Guild Wars 2

just wanted to add another quote from Colin:

Just to clarify a bit, as Mike said there are numerous teams beyond our Living World teams, and some of them are working on much longer term projects which we’ll go into details on much further down the road.

It’s entirely possible some of the types of content which you might traditionally find in expansions would be released through an expansion in the future for Gw2, and it’s possible we’d try something different when it comes to integrating those type of releases.

We have no final plans one way or another about expansions at this time, and certainly haven’t ruled them out, it’s something we’ll discuss more in the future.

Edited to add: Our primary focus right now is on making the core Gw2 experience as strong and compelling as possible, we’ll release a blog post later this month detailing more specifically our plans for Gw2 in the second half of 2013.

So keep your eyes open at the end of this month

it’s awesome to get also PvP rewards. Why? Because we already get tons of gold and laurels (and even a bit of gems) to buy the best PvE-stuff anyway.

try this one:
http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/guild-returning-cantha-elona.html

the reason why I prefer the Living Story can be summed up with this quote:

Perhaps the clearest message from our time with Mike is that ArenaNet are constantly listening to their fans and that this new fortnightly ‘Living World’ update strategy allows the studio, which now consists of 300 developers and four Living World teams, to be more flexible and reactive when it comes to answering fans’ needs and desires. Be it nuts and bolts features like linking elite gear with achievements or returning to continents which have otherwise been overlooked.

Colin also mentioned this:

• As we recently announced, we’re up to four living world teams now, which means they will have a much longer development cycle later this year to build more polished content, and content that can be more impactful.

• The Living World teams are only a small chunk of the total developers at ArenaNet, we’ll be going into details on what many of those other teams will be doing in a blog later this month.

• We also have teams working on much longer term projects, which we will discuss when they are closer to arrival.

So as a year has gone by most of the core-structures for holiday events are finished and the devs can focus on other stuff as well. Each team (there are 4 teams now) has much more time to work on the Living Story updates so we can expect those becoming bigger and better. It was also stated that the content which would normally be in an expansion is considered as living story updates… so new races, new weapons, new continents is absolutely possible this way.

I love the current release: the Zephyrites have a deep connection to the core Guild Wars lore which I love. Listen to the songs they sing, listen to the teacher on the airship who tells that story to the children… it’s awesome.

The one thing I don’t like: I love that we get new content each 2 weeks now, but I don’t like that new areas are temporary. I don’t like that you can do awesome new activities this month and next month they’re gone. People would focus on the new content anyway, but they won’t feel stressed because they know they can do it on their own scedule.

I can see that it’s important to make activities temporary… but scavenger hunts like the sky crystals in Labyrinthe Cliffs should stay imho. It’s this single-player activity which people can do when there’s not much else they prefer doing. The sprint could be a rotating activity since people would spread out too much when a lot of minigames are available at the same time.

save in in your bank with other items which remind you of previous releases… it’s your reminder of the event, and how “lucky” you were. Not a lot of people get that golden ticket.

I can’t believe no one mentioned it so far: you get those in “heavy loot bags” from the tradingpost. Those drop in WvW and include kite fortunes sometimes. The droprate is far more efficient than farming baskets.

so rewarding loyal fans is bad why?…

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I would also love to see the option for players to create their own books, and then sell them to other people.

and make it possible to vote on those and have vendors sell bestsellers… where part of the money goes back to the author… Hell yes!!

Edit: On second thought… I think this would go too far. I also think that not many people would buy books from other players.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Orders (Order of Whispers, Durmand Priory, Vigil) would be more involved in gameplay?

The Durmand Priory is all about collecting old artifacts, gathering lore etc… it would be nice if you could actually do these kind of things. Let me “collect” pieces of lore from npc-conversations (like some lines from the Zephyrites) and put those together in a lore-book to look at it as a whole (instead of having those conversations without context). It would feel as a rewarding collectible, don’t you think?

Also finding artifacts from certain lost cultures would feel great. Maybe you can put those found pieces together to ancient weaponskins.

Things like that could be done for each Order. Players who are member of the Vigil could spawn new Events in the world (Vigil-related of course, with good lore-bits added) for everyone else to participate. You’d have a mission-log and someone who’d manage to sucess in all those events would unlock prestige-armor/weapons from that order.

Well it was just an idea, I’d prefer making each Order’s activities open for everyone. But give Titles to those guys who chose that Order in the character creation.

I second this, it would be awesome if we could “collect” pieces of lore and put them together to look at the whole instead of having those lore-bits from listening to the npcs and having little context to it. Would make you feel like a member of the Durmand Priory.

