Guild Wars 2

Kinoh.7423:

Is this like the Norn Fighting Tournament in Gunnar’s hold in GWEN with gambits?

it sounds more like an open world version of this which would be awesome

In the special Queen’s Gauntlet, you will face increasingly difficult challenges of single-combat against unique bosses. Cheer on your friends or show off your skills to the world. Take a risk with special gambit conditions to earn even more prestigious rewards!

So I’d guess that you have to wait in a queue until it’s your turn. You’ll enter the arena alone while the other players can watch from the outside and cheer you on. It would go with a recent dev-statement that they plan to move away from instanced minigames

Current situation: a lot of players fight the more trivial encounters and don’t even start the difficult ones.

The Dragons, as an example, rarely win the battle. They are doomed to die to players autoattacks. Then we have the god-temples which are rarely active because players find them too difficult and get no reward out of the battle when all goes wrong.

What can be done?

Introduce Follow Up Events where interesting (and also rewarding) content gets unlocked when the battle fails or succeeds. The rewards should be equal to the winning-conditions, so that players don’t try to grieve the event. (Winning the battle could open up the chance to get pretty cosmetics though) This way Anet can rise the difficulty for all the trivial encounters without having to fear that players stop doing the events.

Imagine: the Shatterer wins 60% of the battles.

• Shatterer wins: groups of crystal champions swarm out in the area with 4 minibosses leading them to attack allied outposts.
• Shatterer loses: groups of ogre champions take over certain outposts. New event chains arise.

I’m sure this is no easy task to balance since the Karka Queen has some aspects of that implemented and people still wouldn’t play it. Perhaps this changes with the upcoming Champion loot bags…

what do you think?

I’m wondering too, why is it so difficult for developers to answer this simple question (which came up a lot)?

they could add new attacks which 1-hit you to down mode if you’re not reacting fast enough. Now that the effects are going to be reduced when too much comes up, telegraphs could work out as initially planned.

… and Anet shouldn’t be afraid to 1-hit a whole group of players; a champion should be a challenge, even in low level areas imho.

there could be a potential problem: different players feel it’s unfair for their profession…

What if the time trials lock all of your skills and traits during the race? So you can’t use the thief-ports, you can’t use the mesmer portals or blink etc. – only your jumping skills. Instead each player’s nr.1 skill is a swiftness skill on a reasonable cooldown. This would allow for a more tactical approach and viable to compare your time on the leaderboards.

I don’t care for the QQ crowd, since it’s an optional activity. I’m not happy with the direction the achievements have taken… so I’d give this activity a 0 point achievement. Rewards like those listed above should be rewarding enough.

Alternatively Anet could implement REALLY difficult achievements en masse so that those QQers learn that they can’t have every achievement in the game.

Ahratan.1098:

Nothing ruins a JP like a timer IMO, that’s why I hated the Xmas/Halloween ones :/

well it would be fully optional since you can start it like guilds can start time trials in the guild races. You could still run your daily JP the normal way and getting your chest + daily achievement.

A lot of people loved the Winter’s Day and Halloween JPs. There was a thread once ( http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gyk41/achievements_you_are_proud_of/ ) where people were asked what they are most proud of in GW2. For a lot of people it wasn’t their Legendary, it was getting to the end of the Halloween JP.

I really don’t know why legendaries are tradeable. I mean, they made all the karma-costs (karma non tradeable), the world exploration requirements (can’t trade that), the wvw badge requirements (non tradeable), skillpoints (again, non tradeable),… and then you can buy it on the trading post??!

It could have been the ultimate prestige object for people who are dedicated to the game. Now player xy who started gw2 yesterday can spend real cash to buy it instantly… Great.

I’m also close to having Krytan Explorer but I have no idea on which of my characters. Most of them have quite a lot explored but it feels impossible for me to find out who has the most.

not sure if it’s a good idea, but what if you spawn a hidden boss when you beat a certain time limit in the time trial? Your time still counts but you have the optional possibility to defeat a bonus boss and get maybe a chance of a nice skin.

