Guild Wars 2

most karma vendors sell it.

bump

last i checked this is still an issue, and still the ultimate kick in the nuts for players that want to see the culmination of their characters’ efforts.

i’m more annoyed by the fact that the final personal story mission, it might be a random dude doing the talking, rather than you.

Zaber.5609:

Do you buy them with Gold or Karma?

very important question. i’d like to know this as well, so i can spare buying myself 3 exotic weapons.

Megido.5061:

Seeing as the patch didn’t address or do so much as acknowledge any of these ‘issues,’ I assume these points are relevant and will therefore take the liberty of addressing some concerns.

>skin freedom ruins PvP
In doesnt, in fact. From playing roughly a year’s worth of pvp in Runes of Magic where transmutation isn’t limited via armor type I know full well that there are several factors as to why this doesn’t cause issues.
1) If you’re unaware who you’re going to engage with before the first hit you’re probably dead anyways.
2) You can target someone well before they’re on you to know their class
3) You can tell via the weapon selection
4) You can tell via the buffs/particle effects they possess
5) Even if they surprise you the first time, there’s no way you’ll forget who they are on subsequent encounters.
6) Using armor as a class visual cue isn’t a good idea in the first place.

you seem to completely ignore that almost nothing of what you said works on WvW, given that you often have to spot enemies beyond targetting reach. but let’s talk individually.

1- that’s the point. you can’t tell an ele from a guardian except for the armor. armor profiling lets you judge people quickly, and know what to expect before the battle even starts.

2- targetting distance, and having to click on the target and look for the small icon on the UI to be sure which class you’re facing is not only very counterintuitive, but goes against ANet’s “play the game, not the UI” motto.

3- again the guardian and ele example. both of them can use scepter and focus, or a staff. hell, a mesmer can use a scepter and focus, a staff AND a greatsword.

4- you can only tell that after you’re already in battle. by then you’ve already made the bad move of misjudging, and now you’re desperately trying to fix it.

5- yeah, i’ll never forget you, “green invader”!

6- why not? it works wonders, and you haven’t provided any evidence that it isn’t a good idea. i, on the other hand, have been pointing out how NOT being able to judge via armor is a bad idea.

bump

the shoulders are the only armor piece i have now that aren’t lv80 exotics, and i think that, considering i have them and worked just as hard to get them now as people have to work now for the lv80 one, that i should at least get the new standard version, rather than having to get yet another lv80 exotic and then transmute it.

question (to avoid a new topic):

i’ve already got a full exotic armor set. now i just have to go for my exotic weapons (going to get one of them from a dungeon) and trinkets.

is there any place i can use my karma to obtain those? because really, i have like 90k karma and no use for it. the stats i wanted weren’t available on the Orr armor vendors, which is why i had to buy them with good ol’ gold (or get from dungeons).

another picture of the incident, since i can’t attach more than one image per post.

while a much less annoying glitch (and less prone to causing headaches) than what we had before, it’s still a pretty big issue. depending on how the camera is trying to place itself based on terrain blocking the way, the entire map, or several parts of it (including the player, enemies, etc) can just go invisible. picture on the attachment.

NOT PICTURED: if i zoom in the camera and point it upwards, my character (human with height on maximum) gets slightly transparent. that would be fine, if his teeth and eyeballs didn’t remain at 100% opacity, making for some really creepy imagery.

Steel Fenrir.2791:

About the Orrian mirror, so maybe that was what the developers intended, to experience the game as each race, for each race’s storyline is intertwined. My first character was a Charr, and in one of the last missions, a VOED device played an important role. Right now, I’m playing a newly made Asuran character, and right from the beginning of the Asuran storyline, I am introduced to the VOED device (it is actually the creation of your Asuran character’s krewe). I don’t know what my Charr character’s specific contribution, I haven’t played much to know in my Asuran character’s perspective.

the thing is, the VOED is on the same level of importance as the mirror, but both trahearne and the sword only make sense to the sylvari players.

