Guild Wars 2

I still have some in the bank, hoping to get a chance to get more and spend them. Yes please!

I managed to do this whole instance without dying, I think that is a first for me in a final mission of a LS chapter. The biggest hurdle for me was seeing my cursor to drop the bomb on the reviving dog in all the fiery mess. I went into the air at the drop of a hat once I realised the dogs do not regenerate health. Land, hurt them a bit, jump back up and float around a bit to heal, do it all over again. Also, a trick I WISH I had figured out during the fight (I figured it out after, while still in the instance to collect the excess energy for the achievement) the lean back move while gliding would have been great to use to line up the shots from the glider due to the thermals keeping you constantly rising, instead of falling like on all other maps.

Sephas.8793:

Arden.7480:

Did you notice that she is no longer “Kasmeer Meade”? She is “Lady Kasmeer Meade” now.

So I think, she is a noble now.

I did notice this. But when did this happen? How did we not hear about it? What is the explanation of Marjory’s wardrobe change and Kas’?

They explain it in the part where they give the lore behind the elite specializations.

Season 1 was fun to play, as there was always something new. Story wise though it was horrible. Just one random idea after another thrown around every 2 weeks or so. It only made sense at the end when we killed scarlet and woke up Mordremoth, and by that point it just felt like they could have gotten to that same story point without all the convoluted mess along the way. Season 3 still has it’s issues with storytelling, but it is getting better. Certainly the presentation of the story is better than it has ever been, but there is still room for improvement. Anet now needs to improve the actual story itself.

The new mastery makes up for the story shortfalls for me. That vine pull / glider combo is exactly the sort of thing I hope to see them do more of with the mastery system.

I didn’t really read her as flipping out at us. It seemed like a playful jab “the invitation must have been lost in the mail” was to me a tongue in cheek way of her saying she knows we have been busy but she is here now if we need her. And she made a good point to Marjory, and Marjory made a good counter point. They were a bit miffed at each other, but not completely kittened off, and the tone I felt conveyed that well. Her reluctance to face the human gods made sense to me as well, I could see her needing to take some time after having her faith shaken like that. But then to just have her leave and we don’t hear a thing from her again this episode, that was weak. I wouldn’t want her in the guild after that.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

vanillexhope.2043:

I’m not sure how it is with other MMOs. But for ESO, if you bought the game before it was released on Steam, your account could not be transferred. You would have had to buy a NEW copy on Steam and make a new account.

That is pretty routine. I don’t know why, but my guess is that it’s because the game uses some sort of steam ID as part of authenticating or whatever — since you can definitely ship games requiring a third party account on steam.

(…and the developers used your email address or something concrete and meaningful as the primary key for identifying accounts, rather than an internal account ID with one-or-more external ways of identifying to it. dang developers, assuming that you have one stable way to prove identity on the internet. not that I have not made the same mistake in my time.)

I have worked on 2 MMO’s that later got added to steam, and in our case at least you are correct. The steamID tied to the steam wallet will allow a company to set up payments using the steam wallet to work in the in game store. In our case we were able to set up a way to convert accounts in the background so you could use your old accounts on steam, so to the customer it looked like nothing changed, but technically those were all new accounts, copies of the old ones.

Ardid.7203:

Maybe it’s Canach, and he deceived us all along.

It was the long con, he has been working with the consortium all along.

Sartharina.3542:

Wanze.8410:

Behellagh.1468:

No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.

Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.

This doesnt make sense.

People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .

Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?

I don’t know how it would be as a statistic for total players, but I can say you described my leather purchasing / hoarding habits 100% correctly.

castlemanic.3198:

Moonyeti.3296:

Yes. If he were anything other than a Norn then the whining wouldn’t feel as out of place.

Except he’s totally acting in character for a norn who was estranged from his mother due to his father not wanting to stop Eir from becoming the hero/legend she was becoming. To Braham, Eir isn’t just a legend, she’s a figure of importance to him, his mother, and what greater honor could there be than witnessing the legend of your parent.

But Braham never saw Eir the legendary figure. Braham saw Eir, the norn who stayed at Hoelbrak while prisoners were taken from outlying norn holds, eventually (somehow) getting close to his mother, slowly but surely beginning a relationship that, really, Braham needed for closure on the absence of his mother when he was younger.

