Guild Wars 2

A skill point scroll in a chest is still relevant. It sounds like they are just removing them from leveling up. They are adding them to specific content and I can’t see them leaving chests as drops etc.

Hopefully the Mastery system will have fun contained in it as well. I like the Collection system and hope that rewards will be doled out through masteries.

The masteries thus far seem super specific to specific places. I really feel bummed we can’t glide in the main map(at least that’s how it seems). JP’s are usually vertical in nature and you have to go from bottom to top to advance so I don’t see it as game breaking in PvE. I’d love to glide off the diving board in LA and myriad other places. Hopefully they allow for it in certain places besides HoT maps.

So instead of gear gating we have map gating. Wanna get to that place in a map? Finish this mastery.

I really wish the gating was kept to cosmetics. That way it’s optional. That was really nice about EotN in GW1. You had to grind rep in order to level up racial skills and earn specific racial gear. It was purely optional. If the grind is light then no big deal.

I never feel like exploring should be gated though so my opinion is tainted.

I like what I am hearing though for the most part. Seems really interesting.

We already donated gold for LA’s rebuilding in the Pavilion 2.0. I am not donating again. That thing was a debacle and an arbitrary gold sink in its purest, most distilled form.

Yuck.

No thanks.

Hylox.9746:

it sounds like they are going to make much smaller maps with explosive content and challenges that require massive amounts of players to complete…

what the heck happened to exploration?

Is Soloing going to be forever screwed?

There will be less maps but they are supposedly massive. I get your qualm with exploration though. It seems like the world will be so full of stuff which is great. They do seem to be less inclined to design maps that have a little breathing room. That was a nice part of the design of the original game. I have no reason to dislike a map with a ton to do in it. At the same time I also like a map that has a lot to do in it but also offers some spaces in between the action. I am sure we will see this in a different way in these new maps. I think the exploring will come from us gliding in the air. which is cool.

The thing I lament as an explorer myself is that we won’t be getting varied climates. It’s all jungle with hints of desert. Sure, the forest floor will be different than the canopy, but it’s all jungle. I would have rather the expansion been all over the map and included an icy map, a desert map, a jungle map, a fiery map, a coastal map, etc. Variety is a big deal for exploration.

We will just have to wait and see. They are taking a risk by designing it this way for sure. They are gambling that we won’t care about variety as much as things to do with a ton of other people around. I love Silverwastes, but if this game were all maps filled with zerging group content and lacked dungeons, fractals, and maps that I could run around in solo and just take the sights in, I wouldn’t have played for as long as I did, that’s for sure.

After reading this: http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/arenanet-invites-players-%E2%80%98first-look%E2%80%99-guild-wars-2-heart-thorns it feels to me like masteries are more of a “map progression” system than character progression. Peeling the bark off a mordrem is really specific. Jumping on certain mushrooms. Gliding. It seems to me that we will get very specific masteries in each region or map and that we will need to finish them to progress to the next area of said region. With the old maps, I could see them filling out content in this way as well.

McWolfy.5924:

I hope rangers lose the pets

This would be a win in my book. Ranger wouldn’t lose a thing. they would be gaining freedom from the chains that bound them.

It would be nice to see a posting reset for anything on the TP longer than 6 months. A lot of that stuff wouldn’t even make it back into circulation as it would be people who don’t play anymore.

There are plenty of items when I am searching from most expensive to least expensive that clog up the limited return data like golds selling for too much etc.

Windsagio.1340:

“There’s only 1 map, that’s terrible and lame!”

“Oh wait, there’s clearly more than one?”

“Umm… umm… (light goes on) I’ve got it!”

“there’s only one environment, that’s terrible and lame!”

It’s kind of amazing how quickly one talking point is dropped and the next one solidifies.

