Whereas quaggan tend to look like frogs, murlocs tend to look like fish with legs, minus the tail.
If quaggan look like frogs, then what do hylek look like? O_o
Whoops. My bad there. I got too caught up on the a) preference mentioned at the end and let the b) part slip my thoughts.
Asura infinity ball personal store tells you exactly were the steam creatures came from.
It tells you one point of origin. It does not exclude the possibility of other points of origin.
I never fail to be amazed at the misunderstandings around farming. Farming, in an MMO/RPG is simply playing the game purposefully, i.e., with an objective in mind. I am farming mats in order to craft a set of gear, or farming karma in order to get a temple set for a fresh 80. These are all natural activities, not something foreign that someone brings to an MMO. And, farming is not a problem that needs to be wrestled with. Some people love it and farming is non-differentiated from their normal gameplay. Some people hate to farm and they tend to buy mats if they want to craft. But, the currency they would use to buy the mats was obtained by some farming-like activity, i.e., play with an objective in mind.
Playing purposefully or with an objective is not work. We often play sports in a way to play well and to improve our performance—it’s not work, it’s play. The same with games. Objectives, whether a legendary, or a hard to get skin, are a good and normal thing in gaming anywhere close to the MMO genre. No problem here really to address.
Er…Your definition is way too loose for this discussion. There wouldn’t be any discussion if what you said was the case, you’re right. This is considering that operating under your definition, if my objective were to explore the world in a game, by exploring I’m actually “farming” the world. That may be accurate from your perspective, but this discussion is operating under the rough definition of yes, goal-oriented behavior, except the pursuit of the goal is heavily characterized by the specific task of repeatedly killing and looting mobs in various, or in some circumstances, very few, areas.
The problems with this behavior vary from perspective to perspective.
For the explorer types that may enjoy encountering others, it may make the world empty. If encountering others isn’t a concern, it simply makes them poorer than the farmers, which can make engaging with the player-driven economy basically a no-go. [In GW2’s more specific case, it can render certain content nearly incapable of completion, e.g. group events.]
For the casual or less-efficient minded, it may make the playerbase seem intolerable or unapproachable. If either of those, it may result in them quitting or, more optimistically, finding a laidback guild to hide away from those sorts of players.
For the hardcore, it may make actual challenging content hard to find. If that’s the case, they may either leave, move to PvP, or find some way to self-impose challenges.[It may be asserted this is where the farmer fits in, but if the farmer is just in it for the aesthetics and is fully maxed out in level and equipment stats, this argument falls fairly flat. There is hardly any major challenge to farming, at least for skillful play, the only real challenge it presents is to an individual’s dedication and devotion to their self-imposed goal.]
If we combine the casual and explorer types’ potential issues produced by the farming subset of the community, then we also arrive at the issue it can present to the newcomer. The newcomer may find the world’s transitional areas fairly empty, and the player economy too difficult to get into early on, and the efficient focus of many players to make the game as a whole seem a mixture of intimidating and tedious to the point of turning them away.
This isn’t necessarily ever certain to be the case, but it is a very viable possible byproduct of the farmers of the game. I mean, just look at what went down with GW1. That’s an even easier game to analyze the effects of farming behavior on the activity of the playerbase throughout the world. The basics being: most of it was empty excluding farming areas, with some concentrations to be found in some starting areas, with everyone else maybe being in the major capitals of each continent (except for Cantha because its capital was a crazy maze).
What’s really bizarre (to me anyway) is how that has almost perfectly carried over into GW2’s PvE scene, despite it being a proper MMO this time.
The issue I take with that idea is that it unnecessarily (in my opinion) complicates things. It’s much easier, I would think, to subdue and heavily override the existing creatures’ biological forms with metal armor and mechanical insides, leaving the basic control systems (the existing nervous systems) intact, albeit likely with modifications to follow whomever made the modifications orders.
If you pull from another specimen, you would have to I would think, train them to become accustomed to their new form. It’s much, much simpler-if organic beings work in any way similar to our own and if we operate under the premise that neuroscience is still either not even a consideration to any beings on Tyria or is highly underdeveloped to the point where such a swapout might not be possible-if we consider it from the existing examples we have to work with than the slight possibility that out of nowhere someone thought to tamper with brains.
That’s not to count out the possibility, but I’m unaware of any aspiring neuroscientists in Tyria, and it seems far simpler and more intuitive to think that since the creatures resemble existing creatures and are deemed biomechanical, that they may very well be heavily modified versions of existing creatures we’ve encountered.
The only exceptional case that comes to mind amongst the steam creatures would really be the steam hulks. These don’t exactly resemble any creatures I’m aware of, however there is a loose resemblance to golem designs (short legs, long arms, broad shoulders if going off the Mark II golems).
See I was wondering why arenanet was against farming so much and then it clicked. They made this game for a casual base of players and not hardcore. If Arenanet allowed farming than players who spent more time farming would make more money from selling the rare items they gained, more money means that prices will rise greatly on everything across the board.
Now if i’m a casual player and I want to get an awesome weapon but I see that it’s 100g and I have only a small amount of playtime a week. It will take me much longer to get that weapon without spend a huge chunk of my play time doing something I hate such as farming.
So it’s really a double edge sword who would you like to cater to. Your casual base, or your hardcore fans.
I don’t think we should confuse farmers for being in any way hardcore. The Crown Pavilion is a prime example of this. The farmers are zerging around at the base doing what is pretty much as easy as it comes as long as you can see the AoE attacks through all the player effects, while the really challenge-oriented players are above running the Queen’s Gauntlet.
Farming can be casual, and when in zergs, pretty much is. I think the only reason it can be confused for being hardcore here is because it tends to have to be done for a ridiculously long time to get some things.
Let’s be honest here, if you can program something to do what you’re doing, is it really hardcore?
Somewhat too interactive for my tastes (copying and piecing together part that is), but I support any and all ideas that might improve the lore-relevant experiences of the game. =)
Sorry, I didn;t see this part:::
The Adventurer’s Map:
The Summary Pane would be modified to instead be an Adventurer’s Map, with easily selectable regions, that would then become easily selectable areas. I.e. Metrica Province > Soren Draa.
