Guild Wars 2

Atlas.9704:

Every time we get a release there is a guide provided on the GW2 site.

This is an excuse. Not a solution.
“We posted a guide online, why do we need to tell you anything in the actual game?”

There is also a reason why people go to dulfy and not the “official” guide.

Every LS event to date:

Read the letter, do the ONE thing it tells you about.
Try to follow the one hint you get at the end of that first thing.
Look at all the achievements and use their descriptions as a guide to figure out what to do.
Go online and find a real guide. Now grind out those achievements.

Really at this point, they may as well hire dulfy and add the website into the game somehow. I almost expect that site has more views that guildwars2.com. For obvious, sad, reasons.

ToT.7018:

I normally play for a t least 3 hours after work, last night i didnt even last an hour, did first part of the story, went to check doors in Queensdale 3 teleports back to LA later i logged out.
This is supposed to be a holiday event and get everyone playing and have exciting times in game.
I really think all the new recipes should be reachable/craftable by everybody and in a very short time.
I dunno if it’s just me but it just seems a watered down version of last years, i think my bubble for this game has burst.

Yup :/
I’ll be dragging my virtual feet to hold out hope there is a second, major addition coming before the actual day. But I certainly won’t be holding my breath.

mercury ranique.2170:

I
So
Consortium arch is closed. It can be opened again but there are no loose ends
Ellen Kiel Arch is closed as well. She might be returned in the future, but no loose ends here either.
Remains the Scarlet Briar arch (including aetherblades and molten alliance). Twillight Assault clearly indicates that this story is still in the progress of being told.

So there really isnt an issue. They are not hasting to the finish and to me it all makes perfectly sense. I can’t wait and see what Scarlet has to offer us in the future.

lol, I don’t even get how you think any of that is “closed.”
We don’t have a clue what the molten alliance really is or what they want. We have no idea why they are working together, except of course: “scarlet did it.”

We don’t have a clue who or what the consortium really are, where they came from, why they care about southson, what they are/were really after. We had clues they were evil long before the refugees got involved, yet they still exist and all they lost was the slavery contracts. We can probably assume “scarlet did it.”

We don’t know and haven’t touched on where the refugees even fled from. Why haven’t we been there? Why haven’t we gone to see what the MA are really up to? Craigstead came later, their final push from the north.

Ellen Kiel is a random NPC who took credit for player actions and stole a seat on the LA counsel because someone else put her up to it. We have no idea why, or what goals either of them have. What, she got the seat so now she lives happily ever after? lol

Of course the story is still in progress. A bunch of random unfinished storylines under the umbrella “Scarlet did it” doesn’t make them suddenly closed and cohesive. There are several unfinished stories, and the whole “scarlet did it” umbrella isn’t making them better. It’s killing any hope they had of fleshing out something more real.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

The dungeon isn’t :C

Do keep in mind the dungeon didn’t open until halloween. Not sure if you’ve noticed the date or not, but that’s still a ways away. In fact, it happens to be about two weeks away….

(Two weeks is the release schedule for LS updates, just in case anyone is wondering.)

Danikat.8537:

A lot of people on the forum were still mixing up jumping puzzles and vistas.

Heh, yeah I forgot all about that.
Talk about jumping puzzles and lots of people would go off: " yeah, this one I had to like, climb a mountain, took me like fifteen minutes just to figure out how to get up there! I hate the jumping puzzles!"

Meanwhile playing that lab in caledon on a friend’s account is one of the main reasons I bought the game. Still one of my favorites.

Knote.2904:

Also OP, it’s obvious you’re just here to gloat (it’s not that hard) =p

As I said in the other thread, the clocktower’s “Legendary” status was never actually due to difficulty.

RedCobra.7693:

is this seriously the super difficult achievement that people complained about,

Um, yes and no. lol

See basically, this is a super easy JP that people have blown to “legendary” status for a few reasons.

1. For many it was the first JP in the game, even if it wasn’t, it was the first with a time sensitive component you couldn’t just get back on again.

2. Even for those who loved the jumping puzzles, it was still platforming with an MMO engine and most of the playerbase had not gotten used to the finickiness and almost hyper-sensitivity of the controls.

