Guild Wars 2

So still no fix to this…

I’m beginning to lose faith in ArenaNet, again.

If you just mean the pre-events then it’s the same as succeeding it.

Originally the champion would lose half of his health if the pre-events were done on time. Similar to Ulgoth does still. But because he died way too fast, they removed this aspect. Similar to how the Claw of Jormag no longer loses his wings when entering phase 2.

There is a fail state for if you fail the total timer for the world boss, like all others. In most cases this is just larger amounts of ambient mob spawns, or evvironmental hazards like mines for Tequatl.

They left the end of the PC open ended like they did for a lot of aspects around the PCs.

There was meant to be two more storylines – one around Elona and one around Ascalon – but with the playerbase decreasing so much when GW2 was released, and staying low for three months, the plug was pulled on such, despite the storyline for the former having been done already. But even if those were made, I doubt the PC’s end would be anything but open ended.

Stooperdale.3560:

The combat engine doesn’t work properly underwater. First of all there are the camera and depth perception problems for players. You could argue that players should get used to it but actually players just don’t like it. More importantly though the combat engine is designed for 2D land combat with fields/traps/aoe in two dimensions. Ground targeting is not applicable underwater. This means that the weapon sets are dull, hard to use, or almost broken. Utility lines are lost without ground targeting and so are the traits to support them. This leaves some classes unrecognizable from their land based versions. We haven’t even started talking about different builds for underwater, re-breathers, or the helpless surface state.

Underwater combat is alright for skirmishes for but not alright for any major content.

Not only are there a lot of traits useless underwater, but unlike skills they don’t switch out between underwater and land.

I think that a good deal of the issues around underwater combat would be solved if they introduced underwater-only skills and traits, and make traits function like skills in that they switch out when underwater. Also adding in craftable aquabreathers (up to Exotic at least but preferrably ascended) would be a benefit too. I’d say about a third of the issues would be solved then.

They need an underwater focused feature batch, imo, followed or accompanied with extended underwater content.

It is not playable at the current time.

ArenaNet has stated that they intend to bring it back in a new format – one that’d match Season 2. However, since Season 1 was designed with the prospect of being mostly told via the open world, it’ll take time to convert it into the instances. Since they’re also not slowing development of Season 2 and the feature batches to work on Season 1, there’s no ETA on when Season 1 will be turned permanent.

Not all rewards can be obtained, but some can via the Laurel Merchants in the cities – there bottom-most tab above the sell tab is labeled “Living World Season 1 rewards” (or something of the like) where you can get all achievement-based rewards (basically any reward that was guaranteed rather than RNG). They cost 10 gold and 25 laurels each.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

Syska is lying in a cave in the open world and is the only story arc I know which has an open world event tied to it (If you had the story and interacted with the body an event started in that cave).

There’s a grand total of 6 or 7 PS-related open world events. Along with the one you mention, there is three versions of the “kill the risen captain and avenge [insert mentor name here]” events, and then there’s a Renegade Captain event in southern Blazeridge which only spawns if you killed Ajax (Vigil Chp4), and there’s a Son of Svanir event in Dredgehaunt if you are Priory and completed chapter 4. Not sure if there’s an event for Whispers, never beat it but it’d be tied to someone wanting revenge for Landon no doubt.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Majic.4801:

Yet another great way to make the game less enjoyable.

It’s sad to see people who think it’s enjoyable to kill a boss without any effort semi-afk just to get a few daily reward chests. Leaving bosses like the Shatterer with the graveyard rushing available (something which has been fixed for dungeons for a while now) would be a lot of wasted potential imho.

There’s a fine difference between not wanting to make the content punishment, and thinking it’s enjoyable to kill a boss without any effort semi-afk.

Majic never said he preferred the later, so it’s rather false for you to assume such. As I understand, no one’s advocating a policy of “no change” – but rather “not the OP’s change”.

Honestly, the only thing the OP’s suggestion does is thus:

1. Promotes guardians using Ventari/Nomad gear – aka full out tanking, instead of full berserker gear. That way, you can just stand in place, spam one, and not be killed by those silly boss attacks.
2. Demoralizes those without optimal computer or internet set-ups, thus segregating the playerbase.

It’s not a good suggestion in the least.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

It seems you’ve never experienced raid-bosses in games like WoW, correct me if I’m wrong. A battle like Heigan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmArX8GvHLo) was frustrating at first but got really really awesome the more you were accustomed with the mechanic of the battle. This is just a tiny example, raid games build their excitement on such mechanics.

You’re entirely right, I never did raids in WoW – I never played WoW, either. But from what I know they aren’t punishing, but challenging. Something being “challenging” instead of “punishing” does not mean there’ll never be frustration. People enjoy challenging content, not punishing content.

From what I understand in raids – and do correct me if I’m wrong – but there are save points, so if you fail you don’t have to start from scratch; if you have to leave, you can restart further in than the beginning, and if you’re group wipes you don’t have to restart the entire thing from absolute scratch – or in the situation of world bosses like in GW2, you don’t have to wait for other players to revive you or risk missing out on the boss fight entirely. Raids are not “no errors allowed” where even one mistake will prevent you from beating it. Such designs aren’t so bad in of themselves, except when added with hard-to-restart conditions, such as world bosses or long-lasting content.

The OP’s suggestion isn’t challenging in any right, unlike raids – as far as I understand of them at least. That’s where the difference in.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

and it IS possible in open world encounters.

I agree, but the OP’s method is far from the appropriate method.

And the Marionette was not a “no errors allowed”. There were probably two or three failed attempts at the generators allowed before it was a guaranteed fail, if memory serves me right. That means that some errors were allowed. The problem with the Marionette is that it required people you have no influence over not to fail as well as those you do and yourself.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Good telegraphs which give you enough time to react isn’t that hard to realize. It certainly would filter out the guys who watch tv next to their pc with the autoattacking charakter.

Good luck surviving with the lag then!

I have not-so-great internet. Just about every world boss is laggy for me. The OP’s change would downright prevent me from participating because I would be lagged to death. Hell, the lag already makes most encounters impossible because I either get d/c’d or unable to act – in the case of the former, getting back into the map means it either takes so long that it’s done, or I’m in a different map where it was beaten already; in the case of the latter, I don’t receive credit because I wouldn’t attack.

Making a “if you die, you must leave the map” set up would just prevent players who lag a bit from doing any world boss unless there’s small numbers at it – which unless the timer system is changed, won’t ever happen.

If you want to filter out the auto-attackers, you need to stem down the zerg’s numbers or increase the challenge. Do not create punishment, but challenge. Rather than preventing reviving, you change how the boss acts and reacts, you reduce the number of the zerg by giving them reason to spread out that’s more beneficial to them than clustering together. The OP’s suggestion only punishes those who lag, not those who auto-attack.

It also creates a discrepency with the letters sent to you throughout the personal story.

If I were them, I’d set all explorable modes to be level 80 (rebalanced of course) – this would give a better sense of end game via dungeons, create an ease of cross-dungeon balance in both difficulty and reward, and give sense to how the primary reward for a level 35 dungeon is level 80 exotics. Then I’d set up the story mode to be every 5 levels, going down from 80 with Arah. Thus:

80: Arah
75: HotW
70: CoE
65: CoF
60: SE
55: TA
50: CM
45: AC

This does make a slight level issue with HotW, and a bigger one with CoF, but with the entrances to both being easy to reach or always open (respectively), and most players not going to them at the recommended level, it’s not as big of an issue as the current story mess.

