Guild Wars 2

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

As a matter of interest, do you run this with random people? You should if you don’t. Don’t go in with other ANet people, and don’t use 3rd party sites or systems (like teamspeak) to find a group or while running the dungeon.

To get the true player experience.

One where your team splits up to fight your mirror images one on one – can only proceed once all duels are won in your favour.

Another where you have to fight a dragon while doing a jumping puzzle to reach environmental weapons (cannons etc). Falling is death. Dragon regens to full if you all die.

Another where you accidentally fall into the Mad King’s realm and.. well go nuts.

As poor as it is to need a third party site to fill this requirement (no offense to the gw2lfg people, it’s a good site) there is a nice alternate use for it. Stats! :P

Here’s what I’m seeing as of this posting:
NA Servers – 188 entries, 73 are non fractal, and of those only 10 are story mode runs
EU Servers – 47 entries, 13 are non fractal, and of those only 2 are story mode runs

Maybe we should keep posting the stats so that arenanet gets the idea that Story Mode needs to be made more rewarding than explorable – just limit it so that a character can only “lead” a party through story mode once.

That means a team of 5 can run storymode 5 times with each member swapping in as the lead cinematic person. After that they need to find someone else to lead them in.

I’d like to be able to get them (or a chance to get them) at the end of jumping puzzles and mini dungeons, or after beating a dragon. Also one of those and/or precursors should have a chance of dropping at the end of Arah story for ALL party members.

Would be ok if they also dropped from normal mobs, like a random deer or boar. =)

I know it’s not a priority but I find it amusing that something I thought was pretty simple to fix isn’t being touched. Maybe I’m wrong… maybe if they put these goggles back Zhaitan will spawn in Lion’s Arch and kill everyone. ;p

2) Quite important. Story always adds value to the game for me.

3) Hmm both, but slightly favouring individual character development.

4) I am my character! Sorta, just less pixelly and such. People that know me actually comment how close my dude looks like to me. :P

5) While it should be a mix of both, I don’t like getting railroaded into paths and ultimately should decide for myself how to progress.

6) That keeps changing as my character evolves (and given he’s the same guy I use everywhere he evolves quite a bit). Defeating the final boss for me is a mere stepping stone where victory is just a prelude to the next battle.

7) Again, depends on the MMORPG. GW2 strangely feels more disjointed than say Mabinogi, with the main problem being the persistence/consequences of your actions (or lack thereof).

8) Totally fine with sharing the same plot line. Only in old school UO did you get personalized quests if you were lucky or managed to get the GM’s attention – it was very hands on for them, but it resulted in unique experiences for the players.

9) They blend well enough, though in my view we move up the ranks too quickly and don’t really participate enough with the mid-level groups here story wise then get railroaded towards the war but that’s just limitations on the modern MMO structure I guess. I truly pity anyone who has never had the personalized UO quest experience as for me, that is very hard to beat (possibly only by table top gaming).

Aoshi.4785:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

I don’t mind if I can’t ever get stuff on the TP, but I would like to be able to make enough money to afford WP travel. Nevermind the bentley, I can’t even afford a bus ticket. :P

Lol, totally been there before, hahaha.

Of course Anet wants you to play longer, that’s just simple business. And let us not forget, ever, that Anet is first and foremost a BUSINESS. As soon as folks can understand this, the sooner we will have fewer threads like this one.

Yeah, profits first – players later and all that.
With this model it really just takes one crazy person spending silly amounts in the gemstore to keep them happy too – meaning they can ignore the rest of us unfortunately. ;p

ps – nice blog too Aoshi.

Tarn – with that mentallity I guess you are also wondering why there are rewards for story missions, dungeon runs, wvw, etc. right? Completing each should be the only reward anyone needs?

I think the OP’s idea is a good one, and will see people revisiting already existing content provided it’s not super grindy. If I have to jump-grind for a million tokens to get armor then I’ll just ignore it, much like I ignore the current dungeon tokens now.

