Guild Wars 2

I just had the weirdest idea based on this. Probably because it’s almost 1 am and I’m groggy.

We don’t have a third heavy profession, right? What if we got one — that didn’t use weapons. Instead the armor is the weapon. Like a power suit. Power punches, mighty leaps, energy discharges.

Though I bet most people wouldn’t want to be denied all the spiff weapon skins in order to play such a class. Maybe there could be, I dunno, power bo staffs?

Another fine point. So once again, it’s not a philosophical reason that prevents them letting any profession wear any weight, it’s technical limitations that they cannot feasibly get past.

I’m wondering how they’ll let new players know in advance that this will be happening at level 5. Will it be a surprise then? Just maybe more easy to figure out given other game mechanics having already been learned?

I mean, when I learned to drive it was in a VW bus with automatic transmission. No pieces of the vehicle stuck out beyond the windows, I had excellent visibility, and only had to deal with gas and brake and steering. A couple of years later my dad rented a manual transmission car and taught me to drive it. Since I already knew the rules of the road, all I had to add in was the mechanics of moving that style of car. Then for a summer we kids got a 1964 Volvo wagon. Manual choke, the works. More layering in. Whereas my college roomie who learned on stick in the first place was far too easily flustered by traffic getting in her way.

But if you don’t know you’re getting in a stick car and no one tells you in advance about the clutch and gears, you’re going to have a nasty shock when you try to move forward.

Becka Williams.4978:

I think there’s far more problems I’d rather Anet work on then making it so that people can use skins for a different armor class. It would also wreck havoc in WvW and pvp, cause then you couldn’t tell at a glance what armor class they were. You see a norn in light armor, and boom, hammer stun because they’re a warrior.

This particular rationale is frequently brought up but simply no longer applies thanks to outfits. Unless outfits are disabled in sPvP and WvW? I don’t know, I’ve not gone in those areas wearing an outfit. If they’re not, then good luck figuring out if that norn in the Ancestral Outfit is light, medium, or heavy before that hammer stun gets you.

It was announced I think it was in the patch notes when it happened? I know I knew in advance that I could do it, though I did have to ask where the NPC was for the trade-in, but I did the swap minutes after that patch.

They just didn’t keep announcing it or, more practically, add it to the tooltip on the soulbound versions.

This has been requested many times, and the answer is they didn’t code the rigs for the armor to work together between weights. They’d have to do a ground up redesign. It’s not just “clipping” — it’s out of control textures and dye colors completely wrecking the appearance of the armor.

So unless you want random patches of fuzzy pink leather sitting across your shiny plate chest, this isn’t something you would enjoy as it would actually appear in game.

Now I’m tempted. Not to lead people around to events, I’m not qualified for that as I get too focused on my own immediate stuff. But a time or two my guild’s done large scale RP with other guilds and using the squad channel was a great thing given the lack of guild alliance chat or custom chat channels.

Ten bucks, you say?

I loved the marionette. I kept doing that fight well after getting all the achieves.

I think the person complaining about it used “zerking” not “zerging.” Either a typo, or s/he meant “everyone geared as berserker.” Which wasn’t true, I didn’t. Plus the fight called for all sorts of useful skills and utilities. Sure it was good to stack up the might, but it was also good to have extra dodges, group stability, etc.

It certainly wasn’t a zerg, though it did need most of a full zone of people to get it done.

I remember that dye seed system. It was very much for the best they scrapped that, and they did so based on beta feedback. A lot of changes in beta happened based on our feedback and we could see the results in the following beta weekend.

WP didn’t comment on it, but I miss the Seraph wearing the tabarded plate instead of their current grunt low end stuff.

Me Games Ma.8426:

We were quite early because for us the Birth of GW2 was the 25th! This is what we did for you Anet!

~ The Quaggan Squad <3

That was fun! It was nice to get a look at the dragon designs, and the TSFH music was a bonus.

narwhalsbend.7059:

nethykins.7986:

T
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

This is a good idea, look at this devs. The one thing that I found difficult when making a new character was finding out what my downed skills did before I got killed.

