Guild Wars 2

I think this is one of these things they are aware of and want to add at some point but just got pushed down a list of things with a higher priority. I think we will get it at some point though, especially now that raiding is coming and it will be even more requested.

It could impact living story. However I do find it interesting they want to earn royalties when a huge team of people is involved in the products they help produce. None of them receive any royalties as far as I’m aware.

Perhaps I might shatter theories here but I think the invasions were placed based purely on location and level range. They wanted this invasion to be for a certain level so the free to play players could join in. Brisban Wildlands is directly connected to the Sylvari and Asura starter zones, Diessa Plateau is connected to the Charr and Norn and Kessex Hills is connected to Queensdale for humans. At least that is why I think they chose the attacks on these locations.

I think you might have overlooked one thing, each area that you can actually enter has a level range marked over them (even when you haven’t explored it yet). Some may be hard to see but that’s how you can track them down. Because southsun, dry top and silverwastes aren’t in map completion those might be harder to find. All the skill points used to be visible on all the maps but they started hiding them a few patches ago with the hero point introduction. I am guessing that’s in preparation for Heart of Thorns.

The zone portals are usually visible on the map as small white stripes or because they have roads leading to the edge of the map. One misleading example is a road in gendarren fields that once led into Lion’s Arch but got closed off after it’s destruction. The road is still there on the map from before the destruction but the entrance is no longer there.

Judging from the gold→gem history it seems account upgrades cause gemprice spikes, black lion keys aswell as some Rox/braham etc. skins and the new outfit. Although on September 1st it could also be due to the dye kits. I have been holding on to my gems that i converted a long time ago. Perhaps I should have bought the bank tab expansion etc. Here is hoping the final day will bring an item I was hoping for :P

I agree, mobs feel like they are fairly unique and have a meaningful purpose of being somewhere. Alot of the old mobs are pretty much carbon copies with different looks, but the new ones all have different attacks that make you think about how to take them down. Some are definetely more deadly than others but that will give certain mobs a reputation which is a positive thing in my opinion.

The first time I encountered a veteran of those smoker beasts (I don’t recall the exact name now) I got torn to bits. Something that would never happen in old content and I like it. The next time I encountered one I knew I had to prepare some form of damage reduction such as dodge/blocks/blind. Mobs aren’t as deadly as in a game such as Dark Souls for example but for an MMO they are definetely interesting to fight.

It makes sense that this is an early version, I am guessing that there will be a larger variety of things to do during nighttime once we see the inhouse version. But regardless, I must agree that during nighttime I spent most of my time escorting Pact supply runners and defending the camps because there weren’t any other type of events running that I have found so far. On another note, I expected there would be a basic vendor at some of the camps to buy salvage kits/sell junk but there currently aren’t any. Perhaps the vendors are kept out on purpose to prevent items from being spoiled but it would be nice if people can empty their bags once it goes live.

There was no clear indication on how to swap the mastery tracks ingame so I just tried clicking around and you can basically choose to work on a track by clicking on it at the top after selecting the track in the UI. It appears you can fill up each of the mastery tracks and then spend your points to upgrade them all to tier 2 at the same time. This is something that can be used by players as a way to postpone your rewards, which is nice for players that want to play a certain way.

As for actually earning experience, when I first entered maguuma during daytime without mastery tracks it took me a while to find events. However, once nighttime hit I levelled up fairly quickly as there are alot of events going on at rapid succession at that point. I’ve only gone through 1 proper cycle so far and a few bits in between but it seems like nighttime allows for much faster levelling.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you only have to unlock masteries once, they are account bound. So going through the content on an alt will be easier once you have the basic masteries such as bounce mushrooms and gliding. I don’t mind if it takes a while because I don’t want to have them all too quickly.

Yes you have paid more, but you also had the chance to play for 3 years if you got it at release. During those 3 years the devs had to maintain your account data etc, but that’s not even the important part for you as a player. You had a chance to play alot of stuff that new players will never see. Digital goods always lose value over time because making a copy of the product to sell doesn’t cost as much as building furniture or something like that. Another thing to consider is that if new players had to pay this much we wouldn’t see many new players at all and the game would eventually die. Having just 1 price they have to pay means we will keep getting new players in the future.

