Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

That’s true, although the understanding I had was that largely what was making it unsustainable was that new professions (not to mention a big pile of new skills for each of the new professions) every six months was part of the deal – this created an exponentially increasing balance problem and required the team to do ever more with each new campaign in order to add new stuff to the increasing number of professions. Adding new zones wasn’t part of the unsustainability (note, after all, that EOTN was probably about as large geography-wise as the previous campaigns once you include dungeons, but only added a limited selection of new skills).

GW2, on the other hand, has added much less new virtual real estate than you’d expect even using EOTN as the baseline, and even taking into account that true 3D maps require more development than the quasi-3D maps GW1 had.

Mind you, on the other hand, comparing the numbers of new skills added is a bit of a false equivalence. A lot of GW1 skills were fine shades of difference, which in GW2 would be the same skill with different traits. There’s still less new skills than would be expected even from the most conservative expectations set from GW1 and taking into account the changed philosophy, but directly comparing numbers is being a little unfair.

Excellent points all around. The balancing issues that the team faced in the first game were daunting, mainly due to all the new classes and sheer number of skills, particularly since many skills had PvP versions. This is why I’m completely fine with no new classes on the horizon, no split skills, and less skills total than the first game. It greatly eases the dev’s balance workload and I support that.

You’re completely right about false equivalence between the skills, too. So for the sake of argument, let’s cut the number of GW1 skills in half to account for duplicate skills and the addition of traits. Then let’s cut it in half again to account for the fact that weapon skills are now an inherent part of the weapon. That puts us at about 176. Split between eight classes, that’s 22 skills per class, a much more reasonable expectation of how many skills should have been added to GW2 by now.

The zones are considerably more complex than GW1 zones, so it’s fairer to chop that number (67) into eighths, giving us about eight new zones that should be expected. Which means that if we get six new zones in Maguuma, that’s about on par.

Have you been to Southsun Cove these days? Not dead at all. Even LA always has people in it thanks to the megaserver.

Anyway, I don’t see a reason why merchants couldn’t continue to inhabit the zone even when the airship isn’t there, particularly now that LA is destroyed. The aspects could still be scattered around the zone, there could be permanent achievements put there, and the lack of counting towards map completion could be fixed. That would easily keep people coming back there.

Heck, put a couple merchants and crafting stations there and it would instantly be my new go-to city.

pdavis.8031:

What zone are you refering to? From what I can tell there hasn’t been anything removed from the festival, except the festival itself.

The Labryinthine Cliffs, the zone introduced to hold the Bazaar of the Four Winds. Once Bazaar ended, access to the zone did as well.

lordkrall.7241:

The problem is that the zone where the Zephyrites hang out is more or less completely taken up by their airship.

Except that it’s not. The airship occupied the upper portion of the zone. There was an extensive and well-established conglomerate of structures built into the cliffs that you had to climb to reach the airship at all. Only once you reached the top of the cliffs did you reach the airship itself. The non-airship structures actually make up the majority of the zone.

I also would love for the zone to stay, and I don’t understand why it was removed the first time. Just remove the airship.

lordkrall.7241:

Whole new map in WvW.
Rework of borderlands.
New skills.
Several new PvP-maps.
New dungeon(s).
New reward systems.
New world-bosses.
Etc.

Should I go on? All these things are permanent changes. Then add the massive amount of temporary things added and we have a rather large amount of new stuff.

The fact that you’re a GW1 player and seem to think that this list is satisfactory at this point in the game is completely baffling to me.

- One new WvW map and one new PvE map. Factions added thirty-three new zones, and Nightfall thirty-four. This doesn’t include towns, minor zones, guild halls, or the Realm of Torment.

- Nine new skills. Total. Factions added 343 new skills. Nightfall added 364. I didn’t count PvP versions of skills. That’s 707…to 9.

- A few new PvP maps. Zero new PvP modes. Still no GvG.

- Zero new dungeons. New TA path, yes. Factals, yes. There were a couple new dungeons but they were temporary, so why should they count? I can’t play them anymore, therefore they are no longer content.

- The rewards system is getting positive overhauls, yes.

- Two new world bosses. Karka and 3-headed wurm. Only two.

- Etc. I still can’t replay my personal story missions or the living story releases. I can go back and replay all of the GW1 story missions right now (and indeed, I’m doing just that.)

It’s not even close. For me, temporary stuff doesn’t even count by definition. Maybe it does for you. I don’t understand why. New players can’t play it. Old players can’t play it. It is no longer content. If you had a room built onto your house, used it for two weeks, and then had the room removed, could you say that your house has a new room?

