Guild Wars 2

Then please let me clarify my position, so there won’t be further confusion.

My original post first stated my dissatisfaction with the amount of jumping in the game.(Not in line with the flavor of a high fantasy MMO, in my opinion.) But mostly jumping is not required to progress in the game, so that isn’t such a big issue.

The second part of my original post expressed dissatisfaction with the use of the Zephyrite skills, which I find awkward to use.(on top of the fact that jumping is hard for me) I think that they clutter up the game mechanics, and are made needlessly difficult by an arbitrary time out, and the fact that they block your weapons skills. If you want us to temporarily replace one of our skills on the skill bar, that wouldn’t be as bad.(IMO) In fact, GW1 did this on several occasions. The fact that these Zephyrite skills are required to participate in Living Story is a sore point for me. And I find the intrusion of platformer game type stuff into a high fantasy MMO distasteful, needlessly complicated, and against the spirit and flavor of a high fantasy game. This isn’t what I expected when I bought a high fantasy MMO, based(supposedly) on Guild Wars.(Which did not use jumping as a game mechanic. – It was an emote.) So I really don’t want to have to be required use these new, awkward, tacked-on skills to progress in what I consider to be a mainstream part of the game.(Living Story)

If you like and enjoy the Zephyrite skills, great. But I would rather they please use them for jumping puzzles, or special achievements, or other non-required content.(Most certainly not as a required activity to progress in the Living Story.)

Thanks for the input guys. Please don’t let this get personal. I think we can all appreciate Nageth’s point that jumping and a 3rd dimension are part of GW2. But we can also see Spoofy’s point (and mine) that jumping has not been(and IMO shouldn’t be) required for progression in a mainstream part of the game like Living Story. Until now.

Thanks for the input. Fay posted a very useful tutorial on how to use the Zephyrite Aspects in another thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Why-is-LS-S2-only-for-people-who-can-jump/4163987

I found this quite helpful.(though I still don’t enjoy all the jumping, I am making some progress.)

Very well said, Spoofy. Thank you for contributing to our discussion.

Yes, for those of us who can’t jump there are a lot of things in this game that are more difficult than is fun for us. Be glad you don’t understand.

I have managed to make some small progress, but it certainly hasn’t been enjoyable. Way too much time and effort devoted to something I have no aptitude for, and don’t enjoy anyway. The fights have been fun.(When I wasn’t balanced on the edge of a cliff.)
All in all, I still have to say I don’t think that the Aspects and related jumping should be necessary. I think they’d be great if they were optional, as some people seem to really enjoy it.(But not all of us.)

I did manage to finally get to the middle part. Then I got to the second way point by falling to my death near it.(How are we supposed to know where we’re supposed to go?) I had planned to use a revive orb, but a couple of kind people rez’d me.(I’m pretty sure one of the was Noble Ting – thanks.) I’m very slowly getting around the map, but it certainly isn’t fun.
edit: Thanks especially to Fay for your very helpful tips, and to Julischka for your kind encouragement.

Some things make it unnecessarily difficult, though. The time limit on the crystals makes it harder, and the fact that you don’t have your weapon skills while you’re using Zephyrite Aspects. It wouldn’t be as bad if there weren’t creatures that you need to fight near some of the places where you need to use Aspects.
So some of us will be able to get around with a lot of time and effort. But I’d certainly rather be doing something fun. And it still isn’t fair to lock people into this. For some esoteric jumping achievement, sure. But not to progress in the Living Story.

I think that an achievement for a more difficult path is more fair. The important thing(IMO) would be an alternative way for the “jump-challenged” to progress in Living Story Season 2 and open up the new map.

Enjoyment and ease of jumping is highly subjective. Also some of us can’t jump, for physical reasons, or because of poor internet connections, or PC’s in the lower range of the spec.
Why can’t we have multiple way to progress. It’s not a new “Jumping Puzzle”(At least it’s not been advertized as such) It’s new “Living Story”, which is about fighting evil, not jumping around like Mario. Since when is platform jumping a part of high fantasy MMO’s?

Thank you for the good advice and kind encouragement. It is greatly appreciated.
I’m not saying they should take all jumping out of GW2. But I would like viable alternatives where jumping exists in the open world and Living story.(Except for jumping puzzles, jumping is the whole point of those and that’s fine with me. I just don’t want to be forced to jump, and jumping puzzles are optional.)

re: Not to sound rude or anything, but why are you playing a game that involves jumping – It shouldn’t have jumping so integrally involved. This isn’t a platform jumping game, it’s a high fantasy MMO.

re: jumping is easy, anyone can do it! – No, not everyone. We all don’t have great PC’s, and we all don’t have great internet connections. Plus we all don’t have the coordination of 12 year olds.(even when we were 12 years old.)

re: time for an upgrade – Everyone can’t just plop down a stack of cash for a new PC, or even a decent upgrade. Feature creep should keep in mind the original game specs.(Especially for a game less than 2 years old.)

