Guild Wars 2

I’m of the opinion that they need to adjust pretty much everything in regards to enemy density and combat behavior. Spread wildlife out a little more in the open world; put a little more space between groups of mobs within noteworthy areas; reduce respawn rate globally; increase the time before each event restarts; increase the radius of the tether to allow mobs to be moved further from their spawn point; remove the invulnerability effect when mobs are attacked from an unreachable position, allowing players to use terrain from a tactical perspective.

If they are worried that too few enemies and too much time between respawns will ruin things in areas of high population, well, isn’t that the point of the scaling feature they discussed before release? If they get that scaling feature to properly adjust density/respawn based on number of players, they can do all of the things I mentioned and the game would be better for it (in my opinion).

Drakos.3510:

Honestly, I like it. It forces you to choose your skills selectively, or move enemies to places where the terrain is better suited for your playstyle.

I get that it’s inconvenient, but not every aspect of combat is supposed to be – nor should be – convenient. So you have to give up an ability or two to kill an enemy. Or you have to begin thinking about positioning in combat. This is a good thing.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the mob leashes weren’t so short. As it is, you really don’t have much chance of strategically moving an enemy to a more advantageous spot because they’ll likely run away and heal to full long before you can get them there.

I hope this doesn’t come off too unsympathetic to your issue because I’m sure it’s a lousy situation to be in with a game you want to play, but perhaps your computer has finally reached the point where you can no longer expect to be able to play new release PC games on it. If you were only running WoW at 45fps — a game that released 8 years ago — that suggests that your specs were fairly mid-range even among PCs from 4-5 years back. Anyway, I hope you’re able to find an acceptable balance so that you can play sometime soon.

I’m just now closing in on 100 hours played, spread between 4 characters with my highest being mid-level. I’d already say I got my money’s worth, and I’ll continue the leveling process on-and-off for awhile. That said, I’m slowing down and playing other games, as well — looking forward to Dishonored and X-Com on Tuesday, then AC3 and Halo 4 shortly after. I have a different approach to the game since it doesn’t have a subscription fee.

All that said, the game definitely has its share of issues, and there are several ways in which ANet’s plans for the game don’t align with my personal taste or expectations. The restricted beta testing — and ANet’s “our way or the highway” approach — allowed a lot of things to be released in a form that should’ve been unacceptable. Even without reaching the level cap, I can read between the lines and see the many areas of the game that fall short of other MMOs on the market. But they did some thing’s wonderfully, and there is a lot of potential here. I’m not exactly hopeful that the Guild Wars 2 we’ll have a year from now will resemble the game I want, but I still wouldn’t ever look back on it as a bad game.

I’m not familiar with Guild Wars lore. I just read in the wiki that Norn can live to be 120 and retain their health and strength for much of that time, but I was taken aback during the Norn story when Eir was called an “old lady” by an NPC enemy that appeared to be twice her age. Does anybody know the intended age of the major characters in the Guild Wars canon? Logan Thackeray is another character model from the Destiny’s Edge members that looks like he’s still in his twenties, but the back-stories of these characters reads like they should be in their middle ages with half a life of regrets.

I created a Ranger a week or so ago, and now that I’ve played around with him a bit, I’ve noticed a couple of obvious improvements that could be made to the pet UI.

1) Give us a way to see the pet info screen you get from pressing K (name change, stats, abilities) for each tamed pet in the drop-down window without having to ‘equip’ them. Maybe a single click on the icon could bring up the window — allowing us to mouse over abilities and see their effects, or change pet name, etc — and a double-click could quickly equip the pet to the selected slot.

2) Show boons and conditions on the pet directly above the pet action bar. A ranger should be aware of his pet’s status without having to stop combat and select the pet. This would make ‘cure condition’ abilities, and boon abilities like the 1h-sword #3 that stacks might on the pet, much easier to manage properly.

3) This one is obvious and has been mentioned a hundred times, but I’ll reiterate since I’m on the subject of ranger pet UI: store each pet name created for each type of pet so that, even if it’s been 6 months since I last used a particular pet and have used 20 different ones in between, that pet has the same name that it had the last time I used it.

I have to disagree with this suggestion. No matter how great our favorite games from the past may have been, most games (and players) have evolved beyond using restrictions to artificially pad the number of gameplay hours. A wide variety of gameplay modes and a regular release of content updates are the ways a good MMO will keep players interested for a long time.

