Guild Wars 2

You can buy them on the TP – according to the Wiki the current cost is 93 copper each.

(Having said that I do think it makes sense that PvP is included in making a legendary, the whole idea is that you have to ‘master’ or at least play the entire game to get one. I think the only reason PvP wasn’t included originally was that before the wardrobe you couldn’t use legendaries there.)

They’ve already said they aren’t going to release them before the expansion but they also won’t be part of the expansion – you’ll still be able to make them whether you have PoF or not.

Think of it like PvP and WvW updates – some of those came out after HoT was released but they weren’t part of HoT, even free players got the changes.

killermanjaro.5670:

Cyninja.2954:

Yargesh.4965:

The way it worked last time was that your account was in effect cloned and the clone could do whatever it wanted in the new area.
This had no impact on your “true” account and was removed after the betas where done.

This is how it very likely will be again this time.

People used the copy for:

- testing stuff and builds without risking/spending their assets ingame
- throwing stuff into the mystic forge
- trying out new classes
- kicking themselves in the head for getting that longwaited precursor drop on their clone character instead of their regular account

Basically the clone characters and economy is completely seperate from live accounts. Everything that happens on there gets wiped. You won’t have access to the TP etc.

All rewards gained from interacting with clone characters like killing them in wvw though remains available and valid as long as it was created using the live account.

I imagine all my time during the beta weekend will be spent doing as you mention, testing stuff out, getting a feel for things etc. But does that mean if I do things in the vanilla maps or HoT during the beta weekend then any rewards from events there would get wiped too? I don’t imagine I will, but just curious anyway. Or during the beta will we just not have access to normal GW2/HoT and only have access to the beta content anyway?

The way it worked during the HoT beta was everyone got a special beta-test character slot. Any character you made in that slot was automatically level 80 with a bunch of level 80 gear (and had the option of being a revenant) and was completely seperate from the rest of your account.

For example they could access the bank but anything they took out would still be in there for your other characters and anything they put in wouldn’t show up on any other characters. They’d start with the same gold allowance as the rest of your characters but if you spent it all on your beta character it would still be there on your others, and vice versa.

For the first few betas they couldn’t leave Verdant Brink, later on they allowed revenants anywhere to get feedback on their balance in normal zones.

Assuming it will be the same in the PoF beta it means if you want to play existing content or ‘save’ your progress you simply log into one of your existing characters, but they won’t be able to access the new maps. If you want to play in the new maps you make a beta character and accept that nothing they do will carry over.

We’re already getting a version of this.

Anet have said the mounts themselves will be obtained in-game, presumably through the story. Then each one has a mastery track to give it new abilities. And mastery track means you’ll need to gain mastery points to activate each tier.

The only difference is it’s not tied to specific content. You don’t have to go and beat a specific champion to enable your raptor to jump further (or whatever), you can get the mastery points from any of the content which offers it. Which allows people to ‘customise’ the process. If you hate raiding/don’t have time/whatever you can still unlock the same mount abilities raiders can, by doing something different like adventures or story achievements or whatever.

One point I’ve not seen addressed yet is that part of the reason the game doesn’t give you a set order to do hearts and events is that you can’t really get it wrong. And since there’s no wrong answer there isn’t one right answer for them to give you either.

The absolute worst thing that could happen is you wander into an area that’s above your level and die. But unless you’ve literally never seen a game with levels before, never encountered that concept at all, it will be obvious why you died. And there’s no real consequences for dying, except you might have to pay a bit of copper to use a waypoint (remember WPs are cheaper on low level characters).

And that death on it’s own is a valuable experience – you’ve (hopefully) learned to pay attention to the level of your enemy so you don’t get caught out, which can lead into paying attention to the other info the game gives you about them – what rank they are, what buffs they have, what the text description below their health bar says…

You’re over-thinking it, and by refusing to do anything you’ve not been explicitly told to do for fear of doing it wrong you’re missing opportunities to discover what the game is telling you. And to discover that it’s ok to explore and experiment and even to think for yourself.

You can buy the core game on Amazon, and probably a few other places. But the price is about the same as HoT so you’re probably better off just buying that.

You can always ignore anything you don’t want to do.

I doubt they’d surprise us with a new class – that would be a major selling point for the expansion so by keeping it quiet they’d lose sales.

At first I thought you meant the moa.

I was going to say I think that’s the opposite problem – that the event has been running without players interrupting so the seekers were free to bring shards and power up the sheild with nothing reducing it.

