Guild Wars 2

Toast.1495:

I also think it’s a poor design choice to limit the new weapons that each class will get to the elite specialization. It’s bad enough that weapons currently are restricted to a role/build. Keeping the new weapon linked to the specialization does not enhance diversity or experimentation. Each weapon set should be equally viable in all situations, regardless of build.

They announced from the very beginning that you’d have to be in the specialization to use the new weapon. I’m a bit surprised the specialization is simply an added elite spec line, though that does make it easier to do the swap-in-swap-out they described. But as the new weapon is part of the “identity” of the elite spec, it makes sense to me that it would be restricted to using with that spec.

However, it does beg the question of what happens to equipped weapons when you retrait. Having them just go to a random bag space would be terrible on the QoL front. So I hope the Hero Panel Equipment page will have a slot to put in the elite spec weapon set, just as we have underwater slots to store our underwater weapons when running about on dry land.

Oh good, there is a compilation thread! I had just done up a list of my questions and it tossed me to log in instead of posting, so I’ll repost them in here.

- What crafting materials will excess skill points turn into? Existing ones or something new? I hardly ever touch the Forge. Will there be any use for the mats other than the Forge?

- If an alt has all current utilities unlocked, will that grandfather in any way? Should I use my hundreds of scrolls making sure all my alts have all their utilities, or will that be wasted effort as everyone gets only the unlocks based on having done skill challenges in the world? (I know utilities and traits are different things, but I’m trying to figure out how the skill point change meshes in here). So, go out and hit all the skill challenges my alts are missing, or spend my scrolls on utilities?

- Fall Damage – Will this still be a trait-line choice thing? It’s the only universal thing to all professions. It’s always my very first trait unlock on any alt, and most of them have it perma-equipped even if the rest of the trait line it’s in has no appeal to me. Will fall damage reduction be severed from trait choice and provided in some other fashion?

- Respec’ing out of combat — will this remain as easy as it is now? I know you’ve said we can swap in and out of spec freely. Can we also change the major trait choices as we like between the three in each tier? I’d imagine so, but the blog suggests the trait choices are to have greater impact and it almost seems like we get locked in once we pick one of the three.

- Will specs essentially be the spec trait line plus two base profession trait lines, or will equipping the spec line also open a different set of trait lines to go with it? This may be already answered in the blog post except Ele and Ranger are my two least familiar professions so I couldn’t tell if the Druid spec description was using new lines or current ones as the two extras.

Donari.5237:

It’s just the regular, expected summary of PoI for those who missed it. That’s what we get at the start of the week. Only the cynics and pessimists see a perfectly ordinary PoI summary as proof ANet is never going to tell us anything new.

Now, if we get to Friday and nothing new was revealed, then I’ll join in a bit of ennui.

And there you have it, ennui completely avoided! Now what I’m looking for is the official Q&A thread for posting questions so they can all be consolidated. I have quite a few already but I want to put them in the right place rather than making Jon Peters dig for them.

Ok, I think I was misremembering because it does a good job of being sheer black stockings and I’m quite nearsighted so I tend to mentally fill in detail RL. But it does have a bit of a moire pattern as shown here with the surrounding fabric dyed celestial for contrast.

What are your graphics settings? To me it is very clearly a black fishnet stocking. I can see the crosshatched lines and everything.

Here’s a gallery of them courtesy of Dulfy (though I don’t agree with all her dye choices and you might be more interested in some if you can see how they dye). I’m getting set to head out for the evening so I don’t have time to put up all the shots I have of all the variations I’ve done with the outfits, sorry.

http://gw2-fashion.com/gem-store/#Outfits

Does everyone need to be on square one, though? When AP chests were introduced, people who had already accrued AP got them retroactively. When dyes went account wide, people got all their unlocked dyes, with duplicates turned into Unidentifieds.

There will always be new people joining the game, hopefully. They’ll start with less than people who’ve played a while. ANet’s been mostly good about not making previous players feel they wasted their time. Eventually the newer players will do the content and get the mastery points for doing it; ANet’s been moving to a design of repeatable content. Or are you asking that six months later, a new player can come in and ask that everyone be put back to square one so he or she can join in at the start?

