Guild Wars 2

Darmikau.9413:

The patch needs a rollback for more than just the GWAMM exploit.

I agree but there must be some reason, likely logistics… for why they haven’t done so.

Physically restoring every server related to GW2 to an earlier point prior the most recent patch is always an option but depending on how frequent their respective automated backups are, or how easy of an undertaking such a thing even is, that kind of nuclear option might be even worse for them.

Imagine then having to loose say even just half a days worth of data. People loosing precursors or legendaries because of said rollback would create a kittenstorm of its own, not to mention other smaller in-game accomplishments. Also, I doubt all of these issues are ones that QA simply missed, after taking an extra week for testing, player volume must have something to do with it as well.

Malediktus.3740:

did you try using your hall of monument portal stone? i heared that one also triggers it

All it does is crashes the game as far as I know.

Malediktus.3740:

Its a guaranteed bug. It worked for everyone I know who tried it.

Nope it isn’t, guaranteed that is, I too created an alt earlier today, mostly to reserve a name (since I finally thought of a decent one for my Revenant to be) and I still have the exact same HoM points I have had until now and ever since launch.

It might work, or rather be broken, for a lot of people but saying that it works for everyone or that it is guaranteed is bit of a stretch without any evidence. Besides why would you encourage anyone to test this knowingly, when there is high chance for some kind of action to be taken for people that deliberately try and do it.

Gank.4957:

People are getting free GWAMM and HoM rewards, this is a major game breaking exploit and is already spreading across the internet as we speak. Please do something.

If it was such a simple choice, I’d think they would have done it already, for the whole patch.

As for that particular issue, not sure I would call it game breaking, while it devalues things it doesn’t actually physically break the game (aside from the HoM instance itself being broken and we don’t even know if that and this are related). It is definitely an exploit though, but at least it is not a guaranteed thing nor is there a step by step guide for it that I am aware of.

Also, as far as I know taking away any achievement bugged or not is not something trivial either they probably would have to do individual account rollbacks or develop a specific tool to fix it (ie. for example the bugged placement achievement from the WvW tournament before last is forever on the accounts affected, if it was simple for them to remove it they probably would have).

That said, anyone stupid enough to actively try and trigger it is probably going to get tracked down (at least if they don’t succeed on first attempt, ie. they try for it repeatedly).

The Revenant is definitely lurking in Char creation screen has a nice text about needing to upgrade to HoT on it as well, can’t do anything with it though completely unselectable (which is somewhat surprising with everything that is broken right now, at least they got something right).

My suggestion, send a PM to a dev on the forums about your find (someone who frequents the bugs forum would be a good pick, Gaile Gray would be another possibility). That is in all honesty the best thing you can do about it with the in-game reporter as broken as it is right now.

I honestly don’t get they have been so careful lately about not putting anything unnecessary to the dat file with living story, why now this motherlode of data that we really do not need on live yet. Just strange.

The double parentheses is placeholder or unlocalized text as far as I know. So whatever they say isn’t supposed to be there on live.

thefinnster.7105:

well i spend an average of £20-£30 a month

The thing is spending any number of money on gems does not entitle you to anything except whatever it is that you bought the gems for or choose to use them for at later date. No-one forces you to spend any money on GW2 after the initial box price (which is about the equivalent of a subway sandwich now, at least during recent deep discounts). What money you do spend is entirely based on your judgement and whether they deserve said money or not in your opinion.

You are not giving ArenaNet money as compensation for their regular free updates, because a player that makes gem purchases gets the same free updates as the people that don’t do.

Also HoT content is by its very nature more costly than LS, because while they brought in the biconics for living story both for logistics and cost effectiveness but now they have good portion of the voice cast from the base game back and their new secondary cast as well which means that for instance just doing the voice work for HoT will cost magnitudes more than LS voice overs do (the player character is also talking that is each PC line times 10 for each race and sex).

There is a glass ceiling on live development both in terms of type of content, changes and the resources that can be used to develop said content whether in terms of cost, time or logistics.

HoT is way more than just story and undetermined number of PvE zones related to said story, but since we are talking story in addition to extra VO and longer development time overall the story will also feature real player choice again with different paths through story mission (tuned with the new story delivery system in mind vs old personal story). So saying that it will be same quality as LS is not a fair comparison at all.

Also, you do get free goodies even without paying for HoT, including the new borderlands and the new Stronghold gametype.

Andred.1087:

Pat Cavit.9234:

One decimal place is ok, two starts getting into the limitations of IEEE floats and the calls to the API get turned into nonsense.

