Guild Wars 2

can’t say i dislike the idea of hidden treasures i have to explore to find.

fun fact, the only mention of horses in all of Guild Wars lore is a snippet of canthan lore that implies horses more than confirms.

so best case scenario for you mount lovers, you’d be mounting dolyaks and moas.

Obsidian.1328:

What’s up with the pirate-themed stuff all over the place too? I suppose medium armor goes with “rogue” type classes, and pirates are pretty rogue-ish.

Those Ascalonian feathered hats are all over the place…never saw an Ascalonian in GW1 wearing such silliness. :P

that’s because arenanet thought it would be smart to reward people with the pirate armor set for completing a dungeon, until you get to level 80.

i have a better suggestion

instead of attempting to corrupt an area that would eventually get uncorrupted (which would make cleaning up dragon mess look really easy, when in fact it’s not), increase the corruption of areas where certain DEs fail (especially fights against dragon champions). other than temporarily increased mob density, you could have a myriad of other negative side effects, not unlike the corrupted shrines in orr.

then you’d have to take part in a DE and succeed to re-stabilize the area.

i have 5 characters, but whenever any of them drops a dye, it goes straight to the bank, because my main is the one keeping all of them. why? because i like collecting dyes, which has the side effect of making all my other characters have lame colors.

i’m surprised there isn’t a confirmation button. please add this.

Ari Kagura.9182:

@BrunoBRS.5178

Besides for the story, completing Story also unlocked the capability to do Explorable mode. However, you can do Explorables without doing the Story if someone in your party has the unlocked the ability to do Explorables.

which in turn kind of ruins the point of unlocking explorable modes. i have a friend that farmed CoE (farmed) and only did story mode after he was done with it, because why not.

isn’t that the quest where you pilot a golem that sprays water instead of firing lasers?

i loved that quest, one of my favorites in the personal story.

^ it doesn’t suck, because while the time it takes for a specific event to trigger (say, centaurs attacking nebo terrace), there are more events in the area, including one in the same general area that is triggered in nebo terrace invasion’s offtime.

basically, with more events in a single area, they’d be able to pace the events better. in an utopical world, there would be so many events to cycle through, that you would have to spend a week in a single area to see them all, and rarely if ever see the same event twice. all while not ever running out of events to do, always having an event nearby to help with.

this idea is what i believe they originally had in mind. so many interesting things going on, that whenever you revisit an area you’ll be surprised to see it changed. but right now, those changes are “fixed” within 10 minutes, and then they happen again in half an hour and then reset again 10 minutes after that. nothing sticks for long, and if you spend a day or two in an area (if you’re not playing like a madman, it’s not far-fetched to think someone would spend that much time per area, especially if they’re going for map completion) you probably saw most of the events.

as for impact on the world, it doesn’t have to get to that extreme (at least yet :P), but it needs some impact. we need a reason to want that village not to be overrun, a reason beyond “it’s another place to respawn and sell junk items”. better yet, we want the possibility of that village being overrun (most events don’t even have the option of failing).

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

@Knyx:

What you said is a joke. No skilled competitive intelligent Thief player would play D/P if he is going for a burst spec, why would he? What combo field? Bring smoke utility or waste initiative on Black Powder so he can heartseeker through it while his target is 100% hp so he can get a stealth? Don’t make me laugh. D/P is the biggest fail set on the Thief in PvP, D/D does the role better. Also, how are you going to CnD with D/P?

i can see it being useful, if you’re not aiming for a backstab dagger (yes, that does exist). you have a free interrupt and a smoke field for survivability, a shadowstep for mobility, and heartseeker for burst. use a stealth steal for initial backstab, use high initiative regen, work from there.

@Blazer – i think they renamed it for versatility. long time GW1 assassin, the thief is definitely more versatile.

assassins were purely high dps, no range, all speed classes (unless you went for obscure builds like critical barrage). thieves got new tricks up their sleeves. aside from all the assassin stuff, thieves have access to traps, some of their skills have turned into more support-oriented skills (ohai shadow refuge), and there are more ranged options. stealth is part of the archetype, but wasn’t present on GW1, and steal can be traited for a myriad of different effects.

oh and most importantly, you don’t have to be a glass cannon.

that’s so annoying. it’s somewhat harmless, but still very annoying. had the issue on my human mostly.

jpg.1783:

This is quite an interesting topic – to answer the OP, the difference between GW2 and DOTA is that you don’t actually build DOTA characters. They are essentially pre-made, and it’s a matter of which skills you will open up first. Then comes your equipment.

