Guild Wars 2

I agree

HoT maps are just too busy for my liking. I like to take my time and explore- I’m rather put off by getting chased by a huge amount of mobs (with CCs…). It means running around and exploring every nook and cranny is always a battle and super tedious.

I want to find a mysterious area that has no real use apart from looking pretty.

Orr was sort of half-way there- I could explore and there were no heart tasks to distract me (but the area itself isn’t exactly beautiful and there are a huge amount of events that pop too).

But I get that A-net want to produce maps with the greatest amount of play-time possible- it means more players stay interested in the game for longer.

I agree with what Danikat said.

If you publish an in detailed specialisation suggestion, they might get inspired by aspects of what you’ve suggested, but I highly doubt they’ll use large portions of it. I’m somewhat of a skeptic and a cynic- no doubt our feedback is useful but I reckon that the majority of “fan-suggested” things that appear in-game had already been discussed by dev teams before we suggested them ourselves.

The most likely “fan-suggested” things that end up in-game are QoL features and gemstore items… probably because they were considering them already but prioritised them because there was an outpouring from the community about said feature/item.

But hey, enough tin-foil hattery from me- I think it’d still be neat to post it! Consider it a form of artwork- it will be appreciated (and no doubt given constructive criticism) and looked at by other community members just like other creative responses to the game.

Danikat.8537:

It looks like that one has been fixed already. I tried typing ‘laurels’ into the Wiki’s search bar, and using ‘/wiki laurels’ in-game and both sent me to the Laurel page.

Wow, that was speedy!

Greener.6204:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

[condensing list of examples of missing redirects]

First, locate the page you were trying to find (bear with me, I know how silly that sounds). Then, click on the Feedback button and type, “Hey folks, could you make [insert name which you originally tried] redirect here?”

What a great suggestion! Thank you

@Danikat

I’ll edit this post if I remember anything specific or come across something whilst searching in the near future.

EDIT:
First example, I searched “dye kit” and it sent me to a long list of pages with “dye kit” in their title. I sort of expect to be lead straight to a page that would explain what a dye kit was, or just a page that listed all currently released dye kits. Even just being directed to the “Exclusive colors” sub-article on the “Dye” page would be reasonable.

Just a quick example though, I typed in “Laurels” and rather than take me to the wiki page for Laurel, it showed that there was a hit for “Laurels”… “but also here is a long list of pages that also might interest you!”. I liked how the GW1 page directed you straight to a page if you searched for something rather than a list of pages that might possibly be of interest.

I will say now that it has gotten a lot better over the recent months! I guess it only gets better in time as people add more redirect options to streamline the whole thing.

PS: And yes, I’m exactly the same. It always frustrates me when I have something on the tip of my tongue but can’t remember what it’s called exactly… so I try to think of more generic terms to try and land me somewhere. Maybe that’s not the way that wiki is usually browsed, though? I guess a lot of people will research known terms/things they have in front of them to learn more. :P

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

snip

toy box or gadget box…even lets you use unlocked gadgets like “eaters” from the toy box, which would free up space

Yes! What a great idea.

Include “eaters” (like mawdrey, princess etc) and also those once-a-day traders like the Ley-Energy converter and Karmic Converters.

Yes!

I’m both very grateful for the wiki and for Dulfy’s guides- the game is so detailed that I feel like in many cases you’d only get half of the whole story without these useful sites. It makes the whole experience a lot smoother, too

I loved the GW1 wiki, too- especially how much lore was available on that site.

My only real complaint about the GW2 wiki is that the search function isn’t as fluid as the GW1 wiki. In the GW1 wiki you could mistype things or even if you didn’t know the exact thing you were looking for, you could use similar words or ideas and find the right page. The new wiki seems a bit more picky in that respect.

Probably been suggested a gazillion times already but…

Tonic/Toy pane in the hero panel

So all unlocked tonics, toys (mounts, instruments, costume brawl weapons) would be shown there and could be selected and toggled on or off from that location. (Alternately, have a special hot-key that could be used to toggle on/off the selected tonic or toy).

I have so many toys and tonics cluttering the inventory of my main because I fear that if they sit in my bank they’ll just never get used. But this also means that only my main has access to these things… Right now the system is pretty inconvenient.