I was planning on asking for this, as well. As Blacklight said, if I’m hiding it in-game, it’s probably because I don’t like the way it looks on my character.

While I’m not exactly one of the many people who feel strongly enough about the limited FOV to be consistently vocal about it, here is how I feel about Jon’s explanation.

1) The default FOV could remain the same, while creating a slider would give those with the hardware to accommodate it — and those who feel ill playing with the default FOV — the option to change it. PC gamers love having options, and MMO gamers love them even more.

2) Expanding the FOV via windowed mode stretching has not resulted in texture/art distortion to a large enough degree for me to notice it, but even if it did, this is another example of how allowing each individual player the option to decide for him/herself what is most important to them in how the game runs and appears on their setup would be as close to ‘everybody wins’ as you could get.

3) I disagree with how this was explained. Positional awareness IS important in combat, and the game already suffers because the limited FOV and camera make it more difficult for players to be fully aware of their positioning. You say the game would suffer with expanded FOV because it would diminish the importance of being positionally aware…I say the game would improve because it would actually allow players to BE aware of their surroundings, thus putting any lapses in player awareness solely on their own shoulders rather than allowing them to blame it on the game itself.

Of course, hardware discrepancies between players will result in some playing with an expanded FOV having an advantage over those who cannot, but let’s be honest here — those with the better hardware and connection are ALWAYS going to be at an advantage in competitive PC gaming, and the same is already true in this game. Players with triple-monitor setups and more current specs (or those playing on large HDTVs with enough screen real estate to play in widescreen windowed mode) are probably destroying those people with older specs or single sub-24" monitors as it is.

I clocked it before when I was unaware of the difference, as well, and it is a 25% faster CD when picked up, as stated. I posted a suggestion before, though, that the tooltips are insufficient in explaining that, and that the term ‘pick up’ made me think I could actually pick up the turret and move it (like a warrior banner). I think it would work better if it was changed to say ‘Salvage’ instead of ‘Pick Up’, the difference in cooldown was improved to 50% (and tooltips improved to make players aware of how it works), and maybe there was a dusty “breaking down” type graphic set off when you did it, rather than one instant the turret is there and the next, it’s not.

I agree — it’s annoying to use a knockback on an enemy standing by a cliff edge only to have them hit an invisible wall. There would also be a tradeoff for taking the “easy way out” by sending some enemy falling to their death: you may have to make your way down to the body if you want to loot it.

Having a ranged weapon as one of your 2 sets is invaluable — all 3 of those thief attacks are close range, so whittle them down before they can close on you as much as you can. Cloak and Dagger only gives the thief 3 seconds of cloaking, and Backstab has to be from behind to hit hard…if you know that is the lethal combo they’re hitting you with, dodge away and stay mobile for a few seconds and he won’t get that backstab off from stealth. Heartseeker does more health the less HP its target has, so if you’re able to avoid a backstab from behind, it shouldn’t exactly be the nail in the coffin. Warriors have their burst builds, as well. You might be able to drive that thief/engineer just as crazy with a cookie-cutter Hundred Blades build.

I know WvW isn’t intended to be balanced around 1v1 fights, so I’m sure there will be plenty of times when certain classes/builds will get the jump on you and take you down quicker than you can react. Chances are, though, that those players are legitimate level 80s who just know their class (and possibly the other classes) very well and have built their gear/traits around a specific strategy. If you take a little time to learn what those strategies are (usually those crazy burst builds are flaunted on YouTube videos) and how you can gear/build to counter them, chances are good you’ll find yourself getting more and more competitive over time. It’s still WvW, though, so your best strategy is just to stay with a group of other players and move with a purpose.

The camera definitely needs work to make it less erratic, but I disagree with how you would prefer they went about it. I wouldn’t want to run into buildings and have the walls/floors all go transparent so I can see through them, like in most 3rd-person isometric dungeon crawlers. I would prefer they just find ways to make the camera behave properly and not fight against the player and the terrain all the time rather than completely separate it from the character model.

Some may say it’s to protect players from those who would use it to scam them. Others may say that, because the game allows you to exchange in-game gold for gems, it is necessary for ArenaNet to take gold from players in many different ways in order to facilitate the buying of gems with real-world cash (thus funding continued support of the game), and restricting all player-to-player sales to the Trading Post allows ANet to skim the listing/selling fees off the top and remove that coin from the economy. Either way, there have been a ton of suggestions for a traditional trade interface and COD mail, but I have never seen a company response suggesting that they were considering it.

