Guild Wars 2

So to start everything you need to open up your hero panel (H), pick the expansion’s story, and click to start it. Until you do that you can’t even zone into the HoT zones (unless you sneak in the back way from a guild hall, which lands you way away from the content you need to reach to get going…)

Open up the mastery system and pick an item to “start training” – always make sure you are training one of them, as any ‘XP’ you earn when not training just gets flushed down the drain.

You will need to train gliding first, and then mushroom jumping. After that, I’m not too sure – but it looks like we’re a little locked in before we can start making choices.

You will see an Icon that looks like a grey version of the mastery icon – and yes, that is a challenge that if done will reward a mastery point flat out.

You will come across flag poles – this can start a mini-game that if you get silver gives 1 mastery, and gold gives 2, and can be repeated as many times as you want (but the master points only get earned once).

Otherwise, follow the story and when it tells you to go somewhere, find that somewhere and go there.
- Sometimes that somewhere is a green ‘asterisk icon’ and sometimes it is a green circle around an area (this got me for a bit until I realized the green circle was where I had to go).

After that… its like Guild Wars always has been: open up the portal stones, find the vistas, and find the ‘hero point challenges’ (what used to be called skill points) – their icon has changed, but you can recognize it easy by just looking on your map at an old once from the old zones and then finding that same icon in one of the new spots…

While the number of people farming dungeons is likely to go down a LOT, I suspect in time the quality of the experience will go up once I don’t have to do alongside speed runners and people demanding ‘all zerker’ groups. I get that those things work for some folks – but they’re just not as enjoyable as a run with a diverse set of builds and people who actually watch cutscenes and chat about them…

By contrast is means to quality of my open world content experience might go down as all those gold-farmers are going to end up running zerg mobs through wherever I’m trying to hang out and make screenshots of my toon’s pretty outfits in scenic moments. :P

As to the OPers note about a tracker for the Dungeon Master title – it is nice to see it there. I don’t think the gold nerf actually makes it harder to complete, because before the nerf most groups would boot out new players if they discovered them… Now, you’re more likely to start finding slower paced patient PUGs… and have to re-queue less often.

That said, I got Dungeons Master ages ago – most of it back when the game was new and the gold farmers had not yet settled in because at the time, Dungeon Rewards were no good. I did a few of them after the gold got added in – and yeah it was often about brutal attitudes and staying silent about whether or not I knew the strat…

Yeah I salvage it all pretty much too.

Then every few months / year – I go through a big purge of my mats and sell it all off to bump up my gold.

Is this profitable? Probably not. But it gets me enough gold to pay the mapping and repair bill fees…

Guhracie.3419:

I am not addressing any of the rest of your points, but I will say that John Smith was absolutely clear about the fact that it wasn’t an issue of the gold; he did outright state that it was to encourage people to move away from running dungeons.

Where is there a link to this?

And to the statement that the Dungeon team was disbanded?

sirsquishy.8531:

AphoticEssance.7592:

---

Guhracie.3419:
**********
AphoticEssance.7592:
Every time I start make progress in HoT something else gets broke. My main character is still stuck on the first mission. Almost a week and two tickets later but still no fixes… Why?

This has been by far the worst xpac experience I ever had by far.

---

This must be the only xpac experience you’ve ever had if you’re upset about bugs in the first two weeks.
**********

I have been playing mmos for 10 years

I have never had an experience in an expansion in which I tried to do the first mission on 4 seperate characters until I could get one to not bug out. For the first day I had 3 characters locked out of progress.

I have the right to my opinion.. and that is that this is the worst experience I have ever had with an xpac release of a game.

So then you never played Everquest where characters were dead locked on loading screens on 3-4 separate expansion releases for WEEKS?! What about when they merged servers and characters went Poof!

This is FAR from the worse release to date of any MMO (been playing since 1999 when Everquest was released)

The situation here has been as smooth as butter compared to some other recent launches. I also play Wildstar and the f2p launch there had major issues, on par with this issue – but lasting for more than a week.

Near as I can tell this issue is the first major issue of this expansion. Minor issues have affected some players, and it looks like I’m quoting one such player, but this is the first issue affecting a large number all at once.

As for people asking for ETAs… You can usually ask your car mechanic how long it will take to change out an engine part. All the variables are probably known and anything discovered could even be estimated.

But this is software… and the first task is finding out what went wrong – which can NEVER be estimated. The actual fix can be, but only once the problem is known. And then there is testing the fix – which can also be estimated, but also adds time. Debugging though – finding out what the problem – by its very nature is an unknown, or there wouldn’t be a problem.

