Guild Wars 2

Excalibur.9748:

Btw, from experience I can tell you, soldier set or even cleric set wont allow you to facetank anything even as a guardian, and with a thief its just totally wrong imo.
Only talking about pve, mind you.

It’s not about facetanking, but being able survive a couple of hits if you screw up or hits that you can’t avoid.

This.

You guys really can clear a fractal without being hit once?!

Why he heck do people bring guardians?!

I used 0/30/30/10/0 for dungeons, valkyrie+soldier armor (soldier up to 2400/2450 toughness then val), berserker weapons and trinkets, runes of divinity, +5% dmg and accuracy sigils. Traits where

CS: +7%crit on flanking, 100%crit on stealth, can’t remember.
SA: Regen on stealt/blind on stealth, +2 ini on stealth, regenerate health during stealth.
Acr: can’t remember.

I could melee pretty fine, keep in mind you need to evade some attacks with thief, like Kholer will shot you with any setup.

It was Thieves Guild I think, back when I played the game stealing from a Mesmer gives you consume Ectoplasm, that gives all boons.

It’s not just Traedjfjxibfksne, your character is a natural lackey. I just played humans, in your personal story you just switch masters. And besides being a lackey, you don’have any any trace of personality. Only thing that resembles a character’s personality is the dignity(lol)-charisma-ferocity… And we all know how much it influences the gameplay or your dialogue. Had to came up with a personality for my characters because they are otherwise painful to play as.

In order to grow fondef of your character in this game you have to scrap personal story from your mind and create a background, a your own story and personality, or else your character would be a pathetic wimp whose only occupatiin is to lick boots, especially Therelvxalchroshfiwhanne’s.

I think I had my most epic conversation doing fractals level 10 daily months ago.

I was teaming up with a bunch of good players and then there was this little asura engineer kitten. This arrogant dwarf kept complaining, telling others what to do even tough it was clear they knew how to play, and calling me noob because I was downed at one point, his line was something like “lol noob you can’t melee bosses in fractals”. Funny thing is, he was the worst player of the group, he wasn’t able to stay alive and kept dying and dying and dying, not ressing downed allies, pulling aggro at wrong times and so on. We had a tough time dealing with dredge’s mining suit because of him because he was dying at switches after he wanted to deal with them, then he started pulling the boss away from the new switch operator because he claimed to know a better way to do the boss.

So, after clearing maw, I pinged my ring and wrote my most badkitten line of all times:

“Nice! I had to stand *player*’s arrogance and utter incompetence but it was well worth it”.

Guy was kitten ed and called ME an elitist kitten.

kitten asuras they always give problems, many asura players take roleplay too seriously.

Edit: i kitten the kitten kittening kitten filter.

I play both thief and necromancer. As a general tip, cripple and chill the thief to make it harder for them to landackstabs and keep moving while they stealth. You also have access to weakness and blinds and let your deathshroud eat their backstab. You can also spam your marks to hinder and damage them. Remember that staff 4 is now immune to blind, transferring blind to the thief instead.

Be careful not to waste your cripple and chill on a blind, cleanse it with autoattacks.

I also loved the rapier. Very fitting for thieves and mesmers.

Can’t believe it. Seriously. Totally illogical.

KaiserCX.7103:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Crawford.4135:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Oh, a dev on the thief forum, such an unexpected visit. Since you’re honouring us with your presence, would you mind explain us the reasoning behind Cluster Bomb range reduction? Was it so over powered? And while you’re at it, could you share some thoughts about Last Refuge, since lowering its cooldown by 30 seconds suggests that you devs don’t have a clue about players’ issues with this trait.

He is a designer, not a developer. Big difference. He’s way below a developer.

Yes, but maybe he has a better understanding than I do about LR and CB. Because I can’t stop laughing for these two changes! XD

They wanted us to be completely useless in sieges so we’re always roaming, simply put they want to hear more whining from people in WvW dying to thieves I guess.

