Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

^ That. Today is a public holiday in the US, so I imagine the update will come tomorrow.

But that’s why you prepare it before hand and then schedule it to be automatically released :P
I guess I understand though. Although odd that the celebration of Labor Day would in fact not involve any work being done (well other than in retail if wikipedia is to be believed).

Ben.2685:

A few days ago as I was salvaging luck I asked myself “what for?” I have more gold than I’d ever spend and would better drops from the same content really make the game more enjoyable? I realised then that I playing out of a compulsion rather than deriving any sense of fun; I was addicted.

Whether it be from chasing achievement points, completing your daily, or anything else, does anyone else feel the same unpleasant necessity to play the game?

I’d firstly congratulate you on recognising the difference (so many times I’ve seen farmers or people asking for more rewarding content claim that it would in some way make the game more ‘fun’) But on point.All MMOs are essentially Skinner boxes. They have to be, fun is not engaging long term I’m afraid. I do find that the structured nature of achievement (be that whatever) is psychologically calming I guess. Compared to the real world where achievement is at best murky a MMO like GW2 makes it clear for you: Kill X get Y achievement points. It’s kinda nice after a long days work (with it’s real world uncertainty) to sit down for a hour or two and get the feeling (however fake it might be) that I’ve either achieved something or I’m working towards achieving something.

Anyway by definition (as in literally by definition) it’s only an addiction if it interferes with your normal routine. So if say you sacrifice sleep, proper hygiene, or cancel on usual social activities in order to play GW2, your not addicted.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The only way to improve the tours was to make them occur constantly – without player triggering – so that they become more obvious.

Still a bit obfuscated. I’d say give it a unique icon on the map / minimap in order to identify that this is something different / to take note of. Even if it does occur without player intervention, if it’s a walking tour being able to know where the tour is at present is still useful.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I think what I really miss is reward concerning the lore. No material reward though, but a log or a journal where your character writes down everything he gets to know about other races. It would be fun to try to complete this log.

I’m really hung on the world obfuscated today… but anyway yes one of the biggest problems at present in GW2 is that a lot of lore is… not as visible as it could be. Sure if you actually go around hunting for it you’ll find some, but a journal (and also a bestiary) would go a long way in making lore more accessible and visible to the average player.

Foefaller.1082:

I’d love to see that. Black Citadel could be a couple Adamantine Guards on patrol commenting on the city, or a fahrar being given a history/cultural lesson.

We don’t see enough Charr cubs so +1

ZudetGambeous.9573:

One Note Chord.5031:

It feels like they have very limited resources, and for better or for worse have decided that living world updates are the place to put them all. All these comments they keep making amount to “no new content outside the living world.”

I just don’t understand it. I mean they supposedly had over 300 staff. The LS has been nice this season, but no where near what I would expect from 300 employees. Maybe 50…

What are the other 250 people doing?

It’s not 300 developers however.

Sonoris.2301:

I know this game was never meant to be about the end game, but the “journey” of leveling and exploring, doing what you want when you want.

After getting 6 classes to 80, and the other two halfway there, with 100% completion on two and ~80% on the other 80’s… and running 15 dungeon paths a night for a few months, fractals here and there, and some stabs at spvp/wvw…

I dunno. I feel as if I’ve played the game to death. Taking a break doesn’t help, because the game is… exactly the same. Like many others, I’m confused about anet’s choices lately. I do like the LS, really, but each 2 week installment adds enough new content for me to finish in one night.

If they aren’t going to add any content other than the biweekly LS episodes, I’m at a loss as to what to spend my time doing. I really don’t want to leave the game, but is there some way to creatively breathe life back into the game, as a player? Or, have I hit the limit of how much I’ll get from it?

I think you can agree you’ve got your money’s worth from GW2 (by your own description). If there’s nothing left to do then there’s nothing left to do unfortunately. If all GW2 has left to offer you is the LW episodes than play those and find something else to invest the majority of your time into. Maybe one day ANet will bring out that expansion everyone wants so much and you’ll have a bigger chunk of content to enjoy.

Nkuvu.2570:

I don’t really understand.

People are fine with the mechanism to artificially lengthen the play time. Namely, the achievements being locked until after the first play through. People are fine with exclusive achievements requiring yet more play-throughs.

But you lose your patience for some repeated dialogue?

Well people don’t really recognise time lengthening mechanics until they hit time lengthening mechanics that they don’t like. Or (as is particularly the case here) the nature of the time length (the dialogue) isn’t interactive, thus the lack of interaction provides more time for player to think and thinking is not usually advised in most forms of entertainment.

Manasa Devi.7958:

In the future, they should just split up instances like “The World Summit” into 2 parts: one with the dialogue and one with the action. That way there wouldn’t be any need to add complications like ‘skip’ buttons. We’d just go straight to the second instance for the achievements.

Judging from the present game mechanics this would probably require less work. It would however somewhat break up the pace a bit, having to jump in and out of instances is also rather inconvenient. Rather simply create a whole separate instance that unlocks after first playthrough which is achievement only (which hopefully will one day be more than simply combat or scavenger hunting) focused.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

They should just make it so that, when replaying instances, all the dialogue that isn’t needed is cut out and you only have the fighting etc.

Although some of us might actually want to experience the dialogue a few more times. So it would actually be better to having 2 repayable instances (story and achievement).

Clip.6845:

They could also make the achievement instances start just before combat and end after combat.

• Party Politics > Start after you’re introduced, end after your last dialogue option.
• Summit > Start after you had the discussions with all the leaders
• …

Probably the easiest to implement but again pacing is sacrificed with the hoping in and out of instances. Well if done well perhaps…

Zaxares.5419:

It took me 4 attempts before I got all the achievements for the World Summit. Took me about an hour, so it wasn’t too bad, but I do agree that a “Skip straight to boss battle” option would have been really nice, even though I understand how that would be “story flow disrupting”.

