Guild Wars 2

Very much like. You stand on one, hit F, and get flung high up.

I wonder if the F is needed, or if they can put some in that fling you just for stepping on them. That could cause some amusement with inattentive players, but also give a faster pace like the jump pads in Dragon Ball.

Double post! I do wish we could get more elaborate facial definition. The base facial structure in this game’s humans doesn’t actually vary all that much. Here’s what I was able to do in another game’s creator (too bad that game was one of the most toxic messes I ever played in, and in-game the faces didn’t strongly reflect what you had done in the creator, but man could you get some nice looks so long as you didn’t actually log in).

I don’t imagine GW2’s creator will ever go that deep, alas, and I’m grateful for how much can be done with it. So this is more a wistful yearning than anything else.

You will see many Canthans in:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Post-your-Canthan-toons-here/first#post4772056

They did mention that you get your first mastery point pretty much just for entering the area. So that answers my question from yesterday as to whether someone could deliberately avoid getting mastery points. Also they had one person controlling a character while another discussed what was going on, thus avoiding the 20 minutes of a charr standing still we got on Friday

I don’t mind the fan art section, I like that they are encouraging creativity in the player base, and it’s only a few minutes to show off the talents.

The UI, yes, I had a friend over watching with me and I was muttering about needing to see the UI. Though I guess maybe it would have shown mastery lines they don’t want us to know yet?

Good question, but I imagine the first mastery might unlock just from playing the game. It’s something to beta test to make sure it doesn’t break the game if someone deliberately avoids garnering that first point.

That’s because stores make wild guesses because they can’t take pre-order money without a date in their system. They don’t speak for or control ANet, and if the release date comes later they’ll just shrug and you can get a refund or just wait for release with your guaranteed box.

Me, I see no reason to pre-order something that doesn’t exist yet. Once there’s a date and they announce any CE contents, then is the time to pounce and order. Otherwise you don’t even know if you’ve ordered the version you’ll end up wanting.

Yes, yes there is.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Questions-you-want-Answered/first

Probably in 2 weeks since we know that’s when Chapter 8 free access ends.

There is hope of seeing way more land than even was found in GW1. Check the world map compiled off the Hidden Arcana floor and translated by reddit folks/that_shaman.

http://i.imgur.com/8ezEHDE.jpg

Hard to say since you can only do it once a day. I had a small net loss on my 16 envelopes today, that I think was covered by the 2 envelopes I got for a Dragon Ball win. Each envelope had one of those 88 silver trash items in it, so I lost 12 silver per envelope (and got fireworks and good food).

Long hair clips the fan on humans too. I can live with that

Krestfallen.8025:

But since I already have the Ram Backpieces, and I ain’t no gamblin’ man, it looks like this part of the festival is definitely not for me.

Where did you get the ram backpieces?

Knighthonor.4061:

Can somebody post what a male Norn look like in this from front?

Here you are. Sorry for dull dyes, Altdragg’s into earth tones and I didn’t want to undo his dyes for the outfits he’d actually wear.

At least this one allows for Charr tails. Females get a lifting flap of fabric, males get their tail coming out of a dragon mouth.

Well, the art frame is a simple white plastic thing and the soundtrack CD is a tiny sampler of about 30 seconds each of 5 pieces (I may exaggerate, but not by much). I don’t collect figures like that. So I did feel disappointed in the CE, though glad I’d supported the game’s successful launch.

The stuff I had to go through with GameStop to make sure they knew how to order it and that I could have it right away on early access Friday, though, man. That’s one reason I’ve been more interested in digital downloads since then.

As I recall from the April feature patch blogs (which really were far too drawn out), they didn’t give us Friday or Monday posts. Monday most likely because the poor dev would be spending his/her weekend writing it and still need final approval for the post before it could go up, and Friday because (total guess here) then any forum repercussions would be on a weekend when there couldn’t be so much attention paid to threads.

Or maybe we just didn’t get one Friday because they were doing a POI.