Then I checked the wiki and found out that each shard only adds 10 to the shield strength. So if the cleric had been recieving 1 shard per second it would take 13.6 Years to build up that much.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it might be bugged.

If you have a free character slot you could use them to do Black Lion Key runs: make a new character, get to level 10, complete the story, get a key, delete and repeat next week when the allowance resets.

If you like/don’t mind the story and don’t mind spending more time on it you can level them to 40 for an additional key (and 60 for a 3rd one, but I find that takes too long).

Otherwise if you really don’t need them and they’re taking up too much space you could always just delete them. Although I recommend keeping at least 80 just in case – it may be unlikely but it means if you ever want an instant level 80 you’ve got the option.

Yakez.7561:

I bought PoF already and Lily clearly says: “This item will not activate until after you have completed Chapter 1 of the Path of Fire story.”

Other thing that I noticed, that item actually called Invitation to “Lily of the Elon”. So maybe it would be replaced by actual usual pass after unlocking first chapter on any char? Hope so.

But it might work like masteries – you have to complete the 1st part of the HoT storyline to unlock them, but once you’ve done it once you can train masteries on any level 80 character – even one who has never started the storyline.

I’m not actually opposed to unrealistic weapon designs. But to suggest that all hammers in the game should be made unrealistically large? That is IMO a step too far.

If you want to have a giant cartoon hammer then you have that option. But it’s great that we also have more realistic options for people who want that. Pushing all weapons of one type to one extreme of the realism spectrum just excludes people who don’t like that.

You may as well ask why we have swords that look like they’re made of metal or armour that doesn’t glow in the dark.

You can’t upgrade from Deluxe to Ultimate because the only difference is cheap gems. So there’s nothing for them to add to your account.

But Support may be able to refund the one you bought, so you can buy the Ultimate instead.

I agree that most hammers are actually unrealistically large. If you look at real-life war hammers most of them look like the kind of hammer you’d use to nail boards together with a longer handle.

And there’s a good reason for that – it does more damage that way. If you have a big, wide hammer head then you’re spreading the force out across all that surface area and the impact on any one point is reduced. Same way it will hurt a hell of a lot more if someone stands on your foot wearing stiletto heels than hiking boots.

Add the fact that it’s heavier and therefore going to wear you out sooner and be slower to swing and harder to aim and overall what you’ve got is a much worse weapon.

Put a small metal head on a long pole and swung right it could (and did) punch through platemail. Put a massive wide head on a long pole and maybe you’ll feel more like a big, hard man walking up to the battlefield but when you hit them with it at best you might dent their armour.

I really like the weapons. Only reason I haven’t picked one yet is I want to wait and see if it’s possible to get others (and how difficult it is) before choosing. I’m very tempted by the sword, torch, dagger and hammer.

I’m not opposed to flashy weapons (I use the Dreamer on my main, next to that almost anything looks subdued) but what’s most important to me is to have a variety of skins to choose from – as much as it’s nice to have a range of flashy weapons with weird effects it’s also nice to have plain, elegant ones like these. They suit different characters and themes.

The outfit is a bit dull, but as other people have said it’s appropriate – it’s based on the paragon armour from GW1. Oddly enough I think it looks best on my asuran guardian, but then all the outfits seem to look good on her.

Overall though I’m not worried about them. Buying the Ultimate edition basically means I bought 4000 gems and then paid £27.50 for the Deluxe Edition – and the pass alone would cost me £10.60 so even if nothing else was included that’s a good deal. Anything else I use is a bonus and anything else I don’t is a non-issue.

I’m not going to buy anything I wouldn’t be anyway.

I got the Ultimate Edition because if the 4000 gems replaces gems I’d buy normally I can subtract the £42.50 they cost from what I paid and get the Deluxe Edition for £27.50. If I then spend those 4000 gems on stuff I’d never get normally and end up buying more gems that goes out the window.

Regardless of how you spend them I strongly recommend waiting for the anniversary sale. They normally do a few different sales throughout August (e.g. one set of items will be sold for 3-7 days, then they’ll be replaced with others, and so on) and it’s normally a mix of current items being discounted and new and returning items being made available.

It’d be really annoying to pay full price for something you only kind-of want just to see it sold for 1/2 price a few weeks later. Or to spend 4000 gems on stuff you kind-of want and then find stuff you really want added just after.

If what I’ve been told is true interacting with NPCs, gathering and pretty much anything else pulls you off your mount. And you definitely can’t fight on a mount because they covered that in the article.

