Guild Wars 2

I’m glad everyone finds the WvW sets so ugly, because I quite like it. When I finish getting the medium set, I know I’ll be the only one running around with that skin. Thanks all!

That’s funny. I got bored with all the “rewarding” stuff pretty quickly. Run a dungeon 300 times to get X? Yawn. Be a knight in a week long chess game of carnage? Count me in!

I play WvW for the same reason I:
Play FPS’s
Keep playing the same Sonic levels over and over and over
Continue practicing “pro” Smash Bros techniques

I do these things for the internal pleasure of self-improvement and the external pleasure of competition. To be honest, I’m glad WvW is so “unrewarding”. It has less appeal for grinders, and keeps mostly just the people who are in it for the sake of winning.

That being said, if it’s not your cup of tea, that’s cool. There are lots of MMO’s out there for you. GW2 is in the minority of MMO’s for a lot of reasons, and most of those reasons are what keep me playing GW2.

I think we should at least be able to purchase a second slot. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to have a PvE build and a WvW build, or a dungeon build and a DE build. Maybe make us buy the second slot for a reasonable amount (anywhere from 20s to 2g, imo) and then make you pay the ~3s each time you respec one of your slots. I get the need for the goldsink, but it is a bit jarring going from the freedom of GW1 to this.

I’ve found the Trickery line all but useless in WvW and indispensable in PvE, for example.

I can’t say I noticed any floatiness, but I have picked up on the 2d feeling. I’ll admit, I think it’s part of the art style. The whole game feels like a living painting to me, and I love it. Fire in particular I think just screams “moving paint on canvass”, and that alone makes me think I’ll be rolling an ele next.

As for the animations, I’ve never seen an MMO with such smooth animations before. Animations transition into one another seamlessly, which is something MMO’s generally haven’t had before. Perhaps this could be part of the problem? Maybe you’ve become too accustomed to animation X always looking exactly like X, whereas in this game you can be running in any direction and/or transitioning to your next animation while casting.

As for the camera, yeah, it’s tighter than most MMO’s and that’s a very valid complaint, but I bet that’s mostly for WvW and PvP so you don’t pull back and gain the ability to see over walls. I have no clue why there’s no 1st person view, on an unrelated note.

“I sure am glad thieves can’t use rifles!”

About a month before launch ANet more or less stated that they weren’t going to develop THE app, but rather release a kit for the general public to develop apps instead. I don’t believe they’ve released the kits yet though, I haven’t heard anything since early august/late july. I can’t seem to cite my source atm though, so I could be mistaken.

saiyr.3071:

Roland Falantyr.3290:

He implied that you guys made some sort of adjustment to overcome us actually. I find that laughable. Take it how you will.

Here is the post right above his, and his first sentence:

I’m in shock that Maguuma is nightcapping another server. I was expecting this week to be rough from how well Ebay was doing Friday night.

Besetment.9187:

No kidding. We were broken by Ehmry’s opener.

If you seriously think he is implying that then I have nothing else to say to you.

Guys, guys guys. I’ve got two words that will solve all your problems. “Time share!”

/slowpclap

plussomemoreletterstogetitover15

Playing GW2 is my way of rebelling against the healer mechanic. Downed state is here to stay, the system would need MASSIVE overhauling without it.

That aside, my only gripe with alt-f4-ers is depriving me of my badges. I have no problem with them opening the client and going through 2 load screens on top of the corpse run.

Put simply, the need for speed.

Now I’m used to getting 3 dodges for every other classes’ 2, and having 25% faster run speed all the time, it’s hard to play other classes. Plus those other classes have cooldowns. Thief has ruined me, and I love it.

spif.7580:

This and Shadow Refuge should never leave your utility bar if you are playing WvW. It’s that good.

I prefer the much less popular Blinding Powder to SR. It makes a much better oh kitten button, and with the blind and instant cast, helps counter the frequent 100 blades and fellow thieves’ bursts.

A earendil, I s’pose I hadn’t thought of that. Your stance on idividual reward is my stance on WvW overall. I play because it’s fun, and because I want to win. Seeing my server do well (while making a personal gold profit) is all the reward I personally need. If your personal rewards were only usable in WvW, and only for being active on your server consistently, do you really think it would exacerbate the bandwagoning problem? Remember, this would be tied to the above mentioned server loyalty, so server hopping would relinquish everything you’ve earned. I’m not saying no one would act as you described, but I don’t think it would add to the problem. Maybe we could add some sort of miniscule minimum participation requirement. Because really, if too many people afk farmed, they’d only be shooting themselves in the foot, as they take slots from the people who are actually trying to help the server.

Glad they’re gone. They encourage rich-get-richer gameplay (plus the whole hacking thing). I haven’t found my drive to take/defend keeps diminished at all. I’m still motivated by getting as many waypoints out as possible.

