Guild Wars 2

Chrispy.5641:

Thats 11.1% of all dungeon content (1 out of 8 dungeons + 1 fractal), and 11.5% of all the PvE content in the entire game total (3 out of 26 zones). Why should I, or anyone else take anything you post seriously about Expansions and living story, if you refused to even try that content yet?

Nice math there, but entirely irrelevant, also incorrect. They may have been the numbers originally but with the living story patches they are no longer correct the fact that some content is no longer accessible is not the same as if it never existed. Also it is funny that you separate dungeon content and PvE content as far as I am aware dungeon content is a subset of PvE.

If Living Story is filler, ergo unrelated to the content that I opted not to play, it means that my opinions about living story are entirely justified. As for my opinions about expansions, they are opinions about the model of boxed expansions and of the kind of content progression we have seen in other games (again in no way is experiencing Orr required for this).

Personal Story, above level 64, is the only type of content that I can not have a first hand opinion on (and I don’t pretend to), my statement of Zhaitan fight being abysmal (which is the only opinionated statement I made about the content I did not play myself, the lack of time progression in Orr is a fact) is entirely based on second hand accounts, the general popular opinion and some video footage. Now if you are going to go ahead and argue that the Zhaitan fight was good then be my guest.

Just because I did not play everything does not mean my opinion is any less justified or valid when it comes to living story or expansions. There are people who don’t play fractals or who did not play Super Adventure Box (as there probably are people who have skipped one or more of the living story patches) and yet you probably wouldn’t devalue their opinions about the state of the game.

If you looked through the recent stream about PvP map creation, even in passing, or the developer conference presentations about GW2 development and their tools you would know that unless the bug is at the scripting level fixing it is up to people who do not make content but who make what is used to make the content with (ie. their in-house editors) or what it is made for (ie. the game engine). I am also pretty sure that even within scripting they have common ones that can not be easily changed to fix an issue with one of the components that relies on this common script (say a common script for capture points or death recap in PvP) without the change snowballing out of control (in a perfectly designed modular software snowballing can’t happen but in most large real world projects it is a goal to thrive for not a reality).

I don’t know if it still happens but for the longest time there was this bug with multiline text input fields in GW2, that would cause incorrect representation of multiple consecutive EOL’s (one of them would not get rendered until after the fact, but would still be in the actual text, was particularly visible with in-game mails) and I can almost guarantee that no amount of redirecting resources away from content creation would expedite the time in which a bug like this is fixed.

Off-topic: for the record a bug in MS word will probably exist (to end users) longer than in OpenOffice because Microsoft has so many hoops to getting a fix out to end users potentially even delaying them for the next major product refresh. Not to mention that the example you posed is pretty bad (the fact that word random is used, a bug can always be explained with logic after the fact, and randomness in computers is not logical… unless there is a deliberate random or pseudo random element).

Sirendor.1394:

Treborlavok.3504:

biggest mistake they made with WvW was no loot upon leaving… you should never lose out on loot or a chance at loot because you get killed inside a keep, etc. You should automatically get all of the loot you missed upon leaving the worlds and zoning back to LA.

Pop up window, here’s your spoils!

YEP. POP UP, POP UP, POP UP. We need this

They actually used to do this in GW1, when you left a mission unclaimed loot from it would be presented to you in a popup…. not sure if all of it or just some rarity and up. They point is they have done it before, I am guessing the reason why they can’t do it for WvW is the size of the map and the number of players. Depends how their intermediate data is stored but it might potentially result in lot of data being stored for each player if the system was unconditional.

As in people would just never bother to pick up loot normally at all, just wait until waypointing on death or otherwise to claim all loot through the popup. Also waiting until leaving the mists entirely would most certainly increase the time of life of this additional data exponentially when in fact it should only need to be stored not much longer than it would if it was just waiting to collected on the ground (see example below).

Since all loot in WvW drops at your feet, maybe it is possible to present a claim uncollected loot popup upon death, but before waypointing, from a certain radius from your characters position from when he died (would stop situations like the OP at least).

Since there is no competition over loots, a system like the example above would be harmless (since the enemy gains nothing or even knows if he denied you some loots).

It was a poor call to announce matchups in advance… leave the end result up to what happens in-game not outside of it.

Also there should have been some kind of preliminary matches as well the season brought in more activity so it should have been taken into count with the match ups on the actual season games, and the only way to do that is with some kind of pre-season preliminaries, to test the difference from the norm.

Part of the problem is definitely the tech behind it all… stacking is extremely effective way of negating siege damage in a large group… and since there is zero collision between player characters as far as I am aware it is a free way to essentially ignore most siege.

Of course player cast AoE’s are even easier to avoid since their caps are even smaller.

Also the problem with (unintended) splash damage through a doors to prevent repairing (I know there is a mastery ability for a similar effect with launches on something, and that is okay, but it is not really needed now is it) is something that promotes meele’ing a gate in addition to siege, which is just stupid… if you ask me gates like walls should not accept melee damage at all from regular players, because it is counter intuitive. I could understand unupgraded gates taking damage from burning and or blast finishers from players but not from any old auto attacks.

