Guild Wars 2

I suppose it depends on your character. My character has never been especially religious, even in Neverwinter Nights when she was a cleric (took a lot of reading up on Faerun lore to find a god who wouldn’t mind). Her attitude is much closer to Marjory’s – if Balthazar wants to destroy the dragons for his own benefit and doesn’t care what it does to Tyria and the human race then he’s no longer deserving of worship.

Although saying that if it was Melandru, who she sees as the embodiment of Tyria – the thing she’s devoted her life to protecting…that would be difficult.

I am bothered by the instant jump to “let’s kill it” given that we’ve just been told that was a really bad plan with the dragons. But again that’s in character for her because she’s also known to be rather impulsive. I’ll just sit here and wait for another opportunity to say “I told you so” and get told if I was so sure it was a bad idea why did I make her do it…yes I talk to my characters, yes we argue, but it’s ok, the other voices have assured me neither of us is crazy.

And overall yes it would be nice to have more choice on how to react to different situations. But that’s still a relatively new concept in computer games and although people are constantly working on improving the tech that makes it possible and the writing that makes it works in the story it’s still got a long way to go before we can be given total freedom, especially in MMOs where the world is shared by lots of people and so needs to stay consistent. If you want that level of freedom you unfortunately need to stick to pen and paper RPGs, or writing your own stories.

The alternative is to tailor your character to the game. Make a character who would make the choices offered. It’s not always ideal of course because it can involve some compromises, but making that work can be fun in it’s own way.

I can see how this could be a difficult situation for some humans but I don’t think that’s the case for all of them. There are plenty of NPCs in the world who question why anyone would worship the Six when they haven’t done anything for centuries and others who doubt they ever existed.

Also I think even devout humans attitudes would be closer to ancient pagans than modern followers of the various Abrahamic religions. They don’t believe their gods are infallible, certainly not all-knowing or all-powerful so disagreeing with them wouldn’t be totally out of the question. Unusual and probably dangerous, especially in person, but not unthinkable.

So there’s a lot of ways I could see this playing out for a human character, and I actually think those options are more interesting than for the other races who probably just see Balthazar as yet another powerful being that’s a threat.

Shared inventory slots are already available in the gem store and gathering tools already can be placed in them.

If you have any of the old soulbound infinite gathering tools you can speak to one of the Black Lion NPCs (armoursmith I think) to make them account bound so they can go in there.

If this was implemented it would have to be an option guilds could turn on or off. Otherwise it would make the original, intended way of doing trek’s impossible.

The way it’s designed is that just 1 person will go to each mark – the others will be spread out around the world going to the other marks. Many guilds still do it that way either because they find it fun or because they want to actually complete the mission and lack the man power to do it any other way. If only officers could activate them they’d have to either promote everyone to officer rank temporarily (which could cause even worse problems) or the officers would have to scramble to get all the marks themselves.

Personally I suspect a lot of the time this isn’t intentional trolling – some players are just conditioned that if they see the indicator show up to press F to do anything they push it without thinking. I’ve seen the same in other situations where players end up picking up environmental weapons they didn’t want or activating things like gate switches at the wrong time because they see a yellow blob on the screen and push F without taking the time to read or think about what it does.

One fix could be to change which button activates it. But I think the way most guilds handle it is to have everyone meet somewhere nearby but not on the mark – like the closest waypoint or the entrance to the area it’s in. And then they go in as a group once everyone is there.

And if anyone does miss it they can always go to another mark. There’s usually at least 2 which are easy to reach in each mission.

Welcome (back) to the game! I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself.

In answer to your question about the Living World seasons they’re similar to other games DLC. They continue the story after the main game and bridge the gap between expansions. But they’re not stand-alone stories. Season 2 leads directly into HoT, including introducing the main enemy and setting up the fight against them, and it looks like Season 3 is doing the same with the next expansion.

You might notice I didn’t mention Season 1. That was a bit different. The original plan for GW2 was to just have a series of temporary releases which weren’t repeatable. That was Season 1 and unfortunately after that proven unpopular and they switched to permanent content it was too time consuming to modify it all to bring it back. All we’ve got is a short summary video, and longer, more detailed ones on Youtube.

Basically I wouldn’t worry about the Living World until you’ve finished the main story. Then you might want to think about getting the Season 2 bundle. (And don’t forget you can convert gold to gems if you don’t want to pay real money for it.)

It might also be good for you to know that you’re not limited to meeting and playing with people on your server. The game uses a system called mega-servers which means all the PvE maps are shared between all servers in a region (North America or Europe). So when you’re out in the world you can meet anyone from any NA server.

