Guild Wars 2

Ben K.6238:

Heart of the Mists is the lobby; it’s a PvE zone. (And a free ticket back to LA, too.)

And that free ticket was the most useful thing I ever received from that zone.

For anyone who’d like to get the world completion achievement, but really doesn’t like the idea of fighting players in WvW, you may be able to get some assistance from your server community.
For players on my server, Stormbluff Isle, there is a community website at http://www.stormbluffisle.com/ – you can ask for assistance on map completion in the WvW forums. We have quite a lot of PvE/WvW crossover guilds who can help out with map completion and the WvW jumping puzzles as well. It will take repeated visits as we never own the whole map all at once anymore, but you don’t have to do any PvP at all if you don’t want to. Got plenty of experienced WvW players and scouts who can keep you well clear of the trouble spots.

I really wish my server had advertised like that for WvW.
Back when I finished it, I had to help kill off players.
IoJ’s teams would run and try to capture zones before quickly leaving them to the enemy. So really it depends on the server and those who constantly get curb stomped will have problems in the Battlegrounds section.

Though many do see Map Completion as a Character achievement, I disagree.
It inherently is a PvE achievement since 95% or so of the map belongs on the PvE side.
In fact most, if not all, of the Explorer achievements are PvE based.
So I won’t say it is bad game design, but rather jarring how we’ve gone from “you’ve done all this stuff in PvE! Congrats!” to “Now you’ve got to experiment in this other game mode.”

Yes the reply of “try it you might like it” will bounce from some lips.
It is sound advice, but face it sometimes you can try it and hate the experience.
I’ve done it, I’ve got my star, and even though they tried to retroactively award bonus chests in WvW I have no intention of collecting them.
Simply put: Tried and hated it, double so with the fact I needed to in order to get my 100%.

One could bring up that achievements are not supposed to be easy.
That is correct, but it still seems rather sad in game design that such a goal requires you to enter 5% of a game that maybe you’ll not ever play again.

To those who aren’t worried by such a requirement and are willing to experiment with all the game modes I applaud you. Chances are you are the types they are trying to target with these requirements, but then again if you were willing to try out those game modes anyways why bother with those requirements at all?

Achievements, at least to some, are designed to reward folks who focus on a goal and are rewarded within the construct of that game mode.

PvP’ers have their PvP achievements. No PvE’er who abhors that game mode would want to accomplish those goals. Just as no PvP’er who finds dungeons boring would give a skritt about the Dungeon Master. Once again those who are willing to try everything need not be examples here. You’re willing to play regardless.

Finally to those who say, in so many words, “man up and just do the kitten thing” I don’t see your words as particularly helpful. Those words are just as useful as “shut up and bleed for your server” which I’ve seen from the WvW community in threads.
It is bombastic, toxic, and overall not helpful.
Yes these threads get tiresome to see, but they are just as valid as those who want other things in this game.

Disagree all you want, but it does show that WvW should either stand on its own or work really hard to be this supposed “middle ground” that the developers are trying to do.

Personally if the achievement was scrapped I wouldn’t shed too many tears, if it just made WvW stand stronger as a game mode alone without resorting to bribing folks to try out a mode they might not like. As for those who were going to try it anyway, I do envy you. I still can’t get any enjoyment from it. I spent a lot of gold making trebs for folks that just abandoned them when zergs approached.

timidobserver.7925:

WvW is part of the world. If you want World Completion you have to go into WvW to get it. It isn’t going to kill you to spend a little time in WvW to grab the points. After all, a WvW player has to a great deal of PVE they have to do in order to get map completion.

Which means WvW needs to have more in order for it to stand alone.
That way WvW players wouldn’t need PvE to help with their income or map completion.

I feel like GW2 is a fine game that eats up what little free time I have.
I like the PvE, I would like for them to finish up Scarlet so we could have another chapter, and I am currently finishing up hearts on my alts.

It won’t change TheNinjaCupcake.
Colin thinks WvW can be a “middle ground” but unless significant steps can be made to get something that both camps like it will have a hard time doing this.

Sirendor.1394:

You searched for a link with PvE.
Blobbing = very casual level for PvP, hardly competitive at all.
If you take WvW in that sense, it’s a middle ground.

