Guild Wars 2

…or maybe you’ve just outgrown MMOs? It does happen. And while GW2 aims to please a large audience, you can never please everyone. I for one love not having to be either DPS or tank or healer.

Maybe you just need to take a break? That usually helps me when GW2 is starting to bore me (because, let’s face it, every game does that after a while – I need a diversion every now and then).

…thief is still most effective at taking out a target quickly when getting into melee range You might feel overwhelmed by crowds though, if you’re not careful.

On a side note: Legendaries are something to do once you pretty much did everything else in the game…because you will need to do nearly everything in order to afford one.
Also, endgame doesn’t differ from leveling from 1 to 80 all that much…so you might as well enjoy the ride
Incidentally, exploring gives lots of exp while also taking you across the world, to events and hearts and hilarious NPC conversations.

Uhm…so you would like to solo PvE? Or WvW? Or are you looking into sPvP?

Sneaky reeks of thief, being the only one with reliable access to stealth of those you named, but the ranger does have flanking attacks, too. Genreally, I find Ranger and Necromancer much more solo-friendly than Thief, but that might be just me. Playing thief is tremendously fun, but my survivability is far superior on ranger and necro.

How do you define “sneaky”, anyway?

Agreed! That would be a very nice little addition.

…people, remember this: Monthly Achievements are entirely optional.
If you don’t like what’s incorporated this month, don’t do it. End of story.

…although I really do like Mungrul’s idea

…but last names are a pretty sure way of getting the firstname you wanted I’ve never had any problems using both first and last names.

If I wasn’t on a european server, I’d run the instances with you :/ Have you found a guild yet? If you really can’t find anyone in mapchat, you might look into guilds looking for members – guildies are usually very helpful people Or you could look for help here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OPERATION-UNION-Bringing-Players-Together/page/10#post811484

For starters, I’d say a necro works better than a mesmer or ele, if simply because of the fact that the latter two are rather squishy. Having a more durable character is much more forgiving in the beginning, when you are still learning your way around the game.

Have you tried professions like ranger or necro? Their ‘pets’ can quite easily take some of the aggro from you, often allowing you to kill you opponent before he has gotten around to you (also – second HP bar on necro ^^). Apart from that…circle strafing, watch out for “big attack tells”, avoid Ettins Also: try to hit enemies with blind.

Not on GW2 that I am aware of. I prepurchased the CE, so if there were any weapon skins tied to an early purchase, I should know
There are extra weapon skins for people who earned specific achievements in GW1 though.

Weird, I only have 250 cogs by now oO

Uhm…I’m sorry, but I just can’t agree with you OP.
In my opinion, the holiday events are amazingly well designed (art team, I love you!), the attention to detail is astonishing, the activities are fun, well doable with a little bit of practice, and diverse enough to be enjoyable to many different people.

Where is the dungeon grind you speak of? The dungeon gives you decent rewards for one playthrouh – after that, all you get is normal drops you could get anywhere in the world. If you decide to grind it either way…well, that’s not really ArenaNets fault, is it?

The jumping puzzle has a decent difficulty level (if you need the practice, there is a very nice JP in Timberline Falls called Coddler’s Cove where you can learn to jump accurately without much penalty if you fail) – yes, it does, really. If it’s too hard for you, you have the choice of either not trying anymore or practicing until you get it. It is far easier than the Halloween one.

What do you mean by junky rewards?

Did you even try the Bell choir or the snowball PvP?

Account.9832:

Frotee.2634:

The only thing that’s puzzling me, at this point, is the challenge-seekers who are soundly against difficulty levels because they don’t want people lacking their particular skill being able to enjoy part of the event.

Have you done every other jumping puzzle in the game?

No? Well, there are your “difficulty levels”, then.

Maybe we should also have multiple difficulty levels for every dungeon path? What about multiple difficulty levels for every world boss? Or multiple difficulty levels for each renown heart? Or maybe whenever you’re exploring and a mob attacks you, it should start by asking which difficulty level you want…?

Or maybe (here’s a crazy idea) we should just have several different dungeons, each with several different paths, and populate the world with several different bosses and creatures. Some easier, some harder. And then let players explore and fight the ones they want. And maybe we could do the same with the jumping puzzles.

I for one prefer a game with 30 different jumping puzzles over one that has 20 puzzles with 3 different “difficulty levels” (meaning rehashed content with a slightly different timer or whatever).

If you can’t climb the Everest, don’t ask God to make the Everest shorter; try climbing the Kilimanjaro instead.