Why lowering LS cooldown then?

… still laughing! XD

Btw where is the petition topic about removing LR?

Crawford.4135:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Oh, a dev on the thief forum, such an unexpected visit. Since you’re honouring us with your presence, would you mind explain us the reasoning behind Cluster Bomb range reduction? Was it so over powered? And while you’re at it, could you share some thoughts about Last Refuge, since lowering its cooldown by 30 seconds suggests that you devs don’t have a clue about players’ issues with this trait.

He is a designer, not a developer. Big difference. He’s way below a developer.

Yes, but maybe he has a better understanding than I do about LR and CB. Because I can’t stop laughing for these two changes! XD

Oh, a dev on the thief forum, such an unexpected visit. Since you’re honouring us with your presence, would you mind explain us the reasoning behind Cluster Bomb range reduction? Was it so over powered? And while you’re at it, could you share some thoughts about Last Refuge, since lowering its cooldown by 30 seconds suggests that you devs don’t have a clue about players’ issues with this trait.

On a more serious note, this change shows how poorly they understand their own mechanics: they couldn’t understand why LS is so bad. I bet they thought:

“kittena, people are gomplaining about LR not being strong enough! Well, lowering it’s cooldown will make it better because it will trigger more often!”

I bet they actually intended it as a buff.

Now if you can miraclouslly survive the first LR proc you should be wary: another proc mau actually occour!

It’s the end, after this patch we won’t be able to thieve around anymore. We just recieved the worst nerf I’ve ever seen, a nerf that will make every thief that uses Shadow arts impossible to play. An upleveled in whites will be able to faceroll us just by autoattacking. White ambient creatures will tear our livers out leaving us agonizing to death. Maybe even green npcs and party members will be able to kill us.

You know what I’m talking about: Last Refuge, they nerfed it by lowering it’s cooldown to 60 seconds.

Rest in piece my dear thief, you will be missed! XD

Roll a thief, can’t pick a locked door nor steal anything.

Eat five candies, vomit all over the place. Eat 100 rare vegetable pizzas, everything is fine.

tolunart.2095:

I bought TWO copies of the game, for my wife and I, so we get two votes. And we both like the way the game is going just fine.

Are you implying my opinion is less valuable then yours according on how much you spent on the game?

… because if it’s so, two copies don’t come any closer to what I spent on gems! XD

And, since LS continues with it’s “press F to watch your fully exotics/ascended character perform a random animation and get achievements” stuff no, my opinion wasn’t heard at all. XD

JustTrogdor.7892:

Lucky Shot.7650:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gotejjeken.1267:

Fast forward to today, and new players are forced to participate in the most mundane activities ever.

No one is forced to participate in these events. I’ve logged in everyday since the event started and have yet to see a screen that said, “You Must Now Participate In The Dragon Bash Event To Continue Playing” The new players have a bigger advantage when it comes to this because they have a whole lot of things outside the event to discover.

So basically if you’re not forced to do the event you don’t have any right to talk about those activities quality?

I’m not forced to comment on Living Story events, but I do so because I feel the focus of this game is shifting on those activities and by doing so other aspects of the game that I like and need fixing are being ignored, so I have all rights to complain since I paid the game and a quite decent amount of gems. When I think about 2012 updates (oh God November update) and I compare them to 2013 updates I can’t help but being angry about the direction they took.

You also wasn’t forced to answer the topic, but you did.

I responding to this specifically.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Fast forward to today, and new players are forced to participate in the most mundane activities ever.

I chuckled, didn’t notice! XD

Penguin.5197:

So do I. It would be horrible if (imo) the best looking pistol in game came from a limited time rng chest :/

This, always wanted a revolver.

“Now I’ll show you why they call me “Revolver”."

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gotejjeken.1267:

Fast forward to today, and new players are forced to participate in the most mundane activities ever.

