Guild Wars 2

I’m not a huge fan of the trinity but having a method that allows filthy casuals, like me, to play and actually enjoy this content is great.

Thank you Skady for the post and the videos. I’ll be studying.

Blackhearted.1264:

It’s amusing how some people apparently seem to think you should basically be punished for leveling up, gearing up, and unlocking traits by being made as weak as someone who’s done no leveling whatsoever, is in blues, and has no traits whenever you decide to leave a zone like cursed shore and go elsewhere.

There’s no punishment involved. You’re being downleveled to an appropriate range so that the low level zone you are in will still be pertinent to you. All of your stats are reduced even though your traits will still function. This preserves the map to provide you with more challenging game play while still serving players of the appropriate level at the same time. It’s a good thing. For everyone.

Even discounting the fact that over powered level 80s make the game less enjoyable for low leveled characters it is also true that when areas/mobs are too simple it makes players careless and weak.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Eh, I enjoy the challenge as well.

One thing I don’t like is, that the rewards are diminished. As in, you’re a level 50, you go to a starter zone that acts every bit as hard as level 50 zone to you, but gives level 1 xp etc rewards for hearts and whatnot.

The game has never worked this way and it won’t work this way now. When you do a heart, make a kill, get a wp you get a percentage of the amount of exp. needed for a level no matter what level you are. If a level 3 gets 3% toward a level then a level 50 will get 3% toward level. It’s proportionate.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I find I disagree with the statements that there should be no other means of acquisition. I don’t mind people having to do “something” to acquire said item; however, locking a specific stat set to only ones means of acquisition can be very frustrating.

As it presently stands, Sinister and Nomad ascended trinkets can only be earned if you complete the associated achievements, where as the other stats can be gotten via laurels, guild commendations, wvw tickets, and fractal relics.

Even the stats locked behind the dungeon collections have more than just one option. You can either do the dungeon itself, or you can do the pvp reward track to earn the necessary collection items. Or you can do a combination of the two.

For Nomads and Sinister you absolutely have to do the LS, and you absolutely have to do all the achievements for the particular story instance. There are no ‘options’ available here (until after you unlock it), and I don’t agree with that.

Aren’t the weapon and armor recipe books available for Nomad and Sinister gear? I would have sworn that they are…

I haven’t gotten the achievements yet on episode 8 but I believe I have recipes available for making the gear.

The map rewards really should have stayed in place. Nothing wrong with giving some siege and transmutation charges to WvW players when they complete a map.

Thanks for the information, and please also say thank you to whoever made the decision not to release something that we’d have to suffer through tonight. I’d much rather wait for a well-oiled bit of work, especially when it is as crucial as the camera, than to deal with the problems of a poorly working game.

Thank you A-Net!!

I think I will build my first Char and call him Tasty was Gwen. Surely after a Revnant is created in the mist profession takes precedence over race.

I think I will build my first Char and call him Tasty was Gwen.

I’d like an invitation, please (NA). I’ve done dungeons and fractals quite a bit, but in a BYOB, play as you wish, kill everything kind of way. I’d love to learn the Meta.

yos.1846:

I feel the same as OP.

I myself really enjoy running high lvl fractals with in-game friends/pugs and run it daily.

Regular dungeons do not have any ‘ramp-up’ involved, you get the WP to the dungeon, run it and receive guaranteed currency to purchase dungeon specific armor/weapons. Do that a couple of times and you have your desired skin.

For fractals, to be eligible for ‘fotm lvl 50 rewards’, you at least must’ve done fractals 50 times. Also, you must invest into ascended armor/trinkets/weapon to survive unavoidable Agony. The amount of effort involved is different, but I’m fine with it since it is my choice to run fractals.

Now, what rewards are there at the end, considering the effort involved? Besides ridiculous RNG, there are the guaranteed Fractal Relics. It even has a spot in the wallet between all other account bound currencies.

What am I doing with relics? Nothing since the end of 2013.
Sitting at 35,000 relics, 3x stacks of pristine and a couple of fully upgraded backpieces (pre wardrobe)/ 40 fractal bags etc. If I know I could purchase i.e. fractal specific skins/tonics (just like in other 5 man content) with relics , EVEN after getting nothing at the RNG game, I would feel more satisfied and rewarded for the effort.