Except Eir died before Braham could see her as the legend everyone sang songs about. Braham never witnessed the legendary aspect of Eir, which must be a downer. Not only that, he witnessed the death of his mother, he failed to save her, he failed as a protector, as someone strongly connected to Wolf. Eir just became a part of his pack, but then she died.

But she didn’t simply die. She died broken and bruised. She died betrayed. She died weaponless. She didn’t die a hero’s death. Her death was everything BUT honourable. She didn’t even fight. She couldn’t. She had no weapons and she was up against a creature who killed her with a single, powerful blow, after she had been taken as a prisoner. She had no last stand, she had no victory, no greater goal that she fought and died for. She died betrayed, weaponless, without any of the glory due for someone of her stature, someone who fought two elder dragons, killing one and lived to tell the tale, who then died as an escapee from a prison camp.

All anyone else will know is that Eir died fighting Mordremoth, a heroic end to such a legendary figure. But Braham knows the truth, he witnessed it first hand. If he told the truth about Eir’s death to anyone, her legend would be shattered. All her great accomplishments marred by an inglorious death, caused by imprisonment and betrayal. No norn would ever attempt to sully the name of someone such as Eir, who did so much and accomplished so much in her lifetime. And so, Braham can’t grieve, not in the traditional sense. He never witnessed the legend that his mother created for herself, which would have provided some form of closure as to why she could not be by his side when he was younger. He could not save her when she needed him the most. He saw her die in a fashion that no norn should ever perish. No songs will be sung of her death, not any that resemble the truth anyway. Songs and stories won’t fill the void in his heart that he now has, when he finally opened up to Eir, only to have it ripped away, and not from a human standpoint, but from a norn standpoint.

So I totally believe that Braham is acting in character from a norn perspective. He can’t form the words he needs to say in order to grieve, for fear of tarnishing Eir’s legend, the most sacred thing to a norn’s legacy. Having the struggle between the lack of closure and knowing the horrible truth, Braham can’t act the way any norn would act about another’s death because his situation is all too unique. I think these aspects could definitely, without a doubt be portrayed better in game, Braham isn’t written well enough in my opinion, but I feel that his reactions are at least justified from a norn perspective, considering their culture surrounding legends and legacies.

I like your explanation and why it works for you, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t do it for me. His whining is too much for someone supposedly so proud of his Norn heritage. An agree to disagree situation.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Sceylan.1078:

Taimi is annoying, but for me Braham is the worst character. Acts too much like a spoiled brat and doesn’t think with his brain only his whiny emotions.

A perfect rendition of a traumatized 16 year old boy from a culture that focuses on violence and self-reliance at the expense of support, though, gotta give them that.

Yes. If he were anything other than a Norn then the whining wouldn’t feel as out of place.

Lazarus is the negative after image of the PC that was the anomalous entity. He is the evil version of us.

Lazarus is Rytlock’s mom.

Lazarus is 3 quaggans in a trenchcoat on each other’s shoulders.

SirDrygan.1823:

ANET,

you do realised that DC Comics has a comic book named “Flashpoint” right?

Are you sure you can use that word and not get sued for it?

DC did not invent ‘flashpoint’. It is a common term.

GW2 is all about having the mechanics avoid pitting players against each other, unless they specifically sign up for it, like in WvW or PvP. This goes directly in the face of that.

azureai.9764:

joneirikb.7506:

So once I went there they had already done the largest difficulty reductions. And I find myself really sad that I missed that, because the maps seems so obviously designed to be the first taste of harder maps in the game.

A lot of those changes were definitely necessary. Attacking a group of Risen was suicide – they’d just spam CCs non-stop. No one had the CC breaks capable of dealing that much spam. And even if you did kill a Risen, the respawn time was a matter of a second (not plural).

You couldn’t take time to explore the map. And that’s antithetical to the game. Orr mobs weren’t smartly designed, they weren’t satisfying to defeat, they were just annoying.

Lahmia.2193:

It would be nice to see the maps advance plot wise. Aka clearing up the undead and reconstructing Orr to its former glory.

