Guild Wars 2

I was proud that even a server like SFR stepped down to double-team us (Deso, well known pve server in EU, but thought of as cheap blobbing server in wvw last tournament). That was an honour because that meant we were taken seriously (and rightly so, we ended as 2nd in gold league). But now I don’t think much double teaming is going on, at least not in EU gold. The reward scheme may contribute for this, because if they are important for you, you want to win every match.

The principle behind these achievements is sound: Only count events because then you can play as you like (or as your server commands) in wvw.

There are only two flaws, and they are not that important in my opinion:

o You can do them in EotM. That is too easy. There is nearly nothing achieved by that.

o The number of events should be higher. 5 is done in 15 minutes, if you really want, and in 30 minutes it was done in my case (by playing “properly” wvw). 50 would be more like it.

In any case it is a good idea not to force wvw players to something the tactical situation does not call for.

@Dual:

It may have sunken in but the conclusions they drew from it are weird.

Dodging is a bad example because for exactly that they did the right thing: they added a tutorial.

But the solution to teach players game mechanics cannot be to deny them said mechanics. To learn to use all your weapon skills instead of 1 it is advisable to teach them all skills. Not to deny them these skills longer than before.

It makes the first levels easier but also more boring.

I remember fondly my first character. I was level 2 and the whole world was open for me. After a very short time I could use all my weapon skills. And I needed them. And that made the combat awesome.

Now I am led by an arrow, doing 1111, taking care not to step into water (no underwater combat for me), no enemies who force me to dodge or apply conditions, so that 11111, standing still, is actually good enough… That is not that fascinating.

I am not exactly happy about the influx of new content, but I am not unhappy either. I wish there would be more maps, instanced guild raid bosses (Marionette as a guild raid mission) and so on. But GW2 is still the best multiplayer game for me.

But I really don’t like their PR regarding this feature pack. It was 3 weeks of hype, each post followed by a “meh” feeling from me. Not bad, not bad, let’s keep at it, to quote a famous instructor, who must inwardly feel like: “oh no, not again one of these hapless posts noobs.”

My first character was a female Norn elementalist. I played together with my son from headstart onwards. I found the trait system difficult to understand, and I did not get the underlying dependencies from skills, attunements and traits very well. Nevertheless I liked the system. It was interesting, somewhat challenging and intriguing. Don’t forget, in those days most people did not know what to do.

The down state was very easy for me to grasp. I was downed very often. My greatest problem was to become accustomed to moving while fighting. And it is the fault of Meteor Shower. That is a powerful skill which gives you an awesome feeling of power. And you must stand still while chanelling it, as it was in all my former MMOs. Sadly the monsters did not share that assessment while I stood around waiting for the next Meteor
Shower…

Now I can smile about that because my ele whizzes now through the open world leaping about with her daggers, soloing veterans and most champions there if she fancies it, but that does not mean that the starting experience was terrifying. It is not bad to have to learn. It is interesting and it gives you a feeling of achievement if you master skills you thought way above your skill level.

That is one of the many reasons I think the current iteration of the trait unlocking system is so wrong. It “protects” players from this learning experience by terrifying them away from traits completely.

What I really missed was a true tutorial. There should be an optional instance right after the starting instance which you can skip but not without dire warnings. It should be a bit similar like in pvp. A guided tour through downed states, weapon skills, utility skills, boons and conditions, cleaving and aoe and so on. That would help much more than to push the problem to later levels where it will again stare into the newbie’s face.

Et ceterum censeo ingenia nova recondam esse (kitchen latin)

But here my list of the greatest trait unlocking offenders. I gave each offender a rating: 10: super horrible, 5: barely tolerable, 1: only mildly annoying.

• All trait unlocks which requires story steps.
  Traits: 1 I, 2 X, 3 II, 3 X, 4 X, 5 III
  Rating: 7 to 10 (depending from how far the story has to be done).
  Nobody should have to do the story, especially not multiple times (for alts).

• All trait unlocks which require map completion.
  Traits: 1 III, 1 V, 2 IV, 3 V, 4 IV, 5 IV
  Rating: 9
  That is one of the tasks I dread the most for alts. It is mindnumbing, if you have to do it over and over again. The world is wonderful but only if you may stroll about without bookkeeping. Map completion the second time and further reminds me of a (gigantic) classic quest of old MMOs. And it is frankly too much tedious work for a trait.

