Guild Wars 2

legion.7518:

Is the zombie MMO going anywhere? Cause I like the sound of that. Got a name?

I thought this was the zombie MMO?

Looks over at Orr and the risen…

Its unusual for people in the tech industry to stick around for more than 2 to 3 years at a single company. That the devs who eventually left lasted even longer than that is the real info here – it shows either
A: Their resumes sucked and they got stuck (doubtful),
or
B: ArenaNet was unusually good to its employees and doing amazingly well (which seems more likely given the end product we have now).

I keep trying to hit things over the head with my rifle on my engineer but it just keeps making this ‘boom’ sound for some reason. So I’ve gone back to meleeing on my warrior/guardian/thief/ranger/necromancer/elementalist/mesmer. :P

(A guildie told me flamethrower is a bit like melee, but it still doesn’t let me whack them upside nor downside or even rightside the head).

SneakyErvin.3056:

For instance, if a band completely turned their view in the opposite direction and did it under the same name I think many people would get extremly mad. For instance a black metal band suddenly decide to make white metal instead under the same band name would probably cause a riot among their fans.

/emote puts in Snoop Lion album.

Oh did you say something?

(/aside: I like that he changed, but he’s not “good” at his new genre, sadly.)

The comparison here would be more if Guild Wars 2 had been a super hero platformer…

Its still fantasy in the same genre and same world.

Players with an eye for detail can often find themselves in places that even look like aged versions of a GW1 location. I spent half the day yesterday running through zones that I could swear felt like Guild Wars 1 maps opened up to let me walk off the ‘path’ (I was in Bloodtide Coast and Lonar’s Pass). It felt amazing because it was like ‘seeing a place you haven’t been to in years, and noting the changes’.

The two games (GW1 and GW2) have an amazing amount in common. Its not at all like Final Fantasy where you’re riding Moas with a sword one game and fighting Cyberpunk jello blob aliens the next. There’s a very solid consistency and continuity here.

clay.7849:

@Kia

Do you understand what ANet stood for when they made GW1? It is quite different than what they have become in GW2. So much so that 2 of the three founders an other key developers left the company.

This is why I, and many other GW1 players do not like GW2 and feel lied to.

Man it must suck when people at work get jobs elsewhere. The whole world comes crashing down.

They should be forced to work at the same company for at least 2 decades, because one decade and then leaving is an obvious sign that the company is a bunch of lying scoundrels.

;)

Xia.3485:

clay.7849:

My biggest problem with the manifesto is that they said that people who loved GW1 will love GW2.

Surely as a “marketing director” you didn’t take that as a promise did you? I believe this is the main point of all your posts; you miss playing a healer (monk) in your old guild. “The good old days” mentality. Sorry you’re disappointed but you’ll have to look past your feeling to see the big picture as they say.

I have 3 monks in GW1 (ok the third one is not leveled). Yeah I miss playing them.

BUT I do -NOT- miss the fact that unless I logged in nobody else could play -anything-…

And that to solve this, they added heroes that were just good enough nobody but people I knew were willing to trust using a player healer anymore. People you knew knew you were not a fool – but random LFG, they could use the NPCs, so why risk me?

I went from completely needed for anything, to near total lockout from all group content unless I ran it with 7 NPCs… Especially after my guild basically became the home of a hundred abandoned accounts…

Oh yeah, and the whole thing that “not everyone loved it, so I’m mad at them” is just foolish… Anyone who takes that kind of marketing speech that seriously is going to have trouble functioning in the modern media-driven world…

Its almost as busy here as it is in WoW.

BUT the difference is that in WoW to get that busy I need to do cross server content. LFG/LFR. In the zones WoW is dead. WoW is always dead in its zones after people level out. Usually only one zone has any life left a few months after launch.

Here, I see people constantly in every zone I go to. Its hard to find a spot to hide, if one wants to do so.

Some spots are so busy I start getting flickering lag and have to head out…

And I get phased to those copy servers at least a few times a day. Sure its no longer constant like it was at launch, but it happens. At least on my server, GW2 has a very healthy population.

My WoW server BTW, is rated as ‘high to full’ (Wyrmrest Accord). In WoW they cross-server phase zones if they’re too empty. So I -do- see people in low level world zones. But not many, and they are almost never from my own server (it says on the titles above their heads). Once I hit PandaVille, ghost town outside of cities…

There may be less people playing here, but the population seems more healthily balanced around.

What they should do is remove the AoE limit for damage and conditions, but keep it for buffs.

- But I don’t PvP. And so, they should only do this if zerg mobs are seen as a problem. If zerging is the desired tactic (in ArenaNet’s opinion), then leave as is.