Edit: to make the discovery a conscious one, the ruins can only be discovered as an entry in the codex if you’re actively looking for the right section. (In the codex there is a small bookmark which you can set on any of the pages (dwarfen ruins, tengu ruins,…). Only when the bookmark is set on dwarfen ruins, an entry on dwarfen ruins will be unlocked in the codex when you’re nearby.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We wanted to build some solo challenge content. There’s plenty of stuff in our game for groups to do if they want challenging content.

this is awesome Robert I remember people suggesting this once and you (team) deliver again. Is this challenge here to stay (permanent) or only for the event? As I’ve got it the new crafting material is permanent and there is a merchant who sells stuff for this.

I guess we have far too many minis and weapons/armors for that, but generally I like the idea. I’d put those system in a codex though… so you can really work on completion and take a look at it on your travels.

arguments pro this suggestion:

• add lore to each entry (like killed champions, special weapons)
• add nice artwork to some entries
• full pages (like a page for centaurs (tamini champ, modnir champ,…) unlock a trophy you can show-off in your home instance.

I would like this idea if there would be no statistical increase from 80 onwards. New gear like that is already introduced with the achievement reward system.

81-90 should only be an indicator of how much a character has experienced in the game. Well, I guess we have Legendaries for that (in case you’d actually craft those instead of buying from the TP)

since the new Legendaries have an option to choose the stat-combo, I’d say: do this for magic-find items also – only 1time of course. This way everyone with magicfind gear can choose which stat-combo he wants instead.

(I love the idea about consumable duration… maybe introduce more utility-slots for items…?!)

I like the idea

copy and paste of my post from another thread:

A title is one of the more boring rewards in GW2 if you ask me.

Why not unlock time trials after you’ve completed every Jumping Puzzle? Just like in the guild races you’ll have to pass certain checkpoints one after the other so that Mesmer portals are out of the equation.

And then introduce ingame leaderboards. The 10 fastest players per week in a JP get rewarded with gems. This way people would also spread out to different JPs and learn how to be even faster than before.

Also increase the rewards. For beating a certain time (not too hard, but also challenging) you’ll get a guaranteed rare/exotic per day/JP + 40s.

A title is one of the more boring rewards in GW2 if you ask me.

Why not unlock time trials after you’ve completed every Jumping Puzzle? Just like in the guild races you’ll have to pass certain checkpoints one after the other so that Mesmer portals are out of the equation.

And then introduce ingame leaderboards. The 10 fastest players per week in a JP get rewarded with gems. This way people would also spread out to different JPs and learn how to be even faster than before.

Also increase the rewards. For beating a certain time (not too hard, but also challenging) you’ll get a guaranteed rare/exotic per day/JP + 40s.

lanthalas.7695:

By going to specific places or finding objects, for example the Temple of Age (and other place of gw1 for example) you will unlock a entry in your encyclopedia which will give you some background about this place.

this is even better than the riddle-like scavenger hunt I had in mind. Buy the dwarfen codex and try to find dwarfen ruins by yourself. Once you’ve found one you unlock an entry in the codex with a bit of lore (for starters) and now you also have a digsite for the puzzle-pieces.

Ideas could also be merged: the newfound digsite bears writings in a different language and you have to translate it to find hints for new digsites. The writings can only be read when you’ve got the codex.

I’m absolutely for a system that rewards players with ingame lore. Personally I loved the profession: Archeology in WoW, it was fun and there were also great rewards (minis, mounts, ancient weapons, etc. etc. – everything with nice lore added)

Your idea would look like a step back from that to me, to be honest. I like the implementation of the puzzle-aspect though. Gathering and rewards not so much.

Some spontaneous ideas from me trying to be a bit constructive:

• finding digsites could be designed like a scavenger hunt. You buy a novice-codex for dwarfen history. Once you’ve “consumed” the codex you get a new UI-element for that book (because we don’t need more items in our inventory). Here you have a bit of text and artwork about dwarfen lore.

Most important: descriptions to the locations of digsites (but more like a riddle). Because of the fact that you’re in posession of that codex you can now dig at those locations.

• Each piece of the puzzle (e.g. novice dwarfen puzzle) is a part of one page of the codex. That way you have access from anywhere in the world. Some pages/puzzles unlock new lore texts, new artworks, but even recipes for your other crafting professions. You might unlock a recipe for an ancient dwarfen hammer skin or an old Norn costume (GW1 armor skin).

