Guild Wars 2

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Is Thanksgiving even celebrated outside North America?

We use to celebrate when we killed a lot of the indigenous population. They were pretty thankful they didn’t all get killed. Does that count? :P
Although they changed it to Heritage Day.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

adormtil.1605:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

You face Branded in the ogre plot line.

Well that is my point that was another elder dragon that hurt our friends not a Zaitan. What reason did we had then to go against Zaitan?
We should have went against the elder dragon with a very complex name.

Zhaitan attacked Claw Island and killed your mentor – who by that point was a good friend to the PC (ability to show this questionable).

And if you’re charr, human, or sylvari you had even more dealings (Rissa/Howl, Kellach, Mazdak respectively), and if you went to help the hylek even more.

And lets not forget Zhaitan also directly attacked the Headquarters of the Orders, which led to the formation of the Pack and largely to the focus on Zhaitain.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

There was a thread on this a long while back. The figures haven’t really changed all that much since then though. The end consensus was the charr being highest population in continental Tyria, but humans likely still having the highest population in the world.

I thought the conclusion there was that although the Charr likely have the largest total area in continental Tyria there numbers are limited by their largely carnivorous diet i.e. you need more farm land to raise cattle than grow plants.

Honestly the entire system of limiting how many parties you can join is… well I don’t see why it exists. The fact that the penalty time constantly increases… well very horrible for when you want to taxi into a map (and constantly get full LFG groups). For example I’m writing this post while waiting for my LFG to become enabled again so I can get into DS.
More specifically though (since this is the bug forum) the client side checks are exceptionally annoying. You see when I click the join button and in that second to get a response from the server the party was already filled I obviously don’t join the party, but I still get treated as though I had joined the party (so I assume this is just a client side check which doesn’t remove from the tally when the server responds that the group is already full).
So basically go into the click event for the LFG join button and (ideally strip out the whole annoying anti-brute force code) and at least implement a system that doesn’t penalise people for not joining groups.

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

But it would be a great way of punishing large guild and systematically ensuring that large guilds are avoided. Actually no this is a great system. You get like 200 people, make a 5 man guild, get all 200 people to send their mats to those 5 people and bang you have all your upgrades in no time. Obviously after your upgrades are done you invite the other 195 people into the guild cause at that point size doesn’t matter anymore.

Well more armour is never a bad thing, I guess.

DeShadowWolf.6854:

D is already in place. Look at the other tabs on Hobbs or whatever it is in LA.

Which also addresses B and C I believe, more or less.

Probably not, it’s literally cheaper to buy GW in a brick and mortar store locally and not have to rely on exchange rates of online purchases

Misguided.5139:

I know the rare ones exist, but never gotten one. Would happily sell them since I don’t like the look of the reclaimed/machined weapons anyway

But you need them for the elite spec ascended weapons.

Velarian.6290:

i get around 1 plate for every 10 or 20 greens i salvage, still better than buying yellows

Then you are consistently lucky. I’ve gotten 3 plates and I’ve salvaged a lot more than 60 greens (or at least it feels like it).

HtFde.3856:

Well, a friend of mine would tell you that getting precursors out of the mystic forge isn’t that hard and that precursors aren’t really rare because he’s got quite a few of them this way.

I’ve thrown a lot of stuff into the MF and never got a precursor.

I’ve recycled about 100+ blues and greens and have gotten 1 plate and I’m not sure that that wasn’t a reward from somewhere …

Which is why RNG shouldn’t be the primary means of getting items. The legendary scavenger hunt might not be ideal for everyone, but it does present a reliable and predictable means of getting precursors. Plates… they’re all RNG.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Simplicity.7208:

Was this really the case? I don’t remember this at all from that patch sad face here.

ArenaNet has an issue of not making things clear.

I did a lot of digging into lore for everything back then – kind of still do but more out of habit than actual interest.

Some of the information came from objects added with Secret of Southsun, and it was never explicitly stated (as said – they don’t make things clear) but when you add the dots together that’s what you get.

ANet really should start doing a better job of conveying the lore. Going on a scavenger hunt to get more detailed lore is fine, but not even being able to easily learn the broader plot points is… well not good storytelling. Reminds me too much of Lost (that show that ended 5 years ago… so not a very recent example) where they kept adding more and more random things into the story (although the problem there might have been how much they were hyping up a rather meh mystery).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

We know souls in GWverse are magic. They can be consumed (such as by demons) and used as a energy source.

So would soul and spirit then be interchangeable?

Daharahj.1325:

Speaking of Taimi, how long is she expected to live? since she’s got that degenerative disease thing going on, though it is never specified which degenerative disease it actually is.