Er, your idea would still be very useful though, for those that don’t want to zoom in/out of the map or click the region then try to remember where the area is. That’s why I was wondering how it might be modified to fit in with this idea.
My guess would be to have the category list by regions, then just scroll through the list to the more specific area in it to get the info you were pointing out.
Er…I want to emphasize that I’m asking about the stories alongside the personal story here. There are tales in the dynamic events and renown hearts too, after all.
I don’t think it’s ever said that the steam creature’s organic parts are from what creatures they mimic.
And side notion that came to me – it is a bit interesting how Steamriders use the shapes of GW1 wind riders, while GW2 wind riders are more like floating brains.
Frankly, I can’t think of any other specimens we’ve encountered in GW2 off the top of my head that, after modification, haven’t resembled their original form in some manner. Even the exceptions that do come to mind still retain some of their original features, albeit twisted (undead/Afflicted+Shiro’ken/Margonites).
Not to say that I might not be overlooking some key samples, but most beings involved with constructs or organism modification seem to be less creative, making in their own image or in the image of the subject being modified.
With all these topics about loot, rewards, meaningful results, and all manner of silly nonsense ripping and defending players’ preferred activities, I have to wonder a simple little thing. What about the story? Is it at all feasible for the stories in the world to be compelling enough to be an adequate reward in themselves, that whatever else is gained is noticed but not dwelt upon?
Is it a simple concession for those playing online games such as this that the world simply cannot tell these sorts of compelling stories? Is it that the personal story felt so weak to some, that they assume the same quality is found throughout the world?
What might be altered about the way in which the stories are told that they become the goal to be pursued, rather than the background noise to new killing grounds?
Is the storytelling of any interest to you at all, or is the world for you mainly a playground that can easily do without it?
And for another suggestion for another Tab…
Locations
- This Catagory would list all of the Notable locations you visit in the Game World. It would be divided into Areas, Landmarks, and Jumping Puzzles.
- Areas would tell you basic information about the area you are in, and you would get more information and history as you complete Hearts, Vistas, etc. When you 100% an area, then you have quite a bit of Lore for that area.
Looking over this again, I’m wondering, would we want just the basic area for that? Part of the reason I divided the world into region/area was so that we could get more specific information, even for the named areas in a region, i.e. Soren Draa in Metrica Province, and so on.
~little bump~ Anyone think this is a worthwhile idea? What might you change?
Casual mammaries don’t have the “right” to a legendary.
Mammaries are breasts. Of course they don’t have the right to a legendary.
That’s an awfully sexist thing to say
If you forget both genders have breasts.
Hey everyone, thought I’d bring this to your attention. A redditor by the name of Plagiarised is going to begin trying to transcribe all the ambient dialog in GW2 (kind of crazy but yeaah…) and could use some help on the project. The first area he intends to go after is the Royal Palace area in Divinity’s Reach.
Here’s the link to the thread for those interested: I will try to record all the NPC conversations and Mr. Plagiarised needs your help.
If you’re up for it, he provides instructions on what sort of submissions are desired. Honestly, I think this would be of great benefit to the lore community, as well as the wiki community, so I’d encourage you to try and log the conversations you find where possible, however you find easiest/productive/whatever. I’m sure he’d appreciate any and all help on the matter.
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Since this is the more active thread and more tied to the Steam Creatures themselves, I thought I’d throw in my own speculation again.
After going out and locating the habitat of the specimens that have been modified into the cybernetic steam creatures thanks to a tipoff from a guildmate, we found that one major place is in the Blazeridge Steppes, and also in close proximity to them is an Inquest lab. We know the Inquest are allied with the Aetherblades and we know they’ve worked with the dredge.
Whether or not this has resulted in an experiment that went awry and led to the steam creatures overwhelming them and somehow creating mechagates, who knows. However, it does seem a decent possibility.
- Scale loot with number of players: zergs are able to take down content extremely fast, tagging a ton of monsters and getting a lot of loot. Solo players or small groups can not do this as fast and consequently get less loot. Change this. Give non-zergers better rewards and zergers crap.
What this will foster is players who will start an event, then rage at additional people who might arrive. These adds would be seen as reducing the loot of the ones who started the event. I’d rather live with the zerg situation than the one where I get cussed out for showing up to an event.
One of the other ideas I’ve seen floated regarding this is more of have the reward increase based on the duration the event has been left alone. That way it would build and build to a certain point until it would be more than if it were done immediately upon its occurrence. I’m not sure how well this would pan out though.
I will take the enjoyment of playing the game over grinding or farming for loot any day, but it appears some people may solely be driven by the quest for loot (which is a strange concept to me and why I’m curious about the behavior).
You and me both, man. I treat this game mostly as if loot is just a side. If I get something better, I equip it, if it’s junk I sell it, but I don’t actively hunt for it. It’s part of the process, not overriding the process in anyway.
Heck, if we didn’t have loot and money wasn’t a concern, I’d probably be playing the same way, but with the level cap equipment just so I wouldn’t have to think about it, and then I’d just roll through doing my thing. Exploring, observing, analyzing, speculating, and theorizing.
I play inefficiently, for the most part, partly because I’m just stupid that way, and then partly because it forces me to see the world differently. It’s kinda like looking at every route on a drawn maze, despite being able to easily see the solution.
It sounds to me like you’ve more or less understood what I was getting at, but it sounds like you’ve highlighted something I missed. Keeping the existing rewards the same with hopes of better rewards for completing a combo of events still doesn’t entirely encourage playing through them.
So maybe the rewards should ramp up the chain, instead of staying the same. So you finish one event, standard reward, finish another, bit better, and so on until you get an event combo bronze reward that’s still better than the collective events’ rewards, but you’ve been encouraged to that point by better and better rewards as you combo completed them.
