Guild Wars 2

Honestly the scale of 5v5 is easier to manage as opposed to 10v10. While there are other guilds that can find this a non-issue, I can imagine most guilds will have trouble coordinating with each other if there are many players in a single match. Plus from an E-Sports standpoint, looking at how five players fare against the other five does strike more engagement as opposed to 10. That’s just how I picture it at least.

Yeah, outside of the several weapons like the greatswords, the shield and perhaps the staff, a huge chunk of the legendaries that I see bring me out of the immersion. The Dreamer, while it looks fun is still at it’s core a very silly weapon to use when killing hordes of dragon minions for instance. If anything, I desire lore sensitive weapons.

Funny thing about difficulty is that it becomes less and less present the more the task is done. Same can be said for world bosses like Tequatl, I would think. I mean, when I first faced the guy, I didn’t know what to do other than follow the lead of the zerg. :/

This is one design decision I am very much against in my opinion. The reason for this is that Stronghold feels like a significantly different game mode in comparison to Conquest and Deathmatch.

Cacharadon.5681:

BobbyStein.2315:

Malkavian.4516:

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

That’s all well and good. Nice to know you are getting down to fixing it. Now, that just leaves the issue on characters who have been through the botched PS. Will you by some chance, make it replayable like you did with the Living Story? Because if I have to grind my charr character just to see the fixed version, that’s just bullcrap. :/

The Personal Story was never designed to be replayable on a single character, so making a change like that would involve a lot of revision (updating and testing hundreds of story steps). It’s simply out of scope.

The updated story steps will start with A Light in the Darkness.

So does this mean that anyone who have completed up to the “light in the darkness” is stuck on the botched personal storyline? Or can we still experience the content we paid for even if we have completed the “light in the darkness” mission as it stands now and nothing else?

My character has completed all the way to “forging the pact”, before I put the story on hold till it gets fixed. Would the new changes be unavailable for all of my characters? Not trying to be mean or snarky but I’m really digging my characters ps and it kills me that a significant chunk of it is denied to them.

My worry lies in one of my characters in that I completed his story (despite the technical problems the patch provided). It’s safe to say that if you have characters that have yet to do A Light in the Darkness or Forging the Pact, you’d be able to play them just fine. Whereas those who have made it past those instances. Well, chances are you may have to do that story all over again. I’d be okay with starting fresh myself but considering how much I invested in terms of gear, I am not willing to farm more gold just to re-gear my character from scratch. Here’s to hoping that Anet’s support team comes up with a workaround for this as they have been kind to me in the past.

So far, the only other weapon skin I have seen for a shortbow that isn’t really a shortbow is the slingshot skin you get on Wintersday. I was wondering if in the future you can provide a unique weapon skin for one such as the shortbow and make it look like a wrist crossbow. If there is one risk I can see here is that is cost in that it will not be like normal shortbows in that you holster them on your back as opposed to just having it stick on your wrist.

Sebastian.4610:

Lazaar.9123:

The precursor collections will not be easier, as they are precursors. In fact, this system is likely to be harder than grinding gold (which isn’t hard to beat).

Grinding gold is easy, they are handing out legendarys now because social casual gamers cry. They dont want to put the time in to earn what everybody else has. They want it now and without a challenge.

That’s not the point. I think what most gamers want is to get what they want without relying on chance. Yeah, you can say they should grind the gold because as you said, it’s easy to do, but from other player’s standpoints, doing so is more tedious than challenging in that you do the same kitten every day just to get that precursor that they want. Besides, I imagine doing the collections for the precursor will be tougher to pull off but will get them guaranteed pres. As to how challenging it actually is, I can’t say until we have a beta available.

Pifil.5193:

BobbyStein.2315:

The Personal Story was never designed to be replayable on a single character, so making a change like that would involve a lot of revision (updating and testing hundreds of story steps). It’s simply out of scope.

The updated story steps will start with A Light in the Darkness.

Will it be possible to choose to have our characters “reset” to this point if we’ve gone past them or will this just be for characters who haven’t reached that stage in the PS yet?

I asked support about that to see if this is possible. Sadly, they couldn’t rewind a character’s story progress, let alone reset it.

Jaken.6801:

BobbyStein.2315:

Malkavian.4516:

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

That’s all well and good. Nice to know you are getting down to fixing it. Now, that just leaves the issue on characters who have been through the botched PS. Will you by some chance, make it replayable like you did with the Living Story? Because if I have to grind my charr character just to see the fixed version, that’s just bullcrap. :/

The Personal Story was never designed to be replayable on a single character, so making a change like that would involve a lot of revision (updating and testing hundreds of story steps). It’s simply out of scope.

The updated story steps will start with A Light in the Darkness.

So it is not on the table period, or just not feasable for the moment?

