Guild Wars 2

One of the BWE’s had karma and exp rewarded for doing personal stories with friends, guess ANet did not like the idea of people rotating personal story quests and then leveling up that way.

Or it was just a bug, because obviously if you accept story progress when you are doing exact same story step than a friend yourself, then you are supposed to get rewarded even now.

Volatility.6729:

I find it extremely difficult to believe a PUG can successfuly out DPS the spawn rate in the kiting room. This is why you need to test these types of changes and fine tune them prior to implementing them. Unless the intention here was to turn dungeons into a super-coordinated raid-like encounter?

Here is a quote from ANet blog: “The story mode of a dungeon, while challenging, should be survivable by a typical group of adventurers. The explorable mode, on the other hand, is set up to be a challenge worthy of an organized group of experienced players who coordinate their attacks.”

Organized group, with co-ordination does not spell PUG to me. Also: http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/eric-flannum-expect-explorable-mode/, and before you get caught up on the statement about wiping, remeber this is a group with two press members.

I am not the OP.

Edit: removed pointless and repetitive comment

ANet, in their manifesto, said that there would not be grind to get to the fun stuff… so for all the people complaining here their fun is only derived from that one instant when you get your prestige gear and then there is no more fun for them appearently.

You do realise there is literally nothing, beyond sPvP and WvW, after you get your legendary and/or dungeon sets. The fun stuff, as they put it, should be the process of getting the reward not the reward itself. So I see no problem with them slowing down the rush to these rewards… they are trying to not make people have to grind but people grind anyways, and when they say slow down people complain.

It could also be said that, the grind to legendaries and dungeon armors does not get you anywhere, because there is no statistical gain from the grind, you don’t have to grind for the stats, if you choose to that is your prerogative. You can get everywhere in the game without a grind, you can access/experience all types of content without a grind (the fact that explorable modes are hard as nails was advertised prior to release so that is in the clear).

Also grind is repeating same thing monotonously over and over again, an individual dungeon has 3 paths, if you don’t want to alternate between different paths to eliminate the grind then that is again your prerogative and ANet is doing the correct thing in trying to incentivise you to not grind (now whether these paths are different enough is always up for debate). The dungeons are also dynamic, like the troll in AC for example.

Their statements do not imply that grinding should be impossible or nonexistent, just that it is not a requirement for you to experience the entirety of the game.

Hellkaiser.6025:

Crise

the very, very first part of that wall of text, basically agrees with what the op said, it is protecting the game from the players

vision of the game =/= the game

protecting it from the players is what they did, and to the detriment of the enjoyment of the game given that they were overtuned instances anyways

Yeah I do agree with what the OP said (I would have worded it differently), just not what he implied… I think it is fine for a developer to protect their vision. I am a software developer myself and unless someone pays me to realise their vision I will protect my own vision and principles. Last I checked the community is not paying ANet to realise their vision, they are paying ANet for a game to play, which is a vision of ANet developers, in other words they are paying for that vision, not for the right to mold ANet’s vision and realization of said vision into what they like.

The game doesn’t center around a hardcore player, however, this particular type of content (explorable dungeons) does… which was said over and over again pre-release. The game doesn’t even center around dungeons per se, some may say it does because of how Orr is… and I have no comment on that because I am deliberately avoiding Orr (because I can).

I derive enjoyment in different things than many of the people making their points here for sure, but if you enjoy non-stop dungeon running, aren’t there plenty of games that actually force you into that already? If you don’t there are plenty of things for you to do still.. and get statistically the same rewards elsewhere.

If you really want that dungeon set, yet don’t want to repeat the dungeon, then consider whether putting up with the way the dungeons are is justified by how much you want that look.

If you read my post I say this: The way dungeons are right now is blatant indication that the core idea is not that you grind non-stop for a month for your set, or earn money through dungeons. You go out there, do other things, collect money to cover the costs of your dungeon runs and over long periods of time you work towards the long term goal of getting the visual dungeon gear you want.

