Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe it’s Mr E

As I speculated above. Though man, I soooo want Faren to be E. Are my ScarlEt PimpErnEl dreams to be dashed? Faren even wore a red doublet!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Rauderi.8706:

Nah. If we’re allowed to burn down anything, it should be the Grove first.

If players are allowed to burn down the Grove, they would be allowed to burn down everywhere.

Now I’m dying laughing!

Do you suppose the Queen held enough of the Seraph back in DR, now that it’s come to that?

Yes, I know. But the discussion is about who that blonde man is that you posted, and I’m pretty sure he’s not Estelle. Even if she is a mesmer and can look like that, she wouldn’t be calling forth the good guys to fight for DR which is how I interpret his speech.

Estelle’s turned into a young blonde man with stirring rhetoric? Ok …

Mimicry? Who is she imitating, or who is imitating her? I’m not sure that’s the word you meant to use, but I can’t figure out what fits in its place.

Dignity? Delivery? Determination? Something implying strong leadership? Depiction?

I do agree that she’s awesome in the cinematic.

edit: Most welcome. “Expression” makes sense!

I asked that question in the general forums thread on this. I can’t see them changing Faren that much but on the other hand with my ongoing theory that Faren is E, maybe?

Or maybe this is E and it’s someone we haven’t met in person before.

Or just some random Minister who’s on Jennah’s side.

There is also discussion starting in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Head-of-the-Snake-Feb-7th/first#post6479806
and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Episode-4-Head-of-the-Snake

Who is the blonde human man at :24? Just a random Minister, or should I recognize him? Surely it’s not Faren with a hair change

I am super happy to see this, I have some RP storylines that have been dancing around the plot involving the Caudecus propaganda. I have high hopes (likely to be dashed, I know), that we’ll get another world-changing event like LA had, something that can fuel RP for a long time to come.

Ayrilana has a fine point there. I’ll add that undocking the timer would seem far more complicated code wise than doing a check on individual looting.

Two or three days ago I was working on Chupa&Champawat 3, which among other things requires a successful DS. I did a couple other collection things, then noticed DS was due to start in three minutes. (I both use the timers and know that until the spring time change DS is always half past the even hour my time, eastern).

So I wp’d into DS, checked LFG, found a taxi with 30+ people in it, joined, and joined the commander’s map shortly before the mass reset. We were a bit short of tag volunteers so I tagged to lead north and since we had a couple of new folks in the squad I took a little time to explain the must-know mechanics of each section.

And proceeded to happily chant to myself “I love this squad!” as everything melted in our path. Every event was done with time to spare. The whole map moved along smooth as I’d ever seen. No problems at the towers, the first burn on the Mouth took 75% of its health and it was finished second burn.

The key here was: I went to the map just before reset, I joined a squad, I moved to that squad’s map. I don’t recall ever getting in a failed map while following those steps, though sometimes I have found myself unable to join my squad due to full maps, which is why I endeavor to be in the commander’s map even before reset. That increases my chances of being in his/her map as things get started.

Have you seen anyone using ANY town clothes tonics? I tried for a bit to use them for RP but since they expire after 15 minutes and there’s a confetti burst when reapplying them, and since they can’t be dyed to suit the character, they’re rather a mood breaker.

“Character makes a silent, menacing gesture to quell his subordinate’s blurting of information.” POOF CONFETTI.

What you want to ask for, Athena, kitten many of us have asked, is not to “adjust” any of the tonics, but to make them into armor skins like they used to be. Mix and match and dyeable.

1) Not at all limited. Even if you never gather a single HP in the world, you will automatically have enough at level 80 from level-up rewards to max all your traits and skills. EXCEPT for the Elite lines, which will need 250 more points. (You must own HoT, not be F2P, for this to matter to you). Those points can be gathered one at a time in core Tyria, or you can go into the HoT maps to do HP that give you 10 at a time.

