Guild Wars 2

Anyandrell.6238:

I will just sum up my opinion about these changes. Old style NPE and new style NPE.

Old style – I couldn’t care less what level I was. It was fun everywhere and many things to do, wonderful details and beautiful stories, not “kill 25 locusts and bring their wings to X NPC”. I felt immersed in the world of Tyria and part of it.

New style – I’m focused on leveling faster so I can finally have fun at level 80. Leveling is a hurdle and not fun. I don’t really care for fun or beautiful landscapes or NPC conversations – all I care is how to zoom faster through hearts and missions (of which many have been dumbed down a lot). I don’t have that feeling of “belonging” until I finally get to level 80. On my new characters I actually avoided doing PS until then, and also I did everything possible on my existing lvl 80s to get as many tomes of knowledge as I could to make leveling faster.

And this is from a veteran player. Now think what a new players feels like compared to what it used to be.

I hope there won’t be made the same mistake of most MMOS out there, true, most of them Korean – to try and “unify” the game for both the Asian and European/US market. Because, in few words, it comes down to this: Asians love grinding. Westerners don’t. They want fun and they want it easy, most of the time.

Hmmm… I suppose I am play it the Asian fashion because it didn’t bother me too much. On the other hand, I do agree that perhaps having the option to access the instances.

Did you try restarting the launcher?

My idea for that would be to have the instances readily available but you still need to be the required level or close to that to stand a chance on your own. That way, it could also encourage party instances. I don’t see that too much even among friends.

If I recall, pistol shield engineers are pretty good to use if you are a beginner.

Okay, based on what I have played in the Personal Story post patch, here are some of the major issues that would need serious addressing. I know that others may have mentioned this before but:

1. On the Battle of Fort Trinity and Romke’s Final Journey, on the dialogue cinematic at the end and beginning of their respective instances show no voices at all and for that matter, they don’t even flap their gums.

2. Because Chapter 8 is now Chapter 7, when you defeat the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan and speak to King Reza, your character immediately guesses that the other Eyes were former monarchs of Orr. This raises the question of how we came across “other Eyes” if that was the very first eye we have ever seen (from the perspective of a first time player)

3. Prior to the Battle of Fort Trinity, the Greatest Fear story segments were deemed missing. I know for a fact that they are not deleted from the game.

As I mentioned on my last post, I won’t claim to know anything about game development 101 or how your policies in Arenanet work plus I know that you currently have your hands full with the new stuff you are releasing. But in my opinion, you need to finish ironing out major issues first before introducing new content stuff. If it takes that much resources to clear out the bugs as opposed to adding upgrades to existing systems, then I’d consider it to be sloppy on your part. The point of the NPE is to give a fresh start to new players, or vets who make new characters. And I won’t speak for the new players, but from my perspective, I’d think of the overall experience from the beginning to the end of the Personal Story would slope down from being awesome to just being really annoyed by the noticeable plotholes your “rearrangement” brings. And as such, all I ask from you guys at Arenanet to NOT ONLY fix the issues, but also work on a way to have players rewind their story chapters back so they can play them again.

If you want to compile the story chapters so that we can access them in 10 levels, know that I am 100 percent okay with that. I don’t know about others, but I got no problem with that at all as I always start my Story chapters every 10 levels anyway.

EDIT: I’ve been thinking about a way to compensate players who care about the story. It’s not a perfect approach but I will welcome better ideas.

Here’s what I think:

If you cannot rewind players story chapters back if you managed to fix it, then provide players who ask for it on your support desk to give them enough tomes of knowledge to go into max level or at least level 60. That way, players can start fresh on a new character, and do the Personal Story again if they want. Your support team can just validate their requests by looking at player’s characters assuming they got the technology to check it for themselves. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind going that route.

Dinky is not an Engineer. He’s a guardian. That being said though, no harm in picking him up if you want some melee support for the first 2 chapters. Plus he can be quite a hoot with his dialogue.

I appreciate that they are still working on this, but I got to ask these questions: what’s the challenge involved in just adding in the missing chapters back? What resources are needed just to bring it back? Don’t you have the means of just going to a specific point in the story yourselves? And of course, assuming it does get fixed, is there any possibility of having those players rewind to that point just to play it (upon request, of course)?

I don’t really care about the current arrangement of the PS too much. It’s just that particular issue that always bugs me.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Let me see if I can get an update on this.

Glad to get a response from you. No offense towards Chris Whiteside because he seems to try his best to get in touch with us as much as he can so far, but I’d really appreciate a detailed follow-up report on the status of the fix with the Personal story along with other bugs.