That, for me works more than fine, not paying monthly just to keep my account allows me to play that way… for me getting there fast or being among the first is of no value, I enjoy the content for the contents sake… which is why I may do reruns periodically such as I may rewatch a tv series or read a book again. If I find a set I like I may also invest time into it, but thus far I am perfectly happy with just being on a level playing field with gear obtained by other venues.

There are short and long term goals in the game, prestige gear is obviously not inteded to be a short term goal… which to me means it is expected to occupy people for more than a month.

Edit: tl;dr… of sorts, the game is not designed to be played with a tunnel vision, there are plenty of things in there, the content is there, diversify and work towards your goals while you are at it.

More like they had a vision and that did not include players reaching their dungeon armors or legendaries in 2 weeks. They want players to play the game the way it was intended to be played.

If there are ways to play the game in ways that they did not intend it to be played then they have all right to do something about it, now the things they may have done may be hasty and drastic… perhaps even untested (this we can not be sure of without confirmation, one way or the other), the point is, they really did not have the time to go through a deep planning process for this, a crack in the dam needed to be plugged, so they did.

Now we wait, if they are happy with their repairs nothing will change if not it will, couldn’t be more simple than that.

This is essentially same thing as someone who said something like this: “We [ANet] made a game, and now we have to make sure you play our game the way we want you to” which I would correct into “… you play our game the way it was intended to be played”.

This is all comparable to the complaints about renown hearts not giving enough XP that some have voiced, if you do the math, renown hearts are less than 20% of the leveling content (in terms of EXP), which is blatant indication that the game was not designed to be centered around those hearts. The way dungeons are right now is blatant indication that the core idea is not that you grind non-stop for a month for your set, or earn money through dungeons. You go out there, do other things, collect money to cover the costs of your dungeon runs and over long periods of time you work towards the long term goal of getting the visual dungeon gear you want.

Also, I don’t know what people do with the loot that drops in dungeons, from mobs and chests, do they not count it as a reward from dungeon runs when you sell, to a vendor, or salvage it. ANet doesn’t stop you from running dungeons non-stop if you want to, they are just making it so that you have to diversify… and they are making a point that dungeons are not for money making, they are for the visual gear which is not intended to be farmed in a month. They want to encourage the player not to step in the same dungeon for a while, so it doesn’t get quite as old quite as fast…. they are not locking you out but they are doing their best to get that point across, if you don’t want to follow then don’t but also do not complain.

ANet designed the game, short of NCSoft and stock holders coming and saying they have to do something about this, they are entitled to doing what they want to make players play the game the way it was intended to be played in their mind. Alternatively they can listen to the community but that is their prerogative. They are financially responsible only to their stock holders and NCSoft, and if they say something then their hand is forced but short of that it is their game to do as they wish.

Adam Baum.6170:

I’ve had trouble trying to level to 25 with my last character. There are few people around and no events popping up. Once in a while an escort event happens. I’ve done hearts in three 15-25 zones to get to 25.

This is in contrast to the first two characters I took to 25. Plenty of people around, events all over the place, fun experience. I have 5 characters I have been leveling. I’ll play one for a few levels and try out another one. To get a feel for the ones I like, etc. I was hoping the fast travel system would bring more people to an area. You know, moving people around to populate an area.

I would like to see more experience earned for doing hearts, enough to get to the max level in that zone. Less experience for doing DE’s. Right now you have to do them to level, but if they don’t pop up… then what? I’ve been fast traveling around on the map trying to find something to do but that gets expensive.

For me DE’s = fun. Doing hearts = not so much fun… go kill a bunch of wolves and the heart lights up.

Hopefully they will be able to do something to bring more people together in a single area so DE’s spawn.

They probably will not increase the xp from the hearts because it caters to the shoppinglist mentality. Hearts were added as a mechanic to mark areas with most DE activity, whether that is working as intended I don’t know but that is the design.