It’s seemingly very close to MS. Never stated to be fatal, but could lead to further paralysis. If we continue the MS comparison than yes MS does decrease life expectancy and introduces new dangers that could be fatal but overall life expectancy isn’t massively reduced (depending of course on age of onset, sex, access to medical care etc.).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

CureForLiving.5360:

Do you have a source for that? I mean did they specifically say ‘big role’ or is that a community addition?
With the communication being so few and infrequent there isn’t much room for clarification, so players might assume things.

“Leah also said that the Mordrem Guard and the Nightmare Court are separate factions, and joining up with Mordremoth isn’t necessarily in line with the court’s ideals. She hinted that players can look forward to seeing this explored in the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns storyline.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-mordrem-guard-on-points-of-interest-a-summary/

Only mention I see. However, that “explored” turns out to be three NPCs, two of which are in one story instance and the third is in one place in Dragon’s Stand.

Not much ‘exploration’ there to be honest.

Ok so it was a community addition, this idea of a ‘big role’ then. GW2 community loves doing that it seems.
But yes it seems explore is a bit of a stretch.

Eh evidence is so so on that (well actually there is no evidence only speculation).
In this case I think it’s another example of mechanics / practicality over lore. Making a giant plant dragon monster that we fight in the dream might have been more lore consistent or visually impressive, but it would also have taken far more time and effort to model, texture and animate and ANet did seemingly put a lot of effort into the MoM fight.
Although I would have liked to see a Zhaitan-ish creature in the Dream.

Same thing, was just there no luck. Even tried from a different spot.

Sicarius.4639:

Love some of the comments blaming the user for his broken product.

You can’t choose where you’re born and what you’re born as, but you do choose to be a Mac user :P

Dawdler.8521:

Now you and your 500 guildmembers (hope you dont have any less) start the joyous path to farming 5000+ gold worth of materials to get the upgrades you probably already had before HoT.

It’s only a problem if you must-have-everything-now, and in that case it’s more of a you problem.

Kraggy.4169:

Let’s call it what it is, it’s an anti-cheat mechanism, there’s no reason the client couldn’t do it if Anet wanted it to.

Yeah but people love their conspiracy theories.
Besides if the client decided how and where the player can move…

NitricRose.1863:

Hakuryuu.8634:

They’re incapable of limiting the glider to expansion areas if gliding was client-side. When you try to glide, request is sent to the server and the server will decide if you’re allowed or not.

They could still have a ‘glider-allowed’ flag for the map on the client side, and at the same time send an asynchronous confirmation request to the server. Anyone who creates a hack to ignore the glider-allowed flag would soon crash as soon as the server response came back.

But is it worth it? I mean from a technical and practical perspective

shinreigari.7318:

Lord Kuru.3685:

shinreigari.7318:

We know that low population maps are set to close within an hour. That’s when you get that window which offers to move you to a more populated version. If you stay in the map however, it will still close within that hour, even if by then it is full. Could it be that this happened in your case too? If at the very start of the timer, the map was so low-populated that it was set to close, then everyone went there later to do the event chain, all those people wouldn’t get the message about the map closing soon, but it would happen anyway.

They don’t place people into maps that are due to close.

That is true, but i’ve seen such thing happen in the Silverwastes many times when people who didn’t see the message about closing (or didn’t know that it would still close under all circumstances) started to taxi more people, trying to make an event map. And then all those people had a nasty surprise at Vinewrath.

Well sometimes the system decide ‘nah this map is fine, it can stay’. Happened yesterday in DS, we taxi-ed people in… and near the end the system decided to keep the map open. But it’s kinda random

Exotrax.4207:

So , I’m trying hard to grind xps doing events but since the raids came out , maps (even VB) are quite empty.
Yesterday I ran around VB trying to find a small group to do events and we were 3 people (from 8pm till 11pm).

I know, ran VB a few times yesterday and we just barely kept missing T4-day.

Sthenith.5196:

That is until Anet dev’s figure out that that aint the place to put the raid entrance.

And IF they only want guilds to do it and NOT random pugs like someone claimed,
then they’d better put the access INSIDE the Guildhall.
You know, so only guilds can do it.

But wouldn’t that be unfair to HoT players who don’t have acess to a guildhall …?

All weird stuff going on, and strange decisions from the dev’s. Add more armor options, but force ppl into a meta again for the raids. I still can’t wrap my head around some of their views. Weird stuff indeed.

Nah, just add a lobby area. People are going to try and pug it, no matter what and would only get upset if ANet limited access to Guild Halls. So rather add a lobby area for each raid so people can stand in there and spam LFR-condiengi, healer, tank, and leave open world alone.