No one is forced to participate in these events. I’ve logged in everyday since the event started and have yet to see a screen that said, “You Must Now Participate In The Dragon Bash Event To Continue Playing” The new players have a bigger advantage when it comes to this because they have a whole lot of things outside the event to discover.

So basically if you’re not forced to do the event you don’t have any right to talk about those activities quality?

I’m not forced to comment on Living Story events, but I do so because I feel the focus of this game is shifting on those activities and by doing so other aspects of the game that I like and need fixing are being ignored, so I have all rights to complain since I paid the game and a quite decent amount of gems. When I think about 2012 updates (oh God November update) and I compare them to 2013 updates I can’t help but being angry about the direction they took.

You also wasn’t forced to answer the topic, but you did.

Rimu, I hope you’re having issues only finding a group with cof1.

You have to understand that some people doing speedruns want to clear them as fast as possible to do more runs in the time they spend. Even a two minutes delay is a lot: if a standard speedrun takes 6:30 the group will be able to do nine runs in a hour, if it takes 8:30 they will able to run it only seven times, making less gold. Some people play speedruns for several hours straight, so they will lose even more if they get two minutes late every run.

I am against class elitism in general, but I can understand why some people will take only certain classes, I respect their decision and won’t get angry if they refuse to take my dotter in their runs.

For general dungeon runs, some classes are misunderstood. For example, it is generally believed that thief and ranger perform badly in dungeons. Playing thief, I can say they are wrong. These misunderstandings born because these classes are generally badly played in dungeons, like thieves sticking with P/P and spamming unload without doing anything else. Truth is, thief is a great class if used well.

Hence, people that won’t take you because of your class are generally wrong except for cof1 speedrunning. This being said, it’s their choice and I respect it, I’m sorry if this is ruining your experience with the game.

You could try to find some other dungeon groups. TA is easy and lends good rewards due to onix drops. CoE 1 is also easy and crops charged cores, while CoE 2&3 are easy IF you know what you’re doing.

I love how some people just use some set phrases to argue.

What if I love this game combat system, graphic style, classes, world, dungeons, fractals, pvp, wvw, customization, skills, lore… but I don’t like dailies because I find them boring and nonsensical and I like, instead, challenging content and I feel that BiS gear should be awarded for this kind of content? Isn’t this game for me?

I love this game, I just think we should be awarded more for hard content instead of repeating every day the same trivial tasks.

Stop saying this game isn’t for me, I can chose myself what games to play.

Yeah, I hope they won’t be acquired with rng boxes and that they will be permanent, I’m about to take one month vacation and I’d hate to lose that rapier!

My thief likes that sword and that pistol! ^^

Because, you know, dungeoning for 5 hours is not playing the game.

I play fractals with 2 classes: warrior and guardian and I’m raising a thief so for me the time gate is a problem.

Also, I can play pvp with necro, thief, enigneer and guardian. I don’t really like to start a fight in wvw knowing that my opponent has:

Main attribute: 62 more stat point, 12% better than exotics.
Secondary attribute: 30 more stat points, 8.5% better than exotics.
% attribute: ascended has 8 more percentage points, 22% better than exotics.

And since I roam solo or in a 5 men party is not like I won’t be required to play 100% to make a difference.

I mostly play dungeons and I rarely get more than 1/5, wvw and pvp being something I do when I’m up for some variety so yes, I have to actually pursue my daily every day. Those 30 minutes I spend doing the daily could be spent for a path run, that means I’m losing 30 minutes of something I like to do to go chop the tree-kill the rabbit.

I’d love to, that would really be rewarding people to play the way they want. Dungeon completer? Check, and with this veteran and champion slayer, daily kills and daily healer if I’m unlucky. Fractal frequenter? Check. WvW kills? Check.

Just for the sake of the argument “you don’t need ascended gear so you are not forced to do your daily”.

Some people like to improve their characters. That’s why they play rpgs, and I bet they would prefer to do so by playing some challenging content and be rewarded for their hard work instead of picking 20 flowers and kill 40 moas in kryta. Every day.

