Guild Wars 2

Yes, it’s an obvious and huge error.

First of all, the change to refinement to make it require 2 to 3 was an error. Second, asking 100 bolts per each damask was an error, too, when all the other ascended refinements require only 50.

Each piece of damask should have required 100 silk scraps, but they changed it to 300. And now the market is mad.

Toroxus.9256:

Silk is never going to hit 3s per scrap. The price of silk will rise from it’s measly 15c price. That was the plan, and I agree with that plan. There is no problem with the silk market.

I’m laughing: http://www.gw2tp.com/item/19747-bolt-of-silk

Saw this on Reddit. Reposting my answer there:

I don’t know, I wanted to play tournaments but no people, long waits and kittenty matchmaking made me stay away from them, and I usually joined hotjoin rooms where good people usually gathered.

I don’t care about they adding retroactive points, but they should for everyone, not just tournament players. What about Skyhammer farmers? Find a way to detect them and don’t give them anything, if possible.

What if they resetted ranks and gave new points depending on wins or something? That would be pretty fair, wouldn’kitten Of course it would go together with a nerf to needed points or with a buff so no legit players get worse ranks.

There must be a formula somewhere to compensate legit players, tournaments or not, and give nothing to the Skyhammer farmers.

• Parallel accountbound leveling systems: Fractals of the Mist and WvW accountbound levelling systems are great, in my opinion. They add progress, while the core level cap stays at level 80. We could have more of these systems, that give small bonuses for those who want to progress their level, and reward those who play it usually, too. Imagine if each classic dungeon had 10 levels, and to level up you need to complete all paths in each level. Each level enemies get harder, new mechanics appear, and you get better loot. These could help balance all dungeons for everyone, making them easier or harder without screwing a part of the playerbase. Story Arah at level 1 could stay as easy as it is now, and Story Arah at level 10 could be a nightmare. You decide which you want to play. Also, each region could get its own levelling system. For example, Kryta. Kryta has 40 levels, similar to normal levelling in cost. Each time you get xp on Kryta, you level up Kryta, unlocking special stuff like extra karma/magic find/gold find/experience, or resistance to enemies there. For example getting into Orr could be dangerous, so you should level up a bit to get Risen-resistance, or some of the champions could be more dangerous. Things that don’t break the game, but add some flavor to it, all while encouraging not to rush across the content (a problem for future expansions if the level cap stays at 80). New abilities could be unlocked through this, too.

• Unlocking new abilities: New ability! Pay 25 skill points to get it. Not exciting at all, I’m sorry, and also way too expensive. Why not make players do something specific, skill-related, to get their special abilities? The above region-level system is an idea, but specific “guild bounty”-style missions? Remember Modus Sceleris? Those villains have new abilities! What if I learn them after punching their faces? Another option would be creating some kind of sanctuary for each profession, where champions gather. Some kind of “secret schools”. You get there, and can fight NPCs or do stuff and profession-related missions to unlock profession-themed armor and weapons, new skills, etc. Instead of just spending 25 skill points, which you get by farming. Ifyou want a skill point sink, then make people pay 3 skill points each time they try to fight the NPC to get the skill.

Just some ideas, some are simple to do, others require work, but I believe all of them would help create a feeling of progression, horizontal, without needing to alienate the playerbase.

==Things that should be accountbound==

If I do something once, in a character, I shouldn’t be doing it again. I, the player, already did it. The only thing that should always be character-bound is PvE character level.

Now, what should be accountbound?

First, crafting. What’s the point of it being character-bound? I know you can switch between crafting disciplines, but it’s pointless. It’s too expensive, so I’d rather make a new character, and level them there, with the bonus of getting xp and levelling.

How would accountbound crafting work? Very simple, every crafting discipline is accountbound now. Switching between them in a single character? Much more cheaper, people should do it naturally like they waypoint around, so it’s an effective gold sink.

But wait, what about using crafting to level up? Is that gone? Are my new characters excluded from crafting in their levelling experience? Yes and no. You get experience when you level up crafting. Now, instead of that, you get experience when you craft stuff of your character level.

Need a sword? Just go and craft one, and get some bonus xp, even if you already have the discipline at 500.

Another thing that should be accountbound: Dyes. The game should encourage a “collector” feeling much more, and dyes get a very short stick here. To compensate, lower the drop rates, or add new valuable recipes that make them more expensive.

Stat swapping should be more alt-friendly, too.

So that’s it. I’m all for horizontal progression, parallel leveling systems, adjusting difficulties as you wish, and collecting stuff; all better with skill and playing varied content than with mindless farming and repetition of the same content again and again.

I’ll be pretty straightforward.

Just look at the title of this thread. “Character progression”, it says. There, in those two words, you have the main problem around this topic.

Character-bound progression is outdated, something from the past that doesn’t make sense anymore. Everything except some minor things should be accountbound, because the player is the account, not each character.

So we have two discussions here: What should be accountbound, and what should be added to make stuff to work for. Let’s start with the second.

==Progression: Things to work for==

The game, right now, has no progression after an early point. Not vertical, and not horizontal. People feel like they have nothing to work for. The few progression systems rely too much on time gates and just playing daily, instead of actual skill and challenges.

Now, explain to me, what’s supposed to be “exciting” about crafting one piece a day for 30 days to craft an ascended armor? Long-term goal? And what about my own-term goals? Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with ascended stuff being crafted this way, but I’m not okay with it being the “only thing left to do”.

There’s many fields that we could cover when we get into progression discussion:

• Collecting stuff: Way too punishing. Lot of people would play and replay dungeons just to collect every single skin; except they don’t because it’s useless wasting of space. Collecting stuff, specially skins, should be easy, should be encouraging. No one would catch all the Pokémon if you could store just 10 of them or if the Pokédex didn’t track them and unlock lore tidbits each time.

• Dividing the playerbase: This is always mentioned with some kind of apocalyptic tone. Adding daily special objectives, that differ from player to player, focusing them on making the players visit specific places would be fine. Like guild bounty missions, but for single player. For example: Someone needs help solving a crime in Snowden Drifts. You have to go there and work alone or with the other players that share your mission, and interrogate people, fight drunkards that may know something, etc. Kinda like an ARG, with lot of random factors so it’s never the same. Give many hints so it doesn’t turn into a boring scavenger hunt, and players never feel like alt tabbing to a guide is better than playing the game. Also, give different players different hints. Other mission ideas: A gang of Flame Legion charr assaults towns across Diessa Plateau using portals, you need to predict their movements (which are different each day) and then ambush them and use their portals to follow them back to base. Another mission in Gendarran Fields could force four teams of players working against each other, each helping a champion train for a tournament. The social factor is VERY important on these, too. Make people want to go out there, to have fun and get some unique reward tokens.

• Reward-dedication-skill ratio: You get more money for farming while watching a movie than for doing Arah or Fractals of the Mist level 50. You get more final reward money at Ascalonian Catacombs than in Crucible of Eternity. These things are terrible for those wanting to do dungeons, because they feel they’re losing money and time. I’m not asking for Arah being 10 times more profitable than AC, I’m asking for balance. Right now 1h of champion farming is much, much more profitable than doing some dungeons. The gap is way too wide, and it needs balancing so you don’t feel forced into an activity, and so you can play as you wish with the playerbase switching between different activities easily and healthily.