BitterClinger.8490:

Stars.2179:

BitterClinger.8490:

Now, it looks like we’re done. It seems there is no way to progress our guild, no matter how slowly.

Make some friends? There are tens of thousands of other players out there willing to help you. The only reason why you don’t have a way to progress is because you don’t want to (invite other people, make friends, etcs). It’s called an MMO for a reason.

Yes, and in some games, we join other guilds for that reason. However, we liked our little two-person guild,

WoW requires 10 people to create a guild. Yet my now unsubbed account has a 1 person guild.

- Meet some people who are willing to help you with the needed challenges to get a guild hall, and then leave. In WoW: its quite common for people to offer others coin in game to help start a guild and then leave it.

No not every MMO is for everybody.

In fact among those I follow, 3 of which are leading MMOs and one of which is hoping at a second chance… I would say they all appeal to a very different crowd… But for some reason I stick it out in the latter 3 of them…

If this isn’t the game for you, move on. You will find that contrary to popular opinion, MMOs don’t have a unified style…

GW2 is the MMO that does NOT explain what is going on, but has all the clues there to be found if you can figure out how to look for them. The actual play of the game is rather easy, the lure is this very exploration and lack of explanation.

The one to Rule.2593:

if ur 80 in exotics and dying on orr, you’re probably just bad.

Maybe so. But its something these forums used to be full of threads complaining over…

And you’re missing my point. If you’re 74, in Orr, on level 65 greens, fighting level 79 mobs… something might be off on the balance…

Heimdallr.7021:

Yeah now we balance the endgame of a class based on how good it is while leveling with greens.
Good idea.

Well that’s a foolish and not exactly well detailed response.

If a class while leveling, on underlevel green gear, can outplay 80s in exotics when dungeoning with them – that hints at imbalance.

If I can end up finding myself tanking for those 80s, because despite being underlevel I am also unkillable AND doing a LOT of damage, so much that I hold threat almost as well as a ‘traditional MMO tank’… then it might be time to raise an eyebrow at my class’s capabilities…

If I can switch into Centaur stance and then heal the group of downleveled people plus myself, while still also holding much of the aggro… then I’m raising two eyebrows…

If I can walk through the open world and pretty much ignore everything just by putting on a staff and spamming 5, 3, and sometimes 4 – while in areas above my level… that hints at imbalance.

If I can pull mobs in the Orr zones that are 5 levels above me, and not even notice they outlevel me… while 80s in exotics wipe on that same content – that hints at a balance issue.

Sure it might adjust at cap all of a sudden, for random reasons… but the numbers appear to line up to a situation where at 80, I will basically be unstoppable… while being ‘new’ to my class and having only a tidbit of experience playing it compared to others on their classes…

Or we could just say “ignore all datapoints but a select few when looking at balance…”
- Which is basically your point.

Up to level 74 at the moment.

I’ve been doing a bit more mild version of the same – I got to maybe 22-24% completion just running around looking for skill challenges and doing a few events and hearts on the way to them.

I have NOT tried the action camera – that kind of camera is why I uninstalled TERA and Neverwinter. If you lock my camera to it auto moves… I’m out of that game. I’m glad its an option for those who like it – but I can’t handle moving with things like that and I do a lot of camera action independent of toon motion, while moving – something I picked up being a ‘tank’ in so many games and having to find ways to see around some mob’s giant crotch being all up in my face…

I’m a little surprised at how easily this class chews through content…

Well, maybe not – every MMO I’ve ever played has always made any new class overpowered on its initial launch… so I expect a lot of people will complete things faster than their normal paces with this class… Until the first major patch changes its numbers a little.

I took my Revenant from 56 (where all my tomes of knowledge and insta level boosters left me) to 74 today…

Haven’t played in a while, and decided to jump straight to the new class on trying things out.

While out there leveling in PvE the class seems very overpowered – as if they didn’t bother to tune it well for the leveling game. Quite often just running back and forth with ‘Vengeful Hammers’ up was enough to gather up a stack of mobs and burn them down quickly and with little risk to my character. I ran out there with gear that was half knights, half berserker, and just rebought the stuff every at 65, but will likely be able to stretch this to 80 and not bother with gear again until it comes time to get some exotic gear.

Near the end of the evening I was in the straights of devastation area and accidentally pulled some level 79 mobs. I didn’t realize this as the first few went down fairly normally and it was only when I was suddenly overwhelmed from pulling a stack of over 10 of them that I bothered to look at the numbers over their heads…
- So that was a leveling toon pulling mobs 5 levels above herself while wearing “green” gear 9 levels old… and only having trouble when the numbers got to ‘a lot of them at once’… Being run by a player who hasn’t played in about 3-4 months.