Except I stated I used the wrong word. I should have used climate instead of environment. It was the same argument except the person that responded to me didn’t get what I meant because I used the wrong word at first. I fixed it though so you can happily drop the snarky attitude

Diovid.9506:

For now it seems like there are four environments: 1) the maguuma waste, 2) the jungle floor, 3) the roots, 4) the canopy. Those all seem pretty distinct to me.

I think there is a slight chance we get to the area that was the Alcazia Jungle in Guild Wars 1. Otherwise, I think that the four environments mentioned above are it.

I get that. I probably used a poor choice of wording. I meant like climates. Tundra, Chapparal, Desert etc. We have four environments but they are all jungle.

It is always welcome to get an icy map, a fiery map, a desert map, a coastal map and so on and so forth. It may not seem like it, but it’s a big deal for the long term. That kind of variety helps to break up the monotony of staring at the same environments over and over. I get that they aid they want us to keep playing the old maps. That’s why I asked if they were adding new stuff to do in them.

If they want us to keep playing the old maps, what’s the impetus to do so? They keep mentioning that they are adding only a few maps with tons of stuff to do in them instead of adding a lot of maps with nothing. Well why not add a decent amount of maps with climate variety all over the world of Tyria with the same amount of content in them as the maps already in the game? It seems to me that adding a bunch of stuff to do in a few maps will make the old maps feel light on content by contrast. I guess if we can glide and play the old maps in new ways it will be great. We have heard nothing on this front though and it concerns me.

I want a pterodactyl-type pet that can glide beside me on my glider.

I do really hope we get a whole new slew of pets for the Ranger to tame.

zaw.6741:

its great and all but…makes magicfind kinda useless ?
whats the purpose of my 200account mf, if all rewards are unaffected by it? there need to be some balance done.
and pleaseee
pleasee
pleasee
no more currencies. or if we must get some, at least add them to wallet. geodes/badges are really poor design, just wasting inv slots (and yes, i do have maxed bank and inventory..but hate it when unnecessary items are taking slots)

I agree with a lot of this. I am tired of chests not being affected by my MF. I want the stat to mean something. Otherwise, do away with MF completely so I don’t ahve to think about how ArenaNet is subtly circumventing it all the time.

I most definitely have concerns over the issue of environment variety in the upcoming expansion. One of the great parts of the waypoint system in GW2 is that it allows you to jump all over the existing map and the varieties in eco-systems help to break up the monotony and we seldom give credit to the designers because it’s such a subtle thing.

With this expansion, we see some jungle and desert themes which look absolutely incredible. I don’t want to take anything away from how amazing everything looks. I had quite a few jaw drops watching the trailers.

In the long term though, the environment variety is a major concern for me especially since I am an explorer at heart in the Bartle System.

I wasn’t concerned at first with the title “Heart of Thorns” because I remember “Eye of the North” gave the impression that it was all going to be snow and tundra and that turned out to be a non-issue as the expansion covered a bunch of different regions in Tyria.

Is HoT going to be covering as many regions albeit with less maps?

How much time am I going to want to spend in a jungle or desert setting?

Are old maps getting face lifts and having content added to them so that they are just as chock full of content as these few, new maps?

I think variety in scenery is a big deal. I remember playing a pirate themed mmo and it was super fun for a short period of time and quickly got grating. It was grating because it was the same environment all the time. Fantasy MMOs work thanks in part to varied environments.

Also, unless they plan on making the maps we have now as chock full of content as the new maps, ArenaNet run the risk of still stumbling into what they were hoping to avoid in the first place. Why would any of us want to go back to events we have done for almost 3 years in old maps if the new ones are so full of things to do? Why would having more maps mean less content?

I think if new maps were designed like older ones it would be fine. I would gladly take varied environments that I could explore over a small handful of big maps with the same ecosystem.

I feel the exact same way. No one ever wrote as eloquently as him about GW2. Between he and Rubi and Lis —who both work for ArenaNet now-- they made Flameseeker the very best column about GW2, bar none.

I already thanked Anatoli at Massively in the comments on his last column, but yeah, thanks!