What if your loyalty points were doled out each 15 minutes with the overall score? Rather than anet trying to balance the reward between guarding yaks and taking keeps, we could just peg it directly to server performance. There would need to be a bit of smoothing for people logging in/out in the middle of a 15 minute period, but I think that would be the simplest and fairest solution.

Other than that great ideas all around. Keep rewards cosmetic/organizational! (ie commander icon equivalents)

Look, they (and by “they,” I mean “the other 7 classes and many thieves”) already think we’re completely broken and need savagely nerfed. How bout we all just wait the extra 0.5 seconds till your initiative refills. If you’re destroying trash mobs for minutes on end, try treating it like a marathon and not a sprint. Use 2 more auto-attacks and 1 less HS or something.

Just because nothing has been done doesn’t mean it’s not going too. Like you said, ANet has seen a lot of the last two, and are very likely working on some sort of solution. Tyria wasn’t built in a day, give it some time.

It is, but I don’t think it’s any different from any other video game ever, really. How many video games use box canyons and groups of trees to thick to walk between as aesthetically pleasing alternatives to invisible walls? What I really like about GW2 (and coincidentally, Skyrim) is that sometimes you get on top of those mountains, instead of just shuffling between them.

I also wonder if the march of time has anything to do with ease of magic use. Just a half century ago playing the guitar solo from Hard Day’s Night was an advanced guitar technique, now any 14 year old with just a bit of dedication can bust out sweep arpeggios to their heart’s content. Hell, 200 years ago, the only way you could be bothered to learn an instrument at all in western culture was to be among the very privileged.

Maybe 250 years ago magic was a much more regimented discipline, but now anyone with a a bit of spare time and a few coins to spend on books can learn a Profession. The knowledge may have just disseminated that far in that much time.

Not to steer this thread back away from dendrophilia again, but as for the bone debate, don’t RL plants already have a means of mimicking skeletal structures? Being plants their cells are rigid, as opposed to animals’ squishy cells. Just because they have a plant-like equivalent of all things human, doesn’t mean they have a woody bone structure, a leafy pancreas, some kind of sap filled gall bladder, it just means they achieve pretty much all the same functions and experiences as humans do. Like the above example of the pitcher plant instead of a full gastrointestinal system.

My big question is, can you tell how old a sylvari is by cutting off its head and counting the rings in its neck?

Kittentails?! Really?! Censorship is going too far.

The first time I heard one exclaim “For the Moletariat!” I almost spewed beer all over my monitor. Come on, having a race parody communist Russia is way cooler than naming quests after Bob Dylan songs, and I really like Bob Dylan.

It’s not the size of your norn, it’s how you use it!

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I went from Human thief (I feel like Sonic the Hedgehog!) to an asura mesmer (I feel like Yoda in that one kind-of-a-Star-Wars movie!) to a norn engineer (my dodges look like me rolling out of bed in the morning!) That being said, norn are a blast once you get used to it. Just don’t switch back and forth too often and you’ll forget how slowly your kitten lumbers across the world.

yo mamma’s IQ so low she thinks norn cows say “moot”

I saw a red response on the Tengu thread and got so excited. It was only to move it, alas. I’ve been excited for Guild Wars 2 Factions since they announced GW2.

The problem is, this really only affects thieves. Pretty much every weapon skill that isn’t an auto-attack has a cooldown, except for the initiative-centric thieves. I hate it too, but I can see why it’s not the highest of priorities.

I like the thought process here. It might need a little tweaking, like maybe only 5 shots, but I do like where your head is. Especially compared to what we have now.

Excellent points, OP! My only contribution is to say, “Ew” to the name of the thread. Carry on.

Seriously dude. There are people out there dying of hunger, and you’re too busy trying to fix the GW forums? Man, some people need to realize that people are out there dying, and that getting their favorite MMO’s forum in order is not the most important thing in life.

You know, if all waitresses went around armed, I bet average tips would go up in a hurry.

I do remember allusions to some kind of institutionalized learning for Professions in GW1, but those seem all but gone .Some of the cooler MM skills were from a necro who “went rogue” iirc. However in GW2, my street rat human sure didn’t train at thief school. That’s why I’m into the magic-as-force-of-nature train of thought. Warriors might not be as overtly magical as elementalists, but magic could be what separates a guy who can preform hundred blades and the special shouts from a civilian flailing a sword around and screaming “For great justice!” Bullseye’s super powers might not be as flashy as Wolverine’s but they’re still powers.

So no one’s up for the magic ammo theory? Anyone? Ah well.

