Guild Wars 2

Krim Dal.5416:

ANet…don’t listen to the haters. Please keep up the good work. I intimately know what it takes to pull off something like this, and think you guys should be commended for even trying it. I had an absolute blast, and please pass on to your art & design teams that my guild and I were blown away by the new island…truly amazing stuff.

(FYI…no one in our guild got precursers…I’m thinking the numbers of ppl who received them are extremely exaggerated and overblown)

Krim, there are a number of people with legitimate issues who are not being haters. I LOVE GW2, but I think the design of this was flawed. For one, too many people were excluded because of the design, when GW2 has always said they wanted to make sure their game never exludes anyone because of time, issues, etc.

Several people have already quoted the game designers saying precisely that… then they come out with an event design that excluded quite a few people anyway.

So I think we can have issues with this design choice without being haters.

Valatar.7590:

Now you just need to cap it off by having an ingame announcement from the developers in a PvP zone and forget to turn on the invulnerable flag for the head designer. At that point, GW2 will have cemented its place in online gaming history forever.

Wait… there was a game designer in game… and he wasn’t invulnerable?

What team was he on? And did he die quickly or something?

LOL I’d pay money to see that hahaha!

I have to say regarding the rest of your post, I think it was a little extreme, but otherwise I agree with the sentiment.

and it was pretty funny, hehe

I have to say, the choice to make some events one shot is a rather poor one, if you want to keep your customer base happy.

In fact, I think the choice to make a weekend-long event poor as well. Between people in different time zones, and people with different work schedules, etc, it seems to me that making a week long event with repeating events to be the far superior choice.

After all, it worked for the halloween event. Why make it so much harder for this one?

Let me give you an example. I’m a divorced father of 3, and I had my kids that weekend. My kids come first, so I spent most of my time with them, and only played a little. So, I missed out on the majority of the event.

I was willing to make that sacrifice for the more important things in life, but I’m sure I’m not unique – I read one guy is the manager of a restaurant who has to manage his place on weekends.

A week long event gives people a chance to participate who might have bad weekend schedules. Furthermore, having reiterative events would allow everyone to participate. For example, the Mad King showing up on a repeating schedule in Lion’s Arch allowed everyone a chance to get him.

Alternatively, making it an instanced event, like the Battle for Lion’s Arch personal story.

I know that the short bit of time I was able to play, during the investigation segment, the npcs I needed to talk to were bugged and I was unable to progress; all that was left to me was going to Southsun Cove, kill random things and do a few of the repeating events and jumping puzzles, but between bad timing and bugs, I was basically left out of the event completely. The Real Life issue is my bad, but the bugs weren’t, and with some more expansive decisions ala Halloween, I think you’d have a lot more happy customers here.

But this became a serious buggy lagfest that also left a lot of people unable to participate at all, and maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like this is getting a LOT more complaints than anything else done to date with this game.

The implementation of events of this type need to be given some serious rethinking.

(as a side note off topic here, I want to agree with someone on the mad king’s clocktower: it was nearly impossible to do not because it was hard, but because I could never see my body, especially as an Asura, with everyone else there; with the new jumping puzzles, at least now it will depopulate some and it will be easier to do. But events with time limits before they are gone altogether and then body blocking issues added in need some serious rethinking, guys)

You know, I’d be pissed if I played and didn’t get a chance to get to the chest because of a bug after playing for hours.

But I wouldn’t be pissed if my buddy got a precursor and I didn’t; MMO games have generally always had good loot vs bad loot, unless a drop from a particular creature always has the same thing.

So, it’s a part of the game play. I have no problem with it.

But this event was still bad… the timing and thus creating an exclusive nature, plus the lag, bugs, etc. I wasn’t able to play much because of RL issues – my problem – but the few times I was able to play, bugs prevented me from progressing, and this being a weekend only thing meant that the rare times I was able to play was essentially time wasted, as I was unable to progress, and the event would end before I could make another attempt.

So, loot issue is not an issue IMHO, but the game design of a single weekend event is. They should have at least made it a week long instead, so they could debug it and let everyone participate.

Ok, so I was frustrated that I was unable to participate much in the event for this weekend… but I can’t blame anyone for that. I’m recently divorced, I only get my kids every other weekend, meaning 2-3 days every two weeks, and as it turned out, this was one of my weekends to have my kids.

So, I missed out on almost everything. Sigh…. But again, no blame assigned here, just… frustrated at the timing, and the shortness of the event. Couldn’t they make these events week-long instead of weekend-long?

Oh well. Again, no blame assigned, mostly just frustrated at the timing.

