Guild Wars 2

So far I’ve always been building siege weapons as follows:

-Buy blueprint
-pick up supplies
-go to place
-use blueprint
-use supplies to build device

However….since I personally can only carry a very limited amount of supplies I require other players to help me erect these machines. Yet not everyone is always packing supplies and sometimes there aren’t enough around to finish building the machine.

Hence my question, aside from running to the next supply camp and bringing back supplies one at a time, is there a more efficient way of transporting the supplies needed for siege weapons to the place of conquest?

Is it, for example, possible to have a Dolyak follow you and use its supplies? Is there maybe an way, an item or an upgrade, that would allow me to transport more than the standard units of supplies?

I agree that GW2 WvW doesn’t have the same sense of epic scale to it that DAoC had. In many ways it’a more akin to Battlefield than RvR.

I think this is partially due to the relatively small map size and the dense concentration of objectives. I mean it takes about 1-2 minutes to travel between two objectives…..hardly an epic scale.

But worst of all I find the fact that WvW is drawn out across 4 “different” maps. That just totally undermines the sense of our server vs. the rest.

punny.9210:

looool do u really think u can hit like this ??

i post this because i believe its either bug or hack

Yes, you can absolutely hit like that as a Thief, especially with backstab.

More so if you consider the various Orb buffs that might have been active at the time.

Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udk3CEtc7E

Maybe WvW should update scores less frequently during off-peak hours in order to make nighttime capping less profitable.

For example, during night time, scores only add up at 50% the usual rate while being 150% between 6 PM and midnight.

Garenthal.1480:

It’s logical. I loathe the ‘trinity’ system because it makes no sense. This is a tactical game and the enemies are attempting to kill you, not just knock you out.

Rubbish,

I’ve seen them ignore downed player just as often. In fact they ignore them more often than not. So why do some mobs seem to make an exception…for no apparent reason.

PS: I agree that the aggro system has some sort of (this guy has been the most dangerous over the last 5 seconds) type of mechanic. But that doesn’t help explain the “I’ll continue beating on a downed players for lolz” behavior.

I’ve had this occur on multiple occasions and it’s really frustrating.

A group of players will take on a mob (commonly a boss, veteran or champion) and he’ll commence to kill the melee characters. That’s fine and all.

But at times the mob will decide that an already downed player really needs to die. And that’s annoying and doesn’t make much sense. Surely a crippled or downed player is the least threat to a mob, and thus should take the lowest position on his/her threat table.

Simply being focused to death for no apparent reason, and with nothing you can do about it, is really frustrating. Surely this cannot be intended because….well why would it?

This is pretty much what I imagined the Straits of Devastation were supposed to feel like. And in a way it does. It’s only implemented half-heartily.

It’s like ANet knew they wanted to create the sense of a perpetual PvE war, but were afraid to fully commit due to the ramifications (content access and movement restrictions).

I believe these fear were unwarranted. I too would like to see something encompassing a PvE war, at least in one (very large) zone. It would work quite well I imagine, as GW2 already has many of the mechanics in place (Siege weapons, Dynamic Events).

I guess such a zone could then be considered “PvE” endgame and pushing the PvE forces all the way back could unlock a final, “awesome” event boss.

That said, all of this would require progression in both DE mechanics, mob dynamics and encounter design. Maybe it’s better if ANet holds off a little longer on such a zone until they’ve gathered a little more experience.

I’d be happy if there was some way the game would increase the max. range of your abilities when firing from an elevated position.

+30% range when firing from wall, cliffs, etc?

Yes please!

Bassario.3465:

I just noticed a fair few posts in this section heavily critiquing some of the writing in game, and I’m not here to overly glorify the writers, I just hope they don’t get too discouraged by all the criticism because people can be quite picky and have very personal opinions above all else, however I doubt any of them are professional writers.

All in all a TON of content was written, in the stories alone and then a few more tons all over the world, half of it spoken even. It all can’t be amazing, or it would have never been finished! A lot of fantastic jokes have been snuck in and quite frankly I think this is just as important! Sometimes when you’re running around doing busy work (which has been GREATLY reduced by some smart decisions in this game) it just really brightens the mood when something hilarious or out of context happens.