I have done most of the other JPs in the game, and I am well able to complete them – I was neither asking for a harder nor for an easier holiday JP. Heck, I was even fine with the Clocktower, although I wasn’t that good at platforming at the time and didn’t have enough free time to manage it, but it was kinda nice. Except for the whole failing because of too many large characters, camera jarring thing…
My point was solely this:
I can understand that there are people wishing for a more challenging JP, although I personally don’t think holiday JPs are the right place for it. What I cannot fathom are those who wish for a more difficult JP but are against several difficulty levels (in a holiday JP!) to allow both themselves and others with less skill at platforming to enjoy it.
Because even people who are bad at platforming might enjoy JPs :P However, they likely to have a much lower frustration threshold when presented with something that is far beyond their abilities. And holidays with their limited time and limited number of activities really should aim to be fun for (mostly) everyone IMO.

Again, I am perfectly fine with the difficulty of the Winter Wonderland, and may even beat the Clocktower next time around, if I am not quite so busy.

So let me get this straight: Some of you are against difficulty levels (in favour of only super hard holiday JPs) because people would still complain about not getting this or that? What do you care about people complaining on the forums?
I thought your complaint was that the current level of difficulty wasn’t enough of a challenge to you, so why should you not be satisfied if you did get your challenge?

Seriously thoug, not everyone has enough free time to spend hours and days on learning how to do a JP…or sees that as a fun way to spend their time.

Ah, I was having trouble with actually scoring points at this, too – because I kept hitting the right keys before tha coloured dots were inside the blue circle >_> Maybe that’s your issue?
Also, the easy stages are actually that – fairly easy. Hard. of course, is an entirely different matter

Thank you
Gosh I need myself a quaggan mini…

Awwwww I want to hug him until the bad goes away…;_;

Does someone have a screenshot of the little guy? I know I won’t spend the money to get one, but I’d still like to see it

The only thing that’s puzzling me, at this point, is the challenge-seekers who are soundly against difficulty levels because they don’t want people lacking their particular skill being able to enjoy part of the event.

dreztina.4820:

I don’t get why so many of you think you should be able to do and enjoy every single piece of content in a game. I don’t like dungeons. There are lots of things keeping me from enjoying them. I will never even see a major chunk of content in this game. Yet, I’m not crying and whining for Anet to change them to fit me. I just don’t do them and let the people who enjoy that type of thing have their fun.

This game is incredibly simple and easy. There is absolutely no lack of easy content for you people to do. So why do you insist on making it so those of us who enjoy a challenge can’t have even one single thing that caters to our wants? I don’t expect the entire game to be harder; you people are where the money is, afterall. But why can’t we have even one thing that pushes us to our limits and take hours of trying to do?

No one is saying you shouldn’t have one single piece of really challenging content. All I was saying was that I don’t believe that one out of 5 or so holiday activities may not be the right place for it – because of the limited nature of holiday events, people will be drawn to participating in each and every one of them.
If you must have a super-mega-challenging piece of holiday content, I’d vote for normal and hard modes for those, so the lazy, casual, non-challenge seeking rest of us has something to enjoy as well. I’m egoistic that way – I love jumping puzzles, but I hate for them to be (for my skill ceiling) overly frustrating. I found the difficulty level of the Winter wonderland pretty much perfect.

Thank you, dear Anet, for this amazingly designed event and the funfunfun activities

The attention to detail is, once again, simply astonishing.

I would much rather buy a Quaggan plushie than having to gamble on a bunch of mini-pets to be able to creaty a quaggan mini in game :/

Actually, they are fairly easy to tackle on a well necromancer

(It is kind of nice to know that my profession rocks something for a change XD)

While we’re at it, I’d like to see a return of the air-instrument emotes

I really like the winter wonderland
I’m generally not much a fan of timed events, but the timeframe of this is really doable.
Having everyone start spread out on different platforms not only helps with getting lost between other (bigger) characters, but also makes gameplay less repetitive.

I respect that there are people seeking more of a challenge, but I don’t see festive events with a very restricted number of easily accessibe ativities as the right place for really challenging content.

I only tried thief out during the beta, but what I got from her was this (PvE experience only, I don’t PvP):
Thief is absolutely deadly on a single target, but not particularly good (and rather squishy) against groups of enemies.

iJuan YouLost.4872:

When I bought the laptop (from HH Greg) I made sure to ask the guy there how well it should be able to play, and although he wasn’t a gamer (and I know nothing about cpu’s except ram) he said that this graphics card (or OS, don’t remember which) was about equal to the i5, and that with the 4 gigs of ram this had, I should be good to go. Then I went to Best Buy after buying the laptop and the woman there (who was a gamer) said that this should run well enough.