If the story skip function is unlocked after completing the episode (and is limited only to those instances like summit as some instances are almost purely dialog).

Muusic.2967:

I think anyone at Anet who has the ability to add an option to skip dialogues probably skipped right over this thread because in 7 days it’s less than 1 page.

Funny how they reserve the right to skip over the stuff that is boring to them though huh?

Well you are building arguments on top of assumptions so might want to check out the Toulmin model. Very easy to apply. In your case your warrant is questionable.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am starting to feel like doing another CDI just isn’t worth the frustration, huge amount of time and heartache.

I honestly feel for you. I can somewhat see where you (studio design director) might not really feel like going through the hassle of CDI (which isn’t really your job). Although there’s no reason why you can’t hire someone for this (perhaps, I don’t know).

Yargesh.4965:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

NewTrain.7549:

Creating a CDI about communication is like forming a committee to discuss how to form committees.

Morning All,

You asked me to be honest so I am going to be. I am starting to feel like doing another CDI just isn’t worth the frustration, huge amount of time and heartache.

As i have said many many times before getting the logistics around communication are extremely important. Time is precious and anything that can be done to make every second more valuable is paramount.

Chris

Good to know, thanks.

Could at least read the last sentence as well :P

Iason Evan.3806:

Players need to be respectful or lose their right to post on the forums.

Nice in concept but I can already see people complaining about first amendment rights or something.

Iason Evan.3806:

Yearly outline blogs by devs should be adhered to so that expectations by the player base are respected by the devs. Deciding to go silent because expectations weren’t being met isn’t the way to handle it.

I like the idea of a outline or roadmap, but at the same time requiring developers to adhere to it assumes many things (such as clairvoyance on the part of the developers). Thinks will change, ideas that sounded good would turn out to be not so good. The trick is not a strict adherence but constant honest communication informing us about such changes. This does have the threat of potentially becoming very time consuming (i.e. having to explain why something isn’t a good idea anymore can complex).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

You asked me to be honest so I am going to be. I am starting to feel like doing another CDI just isn’t worth the frustration, huge amount of time and heartache.

This is why, actually, I don’t have much faith in any of them working anymore. I like the idea, and I loved some of the discussions. But I think there are several here who want a CDI just to have a developer punching bag.

Man I’m really feeling for the devs here.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I can understand the frustration in dealing with certain individuals on these forums, and cannot in conscience recommend you interact with them. It’s y’all’s call. We cannot evaluate the value inherent to CDI’s since we don’t have the full range of information that ANet has.

If you do decide to go ahead with the CDI’s, you may have to ignore some comments that are rooted in disappointment. It’s nice to be invested in one’s work to the point that you care about it. If it helps, some of us appreciate your efforts.

P.S. I did suggest you take the weekend off…

I still think ANet get’s some poor person in to handle the CDI, act as an intermediary which can summarize and compile and handle player interaction. Allow the developers to maximize their development time while also getting value from the CDI (and being somewhat insulated from the negativity). Of course that said I’m unsure of the value in having a dev actively involved in the conversation (I don’t follow CDIs, they grow by like 10 pages a hour and these forums functionally simply don’t allow for each consumption of such a massive number of posts. Perhaps a hierarchical structure like reddit would allow threads of conversation to at least be grouped better).

Jandopo.2107:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Note i am up to date with all the comments since last night.

Chris

Mr. Whiteside, I have a question.

Do you remember the Commander CDI 1 year ago? Why we got only 3 more colors out of it? I love the idea of CDI, but after this I wonder if the community’s time and effort are wasted…

Or maybe the big improvements to the commander system are yet to come?

Yeah… I see question marks but I have the feeling you’re not so much interested in asking any questions as much as insulting. It’s that 80% rule I guess (you know that 80% of all questions are actually statements).

RoyalPredator.9163:

Shapes will be introduced when Devs realise colors aren’t showing else than being “another” something.
Like it it’s a Siege squad, Main Force and Defender Squad
Until that, the community will make it’s own meta color myths.

This. Shapes communicate more meaning than colors. There would still need to be a lot of communication regarding which color does what. A sword symbol (or something) does a better job of indicating an offensive force than the color red.

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I mean, we have kitten like “Devs Wasting Time” here, kittening about how apparently they don’t know what they are doing.

Is it really that unfair to say that the devs are out of touch with the community or that they don’t know what they’re doing considering things like what’s now happened with SAB and what they originally intended for the commander tag system?

I mean, they were fully prepared to charge WvW players 1200 gold for a QoL improvement that would have allowed commanders to better coordinate in WvW (and PVE to a lesser extent).

They thought that this was a good design decision.

They continue to think that leaving SAB and the Continue Coin to rot, despite no future planned work on it, to be a good decision.

Sure it’s unfair.

When I worked at my old place, I managed the store and we had an owner as well. Sometimes the owner would get a deal on something and buy it, even though I was the buyer. People would come in, look at the crap he bought and say, you guys have no clue do you.

I didn’t buy it. I had no say in it. Painting all devs with one brush for one decision that might not have even been a dev decision? I’d say that’s unfair.

Business decisions aren’t generally made by developers. They don’t decide what to charge for and one not to charge for.

The corporate side is certainly going to be out of touch with gamers. Is that the devs though? All the devs? Some of the devs?

It only takes a couple of people to make a bad decision. If all the devs agreed with that decision I doubt very much it would have been reversed.

You know what they say kittens roll down hill :P
Unfortunately the guys at the bottom tend to get a lot of flack (I’m thinking about help desk support, boy do they have to take a lot of kittens from people who are unhappy about things that help desk has no control over).