I agree, Eolirin, with this caveat: They announced that they wanted our feedback so they could tighten up and finalize the systems. We can’t give feedback on information we don’t have.

Of course that doesn’t mean they should info dump the whole project on us. Yet for feedback to matter, they really can’t wait to the very end of development. I know some people will throw tantrums if anything changes from the first announcement but surely they can plaster it with enough “this is a work in progress, anything you see here may be completely removed or changed by the time of release” statements to give more rational sorts quotable material to quash the overreacters.

If the testing must be done physically in their building, there is no unfairness involved. They simply can’t do it world wide, they only have the Seattle HQ.

So many times over the years since college I’ve wanted to go back to Jarra’s restaurant in Portland OR for their incredible Ethiopian food. (They closed a couple of years ago, so my 30th reunion plans are dashed). But I’m 3,000 miles away. Should I demand they travel to my area to cook for me?

Not everything in the world, even digital things, can be done wherever you happen to be.

I think my asura mesmer is quite scientific, as she does her “magic” by manipulation of light into various forms. If her phantasms hit someone, they’re doing it because they are made of solid light and/or force fields. She’s all about light physics and theory.

Engineers are tinkerers, not theoreticians!

It’s just the regular, expected summary of PoI for those who missed it. That’s what we get at the start of the week. Only the cynics and pessimists see a perfectly ordinary PoI summary as proof ANet is never going to tell us anything new.

Now, if we get to Friday and nothing new was revealed, then I’ll join in a bit of ennui.

We’ve only seen two legends, that don’t actually mix well together. Stats that suit those two might not be what you want for other legends yet to be announced.

Perhaps you should just earmark the mats to make gear and keep those aside until you are sure of the stats you want?

Actually there was a “Suggested Merchandise” thread Gaile was running for a while. I think the sticking point is leeriness about licensing issues.

I’ve just been googling my heart out looking for that thread and can’t find it. I remember suggesting the tshirts from the old Facebook poll, keychains, cell phone covers, jewelery, and the like.

Some things that get asked for all the time are just asking for the dead horse gif. This, however, seems eminently reasonable. It fits into the game design philosophy and I would hope wasn’t a nightmare to code given the already extant helms toggle for outfits.

I almost never ask for a dev response (and I never expect to get one). This time, though, I’d like some general comment on how technically difficult this would be. We got one once on why armor weights can’t mix, and learning that doing that is can’t not won’t has quelled a lot of nagging requests.

I’d amend your first section to mention that there will be a Collections method of getting a precursor once HoT launches. Also there will be new legendaries. So people may not want to get costly legendary-specific items at this point unless they know for sure they want a particular one and won’t be miffed if another new one is “better,” and they don’t want to wait for the Collections method to debut.

Since your whole point is to “be patient,” I think anyone following your advice will be willing to wait.

We’ve only seen one corner of one level of one map so far. Dev comments and blogs have suggested they are looking for ways to split folks up, with Silverwastes as a test case for that with zone-wide objectives that need people spread out doing things simultaneously.

The demo wyvern fight did need a number of people to succeed, but was tweaked to easier success by having a larger platform and the like.

I think in the terrain we’ve seen so far there won’t be room to zerg. I didn’t take too much note of the new WvW map but that also seems to reward multiple teams more than one big blob.

I know players will find ways to stack up for easier wins, but at least the design goal seems to be against that. You may be pleased.

Blacktalon.5681:

If I’m completely missing the tanking aspect of the game, please tell me… Because currently it seems like you can’t gettanking gear, because otherwise you won’t do enough damage to hold agro… In Warcraft, every move based on gear generates x amount of threat based on gear, and other classes that did crazy damage were given moves to divert agro towards the tank.

You’re completely missing the tanking aspect of the game

That is, there isn’t one. It’s part of the core design not to have designated tanks and healers. ANet isn’t going to set up aggro grab/diversion skills (beyond Thief stealth, which I use when trolls are getting in the way of my shooting the Iron boss, so they trot merrily away from me, or the various pulls to haul enemies to your feet such as Scorpion Wire or Guardian GS 5).

As to your requests for gear-gated dungeons, that’s also against the game’s core design.

