Guild Wars 2

It baffles me why the writers decided that corruption (dragon or Nightmare Court) is a one-way street. The greatest stories are redemption stories, and there’s so much more room for interesting character development if it is possible (evem if almost impossible) to bring someone back from darkness.

Imagine Star Wars if the decision had been made that no one could ever be redeemed from the dark side of the Force. :P

KyreneZA.8617:

Unless the current trait unlock system is replaced,

That has already been confirmed, though with no details on what it will be replaced with.

Kentrey.3251:

and the only options for customization or improvement are cash shop options)

Not sure if anyone has adressed this yet, but it’s not true. Yes, there are the cash shop gathering nodes and such, but there are also things that have been the result of playing the Living Story. I haven’t purchased anything for my home instance, but I have a Christmas tree, crystal node, Krait obelisk, a candy corn node, and a belcher’s bluff station (can’t remember, there might be something I’m forgetting because I rarely visit).

What I would like is a free portal to my home instance. Maybe on a huge cooldown if ArenaNet is concerned about it getting abused to shortcut around waypoint fees. I’d simply like the freedom to port home at the end of any given game session, so I start off the next one in my home instance. It’s the only way I can see it ever being convenient enough to visit regularly.

DarkWasp.7291:

Coldtart.4785:

I’ll be either taking my instant 80’d rev into the jungle or my ele into the jungle to get its specialisation.

Gonna have exotic+ gear ready?

It’s easy enough to get a full set of exotic. Between WvW, karma armor, and throwing some gold on the TP getting fully suited in exotics should happen day one.

And that’s not accounting for account-bound ascended (thanks again, ArenaNet!). Strip down your other characters and you’re good to go.

Anyone else have trouble not imagining the characters impaling themselves through the temple when they lift their left arm?

Isn’t it pretty much par for the course in MMOs that new classes come out a little more awesome than existing classes and a little OP?

So make sure you have an Experience Scroll and 60 Tomes of Knowledge in your bank, and join the Revenenant Invasion for the first month or two six months after HoT launches before they swing the nerf hammer, and swing it again, adjusting the Revenant to a little less awesome than the other professions and a little UP.

And we’ll all have stories of the all-Revenant dungeon runs and 9/10 Revenant PvP matchups to share with the newbies who buy GW2 in 2017.

Hm….

Currencies have gone from characters to an account wide wallet.
WvW progression went from characters to account wide.
Ascended items were changed from soulbound to accountbound.

And now masteries have been announced as account wide. It fits with the general direction ArenaNet has been taking the game.

For which I applaud them.

I would like a short, neatly trimmed beard option for human males. As it is we have two varieties of stubble and a full beard.

Like http://images.natureworldnews.com/data/images/full/1500/ben-affleck.jpg

I commend you for trying to educate about the history of these topics on the forum, and demonstrating how we can work around the forum’s terrible search feature in order to find those earlier threads.

pdavis.8031:

P.S. This is not a discussion regarding those things. This is an announcment that many threads have already been started, and the community has already expressed their opinions on the matter multiple times. Thank you.

However, if you did not wish this to become yet another discussion regarding those things, you should not have presumed to speak for the majority by declaring a general consensus.

pdavis.8031:

The general consensus is that mounts and open world dueling do not belong in this game.

The reason these continue to be hot-button issues that continually get readdressed is that there is most decidedly not a consensus. There are passionate voices as well as reasonable arguments on both sides of both arguments.

Without your statement that there is a general consensus, this could have been a post helping to direct people to appropriate threads, rather than starting new ones, and reminding them to keep the conversation civil so as not to get threads locked.

Instead, it comes across as an attempt to get people to stop expressing their desire for mounts or dueling.

Thank you, ANet, for account wide masteries.

I expect unlocking them on my first character will be fun. It might continue to be fun on a second or third. But I’m confident it would just be a chore by the fifth character, let alone my ninth.

It’s design decisions toward account bound progression that make me confident enough to purchase additional character slots.

Level 80 day one.

Because NPE.

Thanks for the tip, Redenaz. Will have to watch for that.

My problem is that it requires running fractals, which I have no interest in doing.

I hope when it gets rebuilt that it does look like the LA from launch. A city made from ship parts was a unique visual concept I’d hate to see lost forever out of some attempt to make the world feel like true time passes.