I’ll admit that I like there to be some RNG in the game. I like getting lucky, I am okay feeling envious of that buddy-o-mine who always gets the skin…

And yet I completely agree with what you are saying here. There needs to be something at the end. Just having a fractal set like they have dungeon sets would at least give something to make players want to spend relics. If nothing else salvaging or throwing into the forge. It wouldn’t even have to be an armor set, just a weapon set. Or maybe even a new weapon set twice a year. Right now they’re coming up with a new weapon set every two weeks for the gem store (I’m not complaining about them putting weapons in the gem store, just mentioning a time frame of what they’re putting out). Keep the fractal skins as exclusive and always account bound, but give something that could be bought with relics and then sold on the TP, or salvaged, or tossed into the forge. Something tangible.

I just can’t see this breaking the economy. Take a look at Silverwastes and what they’ve dumped into the economy there. Mats, items, ascended armor and trinkets… all on about a one hour timer. The big chest isn’t even limited to once a day, and there’s also the endlessly spawning bandit chests.

Yes, there needs to be some value to the rings above 5s. I mean, c’mon… The spoon from Tequatl sells for 10s — double the value of a fractal ring. The spoon.

These should be salvageable for ecto, dark matter, ascended mats. At the very least they need to have a decent vendor value.

Riku.4821:

The cinematics (if you’re speaking of the current living story ones) were simply amazing and a great piece or work. So what if you need to watch it over and over, it’s a good art piece. And as you said. Just minimize it and go watch a youtube video or go wiki something.

But I will have to agree on the removal of the option, as it is something that people should have the option to do. But to me this isn’t a big deal worth complaining over.

The real complaint here is the waste of time. When they are optional I watch every cinematic at least once and some more than that. I agree that the cinematics that are in the game are worth watching but, like many things in life, there are some things that are good every time and some that are good once.

My time to play the game is very limited. Sometimes I decide to go back into living story episodes with a second (or third) character or to work on a particular achievement — when I am replaying content that I’ve already seen how many times do I need to hear that Braham’s leg is feeling better or that Kasmeer is a mother hen? Some things, especially conversations between the Biconics, can be skipped without missing out on artwork and allowing me to use my precious play time to actually play and just wait to play.

Skip to End button is a very good thing.

Scoundrel.2139:

When you’re crafting, you have the option of selecting the amount of items you wish to create, based on the amount of available resources you have. Surely this could be put in effect for the forge, perhaps? Unless tech restrictions prevent it…

This is worth a look.

Any new instances are a good addition for me. I love instanced play.

Love it — thank you!

Me too! Very nicely done.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

it’s probably like Guild Missions, some are more challenging, some not so much. All of them become a challenge when you try to beat your friend’s highscores.

Having to do jumping puzzles in a certain time certainly sounds challenging enough to me. When I think of an adventure at skipping stones, I’m gonna have a hard time.

“Mesmer portal to the end of the Skipping Stones adventure, tips appreciated!”

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

A little birdie told me that some of the folks from Massively are forming a new group, so if you were on their FB page, you might want to check that out!

Thank you very much for this information and I hope you will let us know when they get actually up and running. I seldom talk to the birdies

I would love to have an option to sort dye in a way that shows what is missing. Whether it gives achievement points or not I’d like to collect what I have missing.

Unfortunately, in my experience in games where open world dueling exists, it works something like this:

Badkitten: Invite to duel
Me: auto-decline
Badkitten: Invite to duel
Me: auto-decline
Badkitten: C’mon Wuss duel me!
Badkitten: Invite to duel
Me: auto-decline
Badkitten: Why won’t you duel?!? It’s because you know I’m gonna (insert expletive here) you.
Badkitten: Invite to duel
Me: auto-decline
Badkitten: Wuss. You’re worthless, you shouldn’t even be playing this game, what are you afraid of, having your pixelated butt land in the dust? DUEL ME!
Badkitten: Invite to duel
Me: Logout

That is how having open world dueling effects me.

I sincerely hope the PvP developers will spend their time improving PvP in the zones that are created for it, making the world a better place for PvP’ers and not spend their time developing PvP in the open world making it WORSE for people who do not want to engage.

