Guild Wars 2

Rigel.3092:

Rifle needs fixing, since when? It is still capable of 17K plus killshots if warrior is traited properly. Lol, wow, cannot believe this talk of ‘fixing’ rifle…..

Just because a weapon has one trick, using one specific ability, if you spec and gear precisely, does not mean that it is a good weapon.

Indeed, it’s generally the opposite – one badly designed but arguably slightly OP ability can easily mask much more serious deficiencies and cause devs, but thinking like you do, to fail to fix the other problems with.

Cefiro.9372:

For levelling – craft it.
Dont have the gold then use gw2spidy and make it.
Champ train in Goldshire/Queensdale – boring but fast karma/gold/xp
Craft some more with said gold.
Did I mention craft to level up?

This, on the other hand, is really questionable advice.

Crafting armour or weapons in the current patch is a massive, massive gold sink. Do not, if this is your first character, craft weapons or armour. If you need weapons and armour, blues and greens are available on the AH. They will cost less than you could sell the crafting materials for, far, far less.

If you really want to level up super-fast, for some reason, don’t do it by crafting weapons or armour. Do it by levelling cooking 1-400 (which can be done very cheaply, that’s 10 levels right there), and maybe levelling Jeweller 1-350-ish (maybe 375 – you won’t have the ectos to go higher), or perhaps Leatherworker (but that’s no direct use to a Warrior so less of a good idea). 1-350 will get you 8 levels or so with Jeweller, and whilst it will detract from how much gold you could have at 80, it won’t do so in the same way something like WS or Armoursmith would.

The Queensdale Champ train is also truly incredibly boring, and on a lot of servers, it’s not actually running right now a lot of days/nights, because the same people are often the Labyrinth instead. Both of them will get you fairly steady XP and good rewards, but you are repeating the same few events over and over and over, and you will be doing literally nothing skilled or involved, just mindlessly zerging bosses whilst seeing the same scenery. You gain a level about once every kitten minutes on the Queensdale train (and 95% of the XP is from the Champs being “events”, so XP boosters do almost nothing to that), which is good but not great.

It also means that you won’t have any WPs around the world, so once you do level up, you’ll just have to go get all of them. Scarlet events are also much faster XP than the train (especially with boosters – even without I’ve gained three levels in those 45 minutes before) but you won’t be able to get to them if you only have WPs in Queensdale or the like.

So unless you actually enjoy boredom and repetition, I’d stay away from that. Especially as at 80 you may want to do the Frostgorge train, which is vastly more profitable, and don’t want to already be 100% bored of trains!

Cefiro.9372:

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

DPS Warrior Guide Updated for 10/15

Top PVE DPS guide by Brazil.

All you could need.

Great at level 80, not much use whilst levelling.

ddoi.9264:

Hexom is asking what to use while levelling guys.

I’d recommend staying away from GS at low levels. Even with power prec gear hundred blades and the autoattack simply does not do enough dps and you often get overwhelmed by enemy mobs and the occasional veteran mobs which hit like a truck.

I’d recommend axe/mace and longbow, and full power precision crit gear. Slot signet of fury, fgj and endure pain for oh crap moments. Start fights with full adrenaline by activating the signet if you’re low. Combustive shot -> arcing arrow, then hack away with your axe if there’s anything still left alive. Combustive shot + arcing arrow is just so powerful for clearing trash mobs, they literally melt away from that simple combo. The AoE is powerful and very large so it’s great for tagging mobs for loot and exp too.

If you have trouble with stronger/numerous mobs, stay in longbow a while longer and kite inside your combustive shot fire field until they have lower health/fewer numbers.

Carry a GS around though if you want to jump in a dungeon or two to swap out with your longbow. Also, get healing signet asap.

That’s the best advice so far, considering the OP is asking about levelling. However, rather than Axe/Mace, I’d usually run with Axe/Horn, because when you’re levelling, you spend more time travelling than fighting, and you can’t fight travel time with a mace, but you can with a horn!

Alternatively if you have Warrior’s Sprint, and remember to keep the Axe/Mace equipped whilst moving, that’s almost as good.

Astral Projections.7320:

I suspect that they are like ori and ancient wood nodes. From harvesting every day in Frostgorge, thus is what I have seen, normally those reset at the reset time unless you have harvested that node within 6 hours of reset. Then it’s reset plus those hours. That is, if you harvest 5 hours before reset it’s reset plus 1 hour. If you harvest 3 hours before reset it’s reset plus 3 hours and so on.

That would explain why someone opens a chest within the 6 hours before reset and then it’s not available again at reset, he need to wait that extra time.

Thanks Astral, I logged in and checked, and this appears to be it – the normal chests reset on the daily reset regardless, but the Grand and Splendid ones are doing something along those times – I think it may be slightly longer, or it may round up, when calculating the delay, but certainly it’s along those lines.

Interesting.

I ran the Queensdale chest route with three characters, and lazily logged two out after finishing it (near the exit to Demongrub Pits, not actually by the last chest), whilst I kept playing the third.

With both of the lazy characters, not only did the big chest at the end of Demongrub Pits not reset, but also, half-way across the zone (literally – maybe further), the Beggar’s Burrow chest did not reset! One that neither of them was near (obviously). Both were done an hour or two before the reset.

All the normal (i.e. not Splendid or Grand) chests in the zone reset properly on both.

What I haven’t checked is whether they reset for the third character, who logged out in Lion’s Arch later.

What this would suggest, if it’s not some weird bug, is that either:

A) Logging out even in the same zone as chests you’ve opened is risky.

or

B) Logging out near one Splendid/Grand chest that you’ve opened could potentially prevent reset on all of them (in that zone, at least).

What’s particularly odd is that I have logged out right next to JP chests in Lion’s Arch before and they’ve reset just fine.

I’ll check with the third character and update this thread. If they’ve not reset for her, either, it has to be some kind of account-wide thing, I’d think. I sure did open a lot of chests last night. I know people who do all the JPs on practically a daily basis, though, and haven’t seen this problem.

Danikat.8537:

I doubt a lot of people go for black and/or white because they don’t know how to choose anything else. I think they do it because those are the most expensive colours.