Also when are they going to fix stonemist and move the castle lord back to its original place (why does damage leak through structures at all, ignoring the fact that the floor prop is full of holes, but that is obviously intended aesthetic only, or they wouldn’t have moved it downstairs).

Re: new traits, that probably means re-purposed or replaced traits as well. New PvP game modes were never promised by the end of the year, and PvP legendaries were simply datamined as far as I know.

If individuals could apply I would in a heartbeat (I have a 5 person guild but none of them play anymore sadface.jpg).

Fey Zeal.7032:

Guild Wars is not built on increasing levels or armor stats. I find this a pointless topic to mention.

I did basically imply that most of that was sarcasm (I am pretty sure I even said it), the point was that mainstream has an extremely specific idea what an MMO expansion means as such an expansion might not create the desired outcome of bringing in new players once the internet does its thing (precisely for the reason you stated). Thus a boxed expansion might pull players in once but it wouldn’t work a second time if the usual expectations for an expansion are not met and GW2 expansions end up with bad rep. They have exactly one chance to make a boxed release that will work, and get a real benefit out of it (which is new and returning players far more than existing players currently playing the game).

Boxed releases have the catch that they cost money and are a barrier to experiencing new content. Realistically they can not keep the living world initiative ongoing and have a large boxed expansion, even if they could afterwards this filler content as you called it would be available only to the owners of said expansion. Then we are in the situation where the paywall to play the game at all, for a new player, becomes higher and higher over time unless they do expansions which always include all previous expansions to date. Let’s not even talk about the implications an expansion exclusive profession or set of profession skills would have to the way GW2 handles PvP outside of WvW.

Fey Zeal.7032:

— the game is already a single venture with the exception of dungeons. And that’s not really a bad thing anyway, it’s nice to have a choice.

Actually that is a bad thing, because number of people in an area directly impacts how many events spawn. Which directly impacts a new players experience due to the fact that it seems nothing is going on (launch day week in Queensdale vs now in Plains of Ashford). If GW2 had standard quests then it wouldn’t be such a problem but it does not. Because in traditional MMO’s the absence of other people does not really affect your leveling experience (the contrary even with kill stealing and all that good stuff) like it does here.

Fey Zeal.7032:

Temporary stuff is not going to keep the majority of players’ interests. — If you think anet is going to keep the majority of its fan base with monthly content, when new games start coming out you are foolish.

Expect that it is bi-weekly content especially as of late where the patches two weeks apart haven’t necessarily been having anything to do with each other. Besides the current living story patches that have had permanent additions perfectly demonstrate what would happen if GW2 came out with an expansion that added a bunch of new zones. Only it would be several times worse. Most people including myself seem to have more issue with the subject matter, the pacing of the content and how disconnected some of them seem than how much of it there is or the fact that some of it is temporary… less and less as of recently.

In terms of pure content and features we have definitely had an expansions worth by now… but because we don’t have 5 new permanent zones, three new dungeons one new race or profession or a new weapon for existing ones (or any combination thereof) people don’t see it as such. Which brings us back to the perceptions about expansions that are so vital for its success in the mainstream gaming media.

In terms of story once Anet solves how they are going to handle progression of time in Orr, then we are at a point where we can start talking about dragons again, in my opinion. Besides Zhaitan fight is still abysmal I don’t want another dragon to be like he was. As a matter of fact I haven’t beaten him yet because of all the bad rep Orr got at the time I was ready to move there. I haven’t even set foot or seen the Orr related zones at all (just the Zhaitan fight second hand), when it comes to level 80 zones I am Frostgorge Sound all the way.

So yes you could say so far Elder Dragons did not seem like anything to write home about, for me Personal Story stopped being interesting after Trehearnes vision quest to Orr at level 50 something (I did up to 62 or so afterwards by forcing my self to go through with it… then I stopped). So I am definitely in the camp where new zones and new content but no more dragons if Zhaitan was any indication. Something like the new Teq mechanically maybe… but really I am fine if they went back to sleep.

If I wanted more personal story it would be something similar to what it was up to the end of the Orders arc, because that in my opinion was the point where it stopped feeling personal entirely.

Lirra.5410:

Imho the wvw overflow map should have come BEFORE the season to make sure everyone can play wvw at any time they want.

Agreed, would have also been great for people just doing it for the meta and not the server.

Funny thing is I play on Blacktide, have since launch and from your post I may be at the bottom of the pile (pretty much) but I have seen very few people even bring up the meta in chat and I have had two or three instances of short queues, on one of the four maps (presumably from PvE players coming into the season).

Last week Blacktide was stomped bad but other than that I think I have had more fun than the people in the gold servers right now because the shifts in population, and very unclear rewards. People wanted to transfer just in case for the reward… dunno what they expect precursors for gold and blues and greens for bronze or what :P.

General Feedback

Yes and no, it did what they wanted… rekindle some peoples interest in WvW, at least for a short while, and address the issue of reasonable achievements and AP rewards for WvW players without invalidating the handful of people who actually have achievements from the old category.

