Guild Wars 2

Hexalot.8194:

As for the “1%” comment, you clearly haven’t been following (or have been following but it just didn’t offend you ?) the hate threads before the HP change where a common theme was that complainers… who were typically casual… were the only ones on the forums making negative posts and hence were a small minority… since all the “happy gamers” were busy playing the game !

You’re misrepresenting the posts. If anybody ever claimed that only “1% of the game’s playerbase were casuals” then they were smoking something. In fact, I would posit that even the whitest of knights never made that claim. What they did say was that the people making the posts were a small minority of the playerbase. Just because those people may have been casual (some actually were also hardcore players but focused on WvW almost primarily) doesn’t imply that the white knights were attacking casual players, but rather the vocal “minority” on the forums opposing the changes.

Were they correct about this group actually be a minority? Not really. As others have stated, this game is made of mostly of casual players, but a majority of those casual players don’t visit the website or message boards, a smaller amount of that group don’t visit the forums, and those few that do visit the forums often don’t comment. It is difficult to determine whether the forums actually represent the total player population properly without real statistics from Anet, but the fact is that the forums primarily draw in the extremes rather than the regular casual.

Where do you see anything about hero points not being soulbound? They aren’t even an item. The complete section about them from the recent post reads:

“We’re going to update the elite specialization unlock to find a better middle ground by reducing the cost of unlocking every possible ability for an elite specialization from 400 hero points to 250 hero points total. This means you will be able to access them much earlier in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns PvE or World vs. World and fully unlock them much earlier as well. This also means you’ll be able to experience more of the expansion story as your elite specialization earlier on while still maintaining some of our core goal. This should also help players with lots of alts try out more of the elite specializations. If you’ve already put more than 250 points into your elite specialization, surplus hero points will be refunded to your character for future use.”

This will put the extra hero points back onto the character that got them for when the next elite specs come out; they won’t come back as a token or some such thing.

Raedwulf.3712:

Mo Mo.1947:

Why are people argueing about lore or text-book definitions of the word “guild”? O.o

Because, inevitably, Someone With An Opinion stomped in & tried to lay down a law, that isn’t anything more than their opinion, by telling you that “you’re not a real guild”. In Anet’s terms, oh yes you ARE!

Yup, this is the only reason I chimed in at all. People said Mo Mo wasn’t in a guild but they technically are.

MiniE – you’ve really only repeated what I said. I’d thank you for the support, except I think you thought you were trying to tell me something I didn’t already know! snip

Ah, it sounded like you might have meant something else, but it’s good to know what you actually meant. That LotRO style guild also sounds like an interesting way to do guilds.

Misguided.5139:

Yeah, I was afraid of this…

The only “problem” with this is that having to choose between Halloween stuff and working on unlocking elite specs is a bit of a bummer.

It’s not much of a choice really if you want to do both. HoT will be here literally forever, but this year’s Halloween event will only last two weeks.

Play Mad King Says and everything else to your heart’s content first, I say.

That’s pretty early in the morning, on a Friday.
00:00 Pacific time
03:00 Eastern time
07:00 UTC
08:00 United Kingdom
09:00 Central Europe
10:00 Moscow
15:00 Beijing
18:00 Australia

Raedwulf.3712:

Whatever the literal meaning of guild, in the game it is a logical entity with various attributes that has at least one player in it and does not require more than one. So can we drop the silly “one person is not a guild” nit-picking.

I, too, am in a one-person guild. Well, actually, there’s still a dozen or so names on it, after I trimmed some. Basically my then Raid Alliance took to GW2 like a duck to oil (hopped in, hopped out again). There’s only 3 or 4 of us still play and we’ve all found other guilds, so there’s only me ever rep’s. I never bothered about the GMs, and whilst it’d be nice if I could get my own guildhall, I don’t suppose it’s been designed with solo guilds in mind.

Two things: The meaning does matter, but in this game the important meaning of the two is how Anet defines it within their game mechanics. If they decide that a guild with less than 50 people in it should not be able to do all guild content then that is their prerogative. This also applies if they decide that a one-person guild cannot do all guild content.