Thanks for all the effort guys!

You don’t have to be able to do it better in order to know that something is wrong.

The same way you don’t have to be a movie director to know if a movie plot works.

The same way you don’t have to be a musician to critique music.

“Writing” actually encompasses a lot of things, many of which are good, some of which are “subpar”. Like with all forms of art, this is subjective (despite there being some general rules to follow).

The dialogue for example, both the writing and the voice-overs, were pretty well done afaik.

The most criticism has been directed at:

1. The story arc(aka. setting up the villain, explaining motivations and backgrounds, twists, etc.
2. The lack of consequences for each decision (in the end, no choice you made really matters)
3. One-dimensional characters

And these critiques have some merit, like it or not. For an MMO the story is never going to play a huge role (except for SWTOR) but given the time and resources invested, I was expecting a better story arc and delivery.

Samfisher.7942:

What server are you on and what level are you? Taking that long to kill a dolyak, I think you’re abit low lvl. Also really depends what time you play, teams you’re against and server you’re on

It takes me about 15 seconds to kill a Dolyak…and yes, I’m level 80. But is it really that important? Is that all you took from my post?

Sure, a lot depends on player dynamics, time of play etc. But really I doubt any of that would really change my perception. My “complaints” don’t really have much to say on players, but rather how the maps and WvW in general was designed.

I mean, all the design decision make sense and as I said, all the ingredients are there. And yet it feels a lot less meaningful than I expected.

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and entirely subjective. I have invested only about 6 hours in total in WvW, a lot less than many others. I won’t claim I have grasped all the fine nuances and meta-game that decide matches.

Then again, this is not what this thread is about.

This is about how WvW feels a lot less “dramatic”, “epic” or “meaningful” than I pictured it. This is coming from playing various MMOs in the past, DAoC, WoW, WAR, SWTOR etc. Now of those aforementioned games, only WAR and DAoC had a meaningful open PvP aspect, which is what I’m basing my evaluation on.

Like many others I was quite excited when hearing about Guild Wars 2 WvW. It seemed to be the first modern MMO to really commit to the large scale open PvP style. I liked that as it awoke memories of large scale, hour long sieges etc.

Better yet, GW2 had all the ingredients to make this type of game-play even better. We have a resource system, working siege weapons and fairly intuitive mechanics. In theory, it sounds perfect. And objectively it’s hard to nail down what’s wrong.

I’ll begin by saying that over my time of WvW, I felt more like playing an RPG version of Battlefield 3 than I did playing a open PvP game. In general, everything was very fast-paced. Over the course of an hour, we layed siege to 3 bases, lost them again, took 5 resource hubs…lost them again etc. Taking these bases felt more like capping a flag in BF3 (and it was almost as fast), than it did conquering a fortress.

Essentially, due to the rapid exchange, everything felt rather meaningless. This applied to minor things like Dolyaks as well. If I took the time to kill one, I could see the next one walking up the hill just in time. Whether I killed it or not, ended up feeling rather inconsequential.

The “synchronized” maps add to the artificial flair, again making it more akin to a shooter map than a real Battlefield.

Then there’s the other issue with the lack of choke points. Allowing 50+ players on each side to freely roam the map might sound good, but every video-game map designers understands the need for choke points. Without them, battles have a random nature and people spend more time roaming around than in the heat of battle.

Lastly there’s the disconnect between what’s happening on my current map and the rest of the worlds. I don’t actually feel like I’m part of the same battle (because I’m not). Instead of feeling like a gigantic battlefield it feels like 4 different shooter maps which share a score.

My memories of DAoC and WAR are a little fuzzy, but somehow RvR there felt more meaningful overall.

PS: After having written this I realize some of these complaints also carry over into PvE (“speed” of the game, aka. mobs respawn, events resetting, lack of “meaningful” contribution etc.)

I just felt like sharing this and was wondering if other people felt the same.

Traveling costs really need to be looked at. They are indeed a little high, especially when travelling within the same zone.

As for repair costs, that’s something I haven’t had an issue with so far, although I’m only wearing rares and no exotics.