Can’t even reach the dungeon it since the events leading up to the contested gate are frozen on my server.

Dogblaster.6713

Or I would burn out faster because ive already obtained all I wanted sadly too fast

After you grind for all your nice armor / obtained all you wanted, you’re just gonna quit? o.o

I want to see what the maximum gold amount you can put into your bank box is. :P

Dogblaster.6713:

I enjoy doing dungeons over and over again. If I like the skin I am willing to farm for it Its my own choice, no one is forcing me to do it. Its only SKIN

BUT I want this skin to worth something, to be unique, rare. If anyone could could easyly get it, It would worth nothing. I would just destroy it.

I don’t particularly enjoy dungeons because a) I need a group and b) the rewards don’t really interest me especially since you have to grind them to earn the reward. So you know what happens to all the days spent by ANet making those dungeons? Wasted in my case, because other than the mandatory Arah Storymode, I don’t really want to run any of the others.

Ever think what you will do once you actually get everything you are grinding for Dogblaster? Dance in Lion’s Arch 24/7 (if so, can I join)?

Bluestone.7106:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

I need the gold so I can afford the frigging WP costs, never mind items and repairs. 5 silver is a lot of money to a pauper scrooge.

Lol. If you hadn’t referenced scrooge I would have pounced on you about your lies :P

As Parker from Leverage said:
I don’t like stuff. I like money.

Erasculio.2914:

I don’t think anything more needs to be said about how grind is bad for the game. It’s sad that the influence of PtP MMOs has created this kind of mentality. All ArenaNet can do is prevent players from hurting themselves, which requires a drastic reduction of the importance of grind in the game.

Can’t really out-grind a player driven economy but ANet can lower the costs for controlled things like dungeon armor tokens, waypoint travel and the like. Here’s a good example:

Not Grind:
If you’ve run every single path of a dungeon once you should have enough to get the full armor and a weapon or two from its tokens. If you want every single weapon as well, ok maybe you have to do all the paths once again.

Grind:
You’ve run every single dungeon path already? That’s nice. Do it 30+ more times and maybe you can afford the full armor and a weapon or two.

I don’t mind if I can’t ever get stuff on the TP, but I would like to be able to make enough money to afford WP travel. Nevermind the bentley, I can’t even afford a bus ticket. :P

I need the gold so I can afford the frigging WP costs, never mind items and repairs. 5 silver is a lot of money to a pauper scrooge.

Dogblaster.6713:

There are regular exotics – everyone can easyly get them

Where do these drop exactly? The only exotic I haven’t bought at the TP are the Mad King’s slippers from the clocktower – and a single rifle I gave to a guildy. That’s 2 exotics in 400+ hrs game time. Just curious.

nofo.8469:

Ditton.3149:

No, I said put up the money to start a server from them and that would be paid completely by you and your group, the moment its not making money, its dropped. This venture would take an entirely new team, if there are so many of you out there..should be easy to pull up the amount needed for a new server and team right?

Do you really think ANet is going to let some of their consumers have the source code to this game? Serious changes to this game would be necessary to make a PvP server even remotely viable.

The only way for a FFA server to exist would be to start an illegal private server which is not a good idea because even if you were so inclined, there are better MMO’s out there to use as a base.

I think Ditton was suggesting that the group of players who wants the open PvP everywhere idea get money together and pay ANet to open and maintain a new server specifically for them.

As for the idea itself I’m not a supporter. If it does happen though then that particular server should have no WvW (not be part of the ladder) and have no options to transfer characters to or from it (no levelling to level 80 on a non-pvp server then transferring over). Personally, I would only be interested in trying it out if it also had permadeath (you die, your character is dead forever and all equipment on them destroyed/lootable by anyone passing by – make a new guy) but given the nature of the first suggestion I don’t think they want this.

