Guild Wars 2

Concerning guild halls I think we will see them host content in the game like guild raids. I think customizing them will be horizontal progression(cosmetic upgrades etc.). I think we will get access to dungeons and fractals from them. I’d be interested if there will be special attention given to Stronghold from Guild Halls where you can issue challenges to other guilds to play that format. This is all speculation on my part, but they definitely seem more interested in guild halls having function over being a place for people to hang out.

They seem really concerned with keeping hubs populated instead of letting people hang out away from map chat which can get pretty ridiculous.

I wish that they would understand that customizing our guild halls with our own creativity and housing is a big deal too. People like that sort of thing more than I think it gets credit for.

I have 240 Tomes and just as many skill point scrolls. I’ll see you in the jungle on my rev. 20 minutes after downloading the x-pac! Yay!

Where are we with matchmaking fixes? How are the ladders coming along? I took a long break, but the matchmaking still seems as if it’s in the exact same place as it has been for quite some time.

My opinion is that it needs quite a bit of work. It would also be nice to get a vocal dev on here to give progress reports.

Also, how the heck are you going to match make for 3 separate formats in one queue? I’m sorry if I sound less than enthusiastic at the prospect of three queues sharing one roof, but there are reasons other games let you pick which mode you want to play instead of mashing them together.

I guess what I am saying is it would be nice to get some assurances and some data to back up why my concerns are unfounded. Thanks for your time.

BrunoBRS.5178:

oh, i figure i’ll drop a question too.

Q: Will the core professions get new utilities and reworked skills to embrace the new tech we’ve seen with the revenant, or will we have to specialize to have access to those new toys?

^ This question has huge worth. You should ask it.

My question is if the new PvP Mode, ‘Stronghold’ will be free for all users or only playable if we purchase the x-pac. I ask because ArenaNet have said that they are merging the queues for the old game mode, "Conquest’ with ‘Stronghold’. How will that affect users who don’t buy the x-pac?

warbignime.4610:

How is GW2 have anything relate to comic?

ComiCon has comics in the name only by title now. I grew up in SD and have made it to the con quite a few times. In 2011 ArenaNet was there and had a party for fans. Jeff Grubb also signed a copy of “Ghosts of Ascalon” for me there.

esports history.

I’d be down to sacrifice getting a new weapon for a 5th attunement.

My hope is for Togo and it looks like in that picture on the blog the other day that they may be toying with Rotscale as a possibility. Togo, in the Bonus Mission Pack was high dps and had a great mechanic. Togo was a Ritualist and it would be a cool way to tie them into the Rev. in a small way.

For support, I’d think they’d be wise to go with Mhenlo or Saul D’Alessio. Sure, Saul used smiting prayers mostly, but was a monk. Ventari would be an interesting choice or Ronan.

My favorites would be Glint, Kuunavang or Dhuum though.

Terrahero.9358:

What they were showing is a preview to the demo build they are going to show at PAX. Likely there is more done than is shown here, but hey you gotta keep some secrets right?

^This. Just because the build they showed looks like that, it doesn’t mean they aren’t farther along than the build they showed. They don’t show or talk about anything that isn’t set in stone. The demo build has probably been ready for quite some time. I still hold to my opinion that we will get it in August to coincide with the 3 year anniversary of GW2. I am hoping for April, but that seems too soon. We had open beta for GW2 from April to August. This could be about the same amount of time.

Blaeys.3102:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

…and this is why we showed all the things. Awesome job getting all the info dulfy.

Amazing job.

I am still curious about the underwater skills however.

It would be super funny if the revenant only had 1 Legend that you could use underwater.

Lictor Alpha.3724:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Boy has it ever. Might be best if you look over the patch notes or just play the game at this point. The new leveling system alone will turn your stomach. But, apparently, they’re changing it again come the expansion . . . if that tells you anything.

I’l give it a once over while im reinstalling. The primary reason I loved GW1 was for the crazy team combos you could pull together, like having a necro/monk only party with an army of 50+ undead minions or the more higher speed clear builds and zerging through levels. I was really disappointed because GW2 seemed like it did not have any of that.

What’s to stop you from getting in a guild and suggesting that you all roll necros and all go MM and do the same sort of thing? So much has changed in this game from two years ago. Also, this game isn’t Guild Wars 1 and never will be. The combat is so much better in my personal opinion in this game. The movement, the mobility, and everything else combat related. I get what you are saying about GW1 and the crazy build combos, really, I get it. This game just isn’t Guild Wars 1.5. It’s a different animal altogether. Try and look at it as a different franchise entirely and then you can possibly enjoy the little nods to the past..

