Guild Wars 2

Thia.4891:

I prefer /surprised

Best emote in the game on anyone, but Charr really have it best!

Array.9581:

Hey everyone!

So I’m a lvl 80 ranger with full exotic and I’m planning to go for a cool look now. I already bought T3 Gloves and Shoulders.. But the problem is there is no other cool armor for a medium charr imo. I like the gloves and shoulders and that are the only pieces I found and that I liked for a Medium Class Charr.. Now I’m just playing on my Sylvari thief because I can gear him pretty cool. So now I was hoping my ranger was a sylvari
So any cool leather gears? Or your opinion about it?

Thanks

The only bearable leather armor I could find for my two medium-wearing charr females is the Whispers and Vigil chest pieces. I really feel charr need armor with NO shoulders, as the “we just stretched this texture from the human mesh onto the charr one, lol doesn’t fit” look is painfully obvious on shoulders. The Whispers and Vigil armor both leave the arms free, and are pretty good looking.

Though of course I really really wish they’d give us the stuff in the concept art :-/

My ticket is #121213-000204

All I need is a simple password reset and a change of email.

I’ve provided the code that came with ordering the game TWICE, I’m communicating through the original email that I signed up with, I’ve given the last 4 digits of the CC used to buy the game, and yet after the initial “we’re escalating your ticket” (why??) email, I’ve received no communication.

I haven’t been hacked, I don’t need anything “restored” – I just need my password reset, and I can’t log into the game til that happens. In the meantime, I’m missing out on Wintersday, I missed my guild’s event yesterday, and my chances of feeling like dropping $ on gems for the holiday event is rapidly dwindling.

Gaile, can you kick someone in the tail on this? It shouldn’t even be a complicated ticket.

Tell her to dye her clothes differently and swap to a black bear instead of a brown. Then it won’t really matter if she socializes or not.

As long as she’s not running a cycle killing the same stuff over and over with a bot, of course :P

I can’t see what the requirements could possibly be.

I did the event in a group of 4. We did the event all the way through, all the phases. We stayed in the same overflow to do the final event. One of our number DC’d multiple times – one of us DC’d only once – the other two stayed connected the whole time. All 4 of us got to open the chest – the guy who was disconnected multiple times got a precursor. None of us filed a ticket, naturally.

Yesterday, one of us got the chest in the mail, the other three did not. I have no idea what Anet is doing.

Eirik.9145:

From the looks of it, everyone is getting a chest. It doesn’t seem to matter if you dc’d during the final fight, already got the chest, participated in the event but not during the final fight, or even didn’t do any of the event at all. All of those cases have gotten chests on the Tarnished Coast server.

Some of all those cases are getting chests, but some aren’t.

I know people who did the event and got the chest who got the mail – and some who didn’t.

I know some people who were constantly DC’d and couldn’t finish the event who got the mail – and some who didn’t.

I know some people who didn’t even participate, weren’t even online that day and have gotten the chest – and some who haven’t.

It seems totally random from here.

tkalamba.2541:

Feycat.4370:

A much bigger threat than Ascendant gear is the raised level cap.

Seriously, they’re planning on raising the level cap, and said as much in the AMA.

So your exotic sets, AND the Ascendant gear? Are all going to be obsoleted. Even if the Ascendant gear had never been added, your exotics would have been outleveled.

They said they were going to raise the level cap in 2011… people glossed over it or ignored it. It’s not new news but alot of people seem to think it is. Sadly people seem to only have selective beliefs.

New or old, the point is that they’re planning to do it, and overreacting to a new gear tier is pretty much overlooking the fact that the gear is going to be obsoleted one way or another.

How many ways are there to handle a raised level cap? Do you think they’re going to automatically level-bump all the existing 80 gear?

Not because it doesn’t break the Manifesto (it does) or doesn’t add a grind (it does) etc.

They’re planning on raising the level cap. They’ve said as much.

So you’re going to have to periodically replace/upgrade your gear ANYWAY.

Where’s the outrage about the raised level cap? Because THAT is an artificial game-extending and unnecessary act. They never did THAT in GW1. And they don’t need to do it here. You can add zones and dungeons and jumping puzzles and whatnot at all level brackets (gw1 did it, COH did it, etc) without making everyone drop their gear and go fishing for new stuff again.

