Guild Wars 2

Depending on your profession you may have a skill available to you that allows you to teleport, bypassing the more difficult jumps altogether as long as you don’t mind waiting for your cooldown. I know that, at the very least, Mesmers, Thieves, and Elementalists can do this.

On the topic of Zhaitan being undead and possibly rising again. I haven’t done multiple personal story paths and haven’t even completely finished my own yet, so I could be mistaken on some parts that haven’t been revealed to me yet…. but during the battle for For Trinity, I do remember that we have a Krait water orb that somehow prevents the Risen from…. rising again. Assuming Zhaitan ever had the power to reanimate himself, then wouldn’t this orb prevent it from happening at all? If it can stop him from rising minions then it’s not a big leap to assume it would stop him from rising himself.

I did acknowledge them. When I disagreed with them and explained how I didn’t agree they were significant advantages. They’re only an advantage if the best gear in the game is difficult to earn. Exotics are anything but and Ascended gear acquisition is in flux. Like I said, I’m not seeing it. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you didn’t try to convince me.

Yeah, it’s a shame it had to be made personal. I was liking the discussion.

Like I said, I’m not opposed to changing how they’re earned. I’m just not seeing how they’re some huge advantage.

Tomkatt.1684:

Ehra.5240:

No. Most, if not all, of the profession specific starting gear have unique skins that can’t be found anywhere else. With the newest blog post, I’m hoping that the new chests being added that have profession specific gear will have these skins included to help out the people who trashed them without understanding how rare they are.

Umm…this is flat out wrong.

Yes, this was pointed out. I thought of editing my post to speculate about whether transmuting would work after I made it, but someone had already confirmed it by then.

Although it is still technically true that you can’t get that skin with that same character. Not everyone has a free charater slot

Firegoth.6427:

Risingashes.8694:

the rewards seem to be cosmetic only.

I wouldn’t call obsidian shards or gear packs cosmetic.

The post also mentioned that Ascended gear and Infusions will be purchasable with the tokens.

critickitten.1498:

Now let’s see if you can take the next step and ask yourself: Then why are they using WoW’s design structure for their game?

They aren’t. I just explained some pretty massive ways that this game’s structure is different from WoW’s. Your one, entire example is something that I already commented on in my post and which Anet has already agreed is an issue and is working on a solution to. I’m not expecting you to pat them on the back for working on the issue, I’m expecting you to not act like nothing’s being done about it and things will still be the way they are now whenever the next expansion comes out.

Level cap raises that come with newer and better gear, most of which will be acquired only by playing in the new regions provided by that expansion.

Except that’s not how this game works. A level 80 going back to a low level area can still get high level loot drops. There’s no reason to think that will suddenly stop once we reach level 85 or 90.

I’m happy to have a real discussion with you on this subject provided we’re willing to be realistic. But this discussion is about fixing legendaries, so that’s a discussion best held elsewhere.

The comments I’m replying to are being made in this thread. If you didn’t want people to comment on the topic of how much of an advantage Legendaries are or whether they were a bait and switch then why would you yourself start that discussion? I’m not going to stop replying to comments I want to reply to just because you don’t like seeing them in the thread.

And I really don’t see how “is it unfair for Legendaries to be able to scale wit the best gear?” is NOT relevant to the discussion of “fixing” Legendaries. How fair or unfair it is is entirely based on to how difficult it is to get the best gear in the game. The difficulty of acquiring exotics and Ascended items is directly tied to how much of an “advantage” having a Legendary weapon is. You can’t discuss one without the other.

critickitten.1498:

Let’s put this in context. If WoW had done this

This isn’t WoW. WoW is entirely about new, better gear. Every single new set of content the game adds comes with new, better gear. The best gear is exclusive to the top end instances in that game and can not be acquired by any other means than through doing those instances. Gear drops are also shared between everyone in the party or raid, rather than each individual getting their own loot. The two are not comparable.

Getting high end, non-legendary gear in this game is not difficult. It’s nowhere the time investment it is in WoW and it’s nowhere near the time investment you guys are implying. I don’t know how you expect people to take seriously the idea that getting a single exotic weapon is a huge time investment and thus earning a Legendary is a huge time/resource saver (especially when you account for the time/resources spent getting the Legendary in the first place). It just isn’t. Ascended gear is a point of contention since it can only be gotten through a single area in the game and Anet has already confirmed they are working on alternate methods of attaining them. We won’t know how that goes until later in the year.