It’s still up in the air as to whether or not they are locked. My hope is they give us choices for heal and utilities per Legend. It would be a real bummer to have no weapon swap and locked skills for 6-9 per Legend.

It also made me wonder if the toggles on the utilities were showing because you could replace those with racial skills and racial skills only.

I am super hype on the Rev., but that doesn’t mean it I don’t think the class feels rushed. If it were fully fleshed out we would have choices for utilities per Legend.

I would have agreed with you before the introduction of gliding. My hope is that there is a “jumping puzzle” that is strictly for gliders and eschews the use of an endurance bar for gliders so that you can glide as long as you wish.

On second thought, rollerbeetle racing would still be super cool.

Perfectblue.6409:

By far the best dev! Showed off a lot at POI and genuinely enjoys it.

Can we please have the chick talk less and devs talk more in the next POIs?

A no-class comment at the end. Rubi does a great job. This was by far one of the best POI’s all the way around. If you can’t comment in a respectful manner, don’t comment.

That was so good! Fantastic job on talking about all of it while playing. The traits peak was great and the class looks amazing! I really enjoyed this episode tremendously.

How are armor, jewelry, weapons, and backpieces going to work on the revenant? The playstyles of each legendary stance are so different from one another it would be odd to be tied to one set of gear in combat. When I swap stance does it hotswap my gear so that both stances are benefited by the stats I choose on my gear? If I go with the tanky dwarf stance and a damage stance, do I have to favor gear for one over the other? If I want a tanky stance I want tankier gear. If I want a damage stance I want dps based gear.

I am really interested in what devs have to say about this.

Lots of disagreements. Almost like the game is balanced pretty well.

Hlord.5940:

Does nothing was Kormir:
PvE: 1200 range, all the exp, money, loot and credit are transfer to you, effect 5 friendly targets
PvP: all the rank point, reward chest and player point from your team are transfer to you at the end of the match

You have to play with your monitor set to off.

I am hoping for Master Togo. His skills in the Bonus Mission Pack in GW1 were some of the best and most powerful in the game.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dragon_Empire_Rage

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Tengu_Accords

My lone Sylvari.

Nike.2631:

The saddest thing is their take away on multiple paths – since the early, massively branching storyline is one of the best, most re-playable parts of the game to me. When it became all roads lead to Trahearne is when I stopped caring about the story.

For me, coming from SW:ToR into GW2 I wanted to play the world they designed instead of story. Tyria is such a better world than the one in ToR. The personal story and cutscenes though? Not really.

I am glad ArenaNet are playing to their strengths and dropping any addition to the PS for the Rev.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Belzebu.3912:

In GW1 when a new “expansion” was released, 2 new character slots were added, it may happen again.

The only “expansion” released with GW1 was Eye of the North – there were no character slots added.

There also wasn’t a new prof. tied to EotN. When they have released professions in the past they have included character slots.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Iason Evan.3806:

I would imagine the personal story will have a little different timeline to it as well or a “flashback”.

no it won’t. and the sooner you stop thinking that, the less disappointed you’ll be when you finally get to play HoT.

jesus, guys, you have freaking DEV CONFIRMATION that this kitten won’t happen and you keep insisting. the denial here is worse than the polearm thread (which ALSO got dev confirmation isn’t happening)… then again, i’m seeing some recurring faces…

Yeah. You were right. There is not a personal story for the Rev. whatsoever I guess.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/2/18/8061219/guild-wars-2-profession-reveal-revenant-pc-mmo-arenanet

“While the revenant is very story-driven compared to other professions in the game, ArenaNet says it will not make class-specific story content for them.‘We want professions to have more story to them about why they exist and why they’ve come about,’ Peters says. ‘But one of the things we learned in the original Guild Wars 2 release is that when we gave people a bunch of story paths to go down, they only played one of them. It’s better for us to give players choices along the way but not have those choices make them go in a different direction and not play a thing we spent a lot of time building.’ "

Also, ease of the angst. Just say what you are going to say without being antagonizing. I was stating my opinion.