Some things, like the Trading Post and mail are game-wide. But it’s not possible to actually meet up with people from the other region without transferring to a server in that region. (And unlike some other games all your characters will be on 1 server.)

The strategy guide was made shortly before the game was released and I don’t think it’s ever been updated. Meanwhile there’s been several major changes to the game, including how weapon skills are unlocked, what you get for levelling up, how Magic Find works, the entire trait system (several times), how dailies work and what you get from them, which stat combinations are available, the top tier of equipment…

About the only thing it might be useful for is a guide to the Personal Story, and you can get that from the Wiki for free.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

If you care about playing the story, I’d recomend buing the Living World Season 2 bundle. That is story content leading up to Heart of Thorns (the expansion story).
Other purchases really depends on your play style, so might be a good idea to wait and get a feel for it.

Oh good point. I forgot that’s in the gem store too.

There will probably be a Season 3 bundle as well once Episode 6 is out. (Or individual chapters are sold now, through the story journal, but I’d recommend waiting for the bundle, there’s a lot of story to get through before Season 3.)

For legendary weapons I strongly recommend you make the first step being absolutely certain which weapon/s you’re going to use most for the entire time you’re playing GW2.

If you’re worried about meta builds and always using what’s best/most popular consider that updates and new ideas from the community can shift which weapons are best to use. In that case you might be better off making ascended weapons. They have the exact same stats, but if you need to make a new weapon it’s a lot cheaper and easier.

If you’re not concerned about the meta but like to change your weapons around or haven’t decided on a favourite yet you should do that before you start making a legendary.

Whatever the reason you don’t want to find yourself with a soulbound precursor and a legendary-specific gift and no desire to keep the finished weapon. Especially if it’s one of the new legendaries which can’t be sold.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For weapons, you can purchase, craft with the Legendary Collection (for Precursor), or wait for a drop (Precursor) and craft.

Or for the pre-HoT legendaries you can buy the precursor and then craft the legendary with it.

Short answer first: Not using your level 80 boost yet is sensible. Levelling up at least 1 character will help you learn the game so level 80 will be less overwhelming. But the boost might come in later if you want to start a new profession.

Long answer: What to do with gems. This is actually a hard question to answer because there’s nothing in the gem store you actually need to play, so there’s very few obvious answers and I know people disagree on what those are.

I’d say the most useful things right from the start are 1-2 extra bank tabs and if you’re going to play 2 or more characters maybe some shared inventory slots. Later on you might want some extra character slots. Oh and the infinite gathering tools are useful, but probably not needed until you get to level 80 and are moving around maps a lot more.

Just so you’re aware all of those things go on sale periodically. These sales aren’t announced much in advance and then when they do say they’re going to have one they don’t say what will be included. But if you want something that seems expensive and you don’t mind waiting a while to get it for less that’s an option.

I actually spend the vast majority of my gems on mini pets, closely followed by gliders, mail carriers, outfits and other cosmetic/fun items, and I suspect the same is true of most players (with different items taking priority). If you like them I think they’re well worth getting, but I don’t want to actually recommend them because they have no gameplay benefits – they just look different – so there’s no need to buy any you don’t like.

The one thing to be aware of is Black Lion Keys. These open Black Lion Chests which are found in-game or bought from the Trading Post. I don’t know if you’re familiar with RNG boxes from other games but they’re basically a lucky dip. There’s a huge list of items that can come from them, including some really rare and highly desirable ones (either because they’re useful or simply because they’re worth a lot of gold) but the vast majority of chests will only give the common items.

If you enjoy gambling then that’s great, but if you’re ever tempted to buy them because you think it will be a good way to make a lot of gold or you want a specific item be aware that you’re highly likely to lose more than you make, and end up without the thing you wanted. If the thing you want is tradable you’re better off buying it from the Trading Post.

I seem to remember a little while ago it was mentioned that she’s 16 years old. Which means she would have been about 12 or 13 when she was first introduced. If asuran development is anything like humans she may well have experienced a growth spurt in that time.

But they have also been subtly altering the models for all the characters over time. I noticed when we saw Logan in Episode 4 he had a bit of grey hair, and of course there’s obvious things like the costume changes or the contrast between Caithe normally and during the flashbacks to when the sylvari first awakened.