3. Many, many, many, many people quit or never completed it due to technical difficulties. This made those who spent hours in the waiting rooms to finaly get their achievement after so many rage quitters feel “spechel” and rainbowy inside.

4. The waiting room.
That was the killer for me. Even this year, I really can’t stand waiting around for the timer to reset with nothing to do. Even with the other players invisible, and the number reduced (15 players making the first few jumps and blocking your screen was NOT fun, regardless of what anyone says) the waiting room is worse.

The most fun I had last year was when people put a cauldron in the waiting room and we all played costume brawl between attempts.

In the end, a year and several MUCH harder JPs later, it is just a time gated one-minute fifty-five-second puzzle.
The puzzle itself is still kinda fun and well designed, but at this point it may as well be a single instance you can restart whenever you want to.

They did this with all the stuff during the scarlet invasions too.

I started to feel trapped on my necromancer being forced to do all the grindy content of the invasions with her. Come to think of it, barely played her at all since….

Meriem.3504:

Ayrilana.1396:

I did that solo on a level 5 toon so it was definitely not impossible to do.

You technically did not do it solo cause I know certain parts required you to stuff high lvl. You probably just came at the right time to get the needed stuff after the mobs have been killed.

That’s kinda what he was trying to say.

There were so many people running the scavenger hunt I was able to run through on two more alts in a few minutes, just bypassing the literal swarms of other players and talking to the ghosts. The final ghost was the only one which actually required some daring to avoid the traps and mobs (though the mobs were pretty much dead with all the aforementioned swarms of players). Those traps were instakill at the time, regardless of level, so it wasn’t any harder.

I had really hoped for the scavenger hunt to come back. A new or different book would have been great, maybe with a longer or different scavenger hunt (Bloody Prince Diary, anyone?).

So far this is like %75 of the content from last year, with more grinding for only half the rewards.

I’m expecting a Bloody Prince costume to be released next week.

Remember the Gem Store is on a weekly release schedule. They’ve been releasing the better content one week after the patch pretty regularly.

It would be just short of insanity not to release a costume at all. This is after all the anniversary of Costume Brawl being added to the game.

(For that reason alone I half expected them to make a big deal in the gemstore about costumes and release a bunch.)

I don’t know about destroying them, but you could just double click them to get them out of your inventory. Finishers are added to a separate finisher tab in the hero panel, if you don’t want/like them you don’t even have to activate them.

DusK.3849:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

The final defense of any irrational argument is complete dismissal of opposition.

Exactly. So why are you doing it?

Oh come on, the tin foil hat was a better comeback than that. (surprisingly.)

Surely you can do better?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

what about the laurel system? you can buy ascended items with laurels
what about the karma system? exotic endgame gear with karma from Orr vendors
what about the dungeon token system? exotic endgame gear

Laurels ARE alt un-friendly. You can only gain X laurels per day, with or without an alt. This makes the laurel system automatically better for one chr than two. Regardless of any amount of input or effort. Worse for three Characters. Even worse for four, ect.

The Karma system was originally alt friendly. The entire system.
Now that it is account instead of Chr bound, and shortly after they drstically reduced the amount of karma you can gain from jugs (which was more karma per day that can be farmed, on top of whatever you farmed) it has become a limited resource. Not to mention it’s necessity for Obsidian Shards is now more important than ever. Since the other means are more time consuming and have their own alt un-friendly means.

Dungeons are now Account Per Day restricted as well. They used to be alt-friendly because you could rerun your favorite dungeon on an alt. Now you can only get the diminished rewards. This artifically increases the amount of time to gear one chr, and again for three, four, etc.

Alt friendliness : Time input to each character = Equivalent reward.
Alt un-friendliness : Time input into each character = Diminishing reward.

“Un-friendly” doesn’t mean it’s impossible, or remarkably more difficult.

1 chr takes X amount of time to level and Y amount of time to gear.
A second chr X amount of time to level and Yx2 to gear.
A third Character takes X amount of time to level and Yx3 to gear.

Then you have to level their fractals, or WvW bonuses (time and effort that could have gotten your main a higher level).