Rouven.7409:

That would be a great incentive for group-play. The more people come together, the more skills we get. Powerful skills like the skrittinizer, shiny-mass-hypnosis, skritt-stampede and last but not least skritt attack formations. Think romans, think the turtle!

Yes, who need elves when you can have skritt, they are actually like dwarves really.

I so want to play a Skritt. But… I don’t know how they’d do the stupid when alone thing unless when solo we got a WoW-like action bar (Oh yeah, I went there ), and the buttons got more focused but more useful the more of us ikittenone. :P

Oh and, “Skritt are just copied from EQ2”…
- Not really, but heh…
“Sylvarri are just copied from 1970’s table-top RPG RuneQuest”
- Which called them elves… but made them plant people.
/sigh

Adine.2184:

I dont know about 80% but i can tell you that a lot of people who played GW 1 were taught for 7+ years that the Charr are evil and should have been wiped off the face of Tyria 250 years ago . Do to this very correct view i would fathom to guess that a lot of people refuse to play Charr

UM…

Its right in the manual of the first chapter of GW1 that the Charr are in the right for attacking Ascalon. Its right in there that Ascalon was their homeland.

For 7+ years, we were stuck playing an invasion force trying to slaughter the natives. Now we finally get to be on the good side, but we’ve got this pesky treaty and can’t exact vengeance unless we get lucky and randomly pop into the right fractal.

EDIT: Resolved itself somehow by late that evening.

Guild name: Justice and Honor [JAH]
Server: Tarnished Coast.
- I formed this guild about 3 minutes after the servers went live on launch day.

Chat claims I am not in my own guild.

Have tried relogging, rebooting machine, restarting router (with 2 minute unplugged pause), restarting client, and several characters. Tried standing down and re-representing, and multiple zones.

I’m founder and co-GM and no, my brother has not booted me out, and there I am in the guild panel. But unable to guild chat…

Other abilities seem fine. I just promoted a member a second ago with no trouble. Also still able to edit guild emblem.

legion.7518:

You guys haven’t commented on what I said about the Charr and Asuran races. I don’t think anyone can deny that most people really don’t like to play those races. This game just doesn’t have enough cool races.

Charr are the whole reason I was drawn to GW2.

After seeing who the real heroes of GW1 were, and that humans were the evil force driving the other races back. GW1 having been a story of the Charr trying to reclaim their homeland – I’ve wanted to play one since 2005.

GW2 finally gave me that chance.

I could care less about Sylvarri. I called them out as elf-pron when they were first announced. But thankfully the hentai-looking original model got scrapped. The plant people, I don’t object to – they just bore me.

Asura are a lot of fun and very interesting.

Norn… meh. Somebody has a Viking that acts like a Native American thing over at ArenaNet. I’ve got 2 because the model is often better than the human one for certain looks – but could care less for them as a concept. They’re the “we dialed it in and just added big humans because we ran out of ideas” race.

But don’t diss my Charr.

You want epic races and then you ask for Santa’s Elves as done by Tolkien? That’s like saying “I want amazing” and then going out and buying a Hinda Civic like the other 100 people on your block…

legion.7518:

What do the most successful fantasy MMOs have in common? They had elves! People love elves. Remember EQ? And then WoW.

We don’e need elf-pron ERPing in Lion’s Arch in this game. Take that to WoW.

The LAST thing this game needs is Tolkien’s warped interpretation of Santa’s Shoemaking crew for the XXX-texting crowd.

You want WoW or EQ? The door is —-———————————> That way.

Here’s a Krytan:

Next to my Elonan monk for contrast.

And the second shot is another Jennah, looking as Caucasian as Britain’s Queen Mother.

Because I have 9 character slots. I have everything at least once, though I’m setting up to delete the Sylvarri as I just don’t care for them. The human model is interesting and once I got over Logan being a complete tool, I’ve had fun with them in this game unlike other multi-species MMOs where I tend to never play the humans.

Her skin’s pretty pale on my screen. Attachment below.

Maybe I’ve got a graphical glitch or something, because on my screen, I get her showing up as an Ascalonian with what is basically northern European pale skin, not the African-mix of a Krytan.

Asante:

Currently level 38. Got a ways to go.

Sicne she’s a Krytan and not an Ascalonian, she should have dark skin, like a person of Half-African / Half-Caucaisn descent. Otherwise the existing model for her is fine.

I’ve met countless people who refused to play GW1 because it only had 20 levels.

