Guild Wars 2

ParaldaWind.4523:

Malchior.5042:

Put all my money on the Devs!

I love the content WP, MattVisual, Blu, and whoever else produce…but if they gotta fight the Tylers, the Jons, or Grouch…they’ll get wrecked :P

Put Teldo on the list!

Why isn’t Grouch or T-Bear in the lineup to represent Engi Master Class?

Have you ever played with WP or Blu? They’re both very good players.

Yeah, I know WP’s good and I know Blu’s good.

What makes a team is synergy, both in player mindsets and build

The devs have much more experience in that, but since Allie has informed us of the Playground Captain format, my original fears have been lifted.

Put all my money on the Devs!

I love the content WP, MattVisual, Blu, and whoever else produce…but if they gotta fight the Tylers, the Jons, or Grouch…they’ll get wrecked :P

Put Teldo on the list!

Why isn’t Grouch or T-Bear in the lineup to represent Engi Master Class?

Disastro.4086:

I have a hard time understanding all the engi posts they singularly feel like the most well-rounded right now. Their primary issue I’d say is how garbage turret builds are and aesthetically the Hobosack… pls no more hobosack. Outside of that I’d say it’s a l2p issue and people wanting things to be what they dream up in their heads instead.

It’s most definitely just a desire to make turrets more viable in multiple areas of the game and improving their AI. AI improvements would be seen in the Ranger pets as well.

Aside from turrets, Engis are in a pretty good spot compared to the poor ranger

@thedenofsin – If all professions are brought to the level of Guardian or Warrior, then nothing’s imbalance and everything’s super powerful (how it should be)

1. Ranger
2. Engineer (specifically turrets and their AI, which could go alongside in improving pet AI for rangers)
3. Elementalist

Boom, thanks for the quick response, Tyler!

I remember a similar bug at that gate in beta, but just to collect some details to be sure we’re on the same page…

Which color owned the Frostreach Keep at the time you attempted to repair?

Was your team in control of the Frostreach Keep at the time of repair?

Did you have supply? (sorry, but gotta check)

Which Belltower gate are you referring to? From the belltower itself, one gate faces West and the other faces North.

I’ll follow you my Queen! We will defend our city at all costs or die trying!

#TeamHeroTron!

The people’s golem! Displaced by Scarlet, forced to adopt a number of odd-jobs to find his identity in society!

Our favorite mechanized marvel takes on a new title…

YO-LO-TRON!

Bravely throwing himself in the face of danger to rescue citizens because…YOLO!!!

(Not official…but should be )

It’s probably related to the other large changes they’re doing (rune changes and sigils on 2-handed weapons). That’s likely why they can’t talk about it.

That alone will introduce new builds, for sure.

TBH, I’d rather tie it something that isn’t an incremental number. I’m sure there’s something much more elaborate and interesting in gameplay Arenanet could devise besides a rank requirement.

Thanks for the update, Allie! Welcome back!

Josh Davis.6015:

felivear.1536:

what does this line mean: “[Grouch] just won’t be as active on the forums or behind the scenes.”

Hmm, that did sound a bit ominous! Don’t worry – I’m still here, I’m just switching to a different team. It’s true that I won’t be as active on these forums, but I should still be active “behind the scenes” unless someone forgot to deliver the terrible news to me. -.-

Guild Wars 2 PvP is the main reason why I came to ArenaNet. I’ll always have my finger on the pulse, whether that’s from reading the forums in my spare time, or logging in to play after work.

Something something, touching moment, something something, this is not goodbye.

The big D-word? ………………………………………..

DESIGNER?

I’ll say one thing…

Quote wars are bad, mmmmk

Quote wars, even if it may be not be the quoter’s intent, is a consequence of forum design and is often seen as tearing apart the overall meaning of the quotee’s responses, to instead attack the individual sentences and statements.

It never ends well. (Sir Nike)

That Factions theme!!!

SOOOOO Goood!!! UNGHHHH!!!

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

In case you haven’t seen some of the posts I’ve already made, I’m back! I’ll be covering PvP/WvW/Balance teams for community coordination.

That’s pretty much the short version. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here!

- Allie

After spending the past several months training with the elite Shaolin monks, can you beat Grouch in a 1v1? We must determine who is Grand Master Poobah of PvP Community Team

Is your inventory full? Which chest are you looting? (I know you say every chest, but please specify which one, with screens if you got them)

Does anyone have screenshot proof that it’s not incrementing (increasing) their token counter in the currency wallet?

Do you use either Autoloot, or AoE Loot? If you use AoE loot, do you use AoE Loot on Interact or the specific AoE Loot keybind?