With the large amount of stalling events no doubt there will be problems, but getting around them does not fix them. DE’s are supposed to be the core content of the game and personally I’d prefer they fix the problems with events rather than make them the optional content.

I also find that favouring walking over waypoints usually leads to better rewards than gunning for dynamic events in different areas by fast travel.

Trollocaust.7196:

Unless you specifically gear up to have as much HP as possible, 15-25k HP isn’t achievable.

Actually it is, without any traits allocated at all level 80 thief has 17k hp, if you stack toughness and vitality you get ~20k (sigils, runes, and base equipment: sPvP presets which does not impact hp).

CoF is 75 right, so unless you telling me that 5 levels is worth of way more than 3k hp, since you are getting nowhere near that, then your statement does not add up.

Does it refund it directly or through the pickup mechanic?

There is also an event in one of the Shiverpeaks zone’s where an NPC says to meditate on a shrine, and if you don’t talk to her there is no way you are going to figure out that it wants you to kneel in front of the shrine, with an emote, which triggers the event.

And yeah, rare events are most failure states right now because many events do not fail at all.

That DE, I can’t be positive… because it has been so long, but I am pretty sure it is labelled as a group event.

With a level 70-80 toon it is possible to solo some group events, depending on the number of adds and their properties, in the 1-15 range. However, even then it is no pushover because of the scaling mechanic.

That alone should be enough to tell that events with the group event label are really not intended to be possible for solo play, same applies to anything that involves a champion mob (golden ring) usually.

klarkc.3754:

Crise.9401:

Just something worth pointing out, according to their press release ANet is using/used middleware solution to accelerate the creation of their Mac client… I am unaware of such solutions for linux at the moment.

Wrong, Transgaming are working with Cedega: http://gametreelinux.com/

The only thing the press release mentions is Cider, which is not the same thing as Cedega, it shares some of the same tech but that does not mean the work they do to get GW2 running through Cider is universally applicable to Cedega or the current versions of Wine.

Actually, there is one instance where the dialogue choice affect cinematic… in the first whisperer’s mission for asura, before joining the order, I think, the dialogue option chose (ferocity/charm/dignity) does affect the conversation cinematic that follows.

Not much of a branch and so far the only instance where a voice acted cinematic was seemingly affected by my conversation choice (that wasn’t a major story branch marked by those triangles).

Presumably my Asuran toes clipping through my basic leather boots does not count?

importune.7120:

Because then people wont waste their time running a dungeon for nothing.

Why would ANet care if you waste time in the game or not, whether you play 6 hours daily or six hours in one week that does not make them any more money. You are not paying for time in this game.

The grind for legendary weapons and dungeon sets is simply there because they won’t want everyone and their mother with that (cosmetic) gear in a month. Also, hard locking content is counter productive because maybe, just maybe there is someone who plays the content for the content’s sake. So they leave in the possibility to run the content for those who want to run it anyways.

Nepocrates.3642:

So sometime I feel there is an issue but time like this morning everything felt fine. Could it be that DEs are just breaking and a server reset or patch may fix it?

There are plenty of broken events, which of course will stall any events tied to that broken event, for sure but it is not just that… there are events that only run during certain time of the in-game day and night cycle for example, just to add one to what I already mentioned above.

Why post to specifically add this… I recall from pre-release discussion that there was an event that was added to the game and then month later someone in the company asked if it was just recently added to the game, turns out they just hadn’t encountered it because it only ran in that zone and only at night.

The point is, it is also possible that you get unlucky. Although it is certainly possible that being in a sparsely populated zone affects the amount of events you see, because an individual event takes longer to complete and even direct follow up events may have minute or more of a gap between them when the NPC’s run to stage their discussions or whatever, or they may have to run a relatively long distance. But on the contrary in a zone brimming with people you only ever see events in their ultimate states of success, which means that potentially you could also see a greater variety of events in a more sparsely populated zone.

Rewards are handed out whether event succeeds or fails, so if you think you can’t make an event complete successfully alone just hop in anyways you get credit for it and will still see the potential failure follow up regardless. Also some events do have partial success states.