It doesn’t matter that both games technically have unlimited levels – every so many XP you get something. And that technically both games have levels that are meaningless past a fairly early point…

People want that number over their heads, and want it to be big…

So we have it.

The average movie costs a little over $8 for 90 minutes of Hollywood junk (to be polite).

So by the hour, that’s a little over $5.33

I have 395 hours played in GW2. If I’d gone to the movies, that would be $2106.67.
Instead I’ve paid $60, plus about the same again for bank and character slots.

Either movies are obscenely over-priced, or I’ve gotten way more than my money’s worth out of GW2.

Also in the city I live, I’d be lucky to find a movie as cheap as $8… That’s just the cost google claims is average.

Makeda, my norn mesmer:

If you’ve run out of content, it is likely only because you’re playing it wrong and actually have not run out of content, you just think you have:

“GW2 – Slowing down can change the game completely”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTF9T4oQ480

- Watch the video, and see how you have likely missed 90% of the game by doing the “typical other MMO player’s path” of 100% map, and zerg grinding gear for the non existent raid.

I went through years of patches in WoW that would completely wipe my entire list of abilities and replace them with all new ones.

I still can’t play a paladin since they changed it at the end of BC – giving it a rotation instead of the older “more complex than warrior” priority list.

At least Guardian still has the same general actions now. At least you still have the weapon. At least you can still play the same playstyle.

Moving a skill from one number to another is pretty small compared to what some MMOs have done to classes.

Aggro often but not always favors based on range.
It can also favor based on damage and a priority list of professions (which changes spawn to spawn, monster to monster).

Are you a mostly ranged group but for the warriors? Are they glass cannons that do -too much- damage?
- Both of these could lead to them having too much aggro.

Is there some ability in GW2 called “Low hanging Fruit” or some other reason to title this thread after the name for lynching a black man in the US south?

Kushiel – Human Ranger

Despite the image, I’m mostly melee, trying out sword/torch at the moment.

Cik.6479:

Kouken.8604:

. . .
Personally allowing easy(ish) access to full exotics to most players is a perfect system. . .

Hmmm…I grew-up with the learning that a socialist system is far less than a perfect system.

But that’s me.

Two posts into this thread and somebody’s already dragging out the Libertarian’s Boggyman.

The modern /Godwin…

Seriously… is EVERYTHING so black and white in your universe?

Try a discussion without a godwin-like-phrase phrase…

I’ve got one of each class.

I like 8 of the classes in this game. But the rest of them suck.

The people who complain a lot, in my opinion, really don’t know enough about their class…

Some of them are playing it like “X” from MMO “Y” and wondering why that fails. Your thief is not a rogue, nor a rouge. Your elementalist is not a mage. And your Guardian is not a Prot-Paladin.

Some of them picked A when they really wanted B – but a B that had the name A
(rangers with no pets: this is known as thief or warrior. Thief or warrior with pets: this is known as ranger. If this hurts you, just get a pen and write the word “thief” over where the name of your profession appears on your monitor.)

Some say they want an MMO that is different, but when it is handed to them they gripe about everything that actually is different, and then point at the familiar similar things and say “see, this MMO is 123% identical to my old MMO.”
- And this seems to be the big issue at the moment… though none of them want to admit it. This, plus people who insist they know everything, so when confronted with something they don’t know, they get angry.

Take a lesson from Socrates: The path to wisdom is to insist you’re an absolute fool. That way, anytime you find something new; it presents an opportunity to learn and enjoy becoming wiser. You get to be smarter and happier.

The real question is not how much damage that thief did – but how much toughness you had to mitigate it down from 22k.

If you were yourself a glass canon, you deserve to get 3-shot. If not… then there may be something to say, unless your mobility or dodging was poor.

Lore wise there should be a few thousand of the Elonans.

The majority of people should have a skin tone that looks native Hawaiian (look at the Krytans in GW1) – though not those features.

The Order of Whispers is an Elonan order – and there have been several waves of refugees. The last of these ending 50 years ago.

My two humans are Elonans:

If Orr is too hard, they have a feature called downleveling that lets you do the more forgiving zones.

Characters with an African look is a legit concern, as are Asian appearing ones – due to both Cantha and Elona being parts of the GW world, AND having, according to the lore, sizeable populations in Divinity’s Reach.

The Krytans should be a deep tan with a Polyneasian like look to them – but in GW2, they seem to have become mostly Ascalonian in look.

There are truly Krytan looking people around, and a few that look Elonan. I think I’ve seen a grand total of one NPC that could pass for a Canthan.

Agemnon.4608:

I’ve seen some on my server. As for NPCs Queen Jennah looks black.