Anyway, I sure hope something comes today. The blogs are interesting reveals and tend to spur a burst of interesting forum threads

Very minor query: Will there be tweaks to dye channels? Some outfits have odd choices of where the channels go, especially forcing boots to bizarre shades, and so far the Wizard’s (hat) cannot be dyed at all.

In the latter’s case, can you at least tell us why it can’t be dyed? Are there technical, legal, or aesthetic reasons for it?

I don’t think anyone should blame Pop. It’s clear in all the POIs that they are showing the active game world — just look at the particle dance parties that accrue as people find out where the pov character is hanging out — and this just happened to be an internal server. With hundreds of employees, it’s unlikely they all track what’s going on in POI or have any idea where it’s being filmed. Pop just went in to playtest in the starting area of HoT and it happened to be when a whole lot of folks were watching.

Some of the things were cool. The dye seeds, nope. You could only unlock a dye once a day as I recall, or was it you had to wait a day for the seed to grow?

That warrior bow skill, woof. Here’s a video I remember rofling at when it came out:

Guardian stays alive like a charm; for the longest time my total-support Guardian was my dungeon runner (and thanks to AR is still my go to for Fractals teens and up). But I won’t PuG with her because her dps is often in the double digits and most PuGs will consider that leeching, no matter how much aegis, heal, stability, condition cleanse etc I do.

But I use her on guild runs because my guildies don’t care about speed, just fun. She’s primarily scepter/focus so I can stay further back from the scrimmage and has the heal tome elite (every 3 minutes I can channel for 5 seconds and restore everyone’s health to full if called for, so long as they don’t get downed during my channel).

Dealing damage: toss on a Chains (traited to cause Vulnerability) and drop scepter 2 under the foe. Hit F1 to make all my party’s attacks set the foe on fire for a bit. (Remember, I’m not actually doing much dps on this alt, I’m just sort of supplementing).

Mitigating damage: F2 to toss out a heal, F3 to give everyone aegis to block one attack. I have Purity of Voice so I like to run 3 shouts: Retreat, Hold the Line, and Save Yourselves (and I trait for rapid cd on shouts). Thus not only am I blocking/regenning/protecting/condition cleansing everyone (keep one eye on party portraits — if you see a lot of red debuffs, it’s a good time to cleanse), I’m doing extra condition cleanse on top of that. I can swap out to Wall of Reflect, Stand Your Ground, and such for specific fights.

Support: All of the above. Plus that elite heal. She’s geared to a lot of Vitality and Healing Power. Again, not optimum for hurting things, not likely to make you welcome to random strangers. But fairly simple to manage, relatively speaking.

Context: I also am in my forties (near the end of them), lack twitch reflexes, and can get tunnel vision at times though years of MMOs have taught me some situational awareness. That said, I revel in Mesmer these days, but you don’t have one of those to kit out.

The blogs are pretty darn shallow dives imo. My impression from their promises of deep dives was there would be plenty of details and requests for feedback, with that feedback having a real impact on the final shape of the game systems. (Minor irrelevant point, you whet an appetite, as in sharpen it. Not critiquing, just educating, as I love seeing people use language to its fullest ).

I do hope that it won’t take ghastly amounts of merits to get small upgrades. I also hope there will be small upgrades, and many options, to provide enough granularity for real customization. WoW’s garrisons continue to disappoint with their tiny set of building choices, all in the same architectural style, and no player-generated small decorative touches to personalize things.

But all I can do for now is hope, until we get the initial reveal, playtesting, and followup feedback and iterations.

All indications are that we start with just one specialization per profession, and that they can add more in later. It does sound to me that when that happens, you will be able to swap around.

Because imagine the flame-storm if people have their alts set up with the only spec available and a new one gets offered a few months (or years) later.

This just occurred to me:

Specializations will get a weapon the base class can’t use. We’ll be able to “easily” toggle back to the base class any time we like out of combat.