That leads me to the second point: You can absolutely get your own Guild Hall, but you will need to petition for aid from your fellow players to do it. They’ve stated elsewhere that you don’t need a big guild to claim one but that you can start the clearing quest for your guild and bring non-guild players with you to finish it. Once it’s done they can go on their merry way and you’ll have your hall. It will take a lot longer to upgrade on your own though, so there’s always that to consider and this will likely not be changed.

mcwurth.2081:

Vayne.8563:

mcwurth.2081:

TexZero.7910:

One person isn’t a guild.

actually it is. The guild is named and created, it just has one member, no matter how you turn or twist it, it is still called a guild within the realms of Tyria.

No, one person isn’t a guild. One person as the ability to make a guild but according to the actual definition of the world guld, even lore wise, one person is not a guild. A guild is an organization. You can’t organize 1.

That’s why 1 person does an event and gets 2 influence, but 2 from the same guild get 20.

Anet was nice enough to allow solo players to make bank guilds, but it’s really just a tolerated abuse of the system.

it is still called a guild.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

There are points to what Vayne is saying and to what you are saying. Vayne is correct in the sense that a guild, by definition, is a plurality of people coming together for a common cause and, as such, cannot be a single person. This is also true lore-wise. You are right, however, in the sense that Anet can define guild to mean whatever they want it to within their own world through their game mechanics and have seemingly redefined it, exclusively to GW2, to mean “registered in the system with a guild name and at least one member”.

So it’s called a guild through the meta-game as defined by Anet, but I do not think it would be reasonable to call it a guild through lore or real-world definitions.

I don’t think I could give an accurate number, but I don’t expect to be able to play a steady game until at least Sunday. I’ve taken Monday and Tuesday off in preparation anyway.

I will be thoroughly pleased if it’s stable at launch, but that’s not realistic for any game release/super patch.

BattleKat.7210:

The game already have disgusting items such as huge useless wings, that to me look terrible with all the costumes, i havent seen a single character with wings that look good. While mounts have sense, and as long they stay as Horses and other good looking mounts that are not a….weird dragon or those clown looking ones, mounts are nice as long they dont look dumb.

My Necromancer uses the black wings and is dressed in a combination of lich and dry bones robes. He looks pretty darn cool.

My Guardian uses white wings and looks like a guardian angel of sorts. It’ll be better when I can give him a longbow come time for HoT.

I built my outfits around the wings, so they look good. Though, I do concede that most people just equip them just because they are wings.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

I dont care that new players who only buy HoT also get the core game included.

What I do care about is that veteran players dont get anything for their loyalty.
And second, and more importantly, how much content will we get?

Can everyone quit pretending like you didn’t get anything? They gave out a character slot to all existing accounts, they gave the LW updates in the past, and everything else. You are not getting screwed over as a veteran player. What you are not getting is pampered, but ANet has no requirement to pamper you just because you’ve been around longer. If they choose to not do something extra special for veterans outside of the character slot (something not required), then that is their prerogative and you can vote with your wallet.

I swear this thread needed to die months ago but people keep bringing up BS arguments about entitlement and deserving things. That is not how a business works and it pains me to know that people with these attitudes are customers elsewhere, not just for the same game that I play.

These should be accessible. You don’t have a level in sPvP and everything is unlocked, which would include elite specs. You might have to own HoT though.

Linken.6345:

if it worked then you already had said item in normal bank and sold that one

I’m guessing this is more likely the case, but there could be serious abuses with this given how many exotic items they hand you for nothing on the beta characters. There were multiple people pulling precursors by throwing their revenant exotics in the MF during the first beta weekend, so hopefully this is just a fluke.

I think there are relatively strong correlations where a regular player starting the game for the first time tries to pick a race and class that they most associate with or is the “easiest” to comprehend. This would usually be a human as a warrior-type class. It’s almost unavoidable, unless you literally don’t have humans or the warrior archetype in your game; the first is relatively easy (though uncommon) and the second is near impossible.

Halvorn.9831:

Why can you not trade it? Go to your bank, put it in there, relog, sell. Worked for me on a few items.

This should not be possible. Your beta characters are, for all intents and purposes, a completely separate clone of your personal account. You cannot use the TP or trade items between your beta bank and your regular account bank.

Ah, I see. It’s fine; you can earn that with a VW run in the Silverwastes. I tend not to pick up any items if I can help it while on beta characters. It’s not worth the worry for me since everything will get deleted anyway.

Why what? Why is this in the HoT forum? It’s a cool looking hammer, but it’s on the TP for only 4-5G.

Isarii.2804:

CandyHearts.6025:

Etien.4601:

The effort you put in SW justify the farm there. No need for changes at all.