The problem with it is… because it is seasonal and by definition temporary any effects it had are also transient in the long run. Sure the golden dolyak finisher will be neat (for a time), but what for the next season… will they just go through different animals or what?

However, I hold a small fear that when those reward chests are opened at the end of this season there will be an angry mob on the internet thirsting for blood… be it because the rewards are too good and PvE players will feel excluded or they are too bad and both WvW and PvE players (who did not skip the meta) will be up in arms for wasting time on the achievement.

I personally think they should have first made Edge of the Mists and used it as a testing ground for new mechanics then integrate the popular stuff to the existing maps where possible… and then do a season. Chances are they will intend to do just that and the first season was just something to give them time to start that process.

They should have encouraged small group play and tactics but I am guessing the achievement system can’t keep track of more than one metric at a time. So an achievement that has condition take over X towers with Y people would not be possible and it would also cause players to shun others who show up to help uninvited.

Also the problem with people in theory being able to pre-emptively transfer to the predicted winner to flag themselves as participant there and then transferring back to their own server to avoid tier 1 queue is really not something that should have been possible.

The Achievements (as metric of participation, and a tool to drive gameplay)

The achievements themselves had some issues, mainly the most solo friendly of them took the longest (aside from supply camps) so it really fed into the zerg mentality to get them done the quickest. Probably also on tier 1 servers they completed the meta within the firs week. When you see people running in a circle quite literally to do the “Master of Ruins” then that is the sign that either the ruins mechanic is not what it is supposed to be or that the achievement should have been different.

For example here is how I would have reworked the ruins into achievements… a set of three and being awarded for reaching a particular level of bloodlust (minor, major, superior) and perhaps one for capturing the ruins as well but being made optional by three extra achievements that actually drive gameplay.. I didn’t like that fact that you only got to pick and choose what achievements to complete if you did the jumping puzzles. There is no choice for those who do not want to do the puzzles which are something entirely not related to WvW except by their meager loot (and in some cases an exercise on refraining from being a troll). More achievements for choice and ones that do not involve gaming the systems but drive useful gameplay.

The only kind of useful achievement, in my opinion, in terms of gameplay quality was the one about supply on repairs, but then why wasn’t there one for defending different objectives in general they have events in the system for those and I don’t think they hand out rewards without actual attackers.

TL;DR: They need better ways to track participation and encourage actually good gameplay styles and devalue mindless zerging, also rewards are very unclear outside the top three placing worlds for each set.

They already did “Zommoros in a bottle” or what most would think when they first see that name. They called it a mystic forge conduit :P.

It would be interesting if this item has an entirely different functionality, or is perhaps story related but short of a MF conduit by different name I really don’t have a clue what it could be.

I can agree that a boxed product for GW2 with additional marketing behind it would benefit the game in more ways that one.

However, a traditional expansion will not benefit GW2 in any way. By traditional I mean 10 or so new character levels (never going to happen, because of power creep issues) and handful of new zones and a dungeon or two.

Why? Because like it or not that model is inherently flawed it only creates ghost towns of old content (which we have already in my opinion) and after a while introduces one of two things, either a skip to 80 scroll or the nerfing of existing content and devaluing any items from that content by result although less so when we are talking about cosmetics which is pretty much all there is aside from the newly added utility of legendaries (and their never to be the second best guarantee).

As much as I want to see new zones and even new continents if they are made available in the traditional ways it will simply thin out the playerbase even more and by proxy feed into some of the other things I mentioned above (although it was not entirely without sarcasm, for ArenaNet that touts on innovation, I really don’t see them giving into those problems).

In short: substantial landmass additions no, more content yes. If they want to add landmass then they will have to do it in a way that does not reduce the original game into essentially a single player venture.

Honestly if they announced an expansion, by that word alone users have certain expectations… ones which ArenaNet might not want to meet (power creep and invalidating existing zones by adding more and more landmass). Or maybe they do… but I don’t think anyone likes seeing content they spend years making be reduced into an empty wasteland by comparison to what came after.

There is a reason why they like temporary stuff and it is not only to keep players coming back for all patches (because if they don’t they miss it) but also to avoid there being more content than the playerbase can populate same reason why they went with rotating activities.

Ulion.5476:

Probably the same reason they can not adjust the wvw achievement. Must be difficult for A-net to put in something that checks previous achievements or changes achievement already earn. That item will enable everyone with the meta to get the correct rewards at the end. Also you should have already put your wvw key in your bank by now.

But the key so clearly states the chests are only sent to people who do complete the meta — so they are already checking past achievements.

Also they have done retroactive meta rewards before, the original achievements for SAB (April edition) had a skin retroactively added to it.

Namely the WvW season meta, the meta achievement gives us a key… however, why is there a key at all? The reward chests are only given out to people who complete the meta after all.

So that means someone somewhere set up a distribution system for the chests that checks for the completion of the meta once the season ends already. So why doesn’t that system simply deliver the chest “unlocked” as is when the time comes. I am also assuming that since the rewards are tiered there are variety of chests or the chest is super smart and has the logic to use different loot tables based on users server.

