Guild Wars 2

I really want dungeons to scale to the amount of people in the group. Sometimes I just want to accomplish something by myself, sometimes a duo approach is really nice, sometimes a group of people is fun.
I don’t like feeling forced into finding groups of people, this is the main thing I was excited about from gw1 to gw2, the idea that you’d be able to do everything by yourself, but could do it in a group if you wanted.
The general reaction to this is “don’t do dungeons then gtfo.” But I feel that is unfair. I would like to play through dungeons, but I would like to go at my own pace.
I must’ve spent so much time in gw1 getting entriely stressed out due to trying to get a group of people together to achieve something, someone wants to rush, someone is too slow, someone has never done it before, someone thinks they know everything, there’s that guy that calls every noobs and then leaves for no apparent reason other than he’s a jerk, that other person that repeatedly goes afk, the person with the cat that constantly sits on their keyboard, someone disconnects, someone else has connection issues, it’s your first attempt, you’ve done something wrong and everyone else is yelling at you…….. it goes on….

Also my lifestyle has changed now that I can’t spend hours looking for groups. I’m pretty sure many other players feel the same as I do.

Make dungeons scale to the number of players.

Before the game was released, I read somewhere although I cannot remember where that:

[i]“The elites were going to be epic battle changing skills with long cool downs.” [/]i
(or words to that effect)

They are not. I anticipated the diversity of elites from gw1. Some that would have less of an effect but could be used more frequently and some with huge effects and benefits but could be used less frequently.
The skills themselves aren’t always awful, but they are not the standard that the word ‘elite’ suggests.

Caithe is a firstborn so she;s been around 25 years. And I can’t think of a point in the story that stands out where she’s really insulted anyone. She seems quite diplomatic and truthful without any need to insult anyone.
Maybe they are just too young a race to do so yet. I hope we are given the oppertunity to skip forward in time and see the Sylvari in a few hundred years or so, to see what they’ve become and what they’ve learned. Maybe then they’ll be able to insult.

At the moment they’re just so wondering, and curious and niave to be able to insult properly.
Apart from puns…. obviously :p

LordNat.4963:

Way points are fine how they are now. If you don’t want to pay to go somewhere then run there. In FF11 the only kind of “instant” (Outside a few VARY hard to get items that allowed limited use teleporting) was Airships/Boats that went on a timer so you had to wait for them or being teleported by a Mage to a few set places in the world.
Having to walk where you want to go filled the world and made it more alive.

I always walk to places I want to go in GW2 (outside of a fast port here and there to fight a dragon), saves me a bunch of gold and lets me see things I’d not always see. Interesting little events, NPC conversations, random other players doing stuff, etc. It just makes the game more fun and interesting. Half the fun of going somewhere is getting there, using the WP system robs you of that.

I totally agree with you, I am the same. Given the choice I’d rather run somewhere than map travel. The journey is part of the fun espcially when you are on your way to do something and you get caught up in an event, and then you see a gathering node which takes you closer to another event and then something else and after about an hour you have to remember what you were doing in the first place. I really love that, getting lost in a game.

However as I mentioned in my previous post, what if you want to meet someone, or get a group of guildies together to do something. I would feel awkward to say to them, “guys I’m going to run there.” especially if we were going to meet in frostgorge Sound and I was in Caledon Forest or something.
I also feel slightly guilty if I ask for a hand with something and the person travels a long way, I know they have paid several silver to come and help me.
My point is, that for solo play the waypoint costs can be worked around. But it is really anti guild socialization.

My biggest problem with way point costs is when you want to join up with a friend, or go and help someone out, and you are in entirely different zones, sometimes on opposite sides of the map. The cost is ridiculous, going up to around 4 silver. Or it’s the loading screen scenario, which usually halves the cost but I still pay around 2 silver.

I feel punished for wanting to socialise with other players. It also makes it difficult within guilds if someone says “I need help at this point.” and everyone considers how much they like that person relative to the amount of coin paid…. usually the person goes without help.

The atmosphere of being in a guild and someone saying “hey guys lets go do this…” and then everyone meeting up to do something is gone because of waypoint costs. I feel genuinely sad aout this.

I am aware lots of costs were put in the game so that gold would be removed from the game on a regular basis. But as things are at the moment it punishes the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

When I first decided which traits to focus on with my ele when the game had just come out, I wanted to focus on output (power and healing) rather than passive abilities (toughness and precision) I thought I’d much rather have the constant flux of change and high damage, high healing.
As the game doen’t really centre around healing at all, this didn’t work out quite the way I hoped.

Precision Healing builds could potentially be annoying, especially if players could continuously get back up to full health. But this could be balanced out just the same as other skills are.

Just going to through this out there… I’ve been wondering for a while.

Why aren’t crits applied to Healing as well as attacks?

While is does sound kind of paradoxical to have a critical heal, it’s not a bad idea.

As an ele, whenever I am in a group situation I really enjoy healing, seeing lots of green happy numbers around me and thinking “I’m doing that”. From the amount of times I have healed I haven’t seen any critical healing so I assumed it wasn’t in the game and found myself asking why it wasn’t.