The Great Collapse was a wonderful, character-filled part of DR. The Queen’s Pavilion is nice, but took some of the mystery out of DR and made it a little more generic fantasy city.

The Zephyrite cliffs and airship were another highlight of the game, but now the ship is scattered across Dry Top giving us another rubble-strewn area.

If LA must be redesigned, please at least keep it in the style of LA at launch.

And if another home city is slated for destruction, let it be the frustratingly designed Black Citadel, which could be rebuilt to be more logical to navigate and closer to the epic looking concept art we see in the loading screen.

Can I get an invite to the NA chapter please. This dungeonaphobe would like to reform his ways.

Kortas.7345:

Don’t worry I’m shure we’ll get less trenchcoat armor in HoT just look at this beautiful armor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqkcBy8JpSI

Thanks for the link. Looking forward to seeing the male version, and hoping it doesnt include the ubiquitous butt-cape or trenchcoat (since we already have a few pieces that don’t have them on female, but still do on male).

Still curious if someone knows what chest piece is on the Charr posted above. That was my main reason for resurrecting this thread, not so much to restart another trench-coat complaint.

anemoneko.8345:

Charr engi without trenchcoat

Anyone know the name of that chest piece?

Soon™.

/15Charr

So far, their talk of getting new powers based on the legend you are channeling sounds a lot like Engie weapon kits. But there’s been so little information, who can say.

Electro.4173:

One spec per profession is pretty disappointing, even if I was expecting it based on what was said during the reveal event…

…I guess there’s something to be said for laying the groundwork for future improvements, and the system certainly seems great for that, but I’d like the system to be a little more fleshed out on release, so you can explore it a little more right away instead of a year or whatever down the line….

Yeah, I’m content to get one specialization per profession to start, with the idea that they’ll keep building others.

The thing that makes me nervous is the game is littered with “groundwork for future improvements” that seem to have abandoned. The shooting gallery, the pub brawl, the polymock arena, the miniature arena are all side-games that were underway but got dropped. The remnants of the personality system has been slowly, quietly pulled out of the game. Fractals were introduced with great fanfare, but aren’t regularly grown. Aquatic combat was trumpeted at first, but seems to be phasing out.

I just hope they get a chance to take this specialization system and really flesh it out into a wide variety of character growth options before design goals change and new systems replace it as the focus of development.

Brtiva.9721:

It remains to be seen, what the current system will be replaced with. I am not celebrating yet.

The current system was hailed as being this new, awesome, and improved thing. I feel quite the opposite, personally. So, I have become a skeptic and reserve judgment . We have been told the current system will be removed but what will we end up with?

Very welcome news that the current system is going away but as I do not know what this truly means I am still not excited. It would be very easy to get excited about this, but I have disliked everything that has been done since the trait change except the free and immediate respec. Experience has made me quite wary.

Can’t agree more. At this point, the devil has been proven to be in the details.

I’ll be cautiously optimistic that the new system will be an improvement. Bummed that the financials hint release of HoT won’t be until Q3, as I was thinking about starting a new alt, but there’s no way I’ll do that with knowledge that the trait system might improve in the foreseeable future.

They did say that the new system will be account unlocks, rather than character, so I expect that those of us with grandfathered unlocked traits on characters will now have them open to our entire account.

SkyShroud.2865:

Erm…

Considering that you can purchase an upgrade to deluxe pack of GW2 through gems, which also means that Anet is not making any profit by doing that but still doing it for the benefit of players.

Of course they make money off of it. If you buy gems with cash, they’ve made money. If you buy the gems with gold so you can upgrade, then someone else paid for those gems with cash, so ANet made money there, too.

It amazes me how many people are ready to expect a price point equal to the original cost of the base game when the expansion doesn’t appear to be adding new content equal to that of the base game.

Well, since the mists are dislocated from time, the revenant could be immune to paradox. Perhaps Rytlock’s unlocking of Revenant powers causes other Revenants to emerge from the mists throughout the time stream.

In other words, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

Same problem here. Purchased on Tuesday, and got double charged. Today they’ve corrected it by crediting back the extra charge to my account. I didn’t have to contact anyone.