Doam.8305:

It’s an expansion with no loot aside reclaimed weap set and you can farm mobs for hours and get nothing of value so its no wonder the farmers have left.

Wait what? No, no, no, no. Maybe there isn’t enough loot for sum but saying the only loot is reclaimed weapons is a lie.

Doam.8305:

This game has overflows and even the overflows have all dried up these days your lucky to find and org map in Lfg.

It hasn’t had overflows since the megaserver was implemented.

Mortifer.2946:

I noticed it too. Everyone is gone…and WvW borderlands are empty too.

Noticed that too. Yesterday my guild with a total of 4 players and two random people on the map captured a keep in wvw and held it for the guild mission… Seriously no one even tried to stop us, or noticed. But it does seem that a lot of players are still doing EB.

Ayrilana.1396:

Well raids did come out on Tuesday.

Yeah it is the new shiny thing. Once everyone has tried it they’ll go back to their usual.

Valky.2574:

Trust me it’s not dead do to raids and it’s not just VB it’s all H.O.T zones

Really I did DS like twice in a row yesterday, one map I came late and we were able to fill it up and push the meta. Finally got my last Ley-stone chest… now for those Bladed skins chest skins…

Manasa Devi.7958:

They should change these event chains to be like how they implemented the Silverwastes. Throw out the fixed-time cycles and make the meta advance based on progress made. The day/night cycle sounds cool, but it doesn’t work, throw it out.

Well the problem there is you then have people jumping from map to map (in the case of SW it was from Vinewrath to Vinewrath), so you might end up with people not pushing the meta but waiting in LFG.

Nausicca.6038:

I find Orr maps being a lot more active than HoT’s ones. And it’s 3 years old content.
And if I had to do meta events now, I’d chose Silverwastes without hesitation.

Why? It’s a lot faster and gives better rewards for the time invested. There are events EVERYWHERE on the map ( protect/upgrade keeps, escort yaks, random vet, ppl digging here and there, then breach and VW + maze).

The outpost system is fine and all but yeah the lack of more widely dispersed short quick events isn’t ideal. Having the big event chains is fine, but having a few small events here and their allows for more exploration, a bit of variety.

Soon.5240:

No. It’s because the maps are empty. Why aren’t there queues to get into the new maps of the first expansion to be issued in 3 years? Why hasn’t Anet needed to create new servers to handle all the traffic from new customers?

Queues? Are you even a player? Probably not. Ok so ANet has the Megaserver system, as far as I can tell using virtualisation and cloud-y stuff, is able to dynamically create instances of a given map, and of course close unnecessary instances (so it’s a bit more efficient than the old system where there was always a active primary map instance open. In this old system they had the overflow and queue system but that was years ago). So this is why there is no queue, because as a map fills up a new instance is created (although I still think the algorithm is iffy, I think it not so much filling maps but distributing players over current instances). This solution is also pretty nice because it allows for easier scaling of the physical architecture. Undoubtedly ANet did increase their server capacity (although I’m not sure if they host their own servers or if they’ve built GW2 ontop of some other cloud platform. If it is the later then that’s even better since most cloud providers allow for dynamic scaling of resource, so if you need more you can get more… for a higher price usually but that’s another topic).
So actually I think the lack of queues and need to get more servers is not a bad thing, it rather indicates that they’ve got a solid system there.

MyriadStars.5679:

Good questions. Usually when a popular MMORPG releases a highly successful xpac, several new servers have to be created to handle the population. However, all we heard about launch day was how “smooth” it was. It would certainly be smooth when there were fewer players than expected.

So if the launch was not smooth I imagine it would be ‘oh look how buggy and broken hot is’ but if it is smooth ‘oh look no one is playing the game, the game is dead’. Do you see how that reasoning could be… well very odd. I mean you’re clearly looking for fault here. Now now I know confirmation bias and all, but it seems you’ve set up a scenario where the only success is failure. No literally the implication is that a bad launch is a good thing.

Takoyakii.2146:

Megaserver won’t let you in the populated map most of the time…..unless you LFG :/.

I’m telling you the algorithm man it’s the algorithm. Lets say you have two servers one is 90/100 and one is 20/100, seems like the algorithm is putting you into the 20/100 server…

Soon.5240:

But Megaserver was only created after it became apparent that customers were not continuing to play, and PvE maps on low tier servers (such as the one I was on at the time, Ferguson Crossing) were empty.

Or maybe because it’s (ideally) a long term scalable solution which has the benefit of ensuring more efficient resource usage? But yeah low pop servers did benefit from it.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

People said wvw was dead cause of the HoT maps and it’d get better after a few weeks, it didn’t People are now saying HoT maps are empty cause of raids, this is even less likely.