Might I recommend doubles…

I am guessing whatever they use to encode and decode the requests is the the source of this not being as easy as changing the type. I haven’t looked at the exact specifications for JSON or JavaScript in a long time, but if memory serves most parsers do indeed treat JSON Number type exclusively as float.

The easier solution is likely to either change the currency exchange API to use three distinct inputs for currency like all the rest of the traiding post inputs or limit the precision of the current input to one decimal place.

Edit: a third option is of course to use a numeric string that the server then converts to double after the JSON has been decoded serverside but that borders on a hacky workaround.

Pat Cavit.9234:

One decimal place is ok, two starts getting into the limitations of IEEE floats and the calls to the API get turned into nonsense.

Thus a request for 80.82 gold worth of gems returns “2” instead of something sensical. The trade happens entirely on the server and will deduct/deposit the correct amounts, it just won’t match up with the now-goofy UI state.

Right, it is so easy to forget that anything in the trading post window is actually a web based fronted / sub-application. Props for managing to make it look so “native” in terms of the games aesthetic (I am guessing the overall art style of the game helps a lot).

So, just a quick question then why isn’t the custom exchange three separate inputs for different types of coins like it is everywhere else in the trading post?

Edit: or alternatively, why does the custom exchange ask for the desired gold amount rather than the number of gems to trade away (in an ideal world we would have the choice between both inputs, but that could get tricky to keep in sync if both inputs remain editable).

If the bug reporting in game works for you, it might not because of the very same patch, but if it does you might want to report this through that and tick “blocking progress” or whatever it is labeled as.

Here is a screenshot from my bank with the same problem (ps: please give us some way to productively use these boosters there is no way in a million years I will ever actually use the 2,5 year backlog of them as is).

PS: none of those stack have obviously intentionally been split.

Certain Black Lion items no longer seem to like their older duplicates I have stuff like certain not so useful boosters now taking two slots instead of one in my bank because the more recent copies refuse to stack with the others,

This is much like the birthday scrolls only much worse because now it seems to affect random backlion goods.

Edit: nvm, found another topic on the subject

Now mind you, I did not actually get the gold… but I did loose 2 gems, regardless this might be something someone wants to look into.

I doubt this can be considered an exploit, unless there is actually a way to get gold out of it (I am not about to look into it, I just want to get rid of an odd number of gems).

Important thing about masteries that is different between the demo we have seen and the final system in HoT on ship is that the mastery points only unlock the abilities for training you need experience to learn them still.

So even if you can farm the needed mastery points in a day or two you still have to gain experience to unlock each of the abilities individually (and it might not be on a flat curve, but there is no definitive statement on this, but it seems unlikely to be as quick as gaining levels is right now with the system being account bound and all).

How Tomes of Knowledge will factor into this is unknown at this point though. What they did for the demo is remove the gaining experience step from unlocking masteries afaik, because the demo is timed to 40 minutes.

So assuming content is gated behind masteries with needing to gain experience for those masteries it is a soft time gating on unlocking all the content in the expansion immediately (also, any retroactive mastery points will not be for HoT masteries either).

Also, while this is just my own opinion, mastery system is at least on paper way more effective method of controlling the longevity of the content than say a flat level increase because the mastery points are a definite resource, and some mastery points are no doubt gated behind having access to other masteries. What this means is that it is far more difficult to figure out the optimal progression path because while experience will still be a factor how the mastery points are laid out in the world will determine how quickly you can actually make use of the experience you gain from events towards specific masteries.

I don’t know the actual numbers, too lazy to hunt them down to check, but as far as I can see right now the healing skill is the only legend skill with a significant cooldown and an energy cost add to that the fact that swapping legends also costs energy I honestly don’t see double heals and even double elites as a problem when dealt with care.

In one of the interviews that I listened through recently the dev basically said when talking about Revenant profession mechanic that the legends are a direct point of comparison to what weapon swapping is for other professions (except that it affects the right side of your skillbar) which means that you do have two healing skills, six utilities and two elites. He basically also said “how broken does that sound, well it is our job to make it work”

Also assuming each legend remains as one specific set of five skills as it is now… ie. no skill choice for utilities (except maybe racials but who uses those, other than for kicks) which at least at the time of writing this seems plausible because they keep referencing to legends as “packages” of skills. So it is not like having two (self)heals etc. is automatically game breaking… especially when your opponents can easily distinguish the legends you have active (they deliberately stated that they want there to be cues for other players to be able to make the distinction easily).