The point is it went from the most Alt-Friendly game the world has ever seen as an MMO, to, less friendly in many ways than many other mmos.
Some of the Account Bound stuff is good, but many of the same rewards and systems are actually punishing to running an alt by increasing the time required to get rewards specific to that chr.

Sure I can have my Hammer and GS Zenith skins on a brand new chr. Great. Until I roll a thief or an engineer and have to get even more AP if I want skins for them.

The wallet was alt friendly, but brought about unfriendly changes to karma acquisition.
The magic find change was alt friendly, but is still tied in with the laurel and AP system which “appears” alt friendly, but ultimately isn’t.

Uden Reavstone.3426:

Why call the Bloody Prince the Bloody Prince and not the Mad Prince? Anyone got any thoughts about this?

Because he’s not just a random “btw, the Mad King has a son.”
He earned his own nickname and has his own backstory and lore.

I just want a griffon, since launch…

Everything in the original mad king was obtainable on multiple chrs. (In fact most of the game was built that way then.) I have two of the mad king memories complete edition, and one of the non-burning incomplete one cause that alt was too low level to complete the scavenger hunt. I had a hat for all five of them too, not sure if I even kept one (Hated that it removed their hair).

Since then they have restructured nearly everything into “Once per account.”

So by doing a little ‘math’ we can arrive at the conclusion, everything will be once per account. Again.

Well, considering the idea at the start was to have every back piece and weapon set unique and only available once…

And now they are pretty much all available for black lion tickets…. except for the mad king skins…

My money is on everything returning. I really want the mad king memories to remain unique too, and after SAB, that might happen. But I wouldn’t hold my breath on the weapon skins.

Awesomesauce would be if they released the rest of the set without any of the pieces they released last year.

Lemaign.3529:

I thought I’d just take a moment to acknowledge this sweet burn since the noisy, misguided, objectivist fanbase doesn’t seem interested in doing so. Good form.

The final defense of any irrational argument is complete dismissal of opposition. Guess anyone who hasn’t actually been following the game for a year still thinks none of this crazy LS restructuring and backtracking actually happened.

Pretty strong evidence for that in the “They only do the 2 week releases because they had data that told them the 2 weeks release schedule would work.”

No one ever has data that something they haven’t even done yet will work. But it has to actually fail before they will change tactics. It’s certainly not a failure, but it’s not a success either. As long as it doesn’t outright fail, they will keep it up. The argument in this thread is that that failure happens long before people stop logging in.

The major players aren’t even on the field yet, one can argue whether team Anet is going to win or lose the upcoming season till they’re blue in the face. But we do know their playbook, and it’s just not strong enough in it’s current state. LS can still work, they just need a new coach.

Player concurrency and Anet’s expectations may be high. But the LS releases are far from concurrent in their quality and the player expectations are getting lower. (Some of them are so low they actually like this drivel.)

RuneCrimson.7380:

So why is it that when I and my wife kill something I get something she gets nothing when she gets something I get nothing…if I go by what you all tell me we should both get something we should both get the same exp and we should both not have a problem leveling doing things together…but we do. Cause I see a split in exp between us I see her picking up loot and me getting nothing I see her getting nothing when I get something which means if I get it first she gets nothing if she gets it first I get nothing. Which means it is effected by what others do to it.

The XP is determined by your level vs the mobs level. If you two aren’t exactly the same level, you won’t get exactly the same xp.

Loot is RANDOM. For you and for her. You don’t split it, and you don’t get exactly the same things. Sometime you will get loot sometime you wont. Sometimes she will get loot sometimes she won’t. What either of you gets has no effect on what the other gets. You would get the same amount of loot if there were fifty other people around hitting the same mob. (as long as you hit it too.)

People mob champions by the Hundreds, all day long for exactly this reason and all get the same loot that they would have gotten if they had soloed it. Not exactly the same loot because it’s still a random loot table, for each person.

No matter what you do in the game, anywhere at all, all of your rewards will be the same regardless of anyone else participating. They are all determined randomly based on your own chr stats, level, buffs and personal Diminishing Rewards. (The more you do any one thing the less you get. This holds true in nearly every corner of the game.)

But none of that changes the fact that the XP from mobs is practically worthless compared to any other means of getting XP. Events and heart quests, skill points and vistas, points of interest and discovery will always be the primary means of leveling in open world PVE.