Agreed, and I’ll add in other sets of skills that disappear faster than you can figure them out especially as you must do so in combat situations: Death Shroud and the two Guardian tome elites. I don’t have time to grok the tool tips on those, I have to sort of skim them fast and click them and hope they do something cool. (Yeah, over time I’ve learned them better than that, but it would be nice to have an in-game way to carefully study them). If you want them to be a surprise, well, at least add them to the skills panel once they’re unlocked?

I did catch a glimpse of a giant in the Toxal Bog when leaving the Dry Top entry area. It was just labeled “Giant.” Alas it died before I could get to it as I was RP walking and didn’t toggle in time, so I don’t know if it counts towards the achieve.

It made me think they might have added more giants, though. Have they?

One exception — I’m not sure you can get the poi in Fort Trinity where Trahearne holds meetings unless you go in via your PS or someone else’s. Not without some sort of wall running glitchy action, anyway. Or did they change that?

You absolutely can get to it later, it’s the entrance to the Arah dungeon which you’ll need to do for the penultimate PS step. The areas you travel in the vision are actual areas in Orr.

However, in the vision you have far fewer monsters to fight on the way to said areas than you will be dealing with at level.

edit: Also a note: I don’t think you keep the pois from the vision. I certainly have had to re-explore them once traveling in Orr. So they’re just a nice little xp boost while in the vision.

The gate to LA from Divinity’s Reach is in the Park on the top level. It dumps you out right next to the other gates. In each city you have to jog a bit to get to the exit to the starting zone.

Black Citadel and Hoelbrak: Get to the east side exit (you start on the west side).
Rata Sum: I think it’s the north gate on the top main level? It’s a short run to each corner of the triangle though, so just approach gates until you see the one marked Metrica Province.
The Grove: It’s not too far from the port in, on the north side.

Tasmosuth.4265:

ArenaNet, can you please answer this:
I currently have some alts which are not level 80. Will these changes affect my alts too, or do I need to remake them to get the changes (just like the Trait change)? I’d rather have my alts be grandfathered into these changes than having to remake them.

Read further down in the blog:
“We won’t be able to retroactively give these rewards to existing level 80 characters, but all characters under 80 will use this system for their remaining levels between their current level and level 80. All new characters you create after this system will have access to all of these changes from level 1.”

Sure sounds like it will affect any leveling up to 80 no matter the start point.

I believe that part is talking about April’s trait change. It’s a bit out of place to put it in this blog about new changes.

I’m in the same boat, I have a mid-30’s necromancer whose been my go-to for doing dailies. He’s going to sit fallow until I can use him to test out these changes. I have a couple of empty slots; I could start an all new alt in September, but I prefer an RP need to help me design a character before I work on them.

You’ve held my gaming heart since before beta. I’m excited to see what new things you bring to the table in this next year!

The upcoming CDI discussion will be on Guilds. That will be a great place to make suggestions. Details help. You can say “I want capes.” Or you can say “I want capes with physics, that actually wrap around the character instead of hanging in a stiff rectangle down the back; I want hoods I can toggle up and down, and here are a number of images of interesting capes from RL that would make good models.” The latter gives a real springboard for the devs.

Vegeta.2563:

I’m just gonna pretend to know what CDIs are.. a full description would be great .. thanks

Community Development Initiative. The devs and players post in a thread (that becomes massive) in an ongoing discussion of a game-related topic. The devs use the discussion and feedback for later game development. The devs do not promise to use any specific idea promulgated in the thread.

There have been several CDI’s. The one I did the most in was Horizontal Development, that being close to my heart.

Remember, there are no promises, so having a discussion on Guild v Guild or Guild Halls does not mean any immediate intent to implement those. The CDI is merely to focus the thinking process and look for interesting ways to put them in game if they become a project.

They’re called Ekku and Kertch saplings in non-human zones but any tree in a starter zone will give you the Green Wood Logs you’re looking for. The next step up, Soft Wood Logs, will be in the level 15-25 zones such as Kessex, where you will be looking for Gummo, Mimosa, or Snow Cherry saplings.

Even using both hands I lose target a lot. Generally I make a point of hitting CTRL-T when I start fighting something I’ll have to move a lot for.