But Player versus Environment doesn’t use the requirement of attacking players.
So if anything the ‘blobbing = casual PvP’ is spot on, but that still doesn’t support PvE at all. Which makes that link stronger for the sPvP crowd instead.

Of course I’m of the type that believes PvE should have the strength of storytelling whereas PvP should have the strength of showing your player domination skills.
Which then goes to show why I believe WvW is ever more into PvP camp.

Now if they try to put a story into WvW then maybe that’s some middle ground, but then you risk rankling the WvW crowd because that may not be something they want.

Sirendor.1394:

Atlas.9704:

Obsidian.1328:

Atlas.9704:

We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and …

This snip right here is why players say they are so out of touch with the game. W3 is in no way, shape, or form a “casual middle ground” between PvP and PvE….

I too would like to know how a massive scale PvP game mode like WvWvW be a “good middle ground” for PvE’ers honestly.

They’re not talking about roaming. they’re talking about blobbing. If you compare the measure of skill needed for roaming to the measure of skill needed for blobbing… ahaha. I think even dungeons in PvE take more skill than the latter and nothing in this game takes more than the first.

Based on my quote and the ones after that I’m wondering how blobbing/zerging versus roaming comes into the discussion.

Though I will agree when you have a large group of players zipping about like a swarm of locusts it is fairly easy to strip down anything in your way. The Champion trains have shown us that, it’s almost like a game of Pikmin with them.

Obsidian.1328:

Well they had said they wanted W3 to be fun combat zone that everyone could enjoy. I think they envisioned a semi-casual realm-v-realm mode that was light on competition and heavy on simple good times I guess.

There was an incident late last year where a dev player had told two guilds who were GvG’n at the windmill to basically “stop ruining our game, this zone isn’t supposed to be for that stuff”(not word for word). He later apologized, but it just goes to show how inflexible and out of touch they were with the W3 crowd.

It’s really odd they don’t cater more to the hard-core W3 crowd, there’s certainly a dedicated following for it. They did put in another overflow map, which helped, but they don’t exactly put in a concerted effort there. Comments like the quote above has everyone kinda put their palms up and say “Uhh…what?”

I do remember that little faux paus, had the popcorn bucket ready and tried to follow what threads I could.

Though I admire their ambition I’m still skeptical that PvE players could enjoy a PvP setting. That’s the crux of my confusion with WvWvW. It is large scale PvP. Whatever challenges they put in around the map still aren’t as important as conquering the other servers. At least that’s how I’ve seen it when I tried to do it for my Map Completion.

Like you, I think they really should expand on WvWvW for its own sake. It shouldn’t rely on PvE or the sPvP crowd, if folks come from those areas and love WvWvW then that’s great. However when you have this half way compromise place instead of a unique game mode with its own culture then the concept loses the potential strength it could have owned.

When this post was made in that other thread, about WvWvW basically being a half way compromise so both sides can have fun I was confused. For PvP folks I could see the draw. It is large scaled PvP, take down people by the hundreds. Though for PvE folks where’s the fun? I don’t want to attack human players, so I’m stuck with escort missions and going broke trying to fix buildings.

As a PvE fan, I can get escort missions already and not worry about going broke back in PvE mode.

Obsidian.1328:

Atlas.9704:

We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and …

This snip right here is why players say they are so out of touch with the game. W3 is in no way, shape, or form a “casual middle ground” between PvP and PvE….

I too would like to know how a massive scale PvP game mode like WvWvW be a “good middle ground” for PvE’ers honestly.

Darkobra.6439:

I can point to those locations on a Canthan map. I can’t point to the Mists ANYWHERE in Tyria.

This is true, plus Factions was the most PvP in nature when it comes to the expansion packs from GW1.

Me too, a yearly one would be fun to see.

Temariah.9372:

Why do people constantly harp on the things Anet does wrong and never praise them for what they do right?

Some people harp on things and not praise others because possibly ANet isn’t reaching their goals that would illicit praise. Those goals might not actually fit in with what the company wants to do.

