Guild Wars 2

Djinn.9245:

OriOri.8724:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/What-Eternity-Should-Look-Like

This thread has my favorite fan-made eternity skin

That really is beautiful.

It’s a really nice skin. It can’t be linked too often.

The code doesn’t exist in the game to dye weapons or dye backpacks, so it’s not possible to set the back + wings to match, whether dynamically or otherwise.

They could rewrite the code from scratch, to enable dyeing backs, but that would also require retrofitting the existing designs even for the packs that aren’t going to be dyeable.

Why did the developers decide to make this so hard on themselves? They thought about it a lot before the game launched and decided that they’d prefer to release more weapon skins more often, by leaving the base designs simpler.

And that’s worked out in practice: we have 37 BL weapon skin sets plus several in HoT plus some for raids plus some for LS3.

tl;dr developers made a design decision before launch that simplified design of backs & weapons by not including the capability to dye them. Changing that would require a massive retrofitting of code, even to change just one back or weapon.

Labjax.2465:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The named mercs make for some interesting encounters; I don’t think they need to change, especially since they are all easily avoided. Think they are too powerful? Don’t fight them.

Snow.2048:

I don’t read the OP as a call for npc nerfs, but more an indirect ask why new skills are being made for npcs and not given to players

ThomasC.1056:

TL;DR : Ro venombite is yet another OP character, bearing skills with no common measure with player’s. Either it’s a bug, or it’s an intended design to have a veteran so tedious to beat, but it’s time to stop the power creep, and the crazy new skills for NPC’s only.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OP is clearly asking for NPCs not to have “crazy new skills.”

ThomasC.1056:

I was indeed not asking for a nerf.

I apologize then for misunderstanding your intent. I recommend you go back and edit the original post, because the text clearly says you don’t want the NPC skills to be stronger than that of the player’s. That’s a “nerf” by nearly anyone’s definition.

ThomasC.1056:

From a gameplay point of view, that mercenary is nothing to worry too much about : she can be avoided, she’s no real threat. I’m underlining here design issues : players have been asking and asking for new skills for ages, and at each release, we see new skills designed, developped specifically for NPC’s. On top of it, it’s on-steroids version of player’s skills…

I still can’t agree that there’s an “issue” with the design. Players are always going to better than the AI, so it makes sense to make them deadlier and more powerful, otherwise we will always adapt too quickly.

Runiir.6425:

Named or not the named classes NEED to be 100% confined to the EXACT skills the players have access to. If they can’t create a challenging encounter with those skills, it is time to take a hard look at the class as to why this is.

I think this is horrid idea. Players are always going to perform better than the AI; we have an unfair advantage. I think it’s up to us to rise to the challenge of strong NPCs.

Er… I don’t really have a horse in this race, but… come again? “Players are always going to perform better than the AI”? In what world? If you mean players will always have the potential to outsmart AI, sure. But that’s why games make mobs stupidly powerful, to compensate for how dumb they are, strategically. Even so, some of the mobs in this game aren’t exactly dumb or inept. Some of them are downright obnoxious and great at making a mockery of players.

Like Mordrem Snipers, for instance. In what fantasy world are players always going to perform better than them?

It’s actually not really beyond the capability of developers in this day and age to program AI that can give players a really hard time, without being much more powerful than them. And I don’t see why it should be a bad thing if there’s room for the player to figure out how to outsmart the AI’s tricks and take it down a lot more easily than they were doing prior. I mean, what’s the alternative? Being required to have more people along because the mob was given uber powers? Where’s the strategy in that?

It seems the fear is that the mobs will be too easy and therefore people will get bored and disgruntled about it. But I don’t see how uber powers is some sort of carte blanche answer to that.

I doubt it’s even true in practice. I think what keeps people entertained is more complicated than that.

The point is that there is no design reason to restrict mobs from having non-player skills, including skills that are more powerful than ones that players can obtain.

You’re absolutely correct that what makes combat interesting is more complicated than any single design choice. However, the topic of the OP is one particular design choice — they weren’t saying here’s how to holistically make encounters more interesting; they were saying how they didn’t like mobs having special skills.

