Guild Wars 2

A Massive Headache.1879:

The other thing about dwarves is anet outright said, they don’t want dwarves to be to prominent, as dwarves and elves are already pretty much staples of other fantasy games, and they’re trying to be different.

Yeah, Guild Wars 2 innovates so much by having a quintessential race of giants (whose only distinguishing feature from regular humans is that they can partially morph into animals), and a quintessential ‘short and cute/child-like’ race. And to be fair, the Sylvari originally looked like Elves with a few plant-like features, instead of their current plant creatures with hardly any elf-like features. And to be doubly fair, the Dwarves in GW1 were pretty much a mirror copy of the Dwarves of Middle Earth, and Anet was wise to get rid of them….by making them turn into stone, which just brings the middle earth similarity come full circle, just backwards.

Its not all bad, as Guild Wars 2 does innovate with the current Sylvari and Charr. Sylvari because they are entirely plant based(despite ruining much of that when Anet started explaining some of the physical features they have, but physically shouldn’t need), and Charr because the females actually look like what a female member of a beast race should look like (instead of a hyper sexualized human female with horns, cat ears, and a tail.)

Guhracie.3419:

I’m shocked at how long it took for someone to point out that horses actually can swim.

I’m less interested in a new race than I am a new profession. But I’d love largos to become playable. Kodan for the lore and naming conventions. I love Kodan names SO. MUCH.

At the end of the day, I would honestly prefer a new weapon (or 2 new weapons to make 5 new weapon skills total) for every profession, since basically every archetype imaginable is already taken by the 8 professions that exist.

Tengu – They’ve been around since the original GW1 release. They have their own areas and city, and have a well established history and Lore that doesn’t require wasting time reinventing the wheel.

Centaurs – They have also been around since the original GW1 release. They have a well established lore just like the Tengu do, and the lore supports that they aren’t 100% a totally evil race like the Krait are (and like the charr were originally). How would they swim? A question people keep asking like they know everything. Well, my super intelligent friends, I imagine that centaurs would swim in the same way that any other horse or any creature with hooves can swim. Yes, yes, I know its ridiculous, the thought that horses can swim, but no more crazy than having all cat species swim like its second nature (Including the Charr, but with the exception of the Lynx, a Cat that is documented with photo evidence, to swim quite often)

Okay, that’s all.

Prysin.8542:

Valtarius.8671:

Prysin.8542:

Pet speeds that would make sense:
Dogs, bears, pigs – 15% faster then players
Cats, moas – 33% faster then players
Birds – 40% faster then players

This would be a great design. Adds some variation to which pets to choose. However because of the difference in increase speed would kind of be unfair to the other pets. I wouldn’t mind if this happened but a believe a flat speed boost to all pets will do.

Actually the difference in speed wouldnt hurt choice diversity, but rather it would strengthen it.
Birds are pure dps
Cats are melee dps, moas are melee support, thus you want those close to you at all times.
Dogs, bears, pigs are control/support, so you want them close, but they need to be a bit more responsive to perform.
Drakes, spiders and devourers are semi ranged/condition. So they do not need to rely on speed that much.

+1. I like this idea because of the diversity it offers!

But, to be technical here (and since I am really bored…..), Real world arthropods can move quite fast relative to their size, and house spiders can outrun a cheetah if the two were the same sized animal.

And also, As far as endurance/long distance running goes (which would be the case running across a WvW map), humans are actually the fastest animals on the planet, due to our superior heat regulating abilities compared to other animals (mostly that we sweat a lot more). While any animal can outrun us in short distances, research has shown that humans can outrun dogs, ostriches, horses, and antelope, given enough distance. (Char would actually be the opposite of humans in a marathon run. It doesn’t matter that they can run on all fours and their initial speed burst would be much greater than humans could ever achieve,… their fur would hinder their ability to expel excess heat, even if they could sweat as much as humans do, and they would have to slow down eventually.)

Aesthetically, and not counting game mechanics in any way, I would have to say that Necromancers would be the scariest, followed in second by Rangers. Necromancers, because they are masters of DEATH They should be able to destroy you if you face them unprepared. Rangers, because enemies should be afraid and uncertain if there is a minefield of invisible traps between you and him, and that you don’t know what their second pet is, on the chance that you kill their first pet.

Unfortunately, game mechanics make me fear Warriors more than anything. You know, instead of a class that can take over my mind and play tricks with it; instead of a class that can burn, shock, drown, and crush me in the span of 10 seconds; instead of a class that can almost kill me in one strike and I’ll never see it coming; instead of the master of death; instead of the master of nature that can have eagles pecking my eyes out and have a bear mauling my arm off at the same time; instead of a class that has any number of hidden gadgets, any of them I could be totally unprepared for.

And guardians? sorry, nothing ever scary about a holy/paladin type character.

projectcedric.6951:

Azrael.4960:

Let’s take it a step back and look at the fundamentals. As it is, food is a buff. Does it make sense to be? Not really (not that this matters too much in a fantasy setting). Maintenance oils/sharpening stones/tuning crystals are a buff and they make sense to be.

Why do maintenance oils\sharpening stones\tuning crystals make sense as a buff but not food? Whats the logic behind? (Narrative, concept, mechanics, etc?)

Concept wise in a fantasy world, food being a buff makes sense perfectly, even more so than things like sharpening stone and maintenance oils.

For example, why in the world would a sharpening stone convert 5% of my toughness into power? Do I use a sharpening stone to…what…sharpen the horns on my helmet so that I can use it to impale somebody?

In fact, the only thing that makes sense about food is that they should only augment stats, and not things like experience gain, magic find and gold from monsters, because food is by concept an organic consumable that affects the character’s body.

Like why the F would eating an Omnomberry Bar gives me 40% more gold from monsters? Do I suddenly gain the Midas Touch upon eating some magical food?

But gaining power, toughness and vitality after eating food makes sense, no?

Apparently the concept of magic is lost on you. You said yourself that this is a Fantasy world.

Swagger.1459:

warriorjrd.8695:

If you actually look into it a bit more the ranger was initially meant to be two separate classes, not this archer you still cling to. The beast master and the warden/ranger were the two different classes that were merged into one last minute, the result is the current ranger. You will find that regardless of the ranger’s description, rangers excel with melee weapons and conditions, compared to long range power.