I farmed nonstop for 2 days. I made 40g. (Not my best 2 days lol)

If it got nerfed it would be a dead map. The outcome of what you get there can vary so much. You could get 2 exos from 1000 bags. or 10 exos from 250 bags. It’s luck and hardwork and I see 0 reason to nerf something that isn’t unnaturally rewarding. The reward is just and fine as is.

You either did something horrifically wrong or you aren’t factoring in material drops. I can make 40g in about an hour and a half in the Silverwastes just from the events when using a full liquidation strategy (which I’m totally fine with).

~26G per hour still seems a bit steep, even with factoring selling off all materials you gather. SW is certainly a great place to farm gold, but there’s also a significant amount of downtime between VW events, never mind if your map population dies. I suppose if you are in a SW guild though you could perpetually beat VW.

Kevan.8912:

Both masteries and raids are in fact a new (different than competition, i grant it) step of vertical progression.

Ok, there is no new tier of gear. there’s not an evident increase in stats.
But if increasing masteries gives an advantage to those players who grind it, or if there’s a content you can unlock only after leveling…it’s not horizontal.
Anet keeps just playing with semantics, but here is another step upwards.
Dejavu… just like that manifesto/no grind/ no vertical progression situation.

Are you not also just playing with semantics? Masteries are no more a form of vertical progression than crafting is, and masteries are easier to gain experience for than crafting albeit it would take longer to do.

The key difference between vertical and horizontal progression is that vertical progression negates the difficulty or reward of previous content whereas horizontal progression does not. Masteries are very clearly horizontal in this regard as they currently stand. They let you do new things better without making old content obsolete.

Agemnon.4608:

Exciton.8942:

And I still remember Colin said in the announcement that GW2 should be all about playing the challenging content itself rather than setting a high requirement you need to grind for even before you start.

And now this? Such irony. Why should players even attempt this knowing it is impossible to do without gear grind?

Also if you have a non-meta statset for ascended you’ll need to start from square one even if you wanna raid.

Or just throw it in the Mystic Forge with a ~10g investment per armor piece. The change to stat-swapping made a lot of the arguments against Ascended armor quite moot in many regards. You can literally find the jankiest piece of ascended armor and turn it into Berserkers or what have you for a small amount of gold and spirit shards.

Sleepcoma.9487:

SkiTz.4590:

You honestly believe anets new endgame content, “most challenging content” should require basic exotics or the actual endgame gear (ascended)???

This content was not created for someone to simply hit 80 and bam, waltz right into the raid in their rares/exotics and complete it like it was nothing.

What was the endgame prior to raids? Fractals. What did high lvl fractals require? ascended.

Its only logical that anything tabbed by anet as “endgame” uses the endgame armor/weapons……

People were doing Fractals in Exotics forever. Just because the folks farming fractals today are in all ascended, doesn’t mean it is required. It is just the fastest way to complete a run.

Actually, ascended armor is absolutely required for Fractals because of agony. There are ways to get around needing full ascended armor buy slotting really high-valued agony resistance infusions in gear (like +15 AR), but for the most part it is required past level 9 fractals.

Bartender.1674:

As for TS’s idea, how are people going to move around if they have to keep the 1 pressed in order to auto-attack?

Hold 1 with your left-hand ring finger, middle finger controls Q/A/W, index finger controls S/D/E, utilize the mouse to control your camera and general direction by clicking and holding both L/R mouse buttons.

It’s do-able, though awkward.

Maximum damage will always be: primary damage stat, 2 secondary damage stats. A pure condi build will still benefit greatly from power added in through Sinister stat combos. As for survivability, HappilyInsane is absolutely correct (and also correct about Rampager too). Raids and high-level fractals may require survivability that simply dodging cannot provide, so the additional toughness from Rabid or vitality from Dire will help you without affecting your condition damage at all. Condition builds might be more useful in this regard because they heavily rely on one stat for most of their damage whereas power builds rely heavily on three stats.

I hardly ever touched the Ranger class until the Druid announcement. My former level 20 Ranger is going to hit level 80 tonight and I even spent a total makeover kit on her to get her ready for HoT. I’m excited for the idea and can hope that whatever improvements need to be made will be in due time.

I don’t contribute much to the Ranger sub-forum in particular, but I wouldn’t want questions or concerns I have about the Druid to be ignored simply because of play-hours on the class. I don’t think that this is quite as big of a problem as it seems to you.

