Guild Wars 2

It’s not available in Steam for my region (I’m in Brazil). I’m sad.
Anyone knows any tricks for being able to buy it on Steam anyway?

Stormdancer.4972:

Serenity.6149:

This has been a long time coming.

I have to wonder why they waited 2 years to release improved/relevant filters that would take a fraction of a day to code.

You should definitely consider applying for a job there.

With that attitude he/she would quickly become the darling of the team.

I really love the spirit of the changes, somewhat expect some bad surprises in the implementation (like with the trait system) but the direction is very good.

Now the next point of improvement in the game: include downvote buttons on the forums so we can sink whiny people who never say anything constructive (and upvotes to give focus to good ideas and constructive criticism).

I do agree that humans need their “something” to bring to the table…
– like charr have their military ways
– asura have their magitech
– sylvari have their inside knowledge as dragon minions (:-P)
– and norn have their endless dumb courage.
But I think their love of heritage and history is much more appropriate than their knowledge of magic.
One thing you can see in Grenth’s temple (personal story) is that, while humans “pray” for the “Human Gods”, asura study to try to understand their power as part of the physics of their world.
It is the difference between alchemy and science. Or faith and science. That’s why there’s a lot of asura artifacts holding back the corruption in Orr: humans would be able to create those artifacts in a one-off fashion (and later venerate those artifacts for centuries on end), asura use science to be able to replicate their abilities. Replicability is a main necessity of science.
Now, there are some magic abilities that humans seem to understand better than even asura. Mesmer abilities, for example. Humans have 3 important characters as mesmers (Jennah, Kasmeer and Anise) and it may be that the “Great and Gorgeous Mesmer Collective” is human exclusive (and Kasmeer has been shown to do things that PC mesmers can’t).

While I don’t like carrying many sets of weapons and armor, it’s really easy (and cheap) enough to buy a white level 80 weapon or armor from a armor/weapon vendor and that will probably put my stats in a closer ballpark to real level 15 people (wish these were salvageable so I wouldn’t have to right click to destroy them though).
The rest of the work is re-speccing my trait points to toughness/5th trait line and that would probably prevent me from one-shotting mobs in Metrica when I’m playing with friends.

JusticarArkiel.1564:

they said pretty early on that they would not set the personal story to be repeatable, simply because of your choices you made in the first place. it takes alot of coding to have it remember, hold onto, and keep the first choices, and still use the new choices in the repeat

The system already remembers, “holds onto”, and keep the first choices, considering the 3 terms are equivalent to “store the information”. The missions showed in the Story Journal serve as the storage of the information (for example, different choices in the talk with the Pale Tree trigger different missions afterwards, and the Story Journal knows which missions you made).
The needed code work would be for not allowing the player to make the choice again (it would appear like the choices appear currently for “guests” of the story).

I would guess it is small work, but repeated many times (one for each branching path), but it could be bigger depending on the quality of the code involved

For example, the “people” asked for change from 2 to 3 people to kick a person from a party. While this change appears trivial from the outside (change some constant from 2 to 3?), the devs already said it is not trivial because of the code involved.

Little or big work, I don’t think season 0 is their priority, but currently we have no way of knowing…

Musha.4025:

I don’t know.. I definitely wouldn’t want to see the repeatable story farmable, but I would also definitely love to have access to the unique skins I didn’t know were unique before. I’ve started NOT completing my PS on my chars now because, as it stands, I know I’ll never be able to go through it again. I’m like a perma-pre.

As long as the only thing farmable are green equipment and skins, I don’t think they would have a problem allowing repeatable rewards.

However, because the changes announced today include a revamp of the story rewards, that would probably mean that the current blues and greens may become yellow and maybe even orange on the Orr part. That would preclude repeatable rewards.

On the other hand, if that happens, my alts will learn a bit of the story too…

What is a perma-pre?

Nerelith.7360:

What I am saying is, that I feel you and I are in the minority. I think the " average" gamer that likes Gw2, does Not want to have a greater challenge with their level 80, as they fight level 15’s. I think the average gamer may feel that getting to level 80, should entitle them to some uberness.

I agree that is nice to be in a level 15 zone and be much more powerful than the rest and the mobs, but I think that the fact we have all skills (including elite), all traits, runes and sigils already gives us that edge. (Also we already know when to dodge :P)
That’s why I think that the statistical advantage we have (so much more power, vitality, etc) is overkill, and it is the easiest thing to tone down. We will still be much more poweful than a real level 15.

It is repeatable!
It costs 800 gems.
And you can even change some minor details of your story.

Now, seriously, understand where this comes from, there are some quests that are more fun and others you won’t ever want to see again. I hope they make season 0 repeatable,
I remember that they said that season 0 wasn’t repeatable because of the choices presented in the story, but they just have to lock down the choices (just present the chosen option instead of asking again) since the player shouldn’t be able to rewrite the past.
If/whan they do that they will probably use the mold of season 2, and that would probably mean no repeatable rewards. But I think we can live without the greens awarded by completing a level 75 mission.

