Guild Wars 2

I have not had the chance to read the entire thread (having been away over the holidays), but I just wanted to add in one quick comment regarding horizontal progression and particularly cosmetic systems. Having played a number of MMOs over the years, I have to say that the cosmetic system in Lord of the Rings Online is still about the best one I’ve come across. Basically, the ‘look’ of your gear and the actual, stat-bearing armour pieces you wear are entirely separate, with a number of slots for sets of cosmetic armour. You can even wear armour types cosmetically which your class can’t equip in-game – for example, my minstrel has a Halloween costume of heavy armour (which makes her look like Captain America), even though she can only equip light armour for stat purposes.

This system allows the player to easily swap between, say, a set of heavy plate in a dungeon and a dressy robe during festivals, and means that winning a new piece of armour which is an upgrade, but ugly, does not require a full cosmetic rework. Additional slots are purchased via microtransactions. The cosmetic items are disabled in the PvP zone so that other players can still see at a glance what armour type a combatant is actually wearing. There is also a wardrobe function which allows for quick access and sharing of non-soulbound items between alts; this can also be expanded via microtransaction.

My suspicion is that transmutation crystals are one of Guild Wars 2’s biggest-selling gem store items, so they may not want to jeopardise sales by implementing something along those lines. However, adding in multiple cosmetic slots (like the town clothes but usable in combat as well) would potentially encourage people to buy more skins and crystals, as well as the slots themselves, and to still change things regularly to suit the seasons, change of taste, roleplaying, etc. I feel it would allow for more flexibility for players in terms of choosing looks, without making the prospect of getting new or better gear actually a negative due to cost or appearance. Combining a multi-slot cosmetic system like LOTRO’s with GW2’s intricate dyeing system would produce something really phenomenal, IMO.

Advent.6193:

Meh. I’ll most likely get flagged for this one, but it bears saying. There’s a certain tinge, nay, full-on taint of hypocrisy in this kind of situation. Doing all players dirty since a few act a total fool? Worst thing is; it’s not just this specific situation. Look at jobs, for instance – I couldn’t begin to count how many times I’ve witnessed an entire workforce
punished for the mistakes of a relative few. And you know what? It royally peeves
every other person on the job who’s not the “Bad Apple,” or is at least far less
troublesome.
Unfortunately, this is the (screwed-up) way modern society operates. Basically, "Oh,
Persons “X” and “Y” acted the wrong way? Sorry, “Z,” but you’re screwed too!"

I think the rationalisation for group punishment has always been that the threat of punishment will lead to groups enforcing rules amongst themselves – i.e., peer pressure will encourage people not to ‘ruin’ things for each other, rather than authority figures always having to crack down. But yes, I have always hated it too, because there will always be a percentage of people who just don’t care whether or not they or anyone else loses out, they are gonna act up and that’s that, and there’s not a lot people trying to follow the rules can do about it.

This is a bit disappointing. I can’t say I used the matchup forum a whole lot, but server community forums don’t make a lot of sense to use for the overall matchup discussion (whose community do you use, for a start; then there’s the issue of approving and monitoring a whole load of new users all the time). I also don’t use, nor do I wish to use, reddit – which is not always the kind of ‘safe and productive space’ Anet wish to build here.

Taking action against forum abusers, particularly repeat offenders, is fine, but quashing the whole forum seems counterproductive unless it’s almost literally all made up of bad apples. If it requires a bit more time investment to manage on Anet’s part, well, I’m sure there are plenty of people looking for a job who would be happy to help out!

Oh no! What will happen to Krait at the Nightmare Tower! :O Stay safe, Krait!

One, maybe, for WvW. I still haven’t got either weaponsmithing or huntsman to 500 because I can’t always work up the willpower to run through Orr to harvest stuff. Plus I like the Sylvari cultural armor for my Sylvari, and I don’t really like mixing the ‘grown’ armor with regular old ‘worn’ armor, so ascended will require me to use a bunch of transmute stones again. :/ My zerk/PvE gear will stay exotic as is, can’t see that the stat boost would be all that important for anything I do in PvE, and I don’t use my alts enough at the moment to make it worth the investment.