• Defeat Rendak The Crazed (1 IV)
  Rating: 7
  It is quite difficult to get the quest chain right, even with the help of the wiki.

• Help Shining Blade Kimber defeat Kol Skullsmasher (1 VI)
  Rating: 6
  This is only a great offender because Kol Skullsmasher is a hit point sponge. Last time I did it with four others and the fight lasted nearly an eternity. Tone the hitpoints down and it would be only mildly annoying, not more than most tasks.

• Befriend the ogre/dredge camp in wvw
  Traits: 1 VII, 3 VII
  Rating: 9
  I play a lot of wvw, it is “my endgame”. But even then befriending the ogre or dredge camp is a matter of luck. It depends if the zerg (or a strong enough roaming group) happens to go there and if you are just in EB in that moment and not doing your duty in a borderland. It is a bit like the dreaded ram achievement in the first tournament: it seduces one to do selfish things which are against the spirit of wvw (collaboration). For a new player this requirement must be horrible.

• Complete dungeon story modes
  Traits: 1 VII, 2 II, 2 XI, 3 VIII, 5 I (not 4 XI and 5 XII, that is not that unreasonable for a grandmaster trait)
  Rating: 6
  Some dungeon story modes are easier than others, so the rating gives only the average annoyance. But at least for adept and master traits a complete dungeon is too much, especially because you have to form a group. And not every player is in a guild, or if so, in a “working” guild. Pugging, on the other hand, has its own difficulties. There is a big difference to “multiplayer” tasks in the open world, because there grouping is easy and possible without formal party building.

• Defeat the Dredge Commissar (4 IX)
  Rating: 6
  It is very difficult to get the quest chain right (see Defeat Rendak The Crazed). I tried it several days and it was never possible to get a group to do the quest chain properly.

• Defeat the Overgrown Grub (5 XI)
  Rating: 10
  That is an abomination. Even without being a trait unlock challenge: Disembowel that grub and bury its remains in a location far, far away (preferably in the citadel of a borderland of one of our enemy servers).

Proposal for a quick fix

• Let the old challenges stay as they are (but do away with the Overgrown Grub).

• Design 12 new additional challenges (plus the replacement for the Overgrown Grub).

• Sort all challenges, old and new, in 3 tiers (adept, master, grandmaster). Each tier gets 4 of the new challenges added to the old ones.

• Each challenge completed does not unlock a specific trait but gives an unlock token.

• You can exchange an unlock token for a trait of a corresponding tier. For example a master unlock token allows you free choice from all master traits which you haven’t unlocked yet.

This should be reasonably easy to implement. It has the big advantage that the player can choose which unlock challenges he likes best and which traits he unlocks first, which he does later and which he does not need.

It is not the ideal system, but a huge improvement.

Lazy Fix

Let all as it is now but make the unlocks account bound.

Note

Personally I hope that you design a system which allows us to gets traits earlier and easier. But I understood that you will do so, only later.

If you want to pay with in-game gold for transmutation charges, one would cost you about 60 silver. That is not out of the world, albeit nothing to ignore either.

If ArenaNet would find it in their hearts to let you change your looks for free for characters below level 80, I would be even happier…

In other mmos I played parties were kind of a dictatorship: The party leader decided upon invites and kicks and could even determine how loot was distributed (no issue in GW2). That worked very well. If you don’t like how the party leader managed his party: go. After all you were invited and did accept it knowing who was “calling the shots”. And when the party leader left a new party leader was determined by the game (in my mmos: the player who joined the party earliest).

The GW2 system seems more friendly but only in GW2 I encountered serious problems with party trolls and kicks (only as spectator, mind, afair I was never kicked).

After levelling 2 chars to 80 under the new system and now having a lvl 60 guardian on a completely new account (so that there is no help whatsoever from my main account):

• In principle the idea of unlocking traits via challenges is good.

• Traits tiers come too late. Start at lvl 15, 1 trait point every 5 lvls, Master at lvl 40, Grandmaster at lvl 60.