Zylonite.5913:

Devata.6589:

I did not ask for both. Just expansions is fine.

I have worked in enough software companies to know that ANet doesn’t have the budget to sit back and develop an expansion while having little to zero cash flow for that period of time.

So all this talk of expansion is really a waste of time…..

They did it with GW1, and that was without a gem store. What’s the excuse this time? If you think the gem store sales = “little to zero cash flow” then you seriously haven’t been paying attention to the number of players running around with gem store armors/weps/backpacks/hats/gathering tools etc.

spritefire.5234:

It’s ready when it’s ready.
I don’t know why people feel so entitled to have something new to do.

For me personally, it’s because I’m a GW1 player. I’ve been with this series since a couple months after GW1 released. I’ve seen it through nearly every single update, every iteration and evolution of the game. I’m coming up on nine years of play.

We’re close to two years since GW2 release. Two years into GW1, we already had Factions and Nightfall. That’s two new continents, four new classes, two new skillsets for all classes, new PvP modes, two entirely new stories, multiple elite dungeons, and bunches of other things. These were enormous, gorgeous, and fully engaging expansions. I am seriously invested in Cantha and Elona, significantly more so than I am Tyria. I have very deep attachments to those places and the peoples that I met there.

When GW2 released, I assumed (as many did) that things would go like the first game. First release is Tyria, then a year or so later we’d get a Cantha expansion, then Elona. Or maybe reverse order. Now we’re about to hit two years and we’re just now getting to new zones. Don’t get me wrong; I have a lot of attachments to Maguuma as well and I’m happy that we’re headed back there. But I feel like this should have happened six months to a year ago.

I know this team. I know what they’re capable of. At least, I thought I did. But release after release, I’m more and more disappointed. The volume of content compared to the first game is just not on par. Instead of content previews we get maybe a paragraph and thirty second teaser videos. It’s all been building to a steady disillusionment in myself and others, and the Megaserver turmoil + the lack of any real communication with the devs right now are seriously exacerbating the problem.

So many of us are reaching tipping points. All we really want is for the devs to drop all this “hint and hype” nonsense and give us a straight up, real conversation about permanent, expansive new content in the future of the game. They stated a while back that they intended to deliver an expansion’s worth of content, but that they weren’t sure how to go about doing it. Well, I think they’ve had enough time to decide. It’s time to let us know what’s up. Hopefully the Festival release next week is the start of that happening.

I’m iffy about the reward idea, but I would love to have a calendar built into the guild menu. A notification system for keeping guildies up to date would also be wonderful. Relying on message of the day and external calendars frankly doesn’t cut it, particularly if you run an alliance guild with no rep requirements like I do.

That depends. Will it look as terrible as ascended armor? If yes, then no.

xXxdevildogxXx.5947:

Because as I see it game over at level 80 instead of starting

Well, there’s always ascended gear. It was added precisely for people like you that wanted a bit more vertical progression. Crafting a full set is a huge grind and should take you a good while to do. Legendary weapons also.

That said, Guild Wars has been about horizontal progression since the first game, and I doubt that’ll change in any major way anytime soon. It was one of the big selling points (and why ascended gear made many people very angry.) If you define endgame content as “chasing down all the rare super gear,” then GW2 is simply not the game for you.

Because of the megaserver, all servers are now highly populated. Except for WvW, server choice no longer makes any difference because we’re all stuffed together on a couple shared instances of the maps.

As for your necro question, the necromancer subforum can answer it. What I can tell you is that necros are great at condition damage (thus DoT) and that you would not need to restart to spec for that. I don’t PvP so I can’t give you a better answer than that.

As for trading and reselling, that’s a trading post thing and the TP subforum can help you out. Idk if there are guilds that specialize in that but you can always ask in the guild recruitment subforum.

No offense, but if you want people to address your concerns, you might try putting them in coherent sentences. But I think I can make some sense of what you mean:

- You feel like there should be more explanation of past Living Story events and past events in general to assist new players. I agree.

- You wonder why two weapons of the same power are worth vastly different amounts on the TP. This is because one has a highly valued skin and the other does not. Weapons of the same type and rarity always have identical power; the difference is all in the appearance.

- Why do you need to see someone else equipment? What do you gain by this?

It sounds like you’re coming from WoW based on your expectations. GW2 is a vastly different game and you’ll have to do a bit of adjusting. End game gear acquisition is more about horizontal progression (visual appearance) than it is vertical progression (there are no rare, super powerful gear sets. Only rare skins.)

CptJeff.3809:

Just like in IT an MMO deals with all kinds of people why should only the hardcore gamers get all the loot?