So even if they don’t out-right ban mounts in cities people blocking things like the TP and the bank will have to be doing nothing else – just standing there. I know people do go afk there, but I doubt it will be a case of everyone on the mounts crowded together.

But I’d be very surprised if Anet don’t implement at least small no-mount zones. Even single-player games where you can summon your mount from thin air (like Dragon Age Inquisition) do that.

For me the key difference between GW2 and WoW is summed up in this post: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753795863?page=26#post-502 (context is they introduced a new scaling system, and unsurprisingly it had problems, in particular being too far above the intended gear level could actually make you weaker)

Key points for me include:

“To reiterate, power progression is an essential part of the WoW endgame.”

“We’ve never had the initial outdoor world content stay relevant for this long in an expansion before. By the end of Mists of Pandaria, for example, the mantid of Dread Wastes that had once been reasonable foes were completely trivial. They’d basically evaporate if a raid-geared player looked in their general direction.”

Fair enough that’s what some people want – a game where you’re constantly chasing new stats and new gear, forever getting more powerful and as a consequence older content rapidly becomes irrelevant and you’ll likely never go back to it. But to me that’s anathema. Maybe because I came into MMOs with Ultima Online rather than Everquest/Runescape so I associate them with story telling – both the games built in stories and the ones players make for themselves and for that it’s vital that the whole world remains relevant, not just the one little bit designated as the current ‘end game’. (On a related note the term end game still seems like an oxymoron to me, the end of the game is the point where there’s nothing left to do and you have to start over.)

Next to that things like mounts or jumping or how players trade with each other are trivial. Especially mounts which is such a broad category. It sounds like GW2’s mount system will be nothing at all like Ultima Online’s (if it was then only rangers would be able to obtain mounts and other players would have to purchase them from us) or Elder Scrolls Online (mounts are strictly a speed boost, different appearances are purely cosmetic) or from what I’ve heard about it WoWs.

As other people said games borrow from each other all the time. Even ‘copying’ one big thing isn’t enough to make them the same. When Elder Scrolls Online went buy-to-play it remained very different to GW2 for example. Even now they’ve also introduced level scaling and seem to have capped gear progression they’re still very different.

ClockworkRaja.1732:

I have been crafting Frostfang for my Ranger, and I must admit that at times I have seriously thought about giving it up. just some of the components are next to impossible to get. Yes, I understand that it is a legendary but I am just trying to figure out of the stats are really worth grinding out 1000 Orichalcum ingots, to say nothing of having to do the grind in WVW to get the Gift of battles.

If you’re making it for the stats then I’m sorry to tell you it’s absolutely, definitely not worth it.

Legendaries have identical stats to ascended weapons (which are a lot cheaper and easier to make). The only difference functionally is that you can swap the stats on a legendary instantly instead of using the Mystic Forge.

The benefit of legendaries is the unique skins and effects they have. It’s part of the design of GW2 that stats and other things you need to play should be easy to get, and any grind or long-term goals should be for purely cosmetic things each person can choose to go for or ignore.

Got mine sometime in the last 10 hours, so about 50-60 hours after purchase.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Actually we’ve been pining for guild capes since the start.

And some people have been asking for built-in voice chat, and server-wide chat channels.

It’s ‘standalone’ in the sense that you can just buy Path of Fire (which comes with the base game included).

You don’t need to buy the original GW2 and then Heart of Thorns and then Path of Fire – which is what you’d have to do with a lot of games.

Buy PoF – at the end, just before you put your payment details in you’ll have an option to add HoT for a lower price than normal.

I bought it almost exactly 48 hours ago and mine haven’t arrived yet. My plan at the moment is that if they’re not here by Monday I’ll email Support.

Chadramar.8156:

It’s one of several loose ends that really needed to be addressed but were never really picked up again either in HoT or afterwards. The “current event” does mention her very briefly and IMO is done well considering how short it is, but we — especially sylvari players — still never get to ask the burning question of why she didn’t warn anyone before the Pact fleet sailed to its death.

She couldn’t.

She was attacked during the Summit and at that point we hadn’t even gotten as far as Silverwastes and the plan was pretty much ‘we must fight this dragon’.

The plan to focus on an aerial assault, sending ships over the jungle to find and attack the dragon immediately instead of going in over land/sea and looking for ways to weaken it first like we did with Zhaitan wasn’t worked out until later.

And from the Summit onward the Pale Tree was unable to communicate. Outside of The Dream she can only speak to the sylvari through her Avatar and she was too wounded to maintain it. It’s hard to tell because, well, she’s a tree, but it’s possible she was unconscious the entire time we were fighting Mordremoth.