• Skill achievements: Add more of these, please. Tons of them. They make people want to replay content, even when it’s hard. Dungeons and guild missions needs them.

• Time-gates and temporary content: These hurt the game in two forms. The first is making all players want to do them, leaving other activities with lower populations. They fear missing the timeline, because when the event ends they will never be able to work towards them. Super Adventure Box achievements were great in this regard, because all of them returned. Wish something similar was done with the rest, specially festivities. For example, the WvW title should return each season. What if a second is added? Well, if you’re missing the first title then you’ll have to work harder to get both, but they’re still available and you can work towards them each season, slowly. People that get 50% of achievements on each season get no title if each season’s achievements are locked once it’s over.

Did you check the prices of quartz crystal before Wintersday?

Here, check them: http://www.gw2tp.com/item/43773-quartz-crystal

And I doubt celestial crafting is open to anyone when the recipes are ridiculously expensive. It’s cheap for those of us who have them already.

Now Charged Quartz Crystal has literally zero value.

I’ve been doing the daily quartz skill point channeling pretty much daily since Bazaar of the Four Winds.

Now, Charged Quartz Crystal drops like candy from Giant Wintersday Gifts. Yeah. Thanks a lot for making all my effort and money be worth zero.

Is there any reason for this? Why weren’t we warned about it days ago?

I’ve invested a lot of money and time, specially before the krait obelisk, and now all my efforts feel just stupid and useless.

Edit: Discussion on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1sn0ib/charged_quartz_crystal_disappointment/

Krag.6210:

harris.7964:

Alias name is the nickname we want to have for the tests isnt it?

I’d like to know that as well before I make a mistake.
Is the alias your current in game name or another one you choose for the testing?

Same here, I would like a clear answer from ArenaNet regarding this.

Hey, I have some questions, and I figured they’re better here than in the private email, so the answers can be seen by everyone.

• Do we need a different client for testing, or we already have everything inside our current version?
• Only people in the spreadsheet has access to the map? Or everyone inside the guild? In case of “a”, is there any way for me to invite someone not in the list once the testing begins?
• As a guild leader, can I control guildmate’s access to the map? Imagine I find someone from my guild breaking the rules or behaving improperly. Would I be able to limit his access, or kick him from my guild?
• In the message you ask about each member choosing an alias or handle for the forum. Can you elaborate on this? Our alias is supposed to be our account name already, isn’kitten
• In the spreadsheet, is it fine if the point of contact and the guild leader are the same person?

Thanks for the opportunity.

Let people buy commander books with guild influence and merits, aside from gold. That way big guilds can get their commanders for “free”, and future commanders don’t need to invest so much gold.

Regarding rank

Ranks as they are now are awful. You require thousands of hours dedicated solely to sPvP to get to the last levels. It’s ridiculous.

Should ranks show dedication? Yes. Does requiring thousands of hours to level help show this dedication? No. Someone 1/10 of level 65 doesn’t have the same dedication as someone 9/10 of level 65. Also, the changes to rank points make it only worse, since now you can’t know how much you’re winning each game.

First of all, the ranks need a nerf. Higher levels shouldn’t require as much dedication. Titles and finishers should remain, but be easier to achieve.

Then ranks should be reworked to something more like WvW. Instead of 80 ranks, give us 400, for example. Make the levelling more horizontal and less tedious.

But what about those who have put more dedication? They get no reward? Well, they are a minority, and a part of them got it farming Skyhammer. They could get nothing in exchange, like Fractals of the Mist players, get some glory compensation, or just leave levels infinite so you can keep levelling up ad infinitum even if you don’t get anything in exchange.

Armor and weapons

I think the way to go for this is transforming it into some kind of “trading card game boosters”, in that you get a box, open it and get random skins. Then, you can TP those skins to change it for new ones. There would be different series, each one requiring more level, but the pieces would be available for anyone at the TP. This can be monetized easily and without punishing the community with stuff like guild arenas, which should be purchasable with influence aside from gems.

Of course, if it’s to be merged with PvE I’m not sure this “TCG boost” idea would work.

Another IMPORTANT thing regarding armor and weapons. Please, for the love of Dwayna, sit in a table and give each armor and weapon set a name. A single name. Which isn’t repeated in other different skins. PvE skin names are chaotic, but then PvP makes it even worse by using names that don’t even appear in PvE.

Check this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_weapon_sets and this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets

Those names should be used for PvP, if they’re right of course (in which case give the PvE team a call and tell them you’re going to change some PvE names instead). Armor in particular needs better names on most sets.

If you really feel this is a problem, I can write you a list of the names in the wiki. I really feel like each skin in the game should have its unique name we can use to identify it properly. I can make a list of icons that need fixing, too.

Also, sort the armors and weapons in the locker a bit better. For example:

• Separate armor weights, weapons and crafting materials in 5 different tabs. Navigating such a long list is a pain.
• 12 elements each row, so each armorset is in the same row. Respect Head→Boots order in all of them, and leave non-set pieces in different sections, not mixed with the armor sets.
• Sort by set inside the weapon tab, so you can see all the krait weapons in a single section, for example. Want to see axes? Sort by weapon type. Want to see all krait weapons? Sort by weapon set.

Other rewards

Portraits could get a custom portrait circle. Champions have a gold circle, legendaries a purple one, etc. A similar system could be added to reward players by, for example, their league. You’re gold league? Golden circle. This lets players show their league easily, and then feel competitive to improve and show they’re in a better league.

And that’s all from me for now.

The medium and heavy armor sets deserve some changes, too. It’s already unfair enough light armor is so superior to them, now it gets improved while the other two aren’t.

Improve the other two armors, too, to make them distinct enough from their originals, which aren’t prestigious at all. I mean, WvW badge armor and level 30 karma skin: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets#Quick_reference_table Huge series disparity.

It’s too late to balance that, so just make sure you put the same dedication on reworking the light armor in the medium and heavy, too. Worry about balancing the series-inequality it with the next skins, by adding the cultural to medium or heavy instead.

But please, rework medium and heavy too. They already got the short stick here against light, don’t make it shorter.

(New post unrelated to above)

HOME INSTANCE AND COLLECTING PLAYED STORYLINES

I really think all the Living Story (From The Lost Shores) should be compilled into instanced content, just like the Personal Story. Also, make them both replayable.

Then just access them from your home instance.

Your home instance is pretty empty, isn’kitten Why not add some sort of library, or display cabinets, where you have this item or painting of each story. Example:

So, right now, I arrive at my home. I have one big shelf, with a a space for each chapter of the Personal Story. Interacting with them opens my hero panel, in the story tab, but adds an extra option to replay them.

Also, I have other shelves, including other storylines. One for Southsun Cove, with the two storylines. Then another for Scarlet’s minions and their releases.

As you complete each storyline, the spaces get filled with paintings or other trophies to remember each chapter.

Unfortunately, not all the release stuff was instanced. No problem! Molten Alliance chapter? We can take a chunk of Diessa Plateau, instance it, add a few classic events and make you complete some. Even the Ancient Karka could be replayable with this idea, in a softer way, of course. For those events that stay, just make you go and complete them in the open world before continuing the story.