But they said they’re not really going to be touching the dungeons, so… shrug Opportunity lost, story confused.

Astralporing.1957:

“No errors allowed” approach is not really fun in the longer run. At least not for me.

“No errors allowed” is never fun. It’s frustrating. It makes people give up.

I don’t think a single person I know enjoys a “no errors allowed” gameplay unless it’s fully optional and super-quick to re-enter from scratch. Otherwise it isn’t “challenge” it’s “punishment.” And punishment is not fun.

Difficulty tends to come into two general forms: Challenge and Punishment

Challenge is when players are given visible hurdles to overcome, with visible means to do so. It may take trial and error, but it’s fully possible to overcome them on the first go without specific care and focus for them.

Punishment is when there are invisible hurdles, or visible hurdles with invisible means to overcome them, or incredibly high hurdles with means only to clear lesser hurdles. Typically, the only way to overcome them is to know they’re there and plan specifically for those hurdles, not just enjoying the game as you go.

The OP? It falls under that last one: “incredibly high hurdles”.

Though in my opinion each world boss needs a look at, with this set up at least the low level ones would theoretically have fewer players going to them – partially due to their commonality (ever 15 minutes instead of every 30 minutes – same one every 1:15 instead of every 2 hours), and partially due to lesser rewards. Each tier should be capable of being done with enjoyable difficulty at a range of players, based on the boss’s level and tier.

Tier 1: Minimally doable by 5 players of equal level in masterwork gear; maximally by 30 level 80s in ascended gear
Tier 2: Minimally doable by 10 players of equal level in rare gear; maximally by 50 level 80s in ascended gear
Tier 3: Minimally doable by 15 players of equal level in exotic gear; maximally by a full map of level 80s in ascended gear
Tier 4: minimally doable by 30 players of equal level in exotic gear; maximally by a full map of level 80s in ascended gear
Tier 5: Same as Tier 3.

In terms of reworking, the bosses need to establish five rules in their skills:

1. No safe spots. You should not be able to stand ANYWHERE in these battles and be unable to be hit by the boss or its minions.
2. No weak and slow attacks. Unless you’re specced out for full damage absorption, you should not be able to stand in the center of an attack and not take at least 20% damage. And if it’s less than 33%, then there needs to be an equally or more powerful follow-up – be it DoT, or a new attack landing in the same place.
3. Changing things up. Phases are a great and simple way to enjoy different kinds of fights in the same fight. Claw of Jormag, Triple Wurm, Marionette, and Prime Hologram are all simple examples, where how you fight changes but it always changes the same way. A better way to utilize the phase technology would be the Molten Facility Duo, where the second phase has multiple forms depending on what happened during the first phase. The fail point with the Molten Duo is that it’s too easy to manipulate by the players, and one outcome is much simpler than the other outcome. The best way to do it is to have a RNG outcome – when hitting a certain point (health, timer, etc.) one of many outcomes is chosen for the next phase’s fighting style, thus each time is not only unpredictable but different order too (note: should not be used for Tier 4&5 fights due to the amount of planning they’d need).
4. Fear is not the only CC. A lot of the “more challenging” bosses love the use of fear spam – Claw and Tequatl especially. This is a sad way to force crowd control, as there are better methods. The vine prisons in the one Iron Marches event is a neat method – players must pay attention or else they’re imprisoned. And CC spam just to use up those stun breaks to make another CC unbreakable is just a band-aid usage which in the end only annoys players, reducing the fun.
5. Finally: Unpredictability amongst predictability. I covered this lightly in the phase part, but being unable to predict the entire fight (to a more or less accurate degree) at the beginning makes it far more itneresting. That first time you face a boss in a new game will always be more pulse racing than the tenth time – it’s only natural that after a while you begin to get how things are done. Thus we need to introduce a level of unpredictability into the fights. Have some skills require specific conditions (be it very specific or just generally specific) to be met before being used, or skills that can chain, but aren’t always – for example, if players group up not too far from his own self in 20+ numbers, he’ll stand up and slam his fist down in that spot, doing an automatic 85% damage with crystal imprisonment. Give bosses their own unique combo effects, where if two specific skills follow each other and land in the same spot, a devastating result occurs – for example, let’s give the Claw of Jormag a player-bunch targetting Blizzard skill – if the skill happens to strike one of the crystals it spawns, the crystals and icebrood within the AoE instantly die, however the Blizzard expands to engulf the entire area and instead of just damage+chill over time, it now damages, bleeds, chills, cripples, and blinds over time.

I have ideas on how to improve each world boss, but I think I rambled enough for now.

If you want to make world bosses more interesting to fight then you have to do three things:

1. Give them more attacks, perhaps in phases based on time or health or both.
2. Either remove the timer or, more preferrably for the masses, have the tiers of bosses overlap so we don’t have a single world boss going off one at a time.
3. Redistribute rewards so that it’s more rewarding to not zerg.

What I would proper for a timer set up is to divide the world bosses into five tiers:
Tier 1: Starter bosses (10 or 15). Frozen Maw, Shadow Behemoth, Fire Elemental, Great Jungle Wurm, and a revamped Siegemaster Lormar
Tier 2: Mid-level bosses (35-60). Taidha Covington, Modniir Ulgoth, Dredge Commissar, Foulbear Kraal Chieftain, Branded Devourer Queen, and Nonmoa Lake Krait Witch
Tier 3: High-level bosses (60-80). Golem Mk II, Megadestroyer, Karka Queen, and Iron Marches Fire Shaman.
Tier 4: Mega bosses (50-80). The Shatterer, Triple Jungle Wurm, Tequatl the Sunless, and Claw of Jormag.
Tier 5: Guild Mission bosses. Tier 4 bosses + Twisted Marionette, and new specially tailored world boss-like enemies.

Each tier, sans Tier 5, would have their own timer. Set up as:
Tier 1: Every 15 minutes.
Tier 2: Every 30 minutes.
Tier 3: Every hour.
Tier 4: Every 3 hours.

Thus Tier 1 would begin repeating every 1:15; Tier 2 would begin repeating every 3 hours; Tier 3 would begin repeating every 4 hours; and Tier 4 would begin repeating every 12 hours.

The main point is to have the overlapping bosses, where currently we don’t have such (current Tier 1 bosses at the :15 and :45 marks, current Tier 2 bosses at the :00 and0 marks – only time there’s an overlap is when a current Tier 3 spawns). There’d be up to three bosses spawning at the same time, spreading people out amongst them.

Changing the reward is most important, as in the end that’s what most of the zergers do the bosses for – not the entertainment of the fight, but the guaranteed drops and the chances at exotics. What I would do is thus:

Tier 1: 1 guarantee rare (low chance to be exotic if level 60+)
Tier 2: 1 guarantee rare (medium chance to be exotic if level 60+) and 1 exotic champion bag
Tier 3: 1 guarantee rare (medium chance to be exotic if level 60+; low chance to be ascended if level 80), and 2 exotic champion bags
Tier 4: 1 guarantee rare (medium chance to be exotic if level 60+; low chance to be ascended if level 80) and 1 guarantee exotic (low chance to be ascended if level 80) and 3 exotic champion bags
Tier 5: 2 guarantee rares (medium chance to be exotic if level 60+; low chance to be ascended if level 80) and 1 exotic champion bag and guild commendations

Thus limiting the rewards based on tiers, making the higher tiers more desirable as they offer better rewards, but still having some decent reward to the lower tiers so that they’re still worth doing, will keep them off of the lower tiers, allowing a better experience with those. Thus the higher tiers need to be redesigned to better fit having to fight a zerg – where the real work comes in.