I started a thread about this but after no one responded to what I thought was an interesting subject, I will post this here as well. No personal story for the Revenant.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/2/18/8061219/guild-wars-2-profession-reveal-revenant-pc-mmo-arenanet
This has some very revealing things about the Rev. in it as it pertains to story:
“While the revenant is very story-driven compared to other professions in the game, ArenaNet says it will not make class-specific story content for them.‘We want professions to have more story to them about why they exist and why they’ve come about,’ Peters says. ‘But one of the things we learned in the original Guild Wars 2 release is that when we gave people a bunch of story paths to go down, they only played one of them. It’s better for us to give players choices along the way but not have those choices make them go in a different direction and not play a thing we spent a lot of time building.’ "

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/2/18/8061219/guild-wars-2-profession-reveal-revenant-pc-mmo-arenanet

This has some very revealing things about the Rev. in it as it pertains to story:

“While the revenant is very story-driven compared to other professions in the game, ArenaNet says it will not make class-specific story content for them.‘We want professions to have more story to them about why they exist and why they’ve come about,’ Peters says. ‘But one of the things we learned in the original Guild Wars 2 release is that when we gave people a bunch of story paths to go down, they only played one of them. It’s better for us to give players choices along the way but not have those choices make them go in a different direction and not play a thing we spent a lot of time building.’ "

Breckmoney.6387:

I like the idea of legend skills being locked, personally. Legends should in theory be iconic for some reason or another; it’d be weird to have some of Jalis mixed with some of Mallyx or whoever else is introduced. Asking ANet to make too many utilities per legend is probably just not reasonable from a design standpoint.

And I don’t even know if they’ll be less flexible in the end – in the two example legends today you can go from tanky and supportive to what I assume is a higher DPS condition class with just a legend swap. That’s more than many classes can say. What they might be is hard to gear around and maybe people will just run celestial to be decent at everything.

Instead of being “locked” I think there should be choices for utilities that are tied to the Revenant’s chosen Legend. Let’s say you get one Elite per Legend, but you get a choice of 6 utilities per Legend. Then at least there is some player agency and chance for build diversity. I really hope the weapons don’t compliment each other too much in the way of —if I am running mace, axe is always the off-hand to have-- for example.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/ I would like to know too. Ladder announcement was over a year ago.

This is why the queues are being merged for Stronghold and Conquest. The base professions don’t look like they are getting access to these new conditions. The expansion is the only way to get the specializations that offer access to these. Stronghold will be playable by all and if you decide to forego the x-pac, you can expect to be a little under=powered for a month or two to “encourage” you to pick up the x-pac. Then, after a few months of spec. OP’ness, they will do a balance pass on the base professions to bring them more in line with the specs.

The Revenant is a part of the expansion which we pay money for. A slot will be included in the price.

I have a few suggestions for some things to keep the old maps fresh as we dive into HoT upon its release. My hope is that with the Mastery system on the old Tyria side of things we get new content to go with the masteries we ahve to earn. Being that they are retroactive, a chunk of the player base that is returning from a hiatus or still playing the game will have a portion of them already completed. This actually gives veteran players less of a reason to go back to Tyria once the expansion is upon us. These are my suggestions to help mitigate that to an extent.

1.) Regional Event Weeks
Offer a week of events in each region of ‘Old Tyria’ and rotate them.

• Bonus to Magic Find in those regions.
• Special boss spawns.
• Special loot chests that drop.
• Special dailies designed around those regions.
• A PvP reward Track special for the week whose rewards reflect that of the region chosen for the week.

2.) “Flashback” Event weeks
Bring back some of the area events of the past living world seasons that are no longer available to play. You could talk to an NPC to “relive” past events. This way, people that want to still play an area sans past events could do so.

3.) Triple Dungeon Loot Rotation
If new dungeons aren’t coming then give us a reason to go back to old ones. Remove the daily cap on a single dungeon per week. Triple the amount of drops we get from chests. Every week, a new dungeon gets the spotlight.

Long Term Daily Loyalty Rewards

This is something I would really like to see. The dailies could be a little more creative. After a player has logged in ‘X’ number of times(non-consecutively), they get a special reward.
For example:

• 25 days(Unid’ed dye for instance)
• 50 days(A miniature)
• 100 days(random costume)
• 150 days(Special dye player gets to choose from 10 dyes unique to the Long term daily reward track)

I am sure others have ideas as well. My hope is that we will get new content in ‘Old Tyria’ to make the maps as dense in content as they say HoT is going to be.

Thanks for reading and responding!

It seems there are a lot of people who are confused as to the difference between starting zone and personal story. I think the OP confused the two. The Revenant will start in whichever starting zone belongs to the race they choose. I would imagine the personal story will have a little different timeline to it as well or a “flashback”. If they make us do a personal story to earn mastery points, I will definitely pick this profession to do it with.