And I’m not preventing anyone from having a discussion. I don’t have much of an opinion on changing how they are acquired and none of my posts have any barring on that topic at all. I don’t mind the current implementation but I wouldn’t be opposed to changes depnding on what they are. What I’m commenting on is the idea that there was some kind of bait and switch that went on with Legendaries, that they’re some kind of unfair advantage or that they’re in any way must haves. If you don’t want to take part in this particular discussion then don’t, no need to complain about it or act like I’m repressing anyone else’s speech.

Kusiobache.7203:

If I do, I save myself a lot of effort.

I think you’re vastly overestimating how difficult it is to get a single max level exotic weapon in this game. Ascended gear is in limbo since we currently don’t know enough about the future methods of acquiring them. But exotics are not hard to get and can be easily obtained, either through drops or by saving up enough gold to buy them, in a short enough time just by playing however you like playing. Especially since we’re talking about a single weapon.

The only “advantage” to having a legendary is that when you get that first exotic/ascended weapon after the level cap increase or whatever you can sell it rather than equip it. If you’re still playing the game after 5 years then you’ll have gotten so much money or had so many high end gear drop for you that it won’t matter.

And the problem with the “no grind” comments is that “grind” is really just a word people use to mean “I don’t like this.” Nothing that people actually enjoy doing is a grind, that’s fun. It’s only something people don’t like doing, and there isn’t anything that everyone enjoys. I’ve already had someone tell me that having to unlock waypoints is a grind. Legendaries are meant to be a big time and/or resource investment to obtain, whether that’s a “grind” or an “achievement” is entirely based on your enjoyment of what you’re doing.

Kusiobache.7203:

Ehra.5240:

critickitten.1498:

Legendaries are not purely aesthetic items.

Yes they are. Their stats will be exactly the same as Ascended weapons when they release, which means the only reason to get a Legendary over an Ascended weapon is because of its aesthetic.

But if I get legendary now, I don’t need an Ascended weapon. It has nothing to do with the skin; Legendaries are clearly the best weapons.

They are tied for best weapon. If you want to go through the effort of getting a Legendary then you don’t ever have to worry about replacing it. If you don’t want to then you can get whatever else is the best weapon and not be at any disadvantage. If you don’t want to do THAT then why do you feel you deserve to have the best stuff? Eventually you have to ask yourself why you even want the item, because it was a reward for playing a game you enjoy or because you like seeing your digital numbers go up.

Anet already knows that the current method of acquiring Ascended gear isn’t satisfying for a large portion of the playerbase which is why they have told use they are working on other ways of earning them. In fact, today’s 2013 update had a part where they said Ascended gear and Infusions will be purchasable with the tokens that will be granted for completing achievements.

critickitten.1498:

Legendaries are not purely aesthetic items.

Yes they are. Their stats will be exactly the same as Ascended weapons when they release, which means the only reason to get a Legendary over an Ascended weapon is because of its aesthetic.

Arguing otherwise simply because getting one now will save you from a hypothetical “grind” that won’t even be a concern until over a year from now is really silly. And even when considering that, it still in no way makes them a must have. It still doesn’t give a gameplay advantage, it just means that the first level 85 exotic or whatever weapon that they get will be sold instead of equipped. So unfair, I know, but I think everyone without will manage.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I wonder if you can use the old transmute trick. Create a new guardian, transmute that pauldron onto a white or blue item and make it account bound rather than soul.

That’d probably be your only chance at getting it if there is one. Unfortunately it isn’t an option for me since I decided to fill up all of my character slots on release day, banking on the assumption we’ll get GW1 style birthday presents. Unless, of course, I buy a character slot :P

No. Most, if not all, of the profession specific starting gear have unique skins that can’t be found anywhere else. With the newest blog post, I’m hoping that the new chests being added that have profession specific gear will have these skins included to help out the people who trashed them without understanding how rare they are.

HERO.2057:

No real bullet points with this or that, just text, text, text, it’s an amazing year, text, text, we are so happy, text, text, we believe in… , text.

Considering they actually did give concrete examples of what they intend to add, would you feel better if I formatted it into bullet points for you?

• The concept behind this is to allow players to earn new rewards for achievements, as well as progressing down achievement paths that take advantage of the open world experience. We’ll add tokens for your achievement you can turn in to select from a list of rewards, including new reward types like ascended gear and infusions.

