Guild Wars 2

Who was the original inventor of Candy Corn in the GW universe and why is Mad King Thorn so obsessed with it?

Thanks to everyone posting the stats, I know most numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt but it sounds like these can at least give us an idea of the usage the upgraded Teq content is seeing.

A stat I would be interested to see is how many of the playerbase have killed Teq multiple times (which would include those farming him) and how many still have not killed him once (and are no longer trying), but I doubt it’s possible to get that number outside of ArenaNet.

It is good to hear others who view Teq as now being dead content. I remember when people used to gather and hang out and chat waiting for Teq to spawn. Now I only see that beach as an empty desert.

I know there are players who have Teq on farm status but I think there is a number of the player population who are excluded for various reasons.

I really hope it was not ArenaNet’s intention to drive people into joining the Teq-killing guilds months after the game’s release. I already used up my 5 guild slots in the first 6 months, I don’t have room for another. If this was their intent they really should have at least increased out guild slots.

I also hope they did not intend for Teq to become segregated content. The encounter may still getting done by some guilds that are gaming the Overflow system but that basically turns the encounter into an instanced raid rather than an open-world encounter. This is hardly the kind of inclusive feeling the game seemed to mean to foster.

I’ve heard the suggestion to have Teq hang around if he not killed and I think it’s a good one. If ArenaNet must incorporate the annoying timer, it should only activate if he has been defeated. The time limit on the event was probably the worst thing that they could have done for an open world event that will naturally have more zerg to it than organized players.

Some players may be doing Teq on a regular basis, I think there are a good number who simply view it as content to be ignored (and this includes some of those who have already killed him).

An encouraging note is that ArenaNet has shown they learn from what they’ve done in their past. I am hopeful they are looking at the metrics of Teq and letting that shape their future direction.

Interesting point. You are trying to understand her motivations by looking at her actions and that is an important thing to do. Because right now, we have not been given any solid explanation about her goals or motivations (beyond I’m crazy and want to blow up stuff)

I think one of the issues people have is that Scarlet’s motivations as a villain are either overly simplistic (blow up stuff) or they are being kept hidden when they should be revealed and explained to players.

Good motivation is critical for villain and just as critical is being sure the audience understands those motivation. The best villain motivations are those that the audience can grasp and even empathize.

ArenaNet likes being mysterious and dropping hints that everything will be explained but there are some things that need to come out at the start.

If Scarlet has deeper motivations, they need to be explained. If not, well I suppose the people who hate Scarlet do have a legitimate point.

For myself, after the flat, cardboard Elder Dragons I’m just glad for a villain with anything remotely recognizable as motivation, even it is just a Harley Quinn craziness.

fellyn.5083:

Some people might hate me for doing this but there are some helpful sites out there for gatherers.

I knew about orrmaps but I didn’t know about gw2nodes, thanks for the link! That looks like a much more useful site.

I guess having those stagnant would get boring, they’ll be much less annoying with gw2nodes

I hope they have plans to reveal the Wizard’s Tower sometime in the second year of GW2 rather than the third or fourth.

Heh, I see I wasn’t the only one who had that thought.

Very cool way to hint at the new update. I think it could have been milked by having the wall appear even earlier, say a month ago to really get people wondering about it but it is nice to get the answer quickly.

I like how this adds to the Halloween theme with a bit of horror, that’s a nice counter to the Mad King’s amusing (if disturbing) silliness.

Just to clarify things, I think we are being asked only for topics in this thread, not engage in the actual discussions yet.

There was only one topic mentioned in the OP (PvE) but the thread linked thread talked about topic areas like sPvP and WvW as well so I will include them.

PvE
1) Story/Lore presentation (gating storylines behind difficult content)
2) Player housing
3) Gear grind/Exotics/Ascended

WvW
1) Rewards (better loot & regular XP)
2) Emphasizing WvW defense
3) Adding variety

sPvP
1) Rewards (more like WvW with non-sPvP rewards)
2) Matchmaking
3) GvG (8v8 or larger group matches, why not 16v16 or 24v24?)

skullmount.1758:

Scott McGough.6897:

Xanthia.7209:

I wonder how hobo-tron is doing……

Stay tuned…

He’s gonna become the next villain, isn’t he?