I would presume that considering the two classes were merged last minute they also needed a description for the class, which was apparently also made last minute. I suppose you could say that we are unparalleled archers simply because we are the only class with access to both bows. However, as stated previously, we excel with melee and conditions more than ranged DPS, so overall the statement that rangers are indeed the best archers in the game is void, because we aren’t, and we don’t need to be.

Now to actually address your other notes. First and foremost, the longbow isn’t low DPS if you trait right, and is only possibly beaten by warrior LB because warrior LB has access to damaging conditions which add to the over all damage. However talking about straight direct damage, ranger longbow wins that one. Shortbow on the other hand isn’t really meant for the big numbers. It’s more of a hybrid weapon, hence the reason it has access to the conditions and offers more utility than the LB.

You can take advantage of the SB’s speed by taking the Sharpened edges trait which gives you a 66% chance to bleed on crit. Even with moderate condition damage using that combined with poison volley and the bleeds built into the AA itself you can do some nice condi damage. I wouldn’t recommend trying to get ultra high numbers with the shortbow though, like I said it’s a hybrid weapon, not only power.

Now for the pets. Pets used to be borderline useless, but they have come a long way with recent patches. Always make sure you are using the right pet for the right job. Don’t try and get a bear to do some super combo and 1 shot your enemies. I wouldn’t suggest taking a cat to try and soak up some damage either. I would also suggest keeping an eye on your pet’s HP bar (it’s there for a reason) because if your pet dies the CD for swapping increases from 25 seconds to a minute. Ranger’s total damage is shared with the pet, so neglecting it to try and do things quicker, will only slow you down and hurt you more. Learn how to use the pet effectively and you can and will blow through things with ease.

If you came to GW2 looking for an archer, you’re out of luck. You CAN play an archer, but most melee builds will outshine you, that’s simply how the game has been designed. For all classes their melee builds can generally out DPS their ranged builds.

That was a nice and informative post! In your honor, I will start calling the Ranger Profession… Miolm for “merged into one last minute”!

Which still has misinformation in it. For example, the Ranger wasn’t merged together from 2 different professions. It was actually 3 different professions (Marksman, Warden, Beastmaster), and apparently other elements of the Ranger were further split into yet more professions originally, and I am going to guess that one of them was a Druid/Nature-y type profession.

So hey, guess what, there is a level of truth surrounding everyone’s problem with the Ranger not bring the best at range. Its just 5 years out of date.

I agree with you, adding any more weapon types is just an unnecessary waste of time, though it is nice to dream (It would be awesome for example, to see a Ranger running around with giant metal claws on his hands, screwing things up like a Feral animal!)

There is more than enough weapon types in the game that Anet can use to expand our weapon skills with. They just have to….you know, actually do it instead of saying they are going to do it, then never give us a status update on why they did or didn’t work on it.

Shiren.9532:

Angel McCoy.1832:

Yes, you nailed it. I’m not sure we’ve completely figured out the best way either, but we’re getting closer all the time, and we’re always working toward that goal. Discussion threads like this help us to get a feel for how we’re doing and for what you want. Thanks for posting!

I used to think there were two sides of this debate, players that wanted to be the hero and players that wanted to play a faceless witness of other heroes. I used to think I was on the former side (I’m doing all these things, I want the story to recognise me) but after seeing all the NPCs recognise me as the one who took down Scarlet, I began to think that wasn’t right either.
…..
…..
…..

Still, it’s interesting to see different player’s takes on the PC’s identity and role in the story. For instance, I am fine with Braham taking a front seat in the credit portion of things if it comes to him finally earning his own name, forging his own legend and moving out from underneath his mother’s shadow. As long as he truly and personally accomplishes the task (give the PC some other gameplay objective to aid him) and it’s not something huge (like taking down Jormag) I’d enjoy that story.

The big problem is that most people only see two sides of the debate.

@all, for example, If I disagree with being a faceless soldier among dozens of others whose contribution meant nothing in the long term, then half of the community will (and has)immediately accuse me of wanting to be the super heroic god king that demand everyone kneel in front of me, then the accusations of narcissism and delusion follow soon after because for some reason, I am wrong for disagreeing with you.

Those are the two most extreme ends of the debate, the faceless collective on one side, and the god-king emperors on the other. But, as real life should have taught everyone by the time they became an adult, there is never only two sides to any argument. There is never just your side of the coin. The world is always gray, and there could be dozens, even hundreds of separate points of view on the same issue.

In my case, I believe that the characters who did absolutely nothing should be recognized for doing absolutely nothing (such as the many AFK’ers that people complained about during these events [and I bet you remember a name or two that stuck out. I know I did!], as well as the NPCs that I thought don’t deserve what they got [Ellen Kiel for example, who did nothing but play key master while watching you get filleted by cannon fire in a dungeon])

Iason Evan.3806:

All really good points in here. I think we have strayed way too much into the “i’m the hero/I’m just one person” part of the discussion though. It was a very minor point of my original post. The majority of my post was about how the dramatic parts of the story line need to be on par with the comedic parts. That was mostly what this was about.

True, but that’s not as interesting to talk about as the extremely polarizing “I want/don’t want to be the hero” part of your post.

Rym.1469:

There’s no real need for Rifles for Ranger. Well, I wouldn’t mind them either.
But as we know from the first game, we still have some Bow types left.

We have Short and Long -bow already.

So, Reflex Bow and Flatbow remain.

Reflex bow wasn’t in gw1. And what about Recurve Bow and Hornbow which were in gw1? And since time has passed and technology improved in the game universe, what about Compound Bow or Crossbow?

Your problem is assuming that Rangers should be better at Ranged attacks than everyone else, just because the word range is in our name.

Eurantien.4632:

PS. WHERE THE HELL IS THE RANGER CDI!?!?!?

Anet just recently announced the Living World Journal. That was a very popular suggestion since the living world began, and was mentioned many times way back in CDI’s from last November. 8 months later, and its being implemented.

Go on and moan about the Ranger CDI all you want. Its been like 3 months since the end of that thread.

lordkrall.7241:

I think you remember Prophecies, Nightfall and Eye of the North quite a bit wrongly.

