrban.2578:

Anthony.7219:

Finally, I never played Cantha, so can someone point out to me why the Tengu are so interesting? I find their appearance, structure, and overall design aesthetic to be inferior to every race outside the Kodan. (I see them and think, oh great, a bird race, a bear race, whats next, an elephant race? I’ll name my character Babar)

The tengu were, essentially, the Charr of Cantha.

Where they differ is that they were actually not the agressors of that war, the humans were, and they sucessfully defended themselves and may have actually wiped out canthan humanity if not for a man named Togo working diligently to secure a lasting peace. Unlike the Charr, they also had presence on multiple continents, and in the case of Cantha even some villages and quest NPCs.

Also, all of that Tengu stuff was Cantha’s backstory, it hapenned before that campaign, but Tengu were the “other” major sentient race in the region, and Tengu existed as far north as the shiverpeaks 250 years ago in the original Prophecies campaign, though at that time they were simply wordless NPCs much like the majority of Charr.

My point is they have a large grounding in the lore of the world, as much as the Charr and, IMO, would have been a better pick than inventing an out-of-place “elflike” race to pull in… well… people who like elves.

That’s the difference when working with an established world versus making a new one.

You’re just racist

GOSU.9574:

Anthony.7219:

If you have higher toughness and lower vitality, then your heals are healing a larger portion of your health pool, which is getting reduced at a slower rate because of your higher toughness.

This is misleading.

You health is reduced slower if you have higher toughness only in situations where you are facing Power damage. You vitality loss is not slowed by having higher toughness if the damage source is conditions. Also condi that reducing healing is more of a bane to low vitality Guardians.

Hrm… Yes, wasn’t trying to be misleading. Thanks for pointing that out.

PopeUrban.2578:

Anthony.7219:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kodan wouldn’t really work. Your customization options are white and… uh… white. Tengu were originally slated to be playable, but got cut, which is a shame, as they would have made far more sense than suddenly inventing sylvari, and would have easily filled the same cultural role.

Honestly the sylvari seem to have just been injected in to the lore with very little rhyme or reason as some sort of plot fulcrum for a plot as yet unrevealed to us. Tengu have a vibrant backstory, a global presence, and a diverse and interesting culture. Why Tengu were cut in favor of sylvari I’ll never understand. Maybe to court the elf market?

The Sylvari are a very well designed, innovative race. Thank goodness they didn’t just say… and… um… Elves? Yeah… they came from…. somewhere.

Sylvari are semi gender neutral slim forest creatures. Elves. Which LITERALLY sprang from nowhere (alright, from a magic tree planted by two extremely minor NPCs) and weren’t even given a decent retcon to apply them to the existing world (at least the asura and norn were “discovered”)

Coming from literally nowhere, they’ve been given the one special gift that they’re somehow immune to dragon corruption. Something that’s extremely potent as a plot point.

Additionally, the two foremost NPCs in the game thusfar NOT designed just so that your race has a hero too are both sylvari (Scarlet and Traherne)

So, again, I marvel at a brand new race that sprang from nowhere being suddenly added to the lore and made literally the most important one.

The alternative would have been a race that has a richer history than the Charr in the collective lore of Tyria.

The only explanation I can think of is that they knew they needed an elf-like race and Tyria didn’t have any. At which point they had to justify adding them to the world, so they made them super important to gloss over how much of a historical black hole they are.

Yes, and then there are the rumors that the pale tree is really supposed to be a minion of the jungle dragon.

Elf-like perhaps, but they’re not elves, and that’s an important distinction (they did have Dwarves at one point, so don’t think it couldn’t have happened). Also, I personally find their backstory and possible looming plot points very captivating, although I despise both Caithe and Traherne.

