Guild Wars 2

Addendum: One thing ANet could do immediate to take a little pressure away from WvW is to remove each and every “PvE content” from the maps: harvesting nodes, vistas, POIs, skill challenges, and all that stuff. The jumping puzzles could be relocated completely to, say, some new caves in LA. (Or do they have any WvW relevance I don’t know of?)

That way you could at least reduce the amount of “tourists” on the map that do not contribute anything to the battle. Last night I saw some guy grinding mobs in WvW, which drove me crazy.

Of course all this has also an impact on the current WvW economy, but maybe it is still worth a shot.

~MRA

Rounder.6703:

The idea is there will no longer be hour queue times.

If death boots you from WvWvW, there won’t hardly be any wait… There would just be the 5 minute rejoin penalty, then maybe just a few minutes of wait time.

However you implement it, if you have 800 WvW spots available, and 1600 people want to play it, then 800 are in and 800 are out.

With your suggestion the “flow of the game” would be: Play 20 minutes, die, wait 20 minutes, play again. This doesn’t sound like fun to me.

The only fix to the long queues are:

a) People loosing interest in WvW (decide for yourself how desireable that is), or
b) ANet releases more WvW maps, which I assume will happen before the end of the year.

~MRA

With hour-long queues, this will also prevent a player from ever risking anything in WvW. I don’t think that is a good idea. It will remove much of the dynamic, or suicide missions.

Also, you would rather stay in the zerg, since it is a much more safe place to hide.

~MRA

Moandero.7320:

It is WAY to easy to level, I mean you can almost level standing idle. I like that there is cooking in the game, but why does every item crafted in cooking have exp bonus on it? Potions too. It is OVERKILL.

I disagree, it’s not overkill, it’s CHOICE. There are many options to gain XP such that people can choose the ones they like, and ignore the rest. And the great thing about downscaling is that if you might happen to have consumed ‘to much XP’, it doesn’t even matter.

So there is no problem.

Moandero.7320:

I’m sure there are more, like sneezing while clicking F5 or something, but my point is, there is a ton of ways to get exp as it is, getting a bonus from EVERY piece of food is just too much. Other bonuses are fine (within reason), but it would be cool if the exp bonus was removed.

You do realize that the 10% only affects XP from killing mobs? Killing mobs has the absolutely least impact on your XP income, and only people with really way too much spare time would run around and butcher the poor wildlife for the sake of leveling.

~MRA

I am one of the people who are a little concerned that the “winning team” in WvW could use a little bit more opposition for being in lead. Many times both “losing teams” attack each other and I have yet to see real cooperation to kick the current number one. Part of me believes that this will maybe never happen. (After all, all enemies are red and drop loot.)

I have a suggestion how PvE style events could help to balance the relative strength. I call this the Release the Kraken proposition. It is nothing which could be implemented immediately, but it uses only game mechanics that are already in place so it may be an option for the future.

The idea is as follows: Assume that in each map there is an additional area which is equally accessible to all three parties, such as the jumping puzzle in EB (but I guess it should better be new area). The center of this area should be hard to get to (traps, jumping puzzle, enemy interference, and all that stuff). At the center is a shrine/place of power/red button or whatever. This MacGuffin can be activated by any player from any team. (It should not be able to activate for some hours after a match started, and it should not be able to be activated for some hours again after it had been pushed.)

Once activated the following happens: A huge creature is summoned to appear at one random castle/keep/tower of the leading team (equal chances, but at locations controlled by the leading team only!). This could be a Kraken rising from a lake to attack Dreaming Bay, Gojira approaching Stonemist Castle, or whatever fits the mood. The creature is out to complete and utterly destroy the stronghold and anything in its way. This means that even maximized guards should not be a threat to it, and it should take an opposition of at least 30-40 players to make it a fair fight.