A much bigger threat than Ascendant gear is the raised level cap.

Seriously, they’re planning on raising the level cap, and said as much in the AMA.

So your exotic sets, AND the Ascendant gear? Are all going to be obsoleted. Even if the Ascendant gear had never been added, your exotics would have been outleveled.

Ualtar.5047:

LOTRO has been in existence for about 5.5 years. GW2 3 months.

LOTRO launched with its title system (which they stole from COH)

GW2 didn’t.

GW2 would have been better spending development time on actual horizontal progress (like skins and titles and more STUFF in the dang gem store) than in putting together a failed gear-check system that other games tried and have removed.

AnemoneMeer.7182:

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too, back when it was Radiance in LOTRO.

You can see for yourself how well that turned out.

They need to add REAL things to buy from the store instead of just lottery after lottery.

We need more townclothes! We need more armor skins! We want housing and housing items! I would love to see more emotes in, and I’d buy ’em!

What’s the point of having a buy-to-play game where COSMETICS are supposed to be the grind when there’s very few cosmetics in the game??

Curtis.1562:

I say, “Bring on progression and harder content!”

They can do that WITHOUT adding a gear-tier system.

They could simply add hardcore modes to the existing dungeon. They could design proper bosses with better fight mechanics and phases, instead of “beat on this bag of way too many hit points for the next 20 minutes.”

The problem is that vertical progression adds nothing to this model.

This is not a sub game. Keeping people grinding away for months will in no way move the game’s bottom line forward. In order to continue to add content, money has to keep coming in.

Since there’s no sub for this game – making people grind and grind and stay “subbed” to the game won’t help the game at all.

Horizontal progression “isn’t working” because they haven’t ADDED any. There’s the Legendary grind – which frankly a very small percentage of the game has engaged in at this point. Most of the players of GW2 don’t want to “gear up.” They want to hit 80, buy their Exotics or Rares, and then enjoy the rest of the game.

However, for a game that runs on a gem store? The gem store is pathetic. I was shocked how skimpy the offerings were when I started playing – 3 armor skins, one for each weight, 2 townclothes sets, and some hats. The upgrades for space aren’t going to keep people coming back – and the boosters and consumables have limited value. The only thing that’s a solid seller is the “lottery” systems – dye packs, mini packs (of which there is only one!) and the Black Lion Keys. Apparently Anet thinks that people will dump hundreds of dollars a month in lottery keys for the event skins they keep stuffing into chests… and I really think that’ll only work once or twice.

Why are they wasting development time on a system that adds nothing to the game model AND pisses off their hardcore fans, breaking very specifically against the design philosophy they espoused for years – and only three months after release? Why are they not stuffing the store with shinies?

The stats on what sells in an MMO cash shop are out there to see. Take a look at LOTRO – millions of cloaks, dresses and horses. WoW’s full of mounts and minis. Costume sets flew off the shelves for COH. People want to LOOK COOL. And for a game that specifically promised that LOOKING COOL was the endgame… they’ve offered us precious little in that regard to actually spend money on.

Why isn’t there a housing grind? (they said they were working on it and it got pushed back from release.) MMO players LOVE housing – then they could pack the store with housing items. Why aren’t they offering emotes in the store? The emotes right now are painfully skimpy. Why haven’t they added new skins every month – most of the NPC outfits aren’t available to us through any means, and they’re already existing sets on racial models, so why not take those pre-made art assets and stuff them into the store? Why not add more non-Event based minis – quaggans, leaf hounds, wolves, the cubs from all over Norn lands, all of them have been passed over for minis so far, but the people I know desperately want them.

All they are doing at this point is adding something that isn’t needed, won’t move their “brand” forward, and is garnering a hellacious amount of negative press. On top of that, lots of folks who’ve been huge and vocal supporters of the game are not vowing to vote with their wallets and STOP buying gems and recommending the game to others. This is the OPPOSITE of what Anets needs to have happening three months after release.

Not to mention.. it’s the kittening RADIANCE SYSTEM! Which was kitten when LOTRO introduced it, resulted in a massive hemorrhage of players, and was removed. How stupid do you have to be in order to deliberately choose to put it into your game?