I agree with this and must say I strongly disagree with Konig Des Todes and Lonami. I think both individuals are confusing WoodenPotatoes role in the GW2 community as a ‘lore specialist’ when in fact his emphasis is community outreach. Since both are keen on backing up their claims, I will point to WoodenPotatoes many other video contributions (let’s plays, jumping puzzles, learn to PvP, and introductions to tPvP, and summaries of GW1 storylines) as suggesting that he is more broadly interested in keeping the community engaged rather than perfectly informed on the many details of Tyrian lore. I think a strong analogy is the difference between a Scientist and a Science Writer. The scientist is the expert that provides original contributions and knows the very ins and outs of their subject. Like an expert in a field, Konig Des Todes is claiming that many other lore experts are better informed on a particular subject than WoodenPotatoes, and thus they would be more deserving of an honor. However, that misses the point. WP does not claim to be any form of an expert (oftentimes admitting so in his videos). WP’s role is to disseminate any and all forms of GW2 knowledge to as many people as possible in hopes that the community stays active. Dulfy does the very same thing. She brings together widespread information and distills it into one easy to find place, so that users can share, discuss, and experience the game more easily.
If you want to argue that people who perform this task are not worthy of recognition you are free to do so, but claiming that WP has not contributed significantly to the community because he’s not lore-perfect is something I disagree with.
If it’s for community outreach or something, sure, why not? We’ve seen similarish things happen. I think the biggest point of contention here is over whether it should be for lore, which you neatly sidestep by looking at the bigger picture.
Edit:…wait, I should be angry about this. I’m the one who got the ball rolling with all the recordkeeping, darn it! I started the archives, the most absurd project ever for the lore community to make it easier to keep track of theories and speculation, which through collaboration with Konig we ensured carried forward to the more popular GW forums.
Ahaha, nah though, it’s all cool.
And if that significantly smaller subset of the overall GW2 community wants to petition for your recognition, they are welcome to do so. Obviously your contributions aren’t as far-reaching as those of WoodenPotatoes’, even if you happen to be a bigger fan of yourself than him.
Also, I did not sidestep any issue. The original post acknowledges WP for his ‘extensive work in summarizing the events of GW 1, making tutorial videos and his ongoing record keeping of the Guild Wars 2 lore.’ Clearly you’ve latched onto the lore aspect of the post, because that’s the part where you feel that you are superior to WP. However, you seem to have ignored the full extent of the original post by not seeing that the community members in this thread are also acknowledging his tutorials and GW1 summaries.
You can be as angry as you’d like, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that WP’s efforts are obviously being acknowledged by the community.
what. Dude, I’m with you. I’m backing you. Why you gotta be this way man.
But seriously, I honestly just incidentally remembered my recordkeeping contribution as I reread the OP and caught that part. I was also aiming to compliment you by saying you sidestepped the lore part as a focus to encourage refocusing the suggestion on a community role basis, not anything else. D=
Sorry if it came across the wrong way, my edit was meant lightheartedly.
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
I agree with this and must say I strongly disagree with Konig Des Todes and Lonami. I think both individuals are confusing WoodenPotatoes role in the GW2 community as a ‘lore specialist’ when in fact his emphasis is community outreach. Since both are keen on backing up their claims, I will point to WoodenPotatoes many other video contributions (let’s plays, jumping puzzles, learn to PvP, and introductions to tPvP, and summaries of GW1 storylines) as suggesting that he is more broadly interested in keeping the community engaged rather than perfectly informed on the many details of Tyrian lore. I think a strong analogy is the difference between a Scientist and a Science Writer. The scientist is the expert that provides original contributions and knows the very ins and outs of their subject. Like an expert in a field, Konig Des Todes is claiming that many other lore experts are better informed on a particular subject than WoodenPotatoes, and thus they would be more deserving of an honor. However, that misses the point. WP does not claim to be any form of an expert (oftentimes admitting so in his videos). WP’s role is to disseminate any and all forms of GW2 knowledge to as many people as possible in hopes that the community stays active. Dulfy does the very same thing. She brings together widespread information and distills it into one easy to find place, so that users can share, discuss, and experience the game more easily.
If you want to argue that people who perform this task are not worthy of recognition you are free to do so, but claiming that WP has not contributed significantly to the community because he’s not lore-perfect is something I disagree with.
If it’s for community outreach or something, sure, why not? We’ve seen similarish things happen. I think the biggest point of contention here is over whether it should be for lore, which you neatly sidestep by looking at the bigger picture.
Edit:…wait, I should be angry about this. I’m the one who got the ball rolling with all the recordkeeping, darn it! I started the archives, the most absurd project ever for the lore community to make it easier to keep track of theories and speculation, which through collaboration with Konig we ensured carried forward to the more popular GW forums.
Ahaha, nah though, it’s all cool.
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
I’m sorry but no.
He doesn’t really present anything new. He takes theories and speculation that’s spreading through the community and simply represents it. He often gets his facts wrong and is less accurate than the official wikis by far in his presentation of “facts” – often mixing in theory with facts.
I get that he’s been helpful in spreading lore to the larger community but that’s all he does, and it’s not a big thing either in the long run. Few if any of “his” theories he presents are actually his, and worse yet is that the people who watch his videos so fervently mistakenly believe what he says as truthful without question or believe his theories hold no counter points. Because of him there was a huge long-termed speculation that the Pale Tree is an Elder Dragon/dragon champion – but there’s FAR more countering this than supporting. And in his recent thread he presented a theory without any counter points to it about Kiel being an Aetherblade and the Aetherblades being from the future (ergo, Kiel’s from the future) – except that we have short stories that outright prove him wrong from the get go.
If people who actually put time and effort to make original and solid theories get nothing in the game, then the same should go to WP. I see no reason why he should be given special treatment over others who’ve been in the community far longer with far more (properly given) credibility to their name.
As far as I see, all WP does is make those who don’t look into the lore on their own accord get a mistaken and skewed – partial at best – view of the game’s lore.
And not to sound conceted or anything, but I’ve been in the community longer (at least actively), have moderated multiple forums, been a long time and huge wiki editor, part of the Test Krewe, and far far more, gotten a reputation as “lore guru/god/etc.” (which I’m not too fond of the last but meh it happened), but I don’t have an NPC. Why should someone who merely acts as a spokesperson in video format (often the video not being entirely relevant at all) be given an NPC over others who’s done FAR more to the community and to ArenaNet itself?
(Side note: no, I’m not wanting an NPC – I’d be ecstatic if I get one, but I don’t want nor need one).