This is where Traits come in. I doubt that you’ve exhausted there is to exhaust when it comes to the combination of Traits you can do on a single character.

At the moment I think what happens is there are more or less tried and tested traits that people stick to. They share the experience and they become the bench mark for the rest of the players. The traits have its limitations, granted. You pick from only 12 available per Traits, and they are further limited by Tiers.

Second comes your skills both utility and weapons. This is another thing DOTA does not have, as far as I remember how the game goes. I am confident as well that you haven’t come up with all the possible combination of skills on a single character, so that’s another point towards the system of guild wars, in terms of customization.

In the future what I imagine ANet will do is either add traits per Tier or Increasing the Level Cap by 10 to Increase the Trees by one Tier again. Or Maybe both. It’s not far from possible that ANet can bump cap up to 100 even. (Branching Trees also seem interesting as how ME3 did it for its class system)

They will most likely add more utilities/healing/elite, as there is no cap yet on how much skill points you will earn.

As for weapon skills, they could include new weapons that have their own skill sets. (this is very likely) But a more interesting thing they can do is to include “Stances,” on top of weapon switching. A great sword will have an offensive set and then a more defensive set. “Stance” changing can be predicted or read through character animation which might become a huge change in how people size up each other in PvP or WvW.

raising the level cap would cause way too many PvP balancing issues, especially considering that they’re aiming for e-sports. and honestly, i’d rather they expand on the system rather than just add bigger numbers and “eliter traits”. trait branching would have to be handled carefully too, as to not allow a single trait line to get more than 30 points in (can you imagine a thief with +600 precision and critical damage from traits only?), while still making the branches viable. that is, if they go for branches.

regarding weapons, you have the same view as me, it seems. if they want to add more weapon skills per weapon, it would have to be entire sets, and the player would have to choose which set to bring into battle. this could lead to greatsword-only warriors, for example, where instead of two different weapon sets, they’d bring one greatsword with two sets of skills. and more weapon types are inevitable, though i can’t think of many they haven’t covered that won’t fall into the “too niche” category.

i could swear there used to be a “skip to ANet dev post” button at the top of the thread.

from each dev post, though, there are those arrows that redirect you to the next or previous dev post (if there is one).

Adine.2184:

Such are consequences for not defeating a Dragons champion . Keep in mind of course im not asking for the duration till the event spawns again just a short while after .

eh, i think it might be a bit too intrusive. maybe not instadeath, more like the corrupted shrines in orr.

Ari Kagura.9182:

The amount of Karma you get should scale with your level. For instance, at level 80, you should get roughly the same amount Karma you get if you farm Orr for about an hour, while a level 30 character would get the amount of Karma that one would obtain from running events in a level 30 zone.

that could work too, though i’m trying to remember what was the original incentive to do story dungeons for players that weren’t in it for, you know, the story :P

Jia Shen.4217:

Isn’t that the point of transmutation?, find the look you like and put it on the item with the stats you like? Look at the armor options available, venders, crafted, rtc and other players TP listings, or possibly galleries of screenshots too.

this suggestion is to handle the issue of “but i like that one too”. i love my duelist set, but i also really like the lv60 human cultural armor, and i like the inquest armor too.

problem is, i need 3 exotic sets just to be able to wear what i want, when i want, without feeling like i’m being held back.

^ i think that might be taking it too far, as it could potentially block entire areas of the map from players. not just the infected areas, but the areas that are beyond them. lowland burns is a dividing point in the map, and blocking access to it would be blocking access to one half of the map to the other half, for example.

can’t say i would mind seeing all the nearby players becoming branded/icebrood/risen and having to respawn and kill the mobs that they spawned upon death :P

in fact, i think that should actually apply to all player deaths during dragon events. someone dies, a mob (maybe even a veteran, huh?) spawns in their place (the player could be forced to port somewhere, or they could leave the body there to be rezzed).

i’ll be honest, i have absolutely no clue how they’ll handle class expansions beyond new utilities and elites.

will we get new weapon sets? will we get new skill sets per weapon? individual skill changes like many asked (kinda ruins the idea of ‘you know what to expect from the enemy just by looking at it’ though)? customizable skills as you suggest (a bit too complicated IMO)? new trait trees, or just new traits? branching trait trees?

it’ll be interesting to see what they can do.

thealienamongus.1968:

I have been following this idea since BW1 and even put in a few threads myself. I would like something like rift’s/lotro system.