Alternatively why couldn’t the meta achievement reward us the appropriate chest locked and then once the season ends a similar script goes through and changes all those chests to unlocked ones. Why is the key necessary?

To me it seems that the splitting of it into two separate items will only cause grief for customer support due to lost keys and/or chests.

Matthew Oswald.3082:

There are some pretty exciting cinematics coming in the future…I hope you guys will receive them as well as the Fractals piece.

Yes please, I liked the “old” style of cutscene Ascalon Catacombs had as its intro… if changing to this new flavor makes producing cinematics, similar to the trailer, faster (by comparison) than the hand drawn concept art ones which we have seen all too little of and by proxy means we see more fancier cutscenes that have same spirit as the hand drawn ones… yes please absolutely more of them.

Not only is the trailer an amazing to look at but it feels like a natural advancement of the concept artsy style we have seen before.

Edit: if you ever find that your team has nothing to do… as unlikely as it would be, it would be nice to see some kind of cinematic added to the beginning of every dungeon story mode the first time I saw the AC cinematic most dungeons felt like they were missing something because of a lack of similar intro. So if you now have tech that makes producing fancy cinematics easier.

Interestingly enough the way this content is designed doesn’t actually entirely encourage repeating the end instance (ie. actually injecting the antitoxin). Because after you have done your meta and hybrid related achievements in particular the only reason to climb the tower would be the tri-key chest and champions.

So even if people keep doing the tower content only fraction of them will repeat the hybrid instance beyond a certain point. So the content is not set up in a way that would allow the bar to fill the fastest (which could be calculated thing on their part to prevent the meter from filling too fast if it really is 100% genuine).

ezd.6359:

No. Just % per day until end of event.

You didn’t actually read the first post, did you? Because it pretty much proves that at the very least it is not a flat daily rate (which you imply).

It would not be difficult to make the bar fill automatically in a smart way, based on past player activity data they have to give the illusion of player input. But then without giving them the benefit of the doubt this discussion is pointless.

We sort of know that the next patch will in all likelihood have nothing to do with the tower (the fractal speculation is rampant), same is true for the one after that most likely (Wintersday). So if it is not infact player input at all then the tower should remain unchanged until the second patch in December (assuming there is one, because the current release dates would date that one on the 24th) or change as soon as the next patch… if our speculation about fractals turns out to be false.

So if players are not even a factor the meter should fill either in the next two weeks or by end of December. Because if players have no say in it whatsoever I find it unlikely that ANet would willingly allow three different simultaneous LS patches to be ongoing because that splits the playerbase up toon thin.

Mirta.5029:

Clockwork Chaos had her reveal,

Correct but beyond that there was nothing plant themed about the content itself.

This is speculation on my part but chances are player action is a factor but it is very likely that there is some per-determined side to it as well.

Why? Because they don’t want the meter to fill too quickly otherwise there would be an unpredictable amount of time between when the meter fills and when the continuation of this story thread is scheduled to go live. Of course it is possible that some of it is already pre-developed for this patch so that something is ready to happen the moment it fills up, but depending on what they plan to do in the future it would be extremely bad for pacing if they could not predict when that meter fills (considering all the feedback they are getting for LS pacing in general, I doubt they would gamble on the meter filling too fast).

Just seems like a logistical nightmare if it was 100% up to players, if each patch needs a couple of months development time then that means they have to make sure whoever is responsible for the immediate aftermath of this has either already finished or is close to being finished with that piece of content (or that they have means to artificially slow the progress down if that is not the case).

Nightmare chambers and hybrid are soloable though the latter is much easier in a group.

The trek to the top not so much, and with overflows in the mix it is annoying as hell… when overflows get less frequent it is less likely you will loose your open world group completely when entering the chambers.

Spider queen is doable with around 5 people, don’t know about the wurm, maybe the whole thing is doable with a 5 man group… haven’t tried this. The tower climb is obviously group content though.

This update does a lot of interesting things, the nightmare chambers are a really nice mechanic and same can be said for progressing through the tower with a group. They key phrase being with a group.

Sadly while the nightmare chambers are great mechanically they are also the biggest flaw because when they mix with everyone’s favorite overflows going into one of these mini instances with or without a group causes you to loose the bigger group you were climbing the tower with. Now this is not all bad because it functions as an anti-zerg mechanism during the peak times. However, it also can throw you in an instance of your floor that is barren and climbing solo can be really frustrating when you hit a champion event that you can’t complete to progress (and since those events can not be ignored because of the barriers…).

TL;DR: The tower is a great mix of open world group content and instanced content that can be done in a group or solo (usually). Sadly some of the game systems can cause unlucky players to have a really bad experience because of getting separated from your open world group and not being guaranteed to find a new one.

The erotic undertone is a definite possibility in my opinion, I don’t know much about Kasmeer as a character but considering she is a human noble and Marjory probably isn’t it is pretty obvious that there is more to them than just working relationship. Why else would a human noble be found in a low end town tavern with a shady female like Marjory (ref: Dragon Bash).

