Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t more ‘tropical’. In fact, only about what, a quarter of Tyria was actually tropical in design? I’m not trying to be condescending or anything, but have you considered that perhaps you’ve just spent most of your time in a Tropical area? So perhaps you’re just being biased due to your personal endeavours?

Nevertheless, I don’t see your point. I feel quite the opposite really. The design in GW2 is so much more lush and heavy, it really takes the GW1 feeling to a new level.

If anything I can only hope for longer night cycles, a swamp based map and thicker jungles.

All of these arguments just remind me of how arrogant people can be. No compromise, no working together, just do it ‘my’ way or gtfo.

Sigh*

No one wants to play for fun? Or wait, let me guess, some of you are defining fun as the ambitious rush to achieve the highest accolades (so you can impress others I imagine). That’s fun to you? Get the top stuff the fastest way so you can be on top “first”, then what?

I always thought fun in video games was a repetitive thing that came merely from the imagination – think back to when you were a child. The simplest things could get you going for ages.

Now it’s all about ego; selfish bullkitten.

It’s not that bad. YOU don’t have any use for the items, but other players might.

Normally I would spend 60 bucks for some new console game (there are quite a few out that are on my ‘to get’ list), but GW2 has me in it’s grasp atm. So that money just gets saved up and spent on gw2. Point being is that I do spend quite a bit on keys and I make use of all of the items I get. Even with the mystery tonics I’ll use a recipe to craft some owl or skritt tonics.

I don’t miss that at all. It was way too… tooth fairy-ish

I’m actually hoping that if we do get new weapons in the future, one of them will be direct damage like a warrior with a greatsword.

The Guild Wars 2 score is excellent. I absolutely love the ‘Straits of Devastation’ track and kinda wish we’d have more like that.

I was actually hoping there would be music relative to the Fable soundtrack. Specifically the tracks we hear in towns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItGkArAXrlQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnZwiE5dG6k (Ooohhh yea)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf0e688eqes

That stuff fits so good when milling around towns and getting into the community of something like Divinity’s Reach or Lion’s Arch and possibly Rata Sum.

Normal Battle Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvriqdS3vsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5tnyrwTEjU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0KhRSX4p-s

The boss battle music is actually really good. I just thought I’d throw these into a mix anyways. xD

Boss Battle Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8JLy1Yqt7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D4QIf4Ot7o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjZACyYKGJ8

First is from beta.

Second is a month or two after release.

Third is current.

Just about everything changed. I still prefer a dark purple & black color combo, regardless of what my character is wearing and I do still use my fellblade (such an awesome skin).

It was mentioned in an Anet article awhile back that Legendary weapons would be receiving an upgrade in stats to match that of the ascended gear.

So my question is:

Can I use a transmutation stone to change the stats of a legendary now and not be worried of screwing myself over when they get upgraded in the future?

Generally I just want more content. If I had to nail it down, then here would be my list:

1. The ‘Ravenheart Witchwear’ Costume from GW1. I loved this piece, esspecially for the female. Was rather sad to find that the GW2 witch costume lacked the modernized touch. It had too many bones and pointy objects. One day I hope we’ll get something smoother in concept like the Ravenheart.

2. I would love to see some more classic type fantasy skins for gear. It could all range from weapons to backpieces, but they’ll play homage to your stereotypical fantasy stories, like elf ears (bad example though, I know). Still, there’s plenty of things to pull from the lore. Heck, even playing homage to modern fantasy stories would be awesome – like a Harry Potter wand for scepters? You made a Gandalf hat basically, so why stop there?

3. More emotes please. I’m not talkin’ about the standard stuff we should have (like ‘roar’). I’m thinking since we’d be dropping money, then they should give us objects in addition to rockin’ animations.

For example, “study” could be an emote to purchase. You character would bust out a big magical book and start sifting though pages like they’re reading intensely. Heck, they could even cast random spells during intervals that’ll do stuff like make frogs with tophats appear. lol… YES PLEASE!

4. More spiffy finishers.

There are many complaints going around about how the combat is too bland due to the lack of skills and variety in traits & builds (I.E. a lack of depth). I personally don’t have an issue with it, but I am still curious.