• We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together. Later, we’ll also be adding a system that lets you complete a subgroup of achievements to fulfill your daily. For example, if there are 6 daily achievements available, you’ll only need to do 4 of the 6. So you can choose the achievements that you’re most interested in.

• We’ll continue to offer cosmetic rewards such as titles, medals (map complete), unique skins, etc. which will remain prizes earned for completing specific parts of the game.

• You won’t see another tier between ascended and legendary in 2013 for example.

• To that end, we’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements while others see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience.

• Firstly, we’ll be adding paid server transfers, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and guestingability, which allows players to visit friends on other servers in every part of the game except for WvW.

• Second, we’ll make improvements to culling. We recently ran small tests on Live to help us move towards eliminating as much culling from WvW as possible. The results have been promising, and we have a number of additional culling features in development. If all goes well, our hope is 2013 is the year culling ceases to exist, or is as minimal as possible in the WvW experience.

• We’ll introduce a system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW. This will give players a progression path where they earn new WvW-only abilities and bonuses, and with them gain prestige and visible titles/recognition

• We’ll be adding systems that make it easier for players who are less competitive to get matched only against people with similar skill sets, and stronger methods for players learning PvP to do so in a safe and fun environment with more information to help their skills grow.

• things like being able to watch other competitors and see major ranked matches to learn how to play better, the ability to host your own custom arenas to setup your own rules and host your own team practices, and visible places for everyone to see rankings of the best teams/players in the world.

And then, of course, the section at the bottom where they litterally do have bulletpoints:

Examples of some of the major areas we’re working on in the first half of 2013 include:

• Leaderboards on our website where you can compare your abilities with other players to find out who is the best in the world.
  * Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.
  * New types of achievements which tie into the new systems of achievement rewards.
  * Continuing to improve the security of the game fighting botters and hackers, as well as improving the games stability by addressing bugs as quickly as possible when they are reported.
  * Identifying existing parts of the game that can be improved and made more fun/exciting, and investing the time to ensure everything we’ve built really shines as we move forward.
  * Improving the new player experience, to make it easier for new players to learn how to play GW2, enter the game world, and more quickly learn the game without being overwhelmed.
  * Improving the “looking for group” tool to make it easier to find other players to play with in the game.
  * The improvements and fixes to the fractal dungeons, detailed in Isaiah Cartwright’s blog post here:

Just requires reading past the first two headers

I don’t get how anyone can claim that the majority of people bought their legendary when they still have to be made to be bought in the first place. I really doubt most of the people who went through the effort of making a legendary in the first place did it just to sell it on the AH, there are much better ways of making money.

edit: Heck, I’d say that the very fact that the person who makes the legendary has to consciously decide they want to sell it kind of invalidates the idea that someone buying it “taints” the experience of everyone else. Becoming a max level crafter isn’t ruined by someone buying crafted items on the trading post.

critickitten.1498:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdA4MlrF5mA

Dunno about you, but the way he goes on about them, it doesn’t sound to me like they’re just meant to be “pretty skins” and nothing more.

The entire video was about how special they look. What isn’t in that video is a part describing how massively powerful they are.

Healing your party can be done in more ways than just stacking Healing Power and picking the few healing traits your class gets. Rangers, for example, don’t get very many ways to directly heal other people, but they do get Healing Spring which is one of, if not the, longest lasting water fields players have access to. Get your party to throw out some blasts and leaps while it’s up and you’ll have a ton of burst healing going around.

Thieves don’t have many methods of healing others either (Venomous Aura has an abysmally short range) but they do have Cluster Bomb which is arguably the most spam-able blast finisher players get. Coordinate with anyone who has water fields in your party and you can dish out some nice burst healing.

Elementalists have huge potential to build themselves to be “healers,” but one of the most potent Ele PvE support builds I’ve seen is actually very offensive in nature yet still provides party support through shared auras and smart field/finisher use.

Anyway, my point is that healing and general party survivability aren’t, and shouldn’t be things that just one person looks out for. The game rewards you for having everyone looking out for the team’s survival and sometimes the best way to keep everyone alive doesn’t involve bringing all of the pure, outright healing you can muster. Combos in particular are very powerful if used well, and are more about player coordination than they are builds.