Been checking on some guides and I am not sure which ones are the most up-to-date. I’d appreciate some of your guides if that’s okay. This is going to be primarily for PvE that could perhaps work in WvW as well. Thanks

NerdyMike.2695:

Spoiler Thoughts...

hide spoiler

Seeing her, and her following us didn’t bother me too much. As soon as she was there, and seeing her act “strange”, I suspected that she would do what she did. What bothers me is that the episode ends with us NOT going to the Pale Tree to ask her “WTH is up with Caithe?!” That is was irks me. Was that TOO much for this story?! Because, let’s be honest – this episode was extremely short.

Wasn’t the Mother Tree still weak since the Shadow of the Dragon’s attack? I don’t think she’d be in a position to answer questions at that point.

Yeah, I do see your point. It starts out annoyingly hard but it becomes a breeze with every rescue.

Man, I am very disappointed by the fact that this is a very short episode. In fact, this is the shortest one out of the all of them so far. The ending was the most predictable considering how Caithe tends to follow you around plus there was foreshadowing from a Norn hunter saying “he doesn’t trust sylvari”. I will say that I like the maze part though it has been a bit of a pain facing the legendary boss for several times.

Vayne.8563:

It’s really not a fast fix. I know why they wouldn’t want to revert it. It was changed for a reason.

It was a bad change because the way it was changed left you with all sorts of things out of context. It was a good change because of the situation in Orr.

Spoilers below:

The story of Orr is really two stories. It’s the story of Trahearne’s Wild Hunt to heal Orr and the story of your battle with Zhaitan.

In the old telling you did a bunch of stuff against Zhaitan and then there was a whole hiatus from your story while you ran off to do Trahearne’s story before getting back to your story.

This new way gets Trahearne’s story out of the way first. So your weakening of Zhaitan by cutting off his food supply, partially blinding him, crippling his ability to make undead directly precedes you’re encounter with him. It removes some of the bitter sting of Trahearne’s prevalence in your story while at the same time showing that the last fight with Zhaitan isn’t just a boss fight. You’ve been in fact fighting him for the last five or six missions and finally get to finish him off.

The Zhaitan fight is going to be anticlimatic no matter how you slice it. This way it’s less anticlimactic.

The problem with that is from the way it’s currently arranged, it’s very poorly and cheaply done. It’s like switching 2 chapters in a book where after you read Chapter 6, Chapter 7 is replaced by Chapter 8. It would take serious editing on Anet’s part to make the connection more seamless. Plus let’s not forget the missing instances related to the Greatest Fear.

And there we have a huge problem….

So far the only significant change I have seen is the modification of the story journal to what it once was, with the exception of a duplicate story chapter involving Sayeh (Temple of the Forgotten God) showing at the beginning and the end of Chapter 8.

Okay, so Personal Story hasn’t been fixed yet as far as I know. The fact that the PS is still broken makes me reluctant on levelling a few of my other characters the way I want to. It’s been 2 months since my alt is standing still and I am considering levelling her to 80 again. I ask this, assuming by that time the Personal Story gets fixed, and by that point, I would be past that part of the story, would Anet allow us to revert a specific character’s story backward a few chapters so we can play them again? Because it’s going to be one hell of a pain if it were not possible, meaning I’d have to delete my alt, and make a brand new one from scratch just to experience the full story.

Still waiting on the fix for the Personal Story. It’s been months now and I think it’s time for a follow-through.

Ameepa.6793:

I have two new characters waiting for it to get fixed before continuing story.

Or is it gone for good and only a strange end for the story left? Feels like watching a movie and skipping after 1 hour straight to last 2 minutes.

It’s not exactly “gone” but more like locked out.

From what I recall, they are aware of this issue. But that’s all we have received at this point. I’d like to think that they are working on it, but with the lack of progress updates related to this problem, I am starting to doubt if they even care of getting this fixed. They claim that this is supposed to be an NPE. I am okay with the new features they added here, but the way the story was arranged just seems to be very very lame.

Such a shame. I won’t pretend that I know a thing or two about coding, but what’s the difficulty in restoring what is already there in the first place? I know they got a lot on their plate with the Living Story updates, but this is just silly. I have waited long enough and I think it’s high time we at least get some update. So far, Chris is still keeping it quiet telling us that once we got an update, we will be made aware. But so far, I think they haven’t even started fixing this. I’d probably be real kittened off if they add this fix on the next Feature Patch.

I’ve been thinking, there are different classes that have different professions, right? Sometimes, having a comfortable control setup for one class may be awkward for another class. I wonder if in the future you can give us the option for players to have players set up control profiles?

