Guild Wars 2

I’ve never understood why they didn’t make it into an outfit either. Making town clothes into tonics never made sense to me and it was basically the end of me ever using the ones I had, which is a shame.

But the common clothing is the one that really seems like a strange choice because it’s a complete set so it seems like it should be easy to convert, or at least no harder than the chef, witch, pirate etc. sets which did become outfits.

I did see someone say it’s because they didn’t want to give everyone a free outfit, but I actually think that could be a benefit. At the moment you can completely ignore outfits unless you’ve already decided to spend money on them. If everyone had a free one it would act as an introduction to that system – get people used to the idea of having an alternate look they can switch to instantly – and every time you open the interface you see the icons for all the other ones that are available and can preview them. I think it’d get more people to buy outfits.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Once the supply runs out on the Trading Post, perhaps players, like myself, will put our inventory of the Tonics up for sale. I had no idea there weren’t still thousands, or however many, still there.

Good luck.

There’s currently 35,074 of them on the TP. There will be more than that in the game in total – I have 9 (one for each character) and there’s 12 in one of my guild banks…no idea why. I’m sure other people have at least a few lying around.

At the moment they’re worth less than 1 silver each so if anyone’s stockpiling them to sell it’s unlikely they’ll sell them any time soon. Although it’s been impossible to create new ones since the wardrobe came out back in 2014 (unless someone has characters from before then) and there’s still thousands on the TP so it looks like if anyone is hoping to make a massive profit they’re going to be waiting a very long time.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m surprised they didn’t just extend it for another period. Probably to avoid some law about “full time” contract workers Vs employees.

If you’re talking about my job it’s because I’m technically doing something different. Or rather I’m doing the same type of work in another department. I think it’s easier all around to end one contract and start another. Plus I get a week off, which after a crazy non-stop month I really needed.

If you’re talking about Anet I have no idea. America has very different labour laws to the UK (for a start they’d be called labor laws) and I don’t know what kind of contracts they have. In some cases it might be that people wanted to only work there temporarily and then move on to other things. I have a few friends who are games developers and they often get signed onto a project 6 or 12 months in advance and then find something quick and temporary to fill the gap.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m surprised they didn’t just extend it for another period. Probably to avoid some law about “full time” contract workers Vs employees.

If you’re talking about my job it’s because I’m technically doing something different. Or rather I’m doing the same type of work in another department. I think it’s easier all around to end one contract and start another. Plus I get a week off, which after a crazy non-stop month I really needed.

If you’re talking about Anet I have no idea. America has very different labour laws to the UK (for a start they’d be called labor laws) and I don’t know what kind of contracts they have. In some cases it might be that people wanted to only work there temporarily and then move on to other things. I have a few friends who are games developers and they often get signed onto a project 6 or 12 months in advance and then find something quick and temporary to fill the gap.

I don’t think he can be member of any of the playable races. I mean whoever it is they were able to absorb most of the power of a bloodstone (and one that had been powered up with dozens or hundreds of human sacrifices in addition to its original store of magic). I got the distinct impression from the way everyone was talking – and more importantly the effect on anyone caught in the blast – that would be impossible for any of our races.

Trouble is “some kind of supernatural being” doesn’t exactly narrow it down. I think people are right that it’s obviously going to be someone/thing we will recognise, someone we’ve met before. But I don’t know who. I keep thinking maybe a character from GW1 (Razah maybe?) but then Kasmeer recognises them too, and I don’t know how she’d know anyone from back then, unless it was someone like Jora or Ogden who is now a legendary figure, and then we’re back to the problem of them being unable to absorb that much magic.

I never thought of it this way before but it should have been obvious that Season 3 would include 6 episodes because each one has introduced a new Ancient Magics mastery tier and there’s only space for 6 tiers in the Mastery window.

And now they’ll probably prove me wrong and episodes 5 and 6 won’t have a new mastery.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Danikat.8537:

Actually that idea sounds more like the Current Events which may or may not tie directly into the Season 3 storyline at some point.

They did once, very early on in the game’s life, add a bunch of new dynamic events to existing zones and I think there were plans to do that periodically and maybe build on some of those to create new stand-alone storylines. Apparently that plan was dropped because they found people weren’t seeking out the new events, they only did them if they happened to come across them.

Which still annoys me, nearly 5 years on, because I can’t see how we could do anything else. Literally all we were told was that there were new events, nothing about what they were or how to find them. The game was still new at that point so the Wiki didn’t even include all the events that were in at launch and I can’t imagine anyone had seen (let alone memorised) them all. There was no way for us to seek them out even if we wanted to (which I did).

The only events I know were part of that update are the ones where you fight Modus Sceleris guild members. I suspect that’s part of the stuff they intended to build on later, but so far they haven’t.

I remember that, and didn’t they add the new events during a festival?