Because the fight is not designed for casuals. It’s designed for people that want to organize and coordinate. We enjoy the challenge and the sense of accomplishment from beating it (I’m still riding on the high from our first FA Teq kill this Sunday.) There are twenty other world bosses for casual play.

I never did The Deep, Urgoz Warren, or Mallyx in GW1 because I didn’t feel like coordinating with organized groups to get them done. I also never complained that they should be nerfed for the same reason.

If you really want to beat Teq: learn the fight, get the right gear, buckle down and plug away at it. But to come here and ask for it to be nerfed is just childish.

BenHUK.3869:

Kalarchis mentioned “Try a mix of power, vitality, and toughness gear while levelling” – but I tend to just use the gear that I find, not focus on ones which have certain qualities – where can I easily find the power, vitality, and toughness gear?

I craft all my gear, and for alts I craft them a new set of armor+trinkets+weapons every 10 levels. I’ve found this makes leveling much easier. That said, crafting is complicated and runs a lot of materials that you probably don’t have amassed yet. I’d suggest you dabble around in Jeweler and Artificer for the moment so you can craft yourself some trinkets and weapons and start to learn how crafting works.

Beyond that there are three reliable ways to get gear:

1) Armor/weapon vendors. These are in every city and sell gear at 5 level intervals. They always offer zerk gear (power-precision-ferocity) and it’s cheap, so this is an easy way to get your power gear while leveling.

2) Heart vendors. Once you complete a heart the NPC becomes a vendor. They’ll typically have a few pieces of armor/weapons/trinkets with varying stats you can choose from. Always check the vendor after you complete the heart to see if they’ve got anything good. You buy this gear with karma.

3) Trading post. Go on the TP and filter your results by level and item type, then search through the listings for what you want. This is probably the easiest way for you to get the stats you want, as the majority of combinations will be available here at all levels.

As for the “panicky skill use in combat,” don’t worry, that’ll pass the longer you play. Try going to an area with easy enemies (I practiced a lot on moas and deer) and just practice different skill rotations on them. Our combos are non-intuitive but at some point it’s going to just click for you.

First off, you should be aware that ele is one of the most difficult classes in the game to level, and one of the harder to play in general. The combination of lowest base health (along with thieves) and light armor makes us very squishy. But once you get it down and hit 80, we’re also one of the most rewarding and fun classes to play.

As others said, don’t pick D/D just because the forums told you to. Try all the weapons and find the one that you like best. I’m a staff man, myself. Have been since beta. And yes, learning how to cycle through your attunements and combo between them is crucial to your success and survival. Study those links virtualtourist posted ^. Learn which of your moves are fields, which are blast finishers, and what effects combining them will create.

Take it slow with your PS missions. I waited until I was 10+ levels above the story levels before I did most of them; otherwise I was having the same trouble you are. As far as gear, stay away from healing power for now. The returns simply aren’t worth it versus power gear, particularly not if you’re running D/D. Try a mix of power, vitality, and toughness gear while leveling.

Once you get to traits, I’d suggest Arcane and Water as main lines, at least until you’re more confident with the class. I still run classic bunker (0/0/2/6/6) and it works great for me. Water gives me lots of condi cleanse and healing and arcane keeps my attunement cooldowns low + fun stuff like Elemental Attunement and Blasting Staff.

Try all your utilities as well. I was very fond of the elementals when leveling up; the earth elemental is a fantastic tank. Glyph of Storms, particularly on earth, was my friend as well. These days I prefer cantrips, which I wouldn’t go anywhere without. And then there’s Arcane Wave. This skill is a must-have. It never leaves my bar.

Good luck to you. Let us know if you need any more help.

Last night our group of FA guilds beat Teq for the first time with 30 sec to spare. It was wonderful. A month’s worth of plugging away every Sunday and steady improvements finally culminated in a successful kill. And we have every intention of doing it again next week.

OP, Teq doesn’t need a nerf. You just need to find some guilds that are dedicated to getting the job done and sticking with it. Don’t be so quick to blame the pugs either. Now that the initial megaserver rush has died down, a lot of the randoms that show up for Teq are people that have some experience and/or are willing to listen and coordinate.

1) Instances – We already have a couple raids; the problem is that they’re not instanced. This is an issue for guild events as well. Fragmentation of the playerbase is no longer a problem with the Megaserver in place. Now players actually want fragmentation; we’d like to be able to get our guilds into private maps without bunches of randoms running around so we can actually do our bosses/events in peace.