I had fun in WoW for many years, I really did, but I am so very glad GW2 has these fundamental design differences. I still do some WoW dungeons now (mostly I just send followers out on missions, hit the mine and herb garden, and log out). They can be fun to do with friends. Bringing that style of game design into GW2 would kill this game, which just isn’t meant to be like that.

Yeah, I read that as will they have access to them since the utilities are the profession skills.

At least in the beta stress, the arrows just allowed rearranging to something more intuitive for the player. The elite is defined by the channeled legend.

So it is a very good question because it’s hard to see how it would work, other than letting people have a subset of utilities that aren’t revenant specific that they can swap in to replace the revenant ones, perhaps choosing them for each legend.

See all the threads and suggestions asking for build templates, and the dev interviews stating they know this would be cool but it’s not planned for HoT.

I’m pretty sure you have to do the Seeds of Truth to get the legs. Though you can repeat it on alts to get more legs of other weights and not spend any more, so really you’re getting 3 skins. Plus, y’know, there’s a story and other content, and doing the achieves (though they are the hardest ones of the 8 chapters) gets you an ascended trinket. It’s not just the skin.

Given the op was 2 years ago, there was no streaming client at the time.

Filled it out. For some reason there was no “Other” on why I don’t play my Engineer, so I had to pick one that semi-fit.

BilboBaggins.5620:

You did make a good case, it’s just that the white knights can say anything with impunity against anyone with a criticism. (this does NOT work both ways though)

Untrue. Calling someone out for deliberately negative trolling will in fact get you infracted, even if done with pure intentions.

As to the animations, I don’t completely agree with Hamfast’s presentation (though normally I do adore your posts, Hamfast, you are creatively funny at all times) but I do think that if the reason for the continued loss of animations is indeed so they won’t interfere with one cut-scene, then that’s a poor judgment call on ANet’s part.

I do miss them, mostly because I used them as impetus to decide my necro has a bad back and has to keep stretching and twisting to alleviate the pain, which has sparked a number of RP scenes. They are otherwise out of character for all my female humans …

… but if it comes down to it, I don’t think any set of animations provided for any race/gender really works well for my developed RP characters. Nor do I like any dance except the sylvari’s, the rest are too silly and too pop-reference. It’s something I live with in MMO’s for the most part. ESO does have excellent emotes, but almost too many, I can’t quickly find the ones I want for a situation and with no chat-line attached to them, most people miss seeing the short ones anyway.

So I’ll put up with odd idles that don’t fit, and I’ll put up with odd poses in cut scenes as a result. I just want there to be idles.

Thanks! For others’ reference, the relevant footage + concept pics are from about 4:00 to about 10:00.

thefinnster.7105:

most of my posts dont contain the the letters SW for that reason , but still lets say my party says im doing mystery cave or no refuge some players know this is a SW activity and assume i will most likely be in the main sw map waiting to start and they decide since no one is posting an actual SW event map or chest farm they will join and take there chances and find out the state of mine and hope to get lucky

I find this unlikely. If one just “hopes to get lucky” one can simply waypoint to SW and see where it is without needing to join random SW groups. Most likely people are misclicking, since the LFG listings move around so quickly, and leaving as soon as they realize you were not the group they were looking for. I know that if I act as a taxi, or join a taxi, I have an interest in degrouping fast because I run around SW doing my own thing as the mood takes me, though usually I head to Amber because I enjoy defending Amber and escorting its bulls.

Achievement selling seems odd to me. I’m always happy to help anyone who asks for free, and I think there are enough like me that no one should have to spend coin on it.

Were you using a melee weapon? I’ve been reading complaints that only ranged weapons hit the dragon even if you get up in his face.

I think the shadows are irrelevant, you just want to burn the dragon as fast as you can before you get tossed back into Divine Fire lighting.

Well, the two thiefy teleports I do are with the short bow and in the downed state (and the sword 2, which also gets that error message far too much now). I’ve noticed terrain hampering all of those, even in flat dungeons like CoE.

I saw a stream of someone trying to use their revenant. They got the tooltip about it only being available with HoT and betas. I wasn’t surprised, since this was a test of something that anyone will be able to play even without buying HoT and was open to everyone with an account. I didn’t think they’d let revenants into the mix given how many would be testing the stronghold who didn’t have one available.