Sneaky way to get people to try WvW. Don’t mind having had to explore it, however it was annoying to “scout” out 3 borderlands that were 98+% identical anyway.

Just thought I’d give a heads up that events on the Cursed Shore seem to be frozen. Can’t get the pact to push forward to open Arah to finish my personal story (which is ironic since I actually found people to help me with it this weekend – opportunity gone).

As a fun side effect, endless waves of risen are pouring into the first staging zone (forget the name) where the pact is attempting to setup a base (which the engineers seem to have completed/forgotten to complete). Great endless source for high end mats and gear which I suppose is an ok enough trade off until you sort it out.

According to one of the many people there it had been this way for a few days now. I’m sure you knew about it anyway since you monitor stuff like this with your metrics right?

Question with the borderland vault. Does only one person need the key then they can open the door for everyone?

May also not like auto-lobbing grenades when you can’t lob “ahead” of a moving target. Just a thought. :P

[obviously not the problem you were having though]

Yes! Thank you nottsgman and everyone else who responded.

Actually I just had a thought. If “soulbound” stuff is linked to a character name then that would probably be an issue – and bad planning on ANet’s part. :P

Kopipoki.3542:

I’m pretty sure batman got a lot of attention from his parents, considering he was a single child.

Hehe, you’re right ofcourse. That’s why he went off the rails when they died and became Batman. Probably woudn’t have put on the mantle if he didn’t care about them that much.

Ooookay, gotta stop derailling thread with comicbook talk. :P

Kopipoki.3542:

I’m not going to send anyone tells for having their commander icon on in towns, but I do think that Commanders that have their icons on in towns are kids who don’t get enough attention from mommy and daddy and are searching for it in game.

Just like Batman?

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/5/59690/2051571-batman-my-parents-are-dead.gif

Sorry, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share that.

grizzlebizzle.9371:

So where exactly in Southsun Cove is this rich node that is ruining the game? I would like to test out the theory myself.

Top floor of the Karka Hive, which ironically now only contains one living karka.
They could always just put more crab faces in there to make in more challenging.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It was getting pretty abused. We had some solid metrics on it, and decided to kill the loot from one of the bosses in an attempt to slow it down.

It was indeed a hotfix.

So you actively look for the ways people are making coin and then remove or lessen it? That’s pretty scary. If that’s the case I think it will be a long time before I get over 10 gold pieces.

Hi all, just wondering if you could direct me to a full list of those things because it seems there are so many I don’t know about! Did have a cursory look around but couldn’t find anything (might just be blind though).

People whisper you their hatred? Awesome. I need to get me one of these books so I can determine which players don’t deserve to be in my guild, be partied with, helped, or exist in general.

Not really something I’d want so as long as there’s an opt-out function (turned on by default) that would be ok… until you get your dungeon group wiped when people decide to pvp in there while fighting against a boss. :P

Still would take a lot of work i think though. A mesmer in no-pvp mode uses an AoE attack against a worm fighting a warrior with pvp mode on – does the warrior take damage? Can a mesmer portal their opponent into a cluster of ogres? Do summoned thieves guild or warband attack players with pvp mode on? Lots of variables to take into account and not something I really want the dev team wasting time on.

That’s actually very funny, but yes – quite an oversight given that this is using the account name.xxxx (4 numbers) method for ID instead of character name itself.

Alternatively it’s intentional and they’re making a shop item for the name change bit.

Sounds great to me. Even better if the LFG is just server wide.

Lion’s Arch again? :/ Far out. Let’s see if they’ve got any one time events for Oceania this time.

piitb.7635:

They are following the same model from GW1.

They make seasonal events and push out some content, but majority of content is saved for expansions.

Heya piitb, since I didn’t play GW1 I just thought I’d ask – we’re the expansions there free or should we be expecting to pay money to get those here you think?

Hah I actually like that Solvar. Good suggestion!

