Guild Wars 2

Hamfast.8719:

Dear God… nobody has said anything about the Megaserver yet? What’s wrong with you people?

I can’t stand being packed into this world like a sardine. Give me back the lower population server that I elected for in the first place. And get it OUT of the cities!

I thought about it.

The other day I did Fire Elemental for the first time in a very long time. It was a sad sight to see all those people streaming in, knocking it out, and then moving on.

Made me think back to when FE was difficult. I remember a handful of us battling it once, barely surviving by the skin of our teeth until more players finally showed up. That just doesn’t happen with the Megaserver.

Then again, I don’t know what the population of this game actually is at this point. Without the Megaserver, we may have seen server merges over the last year, and still be all alone whenever venturing into a mid-level zone. I’m not much more fond of ghost town areas than the overcrowded ones. If I wanted to play and never see another person, there are plenty of better single player games.

So, yeah. The Megaserve gives, and the Megaserver takes away. Hard for me to say if it has been a net gain or loss.

1. Account bound dyes (thankfully they changed their minds)
2. Death penalty (again, they changed back to the original plan)
3. Adding vertical progression.
4. The extreme grindiness of 400-500 crafting.
5. Pretty much all of the NPE changes.
6. Trait acquisition rework.
7. Policy of dev silence.
8. Turning town clothes into tonics and removing ability to dye.
9. Moving world bosses to a regular timer.
10. Including Fractal rewards in Mawdrey recipe.
11. Too many waypoints.
12. Not giving enough value to builds heavily speccing into support and cc.
13. Condition damage not affecting objects.
14. Putting all three PvP game modes in the same queue.
15. Making it far too easy to jump servers for WvW.
16. Rejecting the idea of adding new playable races.

Kinda wonder why they didn’t just drop the afros in for women, since they made them for men, and they aren’t exactly intricately designed to fit a particular face.

Makes me think of the discrepancy in skin tone in GW1. You could get very dark men, but women could only be on the lighter side of what would be African descent in the real world. It always read as a subtle, probably unconcious on the part of the creators, manifestation of color/gender bias.

There were horses long ago, but back then, humans couldn’t jump. Since no one could mount a horse, they were all killed and eaten.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I guess ANet wanted the new players to experience the joys of face tanking on a squishy char.

The concept of ranged combat was too confusing for new players.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Yes you picked the class with the biggest learning curve

I’d rank both Engineer and Mesmer above them.

But the attunement dance does take some learning. When I first started my Ele I just focused on getting every city 100% complete. While doing all of that running around in a safe environment, I practiced attunement swapping until it was second nature.

Of course, you can’t do that now with how attunements are gated behind levels.

Stupid NPE.

Both Mesmer and Elementalist fit your criteria.

Solo Both do well solo.

Asset to Team
Elementalists provide water fields, might stacking, and AoE damage to a team.
Mesmers provide feedback, mass invisibility, and portal to a team.

Melee Combat
There aren’t really “ranged” and “melee” classes in this game. A great number of Mesmer builds use sword as one weapon set, because of it’s damage output and invulnerability frames (distortion). One of the flashiest weapon sets for Ele is dagger mainhand (which isn’t really melee, just very close range). You could play both of them as solely ranged, but you’re giving up a tool in your toolbox if you do.

Same is true of Ranger. Longbow is nice, but greatsword is also very useful.

Having said all of that, as a former “mostly ranged player”, I can tell you that this game may change your mind about melee. With weapon swapping, you can jump in and melee, then pop back and pewpew, and jump back in again as the situation leads.

Mesmer’s are plenty survivable once you learn them, and get past the stupid New Player Experience trait progression. You kinda need some traits in order to put out illusions fluidly.

Based on your post, I think I’d lean Elementalist, though. Mesmers have some hurdles to get over like the trait thing, and they can be frustrating in zergy situations as you see your illusions get wiped out before they can do anything useful.

SpyderBite.6274:

Of course, that won’t stop anybody who wants to play WoW in Tyria from posting again tomorrow in a new thread. :P

Because WoW invented mounts, amirite?

Here’s to the anniversary of one of the worst patches in GW2.