That said, I think it would be interesting if there were ways to show play-hours as a value or percentage of a particular class when you comment on the appropriate sub-forums. This would be useful for determining if people know what they might be talking about, but wouldn’t be terribly restrictive either. GW2 API keys can do this with 3rd-party websites, so they could easily implement it with their own stuff.

I agree they should add something. There are plenty of rune sets that would work generally well between different build types, but there are a number of solutions they could use otherwise. Whether its legendary runes or the armor “remembering” runes you slotted into it before, it would be really useful for raiding.

Fortus.6175:

Rauderi.8706:

Mounts: Go to the other thread. It’s long, and discusses every point ever made about it.

Duels: Just about every thread on dueling gets closed, because it devolves into insults. No wonder its opponents don’t want that toxicity in game.

Reddit: It’s where jerks go to jerk when they get banned from the legit forums for being jerks. =P

Talk about bias lol.

Im in reddit yet Im not banned?

I will report anyone who start being toxic. Toxic people are toxic, regardless of what you do. They will go on ranked and AFK, they will join your AC run party and disband it, they will move the items to a place where it cant be retrieved, they will spam whispers at your until you block them. Dueling isnt inherently toxic, toxic players are. Just like guns dont kill people, people kill people.

Mounts, is another of my points, perhaps the one closest than duels, if we follow the wings/gliding timeline.

Their reddit quip was mostly a joke. I doubt many people would question the effectiveness of the GW2 reddit community.

Rauderi brings up important points though. The mounts and dueling threads are very long and already have everything that could be stated in them. Dueling isn’t much an issue, but there is likely something in the engine that makes it difficult to make players turn into enemies in the open-world, even if there are some Hero Point NPCs that are able to do this.

Mounts, however, are literally obsolete in the way this game was designed. It’s objective fact that they would not be able to give movement speed boosts beyond what characters can already travel at, they would not be able to fly, and they would almost exclusively be for aesthetics. As stated, there are mounts in this game in the form of the flying carpet and magic broom. Others could be added in, but this would be additions to the gemstore as purely aesthetic items as opposed to useful items. Also, mounted enemies count as a single enemy and, in the case of the dino rider, when the health drops to a certain point it splits into two separate enemies.

And that’s the crux of the “anti-mount” argument; you would not be able to add useful mounts into the game. Should they add more “mounts” to the gemstore? Sure, why not? They are basically transform items.

PyrateSilly.4710:

notebene.3190:

What does P4F mean?

Someone else said something about the ‘PU nerf not going far enough’. What’s PU?

P4F or F2P = Play for free or Free to play
PU or PUG = Pick up or Pick up group

PU is Prismatic Understanding, a Mesmer trait that used to grant +100% stealth uptime and has been nerfed to +50% stealth uptime with the upcoming balance patch. PUG is the only acceptable form of “pick-up group”. Otherwise, P4F is correct.

Donari.5237:

I’m sure it will happen one day, it’s too core a QoL change not to, but I’m not holding my breath.

My worst fear regarding it is that we will have been raiding for a year before it is finally implemented. It would have already been a very useful addition for non-raid content, but we really need something.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Templates are something we would love to do. We have talked about this quite a bit, and with the frequency we’re seeing raid builds get tweaked we agree this would be a huge help.

This is a vital QoL change if raiding is going to be a staple component of the game. The changes made earlier in the year unlocking the WvW build from the PvE build is a great start, but this needs to be taken further in the PvE environment when build-swapping is crucial. Fractals, dungeons, open-world exploration, and raids all require different types of builds a lot of the time, so even just the ability to slot two different types of builds will greatly reduce frustration among players. It would also allow room for more experimentation because the players won’t worry about losing their tried and true build if they re-trait for something different, temporarily.

That reward list looks quite promising. Ectoplasm and lodestones just for running events and such in particular maps? I really think this is a great way to get the maps filled.

I use Elixir X when in my HGH FT-Rifle Decap build. The additional 2 stacks of might and condi cleanse are always useful, and both Rampage and Tornado offer ways to kick people off point. I would not suggest using Elixir X though unless you are running an elixir build. Definitely go with crate or mortar.

Serophous.9085:

• Week of Sept 20th – 26th (this week): TwitchCon, definately no BWE. Maybe Druid reveal at Con.

Definitely no BWE, but they absolutely are revealing the Druid at the con. In fact, this is why they are not having a POI episode this week. This has all been confirmed in red posts.

