Guild Wars 2

I play GW2 on my Surface Pro 2 from time to time as well when traveling for work. Great little device. As others have said, graphics on lowest as you can get, even undersample the resoution (At the screen size, you cant really tell at range anyway). Works with 25-30fps then.

Limiting aspects are keyboard that is tight to control your action and the small screen. But as an on the go sollution its pretty good.
I would say with 2 years of iteration it should run just fine on a SP4. You have to accept low quality though, and always keep it powered.

I’m suffering from the same problem. Vanilla GW2 works quite smooth (good FPS and input lag) on low graphics settings and on wireless, even in the middle of a boss fight. My router and internet connection is more that suitable for this purpose.

Then i go to a HoT map and that not only drops the FPS, i also suffer from contol lag.
gliding is near impossible because it deploys about 1s later than it should. But also in general contols are laggy, and its taking the joy out of the game.
Instances in HoT run fine however, so it seems to be something relating to the open world maps in HoT.

Loosmaster.8263:

I’m amazed they didn’t put the portal in LA with the rest of the instances.

You mean like the dungeon entrances that are all in LA? Or all the story instances that can be accesses from LA?

The dungeons didn’t have entry lobby area’s either, so that is probably their example. Fractals the same thing. But those maps also don’t have Meta Events that require everyone in the map to participate. So I agree that they need to add a lobby of sorts like the final story step of HoT. Or move the portal to a non-sensible location as LA.

Yes indeed, they do melt. They did so even faster before. ANet doubled their HP in an attempt to make them ‘harder’. It’s stop gap measure to hide a lack of mechanics.

Look, working out a challenging, diverse, failure prone but still achievable boss fight is not easy. The current Tequatl we have is, I think, a good example of a good set-up.
Difficult start phase where you need interaction from other teams at different sites to avoid invulnerability. Then split everyone to cover three battery sites and knock Tequatl down for a burn phase. At any moment during those phases the challenge can fail.

Golem Mk2 (current) is actually more challanging because you really have to pay attention to the surroundings and not get KD, shot or electrocuted.

But bosses like Kralkatorik, Jungle Wurm and Fire elemental are just straight forward. Lots of HP to chip off, stand mostly in one place and spam skills.
Why oh why, on the Kralkatorik battle does eveyone stand on the rocks to his right and he completely ignores that? Why not have huge AoE flanking areas to force players to his front? Why does the Jungle Worm does not do the same huge Knockback as Golem mk2 can do? And what does the fire elemetal do anyway, other than hang there…?

Maybe I’m underestimating the amount of work it takes to make these things work, but why no make large AoE attacks based on where the most players are around a boss? That will spread everyone out, keep you on your toes and have actually dodge out of harms way. Instead of just standing there….

The mordrem bosses in SW have some nice mechanics that you need to keep in mind of (no AoE, lure to bubbles to weaken etc). THe new HoT area also has some nice mechanics, such as both Wyvern Fights in VB.
It would be nice if the old bosses could see some updates to their challenge.

Same issues. Graphics at low, fast internet on my end. I’m Just sent back to character select and when l get back, I’m on a new map. No more T4 Progress in VB, no reward chest. Very frustrating.

Tom Gore.4035:

Anet seems to know this one is annoying, since they have this text with the open-world totem achievement:

“No, you don’t have to carry them all the way back…”

I wouldn’t put it past one developer poking fun at another for creating that boring Achievement.

It’s a change of pace in terms of achievements, but after two its just tedious. There is also no puzzle achievement since there is a big green blob showing you the way.

5726900

Hmm…

A. Well yes it isn’t like many other MMO’s where new armors is a must becouse there is new armor levels… So yes it actualloy lacks alot of cosmetics. But look at point C.

B. I still havent had any laggy experience except for when I enter Tarir for the first time in the story instance. I don’t understand why some have lag and some dont (assuming they have good enough computers), try the new 64-bit Beta version of GW2?

C. I havent played through the whole story yet as I am taking it very easy. But remember that point A and C is something that will come with the LS too, you didn’t just pay for what you got with HoT, you paid to continue play the LS that will give us raids, more story, Outfits, armors and probably even more masteries and even Elite specializations. I doubt F2P and Core GW2 players will be able to do the LS from now.