-continued in next post-

You just need to replay the story steps and you should have a chance to talk to the biconic NPCs (or the first charr you speak to in Iron Marches) to get another of the items.

That actually would probably fit Mai Trin given she’s a pirate and pirates… steal things.

So long as they don’t turn it into another saturday morning cartoon adventure, I don’t really care what they do. It’s always how they do it that matters in my eyes.

@rathy: It’s a known situation that was brought about with the September 9th feature patch. There’s two or three threads about it on the front page of this forum, as well as just as many in other forums.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Tho I can’t remember anymore if Syska was also mentioned/hinted at.

Not directly, but there are risen mesmers infiltrating as Pact members (specifically Vigil) just like Labwan was.

ElysianEternity.6215:

And even though we can only take 1 route throughout the game, the game’s narrative mostly acts as if all succeeded.

Not necessarily. They all occur, but it takes the paths to be without the PC – some succeed, others succeed but at less good levels, and some don’t succeed.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Anyways, I’m upset about the PS change as well and won’t dare to finish the 50s arc on my alts until they fixed everything. :/

It’s the 60s – specifically Retribution – that you cannot finish. A Light in the Darkness still gives the fear choosing, so theoretically when they re-impliment the fear arc (or rather, if) it should register so long as you haven’t completed Retribution/unlocked Chapter 7 (which begins with Forging the Pact).

weston.3457:

fellyn.5083:

weston.3457:

remember to those that need completed for LS, let us know you need it, how would we know to help if we dont know someone needs it. please do not go there simply to cause trouble and ruin gameplay for farmers, if you need LS most of us help, but be honest, dont say you do just to cause us grief please :]

There’s the problem right there, you want people to ask if they can finish the event, which they don’t have to.

if they can finish the event themselves more power to them, but its pretty hard. they dont have to ask, they just need to let us know they need it so we know to help em

It actually isn’t all that hard to complete the event alone, even with a bunch of people there.

Most of the farmers will wait until the last moment to keep killing. And that last moment can be solo’d.

zeromius.1604:

Sarathiel.6374:

I couldn’t agree more. At this point the lack of new content has basically driven my guild to an all time low and myself away from the game. Waiting 4 months for 2 months of mediocre content isn’t worth investing time into.

The irony of this statement is that you actually end up waiting longer if ArenaNet stopped doing Living Story content and instead focused on releasing an expansion.

The lack of irony in the statement is that he’d be getting more content at a single time, so it changes little.

Guild Wars 2 lacks long-term investiment other than the grind of legendary and ascended gear and dailies/monthlies. And people blame this on the breaks in the Living World, but that’s because they’ve been conditioned into feeling “Living World = new stuff to do” thanks to the temporary nature of Season 1, where you had to do the Living World… or you just simply can’t do it. Which meant “screw the rest of the game, I have to do this” thus resulting in people now thinking, with the LW at a lull, that there’s ‘nothing to do in the game’ despite how obviously false it is. They’ve been conditioned to think “nothing new to do” = “nothing to do”.

Or that’s how I view the situation, as that’s how it feels to me even when I remind myself ‘just because it’s not new doesn’t mean I did it already’ and I go out to search for more events I’ve not completed… which at this point is ever-so-fewer.

RoxBuryNine.4210:

Kasmeer and Marjory vanish part way during the last fight. Are they supposed to? If not, then why hasn’t this been fixed? If they are, then why were they there in the first place?

I doubt it was intended.

All allied NPCs go back to their starting position – even the Seraph you rescue outside the fort, and even the now-dead Belinda.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

However, Largos and Tengu cannot become playable characters in the PS: during Zhaitan era, Tengu were neutral and not involved at all in the fight against an ED (they only thought of helping after Mordremoth awakening), and for the Largos… It wouldn’t make sense since we would be talking to Sayeh al’Rajihd like we are not part of the Largos.

I do agree that GW2 is taking another path, but we have two choices: either we won’t have characters that could witness what already happened, or we won’t have any new race at all :-/

Both right and wrong there.

While it is true that the races of the three most desired “new playable race” (tengu, largos, and kodan) were not involved with Zhaitan, Scarlet, or Mordremoth (at this point), it’s heavily pointed out that individuals do. We have a tengu who’s joined the Vigil (Fuji Shadowmane, iirc) and one who joined the Pact (Izu Steelshrike) – who’s to say that there couldn’t have been a tengu who joined one of the three Orders and got paired with Forgal/Seiran/Tybalt? Who’s to say that a largos couldn’t have joined an Order for the chance of a better prey (or perhaps after being exiled from his/her people, or something else) and get paired with the right mentor? Or a kodan (we already see some kodan in the Chantry of Secrets as I said) joining an Order?

And in all, the only mandatory dialogue changes are in the Apatia storyline – which currently is cut from the game. If memory serves me right, Sayeh is never introduced as an “uncommon race” to the player via Trahearne, but simply just “she doesn’t like crowds and we fear others would be scared by her presence” – at most, there may be a text dialogue in a single location that asks what Sayeh is – and it wouldn’t be hard to add a “if not largos, then show this dialogue branch” in that one thing.

So aside from one currently-not-in-game-though-may-come-back storyline, the need to change things is minimal, so long as the first three chapters (prior to joining an Order) is done right.

Neox.3497:

Since they are really slow on adding new content, I really would like to see a comeback of the S1 stuff.

They could add them kinda like fractals. The letter you got about fractals says: “Fractals of the Mists! Re-live the greatest and most exciting moments from Tyria’s past as you test your strength, speed, and skill against some of the most formidable opponents from the annals of history.”
Doesn’t S1 fit there too?

They intend to bring Season 1 back in the same format that Season 2 currently is. However, since Season 1 was mostly open world stuff, it will take a lot of work and they’re not going to hault Season 2 just to reimpliment Season 1.

Putting Season 1 into the form of Fractals would also take a lot of work – I doubt it was a walk in the park for the four fractals that is a butchered Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat to be turned into fractals, and that would be amongst the easiest to be done!

I’d rather have Season 1 in the story journal, than in fractals, anyways. Especially if it takes a lot of work either way.

NYG.2568:

Since Guild Wars 2 was first announced. It has lived up to very little if any of the hype projected by it’s players.

Fixed for you.

To be honest, the developers don’t hype as much as people proclaim them to. They do make desires for what they want of the game, but they don’t hype it up. And some desires come, some don’t. They merely promise to look into it. Exception being the Manifesto trailer, which… yeah, that didn’t really come about.

NYG.2568:

I love the idea of a legendary scavenger hunt so to speak. Implement it in a way the tells the story of said legend not just collecting the items to make it. The legend behind legendaries shouldn’t be about the amount of time, cost, or resources to make it!

I suspect that the scavenger and crafting hunt for Mawdrey was the prototype for precursor crafting – a test to see how well it was received.

ANYWAYS

I think the ‘hype’ has died down due to three things:

• Temporariness of Season 1. Hard to become motivated for stuff if you’ve got a pre-established feeling that it won’t last, even if you’re told it will.
• The continuous release nature of the Living World. It just isn’t easy to get hyped up for small update after small update, even with breaks inbetween them now. If they want to get the hype train going again, they’ll need something different than ‘same old same old with a new look’.
• A build off of the direct above: far too many situations where what players get didn’t hit what players expected. One of the downsides of the continuous releases is that it increases the disappointment of the inevitable inability to match a player’s imagination – you have to be true masters of the craft to make people who have expectations ooh and ahh in awe. And true masters of the craft, ArenaNet are not – few, oh so very few, are. This is the main reason why ME3’s ending got ridiculed – though it wasn’t the best it could have been, ME1 and ME2 created such high expectations that it just couldn’t be met; but those who played through after hearing all the bashing had low expectations… which were surpassed. Anyways – too many disappointments caused by the player’s own overhyping, leading to a disillusionment resulting in a lack of desire to have expectations.