Scoobaniec.9561:

Or that the whole theory about pets etc is just wrong. Most likely reve will receive 4 fixed legends that change the whole skill bar from skill 1 to 0.

It would give them too much work imo to create 10+ legends that change your utilities.

It could very well be wrong, but at the same time we have Elementalist with 60 land weapon skills and 20 underwater skills. 25 conjure weapon skills and 6 Glyphs with four variants each.

There are at least two ways they can go with legends, the boring way which is four static legends two of which we already know (essentially carbon copy of attunements for utilities). This is not entirely without merits though as in this setup each of the four legends likely gets more than one full set of utilities (ie. 5 skills). At the same time, however, unlike attunements which are intuitive and it wouldn’t really make sense to have many, if any, more unless you force it, legends are not similarly easy to categorize and define.

Assuming they take this path of least resistance Jalis seems essentially very much akin to earth attunement, Mallyx on the other hand a condition control one, which would be kind of fresh I admit but its usefulness without further information is debatable. As for the other two one of them would likely be pure offense and the other more supporty.

Then there is the fun way, one that is indefinitely extendable and has the potential to involve some discovery over just flat level or skillpoint unlocks. I am not saying that we would necessarily get 10+ legends with HoT if they went with this path, we might get some equally low number to the four we would get with the boring option above. But why would they deliberately lock themselves out of the potential to expand the lineup of legends in the future by tying them to the definite number of F-action skills directly.

That is not to say that these two are even the only options, another one is contextual legends for example. when you get X conditions on you that is when Mallyx will become available for channel or when you take a certain threshold of damage Jalis becomes an option. Or then they can go with a time gated mechanic akin death shroud already discussed, but personally I think these last two are the least likely options because of the usual nature of utility skills (ie. longer cooldowns, situational skills, elites).

Scoobaniec.9561:

Wiki says; “Can channel the Mists into weapons, as well as utility and heal skills”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns

There is a clear inconsistency between the summary and the profession specific pages, the profession page lists references while the summary page doesn’t. So for the time being with the little that we know it is probably safe to assume that weapon skills changing is an exception rather than a rule for the Revenant.

This interview will go into retroactiveness of masteries a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIJeblpbcr8&list=PLuF8h6vFT6oV3nqL7fJm6IIdxaWDYBz48&index=1

Plus, it is just a fun a bit different kind of interview altogether. I get the impression that there will be quite a bit of retroactiveness (probably not a word, but whatever) to the mastery system from what was said.

BilboBaggins.5620:

Strawman argument.

Absolutely, not that I am in any way implying that I agree with you, but as long as no member of the general public has had a chance to actually play the Revenant this applies to every argument about its supposed over or under poweredness. Just playing along here to amuse myself.

Revenant Master Race Profession

Edit: Also Elementalists are clearly the most OP of all professions for they are the only profession with access to over 25 skills in active combat underwater, this blasphemy must immediately be rectified.

OP says Revenants are OP that means Elementalists are also OP, simply by the fact that utility skills have traditionally longer cooldowns than weapon skills so Elementalist will not only have more skills than the Revenant most likely (using the math provided by Minae Iss above) but they will also have overall higher APM because weapon skill cooldowns tend to be the shorter of the two sides of the skill bar.

PS: This topic is an amusing read, just adding to it

Zaxares.5419:

I do wonder if that means new stat spreads won’t ever be added though.

As fas as ascended stuff is concerned, definitely, since they don’t have an upgrade slot. But that being said, I doubt they will add stat combinations just for the sake of adding them. Which is why I would like to speculate that f.ex. condition damage will be a big(ger) deal in HoT than it is right now f.ex. not to mention that there are now some sets that don’t have power at all, which were added recently, I’d like to think they wouldn’t add a set just for decoration.

Not suggesting that any set is going to overthrow power based variants completely, but them adding stat spreads that no-one would really use right now seems pointless. Unless they know something we don’t. Especially when zerker is already dominating as it is.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I think some of you are probably correct in your estimates, now that we know “channeling a legend” effects skills 6-0. Here’s how I think it will work:

1. Revenants will have weapon swap ability. If they did not, they would be the only profession that cannot use on-swap sigils, since channeling doesn’t change their weapon.

2. Revenants will collect Legends like Rangers collect pets.

3. Revenants will have normal utility skills, but with shorter cooldowns than average. The base effect may be on the weaker side.

