Guild Wars 2

That’s one reason (of many) they can’t introduce flying, same way WoW couldn’t until they redesigned the original zones. Background buildings that aren’t meant to be seen close up will be incomplete, mis-sized, missing back sides, etc.

I really do wish we had a city’s worth of housing to explore and use. DR clearly has room for a tremendous population but most of it’s in the Hollywood facade you just found.

I am on TC and I never object to being added. Pestered, that’s another thing But I’m happy to chat and help as needed.

I do RP. It’s been sparse over the holidays but my guild is for RP, we do adventures and shenanigans. Of my 12 characters, 4 have strong plotlines and 2 more cameo in RP as needed. (Ok, I have 13 characters, but one is a low level shill made for a guildmate’s RP, he’s her nemesis villain and isn’t for actual game play).

If someone walks up and RP talks at me I’m likely to drop into character and hang out with them, so long as it’s not moment before logout/bedtime or a guild dungeon run etc. In which case I’ll /w them with an explanation.

Btw I mentioned the guild restriction because your OP said you wanted to start your own, so I was cautioning you that you wouldn’t access its stuff while guesting.

Ah. No, there’s tons of ooc stuff happening and many people that don’t even know how RP works. It’s just that you can find RP whenever you want it and the world remain well populated thanks to all the RPers who also happen to rock PvE and WvW. Map chat is always ooc, and the stuff near the DR bank is … not representative.

What I meant was that one can’t start an account on a full server. So people wanting to get on TC had to be up at 3 or 4 am spamming refresh on the login page hoping for that magical moment when they wouldn’t be blocked. I had one guild mate accidentally transfer away in … October? 2012 and it took her a solid week to get back to us. I think ANet’s fixed that, I’ve not seen any posts for a long time asking about how to get onto TC.

Also you can only guest to two servers per 24 hours.

It’s useful not just for RP. If you really need an open temple, you can check temple timer pages to see who has it open, get nearby (not in aggro) and log over to that server, do your business, then again get to a safe place to log back home.

Restrictions are you can’t WvW while guesting, and your guild bank and benefits are localized to your home server so you can’t get at those either.

You can scan the wiki for lore, and ask oocly in game to clarify some points. Also you don’t have to transfer to TC to hop over for RP. My guild has some members from other servers that join us just to RP. Guesting is nice and simple (just don’t accidentally hit the transfer button when using the feature).

Check on guildwars2roleplayers.com for tons of threads on lore, too.

For a long time getting TC as your home meant camping out in the wee hours and waiting for a slim chance at an opening. I’m not sure what you mean by “prominent” in this context — we’re well known, yes, and in WvW we hover at a point where we win if in Tier 2 and lose if in Tier 1. We have tremendous zergs on most world events, we killed Tequatl many times during Boss Week.

There is RP all over, especially in DR Rurikton where you had better have a high capability for sorting out your conversation from all the other chatter in earshot, with assignations, crimes, mystery solving, scavenger hunts, theatrical productions, etc.

Map chat is generally lively in any frequented zone. There’s a server Mumble that hosts ungodly amounts of speakers, far more than I has any idea Mumble could encompass.

TC has been a boomtown since beta. Is that what you were asking?

JayVisco.5310:

Any suggestions for a good looking medium armor hood?

The only true hood is from thief starter armor. You can make a thief and transmute the hood onto a white item for your norn there to pick up.

The CoE dungeon helm is a ninja-ish hood as is the Duelist hat available on TP. With a small amount of WvW badges you can buy the Lionguard Tricorn in your server borderlands at the vendor near port in. The Order of Whispers hood might suit you too. If you’re not in Whispers, you need an alt in it who can buy the hood and do the transmute trick mentioned above.

You don’t have to spend a single gem. Explore a couple of cities for 3 stones each (you can even just create alts to explore an easy one like DR repeatedly and delete the alt after putting the stones in your bank). Find armor you want that isn’t level 80 and use the stones to put it on your gear. I recommend only doing that every 10 levels or so and just putting up with bad looks for a few levels now and then since you replace gear so frequently.

Note, if you just started you might not have the money for the fancier looks yet. Over time you’ll be wealthy enough that any new alt can get the pricier pieces for looks.

Very High means number of accounts.