So let me ask you guys. How could ArenaNet expand on it’s current skills system? No this doesn’t mean making it like GW1, or by having single swappable skills for weapons (like utilities) – that would defeat the purpose of “expand on”.

Here’s my take:

What if we were able to pick between say two different sets of skills per weapon? Additionally, what if we could do the same for traits?

The kicker to this system, of course, is that this kind of choice wouldn’t be able to take place ‘on the fly’ – to prevent a massive imbalance during combat. So one example would be to remake the hero’s skill panel so people have to choose between skill sets for weapons that are equipped. Furthermore, the process of doing so would require some kind of vendor-ing that can only take place when in a major city or heart of the mists training area etc. Similar to resetting traits basically.

That could give more depth to players without taking away from the current system.

Two things:

1. I recently started playing PvP and I’m getting pretty good at it. At rank 21 I can honestly say that I’ve seen my fair share of matches, this includes paid tournaments.

Now out of all of the finishers I’ve witnessed, the highest rank I’ve seen so far is a tiger. I probably played against higher ranks, but I don’t really pay attention. So the only way I’ll know a rank is by a finisher being used. Point being is that out of all of the tigers I’ve seen, I can’t recall any of those finishers coming from any other class than a thief.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not some hardcore evidence. It’s just something that strikes (hur hur) the mind.

2. I’m a Mesmer who loves my berserker build. I have a very special setup used for combating a thief and depending the player, there are times where stealth is too much for me to handle. I use stealth myself to try and counter theirs. This means I’ll wait a few seconds after they’ve gone stealth before I use mine, so I can drop some seconds off of their clock. I’ll bring a break stun and I even have two block skills saved up (scepter and secondary sword). Lastly, I’ll usually save my distortion for thieves.

Out of all of that, the stealth is still too much. If I’m fighting a pro thief, then I’ll usually go down due to their ability to know when to stealth and pick up their mistakes.

The stealth and burst combination doesn’t feel fair at all.

Is the boss loot system broken?

There are numerous times where I’ll be in fracs or something and get killed right when the boss is at about 10% HP. The team decides to drop the boss instead of rezzing me, so when I am rezzed, I get no loot. Really? I spent the entire time dishing out tons of damage and yet nothing?

I really hope this system doesn’t play into the chests we’re reward right after a boss, although sometimes it does feel like it >_<

Unfortunately, in GW1, meta game was THE deciding factor. Sure it might have been possible for one non-meta profession to drop a meta, but a lot of that was dependent on which profession was going against which. The holy-trinity played a big role in defeating the purpose and having so much variety. Ironically, much to Czar Peter’s analogy, if you don’t run Meta game in magic the gathering, then you don’t win.

GW2 isn’t so heavy on meta, which is what makes it awesome. A lot of the variety comes from how you use skills and how you coordinate your skills in correlation with your opponents, this includes utilizing dodges etc.

I did PvP in GW1 every so often. When I did, it was pretty boring. GW1 game play just can’t compare to how action-orientated this game is. So PvP is a lot more fun, imo.

Battles in pvp were always predicable in gw1. You pretty much knew if you were going to win within the first 10s of a match. If one player died on someone’s team, that was a clear single that the other team had the advantage and would win.

With GW2 there’s actually more variation to how one can overcome their foe. So even though someone went down during a match, that doesn’t mean the other team is going to win. It’s awesome to how it works now.

I’m a male who chooses female characters in just about any game where the option is available. For me it has to deal with real life implications. The fact that women have been oppressed (and still are in some cases) just disgusts me. So this subconscious feeling of hate towards our history always drives me to pick female characters to watch them succeed in whatever story/game.

It’s a little joy, but I can’t take it too seriously of course. It’s just fiction. Nevertheless, point stands.

last few AC runs have been with a mixed bag of levels. They ran really smooth for the most part. Level didn’t seem to matter as much as player’s simply knowing what to do. As far as arguing against new players vs experienced. . . Well I don’t know what to say. Whenever I run stuff (mainly HotW), I’ll take whoever I can get. A lot of the time I’ll get new players who will be upfront about their first time etc. Doesn’t really effect much.