I abhor the PS so much I deleted a ranger that was already in Cursed Shore for the PS because I wanted to reroll my Ranger to a different race. I imagine they will make the PS way better this time around for the bits they can change up and it may be enough to fix some of the issues with the story telling in the format.

I would still like to hear from ArenaNet if they would be so kind as to illuminate what they thought were the pros and cons of merging the queues of Stronghold and Conquest. It would greatly help to see what the reasoning behind this was.

It’s one thing to keep us in the dark about what’s coming up int he game, but I can’t recall another game doing this ever. I think there is good reason for that too.

Ayrilana.1396:

Brother Grimm.5176:

pandas.9450:

Great reused skins in gw1 that were unlockable for free

You did have to semi-participate in the festival events in Shing Jea for some of them as I recall….not actually FREE (but yes, they did not cost any in-game or RL currency).

Also, if you wanted them for multiple characters, you had to do some serious token collecting (tho, you could AFK some of the games to do this). The GW2 method allows you to use it on all characters once obtained (for trans charges, yes).

It depends on your definition of participating. I just AFK’d on the map overnight and woke up with 3 of them in my inventory. I just checked the finale and you got the masks regardless as to how successful your district was with the dishes.

My guild regularly sponsored districts by making it a guild activity to go and collect all that was needed. You’re welcome.

Masks for festivals should remain festival rewards and not an armor piece that is sub-level 80 that I have to use a transmutation stone on and can’t even salvage ectos(like the gold ram backpiece) from because it’s too low a level. You guys took items that were rewards in one game and made them cash shop fair.

It’s really disheartening to not at least get these as rewards in game for completing content that you designed around it.

I finally finished this one off. Someone filled one of the jewelry orders I put in. Really stoked to get the title and the back piece. I have had the bows for over a year. I really dig em.

I have a major gripe though. The Reliquary you get for completing it had two exotics that were both sub-level 80. I got two gold items as well and only 1 of them was level 80. Can we please start getting usable gear as a reward? What is someone who unlocks this collection going to do with sub level 80 exotic gear?

Please consider making a pass through and updating the rewards for these collections. you tell us all how excited we should be when you implement these changes and then we have to find out the rewards aren’t up to snuff.

Thanks.

This merging of queues really feels like short-term thinking. It’s terrible for the players. It’s so bad in my opinion, I really can’t fathom how it was agreed that this was the way to go. There isn’t a player that wants agency removed from the equation when it comes to picking the mode they want to play.

The best part about adding this would be the profession specific achievements for PvP dailies! Think about the excitement! “It took me 8 matches to get the mode, build, and profession I wanted to play!”

I gave you a +1 OP. Your post is funny because it’s true.

I don’t see a valid reason whatsoever for the modes being merged. There isn’t an upside for doing it this way. That’s why other games let you pick the mode you want to play.

ArenaNet: I would love if you could show us valid reasons why players should be excited to have to play a random mode instead of the mode they would choose to play were there separate queues. What am I missing here when I think that this has no upside whatsoever for players?

Argon.1563:

At the PAX South announcement for Heart of Thorns, Mike O’Brien promised us that the maximum level cap will never increase, and there will never be another gear tier added.

Saying there will never be another gear tier prevents the crafting from going up any higher, because there needs to be a new tier to craft if they want to put it up. So no, I think our wallets are safe.

My poor wallet…Its still damaged after 500 crafting, forget 600.

They could actually add “Legendary Armor Crafting” and raise it to 600. With them including rare and exotic food in this last patch, I can see them raising jeweler and cooking to 500 at least as well. 600 for jeweler if they decide to make Legendary jewelry craft-able.

I’d drop the points in WS and change your GM trait in NM to XII. Add the points you dropped from WS and spec them into Beastmastery. Take ‘Shout Mastery’. Replace sig of stone with the ‘Guard’ shout. 100% upkeep regen and swiftness with that spec. Go with Runes of the Soldier for the extra aoe condi clear.

If you have played with the other spec and really like it then keep that. I like to play in team fights and I am usually off point when I do it. It’s really survivable and does enough damage that the other team can’t ignore you.

My guess is that the specializations will be OP for a few months which will mean you will have to own HoT to be competitive. There is a reason these modes are being merged and it has nothing to do with what would be fun, competitive, or what the community would want. It’s about cold, hard, cash, homey.

There are zero reasons that this is good for players in any way shape or form. Could you imagine if game modes were all random in CoD or Halo? Just think about the reaction from players. There has to be some reason behind this choice and my bet is it’s all based around what makes them the most scrilla.