That seems a little overpowered.

Plus managing to burn through 18 levels in basically a day plus about an hour or so the night before (most of that spent reading tooltips)… is a bit extreme for what I’m used to being able to pull off. 2- 2.5 of those levels were crafting, and that was actually a significant slow down… I think I burned 3-4 hours just running back and forth from the trading post and the crafting station and then decided to call it on that when I noticed that’s I’d burned out most of my account’s gold, spent a lot of time, and barely moved the needle… and so I went out there and instead noticed how powerful the class was compared to how I recall leveling on the other classes.

Random groups. And the wisps. I’ve only ever seen one group that can get past the wisps at the start.

The walls move as you run back, traps snare people, half the time somebody aggros the champion. etc. All sorts of reasons. Groups just give up anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour into repeating the wisps…

I’ve noticed that parties often advertise specifically for the swamp fractal.

The hardest fractal in the game. I’ve almost never seen a group able to complete it. In fact I think I’ve only seen it finished once since Fractals came out.

Why is this one the popular choice?

Is there some gimmick to doing it that I’ve had the strange luck of never seeing?

Pockets.3201:

I don’t know why people actually expect answers.

Don’t get me wrong, I want these too, but vague answers are all we’ll get as Anet seems to have quite the aversion to giving out actual information, never mind committing to things ahead of time.

The community frustration makes sense to me. Even as someone with very little interest in this specific item.

What is the ‘point / goal / grind’ and in fact business model of Guild Wars 2?

To make your toons look fab-u-lous.

This is a fashion show MMO.

The business model is all about selling us pretty outfits and special looks.

The grind so many people get on in this game only ends in one result: fashion.

By level 80, you had hit the end of meaningful progression the moment you have exotic gear – which is often within 1 hour of hitting 80. Ascended only matters for a tiny fraction outside of Fractals, and in fractals only for the upper end of them…

So it all comes down to ‘make mah toonz look purdy’.

Even in games where ‘fashion’ is not the goal, it is something people will put down serious cash to achieve. There are people playing WoW who have spent hundreds of dollars to get a keycode to buy… a minipet of a dancing little fishman… (murky).

So…

It seems odd that the company behind this limits the choices, and removes popular items with no known path for them to return.

And it seems perfectly reasonable given this business model, for the customers to expect an answer.

More in fact, than we deserve an answer for game balance or new dungeons and zones. Those aren’t the goals of Guild Wars 2’s model. They are just window dressing. This game is built on a model of ‘the people standing in between the bank and lion trading house in DR.’
- Those are the people who pay ArenaNet’s salaries…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Kichwas.7152:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There is no reliable way to get ascended gear, outside of crafting.
…
I also think it goes against the spirit of the “play how you like” aspect of the game.

You can play the game just fine without a single piece of Ascended gear.

What do you want, 10 gems per item in the gem store?
- Even then, somebody would say it "goes against the spirit of the “play how you like” aspect of the game" until it was free. And then it would go against the spirit for people who desire a challenge for their shiny (which BTW, would put us right back to where the game was before Ascended gear was added to offset how easy Exotic gear was to get)…

But its gear, not play.

You can do any content in this game with even leveling blue and green gear. Just not as easily (Dungeons), or to as high of a ranking (PvP/WvW and Fractals).

“Winning” and “give me all the shinies for free” are not play styles, but score-metrics.

You left out the part of my post where I mentioned my friend was interested in Fractals, which does depend on Ascended gear.

Because I answered the point about playing as you like. You CAN do any content without Ascended gear.

I have all of 1 to 3 soulbound ascended items on 8 80s. 1 amulet, and maybe 2 more amulets but I think just the one…
I have 1 more ascended thing somewhere in my bank or a bag, that dropped somewhere.

I do fractals anytime the mood for them suits me. And usually not on the character(s) that have the Ascended amulet(s) because I can never remember which one or so that is…

What you want… is to basically “raid at the top tier of raiding, with all the epic dudes, but without putting in the effort to get there.” Having just come back from WoW my thinking is still in their terms a bit… and Fractals in GW2 are the closest thing this game has to Raids…

That is demanding a “/win” button…

You can do any Fractal you want.. in green and blue gear. Just you’re doing the “lowbie version”. If this were WoW… the first few levels of Fractals… that’s “LFR”.

Those high level Fractals… just like high ranked raids in any raiding MMO… have a barrier to entry.

BUT THEY ARE THE EXACT SAME CONTENT AS THE LOW LEVEL FRACTALS.

So… I find your entire complaint invalid. It is an entitlement complaint. You want the win, without having to work for it.