DusK.3849:

snip

Anti statistics are a far better philosophy than making them up as you go.

“%1” pfft. There are now dozens of threads like this one in the last month alone.

Of course, Anet themselves make the claim that the forums are such a small percentage that any opinions expressed are irrelevant.

I log in because I want to have fun. Sure.
But then I run into the daily limits on anything I want to do and am enticed to walk in a circle farming champs as the only legitimate method of ever achieving any of the worthwhile rewards. Since doing the content that is fun is losing out on any real progress and reward.

I log in on LS release days, hoping the content is worthwhile.
Doesn’t mean it is.

This thread is a sad scope of education.
Extrinsic vs intrinsic rewards are a basic premise of psychology. No matter how hard you claim that people only do things for intrinsic rewards the stark reality of life in general is the opposite. But by all means continue arguing that as it seems to be something you enjoy doing, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it, right?

Statistical fallacies (real numbers portrayed incorrectly) are a basic premise of mathematics and debate. Individual anecdotal evidence is flawed and subject to bias, but there is a point where the anecdotal evidence of many people reaches statistical viability.

And any corporation’s primary goal should always be customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can only be gained via anecdotal evidence from the customers.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that people loved the “idea” of monthly release, but were very disappointed with catastrophe that was the Lost Shores release. Regardless of what came with it, the release upset nearly every who was there, and everyone who missed the one time only event at 12 noon PST.

Knowing that this was the case Anet admited to redesigning the core foundation of LS and working towards a better solution with Flame and Frost. The end result of which, and the opening of Secret of Southson was well received. Again by the collection of anecdotal evidence. Those happened to be two weeks apart.

Someone, somewhere, decided that since people liked the never before heard of monthly content (anecdotal), and people logged in and spent the most money during the first 1-2 weeks of each release (statistical), that doubling the release schedule would result in a more fluid income rate.

(And stick it to those monthly sub games, as Anet would roll in dough TWICE a month.)

Anet has hinted (no actual evidence of any kind, just anecdotal marketing hype from a market driven company) that concurrency is still very high. One half of their magical formula has been working for now.

They still need the collection of anecdotal evidence of customer satisfaction.

Because year one is gone, the “Loyalty” building phase is gone. What they choose to do now and into the beginning of 2014 WILL determine the longevity of this game. As a ‘niche’ market overshadowed by the new wave of MMOs? Or as the stark reminder of how easily the current BiS can kill itself with gimmicky mechanics built around maintaning concurrency vs satisfaction.

Unless everyone has forgotten the early reviews of Guild Wars 2, that it would either be the new best in class, or just the first-and-worst in a new class of mmo. The former could still happen, but only with some core changes to this LS formulae. The idea is still good. The execution, lets just say if it was a tv show based on a good movie, it would have been canceled by now.
(It’s more like it opened with LOTR, and now we have the Power Ranger edition.)

The latter is looking more and more likely with each new LS release, and each new developer pod cast about the other upcoming games.

In Caledon Forest there is a Rizen Hylek boss (attacks Morgan’s Spiral).

This boss has a special immunity to poison. If you poison him he gains a regen buff.

WHY isn’t this mechanic used more often? Especially in late game?
Bosses that react to specific tactics?

I certainly don’t want to see conditions punished and made even more useless. But as was said, this like damage immune bosses, or other effects. Bosses that react to player buffs.

You use might? So does he.
You hit him with an aoe, he hits back with an aoe.
He has an immunity to poison, make him take extra damage while burning.

And for that matter, why not have conditions have special reactions?
Make fire creatures/bosses immune to burning, but take double damage while chilled (or do half as much damage).

A handful of things in the game have immunities. Dredge to blindness some embers to burning (but not all or even half).
This should be a lot more common, and even heal the fire creatures when burned. Or ice creatures when chilled. (Seriously, how do you “chill” a minion of Jormag?)

This would/could be a massive scale change to the entire meta that would add real challenge and thought to almost every encounter in the game. Without having to be cheap.

Flat out immunities are lame, but couple that with an equivalent weakness and it would be a lot of fun. Without having to rely on OHKO mechanics and making conditions useless on bosses.