Take a few seconds to explain something and don’t rush the group and usually it all pans out. =3

Sometimes you do run into that one person who’s so condescending, you can’t help much but notice how much they really do expect people to play like they do. D=

fony.5102:

no one ever runs to the forums after this kind of run. but oh no elitists is everyhere yo, dis guy left da group cuz da group wasn’t to his liking yo! he hav no right omg!

Hey look, you capped a pic with me in it! xD look, one of the AC runs I just talked about.

FYI, you’ll wanna take that pic down. Violation bro =/

Loot is definitely an aspect to games. It’s just a type of achievement really, but in most cases it’s about making oneself more prominent – more so in a multiplayer game.

Point being is that removing loot would leave (from what I can see) two other aspects:

A. Social/Community
B. The Challenge

A. So is the game a good social multiplayer source? Well, the best way to look at this would probably be to take the roleplaying community. They can be a good example of how multiplayer games become extraordinarily social. So does GW2 have a good roleplaying community? Frankly, no, not from what I’ve seen. I know they exist in this game, it’s just that to the casual player; you’d never find them. So ultimately, the social aspect is rather dull when you take the extreme form into consideration.

B. PvP is probably the only real challenge because you’ll always have some other player who can 1-up you. Whereas with PvE you can learn the system, so things will be more predicable. PvE is the biggest design to this game, so without loot and a huge roleplaying community to take advantage of it, then it would die.

So the real question I would pose is how do you amplify PvE to support more social activity and challenges similar to PvP?

In most multiplayer games people tend to play against each other and that itself is the whole drive of the game. Just look at Modern Warfare or Street Fighter. Who says anything about loot in those games? It’s the competition.

I think the same competitive nature should be applied to PvE. Yet how do you do it without just making it another scrap of WvW or PvP? Easy, focus on achiements and scores. You don’t need to pit players completely against each other to still have competition. Ironically, a lot the loot is competition. Most people are playing so they can put themselves ‘at the top’.

So my solution here (to this underlining problem that OP made) is the focus on achievements. Add in detailed and complex scores into PvE. Get people competing not over getting the top gear the fastest, but over how well they complete events or solo 50-mobs of enemies in a minute. There’s hundreds of ways to do it, so why not?

I had an idea today that I’d like to share and see what the dungeon community thinks. I’d love to hear about how this idea could expand further, so don’t be shy. Just keep this adult and constructive.

So there are some key issues popping up around the forums about dungeons. Everyone should know them by now, but I’ll list the big ones just in case you hadn’t:

1. Loot not being worth the time.
2. The “fun” or challenge of a dungeon is lacking.

Something that popped into mind was that most enemies are pretty much the same in effect, just variations of health and dps. So my idea is to turn this around a bit.

It all starts when we look at the Urban Battlegrounds Fractal. This is a good example of the types of enemies we should be encountering for a couple reasons:

1. They are a challenge, yet at the same time, they can easily be dropped with a good group (even without the NPC support).
2. The loot is amazing.

So taking that into consideration, one word came to mind… Agenda.

What if all of the enemy ranks had agendas to them? Each agenda would exercise a new challenge for the party, while still being difficult. For example, it could work like this:

Non-ranked Mobs
- These guys would focus primarily outnumbering us. So whenever we encounter them, it should always be in huge numbers. Sure they can die fast, but if the group isn’t prepared, they can overwhelm you. This sort of already exists, but it could be better implemented with the agendas for the ranks below.

Veteran
- These groups should be similar to the Battlegrounds Fractal. The agenda here is an organized group of 6-8 enemies that are more concentrated and therefor promote surgical-type tactics. These guys should be the most common enemy type we fight in any dungeon and should have similar drops to the Battlegrounds Fractal. They could also be groups that you’ll find supporting champions etc.

Elites
- Inspired by the new defending Magg change in CoF p2, What if Elites were strictly solo agents that focus on making a challenge more difficult if not dealt with when they appear? So in other words, people should freak out whenever they see an elite. So they would need to be hidden for the majority of a dungeon, until you get to a challenge that’s like the Magg event. They can be much more useful in escalating events though. Take the final boss fight of CoF p2. What if during a certain time, an Elite would appear to start conjuring some spell that would heal the Eternal Flame? If successful, the flame is healed to full hp and the acolytes are immediately rezed?