I could really see that happening. Anyone remember Wheatley from Portal 2?

I liked the Family Business story and I think it’s a nice idea to put them into the game as books. There are already books as objects in the open-world and we had Majory’s Journal as an event item.

Being able to collect the books with event lore would be a cool thing to do, but it would be even better if they didn’t take up bag/bank space. One could a library shelf to our home instances that could serve as a guild bank but only allow books to be deposited in them.

The game does not do a good job explaining itself so you’ll want to bookmark the Guild Wars 2 Wiki. It is a good resource of general game info and it has most of the info you’ll need on mechanics not explained in game.

Like Dodging. The repeated point people make about dodging and moving in combat is very true.

Even if you play a heavy armor class (Warrior,Guardian), you still can’t just stand there and be a meatshield. You’ll die. Even in heavy armor you need to dodge (also there are high level traits that produce effects when you dodge so check those out when you get to higher level)

Also check out helpful websites like GW2Spidy and GW2Stuff. One is a pricing website, the other monitors open world mega-events.

Whatever flaws it may have, I’m still playing GW2 with friends. I think I can say that I’ve found it to be the most enjoyable MMO I have played. I may not have liked the last couple of update very much but I did enjoy the holiday content last year so I expect to have fun with King Thorn again.

TooBz.3065:

You can’t find all of the “no endgame” or “gear grind” threads. Even with the search function.

The “Search function” on these forums could not find its way out of a paper sack with a compass and a map. If you want to find a post on these forums use Google. Unfortunately it’s been that way since launch.

Thank you for the post. I had been looking for something like this. Would you mind if other people started to post when they were doing Teq kills on their servers?

cherrie.8907:

Any TTS equivalent in EU or guilds that do regular attempts to kill him?

Not to ninja the thread but it would be nice to if people could post any US guilds/servers that do regular attempts.

The group I usually play with has done content like the Molten Alliance dungeon and we succeeded at that final boss fight even if we faceplanted learning how to do it. We have VOIP and used it with this dungeon.

IMO good game content like the Molten Alliance dungeon makes you want to try again when you fail, this encounter did not qualify. The ooze room was not the kind of content that made anyone in my group want to keep trying it. I’ve always thought that escort quests are some of the worst type of content in MMOs and this one not has you escort slow mobs with suicidal pathing that goes into lava but they’re trying kill you and can’t be healed.

I doubt ArenaNet will reveal the metrics, but it would be interesting to know if my group’s experience was an insignificant percentage of the playerbase or whether the vast majority finished this dungeon as easily as some posters here.

Dark.1823:

TL;DR:Dungeon is annoying and unfriendly to PUGs. Would like an option to chose difficulty. Rewards would scale based on the difficulty.

Roxianna.2563:

For me however, all I got was a case of buyer’s remorse for all the gems I bought this month.

juginst.5018:

I play GW2 when I want to rest and have some adventures, but dungeon is not meant for rest. This is work, that is why I don’t like it.

I generlly agree with these opinions and I really hope this is not the route the future content GW2 is taking. Previous updates have provided a range of content for both hardcore players and casual ones. The Twiligth Assault storyline was gated behind a level 80 explorer mode dungeon, insuring there would be those who would never see the story.

The previous development of Scarlet’s storyline had never been so excluding. The story was presented in a way that everyone could enjoy it with more difficult achievements for those who wanted them. The Twilight Assault storyline has been deliberately designed to keep some people from ever seeing it. (ArenaNet must know there is some percentage of their playerbase who do not regularly do Explorer mode dungeons)

This has been a recent trend with the TA dungeon and the Teq update. Both have been geared solely for those with the time to spend considerable time learning the tricks of the encounter rather than players who just want to play a game to relax and have fun. Only ArenaNet has the metrics on what percentage of their customers actually finished the Twilight Assault dungeon, but I can see the result of the Teq update with my own eyes with the deserted, empty area that Splintered Coast is now.