(Seriously, does 25 stacks of vulnerability make teq die %25 faster? Or do the chilled CD increase, poison heal efficacy reduction or stun effects do anything to bosses at all anymore?)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Just wait, within the next 3 months – give or take – the playerbase will begin dropping…

I think they majorly underestimate just how many people ingame are only hanging around for mad king and winter’s day.

Those two have a chance of reigniting the playerbase, but what Anet chooses to do in november and january will be the deciding factor for a lot of players.

(if there are skypirates in the mad king event, I will be crying myself to sleep at night and winter’s day be kittened.)

Jordo.5913:

while it is true who won the election may not be so vital to the story….the reason the election for a trade agreement with the zephyrites is vital to the story….yet we don’t have the slightest idea why

I can tell you right now it’s just an excuse for them to come back every year as part of the Bazaar. Remember the Bazaar was already shadowed as a (secret) yearly event in a different place every year, but no one had even seen enough of the Zephir Sanctum to believe it was real.

Next year it comes back with the Bazaar because it made a trade agreement with LA…

Even though the whole thing seemed to hint at the Bazaar being a black market of sorts, hiding from the official governments, nobody seemed to care.

And a dredge tunneler.

Hexin.5603:

t1 servers should never have free transfers. But open up the free transfers to bottom 6, not such a bad idea

I strongly agree with this. The lowest pop servers should always be free to transfer to.

Riding Broom anyone?
rofl

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/41865/gw013.jpg

Scizzor.8137:

Mesmers are gods for this path. We have the most reflects and contol effects. These are needed for the oozes, the generators, and the last boss. So.. mesmers are very very very very far from useless.

Sounds more like a job for an engineer. :P

Jordo.5913:

we have no idea what is going on, so there are no chances for twists later down the line

This is probably the most important thing certain game developers seem to be missing.

“Mystery” requires a plot. A plot where you don’t know everything, but a plot none the less. Right now the only mystery is “what the kitten is the plot?”

Zoltreez.6435:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Zoltreez.6435:

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

It’s formatted, chaptered, has an introduction and paragraph breaks as well as a warning about the length. It is most certainly NOT a “wall” of text.

I prefer to think of it as a well crafted castle of text. :P

you made my day LOL

btw why my pic didn’t worked ?

:P

Not sure why it didn’t work….

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Someone summarize please?

There’s a TL:DR (too long : Didn’t Read) at the end of my post.

TL:DR:
Love the game, saddened by the direction.

Timegating = I get that you want me to log in every day to be sure I get all the daily limited things done and be tempted by the cash shop, or pour gold into the gem pool so that others can be tempted by gem conversion. But all you are doing is forcing me log out when all my daily limits are effectively locking me out of the content I enjoy (and making me regret ever even starting my alts). Or, more commonly, being tabbed out while I do other more interesting things.

Random Story = Just adding my voice to what so many others have posted about.
The most fun I have in the game is still the vanilla game. LS is completely arbitrary and hollow feeling, it makes me less and less interested in the longevity of this game. There is more story in the random interactions of Skritt in various corners of the world than there is in any LS release.

Taking this with a grain of salt is fine, just don’t pour salt on an open wound and pretend these concerns are from a minority and therefore unimportant.

Zoltreez.6435:

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

It’s formatted, chaptered, has an introduction and paragraph breaks as well as a warning about the length. It is most certainly NOT a “wall” of text.

I prefer to think of it as a well crafted castle of text. :P

Too many people listing SAB in the worst category.

1. SAB w1
2. Mad King
3. Fractals
4. SAB w2 (post bug patch, still more content than ANY other update)
6. Winter’s Day Toy Dungeon (would have been more fun if it scaled to number of players, but was rampaging awesome fighting off waves of toys and destroying the mini villages.)

Worst:
1. Lost Shores (Again because it was just a shody release, the content could have been good if it had functioned at all like it’s intention.)
2. Scarlet (basically in general)
3. All attempt at ‘story’ since flame and frost with the exception of the interesting new cutscene design and the zephyr sanctum. Although marred by:
4. The “Election” really, I mean… really? Who can buy more votes for a pointless fixed election between someone you’ve barely ever heard of and the goody twoshoes who stole all the credit for everything you’ve ever done. (Imagine if we had gotten to vote between Roxx and Brahm.)
5. Secret of Southson, second half (started out strong and hopeful, then died in a putrid fire of horrid disappointment.)

