Guild Wars 2

bri.2359:

In 2011 we had The Witcher 2, Skyrim and Deus Ex:HR, all excellent games and all worthy of GOTY.

This year we had squat. The only big release was ME3, and look what happened there…

If GW2 was released last year, it would not have received a sniff of a chance. Anet were fortunate 2012 was a dud year for releases.

That’s the spirit!

Very Gratz Anet! That you were doing something different was visible in all the lead up.

This is not a thread to discuss whether lower populations are or are not a good thing
There’s a lot of threads elsewhere talking about the negatives of having fewer other players around or lowering populations in servers. This is a thread I wanted to make about the brighter side of this.

With fewer people around, I’ve come across more settlements taken over by enemies (e.g Mirkrise in Brisban Wilds and Shadowheart in Kessex Hills). In the three betas I hardly saw this at all as there were often enough people to succeed in the dynamic events.

Now I’m seeing the fuller stories of the dynamic events, and what happens when they fail.

What is also enjoyable about this (alongside all the sadder aspects talked about elsewhere) is that most of these conquered settlements I’ve come across I can also solo.
Although these events work in a perpetual cycle, I actually feel some achievement when I restore a small village back to it’s green state.

Here’s the word on Aggro from the official Wiki:

The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance [citation needed] :

1. closest target to them
2. who is dealing damage
3. top damage dealers
4. who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5. others (see Tanking tactics below)

As a consequence, to lose aggro, the player moves to be further from the NPC than other players or allies and ceases all attacks. A typically effective Guild Wars 2 technique to lose aggro is to roll away (dodge) from the hostile NPC. This is based on the fact that the distance travelled away from the hostile NPC by rolling is greater than the distance a player could run in the same amount of time. Lastly, a jump seems slower than a run – jumping away from the NPC will not help on a flat surface.

Some foes follow their own, unique rules, however.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Light sexy armor isn’t supposed to be practical. It is supposed to be squishy. The sexiness and lack of protection gives that vulnerable feel that you do not want to get hit.

Would be nice if males were as revealing as females, and that there was a good variety of non-revealing clothes to enhance the range of choices. But I don’t think giving “that vulnerable feel” is really what weighed heaviest on the model decisions.

Diggy.3760:

The dye system is great…

I wonder if this is heard from players nearly enough? I find the dye system really enjoyable and more exciting than I’ve seen in most games.

Also, I love Diggy’s point about dedicated costume slots helping the economy as people can still use armor with good stats but bad looks, and vice versa. I guess the transmute stones were Arena Net’s own way of doing this, however.

An extension of your idea Jex is to create a single lobby in the Capital Cities, such as a pub or lounge, or frankly every pub and lounge, where people lfg for dungeons can congregate. It could be either instanced so as to allow cross-server interacting (and even create a space where cross-server friends can just meet up regardless), or it could be non-instanced.
It could also be made that whatever feature it holds to help ppl connect (LFG Chat, a LFG Window, etc) is accessible once the player enters the lobby and remains accessible until the player leaves the city. That way people need to travel to the lobby to get access to the feature (therefore keeping the feature in-context and accessible) but can then get some freedom to move about and occupy themselves while organising themselves (sustainable). Their access would also remain after leaving the dungeon.

Unfortunately, tho, being able to teleport from a single, joint lobby into the dungeon could tend to distance the actual locations of the dungeons from players. I’ve used LFG’s before and played dungeons I never knew where they were physically located or what their purpose or story in the world was. Dungeons would become monetary entities to me before I even understood them as unique expressions of the world.

I really like the idea of basing a LFG tool within the context of the game. For example, the difference between “Press V to open the Vendor Window” and having to actually find the Vendor NPC, see them, and interact with them seems vital to me in terms of a living, breathing world.
I really hope the path to the solution for players finding party members is:
- based within the world, with space and visibility, not just a UI Window
- accessible, and something ppl don’t feel hindered to use
- is sustainable and becomes established as the way for people to find others.

LFG Windows are a fantastic relief in the short-term, but in the long-term they quicken the sense the game is just numbers and variables. It’s like giving people a drug to make them hungrier than they really are so they care more about consuming than what they consume.
The Dungeon Lobbies in GW1 failed the last criteria as they became vacant ghost towns as the population moved forward through the released content. They also weren’t very accessible and often required the purchasing of special uncommon items to get to the entrance.