I thought it was pretty unfair that they add a few new events during a busy time to some random place(s) in the map without telling the players about it beforehand and then post saying they wouldn’t add more events since no one noticed what they had done.

At any rate, they’ve already tried adding new events to the old maps and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Yeah it was the same update that kicked off the 1st Halloween event.

Come to think of it that means their plans at the time would have been very different. Originally they weren’t even going to do 2 week/1 month long releases like Season 1. The first Halloween was released in stages and some things only happened once, or only on certain days and if you missed it then it was gone forever. That was apparently their plan for all new content – ‘live’ events that left a permanent impact on the world. (Like exploding the poor lion fountain.)

Fortunately they only did that for the one Halloween and the Lost Shores event then scrapped it because it was a mess. It was replaced with the Season 1 and I suppose that also replaced the gradually added new events.

Although the Current Events system may be a attempt to reintroduce a bit of that original concept, just in a less annoying way. We still don’t know if they’re going to be permanent or if they’ll disappear when Season 3 ends.

Pino.5209:

This is what we get for fueling a company that runs on hype motor and they fell short.

Imagine if these images were shown before HoT release date. How many would really buy HoT to exclusively raid?

I suppose it depends on why you’re interested in raiding.

The impression I’ve gotten is that most people who play raids (or whatever their games equivalent is called) enjoy raiding because of the challenge – it’s typically the most difficult PvE content in the game and some people like to push themselves to complete increasingly difficult content.

There’s many people in both my guilds who raid at least once a week and are regularly encouraging the rest of us to join in on the basis that it’s fun. People often ask what you get from it but the answers are all over the place. In one of my guilds decorations for the guild hall is often the first answer, followed by mini pets. Legendary armour will come up sooner or later but it never seems to be anyone’s main motivation.

The fact that in many games the hardest content is also where the best equipment comes from is seen as a necessity because so many games are built around the idea that you’re constantly improving your character so it’s only logical that the best equipment comes from the hardest content. (This usually also means you have to have the next-best equipment to even start.)

A lot of people I’ve talked to actually seem to hate that because, especially if the equipment is a rare random drop, it means they end up repeating it long after the challenge and therefore the fun is gone. I’ve seen people on the Elder Scrolls Online forum saying a particular trial (aka raid) used to be their favourite but by the time they got the drop they wanted they were so sick of it they never want to go back there again, which seems unfortunate to me.

Rashagar.8349:

Danikat.8537:

Rashagar.8349:

Crinn.7864:

“Faolain” is actually a Gaelic name that means “little wolf”

What??? Oh my god this is fecking Sam Hain all over again.

Most sylvari names are based on Gaelic or Celtic names. Although some are closer to modern Welsh.

Oh yeah I noticed the chef nearly called “food” and the artificer called “magic” and the warden called “farmer” but the pronunciation of Faolain made it completely pass me by unnoticed, so for me it’s like that time when I found out that when the people in Supernatural said “Sam Hain” they were getting it from Samhain.

Oh I see. Yeah a lot of people pronounce it that way, particularly in America. I’m not sure if they think it’s an English word or just have no idea how else to say it. Although you’d think if you’re going to make a TV show called Supernatural you’d do a bit of research first.

I had a fun conversation once in Elder Scrolls Online trying to convince someone that my sorcerer Ilorwerth definitely wasn’t called Ill-or-worth or I-or-worth, and that when I said “just call him Iolo” (pronounced yolo) that was a genuine nickname.

On the plus side things like that make me feel a bit better about never learning to say Machynlleth correctly even though I lived in Aberystwyth for 3 years.

Actually that idea sounds more like the Current Events which may or may not tie directly into the Season 3 storyline at some point.

They did once, very early on in the game’s life, add a bunch of new dynamic events to existing zones and I think there were plans to do that periodically and maybe build on some of those to create new stand-alone storylines. Apparently that plan was dropped because they found people weren’t seeking out the new events, they only did them if they happened to come across them.

Which still annoys me, nearly 5 years on, because I can’t see how we could do anything else. Literally all we were told was that there were new events, nothing about what they were or how to find them. The game was still new at that point so the Wiki didn’t even include all the events that were in at launch and I can’t imagine anyone had seen (let alone memorised) them all. There was no way for us to seek them out even if we wanted to (which I did).

The only events I know were part of that update are the ones where you fight Modus Sceleris guild members. I suspect that’s part of the stuff they intended to build on later, but so far they haven’t.

Ah, yeah, I noticed this morning I wasn’t able to sell a lot of stuff. Some things worked, many things didn’t. Strangely I was able to buy with no problem.

Of course that was mid-morning UK time so it was the middle of the night for Anet. Good to know it’s being addressed though. It was really annoying not knowing if a sale had gone through or not.

