@Xenon:
Dungeons are only an option if you’re level 30 or above. (The first dungeon becomes available at level 30. Many others become available much later.)
Personal story is a finished product. Changing it adds little to nothing for the game, especially compared to the work it would involve.
The personal story also happens to prevent race change. So tough luck on that. Not going to happen.
(Personally, I believe the no-race-change policy is not only grounded in this technical issue, but also in the thought that it would be immersion-breaking. Each race has a culture and history, and your character becomes a part of that. Change your race, and you erase your character’s place in the game world.)
Not every Season 1 episode would need to have a lot of (interactive) content. For example, cut-throat politics would only need a few story instances that serve as cut-scenes.
ArenaNet could then either make Season 1 available as free content (or just for everyone whose account has credit for killing Scarlet), or don’t make it free, but put it in the gemstore as a single package.
This way, it is not necessary to break down the episodes into relatively equal-weight mini-adventures (as the OP has attempted above).
Also, a minor nitpick: Scarlet’s Secret Lair was left out.
Don’t count on the current dialogues in the personal story to be “revamped”, if that was the question. The personal story (from level 1 up to Zhaitan) is a finished product, and reworking it adds little to the game. Players want new content, so slightly better-looking old content is not something they would want to invest their programming time into.
Don’t forget reviving allies. That also gives experience.
If your father is currently only using the keyboard for movement, you should try to get him to move by only using the mouse.
(Press both mouse keys at the same time to get your character to move forwards. Move the mouse around to change direction during this movement.)
After your father has gotten used to this, allow him to use the keyboard again, effectively using W to move forward instead of pressing the mouse buttons.
Next, you can get him to use Q and E to strafe. If he has that down, he should be set.
It’s only a gold sink if you don’t want to explore the world with that character. The gold/skillpoint cost is rather high, because ArenaNet wants to encourage players to do exploring.
(Agree with it or not, but this is probably their reasoning.)
GW2 releases Story Journals: Feedback/Questions [Merged]
in Living World
Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475
I do wonder how they will handle the large fights, like the end of season 1? Will you fight the 3 marionettes by yourself? If they did some scaling and fiddling with mechanics that could be a cool fight!
More likely this is open world content, the vast majority of which will be permanent. (For example, future marionette-scale events would be just like the Three-Headed Wurm or the revamped Tequatl the Sunless.)
I’m not eliminating the possibility that they could still make some content temporary, though (like the Battle for Lion’s Arch). Some of those things (like the Scarlet Hologram battle perhaps) could be adapted into fractals.
Colin Johansson never said it would be all we get.
He specifically mentioned story instances and permanent open world changes.
It depends who “you” are. If you are one among the many players, you are right. If you happen to be the owner or chief developer of the game, you may have legitimate concerns.
However, one mistake many people make is that they exaggerate their own numbers, until they believe “everybody” agrees with them. If one million players like doing X, but two million players are bothered by all those people doing X, then something probably needs to change.
ArenaNet never involves itself in guild issues. You can submit a ticket, but it will not do much for you.
(However, if the person who stole from the guild bank did other things, like spamming or verbal abuse or somesuch, you can report them for that in-game.)
Truth is, there are more (fun) ways to farm now.
And this is a bad thing?
GW2 releases Story Journals: Feedback/Questions [Merged]
in Living World
Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475
Why can’t it be all of the above?
Some new maps, events, dungeons and other permanent game features.
Some new fractals based on Season 1 (Scarlet’s hologram boss fractal?).
Some new story instances and the ability to replay them as many times as you like.
Some temporary content (like Scarlet’s Marionnette).
@LordByron:
It is not just about economy, but also about enjoyment.
Champion trains in starter areas were removed, because it was unwelcoming to new players. This is (rightly!) deemed more important than any contribution it may have to the game economy’s health.