The idea is that the creature should be a serious distraction to the dominating team. It should be as if a small “4th faction” joined in the fight. If it remains unopposed for too long it will shatter walls and doors and ruin money and resources spent to the fortification. (Maybe it should even be able to “downgrade” already made improvements.) And it won’t go away until it has been beaten. So it should be a problem that the leading team has to address immediately, and this should give the two other teams an opportunity to push forward.

Plus, with the shrine/place of power/red button there would be another objective that is worth fighting for. The leading team should try to block any other faction that tries to unleash the beast, and both other teams have a fair motivation to activate it. Plus, since it can be activated by any player of any faction, both loosing teams do have a real incentive to cooperate in the mini dungeon. When they don’t attack each other, they might outnumber the defense 2:1.

I am sure that there are many practical problems with this suggestion, but I really think with a little bit of professional game development mojo a concept like this could be realized in GW2. Personally, I would really like to see events to take a more active role in WvW than just to cash out rewards for conquest and defense.

tldr: Let world events distract the leading team to give the two other teams a chance to catch up.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Stop the krait blood witch (23)
Objective text: — none --
Date when encountered: Sep 16, 10:25 UTC
Map: Kessex Hills
Server: Riverside

Description:
- Gatherer Flipdroop at Ireko Tradecamp doesn’t stop begging everybody to fight the blood witch, although the event is not running. When talking to him, he consequently doesn’t provide the “show me the way” option either.

~MRA

Oscill.4325:

I think the main problem for some players on this thread is the boss Doc Howler. Generally, I just want to be able to solo the Doc so that I don’t have to waste a life to revive Quinn only to have him charge in and die again.

I was exactly in the position as you: playing as a Thief (of appropriate level), Quinn was lying dead in the bar, all goons down, but Doc Howler was impossible to solo for me.

Here is the trick (strategy?) how I finally made it through that mission:

1. Reviving Quinn: My main problem was that Quinn was lying inside the bar. Hence, I could not revive him without aggroing the Doc. I equipped short-bow. From outside the bar, I pulled Doc Howler. Once she was outside, I used Infiltrator’s Arrow through the door of the bar to get close to Quinn. Then, I started immediate to rez, keeping an eye on the doc. Once she was close again, I used Hide in Shadows to flee like a little kitten out of the bar, turned immediately left, down that small alley, jumped on that little ledge left at the end of that alley, and hid behind the house. This way, Doc Howler lost aggro and returned to her position inside the bar and I waited for my cooldowns. After about three runs, I had accumulated enough rez to get Quinn back to his feet. However, I stopped at, say, 99% rez such that he would get up to his feet immediately in the next run.
2. Getting Quinn out of the bar: With Quinn on his feet we immediately tried to leave the bar. Since Quinn aggros Howler this meant that I tried to get her attention and slowly moved backwards until we were way outside on the marketplace. The reason behind this was that if Quinn dies the next time, I could rez him safely outside of the bar.
3. Fighting outside the bar: Quinn went down several times (as expected), but now I could rez him. However, Doc Howler resets to her position in the bar when she loses aggro. So I rezzed Quinn (outside the bar) to 99%, pulled Howler with the bow outside, and finished rezzing Quinn. Then we fought outside. When Quinn went down I ran again like a little chicken until Howler reseted. After two or three trials (where Quinn tanked and I was using every condition, CC, stealth a thief has at his disposal) we finally succeeded in bringing her down.

I understand that the mission is beyond any doubt too hard to solo for one thief. But although I fought like a coward (and I misused game mechanics like aggro and reseting), it WAS possible after all, and I didn’t even die more than three or four times.

~MRA

Numbers are meaningless.

I am enjoying GW2 over GW1 because the game plays smoother.

~MRA

Have the guys of you who do not enjoy replaying the game for a second, third, etc. time ever thought of the option of, well, just to stop playing the game and play something else instead? There are many, many entertaining games out there. Maybe you just need a rest from GW2, and you can enjoy it again after some downtime.

I’d assume that there is really no sense in forcing yourself to play a game over and over again when you do not really enjoy it.

