Guild Wars 2

I just saw in Caledon Forest the chance to ask some nearby NPCs for help with a DE. It was the Retake Caer Astorea event near the southwest corner, and you could ask a warden for help to clear out the Nightmare Court (well, you could agree to fight alongside her and her comrades). I did, and the DE was massively easier than before.

I’ve never seen this before, is it a new addition? I really liked it, it made me feel more like the NPCs are living in Tyria instead of letting players save them from trouble.

Legendary isn’t statwise better than other weapons, guys. If you aren’t the kind of player to enjoy the grind, don’t grind for it. There’s lots of things to do after hitting the level cap besides legendaries.

Build up your guild.
Start a guild.
Get a group of players to do theatrical enactments.
Find screenshots you want as wallpaper on your computer.
Collect all the XItem.
Establish a Noob Babysitting service (this is actually really fun – I got to show off for an admiring noob and we both got the daily achievement).
Compete with Toymaker Trixx by handing out cheap crafted items to everyone you see.
Have color-coordinated outfits for all of your alts.
Do all the jumping puzzles blindfolded.
???

Just because the game isn’t handing you things to achieve doesn’t mean there isn’t more to achieve. It’s just the game taking a step back and letting you decide what you want to do.

Garenthal.1480:

Here’s hoping that the Elder Scrolls: Online isn’t infested with half-hearted events that plague most recent MMO’s to appease the sort of players who cannot live without their pop culture.

That’s kind of random. I mean, are you threatening to flounce out of GW2 because we will have a lore-appropriate Wintersday celebration? Or are you just really looking forward to ESO?

Paul.4081:

I keep meaning to save for it but I always end up finding things to spend my money on.

Will we get a Golem Financial Advisor in the future Anet?

QFT. It can even be a cash shop item, and do comparison pricing for you!

Shadowlancer.7102:

@ mulch.2586

Quote: “Having the other races…”

That’s the problem its always about ASURAS.

I have heard no content involvement or update about Sylvaries, Charr, Norn, or Humans.

Its always “Asura” this and “Asura” that. That’s not lore, its just choosing a single race to base the content on.

We’ve only had 3 major events in the game – 1 was human, 1 was human/Asura with a Sylvari (sort-of) villain, one is multi-racial (all capital cities, remember) with an Asuran theme.

I’m glad they didn’t use Norns, I don’t see how it would work thematically with Sylvari, Charr don’t seem tied to the seasons at all. See a full year of holidays before complaining about how ’everything’s about Asuras’, OK?

I’m hoping they keep the trend of unexpected racial holidays and doing an Easter/spring holiday tied to someone besides the Sylvari. I’d love to see what Hoelbroek looks like when it flowers.

Yeah. There are somethings I’m disappointed in, there are obviously some major issues, but there are also a lot of really fun moments and things I’m enjoying or looking forward to.

Honestly, if some cities besides LA get enough people to have some lag, I’ll be happy.

mulch.2586:

It being a human holiday about (absent) human gods…

Having the other races do it is like Christians have a Pesach Seder.

Nah, it’s more like agnostics having Christmas. People wanted to celebrate at midwinter – the religious people for the religious holiday, others so they could celebrate. So now it’s more of a generic festival than anything, and this year Asurans are using it to drum up some international fame and impress the poor non-Asurans. I think lorewise it works just fine.

Asura is totally believable. Who in the game loves to show off their genius? Who is absolutely sure that what they do is perfect for everyone and everyone should have it?

Humans are concerned with their own issues. Norn don’t really seem the type to do a multi-racial event, or spend time making a lot of little things. Sylvari are busy learning about the world. Charr go “Presents? You mean, loot we don’t have to loot, huh?”

Asuras want international recognition, without giving other races lots of advanced weaponry. So they give advanced toys instead, bask in the glow of goodwill, get to extend greater influence over the world, and avoid giving anything useful to their future subjects. Also, awesome blimp is awesome, if I could build that I’d totally want to show it off all over the world. This is totally in keeping with Asuran culture *cough*arrogance and paranoia*cough*.