It took quite some time before we saw the Lich, Abaddon and the Great Destroyer respectively. In fact in Prophecies it took more or less until the very end before we knew who the big enemy was.

Same with Zhaitan in GW2.
More or less the first half of the personal story in GW2 have basically nothing to do directly with Zhaitan.
Its first direct attack takes place in Battle of Claw Island, which is rather far into the story.

I personally prefer a more “realistic” story, where the big enemy doesn’t simply do something massively evil for the whole world to see as soon as he/she/it turns up

I think you don’t remember those games very well either…..

• In GW, Nightfall, we saw fallen statues of Abaddon in the opening cutscene.
• In Eye of the North, the Great Destroyer was talked about very early in the game, and we spent most of the game bringing everyone together so we can defeat the thing.
• In Factions, the promotional trailer shows Shiro doing exactly what the game says he did.
• In GW2, most trailers, previews, everything clearly showed that our enemy in the game was the Elder Dragons. It isn’t relevant if it was Zhaitan or Jormag or another dragon(the first one actually shown in gw2 proper was the Shatterer and people were excited to kill that thing at the time!). The main enemy was very clearly defined from the beginning, which was Elder Dragons.

While you don’t see the main bad guy himself, there is quite a bit of epic foreshadowing in each of these games on who exactly you are going to fight. The only exception is Prophecies which is the only story that didn’t clearly define the enemy until the end (unless you count living world season 1).

I do agree that we don’t need to see some sort of epic scene of the bad guy wrecking everything at the very start (the only example I can think of in video games that wasn’t totally awful is Final Fantasy X)

@OP, The main Villain was already introduced during the last cut scene at the end of the 1st season of the living world. We already know who the bad guy is and what he/she/schlee, is capable of doing based on what we know the other Elder Dragons are capable of. You already got exactly what you are asking for.

mcarswell.3768:

sure, why don’t we dumb the game down even more. how about removing traits also?

UnitedChaos.8364:

-Increases balance in WvW.
(Since F&N isn’t a requirement not every body uses it. For example, you come across a player who is using F&N while you aren’t. Your defeat usually is quick and painless.)

If you’re losing 1v1 to a player using food and you’re not, it’s not because of the food. That player obviously cares about maximizing his performance while you obviously don’t, which probably carries over to other aspects of your gameplay.

Isn’t this the same as you losing 1v1 to a player that has 5 stacks of WvW buffs, and 25 stacks of kill sigils? If you don’t have either of those, then you aren’t maximizing your performance in WvW either. Food is only part of the equation.

At the rate that Anet releases new skills/traits, if the next feature pack gives us a new weapon instead of 1 new/useless healing skill or 5 traits that you could code in less than a day (especially traits like Read the Wind and Poison Master), it will take….. 13 years for Rangers to get every possible weapon and combination, and long before then, Arenanet will be complaining about how Guild Wars 2’s code actually limits them more than they like, so instead of taking steps to improving the code, they are going to start the 6 year development cycle for Guild Wars 3. (/sarcasm)

Still, a rifle/staff/etc. of some sort would be cool to have…

…I’ll contribute to this not-serious thread I guess…… (from a post I made in the Ranger CDI when I made the case that pets don’t need to deal damage at all)

Lunar Moth – F2 : Lunar Cadence – Command your pet to fly in target area, transferring boons from foes to allies. (1 boon every 2 seconds for 10 seconds)(5 targets max.)(50 second cooldown)(500 radius)

Solar Moth – F2 : Solar Cadence – Command your pet to fly in target area, transferring conditions from allies to foes. (1 Condition every 2 seconds for 10 seconds)(5 targets max.)(50 second cooldown)(500 radius)

Auto Attack – Steals health twice. (1s activation)(steal health for pet, and steal health for Master)
Skill 2 – Sacrifice 25% of your health to break stun on a nearby ally. (breaks stun)(on ally and pet)(5 second cool down)(Is not used when below 50% health)
Skill 3 – Heal allies when your Master falls below the health threshold. (90%)(same heal as the Moa’s Harmonic Cry)
Stats – Low Power and Precision. High Toughness. Med Vitality.

My guess is that dragon bash doesn’t come back until we kill another elder dragon. If you want one of the Dragon’s Jade weapon skins or want a long term investment in the market, its probably safe to invest in one if the first living world release in July isn’t dragon bash, and all signs from Anet so far are saying that it wont be.

A healing build can work if you know how to use it properly. As a Ranger with magi gear and using a build heavily focused in Beastmastery, I can effectively solo almost every Champion in the game, in less than 5 minutes for most of them too. I have a lot of trouble with group events in Orr though. Group events everywhere else are way too easy to complain about. Because of the recent Megaserver changes though, its rare that you would ever need to solo a champion outside of trying to look awesome soloing dungeons in youtube videos. Just ask for help on chat. No one ignores you when you say there’s a champion somewhere on the map.

I am seriously surprised that there are more people defending Ranger now. It used to be just me and 2 or 3 other people.

Of course, there are also more people hating on Ranger now too…..

PseudoNewb.5468:

Call me crazy, but… I didn’t see anything in the game like the end of that ‘comic’… If you saw anything remotely like that, then I’m afraid you might be suffering from some sort of paranoia. I guess GW1 ending is just that traumatizing… but I wouldn’t know.

Wjerd Bladeborn

No match for the Commander, you mean. To the Dragonslayer!

Rajihd

You continue to impress me, Commander. No one in any of the Tethyos Houses has ever taken down such an imposing target. I shall be watching to see what you accomplish next.

Trahearne

The world owers you a great debt, Commander. As long as I am Marshal of the Pact, I will see that debt honored.

Oh hey, I was right! Not two posts after mine, and someone is accusing Trahearne haters like me of having a mental illness. My posts aren’t ever over the top people. They just predict the future.

pdavis.8031:

Trehearn is the JarJar Binks of Guild Wars. He was irritating, and less than useless. Yes he was intrumental in forming The Pact, but it really didn’t take THAT much to convince the different orders to join together. I am really surprised they hadn’t done it themselves much earlier. I mean really, the order of whispers has been around since before 1057 AE, the Priory since 1105, and the most recent Vigil since 1320, 30 years BEFORE the events in GW2. The Priory and The Orders of Whispers knew about the Elder Dragons long before ANY of them awoke. It seems kinda stupid to not have formed together beforehand to fight against them. But back to Trehearne. He is a motivational speaker, who gets the awesome sword of awesomness to deafet Zhaitan and cleanse Orr. And what does his “second in command” get? A stupid weaksauce RNG weapon that is even more useless than Trehearne. Thats what irritated me about him the most. He supposedly does all this stuff behind the scenes while we face hordes of undead single handedly, because he gets knocked out in the first encounter, and is some sort of great hero. It’s not so much about OUR personal story than it is about his, that we get to assist in.