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

They’d need to have someone with good “PR speak” to talk to us, in order to avoid a lot of the verbal mines waiting around here. As I’ve said before we wouldn’t be happy with it, and a lot of the responses to Mike’s post prove that point.

This is the ideal solution, I think. Developers commenting on things is nice, but it’s not their job (they develop).
Having a dedicated PR person whose job it is to play intermediary between developers and players would be ideal (or at least would mean less pressure on the devs to comment and more responses in the forum). Sure we’ll probably get a whole lot of PR speak but their would at least be some useful info as well. Even if this PR person mostly comments along the lines of: oh this is interesting I’ll discuss it with the team later and give feedback. Of course this also requires feedback to be given.

poisonality.8972:

I miss the old team Rift had, I doubt I will ever miss any team member of Anet or NCsoft, these people are forgettable robots

That’s kinda harsh. Also I’m not exactly sure based on what you’re making such a comment (from the Points of Interest they all seem rather non-robotic to me).

ShadowStep.3640:

Yep that’s right, tragedy. Every truly great story has some sort of tragedy that allowed it to relate to the audience.

Technically it’s conflict, every story has some sort of central conflict which motivates character action and the resolution of which forms the climax of the story. This conflict can be initiated by a tragedy or result in a tragedy but a tragedy isn’t inherently required. This conflict could be something as simple as SPOILERS in Avengers attempting to stop Loki (the climax being the battle in LA), Gravity attempting to not dying in space, Terminator protecting Sarah Conner from the titular killing machine etc.

Tragedy is actually a risky move to use, since it either comes off as deeply emotional (Tybalt!) or can actually come off as being slightly manipulative and generally cheap. In fact the value of a tragedy does not lie in the tragedy itself but in our investment in the character and their reaction or feelings regarding the tragedy (Why Tybalt why’d you have to sacrafice yourself? Especially since there was a army of nameless NPCs standing around who could easily have taken your place!). So in order for a tragedy to work you need to have already relate-able character, so a tragedy isn’t actually a means of making characters relate-able.

ShadowStep.3640:

I think the best thing to do during the next season of LS, is to truly build up the characters of Marjory, Kasmeer, Braham, Taimi, and Rox. Then at the end of the season, take two compatible characters that are closer than the others……then kill one off.

Ok so you’re advocating the Naruto approach. Mmm why are we suddenly getting more back-story for this character who up until now has barely been involved in the plot… surely it’s not because… Jip he’s dead. I’d prefer the Game of Throne approach where everyone get’s a decent amount of characterization so that in effect they all have targets painted in their backs (however this is not viable in a video game).

lordkrall.7241:

I suppose killing thousands of people and destroying one of the most important city on the continent was not tragic enough?

It’s not tragic unless you see the people crawling on the ground and bleeding out it seems, while holding the dead bodies of their children. It seems we’re aiming for the Modern Warfare tragedy model.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Becka Williams.4978:

Belinda’s death didn’t do it for you?

Not really. Neither did Tybalt’s.

And what I want to see is tragedy more of a purest sort, not just killing off someone to reach through the screen and hit a player in the feels. No, I want it to be . . .

. . . I want Oedipus Rex and Antigone level tragedy.

So you want incest and patricide? Just joking :P

Gorani.7205:

Taimi is safe (at least on screen death), because they can’t kill kids because of the game’s rating (I still don’t know about “Raisin” from LA).

Poor raisin-face I miss her verbal jousting.

Labjax.2465:

Perhaps the issue is that it’s not personal enough. As in, it’s an interactive medium and yet you almost never have any influence on one dies and who doesn’t, who gets saved, that sort of thing.

Given the choice of who lives and who dies doesn’t inherently lead to investment. In RPGs where I’m given this option it’s usually very obvious that it’s going to happen and usually is a choice either between two characters I don’t care about (usually since there is a large cast of secondary characters) or between a character I sort of care about and one I don’t. Being given a choice would only matter if we already care about the characters. So again we see more emphasis not on the tragedy but on the character development and player investment.

Labjax.2465:

If they really want to turn up the heat, they could give us a situation with two characters that we’re likely to care about and force us to make a choice on which one we’re going to save (both being in a dire situation).

Then the one that we thought we were going to save dies anyway and so does the other one. And we’re left standing on a hill, feeling helpless, as the world burns around us. So we have to go back to our roots, talking to people from our past and trying to remember how we got where we did.

Without character development that would just be cheap manipulation.

kta.6502:

It’s a sign of the times. People like to watch characters die because of their exposure to the War on Terror.

That probably explains my general apathy toward the subject, being South African I’ve never been touched by this whole boring War on Terror business the rest of the world is going on about. Also I tend to be rather cynical about these sorts of things.

GreenAlien.5623:

They could easily step out of that corner by awarding one unique achievement point for every ingame event. That way, people would actually try to experience every event which i am sure takes lots of time..

There’s a lot of events so I’m certain of it :P
At the very least I like what they’ve been doing lately with S2 where they give you achievements for achieving certain quest-chains within certain conditions. Expanding this to every zone would probably add some added length. Although this might again be labeled as grind.

GreenAlien.5623:

Does that really make a difference? Are MMOs harder to code then ORPGs? Sure.. there may be more complicated netcode, but other than that you just have to follow a different design philosopy..? A kill 10 monster quest is still a kill 10 monster quest and a 500m² map is still a 500m² map..?
and im pretty sure they dont have to do the complicated stuff from scratch everytime..

I think your correct in your estimation of the effort to produce, although I think you’re neglecting the effort to QA and bug fix. If we’ve learned anything from GW2 its that emergent properties can be rather error prone. One event might work perfectly fine, but when it runs into another event suddenly one orboth break. Or maybe 1 in 10 times a wolf spawns to close to a caravan and boom whole event is broken. The way GW2 does things like events (in stead of old school quests) actually open it up to a lot more possible negative emergent properties.

xusa.4021:

Hope they never make an expansion pack and they never put SAB into the game again. Farewell.