Champions
- These guys would basically be what they are now, but instead they have a group of veterans that work with their skills. It’s a foe that has gained a small following. A little gang and their leader, so to speak. Vets could rez each other and use skills to help the Champ etc.

Legendary
- Not much to change here, except to consider inserting an elite to make things more challenging.

Thoughts? Other ideas?

The cost would have to change because now people would be able to farm 2 a day instead of 1. So however Anet figured it, chances are, stuff would have to go up in price.

I think a second reward system should be made for PvP. It’ll be just like the laurels, except only for a new PvP vendor. For the new vendor, all of the armor and skins you can get from tournament chests would now be available.

PvP has a separate daily system, so if it had a reward system, then it shouldn’t be the same as PvE. Endless Mystery Cat Tonic shouldn’t be cut nearly in half because people can get two laurels day.

I’d quit my job and hand it over to this awesome dude named Eric Flannum.

Will the new ascended gear only be obtainable with the Laurels? Or can we spend pristine relics like the rings?

Better yet, will any of the new content be available by spending relics?

For starters, check your explorer achievements. Are you missing any areas in Orr, Shiverpeaks etc. If you are, then that’s a good sign that you still have some spots to discover with your missing POIs and Vistas.

Next, you may need to check all of the orders (Vigil, Order of Whispers & Durmand Priory). They all have instance maps with POI.

I hope that helps.

Solving this problem is inevitably the same as the skipping issue. You simply have to coordinate you groups better. It’s a community, so be social and discuss the issues before making your parties. /Solved

I’ve made many groups and I always take whoever I get, from newer players who still have things to learn down to MF users. I’ll enjoy the game either way, yet wait… I’m not opposing MF so my opinion is irrelevant, right?

If you’re really strung out about MF, then make a guild that focuses on not using it. Just take advantage of the social aspects and quit blaming your lack of effort to do so on the game’s design.

Here rests Naevella Vairidean.

- It seems the writing has been tampered with. Only two words remain: “barrels” and “frogs”?

I’m so excited!

I wonder if they threw in some little animations – showing the arms and legs reacting when you strafe or something. Regardless, this is awesome.

Leo Paul.1659:

Who sows these backpacks anyway? I bet it’s them charrs who kill em poor baby quaggans and turn them into backpacks. Why isn’t anyone doing about this? We should hold a rally in flame citadel or something. It is grossly inhumane to kill a living being and turn it into an object for carrying books and stuff. I mean who even read books nowadays? Can charrs even read?! Plush griffons on the other hand…

This is a stuffed doll, basically. It’s just cotton and who knows, maybe the Quaggan helped sow them?

I had been without this achievement for the longest time until recently. At first I had thought it had to deal with being on fire in general. So if you stop moving and catch on fire, step in a pit or take a hit from the boss’ fire arrow/aoe, then you’d fail.

But out of nowhere, lv30 and as a Mesmer, I got it. It felt random, mainly because I wasn’t expecting it. Still, I wasn’t paying attention to notice what I did and didn’t do that triggered it.

Sorry. =/

When I first heard about it before release, it sounded too good to be true for an MMO. The best I had figured was something along the lines of Fable.

I can understand the lack of depth in choices and changes (like Bioware games), but at the very least, something like a selection of voices to choose from in character creation would have been cool.

From there, NPCs reacting to your personality and even new animations for emotes would be nice changes that wouldn’t be as drastic as implementing a full-scale character arc like Dragon Age etc.

An easier solution to a skill based Magic Find buff is to make it a utility skill that will give you a 3-minute boon. In addition, the skill would have a recharge time of 4-minutes.

Boon effects are easily dropped by enemies and therefor it would require heighten awareness; i.e. more skill.

It’s simple and doesn’t oppose group capability (via stats rolls eyes).

I wouldn’t remove food buffs either. Just make the boon’s effectiveness based on your current level.

DocHolliday.5921:

I think the first problem with that idea is that one of those stats will be quickly determined to be superior and the majority will simply use that, rendering the others mostly useless.