What Konig said. I can’t speak for Konig, but I’ve actually collaborated with WoodenPotatoes in the past, trying to help him fact check for some of his videos (e.g. he would exchange parts of his script with me over PM and ask if they seemed right for a time, until I reduced my forum activity for RL stuff), and he definitely tries to be accurate where possible. However, I think it’s entirely valid to point out that he doesn’t necessarily contribute any more than either Konig or myself have contributed (either now or, in my case, in the past).
Yet neither Konig nor myself have (albeit I like to speculate the asura Gor is a NPC version of myself, due to my major theories on the Mists [Mists and Magic as well as Mists and World/Planetary Formation]) NPCs in GW2.
Edit: As a completely off-topic sidenote, man Guru’s changes botched my formatting…And removed my awful example images. It’s a mixed blessing, for you guys!
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
Chrispy, my bad, I did understand that it would extend beyond just the animals to actual creatures/monsters/races/etc. However, dependent on the info gained, again, it’s just not my thing very much. =)
Really like the landmark idea too. That’s definitely along the lines of what I was thinking for the artifacts.
What if, better rewards for event completion, were a matter of area event comboing? Set to a certain limit of combos for an area say per day or what have you. Participate in several events to only a bronze level, you still get something more decent than the collective events’ rewards themselves, but not too great. Silver, you get something a little better, and again, better than the collective rewards of the events participated in, up unto Gold, which is where you get the really good stuff.
What could further enhance this would be area variety event combo benefits. So say you’ve completed your max combo for an area for the day, you’ve gotten decent rewards, but you feel you could do better or you want to play some more and still get rewarded. Okay, now you go to another area, and do the same combo style event completion gameplay, but suddenly you notice, you’ve gotten an additional reward for doing events in a variety of areas as opposed to one.
If you completed all events within a short (e.g. 30 minutes/hour, whatever’s reasonable) span of each other (hence combo) to bronze level then complete another area’s events in the same manner, it’s essentially the same to how you would reward it for a single area. Better than the collective events’ rewards of both areas, but could be better.
So:
Combo complete several events at a bronze level within a short time apart from each other: get a reward better than the events’ collective rewards, but lesser than if done at silver or gold level.
Combo complete several areas’ events at a bronze level: get a reward on par to a single area’s silver reward, but still lesser than several areas’ silver or gold level reward.
What do you think?
Or maybe because most people are already at 80.
I’m already at 80 and with lots of objective to go for. Explain to me why I should roam around and kill grawls with you?
Whatever happned to expand the world? exactly, that’s because the world is expanding, you don’t see alot of people in one given area.
It’s not expanding, it’s shrinking as people hit 80 and go to the farm for nothing. All that’s happening is they’re moving the farm around rather than making a bunch of plantations.
What, that “all storylines happen, just not as effectively as if you were there”?
The best example of that is the human street rat – if you choose to save Quinn, Logan screws up and people get poisoned, but the job gets done. If you choose to stop the poison, no one’s there to defend Quinn. Both threats happen – it’s just depending on which one you go to help prevent. When you’re not there, it’s not done as effectively so there’s more casualties..
Yeah, more or less that. I would expect it on a limited scale like that, but it sounds like it may happen on a broader scope as another character doing whatever it was you might have done. Talk about diminishing things.
Also, exactly along the lines I was thinking Zeromius. Albeit without Shodd. Because as far as I can tell, Shodd doesn’t exist for all characters (though from what Konig’s saying it sounds like he may? which is blargh). If anything, I’d pin it as maybe an alternate Kudu that’s efforts weren’t foiled.
the personal story was designed so that all story steps are canon regardless of whether or not your player was involved in it. this is an MMO, not a single player game. shodd’s story arc might have been done by another player rather than you, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. you share the world and the events, even the instanced ones, and that’s something people love to forget about when discussing lore.
the easiest example is how even non-asuras benefit from the lv20-30 asura quest line, where the asura players save a scientist that, around lv50 or so, comes up with a special anti-orrian gun.
the personal story quests are all intertwined, they’re not isolated events, with each player living in their own isolated universe. that’s the reason we are “a pact commander”, not “the leader of the pact”. it’s why oftentimes the player needs to take a backseat, because if we give them an absolute position, then suddenly the stories start contradicting themselves.
Nah, see I was looking at the very base, what makes each character somewhat different. Everyone joins an Order and the Pact regardless, that’s all cool, what I was taking issue with was my own stupid notion of ignoring the other players and thinking it was NPCs filling out the other roles.
So say you make a ton of alts each pursuing the different lines, they all really happen for you and it’s neat to see them come to fruition somehow. What I was thinking, since I’m not the alt type and I’m very good about forgetting other players, is that a player only playing one character doesn’t see any of that, so they think they’re the only major hero of their race pursuing the Elder Dragon problem, besides the obvious Destiny’s Edge member. The other two choices were never made by anyone else since they were exclusive to you…Unless you maybe made an alt taking a different one. That’s still viable.
If however they come to find the traces of the other stories emerging with no indication of another player character involved, it may make them realize they’re actually not that big of a deal coming from their race, that none of their early choices were really of any interest. That’s kind of sucky, and Destiny’s Edge already contributes to that as-is.
However, coming at this from the perspective of other players filling out those other choices that you didn’t makes that more understandable and tolerable. What was nagging at me was the idea of race-specific Trahearne-like parallel NPCs of ourselves that just happened to take the other choices but didn’t (for obvious reasons) take the limelight. It really detracts from the experience for me if I think my involvement was too dramatically negligible, which it’s already teetering on as it stands, with the only thing keeping it rolling being whatever tiny scraps I chose at the start.
(which we adapted to by HAVING to recruit a “Shadowform Tank” every single time)…
I don’t recall doing that when I did it, I just would pack blinding skills like “Throw Dirt” or such and others would do similar.
You couldn’t blind the 4 Horsemen, AND their pack of 20 Dryders on both sides, and the 6-8 Dhuum Skellies that also piled in with them… what is this I don’t even… You must have done it way before they changed everything by adding Dhuum and the Extra Dryders (also this …which was just as bad usually)
I wonder how much of the Guild Wars 2 community has any idea of what this means, lol. This conversation is nostalgic.