But then again, it’s still early in the game. People are exploring a lot, dying a lot, buying a lot of gear and leveling crafting skills. That’s all very taxing and thus Gold is in high demand. This will change over time, as people become more accustomed to the game and its mechanics.

Also bear in mind that ANet still has every intention of earning money from micro-transactions, which includes the sale of in game Gold. So they have an invested interest in keeping the value of money high.

Under no circumstances should gold just be generated from thin air.

Yet, even if you could set a guild tax, how exactly would it be collected since you cannot loot gold directly.

What they could do is: All the money generated by the sale of grey items goes to the guild or they could take a certain percentage from DE gold rewards.

Lande.5782:

Downed state is fine. It adds tactics to the game beyond just ‘kill everyone’.

Yeah, it adds the tactic of trying to keep enemy players “downed” so theydon’t respawn that quickly.

That really doesn’t speak in favor of it.

Thieves have, as I’m sure you are aware, a very limited incarnation of Stealth.

Stealth is typically attached to specific abilities as a utility effect and usually of rather short duration. Considering the history of Stealth classes in past MMOs, this is an understandable and reasonable incarnation of the Stealth mechanic.

However, it also limits the “sneaky” potential of Thieves. No longer can we truly “infiltrate” or even waylay opponents. It kind of limits our potential which is a bit of a shame. Now while I’m sure no one wants to return to the days of infinite ganking potential, I believe there is room for a middle ground.

Hence I propose a new ability, called “Sneak”.

Sneak – 60 seconds cooldown
Become stealthed, consuming 1 Initiative per second. Every hit you take while stealthed will consume one Initiative.

The effect ends when either all Initiative is spent, or when the effect is ended manually.

Reasoning: This would open up myriads of tactical opportunities for Thieves, especially in WvW, without reaching the overpowered dimensions of perma-stealth.

The fact that you consume initiative means that you won’t be able to “pounce” on unsupected players as your main resource will be depleted.

Bleeding initiative when hit by damage should ensure that Thieves can’t simply escape from a lost fight, as their Initiative would bleed rapidly (for those who don’t know, you still take regular damage in Stealth, it just doesn’t break immediately like it does in WoW).

Another side-effect is that this utility ability would give us an alternative way of spending Initiative outside of spamming our most effective attack.

Overall I’m curious to hear what you think. Would this kind of short-duration (12/15 seconds max.) stealth be a good addition to the class?

Although I play a Thief, I oppose the idea of a permanent stealth mechanic, despite it being very useful. Perma stealth really gives a class a huge upper hand in many situations while being difficult to balance in open fights.

That said, I would like to have the ability to Stealth for longer periods of time, say up to 10 seconds or so, to sneak into crucial positions etc.

That’s why I propose an ability that allows us Thieves to stealth, consuming Initiative at 1/point per second.

That would grant Thieves the ability to Stealth for up to 12 second….15 when specced accordingly, while leaving them very vulnerable once they leave Stealth. It would open a lot of tactical opportunities without being too offensive in nature.

PS: Being hit in that Stealth mode would consume 1 Initiative per hit, so that a Thief couldn’t abuse it too escape every fight.

Yes, the fact that a lot of DE events reset too quickly is a common observation and does break immersion quite a bit. In general it seems ANet has been a bit overzealous with their respawn/reset timers and mob density, obviously concerned players might not have enough mobs to fight.

I hope this will be addressed within the next few weeks when player activity clams down a bit. Then things might start feeling more meaningful. I’ll hold off with leveling an alt until then.

The Mercenary idea is quite smart, but I really don’t approve of it.

The whole argument of “balance” in WvW is a flawed one. It is inherently imbalanced and I think that’s a good thing. I oppose the idea of adding artificial bolstering mechanics via buffs (like tenacity) etc.

Over time, server matching will ensure that Worlds face off against comparable Worlds, thus alleviating the need for all too severe artificial balancing mechanisms.

That said, I would embrace the idea of making it harder to dominate by limiting the available resources. Make it possible to conquer the majority of the map, but make it hard to hold that position due to resource limitations. It’s a much more “natural” mechanism than buffs or debuffs of some kind.