2) You will easily be able to switch. As in, any time while not in combat, open your hero panel, click on the left side of the trait line you want to swap, pick a different trait line, then click the three traits you want for your build. It takes a few seconds if you know in advance which three you want. There is no limit, you can swap all day long.

3) It’s a matter of opinion as to whether it’s worth getting the elites. Many on the forums seem to feel the elite lines give you a real advantage. I’ll tell you that I am in love with Reaper, the Necro elite, as I find it about the most fun to play of any profession. But that is subjective opinion.

Otoh you can get the elite and then never use it if you don’t want, or swap in and out of it. You “equip” it by using your bottom trait line for the elite. When new elites come out with the next expansion, you’ll have to choose which elite to equip as you can only have one at a time. I say it’s entirely worth it because it gives you options, and as you certainly won’t have your masteries maxed for a while the pursuit of the HP in the HoT maps will contribute XP to leveling masteries.

As you are just level 20, take your time, explore the world. Limited time content will scale you to 80 so you can participate. Level 80 content won’t vanish before you get to it. Spend your HP on any skill or trait that looks interesting to you, since you’ll end up with everything at 80 anyway. The elite line won’t unlock until you’ve maxed all traits and skills.

Add me to those who don’t like to fight other players. I much prefer cooperative helpful play. I have on occasion successfully PvPd, but as a rule going into a situation where other players can decide to make my day suck (or I can empathically imagine I’ve just made someone else’s day suck) kicks up the adrenaline and tension. It sours my belly, tightens my neck, I think I hold my breath because I get short of air, and I end up feeling trembly. I don’t like feeling paranoid and in danger. I managed world completion twice back when it required WvW and really hated running to the exploration spots repeatedly as others killed me in sight of the poi I needed. It made my task frustrating, plus it bothered me that I was using up a spot without helping my server. (I had done actual server help stuff in WvW with guildies a number of times before I just couldn’t be bothered with the stress any more, so I understood that my non-contribution while exploring was an issue).

I also loathe trash talk. I don’t feel insulted or hurt by it, I am actually rather amused by the way in which it shows up the trash talker as an insecure, immature idiot, but I’d flatly rather hang out in areas where people value being nice to each other.

I’ve tried a bit of SPvP, both actual fighting (well, at least I beta tested the map with the skritt bombers, and won my fight there) and a custom arena where people go to do dailies in a cooperative manner. It did not thrill me. The only PvP Activity I enjoy is Sanctum Sprint, possibly because that is a linear course with plenty of fun things to do with traps and zaps but no need to keep hyper alert in a 360 degree surrounding.

I don’t think PvP is a bad thing. Some people really enjoy it, including a lot of my RP friends. I’ve even enjoyed it in short bursts when dragged in by friends. But as an ongoing thing, well, it’s not what I want in a game, it’s not what keeps me playing, and games where I can’t avoid it (hello, Age of Conan RP-PvP server, hello ArcheAge, hello BDO) are games I leave pretty fast. (I admit that there were other problems with the listed games that would have had me leave, but number one in all of them was open world PvP).

I empathize with your pain but I will note there is not much ANet can do about it. Physical disks can only contain the game build extant at the time the disks are recorded. Every patch thereafter will be digitally transferred. They have only released physical disks at vanilla launch and at HoT launch, while they have patched as frequently as every week or two for years, including huge quarterly updates.

So any ANet-made disk will save you -some- time in getting base files, but then progressing to the current build will perforce require downloads.

Or, I suppose, if you have a friend near you that has the game, you can get a copy of his/her client as that can freely be copied and loaded. Then you just need to stick in your own custom file of keybinds etc. Or maybe have a friend mail you the client on a thumb drive? A trusted friend, that is, who you know will give you a clean copy.

Was Na, I was going with the OP’s question about being able to get alts into the map without having to do the story on each one. All the maps have the scrolls which are a way around doing the story first.