I realise that adding it would subtley change a lot of classes and builds, but I really feel it would be a nice addition to the game and would shift the focus very slightly away from damage. As damage crits are random and extremely nice when they occur, wouldn’t critical heals be the same?

Just taking my wonderings onto the forums
Comments welcome.

Where can you see the pale tree in gw1? I completely missed that O_o

Made my sylvari white straight away. I think the skin colour is Frosted. There are a few pale colours, Ashen has a much warmer feel to it whilst Frosted looks slightly bluer and colder.
She has pale purple leaves in her hair to give a touch of colour, and her armor is dyed with celestial dye.

She does look kind of grey when stood by herself, but in a crowd of people she’s entirely white. Have had a few people say to me that she looks like a glitch, like textures haven’t loaded properly or something :p But I kind of like that.

Note for everyone!
I was worried about this, but when you click apply lighting in the character make over screen it applies lighting from where your character is currently standing.
So if you are in a sunnny bright spot you will not see any glowing at all, but if you go and stand in a shady dark spot, or use the kit at night time (in game) you will be able to see the glow effects in the makeover screen.

I hope this helps.

Ele is my absolute favourite class. Ever.

I enjoy engi for a similar versitility to the elementalist, being able to set out guns and change weapon kits is fun. Also the rifle has almost as much maneuverability as some of the ele skills.

Really like my ranger for a complete change of pace.

Play the necro for the cool assosciations with death, having a minion army and being able to use magical dagger attacks like the ele.

Again though… I can’t really paly any other class without comparing it to the elementalist :c

Sylvari area is my absolute favourite because of the vibrant colours, the fact that has jungles, swamps, a massive relaxing beach, morgans spiral and loads of imaginative curly forest. Also Love the Pale tree, I would ive there in real life if I could.

Least favourite would have to the charr and norn area. The norn area has much more fun quests and the NPCs are so down to earth but the landscape oh my god….. snow… endless… white.. snow… and snow and more snow and another pile of snow, and a mountain with snow on….. I disliked the snowy areas in GW1, then having spent a long time playing Skyrim I got even more bored of snow. The charr area is more diverse but I just clash majorly with charr personality, they put no thought into anything, everything they say has no depth to it, and their constant battle with the ghosts of ascalon goes nowhere slowly. Why don’t they come up with a new idea or put some thought into that battle instead of, “well they keep reswpening so we’ll keep killing them….”That grates on me so much. The look of their area is pleasent though apart from the bits where the charr have built stuff.

Things I love about this game:

The concept art as loading screens. I love looking at concept art, and I especially love the art of the Guild Wars team, you guys are simply amazing! The only thing I’d change is that more popular places like the main cities would have more than one image to cycle through. It would increase the file size of the game, but I wouldn’t care

The Sylvari Would wouldn’t want to play a glow in the dark tree? I think the balance of the sylvari is just right, you can make them resemble the familiar form the human if you want, or you can go waaaay out there and be a really abstract human themed tree. Love the colour ranges too, can make your character (not just sylvari) a wide choice of colours.

Can re-dye your armor and any point Love this feature! It helps keep armor feeling different especially when you can’t afford to keep buying new armor. I am generally quite happy experimenting with colours for hours before settling on something

Jumping Puzzles So fun, and sometimes completely unexpected. You’re just happily exploring then you find a cave, start jumping to explore more and then realise you’re in the middle of a puzzle

Diving spotsAs fun as jumping puzzles, especially when you don’t expect to find one!

Meteor Shower This skill never gets old for me, never. You can never have enough meteors and if the people around you aren’t on fire, you’re doing it wrong. >:)

Crafting Crafting is so satisfying, I love being self sufficient, going out finding and hording things to craft with later. The main downside to crafting is that 6 out of 8 of them require the same kinds of fine crafting materials which makes keeping up with the demand difficult, whilst I then have surpless amounts of gems and carrots.
Cheffing is so fun for some reason discovering I can make various cookies and chocolate coated fruit was really exciting

I’ll add some more things when I think of some more

Just checked the wiki and found this at the bottom in notes:

Charging and stacking sigils can be used together.

Some more information about sigils there too
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

As far as I know you can only have on sigil that does anything and the other one wont work. I think this is the case because two handed weapons (hammer, staff) only have one sigil slot, so allowing both sigils on one handed weapons to work would give a major advantage over two handed weapons.

From some experience I had a dagger with a sigil of earth on it which caused spikes to come out of the ground on a critical hit. This happened frequently until I updated my otgher dagger with a sigil of luck. Then I didn’t see the spikes on critical hits again.

Yer, I just pulled 40% out of the air, I simply meant the recharge rate needs a noticable reduction so that when you put points in Arcana you become more flexible whilst giving up being really really good at one thing.

Just thought I’d chip into the discussion here to add a few thoughts.

To get the best out of the elementalist you need to swap attunements on a regular if not frequent basis. You are encouraged to use all your attunements to make the best of a situation.
However the trait lines encourage making one attunement stronger than another so that you are better in one attunement than another.
These two things counter one another, like saying “we want you to use all your attunments but just stick with this one because it’s the strongest.”

As each attunement has a trait for “20% more damage in this attunement.” and a “this attunements skills recharge faster.” If you want the ele to be good across all attunements these buffs ought to be changed to ones that can apply to all attunements.