4. Channeling a Legend adds some extra effect to the 6-0 skills. Not every Legend will necessarily effect every skill (for example, Malyx may not affect a defensive utility)

5. Channeling a Legend will be similar to attunements in terms of cooldowns. Once you swap Legends, you won’t be able to return to that same Legend for a period of time.

The end result is that utilities will overall be weaker, but be used more often in multiple ways. They would not change greatly, but using the right “kicker” effects at the right time can greatly enhance your play.

This seems fairly reasonable set of conditions, I really hope we get the deep dive for Revenant sooner rather than later. If in part because we may also get some tidbits dropped about Rytlock in the process. Also, sort of want to know if Revenant will have access to greatsword or not.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anything that wasn’t a collection however has not been retroactive… so not sure.

To be fair they could easily do it retroactively for anyone with at least 1 100% map completed character (since mastery points are account wide) but what if highest map complete is say 46% them scattered all around the place. It would be more complex to write an algorithm that would check eligibility for each available mastery point. This only for map exploration though.

It is likely some mastery points are through collections and those could easily be retroactive as you said, but the rest not as much.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

I’m betting it works like Elemental attunements, equiped like ranger pets, but will have a time limit. Something like death shroud, or maybe just 30 seconds before it ends.

It might also put your normal skill bar on cool down when an ability is activated. So you won’t be able to use one legends heal skill, then switch to another and immediately use their heal skill.

Locking you out of “legend dancing” is given. If it is time restricted though utility cooldowns will have to be shorter than normal utility cooldowns otherwise you can use your utility a grand total of once during your channel (and there can be no highly situational legend bound utilities very easily, since it would easily turn into spam all the utilities before time runs out) and assuming each legend also has a cooldown like ele attunement swapping it would kind of put a huge damper on it.

If it has normal utility cooldowns I could see it working like adrenaline/death shroud but having a longer duration like 5-8 minutes or based on how long you fought without channeling a legend (with the same caveat of no dancing ofc, so once you channel a legend you are stuck in it for the entire duration of the channel).

Edit: an interesting spin on it would be if the more damage you take the shorter the channel time, ie. adrenaline reversed sort of. You could spin it by saying that the spirits of the legends or whatever they are hate feeling pain as most of them probably didn’t die of old age.

Scoobaniec.9561:

That actually makes sense, yeah. But then again im worried. If we can “catch” for example 20 different legends like a pokemons, how many skills that class will offer in the end? Its a lot of skills tbh. Basically 10 skills per legend

More like anywhere between 5 and 10 per legend most likely, ie. lets call the skills affected directly by your active legend “Legend” skills (like signets or traps). That means the Revenant would have a set of static utilities like the rest of us but a specific skill category that is impacted by the legends.

Another possibility would be that each category of skills has a specific subset (say 2) that are legend bound (ie. say Revenant has access to shouts, then he would have f.ex. 4 shouts total one or two of which are affected by his legend).

If you are worried about skill overflow. The elementalists get 20 skills per weapon(set) plus Glyph utilities, so I think it is not outside the realm of possibility for them to go the pokemon route with legends. Especially since the skill animations and effects can be a lot more free form than weapon skills when the weapon doesn’t necessarily have to be featured (ie. they don’t need to have damage component for example).

Also, utilities and especially elites tend to have longer cooldowns as well and if they limit the combat swapping of legends it probably wouldn’t be that much harder to balance than Elementalist in the long run.

hokeso.4028:

maybe, the player has to buy/acquire some kind of revenous artifact to allow you to transform into a revenant…

Each character gets one revenization charge free, when he visits the new maps.

While that would be a good solution, Colin said that Revenants would start at level one. Though to pick a hole in your idea if each character would get a charge for free what would the point of being able to buy/find one be.

psizone.8437:

Scoobaniec.9561:

So basically f1-5 which changes not olny your skillbar, but also everything else? Aka ele+engi combo lol sounds interesing but not sure how it work out. And why i mentioned f1-5 at this point? Cause we have 5 types of utility.

I personally see it as being similar to a Ranger and an Elementalist.

I like the way you think, although it would likely mean no swapping legends mid combat or only limited to at most two. But it would also likely mean we get weapon swapping, which means on swap sigils will be useful.

Edit: :P ninja’ed sort of…

Scoobaniec.9561:

So basically f1-5 which changes not olny your skillbar, but also everything else? Aka ele+engi combo lol sounds interesing but not sure how it work out. And why i mentioned f1-5 at this point? Cause we have 5 types of utility.

There is another and in my opinion more fun option, but part of me wonders if they worry about other professions getting green with envy and that is why they might go with f1-f5.