A + C: That was my reason for prepurchase as well. I would continue to play GW2 and enjoy the tremendous value for money it has given me over the years. I’ve played games mere hours that had a value of €50 because it didn’t work out as expected. Waste of money. Movie tickets are relativly expensive compared to what you get in entertainment time.
So HoT is long term purchase for me, providing new content over time with a one time purchase. Yet I felt that the initial offering is a bit lackluster, is all.

B: Its been coming and going. HoT maps are definalty worse, but Tyria maps seem to work fine. Its not a FPS problem, as I scaled everything down to improve performance (running it on a 4 year on laptop). its simple input lag, that has actually seemed to have gotten worse over the last week (gliding with lag is hard…).

Dont regret HoT. Kind of regret taking the ultimate edition. (I now have a character slot unused…) and nothing in the gemstore I would consider buying (aside from a bank tab).

I’m disappointed in a few things though.
- Lack of new armours
- Laggy gameplay in HoT maps
- Short story

Other than that I’m enjoying it a lot. I like the new maps, the Meta Events taking place and the gliding is very nice and natural feeling.
I’m sort of betting on the future releases they plan, and hopefully adress the shortcomings.

If A-net had waited just 2 monts for release they could have release a much more finished product. Shame…

PopeUrban.2578:

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

PopeUrban.2578:

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

-Snip-

-snipped

-snipped again

-and snipped again-.

That’s not rigging, that’s tweaking the base model’s geometry to fit the sizes and visual anatomy of those races. The issues you’re talking about come from a standpoint of modelling, and it’s pretty obvious where they cut corners there to get more armor out for less work, but is a great indicator of the challenges and time required to push out an armor set that has versions that fit all of the game’s races and genders.

Rigging is the process by which the individual vertices of each model are given weights for how much they follow individual bones in the links in a skeletal animation system. It’s how you set up a 3d model to work with the technical anatomy of a character. I don’t have the skeletons in front of me, as I don’t work at anet and don’t really do the whole datamining thing, but from a purely visual inspection it looks like charr have a few extra spine links, asura a few less, and generally the torso rotations in terms of actual euler angles are pretty drastically different. Humans also appear to have a more complex skeletal setup for the light and medium weights to control skirt/coat bits, while asura seem to link those bits directly to the hip/legs skeletons since they’re so short it wouldn’t be a sensible use of porcessing power to caculate skeletal animations for something that barely moves at all. Asura also seems to have a squash and stretch controller implemented to give them their more bouncy aesthetic, though it’s entirely possible that specific controller is separate from the animation skeleton and applied to the entire model so it may not be an issue at all from a manhours standpoint when animating armor.

You know, I appreciate the detail you explain this with. I realize its not as simple as just copy/paste. I’ve done some 3D modelling in the past as hobby and never really got into animations. Its not straight forward.
So I can appreciate it that making new armour sets takes (more) time to do properly. There are lots of dependencies.

Sure, they had a longer time to prepare for GW2 original launch. Yet they had the time to delevop the armour sets for Crafting, Dungeons, Loot and Karma etc. Dozens of sets.
They also had to make all the zones in Tyria. And the story line. And the professions and their mechanics.

HoT has seen a significantly shorter development cycle that original GW2. That is a fact and what we see now is the result of that.
Shorter story. Fewer armour skins, fewer places to explore to name a few.
I bought HoT for the long term, to enjoy the upcoming content over the next year. But then the armours will have to be released as part of the game, and not as Gem Store purchases.
THat is what mainly rubs the wrong way with me. I would have expected more skins to aquire (crafting, collections etc is fine. The fun is in the chase). Yet it seems a bit lackluster, as if HoT was simply too rushed to get out before the release date.

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

Elite is just a term A-net gave it. It’s not a correct term because, as yous aid it yourself, it does not have an ‘elite’ effect. Its different, and that’s it.

Funnily enough, if A-net had called the ‘Elite’ just ‘Specialisation’ and the core trait lines just that ‘Core traits’ (or something like that), nobody would have expected any overpowering mechanics.
Specialisations always come at the cost of something else, usually more generic skills.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Almost everybody loses track for at least a small moment, and if you pvp in any game you probably know even half a second can matter. I think there is a certain confusing quality with mesmers.

