Guild Wars 2

Goatjugsoup.8637:

Simple solution imo would be for them to make an item that eats luck like they have for bloodstone dust and empyreal fragments (and seem likely to do for dragonite ore eventually).

Other solutions they could make a unique weapon/armor set that requires large amounts of luck to create or make it part of an alternate recipe to try and make clovers

They could also use the solution they came up with for excess Grawl Paws and other such trophies: make them salable to NPC vendors without being salable on the TP. Essentially they become a junk item.

Yasi.9065:

So… starting “attack” temple events on a timer would be the easiest solution. Making it more predictable for achievement hunters and still giving those that enjoy defense events, or just plain all events, the opportunity to finish those events without getting yelled at.

To me that would be yet another betrayal of the promise of a dynamic world. They did this when they put the world bosses on timers, divorcing them from the map meta.

Tequatl, for example, was supposed to be the culmination of efforts by players to defeat risen all over the map, causing the big boss to appear to reinforce the risen assault. He was the reward for player engagement with the whole map. Now it doesn’t matter if the risen are running rampant elsewhere or not. Teq will appear regardless, just because it is time, not because it has any relation to the map’s story.

Doing this to the temple bosses would send the wrong message, I think, especially from what we know so far about HoT. Players need to learn to accept dynamic event chains and accept that every event success or failure will change the outcome of the chain. It was designed to be unpredictable, and that was the exciting thing about the concept when GW2 was introduced.

Rognik.2579:

Wiki says that an exotic aquabreather drops from Tequatl, but I can’t confirm that myself

The Benthic Aquabreather drops from Teq, but it is rare, not exotic. I don’t believe there are any exotic breathers, and the Benthic is the only rare.

joe.7684:

Well. What it sounds like to me, at any rate, is that there’s a potential gold mine that a lot of people are walking by. 3s per prickly pear? That adds up to 7.5g per stack. I, for one, am going to start regularly gathering prickly pear – and nopale – whenever I’m in SW from now on.

I’ve been playing a fair bit of time every day in Dry Top over the last six months, and I harvest every cactus I come across. So far I have fewer than two stacks of prickly pears. What kind of gold mine returns less than 15g in six months? I think there are better ways to get rich. The nopales I now just merch, since they aren’t worth selling on the TP and I’ve got 1,500 of them sitting in crafting storage.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

So WHY does it matter if they lay there dead?

Because dead players do no DPS? What if those remaining on their feet are too few, losing an event that might have been won if the dead had waypointed and gotten back into the fight?

Peileii.9845:

Another thing: I’ve resorted to begging people to stop fighting and let the temple fall. Even explaining to them that the rewards are 100x better if they let it fall, they still defend it.

I’ve seen this over and over again in map chat throughout Orr. It just never seems to occur to the “let the temple fall!!!” crowd that not everyone is solely or primarily motivated by rewards, and that there are other reasons why some might enjoy doing defense events. They all seem to think that the defenders must either be stoopid noobs who don’t know any better or trolls who want to tick them off. Believe it or not, explaining that “the rewards are 100x better” is about as motivating to some people as explaining that “the rutabagas are much fresher” as a reason to switch grocery stores.

Fantastic! It is much easier to be patient now that we have a firm yes-or-no answer on whether the storyline will be restored. Though I’m very (very!) glad the answer is “yes”, I had gotten to the point where I was willing to accept “no” just to have some closure. It’s the uncertainty that drives one mad.

Aside from writs, tomes, and scrolls, I also wonder what happens with guild XP buffs and banners. Do they suddenly become useless except for guild members who are leveling an alt? Will there be new mastery boosts and banners that guilds will have to unlock?

Astralporing.1957:

Not. There are no standalone events/separate event chains that would not be part of the zonewide metaevent (tiers and sandstorm). They repeat at the same sequence every zone “reset”, instead of making the refreshingly chaotic dynamic conglomerate of events the old zones have. It changes the whole zone from a living place into nothing more than a grind sandbox.