I actually think that’s why they had the dragon attack her and why she was out of it for so long. Because otherwise she would have warned us and we’d have found another way to attack, with the full strength of the Pact and all the allied races…which would be a much better battle plan but a much less interesting story with a far lesser role for our character.

Well, what determines who is and is not a god?

People in Tyria still worship him. In fact it sounds like his followers have gotten more enthusiastic and he may have gained some new ones since coming back. Doesn’t that make him a god?

But if so, can we follow that train of thought through to the extreme and say all the statues and crystals and rocks and trees and whatever else the grawl worship are also gods? If not then why not? Because the grawl are not human and somehow not entitled to ascribe deityship (a word I just made up) to things? Because only a few of them are alive or have any magical power of their own? (But then are those ones gods?)

Alternatively if it’s a matter of how powerful you are then what’s the cut-off point? Are the elder dragons gods? Does it have to be a specific kind of power, or will anything do?

As a 3rd alternative (and strange as it’s going to sound the one I think is most likely) it could be a role you’re assigned, a bit like being in government. You (in theory) need to fulfill some basic qualifications in order to be considered but the deciding factor is someone declaring that you are a god. But who decides? The humans who worship them? The other gods? Some unknown higher authority?

If it’s the first one then I think yes, he absolutely is still a god. If it’s the second then we don’t know; he’s certainly weaker than he was because he’s said as much himself, but we’d need to know exactly how weak he is and how strong a god must be to determine whether he’s been ‘demoted’.

If it’s the 3rd then we don’t know. From things he’s said it sounds like he’s not on good terms with the other gods right now, but when Abaddon and Dhuum were ‘demoted’ it was pretty dramatic – Abaddon and all of his most dedicated followers (the Margonites) were blasted from the face of Tyria in an attack that drastically changed a huge area of the world – creating the Desolation and the Crystal Desert. On top of that almost all knowledge of him was erased from history so only a few people even knew he had ever existed. I think Grenth taking over from Dhuum happened almost entirely in The Mists so there was less impact on Tyria but it was still pretty dramatic and had far-reaching consequences.

So far we’ve not seen any of that with Balthazar. But it might be that part of the reason he’s in such a rush to gain all this extra power is because it’s not yet reached that point. This could be the god equivalent of him skipping bail and trying to hustle enough money to skip the country before the other gods can catch up.

The extra character slots only come with the Deluxe/Ultimate edition and as far as I saw there was no option to buy HoT Deluxe or Ultimate bundled with PoF, only the basic version.

But once you’ve got HoT you can upgrade to the Deluxe version using the gem store and then you’d get the bonus character slot.

Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485:

Disco Biscuit.1864:

I am wondering what comes with the purchase, do we get a character slot on 80 boost as well or is it just the xpac?

you get whatever version of PoW you ordered, 1 extra level 80 boost (which I will never use, so it will sit there, mocking me forever) no extra anything else it seems.

Are you aware that you can use the level 80 boost on a character who is already level 80? If you do that all you get is the bonus gold and items, it won’t change your build or give you any extra XP or anything. But some of the items are nice (celebratory dye pack for example) and it gets rid of the boost and frees up the shared inventory slot.

Are you aware that your server is only relevant for WvW?

Unless you want to play WvW with people on that server there is absolutely no reason to transfer because everything else is shared.

Because of that the server ‘population’ is based on the number of people considered to be active WvW players. Not the number currently in WvW maps but the number who have participated recently. This means it only updates periodically and the time of day or the number of people online doesn’t make any difference, so there’s no reason to wait until 3am or any other specific time.

I’ve heard that the best time to check is just after WvW resets on a Friday. But there’s no guarantee of any world opening up, especially if they’re currently doing well in their matches.

Tommo Chocolate.5870:

Danikat.8537:

It’s a lot for someone who has been playing for 5 years but spent all their karma at Wintersday.

I find Wintersday is the best time to make karma. IIRC you can make several thousand from delivering gifts to orphans (very quick once you know where they are and it gives a karma booster), and by doing the bell choir ensemble.

Of course, that doesn’t help the OP right now…

You can get a lot of karma during Wintersday. But every year I still manage to use up all I’ve got saved and all I can farm and end up with as close to nothing as you can get.

I did think about suggesting that, but with Wintersday 5 months away I wasn’t sure how it’d go over. I’ve considered it for my mini pet collecting, because I’m fine to wait – it’s very much a long-term goal and I have others to get in the meantime. But if the OP wants the backpack for a build or just wants to get it over and done with that wait could be very frustrating. (And of course there’s no guarantee they won’t change Wintersday again.)