Come to think of it the Wiki says asura live 5-10% longer than humans do (barring accidents). We don’t know much about their development, but if it’s proportional to their lifespan that means Taimi may be close to being fully grown, and more importantly considered an adult and no longer a ward of her college – in other words free from Phlunt and his interference. (And if it is different asura are likely to develop faster since humans spend an exceptionally long time maturing compared to pretty much all other species.)

It’s an anti-clockwise spiral.

You start at the bottom in the south west corner of the map and you keep going up and left until you end up almost exactly above where you started, but 2 levels up.

There are various short-cuts in the form of updrafts, those lava font things from previous LS maps, leylines and the new druid mastery, but if you can’t figure out where to go you can just run there – keep going left and uphill and you’ll get there.

The one bit that might be confusing is the transition between the 2nd and 3rd levels, which is a ‘ramp’ with loads of destroyers on it, because there’s other paths to either side which don’t go up. But you can see that from quite a distance away, so that’s where making sure you’re going uphill as well as left comes into play.

That definitely sounds like a bug to me. I start and quit episodes all the time and I’ve never had the markers stay around. They’re not supposed to, you’re only supposed to see the ones for the step you’re on. (Or none if you have no active story.)

In lore it’s the asura, Or rather a subset of them who choose to work as waypoint engineers.

In reality the money simply disappears. It’s called a gold sink and it’s an important part of the economy in an MMO, to counter all the gold that appears from nowhere when you kill enemies, complete hearts and events or sell things to NPCs. Otherwise we get uncontrolled inflation and that’s no fun for anyone.

Fortunately you can avoid waypoint fees most of the time by using gates (which in lore you have to pay for but in reality are free) and running between locations. You will have to use waypoints occasionally – like when you want to go to one of the new maps which aren’t connected to the mainland (unless you have a portal scroll) and when you die and there’s no one around to revive you. But you can usually ‘counter’ that easily by gathering 1-2 nodes and selling the materials, you’ll get more money than you spend on the waypoint.

It’s probably too late to do this now but for future reference if you see something on another player’s character that you like you can always ask them about it. Many people like (or at least don’t mind) sharing details about their characters with people who like them.

Although they may not know. Someone once asked me which face I used for my asura and I couldn’t even tell them if it was a kit-exclusive or not. I know I used a kit on her but it was about 2 years ago and I can’t remember if I changed her face.

I think people are right that he was trying to gain our trust. The fact that it didn’t work doesn’t change that – people try things all the time that don’t work, that doesn’t mean they were never really trying, just that they failed.

He apparently wants to destroy the dragons and absorb their power. The people who killed the last dragon probably seem like good allies to recruit to his cause, especially since one of them has killed 2 dragons and especially when they also have a baby dragon on their side.

Also considering he’s one of the human gods I suspect he may be out of practice at actually persuading people. It’s probably been a very long time since he’s had to do more than show up and make demands to get people to do what he wanted, and since he’s the god of war persuasion probably isn’t his strong suite to begin with. He probably expected the same reaction he got from the White Mantle. Instead he got suspicion and distrust and apparently decided we weren’t worth the hassle.

Maybe he planned to come back to us later or work on us gradually over time. Maybe he thought Marjory was enough, or she could bring the rest of the ground around. Maybe he just decided he could get easier allies elsewhere and it probably didn’t matter too much which mortals were helping him.

Arden.7480:

Why? Because he wanted to earn our trust. Perhaps he wanted to check how much energy she has, anyway he is a god so he knows everything. And when he noticed that Aurene has not enough energy to restore his power, he wanted to earn our trust as I said before.

Actually he’s a god in a polytheistic pantheon which means he almost certainly does not know everything. Outside of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam etc.) the idea of an omnipotent god is fairly unusual, and the ones who are capable of knowing everything usually have serious limitations that make their ability impractical.

A huge amount of mythology, particularly Greek, Roman and Norse (or those might just be the ones I’m most familiar with) concerns situations that arise specifically because a god doesn’t know everything that’s going on, often because they’re being tricked by another god.

Likewise they’re not infallible and often make mistakes (if in doubt see Zeus) and their powers usually have very specific domains and limitations.

Personally I hope their relationship is not intended to be either a model example of a healthy couple or an extremely dysfunctional and abusive one where one or both partners are clearly in the wrong.

They’re people and I want to see them act like people – sometimes doing things right and sometimes doing them wrong, and sometimes doing things which are ambiguous and complicated in situations where there is no clear right or wrong. One-sided always perfectly good and right or always wrong and evil for the sake of being evil characters are not only bad writing but also pretty boring. Real people are much more interesting because they’re more complicated.