Reports everywhere…this is why we can’t have nice things…

First iteration of beta – supply was only found in keeps or towers. That was changed immediately by adding supply to reactors.

Map used to not have sentries. Sentries were added to give solo players and small groups objectives.

Kodan used to be the absolute strongest Keep NPC. That fun little AoE Blizzard they can do from anywhere? Would you believe that used to apply daze on every single hit? It literally shut down an entire guild group of 40+ that attacked Green Keep during one of the tests, because they couldn’t use their heal skills.

The altar buff that makes players invulnerable? That used to be a 5 minute duration, oh yeah, and it also had an auto-attack that could be used on enemies without losing the immunity.

The Legendary Defenders that prevent spawn-camping? They used to not exist.

So many graphical bugs, along with tower and keep exploits were fixed. There was one tower in particular where different players found about 6 unique ways to exploit inside. Every time it was thought to be fixed, some innovative tester found another way in.

So many things were changed, fixed, altered, etc…The map is in a much better state than it was in testing.

Cool, thanks for the update, Tyler!

videoboy

If people want to participate, they should plan time during the week and not expect this to be scheduled around whenever they feel like showing up.

Uh…even though a majority of the core suggestions have already been discussed, the ability to just jump in, say a piece/proposal, and come back days later is the exact way CDI was meant to be handled, if I understood Chris’ intent correctly.

People have jobs, families, and lives. We can’t expect them to plan a specific timeslot in their day to contribute to the CDI. Contributors should be free to come and go as they please, and the structure of the CDI delivery and discussion should be that a person can re-enter a discussion at any time, with minimal effort to “catch-up” to the current topic or posters.

Honestly, veteran trolls that regen so the fight last longer?

Did you realize they were using the new Warrior heal skill, Defiant Stance?

If you kept damaging them while they were channeling it, instead of cutting DPS, you were the one doing the healing.

dulfy.1493:

Hey there, I was told by some players that Aetherblades exists in the middle of the map, inside the area with all the traps. After visiting that area myself and waiting around, I see no Aetherblades spawning, just a ghostly Mai Trin dropping down once a while and ordering imaginary Aetherblades around.

I ask about this and someone said that they only spawn at the begining of each 3 hr match, when all the flags are white. Is this true or is there a bug/mechanic I am not understanding here?

Thanks

Hi Dulfy,

During the public beta test, the Aetherblade only spawned in a sparsely populated map. Given some of the recent AI improvements like NPC’s using siege and repairing structures, it might be within Anet’s design to further the use of the Aetherblade as a “neutral” faction or a “hostile to all” faction later in the year.

Again, they only spawn on sparsely populated maps. Not exactly sure why, whether it be a design choice (the old keep PvE out of my WvW argument) or a technical limitation (number of models on the map).

Nike

Its a little antagonistic, but maybe that’s what people feel they need in order to feel like they’ve been heard.

This kind of approach will not work, because as clearly evidenced both on the forums and within the CDI threads themselves, people don’t know how to control their antagonizing into focused critique, feedback, and most importantly, suggestions for alternatives/improvements.

I feel you summed it up the best, Nike. CDI doesn’t touch hot button issues. That’s for damage control/development/CC/and QA

CDI’s goal is to prevent further damage by collecting feedback from a larger audience and using that feedback to change policies, procedures, or build content that aims to cause fewer issues than that of the past. At least, that’s the way I view it with comparison to concerns in the current game.

Helcor.9527:

Harbinger.8637:

Pro tip: Bring stab or a stunbreaker.

So you mean bring certain professions. A true testament to balance.

Lol, seriously?!

All professions have stability access and a stunbreaker. This is just pure ignorance.

timmyf.1490:

Chris,

I have a proposal for an alternative structure for CDI that may be helpful. One of the problems that we have with the existing length of the thread is that you have two things mixed together:

1) Suggestions/brainstorming of new ideas
2) Discussion of those ideas

This means that, if there’s a particularly hot topic being discussed, it’s almost impossible for somebody else to come in and offer a new idea.

I’m not sure if we’d be able to self-police well enough to do this, but what do you think about having a few different threads like this:

1) CDI General Discussion thread: most similar to what we have now
2) CDI Proposal Thread: these are proposals suggested by the community for you to read over

From the second thread, you can choose proposals which you think merit further discussion or debate and create a new thread meant to have focused discussion over that particular proposal.

For the last CDI, we might have had threads on Order progression, housing, subclasses, for example.

This would hopefully lead to more focused discussion of proposals and assist in the process of creating a community-accepted final proposal.