• Sort the current unlocking challenges in 3 tiers, called adept, master and grandmaster. If you beat a challenge you get a token which you can exchange at the trainer for one trait of the corresponding trait tier of your choice.

Advantages: You don’t have to redesign the challenges. The good part (exploring) remains. Experimenting with builds is easier because for acquiring a new trait you don’t have to best a specific challenge, any challenge of the corresponding tier will do. You get tiers earlier, giving you more time to become accustomed to them.

I made this proposal as realistic as possible. There are more advanced solutions in this thread which would be even better but taking into account the amount of ressources necessary my solution would already help a lot and be easy to implement.

It is a bad interview because if you accept to be interviewed (as a professional) you do that only if you have a message to convey. That can be a denial, a confirmation or a piece of good news (preferably the latter). It is an absolute no-no to say nothing or nearly nothing as the poor souls did when interviewed by guildmag. An explanation why is not necessary anymore, the reactions do that job already.

I read the interview just when it appeared, before the “storm”. As one who worked 10 years for persons who were very much watched by the public in my country I could only shake my head in desparation. That interview must slipped by the PR department of Arenanet.

I do dailies. Then wvw. In the last weeks I also do LS achievements or Dry Top farming if my daughter is online who then accompanies me. Before the April 15th patch I would have levelled another character but that is broken now because of the new trait unlocking system. On Sundays I do guild missions. And if it really overcomes me I may be seen doing a dungeon. But only if wvw is not an option (that is if we are matched against SFR – fed up with that matchup since tournament season 2).

Ok, I can now confirm that you can leave the home instance and enter your home city for free for humans, Norns, Asurans and Charrs (I have no Sylvari character).

Simply turn around and go to your respective entrance and press F for Travel.

If you want to go back to where you came from use the shortcut arrow or the green starry indicator instead.

Vayne.8563:

Claudius.5381:

I don’t understand. When I use the homestone with my Asura, I can turn around and leave the home instance through the big red portal labelled “Rata Sum” and I am in Rata Sum. If I leave it via the small right arrow above the mini map I go where I was before.

Same goes for Holbraek and its home instance.

I am not at home and can’t test it. Is that not possible for the DR home instance?

There is no big red portal in Divinty’s reach. Usually you have to click on the star from your personal story which I finished. I’ll have to test it out. I originally had the stone on a Sylvari and moved it to an Asura for convenience because of the layout of home instance nodes anyway.

There isn’t one in the Holbraek home instance either. But if you turn around and go to the nntrance door you can leave the instance and you are in Hoelbrak. I assumed that would be true for all cities…

I don’t understand. When I use the homestone with my Asura, I can turn around and leave the home instance through the big red portal labelled “Rata Sum” and I am in Rata Sum. If I leave it via the small right arrow above the mini map I go where I was before.

Same goes for Holbraek and its home instance.

I am not at home and can’t test it. Is that not possible for the DR home instance?

aceboogie.4031:

well NC soft is part of it i think

Im not trying to be negative…its just really sad that all my people left and the new content is already boring

Wow, for not trying you are very successful in being negative.

I respect that you find the new content boring. Many, including me, don’t share your opinion. Try another game mode, like wvw. And if you answer “Tried that, boring, only zerg vs zerg” then I could try to point out that you were wrong, but I think what you have to realize then is: GW2 is not the game for you. That is natural and doesn’t say anything about the game necessarily. I find chess boring but I can see why it is loved by many people who in turn do not like Go, which I vastly prefer.

Having lived more than 50 years I have to admit that my reflexes and my ability to learn new “muscle memory” skills are more limited now than they were 30 years ago. But up to now I could manage. I could even hold my own in the Labyrinth Cliffs. But I never finished timed jumping puzzles (I have my son for those achievements). And these timed crystals are a huge problem for me. Can’t we have the old kind with 10 uses back, please? That way I can at least take my time with each jump. I need it

At first I was disappointed. I love maps but Dry Top is so small. Only 2 wp.

But the map is beautifully designed. Much more intense and condensed than normal maps. And the story is nicely woven into the map. One can play there because it is fun and interesting and not because of rewards. And that is a great thing.

Though I have issues with some of the story-telling (the relation between Kasmeer and Marjory is portrayed a bit too smack-in-the-face-ly) all in all the way how you tell the story now is much, much better than in season 1. I am happy about this update and excited about the upcoming ones.