Even if there was a plot advancement, there’d still be Risen everywhere. Zhaitan’s minions didn’t die or deactivate with his death. They’re still trying to accomplish the Elder Dragon’s mission.

If you do the Caladbolg quest line they do point out that there has been some progress made on clearing out the risen after the defeat of Zhaitan, but there is still a lot of work to do. So there should be less risen everywhere, even if they aren’t gone yet.

Acnologia.6934:

another question is… what would happen to the world if all dragons die? i still think all dragons are part of a greater plan, a grater “structure”, like a sigil to keep most of the magic away from the physical world. like if ALL magic come to the “real” world, it can’t keep up starting to lose its “logic”…. i don’t know how to explain… english not my language XD in short if all the magic flow into the world, the world itself become part of the mists, like our in-game fractals, where logic is cast aside and time and space don’t follow any rational thought (anomalies).
AND that’s why we have Aurene! Our “last” dragon, our last “good sigil” who will take the place and the magic of the other dragons when we kill them……
HEAR ME!!! THE END IS NEAR!!! PRAY THE GODS HERETICS!!!

This is exactly what the game has been hinting at. Maybe just killing the dragon’s isn’t the best idea. We can’t just leave them alone to wreck everything, but killing them makes things worse. Both Taimi’s research and the role of Aurene will factor into this exact question by the way things are currently going.

It is kind of a neat idea, but GW1 is an entirely separate game client. It would be work done with no real benefit, and potentially drawbacks. What if GW1 gets discontinued before GW2? They would then have to go back and change this again to unlink the two.

Sounds like a good fractal storyline. Investigate if Mordy and Z are around somewhere in the mists or not.

zealex.9410:

the deap sea dragon isnnever coming simply because you never gonna get any water ever again in the game. As for primo no being the last kitten you ^^ hes the PRIME he has to be the last

Then he should be first. Otherwise his name should be Ultimordus.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Moonyeti.3296:

The desert was desolate in GW1, nobody lived there.

False. You had the Forgotten, Losaru centaurs, sand giants, riders, devourers, scarabs, griffons, hydras, etc. etc.

Other than the first three, no civilized races lived there due to the harsh habitat, but it wasn’t desolate – there were still living there (unlike the Desolation, which only had wurms, undead, elementals, and the few endangered species of grey giants). There’s also many patches of oases in the Crystal Desert, which have only grown due to the redirection of the Elon.

True, I should have said no civilizations or something as I was more going for the fact that while there were a few outposts, they were usually 2-3 explorers standing around an oasis pool, or they were ghosts or the like. Not even a village size were these places. What it feels like to go there the first time is to be about as far removed from civilization as you can get.

DarcShriek.5829:

Feanor.2358:

Why would Gleam care about masquerading as a mursaat? What does it gain him?

It keeps him hidden. Primordus has already tried to kill him. Why would Gleam’s mother lie about her lair being the size of a single grain of sand?

Also, his mother had a keen interest in the mursaat. He may know a lot about them.

If that was the motivation, there are still a million better choices than Mursaat. Better to pick a race that everyone doesn’t hate if the only motive is to hide your identity. As for the grain of sand thing, think of it like the TARDIS from doctor who.

Acnologia.6934:

Hello. I’m a noob when it comes to gw1 stuff. As the expansion number 2 comes closer day after day, everytime i look at the map the only place where i can think there is enough space for a expansion like HoT is the right low corner of the map that after some research i discovered it is this crystal desert.
Now.
Forgot my thoughts about where the next expansion will be. I found myself intrigued with this place. So what is the lore of this place? What flora and fauna can we observe there? What kind of resources (is that place full of gold? Because every image i found there are golden things everywhere) do you think it contains? There are special characters around there that can be connected to gw1? (I found something about a lich king ruling the desert with an undead army! Cool!) Lazarus is somewhat releated to this place? Ty

The desert was desolate in GW1, nobody lived there. There were a few explorers that set up trade outposts and such for player convenience, but no civilizations were there. There were a lot of cool ruins and giant bones. Overall, it felt like this remote dangerous place. The cool lich ruling things is a bit farther south in Elona, which is separated from Tyria by the Crystal Desert. Lazarus had nothing to do with this place at all in GW1. We shall see about GW2.