2) Still waiting on a QoL overhaul for guilds…

Greetings, Vinsero. I’m the leader of a similar initiative to yours that was started on the Fort Aspenwood server a few months ago. Every Sunday a few of our guilds get together to take on Tequatl. We’ve been making good progress (haven’t beat him yet but improving), but gathering like-minded players that actually want to coordinate has become difficult post-Megaserver.

Here is our event page and here is our Google+ page. At this point the issue is simply balancing out the randoms with players that will actually get in TS and listen to our commanders. We could definitely use some help and would love to work with you and any guilds you can gather.

You can reach me here, on FA forums, G+, or in game at Beacon of Kormir.

Thank you for the reply, Chris. Despite my rants earlier I do appreciate the response. Ya’ll are very busy right now and I respect that.

But I really do need to make this point clear: the way the last two weeks have been handled from a PR standpoint is inexcusable. I’m not blaming you or anyone in particular b/c I don’t know who makes these sort of decisions in the company. So please get this feedback to whatever Anet/NCSoft big wig needs to hear it.

Ya’ll need a dedicated voice between devs and players. To drop something like the Megaserver and then leave us with zero response to feedback on it for two weeks looks really, really bad on you. “We’re very busy” isn’t an excuse. If you’re too busy and stretched too thin to handle basic PR functions, you hire new staff. Period.

I wish you all the luck with the Chinese release. And that’s the thing, guys; I love this game and I want to see it succeed. That’s why this whole fiasco got me and others so worked up: we care. And it feels like we were used as guinea pigs and then brushed aside. We don’t like feeling ignored, particularly not after you’ve thrown our communities into disarray.

Best of luck to you, Chris. I hope you and everyone else on the team get some good sleep.

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

The fact that the guys who can answer us are busy with China is exactly the issue. They did not leave anyone behind to handle the existing market. Why not? And why shouldn’t they be taken to town about this? If we did the same exact thing with one of our stores the community for that store would flip their kitten. It would do irreparable damage to that community and our reputation as a company.

It’s not like it’s a completely crazy thing for the Game Director to leave for a big launch. And it’s borderline insane to suggest that they should have hired an additional game director for the China launch.

Video games are not retail, anyway, and I wish we’d quit with the rather tortured metaphors.

Who said anything about a new director? I’m talking new staff. Hiring new staff to handle a new market/release for a game is completely normal, particularly PR staff when the new release coincides with a major upheaval of the existing market. I already noted that it’s normal to send some existing staff to help with a new release. Indeed, it’s recommended. What’s “borderline insane” is to send all the staff and leave no one to handle the existing market.

And what’s so tortured about the metaphors? They seem rather accurate to me.

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

As for developer involvement in the forums….make a post about not being able to buy gems, or ask how to put in custom music. The devs have no problem responding to those right away.

I don’t mean this in an insulting way, but how old are you? Have you held a job in a corporate environment before?

I’ll give you an example. My company has a big message board where people can ask questions. We’re an enterprise software company. I work within my company’s Education group, so if people have questions related to training, I’ll pop in and answer. I’ll occasionally also answer questions about the product when I know the answer.

Sometimes people have questions about the next version of our product. I might know the answer. Or at least think I know it. But it could have changed. I’m not directly involved in those talks. Or the meetings they have about how to communicate the changes. etc.

So yeah, somebody came in and gave the link for the playlists. What makes you think he is in ANY way knowledgeable or authorized to respond on behalf of the company on THIS thread?

He isn’t.

You guys keep acting like every single human being at ArenaNet is equally capable of answering your demands here. They are not. And the guys who are? They’re busy with China.

You don’t have to like it, but you should at least understand what’s happening.

I’m in my late twenties since you asked, and I work in a corporate retail environment. I completely understand what you’re saying, and I do understand what’s happening. What’s happened is that, instead of hiring new employees to handle the new market, they took all the old employees and moved them over.

Hence my store analogies. When you open a new store, you hire new staff. Some of the existing staff goes to help open the new store…but you only send what you can afford to send. You always leave behind enough to run the old store and handle customer issues. That’s how we do it. Clearly it’s not how ANet does it.

The fact that the guys who can answer us are busy with China is exactly the issue. They did not leave anyone behind to handle the existing market. Why not? And why shouldn’t they be taken to town about this? If we did the same exact thing with one of our stores the community for that store would flip their kitten. It would do irreparable damage to that community and our reputation as a company.

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

You really screwed the pooch on this one guys. You’re going to have to really work to win back the good will you’ve lost with this fiasco.

Or you’ll have to downgrade your expectations for developer involvement on the forums.

It is nice to see that the predictions made by myself and others that a simple “we are reading this” confirmation would be considered insufficient turned out to be true, though.