%100 to the OP. For all that I love this game, I sincerely hope Anet is listening and chooses to act before it’s too late.
Actively encouraging anyone else who’s been around for a year to post their own thoughts. Anet needs metrics on long term player satisfaction, who better to give it that the players who played for a long time?

Chapter Four: To AFK or not to AFK, that is the Daily
There are a lot of things I still enjoy about this game, but they were all here a year ago. In spite of that there is a TON more time gating that’s been added, essentially nerfing the original game in ways that prevent me from doing things. I used to log back in on an alt and do stuff over again if I felt like it, and work towards the same rewards for that alt. Now I can’t. Now I am required to focus on a single character ‘per day’ and use the others to harvest ore and wood that is also timegated and I know that you are going to account lock that before the end of the year. I can feel it in my bones.
This truly diminishes the value of extra chr slots at an exponential rate.

TL:DR:
Love the game, saddened by the direction.

Timegating = I get that you want me to log in every day to be sure I get all the daily limited things done and be tempted by the cash shop, or pour gold into the gem pool so that others can be tempted by gem conversion. But all you are doing is forcing me log out when all my daily limits are effectively locking me out of the content I enjoy (and making me regret ever even starting my alts). Or, more commonly, being tabbed out while I do other more interesting things.

Random Story = Just adding my voice to what so many others have posted about.
The most fun I have in the game is still the vanilla game. LS is completely arbitrary and hollow feeling, it makes me less and less interested in the longevity of this game. There is more story in the random interactions of Skritt in various corners of the world than there is in any LS release.

Taking this with a grain of salt is fine, just don’t pour salt on an open wound and pretend these concerns are from a minority and therefore unimportant.

Chapter One: Looking Back
SAB was the first recurring event, and as a fan of it, it was fun. There have been a lot of games built on the nostalgia idea and I think they all failed horribly in comparison to this game within a game. The nay=sayers claim it is out of place, but the world of Tyria doesn’t really belong in my living room either. But then so much of the reward system was changed for W1 (instead of maybe just doubling the prices and rewards from w2) it actually damaged the memory. And makes me worry about upcoming holiday events and what fun things will be “improved” in horrifying ways.

I sincerely hope that you begin to understand that more and more people have given you as much time as we could. A whole year to see if your way was gonna work, that’s a long time to dedicate to any game. I hope you guys understand that. It’s a testament to the launch title that so many of us are still around. I for one am not here because of living story. I would like to see it live up to it’s potential, I had so much hope after F&F, the direction then and the opening of Secret of Southson looked like AMAZING and bright future for the direction of the game. That much great content every month? Sweet!

So tell me why the long drawn out “lets take our time and figure out what we are going to do with this LS idea” thing worked so much better than “Lets have four teams rushing content out the door every two weeks because that looks good on an advertisement!”

Chapter Two: Looking Forward
Unless you plan on releasing a brand new game within a couple of years to recapture the populous and do it all again, you need to concern yourselves with long term player interest. “It’s always less then two weeks since or til a brand new update!” Carries a huge connotation when those are the only updates available. “GW2, where there are only two small updates available at any given time!” Is what far too many of us are at least tempted to tell our friends. (I actually recently convinced my brother to buy the game and kinda felt like I was lying to him by not pointing that out, so you are welcome for that.)

Two things are killing this game for me personally, there are many other reasons in other posts like this, but these are my personal demons, and you should care, because I’m not alone:

Time gating content “Once per day.”
And the biweekly Random AP Quest. The “story” is on the website, as usual. And there is nothing living about it.

Chapter Three: What could have been
The world is the same as it was at launch. The most memorable change to me was the lighthouse in LA, and the statue melting prior to the mad king, then being rebuilt over several weeks through wintersday. Both of those happened in 2012! And neither of them matter to anyone who wasn’t there to know it happened.