Um…

No…

She doesn’t.

She looks as black as Sara Palin. Which isn’t.

Wrong features, skin tone, and hair.

Got my second run in. We had one 59, rest close to level. At least 2 people were on their first time on those characters – but for one guildie (the other warrior) it was his third character. For 46 necro had never been on any toon from what I gathered. The ranger – I don’t know.

I noticed a -BIG- difference between the pulls where people listen to called targets and the ones where they don’t.

As in -smooth- vs -OMG, NOT THE FACE! NOT THE FACE!-

Its difficult, takes minor coordination (if you call the right target – and I called the wrong one on one fight- and everyone hits it, its still not -that- hard), and is a blast of a fun thrill ride.

I ended up 1 silver ahead, and maybe 2 1/2 bars of XP ahead. Would have been more – if we’d had more coordinated pulls.

So this groups is closer to the ideal makeup level wise, and I still say its well done now.

Yes, its why I make sure I’m at the dungeon portal when I send out the last invite, and then jump in right away. Make sure its you or a guildie that gets in first…

BUT, we need this feature changed so that if a group starts to break up, who-ever stays inside stays inside…

So I’m not alone in thinking the change is about right. Though I go further and call it a great improvement.

I work my build as a hybrid – points spread evenly between defense, tactics, and discipline,
I use crafting to get at-level gear every 5 levels.

I run with hammer and rifle, or hammer and mace/shield.
- Rifle is mostly for pulling, switching back to it only for backup moments. I pull with the F1 ability thanks to one of my signets, and try to pull so I grab some but not all of the mobs ahead, using LoS etc to grab them back.

Utility bar for me:
Healing Signet, Signet of Fury, Battle Roar (sometimes swap for Dolyak signet despite others saying that is weak), Banner of Discipline or Defense, and Battle Standard.

Arms: Deep Strike.
Defense: Turtles Defense
Discipline: Warrior’s Sprint (need to change this, this was meant for soloing and I forgot about it).

- CM and AC are both now fun in that they are challenging thrill rides you know will punish you if you make mistakes – and you will get that thrill of victory from when you pull it off well. They’re no longer farming content – which is good.

WIll now try to get an at-level group going for CM-story; hopefully over the weekend. I suspect I’ll have the same opinion. SInce people have raised this point – I don’t think it makes a difference, but I will accept a challenge of going and seeing. Holding my Warrior at current level until I can get that group assembled.

The greater difficulty is an improvement. The lesser rewards likewise.

This game is not meant to have modes of farming – and dungeons are not meant to be something one needs to run in endless repeat. Dungeon armor: its just a skin folks – for people who like its look and love these thrill rides.

And a difference of opinion: that is not a troll. Some of you need to go back to school and re-learn debate if that is how you rebut every argument you disagree with. Most of you have real opinions – including those against me. But the people who call troll – that’s poor reasoning. Resorting to personal attack is the last resort of the -LOSING- debater. So keep that out; post your real argument against me if you have one – others have managed to.

As for not noticing party levels… some of us watch the game’s screen, not the UI. I never looked at the party window until the end. Was halfway through AC last night before I thought to check it.

Ran AC-Story last night. This time I was number 2 in level, with a 49 above me and a 35 and 30 below me. A little harder than last time I went – mostly because these were 3 PUGlies and 1 guildie, and we were not in voice.

BUT it was still a lot of fun, and a good challenge. End reward for me was I think a hundred or two over 1000, and about 1-silver. But I came out 20s ahead from drop throughout the dungeon – after spending about 10-12s on repairs because we were less coordinated (ex: I didn’t realize until halfway through that only one other person understood the call-targeting I was doing).

So I still think the dungeons are headed in the right direction. My guildie was less convinced – wanting to know why you would run them.

To me that is exactly the point – there should not -BE- a reason to run them. This way NO-ONE feels -pressure- to run them. Only people who find this kind of challenge fun will be there.

Unlike in WoW, where everyone felt forced to run dungeons to keep up – here, they are just an option for people who like that kind of thrill ride.

Which is great.

If playing the game is boring to you – why are you even bothering to grind for it?

The design goal of the game is that the ideal rewards should come from normal play.

Normal play is defined as doing a mix of content. Not a focused content.

That means ALL of DEs, hearts, exploring, crafting, Dungeons, WvWvW, etc.

Farming is usually a narrow focus kill repetitive mobs affair – if that is what you are doing, it should have the lowest possible reward. Grinding mobs is specifically meant to be the bottom end of the reward spectrum.

If you’re doing something else – but it is still repetitive, then it is still meant to be lower reward than varied play.