This is my Shortbow. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I must master my Shortbow as I have mastered my life…

In WvW, SB is king for thieves. Awesome blast with excellent AoE (which works for crit or condition builds!), a dodge with a cripple, and the single best shadowstep in the game. Let’s not forget the awesome power of human CC. The poison gas skill can put down 3 giant red circles full of particle effects in no time flat (more if you’re traited), and that gets people to move. It doesn’t work on everyone, and it has been working less as time goes on, but more often than not, tossing some big red circles on the ground can scatter a zerg, make them pause inside artillery range, or buy you a few seconds to escape.

Not to mention SB’s skills having no cooldown make thieves great at playing wack-a-defender while sieging a tower. Plus, even my own guildies, who I have been playing with for 2 months now, still sometimes forget I’m not a ranger, so I assume the enemy makes this mistake as well.

All other arguments for other builds are accurate. Bring a DD if you wanna pick of individuals. Grab SD or SP if you wanna hang in the zerg for a bit. Get crazy and go for whatever else suits you (I’ve been playing with PD for my off set, with mixed results). But for Grenth’s sake, bring a shortbow to WvW.

But that’s exactly my point. You can spin it however you want. As I was just reminded in the lore thread, magic really has little lore behind it in this world. ANet seem happy to leave it at “it’s magic!” Roll how you wanna roll.

Side Note: I didn’t read the books, and my asura is only up to level 24, so I haven’t quite devoured their personal story. Plus, I use most of my energy converting Zojja back into Felicia Day in my mind. Those creepy little piranha teeth just don’t do it for her.

Side Side Note: I did post a thread about “Magic Ammo” over on the lore thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Some-thoughts-on-magic-in-Tyria/first#post540851

Exactly, that’s why I’m trying to fill in some blanks here. That’s why everything is a “what if” and not a “here’s my evidence for”. Just bouncing ideas around. Bouncing them around like magic bullets.

Audio cues for when boons/conditions happen. This is such an excellent step in MMOs in general (along with standardizing boons and conditions), how can you not love this? I know individual clips can get annoying, but not as annoying as looking at your status bar. I love that I know the second I become chilled or poisoned or whatever without having to divert attention to the status bar.

I know magic, and how it relates to Professions, isn’t the most fleshed out area lore-wise in GW2, but I do recall a video or interview prelaunch where Ree danced around the idea that sometimes it just happens. You are so into the idea of defending the weak that you slowly start becoming a guardian. You’re such a good pickpocket that eventually, you learn to just blend so well you’re basically invisible. I think she may have also referred to institutions of learning, like elementalist school or something, but I’ve seen no evidence of this in game. So let’s just say that most of the time, the difference between myself and Farmer Joe is that I was either strong willed enough to develop a capital P Profession, or Grenth decided to bless me (or Raven, or the Eternal Alchemy, or whatever) and gave me some predestined mark to be awesome at stealing.

I think it’s safe to call every profession “magic” to some extent or another, even the more physical ones (engineers have their elixirs, thieves can stealth and shadowstep, warriors can hulk up at the point of near-death). So what if ammo is magic? Not all ammo in Tyria. Farmer Joe still needs to use black powder and a ramrod each time he fires a flintlock, he hasn’t manifested a Profession. My Heroic-brand character however, can pop off 5 shots from his flintlock pistol and never even think about reloading. No one with a bow in this game has a quill, and rangers can rapid fire their bows with the best thief pistols (probably much faster, with barrage). What if that’s because there’s no physical ammo involved? What if my thief, by dint of having a Profession, doesn’t need to worry about these things, and shooting through pistols is just as natural as an elementalist hucking fireballs?

Maybe these topics are well trod by now, but I don’t usually chill in the lore section. So if I missed it, sorry. Thoughts?

Does an Asuran mesmer make sense? How about a Guardian, with their religious overtones? And really, engineers tend to use more Charr-y technology, not the awesome high tech of the Asura. One of the coolest things about GW2 is that Anet didn’t decide for you what races stereotypically enter which professions. You can rationalize why your asura became a ranger, and make it as awesome as you want. My engi is a norn. Why? cause I love the idea of the crazy guy with the strange workshop (workshop not included) amongst all the nature worshipers. Go apekitten. He could be pursuing nature magic as a facet of the eternal alchemy, or as rebellion against asuran norms.

I believe I remember hearing that the problem with the GW1 story, is now we have no historical way to refer to your character. In my story, I know that Klawlyt lead the Ascalonians to Kryta and eventually took on the Titans et al, but now in GW2, we have no way of referring to a constant who did those things (though I’d be ok with letting Mehnlo and Eve have the credit). I think The World’s Least Exciting Plant was put there so that way, in the greater narrative of Tyria, we could refer to Trehearne as the one who took down Zhaitan.

That being said, yeah the personal story really did drop off after Claw Island. I love love love GW lore, have been 80 since 2 weeks after launch, and still haven’t bothered to finish my personal story.

I’ve done street rat and noble, and both wacky sidekicks were obnoxious in my book.