If the base class still cannot equip the new weapon, what happens? Does it get shoved into the first open slot in our inventory? People lose more weapons that way …

Or will we get the templates many have been requesting, with the weapons not using inventory space so long as they are equipped in one of our toggled builds? So like swapping from dry ground to underwater, when suddenly we are in aquabreather/underwater weapon, will the swap just activate a different weapon set stored in the Hero Panel?

On the warrior, it’s a Signet, perhaps one in the Elite slot. Signet of Rage maybe? I haven’t played warrior for a long time. But it definitely comes from an equipped utility. Some think it looks like mud and the warrior is filthy; to me it was more like champagne bubbles, my warrior just fizzing with rage

Finding them could still require unlocking them, and merits could be a bar to smaller guilds getting halls. I agree with the concern. My own guild, active since launch, has under 100 merits because we’ve gotten too small to do the bounties and frequently couldn’t manage them at our peak. We do have rushes unlocked and even there we can’t get as many as 10 people working on them. I’ve lost track of how long it’s been now, could be we haven’t earned a merit in the past year.

I’m sure we can get to the place where guild halls happen. I’m not sure we can pay for one once there. The blog on guild halls is one I’m most eagerly awaiting! And presumably there will later be a deep dive on the subject, with some real Q&A going on.

Aww, ZudetGambeous, you went and applied reason and logic and explained it perfectly. We could have had so much silliness!

Nope, OP meant LS2, he wants to know if his friend must pay separately for it.

Reading this thread is leaving me rather torn. I do feel I can figure out the profession starting with all skills available, and I do agree leveling can grate after a while in the NPE (I was fine with working my way up pre-NPE, got 13 80’s that way, just finally hit my 14th on my one post-NPE alt). Though most of the issue is really in the traits revamp, which they’ve said is getting a revision, so leveling could get fun again for me.

Yet I use the leveling time not only to learn the mechanics, but to learn the character. I digress to RP scenes, I let the character tell me his or her reaction to Dynamic Events, and motivation to help others. I develop the voice, and that gets me invested in playing the alt. Leveling gives the alt some history, and thus more lasting power.

I suppose there will be plenty to do, and one needn’t have a Revenant to explore the jungle after all. I’ll have specializations to try out for all the professions, more world to see, new systems to discover. I have enough Tomes that I can skip ahead on my Revenant if I want, but I can’t undo levels if I realize I didn’t want to skip!

Also PSA to those for whom English may not be your main language:

A “tome” is a large book, pages bound between covers. Pronounced toe-m.

A “tomb” is a large vault, usually underground, used to bury the dead. Pronounced toom, perhaps with a slight extra lip press to suggest the b on the end.

sorudo.9054:

easy fix ppl, have a special edition that gives you some nice in-game stuff and all S2LS chapters.

But that sounds like it would cost more. The whole idea is to help out people that want to buy the expansion, not the expansion + LS2. They could buy LS2 right now if they could afford that.

On the plus side, there are a couple of pieces of Carapace armor you can get each time you do those chapters on a fresh alt, so you can get all three weights without paying thousands of crests for them.

Nice as always, Shriketalon, but I’d like something to explain how Mai Trin had an army that wasn’t a known factor. No one had heard of the Aetherblades before they first attacked, but they were far too sizable a force to just camp in the woods undetected for the months/years it would take to recruit and train them. No deserters? No loose lips in taverns? No rangers out hunting and going zomg it’s a fracking army out here? No sightings of non-Pact airships? No odd caravans of supplies going out into the wilds?

Maybe I’ve read too much SM Stirling but I really do crave realistic logistics in things like this.

They still could trash DR (I would weep, it’s the most city of cities in the game). I’m highly nervous about that Seraph in Camp Resolve who keeps muttering “I hope the Queen held enough of us back to defend DR, if it comes to that.”

Yes, he says the letters D.R., thus validating a lot of RP! Now I just need to find an NPC calling it “the Reach.”