If they just handed out anything… the people who seek challenges, would get bored and leave…

And that is exactly the situation Ascended gear was put in to address. Because Exotic gear rains on us… After my first 80, the others all had near full to full Exotic gear usually within 20-60 minutes of hitting 80. It is just so silly easy to get.

The challenge then was getting skins I liked for all 8 80s… that came LONG BEFORE I had the Dungeon Master title BTW…

As soon as you get your Ascended demand… to be allowed to get it handed to you on account creation… then what? They will have to make ‘Enlightened One’ gear… and ‘Particles’ – new dungeons to grind for that… and then somebody will demand they get that gear on account creation… and its rinse-wash-repeat…

And that that point… the game might as well be WoW… because that’s the ride WoW has been on for years…

I took off for 2 years. When I left, I just had managed to put together a tanky ranger build for dungeons that was actually performing very well, all while the forums were full of people saying the ranger class was hopeless, the devs secretly hated the actor who played Aragorn in Lord of the Rings so were punishing all ranger players, ranger toons needed to be deleted or people with them ought to lose their accounts for being that bad, and all the usual forum sillyness…

Now… is it time for Turnabout and we’re all supposed to bring rangers while everyone else has to delete their toons?

Or are we still just in the land of anecdotes != evidence?

My ranger build BTW, still does great in dungeons, but… rangers can use bows?

If you were to ask me and I were to answer based on biased anecdotes… the only class that “sucks” right now is elementalist… But then again, if I were to answer based on thinking: I would just say that I forgot how to use my elementalist properly…

All you need to open up the roleplaying section is put your characters on Tarnished Coast, and visit the roleplayers of GW2 forum, or just wander into some taverns, join the conversation, and wait for a good ‘OOC’ moment to ask some folks about what’s going on.

Roleplay by its very nature is best done more organized than ‘a pack of random people spawning in a location and looking for something to click on’ which is what you get with LFG tools.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There is no reliable way to get ascended gear, outside of crafting.
…
I also think it goes against the spirit of the “play how you like” aspect of the game.

You can play the game just fine without a single piece of Ascended gear.

What do you want, 10 gems per item in the gem store?
- Even then, somebody would say it "goes against the spirit of the “play how you like” aspect of the game" until it was free. And then it would go against the spirit for people who desire a challenge for their shiny (which BTW, would put us right back to where the game was before Ascended gear was added to offset how easy Exotic gear was to get)…

But its gear, not play.

You can do any content in this game with even leveling blue and green gear. Just not as easily (Dungeons), or to as high of a ranking (PvP/WvW and Fractals).

“Winning” and “give me all the shinies for free” are not play styles, but score-metrics.

Soilder.3607:

Silvos.8653:

I dont think this is something they will fix, since it is not broken. The auto attack roots you deliberatly. (I think I read that somewhere, forgot where) You can still get out of the lock by switching weapons.

Yes, it is deliberate and anet has stated so before.

You have to realize that the swords ability to stay on target is insane. And in my opinion it outweighs its minor effect on evading.

With a more tanky build, I’ve never seen this as a problem. Its proven very handy when I’m trying to take away aggro. I don’t have to worry about the boss being kited away by the person I’m trying to take pressure off of.

There are many players in MMOs who, upon getting aggro, run in a panic and lose all sense of what they’re doing. This kind of thing is so common, its just absurd. The ‘OMG get it off me!’ panic kiting run…

This leap on auto-attack is wonderful for that, because you can get onto that thing they’re kiting away, and if lucky or skilled in stealing aggro, take it back to where it belongs.

It also means that when I do dodge… autoattack often puts me back in place.
- Less downtime on DPS from having used dodge.

I’ll just toss it into here that in Dungeon PvE, I actually find I can sneak in a rather tanky sword/torch axe/axe ranger, with devourer pets, and semi-tank bosses with strong survivability and solid DPS – solid enough that nobody notices.

When GW2 was newer, the common complaint was that pets couldn’t survive anything. While that may never have been true, I just decided to not even bother, and went for a ranged conditions pet, and a build that could keep me up with a playstyle as if I was a WoW brewmaster monk – grab the aggro and bounce around.

That concept is working even better for me now than it did back when…
(though my build is about 2 years old now, and could use some tweaking, it has ended up very solid over this time.)

Altair.8402:

Each path in Arah now takes 5 hours.

I seem to recall doing them faster than that.

Khalisto.5780:

Would you play dungeons if they removed the gold prize in the end?

Yep. That prize was not there, or was much smaller (I forget) at launch.

I think Dungeons would be better if they removed the gold prize AND caused aggro’d mobs to never break out of combat and be able to follow players with the same tricks ranger pets use (when you jump to a ledge or over a gap, the pet ports to the other side).