SAB is a nice additional feature, however I think it’s something you put into the game permanently and perhaps once a year or so add a new section to it. Not something that’s core gameplay or core development focus.

Stinkehund.3012:

And now Season 2 brought me back – in fact, i enjoyed the story so much, i bought the 3 parts i missed so far, i bought the game for a friend to bring her into it as well and i’m actually disappointed that i missed the first season because while i get the gist of all the characters, it feels like i missed a lot of nice moments with them.

This is something ANet needs to work on (if only to provide a better overall experience for new players). The format of S1 doesn’t fit well into the format of S2, so clearly a lot of work needs to go into it. With the focus currently being on producing S2 content it’s unknown when or if they’ll have time (afterall when S2 is done they’ll move on to S3 and so on so when they’ll get time for S1 no one knows).
Even just reintroducing some of the more story focused instances (and listing the rest at TBA) would be a nice touch, since for example the instance we meet Rox and Braham (during Flame and Frost) are all fairly self contained and would relatively easily fit into the current living world format.

Stinkehund.3012:

Things i don’t really like:

• Tying the story-progression into area-events is a bit off-putting. Especially if your timing is BAD enough to miss the event for it, but triggering the next story-step. For instance, one of my characters destroyed the dragon-totem without getting involved in the eventchain before it and that just felt insanely anticlimactic.

It was a nice idea, but the implementation was iffy. My big problem was (like yours) that in an instance you have control over when events fire off while in the open world you don’t. Also these open world events don’t have the same narrative or lore focus (or far less so than the instances). I think it’s not completely nonredeemable as a concept, but some tweaks and experiments could be done to further refine it.

Stinkehund.3012:

• Unskippable Cutscenes and Dialoque. Both are good, but if i do the story on a toon, it would be nice to be able to jump ahead a bit. I mean, i already saw all of it.

This is a problem. I think the issue came about when they moved from the old dialogue system (which had skipping ability built into it) to the new in-game dialogue system. Well a lot of players didn’t like the old system so moving away from it was an okay idea, although the moved to a new system which wasn’t as functional (no skipping and no player character dialogue). They said they’re working on it.

However I think the easiest solution would probably to implement an achievement instance (no dialogue and what not, just the combat) so that players can more easily replay and retry. Challenge is fine afterall, having to be punished for failure (having to sit around and wait i.e. living world dialogue or Pavilion-esque queue system) is a bit frustrating, because any good challenge will involve plenty of failure. Ideally it would be fail-instant retry-fail-instant retry.

Stinkehund.3012:

• The pale Tree being knocked out for everyone. It doesn’t make sense from a story-viewpoint, since players just starting out will not even know why the weird glowy person is lying on the ground there; they’re not at that part of the story yet. From their POV, the Pale Tree Avatar should be just dandy.

Well the story windows clearly states that the LW S2 takes place 2 or so years after the start of the personal story, and since players can only access the LW content once they’ve reached level 80 I don’t think this is such a big issue. Or at least it’s an issue that all MMOs need to deal with. In other MMOs each time a new expansion is released (and usually a new area or content) then players are in effect time traveling when moving from the new content to the old content.

Stinkehund.3012:

• As a minor point, the party setup – Not only is our group missing a Sylvari to get all the races into it, but except for Braham and potentially the player-character, everyone’s female.

Canach!

Kalarchis.8635:

This is the major thing keeping me from replaying the story with my alts. I don’t want to have to sit through all that again…

The question is why do you want to replay? If it’s to experience the story then skipping the dialog is odd. If it’s for the achievements then being able to skip dialogue is a perfectly logical and desirable ability to have.

Kalarchis.8635:

If the setup were the opposite (all males with one female, i.e. the standard setup for everything, see Avengers/Guardians of Galaxy etc…) would you even notice/care? Just saying.

Was thinking about this the other day and it’s a rather wonderful inversion of the usual trope. Would be even better of an inversion if Braham wasn’t the bulky-heat-head sort but more a Faren-esque characters (the pretty and pretty useless sort).

Reinate.7594:

Okay first and foremost sorry about the forthcoming wall of text.

Oh it’s barely a wall of text, some people fill up the first 3 / 4 posts with only text.

Reinate.7594:

I do hope the devs read this.

They keep telling us they do so probably they are.

Torrent.7380:

I log back in after several month breaks now and again and find…
no capes
no mounts
no new races
no new classes or even new class weapon choices
a lackluster gem store selection
and I lose more hope every time that any of those things will ever change.

I’m afraid you might be looking at GW2 with the wrong mindset. Or maybe that’s just the impression I get from seeing a list with mounts in it :P

ProtoGunner.4953:

I feel similar, burned out.

Burn out is a bit of a problem in GW2. I see some people with 5000 / 6000 hours of gameplay and I’m only sitting on 1700 hours so I can fully imagine someone having experienced the game 3 times us much as I have being burned out or perceiving their to be a lack of content (honestly 6000 hours? no way there’s ever going to be enough content to satisfy someone like that).

The usual advice would be A) take it easy take a break, GW2 is still going to be here in a week or a few months. Perhaps give a few other MMOs a try (or a few single player games). Burn out is inevitable, there’s nothing in this world which you can’t get burned out on if you hammer at it long enough.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

While it doesn’t fix the issues: take a break if you feel burned out. Really, a week away from Tyria can work wonders.

Exactly.

Well having a condition-mancer as a main I do feel that conditions aren’t equally effective in all parts of the game (mostly dungeons, right off the top of my head I’m thinking AC and the graveling mounds which can’t be conditioned). So some improvement can be made, but I don’t feel hampered in general open world pve, wvw or pvp (although I haven’t been pvp-ing in a while).