…That was awful with only one other person and our heroes. We never got past it, but also never tried the “cheap” build.
What, that “all storylines happen, just not as effectively as if you were there”?
The best example of that is the human street rat – if you choose to save Quinn, Logan screws up and people get poisoned, but the job gets done. If you choose to stop the poison, no one’s there to defend Quinn. Both threats happen – it’s just depending on which one you go to help prevent. When you’re not there, it’s not done as effectively so there’s more casualties..
Yeah, more or less that. I would expect it on a limited scale like that, but it sounds like it may happen on a broader scope as another character doing whatever it was you might have done. Talk about diminishing things.
Also, exactly along the lines I was thinking Zeromius. Albeit without Shodd. Because as far as I can tell, Shodd doesn’t exist for all characters (though from what Konig’s saying it sounds like he may? which is blargh). If anything, I’d pin it as maybe an alternate Kudu that’s efforts weren’t foiled.
I play for the booms and the zaps and the fwooshes and frrrsshhes. And tiny guy sideflips and backflips.
When I do play.
If you pay attention enough through the various alternate Orr story steps, you’ll see that just about every story path occurs – more or less – except without your character being the one that went there.
Even if you didn’t have the Dead Sister storyline for humans, SPOILERS that missing sister, Deborah, will return in Orr if you choose the Vigil’s plan for invading Cursed Shore. Similarly, even if you didn’t do the Act with Wisdom storyline as a sylvari, Tegwen and Carys still had their situation with the mirror – it’s just that Carys didn’t get your help in saving Tegwen. If you go to the Temple of Grenth in Orr near the end of the storyline, you’ll find the Statics asura storyline colleges there with their invention – even if you weren’t part of that storyline.
In this case, it would likely be that “some other asura made the Infinity Ball” or it would be “some asura goes on taking over the world and made the Steam creatures and sent them back” (or even “there’s a chance my asura goes to take over the world… he/she just didn’t make the Infinity Ball – but someone else did so my asura uses someone else’s invention to send an army back in time”).
It’s hard to define what the “canon” is here in the nitpickery of things, but effectively all storylines take place irregardless.
That’s precisely the kind of silliness I had hoped they would avoid. >_>
the dragons are like a magical circuit breaker. too much magical power goes through the ley-lines of tyria and the dragons wake up and have to fix everything.
Which brings me to a thought, what happens when the balance of magic is incapable of being checked by the dragons?
My thoughts always were that it makes Tyria a bit like the Mists. Assuming they haven’t tweaked the lore too much, that would mean a significant potential for the influx of and/or formation of demons to ravage the lands.
My apologies if I have this wrong- my reading of your post was that the steam creatures need an origin other than the Grand Sovereign encountered in the Infinity Ball storyline.
I think it was I that was misreading both of your posts. I was reading them as an echo to what I was saying when you both may have been pointing out that it didn’t need to be the fellows I suggested.
I might be juggling too many thoughts right about now. But to answer your question, yes, that was the primary concern of my OP.
As for the change… I think it lore wise there is a work around. Hell, for all we know perhaps the Bloodstone wasnt just a way to store magic but was an attempt by them to create an ‘artifical dragon’ or something that consumed excess magic. After all, if magic was permentently regulated, the EDs would never wake.
I think something like that was pretty much what the Seers had in mind, yeah.
The overall impression I get is that the Seers made the original bloodstone to suck up all of the magic in the world beyond a certain, low, ambience level. The ‘gift of magic’ basically set it from suck to blow – when that proved to be too much, the division of the bloodstones limited mortal spellcasters to the four schools. Back then, pretty much all of the world’s magic was in the bloodstones, so this was effective.
However, the Bloodstones were still blowing, and the magic that was no longer contained within the bloodstones started settling into Tyria itself, raising the ambient level of magic independant of the bloodstones. So, basically, as the centuries have passed the bloodstones have grown less and less relevant, as the level of magic that has already leaked out of the bloodstones and thus is independent of the restrictions of the bloodstones increases.
Well that’s pretty neat. My theory of a few years back wasn’t too off base it seems. Now if only we could pin down if the magic is interrelated as the basic medium of the Mists (or vice versa, the Mists are the basic medium of magic), and that as worlds form in the Mists, they encapsulate it and the magic seeps out to help generate life and then is a natural part of them, I’ll be set.
A few revisions to fit with whatever turns out to be the case, and it’ll remain stable.
About the interview though…Yeah…This is part of the reason I’ve been less and less involved with this game as well as its lore.
…That’s sort of what I was saying too? Albeit with an emphasis on the someone being affiliated with the Inquest and dredge.
I think you mis-interpreted my post and brought up the argument that most people use: If you’re not enjoying it then don’t play, otherwise you’re a grinder/farmer and ruining the game and/or making life hard for yourself.
To clarify, I still play the game and still enjoy it (alt-aholic here), but when people say “only play for fun” I kind of don’t agree. What I meant in my previous post and in this post, is that while playing for fun is indeed a merit of itself, you have to understand that MMO’s are repetitive by nature. They have to be. An MMO is different from a single player RPG, like Skyrim. MMO’s need playerbases to thrive and something to keep them playing. In GW1, it was all the vast amount of skills you had to unlock.
I mean, if the game is all about the fun and experience, why do we have armor types? Why do we have classes and leveling? To hell with it I say! We must explore the world and enjoy it in our underwear because it is enjoyable to stare at scenery and repeat events over and over! When people say “play for fun. Don’t grind/farm do whatever bro” (or something along those lines) you’re essentially saying: Play this way, because any other way shouldn’t be the way the game is played.
People enjoy working for a task, because it makes them feel like what they did was meaningful. That’s why very little people play sPvP, or why many complain WvW is lacking, because there is little rewards that actually make it feel meaningful, that make us say “Wow, I want to do that again because not only did I enjoy myself I got cool shinies too!”. Rather than, “Wow I enjoyed myself, but i didn’t get anything…I guess i’ll play this one or two more times for the fun of it and drop it when I get bored”.
It’s a little hard to explain my point without going into very big detail, unfortunately.