Way’s to monetize this system (this was the main augment against the idea I come up against):

New uses for transmutation stone
- to change between types – light,mid,heavy – link that’s likely not happening, it would get in the way of class identification on PvP and WvW. for example, guardians, mesmers and elementalists share a lot of weapon combinations. the only way to identify a guardian over an ele/mesmer is through the clothing.

Sell additional slots in the gem store – everyone starts with one but can buy more
-they can still sell costumes in the gem store

other changes:
Rename town clothes to costumes or what ever kinda pointless really, i’d rather have the option to make you wear them as soon as you enter town, like GW1
An inspect to shown the players true gear i don’t think they’d want to implement this because of how they’re trying to move away from stat-checking, plus it’s kinda pointless

Restrictions on use(?):
Cannot use in sPvP or WvW why not? PvP already has this system, and WvW shares your PvE look, there’s no downside to being able to choose your look better on WvW

my comments in bold.

Grenths Ire.4360:

I’d like to see dragons gain some smashing ability with movement. Make it not wise to camp and burn.

i think the claw of jormag doesn’t let you get too close. the closer you get, the more damage you take just from being there, but i wouldn’t mind if the dragon champions got more attacks and moved around a bit more.

kash.9213:

Not so much a fantasy thief skill but there’s times I’d like Scorpion Wire to be able to pull friendlies.

waaaaaaaaay too much griefing and misfiring potential. especially griefing.

Knyx.5926:

BrunoBRS.5178:

this isn’t balance, this is breaking the level design structure. those are two different things entirely. the high jump ability you propose would only function as a game breaker tool, and no matter how harmless you expect it to be, it’s not going to happen.

You are still using the same moot argument with nothing to back it up. Oh well agree to disagree.

nothing to back it up? it’s level design 101: place stuff that players can’t trespass to limit the game box.

the game was full of exploitable areas that you could go through by glitching through the map. an example? caudecus manor, explorable, seraph path. about halfway through, there’s a tough segment where you have to place 5 barrels in front of a gate while keeping enemies from taking them away. however, until recently, players were able to circumvent that whole part of the puzzle by jumping through an unintended path. how did they fix it? they placed a bigger rock.

if you let thieves jump higher, suddenly they can skip an entire segment of the dungeon, and before you know it, thief-only groups are speedrunning dungeons to farm tokens, and you can’t get into a group unless you’re a thief with high jumps. those tokens get traded for exotic armor, and that exotic armor is salvaged for rare materials. those rare materials start flooding the trading post, and as a result the prices drop, the economy inflates, and suddenly money loses all value.

congratulations, jumping higher just destroyed dungeon runs AND the economy.

^ you need an insane amount of karma to get legendaries, as well as some exotic gear with fancy status setups on Orr (and in the future, in other places). right now, people farm karma in Orr because of the bonus reward, but as a result, people aren’t seeing the rest of the world, or playing story dungeons.

if you give them story dungeons as a way to farm karma just as effectively, even in a once per day per dungeon way, people would try them.

^ which is just as mind boggling. it won’t kill the economy to give players a single exotic weapon at the end of an entire campaign. GW1 did it and it worked just fine. maybe they could do like GW1 where you couldn’t customize the weapon (as in use upgrades, not actually customizing), but it would come with upgrades (i.e. sigil) of its own.

it’s soulbound, and it’s for looks, and it’s one single weapon that you can’t get ever again, which you can only get by playing hundreds of hours of the game. ANet, it won’t kill the economy to give us a single exotic as a much needed reward after an entire personal story’s worth of efforts.

that’s a great idea. the system is already in sPvP in a way, being able to unlock skins (that would have to be applied with fine transmutation stones, to not ruin the gem economy) would save me from storing all that cultural armor in the bank and having to buy dozens of different exotics so the armor isn’t trash.