Not sure I’ve seen an MMO forum where this good point hasn’t be made about the gender imbalance in character costumes. Mebbe the EQs and Vanguard aren’t shabby on it, but of the sexy-vs-practical/realistic spectrum I think GW has always edged on the sexy end.

I’m always in favour of seeing balance on these issues (with a similar number of options on both sides), as well as balance on these scales between genders. Having skirts/robes and pants for both males and females would probably satisfy a lot of people and help players feel better connected with their toons and Tyria overall.

It could be argued some things are just not culturally appropriate for the landscape the game is set in, and that is very true for many ideas, but the designers are willing to invite us to suspend disbelief in some of the things we do have available.
I’d respect them all the more if they examined some of the things they’ve omitted (consciously or not) and include them for the sake of fairness or balance.

I’ve been pretty impressed and endeared by SWTORs use of multiple choice in all dialogues, with all lines voice-acted, and a firm minority of choices actually changing what happens (this has been my MMO of choice for the last two weeks).

Yes, this story crafting comes with a price, but so does making a frontier game of excellent quality. Bioware is pwning this corner of story telling across genres, platforms, and player bases. They don’t have the right to monopolise it, they are just willing to try and show they are good at it.
Arena Net has the opportunity to also show us (and them) how it’s done!

This would be brilliant for people who are motivated by desires to be immersed in the world, customise their characters, and role play by participation or chat. Once again this would new ground for the MMORPG genre.

My hope would be that this would not be a Gem-expensive thing to adjust and re-adjust. At most I’d accept an item that has multiple charges, each charge allowing a complete overhaul in one use, with the charge only being consumed x amount of time after it is used or the option to reset and therefore refund the charge (so the customisation can be trialled before committed to).

Some simple auto-emotes I’d like to see in any case are:
- Making your avatar pull out a map and stare at it when the player opens the map window.
- Make your avatar rifle through a backpack when inactive with the inventory window open.
- Make your avatar stand and count coins in hand when browsing the TP.
- Make your avatar examine their limbs and clothes with the hero window open.

Just some common behaviours for characters that kinda show what the player is doing and adds colour to all the people standing around.

This is a great question to explore, and it’s incredibly hard to put words to it. The first concept that comes to mind is the co-op that happens in the Playstation game “The Journey”.

I think I am reminded of The Journey the most because of how it has distilled so sweetly the joys of playing multiplayer while exploring a world. While GW2 and MMOs make the social aspects quite explicit through chat and teaming and such, underneath these elements are these fundamental experiences and feelings of being with others and sharing.

1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
I seem to log in during my lunch break at work to see if there’s interesting news or to consider the things my partner has written here.

2. When did you start playing less?
I seem to be logging in about once a fortnight since about late September. No particular event coincided with it.

3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?
Mostly caring less about my characters and the world. Like many I want to feel like I create a lasting impression in the world, and I hope for more than one possible aspiration.
The effects of anything I can achieve in GW2 seem to be eliminated as soon as I am gone, other than what I learn and take away with me.
If I can’t have a nicely persistent MMO world to play in, then I am probably looking for a good story to experience, and I don’t feel that with GW2 right now. I’ve just recently given Star Wars: The Old Republic a go for the first time and have appreciated the story a lot.

Still, the “Forum Game” right now gives me seemingly more persistence, story, and something to take away with me than GW2 does. :p

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

What is it that keeps me coming back? The community. The people who saw me hanging around Southsun Cove exploring for hidden goodies and went: “hey, it’s you!” in a positive way. The people who I give help to and actually mean it when they say thanks. The two people I did an event at Jolfast’s Waypoint with where we had to have mowed down almost a dozen dozen of Risen but we were too stubborn to stop, until we could get more people there to put it down for good. The small group who I joined up with then doing the Temple of Melandru for my personal first time ever, and were happy to have someone showing up on an off-hour point. The people who tell me “thanks friend” for pointing out Rich Ore Veins.

This was a lovely read and made me smile! Thanks, Tobias.

To the OP: I read Whiteside’s “better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2” to mean the way in which players consume content. This is as much to do with what there is to consume as to what players want and expect to consume.

I personally don’t like seeing players as “Pac Men/Women” just mindlessly eating what the devs give us (these forums prove to an extent that we don’t), but I feel Whiteside was getting at the idea of better matching the game to how we hope or want to move forward through it, whether it’s PvE, PvP, WvW, Guilding, Crafting, etc etc.