So Trahearne gets the Caladbolg for nothing, speaks a lot, then continues to do nothing. What do I get for all my hard work? I can’t get a Tizona, a Fragarach, a Tyrfing,….anything? No? I get a weapon that’s probably weaker than what I have right now? Well, at least its a unique skin with something that glows on it, that isn’t anymore unique than the other thousand weapon skins I already collected…..

Chachamaru Nagase.7298:

Skimpy armor, or realistic armor, I don’t care, we just need MORE armor. I love my Norn Female Engineer, but all she gets to choose is Trenchcoat #1 through Trenchcoat #10 with a little bit of variation through Dungeon Armor.

MMOs should have a HUGE selection of widely different armor, and GW2’s armors feel extremely small. Skimpy or not, I don’t care, we just need more armors, and more choices.

The problem in this game is that in 90% of all cases, Anet seems to only define Medium armor as texture-less Leather armor, unless it involves Cultural armor. Same thing with Light Cloth armor, and heavy Metal armor. There is an exception or two in Dungeon armor, but, that’s 1 of 50 armor sets.

This season of the Living World seems to deal with an Elder Dragon. Since it deals with an Elder Dragon, the pact will probably get involved. If the pact gets involved, then Spinach guy is going to get involved. Since Spinach guy is going to get involved, there will inevitably be more threads created like this. If more threads get created like this, then the true narcissists of the world will log in to tell you that you have a mental illness for wanting to be a hero in a video game….a video game where you literally play as a pact commander/general/slayer of elder dragons/Hero/etc.

Don’t call me out for predicting the future. All of this will happen and has happened in the past.

also….that comic is always good every time I look at it! If only one existed for Nightfall….

Djinn.9245:

Sartharina.3542:

Darkobra.6439:

I like skimpy but I think we should have more non-skimpy now. We got enough of one, let’s bring the other up to par.

We have 15 Skimpy vs 27 Non-skimpy female light armors. We have ~5 skimpy vs 37 Non-skimpy female Medium armors(But a lot more low-cut tops). We have 9 skimpy vs 33 non-skimpy female heavy armors (Unfortunately, all faction armors are skimpy).

We have 5 skimpy vs. 37 non-skimpy male light armors. We have 0(!) skimpy vs 42 non-skimpy male medium armors. We have 5 skimpy vs. 37 non-skimpy male heavy armors.

I considered any armor that exposes any part of the torso (Other than neckline) or legs to be ‘skimpy’ for the purpose of this examination, which means a lot of armors that are ‘skimpy’ still cover a significant amount of the body.

Yes, there’s an imbalance and one side needs to be brought up to par with the other. It’s not the non-skimpy side, though.

This is a very good post regarding skimpy vs. non-skimpy and it made me realize that it isn’t necessarily the amount of skin shown or not but the utility of the “armor”. You are entirely correct that most female armor covers a fair amount of skin. But most female armor also (IMO) looks completely ridiculous for a person who is going to be running around killing enemies in the wilderness or underground. Ribbons/frills, thigh-highs or tights, miniskirts or thigh-high slits are just as unreasonable for adventuring as bikinis/slave outfits. This is only my opinion and what I want for my character – other people should be able to dress their character as they prefer.

So I agree that “skimpy” isn’t really the issue. And I’m not advocating the removal of existing armor – to each his own. What I would like is more female armor that looks like you would actually go adventuring in it.

Most of the Light armor that has pants also has a skirt which I guess is OK for casters but I wish there were at least a few with just pants (not tights). Medium armor should definitely be mostly pants. I’m sure the guys would also appreciate a lot less skirts with their pants And Heavy armor should almost never have a skirt. That would really be only for ceremonies.

speaking about Heavy Armor realism for a second here…The Romans didn’t wear pants, so why is a skirt not okay in heavy armor?

How is a physical arrow going to knock someone down/back if it pierces right through them?

nexxe.7081:

People might hate WoW all they want, but their initial game (non-expansions) had literally hundreds of unique armor items. This isn’t the same with GW2 though. I think even GW1 has more unique armor.

Across ALL of Guild Wars 1, each profession had 30-35 or so unique armors. The problem is, is that 25 of those 30 armors all look exactly the same for each profession. Every Ranger armor had some sort of stupid shoulder piece only on the right shoulder. All Assassin armor had varying amounts of skin cover, as well as varying amounts of pointy stuff coming off of everywhere. If Monks weren’t wearing the exact same cloth, they were wearing a variation of tattoos instead. All Dervish Armor had a Hood and skirts. All Paragon armor had skirts as well.

That’s about 300 total armor sets across 10 professions, 600 if you split genders (and that’s assuming they all had at least 30, and they don’t, only the 6 core professions had them, so that 600 number is very generous). In Guild Wars 2, there is 50 armor sets per weight, and across genders and having to use different models for different races, you could say there is at least 600 different armor sets in Guild Wars 2. (50 per weight x 3 = 150 × 2 genders = 300, + 150 more for Char + 150 more for asura, both of which use the same armor model for both genders. (and I’m also pretty sure that Norn and Sylvari use the same model as humans)

600 different armors, plus another 40 or so additional head pieces, is kind of a lot of stuff that they had to make. Not only that, but you can dye 99% of it to any color you want. You don’t have that much coverage in GW1, and definitely not in WoW. Sure, a lot of it looks the same, but it is nowhere near as bad as GW1 was, which itself wasn’t as bad as other earlier online games were.

Brother Grimm.5176:

They can certainly say it’s 100% not Anet if they please….it’s entirely up to you if you believe them or not. The fact remains that the majority of the latest hacks are due to email accounts being compromised (not ANet’s responsibility). There are not THOUSANDS of players reporting hacks (like in the case of the PSN issue), so stating, “that’s what PSN said.” is really not applicable in this situation.