Finally, I never played Cantha, so can someone point out to me why the Tengu are so interesting? I find their appearance, structure, and overall design aesthetic to be inferior to every race outside the Kodan. (I see them and think, oh great, a bird race, a bear race, whats next, an elephant race? I’ll name my character Babar)

juno.1840:

Anthony.7219:

Okay, found the spreadsheet. I took a steady level of damage (power, weapon damage) and increased toughness by 1, and took the percentage decrease in damage. I then increased vitality until I got the same percentage decrease in damage. Vitality was better for my character because he had low health, he was a Guardian, this fits perfectly with what was said above by others. The key thing to remember is that it is Armor + Toughness that needs to be equal to Vitality for maximum effectiveness vs direct damage.

However regeneration and healing should be considered. A guardian has constant health regeneration which is more effective with a smaller health pool and higher toughness. There’s a great build post about this in the guardian forums. However this approach makes you more susceptible to dying from conditions.

I find that both should be sacrificed for damage on my toons since no amount of survivability will allow me to win if I can’t kill my opponent.

Balance is a good approach, but I find burst the most valuable asset in wvw for my characters.

Yeah, I should have mentioned that. If you have higher toughness and lower vitality, then your heals are healing a larger portion of your health pool, which is getting reduced at a slower rate because of your higher toughness.

But on a very basic level, if you go from 25000 health to 25100 health, that’s a 0.4% improvement from 10 vitality. If you go from 3000 to 3010 armor/toughness, that’s a 0.33% improvement from 10 toughness.

Of course, it will also make you heal a 0.4% smaller portion of your health pool. Complicated stuff

PopeUrban.2578:

Kodan wouldn’t really work. Your customization options are white and… uh… white. Tengu were originally slated to be playable, but got cut, which is a shame, as they would have made far more sense than suddenly inventing sylvari, and would have easily filled the same cultural role.

Honestly the sylvari seem to have just been injected in to the lore with very little rhyme or reason as some sort of plot fulcrum for a plot as yet unrevealed to us. Tengu have a vibrant backstory, a global presence, and a diverse and interesting culture. Why Tengu were cut in favor of sylvari I’ll never understand. Maybe to court the elf market?

The Sylvari are a very well designed, innovative race. Thank goodness they didn’t just say… and… um… Elves? Yeah… they came from…. somewhere.

7/10. I like the effort but I find them difficult to read.

Named my Sylvari after my son and a tree — I was going to make him look like a fall Birch tree, but then he just looked like a pale blond kid. Ended up being a birch tree with blue-leaf-hair. The single name thing was way too hard, everythings taken!

Quinton Birch

I was just thinking about how angry people seem on this forum. For example, yesterday there were threads complaining about the combat system (ridiculous in my opinion)… This made me think back to my days playing other MMOs. Here is a little story for you:

I used to play Rift. Rift was a game that tried to make things as complicated and hardcore as possible. There was one class (thief or assassin or something like that) where you could perform various combos. Main hand, off hand, main hand, finisher, that kind of thing. 1, 2, 1, 3 or 4. In PVE this was fun, but in PVP I found myself quickly falling behind. Eventually I realized that the reason I was falling behind was because the game had the ability to program macros. Eventually I figured out the following macro:

-Ignore error messages.
-Attempt skill 3 (finisher). It will either give you an error message (unavailable) or start the skill.
-Attempt skill 2 (off hand). It will either give you an error message (unavailable, or currently performing skill 3) or start the skill.
-Attempt skill 1 (main hand), same as the above.
-Use keyboard macro to repeatedly press the button to run this macro.

I would make one of these for each finisher, but the truth was that one of the finishers was better than the rest, so really I just ignored the others.

Essentially, I held the 1 key and my attack would run by itself. If I wanted to do something else I would release the key and press something else.

Think about that for a second. Sound familiar? Yeah, its called your “1” key auto attack. Thanks GW2 team.

champ.7021:

why not just let party members damage each other anyways that way i can kill off all those useless clerics guards as punishment muahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Also build variety is a good idea in the sense that you have damage or condition. All the other stat combinations are useless. GW2 honestly has way too many stat combinations probably so casuals can feel innovative

This is one of the problems, the stat system they’ve created is a ton of fun, but when there is one “best” set then you don’t get to experience it. If you try to do something like increase 4 or 5 specific stats then you end up picking 2 or 3 different sets that have most of the stats you need and balancing them.