If you listen to their dialogue here Marjory can call Kasmeer “krait food” and get away with it and Kasmeer calls Majory by a familiar nickname so at the very least there is very close knit friendship there but to me it seems like something more than that.

I really wanted to see Krait shapeshifting come into play, especially with PvE stomping being the flavour of the month right now. Clockwork creatures had a nice mechanic to their downed state, Krait could have made shapeshifting their unique spice, wasted potential in my opinion.

For general feedback, imo. the healing tome from marjory is overpriced, considering how easy it is to get 25 skillpoints, through champion bags and well just levels in general. For players who aren’t 80 yet it, and don’t have all their skills yet (and thus no surplus of skill points), it might be worth it but for them 5g might actually be well spent for other things.

zeromius.1604:

This mechanic was introduced with the twisted minions. No one seemed to complain back then for some odd reason.

Because if you did not clean up twisted minions the living ones would morph or conbine into new ones it had more significance there. Personally I am indifferent about finishers in PvE as is but the kind of stuff they did with the clockwork creatures was interesting.

It is obviously partly a business decision for permanent finishers in PvE context and I don’t dislike it for that.

Personally what I really would have wanted to see here would have been downed state for Krait with their shapeshifting lore being turned into an interesting mechanic. Wasted potential.

One topic asking for more, another asking for less… personally I am indifferent for this instance. For clockwork creatures they had unique mechanics associated with it here not so much.

I absolutely would have wanted to see Krait downed state with shapeshifting though.

JonPeters.5630:

Edge of the Mists will have a lot of content elements but much less arbitrary than the current maps.

— cut for space —

At least on paper all of this sounds really fun. Now I am not super hardcore WvW player, but I like the concept of it and the open world style of PvP it brings. Mostly because to me WvW as it is right now seems a lot like an overgrown sPvP map, to crudely oversimplify it.

Siege is fun but there is finite number of practical siege that can be deployed at any one time, to put it differently using siege is typically satisfying but the ratio of time you spend running supply/building it versus the time you usually get to use it (if any) doesn’t feel fair to me. This happens with any size of group because you need several people to build a most siege yet only one person can ever man it at any one time. Which is fine, but if you are not playing in a heavily organized way or with friends you tend to feel like you get the short end of the stick more often than not.

I am all for team play, but I guess I am just not motivated enough by passive server bonuses and PPT to feel rewarded for being a good team player. I guess what I yearn for is more “combined arms” battles, as out of place as that term sounds in this context, mixing of siege and infantry/open field combat. The best moments I have had in WvW are moments were both the attacker and defender have a chance and the end result is not foretold (which usually means both players and siege are used). Sadly there is no magic way to make that happen with current WvW mechanics. In a fair matchup in theory this should happen on its own, but that isn’t always the reality.

What I read in above sounds promising to me because it doesn’t sound like it is as reliant on siege, which means there is less moments where I would feel like something that could be replaced with a dolyak. Playing with siege maybe fun but in the end siege mechanics are far less diverse than profession mechanics. The funny thing with siege is that it should be essential in WvW, which it very much is, but it should usually be in a support role not the only thing that matters the most. You don’t make an army with battering rams and catapults alone, they are either supposed to be in either a lead in or support roles, with the exception of tactical nukes. But in WvW I sometimes feel that you don’t need people to take over the keep you need them to be pack mules for the supply to build the siege needed to get into/take over the keep. Once you are in the passive defenses are pushover for even a smaller group, and you only need people to keep a lookout for incoming players, that are the only real threat for you takeover attempt, and take the otherwise mostly average champion down quicker.

I think you could make WvW a lot more interesting for the less populated servers at least if each Keep/Tower/Castle Lord was unique, perhaps with few spares in the roster to rotate and give an element of surprisoe…. make them have more tricks than simple DPS race.

Which is another thing I read between the lines in your post namely diversity, which WvW has none of out of the box, Keeps & co all share the same basic mechanics, supply camps being the only diverging objective. Siege does in theory give tools for player created diversity but more often than not to take a keep or tower the fastest or defend it in the most efficient way that potential for player created diversity in encounters is killed. Only when this efficient routine is thrown off and the encounter becomes unpredictable things tend to work out in a fun and different way.

And to throw in a question, does the map itself have geographical verticality that players can use or is all of the vertical gameplay in structures, like say with the recent re-design of borderlands. To clarify, can players by holding one of the islands potentially lay waste to an island below (or even above) them. Another way to put it would be whether or not this map has potential for territorial warfare beyond the marked capture points and objectives.

The reason why I feel the need for such unmarked territorial warfare is there is because that would give a place to use siege in a way that you can’t put numbers on. What I mean is that with current objectives you can in theory put a number on how many rams and well usually just rams you need to take over a point that is not hyper defended, some times you can trade bring a few arrow carts and ballistas to do it with less people, but the point is there is no places on the current maps where you would want to deploy siege in a free form way. Granted doing it verticality does limit “infantry” options. But on the other hand no opponent is going to let you set up siege to battle for control of an are if they can just run over and destroy your build sites either.