Why is a simple price adjustment too much to ask until the new system can be implemented?

Make each adept trait cost 4c to unlock.

Make each master trait cost 5s to unlock.

Make each gransmaster trait cost 13s to unlock.

That way unlocking all traits would cost about the same as buying one of the manuals from the perfectly fine system that was scrapped in favor of this terrible one we were given one year ago.

How long would that take a programmer to do?

I’ve played the game since the first beta weekend, but my family has joined only recently. I love that while playing with them they discover new things I’ve never encountered.

Yes, it’s sad. I miss the Inquest that abandoned that lake, along with their shark.

I also miss the sylvan dog transform quest that was one of the earliest things you encounter as a new Sylvari. It’s still kinda there, but you just play with the pups and fight spiders instead of being turned into a sylvan dog yourself.

It’s also very frustrating and confusing for new players to keep running into skill point challenges that they can’t access. I’ve run into this with my kids while playing. “Oh, yeah, sorry, you can’t do that right now, we’ll have to come back when you get a few more levels”.

The NPE was very ill-conceived.

Wish we could see the metrics, and judge whether or not these annoyances actually helped anyone.

If nothing else, this is a necessity now that they are adding a third game mode to PvP. We need to be able to swap builds quickly based on which mode the spinner chooses.

BrooksP.4318:

Gibson.4036:

BrooksP.4318:

Bunch of hipsters.

Because beards were totally invented by hipster fashion, amirite?

P.S. Sorry, mods. Accidentally hit report instead of reply. Please ignore.

Should also probably relax, its the internet.

Not worked up at all. Just hit the wrong button.

So if you queue with less than a full group, you have to deal with courtyard, but if you queue full group you get to pick the game mode you want?

:P

GrandHaven.1052:

And? Taking longer to do something isn’t all that bad, its a trade-off.

So what’s the trade off? I haven’t noticed condi builds to be superior to power or crit builds as a trade off for being completely ineffective against objects.

What are the condi builds getting in return?

And taking longer to destroy an object that sits there and does nothing in return, yes, that’s bad. I can’t think of an upside there. PvInertObject is about the dullest form of gameplay possible.

I expect by the time HoT launches, the base game will be on perma-sale.

I’ve been meaning to ask for this for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it. The recently added hair options finally prompted me to do it.

Please add some afro options for female characters. At least for Norn and Humans, it’d be great to have both a short and full afro option.

Also, if this does get implemented, please make another design pass over the male afro options we currently have. They could use a little iterating to give them more texture so they look less like a giant foam ball that has been dropped on the character’s head.

Thanks!

For inspiration:

BrooksP.4318:

Bunch of hipsters.

Because beards were totally invented by hipster fashion, amirite?

P.S. Sorry, mods. Accidentally hit report instead of reply. Please ignore.

I’m adding my voice to the request for beards that are somewhere between the tightly trimmed and really full options we currently have on men. The one full beard we have is far too bushy.

Great critique and suggestions.

From very early on, I’ve felt like they need to focus more on dragon lieutenants that are small enough scale to have personalities so that the story will be stronger. Unfortunately, ArenaNet does have a weakness for thinking that Big=Impressive.

The new direction of the story, with the revelation of the Sylvari as dragon minions has a lot of potential to make this more interesting than the Zhaitan story. It’d be great if we will get to see one or more of our Sylvari celebrities (Trahearne, Faolain, Malyck) become the Lieutenant that gives Mordremoth a face and personality.

As to your zone idea, it reminds me of the early days of Rift. I love the idea, but a lot of players in that game complained because when the evil forces took over, they couldn’t go about questing like usual. It seemed like a ridiculous critique to me… how much better to have a dynamic world that didn’t always have the same quests available. But Trion responded and heavily nerfed invasions.

IMO, one of the standout things about this game is the DE system. It had the potential to be grown into something amazing. Complexity could have been added so that the DE system becomes a back and forth between AI forces spinning of an ever changing, dynamic world, into which the players come and decide how they are going to effect the balance of power.

Imagine if the DE chains we have could interfere with each other and the system was fleshed out into DE networks pushing and pulling each other across zones. Then your dragon invasions could be a dynamic force working through an area and threatening all that is good.