Ah, I see where you’re coming from now, and I have to agree that the metaevent does take something away from the map. For people like us, anyway. Unfortunately, the playerbase seems to prefer predictability for the most part, which is why the World Bosses are now on timers instead of being the culmination of dynamic chains and why players constantly arrive in Orr expecting temple bosses to be just as predictable.

OTOH, one can mitigate the grind to some extent by simply switching to different areas of the map now and then. Instead of standing around waiting for the race, go help the shaman and get the mordrem away from the vine bridges, or go whack on the beetles and escort Rustbucket.

But it would be better if there were actual event chains and alternative outcomes instead of all the one-off events to be completed checklist style. If Repair Station is undefended because Rustbucket didn’t make it, that should result in something different happening. Otherwise the escort is pointless because neither success nor failure has any consequences other than the effect on favor.

Yet, the one actual event chain there is almost never done. Apparently players find it too much trouble to do the rescue in the abandoned mine. On the rare occasions when it is done, they find it too much trouble to take on the champ that spawns as a result. The vote is in, and players have chosen the predictable over the variable. Who are we to say that ANet should not respond to that in their design of the HoT maps and events?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I think the problem isn’t the variety of enemies but rather the existence of stories which can stand on it’s own, without the big theme: war.

And do you not have exactly this kind of variety in Dry Top? There are only about three events (not counting the s2 story instances there) focused on the mordrem efforts to push east into Brisban Wildlands and beyond. Other events are focused on the Inquest trying to take advantage of the zephyrites while they’re down. Still other events are focused on the skritt being a constant annoyance to everyone, regardless of affiliation. And then there are the events focused on the hazards of the environment — dust mites, beetles, colocals, devourers, etc. — and their impacts on the zephyrites, Priory researchers, and centaurs. It looks to me like there are several stories being told here, only one of which directly involves the war against Mordremoth and its minions.

Astralporing.1957:

The map Nochtli is on – Dry Top, is one of the monofocused ones. It makes it way more boring than old maps. OP’s concerns are quite valid.

Say what? Inquest, skritt, critters of various sorts from the meth moa to the beetles to the rare beasts, elementals, and mordrem all have a handful of events each. Some events, such as Colocal Queen, require zerging while many, such as Basket, require smaller groups and some strategy for best results. I see quite a bit of variety there. Which of these do you consider the monofocus? I sure can’t see it.

And the fact that many events are more harmed then helped by zerging them is a big change from most maps. (Though problematic when new players show up wanting to know where the train is and trying the same mindless tactics that work everywhere else but cause event failures and blown bonuses in Dry Top.)

As for Queensdale, it makes sense to me that a starter zone — the training ground for new players — should expose the player to the greatest possible variety of encounters.

They have ways of deflating your ego. Once you become commander, your name becomes Heyou Overhere or Heyou Gottaminit. You don’t get any respect at all.

Are you sure he was talking about the combat and the NPE being overwhelming? Even a new player who has no trouble with that is listening to friends and map chat prattling on about runes, sigils, builds, ascended gear, fractals, dungeons, events on other maps, world bosses, lore, story, achievements, and all kinds of things he doesn’t need to be worried about yet. The sum total of information about a big game looks pretty overwhelming to any new player of any MMO — the guy who’s still working on getting the keymap into his muscle memory — and it takes time to figure out what needs to be known NOW from what comes into play later. When you see a mountain of information and have no idea where to begin climbing, it isn’t surprising to feel a bit overwhelmed.

Vayne.8563:

Group looking for Rank 8 Ursan. Only rank 8 or older please.

You try playing an imbagon Paragon with a low level Luxon or Kurzick Paragon. It didn’t go so well. lol

Players will find some way to abuse any system that ANet can dream up. Thousands of clever minds in the playerbase start looking for the loopholes .05 seconds after a new system comes along. In the end, Ursan got hit with the nerf hammer. We can only guess at what would have happened to imbagon if paras had ever gotten the long-awaited big balance update, but I don’t think it was ever the problem that Ursan was.

Ausfer.1853:

If I were to only go on what we know from the Living Story, and if I had NOT seen what these “new allies” look like, I would assume they are The Forgotton.