I know you want to push the game further, instead of hanging around the old stuff . (Though revamping it for the journal like S2 in combination with Archievments, could be pretty awesome and would give the one chance nature of the PS (aside from new characters), which in turn would be able to give players some new things to do)

With the way the Living Story and Personal Story instances are organized into chapters, I can definitely see this happen. Though yeah, one can argue that the Personal Story is not linear as you can choose what your next instance will be every now and then. The reason why I desire the PS to be replayable is that one of my characters has experienced the botched version of the story and as someone who is concerned about story and lore, this disturbs me more than any balance issue. If it IS out of scope on Arenanet’s part for them to make the Personal Story replayable, then there is one option left available which I think may be more of a workaround: compensate players WHO REQUEST FOR IT (sorry, don’t know how to do italics) by giving them the same gear (if they customized their character thru a self-style kit, they could be given one as well), trait guides, and tomes for free to get them to max level immediately so they can start fresh without certain players feeling that what they have done has been a complete waste. That is only if they can’t make the story replayable at all.

Merus.9475:

The potential for improved writing in the back end of the campaign is very appealing. The fight against Zhaitan feels surprisingly weightless, something I hope the writing team are itching to fix.

Hopefully alongside this there’ll be some changes to Traherne’s AI – I think players would be more favourably disposed to him as a character if he was capable of reviving players, for instance. Currently, what players see is a ‘companion’ character who doesn’t care if they die.

To be honest, I don’t think they would actually fix the Zhaitan fight itself but rather restore the story chapters to what it once was.

BobbyStein.2315:

I just wanted to provide an update since it’s been a while.

• We are currently working to restore the Greatest Fear storyline to the live game. I can’t provide a release date at this point.
• In addition to restoring the Personal Story steps to their original order we’re making some minor improvements where possible (e.g. recording new VO or updating certain conversations, etc.).

We’ll provide additional details closer to release. Thanks much for your patience.

That’s all well and good. Nice to know you are getting down to fixing it. Now, that just leaves the issue on characters who have been through the botched PS. Will you by some chance, make it replayable like you did with the Living Story? Because if I have to grind my charr character just to see the fixed version, that’s just bullcrap. :/

I don’t mind if I have to wait that long. I have done that in PvP. :P

All I desire is a sense of certainty that we have a chance against whoever we are up against in a game mode that isn’t PvP.

Let me just start things out by saying Happy Lunar New Year.

Considering this is my first time experiencing the Dragon Ball Arena (had a ton of fun with it), let me lay out my thoughts on the daily associated with it, namely the getting of five wins. Now my main concern with this activity is that much like other activities, you don’t get to form a party of buddies to fight alongside you. Instead, you are to play with random strangers who you may or may not be sure they are willing to listen to you or interact with you and just wanna go charging in. And depending on who you are with, you can get your five wins either on your first five matches or maybe after 10 matches or more. The odds of winning are too fifty-fifty if you ask me and it makes getting the daily for it even more tedious and irritating (though I will acknowledge that there are those who don’t mind this sort of thing).

I know it has been 2 years since this game came out and I have heard from a lot of players that you have not improved the way friends can participate in activities. But I think you may need to consider working on that in addition to what you are currently doing (updates, Heart of Thorns development and polishing, etc.)

Thanks again.

Siobhan.3582:

Nobody is going to actually have to level up the new profession if they play normally. Just use all the xp books by that point.

Going to be funny seeing all the insta level 80’s in August..

Not everybody would do that though. Yeah, some will just level to 80 and go through the new expansion content immediately, while others will just simply take their time doing the core story and then do the expansion stuff later.

ReaverKane.7598:

Malkavian.4516:

Here is where my main concern lies: the utilization of Mastery skills.

Let’s use the Gliding Mastery, for example. From the way it was worded out, it seems that my fears may be realized in that the gliding part is going to just be limited to the Maguuma jungle. I can understand that gliding may be essential to explore more unknown areas that would be impossible to do by jumping or walking, but at the same time, I feel like I am grinding for a mode of transportation that I can’t use wherever I please. I’d really appreciate it all the more if the Gliding mastery extends to the core GW2 areas (excluding dungeons, WvW, EotM and HotM instances) as there are plenty of high areas for players just go “wheeee” when they ride on a glider though it would not be on a greater scale nor would it be practical to do so as the Maguuma area.

Please consider this feedback piece, Arenanet as you work and refine your expansion.

I feel like you, but i understand why this is impossible. As it is there’s already lots of instances where players have found ways to go “off-map”, now imagine with gliders on maps that weren’t designed with such a easy way to go upwards. I mean there’s a ton of maps where you can almost climb on top of the map edges, with gliders it would be too simple to do that, and would force the devs to redesign the edges, and possibly alter a great deal of the map. Not to mention that many a jumping puzzle would be rendered 1-glide rides.