For example an event where bandits are trying to blow some pipes up not letting them blow every one, but only some, of those pipes will give the event succeeded message, but still you might get a follow up to repair what was blown up… if they managed to blow up everything and the event failed the follow up might be different (this example is from Queensdale, but no doubt similar conditions are used in other events as well).

Synchronized day and night cycles also get my vote, I will not usually leave overflows unless I am grouped, because that is usually guaranteed to be in different stage of the cycle than the main server… when moving from zone to zone it is not as noticeable for me but if I pay attention to it then it does annoy me.

Just something worth pointing out, according to their press release ANet is using/used middleware solution to accelerate the creation of their Mac client… I am unaware of such solutions for linux at the moment.

However, the point is, because the middleware they are using is aimed at Mac OS X portability of games I doubt the point about Mac and linux being similar platforms holds water here, unless the middleware in question supports linux as well, which based on the website of the mentioned company it does not.

Edit: http://transgaming.com/cider

Al Zheimer.2305:

Again, if you actually read my post you’ll see that I already accounted for that.

I wasn’t replying to any post specifically, if I had I would have quoted it.. my choice of words was poor on the avoid… but avoid does not necessarily mean nullify or negate entirely, you are avoiding damage even if you only avoid half of it.

To reply to your post specifically, reducing fall damage any more than 50-75% seems overkill, you can do some pretty daring jumps with just the trait alone (50%). Also falling damage is a gimmick as it is since dying from it does not actually accumulate death penalties (beyond waypoint cost and the treck back, which I admit at 80 might seem worth it to try an avoid).

The only place where I really want to get rid of fall damage is sharkmaw caverns “slide” in lion’s arch, because when you are going down you can take individual fall damage on the way even though there is water at the bottom (I suppose avoiding that is part of it, but it is really the only instance where falling damage has been any significance to me). Another instance may be WvW, but you don’t pay a fee for dying there form fall damage at all, not even to waypoint to spawn so I even end up using it as a way to avoid repair bills if I am overwhelmed near a cliff.

To OP, you might want to change the topic title on this, addressing ANet or a specific employee in topic title is not allowed as per their code of conduct (they refer to it as employee call outs as I recall).

Ballistic Tomato.3908:

ill add an “i agree” to this.. i don’t see why any given zone can’t have at least 2-3 events going on at any given time at its various sides.. you know there isn’t enough events when the last part of the daily achievement i manage to complete is always the 5 events.

For the record simultaneous events are a thing, they do happen. However, the zone map will not show every event to everybody. Then there are not so obvious event triggers like a shrine which you do an emote at and it spawns an event as a result if the prerequisite is met. There are also seemingly unrelated events that depend on each other failing or succeeding.

Not to even get started on the “everything always succeeds” issue.

I might be wrong but I recall in a beta, or perhaps a tradeshow build, it was possible to avoid falling damage that way.

They considered it a bug and fixed it, so I doubt it would be reintroduced (also each class has a fall damage trait that you can invest into, this would make that obsolete).

Just logged into forums, and saw this where the dev tracker is:

Sigue al desarrollador ¿De qué habla el equipo de ArenaNet?

I suppose it is worth to mention that the rest of the forum remains in english (as denoted by the used address, forum-en.guildwars2.com)

Edit: seems to have resolved itself, but it did persist for ~3 page views.

nerva.7940:

the hearts were put in just to get us started. i foresee GW2’s future content being heavy on the DE’s.

Same, already we can see that the hearts get more sparse as you go to higher level areas and an individual scout will mark less and less hearts in the comparison to the early zones as a direct consequence.

You said it has been that way for over 30 levels, that would mean your experience changed around Gendarran Fields… I did 100% completion on that zone both in BWE’s and in live, and while there were repeated events there were also events that I saw during one run through and not the other.