I have left, right, and back arrows bound to the buttons on the side of my Naga HEX. As it sounds like you have even more buttons available, try adding in CTRL-T and T. That way you can set target on the thing you want to fight and if you lose target you tap T to reacquire it swiftly. It’s not as good as the game locking your target as it should but it’s something.

I think you can also disable the function that clears a target when you click the ground, but I’m not 100% sure as I find that feature more help than hurt, it being much faster for me than tapping the Escape key.

To me a guild hall would be a scaled up personal house. LotRO does that with having some estate-sized homes mixed in with the smaller ones, and those have meeting hall areas in them.

Though I’ve seen some excellent ideas about making guild halls out of airships. I’d prefer airships with a little more detail to them than an outer deck and a cargo area with some platforms, though. Individual cabins for guild members, etc.
—-
Gold sinks from housing: Right! I don’t think the taxes are meant as a gold sink so much as a control method to prevent congestion of abandoned lots. However all the furniture and such? Boy howdy can that take a lot of money to gather together. Make it craftable (LotRO does, I loved making those rugs) and tradeable, and the TP will collect all the sales tax one could want.

I don’t think there is a leveling curve other than things being faster from 1 to 10. After that it’s a flat rate. So they would give 20 levels or close to it no matter where one started.

As to the Dolyak Express, my problem with it was that I could find the Q section, but not the A. I know there were answers posted once a number of questions existed but I did not see them. Were the Express to return, I’d want a clearly labeled Answers sticky to go with the Questions one.

Individual Style Which leads to the hope that each player can set up housing that suits the character. Put enough space between homes – heck, have some isolated home spots that are just hermit hovels in the woods, or camp sites, or whatever – that the individual lot can look as desired in structure and décor no matter what the next house over is doing. HZ let you build your own (or have others help) using crafting to bring ikittenllion stone blocks; that game had large community projects like bridges, so it was a core game mechanic anyway. LotRO doesn’t limit furniture styles, but architecture is dictated by the chosen neighborhood. AA seems to be completely individual, if not terribly spacious.

Deep Customization Options, options, options. The more house styles the better. AA has 4 cultures and a number of house options, each with a number of color options, though it still tends to look like a subdivision. The more things to put in the houses or around them, the better. LotRO has a ton of furniture styles, shrubberies, trees, hammocks, rugs, tile and paneling choices, wall paint, etc. HZ let you build up your lot however you liked from basic building blocks to make different buildings, patio designs, hedges, and so on. AA looks like you basically get one building, farmable plants, and plenty of furniture.

Be able to place the décor as desired, too. Make it sized to the type of home it is. LotRO’s hook points are far too sparse, limiting what you can put inside. A hobbit burrow with acres of empty floor space just looks wrong. AA seems to allow infinite gradation and orientation of item placement (I have not and will not test it personally due to the biweekly tax issue). HZ didn’t have furniture at all other than what came with building types, and everything was to a far larger scale than made sense.

Robust Permissions Be able to fine tune who can enter your home, and what they can do once inside. Preferably have a created list possible, so for example your whole guild could add items or operate lamps or whatever, but only your beloved special person could remove or rearrange items.

Character Bound? Altoholics might want a mansion for their noble, a grungy apartment for their street rat, a pyramid for their asura, a steading for their norn … I can see that being a problem, though, and it may be that one would have to pick the alt most in need of a nice place to live.

Usefulness I personally don’t give a darn for personal craft stations, bankers, etc. I can get to any of those I need to in game in moments. But I know a lot of players see no other point to personal housing, so there should be a way of adding these things. I would prefer they be integrated into the home – a banker at a desk in a separate room for instance – rather than just randomly standing around creeping on social interactions.

Ok, that has got to be my first seriously huge wall of text in these forums ever. I won’t TLDR it because the headers cover that

I likely should start a new thread but they proliferate too much as it is. I’ve had some ideas noodling around in my head on desired housing features these past few days, courtesy of another game’s beta I gave a whirl. During this current phase of communication initiatives, I’d like to reiterate some of my concerns I’ve posted in a more scattershot fashion in the past.

I’m going to use game names simply because it is easier to describe if the reader knows what the heck I’m referring to. The three games I’ve played with involved housing systems are Horizons, LotRO and Archeage, so I’ll use those. I’ll list a feature I enjoy and describe how well it was done in those others – this is due to GW2 beta discussions of the devs looking at the fun/unfun parts of other MMOs and tossing out the unfun parts.