Reading your post i’m more thinking on how you’ll actually “trigger” the glider… Does the game detect a free-fall and replace your 1-5? Double jump?

I am starting to understand the logic behind it. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that Arenanet is playing it safe with that particular mastery, which isn’t a bad thing. It just feels a bit sad that so much potential could have been had just by adding that particular feature throughout the rest of Tyria’s explorable regions. I suppose I could just live through the fact that I can just show off my mastery by being a druid.

lordkrall.7241:

Malkavian.4516:

Here is where my main concern lies: the utilization of Mastery skills.

Let’s use the Gliding Mastery, for example. From the way it was worded out, it seems that my fears may be realized in that the gliding part is going to just be limited to the Maguuma jungle. I can understand that gliding may be essential to explore more unknown areas that would be impossible to do by jumping or walking, but at the same time, I feel like I am grinding for a mode of transportation that I can’t use wherever I please. I’d really appreciate it all the more if the Gliding mastery extends to the core GW2 areas (excluding dungeons, WvW, EotM and HotM instances) as there are plenty of high areas for players just go “wheeee” when they ride on a glider though it would not be on a greater scale as the Maguuma area.

Please consider this feedback piece, Arenanet as you work and refine your expansion.

That would require more or less a complete rebuild of most of the maps in the game. Seeing as they are not built around being able to semi-fly and as such being able to do so might very well break them quite a bit.

Hmmm….. there is that. But at the same time, there are plenty of high areas, especially in the Shiverpeaks, that seem conducive for hang-gliding.

Either way, I am confident Arenanet could put in that little nudge of effort to make that possible. And while I would really want to see that realized, I’ll also not hold my breath on it.

Here is where my main concern lies: the utilization of Mastery skills.

Let’s use the Gliding Mastery, for example. From the way it was worded out, it seems that my fears may be realized in that the gliding part is going to just be limited to the Maguuma jungle. I can understand that gliding may be essential to explore more unknown areas that would be impossible to do by jumping or walking, but at the same time, I feel like I am grinding for a mode of transportation that I can’t use wherever I please. I’d really appreciate it all the more if the Gliding mastery extends to the core GW2 areas (excluding dungeons, WvW, EotM and HotM instances) as there are plenty of high areas for players just go “wheeee” when they ride on a glider though it would not be on a greater scale nor would it be practical to do so as the Maguuma area.

Please consider this feedback piece, Arenanet as you work and refine your expansion.

You do cite valid points. While I do prefer getting masteries over progressing my character’s level, I am afraid that the game might be noticeably linear past level 80. With that said, it’s wise to wait for more information. I think in a few hours, we will get to know how the Mastery system works here.

I wonder, with the upcoming expansion, I wonder if Arenanet would do what they did with the base game and have Mordremoth be fought at the end or will they do what Blizzard did with it’s expansions in that they would release a final battle patch of sorts via Living Story? What do you guys think?

Here’s a few ideas I can think of:

1) Make every character in Guild Wars 2 naked.
2) Make every character into Sylvari
3) Make every character into Quaggans

Thinking about it, I imagine it would be even better if that PvP map is exclusive to Lion’s Arch only and not necessarily a part of the HotM PvP lineup. I hope that once Lion’s Arch is fully restored, we’d actually be able to fight in that arena.

Rangelost.4857:

This again?

My main is a charr and I’m very happy with how the animations were designed. It’s a breath of fresh air to see something different and consistent.

It’s just a thought. I like the animations too but it’s just always off seeing a charr character having to go all fours just to go somewhere close.

MithranArkanere.8957:

I think charr should only run on all fours when they are running at least 25% faster.

A full size charr running on all fours slowly looks ridiculous.

Yeah I agree with you there.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

I can already see people complaining about charr getting an inherent speed buff just for being charr while the other races get nothing.
Personally, I have no really issue with how they move, though I do wish that we could get an option as to whether we run on two legs or four, regardless of whether or not we have a weapon drawn. No speed buff necessary.

Oh I probably forgot to mention this. The animation will just change but it will not give them a natural buff at all.

I always found it strange at how playable charr run on all fours unless they are holding their weapon but NPC charr just run on two legs. After I played Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, I noticed something that I think can be integrated into this game in that your character starts out running on two legs and as long as he doesn’t pause, he would eventually run on all fours. I was hoping we can see this happen for playable charr in the future. How I would picture it would be if

1) a charr keeps running without pausing and then moves on all-fours. Or,
2) have a charr get a speed buff enabled (except for the ones that come from signets) for him to go all-fours immediately.

Anet, I won’t hold my breath when it comes to seeing my feedback realized. But I hope that you take this into consideration in the future.