Those that got the gift recipe before this patch (as long as you had the ingredients you could get it at any time, got mine month or two ago) are in luck, still the loadstones alone do not make actually crafting and/or selling (a crafted version of) the weapon worthwhile right now. But hopefully sometime down the line that will change.

The refined Halloween materials are obviously another effort to normalize the amount of Halloween materials in the market. Sadly I think they did not properly consider people who just want to get rewarded for playing the content not through farming or the TP 15k candy corn for 20 slot bag is ridiculous.

The economy needed a material sink particularly for candy corn, but this is very much overkill.

Edit: looking into Mad Moon specifically, it seems to have been incorrectly updated. The requirements for crafting the recipe changed to 100k, but the wiki lists the ingredients used in the recipe the same as the ingredients used to get the recipe. It is unlikely this is correct information.

Rachael Augg.2379:

The only items that changed were the materials needed to combine in the mystic forge to discover the recipes for the Gift of Spiders, Souls and Moon.

The materials needed to craft the gifts from the recipe itself and the items needed to craft the resulting weapons has not changed.

This kind of things make my day, it would only be nice if we could see hints say 2-3 patches in advance not just for the next patch, would add to the mystery a bit imo.

Seeing as Halloween is a lighthearted celebration I highly doubt they will make it the most hardcore content ever. Looking at Wintersday and Halloween from last year they were mostly about random fun things nothing more nothing less.

Long time ago there was a blog post in the old ArenaNET blog about cutscenes and their evolution. Sadly that, along with countless of other amazing posts is no nowhere to be seen. Including the race weeks and all those wonderful short stories.

Looking at it year after launch that is a kitten shame in my opinion, anyways I digress. I really wanted to talk about the evolution of story cinematics with the living story.

I really like the in-engine and in-world story telling that they are doing now, however, at the same time it is strikingly obvious that the tech hasn’t quite kept up with things. I recently played some early personal story stuff and after comparing that to Queens Jubilee in particular (Scarlets jarring speech) I almost wish that they would use the old conversation tech or some combination of these two approaches for two very big reasons.

One, the high detail models and facial expressions are just so much more pleasant to look at than the closeup of the in-game model. Yes with in-engine shots they can do lot of cinematic panning and lot of auxiliary things to set the scene, but if it looks dreadful in comparison I really would rather have the simpler scenes where the tech is more advanced, until they can come up with something to improve the quality of their in-game style of cutscenes. I don’t usually advocate pre-rendered scenes but in this case even having parts of the scene pre-rendered and recorded in higher detail would be better than what we have now, particularly when it comes to closeups. If that is all they can manage.

The second reason is the fact that the in-engine scenes have the limitation that our player characters can never say anything at all, while things are actually happening… even when it would make sense. This further enhances the feeling that we are just tag alongs with no significance whatsoever.

I am really happy that they started to use the concept art scenes like the ones after character creation or at the start of Ascalon Catacombs more with the more recent updates. The noir scene was really well done like was Farens leap of faith as well. These won’t have the problem of not being able to have our characters talk either and they also use high detail models as well. While they lack full motion I still think these are the best type of cutscenes in GW2 hands down. Too bad they obviously take more to make since each art piece has to be drawn by an artist individually, which is why we haven’t seen that many of them. Things like, explosions would look way better if done through concept art than in engine for example, Scarlet’s bombing of DR didn’t feel grand at all (same can be said about Ellen blowing up the ship).

TL;DR: The story telling has improved as the result of the increase of in-game scenes, but at the same time the graphical fidelity, aesthetic and the general level of awesomeness has significantly decreased and our characters have been gagged. Personally I would rather have higher detail scenes and less in-engine shots if the grand scope of events is watered down by technical limitations. With old style at least I could let my imagination run its course now I can not instead things that should feel impactful don’t because the tech can’t deliver right now.

Just a side note, improve the squad/commander system, this will get two camps happier at the same time… giving more tools to WvW people and making squads practical in PvE information distribution and co-ordination, where more precision is needed than in WvW currently.

I don’t like all the overflow problems which is why I haven’t bothered with Tequatl much… However, any overflow created within 10 minutes of the start of an event will have said event. I don’t know if there is a limit to the maximum number or rate of new overflows created but as long as I am present when the bell tolls his arrival you can get into an instance pretty reliably in my experience.

However, it is entirely different story to get into an overflow where beating it is more than a mere pipe dream.

The main problem that creates the fact that you feel like you have to be ready an hour and a half before is because of the dynamic spawn window system… most event notification apps or the sort will ping the event when this spawn window starts and then do so again when the event actually starts. The problem is you can’t reliably wait for the second notification, because people want to reserve a spot on the main server for best chance of success.

I get that ANet doesn’t like “static” spawn timers but for an event such as this, it would be a godsend… allow people to set up and plan their attempt in advance and have it guaranteed to happen, not have to wait for the duration of the spawn window. A static timer on an event this crowded might make some of the other overflow issues more prominent (ie. being moved from queue to queue etc.) and increase the total number of overflows, but it is better because then we’d have more people (ie. those that don’t want to wait for ages).