Don’t forget that PoF hasn’t actually been released yet. All that’s available at the moment is pre-purchase.

It might be that they’re only offering pre-purchase on digital copies, and boxed copies will be available from 22nd September (the release date) onwards. Although what I’ve seen in all the other topics about this is that boxed copies will not be available at all.

As for why they didn’t make a big deal of it I assume that’s because it’s exactly the same thing they did with HoT so it’s not really news any more.

Just like they didn’t make a big thing of not increasing the level cap or adding new equipment tiers and instead giving us masteries – that’s now business as usual for GW2 so it’s not worth spending much time on it when they’ve got all the other stuff to announce.

(Having said that the previews do show the characters using new skills and weapons – they just don’t explicitly say “this is not a trait, this is a skill which will go in a utility/weapon/elite slot”).

Considering the living world and expansion stories require you to be level 80 I’m not sure what that has to do with using the boost, since you can’t use them to level up. Unless you flip the question around and say the point of using the boost is to enable you to access those stories sooner.

But like Inculpatus said the point of playing the stories is, for many people, the stories themselves. You could equally say what’s the point of WvW or PvP or open-world events, or achievement…or the entire game. There isn’t really a purpose beyond having fun doing it.

There are no racial storylines in Season 2 (or in HoT or Season 3), it’s one story for everyone.

Everyone gets the same story and it uses the same characters. Story-wise your character associating elusively with their race’s member of Destiny’s Edge ended when you bought the whole guild back together to fight Zhaitan. From that point on you’ll deal with all of them periodically.

Eir will come back into the story periodically (as well Zojia, Caithe and Rytlock and various other reoccurring characters) but it’s based on when it makes sense for that specific character to be there, not simply an NPC that matches your race.

OriOri.8724:

This was put into the game to appease veterans who have been whining about having nothing to spend karma on for years, and therefore have accumulated millions of it. Its honestly not that much karma for someone who has been actively playing for 5 years and has nothing else to spend karma on.

Still though, LWS3 was extremely heavy on how much karma it costs to buy all the exclusive stuff, and I hope that trend doesn’t continue with expac 2 and LWS4.

It’s a lot for someone who has been playing for 5 years but spent all their karma at Wintersday.

I’m in a similar situation – between Wintersday and making a legendary not long ago I was down to barely any karma (well, less than 50,000 but compared to the 1mil minimum I used to have that’s a big drop) and found myself needing several hundred thousand for all the LS3 mini pets.

The best solution I’ve found is doing the LS3 dailies. Each one gives about 1,500 karma, and that’s on top of what you get for events, killing enemies with the bonus etc. Of course there’s only a finite number of dailies so you can’t grind it all out in a day but it’s quicker than anything else I’ve tried.

P.S. Am I the only one who keeps accidentally writing karka? Trying to accumulate karka is a whole other problem.

72 hours from when it was purchased.

The delay is to allow the card payment to go through – including a check that the card is legitimate.

When HoT was up for pre-purchase there was a big problem with gold sellers using stolen or fake cards to buy the Ultimate Edition, converting all 4000 gems to gold and either selling it directly from that account (knowing the account would be banned once the transaction failed to go through) or transferring it to other accounts.

This way they can’t do that.

They do include new skills.

I don’t remember all of them but rangers are getting stances, guardians are getting tomes which are like long-term support skills, engineers get new toolbelt skills (I think) and so on. Plus of course new weapons that will each come with 2-5 new weapon skills.

I assume that just like HoT the new skills will be unlocked as part of the elite specialisation track – but once they’re unlocked they function just like normal skills.

Healix.5819:

They can use old masteries, they just won’t be required to progress. They could have updrafts as a shortcut for example, but anything from HoT would never be required for PoF’s story.

I think this would be the best solution.

With many of the masteries that’s already true. There are very few places you can’t get to without using Nuloch Wallows or Thermal Tubes or Oak Heart Reach and even fewer for advanced masteries like Advanced Gliding or Speed Boost Mushrooms.

So it wouldn’t be a big deal if they added them to the PoF maps but as one of several options, not the only way to do it.

Come to think of it I’d love to see a multi-path jumping puzzle. There could be a long, slow way where all you need to do is run and jump like the new one in Siren’s Landing – no timed or especially tricky jumps but it’s by far the longest way. At various points you can branch off from that path and take short-cuts or alternate routes (maybe with bonus chests) by gliding, using mounts, using Oak Heart’s reach, using Thermal Tubes, completing puzzles, dodging traps that require good timing, fighting enemies…literally all the mechanics they’ve ever put into jumping puzzles all in one, but it’s all optional so everyone can pick their preferred route. Or replay it all the different ways.