Hello Krait,

Have you been to visit Durmand Priory? We of the Priory would love the opportunity to listen to some of your stories and record them for posterity, to learn more about your culture. We also have unusual shiny weapons and tablets for you to look at, and you can meet the very last dwarf in the world. Do not worry, we have a very strict no vivisection policy so you will not be harmed!

I have always assumed that the character was named for Knut the bear, since he was a minor internet celebrity. Such a sad story all round…poor Knut.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps?
…

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them?

Reduce match length significantly (to a given number of hours – 2-6 most likely, but slightly longer would also be possible) and allow multiple instances of maps to run as and when. No transfers and minimal queuing required.

I don’t expect this to be either popular or ever implemented but this is my opinion so I may as well give it.

I honestly don’t think that the current system of WvW matchups will ever be possible to balance. The existence of server transfers and the fact that people can and will simply stop playing as and when means that getting stable populations for a period of time in WvW is virtually impossible. With all the best intentions, neither the original Glicko system, nor the expanded matchups nor the leagues have proven to bring balance and blowouts are a common experience.

At this point I think the best chance for balance would be to scrap a lot of the current WvW and restart on a much more time-limited basis, more akin to sPvP but with some significant changes.

• Matches would last several hours at most, so capture points (towers, camps, etc.) would need to be rethought with this in mind.
• A layered/instanced system of multiple matchups running at any given time would need to be implemented to allow as many people to play as desired. The new overflow map would be that kind of
• There would also need to be a ‘join as group’ function so that parties and guilds could join together, while still allowing single players to play and fill in the ranks.

I’m sure this would not be a perfect solution but it’s really the only thing I can think of to try to fix it.

My feedback is very similar to most of the posts so far so I will keep it brief.

Pacing: I agree that the two-week cycle is very short for both players and, presumably, designers/developers. It tends towards punishing rather than refreshing for myself, at least. I’d like to see either slightly less stuff to do per two weeks, or preferably longer and more flexible timescales and space between patches.

As an addendum to that, I would ideally like to see more permanent content, even if it is done via some kind of ‘flashback’ access point. Which leads onto my next point…

Story: Not only were we promised a living world, it was described as a Living Story. We’ve had some plot lines and characters introduced, but it feels like pushing it to describe it as a story. There is very little in-game lore or background provided; I understand that some of it is/was to maintain mystery around our nemesis (Scarlet), but there have been so many bits and pieces thrown around that it can become frustrating and hard to follow. We get some tantalising hints now and again (Braham as Eir’s son and their relationship, Marjory and her special weapons) and even evidently make some decisions (the Kiel v Gnashblade vote) but there isn’t a lot else divulged and I feel like we are left hanging.

Overall I think the Living Story would benefit from more story elements, to work more like the personal story line, and less laundry-list achievements which are tedious and do not flesh out the actual story much. I know the GW world isn’t really about linear questing but I think the Living Story would benefit from something more along those lines to give us goals to achieve whilst maintaining a more cohesive storyline.

Finally, while I enjoy the ‘working together to reach a common goal’ aspect of MMOs, I am a bit concerned about what seems to be the current trend towards ‘zerging’ in many events and areas (Scarlet invasions, the Divinity’s Reach arena bit, the new spore events and ‘champ trains’ in general.) For me, at least, that kind of play feels rushed, mindless and not very enjoyable as I am not able to play at a pace I would like. I am not entirely sure how to move away from that whilst still encouraging cooperative play but if it can be done I think it would improve the story and play experience.

Lostwingman.5034:

Laurelinde.4395:

“The dudes I don’t like don’t count!”

Sorry, but Logan, Trahearne, Braham and Faren are still male and still living story characters no matter how much you or I or anyone else likes or dislikes them. You can’t just discount them all together and then claim that supports a lack of male characters.

P.S. Plus, men get Hobotron on their team, so that’s a win right there.

All but Trahearne are doofus’s or muscleheads. I’m sure you would feel there wasn’t a lack of good female characters if all of the female MCs were changed to ditzy airheads?

Up until her recent revelation as an apparently astoundingly powerful mesmer (which is both weird and suspicious IMO), Kasmeer came across as the female version of Faren to me – she was introduced to us as a spoiled bikini babe. And Scarlet has been roundly criticised as an annoying character and a ‘Villain Sue’ (which I would have to agree with.) I don’t think either of them is a great character, nor was Kiel, who was fairly unobjectionable but not particularly interesting. More screen time does not a great character make. (Oh hi there, Jar-Jar.)