I realize this is a very busy period for the game and that developers are scared of players “competing” for quest mobs and objectives. This is understandable, although it’s rarely been a real issue.

But it seems like ANet has gone totally overboard when trying to deal with this (non-) issue.

The respawn rates of many mobs, especially in and around Orr, is ridiculous. Regardless of how many people are in the vicinity, I’ve seen mobs respawn as quickly as 10 seconds following their death.

The average respawn rate out in the world seems to be roughly 30 seconds, which is still way too quick, especially if you consider the overall very high mob density.

The fact that Guild Wars 2 dynamic combat encourages movement…and thus brings a lot of potential for pulling adds, further enhances this effect.

Some places in Orr seem to be particularly excessive. I recall a situation from yesterday, where my character was exploring a cave (the one Treehearne uses to heal Orr). I killed the local mobs, opened the chest, opened my map to select a waypoint…..only to be locked into combat before clicking because the same mobs had just respawned. Overall it was no more than 10 seconds.

That’s just excessive, regardless of how many people are playing.

You can’t have high density and high respawn rates. It just feels frustrating and tedious.

I believe mobs should respawn at a rate of roughly 1 per minute out in the world, downscaling to as low as 2 per minute with a high player density. I doubt it would have a noticeable impact on the ability to do quests but it would certainly make exploration and travel less tedious.

That’s all.

They were probably a little over-cautious regarding the consequences of failed dynamic events. They were scared extreme outcomes might alienate a lot of the player base, which was understandable, but probably overcautious.

You can see it in the way the Straits of Devastation were designed. You have this perpetual invasion scenario playing out, yet there seem to be troops of the mainland and further inland, regardless of the outcomes of the previous scenarios.

What should feel like a perpetual war, thus feels more like a permanent repetition of the same 3 DEs. I can’t really blame them for this attitude, but I do wish they’d been more daring.

That, and the fact that DE seem to repeat in a roughly 10 minute cycle really reduce their meaningfulness.

Lixia.3298:

somebody hasn’t been to Orr yet… :P

I have, and it pretty much works as advertised.

Gathering 5 mobs might be a little hyperbole, especially because their positioning can be tricky, but it works flawlessly with 3 mobs, even 4 at times.

Yes, the downed-state is what is holding this back. You can’t reliably finish a player off while his friend is still running about. And while you’re chasing him around the downed guy is throwing rocks at you and or healing himself.

It’s just bad.

Yes, the downed state is beyond lame in sPvP. It works in WvW and PvE but in sPvP it just leads to absurd situations.

It also takes ages to respawn. 15 seconds downed state + 20 seconds respawn timer….are not fun (only happens sometimes).

If they must keep it, give all downed abilities a 8 second cooldown upon dropping and make the execute animation play twice as fast. That way it should be way easier to finish someone off while still allowing those to recover who have been abandoned or forgotten.

The sharks are obnoxious, that’s true.

I’ve decided to ignore the water part of that map completely and just focus on land-battles, despite thieves being pretty OP underwater.

I could live with 1-2 sharks…..but the waters are infested with them. It’s pretty stupid.

I don’t understand why ALL PVP DESIGNERS seem to have this uncanny obsession with adding gimmicky features to their PvP maps.

Give us Capture the Flag, King of the Hill or Last man Standing if you want to spice up PvP. But don’t go filling maps with stupid NPCs are other gimmicky mechanics.

I play an Asuran Thief, I can barely see my weapons as is, I doubt anyone else would even notice if I was wearing a Legendary.

metaphorm.6904:

Dee Jay.2460:

It should probably cost 4 Initiative rather than 3.

In turn, they could drop Death Blossom to 4 (down from 5).

do you play thief or do you just come here to ask for nerfs?

his post was about heartseeking missing its target on a regular basis. “bork” as in “broken” as in “there is some technical issue with the skill”.

I’m sorry I didn’t check the urban-dictionary for the word “bork” before posting. Not that that would have changed anything since “broken” can be used in almost any context and it’s not like the OP made any attempt to explain his point.

Honestly, did you even read this thread before posting?

I know Pistol Whip can deal quite a lot of damage. Roughly 5k in PvE…probably 7k in PvP with the right traits and the exotic gear.