Your best bet is to start a ticket with support:
https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Fluffball.8307:

Daddicus.6128:

How does it compare to Ad Infinitum? I earned one of those a while back (but, it didn’t trigger the achievement, which is for weapons).

If you only want it for the achievement, I suppose you could just pick the cheapest one. Some legendaries are WAY more expensive than the backpiece, and some are actually cheaper.

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/legendaries

For me, Legendary Weapon collections take more effort than Ad Infinitum, a lot more mats, and a lot more time doing things I don’t normally do. (That last can be a good thing… or a bad thing, depending on your attitude).

On the other hand, if you all you want is to make your own legendary, just buy the precursor for one of the underwater ones and buy any mats you’re missing. Then the only ‘hard’ part is world map completion and WvW Gift of Battle (the former takes lots of time; the latter can take as little as hours, but might be more daunting depending).

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time,

I can’t agree. There are always newbies, some who catch on quickly and some who don’t. There have always been veterans unfamiliar with basic mechanics.

If the skill level was going down, then I would expect to never hear about PUG raid success, nightmare fractal CM successes with PUGs, and I’d have a far, far easier time in WvW and PvP.

Farming for anything is dull for me. So I do stuff that’s fun for me, sell valuables, salvage the rest, and buy whatever I need off the TP.

Astralporing.1957:

Sublimatio.6981:

they could at least fix all the bugs and only then abandon the content…

One of the main reasons behind Anet abandoning dungeons is that they couldn’t have been bothered to fix bugs. If they had the energy and will to fix them, it’s entirely possible that dungeons would still be a supported content.

They have both the energy & the will to work on other stuff, that is a bigger bang for their buck. The way they engineered dungeons made them inherently difficult to update, including fixing bugs and keeping up with power creep of skills & builds.

Put another way, the same will & energy that it would take to fix a few bugs for dungeons could go into starting a fresh fractal map. Dungeons still work, they still offer substantial rewards — they just aren’t as interesting to long-time veterans because they haven’t kept pace, because we’ve done them all many, many, many times.

I’d love to see the worst bugs fixed and the silliest encounters updated. It just doesn’t seem like a good use of ANet’s time, as long as there are so many other things that the community also wants.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Regardless, the point is that ascended was introduced so that there was some gear progress, some sinks for various mats, and some profit for crafting. It was not introduced primarily as “something to do for people who ran out of things to do.”

Astralporing.1957:

So you say. I remember it differently.

So Linsey Murdock wrote.

As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.

We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach. Original Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression. The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.

Ascended gear (and agony resistance) was added to introduce some gear progression. To the extent that you have to do something to get the next tier of gear, sure, that qualifies as “something to do” — the main goal was gear progression, not filler.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

So again, I would bet that ANet didn’t make this change to drive people to WvW; there are just too many better ways to do that.

Feanor.2358:

I don’t know. They seem to be using legendaries as an incentive on other occasions, too. Both backpacks are strongly tied to specific content, and so is the envoy armor.

There’s a difference between setting up a reward structure to encourage people to change the way they spend their time versus to reward people for how they were going to spend their time anyhow. Both are incentives for the same content and we shouldn’t assume they are one & the same.

Even if you don’t agree with this, there are so many other ways that ANet could encourage people to play WvW that would apply to everyone, not just those interested in legendaries. And again, there are all sorts of ways to make it feel like a reward for moving to WvW, rather than a punishment for being PvE-focused (which is what the OP & others are saying they feel).

The legendary backs are clearly special rewards, since there are (for now) at least two ways to get them: challenging small-group content & challenging PvP (although of course there’s disagreement about how challenging either collection is). Similarly, ANet has repeated early & often that Envoy armor is intended to be the special reward for challenging larger-group content (raids) — there’s controversy about whether that was a good choice for them to make, but it’s clear that was their intent.

Feanor.2358:

By the way, I don’t know many active players in PvE who do not possess at least one legendary weapon.

I know people who have played every week since launch without legendaries. I think I’d want to survey 10,000 to 50,000 players before determining what is true for the ‘many’.

To summarize:
My primary point is that there’s little evidence that ANet changed the GoB requirements to encourage people to play WvW. It’s therefore not useful to use it as an important part of an argument as to why ANet should (or should not) change the requirements.