I’ve played many an MMO over the years. I find GW2 absolutely refreshing in how minimal the key needs are (granted Ele and Eng do demand more, one reason they are among my least played professions).

I was a Minstrel in LotRO and had way more necessary things to press than fit in the 1 to 0 keys. There were banks of hotbars above the main one, requiring shift, ctrl, and alt modifiers to use. This meant I mostly clicked those, because my hands are small and it’s painful to repeatedly press those combinations. It was a freaking bank of 40 skills! Then they did the Isengard release, and I logged in to find that all my skills had been redone in a total class revamp and I no longer had a clue how to play her. That was the end of my LotRO time.

I’ve been doing some WoW lately (mostly just managing a garrison for a bit). It took a long time to learn my keybinds again after years away and it’s still way too many, some things just have to be mouse clicked.

GW2’s controls are a dream. (Ok, so I did buy a Naga HEX so I could fully mouse-move and dodge). F1 to F4, 1 to 0, ~, and T/Ctrl-T cover everything I need to do in a hurry. Add in B to dodge with when I can’t hit the mouse thumb keys fast enough, J to autoloot everything, and I’m good. Other binds can be used at leisure outside of combat.

As far as I know the creation screen hasn’t changed since launch. While large things like what the Sylvari really are were designed in from the start, I think smaller game mechanic choices have likely been iterated beyond recognition. They may not even have had Revenants in mind back then, though it does seem they have been planning Rytlock’s role in it for a good while.

So while it’s a clever idea, I think it gives ANet too much credit for planning ahead

There is no “Story #9.” We’re in Chapter 8 of Season 2, all of which takes place well after LA’s destruction. No one can replay Season 1, in which that destruction occurred, until such time as ANet has the resources to spare to rework it into repeatable content. It was originally meant to be this-once-and-never-again, to make the world feel it was progressing.

You can experience the story of Chapters 1 to 7 for free by having someone who has it unlocked open the instance for you. You won’t get control over dialogue choices and speed, and you won’t be able to interact with objects needed to progress, but you will get a first hand look at all the narrative and cinematics.

In the HoT forum some are speculating that ANet might be nice enough to bundle LS2 into the HoT purchase for those who haven’t managed to do it yet. If so then you need only wait and not pay your 20 bucks extra, assuming you are buying HoT.

Only in the new maps we get with HoT. My first gut reflex is no in the new Borderland, but y’know, they could have designed that one with gliders in mind.

Gliders will not be available in the old maps, be they PvE or WvW.

I’d like some sort of silhouette overlay to let us see our height/bulk compared to a completely average one. Game after game gives me height sliders with no clue how I’ll look in the world. In TESO I made an Altmeri (High Elf) and she’s a freaking giant when I just wanted a bit of height. In GW2 my alts have generally come out as I like but I see so many out-of-scale tiny or giant people (of the same race) it’s bizarre.

Good question! I had a very nice over $70K salary but unless my math is way off that comes to under 40 bucks an hour, gross not take-home. Still left plenty of spare twenties for whim purchases though

I still don’t like just buying gold. I’ve done it for small amounts so as to get some things on the TP I wanted (skins, dyes), but my gem purchases generally go to gem store items.

I got Golden early on thanks to a guildie doing that 5 second loan trick, because the title fit my RP far too well and I really wanted it and had I done it the regular way, it likely would have been over a year. I’m not a gold-making machine in MMOs

If the Pale Tree is a champion of his and all the vines spreading through the land are part of him I really hope the whole jungle, all the maps of it, makes up his body. We were told dragons were the size of mountain ranges, after all, and he really shouldn’t be smaller than his champion Trees. Well, he could be, size and power need not have a direct relationship — but having it all be him would rock.

How to kill that? I’m stumped for now. Perhaps the antitoxin injector we used on the Tower of Nightmares can scale up somehow. And then we get to watch an entire ecosystem collapse as the living jungle becomes a rotting swamp over time once Mordremoth isn’t keeping it going.