Oh, and it’s a really smooth way to work in a mid-winter celebration without the old human gods around.

Glitch.6849:

@Deffy yea blink and you miss the next 2 pages!

The only ‘requirement’ is represent if with other Unionists, sounds fair right?

Also: What is this Winters Day? :P

Yeah, that sounds completely fair.

Wintersday is the Tyrian Winter holiday. This year it apparently involves Asuran Santa in a blimp, as well as drawing more people into the racial capital cities.

As for suggestions, I think a guild calendar (who’s likely to be online when, some kind of scheduling for dungeons runs) and guild directory (who likes what content and will play with you, including crafting maybe?) would be good.

Tassu.6284:

xerca.6135:

Tassu.6284:

I truly hope that it will at least give male Charrs the option to get a fluffy tail.. I’ve been longing for a fluffy tail and only girl kitties get one.

No, it is how they tell different genders. Just like lion males have a huge mane and the female lions don’t. Female charr has fluffy tail and males do not.

I know.. And it makes me sad ’cause it would be lovely to have a super-fluffy tail on a huge guardian cat, to show the “soft side”.. Even though it would be rather close to a transgender kitten..

It would just be a huge female Charr. There’s no size difference between male/female Charr that I’ve seen.

Ryujinshi.5618:

The biggest help to me would be better AI for some characters in personal stories…..like Logan Thackery. This dude is suppose to be really strong but sometimes he just stands around while im being ganged on…..

This, please. NPCs that are stronger, or less brain-dead, or hopefully both, would help me feel more like I’m playing an epic and less like I’m babysitting heavily armed toddlers.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I need specifics to do anything. Just stating that “there are lots of bugs!” doesn’t help me at all. I’ve been making a lot of minor fixes to many of the story steps, so it’s quite possible that they’ve already been addressed, but I need to know about them to fix them.

This is awesome news. Thanks!

I think this is a general problem ANet has with event reward balance and respawn rates. Everywhere I go, events don’t reward enough to pay repair cost, except for the super-easy ones that don’t create repair costs. Mobs respawn so quickly that it feels like very little is accomplished. Just tweaking those things would draw me into other zones, but as it is I rarely go to unfamiliar zones because it’s actually a detriment.

Aside from that, I really like the idea of seeing near-by players on the minimap. It could be a new event chain to get them in one of the mid-level zones.

I also really like having event impacts last longer. For some events just extend the time between, so people can take a breather. For others, extend the timer and have mini events start up to keep players in the area. For the Orr areas, after the pact takes a waypoint there’s setup that needs to be done, probably supplies need to be gathered, reports need to be made. Use different game mechanics for this.

Examples:
1) Send mail reporting the victory back to Trahearne, tell him to send more soldiers
2) Put on a dance party to keep up soldier’s spirits, which gives them bonuses
3) Crafting for the Pact soldiers – make or repair armor, cook provisions, build guard turrets, etc.

If a waypoint isn’t contested for a really long time (measured in days or weeks), have a huge army of Risen gather with a champion leader and have a huge battle. If the Pact keeps the waypoint, all the mini events start over. If the Pact loses it, you have to retake it.

TL;DR: ANet events aren’t rewarding enough to cover the costs of playing, so player focus on profit. Making mini events that don’t have costs would help, as would extending timers.

Completely agree. Everyone’s new at some point, and it’s actually a lot of fun to help new people out. I took a new player on a guided tour of some game mechanics the other week. I got to show off all the cool things to do, and we both finished the daily achievement.

People who complain about the lack of progression should spend some time helping others instead of grinding. It really makes it clear how far a character has come and how neat the game is.

There are several guilds dedicated to casual / help-others play to join. I don’t know if any of them have a presence on your server, though.