If we take the zone south of lion’s arch (bloodtide coast) there are some seriously hilarious dynamic events in that zone, but some do require another event to successfully complete to trigger (please refer to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Gb6uZzoTE for one of the more hilarious examples)

I guess it should be mentioned that the zones are not necessarily the last two, there is a 70-80 zone up north that has hearts, so from pure leveling standpoint it is not needed for one to ever go into a zone without hearts.

If you only go through the zones your story takes you to you won’t see all of it, you will probably have at least 2-3 zones you have not visited (may vary based on story choices but for me, I never went to the northern higher level areas as part of mine for example).

Lonami.2987:

The Shatterer and the Shadow Behemoth die, so that excuse isn’t really valid.

Well, I don’t know about Shatterer (because he is, well unique, based on something individual that presumably lived once), but Shadow Behemoth is something that I could imagine being able to be reproduced by whoever is responsible for the first one (the name is certainly generic enough, same as the Jungle Wurm in the sylvari starting area).

The key difference is, an Elder Dragon is unique, there can be only one, of each… all these others are something born somewhere, either from the power of said Elder Dragons (directly or indirectly) or as a part of a species (mutated by the elder dragons or something to that effect etc).

In any case, it all comes down to the fact that according to ANet’s original manifesto, I highly doubt they would want the player to feel like: “hey, I just killed that guy 3 days ago” of course in practice it will still happen, but Zhaitan is iconic and while we can re run dungeons, that is immersion broken by player choice, not by the game just spawning the games big bad, unannounced, that you already beat.

Edit: on the Shatterer subject, according to wiki, that is his rank not his name.

Reqnine.6394:

However I do see arena nets thought process that economy can win/loose wars etc. Maybe the currency should change to using supply to repair, buy siege items and upgrades instead of using silver.

WvW and PvE share the same economy, quite literally, while sPvP has no real economy at all.

While I do not like repair costs in WvW, the argument that because we pay gold for siege weapons, (keep) upgrades and repair is offset by the fact that you typically generate more income in WvW on average so the potentially increased death count is not a factor. Right now some people say that WvW is more efficient way to level up and gain money and karma on a reasonably active server. Presumably the reason why this is the case is because in a day long match investing into more costly upgrades or siege weapons was not worth it.

Though only speculating, I doubt ANet wants WvW to be more efficient way of playing the game, just that the extra income has to account for the extra expenses an average player would have… ideally they probably want WvW to eat the gold it generates as much as possible to avoid people gravitating towards WvW in hopes of personal gain and thus causing slow but sure inflation in the ingame economy as a whole.

For your suggestion on using supply as a WvW currency it would only work if each keep had a set of Supply vendors for those services that would collectively charge that keeps supply depot because players can’t move large amounts of supply or otherwise carry it around.

Well… the thing is dynamic events involving Zhaitan are probably not there for the sake of immersion. Right now, Zhaitan dies from what I understand (to be fair, I am intentionally avoiding Orr on my current characters as much as possible), so he can not be directly present in DE’s because then it would be inconsistent for players who already beat Arah.

So, to put it differently, in order for Zhaitan to be directly a part of any Dynamic Event (which I would like), he can not ever die completely, only be wounded and recover. It’s the same reason why most world boss dragons, fall into sea or some other thing as such, so that we can not see what happens to their body, so that they can be back later.

I thought I might just put this out there, but for example when I play thief for me stealth is nothing more than condition removal and/or buffs and a way to control aggro, yeah 3 seconds (base) is not much, but when that is all you need for endurance to regen, well that’s all you need (with the trait that returns endurance faster).

For me thief is not about being stealthy, but being slippery and generally always having something in reserve in case something doesn’t go as planned.

This is not a very well fleshed out, however, I wanted to post it anyways.

I think WvW should reward people more for managing the second resource of WvW better (in other words people). What I mean by this is that 10 people taking a keep from 5 defenders should be rewarded more than 30 people who do the same.

In reverse, 5 people defending a keep should get more from it than 15 people defending a keep (the difference in example numbers is because defenders have a natural advantage of keep walls… siege weapons work for both sides).