Nexi.1297:

BrunoBRS.5178:

3- that orrian mirror from the lv73 mission: this is almost literally something that Trahearne pulls out of his kitten for the sake of moving the plot forward. he just happens to have a powerful, magical orrian mirror? turns out not quite. if you played a sylvari and picked the proper story path, you’ll play through an entire story arc revolving around that mirror, how it was found, and its true powers. it’s also where you first meet Trahearne, which, at the end of the story, keeps the mirror to study it, as well as in case he needs it on the future.

This was one of the things I really hated my personal story for:
I did the mirror arc as a Sylvari, but when the mirror reappears in the Lvl 73 mission no one remembered me. In fact they told me the story about Trahearne retrieving the mirror and doing all the stuff that in truth I did.
I could imagine this is a bug, since Trahearne not recognizing sylvarian players on Claw Island is very similar and was confirmed as a bug.
Has anybody played the 73 quest and experienced more consitency?

haven’t gotten there with my sylvari yet. i played the story as a human, and now i’m playing a sylvari, and now suddenly a lot of stuff makes sense.

also, lol “dung armor”.

Kurodius.7463:

BrunoBRS.5178:

curious, i just posted a thread about how the sylvari story kind of remedies that indirectly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Sylvaris-have-the-most-consistent-cohesive-story-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things

It does seem like the Trahearne heavy segments would feel more natural as a Sylvari, but that doesn’t ultimately fix the issues I have. I have no doubt that there are good stories in the personal story, but my issue is more about the mechanics of it than the content specifically.

i think the real issue, which i addressed on that topic, and which i thought was the issue you had, was how disconnected everything feels. no matter what i do now, it won’t matter once the next story arc starts. nothing is ever brought back, nothing ever sticks around, and nothing feels like it matter because it won’t change anything.

it was said that it would be implemented “soon”. do we have an estimate? running around in lv60 armor really hurts my performance, and i don’t want to spend time and money on something that supposedly i should be getting for free.

number 2 is the reason i’m running caudecus manor. apparently the only way of getting healing power and condition damage on a lv80 exotic is through that. shaman armor? ha, if only that existed on lv80 exotics.

number 3 would kill the class identity. a warrior in robes or a thief in tanky plate armor are just absurd. it also gets in the way of PvP, since you can’t identify the class based on armor anymore. what guarantees that this warrior-looking dude isn’t actually a super-squishy ele? for all i know it could be a guardian.

curious, i just posted a thread about how the sylvari story kind of remedies that indirectly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Sylvaris-have-the-most-consistent-cohesive-story-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things

WARNING, MAJOR SPOILERS, TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED

i’ll try to keep this short. basically, everything that happens after level 50 only makes sense if you’re a sylvari. all the other races are like “what?”. seriously. like every object that passes for a maguffin/deus ex machina for the other 4 races, there’s an entire story arc about it for the sylvaris. to list them:

(note: i have not played all possible branches of the sylvari story to know if more things get explained).

1- Trahearne: most people hate him because he’s a dude that comes out of nowhere for the sake of replacing your dead partner. and that’s justified. but the sylvaris actually know trahearne from quite early in the story, and he sticks around for most of your racial story. you get to see him use his knowledge of Orr, get to talk to him, way before you get to Claw Island and he’s just there.

2- Caladbolg: “hey Trahearne, here’s a magic sword to turn you into a necro/mesmer/guardian. it’s powerful, and it looks cool”. that’s what most people get. it’s a random deus ex machina that allows Trahearne to be more proactive in battle while driving the story forward. meanwhile, the entire story arc revolving around the 3 orders (before you finally choose one) is about retrieving Caladbolg, and you get to know its origins, its reason of being, and its power.

3- that orrian mirror from the lv73 mission: this is almost literally something that Trahearne pulls out of his kitten for the sake of moving the plot forward. he just happens to have a powerful, magical orrian mirror? turns out not quite. if you played a sylvari and picked the proper story path, you’ll play through an entire story arc revolving around that mirror, how it was found, and its true powers. it’s also where you first meet Trahearne, which, at the end of the story, keeps the mirror to study it, as well as in case he needs it on the future.

.

.

so as you can see, the sylvaris are the only race that get to experience the story behind all that stuff, whereas everyone else is just lost and assumes it’s poor writing (which it kinda is).

i think i speak for everyone when i say that, in future story expansions, i’d like to see more of this cohesiveness and consistency, more of this sense that it’s actually just one story, rather than a bunch of tiny ones which the same character lives through, with no connection between them because WE NEEDED to get to the next choice.