There is also teleport to a friend, I think that would work to get your alts into the map without doing the story at all, so long as you have a friend willing to go stand still in a safe place for a minute or so. I don’t know for sure, though, since I tend to leap into new story on the first day to get ahead of spoilers.

Vegeta.2563:

Neural.1824:

Vegeta.2563:

I really hope the map doesn’t die out because of this. I can already picture the event being less occupied once the patch releases. Maybe a few runs to test it out to see how it is after the change, but probably not much after that.

The majority will simply move to the next most profitable spot unless a new map is introduced. In which case the newest map will be busy for weeks, until people have the newest trinkets to show off, and will then go back to farming the next most profitable spot. This is what happens when you run your entire game on principle of scarcity.

The most profitable is obviously Silverwastes in this case, and that can be farmed 24/7 no down time. However I’m pretty interested in the leather farming stuff, but kinda bummed you need a group to do it. I’m more of a solo player and like to do things on my own most of the time.

I’m hoping that what it means is you need other players around, not that you need to party up and go in an instance a’la dungeons/fractals. Possibly it will require active motion to avoid afk farmers, and won’t be easily done without other players, but you shouldn’t be required to be in a group or squad to have a chance at leather. Here’s hoping.

ThomasC.1056:

Hello,

I’ve got another small suggestion for shared inventory slots.
I use it for my unlimited mining tool. When I go to the hero panel, I see I can equip the tool from inventory, as other gear I have.

But I can’t put back the mining tool back in the shared slot from the hero panel, so unequipping it requires to open both the inventory and hero panel.

My suggestion is : put the empty shared inventory slots in the hero panel so that any item you unequip can be send to it.

The solution here is to keep a cheap normal tool on the character. Double clicking the infinite tool in the shared slot swaps them out. When you want to switch alts, you double click the normal tools in your shared slots to restore the infinite ones to shared. No need to open the hero panel.

clump dump.1863:

Mike O Brien.4613:

This release won’t include a skill balance update. As we did last time, we’ll ship the next skill balance update off-cycle from Living World releases.

Wait.. so this means that there won’t be a balance patch until after February? Or is one coming soon

“Off-cycle” doesn’t mean “after,” it means “not at the same time.” So if they have the balance patch ready a week before or after a story release, that’s when it comes out, it’s not tied to the story patches.

Rejoice in wrongness, Was Na!

Ember Bay and Bloodstone Fen can both be accessed via the portal scroll on alts that have not done the story /pats her seaweed farm fondly. Only one alt needs to do the story to get there first.

My shared slots have so darn many portal scrolls in them ><

I was sort of hoping to have the focus in this thread be on feedback as to the strengths and weaknesses of the Rox outfit, not head into the armor/outfits debate. That’s why I offered constructive criticism on dye channel assignment.

Does anyone else have feedback that might help the devs/designers make better outfits in the future? Clearly outfits are here to stay for a good long while, so let’s at least try to get ones we want to wear. And if you don’t want to wear them, cool beans, just please weigh in on the threads that cover that topic. Thanks

I do like this outfit, though I could do without the male butt cape and huge shoulders. But that’s subjective.

Objectively, I think I have figured out why it’s hard to get a good looking male dye combo on this: The butt cape and the metal fittings, most especially the knee guards, share a dye channel. This means that the same dye must apply to both cloth and metal, and it’s proving difficult to select dyes that look equally good on both. Thus it limits the selection and variety of hues. Beyond that, one might want a colorful cloth drape while sticking with natural metallics for the knee armor, so it tends to come to a choice of which one will look good at the expense of the other.

While probably the dye channels cannot be redone on a released outfit, please in future consider not just the distribution of blocks of color but also what materials will share a channel. I think it’ll make a real difference.

Randulf is right. We have NPCs in DR that from day one have been going on about their grandma’s Canthan recipes they’d kill to taste again. That hasn’t been a hint, just in game lore that Cantha once was reachable and now is not.