With examples, in case you don’t understand it:

Live release:

During a live release you have 3 things you usually need to participate in:

• Temporary events (open world).
• Permanent events (open world).
• Instanced stuff (instanced).

Archived release:

This is how they would translate:

• Temporary events need to be removed (I’m talking about stuff like Toxic Alliance appearing across the world, repairing sign posts during the Molten Alliance incident, finding and defeating Canach during The Lost Shores, etc). So we save them into new instances, so you can “experience” the story, in a softer way (instanced).
• Permanent events, they remain unaltered, so just send the players to complete them in a step of the archived story before unlocking the next one (open world).
• The instanced stuff remains the same instead of getting removed. (instanced).

So for example, how would we bring Secret of Southsun back? We have the 3 things in this case:

• Temporary: Settler fights, camps getting attacked with us discovering one settler was behind it. => We do instances for a few of these things.
• Permanent: Crazy karka, Karka Queen. => Send players to do this in the open world.
• Instanced: Canach’s Lair, Kiel blowing up the ship. => Bring back the original instances.

I think everything would be viable this way. It’s a quick draft, but I’ll try to improve and explain the idea better when I get to touch more topics later.

Continues from previous post…

Living World: This is the most important feature, because it’s still growing unlike the other two. This will be a bit long, but I’ll try to analyze its main problem properly.

You need to realize something, and soon. You can’t progress story keeping the instances without killing previous story. That’s why there should always be a Cursed Shore where the Pact is invading and Zhaitan is still alive. The Personal Story needs it. The new players need it. What if tomorrow we decide to cleanse Orr? Use a new zone. Have 2 timeline versions of the same locations.

Lion’s Arch lighthouse… Ok, it’s a small change (I’d still prefer if it appeared intact during the Personal Story), but when we get bigger changes, it’s going to become a mess. I really think stuff like what’s going on in Kessex should be a different zone. Take the area around Viathan Lake (No need to take eastern Kessex Hills), and duplicate it in another instance. The old one remains as it always did, so the lore there isn’t lost.

Then, in the new zone, you can nuke all the dynamic events of the old zone. It’s storybreaking to see centaurs fighting humans like if they weren’t on the shadow of the Tower of Nightmares. To progress story properly, that situation should be gone, and it can’t be gone without breaking the entire game’s story flow if we don’t separate both timeline stances.

For example, let’s fastforward to a future expansion, where you release many new zones. Imagine if we visited one of those zones at level 30. The zone has a light storyline with the locals and whatever. We complete it and leave. Then, at level 60, we return to the zone, and it’s changed! It’s now a battlefield, lots of towns destroyed, trenches replacing forests, the enemy armies have invaded it and destroyed our previous efforts. I think it would be great to see this situation arise, and to be able to experience both time stances when we wanted.

In the end, what I want to say is that zones should be time-locked, and it’s not bad. The “living” should be on how we play and interact each time we get to that zone, how our actions affect the world, but in specific moments and through dynamic events, not permanent changes that try to move the story forward, but that feel poor because of the limits, and that in the long term will make things confusing,

And if you really want to move the story forward? Make a copy of the zone, and CHANGE it as much as you want. Imagine if right now, we had 2 versions of Wayfarer Foothills, one as we do now, and another where the Molten Alliance is assaulting. That’s the way to go, in my opinion.

Both the limits on how much you can modify current zones, and how the old lore is getting screwed, really cheapen the experience of the Living World. Separate them for good.

Navigating between both of them could be confusing? Well, I’m sure there’s a solution. For example, add special waypoints that switch the time stance.

What about splitting the playerbase? That’s a problem, but having many zones isn’t what originates it. Adding new content that makes you travel around would fix it. Daily achievements focused on those zones could help, but I think the real solution would come through a new mechanic. Something like guild missions, but for single player or small parties. How could it work? Each day each player gets to a NPC, and gets assigned a random mission. This system would divide the playerbase by segments, and make them go to old zones, find whoever else got the same mission and join to complete it, fixing the main problem which isn’t fragmentation, it’s everyone being in the same place.

Summarized: Make copies of the zones when you want to progress story, and then have complete freedom to create and destroy without fearing old lore getting destroyed. Making the world progress shouldn’t mean destroying previous material, and trying to “collage” advancing story with old story in the same locations is too confusing. The living should be in the content and how we play it, on the moment and the different consequences each time.

That’s all, hope it helps. I really think how the world grows and progresses needs to be looked into, and adapted to a stable model that makes sense for everyone, doesn’t leave a confusing scenario in later years, doesn’t punish new players and let’s us experience the entire story, no matter it’s supposed to have already happened.

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

Hi Colin,
I wanted to quickly respond to this, then I will read the rest of your post. Have you guys considered using phasing? Keep the content in the game for everyone and use phasing to phase the world into the different changes that the Living Story dictates.

For people that are playing alts, if they have unlocked the last, or most current phase, of the Living Story with a previous character, they have a choice to kick off the LS from the beginning or at the current point in the story.

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

That’s fine with how dynamic events and the open world works, since the world moves forward without you needing to be there. Someone else can complete the event you ignored, and the story will progress.

However, there’ two important things that don’t match this, because they aren’t world-locked, they are player-locked. These are:

• Renown Hearts
• Personal Story
• Living World (Longest of the three)

Renown Hearts: When you complete a renown heart, phasing should happen to show completion. Just removing enemies or disabling heart stuff isn’t good. The world should change somehow, just a bit, and only for those who have completed it. Pretty much what happens with some hearts, where you rebuild stuff and unlock new gossip and vendors, but phased for players who have completed the heart.

Personal Story: The Personal Story feels very disconnected, for many reasons I’ve already linked at reddit some pages ago. But in this particular case, I could say the same I’ve said for Renown Hearts. The Personal Story is very important to the lore, and it has zero impact in the open world, which is very sad. Maybe adding non-instanced stuff between the personal story would help (Like completing X hearts to unlock next mission, or requiring for a temple to be captured to access the mission).

Continues next post…

I really like browsing across skins easily, but the wiki was chaotic in this regards. So, for some weeks I’ve been organizing all the skins of the game, weapons and armor, in lists and categories.

This is the result: (Work in progress)

Lists:

• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_weapon_sets
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_standalone_weapons
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_standalone_armor

Categories:

• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Weapon_sets
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Standalone_weapons
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Armor_sets
• http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Standalone_armor

So, how do you navigate this?

First of all, skins, both weapons and armor, are divided into 3 groups/pages:

• Sets: Collections of skins that share visual characteristics and source, and usually name patterns, too.
• Standalone: Skins that aren’t part of any set.
• Renamed: Skins that are just renamed versions of set or standalone skins. (Pages still not done)

Then, skins are divided by primary source, and sorted by basic accessibility:

• Cultural: Bought with coin, bound and race-locked.
• Karma: Bought with karma, bound.
• Personal Story: Unlocked during the Personal Story, bound.
• Token: Bought with various tokens, bound.
• Crafted: Crafting, not bound.
• Loot: Looted, not bound.
• Temporary: Not available, not bound.
• Limited: Not available anymore, bound.
• Other

This model is present in both the lists and the categories, and is generic enough on purpose to keep adding new skins without having to reorganize everything, moving or deleting previous work.