I think I’d be more ok with the current costs so long as the WPs to each city is made free. Everyone does the “work around” of WvW -> LA Gate anyway which means that by design it is flawed to begin with. You want to make it cost? Fine. Make it like 2 gold to go to WvW if you’re not taking the LA Asura Gate – otherwise make the other cities free, not half/half.

Also, what happens if you die with no coin on you? I like banking most of my stuff – does that mean I can’t res if I can’t pay the fee?

Good thing I didn’t die in say… Vexa’s Lab in Fireheart Rise. That zone was pretty much dead when I soloed that place. Just seems like extremely poor planning and something that only a non mmorpg player would make. Hmm, do you think these people actually “play” their own game?

If they do, hopefully they are instructed to -not- party up with each other too, just to see how everyone else is managing.

Edit: Just thought of a good test for you ANet – make a toon on an EU server, have no coin, get killed in Fireheart rise or some other distant zone and time how long it takes for someone to come res you. Do this around 10 times (various zones) and let me know what you find.

wildcode.5403:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

That is such a great neutral answer. Certainly keeps us Oceanic people guessing till the next event huh? :P To be fair I don’t think he couldn’t have answered differently as the real answer will be how they handle their next few events. If I am not even given the chance to participate then I think this is the wrong game to be spending my time on.

I’ve seen it explained in other threads by ANet people that the timing is based on when they have the greatest number of people on. For us in the western pacific, GW2 is really quiet in our prime time, so to be involved in GW2 prime time event we need to wake up extra early.

If they continue to cater to their “greatest number of people” 100% of the time, then 100% of the time they aren’t catering to anyone else. I just wanted to know for certain, from the horse’s mouth, what their plans were for that.

Given that it sounds like 1 time events aren’t being ditched it will be interesting to see what they actually do. As previously mentioned, if I don’t have a reasonable chance to participate not sure I should stay. Also leads me to wonder why they have european based servers in the first place if they aren’t going to use other timezones. :P

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind missing events if I really can’t make them. But if almost everyone in my timezone misses an event due to timing that’s a different story.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Good luck finding other players or a guild to go around the map with you. It’s like asking for charity.

Is Arah story mode solo-able yet? That’s where I’m at.
Exploration is very easy as a solo thief.

Howdy! Just thought it would be handy to have a command anyone can use which would simply show how many other players are logged in to their current zone. Pointless hanging around some places for meta events if no one is there to begin with.

Also would be good as a general thing so people can report which zones are seeing the most traffic and which are getting only tumbleweed.

Chris Whiteside @ Reddit:

It is great that you are italicizing questions that have been answered thanks. My intention is to answer as many question as possible and then when i get home tonight I will continue to answer questions:

E3: How will future events be handled in regards to timing? Oceanic players are upset that the one-time-only events were skewed to arguably unfavorable times for them, and that many didn’t get to participate.

Moving forward we are going to do our best to design events that are accessible to the community as possible. We really should have thought about some of the ramifications of the design of the Karka event in more detail. In short its not something we wanted to happen and we will be rethinking how we do 1 time events moving forward.

chris

That is such a great neutral answer. Certainly keeps us Oceanic people guessing huh? :P To be fair I don’t think he couldn’t have answered differently as the real answer will be how they handle their next few events – big and small. If I am not even given the chance to participate in every single aspect of them then I think this is the wrong game to be spending my time on.

Also, at least one thing is clear here – 1 time events aren’t being trashed, which is unfortunate. Hope they realize they can just make instanced stuff that everyone can do at least once which would probably sort out this timing issue if they continue with this model.

tkalamba.2541:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Ahha – thank you to all who told me about the context thingy.
Didn’t realize I needed to learn to use Reddit to discuss or listen in to things about GW2. Seems I should have studied before hand! :P

I’d suggest learning reddit for more than just this AMA. It can be a valuable informational tool about pretty much anything, and posts you make have high potential for traffic. People have used it to get new indie games out into the market, or get their blogs known.