Feel free to substitute keep for control point. I don’t know if this is done at present, but it certainly does not look like that. Zerg trains are way too common on some servers (trains, because many like to run on roads in a line).

The point is by rewarding for smart allocation of the most valuable resource of personnel perhaps it will encourage people to learn to play strategically over using the non-strategy of strength in numbers and circling Eternal Battlegrounds taking points only to loose it 2 minutes later. I believe this could emphasize planning and co-ordination in pug’s and even inter guild and result in better matches for everyone.

I know this is a non-issue in some of the high ranking servers where no doubt server pride does more than enough. However, realistically not everyone who would want to be on those kind of servers can get on them. If your world versus world population primarily consists of disjoint guilds and public players fostering that kind of co-operation is also not something that few people can pull off no matter how much they want to.

I also support this, if you play a weapon set focused on ground targeted skills this could significantly increase your APM, normalizing it with other weapon skills that still fire regardless of “out of range”.

Easy, call a target on a mesmer -> add target marker to all “entities” player and clones alike and place the actual target on whichever is closest, updating when necessary.

The only problem is hard targeting, not sure how it behaves right now, for example for the the skills that create a clone where you are at and move you (what happens if you had the mesmer targeted when the skill was cast).

Not sure if what I propose would be considered overpowered, but in my opinion, a player should have to use their human mind to distinguish the clone from the real player not a game mechanic (that wasn’t designed for it, optionally add a counter mechanic to illusions, but don’t allow an unrelated system to break them).

The so-called holy trinity is a brain child of a certain kind of game design, a game design that supplemented the lack of smart AI, the inability to adapt to players actions, with a mechanic that can be described with threat = aggro, every action has a threat score, and the player with highest threat became the target.

From that came taunts, that have an extremely high threat score, whoever first introduced them probably intended them to be used as a way to pull an enemy away from a dying team mate. I find it hard to believe the initial design document for the threat system included the concept of one player keeping an enemy always attacking him consistently and never touching the players that are actually hurting it.

Holy trinity was born out of efficiency, while it is necessary to do damage, heal and have some degree of positional control in all encounters, only once players started playing the threat mechanic and abusing its lack of adaptability in pursuit of efficiency the trinity formula as it exists today was born, and many games have since adopted it.

But segregated roles, that you would be stuck in, were never a requirement for a fun encounter, just as min maxing for one of those roles wasn’t. The players did it out of efficiency because of the gear treadmill and the eternal game of catchup that formed.

In a sense, the traditional holy trinity that has now become one way of designing an MMO, even a norm to some, was originally nothing more than exploitation of a limited AI. Holy trinity is not based on three roles, as some would say, it is based on the tanks ability to glue enemies to himself, what the other people do in a trinity setup is also based on it, because a trinity fight is predictable, you end up with rotations and dps meters etc. Take that predictability out and yes there will be chaos, until people find the most efficient way to deal with the lack of taunts, fortunately that is not based on group composition, due to lack of burst heal profession, but on positional play (although with enough players, AoE spam for the win is sad but true… “fighting” the keep lord in WvW is such a sad event).

Ganadorf.3460:

I think they made the zone to be underwater, then decided that since no one likes underwater content, they made it land level, and then wrote the lore around that

Someone might have already pointed this out, but that piece of lore existed in GW1, so what you are suggesting is not only false, but also completely impossible, because GW2 did not even exist as a concept back then.

When Orr was made part of GW2, it had to be brought up from the ocean, which is the event that the whole Zhaitan lore center’s around (also allowing the remake of Lion’s Arch).

For the record, I have a level 70+ toon, and I have not set foot into most 60+ zones with him, Orr, or the high level zones are not a requirement for leveling in any way.

For the point about waypoints being contested, that is kind of the point, it is a game of push or be pushed. If you don’t push the undead back, Orr is horrible place, if you do accessing Arah becomes much easier, and the more co-ordination the easier it is.