Personally, all this announcement does for me is make me take a serious step back in my emotional investment in this game. I already had a problem with “trusting” another NCSoft game after what happened with COH, and now the devs are displaying a really troubling level of idiocy that makes me want to back slowly away.

Nephaerius.9103:

Feycat.4370:

EverythingXen.1835:

Not enough to keep a game this size running, or this wouldnt be happening.

Really?

How is Anet making money on this?

Are they selling the Ascended Gear in the gem store?

Is the new gear grind going to magically make people pay a sub fee?

Is this making them more money than concentrating on developing new cosmetics for the store?

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

People playing longer have a longer opportunity to possibly spend money. Inevitably at least one more gem purchase will be made by a player that’s only continuing to play to get their Ascended gear. At the end of the day that’s all they care about. Also, 2 words, Transmutation Stones. Yeah that’s the money maker here when they add new gear.

Not if they don’t ADD ANYTHING NEW to the store.

Also? I have 85 transmutation stones in the bank right now, and 20 fines. Every single character of mine is wearing transmuted gear. I use those things like candy, and I get 3 every time I finish a zone.

Lothair.8942:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

They were going to do this all along. That’s why it’s coming out before any cash shop expansion and without any real polling of the customer base. It has nothing to do with a lack of revenue or “customer feedback”. There’s no logic to those claims.

First off great post Win.

Agreed, it’s a known fact that developers of this game were talking about item progression and this type of initiative as far back as PAX. I just never thought they would implement it.

I agree with Win, but again, that makes no sense either.

Sure, it’s obvious that MMO additions are developed MONTHS ahead of time. If this change is based on “feedback,” it pretty much has to be on Beta feedback.

But it still makes NO sense to add this stuff BEFORE a major cash-shop roll out. Because as I’ve been posting over and over, this change and the gear grind it is introducing makes NO MONEY for the company, unless later additions are planned to be gem-shop only additions.

EverythingXen.1835:

Not enough to keep a game this size running, or this wouldnt be happening.

Really?

How is Anet making money on this?

Are they selling the Ascended Gear in the gem store?

Is the new gear grind going to magically make people pay a sub fee?

Is this making them more money than concentrating on developing new cosmetics for the store?

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Morrigan.2809:

ok I have to post again on this tread.
Even after I read the clarification by Lindsay, all I can think is wow.

What clarifications? Link?

camoflaugz.5031:

So peoples issue is a gear treadmill? This is the best decision ever, finally have something to look forward to. I don’t get why people are playing an MMO if they dont like progression. Progression is proven and its what makes an MMO a success, sounds like what some of you are looking for is easy access to everything, that doesn’t work in the long run, thats a game that you end up putting on the shelf after a few months.

Progression doesn’t have to be vertical.

It doesn’t do Anet any good to have people grinding the game for month after month. There’s no sub fee.

xeph.8410:

Hydrophidian.4319:

A distributor.

I suspect that ANet wasn’t responding to forum feedback here. I suspect this development is more due to pressure from the Big Bosses, who seem to think there is only one template for a successful MMO.

You see, as someone who played City of Heroes for 8 years, I’ve been here before. The common denominator: NCSoft.

At its heart, I think this is all the result of: 1. culture clash and 2. a dysfunctional corporate methodology (that is plaguing just about every big distributor these days, not just NCSoft).

I suspect that if ANet had been left to its own devices, we wouldn’t be seeing this shift in design trajectory. Unfortunately, a great deal is resting on the success of this title, and NCSoft has recently restructured and ‘streamlined’ its focus.

In light of that, this all makes a certain amount of (depressing) sense.

As someone who hasn’t played any other NCSoft subsidiary title before, could you provide further details? I’m interested in knowing how it turned out for you in City of Heroes. Did the developers manage to stick to their guns in the end? Since you played it for eight years I imagine you must have enjoyed the game despite issues like this coming up.

No, they didn’t.

6 years in, they caved and added an “endgame” to a game that didn’t have one and didn’t need one – large-scale raids like WoW’s, at a time when even WoW was pulling back from that style because it’s not rewarding to a mature gamer playerbase (players aren’t mostly teens anymore – they’re adults with jobs and families.)

Then the game went F2P.

NCsoft shutters it at the end of the month.