What am I thinking? Maybe legends could be acquired akin to Rangers pets (even if there is lot less of them, for obvious reasons) because that means there can easily be more than four or five and there is indefinite room for expansion in the future and it will also mean the legends and their acquisition can be linked to the lore more strongly which would be very fitting.

Also to go one more step towards crazy, there is always this question: Will it go as far as a legend will change an utility skill that will then change or replace your weapon skills? (ie. glyphs meets kits)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-29-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-expansion-level-cap-gear-tier

This has some big statements, something has indeed been officially taken off the table unless Eurogamer misquoted.

Heart of Thorns will not raise the level-cap or add a new tier of gear, and thus, he had backed up his fighting talk with action. But that fighting talk made me wonder about the future, and whether Guild Wars 2 would ever cave in and conform? When I get game director Colin Johanson on the phone a couple of days after the reveal, I press him about it. And then he makes another statement worth remembering.

“Correct,” he answers. “We will never add more levels to the game, we will never add more tiers of gear to the game. The tiers and levels we have today will be the tiers and levels we have for the rest of the life of Guild Wars 2.”

Also, about revenant:

Johanson explains to me: “[Channelling a legend] actually changes out the entire back-half of your skillbar, so your heal skill, your utilities and your elite are all determined by the Legend you are currently channelling.” Apparently there are traits that “play off” these abilities and combo strongly.

They may have been mentioned elsewhere but seriously this deserved its own thread, just for the fact that a high level dev at ANet just used the word never, not anything indicating any sort of reservation or uncertainty… just flat never. In PR terms this is a bad move unless you are super confident.

Then again, MO also said in an interview that if he had announced level cap increase or new tier of gear (which as he so astutely pointed out is more or less the same thing) he could see the crowd storming the stage. But it is good to have it out there in this way too.

psizone.8437:

Kvothe.1467:

I’m pretty sure personal story is linked to race not profession. So… I’d say it should just give you an option to start at beginning or… I guess in Lion’s Arch near the Mist gates.

Usually yes, but lore wise if Rytlock is the first then technically they could create a separate instance for the profession in place of the race starter story.

For example, choosing Revenant as a class gives you a new choice, instead of choosing a pet etc like the ranger, you choose the method in which you “died” and went to the mists. This would lead to an intro scene of, for example, a battle in which you died or you falling into a portal similar to how Rytlock went to the mists.

After the cutscene it starts you in the mists without weapons (imagine the Sylvari starter area, it being in the Dream would be similar to this) whilst in the mists, you find Rytlock in all his Revenant glory and he agrees to teach you how to use the Revenants abilities and you complete the instance by leaving the mists.

This would drop you back in Tyria before Zhaitans defeat (explainable by mists physics and reasons) and the next personal story steps include dealing with issues with being a person with an unknown power in the “past” and that’d lead you into the order arc since they want you in their orders etc and it continues as normal.

Purely theoretical and wild, but it would fix the issues with lore and be a great incentive for people to try out the class.

This, or any variant of it (ie. revenant instance + race intro even) would be super cool. Or even just a cutscene.

Brahmincorle.1264:

But what would happend to “E-Rytlock?” would he commit suicide? or live in seclusion until he die? And this still doesn’t solve the cloning Rytlock paradox. If there isn’t major hole in my logic, every Rytlock that leave into the mists will return and find Rytlock that is alredy about to leave and XY Rytlocks that already returned.

Example:

At first there was only 1 Rytlock. He left into the mists and retuned before he went into the mists. Now we have 2 Rytlocks – one who returned and one who is about to leave. The “returned” Rytlock can’t stop the other Rytlock from leaving because it would cause another paradox when he never left which mean he cannot return and stop himself from leaving…. Ok so we have 2 Rytlocks, one once again leave and since we know he has to return before he leave now we have 3 Rytlocks… one that is about to leave, one who just now returned and the original Rytlock who returned as first. This will continue forever because Rytlock can’t stop leaving because as I said before if he stay in Tyria, he cannot return …. but he alredy did.

:)

This mean personal story as a Revenant would be logically flawed unles they drastically change it. They might keep it as it is but it would mean Rytlock wasn’t first revenant but “just another” revenant (or at best the second one because our character will be the first one).