Ugh. I can’t think of anything good to say to this because you’re right but I absolutely abhor this mindset. Not that I dislike those with it, just the general mindset, since I don’t know you personally. I can’t stand repetition in games. I can’t stand grind. I can’t stand farming. I can’t stand deriving purpose or meaning from what is essentially expendable.
It’s utter insanity to me. Let me put it to you from my perspective, with a different game, but the same basic concepts are employed:
Player A spawns in a world in Minecraft. Player A explores, builds a shelter, survives, starts a mine and stockpiles materials, maybe starts some farms. Slowly but surely A begins to build up a nice place. With it as nice as A wants it, A decides to stop playing for awhile.
Player B does much the same, but the place is never nice enough. Simple farms must be automated. Cobblestone and obsidian must be constantly produced. Complex combination lock doors to absurdly large stockpiles must be built. But…Player B is all alone. There is no one the food, stone, or obsidian is being produced for. There is no one trying to steal B’s stockpiles.
It’s all nice and impressive…But there’s no point to it. It’s just going to sit there…For nothing. I’m sure B enjoyed making it all, and I might enjoy hearing about it or seeing it, but it’s entirely unnecessary.
Fortunately B doesn’t really affect anyone there.
In online games though, B really makes things awkward. B is the one keeping the world looking both dead and alive. B is the one that is always hovering around the most efficient gathering spots. B is also often the one encouraging efficiency over all else.
You might say, well, that’s mischaracterizing those sorts of players, but look around. The people you are sort of defending seem to mostly be that way. It’s not about the purpose or meaningfulness of the rewards. It’s about gritty, tedious efficiency. And for what? The sense of purpose? A piece of gear that by then they’ll have tired themselves of the game too much to go around with?
I just can’t begin to fathom it.
…So how else do we explain the steam creatures? It doesn’t seem sensible to base such a curious portion of the game on one race’s specific invention choice, since it may not be chosen. Not to mention, if it isn’t chosen it couldn’t come to be, at least from your character’s hands. As such, there has to be an additional parallel explanation for them that excludes the player character and can affect everyone.
There are only two races (that come to mind) that utilize mechanical tech kind of like the steam creatures extensively. The dredge and the charr. The thing is, the Iron Legion have shown, to my knowledge, no tech entirely on par with the steam creatures, nor have they seemed interested in self-modification. They’ll build tanks and vehicles, but I don’t know of anything more self-augmenting focused.
The dredge, on the other hand, have gone around in mech suits and have gone around wearing lanterns on their backs for ages. They’re no strangers to tethering some bits of tech (if you can consider the lanterns that) to themselves. That of course doesn’t necessarily mean they’re behind the tech, but let’s consider that their leaders have been known to be ruthless, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest they might try heavier tech integration into their fellow dredge.
There’s still a missing link, however. The Mechagates. The dredge have nothing on this, and their constant infighting would seem to prevent them from the extensive steam augmentations to such a variety of creatures.
But, we do know the Inquest have been involved with them in Sorrow’s Embrace. And we also know the Inquest have the odd habit, for asura, to share their research with each other. I don’t know that we know how long they were with the dredge, but I have little doubt that, as asura, they would try to gather any and all info on their type of technology.
This leads me to believe that some parallel explanations for the steam creatures, for everyone else, may be that in an alternate reality the Inquest succeeded in their efforts with the dredge or this is the aftermath of a steambased cybernetics experiment gone wrong. Whether in the case of the alternate reality the Inquest just crushed the dredge afterward or what happened remains unclear, but it seems like these might prove more viable options for helping to explain the steam creatures without relying on a personal story option that only certain asura would know.
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
Konig be nice ^^
AEFA in the future check the threads and search for the topic you want,since its already being debated no use in opening a new thread,do you have any specific questions regarding Razah?
Well…Search doesn’t really work all that well. As to the topic, I bet we could guess the questions.
Original:
Does anyone remember this guy?
Followups:
Do we know what happened to him/it?
Has Anet said anything about bringing him back?
Why aren’t there more like him?
I
Anything Else: This wouldn’t be an actual category, this would simply act as an area where they could add in any additional categories as they see fit.Which also compels me to again request the implementation of some kind of collectable scrolls/tablets/books under an Artifacts category that would then be organized by region they were discovered in. These would just be some fun little lore bites to better flesh out the world more than anything else.
I gots an idea for stuff to add on!
People Met
- This Catagory would list all of the Important people you met on your travels through Tyria, whether through your personal Story, Living Story, Dungeons, or Events. It would display basic information about these characters, and would be updated as the game updates with content that these characters are Involved in.
(example, we would get an Entry for Ellen Kiel way back in November, then in Secret of Southsun it would update us with information to her whereabouts, what she’s doing there, and would update each time we meet her through the current release.)Bosses
- This Catagory would list all of the Important Bad Characters, Bosses, Dragons you met or fought on your travels through Tyria, whether through your personal Story, Dungeons, or Open World Events. It would display basic information about these characters, and would be updated as the game updates with content that these bosses are Involved in, or,…you know, if you kill them, the entry stops right there.
Bestiary
- This Catagory would list all the different Types of Creatures and Enemies you can come across in Tyria. When you first fight an enemy of this type, it opens up the entry that you can read.
- Then a sort of scavenger hunt opens up, where in order to keep reading, you have to track down, and defeat different types of those enemies. (Example : You kill a Black Bear and the specific paragraph for bears opens up for that creature, as you kill the Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Murellow, Arctodus, etc. the other paragraphs become readable)
- Once you unlock all the entries for a specific Enemy, a new entry will open that tells you the location of a Secret Boss (in this case, a Bear type boss)
- You go Kill the Secret Bear Boss, and you will Automatically recieve an in-game mail (maybe from the Tyrian Hunter’s Society or something?), and you recieve a Special Weapon or Armor Recipe (In the Case of the Bears, it could be the Bear Mantle Recipe, which would be unique shoulderpads that are shaped like large Bear Paws)
- Each different Type of Enemy would have a unique recipe to find.
There’s my ideas…
Some really good ones in there! I’d considered the bestiary too, but I’m not much of an animal person (more of the history/culture type) so I wasn’t sure how to flesh it out. I really like the ideas you have down for it. The VIPs and bosses are also really good ideas in their own right that didn’t occur to me at all for some reason.