The atmosphere of the crystal desert was incredible in GW1, and I would love to see it again.

No! I am the hero, the rest of you all are the NPC’s!

…really though, always good stuff to keep in mind.

Zaraki.5784:

But why a personal debuff instead of a completely different map instance for those who want to play on hard mode?

In my mind it would be to not split the map population. This would be my issue with such a system. Using this debuff method would avoid that issue.

Menadena.7482:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think the default is the hyphen key next to 0 but you can change it in the option menu. There should also be a small icon that pops up above (or near it) your health bar which you can also click.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Coordinated_Attack_

There is a keyboard equivalent? Cool! I use my mouse as little as possible in the game so it is nice to know I do not have to rely on it to hit that icon.

I am guessing that was in the instructions somewhere? I was doing normal attacks forever before I finally asked my guild what I should do and now it seems I am not the only one that did not realize it.

It was unclear exactly when to do it, It took me a few rounds of her making the circle before I figured it out too. As for the special attack, I highly recommend rebinding it to somewhere within easy reach because sometimes it only pops up for a second. I ended up remapping it to ‘Q’ and it has made all of these LS missions a lot easier.

Another thing that probably throws people off is how big mastery progression plays into it. Playing VB with full gliding is a lot easier and more fun than with just basic (or no) gliding like when you first get there. By the time you have the masteries unlocked if you have moved on because the maps were too hard, go back and try again. The early impression may now be wrong.

Ashen.2907:

Moonyeti.3296:

Ashen.2907:

Silmar Alech.4305:

Djinn.9245:

When someone who is the equivalent of a NATO Commander decides to work with people, he can’t just pull some college student into his group without people asking questions (normally). And what would really happen is that the Asura would deal with the situation. Whether that would end up better or worse isn’t what I’m concerned with.

You are an agent from the Arcane Council, aren’t you? You report to Phlunt. You have as much imagination as the Arcane Council: none, apparently. For you, it is not RIGHT that a 15 year old child builds his own golem and designs part of the logistics behind the fight against an elder dragon. For you, it cannot be what MUST not be.

But, it is written in the script. There is precedent in (fantasy) history. It fits the story. It doesn’t violate nature laws or story continuity. She has a nice personality and a fault that balances her ingenuity.

There is one thing a child of this age is missing in comparison to an adult: the sense of responsibility. The ability to see the consequences of own actions and take responsibility for it with all consequences.

Because of this, in real life, you don’t want a child in a serious business. But in our story, we are not in a serious business. It’s all fantasy. If it were a serious business, we ourselves would not enter the jungle and approach Mordremoth without any clue how to defeat him. Remember: we found his weak spot as late as in the last mission. Instead, in real life, we would set up research about the elder dragons. Something the Arcance Council and the 3 orders do, and the Inquest. For years.

But we are the heroes, we go straight into the fight. And we win. That’s because we are the heroes, and Taimi is part of our heroship. Because of that she is as believable as we all.

In this regard, she is even more believable than ourselves as pact commander: Taimi in fact does perform research before she requests actions. We instead, we always went straight into action. We are the pact commander and let the fleet perish in the jungle – that’s nothing a commander with any responsibility would let happen in real life.

Are we still the pact commander? I thought someone else bore that title, and responsibility for the fleet’s destruction.

No longer the pact commander (though we keep the commander title) but we were still pact commander when Mordy took out the fleet, so some of the responsibility goes to us still.

My mistake then. I thought that Trahearne had commanded the fleet.

Trehearne was Pact Marshal – Top dog of the pact. We were the next tier below him, his right hand men / women. So yeah, Trehearne bears more responsibility than the commander for the fleet destruction, but obviously we played a part in that decision.

Ashen.2907:

Silmar Alech.4305:

Djinn.9245:

When someone who is the equivalent of a NATO Commander decides to work with people, he can’t just pull some college student into his group without people asking questions (normally). And what would really happen is that the Asura would deal with the situation. Whether that would end up better or worse isn’t what I’m concerned with.