Shanna.4762:

Most of those armor skins are already available in game, though.

but some aren’t, and that’s the problem.

none of the guardian choices are in-game, and the thief’s hood and mask/bandana are exclusive to character creation, to name the ones i know. oh, and all light armor classes choose items that are never seen again in the game (face paint, elemental jewel thingies, masks).

slow down their spawn times. like, a lot. the original vision was that each time you logged in you’d see something different going on, and that those events would impact the world.

well, they don’t. because they don’t really affect the world for the most part, and because even if they did, they restart in less than an hour.

the only solution to fix this without making DEs too sparse is adding more of them and timing them so that each individual event takes much longer than it currently does to reset, but that there are enough events per region that it compensates the long spawn time.

and on the topic of affecting the world, that needs to be worked on. currently, about 90% of dynamic events are done solely for the game rewards (exp, karma, money). there is never a reason to do them ‘for the world’. rarely if ever failing an event will impact the player in a meaningful way, and most events can’t even fail to begin with. how can i “change the world” if these events start off in the status quo, and either failing (if the option is even there) or succeeding will take them back to the status quo? there needs to be consequence. the original vision of dynamic events fell short on that part, save for very few exceptions (like keeping 3 of the dungeons open).

as it currently is, the death of a dragon champion is inevitable, just a matter of time. and that time is usually 5-10 minutes.

the problem with that is that such a large-scale event has no consequence, because winning means nothing, and there’s no way to lose. instead, we should be fighting to prevent the failstate from happening.

if the failstate happens, the dragon flies away, the closer waypoint(s) become(s) contested, and mob density in the area increases, for example. maybe even kill off the NPCs around the area, stripping players of merchants and back-up.

after a while, a new event chain starts to clean up the area, a different one from the one you usually do to trigger the dragon (in the case of the shatterer, don’t recall the other two requiring a chain, which is a shame), which ends in another fight with the dragon.

in other words, failing to kill the dragon results in a tougher environment for players and a different event chain leading to the fight with the dragon.

i think the bigger issue is that buying the costumes (both town costumes and armor skins) doesn’t “unlock” them for you. town costumes are interchangeable between characters IIRC, but that’s just busywork, why not unlock them? and armor skins are one time uses, rather salty for that.

it annoys me, yes. i have to fix it by using similar dyes so that i get the right color on all pieces.

there’s having a texture, then there’s making it a different color for whatever reason. sometimes red dye looks pink, sometimes it looks red.

simpler fix: make an alt.

you do realize that there’s a large chunk of european players on NA servers, despite the EU servers, right? it wouldn’t help WvW.

yeah, it would have to be an equivalent amount of karma as spending all that time in Orr, but then you’d need to apply DR so people can’t abuse a single dungeon.

^ yeah, reset the story and let players find a way to turn it into a farming mechanic. great idea. it would also let players switch orders, which is not intended, as well as a bunch of other issues regarding soulbound items.

i think the biggest issue is that a lot of legendary weapons are “troll weapons”, like the rainbow unicorn shortbow or the disco ball mace. there are plenty of amazing-looking legendaries too (the greatswords are :o ), but i hope that with future updates, there are options for all tastes for all weapons. i know my thief isn’t going after any legendary, because none of the weapons the thief can use have cool legendary versions.

this isn’t balance, this is breaking the level design structure. those are two different things entirely. the high jump ability you propose would only function as a game breaker tool, and no matter how harmless you expect it to be, it’s not going to happen.

Knyx.5926:

BrunoBRS.5178:

^ they’re not going to ever change jump height. it would break the game on so many levels it’s not even funny.

what i really want is more incentive for thieves to synergize two weapon sets, rather than carrying a melee one and a ranged one and almost never switching weapons in combat. too little weapon options to pick + shared initiative pool means you’re usually better off with a single set.

It doesn’t have to break the game. It can be either set so the max height is capped lower then the average keep/tower wall. Extremely minimizing where that can be used, unless of course really the community understands even if a thief can jump over a keep wall lets say if they specced for jump height, that means the thieves on ALL servers in the matchup will be able to do the same. It would add a nice flavor and tactics to wvwvw as well since you can choose to have manned defense of your orbs or risk losing them to a (non hacking) thief or 2. This would also promote positive gameplay in another way as well, as no single server would really have all the orb buffs as they would be constantly getting jacked by other sides thieves. As for PVE, not really a concern, who cares if a thief can jump a bit higher. spvp? So what if the thief can jump up on the rooftop of the small house instead of using the stairs, he could have just IAed or shadowstepped there anyway.

it’s not just that. it’s the entire game that would have to be redone to fix map barriers that the new jumping height can jump over, it’s entire jumping puzzles ruined because you can jump higher (the WvW borderlands puzzle is suddenly very easy), it’s jumping to places only people with the height bonus can reach, giving you a verticality advantage over mobs and other players, etc.

and you can’t shadowstep anywhere you can’t walk to. you can’t shadowstep even past a small gap that you can easily jump over.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Backstab – Shadow step behind your target and stab him in the back, high damage, ranged ability.