I’m pretty sure everyone has at some point either accidentally click ‘craft all’ when they wanted to make just 1 dowel, or clicked dowel when they wanted planks.

Now I always double check what I’m making before I make it. Which has come in useful when I got to ascended crafting and already knew to check whether buying the 5g recipe from the crafting NPC would actually let me make the one I wanted or if I needed a unique recipe from somewhere else.

A while ago someone claimed that Harathi Hinterlands was a rip-off of an area in WoW called Something Hinterlands. Explaining that it’s a common term for an area considered distant (literally it means ‘place behind’ or more collequally ‘back end of nowhere’) didn’t help.

Oddly enough someone jokingly claiming they both ripped off The Netherlands (yes the real life country) because the name means almost the exact same thing did help convince people it wasn’t a term either game had invented.

Honestly most fantasy copies from what’s come before. Whether that’s previous games or DnD or Tolkein or the fairy tales and folklore than preceded it or the actual historical events that inspired those. Plus sci-fi ideas, more recent real-life events, and all sort of other things.

And as people have pointed out gods of fire and gods of war and even gods of both together aren’t exactly uncommon.

Now if Balthazar was called Ragnarok and was a demon made of lava that Tyrians worshipped (like the titans in GW1)…well that still wouldn’t be a rip-off of WoW because all of those ideas preceded the Warcraft franchise.

(And as much as I love their RTS games a series which started from being unable to get the rights to Warhammer so they 1/2 changed the name and threw in the resource management concept from Dune II is hardly in a position to complain about rip-offs.)

Hannelore.8153:

Carighan.6758:

jojorne.2175:

With PoF does this means people will forget Core and HoT contents?
Each expansion will replace old content activities?

Yep! Exactly! Just as with HoT, since which the non-HoT zones and activities have been abandoned.

Ok, all joking aside, I am slightly worried what will happen as more and more landmass appears. We got 6 mini-maps (mostly abandoned now, granted, as they were never designed to be “real” maps) with LS3, stands to reason we’ll get another set with LS4. On top of that the expansion zones.

This is fine right now. Plenty population between all servers. But make it 2019, expansion 3, population further declined, and many many zones will start to feel rather … lonely.

Mostly, the only reason Central Tyria still has people in the maps is because of F2P and because of new players coming to the game. The number of people you’ll run into in these maps is still far lower than after megaserver update hit—unless it is a daily like event completer or a world boss or something.

HoT maps won’t benefit from F2P, or newer players, as they can skip to PoF. The zones already are abandoned compared to launch. I haven’t seen a tier 4 Verdant Brink meta complete since the first few months of HoT.

Its like saying Dry Top isn’t abandoned because it sometimes has a single map instance that manages to reach tier 4 (the maximum is tier 6). Sure, its active, but its not active in the capacity that ArenaNet originally intended.

Just like Dry Top if you want to get into a Tier 4 Verdant Brink map you need to use the LFG tool because whilst there might only be 1 map doing it that one is full enough that the game won’t drop random people into it – they’ll go into other, less busy, copies.

I suspect that will be the answer for all the maps. Fortunately most things do go to one extreme or the other – either you can do it solo or you need a big, organised group. It just means for the group stuff people will need to plan ahead a bit – decide to do it, find a group and build the map up instead of hoping to drop in to a map that’s already progressed thanks to the sheer number of players, do the thing/s they wanted and then leave again.

Aurene. Probably story instance only but it would still be amazing.

Also I’d love to see a griffon as an alternative skin for the bunny. Instead of jumping it could look like it’s flying you up the cliff (or whatever).

Glenstorm.4059:

TBH, the default mounts already look great; it would have to be something truly amazing for me to consider buying mount skins.

With gliders, the default is basically a potato sack, and incentivizes players to buy better skins.

That’s a good point – in any other game I’ve played these mounts would be the special ones you can only get from achievements/rare drops/cash shop. Especially the raptor and the weird magical sand wolf thingy.

On the one hand that makes me think it’s going to be really hard for them to come up with something better, on the other hand it makes me excited for what they’ll come up with.

Paradoxical as it sounds I’m happy to buy stuff in games as long as I don’t need it. If they start selling new types of mounts that do things these ones can’t (or can do the same things better like a faster raptor or a bunny that jumps higher) and I feel like I’m being pressured to buy them because otherwise I’m at a disadvantage then I’d be furious.