Good to know that this happens, though. We should be checking just to make sure after each transaction.

And a piggyback question, how will it combine with other XP boosts?

If I pop a 50% XP increase on kills, will I be getting 200% (if the double simply overrides other boosts) 250% or 300% xp per kill?

Dahkeus.8243:

Don’t rush to level up. You don’t need to be max level to experience all the good stuff in this game.

Take your time and open up waypoints and explore a bit. It’s frustrating to get to 80 and not even be able to participate in dungeons or guild missions due to lack of territory/waypoints opened up.

I used to agree with this… until the New Player Experience.

The extended trait schedule is very annoying, more so on some professions than on others. Get to level 80 fast, buy some traits, and then you can always go back out and do that exploring after, with a smoother experience because you have the traits to make your profession function as designed.

Just my 2 cents, from a player who usually tends toward immersive, non-goal oriented play.

The release isn’t clear on when double XP starts. 8am with the sale?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Gibson.4036:

brien

we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.

That’s the last official word we’ve had from ArenaNet on the subject, as far as I know. It was in an Reddit AMA in 2013, so take it for what you will.

Anet claimed many things they would do at some point that never happened, so take that for what you will.

Yep, that’s why I include my comment about 2013. It was a while ago, so it may have no relevance given the frequency ArenaNet likes to change direction on their design goals.

Still, it’s the only official thing we have to go on.

I’m behind on the LS, so my experience is a couple of episodes ago as I’m working on catching up. I’m definitely noticing some wide disparities in difficulty depending on profession.

I’m having a much easier time on professions that have stronger ranged attacks and movement. One example are the Mordrem wolves with their insane flanking damage. Allow them to flank, and they practically one shot you. Not such a problem on professions built for kiting and ranged damage, but on professions with limited mobility and much stronger melee damage the fight is much more difficult.

I had the same issue in the attack in the omphalos chamber of the Pale Tree. The Shadow of the Dragon lays down so much ridiculous AoE, combined with the tendrils AoE, you have to be constantly moving into the small safe zones left. They’re very clearly telegraphed, so it’s not hard to “stay out of the fire”, but on a predominantly melee character that means a lot of time doing very little damage back while you dance, compared to the kiters who can stay safe and still return fire the whole time.

I know, there’s no such thing as a melee or ranged class in GW2. But some (ele,mes) have easy access to a ton of mobility and ranged damage, while others (guard) can only dish out reasonable ranged damage if foes are stationary or cc’able and don’t have a ton of escape mobility.

Once again, a patch arrives and I had the problem where the game starts to download but quickly ramps down to 0KB/s. So I tried -repair, and got a special “repairing data archive” window that doesn’t seem to progress, and just sits there.

Looked around and tried the /clientport 80 tag and that made the download happen almost instantaneously. Got the login screen and logged in successfully, only to find that every time I hit “play” the game closes.

Went back to -repair, and still get the endless “repairing” window.

Kinda frustrated that it seems like every time we get a patch recently, the game breaks.

brien

we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.

That’s the last official word we’ve had from ArenaNet on the subject, as far as I know. It was in an Reddit AMA in 2013, so take it for what you will.

I want to first thank ArenaNet for their recent work on growing our home instance. I remember when they first talked about it changing to reflect our adventures over time, and it’s nice to see that starting to happen with things like the obelisk shard and gift tree.

There are a bunch of memento gizmos, however, that would fit great in our home instance. Things like the Zephyr kite, jubilee balloon, flames of Kryta, Sanctum model, Marjory’s journal and even the orphan’s letter are too plentiful to carry around, eat up precious bank storage, but are kinda painful to junk.

It’d be great to have something like the Hall of Monuments from GW1 inside our home instance where we could go and choose to “dedicate” these gizmos. A copy would appear in the memento case, and we’d be free to delete the original item.

Since most of them have an effect, it’d also be nice if we could interact to have a copy of the memento placed back in our inventory, for those moments when we feel like running around the undead wastes of Orr with a cheery balloon bobbing along behind us.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

With games? It’s more a matter of at least putting an effort into seeing what some developer/coder put their time into rather than going “it stinks” without actually looking into the whole of the game. “It’s not my thing”, I’m okay with but “this game sucks donkey turds” after five minutes of play? Annoys the heck out of me.