But yes not saying it’s an ideal situation, especially with the alacrityflames (which look awesome, so i wish the clones would have it!) which is a bit too obvious. Still, kind of hard to balance it i suppose. Pose that you have two classes that deals similiar damage, and one can completely blend in with several clones. How do you ever beat that character except by guessing (multiple times in the fight mind you) or swarming it?

Not that it is perse easy, but ID’ing the real mesmer does not need guessing but can be done by looking for what the clones are not doing. Dodge roll is obvious, but even strafing is a dead give away. Running away from target is another. In fact, a stationay mesmer is nearly 90% certain a clone. And having casting animations that show something else than the Autoattack.

As Mesmer I’ve come across players that ID me as soon as we get in a fight and pound me. Others are clueless and lost.

I’m not sure what to think of it. I like the Hammer part, but the rest just feels ‘meh’. Its interesting to bringing my charr into CC and smash!, but perhaps my skill is lacking because It doesn’t seem to have high surviablity, or damage, as a Hammer scrapper.
Flamnethrower condition Engi was more impressive, and quite fun to play as well.

Maybe I’ll just have to unlock the rest of the traits before I make a better comparison.

Paulytnz.7619:

Summary – loot can add fun to the game because it rewards players for taking the time to kill things instead of just running through (which is another part of the problem here). It is also a great way to earn wealth in a game which is NOT a bad thing. People like to do things in games they can’t so easily do in real life and making vast fortunes in game is one of the big things in that regard.

Maybe I should have been a bit clearer. I realize, and appreciate, that loot forms a part of the game experience. The chance to get someting rare.

My response was maily aimed at the ‘No loot, no point’ comment from the OP. The way it comes acros is that he/she has not other reason to play than to get loot.
By comparison, other game types offer no loot but instead offer the ‘reward’ in a different format. RPG’s have always had rare gear as part of their reward system, but to me it is just a nice side thing. It’s the sense of achievement (Personal Skill challenge, Achievement Point) that I find rewarding as well.

And no, I dont enjoy killing mobs for the sake of killing them. I enjoy doing the events (meta chains) and the gameplay challenge that comes with it (Wyvern Patriarch for example).

Does the amount of content in HoT seem a bit limited?

I would say yes, but with a few notes.

Only four zones? Yes, and no. They are larger and more complex than the original, so in a sense amount to ~8 zones from Tyria.
But even then, what would adding 20 zones do? Look at the current spread of zones in Tyria and they population density. Notice anything?
Adding more zones does not make the quality of the content better, it just repeats more of the same Dynamic events and Hearts (how many variations of ‘defend village’ can you make?). So 4 zones seems lackluster, it actually can be an improvement because they make the content that is there better, because more people will use it.
Exploring is nice, but after you done it once the novelty is gone and you are just repeating the same empty content. yeeuh…

Elite specs locked behind grind.
I can see that as an issue, and the the 400point limit was daunting for me on my alts. They brought it down after live testing with a disgrunted player base. 250 is still high, but a lot more manageable with alts. My initial frustration has been taken away by this.

Lack of armour skins
Yes, something that is bugging me. GW2 had quite a lot, but I never really liked them much. Then again, I was spoiled by the wonderfull GW1 armours on my Mesmer.
Still, I was hoping to have seen more than just a few new skins.
On this it seems A-net simply ran out of time before launch and had to focus on more important stuff (like a playable game etc). Given the history of adding armours to the game, I’m confident A-Net will release more in the coming months.

Story.
Well, I have only just started Act 2, but it does seem that the story is rather short (somewhat longer than LW2). THen again, the original Zaithan story is also rather long (meant to pace the leveling, I know), so a bit shorter is fine.
Its more the quality that concerns me, and I hope it can create more depth or hint towards side stories to explore.

All in all, HoT is a bit incomplete. However, as A-net has done over the last couple of years, adding content in the coming months will add to the overall quality of the game.
I’m taking my time exploring and leveling characters, so I’m happy where it is at right now.