Ultimately a rework of the toy and tonic system could result in more sales of toys in the gemstore… hint hint…

Yeah! Why not?

We have an achievement for collecting a number of different wardrobe pieces, it makes sense to include something for dyes too.

The achievement could even be broken down a bit- for example, different collection achievements for the different dye rarities.

I think it would also be neat to implement collection achievements for the exclusive dye packs, much like how there are achievements for BL ticket weapons. So, for example, have separate achievements for “Winter Chimes”, “Toxic”, “Golden Lion” etc.

My only concern for your suggestion is the reward for 1 Celebratory Dye Pack. We recently saw a thread where a small group of people were complaining about this being available in the 3rd birthday gift and that they had no use for it as they had already collected all of the dyes that can be chosen from it. (The dyes from the pack are also account-bound, meaning you can’t profit from them other than salvaging for pigment.)

No doubt that these few people also have collected all 403 non-exclusive dyes, so if this was implemented they wouldn’t be receiving a particularly useful reward.

Personally I think a Celebratory Dye Pack is useful, but maybe it’s not quite the right reward for somebody who has collected all/most of the dyes?

My immediate thought of an alternate reward would be some sort of backpack that was either inspired by colour, or perhaps displayed lots of bottles of dye… but I’ll keep thinking of an alternate reward that doesn’t require hours of designing and modelling

Tiscan.8345:

Or they could just bring back Polymock and enhance it with more collectible pieces you find all around Tyria.

This this this

Even if it’s not necessarily a scavenger hunt for the individual game pieces, but looking for blueprints, “samples”, materials or “inspiration” for an asura to be able to design and craft the pieces for you. The stronger pieces would be more challenging to find/reach or collect materials for.

It sounds like it could be fun, but from what I understand scavenger hunts are very costly and resource intensive to create, requiring a lot of different development teams to collaborate. I would hope for something like this to be released, but I think it would be wiser to expect it in an expac rather than a LS update.

The market is definitely run by completionists rather than people who buy the nodes for convenience or a long term profit.

I guess the other possibility is that these people who have full home instances are selling entrance to their home instance and turning a slow profit.

My point is, sure, the nodes are very rare drops from BL chests, but they are priced so high not because of their content but because people are willing to spend that amount of gold for fulfillment purposes.

If you say that they are new, I guess they are so expensive because the market hasn’t settled out yet? A lot of people will want to buy the new nodes ASAP so they still have a claim being somebody with a full home instance… thus demand is high but supply still relatively low.

I think Flesh Wound has got it spot on.

At the end of the day, reception is subjective and there are always going to be people who are unhappy (even when it seems unreasonable by other peoples’ standards… as demonstrated in this thread and plenty of other ones about other topics). There are bound to be times where you receive content/a reward/a gift that you are happy with and some people won’t be. I guess you just can’t please all of the people all of the time, amirite?

I just hope that the 4th gift is to your liking (but I’ll also bet my bottom dollar that there will be people who won’t like it :P)

@Thelgar

But you can’t have it both ways:

-DON’T make them tradeable. The people who have the dyes already unlocked will complain that they can’t even sell the birthday presents for a few gold.

-DO make them tradeable. The people who have already unlocked the dyes and investors will complain that the market has crashed because suddenly they’re abundant and tradeable…

Sure, I’m sure market prices have decreased a bit because unless you’ve used up all of your birthday dye kits for now/have very limited characters/are impatient you can easily get any expensive dye you want (except the exclusive kits released after the 3rd birthday, I hasten to add). But there are plenty of people who would’ve opened their kits for the most expensive dye to sell if they were tradeable, devaluing any expensive dye available from the kit…

A-net just can’t win, really…

In Soviet Dredgehaunt Cliffs, party gets kicked from YOU

OP- I would’ve thought that the gifts for the 4th birthday gift have been finalised for a very long time now… (in fact, I remember an “insta-level-40” exp scroll being datamined around the time of last year’s birthday patch).

It would require a serious outcry from the community to change anything now- maybe suggest what they should do for 5th year birthday gifts instead?