There’s a bigger issue here.

Yeah I know, I call it Fallout 4, and Legacy of the Void. Of course that was to be expected I guess.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Was helping a fellow guildie earlier today on Auric Basin map and I really feel sorry for people coming into the game at this stage.

That’s perhaps a bit hyperbolic, I’ve seen Auric Basin meta completed recently, so maybe it’s a matter of when you play, how many afk-ers there are or people doing HP etc.
But I will agree to long term sustainability. Although Dry Top and Silverwastes are still fairly active, but the design there is a bit different.
Still a better system to replace LFG would be ideal, megaservers seems so so when it comes to sorting out map populations.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@thunderfall&Fenom: Do dragons even have souls?

We’ve yet to see a sylvari soul, either.

Probably not. Although it all depends on how exactly souls and the Mists interact, but for the most part we know that the Mursaat were able to phase out of reality into the Mists to hide from the Elder Dragons and the only time we see any ED activity in the Mists is Jormag and that is via the Sons of Svanir. So it does give the impression that Elder Dragons are largely of the physical world, but if this means they have a soul or not… well who knows. We know minds in GW universe are magic, what a soul is, is is separate from the mind, where they come from, who knows?

Icdan Sevaen.4628:

Off-topic: Actually DnT made a World’s First post… And got quite some backlash for it. It’s been deleted too afaik.
Ofc it’s arguable how legitimate you consider their ’world’s first’ kill.

Seeing as how DnT was responsible for testing the raids I’m not surprised.

Tom Gore.4035:

A mistake that can easily be fixed by introducing an NPC later who can recap the story to those who don’t want to play this kind of content.

Like the S1 recap.

SirMoogie.9263:

That would certainly cheapen the budget and cheapen the experience for those of us who like role playing their character through these stories in this role playing game. For me, it isn’t enough to get the Living Season 1 recap treatment for important story content. I’d rather they just add a story version of the raid with reduced rewards. Most MMOs do this for their story driven raid content and it’s surprising Arena Net hasn’t followed suit…. unless of course there is no story to be had here.

Raids are hardcore content. I’d rather ANet not spend time and effort on making a story mode but rather focus on new content.

Daralii.8940:

They also said the Nightmare Court would have a big role in HoT and there’d be elite spec lore. I’m not taking anything they say at face value.

Do you have a source for that? I mean did they specifically say ‘big role’ or is that a community addition?
With the communication being so few and infrequent there isn’t much room for clarification, so players might assume things.

Boysenberry.1869:

I think the Blighting Trees that are scattered about in HoT are the other “Pale Trees”. One such tree is in the Northwestern portion of Verdant Brink. However, I never found a single reference to Malyck in HoT.

Lore wise it makes sense. It’s kinda a meh conclusion to a potentially interesting plot thread.

Kayberz.5346:

I think its still possible we might hear from malyck, in tangled depths in the south east corner you can see a constant stream of mordrem marching east towards what would be the blank area between tangled depths and metrica province which may be added later with living story srason 3

Would be nice. Hopefully ANet is reading these threads and thus realise how many lose threads we’re (or maybe just me) all expecting S3 to tie up

Konig Des Todes.2086:

They didn’t activate the pillars because they couldn’t! The activation of the pillars was triggered by the egg. Replay Prized Possessions – NPCs state the ruins began to glow when Caithe with the egg passed by, and at the end you take the egg into the center of the northwatch outpost which activates it completely.

Why they had it set up that way is anyone’s guess, however.

Egg was probably a power source of sorts. But somehow I don’t see Glint’s plan being so pedestrian as to simply have one of her eggs used as a power supply to power a shiny city and some magic towers.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Commander went on his own, without any communication with Laranthir or other Pact leaders to find Destiny’s Edge. It simply led the Commander to the same location the Pact was heading: Mordremoth.

Yeah that was odd. A few mails every now and then from Laranthir on the status of the Pact forces would have been nice. Actually that would probably have helped to tie the personal story and world stories together… Hey Anet why not add a few mails here and there? Seems like a small change.

Jaken.6801:

Why did the mantra of: “HoT will be the base for the future”, went into the story department, which allready had a solid base?

They meant that purely mechanically (yet again giving me the impression that lore is in this room and the game designers are in that room, and they only meet when passing each other int the hallway).
You see by base for the future they meant they implemented scalable systems such as masteries, elite specs, guild halls, precursor crafting etc. So basically that means in all future expansion we can at least expect more mastery tracks, more elite specs and guild halls / guild upgrades, and legendaries because they have the foundation for it.