I have to agree here, I love the idea but the quality is just bad with framerate issues also.

I personally prefer JPs over dungeons… as weird as it sounds. It’s stuff I can do solo too, but it get’s more fun if other people are around. Dungeons in GW2 are too much sponge-boss at the moment imho.

I agree on the camera issues… the cam needs some improvements for this kind of content (like the transparency issue with obstacles behind you). Not much problems in the new areas though…

Imho Minigames are among my favourite things to do in GW2. Belcher’s Bluff for 100g… I’m paying that.

I’d like to add something:

I really love the look of the new helmet we can buy for 250 fortune scraps (or 1 golden ticket). As I don’t think I’m lucky enough I’d like to work for that helmet… well work, ahem, is the word which fits.

Dulfy mentioned that baskets have a droprate of 1/10 (or less) of the fortune scraps. This means that I would probably have to open 2500 baskets for the ticket. In 25 days this are 100 baskets per day.

I really don’t know how to get the helmet without missing the new zone, the awesome looking race, the scavenger hunt,… I can’t play 24/7. I’d have to buy it in the TP for 8000 gems?! omg.

I guess I can scrap that helmet I really wanna have in order to enjoy the content this month. If it were permanent, I could farm it in my own pace and still would be able to participate in all the new content. I really like that there’s always new things to do, but having that new content around forever wouldn’t really hurt the game imho. People would still go to the new event. People would still have to put a lot of time into the basket-hunt in order to get the helmet.

well it seems no one knows any specifics; I had the hopes that Dulfy or anyone else of the people who got their hands on would comment…

well I’ll keep a close look on the droprates:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyr_Sanctum_Supply_Box/drop_rate

Albert Of Tyria.2149:

What Anet have shown in 1 year of game…is that they care only about the gemstore.

yeah that’s why you need transmutation crystals for the new armor-pieces from the achievement system! …

wait… not.

What drops from supply crates?

this is a copy from one of the reddit-posts about this issue:

The supply boxes also drop the skins. You can either open boxes, run around and press F ~1500+ times or buy via the gem store. Opening them for quartz itself is (obviously) not of as much value.

The Zephyr Sanctum Supply Box drops new quartz recipes, new weapon, armour and Suncatcher back piece skins (as seen below) as well as quartz itself.

http://www.guildmag.com/the-bazaar-of-the-four-winds-preview#theloot

There are new skins for helms and back items reflecting the crystals and aspects of the Zephyrite peoples, and these are tied to Zephyr Sanctum Supply Boxes, which seem similar to the other supply boxes.

http://www.killtenrats.com/2013/07/08/gw2-bazaar-of-the-four-winds-impressions/

Each supply box have a 100% chance to yield a Celestial recipe and give you some other items such as Quartz.

http://dulfy.net/2013/07/08/gw2-bazaar-of-the-four-winds-patch-overview/

so different answers to the question…

man what a bunch of ungrateful guys here… they didn’t have to do this, but Anet decided to design decent looking armor-pieces nontheless. And all you can do is whining, shame on you.

I’m quite happy personally, being able to equip my Norn-Ele with HoW-armor with a helmet. Thanks for making this possible devs! Also: saw the animations on the backpieces… awesome!!

it’s not permanent

well I can see no advantage to gameplay really… Instead of creating something like npc-driven expeditions to dragon encounters from different zones where players act in a story-arc and experience the game in a cohesive environment, waypoints are abused to get to those encounters without any context at all. The battles are overrun with players and most of those see the encounter as loot-pinata instead of a threat to Tyria.

I mean: waypoints were introduced to make it easy to play with your friends, not to skip content constantly.

Why is it so important for Anet to open up new APIs for the community?

I can’t see how this would improve the game… actually quite the opposite. How does this help gameplay? People have to run a second screen (laptop, smartphone etc.) to get the most out of it. You learn that a dragon encounter is open so people port to the next waypoint to farm those bosses – so the scaling can’t cope with the amount of players and the encounters become cake. After the battle people port to the next bossfight.

I don’t get it. “Because they can” is not good enough for me.

I don’t know for sure, is there more behind killing Zhaithan (lorewise, maybe something about bloodstones) than shooting him with a giant laser? In Southsun there was lore too, but it had to be found via talking to npcs which were spread on the island.

I don’t like this story-delivery method

the whole point in giving us the daylie for 5 of 10 is to enable us to play the game as we want. This is not the case when you still get points for achievement 6-10. People feel forced to do this in order to compete with the best. So I 100% agree with the OP.