The most solid hint has been the world map on the Hidden Arcana library floor that does include Cantha along with places brand new to everyone. Even so, this is very much not a breath-holder.

You might have to finish out the whole episode before you can replay parts of it?

But don’t worry, you can just take a second alt through the first part of the story and head back to the box at the south end. That’s how I got that one, since I always play the new chapters through “blind” the first time, so I don’t know about achieves.

Zintrothen.1056:

Can we get character specific keybinds?

I’ve got no problem with this so long as we can have a “global” column so those of us that want the keybinds to apply to all characters don’t have to specifically set up binds every time we make an alt.

Heck, I try to have similar keybinds across games, so my muscle memory keeps working. Having to track variations in the same game would hopelessly confuse me. So it’s a royal pain when my keybinds get reset and I have to go tappy tappy tappy down the list putting them back as desired. I really don’t want to have to do that for each of 20 or more alts.

One point to be clear on so you don’t get frustrated: Once you set the preference, it doesn’t kick in until the next weekly reset which will be on a Monday. So set it today or you’ll be stuck another week.

It’s not an exploit. Note the “neither was wrong” part of the quote. ANet just meant for both to be needed for the recipes, they left something out, they’re altering the recipes to match the design they wanted, and they are kindly letting people know that they are making the recipes more expensive in the near future in case they want to push production under the current design so as to save on the upcoming price hike.

Nor did this error on ANet’s part in the released version mean that players were somehow making legendaries with ease for free; it’s a relatively minor tweak when you consider the overall costs.

There are several options. I use the one where tapping the skill gets me a green circle and I can move my cursor around to select where it lands, then I mouse click to fire it. I think. It’s all so smooth and seamless I don’t actually keep track mentally of the actions I need to fire ground targets. Also I have snap to target so I don’t even need to place the green circle so long as I have a target (I hotkeyed the toggle for that so when I have to place the circle elsewhere or am on an alt that wants to place barriers between me and the mob I can on the fly swap methods). With snap, cursor position doesn’t matter at all.

There can’t be a later date version of that linked thread It’s the current stickied thread and it tends to be updated within 15-30 minutes after the gem store changes listings. The last post in it is about the currently available Silver-Fed.

windyweather.1238:

Ok. So whatever AFAIK means.

As Far As I Know.

It’s a pretty old acronym, far older than this game and fairly broadly used. Which doesn’t mean everyone knows it, of course, but it’s of a vintage with imo (in my opinion), imho (in my humble opinion), and iirc (if I recall correctly).

They’re not 100% useless. They will at least -buy- things from you that you want to vendor. But yeah, they should expand their inventory.

The past couple of years I could reliably get a jackpot vendor item every few days at least, so my gold only rose. This year, even buying a few extras on the TP, I’ve gotten not one jackpot of any sort.

RNG is a meanie pants.

The Jaka Itzel farm is much more relaxing. No aggro beyond an occasional mob blast that the Itzel guards take care of, all the plants in close proximity, a lot faster to get to, a convenient ledge to park alts on. So much speedier! Which matters when you cycle 20 alts through the farm … I should do that again, I haven’t been building up my flax lately and the guild hall needs linseed oil.

It doesn’t sound pathetic at all. I don’t know that they would alter game design that drastically, much as people have lobbied against the WvW requirement since the change (and before the change, there was at least a WvW exploration requirement). I got my one and only Gift of Battle the old way and it will be a concern if I ever make a second Legendary, to be sure. For me, mostly because I don’t get that much kill credit on my rare forays into the maps.

But that leads me to ask — does track advancement come only from killing players, or does it come from overall participation in WvW? If you don’t have issues with attacking NPC’s, perhaps you can go capture ruins points, or attack unattended guards and supply depots, and if other players show up you run away. Or just stand there, let them kill you while you keep your eyes shut, then waypoint out. It’d likely be slower progress than dropping aoe on zergs, but you’d avoid the trigger of dealing the blows.