Oh well, too late now.

Okay, found the spreadsheet. I took a steady level of damage (power, weapon damage) and increased toughness by 1, and took the percentage decrease in damage. I then increased vitality until I got the same percentage decrease in damage. Vitality was better for my character because he had low health, he was a Guardian, this fits perfectly with what was said above by others. The key thing to remember is that it is Armor + Toughness that needs to be equal to Vitality for maximum effectiveness vs direct damage.

I did some math on this, but I could be wrong so take it with a grain of salt.

If damage is (as I saw somewhere) (Power * Weapon Damage * Skill Modifier) / (Armor + Toughness)

Then you want whichever is lower, Toughness + Armor or Vitality (You can see your toughness + armor stat on the character sheet)

Condition damage works differently however, this is only for direct damage.

Edit: I’ll try to find that spreadsheet, I forget the details.

Lord Rheios.4152:

Its hardly random. There’s so much anger in this forum you could show it to religious zealots (any of them, lets not be discriminatory) and they’d step back and go “whoa guys, chill a little.”.

And some of it is warranted, most of it less so, and it kindof feeds itself until everyone loses their reason and focuses on the negatives.

And honestly, I don’t think the rage level is indicative of the actual player base, but like all things, that’s heavily tinted by my opinion.

And I honestly would have expected this sooner. And much more rudely. Some of the posts are really inflammatory and I’m certain its hard not to just whip out the ban hammer in a rage, or at least respond angrily. I’d have been tempted myself, especially if they work as hard, and for as many hours, as I think they do on this game.

Yeah, you’re right about the anger, there is a lot of anger. I’m one of the calmer people on here and I just lost 400g by accident.

clint.5681:

Well this is random

I kept waiting for him to say something, then he didn’t. Consider our collective wrists slapped?

Galtrix.7369:

Katai.6240:

You want to show that you’re better by having inherently better stats, while standing in one place casting skills in some optimized order.

I just gotta say, maybe GW2 isn’t the game for you. I’m not saying that GW2 can’t improve. I’m just saying that I’d probably stop playing altogether if it turned into whatever you’re thinking.

No, I would not like Gw2 to implement a combat system where you “Stand still”. I’m simply saying that the combat system needs an improvement, because at the moment, it’s unclear who I’m being attacked by and from where I’m being attacked. I simply want Anet to make it a little clearer so a thief can’t hop around my guardian while I can’t hit him a single time because the thief constantly flips over my character, dodging in and out before I have a chance to get a single hit in.

And the combat system in PvE needs improvement as well. It seems ridiculously clunky and jerky, and the skills feel like they don’t activate right away when you press the skill buttons.

From https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/thief/

“Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”

Working as intended?

—> Side note, as a Guardian, I found it useful to have a shield and when you run into a punk like that, shoot off skill #5 and knock them on their butt.

Lostwingman.5034:

Galtrix.7369:

Well, while we’re on that topic, dodging in and out while hitting people is not skill either in my opinion. Anyone can dodge, anyone can activate skills in a certain order.

If there was no limit on how many times you could dodge and no cooldowns on skills sure…

It takes skill to research and create builds of your own that you can show off in PvP by literally destroying everyone.

The word you’re looking for isn’t skill. It’s dedication.

Galtrix.7369:

I remember building a tank Paladin build in WoW and going into PvP for the first time. It was so ridiculously good that I only died once and I would rush into a mob of 3-5 people by myself and kill them all within 5-10 minutes.

That sounds like a broken build if anything…

All I had to do was stand there, pop some heal skills in a specific order, and repeatedly bash my enemies in the face while stunning them, because that’s what I was specced for. I researched the skills I wanted to use and combined the best of them into a chain of fantastic awesomeness.

That’s like drag racing in a corvette against someone in a Prius.
That’s not skill. It’s simply dedication to having the best build/gear/class.

That takes skill.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Lol, this game is balanced. Please remove the balance. I will then choose the best combination of everything so I can be the best. Thank you.