True, it might look strange with the current animations. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I think it’d also be strange for someone to hold their torch out in the middle of the day. It would be pretty cool if the torch stayed out at night or down inside caves, though. Well, chalk this one up as something that probably requires a bit more work than is feasible in order to be executed properly…just something I thought of while dual-wielding with a torch earlier today.

I think it would be neat if, when using a torch as one of your melee weapons, it was not sheathed using the same animation as other 1-handed weapons and then extinguished, but instead your character continued to hold it up in the appropriate hand and give off light. It seems like my character should be setting himself on fire every time he puts his torch away with the way it is now.

Hyung.6140:

Bonzoso.7014:

One of my most memorable experiences with the game so far was with a jumping puzzle. On the Breached Wall vista in Diessa Plateau, I was practically banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the proper path and repeatedly falling — it was so frustrating. The thing is, there was this Norn female character right there with me the entire time. We’d make a little progress, fall, rinse and repeat. Sometimes it’d be me who figured out the next step and she (He? Who knows? Not the point, haha.) would follow me up, and sometimes the other way around. We both died fighting one of the veterans along the way and had to start over. Every so often, we’d say something in /say to vent a little frustration to the other total stranger we knew was going through the same thing. After more than a half hour, when we finally made it to the end, a simple /cheer and a mutual “grats” and we were both going our separate ways. Some may have found it insignificant, but to me it’s the kind of rare moment that I’ll probably remember fondly about this game long after I’ve moved on and forgotten the combat, certain encounters, etc. Those are the kind of experiences you only get in an MMO.

Bonzoso! I had the same experience, except I was a Norn female – do you play a charr on Ruins of Surmia? I’m guessing not as afterwards I went to do some more jumping puzzles with my new Breached Wall companion. It was epic, and one of my favourite things ever in all of gaming. I’m really glad someone else had the same experience in the same place

Very cool! I was playing a Charr, but I’m on a different server. Yeah, it’s neat to know that other people are out there doing the same things and making the same connections. I’m glad someone else took away something good from that frustrating place, hehe! It goes to show that some of the most fun you can have in this game (and others like it) can come out of nowhere when you aren’t even looking, if you’re only open to it and not so quick to give up.

I agree. Some family members — all skill clickers — who are currently back to playing WoW saw me playing GW2 for a few minutes and immediately commented that they didn’t like the way combat looked for two reasons: 1) they couldn’t tell what was going on in the middle of the zerg with all the spell effects from my mesmer, and 2) they didn’t like the tooltips popping up by the mouse pointer rather than on the side of the screen in an unobtrusive place like in WoW.

Deria.9158:

Valire.3761:

(They are by definition a solo event.)

Actually, funny you should say that. I was really struggling with a vista a couple of weeks ago in one of the zones — I simply couldn’t find a way to get where I knew I needed to be. So anyway, after much frustrating searching, I saw someone up there and I sent a whisper asking them how they got up there. Much to my surprise, the person came down and showed me -exactly- how she got up there. I was actually a little stunned. Anyway, the point is, the vistas are not necessarily solo. When my friends and I are playing, we also help eachother out (or laugh at eachothers missed jumps and deaths, more often).

One of my most memorable experiences with the game so far was with a jumping puzzle. On the Breached Wall vista in Diessa Plateau, I was practically banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the proper path and repeatedly falling — it was so frustrating. The thing is, there was this Norn female character right there with me the entire time. We’d make a little progress, fall, rinse and repeat. Sometimes it’d be me who figured out the next step and she (He? Who knows? Not the point, haha.) would follow me up, and sometimes the other way around. We both died fighting one of the veterans along the way and had to start over. Every so often, we’d say something in /say to vent a little frustration to the other total stranger we knew was going through the same thing. After more than a half hour, when we finally made it to the end, a simple /cheer and a mutual “grats” and we were both going our separate ways. Some may have found it insignificant, but to me it’s the kind of rare moment that I’ll probably remember fondly about this game long after I’ve moved on and forgotten the combat, certain encounters, etc. Those are the kind of experiences you only get in an MMO.