And if I really wanted to be sneaky… put the gold prize back in for the anyone who matches any 2 of:

1. Using the least common class seen in dungeons in the last 2 hours.
2. More than 50% armor in the least common stat-type (Berserk, Knight, Rampage – those kinds of things) that can be crafted (to keep it from always being things that are hard to get) seen in the last 2 hours
3. 8 or more points in the least common trait lines for their class seen in the last 2 hours.

- All changes that would get things to be “interesting” again.

Oh and… maybe a 10% bonus to damage if at 80% of endurance, 20% if at 100%, and -10% to damage is below 50%.
- to encourage builds other than berserk.

I know that may seem off-topic…

But I see the gold thing as linked to the zerk thing. Its a dual mentality of ‘farming’.

But all other changes aside, the only 3 I think are really, really vital – would be the gold bonus going away, mob aggro never breaking, and mobs being able to ‘port’ to places they can’t walk-path to if players end up in those places.

Whatever the boss… the time it takes between the last pre-event and the boss spawning should be based on the time it takes for a toon to run from the furthest pre-event to the boss, plus maybe 5%.

- So that all pre-event folks can join in at start, barring lag or lingering around…

They’ve probably already got some formula for this.

I find the difference is very minimal between the speed you can clear with berserker versus something like knights – but the ability to withstand bad timing or too big of a stack is significant.

My warrior uses body armor split between knights (power, precision, tough) and soldier (power, tough, vital). Berserker for weapons (axe/shield and longbow), and the trinkets are half berserker half knights with a cavalier’s back (power, tough, ferocity), and a rampager’s amulet (I don’t know why that ended up there actually. This is one of my older 80s and that might be a mistake).

4/2/4/4/0 – signet build.

With a critical at 71.52% and power at 2342, but armor at 3,007 and health at 23,156…

…I find I have an ability to near facetank dungeon and world bosses, and less need to dodge – the increased ‘uptime’ I have on DPSing comes closes if not matches the DPS I’d have in berserker and spending about 1/3 of my time dodging and getting back in place.

And my traits are such that I often heal back from any heavy hits faster than my team-mates will get back from the smaller hits.

You can go all zerk, but then consider that you will have no room for slight mistakes, and should factor in that time spent dodging or kiting instead of attacking.

My Ranger, Engineer, and Guardian play about the same, for their own different reasons. I’m still working on perfecting this strategy with my Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer, and Elementalist – they used to be able to do it but I took a near 2-year break from GW2 and their builds and my skill both got reset…

When I used the LFG tool, I just skip past the entries that say they require full zerk. I go for the ones that say either experienced or newbie friendly. Experienced because those players understand the “meta” is not as narrow as some think, and can vary with playstyle. newbie friendly because I like helping new players – guiding them through content. And also because if someone else is guiding, I can play it ‘low ego’ which is more relaxing.

And I find ‘newbie’ groups can clear content just as fast as experienced ones when you factor out the ‘newbie mistakes’ like running off cliffs or not knowing which direction to go…
- But they tend to be more social.

I’m not getting that as an option in wardrobe.

Am I right-clicking the wrong area?

How do I get the weapons held in the hand in armor previews? Is it possible?

Or should I just strip off all my armor so the weapon isn’t being clipped here?

My Sylvari. It took me several screenshots to get one that it recognized a face in. At one point in the login screen it said her thumbnail was age ‘5’…

Same character in both images:

I’ve been playing since beta. I made my main on launch. my guild was created in under 2 minutes after launch.

So I guess I’ve got about as old of an account as can exist here. Those who have older accounts have them by matters of seconds.

My drops have been rather constant, though I don’t really have a farming mentality so I don’t measure things like my ‘exotics-per-hour’ rate or whatever…

I’ve never been active on the giant zerg trains or boss trains. Ending up on them only when one passes me by or is a daily, and sticking with it for as much as 2 bosses at most (I find it extremely boring to sit there and wait for a boss to spawn, and even more boring to be part of a massive zerg steamrolling open content).

I do dungeons when the mood strikes. I used to do them constantly.

I find a single dungeon run will fill my bags up with look and loot boxes. I’ll get an exotic about 1/3 of the time. World bosses seem about similar.

This is either about the same or slightly higher than it used to be.

My account’s richest ever moment was recently when I hit 40g. Which didn’t last because I bought some gems…

I’ve had a WoW account since 2006 by the way – I’ve had a similar pattern there. I always had about a third of the gold of the people I knew, if not less.

I’d wager people who think the system punishes old or punishes new or punishes people named ‘fred’ or whatever… are thinking in anecdotes and too small of a sample size.

