Guild Wars 2

Please take a break!
I kind of miss this from GW1, can you still get it in GW2 or was it a feature that was axed?
Even if it’s not telling me to take a break, is there any way to time the current session in game? Did anyone else like it?

I know it featured on many games released in the same time-frame as GW1, has the industry as a whole stopped trying to tell people to take breaks?

I’ve only just started to frequent the forums, and it’s not been to complain, it’s been to look at the suggestions of other players such as mounts and new armour and whatnot, and see the creative side of the community that’s into the lore and the art.

TurtleofPower and Redfalcon both make good points- there’s lots of keyboard warriors about, and some of them aren’t doing it intentionally, but rather they’re really deep into the game and set in their ways. The fact that there’s a stickied post saying be civil and nice to each other kind of sets the tone for the forums, there might as well be a sign saying Danger! Grumpy cavetrolls!

I think it comes down to the fact that most happy players are too busy pretending to slash at each other, falling to their death and harassing moa birds in game to comment on the forums. Sorry Moa birds.

chronus.1326:

Fatfox.4915:

I think GW2, is at the end of the day, what each individual user makes of it.

Sandboxes don’t make good MMOs.

I meant as a unique experience for individuals, not as in a complete sandbox, I don’t want people to start building all over the place and leaving their mark like some cheap housing scheme gone wrong XD. I think the optional bits are what draw some people to the game, as if they don’t want to do it, they can do something else that they enjoy and get an equivalent reward if that’s what they’re in it for.

I have no idea if we share the same idea of a good MMO, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that.
MMO itself is a fluid term, so maybe GW2 is a semi- open-worldish-RPG-MMO-part-RTS-nonlinear-in-places-linear-etc-etc beast that aims to cater for a lot of different tastes and does fairly well considering.

Hopefully more content will be added to make sure that people who want to use deep strategy and team work can do, giving a reason to talk to others but that is still accessible to the generally soloing player, who goes “Hey I feel like working in an organised team today.”

It’s pretty tough to get the balance right, too much optional stuff and those that like to be guided on an adventure get bored, and too much compulsory stuff and people who like wandering and exploring of their own accord get bored. Same with grouping and solo. Good luck ANet!

I like the female charr, though I do wish some would have better horns, and I wish they’d use the female voice for things like mining, as I sound like a very manly female charr.

I also like that you can make them really cute, or terrifying (or both).

I would post a picture of my female engi, but I’m normally too busy blowing things up to take a screenshot.

Instead here’s a tiny screenshot of my first character- she’s an elementalist and a sleepy one at that.

Considering the fact that one of my Charrs is a max level chef, she can assure you through a mouthful of chocolate cake and chocolate cherries that they are well accustomed to eating chocolate.
That said animals can tolerate it in small amounts, it’s when they have too much that they cannot break it down that they tend to throw it back up, (My dog has the ability to open easter eggs). I think it’s only a large amount for a long period of time that has an effect.

In the ghosts of Ascalon the book, one of the charr characters eats some sort of ration rusk, and drinks wine, only eating meat at a feast. I know it’s not proper lore but it’s another source.

Maybe they’re just omnivores but prefer to eat tasty bacon most of the time- it would make sense if they’re a warring race that they’re used to soldiers rations. And if Charr were kitties, wouldn’t they like fish? And as far as I know, the only vaguely fishy thing are clams that you can craft with.

Zeldain.5710:

“The narrow pursuit of exclusive items is not what GW2 is about”?

Hello? Did you really say that? That is the ONLY thing GW2 is about… Legendaries, other skins, etc.

And there is PLENTY of farming to do within those pursuits, and ArenaNet is controlling them artificially… conveniently you can turn to the cash shop.

If not that, then what?

I think GW2, is at the end of the day, what each individual user makes of it. MMO’s suffer from their strength- bringing lots of people with different interests and gaming tastes together. There are people that strive for legendaries and the good specs, but at the same time there’s people that just play it like any other video game and aren’t really bothered about the other people around them, they just want to treat it as an Rpg I guess. At a long shot it’s kind of like multiculturalism, in theory, having lots of different views together should work, but because the different parties don’t intermingle it doesn’t actually work; it becomes difficult to cater for everyone’s tastes.