Classic Assassin ability <3

backstab is in game. stealth yourself while holding a dagger, aim for the back for double damage.

combine with stealth when stealing, and you got exactly the skill you just described.

^ they’re not going to ever change jump height. it would break the game on so many levels it’s not even funny.

what i really want is more incentive for thieves to synergize two weapon sets, rather than carrying a melee one and a ranged one and almost never switching weapons in combat. too little weapon options to pick + shared initiative pool means you’re usually better off with a single set.

head shot is trash in PvE, but i can see it being amazing on PvP, being a near-instant interrupt. body shot is just lame, unless you trigger quickness, and then it’s kinda average.

unload is good for signet of malice builds like mine, and skill #5 (forgot the name lol) is good to either blind distant enemies, or lay a bunch of smoke fields around during a zerg (though i’d rather lay poison fields with my shortbow and deny the enemy their heals)

pLikT.9761:

The formulas for poison and bleed damage are on the wiki.

Poison: 4 + Level + (0.1 * Condition Damage) per second
Bleeding: 2.5 + 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per second

i meant accounting that data plus the damage of the attack for the total damage you get with each attack, but thanks for the data.

^ i heal more with my traits + signet of malice + death blossom than i would with lifesteal dancing dagger, so i’m better off using the refuge for extra damage than for a heal (i’m usually full on health too, thanks to how the signet works with caltrops and death blossom)

yeah i know guild armor can be previewed on the mists, but it’s still not an optimal solution, and it doesn’t solve the problem with starter gear that you can’t get anywhere else.

charr tier 3 heavy cultural armor.

aka that thing rytlock wears.

i think a quiver back item makes too much sense not to be in. bows already have a quiver animation, and quivers wouldn’t clip any more than backpacks (or weapons, for that matter) do.

capes, on the other hand, would be kinda stupid, as a lof of chest and shoulder armor are already capes, and those that aren’t are long coats (hello 90% of medium armor). wearing a cape over a coat is just ridiculous.

welcome to guild wars 2! i hope you have fun too. i recommend digging around pre-GW2 lore meanwhile to pass the time, if you’re into story. watching some PvP videos, if you’re into the combat. lurk the forums, if you like chatting, and so on.

Amlin.6041:

BaireSharque.5326:

I got to this point in the story arc last night. I excused myself from TeamSpeak with my guild so I could concentrate on the episode (“A Light in the Darkness” I think it was called.)

When it was done, I sat dumbfounded for a few moments and then went back to TS. “So let me get this straight,” I said over my headset. “I just spent nearly sixty levels honing my skills, defeating evil, and rising through the ranks of the Order of Whispers… in order to play second banana to a sword-wielding salad?!”

The understanding guffaws I heard in response pretty much confirmed my suspicions. To rub salt into the proverbial wounds, my “reward” was one of two really crappy blue weapons.

I can’t even begin to express how disinclined I am to even progress the story now. Haven’t been this disappointed in a storyline since Mass Effect 3. And at least they (eventually) tried to fix that one. I’m not sure you can unring this particular bell.

It’s this fact alone that I leveled my third 80 without doing any story missions after I got “Orders of Tyria” level 21. Remembering why I disliked how Anet always seems to screw over player characters, I couldn’t not force myself to stomach this author avatar ego stroking for yet again.

instead, they should stroke your ego, right, O Chosen One?

^ it’s one of the worst fights i’ve ever fought in any game, true, but at least from a lore perspective, he’s still dead.

the big DE chain to get to him is already there, in the form of the corrupted temples that block passage to the dungeon (though i’ve entered the dungeon with the temples contested… did they drop that concept?). they need to remake that fight badly, yes, but they need to keep it instanced, as the fight against zhaitan only makes sense if you’ve finished the personal story (or at the very least you are near its end).

blood dries up with time. turning into crystal is just a matter of composition, and it’s especially easy when your blood drips on sand. for all we know, the crystal blood is just sand from the crystal desert mixed with kralk’s blood.

the point is, to bleed, you’d need flesh, or some other equivalent. a sylvari’s ‘flesh’ is made of leaves, which just like in real life plants, drip sap if you cut them (depends on the species, of course, but the point stands).