That’s still a far cry from one-shotting, hasted or not.

That said, it is indeed a bit broken. Unfortunately most popular Thieves builds revolve around spaming one particular attack. That’s because the Initiative system encourages Thieves to dump all their resources into their most effective move, whichever that may be, instead of rotate between different abilities like most other classes.

ANet may nerf Pistol Whip, like they did Heartseeker (as minor a nerf as it was) but ultimately nothing much will change until the initiative system is revised.

And yet relying on a 1 min CD just so you can survive what otherwise would 1-shot you is poor design. You should know that.

There is no justification for builds that practically 1-shot people, be it a Warrior 100 Blades or Thief-backstab builds.

No matter if a combo has a 45 second CD, a 5 minute CD or even a 24 hour CD. A long cooldown or an extensive setup DO NOT JUSTIFY the ability to one-shot people. As the most incessant spammer of MMO-Champion, you should be able to recall Ghostcrawler’s stance on that issue.

If people aren’t given the chance to fight back, they will ALWAYS feel cheesed, frustrated and cheated. It is ANets job to ensure that people have their chance (and ours to find ways around that).

Even a duel between two glass-cannon builds should last at least 6 seconds and involve the use of a handful of abilities.

It should probably cost 4 Initiative rather than 3.

In turn, they could drop Death Blossom to 4 (down from 5).

How did a reasonably constructive discussion about Thief mechanics turn into a flamefest about easy mode Guardians and if Thieves were somehow weak?

That entire discussion seems to be besides the point.

The original point was how Initiative encourages players to efficiently focus on spaming a single core ability, whichever is most effective in their build. This applies to Heartseeker, Pistol Whip, Death Blossom etc.

Instead of encouraging variety, Initiative encourages the opposite. (Yes, not all builds work like that, but enough.)

ANet may nerf this or that, but fundamentally nothing will change because using your best attack will be the best use of initiative. And that’s flawed.

Because losing to a class that can get away spaming 1 attack, be it heartseeker, Pistolwhip or whatever is really frustrating and seems cheep and cheesy.

Frustration is born when you don’t understand why you lost, or you don’t feel it was a fair fight. This has been the same in all MMOs and when I see videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ&list=UUqpWfKAHMihI0ATOFMxiotw&index=1&feature=plcp

I can hardly blame them.

I can’t back it up with maths but subjectively speaking Vitality seems far superior to Toughness. Despite having stacked quite a bit of Thoughness in my current gear I don’t really notice much of it in practice.

Yeah, there’s obviously a bug making the sound trigger too soon.

It shouldn’t really trigger until ¬2 seconds into a free fall.

Just another reason why Condition based builds seem entirely unviable. They do nothing for underwater combat.

And yes, you’re obviously right. Outside from 1v1, underwater skills are lackluster.

I have no idea what lead you to conclude D/D was geared towards Condition Damage. If you ask me, no Thief weapon is really geared towards Condition Damage. In fact I don’t think any weapon has more than two attacks with significant Condition Damage attached to them.

Power is useful for any build and should work equally well for every weapon-combo you chose.

Some weapon combos however depend on your character level because you’ll need certain traits to make them effective. Pistol Whip spam for example is highly effective in PvE but requires a lot of Initiative supplements.

DrakeWurrum

Only comment so far: it’s traits not taints.
Other than that, I feel that you’re quite wrong. You should especially remember that initiative is SHARED between our two weapon sets.
Other professions get 8 cooldowns to juggle, and can use them all one right after another, sometimes endlessly chaining combos. That’s not nearly so easy for Thieves to do.
16 cooldowns, in the case of Elementalist.
Death Blossom, for example, costs 5 initiative. You can use it three times in a row, if you have 15 points in Trickery. And then you can’t use ANY other weapon skill, but for auto attack.
That’s the balancing factor of initiative.

I’m not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing here.

While other classes get to juggle a number of different abilities the Thief is most effective when spaming that single effective ability that you’ve decided to base your build on.

It’s just a very uncompelling and simplistic play-style.

To expand on that, say I’m specced into Condition Damage as a Thief. How many viable attacks does that leave me with each weapon combo (assuming I want to get the most out of my specialization). One, maybe two attacks per weapon combo?