Lightsbane.9012:

can i ask the point of something like this if…
-there’s no player to player trading
-there’s no open world pvp
-there’s no real way to get any benefit out of guild alliances save for social benefits

Social benefits are everything in an MMO. I’d love to see the return of alliances.

My guild currently has about 8 active players. In the past it has had as many kitten active players on line at a time. I expect that with the expansion coming out guilds that want to grow will be able to.

We have a guildie that at last count had pulled 35 precursors from the Forge. He used a very specific recipe: 3 exotic weapons of any type, level 70 and above, with one mystic forge stone. For each pull he consumed 3 exotics, but got one back in return, so net loss of 2 exotics. With this recipe the mystic forge stone makes the draw random — you can throw in 3 foci or shields and have a chance to get a greatsword precursor in return. Following this recipe we had one guildie receive a precursor after 32 pulls, another after 49 pulls, and one that said they didn’t keep track but did eventually get the hammer precursor.

The best I can say of the one who got so many precursor is he tossed a LOT of stuff into the forge, and he ended up VERY wealthy.

I’ve personally just started the process and I’m up to 13 pulls doing just one or two a day and no luck so far, but I’m a patient type person… It’ll happen eventually.

Oyjord.2508:

Hi all,

I’ve toyed with a number of builds and professions, and though I enjoy them all, the game is very-much designed for young folk with fast reflexes. I just tried CoF last night with a PUG and died 10000000 times. It was fun, but I could’ve helped my group more, I think, should I have had a good, easier, ranged build (I ran it as an 80 D/F Necro).

Any suggestions? It seems all Elementalist builds require a boatload of weapon swapping and dodging, which I just don’t think I can manage much of. And Engineers, though, fun, also appear a bit too…complex for this old man.

Thanks for the advice.
Oy.

Granny here, and I love playing my Hammer/Greatsword guardian. The guardian has good survivabilty with heavy armor, protection, aegis… Plus I kill things pretty quickly. It’s good for me and my old people reflexes.

I think she is taking the egg to Elona. To the Dasha Vestibule, to meet Uncle Shiny.

Seriously though, is there anything in the lore that tells us what happened to Shiny?

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Sure, the players themselves are obviously immune to the effects because duh you’re not just going to make everyone’s Sylvari characters suddenly not playable. Obviously the NPCs in the Grove are immune because duh you’re not going to lock out an entire capitol city from the player base.

Please explain this to the denizens of Lions Arch.

While it’s true the game developers won’t take away our playable characters they could conceivably make it so that Sylvari could no longer be made at character creation. I don’t expect that, but then I didn’t expect them to blow the heck outta LA either.

I’m at work and can’t test right now so silly question: Does using a tome in WvW give an instant full heal the way that leveling up does?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Astral Projections.7320:

Is there really any reason to make public who the forum specialist are since they mostly are there to report back to ANet? I don’t see why someone needs a tag for that. Having a tag opens up possibilities of them being constantly harassed about being white knights and ANet toadies. Imo, it would be better not to have people publicly labeled as being “semi official” when they have no official function other than collate information and report or linking official posts (which anyone can do).

That is a really thought-provoking comment!

What do others feel about this? I’m very interested in feedback on the subject of making specialists public or not.

I post very seldom since I stopped playing the game, but I do have a small bit of experience as unpaid forum help in other situations so I thought I would post here. In the past I felt that having the tag made me a target to other disgruntled forum users. I always felt that my efforts were appreciated by the developers but almost never felt that my diligence and effort were appreciated by my peers on the forums. Not having any tag or designation would probably be a good thing for those involved in the program.

GOSU.9574:

The OP has a legitimate issue. Along with that there also needs to be an option to disable display of commander tags. All this junk and clutter serves no purpose other than ego-fluff.

You can do this for yourself now. When you start up the game choose any random commander and join their squad, then map off to play where you want to play. Since you’re already in a squad you won’t be able to see any other commander icons.

If I could get rid of the visual effects of people with Sunrise or Twilight painting the enemy to death I would love it.