I’m not really sure what your problem is. You seem to think that acknowledging that a claim was made means you can’t be skeptical of how the results will turn out. I never said that the problem is guaranteed to be fixed. I never “white knighted” or whatever hilarious term you feel like throwing out. I never made a claim to what the quality of the change will be.

You said that they made no comment about your concern of precursors only being obtainable through low mob drop rates. This is false, they are working on a new method of obtaining them. That’s all I said. Not sure why you’re so upset about it, but you’re complaining about a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with anything of my posts. I really don’t care whether you’re optimistic about what they’re planning or not.

critickitten.1498:

Ehra.5240:

critickitten.1498:

That statement says absolutely nothing about how this will fix the problem of precursors being subject to the whims of the RNG, all it says is that there will be “new ways” to obtain them.

You said you don’t see how the new system will " fix the problem of precursors depending heavily on terrible loot tables." I think it’s safe to say that when a dev says they are working on a new reward system that will grant precursors, they mean that there will be a new way to obtain them that does not rely on you killing monsters until it drops. That is what “new reward system” tends to imply, that it will be different from the current method of obtaining them. But if you want to keep assuming it’s not going to change anything at all then I guess that makes sense too.

I’m not convinced that it means what you think it means, no. I’m not expecting much.

I’d be perfectly happy to be wrong, but until we have further details, I’m not going to take the optimistic route and assume that it’ll be some brand new wonderful amazing feature.

And if you can’t understand why some of us might be burnt out with what boils down to just hype right now, then you probably weren’t around for the last several years.

I’ve been familiar with how Anet does things since the GW1 beta events, thanks. It doesn’t really matter how much you want to ignore what was actually posted, adding the precursors to a few more mobs’ loot tables would in no way consist of a “new reward system.” If you want to ignore the answer you were given to your concern of how acquiring precursors is reliant on poor mob drop rates then that’s your choice, but let’s not pretend you weren’t given an answer that clearly stated they are working on a new way of obtaining them.

critickitten.1498:

That statement says absolutely nothing about how this will fix the problem of precursors being subject to the whims of the RNG, all it says is that there will be “new ways” to obtain them.

You said you don’t see how the new system will " fix the problem of precursors depending heavily on terrible loot tables." I think it’s safe to say that when a dev says they are working on a new reward system that will grant precursors, they mean that there will be a new way to obtain them that does not rely on you killing monsters until it drops. That is what “new reward system” tends to imply, that it will be different from the current method of obtaining them. But if you want to keep assuming it’s not going to change anything at all and when they say “new reward system” they actually mean “we’re just going to buff a few loot tables and call it a day” then I guess that works too.

critickitten.1498:

How exactly is a “new rewards system” going to fix the problem of precursors depending heavily on terrible loot tables?

I thought Colin’s post was pretty clear cut on this…. did you actually read it?

ColinJohanson.2394:

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Even when you discount the terrible builds that there is no reason to run, GW1 still had many more viable options to choose from. Heck, the idea that GW2 did away with “useless” or “bad” builds is false, there is still huge room to screw up a character, just not as badly as you could in GW1 if you ignored all common sense.

GW2 will have more options as time goes on and expansions are out, but it’s not “rose tinted glasses” to realize that GW2 has less build variance than GW1 does or that GW2’s setup is much more limiting than GW1 was. The game isn’t that old for nostalgia to be an issue and I, for one, still play it.

What would set legendary armor apart from any other type of armor? Crazy particle and character effects like the weapons? I could see that getting gaudy fast if every piece of equipment had its own separate special effects going. Weapons are probably enough.

leprekan.7248:

Why pursue it if there are better and easier ways to achieve the same results. Like I said give me a logical reason why.

Because just buying it with gold isn’t a interesting way of acquiring items and a scavenger hunt, depending on how it’s implemented, could be an interesting way of rewarding and providing an incentive people for going out in the open world rather than repeatedly farming the same dungeons over and over for the best gold/time ratios.

There’s more to playing a game than simply acquiring items. Fun is also a pretty important thing to consider, and a scavenger hunt opens new avenues of gameplay that people could enjoy. Slapping in a glorified weapons merchant and calling it a day would not only be highly lazy but would also be redundant, as there are already plenty of ways to acquire loot through merchants or with gold.

The reason you can see the “logic” is that you seem to think the only end result that’s worth considering is whether someone gets an item or not. Unfortunately for the devs, it’s a bit more involved than that.