Jaken.6801:

Overall I would suggest two AMA:
- HoT making of: How things came to be. How things that are in the “final” release, were chosen.

From a purely design and management perspective I’d love to know about the process.

Jaken.6801:

- An AMA about things that were on the cuttingboard and can be talked about.

I would like this as well, but I see it giving a lot of ammunition for people wanting to complain but then again those people will complain no matter what…

Hannelore.8153:

Killing the master doesn’t seem to stop the minions, just disperse them.

I know spoiler at the end of HoT when Caithe is all “Oh I was afraid we’d not survive” I though “Seriously? Orr is still crawling with Zhaitan’s minions and he’s (apparently) dead”.

Kalavier.1097:

The corruption is cleansed, but healing would take a long, long time (agreeing with you).

However, Tequatl officially was killed off during the one living story season 1 chapter. Before that point he kept resurging, but then post Zhaitan dying he grew stronger, but got killed off for good (last I checked).

What killing Zhaitan did was simply make it much, much harder (if impossible) for NEW risen to be formed. But remember, we are talking about a nation’s worth of undead, ALL the wildlife of Orr, AND 106 years of collecting corpses from raids, the bottom of the sea, or advances.

Zhaitan had a lot of risen, and it will take a long while to clean them out.

I wonder of Palawa Joko can usurp Zhaitan’s position? I mean the Risen seem leader less and we’re talking about an undead lich here, so if he could control the Awakened why not the Risen?

Well maybe I just never noticed before but it seems the staff scythe is constantly visible. I remember it only being visible when attacking or using an ability.
So um… Please don’t fix this (if it is a bug) because it looks awesome XD

Blacklust.4638:

But no they had to turn this into a 10 minutes farm killing any hope of playong the game as you feel like.

I don’t think you know what a farm is.

Blacklust.4638:

I am sorry but i do not like the meta zerker i do not feel like being a class cannon so i guess this is it for me i have no more role in this game and this game is no longer for me….. why would i play a game that forces me to play as something i do not like in order to have a chance at the content i payd for? Fell free to share your opinions.

You don’t have to be.

Blacklust.4638:

Yeah sorry i was writing this from my phone had no ideea how long the post was or how it looked like i just shared my feelings

Well ok, I was going to not read it given the lack of paragraphs, horrible spell and grammar but if it was one your phone…
I’m pretty much with:

Goldenrevolver.4371:

u are talking about 1 of 4 encounters only in the first wing of three raid wings and only your day one experience…u cant be serious.

have u ever thought about why builds become meta? maybe because they are the best at doing what they are supposed to do! how many people were running crowd control before raids? both soft and hard cc are required for the encounters. you also need coordination and heals…yes heal, if u do it with a dedicated healer or zerker meta player blasting a water field they are heals. this sounds like you were simply to bad to beat the first boss in the raid intime until the mechanic “enrage timer” wipes you. you know that most people who have beaten the first bosses had a dedicated healer and tank? where the damage comes from you ask? maybe their dpsers had better dps uptime because they didnt get downed by anything and maximised their damage potential for the encounter while still being able to overcome the mechanics. its day one. simply learn the mechanics and enjoy… this is far better than anything we have ever seen.

This seems to be my thinking. You can’t judge the raid based on a single boss, the first boss which has by ANet been described as being the easiest.
That said, given that I don’t know about your group composition and the builds they used any number of things could have gone wrong.

Frank.7452:

There is literally nothing in the guild hall for them.

What about the arena?

Ohoni.6057:

I’m also very worried about the new direction. I enjoy the HoT content in how I play it, but the current Map Meta cycles are way too long to complete, and the content is way too pointless if you don’t intend to complete the metas, so you’re stuck doing them if you want to accomplish anything. They should make each meta cycle half or less the current time requirements, trimming events as necessary.

Also, if a “good map” can complete a task, while a “bad map” is more likely to fail it, then they need to give players better tools for arriving at “good maps” than they currently offer. LFG and “join on player” are not nearly good enough. Players should be able to select specific maps from a list, not get randomly assigned one.

And they definitely need to stop locking cool rewards behind things like raids. If raiders want to raid, let them raid. If players want legendary armor but have no interest in raiding, they shouldn’t be forced into raids to get it.

I’ll disagree with you on having to play the full meta. I guess it depends on what you want from the game. If you want loot, then yeah you’d have to put time into it. But I don’t think that’s so much an issue of how long the meta is, so much as no matter what ANet did there would always be a minimum time commitment to get something out.
But I’ll agree that a better system for filling up maps is needed .
And then I’ll disagree with you on raid loot. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have raids have raid specific loot. Else what is the point?