I mean D/D has Lotus Strike and LDB that deal Condition Damage…that’s it. Other weapon combos have even less.

Yes, although your Dots don’t scale with Power, your main attacks will.

Overall however I’ve been really disappointed by Condition Damage Thieves. The problem is, you only have a very limited number of attacks that deal significant amount of condition damage and you’ll be relying on them 95% of the time, which makes for very stale game-play and very so/so results.

I mean, D/D hat Leaping Death Blossom and Lotus Strike. With LDB being rather expensive.

D/P has Twisting Fang, Pistol builds have Vital Shot and the Short Bow has Poison Cloud.

Overall however it’s a very small number of attacks that benefit from condition damage, even if you include the Venoms you’re forced to take.

Compare that to Precision builds that benefit almost every ability and you’re left wondering why you even bothered.

I just hit 80 yesterday and switched to a Precision build after having played Condition before and it’s a huge difference.

Painking.4703:

On item #4, Zhaitan is evil, it’s hard to write meaningful backstories for massive forces-of-nature that exist solely for their own benefit. Plus, as an Asuran researcher points out for you during the “order selection” quests, the Dragons are consuming the natural magic of the word at a disturbingly fast rate. It only makes sense to destroy them before what is pretty much the in game version of oil is drained out by giant, world destroying sponges.

Well, I never really felt that the “consumes magic” aspect was really a compelling reason to wage war on them.

First, it seemed like this was just a side-effect of being an Elder Dragon and not something Zhaitan chose to do. Standing in Rata Sum I can see that the world is dependent on magic but if this is supposedly the main reason to fight him, then it needs to be fleshed out more.

It’s still not good story-telling though because in most stories you have at least 1 or 2 evolutions regarding the antagonists motivation.

Ok and the fact that he raised undead to pursue his goals is obviously “evil” but to what end? What is his goal….why is he doing all of this? He must pursue a greater goal than “killing everyone”.

If this is something that’s expanded on in other races story-line then that’s just sloppy. While it’s ok to have an intricate plot spelled out across multiple races and classes (like SWTOR) elemental story parts should always be in every personal story.

Ok, so after spending the last 10 minutes watching my character auto-shoot his short-bow at a DE-boss I must ask….does anyone at ANet believe that giving a mob triple the sensible HP makes them somehow more challenging?

In general, it seems like ANet is trying to make up in HP, what DE bosses lack in actual mechanics. That, or there’s a bug somewhere and all DE bosses are spawning with the max. possible HP. So far this applies to all the DE bosses I’ve done in the 70-80 areas of Orr.

This applies to quite a number of dungeon mobs too, based on my limited experience.

I hate to say this but I wish ANet would have taken more cues from WoW when it comes to designing interesting and engaging fights.

In general though there seems to be a discrepancy between the HP of DE mobs.

-Once more than 10 players partake, trash mobs die almost instantly to the Zerg.
-Some bosses take a solid 10 minutes of non-stop beating, even with a group of 6-10 players.
-Occasionally some bosses drop really quickly under focus-fire.

I’m sure this will be ironed out eventually but I believe it deserves some attention.

RoRo.8270:

How is it possible for someone at level 8 to have trouble with the personal story;/ Only issues i’ve had were bugs. There are repair costs for armor to counter inflation. I have a level 80(mesmer), 52(engy), 66 (thief)and never had issues with the personal story being hard you can’t just facroll your keyboard most of the time.

I had my first death in my level 8 personal story when the game just randomly decided I should face off vs. 3 mobs + 1 elite at the same time.

Oh yeah, this was a level 10 elite….for some reason….that roughly 3-shotted your character. (Asura personal story).

Maybe automatic pricing might be useful in that regard.

Instead of entering a price manually you’d be given the options:

1. Meet highest buyer
2. Match highest lowest seller
3. Undercut lowest seller (automatically undercuts by 5%)
4. Manual price (must be above current lowest seller)

It would make finding a market price more convenient while eliminating the minuscule undercutting.

But now to the actual story and how it’s told.

This is recalling from the top of my head. So bear with me in case I skip some details.