Not necessarily. It would only be a matter of equalizing the percentages. It’s all mathematics at that point, and we wouldn’t ever know of the exact amounts to prevent us from taking advantage of the system.

There’s an argument going around about how the MF stat is selfish by lacking contribution to group efforts. As such, people have proposed either removing the stat completely or making it a group-related function, where everyone in a group can add to a total score that everyone will reap benefits from.

Now I disagree and have no concern with magic find only because I see an easy solution to the argument above; community. This game is about social interactions and therefor it’s up to each person to communicate their concerns between each other in order to alleviate any “problems”.

On the contrary to my personal opinion about the “easy solution”, I thought I’d take the time to consider something that might sooth the people who oppose magic find.

Proposed Solution:

What if Magic Find was implemented with a new stat category? This stat category could be slotted near your accessories in your hero’s window. How it works is that people will have to make a choice between MF and a couple of other new stats. You would only be able to make one choice and the choice (once made) would be unchangeable.

The choices would be something like:

1. Magic Find (name could change to fit the list)
- It would work the way it does now.
2. Bartering
- People who choose this will get a percentage of reduced prices from all karma and other merchants in the world, with the exception of the trading post. Although considering the new reward system on it’s way, I’m not so sure about this.
3. Salvaging
- Similar to Bartering, people who choose this will gain a percentage bonus to obtaining extra materials from salvaging items.

At this point, the system can now be worked on to add more depth. One way of doing so would be to have the percentages be tier based. So it’ll require some leveling. Furthermore, the leveling won’t be based on the level your character is at, but now it’ll be based on personality.

Personality is rather dull and has almost no real noticeable effect, unless you read character text. So why not make personality more important to your character by having it effect how you level your chosen stat?

How would personality leveling work? Well, that’ll be based on the events you do in the world, the people you help and how you help them. Karma and perhaps the new tokens could be used (via new leveling merchants) that work with how you’re personality has developed.

Just an idea…

Raine.1394:

My argument is that MF is a risk/reward dynamic where you gimp yourself (assume risk) in order for the chance to receive better loot. By definition, in a group activity you gimp the group to the extent that you gimp yourself.

The problem with that argument is that in order for it to be valid, you must have a group who plays the same way, with the same exact skills and has the same exact hit/miss ratio during an entire run, however, that’s anything but guild wars 2.

The current system allows users who are not up to the highest grades to still be able to contribute more than the highest graded member in the party.

For example, let’s say you have a group of 4 top-geared (geared your way) and 1 MF user. This is probably happening as I type this. Anyways, let’s throw this group into their first fight and let’s say it’s a boss just to make it simple. So a few seconds in and one of your geared members goes down because they made a mistake, so another of your geared members goes over to help. The remaining three are left dishing out damage. So point being, is during that time it takes to get that geared member back on his feet, the MF user has just dished thousands of damage that now puts them over the top in their hit ratio when compared to your downed player. That’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these scenarios.

To argue that it would have been “better” to have had another top-geared player in place of the MF user is only ignorance. The ironic thing is this has probably happened to you without you even realizing it.

These “arguments” are plainly egotistical and should be ignored until you can actually spot the MF user without him/her having to ping gear.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

On a 35% crit chance (quite low), the crit damage from Berserker’s on just armor and jewelry gives a 14% average damage increase. This bonus increases the higher the crit chance is. A 55% crit chance has a 20.7% increase from it.
Do you understand what that means? A group running full Berserker’s instead of full Explorer’s will be outputting enough damage that there’s effectively a sixth person there.
And that’s not even counting the Power.

No level of skill, no matter what, can cause you to deal that much damage in Explorer’s, because it’s your damage in Explorer’s, except more.

Again, you’re taking the assumption that everyone is going to stand around and be on auto-attack for every single moment they’re in the run. That’s not how the game works and if you play it that way, then I would think you’re defeating the purpose of what Anet set out to do.

alcopaul.2156:

skill level is relative and doesn’t have hard data whilst comparing MF vs Toughness and +Critical Damage will actually give you the numbers.

That’s your problem. You’re assuming that the hard data is what determines every single group run. It doesn’t and that’s because not every single run plays out the exact same way.