TeamRaveGreen.6917:

Zenyatoo.4059:

…You can also enter a dungeon regardless of your level.

You mean once you’ve leveled past you can come back? A level 30 cannot go into anything but AC, right?

The tip about the first person entering the dungeon dictates which mode is good. I just found this out the other day.

no. technically you can just walk into the dungeon, regardless of level. i’ve done 3 of the “endgame dungeons” with an underleveled friend. and if someone else creates the instance, you can even walk into explorable mode without doing story mode.

but to the original question, i think explorable dungeons are unlocked per-character, and i think it should stay that way. it’s hard enough to get a story dungeon group with alts having to do them, if alts can skip story mode, it’ll be nearly impossible to get explorable dungeons.

the magic of dagger storm is using it as a heal with SoA thieves.

with 120 heal per hit, i can heal more than i take damage during dagger storm, unless people know what they’re doing and nuke me with lava fonts and the like (rather than freaking out and using quickness + rapid fire… it happened lol)

Lucubration.8361:

BrunoBRS.5178:

as a dagger storm thief, feedback kills us, instantly.

Thank you for that. I’ve now decided on what to slot in my 3rd utility skill. ^.^

if you’re a mesmer without feedback, you’re doing something wrong. creating feedback bubbles on rezz with no/short cooldown makes for an amazing anti-projectile wall, both on PvP and on dungeons. my mesmer friend always says “leave the NPCs dead so i can abuse feedback” :P

as a dagger storm thief, feedback kills us, instantly.

i’m willing to bet jormag.

and if ANet listens to my prayers, they’ll make kodan playable

snaplemouton.1294:

2 handed mace I meant
Their third auto attack on it lay down a light field

“2 handed mace” is the hammer. like i said, the charge time is big enough for the guardian to move the attack to a more favorable place, AND the guardian can provide a blast finisher of his own.

from the personal story board, an even better suggestion arrives from another member, to which i complement with some ideas of my own:

BrunoBRS.5178:

yandere.9176:

I was actually quite suprissed that the players in dungeons
A) do not have more lines
B) rotate in cutscenes so that the first 2 lines are delivered by player1 and the next one by player 3, etc.

you mean “do not rotate”, right? :P

and player rotation would be an even better solution. together with my “everyone gets to see their own version of the cutscene” suggestion, and some clever picking by the devs, you could get the player’s character to deliver some key lines, while having the other characters in the party deliver secondary lines.

everyone feels like the protagonist, and the party feels like it’s the party that made the story, not a single person.

yandere.9176:

I was actually quite suprissed that the players in dungeons
A) do not have more lines
B) rotate in cutscenes so that the first 2 lines are delivered by player1 and the next one by player 3, etc.

you mean “do not rotate”, right? :P

and player rotation would be an even better solution. together with my “everyone gets to see their own version of the cutscene” suggestion, and some clever picking by the devs, you could get the player’s character to deliver some key lines, while having the other characters in the party deliver secondary lines.

everyone feels like the protagonist, and the party feels like it’s the party that made the story, not a single person.

Dagrin the Ethereal.8371:

BrunoBRS.5178:

because arenanet wrote the story arcs as isolated events with no sense of pacing and progression, and couldn’t let anything carry over from one arc to the other. he won’t even get a mention after that.

He does get mentioned again. The mission before Arah.

OP, I would take it a a compliment if i were the story line writer that you were moved or upset that Tybalt was killed. It means that the story was well written and if it can move someone, I will have done my job. Cheers A-net!

oh yeah, the one mission that briefly mentions everything that happened, just to give the illusion that the story isn’t broken in various separated segments.