Serophous.9085:

• Week of Sept 27th – Oct 3rd: Druid reveal most likely. Maybe BWE.

As stated above, Druid reveal is this weekend, not next. BWE could be on this weekend though.

As far as this goes, there was a red post shortly after the ascended armor/weapon stat change update where they stated something about possibly adding this later for back pieces, rings, amulets, and accessories. I think part of the issue with these was the following: What, exactly, do you turn them into when you convert the stats? Ascended weapons and armor largely have 1 skin with just different colors. The other gear has multiple variations of what they could become and some of those things are collection items (namely the back pieces). Mawdrey does not fall into this category because you do get to pick its stats upon creation, but most back pieces do not have such a luxury.

If they can figure that out, then we will see them add this in.

There is a key distinction between the definition most people use for “Ranger” and what a “Ranger” typically is, and how the Ranger class represents the latter. I’ll explain.

Often times people attribute a Ranger to being somebody who “fights at range”. The reality of the name is that it doesn’t have anything to do with combat in particular. The Ranger is a class that focuses on nature, using natural magic, and has an affinity with animals. This parallels real-world rangers who take care of nature reserves and parks. Fighting at range is more often just a trope of being a Ranger because you typically have an animal ally that can’t fight at range so you have them go to the front and you stay back. Thing is, Rangers have a number of melee weapons too and they aren’t just for show.

Guns do go against the philosophy of the natural, so it makes sense that a core ranger would not be able to use them or rather would choose not to. They may get them as a future elite spec as others have stated, but this is why they don’t have it now.

You want a lot of stuff, so head here: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

The engineer section has lots of types of builds to get you started, but you should adjust it to fit your play style.

Kodama.6453:

MiniEquine.6014:

Kodama.6453:

I didn’t say the new gyro isn’t a class mechanic change, but it isn’t a good one for PvE. This mechanic won’t be worth it 99% of the time. That’s why I would like to get something minor added to this, to actually feel a change in PvE.

I even did suggestions, you don’t have to change the toolbelt skills itself, just add something just like tools do -> vigor on toolbelt activation.

I don’t think my suggestion is too much to ask for.

Stomping may not be useful for PvE, so far as we know (we’ll see if it becomes a thing in raids), but rezzing absolutely is. What if you don’t even have to stand in place while you command your gyro to rez your downed ally and you get to continue to DPS the boss? Isn’t this a lot of the issue as to why people don’t stop to rez in the first place; they lose DPS?

I know you’re just using the boon-on-activation as an example, but let’s roll with that for now. Is getting a single boon an acceptable change to the class mechanic? I would say no there would almost certainly be rage threads about that.
Do you get different boons? Are those decided by which F-key you press or by what is slotted in the toolbelt? If the first, then it’s 5 instances of boons disconnected from the utility. If it’s the latter, then it’s 27 different instances of boons, which is a lot. If it’s 1 boon per utility type, that could fit better. If it’s only for the drones, that’s obviously an issue.

This shows me you didn’t even bother to read my suggestion.
My suggestion was the following: Activating a toolbelt skill (or 3 or whatever seems balanced) will spawn protective gyroscope. This gyroscope isn’t attackable directly, but it absorbs a set amount of direct damage for the scrapper (let’s say for example 1k, numbers can change). The gyroscope also is gated by an ICD.

You don’t have to think about different toolbelt skills, because this is just counting how many you are activating and doesn’t care which one it actually is. Nor is it possible to abuse low cd toolbelt skills, because the gyroscope itself is gated behind an ICD.

I don’t think this will be a bad idea and would fit the tank theme of the scrapper, while also using his new shiny gyros.

The reason it might not seem like I read what you said is EDIT: apparently you mentioned something in a small comment. I did not see that before. Your suggestion here doesn’t sound bad at all. It actually reminds me a bit of Holy Paladins in WoW where (at least in Cataclysm when I played) they would put a small shield on targets that they healed up to a certain amount of shielding. This change would be more “selfish”, but would definitely lead to higher survivability and that tankiness that could be quite helpful in raids and higher-level fractals.

Kodama.6453:

I didn’t say the new gyro isn’t a class mechanic change, but it isn’t a good one for PvE. This mechanic won’t be worth it 99% of the time. That’s why I would like to get something minor added to this, to actually feel a change in PvE.

