Guild Wars 2

They run a tight, zero-tolerance ship.

Knowing that harassment, insulting demeaning language and genrally being unexcellent to each other will be responded to swiftly and decisively (when people report it- be proactive about doing so!) is a large part of why I play GW2 over every other MMO, and why I continue to reccommend it to players of all diversities.

There’s still some social bugs to work out, and there’s always bad apples showing up to try and make life unpleasant, but on the whole, ArenaNet provides a safe, welcoming environment.

Now would be a lovely time to add stacking for harvesting tools, since so many of us now have a bajillion of each of the frostbitten ones…

Ah, the inevitable “But we kill things all the time!” arguments- which completely bypass anything like nuance & motivation. I was wondering when those would show up.

I will give mad props to the writers for really capturing Faolain’s manipulative darkness- blaming Wynn because she didn’t do what Fao wanted, ‘we didn’t want this, but you made it happen’. That’s some classic abuser tactics right there.

I suspect the whole point of the memories is witnessing Caithe watching her beloved descend into evil, and at some point seeing Caithe’s revelation that her sweetie is a manipulative psycho; thus leading us to understand why she ganked the egg (mebby she thinks she can heal her with it, I dunno)

And I know recapping the entire thing for Jory would be redundant storytelling but “The centaurs turned and it got violent” really does ignore what actualy happened. By this point Jory (and the PC!) should be “Daaang, that Faolin was fruiter than a nutcake!”

I’m not disagreeing with the story or the memory, or that there was information there that we needed to know. I’m disagreeing with making the players actively participate.

Being forced into the position of killing an entire village was just… distasteful. Even though it was a ‘memory’ and we were supposedly acting as another person, having to physically participate in that fight left everyone on my team feeling very sick.

Maybe that’s what you were going for, I dunno, but it marred the storytelling for us. It is one thing for a player to make choices that are less than ‘heroic’, it is another for a game to force a player to act like that.

(Tack on that the PC and Jory’s reactions completely missed the maipulation that was happening, and just described it as Caithe being in some ‘dark places’, and it really felt, well, yucky.)

Mal.1670:

And the story is getting better every time.

I agree that the story is getting better, it just feels very chopped up and sparse to me- less than an hour of gameplay every two weeks feels awkward.

I think there might be more success with releasing story monthly, so there could be more weight to it, and other open world content (like the skritt tunnels, or the Mordrem breaches-which had absolutely nothing to do with the story content) every two weeks.

Traveller.7496:

I just didn’t like playing No refuge. I hated every moment of protecting that b*ch Faolain and killing innocent centaurs. Even as a flashback, even as roleplay, it sucked.

Yeah, that was really… disturbing… to have to participate in. Even knowing that you were just replaying Caithe’s memories, it was still Not Cool to do.

I agree with the op, in that it feels like we’re getting less and less story each episode- it took 2 of us about 60 minutes to go through it all.

I think the idea of temporary rally points closer to major fights is a good one- was talking with another player and he said, “If I’m downed in the Breach and someone rezzes me, I can go back to being an active participant in the battle- if I WP out, I’m done. The odds of me getting back in time to do anything is really low.”

During Scarlet Invasions, I saw a lot fewer bodies just lying there waiting to be rezzed than I see now- I think that was because there were always WPs nearby that you could go to, and still be able to get back into the fight. With Silverwastes, getting back into a Breach after WPing is a lot less likely, especially if you were at Blue or Amber.

Maybe the problem isn’t assumed ‘leeching’, and ‘not pulling weight’ it’s the culture of anti-rezzing aka “How dare you ask me to take time out of my causing damage to help you.” Maybe some of these battles would go better if people stopped to help their fallen allies, instead of yelling at them to go away.

There’s a significant vein of elitism going through this thread- players that die are ‘bad’, have lousy builds/gear, can’t play right, are a burden on the ‘real’ players and don’t ‘deserve’ any rewards.

Everyone who plays deserves to participate in open world events, and receive the rewards for those events, even if they aren’t perfectionist players. No one should be punished or evicted for dying.