Personally I really liked the free dye. I’m with Gendou here- it’s nice to get some dyes I like but would’ve never considered spending 100g+ on. A lot of the exclusive dyes have better “texture contrast” (for lack of a better phrase) than standard dyes- they really pick out the fine details in the patterns on armour and in some cases even create cool textures where I didn’t realise they existed… (See for example in the blue glowy parts of the armour. Also the grey parts I used “murky grey” and it has really picked out the details too).

At the end of the day, these items are freebies and I’m pretty happy with anything that is useable. Most people don’t have the thousands of gold (or real life money) to throw at exclusive dyes. Also, the birthday gifts for GW2 imo are miles better than the ones that were given in GW1.

There are already a lot of responses here that probably have covered my viewpoint, but here are my 2 cents.

Playing the same content every day for months/years is going to become less and less fun. The newer content seems to be a victim of the double-edged sword that is hype; people get so excited for it by comparing it to amazing older content only to be disappointed when it doesn’t exactly meet their expectations.

I took a break since Christmas, and even then I was starting to “cool down” my play time. I became disenchanted- things just didn’t seem productive. I was doing things for the sense of completion rather than the enjoyment of the content itself…

I recently came back to enjoy the new LS3 and also found a bunch of old content/achievements from earlier this year… I’ve enjoyed them far more than I would have done if I kept soldiering on and grinding since the new year.

If you aren’t enjoying it as much as you used to, take a break and come back once you have “fresh eyes”.

DoctorDing.5890:

Terminated
Politely disposed of
Jettisoned
Unfollowed
Dumped
Hugged goodbye
Strategically re-assigned
Sent to the naughty step

My personal favourite is Hugged Goodbye… spread the love people

Booted
Dissolved
Abolished
Destroyed
Removed
Shooed away
Postponed… indefinitely?

OP: I appreciate that “kick” has negative connotations, but ultimately “kick” seems to be pretty standard when it comes to MMO terminology. Ultimately it’s as painful as you think it to be. If I was kicked from a party (without a valid reason, for example) I don’t think being “Hugged Goodbye” instead of “Kicked” would make it sting any less :P

I really like that this is not a “no fly” JP- if memory serves me correct, the JP isn’t exactly easy to get to/is far away from a waypoint. I like the safety net that gliding provides- miss a jump and at least you can glide down to safety to start over instead of plummeting to your death.

And like Khisanth said, you can still complete the JP the old fashioned way! Having the option of gliding means you can tailor the content yourself depending on your ability and mood

I think Karma would be the best way to buy world exploration as there isn’t a way to exchange into karma (i.e. if the currency was gold, people could easily “Pay to Win” when it comes to world completion).

Karma is a currency that you have to play the game to earn, so in that respect I think it’s fair to be able to “exchange” the time in your preferred game area (e.g. farming meta events) to something that you might not enjoy (e.g. world completion). I think it would be a reasonable addition to the “play how you want” ethos that A-net seems to run with.

Other than that, I think it would be “too easy” to be able to buy your way into world completion, even with Karma. I think only waypoints should be able to be purchased, and at that I still think it should be random to an extent. Being able to purchase very particular waypoints seems just too… exploitable?

I’m thinking of the impact that it might have on bots (and alt farming in general to be honest). Suddenly there are fewer obstacles to jump on an alt and buy a load of convenient waypoints perfect for farming.

So I suggest that the merchant that sells this “Waypoint consumable” would be zone specific. E.g. “Random Shiverpeaks Waypoint”, “Random Krytan Waypoint” etc.

Some other options… Maybe add a daily limit on how many you can purchase, or have the waypoints sold on a daily rotation (a bit like the Pact Supply Network Agents).

Completing a map goes a lot faster once you can jump around it using the waypoints. This would be a good headstart at least, especially for those who just want to run around for Hero Points. I still think that with this system players should earn Map Completion rewards and a Gift of Exploration for completing the world.

I assume that unlocking waypoints “unnaturally” is entirely possible in the engine as it is. The level 80 boost unlocks a number of waypoints automatically, so it doesn’t seem like a technical impossibility.

But what happens to the EXP that you would have earned through discovering the waypoint naturally?

Ultimately, the balance that A-net has to provide has to offer incentive to play the game without deterring players. Perhaps making it slightly easier (with a cost) to complete maps will incentivise players to play more, but at the same time there is a risk that things become so easy that it shortcuts the players’ long term goals.