It was a phenomenal game, and much like GW2, was a “the journey is the reward” style game, with a unique progression system, sidekicking/upleveling, cosmetics being your only visible “gear” and your actual +stats gear invisible, and a lot of other remarkable things like being able to craft and publish your own quests in-game. It was unique in the MMO market.

Crater.1625:

Loosifah.4739:

Did you REALLY expect them to not add any additional sets/armors/weapons/etc. to the game EVER?

No. We expected them to never add better sets/armour/weapon/etc to the game, EVER.

No, we expect them to add MORE SKINS to the gem shop. More items. More things to buy.

A gear grind in a game with no sub fee MAKES NO SENSE.

The information on what sells in a cash shop is out there for all to see. Check out LOTRO – it’s mostly cloaks, dresses and horses. Check out all the minis and mounts in WoW. Look at all the costume sets in COH.

Now look at our gem store. It is beyond skimpy – it was bare-bones when the game released, and almost nothing has been added to it. What HAS been added is event-related.

The events and content are great and fantastic. They make people log in. But if people don’t have a reason to BUY GEMS then it does the game NO good. It’s wasted development time. And since our gem store has almost nothing in it… why are they wasting development time with an in-game gear grind?

Does Anet really expect the Black Lion Key Lottery to pay the bills from here forward? Every month?

This makes no sense. Seriously, it doesn’t.

Adding a gear grind to a game with NO SUB FEE. What’s the point? Whether I get my gear over the next 6 months, or whether I get it playing 24 hours a day the next week – Anet gets the same amount of money from me. Which is none, aside from what I buy in the gem store.

Where is the horizontal progress that should be paying the bills? Where’s the new gem store skins? Non-event minis? Weapon skins? New townclothes? New cosmetic slots? Housing? All stuff we would have to drop real money on for gems, and would do so gladly because LOOKING COOL was the real grind of the game?

And if we weren’t dropping real money – we’d be grinding gold in-game to buy gems, which has the EXACT same effect as adding a gear grind (making us spend more time in-game) but without the penalty of breaking the Manifesto and making their core subscribers feel betrayed.

This is illogical and crazy. Hardcore grinders are never going to be the target audience for this game because it has NO SUB FEE. Spending more time in-game without spending money does Anet no good. The people they NEED are the cosmetics-kittens who would be spending money like gangbusters for housing, townclothes and the like.

For a game with this business model, vertical progression makes absolutely no sense as a development direction.

No.

To a gear grind we were promised would not be part of this game.

Definitely a 10. Never have I seen so much actually INTERESTING content in a holiday event, and better yet, it was stuff you didn’t HAVE to grind and do on a daily basis – the only other MMO I’ve seen come close for actual holiday content is LOTRO, and that’s deadly dull and grindy because you do it every day, and not nearly as much real new content.

I didn’t even attempt the clocktower and I love the fact it was included.

Many folks have posted about this – surely a game whose sole monetary support is through the gem store has every reason to make cosmetics MORE attractive to people so they buy MORE of them.

1. Have extra town clothes “pages” unlockable via gems, like bank and bag slots.

2. Let us slot armor into these town clothes slots cosmetically. If you don’t want people “masquerading” as other classes in PvP, simply don’t allow any town clothes to be equipped in PvP zones. As it is, since we can’t wear town clothes in combat, it would harm nothing at all to allow us to wear “dresses” of light armor while in town, if we’re a medium/heavy armor class, and would harm nothing to let light armor wearers dress up in Lionguard heavy armor for RP if they wish.

You can also go to the Mists and use the PvP lockers there to preview stuff on your actual character.

I can actually answer that. I got one of my good friends to try this game – it is her first MMO. The only other computer game she’s actually ever played was Minecraft.

She loves it. She doesn’t know any better, of course – she doesn’t encounter bugs and flip out, she doesn’t expect things that a lot of us have become used to. She just knows the world is beautiful, it rewards her for exploring, and she’s having a great time. She’s still pretty much spending most of her time poking around the capital cities and exploring to her heart’s content. She’s definitely happy with the game.

You have to remember – if this was your FIRST game, you wouldn’t be in such a rush to level and throw yourself at the “end” of the game. You’d be having too much fun with the journey. I really do envy her in a lot of ways

Seriously, this drives me insane.