Now saying that, I do think ANet could reduce the number of hacked account if they simply QUIT allowing passwords to be changed by a simple email request, but I’ve expressed that concern in the past and would really just like to hear they are considering changing that policy.

Yeah…I don’t exactly believe that its always someone’s e-mail account.

On many websites, you can check the recent login activity (complete with location and IP address), sometimes it goes back several months, and in almost all cases, you can’t delete or change it (which I atleast know to be true on Yahoo. So, if you did change email accounts recently, and your still getting hacked, you can check if its your e-mail or not for long-in activity, VERY easily.

So, say I checked that and came up empty, what would your magical reasoning be for me being hacked in that case?

Zylonite.5913:

Chrispy.5641:

Vol.7601:

Remember to use dodge food for Liadri

-Brought to you by the Dodge Food Conglomerate

Game Update Notes, May 22nd, 2014

• Fixed an ‘exploit’ where players could use food to boost their odds of winning against Liadri the Concealing Dark.
• All food buffs, including the Metabolic Primer, are removed upon entering a fight in the Queen’s Gauntlet.
• If you attempt to use food while in the fight, All Dodge food becomes Doge food when consumed, and instead of increased endurance regeneration, a bunch of badly spelled phrases appear on the screen whenever you dodge.

Is this for real? Or fake troll patch notes?

I knew I forgot something! This tag at the end:::

[/Sarcasm]

Seriously though, the events aren’t terrible, except for the complete and total lack of LOOT!!!

Whelp, I’m going back to WvW where I can literally just take towers and get champ bags faster than this event. (and now I know what the next patch notes will say!)

FlamingFoxx.1305:

But you’re then producing wasted map space. The way they have set it up means that there is as much to be explored as possible. You also have to take into account that the GW1 map dictates a lot of what needed to be on the GW2 map. There were a lot of landmarks that they had to carry over.

The maps still didn’t need to be square, or round, or triangular. There is absolutely no limitation in a computer program that forces you to make square shaped maps and you can make just as large of a game area with a realistic shaped valley.

Vol.7601:

Remember to use dodge food for Liadri

-Brought to you by the Dodge Food Conglomerate

Game Update Notes, May 22nd, 2014

• Fixed an ‘exploit’ where players could use food to boost their odds of winning against Liadri the Concealing Dark.
• All food buffs, including the Metabolic Primer, are removed upon entering a fight in the Queen’s Gauntlet.
• If you attempt to use food while in the fight, All Dodge food becomes Doge food when consumed, and instead of increased endurance regeneration, a bunch of badly spelled phrases appear on the screen whenever you dodge.

Ben K.6238:

Chrispy.5641:

Coming up next :::

Kessex Hills Chamion Farm Train
Brisban Wildlands Champion Farm Train
etc.
etc.
etc.

People will eventually learn new areas, and then all the whining and complaining about champ farm traisn is going to start all over again. Removing the farm train from the starter areas isn’t doing much, just saying.

Those are more appropriate venues however. I’m not particularly keen on champ trains being the first experience new players get in the game. They seem to be magnets for the wrong kinds of people.

Or it could just be they get really bored from all that button-mashing.

Yup. Its a Gigantic difference! Instead of my first experience the game has to offer, it will be my second experience! YES!!!!!!!

Coming up next :::

Kessex Hills Chamion Farm Train
Brisban Wildlands Champion Farm Train
etc.
etc.
etc.

People will eventually learn new areas, and then all the whining and complaining about champ farm traisn is going to start all over again. Removing the farm train from the starter areas isn’t doing much, just saying.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Let’s hope China guys won’t take Ranger’s state as cool as we do…
So far I think Chinese players do like ranger-kind very mutch.
Will that make different here? No clue …

Is Anet actually in charge of the balance for the Chinese Version, or does the Publisher there have control over that as well?

skullmount.1758:

Chrispy.5641:

skullmount.1758:

Vesuvius.9874:

lordkrall.7241:

Apparently we will have Flying Dolyak Race this time around………

Flying Dolyak confirmed!

I claim photoshopped!
Dolyak don’t have 6 legs

Fixed

That seems more legit. But didn’t Scarlet need to attach rockets to them to get them to ‘fly’?

I admit that guy did alot more photoshop work on that Dolyak than I wanted to fix, but, since you asked, I managed to find the true version of that image!

Okay, seriously though, we have airships, tanks, golems, and we’ve even ridden in the stomachs of giant worms in the past. Why can’t we have flying Dolyaks Anet?

skullmount.1758:

Vesuvius.9874:

lordkrall.7241:

Apparently we will have Flying Dolyak Race this time around………

Flying Dolyak confirmed!

I claim photoshopped!
Dolyak don’t have 6 legs

Fixed

My guess? April next year. I say that because Anet considers something as fundemental to a game’s life as “Game Balance” to be a feature worthy of an Expansion or ‘Feature pack’ for some reason instead of something you add to the game at regular (short) intervals. So,….I think it will be released with the next feature pack on Tuesday, April 14, 2015.

(remember kids. obvious sarcasm is obvious)

zoejo.2317:

Orr is a good example, but against the OP’s initial proposition. I mean, if the sudden rectangle of mountains is annoying, what do you call the “Something something strong currents, if you proceed you will be pulled back” pop up? I much prefer a mountain in my way.

I would actually Prefer a ‘Legendary Krakken’ or something that is Immortal and hunts your sorry trespassing kitten down and swallows you or something.

Then, instead of having a set boundary, you could wander into its territory a little bit atleast, kill a few exotic sea creatures, try to open several chests, all while trying to not get your head chewed off.

Every map that has ‘strong currents’ could have a different boss that hunts you down. Orr could have undead, Southsun could have a special Karka, Sparkfly could have Tequatl himself hunting you down, etc.