Nansen.4631:

Well I didn’t farm the new map that much yet, but rares seem to be popping like crazy from event rewards and stuff. Probably everyone trying out the new map cause a too big supply. I expect it will stabilize when people go back to their daily routines.

I think this is a very reasonable assumption.

I got more ectos in a couple of days than I have done in 9 months!!!!11!!

(I haven’t played in 9 months)

But yes, a rare drops for every event you complete (until DR kick in?) but it still means on a good map or if you’re being vigilant, you can chain events and get a rare every few minutes.

Loosmaster.8263:

The heavier a ship the more water it displaces. If they were any higher, they could capsize.

Do you know what the ship is carrying?

If memory serves me right, the water level was incredibly close to the portholes/or where the cannons come out of the side of the boat. If there were any waves or if the ship leant to the side, water would come flooding through them.

I appreciate that ships high in the water would be unstable, but the water level on this one is just a little ridiculous :P

Here’s a video to demonstrate the point. https://youtu.be/CPo5pdLcJCo?t=20m45s

I totally agree- I think it would be great if people could also change font colour on their clients too, to make things more easily visible or to help contrast them.

Even being able to change the background colour of the chat would be nice (I’ve heard that black font on a yellow background can help people read faster/easier).

But… I’m not sure how easy it would be to change the font in a game that has (probably) been designed with just one font in mind. Different fonts have different sizing and spacing which could cause issues like overlapping text, or text creeping outside the boxes.

Let’s hope that if a colour blind mode gets implimented (or any UI customisation, for that matter), this will be considered too.

Haha, yes.

I’ve done this arc so many times and I’d always giggle at the clumsy-looking boat as it sailed away.

Funnily enough, I’m not sure if it has always been like that. I distinctly remember seeing the cutscene a while after playing through it a few times (maybe half a year after launch?) and thinking that it looked a lot lower than it used to. But perhaps I’m just imagining things.

I don’t think A-net could possibly do anything to alleviate the causes of epilepsy within their games to prexisting content, because even suggesting that a certain filter helps could land them in hot water if it didn’t. What triggers one person to have a seizure might not trigger another one.
Moreover, they have yet to accomodate colour blind players (which make up a much larger percentage of the population) even though tried and tested filters are available in other games.

What would be really neat is if there’s a forum or something dedicated to gamers with photosensitivity (epilepsy, vertigo/motion sickness, migraines etc) that gives feedback on what game/area of a game is a significant risk and what isn’t. It seems like something that should exist on the internet…

Another option is to research the area of the game before you go into playing it. Perhaps join a guild with trustworthy players and ask them if a particular mission has a lot of spinning/turning/darkness with flashing lights or anything that you know is likely to trigger a seizure for you.

Ultimately, you can’t hold A-net accountable for your seizures. It is your choice to play and you are advised to consult a doctor before playing videogames. But I understand that you still want to live your life and enjoy it- just try and err on the side of caution where possible and try to know as much as you can about an area of the game before committing to it.

What about reworking the rune/sigil system so that minor runes are worthwhile?

TheHeretic.3529:

Character speed should also scale with body size. If you want realism, then an obese character is going to be limited to combat speed without swiftness.

I actually thought that this was going to be the case when I saw the original teaser trailer pre-launch. There was an asura mesmer doing all sorts of crazy acrobatics and figured that they’d be faster too. (Similarly I thought maybe that which norn spirit creature you chose could influence your stats)

It would’ve been cool to have more diversity between the races in this respect, but at the end of the day it means that certain races are better/more niche for certain tasks. It forces people to play rigidly and reduces customisability and even the connection you may have for your character.

Sarrs.4831:

1. Clipping, clipping everywhere
2. Adventurers are always running, they do a massive amount of cardio
3. How much does your character even eat? Nal gets a few scoops of icecream a day if she’s lucky
4. There are already a lot of ‘chubby’ models, especially for Norn, Charr and Asura
5. Does sylvari physiology even work that way? For all we know they all about that photosynthesis

Not sure why there would be clipping- armour stretches to the frame of the character. Your second/third points are sort of argued against by the 4th…

And sure, trees can be “chubby”
(Cacti do a similar thing where they absorb as much water as they can during a wet spell. That’s why many cacti have ridges, so they can stretch out to make room for more water)

Vistas: Reward exp (like POIs, Waypoints etc) and count towards map completions (and therefore world completion)

Jumping Puzzles: give achievement points and often tie in with other achievements and quests (e.g. legendary journeys).