No matter how good a PC you do/do not have, the quality of your internet connection is often largely or completely out of your control.
Enjoyment of JP material is highly subjective.(and subject to many factors out of the players control) JP material should not be required to progress. Once again, I call troll. Please make a separate thread if you just want to fight with people. Please quit trying to derail this thread.

re: But you CAN learn to do them. – That is highly conditional. Some of us have high lag, which varies in intensity and is unpredictable. Some of us simply can’t jump.(I fall into both categories) Also, I didn’t say I hadn’t tried.(Which you seem to be implying)
And once again, please quit trying to derail this thread. Please start your own thread if you just want to argue with people.

I’ve explained myself, and I’ve asked nicely. Please quit trying to derail this thread.

It’s not whether or not you “mind” or “like” them, it’s whether or not you can do them. If you can’t jump or do Zephyrite Aspects well, it effectively locks you out of Living Story Season 2.(Which is supposed to be for everyone at level 80.)

The point of the thread, is being forced to use jumping and aspects to progress in Living Story Season 2. It has gotten a little derailed by trolling.

I agree, the game should be more tolerant of lag, and there should be less “twitchy” content, and certainly there should be colorblind options.
Jumping and reaction time based stuff, should be optional. And once again, there should have been a color blind/high contrast display option at launch. Not having it almost 2 years after is just shameless.

I have to agree with the people who dislike having jumping and aspects forced on us as the only way to progress in LS S2. I have no jumping ability, and this will effectively lock me out of LS S2. I started a thread about this in Living Story /Discussion, which may get moved here. Not trying to be redundant, I just posted it in the wrong place.

<sorry, this needs to be moved to livingworld/s2 forum, can an Anet employee please help me with that?>

I have always had a problem with jumping in games,(I can’t jump) and and find it extremely unfair that so much GW2 content is tied to jumping.
Now I find out that the Living Story Season 2 is going to force me to have to use all the Zephyrite jumping skills?!? That is just horribly unfair.

When I did this with a friend, we created our characters at the same time and used voice chat to discuss the questions and choose answers that suited us both.
That would be the shorter way of doing it. Or you could deliberately choose different answers, so that you have different chapters that the two of you can still do together. This would give you more story material to work with, but would be slower.
All the story paths eventually merge together, so you’d both end up in the same path after a while.

Got an answer already, thanks.(see above)

Thank you for the info, Inculpatus.

Thank you for the info. So it’s up to 5,(scales) or made for 5?(fixed, meaning you need to have a group of 5.)

Thank you for commenting, but we can speculate all we like. I’m just wondering if someone has actually seen something in print, or if we can get an Anet employee to comment here.
Also, it would be useful to know if you can have “guests” that do not have the LS chapter unlocked.(Presumably they would not have access to any achievements/rewards, and could not replay the instance later.)

I haven’t noticed that they’ve said anywhere how many players can play in an instance of the Living Story Season 2. Is it solo only, 5 only, or does it allow for a variable number of players.(5 or less presumably)

There should be no punishment for staying dead at an event, but Anet should certainly look at what classifies as “active participation” and adjust it. Punishing people just makes them angry, withholding reward for “non-participation” will get them to change their behavior.
An AFK flag/tag sounds like a really good idea, but IMO it would just get abused.
re: Downed taking precedence over dead for rez – this sounds like a good and workable idea.(Says someone who has no idea how that stuff is coded in-game.)
re: RL intruded and I didn’t get credit – Yep. It happens. Insufficient participation = no reward. I deal with it, and everyone else can too. RL> game, RL should take precedence. But don’t don’t expect credit unless you did enough before RL intruded. That’s life. It can be annoying, but that’s how it is.

You have to vary your wording. One and two word posts are pretty much guaranteed to get you suppressed. But even if you vary your wording, there’s still a time factor. If post too many messages to /s or /m chat in a given period of time, you’ll get suppressed. Even if you haven’t repeated your exact words.
Maybe “complex” events should spawn their own, temporary chat channel. Which would close down once the event is over. Most people would just listen, but you could type “/E” or something to post to the event channel. People with the event channel turned off would not get credit for the event.
Or they need to enhance commander functionality, and make squad membership mandatory for “complex” events.
Anet has made events that require coordination, but they don’t allow for that level of communication without voice chat.(And there is no bundled, or even official GW voice chat.)

Blackgate uses Teamspeak a lot for organizing events, so you won’t see a lot of that type of chatter. They may use it for chatting amongst themselves as well.