Or if you’re going to invest in making one attunement stronger than another you should really be able to go for it. Each trait line should have a “this attunement recharges 40% faster” which would stack with your arcana attunement recharge rate. (either you can only have one at a time , or the trade off for having one on all four would be that you are super versitile but not strong at one thing)

It just feels like at the moment the ele is neither here nor there, we are being told 2 conflicting messages. The attunement rechaege rate is so slow that you have to put points in arcana just to make it feel the right speed. But if you decide not to do that, and put your points in other places you can’t make one attunement particularly strong either.

I sppose in summary I am saying, the default attunement recharge rate is too slow.

I totally agree! Ele was my main class in gw1 and it was the first character I made in gw2. I do like the other classes, but every moment I’m playing them I think about how much more fun my elementalist is. This both a blessing and a curse, since I have other characters, none of which are past 20 and I have like 450 hours on my ele.
Yay Anet for making ele so fun, but the other 7 classes really need a fun boost.

If the expansions are anything like the expansions in gw1 they wont be expansions at all. They’ll be another campaign entirely, where you wont have to buy both or play both. You can just buy one and still have a great game. If you have both though you can travel between 2 worlds and all the other benefits.
I really hope Anet stick with this approach, as expansion packs essentially mean that if you dont have one or all of them then you are behind everyone else. That sort of thing isn’t a problem in a single player game but in a multiplayer game it makes a big difference.

Lmao
Technocrazy asura XD

Class wise, I actually miss the ritulist more than I thought I would.
Ritulist was my second favourite class in GW1 and when I’m playing g2 I find myself constntly thinking of how the ritulist might work and what skills they’d have and stuff.
She’d be somewhat of a mixture between engineer, necromancer and elementalist. Myabe lacking somewhat in actual equipable weapons but being able to hold ashes in the same way engineers have different kits, to be able to summon useable weapons like elementlists can, and being able to amas a spirit army like necromancers can with minions.

I think that now that gane has been out a while and people are used to the no specific healing class, a monk would fit in really nicely. I reckon he’d have 2 types of staff, one that is used as a melee weapon and one with spells.

I know a lot of people miss the dervish, and I think it would be a fun adition but I can’t see what qualities the dervish would have that would make unique from a warrior or gaurdian. Also they are very associated with the human gods which wouldn’t really translate to other races.

As for races I am really hoping for Tengu. Love the concept of bird people, and the Tengu are an interesting race.
Lots of people seem very much excited about the kodan, I can see why but I am so bored of looking at in game snow, and hanging around in frosty places makes me feel cold XD.

Gaming Background
I have literally grown up with computer games. Started playing when I was 5 or 6. I would describe myself as a Roleplayer. I get really into the mindset of the game I am playing, and start thinking like my character would (without intending to it just happens XD)
My earliest games where things like Orly’s Draw a Story and Derby the Dragon, both were very much stories that requireed active audience participation.
When I was 10 -15 I played through games like The Myst series, The Longest Journey, Aliens Versus Predator (the first game), Age of Mythology, Stronghold Crusader and The Elder Scrolls. I spent so much of my time playing Morrowind.
16 +, I played TES Oblivion (that game came out after I’d done my GCSE’s when you have that really long summer before sixth form…. that was a good summer :p) Also played; Aliens Versus Predator 2 (to death), Guild Wars 1, Kingdom Hearts II, Predator Concrete Jungle, Black and White II, Team Fortress II, Portal and Left 4 Dead.
I have less time to play, so the last few games I got properly into where, TES Skyrim, Littlebig planet (1 &2) and Guild Wars 2.

Love/Hate GW2
As I am a roleplayer, I’d say I absolutely love this game. It’s allowed me to play through a wierd childhood dream of mine of being able to be a tree. :p
Roleplaying and Lore wise, I’d say this game has a lot of depth, I find myself constantly thinking of questions, ‘How exactly does it work for a Sylvari to be Vegetarian?’, ‘What happened to the humans to make them loose so much land?’, ‘How long will this peace between races last?’, ‘What will sylvari cultire be like in 100 or 200 years time? Will they spread and have more trees?" etc…. I think it’s these questions that constnaly keep me interested and entertained.
I have found that with GW2, the lore and the fact that it’s a game don’t seem to blend that well. This was so obvious within the personal story. Where the makers would go for fun, excting and different to the point where it stops making sense.
(I’ve used this exmaple previously but I’ll use it again) In the Sylvari quests you have to kill this lich. I chose the Priory option to go to his tomb and ambush him there. As the NPCs said it would be dangerous since it was full of traps I assumed the quest would be more puzzle like. I thought we’d go in, sneak past all the traps and then there would be one boss fight at the end with the lich himself. However the ‘fun/different/exciting’ aspect came into play and The tomb was filled with enemies, the mission was centered around killing repeatedly whilst trying not to get caught by traps and then in the boss battle you were given a sword with entirely random skills that you’ve never seen before, so whilst you’re trying to work out what the attacks do you’ve been killed.

It is instantly like this scattered throughout the game that ruin the roleplaying aspect for me. But overall I love this game I am quite happy to go at my own pace exploring the world and roleplaying as a fire bretahing tree.