Sometimes a vista will appear at the end of a jumping puzzle (Say for example, Wall Breach Blitz in Diessa).

From what I understand (think it was from a dev response) they aren’t going to include these sorts of mounts for the same reason they can’t easily add chairs in-game.

Because you can make characters all sorts of different heights, it would be hard to make a mount that looks reasonable on all races. Leg proportions (in relation to height) vary across the races, so it’s not just a case of scaling the mount up or down depending on the character.

So this is why we have mounts that don’t have “foot holds” such as the magic carpet and riding broom- characters can sit/stand however they want on these and it won’t look odd as there’s no limitation on how they have to sit on it.

This topic has been brought up many, many times before.

The leading argument against this is always the financial cost on A-net’s part.

There are thousands of lines of dialogue in-game…think of every story-line variation there is and that there are 10 different character voices. They would have to re-record all of these lines, but also add more with new living story updates, expacs etc.

The best “compromise” is to add a variety of ways to edit the voice (e.g. change pitch, speed etc). This doesn’t require hiring new voice actors, but offers a little bit of variety.

Yep, +1

I wanted to remake my GW1 assassin as a GW2 revenant. She had the up-do/bun (with a fan or something in it) with an asymmetrical fringe. There were slim pickings for hairstyles that were similar and I had to go for a bob that had the fringe the wrong way.

Just mirroring the haircuts seems pretty simple. No extra designing, but adds lots more hairstyles considering many are asymmetrical in some aspect.

Regarding map completion rewards…

I think one of the biggest problems I had was that the value of map rewards could vary so much. You get 2 pieces of gear, some material and either a black lion key or transmute charge, right?

Well, in the higher level areas (Orr maps, Mount Maelstrom, Fireheart Rise and Frostgorge) you are guaranteed two level 60+ exotics. If you’re lucky you could get a piece that has a rune or sigil worth 10g+. You could get a “named exotic” with a sought after skin. You could also land a black lion key and find something expensive inside a chest!

But then you could get two exotics worth like 60s a piece, try salvaging them and only get like 1 ecto between the two.

And the same applies to lower level maps. You could get like 40 soft or seasoned wood logs. Ka-ching. You could get a cooking ingredient that is worth a lot, too.
Or you could get 40 potatoes (or something) and feel super salty.

I’d feel great completing a map, only for that feeling of completion to disappear when you get a reward that is similar to a slap in the face.

A bit of randomness is wonderful, but the monetary range between rewards shouldn’t be as much as it is.

Forum bug?

Last map/world exploration I did, I used this site: http://www.postcount.net/index.php?pageid=tdwindex

I have done.. uh… 7 (?) 100% worlds and I think I have a couple that are close to 100% as well. You’ll find yourself taking on maps in a particular way or direction. Change it up and you’ll see the map in a different perspective.

I found that I got a massive change of perspective using Tour de Waypoint… and it had the benefit that it was also faster.

I also quite like breaking down maps- first run around grabbing waypoints (and POIs, skillpoints etc that you pass by). Gather as you run for a bit of material/money. Complete events if they help towards a task.

Do all maps like that to start with. Then you’ll have a good 60%+ in most maps. It doesn’t take much time to waypoint and complete tasks. Breaking things into bite-sized pieces makes things manageable and rewarding. It also means you can change up the environment more frequently (it’s nice spending 45 minutes in a dry, arid landscape and then moving to a snowy, foresty place). Also getting 3 map completion rewards in one (short) sitting is a great feeling.

As far as I recall, it’s only ever sold during Wintersday.

I snagged mine last Wintersday (after waiting a year) because I have seen some cool uses for it outside of it as a festive item. I’ve seen a couple of neat Link (Legend of Zelda) cosplays that use it, for example.

Most of my sylvari are skinned with TA and cultural armour- I find mixing and matching TA + cultural armour can give pleasing results (full cultural armour/TA is too mainstream because there are very few pieces that match the sylvari aesthetic).