Instead of a super giant, immortal killer boss, there could be something surrounding one of the orr maps like poison or acid, and the further you swim into it, the more damage you take over time. It gives you a chance to explore just a little further to find a secret treasure chest or something, but it is 100% your fault if you stay there too long.

shadowpass.4236:

also, 500 dmg on a crit, 8 arrows… if u shoot that point blank on someone, that’s 4k dmg… (if they all crit with 1.5% dmg modifier)

now we have a burst, sort of a “shotgun” on our lb

now, its semi-spammable on a 2 second cooldown, but its going to be a bit hard to stay on top of your target at all times so its not overpowered, also, there should be a semi-noticeable animation and maybe like a 1.25 second cast time to give ppl a chance to dodge (like a warrior’s killshot, shorter, but the range is shorter as well, but able to be used while moving)

lets say with a 2.2% dmg modifier, 8 arrows, 1100 dmg each, that’s 8800 dmg on a 2 second “shotgun” burst, pretty cool imo, and it would probably be slightly lower than a warrior’s killshot in dmg, except for it being close range which balances it out I think (the dev’s shouldn’t have a problem with this cuz it still leaves their warriors on the top)

Do you have any concept of the balance in this game at all? Do you understand the reason why Anet put a target cap in this game to begin with (yes, there used to be no target cap)? Do you understand why the Thief has skills they can spam all day long, but other classes generally do not? Did you even look at our other ‘Shotgun’ skills (Axe and Shortbow #2)? They can’t do the damage you are suggesting with this new ‘Shotgun’ idea, and they have a longer cool down. You can argue for the Condition damage, except that even with a generous amount of condition damage and duration, they still don’t equal your new barrage idea.

Your skill idea looks cool, but in execution, it is horribly unbalanced.

Traveller.7496:

I think I was misunderstood a bit. I don’t mind portals as zone transition. I just don’t like zones that are drawn with a ruler. Now look at the world map – all zones are shaped like rectangular boxes. Some of them (like Orr) have a water border, so it’s not as bad, but most have some kind of mountain border, making them look like a box, not natural at all. Maybe when we get new zones, we could see a transition in a wide, open area instead of a clunky mountain pass? And have different shapes of zones as well.

Many games have portals of some sort as a zone transition, and that’s fine, there is no reason for an entire world map to be available at any time anyways.

The Problem I had was that all the mountains run exactly north and south, east and West, even on the maps themselves and not just the borders. On the portals between maps, they are ALL cleverly hidden in passageways so you can’t get a view of a map before you go there or get the sense that there’s more out there.

There’s nothing to break that. There’s no Canyons or walls separating the map (except walls in one area). It would be neat to see a canyon we can’t get across, and we get to see a vast plain/forest/desert/etc. out there that we just can’t explore yet, if we ever do. It would still give us a sense that Tyria is a big place, because right now….there’s no sense that Tyria is actually that big of a place, because beyond the borders of the map when you can see beyond the map, there’s nothing, that or just mountain, because….Reason!

Lace.9472:

This is one of the most pressing criteria asked for in the Collab thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/54#post3746046

Yet other than the read the wind trait and a minimal boost to pet AI nothing in any change since has scraped the surface.

The main question now is, do they know that?

And the CDI was two months ago. so? How much stuff has come out of the other CDI threads in two months or less?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

@Chrispy thanks for being bothered to type everything out into a nice big block. it’s handy to have everything that’s been covered already put out in depth. (this is not sarcasm, I feel like it could be read as sarcasm, but it’s not!)

Just had to put it in a slightly different perspective. And besides, the second paragraph on my post was nothing but sarcasm!

khani.4786:

(Also Dwarf = 1; Dwarves = more than 1 Dwarf)

Not trying to correct you because you are not wrong. The Plural form of Dwarf is Dwarves, just like how the plural of the word Scarf is Scarves, though the plural of the word Scarf can also be scarfs

While Dwarfes is incorrect, The plural can also be Dwarfs, as that was the original ‘correct’ spelling, until Tolkien became popular, then everyone started copying him, and spelling it Dwarves, though there were earlier people that spelled it that way as well.

It was either spelled Dwarves, probably to sound similar to Elves, Tolkien believed it actually was the proper spelling, or it was a mistake that he had too much pride to get corrected. We’ll probably never know.

But, Anet does use the Dwarves spelling, and inherited a long line of ripping someone else off……So, yeah, the word Dwarves exists the way it does in Guild Wars 2 because it describes the relationship between (Tolkien’s) English spelling of Dwarves and Elves, even though Elves don’t even exist on Tyria.

And there is no rules saying how to use either word. You can refer to a bunch of short people as Dwarves (and be looked down on just as much as if you used Dwarfs), and Dwarfs is used to describe them in fantasy just as much as Dwarves.

Snowmoon.1758:

Chrispy.5641:

Snowmoon.1758:

Vissarion.6509:

I think the problem we don’t get new content is not the lack of devs number, i guess they don’t want to overshadow the release of wildstar since its ncsoft published too, so they will wait for it to be released and then release more content

Absolutely agree with this.
The reason why we’re only getting Living Story instead of a proper expansion after 2 years is DEFINITELY due to the upcoming release of Wildstar.

Obviously NCSoft don’t want a 2 year old MMO like GW2 to do any expansions to steal the thunder of this new franchise. This could explain the lack of ambition on gw2.
Or even worse, they may even be reducing funding for GW2 due to Wildstar.

Yeah, because Wildstar developers got so much money that one of the most simple systems in the game that every MMO has, character customization, was universally hated in Beta because of the lack of customization options, which caused more/totally new customization options to be added in later, that were still criticized for being rushed. I don’t see where these statements are coming from about NC giving more funding to Wildstar over other projects. The evidence just doesn’t exist.

How then can we explain the LACK OF AMBITION that GW2 has so far
if its not due to lack of funding from NCSoft?

2 years later and all we had was a feature pack that should have been
implemented at least 1 year ago, a stupid sylvari villian that no one cares,
character dialogue thats just….meh~ and every single event merely another
excuse for achievement grinds?? (I’m looking at you stupid Dragon Bash Pinatas)

Is that it for GW2? Is that all we will have?
Its a little hard to keep the faith for 2 years.
To be honest, i personally don’t have much hope for the so called Season 2,
which will probably be more of the same we got in Season 1. I really find it
hard to see how much better they can improve on gw2.

dozens and dozens of armor sets plus hundreds of individual pieces and tens of thousands of different weapon models disagree with you. So is the fact that they Destroyed the center of the game world a few months ago. The game is literally twice the size of any comparable MMO at the moment of release. There are also over a dozen fully fleshed out cultures and races with a lot of lore and history not in the game (I really wish I could have access to that database instead of our cruddy player edited one!). Another thing you should consider is that after combining all the weapon skills with all the utility skills, Guild Wars 2 actually has about the same number of skills as GW1 did through 3 campaigns and an expansion pack.