Xenon.4537:

It’s important to note that Anet (like any game studio) hires a LOT of contract workers. These are artists and programmers who are hired for 4-8 months to work on one project. Most of the time when their contract is up, they leave Anet and take a contract somewhere else. This isn’t abnormal. They aren’t being fired. Their contract is simply a temporary job. Artists especially fall into this category. Anet’s actual employee count probably fluctuates a lot more than we know. It has never been precisely 300, and it wont stay at 400 for very long.

Unfortunately it seems to be even harder to convince people that coming to the end of a contract is not the same as being fired than to convince them that not all staff at a games studio are developers. I’m in that position right now – finished one contract last Friday, starting another one next Monday with the same organisation and even people I work with told me they were surprised I was “losing my job”. I just told them I wasn’t surprised because I knew when they hired me it was for 18 months.

The funny part is some of them are on contract too, some for less time than I was.

Technically the queens Jubilee hasn’t been repeated, but the Crown Pavilion was re-opened for the Festival of the Four Winds (at the end of Season 1). If it’s anything like real life the queens Jubilee would only be repeated for significant years, at most every 10 years.

But the Pavilion could be opened for other events too. Personally I think they should bring back the Dragon Bash and include the Pavilion in it. Or we could have a storyline about the surviving Zephyrites rebuilding their fleet and the various cities helping them as thanks for their help rebuilding Lion’s Arch (which is what the Festival of the Four Winds was for…as well as setting up for Season 2).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Maybe someone got cold feet? Or got their account banned from other RMT purchases?

I suppose only ArenaNet really knows.

I could see that happening sometimes actually – the gold seller instructs the buyer to purchase an item with no current sell listings and list it for X gold. Then in the time it takes them to do that the seller gets banned and the buyer can’t bring themselves to cancel the listing because they’ll lose the gold they spent on the fee.

I could also see it being gold sellers tricking customers – they take their money, tell them to list the item and then simply never buy it. People do it on ebay (listing items for sale they don’t actually have, or at least never send) and with 2nd hand concert tickets and it’d be even easier for gold sellers because there is no one their customers can complain to – if you go to Anet you’re at risk of being banned for buying gold and most of the time the sellers are not only based in different countries to their customers but also in countries they know are unlikely to take action against them.

Sylvari ranger.

The ranger is my favourite profession and has been my main since day 1. If it was the only profession I could play I’d probably play less and be less inclined to repeat content, but if I had to do everything on the same profession that’s the one I’d pick.

And sylvari are my favourite race. No particular reason other than they seem fairly original to me, plant people aren’t a common playable race in fantasy games and I like their racial stories and lore. Also they come in a wider variety of colours which makes creating them more fun for me.

Are you talking about Legendary Insights?

I think that is unusual – that they released the Insights and people could start farming them before knowing what the legendary armour would look like. But I don’t think the fact that they did it once means it’s now going to be the standard way everything is released, Anet doesn’t work like that.

And in this case what was the alternative? They don’t release raids until they had finished designing the legendary armour? Or release raids but don’t allow anyone to collect Legendary Insights until the armour is released, so people who have been raiding all that time have to do it all over again? I don’t think players would be happy with either of those.

This way if anyone simply wanted to play the raid they could do, and if they happened to get Legendary Insights along the way there’s no harm in that, it’s not like they were losing out on another reward because of it. And if anyone was concerned that they might not like legendary armour and wanted to see what they’d get before they started farming Insights all they had to do was wait.

Gomes.5643:

Oh what lies beyond those mountains?: One thing BotW Overworld does exceptionally well is the ratio between content and size. The world is scaled with purpose in way that there are parts which are just empty. While that sound contraproductive it really enhances the gaming experience. The most common way in which players play the game goes like – see something in the distant, plan to go there, get distracted, get distracted from the distraction, forget where you wanted to go in the first place, see something in the distant …… and so on. Which leads in most cases to the feeling of “getting lost in the world” (in a positive sense of course)

That is exactly how I play GW2 most of the time. Even when I don’t mean to – I made a keyrunner once and ended up spending half an hour climbing around Queensdale to get good screenshots of the windmill…after fully exploring the inside of it.

Here’s a screenshot I took once when I caught myself doing that. I set out from the waypoint intending to go straight to the heart and vista. Then I think I saw an event so I went to join in, then I resumed my trip, then I think I went looking for a gathering node, then I was checking if there were any interesting caves, then there was some more gathering, then I was taking screenshots on the bluff, then I finally made my way into the camp.

This was a relatively short detour for me. It can often lead me literally all across the map, or onto a totally different map. I once set out to get one POI in Verdant Brink and ended up 1/2 way across the map, right at the top of the canopy doing a jumping puzzle I didn’t know existed and then gliding around looking for the way to a different POI before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. Fortunately I don’t mind things like that, I enjoy it more than strictly focusing on just 1 goal and then moving onto the next one and never going off that path unless I’m sure there’s a reward for it.