LordYz.8941:

Were the different builds and tons of skills made available during the first few months of GW1 or introduced over the years?
I am really interested in knowing not trolling.

Each class had about 35 skills and 5 elite skills to choose from in the first campaign. You aquired new skills by buying them with money, and some of them were quest rewards. It was a gradual thing too. As you levelled you got to new areas where there would be vendors for new skills.

The Next campaign they released added another 20 skills and 10 elites for each class as well as 2 new professions entirely. (I think I am right in saying that Factions came out nearly a year after the original)
Their last campaign added yet another 15 skills to each profession, 10 more elites and another 2 professions. (Nightfall came out 6 months after Factions)

And lastly they added Eye of the North, an expansion pack to bridge the gap between gw1 and gw2. It also added 10 skills per profession.

So it was a very gradual building up of skills but by the time everyone was familiar with everything each profession had about 100 normal skills to choose from and around 35 elite skills.
This means massive amounts of customization. You could have hundreds of different skill sets which you could save as ‘builds’ and load one whenever. It meant that if you were playing say a Necromancer you could change all the skills on your skill bar and play like that for a while, then if that got dull, or it didn’t work, you could change your skills entirely to something else.
In PvP, players were constantly making and testing ‘builds’ trying to find the best combination of skills.

Bit lengthy but hope that answers your questions.

I haven’t exactly lost my motivation to play, but being an explorer type once a game isn’t new any more it’s just looses something for me.
However a lot of people around me are loosing motivation to play so the game is starting to feel a bit empty.

I don’t understand why the ascended and and legendary items needed a stat boost and didn’t just have the infusion slots added to them. To be honest I think a better thing would have been to be able to arrange your own Major and Minor stats. In the same way that in gw1 Green items were ‘best’ but gold items had the same stats but more customization.
I just do not understand at all, I lvoed gw1 because once you were level 20 everyone was on the same playing field. After that you really only worked for skins for your stuff, not stats and it was all down to your own skill rather than the stats of your weapons and armor.
Surely you noticed that people will work for skins. Obsidian armor was the most ridiculously expensive armor in the whole game. I think that’s the the main reason people wanted it, just ebcause it was something to work for.

I also dislike the way that LA is strongly encouraged as the only ‘town’. The other main cities are always dead and theya re so much nicer to be in that LA. Perhaps add free travel to your characters races city? This would make each city feel more alive, and if people want they can still get to LA through the Asura gates. This changes pretty much nothing as everyone can travel to LA for free anyway through pvp. Why not direct it through home cities instead?

Also I really miss Hard Mode from gw1. I reckon it could be brought back as a dungeon style thing where you get in your party of 5, and then enter a personal instance of the area you’re in. Then you get karma and gold for killing everything, maybe there’s a boss as well? I found the vanquisher title to be so satisfying, you could tick off areas of the map and think “I killed everything in that area”
Also Hard Mode really worked, got everyone playing again as people were starting to think “hmm what shall I do now…..”

Possibley the neding 5 people thing could be changed. For me the main reason I was so excited for gw2 is because I wouldn’t be foreced to party with other people/heroes/henchmen in order to achieve something. I liked that you could join up if you wanted but it wasn’t necerssary in order to play.
However now it is, the whole process of finding other people to play with is aggrivating and a waste of time. And by that I mean you can spend a good hour or so trying to find a group of people, which is time not spent just playing. (And for people who don’t have as much time to play it does feel like a useless hour.)
This wouldn’t be a problem if all the ‘good’ items weren’t just in dungeons, or if you could play scaled version of dungeons by yourself or with one other person.

I do have more to say, but long post over for now

I am in the underworld server which appears to be having population issues. It seems wherever I am map chat is usually dead or quiet (apart from LA) Big events are really impossible to do as there are just not enough people even on the map to come and help.

For the past 3 weeks or so I have gone repeatedly to do the Lyssa Temple quest. Not once in 3 weeks have I seen it done, or seen the temple uncontested.
This really went crazy yesturday when we had a large group of us, enough random players to do the mission. Except at the bit where you defend the NPCs fixing the cannon, level 82 Veteran Abominations were spawning faster than the rate we were killing them. It was absolutely ridiculous. We all called on map chat for more people and more people turned up to help but literally eveyrtime we killed one, 2 more would appear. We stuck at it for about half an hour before everyone got fed up and left.
This is beyond ridiculous to be honest.

It seems unfair that because we have a low population (something that we have no direct control over) is affecting gameplay like this. The game seems pretty keen on scaling and being dynamic. Could you not make huge events scale to the number of people on the map so we still have a chance?

Also the generally low population and Underworlds status in WvW has caused my guild to question moving to another server. I do not want to do this for several reasons. One, we are not a huge guild so we all feel we have contributed to influence points and our upgrades will be lost on another server. Two, Empty servers are not fun, and I know its in your interests not to have them either. Three, I like the name.

I have been having the problem recently where I am wandering around with my D/F and I find myself in the middle of a boss battle, or some kind of event where suddenly It’s suicide for me to remain at close range. My problem is then, I cannot change to my staff or a conjured range weapon (since I don’t usually have them equipped) But it is stupid for me to try and fight with my D/F.