Andred.1087:

Am I missing something here? Are you making real-world money off of loot? Cause if not, why does it kittening matter? You play games to kill time. You play games to have fun. Loot and exp are just bits on a server. What’s the big kittening deal? Why are you turning this into an optimization problem?

Agreed on this. Gaming is entertainment, killing time, having a good time etc.
Sure, loot is a reward for the time invested, but just compare it to the loot you get from an FPS, or a puzzle game, or racing sim.

Don’t forget that the dodge is not just used to avoid directed attacks. They are also a great way of moving out of an AoE area to a safe area. Think the new Wyvern persistent fire. Nice if you block it, but then after the dodge timer expires you are still in the middle of it.

Well, you get them quite often, so you’ll be clicking on that chest quite often. Think old SW in the amount of chest you had to click away all the time.

I dont mind it. less disruptive.

Demented Yak.6105:

I think we’ll probably be getting more when raids are released. We know we’re getting legendary armour.

Oh sure, that will be coming. Maybe I should be clearer that I was hoping for more thats not as hard to achieve as Legendary gear.
Even though I dont personally like them much, the Bioluminecent armour hunt is actually quite rewarding. I dont expect them for free, but more as either loot, crafting, scavange hunt etc.. After all, thats non different from all the other skins we have, or how GW1 did it.

While i’m not a game designer, I’ve worked on enough projects to know that you always end up running out of time to do the things you planned for, and that you need to prioritize on ‘must haves’ and ‘nice to haves’.
So its very possible that they simply recieved a lower priority from Anet. Zones and overall gameplay function is more important for a launch than a few cosmetics. So hopefully they can now redirect their people to finishing the things that they had put on the backburner.

Some sort of look ahead, teaser or vague promise from Anet on that end would be welcome.

Canakun.8031:

do you have all the new armor skins already?

No. But that is hardly relevant. I don’ t have all from Tyria unlucked either. THats because I preview them all and see which ones I like. Then proceed to unlock the ones i like.
Did the same for the HoT skins, and cant say i’m impressed of the line.

And that only makes my request more relevant. WIth only 3 new skins per class, the amount of added choise is rather limited.

I’ve been enjoyning HoT for the week that it is out but one thing that I have started to look for are new armour skins. Most of the skins from Tyria didn’t all really get me excited and actually a bit of let down compared to the classy and very well designed armours from GW1 (I had 15 sets on my Mesmer. Just for the skins).

So one thing I was hoping for was more armour skin diversity from HoT. It is after all a complete expansion and if GW1 expansions can be used a metric, they added some 8 new armour skins per profession.

It now seems though that we only get 3(?) new armour skins sets per armour class, so effective 1 per profession (to make it somehwat comparable). This is very meagre and dissapointing, and it would be actually very dissapointing if A-net would make more skins available via the Gem Store.

So I would appreciate it if Anet would give some comment on what their plans are for adding more armour skins. After all, it is an expansion so I would have expected to see at least around half the amount that was available from Tyria.

So, wait?. this is intentional?

I thought is was bugged out, not only because I could not see any animation to speak of, but also not big flashy damage numbers.

If so, this sucks. There are many over te top animated spells, and removing the clutter a bit is fine, but this is the opposite end. There is no visual feedback that it actually worked or hit anything now.

Xyonon.3987:

I’d like to have the rift count as a minion aswell

Lol, yeah. that thing ends fast! Sometimes less than a second to actually fire off some spell before it all snaps back.

Well, the best way is to gain levels, as that way you get them.
To level there are several options, but in my experience WvWvW is good way. Join a Zerg and stand in mid/backline to assist with capping. You’ll have crappy gear so will die quikly.
Otherwise run around the maps collecting HP locations. The exploration and some event you come across will give you decent experience for levels. Playing the story also gives nice Exp, but you’ll need to level in between the chapters.

Zoid.2568:

How much more are ArenaNet going to nerf? How much will they destroy their new expansion, and how much will they ruin for the future of Guild wars 2.
A few people on the forum and reddit is all it takes for them to change their minds. 400 HP for an elite specialization was good and nice progression as end game content. Now they decreased to 250. That’s not the only nerf though. They also made nerfs to the mastery system and story. Now you can progress without some of the masteries.