For RP you want Tarnished Coast, it’s been the unofficial RP server since Beta.

For WvW, hmm. I don’t play that much, but I see that Blackgate and Fort Aspenwood have hard hitting presence there. Blackgate’s also quite organized about things like Tequatl kills. (All from partial knowledge, I claim no personal experience of anything but Tarnished Coast).

I can say that TC is very friendly despite a few trolls here and there. And you’ll find people pretty much anywhere you go in the world, with so many of them in popular spots you’ll be in overflow before you know it.

Happy New Year from the Washington DC area! Where I am blissfully listening to the Vienna Concert live via WETA.org Listen Live. It makes me want waltzing in Tyria, and tuxes and ballgowns, so much.

RP’s a huge part! Then again I’m on Tarnished Coast, home to thousands of RPers.

It turns out that making and growing a guild isn’t terribly hard. I just did it for some extra storage, made my own solo guild. The only scary part is that Leave Guild is a button right next to Represent Guild. If I ever misclick while swapping over to access the bank, I’ll have lost a lot of time and money.

However, influence will come in very slowly with just one or two members (unless you have a ton of gold) and building things takes not only influence but time — when you want to build something, it can be a week before it’s available for use. Since you have to build one stage, then build the items that stage allows, then build the next stage, it can be a few weeks before you have the initial basics.

I believe that Mages can trait to have something castable while moving, but it’s far from being every ability. So yes, they can cast -something-. Not nearly to the extent one can in GW2 where channeling is the exception. /looks at Guardian Heal Elite 4 and 5

Curae captured my feelings exactly. While I’ve felt a little more tedium lately, that’s due to most of my guild vanishing for the holidays so the RP’s been scarce. But my attempt to go to my old game of 7 years failed inside an hour right after GW2 launched. I’m hardly a twitch reflex gamer and yet the action level in combat here and the clean UI keep me engrossed and feeling effective.

I’ll be trying out TESO, mostly because I have a good friend working on it and I will always support his projects. Also I did like Skyrim until a game killing bug stuck me in a town. I just hope I can handle the game mechanics after GW2 tailor made itself to everything I like.

Ha! Is that another Indy skeleton?

There must be some meta joke in the attachment’s missing status leaving the rest of your post blank white.

Ok, now it’s showing but goes to a page full of errors when I try to open it.

I think my necro is my best at aoe. At least at tagging. Drop down expanded marks via staff, watch the numbers swarm like bees. Then there’s the elite plague, mix that with epidemic, my goodness. Ele will be the game best at AoE and at sharing it (Fiery Greatswords for all!); I just don’t play Ele to say it’s -my- best.

Ah, when you said you had played it before I thought you meant in this game. You should test run a necromancer in the Mists against target dummies. I don’t know how different they are from GW1 as I never played that game; still, it seems likely the feel will be quite different as some base game mechanics are unique to 2. Also you can run very different styles of necromancer, avoiding minions entirely if desired.

The colors follow a different progression from WoW, btw. From lowest to highest they go

White
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Pink/Purple (not sure whether Pink Ascended should go before or after Purple Legendary).

You’d lose the Ascended look. That’s the point, some people like the look. You asked why keep multiple things around for looks and put it in terms of “profit.” I’m not into profit, I’m into RP. So my thief has the monocle, conquest hat, and starter hood, all put on exotics with identical stats and rune so I can swap around without worrying that I’ll forget when heading into combat. One of my guildies routinely forgot to put on weapons before a fight since in RP she didn’t carry them around and that’s far more noticeable than having a cheap white item on your head.

I made the Light coat and skirt for my necro who isn’t even doing Fractals, because they look good on her. That didn’t mean I wanted to overwrite her previous combat gear with the Ascended items — it included some skins she’d wear just to go to a party or a bar or to meet someone to chat.

As to altering stats on armor if using something outside one’s profession: Isn’t that vertical? Or at least fiendishly hard to make sure no min-maxer can get a definite boost or advantage from it? This CDI is about expanding experience without changing power levels.

I’m all for more ways to dress up. I’m not so much into having to wonder if I’ve just crippled myself by putting on the wrong thing.

I’m not sure how I feel about mix and match, other than wanting it to be equal, none of this “heavy gets it all” stuff.