I’d like myself better something like this: you get 1 laurel for your daily, then 1 laurel for each dungeon you fully complete during that day, meaning story+3 different paths. Also, every dungeon should have a fourth path, an kittene, to award you with an extra laurel if you complete all 4+story. WvW could have like 1 laurel every X levels they gain in wvw rank and pvp could award you with laurels for winning tourneys. But I’m digressing here.

The difference between full ascended and full exotic trinkets is not negligible.

This is the difference between a full set of exotic trinkets with jewels and a full set of ascended trinkets:

Main attribute: ascended has 62 more stat points. That’s 6.2 trait points, 12% better than exotics.
Secondary attribute: ascended has 30 more stat points. That’s 3 trait points, 8.5% better than exotics.
% attribute: ascended has 8 more percentage points. That’s 8 trait points, 22% better than exotics. Not to mention, ascended gear has the best % ratio.

And I’m not taking into account infusions because they’re really grindy to get, that’s 30 more points.

It is a noticeable difference, especially talking about berserker gear and critical damage. In pve the difference escalates for 5 party members and in wvw, without them, you won’t start at the same ground as an ascended equipped opponent. Want to perform better in dungeons and wvw? You need ascended. Personally, I could feel the difference in wvw when I equipped my engi SD with full ascended.

Vayne.8563:

You see, not everyone that has a 150 IQ is necessarily a go getter. Not everyone has equal motivation. Sometimes people have physical problems. Sometimes people have emotional problems. Sometimes people have life situations that make it harder to get things done in real life. One of the smartest blokes I ever met has done nothing with his life because he has zero motivation. And probably due to his being bullied when young in school (this happens to LOTS of smart people), he’s never felt secure or supported enough to overcome his depression and anxiety. He’s smart, but screwed up. Nothing to be done about it.

When I read this, I thought about myself, felt sad and guilty and remembered me I should be studying right now. Shouldn’t waste myself like that.

“Hello, my name is Vayne and I’m a genius. I love to press F to chop down trees and smash piñatas 4-6 hours a day in Guild Wars 2 because I made myself believe it is stimulating. I also like to waste my time on the forums boasting, opening topics about myself and fighting people’s legitimate complaints about the game on the forums with contradictory statements instead of ignoring them like extreme geniuses would do.”

Something is wrong here.

Dude, please, instead of wasting your 150 IQ like this, go develop a new, clean and unlimited power source, we need it badly.

As the topic says, what sigil should I put on my rifle for the static discharge build? I really can’t choose between Air, Fire, Force and Accuracy.

What do you guys suggest?

MakeitNeil.4561:

Now, ha ha ho, the thief…moment of silence…heals for 65k and removes 25 conditions. These thieves also have to ability to permanently stealth as they please. If they feel that they want to stealth for three minutes straight (no reveal)… they can start at any given time. Know that we didn’t include any elite skills and we only need at least 1 utility slot to achieve these healing capabilities on each class. Also, (besides the thief, though they can do this if they want to) they have approximately 3000 toughness and still enough damage to kill a bunker guardian, not completely useless.

You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

I prefer running Sw/P+Sc/Sw and that helps a lot against thieves thanks to blind and blocks (prevents them from C&D).

For D/P thieves you should have an easy time: when they stealth dodge randomly after a couple of seconds or activate blurred frenzy or decoy. Keep in mind that many thieves won’t wait the last second of their stealth to attack fearing the target will dodge. Time your dodge instead calculating the time it would take for the thief to get at your back/side. Phantasms should have an easy time against them since during every second they spend in stealth our phantasms are recharging their attacks. If you run shatter, when you dodge you should drop a clone, the thief will hit it with your attack gaining revealed and a 3 seconds window (since you’re playing wvw) to pop up the clone you lost and land your shatter. Some thieves use dodges to move faster towards the target so if you’re lucky they’ll be one dodge short. It could survive though since P/D usually have some decent defences. Watch out for blinds when you summon a phantasm.