Colin said some stuff during the announcement address for the new expansion that they want the original GW2 maps to remain populated. That’s great news! Well, it’s great news if they decide to fill the old maps out with new content. Orr needs to start evolving into a post-defeated-dragon state. A temple to Kormir could be built with a new event surrounding it. Tons of new events could be added all over the world to reflect what is currently happening in Tyria.

I get they want people to keep playing content they have played for going on 3 years, but isn’t it also reasonable to ask for a lot of new things to do in this game that has been out for a decent amount of time?

They are adding masteries to the original game, but they all sound very specific. One of the masteries that was specifically mentioned had to do with peeling the bark off a Mordrem. That’s a mastery that can only be used on a specific mob. Same goes for gliding. They are also account based so once you get them for your account, that is stuff you never have to do again. While I like not having to repeat the same thing over and over for every profession, the masteries they highlighted aren’t affecting things in a broader sense. They are really specific. If there is a mastery for peeling bark off of a Mordrem, then is there one for de-hoofing a centaur? After we do them, is it just business as usual with a 5% damage bonus to that type of creature?

Colin said in an interview that they aren’t adding a lot of new land mass to the game, but are adding a ton of new content into the limited number of new maps for the HoT release. That is great news and I don’t want to detract from it. I do however want to see a lot of new content added to the existing maps then. If you want us to keep playing the same game we have been playing, give us more replay value.

My hope is that they actually push forward the timeline as it pertains to original maps. You know, updating Orr so that it isn’t all undead and looks different since we killed the dragon there. I hope someone random NPC decides to build a temple to Kormir there.

I agree. A drop down menu to pick the specialization you want to use(when there are actually more than one of course). The thing I don’t want to see is a limited number of templates like f2p games adopt. I get why f2p games do it. That is where there income lies, but I’d like to see it be as many templates as you want to save like in GW1. There isn’t as much build/skill diversity in this game for each profession, but it would be nicer to have GW1’s system rather than, “You get two free template saves and the others cost you 400 gems each.” My hope is it gets rolled out with the x-pac and we get it included in the download/box price as opposed to them rolling it out six weeks after the fact and charging us gems for extra templates.

There was a guild hall CDI. You should check out the thread. You will glean some interesting insight into which ways the devs and players were leaning in regard to how features would be implemented. I don’t think the BLTC will be a part of it though because they want players to have reasons to populate the NPC cities. I would imagine repair stations and merchants and crating vendors would bethere. Also, I see no reason as to why we wouldn’t get a guild comm vendor as the existing one is tucked away in a corner of LA. I think quite a few services will be available and so much more. I honestly think we will get direct access to dungeons from guild halls among other activities that haven’t been announced yet.

Richie Procopio just put out a really interesting video about how he thinks LA will become a Sylvari prison camp. He came to this realization after Colin asked him an interesting question over dinner. Worth a watch and worth some thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoxZ8_51ieo&feature=youtu.be

I think LA will be rebuilt personally, but maybe there will be a refugee section for displaced Sylvari who weren’t corrupted? What do you guys think?

All of them are the best. Don’t confine your RP. Unleash it in /emote chat in Rata Sum.

Would you like to be a Sylvari on a zamboni? I know a dude in Toronto.

I want outfits for HoT that I can earn in HoT, you know, because I am paying with cash for HoT. I would hate to download HoT only to find that the outfits for HoT were hidden behind a paywall on the gem shop. They wouldn’t be HoT outfits at that point. They’d be gem shop outfits.

3.) Implementing a vast array of glider skins we can earn for playing the expansion that we paid for.

I would hate to see like 3 skins to earn and then a few skins on the gem shop a week after release of the x-pac. Same goes for armor and weapons.

I’ve often wondered why no one has come up with an e-bay style site with ratings for users for in game trades in gw2. all posts happen on the site, people get rated on a 5-star rating system and you only trade with people with good ratings. if i am willing to trust people with RL money why wouldn’t i trust people with fake money? we cut out the 15% and everyone is happy, no?