I like the way you think, but I’ve always been more curious about the forgotten than the mursaat. If I could have one HoT wish, it would be to finally learn what their race was called before it was forgotten.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Rytlock ended up in Kormir’s realm. Bunch of forgotten there the last we saw of it, a big library, a goddess of Knowledge … what better place to learn a new profession?

Gnat.9405:

I think it’s disingenuous to compare GW1 rep grind with WvW mastery. The GW1 titles were a very apparent grind. WvW mastery is achieved by participating in general WvW. If you’re claiming that WvW is grind then there is just a problem with your definition.

GW1 reps were only a grind after you got enough levels to be useful for story/mission purposes. The first few levels came pretty easily before the curve got steep, but top level was pretty much unnecessary for anything but bragging rights (titles, armor, or whatever). You didn’t need to be top tier Lightbringer to take down Abaddon, or top tier Norn/Asura/Vanguard to take down the Great Destroyer.

If mastery works the same way, I’m not sure I have a problem with it. If the stuff you really need comes easily but the higher levels for bragging rights become a long-term project, is that so bad?

Right now there are no rewards or achievements for map completion in Dry Top or Silverwastes. Wouldn’t surprise me if those counted towards mastery retroactively. Other maps already give you rewards and count towards the World Completion achievement, so I would see no point in adding yet more rewards for doing those.

Vayne.8563:

Nike.2631:

Take just one look at the Giant Slayer deed and you can dispel the notion that Achievements can’t be GRINDY AS ALL KITTEN.

I’m sure you can pull a number of grindy achievements out of your hat. But taking the grindiest PvP achievement out of your hat and trying to use it as an example? Probably not the best way to phrase an argument.

There are grindy achievements, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

Where did Nike’s argument SAY that they were the rule? The point was simply that achievements CAN be grindy, and you admit that there are a number of them that are. It isn’t Nike’kitten, it’s ANet’kitten that produced Giant Slayer, Weapon Mastery for offhand weapons, etc. So basing mastery points on achievements is not a guarantee of “no grind,” which is the perfectly-valid point that Nike was making.

Edit: Holy Frijole! The filter is now kittening out a simple apostrophe-s possessive?? Ah! I see. Nike’kitten should be Nike’s headwear instead of “hat”.

Curunen.8729:

Yeah, definitely reminded me of an ankylosaur. Looks amazing tbh – I never played gw1 so I didn’t know dinosaurs were such a big thing in the lore.

They weren’t, really. They existed along the Tarnished Coast in Eye of the North, including Sparkfly Swamp and the areas around Rata Sum and the location of the Pale Tree’s sapling, but not in the northern parts of the Maguuma. There were also a couple of varieties in the Charr Homelands in Eye of the North.

In GW2 it appears that raptors have spread everywhere and split into numerous subspecies, but we haven’t seen any signs of the others: tyrannus, angorodon, ceratodon, ferothrax, trihorn, and armored saurus. Apparently they’ve migrated during the interval between GW1 and GW2. Maybe the asura began an extermination program, which would explain why the areas that became Metrica and Caledon are not crawling with them.

Xander.9024:

Those little spore things at 1:07 looked like some..fun guys…get it..I’ll see my way out now.

Just what we need: cute little things that will snuff you while you’re going “awwwww.” Kind of like those little cannibal critters in Galaxy Quest. Either that or they’ll be GW2’s answer to Ewoks. I don’t know which worries me more.

CureForLiving.5360:

It would be great, and would allow for better overall story telling. However it also means instead of a single story you end up having to make 5, which could lead to 5 average stories instead of 1 good story. So I’m not sure, as long as it doesn’t sacrifice quality.

You don’t really need five completely separate stories, though. S2 handled racial differences quite nicely through dialog options at key points. An asura might get a more complete or slightly different explanation of something in one instance, while a sylvari got additional information in another. A human would demand that Rytlock return the crown when he was done with it, while other races had no dog in that hunt. I thought it was rather cleverly done.

In this case, the story for a sylvari might have to be pretty divergent from the others at certain points, but that shouldn’t have any more effect on the quality than the forks in the existing personal story. All of the order branches were fine, for example, and I don’t think the PS would have been any better if there were no such branches.