Change how dead players impact the scaling, so that piles of the dead don’t make it harder on the people still standing, make it helpful to rez the dead people, instead of ignoring them; but don’t treat them like trash that needs taken out, no matter what some people act like.

My hubby is working on an Asuran project, and just posted this little outake:

“The Semantic Categorization Debate raged for almost three decades. The ongoing discussion was described by historians as ‘intense’, though they often go on to point out that there were surprisingly few bystander casualties, and that collateral damage resulted in years of gainful employment for dozens of repair krewes from the College of Statics.”

Thank you Paul & the rest of you- this must have been a weird bug to track down

I’m glad I caught the link to this thread on G+ before I loaded up the game, the alt I’ve been doing season 2 with is on VoD.

Dev is asking about this over here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Game-crash-when-clicking-story-journal/first#post4569408?

Stooperdale.3560:

- Puzzle that is not a puzzle. – Why talk about secret codes and complex indices when all a player has to do is click on a few green stars to find all the books?

Ooooh, that drove me bonkers! Super seekrit chamber that you have to get this seekrit code to open… and then it just pops open in the middle of the room, in front of everybody, and anyone can wander down the stairs. Gah!

However, the amount of random books lying around made me utterly gleeful, and I had to read them all… interesting implication in there that killing Zaitan could actually have contributed to Mordremoth’s awakening.

And I love that the White Mantle have just been hiding out in the wastes for 200+ years, plotting their revenge.

You know, Mordie did have to be awake enough to get into Cera and Aerin’s minds, and the Mantle have been doing Gods knows what out there near where the dragon has been sleeping…

Rozbuska.5263:

Arch of Covenant. I am sure its there:-P

I specifically went looking for that box! Was very bummed not to find it. And nothing labeled “Warehouse 23” (or 13) in Krytan. Harumph!

Why, for the love of Dwayna, weren’t the these hearts included in the patch notes? I wouldn’t have known that I’d lost 100% map completion if someone hadn’t been kvetching about it in a random zone’s map chat.

I’ve got so many Scrolls of Experience that I’ll never need to have a character under L20 again o.O

I don’t have any alts under L20 right now, so I dunno how the new leveling will compare to the old, but I do feel some trepidation about it. I really liked how you earned weapons skills based on how often you used that weapon- that had a nice flow to it, and I’m dissapointed that has changed.

I’m also a bit miffed that they’ve changed personal story from a reccomended level to an unlock level, I liked squeeking through some of my PS at a lower level. Although I can see how it does limit the number of people completely ignoring the reccomended level, and then complaining that their next PS step is ‘too hard’. But now it feels a bit like I am at loose ends while I get up to 50 so I can take my alts on their next round of story (I tend to go in batches…)

I think the game mechanics demo/tutorial bits in the starting zones are clever.

Me three. Wanted to quit the episode I had been replaying for ’cheevs, got dropped to character select twice.

Rognik.2579:

As far as I remember, you don’t need any jumping skills to track Taimi through the desert…you might have to hop around in that green circle until the game tells you to go to the next checkpoint.

I may have been caught by a bug or something then, because I’ve run through that first green circle a bajillion times, and it wouldn’t send me off to the next checkpoint- so I figured the clue was up by the skill point (that I still haven’t gotten)

I have a very hard time with jumping, as well. It isn’t something that comes easily to me, for multiple reasons that have nothing to do with how the jumping mechanic works.

It just means that I will often bypass things that require some sort of jump that I fail miserably at (The Vista in LA that requires you to jump on the very edge of a rock and sorta turn while you are doing it as an example.). If after 10 minutes of trying I still haven’t made the jump, then to heck with it.

Normally, it isn’t an issue, either I just live without whatever was up there- vista, diving goggles, llama, skill point, whatever, until I stubborn my way through or find a freindly mesmer to port my pitiful behind.

Right now, though, it is blocking my story progress, because I can not for the life of me get up to the first Taimi tracking point. It is frustrating to have a real world physical limitation interfering with my right fantasy life, grrr.

I know for many people that all jumping is easy-peasy, and they look down upon people who can’t get there as some sort of gaming-deficient looser. And when people snark at you in game about asking for help on something ‘easy’, it doesn’t make getting around your limitations any less frustrating.