There are definitely a few jumping “puzzles” in this game that have driven me crazy, even being a fairly skilled gamer of 30 years with unimpaired motor skills (Wall vista in Diessa Plateau, Metrica Province), so I am sympathetic to anybody with disabilities trying to complete map exploration. Without knowing anything about your situation (so maybe I’m completely off-base here), is it possible they would be easier to complete using a controller rather than a keyboard/mouse combo? I’ve known some players with disabilities to be much more dextrous with a gamepad, and have seen threads mentioning Xbox 360 controller support, so maybe that would be worth trying. Of course, it’s not like this game engine is made with reliable jumping physics, so I’m sure it would still be tough.

Suini.4379:

While leveling solo i’ve gone Dual Axes + Longbow with the standard Signet leveling build. and Axe #5 is fantastic.

I’ll pull as many mobs as i can to stack, Drop the longbow Burst on them, followed by Longbow #3 for might stacks, switch to axes and pop #5, I am now hitting every single mob both with the Axe and with the burning effect due to the whirl finisher. By the time #5 stops everything is dead. In fact even with something like 7+ mobs where I might get downed, I would instantly rally because of the burn inflicted via combo field.

Combined with the ability to move while attacking, and more importantly the ability to dodge while attacking, its actually very useful!

That’s very similar to how I’ve been AOEing mobs down while leveling, although I decided to go a semi-condition build and use sword/axe + longbow. If I start with the longbow’s F1 fire shot and then #3 for the area might, I can switch weapons and use sword #2 for a blast finisher and get fire shield as well, then it’s whirling axes and everything is toast. I can face off against a veteran with 4+ adds, and everything but the veteran will be dead by this one combo, and the whirling axes will have filled my adrenaline again so that I can immobilize/bleed the veteran with the sword F1 and that’ll drop him.

These mechanics also have a tendency to make certain skills counterproductive. The Mesmer weapon skill (I believe it’s Torch #4) that makes the player disappear in a puff of smoke to blind the enemy and then reappear 3 seconds later with a burn effect often causes the mob to run away and start healing after you disappear.

The game would definitely play better if leash distances were drastically increased and the invulnerability/super-fast regen was removed. Some might argue that long leash distances allow griefers to train other players, but I’m of the opinion that designing a game in an ultra-restrictive way just to protect the community from jerks can end up being a detriment to the game as much as, if not more than, jerks in the community ever could.

I agree, it would be kinda neat for the game to recognize that you contributed during every step of an event chain and reward you with some extra exp, karma and coin. I like to stop and be a part of what’s going on as much as any fan of PvE, but I still find myself getting swept away by an event while on my way to do something else and then going back to my own agenda after just the one part is done.

Nurvus.2891:

Bonzoso.7014:

Personally, I wish they’d just made slots 6-10 completely interchangeable with all your non-weapon skills (similar to how Diablo 3 is if you change it in the options menu), but at this point, I’m not sure they’d be willing to redesign encounters that may be unbalanced by it. As far as I’m concerned, allowing players to slot 6-10 with all their heals and a couple support utilities would’ve gone a long way to smooth out the twitch learning curve that group activities have because of all the players used to trinity game design.

No. This won’t simply smooth out the learning curve, it will outright bring Holy Trinity back.
“DPSers” would bring offensive utility instead of Healing.
“Healers” would bring more healing.

Just no.

To the OP, yes, it would be a nice option, but only replace Elite with Utility, not Healing.

Well, I think that’s an exaggeration, but we’ll just have to disagree. Sure, you’d see some “trinity light”, but the game pretty much has a trinity light already, and not even a player with all 3 heal skills slotted would be able to keep up someone who wasn’t dodging and kiting when aggro’d.

Passiflora.2047:

TBH the social set up in this game has made me rather anti-social. I feel like it is “all or nothing”: have friends and a guild, be social ALL THE TIME, or don’t have friends and a guild, and play alone all the time. :/

I’m the same way. The way they linked all social connections to your account rather than to your individual characters is one of the handful of ways that ANet’s design philosophy completely disagrees with me. All of my family and friends passed on GW2 and were happy to go back to WoW, so I don’t play with anyone I actually know, and because I don’t like that account-wide friends/multi-guild design, I’m level 38 and unguilded with nobody on my friends list. One could argue that the events and PvP are still social gameplay, but the only talking I do with other players is in map chat or the rare /say. I joined a party for a few heart quests the first week I was playing, and when I realized that our account names & 4-digit numbers actually showed in the party frames, I was really turned off by that, for whatever reason.