Same reason so many people get T3 armor as soon as they can afford it and never really consider anything else. They want to use their armor to show off.

I strongly disagree, Dani. Most people who are dressed in black and white clearly have no ability to coordinate colour schemes. You can see this particularly when the same people do attempt an actual colour scheme – it’s pretty much always a disaster. Black and white is completely safe.

There are exceptions, of course, where B&W is a great way to make an armour look great, and the player is otherwise good at dyeing but they’re rare.

Behellagh.1468:

There are 421 dyes in this game. Only 181 selling for 10s or less and 174 of those for less than 5s. And nearly all of them are bland and boring. 155 dyes in the 10-20s range and they are only moderately less bland and boring. 53 dyes in the 30-50s range and 19 in the 50s-1g range.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we had some way to try on the various dyes without buying them first. But the preview in the TP is limited and the swatches in the Wiki are still too small to be of much use.

So we end up will an array of dull, muted but affordable color choices to choose from because all the really bright primaries/secondary/tertiary colors are above 1g a piece and aren’t coming down any time soon due to their rarity and popularity.

This is a bit silly Behellagh. The colours listed in various posts here are both cheap and strong. Some are pastels, but others are primaries. Either way, you can achieve a strong look very cheaply unless your look absolutely demands solid black, solid white, or certain primaries.

I do agree that a better colour-tester would be nice, but I know from practice that using wikis and so on does get you off to a good start – just try them on via the AH after that, and maybe 60-70% of them will in fact look how you anticipated, and you can buy those.

The only dye I’ve ever spent close to 1g on was Royal Blue, I note. Of course I once had Celestial drop for me… I sold it and used the gold to buy a new character slot!

@Serisho – this is a great thread, thank you for making it!

Does anyone know what the actual reset time or reset criteria are for Splendid and Grand chests from JPs, mini-dungeons and so on? (Not from bosses)

I had always assumed that they reset at the daily reset, with most other things, but they definitely do not. Even six hours after that, they’ve not reset.

Normal chests appear to reset either at that time, or at some point in those six hours.

The wiki and so on do not appear to have this information, but surely someone out there knows?

Vayne.8563:

I second this. If you must have vertical progression in the game, keep it optional.

Agreed, but with the spread of Ascended gear into ever more areas, I think it’s only a matter of time before ArenaNet starts hearing “OMG THIS GAEM IZ 2 EZ!” from people in full Ascended, and starts thinking about how to challenge those people.

Aza.1702:

So, we can buy an instant trait reset for 70 gems (~4g) at the traiding post, while it costs a few silver to reset trait points in LA. But the price is not what i want to discuss right now.
Since the start of gw2 i was hoping that some day we will have the possibilities to change and save our weapons, traits, skills.. wherever and whenever we want, just like in gw1 (Maybe with a few restrictions like dungeons or so). I think with this step my hopes that we could see this feature in the near future are shattered. You are always talking about how we can play what we want. Is this really a necessary money sink? We can already change weapons and skills at any time, so why keep this restriction on traits? Also i think people would be more likely to try out new builds and test them in different situations. with the upcoming balance update you said you want to encourage new builds. So why this useless restriction? i can see no harm in it and i’m sure it would make a lot of people very happy.

I have to agree. It’s disappointing, to say the least.

It’s particularly bizarre to put this in before putting in any ability to save templates or the like, because the only time I could ever foresee myself wanting to blow 4g to retrait would be when I was in a totally insane hurry, and I sure as heck wouldn’t have time to mess around with carefully re-spending all my trait-points if I was in that kind of hurry!

cesmode.4257:

I’ve said this before in other threads…
I think that the reason why this community has become the most demanding and nit-picking community out of any MMO I’ve ever played is because Arenanet has made pretty bold claims, promises, and then claimed that we mis-understood what they meant to say. I’ve played many MMOs and while each commmunity is different and each community is pretty demanding, GW2 community is by far the worst in this regard.

You never played EQ a year or two in, or WoW in the TBC era, did you? Or sure as heck don’t remember the forums from back then if you did! With EQ, players got so demanding that they staged sit-ins which crashed servers, in order to attempt to force developers to nerf certain classes (not for PvP, even, purely for PvE!). The players were successful (the leader of these sit-ins went on to be WoW’s lead dev for a while before being sidelined into developing Titan).

With WoW, the amount of screaming and shrieking, particularly from self-declared “raiders” in the TBC era was far, far louder, more irrational, and more shrill than even the worst stuff here. Screaming that they, as raiders, should never have to do anything but raid to access gear, that no-one who didn’t raid should ever have gear which was either aesthetically pleasing OR powerful, trying to force the developers to get rid of “welfare epics”. The level of entitlement was truly astonishing (there was no “opposition” either – no group of people demanding easy epics or the like, just “raiders” (and I was an actual raider at the time and thought these guys were complete idiots) shrieking endlessly at the devs and threatening to quit and to go to [insert FotM game which turned out to be terrible here] and so on. WotLK forced them to accept that none of that was going to happen so they kind of calmed down a bit then.

I heard that FFXI fans were even more demanding and loud, too, but I don’t know, I never played that.

You are right that a lot of the issues stem from the boldness of developer comments followed by the near-complete lack of communication of changes of direction, though. In general I think we could do with more frequent updates on the direction of the game, and particularly some discussion from the devs of their goals with certain mechanics and ideas – not the living story stuff, which they are always happy to talk about, but Ascended weapons and the karma nerf and so on, which they avoid discussing much.

Tongku.5326:

OP, they are NOT ignoring it. Its kinda locked at the moment “as is” due to technical limitations. They have stated so a few months ago very clearly, and no I do not have a link since it was x months ago, if source is an issue for you or anyone, please google it yourselves.

Googling it I find nothing on zerker and little on conditions, and last time they said anything was February. I didn’t say they were ignoring it. I said they were silent. Given they’ve just talked about “collaborative development”, I think it’s fair to ask about this.

style.6173:

Because zerker builds are high risk, high reward. That’s how it should be. They do not need any changes.