To go back to my new store analogy: if one of my staff went back to the old store, popped his head in the door and said “Hey, we hear you but we’re really busy,” and then left, would that be sufficient?

We’re past the point of “a response or two would go a long way.” That was a week ago. We (or I) have reached the point of “the way you’ve handled this whole ordeal is frankly shameful and my respect is broken.”

As for developer involvement in the forums….make a post about not being able to buy gems, or ask how to put in custom music. The devs have no problem responding to those right away.

ceol.9175:

If this drought of communication and bug-fixes is seriously because of the China launch, they should rethink something, because they obviously don’t have the resources to support a third region (completely separate from the other two, by the way.) That’s just supremely idiotic to pull all of your resources from the stable playerbase that still needs work and put them on an unstable, unproven playerbase. It causes tension and distrust in your loyal playerbase. That’s not even putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s taking your eggs from the basket, putting them in a plastic bag, and swinging them around at the guy who sold them to you.

This sums up my feelings. To the ANet dev that posted: thank you. Ya’ll are very busy with the China release and I respect that.

What I don’t respect is that ya’ll appear to have dropped everything to work on China. You hit NA/EU with the Megaserver, lied about the full implementation time, dove headfirst into China and proceeded to act like we don’t exist. It’s obvious now that you forced the full Megaserver on us so that we would be your beta testers and you could get the algorithm right for the Chinese release.

And you know what? That would have been fine with me if you communicated it properly. The fact that none of you can take two minutes to post in the feedback threads saying “We’re aware of issues X, Y and Z and we’re tweaking the algorithm and looking for other solutions,” is just ridiculous at this point. It suggests to us that you do not care about the NA/EU communities, that we are simply a means to an end (proper Chinese release.) Even if that’s not true, which I don’t think it is, it’s what it feels like from our end.

If you have the resources to release the game in a third market, you have the resources to give us a real feedback response. You mean to tell me that 100% of your staff is working on Chinese release? That you didn’t leave anyone to handle the Megaserver feedback hoopla?

What if I was a store owner, and in opening a new store I took all the staff from the original store and proceeded to ignore the (longtime) patrons of the original store? If my customers of years were calling, sending emails, showing up in person, asking desperately “What is going on, why is no one here? and I just ignored them? How well do you think that would go over? What would that say about me and my business?

You really screwed the pooch on this one guys. You’re going to have to really work to win back the good will you’ve lost with this fiasco.

Dear Anet,

You have killed my temple/world boss trains. I used to really enjoy leading those; now I get to enjoy the memory. I’ve spent over a year building my server community as a leader and organizer and the heart of that was my work running world bosses.

I used to run with a large and familiar crowd. Not a bunch of randoms: my people, from my server. People I’ve been playing with for a long time. I have a long list of followers on my friends tab, many of whom would pop into my current zone to see if I was leading an event.

I used to hop into town and see familiar faces every night. People I would shout-out to, who would shout-out to me. Then I would say “I’m off to [WP] to start Dwayna, come join me!” or the like. And they would join me! Because they could. They knew that when they hit Malchor’s it’d be the same Malchor’s that I just tagged up in. They knew that they could reliably follow me to any map in the game, and they did so, and we had a blast.

Now all of that is dead.

Is this what you wanted, Anet? Because I miss my community. I was in Harathi the other day and someone asked if there were any FA guilds present. I could have hugged the guy. He’s now in my guild, because I’m not giving up. We’ll find ways to organize events and build our community again. Even if you very clearly don’t want us to do so.

I ran full celestial before the patch and I still run it now. Yes I lost some crit damage but everything else was buffed by 6.5%

Frankly, I barely notice the loss in crit damage. The effective damage increase from more power/condi damage makes up for it, as does the improved survivability. My character is just as effective as he was before, if not more so.

If you bought celestial for the crit damage then you made a poor choice even before the patch (it’s a balanced set; zerk is better for that.) If your character is reduced to “totally broken” by a loss of some crit damage then you have bigger issues than regearing.

Pie Flavor.1647:

Kalarchis.8635:

My effective damage and my survivability have gone up.

how so?

6.5% boost on all stats. So more power, more condi damage, more precision, more vit, more healing, more toughness. The only one of my stats that took a hit with the patch was crit damage; everything else went up.

People that tell you celestial is useless QQ too much. I’ve been running full celestial ele since long before the patch and if anything it’s better now. Sure I lost a lot of crit damage, but honestly I barely notice it. My effective damage and my survivability have gone up. I assure you that for the right class (ele/guard) celestial is still a wonderful choice.

Saint.5647:

It’s not the scaling, but rather the coordination. I will explain.