I am really interested in this feature more so than others due to the fact that they are combining the queues of Stronghold and Conquest. The devs have admittedly said that the two formats play completely different from one another. Shouldn’t build/gear swapping on the fly be a priority then?

Skill splits across formats making game more enjoyable for all players<Less work for devs.

It almost feels like trolling. There is no way in actuality that they can merge the queues because you are only supposed to be able to play Stronghold if you buy the expansion. If you don’t own the x-pac and the queue picks Stronghold, what are they gonna do, kick you from the queue?

That’s why I say it feels like trolling. If you really like Conquest and Stronghold doesn’t look all that interesting, why buy the x-pac? If it is indeed going to kick you from the queue if you don’t own the x-pac, why continue playing?

This whole thing feels poorly thought through and terribly communicated to the playerbase. If they wanted to explain it properly they would have told everyone whether or not Stronghold is actually a part of the expansion. If it’s free and I only PvP, I would definitely play it with the base classes before making a decision to even purchase it.

Solstice.1097:

maybe this has been asked but….

if you don’t buy the expansion and queue for PvP, what happens when stronghold comes up?

i don’t see how they can add stronghold to regular map rotation without forcing people to buy the expansion.

This is the most salient point yet. If you only play PvP, maybe there isn’t a reason to buy the x-pac sans the specializations and new class. If it locks people out of the Stronghold rotation that just splinters the community anyways. I am looking for an upside to this and it eludes me.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I don’t want to kill the brainstorming….. but, there are no new weapon types being added in Heart of Thorns. Though, specializations will allow professions to use existing weapon types which they currently cannot use.

I think it’s worth clearing up the “Spears as land weapons” discussion for a few reasons. “No new weapon types” wouldn’t technically eliminate land spears on a class. Also, in the trailer at the end of S2, a Sylvari impales someone on a spear, on land. It’s gonna stink for players hoping to get land spears and they wouldn’t be wrong to get excited for them after seeing the reasons I left above. If you don’t comment, I will figure land spears will be a thing that you guys want to surprise us with. If you do comment, I will figure it’s to dispel the land spear myth, which would be a good thing. No one wants to get hyped about something that isn’t making its way into the game.

I still can’t wrap my head around this decision. If I have an hour before work and I want to get a quick match in, there is a possibility that I can’t play the mode I want to play because the other mode may win out in the voting process?

I’d like to hear what some of the devs who made this decision look at as the pros of setting it up this way from a player’s point of view. Because as a player, my view is that there really aren’t any for me personally.

I was really stoked on what I saw. I left after they showed off the map. I come back and people are saying that this will be in the same queue as Conquest which is a totally different game type?

So you guys are offering Templates right? Templates where I can save as many build/gear combos as I want without the gem shop being involved? You know, so I can swap my armor quickly and conveniently because I am queued for 2 different formats in a single queue.

Magoslich.6857:

KyreneZA.8617:

Can we get a new host to POI yet? Someone like Josh or Hugh who are actually comfortable in front of the camera? Is there really nobody better at this than Rubi (who looks like a nice person but is really ill suited to the job)?

Please!?!

I’m really going to have to disagree with you here. I think Rubi is a fantastic host for the type of show that PoI seems to be. Its not a formal feature discussion show. Its a pve oriented informal show that highlights community things as well as whats going on in the game. Could be wrong, but thats the style that seems to be how they are proceeding. And for that, Rubi is doing a great job. I think everyone who is mad at the recent PoI was expecting it to be like the old blog posts during Beta. The ones that gave us in depth looks at features with commentary from folks like Colin. That doesn’t seem to be what PoI is about. The only reason we are seeing HoT stuff in PoI, I think, is because they think it would be cool to give us a little sneak peak.

Full on information is likely going to hit during or after the demo at Pax East. I expect to see a lot more formal style information dumps during that time. I don’t expect to find it on PoI and that is ok. I know people are starved for info right now and its frustrating, believe me, I know. But we can’t take it out on Rubi and her team for not providing what we think she should rather than what she is supposed to be providing.

Agreed. Rubi does a fantastic job. I think people project what they want to see from the show and ignore what the show is about. Heck, the show gets outlined as to what’s gonna be in it and twitch chat blows up that they won’t say a release date for HoT. Even if Rubi were to announce that HoT was available for download and free, people would complain about something. It’s ludicrous.

They will show strongholds and it would take a miracle for any of the people that will be playing it to actually be using a specialization and if they are, I highly doubt they will talk about what they do. This stream is a deep dive on stronghold, not specializations.

It makes a ton of sense and has been suggested before. Many times actually and in a less abrasive manner.