Why stop at swapping a single utility during combat? Why not allow them all to be swapped? Why not allow weapon swapping? How about replacing the elite or the healing with some other utility?

Everything the OP writes to justify this option applies to the others: there are situations in which each would be useful.

Fortunately, ANet considers more than just utility of, um, utility skills when determining how to set up an infrastructure of game mechanics that allow for (a) fun game play and (b) continual rebalancing and evolution of the skills to match our evolution as players.

Ayrilana.1396:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ayrilana.1396:

Did you read the news where it was stated that it was stopped?

The same reports mentioned that it was probably straightforward for other ‘hackers’ to use the same technique to replicate , that it just takes one mistake by one person in an enterprise network, and that we got lucky that the ‘kill switch’ that shut down this infection was so easily discovered.

That said, companies serious about their data & software (such as ANet) already have disaster recovery protocols in place and already test them. Those that aren’t (yet) worried about it aren’t going to be able to make it happen overnight.

That’s always been a risk for a long time which didn’t just suddenly increase because of recent events. Many of the articles mentioned this became so widespread because of a perfect storm of events.

Many companies already perform backups routinely and even back up the back ups.

Right, good points. Security isn’t anything new. Disaster recovery isn’t anything new.

Profeus.9034:

In GW2 have translate for German Language, and it not in 10th top…

Exactly. Because it’s not just about how many people speak the language. It’s about how many people speak the language + don’t speak one of the existing languages well enough to play + are likely to purchase the game. There’s no question that lots of humans speak Portuguese; there’s apparently some question that enough of them will purchase the GW2 to make it worth the extra initial expense and to increase the cost of each game update.

If this were solely about how many people speak a language, Portuguese still wouldn’t be the first choice.

I really like the game. I’d love it if it could be translated into every language that has a lot of MMO players. At the same time, I recognize that no business can try to appeal to everyone — ANet has to carefully choose which languages to support.

Start a support ticket, so that ANet can work with you directly.

There’s a specific programming reason. Could it be fixed? Sure. Is it worth doing? I don’t think so.

If/when ANet decides to do a badly-needed overhaul of the guild UI, this would be a good thing to include. Until then, I think we can live with it. Well, I know I can.

Feanor.2358:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Plenty of people play WvW for all sorts of reasons. It’s not at all clear why they changed it.

To give incentive to PvE players to try WvW. And by “try” I don’t mean “press B, pick a world, look around and say you don’t understand what’s going on”.

And you know what? It works. I’m still primarily a PvE player, but I do enjoy WvW, now. And I originally started playing it for the Gift.

That’s great — I’m glad that the requirement opened up a new source of fun for you.

My point, however, is that it’s unlikely that’s the reason for the change. Most PvErs don’t go for a legendary, so this change only affects a tiny fraction of players. If the goal was to increase WvW participation, this would have been the least efficient, most controversial way to do it.

If the goal was to incentivize WvW play, they would have first introduced a reliable way to convert Memories of Battle + Badges of Honor into ascended gear — that would get all sorts of people volunteering to try WvW. In contrast, this change drags people kicking and screaming into WvW — two minutes of thought by anyone working for ANet would establish that.

So again, I would bet that ANet didn’t make this change to drive people to WvW; there are just too many better ways to do that.

As Yargesh says, there’s no “need” to track this.

On the other hand, it would be convenient to be able to see something on the character select screen:

• Map Completion: x%
• LS1-2 Maps: y of 2
• HoT Maps: z of 4
• LS 3 Maps: w of 6

So I’d chalk this up to something that’s “nice to have,” not something the game needs.

Even subtitles aren’t going to happen. Accurate translation is expensive and adds to the cost of the game and slows down development. For example, LS3 Episode 6 won’t ship until it’s been translated to each of the game’s supported languages — adding a new one to the list means waiting for one more team to finish up (sure, that work will be concurrent with the other translations, but this creates additional bottlenecks).

Translating isn’t an exact science and it’s harder for fantasy and technical language. “Rock Star” is a great title (and pun) in English — how do you translate it into other languages?