I can’t believe that their ultimate goal with Teq was to turn the area into content avoided by players. I have to wonder if it was truly their intent to insure that some percentage of their playerbase would never see the storyline of Twilight Assault.

I have nothing against difficult content and offering rewards for it, but story and lore should never be gated behind content like the Twilight Assault dungeon. ArenaNet has shown they understood this, they made their dungeons with Story and Explorer modes. It worries me greatly when they seem to be abandoning the Story mode of their content updates and offering nothing but Explorer mode content.

I really hope the Halloween udpate follows what we saw last year where there was something for everyone to do, rather than the trend we’ve been seeing in the last few weeks.

Frankly, I am willing to wait for updates that take longer than two weeks if it means that all GW2 players can enjoy it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Would a topic on the UI need a place? I was thinking about subjects like build-loading or ability bar schemes that might be of interest.

Good point. We could discuss global topics such as bugs and UI on separate threads once we get our collaborative process down after we have tried 1 round of PVE, WvW and PVP threads?

That sounds like a decent plan.

‘Global’ is good heading for general issues that affect PvE, WvW and PvP like bugs, UI, graphics and such.

Josh Foreman.8250:

An MMO is an incredibly complex web of interdependencies, and tweaking any individual part runs the risk of breaking many other parts.

Good points to bring up esp. this one. People seem forget how fixing a bug in the mail system could end up screwing up PvE loot drops or visa versa. MMOs are big, complex, computer programs and anyone who has done any programming will know how unexpected interactions can result in problems.

No one wants to ‘slap you in the face’ or make the game less fun. We love you guys, and are thrilled that people play our game!

I try to remind myself this every single time I see a karka go from zero hit points to full health or when I get spam cc-ed running across Orr or Southsun to the point I miss out on event I’m trying to reach.

It would be silly to think that you wouldn’t want players to enjoy your game, it’s just that on some (thankfully) rare occasions there are times when as a player it’s hard not think you’re hearing mocking cackling in the background.

I hope this new interaction will decrease those occasions in GW2 from being blessedly rare to being non-existent.

Best
1) Tyria The world itself is not only beautiful, it is a ton of fun. One year out and I’m still discovering cool new places and events. This is an amazing setting and I’m still thankful to ArenaNet for giving us a chance to wander around it.
2) Halloween. Brilliant presentation with the Mad King bursting out of the LA statue. Oswald was hilarious and the Halloween themed decorations were great. The events and activities were all terrific. It really captured the feel of the holiday in a uniquely Tyrian manner. Overall the best update in GW2 so far IMO
3) Wintersday Close second behind Halloween. The floating toy fortress was an awesome sight to see. I enjoyed the slowly evolving Toyshop, although it was a kind of grind it was a very fun one to do with friends. And the music was superb. I’m looking forward to seeing this return in a couple of months.
4) Flame and Frost It was terrific to see the introduction of likeable NPCs of Rox and Braham (and Frostbite!). The story pacing was a bit slow in the earlier months but the finale was excellent and final boss of the Molten Alliance facility was the definition of EPIC. It was difficult but it was the kind of challenge that makes you think about it and try to go back after you have tweaked your strategy.
5) The Queen’s Speech Excellent new cinematic system introduced to present storylines in the game! Great to see the event was not very difficult so there was no tedious faceplanting/character dying that only interrupt the story (Challenging content should be kept out of cinematic events like this, leave it for the dungeons). It wasgreat to see Lord Faren show his heroic side and Hobo-tron was hilarious. I hope this is the system ArenaNet will use from now on to present their stories.