Rashagar.8349:

Crinn.7864:

“Faolain” is actually a Gaelic name that means “little wolf”

What??? Oh my god this is fecking Sam Hain all over again.

Most sylvari names are based on Gaelic or Celtic names. Although some are closer to modern Welsh.

Masteries work a bit differently to levels. You gain mastery points from specific achievements and finding points in HoT maps, not from XP.

XP is used to train up a mastery track. Once it’s full you need to ‘spend’ mastery points to unlock that mastery, which will give you a new ability, and then you start on a new track. (Don’t worry, points you’ve spent will still count towards your mastery rank, you don’t lose them.)

So if your XP bar is full that means you need to click on it (outside of combat) to open the Mastery window and click the button next to the track you’ve been training up to put points into it, then you’ll move on to the next one.

If you don’t have enough mastery points left over to do that you can switch to another mastery, if one is available, to start training that up. But you should also look at the achievements panel to see what you can do to get more points. All the achievements which award masteries have a mastery symbol next to it (green for HoT points, orange for Core points) and all the points are the same so you can pick whichever achievements you want to do to get the points.

I was planning on doing this when the celestial rooster was in the chests, but I didn’t even get anything on the same tier (or above).

I don’t know if they’d exchange it. It’s highly unlikely they’d give you the sword outright, as Inculpatus said they’re more likely to give you another key (that’s what they did when some people accidentally got duplicate items from the chests – like glider skins they’d already unlocked).

sevenDEADLY.5281:

I can’t think of a single MMO, or RPG for that matter, I’ve ever played that didn’t have variable damage ranges. I can’t even really wrap my mind around how someone doesn’t understand after the multiple fully fleshed out explanations posted.

The OP has only replied once, which was in response to the first post. It’s a bit unfair to say he doesn’t understand after multiple explanations when he’s not said anything to indicate that (or anything at all). For all we know he hasn’t had time to come back on the forum since the first reply was posted and hasn’t seen any of the other responses.

Or the barrage of people saying the same thing (and claiming it’s obvious, every game works like that, how could you possibly not know etc.) made him feel like he was being criticised for being stupid and he’s now too embarrassed to post in this topic again for fear of further criticism.

I admit I know pretty much nothing about how armour is created in GW2 except for the end results. But however they do it the fact that there is medium armour in the game which doesn’t look like trench coats tells me it is possible for them to make it.

I suspect a big part of the reason so many of them fit the same style is that they want a coherent theme for each armour class. It’s not just medium – heavy is basically all variations on plate mail with a handful of exceptions (which generally look like chain/scale mail or an incomplete set of plate mail). And light armour is basically all mages robes (or dresses/‘butt capes’ as people tend to call them).

It’s not just Anet either. Here’s a gallery of all the medium armour styles in Elder Scrolls Online (chosen mainly because I already had the page in my favourites list): http://eso.mmo-fashion.com/medium-armor-comparison-tier-10/ Scroll down a bit and you’ll see much the same thing – they all fit the same basic shape with slight variations in the pattern.

Personally I don’t understand this, if it was up to me I’d go the other way and aim for as much variety as possible. But I suppose it’s easier for artists to create lots of variations on a theme than to create lots of totally unique sets, and easier for the modellers to build it.

I vaugely remember hearing that it was also to make it easier to tell who you were fighting in PvP – if your enemy is wearing a trenchcoat you know immediately they’re a ranger, thief or engineer. But I think it’s possible to wear outfits in PvP so that’s gone out the window.

I do wish they’d change it though because it does severely limit the options if you have a specific style in mind for your character and it doesn’t fit the base model for the armour type they can wear.

Amaimon.7823:

Yannir.4132:

Dawdler.8521:

Operation Flashpoint, only one of the greatest PC games ever made and basicly what ushered in the era of true wargaming (1 year ahead of Battlefield 1942)… and you think of DC comics?!?!

“Oh no… 1… is down!”
“Oh no… 2… is down!”
“Oh no… 1… is down!”
“Oh no… 2… is down!”
“Oh no… 5… is down!”
“Oh no… 1… is down!”
“Oh no… 2… is down!”
“Oh no… 5… is down!”

Bonus points for anyone that knows wtf I’m talking about, lol.

Not everyone likes FPS games. Like me. Couldn’t care less about that or Battlefield or whatever. Flashpoint however is currently relevant as it’s included in the story arc for The Flash’s 3rd season.

Likewise back at you, I had never heard of the DC hero before, I know Flash and that he has a show now, but really no more than mention of the name. So how is a DC comic character more relevant than a mission of a popular game?

It’s not a character, it’s a series. (Assuming people are talking about the series and not the one-off Elseworlds story about the Flash.) Flashpoint is a massive cross-over storyline involving most major DC characters and affecting the plot of all their individual comics at the time (it started in 2011). At the end of it all the different versions of all the DC Comics franchises were merged into one coherent timeline and relaunched as ‘The New 52’ (because there are 52 different series).