But I’d be happy to pick out exactly the right kind of raptor or manta ray or bunny for each character.

(Also I think it’d be kind of funny if one of the gem store mounts was a basic brown horse – the kind that’s normally the starter mount in every game with mounts.)

I recommend picking just 1 legendary to work on at a time. They need a lot of the same stuff so trying to make 2 together will slow you down a lot.

I also recommend thoroughly researching everything you need and where it comes from now (some people make lists or spreadsheets, some people just remember it). You don’t want to be the person who has everything except the Gift of Exploration and then learns it comes from 100% map completion, which you’ve avoided because you hate doing it.

There are a lot of things like that – you need lots of Mystic Coins which are time-gated or expensive, if you’re crafting the precusor you need lots of time-gated ascended materials, you need 100% map completion and tokens from WvW and PvP etc.

It’s best to start the stuff that will take a long time and/or you hate doing right at the beginning – even if you won’t need it to the end – so you can space it out.

I remember exactly the same complaints about the story in GW1. The characters were terrible, the overall plot was unoriginal and predictable (I mean surely it was obvious to everyone the moment you met him that the Vizier was the lead villain, right?), each storyline had no connection what-so-ever to the previous ones and overall it was a jumbled mess.

I still play GW1 periodically and still see those same complaints being voiced now. But apparently GW2 players remember it far differently to the people who are still re-playing it.

As for the current storyline honestly if you think they just suddenly sprung the idea of not killing the dragons on us after Balthazar tried to kill them I think the problem is you haven’t been paying attention. We’ve been getting hints that killing them was causing problems since at least the end of HoT (all the Current Events stuff with loose ley line energy for example) and it was explained repeatedly by Taimi throughout Season 3.

You’re right that we don’t know why Balthazar has appeared, but that’s because at first he was trying to hide himself and since we revealed him he’s been actively avoiding us, so we’ve not had a chance to find out. But also we’re in the middle of the storyline, we’re not supposed to know everything. If this was a TV show then Episode 6 would be the ‘mid season finale’ – they’ve introduced the character and built the story up to the ‘crisis point’ but of course nothing has been resolved yet, otherwise there would be no plot left for the second half.

Finding out why Balthazar is back and so set on killing the elder dragons will presumably be a major part of the plot to PoF, alongside stopping him. But if they’re sensible we won’t get all the answers in the expansion because some of it has to feed into Season 4. Either us getting involved in whatever’s got Balthazar so worked up, or us finding a solution to the elder dragons absorbing all the magic (and killing most of Tyria in the process) without killing them.

Ok sure if you’re simply following the meta or whatever builds other people tell you to use then I’m sure it is boring. But the same would have been true under the old system.

I’ve always put together my own builds (in all games). Sometimes they’re similar to what other people are using, sometimes they’re not, most of the time I have no idea. (Although yesterday for the first time ever I was, rather bluntly, informed that I’m using a high DPS build on my ranger and need to slow down killing things in group events so other people have time to tag them, so I assume right now that one character is in line with the meta.)

As I said above I find the new system allows more flexibility because under the old system I had to either choose which stats I wanted and then accept whichever traits were on that line or choose my traits and then try to work with the stats it gave me. Under the new system I’m free to combine any stats with any traits which gives more flexibility over all than being allowed to choose 3 lower tier traits from whichever trait line I was stuck with.

I did like being able to only go part way into a trait line and put the remaining points into a different line, or put a lower ranked trait into the grandmaster slot, but I do also agree that people choosing to do that probably just means the grandmaster traits are badly designed and need to be fixed.

On the other hand I think the early version where you could for example put 3 points into a trait line and not even reach the first minor trait was pointless – there was no benefit to doing that so simplifying it so that every point unlocked something was a definite improvement.

I also didn’t like having to pay gold to unlock later traits. I get that it was supposed to be a gold sink but it just meant I ran without traits until I was sure I’d be keeping the character.

Similarly I’m glad they seperated traits and stats because it was extremely frustrating to have to compromise my build – either using traits I didn’t want so I could have the stats or vice versa – just because the seemingly arbitrary pairings didn’t match what I wanted to do. This way I have a lot more freedom over my builds.

So overall I think I prefer the new system.

As for the other stuff I still collect materials, because I still need them, and all the gear progression is still in the game.

I think some of it is definitely complaining for the sake of complaining, considering one “problem” I’ve seen raised is that the preview for some elite specs was 2-4 seconds longer than others. (This apparently shows a clear bias in favour of those professions.)