• completing a whole codex (novice, apprentice, master) unlocks the ultimate reward: you unlock a bonus mission (single player) which let’s you relive a long forgotten tale. (e.g. play as Jora and hunt down the Svanir). Similar to the bonus mission pack in GW1.

BobbyStein.2315:

The first bits of the system should be online before the end of the year. It’s a rather big undertaking, so thanks for your patience.

thanks Bobby, sounds good. Is the system retroactive (explains what happened in earlier Living Story steps) or does it only work for new content?

I also hope it’s a bit more in depth than the personal story tab, but maybe that’s just me. Can’t have enough of lore in the game.

I wonder what the reason/difficulties might be, why none of the blogposts can be found in the game in some form. Maybe I’m looking at this too blue-eyed.

I hope that the arena is permanent, challenging PvE content shouldn’t be temporary imho I love how they did it with the Moa race: temporary achievement for the event only + corresponding reward (moa with helmet) and permanent implementation with a different reward (moa without helmet).

are the unique skins/weapons from the champions randomly distributed to the champions in the game or do certain enemies hold the chance to drop specific loot (e.g. pirate champions —> Rapier)?

I’d be interested too if it’s permanent or temporary. The new crafting mats seem to be permanent and there is a merchant who sells stuff for this too (temporary or permanent… I don’t know).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

More clarification:

• It’s an artificer recipe
• You can trade the output of the recipe between characters on your account
• The recipe makes a one-time use item, it does not unlock a new skill
• This is not going to replace a mesmer in your party

so the portal gun for a few points of karma is the superior item?! Hmmm.

I would have loved this if it were a new utility skill, but one-time use means opening your inventory… not very userfriendly at all Instead of making those one-time use items more userfriendly (what’s wrong with those acting as kind-of-engi-kits / utility skills) we get another one.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I find that add to the realism, though.

In real life, if I want to know what’s going on, I have to get informed, too.

At least in GW, there’s only a limited number of sources for info: website/blog announcements (which you get emailed, too…), wiki, forum (in that order) or if you want to save some time, dulfy.

It’s really not that hard.

…if you follow it constantly. If you are new to the game it might get a bit difficult to find the story of Mr. Sparkles or Canach for example. It could be so easy, those book-carts in Divinity’s Reach could simply contain real ingame books with a few pages of the website/blogpost/wiki-content. And every newcomer or people who missed it the first time would have easy access to it.

I’d also love to re-read such wonderful pieces while waiting for the WvW queue or something like that, without having to leave the game and look for long-forgotten bookmarks in my webbrowser.

btw: some stories aren’t even available anymore on the official Anet blogpost page.

I really liked story progression in Guild Wars: Eye of the North. You had some heroes who each had interesting backgrounds and their own quest to follow.

opinion about current status quo

The personal story in GW2 took some aspects out of it and it was great in some aspects, but it doesn’t really work well with the Living Story. There were also interesting characters who vanished after a chapter.

I feel what’s missing currently in GW2 is character development. The Braham and Rox finale seemed to be an awesome beginning of this but when the next Living Story Chapter started, it felt all over like the personal story chapter dilemma again.

Ellen Kiel on the other hand has much appearance in the last update(s!), but we haven’t really spent much time with her on missions to really learn to know her better.

my suggestion

Introduce a mission-chain to various interesting characters so that you can accompany the heroes fighting their own inner demons. Each hero should have his/her own motivations, just like we experienced during Flame and Frost. Rox had this little story about the hatchery and Braham with Cragstead. I’d really love to follow Braham on more adventures which define him and make them interesting.

Why not bring back the bonus mission packs, I’d gladly pay a few gems to experience those instanced side-stories.

I have to agree with the OP in some aspects, I have made the same experience. Most of my friends/guildies have no clue what’s going on storywise. A whole map appears out of nowhere (Labyrinth Cliffs). How is this connected to the sky pirates? Why did the skypirates attack? Lore about Kiel and Gnashblade is introduced not in the game but on a website… not very accessible.

Sure, people who invest extra time to gather lore together from various sources (website, books, occasional npc chatter —> youtube,…) will get their full experience. It’s sad that the writers who create this stuff have no ingame-platform to spread the stories to the players playing the game.