Guild Wars 2 had Ambition.

While some games do double in size in two years through free updates and the first expansion pack, Guild Wars 2 is not going to do that, solely because of how large it was at the moment of release.

The problem with Guild Wars 2 was that Anet made it TOO BIG at the moment of release, and 2 years after a generous amount of free updates, the added content doesn’t hold a candle to what already existed in the game. The other problem is that because of how large the game is, updating the individual stories across dozens of map can’t be done at once, if it ever gets done. Just the act of updating all the world bosses and events in this game probably took as much time as creating a new map. Just the act of creating the Megaserver tech probably took as much time as creating a new map. There is a reason why there isn’t more areas to explore.

The 3rd, and biggest problem, is that, after the Dwarves transformed into Stone, it was revealed that they have a collective consciousness. This is really interesting because it means that the Dwarves are literally a Hive mind. They are a Super Organism like an ant hill or a bee hive (at least in thought)(and much like the Borg those hip sci-fi teens are talking about.)

In a Hive mind, there is no individuality, you will do what the collective says. When the wiki says that eventually all dwarves were forced to undergo the rite, that is what it means. The collective decided that it would be more beneficial to them to hunt down and force al the dwarves to become living stone.

The flesh dwarves are all gone because the collective said so. and If Deldrimor knew where the other Dwarven kingdoms and outposts were if they existed, Deldrimor would have sent the much stronger stone dwarves to take them out and force them to convert to stone.

This does raise some very interesting questions about what the actual origins of the dwarves were……(that will never get answered)(My crazy theory, the Great Dwarf was once an actual sentient mountain that split itself apart and turned itself to flesh and blood to avoid getting corrupted and turned into Destroyers by Primordus. The rite of the great dwarf was a way to turn its many parts back to stone after it multiplied, and it now had the force of a thousand mountains instead of just one……okay that got weird fast…..)

….the Problem is, if the dwarves were as united as humans were, they would know where all the individual dwarven nations and outposts were, and the Stone collective mind of the dwarves would have forced their now weaker flesh and blood cousins to undergo the rite, meaning, no more Dwarves.

Now that that’s out of the way for now, the reason why there was no living world updates between the end of season 1 and now is that Anet want’s to synchronize the living world releases so that each new release is done at the same time everywhere in the world. The problem with just giving us something while they were working on China, was that this would cause the release schedule to no longer be synchronized. We would be enjoying reading about the origins of the dwarves and learning that Anvil Rock was actually a sentient mountains or some weird stuff, while the game just came out in China, and they wouldn’t have this release to enjoy because Anet was too busy getting china bugs worked out to actually add anything new. You got to remember that there are two separate versions of the game that both have to be worked on : China, and everyone else (unless they really want to release a North Korean version with a special guest appearance on Kim Jong Un riding a unicorn killing all the elder dragons before Trahearne gets the chance to take credit for himself.)

Personally, I’m glad the release schedule is now in sync, because this means (baring the game getting released in yet another new country) that everyone in the world gets to enjoy the living world at the same time instead of having to wait for it.

Kurrilino.2706:

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

Chrispy.5641:

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

Kurrilino, please stop claiming that everyone who disagrees with you is a teenager with no interest in the lore. Those who are arguing against you are very much concerned about the lore, which is why they are trying to correct your faulty understanding of it.

On an unrelated note, if you are going to insult peoples’ intelligence, kindly work on your grammar, s;pelling, punctuation, and language usage first. Thanks.

…What is this s;pelling you speak of?

Fixed, thanks.

Chrispy.5641:

; Its just how he formats his posts.
; And I am assuming that English is not his native language.
; If its readable, it should be good enough right?

I don’t make a habit of bugging people for their competence with the English language. The issue is that he’s making a habit of insulting other peoples’ intelligence. If you’re going to assume a position of superiority, you ought to demonstrate it properly.

Indeed english isn’t my native tongue.
But i managed to learn and speak 5 languages fluid.
For the position of superiority we continue the coversation in latin, shall we ????

The point of this thread actually is that it would be great if A-Net would have filled the gap until China is ready with something exiting and rediscovering a little part of the map.
It just got out of control when these Sci-Fi teens told me the Dwarfs never left Shiverpeaks and how it is absolutely impossible to have living Dwarfs as NPC’s even having the Great Dwarf still around and how they don’t belong into a blade n’ plate fantasy game while Borgs and Star Ships do

Pergamus bene latine loqui

Actually, lets not since these are English forums and Anet probably wouldn’t like us speaking in a dead language, and they do like to delete posts that bring that kind of attention to themselves……..

There is a few things that the game doesn’t touch on that even the the game doesn’t actually touch on….. Because, Reasons. That or the pride of the Wiki editors outweighs any form of speculation unless it came out of their mouths, or typed by their fingers.

Here’s the thing. The Dwarves are one of Tyria’s oldest races, they have to of left the Shiverpeaks at some point while they and the other elder races were having a nice big tea party….No wait! I mean WAR against 6 all powerful Elder Dragons. It is entirely possible that they did have settlements all over the world.

There are several problems with seeing any flesh and blood dwarf still alive today though. …..

The 1st problem is that the only Nation of Dwarves that we know of is Deldrimor. Across Tyria, Cantha and Elona, the only other Human nations we know of on the planet, there is no mention of any dwarves aside from the Deldrimor.
(Well, that’s not really a problem, since there is a lot of Tyria that is unexplored/ yet to be fleshed out by Anet. It is still possible that there is another Nation of Dwarves out there, well…..)

The 2nd problem is that there might not be another nation of Dwarves. We know where the Char and Norn come from, and its a pretty small area of the globe, just like the Dwarves in the Shiverpeaks. Its possible that they never bothered to make maps or leave their home. The Sylvari(as we currently know them) only exist in one tiny area.
(Again, you could argue against this because the Dwarves had a 10,000 year head start over all of them. The other thing is that the most widespread races in Tyria that we know of are Humans and possible also the Asura, Tengu and Centaurs.