Einlanzer.1627:

a.) megaservers are designed to handle fluctuating population levels within the game

Yes, but that doesn’t address the issue of player fragmentation.

Einlanzer.1627:

b.) only level 80 characters participate in living world or expansion content anyway, so what map pre-80s go to really doesn’t matter that much. Especially in the case of Lion’s Arch.

so basically rendering the downscaling system pointless. The idea with downscaling was to allow players to play together, so if your friends start playing you’d be able to take your level 80 and play with your level 10 friends without necessarily (not that it’s really the case) one shot-ing everything.
If you throw all level 80s on one map and all 1-79 on another then players can’t play together.

Einlanzer.1627:

The benefits would dramatically outweigh the drawbacks, IMO. It would let people who prefer the original LA (or even the wrecked one) retain the ability to visit it, and it would provide the necessary framework for putting Season 1 back into the game AND provide many more options for handling future LW content.

It’s even how they handled Ascalon in GW1.

In this case I’d rather argue that an intelligent phasing system would be better and not sharding system. That is we have players on the same map, but where both players see the same building player A sees a ruined burned down house an player B sees a nice, new, rebuilt house. Mind you you’d have to design the maps in such a way that collision detection is constant (don’t want one player running through a wall of floating in the sky).
Unfortunately this won’t work for LA since they weren’t designed to be overlay-ed on each other. But it could work for current maps.
We’ve already seen very very limited implementations of this functionality, when talking to certain NPCs audio only plays for one player and not the other. A intelligent phasing system would be similar but would simply load different textures and models so that the world looks different, but still functions the same allowing for players in different phases to play together.

Well there will always be room in the raid for a zerker, the bosses have enrage timers so someone is going to need to output damage. It’s just that you won’t be able to do it with only zerkers. That means you will need more than zerkers. The problem then comes in that everyone and their dog is a zerker (because of the Icebow Meta XD ), so that means you have a high level of competition. Luckily most classes have a variety of builds available to them, so you won’t need to level another class, but you’d need to change gear if you want to have a higher chance of getting a spot in the raid.

FogLeg.9354:

The problem with changing stats on ascended set is the next boss. What if (we dont know yet) it requires another set of stats. And again, its not just recommended, you either have 10 people with best stats or you fail. Will you change your gear for every boss? Will you craft dozen sets once all the raids are released?

Nah. It’s a 10 man raid, presumably you create a group makeup that isn’t perfect for a boss but has enough variety to deal with all bosses. Ideally you’d just have to switch some traits.

Celtic Lady.3729:

YaYa.5879:

you are not supposed to play a game while watching netflix (on the Ipad). A good game doesn’t require netflix on the side not to keep you bored.

Well, tbh, I wouldn’t need Netflix on the side if I could solo all the Hero Challenges and didn’t have to spend so much time waiting to get into a good map or waiting around for DS to begin.

I basically watch youtube while playing GW2… My country doesn’t have netflix you see… I find it helps me focus when I have more than one thing to focus on :P

Asura.6209:

Since GW1 to GW2, the main story of Tyria to the whole world is great. But how about the GW2 Expansion-HOT? It should be called Silverwaste 2-SW2. This is a Enhanced Farm with new Elite specialization, Meta events.

Most players like the way of “Adventure in the World” not “Farm in the Map” to be the Expansion.

Well I agree, but the design is pretty solid. There is a limit to how much content Anet can produce in a given time, and it will always be faster for players to burn through the content than Anet can make it. So the design idea is to rather than producing a few hours of content that can be breezed through to produce a few hours of content that has high replay-ability. Think of one of the vanilla maps, how much gameplay do you get out of them? How many times can you play through them? Once? Twice?
Now I’d love to have more exploration style maps, but at the same time I know that I get less value and gameplay from those maps than from a meta-map.

FlamingNipples.4176:

Dear Anet: As a mac user I want my money back. This game is utterly broken for mac and unplayable. I’m crashing on average every 7 minutes and get 16 different error messages. I paid for a game and expansion that is mac compatible but it clearly isn’t nor do I see any messages from the devs talking about it.

Eh Mac users, even worse than Linux users… Sorry I know I’m a bigot, but come on it’s a Mac we’re talking about here.

Well my first reaction is ‘I do hope that raids won’t be so easy that you can pug it’, but yeah the LFG could use an update, and they might just as well throw a LFR in there if only to ease up on the clutter. So more categories pls.

12 whole days? My god how will anyone be able to make it through that tortuously long time.

warbignime.4610:

This is offical forum, most toxic and offensive part of GW2 community, what did you expect came in here.

Well I like to think of it more along the lines of: happy players are busy playing, unhappy players are more likely to be the ones who complain.