Knowing that earth is divided into multiple time-zones, I wonder the merit of giving every server a dedicated time in which annual and once-off events will start.

For example, if Anvil Rock is decided to always have events start at 9am PST, and each Server down the list starts 1 hour later, then players can shift to the servers that they think would suit their lifestyle and schedules.
Doing this won’t solve the problems for everyone or prevent all obstacles for people participating in events, but when it comes to Server selection players would have more information guiding them. This decision may also help players find more people in similar time zones playing at roughly the same time.

Of course it’s hard for Anet to decide how every event in the future will be released, but allowing players better opportunities to be on the right server ahead of time might increase participation quite a lot.

It’s an incredibly controversial idea for MMOs, but is a basic unquestioned assumption for MMO game design. My partner had the same idea, and at first I found it difficult to not dismiss it because I couldn’t understand the implications, but the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve found myself asking “Why not?”.
Kudos to the OP for thinking outside the box and considering a new way GW2 can break ground for MMOs (not counting GW1!).

Forgive me if my lack of PvP experience means this idea is already implemented or incredibly unrealistic.

I’ve had this idea burning a hole in my pocket of playing a PvP map that is entirely on a floating island of some sort. I was inspired by this gorgeous animated short film here at youtube that I highly recommend seeing before reading ahead.

The objective, as usual, is to eliminate the other team. However, both teams must navigate the island in a way that prevents the entire island flipping over and killing everyone (a Draw). Naturally success depends on players taking risks and counteracting consequences, as well as a variety of lovely annoyances to keep people moving:
- Whatever is over the edge of the island can freely flow (like liquid) over the sides. For example, the island could be a magma rock floating in a river of lava, or an iceberg in freezing waters. When the island unbalances then areas will become submerged. Liquid that flows over the edges of the island cause great (but not one-shot) damage players. Admittedly, liquid mechanics could be more than GW2 could handle, so static spikes or instant death/teleport like some of the jumping puzzles would suit perfectly.
- Parts of the island could be gated with certain open/closed conditions
- Moving, weighted obstacles such as boulders thrown in from the sides, creatures, or war machines, etc.
- Some parts could be conquerable like the larger PvP/WvW elements.

A challenge like this seems like a great way to make PvP teams need to work well within them and occasionally between them to get a win for someone. I’m not sure how victory is rewarded in PvP, but I’d expect a map like this to give scaled rewards depending on what order people died so that everyone would keep trying to the/their very end.

I’m not typically a dramatic Role Player when it comes to MMOs, and yet I would love my emotes to be used more.
Across games the emote system seems to me to be vastly under-used and forgotten about outside RP Servers. It’s a shame because they are flavourful and create a richer social environment.
I would suggest two possible methods of players being able to optionally have emotes trigger automatically:

1) A general schema is created for each of the three personality traits used in the game: Ferocity, Charm, and Dignity. The player auto-emotes to particular triggers in ways that are relevant to the trait they are strongest in. For example, a charming player near-always cheers when a nearby player levels up, a dignity player bows to nearly all NPCs they interact with, and ferocity players taunt a small percentage of all creatures they engage with (these are singular examples among many possibilities).
To change your auto-emote schema means shaping your dignity/charm/ferocity interactions.

2) Auto-emoting becomes a player-managed interface. Through various achievements in game players unlock specific auto-emotes which are triggered by specific actions. For example, each dynamic-event in the game awards all players with an unlocked auto-emote.
One event unlocks “Occasionally cry when selling items”, while another event unlocks “Occasionally cry when an ally falls in combat”. One unlocks “Occasionally cheer when leaving combat” and another could be “Always Laugh Out Loud when you type ‘lol’”.
Players could then manage which emotes matched the kind of character they wanted to show the world, and could pursue the auto-emotes they want from around the world.

Of course, players can opt-out of auto-emoting, and possibly also opt-out of seeing other people’s auto-emotes if they get annoyed of them (not all emotes, just those tagged as triggered by the auto-emotes).

Moderator.9532:

Please try using the following link, the possible problem may be that your browser does not allow the redirect from the official URL: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/eGW2LostShores_en

Thank-you for this official post. I was wary of the links posted above and wanted to wait for Arena Net to confirm them before completing the survey.

As an introvert, I like playing with and around people, but I don’t come to MMOs to make friends or join guilds. I’m very comfortable with this way of play, and I am certainly not alone in wanting it.