I also enjoy the chef’s/cooks outfit (whatever it is called) and the wedding outfit on female sylvari. Just gives more options and I think they’re especially fun whilst levelling.

There are a few gem-store skins that also work well:
Toxic (Gloves, Shoulders)
Shadow of the Dragon (Head, Shoulders, Gloves)
Wreath of Co-operation

There are other more surprising options too. I found that phalanx armour (legs and chest) also appeared quite plant-like in a scaly, thorny way. On its own, it appears like most other “human” armour, but paired with other planty items (e.g. TA shoulders and gloves) it all comes together.

Look for shapes and patterns that remind you of petals, leaves and sticks. Try and find a hairstyle that incorporates similar shapes- perhaps a pattern style/body style that does that too. Dye the armour to try and build upon the plant-aesthetic.

Looking at medium armour now that has a natural, planty vibe:
Carapace, Luminescent
Arah armour (the coat totally looks like a venus fly trap)
Leystone armour (if you can dye the rocks, perhaps you could make it look like bark or wood)

I really believe that mixing and matching is the way to go- it’s easier to break up “unnatural” patterns this way and also select the most planty parts from different sets to combine together. Just remember that different materials dye differently, so you might have to try similar but different dyes on parts from different sets to make it all come together.

Choosing a defined colour palette also helps- especially with a specific detail colour which you can carry throughout your armour choices and maybe through the character design too. Using dyes that closely match the skin colour of your Sylvari might help, too.

If you send more than 2 mails within a couple of minutes, you’ll get supressed. Every time you try to send a mail, the cooldown timer gets reset (I think!).

So, send 2 mails, wait a couple of minutes. Rinse and repeat.

If you have a guild bank, you can more easily bulk exchange between players there. Of course, if the bank is shared with other guildies (i.e. isn’t a personal/family guild) you need to make sure that they’re trustworthy/sensible/know that you’re exchanging just between the two of you for that time period.

It doesn’t matter if only accounts older than 2 years could buy it… that wouldn’t prevent bots. Bots often hack accounts rather than buy them, so they could just hack older accounts to bypass this restriction and buy the item. Or even better, hack somebody who’s already bought the feature.

I don’t like the fact that people already map change and spam guild recruitment messages, either. On occassion it has been difficult to have conversation because of lengthy recruitment messages (and guilds competing to have their message visible in the chat window).

This seems like an item that would make this even worse. Fair enough if there was a chat channel particularly for this (so people could just hide it), but I’m willing to bet that it would be flooded with so many messages that it would be practically unusable anyway.

Another solution to your request? Add a guild recruitment tab in the LFG.
-Visible anywhere
-Only is seen if people are actually interested/browsing. Doesn’t spam up chat
-Filters could be added so people recruiting/looking for can more easily find what they want
-Easier for recruiters too. Doesn’t mean you have to spend money waypointing, or putting hours into rotating map and spamming the recruitment message

If you aren’t sure, report them (for botting).

Let the moderators work out if they’ll allow it or not.

If it really bothers you, you can send a ticket in with screenshots/observations (if you don’t think that your in-game report will make much sense).

If you have a valid reason for reporting, you won’t get into trouble. You will get in trouble if you spam report people for no reason, apart from that you don’t like them or something. :P

And you just managed to start another thread about it.

So I guess now you can understand how/why people make duplicate topics, when writing on one of the pre-existing threads would’ve been sufficient.

Ok, going to play devil’s advocate here and think up some negatives to this interesting idea. I’m curious to see responses.

1. The biggest problem I see with this idea is that it only benefits Rangers. That means that less than 1/9th of characters would benefit from this (but of course, more than 1/9th of the playerbase would benefit because people don’t tend to stick with just one character).

Think how the legendary journeys got scrapped, because of how much dev time they required and how little impact it would have on players proportionately. In one of the recent polls I seem to remember around 1/10th of the playerbase actually owns a legendary (who engaged in the poll) and of course that means an even smaller percentage would go on to complete one of the legendary journeys. So if this pet idea was more than a simple colour edit or added top-hat, would it really be worth the dev’s time?