Edit: my english is far from perfect, I hope it all make sense

I might have chosen my wording bit poorly, however, if “Revenant Rytlock” spends the time it takes for “Vanilla Rytlock” to go in to the mists in seclusion with minimal interaction with the timeline that will mean Vanilla will always enter the mists undisturbed. Here comes the key point, after Vanilla has entered the mists Revenant no longer has to worry about interacting with the timeline because he is now the only Rytlock in the active timeline. Then the new Revenant Rytlock will be the only Rytlock in the timeline past the point of his past self entering the mists while there will not be more than one Rytlock in seclusion in the past either because they will always have moved out of each others way without interference so to speak.

The theory of replicating Rytlocks relies the point in time were Rytlock emerges from the mists in the past (and when his past self enters the mists for that matter) to be constant, however, it is not as time flows continuously and when the paradox occurred the in the timeline there were indefinite number of splits each of which did at most one full circle as per my description in the previous paragraph. Perhaps in some of these split timelines Rytlock, if he indeed is E, interfered too much with the course of events and those timelines now either no longer exist because time has progressed past the beginning point of the paradox in the original timeline or now have an entirely new present different from the one we will see in HoT.

Which of the above outcomes you want to go with depends entirely on your preference but the concept of multiverse is established in GW2, see Asura personal story about “Infinity Ball” if memory serves, so perhaps paradoxes are how multiple versions and realities of Tyria have come to exist inside the mists in the past for example. Also, we don’t even know for sure the Rytlock that is coming back is originally from our incarnation of Tyria he was once the same person yes, but as he entered the mists he could have easily come out in any number of parallel version of Tyria (ie. he could be from a different timeline altogether, or have visited another version of Tyria where Revenants are commonplace for example).

As a closing note this theory relies on the fact that Rytlocks actions in the timeline after he re-emerges from the mists remain the same, ie. his state of mind would be the same after whatever he experienced in the mists, meaning the suicide scenario would not come into play and he would always take his old selfs place when the time came.

Grimwolf.7163:

They’ve likened them to the PvE form of the WvW abilities we have now.

They did say that but they have also said that the WvW masteries system will get some degree of an overhaul with what they have learnt with this new incarnation of masteries in HoT.

So in other words “everything is still definitely on the table” :P They definitely seem to be implying that specializations will have a horizontal slant though and masteries will be more vertical (even though we still don’t know what combat masteries entail) as forms of progression.

If the Revenant uses the staff for melee strikes (ie. like a bo staff) then the style of the skin does make sense, however, it probably should really have been its own weapon type or reusing the underwater spears.

That said if Revenant will be the only profession using a Staff or a Staff like weapons in Melee capacity it for the forseeable future it makes sense because it is cost effective and there are more staff than spear skins in game already most likely.

Also, as far as the trailer goes, that move or move set could just as easily have the skill animations with staff or polearm baked into the skills themselves (ie. think something like Charrzooka or Engineer kits).

We don’t really know how this channeling thing is executed in game.

Gulesave.5073:

I think they said it would be two weeks before the first deep dive, in the quick on-air interview right after the announcement.

Maybe they are waiting for the next PoI then, this Friday it’ll be Ready Up right?

Well we can make some conclusions on how fast the information comes, if we get 1 deep dive every 2 weeks f.ex., I doubt ideally they’d want to run out of “deep dives” and have too long to go until the thing launches once they are done (also how substantive each deep dive will be and if it will be piece meal will also help to guess).

Guardian of Angels.9867:

I like that answer!

That would mean earliest next weeks Tuesday (the 3rd) assuming they keep to their old habits. Then again for feature packs they have deviated from this.

royaldanney.6047:

Wow, what’s the point in these specializations if there’s only one per profession? It will probably be just a mandatory thing to further progress your character.

Not necessarily, as they have the ability to both change, give and take away aspects of the base profession freely when you specialize. Nothing says they all have to be additions just differences.

So a Ranger might want to stay a Ranger for example (imagine f.ex. one entire trait line being different between the base profession and its specialization). Or a Druid loosing access to all of ranges traditional Trap utilities and having them replaced by a set with a more druid like slant, or even an entire new classification of skills.

They have free rein to suffle traits of the base profession just as much as they do to add to them. Colin already stated that trait acquisition would be reworked again in HoT.

This is my understanding, but specializations sound like a horizontal choice whereas masteries are the vertical path.

Brahmincorle.1264:

But if he returned from the mists before he went into the mists, he would pretty much copy himself indefinitely which could be problem for Tyria. Milions of Rytlocks everywhere.

However if there could be only one Rytlock in same time, the returning Rytlock would replace the original Rytloc but the “new Rytlock” would already be a Revenant and already have that funky sword which would mean he wouldnt have reason to go into the mists. But by not going into the mists he would never learn his new craft and never get that funky sword so he would have to go into the mists again in order to get them and this cycle would repeat forever.