I’ll focus on one tiny thing in all that, the taxiing to a map near completion. That works in Silverwastes because each map advances at its own pace depending on event completion speed. What I’m hearing about the new initial map (I don’t know what the phases will be in others) is that it is day/night dependent. Night won’t go so well if day hasn’t been used to its fullest to build defenses.

If the day/night cycle is constant across maps, I’d wager successful night phases (and their rewards) will be easier in those maps where people have spent daytime building up. Sure, some might try to taxi in, but it may be more like Dry Top where you know exactly when the sandstorm starts, and Zephyrite Favor depends on overall work during the round before and after the storm.

If a map has room to taxi in, perhaps it won’t have been built up enough to be worth the taxi?

I think it would be nice of them to include it, though I foresee some negative reaction from those who bought gems to unlock it and then have to pay the same price as others for HoT. Even though I doubt HoT’s price would be in any way altered by bundling in LS2, and even though these people got the advantage of playing the LS sooner and unlocking Lumi sooner, they’ll still consider it “unfair.”

tekfan.3179:

Would have been nice to know if what we saw on the mini-map is the actual size of that map-plane or just a part of it. Since the POI I’m fearing we might just get maps that are smaller than the current cities.

As for the Twitch-chat…I’m always ignoring that, that’s better for my health.

It looked to me like that was just a small portion thanks to the irregular shape and all the smudgy brown around it. It looked like other maps where you haven’t explored yet.

Oh, there are many that I find tons of fun. I’ll riff on yours, though — did you follow those two NPCs back after they ditch the kegs? You get some Gilbert and Sullivan!

It seems likely that the specializations will have new skills, not just mix-and-match of the old ones.

I can’t say this is the dumbest I’ve managed, but it does come to mind:

Working on my first run through of PS. Bunch of guildies helping. We’re doing the part where you walk all over Lyssa’s temple, then go fight Risen in front of a hallway going down. You know, next to a sheer drop. Risen comes for me, I hit my Roll for Initiative. Aiiiiiiieeeee splat. And it was my instance so all my friends had to jump down and die as well so we could reset and continue.

It was a good learning experience, though. Sort of like when I fell off the top bunk when I was a child and woke up to see the floor rushing at my face … I never fell out of bed again, and I’ve never Roll for Initiative’d to my death either. I mean, I do accidentally go off SW fort walls far too often, but that doesn’t kill me!

My pleasure! I can also help with 7 and 8 depending on when your work shifts and my awake times coincide.

The PvP 101 is an added segment as I understand it. An extra bit after the regularly scheduled ‘cast for those interested. They haven’t shortened the POI to make room for it.

So yes, I do cut off the stream once the PvP section starts, but I don’t feel cheated out of time spent on the parts that interest me.

I’m still debating trying to beta or not (not fond of spoilers, do like to help give feedback). If I do beta, then I’ll have an idea of what to start with.

Regardless, lesson learned from LS patches: be ready to hit that New Build load button immediately. If I do so I usually get my patch a lot faster than if I wait a couple of minutes and everyone else leaps in.

Because I imagine the first 30 minutes of HoT for a lot of people will be watching a little red line slowly cross the screen from left to right

Well, you can click Show Deleted. I’m sure it was due to its being a question format when it wasn’t a question as I for one see absolutely nothing objectionable in the post content itself. Your text was:

“I would love to see an article previewing the art for Heart of Thrones (e.g. concept art, equipment designs, etc.) and not just game stills. Nothing whets my appetite for a game quite like seeing the artwork. It fuels a tremendous amount of speculation for a variety of players. That was one of the greatest things about the previews we received for Guild Wars 2 back during the alpha and beta stages. Bring on the Heart of Thrones art preview!”

(But you should likely remember to call it Heart of Thorns …)

Adventures: how frequently can you do one? I see on POI you can restart one that isn’t going well, but once complete can you just rush right back in?