You are an agent from the Arcane Council, aren’t you? You report to Phlunt. You have as much imagination as the Arcane Council: none, apparently. For you, it is not RIGHT that a 15 year old child builds his own golem and designs part of the logistics behind the fight against an elder dragon. For you, it cannot be what MUST not be.

But, it is written in the script. There is precedent in (fantasy) history. It fits the story. It doesn’t violate nature laws or story continuity. She has a nice personality and a fault that balances her ingenuity.

There is one thing a child of this age is missing in comparison to an adult: the sense of responsibility. The ability to see the consequences of own actions and take responsibility for it with all consequences.

Because of this, in real life, you don’t want a child in a serious business. But in our story, we are not in a serious business. It’s all fantasy. If it were a serious business, we ourselves would not enter the jungle and approach Mordremoth without any clue how to defeat him. Remember: we found his weak spot as late as in the last mission. Instead, in real life, we would set up research about the elder dragons. Something the Arcance Council and the 3 orders do, and the Inquest. For years.

But we are the heroes, we go straight into the fight. And we win. That’s because we are the heroes, and Taimi is part of our heroship. Because of that she is as believable as we all.

In this regard, she is even more believable than ourselves as pact commander: Taimi in fact does perform research before she requests actions. We instead, we always went straight into action. We are the pact commander and let the fleet perish in the jungle – that’s nothing a commander with any responsibility would let happen in real life.

Are we still the pact commander? I thought someone else bore that title, and responsibility for the fleet’s destruction.

No longer the pact commander (though we keep the commander title) but we were still pact commander when Mordy took out the fleet, so some of the responsibility goes to us still.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

ChiSama.2590:

And the next LS map will be…

Isn’t that just Bastion of the Penitent? The latest raid?

If you are talking about the 80 zone mark, yes.

Faline.8795:

- No random dungeon matchmaking. Yes, burn me at the stake. I’m shy and don’t like to make a group or ask to join a group. I’d much rather the system make a group for me.

My apologies if you are already aware of this, but the LFG tool you don’t have to ask to join a group. When you see a group posted and hit the join button you get added to the group. No chitchat or anything, just click and you are in.

Lahemic.6097:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

1. Roleplaying is encouraged through community efforts rather than the developers attempting to hint or encourage RP through certain realm labels. Encouraging roleplaying would open more playstyles, immersion, and also give people a chance to develop their character.

Role play has never been truly encouraged or supported by this game. They did it no favors when they megaservered not only the PvE maps but also the cities. It took years for them to add a few new emotes. Requests to add a role play chat or to decrease the reach of /say chat have gone unanswered as have requests for such things as a chair to sit on or a mug to drink from (items that could be sold in the gemstore to help recoup the cost of designing them). Their attitude towards role play can be described as benevolent indifference, where they neither actively support nor go out of their way to hinder. I don’t see them changing this as it seems they do not find role play to be of value. I think they are short sighted in this attitude as role play gives people something to do and a reason to log on for long periods of time.

The possibilities of Immersion, character development, and most importantly, social interaction would be endless with more catering to Roleplaying! Of course, I’m not implying ERP like I use to see on WoW’s Moonguard server. I discovered fetishes that I didn’t even know exist.

Ha! I used to take the long walk down the tram tracks between Stormwind and Ironforge (PvE server), just to look in the corners and out of the way spots. I came across and Elf and Dwarf doing some ERP, obviously thought ducking way back here would get them some privacy. I nope’d out of there in a hurry.

Personally I would love to see a game say “You know what? We are not aiming for 100% balance. We will make everything possible for every class, but styles are different so some things may be harder for one class over another. Another part of the game could be the opposite, so it works out in the end.”

That way, you decide what to play based on if it is fun or not. You still balance, but not on a micromanaged level that doesn’t ultimately end in balance anyway.

Not GW2, it wasn’t designed for it, but someday, some game…

Rauderi.8706:

Moonyeti.3296:

As someone earlier mentioned, they would have to address the issue of people hanging around fishing accidentally scaling up nearby events that they are not taking part in. But if they found a way around the issue, sounds like a fun thing to add.

My suggestion is that mobs aggro fishermen first.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, GW2 style.