ANet has demonstrated that they can do branching properly, and I think it’s going to be important to making HoT what it needs to be for sylvari characters.

I’m kind of curious as to whether the HoT story will be like Living World S1 and take place in the open world, like S2 with instanced play, or will be an actual continuation (finally) of the personal story.

Tormentor.2508:

I want a Tengu as pet

Why not a quaggan? F2 = Hulk Out!

FrizzFreston.5290:

And the Master of Peace was heading to the jungle as well for some reason. (Which I still don’t understand)

At first glance, it would seem counterproductive to take the egg closer to Mordremoth (or any Elder Dragon). Me, I’d probably take it to Orr, since Zhaitan is dead. Too bad the Master of Peace didn’t live long enough to give us instructions and didn’t fill in either his other masters or Ogden on the plan just in case. Poor planning! Wouldn’t it be interesting, though, if he was taking it to the mursaat or some remnant of the forgotten hidden in the Maguuma?

I’m more interested in Caithe’s angle. I keep thinking about how she didn’t know precisely what her Wyld Hunt would be, though she was sure she’d know it when she saw it. I also keep thinking about that conversation in the memory of the conference of the firstborn, where it was suggested that it was possible for a sylvari to misinterpret his/her dream and Wyld Hunt. Could it be that her Wyld Hunt was triggered by the egg, but she has misinterpreted it and is unknowingly making a tragic mistake?

Carighan.6758:

Do this a few times, fueled by dailies, and either you start ignoring the daily, or engaging the activity on your own even without the daily. Either is a good outcome for the devs.

It is a little hard to ignore the dailies when they’re the primary source of achievement points. Under the original system you got to keep what you earned. If you only did two of them, you got your two points. If you did seven, you got seven points. Now, it’s all 10 points or nothing, which may drive some to do things they don’t like to do just because it’s the only way to get any achievement reward for the other things.

Perhaps it balances out. I get 10 points I didn’t really earn on most days, and no points on days when I refuse to be baited into full participation (like double-fractal days). But somehow it doesn’t feel as satisfying as being rewarded for what I did achieve, no more and no less, on a particular day. It feels like first-place ribbons are handed out to everyone who completes the race, regardless of their actual place, and bags of doggie doo to everyone else. The balance between effort and reward is out of whack.

FrizzFreston.5290:

If the seal was there for the entire time, “needing” Chosen for it to stay on or what not, then that is alot of people. So I really doubt that’s the case, as it would mean that right now that Door would still be open as there’s no one killing any chosen to keep it shut.

There is no need to keep killing Chosen because the soul batteries are fully charged with the soul of the Lich, who was killed on the Bloodstone.

Astralporing.1957:

If i need to switch area, i am going to notice. If i need to go PvP for the daily, i will definitely going to notice. If i get double fractals daily (like today… again), i’m kitten well going to notice that.

Amen.

As I recall it, the original reason that dailies existed was to produce some parity in rewards for players with limited play time vs. those who can play hours every day. The original dailies allowed a player to get rewards just for doing what s/he would ordinarily be doing in the place s/he would ordinarily be doing it. Almost all of the of the dailies could be done anywhere at any time. It didn’t matter if you were in Queensdale or Cursed Shore, you could still do X events, revive X players or npcs, etc. Even if you only had an hour to play you could generally complete the dailies.

Now, however, you have to be in specific zones, specific maps of specific zones, and/or playing at a specific time rather than the time that is convenient to you. If the hour you have free to play doesn’t overlap one of the appearances of the daily world boss, too bad. If the hour you have to play isn’t enough time to finish a whole round of fractals, too bad. If you want to spend an hour in Dry Top collecting geodes but the daily says you must do events in Frostgorge, too bad. If you want to spend your hour working on map completion in Kessex while increasing your supply of iron but the daily says you have to do your mining in Ascalon or lumbering in Maguuma, too bad.

The new dailies seem diametrically opposed to the original purpose of dailies. Now they don’t reward everyone just for playing, but only reward people who play in specific ways and places and times. The rewards are greater, but less accessible to the players the dailies were originally intended to serve. This seems like a bad move.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Also remember, Glint was behind the prophecy, without it the Mursaat and the Lich wouldn’t have done such thing.