Worst
1) The Lost Shores Karka event One of the top 5 worst MMO gaming experience I have ever had. I would trade that Karka bag for those 3 hours of my life back. It felt like this event was thrown out with no QA and no feedback from any sensible testers. The fact that it had all that only makes it more depressing.
On the plus side, ArenaNet admitted what a fiasco that event was and we haven’t seen anything this horrid since.
2) SouthSun Cove People saying they love this zone should be shown the metrics of how much time they spend in this zone compared to all the rest. Travel here is pointlessly annoying. Filled with CC-spamming mobs, terrible layout and limited waypoints, SouthSun throws out the excellent design seen in lower level zones with the excuse of being ‘challenging’.
Dynamic events in the zone should be challenging. Moving from one point to another should not. Orr is almost as bad but SS is worse. (Also karka are by far the most tedious mobs in the game)
3) Canach’s dungeon/SouthSun Shores event Very bad presentation of a storyline. Unclear dialog that could be easily missed. Vital plot points hidden from players unless they stumbled across them. Critical NPC text buried in dialog boxes rather than explained in a cinematic.
ArenaNet has since made a cinematic system that takes advantage of MMO mechanics, rather than letting mechanics to get in the way of presenting the story.
4)Frizz’s Lab in the Aetherblade Retreat. The single worst encounter I’ve seen in any GW2 dungeon. Usually GW2 challenges are fun and make you want to try them again with new strategies. This stopped my gaming group cold. We knew we could do it until we beat it but it was so unenjoyable we had NO interest in trying. This was the –only- time this has ever happened with GW2 content.
There was no build or strategy that would help with this encounter. You either jumped on the poorly designed boxes at the right time or you didn’t.
Frizz’ lab gutted the concept of supporting each other. The occasional Swiftness would do little in what was basically a party-wiping jumping puzzle. Even the mobs were designed to yank players apart, further isolating the party to the point that you might as well have been playing this alone.
Even worse, it gated the storyline so unless you got through it, you never were allowed to see the conclusion to the Aetherblade storyline.
I really hope that we never see anything like this ever again in GW2.
5) Don’t have one
And frankly GW2 has more positive points to it than negative so I thought my list should reflect that.
There is so much good in the game that it makes the bad stuff stand out in even greater contrast. Each one of the four examples I picked were wholesale deviations from the fundamentals of GW2 that make it so enjoyable (high polish on content, easy zone travel, dramatic storytelling, cooperative gameplay etc). I just hope that we continue to see content that follows those excellent fundamentals and less of the lamentable deviations from them.

I just came across this post and I find this an interesting direction for ArenaNet to be taking. I hope they can find a way to work out this approach to communicating with the community. I’ve always been struck by the balance game developers need to manage between listening to the often contradictory community and presenting the game design envisioned by the company.

On the subject of prioritizing topics polls seem like a good way to determine which topics shoudl get the highest priority as well as finding the real topics of interest of the GW2 community rather than just the ones that occupy the attention of forum-posters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

\
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:

PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: Roleplaying

For global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP

Chris

Would a topic on the UI need a place? I was thinking about subjects like build-loading or ability bar schemes that might be of interest.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Lovely…. now I have this mental image of Tequatl popping out of the water in LA and rolling around the Trader’s forum like a giant puppy dog. Complete with ‘purring’

Or being able to rub his tummy and make his leg twitch

Otaur.9268:

Because the dragon’s are actually friendly, and we are the bad guys… They land like, “Hey everyone, what’s going on? OMG OUCH STOP POKING ME!” and we are all like “Hahaha evil dragon, taste my awesome fury” and then it’s all like (in Tequatl’s case), “Man forget all of you fools, can’t even get me limping, I’m going swimming and this time I’m drop some dead fish heads on your land… You Tyrians are so mean…” and then he does a few leaps and is gone for a few hours hoping that when he returns, someone nicer may greet him.

LOL! Great post.

That would be a cool secret Easter Egg – do /cheer emote when Teq first appears and he rolls over for a belly-rub.

The OP asked for thoughts, so-

Not everyone who played GW1 wanted GW2 to copy it. I played GW1 but I was not a fan. I played to get the HoM points I wanted and see the lore but I did not enjoy the gameplay.

GW2 impressed me during its development because ArenaNet was fixing many of the issues from GW1. I think they’ve succeeded because I’m enjoy the gameplay in GW2 far more than I ever did GW1.

Khisanth.2948:

If those are the requirements then FotM is perfect.
You don’t even have to be lv80!

FotM is one of the systems that seems to be work well in GW2. I like that the skill level varies, so people who are not hardcore can still see those amazingly well done dungeons while people who want to go for difficult challenges can get a challenge from it as well.