For an Asura it starts out with meeting Zorja and someone stealing my invention. I forgot who was stealing it and why, because I seemed to go through at least 3 or 4 different antagonists before that plot line was seemingly resolved. I don’t recall what the conclusion was, I assume I stopped the Inquest from weaponizing my invention or something along those lines.

Anyway, around that time Zorja introduces the Destiny’s Edge plot-line, and how their unification is apparently crucial for defeating Zhaitan, a evil dragon who wants to do….evil things because….he’s evil. Or something like that.

The thing is, up until level 30 I don’t think I hear the name once or even see why and what’s so evil about him. Even now at level 80, just before the finale, I’ve yet to see Zhaitan or understand why he’s evil (aside from the fact that he uses monsters). What happened to the Hollywood principle of “show, don’t tell!”? Over the course of the game I have dozens of characters tell me that Zhaitan must be defeated and yet I still don’t know why.

As for Destiny’s Edge, it seems like their plot just disappeared before it even started. Could it be that their story is only told within the dungeons? It would seem so because they haven’t turned up in the personal story ever since. I don’t know the reasoning of introducing them…only to have them completely cut form the reaming story. It just doesn’t make sense.

At some point we then get to select our order and go chasing after artefacts or something else in the case of the other orders. In the end though, I don’t recall any of those Priory artefacts making much of a difference in the plot. I mean I remember chasing after a hilt for a Sword fored of Dragon Blood but I forgot whatever became of it or why it was even needed. Overall though, this was probably the most flawless part of the personal story. Eventually this calmantes in the battle for Claw Island.

I don’t remember exactly when and where Trehearne is introduced but that dude becomes the knew Mary Sue and I his minion. Until we finally get to Fort Trinity the plot can best be summarized as “stuff happens”.

There’s a weird and unconnected subplot about a Rogue Mezmer….which forced me to run across a previously unexplored map for about an hour. Then there’s a dream sequence with the tree lady. And some assisting of somebody, somewhere …..whatever. It’s not until we get to Fort Trinity that we finally get a tangible goal and a visible enemies. Although not Zhaitan….still haven’t seen what he’s about…

But even now that I’ve played through most of Orr’s story….I still feel like I’m missing something. I’ve seen a number of “noble, selfless sacrifice” scenes by characters I never really knew and never had any connection with. Why would I care about a character that was only just introduced 5 minutes prior with 2 lines of dialogue? Am I missing something? were they important to the other races story line? To me it just sounds like cheesy writing.

In fact cheesy writing is a pretty good summery of the plot so far.

We have:
1. Countless disjointed plot-lines.
2. Mary Sue character
3. Countless “selfless sacrifices”
4. “…because he’s evil” explanation.
5. Countless Fantasy clichees/tropes.

Anyway, I’ll edit this once I’m through but unless you pull off a real eye opener I don’t think much will change.

As good as the regular world questing is, the personal story is just lackluster.

PS: Despite the rant, I do actually enjoy the game.

Ok, so I’m going on a rant about the personal story-line in this MMO and why it’s poor story-telling and poorly designed.

This is from the POV of an Asuran Thief, currently level 80 and on the final stretch of his personal story.

- So far the personal story has made me rage more than any other aspect of the game. At times, it’s pure frustration because of some idiotic design decisions.

1. Getting swarmed by Risen. Before the Risen came into the story, this was less of an issue. But it became a lot more apparent once they became the prevalent enemy. Their speed and erratic threat behaviour made them very annoying enemies to fight. At times they’d switch targets on a whim and then practically one-shot you. That, or they’d chase you across the map while you hope some NPC will finally get them down or draw their attention.

2. Mostly unrewarding: I can’t recall a handful of times where I actually ended up with a useful reward from a story mission. Most of the time it’s just some blue gunk that doesn’t even have the stats you need. That, combined with the poor Karma gear selection while leveling resulted in often playing with gear 10-15 levels below my characters level.

3. The amount of enemies I’m expected to fight is obnoxious. I’m talking groups of 3-4 mobs here that require either cheesy builds or aeons of kiting to defeat.