Mindless boss events with 0 mechanics are zerged down rather quickly. As you know, the bosses scale to the players present. However, Lyssa has some rather fun/interesting mechanics to her. Because of this, many bad players either die/down or are unable to keep DPS uptime. You end up with maybe 40 players present but only about 20 of them actually alive/dealing constant (and acceptable) damage. The boss scales for the 40 players present but there are only really 20 of them contributing.

This can be seen at any boss in the game with mechanics beyond ‘Spam 1’. It is the same reason that bosses like the Assault Knights, Teq, Wurm, etc… caused so much frustration. The smallest need for coordination and understanding of mechanics causes about half the present players to carry the other half.

Lyssa requires zero coordination past getting the three capture points; after that it’s your standard zerg fight. She does not have special mechanics like Teq or Wurm and it’s not a difficult fight in the way that Grenth is. Grenth is a fight where you get half of the players dead/not contributing (b/c they’re being one-shot.) I’ve been doing temples for a long time now and you simply do not see the same problem at Lyssa, particularly on nights like last night where she didn’t even summon the gorillas.

Lyssa blocks/dodges/evades 75% of what you hit her with no matter what you do. If you’re melee you spend most of the fight just chasing her around. No amount of coordination changes that. Not to mention Corrupted Gaze, which does nothing but needlessly prolong the fight (she likes using it right at the start and end.) You can have 100% of the zerg attacking just her and it’ll still take forever. I’ve seen it over and over; the only way to speed up this fight is to bring less people.

She overscales; plain and simple. Sorry, but comparing this boss to Teq and Wurm is just a joke. Those require real coordination. Lyssa is just a troll.

We’ve added Sunday Tequatl runs to the schedule! Other guilds including [SDS] and [PVP] are joining us each Sunday to take on the big Teq. We’re still learning the fight and looking for more to join us! No experience required; we love helping newbies and learning together as a team and a server. Let me know if you’re interested.

It sounds like Fort Aspenwood Ascension would be a good fit for you! We’re a PvE guild with a focus on community building. We do dungeons casually, while our weekly scheduled events are things like temple trains and map completion nights. Last week we had a night where we explored Orr with our alts, and this week we’re going to do the same in Frostgorge. I’m going to schedule jumping puzzle nights as well, plus guild missions once we unlock those.

Feel free to guest to FA and tag along for one of our events! We’re mature, friendly, and love helping other players. Send me a message if you’d like more info. Good luck to you.

A lot of guild recruitment on FA happens on our forums

That said it’s mostly WvW and PvX guilds; if you’re looking for a PvE guild than Fort Aspenwood Ascension is a good choice. We’re a PvE alliance guild with weekly scheduled events and a focus on community building. We love helping players and would be happy to answer any questions that you have.

Tag along for one of our events; we’re attempting Tequatl with [SDS] and [OBEY] tonight (Sun 3/30) and run a temple train tomorrow (Mon 3/31). Send me a message if you’d like more info.

Dye question was already answered in this thread

Dyes you’ve already unlocked will become account bound. So all of your characters will be able to use abyss; you’ll just receive an Unid. Dye for the second copy of it that you have.

Bumping it up.

We’re still looking for active players! We have weekly scheduled events (including Balth runs with [SDS] on Mondays) with more to come as we unlock the guild missions. Please see the forums or whisper me for more info!

Shut up and take my +1

Top three in order:

1) The Nightmares Within. I had a blast leading zergs up that tower every night. Great atmosphere, good challenge, nice contained instance, fun content. I’ve got guildies who didn’t get to see it; I’d love to have a dungeon of this content so I can run it with them

2) Bazaar of the Four Winds. What a beautiful area. Not only that, but the wind/sun/lightning aspects were a ton of fun, as was Sanctum Sprint. This entire release was a big breath of fresh air and I can’t wait to see it again.

3) The Origins of Madness. Despite the trouble we had beating Mari in the final two weeks, I did enjoy fighting her quite a lot. It’d be great to see this fight returned as a scaled-down instance (maybe 25 total, one full party per lane.)

Since when was Trahearne the main hero of the PS? Sure he’s ranked above you in the Pact, but he spent the whole PS asking the player character for guidance and being humble, always thanking you and everyone else for your efforts. He repeatedly asks you to decide on the next course of action. He’s not even present for the Zhaitan fight; he puts the whole Pact behind you and gives you the charge, and afterwards thanks you with phrases like “The world owes you a great debt, Commander. As long as I am Marshal of the Pact, I will see that debt honored.”