I think one reason why FotM works so well is that players get to pick a variable difficulty level of the content based on what they want. The problem with open-world content like Temple of Balth and the revamped Teq is that the difficulty is chosen by the game. That is different from allowing players to pick the difficulty (and commensurate rewards).

Even the Personal Story suffers from this lack of player choice in difficulty setting even though it ought to be straightforward for the GW2 engine to allow players to pick the difficulty setting for their story, just as one might for a single player game.

Good to hear they are continuing with their announced plans to give more ways to acquire precursors.

I agree with the OP. I would rather have easier fights in PvE than ‘challenges’ that are just disguising a gear grind.

Hawkian.6580:

Never make content too hard for rares.

In general, I think this is a good idea but it depends on the content. Some people want more challenging content. Of course, there are ways to do this without requiring people to be fully geared (Mad King’s Clock Tower comes to mind). The other important point is that if there is more difficult content requiring better gear it should NEVER gate the story or lore, that is something that everyone, even people with nothing but rares, or even blues, should be able to experience.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

It sadly comes down to playstyle. The only reason I have so much dust is because I saved up some champ bags from invasions before the MF change. But that said I still have 25 bricks and a couple of stacks of dust, and enough dragonite ore for 3-5 weapons yet only ~150 empyreal fragments.

I don’t like dungeons so the ~3-5 jps I do a day just have fragments trickle in. I like that we aren’t forced to do 1 thing to get the mats, but it would have been nicer if each activity had a say 50% (or 75%) chance to drop the thing they do now, and a 25% (or 12.5%) chance to drop one of the other mats instead.

Agreed. The imbalance between mats from playstyles is incredibly poor design for a game that was touted as allowing players to play the way they want.

I currently have over 1500 dusts, almost 500 ores and only 216 fragments. So now the one option is to focus more on the game content that I have little interest in doing? I guess my mistake was playing the parts of the game I actually liked. This is certainly a novel approach to try to keep players interested in a game.

Most of the revamped bosses don’t seem to have anything really interested changed in them, and the ones that are noticeable are more irritating than anything else – the Golem MkII for example.

Now that fight just a matter of standing in a different location and spamming ranged attacks instead of being able to melee attack. At least before you could break up the fight by killing some of the mob spawns, try that now and you just die repeatedly. This fight has been made less fun and more annoying IMO.

If the rewards were better then it might balance some but the extra chests do not make up for it.

It may just be that open-world bosses are just not suited for the mechanics of a difficult dungeon boss. I have no problem going to dungeons for the hard content while the open-world is where players can find the laid-back fights.

Agree 100% I can understand timesinks like a lengthy respawn if this was a sub-based MMO but it makes little sense for a B2P game like GW2.

There should only be a spawn window if people succeed the event. If people fail then Teq should kill everyone but stay around the beach for people to reorganize and try again. The beach has been made useless anyway by all the pointless insta-kill fish anyway.

ArenaNet seems to understand this is how a good game should be designed, you see it in the dungeons where they don’t reset the dungeons if players fail the final boss fight and force them to fight through all the trash mobs again. Yet they forget this and make events with pointlessly tedious timesinks on failing when it comes to Teq or the Temple of Balth.

If Teq was hanging around all the time then if a server wants to try to gather up people for a try, they’ll be ready to go. With the spawn window even if a server overcomes the intertia to gather people they still have to wait around doing nothing which destroys any of that momentum.

Get rid of the spawn window if people fail the event. Have Teq kill everyone but leave him around the beach for people to try again. The beach has been made useless anyway by all the pointless insta-kill fish anyway.

If Teq was hanging around all the time then if a server wants to try to gather up people for a try, they’ll be ready to go. With the senseless spawn window even if a server overcomes the intertia to gather people they still have to wait around doing nothing which is utterly pointless.

Or make Teq spawn based on a guild action or something that players can rely on (NOT a tedious, needless long series of buggy events like Temple of Balth)

I can understand timesinks like that in a sub-based game, it makes no sense for a B2P game like GW2.