ArenaNet have to stop doing this to their game. They have to stop listening to some players that brings the game down. If HoT was casual content only and not end game, then I would have understood. HoT is end game though, it’s beyond lvl 80 and it needs good and rewarding progression. Without end game progression Guild Wars 2 will have no future and it will be nothing more than a shallow human being filled with botox.

#StopNerfing #NerfWars2

Nerfing usually refers to gameplay mechanics that are too overpowering or imbalanced and need to be tuned to restore it to a more balanced state.

In the case of the HP the balance relied too heavily on investing a lot of time, more than the casual player (by my estimate, ~1h on average per day agmeplay, which might even be high) could, and would realistically invest before quitting. It goes against the design principle of GW2 (see bottom of post).
So A-net balanced the number to a level where it is still (too) high, but better achievable over multiple characters.

You are worried that A-net removed all end-game content, but that is where you make a crucial mistake. A proffession specialisation (wheter it is core or ‘elite’) is an integral part of the gameplay. It does not need to locked behind time investment, or ‘preparing to have fun’. its should be as readily available as all the other specialisations.

Masteries are your end-game content. Something to work towards, spend time on achieving. Gaining avantages that only by spending a lot of time on will unlock. There are Hot MAsteries to attain, Tyria Masteries to attain and a whole load of new achievement to unlock. THAT is the end-game content in terms of GW2.

Proffessions are the means to achieve those achievements, and should be relatively easily achieved so that you can ‘have fun’ while having fun playing.
If you don’t believe me, read the GW2 manifesto again, and pay attention to the paragraph below:

Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

Just because A-net slapped a title ‘Elite’ on it, doesn’t make it more powerfull or rare. Stop making it some special thing. Its just different, a diversification of the game.
And that is awesome!

Locking it behind 400points of HP was arbitrary and way off the point and totally unnecesary. Lack of testing, seriously underestimating time required or something else on A-net resulted in them having to backpedal and reduce the number.
250 is still rather steep for for what is essentially a 33% expansion of a profession, where 66% remains the same. Still, this will make it more realistic to achieve this for a couple of my alts.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

As I’ve said many times PLAYERS WANT TO PLAY THOUGH MOST OF HEART OF THORNS WITH THEIR ELITE SPECIALIZATION NOT GET THEM AS AN END-GAME REWARD.

In general i’m pleased with HoT as it is, but this is agree with. There is no reason to make the Hero point requirement as large as it is. It should have the same skill point cost any other trait line as it does not transfer any ‘Elite’ powers to you. Just a different way of playing. On top of that it excludes a lot of the elite professions from a lot of players.
Leveling to 80 is one thing (crafting, exploring, tomes) to play that character at top level. The Elite spec requires the same amount of skill points, but it is not the same as a completly new profession. Its more like a 30% new profession because it shares 70% with the base profession.

Its actually quite dishearting to think that I need to spend lots of hours of straight HP hunting per character (and I like my alts) to get the elite specs. I probably will not get around to getting my Engineer, Ele, Warrior and Mesmer all to elite specs…

Half the number of points for elite specs, and make the excess HP available in the HoT world convert to Mastery progression or points.

Pretty sure A-net made a mistake there. They probably intended it only for Necro minions… :S. Hope it stays this way.

The other day I was surprised to see my clones happily running through the wyvern fire to shatter on his tail end. Didn’t read the notes until now, but this is great! Finally a way to use shatters on world bosses.
And a phantasm build! Yeeh!

Astralporing.1957:

Faab.8049:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

“Having no flaws; perfect”. Indeed, HoT is not that.

Hyperboles work two ways though. While HoT is not ‘impeccable’, its also not ‘broken’, ‘a distaster’ or ‘the worst expension ever’ as some describe it.

Well, it’s the worst Guild Wars expansion so far (even if we include GW1). And it’d better remain the worst Guild Wars expansion ever. I don’t think i could stomach any next expansion to be even worse than this one.
It’s really, really bad. Though i agree, there were worse cases in MMORPG history.

See, you just confirmed my point about using hyperboles. In my own experience HoT is a very entertaining game expansion that provides me with a lot of content to enjoy. Its not perfect, just as GW2 was never perfect and GW1 lacked in many things.