For example, those that like soloing like the game as it is, and those that want main group focused content don’t, so they add some group content, but then a couple of months down the line they’ll be a ‘I wish I was able to solo the whole game’ and a ‘I want more group content’ post. Even if it was completely fair people would still complain, even if you had two separate maps with the same main games bits in them just with different levels of spawn, eg Queensdale- A wandering path for soloist and Queensdale- Bandit Bonanza for groups.
I can understand wanting features from other games, but I can also see how that if that happened all the time, MMO’s wouldn’t move on and get a bigger fan-base. Money is what drives it all now :/

I myself come from the casual gamer camp, I will readily admit I’m not a ‘great player’ and not big into MMOs and don’t really spend that much time gaming. But in this case I think in order to include group content that works well, it will require a bit of give and take from both sides of the solo/ large group argument. I think Zergs are the slightly unhappy medium for that as it can keep both sides happy and that from what I gather the looting system in gw2 is fairer, than others, meaning that, even if there was group content, people would just zerg it anyway as they don’t have to worry about their team-mates stabbing them in the back as much.

This topic really encompasses everything about gaming in a roundabout way

I like the ability of not having group in order to progress. I attempted my first dungeon a couple of weeks ago, and found the fact that everyone was standing outside going lfg, and no one was actually going into the dungeon confusing, I guess they were all secretly judging each other, but it was almost like the social awkwardness from real life had made it into the game. Like someone said, socialising has been lost.

I like the fact that in GW2 if you’re interested in exploring, you can spend the entire game doing that, or if you like dungeons, you can do dungeons etc etc. I like games that give me freedom and at the end of the day, I game with people that I know mainly, so we’re generally doing the same thing.

Some of my best moments have been with a randomly formed team, in Queensdale some new players joined my party for an event and in the end we spent hours wandering around and teaching them new things. It felt good to help people. And to the thief that helped me and a guild member try and topple the champion ooze, you were awesome, even if all three of us died in the end. The content is entirely soloable yes, but with a group it makes it pass quicker and is more enjoyable- it also means you can seek out things like the champions and whatnot. That said I can see why the larger guilds have nothing to challenge them with, but I guess GW2 is all about making everything accessible to everyone, the casual market with things like dungeons optional for the players that wish to undertake them. You wouldn’t buy a game if the bit you wanted to play was inaccessible unless you happened to be able to get 32 other people to go out and buy the game.

The point about addiction made above is an interesting one and I think it’s true. It’s like everyone has forgotten about the journey and are so intent on reaching their destination of best armour, lvl 80, that they fail to notice all the enjoyable content and all the other players around them.

I’d love one, I mean, I don’t play WoW and even I’m tempted to buy their plushies (I think they do a baby griffon).
But if they are made, make sure there’s plenty of stock so they don’t run out almost straight away

Perhaps it could be worked into the charr warband racial skill as well, I’d love some of the larger races to join in and beat it’s local counterpart about. That said, I’d also love an army of Dinkys from lots of charr characters on a map and really miss the NPC companions from GW1.

It does irritate me sometimes as I’ve helped a race and then they all want to tear my throat out the moment the instance ends. But yeah, a mini pet would be a good idea, as it would encourage people to complete the story up to that point on a secondary character if there was a mini pet in it.

I quite like the idea of fishing, as sort of a crafting/ gathering hybrid, as you don’t cook with fish as of yet and there’s lots of fish swimming about doing nothing.

They’re kind of the professions you see in fable 3, almost a bits more artsy in their approach to life.

Maybe a guild hall with craftable decorations as well, as I don’t really visit my home instance that much.

Ah, that’s true, having only just adventured into Dredgehaunt cliffs I can see what you mean about killing the frame rate, so a visual effect it would have to be.

I’m on Seafarers Rest and I saw him for two days in a row (22nd /23rd December) . Generally it started with the ancient oakheart event, which set the portal events into motion and finally he appeared in the middle of the swamp. Though I’m not sure what triggers the ancient rotting oakheart event.

I have to agree that with the waypoints, the mounts are a bit redundant in the game. I read the strategy guide and in it, it mentioned that when you ‘first explore the area it’s meant to be difficult’ and that mounts would take away from that. Mounts are something that are so difficult to get right in a game and shoehorning them in isn’t a good start, I think the only games to have got it right were Legend of Zelda OoT and Shadow of the Colossus which had parts built around them.

Despite that, I’d love for there to be an open plain area added, just so you can mess around on mounts or something like that, as most often, I’m enjoying pelting a guild member with snowballs rather than adventuring out. Kind of like the costume brawl system but with mounts, maybe even with racing mini-games. Some people play games for the landscapes after all. I like your idea of having each races horse the same base animal, but custom to them, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse in game?

Hey all,
It’s just something that I thought of whilst wondering around the world map, the idea’s not polished by any means, but could a form of dynamic weather ever be introduced? By this I mean having varying weather over the whole map. To me (or I might just be unlucky) it always rains in the same places.
I’m not much of an mmo player, but do any other games have it? It seems to be common on console RPGs in varying forms.