I like this idea! Although I think the Bloody Prince is more likely if it happens (he still has the same last name so it still works).

ArenaNet needs to keep the Mad King more consistent since he’s the showcase for Halloween but players can do anything to the Prince without issue for next year’s event. Plus I think Scarlet would find a rebellious prince more interesting than some old monarch who has a history of relationship issues

Welcome back Mad King Thorn! GW2’s Halloween stuff was great fun last year, nice to see much of it returning. I did enjoy Reaper’s Rumble but TBH I didn’t do it that much, the Labyrinth was where I spent my time. It should be fun to see the conflict between the King and Prince this year.

Astral Projections.7320:

Try this app. It’s currently set for NA servers so if you are EU, you will need to reset it. When you see a server with it open, guest there and get what you need.

http://us.gw2stuff.com/en/events/us

On the temples, dark blue is open.

I did not know about this app, thanks for posting the link!

After wasting a whole evening and going between three different servers I’m just going to use that app rather than try and run that wretched quest chain again. I don’t mind challenging content but it’s really annoying how we have to jump through these hoops to spend karma we’ve already earned. (Also doesn’t help how easy it is to have just a few people mess up this chain by standing too close to the NPCs and aggroing mobs onto them).

[quote=2927225;Nilkemia.8507:]

Has this ad campaign just started? Below is a link leading from one of the web-ads with a poor quaggen holding a sign asking for help to find a fish.

https://buy.guildwars2.com/en/welcome/quaggan?cid=13:1:SalePromo:Flash:728x90:NA:2:2:Quaggan

I have to say, it gave me a chuckle.

GoldenTruth.2853:

I thought the Frizz fight was the best fight they made since Giganticus Lupicus, and excluding the Mai Trin fight dragging on forever (along with her undodgeable shadowshot), AR was a step way above their other dungeons.

I have to disagree. The “fight” was a badly made jumping puzzle, nothing more.

The only skill that let you survive was being able to jump on top of poorly designed boxes. You could not support your teammates if someone was not a skilled jumper and there was no build you could make that would assist with jumping on the boxes. You either had those jumping skills or you didn’t and unless most of your group did as well, this gated the entire Aetherblade storyline and prevented people from seeing it. I saw enough posts when this content was live to know that my group of friends were not the only ones who had this issue.

Previous jumping puzzles in dungeons allowed players to support each other. For example the sloped stairway with electrified pulses in the Uncategorized Fractal was designed so people would take turns and others could revive those who got killed and ported right to the bottom. Players could support each other with speed buffs as well and change abilities for such buffs as well. Mesmers could make portals for the platforms if someone in your group had problems with a particular section.

This was good game design. It encouraged working together and enhanced the sense of group gameplay.

Another example of good game design was the Molten Legion final boss fight. That was tough, fun and memorable and even if you wiped, it gave players the feeling that they could succeed if they tweaked their builds and came up with a new strategy. It was not reliant on a single, solitary game skill like jumping which is not shared on the same level by all players.

Frizz’s lab gutted both the elements cooperation and build-tweaking that makes GW2 fun IMO. It was a horrible design and I really hope ArenaNet never gates a storyline with something like that again.

Scarlet is an improvement over the villains we’ve had in GW2 so far and I hope ArenaNet continues to move in that direction but I can’t argue that the villains from GW1 were more interesting.

I don’t remember specific White Mantle characters but I do remember watching them kill those innocent villagers and I remember their obnoxious attitudes. Those were guys you wanted to beat up and stop.

I did not finish the Factions campaign but what I saw of Shiro in the game made him seem a very intriguing villain.

That may be one of the big flaws of GW2’s villains. We never SEE them in the game except to fight them. The only way we are shown their backgrounds is through out-of-game stories, which are fun to read but they should not be the ONLY source of character development shown to players.

We got to know the White Mantle (and suspect something might be up with them) while playing GW1. We’re shown visions of Shiro’s past while playing the game. You didn’t need to read any wiki or story, it was all there in the game.