Not everyone has an artistic eye, or strong sense of fashion. I freely admit that I’m one of them. I can make looks that I’m content with for my characters, but then I see other people do so much better. I’ve seen armors and thought “What is that armor? I want it!” and then realized it was an armor that (I thought) I hated, but with a really good dye job that made me actually like it.
I’m thinking that the OP is also going to give his clients the recipe for the look so that they can duplicate it on their own character.(right?)
RoyalPredator, I would (with permission) put up before and after pics in this thread, so people can see more of how you can help them. Looking at the pics you’ve posted, I can see you have a good technique. But a before pic, with an explanation of what the client wants, and an after pic would help illustrate exactly what you can do for people.

If you stay on the surface of the water.(with all weapons/skilled blocked) then stacks remain regardless of sigils on the underwater weapon. I can confirm that with a superior sigil on your land and underwater weapon, your stacks will be preserved, and you can even add to the stack with each weapon. Even if you swap to another underwater weapon w/out the same sigil, you’ll still keep those stacks.(Just confirmed this, they must have fixed that.)

Thank you for the link. It’s odd, the dulfy.net timer was the first(I noticed) to be updated. It’s reading the same events & times as http://howar31.github.io/GW2Timer/ (at the moment) The dulfy timer does seem to need a refresh at times, though.
I do like the http://howar31.github.io/GW2Timer/ timer a lot. It’s got a clear, easy to read display. Thanks again for sharing that link. And both dulfy and the howar31 timer seem to take the local time from the time zone set on your PC. I changed mine and they both adjusted.(after a refresh)

I think the dulfy timer: http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/ either adjusts to the time zone you’re in, or maybe defaults to US Eastern time zone. I’ve never had to tell it my time zone. Can anyone confirm that this timer somehow picks up on the local PC’s time zone?(Or does it just default to the same time zone I use?)

Absolutely the right call making this potential lag/bug inducing item an “opt in”.
Absolutely the right call making this purely cosmetic item a gem store purchase.

The only problem is, all the people who will chug this before world boss events and complain that their response is bugged/laggier.

“Make a $15 per month fee to eliminate diminishing returns only.” – Is a an ideal that would not happen here in the real world. Because Anet wouldn’t just do that one specific thing. What would happen, is all the non-subscription players would become second class citizens. IMO, it would destroy the economy and the player base.
Instead of paying a subscription for what amounts to a farming fee, why not spend that money at the gem store instead? $15 → gems → gold

Omar, do not demean yourself with words like that. Casual players have as much right to play GW2 as anyone else.(Except hackers, exploiters, spammers, and others engaged in non-legitimate types of game play.) Some people work hard all day and just want to do something simple and fun to relax. That isn’t a crime. Wanting everyone who doesn’t think and play like you do, to leave the game – IMO, that is out of line.

The thing that the uber l33t fail to realize, is that this game is not exclusively for them. They are a small percentage of the player population, and therefore in the minority. Casuals, and those that are more casual than the uber l33t are not an annoyance to be removed from the sight of the uber l33t, they are what is sustaining the game, so that everyone (including the uber l33t) can play it. Without casuals GW2 would die, and no one would be playing. So we don’t need to be eliminating casual content, or casual players.(As hard as it may be for the high and mighty uber l33t to stomach their presence.)

Time a repetition are both factors. It’s hard to say “Thank you” or some other simple phrases in so many different ways, but you have to vary your wording. Thank you, thanks, thx, ty, tyvm, etc… If it’s someone I can identify, I put their name in “Thanks [player name]” instead of just “Thanks”. Or “Thanks for rez”, to make it specific, etc… Even if you constantly vary your wording, the time factor will kick in and you’ll still get suppressed. And I agree that once you get suppressed, it’s better to not type anything for a few minutes and wait it out, rather than checking every minute or so.

I think that 1 and 2 are definitely good ideas. But 3 isn’t necessary, or I don’t understand what the OP means. When you join a squad, you don’t see any other commander tags – just the one for the commander of your squad. So there’s no need to hide tags in events with more than 1 commander.
I’d say my item number 3 would be a squad size of more than 50.

Uleq, you didn’t say whether you are new to the game or not. So let me explain a few things. When people say “exploring” they mean unlocking all the hearts, points of interest, skill points, way points, and vistas on each map. Each of these things gives you experience. Gathering(lumber, ore, and plants) also gets you a little experience each time. Completing a map also gives you an additional award.
Crafting will also give you experience, but you’ll need crafting materials. SO you’ll need to alternate this with exploring and gathering, because crafting materials are pretty expensive right now. There are also crafting guides on line. I’ve used http://www.gw2crafts.net and there are others. Personal story will also give you experience, and level appropriate gear.(If you’re doing them at the recommended level.)
Anet seems to want players to do a good mix of things. And exploring (map clearing) whole gathering and doing the local events will get you a surprising amount of experience. Some of the hearts and vistas are tedious and unpleasant, skip them and come back later.(or never, if you prefer) Exploring all the starter areas is not difficult, and will get you a lot of experience. Mix in some Personal story, gathering, events, and crafting and gathering and you should do well. You can also do the World Bosses in the starter areas, until you level up higher. You won’t get a bonus chest until you’re level 39, but it’s still worth doing.
You don’t need to “zerg” or do a train to level your characters. In fact, the primary low level zerg was just nerfed. Try a lot of different things, and avoid what you find unpleasant. It isn’t hard, but it does take some effort.