Morsus.5106:

Malkavian.4516:

…when I do business the only currency I accept is in gold, silver and/or copper. I refuse to accept paper money!

I’ll only give you pennies from now on. Have fun counting up your mortgage payment.

Ha! Jokes on you! I don’t got a mortgage. Although I do have other expenses though. Imagine paying in pennies. That’s the epitome of trolling right there. :P

Danikat.8537:

Malkavian.4516:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Most of the complaints were focused on earlier events though.

Mainly the fact that unless you play a sylvari you’re first introduced to Trahearne at the start of The Battle of Claw Island. At the end of the instance your mentor dies and Trahearne instantly takes their place. Very shortly afterwards he becomes the head of the Pact and you’re his second in command, following his orders from that point on.

It’s extremely jarring given that until that point you were lead to believe your Order mentor would be the one going up against Zhaitan with you.

Following his orders, huh? There’s that plus he let’s you decide the best course of action on certain occasions.

…whenever I would run away, I would yell “Save Yourselves”

…when I have accomplished something, I would yell “I’m SIX FEET TALL!” (I am 5’6")

…when I offer flowers to a significant other, I would say “This rose has thorns. Here they are.”

…when I go horseback riding, I would say “I can outrun a centaur.”

…when I do business the only currency I accept is in gold, silver and/or copper. I refuse to accept paper money!

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Honestly, this wouldn’t be too bad if the subscriber benefits are like a free selection of items depending on the month. But from a realistic standpoint, I’d say Guild Wars 2 seems to profit well enough from the gem store alone so a subscription isn’t really necessary unless they got something to offer that would peak my, and a majority of gamers’ interests without alienating those who don’t want to pay.

From the perspective of a person who prefers to keep the names of his MMO characters lore sensitive, I’d give your name a 6/10.

I made a second Asura today and she is an Engineer. Her name is Plukku.

Really? Because they never appeared from my experience.

I have no idea what Arenanet is doing to fix this issue. I understand they got the other pieces of content on their plate, but I am really starting to grow impatient as something like this really shouldn’t take this long to remedy. I am at least assured by the fact that they are aware of the issue related to the “greatest fear” but still, for Chris to just tell me that we will be informed as soon as we have an update, that’s still too vague for an issue this serious.

JusticarArkiel.1564:

Deli.1302:

Did anet ever give a reason for the removal?

something about making the personal story less confusing to new players, but then they changed their stance to “it’s a bug” after everyone went up in arms about the story changes………..still don’t get it, if the story changes are a “bug”, why has it taken 2 MONTHS to fix it?

This isn’t the only bug that has yet to be fixed since the feature patch. If I remember, there is this one heart where you still cannot face the monsters in an Arena somewhere around the Plains of Ashford.

I’ve been trying to speak to Chris about it and so far it’s the same response that they are still working on it. It’s getting really old now. Seems my worst fear my be realized if they mention this fix will be on a feature patch.

You’d be surprised how less popular MMOs still remain strong. That just means they are playing it safe and keeping their current playerbase while slowly trying to attract new blood.

As for an expansion pack, that would mean that Arenanet will have time to implement new stuff that they could not do with mere Living Story updates.

I read on Dulfy that the developers were considering doing a puzzle based instance on the final quest of the current chapter but due to difficulty of pulling it off, it was simplified. While I personally do not mind what we got right now, I think you should really consider going through with making puzzle instances in future Living Story installments. They don’t need to be very complicated but just the right amount of challenging to actually get players to think.

Scepter focus and Greatsword are the ones I use as a Guardian to balance my need for range and melee combat.

So basically, you are saying having your Warband appear in your eyes but from the eyes of other players they would see generic Charr legionnaires?

My most “wow” moment in this game was at the end of the fractal where you save a collosus from his chains. When I look at him and he was facing me, he bowed so I thought it was common courtesy to bow back. I had no idea there was an achievement for actually doing that, which I think was a very nice touch.

Before I begin, let me just mention that the only risk is that this outfit would probably be gender-exclusive, unless they can think of coming up with a design that would work for males. Perhaps a Thor-inspired getup?

Anyway, I love to see girls in Valkyrie-style armor. You should totally consider that in the future. After all, we got pirates, ninjas, nobles, skeletors. Why not Valkyries?

If anything though, I think it needs some adjustment. Perhaps do what they did in Dry Top and have the bandit chests be ready to farm during break-times whether you succeed at the breach or not. Naturally if you are victorious on your breach, then increase the break time to 10 minutes. If they failed, then just keep it to 5 minutes.

Kurrilino.2706:

really this again…………………………………….

What part of : “A-Net announces no expansion coming”
is so difficult to underdstand ??