More maps, please. And that sword of Marjory’s sister… want it!

If you want only one profession for all three modes (as I do), I recommend guardian. He is
very survivable, makes very decent damage and the skill floor is quite low. You get 90% of the power with 20% of knowledge

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Karizee.8076:

Silly.

Q2 2012 25,800,000
Q3 2012 22,900,000
Q4 2012 107,000,000 <—-Launch year Christmas sales
Q1 2013 32,800,000
Q2 2013 25,800,000
Q3 2013 22,900,000
Q4 2013 32,000,000
Q1 2014 24,500,000

They just launched in the largest gaming market in the world. What do you think Q2 is going to look like?

LOL!
If you really think the China sales are going to have any impact on the rest of the world, your in for a rude awakening. I’ll give you a hint, you may as well consider the China servers a completely different game for a different audience. It’s common practice, if you have resources in 1 location losing money and another making money, you don’t keep both alive, you kill off the losing property and concentrate on the money maker. If you really want to keep playing GW2, you better hope the rest of the world servers can keep pace with the China servers or they will shut them down in a heart beat. Mark my words, the megaserver was phase 1. Next will be merging servers in regions, then merging regions, then………..

I don’t see the problem. Assuming the royalty numbers in the quote are correct GW2 seems to be quite stable financially (launch and chrismas have the spikes to be expected).Where is the reason to be afraid over the financial situation? Where is the argument for deducing that the number of players are dwindling?

Don’t think about GW2 in biblical categories. Play if you like. Charge gems if you feel there is something you like to have and you can afford it. Don’t, if you don’t.

It all comes down to that. You can not demand anything from the publisher, the game is not your life, so relax and have fun. And I think that is about what Palador intended to say in his OP.

The whole meta discussion about whether the game is dying (of course it is dying – every MMO dies starting from the moment of its birth, like we all do), what direction to take and about broken “promises” and such are in vain. ArenaNet offers us a game and we can play it or not. We can provide feedback via the designated threads (which I did regarding the horrible new trait unlocking system) but in the end it remains your personal decision.

No reason to overload it with world shattering questions like “Can GW2 be saved?”. Those should be reserved to the really important questions like “Can Germany finally win the soccer world cup? Please? Pretty please?”.

I don’t care for duels. I am not part of the “we” in the thread title.

If ArenaNet wants to introduce duels in an inobtrusive style (auto-decline, option to make duels invisible or put them in arenas in the cities etc.), I won’t oppose it but there are a lot of features and bug fixes which are more important in my opinion.

I have levelled1 guardian to level 80 under the new system. I groaned but had to concede that I did some events in the process I never knew about, like the Ignatius guy in South Lornar’s Pass. I am now levelling my 2nd character under the new system, a warrior. She is
at level 72 now. She has miserably few traits and she will only be good to be parked near a jumping puzzle chest. It will be my last alt, and that is a pity because levelling alts was one of my favourite pastimes (I have 13 level 80 characters under the old system). The change
of the trait system killed an important part of my fun with GW2.

My proposal for a change:

• Adept traits should be free.

• Unlocks should be account bound (when you unlock a trait, say 3 IX, all characters on your account have and will have this trait unlocked).

• First trait point in level 15, then 1 every 5 levels. Unlock Master and Grandmaster trait as before the change.

That way you will unlock traits with a much fitter character, because of the free adept traits. And you do it only once, and if you are a new player the magic of discovery outweighs the artificial nature of the tasks you need to do to unlock (there is no connection between the trait you unlock and the task). Levelling alts remains an interesting pastime.

Doing my dailies, leveling my 16th character in the process.

Farming one key per day because I want these phoenix skins.

Playing with my daughter and/or wife in the open world and helping them.

Playing wvw.

Thinking about tackling the gauntlet… but I am afraid…

lordkrall.7241:

Claudius.5381:

While I accept that debugging takes its time, I cannot understand the Friday/Monday argument Mr Katzbach made. MMO is leisure time entertainment, as is for example Disney World. In both cases the main numbers of players/visitors will appear on weekends. It would make no sense to close Disney World over the weekend because their employees want to spend time with their family. And it makes no sense to reduce the staff of ArenaNet during weekends either. That includes developers, especially after a screw up. If anything the weekend staff should be even more numerous on weekends.