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

GW2 isn’t quite holding up to its predecessor.

A bit subjective since it seems to imply GW1 was a better game…

Palador.2170:

A better question is: How can we apply the lessons learned from GW1 and GW2 to make GW2 better?

I guess that makes for a slightly more interesting conversation, which I can’t partake in since I played GW1 for a few days and I haven’t actually felt like investing anymore time or effort into it…

Palador.2170:

Sounds like what you want here is really just a way to get rewards/loot faster than most of the players.

This is what most people want it seems. There’s just subtle competition in MMOs, not an outright one but more of a bragging-rights thing (who has the newest best armour, or legendary weapons or what not).

Scryed.9423:

Hard mode dungeons.

Although the question would be, what’s the goal? To add challenging content? Well challenging content is only fun until you’ve beaten it. Most likely what will happen is that players will ask for better loot in hard mode dungeons, then choice the easiest of the hard mode dungeons and then turn it into another mindless loot grind through pure rote.
But that said I do believe adding a hardmode would (theoretically) be easier than say adding new dungeons (since you could reuse a lot of the art assets). All that would be required is mob ability tuning and perhaps adding a few more.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

No need to go to a GW1 mentality. GW1 is a better game for me so I still go there for some fun. I keep holding out hope that this game turns the corner (stop the boring LS releases and make an expansion).

Different strokes…

Scryed.9423:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

No need to go to a GW1 mentality. GW1 is a better game for me so I still go there for some fun. I keep holding out hope that this game turns the corner (stop the boring LS releases and make an expansion).

Having tried it recently to work on HOM stuff I found it to be terrible in comparison to this game by a long shot. The pvp was a little more fun but that was about it.

Yeah me too. I guess it’s like old movies. Honestly most old movies (with a handful of exception of course) are horrible, bad acting, bad script writing, bad effects but people love them for some reason.
But hey different strokes for different folks.

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

Right now the only challenging content is Aether path, fractals, and a handful of explorable dungeons. Seriously, all it would take to refresh this game, would be one challenging instance per living story update. That and returning the build swappability of GW1, but that’s much harder. So start with the challenging instances.

Too bad no one does aether or those handful of explorable dungeons. Challenge will always only cater to the minority I’m afraid. Still I’m all for ANet adding hardmode to dungeons if only because it seems like relatively little effort in correlation to the small number of people it would cater to.

A Lizard Bolting Skin.7426:

I will give Anet credit though, Dry Top is very well done. Having a map wide score that drives everyone’s loot, with lots of simultaneous events promotes smaller teams using a divide and conquer strategy. If we must have persistent world, I suppose Dry Top is acceptable.

Indirect cooperation and dispersal seems to be the best means of getting the zerg to cooperate.

Goose.5196:

However, the replies are always the same. People constantly bash the individual and announce that the game is basically perfect and that nothing needs to be changed.

I don’t think you and I go to the same forums…

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Nothing, the story telling in this game is god awful.

I think comments like this make me sad

S1 isn’t in game as re-playable content (and probably won’t be anytime soon if at all ). But at least you can still play S2 without too much hassle.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The final form will be your character being turned into a human/norn/asura/charr version of this:

I told Spot he shouldn’t crafting the backpiece, what does a dog need with a backpiece anyway?

EvilIsHisName.2814:

The backpiece does not have to develop in stats to actually have it grow so I am hoping that it continues to grow as the LS progresses if not then I wasted a bit of money and time making this :/

Mmm true enough, although I’m wondering if the backpiece couldn’t perhaps grow into a full set of armour

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

Even more than that, I want Mawdrey II to be something I can put in my home instance; my pet carnivorous plant. Ideally, it will wave at me when I visit, and make happy chomping noises when fed.

+1 +1 +1 +1

RoyalPredator.9163:

I don’t say it has to be so mutch at edge like in Skyrim, where you really saved the world ~alone and they jail you for stealing a cookie, not to mention they still look on you like the last homeless garbage – but at a well balanced state, just like I felt at this episode.

That’s mostly just issues with state-management. It’s easier to produce a generic world reaction to you (i.e. before you’re able to slap dragons to death) and keep that in place than to crate different world reactions as the story progresses (i.e. different global reactions based on how effectively you can slap dragons). The guards were programmed with limited responses to your character (which don’t necessarily change as your character progresses through the story). So I’d say Skyrim example is more an issue with the game mechanics not reflecting game narrative (so ludo-narrative dissonance I guess?) where your example relates purely to the narrative (placing you more in the spotlight).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

so presumably they’d just return to Ascalon, not be capable of being pulled out (otherwise, I think the charr would have done such already).

Well Spectre Warband does routinely attempt to ghostbuster them some Ascalonians and put them into a big holding-cell (although that hardly ever works in the long term due to Flame Legion interference). But theoretically you could suck up a bunch of foefire ghosts put them in a big tank and hurl them at a dragon. Although the effectiveness is questionable.

Zaxares.5419:

CureForLiving.5360:

All evidence points towards that, unfortunately. We see several unnamed mobs in Ascalon talking to each other, so they’re more than simply magical copies. In the AC story intro video we see the foefire stripping the souls from soldiers.

But are those TRUE conversations? Or simply magical constructs repeating a message over and over like a record? For example, you can meet the ghost of Captain Calhaan who recites the exact same words he says to the PC back in the Great Northern Wall mission, and the person he’s talking to also says the exact same line the PC said. Since our GW1 PC’s most likely did not die in the Foefire, how did the ghost Calhaan’s talking to know what to say? That made me think that the secondary ghost, and possibly even Calhaan himself, are simply like a holographic recording replaying a momentous scene taken from Calhaan’s memories when he died in the Foefire.