Ok, some beginner’s clarification (just so you understand the sales people better next time):
OS: Operating System, in your case probably Windows 7.
Graphics Card: Usually referred to as GPU.
i5: Usually referring to a type of intel processor, or CPU.
→ A graphics card can’t really be equal to a processor, it’s like comparing apples to pears

The nice people at the tech forums will probably tell you what particulars to look out for when building your own PC once you have the funds to do it

On highest settings – and if it doesn’t, just turn your resolution down a bit A friend has very similar system and is running GW2 at max settings just fine.

(heck, I have one that is slightly weaker and can run it on max settings on 40-50 fps, but then my monitor is kind of old and can’t handle more than 1240×1024)

I agree that you picked 2 of the hardest professions – especially the elementalist is prone to dying horribly often if you haven’t mastered the general gameplay yet.

Warrior, Guardian (for melee) are much much easier, as is the ranger (pick a bear pet as your starter for extra easy gameplay) or even the necromancer (tanky scholar, plus starts off with a minion for heal, which will take some aggro away from you).

I believe the icon for armor repairs is actually a broken shield, not a broken heart.

Apart from that: Visit the wiki! There, you can get more insight into what your skills and their side effects do. That should be quite a big help…
One easy tip though: Circle-strafing. May take some practice (I’m still not excellent at it) but it does help tremendously if you keep dying. If you want to know when to use your dodges: Watch the animations of the monster you’re fighting. You’ll usually see some specific moves before they unleash their more powerful attacks.

What do you mean you can’t attack when you move away? Simple movement shouldn’t disturb most of your skills.

Ahh…now, it’s not much, but I feel like my SSD loads maps slightly faster than my old HDD (as far as harddrive is concerned).

Good CPU for GW2… well, my i5 (3,2 Ghz, I think…would have to check though) handles it just fine.

There’s christmas up ahead; no chance you could get your family to collect the means to buy you a new CPU? Or see if you can get a used one?

i paid not quite 800€ for a system that can run GW2 comfortably on high-max settings, so you should be able to something that can play it with 25+fps at least on medium for 600 tops

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

I personally don’t like it, as I’d rather be surprised. Knowing that his toys are going to go berserk is kind of a “spoiler”. Oh well, as long as it makes more people happy, I’m cool with it. Very excited about this event.

… he is Asura. What did you expect of his toys? Did you notice the similarity between nearly all DEs involving Asuras? ^^

Nah, he just said that during summer, most of (central) Europe actually is GMT+2 Nothing to do with the event.

Being CET, I’d still prefer GMT times. I’m just more used to that ^^°

Just remembered what I wanted to add/explain (yesterday was kind of busy, sorry):

When you’re interested in someone, you really shouldn’t think too hard about how you might seem too “available” when you try to make time for them whenever they need you.
Yes, confidence is sexy. So is independence, or rather: Seeming to have a life of your own. But this only means that even when you have a crush on someone, you shouldn’t sit around all day waiting for them to call you (or at least not making it obvious). It is perfectly fine if you are always there for your prospective significant other, as long as you don’t abandon all your other interests. It’s kind of difficult to explain, but as long as they see that you have things (other than them) that you are passionate about, you’ll be fine – as long as there is a spark, that is

On a general note – will you keep us updated on your progress, Kunshu? Maybe we can help when any specific issue comes up Or you could have a journal detailing to you the little successes you have each day. Maybe make small goals for each day, like “I will talk to 3 fellow students today”, “I will have smalltalk with other students while waiting in line in front of the cafeteria”, etc. (talking to people and having pleasant, lighthearted conversations with strangers takes practice, but it really helps in having a pleasant university life and meeting friends).

Personally, I do the jumping puzzles because I find them fun and challenging
The chest a the end is just a nice little bonus to keep me at roughly +-0 what with all the travelling costs…

Hmmm I think I’ll formulate a decent reply tomorrow in my Typo3 seminar or something, as it has gotten kinda late – was out with my boyfriend for our 10 year anniversary
Apologies accepted, Glitch – I’m fine with it if you didn’t mean it that way, I just couldn’t let it stand like that. I still think that the “friendzone” is not something you can really consciously avoid though – much like Kunshu described, it’s something that may just ‘happen’ either way. I’ve been on the other side of that often enough, and I’d much rather not have had it that way, believe me It does feel bad to have to hurt someone you actually care about like that.

phobia.3958:

WoW, I must say I am Semi Impressed so many of you went all Internet Psychologist on this dude….Here is a former US Army Drill Sergeants perspective and the MUCH Shorter version of what so many of them have said…

MAN the “F” up and have some confidence, without it you will drown in today’s world. In the civilian sector I eat boys like you for lunch. If you can’t grow a set your doomed to run to the internet for your social interaction and will at best end up with a fat girl ( Who will love you way more then the smoking hot ones I have landed btw )

Attractive woman have so many “Outs” when it comes to life, as a Man you need to be an Alpha and don’t stress the people in your life that don’t fall into the three F’s of life…

If your not Feeding me, Financing me or Fn me you just don’t matter…..