4. If you’ve ever wiped on a boss you were fighting with a group of NPCs then you’re in for a world of frustration when you’re trying to get the group back to its feet, only to see the rezzed ones charge the boss instead of rezzing the rest, resulting in another wipe.

5. Some missions are too long: As long as you have stuff going on, it doesn’t really matter. But spending 20 minutes running into a cave, just to spend the next 20 minutes fighting your way out again so save some useless and never mentioned again artefact is just boring.

The best part is when you get disconnected just before the end are are allowed to do the whole thing over again. Yay…-_-

I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the issues I’ve observed about the Thief class over the recent weeks.

To set them apart from other classes, Thieves have a unique mechanic called Initiative that replaces the classic cooldown system. Essentially, rather than weapon skills having a direct cooldown, they cost a certain amount of Initiative, which in turn regenerates at an even pace.

For multiple reasons however, this mechanic is fundamentally flawed.

1. The Initiative system is designed to replace the cooldown system. However the taint and skill system add multiple mechanics on how to mitigate the limitation provided by Initiative.

2. Since all these taints and abilities combined are very effective at negating the initiative system, this allows thieves to design builds evolving around spaming certain abilities (like Pistol Whip). Abilities that for balance reasons, would really require a cooldown.

3. Taints already dictate which of the already limited number of abilities are your preferred source of damage. You’re specced into Condition Damage as a Dagger/Dagger Thief? Well then LDBis your only significant source of damage.

With such limited weapon combinations available, combined with the strengths added by the taint system and gear selection, it only leaves a very limited amount of effective attacks.

90% of the time I find myself spaming the same ability over and over again, because the Initiative system is so easily circumvented and because, due to my spec, I only really have one effective attack per weapon combo.

While I enjoy some aspects of the class, I can’t get over the feeling that many of the core mechanics are just fundamentally flawed. The Initiative system for example is just something that will never feel balanced and fun.

I do think Heartseeker should cost 4 Initiative.

Leaping Death Blossom is the ability that needs a cost reduction.

My professions are Cooking and Jeweler.

I know I could learn more and switch between them but as annoying and cumbersome as I find crafting, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

However there’s a lot of talk about crafting various Legendary Weapons. I was wondering if this was limited to specific smiths or if other professions could partake as well?

This does seem like an odd anomaly obviously related to the maths of down-scaling.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were quite a few of such inconsistencies to be found.

I think there need to be a few changes regarding travel-costs.

1. Traveling to Lion’s Arch should be free. It already is free via the Mists, so why not embrace it?

2. Traveling within the same zone needs a minimum 50% discount. Picking up a few remaining POIs or assisting an event and going back seems extraordinarily expensive.

3. Traveling from one zone to another does however seem fair.

4. But traveling in a low-level zone should be cheaper than a high level zone.

In the end it should look something like this:

Travel cost in Copper = (Character level + Destination level) x distance multiplier (Rata Sum to Lion’s Arch would be roughly 1.0, within the same zone is always 0.3).

So a port from Orr to Lion’s Arch would cost roughly…

Character level 80 + Destination level 15 x distance multiplier (roughly 0.8) + 84 Coppers.

A port back would cost 1 Silver and 28 Coppers.

Porting around within Orr would only cost 48 Coppers.

This strikes me as fair and scales fairly for all levels.

Scorpy.9754:

Splat.2718:

Short-bow is bad and it should feel bad. All short bow does is some aoe damage.

what are you talking about, Shortbow does more dmg then unload overall, on PP u just spam unload, with Shortbow its poison cloud from which all party benefit + cluster bomb detonates multiple times on same mob

Short Bow does good damage, if there are multiple targets.

But if you’re just blasting away at a single target then Short Bow damage is abysmal. Like, really, really, really bad.

I’d still pick it as my main ranged weapon in Dungeons and PvE where there’s plenty of need for AoE but in PvP and certain boss fights, Pistols really are the better choice.

Infiltrator Arrow is a little inconsistent in that regard.

Generally speaking it can go up slight elevations and small hills, but only if you could walk up them as well.

As for crossing gaps, I’ve done this a few times, but it rarely works. There seem to be some exceptions where it does work, especially with smaller gaps.