Given that we’ve had no announcement today I’ll assume there’s no test this coming Tuesday, based purely on their giving us a Friday heads up on the first one.

Does anyone have a link to the videos of the new frogs in action from today’s PoI? All I have is a Snip I took of the Itzel leap concept art:

It’s news to me that Thieves can do that. Since the patch change to teleport abilities I’ve been getting “No valid path to target” messages when trying to go through freaking doorways from one flat floor to another. Apparently shadowstep now trips over door sills, tiny rocks, small stumps, and mild inclines.

I don’t know who Master Chief is but that last shot with him walking out of the fire is stunning.

They aren’t good and evil as described, just sunny and grumpy.

From where you are standing in the screenshot, go to the edge closest to the lower step of the rock you’re trying to reach (the part in Khisanth’s pic). Jump forward, keeping your move forward button pressed, and steer left mid air to curve onto that step. I just did it without swiftness (though with a thief’s 25% speed signet).

I like the two new frog races. They’re believable for the world and environment. While it’s not impossible for a completely new race to show up, unlike anything any inhabitant of known Tyria has seen before, it’s more likely that variants on known life forms will exist.

Plus I don’t think they’re all that’s coming. We have the golden city race, those exploding mushroom podling things (likely creatures, not sentient with a culture, but we’ll see), dinosaurs, new Mordrem variants … The frogs are what we encounter at the edges in our first forays. It makes sense they’d share some features with what we already know; the regions weren’t always separated by harsh desert.

I only recently found that it does that, when I accidentally clicked on a daily log in reward. Isn’t it faster and easier to tap I to open the inventory than to move your mouse over to a moving, fading icon?

If that were implemented I’d suggest that the name only be locked while you are working on the character. If you close the game for any reason (including a dc), the name is immediately released. The 24 hour reservation on a name on a character created and placed in game should remain.

My reasoning is that it would be too easy to lock out names that never even get used if you can reserve a name without actually making a character.

For me, I’ve never had problems getting lore appropriate names so long as I was a little bit flexible (like converting my asura necromancer from Blekk — taken — to Froblekk — now mine). Sometimes I want to see the character’s appearance before I pick a name that feels right for someone who looks like that. So the system as it is works for me, especially with the ability to create something totally random, pick a name, then delete once I have time to leisurely work on appearance. That covers the need to secure a name quickly and offers all the functionality people are asking for in this thread, in my opinion.

It’s quite easy to delete a character, especially one you haven’t even done the tutorial on. There’s no need to strip them for items and coin, they haven’t got any.

Now, letting new players know about the current functionality is another matter. Perhaps there could be a brief blurb on first log in to character creation: “If you have a name you would like to secure, select Skip To End and create the character. You may then delete that character at any time and will immediately have the name reserved for 24 hours during which you can carefully design a character to use the name.”

The only part of that you can control, afaik, is the dailies. If you pick any achieve to track, and track just that one, it will always be there and the longer daily list won’t show.

One for sure safe one you won’t finish by accident (or at all) is Giant Slayer.

I think there is now an option to untrack the PS — check in the upper right area of your options for a drop down box and see what that offers.

If you don’t want the AP or the pop up chest reward (which includes xp writs you can apply to future alts if you prefer not to level via game play, as some do), then yep, no need to do them.

I enjoy them because I can do them quickly, I get some mats, and it gives me an activity to do. I’m sad I missed one set in the past week, that was my first missed daily completion since the change and it only happened because I thought I had in fact done them the night before. Logging in 10 minutes before reset just wasn’t enough time for that day’s set, drat.

However, there’s no need to ask for motivation to do them, imo. Either you like them or you don’t bother with them. The reward rearrangement was done so people wouldn’t feel they “had” to do them. But even before that, it was always just a bonus, not a vital part of game play and success.

There actually is “going back” because name change kits are available. You can research the names you want by friending them in game. If it says no player has that name, bam, grab it.

Just keep an eye on your friends list so you can drop the random friends you gather that way, the UI doesn’t possess many clues as to which is the new one that you only added because you were name checking.