It seems to me like you miss playing the defensive, healing type classes that have been semi-removed from this game in order to avoid the typical holy-trinity that most games rely on. That’s not a problem with the combat system, its just your problem with the combat system. I sympathize.

coronaas.4362:

Anthony.7219:

coronaas.4362:

Peetee.9406:

You guys are aware that NC Soft also owns Wildstar, correct?

I mean where did you think your money from gem purchases goes? Obviously to fund the creation of another game that will share a 95% likeness to Guild Wars 2.

Instead of adding new content to the game, they can just reskin the entire game and sell it to you again.

I forgot to mention. Development on Wildstar started in 2005 for a 2014 release date. Development on Guildwars 2 Started in 2007 and released in 2012. but ofc W* must be a reskin because it came after.

ArenaNet is an AMERICAN based company that is a subsidiary of NCSoft, a Korean company. There are definitely differences in the “style” of the game they make. Just google “Eastern Vs Western MMOs”, I know its a thing, although I haven’t read too much into it myself.

CARBINE is an AMERICAN based company that is a subsidiary of NCSoft.

So im not sure what you point was

from the wiki

Carbine’s founders were 17 former lead and senior members of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft core development team. Since then they have attracted key talent from award-winning games such as Diablo II, StarCraft, Metroid Prime, Fallout (video game), Everquest, City of Heroes, Half Life 2 and many of other successful titles.

Yeah I just posted about that. The thing that gets me going most re: MMOs is that they’re not something you can play on your own time. If you’re playing by yourself, you’re not getting the same game. They’re different than any other type of game because I could go buy some old game and still enjoy it, but if I tried to go into an old MMO I wouldn’t get the same experience at all. After years and years of dealing with this problem it has made me very wary of new MMOs that hit the market. I feel the need to carefully analyze every aspect of the game to determine if it will last past the two month mark in any significant manner.

To each their own though, doesn’t really matter.

Xcom.1926:

Anthony.7219:

coronaas.4362:

Peetee.9406:

You guys are aware that NC Soft also owns Wildstar, correct?

I mean where did you think your money from gem purchases goes? Obviously to fund the creation of another game that will share a 95% likeness to Guild Wars 2.

Instead of adding new content to the game, they can just reskin the entire game and sell it to you again.

I forgot to mention. Development on Wildstar started in 2005 for a 2014 release date. Development on Guildwars 2 Started in 2007 and released in 2012. but ofc W* must be a reskin because it came after.

ArenaNet is an American based company that is a subsidiary of NCSoft, a Korean company. There are definitely differences in the “style” of the game they make. Just google “Eastern Vs Western MMOs”, I know its a thing, although I haven’t read too much into it myself. I do notice the difference when I play them though.

Carbine which makes WildStar is also an American company. NCSoft owns both Carbine and Arenanet. They aren’t just publishers. But I am sure everyone knows that.

That’s news to me, I cant get the website for WildStar to load where I am at the moment. Good to know, although Carbine is new (so we have no precident), it gives the game hope. I’ve given up on pure-NCSoft games.

PS: Did some more research, and it CoH was another American company created by NCSoft, which makes a lot more sense. The only pure NCSoft games are Lineage, Lineage 2, and Aion, the 3 worst games I’ve ever played. (Exaggerating a bit)

coronaas.4362:

Peetee.9406:

You guys are aware that NC Soft also owns Wildstar, correct?

I mean where did you think your money from gem purchases goes? Obviously to fund the creation of another game that will share a 95% likeness to Guild Wars 2.

Instead of adding new content to the game, they can just reskin the entire game and sell it to you again.

I forgot to mention. Development on Wildstar started in 2005 for a 2014 release date. Development on Guildwars 2 Started in 2007 and released in 2012. but ofc W* must be a reskin because it came after.

ArenaNet is an American based company that is a subsidiary of NCSoft, a Korean company. There are definitely differences in the “style” of the game they make. Just google “Eastern Vs Western MMOs”, I know its a thing, although I haven’t read too much into it myself. I do notice the difference when I play them though.