If all else fails, it may not satisfy as much as fully crafting it for yourself, but you can farm up gold doing the parts of the game that don’t fire up the PTSD and buy a legendary (not a HoT one) off the TP.

Thank you for your service, whichever country it was for. I hope something gets you your legendary of choice.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

There was an announcement a while back the Anet had a small team working on the new exspantion, not sure where this was but I’m positive it was official

Small? Try 70 people. It was in the AMA from around the time Colin left and possibly on these forums in the foo fah rah surrounding the legendary stoppage.

Sometimes I find it really fun. Those are the times when my team knows what it’s doing, sticks together, and properly focuses down the other side.

Other times, like tonight, it sucks so badly I actually get put off playing GW2. I went in for my 2 sessions for the daily, with a vague intent of sticking it out if I got some wins, only to be mostly on understrength teams that were up against a team sticking together. My team got 0 points despite having no afkers. I was doing my best to gather my power ups and stick with at least one team mate but nothing worked and it was far too one sided.

I would have found it almost as bad to be on a winning team against a 0 score, but at least that would have advanced me towards 10 wins. As it is, in 5 rounds played I have 0 wins, 2 interrupts, 1 stealth, and 100 points health healed, and nice as the AP would be from the achieves I don’t have the heart to go for them. I got them in previous years anyway.

I’m not a pvper. I’m willing to pvp when I must, but I want an even match when I do. So no, tonight I was firmly on the zero fun side of Dragonball opinion.

The random rare weapon drops from black lion chests are now the Crimson Lion and Phoenix skins. Complete RNG as to if you get one and which one that would be, and of course you have to gather keys one way or another, and to me they are hideously overwrought clunky skins, but hey, it’s something.

Decorating zeal seems to have overwhelmed the makeover NPC. She has perhaps been built into a pillar of the Lunar decor in the Royal Terrace.

Could you maybe bring out her assistant to stand around near her spot during the festival so we can still daydream up new looks? Sure we can go to LA for it … but that’s a heck of a lot of extra load screens and running about. The Royal Terrace already lacks an Activity NPC, it’s just mean to further reduce its functionality compared to othe locations.

I feel your pain, but I think it’s intrinsic to the outfit system. So here’s my workaround:

I keep a Word document listing all my alts alphabetically, and under each one I list each outfit they ever might wear. I add the preferred dye scheme for that outfit for that alt (going upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right in list order of dyes). Some dye schemes do work well across a number of outfits, it turns out. But if not, I just cue up that document when I want a different outfit on the alt for a bit and use the dye search feature in the hero panel to quickly find and apply the relevant four dyes. I also put a * in front of the outfits that really work for that alt.

So for example,
Lord Arlos Victor
*Fancy Winter – Scarlet, Caramel, Cinders, Tarnished Silver
Monk – Lemon Tint, Glint’s Isolation, Shadow Red, Glint’s Isolation
*Noble Count – Enameled Crimson, White Gold, Midnight Gold, Antique Gold
Royal Guard – Flare, Pyre, Enameled Crimson, Glint’s Isolation
Sentinel — Lemon Tint, Glint’s Isolation, Crimson Lion, Glint’s Isolation
*Wedding — Enameled Crimson, White Gold, Shadow Abyss, Antique Gold
White Mantle – Celestial, Ruby, Flare, Matriarch Brass (richer version of default)

And it sounds like at least an implication that Episode 4 will indeed have a map. As expected based on their desire to add a map with each episode.

I’ve called them stat combinations all along. As in, if someone asks “what is a good stat combo?” I will instantly think in terms of the prefixes such as those you list, rather than a balance of stats on the Hero Panel.

Linthenius.3704:

Thanks a ton for the bags. Guess i’ll start working on tailoring so I can make my own in the future.

It doesn’t have to be tailoring. Leatherworkers and armorsmiths can also make bags (out of leather and metal, respectively) that do the exact same things. Armorsmith might be your best bet simply because the raw mats are far more reliably gathered.