Does that mean I can discount Scarlet, Kiel and Kasmeer as living story characters? And if not, then why can we just dismiss Braham, Faren, Evon, etc.?

Either we have to count all the living story characters, in which case it is relatively balanced; or we only count the ones we deem acceptable, in which case there will never be a consensus because it will be a subjective measurement.

As it happens, possibly my favourite character in GW2 thus far was Sieran, who was a bit of a ditzy airhead…as was Tybalt, who I also liked. I would hardly call the well-liked Hobo-tron a serious and dignified character either.

Basically, this whole topic is highly prone to cognitive bias (from any direction), because humans have a marked tendency to overestimate the numbers of minority or ‘other’ groups when they are part of an in-group. See studies about people wildly overestimating the number of immigrants in the US or the number of LGBTQ people in the population compared to actual reported numbers, for example. Basically, men are more likely to feel outnumbered by female characters, and vice-versa, even if neither is actually true and the numbers are even.

Aedelric.1287:

I agree, we need more relatable male heroes especially in the living story who most main characters are female. Tower of Nightmares is a real estrogen fest even sergeant Walters was a woman.

Rytlock is the right kind of male hero, Logan, Trehearne and Braham are the wrong kind and the Lord Faren type is an absolute no. Could you imagine the outrage if we had a female character designed to act like Lord Faren?

I like the female heroes we have and in no way against them, I am just wanting a handful of male leads to have equal standing.

“The dudes I don’t like don’t count!”

Sorry, but Logan, Trahearne, Braham and Faren are still male and still living story characters no matter how much you or I or anyone else likes or dislikes them. You can’t just discount them all together and then claim that supports a lack of male characters.

P.S. Plus, men get Hobotron on their team, so that’s a win right there.

I’ve spent more time working on trying to re-dye my armour and I think the main problem I have with it is the inconsistency in terms of which element glows. On my chest piece it’s the primary, base colour, but on the legs it’s the highlight. Now, I’m sure this works fine in some combinations but I can’t replicate the colour scheme I was using without causing my chest piece to glow purple, when the rest of my body glows grapefruit/orange. To make the glows match ruins the gradient effect I had on the ‘skirt’ part.

Partly this is compounded by the fact that I can’t use any red, orange or yellow as a primary/base armour colour without ending up with a lot of green tones I do not want at all. (My base skin tone is purple so the greens do not come from that – they are just textured into all the Sylvari warm tones for some reason. This also limited my hairstyle options.) If there were any way to remove these extraneous colours from the reds/oranges/yellows I would have less of a problem but as it stands I am quite unhappy, as I don’t like either the out-of-place purple glow or the ‘negative’ colour effect, neither of which I can eliminate.

Thanks for the update Kristen. I will admit it was a bit of a shock when I logged in but I expect I will adjust, and it is nice to have the glow more prominent.

Found an old screenshot and took a new one to compare the medium Sylvari T2. All the pieces look quite different.

My Sylvari T2 medium has also changed fairly drastically – it’s most noticeable on the leg piece. Will try to get some screenshots up but the highlight colour went from being very light to deep, bold stripes.

Anyone else have medium T2 and notice a massive visual difference post-patch? I’ll get some screenshots up but the highlight colours on my armour are considerably deeper now and there seems to be some glow where there previously wasn’t as well – although the glow on the chest piece is glowing my skin colour, not my glow colour.

I have had the same problem, although I was not ranking up at the time. Camp capturer was my last daily and it did flash up but no chest was received. I even tried doing a sixth achievement (having seen that camp capturer was showing up twice and theorising that it hadn’t counted), and tried relogging, but no luck. Oh well.

Obsidian.1328:

Laurelinde.4395:

If you want to control all the variables and units in a game, then you’re going to have to play a single-player game. In an MMO you are always going to be at the mercy of other people and there will inevitably be some that you don’t like/aren’t good/clash with your ideas.

Anyone who paid for the game and is not actively griefing (and no, being clueless or disorganised or not speaking your language is not griefing) has as much a right to be there as anyone else, like it or lump it.