I think this is a great idea, anything on the vendor UI that makes it clear would help. Even now when I go through heart vendor’s wares I can’t tell whether I already have certain skins unlocked without checking all the individual items. If crafting recipes (the ones you can buy, not discover) ever become account bound then it would work well with those items too.

Indeed they said they would focus on outfits, but skins such as the recent popular wings are still skins. I think reincluding old skins that are already there is fine, ‘policies’ ruin fun for players far too many times. Players want them, just give it to them. A man from a different company said something along the lines a few months ago ‘if you make your players happy they will keep playing and keep paying’. Why is it so hard to re-release this item, even just temporarily? It is just one item that does no harm.

flatlined.6597:

Zackie.8923:

thief’s spec daredevil looks the most exciting for me

lol I almost smell a law suit from marvel

Daredevil wasn’t invented by marvel, they used a word that already existed.

As for the topic, I’d say necromancers can still be fun but not with minions as said. Condition necromancers are better since the recent patch but they are still nowhere near the damage output of an elementalist or warrior etc. With the new elite specs, from what I’ve seen all classes seem to be getting some nice mechanics.

You could buy more gems with gold and buy something, even if it’s not ideal. But if you really want to get rid of it, it might be worth doing.

I agree this would be a great addition, at the same time they could do it for the wardrobe (bank) skins aswell. So that players can easily see whether the items are ingame rewards or from black lion chests/gemstore.

I think that we will have the bulk of the expansion on our harddrive already some time before the release. They have been doing that with lots of things, updates, gemstore gear, beta weekend etc. All the data for those usually came in bulk a few weeks before and a small patch at the end to add any additional fixes/changes. I am assuming it will be the same for the expansion, even if players don’t own it. You still need to have the audio and gear skins etc on your harddrive for when you see players that do have it.

GonzoNeo.4965:

I recive the outfit but i double click to unlock it, dissapeard and is not in the Outfit Hero panel to choose , i suppose that they unlock it next days :S

Do you have a screenshot of your outfit panel? Perhaps you are just overlooking it, it would seem like a really odd bug if the outfit doesn’t unlock when using the item.

I really like the armor, it even has some armor plating for the tail on a Charr. I already had a heavy armor set on my warrior and now I can use this outfit as a second heavily armored skin.

There most certainly will be new tracks for HoT, LS1 and 2 already included alot of new tracks. They probably knew they would bring the expansion out long before LS2 even started. I’m guessing they will put it on soundcloud as they have done with those tracks.

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this already, but I seem to recall either a red post or a mention of this during one of the P.O.I. that it might be an idea to make PvP F2P to increase the Esports scene. I could be completely wrong ofc, but if it turns out GW2 won’t have a full free core game then this might be what they are going to do. Whatever the case, we will find out tomorrow.

I think the new icon looks nicer which is what the artists went for. But the visibility is indeed alot worse than the bright blue old ones. The small photoshop above by ShelBlackblood already increases visibility drastically. Sometimes UI usability should come above ‘making it look pretty’. I think this is a good example where the artist intentions were good but it just didn’t work out so well in practise.

I think alot of people are not thinking in the same way the marketing team does. Many major MMO’s nowadays include all previous expansions into a package. Game of the Year editions use a similar strategy, except those tend to keep the DLC/expansions available seperately aswell, but buying all of the DLC would then cost more than just buying the game of the year edition. The expansion would have been 50 dollars no matter what, but to make sure new players don’t have to pay even more on top of it which would deter them from trying the game, they add the base in.

Players who already paid 50 dollars or whatever currency for the base game have essentially paid to play the game for all this time, enjoy the temporary content that new players won’t see and so on. Games drop their prices over time because that ‘get access to it early’ wears off as a game becomes older. To keep selling the game they lower the price more and more as time progresses. The reason this can be done is because it’s not like you are buying a piece of furniture where wood has a somewhat stable price and the demand remains somewhat stable. A game is digital, once it’s made it doesn’t cost much to sell additional copies. Just be happy we might get more new players because everything is packaged together. An online game without a stream of new players will eventually die.