In other words it was a big deal. Even people who didn’t normally read DC Comics were talking about it (although mainly other geeks and their friends, I’m not saying it drew massive mainstream attention but it was probably more talked about than say…a new WoW expansion).

But even so that still doesn’t give them exclusive rights to the name or mean anyone will be confused if it comes up elsewhere.

But what does an engineer look like? Or any profession for that matter?

Here’s my engineer, looking like an almost polar opposite of what the OP described. My thinking behind her outfit was that she’d want something practical, something she could work in and that meant hard wearing leather but nothing too constricting or cumbersome. No bundles of gadgets strapped in odd places or clunky metal plates or chains.

Also she’s a norn and she learned engineering primarily from the charr so she learns more towards the steampunk style (sans actual steam, and goggles) than flashy asuran magitech. Of course magic does have a place in her work, this is Tyria after all, but it’s housed in sensible, durable kit and doens’t need a bunch of blinking lights to tell you it’s working – you can tell it’s working because the target is on fire or dead.

Well the good news is if you got them before the shared inventory slots were released you’ll have paid a lot less than 4.6k – the price jumped up the day the slots were released because they suddenly became much more useful.

There is currently no way for players to unbind any item and it’s unlikely to be added because it would defeat the point of having them bound in the first place. But you could try putting a ticket in to Support to ask if they can revert 3 of them back to the unbound state. They may not do it, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. (Just be aware it will be considered a low priority request so you may have to wait a few days for an answer.)

I’m surprised they haven’t made both of these into gliders already. They definitely should be.

I keep hoping the Holographic wings will be made into gliders too. If they’d been released after HoT I’m sure they would be.

Daddicus.6128:

Perfect! I searched before, and couldn’t find it. But, I was looking under armor instead of generally or recipes.

Thank you!

If I had 1g for every time I’ve done that…Or searched under armour when I was looking for a skin.

There are currently 4 items simply called ‘Trident’ on the TP, all listed separately (because they have different stat combinations) and 6 called ‘Staff’ (4 versions, but there’s 3 copies of one of them).

The recipes are tradable, you can buy them on the TP.

But if you need gold it couldn’t hurt to farm AB to get it, so you’ve got a chance of getting a recipe directly instead.

Short answer: Yes it will almost certainly be weaker but if you’re prepared for that you can make it work in almost the whole game.

Long answer: It’s not quite that simple and you don’t necessarily have to choose one or the other.

Firstly you’d have a hard time finding a build that doesn’t work at all in this game. A bad build means it will take longer to kill things (so they get more chances to kill you) and it will be harder to survive those hits, meaning you’ll have to put more effort in to play but I don’t think you could make one which was literally unusable.

Secondly whilst it’s true that in a straight comparison putting points into power and then using condition weapons is a bad choice (because power only increases direct damage and skills which cause conditions generally do less direct damage to begin with, so there’s less for your power to improve) stats in GW2 do not exist in isolation, so you won’t ever really get that straight choice.

Your stats come from your equipment (except the baseline values of course) and above level 20 you get 2 stats per piece of equipment. From level 60 onwards you get 3 stats on each piece and at level 80 there are some pieces which have 4 stats. (There’s also one set – celestial – which gives equal bonuses to 7 stats.)

This means you don’t need to choose one or the other. There are many different stat combinations in this game and several of them give both power and condition damage. You can also mix and match pieces with different stat combinations. It can take some juggling to find a combination which gives the exact numbers you want (if you have specific numbers in mind) and there may be some trade-offs because not every combination exists (I’m still wishing for condition damage/power/toughness). But you can definitely get a mix of both condition damage and power.

Or you could get Viper’s gear, which increases power, precision, condition damage and expertise (condition duration). But be aware the 4-stat equipment is much harder and more expensive to get.

Arenanet don’t need to do their own tests to prove that it works because the evidence is already out there. That’s like saying you don’t know that eating nothing but sugar is bad for you because you’ve never tried it – you can be reasonably sure your body is similar enough to other people’s that what’s been proven for them is also true for you. And likewise Anet can be sure their customers are susceptible to the same marketing techniques that work on other customers because people are people regardless of what product they’re actually using.

For example here’s an article about a clothing brand built entirely on a fairly extreme example of this technique – releasing a few items each week, for 1 week only (so effective that many items actually sell out in minutes): http://thembsgroup.co.uk/internal/the-drop-a-lesson-in-artificial-scarcity-and-cool/

There are many, many other articles out there about the pros and cons of the system and how it works, what kind of products/audiences it works for and both good and bad examples.