You’re talking about PvE. In which case I would totally agree with you.

PvP is a different ballgame. Those that want to try to win should be there, and Team synergy and cooperation are arguably the most important factors in a match. Why bother with having PvP at all if you can’t coordinate anything? It doesn’t make any sense to say you can’t form teams in a competitive environment…

I’m talking about WvW. You are free to try to form teams but ultimately it’s not a team, it’s a world (server.) There’s no signups, there’s no tryouts, you get who you get. My overall point stands: we do not control the parameters of GW2 or WvW no matter how invested we are (or aren’t) in it. PUGs are a fact of life. The only way around it is to leave the open MMO environment and move into something where players can set more of the parameters.

If you want to control all the variables and units in a game, then you’re going to have to play a single-player game. In an MMO you are always going to be at the mercy of other people and there will inevitably be some that you don’t like/aren’t good/clash with your ideas.

Anyone who paid for the game and is not actively griefing (and no, being clueless or disorganised or not speaking your language is not griefing) has as much a right to be there as anyone else, like it or lump it.

What about people who are both PvE’ers and WvW’ers? Should we be cut in half and only allowed to play with one bisected portion of our bodies? Or should anyone who doesn’t eat, sleep and breathe WvW and WvW alone be forced to scrape and bow for spots in the queue behind our beloved hardcore betters, who only want wots best fer us poor peasants, like?

Please, sir, may I have some war?

Don’t get me wrong, most of the achievements are a bit…ill-advised in my opinion (they are all far to offensively-oriented for a start, with nothing for defending, scouting or tactics) but these reactions are ridiculous. Sharing is preschool-level stuff.

Bumping this because I have just found the same issue on my Asura (hair with the two braided buns.) The ribbons were the antique gold colour but are now a darker brass or gold which does not look as nice.

Is this a bug or do we need to buy a kit if we want to change it?

1. Class balance and performance
2. Matchup system and server balance
3. Downed state and the rally mechanic and their place in WvW

In no particular order:

PvE:
1. Class balance and performance (e.g. serious long-standing bugs in need of fixing) – this includes the utility of pets
2. Horizontal vs. vertical progression now and in the future
3. Living story vs. more permanent high-level content

WvW:
1. Class balance and performance again
2. Matchup system and server balance
3. Downed state and the rally mechanic and their place in WvW

Edit: thought of a better (and less vague!) one.

Gunnars Hold seems to be having this issue too – the western two-thirds of the map, roughly, is empty of mobs apart from a few corpses which don’t despawn. The far west of the map is more populated, and events still occur, but most of the map is almost deserted. I gather it has been like this for a few days, although I only visited today.

For what little it’s worth…

You are:
[X] Married
[ ] Have Girlfriend
[ ] Employed
[ ] Have Pets
[ ] Have Children
[X] Are an Adult
[ ] Have a Life
[ ] Have no Manual Dexterity

You Think Living World is too:
[ ] Hard
[X] Time Consuming
[X] Temporary
[ ] Full of Jumping Puzzles
[X] Repetitive and frequently tedious
[X] Encouraging of frantic zerging which is stressful and un-fun

You are Currently Threatening to:
[X] Quit
[ ] Uninstall
[ ] Kick Colins’ Dog
[X] Tell the Internet That You are Upset
[X] Just sort of fade away and find other things to do with my time

Some type of ‘endgame’ is needed to keep people interested once they have finished levelling all the characters they wish to, and exploring the world. I’m just not sure that the Living Story as currently implemented is working.

I’ve done it 2 or 3 times on my home server (Gunnar’s Hold) but neither has finished. All got to the final wave but were not all that close to completion when the timer ran out.

Same for me, I really like the one with the flower at the back but I look too bald at the front, especially with the leaves being skintone.

Incidentally, there are certain NPCs (such as the temple speedbuff givers in Divinity’s Reach, I believe) who will allow you to give personality ‘responses’ repeatedly in whatever combinations until you find a personality type you prefer. I noodled around with some such NPCs just to see what the options were, early on in the game.

FWIW I lose target regularly and also use a Razer Naga (about 2 years old iirc) which I know has multi-clicking issues on both the right and left button. I’m loath to replace it as it still ‘works’ for the most part and it is not cheap. It is very frustrating.