This organization doesn’t discriminate between weapons with stats, weapons without stats or weapon skins. I think someone browsing this doesn’t care about that, and want to have everything in a single place. Also, the lists don’t include stats of any kind. I think it would be way too confusing, and there’s already better pages for that, like this one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats which cover stats perfectly.

Additionally, set lists include a quick reference table, which comes handy to see when a set can be obtained from different sources,
as well as to know which sets share their model, and only differentiate from each other for the texture.

What do I want from you?

I just want you to navigate a bit around the entire organization, and tell me if you feel it’s user-friendly. Basically, I want to know if you like this system, and then discuss what you don’t like about it.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know about how wikis work, just ask about anything you don’t understand, and I’ll try to answer as best as possible. Believe or not, those who know the less are usually the first ones to find things to improve, details that editors usually miss, so don’t hold back your opinions.

There’s still work to do, and I’d feel safer if you, the people who browse the wiki, like and support this model. Obviously, I don’t want to work hours and hours in something that may end removed after internal wiki practice disputes. And well, maybe if you don’t like this model we can work on a new one? The wiki should be the best place to browse stuff about the game, and I would like to work towards a stable model, no matter how it’s like.

You have an “opportunity” as users to voice your opinion about the wiki, I hope you use it well and we get something good out of this.

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1pt374/organizing_weapon_and_armor_galleries_in_the_wiki/

There’s a lot of stuff I should say, but it would take a big amounts of posts, and I’m not kidding. Instead, I’m going to link two of the few Reddit discussions I created, the ones I think were the best.

Maybe it isn’t “polite” to post links instead of the text itself, but I think it saves space in an already crowded thread, and also shows user feedback on them. Still, I’ll post some TL:DR;s for the first one.

I have gameplay feedback, too, below at the bottom.

Here they are. You’re warned, they are long:

This thread talks about how the game’s lore is great, but the storytelling is weak.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1imw7b/state_of_the_lore_reaching_to_the_players/

• Lack of coordination between the open world and the personal story.
• Dull characters without growth and story progression, specially villains.
• Too many random talks that are too hard to witness.
• Long event chains that are player-unfriendly to follow.
• Lack of easy-to-access ingame sources for background lore.

This other one covers more, and is a bit older. Some things could be considered for the living world discussion, but it’s about the Personal Story, in combination with the living world. Still, I think it’s an interesting read (Warning: Very long).

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/191me2/detailed_analysis_on_how_to_improve_the_personal/

And that’s it. It’s mostly about storytelling, not just the living world, but I think it affects it heavily anyway, since storytelling is storytelling, no matter the medium.

A final touch, regarding the gameplay side of the living story: We need both new content and respect for the old content. Add, and don’t remove living story or already existing stuff. Population problems? Encourage people to play specific content each day, without locking access to it the rest of the days. Freedom is good for the players.

A new player returning feels punished by not logging in for all these events. I am a guild leader, of a big guild, and my personal experience tells me casual and hardcore players are the ones getting hurt the most, at least around me. Casuals feel overwhelmed and can’t play how they want, they need to spend their time doing the events, and then be remembered about each reward they missed. Hardcore players find no long-term content was added after Fractals of the Mist. I think the temporary nature of the living world aims towards the remaining group of players, the dedicated, but I feel they’re being burned out.

In general, I’d say the game has a problem with its reward/dedication/skill ratio. Play your way? Not profitable. Play hard dungeons? Not profitable. Only farming the same spot again and again is profitable. Which isn’t bad, it’s fine. What’s wrong is the difference between normal play and farming is HUGE. And then you add achievements from the living story, which only make it worse, limiting things you want to play. Good luck finding a group for a dungeon when half the people is farming champions and the rest is busy with the achievements.

You have no population problems, that’s for sure. The key here is, is the population happy, or do they feel like the game has become a chore? Do they feel each living world release is another list of must-do boring farm stuff? The problems with how the people don’t like the living world aren’t just in the living world itself, they are in how the game tells the story, and in the reward system.

If you want people to love the living world, you need to tell the story better, and you need to make content fun, and not a chore.

Aaand I just wrote too much. I’m a lost cause.

I really hated this activity until it got changed to 4 players per game. Then, I got to love it. 8 players were too many, you couldn’t do anything with people killing each other trying to get to the top players.

With 4 players, the other 3 could team up and chase the top player. It was much more better.

Now Crab Toss is terrible again, back to 8 players. Any possible reason for the change?

Krait being “racist radicals” comes from just the old blog, nope?

The problem with dwarves is that there’s far too many dialogues and scripts speaking about them being a mystery.

You pretty much break all of those dialogues by making a living dwarf walk around those scholars. And we aren’t talking about just some gossip, pretty much more than 50% of Durmand Priory activity is based around dwarves.

You can’t have so much lore, storylines and situations where an extinct species is being researched, and then just throw the extinct species as if those dialogues never happened.

It would completelly break the entire cohesion of way too much things.

So no, dwarves can’t be playable, unless you pull some weird theme where they aren’t dwarves anymore, like making them lose their identity as dwarves, or using dwarf-looking dwarven constructs, making the playable race not be dwarves but dwarf constructs built to replace them.

My “want to” villain:

Snaff clone

No, I’m not mad, keep reading!

Kralkatorrik would have mesmer abilities. One of his most dangerous minions would be “mesmer assassins”, crystal insectoid-humanoids that can shapeshift using illusions. Think of what the watchknights did Queen’s Pavillion.

But beyond these minions, Kralkatorrik could create “special versions” of them. Snaff was inside his head, so we could consider he was inside his, too. Destiny’s Edge was way too dangerous, so he would create a crystal replica of Snaff, with all his memories, and make him look realistic through mesmer abilities. Snaff 2 would lead Kralkatorrik’s minions against Destiny’s Edge, the Pact and whoever menaces Kralkatorrik, but specially his former comrades.

Snaff 2 would be a perfect replica, with just small changes to make him want to serve Kralkatorrik. Why? Why not make him a mindless slave, with Snaff’s memories being just information he would use?

Because that isn’t as dangerous, and Kralkatorrik, being a mesmer, would know it well.

A 99% real Snaff would carry Snaff’s emotions, too. No matter how you look at him, he would be a perfect copy. It wouldn’t be like a mindless Zhaitan-loving risen. He would be Snaff. Zojja would face him eventually, and she would be facing Snaff, not just someone pretending to be him and using his memories to manipulate Zojja. Bold honesty is much more dangerous than manipulation.

No matter how Destiny’s Edge looked at him, he would still be Snaff. Even the replica would believe himself to be Snaff. Like if he was still alive, or he had been resurrected, with only a single “dark” point: Serve Kralkatorrik. And when you’d face him, he would reason his actions as good, not noticing deep inside him there’s a single “Kralkatorrik is bad” switch turned off, which he can’t turn on.

Destiny’s Edge would defeat him, and in his defeat, he would say goodbye as Snaff would if he had been allowed to properly. He would overcome his dark point, manage to realize Kralkatorrik had put a forced idea inside his head, and die as 100% real Snaff.