Also while I’ve been typing this comment my other MMO has released a new house which is available for 4 days only and which costs $109 / £65. I knew before it was released that I didn’t want it, but I still went to look at it and I can guarantee that while I’m typing this their forums are full of people talking about it. (Mostly complaining but hey, any publicity is good publicity as they say.) People have already stated their intention to get it purely because it’s limited, which in their eyes makes it special.

For another current example there’s Starbucks unicorn frappuccino. It’s not even sold in my country but people won’t stop talking about it, and a big part of that is the “OMG get it now” factor of it being limited. There is no reason they couldn’t keep making them, but by limiting it people feel like they need to get on and get one instead of thinking they’ll maybe order it next time they happen to go there anyway.

Snow.2048:

zealex.9410:

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

this is part of what killed hot. and the game all together . was fake hype just like this . and when this is not delivered upon the amount of salt well am sure that taste will not go over so very well at all .

Anet went to great leinghts to tell us what we were getting with the expac they are at fault somewhat but ppl’s expectations where high above and beyond

And we still haven’t gotten everything they mentioned on the box.

What are we missing? I never got a box with my copy so I can’t check.

Lazarus is The Doctor?

Most likely it’s a gold seller.

But I did once see someone in LA really excited about the random gold item they’d just pulled out of the Mystic Forge – because no one was currently selling one on the TP they thought it must be really rare and special and they could basically ask any price they wanted and someone would pay it.

It was lucky in a way that their first reaction was to brag about it in map chat because several people explained (nicely) that it wasn’t actually that rare, it’s just that no one was selling one right at that moment and it wouldn’t be worth any more than other generic rare items.

(This is one downside to GW2’s horizontal progression – in most games if an item is 2 tiers below the maximum that tells you immediately it’s not that special. But in a game where so many things are valued because of their skin instead of their stats that doesn’t work.)

This is a really good idea.

I’ve been put off using the test golem because of the confusing interface and the fact that you have to actually get a full build in order to test it. I think it’d be much better if we could quickly swap builds – only in this area – to see the effect before we go and actually buy/craft/earn all the kit.

I’m waiting to see how it looks in-game. I want to see what the animations are like, how dye affects it, what the individual pieces are like and how it combines with other armour sets.

When I first saw medium ascended armour I thought it looked absurd. But actually that’s just the helmet and shoulders (and to a lesser extent the mismatched gloves). The coat is one of my favourites (especially on human female) and the leggings are nice too.

So, (in a hypothetical world where I get around to raiding enough to even think about it) I probably wouldn’t use a full set of legendary armour, I don’t really do full sets. But there might well be pieces I think are amazing and perfect for my characters. Or amazing but not right for my characters and then I’ll convince myself it’s a good thing I don’t want it because I can’t get it anyway and pretend I’m only previewing it to remind myself of that.

I’m the weird one who prefers to jump on a norn. The height and distance they can jump, relatively to their body size, is much closer to what I can do in real life so I find it easier to judge whether I can make a jump. Asura’s animations throw me off – they look like they’re really going for it, sprinting forward and hurling themselves into the air – so even though they’re smaller I expect them to go further…and then remember it doesn’t work that way as my poor character plummets to their death.

Although I mostly do jumping puzzles impulsively when I find myself going past, or when I thought I was just poking around a cave and realise I’m halfway through one. So I will do them on all 5 races and can complete it on any of them, I just have to shift my thinking into the right mode and that doesn’t always happen until after falling to my death a few times.

Crinn.7864:

NotASmurf.1725:

400 is probably more than WoW has. At the time of GW1 Anet had ~60-80 employees total yet were capable of dishing out 3 campaigns and 1 expansion in 3.5 years with regular balance patches inbetween. Granted it was a somewhat smaller in scope (no gliding, masteries, achievements, etc although there more content to play), but still. Stop making excuses for them.

If WoW had less than 400 employees, then how’d they manage to lay off 600 employees in 2012? hint: (they where estimated at 5,000 exployees at the time, or ~4,400 afterwards)

Yeah but Blizzard also makes multiple different games. Anet only makes GW1 and GW2. And GW1 hasn’t had any new development in years. Their staff are probably down to the people who maintain the servers and a tiny team to keep things updated, if the festivals, weekly rewards etc. aren’t literally on a timer by now.

Unless Anet is going to start branching out into other things. But I don’t know what that would be. (Super Adventure Box as an independent game maybe?)

NotASmurf.1725:

The whiteknights on this forum are unbeliveable. I swear if Anet had 1k employees people’d still say “it’s a small company” and would claim at least 980 are artists/management/janitors which means we should be glad that this poor small company has enough resources to at least keep the gem store going.

400 is probably more than WoW has. At the time of GW1 Anet had ~60-80 employees total yet were capable of dishing out 3 campaigns and 1 expansion in 3.5 years with regular balance patches inbetween. Granted it was a somewhat smaller in scope (no gliding, masteries, achievements, etc although there more content to play), but still. Stop making excuses for them.