I’d totally support this as well. I don’t necessarily know how it would work, though. If people want to discuss said proposals, it might create a sense of favoritism for one and still stifle the introduction of others. If each player had their own thread of proposals, then we’d have the same problem as the suggestion forums, and those with poor intentions/control will just turn their thread into a “wish-list” or “y u no add this anet?!”

I wish we could have a controlled area of the forums to discuss CDI elements and proposals in a high-level, concept style, that wouldn’t degrade into another general purpose suggestions forum/wish-list.

Keep a tally of what the old scores were, just in case league season 2 is sometime this year!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think we need to continue to discuss:

- Tech improvements for the CDI forum.
- Anymore ideas or thoughts?

Updated ^^

If the resources are available Chris, the desire to improve the CDI process should be driven by the goal to fix the “Search” functionality on the forum as a whole. To be honest, it hasn’t worked correctly since launch and is often remarked as one of the core elements that prevents the forum from having a larger impact.

Tyops.5894:

This thread is reading more and more like a step by step guide on how to make the CDI threads even more insular.

Chris has made it very clear that the initial template or whatever format utilized would only be for a player’s opening proposal.

When discussing other player’s ideas, or critiquing one another, we want the discussion to be free-form as it has been in the past.

Having more concise proposals will allow more people to jump in with their individual proposals and ideas, but those that want to contribute more can continue with unhindered discussion with both the community and the developers.

Delete this thread already?

No constructive discussion will come from this.

From the beta forums, the developers stated 100% World Completion would not be tied to EotM.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Malchior.5042:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Question:

- Should we run the WvW, PVP and PVE concurrently or one at a time for the next round of CDI topics?

Chris

I’d only run them concurrently if one developer from each discipline can be available for some amount of time during his/her work day. The unequal contribution between yourself, Chris, and say the WvW team during the Commander Tag CDI made WvW players feel like they were being ignored, or at the least, being shafted.

Granted, I’m well aware that WvW team was 100% involved in developing EotM at the time. I was there in the Public Test and saw how much got accomplished between releases.

If Arenanet has the resources to designate one Host-Dev (to use one of Nike’s terms) per CDI thread, then I’d be comfortable with each thread running concurrently. Otherwise, let’s just keep it to one at a time.

Ok let’s run them concurrently. I will delete that part of the question section.

Chris

Alright Chris, thanks!

Any idea who you’d recommend to be host Dev of the PvP and WvW sections? Josh Davis has been doing decent in communication with both communities recently.

Also, I sent you a message on Twitter when you find the time, sir.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Question:

- Should we run the WvW, PVP and PVE concurrently or one at a time for the next round of CDI topics?

Chris

I’d only run them concurrently if one developer from each discipline can be available for some amount of time during his/her work day. The unequal contribution between yourself, Chris, and say the WvW team during the Commander Tag CDI made WvW players feel like they were being ignored, or at the least, being shafted.

Granted, I’m well aware that WvW team was 100% involved in developing EotM at the time. I was there in the Public Test and saw how much got accomplished between releases.

If Arenanet has the resources to designate one Host-Dev (to use one of Nike’s terms) per CDI thread, then I’d be comfortable with each thread running concurrently. Otherwise, let’s just keep it to one at a time.

Atlas.9704:

Tommyknocker.6089:

style.6173:

hopefully, players can kill other players while completing this version of LS. It would be a completely new dynamic to the game and I think worth trying.

Welcome to the living story, grievers welcome edition.

We will find out, but hopefully we get instanced and there’s no PvP on that.
That would tweak the griefers and it is fine by me.

I’d be fine with a little of both worlds. Have the PvErs going into the Edge to get some achievements and begin the story, and a story instance to tie the pieces together and prepare for the inevitable attack.

Given the details surrounding EotM are few and far between, I figured we could create a thread to aggregate the details everyone’s found thus far.

I know Anet will probably release their own blog post at some point, or lots of new stuff will be found during the Ready Up podcast tomorrow, but this might serve as a primer for people aiming to ask questions during the podcast tomorrow.

Afterlife Gaming was involved in the Public Beta test of EotM and they’ve written a decent overview on their blog.

http://www.afterlife-gaming.eu/Blog

What other details have people found on Reddit, Wiki, Dev Responses, etc…?

Would you rather have a bugged account WxP system that deleted all your WxP on all characters until the next patch?

If it’s still got kinks, then they need to be addressed before rolling out a large system change that affects an entire gametype.

Sirius.4510:

I still maintain (from last time this thread was held ) that part of what gets in the way with the CDI is the forum format itself. It’s a completely flat structure within a thread, which means that zeroing in on discussions that I might have something to say on proves a little bit difficult. Multiple threads would fix that at the cost of not being very organic – if the topic starts to diverge, you then have to have a moderator split the thread to retain that kind of structure.