The problem for me is also that, if I take a level 80 character to a low level zone to play with a friend who is starting at the game, I have to refrain from attacking the mobs so my friend can even tag them. Even then, there is no challenge for either, and my friend won’t learn the game very well that way.
I think our downleveled stats should be equivalent to the maximum a true level X in the area has (for example, a level 10 can only have blue armor with one stat, so our 3 stats summed should be equal to the 1 stat a blue gives) .
My reasoning is that, even then, our runes and traits will give us a huge advantage in battle.

Ohoni.6057:

NO to profession loot. I want my Thief to have just as much chance of getting Great Swords and Silk in my drops as any other class. This is just a straight up bad idea, and will make me want to play my favorite characters less because the drops they will get are less desirable. How much work could the players have saved you if you’d announced you were considering this before doing any significant work on implementing it?

I disagree with you. Most people play more casually and don’t dominate the Trading Post, and prefer loot that is relevant to their characters. Your wording of “you devs are wrong, all players think that” makes it even more difficult to consider your position.

However, I hope they clarify that this change applies to equipment and not to crafting mats (that could make a huge gold difference).
And I hope they fix the silk price, so being a salvaging elementalist isn’t more lucrative than being a salvaging thief.
And I hope for world peace.

Yoda.2839:

So in short what I am trying to say is that this update seems quite substantial but they way anet is releasing details about it is simply horrible. If there were 1 (or 2) huge blog posts where everyone could find something to get excited about there would be far less fuss about it. Instead players are sent on an emotional roller-coaster which results in being disappointed to a varying degree for 90% of the time.

I agree. Compared to last pack, this one seems to have much less user-facing changes. Last one had some big changes (wardrobe, megaserver, traits change, PvP tracks) and some smaller changes (account bound dyes and armor, no more repair costs).

The only change I saw in this patch that seems to be big as the previous big ones is the MegaGuilds one, and even this one may not change the game for 90% of the playerbase (but is probably very difficult to do it right for those affected).

Maybe it’s the comparison, but it would help to consolidate the announcement so it fits the size of the feature pack.

I hope they don’t dedicate a post next week to announce they will include Backpieces as a searchable TP armor category.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Well, I talk about it because it seems to me that the community-reaction on the delay of pc-crafting is the reason why we haven’t seen roadmaps for 2014 anymore.

Oh, sorry, now I understood your post. You are pinpointing the most likely reason/contributor why they stopped sharing plans with the community. Very on topic, my bad :P .

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I ask myself this: what is worse?

• the scenario after the delay of precursor crafting
• the scenario when no one knows how the future of GW2 will look like

After 2 years of game without a precursor, I want that precursor crafting as much as any 1k+ hours player without a precursor, but I really think that people talking about it (or SAB) in this thread are going off-topic, just because a dev is watching the thread.

Ensio.8172:

No matter how hard you stress the point that ideas aren’t set in stone, you’ll end up with a crowd raving about “broken promises” if something ends up getting changed or scrapped even..
Having said that, I wish game devs everywhere would grow some balls and just ignore the irrational crybabies.

Tell me about it… Sometimes it feels like some of these forumgoers think they are in Sword Art Online, and if they try to log off and go to another game, they will die in real life, judging for how much they cry and complain about a game.

Well, I saw some ideas about the poll and I think that there could be ways that even an in-game poll could be not intrusive.

For example, you receive an e-mail that tells you to visit the Consortium Office so you can respond to a survey and win 100 gems in the process! Don’t know about you, but I would do a quick survey for 100 gems.

That could happen not frequently (once a month, tops) and would be only once per account per survey cycle.

And the questions, while they would inform future development, would not be a direct “what do you want us to develop?”

First, because that question would be immersion breaking…
But also because the idea for a survey in my opinion is to see what is working for the playerbase and what… not so much.
So it’s better to ask about interests in the current game, even because 90% of the playerbase just plays, without thinking about what they want “next” in the game. They know what they like, and they will answer if asked, but they will not write a book about it (like us…)
And the final reason for a not-as-direct poll: this is not a democracy. ArenaNet can and must consider player feedback in the development decisions, but the final decision should be theirs.

We may think about what we imagine would be fun or better, but if that doesn’t mesh well with their vision for the game or even what they know (and we don’t) about game mechanics and story, they should not implement. And a too direct poll (“what do YOU want next”) would imply a commitment that I don’t think they should make anyway.

It’s better to make questions about the current game than to ask about what people want next. Like the example I made about specific aspects of the new trait system.

DDCarvalho.2071:

Any particular criticism about the system?
[X] 100% map completion for traits? Bad idea.
[X] I think that traits should always be found in maps with level lower than the trait availability (level 36 for adept for example)
[ ] All traits should be attainable by playing only a game mode, the current system forces me to WvW / PvE!
[ ] The events that award traits should be better planned to avoid waiting hours for it!

Hi devs and forumgoers, since this topic is exactly to talk about how to better the communication between developers and the community, I would like to make a suggestion: Polls.

Sometimes I feel that in the forums the “general opinion” is dominated by a few people with the time and patience to do kilometric forum posts. Those are hard to respond to, and even hard to read (tl;dr).

With polls, the barrier to entry would be reduced and people that just want to give their two cents would be able too, without having to write a full dissertation about it.