This usually means I have to run to a point where I am out of combat, which is sometimes a really long way if enemies keep chasing me, swapping and then running all the way back.
The whole thing is really ridiculous. However I am not suggesting at all that elementalists need weapon swapping, we have 20 skills at our disposal we don’t need 40 (although I will admit it would be so much fun on our part). I am saying this situation of being stuck in a combat situation with the wrong weapon is somehwta annoying.

This isn’t exactly constructive, but Trident probably shouldn’t be on the list since it’s not like ele has any other underwater weapon choice.

Also, I think it is entirely down to the individual playing. I notice you’ve put focus near the bottom. But I found (after playing with a focus instead of another dagger due to me accidently salvaging it) that it’s protective abilities prolonged my survivability in PvE immensely. It does do less damage, but obsidian flesh is priceless in near death experiences, being able to relfect projectiles back to their source is so helpful, (and looks comical when it’s a boulder or something) Knockdown and daze and also useful interupts. The only nearly entirely useless skill is the 5th fire one since you have other ways of burning an enemy and it doesn’t add any extra protection.

World vs World vs World is a war situation with 3 teams/sides. There are three team colours, yet there are only 2 colours for player names.
I think player names should show up in the colour that world has for a week. So if you’re blue on the map you have a blue name, green enemies have green names, red enemies have red names.

I think this simple thing would go a long way in changing the current dynamic of WvW. At the moment even though there are three sides, you either encounter people who are ‘us’ or they are ‘not us’, so there is no sense of temporary alliances with the green team to overthrow the blue team because everyone else is just ‘red enemy’.

A different game entirely, but I have spent a large portion of my life playing online Aliens Vs Predator games. These have always been so interesting because there are 3 sides, and when the Marines are doing particularly well the Aliens and Predators have a temporary truce while they crush the marines. There is then that awkward bit where everyone stands for a second wondering who will make the first move to break the truce. Somehow on those games a dynamic was created where two teams could work together before turning on one another.

In WvW as it is, it’s impossible to build a relationship with the enemy of my enemy in order to take the winning team down a peg.
I also think it would feel quite threatening for the winning team to see the othere two colours running and working along side one another. This would put preassure on them.

Also in GW1 Kurzicks were Blue and Luxons were Red, it wasn’t just the other team is red, you would actually change colours depending on which team you were in. So I do not think this is an impossible task for you guys at Arenanet.

Thanks for reading

I really like that you guys read the forums and post regularly. I try to be critical and honest in my posts which sometimes comes across as a little bit harsh. I also feel bad for all the negative things you have to read through on the forums and I want to make a post outlining all my enthusiasm for the game. But then I feel so enthusiastic I just want to play rather than post about it.

Just so everyone at ArenaNet knows, GW1 and GW2 have a bigger place in my heart than is probably healthy for me.
:)

Ickara.8725:

This leads me to believe that they are more concerned with each other than with the other ‘lesser’ races, instead veiwing the other races as a source of food and a way to expand their respective domains in relation to one another.

When you say it like that it sound like an echo of how humanity has veiwed the real world up until now.

Realy like this suggestion

I support this idea.
Maybe the quests aren’t really long, not dungeon length and difficulty. Just like a way to round off the collection of all the materials and maybe a bit of background about the weapon

The minitures in gw1 used to make noises based on what they were.
I had a miniture celestial ox Seen here

He used to do the loudest Moo ever while you were running around. I personally found it to be hysterical especially in the middle of an epic boss battle or when somerone was telling you something really serious.

I also wish the mini’s in GW2 were actually mini. When you play as an asura your mini is often bigger than you are O_o

This really sucks :c
Maybe they can reimburse you with gold which you can then convert back into gems?

I think this is a valid idea, but what is wierd is that towards the bottom of the personal story tree where there is a lot more going on, the game is actually smoother. It seems the problems occur later in the story where you become Commander and it’s like your life before thay never happened.

I don’t fully understand the problems, but a possible solution might be this.
In The Elder Scrolls games you have a journal where every time you take on a quest a jounral entry gets added. In programing terms, each journal entry has a code attached to it. NPCs and events and stuff in the game are told to check your journal before they do anything.
For example, your character has not yet joined the mages guild. NPCs know you have no journal entry about the mages guild so they respond by saying “You seem good at magic you should check out the mages guild you’d fit in there.” After this a journal entry appears saying “I have been told to seek out the mages guild, I must go to blah blah to do so.” After this all NPCs can see you have this journal entry so you wont get told the same thing by everyone you meet.

As the player has a record of personal story choices in the Hero Pannel, could a similar system not be used. Where everytime you speak to someone the game checks your record so it goes.. “I see blah blah choice has been made in the past so I shall do this.” or “I can see that blah blah choice is not record so I should do something else.”

While this is quite an extensive amount of work to get everything covered, I think the system would work pretty well

I just want you to know that I read your post, and you make a good point

That is the problem with systems such as this, either it is not in place and there will be people exploiting it, or it is in place and people innocently playing the game suffer.

Thanks for reading it all

Yer I think there are meny underlying inconsistencies like this that players really pick up on. Where you play through a part of the game and it doesn’t feel right but you can’t put your finger on what was wrong.