And how long do you think the company would survive if they burn out all of their employees by forcing them to work 7 days a week?

I don’t know about the US but at least here in Sweden there are actually laws that regulates how much people are allowed to work each week.

I am from Germany. We have also laws regulating working time. We stumbled over a mind-blowing concept several thousand years ago, called “shifts”. It is widely used in areas which have to provide 24/7 service, like police, hospitals and fire brigades. While you probably don’t need a full staff during the small hours (even on weekends people sleep), the aforementioned concept may help to cover weekends.

And no, you don’t need more people. You have only to distribute the working time in another way.

While I accept that debugging takes its time, I cannot understand the Friday/Monday argument Mr Katzbach made. MMO is leisure time entertainment, as is for example Disney World. In both cases the main numbers of players/visitors will appear on weekends. It would make no sense to close Disney World over the weekend because their employees want to spend time with their family. And it makes no sense to reduce the staff of ArenaNet during weekends either. That includes developers, especially after a screw up. If anything the weekend staff should be even more numerous on weekends.

Rin.1046:

I have no problem with open world dueling, so long as there is an option to auto decline, but I also understand that it can frustrate pure PvE players and I respect their view. We are all here to enjoy the game and measures should be taken to limit griefing from one party to another, intentional and unintentional.

So, here is my suggestion to help please both parties:

Invisible Open World Duels
What I mean by this is, you can duel people in open world, just like many other MMO’s out there, however, when both players accept the duel they (and their effects) become invisible to all other players. Of course, if you enjoy watching duels you can select an option to see dueling in the options menu, as well as the auto decline duel option.

Also, mobs in the area would not see or be effected by dueling players, meaning that PvE players can still attack mobs without chasing after a mob that is chasing after an invisible player. This would effectively remove dueling players from events, mob radar and anything else that can effect PvE players. The dueling players would only see and effect each other.

This system would allow duelists to enjoy a fight anywhere in Tyria, without it disturbing any PvE players at all. And if you want to spectate, you have the option to do so.

That is a good suggestion. I am of the no-open-world-duels-faction, but if it would be implemented that way, I would be ok with it.

Still not working after patch. The game prevents me to spend real life money for gems. Not sure that it is a bad thing, but sure that it is unintended

Tactu.4867:

Claudius.5381:

(Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

I don’t understand this .

I mean , ok , maybe it was unfun for you as a person , but …..
speaking of YOUR SERVER : they pretend that they’re number one and they want 1st place . So …… the system gave them this opportunity to show this . In “8 weeks” THE SERVER showed that they are not no. 1 , because they lost , and the true number one is other server .

That is a very good example

Next , the system gave you 4 opportunities to show that you are better than OTHER SERVER (different one ) and you didn’t.

now , because THE SERVER lost, some people come here and say it’s unfun and that the system is broken ….

Yes, it is a very good example. After about 2 times when SFR met Desolation it was sufficiently clear that SFR was way ahead of any other server, including BB and Desolation. It is not a very attractive tournament system which repeats it six more times (in case of Deso-SFR). With my proposal Deso would meet SFR again (at least in a nine-round-tournament which I find too long), but not every time, as it is now, and especially only in very rare cases consecutively.

I only took Deso as an example because I know it best but I heard similar complaints from NA gold and silver and EU silver (do not remember about bronze leagues).

I don’t think you need the Glicko-rating during the tournament, only for the beginning (the initial triairing – I like that word). But I agree that all servers should be in two leagues: one NA league and one European league (ideally one world league but as far as I know ArenaNet’s server structure does not allow it).

Then do the following modifications to the existing system:

• Limit the tournament to six weeks. Nine weeks burns out a lot of people. Even if you play only 6 rounds with the 24 European servers it is guaranteed by the virtue of the Swiss system that the three “best” servers will meet one another because the Swiss system is basically k.-o.-system with benefits. The further placings may be not exact but that is true for the existing system, too.

• No triaring (matchup with three parties) may occur more than once. For example: If there was a triaring SFR – Desolation – Baruch Bay in an earlier round, that may not occur again. SFR – Desolation – some other server is ok but not the exact same triaring.