For example: the controversy about the new trait system. I thought it was a fun mechanic, but some parts of it were very badly implemented. (100% map completion for trait? How boring.) But most of the forum posts were by people demanding the old system back and complaining that ArenaNet ignores the “voice of the community”. But that people weren’t the voice of the commuity. They were a vocal minority.

Minority, or majority? We may never know. But by consolidating the opinion of the community in polls, we may know better in the future.

Poll options could be collected from the community so the options would be the ones that make the most sense, for example:

What do you think of the new trait system?
(o) I like it, it is a fun mechanic!
( ) I hate it, give my traits back!

Any particular criticism about the system?
[X] 100% map completion for traits? Bad idea.
[X] I think that traits should always be found in maps with level lower than the trait availability (level 36 for adept for example)
[ ] All traits should be attainable by playing only a game mode, the current system forces me to WvW / PvE!
[ ] The events that award traits should be better planned to avoid waiting hours for it!

And so on.

Nilkemia.8507:

0) the roar we hear sounds quite similar to the one at the end cutscene of the “Scarlet’s End” instance, not Zhaitan’s roar.

Sorry, can’t really discern between dragon roars. So nice you can.

#1: They’re still bad about how they do it by killing everything else, and…

Great stories are not good versus evil. Are lesser evils versus greater evils. And maybe the dragons never thought to negotiate with those worthless sentients. Now we killed a dragon, they may be more open to talk. Or maybe Scarlet simply thought genocide is better than non-existence.

#2: So far no major consequences for there being “too much magic” have been brought up or considered in-game.

Maybe because Abbadon was cast down for distributing too much magic, and magic being stored into Bloodstones to avoid the use of magic to waging wars. And the Dragons wake up every 14000 years, eat too much magic (and civilizations, which like magic too) and sleep. What happens if they fail? Maybe that never happened, and that’s why we don’t know.

And finally, the dragging up of the “Pale Tree is a dragon champion” theory with once again no solid evidence even implying a connection between her and Mordremoth (besides both being plantlike).

Ok, do you have a better theory?
No?
That’s what I thought.

4) No.
No one needs that invasive weed. Good riddance.
Sigh…

My thoughts exactly on your snotty attitude.

Also, she has proven to be an asset in most of the fronts she worked. She can read Scarlet’s design like no one else, and pointed us to the places that needed our help (Concordia and Salma).
She could be replaced by another genius like Vorrp, but I think she has way more personality than <<insert generic asura here>>. So she stays, sorry.

Grey Wolf.9280:

I know that many would say that Zhaitan’s orb is black one but black one flashes with yellow color which has nothing to do with Zhaitan. Dark green coincides more with his corruption and yellow and black would coincide with earth because plants and all other needs to be rooted in earth thus earth is the beggining of Mordremoth’s powers even if he doesn’t use it directly. Plus Zhaitan’s energy falling back to circle would correspond to his death.

Yes! This is what I am imagining. But, considering the Pale tree has a better understanding of this than any of the NPCs, and she supported our quest to kill Zaithan, what is her objective in this? To Tyria to blow up? Mord to be double-empowered? For her to become an elder dragon?

Can’t wait to find it out in the next release.

In the wooden potatoes video, they analyse the orb wake up order, and considering that the Green orb is Zaithan, the order coincides perfectly with the known order of awakening.
http://youtu.be/5Atrl9JIu_8?t=18m
That’s why I support that the green orb is Zaithan and the last orb is Mord, and the the fact that the Zaithan orb merges with Tyria (considering he is dead) could be a catastrophic event that Scarlet was trying to counteract.

“Caithe, someday you will see. Tyria will need me” – Scarlet Briar

Currently I support the theory that, in the Entanglement cinematic, the orb uniting into the center is Zaithan, with its energy returning to Tyria. But the fact that the cinematic gives the impression that this corrupts Tyria somehow seems dangerous, and may be why Scarlet was doing something necessary to undo the damage of killing an Elder Dragon.
Elder Dragons have a purpose. They are vacuum machines of magic, that reduce the magic footprint of the world when it reaches too great levels, and later they sleep and start bleeding magic again into the world.
Maybe the fact that one of them died without completing its purpose may lead to Tyria blowing up with so many magic, or something like that. And Scarlet was activating Mordremoth do do double duty and absorb twice as many magic to counteract that possibility.

What do you think?

P.S.:
My theory before was: Pale Tree was a rebelled dragon champion of Mordremoth, like Glint was to Klak. This was consistent to even the “What Scarlet Saw” story, because the “Dream” is the way for the Pale Tree to control its minions (unless the tree is dead, no one else can “corrupt” sylvari.) But, with the Pale Tree appearing in such a proeminent scale in this cinematic, even for non-sylvari, maybe the tree does have a greater purpose that just defying its dragon.

Eight O Eight.8257:

Good ol’ MS Paint.

Your ranger really seems to be using leather! Very nice.
I never quite get the right material textures for my characters, so I almost always fall back to using the color theme for the profession. Very colorful, but not as realist.