Orr is still corrupted, none of the other dragons have done anything. None of the races have done anything. Lions Arch elected a new official (really, as a highlight for one year’s worth of content, that’s kinda lame) and there are Skypirates. (Which still manages to sound cooler than it actually has been.)

Fire and Frost could have lead us into a whole new area where all the refugees had been driven from, filled with molten alliance, skill points, vistas and heart quests and a full 3-path dungeon as the “main” molten facility. (With the original intact as the story mode. And you could have taken six months or more to pull that off and dropped a new race and class at the one year anniversary. The world would have loved you for it. All the story for the molten alliance could have remained in game for future generations to love and adore as they catch up to the next arc.

Then we would have a precedent for a truly epic storyline, with a brand new map and full dungeon every six months. Which could have lead into some connection with one of the elder dragons and tipped the hat for the next “main arc” to start dealing with the actual threat of the dragons. There are enough of them you could deal with a different one every six months as we slowly work towards a resolution and still have a decade worth of content.

We already HAD pirates, far too many for any economy and/or safety in tyra to actually exist, but now they have airships. Yueah.

(yes the post is long, so was the year)

Introduction
Most of this has been said, I’d just like to add another constructive voice. I hope that the devs come to the understanding that this opinion isn’t arbitrary, nor a minority view of the LS content.

I could never get “in” to any other mmo. They just couldn’t maintain my interest for more than a couple of weeks. Even “long lasting” games like Skyrim, which I loved, I only played for 3-4 months. Yet here I am one year later, still playing this game. Not since Baulder’s Gate and Age of Empires have I ever devoted so much time to a single game. As an avid gamer, having passed up quite a few other games I do want to play because this game is actually still fun, should show how much I do like this game and want it to succeed.

I would like you to understand this, and know just how much I enjoy this game that was created. But “Living Story” needs a major overhaul in it’s design philosophy. I believe it may help the cash shop make money now but it is very detrimental to the long term enjoyment of an otherwise top notch game.

I hope you guys can appreciate my feedback on just what the Living Story has meant to me: I want this to be as constructive as possible.

Prelude
Yes there has been some good fun content. But as a whole there has been far more lost potential. Looking back at LS as a whole, there was a lot of stuff, for sure. But take too long to try and remember any one thing and it was “Meh.” Or if was good, it was accompanied or preceded or immediately followed by more “meh.”

The game is like a great Anime series. But we’ve been stuck in a horrible “filler” arc since the mangaka died.

There’s a fading memory of mildly interesting content, awkward comic relief that doesn’t feel like it even belongs, the story feels like it’s completely forgotten everything that happened before it, and the villains are so ‘out there’ you can’t even suspend disbelief long enough to accept them as cannon, oh, and hours of time launching fireworks and being sent to “kill X things” and “touch X signs” something I seem to recall DE’s and heart quests were specifically designed to avoid.

I have great memories of many games, but I can go back and play those games to relive those memories. There is no means of that here. In the end it barely matters how much fun I had at the time if I can’t relive it.

Lucky.9421:

I’ve been saying this since release. It took a year for factions; 6 months for Nightfall. If they theoretically start on expansion now. We probably won’t see anything until ~2015

Which is why they should have started as soon and GW2 went gold.

But then an expansion would only have included all the stuff they’ve done up till now, but properly built, vetted, tied together, with decent writing a new race and a class, with some half a dozen or more new areas to explore….

Pfft, who would want that?

While you are working on it please add some more appropriate boss loot to the steam ogre?
He’s been neglected for so long now…

(Also megadestroyer still has no dragonite ore….)
ktnxby

Guesting isn’t the reason you are hitting overflows.

Maps have player caps, no one knows what they are, but they can’t be all that high, 200-300 likely.

Your server has a LOT more players than that.

At best maybe %10 of any given server actually makes it into their own server map. The rest end up on hundreds of overflow shards.
Guesting won’t do anything but guarantee you a slot on an overflow by the time you get there.

ALSO most of the people on the MAIN server maps stay there, keeping the map limit full and rarely clearing the que for anyone to return.

And if you are “guesting” and end up in an overflow, when the travel dialoge appears I am almost certain it takes you back to your own server, not the one you were trying to guest on. (I could be wrong about that.)