But I brought up my WoW example to make a point. If there is any factor in this that is relevant – its playstyle.

As for the people with two accounts. That’s either just random chance, or the toons are being played differently.

I’ve never seen 60-70g in this game, period.

I’m not sure I understand your problem at all…

Grind may be annoying but absent grind what would you do in an MMO?

Every activity one describes in an MMO, could be re-described as grind if looked at from an ‘un-fun’ perspective.

I’d replace the excessive chat filter with a different system.

I can’t remember which MMO. It might even have been this one… But I remember one where if enough people blocked your chat, you got zone muted for a while.

Now mix this with a system where the default method of blocking someone’s chat only lasts 1 hour. A permanent block would require clicking some ‘are you sure’ box, but the one hour one could be done with as simple as a right click on some lone of chat.
- And then add to this that, if you chat block someone, you end up leaving the party they are in.

Then you can just tweak up or down how many people it takes to get muted in a zone, and for how long that muting lasts.

The idea here is to flip the system.

Presently the excessive chat filter is passive – it just happens.
My idea would make it active – it only happens if enough other people on the zone with you find you that bad…

And the switch to temp-blocking is so that people aren’t afraid to use this for worrying that they’ll block somebody forever who was just ‘having a bad day’ that one day. Or because sometimes you just want to quite down the chatter from that one group while you focus on something and listen to the rest of the map – but don’t want it permanent.

I’m Soooooo glad I finished the personal story on my main human character BEFORE this nerf.

Seeing those fidget animations was the only thing that made most of those cutscenes bearable.

That wasn’t a bug, it was a feature.

I didn’t consciously realize these were gone, not having played the game in almost 2 years. But now I guess I know why I’m mostly sticking to my charr main these days – SHE still feels like she has character.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

They have an extremely tempestuous, on-again-off-again “friendship”. They’re both obsessed with the other. Rytlock is insanely jealous of the queen’s hold on Logan, and Logan’s personality can largely be summed up as “how can I get Rytlock to like me again”.

Wow. You have read a lot into this that simply isn’t there. Rytlock and Logan were friends until Logan chose to defend the queen rather than stay with his group, so a member that everyone loved was killed. This is the source of their fighting; there’s no on-again/off-again thing about it. Obsession is an exaggeration. Rytlock isn’t jealous of Jenna; he’s angry that Logan’s choice resulted in their failing their mission and Snaff dying. Not the same emotions at all.

That’s your interpretation and yours alone. Others have a different view of the situation.

Its not his alone. Logan deserted his comrades in battle. Jenna should have had him executed… Even though he was obeying her, he did so by fleeing his comrades.

Any anger Rytlock feels towards him is more than justified.

Logan is basically why our characters have to go off and fight some dragons, because he is a deserter that doomed the world.

After reading the novels, I pretty much expected this game to launch with Logan as a dungeon boss we had to kill.

Rytlock forgives him the same way Churchill got on with Stalin: There wasn’t any friendship there, there was necessity.

tacticalevilnoodlefox.5694:

kimeekat.2548:

Every time I see a topic like this, it reminds me of the studies that showed women who talk for 30% to 50% of a discussion are perceived as completely dominating the conversation. This is one game out of the plethora of games out there that doesn’t act like the traditional 13-25 year old straight white male is its only audience and makes an effort to show traditionally underrepresented groups in positions of power. I promise, we can handle seeing the traditional script of 1 woman to 4 men flipped. It’s the same reason why Sailor Moon and Tyler Perry are successful.

I’m wary of threads like these because they are usually couched as arguments for equality when really what ends up argued is that minorities do not deserve to have the spotlight. Because that’s “pandering”. But when we pander to the straight males all the time it’s not pandering just… the natural state of things.

I’m so sorry, but because you make logical sense and refute most of the arguments in this thread with said logic you’re going to get completely ignored and they’re not even going to bother reading it let alone trying to reply to it.

My condolences.

I not only read kimeekat’s post. I +1’d it. And yes: as far as I could tell, its right on all points.

The genders actually are balanced. But people perceive this wrongly because of their own ways of seeing the world. And claims of wanting balance are really being used as a proxy for a desire to not lose privilege.

Shezu Tsukai.8291:

As said earlier most of the same sex relationships seem forced and not really integral to the story line.

In every other game and most novels out there… that is basically true of all the hetero relationships.