Some people have, rightfully so, described Orr as PvE version of WvW (minus deployable siege weapons and supply). It should be played in that way, Orr is not a solo friendly zone by any stretch of the imagination. But there are plenty of other zones to spend time in, including but not limited to another 80 zone up north. The content in this game does not expire, you only unlock more of it, then you can make a choice of either play it or play something else, it is unlocked either way. Just like I made the choice not to go into Orr, with my current character.

Orr can be a very different experience, have too few players there and it becomes tedious or have too many and it degrades down to defend X, defend Y etc. If the zone has the right number of active people the ebb and flow of the zone is natural and you will have diversity because the control of different points shifts, rather than being stuck in either end.

From what I understand, the system is not only there to prevent botting, but it is there to encourage the playerbase to move around. In other words, while the “loot cap” is in effect on zone X, you can go to zone Y and farm mats in the meantime (with more than one zone for most if not all level ranges this is not an issue).

This was discussed recently in GW podcast, and the way it (according to them) works is that it kicks in if you spend too much time in a single zone. While the system may not be perfect it has the effect that players in the level 80 zones can’t just sit there day in and day out, or at the very least have to move between the two zones… it means that the zones in theory are less likely to remain stagnant in terms of their DE’s when players have incentive to not stay and keep events stuck in a certain state.

I have had many similar experiences and it indeed is jarring. For one, there is no reason to scream if you safely land in water, besides you can’t (or shouldn’t be able to, as it may be) even scream underwater :P

I agree with anything that gives the mobs a sense of wits. Right now many a time have I thought how stupidly the opposition acts. Great ideas from OP.

There is an artificial loot cap, stay in one zone too long and you gradually get less good loot, until only eventually getting nothing but vendor trash.

Khemizt.5104:

But regardless it’s pretty clear these zones are quite unfinished…

Just a quick thing to note, dynamic events as a content structure have a “flaw” that also happens to be one of their selling points. Get stuck in a 70-80 on a server with no organized playerbase to keep at the tug of war game, to keep the dungeon open and (easily) accessible, the progress through the zone becomes slow. Get stuck on a server where these zones are always brimming with people and the zones (from what I have heard), revert to a tedium of defend X, defend Y defend Z.

I suspect the above is one of the reasons why there is 2 level 80 zones, to be fair though dynamic events are at best with not too few and not too many people around. The chance of failing an event should always be realistic, right now outside middle of the night when all europeans are sleeping for example, it is not really there. US has it worse because they have Oceanic people playing when most of them sleep. This can be seen as early as in 15-25 zones. First you have to fail to hold the centaurs back to even see the other half of the event pool (Kessex Hills).

There is really no relation to hearts (or lack thereof) whatsoever. Unfortunately the zone caps allow too many people in one instance (main or overflow) of the zone. If they were lower the experience with events would be better, because zerging would be less efficient, but people would hate it due to “constantly” being on an overflow.

I personally prefer sticking to overflows every now and again just so I can play in a zone with less people in it.

Khemizt.5104:

I’m sitting with 64 unspent skill point?

I can answer to that at least, speak to Miyani, or whatever in Lion’s Arch, skill points are a currency. For endgame “crafting” you can get a variety of “Mystic” items through it, superior siege weapons etc.

Once you reach 80, you will keep earning skill points through “level ups” still, just that the number and base stats no longer change.

Also, like was pointed out, there is usually a choice in where you want to level, more often than not there are at least 2 zones for each level range (that said the ranges don’t always match 1:1, compare queensdale to metrica province for example 1-17 vs 1-15).

For the record, I am level 70 on a character right now, and I have not even touched a 60-70 zone with him. I have done perhaps 2 out of the 5 so called starting zones, besides that I went where the story took me and completed a few things with a friend. I don’t consider that I in any way leveled faster than intended or grinded for XP/events, I simply experienced a bit of everything.