Never once does he boast or gloat or even relish in his position of power. He’s not fond of being in charge and always takes the time to thank those who fight with him and make the whole thing possible. Even during the victory celebration after Zhaitan’s death, instead of taking the spotlight he goes off by himself and doesn’t join in until you invite him. Exactly what glory did he steal from you? The title of Marshal?

Considering the importance of Thaumanova to Scarlet’s story, I wouldn’t be surprised if the election was fixed and we never had a chance at the Abbadon fractal in the first place.

Dustfinger.9510:

I think this assumes too much without factoring in the idea that the resources of the Pact are already present. The reason the “Pact” isn’t there is because the orders don’t need to work in concert in order to be effective. The pact is basically already present, sans the name “pact”. because the Pact is just a joint task force specifically geared toward one goal.

That’s exactly my point. If the Pact is just the three Orders working together, and therefore involvement of all three Orders = Pact involvement sans the name, then why does the Pact charter not affect the Orders? Basically this means that the Pact can break their charter (and did so) simply by splitting into the Orders and not using the name “Pact.”

Which puts us back to my earlier question: where do the Orders end and the Pact begin? If the Pact has military forces (airships/helis/subs) that the individual Orders don’t use, has a charter that does not affect the Orders, and is treated as a separate entity in game (Pact showed up in name after the Orders were already there,) how can you continue to say that the Pact is nothing more than the Orders working together?

Clearly the Pact is greater than the sum of its parts. Clearly the three Orders working together in LA does not = the Pact sans the name.

As for limits in how much info a game can give players, I get that. That’s why I think even a small moment in the LS where we went to Trahearne and asked about getting the Pact involved would have gone a long way.

Dustfinger.9510:

Founded with the expressed purpose of batteling and slaying the ED’s. That’s the charter. it defines the purpose and reach of the Pact.

That’s not the charter; that was the stated purpose upon formation. A charter is a legal document given by a ruling authority that defines the operational rights of a subordinate entity. Nothing like this occurred at the time of the founding of the Pact; Trahearne told the Orders that they should work together and they said OK.

No one is forcing the orders into the Pact. So participation is at the orders discretion.

Not at all what I was asking. Let me try and rephrase it: if the Pact is made of the three Orders and is bound by a charter that prevents action unless a dragon is involved, why are the three orders not also bound by this? Any nations that have ties to the Pact through the charter have ties to the three Orders by proxy. So if the Pact interfering in LA would have ticked off the ruling bodies as a breach of charter (as is implied in this thread,) why is it fine when the Orders do it?

To be very nerdy: this is like being OK with the individual robot lions helping out, but it not being OK the moment they combine to form Voltron.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

The Pact was supported by the High Legions, the Kingdom of Kryta and other governing bodies. They would have been insane to lend material and personnel aid to a military force without a charter limiting what they could do with those forces.

Where in the game was this stated? I don’t recall anyone other than the Orders being present at the forging of the Pact. Nor do I recall a meeting with dignitaries to hammer out a charter. I remember the High Legions sending supplies, but I don’t recall any stipulations accompanying them. Was there some small mention of this in game that I missed?

And that’s really the core of my objection here: I’m the second-in-command of the Pact and I’m only just now hearing about a charter. You’re right: military alliances like this typically have charters and the Pact probably has one too. So why didn’t I know about it? Why do I know next to nothing about Pact protocol and organizational structure?

If the Pact was prevented from intervening because of a charter, fine. But why wasn’t this made apparent to us earlier? Why didn’t we get a bit in the leadup where we go to Fort Trinity, ask Trahearne about getting involved, and are told no? That would have gone a long way towards my understanding of the situation. As is, it felt like the Pact was nonexistent in the LS until Mordy woke up. Their complete lack of involvement, charter mandated or not, feels off and I think that’s what many people are objecting to.

As well, where do the Orders end and the Pact begins? Clearly the Orders themselves were not prevented from helping in LA…but the Pact was. So if I was a Vigil soldier working with the Pact, could I have withdrawn back to the Vigil to go help in LA? How do the rules governing the Pact affect the Orders that make it up? Where is the line drawn, and on what grounds?

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but the music and mini are suspicious to me as well. Playable or not, the mini suggests that we’ll be getting a character named Tsuru Whitewing, and I’m happy just to get new Tengu characters and potentially learn more about them.

Please no buff on enemy HP, that would only encourage zerker even more. Some bosses (like Golem Mk II and Caledon wurm) already have way too much HP when upscaled.

Enemies need to attack more often for less damage, need more interesting attacks (player skills like in GW1?) and need better AI. Currently enemies just stand there and let you waste them and throw out massive 1-hit-KO moves, which does nothing but encourage glassy builds.