As someone who runs full zerker on some characters, I disagree. Zerker builds are only slightly more risky than non-Zerker ones, for two reasons:

1) Most really serious damage in GW2 must be avoided, cannot be mitigated. So it is effectively the same for all builds.

2) Most “steady” damage is best mitigated by killing the enemy inflicting it. The best way to do that is zerker gear.

So absolutely no, compared to other builds it is not high-risk, high-reward. It is moderate risk, highest possible reward. A full Soldier build, for example, is still moderate risk, not low-risk, in any PvE where being downed/killed is actually a possibility, because it kills so much more slowly (except objects/some world bosses), and only moderate reward.

In PvP I agree it’s extremely high risk, but the whole issue here is how different PvE and PvP are, and it is not anywhere near as high risk in PvE. Some posters who consistently defend the current zerker situation actually point this out as a major plus for zerker (colesy, for example).

As for getting rid of it, well, that’s not what this thread is intended to be about. What I am interested in is why ArenaNet have said nothing. If it is intended, I would appreciate them saying so, and will act accordingly. If it is not intended, well, I hope they have a good plan – they are going to need it.

Mirta.5029:

The engine that they’re using is modified old GW1 engine and therefore freaks out from lots of numbers. That’s why SAB world 2 had to be modified and the water sprouts did not function properly. The engine can’t cope. To solve it they would have to re-code the whole game for a different engine.

No, they would have to improve aspects of it. Companies do this all the time. Or rework damaging conditions so they don’t involve so many small numbers.

haviz.1340:

You don’t get stronger control aspect with different gear and support is balanced such that healing power increases your heal/regen potency but offensive gear increases your reflections and certain supportive conditions like blinds and vulnerability.

This describes the problem but does not answer or excuse it, nor does it really address the tiny condition cap.

@Chris Whiteside – if ArenaNet wants the best collaboration from the community, there is one simple thing that they are missing:

Communication.

We don’t know why many of your decisions were made, or what your goals are, or why certain issues appear to be being ignored (I say appear, because I doubt that they are), but without communication, there’s absolutely no way to tell. Explaining why you think the current Teq design is a good thing, for example, would be interesting (particularly the 1hr spawn window and effectively forcing all serious players into organised overflows), or why, in PvE, zerker gear is still so much more optimal than other gearing.

Mirta.5029:

1. Condition damage can be too hard for them to solve. They can be aware of it, not hoping that it goes away, just be unable to solve it.

That’s “hoping it goes away”, because as technology improves, it may become solvable. There’s no such thing as just “too hard” in that sense, either, and certainly not when other games with similar systems don’t have the same issue.

Mirta.5029:

2. Zerker is already getting solved. For example you can’t crit on Teq.

Uh, no. That’s always been the case with Teq. It’s not a new thing. It’s the same with any “object”-style world-boss, and appears to be a technical issue, not intentional design (again, their silence on this leaves it open), given you can’t crit objects either.

haviz.1340:

There’s always one right way to gear, that’s the very definition of “optimal”.

Sure, but that’s being pedantic and missing the forest for the trees. In most games, there will be different ways to gear that are very effective – a different spec may require different gear, for example – indeed there are in GW2 – just not really in PvE. This is clearly an issue. Also, in other games, there are often a number of very close alternatives, which is not really the case here. If you removed Crit Damage from the game, it might be (not my chosen solution, just one approach).

It seems me like, in many ways, the most pressing issue for this game, mechanically, is the fact that there is basically only one “right” way to gear (and thus few to spec/trait, as well) for PvE. This is caused by two factors – firstly that zerker gear compounds effectiveness in a way no other gear does (including defensive/survival gear), because of the triple-threat of Power, Precision and Critical Damage, and secondly, the low limits to how well condition damage can work in PvE (discussed at length elsewhere).

Given the ArenaNet team are at least somewhat vocal, and frequently discuss their plans and intentions, and problems they perceive with the game, what do we think is going on here. The possibilities that occur to me are:

1) They know it’s a problem but have zero idea about solving it, and are hoping it somehow goes away.

2) They know it’s a problem, and have a plan, but don’t want to tip their hand for fear of economic and other effects.

3) They don’t think it’s a problem, and are happy for zerker gear and power builds to basically be “the only way to go”.

4) They don’t know that it’s even an thing.

If they have ever said anything, and I’ve missed it, please let me know. I hope the answer is 2, but I’m just not sure what I believe given the total lack of comment.

Uh, dude, I’m guessing math isn’t your strong suit. It’s 0-3 and the AVERAGE is 0.9.

It is literally impossible for 1-2 to AVERAGE below one. You could make it 0-2 and see less 0s but… No, you cannot have 1-2 and average 0.9. Math does not work that way.

Lonesamurai.4852:

So basically you’re saying most people who left GW2 want a WoW clone

Well they have one coming with Wildstar

Yep and yep. And right now at least WildStar is like WoW plus massive time requirements. Be interesting to see how that does with people with jobs/kids/friends.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

People need to understand Ascended gear was meant only for Fractals, but as WvW players complained about it, they made it available through medals too.

Nope. If it was, then the only difference from Exotic would be the Infusion slot (not the stats), and it wouldn’t be buyable with Laurels. Fractals were merely where it first came in.

Player Character.9467:

Again, the dps you get is mostly coming from your trinkets. For one trinkets give MORE stats than armor does so you are more zerker than ptv if you run that mix. You are not running soldier’s at that point.

You’re not “running zerker”, either, though, are you? You’re running a mixed gear build of the kind that is actually pretty common on Warriors and despite the boardwarrior “Perfect Scenario”-types screaming that you must go “All X or b failz”, actually works really well in the messy real world of the actual game, where you are rarely, if ever, playing with perfect groupmates in a perfect comp (I think we can all agree that, in a perfect world, yes, all zerker is going to be best – grats to those who constantly and only group with people where that actually works out).

Player Character.9467:

I’m convinced it’s on purpose to mess with people. Even saying it out loud ptv rolls off easier than pvt.

That’s a bit paranoid. It’s more likely because Pvt is an existing acronym – for Private, the rank in the military, and an acronym most players are likely familiar with.