Thankfully there are other posters who are fair minded, praising things while standing their ground on issues that they disagree with. Whether or not their issues will be resolved in a manner which will please both sides is up to the person’s expectations and the company’s goals/actions.

I find it more dangerous to only praise and never offer a constructive criticism.
Overall Vayne and Peetee both have some points in their replies.

Folks get very emotional sometimes. Even more so when people are told that developers and the company will listen.

One can simply go outside and see the same type of energy in other endeavors, when people have energy in them it explodes sometimes, constructive or not.

Lore Question:

With the loss of Glint and the specialization of Air magic came the Zephyrites.
Is there any possibility that players will encounter other Elementalists with specialization towards Arcana, Water, Earth, or Fire?

Well considering how Sigil of the Night works it looks like a possibility that night time could have benefits somehow in the game.

erroch.8061:

I’ve also yet to get teabagged in wvw. This really happens commonly?

I’ve had folks jump on my corpse during the times I tried to complete map.
I’m glad that’s over now.

videoboy.4162:

-Angel has stated in semi-recent Interviews that 2014 will include a good deal of Sylvari content.

Sometimes I half jokingly wonder if this was backlash to the infographic which showed that players used Humans more.

“Sylvari are 4rth place?! That’s it more Sylvari updates until we’re #1!”

Out of all the non Human races Charr and Norn are more exciting, well to me anyways.

Elona, land of the Golden sun.
I miss the warmth of the desert and Joko’s evil actions.

oooh nice, when I log in tomorrow I’ll take a peek.

BobbyStein.2315:

Now to your question: will we see a return of SAB? That’s not for me to say, but if it were to come back, what would people like to see from it? Harder/easier content? New world? More/no Moto story?

More Moto in the SAB releases, new worlds but not like the open air worlds like the ninja temples. Content difficuly (all three modes) was fine.

Or would you like future LW releases to cover other topics? Share your thoughts, but please keep it constructive. Thanks.

Other LW releases that delve into the existing lore (please read that as non or pre-Scarlet) would be wonderful. Bazaar of the Four Winds gave us a group of people that mourned Glint’s death and even showed a bit of what happened after her death.

I would love to see something that bridges the gap between GW Beyond and GW2.
In future releases if there has to be a villain is there a possibility that it will deviate from the pattern we had with Scarlet’s releases?

It is rather difficult to act like there is suspense when a “mysterious person” is described when we knew she was behind quite a lot of the previous mysterious stuff.

Derfblue.1389:

And then the Fire Nation attacked!

Naw we can go older than that.
“Until a new enemy appeared, mysterious invaders known as The Clans.”

Smells fake to me.

It is a decent fall back game for me.
Lately my attention, what little gaming attention I have, was focused on XCom related stuff for a while.
Now that I’ve entered detox (had to do house stuff, no time to play) I’ve gone back to GW2 because I miss the art and game a bit.

Is that anything like the Tank Police or Dream Police?

thefantasticg.3984:

Whatever the new content is, I just hope it ends with Scarlet’s death never to return.

The answer to all of these questions await in our four upcoming releases in 2014: and lead to one final moment that will change the face of Tyria forever.

Source: the recap

So we’re looking at four releases dealing with her and one final moment (not sure if that’s part of the four releases or a fifth release) before she is over with.

Vol.7601:

If it was a forgery it was a pretty good one. What are the chances you would have a GW2 player with a voice that sounds exactly like Scarlet with professional recording software to make it sound crystal clear? It was really well made.

The Internet takes all kinds, you have many folks trying to emulate famous voice actors.
Either for fun, a challenge, or maybe their own attempt at building a resume of sorts.
I’ve stopped trying to understand people a long time ago.

Still my original point stands. ANet has tried to make a non dragon story arc with Scarlet. If they add Dragons to her story or not will be determined in the future by them. I just find it humorous and saddening at the same time that we, the fanbase, jump at the chance of her doing something Dragon related or bigger than her own scale only to be disappointed.

Originally I thought the Krait would be the stars of the tower releases.
It would have made a fine non-Scarlet story. Sadly, I was wrong and now apparently every release dealing with a villain had to have her in it, whether it needed it or not.