Out of all of these threads, I still have yet to see proof that the MF stat is failing groups. The risk factor is compensated by the player’s skill level and that’s what I witness every day I pug for dungeon runs. If someone isn’t doing a good job, it’s 99.9% of the time because of their incompetence to play the game.

The game mechanics are more action oriented, and therefor require more skills than stats to complete. That is exactly why the MF stat works just fine.

To argue against skill level is to set yourself up as some elitist who expects every player to play exactly like you do. This game is meant for players to be largely diverse in stats and play style and still be able to complete goals together.

Goals being completed in certain ways and for certain time-frames, well that’s just personal opinions that require players to communicate and compromise more than arguing and raging.

Anchorwind.9016:

The Dirty Dozen:
1) Would you prefer ascended gear to be the last tier implemented for the remainder of GW2?
2) Would you prefer ascended gear to be equal to exotic gear in all statistics except agony resistance?
3) Would you prefer the level cap to remain at 80 for the remainder of GW2?
4) Would you prefer if WvW was set up on an equal playing field similar to PvP?
5) Would you prefer if WvW / PvP / PvE had separate skill functionalities?
6) Would you prefer if Magic Find was removed from the game completely?
7) Would you prefer if Magic Find was divided equally amongst all party members?
8) Is GW2 too ‘Grindy?’
9) Does GW2 need less RNG?
10) Has the Trading Post [and all its users/farmers] positively impacted the economy?
11) Do you have as much faith [and/or enthusiasm] about the game [and/or company] as you did before launch?
12) Do you reasonably expect [many of] your primary concerns to be addressed in early 2013?

Firstly I have to admit that answering these (rather arrogant) questions feels like I’m discriminating how others should be allowed to play. Regardless, I have no hope to answer these with the intent of promoting my opinion in Anet’s eyes. So having said that:

1. No
2. No (It just needs to be relatively easy to obtain for all people)
3. Yes
4. No
5. No (This sounds like a terrible idea)
6. No (The game focuses more on group coordination rather than stats)
7. No (Very bad idea. It’s a cry for more segregation in the community, gross)
8. No (People are too compelled over rewards to see otherwise. That’s their problem, not the game)
9. No
10. Undecided
11. Yes
12. No

Yay! It’s another one of those elitist threads.

Magic Find hasn’t impacted diddly squat with the groups I run with (mostly pugs). It’s felt this way ever since the day I started playing on release and up to now. The truth of the game play boils down to groups working together, understanding their skills and planning ahead. It’s all about coordination and less about stats.

What a rubbish topic.

One line came to mind when I got the gist of OP’s point:

“Noooo! Smee, who is this impostor!?”

Bard!? What rubbish. The idea behind the Mesmer is quite original and brilliant as is, and that’s because it conjures many different concepts into a giant stew of epic. It derives it’s tone from magic itself; the mysterious, the unknown and the dwelling secrets. From chaos to illusion, so many wondrous notions.

But a class dedicated to basically strumming music. . . very dull and not Mesmer. =P

I think those adds were supposed to be there from the start. The fact that you could interrupt his conversation and thus stop the adds from spawning was just some bug, or at least it sure does feel a bug.

If you’re having trouble, then try heading up the stairs and spread your group out on the left and right platforms above. Range him and drop any elites that stop by. /Cakewalk

As for the other content, I hardly noticed the change. I saw the vets get amped to elites, but that didn’t make it any different, imo.

It all just depends on your team.

Doing all melee won’t work so well. More worms will spawn and be able to range ya while you’re hitting up another worm.

I do think that beginning boss could use a little bit of a nerf. For the required level of the dungeon, it’s a bit rough.

You could just remove the chest it spawns and put that chest somewhere else. So if you did nerf it, people couldn’t farm it for cores.

Nothing’s wrong with nudity of even sex (between mature adults) for that matter. It’s all just a mindset that society needs to work on. Looking over our history, I’d say we’re slowly progressing in the right direction. You can see lots of rationality kicking in, from the social issues like racism or sexuality and down to even challenging religion. We’re getting somewhere better I think. =/

Anyways, this game was intended for a certain audience and to shift that balance in our current time would only cause massive conflict. You just can’t do it now without having to deal with the ramifications that societies current mindset would dispose of. Anet would be ruined for stepping out of their boundary.