Holidays are treated separate from the Living World seasons. Wintersday, Halloween, Dragon Bash, Crown Pavilion, Labyrinthine Cliffs are all counted as “holidays” rather than part of the Living World.

If we’re lucky, ArenaNet will realize folks want the old skins returned and will make them available in the subsequent like-holidays.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

You’re absolutely right, but doesn’t the PS completely prevent any addition to the game?

It would only work for new races (they could have joined during Zhaitan’s era), but every class has been known for quite some time, so either “we” discover new fighting styles that could not have experienced Zhaitan’s era as we saw it, or they could simply add some and change the story because after all it’s just some lines of code and pixels…

Professions actually have little to do in the storyline, so even exotic professions wouldn’t make much of a difference. The issue comes in when you have lore-conflicting things like “cleansed dragon minions”.

It is a heavy plot point that dragon corruption is irreversible and, well, corruptive, so the PC being someone who utilizes dragon corruption to empower himself is a huge faux pass. It makes little logical sense.

If it were something like a necromancer-styled warrior (basically a dark version of Guardians), or a stereotypical kungfu monk like profession, then they’d work easily. But using dragon corruption/minions/magic as a basis will not. It’s too plot centric.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Keeping in mind that if they were to add something that would respect the PS, it is easy to believe that we have now the complete cast of races and classes: we will never use Largos, or Tengu, and we will never discover new fighting styles as they do not fit in te timeline. Plus, we will have to wait until the 3rd dragon to maybe get something new: new races/classes don’t fit in the PS, and they would be obliged to wait until lvl80 (and use 90g/10 bucks) to join in the battle against Mordremoth…

It’s an explicit statement throughout the game that there are largos and tengu who act individually. Your PC would be one such case for those races. Kodan would work too, as we see some kodan who’ve migrated to Lion’s Arch (pre-destruction), work with the Pact (in Frostgorge), and even are seen in the Chantry of Secrets.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

After all in GW1 a ritualist or a dervish could experience Prophecies storyline. Sometimes it requires a tiny sacrifice to add something new.

Which were explicitly stated to be “you are experiencing events that happened already.”

They could do such a thing for the Personal Story, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the route ArenaNet is taking with GW2, given how different the story steps in GW2 and the missions in GW1 function.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Regarding corruption, Sylvari are resistant to ED’s corruption, maybe some studies from the asura could have brought to light what makes the Sylvari incorruptible? They would then, with the help of the Pact, find the knowledge to make it stable and viable when implemented in other races, as well as a few volunteers to try out their new discoveries.

Sylvari immunity comes in the form of “we die, instead of become corrupted.” And it still wouldn’t work since it would be well after the current timeline, which is already giving hints without asuran influence as to the source of the sylvari ‘defense’: the Pale Tree and the connection to her (the Dream). Something that can’t be transferred to other races.

But that still goes to show that Jormag’s influence is making the waters colder – regardlessof the why – and said cooling of waters, as well as blizzards, would affter climates elsewhere via currents.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I did, and I think a lot of other GW1 players did as well. However, Rurik had the ‘benefit’ (in massive air quotes) of being the target of many jokes regarding his warrior mentality of charging blindly into battle. Togo and Mhenlo were pretty terrible. Evennia was rather forgettable.

The only reason why people hated Togo, Mhenlo, and Rurik were due to mechanics – them running off and dying, forcing the party to restart the entire mission.

The hate on Kormir, however, comes from the story, not (entirely or mostly) the mechanics.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Or so you assumed, but that’s not true. There are plenty of characters in GW1 as well that grind my gears, and sometimes for the same reasons.

But another thing to keep in mind, is that GW1 had rather bad voice acting, so me and guildies were used to mocking the game whenever it tried to invoke some sort of drama with these silly characters. On the whole, this meant that we were less irritated, since the story telling was pretty bad in general.

With GW2 this is not the case. I think a lot of the game is voice acted really well, and the story telling is of much better quality than GW1. It’s the story they tell, that I have a problem with. But on the whole, there are sharp improvements. But this has the negative side effect that you are less forgiving when the writers fail. When you’re not poking fun at the game, and are trying to be invested, you are also more easily annoyed.

It’s rather amazing that you even say you enjoyed GW1 lore, with how you’re bashing it now.

I do have to disagree with you on what you say of GW1. While Prophecies and Factions had bad voice acting, I never really had that “poke fun” thing towards the game, and the ‘drama’ with the characters was mostly non-existent in Prophecies and Factions (sans Rurik’s banishment and death, and Togo’s death). Most that is at the very least memorable comes from Nightfall and Eye of the North, which had much much better voice acting.

So I guess I’m just not seeing your complaints taking any root. Our views of it differ too much, though with what you say it is rather curious when I see you say you liked GW1’s lore and story.

And really, it sounds like your entire argument is: “I want my character to be the spotlight! Mine mine mine, not yours but mine!” Which just comes off as Cadeyrn like to me. I don’t think our PC should always be the spotlight, let alone can in an MMO lore without using some silly moniker to refer to the PC at every spot of the turn.

Sariel V.7024:

Rurik is widely despised for being the secret inspiration for Kilroy Stonekins (Leeroy Jenkins is just a convenient cover ;D ); he ends up dead before the halfway point in the game anyway. I got sick of The Mhenlo Show long before the end of Factions. Evennia was hardly a spotlight hog.

I rather disagree with the Evennia bit, and would argue that “The Mhenlo Show” was barely part of the Factions campaign (it was there only, what, four or so times?). Rurik’s hatred you mention is just as I said above – mechanics. You don’t hate him for being a spotlight hog that takes the role of leadership away from the PC.

Vanive.3804:

Normally they don’t…but sometimes they do, If they start burning down fast then you know they are real champs and not scaled event champs with no loot.

Think you got it backwards.

Pretty sure the champions with a lot of health that don’t drop drops are always there (non-scaled); those that do, with normal health, only show up for high scaling (I always see a Goliath and Wolf; only in large parties do I see troll, quaggan, and kodan – in that order of smallest to largest).

This is an old kind of suggestion that just takes different forms, for both race and profession suggestions.

And the answer is that given current lore, it just won’t work.

Dragon magic corrupts, twisting the minds of those affected. “Attuning” to a dragon would do nothing but make the user a dragon minion. Only means known to counter it is the Altar of Glaust and a specific ritual that must be used there. Such a profession would make zero sense in the personal storyline; a new profession should make sense in the personal storyline (and hopefully, a new race too, ideally – otherwise it’d need an entirely unique personal storyline – whereas if it is to use the old PS, it only needs unique PS for chapters 1-3, with some new voice overs and dialogue text rewrites throughout, especially if it’s an exotic race).

And mechanically, the corruption bar is such a hindrance it’d be easily underpowered to all other professions unless the boons from the attune skills are overpowered, in which again balance issue.

Prophecies was designed with the mindset of giving players a large variety of regions to explore, much like many fantasy genres. Prophecies was the very first game, so there likely wasn’t certainty that there’d be continuations let alone a return to Tyria. With Factions, we begin seeing ArenaNet going a more logical route with their geographical climates in that whole contents are themed to the same concept rather than each region being so.