I got the Legend off a jellyfish in Southsun when the +200% MF buff was running. My playtime now on my main is about 1200-odd hours so it will have been somewhere around 1000 then I guess. Sold it to buy Leaf of Kudzu since I can’t use a staff.

Agreed, pets are really struggling with this encounter from what I’ve seen as the condition areas/mines hit very hard and they have no real way to avoid them.

My poor, poor Cookie…

raptor.1064:

I am a ranger so my pet runs into them and kills me over and over. What fun.

Yeah. I’m not ready to throw in the towel on Teq after one go, but it did seem to be another fight where ranger pets spend most of their time dead. Between their inability to path around the fish head mines, the grub AoE, the charging abominations, damage from champ/vet adds and Teq’s own abilities (I’d like to see a bear try to jump a tidal wave), my poor pets were just toast. I presume necro minions are in the same boat.

Or, people are more likely to notice bad players with legendaries because legendaries are intentionally very noticable. The human brain is a very fallible measuring device, I’m afraid. I do agree that making legendaries buyable off the TP is odd, though, particularly when so many other (arguably less powerful) things are soulbound.

Signed,
An Average-ish Player with 14 Years of MMO Experience Who Lucked Out with a Precursor in Southsun and Forged a Legendary To Futureproof Her Weapon Against Any Further Tiers

I don’t know what kind of plant I am, exactly, but it’s some kind of purple-based-orange-gradient succulent-y thing. (At least until I save up enough gold for T3.) I would love to match everything to Kudzu but I don’t really want to change my skin and hair colour, and redyeing the armour alone to green/gold/pink/white doesn’t seem to work since the purple base always stays. If only I could dye the flowers on Kudzu instead!

I kind of wish there were more than just the cultural armours in a Sylvari ‘style’, even though it wouldn’t make sense from a lore perspective (in that we are meant to grow our armour rather than buy it, I suppose.) As nice as some of the non-cultural sets are, it’s far too easy for us to end up looking indistinguishable from humans in them. Which…may be sort of the point, I guess – the Pale Tree made us to emulate them – but feels a bit frustrating as a player. If I’d wanted to be (and look) human I’d have rolled a human.

Aneu.1748:

Laurelinde.4395:

I think Anet probably have a policy of not ‘responding’ directly to call-outs of this kind because it could set a bad precedent. While Sacrx may know what he is talking about, I don’t think it would be the best business model to tacitly confirm that ‘sure, just make a video complaining about stuff and we will cater to your wants/needs.’ Just how ‘influential’ or ‘important’ would a poster need to be to merit Anet’s direct attention, to earn a dialogue? Like it or not, none of us is on their dev team no matter how good, bad, knowledgeable or crackpot of players we may be.

This exact line of thought it was causes a lot of the toxicity within the MMO industry. When community managers and developers decide to maintain their ivory tower approach those who have the same greviences as the most vocal of the community also tend to feel left out.

As you can see on these very forums this is not an isolated incident, there is a general feeling of uneasiness in the World vs World community at the moment and this will degrade over time to a form of loathing, it has happened in many other games.

The only way to counter this is with a forthright discussion with developers regarding the issues that are on the table at the moment – The other problem here is that companies generally tend to only invite nodding dogs to these kinds of discussions as they dont want to take too much stick or flack or sometimes don’t feel the need to broach the real subject behind a lot of the problems…

I should clarify, I am not suggesting that Anet shouldn’t address the issue at all. Obviously, WvW issues come up on the forums regularly and it is often the same ones which are repeated by a lot of people (eg support for GvG). I was more responding to the premise of the thread title in that I think their responses should be aimed at the community as a whole (or significant sections thereof) rather than individual players. So I would not expect a response directly referencing Sacrx’s video, but I would hope there would be discussion of some of the issues raised, in a more general sense. (Not that I am holding my breath, mind!)

I think Anet probably have a policy of not ‘responding’ directly to call-outs of this kind because it could set a bad precedent. While Sacrx may know what he is talking about, I don’t think it would be the best business model to tacitly confirm that ‘sure, just make a video complaining about stuff and we will cater to your wants/needs.’ Just how ‘influential’ or ‘important’ would a poster need to be to merit Anet’s direct attention, to earn a dialogue? Like it or not, none of us is on their dev team no matter how good, bad, knowledgeable or crackpot of players we may be.