I even did suggestions, you don’t have to change the toolbelt skills itself, just add something just like tools do -> vigor on toolbelt activation.

I don’t think my suggestion is too much to ask for.

Stomping may not be useful for PvE, so far as we know (we’ll see if it becomes a thing in raids), but rezzing absolutely is. What if you don’t even have to stand in place while you command your gyro to rez your downed ally and you get to continue to DPS the boss? Isn’t this a lot of the issue as to why people don’t stop to rez in the first place; they lose DPS?

I know you’re just using the boon-on-activation as an example, but let’s roll with that for now. Is getting a single boon an acceptable change to the class mechanic? I would say no there would almost certainly be rage threads about that.
Do you get different boons? Are those decided by which F-key you press or by what is slotted in the toolbelt? If the first, then it’s 5 instances of boons disconnected from the utility. If it’s the latter, then it’s 27 different instances of boons, which is a lot. If it’s 1 boon per utility type, that could fit better. If it’s only for the drones, that’s obviously an issue.

Kodama.6453:

Dojo.1867:

Think about it. Engis original class mechanic will always make him gain new F skills with any skill added. A new class mechanic would basically have to alter this fact which would efficiently add less new stuff than we get right now anyway.

Personally I am completely fine with that. Engis core mechanic makes him change more than any other class just by adding new skills even if those other classes gain new F skills.

I don’t think this is a good reason for what we are getting.
If you think so, why did elementalist get overcharge? Their old class mechanic gives them more new weapon skills than any other (with offhand 8 instead of 5). And they still got reworked attunements.

So if elementalist gets a 2h weapon in future, they don’t deserve any new mechanic because they get so many new skills?

And engineer doesn’t deserve any meaningful class mechanic change just because their toolbelt gives them more skills with theit utilities?

If you think so, we will get some really depressing future expansions…..

Well, Engineers have 27 different heals/utilities/elites, so that means they have 27 different toolbelt skills that are affected by core mechanic changes. Implementing Elementalist overloads on attunements are child’s play compared to the task of altering 27 different skills.

Frankly though, long-range rezzing and stomping is a mechanic change; it’s a combat mechanic change. The Dardevil didn’t get a change to its class mechanic either and instead found itself with a combat mechanic change through its dodge (which is hopefully being fixed well, though I digress).

As for the number of new weapon skills and class mechanic skills classes get, it’s not universally 5:

2-Handed Weapons:
Reaper: 10 5 updated class mechanic skills, 5 new weapon skills
Dragonhunter: 8 3 updated class mechanic skills, 5 new weapon skills
Daredevil: 6 1 new combat mechanic, 5 new weapon skills
Scrapper: 11 1 new combat mechanic, 5 new class mechanic skills, 5 new weapon skills
Druid: X Unknown

1-Handed Weapons:
Chronomancer: 3 1 new class mechanic, 2 new weapon skills
Tempest: 12 4 attunement overloads, 8 weapon skills
Berserker: 11 9 new class mechanic skills, 2 new weapon skills
Herald: 3 1 new class mechanic skill, 2 new weapon skills

As you can see, Tempest got the most, but only by 1. Scrapper and Berserker tie for second, and Reaper comes in a close third.

Simzani.4318:

Nor you or me know what the 3 other mini maps are. We only know that given the parts of the first mini maps they showed, it is small. But when you say "4 of the biggest maps ever done in an MMO to this date ", we know that you are not here to discuss, just lie to us and make us buy the scammy dlc. If you want to see bigger maps, you can already do it in this game, most of them are way bigger.

They really shouldn’t be saying they’re the biggest maps in an MMO to date, because they probably aren’t, but why are you then insisting on calling them “mini-maps”? You have an odd obsession with that word.

In total, Verdant Brink (including the canopy and the roots) will be almost certainly larger than any GW2 map out right now. Maybe that’s what they meant, but I’m not going to try to put words in their mouth.

Also, Verdant Brink is the first of four maps. We have no information about the sizes of these other maps, but take a look at Tyria’s world map and look at the jungle there. There is quite a bit of open space northwest of Rata Sum that needs filling up.

Terrahero.9358:

Linfang.1087:

wow, knee jerk reactions come fast on here. Clearing a condi every 10 secs would be fun

If thats what it is it would be pretty pathetic, so i’d expect a bit more.

Gyro’s arent active all the time, so 1 condi every 10sec on a skill that isn’t always up and can be destroyed ending it early, would be pretty pants. Even if it can fly over and help an ally as well.