People keep saying that a majority of players only play for the “shinies” and never play for the fun aspect and that is what is “killing” this game.
It’s not that players don’t enjoy doing fun things, it’s that they want to FEEL like what they are doing is going to be rewarding. As said earlier in this thread, Mass Effect 3 was AMAZING, but then the endings were terrible and made it feel like all you did was for naught. Things become repetitive after a while and lose their fun factor. Sure I can run a dungeon, or explore a zone, or do a event chain. But after people experience these things, the “fun” factor diminishes the more they are replayed because they already know what’s going to happen and what they are getting themselves into.
It’s not that we don’t enjoy doing fun things, it’s that we want to feel like the fun things we are doing actually have a purpose instead of just doing it for the “fun” factor which eventually will fade away.
When the fun fades away, it’s time to take a break and play something else. “I don’t want to!” Well, you’re making things unnecessarily difficult on yourself, like me not going after optimal gear, farming mobs or doing renown hearts (the ones I’ve finished have been mostly incidental except for a few cases), quitting my personal story before level cap, exploring areas I was too low level for, and trying to fight in WvW without being at the level cap. I don’t complain about any of the inconveniences I encounter throughout this (much) because I know it’s all my own choice, and that I’ve made things take much longer and be much harder because I decided I didn’t want to do some things.
The people farming and grinding away at some of this stuff just need to own up to the fact that they’re making it all even more tedious than it needs to be by trying to be efficient and repeating the same silly stuff over and over again. Most of the stuff they’re after isn’t going to just disappear from the game overnight, there’s no need to get it right now, so just play off and on whenever you feel like it and do whatever. The game doesn’t need to reward you with anything other than enjoyment and fun, it doesn’t need to give you a sense of purpose for your fun. When you cease to experience those, and feel like your fun needs purpose, it’s really just time to step back for a little while.
The purpose of fun is fun. There is no need to repurpose it. No need to excuse it. Simply experience it while it lasts, and seek another source when it diminishes.
“If our society seems more nihilistic than that of previous eras, perhaps this is simply a sign of our maturity as a sentient species. As our collective consciousness expands beyond a crucial point, we are at last ready to accept life’s fundamental truth: that life’s only purpose is life itself.”-Chairman Sheng-ji Yang of the Human Hive.
I’m sure this must’ve been done in the past year, or at least I hope it has and maybe something has changed since, but here’s the basic idea: brainstorming fairly straightforward deployable tactics and strategies to smash up the zergs. As far as I can tell, we’re all content to groan about them, however there must be viable methods that can be spread throughout even the roamers to make it less of an uneven fight.
The major problems I’ve found in my pondering is that it’s difficult to coordinate at times with other players, but if you display some willingness to express direction, sometimes they’ll follow up. Alongside this, the best equipment for the job is, I think, easily AoE, but not all professions have it (immediately on hand) and siege equipment can take too long.
A key solution to the siege problem, though, may be found in getting supply from more secure borderlands to bring to the less secure one and after flipping a supply camp, prepping arrow carts outside the harder to breach targets like the towers or keeps to fend off the incoming zerg while sieging them. I’ve seen completely unfamiliar roamers come together to break down a gate with a battering ram, so I think this shouldn’t be too difficult.
But I suspect there are probably some better ideas than this out there. Besides joining a guild group or something, what do you guys think would help repulse zergs amongst the ungrouped players?
@Leon
I actually see it as the opposite. I would love to see guild castles and I believe building up a guild should feel like an investment, with a great pay-off. I do not like how casual guilds are, and do not like the idea of constantly switching back and forth between guilds to match an interest.
If you like scifi, and don’t mistake this for me telling you to leave please, EVE Online is where it’s at. That game is basically the pinnacle of “guild castles” and great payoffs for investing in and building up your “guild”. The closest to that that comes to mind in GW2 is seizing towers and keeps, which if that’s good enough for you, then awesome.
Magic is unexplained science.
In real-life, and sometimes in-game. Albeit in-game it’s more like raw manipulable energy that may then be employed in devices and spells.
I’m shocked at the number of people defending this event. Take a look at this stuff.
The Zerging:
It’s just dumb. Sorry to say, but it’s stupid. We already have Orr for the people who want to do that. Making it one of the primary activities of this event just seems insulting. There’s no creativity to this, it’s just a big arena with limitlessly spawning mobs and occasional legendary enemies. Drop your AoE ring and try not to die, collect your drops, do this all day. This does not sound in line with the “grindless” design philosophy. To make matters worse it’s almost necessary to do if you expect to keep up with the rapidly inflating economy. I really don’t like that. Anet loves to talk about how anti-grind the game is supposed to be, and then they deliberately introduce content that feels like an upscaled version of the same kind of progression we saw in games like FFXI. And yes, money is progression in this game. With no real “endgame” to speak of, money is pretty much the biggest goal unless you’re turned on by the PvP, which I’m not.
The Gauntlet:
Seriously, this was a very good idea. I actually like a lot of the fights and beating them can be satisfying. But I find it very difficult to enjoy because of how inconvenient everything about it is. I will reiterate: I AM BAFFLED BY THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE DEFENDING THIS. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that we’re not complaining about the difficulty; most people enjoy challenges. What we don’t like is being punished by things that shouldn’t be factors of difficulty. The domes that screw around with your camera are just astonishingly bad by design. The active zerg happening underneath you makes matters worse by severely dropping FPS and causing input delay problems, which is just inexcusable when several of the fights require precise timing on your evades. Many aspects of the Liadri fight, like the unshootable orbs and the Fields of Relentless Pet Killing, neutralize the advantages many classes can bring to the fight. Combine this with the too subtle one-shot AoE circles and awful tab targeting and you end up with boss fights that feel more like you’re battling the UI than the actual boss. And then of course let’s not forget that you’re being actively punished for failing by having to cover ticket, repair, and in many cases waypoint costs. Someone in a different thread said that beating these fights feels more like a relief than a reward, and I’d have to agree with that assessment. This should be challenging by gameplay design, which it would be if the majority of your interface weren’t fighting against you.