• When you triair you start as usual with the highest scoring server (measured in tournament points). I call this server A. Then you add servers B to the triaring where the difference between the score of A and B is lowest. So far that is the usual Swiss system pairing algorithm. But before you compare the score differences you add for every time A and B have already encountered themselves in the tournament a certain “penalty score”. This penalty score is only added for the purpose of the triaring; it has nothing to do with the “real” tournament points. In a system with 5 points for win, 3 points for 2nd place, 1 for last place it seems that 3 points for each previous encounter is a reasonable value. Then you continue triairing in the same way for the rest, excluding the already triaired servers. That way you not only avoid the exact same triairing but you also built in a tendency to minimize the number of times two servers play against each other.

That proposal has the advantage to deviate not that much from the Swiss system. It does not solve all problems, of course, but it does solve two main problems: length of the tournament and stale pairings (Deso played against SFR and Baruch Bay 4 times and against SFR eight times, if I remember correctly – very unfun).

cainejw.7142:

kratan.4619:

A R W E N.6895:

Azrael.4960:

Real money -> Gems -> Gold conversion has been part of the game from day 1, didn’t you know?

But did you know that the focus on gemstore is actually increasing so much?

But did you know that their jobs depend on people spending in the gem store and not just providing free content?

But did you know that you can give great content and people will buy from the gem store out of loyalty to the product instead of putting content exclusively in the gem store and saying “Buy it or no new content?”

City of Heroes did it. It was quite profitable, too. Everything in the store could be accessed in the game, but players were so loyal to Paragon that they would buy from the store because it supported their beloved game. I know because I spent hundreds of dollars in the store on stuff I didn’t really need.

That is the game which was closed by NCSoft because the payment model did not work, right?

I am personally against personal dueling. But if it is restricted to HotM or some specific areas in the cities or open world (an arena for every map) or otherwise organized so that it is not possible to add another trolling possibility: then by all means, go for it, ArenaNet. After you fixed bugs, reworked the commander system in wvw, made boss fights more interesting and did all the other things which you mentioned that you are working upon, of course.

Now that we have megaservers it may even be possible to spawn maps where everything goes – of course only if you actively select “put me into map instances where dueling is allowed” in options or whatever.

In our Western culture we assume that human beings have legal rights. As the wikipedia states: “Classical Chinese [law] does not have a semantic equivalent to the concept of ‘rights’.” That led to judicial practices which we would classify as barbaric (though the actual situation in the Western countries was often not that much better). For example the accused person was deemed guilty until the opposite could be proven.

That may explain a bit why public announcements of wrongdoing is possible in China without (much) risk for the announcer while it would lead to massive backlash in the US (or other Western countries).

Why not make Labyrinthine Cliffs the new general hub, now, that LA is destroyed? Even if we rebuild LA, it would make sense in a way to relocate the hub from LA and now Vigil Keep to the point where the Zephyrites have a base. You know, for future expanding of the realm (I intentionally did not use “expansion” here).

The best commander I know (on Desolation) is Ins For Da Wagh. If you ever fought in a giant zerg against another giant zerg and suddenly a not so giant Deso zerg appears and wipes both giant blobs, chances are good that you just lost to Ins. And be assured: he planned exactly that in before hand.

But my favourite commander is Lelabot. Even when she is angry I could listen to her for hours.

For the next season I propose:

• 6 weeks, not 9

• never repeat the same matchup during the league.

I am playing on Desolation and we are currently fighting the third time against exactly the same two servers. That is boring. As much as I want to contribute to my server’s success, I feel my motivation dwindling. Too long, too much the same.

Oh <server I do not want to name so I don’t turn it into a matchup thread>, how I miss you and you refreshing AC attitude. Is there a problem? Build an arrow cart. Still not solved? Build another one. No problem present? Build an arrow cart anyway.

But as of now I only get to experience the same 2 servers with their not very entertaining tactics.