People need to do a reality check, SAB is probably manned by something like a 3-4 people team… we know it was a smaller team than in April, and the team in April was small as well.

Of course this does not include QA (except the teams QA embed), who of course do not have the ability to create other content anyways. It is not to say that other teams were not involved at all, since obviously music is something that the team probably could not create internally for example… but there is finite number of audio that any content can require at any one time (and SAB this time around has less new tracks than it did in April).

It is kinda funny how strongly people feel about SAB, but the truth is even if SAB was not a thing this past month the content they were developing for Tequatl Rising and Twilight Assault wouldn’t be any different. Same is true for the rest of this years patches actually since each patch has a 2-3 month development cycle.

If you do the math SAB takes approximately 1 percent of their manpower, so you still have 99 percent “content fit for an MMO” being developed. SAB seems like a lot of content and lot of effort but in reality a lot of it is by few individuals, read Josh’s posts for him this a passion project.

Decrypter.1785:

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better.

People need to remember that the last three patches started development 2-3 months ago (features like LFG and wallet have probably been developed separately from these patches as well), which adds up with the time that ArenaNet started saying they would move towards more permanent content, which shows starting from Queen’s Jubilee (invasions), and is followed by, and increased in, Tequatl and now Twilight Assault. Isn’t making existing content better exactly what TR and TA are doing.

SAB really seemed like a patch they used to free resources for these other projects, since it can be mostly developed by a small team (that is like 2-4 people, from the names I have seen thrown around).

As a side note, it also seems unlikely that this patch (Twilight Assault) would be void of any features, which is a section completely missing from the release page as of now… then again we do know that the patch after this one (Oct 15th, I think) will have some features and balance focus so maybe it is the “feature” patch of this next month. There is no rule that the first patch of the month has to be the bigger one after all, now that their four team setup has kicked into gear properly.

Decrypter.1785:

Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think.

Your two examples are vastly different in scope, but let me say this much. Something like Crystal Desert could probably be opened up as a part of living world, especially when they can have things like Halloween and Wintersday etc. now with a bunch of existing content to free resources to that kind of projects.

Cantha on the other hand is not a zone but a continent, realistically even if they stopped doing living world this instant they couldn’t open up something like that for a long while.

We know that designing completely new maps is time consuming, looking at how long partial redesign of one of the WvW maps took (and here they could reuse existing assets for a lot of it). For a completely new “biome” such as desert (or rather a river delta and/or grass plains of some kind now I guess) everything has to be created from scratch or at least retouched significantly to give it an unique feel. Particularly the ambient and hostile creatures in the area are no simple thing — why do you think Southsun has Karka, karka and some more karka in different sizes? This “trick” won’t work for a larger zone.

I can’t wait until I have a legit reason to spam bad jokes with the costume again (not), and maybe just maybe we could get a mad king related combat tonic with a shorter cooldown than then watchknight one.

Also, obviously they are going to try sell permanent scarecrow finishers.

I am also on the mindset that it is more about the skin than about stats, remember ascended weapons are supposed to remain account bound, so if they want skins to be able to be sold on trading post exotic is the go to rarity for several reasons.

One it is is not a skin item so a transmutation stone is needed, and two being an exotic with actual stats it will probably retain its value longer on the trading post than a skin would especially since everything points to this being permanent content. Also for those who like lottery it will in time when all other value is removed work as precursor fodder for the forge (hopefully by that time we have precursor crafting, but if not…)

Zaxares.5419:

Yeah, I noticed it last night too when doing W2Z2 TM. Plus, the arrow traps now have little ridges that make them REALLY stand out. It’s much appreciated.

Those ridges have always been there, if what you are talking about is the same thing I think it is… what they could have done is recolor the red rim around the trap, say to light yellow or orange, so they don’t blend in quite as well with the red wood elements but aren’t hilighted this obviously either with bright spotlights.

I appreciate the added visibility too, even though I know where they are for the most part but the way they did it feels so out of place, and even like a bug if you ask me (green hue “glow” is a graphical artifact I have seen before, for example one of the waterfalls in WvW borderlands maps).

bravoart.5308:

But… Isn’t that what the steam vent wall in the Flame & Frost Molten Facility Dungeon did? Knockback, impeded progression via that path and did damage to anyone interacting with it?

Just speculating here, assuming they did not simply forget that this has been done before.

Perhaps the momentary invulnerability from damage sources inside SAB is global in such a way that they can not remove it for the arrow traps. Thus allowing you to pass through by hitting the trap twice in succession and making that not work because of it if just done like a normal damage source with knockback.

But perhaps, damage source with stun long enough to time out the resulting invulnerability would work… in the end it is pointless to speculate because we don’t now the exact circumstances and compromises SAB does with the engine to do what it does.

They essentially want unobstructed arrow traps to be invisible walls (with damage) I think… which is curious if it can not be done, perhaps it is just the sum of several factors inside SAB.