How about a reasonable compromise? Give us new underwear options (via gemshop) and let use dye them?

What in the heck am I reading? I’ve played GW1 since its release and it has been the only game that I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of hours on. I’ve went through just about everything and the only thing I haven’t done (and regret not doing at this point) is killing Dhuum and getting that chest.

Anyways, I really am confused about your interpretations of GW1. For starters, the way I saw it, the game was very specific in builds. You either ran a specific build or you were neglected from groups for high-end farms – period. Hell, this even applied to just about anything. It was pathetic.

The entire endgame was nothing but a drive to see who could be the richest of them all. Who had the most geared characters with the 1mil bank and 100k stored on each toon, plus the 1k+ ectos and yada-yada ambraces. That was all the motivation – loot. That’s what I hated about it. Luckily I had friends and a guild, which is pretty much the only thing making me want to sign on after completing it all.

Guild Wars 2 took what I loved about GW1, the environment and sense of adventure! The exploration and discovery! Yes! Even after getting 100% map completion, the game is so kitten big that going back to areas I haven’t been in awhile still brings that sense of adventure. It’s so lively and beautiful, it’s far from getting old.

Then again, I don’t play just for loot… so I guess my opinion is irrelevant. =P Come on peeps, where’s your sense of adventure? Didn’t you ever have those childhood days where you could get completely lost in games like ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ or some FFVII? Just by comparison on graphics and content, GW2 is enormous and yet you fly by it without batting an eyelash.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Not wanting to sound too antisocial

Nah, you’re fine there… but you do come of as the elitist type. Something about informing players on how they should play and all, pretty rough.

I respect that you love your speed running stuff, but at the same time you should respect the fact that this game is meant for everyone to enjoy. If some people need time (or want to spend the time) to complete a dungeon, then let them be.

It’s this kind of disposition that ruins the game for the rest of us. We’ve gotta work on this more. I think one of Anet’s biggest goals was to really bring people together and having fun. That’s not seen very often when you have segregated groups over speed-clearing/skipping/time saving versus “other”.

There’s a lack of emotion and realistic tone throughout the cutscenes and even with NPCs in the world. For starters, the animations need to fit more with the dialog and really need to be the drive for the emotion that the actors are giving us, however, the emotion is lacking as well.

A lot of the dialog feels too straight-forward and therefor kind of comes off as just dull. A lot of the characters arn’t original enough, in that they don’t feel different enough between each other. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate more (without being too dramatic). I would even take the animations further by really breaking the barrier with your current cutscenes. Don’t just have characters stand around on screen, have them really interact with each other. For example, when Logan and Rytlock are fighting, they could engage physically – Rytlock shoving Logan etc. You could go beyond that with more effects for specific characters interactions. Just… innovate more. =D

I would look into two of (arguably) the best franchises that have proven to make real raw emotions come alive in video games – Dragon Age & Mass Effect. Hell, I even cried during the ME series. It’s powerful stuff, which really isn’t seen in this game.

I’m hoping one day I’ll feel the emotion, as I don’t doubt you guys and your efforts. Still, you’ve got work to do, imo.

Crusx.9164:

“and giving might to allies…”

/facepalm I really need to learn to read.

Well, still on topic here. What is the most effective way for mesmers to accumulate the most might stacks and keep them long enough for superior dps?

During the final battle with the Legendary Archdiviner, people can stack on top of the boss and have one person take the hammer to charge and hit the seal. After the seal is hit, the four people stacked on the boss somehow bugs him so he remains in the dazed state. This then allows people to continually grab, charge and hit the seal until victory.

Apparently the way you stack is important to this bug. The four who stack have to be literally inside of the boss. If people stack close and next to the boss, it doesn’t create the dazed bug, but it will keep the boss stationary and in a non-attack mode when he does come out of the daze.

So it’s sort of two bugs in one.

Screenshot is example for the “literally inside of the boss” stack.

First of all, how exactly is might supposed to work when using Mirror Blade? Is it supposed to give us 3 stacks for 10s per use/hit? There are countless times where I’ll stack three mirror blade illusions (each blade dealt dmg to the target) and not a single stack of might. I’ve been testing this and am pretty sure it’s not due to something like an enemy skill or whatever. I can recall plenty of times where I’ve been ranged and out of any damage from foes and still, no might stacks. What am I missing here?