I liked having some things like the balloon that were not difficult to get, but showed that the owner was active at a particular time. I’m sorry they’ve brought those things back in a way that destroys the “I was there” element.

I do understand all of the arguments against allowing a race change — they are valid arguments. Not just personal story, but also racial armor could be affected. I did come up with one way around all of it, and posted the suggestions here I would love to see them come up with something that would make race changes possible even with all of the associated problems.

Or they could allow any commander to start the event:

IF it has been at least 2 hours since the last spawn
AND it will be at least 1 hour to the next scheduled spawn
AND there are at least 150 people on the map

There has to be a better way than disallowing TTS and TxS because of the influence/merits/missions issues.

Very glad to hear that the cities won’t be affected yet, if only for the sake of those players who enjoy roleplay.

Here is a race change suggestion thread that addresses the issues of personal story and things like cultural armor or racial professions…

As you can see I’d also very much like the option of changing my race.

The pirate outfit has one piece that is both pants and top. I completely understand that it has to be a costume and therefore all or nothing. But, could the single piece items like the hoodies and cargo shorts be converted to armor skins instead of costumes? It wouldn’t save all of the skins, but it would be a nice gesture start.

I really hope that all of the head items will be converted to helmets. I need to be able to wear my bunny ears >.>

Xar.6185:

I was pretty excited at first.

Then I re-read the blog post.
Then I read it a third time for clarification.

Then I read some posts that pointed out things I didn’t initially think of.

Then I spent some time thinking about how this change affects me and the people I play with.

I realized it changes nothing. The cost is still per use. Nothing changed except the user interface and some phrasing. People are going to use the same amount of ‘pay to make a change’ transmutation charges that they did for ‘pay to make a change’ transmutation crystals.

Pay per use is pay per use no matter the UI. This only really helps some people free up some bank space.

I believe I would feel differently if it were a pay to unlock and usage was free system.

It gives me the ability to attempt to collect every armor skin in the game and use them where and when I see fit. That’s awesome. It isn’t cheaper than the current system, but it’s much more cool.

Was happy, am happy. And very much looking forward to the three Facilitate Friendly Play blog posts.

My Guild Wars 2 Cap! I love my GW2 Cap!

Can I have a T-shirt with a guild emblem now? Please?

Please? This would be a great addition.

It’s true that the achievement was bugged the first week. For me it popped as done while there were still 2 knights alive. I have the achievement, but did not earn it. I atually hate that more than working for it and not getting it.

I’m not sure if this will provide any kind of clue or not, but yesterday afternoon while killing the knights I received the 6 Minutes to Knightfall achievement. However, I received it at the point that the first knight died, so it certainly wasn’t earned — the other two knights were still alive. I did not receive loot for that knight or either of the other two. My group was successful in the airship and I did receive loot there.

I fought and killed 4 knights last night. The first dropped loot though we failed to kill all, but the next run through we killed all of the knights, I was there and participating from the time the first knight became hostile, saw lots of damage numbers, got no loot from any of the three. I was in a party of 2 and in what I assume to be different overflows for each of the events.

I fought and killed 4 knights last night. The first dropped loot though we failed to kill all, but the next run through we killed all of the knights, I was there and participating from the time the first knight became hostile, saw lots of damage numbers, got no loot from any of the three.

Sorann Peace.9056:

You DO NOT NEED the spinal blade pack to do the story. You ONLY need it to go through the secret entrance. The regular entrances to the drill just require attunement buffs from all three assault knights which spawn at the top of the hour in Lion’s Arch. Going to the SECRET entrance is just for people who want to skip straight to the ending so that they don’t have to worry about the assault knights or the hologram fight failing. The secret entrance does NOT give you the whole instance, it merely shows the ending where Scarlet has already been wounded and you can finish her off and see the final cutscene!

TL;DR no, the spinal blade pack isn’t needed to participate.

Thank you very much for this.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Gah gear gating… Kill it! Kill it now!

breathes and counts to 10

I guess I’ll go check things out for myself and try not to blow a gasket until after I evaluate….

I’m with you. 100%. NO GEAR GATING!!