Yeah, the competitive aspect of any game can fester toxicity. Though when compared to most games I have played, the toxicity levels are not as high. Let’s be thankful and hopeful that it doesn’t get any worse. :P

I have played something like that. On a Numenera session, I rolled me a mutant nano who bears a halo of fire (simply put, a Flame Legion shaman). Pretty fun dynamic I had back then with my friends.

I consider playing this game at least an hour a day as part of my lifestyle as well. One could call me OC for doing this. :P

For me, it’s definitely the thieves in WvW in that they can take out two enemies at once if they are really good. I will say this much about them, they helped me be more aware of my surroundings and I made sure that they get entangled before they strike.

Hmmm…. the only issue I have with this is that I’d be fine if we had spoons for collections ONCE. Other that the spoons being worth 10 silver a piece, I see no reason why we should have to get another spoon as a drop.

fadeaway.2807:

can someone give me a tldr? I haven’t done the personal story past the claw island part and was actually looking forward to finishing it one day. Did they remove it?

There is a questline that is inaccessible to new characters (since the Feature Patch) based on what you answered the Pale Tree on what you feared the most. In addition to that, the last two chapters are switched around where Chapter 7 focuses on Trahearne cleansing Orr and Chapter 8 focuses on you doing various missions BEFORE the actual cleansing occurred. Simply put, it’s a kitten ed mess of a storyline.

My idea for the Beastmaster spec would be to have the Ranger control two pets at once as opposed to swapping them back and forth. I always wondered what it would be like if my devourer and drake worked together. Or even better: TWO BEARS!!!!!! >:D

Well, I can’t expect them to implement it in a flash. It’s just one more idea for them to consider.

I definitely would love to tame a griffon more than anything. If I am being lofty in asking this, maybe a Mordrem wolf? XD

Is it possible to have rangers the liberty of customizing pet skills on trigger. For instance, have a drake use his tail sweep with his F2 instead of his breath attack. I think by adding that, it would shift the game a bit for better or worse. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Nope. You get masteries instead.

I do agree that to keep the playerbase interested, something would need to be done to hold them over until HoT is out. Let’s see….

1) There’s the return of the Super Adventure Box
2) Helping out in the reconstruction of Lion’s Arch as well as other areas in which Scarlett trashed
3) Probable way of replaying the Season 1 instances?

That’s too soon. At the earliest, I expect the game to fully come out before holiday season.

Hmmmm… this is going to be a major flaw with the expansion assuming Arenanet decides to commit to that idea. While it IS good on paper, the problem is that I’d love to see those skills (even some of them) applied throughout the entire map. I mean think about it. Gliding through the air after unlocking a vista for the first time.

I’ll pay top dollar!

MAKE ME POOR! TAKE MY MONEY! TAKE IT ALL!!!!!

This is what will concern me about this expansion. Specializations will definitely work on all maps, that’s safe to assume. But this does raise an eyebrow in that the Masteries may only play a factor in the jungles only.

That’s cool. Because I would so love to fly around Black Citadel. XD

I am betting 30 bucks for the standard digital copy and 60-70 bucks for Digital Deluxe.

According what the Heart of Thorns will offer:

We’re reimagining progression with our new Mastery system. Explore new training opportunities for your character beyond level 80 and master abilities like hang gliding in the jungle, tearing the bark off of heavily armored Mordrem, or building new collections that earn precursors to a legendary weapon.

Does this mean most of the masteries will be limited to the jungles in that we can’t use them to great effect in the other areas?

That remains to be seen.

Bumping this thread again to follow up.

Sorry to hear that. Then again, they can’t please everybody, I guess.

Behellagh.1468:

Malkavian.4516:

Okay, I know we have a hype train going on for what Arenanet will offer tomorrow with Heart of Thorns. Most are expecting it to be a traditional MMO expansion while others are expecting it to be basically Season 3 of the Living Story. I honestly do not care what it will be just so long as the content I will receive is something I will appreciate. I’m just saying to all those who ride the hype train, don’t keep your hopes up too high for what Heart of Thorns will be because if it isn’t what you expected, you’d be sorely disappointed.

With that said, see you guys at the PAX stream tomorrow.

Wow, you’re asking for a lot aren’t you. What’s going to happen is a slew of threads will be generated about what was and wasn’t said during the presentation. Mods will attempt to merge them into an incoherent mess. There will be rage quit threads with the requisite “can I have your stuff” posts.

Basically game forum activity as usual following any major announcement. Let the forum carnage begin.

I guess I am. I know that even with this post people will still make their assumptions and nerd rage when the stuff mentioned isn’t what they’d expect (I’d probably do that myself if I were in their shoes). It’s just meant to minimize that nerd rage as much as possible.

If a ranger does not have a pet, then what different is he from say, a warrior or a thief other than it’s skill set? I know that pets still have yet to be improved upon but removing them is just counter productive.