“OMG MY LONG LOST SISTER. kthxbai, i need to talk to the 3 orders. see you in 60 levels worth of story”

“OMG MY BEST FRIEND WHICH I KNEW FOR THE ENTIRETY OF TWO MISSIONS (i mean from a story perspective. you do the introduction mission, then the help a race mission, and then he dies) IS DEAD. oh well, hello trahearne, let’s be BFFs”

which reminds me. “initiate, you’ve done a single mission, but you’ve done it well. you’re now an agent.”
“agent, you’ve done one mission since you got that rank, but why not. you’re a lightbringer now. OUR HIGHEST RANK OF OPERATIVE, WHICH WE HAND TO OH SO FEW PEOPLE”.

ANet was always in such a hurry to move from one arc to the other (so that they could do all the hundreds of story branches they promised) that it hurt the pacing and character progression. having so many choices, in the end, made them carry little weight, because the story arcs couldn’t account for all possible choices you made, which meant they had to have a clear start and finish before another arc began.

i didn’t know which board to post it, so i’ll post both on the dungeon and the personal story boards (though i think it concerns all dungeons).

one of the complaints i’ve heard the most on the personal story board about the final dungeon is how, despite being the climax of your story, you may be demoted to a mere henchman of another player during his climatic battle.

and it’s not only in arah. all dungeons have a story mode with a story that supposedly relates to your character and destiny’s edge, and yet 4 out of 5 people aren’t experiencing that story firsthand. one of my friends even said, at the end of one dungeon, “this dialogue would’ve made so much more sense with my character, she’s my mentor”. while i disagreed (after all, my character had been the one showing in cutscenes in all previous dungeons), that made me realize how boring it is for the rest of the party to see this dude taking the role that they should be taking.

dialogue cutscenes are isolated from the rest of the game for that very reason, so why can’t each player load his own character’s model and voice clips during them, rather than having to see a person that may even be a complete stranger?

for the record, i’m actually putting off my excursion to arah for a couple weeks, maybe even a month or two, until you guys finish ironing out all the personal story bugs (which seem to multiply the later you get in the story), and hopefully before then this suggestion is turned into a game feature.

i didn’t know which board to post it, so i’ll post both on the dungeon and the personal story boards (though i think it concerns all dungeons).

one of the complaints i’ve heard the most on the personal story board about the final dungeon is how, despite being the climax of your story, you may be demoted to a mere henchman of another player during his climatic battle.

and it’s not only in arah. all dungeons have a story mode with a story that supposedly relates to your character and destiny’s edge, and yet 4 out of 5 people aren’t experiencing that story firsthand. one of my friends even said, at the end of one dungeon, “this dialogue would’ve made so much more sense with my character, she’s my mentor”. while i disagreed (after all, my character had been the one showing in cutscenes in all previous dungeons), that made me realize how boring it is for the rest of the party to see this dude taking the role that they should be taking.

dialogue cutscenes are isolated from the rest of the game for that very reason, so why can’t each player load his own character’s model and voice clips during them, rather than having to see a person that may even be a complete stranger?

for the record, i’m actually putting off my excursion to arah for a couple weeks, maybe even a month or two, until you guys finish ironing out all the personal story bugs (which seem to multiply the later you get in the story), and hopefully before then this suggestion is turned into a game feature.

Kain.9167:

You really have to twist people’s arms to get them to do story mode. Doing them for the story and some coin maybe should be reward enough but it clearly isn’t.

well the coin for rerunners is very small, and you can only hear rytlock whine about logan so many times.

the problem with story dungeons is that they’re designed as a one-time thing, and of course there will always be more veterans than newcomers, and veterans want to do dungeons for the tokens, or paths they have yet to do, not repeat content and get almost no reward.

^ they are fun the first time, and the next times they’re just part of the routine. kinda like dungeons in general. once you learn the tricks, they’re a cakewalk. but for that first time, that puzzle was amazing.

of course, the problem would be playing it with PUGs that (rightfully so) will just want to speedrun it, and won’t let you admire the puzzle for what it is.

the solution for keeping them from just being a boring task after the first try is to include a challenging, maybe even deadly element (traps, timers, mobs you have to deal with as you solve it, etc).

more than having someone else fight the boss for you? :P

(talking about the cave troll from AC exp, if you didn’t catch it)

because arenanet wrote the story arcs as isolated events with no sense of pacing and progression, and couldn’t let anything carry over from one arc to the other. he won’t even get a mention after that.

or, you know, keep the orb system.