People who have played jewels like Baldurs Gate have to wonder how that game had looked like if all the decent ingame-lore would have been on websites.

rgrwng.4072:

Also, since there needs to be more fractals, this new fractal introduces a new tier of fractals past lv80, possibly to 80-100.

ehm…. I don’t get what you mean

this reddit post made me aware what lore potential the gods inherit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1j6qlm/with_the_possibility_of_a_new_fall_of_abaddon/

how much lore potential do Elder Dragons have really? They’re just pure power who want to destroy or corrupt all living, even earth and fire.

Asura so far are all about golems. Look at the tutorial area: Norn get a huge iceworm-beast, Sylvari an earth-dragon and Asura a golem. Look at the Asura fractal: golems. Look at the Asura dungeon: more golems… I highly doubt that we’ll see an Elder Dragon in a 15-30min fractal (although I would love it).

Thaumanova was also a lot about elementals. The fire elemental is a quite bland boss compared to the Shatterer, Tequatl or the cool Modnir-bosses. As the dragons represent the elements, I’d say we see an earth-elemental/tornado, an frost-elemental/tornado, etc etc.

I’d rather learn how the gods look like, especially Abaddon with the GW2 engine. In GW1 he looked pretty epic already. :-/

think about it… the only lore delivery we get from fractals (so far) is through player actions. There are no books, no hidden writings, no storyteller npcs or something like this in fractals. We experienced the battle of Ascalon through the eyes of a Charr warband for example, but no one in that fractal was telling us anything about the lore behind it.

So action is the keyword, and I highly doubt that we’ll battle an Elder Dragon in a 15-30min fractal. What we can learn in fractals is about how things looked like. The Abaddon fractal would likely show us the gods / their avatars for the first time. We’ve seen Abaddon in GW1 and he looked awesome, I can’t imagine how he would look with the GW2 engine.

And then… what do we know about Asura? They’re all about golems and maybe elementals (if you look at the Thaumanova event). They even had some sort of golem in their tutorial area as boss. Honestly, I’m tired of golems and non-personality elementals. I can almost see it: an elemental for every dragon-element: a frost-tornado, a crystal tornado, an earth tornado… MEH

hey, if you’re interested in new weapon sets for existing professions, take a look here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ioulq/name_one_weapon_youd_like_to_see_for_your/

Feel free to add any suggestions you have and playstyles you’d like to see

Maybe it’s possible to add a “sell” function to laurel vendors which only works for those magic-find items. This way you would get your laurels back.

Everything else is laughable… the months of wait? Seems you are a bit of a dramaqueen.

I love this thread, awesome ideas

exactly what Cris described; it’s just difficult to keep track of the lore when it is delivered by NPCs who occasionally talk to other NPCs or through several NPCs spread around on a map… or several non-collectible books (Ebonhawke) which you read mostly in a random order.

and I’m not alone interested in this
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/19s762/what_happened_to_the_skill_books_collectables/

celicynd.9420:

I really do like the idea of collecting lore books, though we’d have to have some sort of separate inventory/bank space for it so it doesn’t clog up my already clogged bank vault space. hehe.

something like that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbmx9cKAidw

that’s what I’m talking about. They already had those books in the game, skillbooks where you could get your skillpoints. Ree was probably talking about those, with an additional lore-component I suppose.

well there were books planned for GW2 in the past, I wonder why it got scrapped?!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/story-accessible/first#post2432398

The plan was to make lore accessible to the players in the game. So that they could read it again and again, whenever they choose… without leaving the game. I agree, it would be awesome if those blogposts and further lore pieces would be available in some form ingame.

and please don’t move this thread into the “suggestions” forum, since I have the feeling that no one ever responds there.

Hey there! I’d like to dig up an old interview because it was something I really loved about the upcoming release of the game at that time. First of all, I’m aware that not everything makes it to release and I don’t start with “you promised us!!” because I think they have their reasons to scrap things. That being said I think that exacly things like they wanted to do is what’s missing at the moment for lore-fans like me.

Here the part of the interview:

GWI: Yoh from the GWI Forums also had a question. Are there plans to collect/gain pieces of lore and other information about the GW2 world to be saved on a codex, and will they be accessible in game?