Zaxares.5419:

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Canthans will be the ENEMY in a Canthan expansion, with their armies arriving in Tyria and attempting to conquer the other races/nations. (Perhaps the Emperor has fallen under the sway of a Dragon, or even found a way to bend one to his bidding?)

This. This looks good. GW Factions even without the rest of GW1 is still my favorite MMO, and I’ve been aching for the Canthan expansion to this game since about a year ago (yes, I know the maths here). But this would be epic. Maybe this is how they’ll introduce Tengu, you can play displaced ones trying to fight their way back into their ancestral homes. Maybe the remaining Luxons have finally returned to the sea, and make it to Tyria to petition for aid against the dragon corrupted ministry. So exciting! So many possibilities!

Mine usually mumbles something about Grenth when he’s low on health, but I don’t know if that’s because I chose Grenth, or just because I’m about to die.

So in short, give us an option to toggle it, and when specator mode comes out, make that a seperate toggle. So regular players can view the way they want, and casters can cast the way they want. Isn’t that a major selling point of GW2? Play the way you want?

I don’t think it would be cool to steal someone else’s claim, but there should be a way to consensually transfer it. Like say my guild is heading to a different BL for a bit, and I see you willing to care for a tower we claimed, I’d be more than happy to turn it over so we can snag something more relevant to what we’re heading out to do.

I don’t think free siege from the jumping puzzles ever turned the tide of WvW. Maybe one battle at a time, but I’m pretty sure the aggregate effect of jumping puzzle siege is pretty small. That’s like saying farming Orr while queing needs removed, because you can bring that 24s into WvW with you.

In other words, get yur PvE outta my PvP’s face.

While I am an ardent fan of downed state, Enenion’s suggestions are both very good in my opinion, particularly the all or nothing option. Or maybe instead of all or nothing, what if the truly dead rapidly lost “health” when someone’s not actively rezing them? That way coordinated teams could swap rezing while still not leaving you just sit on your 85% for minutes on end. I’m all for rezing randoms in WvW when it’s feasible, and especially when they’re only downed, but ti drives me crazy how many people lay there and wait for someone to get them back up in the middle of a large, long battle that any class could have done a corpse run and rejoined the effort during.

I don’t think I’d subconsciously ignore someone who says “yolo”. I’d probably wish I had a /flipbird and say a few unkind things about the downed fellow’s mom, but to say that my inner psyche would deal with this passive aggressively is just untrue.

/signed… more or less. I know Mr. Ferguson had at least mentioned the idea of letting whole guilds move with their infrastructure in tact. I think if anet stopped willy nilly free transfers and worked with bigger guilds to move them to lower population (and lower que time) servers it would go a long way toward normalizing sever pops and WvW scores.

Just wanna clear up the thief hate. Stomping a thief is easy, you just have to pay attention. We get a teleport as soon as we’re downed, yes, that’s the 1 free interrupt nearly every class has (sorry, eles).

Step 1 – Run up to the thief and stomp to get that out of the way just like you do to get a guardian bubble out of the way.
Step 2 – After they port, look around, they didn’t move more than 600 away.
Step 3 – Stomp, and try to make this less than 20 seconds after they went down.
Step 4 – If this all did take more than 20 seconds, the thief will stealth. They didn’t move, the thief is still right there, he’s just invisible. Shake what Mike gave you and just start attacking right there where they were, because the thief is still there. In a 1v1 situation, you should rarely need step 4.
Step 5 – If it has been 15 seconds since the first port, he got another port. Repeat steps 1 and 2. In a 1v1 situation, you should never ever make it to step 5.

Now, I know this is a WvW thread, so you can say all sorts of things can happen, and 1v1’s aren’t usually what goes down. Well guess what, that’s the case for all classes! All 8 classes get into all sorts of non-normal situations full of random allies, hostile zergs, diseased flying cows, and errant moose. That’s why WvW is fun!

TL:DR – The thief makes an excellent example of learning not just your own class, but the classes that frustrate you the most. Learn from them. Learn to beat them. It’s possible. Your engi has bad downed state? Well my thief has abysmal CC. There’s no reason balance has to be bland. Keep the downed state!

Yeah, if there’s anything to complain about, it’s free server transfers going on for this long.
I would like to see 2 week matches start at some point though. It’s undeniable that weekends are a pretty defining time, and it would be nice to see another one halfway through the match.

Just remember, no one ever posts, “man, am I ever content with my class” or “wow, I just played against an X, and boy, was that an an enjoyable and balanced fight!”. Yeah, we might get a bit more forum agg than the other classes, but there’s no hard evidence that we’re the bestest ever. Top spvpers tend toward other classes, and that’s one of the best indicators out there.

I can second the “go snag supply camps in enemy borderlands with a small group” method. Good for your score, good for your wallet, good for your badge count. More fun than zerging.

Yocahu! Nice job man!