Grileenor.1497:

Charak.9761:

The players they’ve lost won’t come back for an expansion.
The new players they get can’t even keep up with the new content.

Wrong, most players who have left would only come back with a decent expansion. 80% of my guild stopped playing and waits for either a good new MMO or an expansion worth of content. LS only offers new content for some hours a month. This might be enjoyed by active players, but nobody who has already left really cares for this temporary mini content.

The point is: GW2 currently lacks competition. There will be some bigger titles in the next half year and GW2 will loose big chunks of players, if they don’t offer (much)more than they do now. I would buy an expansion, just to be able to play with my guildmates again for a longer period of time. I would buy another promising game for the same reason as well. I am not the only one thinking this way.

I just wanted to point out that the above is pretty much nonsense.

Most people who have left GW2 and have not come back at all for the Living Story stuff would not come back for long, if at all, for an expansion. This is because they are not looking for a game with slow, limited vertical progression, or where you are meant to keep looking around the world, exploring, doing new stuff and so on.

They are looking for a game with strong, steady/rapid vertical progression, where you burn through content, then largely sit around and wait for more, whilst raiding a couple of nights a week.

Even if GW2 released an expansion full of new content, all that is going to happen, best case scenario, is that they will buy the expansion, realize that the game still doesn’t have much vertical progression (and that it is slow and time-gated, and they’re waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on it, because they quit months ago, and will thus take months and months of time-gates to catch up), and then quit again.

Worst case scenario, and more likely, they just completely ignore the expansion just like the ignored the living world.

I do think the Living Story, so far, is seriously lacking in one area: “New lands!” as my Norn would put it. But that’s really the only way in which it is lacking. If we don’t see some new zones fairly soon, I could see that having a negative impact when new MMOs are coming out, but at the same time, maybe the ArenaNet want to play it smart.

Here’s a secret: every time a new MMO comes out, a bunch of people will want to play it, no matter how much they like their “current” MMO.

They will go and play it for 2-3 months until they are bored, burnt-out and generally feeling “meh” about it. The first month or so they will be intensely positive about it, telling everyone “OMG THIS GAME IS GREAT!”. Second month they’ll tone it down, and by month three, well, they’re apathetic.

It is at this point that they will either return to their previous MMO, or move on to yet another MMO.

So when releasing stuff which is actually exciting, like new zones, it could be smart to time it appropriately. Which may mean waiting to “lose” players to TESO and WildStar and the like, before drawing them back.

Speaking of which, I’m already seeing people drifting back in from FFXI Reborn – just for the living story stuff – even if they don’t play it, they are aware of it, and it keeps them thinking about the game.

reapex.8546:

Your choices still affect how Trahearne responds and what course the Pact take. Without you the story would go one linear path, there are several ways to affect the story after you are made Commander.

Not in any meaningful way. The story is effectively completely linear. All you are doing once the Pact is formed is deciding what scenes to “get in on”, essentially.

It’s really bizarre. Even the “end” of your personal story is essentially about Trahearne, not about you. Which is really the precise opposite of all four GW1 campaigns (I note all the GW1 campaigns gave you a really solid, last-forever-type reward, too, where this personal story just gives you a yellow with a so-so skin).

Nilkemia.8507:

As for him turning evil…well, right now I just can’t see a good motive for him doing so, given what we know about him. He could get forcibly corrupted by Nightmare, but other than that, doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that would turn against you.

Indeed. But as the game actually points out, he needs to find something to do with himself post-Zhaitan, and given he doesn’t appear to particularly care about anything or anyone (not in an apathetic way, but in a disinterested way), it would be easy to see him deciding to champion something that maybe not everyone is keen on. His lack of purpose might make him a good candidate for Nightmare corruption, too.

Doesn’t really explain why he had all these abilities and so on, though.

Morrigan.2809:

I love Take root, seriously- I use it on all my Sylvari’s
Seed Turret I have found useful to pull agro away for me for a second or two- I actually use it a lot on my Ranger

Take root is an extremely strong elite by racial standards. I think the OP is being pretty darn silly. Also the monsters attacking the turrets is a feature, and a VERY useful one.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Those items were never intended to be usable in-game items. We didn’t want to force players to play a specific race/storyline to get the “optimal” items for their class.

These two things don’t seem to go together.

Just because an item has some actual existence in-game, rather than being merely notional, doesn’t mean that it is in any way “optimal”. I mean, this can’t be a looks issue, as you have already linked available looks to race and choices in the storyline.

This really seems like an unfinished feature, and I hope you expand on it later, rather than just letting it go to waste.

Nilkemia.8507:

From “Forging the Pact”.

“We’re trapped. But I can summon the reinforcements we need to fight our way out. This will require no small effort, but it is well within my power. Stand by. I need a moment to gather my strength.”

Aside from summoning 2 Flesh Worms at the same time back while retaking Claw Island, he doesn’t ever do this again as far as I know, despite fighting alongside us quite a few more times through the game in encounters where having multiple Flesh Golems would be handy to have.

That’s a flaw of the Personal Story. We see cool things like this and they never come up again. This also contributes somewhat to people’s hatred towards him: If he had thought to do this back at the first battle of Claw Island, our mentor would have no viable reason to have to sacrifice themselves.

It’s pretty much just your choice of:

A) Inconsistent/bad/lazy writing – As Trahearne’s abilities aren’t pinned down, different writers probably have different ideas on what he can do, and it’s very easy to say “Trahearne can magic his way out of this situation I have created”.

B) Trahearne is more than he seems – If it’s not bad writing, then maybe Trahearne isn’t completely showing his hand. Dialogue-wise, we have no reason to believe this, but in terms of his behaviour and capabilities, he seems a little off.

Which of course brings to mind people like Vizier Khilbron, who told us he was on our side, and seemed to be, but also seemed to be holding stuff back.

C) “Trahearne is the best” – Not so much bad/lazy writing as misguided (for this kind of game) writing, where the writers want to show off how “awesome” Trahearne is, and the easiest way to do this is simply to have him demonstrate greater power than any PC can wield.