In The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, which is a similar story to Guild Wars 2, you spend a good third of the story on the hunt for the power to bring a dragon out of the sky so you can confront the main boss.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but througout the story you get “Zhaitan is doing this… Zhaitan has detroyed here.. Zhaitan is evil…. blah blah blah” and I keep thinking… "Why? why is doing this? Did anyone think to ask him, or at least have the sense to try and find out, if we knew what his motives were we could find a way to stop him.
It didn’t even seem hinted at that he had any motives, which makes him quite a flat character.

It also bothered me that no one in the story thought… “Dragons are quite big, since we haven’t seen one flying around in the sky a lot, he must have a lair, or a home or a retreat…. why don’t we find out where it is?”
It seemed like we were attacking him from all angles except the weakest point, and then we, as creatures that prefer the ground, put ourselves into the sky where a dragon feels at home.

Another thing that I didn’t add in my first post since it was long already, was that each race has some kind of option that suggests you’ve chosen a personality for your character. The Sylvari’s one is what time of day were you born, where people born at dawn are head on and practical, and people born in the evening are reflective and philisophical. I was majorly disappointed that this didn’t have a deep effect on my story.
I genuinely spent several weeks torn between whether to make my chracter the cycle of dusk or cycle of night. I eventually settled on night, (keeping their own council, quiet, find answers within themselves rather than asking other people) and my character didn’t behave this way at all… neither did anyone treat her so.
I think all races have an option similar to this and I really wanted to see this have more of an effect on the game.

Just saying I agree with the OP

I don’t know what they’re called but I have stood by the tailor and the artifactor in lions arch for ages and by the time I’ve heard the asura tailor say “My ears , how are you?” I about ready to explode at her and say “omfg what is wrong with your ears”
The artifacting guy says something about his relay transltor revolutionizing something-or-other.

AdelaisAer.4109:

Baselerd.4921:

Really the engineer is a re-skinned Ritualist with kits instead of urns. I don’t think we need a class that’s any more “pet based” than either the ranger or necro… this isn’t Pokemon.

This.

Engineer pretty much is ritualist.

While I agree to some extent. Appearance matter to me. I’d much rather have ghosts than guns.

A specific example I can think of, was in Against the Corruption. Where you have to escort Trehearne to the tombs in Orr.
The problems arose when I was totally not expecting an undead abomination to spawn in the doorway. Playing as an ele, geared towards damage and healing I usually make an effort to heal the NPCs. In this instance I didn’t because the abomination was targetting me, and only me. As I can’t really take much damage before dying I mostly ran around keeping him immoblized and chilled to slow him down while I fired damage spells at him. In this instance I died, and respawned back at the base where you start the mission. As I ran up to the entrance to the tombs I realised all the NPCs who were with me were dead. facepalm
I rezzed the nearest one who then ran directly at the abomination, th abomination then summoned 3 risen and the NPC died. I looked for Trehearne and rezzed him, the exact same thing happened. So then I realised I was going to have to fight this thing by myself. Which, even for an ele who utilizes all 4 elements, was difficult. At one point during the fight, I think something tirggered and the abomination just stopped taking damage, ran back to the doorway and regenerated.
I literally stared opened mouthed at my computer because I knew when I re-engaed it in a fight, it would summon 3 more risen and the most difficult part of the fight was dealing with 4 targets by myself.

After a lot of hard work I managed to kill the abomination, and ressurect all the NPCs. Trehearne then refused to move for some reason, and I couldn’t continue the quest. (His movement was fixed in the last update, and I have now managed to do it) but as my first experience of this quest it was awful. Especially as I went through all the hard work just to encounter a bug.

Could you guys not introduce a similar question system that you had in the Beta’s. Where at the end of each mission you’re asked a few questions about how you found it?

Obviously you could change the questions to reflect many of the points made here, Rate the difficulty, 1 -5, Where the NPCs helpful 1-5.. that sort of thing?
That would be the most efficient way for you to collect information.

I digress a little bit.
By the time the player foges the pact it should seem like their time in an order has affected the world and will affect the rest of the story.
Those approaching the Pact from the Vigil should feel heroic since they’ve defended many places, and helped many people.
Those approaching from the Order of Whispers should feel like they have significantly removed many important enemies.
And those approaching from the Priory should feel armed with knowledge about how to fight a Dragon, even if they don’t have the means to do it yet.

Things I would change
I heard one of the developers describe the story as a pyramid, with everyone coming from different places but all of us arriving at the same ending. After I heard this, when I played through I felt like I was being funnelled along. Like all my choices were superficial, and meaningless because my fight with Zhaitan would be exactly the same as everyone else’s. The superficiality is even as blanant at one point where Trehearne offers me the choice of either talking to Grenth or locating a magical map. And he says something like “Both choices take us to the same point.” To which I thought, why should I even bother choosing at all?

Instead of the stories forming a pyramid, I would have them forming an hourglass. Where the point that everyone ends up at is forging the Pact, uniting the 3 orders and agreeing we need to kill Zhaitan.
After this point I feel missions ought to spread out again, so that while everyone’s ending is that Zhaitan dies. Everyone goes about it differently. I suppose I would have liked race and profession to play a bigger part in the story.