If people are buying it they should leave it, but they really should at least rename it. It feels like a trick to steal money from people that don’t know better. After all, when you are new, you don’t know what things are really valuable or not, and here are the devs of the game saying “give us a few more $$ and here is a package of things that will be useful.” If the name didn’t imply what it does it wouldn’t seem so shady.

As someone earlier mentioned, they would have to address the issue of people hanging around fishing accidentally scaling up nearby events that they are not taking part in. But if they found a way around the issue, sounds like a fun thing to add.

It’s a little hard to answer because you have some masteries to unlock along the way your 1st time through, gliding being one of them. This put the brakes on things for me, as I had to stop the story progression to level up a mastery before I could continue. Probably took me 10 -12 hours for the whole thing the first time.

Chun.5827:

Moonyeti.3296:

Menadena.7482:

Feanor.2358:

Arnox.5128:

I imagine this would be really easy to implement too

Sigh… As a game programmer, this sort of comments make me feel like this

You get that with all kinds of programming. Every time a user wants some change and says ‘this should be simple, just…’ I just assume their estimated time for writing/testing the feature is off by at least a magnitude and will probably have unanticipated results.

Yeah. A lot of the time though, you can at least see why something would logically seem easy to a layperson though. In this case unless you are completely baffled by the general capabilities of computers this one should seem obviously hard.

There’s a good reason as to why customers should never set the engineering scope.

I’ve read your explanations, and they don’t tell me much about what is actually involved in allowing a “offline” mode.

If I was a client, and I asked you for a proposal. I would deem your explanation insufficient, and you would lose out on the contract. From what you have said, you have no idea how the communication infrastructure works, what processes are being used, and what is the philosophy behind their architecture.

“There’s a good reason as to why customers should never set the engineering scope.”

This statement is false, the client is a important part of setting the “engineering scope”. Many conferences are held and documents are exchanged, in the process of creating and defining the product. What is being delivered to the client, is stated out exactly.

Of course the client is important in deciding engineering scope. They are the usually the origin of whatever is being requested, and they are the ones you want to be satisfied with the end result. This is why I said they should not set the scope. They know what they want but not how long it will take to make it.

Djinn.9245:

Cyninja.2954:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really sick and tired of people taking the complaints regarding one of the toughest story boss fights (that’s why there are these threads and why they nerfed it) and going to the opposite extreme “why does everyone want it to be a faceroll?” Who, in any of these threads, said that their solution to the fact that they find it too difficult is for Anet to make it a faceroll? Can no one who says this type of thing imagine that there is an entire scale of difficulty between the two extremes? I laugh every time I see one of those comments.

Toughest story boss fights means little when every other boss fight was “stand there and half afk press 1”.

For everyone? How do you know that?

Cyninja.2954:

When people finished the Zhaitan fight most were rightfully disapointed with how patheticly easy it is, there was absolutely 0 sense of immersion or accomplishment.

What people? Zhaitan also initially had threads like this…

Zhaitan used to require a party to do it though, a person’s impression of the difficulty will likely depend on what version they did.

Menadena.7482:

Moonyeti.3296:

Menadena.7482:

Feanor.2358:

Arnox.5128:

I imagine this would be really easy to implement too

Sigh… As a game programmer, this sort of comments make me feel like this

You get that with all kinds of programming. Every time a user wants some change and says ‘this should be simple, just…’ I just assume their estimated time for writing/testing the feature is off by at least a magnitude and will probably have unanticipated results.

Yeah. A lot of the time though, you can at least see why something would logically seem easy to a layperson though. In this case unless you are completely baffled by the general capabilities of computers this one should seem obviously hard.

There’s a good reason as to why customers should never set the engineering scope.

True of all fields. The phrase ‘this should be easy’ should be banned if you do not have experience in the field. Often VERY specialized experience as, oh, the preferred text editors for web programmers may not be the same as the preferred text editors for game programmers.

We are looking at why this could not be done, maybe how to do it if the company said it was their #1 2017 priority? My guess would need almost a complete rewrite of the engine, hopefully utilizing existing graphics/sound resources.