I also agree that part of the problem is we don’t see them much, and when we do it’s usually in the middle of a crisis of some description and that changes the tone of whatever they’re saying. I feel like the Living Story really needs something like Dragon Age Origin’s campfire scenes – downtime between the actual story instances where you can have in-depth conversations between characters in a more sensible setting where there’s time to discuss things properly. I think that would have helped here and with Braham. (Both in an out-of-universe sense by giving us more time to get to know the characters and hear what they’re up to now and in an in-universe sense because I think people would say things differently if they weren’t so tense about being under attack when the conversations happened. Especially with Braham – we could have explained things fully instead of constantly trying to shut him down because it wasn’t a good time for that conversation.)

Basically I don’t think we’re in a positon to judge – we don’t know all the details but we do know neither Kasmeer or Marjory is actually evil, they’re probably not out to intentionally hurt the other one, they’re just not always thinking clearly or saying things in the best possible way. It happens to everyone.

Different people will approach a problem or a puzzle in different ways, which means what one person finds impossible another person thinks is obvious.

For example I can often just look at a jumping puzzle and see where I need to go and how to get there and I’ve been struggling to understand how people find the new map confusing when it seems easy for me to work out how to get where I’m going. But then I found some text and after about 20 minutes of trying everything I could think of I had no idea what it said or even what alphabet it was using. I posted it on the forum and talk to some people in-game and it took some of them maybe 2 minutes to translate the entire message. To them it was obvious, just from the context and the pattern of the letters apparently. But I’d never have been able to do that myself.

This is where working it out as a community comes in useful, one person doesn’t have to be able to do the whole thing themselves. One person can find the cat, someone else can work out what kind of food it wants, a 3rd person might know the foods that match that criteria and then a 4th person has all the recipes unlocked and is willing to make the foods to test it out.

Wanze.8410:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Wanze.8410:

according to gw2efficiency, the average is 99 mastery points.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.masteryPoints

I suspect that database is probably skewed towards players who think of the game as a hobby. Hobbyists will tend to spend more time in a game than those who view the game as merely a pastime. I suspect that pastime players cba to register on such sites. Whether pastime players would have a lower MP average than hobbyists seems likely, but who knows?

I agree but those player accounts are the ones you are most likely to see running around in game as well.

I think it’s true that people who use GW2 Efficiency are more likely to be regular, committed players who will be online a lot, but even so it’s only going to be a sub-set of them. There’s likely to be just as many, if not more, who are online just as much but have never registered with the site, and may not even have heard of it.

Just like it’s a reasonable assumption that if someone is on the forum a lot they’re also playing the game a lot (although there are definitely exceptions) but it’s still only a minority of ‘committed players’ who post here.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Average is a misleading metric for masteries. The player base is probably divided into several main groups:

• Veterans who have raided at least once: they will be largely in the 150-186 range
• Veterans who haven’t raided even once: probably 125-178
• Veterans who could care less about a lot of things that seem important to us forum regulars: 65-130
• New players (within the last year): 0-50, with many above 100.
• PvP only: similar probably

That’s in addition to the point that mtpelion makes, that GW2/E includes (some) inactive players.

All in all, I wouldn’t trust any single number to give us a good sense of the distribution of mastery points (even if it were tied to number of hours — I spend a lot my time chatting or AFK-while-in-town).

I think this is a good summary but I’d add a group for free/core-only players who have a level 80 character but no mastery points.

I was going to suggest another one: veteran forum regulars with weird priorities, then I remembered that you said main groups and I’m probably a weird outlier rather than a main group. I have 112 mastery points and haven’t even trained up all the HoT masteries yet. (3,792 hours over 1,713 days, just not a lot of it spent doing achievements.)

As you said I don’t think an average number would mean anything. If you could do a graph of something like mastery points against time played that might be more meaningful, but I suspect there would be a lot of variation. Grouping players by activity might be more meaningful but it would be hard to come up with relevant groups.

I completely forgot the content guide existed. I only ever turned it on if I couldn’t find the last POI when I was completing a map, and then they added the option to just hover over the map completion info to be shown them. So now I never use it.

But I can’t see any reason not to add the option to disable everything except events, since apparently people use it for that reason.

I know, I know…everyone wants everything to be a reference to something they’ve seen/read/played before.

But as soon as I entered the Iota Vault (the one on the northern edge of the upper level) the cages made me think of the Dharma station in Lost where they kept the polar bears. Then I went further in and found polar bears, which just like in Lost seem extremely out of place on a volcanic island (suspected to be) in the tropics but were brought there for study by some crazy scientists setting up a series of secret bases.