So it was said at PAX for the HoT announcement that specializations would change how the class gets played fundamentally. Eles use attunements. Engineers have kits. Warriors have adrenaline. Rangers have pets.

So why in the video footage of the Druid did the druid have a pet? If the class is being changed fundamentally, shouldn’t the Druid be petless or are pets so useless that they figured they would throw pets in with the Druid mechanics as a bonus of sorts to sweeten the pot?

There’s a wee bit of snark in my post, but isn’t it high time we get a petless version of the Ranger, or at least sweeping changes to fix the pet? Sure, the Ranger is a lot better now, but it isn’t because pet mechanics got better. Do you guys think we will have the ability as a Druid to stow the Ranger pet or do you think we will be forced to carry the burden of the Ranger pet mechanic around with us for no good reason?

Nah. Leave em. I say if you want to travel more you should do so and leave the waypoints for those of us that like to get to events when they are happening.

I want the paid expansion. ArenaNet has one of the best pay models in all of gaming. They really do. I don’t think they should hide LW content behind a pay wall though.

With that being said, if they are changing the way they do their content and giving us like 3, $20 dollar expansions every year I am OK with that. Would be nice to see some clarification about how the process is going to play out though.

The guild raiding CDI was cool and then people started being jerks to each other.

The one thing I am really looking forward to in HoT is if ArenaNet is cooking up any content for people to do together with a group and no one else. For example, my friends and I were extremely disappointed when we couldn’t do that Wintersday tower defense type instance together.

Sometimes you want to get together with a hand picked group, get on voice comms and have a great time with good friends. The open world stuff is great, but not always.

“These new weapons will not be entirely new, however, just new to the profession as no new weapon types are being added with HoT.”

That’s the quote for people that don’t want to search for it.

Colin said: “Our focus is instead on a smaller number of maps that have an incredible amount of deep replay value.” The new maps will have an incredible amount of depth with a huge amount of content to discover and explore with more places that reach as you spend points into the mastery system. “We want that sense that as you are progressing through a map you are seeing all these areas and challenges and you are saying to yourself ‘I can’t wait until I can get there or defeat this!’” These maps were designed to have a huge amount of 3D space and content depth with an amazing amount of replay value so that players can always go back and play the map and while still progressing and building. “That’s going to be our focus. We want something that is meaningful and stands the test of time rather than a whole bunch of maps that you tear through.”

Hopefully this means they are bolstering old maps to have the amount of content that these few new maps have then. They said they didn’t want the old maps to get deserted, but if these new ones are so chock full of new stuff to do, what would be the point of going back and playing that old content that we have been playing for 2 and a half years? I get that Masteries will be scattered all over the world, but just like the story instances of the LW, they don’t hold much replay value in terms of loot or game play. You go do them and that’s that.
In the LW instanced content, the replay value is AP. If you don’t chase that carrot it makes it “one and done” content. It’s great content to be sure, but we are getting a lot of design work poured into one shot content. I would rather not have LW content have hundreds or thousands of man hours poured into it. Pour it into replayable content like dungeons or fractals or raids.

There is something to be said for content you can do with a select group of people as well. I like the open world content they have designed to an extent, but if theya re really making challenging content, I do not miss the gnashing of teeth and terrible chat that happened for the Marionette. It was vile garbage that was spewed out by players if the event failed. A far cry from the “best community in MMOs” that they were talking about at PAX.

One of the things I feel like they contradicted themselves with is when they said there isn’t going to be a new race because it doesn’t add to the story, but they also said they want the original game to still be populated. What better way to populate all the old maps than to add a new race? More so when you consider that they are getting rid of the new, poorly received trait system.

New players and vets and altoholics alike would flock together to make, well, flocks of Tengu if they were the new race and the new zones would be heavily populated.

I also wonder how much new content will be added to existing zones for this x-pac. If they want the old content to keep being played they need to bolster the areas with new stuff to do. The world is supposed to be changing and if we aren’t getting myriad new maps to play, then add to the existing world!