Wonderful presentation of how this game could take things to the next level. Thanks for putting it together.

Either it would happen way too often in-game to be very realistic, or it would happen too infrequently to be worth spending development time on.

Having said that, we do have tornadoes and sandstorms in the Maguuma Wastes.

GrandHaven.1052:

I don’t give a kitten about condi’s and objects.
I mostly use condi build…

Kinda curious what game modes you mostly play.

There are a crazy amount of dynamic events out there that revolve around destroying objects, and I always found that to be very frustrating on condi-spec characters. Other people are swooping in and sending centaur weapon racks flying in explosions of splinters as my poor condi-build character pelts them with fluffy marshmallows.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The dragons don’t really destroy though. It’s a side-effect, yes, but not what they’re really doing. Plus, the Six Gods aren’t native to Tyria, but another world.

And the cinematic from Omadd’s machine was Zhaitan’s sphere crashing into Tyria.

Is there official confirmation of this? It looked like Mordy’s sphere to me.

Nox Lucis.8341:

Gods in this universe (or is it a multiverse?) never amount to anything more than powerful monsters or mages. Nothing is eternal, and everything can be killed and/or destroyed with enough force.
All I’m saying is keep your expectations low. I must admit that Grenth is pretty cool guy (see what I did there?), but altogether the human pantheon is pretty underwhelming and not entirely benevolent.

Except the gods are eternal. When one is"killed" it’s essence moves into a new host and the deifies them. Same essence, new manifestation.

As to the gods and dragons, my pet theory is that the withdrawal of the gods was one of the factors that lead to this awakening. The dragons rise in response to the increase in magic. There is some symmetry between their magical portfolios and those of the incredibly magical beings called the human gods. What if the gods were binding up or siphoning off enough of each sphere of magic while they were present that it kept each elder dragon in slumber?

Bathos.6341:

Anet NEVER give information ahead of release.

They did before GW2.

Remember the original Sylvari design that got taken back to the drawing board and greatly improved? I’m glad that they responded to the community and we have plant people instead of green Elves.

Remember that there was originally an energy mechanic on all professions, and you were expected to stock up on energy potions to be prepared for action?

Remember dye seeds, and how you had to plant them in your personal instance garden before you could harvest a dye to be used?

There was a time when ArenaNet was remarkably communicative about things that were in development, and willing to change them in response to player feedback and internal iteration. Their policy has changed very intentionally over time since launch.

Sickle seems like it would make most sense.

It’s a one way street. Sub games can go F2P, but it’d be death to try and do the reverse.

Before I got into the thread and saw this was about Charr, I was going to point out the Sylvari cultural armor has a barefoot option. Cause, you know, that’s how the Veggies roll.

So what you’re saying is, “So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you won’t hate Guild Wars 2 quite as much”?

Doflamingo.6957:

Guild Wars same with most mmos now but specific Guild Wars 2 is designed so that you play only with 1 character the story progress map progress etc if you play with 2 or more characters you can never fully play the game and do everything in it

I think I get your point, here. For the most part, playing alts distracts from making full progress on one character.

Although when it comes to farming, having alts parked at rich nodes, node farms, or loot chests sure decreases the amount of time to gather materials.

Interesting that so many guilds require 100% rep. There’s at least a portion of the player base that wants nothing to do with multiple guilds, and small guilds acting as mercenaries to large guilds in order to participate in guild activities.

I have one of each profession, and I like all of them (well, my ranger is probably my least favorite).

If I was forced to play only one, I’d probably end up with Guardian, because they seem to have a decent fit in just about every area of the game. He’s not my favorite character though.

Hello. My name is Gibson, and I’m terribad at PvP.

I don’t, however, talk trash, and I try to learn from those who are better than me. Which is most of you.

That is all.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

This ‘stupidity’ ( in this context it would be a mistake out of inexperience) manifests itself in making a grave tactical error by underestimating Mordi and flying way too low.

Was anyone else a little disappointed by this? Randomly carpet bombing the jungle, then ships getting smashed out of the air by giant vines?