I think the AMA was a genuine recognition on their part that they’d made mistakes (and that Chris personally had made a bad call – that’s why he got stuck with the AMA I bet). And a genuine attempt to communicate where they see the game going and engage with fans. I don’t think it was a bait and switch. Everyone makes mistakes. Owning up to a mistake is a lot rarer, and doing that for hours in a Reddit AMA takes guts. Just the fact that ANet is obviously working on making things better makes me more willing to invest and pay for their stuff.

GW2 isn’t the best, but it’s good, and they’re trying. I can’t ask for more than that, because I can’t give more than that. I’m willing to keep playing and see what happens.

TC is usually pretty full.

You could try starting up an RP group on your own server. Yak’s Bend has a decent population, there’s got to be some RPers on there. Or check in the Guild forum for an RP group.

1. Are you enjoying the atmosphere?
Yeah - it’s an nice group of people to hang out with and chat while playing the game. I don’t think I’m on the same server as any other Union member (Henge of Denravi - please correct if I’m wrong), so I’m looking into also joining other HoD guilds to have people to play with more.

2.It is what you hoped and does it keep to our ideals of helping others?
Yeah. I’ve gotten answers to questions and been able to answer other people’s questions. I’m leveling a cooking alt, mentioned it on guild chat and got ingredients to make dyes with (awesome) and sent back the dyes I made with them. That was really nice.

3.Did you also enjoy that you aren’t required for mandatory representation?
Absolutely. I play casually and just want to have fun. Mandatory representation is not something I’m interested in. Plus, that would really be bad because there aren’t many Unionites on my server and I’m interested in multi-guilding for that reason.

4.What drew you to this topic in the first place?
Was looking to find a friendly, low-stress guild.

Are we really seeing huge attrition with new people coming in and leaving because guild chat is quiet? Or are people finding that there aren’t many on their specific server, and switching to another guild for that reason? Maybe we need a per-server officer to address that. I think we’ll get better results if we identify specific issues and finetune.

@Glitch, I do web stuff for a living. If you need help setting up or running the site/server, I’d be happy to help.

Also, is anyone else excited for [s]ToysDay[\s] WintersDay?

I can log in, but as soon as I try to leave Divinity’s Reach I get kicked. Same error number.

Well, guess it’s map completion time. Or finding out if DR has jumping puzzles.

EDIT: Spoke too soon, now I can’t log in at all. Oh well.

Conner.4702:

Sky.9347:

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

-Snip-

“Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
- Mike O’Brien, November 2012

I am very interested in how you can combine horizontal and vertical progression (progressing in two different directions?) for the same content… I believe it can not be done, and instead you can only create a very slow, very bloated vertical progression.

I’m out. I haven’t requested refunds, and so I will keep an eye on GW2 over the years just to see what happens. I can’t see me ever coming back to “catch up” with the treadmill.

Mister Mike O’Brien does not speak for me. I never felt GW1 was stagnant or not fun due to no vertical progression. On the contrary it was liberating to be able to do anything without the pressure of wondering if my gear was good enough.

I doubt I’m the only one that feels that way.

Exactly.

I think O’Brian here is making this mistake because he’s too close to games. Of course it’s boring for him – he spends how much time thinking about, talking about and playing the game? If 1) Everyone else is as invested as he is, and 2) Every / most players share his tastes, then his conclusion is logical.

But we’re not as invested as he is, and we don’t all share his tastes. This is a fun diversion, not something where we want to worry about regular scheduling. ANet knew they were going for the casual market, and that market doesn’t want to worry about keeping up in a game. Life is busy enough as it is, there are other priorities. A game is something to play when I want, not something I must log into regularly so I can still play.

I think it ties into the flap over one-time events too. The Other-Priorities market is a different market than the Reliably-Online market, and ANet keeps getting them mixed up.

That said, the AMA provided answers and made it clear that ANet is at least listening to community concerns. They know they goofed, they’ll fix it, and knowing that makes me more confidant in the game long-term.