It’ll be interesting to see how they handle it because if the LW remains free to people that log in for the two weeks it’s out will ArenaNet put story in the expansion maps(which require a separate purchase)?

The next part of the story takes place in the expansion so people will at least be missing the story there if they opt out of buying the x-pac. How much of the continuation of that story will be in the new maps remains to be seen.

With us getting very detailed yet a few number of maps in the x-pac, I am also curious as to how many events will be added in the existing world to freshen those up again.

Seth Moonshadow.2710:

Astralporing, agreed! It sucks because 50% is we can not earn them on our own and 50% because it truly is Luck and timing

I hope Gems are not a factor in guild construction, maybe an initial small 200 gem cost to begin a guild hall, otherwise it should not be TP based.

Donari, I found CDI you spoke of. Thanks. It does appear to address my concerns. It does not however answer my question. But then I guess we will all have to wait and see what the implemented. A lot of suggestions include the no merit, influence, guild membership size design differences. I have not read it all nor found what ANet chose as their model. Thanks again

Guild Halls are part of a paid expansion and therefore should exist as content in the game to earn, not pay money for on top of box costs.

Vavume.8065:

So much jumping to conclusions… how about you wait and see how they implement it before you qq.

Because like the OP said, ArenaNet has a track record of doing this kind of thing. A precedent has been set that would lead them to this conclusion. The OP is fully being respectful and isn’t just wildly guessing at things. They are making educated guesses at what could come due to ArenaNet’s past with this stuff. It’s a valid question and one I would hope ArenaNet would look at closely before deciding how they choose to handle it when it goes live.

Pets have often been mentioned as being an extension of the Ranger. So critical to the class design philosophy that they can’t be permanently stowed. That’s why for these past years that this game has been out that it bums me out that pets don’t work like they should due to map/level/skill design taking them into consideration. There are many examples of this:

Mai Trin Fractal : At 75%/50%/25% health Mai Trin will jump away from the map. At this point the entire surface of the playing space fills up with AoE and there are no enemies to engage. You can only take damage. Instead of pets being taken into account for this and not receiving damage during this phase of the fight they invariably die because there aren’t any mechanics to counter the level design.

Jade Fractal : When the kraken is going to attack you it puts a mark on you. If you don’t pick up a crystal to absorb the attack you are immediately put into the downed state. The pet can be targeted by this without having a way to pick up a crystal or a way to dodge. All the player can do is swap pets before the pet gets killed and waste a swap. This is a critical design flaw.

I could go on and on but won’t. Ranger pets are designed poorly. Period.

I propose a Ranger specialization that doesn’t require the Ranger to have a pet. We are years overdue for the Ranger pets actually getting fixed. It’s fairly obvious to me that it isn’t going to happen so a Specialization of a petless Ranger spec would fix it.

Please finally address the issue.

Sweet! I can’t wait to try it out.

Pandaman.4758:

I tend to notice people ask for longbows on guardians more than anything else, which seems appropriate since it’s one of the spiritual weapons they can summon but not actually wield.

Maybe some kind of archer guardian who transfer their passive AoE boon ability to arrows? Instead of granting boons to nearby allies, they grant the boons to allies near enemies they hit?

A bow to shoot aoe boons would be pretty cool.

I think they will get off-hand sword and the specialization will be called, “Sentinel”.

Johje Holan.4607:

Only one I want:

Ranger > Archer

Get rid of pet. Put 4 different types of bows in F1 – F4.

Longbow, Flatbow, Hornbow, Shortbow, Recurve Bow, etc. Each bow has different range, trajectories, attack speed, skills.

Like GW1 bows: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bow

I like this one the most. Especially if the pet can never be fixed fully which I suspect will always be the case. Also, if we don’t get new pet types to compliment the Druid I will want the Hunter even more.