It seems like a lot of similarities to be a coincidence. I was half expecting to find a leaver which dispenses fish biscuits.

I’m just wondering if anyone had the same thought or thinks it may be more than a coincidence.

The waypoints are definitely available for me, I’ve used them several times to go to and from the map.

There is an achievement for dying though, so it’s worth doing at least once.

(Says the person who discovered it by accident because she got into the zone and immediately decided to swim around the Boiling Sea. In retrospect the name should have been a hint.)

It’s good to know there’s a way to avoid it though.

The precursor will stay in the bank but it will be useless – no other character will be able to withdraw it (and if I remember correctly you can’t put things in the Mystic Forge from the bank.)

Making a new character with the same name won’t help – the game will still consider them two separate characters and won’t let you pick up the precursor.

You’ll need to finish the legendary before deleting the character.

I’m not convinced playing 1 random episode out of order on the odd day when they can’t find a quicker daily would help people appreciate the story. Especially since many people like to get their dailies done as fast as possible so they’ll likely skip or ignore the dialogue.

People seem to have enough trouble following the story when they do it in order with a few weeks break between episodes. Doing random episodes on random days will probably just lead even more people to believe it’s a complete mess because everything isn’t resolved, with full background and lore, explained slowly and clearly (but with the minimum of dialogue and text and finished as quickly as possible) in the same episode it’s introduced.

The way it worked for both the base game and HoT was that if you pre-purchased the game/expansion you got access to all the beta tests. I assume they’ll do the same again for the next expansion.

I actually don’t think the new map is that bad. You can navigate most of it, at least in terms of completing the story, with very little jumping/gliding or even using the new mastery. It just takes a long time because it’s quite a big map for the space it covers on the world map

But if you want to get from place to place faster the options are there. I find the thermal tubes the easiest to use, because they loosely follow the path you’d go if you were walking, which makes it easier for me to orient myself.

Although it usually makes sense the scaling effect can be pretty hilarious in some situations. Below is a screenshot of my charr standing next to a chicken, and then holding the exact same bird. I guess whoever programmed bundles didn’t think about the fact that some of them might end up being animals.

I’ve also seen people use skills like the rangers warhorn one on giant enemies specifically for this purpose, because the effect can be pretty crazy.

If I was a new player today I’d be more concerned about Season 2.

When I get a new game, especially an RPG my initial focus is always on the story. I want to play through the whole story in order. These days I accept that almost every game I buy will have had extra stuff added on after the main story has ended and I may well buy it…after I’ve finished the stuff I’ve already got, but I’d still expect to be able to play all of the game I’ve bought so far without making additional purchases.

Which is fine for the original core game, you absolutely can do that. But then I’d move on to HoT and find the story has jumped ahead a couple of years, there’s characters I’ve never heard of and events I know nothing about. Season 1 is unfortunately an insurmountable problem at the moment (although I keep hoping they’ll bring it back one day) but Season 2 is there, it is available…you just have to buy it separately…even though it’s in the middle of the story you’ve already paid for? That would seem very weird to me.

Personally I think the best solution would be to sell some kind of “GW2 Complete Edition” type package – just not called that because unless they’re constantly updating it the name would be inaccurate. Something that includes the base game + HoT + Season 2 and all of Season 3 so far, and maybe it could be updated when new releases come out. (It would probably have to be digital only, but I don’t see that as a problem.)

Obviously the price would be higher than just getting the core game + HoT, but again I don’t see that as a problem. If you want to pay the minimum you get HoT, but just the existence of another version should make it clear there will be more content to purchase later on if you choose to do so.

I’ve been wondering who could have left a tombstone for an asuran genius in the Fire Islands, written in Ascalonian.

The spelling could be a genuine mistake on the part of whichever developer created the tombstone, or it could be totally in character for whoever wrote it. Zinn was after all famous for building some of Tyria’s…quirkiest golems. If one of them made it the spelling would be completely in character.

They’re already working on this. There was a topic a while ago asking for feedback on how the system could work.

Wow, that was weird…we just came to the same conclusion in my map.

I think it’s supposed to be “Zinn, his genius knew no bounds” – but bounds is spelled bovns.

So now the question becomes: who would have been there when he died who would have written a grave stone in Ascalonian?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Walhalla.5473:

Divine magic is immune to dragon consumption and corruption

Do we know this for sure? Got a source for that?

I thought it was the opposite – the most common explanation I’ve heard for the gods withdrawal from everyday human life is that they knew the Elder Dragons were awakening and left Tyria to protect their magic (and by extension themselves). Much like the mursaat did the last time the dragons rose.