I was inspired by the poster here to the idea of playing “serverless” characters. I recognise the desire to play in areas with lots of other players, no matter the server, and for some players I’m sure would want fewer players (maybe those who want the challenge of taking on events single-handedly).

My suggestion is for a way of choosing in the options to always be able to join any of the most populated servers or any of the least populated servers, and have this decision made automatically for me each time I change instance.

I’m likely showing my ignorance when it comes to server, data, and character management, but my intent is to suggest an option that could be quite desirable for half the playerbase. That is, those who tend towards introverted pasttiming rather than extraverted activities, even if it means being near, around, or with other players, but alone or unpartied. I mean to put forward a way for players to get the social interactivity they like when you take away the assumption that lasting relationships and guild membership is what everyone has a the top of their social agenda.

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to write this post. I’ve been through the high and low of GW2 and am now figuring out why I’ve lost the motivation to play. I’ve got incredible respect for the GW2 Design team for their study of the visceral and psychological experience of people who play MMORPGs, and I feel a lot of love of what has been made here.

So now I’m at mid-game, the terrible 30s to 70s. Any time I think of loading up a character I feel like I’d be dragging my feet to it. The part of the game I want to play and enjoy the most is the regular Area Maps across Tyria, and yet I stall at answering the question “Why do I care about them?”.

I find that the Area Maps have little to no concern for my character. I may have one or two personal story instances per Area, but other than that no NPC or dynamic event cares that I’ve made an Asuran Female Necromancer or a Male Sylvari Elementalist. I don’t seem to meet any NPCs who need my specific Mesmer skills to solve their particular problem, and no-one raises a question that my Charr is, of course, an Engineer.

So I am suggesting that to make me care about the Area Maps, I need to see the Area Maps care about me.
Essentially a different way of creating Personal Story. (I write it here in the Personal Story thread as it’s related to Identity and the individual journey more than anything)

There’s a few ways here that this could be done, but they all depend on the fundamental variables all players make that are crucial to their character:
1) Their Race
2) Their Class
3) Their Gender
4) (Optional) Their Crafting Professions
5) The other Background Story choices

So my suggested methods of increasing character identity in the world, and upping motivation to play the Area Map are:

1) Character-Triggered Dynamic Events:
Create new Dynamic events that trigger when a player happens along that meets criteria based on the variables above. Write story and events that would focus on the presence of, say, a player Thief. Design an event where a Charr Mesmer is needed to help spy the tricks of an imposter Mesmer. Plot a short story where a Sylvari Engineer faces some stigmatism for their chosen class.

2) Character-Specific Personal Story Instances:
Using the character variables, create Personal Story instances that are not quest points on the map. You may see the instance entry point when you are nearby, and party members may join you, but you can’t plot it on the map and run at it.

3) Sharing Your Uniquness:
When a player completes an instance/event as above, give everyone on the map a small, hour-long boon named after the player. The boon is nice but the real effect is
a) showing there are others out there participating in events that are kinda unique to them, and
b) when you participate in them you let everyone know and give them a little buff.
My thoughts were that every Area Map has, say, 20 character-triggered instances, and completing an instance grants a +1% {random 1 of 4 Attributes} buff to all players across the map, max +5% buff to any one attribute.

4) Cause Gossip and Chat:
Have NPCs talk about you based on your character. Have some show love and some show hate, and most have commentary. Many dynamic events would start like this, but often NPCs will just make chat about you.

Events like this would create new and unique experiences for each of the characters you play through an area. It would create flavour and curiosity in the Area Map other than running from Heart to Heart or Instance to Instance. You would pay attention to the environment some more, and feel more immersed and special when it interacts uniquely with you.

Other players would run by and say “What’s this that’s happening? I haven’t seen this before!” and you’d say “It seems to be because I’m a Norn Guardian. I think they’ll want me to do some fighting/defending/bashing/dancing etc etc. Help if you’d like!”.
It’s like those good old times in other MMOs where you are given a quest or mission to do that no other class or race can cause but draws a lot of attention from others and makes you feel special for making the character you’ve made.

I admit that something this important and large would take quite a lot of resources. It’s not a hotfix issue, but something that would take a GW2.6 release, or an expansion to implement. Yet I feel the issue IS important and is worth looking at the factors and options.