Time paradoxes are fun, depending on the fiction you look to for reference returning before entering the mists could work, provided the old and the new timelines don’t interact (ie. the new Rytlock became a monk to live on a mountain in seclusion while waiting his past self to leave the timeline f.ex.). In this example the suposed indefinite cycle of Rytlocks would never interfere with the Rytlock whose past we know and there would only ever be one Rytlock in the timeline that affects the course of its events.

Here is an interesting idea, what if E is Rytlock who returned from the mists in the past? He would have details that he could use to steer people together to make the present that the PC is in, just as long as his past self does not become aware of this. Of course once Rytlock takes his past selfs place as the first cycle of the paradox comes to a close the timeline is again restored.

MokahTGS.7850:

IMO even adding an area like the silver wastes would be too little for an Expansion pack priced at $30-50. If the price is close to the original game it should have close to the same amount of content.

Well, even though I can’t cite this as official information, there will most definitely be more than a single map in the expansion. Because if they could cram even just everything we have seen of the Maguuma area upto now into a single map then they have seriously worked around the limitations that their maps had in the base game. To the point that I find it very unlikely to be the case.

Also, their trend towards map wide meta events with Dry Top and Silverwastes does also suggests multiple maps quite strongly.

For the record, the price of the original game is very relative, but 25$-40$ is still a “standard” expansion pack price range. I find a 50$ price tag to be unlikely even 40$ seems bit steep but possible, anything between 25-35$ though is fair game. Physical copy of the base game at release cost around 55$, if memory serves.

For the record, buy LW S2 right now and it costs 200 gems an episode that is 1600 gems ie. 20$. Just some food for thought.

MokahTGS.7850:

IMO, $50 is insane to ask for an exp with only one zone. The main game doesn’t cost that much.

Personally, I think between $10-20 is fair for the amount of content being described. If it is true that there is only 1 new area added to the PvE side of things then $9.99 is fair.

Depends on your definition of an area and zone.

They used the word region when referring to the Heart of the Maguuma, in the base game regions are larger geographical or geopolitical areas like Kryta, Ascalon, Orr, etc. all of which contain multiple maps or zones.

For the three way split of the new region they used the term biome that is not strictly defined in the base game but has common definition of areas separated by distinct terrain types and life forms. Seeing as how the split is vertical and knowing that the map system in game already has three vertical layers this can be taken to imply that each individual zone of the new explorable area contains or can contain a representation of each of these three biomes.

We don’t have enough information to judge the landmass added to the game by HoT at all, but we have decent examples of vertical maps now starting from Labyrinthine Cliffs and ending with The Silverwastes which show that the area a zone occupies on the map does not necessarily accurately indicate its real size.

For comparison currently what I believe is called the Maguuma Wastes is a region that contains two zones Dry Top and the Silverwastes, Orr is a region with four zones and these are the two smallest regions in the game as of right now whereas the largest regions go upto circa 7 zones (writing this from memory).

draxynnic.3719:

It is also interesting to note that this has basically confirmed that Jalis has died.

Did they actually specifically say that you are calling on the dead. I don’t think so, the wording was that they are channeling past legends which when mists are involved doesn’t necessarily have to imply an actual spirit but also something akin to an echo. See fractals lore for example.

If there is a big collector box, as long as it has a soundtrack (a proper one this time) and a making of/art book or a documentary for example. Then I am all for it.

Figurines are really nice, but I am fine with my Rytlock and Charrlie as it is. So not looking for one here (and hey it would be cheaper then too, which is a plus).

For digital stuff, a mini, maybe a skin of some description (though I can see this being controversial, ie. engies with their hobosacks etc.) No need for consumables akin to Chalice of Glory though (if any, at least tie it into the new content somehow).

I have this problem as well…

I’ll probably fastrack until 30 and do it old school from there. This will benefit both in terms of traits and possibly mastery points.

Whoever mentioned Revenant specific “fast” leveling area, that seems highly doubtful given what was said on stream.

I said this in another topic, but it seems like they are setting up a system for future specializations to be added later. It is a shame if there is only one per profession, however, the terminology chose to use implies more will come later.

Right now I have a Thief, Mesmer and a Guardian (at 80 with mix of exotic/ascended gear). The last of which I have barely played.