That being said, that ‘Obey’ kerfuffle on reddit was orchestrated by a friend of mine. Didn’t know until later and she provided proof :P

Was that the sound bite where Kiel admits to liking having an airship to Gnashblade?
If so neat!

Vol.7601:

Didn’t know it was taken down.

Basically a month ago a user called ScarletBriar on reddit posted a link to it, and what it said was something along the lines of (if I recall),

“Be afraid of Dragons…Be very afraid…(laugh)”

My cynical nature will automatically assume forgery as first reaction, sorry to say.
Also even if it wasn’t a forgery and ANet did make up a line like that there’s not much in context.

We’ve heard from reddit long ago that there was a Kiel sound file that offered the alternative if she lost the election.
ANet could have made up many voice lines for Strong to do. That could have been a line for some promo video one day. It also could have been slated for use on a release dealing with Dragons. That could have also been cancelled somewhere down the line.

Once again all under the assumption it wasn’t a forgery in the first place.
Too many unknowns for this sound file to offer sufficient evidence.

What we do know is, aside from Dragon’s Bash, Scarlet’s story barely contained anything related to Dragons. Bazaar of the Four Winds at least touched upon Zephyrites who talked about Glint. All the hopes that Dragons will be tied to Scarlet are just that, hopes. Her story has no worthwhile connections to that part of the Lore.

Which is a pity, because that would at least salvage her a bit in my eyes.
However one day I could be wrong, there be Dragons because of her, and I’ll eat my hat (first I’ll get one).

This tease though? I’ll chalk it up right there with Clockwork Chaos: A nice concept, but the execution will probably fall flat in places.

First priority: Lore. Expand on established stuff or make new stuff that’s actually entertaining.

Best example for me: Bazaar of the Four Winds, I love the Zephyrites and I loved how they mourned Glint’s death.

Second Priority: Discovering something new. Be it new skill combos, a mob I never fought, a part of the map I don’t remember seeing I enjoy this all. If I get that little “oh neat” feeling then I’m happy.

Best example: I’ve discovered I like Lornar’s Pass so much more in GW2 because I stopped to look at it instead of blazing through for leveling’s sake.

Third Priority: Low stress value. I don’t game on my schedule. I have no schedule. I game on the few minutes at home when people leave me alone. With that said I don’t group up mostly because I don’t want to tie up others by having them wait for me.

Example: This is why I don’t run fractals or dungeons as much as I’d want.

Last Priority: Treasure. Yes I run champ train from time to time because I get the occasional Exotic.

Example: The occasional Exotic I get from champ train or from crafting.

That’s my cut and dried list of “Fun” for me in this game and others.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The event idea is an interesting one, but it doesn’t feel like a “grand journey” so to speak. Do you feel like if we asked you to do 90 different events in a month, and that allowed your ranger to say become a Druid, you’d feel like that was a cool system?

Assuming I can change my Druid back to a Ranger as well, this would be interesting.
For me though 90 different events sounds like quite the feat of commitment, not really a “grand journey”.

Large amounts of filler missions does not equate to a long and grand journey.
Missions and events that touch upon the Lore of Guild Wars in meaningful ways create the grandness for me.

For example: I would value a 20 event chain dealing with the Zephyr nomads more than 80 events where I collected and killed random things.

Now if it is possible to give us meaningful missions and have a large amount of them, that would truly be a grand journey.

Clocks and metronomes are good symbols of order as well.
After all they are consistent, orderly, and there’s a pattern.
Scarlet claims to try and break such things.

I don’t think the poem is about Destroyers or Dragons at all.
Given her past history nothing is really based on the Dragons, save the Dragon Bash crashing.

She’s pulling up lava to mess with the Skritt or something, another plan that has nothing to do with Dragons and hopefully this or the next update will kill her for good.

The passes were available in the Gem Shop again, methinks.

Beldin.5498:

Offtopic .. but .. has anyone else “Carry on my Wayward Son” in the ear when reading "The Story so far .. " ?

Carry on my wayward son
There’ll be peace when Scarlet is done
Lay your weary head to /sleep
Don’t you /cry no more

Yeah that’s my fear as well Mad Queen Malafide.
Most of these worked for her “because they liked to live”.
She ruled by fear and “because story willed it”, when she dies chances are they won’t hold up much longer.