B is the only one that leaves GW2’s main writing team looking good (as regards the 30+ personal story – general lore-wise they look great), so I really hope it’s that and Trahearne does a face-heel turn, but I think a combination of A and C is most likely the real explanation. And yes, it really undermines the martyrdom of the earlier character, and makes you really wonder about Trahearne in a lot of other situations.

Ashabhi.1365:

I have a question for you…

What do you do while waiting? Do you just “stand around” or do you try to organize with the people around you?

While I understand that simply standing around is terribly boring, sometimes having that extra hour to organize is a good thing… besides, I don’t think I have ever waited for more than about 20 minutes once the window has opened….except for the one time that Taco broke.

The extra hour actually prevents organisation, by and large, because you have no idea when the spawn is going to occur. If you knew when, you could get there in time, with an organised group, and do things in the organised fashion that event demands.

Because there is no precise time, just a one-hour window, you instead have to stand around, doing essentially nothing (except for dealing with people randomly dying because they lagged or whatever), because people are still coming and going, and any organisation you can do is extremely limited.

As for “never taken more than 20 minutes for me”, well, that’s nice, but meaningless anecdote. I mean, I’ve never had my car stolen either, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or that I can leave it unlocked. I’ve seen it take ten, twenty, forty minutes and once even nearly the entire hour. Any REAL organisation already had to take place beforehand, because the only way to even possibly avoid the overflow is to arrive before the window even opens.

So, no, I don’t think that it is helpful, it’s just a big waste of time for everyone involved – and much worse, as a waste of time, than most other windows, because there is so little to do in the zone.

Vayne.8563:

This is a genre that changes very quickly. Companies have to think and adapt on their feet. Whatever plan they have unquote is a guideline because they’re guessing.

That’s why things seem to change all the time. Because they’re changing all the time.

I don’t always agree with Vayne, but he’s spot-on here.

Blizzard are a good example. They have moderate-to-long-term plans in terms of where they want to go plot and location-wise (i.e. “fluff”), vague ones, in their games, but their plans for mechanics, or for nearer-term content? Those change absolutely constantly, by their own admission.

This is a large part of their success. Another game comes up with a good idea? Well, WoW’s development is agile enough that they can steal it, rather than remaining tied to ultra-specific plans. You can see this too in how they virtually rebuild the game every expansion – accounting for changes in the world of MMOs, for what’s fun and what isn’t, and so on.

I mean, they’ve done 180s, they’ve delayed stuff they wanted to do for years and years, they’ve changed course countless times, and I’m pretty sure that’s helped them.

I expect that things are similar at ArenaNet. They have longer-term plans regarding fluff and story, and so on (I hope!), but only shorter-term ones with mechanical stuff. With games like TESO and WildStar on the way, they will undoubtedly need to adapt, and to move rapidly.

That said, not planning to do expansions is a fairly big deal – if they change their mind on that it will not be trivial to reverse course on it, because you need multiple teams working on an expansion for months or years. So I wouldn’t anticipate an expansion any time soon.

Chopps.5047:

Do we really want full ascended Valkyrie thieves in wvw? Honest question.

Perhaps not, but if so, we could do with hearing that from ArenaNet, rather than just wondering if this is an oversight, a lack of content teams to make it, or intentional (it was seemingly an oversight previously).

webtoehobbit.4201:

….. I mean did ANet just forget about them? Are they trying to sweep them under the rug? Why is Destiny’s Edge absent from basically every single huge event that has happened since the felling of Zhaitan. If we don’t get a vacation from these world changing events, then why do they?

You may want to ask yourself a question – do most players like Destiny’s Edge or want to have anything to do with them as a group?

As a group, Destiny’s Edge are bickering, whinging, ill-tempered, and petty.

As individuals, they’re all pretty cool!

As individuals, they’ve all re-appeared in various Living Story things and have been fine.

So perhaps that answers the question. But there’s more – if they do appear as a group, they are basically the same as a PC group, only, they take away from the PCs by doing the same things, but being more important than them. So perhaps they are all better off being “civilians”, as it were, and leaving the PCs as the ones actually sorting the world out?

The only fun use I could think for them as a group would be if you did a dungeon “with” them – i.e. you had to split your group and have two people to with three Destiny’s Edge guys, and three people go with two Destiny’s Edge people, and do it that way – that might be fun. Or just have DE backing up (NOT LEADING!) your group.

But seriously, let’s keep them separated – they all have “real jobs” now, don’t they? Logan sure does. Pretty sure Caithe does. Eir kind of does. Rytlock definitely does. Not sure about Zojja. Let them do those real jobs, and let US do the adventuring. It’s fun to help one of them at a time, but to deal with the how squabbling bunch of them? Please no.

Lordrosicky.5813:

It just takes design time away from actual significant things in the game. Is this game really so huge on all the role playing bs?

Take that election thing which people loved. Who cares. It doesnt actually change anything. The living story doesn’t ever feel alive and that is a fact.

Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped wasting time on this and put more resources into pvp, wvw and dungeons and things. Still no new fractals? Still no pvp at all? Still the same old WvW where all they do is add a new skill on a siege weapon each month.

Everything else gets the screw in favour of the living story and yet the living story is BS.

Who agrees?

This is hilarious – you admit people “loved” something, then say it was meaningless. If you cannot see the extreme contradiction there, you need to go back rethink your entire argument.

You are also in error.

The Living Story teams are separate from the Feature teams – the big stuff isn’t done by them, so it is not really taking significant resources away from anything.

You pretty much betray your loyalties when you say you want more dungeons, fractals and PvP – i.e. stuff most players don’t do much. You want more niche stuff, and less stuff for “the masses”.

Er, no.

Anyway, they just put in new WvW stuff, they’ve got PvP stuff coming, there is a new dungeon path in a few days, and new Fractals in not long, so I don’t think your complaints remotely hold up.

EDIT – That said, I completely agree the Flame and Frost was much better than, oh, all the other stuff since. Can we make the Flame and Frost team the “primary” Living Story team or something? The other guys could really learn from them.

ProtoGunner.4953:

This has to be considered. It was no big deal for me with exotics but it IS one now with ascended gear. I play 6 different professions at the moment (some more some less, but still). And this makes it even worse. They really have to change there something if they want us ‘to play the way you want’. It’s simply not true with the setup they have now.