And no matter how you tried, you wouldn’t be able to save him, and he would die in your arms, again. Destiny’s Edge would be forced to murder Snaff, or be murdered by him.

From the very moment of the creation of the replica, Kralkatorrik would know he was making a winning move, no matter the outcome.

And that’s it, hope you liked it :P.

Kodan aren’t viable if we consider established lore. They don’t fit anywhere, and the theoretical location of their capital city would be in the middle of Jormag’s territory.

If you want to draw comparisons towards WoW, choosing pandaren isn’t fair. Pandaren always had playable race potential, with established lore detailing a civilized empire. Kodan’s counterpart are the furbolg, a bear-race lot of people want, too, but won’t ever happen for the same reasons kodan won’t happen.

Why kodan won’t happen, in my opinion:

• Variety is lacking, and it shows. They would need to improve the race a lot lore-wise, adding a lot of racial background and changing established lore. Their “racial spot” is pretty much covered by charr physically (big fur mammal), sylvari morally (peaceful teachings) and norn thematically (snow and bear spirit), too. Also, they are pretty humanoid, unlike the charr who don’t feel human-cats in any way.

• Can’t get starting zones that would flow well with what we already have. Yeah, they could start in a haven-zone in Jormag’s territory, and then have a portal to Lion’s Arch. There’s options there, but still. For a race established as refugees, having a capital that somehow is in a better state than what we already see may be contradictory. They fit better the same role the hylek have in Sparkfly Swamp, and not low-level content.

• Their entire race seems to follow Koda fervently, making them plain moral-wise. Sylvari suffer from something similar, but only partially, because they have established individuals that don’t follow Ventari’s teachings, and others that even defy them. We don’t find that between the kodan, just like we don’t find tolerance between the krait, and other races that have “rogue elements”, like the dredge, keep showing the same radical attitudes, just from opposing sides. Norn are plain enough morally, I can’t imagine how plain kodan would be.

• Kodan don’t sound like your adventuring type. The few you see south are there just to gather help and return home. They seem to have many problems already, it doesn’t sound reasonable to see them fighting anyone else than Jormag for a long while. Some of their members show even some kind of “elitist” attitude, rejecting those that don’t know enough about Koda.

If you force it enough, you could make their capital and starting zones work. You could even make them unique enough using skin tatoos to compensate for their lacking customization. But lore and cultural-wise, it wouldn’t work well.

The only races I see working in this game are tengu, naga (they could have recovered from GW1 and have a big society) and maybe largos (though the general attitude of what we have seen so far makes their society look like very narrow and secretive). Dwarves, after all we hear about them in-game would be too contradictory, unless they pull something like “dwarf-looking dwarven constructs” theme, which could work. Same for all the other “ancient” races, there’s way too much talk about how unknown they are, bringing playable characters would completelly break everything, specially around the Durmand Priory dialogues and recorded gossips.

Also, I would love hylek, but they can’t happen, between other things because of the stupid relationship between skin colour and culture they introduced with GW2. They would need to “break” established lore to make it work, though I wouldn’t care too much because it isn’t good and important lore really. Maybe we could get Heket instead? Whatever, I find them hard to happen, too.

I’ve seen this claimed in some places already, but still can’t find any source backing it up.

Bangar Ruinbringer, imperator of the Blood Legion, is said to be supporting the Renegades, the charr rebels fighting against the peace treaty with the humans.

Any ideas on if this is true or not? It may be hinted in one of those slippery dialogues you don’t even know exist.

My top 3:

• Making players feel forced to play daily and to farm to “progress”, instead of encouraging free roam fun and skill. If you don’t play daily you miss time gates and achievements, and if you don’t farm you become poor. Alternatively, you don’t get rewarded for playing your way, and you get better rewards for skill-less zerg farming than for skilled playing.
• Temporary content vs long-term goals, content quantity and spreading the players vs content removal and overflow excess. Players returning find no new consistent content, and a long list of “you won’t get this anymore” rewards, which doesn’t encourage returning at all.
• Storytelling problems, or how the lore doesn’t reach the players. Maybe dedicating 3 months to just updating the Personal Story would be a good idea, adding replayability and fixing cohesion with the open world. Living world stories should stay as permanent content and be reflected in the hero panel, too.

Bigger list:

General:

• Weapon and armor naming, focused on giving the same skins the same names, so every skin has one unique specific name.
• Major improvements for guilds, and how much of a priority they are.
• Daily/Monthly achievement points cap.

PvE:

• Make all playing styles viable, instead of encouraging berserker through enemies that one-shoot you.
• Scarce skin variety in open world PvE (You wear the same skins from 1-79)
• Dedication / Time reward ratio, specially painful in the case of dungeons (AC3 = 1.5g, CoE2 = 1g), and worsened by the gap between too profitable farming and fun or skilled playing.
• Making Orr a real “World vs Risen” experience together with viable non-zerg party playing.
• Difficulty in dungeons, and how to adapt it to everyone while encouraging replayability (levels like in Fractals of the Mist maybe?).
• Account bound crafting and its viability.
• Lore consistency of the zones (Tequatl Rising release shouldn’t have altered the timeline?).
• Making all 15-79 zones viable and appealing.
• Give Bloodstone Dust and the other loot ascended crafting materials some extra use.

PvP:

• Monetization of sPvP (Tournament tickets, arena tokens, etc).
• PvP rewards reflecting into PvE.
• Making WvW alt-friendly.

I think nowadays it’s pointless to have more than two crafting disciplines per character. Yeah, you can switch and whatever, but you could level those extra disciplines in other characters, getting 15-20 levels worth of experience.

In the end, when you want to use a crafting discipline, you switch to your specific character and use him.

So, with this situation, should crafting be account bound?Why isn’t it account bound in the first place?

First, what would account bound crafting mean? Pretty simple: Crafting level and discovered recipes are account bound. You can level armorsmith with a character, and then use it with another character. You’d still choose 2 crafting disciplines, and pay to change from one to another.

Going further, consumable recipes would become account bound, too. No need to buy it with a character and then move it to another. The moment you buy and consume it, everyone learns it. This would make some recipes more desirable.

But, what about using crafting to gain level experience? Right now, you only get hero experience when you get crafting experience. We could change this to tie it with the current hero level of the crafter, rewarding experience for crafting level appropriate gear, no matter how that would progress the crafting level. This would encourage people to craft while they level, since they get extra xp, while still keeping crafting powerleveling viable.

I think it’d be all advantages for the players, with no severe imbalances. People would use the switch discipline option more often, too, which would add new gold sinks, and new alts would get rewarded for crafting stuff. Also, it would save a good quantity of memory from the server databases, requiring a total of 8 instances for all the disciplines for a single account, instead of the current 8 per character.

What do you guys think?

Still, SE and CoE are underground, so even if they make those “mistakes”, you could say they’re deeper than that. In the case of the light ceiling in SE, well, I forgot about that, but in the end they are small problems.

TA is huge, and there’s no way it could fit in the current map if not underground. It’s not that it doesn’t fit well, it’s that it doesn’t fit at all.

As for Arah, in story mode, when the flying part begins and there’s some giants and whatever, that conflicts with what’s there on explorable mode, but it’s not too big.