As well, there’s little strategy required for taking out groups; rarely do you need to prioritize certain mobs. Remember in GW1 how you had to take out the healers first or they’d keep healing/rezzing the rest of the mob? The Aether/Molten/Toxic mobs have been a big step in the right direction on this front but we’re still not there yet. The lack of a trinity doesn’t help this.

Kody is correct. The reason we as players know it’s Mordy is because we saw the cutscene of him waking up, and the only reason we know his name is from the CoE boss and a confirmation from a dev post. Our characters in game don’t actually know either of these things, only that Scarlet used the leylines to mess with a dragon.

The dragons may not be why the Whispers and Priory were founded, but they’re certainly their focus at the time of our involvement in the game. All three Orders were introduced and sold to us as dragon-fighting organizations, the differences being their approach.

The Pact is similar to NATO but they do have their own military force, particularly a fleet of airships, submarines, and helicopters. This fleet was created by the Pact for the Pact.

To Konig and Alice: we’re not saying that the entire Pact army should have mobilized against Scarlet. It’s understood that they still have Risen to combat and can’t just pack up and roll out. Nor do I consider them my personal army to point at my foes. That’s not the issue here.

The issue is a complete lack of concern or interest until the dragon’s cry. Yes, their job is to fight dragons. But that’s the stated goal of all three Orders as well, and they had zero problem defending the city. And the Pact is just all three Orders working together…you mean that none of the Orders called Fort Trinity for backup? That Trahearne saw all three of the Pact’s component forces join in the fight and he couldn’t be bothered to send a single airship?

It would be one thing if it was a centaur siege on Divinity’s Reach. But this was a massive assault on the capital of free Tyria by an enormous army, not to mention an airship-drill nearly half the size of the city itself. I didn’t expect the entire Pact to mobilize on the city. But I did expect them to acknowledge the gravity of the situation and show some concern and support.

I mean, what if Scarlet had won and then turned her forces against the Order headquarters? All three Orders burning to the ground; would that have been enough to get the Pact involved? At what point does the stated mission of the alliance take precedence to ensuring the survival of the Orders and peoples that forged the alliance in the first place?

Have a look at our forums

Completely agree, Shiren. Their excuses for not getting involved ring hollow for me. Defending a city falls outside of their charter? Their charter with who? Does Anet even know what that word means? I didn’t realize that the Pact received their authority and mission from some higher governing body. They were founded as an independent alliance; they have no charter.

Who, had the Pact intervened, would have said “Sorry guys, you overstepped the terms of your charter by defending the city.” Especially given that all three orders were involved in the defense, the fact that the Pact couldn’t even send one airship (until after the fact) is just silly.

More time on:

1. Optimize the game. Seriously guys my comp has a video card too. I literally burnt out the CPU on my old comp trying to run this game; it’s time to optimize.
2. More skins that we can unlock through gameplay.
3. A complete QoL overhaul for guilds including halls.

Less time on:

1. The gem store.

Blackarps.1974:

The guys on FA were pretty quiet when I was there but friendly when they talked.

FA has been fairly quiet ever since the destruction of LA was announced; we were chattier before that. A lot of us are burnt out from the LS and I know many that are taking a break from the game. But we’ve got a strong WvW side and lots of friendly players and guilds. The PvE side of our server is a bit haphazard and disorganized but some of us (like my guild) are trying to change that.

I share your thoughts on this. It was an interesting idea and they’ve certainly gotten better at it over time (bugs aside,) but the major failing of the LS has been temporary content. I have friends who simply will not return to the game until we get new, expansive permanent content that they can enjoy at their own pace.

Nvm that GW1 spoiled us by having two full expansions out at this point in its life. Or the fact that ANet utterly refuses to preview or properly announce future content, preferring instead to hint and let the hype train do all the work. Now, it seems to me that has something to do with the LS; if new zones and content are in Maguuma related to Mordy, they want to wait until the current LS wraps up to announce that to give everyone the chance to see the ending for themselves.

So this epilogue chapter better be paired with an announcement of major new content coming our way soon. And frankly one or two new zones and a couple bosses won’t cut it. In a year and a half the GW1 team put out two full expansions. There is no excuse why the GW2 team shouldn’t be able to release one full expansion’s worth of content in the same amount of time.

I love this game, but you can only string me along with temp content for so long before I put it down and walk away. I’m not there yet…but another six months with no major permanent content and I will be.

Pandacroc.6591:

okay so I was thinking maybe scarlets evil plan was actually to kill the dragon by cutting of the food supply

This is like seeing your mom get breakfast in bed and saying “Yep, dad’s plan must be to starve her by not feeding her.”