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate. There are good reasons to lock rewards behind certain parts of the game, and those reasons clearly changed ANet’s mind on the matter.

I’m a player who is willing to try everything in the game, but quickly loses interest in something that is supposed to be entertainment when it starts feeling like a chore. After playing enough MMORPGs where the best gear was always locked behind 20 person raids, something I definitely don’t enjoy, it was refreshing that ANet planned to break that mold and allow players to pursue whatever part of the game they wanted to get to the rewards.

There’s a good argument for both sides.

After playing very minimally for a while, I’ve been working on catching up with the LS. I’ve been very frustrated that nothing in the LS instances triggers Renewed Justice on my Guardian.

So I’m adding my voice to request a solution so “on-kill” effects work with 0 xp creatures.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mmm. Sorry, what is it you’re on about? You’re going to need to not be coy about it if you want me to answer straight.

Sorry, wasn’t trying to be coy. Just thought it’d been discussed enough and that there was enough context that it didn’t need elaboration.

Part of the original vision for the game that was presented by the developers was the ability to stick to the part of the game you liked, and get rewarded just as well as other players.

Obviously, this vision has changed. ArenaNet decided it was a better idea to do it like other games, and structure their reward system to draw people into other parts of the game.

But, at one point, they did trumpet the idea that, for example, a player who liked WvW could stay in WvW full time and not feel left behind players in other game modes.

It was a shift. Developers do that. But your reaction (“almost criminal”) seemed very strong for a game, that at one point, was trumpeted as doing just that.

Tom Gore.4035:

Jaymee.1560:

Does… this also mean that you deleted your Sylvari toons, cheeseball?

Who has Sylvari characters anyway? I mean, they are by far the ugliest race in the game. And my opinion obviously is the only correct one

Ha! I have more Sylvari characters than any other race specifically because I think the opposite.

Human men have this weird chunky look, even on the thinnest body model.

Charr have their hunched over stance, slow, loping run, and look terrible in 95% of the available armor.

Norn men have kitten. ’Nough said.

I have several Asura as well, but that’s because their supposed to look like ugly little goblin-rats.

The Sylvari have an amazing design, a wide range of colors, proportional figures, and bioluminescence.

Salads rule!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Though I’m one of those players who feel it’s almost criminal to buy a game and play only one part of it, then insist on getting the same things others get playing the other modes. Personal opinion, only.

Even when that was originally billed as part of the vision for the game by the developers?

DarkWasp.7291:

I feel like ArenaNet needed the game to be released before they could perfect DEs. For example, Dry Top and SE are everything Orr should have been. They couldn’t have possibly, during prerelease, predicted every direction the community would take.

I agree with you there. DEs at release were a start that needed to be grown and matured. As you said, ArenaNet has made progress with them. Unfortunately, though, they still can’t entirely commit to that form of holistic storytelling. No hearts in these later zones, just as the entire game was originally conceived, but instead we have this misfitting linear story to try and pull us through the zones.

That linear story takes focus over the zones themselves. It’s interesting to imagine what they might have achieved with the DEs if they had focused on them as the main storytelling content.

P.S. For those who are relatively new to the game, it might surprise you to know that even hearts, which are essentially old-style quests like every other MMORPG has, weren’t part of the game. Pre-beta playtesting revealed that some people used to traditional MMORPGs became lost and confused upon entering the game because there were no NPCs around to tell them what to do. They didn’t have a grid for exploring and just finding Dynamic Events to bump into.

Hearts were added to pull them out into the zones and give them a structure.

Early on, DEs were the open world, but even before launch it ArenaNet started the process of backing away from that vision. I like to imagine what the game might have been like if they could have found a way to follow through with pure DEs and get people to engage with them.

IMO, it’s deeper than the cliffhangers. The Living Story is patterning itself off of linear media, like television and single-player RPGs. Problem is, this is an MMO, which really asks for a non-linear story development.

ArenaNet was on to something when they originally designed the game with web-structured, holistic stories across regions of Tyria by means of dynamic events. This is the kind of non-linear storytelling makes so much sense in a game where thousands of people are playing in persistent world. It allows a player to immerse herself into an ongoing story and explore in a non-linear fashion, putting the pieces together across a zone or zones until the big picture emerges.