But some of it is people genuinely raising things they see as problems as early as possible in the hope that it will be addressed/fixed before release. (Generally speaking it is easier to change things the earlier in the process it is.)

Some of that may well prove to be non-issues – like the complaints that an elite spec will be underpowered simply because it doesn’t look/sound as exciting or “only” gets an offhand weapon or they didn’t show all the skills in the initial announcement. Other things may be valid complaints, even if it seems silly (for example some people are concerned that the green aura rangers get in soulbeast form will get really annoying if it’s on all the time).

But in general it’s easier to start and continue a discussion about something you don’t like and want to see changed than something you do. Positive topics are basically “I am happy and excited for X!” “Yes, I am also happy about X”…and once everyone’s chipped in to say they’re happy it dies out. Whereas changes can prompt long, detailed discussions. As a result ‘negative’ topics tend to drown out positive ones on any forum.

Zok.4956:

Bridlegoose.9376:

I’ve never used a pass like this before, so I have a question for those that have. Can you map there, do your business, then exit right back to where you were? Kind of like how you can enter and exit the mists or the pvp lobby.

I do not know the other passes but with the “captains airship pass” you teleport to the airship in the normal “Gendarran Fields” open-world map where the airship flies high above the ground. So you are in the “normal” open-world map (and not in an instance like guild hall, lobby etc..) and can glide from the aiship to other places in the map, but you can not go right back where you were before, when you leave the ship.

It’s the same for the other passes. They’re all locations in the open-world map and none of them are instanced. And none of them allow you to go straight back to where you were.

The one exception is the new one – the Mistlock Sanctuary – which is in it’s own unique map. Which is a bit of a problem for some people because it means the only way to leave it is to go through the gate to one of the cities.

Because of that Anet are apparently looking at the option to allow you to return to where you entered from, but we don’t have an ETA on that or even confirmation it will be happening, they may decide to do something different to ‘fix’ Mistlock.

I suspect the reason some people say they’re soulbound is because when the first few were released that was the case. They were changed to account bound after about a year (maybe less?) but if you already owned them you had to speak to an NPC to get them converted and if people played with just 1 character they may not have bothered. Or if they were away when the conversion happened they might not know it’s possible.

The way a lot of people do it is to keep the infinite tools in shared slots and a set of Ori tools on each character. When you log into the character you double click the infinite tools to equip them and the Ori ones go into the shared slots. When you’re about to log out you swap them back.

And if you ever forget to swap it’s not a big problem because the Ori tools are just as good and it will take so long to use them up with just accidental uses that the cost of replacing them will be negligible.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Are you talking about making parts of oufits into armor pieces? If that’s what you meant, how is that going to increase the sales of outfits.

It is already stated in original post, they become unlocked for purchase only after outfit itself is owned.

That’s what I thought you were proposing.

If you think that people will want to buy a whole outfit just to be allowed to buy individual armor pieces, then you’ve not tried to force people to spend money on things they dislike or don’t want before. I guarantee that requiring buying the outfit in order to buy armor pieces will be the most unpopular concept in the gemstore, if not in the whole game, and many an outraged forum post will be posted.

I agree.

A new helmet skin or gloves or whatever costs what? 200-500 gems? A new outfit is typically 800.

If I had to spend 800 gems on something I don’t want simply for permission to buy the thing I do want…well I just wouldn’t bother. I’d stick with the stuff I can get for free.

The best thing they could do to get me to buy more outfits is make it possible to dye each one different colours on the same character.

I like that they’re not armour because it makes them more convenient for me. I have my armour to fight in and then any time I’m in town, or at a guild party or anywhere the armour looks inappropriate I can switch to one of several outfits for a different look – with just a couple of clicks and without having to fill my bags with alternative armour pieces. (I also wish they’d bring back the keyboard shortcut to switch between the two which town clothes had).

I don’t mind that they’re all one piece because most of the ones I buy wouldn’t work as mix and match anyway (although I do miss the combination of the pirate costume and default human town clothes I had under the old system).

What puts me off getting more is that either they have to work with the dye scheme I’ve chosen for each character or I have to come up with a new dye scheme and make that work with all my current outfits as well. So any new outfit either has to be right for the character and their current dyes or so perfect it’s worth changing all the others, and that rarely happens.

(I know some people change the dyes each time they change outfit, but that ruins the quick and easy switching which is the main thing I like about them.)

If they could change that I’d buy a lot more outfits.