ANet needs to fix the rendering issues ASAP. There’s no point in changing stealth until then, because no one knows how thief stealth actually works until it’s working properly.

I’m on a middle-population server and the areas I’ve been in are still relatively populated.

There are lots of people doing fractals, but there are also lots of people doing other dungeons, and last night I saw one dungeon group form in about 20 minutes outside of LA. I’ve noticed that 90% of the server doesn’t care about WvW at all, so they stay in PvE and we get curbstomped in WvW every week. I guess all the competitive/gotta-get-the-best people got weeded out by the continued WvW ROFLstomping?

Before the ban system went live, I did see bots in several places and gold sellers in chat / mail. Since that time, I’ve only seen a few maybe-bots, and gold selling only a few times. The ban system obviously needs to be fixed to have fewer false positives, and the support system needs to be better managed to get people their accounts back quicker, but the bot system is obviously having an impact.

William Fairfield.1428:

All of the new weapon skins are Account Bound. So you can choose which character to send them to.

There is also a change going into the current chest given exotic armors and weapons that will make them Account Bound and Soulbind on Use. So you can send those extra armors and things you get to your bank for your other characters.

Uh – aren’t chest drops already account bound? I find that stupid beyond belief, but whatever, it’s your game to mess up. Making them soulbound on use is just nerfing the chest drops even more.

At the very least, all these items need to stay salvageable so we have some hope of decent crafting material drop rates.

Player-run dynamic event sounds awesome, whatever the cause. Especially if we get to use our town clothes while doing it!

I’d love to do some dungeons, but I’m holding off until I can level a bit more and grab some decent gear. Just found my first rare this week, so I’m pretty excited about that.

There are no restoration services, unfortunately.

They only thing we know about them is that they’ll be available “soon”

gadenp.7586:

Hi fellow forum-ers,

Recently, after FotM came out, I have extremely scaled back my time spend in GW2.

So I would like to ask:
1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

1. I come to the forums a lot, especially since I found some bugged events. Now I check before doing new things to make sure I won’t find myself stuck for a month like people in the Hatchery quest. It’s also a good place to find out about how to build my elementalist.

2. After the bot-banning system went live and turned out to be a fiasco. Lost even more interest after Lost Shores.

3. There are so many players who get their accounts banned wrongly, and I’m not interested in putting time/money into a game that I could lose for reasons beyond my control. The continuing hacks and the false bans for fraud make me wary of purchasing from the gem store. ANet doesn’t seem to be able to roll out content without messing something up, and the Lost Shores event was the turning point for me in trusting the system.

The poor execution just makes me wary of playing. The game is great, but I feel like Tyria is built on quicksand. The systems under GW2 aren’t stable enough to make my playing fun or worthwhile.

Completely support this!

When entire stack of a material is needed to make one item, that’s just ridiculous. Raise the stack limit, please. Or make a Town Clothes slot so the outfit I paid real money for isn’t taking up space I need for crafting materials.

ANet is obviously still tweaking the reward system and haven’t gotten it right yet. That’s why some areas are wastelands and some are full of people.

I think solarisnox has the right idea. If events were usually profitable, people would play more events. I don’t mean that all events should give equal rewards. But all events should take repair and travel costs into account.

Right now I must do the most profitable events or I can’t afford to play the story or craft. ANet has done too good a job with gold sinks.

We already know the waypoint travel system is based on player level, and repair cost based on item level. ANet can calculate a standard level-based travel cost and add that into an event reward. ANet can make an estimate for repairs based on item level and add that in as well.

I’ve avoided some events because the repair + travel costs would be more than the reward. But if I usually make up travel and repair costs, I can play the game without needing to farm to play the game. I think we’d all be happier with that.

I’m trying to donate armor I crafted, and the Mystic Forge won’t take it. Has anybody else gotten this to work? I don’t see anything about it on the Captain’s Commendations page in the wiki.

Yay for the ever-expanding Union!