You give the Sylvari Gaelic names… for “flavor” I guess, but then pronounce all of them horribly. I’m sad it didn’t matter to the writers at all, to appropriate the culture of those names and then not bother to explain to the voice actors how to actually SAY them.

Caithe should be pronounced “Kaih”

Faolain should be “FEE-lan”

I could go on listing names but it just goes on and on. Why bother to appropriate Celtic names and then ignore the way they’re pronounced?

It would be easier to use the PvP locker if the names matched the items out in the rest of the game.

Duelist is called Leather in the locker.

Draconic is called Scaled.

Etc etc

We seriously need in-game GMs. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we can’t get hold of any sort of CS reps.

Bloodlust.3672:

Yulan.4069:

This is not a bug. They want you to keep the item as a symbol of the unique choices you made in the very beggining of your adventure.

There are “workarounds” like the transmutation one, but I’m pretty sure they are not intended to work. These should be unique items that reflect your character’s story.

that’s rather pointless if we can’t wear them stat-wise without constantly consuming transmutation stones

That’s a design choice, not a bug.

I held onto the starter pieces on all my characters. They stayed in the bank until I was about 40 and started putting together a “final look” for them, then they came out and got transmuted. You only need to replace your gear every 10 levels or so, so it’s not “constantly” transmuting. And you are guaranteed 3 transmutation stones every time you 100% a capital city, and a chance at 3 stones every time you 100% a zone, so even though I’ve been structuring my characters’ looks from about 35-40 on up (with 7 characters) I’m not even close to being out of stones.

Anyone got a screenshot or a confirmation of T1 Heavy glowing?

Nope, it’s not.

I love the T3…. except for that big weird rumpled bustle on the butt for females. Yes, it’s on Eir too. Yes, it looks ridiculous. WHAT was the designer THINKING on that?

I’m going crazy trying to find this armor for my Charr.

It’s on many of the NPCs, including the Whispers agent in the “Choose your Order” arc, and tons of the NPCs just standing around.

No blousy sleeves, no flappy “skirt” bit, and it looks like Medium to me (which both my Charr are, which means I can’t get them the Pit Fighter chest)

You’ll find it in Ebonhawke

judeobscure.9280:

be quiet, feycat

I’m quite sorry!

<.<

Quite so.

>.>

My Elementalist Sylvari’s armor does not glow (T1 cloth)

Does the T1 heavy actually glow? That was the one thing holding me back from getting it on my Warrior, that it would completely cover up her bioluminescence.

Can anyone post a screenshot of the T1 heavy glowing??

The Sylvari dance is my hands-down favorite. I hope they don’t change a thing!!

I love the cultural armor. I’ve bought it on many of my characters – mostly a combination of T1/T2. I use it just cosmetically. Yes, including the medium Norn armor, which looks great.

The only cultural gear I don’t really care for is the charr gear, but sadly, all gear pretty much looks like crap on the Charr

So yeah, Anet did a great job on the cultural gear by my lights.

This is a serious problem for melee characters. You can’t see red circles, you can’t see windups – heck, you can barely see the mob!!

Now add to that a Norn or Charr character who is huge and is therefore much more constrained by the camera distance than a smaller character, and you can’t do ANYTHING but just stand in the lightshow and cry.

And down on page 3 overnight. Nope.

Well that’s screwed up :-/

Has anyone seen any kind of acknowledgement on it?

It is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable to change people’s pre-existing characters. Absolutely.

Especially in a game where customization and cosmetics are “the end game.”

Not okay.

Yes, they really really need to let us zoom out more. As a Norn melee character (one guardian, one thief) mass combats are a nightmare. Everything is pushed in so close and the effects are so overwhelming, it’s really awful.

How is this a bug? None of the special starter items are available in any format other than character creation.

Yes Zbrkesbr (that’s hard to type!) it’s a small gem, but it’s quite noticable, as it has an animated sparkling effect and hovers a few inches away from the character’s face. It shows up on the character select screen, so I know I’m wearing it, but it is missing in-game, as Sparkie said.

My elementalist saved this character creation item in the bank until level 80 so that I could wear it as my primary armor.

I just transmuted it onto a 80 rare, using a Fine Transmutation Stone up, and the helm is GONE.

The stats are still there, but NOTHING shows when I click the hide/show box.