I completely agree, but this is proving my point – the problem is NOT the skill system.

The problem is the gear system. Gear is not impossible to obtain, but it does require significant effort, and to change builds you need ENTIRE other gear-sets, which you don’t have the storage space for, and which take a lot of effort to get.

And that’s just with Exotics!

With Ascended gear, it’s all time-gated, and the Weapons (and presumably armour) are hideously expensive to make, I mean just HIDEOUSLY, so your ability to change specs, to try something new – which was really strong in GW1 – is really limited.

But by the gear, much more than the skills. The dominance of Berserker is also an issue – currently it’s making the gear problems LESS bad, because all the good PvE specs tend to use it – but it also means that there are far fewer effective specs.

So ArenaNet is going to have to make some fairly serious changes to the gear, and make them fairly soon, if they want to keep people happy and interested. We don’t need new tiers – we need better storage and more ways to get gear (and perhaps more different stat setups).

Lexandro.1456:

If Anet just tack on another load of pointless skills with extreme cooldowns it wont make a blind bit of difference to the game. Its just more of the same.

Sure, if they do that.

But I don’t think they will do that. They certainly learned to make cooler skills going from Prophecies to Factions, and Factions to Nightfall, and I think arguably from Nightfall to EotN (got a bit too obsessed with Faction-based skills but still).

Once we start seeing the new skills in the game, we’ll have a better idea, but I suspect that they’ll be pretty good, as long as ArenaNet have learned from making GW2, and I have faith that they have.

kirima san.3760:

In Guild Wars 2, the only practical differences I can do is swap the weapon on my Mesmer. There are not nearly as many combinations of play style in GW2 as there were in GW1. Most people have very similar builds.

That just isn’t any more true in GW2 than GW1.

I mean, do all Mesmers run with the exact same weapon combo? Nope. Do they all run with with the same Utilities? Not even slightly. Do they all run with the same Elite… er, maybe, but that’s something that would easy to fix by adding a couple more solid elite options.

A staff-oriented field-using mesmer is a completely different play-experience to one who is primarily greatsword-using and DD/phantasm-oriented.

The problem is that, in PvE, the latter mesmer tends to be a lot more effective. In PvP there is much less of an “identical builds” issue, despite the meta – most classes have at least two-three “strong” builds even if there is only one “meta” (but even in GWI, there was rarely more than one “meta” viable at a time for a class – not never, but not often).

And that PvE problem DOES NOT relate to the skills, much, it relates to the compounding effect of Berserker gear and the low caps on Conditions.

IF Berserker gear was not the only way to get good damage or do well in serious content, IF Condition caps were much higher or worked differently, (like, applying a Condition to a capped creature did direct damage instead or something), then I think there is no way anyone would be trying to argue that they didn’t have enough options.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I partially agree. You guys forget the GW1 meta game. While the combinations were almost infinite most players had some builds they run for months. Simply be cause other builds were not as effective. Like the Discord builds, the SoS builds, the Pain Inverter builds. There were few tweaks here and there but that’s comparable to the utilities we have now.

Yep. On my Paragon I ran basically one build for six months+, with at most minor variations for different circumstances.

Maybe we could do with some stuff like clkitten skills which punish specific opponent-types, like the Margonite-punishing skills, to help break up some of the monotony, though, in GW2.

kirima san.3760:

I think I must disagree with you. While the mesmer does have 61 skills, most of them are skills you get from your weapon and you can not affect or change them. And even if you find a weapon there may be that 1 skill on it you actually never use because it does not fit in with your “utilities”.

Chain skills in Guild Wars 2 are not really fun either. In GW1 the assassin could use skill A to get skill B and then maybe get skill C. But when getting to skill B he could re use skill A instead of using skill C. But in Guild Wars 2 your skill changes into the next one and all you do is press the same button over and over again, and you can not jump in the chain either, like I already stated.

You’re still choosing what weapon to use, so I think this is, well bullkitten, to put none to fine a point on it. You absolutely CAN affect your weapon skills via Traits, too.

I do think there could be more stuff done with them – more interesting stuff, where abilities interacted more, but the idea that there are hardly any skills? Nonsense.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

While I enjoyed those for the most part, I (And every single GW1 player) crave for some actual content that has something to do with the Lore, and that will actually permanently change Tyria. The previous content releases are ill-explained minor happenings, compared to the powerful force that the Living Story truly could be.

The above mentioned content releases:
- Are not a story.
- Do not add on to the GW2 story missions.
- Have nothing in common with each other.
- Have nothing to do with GW Lore.
- Do not permanently change Tyria.

The temporary content is getting old. It has nothing to do with GW, and does not change the landscape of Tyria.

Here, here!

I’ve enjoyed the Living World stuff, but it’s not really sticking together for me (Braham and Rox are likeable, at least), and I really miss the much more epic and less joke-y feel of GW1’s lore. The Aetherblades feel more funny than evil. The Molten Alliance seems faintly ridiculous and hard to really explain. Scarlet herself, and especially her clockworks, seem rather like a joke-y enemy than a serious threat.

I mean, maybe that’s intended. Orr and all that was pretty grim. Maybe this is the light-hearted intermission before TERRIFYING EVENTS unfold?

But I think they do need to start unfolding soon, and I’d really like to see more GW1-based stuff, and less “light-hearted steampunk” stuff. The steampunk stuff is there for those who want it, but how about some more fantasy and less steampunk, eh? GW1 was really awesome fantasy so…

The OP went on for a very long time to describe a very simple problem:

Scarlet has no apparent motivation or justification for her actions.

That’s a problem because it means she’s pretty boring – players don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing, just that she is – so she is more like a natural disaster than a villain – a force of nature, not a person – and forces of nature are interesting only in their consequences. So we’ve gone from a boring Sylvari good guy dominating the game (Trahearne), to a boring Sylvari bad guy (Scarlet). I mean, Sylvari are my favourite race, but come on ArenaNet, this is getting predictable.