I absolutely detest the looks of the spinal blades backpiece. Is this a real thing that it will have to be created, and I’ll have to spend my metal creating it, to be able to get into a portal to view/participate in a part of the new content? I’m at work right now — is this a troll post? Or is it real?

timmyf.1490:

Aye.8392:

The problems with infusions:

1.) Must be an artificer to combine infusions. My mesmer, who I generally play Fractals with, is a tailor and a weaponsmith. So to create higher level infusions I must either run back and forth to the bank by way of the log-in screen to get my infusions to my artificer so that he can combine them and I can repeat the tiresome exercise in reverse, or I must switch crafting discipline to artificer and pay to switch back to my preferred craft after I combine my infusions. It is inconvenient and irritating.

2.) Combining infusions is expensive. The exponential increase needed to create a new level gets quickly out of control; a +1 infusion from the TP is currently 11 silver, a +10 infusion is 69 gold and a +12 is 275 gold. There are multiple infusion slots which helps, but the expense is still incredibly high. Many people aren’t willing to go past the point of the simple +5 infusions in each slot, so 30 AR. It’s cost prohibitive and consequently it prohibits who is able to participate in high level fractals.

3.) The component extractor. 250 gems. At current transfer rates this costs over 20 gold. This gold is spent to get back an infusion so that it can be destroyed in the creation of another. This is just wrong.

These problems need to be addressed.

Well, #2 and #3 are working as intended. I can understand (and maybe even agree with) disliking the intent, but… yeah, that’s intentional.

For #1, I just leave my artificer at the crafting station. Remember that the crafting station also functions as bank access. Just drop your +1s and extracted +whatever into the bank from your Mesmer, log in on your artificer, up-convert, drop the completed one back into the bank through the crafting station with no running whatsoever, and switch toons.

I do completely understand that 2 and 3 are by design, but it’s bad design. Charging that much in-game currency for the enjoyment of a game mode just keeps people from enjoying the game mode. It isn’t worth it. Since this CDI is about evolving the experience then the feedback is valid. If you don’t enjoy this design now is the perfect time to say so.

As far as your solution to the artificer being the only profession that can combine infusions, that’s cool; but my artificer is my guardian and I play him extensively. Just leaving a character parked anywhere whether that is the home instance, a Ori node, or the TP vendor is counter-productive to actually PLAYING the character. Again, now is the time to give feedback and make valid complaints.

The problems with infusions:

1.) Must be an artificer to combine infusions. My mesmer, who I generally play Fractals with, is a tailor and a weaponsmith. So to create higher level infusions I must either run back and forth to the bank by way of the log-in screen to get my infusions to my artificer so that he can combine them and I can repeat the tiresome exercise in reverse, or I must switch crafting discipline to artificer and pay to switch back to my preferred craft after I combine my infusions. It is inconvenient and irritating.

2.) Combining infusions is expensive. The exponential increase needed to create a new level gets quickly out of control; a +1 infusion from the TP is currently 11 silver, a +10 infusion is 69 gold and a +12 is 275 gold. There are multiple infusion slots which helps, but the expense is still incredibly high. Many people aren’t willing to go past the point of the simple +5 infusions in each slot, so 30 AR. It’s cost prohibitive and consequently it prohibits who is able to participate in high level fractals.

3.) The component extractor. 250 gems. At current transfer rates this costs over 20 gold. This gold is spent to get back an infusion so that it can be destroyed in the creation of another. This is just wrong.

These problems need to be addressed.

I’m really glad they didn’t continue with the added bonus materials. I refused to buy the Watchwork pick even though I had a character that could have used it. I’ll probably buy the Golem.

Conski Deshan.2057:

For one it is as Nike said pretty much an exploit and second , it is very important in skill based content that everyone has had to undergo the same risks to have a chance at the reward, there can be no “weaksauce” option.

Nonsense. The thing that you are arguing against — rerolling — would ensure that we all have the same experience, for at least one of the instances. Fractals played as intended ensure that we DON’T have the exact same experience when claiming the reward. But really I’d prefer an option to choose the starting Fractal over having to re-roll over and over to get the one you want. I’m also all of Fractal level 10, so re-rolling is pretty much a non-issue when I play. Only the few times that I’ve sidekicked up has it even been mentioned. We Fractal noobies really don’t like the Swamp >.>