The one good thing I could see is maybe some smaller groups from the previous alliances work together on their own after the fallout.

Then we could have small guilds working or fighting each other and the players.
Sort of like a war of guilds, a Guild Wars if you permit.

I hope you meant vicious instead because now I’m thinking of Inquest/Tar Elementals joining up and calling themselves “The Motor Oil Alliance”.
Alliances that last are built on the idea of each side benefiting from something the other has and the promise not to destroy each other in the process.

Flame Legion and Dredge, even though they were fringe elements worked in some small way. One had tech but no magic, the other magical but little to no technology.
Yes it was inevitable that one would plan to conquer the other, that’s what you get with most villains.

Even the Aetherblade/Pinquest had some usefulness together. Pirates like money and could be easily used as hired guns for mad scientists with no ethics.
That would probably last longer compared to the earlier alliance described.

The one I still have hang ups with is anyone working with the Krait.
The Lore, I know silly me for reading that, suggested that if the Krait are a factor then you are either lunch or a sacrifice to their god.

Now I could see the Krait coming up to power on their own and striking out while the Court did their own thing in the wake of it. The key there is the Court would be dancing around the Krait while still doing whatever they were planning.

I do like the idea that maybe elements in the Flame Legion would hunt down Molten.
Then again I love internal conflicts in storylines and multiple story threads going on, so I am a bit biased.

For 2014 I want to see things happen without Scarlet’s interference. Let the Hylek of different colors ally to kill off Krait or trample on Skritt for a while, for example.
The main thing is don’t let things like this require the outside “help” of some outsider salad. Brisbain already has an evil trinity of Bandit/Inquest/Court, why couldn’t they have expanded on that?!

Sky.7610:

Removing dailies and we getting weeklies?

And cue the folks who would scream “More time gating”, “Bring back mah dailies!”, and “ANet hates that we get laurels” in 3..2..1…

:)

I just find it giggle worthy we’ve resorted to this.
Before, people would put suggestions (and nearly everything else) in GD.
The mods then moved it to a place “more suitable”.
Now that place isn’t apparently suitable anymore.

So we simply go back to how we did it, minus that second step.
It is almost as if the constant thread moves were just too much busy work.

Do I think it is a good idea they’ve done this? Yes but even if they didn’t folks would still put stuff in GD anyways. We would have seen people replicating threads because of moves or out of sheer ignorance to the fact that topic was already discussed earlier.

The latter would have been helped if the blasted search engine worked.
The other half of that battle would be having folks learn to use it.

Karizee.8076:

A fire is rising yo

https://twitter.com/exiledgamer/status/420569988647251968/photo/1

Oh dear Gods….
Scarlet makes the Destroyer/Ettin Alliance!

I’ll just stay near the Grove.
Pretty plant designs, interesting people…er plants, and they don’t mind my Human.
Although I will admit one of them wanting to touch my Charr is kind of disturbing.

Maybe we should take a page from GW1 and apply something like the Ascension quests here.
As others have said, skill trainers teaching us the basics on how to apply skills would help people unlearn some habits.
At some point we should have a showdown with a doppleganger, maybe a Mesmer construct, where it uses certain things against us and we defend ourselves.

If you win, a skill or something of important value is awarded.
If you fail, you try again the next day.

I’m not sure if anyone else has put this down in their posts, I skimmed, but I did like the idea of a skill trainer helping out.

This way we could utilize this test for future skills or special rewards down the road.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Atlas,
so for you, rewards is your priority.
would you consider sPvP if badges of honor have more purchasing power?
say, badges of honor can be used to buy ascended armor, weapons.
or even heavily time gated precursor fragments?

Actually PvE is my top priority.
Rewards are a secondary or tertiary priority, competing with storyline.

How does the game feed into my main addiction that is PvE?
Living Story pushes (slowly) the world along for PvE, so I play it.
sPvP doesn’t do much, if anything, to contribute to PvE.
Due to this there’s no motivation to play.
Also the game structure itself is not fun.

I don’t PvP. I barely cared for WvWvW, and Sanctum/Snowball fights are tolerable to me only because the reward chests sometimes give me a rare for salvage purposes and the occasional silver.