Asking that the amount of actual story content that is accessable only through jumping be as minimal as possible is not a crime, or wrong or a reasons to tell someone to “go play another game”. Story content is for everyone, not just people with jumping skills.

I noticed this, and then it slipped my mind until I played through pt 1 again in anticipation of pt 2 today…

The first thing you do in pt 1 open world, is go into the Iron Marches and help the Charr fight Mordreminions all over the place.

But when you go talk to Rytlock and Imperitor Smodur (the last thing on your To Do list), they make a big deal about how Mordie won’t be able to get past the solid rock Shiverpeaks, that the Black Citadel will be safe, it can’t be that bad…

How in the world could two of the most powerful people in the Black Citadel be unaware that the tendrils have already gotten past the Shiverpeaks, and are actively causing problems for Charr outposts?

Why doesn’t Rox, who obviously doesn’t have a problem pointing out that it is a problem, say something? Her counter to the Shiverpeaks as a barrier is that the tendrils will come up through the Fields of Ruin, why not say “Umm, no, they’re already all over the Charr in the Iron Marches, we were just there.”

The only thing I can think of, is that the scenes with Rytlock were planned out to happen before the Iron Marches or something, and the dialogue wasn’t changed.

There was a Warthog representing our guild [FNRD], so I mentioned it to our boss (who is currently stuck at work), and he replied with
“No no, I added a warthog to the Guild. Nice guy. Stay away from bacon jokes though – he’s sensitive”
facepalm

Random theory/thoughts that skittered through my brain-

Mord is actively seaking out magical energy, right now that’s manifesting as the vines chasing down the ley lines, and one of the paths seems headed straight for Ascalon. Given the theory that has kicked around that the Ascalon Ghosts aren’t actually ghosts (in the souls running loose sense), but magical energy constructs, maybe Mord is headed for them as a massive energy boost.

Or, maybe breaking the curse will release a massive burst of magical energy that counters Mord’s forward advance.

Mebby Rytlock has tried to break the curse previously, and it didn’t work. What’s changed?

Could be Zaitan. Both Sohothin and Magdaer are Orrian artifacts- If we go with the idea that Zaitan’s corruption inhibited or twisted the power of any Orrian magical item, then it is possible either sword was incapable of breaking the curse until after Zaitan was defeated.

If post episode you go into Ascalon and there actually are no ghosts, and the hearts and NPCs and such have been updated to reflect that fact, I’ll be seriously impressed.

If they do it like Orr, and the only parts of the area that are free of the curse are instanced story, and the open world Ascalon still has ghosts and people going along as if nothing has changed, then bleh.

True Living Story makes real changes to the world, even if that means new players experience something completely different than old players.

The thing about the sand river that drives me nuts, is that you have to use the sun crystals to get across… If the Zephyrites just crashed there how did the people who’d been living in the area for years get back and forth?! Bah!

Did anyone else notice that in the Tangle Root story bit, several of the Inquest asura looked really out of proportion? Not bobbleheaded, but like they’d been knocking back some growth potions. One of them was at least chest hight on my human.

I just noticed this and now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it, and it is driving me batty.

The Charr right pawprint is backwards.

I get that promotion of things on social media is important, but I agree with everyone else- Important Things should go on the main site first, and then out to social media. Social media sites should be supportive marketing, not primary information dissemination.

That being said, the news section of the main page does link out to youtube and soundcloud pretty regularly, and the stuff I’ve seen on FB and G+ tends to be more random discussion or “Look at this nifty fan thing.” “Look, some website mentioned GW2.” or “Here’s a thing we just posted to our site.” rather than news that doesn’t show up here. So there’s less ‘exclusive content’ happening on social media than you might think.

However, I don’t think that teaser pictures/soundbites/video clips count as Important Things, so much as, well, teases, and I think those can go wherever, to be found like little treasures.

hannah mee.7925:

So I think saying consets weren’t required is overstepping the line. More precisely, they just weren’t needed. However, based on community responses, consets were required. [/quote]

In GW1, there was a whole lot more in the way of required elite skills and specific builds. There were endgame bosses you could not defeat, unless you’d dragged your characters and/or heroes over to this zone to defeat that boss in order to get such and such shiny ability. It was one of the things I absolutely hated about GW1, and why I never got further than certain areas on several characters- I want to play the game, not have to do tons of research just to get through content.