Also, ArenaNet is not actively regulating the game economy. Their actions are limited to placing gold sinks (and item sinks, like ascended crafting) and managing loot drop tables. The prices of items on the tradepost are not controlled by them, only by supply and demand. ArenaNet’s resident economist, John Smith, appears to be monitoring the game economy more than anything else; all market interventions are indirect (for example, by compiling reward tables for festival events).
When circumstances change (either through players behaving differently or outside influences, such as e.g. Crown Pavilion opening), the possibilities for making profit shift. When this happens, economic agents (i.e. many players) will likely adapt their behaviour, in order to maximize their return on (time) investment. And in response to this, prices may shift and other players may start changing their behaviours, and so on.
You complain about this, yet it is only normal, healthy economic behaviour. An economy in which nothing ever changes and all prices are fixed is not a healthy one, and ArenaNet is not actively trying to do this. If one avenue for making profit closes, you have to go looking for another one. This is not punishment, this is market dynamics.
(edited by Jornophelanthas.1475)
You should probably also submit a support ticket about this. Because the personal story cannot be replayed on a single character, it is not fair to you to be forced to buy the trait, and hopefully something can be done for you. And a support ticket is the only way to get ArenaNet to specifically look at your account for a fix (if possible).
@kta:
Thank you for the insight in your consumer behaviour. Please note that many, many other people who play Guild Wars 2 have different priorities. ArenaNet has to decide where to go based on all those priorities, and not just yours. You putting your preferences in this forum will likely not influence which priorities ArenaNet will cater to.
As they say, nothing can ever be so good that somebody somewhere will not absolutely hate it. Let’s just hope that somebody is not you, or me.
I believe the answer is yes. You should view it as a healing effect with only one pulse.
ArenaNet could have solved the “Queensdale train” issue in two possible ways to bring effort and reward back in line:
1. Increase the difficulty of the champions.
2. Decrease the reward.
Option 1 was not desirable, because starter areas are not a suitable place to put greatly difficult encounters.
So they went with option 2; decreasing the rewards. (Although the demotion of champions to veterans also made the encounters easier.)
If you want free loot with no effort, then interactive games like Guild Wars 2 are not for you. In fact, there is a classic MMO that should suit your purposes just fine: Progress Quest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest)
How does asking for rewards that match the difficulty mean people just want something for nothing?
I’m not qualified to comment on EotM, as I’ve barely explored that map. However, regarding the Queensdale “train”, I can confidently claim that it now does give suitable rewards that match the difficulty level.
(If the content is very easy, the matching reward should be a small one. Champion loot bags are too big a reward for 3 seconds of auto-attacking.)
Will the content in season 2 be on par with that of an expansion but presented over the course of the season to develop the world?
I hope you’re not actually expecting an answer to this question from the peple here. Forum users are just regular players, who know just as little about Season 2 as you do.
The best you can hope for is people’s hopes and speculations.
I take issue with the thread title. The question “Why do you still log in?” suggests that the logging in will (or should) stop soon. The OP is putting his/her own personal bias into this poll.
In answer to the question:
1. Because I enjoy playing the game.
If you want free loot with no effort, then interactive games like Guild Wars 2 are not for you. In fact, there is a classic MMO that should suit your purposes just fine: Progress Quest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest)
The distribution of WvW rewards is the problem, and fixing it is probably a very high priority issue for the WvW team. I expect this to be a matter of days at most.
The Spool of Silk Weaving Thread is not listed under “Refinement”, but under “Ectoplasm Refinement”.
(And for the record, there is also an “Obsidian Refinement” that you need for ascended crafting as well.)
2. You cannot rewatch cutscenes and story dialogues. But you can read a summary of every story instance you did. You can find this on your Hero Screen (press H in the game), and find the tab on the left that says “My Story”.
For every story instance you complete, either a new entry is added to that screen, or an existing one updates to add more text.
(So no need to go to the wiki to get a general overview.)
This content was temporarily disabled by ArenaNet, because something went wrong with the distribution of WvW tournament tokens, and they want to fix that first.
That way, people who have received too many tokens will not be able to spend them, and people who received too few tokens (or none at all) will still have their reward at the same time as everyone else.