Call me a traditionalist, but prophesizing something does not equal setting something in motion. The Lich was already after the Scepter of Orr, who’s to say an army of undead wouldn’t have killed all the mursaat if he had gotten it at some point?

The Lich is to say. He got the Scepter on Sanctum Cay. If that was all he needed to defeat the mursaat and reach the Door, then why did he waste any more time on the heroes? He believed he needed the heroes to become Ascended to take out the mursaat garrisons that were blocking him from the Door. Why? Because the Prophecy said that was the path to his goal. The Lich knew the Prophecy and was doing everything in his power to make sure it was followed to the letter, which made it self-fulfilling.

While drax is, of course, correct that it is not entirely clear whether the soul batteries were lock or latch, I think there is quite a bit more weight to the lock theory. The existence of the Door predates the Flameseeker Prophecies. Before the Flameseeker Prophecies identified the Door as a racial danger, the mursaat had no reason to run a pogrom against the Chosen. Yet the Door was clearly closed before anyone had their soul stuffed into a battery because there wasn’t a flood of titans wandering around Tyria.

Nor have we been given any indication that there were any mass abductions of Chosen prior to the sacrifices begun by the White Mantle. If the batteries were a latch, what kept the Door latched during all the centuries before the White Mantle existed?

I think the lock theory requires fewer assumptions, satisfying Occam’s Razor. It seems likely to me that the mursaat did nothing until the signs of the Prophecy showed that the end was near. Before that the Chosen were no threat and the Door required no additional safeguards.

The three GW1 campaigns were each stand-alone games, so each had to come with character slots to be playable if you didn’t have any of the other campaigns. EotN, however, was a true expansion that required the player to have at least one of the campaigns. EotN did not include any character slots, since those were provided by the base game. Personally, I don’t expect HoT to include any slots, though I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Looking at the concept art, I am reminded of the strange trees seen in the dryer parts of the Maguuma in GW1, and of the enormous stump that used to be in the center of Dry Top. Perhaps remnants of Mordremoth’s minion trees of 10,000 years ago? What is the source of the mordrem of the current cycle? I imagine some tree or trees already out there, growing mordrem wolves and such the way the sylvari tree grows hounds.

I agree with Athrenn. I finally used my fifth character slot, but stopped playing the PS after choosing the character’s fear to await the resolution to this. Either tell us you’ll fix it or tell us you won’t so we can move on. This business of not knowing when or if is getting old. If it was removed deliberately and won’t be restored, I can live with that in the interests of getting my character back to the story.

DarcShriek.5829:

Really, the Mursaat are EVIL. They maintained control by sacrificing innocents. The invaded Lion’s Arch for the purpose of killing Queen Selma. The White Mantle hunted down members of the Shining Blade.

Worse than evil, they’re STUPID. Why were they killing innocents? To lock the Door of Komalie so no one could open it. Why did we unlock the Door of Komalie, allowing the Lich to open it? Because they were killing innocents! Our only reason for being in the Ring of Fire or going through Ascension was stopping the slaughter. If the mursaat had just quietly mounted a guard to warn people away, we would never have even heard of the place, much less gone there.

The mursaat (not to mention Khilbron) basically fell for Glint’s bait, making the Flameseeker Prophecies a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they hadn’t known the prophecy, they never would have carried it out. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I do hope we get an answer, though, to the question of just why the titans had such a beef with the mursaat. Yes, titans were a danger to everyone, but there seemed to be something personal in the way they hunted down mursaat in particular. We know that titans were made in the Foundry from tortured souls. Were they created from the souls of a race that was wronged and killed by the mursaat long before? Seers, perhaps?

I also wonder how much we will learn about these so-called “bandits” who have a militaristic organization, a strong presence in the Maguuma, and secret installations in Queensdale and Harathi Hinterlands displaying the symbol of the White Mantle. How did they become involved with the Nightmare Court and the Inquest? Are they still working for or with the mursaat?