Instagib builds are a bit more problematic since they jump at your back from nowhere and nuke you in a couple of seconds. Pop the stun breaker of choice as soon as you get petrified. I suggest not using blink since they can down you very fast, but something faster like decoy. The good news is, they won’t survive a shatter or few phantasm hits.

Also keep in mind that limiting thieves’ mobility makes their life a lot worse, so go with iZerker.

I have the Sclerite Backpiece: I know it has been asked before but since we’re at it: will it show on my clones/phantasms?

I know, who cares if they show on phantasms but: the more Ch’tulues the better!

So it is bad in group fights… but still good on 3vs3? Thought 3vs3 was considered a group fight. If we’re talking about 8vs8 (hate that kitten), then thief is less useful than those two phantasms: they stay ranged to deal damage, thief has to shadowstep in melee to do so and in a 8vs8 you basically implode! And I think phantasms do give regen to nearby allies, not bad in a group fight! But yes, in a 8vs8 we’re useles… may as well being backcapping during a fight like that.

Sorry for the out of topic, I read the whole topic and even if it shifted to Shatter builds I thought initially it was about mesmer in general.

Still, I don’t know if I’m complaining, may it sound weird. I’m struggling between the love for my thief and the love of feeling powerful. Maybe I’m happy as things are now, still don’t know.

I mained thief since I started at launch. I begun doing spvp in December with thief until a couple of weeks ago:

Recently bought a character slot, built a mesmer. Went to heart of the mists right after the introduction (pve lvl=2) and set up a phantasm build. After reading the skills a couple of times, started some spvp matches to try it. With thief I couldn’t kill bunkers like guardian, elementalist, engineer, ranger. I couldn’t with D/D burst nor D/P, I could kill them only with a S/D build specifically designed for it just to be ineffective against every other build type. With my new mesmer I could SLAY said builds, and every other build effortlessly… during my first match as a mesmer. So after a lifetime playing thief I could achieve better results with mesmer on my very first match. Also played Engineer with Static Discharge before starting mesmer: again, I’m not as affective with engi as much as I am with mesmer despite having more experience with engi.

Also, mesmer is the only class being able to win a 1vs1 even if it gets downed first, except maybe warrior.

And concerning “oh but is very bad in group fight situations”: no it’s not bad it’s at least average since iDuelist and iSwordsman tend to stay out of harm. And, by the way, it’s not uncommon to meet 1vs1 situations, like assaulting a point kept under a bunker’s protection.

Also, stunbreakers assigned to mesmer’s best utilities like blink and decoy. On my thief I only had one stunbreaker on a 45 seconds cooldown, on mesmer I have 2 on 30 an 40 secs.

Not to mention having 2 blocks (that can double as blind and daze should the need arise), one invulnerability that dishes out good damage, and one more daze and one more invulnerability with high drawback on a such offensive spec.

Now I’m levelling my mesmer: in wvw the only class that will survive 1vs1, the most frequent scenario when you roam, will be thief… if they don’t actually try to fight back.

Some people will say phantasm mesmer is balanced due to being weak against multiple players… I say having to bring 2 people to kill one non-bunker, that has 3 pets attacking every 5 seconds for 5000 dmg each, is the exact opposite of balance. Funniest thing I never realized how strong it is before playing it.

Farming glory every day now… half asleep!

No, you can’t match that burst but yes, by running P/D you can obtain more results in wvw.

I have mixed feelings about a build like that. I will compare it to a D/D burst build.

It is great for stealthing without having to land a C&D. However, it eats initiative like nothing else and in a drawn fight I often find myself running low. Stealth from P/D is also shorter than C&D, if you’re going for a backstab. Also, you’re losing a lot of damage from C&D, and your damage will be generally quite low. Fights are going to be longer, thus increasing the chance that enemy reinforcements will kick in.