I originally wanted one of each armor class but as it turns out Guardian wasn’t the right choice of a heavy class for me. So it is probably going to the Revenant honestly. I currently consider Thief my main but lately I have honestly been enjoying my Mesmer a lot more. Maybe in part because I have been running the “Waypoint Gauntlet” with her while my Thief has 100% world completion and the Guardian has been collecting dust in the corner with barely any waypoints unlocked by comparison.

The news about specializations might sway me a bit but as things look right now the new shiny will be the way I am going to go.

draxynnic.3719:

Well, TheBlackLeech missed the part where the sacrifices were being performed on the order of the mursaat, after the mursaat killed or kidnapped all of the WM leadership that wasn’t fanatical enough to carry out such orders without question.

I wasn’t 100% serious with my post if anything I found his recap amusing because of the style it was written in more than anything else.

As for them being Mursaat or not, we don’t know but it seems pretty likely. I am not an expert on GW1 by any means, however, do we even know that all Mursaat acted as one during the events of GW1 for certain, any races tend to have minorities that do what they please (implying that our new allies could be this minority, which would leave lazarus and his potential followers to be the antagonists, same way flame legion is the bad Charr faction).

Also, 250 years is a very long time. Now when the mists are involved the concept of time can become bit more complicated though.

Also, all other things aside, there is the age old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” It could easily apply here at least for the time being as long as the dragons, are relevant. I would very much welcome an uneasy alliance with the Mursaat just because it seems like an interesting setup in more ways than one. I agree that them suddenly being genuine allies just like that would feel weird but I don’t see working with them to be totally absurd either if the circumstances are right.

I would easily pay anywhere between 20-40$ (or euros, as it would be in my case we all know how the conversion goes there :P).

Without knowing more information about the PvE content it is hard to put an exact value on it.

Pandaman.4758:

More information will be coming out as HoT approaches beta, which – as others have pointed out – will be in six weeks. Beta testing takes a variable amount of time depending on how polished developers bring a product to beta testing stage, but I would say don’t expect it until maybe second quarter of 2015 at earliest.

This is not really accurate, in 6 weeks there will be a playable demo on a convention showfloor, but that does not mean that the expansion is in “beta” status.

Who knows there might already be internal builds which are referred to as betas, but as far as we know there will be beta events for the public of some description at an indeterminate point in the future (as per the faq). The timeframe of 6 weeks however has nothing to do with that.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Thanks for not even reading the rest of my post.

I did, but you really do not elaborate at all, mechanically Stronghold seems extremely close to GvG in GW1, with possible cosmetic differences ie. the lack of it being your Guilds home turf f.ex (which no matter how you spin it is just cosmetic flavor) and some added mechanics.

Discussion on team sizes is moot until we have more information. We don’t even know how the guild rankings will work at this point.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

This new pvp gametype “Stronghold” is basically a Gw1 GvG map…… but it is not limited to Guild v Guild….. which is why it is not a true GvG.

Are you saying that because the teams don’t necessarily have to be guild teams it is not true GvG? (It is hard to say if the restriction is in there or not just from the stream tbh). Or are you saying it is not true GvG because of the new mechanics?

If these are your reasons, then all you are really saying is that any sort of iteration or future development of the GvG formula is bad, basically you are against all progress at this point and just want a carbon copy of GW1 GvG. You have every right to want such a thing, but then you shouldn’t be surprised if a company that thrives on iteration and innovation as their motto does not deliver the GvG you are looking for.

Either way this is the worst stance I have seen thus far, there is no such thing as a perfect game or a game that could not be better. Not to mention you are judging without even playing Stronghold, or having all the information for that matter.

All that seems to be missing from Stronghold to me is the fact that the map is not necessarily in the same way personal to your guild as it could be, however, without knowing exactly what kind of Guild Halls are in HoT there might be a solid reason for this.

Phosphia.7813:

If you know absolutely nothing about it I probably couldn’t tell you exactly what it is in just this post. But for the very basics, the gear customization is a lot broader in WvW than in PvP and you have food buffs.

Oh right, separate accessory slots and jewels, mixing and matching runes (though that one doesn’t seem too viable tbh) etc. As well as some unique stat sets I guess, I rarely change them so I forgot there is a distinct difference between PvP and other game types in that regard.

Sadly if those are the defining characteristics of GvG in WvW, I honestly don’t see how ArenaNet could support it any better (at least not inside WvW or sPvP frameworks) It would have to be a PvE instance with PvP enabled (which they no doubt could do) to avoid all the problems doing those bouts in WvW has right now, however, it would also need an entirely separate matchmaking and ranking systems because it couldn’t take advantage of sPvP’s in all likelihood.