Sadly, unless more things have been fixed than I think they have, some of the trait quests are basically impossible at the levels that you want the trait at.
A number of the harder-to-complete trait quests has been changed at the start of the Festival of the Four Winds. For example, completing level 60 areas has been reduced to merely beating a specific event boss in a lower level area.
Next, someone will claim to have made the discovery that there used to be a seventh god named “Abaddon”.
And that the “Temple of the Forgotten God” story instance is a clue.
The old trait books no longer work. Trait tiers now unlock automatically (and for free) at level 30, level 60 and level 80.
The first tier is no longer available at level 11!
Also, the individual traits now require unlocking as well. This can be done in one of two ways:
1. Buy the trait book. This is rather expensive, because players are encouraged to use the other method.
2. Perform some task with your character. Next to every unlocked trait, you see a telescope symbol. Hovering the mouse over it, you will see the task that needs to be done to unlock that trait.
The idea is that you will unlock traits by doing these “quests”, and if there are ones that you don’t like doing (or that have tried and failed too many times), you can just buy the book.
All characters created BEFORE April 15th 2014 will not need to unlock any traits, except the 5 new grandmaster traits that were also added on that date.
All characters created AFTER April 15th 2014 will need to unlock all their traits separately.
Re: small clues:
What I meant by this is new NPC dialogue that is hinting towards slightly more (like the increasing discrimination against sylvari), and there have already been rumors about sightings of new (inaccessible) zone portals in Brisbane Wildlands.
Re: lawless armor:
My own speculation is that the “lawless” armor items could be the look of a new faction of people who will be the first new enemy of LS Season 2. For example, it could be the look for the “black marketeers” that Marjorie Delaqua’s seraph sister is supposed to apprehend in Brisban Wildlands.
The release date is next month, not two days ago.
Imo, problem is not the story itself but how the LS was being dropped to the players,
And this is exactly what the developers acknowledged they could have seriously done better, and which they will bear in mind for their future story content. (I remember reading this in a blog from either December or January, before the LS final started.) They flat out admitted that they should have given more background to Scarlet Briar’s madness/agenda before they gave us her secret lair.
Just presenting Scarlet as a raving lunatic who laughed in our faces as we defeated her (claiming she had won anyway) is what made people lose interest in the Living Story the most.
What they should have done was give us hints about the mystery behind Scarlet’s madness. Instead, they only gave us hints that maybe there could be a mystery.
So in this regard at least, I expect a significant improvement in the next Living Story.
They only just made the announcement.
The teasers are about to begin. I expect the following:
- Starting this week, small in-game changes will give tiny hints to what may come. (For example, conversations between NPCs in Lion’s Arch and Labyrinthine Cliffs.)
- Every week, a few small things change in the world, without announcement. (For example, small changes in the landscape of certain zones where things will happen, to prepare for big events.)
- The gemstore may start carrying a few new items that have some connection to the new story. (Maybe the Lawless armor pieces have some meaning already?)
- An actual teaser movie on the gw2.com website may appear no earlier than 1 week before July 1st.
In short: be patient!
Interesting, where was this stated?
I think this is just Jorno speculation based on past actions.
Yes, this is all my own speculation. It was based on the way ArenaNet presented their previous updates (also before the Living Story went to fortnightly updates).
Also: common sense. If on date X you first announce the release date of something new, you don’t immediately throw around a whole lot of teaser material. The release date itself is the first teaser.
Other teaser stuff is meant to keep reminding us that Season 2 is coming between the announcement and the actual release date, and needs to be progressively more revealing to keep our interest.
Perhaps this topic would receive more attention in the Lore subforum.
You can hover with your mouse over the name of every map when opened the world map and you see exactly how much POIs you have.
However, if a PoI has been added to that map in a recent update, it will not show on that hover popup screen, until you have actually entered the map at least once.
Sometimes, revisiting the Chantry of Secrets may help.