Where did it say 10 seconds? The post stated “every few seconds”. 10 seconds is hardly considered a “few”. It would more likely pulse at 3 second intervals.

Mirta.5029:

MiniEquine.6014:

These Patron accounts almost seem necessary to fully enjoy the game

False. I was able to play as a F2P user for years just fine. To argue that it’s necessary, would be like to argue that boosters in GW2 are absolutely necessary to have.

Okay then. GW2 and RIFT are seemingly on a much similar level then. Both have F2P base games (and the base games are quite large too), both are releasing a Buy2Play expansion. It seems there was already an expansion launched by RIFT, though that one was $25. My point with it being “necessary” is like how having a full account in GW2 is “necessary”. If you’re fine with having 2 characters and 3 bag slots with leveling gates, sure, you could play forever for free. Those benefits granted by RIFT for being a patron are exceedingly greater than what one gets if you’re a paid-account GW2 player, though, even if they still aren’t entirely Pay2Win (from what I can tell).

Mirta.5029:

previously in this thread GW2s expansion price was also compared to Rift. Rift’s is far cheaper, for what could be more content. However because you are capable to access everything in it for free, except for gear people discounted it.

Truth be told GW2 with its expansion pricing is probably the most expensive F2P on the market.

I checked out Rift and its “Patron” accounts range from $15/month/1 month to $10/month/12 months. These Patron accounts almost seem necessary to fully enjoy the game, which you could absolutely say that buying HoT is like that too and I would agree, but the difference is that HoT is Buy2Play and Rift (Patron) is subscription-based. This falls into the same issue as the other two games, even if there is a lot to do.

Mirta.5029:

Jimson.5168:

invalid comparisons to other games, and just plain anger about something with no valid information to back up such a reaction

invalid comparisons? Like what? If we’re able to point at other MMOs and state that there we can get more in an expansion pack for cheaper, then I don’t see that as invalid comparison at all.

I’m not quite sure where you’re able to make this statement like this. You can try to separate subscription fees from expansion costs, but in the end you are paying significantly more money as required to access certain games like FFXIV or WoW. If you are financially able to ignore these recurring costs, then the expansion costs should mean nothing to you since they are dwarfed in comparison to total game cost. If not, then they must be accounted for when talking money.

Over a year, after an expansion has released, GW2:HoT will require $50 (or your local equivalent) since gem purchases are optional. Similarly, playing WoW or FFXIV will cost you $230 over the same time period. This is 4.6x the cost. Ignoring value obtained and only looking at cost, GW2:HoT technically only needs to supply ~21.7% of the content as these other games in order to make the costs equivalent, and this is only after 1 year.

If GW2 launches another expansion after 2 years, GW2:HoT would have still only cost $50 whereas the other two would have cost $410 over the same time period.

gannondorf.7628:

Oh my… pretty good synergy in traits! Maybe we can drop alchemy traitline for scrapper! With purge gyro, regen when super speed and less damages from conditions it sounds really great. You can make a tank bulky with inventions, alchemy and scrapper, but make a condi bulky scrapper too with firearms, inventions, scrapper. Really seems we have trait synergy. Now i don’t know if i’m going to main revenant or stay engi.. good things.

whynotboth.jpg?

But seriously, Herald, Reaper, and Scrapper are looking quite lovely. I’ll probably be playing all three of these a lot in the expansion.

phys.7689:

eisberg.2379:

Mirta.5029:

Kniff.7150:

You pay 50$ and will get the initial expansion content and years of living world etc additions with it.

chances are Living World will work the same way Season 2 did. As in, you only get it for free, if you log in. So if anything in your life happens you have to pay again.

maddoctor.2738:

As an “old” player you will get -character- times a dye of your choice. Spend it wisely and you can have the price of HoT in no time.

everyone’s 3 year old character will eventually get it. Plus, you can’t sell it. It’s immediately account bound :/

Sarie.1630:

When you go to a sandwich shop and buy a sandwich, do you go back the next day, claim you’re a veteran, and demand a free sandwich?

depends on the seller brand, but every store has promotions. For example “collect 20 stickers by buying 20 sandwiches and get one free”, or “here’s a customer appreciation card, every time you shop here 10% of your payed sum goes to your card and you can use it either for discounts or for free sandwiches later”.