But they’re still called spirits and not holograms or copies. Although what spirit means in the context of GW2 is still debatable. We also know of one foefire ghost who was able to break free from the curse (not sure what her name was… the one in the logging area that tries to kidnap the charr children/kittens) implying that much of the quirky behavior is as a result of the curse.
But other than to be argumentative, I really have no evidence either way.

Dustfinger.9510:

There’s an asura that has no interest in ‘science’.

“There is no profit in the eternal alchemy” – basically every Asura merchant.
So I’d say there is a lot more than just an Asura not interested in science.

Dustfinger.9510:

Their a lot of variety in the NPC’s through out tyria. all we have to do is explore a little to find it.

Ah but that’s where the problem comes in. Most players don’t really explore and only get exposed to the most-in-your-face examples which also happen to be the most stereotypical.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

Mordremoth has access to the Dream from what we have seen and likely has been influenced by what he has seen in it…. To only corrupt plant based beings and dogs…..

Would love to see some of the evidence of the Mordrem dream connection. All I know about is that the Shadow of the Dragon appears in both. The only other connection is a iffy one which is based around the Sylvari / Nightmare Court == Dragon Minions.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Bri: If I understand your Dungeon example correctly. So if ANet added let’s say 10 new Dungeons permanently to the game starting in the next update AND promised to add a new Dungeon every month till the servers shut down, then you would be satisfied?

Well I’m not Bri but allow me to weight in none the less.
One of the issues with constantly adding more dungeons is that you wouldn’t be adding more dungeons but (to borrow a phrase from Galen Grey.4709) rather you’d be replace them. Only a handful of dungeons are actually actively run (the more rewarding ones) and any new dungeons would fall into either rewarding and not-rewarding and as such would either replace a current farmed dungeon or not be as rewarding and disappear into obscurity.
It’s a difficult problem to solve really. Adding more content inherently leads to spreading the user base (and for group content this can be problematic) but adding more content is also important to ensure player investment.

BrotherBelial.3094:

4 days. Not 5.

Depends on the person, I probably have closer to 2 weeks myself

Free precursors? Nay I’m just dreaming now. How about free precursors for those of us that have been playing for 2 years but don’t have one? Nay I’m just dreaming again.
I’d say we’re definitely getting a mini and some boosters. Hopefully we also get something decent as well.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

oh imagine if glints egg becomes the new zhaitan like how kormir took over from abbadon

Well surely there is a power vacuum in Orr right now…

Silhouette.5631:

and from what you saw of his minions in the personal story some of them were quite intelligent, so wouldn’t that mean Zhaitan is at least as smart as them?

Ehhh…. Umm… Not necessarily.
Ok so I tend to be mostly alone in this opinion but I don’t think EDs are intelligent in a way we think of it that way. My theory is that EDs are mostly instinctive. When they’re hungry they want to eat. When they’re tired they go to sleep for a few thousand years. And so on. But we have no conclusive evidence either way (so I might very well be wrong).
The two theories however have interesting implications, in the case of EDs not being intelligent this leaves us with a question but how can they perform complex tactics. In such a case this is where those intelligent minions come in. So an ED is like: “Me hungry!” and the champion (guided by the will of the ED) is responsible for figuring out how to do so (so basically tactical planning). In all cases where we’ve seen the Risen show any complex tactics they’ve always been accompanied by a champion of some sort.
But who knows maybe Zhaitan was just playing tricks on us (making us think the minions hand freewill).

Silhouette.5631:

Mordemoth broke the mind of a self proclaimed genius, and supposedly guided her in an overly complex campaign against, well, everybody. So wouldn’t that mean Mordemoth is of sizable intelligence also? These are ancient being with heads the size of large houses, there’s gotta be a brain in there somewhere…

Not necessarily. Ever read Call of Cthulhu? Well Cthulhu is an alien whose asleep (or dead? or neither?) in an underwater city he and his buddies built long ago while trying to colonize earth. Cthulhu send out “crazy-waves” and over the years drove many people to madness. Now Cthulhu doesn’t purposefully do this (as far as we know), his very nature is such that it drives men mad. It’s possible that Mordy might be the same, that driving Sylvari mad is simply a passive extension of his corruption and that he does knowingly drive anyone mad.
Also Scarlet was never really all that nice to begin with…
And also brain size != intelligence or else whales would have conquered the world years ago.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

You are putting human traits onto non-human things.
We have a particular view of the world that is shaped by our cultural and social experiences and upbringing. Elder Dragon’s do not have anywhere near the same kind of social experience, nor do we have any idea how their brains function. So Yeah, I wouldn’t go trying to put human feelings or emotions onto them…

Well according to the Zepherites EDs are like natural disasters, not inherently evil but by their nature destructive. However we’re not sure if this isn’t simply colorful language on their part however (since they’re technically like a cult… and cults sometimes think crazy thing).

Well ideally we’d have ultimate freedom. However that’s not possible, a game by it’s very nature restricts and prevents (even a game of hopscotch limits you to only certain action). This is usually referred to as mechanics but in terms of narrative the same concept applies. There isn’t enough man power to produce enough content to do so. So it’s not an inherently bad thing that we don’t have more narrative freedom (a focus on a single plotline allows for more polish).
However what we do lack is expressiveness. Think about Mass Effect (which get’s brought up very often…) you’re always doing the same thing you just have the options to swing Paragon or Renegade while doing so and practically all that means is different dialog options. The ability to express differing opinions goes a long way in not limiting us to the: “Nice guy who likes flowers”-thing even if the dialog in the bigger scope doesn’t change anything.

Lasting value? Sure. Bang for your buck? Sure. The real question is: is the value sufficient to require a daily investment of time and routine investment of money… Your mileage might vary here. Some only get maybe a few hours a week out of GW2 other’s get a few hours each day and so on.

Bri.8354:

In the case of living story season 2 you are forced to stand there and listen to the same conversations, lasting over a minute in some circumstances, which get very annoying.