2. How could it be introduced fairly?

There has to be some scarcity otherwise there would be little interest in it. It would make sense if it was locked behind skill- perhaps pre-existing content that had few rewards (let’s say at the end of a JP). The black widow spider, black moa and rainbow phoenix (I think) were sort of “exclusive” ranger pets in GW1, they randomly appeared in regions that were a bit more challenging to get to and were also more difficult to charm, if memory serves me correctly. Of course the mechanics of GW2 are quite different.

3. How different would the models be? Would they be confusing in PvP/WvW?

4. Does this idea overlap with the idea of minipets and exclusive minipets that we already have?

The only problem I can imagine with this is in PvP/WvW where colour/animations is quite important in being able to quickly judge what your opponents are on the field.

Of course, being able to use standard models (or just having the feature turned off for enemy players) would be a solution.

Just remember that with every problem a feature brings, extra dev time has to be assigned to coming up with a solution.

I do think it would open up so many more possibilities regarding aesthetic though. I think somebody mentioned a similar idea about gem-store “aesthetic packs”, so as an example, mesmers could swap to blue bird animations instead of pink butterflies. I think a colour filter would be a lot easier than building new animations though, so +1 OP.

Agree with Nero

And the loincloth sort of thing works better with the savage swordmaster that Faren is trying to become, in my opinion.

They have done already- think Shadow of the Dragon, Scarlet’s Armor, Toxic Armor etc.

They primarily do shoulders, gloves and headpiece (occassionally boots). This is to limit the chance of clipping betwen armour parts (chest and legs are most prone to clipping with other parts). It also helps maintain the aesthetic differences between light, medium and heavy armours.

No doubt, it’s a shame that they had to cut legendary weapons.

But if they had to make the business decision to do so, I would imagine that it was pretty necessary- maybe a decision between having a full set of new legendary weapons and having the next Living World Season appear “on time” (aka sometime this year).

So few people are actually affected by each individual legendary collection it makes sense. The amount of work required for designing each collection is colossal, perhaps it makes sense to put the same amount of time/money/effort into a feature that affects more of the community comparatively.

Ben K.6238:

I think “falling apart” is a rather weird choice of words, considering it’s not getting worse as time goes by.

Hmm, I guess it depends on how you look at it.

In terms of community and community faith, I think “falling apart” is a fairly reasonable description, maybe a bit on the dramatic side, but covers it. It is a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy too; the more consistently negative people are, the more people believe it and follow suit.

I think maybe it also suits in terms of what they claimed and what they delivered. Legendaries, “LS3”, the backpiece and a bunch of other promises made are being postponed (indefinitely) or just… sort of forgotten. It does feel like plans for the game made around expac announcement are indeed falling apart.

But yes, the game still works and functions, so in that sense it is still intact. ANet are still developing the game, so it’s not like it’s disappearing and fading away entirely.

EDIT:

I think Doam is right- a lot of the decisions seem to be the best business move/easiest rather than what would be most entertaining/“better” for the game. In fairness, it is a business so they’re not going to spend huge wads of cash trying to improve on something that has little benefit/return. It is a shame that underwater combat (and now other things) have been neglected, but I still see it as time better spent elsewhere.

Maybe they’ll release information about some new feature, or reworking an older/broken one. I think the community needs to hear something constructive and tangible? I dunno

Seems like many of us share the view that core GW2 is/was excellent and that HoT soured it.

Do you guys think that things would’ve been better if they had just followed the LS/feature pack plan that was present before expac?

Maybe people would’ve left in a slow trickle rather than the mass exodus a little while expac released?

Hearing that we won’t get a new LS until q3 definitely (according to a WP video) made me more sour towards the expac and changes to the schedule. It was the steady flow of casual/do when you want content that was keeping me interested in the game. Maybe free updates isn’t sustainable, but honestly I would’ve been willing to pay a little bit to unlock those episodes.

OP, you have it bang on… especially with: “Everyone keeps playing the same content again and again because we are all chasing that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”

I’ve stopped playing now- I only have logged in recently to grab the wizard’kitten and bunny ears, because I know if I started playing again I’d want to use them.

After completing most of the achievements from the expansion, I realised I was playing out of habit rather than enjoyment and that there were plenty of more wholesome, enjoyable and constructive things for me to do with my time.

This is in no way a negative critique of the game (well, pre-expac, maybe)- I got a few thousand hours worth of enjoyment out of it, there’s just only so much replayability a game has. The expac-hype made me stick around probably longer than I would’ve- I was waiting for that pot of gold.