There are a lot of images in the cinematic of Sylvari attacking, but it’s not really clear where they came from. Are they Sylvari on the ship that have suddenly turned under Mordy’s influence, or did they somehow get on board with the vine attack?

It seems like it would have been a lot stronger of a story moment if the giant vines were cut altogether, and the cinematic had instead revolved entirely around Sylvari pact members turning.

Imagine the fleet gliding over the jungle on the way to Mordy. No random firing down into the canopy. It’s heroic, and glorious. Pact members are arrayed across the decks with the wind in their hair, standing in bold defiance against the great dragon they are about to destroy.

We get some closer shots of Sylvari members among them. On their faces we start to see sinister side glances at their fellow Pact members, who themselves fail to notice.

Then violence erupts as a fifth of the Pact turns on their peers. We see them cruely slicing into pact member and setting flame to munitions stores. The fleet disintegrates into falling, flaming rubble as it did in the cinematic.

That feels like it would have played right into where they are taking the story, but would have had more impact. The oversized, “force of nature”, thing that ArenaNet really loves feels like it repeatedly undermines the story. The gigantic, impersonal threat seems designed to awe us, but often has less impact because it is so crazily outsized.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Gibson.4036:

Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

And this mmo will die in 1-2 months. For mmo to exist you need grinding or constant flow of new content. Like a whole wowlike expansion every month.

People are always skeptical of innovation. It’s human nature to think, “this is the way it has been, this is how it will always be.”

But things evolve, and it’s just going to take some inspired creators coming together with inspired backers at the right time (which will partly be up to the state of tech and whether it can support the vision) to change things.

No, I don’t know what the MMORPG that is unlike what we have today will look like. If I did, I’d be making it.

I expect, though, that it will somehow crowd-source a lot of content creation while still maintaining a quality standard. Finding the way to do both of those things will allow a game to meet the needs of seemingly insatiable, full-time-job players without adding pointless repetition.

Rin.1046:

The map might look smaller on the X & Y, but don’t forget there will be a Z too. This will effectively make that map 3 times as big as it looks on the map.

Well, not quite “3 times”. From what I’ve seen, each tier will have less area as you go up, because there is open space down to the next tier.

Astralporing.1957:

Gibson.4036:

And the uproar from those that made the armor with the old recipes?

I made that armor using old recipe, and i still advocate changing it. Where’s the problem exactly? Besides, it’s not like it would be the first time.

Fair enough, though I expect not everyone will be as happy about it. I could be wrong.

Seemed to me like increasing the supply would be a more elegant solution. I recently ran across a post by John Smith asking how players would feel if silk was farmable, though it would be rare, which looks like they have at least entertained the idea.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I suspect crafting a new precursor will use 50+ deldrimor ingots and 50+ spiritwood planks. Don’t worry the prices will all be equal soon enough

Good point.

Just to make sure it’s clear, I’m adding my voice for separate queues in general, not just because of my prediction about the Tuesday beta. We need to be able toplay the game mode we want.

Please make separate queues!

I can only imagine the grieving that is going to happen on Tuesday when everyone wants to beta Stronghold. I’m confident that there will be groups voting Courtyard just to troll people.

For most of the armor linked in this thread, GW2 would need better make human models.

And the uproar from those that made the armor with the old recipes?

I’m not even a SAB fan and I find the release of the SAB minis to be distasteful if there’s no intention to bring SAB back very soon. What were they thinking?

We seem to be starting to go around in a circle, here, Wanze. I have the sense it’s because you are very knowledgeable about economics and place a high value on a strong economy, while I only have a introductory understanding of economics, and wouldn’t count a strong economy on the top of my lists of things I value in a fantasy game.

There are a couple of reasons I started thinking about the cost of high tier mats with respect to low tier. As I wrote before, the one that started me thinking about it was that while collecting foxfire clusters, I ended up with a large quantity of elder wood, and discovered it’s not particularly useful.

On a purely story level, it seems weird that a fantastical metal like mithril, named for a rare, incredibly light, incredibly strong metal envisioned by Tolkien would be cheaper, significantly so, than good old iron. Within the world of the game, T5 mats are presented as rarer, more valuable, more powerful materials than T3 mats.