There is no hidden super secret brewing.
They don’t announce something because there is nothing to announce.

It’s going on and on and on and people keep on being disappointed.
It’s getting old

If you read carefully, I mentioned IF they are considering doing an expansion. I am aware that there was no announcement nor anything secret going on.

caveman.5840:

loading screens are not a problem.

gw2 is a good game and all but it is really time for games more along the lines of
black desert online

arche age was a let down the combat is clunky

if only u could sandwich GW2 Tera and arche age in to one game

keeping the focus on pvp /wvw

u would have a top seller

It’s not that much of a big problem to be honest. I just thought that the game could be better. But I can understand if modifying it would be difficult. It would probably take a relaunch for that to happen. But I can dream, can’t I?

It’s never too late about that. Knowing MMOs, they always change, for better or worse. So the possibility of changing the world is always going to be there. One risk I can think of related to seamless travelling with less loading screens is that there would be so much data to load that it can eat up latency which can be a severe hindrance to those with low bandwidth like myself.

From my experience at work, improving/addressing issues is done through these steps

1. Gathering information (hence the CDI)
2. Validating and Organizing information (checking which concerns are really necessary and which is high priority)
3. Considering the resources available (to check whether or not Arenanet have the money, manpower and time to work on them)
4. Creating an action plan.

From the looks of things, they are taking action but just very slowly. And in addition, one should never get their hopes up too much when they provide feedback as there are hundreds of users voicing their concerns and it all boils down to checking what they all have in common specifically and working on it first.

That’s my whole take on it anyway. Nothing wrong with following it up, it’s just that you shouldn’t expect those all those changes to be realized quickly.

Justine.6351:

Yeah and should knockdown foes on path and launch targets after they explode ! Add in some conditions and boon removal too.

I am content with just giving them a poison and/or cripple bane myself. Or just poison altogether.

Like several of you users out there, I too desire an expansion towards this game. However, I am more than willing to wait for that to be realized. I made this thread so that in case Arenanet is considering on developing an expansion, they would have a faint glimpse of what we want to see. Feel free to post your ideas and the rationale behind said ideas.

My ideas are as follows:

1. When it comes to travelling to zones, I have grown very tired of having to go to a portal at the gate of a main town and look at a loading screen every now and then just to get to the levelling zones. I think it would be best to make travelling seamless in that we can see Shaemoor if we look from the gates of Divinity’s Reach, for example. I think loading screens will be just fine if we move from one continent to a distant one, say: Cantha or Elona. Speaking of which…

2. Players have wanted new lands to explore and while the Personal Story has been kind enough to give us different lands little by little, perhaps it should be appropriate that we have a new country/continent to visit. In addition to Cantha and Elona, I think it’s also going to be good to create new continents for people to hang around.

3. For World Vs. World. while we do have siege weapons and golems to aid players in conquering bases, I think it’s only natural that we up the variety a bit by adding more. You know those air-strikes on the Silverwastes? I’d like more of that in World vs. World, please? We can also have airship combat in World vs. World as well in a similar fashion as Guns of Icarus where a small crew of players will man an airship and with effective coordination, take down enemy airships. And said airships would come in different types from the ones that bombard the ground forces to the ones dedicated to combatting other airships.

4. For PvP, I’ve been thinking of an attack/defend type of game mode as every game mode I see is always capture points.

That’s all I have right now. If I got more ideas, I’ll be sure to add them here.

I have followed several guilds and I have been thinking of establishing my own guild in the future. One thing I worry about is that if the guild members don’t feel engaged, it would feel pointless on my part. My idea is to start small, say 5 members at first. But aside from that, is there any advice you can give me?

That would be really kitten.

Honestly, it took a while to get used to the changes in NPE. I have grown accustomed to it. I can’t say that I like it, but it’s harmless. What I despise is how they modified the personal story in the process.

I think that instead of having to wait for the Bone Minions to go to the enemy and press their hotkey to explode, I think it would be better to have them jump or dash at the targeted enemy, and then explode. That way, the moment they are summoned from a range, it could save Necromancer players the trouble of having to wait for them to go to their target.

Whether or not a necro is good at anything is entirely up to you. I play a necro as my first character and I found her to be the one class I am the most comfortable playing as especially with minions. If anything I don’t play a necro expecting to deal as much damage as say an Elementalist, but rather to support a party in any way I can.

Hmmm… dungeons, huh? I suppose I could give it a shot as it has been a while since I last tried a dungeon.

Been thinking of going legendary hunting since I am running low on personal goals for this game. I was wondering how you guys got your precursor so I could have an idea on where to start.