However, given the mesh issues, a solution would be to design skins that look like other weights but are designated for specific ones. We’ve seen that can be done with dragon bash helms, grenth hoods, and so on. The Aether light chest on men looks like a heavy vest.

That fits right in with all our requests for more and more and more skins.

Many people complain about the game not being alt friendly. Those stones are in fact very alt friendly — I shove them in my bank and never worry about spending them on looks for new alts. I love how easy they are to get.

They’re only useless if you have only 80s who will only wear level 80 stuff.

Not exactly. There are two types of PvP: World vs. World and Structured PvP.

In WvW you keep the same stuff on you wear in PvE. You can customize it to fit your needs. You’re scaled up to 80 but you have the same gear, skills, and traits, so a “real” 80 will have a huge advantage over someone who is actually only 10. (Plus more experience in playing their role).

In sPvP you get default armor, weapons, and sigils/runes. You can swap them out for free at the vendors. Different armor can be found/bought but is purely cosmetic for skins. In that you join an arena on a team. You don’t pick your team mates from match to match, or your team color. Everyone has the same power level, in order to make things skill based.

Another way of saying that is they didn’t limit those skins, they made them as a special reward for people that played the first game.

You can still get the skins, you just have to load and play GW1. To this day I have not found it worth doing that, after making a conscious choice pre-beta not to get a game to grind out points just to look prettier in another game. I was so sick of WoW grind after seeing the Manifesto that I simply couldn’t stomach figuring out GW1 and pushing for points.

Anyway it’s sort of like the inscribed gold watch given a worker who is retiring after 50 years. Any other worker wanting that watch has to put in the fifty years. One doesn’t get a 1st place bowling trophy by playing golf, either …

Ah, but what if you want to keep both skins and use them as the mood strikes you? Some of my characters will always be in the same outfit. More of them will dress to suit the occasion, because c’mon, not only do you sometimes want formal and sometimes casual, sometimes stealthy and sometimes intimidating, you also need to do laundry at times I get more immersion and variety from having a choice of looks.

You probably want this in Players Helping Players.

Race plays no role other than flavor, though some racial skills might complement one profession better than another (albeit weakly, they are meant not to be as strong as universal skills).

Guardian — can do good DPS if played right, but is far more oriented to support. I find it super fun in dungeons with all the boons and stripping of conditions, plus an Elite heal that takes the whole party to full health. I can stay alive when everyone else has wiped. But then I can’t do a darn bit of good against the boss, so I have to suicide. Anyway, if DPS/AOE is your wish, you might find Guardian lacking.

Elementalist — This can do a whole lot of amazing stuff. You have to be good, though. You have to dance through all four attunements and know 20 different skills and when to use them. If you trait towards healing you’ll lose out on DPS. Commonly agreed to be the hardest profession to master; if you don’t master it you’ll be the squishiest person around. My Ele is my lowest level alt (she’s next up to push to 80, but she’s only 40 or so) because I got frustrated with taking 45 minutes to struggle through content another alt could punish in 5 minutes. I know the game better, now, and I think I’ll play her more effectively. Still, be ready to die a lot.

Engineer — I get the feeling you love or hate this one. I’m pushing mine to 80 now (got him to 70) but only flamethrower feels effective. Plus you have to keep hitting utility keys to swap out weapons (well, kits), so there’s a lot of reaching around the keyboard. It’s the most “piano playing” profession. If I didn’t enjoy spending game time leveling alts, he’d never reach 80. He won’t be used in dungeons etc either, so he’s going on the shelf except for Norn rp sessions. Note also that it’s harder to customize an Engineer’s look as kits all look the same for all of them and kits replace backpieces and shields.

These are all very subjective opinions. Every profession appeals greatly to many and repels many as well. And every profession can be shaped to whatever role you want, albeit with greater difficulty for some.

A minor digression from general commentary into something specific that could be done very quickly afaik (though maybe something odd would make it harder):

Titles mentioned in game that we don’t get should be added. What springs to mind is Champion of Orr, promised in a cutscene at the end of the PS. Why not give a title for completing the PS? Or for other lore achievements? Titles seem darn easy to add, they just need to check that the account has met the checklist of requirements and add it to the drop down menu. Characters are awarded ranks in their Order, why don’t we have some memorialization of that?