^ well, yes, but it’s on a really long, really complicated PDF. we’d like a more “for dummies” explanation :P

i’d like it if dungeons were more like dungeons in, say, zelda or darksiders, where you have puzzles to solve as well as enemies to fight, and spend just as much time using your brain as you spend defeating tough enemies. like that minidungeon in diessa plateau.

i also wish those cool, unique bosses (like SE’s story and CoF’s story final bosses) were more frequent, as in more dungeons ended in boss with cool mechanics like those two.

i even wrote a long rant about it, but apparently it was too long for anyone to reply

GW1’s group finder system was already a pretty kitten good finder, it surprises me that they didn’t use it as a base model for the LFG system.

vicwolf.7862:

“i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable”

Where did you get this idea?

from a dev blog. gave the impression that dungeons were something you’d do on your own (party being optional), with the help of the NPCs, like a personal story mission.

pretty sure the guardian greatsword doesn’t lay fields around with the autoattack, and the hammer’s field has like 2 seconds of charge where the guardian can just move away (or even better, use his own blast finisher instead).

hodgin’s path is tough, but my party managed to do it. i wouldn’t mind a slight nerf though.

tzark’s path is downright insane. one party gave up after like 3 hours on the collector’s event, and the other only did it after at least one hour and one less player (we then got another person to fill in the spot).

agreed, surprised it isn’t a thing yet.

Plutonium.1308:

One simple solution would be to give a timer to picking up the orb, same as killing a keep lord. You have to stand in a circle for say 20-30 seconds, and while doing so the holding team is alerted that their orb is being taken. During legit takes it wouldn’t be such a big deal.. but on hacking takes it would slow things down and make them much more vulnerable to killing or reporting.

that… is actually an amazing solution. “capturing” the area around the orb before being allowed to take it from the altar solves the current issue without removing the orbs (which i think are a nice mechanic that motivates players to attack/defend places), and it hardly interferes with legit captures (since you’ll have plenty of time to sit by the altar once you own the entire place).

players defending an orb would still be able to run away with it in case of emergency and interceptions would still be a thing.

can’t confirm, but i think they’re set on a first come, first serve basis, meaning the field that was there first is the one that counts. maybe they should change it, so that the latest field applied is the one that counts?

that way, a coordinated group could use combos effectively even when there are a bunch of other fields around.

correct me if i’m wrong, but i thought story dungeons were originally supposed to be soloable? that way people head in, do stuff by themselves while enjoying the story, then join a coordinated 5-man group to take down explorable.

that’s how i thought dungeons would function, until i got to play them.

at level 30, you’ll have most of your skills set up, and will have a few traits to help, so i’d say that is the perfect time to start.

no, i actually did not know that, and when following a commander, i’d just use team chat.

so thanks for the info.

tjeb.6503:

Whatever they intended, I think there should be some reason not to run into multiple enemies like a headless chicken. If repair costs are to prevent that, they don’t work Far too many flies seemingly content to run up to the closest enemy gate and die there.

and after they respawn and pay the repair fees, they come to the forums and demand repair costs to be removed.

i always leave WvW on a profit, and i get involved on a lot of large-scale battles.

the solution is “stop being suicidal”. WvW DEs reward quite a lot of money, and you get a crapton of event rewards just by attacking/defending. taking a keep can give you enough money to repair a full set of damaged armor, which hopefully you haven’t broken on that invasion alone.

as a thief, i have serious issues damaging any structure with my daggers, and firint my bow or pistol gives me “obstructed”.

structure/object collision is really iffy, and gets in the way of being effective.

Steven.8027:

BrunoBRS.5178:

that reminds me, i found on my first run of AC explorable a hidden jumping puzzle with absolutely no point in it. i figured it was for another path, but i just realized i’ve done all 3 paths and never even got close to that place.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/What-is-this-room/first#post331162

:)

just saw that thread, makes me wonder how many of those are there :P

for the record, after what TC described happened (hours later), we went after dreaming bay again. when we were almost inside the inner fort, the orb blinked out of existence, and 10 seconds later popped up on the other side of the map, where dragonbrand had just captured a keep.

10 seconds to cross the map. there’s no mesmer magic that can do that.