The format used by Reddit conversations seems far more suited to this kind of thing. I don’t know if forum feature additions for the sake of the CDI are realistic, but if it is within ArenaNet’s abilities, it should definitely be considered.

Until then, we can still attempt to mitigate the issue with those “TL;DR” blocks. I don’t advocate a post length limit because it isn’t going to be easy for everyone to deal with (and while editing your work to shorten it is a valuable skill for published work, it just slows things down for this). But trying to use a “summary” followed by “detailed explanation and examples” structure at least means that people can read a small block of a post to quickly gauge its topic before committing to read it or more on to the next. That way I don’t have to participate every day (or do a big chunk of heavy reading) to know whether something I am thinking has already been said.

I have to agree with Sirius’ observation. A forum just makes it very difficult to follow individual trains of thought without neglecting others.

A reddit allows for discussion of a grand overview, while tracking individual trains, but it’s too open to misinterpretation and griefing through the Karma system.

Perhaps not immediately, but in the future, I feel Arenanet should create their own Discussion Board, Meeting Space, Confluence, or something using open-source software, so players can discuss with the developers freely.

Since Chris seems to schedule CDI interaction into his weekly schedule as it is, perhaps an allotted time of 30-45 min of work hours for each involved CDI dev to discuss with players on this new Discussion Board could allow for ideas to flow more freely, without being stifled by the restrictions of forum design.

Nike.2631:

Mikuchan.7261:

You can’t think that I think that you’re endorsing such a limitation

I would never think that you would ponder that they would consider that we would contemplate that anyone would imagine that… wait, wuut? _

If any of your books have pages and an index, that’s exactly how books do it
Just instead of clicking a button to get to read what you want, you have to navigate to the right page number.

An intriguing comparison. I just don’t generally start a book I’m reading or writing with the index .

However.. Based on experimentation..
They seem to havechanged the way spoilers work.
Making the argument obsolete.

Ooo. Good experiment .

((adds new arrow to the quiver))

(Totally off-topic) Spoilers work differently when in the middle of a line

Mikuchan.7261:

Actually.. Something I thought about earlier today..
It’s more or less related to this, but still not entirely.

It would be very nice to have a public Jira or other issue/bug/feature request tracker where everyone can go and post issues they find, features they want, bugs to report, etc and then follow them as ANet asks for more info or tells how they are progressing.
If someone posts something that’s a duplicate of something else, you just flag it and a moderator can fuse the posts together or remove the duplicate.
A voting system could help keep track of what the community thinks would be important to fix.
ANet can of course keep their private internal tracker at the same time.

Google has it, Second Life has it, many others have it.
It would be the epitome of CDI.
The community managers can probably manage such a thing together with the community.

Pros:

• Helps the community help you.
• Shows the community that you make progress on their issues.
• Makes it easier to avoid making duplicate requests / bug reports etc.
• Is a nice and structured way to do it.
• One more place for ANet to gather information from.

Cons:

• One more place for ANet to moderate.
• One more place for ANet to gather information from.
• Needs time and effort to set up.

I had thought about a public JIRA or Confluence, but I feel that might be too confusing for a majority of players. Not to mention, it would require significant infrastructure, actual software access to JIRA for contributors, and perhaps even more employees for Arenanet to enact, review, and police the JIRA tracker properly.

JIRA is more proper for internal use. For public involvement, the only ones I see getting involved will be people already used to software development or project management in general.

The CDI is just a discussion board. JIRA is taking it a little too complex for the CDI’S needs.

At Chris’ request, I’m going to further define the structure I laid out in a previous post regarding User Stories.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, user stories are a method of determining requirements or opening discussion for the development of a software project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story

• The story is written as one or a couple of sentences where the developer (in this case, each one of us) makes a request or statement that they want the piece of software to perform. The statement is usually written in the most simple language or vocabulary as possible, as if a user (or in our terms, a player) were speaking to the developer directly.

For example – As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>

“As a WvW player, I want stronger defensive tools/rewards, so that zerging across objectives is lessened and defense is more valued.”

• After the basic story is established, the poster could spend a couple paragraphs detailing their design. Again, whenever possible, the most basic language and vocabulary should be used. This way, any player of any language can understand the design, critique it, and offer their own insight.

• The idea of simplified user stories would allow people like Chris and other contributing Devs to get a quick overview of what the player wants and why they want it. If the Dev agrees with the player or the player touches upon an aspect or design that may already be in discussion or development by Arenanet internally, then the developer can read through a player’s detailed design suggestions.