All of that has to be weighed against how many new players the subtitles will attract. There are already Portuguese-native speakers who buy the game with its current set of supported languages — how many who don’t (also) speak English (or Spanish or German or French) will spend US$30 (today) or US$50 (for an expac)? That number has to be huge to justify the extra trouble.

Finally, if ANet does add another language, I’m not sure that Portuguese would be first on the list: there are a lot more potential players who speak Russian, Arabic, or varies dialects of the Indian subcontinent.

tl;dr It’s very unlikely that ANet will add language support for another language, unless someone can figure out how that (alone) will sell a lot more copies of the game.

Hawkey.7923:

how to make Eternity actually relevant legendary again.

I don’t consider it to be irrelevant. I understand that some people don’t think it’s epic enough, some think it shouldn’t be cheaper than Twilight + Sunrise combined, and some people just don’t like the design. But none of those things make it “irrelevant.”

Further, given how long it takes ANet to release new skins, I’d far prefer them to work on entirely new designs rather than retrofitting any existing ones to make a fraction of players happier about an existing skin (even if it’s a large fraction).

I’d be more receptive if you wanted to explain your idea for a future legendary.

Ayrilana.1396:

Did you read the news where it was stated that it was stopped?

The same reports mentioned that it was probably straightforward for other ‘hackers’ to use the same technique to replicate , that it just takes one mistake by one person in an enterprise network, and that we got lucky that the ‘kill switch’ that shut down this infection was so easily discovered.

That said, companies serious about their data & software (such as ANet) already have disaster recovery protocols in place and already test them. Those that aren’t (yet) worried about it aren’t going to be able to make it happen overnight.

Neural.1824:

Anet can’t change the method of achievement for Gift of Battle. How else would they get people to want to play WvW?

Plenty of people play WvW for all sorts of reasons. It’s not at all clear why they changed it. Originally, getting badges of honor was difficult and slow without WvW; later they made it easier. With this change, they turned it around to closer to how it was at launch: WvW required. Although I’d argue that it’s easier today.

Moreover, not everyone goes after legendaries. I’m not sure anyone things that it could possibly attract a lot of people.

So, no, it’s almost certain that they weren’t trying to drum up numbers for WvW; there are far easier, and less controversial ways to do that.

Tekey.7946:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Blude.6812:

Not as bad as the apple collection at Ember.

Gotta agree with Blude — while Hungry Hal involved only a single fetch & carry, the achievement required 50 separate runs. At least with this one, you end up with several back items, including an interesting skin.

The reward is great, but that doesn’t change the awful design of the quest. I just hope that they’re able to think of something else in the future. There are plenty of quests in other games that might also include grinding, but at least they’re part of a great story that makes up for some grind. Heart quests however have no value for me, so why should I keep playing after I played through one hour of living story every 2-3 months.

OP claimed “most boring” — I’m saying it’s barely in my top 10. Boring? yes. Worst? no.

Even if ANet agreed that this was an issue (and apparently, they do not — they have twice doubled down on the change), it would be around a year before the game changed.

During that year, you would get your GoB by completing just 80 WvW dailies to progress the reward track, i.e. less than 7/month. Big Spender accounts for at least three, so you just need to 4 of the easier ones:

• Land Claimer: kill a single NPC & remain in the circle for a short period.
• Mists Guard Killer: kill 5 guards; can be done at the camp to the north of your spawn location in your home borderland, if it’s held by the enemy (that’s the safest one)
• Caravan Disruptor: kill a single Yak; also can be done at that camp
• Master of Monuments: cap a monument for your side. Easiest is probably near your home garrison if you’re red, but there’s at least one close to each spawn location in opponent’s borderlands and not that far from your garrison in blue & green BL.

The safest time to do these is outside of peak hours, when there are fewer people on the map. The ideal way to do them is to team up with someone else, anyone else. Lots of people run away from two.

Koolaidius.2580:

Apparently we aren’t allowed to have the option to show overhead healthbars on allies to help with support because the devs don’t like clutter, but there is absolutely no option to disable ally names if you are in a squad or raid.

What is with this contradiction?

Why not change your post to simply ask for the option to display healthbars overhead? What difference does it make if this seems at odds with other parts of the UI?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The named mercs make for some interesting encounters; I don’t think they need to change, especially since they are all easily avoided. Think they are too powerful? Don’t fight them.