That is apparently contra to your experience, and you expressed that. However your use of hyperboles make me not able to take you seriously. It’s an all or nothing attutide, no in between possible. No explanation of why the expansion sucks.

I dont rate it better or worse than previous GW1 expansions. I rate it better than the whole Living Story 1 added content. The original GW2 has entertained me over the years, but has become stale and boring over the last months. HoT refreshes that and with the expectation that content will be added over the coming months/years it will be remain entertaining in the near future.

But hey, to each his own. Just my opinion on that people should refrain from using the hyperbole to express their opinions, but use a more reasoned and substantiated argument than ‘it sucks’ about things.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

It is really hard to take breathless hyperbole seriously. Please look up “Impeccable”

“Having no flaws; perfect”. Indeed, HoT is not that.

Hyperboles work two ways though. While HoT is not ‘impeccable’, its also not ‘broken’, ‘a distaster’ or ‘the worst expension ever’ as some describe it.

To give force to an opinion and vent your frustration, its easy to throw out some big words and make it sound more authoritive. It actually achieves the opposite, as most people (like yourself) will just raise their eyebrows and stop taking it seriously.

Its after all still just opinions, and that can vary per person. I don’t think HoT is impeccable, but i am enjoying it a lot and are happily taking my time going through the story and the maps, exploring the corners and finding new trinkets.

I’ve not been out of Verdant Brink (i enjoy it!) but I do notice that the player levels have gone down since launch. Makes sense, people progress to other maps, complete the story etc. so yeah the population spreads.
After a while this will settle down and distribute again.

Still, Megaservers should solve this, and I have also not recieved a pop-up like that.

Xecil.2798:

Phy.2913:

Anyone remember Orr on release?

Which part? The stone wall until more people arrived? or getting pulled everywhere from the insane mob density and their “Get Over Here” pulls? I mostly remember the latter.

Yup. There is a difference between ’ challenging content’ and ‘stupidly overpowering’ . Orr was the latter. Just add more mobs with OP skills.
A-Net has also made some boss encounters ‘harder’ by doubling the Hit points. Thats also stupid design as it does not actually require skill, just hitting 1 a lot.

The HoT jungle so far also has some ‘High Hit Point’ bosses on HP that seem to have no other function than having high Hit points. THere is no gameplay mechanic that makes it interesting or challanging. Just dodge a lot and hit. But the overall mobs are quite distributed so you can run around without them. If you do run into them they can be nasty, but you can survive and beat them by getting to know them, how to fight them.
Its not OP stupid design, its actually pulled off quite well.

Now the Wyvern Patriach fight! That is something else! Not an extremly durable boss, but the mechanic of using the flyers to dive bomb him is awesome!
That is the sort of stuff that makes challanging content. Not ‘multiply hit points by 5 and increase damage by 4’.
Thats lazy design, and I have not seen many instances like that in HoT yet.

Loboling.5293:

SPOILER

You do realize that on a forum you have to scroll down to read the next post, right? So no matter what you do, some will still end up reading the spoiler.
Now its not the next Harry Potter book or something, But I still enjoy playing the story. Could you leave spoilers out of threads that are not directly relevant to story events?

You can’t please everyone. forums are usually a bad metric for satisfaction on any product, as the majority will either enjoy using it simply not use it anymore.

I am agreeing with you and i have so far thoroughly enjoyed HoT a lot. And I havent even left Verdant Brink!
My only peeve is the shear amount of HP required for the new elite specs, but by playong and doing a dedicated HP chase i am at 75% for my chrono.

So, happy player here, and hope to enjoy the content for a long time.

CoF P1 is one place. Another is Arah. There is a constant wave of mobs at the starting area. Add boosters and you progress quite fast.
There is nothing wrong with gaining experience. And to each his own to burn through their mastery levels this way. Great if you want to do it.
I can’t be bothered. I’m happy exploring and playing the game at my own leasure and made LvL 5 mastery since launch.

Levi M.7428:

OMG something you can’t get in one day of playing. OMG. It’s the end of the world. Why don’t they just hand you everything. Cause that’s all I see when I read this post

Lol, yeah it does sound very whiny after 24h of game time. I’m holding off and will see in a few weeks time how it is going. I want to enjoy the game, and extending the playtime is fine.