I really liked this idea!
Even if I leave this game tomorrow, I quite like the idea of recording the characters with whom I spent so much time.
So this is my family portrait.
Not as artsy as other entries (SO MUCH ENVY, Yunjii Sun) but maybe I will do a new one when they stop using rare crafted armor :P.

P.S.: The Ancestral outfit makes even a savage charr look like a diplomat…
Even though a dangerous albino one, on the case of mine.

Great sentiment.

Just the title seemed like you would start with a rant in the fashion you are criticizing, there are people that thought you had done that and answered accordingly.

I hope many things could be better in Guild Wars 2. But I researched the competition and came to the conclusion that there would be no other game I would like to play more, at least for now (waiting for some Wilstar reviews, but the strong focus on pwning and competition turns me off).

Sometimes I go to the forum and post some ideas of mine, or show support to a idea I like. But I don’t expect the developers to implement it, if they do, yay, game more fun for me. I had thought of the wardrobe idea months before the Feature Patch, but never posted it, and I was very happy when they implemented it. By themselves!
Traits, on the other hand, was a rushed thoughtless change, but that made me play in another fashion and discover more of the game (mini dungeons, JPs), and collaborate more with strangers. That’s at least a silver lining.

This is not a democracy, and even if it was, it irritates me a lot when people try to sell their opinion as “the sentiment of the whole player base”.
Whenever Arenanat wants to consult the “player base”, they will open a vote, those are cheap to make.

I hope that they continue investing in big encounters for season 2, because the change in scale from season 0 to season 1 already makes it seem like Scarlet (a tech-aided dragon “champion” at best) is more powerful than Zaithan (an elder dragon!). If season 2 goes back to groups, well, whatever elder dragon we battle now would be less powerful than Scarlet?

Don’t know why this was moved to living world. I focused my title on it but the suggestion is generic to all “more-than-5 people” content in the game…

I like the idea of Karma as “universal” currency. I think it could solve the problem of each new release creating a new currency (or a lot, Escape from Lions Arch had blade shards, found belongings and Heirlooms!).
But we don’t want people that haven’t played the content to be able to get it’s rewards (despite the exception at Festival of the 4 winds offering many of the Season 1 rewards). How to solve it?

My idea would be to put these buyable items in a seller that would only unlock after you attained some level of attunement to that content.
For example, you would use Karma on the dungeon vendors but they would only be available after you completed all the paths of the dungeon. You would start being able to buy his “tier 1” items and if you completed the dungeon more times, you would be able to get “tier 2” items, up to any tier they wanted to exist.

In seasonal content, it would work the same, and could be tracked by achievements (or not since the developers don’t want to use achievements anymore to track progress, only to recognize real feats).

An option would be an completion bar that, if you got 20% of it, you would be able to buy the bottom items of the vendor, with 40% you would get more options and so on. And you would always use karma, that would be awarded instead of this myriad of tokens.
Some tokens could still exist (like Blade Shards, that are crafting materials too) but the ones that are only currencies could stop existing that way.

Recently I was talking with some guildmates while doing Arah story mode (end of season 0) and we were talking about how underwhelming was the end to that story. Shoot the defenseless elder dragon with turrets until the health bar goes to zero? Epic.
I say that in contrast with the greatest battles from Season 1, like the Marionette one and the Prime Hologram one, which were much more difficult and interesting. These ones very much worked like raids…
Unless for the zerglings that stayed out of the fight just to get some “don’t get hit” achievement, and the autoattack ones of course.
In truth, Guild Wars 2 already had compelling raid content, but they can’t be as compelling because the working people have to compensate for any selfish person that gets into the same instance as us. Even in Boss Blitz, people spend hours trying to get into a “gold blitz”, and when they enter, they see the people standing in the main circle AFK.
Considering is the wish of the developers to make the season 1 content available to replay, I think that one of the ways to do it without removing the grandeur of boss battles like the Marionette and Prime Hologram is to make them available to start by a commander.
Here’s how I imagine it:

A raid would have up to 60 people (magic number: 12 parties that can be divided in a number of ways)
A commander would have an interface in which he/she would choose people to be its liutenants. There could be from 2 to 6 liutenants. Each liutenant would lead a squad made of 6 to 2 groups, inverse to the number of liutenants. Each amount of squads would be adequate for a type of challenge.

2 squads: Some guild missions
3 squads: Scarlet knights or Great Jungle Wurm (if downscaled)
4 squads: Marionette (with adaptations)
6 squads: Boss Blitz, and probably Tequatl

As soon as the commander’s army is organized, the commander would start the event, that would transport everybody into an instance exclusive to the army.
If people were kicked from a party (or left it), they would be sent out of the instance, allowing for LFGs to be placed to replace the person.

Continuing the theme of hierarchy, the commander would be able to set the rule for kicking people from parties in the raid interface:
- Party voting (the way it is now)
- Decided by party leader
- Escalated to squad leader
- Escalated by the commander himself

When trying to kick someone, it could show a drop down with common reasons:
- AFK
- Staying dead instead of waypointing
- Doing things unrelated with objective (like the heirloom collectors from escape from LA)
- Insubordination (not following instructions from leaders)

While the current LS chapter is active, creating a specific instance would be merely optional for people that wished to do it with their trusted comrades, and there would still be a “main” instance like the Tower of Nightmares had.
In this instance, any person would be able to play as selfishly they wished without fear of kicking.
But, after that chapter ran its course, instancing would be the only way to access the raid-sized content.