I know, that has nothing to do with economy, and I understand why it is that way.

So I combined that with things in game pointing to the eventual rebuilding of LA, and thought there might be a way to adjust things. The idea behind temporary is that it could adjust the price upward, but not send it permanently soaring. Eventually the new demand would end, and prices would come down again. Depending on whether it worked too well, or not well enough, something else could be introduced to then add value with the lessons learned.

Perhaps that’s naive thinking.

So, the benefit of “short term” would be building in an automatic period where adjustments could be made, rather than introducing something that might swing the pendulum too far the other way, and require even more ideas to swing it back. Perhaps it’s a problem that doesn’t need solving.

So let’s just continue rebuilding LA with mithril and elder wood for the rest of the lifetime of the game.

The benefit of a price increase would be to make the fantastical mats you can get in the (supposedly) most dangerous parts of the game actually reflect their precious nature in cost. As you’ve pointed out, that would not be a benefit to people gambling for precursors at the Forge.

Although I remember something about the cost of mats dropping also means player income, which largely comes from selling mats, dropping as well, so I wonder why that doesn’t work the other way. If mats rise, then endgame player income rises, right?

Again, not an economist, so this is not something I’m familiar with.

Wanze.8410:

Gibson.4036:

Wanze.8410:

Gibson.4036:

Hah, Gobble. Yes, the idea was that it would be a temporary thing, though of course it wouldn’t matter whether we contributed or not, LA will get rebuilt whenever ArenaNet decides.

Tying it to the rebuilding of LA seemed like a good way to eat up some excess stock, let the price rise a little, and yet not have it be a permanent thing that could swing the pendulum too far the other way.

How do short, substancial price swings of common and luxury goods benefit the economy/player base in your opinion?

What’s to say that there couldn’t be future uses as well? The idea being, if we have temporary ones, they come to an end and can be adjusted. Once LA is rebuilt, as prices start to fall, there can be future things implemented to add demand, and therefore value back to T5 mats.

We don’t have things like “Oh no, silk scraps are at vendor cost!” followed by permanent Ascended recipes added to the game that send them shooting up to stay.

But mithril and elder wood arent at vendor cost.

That was a reference to the wild swing of silk, not to the fact that it was at vendor cost.

Blair.3796:

Of course, you can always add accents and umlauts until a name you want finally goes through, but typically I find that looks silly.

Unless, of course, you’re going with the aforementioned Irish for your Sylvari, in which case accent marks can be very appropriate.

Wanze.8410:

Gibson.4036:

Hah, Gobble. Yes, the idea was that it would be a temporary thing, though of course it wouldn’t matter whether we contributed or not, LA will get rebuilt whenever ArenaNet decides.

Tying it to the rebuilding of LA seemed like a good way to eat up some excess stock, let the price rise a little, and yet not have it be a permanent thing that could swing the pendulum too far the other way.

How do short, substancial price swings of common and luxury goods benefit the economy/player base in your opinion?

What’s to say that there couldn’t be future uses as well? The idea being, if we have temporary ones, they come to an end and can be adjusted. Once LA is rebuilt, as prices start to fall, there can be future things implemented to add demand, and therefore value back to T5 mats.

We don’t have things like “Oh no, silk scraps are at vendor cost!” followed by permanent Ascended recipes added to the game that send them shooting up to stay.

The day we can hide shoulders, I will put money down on the Lich Raiment.

Hah, Gobble. Yes, the idea was that it would be a temporary thing, though of course it wouldn’t matter whether we contributed or not, LA will get rebuilt whenever ArenaNet decides.

Tying it to the rebuilding of LA seemed like a good way to eat up some excess stock, let the price rise a little, and yet not have it be a permanent thing that could swing the pendulum too far the other way.

Screenshot looks better than original Balth to me.

Awesome, Titus! Thanks for the info. I’m just getting into looking at lore a bit more, so I’m a newbie to all this. Combine that with the abysmal forum search function….

I read some of the books down there, but didn’t see that one.

I wonder if this is going to be one of those dangline mysteries that never gets fleshed out, or if the gods are going to become part of the narrative again at some point.