The best on the Leaderboards should be people who got also the harder achievements (not the daylies/monthlies but e.g. difficult WvW achievements), not the guys who are able to play 24/7, have no job and commit every minute to the game.

I disagree with the OP. Some achievements which take TONS of time and commitment are equally worth as daylies which I get in a few minutes.

Bad design.

I really wonder how they organize the teams in order to give each release the best possible cutscenes & story development. Do they have 4 teams responsible for that, each in a team. I like the current style gameplaywise, I see how content is getting better and better. Dungeons improve like a charm and the jumping puzzles (Southsun Cove, Not so secret…) are awesome (except that you can directly Mesmer-port to the end). What hasn’t improved for me personally is the story delivery / quantity & quality. My favourite was the Halloween scavenger hunt. The hunt itself was heavy on lore which I haven’t seen in a later release. You had to think also. The new scavenger hunt is shown on the map with those golden stars…

Imho Anet should take a look at the Halloween lore/story delivery and let this influence future releases. Molten Factory had a few dialogues coming with the scavenger hunt too, but it didn’t feel that important. We helped characters which were never seen after the event and rewards were very bland too. The backback book at halloween (2 versions for casual and hardcore) was awesome also.

Rawthorne.8675:

Sigh I sooooo had my hopes up for this and needless to say I was let down. Nothing but a semi how to nubs guide of wvw.

did you read the first post? It clearly says that this is a beginners guide. Cut the melodramatic nonsense, the negativity train really is annoying.

from official “Kuraine” on Reddit:

If you enjoyed the drinking mini-game in the Order of Whispers storyline, I hope you’ll get a kick out of this It’s evolved quite a bit since then. I’d call it Version 2.0 Omnom Boogaloo. Or Belcher’s Bluff. Y’know, whichever.

http://en.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1hkrvj/new_permanent_minigame_belchers_bluff/

from the blogpost:

New Mini-game: Belcher’s Bluff – Begins July 9

Put your Omnomberry Juice drinking skills to the test in this new, permanent mini-game. Seek out challengers around the world to learn their signature skills, then challenge your friends in PvP mode!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/july-09-2013/

exciting. Skillhunting is back!

• find challengers around the world – like the bosses in GW1?
• …to learn their signature skills – like from the bosses in GW1? O_o

so you go skillhunting around the world and you can challenge your friends too?!! Awesome!!

It’s odd, I would have expected something like this from Polymock, does this mean we won’t see PM since this takes it’s place?

it woudl make no sense if they go with a currency since there are leaderboards for those points. I’m pretty sure we will unlock the items once a current amount is reached.

Iason Evan.3806:

Achievements that take longer grant more points. Dailies grant a few points because they are done every day.

well it were ok if it was so, but it’s really not. Look at the WvW achievements for example. It takes much more time to get the same points when doing WvW instead of daylies.

Hermes.7014:

Everyone should be allowed to get content; the most skilled get it earlier, while the least skilled after longer.

it’s not content. It’s an achievement. I disagree. Good players and players who learn to become good should get achievements which aren’t available to people who have no idea how to play their profession imho.

No one is locked out of content / things to do in the game. It’s just a skin/medal. Do you also think that anyone who competes in a sports-tournament should get the gold medal by just playing long enough? O_o

I smell a player who rarely plays GW2 and/OR refuses to become better by learning/practicing how to play. Portals in Jumping Puzzles?

Faerun.3091:

I’m actually against system like HoM. In HoM all the cool items required a lot of points, meaning if I see some cool item and it says “you need 8k points to get this”, I’ll be extremly dissapointed. I have nothing against using achivement points like currency, since that way I can get what I want, not what they give me, if you get my point

totally not!!

you only got items until rank 30, which was easy to achieve for any player who played the game for a while. From rank 30 to max. rank 50 you “only” got titles. So the hardcore players could show off too.

For the first 6 points you got a very cool looking heritage armorset
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_Monuments_Reward_Calculator

the set:
http://images.wikia.com/gw2/ja/images/a/aa/Heritage_Armor.jpg

Hall of Monuments:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_Monuments_Reward_Calculator

people who do daylies every day already have their rewards: laurels. Tons of it. Anet should bring in even more rewards for laurels but seperate the daylie achievements from the others imho.