The issue here is not what kind of relationship, but that game and ‘Steampunk’ authors don’t write good romance…

As for your comment about ‘social engineering’… that is basically all of those other games that promote the ‘straight white male’ hero. With everyone else a sidekick or worse…

Your children are not growing up in that world – even if one or more of them are Caucasian boys. Better to have their fiction represent the world they will live in; which is a diverse, global place – and one that is basically over the whole sexuality bias issue. I just wish folks could catch up embracing racial/ethnic diversity as much as society has recently ‘gotten over sexuality’.

Coulter.2315:

You’re trying to put your rules and constructs on a world which doesn’t match any notion of your design. We have quaggan backpacks – get over your desires to control what people wear and what we look like.

Actually no.

I’m putting what the already existing conventions of this game are. I’m not the one who set the genre here. If I did things would have ended up very different – the over-abundance of all this steampunk is what drove me away from GW2 for the last 2 years; if we were to make my list of how things should have gone- we’d be having conversations about Elona and Kaineng City; and the armor style genre conventions those two allowed for.

That there are costume items doesn’t change that.

You are the one advocating for a change – so the burden to justify it and explain why your toon shouldn’t end up dead for not wearing gear, is on you.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Do people even routinely put white weapons in the forge? And if they do, why?

Because putting something into the forge is the daily that day, and you’ve got nothing you’re working on there.

I don’t care about legendaries, so I ignore the forge. Except when its a daily. When its a daily the first 4 things of the same time in my inventory go in there. Its the fastest daily on the list most of the time.

Coulter.2315:

Kichwas.7152:

I can’t see any reason to allow shirtless. This isn’t a KungFu or Rambo simulation… :P
- Nor is the genre ‘Sword and Sorcery’ but is instead ‘Steampunk’.

Are you under the impression that ONLY KungFu, Rambo or Sword&Sorcery people ever go about shirtless? Seems like a very narrow view. GW2 is a mix of many different art styles and looks, all people are wanting is another option.

No but I -AM- under the impression that those are the primary 3 genres where you can run around ‘without an outfit’ and not be killed in seconds by somebody with a sharp stick or fast moving metal stone.

In the genres where we have been conditioned to remove our helmets and/or shirts thanks to Hollywood – this is actually a very good way to end up missing a head… or a body, depending on which end ends up in the camera after your first encounter with the enemy… but we accept it because its how actors get billing for the resume…

In the history of Asian military campaigns, the guy doing spin kicks while wearing a farmer’s outfit ended up dead… thanks to the guy in armor with a big sword… and in wars from WWI up to modern day, the Rambo hero that took off his helmet… decorated the cammo of the guy next to him with brains thanks to the sniper… and as for Sword and Sorcery… an armor style that comes from the ancient Greeks… (because actual other low tech cultures did have armor – just made from wood, bone, leather, shell, etc) well, back then pretty much everybody ended up dead, and war was grizzly… and then Romans came along, dressed in armor, and conquered them so fast nobody even had time to change the religion or switch out the local statues…

We’re in a Steampunk MMO.

This genre isn’t known for shirtless barbarians and shirtless Shaolin guys with nunchuks. Nor is it known for actors who have accents even in their native language, and hang out in film noir jungle scenes talking about depression…

- Shirtless isn’t in the script for this genre.

Randulf.7614:

Jumping puzzles are and always have been, a small part of the game. They have and are not now “the majority”.

The expansion is said to be ‘heavily vertical’, so it might feature a lot of jumping puzzles.

Hopefully they will all be optional. I like jumping puzzles, but only some of the time. I’ve always been annoyed by the ones that were used to gate some other content – even if something trivial like needing ‘just enough of whatever’ of Southshore and the final one being behind a jumping puzzle (that had a stack of Mesmers standing around helping people skip it…).

Optional jumping puzzles are great. Its a break from the usual play.
Mandatory or ‘needed for X’ ones are not great.

But either way, I suspect they will get a boost in frequency in the expansion.

sorudo.9054:

sorrychief.2563:

If shirtless was an option I could level a second ele as Charr!

if they finally make an option for straight standing charr then that would make things a ton better
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Charr_ritualist.jpg

That guy had a spinal problem. He was deformed. As a child, he got jokes of “human back! human back! you got a human back. Your momma must have… [insert kittens here]”

He was rejected, and had to move to Shing Jea, and live among humans, in order to study the art of the Ritualist…

Now he stalks in the night, the back corners of the Black Citadel, looking for young Charr cubs that tease other deformed children, and kidnapping them to use as zombie minions for his dark Shing Jea rituals.

Bat-Charr is looking for him.

Endless Soul.5178:

If that were to happen, do you know how many female characters wold be running around shirtless? ~counts on fingers, then toes~ Well….a LOT.