I really like your suggestion about the spectral wall blocking LOS/trajectory, and Dark Path as a leap (like you’d drag the field through the “portal” with you). I don’t agree with merging the wells as I use both separately to great effet and enjoyment.

Been trying to retrait my ele to give me the speed and smoothness of my necro bomb and haven’t had much luck. Greater aoe radius in the arcane line is the best i can do so far

I luaghed and was pleased by this idea! It’d double the available armour skins for players, solve most gender imbalances in armour, be a grand step in the right direction for gender stereotypes, and be very news worthy across the MMO world (and outside it).

Edenwolf.6328:

I’m absolutely in love with my well build and I’ve decided to call it a necro bomb. I’m pure power/crit/crit damage with blood is power to skyrocket my dps. I always cackle out loud when I mealt 5 enemys stacked foolishly on a objective within a matter of seconds, literally to death.

Love it, describes the feeling so….Well? :p (having a bad pun day!)
See the amended topic title.

aivedoir.3471:

Are they worth using on champs/bosses?

From a water ele’s perspective:

snaplemouton.1294:

… Even worst, loosing my water field to the necro wells for… area blind… on bosses. Now that is the biggest waste in the universe. Valiant negating 90% of the blinds. Even worst in Sorrows embrace. T_T

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Tired-of-combo-field-being-negated-by-less-wanted-combo-fields

That’s a really good point that i wasn’t aware of. Until some sort of fix is given for that, I think i can try to be more mindful of putting my wells on the far edge of bosses, away from the fighters when possible.
I wonder how taking away the protection the wells provide compares to the blast heal, when allies will already be getting water field heals + lifedrain heals?
In pve events the difference, given the immensely random and chaotic nature of them, may insignificant in practical terms. In dungeons and smaller group efforts i imagine it’d be quite integral.

I know if they implement Build Saving I’ll swap out Well of Suffering for Darkness and Power for a great support build. I’m surprised how much I’ve enjoyed this class every 5 levels (new traits) along the way.
The worst foil I’ve found were some Ice Elementals that were purely ranged and couldn’t be herded into a nice group. Otherwise, my own hubris on taking on too many foes at once.
I find when I switch to any other profession I often dash into the fray recklessly and am fast reminded I don’t have the same strength as my Necro had. Mesmer is one such alt that becomes painfully slow after playing my Nec.

My main is my Necro and I’ve heard Necros a copping a lot of flak. Since the last beta I’ve been playing only a Wells Necro.
That’s:
6) Well of Blood
7) Well of Suffering
8) Well of Corruption

To be honest I’m in love with this build. I love gathering up a bunch of critters and then slamming them with my Suffering > Life Transfer > Corruption + Blood, then Mark Mark Mark my way to success! My 9) is Pain Inverter, and 0) is Lich Form, Plague or Fleshy, but these haven’t been crucial to my play in any way.
My wells give me protection, my Life Transfer heals those around me, and soon (I’m 53) I will be able to Well my foes remotely as well as sap health.

Have many Necro players tried the Well builds, and are there many fans like me?

Yup, I’d appreciate this a lot. I don’t bother with my tabby anymore since the stack i got for rezoning just got banked. I really only ever want to have one such pet, never bank it (unless that’s where they are ‘equiped’ from) and never need to get it out again due to rezone.

Been wanting this since bltc came live. Seems so pointless to see unequipable armour types come up in the searches.
Also, the “browse for upgrades” tick box would be fantastic!

I love that elementalists can pick up a boulder and cast meteor with it. It’s a great synergy between class and context.

I wonder why there are not more options like these for the other professions? I play a scholar main and am disappointed I can’t do more with boulders and sticks and broken bottles.

What stops there being a profession-specific option for most of the environmental weapons? (not all, that may not make sense). I remember this improvisation being advertised in the demo videos as something special about these weapons.

I would suspect that one of the best anti-botting tricks would be for these popular events to have some sort of aoe knock-back feature?
Something that players could dodge and roll from but bots would be removed so far from the centre of event they become useless?
The Kessex Hills “Break centaur morale” bridge event could easily justify a pair of centaurs running up with a battering ram between them doing a dash-knock back up to the bridge. Bots and afkers would likely tumble into the gorge. A battering ram with lumps of wood makes sense in the context of repairing the bridge and getting resources to it.
If necessary they’d also need to randomly target adjacent areas to spread out the effect.

Would this work and appear more integrated with the game mechanics?