Thanks for the Boss Blitz/vet info. Did they change that when they changed the loot? I seem to remember people say that the Boss Blitz Champs & Vets weren’t counting towards dailies/monthlies when that event first started.

Please give new players a little more credit than that. Double blind and placebo effect studies have given us useful information about human psychology, but they don’t give us license to make sweeping “Ignorance is Bliss” generalizations. “New player” in this context means new to Guild Wars 2, not someone with no gaming or life experience to draw on.(Because probably there are very few players like this playing Guild Wars 2. Wouldn’t you think?)
Games and other entertainment have a precarious effort/reward ratio, which must be maintained. If your effort/reward ratio gets too far out of balance, then people will go do something else.(Something which gives them a better reward for their effort.) And if you lose too many players, the game can’t be sustained.
While ignorance of the old trait acquisition system may give new players some measure of protection against bias, they’re still going to be balancing their effort versus their reward. And with a character under level 80, character progression is part of that reward.
So you can’t just float a flimsy assertion “They don’t know how it used to be – they’ll be fine.” You also can’t presume that they’ll stay ignorant. Once they start asking for advice on character progression, they’ll find out that the trait acquisition system used to be different, and that people didn’t have to do all the extra things(or pay the extra money) to unlock their traits. And there is no better way to poison someone against something, than for them to think that they’ve been cheated – that someone else has had it better than they have. When they hear that “Oh, it used to be so much better.” And it’s inevitable that they’ll hear experienced players say things like that. Along with evidence to support it.
re: I haven’t seen/heard ANY new players complaining about the new system – Oh, have you spent a lot of time helping out new players? I have spent a good bit of time in new player areas helping new players, since the trait system change. And while the response isn’t as bad as I though it would be, a good many of them dislike it, and are resentful. Especially when they find out how it used to be.
Then there are players who are not new to the game, who want to make new characters. They remember the old system, and will make their own comparisons. While they may have more resources and experience to help them, why shouldn’t they resent a trait system that gives less progression for more effort and expense?
Yes, excess money needs to be drained out of the economy, but you don’t want to burden new player creation, and especially new accounts with that. You want it to come from older accounts with more experienced players who can more easily bear the loss. And it should be for luxury/cosmetic items, rather than something vital and unavoidable, like new character progression.
In short, I can’t think of any good reason for someone to want character progression to be more difficult. Especially when it could turn new players away, and make the game less viable in the long run.

Thank you for all the good info, Azrael.

Thanks for the suggestion Lazuli. I need to complete that area, anyway.

Anet says that your home server, guild, language, and friends list figure in to megaserver calculations. So it would seem like joining a guild and adding friends would help.

Anet recently nerfed all but 1 champ in each of the starter areas. They intended it to be a good thing, but this has pulled a lot of the higher level players out of the starter areas. I’ve been to WF a lot recently, and it usually doesn’t seem empty. Neither do Queensdale, Metrica, or Plains of Ascalon. Are you in a time zone with a lot of difference from most of NA and the EU?
You might try to join a large guild to see if Megaserver will put you in maps with more people on them.(in order to group you with your guild mates.)

I think long time players with well established accounts are overlooking how bad the new traits system is for players with new accounts. Especially if they’re new to MMO’s. IMO, the acquisition/progression part of the trait system is bad for everyone. But especially for people new to the game.(the ones who really need to get a good first impression) Please consider how hard it would be to level and fill out your traits with a new account before making disparaging remarks. Others may not have your resources and experience.

It appears that the Frostgorge Champs there are also group event now. So the Frostgorge zerg can be used for events, group events, and champs. There are also a decent number vets there as well.
What other good champs zergs are still intact and running? Current documentation is scarce.

re: World Bosses – My post was unclear, editing.
re: events with large turnout spawning champs. – Thanks, that’s a good point.

Thank you Lanhelin, for the info on Gendarrin. I’ll have to check that out.
re: World Bosses – Oddly, World Bosses don’t count as champs, though they do count events, and group events. It kinda makes sense when you consider that Champs don’t count as elites or vets, and elites don’t count as vets.
Edited for clarity.