Supposedly she has some kind of philosophy, but it seems to be pretty inconsistent, and for the level of extreme violence and damage she’s causing, it seems fairly weak and inconsequential, and she acts in a very light-hearted way that really undermines the idea that she’s dedicated to a philosophy.

So there’s no emotional connection with her – you don’t hate her because she believes in evil, because what she believes in is pretty vague and middle-ground (“What turns a man’s heart to neutral?”), but this is inexplicably accompanied by her invading zones and having two giant, ultra-mobile armies to back her up (even though they seem to get little/nothing out of the deal).

Given that the failings are more or less identical to Trahearne, I kind of wonder if ArenaNet’s lead writers need sit down and think about what they’ve done for a while.

EDIT – The reason that “bad things happened to X” works well as a villain motivation is twofold – firstly it’s ultra-rare in real-life for someone to be evil unless they were mistreated severely OR were utterly spoiled/pampered to the point where they are disconnected from humanity as a whole – so it feels “correct”. Second-off, it’s easy to emotionally relate to – all of us have been through bad stuff, and almost all of us have rejected evil as an option for dealing with it – but probably considered it, if not seriously. So you can say “Well something like that happened to me but I didn’t invade a zone with clockwork men because of it!”

What we have here is the “I decided to be evil”, or so it seems, which is vanishingly rare in real life, and not very interesting or easy to relate to.

I will say one thing – it’s better than WoW. In WoW there is only one reason anyone ever turns evil:

MAGIC. Pretty much every single character in WoW who is evil, is evil because magic made him/her evil.

Hopefully we don’t see too much of that in GW2, but I am still kind of afraid, given Scarlet’s apparent desire to “burn the world” that we will find she is merely an agent for the Destroyers and has been “made evil” by them.

haviz.1340:

This game turns into facebook game. Log in, chop down some trees and log out. Nothing is even remotely hard and anet can’t even design anything hard. Dungeons were supposed to be hard, Liadri was supposed to be impossible and many more. We all have seen how that turned out to be.

Nice attempt to move the goalposts, Haviz.

You’ve already said that your friends are only interested in content which involves them getting better and better gear – vertical progression – but now it’s about “hard” content?

No. One or the other, Haviz. Which is it?

What’s particularly funny is that in vertical progression games like WoW, almost nothing is really “hard”, you just need to go get better gear. I mean, Heroic Dungeons seem hard? Only until you have gear from them. Then they seem really easy. Raiding seems hard? Only until you have mostly raid gear, then it seems really easy. Heroic Raiding seems hard? Only until you have mostly Heroic raid gear, then it seems mostly, well, if not easy, like just a matter of staying focused (certainly not hard-hard).

So I think what your friends want, and possibly you, is just to get gear and overpower content by getting said gear. GW2 isn’t about that, so…

I don’t think the skill system, at it’s core, is bad, but the cooldowns, particularly on the Utility skills, are pretty excessive, which makes a lot of the skill use kind of automatic/mindless outside of PvP.

I would like to see more short-cooldown Utilities, or Utilities in general having shorter cooldowns outside of PvP. That’s the main thing needed, because apart from that, GW2 is in a better place than some here are suggesting, skill-wise.

Skan.5301:

GW had more than 1300 skills total, GW2 has at most 80.

Do you see the vast difference?

Where the heck are you getting “80” from? That appears to be complete gibberish.

Ignoring the “chain” skills, ignoring downed skills, ignoring underwater skills, ignoring racial skills – Mesmer, for example, has 61 skills. Add in the rest and it’s a hell of a lot more.

That is for one class. Some classes have many more.

So this idea that GW2 is somehow lacking skills is just ridiculous. I am looking forwards to more skills, but “80”? Why even make such a junk claim?

Rouven.7409:

If someone spends 25 years behind enemy lines I expect him to be a battle hardened veteran and act like one. With Traherne I’m more on edge, he could have gone nuts, right? How do I know he still has it in him? He talks like in trance, you almost expect him to betray you at some point because zhaitan had already turned him.

This is part of the problem with Trahearne. He’s a classic archetype – the Keeper of Forgotten Lore, the Man who Knows What is Not Meant to be Known, and so on, but instead of having issues because of that, or being tempted to do dangerous/risky/evil things, Trahearne is as calm and collected as can be, in all situations, under all circumstances (to the point where it actually becomes suspicious, as noted).

Indeed, I think this comes up a couple of times, and he basically blandly tells us that he is automatically immune to all that because he is a Sylvari (okay, fair enough, I guess, but not very interesting) and that indeed even his pets/powers can’t be influenced by Zhaitan because they were “never alive” (ORLY?!).

So he is a completely calm, boring guy, who has no real past, because he was just locked in a room with books and no people (as far as we know), no loves or hates, no personal attachments or dislikes or the like, no weaknesses (because being calm, without attachments and a Sylvari eliminate all potential there), plenty of strengths, but all boring ones (he knows everything and is super-necromancer), and worst of all, no strong beliefs that he ever talks about beyond “beat Zhaitan” (he doesn’t even talk about Sylvari beliefs/ideals much).

Yeah it’s very irritating. I don’t anticipate them fixing that, but what is particularly off is that when I’m having no troubles at all with DCs in the game in general, I will frequently suffer them in the personal story. I don’t know if the server is in another place, or they turn the ping-time tolerance way, way, way down or something, but I have had 10x more DCs in personal story missions than any other content (I mean that literally, ten times more), despite not playing it that much (in part because of that). Add that to the fact that many personal story missions are long, somewhat grindy/tedious combat-wise, sometimes even challenging to solo, and it’s a bad situation.

veasna.3675:

Yeah. I’ve lost motivation to continue this personal story. I have a feeling it’s going downhill after this judging by the amount of hate on Trahearne. URGGGGGGGGGGGGGGhhhhhh.

I’d like to say persevere, but, I’d be being dishonest. It’s not all terrible but it’s not great and there is just more and more Trahearne stuff as you go on, and what is fantastically annoying is how your character is a complete suck-up to him, something you have no control over (why even bother giving is dialogue options if that’s how it’s going to be?).

haviz.1340:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this is not enough backing.
do you want to call your other friends and have them say, that they have inactive friend lists too?

i could show do the same by saying my guild is full of active members playing.