I am 54. My wife, son and daughter also play GW2. I remember very vividly my first own computer which I bought around 29 years ago (an Amstrad CPC 464 – 64 kb memory, Z80 processor, cassette drive for mass storage). When I came home from work, I switched on the computer, threw in the “Elite” cassette and then could comfortably make myself coffee and go to the bathroom until impressive 40 kb of machine code were loaded and I was ready to enter which could be seen as a distant grandfather of today’s EVE Online…

When the patch came out on April 15th, I was all for trait unlocking. It makes getting traits more meaningful and gives more objectives, making levelling up more interesting. I created a new character and played him without support from my other 12 level 80 chars and without (much) “feeding” from my well-filled bank, collectible and gold wallet.

My conclusion: Some of the trait unlocks actually work. But others are ridiculous, as pointed out in this thread already.

But what is more important: There are simply too many unlocks. Unlocking traits lasts much longer than levelling to 80. Much, much longer. That means: when you are level 80 your character is unfinished. You have only access to some traits, and possibly not to those you plan to use. That restricts your ability for choosing a build – which is quite sad, because planning and testing and replanning your build is or was an enjoyable process so far.

And buying traits is not a feasible solution, at least not for new players. My new character had about 25 gold at the end of the levelling process (clothed in level 74 greens mostly). That does not go far. And of course exotic gear would be nice, too. I have bought him that now, but only because I threw the non-feeding rule overboard.

Now, the next alt. All this again? No way. I officially close my alt-levelling shop. Alts from now on are created only to farm transmutation charges.

My proposal for a change:

• Trait unlocking only for grandmaster traits (X, XI, XII, XIII). That restricts it to 20 unlocks at a level where you can already “stand your ground”.

• First trait point at level 15, then another one every 5 levels – basically as it was before, where you could get your first trait at level 15, too.

From my point of view this is the second time ArenaNet really dropped the ball (the first time being introducing ascended gear). And this time it hurts even more.

tigirius.9014:

Sourde Noire.5286:

a) You are never the only one. Never.

b) As Hydroclasm said, there are already unique skins from certain events / bosses. I know of the Final Rest from the Behemoth and two Scepters from the Claw of Jormag and the Assault on Arah event chain / Legendary Risen Wizard and there are certainly more.

Some more skins obtainable from certain events would be nice, yes, but it’s already in the game.

I think part of the problem is there’s so few skins, for some reason they either want players to buy the skins at enormous prices from the TP or they want to make them so difficult to get that it’s practically a lifetime achievement.

You and I have obviously a different understanding of the word “few”. I got the title “fashion collector” (1,000 different skins). I have still a lot to collect, for example all dungeon skins save flame citadel.

1,000+ skins isn’t what I would call “few”. That said, I am of course like you and the little Häwelmann: “More, more, more!”

It is still bugged as described. Very annoying for trait unlocking (for one trait you need 100% completion of Iron Marches).

I have 2 characters with 100% world completion. Lately I started a character after the patch. Due to the new trait unlocking requirements I completed maps again I rarely visited during the last year. Thanks to the megaserver I discovered and participated in dynamic events I either overlooked or skipped earlier because there had been no one to do it with. While my main time still is spent in wvw, I appreciate pve more than before. I needed about 5 hours for a thorough exploration of Dredgehaunt Cliffs yesterday (to give you an image how much time a map could take). That included a nice duo run of the Windy Cave…

I like zerging in wvw to a certain extent. To beat a zerg with a guild group can be quite artful and enjoyable. I am in a wvw guild which is quite good at that. Mindless following a commander does not work very well in the fights I experience.

I do not like zerging in pve if it is like against svanir/maw or such bosses, where you and countless others stand around for a while autoattacking the boss. A good counter example for how to do that better was the Marionette battle, and still is the Tequatl fight. There you have at least to use a modicum of skill and awareness.

I am pretty optimistic though that ArenaNet has learnt a lot from LS 1. I hope for more awesome encounters like Marionette.

There should be one server exclusive city, the social hub, if you will. It would have been Lion’s Arch, but sadly that is gone now. I really miss it, most of all it’s social function.

Raphael.9286:

However, I don’t wanna end the previous post without making a suggestion that should cater to everyone’s desires. These I define as on the one hand us GW2 nerds wanting more dailies back in the achie rotation and on the other hand ANet/the game designers wanting to limit the amount of achie points while at the same encouraging (forcing) people to do stuff they don’t really like. I suppose what I’m suggesting won’t accomplish that last aspect as it will give people a lot more freedom in what to do than the designers might want to, but hope springs eternal, and there’s still hope that our having fun eventually will rank higher than forcing people into game modes they don’t like that much.