So, geographically, most dungeons make sense. The Ruined City of Arah has some minor problems between story mode and explorable, Honor of the Waves is slightly bigger than it should… But overall, all of them are fine.

Except Twilight Arbor.

Since the first time I got into that place, I’ve tried to reason that, somehow, the entire place was underground. The light above? Er, light-emitting plants or just holes to the surface!

The entrance doesn’t match where the dungeon starts, either. Some of the light-holes (like the latest Aetherblade “airport”) match mountain zones in the surface.

What’s your opinion?

Personally, one thing I’ve hated a lot from other games is how dungeons didn’t match the real world, and I would love to see some “holes” indicating Twilight Arbor is underground.

I’ve completed the ooze font more than 5 times, all of them without getting in contact with the flames, sometimes carrying mysefl an ooze, others killing a few elementals.

And still no achievement. Happened to more friends, too.

Any idea? What’s going on?

What if Scarlet saw the mursaat?

I’ve always had this kind of “Dark Pact” fanwork. Basically, it would be something like this:

• Inquest + Pirates: Aetherblades – High Councillor Flax
• White Mantle + Modniir – Legate Minister Caudecus Beetlestone
• Nightmare Court + Twisted Engineering – Grand Duchess Faolain
• Flame Legion + Moletariat: Molten Alliance – ? (Not Gaheron Baelfire)
• And a 5th tengu-krait faction that isn’t based on anything ingame and isn’t worth elaborating on here (100% fanwork).

It evolved when the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades appeared, but the original idea is still there, based off the Sinister Triad on Brisban Wildlands. I find it “funny” that some dots connected so well (Aetherblades and Molten Alliance being together, twisted engineering making it to Nightmare Court territory, etc).

On top of all of those leaders, there would be the mursaat. Scarlet Briar would be their personal champion (Or Faolain’s).

Okay, is this madness? Or could it make any sense for you? :P

This Dark Pact or Dark Alliance would seek to defeat the dragons, too, but unlike the other forces, who want to eliminate or nullify them, the Dark Pact would want to control them.

Mystic Starfish.2586:

I’d love to have notes XD
I just visited each of the major cities and talked to the NPC’s, trying to find interesting info. That happened to be one of them. I had a couple more about the location of Primordus/destroyers, but that might be obsolete given the chatter is over a year old.

Post them :O xD.

Probably something related with dragons and Faoilain.

Well, we don’t know what’s north of there, but yes, the obvious answer is it’s the sea Jormag created.

By the way, wiki pages!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sea_of_Desperation
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eernst

Yes! I knew it wasn’t my imagination. I was starting to think I was confusing it with the Sea of Lamentation, a subzone on Frostgorge Sound, but now I see the link, the two names being similar to each other.

Still, we don’t know if this is the sea Jormag created, or the sea north of Far Shiverpeaks.

PS: Would love to know more about those notes, Mystic Starfish :P.

It’s pretty much assumed the Six Gods are either human or an unknown human-looking race. But, what if they weren’t neither human nor human-looking at all? What if they weren’t even from the same races?

Let’s analyze each god:

• Abaddon: Water and secrets. Six eyes.
• Balthazar: Fire and war (+ challenge). Wolf pets. Sword.
• Dhuum: Ice and death (+ darkness). Necromancer.
• Dwayna: Air and life (+ healing). Wings.
• Lyssa: Illusion and beauty (+ water). Mesmer.
• Melandru: Earth and nature (+ growth). Wings, tree shape. Bow.

Important to note, too:

• The last time the dragons rose, the 5 main races were: Dwarves, forgotten, jotun, mursaat and seers.
• The gods favored the giant races, but abandoned them (jotun downfall is related to this abandonment).
• Vizier Khilbron, worshipper of Abaddon, hates the mursaat. Could this mean Abaddon hates the mursaat, too?
• Seers forged the original bloodstone, which Abaddon used to release magic back to the world.
• The forgotten worship the Six Gods.
• The quaggan worship Melandru, naming her Melaggan.

Now for a moment, let’s imagine the depictions of the gods are altered by their human worship, be it humans adapting them or the gods changing their appearance to suit their new followers.

For example, Abaddon is sometimes depicted as insectoid. The seers have a slight insectoid look, too. Both share the hatred for the mursaat, and the relationship to the bloodstone.

Dwayna and Melandru’s wings could be an interpretation of largos wings, tengu feathers or forgotten arm-membrane. Balthazar has a jotun vibe, too, specially the relationship with his family, brothers and fathers killing each other, just like the beginning of the jotun downfall.

Lyssa is said to want to live between humans. She could have a deeper relationship with them, maybe sharing some racial links, too (though her being the godess of illusion makes her the most inconclusive to analyze).

It’s also worth noting how there seems to be a connection between the Elder Dragons and the Six Gods, regarding their abilities:

• Abaddon – Bubbles
• Balthazar – Primordus
• Dhuum – Jormag
• Dwayna – Zhaitan
• Lyssa – Kralkatorrik/Mordremoth
• Melandru – Mordremoth/Kralkatorrik

This could lead to further assumptions, depending on how each race was affected by the dragons during their last invasion. The relationship between the forgotten and Glint is an obvious point here. Lyssa got domain over water after Abaddon was defeated, which could be related to the war between forgotten and margonites, servants of Abaddon, which lead to the forgotten watching over Abaddon.

But in the end, there’s a even deeper theory I’ve had since some time ago: What if the last time the dragons rose, they were defeated by sealing specific powers into mortal beings? Remember that when Abaddon is defeated, his magic seems to go out of control, and it needs to be contained by someone.

So, summarized, what could be the races of the Six Gods, and what, if any, could be their relationship to the Elder Dragons and the races that fought them the last time they rose?

I swear this sea had a name, but I don’t find it anywhere, not even the wiki.

Does anyone know anything about it?

I don’t remember where I might have heard about it, but it’s probably been some kodan on Frostgorge Sound.

Maybe I’m just mistaking it with some subzone in the game, but let’s see if I’m alone or not.

No one cared about him, just like 99% of the game’s villains.

They really need to introduce villains better, and give them more reasons to exist beyond “hey I just met you, kill me and get some loot!”.

I think it was an ERROR to force story into Tequatl Rising. It feels cheap and lame, and even more, emphasizes the storytelling problems of the game when they do stuff like this.

First of all, the revamp shouldn’t have altered the timeline. If it got any story, it should have been placed chronologically when Sparkfly Swamp “storyline” happens. Gameplay patches need no lore-reasons to happen, and when you try to give them any, in most cases you only manage to hurt lore.

Also, I can’t believe I’m still seeing people justifying the return of some enemies. There’s only one Shatterer, and it dies. When we fight him again, we’re repeating content, not fighting his twin brother. Same for Tequatl, I hated when they said “waypoints were canon”, and now fighting Tequatl repeatedly seems to be canon, too, which is awful storytelling.

Tequatl Rising shouldn’t have any story at all, at least not outside his original timeline. Things like this make me lose hope in the storytelling of this game.

If it was in my hands, I would retcon the living world of this release, or just change it to something like Rox searching dragon pieces, with no relationship to the revamp at all.