Personally, I wish they’d just made slots 6-10 completely interchangeable with all your non-weapon skills (similar to how Diablo 3 is if you change it in the options menu), but at this point, I’m not sure they’d be willing to redesign encounters that may be unbalanced by it. As far as I’m concerned, allowing players to slot 6-10 with all their heals and a couple support utilities would’ve gone a long way to smooth out the twitch learning curve that group activities have because of all the players used to trinity game design.

I agree — if a player wants to take up both weapon sets with the same two weapons in different hands, he should only have to acquire one of each weapon. It isn’t a question of bag space because equipped weapons don’t take up space, so I’m not sure why it works the way it does to begin with.

All added content and unique events are a good thing in an MMO. Fixing bugs and balancing encounters or PvP mechanics is important, but that’s not necessarily the driving force behind retaining existing players because most players who encounter a bug that isn’t game-breaking (the OPs idea of gamebreaking and mine are different, it would seem) will simply gripe for a minute and then move on with their progress. It’s unfortunate that they may never get to experience that content bug-free, but that’s just the way it is — time stops for nobody. Bug fixes and balancing go a long way to make the game better for new players and alts, but new content is what will keep players logging in regularly for months and years to come. If they skimp on new content and events for the sake of fixing existing content, half the people who bought the game at launch could be gone by the time they’ve worked that stuff out.

If you’re going for a long-range sniper type character, a warrior would probably suit you better. The rifle skills for engineers are all used at a much closer range than the warrior rifle skills — warrior rifles are good for ranged single-target damage, engineer rifles are used a bit more like shotguns.

Yes, it should be changed to read ‘Invitation Declined’ and never add them to the guild/party roster history in the first place. This is just one more example of clunky tools with poorly worded descriptions among many in the UI.

solanu.3784:

STRUCTURED PvP is not part of the regular gameplay. It is an optional mode for people seeking more straight forward, competitive gameplay.

No, you should not get any PvE benefits for this mode.

One could just as easily claim that the PvE story is optional, or WvW is optional, or exploration is optional and that none of those activities should provide rewards that are useful to the others. I think the OPs point-of-view is pretty much the same as any of the many other players who don’t agree with the decision to boil PvP battlegrounds down to a randomized red-vs-blue King of the Hill match with no connection whatsoever to the persistent character you created. I can understand the reasons why ANet chose to separate their structured PvP from the rest of the game and create a level playing field for all players, but I still disagree with it and think that it’s going to lead to a lot of players who dabble in sPvP for a short time and never return.

The OP seems to really enjoy playing sPvP, and yet the fact that he can’t earn any persistent rewards for his character to use outside of these bite-sized deathmatches bothers him. ANet made a well-polished MMO with fun, fast-paced gameplay, but judging from a lot of post-honeymoon feedback, a large portion of the MMO community also wants rewards to show off to the world on the character they created, or they start to lose that connection. No game will be fun all of the time after hundreds of hours of play — it’s that connection to the community and to your character that keep people coming back for months or years, and bite-sized PvP matches that don’t use the same character you use elsewhere in the game just isn’t doing it for some people.

rattkin.3719:

I actually agree. Getting email instantly feels weird an out of place. The money in the letter is amount that is hardly “important” for your game progress, so I doubt it really matters when you will get it. But story-wise, getting mail sometime later makes more sense. Obviously, best of both worlds, would be to allow player to decide – if he wants the finish instantly, he can go to that heart person and talk to him, get the praise and money and maybe the mail without money later. If he doesn’t want to talk to heart, just send him the mail with money in 5-30 min range.

Being able to just run up to the heart NPC and get your cash reward right away is a pretty cool idea…it’s not like the player isn’t right in the area when he completes it, anyway. And if you don’t run back to the NPC for your silver, you’d get it in the mail shortly. I like it.

Anyway, like I said before, I realize there are a ton of players who would dislike this. I just fall into that smaller percentage of players who don’t necessarily want every little convenience feature added to the game, especially ones that some players will scoff at because it seems so ridiculous. I hardly think delaying someone’s 2 silver heart reward or making them find something else to do for 30 minutes before moving on in their personal story would be ‘alienating’ the players. To me, it’d beat getting a letter from a story NPC telling me to meet them somewhere when I’m literally still standing right next to them because I haven’t even left the instance from the completed quest yet.