It could have been improved, for sure, buut…I kind of look at this way:
~Zerging~
People were complaining about mini-games. So they gave them combat. But seemingly forgot that these things draw crowds and so that equals zergs. Or maybe they hoped players would go to whichever enemy group they wanted to face. I have no idea. All I know is that the main way they could have avoided this would have been to confine each of the sections into a fairly small instance which could be attempted solo or, as tends to be the preference, with a group.
Or they could have had it be an outer ring instance in which you clear each area progressively until you get to the center for some big fight or something.
Metaside: they might’ve been using this to stress test culling effects in PvE and whether players enjoy this over having to form groups to enter an instance for similar-ish combat content.
~The Gauntlet~
See above, this might’ve been amended if each fight were in its own instance. Not sure why they tried it this way. I feel like there must be something more to it all than we know, but I’m probably wrong. As to the dome…Can you zoom in? I don’t know if that’d help much as I dunno if the arenas get smaller as you go on, or if that makes it unnecessarily difficult to read the enemy (I’m guessing this is it). That seems like probably definitely an area that could be improved.
~The Rest~
I can’t reasonably comment on. I’ve not messed with the torch race and only visited one balloon. In my experience, it wasn’t that bad escorting someone and defeating the champion, but maybe I’m too patient for my own good sometimes.
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
Guilds are social groups in online games. Not necessarily castles or towns or something. I see no reason they should be treated as major investments other than a desire to weed out the multitude of them. I think it’s really a move in the right direction for this style of game to emphasize them as such. Sometimes you want to PvE, sometimes you want to PvP, lots of times those interests don’t fully line up in a single guild, so now you can switch between both dependent on what you feel like doing that day. Loyalty is irrelevant. Again, it’s not like you’re building a castle kingdom or township.
combo events sounds too stressful for me personally. Also having it open ended kind of makes you feel forced to do more and more, just like a huge number of daily quests in WoW… meh.
There is a reward in getting more than the 20 events. The achievement resets and you come closer and closer to the next 20 completion.
I also don’t like the time-limits. It would be ok to do 5 unique events today, leave the area, do something different,… and then come back a few days later and find the 6th unique event etc. Exploring should be something relaxing and not rushing through zones to farm as much as possible.
Problem is, getting through the 20 can too easily feel like a slog and/or grind. People will farm these one way or another, so it seems to me you might as well give them the garbage they want, while simultaneously rewarding those that just happen to be going about them. The timespan thing would be very easily adjustable to be however is found desirable if not scrapped entirely (except for the limit per day thing for an area, otherwise we’re back where we started).
The problem is entirely with how you determine what’s to be considered skillful play. There are so many different playstyles that use many different skills, that it’s hard to design content capable of being beaten within everyone’s preferred skills. So what you may see as complaints against it being challenging, may be more along the lines of unspoken complaints against forcing them to become skilled in a way they’re not interested in.
I think it’s reasonable to say that there are multiple ways of playing skillfully, and that it’s not necessarily unreasonable to want your particular form of skillful play to be viable in a scenario. Now, that’s not to mistake all playstyles as requiring skill, as not all really do, but I think where there’s a valid case for those that do require skill being invalidated as a result of a gimmick or something, that there is room for valid complaint.
Both. Magic is basically just easily tappable energy. So engineers doing science are still tapping magic, just in a less spiritual way, more of an intellectual way. Kind of like how asura treat magic. Science in a world with magic will include magic, as it is a part of the world. To exclude it would be nonsense for them.
Which is why the charr habit of aiming for more raw mechanical designs is nonsense compared to the results they could get if they integrated magic, as the asura do. It may prove a bit more reliable and sturdy, as it uses the lowest levels of magic (i.e. energy expressed through shallow physical laws) but it will have a harder time reaching the sophistication of the asuran designs that employ a bit of both, admittedly at times leaning too much into relying on the higher levels of magic tapped. If you will, the asura are employing high level magic in digital like forms alongside electrical principles, whereas the charr are still employing low level magic in analog like forms alongside mechanical principles. [word here to prevent odd censor]
Both are great, but they have their limits. Asuran tech faces unpredictability with fewer physical limitations, while charr tech faces predictability with higher physical limitations.
(edited by Gmr Leon.1846)
My toes go through my boots…I’m not even sure why I wear them. =/ But then, they provide some extra defense, so it’s all good.
Well, the hopping from point to point thing is more of a player issue in a way, isn’t it? You might be surprised, really, if players can track them, they may form into more of a zerg from event to event ignoring the waypoints. I’m pretty sure that’s happened in the past, and with an easier way to see where they’re occurring and when, it’d probably happen even more.
That’s both good and bad in its own right, but hey, that’s a matter for another topic.
Levels and tokens seem a bit much, no? What if, instead, maybe it was a matter of area event comboing? Set to a certain limit of combos for an area say per day or what have you. Participate in several events to only a bronze level, you still get something more decent than the collective events’ rewards themselves, but not too great. Silver, you get something a little better, and again, better than the collective rewards of the events participated in, up unto Gold, which is where you get the really good stuff.
What could further enhance this would be area variety event combo benefits. So say you’ve completed your max combo for an area for the day, you’ve gotten decent rewards, but you feel you could do better or you want to play some more and still get rewarded. Okay, now you go to another area, and do the same combo style event completion gameplay, but suddenly you notice, you’ve gotten an additional reward for doing events in a variety of areas as opposed to one.
If you completed all events within a short (e.g. 30 minutes/hour, whatever’s reasonable) span of each other (hence combo) to bronze level then complete another area’s events in the same manner, it’s essentially the same to how you would reward it for a single area. Better than the collective events’ rewards of both areas, but could be better.
So:
Combo complete several events at a bronze level within a short time apart from each other: get a reward better than the events’ collective rewards, but lesser than if done at silver or gold level.
Combo complete several areas’ events at a bronze level: get a reward on par to a single area’s silver reward, but still lesser than several areas’ silver or gold level reward.
What do you think? I think this would still fit in with the silly farming mentality without a doubt, but would be beneficial to the appearance of liveliness of the open world, personally.
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