In stark contrast, we never even see Zhaitan until the very end. Any minion that shows up is quickly killed with nothing being shown in the game for their characterization beyond being a slave doing the the dragon’s will. Scarlet’s background is left to an out-of-game story rather than having characters see (uncover) it in the game.

I just realized this is another example of ArenaNet’s tendency to leave out important explanations inside their game and expect players to research the info (or telepathically mind-read it). They did this in GW1 and they have done this with game mechanics in GW2 but at least they now taking a first step to fix this lapse by finally making a tutorial, they’ll need many other steps but at least it’s a start.

On the story side, they have the same problem. They leave out worthwhile story elements from the game and expect every player to be reading out of game material to learn them.

A story or a wiki should be a supplement, NEVER the main source of information of game lore or mechanics. Any player should be able to get the full story (or understanding of any game mechanic) solely by explanations providing in the game.

Fortunately, it looks like ArenaNet is improving how they present stories with the new cinematics. I just hope they manage to finally break themselves of their habit of leaving out important information from their game.

Shiren.9532:

Zhaitan killed Tybalt Leftpaw. Checkmate.

The problem was Zhaitan never gloated over it. He never mocked our characters after doing it. From what we’ve seen Zhaitan didn’t even know that he killed an NPC important to our characters anymore than a hurricane would know it knocked down a house.

A good, memorable villain makes you want to hate them. The Elder Dragons are so empty of personality and motivation (from what we are shown in the game) that there’s nothing for us to hang any feeling of vengeance. You might get angry at a flood, but you can’t hate it anymore than you might hate a rock if it fell on top of Tybalt and killed him.

Isn’t a changing world what the MMO community has constantly asked to see? If the events of the LS stayed in the game and were always there, wouldn’t people be complaining that the game is stagnant?

Now the rate of the LS may need adjusting and I could see how it would be nice if there was some way for people to see ‘re-runs’ or something of the past cinematic scenes or missions to catch up on the lore.

Perhaps these re-runs could offer different rewards so people would still have an incentive to do them while people who were able to do storylines during their ‘first run’ as it were could show off they were there with that

It also seems more like the story itself gets monthly, rather than bi-weekly updates. Scarlet’s story really hasn’t advanced this whole month with the Teq upgrade.

Being able to play with your friends.

EVERY other MMO I have ever played I’ve been prevented from playing with my friends at one time or another because they have leveled at different rates or they pick classes that don’t fit into the trinity or they’re spread across various servers or it took too long for everyone to gather their characters across various maps or because the moon was in the wrong phase or some other shoddy excuse.

I always thought it was ironic how the MMORPG community has constantly thrown the ‘multiplayer’ term around as an argument against solo content yet past MMORPGs have had so many mechanics all designed to STOP people from easily and readily playing together.

IMO the subscription business model was the cause for those wretched mechanics. The only way friends could play together would be if they all poured in the same amount of time (and thus subscription dollars) as the highest level/most hardcore of the group.

I won’t even go into the idiotic loot limitations that turned friends into competitors for that single piece of gear dropped by a boss – which was just another timesink meant to stretch out subs.

People can say whatever they want about GW2, it is the only MMORPG I have played where it actually feels like the game supports the ‘multiplayer’ aspect rather than actively finds ways to slow it down.

SafiMoyo.5130:

But it’s very difficult to point out things that are done right. When something is done right, you don’t notice it or you grow used to it. Especially if you don’t have any point of comparison.

All you need to do is think back and remember the times when another MMORPG you played really ticked you off. Then ask yourself if you have gotten ticked off the same way in GW2.

Ninja-looted? Spawn-camped? Mobs you were about to attack getting tagged from under you? Mobs you were trying to kill getting wiped out? Crafting mats filling your bags?

I can think of a LOT of ways past MMOs have ticked me off and most of them don’t show up in GW2, much to my sincere enjoyment.

I was able to catch a little bit of the matches, it’s good to see the sPvP getting some attention. Although I’m looking forward more to the WvW seasons myself

I’m interested in seeing the new dungeon, but even more glad to hear we won’t be missing on any Mad King fun this year

Oh great, more aetherblade retreat instant kill stuff…

I hope not. ArenaNet has shown they can learn from past mistakes. I am optimistic that flubs like that terrible Frizz’s Lab encounter will not be repeated.