I realize that this would be disliked by a lot of players — probably the majority — for delaying cash rewards, but every time I complete a heart quest and instantly get the NPC mail or finish a personal story quest and instantly get the letter to move on to the next step, I can’t help but think about how weird it is. It’s often little things like this that are constantly snapping players out of their immersion every few minutes and reminding us it’s just a game. Personally, I’d take a 30 minute delay on the silver for heart completion or being able to move on in my personal story for the sake of having it make a little more sense.

I could be way wrong (every player has different likes/dislikes and values their money differently), but I’m hoping that after a few months, ANet will see that very few people have spent real money on gems and then spent those gems on dye packs, and then maybe they’ll cave in on this issue. If the forums are a reliable indication, it seems more people want them to be account wide than otherwise.

I don’t buy their claim that it’s because dyes should be a character status symbol. I think it just comes down to “dyes are sold in the cash shop, so limiting dyes to each character allows for more potential sales.” But if data ends up suggesting that most people would place more value on dyes if they were account wide and may actually strive to get them in that case, perhaps the most profitable decision for ANet and the best decision for the players would be one and the same.

Any idea how long you have to loot before corpses with loot on them disappear? I’ve done many DEs and just stopped worrying about looting when things started getting hectic, and was later able to collect what I assume was all my loot after it was over.

Personally, I wouldn’t use an auto-loot feature (that doesn’t mean I don’t think others shouldn’t have that option), but I would love to see an area-loot so I could press F once around a big group of dead enemies and loot them all at once. SWTOR has area loot, and it’s a great convenience feature.

Never noticed your first issue, myself. I know for a fact that there have been times when I ran by someone killing something and fired a shot or two at it — doing maybe 10% of its total HP at most — and gotten XP and loot from it. There have been other times when I was pounding away on a champion for 5 minutes, getting gold contribution in the process, and got nothing. The chance of loot and the type of loot seems more random than anything else, in my experience.

As for #2, yes, there are some quests and events with collection aspects that disappear when one player gets to them, but I don’t agree that it needs fixing. That is the only time in PvE when there is actually a small competitive aspect, and there are usually other ways to progress through those events/hearts in addition to the limited number of collection stuff.

DavidGX.1723:

-PLEASE PLEASE a follow option

Will facilitate botting (multi-boxing) so this would be a bad idea.

There are plenty of legitimate uses for /follow, not to mention the level of botting I’ve seen in this game is already higher without /follow than I ever saw it in other MMOs with /follow. They can crush botters, while simultaneously addressing another concern a lot of people seem to have, by cutting respawn rates by a ton. That, combined with actual in-game ANet GMs who have the power to pull the plug after investigating a report, would do the trick just fine without inconveniencing players who follow the rules by leaving out features that are commonplace throughout the genre.

- Trade Window for in-person player-to-player trades
- C.O.D. mail option
- /who commands

They definitely need to add more active skills and traits that have a more drastic impact on the way each potential build plays compared to other builds of the same class. Certain builds have way too much emphasis on passive traits and signets, and some of those builds can be quite powerful — players shouldn’t have to choose between having a more powerful character and having a more fun, dynamic combat experience.

It’d be better that way, definitely. Height sliders should simply stretch the body on the y-axis without warping its dimensions. I would’ve loved to see more variations between the possible body types, too (I can’t look at a generic human female NPC without seeing a petite anime schoolgirl), but the ones we have now matter even less if the height slider scales everything smaller.

The tech media loved WP7, too, but it still only managed to take 5% of the smartphone market, compared to iOS’s 20%+ and Androids 60%+. I’m sure WP8 will make enough improvements to take more than that, but it still needs more third party support. It’s been 2 years, and ESPN never made a Windows Phone version of their fantasy football app.

Anyway, back on topic of the suggestion itself…seeing as how ANet has chosen just to partner with Google Authenticator rather than develop their own mobile authenticator app, wouldn’t whether or not it makes it to WP8 be up to Google rather than ANet?