So if they are still playing, they need no progression. People I know need and they have quitted. Making living story fluff every 2 weeks won’t bring back anyone.

You’re confused, Haviz. Living Story and so on brings back plenty of people. They don’t put that time and effort into for no reason – they’d have ditched it months ago if it didn’t.

What it doesn’t bring back is progression-obsessives.

Don’t you remember when GW2 came out, loads of people said “All those dudes obsessed with progression will quit within six months!”? Because they did. People said GW2 would die as a result, but that was clearly wrong. That said, they were right about the progression obsessed people quitting.

That is why your friend list is empty. Because as you seem to say yourself, all your friends wanted progression, and now they’re gone.

It’s pretty simple. GW2 isn’t set up to given strong vertical progression. It never has been, and unless ArenaNet are actively lying, it will not have significant vertical progression in the future. So you need to write those guys off. They were never going to stick around, and NOTHING that ArenaNet can do will bring them back, unless they literally turn the game into WoW, with endless tiers of gear.

TESO and WildStar both sound to be featuring WoW-style gear-churn, so even if GW2 did an amazing expansion full of brilliant new content, you ex-friends wouldn’t be interested, because they don’t care about high-quality content, or content at all – all they want is progression, progression, progression, and for them, all that counts is strong vertical progression.

As for the OP, it would be a very strong idea, to make skins more like dyes, and would make me VERY keen on chasing a lot of stuff it’s not practical to chase when I have limited bankspace for my items. Whether you do that with stats too, I’m not so sure, but skins, definitely a good idea.

It’s pretty bizarre that this still hasn’t happened. Are ArenaNet trying to retire Valkyrie/Carrion as stat combos?

Vol.5241:

TooBz.3065:

Vol.5241:

I really don’t get why anti-farmers want to enforce their own tendencies on farmers.

It’s like casuals trying to instill casual tendencies on hardcore players.

Good luck.

I don’t think they’ll succeed but I can tell you why they try. The champ farm trains increase the price of everything on the TP. Or at least they seem to. Much more gold goes into the system than mats.

I’m not entirely sure about that, but then again we don’t have the proof for it

Champ farming does this:
-contributes gold in the economy from pure silver from boxes
-contributes materials in the economy (which indirectly leads into a gold sink through TP fees)
-generates lots of blues/greens, which now act as an indirect gold sink due to the # of ppl who decide to a.) salvage for luck or b.) sell directly to the TP rather than vending for pure silver to a vendor

But anyways, farming can never be stopped. Farmers will always find the most efficient way to make gold and you can’t stop that unless you totally redesign an MMO into something else that wouldn’t even be considered an MMO. These efforts from non-farmers are just wasted.

I don’t know if you know much about economics, but #1 obvious, inarguably, inflates the economy, #2 depresses prices on those items, but only those items, and #3 inflates the price of those items (no, people are not putting them on TP enough to counteract this – obvious from GW2spidy), albeit not dramatically.

So overall, not it’s not unclear or lacking evidence, it’s very basic economics – more money enters the economy – inflation occurs.

The only REAL gold sink (apart from very minor ones like AH fees) is the gem store – and that is what is keeping this under control, for now. People who have lots and lots of money tend to buy gems with it – rather than it all going into the economy.

Stooperdale.3560:

This isn’t just about Trahearne. It also affects Kiel, Destiny’s Edge and could soon affect Braham and Rox.

Nope.

Braham and Rox are presented very differently and have a very different attitude to the PCs (much more respectful and much more “I need your help!”-oriented). This is not a random thing, I suspect, ArenaNet are learning on the job.

As for the OP, it’s fine to like Trahearne, but you can’t argue people into liking him, and really everything he tries to claim as “objective truth” is merely poorly argued personal opinion on this part.

To the OP I say this: it is NOT a meme or a random event that the vast majority of players dislike or even hate Trahearne. This not just some accident or illusion. It is because of how Trahearne is presented, compared to the rest of the story.

We are told that this is our PERSONAL story. Up until Trahearne arrives, that appears to be true. Mentors and friends come and go, we remain, and we make the decisions, by and large. Post-Trahearne, we suddenly stop really making decisions except from amongst options he provides, and we keep coming back to him.

Every big event stars HIM, with the PC secondary or not starred at all. It is very much as if we are Robin, and he is Batman.

If they ever intended to progress the personal story (and I guess they do not), they need to retire or kill off Trahearne, and have the PC clearly “surpass” him. If they had not called it your personal story, not said it was about you, not made you the absolute star for levels 1-30 of it, this would not be an issue. But they did, and it is!

The OP also needs to face fact and accept that, however much he loves Trahearne, other people’s dislike of him is every bit as valid and honest as that. Trahearne is a “cold fish” – unemotional, humourless, without much in the way of wit or charm, and who is obsessed with his mission. Some minority of people like that kind of thing – but it is not common.

veasna.3675:

We got shorthanded when Tybalt died and Trahearne lived during the battle of Claw Island via order of whisper story arc. I haven’t continued passed this yet, but I guess this is where the personal story took a dive …

In a word, yes. The wrong man died that day. From then on you have a humourless, faintly self-regarding, pontificating, sketchy-seeming, bossy twonk to tell you what to do instead of a charming and funny guy.

Sylv.5324:

Eurhetemec.9052:

It should be stressed that you do need a genuinely FAST PC to guarantee that, though, at least at peak time. With a fairly slow one (decent HDD speed, though), there is no way I can get any but the top three in Frostgorge.

I do think that’s kind of a problem because it means that, right now, top money making = fast computer. No easy solution to that, of course.

Guest to a server with less of a zerg and which runs to instead of ports to the wurm. Before I got my machine upgraded, I did that and did ok.

Wow, yeah, lateral thinking!

I’ll try that! Do you have any suggestions as to which?

Vayne.8563:

Dynamic events take a lot more work to create than traditional quests. How many events would Anet have to create to make all that happen?

A lot, sure, but wouldn’t that be worth it?

This isn’t something people are demanding, Vayne, this is something that would be nice for the future, nice for new areas and so on. I’d really like to see it.