If you’re including me in that I wasn’t even thinking about their development times. Apart from GW1 & 2 I’ve only played 1 other MMO in the last 15 years, so I have to take peoples word for it that most of them release much more than a few hours of content and a map every few months and an expansion every few years. (Although that does make me think GW2 is the right game for me, I don’t think I could keep up with much more.)

I only commented because I saw the thread as two groups talking at cross purposes: one who understood that game developer is a very specific job title that relatively few people at Anet would have, and one who saw everyone who worked on making a game as a developer and seemed to think anyone who wasn’t a developer shouldn’t be there. So I was trying to explain that all of those other people are just as important to getting the game made even if they’re not sitting at a computer writing code or programming new events or whatever.

Maybe they could do it faster or more efficiently, maybe not. I have no idea. I don’t know that much about how Anet works or how games development works on that scale.

I really hope Kasmeer is reacting to Lazarus when she says that, just because it really annoys me when trailers edit together totally unrelated scenes to make it look like someone is saying something they’re not (and it’s surprisingly common).

I agree that means it’s definitely someone/something she knows, and wouldn’t expect to be impersonating Lazarus. Which to my mind eliminates all the ‘logical’ candidates (like a Seer or another mursaat) but I’m not sure who it could be.

I think it’s unlikely to be Scarlet however for two reasons:
1) It would really, really annoy many players if they did that. A lot of people genuinely didn’t like her (as a character, not just because she was evil) and I can imagine they’d be very vocal about that if she came back.
2) She was very definitely dead. As in we defeated her and then used a finishing move (I still have screenshots of the quaggans dancing around her corpse) and then we see her corpse lying on the floor. It’s about as clear as they can be considering the game is rated 12+ (so we can’t put her head on a pike or anything like that) and we didn’t have a doctor on hand to examine her.

Of course resurrection is a part of GW lore (although I’m not sure if/how it’d work for sylvari) and in fantasy pretty much anything can happen. If someone really wanted to bring her back they could do it, but it seems highly unlikely.

The only thing that makes me think it’s feasible is that manipulating fanatical groups to do her bidding was her thing, and she was very interested in different forms of magic and how it could be manipulated and re-purposed. So commandeering the White Mantle and the power of a blood stone does seem like something she would do.

But like I said I think she’s a bit too dead for that.

Natto.5819:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just like the paper bag helms.

Please tell me more.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Paper-Bag_Helm_4-Pack

I wish they’d been released back in the early days when we didn’t have the Total Makeover Kit and people kept begging for a fix to ugly characters.

Sadly like the school uniform we only know it exists because of datamining (extracting unused files from the game) and was scrapped before it was actually released. That happens a lot in any kind of creative process, it’s annoying (especially if you’re the one who has a cool idea you can’t quite get to work), but it’s probably inevitable too.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

I’d rather like this, but in my head it sits next to “focus on bringing out new dynamic events on an existing map every two weeks” as an approach to constant growth, as “too expensive both computationally and design-wise.”

That’s what I was thinking. More realistic wildlife would be fantastic but I suspect it would be extremely difficult to do without adding a lot of lag and it would take a lot of time to design and program, especially if it involved creating new animations.

All of which would have relatively little benefit for players. Many people probably wouldn’t even notice. I know this was the case when Ultima Online launched with a fairly elaborate wildlife system, including predators moving into new areas if their prey got harder to find, prey hiding from predators etc. – most players fell into two groups: ones who killed everything and barely took the time to notice what it was and ones who ran past all the animals because they weren’t enemies. Hardly anyone even knew about the system until they announced they were removing it to improve performance.

Even those who would notice would probably only stop to go “Oh that’s cool”, maybe take a few screenshots before moving on. Even I would probably do that 99% of the time and I have a degree in behavioural biology and an on-going fascination with attempts to replicate animal behaviour with computers thanks to a game/simulation from the 90’s called Creatures.

It’s definitely a cool idea, and there’s definitely a place for it within video games but I’m just not sure this is the right game for it.

It’s only spiking because of the legendary armour announcement. People are buying up stuff they suspect will be used, either for their own use or so they can sell it back to people at a (hopefully, for them) even higher price once the armour is released.

But give it a few weeks and it will calm down.

In the meantime if anyone has any mats they don’t want now is the time to sell.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Harper.4173:

So they made the sets ugly to not upset anyone who can’t get them?

I remember some white knights using that kind of arguments for ascended armor.

“It’s not supposed to look good, you’re getting it for the stats!”
“If you want to look good, you can always transmute your gear!”
“They’re ugly, but if you don’t do fractals, you don’t even need them, anyways!”

Well that is all true. Except in this case you don’t even need to get them for the stats.

Also, I made the ascended medium coat for my ranger entirely because I like how it looks. I didn’t want or need the stat boost, I just wanted the skin. I made ascended trousers for my engineer for the same reason. I don’t like how the full set looks, but those pieces combined with others I think look really good.