35 Warrior, 15 Engineer, 7 Mesmer – 8/10

A good PvE game for the soloing player or those with a small group of family/friends, who also like to dabble with PvP on the side. There have been plenty of broken events, though, and I can think of quite a lot of things in the game that I would change — usually things that fly in the face of MMO convention just for the sake of it. There are many ways GW2 innovates that are a step in the right direction, but there are also some ways they tried to reinvent the wheel by making a square wheel rather than improving the tire they put on it.

Silver.8023:

The whole point of elite skills is that they’re kickass encounter changing abilities. If I could use one to win a fight in PvP or PvE, then quickly change it out inbetween fights to one that isn’t on cooldown, I could use six elite skills in the space of a couple of minutes. I think that would be completely unbalanced as it means everyone is essentially running around with six or so elite skills on their bar. I say, wait a few seconds.

That isn’t what the OP is asking for. He just wants to be able to change the slotted skill during the last skill’s cooldown so that, when that cooldown ends, he can use his newly slotted skill as soon as possible. I agree with him. The weapon skill system and limited number of restricted heal/utility/elite slots are designed to give players tactical options for different situations that they can switch up at will when they’re out of combat, and the current system just makes people have to wait before being able to do that.

I’ve been using a WP7 phone for the last two years and plan on upgrading to a Lumia 920 at some point, so I’d be happy to see a WP8 version of Google Authenticator. Lack of app support compared to the competition is really the only downside to the Windows Phone platform — Microsoft may never make a big dent in marketshare without a competitive amount of apps/games, but third parties won’t take the time to put their apps/games on Windows Phone if the platform doesn’t have a significant marketshare. It’s the constant dilemma that faces any tech company trying to compete in a market already dominated by someone else.

This is another lapse in customer service that should be unacceptable in an MMO of this magnitude. I bought this game a couple weeks after launch to give them time to iron out some of the kinks, knowing full well from what I’d read that the game had a bumpy start and ANet’s service was less-than-professional in many cases, but I just thought I’d cross my fingers and hope it didn’t happen to me. I haven’t purchased a single gem yet — through real money or gold exchange — and I don’t plan on it until I know they’ve implemented the tools and services to handle customer issues on par with the other, larger studios currently running high-population MMOs. First two things on that list: semi-frequent character saves with tools for individual character rollbacks, and staff with a bit more empathy and respect for the players, who care enough to do their job of helping the players resolve their issues without sending out canned e-mail responses or giving guilt-trips about who was at fault.

/signed

If they’re worried about removing another money sink, just add a small fee for players to re-dye their armor. I’m sure most players wouldn’t have much of a problem dealing with that compromise, especially if we can continue to play around with the dye window and preview our changes before finalizing it.

Just a side-note: if you upgrade to 4GB+ of RAM but are running a 32-bit OS (just a shot in the dark, but your other specs are a little outdated so I thought it possible you might be), your system will only get use out of around 3GB of that. You’d need to also upgrade to a 64-bit operating system.

My personal opinion is that, if you haven’t already, you need to turn most of your graphics settings way down. Even though it’s an upgrade for you, the 550ti is an older, budget-minded videocard — it wouldn’t have been capable of playing the newest games at their high settings even when it was released 18 months ago. If you’re looking to get good graphical quality at smooth framerates in GW2, you pretty much need a mostly new computer (new mobo, cpu, ram, OS, etc). If, however, you’re perfectly fine with running on low settings and would just be happy with a smoother framerate, adding RAM and upgrading your OS to make use of it would be the first upgrades I’d look into. Even then, however, your framerate will probably be dropping way down in large WvW battles.

I was just thinking about this earlier and intended to post about it. You’re right, there doesn’t seem to be any unique music for specific locales in game — at least I haven’t noticed any either, so it’d have to be pretty forgettable music for us to both be wrong. The music in the game is good, sure, but I feel the same way you do about tying certain pieces to certain locations. I will probably always remember certain pieces of WoW’s musical score because they would trigger every time you enter the capital cities, creating a complete, far more memorable audio/visual experience. So far, the only piece of music I could probably remember from GW2 is the music that plays at character selection.

I really dislike how ArenaNet linked all of the social features of GW2 to the entire account rather than to the individual character. When I joined a party for the first time and realized that everybody could see my account name and I could see each of theirs, I was actually pretty shocked. I just don’t want total strangers to have any more of a link to me than I choose to extend to them, even if they’re in my guild or I’ve enjoyed playing with them enough to add them as friends. I understand the reasons ArenaNet did it this way — I just disagree with them.