Some people like the story… so mileage being all variable again.

Bri.8354:

The content needs to give the player a reason to repeat it. This is most easily achieved by rewards, which is something a lot of content has an issue with. Why do a jumping puzzle when it hardly gives anything? Why do a dynamic event for a tiny bit of karma? Why do any of season 2 again when they give nothing?

Some people do things because they’re fun. Others do it for reward.
Reward is not fun, but reward can have long term appeal (think about watching a fun movie, it’s only fun for the first few times then it loses fun-ness. A slot machine people will keep pulling that lever until the sun goes down). However balancing for both can be difficult (reward is basically just a skinnerbox) while entertainment is significantly more difficult to quantify (engagement, novelty, challenge etc. etc. etc.).
So that varying mileage again.

Invictus.5197:

Balance Changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack
Necromancer

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons. You’ll see that the dagger auto-attack will now hit two targets, while the axe’s animations have been tuned to be more fluid. Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.

FIX THE kitten MINIONS T_T

Well it’s only their PvP changes they’re talking about (week 1 == pvp), so no reason why they might still not sneak this in somewhere.

Funky.4861:

Dagger is hitting 2 targets on its auto-attack, 3/5 of it’s skills will still be single-target; god forbid they give us a proper cleaving weapon…

Greatsword, greatsword, greatsword!

My inner critic says: we need more. But honestly I’m happy with anything we get! Thank you ANet keep it up.

dlonie.6547:

DeWolfe.2174:

This …. empowers the community to take care of trolls.

Think about this for 5 more seconds, please.

Which leads to the conclusion:

anabasis.7346:

It also empowers trolls to grief whoever they want even more. Also I wouldn’t call a group of players ganking on 1 player “dueling”. Sorry but this couldn’t be a worst idea.

anyway…

DeWolfe.2174:

Because I have faith that good players far outweigh the grievers. And, please do create a guild and consolidate all the bad players (Not that you are).

I honestly can’t remember the quote or it’s source but allow me to try anyway: Do you know why the world is doom? Takes an army of people months to build a skyscraper and just 1 person with a bomb to bring it all down.

dlonie.6547:

They’re not grieving you, they’re "playing the game.

Playing the game as intended even.

Substance E.4852:

lol there are no grievers in PvE. What there is are people playing a game that they paid for and a bunch of kitten farmers who are constantly upset that they can’t easily exploit bad game design for profit…

And the best part is no one is able to see things from the other sides point of view. It’s hysterical. The farms think their in the right, the grievers think their in the right. I don’t know who’s in the right though but I do know it’s horribly entertaining.

Labjax.2465:

Hate to say it, but the best solution here is just pointing out to Anet content that is vulnerable to being trolled/grieved and hope that they make it better.

Exactly what was done and then ANet decided with the grievers and decided to nerf the farming. So I’m not under the impression that this is a valuable strategy for farmers.

chemiclord.3978:

It doesn’t matter what they say as long as they are not obscene.

Speaking from personal experience obscene is in the eye of the mod (which means obscene could be anything from me calling you a poo-poo head to a kittening kitten who’s mother kittens kittens all kittening kitten… kitten!).

Law.4765:

The WoW episode of South Park comes to mind after reading this.

Which never made sense because unlike GW2 you don’t down level so you can only kills boars for so long until you don’t get anymore XP.

Since this would basically just be a reskin I don’t see much of an issue with it (well other than visual homogenization).

I agree with the idea of more armors outside the gem store. If it takes the form of a gold sink I guess I can live with that.

As a means of giving players insight into the LW episodes Point’s of Interest kinda fails (they don’t really say all that much). As a means of giving players insight into the people making the game and putting a human face to LW I think it’s a great success.

A bunch of nice ideas in this EP. In fact season 2 is marked by many good ideas (too bad so many of them only get used once or twice).

The garden party was somewhat hampered by the lack of decently implemented fail-states and limited interrogation mechanics (although I really would love to see this come up again, although only more naturally implemented)
The boss fight at the end of the episode was in my opinion the most cinematic so far. The summit was a bit clunky dialog wise (a bit more back and forward would have been nice… Even a convinced-progress bar where we need to argue and convince the summit members would have been nice but now it’s just walls of text).

The Shadow of the Dragon is an example of retcon. Originally it referred to Zhaitan, now it’s either referring to Mordy or just generally to EDs.
The reason you fight the Shadow of the Dragon in the dream is because it’s your Wyld Hunt. The Wyld Hunt is given to Sylvari in the dream. The same way you can also dream about unicorns and knights.

Now I’m not dismissing the possible connection between the Sylvari and Mordy (we simply don’t know at this point).

webtoehobbit.4201:

So, and not sure if this has been mentioned or asked. But the Shadow of the Dragon enemy we fought was the exact same one as we fought while in the Dream if you played Sylvari. Since the Dream is a collected consciousness of all the Sylvari then wouldn’t it make sense that a Sylvari would’ve had to have encountered the Shadow of the Dragon for it to appear in the Dream? Could Caithe have encountered it? Is this her secret? Or am I reading too much into this?

What we do know about the dream is that it’s a repository of sorts for Sylvari memories, before Sylvari are ‘born’ they spend their time living in the dream learning from these memories (why they can walk and talk immediately after being born). The nature of the wyld hunt is interesting though, since it is partly prophetic (so the dream seem to contain knowledge not necessarily originating from the Sylvari) since we have several examples of it containing events that have not happened yet (such as the Nightmare Courting hunting unicorn or Malyk).
But it is possible (given what we know) that OP might be right since that also falls into what we know about the dream.

Konig, even with your explanation, I still don’t see how it’s impossible for the Shadow of the Dragon to be a memory of what a Sylvari experienced outside of the dream. It is a collection of memories and possible futures and whatnot.