With consumable boosts, like food, potions, sharpening stones, etc, I can run the character I want, and get an edge on something when I need it.

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

-Is it really adding to your overall experience?

Yes. I find I enjoy going through my “pantry” to find what food works best with each of my characters, and tailoring that to what I’m going to be doing- just like some people like fine tuning the stats on their armor and weapons using sigils and runes. I’d argue that F&N is better for that, because you aren’t locked into a build.

Does it make things too easy?

No. It did add to my ability to get to L80 smoothly, without having to spend every waking moment playing.

-Do I always use it? Why?
Pretty much always, because of the added boosts, the ability to improve something on the fly, and customize my bonuses to the content in front of me.

-Do I usually win 1v1 fights against those who don’t use it?

I don’t PvP, so I wouldn’t know.

-Do I craft my own for fun? Or just buy it off the TP?

I craft my own for fun. Cooking is the only crafting that I find enjoyable and dynamic. All the other crafting diciplines are extrememly linear and level-oriented: you make the same type of things each level, just out of fancier materials, and the lower level materials become useless to you as you advance. With cooking you have real discovery based on putting random ingredients from many different levels together.

-Do I offer it to other people when I see them without it? Why?
I have often made up a bunch of food and then handed it out randomly to people, or run around LA offering pies and treats, because I like randomly gifting things. If they don’t want to use it, that’s up to them.

Food is a tool, just like runes or sigils or higher-statted weapons and armor; people can chose use the resources they have available to them, or not. Saying that a tool should be removed from the game because some people use it, and some don’t, and it gives the users an advantage, that pretty much negates the idea of having any sort of player-customizeable tools at all.

-Is it really adding to your overall experience?

Yes. I find I enjoy going through my “pantry” to find what food works best with each of my characters, and tailoring that to what I’m going to be doing- just like some people like fine tuning the stats on their armor and weapons using sigils and runes. I’d argue that F&N is better for that, because you aren’t locked into a build.

Does it make things too easy?

No. It did add to my ability to get to L80 smoothly, without having to spend every waking moment playing.

-Do I always use it? Why?
Pretty much always, because of the added boosts, the ability to improve something on the fly, and customize my bonuses to the content in front of me.

-Do I usually win 1v1 fights against those who don’t use it?

I don’t PvP, so I wouldn’t know.

-Do I craft my own for fun? Or just buy it off the TP?

I craft my own for fun. Cooking is the only crafting that I find enjoyable and dynamic. All the other crafting diciplines are extrememly linear and level-oriented: you make the same type of things each level, just out of fancier materials, and the lower level materials become useless to you as you advance. With cooking you have real discovery based on putting random ingredients from many different levels together.

-Do I offer it to other people when I see them without it? Why?
I have often made up a bunch of food and then handed it out randomly to people, or run around LA offering pies and treats, because I like randomly gifting things. If they don’t want to use it, that’s up to them.

Food is a tool, just like runes or sigils or higher-statted weapons and armor; people can chose use the resources they have available to them, or not. Saying that a tool should be removed from the game because some people use it, and some don’t, and it gives the users an advantage, that pretty much negates the idea of having any sort of player-customizeable tools at all.

Short term personal waypoints, so I’m not always having to run all the way back to the beginning of jumping puzzles.

Combined ingredient/componant storage- if it is only used to craft something else (like filigrees, or sauces) it should go in storage.

I would really like this, as well. I have several pieces of cultural armor that aren’t in my wardrobe because I transmuted them. If they could figure out a way to solve the issue that Konig brings up, so we can have the special shiny cultural armor, it would be lovely.

jokke.6239:

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

I have my AoE loot bound to “L”. shrug

“L” .. hmm, could you had picked a key more far away from wasd?
Sorry, just seemed odd to me 8D

L is for Loot like C is for Cookie. I don’t use wasd for movement, anyhow.