Ree: We have a couple of different answers for that. One is your personal journal. As you do things in the game and go through your story, you have a personal journal that tracks what you do, talks about the NPCs that you’ve met, and the places you’ve been and the things that you’ve done. We also have books in the game that you can go and quest and find. A lot like you you would quest and find elite skills, you can find people who sell them or will only give you this book if you complete a challenge in the game. Those books will be things that you can keep to read over and over. To sort of see the story that they tell; whether it be about parts of the past or monsters in the game. We want that lore to be accessible and we want it to be something that if you really liked the story, you can go click on the book again and see the story again and so forth.

source: http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/guild-wars-insider-interview-ree-soesbee/5/

TL;DR: we can collect books and read those whenever we want. Stuff about lore, monsters etc.

I wonder what the reason was to scrap this. It would fit quite fine into the game as the lore is vast and absolutely worth reading. The thing is: Anet releases a lot of the lore bits currently only in the web instead of the game. I can’t say how many people miss that wonderful pieces… but only few of my friends know these.

Personally I’d love to see those in the game. Ebonhawke and those static books are a nice start, but reading those in a random order is kind of confusing imho, and I don’t want to leave the game for reading this as a whole.

EpicHenchman.6594:

But what will the Abaddon fractal actually be of? The war between the gods and his imprisonment? His eventual defeat by the goddess of truth?

Well you can guarantee that it will not involve his single victory, the dance off against the companions of Kormir!

#VoteKiel

Colin mentioned in the interview yesterday that the battle vs. Abaddon predates GW1, so it has to be the one with the gods vs. him

Trixie.7614:

They can make the fall of Abbadon not that epic adventure as well. Then people will be really sad.

how could fighting this guy be not epic?

http://img.kongzhong.com/gw2/news/2013/01/17/49dd615ae91358402147.jpg

Veplerion.3921:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

well saying no to Abaddon would equal telling Anet: “I don’t care about Guild Wars 1 lore” which would lead to a decreasing chance of ever setting foot on Cantha, Elona etc.

lol, no.

of course! Thaumanova would have completely new lore and Anet would get the feedback that their latest storytelling is fine (judging from Aetherblades and Southsun Cove it’s really not epic). GW1’s storytelling is epic… that’s what I vote for.

well saying no to Abaddon would equal telling Anet: “I don’t care about Guild Wars 1 lore” which would lead to a decreasing chance of ever setting foot on Cantha, Elona etc.

I’m curious about the OP too, having the same dungeons again and again with a small chance to see the new one(s) isn’t fun. (we already know MF and AR, so Abaddon/Thauma would be the only new amongst 12 —> chance of 1/12 of appearance)

Suggestion:

Personally I’d like to have a new option: let people vote on their favourite fractal, and the 3rd in a row would be that fractal guaranteed. There’s a chance to get the top1 voted fractal in the first or second run also, but at least it appears in run 3. This way groups could make sure that they see Abaddon/Thaumanova in a full fractals run. Lore explanation: chaotic Asura technology

(the other fractals are still random, because we don’t want another CoF-szenario where groups run only the most effective (the easiest) dungeon continously.)

it would just destroy balance if you could run with 5 of your friends vs. soloplayers. The biggest friend-group would have an easy win in every minigame. I currently like that I have equal chance of winning against others.

What I would love to see though: leaderboards for minigames, where you can see your friend’s highscores.

all the money I’ll make by running this epic battle again and again will outweight the paid waypoint costs by far

what I love: that their focus isn’t on group-content only. Dungeons are’t the most important part of the game, instead they’re looking for activities which are fun for soloplayers & groups of players. Yeah, the hardcore-raid guys miss something, but since I’m not one of these guys it’s ok with me as long as I have a challenge in the world. Playing with random people non-grouped doesn’t mean that the content is carebear.

I see it more as a “who is interested in GW1 lore and would love to see connections/build ups from that”? voting

nah, people got it from the tons of criticism about GW2’s lore that GW1 was superior for some… and now they want to know why. That’s why they vote for Abaddon. Also, because they’ve heard that it’s a battle vs. a god.

Colin is doing a livestream today… about future plans