And on as a final note, yes this will be the highest price I’ve ever paid for an expansion when I do buy it. So I agree that it is a bit steep, but I have played many other MMO’s that had huge ‘pay or grind forever’ elements to it or a subscription fee, so I don’t think they are being completely unreasonable regarding the price. However, I can’t make a full judgment untill release as the exact amount of content is still unknown.

I am with flesh wound on this, having it displayed somehow on screen would be a good thing. However, the Silverwastes bouncy chests are actually a bit annoying to me. The least amount of clicks should be required in my opinion, as things such as luck and salvaging already cause alot of strain on people’s fingers in this game. I think that having a tiny bar is a good idea like the posters said above. Perhaps you could have a bar with a chest icon (or the next reward) above the minimap to indicate map reward progress.

As said before, the beta is for testing. That means testing to see if everything works, which from your experience it doesn’t seem to be that way. If you can use ingame report for bugs then they will be able to figure out what is wrong more quickly.

I think the cat reflex would be a nice way to explain it. It looks fine if you ask me, a cat always prepares for landing. A shame humans would land nose down into the dirt if something goes wrong with that pose right? :P

From what has been said so far it looks like we will have an unknown amount of ‘jungle’ type maps of which some will use the biomes mentioned. On top of that there will be different maps (as said in the recent POI) which will likely be Maguuma Wastes maps because the trailers and Dry Top/Silverwastes already hint at this alot. It’s likely some of these maps won’t have as many layers. With that said, the amount of pure ‘world maps’ is still unknown and might remain that way till launch but I am optimistic it will be 5-8, with 5 being more likely. Perhaps the living story will introduce more maps beyond that. Then when you take a look at the new PvP mode, the new WvW map and the guildhalls it does show they have put a ton of work into them so who knows, maybe they will surprise us.

The reason it is not available is because people would then be able to deposit their rewards into the guild bank. As this is new content there could be potential exploits and to make sure it won’t harm the non-beta economy etc this is the safest solution.

I think this is a pretty good idea for guild hall customization, it can go a long way. A guild can make their own hall of heroes with members on display, or tributes to whatever their roleplaying desires. Even if they don’t have the time to implement it on launch it sounds like something that could eventually make their way in with a smaller update.

I was wondering if there are any plans to release a soundtrack, either digitally or on disc at/after Heart of Thorns’ release? I know that the CD’s from the original game caused some issues because they were sold by Jeremy Soule. However, with the music now being composed by Diemer and Chapelle (as far as I know, perhaps that’s not the case for the expansion) it might be easier to sell a CD this time around.

I think I’m not the only person that really likes the music from GW2. I have nearly all tracks from the soundcloud on my harddrive and I hope the new music will be available somehow.

I predicted that the standard version wouldn’t include a character slot so I had already saved up a few hundred gems with gold. After the confirmation I made sure to get the remaining gems which I will keep untill launch day because they may have a character slot discount in between.

I think it would actually make more sense to allow them to be deposited in your collections because they are basically just crafting materials. There are a few others that haven’t been added yet either and I think it’s long overdue. These new materials should just be added to the collection tab at the time of introduction, same with wallet currencies.

The most valuable things I can remember where 2x Abyss dyes around launch, I used one myself and gave the other to a friend though so there was no gold in it for me. Apart from that I have never found anything of particular value. Sure the occasional 1-8g value items (either through salvage and selling components etc) but that’s about it. I usually get flooded with lots of ‘ok’ or no value items though.

If you kill an enemy with burning they will play a fiery death animation, if you kill them with lightning skills the same applies. I think the current system works fine, although it might be more immersive if a fiery weapon causes a fiery death.

I have 8 character slots myself, as I bought the 3 extra with gold. Currently I’m buying a few gems every now and then to close the gap to 800. I really hope that we do get an extra character slot however. I’m merely preparing for the worst. Not giving a new character slot to players that just paid X amount of money on an expansion, of which many likely want to use the Revenant, would be a spit in the face. ‘Nice, here is your new class, but you do need to toss some extra money our way or you can’t use it’. If it turns out we do get the slot with the expansion then I will have 800 gems to spend on something like bank tabs or skins which is always nice. I think this kind of information will be made available as soon as the price and versions of the expansion are announced.