The basic idea would be, say if it was raining, you’d find the ratios of creatures outside would change e.g. rain could bring out more scales and maybe allow a champion skale event to trigger. On a more extreme level, you could have it so that certain areas flood, though not knowing anything about programming I’m not sure if it could be possible. Then when the weather changes, the skales could head back to their nests or something like that, and the Moas would appear in greater numbers (Avid sunbathers) with some different events. The core events going on would remain the same but they’d be a few varying ones depending on the conditions.

The environment could also alter the effects of characters- blizzards/sandstorms for example could lower the accuracy of long range weapons and reduce visibility. It could be linked to ele abilities as well or thief stealth abilities. Engineers could have traits that reduce the effects of the weather on them. Ranger pets could change effectiveness depending on whether or not they’re in suitable weather conditions/terrain. Mesmers could find it easier to make illusions in warm sunny weather- lesser cool down.

Obviously this introduces balancing issues for the classes if each one is slightly altered depending on the conditions and it probably wouldn’t work in WvW or PvP.
Also, I guess it would have an effect on the availability of materials and loot on the Tp as well and mean that some areas are also only visited during certain conditions but I was wondering if you guys had anything to add to the idea and the potential problems behind it?

Cheers

Using surveymonkey myself for my work as a Uni Faculty Rep, I’ve wrestled with survey-making before. I’m not being critical here, I’m merely suggesting some improvements, that may perhaps, depending on whether or not your collection is assessed give you better marks. shrug Take what you want and leave what you want.

Your statement of ‘we do not collect Ip addresses’ is misleading. If you are using the free version (I don’t use the premium so cannot comment on that) , SurveyMonkey records the IP automatically if you go into analysing the responses of an individual, it’s their way of making sure that the same person does not take the survey twice. So that statement about privacy may need tweaking if you can see it.

With regards to the second section- it’s good that you’ve now stated the definitions there, but maybe make it a bit clearer as to whether or not those with no online friends (people who just play with friends from work/school etc) have to answer the questions or not.

I know you’re surveying mmo players but for those new to it, give mmo it’s full title at first and then put the acronym in brackets- it could be that someone’s just got GW for Xmas and it’s their first game of that kind. Covers all bases- no lost results then. Maybe define ‘read between the lines’ as well, it might not be a saying in all countries.

Your personal information section needs a bit of polish. Never married should be broken down further into ‘single’ as well as ‘co-habiting’ – it’ll make analysis easier.

I’m also not sure what a graduate degree is, so maybe putting some common (BSc, BA, MSc MA’s after each one would help. Don’t forget PhD’s to- or just put higher.

Employment- don’t forget the student option, or an ‘other’ section.

And forcing people to say whether they’ve got a learning disability or not- I can see why you’ve done it, but put a prefer not to say option there, as some people might not feel comfortable with answering it and you lose some potential data.

And a quick heads up- you can only collect 100 responses on the free one before it fills up and you’ll have to collect the responses, empty it and start it afresh, any over that 100 are lost.

Hope it all helps!

Fiorrello.8126:

i like to imagine that charr horns are very much like deer antlers.

you shed and grow them back periodically. so if you don’t have any horns then it might just be because you had recently shed them.

or if you are a warrior you might have caught an axe to the head, and lost a horn.

I like that idea, I can now see Charrs with a full set of stag alters, complete with foci and axes tangled in them, scary

Looking at the concept art, Cubs don’t really have much in the way of horns, so it could be an age thing. Maybe the Charr wants to be young forever? Or maybe they’re in a really high up position in the warband but they’re still young and might not have the respect of their older members? Or maybe they were cut off in an attempt to look younger to trick the enemy into underestimating them.

War wounds, drunken fights, maybe they hollowed one out to use as a drinking horn as a symbol of their battle ability.

The possibilities are endless

Marcusdeblack.2307:

Gasu.6254:

Would be cool if charr elite ‘Warband support’ called Clawspur to fight with me, hehe

THAT! I was thinking the same. It would be a great idea.

But you know, NPC’s are only to “Be”, we are the heroes. They shouldn’t steal our glory (Like The-One-We-All-Know).

XD Who ever could you mean?
I wish Dinky would accompany me to Orr, he’d cheer the place up a bit. But yeah, chosen charr as warband support would be amazing. Imagine the armies of Dinkys (Dinkies?) you could make on the maps.