Let’s put it this way then: magic.
Or another way would be: the dream is a not particularly well described or explored concept whose function and inner workings we have little understanding of. Also it’s magical.

Zaxares.5419:

I could be completely wrong, of course; as a GW1 player, I admit to having some bias in hoping that the majority of the Ascalonian people are NOT trapped in some hellish afterlife through no fault of their own. This way, the only true ghosts that remain behind are those who, on some level, WANTED to remain in the world.

All evidence points towards that, unfortunately. We see several unnamed mobs in Ascalon talking to each other, so they’re more than simply magical copies. In the AC story intro video we see the foefire stripping the souls from soldiers.

The Movement of the World states (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Movement_of_the_World):

The stories told by the Charr (and the few, scattered human survivors of the battle) speak of a gout of sword-shaped flame rising from the highest tower in the city. After a white, burning heat swept the city streets, the dead and defeated Ascalonian guard arose once more, their spirits animated by the power of Adelbern’s sword. In the face of this spectral resistance, the Charr were forced to abandon the city.
Since that time, the spectral soldiers have guarded the ruins of Ascalon City and the eastern frontier. They resist the Charr, but do not communicate with living soldiers from Ebonhawke. Their spirits are only memories, the lingering presence of a past that cannot let go of the present.

So there is some ambiguity, but it comes down to the nature of ‘spirits’ and the usage of poetic language.

Jaken.6801:

You are pushed into the center of a summit, trying halfheartedly to convince leaders with your half knowledge on a thread they all should be aware off and make better statements then you.

They really should rewrite that piece of the LW. Since it’s all text it shouldn’t be that expensive to do. Currently it’s a bit clunky.

laokoko.7403:

I think there’s diminishing return when you kill certain type of monster over and over again.

DR is based on character and on location and only impacts loot drops. Basically if you run around in a circle killing the same mobs over and over you’ll eventually only get trash.

It’s a nice suggestion and I’ve personally been suggesting it on and off for a while now. However ANet doesn’t seem all that interested honestly. But I don’t know why. Most of it would basically just be selective copy pasting from the internal wiki and I (suspect but don’t really know) that implementing the interface wouldn’t be that difficult.

Jinroh.4251:

Every few months it happens and usually at the most inconvient of times.

Pretty sure that’s the idea, to inconvenience people as much as possible.

Jinroh.4251:

So why hasn’t this been dealt with already? I don’t recall other gaming companies having such a terrible problem…well except for that one time when Sony got hacked.

The servers are suppose to be accessible, DDoS attacks attempt to overload / lock up the servers by sending or requesting a massive amount of data to / from the servers. It’s not that easy of an fix.
It’s like when you have a large crowd trying to storm their way through a single small door. Doors are meant to be used to pass through (so closing it would be silly) but the size of the crowd would inherently lead to bottlenecks.

The only real solution would be to try and track down the supposed hackers (they’re not actually hackers, but that’s just me being pedantic again) and file criminal charges (like Sony did). I guess ANet could increase server capacity or the bandwidth to the data center but these won’t work because the script-kiddies would just get more machines to DDoS with.

Lil Puppy.5216:

Why can’t I use my unlocked dye colors on my tag? There, that’s how it should be!

Nice idea, but too many options can also be limiting. Keeping it simple is probably easier since the idea is for tactical use not for personal expression.

Zaxares.5419:

There’s a theory that suggests that most of the Ascalonian ghosts are actually just magical energy constructs. It would explain why they are constantly reformed, yet continue to do the exact same thing over and over without learning or adapting to their circumstances. They are not true ghosts; they are magically created echoes of Ascalonian souls, imprinted with the words and actions of the fallen as they died in the Foefire.

The theory is actually that all ghosts are magical constructs (or more accurately their physical bodies are magical constructs). A foefire ghost isn’t more or less of a ghost than a ghost pirate (just that the foefire ghost is cursed to forever haunt Ascalon).

Lostwingman.5034:

Looking back, I lament that our characters don’t start off with a class mentor who “taught us the ropes” and kind of lends credence to how we went from ‘random citizen’ to ‘one person army’. Could’ve made the Personal Story feel much more unique to our character if there was something tied to our class. Kind of off topic but something I’ve been thinking recently.

But I’m sure the RPers are happy with it this way, since it gives more room for the crafting of their own backstory.

kasoki.5180:

You can’t really relate socio-historical setting of GW to real world.

Well comparisons is perhaps not accurate, but it’s the best we have at this moment. Honestly I think ANet just produced some amalgamated nobility-esque-concept that serves whatever purpose is needed (Oh we need a bunch of out of touch people? Nobles! Need someone who’s very corrupt? Nobles!).

Would be nice if ANet could give us a nice long explanation of the hows and whys of nobility, but like I said I don’t think it exists.

Rukh.9287:

The Inquest to the Asura are the Spectres to the Citadel Council.

Spectres don’t routinely raid the Citadel facilities :P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Going with the ME stuff above, the Inquest is more akin to Cerberus to me

Yeah that makes more sense, Cerberus is more inclined to raid Earth facilities.

Rukh.9287:

Ok, so the dragons are the reapers resetting technology, er… “magic” every cycle so people don’t get too powerful and destroy reality. Scarlet is Saren, the Inquest is cerberus. Now we just need to find the Catalyst! : P

Actually I’d say that the Anti-Spiral is probably a better fit for reality destroying scenarios (oh look at my anime-fanboy coming through) since the worst case scenario in ME was simply the extinction of all organic life (reality would still be perfectly fine).

Well the dislike between the Asura and Skritt go back a long time. Asura and Skritt were in direct competition with each other for resources (back when they all lived underground). Of course with the Asura being the Asura they had a rather nasty superiority complex.