I am a little sad to have learned of the bullfrog bellyflop move before seeing it while playing. (Only a little, there are much worse spoilers possible). I still remember the delightful moment when Southsun opened and a karka first did its roll across a group of players fighting it. I think most everyone in that group died simply because we were laughing too hard to hit the right keys … happy laughter at a brand new attack, that is, not because we thought it was stupid.

Well, that’s artistic license. Also I just nabbed one image of one saber to show the blade, as that’s what you were contesting. Scimitars have much sharper curves so I don’t think the OP image really matches one (Google “images scimitar” to see, this is the page I got https://www.google.com/search?q=images+scimitar&biw=1442&bih=910&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=AN8vVZeIHoulNvy9gZAK&ved=0CB0QsAQ ).

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

or the one that I was going to take but didn’t have time for on April 1st where I swim through water and a friend takes a screenshot from below, of my character “flying” against the sky above – impossible to do as a selfie

While I agree that more flexibility would be nice (much as I appreciate not seeing everyone with arms out, so I can get better posed pictures in sepia), I have to disagree with this one comment. Here’s something I took very casually in the first few minutes of discovering the prank. It involves a wide FoV and a lot of zoom out, both standard settings for me now. (Also I put on auto-run so I could free-pan the camera while moving).

There was a huge thread a year ago with lots of posts showing beloved town clothes combos. Here was mine in that thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-Town-clothes-Costumes-Combat/page/9#post3812990

I really miss the shorts, and the fancy white shirt, and mixing in different headgears, and the basic starter sets ….

Noktus.8506:

The blade hardly resembles either of those

Actually it exactly resembles a saber.
http://www.medieval-weaponry.co.uk/acatalog/88NS-920-1.jpg

They can’t give us a preorder until they know a release date, and they won’t know the date until they’ve had a chance to get open beta feedback. No doubt stronghold will be part of that beta.

In 2012 they didn’t announce the date until fairly close to launch, but we had several chances at betas and stress tests even before the announcement. The main thing that preorders got was 3 days early access, as I recall. The rest of gameplay pre-launch was open to everyone.

In 2012 we got early access on Aug 25, and full launch on Aug 28. Were I a gambling sort, those are the dates I’d expect this year for HoT. The 25th is even a Tuesday!

They said there would be skill points, just not from the level dings, and that they’d adjust the drop rates to make up for the loss of the level up source.

Sure, I’d like account wide for convenience, but I’m not worried the supply is going to dry up.

Normally I can hop very quickly from thread to thread and forum to forum. Today, however, I frequently get the little spinny Firefox loading circle for long periods of time and it’s a gamble whether it ends with a loaded page or a 404 error. This is true of any page, be it a new thread page, a redirect-to-offsite page, a quote, etc.

It could be on my end. I was having slow loads on various sites having to do with my taxes last night. Still, the ANet forums are usually lightning fast.

I’m sorry if I was unclear, I didn’t mean move them to another alt. I was trying to indicate they must be in bags carried on the person, not in bank tabs, or the rezoning trick won’t work because the items have to go through the zoning process.

xev.9476:

Nike.2631:

Put July out of your mind. HoT is a physical box. That means it needs shelf space. That means retailers will be notified of the release date with precision at least 4 months in advance. They still don’t know, so we know the date is at least 4 months away.

Uh, is it a physical box? Did they say? More than a few computer games have opted for purely digital releases, since boxed purchases have been in decline for a decade.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-FAQ
Q: Will this expansion only be available digitally, or will there be a boxed edition as well?

A: Both. Once Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is available, you’ll be able to buy it digitally or get boxed editions at retail stores.

I really think we’re looking at the third anniversary, late August. 2012, Aug 28 was launch, with early access late on Aug 25. It will feel right for that to be the timing this go ’round as well.

OP, looking through your post history you are generally helpful to other players but uniformly pessimistic about anything to do with ANet. Your grey-colored glasses may be affecting your outlook; you certainly seem not to enjoy much of anything having to do with the game and you don’t seem to think it will ever get better. I hope something in your life is just plain fun for you, because clearly this game isn’t helping you enjoy your time.