Guild Wars 2 – and Eye of the North as well, technically speaking, is a bit of an act to consolidate the different climates.

There are still traces of tropical climate in GW2 Kryta – mostly around the Sea of Sorrows as explained by others – but quite a bit of it has been consolidated to be more logical – to look more on par to Ascalon, Verdant Cascades, and Charr Homeland, but not completely so, in order to retain a distinction between west of the Shiverpeaks and east of them.

Fun fact: there were traces on the Ring of Fire which indicate that it was tropical.

If you’re seeking a lore explanation, rather than a design one, then go with draxynnic’s second explanation as it makes a lot of sense. And on top of that:

• In the quaggan racial storyline, we learn that the waters as far south as Dredgehaunt Cliffs have become too cold for arctic quaggans due to Jormag’s influence pushing south. No doubt that also had an influence towards the west a bit as well, due to wind and water currents.
• Per Sea of Sorrows and sparse in-game dialogue – the validity of the former being questionable as it’s sailor tales – the sinking (and later, rising, per in-game) of Orr left the air and waters around Orr much colder than before, so any water currents pushing northward from there would no doubt be cooler.
• With Wintersday in GW2, we see no natural snow in Kryta – what little there was, was made by asuran snow devices. Which indicates that, as drax said, the gods did indeed mess with the weather while retaining their influence on Tyria 250 years ago (just as some folks said during Wintersday). Without that influence, the climate could easily be altered into its “natural” form.

Zaxares.5419:

Then again, we do have an arctic region supposedly sitting right next to a tropical region, so don’t read too much into it.

The Shiverpeaks are, in lore, the tallest mountains in the known world. They’re not an arctic region, so much as a “they’re so high up that it’s nearly continuously snowing there”. (Note the nearly)

Gendarran Fields doesn’t show this very well, sadly.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Not that Kryta had a thick jungle vibe. The zone boundaries in Prophecies were all either abrupt hills or valleys. It wasn’t until Istan (or perhaps Echovald?) that we saw vegetation used to define the limits of playable zones.

Maguuma did too, though usually on a raised land. But it was usually a combination of vegetation and raised/lower land or impassible streams – the purpose of the vegetation then was more to block out sight, to end the map sooner, rather than to block pathing. Usually.

There were several caves opened up during Escape and Battle for LA, this was one. There was a Lost Heirloom spawn inside, nothing more.

Agreed that the problem behind the LW is that it is just continuous DLC. And this is an issue in many ways. DLCs just never have the same impact as expansions. They are mini-expansions.

If I had to pick a single word or phrase to explain why DLC will never beat expansion to players, I’d place it as this: publicity

You never get the same feeling of interest for DLCs as you do for expansions in the same reason you’ll never be happier for an expansion over a new game (except in cases like WoW). Amount of content is part of it, expectations is another part, and just simply how it’s publicised is another.

The ‘Living World’ – a misnomer in of itself – will NEVER be able to solely support GW2, simply due to this difference in appeal between DLC, expansions, and full games.

Any attempts to compare games to a tv series or other styles of cinema is false. They are too different to compare. The Living World is not like a tv series. It’s like a series of DLCs that have the same plot – like a game that got butchered and we’re being served it piece by piece instead of the proper wholee, which is nothing less than uninteresting and borderline boring.

The Walking Dead can manage its style because the content is bigger chunks and is an adventure game, not an MMO. And I feel that ANet had looked at that game and thought ‘we can do that too’. No, no you cannot. The games are just too different.

Guild Wars 2 needs the publicity of an expansion, and that is something that the Living World will NEVER be able to provide. Ever.

saventis.1485:

TL;DR
scarlet’s workshop is needed but should have been introduced/incorporated better

Missed this post before.

I wasn’t meaning ‘it isn’t needed’ but rather ‘it has nothing needed to progress season 2.’

All of if should have been put into the game during Season 1, as I said. It has no real place in season 2 and the fact we blindly stumble upon it by pure luck when we spent a year not finding anything is just poor writing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

While you are correct, I personally felt very annoyed with Trahearne for taking a position that felt like it belonged to the player, and for never really taking part in any battles. That is where the Kormir comparison comes from. It’s not so much the role in the story, but the feeling of a boring npc being the focus, when the player should be the focus.

-snip quote on DE-

I think this pretty much goes back to the point I just made. Npc’s taking center stage, when the player should be the main character. They don’t literally act as Kormir, but the feeling is still the same. It’s the feeling that the writers felt these characters were more interesting than the player.

Oh please, then why no hate on Rurik, Evennia, Master Togo, and Brother Mhenlo? They had the main focus roles, more than the players in GW1, so why no hating them for stealing your spotlight.

I don’t think your argument works. You hate some bit not all who do that.

saventis.1485:

i think perhaps if u think of this game like a book
I think what they are doing right now is still the “begining” of their story they are setting up exposition (the rules of the universe)
asking questions that will be answered later
whereas all the players see it as the end of the “book” cause alot of them have finished the campeign

The thing is… We have no idea how long this “book” is
and for gw1 players at least we have been waiting a loooooooooong time for some of these answers

i understand that this is sort of the beginning of there story however (for gw1 players)
this is the end of the second “book” for us and we still have ALOT of unanswered questions about the first

That’s a good interpretation, and probably true.

One could say we’re in the second book. The first being Prophecies to Nightfall, the second beginning with Eye of the North (the prologue). The issue is, as you said, we don’t know how long the book is. And at the rate it is going, it’ll be like we’re at the beginning of the book still for another year or two, making it a way too long book. Or even book series, but in such a scenario if feels like we’re skipping the fulfilling conclusion of the earlier books as we go into the next one. Kind of like if we look at Eye of the North as the prologue and Personal Story as the main book, we got to the end of the first book – some answers but many more questions; Season 1 would be like half a book, we never really got a fulfilling conclusion to it – yes, Scarlet died and we found out she was working for Mordremoth, but all the other things, her armies, herself, it’s all missing. Some got brought about in Season 2 – far too late, if you ask me, which really just resulted in a “great, more Scarlet -.-” from a lot of my friends – but only a slim few.And now we’re at the beginning of our fourth book, but no clue how far into the book we are.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Odyssey.2613:

Trahearne was awful. Kormir2.0 all over again.

This. So much this. I can’t fathom how they managed to pull a Kormir again. They even did it twice (Destiny’s Edge).

Trahearne isn’t really a “Kormir 2.0” nor is Destiny’s Edge.

What made Kormir so ‘bad’ of a character is that she was uninvolved with a vast majority of the plot. Once her role as tutor was fulfilled, she got captured, during imprisonment made helpless, and shortly after being freed was teleported to the Realm of Torment, where at the very end she shows up and takes leadership once more – she was literally there to introduce players and then put on the bus so players can be ‘the leader’ but then was forced back in order to take the one kind of glory that players could not take: becoming a god.

Trahearne is much different. With the exception of sylvari, he’s never a tutor – he’s a replacement for your second tutor in the form of a combatant ally. He’s quickly forced into a role that players could not take, true, but that’s pretty much where the similarity with Kormir ends. He’s there throughout the entirety of the storyline from Claw Island on, without exception, except for the Fear arc (and that’s only for two of the three possibilities and not counting Forging the Pact/Battle of Fort Trinity). He takes the role of leadership so that players aren’t put there – an act Kormir never really got – and unlike claims, he never takes the glory of the players. While the story does turn to focus on his Wyld Hunt for three story steps near the end, to those who read and listen to the dialogue and spend time talking to the NPCs in Fort Trinity’s instances they’d know that everyone praises the Commander, not the Marshal, for all these praises.