I can’t believe we got this poor lore-excuse of living world story after all the storytelling problems . Seriously.

This is for fun, no offense to any group of players.

Make sure to put this: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/bash-the-dragon in the background while you read. Relax and enjoy!

• This world never lived in shadow from a pair of demon’s wings,
• and none here feared the whining or the drama it may bring.
• The players put on quite a show, expecting him sure dies,
• but there’s just one course of action and it involves tears and cries…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• Turn it back to faceroll content!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• May it never fail his event!…
• We send our worst and lamest to attack like a huge swarm,
• the skill-less and the lazies each line up to join the farm.
• The players may leave disruption in a swath across the land,
• but none will be left looting when our dragon makes a stand…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• Turn it back to faceroll content!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• May it never fail his event!…
• Players come in dozens from the Peaks and from the Shore,
• But he faces each wave with bravery and he’ll never lose this war.
• In every brawl a few may fall and more will surely shoo,
• and if players lose and don’t get loot then this is what they’ll do…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• Turn it back to faceroll content!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• May it never fail his event!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• Turn it back to faceroll content!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• May it never fail his event!…
• NERF THE DRAGON! ZERG THE DRAGON!
• May it never fail his event!…

It’s been only one day, lay down your torches and wait some days before asking for a nerf. Challenging stuff can be pretty fun if you have patience to learn by failing a few fights.

Remember how everyone complained dungeons were too hard at the beginning? Nowadays people is asking for hard modes ;P.

This release is an obvious Quality of Life release, and should have no story, at all; at least, not new story. If it has any story, it should respect the chronology of the previous iteration.

Giving Tequatl story just because is cheap and lame. If they add any, it should be for improving what we have, no another additional layer of confusion.

Making PvP rewarding:

• PvE players need to feel rewarded for playing PvP, with PvE rewards. Make sPvP give unique PvE skins, so they can show themselves in PvE and WvW. This: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Masquerade_armor could be a good example of PvP-rewarded PvE armor/skin. You want that armor? You need to play PvP to get it. It could let you purchase PvE stuff, like bags of materials, using glory, too.

• Making PvP-stuff tradable could be a good idea, too. You open chests to get skins, but then you end up recycling most of them. Adding a “trading card” mentality to this could be healthy. You play PvP, get chests and upon opening them you find rare skins, which you could trade in exchange of gold, or just sell your repeated skins to get the ones you’re missing. Higher ranks, the most dedicated PvP players, could get a nice profit selling high level equipment. I think it would be great for the game if the entire system was reworked around this concept, adding all the missing PvE stuff, too.

• The achievements for PvP (and WvW) aren’t rewarding enough. They need more tiers, so progressing isn’t crazy, and they need to give more points each tier, so the difference in achievement points between PvP and PvE players isn’t that huge. Also, some new achievements would be nice, for using map mechanics, for example (the entire game needs more achievement variety, but PvP and WvW are the ones that need it most).

PvP and WvW:

• The WvW daily should be moved from PvE to PvP. This would let players complete both the PvE and PvP daily in WvW. The Daily PvP achievements should be reworked, too. Just like the PvE daily rewards gold, karma and experience, the PvP daily could reward glory, honor, WXP and rank points.

• WvW needs its own finishers. PvE could reward special finishers, too, so PvE players can show off in PvP and WvW as well. A guild finisher should be a must, too.

Other “harder/polemic” to do stuff:

• In leagues, you should be able to veto a limited number of maps you don’t like, so you’re never forced to play on them if you don’t want to.

• New game-modes, specially Deathmatch, with their own maps and no leagues. Conquest should be the main mode, and give the most glory, with the new modes being just for fun. The new modes could focus on specific Conquest areas, just like Deathmatch would focus on killing, we could have new modes with many capture points or many siege weapons.

• Custom arenas shouldn’t be a rich-only privilege. Monetizing them wasn’t a very good idea to begin with. Guilds should be able to have their own influence-bought custom arena, and paid arenas should exist for big guilds than need more than one room, players that can’t afford it with influence or specific playstyles.

• The above suggested “trading card” mentality for reward chests could be monetized somehow, by letting players buy PvP chests with gems, too. Still, everything that is available in PvE through normal means should be available in PvP without being forced to use the Gem Store.

• Paid tournaments could return once we have a stable league system, and people willing to pay to play for greater rewards. Tournament tickets should be available through glory, too. Some tournaments could require one-use glory tickets, but let you buy a tournament-only gem ticket, too (think of SAB infinite coin, but chepaer and limited for each tournament).

• Playing sPvP could reward PvE experience to help you level, through soulbound consumables, but only for playing league and showing your skill, so it doesn’t lead to abuses.

Just a bunch of ideas, hope you liked them ;P.

I think we all agree the state of the sPvP in Guild Wars 2 isn’t as healthy as we wish. Here go a few ideas to improve it, small changes that wouldn’t need too much work:

TL;DR:

Encouraging skill:

• Proper ladder system with leagues and divisions
• Make showing your league and level easier
• More rank points for playing queue

Making it rewarding:

• Exclusive PvE skins you get by playing PvP only
• Make PvP equipment tradable, adding “trading card” mentality to it
• More achievement tiers and points to balance it with PvE

PvP and WvW:

• Merge WvW and PvP daily, and reward rank points, glory, WXP and honor
• WvW, PvE and guild finishers

Harder/Polemic stuff:

• Map veto in leagues
• New game modes, without leagues and just for fun
• Influence-bought custom arenas for guilds
• Monetize PvP reward chests through the Gem Store for those without glory or rank
• Paid tournaments once population rises, require glory or gems to participate
• Give PvE experience for playing tournaments

Making PvP competitive and encouraging skill:

• Queue games need a proper league system, not just a simple ladder. StarCraft II and League of Legends do this pretty well, and are the example to follow. For those who don’t know those systems, the entire ladder is divided into skill leagues (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, etc) which are in turn divided into divisions. This makes your ladder be of just 100 players, of your skill level, and you can see yourself go up and down each win. If you perform well enough, you’re moved to another division, or to another league. These kind of league systems make you want to keep playing to get better, and protect you from getting stomped by higher level players. There should be another non-league queue system, too, for team practicing and trying new professions without losing league position.

• In line with the league system above, players should be able to show off their position in the leagues. This could be done easily by adding custom profile-borders. Just like champions have a golden border, and veterans a bronze one, players could get a custom border depending the league they are in. The level of the players should show rank level instead, too.

• Progression through levelling is painful, and encourages rank farming, which isn’t healthy at all. In the other hand, we have the queues, that don’t get as many players, one of the reasons being you get less glory. Queue matchs should get a huge buff, making them reward a ton of rank points for winning, and a decent amount for just playing. Someone winning at tournaments should get x2 the rank points rank farmers get, and someone losing get as much. This would mitigate farming, and encourage skilled playing. To avoid abuses, the buff could be limited to a few games, though a proper league system would discourage lose-farming anyway.

I think the pabillion and the gauntlet are far too profitable, but the damage is done already. Some people has been gambit-farming since day one, and have probably made more than 1000g.

Also, I love farming when there’s a lot of people and lot of enemies, specially Cursed Shore events like Plinx and Rakkan (which I loved because I killed stuff nonstop and I even died sometimes).