Guaranteed Spots. LotRO did this via making as many instanced copies of neighborhoods as necessary to meet demand. While you couldn’t necessarily get the exact lot you wanted, and were out of luck at moving in with your guild if random others bought up the land, you were never locked out of buying a lot in the neighborhood style of your choice. Some method of being able to for-sure set up with your guild would be lovely, perhaps making some 500-lot instances designed for guild use?

On the other hand, HZ and AA both use open world land rush models, leading to much rancor in the player base. Finite space that is less than the number of players causes Bad Things.

Permanent Ownership I’m hazy in my memory of HZ but I think there were no taxes to pay once you got your patch of land. LotRO required taxes, payable a certain amount of time in advance if desired, or you lost your plot though at least all your furnishings and décor came back to you for reinstalling if/when you bought a replacement lot. AA currently demands biweekly taxes with no prepaying possible, and will return furnishings etc.

Taxes, bills, required logins to administer your property are Not Fun. They especially do not fit in GW2’s philosophy of allowing a player to walk away from the game for a lengthy period and pick up where they left off. This means that open world lots simply won’t work, because those demand that they be taken away from those not tending to them lest any newcomers be permanently frozen out of ownership.

Pretty Settings HZ did this moderately well, and AA has got one or two that I’ve seen. However, both succumb to a cheek-by-jowl subdivision feel because they have to cram all the lots together in designated areas. LotRO does very well at it, setting up lots with plenty of acreage by streams or waterfalls or up on hills and cliffs, with each neighborhood fitting the style of the culture it uses.

I’m sure ANet would make things gorgeous. Preferably there would be a variety of cultural styles and terrain, though maybe not so rigidly locked in to a neighborhood style as LotRO. Not everyone in a guild will necessarily want the same kind of house.

-cont-

I think you covered the list of most everyone’s dream camera features.

An integrated chat logger would be so sweet for saving RP logs to share with guildies or to remember plot points that developed.

Even better, include a parser so one can select which channels go into the log. Back in the early days of the Horizons MMO a friend of mine worked some magic. In a very short amount of time he made a parser (the game already had a chat log dump but it was absolutely everything from all tabs all mixed together, including combat) with which one could specify exactly what would get saved. You pasted the complete log into it, dragged the chosen channels into a center box from a right hand list, and got your finished result on the left side to copy and paste back out into a word processor. It took seconds to get your log, instead of painstaking hours of manual editing.

For (3) “closer” is the ability to get close enough to see your character’s bust (ie head and shoulders) filling the screen without having to play tricks with jamming the camera against a vertical surface. Right now the zoom-in stops further back, making it very difficult to get portrait shots (e.g. when commissioning art of your character, you want a good view of the face).

Bobble heads help with that one need, as they expand the head and give it character-creator detail. Still in general it would be nice to be able to really see your character’s finer points.

/noms cupcake
Thankies!

Oh, I knew, though to me Aug 25 is always the special day. I took the week off to play, something I’ve never done for any other MMO release. I got as much sleep that Friday afternoon as I could, since the expected launch time was 3 am eastern. Then they said they’d try to do it earlier, long enough in advance that I knew to keep paying attention and not sleep to 2 am or anything! (Yay communication). And they delivered, it started at midnight eastern, so by 3 am when I collapsed into bed I’d made my 5 name placeholders and turned one of them into Donari, using slider choices determined in beta.

Best Aug 25 I’ve ever had, I think. And I’ve had 48 of them.

Is this the thread you were going to update, Chris? Sorry if I’m bumping too soon, I see it’s just been an hour since you posted and we are well within the “shortly” time frame

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/21#post4339535

I’m told there is some event going on in GW1 right now involving the Shiverpeaks and access to Tormented Weapons. If my low level post-Searing character can participate, I’ll be doing that tonight with guildies.

I’m sort of sad the OP posted this because I do think something fun may happen tomorrow now, and I wasn’t even dreaming of it before. It would have been a wonderful out of the blue surprise had no one commented on the possibility!