I’d like the cosmetic items as I’ve yet to find a back piece that I like and it’s a case of ‘if you don’t like them, don’t get them’. I think a charr with wings, especially butterfly ones would be highly amusing along with their princess wand XD

I think the full flying mechanic is a bit far, as GW doesn’t really feature major flying aspects. From what I’ve seen, attacks mainly come from boats and are not aerial and the creatures that do have wings (aside from big beasties) don’t really fly that far off the ground. Flying mobs would be annoying as ranged weapons don’t hit grounded creatures very well anyway and can you imagine if you walked off to a vista and a aerial mob suddenly took an interest? I curse anyway when things have to ability to look directly up XD.
Maybe something restricted to towns- almost like an aerial costume brawl with plenty of places to perch and what-not. Animal transformation magic exists, so you could just add an extra level onto a town, complete with a waypoint so people who want to fly around can, without irritating others.
You could take it one step further and make a mountable pet part of the town clothes and people could pay or find upgrades for it and use that in the area- maybe by winning flying tournaments or something like that- racing could be included.

It doesn’t have to have an effect on the main game, just a optional extra that people could give or take. It also gives the artists a way of showing off fancier designs perhaps. As much as I understand the difficulties behind making models for each different type of creature, especially flying and landing animations, I’d happily buy the concept art behind it.

I would like to fly over areas, as there’s always something great about it, but it has to be done right. Legend of Zelda OOT was magical when you first got to use Epona and if mounts, flying or not were introduced, I’d like it to be the same way in GW2.
Waffle over

Another thing that happens as well is sometimes enemies are running to an event start location (centaurs like to do this) and are invulnerable until they reach that magic point. I’ve forgotten what map it is (centaury area) but you can see one of the bosses run from one lush green anti-centaur area to where he’s meant to be. I as a character would like to do that, just casually run invulnerable across the map without a care in the world :P.

It’s also like enemies get bored of you, you’ve traded hits, he’s a half health, you’re slightly damaged and then he walks off to heal, before suddenly coming back to you with full health and a motive to kill- and that’s sometimes before you’ve lured them out of their invisible comfort zone. Making them run may make them worse.

I have just Mastered chef on one of my characters and it was pretty expensive to do so, but by the end of it, I was buying the in between stages rather than the raw ingredients, because it was cheaper, and most of the time I ended up eating it in bulk, as I didn’t have much space to store it on the low level character- that and half the stuff I couldn’t really use.
I do think that being able to sell it to merchants is a good idea- even if it’s only 50c or something, it still gives you a bit more money to put back into it.

Maybe in a similar way to the feast tables that guilds can have- put a table in Lion’s Arch and get players to drop excess food on it, as it’s free food to those that want or need it.

Salvaging would be a godsend especially with basic chillis going for stupid amounts and the ghost pepper going for pennies.

Some nice ideas in there

I’d personally want a title to work towards as a chef, ‘Buffet Bruiser’ or something like that along the GW1 vein of the eating and drinking titles.

Trahaerne for me was fine when you first meet him (I was playing as a charr) but the moment he gets his hands on that sword, his character suddenly does a massive u-turn, no longer is he a stay at the back of the party and do his bit person, he’s right in there swinging a greatsword round and upsetting every single mob within earshot whilst barking out commands and might as well be demanding everything under the sun at the same time.
For me, with such a drastic change, he could of easily been replaced with another character and I wouldn’t have noticed. I know he’s meant to grow into his role, but it’s such a sudden transition you instantly dislike him because he’s becomes ‘do this, do that’ without really doing much himself. It’s like he read ‘learn to lead a world saving operation in five minutes’ and now thinks he’s a strategic god. Seen as though he’s boss, can he be left in Orr to guard it?
Or as said above, he could get tainted by some evil in an expansion pack and go on a mad rampage- all the power going to his head or something like that
Also, why did all the interesting characters have to be killed off or left in the dust, never to develop? I miss adventures with Dinky

All my characters are female charr, although the only real difference once they’re armoured up is their horns, I tried a couple of male charr characters but just couldn’t customise them into a character I liked.
I tried the other races, but I didn’t really like any of the stories and the Charr running animation keeps me endlessly amused.

Charr are just awesome, all my characters are female charr. They’re always fun to design because of the seemingly endless skin pattern colour combinations that you can make.
That said they’re also the only race where the female armour isn’t revealing and both males and females look fairly similar when they’re suited and booted.

I also felt a bit sorry for them in GW1

Lomaj.1726:

Funny thing that I’ve played to much charr that i can’t do jps with other races. :P

Yeah I have that problem now as well, humans just jump so strangely in comparison to charr XD

I tend to make my charr on the smaller side to ease the problem a little, though the transition from the unsheathed weapon to pouncy pounce jumps tend to cause many falls.