TheLazyOne.8509:

Considering how much they rake in from all the WPing, they can leave the gates on as free to use.

This is what I thought could be a rationale for why adventurers are allowed free city gate. Ordinary citizens don’t use waypoints very much so the asura charge them for gate travel, whereas adventurers use waypoints so much they get a ‘frequent flyer’ perk of free city gate travel.

Of course, I’d like to see the asuran contractual clause that explains why waypoints cost more the higher level a character is. I suppose one could rationalize that high level players radiate more raw power which is more difficult to transport.

Larkir.6502:

Weird that the most dangerous dinosaurs went extinct while the most farmed dinosaurs (The raptors) multiplied and expanded their territory.

Clearly the dinosaurs that were farmed the most in GW1 had to evolve faster breeding habits and quicker maturation cycles. This heightened metabolism required the raptors to kill ever larger numbers of the other dinosaur breeds, thus rendering them extinct. Modern raptors have switched to other prey now but their increased breeding cycles have resulted in their spread all over Maguuma to be the only dino-species left.

Or ArenaNet just didn’t have time to make new dinosaur models

She’s Old Man Jenkins! And she would have gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for us meddling kids!

Actually this has been an interesting thread. While the idea of a mesmer projecting a false person might not apply to Queen Jennah, I think it would make for a cool storyline.

A showdown with Faolain would be highly entertaining. Or perhaps Faolain pretends to ally herself with Scarlet while both are plotting to double-cross the other (and the players get to see and perhaps help this )

Zero Day.2594:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Adding more anti-stealth is an improvement. And good to hear it implied that more is on the way.

It seems like this is always case with any MMO that has used instant invisibility cloaking as their stealth mechanic. The mechanic gets put in and then the game sees a constant series of necessary nerfs in an endless effort to balance it.

Mind explaining how thieves and some mesmer would feel? Any buff’s for them to counter-act over-nerfing? or just beat on one class, without much explanation or re-balancing?

I have a level 80 mesmer and a thief is one of my alts and I still see invsio-stealth as a terrible mechanic in MMOs.

I’m sure that ArenaNet will handle the balancing as best as they can, I’m simply pointing out that every MMO I have seen with this mechanic has been plagued by a constant need to adjust it. This is not the last time we will stealth being tweaked and it will continue as long as GW2 exists.

It is a pity that ArenaNet could not have come up with some alternative to inviso-stealth that worked better without the endless need for tuning.

Charak.9761:

if you’re downing because of the heads… it’s letting you know not to fight in the teq ball

Once you know to avoid them they just become pointless annoyances. If someone can’t figure out how to walk between them then they pretty much wouldn’t be able to play the game at all.

As I said, I just don’t see why they’re there. At least previously when you were waiting for Teq you could grind the mobs that used to be out on the beach. I suppose I just miss that as a break from the dance parties.

@Exosferatu – Okay, that is amusing but again, people will figure it out and just avoid it. I suppose one can get some laughs in the meantime.

I like how ArenaNet is trying something different with these open-world raids.

We’ve seen instanced raids, that’s been done in other games. I’d much rather be part of a game that is trying something new. Somethings may not work (and I’m not saying Teq is or isn’t working at this point) but ArenaNet has been getting enough things right so far to make me want to keep seeing what they’ll do.

Oraith.1732:

Anvil rock, we just don’t get things done seriously. We’d prolly just throw down party kits and say "Fk it, lets go back to lion’s arch)

LOL, actually that sounds like a pretty cool server to be on.

Thank you for this thread! It is exactly what I was looking for to see which servers had killed Teq (and how many times). Please keep updating it!

Although it would be nice if there was some official confirmation on the counts posted here.

I don’t get the point to insta-kills in any game, even fairly innocuous ones like these. The developers might as well put up signs saying ‘Hey, let’s needlessly annoy the players’, particularly for the ones hiding in the reeds.

Still, I suppose they’re helpful when Daily Reviver comes up.