• Interesting user stories Devs can “Favorite” or “Tag” to be explored further, or used within the final proposal at the company roundtable.

Essentially, it puts us, the players, in the developer’s chair as if we were at one of Arenanet’s SCRUM or Sprint meetings.

Personally, I feel establishing a format for a concise presentation like a user story would help us cut down on a lot of the redundancy, confusion, and length that have existed in previous CDIs.

As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>

Something akin to this structure or user story template at the beginning of every player’s post would make elements like type of player, intent, and scope much more visible from a simple statement.

Chris, even more so than the two elements you’ve presented, I feel the CDI could benefit from being isolated from the forums.

The limited structure of the forums is not very conducive to large roundtable discussion amongst a large group of people. Even more importantly, it’s not ideal when a sub-topic arises or the focus of the conversation changes between parties.

For the long-term growth of the CDI, perhaps something like a collaboration site, or user storyboards would make not only Player to Dev interfacing easier, but also Player to Player interfacing. TBH, some of our best ideas and proposals have come from a handful of people discussing ideas left and right, with minimal interjection from Arenanet. Perhaps using an open-source user storyboard could allow players to track their favorite users more efficiently and allow everyone to source their ideas into categories, which can then be tied back into the overall focus of the CDI discussion at the time.

On that note, perhaps a structure for discussion, proposals, or user stories could help keep suggestions more concise and less lengthy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story

As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>

Example below

As a PvEr, I want stronger Dungeons so that groups can be challenged more and more cool rewards can be added to the game.

^ Basic User story. From here, can expand into discussion or proposals to achieve user story.

Unless there’s some drastic changes that were done, I’ll let you guys know that there was no blatant use of Living Story or Scarlet in the EotM map.

In the public beta, all they had were Aetherblades in the center of the map. Everything else was map objectives, towers, keeps, and player fights.

To anyone concerned with WvW CDI,

Wait until EoTM releases. It’s obvious that’s been what’s on their development track the past few months. When that release is out the door, WvW team can have more time and perhaps even more resources to develop other systems like improve commander functionality, amongst other things.

Every server had the potential.

Even the very lowest tier server who doesn’t have player concurrency anywhere near Desolation or Blackgate.

The potential and possibility is there for them to show up in Bloodtide, rally around a recognized guild within the server, and kill the Wurm.

Difficulty of the encounter itself is another issue entirely, but each server has the ability to chase after the World First. It just takes practice, dedication, effort, and of course, willing players.

Nah, this will be improving the process. I got some ideas whenever Chris gets the thread ready.

Jester.6293:

What about returning to the GW1 style of summoning?

You could summon a Flame Elemental, and it wouldn’t only be around for 5 min, it wouldn’t have a timer, however, you could only summon 1 per map. So, if you could keep it alive you would have it all the time, but if it died, that’s it. I guess if you were to WP or enter an instance that may reset it, but still, that would be better than, as you said, endlessly summoning them.

Also, maybe upping the price wouldn’t hurt too. 20s seems decent for something like that.

That works in an instanced world.

According to Anthony, it’s much different for an open-world. Even then, it sounds like instances as a whole run on their own server, so 150 ppl over 30 dungeons each using Infinite amounts of Embers would indeed cause server stress somewhere.

Personally, I want to see encounters overcome by build design and skill, moreso than consumable dependencies and/or bandaids

Sorin.4310:

Welcome to escort events.

Pretty much this. NPC AI is tricky in any game, and when you take something as large as GW 2 and try to run each event on the different servers in sync on a timer.

There’s likely to be some sort of behavioral issues. Too bad it blocks the attempt and that it happened during primetime

I’ve heard Marionette spawns on Even Hours and Wurm on Odd Hours. Or vice versa.

Just show up in either zone at the top of the hour.

Fight to win. Stuff given based on level of success at end of Wurm fight.

darkace.8925:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Because the only reason to play video games is if it gives you rewards.

The reason to play video games is to have fun. If OP doesn’t find the kind of content being implemented in the Living Story, and there’s nothing new being offered by Living Story, wouldn’t it behoove him to speak up?

Yes, but he can do so without letting his emotions cloud his intentions.

Also, providing suggestions for solutions to his concerns, or suggesting other types of content would help.

A blatant whine post will always be seen as a blatant whine post.

Well…the OP never explained his intent of the post, or where his thoughts were coming from. Given a quick runthrough of topic titles, I’d probably have done the same.

As others have voiced, please moderator, if you could move this back to General Discussion, we’d greatly appreciate it.

Perhaps change the title to better reflect the OP’s intent of the current Living Story updates and their design direction.

Thanks!
Malchior