Trahearne, in fact, gets only one praise of glory throughout the entire Chapter 8 and this is in the final instance after Zhaitan’s defeat, and the glory he’s given is leading the army in the Orr campaign, and the same NPCs praise the Commander as “the Dragonslayer”.

Trahearne was forced in for non-sylvari players, but he by no means is a “Kormir 2.0”. He would be closer to being Salma during War in Kryta for those who never did that one side quest.

Destiny’s Edge also aren’t a Kormir 2.0. While they serve as tutors at the beginning and disappear from the personal story, they don’t disappear from the game’s story – the focus on them just simply separates from the personal story into side quests (much like how the story of Devona and co. in Prophecies was told throughout the campaign in sparse side-quests). And at the end, they don’t take any glory at all. Caithe praises you, immediately, and they all praise you at the end. The closest they come to Kormir is being an early tutor that disappears from the main plot – little different than if we were not forced to do Boreas Seabed in Factions and could skip strait to Eternal Grove from Arborstone (thus writing Master Togo, the mentor, for a longer while).

They have yet to make a Kormir 2.0. Or any form of glory stealer. It’s all just cries of people who don’t pay attention, and those who conform to the vocal ignorance.

The only real crime Trahearne has… is poor voice acting.

But just about all of Factions had the same. And yet it was one of the best stories in Guild Wars (if you read An Empire Divided).

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To be fair, GW1 also had pretty dreadful writing. But I really enjoyed the lore and setting in GW1. Recent writing has been steadily improving, and I like the new characters that have been introduced.

I have to disagree with it.

While alone, Prophecies is rather dreadful in its quests’ writings. They’re basically an NPC going “hero, go do this” without explanation. But this became good writing with Winds of Change, when this became highlighted in the dialogue:

“I looked at them and I saw myself. Gullible. Idealistic. Willing to do whatever was asked of me, so long as the intentions were good.”

Which turns the PC into a wanna-be hero basically shouting: “Have no fear, citizens! Tell me your woes and I shall take care of them!” naively believing that whatever was said was to be done in honest goodness.

The only bad part of the writing there was, aside from this lampshaded bit, was the voice acting. Prophecies and Factions both had rather bad voice acting – Factions got the biggest heat because it’s most obvious there, but both games had it. Nightfall, at the very least less so. GW2 has decent voice acting, though a lot of re-occuring voices in the races sadly, making different NPCs sound exactly the same which can be immersion breaking, but it’s not too bad especially if you don’t do multiple storyline playthroughs.

Prophecies also had an issue of a storyline that seemed to jump back and forth between villains, but in a way this is what made it so interesting, as there wasn’t really “a single bad guy”. Which GW2 tries to do, but there’s no “back and forth”. And all the villains die or are put on the bus after the story dungeons – only Kudu and Caudecus got real spotlighting, and Caudecus only if you’re human, and Kudu partially for that one asura storyline that you had a 1-in-15 chance (1-in-3 if asura) of getting. Which in turn only damages the game’s story.

lakdav.3694:

Wouldnt it be fine if they just put the Greatest Fear plot on lvl70 and the rest come at lvl75 starting with the Abaddon temple? Last portion of the personal story, it wouldnt be a problem if it was a bit more condensed, with a 5 levels gap instead of the glaring 10 levels…

Technically, the greatest fear plot is unlocked at 70. The thing is… They completely altered chapter 7 – the greatest fear plot – to use elements of the end of chapter 8 instead of the actual greatest fear.

There is no need to separate the Abaddon’s temple and on stuff from the end of chapter 8, chapter 8 is merely thrice as long as most other chapters. No big deal about that.

Though I don’t see much wrong off the top of my head with chapter 8 split into three chapters, same order as originally, and having the now-final four chapters (Forging the Pact to Victory or Death) separated by 5 levels – @ 65, 70, 75, and 80.

If they even cared about the chapter lengths. Which I doubt, as there is no real reason to.

Cleansing Orr is one part, assaulting Zhaitan is the next. In reality, they just switched the order around.

It doesn’t flow better. It actually flows worse.

Phantasmal.5631:

Let’s be honest. The people complaining on here are truly here for Gift of Exploration for LEGENDARY item crafting with fairly easy WvW completion to get.

I’ve completed WvW mapping on 5 characters, with only 3 PoI on my 6th. I’ve done map completion on 2 characters. I’m only goign after 2 legendaries, but if I wanted more I would not complain about mapping WvW.

Rather, if I have a complaint about the Gift of Exploration, it’s that it is the only reward for World Completion aside from a little bit of AP and a title – which you don’t get for the second and on completions.

I want WvW removed from World Completion not because of the legendary, but because PvE, WvW, and sPvP should not be mixed together.

And while I suggest a second track that contains all five WvW maps and the Heart of the Mists, getting the 3 PoI and 2 WPs in the Heart of the Mists is hardly an issue.

Hell, I’d take having to map the PoI of dungeons over mapping WvW as part of the World Completion. And at least one of the dungeon PoI I’ve never been able to obtain (Zhaitan’s Last Stand), some are just plain old tricky and require doing something before a boss or step.

So don’t go lumping all complaints together, because it’s just false.

Seera.5916:

So you want the legendary to be something that’s easy to obtain? I’m all for making the legendary truly legendary to have. That truly requires all aspects of the game that you’re allowed to take an actual legendary. And if that happens, I likely will not be able to get one. Because I’m the casual who decides they don’t want to spend the time memorizing rotations and keeping up with the meta. I button mash my skills and use the ones that seem to work the best for me and my button mashing rotation. And my main is a squishy elementalist so I don’t have room for a whole lot of errors.

And hey, guess what, I’ve got my Gifts of Exploration and the Gift of Battle and I’m fully aware you don’t have to play WvW at all to get the WvW components. I’m laughably bad at WvW. My badges of honor, which I had been dreading getting, got handed to me in a couple of AP chests. I got them before they changed the requirement to needing to be rank 14 to get the Gift of Battle. But I likely would have bought the liquid WXP and bought my way up to rank 14.

But the map completion part of WvW is currently the only part of WvW you can’t avoid by buying things or getting enough AP.

Did you even truly read my posts?

I am not saying “make the legendary easier” – I explicitly stated to replace WvW map completion from World Completion, not remove. Replace – as in “put something else in its place”. Theoretically, this would mean same – if not more – difficulty in map completion, but you don’t have to go to WvW but instead can go elsewhere.

Even before the AP chests, it was possible to get the 500 badges without really WvW’ing – via jumping puzzles there. Four puzzles a day, gave about 30 badges give or take. That’d just be about 18 days of doing all four jumping puzzles.

Gift of Exploration is already laughable, really, and is hardly a challenge even with WvW maps – for most players, it’s just the waiting game. So why make players wait? What point is it to time gait the Gift of Exploration?

Instead of time gaiting in an artificial means, would it not be better to extend the World Completion in the direction of the world’s mapping? Dry Top, an extended Southsun Cove, an extended Labyrinthine Cliffs, and extensions elsewhere (such as Claw Island) would be all that’s needed. If Season 2 introduces more zones, then there you go: add those zones in replacement to the WvW areas. Put WvW and sPvP into their own track, so that those who WvW can get a reward for mapping everything.

I never once said “make the Gift of Exploration easy” – I never said “make legendaries easy” either. So don’t put words into my mouth.