Recently added PoI’s that I can think of:
- “Wreckage of the Breachmaker” in Lion’s Arch (west)
- “Marionnette’s Landing” in Lornar’s Pass (southeast)
You should probably check each map for completion (and not just remember whether you’ve gotten the completion reward).
Note that newly added PoI’s and WPs only appear on the map after you’ve actually entered the map at least once since the addition!
They only just made the announcement.
The teasers are about to begin. I expect the following:
- Starting this week, small in-game changes will give tiny hints to what may come. (For example, conversations between NPCs in Lion’s Arch and Labyrinthine Cliffs.)
- Every week, a few small things change in the world, without announcement. (For example, small changes in the landscape of certain zones where things will happen, to prepare for big events.)
- The gemstore may start carrying a few new items that have some connection to the new story. (Maybe the Lawless armor pieces have some meaning already?)
- An actual teaser movie on the gw2.com website may appear no earlier than 1 week before July 1st.
In short: be patient!
Before saying something’s a mistake, why not wait and see how it turns out?
These kinds of conversations are important to have in the community since it helps the Developers see what direction the game is going and how their community reacts to their development.
It’s very beneficial for ArenaNet as a company to know were their customers/players are coming from as well as how they can improve or learn from their past mistakes to succeed in making fun and enjoyable contents that expands.
We’ll see what happens but that doesnt mean we cant discuss about it.
In theory, your point is valid.
However, ArenaNet is unlikely to appreciate topics/statements that are as unconstructive as this topic title. What they can use as productive feedback are rationally argued statements, and not emotional rants.
As you must have noticed, most of the statements arguing against Season 2 amount to little more than variations of “I hated season 1, and season 2 will be exactly the same, so I will hate season 2 STOP IT NOW!!!!!”
ArenaNet is unlikely to put much stock in this, because they have already admitted that Season 2 will be different from Season 1, and that they will incorporate lessons learned from the feedback on Season 1. If you choose to criticize the upcoming Season 2 in a constructive way, you have to take this claim into account, and argue a strong case why Season 2 will be bad no matter what.
All of these problems with temporary content can be easily fixed by looking at how GW1 did it. They had historians that would re-tell the story to the player, effectively putting you in an instance where you get to re-experience the past content without it affecting the current living story event. This solution is so simple and obvious it boggles my mind why Anet lacks the basic common sense to put it in.
First, lack of resources. All their developers and programmers were fully devoted to cranking out the two-weekly updates during Season 1. Based on the skimpiness of some of the content (Canach’s Lair during “Last Stand at Southsun” comes to mind, but also the pointless Dragon Effigies during “Dragon Bash”), I believe they were stretched thin.
Next, priorities. After Season 1 ended, they chose to first give the quality-of-life update that was the April feature patch. I think it is defensible to give the game a new polish, since this part of the game had been neglected since Living Story started. And after April, the China launch of the game took full priority.
Currently, Living Story Season Two appears to be the top item on the agenda, and it is quite possible that the thing you suggest will be in it. (It is significantly less work to include a feature like tracking progress from the start of a project, rather than adding it midway.)
Are you kidding me? How much extra resources does it take to put in an NPC that links you into an instanced content that already exists?
Also once the npc is implemented it’s a simple matter of adding new LS content to his instance list because the basic framework is already in place.
They did it with GW1 and they did it with GW2’s NPCs offering rotating events like Southsun and Crab toss. So I can’t accept the excuses you’re making for them.
Unless you are actually a (game) programmer, making a claim of “how hard can it be” is not credible.
You should look up the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
I am not a programmer myself, but I can make a few guesses why it would not be easy to implement such a thing:
- Some instances are designed to be exclusively solo (e.g. Scarlet final battle), some are exclusively designed for five-person groups (e.g. Molten Facility dungeon), and some are exclusively designed for the open world (e.g. Scarlet’s Marionnette). It takes different types of programming to craft together a single replay menu for all three of these types of content, and I highly doubt whether the open world content can even be feasibly accessed by enough players.