I believe it’s not allowed and probably falls under the real money trading policy. They don’t allow players to buy gold outside of the official gemstore/gemcards conversion and this would be the same thing: spending real money on the game through a 3rd party. On top of that I believe you agree to the terms that you will be the only person that uses the account when you make one. If they find out then I’m pretty sure the account will be permanently banned. Perhaps you can read through the terms of service to see if something there mentions it but I’m pretty sure you are going to end up with the same conclusion.

I’ve played in SW for maybe 3-6 hours and Dry Top for about 1-2 hours. I have seen a few people receive one in that time but I pretty much went in there not expecting to receive one myself. Yesterday I did receive more exotics in a single day than I ever received before (4 in a short period of time, during 2 game sessions). At least it’s a nice way to farm your crests and geodes if there is a chance for beta access added onto it.

Last saturday me and 2 other mesmers set up a portal all the way up with one of us as a commander down below in the water. We managed to get well over 20 people to finish the diving spot. Perhaps you can try find a mesmer to help you up there, but before you jump make sure you check a youtube video on how to land into the water. Reaching the goggles is quite tough but once you know the route it is actually easier than it seems, apart from a few jumps that risk getting you killed. I imagine it must be pretty troublesome if you lag alot though.

There is a reason stats are spread over both armor, trinkets and weapons. If all your offensive stats came from a weapon you would be pretty darn crippled if you had no luck finding a better weapon. Instead they decided to give all your armor a more equal value and spread offensive stats onto armor aswell. This way your weapon isn’t the ‘most’ important. It still is, but you can still play decently without a good weapon because your armor stats make up for it.

Whether the game hasn’t been released yet or has recently released at that time, they will want to be at Gamescom anyway.

Well there have been sightings of Consortium NPC’s that appear around the city now. I haven’t checked it myself but they must be up to something. Perhaps they are busy planning the city’s reconstruction and where to place everything.

There are guilds out there that have players level together and such, perhaps the guild you are in right now doesn’t fall into that category. I personally level my characters solo for the most part but I do run into people that like to team up for some hours. You are right there isn’t something hard at low level that requires groups with some exceptions but that’s how the game works and I don’t think it is going to change. Once you do get through levelling and exploring all the zones you can start doing things where you can make a difference, the biggest one being dungeons and fractals where a single person can make a big difference.

I think it would be nice if we got a ‘Heart of Thorns’ completion and have these maps added to that. Perhaps if they give the progress bar different art it would prevent confusion for new players when it comes to the old map completion. It would be nice to at least have some progress tracking on these maps (even if it doesn’t count) when you mouse over the map name.

Schumi.4285:

…

Not sure why you react so strongly to this, but anyway. The gist of it: anyone that already does 3 dailies a day does not suffer anything negatively. Those who do less than 3 dailies a day still get some AP.

On another note, what is it with MMO players that are so strongly on ‘letting the game tell them what to do’? Do people really need so much handholding? There have been plenty of complaints about the restrictions of the new dailies, that indicates this isn’t what everyone wants. On top of that, changing the daily meta to the one I suggested is not much work at all, the daily is already a meta right now. It’s simply not a tiered one. On top of that, what does SPvP rank farming have to do with anything here? Again, you probably did not read my post correctly. I am completing dailies, just not all 3 because I choose to play the game as a game, not as a checklist of ‘must do this that etc.’ I’m not a robot. I play a game, not a job.

Furthermore, the ‘people are farming a million dolyaks’ is like saying ‘but because this is bad that should be bad too!’. No! Lol, that’s terrible, instead they should fix the WvW achievements aswell as they have been ridiculous since launch. But again, we’re talking about how to improve dailies here, not PvP rank farming, not WvW achievement farming.