Tome of Knowledge does drop for PvE. Maybe just in Black Lion Chests? I dunno, I have a few in my bank waiting for the unusual circumstance where I want to advance a level fast and I don’t do sPvP. or very much WvW. Most of my game play right now involves leveling alts (I enjoy that) so speeding it up is no use to me.

I’m against items that speed level you in a game that is already amazingly fast. It took me years in WoW to get a few 80’s. In a bit over a year of GW2 I have 10 80s, mostly geared in exotics, and am heading for my 11th and 12th before I must buy another slot to start someone new. I think people should spend -some- time learning the skills and builds.

One advantage of the hair kit is that it has 3 new hairstyles at the front that you can’t get in creation, along with some new colors (though they tend to be very blue or purple). The new Norn female ones are really nice.

I stand corrected. I know I saw a blog post saying Dec 23, must have been for some other sale.

There’s no telling. Some items have come back for short sales, including on the game anniversary (late August). Sometimes there’s a little heads up, sometimes you have to just notice it in the Promotions section of the gem shop.

Keep your eye open, spot check now and then, watch the Black Lion part of the forums as Dulfy usually posts a thread about new items when they arrive. Maybe you’ll get lucky one day.

I’ve had the feeling those wings aren’t part of the being, but are technological additions to aid in underwater mobility. Artistically they are substandard for ANet (see! I can criticize!). In the cut scenes they angle unrealistically, one forward and one aft. On land they are far too stiff. They seem more crude in texture than they should, as well.

If I were redesigning the Largos, I’d ditch the manta wings unless they could much more organically flow with the character.

Lore question: Have we got anything at all about the origin of Largos? From GW1, books, or GW2? Beyond the PS commentary, that is, which amounts to “almost no one’s heard of them, they are mysterious people who live for the hunt in an assassiney sort of way and they stay mostly underwater.” I think they’d have normal enough faces under the masks, possibly normal voices without the filtering, and a regular bipedal humanoid form. At least as pictured in the PS. The suggestions in this thread which turn them into truly aquatic/amphibious creatures make them much more interesting.

No need to sift, just do a fast scroll down to the Wintersday symbol. Takes under 2 seconds once you are in the panel.

I did that twice. But the sale’s over, it ended Dec 23.

There is a Total Makeover Kit. Now that you know how the look varies from the preview you can adjust for that.

In beta we learned that to keep proportional you wanted to increase the head size on shorter characters and decrease it on taller ones, so as to keep the head normal looking. Unfortunately, the shorter characters get uniformly scaled down so they look like miniatures, rather than just losing some height. Human head sizes don’t vary that much! It’s why it seems childlike to have a big head (see chibis); children get the head size before the body grows to fit.

Anyway, the Makeover still does it via preview (and seems a bit vertically squashed) but it does let you fix things in game without remaking the alt. It even gives you three new faces and hairstyles along with new hair colors.

When you right click a party portrait, one of the things you can click is to kick them from the guild. Apparently this has accidentally happened to more than one person. So the OP is asking that option be only accessed via the guild menu.

I agree, there’s no need to do it from a party interface.

There are two helm skins (Grenth and Stag) available in the gem store for the next few days only. You choose whether to make them PvE or PvP when you first use them and can apply them to any armor weight. 500 gems each.

There are a few champions that get slain in rotation (not always smoothly, as some people ignore the order). Keep map chat open, ask where the train is, and go there. You’ll want a few waypoints open because you have to zip around to the locations. The ones you’ll most easily get to are Troll (Vale wp, go into the cave), Boar (near the Hunting Lodge, down towards the water on a low ridge, you get some breathing time at that location), Oak (Phinney Ridge wp, run into the little autumnal valley), and Spider (wp near the Monastery, run towards the Hunting Lodge and veer right up a steep hill). Usually after Troll people will charge into the bandit caverns for Bandit, it’s a longish run and he dies fast once triggered.

Alternatively you can go do 5 bosses in Kessex, I think they count as champions. I might be wrong on that, they could be the next step up.