Well raids will only be an issue if we only get raids, or if majority of development resources go to raids, (or for lore-hounds if they gate major story points in Raids… but your mileage may vary there). So as long as there is a balance between hardcore raid content and casual content it should be fine

Kulvar.1239:

Also, experimenting things like that on intelligent creatures is forbidden by Rata Sum laws. No help, no recognition, no fundings.

What do the funding procedures for krewes look like? I mean Norn hunt and forage for their survival, humans have some job or another (presumably whatever people in a medieval-ish European-ish society does), Sylvari… I guess similar to humans, Charr warbands are likely fed, housed and clothed by the Legions… but what about krewes? I mean most seem busy with research that has little to no commercial application, so do they have like a research grant system?
Oh wait that’s completely off topic…

Kulvar.1239:

“Asura”, but failing to understand that the liger is a real life exemple…

And zonkeys!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The matter is that both races are constantly attributed together in regards to ancient stories of the Elder Dragons, only briefly do dwarves get added into the equation – as if they are separate.

Two races of giants, living in the same geographic area… I can’t help but feel that they’re related, simply a matter of how far back.

Mmm well incinerator is a fire knife… I assume the plasma dagger is well plasma. Actually isn’t fire also plasma? I’m confused now… well I guess it depends on at what level of ionization of the oxygen atoms we’d like to refer to as plasma. But for the most part fire is just like less hot plasma… so I guess they are kinda the same?

This would be nice. I don’t see head-gear having too much clipping issues with outfits. That said I don’t think this is a high-priority.

Defiling Treekiller.1632:

just because YOU haven’t had a crash since switching to 64bit does not invalidate those of us who have had crashes on the 64 bit.

Yes but both parties are speaking from anecdotal experience… and oddly invalidating each other’s lived experiences.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

SirServed.5693:

Can I have your stuff?

kitten it im too late again

I know right… If he’s going to make this big self-indulgent spectacle of leaving he could at least give us some loot. Else what’s the point?

Yeah a AMA would be nice. Pre-HoT the lack of communication was understandable, they were busy making HoT. Now that HoT is over there’d hopefully be sometime for this.

Cobalt Raven.3986:

Yes, the Pact Commander is quite competent on the field. That’s where the Commander should stay.

Clearly you haven’t heard of the Peter Principle :P

Kuulpb.5412:

I honestly though the BEST thing that GW2 could have done is the following:

You unlock your elite spec at different stages based on your profession,

So Berserkers, Reapers and Dragonhunters would have unlocked the ability to Channel their Anger/Virtues after some event, such as Eir’s passing.

Druids and Tempests would learn after a Calming event such as placing the Egg into Tarir.

Daredevil would learn during an event such as escaping Faolain with the Egg.

Scrappers could learn as they go around salvaging scrap from broken pact ships, and learn/theorize how to craft Gyros.

Chronomancers could learn when they visit Rata Novus with all the Ley energy ( or maybe something related to Time)

And Finally, Revenants could have been a VERY special case, where after Killing Mordremoth, Rytlock finally decides “it’s time I told you about the mists” and then tells you of what he learned. and then a special choice could occur, “Do you want to learn more of the ways of the Revenant and stop being (Profession)?” and then you could have your character literally become a revenant after Rytlock teaches you, and as you learn about maybe Ventari because Centaurs, Sylvari, Pale Tree etc. you could go around and learn about OTHER legends, eventually becoming a Herald with Glint.

Meanign that the character you’ve mained since the start of the game could now be a Revenant instead of whatever it was before.

This choice would be irreversible, and you’d go back to level 1, but with the idea of Revenant being an “only after HoT” prof, it’d be ok imho..

This is all MY OPINION on what GW2 could have done, Please tell me fi you agree or disagree and preferably why you do so, thank you.

Lore wise that would be great, but mechanically… some players don’t like lore and don’t want to feel forced to play story instances to unlock a new specialisation. Players didn’t even want to grind hero points to unlock specialisations. As a selling point of HoT gating it would be a bit frustrating for some.
So I think this is kinda like how HoT blended the personal story and map stories, but didn’t force you to complete map meta events to continue with your personal story.

Ven Zehn.6573:

completely forgot Rox was a ranger lol…..

After HoT I wouldn’t be surprised if you completely forgot that Rox even exists :P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If ArenaNet is smart, then they can still fix this ‘no specialization lore’ with Season 3.

They can do this by having Braham, Rytlock, and Marjory largely off-screen for the story, with one early instance involving the Pact and either them mentioning or better yet showing them training Pact soldiers in their new arts. The idea being “these individuals survived where most of the Pact could not and in small numbers, they have experience and knowledge others do not.”