Snow.2048:

I don’t read the OP as a call for npc nerfs, but more an indirect ask why new skills are being made for npcs and not given to players

ThomasC.1056:

TL;DR : Ro venombite is yet another OP character, bearing skills with no common measure with player’s. Either it’s a bug, or it’s an intended design to have a veteran so tedious to beat, but it’s time to stop the power creep, and the crazy new skills for NPC’s only.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OP is clearly asking for NPCs not to have “crazy new skills.”

ThomasC.1056:

I was indeed not asking for a nerf.

I apologize then for misunderstanding your intent. I recommend you go back and edit the original post, because the text clearly says you don’t want the NPC skills to be stronger than that of the player’s. That’s a “nerf” by nearly anyone’s definition.

ThomasC.1056:

From a gameplay point of view, that mercenary is nothing to worry too much about : she can be avoided, she’s no real threat. I’m underlining here design issues : players have been asking and asking for new skills for ages, and at each release, we see new skills designed, developped specifically for NPC’s. On top of it, it’s on-steroids version of player’s skills…

I still can’t agree that there’s an “issue” with the design. Players are always going to better than the AI, so it makes sense to make them deadlier and more powerful, otherwise we will always adapt too quickly.

Runiir.6425:

Named or not the named classes NEED to be 100% confined to the EXACT skills the players have access to. If they can’t create a challenging encounter with those skills, it is time to take a hard look at the class as to why this is.

I think this is horrid idea. Players are always going to perform better than the AI; we have an unfair advantage. I think it’s up to us to rise to the challenge of strong NPCs.

Blude.6812:

Not as bad as the apple collection at Ember.

Gotta agree with Blude — while Hungry Hal involved only a single fetch & carry, the achievement required 50 separate runs. At least with this one, you end up with several back items, including an interesting skin.

Sounds like you’re suffering some sort of latency. In theory, that should affect other skills equally, although I’ve noticed that isn’t true all the time.

I can say that I’m not having any trouble with swapping weapons nor is anyone with whom I play. I’ve not seen any people complaining about it in /guild or /map. That suggests that the issue is something related to your machine, your network, or the networks between you & ANet.

Accordingly, start a ticket with ANet to track down the issue and then take whatever steps to rule out things other than the game. You can update your ticket as you learn more

Good luck and please let us know what you discover.

I agree in principle that the UI for tracking achievements should be updated (it’s gotten to be really clunky). I just don’t see it happening any time soon.

Should a gold-fed cost, you know, 1g per use?
I think people would buy it if it removed infusions (currently: 24s per use), just for the convenience.

I can’t agree with nerfing any existing kit.

• Bloodstone Dust: craft Toxic Focusing Crystals. 2g11s in costs to make 5 worth nearly 3g.
• Use Airship Oil to make jeweled patches or dowels; huge profit in those (varies a lot with the market).
• Empyreal Fragments can be used for Magnanimous Sharpening Stones useful in certain support builds.

In your shoes, I’d create a support ticket to address this. Other people are able to use the internal /bug reporting tool (and ANet would definitely notice if no one was submitting any bugs through this route).

Regarding the other issues:

• Braham does get stuck in Roots of Terror a lot. They made some adjustments so it happens less often — generally, if you proceed slowly & kill everything along the way, he’s unlikely to stall. (Of course, I’m impatient, so I never do that.)
• No-show-Canach in Hearts & Minds sounds like it’s worth its own support ticket.
• You wouldn’t get Twice-Told Legend for Twilight + Eternity; you’d get it for presenting two bound Twilights to Historian Dozza in Divinity’s Reach
• There glitches in all maps; spidey-web seems to find more of them. That said, use in the in-game /stuck command to report each (takes less than 1 second).
• Modrem Snipers sometimes start their attack before you are behind a wall, and it will still hit you through a quirk of magical physics, depending on the attack used. Without the details, it’s hard to know if this was an absolute bug, bad luck, or expected behavior. Regardless, my condolences on the loss of your no-kill streak; I’ve lost more of those to bad luck than to bad play myself… and it’s horrible.

Vinceman.4572:

mazut.4296:

Yep, Devs stated raids are guild oriented, not pug. But it turned out to be easy to do with randoms.