Ok, hmm.

- alpha sort for dyes known on a character
- gchat persistence through character relog akin to /w and /p
- move the Leave Guild button far far away from other guild function buttons

In fact using your GW2 email and password will automatically link it as I recently discovered. No more steps required.

Always? We’ve had one prior anniversary, and any “update” that came last year wasn’t to celebrate the anniversary, it merely coincided with it.

Hmm! I have 3 points so far, I’m slowly working through the game with the help of guildies. Still, it’s an overall artistic complaint of mine. I grew up with dogs, I’ve had cats all my adult life, I’m quite familiar with the anatomy and behavior of both. I boggle at the disparity in quality between them in this game.

I interpret the massive reply differently from you. I see it as the community asking those in the know as to what actually can progress through discussion to make the evaluation and choice of the first topic. I also see eagerness to get to the actual discussion rather than spending a week lobbying for personal pet favorite topics to be selected.

We’re in the midst of a ten day sale. By my count August 30 would be the 10th day. Thus I predict (without any specific knowledge that I am right) that the skins will be there until the 30th. Buy by the 29th to make sure you don’t fall afoul of reset timers.

This is the … third time? … they’ve been available, I believe. At least the second. So they could come back months or years from now — or never.

Sorry that I’ve resigned my job and don’t have spare gems atm — I have a deep impulse to buy and gift these to you but I’m cutting down a bit on my expenses until I verify my husband’s income actually is enough for us.

I have at least one guildie that wants a beagle. I’ve seen no requests for specialty minis like that in here, so hopefully those little three-packs can return.

Along those lines, I’d love a cat mini that looks like a real cat. I think the ANet animal artists are dog people, because the canines all look astounding with perfect animations and the cats all look chunky and low rez with animations none of the cats I’ve ever owned have used. Except the tiger from the cat tonic, that’s exactly how a tiger should look.

Use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_completion and click on the Ascalonian zones; in each zone page there is a zone map at the upper right with the “white name” areas shown with borders. Compare that to your in game map to see if you have the white name. If not, that’s your culprit.

It’s much easier to do this with a second monitor, or perhaps via tablet viewing, so you can see both maps at once.

Here’s an alternate shoulders suggestion, I’ve found these go well with almost all coats because they don’t “float” like most shoulders. (The screen was to show off his new hat, so it isn’t focused on the “Iron Man” part, but hopefully you can see the possibilities).

It’s only been open twice so far: once during its introduction at the Jubilee, and recently during the Zephyrite return. Likely it will come back another time, but only once or twice a year judging by the pattern thus far.

If/when it returns, you’ll see plenty of forum posts about it (possibly in the Living Story forums).

Brian.6435:

I can see so much of this armor looking good combined with the Radiant skins too, or maybe some us would like to take the helmet off and see our hair.

I agree that it would be superb to get more actual armor sets. But to this one point of yours, you can take the helmet off to see the hair. Go to Wardrobe or Equipment, toggle off helm, voila. It’s hidden on the outfit as well as your equipped gear.

Danikat.8537:

This topic title is exactly what I first thought when I realised we were going to a posh party.

My main character is a ranger which means she’s limited to medium armor and outfits. Her best option is the Order of Whispers coat which looks a bit like a dress, but it’s not ideal.

Take a look at the TA dungeon armor. A guildie of mine who is a Ranger got ICly married in that coat, dyed in whites and golds. I’d have to dig up screenshots to remember what she settled on for leggings and shoes.

Being able to customize your spell effects would be nice. I predict a lot of naysaying from PvPers though (probably legitimately concerned ones) as about the only way now to be sure what type of enemy you’re facing is understanding what the spell effects tell you about their profession and weapons.

The items on sale have all remained on sale, so you should be safe for the whole 10 day sale period. I would expect that the sale will end once it’s gone on ten days, that being the advertised name of it and all.

Donaga.3980:

Presenting the Ultimate Blue Ice White Dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh

That’s impressive! You did a non-humanoid cosplay. /applauds

Iron Man is completely doable in Medium. I put on the AC medium coat, happened to dye it red and gold, and everyone yelled I was Iron Man. It doesn’t have the center glow power core in the chest, but otherwise it works.