Yes, the DE system has its issues. Many of them break down immersion because they cycle too often and don’t have quite enough links and branches to feel like complex interactions among the different factions in a zone. That isn’t, however, an inherent flaw in the DE concept. It’s just a sign of it’s immaturity. Early on ArenaNet talked about having the structure to keep adding more DEs to zones and change them as things developed. It would have been amazing to see that happen, watching the stories in the various regions of the world gain complexity and depth over time, rather than episodic, limited time additions that further a linear story.

Unfortunately, it feels like ArenaNet decided too quickly that holistic storytelling was a mistake, and fell back on the tried and true.

I think of it like the early days of most media. When a new technology enables a new form of expression, the natural habit is to mimic a similar medium that went before. You see it in very early film, which tried to imitate theatrical storytelling, until filmmakers understood more about how film could uniquely tell story.

The Living World/Story tries to function like a medium with a single, primary protagonist even though this game has thousands of players adventuring, often together, as well as trying to follow a linear cause-effect even though we have a wide open, persistent world.

Yes, most MMOs that aren’t completely sandbox go that way. At the beginning, however, GW2 looked like it was going to find a way to tell stories that really fit a themepark MMORPG, rather than shoe-horning in a single-player kind of story. I expect as MMORPGs continue to evolve eventually someone will find a way to tell a story that is uniquely suited to the media.

Charr run animation. I know they’re moving as fast as everyone else, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m loping through molasses.

Norn obsession with glory, hunting, and drinking.

The lack of a better MMORPG.

That would be nice. Plenty of time after the craziness of the holidays has past. Thanks!

I searched, but we all know how poor the search function is here. Googled, and found a lot of questions about it for 2013, but not 2014.

So when does Wintersday end this year? I’m a pretty casual player, and want to know when I need to make some time to finish up some Wintry things before Tixx flies off to wherever for another year.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

This has how it’s always been though. Every game I’ve ever played has this to at least some extent.

Oh, sure. It’s just that “play how you want” was part of the “MMO for people who don’t like MMOs” line they pitched to us in the beginning.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I don’t see Devon’s statement as contradictory to “play how you want” though. Of course they want people playing all aspects of the game, thus why the offer ‘optional rewards’ as incentive to play those other aspects (as his statement goes on to say, but you thoroughly ignore). The keyword is optional, you don’t have to do it, unless you want those shinies. And you know what, that’s perfectly fine. You can choose to not do it because that’s not your type of gaming. Not having that shiny is not going to set you back because you made that choice.

I wasn’t ignoring anything.

It’s very clear from the context of his post and the conversation. “Play how you want” was clearly presented at the beginning as “Hey, you like WvW, feel free to spend all your time there and get all the best goodies as if you were a hard core dungeon runner” or whatever other part of the game. The whole point of “Play how you want” was that you we weren’t supposed to feel like we had to do parts of the game we don’t like playing to get the rewards.

Technically, it’s true. But Devon admitted what was already obvious, reward structures were being designed with the idea of drawing people into all parts of the game. That, by it’s very nature, is a change from “Play how you want”.

Colin Johanson

Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. (2011)

Colin Johanson

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards. (early 2013)

DevonCarver.5370:

It is also the case, that we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards and those may not always include WvW. (late 2013)

IMO, “Play How You Want” was officially declared dead by ArenaNet at the end of 2013. It was obvious long before that ArenaNet doesn’t want you playing how you want. They want you to feel pulled into “all the parts of the game” if you want to get to the rewards.

It makes the game less immersive, more checklisty. The dailies have bounced back and forth between this over a couple of revamps since launch.

There are times when we can say, “Don’t worry, just play the game and you’ll get your dailies.” Other times, “If you don’t like the chore list, just ignore the dailies.”

This change has brought us back to the latter. If I want to get my PvE dailies, I’ve got to make sure I’m chopping down trees in a particular region?

Yeah. That’s engaging game design.

It looks like this thread has been largely focused on endgame stuff, but I was stunned the other night when I went to upgrade to level 35 greens and saw the price.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/10939

I don’t remember leveling greens running anything near that expensive when I leveled my first batch of characters.