Tiefsee.3647:

Gryphon.2875:

3. “Invisible Chest” – like the invisible boots, but for gems.

Make it a compleat invisible clothes set! (Including stuff that can be hidden) and make it expensive (gold, gems, makes no difference)

And in case it becomes a great gold sink, add a title “Emperor” with the achiefment name “Emperors new clothes” (and give an invissible backpiece as achiefment reward)

Alas, they cannot do that. Well, they could, but it would be confusing since you can already get the “Emperor” title for buying enough cultural armor. How about “Invisible” as the title instead? Or “Clearly Fashionable” perhaps? (I am not for or against your base idea, but wanted to point out the title conflict).

A very nice and talented guild mesmer got me the dive achieve last night and by his reports yes, yes they are still quite buggy. Thanks to this thread I was able to relay drunkenpilot’s hint about moving during the launch so the mesmer could handle a pair of sync’d cogs and get the group to the diving platform.

(His “reports” being an implied stream of cussing on the subject as he got badly cogged over and over — certainly wasn’t l2p on his part, he’s a genius jumper who can get up top in the JP in a few minutes and also had just brilliantly and quickly led us through the LA rooftop JP before the divemaster run).

No brainer for me to get the three new slots! I was able to restore my consumable bank passes to shared (got edged out by portal scrolls) along with an eater, and I have an empty slot for quick swaps of items that I will cheerfully fill if I ever get a permanent hair stylist. Which given my lack of any precursor drops ever despite playing regularly since launch and my relatively low consumption of bl keys ain’t ever happening (I’ve been trying to save up … got around 700 gold now … not even close to enough). But I’ll keep hoping

And then we’d need the fractal armor concepted over on Reddit to match the weapons to …
https://np.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5jwlpq/fractal_armor_concept_light/
http://peterprime.deviantart.com/art/Fractal-Armor-Concept-652283747?ga_submit_new=10%253A1482243945
https://np.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5kct9r/fractal_armor_concept_heavy/

(found via the reddit best of 2016 gw2 threads post)

I have the same mental dissonance with going full Dragonhunter — bow works at range, traps work at your feet. There’s no synergy, no intuitive flow like with Reaper GS/Shouts.

Sure you don’t have to fully equip everything an elite has to offer, but shouldn’t it all work well together if you do?

Also they have hammocks for beds. While there are certainly many other things to do in a bed than sleep, the most obvious of those is rather trickier to accomplish in a hammock … >.> Thus suggesting the hammocks are for sleep

No no no, I didn’t mean odd in a bad way, I just meant I’d almost forgotten that NPCs used them during instances just as much as PCs did. I miss the animations, they spawned a whole disadvantage part of RP for my human necro as she has a bad back (thanks to large chest + tiny waist) and the idles were her stretches to relieve it

This video has been a trip down memory lane in small matters as well as big story.

Ah yes, I commented to a friend while watching it that it was odd to see Jennah and Anise using the old female human animations

I have a related question that I meant to post but seems to fit in here.

What’s the effect right now on politics in DR? Since the NPC commentary there is frozen in time as of game launch, it’s hard to know whether the Ministry is reeling, what in-fighting is going on, what the Crown is doing, etc.

I have a slow-motion RP going with a villain who is a high placed Minister with a pro-humans-anti-charr Ascalonian agenda. He’s distanced enough from Caudecus not to go down with him … but I would like to stay as canon as possible and it’s difficult when the game isn’t telling us all these ramifications. I have another NPC who is an aide to a Minister that sides with the Crown’s right to rule.

How are Ministers affected in terms of their influence, their holdings, and the like? What kind of jockeying is going on for the Legate position? How much credence is being given to the posters — is anyone asserting that there’s no proof Caudecus wrote those flyers, that it’s a huge smear campaign?

And will we get civil war in the streets of the Reach? Or is that too upsetting to the game’s starting experience?