Guardian- Sentinel(off-hand sword)

What do you guys think? Do you think there will be a way to craft glider skins? Do you think there will be cultural glider skins? Do you think there will be a way to put our guild emblems on the gliders? Do you think we can get glider skins in collections or for clearing a region?

I really hope that we get a lot of glider skins that we can play for instead of pay for on top of the expansion. Seeing as it’s a paid expansion, it should come with a lot of weapon, armor, and glider skins for us to earn in game. I would hate to see us buy the expansion only to have the bulk of the newly designed armor and glider skins end up as day-one-paid-for-separately-cash-shop-dlc like Street Fighter.

The new Legendary Collections could end up using them. I would save them until after the x-pac arrives.

Play a Ranger with Longbow/Shortbow. It seems to me you want something fun to use that helps a group that allows you to stand back away from harm. LB Ranger is for you!

Go with 6/4/0/4/0 for your traits. 1,8,13. 4,10. 3,6. You will get dmg+that much needed survival for being old! Wear Berzerker’s armor with Trooper Runes! Use Berzerker’s jewelry. You can also switch a trait so that you have farther range if you like. Just stand back and shoot stuff! If you find you are getting stiff because you are old and standing in one place to long, switch to shortbow and get up in the action for a bit with the whippersnappers! Don’t do it for too long though. You may pop a disc in your back and no one wants that!

Enjoy!

IT’s a fantastic game although dated in its design. If you don’t mind that you will love the game. It also has some features that GW2 doesn’t even have like build templates and a multitude of pvp modes.

It’s Community Manager Appreciation Day. Gaile’s awesome. Thanks for all your hard work! We appreciate you.

I didn’t go into PvP and earn close to a stack of tomes and a stack of scrolls to not use them. I also didn’t make Ascended armor which can be shared by any prof. on my account to have it sit there unused. I will level to 80 immediately, throw on all ascended gear and go learn to play the class in the new maps. Unless we are getting new starter zones and mid-level zones. Then I will level it up partially the old-fashioned way.

My hope is that Specializations are going to make Support builds way more attractive in PvE/PvP/WvW. Not necessary, but so much more attractive to players as to make them an integral part to a team. Highly organized PvP seems to be the only place that Support is a must. I would like to see the same thing for CC, but it jsut seems like an afterthought for ArenaNet at this point.

What would be the point of doing specializations, if running them in PvE amounts to just more zerking? I love that people have the option to run a support class in PvE if they like, but it should be more pronounced and more relevant by being better at what it does in PvE.

I feel really bad for professions who are inevitably going to have their sole release specialization and have it be support oriented. Not because playing support is lame, it’s not, but because it just isn’t important enough in the grand scheme of things in this game. It needs to mean something going forward with specializations, otherwise we can just keep running the classes we have now with the DPS oriented builds we’ve been using for years.

I was super bummed about the exclusion of a new playable race.

I hope we get a LOT of new maps to play around on because while I am really excited about the x-pac, it’s going to feel really thin in the content dept. when compared with Eye of the North if it doesn’t have a lot of maps.

On top of that, they said a way to acquire precursors by playing the game was coming years ago. Hopefully, people that don’t buy the x-pac will still be able to use the new system to make them.

The new borderlands maps in WvW were also included in the talk yesterday as part of the x-pac. Does that mean that people that don’t buy the x-pac don’t get to play WvW on the weeks that those new borderlands maps are the rotation map?

I can understand not getting to play the new PvP mode if you don’t buy the x-pac, but the WvW maps are going to be interesting. If everyone can still play WvW when those Borderlands maps are active, then why put them in the conference yesterday as part of the x-pac?

Bring the trinity in this game or nah?

Nah.

I would be way cool with there only being 1 specialization per class IF they allowed the core professions to go further in the x-pac. That way there would still be the progression they are talking about with specializations with the core profs. Hopefully their design allows for the core professions to grow our characters. Otherwise, you will be forced to do the specializations if you want to have any sort of progression whatsoever.