It’s going to seem complicated at the moment because it’s that point in the story. If Season 3 is anything like Season 2 it’s basically an extended introduction to the story of the next expansion. Which means we’re not going to see everything suddenly resolved in Episode 6 and certainly shouldn’t expect it in Episode 5.

Think of it like a TV show – this is the build up to the final episode – it’s meant to make you wonder what’s going on so you’ll keep watching. And the final episode is going to include teasers for the next series (in this case the expansion), again to keep you interested.

As far as the specifics go you’re right that dragons can absorb each other’s magic, but we don’t know how far it goes. We’ve seen destroyers that absorbed death magic and plant magic, and one icebrood which absorbed plant magic. But it might be that specific types of magic are incompatible. We haven’t seen any new branded, which might be because Kralkatorrik is too far away, or it might be because it can’t use death and/or plant magic.

It might also be that the dragons are well aware of that and if we killed one of those two the other would simply let that magic go…or wait for other things in Tyria to change it into a different form.

But I think the main reason we were trying to pit the two dragons against each other is that we lost most of the Pact fighting Mordremoth so people are reluctant to go through that again and a method which only risks killing dragon minions is a lot more appealing.

So the part where he was using a lot of magical fire and converting human fanatics to his cause wasn’t a hint? Sure it didn’t seem like it at the time, but that’s exactly what you asked for. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious.

Of course we still don’t know exactly why he’s doing it or what the outcome is going to be, but again that shouldn’t be surprising. You’re complaining that they’ve ended the storyline too quickly whilst also complaining that they didn’t explain everything in full detail in the same Episode where we first found out who he is.

At least wait until Episode 6 before you decide it’s all over and done with and there’s not going to be any more to the story.

Spoiler – This is from the new map and may give away some surprises about the latest Episode. Do not read any further if you don’t want stuff given away.

In the new map you can find the tomb of a golemancerZinn. This is a screenshot of the actual tomb.

Does anyone know what it says? I don’t think it’s New Krytan (or at least I can’t match any of the characters up to the alphabet on the Wiki, and I don’t think it’s asuran because it’s too square and the characters are too spaced out. (It’s also not Futhark runes or any other real-life runic alphabet I’m familiar with.)

Given it’s Zinn’s tomb it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s in a code or a mix of languages. But I’m terribly at working out things like that. So any ideas would be appreciated.

In theory there’s no reason we couldn’t have a law like this in the EU. There’s already plenty of laws requiring companies to make some information public and to keep other stuff private and secure – for example registered charities are required to make basically all their finances public and there’s been a lot of fuss recently about new regulations for collecting personal information.

The governments don’t need to have direct control over a companies ability to operate to enforce it, they enforce it the same way as any other law. You don’t need a police man standing outside of your house to prevent people breaking in.

The way tax is shown could well be the difference. I know that throws me off sometimes.

The UK and most other European countries (possibly all?) include the tax in the display price. So when I go on the gem store and see £8.50 for 800 gems I know the final price I will pay is £8.50. (And at the end it tells me some amount of that is tax.)

Whereas in the US I’d see $10 for 800 gems, and then when I get through to the confirmation page that price will change to $12 or whatever because of the tax (which is different depending on which state you’re in).

Having said that I know Elder Scrolls Online players are having issues at the moment with everything in that game being massively expensive in Russia – way out of proportion with tax and the exchange rate. So it could be something that’s going on with online purchases from American companies generally, but I’m not sure.

You will need to purchase heart of thorns.

Muy.3170:

Let’s be honest, Gw2 totally takes the grind for gear and turns it into a grind for cosmetic. Good or Bad it’s the only reward we got. In my opinion, it is bad. Economics in this game so important I betcha a typical player would never get anything done in the game without the market. Bad design that could be fixed if unique skins had separate unique ways of earning them and had achievement titles mixed with them. How cool would it be to earn the sword Infinite light through a collection and add it permanently to your celestial or hellfire armor sets to pull and be put on any skin you want from achievements! I think it’s dumb some credit card pro swiper could come out more glossy and shiny than a 5yr veteran who spends 90% of their time in the game with their friends.

If you want skins which can’t be bought there are plenty to choose from. All of the dungeon armour and weapons for a start, the Mistward set, Carapace and Luminescent (which requires a lot of achievements to get), the new weapon sets added in HoT and I’m sure there’s lots more I’m forgetting.

Well that depends on what you had before you left.