Sarie.1630:

We’ve had pretty decent free content for two years running. I say two years because this last year has been a bit of a drought after the final Living Story episode. If you’re played from release, for three years, and you don’t like that ArenaNet are wanting a bit of income for a much larger amount of content, then I think the line back has to be “sorry bud, sucks to be you.”

Depends on your play time and when you were active, having in mind that LS1 was very temporary and LS2 is buy to play if you didn’t log in.

People who would not have access to their computer during the living story season are going to be very very rare, practically negligible. So yes, with the expansion you can expect the free LS updates.

you are actually very wrong. Many people have priorities, vacations, business trip, or they just dont feel like ogging in etc.

Point is, if LS is part of what your paying for with the box, it should be obtained, whether you log in, or your dont.

I get that life gets in the way sometimes, but seriously, you can’t bring up “just don’t feel like logging in” as a valid reason for why somebody is missing content and that they should just get it regardless. I didn’t “feel like” logging in this past weekend to do the Mordrem invasion stuff; should I demand that Anet keep the event going so that I can play it? Regardless, Eisberg isn’t actually wrong. It is indeed very rare for someone to be unable to log on the game for a couple of minutes over a two to three-week period and then log out.

Do I think that the LWS3 content should be included in the cost of the expansion, sure, as long as you bought the expansion. I think it would be much better if they just kept all the episodes free from when you bought the expansion on until the season officially ended and then make them purchasable (suppose you bought HoT after episode 3, then you’d have to buy episodes 1, 2, and 3).

Not sure what connection Bubbles has to the humans. If anything, it would be the Largos, even if they aren’t a playable race. Other connections are interesting but I doubt that the other races were literally brought into existence for the sole purpose of becoming minions as the Sylvari were.

I have no doubt that the listed ones (aside from humans) would almost certainly be directly affected by the matching dragons though, so you might be on to something.

Kodama.6453:

MiniEquine.6014:

Kodama.6453:

MiniEquine.6014:

Upkeep skills, perhaps? Sure, you could run all your drones constantly, but when you run out of energy they all come crashing down.

But we don’t have any natural energy source like the revenant. And I really doubt it is the class mechanic. And if it is the new class mechanic, how could we generate it? By using toolbelt skills? Don’t know, but I got the feeling it is something completely different from upkeep skills.

I am also suspect of the idea, but it’s not impossible. Because we’re getting a 2-H weapon the class mechanic is theoretically supposed to be less-impacted than if we only got a 1-H. However, if they’re bringing “fuel” into the mix then there are two existing mechanics (upkeep and initiative) that could be used to accomplish this and I feel like upkeep is more flavorful.

Also, I think the Herald is in a really good spot with the balance they gave its upkeep skills and I would not be disappointed seeing that balance applied to the engineer.

But I see another problem with that. Let’s say the new class mechanic is a new energy resource named fuel. It has to have an effect on another things as our new utilities too, because class mechanic are there to have an effect in all builds, not just when you are running the right skills.

So if there is a new resource, it has to do more than just give us the new upkeep skills. Like improve our toolbelt skills or something like that.

Good point. I’m not really sure what it could mean then. The anticipation is getting to me

Kodama.6453:

MiniEquine.6014:

Upkeep skills, perhaps? Sure, you could run all your drones constantly, but when you run out of energy they all come crashing down.

But we don’t have any natural energy source like the revenant. And I really doubt it is the class mechanic. And if it is the new class mechanic, how could we generate it? By using toolbelt skills? Don’t know, but I got the feeling it is something completely different from upkeep skills.

I am also suspect of the idea, but it’s not impossible. Because we’re getting a 2-H weapon the class mechanic is theoretically supposed to be less-impacted than if we only got a 1-H. However, if they’re bringing “fuel” into the mix then there are two existing mechanics (upkeep and initiative) that could be used to accomplish this and I feel like upkeep is more flavorful.

Also, I think the Herald is in a really good spot with the balance they gave its upkeep skills and I would not be disappointed seeing that balance applied to the engineer.

Upkeep skills, perhaps? Sure, you could run all your drones constantly, but when you run out of energy they all come crashing down.

Deax is right. The Pistol #4 is an extremely powerful burn. I’ve seen well over 20k come from it alone over its duration when traited for burning and condition damage.

My main complaint is the time in between events starting up. I keep missing it somehow because of things going on outside of the game, so I have yet to actually participate in this. Couldn’t it have been constantly going on?