One thing that I’ve been trying to do lately is hang around the 1-15 areas and help people I notice are having problems. It lets me get most of the daily achievement done easily, and today I got to help a fellow ele who was having problems dealing with monsters. We ran around shooting things with our staffs and having a blast.

I’ve done the Benny Hill routine too. The best one is where I can train a whole bunch of mobs onto a more aggressive mob, then AOE the whole lot and loot the bodies.

The worst one is where I can’t out run them, and they end of up munching on my corpse while I curse ANet’s slowing down running in combat and the irritating Ele downed state (no health regen while fleeing in mist form, ??? ).

The Skelk drop powerful blood pretty frequently, so there’s that.

But yeah, it’s just a normal zone at level 80. I think it’s fine like that, and look forward to going back when I get to level 80 for the resources. Some vistas would be fun too.

Duplicated.4715:

Skewki.4597:

has anyone figured out why we should “hold on to these items throughout the weekend” ??

I’d say that maybe Anet might have another event specifically for those who have missed the reward from yesterday’s event, based on all the complaints about how laggy it was + disconnection issues + different timezone.

I hope that’s the case. I couldn’t finish the Miyani chain due to bugs.

I couldn’t get through on the geysers, so I used Dulfy’s shortcut and then walked across the few geyser towers between me and the 1st ship. It was tricky and I got burned off the edge quite a bit, but way better than trying to go through the geysers.

I hope ANet starts doing a timed/non-timed way up in future jumping puzzles instead of just timed.

I’m fine with being a team player in the story – that makes sense for an MMO, actually.

But if Trahearne is supposed to be the leader / manager / diplomat and I’m supposed to be the field lieutenant / commander, why is Trahearne showing up in the field missions? Isn’t the whole point of him being the Pact leader that he knows about Orr, Zhaitan, etc and is the general of the whole shebang? Generals lead in the large battles, sure, but they have a command tent set up in the back. For smaller missions, they stay at HQ. Commanders go to the front lines. These are 2 totally different jobs, and the way Trahearne gets both is kind of annoying. If that was cleared up and if it was made clear that Trahearne’s position was the faction leader I think that would help.

Also, any way you can tie the storylines together would be good. For Charr, maybe the warband backs you up on the story missions. For Sylvari, a reprise of Tiachren or Carys and Tegwen? Asura could call on their krewe. Not sure about other races, but I’m sure there could be a pool of people to call on for Norn and humans too. That would make the story a lot more meaningful right away.

World recognition might be good also. Random spoken dialog about your victory over Zhaitan probably can’t really be updated without breaking immersion for new players, but when a PC talks to an NPC adding a check to change the greeting to “Hero of Tyria!”, or something would be nice. I haven’t seen any of that, if it is in the game somewhere.

Basically just adding in little bits of NPC awareness of the PC would make the world a lot more meaningful.

Yeah, the RPG part of MMORPG is a bit lacking in the personal story. I hear that expansions really helped with this issue in GW1, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the first GW2 expansion brings.

I’m a lot more attached to minor NPCs and the random people I meet wandering around than a bunch of the major story NPCs.

Sad. The racial storylines are some of the best. Hopefully future expansions will tie all the storylines together.

I agree, I liked a lot of the content. The way the event was managed and communicated was pretty bad, though – I had lots of lag, couldn’t complete event chains due to bugs, didn’t get rewards for events, etc. I think a lot of players were reacting to that more than to the actual content.

First part of Stepping Stones puzzle was terrible. I couldn’t see the platforms, and when I could see them the timer was too slow for me to make it. I tried for hours. Speed boosts helped some, but not enough to really make a difference.

I finally gave up and got to the 2nd part with a shortcut and being able to jump on top of the geyser towers (not the platforms) until I made it to the 1st ship. That’s the only way I could complete the puzzle.

Going forward, could you do 2-pronged JPs if you want to have a timed portion? One way up that’s timed, and one way that’s not. That way players with the super-wrists and reflexes can have their timed fun, and players who take things more slowly can also finish the puzzle. It’s a win-win for everyone.