Since Guild Wars 2 already does scale events with number of people, some content could have a variable instead of fixed range (for example: Great Jungle Worm could go from 40 to 60), but the rewards could be higher if you did it with less people since there are less people backups.

Well, that’s it. The post is already too long, and the developers may already be planning something like this, unless they want all great boss battles on Season 2 to be played by 5 people at most.
What do you think?

I always like to imagine ways to implement the wishes of some of the player base without impacting the rest that think that “it’s fine the way it is”.
The thing I imagined was a “Legendary Mode”, which would work kinda like Hardcore on Diablo.
Players that, on character creation, chose “Legendary mode” for this character, would have the “Legendary” title and even the purple character frame for that character, and would enjoy something like 500% magic find.
If they were able to complete Story Mission (or some other equally distant objective) without dying, they would be rewarded with a Precursor instead of the weapon that is currently the reward for completing Story Mission.
Also, some achievement points would apply for the people that chose to play on this mode when they reached a milestone.
And LFG could have an option to limit your search to Legendary characters because their play styles would probably be much different from the normal playerbase (imagine a bad kite on a dungeon, could ruin 80+ hours of game). And also the option to keep those players out of your “normal player” search, because of course there would be a lot of people using this to try to farm Precursor and using “normals” as shields to avoid risking their precious Legendary characters.
(Oh, maybe the Legendary character could choose to ressurect on death, but if he/she did that, it would lose the chance to precursor, the magic find bonus, and the accolades. And would have permanently the title “Disgraced hero”. Nasty!)
In summation, great rewards and a lot of recognition for the ones that choose that path, and strictly optional so the people who prefer Theme Park Wars continue happy (like me! I play this for fun…).
Do you guys and gals see problems with that idea?

I like this idea.

The interface could be expanded from the “finisher” one in the Hero Panel, and use an structure similar to the Skill Panel.

For each category you could choose (finishers, foods, utilities, boosters AND MINIS!!!), it would show the current/chosen option on the left side and show the available options on the right side (like the skill panel). Buttons would not need to be as big as the Finisher ones, I think.

On unlockable items like Minis and Finishers, it would show all available options (on bank or inventory), but on consumable items it would show only the options on the character’s inventory (otherwise it would be like a direct line to the bank).

And each time the food or utility ran out of its duration, the game could show a button to renew it, next to the activated boons. Most of the time I am not buffed with foods because I always forget to re-activate them.

It would be like a wardrobe for those items, and make them much more convenient to use (specially minis, that by having to be reactivated in each rezone, I am never using).

And someday… Who knows? We may get a subtle boon depending on the mini. Like a flying mini reducing falling damage slightly (restrictions for WvW and PvP would probably apply).

Bug still persists as of 2014/05/29.
Whiptail is locked in place on Brandwatch.

rstripn.8697:

Hey, yet another post from me about trait unlocks!

Thanks to whoever posted first about using heart vendors, and thanks for listening.

P.S. I just realized that I am posting the most about traits, one of the few things in the patch which does not affect me (lv 80 in each class). Which just goes to show that I’m posting because I care about the game, not because I have any personal stake in this. Yay me!

I think I have posted something about using heart vendors (and event vendors) but I have not thought about dividing the Master traits between 2 or more vendors. That would be very nice!

Also, I think the system of using heart vendors would allow for a trait to be attainable in more than 1 place. There are at least 3 maps in the 30-40 range, they should all be viable for getting traits and I see no problem in more than one of them selling the same trait, giving players options on how to explore.

Even better would be if the heart vendor was profession-related, like, a heart vendor who is a guardian selling guardian traits. But some classes have almost no representatives among the heart vendors (mesmers for example). It could still be retconned (oh, that apple pie selling lady at Queensdale is a aspiring mesmer who can teach a mesmer trait or a mesmer skill).

That would be a awesome way to get traits or skills, and would give back relevance to heart vendors, who by my evaluation rarely have something useful.

My main issue with the new trait system (that I think has appeared some times here) is that is really grindy.
I have seen people complaining that the new system was lazily developed, because the unlocks are the same for all professions instead of profession-dependent. While I agree, I understand that creating 70 × 8 different unlocks could be hard.
What I don’t understand is the choices for unlock.
I think that the best way to provide for adept traits would be to put them as rewards for heart quests, preferably in 3 or 4 different maps. I would put 1 to auto-unlock (the worst one :P), 3 traits to be found in 4 different heart vendors or event vendors (vendors that unlock on event completion) on level 30-40 maps, and the 2 most popular in level 40-50 heart vendors or event vendors (with more than one option too). In those vendors, the trait would cost only 1 skill point and no gold.
I would put the profession trainers to sell “treasure maps” to these traits so you could see on the map where you could unlock all the traits for you character ,for a cheap fee.
Actually, that’s how I would put all trait and skill aquisition, mostly on heart vendors and event vendors with a little of them (elites, maybe) assosicated with dungeons, and with most having multiple options to acquisition.
This would take back the sense of ability hunting of GW1 without making the game become the grind it has become now with “complete THIS map” traits.