So, the OP is doing something wrong, or not? ^^

The OP is factually wrong to say it’s impossible, since clearly all sorts of people manage to raid with PUGs on Saturday & Sunday.

I don’t think the OP is doing “something wrong”; I just think they’d have better luck asking for help on how to find the groups they want on the weekend.

Snow.2048:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The named mercs make for some interesting encounters; I don’t think they need to change, especially since they are all easily avoided. Think they are too powerful? Don’t fight them.

I don’t read the OP as a call for npc nerfs, but more an indirect ask why new skills are being made for npcs and not given to players

ThomasC.1056:

TL;DR : Ro venombite is yet another OP character, bearing skills with no common measure with player’s. Either it’s a bug, or it’s an intended design to have a veteran so tedious to beat, but it’s time to stop the power creep, and the crazy new skills for NPC’s only.

OP is clearly asking for NPCs not to have “crazy new skills.”

The worm always spawns. Always.
However, since the mercenary event bugs out (as you say: the mercs stop appearing sometimes), we sometimes have to wait a while before the boss appears. I think the longest I’ve been on a map between merc start and wurm spawn is just under an hour.

So wait it out or change maps (there are plenty for the moment), while ANet investigates the 13,187 reports (including at least a dozen forum posts) about this issue.

Definitely a bug, definitely should be fixed. At least there’s a work-around (even if it’s ugly & inconvenient).

Strider.5829:

Can someone PLEASE defend the design for me so I can feel a little better about it?

Sure, as soon as you defend every other design in this game and every other one.

There is no skin so good that everyone loves it (nor any so bad that everyone hates it). The more elaborate the details, the more likely it is that someone can’t live with some aspect of it. A lot of people were predisposed to hate medium armor because of the wire mesh that serves as the backbone of all medium armor.

There’s no point in trying to defend any particular skin, because it’s all about personal preferences and artistic design. I can appreciate the artistry even though I wouldn’t be caught dead in 90% of the skins in this game.

Trakarg.2095:

There are tons that I simply can’t get because HoT maps are DEAD. There’s no one doing the events. How the heck am I supposed to get event-related masteries?

I can’t agree that the HoT maps are dead. Further, many of the mastery points are designed to be unlocked via solo play.

Which event-related mastery unlocks are you having trouble with? Perhaps we can offer assistance? There are a number of people on the forums willing to offer in-game help, too.

Short story: no.

My work around: when I logon, I manually select the 3+ dailies I want to complete, before choosing the logon reward.

This achieves the same effect, without waiting for ANet to figure out how to update the UI to offer an option.

The short story:

• Players have asked for this since before the game launched.
• Periodically, the devs have said they, too, want this. But… there are complications
• Periodically, some players say, if you can’t offer us a great solution, maybe you could consider a better-than-nothing option. If nothing else, why not just save the build (like 3rd party sites do) — we’d still have to adjust manually, but at least we wouldn’t have to memorize out options.

Regardless, we’ve been given no specific details about the issues, let alone a time frame for seeing this in the game.

Miahell.7492:

I have a similar problem right now and i was wondering how long you waited for a solution? :s

You might wonder a long time — this thread is 2 years old; it’s not that likely that the OP will respond.

For your first L80, it’s fine to slowly upgrade to exotic as you can afford to upgrade, via Karma (using so-called Temple armor), buying on the trading post, or crafting your own. As a new 80, you’re still learning aspects of the game, and that’s demonstrably more important to do than improving your gear — gear (and build) matters; it’s just that how you use your gear (and build) matters more, in GW2.

As you do stuff with others, they will care more about your gear, mostly because there’s no way to guess someone’s skill other than judging a book by its cover. The presumption is that skilled players use appropriate gear (although in my estimation, this turns out not to be true that often).

In short, take your time gearing up. If you get stuck or as you grow your personal skill playing the game, come back and ask “what’s the best way to do X” and we can help with that.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The reason(s) are all those posted when it was first announced there would be the opportunity to join multiple guilds.

Actually, people have posted since that they don’t like the idea of expanding beyond 5 guilds.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One of those reasons is some feel it waters down guilds; less opportunity to be ‘loyal’, etc. There’s always a reason to feel some particular feature of the game is unsuitable for someone.