No. They disappeared from that camp when Silverwastes was opened, and I had assumed I’d find them there. But there’s no sign of them anywhere so far. (Of course, they may be in transit, but moving slower since they ate poor Susie.)

I always answer this question seriously when it comes up in Dry Top map chat, and it DOES get asked a lot. Since I can’t be on duty 24×7, I think ANet should add a scout NPC with this info somewhere in Prospect Valley. It will seem a little weird to those of us who spent the coin to buy the earlier chapters, but it would solve the problem for a lot of returning players.

draxynnic.3719:

The Order of Whispers has no shortage of human male agents

Wait. Where is it established that “E” is male? Or human, for that matter? The letters are only signed with the initial. Voices can be disguised, or provided by some confederate fronting for “E”.

Liz.1497:

I have a question though: did you do the research on what you’d missed before you jumped into the next chapter of the story? If so, did you know that you were going to have to because you had been around for some of Season 1? If that’s the case then at least the confusion over the format of Living Story is at least only an issue for people who left before Season 1 started.

No, I didn’t research in advance because I had no idea things had gotten so complicated during season 1. Last thing I remember was escorting some refugees from some undefined menace to camps in Diessa. I had no idea this was building up to something so momentous, or that it would result in enormous permanent changes to the world.

When I returned, I found myself with a bunch of strangers acting as if I knew everything about them, calling me boss, and dropping references that left me mystified. Plus, in the open world, I kept running into strange enemies and ruins and more mystifying conversations with NPCs who seemed to know me. So I realized that I had missed a LOT and went looking for a summary on the wiki.

Liz.1497:

Another question too: Seeing that you’re someone who appreciates story and has experience with game/mmo stories, do you think the current journal entry summeries for episodes not played and unlocked (the 2 sentence ones I posted a sample of a couple of threads ago) make much sense to players who have missed/haven’t played a large chuck of said story?

It might take a few more sentences, but even two would be a good start. Heck, complicated TV shows offer frequent recaps and reminders that are useful even to dedicated fans who never miss an episode. I don’t mind going outside the game for a more complete treatment of the story, just as I haunt the lore forums for games. But the basics need to be covered within the game, which would benefit both story fanatics and those who are more casual about it.

As a returning player myself, who missed most of season 1 and the first part of season 2, I think Liz has the right of it and some great suggestions on how to improve the experience. I LIKE story and demand it in my games, so I was willing to put in the effort to find a summary of season 1 and was willing to spend the gems to catch up on season 2. But I don’t expect everyone else to share my tastes. A little more hand-holding would be a good thing.

One thing I would suggest is a scout of some sort placed in the town of Prosperity. Every day a surprisingly-large number of people want to know how to get out of Prosperity Valley. Some have only the latest episode and can’t understand how to get where the story says they need to be. Others don’t care about the story at all and just want to get to the events and resources. I take time to explain and/or show these people how to get to the tunnel, but an NPC could do that just as well and be on duty 24×7. This kind of help needs to be in the game, not something you have to google or rely on other players to tell you. Dry Top is a busy place and there’s no guarantee some kind-hearted player will stop and take the time to help out someone who is confused.

Have they severed themselves from the Dream? Isn’t the Nightmare part of the Dream? The Nightmare Court doesn’t reject the Pale Tree, but wants to “free” her from Ventari’s influence. That may be enough for the Pale Tree to shield them from takeover by Mordremoth, even if the Nightmare is a reflection of his thoughts.

If anyone can be said to be severed from the Dream it is the Soundless, who may be completely unshielded from Mordremoth’s influence. Aerin was likely Soundless, and we may see more of them popping up in future episodes. Scarlet may have been severed from the Dream when she used Omadd’s machine.

(If you have a sylvari player, why wasn’t your character severed from the Dream after experiencing the vision? Perhaps because the PC, unlike Scarlet, has a Wyld Hunt, providing a stronger connection to the Dream. Or perhaps the changes in the machine somehow made it safer.)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As far as we know, dragons are not natural creatures, but corrupted non-dragon’s shifted into a new form akin to Mouth of Zhaitan and other bizarre minions.