(Also, it would make the heart vendors on low-medium level maps a lot more relevant… Usually what they have? Greens or blues a few levels below the minimum level for the heart. And this equipment can’t even be salvaged. Yay. Really yay. I learned to ignore them very fast.)

Mongole.6485:

i think OP’s idea is great, but only if you fight with pvp equipment, not legendaries and back protectors and so on… +1

But there will not be PvP equipment anymore even in PvP… But to even it out, the PvP stats and skill rules could be used.
The MegaServers technology would allow for ArenaNet to keep there maps relatively balanced (like, keeping X people with each aligment per map), however that could disbalance with time because of the dynamic nature of the game (people enter the map, people get out, unless there are people being “suggested” to move to a more balanced map, it can get complicated.

Seera.5916:

Unless it is impossible to trigger and complete these quests by those who aren’t aware that the quest is the one that triggers open world PvP, it is too open to people accidentally entering a game mode they do not wish to be in.

I would make it that is harder to enter an aligment than to go back to neutral.
For example: to enter alignment, have to complete a hard group event, and then you are transported to PvP enabled map.
To exit, just have to ask forgiveness to Ebonhawke mayor, and then you are sent back to PvE -only map.
And I would make Ebonhawke guards “yellow” to Separatists and Renegades, so they will not attack aligned players on sight but will chew them up if provoked. This way, it would be very easy to go back to PvE.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Why do we have to say more? ‘THE GAME IS NOT DESIGNED FOR IT’ that is as plain as the nose on your face.

The game was not designed for a lot of things (PvP and PvE equipment being unified, for example). But good ideas may arise and changes are made. I would welcome more good ideas and constructive criticism than decrees about the “fundamental nature of the game”, since those are not constructive or useful.

I recently gave an idea about how to include very optional PvP in an in-game map that I think that makes sense lore-wise.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Idea-for-PvP-in-world-Descent-into-Ruin/first#post3890093
I would like more feedback than the “they will never do it”, something like arising problems from the implementation.
Would you take a look, please?
I am also not a great fan of PvP but now that we have MegaServers, I think there is a chance for implementing it in a way that would avoid griefing.

Thanks!

I don’t know what are the developers reasons for not implement dueling, but there are probably some. Like:
- Ability for a third party to “tamper” with the duel by giving boons to one of the parties, or kiting a mob against the other party.
- They could avoid the 1st scenario by locking both characters from receiving boons that are not from “self”, but it can be complicated depending of how the game is coded.
- To avoid the 2nd scenario (mob kiting) they could make a “closed zone” that stops people or mobs that getting into the “duel arena”, but this “closed zone” could be used to tamper with events and making them much easier or impossible to complete.

One way to solve both problems is to include a little Duel arena in most maps so people can use it without tampering, but this option would create its own problems.
- Many people want to duel in Queensdale! So one duel arena is not enough. How many then?
-Where will we put the duel arena in map X? Where does it make sense, lore-wise?

So, with each problem, we get closer to the current solution, which is: small battles in PvP and large battles in Obsidian Sanctum.
- Hey, another idea! When people choose to duel, they are transported to a PvP mini-map instance for dueling that is quite like a Jubilee arena. Other people can right click the duelers and be transported as expectators.

I think that if people come up with a solution that solves arising problems in an elegant way, it makes it easier to the devs to implement it.

I am not a huge fan of PvP, I am just giving an idea of how PvP could be done in a lore-friendly, resource-friendly (now that we have MegaServers) and player-friendly way.
That still would be as optional as WvW, even more considering that WvW is not optional if you want world completion and the alignment quests would be optional (people would continue in a pure PvE map if they didn’t explicitly align).
Such negativity.
I expected a more useful feedback than “they said they will never do it, so leave it alone or leave the game”.
Something more constructive like “This would have unintended consequences for other maps that have separatists or renegades”.
But that would be expecting too much.

There is quite a lot of people that would like to experience PvP in world, but since all races and orders are friends or at least reluctant allies, that would not make sense lore-wise.
But there is one place when these alliances are the most fragile: Fields of Ruin.
My idea would be a Living World release that would make people (optionally) complete a series of missions or events that, on this map, would align them with the Separatists, Renegades or with the Alliance (which is the “default” faction the player is currently). After this alignment quest, the person would be put on a PvP copy of this map with different events and heart quests that reflect that status (like, a heart quest that helps separatists instead of the alliance).
In this context, a person on a faction would be able to attack people on the other factions, and there would be events that explicitly ask the person to do so (like, an event in which the Renegades attack the Separatists camp and the separatists defend).
Since this alignment quest would be optional, people that never completed it would still be in PvE map, and also, if people wanted to go back to a PvE map, they could make a “come back” quests that restores the supremacy of the Alliance on this map.
This alignment status would be character-bound (not account bound), so you could have a human separatist, a charr as renegade and another human as Alliance.
For lore reasons, humans would not be able to be renegades, and charr would not be able to be separatists. Other races could choose at will.
I can even envision some quests in which a mesmer NPC would disguise a charr as human to spy on the separatist camp while the separatists players on the camp could somehow weed out spies.
Now with MegaServers, that could be much easier to implement, because instead of maintaining 2 maps from the same region for each world, they could have only 2 maps to all worlds, one PvE and one PvP-aligned.
Really, MegaServers opens the opportunity to much bigger things, like a future in which you can work to see Orr restored and see that restoration in game, like new cities in there (while people that didn’t do such things see the original Orr until they complete this work).
What do you think?