Astralporing.1957:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Charak.9761:

I also don’t like that Blackgate beat it because that just makes everyone go “Well, Blackgate beat it, it’s doable” and this event won’t get the rework it deserves.

That’s kind of a strange thing to say given that they did it, with massive teamwork, on the very first day it came out. While I understand it’s frustrating, I think people are overstating the difficulty.

Quite the opposite. This required an amount of effort that is only possible when the event is hot. It’s quite unlikely that several hours of organizing people can be duplicated more than few times. Especially since the reward doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Exactly, Day One sees the highest population rush of the entire release. Ever single release is a massive laging, overflow, DCing mess. Day two is slightly better as player time is more spread out, and from there player participation falls like a stone.

Even the massive farmfest of the scarlet invasion, by day four maybe? No more overflows unless you showed up near the end.

Today, and possibly tomorrow, and unlikely the next day, was the highest level of player participation and drive to complete the content that will be seen for this event. If only one server managed it by now…

Frankly I’ll be impressed if even blackgate manages it three more times for the remainder of the event. I’d eat my hat if every server manages to without a nerf.

And if the content is really intended for only the best servers to win?
That’s likely a final nail in the LS coffin for a LOT of players.

Wayland.3528:

Well since BG did it… it should be possible for all servers/overflows….

Ya it only took one server how many hours to even manage it?

One more dead event walking. Excuse me while I go kill the karka queen…..

You guys arguing over 15 minutes and forgetting that it’s 15 minutes per phase.
It’s already much longer than a 15 minute fight. Right now it takes longer than a dungeon run, or a full fractal set.
For guaranteed failure (On launch day, when server pop is at max specifically to do the new content.)

Tomorrow will already have half the population, and I for one am not even bothering with a second attempt. 150+ people on an overflow, mostly surviving and doing everything they were supposed to do, and didn’t even get him to %90.

That’s just…. terrible for an open world event.

Don’t know why everyone hasn’t caught on yet:
First patch of the month lasts all month.
Second patch of the month is only for two weeks.

But when there isn’t any lore reason for it to leave, it should stay. SAB really should just be there in rata sum until w3 is released. It’s solidly enjoyable for it’s own merits, enough that plenty of people like myself would continue to play it throughout the year. (And new players would continue to be able to enjoy it.)

I posted about this with the original skin during the first release.

Would love to not have the bird flapping it’s wings in my mesmer’s face when she’s trying to stand all heroic and stuff.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I find the whip incredibly useful. My boyfriend and I have started working as a team now for some encounters (one whips, the other hits). And those pesky enemies fall without ever getting a hit on either of us.

^^ this.
Whip is incredibly useful, if used strategically. Of course spamming slingshot works for a lot of things, if you don’t mind wasting all the baubles. But Whip is nearly as invaluable to me as the stick. I use it more than slingshot or bombs.

No it isn’t required for any puzzle yet, but neither is the slingshot, moto’s breath or the shovel.
You don’t have to use it, but just because you opt not to doesn’t mean it’s useless. I’ve only ever died from using moto’s breath if you want to talk about useless.

There were Hundreds of players that could not progress in the levels due to Bugs. Not skill. There are far more difficult things in the game than the geysers or the flowers. Neither of which were actually difficult in the first place, just the bugs knocking you back in mid air and killing you for no reason making the content all but inaccessible to those with unreliable latency..

Oh for crying out loud people, a handful of things were changed out of an immense amount of content because they were buggy and some people couldn’t even progress thanks to bugs.

For every one jump that is now a little easier because it doesn’t randomly kill you for no reason there are still hundreds more just the way they were.

EoNenmacil.2361:

Way to give in Anet. Im no Hardcore player or Elitist but this really makes me loose faith in your guys. You used to stand behind alot of the content you made. Thats why we waited so many years for this game. It was good. Now its way to easy. Glad I did W2 Z1-2 yesterday.

Sorry Moto…….

Yes, it’s soooo horrible that they release bug fixes….

Just ruins everything.

Like when they made engineer rocket boots useful, why, why did they do that? It made the game too easy having a skill that actually worked and didn’t get you killed!

Having a LOT more fun with the rapids now