It’s a really good build to solo camps, but it’s not that great against players. You still have problems against bunkers like ele, guardian, ranger. Also, considering the ability of said classes to keep the fight going for a long time, you’re running low on initiative. It also has a worse matchup against phantasm mesmer, that you can just burst down with a D/D build. So, basically, you can’t kill builds/classes you wouldn’t already be able to kill with a D/D burst. As a worth to mention exception, I’d say you can crush warriors that rely on cc to Hundred Blades that will bring you down if they catch you unaware with D/D.

It works better than D/D burst against a group of players, provided they’re inexperienced and there aren’t tanky characters among them.

So I can’t really pick a set. When I’m on D/D I feel I can’t do anything useful, while on P/D I can’t take my damage being so low.

I have to agree: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/I-think-Living-Story-is-bad-for-this-game/first

Darkstar.6178:

I stopped reading at “me and most of the people I know”.

Does “me, my ingame playmates, my guild and my real life friends” sounds better?

Actually, scrap that: my real life friends just ignore the LS alltoghether.

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Yes, they do play the content, for the two hours required to clear the achievements. Or if the content is farmable.

I bet they’d play more and permanently if, for instance, dungeons had better scale rewards.

I don’t think as many people would welcome the dungeons as people that would do the living story. Those who love dungeons can’t understand why people might solo an MMO, but there are tons of people who do solo. Tons who don’t like dungeons, or any kind of challenging content. Tons of people who just want to hang out in the open world and be given stuff to do.

This is a good point, a really good one in fact and it answers my initial question: I’m disconnected from the playerbase. And also it worries me: if people consider more important and fun LS content than dungeoning, pvp and wvw I’m afraid this game will always give priority to those players, leaving us to wait for better balance on these features.

They… uhm… should add super easy dungeons? I mean, dungeons are far easier than wow raids, where if a single raider doesn’t do his job the whole raid dies (dps failing to dps=enrage, tank failing to hold aggro=everyone dies, healer failing to heal=tank dies+everyone dies) but sure they’re not a cakewalk either.

Yes, they do play the content, for the two hours required to clear the achievements. Or if the content is farmable.

I bet they’d play more and permanently if, for instance, dungeons had better scaled rewards.

But in all seriousness, could you say LS quests are fun, have a good story line, challenging activities and good delivery and it’s better to have LSs than to have an overall better, more balanced and with more variety game?

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

No, we’re discussing Living Story in general as it was clear from my first and subsequent posts, where I mentioned also F&F events, and that spending resources on it takes away from improvements that could be done to the rest of the game.

We don’t need those poorly delivered content with bad storyline. We need improvements to the “vanilla” game before. As I said earlier, having a fair dungeon reward system would be add enough variety to keep people playing. Having a better class balance would allow players to have more fun in pvp, or roaming wvw. There is a ton of potential in what we already have, but there are fixes to be made.

People who bring up stuff like this ignore all the stuff that is being done to the rest of the game. People say there’s no permanent content, but they ignore guild missions which is permanent content. They say there’s no fixes to the core game, but there have been consistent fixes. Culling has been fixed in WvW and they’re working on it for PVe. That’s a core issue. Preview was added to the marketplace, that’s a big quality of life issue. New PvP maps have been added and another is coming. Other things are being added to and changed in WvW. My ranger is far more powerful now than he was five or six months ago. Far more survivable. It’s a quality of life improvment. I’ve lost count of the number of bug fixes that have occurred in the past six months.

The changes are slow but they’re there. It’s like when you live with someone and you watch them grow, they don’t seem to grow nearly as fast as people who don’t see those kids every day. The game is changing but if you’re constantly here, you might not notice it. But people who have come back have noticed changes. They’re not big oh wow changes, but they’re consistent and slowly moving the game.

There’s talk about a big change to the trait system coming up to that will affect every profession. Those working on the living world are not affecting the other stuff being worked on.

Good, keep going then. Concentrate in those issues. Is not that nothing was done, it’s just a lot more could be done, and LS is at the moment not necessary.