Now in PvP your armor is just a fancy dress, and you will pick your stats and runes in a separate interface.
So, to have a different armor in PvP, you only have to transmute you favorite dress onlyonce onto white items and keep them on your inventory, swapping them for your PvE clothes when you get to PvP.
It means more work than the previous approach, but it also means that you can Pwn people wielding a legendary.

Hi man, I am brazilian too.
I am at server Sanctum of Rall, which once was the mightiest server in WvW.
Due to bribery and backstabbings, we are not number one anymore.
I have participated in 2 brazilian guilds on this server (Ultimate Legion and Lunaticos) which were both focused on WvW but had also PvP and PvE players.
If you wanna play mostly in portuguese with brazilian people, you can check this index of guilds here
http://gw2.guildex.org/guilds/na?search_id=mi0V6WFDukW6Rb6o&sort=members&order=desc
Usually this will allow you to talk in portuguese in Teamspeak and other voice services.
Friend me if you feel like it, soon when they implement Megaserver we will be all be together at the maps that have most of our friends, and there will be not empty servers anymore.

If there is a group of people that is using a pug for doing the hard work and then kicking him at the end of the dungeon to free the spot for a friend of theirs, saving said friend from doing the work to get the end chest, I really think that this should be considered griefing.

Since Fractals is the main place this could happen (most other dungeon runs are too fast to allow it) one option would be to kick all members from the fractal sequence if there is a kick in the 3rd or 4th fractal.

Kicking should be used for griefers or uncollaborative players. If a player is so bad that you have to kick him at the end of a dungeon, the group should be willing to forfeit the prizes for them too.

Vimph.8965:

Crafted 2 Incinerators.
Soon (april 15th) one of them will become 2000g worth piece of junk.

Your incinerators will continue to be legendery, with the unique ability to change stats on the fly. The others you can make with the skin will just be pretty torches.
And you will be able to send one of them to another character.

Of course, if you never use the on the fly stat change, it still sucks a little.
Maybe now that they will end a lot of items in the gem store (transmutation stones and splitters) they may create an item that reverses the account-bound condition on items. I would probably price it at exorbitant levels (whatever is equivalent to 300g in gems) but it would still be worth it for a legendary.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Rym.1469:

If your worst experience is buying the game, why do you still play it and post on forums ?

The 50$ (30$ if discounted) for 19 months of play was too much of a price to easily forget.

I usually value my time much higher than my money, specially when my money is 50$ spread in a period of 19 months.
To continue playing a game you don’t like just to “recoup the investment” seems to me like a case of “throwing good money after bad”.

But maybe you are just a lonely troll looking for attention in the forums. If that is the case, virtual hugs to you. It gets better if you get better.

Probably it would be better to make account bound skills if the skills were bought in the open world (heart quest vendors, dungeon vendors, etc) instead of on a tab on the character, retaining that way some sense of collection.
But I agree with Erick that allowing people to buy all of them would not be detrimental. People will still have to prioritize them to put in the available slots, and those slots are given slowly (levels 7, 10 and 20 if I am not mistaken).
And considering the real challenge is to master the skills, learning the right way to use them, I consider that allowing people to try them as early as possible would lead to better, more experienced players.

I can cite a lot of advantages of account-bound skill points:

- Be able to use the skill points awarded to a level 80 who has all the skills to try out the skills in a new character.
- Skill points could be awarded as currency, negating the need for scrolls of knowledge and inventory space for them. They are already used as currency for the Mystic Forge.
- Be able to pool all skill points distributed between characters to buy items which are sold for skill points.

vitus, Khani, Trogdor… What advantage do you see in character-bound skill points?

Overall I really like the change, because walking around an empty Timberline really sucks (and I know, because I am mostly a PvEr who completes maps).
But I understand the issues some of the people have raised, and I imagine that the developers could make the system even better by allowing people to set some parameters to optimize the search, in an in-game interface.
What parameters?
1) RP
By what I see here, there is quite a lot of people who only want to interact with RPers).
2) Country / Language
Main european languages are already covered by the EU servers, but I for example am Brazilian. I would also like to see more people from here, so a selection box with this option would be nice.
3) Lone Wolf
I got surprised to see that there are people who want to see as little people on the maps as possible. So there could be a Lone Wolves overflow, that would give those people the challenge and anti-social behavior they want.
4) PvP
There were some people before asking for PvP servers, this flag could be set and when people enough wanted a PvP overflow, it could be created for them to kill each other at will. How to make a Friend-or-Foe system? Maybe by guild or party. This could lead to some large scale battles between guilds.