Nothing can be done with the items you get from the LS episodes aside from crafting Mawdrey at this time. But if you want to craft it later, simply replaying the story steps will give you the items again, so you can safely delete them.

Seera.5916:

But a legendary should mean that the player has experience with all parts of the game that you can take a legendary to.

So…

What part of the Legendary requires sPvP?
What part of the Legendary requires the Personal Story?
What part of the Legendary requires Southsun Cove or Dry Top?
What part of the Legendary requires doing open world events?

Answer to all: None.

If you’re crafting a legendary rather than buying, you can easily get it by map completion (no events at all), running a single dungeon, and daily farming.

And that’s part of the best part of the legendaries. You can get the materials for them in multiple manners for a good deal of said materials. Only the dungeon tokens and the gifts of exploration are you really forced into a single method. You can get skill points for Bloodstone Shard in numerous ways. You can get T6 mats in numerous ways. You can even get Obsidian Shards and Badges of Honor in numerous ways.

Why should you be forced to WvW for a legendary, if you’re not forced to PvP, do PS, or simply “experience all parts of the game”?

And you know what? Fun fact: you don’t have to WvW to map the WvW maps. I seldom do. I’ve mapped them on almost all of my characters, and for the most part I just look to see what my server has conquered and cap that – then once I’ve capped my borderland and 1/3rd of EB, I wait until the color changes (usually the following Friday; SoR bounces colors a lot now) and rinse repeat. Takes me 3 days over 3 weeks, but I don’t have to join a single WvW battle (intentionally).

So it is entirely possible already to get the legendaries without actual WvW’ing.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

i think that all champ chests dropped from event champions should only be rewarded as bonus chest after the event has succeeded.

My name is Konig, and I support this suggestion. The concept of it – not the 3 bags for success one, as that may be exploitable, arguably, maybe.

This goes into suggestions made previously such as here and that was formed here on how to promote succeeding events. Improve the rewards for success over those of failure, and you have more farmers seeking to succeed events rather than fail them.

Increase the fail reset timers. Increase the success rewards with those bouncing chests. This will help mitigate a good deal of it, as with Coiled Watch people are failing because the farmable events respawn either instantly or in 5 minutes on failure but on success it’s 30 minutes or some such. If the failure was increased to 15 regardless of placement in the chain, and success given a Geode-like reward (regional based event-success reward to be turned in at a special merchant)

Odyssey.2613:

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

It’s definintely more of the former.

While the writing isn’t masterpiece quality, I wouldn’t call it horrible… entirely. There are certainly some points that are worse than the rest, which make me prefer stuff on newgrounds over what I’m seeing in GW2, but that’s not universal. The open world stuff I see few flaws on – it’s all instance storytelling thus far in Season 2 that I see as the issue.

And most of the issue is what was presented before: it feels like a checklist. There’s no depth to it. It’s just “we’re doing this, now we’re doing that, time to do these, go do those.” etc. For example:

• Belinda had next to no depth, and felt like it was intended to be character development – but it was done wrong, you don’t introduce side-plots to develop your characters, you let the main plot develop them by showing their reactions to the new aspects of the plot.
• The entire involvement of Scarlet’s past workshop felt entirely unnecessary – even the Eternal Alchemy cinematic. While cool, what purpose did it hold? None. You can remove Scarlet’s involvement completely and have roughly the same story being told. It felt like it was done for the sole point of easing players’ complaints during Season 1 that we didn’t get to see what Scarlet saw – but that’s the entirely wrong reason to impliment such, and it’s far too late to redeem Scarlet’s plot by bringing all this stuff about her now. That stuff should have been placed into Season 1, and before The Origins of Madness (or the stuff we saw during The Origins of Madness and the Edge of the Mists releases should have been earlier, while what we have in Season 2 should have been during The Origins of Madness).
• The ‘gathering the races’ side steps felt unnecessarily short and glossed over. Ideally, each one should have had their own mini-arc to ease their problems. An entire nation’s issues won’t be solved by a single campaign into the heart of the second-largest Son of Svanir stronghold, or by eliminating a single tomb of ghosts. If I were writing it, I’d have ended E1 with the fight against Aerin and a revelation about new dragon minions, had E2 begin with consulting the Pact leading to wanting assistance from the nations to bolster their forces, turning the rest of E2, the entirity of E3 and all but the finale of E4 into solving the races’ issues – rather than pointlessly (plotwise) assisting attacked forts and the Iron Marches (which could still have been attacked, but left as open world not-part-of-the-living-story content), with 2-3 steps each race; 1 race in E2, 2 in E3, and 2 in E4. This was a chance to include multiple stories and/or story progression into the main plot without deviating from the main plot; a chance to show what’s been happening to the world in the two years since Zhaitan’s death aside from Scarlet and Kiel’s plots, and it was utterly and pointlessly overlooked.

Instead of fleshing out the potential of all these plot points, they’re turned into short one-instance done-and-over checklist aspects of the story. Why? We don’t know. What purpose does Belinda’s death serve, exactly? To give Marjory and Kasmeer the unneeded personal stakes in things? What purpose does seeing the Eternal Alchemy serve, exactly? To send us to the Pale Tree (something that Trahearne would have done if we went to the Pact after seeing new dragon minions)?

These are good plots, but they’re not being fleshed out to their best potential. Making the implementation and writing sub-par.

Of course, the implementation has certainly improved since Season 1. But that improvement is like going from a 1 to a 4 on a “being done well” scale of 0-to-10.

When Season 2 began, I thought it was the best kitten thing to happen for GW2. Looking at it after the initial introduction shock, I realize now that’s not so in the least. The best aspects of Season 2 is really just going back to how things originally was (the shared format with the Personal Story) with some improvements (repeatability); the rest was just because it’s merely better than Season 1 – it isn’t better than the Personal Story (well, some of the Personal Story for sure).

The story instances have, sadly, always held a place of “feels like an amateur did it” to me. Even/especially compared to GW1, which had worse voice acting for sure. Season 2 is no different.

Stormy Dragon.9210:

Coulter.2315:

We already have an unacceptable, monsterous and vile race that only exists to be hated and, Lyssa willing, eventually destroyed – the Charr.

I’ll be the first Charr to admit the Searing was a big mistake. But it’s not our fault; we got tricked into blowing up Ascalon by Vizier Khilbron—a human. Of course, he also tricked you all into blowing up Orr all on your own, so I guess you need to wipe yourselves out too.

And of course, we all learned our lesson and have not blown up any other continents. Meanwhile you idiots have fallen for the same trick on THREE times, having also been tricked into blowing up the Jade Sea (Shiro) and Ascalon (Adelbern).

So if we’re really going to talk about species that need to be put down, humans are the ones who obediently fall in line every time a genocidal nut comes along.

The charr weren’t “tricked” and they don’t think the Searing was a mistake – talk to the charr in Iron Marches near the Searing Cauldron still there, and they will explain that while the thing needs to be destroyed, it is not for its past use but for the potential dangers to themselves it holds. And they certainly weren’t tricked by Khilbron – the charr likely never even met the vizier.

While true that the charr did not blow up Orr (nor was it “humans” who were tricked into it – it was just one man, Khilbron, who did so knowingly after being converted to the faith of Abaddon), they did have the full intention of causing another Searing in Orr, they just didn’t reach Arah yet, where it seems they were going to set off the Searing at. You can find a total of at least 3 Searing Cauldrons in the Straits of Devastation, between and aroud the Vizier’s Tower and Broken Spit – a fourth one was recovered from the temple of Dwayna, moved there by the risen.