For the record, 2 crafting professions are worth 20 levels of XP, if I recall correctly, and crafting is not exactly what I’d call tedious in this game.

paultimate.8790:

Crise.9401:

Well even vendor price +1c nets a loss to the seller, so what you propose would only inflate that loss, while practical as a gold sink, people really shouldn’t sell vendor price + 1c on TP to begin with.

Its not upto you what the reasons behind why people would sell it for less than vendor cost. Not everyone has a pal merchant following them around 24/7. Time is money, and it takes time to take a WP to a merchant and then trek it out back where you were. And if youre 80 and take a WP youre out 1.5s ontop of this.

The feature does nothing good for anything and all arguements to keep it rely on policing the lazy into WP around, and at 80 that is very unfun and unprofitable.

So, you are really saying there are not enough merchants, not that we should encourage people to adopt the habit of selling things at a loss. I don’t have a pal merchant with me, anymore than anyone else, but to be fair, I don’t get pains for trashing cheap stuff or salvaging it and hitting deposit collectibles.

Also why would selling things at an even greater loss ever encourage people to buy more of X to begin with. Dirt cheap prices will not generate infinite demand. +1c is worthless when a single dynamic event gets that many times over.

How about keeping the trading post as a trading post, not a supplement of a trash can that generates diminishing returns, for a third party. If you don’t want the vendor price for an item, then trash or salvage it.

It is a monetizing mechanic for the game, keys are not terribly common in the game outside of gem store, but they are there. There is always the currency exchange feature, turn gold to gems (the second tab from the top) -> get keys.

And to be fair it makes sense for the black lion chests to be gem tied, considering you get gem store items (including buffs, services etc) out of them, plus tonics and some unique buffs that I doubt you can directly buy with gems.

Black lion salvage kits are one of the better things you can get out of them. You can also get more them keys from them as well, the next best thing is probably repair canister.

You don’t need a pick when you can grab the key for gold, indirectly (hey no one said it would be cheap to do the gold route, but cheaper than throwing real money there).

Well even vendor price +1c nets a loss to the seller, so what you propose would only inflate that loss, while practical as a gold sink, people really shouldn’t sell vendor price + 1c on TP to begin with.

I am all for it, just don’t try to incorporate it into the story line of the existing dungeons, but have a mini story just pertaining to that dungeon.

Excellent point, especially because in such cases the costs of fast travel to the zone alone eats several events worth of coin. To be fair I get the decrease in XP it is obviously to give incentive for players to move to harder areas and not camp the easy events in Queensdale or what not, but currency rewards should scale more. Especially notable when trying to get world completion for 1-15 zones for other races at the 70-80 range.

These have been mentioned elsewhere, but In Kessex Hills the meta event in relation to the Fort is usually stuck at the “centaurs are driven back” -> the heart at the fort becomes tedious to complete.

Same thing in Diessa Plateau, the meta event in relation to the Flame legion base with a heart near it, this heart being literally impossible to complete if players are holding the entrance to Incedio temple (that is what it was called I think).

The difference, however, is that in Kessex Hills the problem is at the start of the chain (ie. the heart is easiest to fill when the fort is under siege, which I consider the start because an empty zone would revert to it), while in Diessa Plateau it is at the end so the heart is eventually doable if you are there when they are trying though often still failing to reclaim their camp.

A topic with a fairly similar discussion is here. It is centered around a potential solution though.

I still want to repeat myself from there and chime in though, currently the centaurs in Kessex Hills for example feel extremely stupid, trying to repair the bridge over and over again when it obviously doesn’t work with the amount of players there. Same hardheadedness manifests in the example from Diessa Plateau very often.

However, beyond the difference in problematic hearts the chain in Diessa Plateau has a carrot at the end which will distract players from persistently holding the flame legion camp, nothing like that in Kessex Hills though. So in that sense the Diessa Plateau one is much less problematic chain, although the said carrot at the end would be a great place to farm loot, until the artificial loot caps kick in.

To be fair, I would love “holiday” events on the level of the beta finale events (perhaps excluding the legendary bunny, while it was fun the two others were way more epic).