- Certain instances were only meant to become available after gaining certain achievements (e.g. Scarlet’s Hologram). Others are on a strict timer tied to the in-game clock (e.g. Escape from Lion’s Arch). Adapting these for replay requires effort on the part of programmers, as all these instances would need to work on the same basic infrastructure.
- Certain things that were added to the game after a given instance was already removed could interfere with the functionality of the instance. This all needs to be checked and tested thoroughly for every instance, before it can be added to the game. For example, certain NPCs in certain instances could start saying the wrong thing to you, because they don’t recognize the achievements they used to check anymore.
- The rewards on most story instances are not repeatable, or consist of festival items and temporary currencies that can no longer be redeemed. This all would need to be rebalanced as well.
- From a developer standpoint, it may be undesirable to spread the player base too thin across too many events. If this happens, no large scale event requiring some degree of coordination (e.g. Escape from Lion’s Arch, Scarlet’s Marionnette, or the Great Three-Headed Jungle Wurm) would ever have a chance of succeeding again.
- Crab Toss and Southsun Survival are mini-games that run on the PvP-engine. As such, they were already quite similar. And even so, developing the activity NPC functionality probably involved more resources than one person thinking: “Hey, that’s a nice idea. I’ll take the next five minutes to put that in the game.”
There may be many, many more things that professional game developers and programmers need to worry about before (re-)releasing anything to the gaming public, that we simply have no knowledge of. But just because we have no knowledge of it, does not mean that it does not exist.
All of these problems with temporary content can be easily fixed by looking at how GW1 did it. They had historians that would re-tell the story to the player, effectively putting you in an instance where you get to re-experience the past content without it affecting the current living story event. This solution is so simple and obvious it boggles my mind why Anet lacks the basic common sense to put it in.
First, lack of resources. All their developers and programmers were fully devoted to cranking out the two-weekly updates during Season 1. Based on the skimpiness of some of the content (Canach’s Lair during “Last Stand at Southsun” comes to mind, but also the pointless Dragon Effigies during “Dragon Bash”), I believe they were stretched thin.
Next, priorities. After Season 1 ended, they chose to first give the quality-of-life update that was the April feature patch. I think it is defensible to give the game a new polish, since this part of the game had been neglected since Living Story started. And after April, the China launch of the game took full priority.
Currently, Living Story Season Two appears to be the top item on the agenda, and it is quite possible that the thing you suggest will be in it. (It is significantly less work to include a feature like tracking progress from the start of a project, rather than adding it midway.)
The writing on Living Story Season 1 left something to be desired. However, once it started, it could no longer be changed. The entire story had already been written by the time the first negative feedback about the writing started trickling in.
At that point, they would have had two options:
1. Continue rolling out the original story as planned, and taking notes to improve the quality of any content to come after that.
2. Cancel the original story immediately, leaving players without a conclusion, and hope the game survives 4-6 months of no updates at all (not even a feature patch) while the writers and developers scramble to start over from scratch on a new story.
Which do you think would be worse for the game?
From December 2013 onwards, ArenaNet took time to at least give Season One a decent ending that did not contain the writing mistakes of the previous chapters, and
to better prepare for Season Two.
The four month hiatus after the end of Season One was probably not only used for the China launch, but also for the writers and developers to use all the Season One feedback to create a better Season Two. Remember, it took them 2 months on average of development time on a single LS update in 2013, and they needed 4 development teams to keep up with the updating pace. Writing and preparing Season Two from scratch (as well as developing the first few LS content updates) will take at least as long, if not longer, and I believe it is a good sign that they took the time to draw and incorporate all lessons learned from Season One (including the finale) into the preparations for their new Season Two project.
(edited by Jornophelanthas.1475)
I believe it was stated by ArenaNet that they learned from Living Story Season 1, both from things that worked and things that didn’t work. Based on this, Season 2 should incorporate the results of this learning process.