Other races appealed to me more, basically. I’m not particularly a cat-lover (waits for backlash from cat-loving internet) and I don’t really like their jagged industrial aesthetic – Black Citadel is easily my least favourite of the capital cities.

If they’d been a bear-based race, now, I’d have been all over that. But, I’m happy with my little Enting plant-lady, my big fluffy Norn, and my cutie-patootie Asura.

Vahkris.6847:

I’ll have to find the study, but I’ve heard one referenced that when women make up 33% of the people, people tend to see it as half of the group…when they actually are 50%, then people tend to see it as women are overrepresented.

I have read this as well. Similarly I have seen a story where a number of men and women gave presentations and speeches at a conference, all of which were timed. The women’s speeches were always equal to, or shorter than, the men’s speeches. However after all the presentations, the audience consistently reported that the women had spoken more/longer than they actually had done, ie they overestimated how much the women spoke and underestimated how much the men spoke. It was a couple years ago, I’ll have to see if I can find it.

Edit: This is the best starting point I have found as there are citations at the end. Most of my searches are bringing up irrelevant stuff. http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prejudice/women/

The statistic Vahkris mentions I have found in relation to an interview with Geena Davis (who runs an institute on women in media) but I can’t find the actual study referenced as yet.

Logan is easily my least favourite of Destiny’s Edge. I just find him to be insufferably over-earnest. He doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a sense of humour, or even a personality beyond ‘MUST SAVE THE QUEEN.’ It’s all Jennah, all the time.

I get that they’re supposed to be a couple in love but he comes across as clingy and possessive rather than seeing her as an equal (let alone a superior), as though he feels she will crumble and die without him there by her side and can’t take care of herself. I understand his loyalty but he needs to dial it down a notch IMO.

Having just tried this myself it appears that turning ‘show all player names’ to off creates a sort of ‘dampening field’ around me which blanks out some, but not all, player names in the immediate vicinity. My hunch is that the names are showing for players whose models are not being fully rendered.

While this makes sense for WvW where it is useful and necessary to have a sense of ally and enemy numbers, this still leaves a lot of visual clutter in PvE, particularly with the changes to culling and the large zerg trains which are currently featuring in both farming and event areas. A full PvE name toggle would be preferable, IMO.

Having finally been able to log in and take a look at the invasion, I would have to agree. I have no big problem with Scarlet being a Joker-style supervillain type, but she does seem ludicrously powerful for a mortal. To swoop in and seemingly singlehandedly control multiple groups of humanoids and creatures with no apparent deputies or power structure as well as being able to override constructs with the wave of her hand is…a bit ridiculous. Not to mention that she can teleport, make herself invisible, and somehow possesses the ability to be beaten down by 100 people and then just magically survive. On top of all that, she’s done all these impossible feats without most of the world having ever heard of her or noticed, apparently.

An ongoing villain arc in principle is great – but the threat should be something inherently larger-than-life, IMO, like the dragons. One single character of an ordinary playable race should not be presenting this kind of widespread threat on her own.

It seems a lot of you hate Sylvari for this reason, and I get it – but as a Sylvari PC I certainly can’t do any of this stuff! (But hey, I am a ranger…)

Me too…was on shortly after the patch and logged out around 8pm BST; tried to get back in now but no joy.

Aisina.4963:

Those bone fingers that knock you back. I had a good 15 mins yesterday sending my bear at them and watching it fly through the air. I was in fits of giggles

So we’ve found a good use for them!

Cookie is not amused by this post. She will be watching you, Aisi!

Pets can be hopelessly cannon-fodder-y in dungeons but it can get better with some micromanagement. I need to experiment with trying to change the hotkey for the pet commands (if that is possible) since the F keys are not as easy to reach as others. Pathing is generally the biggest problem since they don’t stand right next to you and don’t seem to be able to see red circles.

On bosses with a lot of aoe kind of stuff, using a pet on passive with a helpful F2 (such as a moa, fern hound or grizzly) or a ranged pet can be easier; I had to swap to a spider for Null because poor Cookie was tripping on all the mines.