Flame on girls….Flame on

As for attractive women having too many outs etc.? You get what you sow. Your kind of alpha male only attracts a specific segment of women – no wonder you miss out on the great, loyal, clever and attractive ones. If you weren’t interrupting this nice and civil topic, I wouldn’t even take notice of someone like you. (Btw, the way you need to reassure everyone of your own success doesn’t really speak of great self-esteem )

Growing up takes a while, and having been emotionally scarred in high school doesn’t necessarily speed up that process. Luckily, it really doesn’t matter who you were in highschool and who your friends were, because your life just started when you left that specific social sphere.

Glitch.6849:

Dating: As always sustained contact. However once you get to the more intimate stages you become that guy that is not there on every beck and call. (in any situation never become that needy, over eager to please guy. It’s a big turn off)

Okay for this bit you have to establish a pseudo friendship, I’m not talking about a fake friendship for a quick play. You’re the guy that they can come to when things go really FUBAR, you’re not the one to turn to for every little thing but the big things. Keep up sustained contact as usual. Eventually they see you as someone to trust established by the give and take factor. If they come to you for small things redirect them to their other friends, however listen to some as if you’re not prepared to some of their smaller worries they will never tell you their larger troubles.

This so you do not fall victim to the friend zone. If that happens you may never come up on their radar in most occasions. I have some tips if you ever need it if you find yourself in such predicament.

Ok, stop it right there with the dating advice – establishing a “pseudo-friendship” just so you can hope to get a date is NOT OK! Neither to you nor the lady in question.
The feared “friend-zone” is not something that happens because you are too friendly or available, it is something that happens because your potential love interests likes you but is not interested in you in a romantical way!
You can’t force something like that. Either there is a spark, or there isn’t. Period.
Gosh >_> You have no idea how much I hate that approach…females actually would like to be able to trust a friendly guy not just hide his desire for a girlfriend, drifting off/loosing interest as soon as they realise that’s not gonna happen. It is terribly annoying to the girl and can be quite hurtful to the male.
Read this if you want to understand why this kind of dating advice can drive a women mad.

Sorry for interrupting the advice, but I find this important.
To offer some more: Don’t take interactions with people you have a crush on as a staple for social interactions in general – we all behave like utter idiots around people we are (secretly) in love with, no matter how good our social skills normally are

The road to feeling truly self-confidant is a hard one, I know
But unless you like yourself, it is rather difficult to approach others in a way that would encourage them to like you.
Silly enough, that is most easily accomplished (in my experience) by having others tell you that you are a great person, that they value you, that they like to be around you, etc. (because, let’s face it, having little self-esteem often comes from others “telling” you the opposite for a long time).
Sadly, having family tell you that doesn’t necessarily work, because they are obviously biased. As long as you don’t have friends who might take on that role for you, you might start reminding yourself every day of what you are good at and what’s nice about you. Tell yourself you are a nice person until you start to believe it. Don’t ponder your negative sides too much – everyone has issues, so that’s nothing special Instead, do things you like and are good at, and focus on these positives. Be proud of your skills.

You already said that with all these interests, you still try to seclude yourself when going after them – this is a point where you can change, as many of the things you listed lend themselves to company.
If you like painting and sculpting, join a club or enroll in courses which focus on those skillsets – not only can you improve your skills, but you will be surrounded by people with the same goal. If you are good at it, you can try to offer advice. If you are not so proud of your results, you can compare them with those of the other participants, joke about how “that arm looks more like a tentacle”, ask for advice, etc.

Ah, on side note: If you think of yourself of a weirdo, you might try out activities or hobbies which naturally attract people who think of themselves as weird or dorky I’ve met the most interesting people and established a nation-wide network of friends and acquaintances through Larp (which is a very social, creative, and outdoor-heavy hobby) – which might also be interesting to you as it allows you to be just be someone else for a while, and try out different kinds of interactions in a fairly controlled environment. Or just allows you to scream at the top of your lungs without garnering funny looks ^^ (Oh so satisfying.)