I think sometimes people forget that GW1 didn’t really get to the point it’s at now until around NF/EoTN. That was when it really started to hit its stride on the PvE side, imo. Armor stats were separated from specific skins, hard mode was introduced, heroes were added. More skills were added. The game just needed more stuff, and I think that’s how this game is going to turn out too. Right now it just feels like GW2 doesn’t have enough choice; ascended gear is earned from one area and build options don’t feel as varied as they could. These are things that a few years worth of content could fix, it just needs more stuff (and more interesting encounters, which the devs have said they intend to work on).

As a side note, fully customizing the gear and skills of my hero party is something I really miss from Guild Wars 1 that almost no other game has been able to mimic. Finally getting the party that had all of the buffs and debuffs I wanted while maintaining a good amount of damage felt really good and the only other MMO I’ve found that has this sort of feature is, surprisingly, Star Trek Online.

There was a recent dev post saying that they intend to go back and make the game’s bosses more interesting to fight.

I’m going to ignore the ignorant “post WoW care-bear console gamers” comments for now as they’re obvious trolling flame bait. There are still some serious issues with your suggestion, beyond my opinion on FFA itself.

1) Looting. Even if we go with your suggestion that you can only loot unbound items from players, this still doesn’t work because a good chunk of the valuable unbound loot can be instantly sent to your bank at any time. If you’re expecting killing players to ever be profitable in any way then you are going to need to disable disable this feature.

2) Porting. There’s a reason that as games like WoW added more and more convenient ways to travel around, world PvP became less and less of a thing. In a game like Guild Wars 2 where the primary method of getting around is to just teleport there, a FFA server will inherently be more about ganking players as they’re staring at loading screens or already engaged with another enemy than actually running into and fighting other players head-on. Any encounter that isn’t a gank or an ambush could be avoided by just turning around, hitting M, and clicking a way point, assuming you ran into anyone to begin with.

3) AoE. Many skills in this game are AoE, especially melee attacks. How do you expect large outdoor events to work when anyone in front of you will get smacked in the back with your projectiles? Or your melee swings cleave on the people around you? Or how about when you’re fighting another player and you use a AoE support ability, will it also benefit your target? How about group vs group content? These are all issues that would need to be worked out for this single server to function in any way.

4) Balance. Many things in this game already have different effects depending on whether the player is in a PvE or PvP area. Which do you consider the “PvE” zones or dungeons to be for the sake of this issue? Whichever you choose, the other portion of the game will be inherently unbalanced.

5) WvW. So this is a single server…. who does it get matched up with for WvW? Are players from this server still able to attack each other in WvW areas, or are you going to out and out disable it? If you keep it, how do you expect that to work in these chaotic situations in any way? It’s the same problem above with large events. If you’re going to disable it then that should be a hint that there will be huge problems with other parts of the game.

And if you decide to just lock it out of WvW then you need new monthly achievements just for this server.

These are all things that NEED to be worked on before a FFA server can ever hope to function in this game. This would require a huge amount of resources to get right, some of these things are core mechanics/features to the game that need to be reworked for the sake of getting a single specialty server to work. Which completely flies in the face of your repeated argument that the existence of this wouldn’t affect those that don’t want FFA, because the resources invested in just getting this single server to work are resources that could be spent on any other aspect of the game that would benefit anyone who plays on any server.

You keep on bringing up games like EVE when those games were built from the ground up with FFA in mind. Maybe you should try actually playing those games and notice some of the key design decisions they make that separate them from games like GW2, because there is a LOT more that goes into making a good MMO with FFA PvP than simply letting everyone attack each other and calling it a day.

Fair enough.

Trock Bronze.9625:

-The sylvari have a natural desire, born of the dream, to defeat the dragons. The nightmare court however provides a different view, just like every race has those who do not see eye to eye on the subject.

I think you’re overstating how many Sylvari are being told/asked by the dream to defeat the dragons. I believe it’s stated during the personal story that the only other Sylvari to actually dream of defeating a/the dragon(s?), other than the player, is Caithe. There are also plenty of Sylvari that seem to be content to just settle in The Grove or live in other various cities without making much, if any, effort in defending Tyria.

Also, there is at least a third faction of Sylvari that we know about who have decided to abandon the pale tree / dream and do their own thing (I believe they’re called The Silent? I can’t remember).