On which note, a non-insectoid ranged pet would be fab…hint hint Anet! Perhaps a spitting cobra, or a monkey hurling…coconuts?

I have 3 at the moment (Sylvari ranger, Norn warrior, Asura thief), plus 2 name-placeholders who I may or may not keep. I only play the ranger with any regularity though, as I did not enjoy levelling the warrior as much as I expected and don’t know that I have the energy to keep a second character well-geared. If I start another it will be a light armour character for tailoring/artificing, and because I haven’t got one yet – probably a mesmer but not sure. I only recently finished levelling the thief however so I am not in a great hurry to start another just yet.

Hawks.5736:

Does anyone find the bird sounds annoying?

Yeah I do, at least sometimes. Sometimes I barely notice it but other times it seems so loud, I feel like Snow White with birds chirping around my head and it’s a bit embarrassing. Ironically one of the reasons I opted for Kudzu over the Dreamer was that having seen other people with Dreamer in-game, I decided that the sound effect from it would grate on me very, very quickly. For some reason I hadn’t picked up on that with Kudzu; maybe there were fewer people with them at the time.

Sometimes I’m actually tempted to go back to my old plain longbow (Bow of the White Hart), but I spent enough time trying to farm the mats for Kudzu that it would feel like a waste. At least I’m Sylvari, so the whole ‘plant-weapon’ thing kind of works.

RoyHarmon.5398:

milo.6942:

whilst

I saw that one on a road sign whilst in Oxford for a summer term, but when I came back and used it in a thesis, my advisor criticized it pretty hard.

But then, I also saw “Tank crossing” signs— complete with silhouette of a tank— so I guess in England, anything goes.

Presumably you were near a military base.

You learn to use ‘code-switching’ after awhile between differing versions of English. I have to try to amend my speech and writing depending on who it is I’m addressing so that I don’t get that kind of nitpicking. (Although all sides love pointing out that I have an accent. ><)

<- Dual US/UK citizen

Funset.7893:

They will never do this. For 2 major reasons. First, Anet hate the holy trinity, or any kind of encounter that requires a setup. Second, they promote the game as a game “play the way you like it”. Full berserker team will be always viable. And in the most cases – the better choice, if, of course, the team knows the boss mechanics and knows how to dodge.

Now that we have those 2, we can assume that they will never release a PvE content that need dedicated tanks and/or healers/any kind of support to be overcome.

I like the idea of no healers/tanks in PvP, but IMO it makes the PvE content really dull and tiresome. Thats why, as a PvE player, I spend less and less time in GW2, and more and more time in MMOS that have the so hated holy trinity.

The trouble is that now as far as PvE goes, ‘play your way’ has become ‘play full zerker or GTKO’. It’s true that there isn’t a trinity, but there’s just a…well, unity, instead. I’m not sure that’s much of an improvement, particularly for those of us who have enjoyed roles other than glass cannon (be that tank, healer, support, jack of all trades) in the past.

I like the idea of more build diversity and no ‘required’ setups for content, but the community seem to have turned the path of least resistance into, essentially, a requirement on its own, and the game is backing that up at the moment. I’d like to see things like 5 healer specs or 5 tank specs clearing dungeons and doing it efficiently enough that that benefits compared to the four warrior-one mesmer-all zerker group would be marginal, at best.

Incendia.6725:

I’m not impressed with legionaries per se, but I am impressed by someone who cleverly and creatively uses armor, dyes, weapons etc to create a awesome looking character. I’ve seen people with legendaries who still look rubbish, because they’re haven’t thought about colour coordination, armour matching etc.

Also if I see someone with more than one legendaries, my reaction would just be ‘get a life man…’

Yeah, I agree that in terms of visual impact a well-designed and well-dyed set of armour can be just as impressive (or moreso) than a legendary.

I keep trying to re-dye my painstakingly-dyed armour to match Kudzu but I can’t remove all the purple from my armour without a full body transformation (Sylvari, so it picks up my base skin colour) so adding the green, gold and pink/white looks a bit garish to me. Actually tempted to go back to my old plain white bow sometimes, although I do like the footprints and the gold projectiles.

Aargh! Sounds like I have made a bad decision then. >.<