I’m not so sure of that. The impression I’ve always had, particularly from Edge of Destiny, is that dragons may have once been the dominant life forms of Tyria. Perhaps the original dominant races were draconic, but most were either corrupted or destroyed when the Elders first manifested.

We bottle up our distaste and rage until we can find a game that lets us kill a troublesome personality in creative ways. It’s called “catharsis”. Which reminds me. Nazeem is due for a little comeupance. Excuse me a minute …

Hmmm. That might actually be a GOOD thing, Zaxares. Rytlock needs a way out!

I can see it now, browsing book carts in GW3 and finding a copy of I was a Thrall of the Mursaat, by Phlunt.

I missed almost all of Season 1 and the first three episodes of Season 2. I was very glad to have a way to catch up on at least the beginning of Season 2, and wish there was a way to catch up on the first season. It is no worse, and much cheaper, than paying for DLC for single-player games.

I’m not sure there’s a real danger of the Door of Komalie opening, since the Bloodstone is not what is keeping it closed and is not necessary to keeping it closed as long as the Soul Batteries are charged.

However, the Bloodstones are all logical targets for Mordremoth given the enormous amount of magic they contain. But the Maguuma Bloodstone is obviously closer to our current location in Dry Top, and presumably closer to Mordremoth’s location, so we will likely see it sooner than Ring of Fire. We also have access to Sparkfly Fen, which puts us close to the Shiverpeak Bloodstone. Perhaps we will end up visiting all five before the story is over, solving some lingering mysteries from GW1.

Though we have a connection with Glint here through the Zephyrites, I would be more enthusiastic about Crystal Desert theories if the gate in the Nov. 4th teaser screenie looked like the gate in Ebonhawke. I certainly would like to find out what became of Glint’s baby! However, it does seem more likely that we are going to be pushing deeper into the Maguuma instead. Brisban Wildlands still has two unreachable portals headed in the right direction.

For some reason the behavior of Anise has started me thinking about Livia and the Scepter of Orr, last seen on the RoF Bloodstone. (Along with Sohothin, also last seen in the vicinity and now back in the story, at least briefly.) And, given the Shining Blade connection, wouldn’t it be interesting if “E” somehow turned out to be Evennia, still MIA after her trip to Ascalon?

mtpelion.4562:

I just don’t understand why the Pact Commander didn’t confiscate Taimi’s device on the grounds that it was directly related to combatting a dragon and on the grounds that there was nothing Phlunt could do about it.

I fully agree. The Pact should be demanding this device, since it could attract Mordremoth to a place and time of the Pact’s choosing, allowing them to pick the field of battle for a change instead of just responding to attacks. The ability to take the offensive will be crucial to the final defeat of Mordremoth, and Taimi’s device could provide that ability. Perhaps this will be a plot point in a future episode, where Trahearne sends you to Rata to confront Phlunt and obtain it. We can only hope.

I was really galled by having my character forced to spout “for the greater good” nonsense at Taimi instead of schooling Phlunt on the consequences to his people if he chose to go it alone instead of coming to the summit. (Ayn Rand’s graveyard friends started calling her “Whirligig Ayn” after she heard about this incident.) I really wanted to stand up for Taimi here instead of talking her into surrendering. Her question about the merits of rewarding evil was an excellent one that should have given us pause.

At the very least, we should be publicizing Phlunt’s actions throughout Rata. What do you suppose the rest of the asura would do if they knew that he was willing to sacrifice their welfare if he could not personally profit from the situation?

fellyn.5083:

That’s nonsense. Name a single event that is in the game that can’t be completed by design and I’ll tell you that you’re lying and/or exaggerating in the extreme to prove a point.

I would not say any events are designed to be failed. However, certain defense events are designed to become tougher with each repetition so that failure will be inevitable at some point and the event chain will reset.

For example, take the Balthazar temple event. Once the temple is captured, the next event is to defend it. If the temple is successfully defended, then the next event will be to defend it again, but the waves will be tougher. If the temple is again defended, the third defense event will be tougher yet. Eventually the temple will be taken back by the risen and the whole chain starts over.