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

maddoctor.2738:

They have different teams for different aspects of the game. The Living Story team has nothing to do with Balance, PVP, WvW, Bugs, Dungeons or even the team that might create the next chapter in the big story (expansion?). So in reality, they are not losing resources/time with the living story.

The LS team gets a salary, so they’re taking away financial resources that could be spent in more pressing issues. Let’s make those salaries more useful and employ those people to work on other aspects of the game.

Only so much permanent content would ever be added at a time anyway, it would be parceled out. It’s far more important for Guild Wars 2 to keep people logging in than to add permanent content. In other words, between bouts of permanent content, keeping people involved is necessary, whether you see this or not.

If only permanent content came out and it took longer, you might have a whole lot less people to play it with when it finally arrives.

More people doesn’t necessarily mean faster creation of content.

If they fixed dungeon rewards and fractals people would have plenty of content to play. People don’t run dungeons other than cof 1 because the rewards are not worth the trouble. I’d love to have a situation where every dungeon has the same time+challenge=reward ratio, we would have 24 paths viable. Those are a lot of things to do. Also, fractals: right now I don’t feel like doing fractals because I could get unlucky and get the longest fractals, taking almost two hours to complete and having the same reward I would have getting the shortest ones. I’d be playing a lot more with those two additions.

It would be interesting to see what happens if Anet were to implement this.

Right now, people are actively avoiding the dredge fractal for example by resetting the instance if they get it first. Would they be resetting the simpler ones and only doing the dredge fractal if the rewards were more significant?

I’d be interested to find out.

Probably. What if, instead of getting more rewards for longer fractals we get fractals with the same length and challenge?

Obviously I was talking about other dungeons when I talked about increasing rewards for lengthier and harder paths.

I think you’re onto something here. Content has to be worth the time. Some players will do stuff for fun only (like me) but most won’t. They want to be rewarded for the time spent.

Doing Arah really doesn’t reward you considering how long the dungeon takes (explorable mode, I mean). Why would anyone want to do Arah, except for tokens. Once you have your tokens why would you ever want to do it again?

Sad fact is, Arah is incredibly fun. It’s fun because it’s still fresh since nobody does path 4 every day and because it’s challenging. We’re brought two guildies in path 4 last weekend, had a blast. Your reward is feeling good because you cleared the hardest path in the game, you’re the boss. But this holds true just for the first time you beat it, you need an excuse to keep going. Same goes for cof 3, se2, cm1…

No, we’re discussing Living Story in general as it was clear from my first and subsequent posts, where I mentioned also F&F events, and that spending resources on it takes away from improvements that could be done to the rest of the game.

We don’t need those poorly delivered content with bad storyline. We need improvements to the “vanilla” game before. As I said earlier, having a fair dungeon reward system would be add enough variety to keep people playing. Having a better class balance would allow players to have more fun in pvp, or roaming wvw. There is a ton of potential in what we already have, but there are fixes to be made.

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

maddoctor.2738:

They have different teams for different aspects of the game. The Living Story team has nothing to do with Balance, PVP, WvW, Bugs, Dungeons or even the team that might create the next chapter in the big story (expansion?). So in reality, they are not losing resources/time with the living story.

The LS team gets a salary, so they’re taking away financial resources that could be spent in more pressing issues. Let’s make those salaries more useful and employ those people to work on other aspects of the game.

Only so much permanent content would ever be added at a time anyway, it would be parceled out. It’s far more important for Guild Wars 2 to keep people logging in than to add permanent content. In other words, between bouts of permanent content, keeping people involved is necessary, whether you see this or not.

If only permanent content came out and it took longer, you might have a whole lot less people to play it with when it finally arrives.

More people doesn’t necessarily mean faster creation of content.