And the charr were not tricked into attacking Orr, Ascalon, and Kryta. They did so intentionally, though directed by the titans – thus the force behind them: Abaddon – but they would have attacked Ascalon regardless, as they had been doing for over a thousand years.

And Adelbern was not tricked into causing the Foefire – he did it fully knowing the consequences, but he was also demented, fallen into madness by the death of his son, the loss of his nation (which the charr burned then conquered), and his hatred for Krytans and charr alike.

Shiro being tricked is questionable, but like Khilbron he was converted by Abaddon’s agents into following the fallen god. His actions do not reflect humanity at a whole. Otherwise, it’d be like comparing the Flame Legion’s actions or the Shaman Caste’s actions reflecting the actions of the charr on a whole. Such as banning all females from fighting just because of a single female warrior and her underground movement.

The other day, people were stacked outside of Coil Watch, while the defense event was ongoing. It was down to the final enemy. Some people went to kill it and there was utter rage on the all chat to not kill it, and when it did, people were acting like someone just shot their mother – throwing constant insults to the person/people who had completed the event, and to myself who asked them to calm down. Despite there being more chances to farm champ bags with dolyaks and the shamans. And half the group didn’t even continue the event chain because the event succeeded.

So yeah, the toxicity in this event has reached a new high, despite the ‘changes’ made.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Is the word “toxicity” gonna be the new “troll”? I’m already sick of it.

Trolling is someone being a jerk for their own – or their friends – amusement.

Toxicity is the act of a hateful and harmful personality in the community, not for the sake of self-enjoyment, but because they’re not getting what they’re wanting, usually their “want” includes playing the game in a manner that is not the norm and hinders or is hindered by playing the game in the normal (and intended) manner.

Basically:
Trolls = jerks having fun by insulting or angering others
Toxicity = insults thrown by people who mean them

One is done in jest, the other is not.

GVG : Yes
guild halls : Yes
HOH : Specifically Hall of Heroes is not needed, but better sPvP is
alliance battles : First we need alliances, and alliance factions. In a way, WvW is AB that was turned three-way, so I say no.
build diversity : YES
END game zones : Better designed ones, yes.
Templates : YES
Capes : Sure
Instances : Kind of pointless for an “open world” game, isn’kitten Something like this should only be considered when the game is on its brink of death and chooses to be turned single player instead of MMO, but would require a major overhaul (some mandatory some QOL) changes.

I’ve never seen it as bad as the OP or a few others describe it, but I wouldn’t doubt it happening.

Whenever I do Claw, I myself remain in the back. There are two reasons for it: 1) I lag a lot nowadays (new internet, doesn’t like zergs) so I just simply cannot handle being at the forefront. Whenever I try, I get disconnected and tossed into a map that Claw was completed when I get back. 2) to keep the champs off of the golems.

Originally, that second point was the purpose of killing the champions in the event, as they can easily kill the golems – this is also why they’re pulled away from the golem path, rather than down the center where they fall faster. When the champ bags were first introduced, Claw of Jormag champs were explicitly stated to not hold champ bags – kind of odd to me that they do now, as I do recall that being the case in the past.

I agree with Orphael that this event needs a rework into a Tequatl-level event; I’d like the same for The Shatterer too, just so that all three dragons became equivalent in difficulty (marred by downscaling of course). Ideally, I’d love for all world bosses to get redesigns of varying levels, but it seems that ArenaNet isn’t interested in touching old content at all anymore except to reduce toxicity and when the Living World touches it. Which is truly, truly sad.

Torsailr.8456:

When they redesigned champ loot that specifically excluded Jormag champs from dropping loot bags. If people are farming the champs there for loot they’re just wasting time. I haven’t seen anything to indicate loot was reinstated there. I’m not even sure the champs that spawn count towards kills.

When Teq got a revamp the devs stated Shatt and Jormag would also eventually get a revamp. Didn’t say when though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Don’t the champions in the Claw of Jormag event already not drop loot? I’ve tried to get them to, but not even Champion Bags 90% of the time – if they do drop, it’s a junk drop (“Cold Stone” type).

If you see me fighting one, it’s usually because they’re pounding downed people or messing with the golems before they can get moving.

At some point, the loot was reinstated.

I think this happened during either Tequatl Rising or The Origins of Madness when all boss fights got slight revamps.

ANet always had mechanics told and explained in-game during gw1, never out.

Lore, however, always had a strong presence outside of the game, though it was also far more obvious (and never felt very exposition-y) in-game during gw1 compared to gw2, and that was thanks to quests – but events rarely give off lore when you talk to NPCs, most events that could and arguably should give lore are just “we must retrieve the artifact!” Which is about 70% of lore events, such as the one into the royal tombs and the one into the tombs behind the temple of Balthazar – no lore at all to what they’re searching for or who the eye was.

Out of context, a bit, but doesn’t the norn talk about screaming and blood for birth first, which is not very metaphorical, and afterwards said norn mentions that sylvari are tougher than they seem for such a birth, indicating it isn’t so metaphorical.

falchion.3652:

Time gating

• Remove the dailies – they are a chore. Double or compensate with the monthly.
• Remove the timer on charged quartz or make charged quartz tradable (in line with time gated ascended materials).
• Remove the daily dungeon token restriction as account and restore to previous character limit.
• Remove guild missions or rework.

Farming

• Some people actually like farming. Have periodic events that allow for injection of t5/t6 mats. Examples – 1st Crown pavilion. Use and alternate when extensive down periods are expected from the living story.
• Put world temples on timers that start at absolute, instead of relative to completion. Megaservers have warped that timing, making it excessively annoying to unlock traits on multiple alts.
• Lower/remove diminishing returns.

Instancing

• Start numbering overflows and being able to pick existing overflows to join.

Dungeons/Fractals

• Revise rewards for higher end fractals.
• Use some existing dungeons to make into fractals, and fractal portions into dungeons.

Account bound

• Newly added recipes (nomad/zealot/celestial) to be traded or existing crafted armour be made account bound.

Living story

• The usual – skip cutscenes. Achieves on first attempt.
• Actually scrap all that. Remove LS from the game. Retrocon the lore with a dream sequence.

PvP

• Delete Spvp from game. Link Spvp players to gw1.

Items

• Make all items salvagable – notably karma/wvw rewards/adventurers mask. Adjust drops/items/costings prior.
• Introduce new legendaries – kick the can down the road some.

WvW

• Rewards for seasons – An individual and server based reward. The individual reward can be used as an additional token count or used as a gap filler for those on lower ranked servers.
• New maps.
• Alternate rewards for badges that have some monetary value – t5/t6 etc.
• Outnumbered buff now lets you carry 100% more supply.
• Don’t display enemy name on /invite in WvW/eotm

I would actually enjoy the underlined changes….

They actually feel like improvements to me. You sure you were writing for ruining the game? :P

What do you think all those nobles in Divinity’s Reach use to stamp their letters?

That’s right! They carve their family sigil into the bottom of centaur hooves!

Feed humanity’s upper classes. Sell those hooves!

Erm, are there even toxic spore events in 40+ maps?

I’m pretty sure the highest map with them is Gendarran.

So… the OP is asking for them to be removed from the game, basically. Intentionally or not.

Which I would like to argue against. People complain too much about temporary content – this was one of few things that weren’t. Please do not remove one of the very little amount of permanent content from Season 1. Instead, if one must make an alteration, reduce the difficulty or increase the reward.