I really liked the puzzle after I got past the geysers, but the geysers were really obnoxious.

EDIT: And in the future, please put in enough rewards to cover the cost of 1 or 2 repairs please. It’s really disheartening to fall, pay to revive, pay to repair armor so you aren’t naked, finally finish and not get enough to break even.

Yes, having week-long or multi-day events for this would be perfect. I liked this event (Stepping Stones JP was terribad, but other than that it was fun). But the timing wasn’t good.

Does ANet seriously expect me to drop my entire weekend for their game? Do they realize how stupidly unbalanced it looks to be giving people who logged in during the last little bit exotics and a 20-slot bag, while I played on Friday and Saturday and got practically nothing with bugged event chains?

Having it be a week or bit longer would be perfect. That’s the thing about MMOs – you’ve got to recognize that your players have lives and plan around them.

Yes, you can switch to another crafting skill. You need a master crafter to do this.

There’s a cost, and it depends on your character’s skill in the craft you’re switching to. 10c per level in the craft.

EX: Switch to Jewelery Crafting and have 0 in the skill, pay 0. Switch to Armorsmithing and have 100 in the skill, pay 1s. Costs 40s to activate a crafting level if you have max in that skill.

Sounds like a good idea. I’d hate to get to the end of a dungeon and get booted without loot. I agree, Suggestions forum might be a place to go. That gets some attention from the Devs.

So, because ANet’s devs haven’t included a basic functionality in the game, I should go make an account with another site and give them my GW2 info? No thanks.

ANet, you made content that requires groups. Why didn’t you also making a group finder?

This sounds like a wonderful idea that would make the personal story a lot more meaningful.

Yeah, I think NPC reaction plays a part in it. For Sylvari, at least, I hear the Pale Tree seems to forget you, which is literally like your mother not remembering you. There are a lot of fun GW2 NPC interactions, but those aren’t in the story mostly for some reason after the racial arcs. Different teams maybe?

But part of it is that Trahearne’s voice is just annoying.

I wish they’d put some more modest armor options in the game. Or make it so town clothes could be warn whenever.

Large thread on this already. Ways to use / play with minipets is the big thing I think we need, but neighborhoods, guild housing, vendors, furniture, etc have all be suggested. Maybe if we can get one thread long enough we can get some response?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Housing/first

Yeah, the home instance looks a bit like one of the things that was rushed to get GW2 out the door on time. Understandable, but I wish it was a bit more lively.

There’s a thread in the Suggestions forums where people are putting housing suggestions / wishlists:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Housing/first

Yuma – did you run this past your University’s human subjects board? Your advisor committee?

I have a hard time believing they signed off on this method of information collection. It’s not nearly private enough to get good results, that’s a big one. Also, age and gender are protected pieces of information and there are legal requirements for how you handle that in research. Also, I hope you already are accounting for the self-selection and bias issues.

Take a bit of time, talk to your advisors, and definitely to the committee/group in charge of signing of on human participation in research. You may wind up not being able to use any of this information for a published paper if you don’t have everything properly set up.

@Responders, especially the teenager – don’t put your age and gender out in public on the internet. Seriously, that is a bad idea.

Genuine researchers have private surveys set up for this kind of thing. Large universities specifically have many resources just so their human-subjects research can meet legal requirements and doesn’t do this. Or heck, even a SurveyMonkey survey would be a better methodology.

This doesn’t look like a real research project at all to me – maybe an overly ambitious undergrad project. Unless it’s actually a research project on real-world online privacy behaviors, in which case bravo.

I think Trehearne wouldn’t be as bad with just some tweaks. The big one would be re-record his lines and include the instructions “Don’t sound like a robot”.

But even just things like making him stronger in fights would help, since then PCs wouldn’t have to keep rescuing him. Oh NPCs, why do you have to die all the time?

There’s an Asura gate near the Claw island waypoint. I think that’s where it’ll start.