I think the new daily system is alright, the rewards for them are nice. However, there is one thing that bothers me. If you only complete 1 or 2 you get no AP whatsoever, because of this I’ve only got AP like twice since the update. I play the game how I want to play so I always did ‘some’ dailies by just playing but now I get almost no AP and as a result I have barely gained any AP in general (as I already have most of the normal permanent achievements that I want to bother going for). My fix for this:

‘Daily meta’
Tier 1 : Complete 1 daily – 3 AP
Tier 2 : Complete 2 daily – 3 AP
Tier 3 : Complete 3 daily – 4 AP

Total: 10 AP for 3 dailies (same as now)

And tada, my issue is solved and I still get AP for doing some dailies, even if it aren’t all of them. In a perfect world they would even add alot more options on a daily basis (like 5 per category or something) but perhaps they don’t want players to get too many of those chests, I don’t know.

I noticed the same thing yesterday while levelling an alt. I don’t know when or why they have changed this but it must have been somewhat recent. Or perhaps alot of people simply haven’t noticed. It could be that ArenaNet is already adding new expansion maps into the client and wants to keep the contents hidden this way, since skillpoints would give away their locations. Not that it stops people using the API and dataminers like that_shaman though :P

Dawdler.8521:

Lethalvriend.1723:

This has to do with how computers store data.

Not really. It has to do with basic math. As a simple case:

Imagine if you have 3×3 pixel grid and make a “round” map that fill the space inside it – a cross due to the obvious lack of resolution. Well you still have a max X and max Y of 3 (lets ignore 0) which means you need a 3×3 array no matter the content or you wouldnt know where to put the pixels. Hence, you get a square with 44% of the space wasted.

Naturally, but said math is exactly what is used to store map data among just about anything else (arrays, lists etc). Pretty much every game uses either a grid or 3 axis for object positioning in 2 or 3D space. But like I said, they simply decided to add space throughout their entire maps rather than ignoring a ton of space to get more natural borders.

As far as no seamless world goes, this may be a remnant from GW1. From what I’ve heard they use a modified engine in GW2 so they remained ‘stuck’ with a map based world rather than using something more akin to for example TES:V Skyrim to create a seamless world. They use small squares of terrain which are loaded and rendered depending on your position in the game world and basically piece all of them together by giving those squares positions on a larger map sort of like a chessboard.

When I first got to play the game the rectangle zones were a bit odd to me aswell, however. Pretty much all map data tends to be stored in such a way that it forms a rectangle (for example, round images really aren’t round at all, they simply have transparent pixels at the corners to make it seem round). This has to do with how computers store data. ArenaNet could have still simulated non-rectangular maps in a similar way by making a map with alot of unused areas at the borders, however, they probably thought it was better to make the maps as big as possible and use all available space. This causes all the maps to become rectangular. Right now I am used to it but if they could go back in time I wish it would have been more naturally shaped.

I’ve paid for a sub for games before but that was a while ago when I had so much time to spare I practically spent all my unhealthy time playing those games when I had the chance. Right now I’m older and alot of MMO features that stretch a game’s lifespan don’t appeal to me anymore. Nor do I have as much time to spend on a game like that. This leads me to the point that I don’t want to pay for a subscription if I can just leave at any point. With GW2 I can take a break for a day, a week or a month without having something in the back of my head saying ‘well you paid for a month but are only using X days this time… ’. If one day there will be some perfect game I might consider it again, but for now GW2 fills my MMO ’needs’ and I like that there is a game where devs implement customer friendly things into the game such as the wardrobe/wallet etc.

They could also just remove all passive speed increases and only allow swiftness to increase your movement. Since increasing the base run speed by 25% for everyone may ruin some jumping puzzles that rely on certain jump distances.

I’ve seen this occur in many other MMO’s. The reason for this is because your character’s hair is made standalone. Once you wear a helmet that covers large areas it seems to replace the hair. It can be fixed but it is alot of work, by basically adding the relevant parts of hair from the player to the helmet for all hair styles and every species. Another solution is the put the hair in a default style per species and gender whenever you wear such a helmet. This would take alot less work although I’m sure it’ll still annoy some people. I don’t use the witches hat and similar headgear because it removes the hair though and I agree it’s a bit ugly.

The problem is that some items are ‘account bound’ and others say they are ‘account bound on acquire’. If you have those that say ‘on acquire’ in your inventory when you relog or change maps it should update them to ‘account bound’. I’ve had this issue quite often aswell. The birthday lvl 20 boost scrolls don’t stack regardless though for whatever reason.