Raserei.8361:

I guess the reality check would be that GEAR is a huge part of RPG’s…. People like to be powerful and work to be powerful.

Maybe I’m just spoiled having played MMO’s for 14 years… Who knows, right?

Hmm … I don’t see “working to be powerful” as the core mechanic at the heart of an RPG. Seems I am not people.

But maybe that’s just me playing RPGs for story and adventure since 28 years.

Raserei.8361:

It’s about the JOURNEY…

I couldn’t express it better than this.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Break the centaur worker morale to prevent bridge repairs (22)
Objective text: centaur worker morale x%, centaur bridge repairs [progress]
Date when encountered: Sep 15, 18:00 UTC
Map: Kessex Hills
Server: Riverside

Description:
- The event starts out as normal with a wave of Harathi (Sharpshooters, Workers and maybe other) attacking the bridge up to the point when morale drops to 50%
- From this point on, Harathi Workers are attacking one at a time, even if the bridge is defended by 20+ players.
- With each worker reducing morale by ~2%, this results in one fun attack wave and ~25 trivial, boring “attack waves” of a single centaur worker.

~MRA

—
Edit: Did just replay the event and updated the description to reflect the bug more precisely.

Meta Event Name: The Battle for Beetletun
Name of stuck Dynamic Event: Retake the farm and bring sprinkler pieces to Clarence (11)
Objective text: centaurs remaining: 0
Date when you encountered the block: Sep 15, 16::05 UTC
Server: Riverside

Notes:
- The event monitor is correct: The are no centaurs in sight.
- You can pick up the sprinkler parts and you can offer them to Farmer Clarence. He thanks you, but he won’t take any sprinkler part from your inventory.
- I encountered this block a week ago and thought is had been fixed already. Doesn’t seem so.

~MRA

Trading post NPC Jaklan at the Scaver Plateau trading post (Map: Queensdale, Server: Riverside) does nothing on interact (Talk [F]).

~MRA

You need a high enough crafting level (i guess level 100+), wool or higher tier base crafting materials, and also additional crafting components from drops, such as ‘charged fragments’ or ‘silver doubloons’. Just keep experimenting with everything you find.

~MRA

Edit: Some spoilers can be found in the wiki at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tailor

Daedra Karagatzu.6723:

One thing for sure about GW2, is leveling is way more time consuming. At least that’s what I have expierienced so far. […] Am I just not used to the game mechanics? I have played 8 hours and am still level 10. lol By that time playes in TOR, i’d be at level 12 or 13 by now.

Actually I have the impression that leveling is pretty smooth in GW2. I usually level up in far less than an hour per level. You should not make the mistake and try to kill mobs for XP, that’s not how GW2 works. Do events instead, they give far more XP. Heck, even harvesting a material node gives about three times as much XP as killing a mob. Or do crafting, collect renown, play WvW, or whatever fits you best.

The difference to other MMOs is that the time to level up remains about the same from level to level and does NOT grow exponentially. This is by design. Also note that in GW2 leveling isn’t the goal, it’s just one measure of progress. Just play the game, don’t care too much for your levels.

Daedra Karagatzu.6723:

Another thing, in WvW, I don’t seem to be getting XP for killing blows etc.

I think you are right about that, but also in WvW events deliver the XP, not killing enemies. The only thing that is lacking since the betas is that it is very tedious to unlock weapon skills in WvW. I suggest to unlock weapon skills in PvE.

~MRA

Sin.8174:

Do as I do. Level one class until you need a break. Then start leveling a second. once you need a break, switch back to the main, or do a third.

Third? I just started my sixth character. Oh my …

I use the following strategy: I play a “chapter” of one character, then switch to the next, and so on. By “chapter” I mean one of the ~10 level story arcs. Since the “origin chapters” are so different this works quite nicely up to level 30. However, I might stick with only three alts from level 30 on, to play the three different “order story arcs”.

~MRA