Hmm sounds like something I -should- look into then. Maybe it’ll grow on me (still unconvinced right now though)? Thanks for the tip.

Actually I think what gets me is Instanced stuff. Very hard to organize a dungeon run because people simply don’t want to do them. More to the point, we shouldn’t need to organize anything in the first place. Not playing the game to sit around spamming LFG. I should be able to wander into Ascalon Catacombs, or hell, even Arah on my own and run into other people running the open-world dungeon.

Then again I didn’t think I needed to learn/use reddit to do anything GW2 related but guess I was wrong there too. :/

Ahha – thank you to all who told me about the context thingy.
Didn’t realize I needed to learn to use Reddit to discuss or listen in to things about GW2. Seems I should have studied before hand! :P

Bullfrog.1324:

I haven’t used Reddit before. Followed this link

http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam/

No account or anything. I tap F5 every five minutes and get updated. What is everyone’s problem with how this is being done? I honestly don’t think having the AMA on the forums would be any easier to follow.

Because it’s a piece of poooooooooooooooooooooop. <- that’s gonna be kitten isn’t it.
No seriously, I go there and there are answers like:

Hi Plaid,

I agree whole heatedly and this is something we have and are continuing to have multiple discussions about.

Chris
——————-

Oh. That’s nice. WTF was the question? o.o

Debsylvania.7396:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Hmm I can’t seem to find the forum post outside this one that had the AMA questions and answers (that have already been answered). Can someone please link that here again? I thought it may have been folded into this one but I was wrong.

Gotta say Reddit is a piece of cat to follow, not sure who in their right mind would use it – given you have official forums to begin with. Hopefully he just gets around to answering the already assembled questions here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13lio6/prepare_for_the_chris_whiteside_ama_here/

Wish they’d just remove the currently accessible Ascended items from drops (you can keep em if you make them or already have them) and just re-release them when the rest of the acquisition methods are ready because as it stands they’ve got a pretty dead world.

Joseph,
Someone posted this link earlier in this thread. It has made my search for questions answered much, much easier as it features Chris Whiteside’s responses. (Note that you can click on “context” to see the question being responded to. Newest answers are appearing at the top of the page.) I hope you and others will find it helpful as well.

http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam

Thanks Debsylvania, but it’s not good enough for me. I can’t see the specific question he was answering in that view. The more I look at reddit, the less I like it.

MajorMelchett.6042:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Hmm I can’t seem to find the forum post outside this one that had the AMA questions and answers (that have already been answered). Can someone please link that here again? I thought it may have been folded into this one but I was wrong.

I think you mean my thread, yeah it was merged into this one – the questions/answered are now spread around page 1 and 2. As such i don’t see the point in doing it now as it’s all over the place.

Yup yup! I suppose the mods are doing all they can to obfuscate the replies further. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong and compile the question and answer list you already had though and put it in a nice clean thread afterwards?

Hmm I can’t seem to find the forum post outside this one that had the AMA questions and answers (that have already been answered). Can someone please link that here again? I thought it may have been folded into this one but I was wrong.

Gotta say Reddit is a piece of cat to follow, not sure who in their right mind would use it – given you have official forums to begin with – maybe they don’t really want to hear from us and instead want to hear from people who don’t play the game? Whatever, hopefully he just gets around to answering the already assembled questions here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13lio6/prepare_for_the_chris_whiteside_ama_here/

Wish they’d just remove the currently accessible Ascended items from drops (you can keep em if you make them or already have them) and just re-release them when the rest of the acquisition methods are ready because as it stands they’ve got a pretty dead world.

Losing steam now especially due to the last update but hey, maybe that AMA later will get me inspired to play again?

That’s a good list, I hope that Mr. Whiteside gets through all of them and realizes this is somewhat important for some of their player base. I for one, am looking forward to some answers as they will potentially affect my future participation here.