Saying that these events are “designed to be failed,” however, misses the point. And I don’t think it really applies to Coiled Watch, since the next event after the defense is the assault on Barrowstead.

The more-honest among the farmers admit that the event will get nerfed sooner or later, which makes a mockery of the claim that ANet considers their style of playing the event just as valid as any other. It is the farmers who should have to ask anyone present if it’s okay to fail the event deliberately and go find another instance if anyone objects. Those with instructions on their screens telling them to attend and complete the event are the ones with priority on any map.

It’s all well and good to tell LS people to just ignore the chat and complete the event anyway, but this is almost impossible for a solo player or small group once the event has been scaled up. Then, even if you succeed by some miracle, you aren’t out of the woods because you then have to keep the dolyaks alive through the scaled waves without any help from the zillion people yelling “let the yaks die!” (though they will at least jump the champ that comes out). Even the battle in Barrowstead, if you make it that far, appears to maintain the scaling even though the farmers don’t follow you there. If you fail at any point, then you’re back to square one trying to cap Coiled.

I spent hours going through this cycle about a week ago. I’ve been away from the game for some time, and couldn’t understand why the event I needed kept failing even though there were many players there. I didn’t know about trains or failtrains, which didn’t exist when I was last playing actively, so I certainly wasn’t there as the troll I was accused of being. I was just trying to play while people kept telling me to get out of the cap zone for some reason I could not understand.

I paid real money for the gems that allowed me to obtain that episode, and I did not appreciate being told to go elsewhere to play because I didn’t own the map. AFAIK, the farmers paid nothing extra for their “privilege” to fail. I was not looking for a confrontation and tried to get a new instance, but couldn’t. I ended up wasting most of a day trying to get through this part of the story, though it shouldn’t have taken as much as an hour. I was not hostile to farmers before, but I’m half tempted to join the spoiler brigade now! Farmers, you are creating your own enemies. That won’t turn out well for anybody.

I would dearly love to see a change, or an option to change, the behavior of the camera after the player is defeated. This business of flipping the camera to a birds-eye view and then circling over the corpse like a vulture is incredibly annoying for several reasons.

— After a while it makes me dizzy.
— It’s annoying not to be able to watch what’s going on around me while awaiting revival or deciding whether to wait or waypoint out.
— After revival, or when restarting an instance from a checkpoint, it is annoying to have to reposition the camera so I’m not looking at the top of my character’s head and can see what I’m shooting at. In some cases, such as some of the Living Story combat, the extra second to do this and get reoriented just pointlessly adds to the difficulty, since the character is being revived right in the middle of combat.

One can’t even maintain camera control when defeated by holding down the mouse button. It works for a short time, and then the game snatches back camera control. Taking control away from the user like this is, for no apparent good reason, does not seem like great design.

I’m honestly puzzled by why this camera behavior even exists in the first place, unless the goal is to inflict some minor punishment on the player for the sin of being defeated. Please consider a change!

You can interact with the totem at any time, but it doesn’t trigger the next step in the story unless the event chain is at the point where the shamans have been defeated. Once the chain recycles back to the beginning, it has to be driven through to the battle in Barrowstead to unlock the story again.

I ran into this phenomenon for the first time this morning, taking my fourth character through the story. I didn’t understand why the event kept failing even with a large number of participants. Silly me.

One of them suggested letting one run succeed to let LS people through, and told me in PM that he always does this when leading the farm there to keep it from being nerfed. Those of us there for the story were accused of being “trolls” trying to “spoil” their farm. It took several tries for us to cap Coiled Watch and then keep one of the dolyaks alive while all the farm kiddies kept screaming at us to back off the cap zone and then screaming at us to let the yaks die.

In a similar vein, a few days ago I heard someone being accused of trying to “spite” the train by killing the quaggan “out of order”. I’ve been away from the game for some time, so this “train” phenomenon is also new to me.

Something is very, very wrong when people playing the game as designed are the ones being accused of trolling and spiteful behavior. Something is very, very wrong when the design is now pitting player against player in PvE. It seems that ANet has managed to add griefing to a game that was formerly praiseworthy for being free of it.