Over time and patches, and finding new ways people exploit the system – you can be sure they will plug the ‘holes’ that people are using to skirt around varied play.

@AFKjosh: Trolling. Are you serious?

Anyone who is not your opinion is a troll. Looks to me like you’re doing trolling by that standard.

These new dungeons are perfection – they challenge a group, and they’re not there for quickie rewards, but for the thrill ride of doing them.

This is now getting closer to what I was ‘promised’ out of their marketing material pre-launch. A game worth leaving WoW for.

Want dungeon farming, go to WoW… boring quickie dungeons you repeat 1000-times.

I want challenge, and a thrill from getting through. XP is meant to come from doing the story of the world: exploring, DEs, hearts, personal. First run through a dungeon is ok for some reward – after that, you should be there for the game, the thrill, the challenge.

This is just right.

Spectacles.5097:

I’m 47 and I get 2100 exp per event in my zone. You getting 1200 exp from that dungeon (which I ran today and took over an hour) is about equal if not less than what you would get from an event at your level.

Which is exactly what it should be.

235 hours :P

No 80s.

8 characters.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.

Everyone in there was dropped to 40 on entering. We were all level 14 in the area outside to dungeon so I had no idea we had a 79 in the group until he started talking about planning to hit 80 tonight.

We’ve all got the same skill bars now – so we’re essentially on par. Maybe it would have been a little tougher with all level 40s – but given the difficulty it had, that would just make it equal to AC, and not slightly easier – so still no bad thing.

I’m VERY glad for the dungeon change – even if it means I will be wiping like crazy for a while. I ran CM-Story twice the night before the change – first times there. I was -SHOCKED- at the XP I got on the second run. So much so I felt I had to leave group and maybe avoid dungeons… It felt like an exploit…

I’ve just gotten out of a run of the new CM-Story.

AMAZING.

Much better than it used to be, its now a challenge. It gives a modest bit of XP, and enough coin to break even on cost once you learn to stop faceplanting as many times as I did (I had to repair 6 items – the same 3 twice). Loot was what I’d expect from story mode – stuff to salvage. One 79 in our group got a level 45 yellow, but the rest of us got normal salvage style drops.

It tested my as yet modest GW2-style skills. We had to coordinate. We had to think about what we were doing. I could not faceroll it this time.

Its fun now – a challenge – not AFK-easy. Not something to farm, but to get a thrill-ride out of.

This one is now just about perfect.

You can melee bosses just fine – and don’t need to kite or ‘get out’ all the time. But you do need mobility – just smart mobility. And you need to not tank the boss, but melee the boss.

Its working just fine – you just don’t play it like you would WoW or EQ. Play it like you would City of Heroes. Or if you’ve ever had the misfortune of being in a RL shootout or gang fight or military engagement – its a bit like that.

It is VERY strategic and tactical, but not WoW or EQ.

It can be handy to rebind them to shift-1 through shift-4 anyway, to make them easier to hit (at least for me – was doing this in bootcamp already).

OS 10.8.1 2011 iMac here.

21.5-inch
4gb 1333 MhZ DDR3 ram
2.5 GHz Intel Core i%
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512MB

Getting about identical FPS to that I get in bootcamp, to up to 5FPS more (27-32). But in windowed mode the bottom of the screen is clipped off – so the FPS gain might not be worth it until that gets fixed.

In bootcamp I run with textures on high, shaders high, post process high. FXAA anti-alias. Doing the same here except textures only go up to medium.

Add me to the list of folks with this issue. Bottom of the screen gets clipped.

Running in windowed mode on Windows (bootcamp) – no such clipping.

It is quite severe – clipping the entire size of the login button – on the character select panel, the frame ends at the bottom of the character icon boxes.

Reqnine.6394:

What happens to those players who want to play with 2 melee weapons and want to stay on the enemy. They will get rofl pomped into the ground.

Right now it feels like melee is being forced to be melee and ranged just to survive. ( I know thats how I feel) It makes the game feel less “dynamic” and feels more linear.

“Learn to play melee” – its harder because you have to be awake. But honestly you can stay up -AND- do more damage once you master it.

This is mostly profession independent – mostly because engineer has no melee option. Otherwise -EVERY- profession will do more damage in melee, and -CAN- survive once they learn mobility.

Ranged is for the less skilled players to be able to participate. Or to go to temporarily to set something up or wait out a cooldown from not having it all timed right.

Why has this problem never happened to me?

If you’ve found a way to run the content other than as intended – that’s an exploit. Report it as such, or get reported for doing it.

Either they will fix it, or you will get banned – or both.