What’s the deal with the stacks constantly dropping in mere seconds? I’ll get up to like 12 and then a second later it drops to 6. O_O Whhhaaaa… but why? What’s the point of getting such awesome might if you can’t even take advantage of it?

I’m running a berserker build, with lots of boon duration boosts. I’ll use food for 20% duration, the signet for 10 and soon I’ll be testing runes for a total of 50% duration boost. If this doesn’t solve the problem… then wtf…

I was in some rough 1v1 setups last night. I joined a game to find some guildies doing some 1v1. So I challenged a couple (both being guardians). As a berserker mes, I must admit, the damage I was dealing was good, but just not good enough.

Both rounds lasted a good amount of time, but in the end, their ability to know when to dodge my shatters mixed with their protection skills was too much for me to handle. They would keep close to me, constantly circling to keep me off balance from casting my illusions and failing to get the straight-shot I need for Spatial Surge. They knew when to dodge the shatters and Phantasmal Berserker.

It just takes practice and you can own us easily. We’re really not that great once you know when to dodge and how to manipulate the field so our casting fails.

Lordryux.9785:

WATTTT i feel like an unkillable god in dungeons lmao damage of izerker is freakin amazing plus the stacks of might u can get with just one mindwrack is rediculous you must be doing something wrong.

like tbh im literally always the last man standing reviving people and saving thier behinds constantly during dungeons even in AC against kholer people getting downed so easily lol im in the back just dishing out crazy damage and spreading my might stacks to my team with signet of inspiration im loving it

Drop a comparison for me then. What are your stats?

They do good damage when you’re able to 1-up your enemy. Although I have run into plenty of others who know the mesmer well enough to be able to hold out and drop me like butter. It really depends on who you’re fighting.

As for PvE, not so much. I do dungeons a lot and find that even when I use damage (+10 against svanir etc) and/or +power/precision/crit dmg food… I’m still a weakling compared to the rest of my party. I’ve tried many variations too, and everything feels weak. I’ve tried pumping a precision and power sigil to max before switching to a +10 dmg weapon. I don’t know. The damage rates always feel the same and too low compared to what a warrior or thief is dishing out.

I don’t see a grind at all. The game play is a lot more action-orientated, and as such it comes off very similar to a lot of other games out there, rather it’s console, pc or even a different genre.

When I play, I’m a crafty illusionist who takes on a mission to stop the Svanir from invading a Kodan sanctuary and as a result to eliminating some of the threats, I get some nice rewards. That being just one of many examples of course.

The rewards are not the only reason to play Guild Wars 2. If you believe that, then your opinion should be negated 99.9% of the time. :P

Errant Venture.9371:

It might be a challenge the first time you see certain trash, but when you’re running AC or CoF or CoE for the 50th time, there’s really no challenge there. The trash just becomes a time sink because you know the mechanics and if you’re capable of skipping them, more power to you. If you’re not interested in skipping trash, the advertise for a group that wants to do a full clear.

Again, that’s how you see things. I’ve been running dungeons for quite the time and have probably ranked well over the hundreds for cof, hotw and (based on my achievement) fracs too. Every run tends to have a challenge based on who’s in the party. Sometimes I’ll get new people who need a little more support to learn the ropes, and even after explaining the routine, they still know how to get a rockin’ vibe started for the party. Recently it’s been more difficult though because most people rage quit rather than putting the effort to get past the challenge. D=

Ironically, it’s the speed-clear groups that are boring. Everyone knows everything, so aside from the skipping, the challenge of the game is even dissipated.

Errant Venture.9371:

I respect that other people may enjoy clearing dungeons, they should respect that I enjoy speed clearing dungeons. Don’t try to dictate my playstyle because you don’t enjoy it as much as I do.

I’m not dictating anyone’s game. Just stating some opinion and observation. It’s clear as day, the conventional wisdom for end-game guild wars 2 is “speed-clear grind for top loot/gear”. That makes it really difficult and tantalizing for the rest of us who don’t follow suit.