I say Centaurs because there were tribes in Kryta, the Maguuma Jungle, the Shiverpeaks, the Crystal Desert, as well as Elona. We know of only 3 tribes in GW2 currently, and that is sure to expand.

I say Asura because in GW1, they had Asura gates that went freaking everywhere. While the Asura do have a capitol city (Rata Sum), do we really know that they aren’t exploring far off locations?

I say Tengu because they have tribes from all over the place, just like the Centaurs. Of course, we can also make arguments for the Quaggans, and especially the Hylek, because there is a very similar race of Heket in Elona, and I’m pretty sure they are the same race (and that there is a direct quote from Anet that confirms that).

Any of those races could easily outnumber the others. My point here in how it relates to the dwarves is that it is possible that in 10,000 years, they got around, and had settlements and outposts elsewhere.)

; Its just how he formats his posts.
; And I am assuming that English is not his native language.
; If its readable, it should be good enough right?

Oh yeah, the greatest (and best) difference between Gw2 and other games? No boring Tank,Dps,Heal trinity to kittenblock all your progress and forcing you not to play the way you want.

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

Kurrilino, please stop claiming that everyone who disagrees with you is a teenager with no interest in the lore. Those who are arguing against you are very much concerned about the lore, which is why they are trying to correct your faulty understanding of it.

On an unrelated note, if you are going to insult peoples’ intelligence, kindly work on your grammar, s;pelling, punctuation, and language usage first. Thanks.

…What is this s;pelling you speak of?

Orpheal.8263:

…snip part 2 of your long post…..

And black desert isn’t brain dead casual? It looks cool to pick up an enemy and throw them around God of War style then slam them into the ground, but is there any tactical feel to the game at all? The combat does have a more traditional, weighted feel to it like an action game, but, Action generally means action, not tactics. From what I’ve seen so far, there is no penalty to just use the same attack over and over and over again. Sure it looks prettier, but prettier graphics is the only reason people buy games (otherwise the so called PC master race would have crushed these puny things called game consoles long ago.)

……

And what would this weakness and resistance system have? It would be cool to have, since Guild Wars 1 (sort of) had a system in place, but that was largely ignored. The problem with a system like that is that it quickly makes the game system very complex, and it forces you to carry multiple gear sets just for certain resistances or strengths for each individual dungeon and area in the game. I am pretty sure that Anet understood this by adding slayer potions instead, that will raise your damage/resistance against a specific enemy type instead of tying it all to gear. I think it would be a mistake to once again tie elemental/weapon resistance to gear.

They could be tied to a specific stat, but since toughness reduces all damage across all physical sources, its not needed. Certain enemies could have certain weaknesses to certain weapon and attack types, but how would that be programmed in to keep the game flexible instead of forcing you to specialize into a specific armor, weapon or skill type for a specific part of the game?

It would be neat to get other non-slayer utility Potions that award proper use and punish improper use, for example say we get a Potion of Fire that increases damage to fire, burning, and explosion attacks. The problem is that these potions need to affect everyone, and not just the class that has elemental powers.

……

The thing that Anet really needs to do is make each boss encounter in Dungeons more unique and challenging, and they seriously need to update the enemy AI in general to be more reactive instead of having the same AI routine, every time. They also need to update their enemy types to encourage prioritizing certain enemies over others. This does exist in some parts of the game, but not nearly enough.

The bosses/encounters in the Aetherpath of Twilight Arbor are pretty much perfect. There is enemy priority, and there are specific things that you have to do to be successful instead of just stacking and pressing 1 in a very brain dead manner, but, it does give you enough flexibility to keep it from being the same boring encounter every time.

The problem is that most other dungeon paths don’t have that. People can just run past enemy encounters, and during almost all other bosses, you can just stack and press 1 to kill them. To make it worse, when an exploit/short cut is discovered, they don’t normally get patched, allowing people to keep doing these utterly ridiculous 10 minute dungeon runs.

shadowpass.4236:

ground targeted line was what I was intending, ehh, kind of like a shortbow’s poison volley, 8 arrows are shot towards the line, piercing any target in the way

I though so. So, instead of having a useful skill, you want to give us a skill, whose only purpose seems to be tagging enemy Zergs, while still not actually being useful?

█ Is it useful besides that? █

Snowmoon.1758:

Vissarion.6509:

I think the problem we don’t get new content is not the lack of devs number, i guess they don’t want to overshadow the release of wildstar since its ncsoft published too, so they will wait for it to be released and then release more content

Absolutely agree with this.
The reason why we’re only getting Living Story instead of a proper expansion after 2 years is DEFINITELY due to the upcoming release of Wildstar.

Obviously NCSoft don’t want a 2 year old MMO like GW2 to do any expansions to steal the thunder of this new franchise. This could explain the lack of ambition on gw2.
Or even worse, they may even be reducing funding for GW2 due to Wildstar.

Yeah, because Wildstar developers got so much money that one of the most simple systems in the game that every MMO has, character customization, was universally hated in Beta because of the lack of customization options, which caused more/totally new customization options to be added in later, that were still criticized for being rushed. I don’t see where these statements are coming from about NC giving more funding to Wildstar over other projects. The evidence just doesn’t exist.

Sindex.9520:

Kind of like the whole politically correct thing that had to with them ripping out the Cantha District from Divinity’s Reach (Podcast time from: 1:44:20 to: 1:47:10).

Yet its still politically correct to still have an African themed section, and a European Themed section still contrasting and 100% trapped inside of the themes of the rest of the differently European themed Divinity’s Reach?

If skins don’t come back (like if Dragon bash doesn’t come back next month) then I am glad I have one last Dragon’s Jade weapon claim ticket I am holding out on. I’ve made 50 gold or so on the other 4 I had, but the weapon I get with one will easily be worth over 200 gold even if they aren’t super particle producing weapons)

My gold is on the catcher skins and helmet skins coming back from that event (or newer better ones get made), since the whole point of the event to some people was to trade excess crafting materials for Fortunes to get those items. That living world update with all the vendors did ALOT to balance the game economy, so it is possible that this update will do the same.