Using gay, the ‘R’ word or related things as insults around me is pretty much guaranteed to get you reported, I don’t give a flying quaggan if you don’t think it is an insult, or other people are laughing, or if people think it should be ‘just ignored’, or if they brush it off as “just the internet” or “just the way gamers are”. It isn’t OK, and it is past time we stopped giving these people a pass on their behavior. Report them, every time, and let them deal with the concequences of their juvenile actions.

We (collectively) do end up using the report function a heck of a lot less in GW2 than in other MMOs, because ANet has been pretty dang proactive in keeping the scum from covering the pool, but don’t let up- if we slack off on reporting, then ANet backs off on discipline, and the offenders start getting away with it more, and suddenly it all sounds like WoW chat.

I have my AoE loot bound to “L”. It made more sense to me to bind it to a different key than the Interact “F”, because it was a different action. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t have it bound to a new key in the first place. F to talk to someone or interact with an item, L to grab loot. shrug

I am hoping that Living Story evolves beyond “Instanced cut scenes and repeatable events that are around for 2-3 weeks and may or may not change the world as a whole.” Those have (in general) been fun, but they don’t feel ‘living’ to me.

However, I fully admit that my bar for ‘living’ is set pretty dang high- I was part of an MMO where the NPCs were played by live people you could carry on conversations with, where players could actively and dynamically influence events, and where when things changed, they changed for everyone, and stayed changed, even if you weren’t there when they happened.

Most of that wouldn’t fly for your average MMO without some serious paradigm shifts and reframing of expectations from both the company and the players.

But it would be nice to see some real innovation with Living Story.

I tend to like most of the armor choices available, as far as amount of skin covered or not goes- in general there’s a good range from barely covered to well covered. Although why so much of the light armor comes with ruffles, I dunno. And we could really use some more non-trenchcoat medium armor.

What drive me nuts is that they’ve not made the effort to make culturaly reasonable female armor for the Charr and Asura, just slapped them all in the male armor. Yes, boob windows and cleavage enhancing armor would look silly on creatures with no breasts- so why not make armor that doesn’t have boob windows, but is still obviously feminine?

Marge.4035:

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

randomly decided to start working again after I came out of a PS bit…I’d already done 2 PS missions without anything changing. o.O

(Had to log off for a bit, came back in and it was off again. What’s a girl gotta do to keep her flaming blue dagger??)

Hey. As fas as I know, these skins are “glowing” only at night.

I’ll have to keep an eye on that then- I hadn’t noticed what the sky was doing

What kind of sick monster lays out spike traps for baby dolyaks, anyhow?

;)

huh. Well never mind then

Now that the low level champ trains won’t be available anymore, has anyone ever considered champ farming the Bard’s Valley cave in Mount Maelstrom? There’s a metric frakton (that’s the technicaly term) of champs in there- theoretically one run though there could take less time and get more loot than any of the trains did.

randomly decided to start working again after I came out of a PS bit…I’d already done 2 PS missions without anything changing. o.O

(Had to log off for a bit, came back in and it was off again. What’s a girl gotta do to keep her flaming blue dagger??)

Weapon Skin: Royal Ascalonian Dagger
Issue: Skin effects vanished after Personal Story

Applied skin to equipped dagger, the blue glow & effects worked just fine, however, when I went into a PS mission, all the effects vanished.

I’ve tried re-equipping, changing hands, changing weapons completely and coming back to it, teleporting, changing zones, changing characters & logging out. I did futz with the graphic settings (no effect), but that shouldn’t be the problem since it was working fine on the existing settings.

I haven’t tried spending the transmutation charges to change the skin to something else and back again.

I did get it to come back once by leaving the game, coming back, and not moving for about 5 minutes- but it went away again next PS bit, and hasn’t come back since.

there’s a plant node in Timberline Falls, down in Melaggan’s Grotto, that always spawns in the rock.

And here I had been feeling a little silly for having so many characters…

8 toons, 6 80s, 1 map completion. Mostly because I’ve been focusing on other things, and I’m lllaaazzyyy.