Personally I find that’s true of a lot of sets – I think most of the complete sets look silly or really don’t suit any of my characters. But there’s lots of individual pieces I really like and I can combine them to make looks I like.

It also depends on the character. What looks good on my human female ranger often looks absurd on my norn female engineer or my male charr thief, even though it’s the exact same armour piece, and what looks good on my engineer looks absurd on my ranger etc. Which is kind of annoying because it means if something new comes out I have to preview it on every character who can wear it to decide if I want to get it or not, but at least it means they all end up looking different.

AncientYs.8613:

My question is, will legendary armor become a requirement if we want a greater stat boost? or is it minimal like for ascended gear?

I need t know because i’m using exotics armor and weapons and i don’t want this power creep to nullify my stats.

Legendary armour, just like legendary weapons, has identical stats to ascended.

You only need to make legendaries if you like the appearance, or if you’re switching stats so often it’s actually worth the extra cost to have just 1 set (which seems unlikely to me).

Otherwise you can make ascended and have exactly the same stats, or exotic and have slightly lower stats for much, much less effort.

Ashen.2907:

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

But that’s why I’m saying the people making those posts need to be specific about exactly what they want from a housing system. The majority of topics I’ve seen don’t go into much detail and there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone knows what good player housing looks like and everyone agrees on what features it should and should not have without anyone needing to explain it.

Having seen one game burned by that already and the ensuring arguments about what essential features were missing which showed that there are many, many different opinions and it’d be impossible to accommodate them all (because some are totally contradictory – like instanced vs. un-instanced vs. shared instance housing) I’m very wary of it happening again.

But what is ‘proper player housing’?

Would you be happy with a system like Elder Scrolls Online has where it’s literally just a house themed instance you can decorate with furniture? (And only objects the developers have designated as furniture – if you see something out in the world you really like and there isn’t a furniture version you can’t have it, if you find a cool weapon or armour piece or trophy you want to show off you can’t put it in your house.) And then once you’re done decorating you can…look at your furniture. Maybe see if you can persuade a friend to come and look at your furniture. That’s about it really.

A lot of people in that game kept saying they really wanted housing and it’d be amazing to have housing but apparently all of them had very distinct and quite different ideas about what ‘housing’ meant and what they got wasn’t it.

Some basically wanted a walk-in bank where they could store inventory items. Some wanted a private town with access to the bank, a merchant, crafting stations, daily quest pick-ups etc. Some wanted features to hold a guild party (I’m still not sure what exactly, I assume decorations, consumable food, customisable music…that kind of thing.). Some wanted to set up merchant stalls and services so other players could visit and use them. Some people don’t seem able to articulate what they want, but what they’ve got very definitely is not it.

I think simply asking for housing runs the risk of ending up with the same problem here. What people at Anet think of when they think of player housing in an MMO may be very different to what you’re thinking of.

I think calling it Flashpoint is basically one step up from calling it ‘Penultimate’.

As you said a flashpoint is the point at which tensions come to a head and flare up into a conflict. It’s basically a fancy name for ‘start of the real fight’. Which is exactly what we’d expect at this point in the story.

Of course there might well be more to it than that. A Crack in the Ice seemed like it was just a reference to the Bitterfrost Frontier map but I think it was actually more about Braham's new weaponwhich cracked Jormag's tooth. But I don’t think we’ll know that until after we’ve played it.

It’s a little known fact that pirates were one of the first ‘professions’ to give all employees contracts which guaranteed their right to things like pay and time off. It was pretty important because the captain was only in charge so long as the crew was happy enough not to commit mutiny. Basically they were one of the first union work forces.

Therefore One-eyed Willy is entitled to take time off in return for his dutiful service guarding the treasure and cannot be expected to be there at all hours of the day or night. You’ll just have to come back during his contracted working hours.

Triggering this forum bug usually feels pretty stupid…

One I heard from someone in my guild (no, really):

Back before ascended weapons were released legendaries had exotic soldier’s stats and you couldn’t change them – if you wanted different stats you had to get another exotic and transmute the skin onto it.

Transmutation worked differently too. The wardrobe didn’t exist and instead you used a Transmutation Crystal to combine two items – choosing the skin from one and the stats from the other. The original items were destroyed and you got 1 new one with your choice of skin and stats. (I bet some people can already see where this is going.)

So a friend of mine finally completed Sunrise and bought a cheap generic beserker’s greatsword to combine it with. He was so excited to finish his legendary he must have been rushing through the menu and it was only after he hit the button that he realised his mistake….when he saw his new Soldier’s Greatsword with pretty much the plainest, most generic greatsword skin you can get.

Fortunately Support was able to help him out but I don’t think he slept at all for the 2 nights it took them to get back to him.