For this reason I expect Season 2 might include more of the following:
(Note: everything below is my personal speculation!)
- More permanent content, as Living Story events leave their mark on the world.
(There will still be temporary content, such as story instances, but it will no longer be the majority.)
- Less frequent, but larger story updates. Probably monthly.
(This allows players more time to finish the temporary content and achievements (if any) without feeling rushed. Also, the content should be of better quality, instead of yet another scavenger hunt across the world map, while killing X number of Y new foes for an achievement.)
- Story updates and feature updates distinctly separated and communicated in advance.
(This would be to avoid confusion. Any changes/additions to “quality of life” – including new crafting tiers in cooking/jewelcrafting, wardrobe enhancements, guild content, new skills/traits – will not be released on the same date as a story update. Players will no longer look forward to a patch expecting a new dungeon, and receiving only minor game enhancements.)
- Better options to keep track of the story in the game.
(This could include a way to revisit cutscenes from past Living Story updates, a character log of events that were participated in, or simply an NPC who can give players an updated summary of the past Living Story events. )
- New explorable zones in Maguuma Jungle, complete with their own sets of dynamic events, vistas, completion achievements and jumping puzzles. Perhaps even with a completely new dungeon at the end.
Also, do NOT visit the skillpoint in the most northwestern corner of Fields of Ruin. There’s a major spoiler there.
The other option is to learn to dodge and get used to doing it, which is a much better long-term strategy. If necessary move the dodge button somewhere it’s easier/more comfortable to use (I have it on the side of my mouse). I recommend using wurms to practice dodging because they frequently use a rock spitting attack with a long, obvious wind-up animation before they fire it off which makes it easy to tell when you need to dodge.
I recommend ettins for dodging practice. And I usually dodge by using the double-tap option on the movement keys. (That can be enabled in the Options Menu.)
Just a tip:
In Lion’s Arch (Postern Ward) near the dungeon vendors, one of the book’s main characters can be found. Do NOT talk to this NPC before you finish the book! That dialogue contains spoilers of nearly everything that happens in “Ghosts of Ascalon”.
I second this suggestion. Many town clothes headwear items have been converted to regular armor options. Why not the opposite, by enabling the ability to display your regular armor headgear while wearing an outfit from the neck down?
The reason mix-and-match was disabled for outfits was because of clipping issues between light/medium/heavy/outfit skins. However, merely the fact that all the glasses and funny hats can now be combined with regular armor shows that these clipping issues do not exist with headgear.
Refusing to dodge in this game is like refusing to equip armor in combat. You may be able to win, but it is very unlikely.
Dodging is an ability available to all professions for a reason. That reason is that everyone is expected to use it at some time, and it allows ArenaNet to design certain encounters that require dodging.
(A good example of this is the very first Queen’s Gauntlet opponent: Helmi Hammerhand. If you don’t interrupt or dodge his charge-up attack, he will one-hit kill you.)
I honestly have great difficulty making sense of the OP’s question. It appears every other word is incorrectly auto-corrected to something unintended.
In answer to the question, ANY profession is able to engage in both melee and ranged attacks. If you want to play a “hybrid”, really any profession will do. Guild Wars 2 does not have a “DPS/tank/healer” job division. Instead, all three roles can be fulfilled by any profession, often at the same time.
Most healing in the game (but not all) is self-healing. Any profession (if specced sufficiently) can deal damage effectively (though not all in the same way). And the dodge mechanic (available to all professions) ensures that anyone can “tank” enemies, at least for a short time. (But in this game, it is always better to not get hit by the big attacks!)
And as CountzuCrytus mentioned, the Guardian, Necromancer, Elementalist and Mesmer are the professions that have magic.
Really, all you need for the Boss Blitz event is three commander tags on the map for players to divide between.
Boom-Boom Baines really only needs 3-5 players with good dps who will always give the turret priority over the boss (along with a few others who don’t join in on the turret every time).
It only takes some time for organized players to show all the other players how it is done, and then everyone will be able to do the event the smart way.