Doggie.3184:

Yeah his HP resets now if you die. Silent nerf on Frog Fingering

Unlikely, what do you get out of the toad, two (well effectively three) bauble bubble’s a day and two continue coins. Why would that need a nerf… if you can do Trib to frog consistently, Moto’s Finger is hardly going to give you much of an edge there either.

If it is intentional, then more likely it is to prevent rez rushing bosses, but I find stopping that a pointless exercise as well, because All SAB stuff, outside of rare drops from daily chests are account bound afaik, thus not something you can farm for profit reliably.

SAB main bosses have always reset when you enter “Moto Hell”, that should be nothing new…. or do they always reset now?

Toad did not reset for me yesterday at least.

Rising Dusk.2408:

A developer in another thread confirmed that this was not possible within the engine currently, so they opted for an auto-kill.

I believe hey also stated that they would look into making them a lose health+ teleport to previous checkpoint trigger for the next round of SAB as well (thus reducing the amount of lives lost).

The spotlighting doesn’t fit thematically at all… what kind of assassins mark their traps with bright green lights. I sincerely hope they get a programmer support for next time around, so there is no need for so many of these strange compromises (apparently they had none this time, so all they could do was with what the engine let them to do).

insanemaniac.2456:

Crise.9401:

gong temple is still a bit annoying though, but suicide is always an option there.

skip it

I do by killing myself after hitting the cong, skipping the whole thing by jumping on top of the arrow trap to get over it to push the block is no longer possible afaik, after one of these patches.

Edit: or is there a third method to skip it?

I agree with Electro, however, I can see benefits in SAB specific avatars inside the box… mainly that they can do away with the difference between model size and hitbox, or at least make it less of an issue.

The flute is the king. Gatekeeper Lullaby and Shatter Serenade makes zone 2-3, so much easier. Also, the secret where you get the lullaby also gives a really nice shortcut for the end of zone 2 as well.

After getting the flute and finding that shortcut, I think the current round of SAB is way more fun, because it removes most of the truly annoying bits (for me), cong temple is still a bit annoying though, but suicide is always an option there.

In case people haven’t realized The Gatekeeper Lullaby can permanently close any "knockback mouths", however, only one at a time as far as I can tell. Shatter Serenade is obvious, allowing you to skip one of the more annoying puzzles.

Don’t know if this is an artifact or not… but in SAB world 2 zone 2, specific arrow traps are now illuminated by green light (namely the ones in the pushblock puzzle in after the first bell.

I know, that some people including myself thought that the arrow traps blend in the environment little too well. That being said, on my second run through I did not die to arrow traps (modulo cong temple).

This however, is bit ridiculous if you ask me….

Also just as a general piece of feedback, the additional pole/platform prior to the jump pad downstairs is in my opinion more of a death trap than the corner jump. In other words in my opinion the original corner jump is actually easier that using this additional platform, because it is easy to jump just a bit too far, and be stuck between two arrow traps as a result.

Barabbas.8715:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Rocky launch

Difficulty spikes

Inadequate rewards

Can’t farm

Also, I’m bad at the maths.

The difficulty spikes aren’t that bad in and of themselves but that combined with the longer levels do make it feel very tedious at times.

Very true, if you want longer levels go for ones with optional difficulty. If you want difficult levels, go with shorter ones with enough check points.

If you want both difficult and long levels then they should not be a prerequisite for getting to experience the other levels, or they should have one shorter difficult main path and several optional sections with added “optional difficulty”.

bradderzh.2378:

I’m sure it will but that’s not the point. I didn’t pay gems for a part time item there should have been a disclaimer saying this item will not be usable when the SAB gets removed.

Personally, I would buy a gem store item that would permit all round access to SAB in a heartbeat (or would love if the coin did that, even if you can’t farm SAB anymore), but I can see that it would create two problems. Mainly that the content would be perceived as being gated behind a pay wall but also that they would have to maintain SAB consistently (which would apply even if it was permanent without any strings attached) and they could not focus entirely on making improvements for the next round of it.

Somehow SAB strikes me as a content type that would be difficult to maintain by people who didn’t create it because it is so different in terms of the rest of the game and probably has to do many things in an unnatural way compared to normal maps. So I think the recurring nature of SAB probably means that they can do more with less than if it was open all year around.

Edit: still when all four worlds are done, a personal access to SAB through ones home instance or some such area would be nice.

I hope that what we get in the future is either a bunch of different paths (of varying difficulty) through the levels with different achievements tied to going through them.

Alternatively levels that have lot more secrets or nooks and crannies to otherwise explore and find. Look at what was added to Zone 3 of World 1 (the area you need the glove for) for examples. Although, that feels a bit incomplete. However, the point is that it is not required to go through the level yet is a major part of the level still. That zone also already has several ways to get from point A to B as well, more of that would be nice.

About the icicles, get the flute and learn the song to make them go bye bye a bit of a chore but worth it definitely.

If you think baubles are a chore, then you must have missed all the pumpkins/snowmen/pinatas/sky crystals. I agree that not being able to track progress and it only being awarded at the end is annoying. But, really SAB achievements are one of the better achievement sets we’ve had. Also because there are no cheap tricks you can use to complete them like guesting or zoning on overflows.