This brings me quite nicely back to the ending. I have several fixes that I shall list and you can apply which ever ones you like to the ending. :p

- There was a massive fuss made that it was not Trehearne’s Wyld Hunt to face Zhaitan, but no reason why he couldn’t have joined us on the ship. I feel there should have been some kind of connection between; him being a first born, his ritual to cleanse Orr, the fact it was the place the Gods first set foot on the earth, that resulted in him having to give his give his life to cleanse Orr. Maybe he makes a second ‘Pale Tree’, spreads his roots and vows to guard Orr forever more from corruption.

- The last mission should be single player.

- The airship should be used to locate Zhaitan’s lair, not to fight him in. (I’ve been over this, anyone with any sense knows you don’t fight a strong enemy where he’s strongest)

- The lair should have contained something really important, like the’ Heart of Zhaitan’ (which he would have separated from himself so he could not be killed) or something to do with the human Gods, maybe the Gods are the only things that have the power to kill a dragon forever, so Zhaitan has them all alive but sedated, or maybe just one of them. It might make sense for him to be holding Kormir and using Abbadon’s power for himself.

- There should have been a direct confrontation with Zhaitan. Through the whole game I had one question. And it was “What is Zhaitan’s motive?” I mean even if he enslaves the world, kills everyone and feasts on Risen chickens forever what does he hope to achieve by that? Is he as simple as being a thing that is hungry, where it will not stop until it has consumed everything, or does he have some greater motive?
It was stated that the Dragons don’t care about mortals and cannot be reasoned with. But by the time I’d ruined Zhaitan’s plans enough, I expected him to have the intelligence to look for the source of his plans being ruined, and seek me out.

- The final fight should have been (either airborne or earthbound) where Destiny’s Edge distract the dragon while you run along it’s body and attack it. How entirely awesome would that have been!

- Either your race or class should have greatly affected how the fight with Zhaitan plays out.

Thank you if you’ve read all of this. If you have any opinions, or thoughts please share them, but I want to make it clear the things I’ve typed here are just suggestions. Nothing more

I think we killed all the minions, and someone else shot Zhaitan’s tail off, we followed him to his lair… where he then sat nice and still for us while we shot him repeatedly to death.
I feel annoyed because literally anyone could have sat at the airship turret and fired at a stationary Dragon. Afterwards when everyone was cheering I felt like I wanted to tell them to stop. It hadn’t been me, it had been me plus 4 other players as well as destiny’s edge. There was also a big thing about Trehearne not being able to come with us, but I really don’t see why he couldn’t.

The whole ending was full off too many loop holes, disjointed things and inaccuracies. It wasn’t believable to me at all. It didn’t feel personal and I didn’t feel threatened by Zhaitan. On top of this the reward was awful, but I know that’s being worked on.

Overall the personal story was enjoyable and had some really fun parts, I liked that there were choices and I like that at the beginning of the game everyone around you is doing something different because their stories had taken them to different places.

The Orders
Choosing an order was probably one of the biggest decisions in my game. I took it quite seriously, or as serious as you can get when you’re role-playing. I know I am not the only one who took found it difficult to make that decision. Yet it seemed that from this point in the game onwards, most choices became superficial.
I’ve spent the last few years reading up on everything that was put on the official Guild Wars 2 page and I built up expectations and assumptions from that. I feel that either I have been misled. I expected each order to have a very different feel to it and to be distrukittenl of the other orders, believing that their approach was the best.

I expected that if you joined the Vigil you’d be confronting threats directly, your missions would centre around someone saying “We expect blah blah is going to be targeted by the Risen, we need you to go and defend it.” Or “We need to make sure blah blah gets taken from point A to point B, you need to make sure that happens.”
I expected the Order of Whispers to be about taking out key figures, or ambushing. I expected you’d spend much of your time in disguise, or sneaking. It would be about spying, infiltrating an enemy base and gathering information.
I expected the Durmond Priory to be about learning, locating ancient information and retrieving it. I thought the play would feel more chilled out, and be centred about puzzles and thinking. There are quests later on that involve viewing things that have happened in the past in order to learn something. These sorts of quests would have fitted in really well for Durmond Priory.
In the Mazdak quest, I picked the go to his tomb option. I had thought the whole point of going to his tomb would be to avoid fighting. I thought the puzzles would be about to avoid all the nasty traps, and possibly you wake up ghosts if you walk too close to their graves. I thought that Mazdak would be asleep or absent, since he would really not expect us to be in his tomb. Maybe there’s a ritual for killing him which we would have to go through but as we go through the ritual we are interrupted as he realises what we are doing, then he comes to kill us. As it turned out the tomb was filled with enemies, and traps, Mazdak had anticipated us coming and so most of the mission was spent fighting.

Hi there, I just finished my personal story and I wanted to share my thoughts about it.
There will definately be spoilers in my post and I think I’ll start at the end and go backwards.

The Fight With Zhaitan
Like.. what on earth was going on here? I got to the Victory or Death quest and got excited that now I was finally going to face Zhaitan, then I realised I was being asked to do a dungeon. So already I know I now have to make sure I have 2 or more hours free to do this, and I have to share my story with 4 other players.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working with other players it’s actually one of the highlights of the game to work together with friends or strangers to do random stuff or kill things. But this felt really inappropriate for a Personal story.