Something else: Smile at people. Start practicing with the people working at your grocery store etc. if you like – in general, people will be much nicer to you if you offer them a smile first. Don’t be discuraged when they don’t always smile back – some people are jerks. Forget about them and move on.

A nice (and very interesting) blog dishing out advice for various issues (opened on a random article): Captain Awkward

cough
Elementalist is your profession, Tailor and Artificer would be your crafting classes
Have you started on any crafting class so far?

Both Ascended gear and a Legendary weapon are more long-term goals so far, btw – that is, concerning the amout of time they require.

I’ve also had backpieces drop in dungeons, such as CoF.

Okay, I’ll try.
Generally, if looking for friends (or potential love interests), it would make sense to frequent places YOU like to go, doing activities YOU are into (or at least somewhat interested in). Why? Well, if you go out of your way to visits social spaces you wouldn’t normally frequent, the people you meet there are likely to have distictly different interests from you. If you are about to start college, you are usually offered a variety of activities likely to introduce you to other students. Also, universities often have all sorts of sport-related offerings (sometmes even teaching very interesting, rather niche activities) – just pick something that sounds interesting to you.

This is important! Friends are people around whom you can be yourself, however weird that may be – and they will still like you. People who only like you because you try very hard to please them are not your friends. Period. Yes, it may take a while to find real friends, but you’ll see that they are much more valuable in the long run
(Btw, I don’t find it all that strange that you haven’t really had friends while you were still going to school – I haven’t met any of my long-term, good friends in school.)

Things that tend to drive people away are different from person to person – heck, some people might just not find you very likeable, for no logical reason. There was a blog about things to generally keep in mind, I’ll see if I have it bookmarked somewhere…
Some simple rules I can remember (which still apply to friends, because they are basic social decency):
- Be polite.
- If you are talking to someone, make sure to actually listen to what they say and show interest. Ask questions, volunteer your opinion on the matter.
- Hygiene! Sounds silly, but people will actually be much more likely to approach you if you smell nice and don’t look like something the cat dragged in.
- If you get the sense that someone doesn’t feel comfortable around you or maybe really isn’t interested in you, don’t fret. That just happens. Don’t be pushy and just try to talk to someone else.

I’ll see if I can find the rest of it

Ah, I just remembered: It might help if you tell us what region (or at least country) you are actually from – though I suppose you’re American, what with the high school and college thing.

Tanith.5264:

I’ve never really understood the appeal of halter tops on any female character in any game. We are fighting a war, we don’t have time to sashay around displaying our doodlebobbers, you pervs. Give us some good old Agent Scully trenchcoats!

Seconded. Did any of you realize that the reason why Asura and Charr have no female armor sets is that every. single. female. (light.) armor. in the game is designed around showing off the Characters “boobies”? And even the heavy and medium armor sets are shaped to show off or draw looks towards the chest. All of them.
So don’t go off complaining about the females looking like tomboys :P

Actually, I think this might just have something to do with the difficulty as well. I haven’t done many dungeons, but the ones I did always had a storymode which was more frustrating, difficult and time-consuming than the explorable mode (or at least the latter’s simplest path).
I like the difficulty and timeframe of explorable mode, but I’d love for storymode to be alittle easier, actually. If it wasn’t so frustrating and time-consuming (that is, more fun), maybe it would be easier to scrunge together a group…

And while I have a very nice guild which will help me do some storymode every once ein a while, it’s a small guild, so it is kinda difficult to get enough people to do a dungeon at all :/

Well, that’s just because you all share the same taste or want to look like the same “stereotype” of thief
Also, because most people just don’t mix and match. Heck, even my guildmates are continously thrown by how nice my necro looks and what kind of set I’m wearing – because I’m not wearing one set, but a mixture of several.

I agree, though, that most sets in each of the armor classes tend to favour a specific kind of stereotype/style.

Tagging mobs with a necro is also very, very easy – just switch to death shroud and hit 4
Also, wells rock.

If you like high HP bullet suckers, go for a necro
While I play mine AoE heavy, I think you can do with minimum AoE quite easily…

Making items account-bound would also disable people from selling them
Personally, I’d much appreciate account-bound over soulbound, but I can also see why they’d want people to spend more time playing the game to get those things (again)…

I still want my dyes account-bound, as they were intended to be at some earlier point :P

To be fair though, everyone thought that exotic was and would stay the highest rarity next to legendary, and certainly have the same stats, so it wasn’t a big deal – until they introduced Ascended and stated that legendary stats would be changed accordingly…

With the time involved in creating a legendary weapon, it should be feasible to change the stats to your favourite build without being screwed over for it