The level cap is still 80 and ascended is still the top tier (depending on when you left one change might be that it’s now possible to get a full set of ascended equipment). Exotic equipment is still fine for most things, but a lot of people go for exotic weapons and armour and ascended trinkets because those are easier to obtain (you can get them with laurels which come from the daily login reward). If you want to do high level Fractals you’ll eventually need a full set of ascended equipment for the agony resistance, and it’s recommended for raids too, but if you don’t have it you can play other things (including lower level Fractals) while you work up to it.

One thing that might be helpful to know is it’s now possible to change the stats on ascended equipment in the mystic forge, so if you’ve got any pieces which are the wrong stats for your build can be converted, which is much cheaper and easier than getting a new one. Exotic can’t be converted but it’s widely available.

Depending on what build you choose you might need the new elite specialisation, which requires owning HoT and either completing hero challenges in the new maps or doing a lot of WvW to unlock the points. But I believe there are popular builds for each profession which don’t require the elite spec.

Ider.1276:

Xienzato.7214:

Oh well, I am considering purchasing another gaming PC in the near future, so there is still hope for me

You can run GW2 on a 7-8 year old PC, judging by minimal system requirements. It is a 5 year old game. Nowardays almost anyone with a console has a PC for work/study/internet. And that PC most likely can run GW2, if it is a machine from this decade. That is why I am confused with this thread.

Not necessarily. I know quite a few people who have a console to play games and a tablet for other stuff and don’t have a PC at all.

Admittedly none of them are likely to ever be interested in an MMO…most of them don’t even play what I consider to be the better console games, but the point is there are people out there with a console and no PC of any kind.

OriOri.8724:

I actually don’t think its all that expensive considering almost all income for Anet right now comes from gem store sales. Would it be nice if stuff were cheaper? Hell yes, I would love it. At the same time, for a game that supports itself entirely through its gem store sales in between expansions, I think the prices are actually pretty fair for most of the items there.

Oh yeah, overall I think the real money prices are reasonable. It’s just that a lot of the gem store stuff is purely cosmetic and that makes its worth highly subjective. Every so often I see things where I almost don’t care what the price is (within reason) because I’m going to buy it anyway. But there’s other things I’d probably never use, even if I unlocked them while playing and sometimes they seem disproportionately expensive to me, but it may be purely because I don’t like them.

Also overall I like that the gem store is almost entirely cosmetic because it means no one needs to buy anything they don’t want. It seems contradictory but I prefer spending money when I know I don’t need to, because it seems more like it’s my choice.

Even so if 800 gems are $10 that makes Eir’s Legacy Longbow $7.50 and I suspect that’s how Anet usually work out prices for gem store items.

Admittedly that also seems expensive to me for 1 weapon skin, even one with flashy effects. No it’s not a lot of money, but if I have the choice between spending that on a longbow skin which IMO isn’t better than ones I can get in-game for free or spending it on pretty much anything else I’m going to pick something else.

Apocalypse Azza.5734:

Xenon.4537:

coso.9173:

if it’s because it’s easier to reuse existing armor and make changes to them, there is the glorious chest piece that is short and tight, why not base more on that one????

You know whats funny about that chest piece? It’s the naked body geometry reskinned.

They took the geo for the naked body and replaced the texture on it. The reason it looks like it has “modelled” armor is because an artist took that geometry into a program called Zbrush and sculpted a very nice detailed model of it (millions of polygons). Then they transfer what is called a “normal map” from that high-poly mesh back onto the original naked body geometry (which only has a few thousand polygons). It creates the illusion of detail without actually having it modelled in the game engine.

A lot of gamers scoff at reskins, but it’s important to remember that nowadays a reskin actually does take effort to make because of that Zbrush process I mentioned. Look up “Zbrush speed sculpt” and you will see a lot of time-lapse of what I mean.

Why do people care about how they make something as long as it looks good?

Because how it’s made affects what it’s possible for them to do?

That’s like saying you don’t see what gravity has to do with car manufacturers ‘refusing’ to build a flying car.

It’s highly unlikely to happen now.

I’m pretty sure that’s something developers have to plan for right from the start. I know that was the case with Elder Scrolls Online – even though the console release was over a year after PC release they’d been planning for it since they started so they built the game to work on consoles. That wasn’t done with GW2.

But the biggest problem for this game is likely to be the updates. All updates for consoles have to be checked and approved by the console company, and that can take weeks (or months for something big like a whole new game) and the game developer has to pay for it to be done.