I would be skeptical that they could pull it off by the end of 2017, it would be a multi year effort most likely. Any one of the many things that would need to be added would take a ton of time. As an example of one, the OP mentioned bringing back the heroes / henchmen idea as an easy way to make up for not having other players. They were in GW1, GW2 game engine is based of GW1 engine, should be easy! Only in GW2 we have full 3d movement, unlike GW1. The maps were designed to be navigated by a party of players, not NPCs. The AI and map work to get henchmen to be able to accompany you in a competent way would be huge. I am picturing taking a henchman party through a jumping puzzle with combat for example.

Rauderi.8706:

Amaimon.7823:

zealex.9410:

Amaimon.7823:

Taimi’s the one source of fun this otherwise ruined world of crybabies and emo mesmers

cough cough canach cough cough

I meant joy-fun,
Canach’s fun, too, yea. But he’s like the older brother who’s seen a little too much of the world. So he’s just sarcastic all the time, because, who knows, maybe he just doesn’t give a skritt anymore.
I can already imagine if Primordus and Jormag are pitted, and Primordus completely annihilates Jormag and absorbs all his magic and Canach will be there
don’t raise your hands if you saw it coming, there’ll be too many to count

[forumrage]
OMG Canach is so evil and snide all the time. UGH, I wish someone would kill him.
[/forumrage]

The above was sarcasm, obviously. :P
I’m just getting so done with psychotic aversions to every biconics character. The “Kill Braham & Marjory” thread went on far longer than it should have. Then this weirdo Taimi-hate, with some off-topic Rytlock-bashing on the side. I get it, forums, let’s just kill all the characters and not have any story whatsoever. -_- Geez.

Meanwhile, I’m patiently waiting for Canach be more than a plant that sprouts pithy one-liners. That said, I’m very eager to see how he develops now that he’s free of Mordremoth and Anise.

As long as the quality of writing keeps improving, I think this trend will slowly die off. When these characters were introduced the writing was in a pretty shallow place, and these characters were two dimensional. Some improvements were already seen in LW season 2, but for me anyway I didn’t start noticing big changes until HoT and the LW season 3 seems to have good direction to the character development. Personally I was really unimpressed with how shoehorned in they all felt in LW season 1 and it took awhile for that first impression to wear away for me.

Menadena.7482:

Feanor.2358:

Arnox.5128:

I imagine this would be really easy to implement too

Sigh… As a game programmer, this sort of comments make me feel like this

You get that with all kinds of programming. Every time a user wants some change and says ‘this should be simple, just…’ I just assume their estimated time for writing/testing the feature is off by at least a magnitude and will probably have unanticipated results.

Yeah. A lot of the time though, you can at least see why something would logically seem easy to a layperson though. In this case unless you are completely baffled by the general capabilities of computers this one should seem obviously hard.

There’s a good reason as to why customers should never set the engineering scope.

Your assertion that this would be easy is wrong. Even if by some miracle the netcode was for some reason written in a way that it could be switched to 100% client side (which in itself is extremely unlikely and would require it’s own huge effort to get in that state) the game would need to be completely redesigned as well. The gameplay is balanced for persistant multiplayer, not on demnd single player, so encounters, spawn rates, prices, timers, EVERYTHING would need to be reworked.

Also your few potential drawbacks you indicate, those are the main obvious ones that maintain security. Yes it is possible to reverse engineer and cheat, people attempt this all the time, and a monitored online presence can maintain security better than a static code base.

So no, the pros do not outweigh the cons by a long shot. GW2 was so thoroughly designed as a multiplayer game that there are no easy (or good) ways to single-playerify it .

I don’t mind her personality myself, I find it fits her. In my opinion I think they have done so much better with Taimi this season. Keep her as a smart in the lab person more, keep her talking to us on the radio, keep this child that has a physical condition that leaves her very vulnerable out of direct combat!! It was so frustrating to have her tag along so her golem could conveniently break down so we have to save her. Maybe use some of that authority as the commander to have her serve where she would be more useful.

Ashandar.2570:

Great idea! It would make the halls seem more alive
Oh and I wouldn’t mind a little add-on in the arena where you can have captured dragon minions fighting each other to the death.. It’d be great fun to watch mordrem take on risen or branded! Why not spice up your weekend with a fight between the risen priest of Grenth and stavemaster Adryn.. they’re critters too, right?