If Badges of Honor had more purchasing power, chances are I’d still not use them too much. The amount I have will be sufficient for The Flameseeker Prophecies legendary I’ll eventually acquire some decade from now.

So that’s probably the reason why I don’t mind Sanctum/Snowball/Dragonball. The games are structured better and pay gold, which I can use for whatever projects I’m working on.

Badges of Honor really do nothing and wouldn’t help incentivize me using them anyways since I have them bookmarked for my eventual long term project.

If ANet says I can use them for precursor, I’d still probably find some way to get what I need for a Legendary without playing sPvP. Once again the game mode just isn’t fun.

If ANet eventually says I can get my Legendary without using them that would further devalue the poor little tokens. They’ll collect dust much like the dungeon tokens I’ve accumulated so far.

I was doing a champ train one night.
When I get bored sometimes I’ll just do it for a while.
As I started opening my pouches and bags, I lamented to myself about the low amount of Ecto I have in storage.

Lo and behold, Truth drops from one of the pouches.
Insane laughter commenced.

Badges of Honor don’t have much value.
So no, there’s not much incentive for PvE players like me.
I have enough from AP chests and the times I tried WvW for Map Completion.
They still sit in the wallet, haven’t been touched at all.

I tried sPvP, but eventually just didn’t like it.
Maybe it is because I don’t PvP, maybe the rewards weren’t worth it, I’m not sure.

Ironically enough I love Snowball Mayhem and Aspect Arena in small doses.
I guess it is because the games are structured differently from sPvP or the rewards better served me.

The LFG tool does in a sense, there’s the Living World section correct?
I tend to group all LFG messages non dungeon/Fractal/PvP related in that spot.

I loved that part of the Personal Story.

I didn’t really think about Sturgis until now.
So the Norn are just cold weather loving bikers who don’t have rides yet.
I can get behind this thought process for them.

Games and the social landscape change all the time.
Pre-computer RPGs required a group because you had groups at tables solving something together.
It was only natural that the framework of that moved into the digital equivalent.

As game titles grew, so did technology, and so did the accessibility of the games.
With that consequence comes a flood of people who probably weren’t brought up on the older culture.

So the tastes change and developers have to adapt. Outside of Lion’s Arch there is a lack of social chat, replaced more with Boss Locations and please for Skill Point help.
I’m fine with that because the game doesn’t really allow for much chatter time outside of waiting for Boar walk to start in Queensdale.

As for the decline of the social element, we have plenty of quantity in LA but not too much quality at times. This goes back to the fact that anyone can join, but once again I’m okay with it. In order for a game to be financially successful it has to be accessible.

In order to have meaningful social chat it is best to find guilds and teams you like to join. Otherwise it is no different than going to a mall. Yes there are plenty of people there, but they aren’t always so sociable to people outside their own circle.

The Svanir are allowed in Hoelbrak at the sufferance of Whitebear.

If he wanted them out, he would say so. At the moment they aren’t causing trouble in his Halls so he leaves them be.

1. The world is not instanced.
2. The art is beautiful.
3. No Subscription fees
4. I can play as other races besides Human
5. I can be social or not, it doesn’t matter.

1) Guild Halls and Personal Instance upgrades.
2) Missions for Orders and Factions within the GW2 world.
3) Ability to repeat Heart quests for level 80s for crafting materials. In fact anytime I’ve finished that heart mission would be nice.

Though I initially placed my thoughts in the earlier thread I’ll put some of them here pertaining to horizontal only.

More weapons or at least more skills to existing weapons would help.
It would be interesting to see Engineers with Taze Maces or Sniper Rifle Mesmers.
New traits or weapon skills could help make classes more dynamic because no two Warriors will be the same in theory.

Guild Halls and improving Personal Instances is another great avenue of horizontal progression. A few mementos dedicated to Personal Story milestones or Living Story moments we’ve participated.

Another thing that will help is art from armor and backpieces we’ve earned in events shouldn’t be one use only.
Allow them a place in the Achievements skin box like the Radiance pieces I already have.

Nice pants. Though I don’t care much for purple dye at times.