So, here goes:

1. Keep the full set of roughly 60 different dailies in rotation (that would include all the previously available PvP dailies, as I suppose that the two/three/five tournament wins have been removed from the rotation as it is now; there’s no way to tell yet which of the PvE/WvW dailies might have been removed from the rotation as well).
2. Of these, have a more or less random subset of 16 – 20 dailies be active on any given day.
3. Limit the amount of achie points one can get from completing dailies to say 10 per day, thus still rewarding those who do more than the minimum of 5, but at the same time preventing an inflation of achie points from dailies alone.
4. Finally, for those crazy achie hunters out there (yeah, I count myself among them), add a new general achievement of “Lifetime Dailies completed”. Have that give another 5 achie points or so with every tier, the tiers being e.g. 100/250/500/750/1.000/1.250/… This way, there’s still a noticeable, yet rather modes reward for those who – for one reason or another – complete most, if not all dailies.

Just to clarify any possible misunderstandings, let me give an example:

• Casual gamers and those who only ever want to do the minimum to get the daily rewards will get 5 – 6 achie points per day for a maximum total of about 150 per month and (after having reached the first two tiers of 100 and 250) about half a tier in the Lifetime Dailies achie, accounting for a nother 2 -3 achie points per month on average.
• More active gamers will complete around 10 dailies a day for a monthly total of 250 – 300 achie points and complete about one tier in the Lifetime Dailies achie, which yields them another 5 achie points per month.
• Crazy GW2 nerds and all others who go for the full package will complete 15 – 20 dailies each day. That’s still a monthly total of 300 achie points due to the cap of 10 points per day, but they progress about two tiers in the Lifetime Dailes achie per month, which brings their monthly point total to 310 – 315.

If game designers feel that the “bonus reward” can be a bit higher than 10 points a month, just increase the tier reward for Lifetime Dailies from say 5 to 10 points.

I wholeheartedly agree. Please implement it like this. Well thought out.

It was mentioned in yesterday’s Ready Up. See Dulfy’s notes.

I would send it back, be it 100 g or a legendary. I hope if I make a mistake I have built enough karma so that the other people behave likewise…

Until last patch the gate in the Royal Terrace led to the Vigil HQ when you chose the option “Lion’s Arch”. Now the gate leads really to Lion’s Arch.

That is inconvenient because I need to go to the Vigil HQ because of another inconvenience of the Royal Terrace: There is no activity NPC.

Please restore the status quo ante and let the gate lead to the Vigil HQ for the time that the general hub of the game is situated there.

(Or, wishful thinking, install an activity NPC in the Royal Terrace)

Note: I circumvent it by now with teleporting to Rata Sum, then to “Lion’s Arch”. That will lead me to the Vigil HQ. But that is another loading screen and one of the attractions of the Royal Terrace was the reduction of loading times…

But who in his right mind would buy these ugly weapons? Or to turn it positively: The danger that GW2-only noobs wear these skins is very low, so that your achievement will not be besmirched by grubby gem store buyers.

Seriously, it is only cosmetics, and in my opinion quite bad looking ones.

Chesed.2890:

The one I want it for is not level 80 yet, so no dice. He’s 54.

The blue (fine) one which is enough for your purposes is wearable from level 20 onwards.

It was an awesome experience. When I entered LA first I thought “Oh, no! The same as the last two weeks.” Then the three knights landed. I was entertained. Then we entered the ship. Awesome. Then the fight, first chaotic but we figured it out. Really great stuff. Ok, now the last cut scene, usually I skip these. Wow, that would have been a mistake! Great work. If you keep that level of story telling up I would even bear with Scarlet for another season.

So tastes differ. As do games. I am a happy zerger. GW2 cares for me.

That said, I am happy that they try to introduce zerg mechanics which lead to more than “all together now! 11111111!”. The Marionette was a good attempt and the current attempt tries the same, though sadly not as successful as with the Marionette. A zerg fight where the zerg has to split strategically and comes back together would be heaven for my little zerger heart