Metatail.1306:

Remove achievement points from dailies and remove these points from total count!

agree 100%… those are too much worth for the little effort and people who are able to spend 24/7 in the game will have the best rewards instantly and would complain about no new rewards for them. On the opposing front people who aren’t online every day will never get near the highest ranked rewards. Just speculation of course.

agree, the design of the HoM is fantastic and I would be disappointed if it were anything less…

and ingame:

http://i.imgur.com/HimDWEbl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rLdgCe8l.jpg

nice, it’s not huge but nevertheless exciting: a new reward category. Miniatures of Jumping Puzzles. How the lore nerd in me would love something about the history of that place…

I agree on the bland norn home instance… not very well done imho.

It’s great that Anet hasn’t forgotten the home instance though… now if only it would make sense to return to cities when nothings happening there.

I agree on the OP and would add that daylies and monthlies should be worth much less too. Or give those a seperate area for rewards…

I can’t compare it to the fantastic Halloween and Wintersday JP because portals take you to the top in no time. What point has an achievement if you can get it via cheating?

AOEHokie.7396:

This Just In: You don’t have to go into a portal if you see it.

Mind Blown

did you even read my whole short post??

I agree with the OP, this portal-using is just cheating, not more, not less. People who port to the end do not deserve that achievement.

The Halloween JP had this skill-restriction and people were so proud to get to the end. It was one of the highest rated things people were proud of. They had to learn the freaking jumps.

http://en.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gyk41/achievements_you_are_proud_of/

Lighthammer.3280:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I thought it was too easy to warrant a guaranteed exotic which sells for 60s. I did it on all 8 of my characters in a matter of 30 minutes and made 5g.

I like how you earned money on soulbound items.

you can sell the exotic to a vendor for 60s

the Halloween JP was something you could be proud of for getting to the end. Now because of Mesmer Portals this isn’t the case here, since you don’t know if your friend with the achievement used a portal or not.

All the time it took desinging this thing and then a Mesmer comes along and cuts out 90% of it. Seriously?

polymock played differently than pokemon, you had your skillbar and cooldowns if I remember correctly

Colin explained how those monthly holiday event mini games won’t get deleted but come back the next time with additional games and maybe changes/improvements to the minigames we’ve played so far. GW1 did this and it worked fine, after a few years there was TONS of stuff to do, for example Winters Day, which had a lot of stuff each year.

He also explained how they have more time to work on different things once all of the holidays have content.

Colin Johanson

You’ll see holiday festivals return, but with updates each year to continue to expand the festival experience, provide new rewards, etc. You’ll also see some types of living world content, such as Super Adventure Box, some mini-games, and other types of content that make sense return at various points through-out the year as they are updated as well. And as mentioned earlier, the dungeons people enjoy from our living world release will be researched by the keepers of the Fractals of the Mist and used as way to continue to expand and build on our fractals permanently going forward.

We’ve built out a portfolio of content and experiences we can use and more easily expand on for years to come with our holidays and recurring content, leaving us a larger opportunity in the future to focus time on other projects around those events since we’re not building the festival from scratch. This means as holidays we’ve run in the past approach, you’re more likely to see larger living world projects like permanent updates to existing dungeons, world areas, etc.

We’ll go into more specifics about what we’ve learned from living world releases so far, and where we’re taking them in the future with a blog/video and press tour at the start of July. This should help answer any of the more specific questions about what to expect in the future in regards to the living world in Gw2.

That said, I also wished that there were much more activities to do in the home-cities.

imho achievements in this game are flawed at the moment:

It’s not only too easy to get Monthlies, it’s also too easy to get achievementpoints via daylies/monthlies. There is no reward for finishing a certain section of the achievements. There is no option to look at the last 5 earned achievements. (often I get an achievement during a battle and have no idea which it was).

I miss the love

about the “cannot do the jumping puzzles”! It’s not you. It’s the controls. Once you get a nice gamepad or some good keybinds and you’ll get familiar with it you’ll learn and become better. Believe me, I was terrible at JPs in the beginning. G13 changed my gamer-life.

I stopped looking at the leaderboards for achievements when I realized that daylies and monthlies count towards it.

I already know who of my friends spends most of the time in the game. What I don’t know (and would love to know) is: which of my friends has earned his achievement points?

Dawdler.8521:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

you don’t get my post at all, please read it again. I just named a location in GW2 where it’s difficult to see what’s going on because of objects (here: trees).

Yes you did and I mentioned the reason why its not a forest. Its an orchard. With very, very small trees in comparison to what you generally find in a forest. Like in the picture I posted to compare Hellion Forest, where you dont have any such visibility issues. Two entirely different concepts of design.

If you call an orchard a forest you might as well call a vineyard a swamp.

wow your comprehension skills are outstanding, where did I call that location a forest??