It’s horizontal because it adds things for characters to do without increasing power level. It’s progression of play overall, not just of combat.

edit: People post so fast, I should be quoting the one to which I’m responding ><

I would help for free except I myself can’t get there. When the puzzle came out I did it in a zerg and there were portals everywhere, but I failed the goggles jump every time. I went with my guild more recently on an RP adventure but only two of us made it to the chest and I wasn’t one of them; none of us went to the goggles.

So while I could mesmer aid in short parts, I couldn’t get up to the goal and then make a portal for you at the bottom. I’d be just as dead as you Nor could I lead you because I don’t know the path.

I’d change your title from Petition to Request. You aren’t asking for signatures from other players.

It’s semantics, but since actual petition threads are against the rules you’re better safe than sorry.

Behellagh’s final point is the key one. You don’t need to rush! Leveling will happen, and as it does you’ll get into higher dungeons and the like, but this game is designed to be the same the whole way through. In fact once you are 80 you’ll keep leveling at the same rate, it’ll just stay at 80 but give you a skill point each time. They put levels in the game purely because early alpha testers got all queasy about not having them.

The Personal Story (PS) is a supplement. A lot of people don’t do it at all.

In PvE you level by doing. Gather every node (it’s there just for you, you aren’t stealing from anyone). Explore every corner, get waypoints, points of interest, vistas. Do the heart conditions. Craft a bit if you want. If events appear on the map (orange circles), get to them and do whatever the text says the goal is (upper right of your screen).

In WvW you also do events, but these are sieges on keeps, escorts of supply dolyaks, and the like. With other players, geared as level 80, trying to kill you.

Anyway, if you do everything in a zone you are likely to outlevel it by the end. You can go back to the PS later when you have more skills and knowledge. Also you can group up for it, if a friend wants to help you do it.

Speaking of progressing titles, I’m not sure I mentioned this in this thread though I did make a thread just for it.

Why not progress meta titles year to year? The “Journeyman Toymaker” seemed custom made to be the title earned the second year one did Wintersday. So people from last year would now have Apprentice and Journeyman, whereas those starting this year would only have Apprentice. That might not allow for infinite progression, but if one went Apprentice > Journeyman > Master > Grandmaster then maybe that’s all one needs, showing 4 years of play. Or there could be additional adjectives? Grandmaster Toymaker Extraordinaire?

Just one sample of progression over time that could be done with titles, so everyone can eventually get all in the chain but the higher end ones are still rare.

There are no cast bars in this game. The big animations are a key, as is glowing, or extra particle effects. Mostly you sort of learn what each monster does and look for that sort of motion as a cue to dodge or block.

Swagger, those are mechanics alterations. Whatever their merits, I think they more properly belong in Suggestions — this thread is for brainstorming ways to broaden our character experience through game play, as in, adding stuff that enriches game time but does not change power level.

Though I suppose asking for additional buttons to press might count. To that I’ll say I wouldn’t feel broadened, I’d feel cluttered. I love the simple but flexible design we have right now.

It does get better, but you’ll also find that alts you make later find the content simpler because the game mechanics become instinctive to you. I can zip along in any profession from the start now and do pretty well even a level or two above my own. I always have an escape plan, though, such as stealth or swiftness or rooting foes while I flee in fear, and I try to unlock the nearest waypoint before diving into tough combat.

You don’t want to take on a pile of mobs that outrank you. You want to pull the singles and pairs from the edges and work your way slowly. Some NPCs will help, so if you can pull near gate guards that reduces your pain.

You can however transmute them onto new items. Until you have level 80 items, you can use transmutation stones (which you get 3 of for completing any city’s exploration, and they come in many other ways as well. You can farm them by making/deleting alts to explore DR, that being the fastest city to complete imo, but regular play should make that unnecessary). Once a level 80 item is involved, you must use a transmutation crystal, which is harder to get.

Important: Using transmutation combines 2 items into 1 new item with your choice of skins, stats, and upgrade from each item. The 2 old ones vanish. So don’t transmute away a rare skin you like, use a statted item of dull appearance to put your special look on.

Once you’re used to GW2 it may prove very hard to tolerate other game systems. I have some guildies who tried out the new Final Fantasy and reported their dismay on realizing they’d kill-stealed because they went to help someone else fight a mob.

You might want to look through
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/first
to get a lot of info on how the game works. It’s stickied in Players Helping Players.