Looking at the expac from a more objective standpoint (now I don’t play GW2 much), the idea of standing around for hours on end for a meta event in the new maps seems crazy. It wasn’t so bad when you had things to do, achievements to complete, but after that it felt like just filling the time.

The amount of time put in for the rewards (not just loot) received is much too low. 3-4 hours for a meta event? I could clear a regular map in 1-2 hours, which was a perfect bite-size amount of time and 1/25th of world exploration (something that I found rewarding, at least). 1-2 hours could’ve been a dungeon tour or a high level fractal run- other very focused game-play with a good sense of completion and reward.

Of course people will disagree- videogames are an artform and subjective. I don’t think that GW2 or HoT is bad, I just think that it wasn’t properly finished and that some of the design choices don’t suit many in the community.

Rose is right, we can only tell you what might have happened.

1) You made a deliberate purchase but have forgotten about it. This has happened before to other people and is more likely to happen if you make an impulse buy. I haven’t been in-game for a bit so don’t know what currently costs 500 gems, but backpiece/gliders seem to be around this price.

2) You made an accidental purchase. This can happen too. Cat sitting on your mouse, perhaps a drunken purchase. It might be worth checking your in-game mail and gem-store history to see if you have anything to pick up from the gem-store.

3) You miscalculated the total number of gems you had. Mistakes happen! This has happened before, too.

Very unlikely:
3) Somebody hacked your account simply to send themselves a 500 gem item and nothing more. I seriously doubt this happened. But it wouldn’t hurt to change your password anyway, just in case.

4)There was a bug in the gem-store and you lost 500 gems. This probably didn’t happen either- because the gem-store is partly dealing with real-life currency, I would assume it has to be very secure and bug-free.

I don’t mean to sound patronising or condescending, but most of the time instances like this are down to user error rather than somebody else. That doesn’t lessen the shock of feeling like you’ve lost a bunch of gold/money, though. Just feel safe in that if something has seriously happened, you’ll probably be reimbursed, but expect that it was probably a simple mistake on your behalf.

It’s what makes us human after all!

Physically I don’t think this will work as NA and EU servers are separate. I’m no expert, but account/character data isn’t stored in a place that can be easily transfered between NA and EU servers. As such, in order to transfer your account you have to delete all characters to be able to transfer from an NA world to an EU one (or vice versa).

I think the separation of EU and NA servers is to improve ping. If the servers were combined, they’d be in one spot and result in huge ping for some players. Currently there is a server in germany and someplace in America (I forget where).

If there were no technical restrictions, then there would be no need to stipulate character deletion, and thus your suggestion of free transfer/secondary world could be more reasonably discussed.

Even if this was possible I think there would be huge implications. Server capacity would have to be increased. WvW would be affected.

In conclusion, there is a far less costly way for you to play with both NA and EU friends. Like Garambola suggested, get a second account- free or paid. You can even use your alt account as a little side business to earn a bit of gold (through laurels and crafting). If you want your second account to be in a similar position as your main account, transfer gold (or buy gems with cash and convert to gold) and gear up your alt account characters that way.

What you are asking for would be a huge cost to A-net and is extremely unlikely to happen. Rather than wait, if I were you, I’d get a second account and start building it up.

I’ve always considered both “staffs” and “staves” to be correct, but “staves” to be more proper and “staffs” more understandable.

I assumed that A-net chose “staffs” on the TP to reduce confusion, but then “foci”(as opposed to “focuses”) is there aswell as an irregular plural, which kind of destroys this theory.

I pin it down to dialectual differences/a difference in word choice governed by region.

Even if you think you’re being original, chances are that isn’t the case. Most one word names are taken (ones that make sense, anyway) and their spelling variations. 7 million accounts is a lot, and then you have to consider that many people have multiple characters, even if they aren’t being used.

Even if the name you want is from an abstract book or series, the writer may have looked to other things for inspiration and thus the name has been taken under different circumstances.

For example, Danikat, I actually knew a girl called Xanthe. I believe the name is greek for pale or blonde. That’s not a far cry from Zanthia, and I would be willing to be that a few people looking for names for their blonde-haired character would be willing to find a name that means such.