The next thing was that this mission seemed to finish off the Destiny’s Edge story. Which I haven’t participated in at all yet, because while I am able to play the game for several hours at a time I am not able to give it my 100% focus and attention. Please understand here I am not critisizing dungeons here, I think they should be lengthy, challenging and have good rewards. The story modes for the dungeons should be just that, they should be about the story. They should be fun and straight forward for 5 people who’ve never been in a dungeon to do. The explorable modes should then be what you would expect of a dungeon.

Anyway I didn’t play through the story modes on dungeons so when I got to Arah there seemed to be some kind of epic reunion occuring between Destiny’s Edge and I had no idea what was going on. So as well as feelingannoyed that I have to share ym story with 4 other players, I also have to work with 5 people where the last I saw of them was pointless arguing and now they’re all friends?

Then getting the airship off the ground. For some reason 3 of the pieces are being guarded by random bosses that have nothing better to do with their time. I had no idea the air ship crashed in the first palce for it to have thrown pieces everywhere, or myabe that’s how the Pact store things? I don’t know. Maybe I just missed something.

So the airship is now in the air and there are massive camera issues.
*Firstly, the camera didn’t treat the walls of the ship as walls, it didn’t even know they were there. So as I walked out of a door the camera remained behind the wall and I got full view of a wall for a large part of my time on the airship. The camera also seemed to catch on the guns a lot so it was all over the place as I walked near the guns. And I couldn’t zoom out far enough. I wanted to have a look at the surroundings and see all the work that went into building the map, I wanted to see what Orr looked like from above. But the camera wouldn’t let me.

When we got to the part where the Dragon’s come to attack us I really started to question what on eather we were doing in an airship. Generally throughout history Dragons are always more dangerous in the air than they are on the ground.They would have no trouble damaging and airship enough to knock it out of the sky. I don’t understand at all why they seemed intent on attacking us and not attacking the airship.
It would have made so much more sense for them to do that, it would have reinforced that Dragons are intelligent and to be feared. Instead they seemed stupid and unthreatening. They repeatedly threw minions at us which irked me because by now… really…. the Dragon should have learnt that tactic doesn’t work against us.

By now it appears Zhaitan is annoyed enough to turn up himself, which I think ought to have meritted a cutscene. This is the first time we meet Zhaitan, I wanted to see the enemy who I’ve been indirectly fighting since the beginning. I also would have liked a few moments to admire the work that went into making him. I didn’t get that
I can’t remember clearly what happened next. I think Zhaitan threw more minions at us… which as I previously said, surely he knows that wont work. Also Zhaitan was huge, and even if the previous dragons had issues attacking our ship, Zhaitan certainly wouldn’t have a problem just batting us out the sky.

I completely agree with you. I was annoyed when I found out I’d have to do the last mission with 4 other people.

I was totally expecting to get a token that you trade with someone for a Zhaitan based weapon.

I got 5 parcels which I opened and they were all blue items aimed at levels 20-30.

I assumed this was a bug because there’s no way you guys would deliberately do something askitten as that.

I was expecting a lot more from the elites I’ll be honest. And I totally agree that lesser elementals should be like ranger pets, or maybe the skill should have a short cooldown.

I suppose I was hoping for elite versions of the glyphs, with stronger passive effects and something epic as a useage.
In another post somewhere I suggested 4 elite skills based on transforming yourself into an Avatar of [insert element here] Where transformations last a minute or 2 but have a lengthy cooldown.

I’d quite like an elite called Master of the elements which does something to do with joining all 4 elements together, either as a tansformation or summoning a weapon with skills from each element. Or maybe for a short period of time you have no cooldown between changing elements.

This isn’t entirely an elite thing, but what if all the summon weapon spells were attunement based as well? Or at least the greatsword one?

I could go on for ages with ideas… I’ll stop now

I definately think Avatars of elements should be elite skills. Where it’s a transformation that lasts a minute and has a cooldown of 3-5 minutes.

Avatar of Fire: Should have things like, immune to burning, enemeies standing too close to you catch fire. You can have a wide spread of cleansing fire to remove conditions from allies, meteor shower obviously… and whereever you move you leave a short trail of fire behind you. You’d also have a flare type skill and you do more damage to burning foes.

Avatar of Water: Your fluidity means you cannot be immoblized, you have a much more epic version of soothing mist which gives regeneration to nearby allies. You can create healing springs, and make the ground slippy so foes have a chance to fall over every 3 seconds.. or something. You also have a skill, like ice spike where you drop cold water on your enemies, making them vulnerable.

Avatar of Air: Air would be about movement, medium amounts of damage but high maneuverability. You would have high endurance regeneration, and would be able to grant this to your allies. You would have skills like ride the lightning, and teleport. Possibly you cannt be hit by arrows since you’re made of air. You are incredibly swift and allies also gain swiftness when standing near you.

Avatar of Earth: You are immune to bleeding and poison. You can create a wall of stalacmites which act like a shiled for a short time. You can stomp and interupt foes. Allies near you gain protection and take less damage. You also have a sandstorm skill, and an obsidian flesh skill.

Ideally these avatard wouldn’t use the same skins as the elementals you can summon. These would also be super elite skills costing 30 point each. Or maybe more.