Make it even seedier, allow us to place bets on who will win the fight!

Ragnar Stormcaller.6253:

I would really, reallly, really like to see Lions Arch destroyed again.
I don’t care how it is done. Dragon’s, Asura experiments gone wrong, Destroyers, whatever… as long as it is destroyed – totally.
And then I would like to see it rebuilt more like it’s original style, a pirate base, cobbled together with scrap.

Ok, I get there are some dev’s somewhere that are really proud of their redesigned LA and may be a bit upset that I’m trying to rain of their parade. I get that. I really do. It’s just that LA as it stands today has no character, no sense of place, it just doesn’t look like it should be in Tyria.
As I understand it from the lore, a good lump of the population died the last time round. So how on earth did the remaining survivors summon up the resources to create a disney theme park (including cutey quaggans and flutey sounding water spouts) rather than the shantytown they should have been left with? I don’t get it. And I surely don’t like it.

So come on devs, have a heart and write another LApocalyspe into the living world sometime in the future and give us back our pirate town. Please.

I definitely miss old LA as well, that place had character. The new one, although I don’t like it as much does make sense why it is theme park like, as it was largely funded by the consortium. Similar to what they did at southsun, they made it a tourist attraction on purpose.

Amaimon.7823:

Fivona.5061:

Ayrilana.1396:

Fivona.5061:

DeWolfe.2174:

Fivona.5061:

Abusing game mechanics allowed.

Friendlisted many afk farmers to check their status, they still “play” everyday for months.

Reported billions of them, opened tickets. Anet says it is forbidden and we “AWARE” “CARE”.

I don’t see any actions taken.

Be thankful as abusing the reporting feature is bannable too.

Abuse ?
Nevermind. I won’t argue with “Afk Farmer”.

It’s not really constructive to make a personal attack on them by claiming they’re just an “AFK farmer” simply because they disagree with you. Why not counter their statement about abusing the reporting feature as being bannable instead?

Maybe reporting “AFK Farmers” not abuse ?
Meh. Why i even try. Probably another Afk Farmer defending their toxic kind.

you: I disagree with you, so you must be a toxic AFK-farmer
P2: maybe you should come up with constructive arguments instead of insults?
you: You defend them, you must be another toxic AFK-farmer

I think wherever the toxins come from, we can pretty much guess who’s taking the lethal dosage here

Looks like another case of bloodstone madness.

Ticky.5831:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

I could see doing it like a reverse challenge mote – pick the story only mode and it switches to the easy mode no loot version.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m glad you two understand what the OP is saying. I’ve read it twice and I still don’t know what the point is.

I think the important take away is that IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!
(Yeah it was just word salad to me as well)

Like the above posters, a mix of all of them. Auto target for roaming about, Tab for picking out one target in a small group, mouse target for picking out one target during a zerg fest.

Daniel Handler.4816:

The story has focused a lot on Glint 2.0 and a quasi Mursaat despite the fact we still have a benevolent dragon champion. The last thing that emphasized the Pale Tree’s potential influence was seeing her in All. There are so many unanswered questions.

• How long is she going to be in recovery?
• Will she better humanity with her mind powers?
• Why doesn’t she teach Taimi how to to make a Jormag version of Caladbolg instead of this machine nonesense?
• Why doesn’t she train to expand her ability to process the Dream, especially the prophetic parts?

To the point of why not a Caladbolg custom made for each Elder Dragon, there is no reason the Pale Tree couldn’t do that I suppose. After all, the Pale Tree was a ‘reformed’ dragon minion of Mordremoth, but Caladbolg was used primarily against Zhaitan, so no reason why she couldn’t make a sword effective against other ED’s as well. But that was at a time when the plan was “Hunt down the ED’s and kill them one by one”, but now we are starting to think that just killing them may not be the best idea either. We are trying something different with Aurene I think, sort of a replacement ED that will be on our side. Something to fill the role that killing other ED’s will leave vacant – to regulate the flow of magic on Tyria. Going with Taimi’s plan could be seen as a way to try a different approach. Also the Pale Tree is still recovering, and making a fancy new magic sword would probably take a lot out of her right now.