I would assume that if such an option were ever added, they’d put the females in bikini tops or tank-top t-shirts. Frankly I would hope the t-shirts because otherwise silly conduct would ensue (just look at any elf-heavy region in other MMOs)…

Otherwise you’d have the problem the Conan game had… while it “added realism”, the game is basically nothing but a horde of people running around on female toons without clothing…

That or… I need to put up with that situation long enough to get past the noob levels and see people doing something other than sillyness…

Helmets are usually a ‘hide option’ in MMOs because we’ve all gotten used to the Hollywood idea where main actors even in combat action flicks take off their helmets before any scene with dialog so that the actor can get ‘screen time’ for his resume.

Shoulders got the option after some MMOs started added silly huge shoulders, and others counter-reacted by telling players “even if our art team starts going nuts like those other guys, we won’t make you put up with it.”
- I think I recall this even being a conversation between the community and devs here when this game was in development and people were listing reasons they wanted to come here from other MMOs. Shoulder-Mania is a problem, and Game-Devs need a 12-step program for it…

I can’t see any reason to allow shirtless. This isn’t a KungFu or Rambo simulation… :P
- Nor is the genre ‘Sword and Sorcery’ but is instead ‘Steampunk’.

Traits are going to be 5 points each under the ‘so far’ announcement. And just being a fresh 80 will give you about 200 points I think they said. Another 60, and you can buy all the traits. That means… 12 traits won’t come ‘free’ with a fresh 80.

Now, skill points have been in WvWvW all this time. So most of us, when converted, will have already unlocked more than 260 points… so even if the WvWvW skill tests go away, that’s only going to effect your next upcoming character… not the ones you already have.

phys.7689:

MeththeMadman.7420:

Wait… What’s going on? Specializations are tied to map completion?

you will need to do skill point challenges in order to unlock all traits.

About 60 of them. Out of the 260-something or so out there.

You can probably complete 60 of them in a single 2 hour session, with most of that time spent in loading screens between zones…

60 might sound like a lot, but its really not.

This could be solved by adding a one-use item that lets you swap an armor/weapon piece for another of the same type (light/medium/heavy or same weapon), and move the upgrade items in it between them.
- Usable on exotic, and a different token usable on ascended.

Then give everyone 1 soulbound token for this, or the right type for each piece of soulbound exotic and ascended gear in their inventory.

And then list an account bound version of them for sale on the gem store for something pricey (so its not a common thing. I’d say 600gems EACH)…

As to how it would work:

I take my piece of armor to the ‘swap vendor’ and buy a new piece for my the cost of my old one and 1 token. I get a new piece. The new piece is delivered soulbound.

Then, the new piece EITHER comes with the same upgrades as my old piece already had, OR, I get those upgrade items outside of it, so I could sell or trade them for a different upgrade.

Simple, fair, and would let people have a full ‘reset’ with the expansion so they could make new builds accordingly.

BrooksP.4318:

Or that reporting gold sellers=auto ignore

That’s all the fix it needs right there.

That and… people could try AFKing somewhere less busy than Divinity’s Reach.

khani.4786:

Harny.6012:

Wethospu.6437:

So it’s also fine for ERP?

Why wouldnt it be?

Looks like it happens.

Somebody probably posted that one just to screenshot it for this thread… :P

That said, the first I thought when I saw that screenshot was "oh, we’re supposed to show up as thieves and engineers with names like “Doc” and “Earp” all in leather trenchcoats and dual it out?"

On the list of common LFG terminology… what does “AP” stand for?
I thought it referred to your power score… as in “Attack Power”… but as far as I know, that’s a stat you have to ask someone about in order to know it…

UncleDolan.9430:

“Physical skills have a new thing where if your endurance is above 50% they are more effective…. Rampage and Mending are now physical skills.”

This looks designed to try and get people to take enough defensive abilities that they can ‘stand and take it’ more often rather than dodging constantly.

You can already build for that. Most of my characters can stand through two big hits before having to dodge the third. But it comes at a DPS cost.

Many zerk builds can’t even stand through one hit.

This change might encourage a middle ground between these extremes. A ‘sweet spot’ where having “just enough” defense to stand through one more hit actually leaves you with more DPS than always dodging and going glass.

If that actually does occur, that will free up just enough points for some build variety in the ‘meta’.

But… it probably won’t be enough of a DPS boost to do this, or it will be too much of a boost, and unbalance play in the other direction…

Do these traits trigger when you are knocked down in combat? Or merely when you fall off of a tree limb 197 minutes into that pesky jumping puzzle somewhere or another…

I’ve always assumed that being knocked down in combat did NOT trigger them, so saw them as wasted space – because if I fall off that tree limb 197 minutes into a jumping puzzle, the least of my worries is whether or not my character has just faceplanted…