Even now GW2 has dropped down to ‘only’ having a big update every 2-3 months and smaller patches in between that would still end up being an expensive process and it’d delay all the releases because it can’t be checked until it’s finished. (This is why all the updates for Elder Scrolls Online are about a month later on consoles, but they don’t include any bug fixes that came out during that month – they’re only allowed to release what they originally submitted.) If an update is rejected it takes even longer because the developers have to fix it and resubmit it.

There is good reason for that process. Back in the mid-80’s badly made console games almost destroyed the entire games industry (no really, it did). It’s also a big part of the the reason even today installing and running games on a console is usually much simpler process than on PC and viruses and things are virtually unheard of. Whereas PC uses are pretty much left to manage the risk themselves.

But the downside is it’s expensive and slows down releases. Which I just don’t think would be practical for a game which uses regular big releases as a major selling point.

Maybe we could ask the makers of Guardians of the Galaxy why trench coats are so popular. I went to see Vol. 2 last night and I noticed about 1/2 the characters were wearing them.

In fact Gamora’s one looked like the noble coat, made me think about switching my ranger back to that one.

Paulytnz.7619:

Hmm, looking at my Clothing Tonics they are indeed endless and can be sold on the TP. Apart from that I am sure all you need to do is make a new char and you get another so I am not sure what the issue is here.

But I agree, turning them into outfit’s would be the better way to go…

You can’t get them on new characters – only ones who existed before the wardrobe update. But if I remember correctly each piece turned into a tonic, so a character with the top, trousers and shoes got 3 tonics.

I don’t know why new characters don’t get them. Not that there’s an issue with supply (especially with shared inventory slots meaning, people who have a spare shared slot could just use 1 per account). But again it makes the overall system look poorly implemented.

RNG chests are always a bad deal. Yes everyone seems to know a friend of a friend who got something amazing on their first try, but that’s because those stories are very unusual and therefore worth telling. All the thousands of people who had 10 tries and got nothing good don’t get talked about as much.

These chests have a very small drop table compared to the black lion chests, but even then you’re unlikely to get anything valuable. In fact that’s partially because of the small drop table because it means the skins are all quite common and therefore not worth much. And the mini pets are extremely rare.

When they were first released in November 2012 I bought 10 for 1800 gems (all the gems I had). I only wanted the 3 mini pets and at the time you could make more chests by combining the crafting materials and armour skins in the Mystic Forge so any of those I got went into making new chests and any weapons skins I got were sold to buy more armour skins or materials.

I kept going until I had no chests, no skins and not enough gold to buy more. And at the end of it I had 1 mini karka, which at the time was worth 20g. (I can’t remember the currency conversion rates, and I’d converted gold gradually over time, but I remember thinking I broke even…although I don’t know if that included the gold I’d spent on materials.)

I don’t regret doing it, although I was disappointed I didn’t get the other minis, but it definitely wasn’t a way to make money. It probably wasn’t even a good way to get the mini because I could have spent that time farming and bought it instead of spending all the money I’d saved up to that point. If I’d done that I might even have been able to buy both the other minis during the event, as it was I got the baby karka on the Sunday and the reef drake months later because the price kept going up and I couldn’t make gold fast enough to match it.

I still have the mini karka BTW. Even when it was worth thousands of gold I was never tempted to sell it. It was the first mini I added to my wardrobe when they brought that feature in and still one of my favourites. (Although I think the racing moa wins the top spot for it’s silly helmet.)

If you want to play an MMO without grinding for gear then GW2 is a good choice.

Exotic armour and weapons with ascended trinkets is easy to get and good enough for everything except top tier Fractals (where you’ll need more agony resistance and therefore more ascended equipment) and possibly raids where I think a full set of ascended equipment is recommend.

More importantly though that’s been the case for a few years now and it’s highly unlikely to change any time soon. They’ve only brought out 1 new tier since the game was released (ascended) and that was years ago. So if you do decide to go for full ascended you can work on it in your own time, as and when you feel like it, without worrying that it’s suddenly going to be invalidated by a new release.

With very few exceptions people who are rich in game don’t make gold by getting random lucky drops. Generally they farm the gold directly or farm and sell items which aren’t worth a lot on their own but sell well – like crafting materials.

They might also make and sell more expensive items like precursors, legendaries and other rare skins, but they’ll usually get them by reliable methods.

It does also involve saving up your gold, which requires the self control to not spend it. That’s why I rarely have much gold, I only save it until I’ve got enough for the next thing I want to buy, then I buy that thing. I usually have less than 50g, but I have had over 800g at once, when I wanted to buy something really expensive.