There could be other factors to aid the selection (any ideas?).

And the process could be further aided by an interface to see the current copies of a map, each one’s characteristics (number of players, number of guildies , RP, PvP ) and allow change to a non-capped copy. This way, people with specific requirements would be satisfied, while also satisfying the 99% who keep settings at default.

Don’t know if that would be viable because most players will be happy with the change and the vocal minority that is complaining is a minority, but the effort to implement the Megaservers is probably much bigger than the effort to include some more variables and show an interface to allow more control.

What do you think?

Well, I stopped talking about the problem at hand to talk about another gameplay paradigm which we may try to absorb its best practices, but coming back to your question:

Olvendred.3027:

So. Is there really any reason to cap this number, which affects nothing in terms of gameplay, at a certain point? Especially if the game is optimistically looking 5 or even 10 years into the future? It’s simply disincentivising playing the game often and for a long time, which makes absolutely no sense.

If they want to incentivize another style of playing, yes, it makes sense.
ArenaNet always made it clear that wanted the game to be a cooperative one, at least when playing with allies. That’s why, by design, we don’t compete for rare mobs, gathering nodes and the game always rewards helping people doing an event together, so it won’t fail.

What I mean is, their decisions are influenced by their philosophy in making the game. If they want the game to be more cooperative and less grindy, they will take steps in doing so and I believe they are right in that. And this is one such step.

Also… Achievements are usually a fixed, non repeatable set of points in almost every game which implements it (allowing a dedicated enough person to complete 100% of them without having to “pre-order” and allocate every day of it’s life to it).
So, their decision would also be seen as “returning to form” in achievement management, altought not totally (there were people who wanted leaderboards to not include dailies or monthlies, for example).

And yes, this may mean that people complete 100% of the achievements and stop playing the game if they are not interested on repeating content. That is called “healthy behavior”.

Olvendred.3027:

ahhh, good point. Anet’s next move should be to delete gold rewards, item drops, karma, dungeon tokens, BoHs and XP from the game. Cause you know, them hypothetical rewards are just bad.

That would be awesome. This way, people would play because it’s fun, and would stop when it’s not fun anymore! Can you imagine that?

Anyhow, I decided to play with your idea because it is fun, I’ll stop when it’s not fun anymore.

The option to remove most rewards and simplify it is not as crazy as your “Reductio ad absurdum” tries to imply. By what I know, this is how most MOBAs (Multiplayer online battle arena) work. And these games are veeery popular.

Most MOBAs are very restricted in what kind of progression you can have, with your character being reset to level 1 with each new match and the only things remaining for eternity being cosmetical items, the experience of playing and having fun with friends. (Maybe also some gold, I don’t have much experience with them).
I think that the initial idea of ArenaNet was to replicate this in PvP, but it caused a divide between people who cried about it being a bad MOBA (unbalanced, complex, yada yada) and also the PvP didn’t capture people from PvE enough to compare to DOTAs and competitors.

Olvendred.3027:

Yeah, this is ridiculous. Talk about Anet shooting themselves in the foot: ‘We have this lovely and largely meaningless system of horizontal progression (which is our whole philosophy, yay!), and we’re going to cap it so those players won’t be interested in playing anymore!’ Is there any logical rationale to making this change?.

Removing the annoying whiners from the game
“waah waah they removed hypothetical rewards!”

I really don’t have a dog on this fight because I only have 1/3 of the daily cap, but seems like there are 3 kinds of people commenting about it:

1) Those who are in the 99% of the players that won’t be affected for years. I am in that group.

2) The daily achievement hunters that do it only to maintain their position in the leaderboards. Those seem to sincerely thank ArenaNet for relieving them from spending 2+ hours daily in a tedious grind

3) Those who “lived” for the daily achievs, since they probably have gotten every other achiev in the game (save from historical ones, maybe). Those are the ones complaining that the game will soon be over to them.

If you are in category 3… Let’s face it. You have experienced (almost) everything the game has to offer. Daily AP hunt should’t be end game content. It’s usually easy, grindy and contributes nothing to the community.

If you want to find other end game content, there are other opportunities:

1) Found a guild. Organizing, motivating people and making them happy is a serious undertaking, more challenging than achievements.
2) Organize large scale events like the Great Jungle Wurm world boss, to improve their chances of success.
3) Enter tournaments, like the PvP ones.
4) Become a respected commander in WvW.
5) Try other games! It is a good thing to take a break from the game from time to time.
Go play other games, and when you come back to see what is changed, you can come here to the forums and suggest other cool game mechanics you saw in other games, to AnenaNet to implement in this game.

Playing other games is not a bad thing. Taking a break is not a bad thing. You have to do what makes you happy. Since Daily AP hunt does not make me happy, this change does.

I think they could open one PvP server and leave it open for people to guest in it, maybe like a no-mans-land. This way, people who like to grief would have the perfect place to kill each other.
I wouldn’t allow switching permanently to it. It would be like a “vacation in hell” for those who wanted, but creating it like a permanent home for a person/guild would divide guilds and create a division in the WvW, because I imagine PvP servers should only battle other PvP servers on WvW.