SkyShroud.2865:

This.

Honestly speaking, Gw2 is possibility the first mmorpg that made guild membership and guild itself so worthless.

No, it didn’t for me — it made guild membership more valuable. In other games, being stuck to one guild means that organization has to cover everything important.

In GW2, I can join a guild for WvW, for fractals, for raids, with people I know from GW1, and for guild missions. I’d also like to have room for a training guild (where I’m one of the mentors), a training guild (where I’m one of the students), separate out havoc from organized WvW, and so on.

I rarely find that any single guild can satisfy more than 1-2 of those interests of mine.

The one to Rule.2593:

I’d be for a monthly sub TBH, so we can get content in a reasonable time

More quickly than every 2-4 months?

The named mercs make for some interesting encounters; I don’t think they need to change, especially since they are all easily avoided. Think they are too powerful? Don’t fight them.

I’ve gone up against each with multiple characters (once I noticed their presence), just to see how I could do. I’ve also chosen to avoid them recently since (a) there’s no story tied to them, (b) they don’t drop any special loot that I’ve noticed, and (most importantly to me), (c`) they don’t progress the heart any faster.

deltaconnected.4058:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think it would be fine to include your interpretation on the wiki, citing yourself as a source. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you could just post your notes on the discussion/talk page and leave it for the wiki frequent editors to decide what they want to put in the article.

Heh. I don’t mind throwing in observations here and there when I see the chance (like this thread), but they’re still observations pieced together from client disassembly + the occasional red post + raw analysis of my own. Plus my code notes are all functional so I don’t exactly have any real reference besides “hey I remember this” :p

That’s sufficient for the wiki, under the circumstances

Like I say, if you’re worried about how it comes across, post the note on the talk page and the let the frequent contributors decide how they want to incorporate your recollections.

Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts here. It helps me (and I imagine many others) to understand what’s going on.

Vayne.8563:

Doing hearts …simply isn’t fun for me.

Fixed that for… me

Probably not, Nathan. A lot of the game’s progression is learning to do creative things with the same set of skills.

Upcoming in the expansion that will “probably” release some time this year: new elite specializations that will unlock a new weapon for each profession, the same way that Druids can use Staff, while ordinary rangers cannot.

Could it be that Jinath.1298 meant to say, “thanks for the link, Mortifera — do you also know if there’s an official forum?”

And that Mortifera meant to write, “you’re welcome. I don’t know of one, sorry.”

edit: my sincerest apologies to the OP for misspelling their display name.

I’d pay gems for this.

A lot of people have asked for this. When it’s come up in other forum threads, some have questioned why anyone would want 6+ guilds (some seem perturbed at the very idea). I can’t see any harm to the existing guild structure and lots of potential benefit for those interested (and ANet). The only question is: how easy would it be to design, test, implement, and maintain?

Randulf.7614:

Prophecies ended with one long mission though? It didnt separate as you suggest. It also felt the most epic of all, except maybe Nightfall since that was a God. The Great destroyer was a big anti climax for being so short

First time: epic. Second and subsequent times: tedious. Lots of trash mob fights that ultimately didn’t matter.

I preferred how it was in Factions & Nightfall: the penultimate mission was long; the final fight was short (win or lose).

vesica tempestas.1563:

$120 a year to simply be allowed to logon and play your characters is greedy and dated.

Nereikia.3507:

Actually, without a discount now you would spend ~$120 for HoT and the locked story chapters.

It’s $110 if you played since launch, which is closer to $25/year.

Total, If Purchasing Today: US$56 for 4.5 years worth of content.

• HoT today costs US$30.
• LS3 Ep1-4 cost 800 gems, i.e. US$10 if you aren’t willing to pay with in-game gold
• LS2 complete unlock costs 1280 gems, i.e. US$16 to purchase today, without using in-game gold.

Total, If Playing Since Launch: US$110 for 4.5 years of content.

• Original price for core game: US$60
• Original price for HoT: US$50
• Cost to unlock LS2 and LS3: 0, since we’re counting from launch and it’s free if you had a single character enter the game for 5 seconds during long period each story was ‘current’.