However, they get lame once there’s far too much people, so I’m not enjoying the pabillion too much. Wish they had controlled population a bit more by forcing more overflows to have less people, but well.

Most champion farms got lame, too, since there’s so much people you don’t see anything and you get no rewards.

The key to balance is every activity should reward more or less the same, so you don’t feel punished for not playing X in an Y way.

Even if we do for the same price as Support Tokens, will we ever be able to vendor Representation Buttons?

An official answer would be nice.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I’m sorry but no.

He doesn’t really present anything new. He takes theories and speculation that’s spreading through the community and simply represents it. He often gets his facts wrong and is less accurate than the official wikis by far in his presentation of “facts” – often mixing in theory with facts.

I get that he’s been helpful in spreading lore to the larger community but that’s all he does, and it’s not a big thing either in the long run. Few if any of “his” theories he presents are actually his, and worse yet is that the people who watch his videos so fervently mistakenly believe what he says as truthful without question or believe his theories hold no counter points. Because of him there was a huge long-termed speculation that the Pale Tree is an Elder Dragon/dragon champion – but there’s FAR more countering this than supporting. And in his recent thread he presented a theory without any counter points to it about Kiel being an Aetherblade and the Aetherblades being from the future (ergo, Kiel’s from the future) – except that we have short stories that outright prove him wrong from the get go.

If people who actually put time and effort to make original and solid theories get nothing in the game, then the same should go to WP. I see no reason why he should be given special treatment over others who’ve been in the community far longer with far more (properly given) credibility to their name.

As far as I see, all WP does is make those who don’t look into the lore on their own accord get a mistaken and skewed – partial at best – view of the game’s lore.

And not to sound conceted or anything, but I’ve been in the community longer (at least actively), have moderated multiple forums, been a long time and huge wiki editor, part of the Test Krewe, and far far more, gotten a reputation as “lore guru/god/etc.” (which I’m not too fond of the last but meh it happened), but I don’t have an NPC. Why should someone who merely acts as a spokesperson in video format (often the video not being entirely relevant at all) be given an NPC over others who’s done FAR more to the community and to ArenaNet itself?

(Side note: no, I’m not wanting an NPC – I’d be ecstatic if I get one, but I don’t want nor need one).

Million times this.

In my opinion, WoodenPotatoes is pretty overrated, specially from people lazy to check stuff ingame and that use him as their only source of lore. I haven’t found anything special or relevant on his videos that isn’t in major lore discussion places or the wiki.

All the sixth dragon and Thaumanova theories have been posted for a long time ago in different places, but some people treat him like a god that discovered all of that by himself.

His lore videos are “good” for people that doesn’t pay attention to lore, but they aren’t good. Any discussion on the lore forum is usually better than what he delivers in his videos.

He does an ok job, which gets way too overrated. Dulfy’s work is years away from what him or anyone else has done for the community.

Magische Boek.2530:

Lonami.2987:

Elementalist here, stuck at Deadeye Dunwell (I think he’s bugged anyway, he spawns mines on top of me all the time and there’s no way I can dodge them).

It’s not fair for everyone not using full DPS gear. I need to get a new armor and weapons just because of this?

I dodge a lot, time my attacks with combos and survive, and then I get insta-downed or the timer runs away.

It’s pretty clear the only way to successfully achieve the Gauntlet is to be a berserker or a heavy condition damager. I saw a necromancer faceroll through the first 11 bosses, killing them all in 5-10 seconds with full DPS and conditions.

The Gauntlet doesn’t reward skill, it rewards DPS. Insta-downing attacks don’t help here, either, why go vitality or toughness when it won’t be useful at all?

go staff earth 3 to reflect his killshot if you dont have a DPS build :p

I’ll try, but other reflection skills didn’t work well before. I think it’s some kind of bug, I tried doing it with my thief, too, and sometimes he ignored the fact that I was invisible.

Also, my main problem is mines. They spawn over me constantly, with no warning, even when I’m moving.

Pinch.4273:

DeWolfe.2174:

So basically, this is a huge gold sink within a farmable area? No amount of retraiting is going to make you that much different without completely reequipping your character.

I have a full glass cannon Thief. I respecced in to Shadow Arts, Acrobatics, and Trickery (full defensive) while still using my glass cannon gear. I killed everything on my first attempt, including Liadri.

Care sharing the build, please?

Elementalist here, stuck at Deadeye Dunwell (I think he’s bugged anyway, he spawns mines on top of me all the time and there’s no way I can dodge them).

It’s not fair for everyone not using full DPS gear. I need to get a new armor and weapons just because of this?

I dodge a lot, time my attacks with combos and survive, and then I get insta-downed or the timer runs away.

It’s pretty clear the only way to successfully achieve the Gauntlet is to be a berserker or a heavy condition damager. I saw a necromancer faceroll through the first 11 bosses, killing them all in 5-10 seconds with full DPS and conditions.

The Gauntlet doesn’t reward skill, it rewards DPS. Insta-downing attacks don’t help here, either, why go vitality or toughness when it won’t be useful at all?

CMEPTb.8091:

Having both a Wallet and Bank is an impossibility:
Martin Kerstein —

It is not as simple as having both, it is something that is within the code and the interaction of multiple different elements of the game. So it might look like an easy thing on the outside – under the hood there is a lot of programming magic going on. So if you need to have a bankspace to protect yourself from – well – yourself, you have to use the “individual guild” route.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/Token-Wallet-Thank-you-a-net/page/5

ANet is taking the practical route of the Wallet — thank you! The safeguard issue can still be had through a personal Guild Bank. Perhaps more of a hassle, but the option is still there. The only other safeguard option I would propose would be to have a “Are you sure you want to place your order” message, but that would really slow down the market.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Will those of us just short of 200 gold be taunted by the removal of the Golden achievement, leaving those with that title to gloat?

I would not put it past ANet to simply bring the title from the Bank to the Wallet.

We still have guild banks, so it’s not impossible.

Kincaidia.3192:

Holy crap. This whole argument is ludicrous. All my laurels are in one spot, I could accidentally buy that stupid cat thing, OMG NEED A LAURELS BANK BEFORE I STUPID MYSELF TO DEARTH!

Repeat with karma, badges, dungeon tokens, ectos, whatever.

Of all the issues in game, this so far from issue #1 as a fart in the wind.

PLEASE move on.

You are always asked to confirm laurel and token purchases. That doesn’t happen with gold and the trading post.

This remembers me of the ghost ship of Cursed Shore.

There’s a ship in the main body of water, you can see it from afar. If you get near, it disappears.

Manuhell.2759:

Uhm, considering that there already was an inventor – Uzolan – associated with the Caudecus’ Manor storyline, i would say he’ll return during this event and he will use the watchknights to kidnap the queen, maybe with the help of the separatists.

Uzolan is Caudecus's Manor story mode spoilerdead.

The best thing would be treating them like the harvesting tools: Consumable versions and infinite versions.

Seems obvious, but I’m asking just in case.

Will legendary enemies be included in the new Champion Loot Updates? If so, will they have the same rewards, or higher?

What about world bosses (rank) enemies? Those never had loot, having only chests instead. Will they be included, too?