Or ANet can start adding prequel and concurrent stories. So far the Personal Story moves the narrative along which is fine, but sometimes I do wish they’d add some prequels. I mean there’s nothing stopping them from adding a story instance that it set early in the the vanilla time-line (before Zhaitan) which would give us some profession lore, or gives us a few story instances that are set concurrent to the vanilla PS which expands some other lore aspects. I think perhaps this is a limitation we put on ourselves because we’re too use to conventional media. Once a book is released or a movie it’s seen as a finished product (with mild exceptions… Han Solo shot first!), it isn’t changed or altered or updated. The same with books or TV series. Now if they want to expand on something that happened they’d do a flashback episode, or have a novel depicting a side story etc. But in video-games what’s wrong with inserting more stories in the current narrative? Why not add another chapter to the vanilla PS story or add a few low level instances? From the perspective of new players it would all still narrative flow and there is no reason veteran players wouldn’t be able to experience it (well except that the PS isn’t replayable… which ANet should change).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This is why we have so many characters die during the personal story that cannot be revived. They’re dead, and cannot be returned.

Zhaitan might disagree with that, although I guess they’d not be returned in exactly tip-top condition :P

DiogoSilva.7089:

Usually, a good story would make a hero’s death more meaningful, either by giving us a proper character arc for that hero before their death, or making the consequences of their death major.

You can have a story that is both realistic and cruel, while being satisfying and rewarding to the reader/ audience. One of the reasons for why Game of Thrones is so popular is because it can do both pretty well.

Eir’s death felt kinda of empty to me.

Death is sometimes meaningless, people just die for no reason. Giving death some sort of heroic narrative, or visceral cruelty takes away from the fact that death is an empty experience. Well unless you’re religious, then death is a wonderful and magical thing or something.

Daralii.8940:

A story that is realistic wouldn’t have a giant plant dragon.

Juxtaposition? Or rather suspension of disbelieve. There is only so much an audience is willing to put aside (unless you invoke the rule of cool of course), until the scenario becomes too unrealistic or emergence breaking.
But I’d go with juxtaposition.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

There might be one or two worth naming in Tangled Depths but I’ve not done much of that map, or in one of the storyline splits I haven’t done yet.

Nah TD is basically just a bunch of Chak.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

What about the champs of copper(red) Colbalt (blue) Platinum (amber) and gold and Silver (Indigo) at breach and the Legendaries at lv 4 defenses in silverwastes?

Well they weren’t named, so more like generic though minions.

Cobalt Raven.3986:

If “I” had control pre-HoT, much like the guy a few posts above said, I would gather intel. Scout. Try to determine what Mordremoth’s powers were, and consult the Pale Tree/Luminaries if possible- they are all “plant-like”, so they may be able to access some information we meat-sapients can’t get to. No thinking sapient would look at two radically different other sapient enemies and assume they’re the same, so why are they doing that here? Overconfidence aside, there should have been someone that points this out.

Presumably the Pact assumed they already had a good idea of what Mordy’s powers were, they’d been fighting it in Silverwastes and likely gotten reports from Ascalon and Dry Top.
The Pale Tree was still slipping in and out of consciousness, and technically we did consult her in S2… she was kinda vague…
Further we had no reason to expect that Mordy would be so different from the rest. Zhaitan, Primo, Kralky, Jorry (as in Jormag not Marjory… maybe Maggy?) all had singular physical bodies which reasonably upon destruction would mean their death. It wouldn’t have been too unreasonable to expect that a large enough force would be able break through to Mordy and cut off the head (or mouth :P ) of the serpent (or dragon :P )

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well, first we have to define what Elder Dragons are.

As seen by Zhaitan and Mordremoth, their bodies differ vastly so they’re not of the same species – that goes for Primordus and Kralkatorrik who’s bodies we’ve seen parts of too.

In Edge of Destiny, Kralkatorrik is defined as “more magical than physical” which has always led me to believe that the Elder Dragons aren’t “true dragons” so much as “taking on draconic shapes”. Mordremoth being able to regrow his serpentine dragon body is similar.

I had always assumed they were simply dragons that lived in the ancient past kinda like dinosaurs in the real world. But of course there was no asteroid / super-volcano / dark-matter or whatever so they never went extinct. Furthermore I had assumed dragons were naturally magic sponges and that a few of them absorbed so much magic that they transformed into giant eldritch monsters.
But yeah Mordremoth seems so different from Zhaitan (seemingly not even having a central body).
I guess another theory I was mulling over was the elemental one. Apparently elementals naturally form where there are high concentrations of magic. So EDs could simply be elementals-like entities that assumed a dragon-like forms because magic.