If they fixed dungeon rewards and fractals people would have plenty of content to play. People don’t run dungeons other than cof 1 because the rewards are not worth the trouble. I’d love to have a situation where every dungeon has the same time+challenge=reward ratio, we would have 24 paths viable. Those are a lot of things to do. Also, fractals: right now I don’t feel like doing fractals because I could get unlucky and get the longest fractals, taking almost two hours to complete and having the same reward I would have getting the shortest ones. I’d be playing a lot more with those two additions.

It would be interesting to see what happens if Anet were to implement this.

Right now, people are actively avoiding the dredge fractal for example by resetting the instance if they get it first. Would they be resetting the simpler ones and only doing the dredge fractal if the rewards were more significant?

I’d be interested to find out.

Probably. What if, instead of getting more rewards for longer fractals we get fractals with the same length and challenge?

Obviously I was talking about other dungeons when I talked about increasing rewards for lengthier and harder paths.

Vayne.8563:

Bainshie.2981:

However most people consider ‘Going to random places with no clues’ ‘not compelling’

There were clues though. The clues were in the achievement panel. You have to point to them to see the clues. Admittedly, I’d like to have seen the clues more visible.

Yes there were clues… on the achievement panel. Pretty immersive I say.

Also, there weren’t any clues for Lost and Found, and those items used to grow legs and walk around by themselves.

The way LS activities are delivered is just unappealing. “Find random junk without a clue and turn it in to an NPC that again you have no clue how to find. Meanwhile, collect more junk and turn it in to an NPC so lazy he’s freezing and won’t light the fire by himself”. I could come up more compelling delivery and gameplay. A mother refugee lost his child along the road, he ends up in a devourer cave, you have a time limit to save him, you do so and the mother comes in and thanks you before walking away. A group of charr refugees are kidnapped by separatists and are about to be executed, go and save them. A refugee caravan loses his food supply and can’t keep travelling further or else they will starve, go find X food sacks an bring them back so they can keep journeying. Random creatures are attacking a group of travelling refugees, go and save them before they get killed.

Ok, it’s cliche, but at least it’s better than “collect random junk just because” or “go defeat the one actually trying to help defeating the consortium slavers”.

Vayne.8563:

Lucky Shot.7650:

maddoctor.2738:

They have different teams for different aspects of the game. The Living Story team has nothing to do with Balance, PVP, WvW, Bugs, Dungeons or even the team that might create the next chapter in the big story (expansion?). So in reality, they are not losing resources/time with the living story.

The LS team gets a salary, so they’re taking away financial resources that could be spent in more pressing issues. Let’s make those salaries more useful and employ those people to work on other aspects of the game.

Only so much permanent content would ever be added at a time anyway, it would be parceled out. It’s far more important for Guild Wars 2 to keep people logging in than to add permanent content. In other words, between bouts of permanent content, keeping people involved is necessary, whether you see this or not.

If only permanent content came out and it took longer, you might have a whole lot less people to play it with when it finally arrives.

More people doesn’t necessarily mean faster creation of content.

If they fixed dungeon rewards and fractals people would have plenty of content to play. People don’t run dungeons other than cof 1 because the rewards are not worth the trouble. I’d love to have a situation where every dungeon has the same time+challenge=reward ratio, we would have 24 paths viable. Those are a lot of things to do. Also, fractals: right now I don’t feel like doing fractals because I could get unlucky and get the longest fractals, taking almost two hours to complete and having the same reward I would have getting the shortest ones. I’d be playing a lot more with those two additions.

maddoctor.2738:

They have different teams for different aspects of the game. The Living Story team has nothing to do with Balance, PVP, WvW, Bugs, Dungeons or even the team that might create the next chapter in the big story (expansion?). So in reality, they are not losing resources/time with the living story.

The LS team gets a salary, so they’re taking away financial resources that could be spent in more pressing issues. Let’s make those salaries more useful and employ those people to work on other aspects of the game.

killcannon.2576:

D: People use guides because playing a frakkin easter egg hunt is about as compelling as watching paint dry. If people wanted to roam around aimlessly in a game I’m sure a company would have made Lost at Sea part 15 by now, oddly they have not.

This.