Still, the problem raised about Hero Points being guarded by champions is an issue. A veteran is soloable. Most champions are soloable with skill. Combine that, and it gets hard really quick. And now there are a lot of people running around the maps. Over time this will decrease as the population spreads to the rest of the world.
So you need others to help you, and beside arranging that with Guildies it will be hard to get groups together or like the OP, wait around for others to show up.

I’m a bit on the fence on this. On the one hand, I’m a bit peeved at the amount of HP required to unlock a Elite spec. It seems like unneccesary padding to extend the time to play. I want to run around as a Chrono and Scrapper!
On the other hand, when GW2 first came out I had to earn the skills as well by playing the game. And this is basically a similar situation.
I dont mind spending some time getting the HP for the elite specs, exploring the jungle and going to the HP around the maps. Its more that as a relatively casual player (1-2h every other day) gaining sufficient HP will take a long time over the alts.
The casualness seems to have gone a bit. But then again all the Maguuma area’s are accesible to all my lvl 80 alts. So map content wise I still can do anything I want, just not with all the skills at that time.

What this does is extend the amount of time I can spend playing the game. It artificially extends the amount of content in the game, and in a way that is what I bought when I added HOT to my account. In Value to cost ratio, GW2 (and GW1 before) have an extremely high value (time played/enjoyed) vs cost.
Just compare going to a movie at €10 for 2 hours. Or GW2 at €50 for 1200h.
So in that sense, i’m fine with as it is.

Just for comparison, going back to GW1, there was also the requirement to buy the new skills when a new campaign came out. And each profession had to buy the skills again. So decking out alts took a long time as well.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Not trying to ruin the mood but the way people simplify their steps kind of makes me less motivated than excited about HoT……

We need more delicate elaboration on mesmer’s grand quest to become a chronomancer, an adventure worthy of songs. \o/

The journey to become a Chronomancer started a long time ago. Puring over Arcane text, journeying to the far corners of Tyria, seeking lost wisdom. After years of wandering, slaying many adversaries and helping out the ones in need, my knowledge increased so much that few secrets eluded me. Yet one remains.
I feel like i’m on the verge of understanding the ability to manipulate time in ways I have never seen before nor heard about. It feels like I already have the power, but without fully understanding the power I fail to channel it.
It’s frustrating at times, yet the journey has been long. To wait a little longer is not an issue in the grand sceme of things. Once unleashed, this new knowledge will grant me powers over the very fabric of reality.

Just a little longer…

A short while to wat…

And release the accumilated knowledge of 200+ hero points, waiting to channeled into understanding the arcane art of chronomancy.

Gliding is lots of fun. I found myself urging my toon on trying to make that last bit of distance to the distant ledge. And then running out of stamina and dropping down and down untill I got out of bounds on the BWE map. On the release maps you’ll keep on dropping to the forest floor, where I expect you’ll be mauled by vicious vines and pestilencial petals…

Yeah, great fun! Especially as you look at a map in a different way, working out ways to get somewhere.

Halloween stuff is mainly a repeat of previous years. Nothing wrong with that, as its nice to revisit that.
I personally do a bit of halloween, then switch to other stuff when I get bored of it. And I don’t plan on running through HOT anyway, so plenty of time play that when I want.

Healix.5819:

Faab.8049:

Getting your phone number is whole lot harder, so the gains for your account securty far outweight the minor inconvenience. After all, it really only sends that if you login from a new IP.

The code is vulnerable to phishing. People fell for the obvious scam where they managed to type in that long URL without realizing it. If people are going to do that, they’re going to enter their code when prompted. It only takes a single code for their IP to be remembered.

I’m not sure what you are referring to. Are you saying that Email Authentication is more secure than SMS authentication?
Off topic a bit: I’ve secured my email addresses with unique passwords, but a lot of people re-use theirs across their Target and Gmail accounts. Get one, you get the others. My phone is with me all the time, and to be able to gain access to the code in the SMS they need to be within ~2km to intercept the message and decrypt it (pretending to be an antenna, have the proper hardware etc). That 2-factor authentication is widely in use by major web services (twitter, Facebook etc) and works fine.

I have recieved a number of phising mails from fake Anet/GW2 accounts over the years to try and get me to enter the information. I recongized them, but they were good and I can see people falling for them.
But if you then add SMS authentication for confirming a password change request, that would start ringing some bells that you made a mistake.

Or are you talking about the GW2 code itself that can be subverted? Or something else?

The added securtiy against account theft is much welcomed. There already was the email notification when connecting from a new IP, but email adres access can be gained via social engineering.

Getting your phone number is whole lot harder, so the gains for your account securty far outweight the minor inconvenience. After all, it really only sends that if you login from a new IP.
If you travel a lot this can be anoying, but really takes about 2 minutes tops from your time. Loading a zone can take longer sometimes.

Ah, thanx Palador. Well, to each his own way, I would say. In the long you’ll run into the new ratios anyway once you have refined everything.

What will delaying updating the client do for you? You cant login untill you’ve upgraded to the latest version, so what the point in holding off? Maybe i’m missing your point though.

Agony Resistance is only required for Fractals. No other part of GW2 currently requires it.
HoT might have area thingies similar to Agony, but I would expect that to be handled via Masteries (if they are present at all, which I doubt).

I like that as well.

I also think that Elite Specs should replace a part of the core mechanic of a profession for something different. As you described it now simply adds to the core by giving you an additional weapon and some extra skills. The core function of toolbelt does not change.

So yeah, a trade-off like this seems good.

During weekdays the population is also lower, so less of a ‘stress test’. Besides, it’s not as if there was sooo much to do during the weekend event that you could fill an entire week with.

More importly, I don’t think it will really help them much more. The issues that arise will still need to fixed, and we’re three weeks away from live. They only have so many people available to actually fix things (after they figured out what was causing it anyway), so they might just as well fix what is broken after this weekend, and then sort the rest once it goes live as they pop up.

Pretty? No. Unfortuanly A-Net painted themselves in a corner by comitting to a release date. Nothing new, but still a shame. We’ll see 23rd what we get. If its too broken, just play what is there and come back a week later.

Ah thanx! didn’t think of that. Will try that next time.

Hi all,

For this BWE event I’m very interesed in checking the new enviroment but even more intersted in testing the various proffesions and their elite specializations.
The first time I started a Beta character I liked to have the story included in the beginning, but now that I have created the other 3 Beta characters I had to go through that same story mode again.
It becomes very tedious that way if I have to sit through that same 20min story again just to see how a new profession works.
And I only have 4 characters, so I will have to delete some over the weekend, then redo the story part to get in Verdant Brink. Then, If I decide to want to play the deleted charactern again I have to sit through that part again.
I dont mind playing the story mode when it comes out of Beta, but this to me feels very tedious as part of test.

So my question is if there we could have the character appear in Verdant Brink straight away after creation.

I’m looking forward to the new Raids, just to try them out. Just as with Fractals when they came out. I rarery play Fractals now but I can do so when I want to because of mechanic that works quite nice.

The higher your tier, the harder it gets, the higher the reward.
It does not exclude the content to anyone, as anyone can do the lower tier (1-10) without any ascended gear.
The rewards are few, but I can still play it. If I wanted to play the higher tiers I would have start investing in Ascended gear, but the only thing that would change is the potential reward. Not the content.

I play GW2 from a casual point of view. I can log-in for an hour, do some stuff (everyhting basically, dungeons, world boss, tequatl, SW etc etc) if I have enough time and with any of my LVL 80 characters. All of them have Exotic gear with runes and trinkets. This gear can be achieved nearly for free from Karma vendors by simply leveling a character to lvl 80. This is how the game has been since launch.

So far I have not had any problems with finishing content in PvE, even though I have no legendary gear. I would say about myself that skill>gear.

Raids can change this set-up if they require a certain set of gear. Even if A-net harmlessly said its recommended, it will create a userbase created requirement.

So what could solve this?
It might not be Agony Resistance, but why not a similar set-up to used in Fractals? The content is still accessible to normal exotic geared players. They get a nice reward.
Dedicated players who frequent it will need to upgrade something (either armour or via achievement track) to survive in higher tiered instances. This does not lock the content out to casuals, and creates a hard mode for the dedicated group.