Anyway, the little bit I WAS able to do, however, seemed broken. For instance, I had to go talk with that NPC after you threaten Blingg or whatever his name was… you know, in the hanto camp I think it was? Or where ever. Anyway, when I arrived, he was lying on his back, like he had just been defeated… or he was taking a nap. And I couldn’t get him to talk to me, and continue the investigation.

I had a few other issues like this. And then, of course, I heard about the awful lag monster attacking Lions Arch and such….

I think what I really dislike is the event was so short, when they ran into the seemingly inevitable problems, they had little time to correct issues, meaning lots of people who had limited time ended up missing out, which is unfortunate.

Anyway. If I had had all weekend, I suppose I’d have a different opinion. I just wish it had been longer, the way halloween was. One weekend just doesn’t feel like enough time.

nofo.8469:

Its not worthless but its far from optimal for everything.

It needs a redesign or a buff.

You can do “just fine” with a scepter

Or you can do more than “just fine” with every other weapon combination.

Disagree. Completely.

There are plenty of reasons to use the scepter. For one, what if I don’t want to engage in melee. I prefer hovering at the edges of battle, letting my friends engage them in melee while I do my striking from a distance out of harms way. This is especially handy with Greatsword in the other weapons slot, cripple anyone that might be eyeballing you, blasting them away, then switch back and hammer them with more confusion and illusions.

I’m not saying it’s better than sword main-hand… but it’s not worse either. I suppose someone could make an argument for a possible few percentage points one way or the other in damage output for instance, but for me, I rely a lot on shattering illusions constantly, its my style, and I need the constant flow of illusions.

Plus, I love using confusion too, which I get more of with scepter.

In other words, you may PREFER sword, but that’s a far cry from being able to justify that sword is flat out better.

Which reminds me: to those who say that in pve the mesmer needs more bursty… what the heck do you think illusion shattering is? combine that with chaos storm, what else do you freakin need? LOL

I used Portal to ferry people into the beginning of Troll’s End – a lot of people don’t even know about it.

Me and another mesmer would pal around, creating portals to help each other if we missed a jump.

It’s a lot of fun, and I enjoyed helping people.

I think mantras are fine, i just focus on illusions because they are more fun.

I do admit though that sometimes I want to play around with a mantra or signet build….

Perhaps. I find shatter a useful skill, particularly since I’m trying to make use of the traits that allow all shatters to add confusion, and confusion duration increases 33%.

Between that, the 20% illusion recharge upgrade, and my prodigious amount of illusion skills I’m using, I can afford to do so – I’m shattering all the time and still keeping illusions up.

Now, that being the case, sure, I could just maintain phantasms directly too. Sometimes I do. Depends on the situation.

portal… really? Hm, honestly I hadnt played around with that much, but I remember the trailer video… I suppose that would make you a lot more dodgy, eh? LOL

That reminds me, anyone get any good use out of blink?

Tina, that’s awesome, lol, although I’ve not been able to solo champions. Veterans yes, champions no.

you really soloed a champion?

I use scepters all the time. When I have three up I either shatter them or switch weapons, depending.

In fact, I trend to shatter the three with mind wrack or very of frustration right before the next clone spawns, then shatter that with distraction, then switch weapons and start the cycle all over again, or confusion and mage right before the switch.

The scepter is not a worthless weapon. I do just fine with it, and that before the buff it just received.

Ok stormcrow, I haven’t seeen all those… but I saw one who did an experiment with ettin and ended up with a gigantic supergenius that rivaled her own.

Asurans are in a way their own worst enemies.

I do want to say, though, that Asurans, while I would say aren’t the most violent (Charr going around calling other races MEAT for instance), they do have some serious ethical problems.

Take the story of Cadeyrn, the founder of the Nightmare Court, and his story:

“He was there to witness the aftermath of Malomedies’ first bitter contact with the asura…”

and

“Malomedies is a firstborn sylvari, the first one to awaken during the Cycle of Night and is its Luminary. He is an astronomer and mathematician, credited with charting the skies and bringing mathematics to the sylvari. He also works to predict the future through current events – as he calls, a “watcher of the world.” He was the first sylvari to meet with another race, the asura, who promptly experimented on him. "

and:

“As an example of what the Inquest has done, they have in the past taken members of intelligent races and trapped their spirits inside of golems. These experiments, normally done with elementals of lesser sentience, involved physical death for the subject and enslaved them in the process. The other asura think this is going too far.

Their master, Kudu, who was formerly Snaff’s apprentice, was also one of the first asura met by the sylvari, and the one responsible for what happened to Malomedies.”

Yeah. Love them Asura. “It’s a new race! Quick, vivisect him!”

Snort…. LOL… now, I read elsewhere in the wiki that that particular Asura was himself an Inquest, but if so, then why aren’t the Inquest and Nightmare Court at war?

Honestly, though, those Asura are just begging to have something really bad that they are directly responsible for happen to them, hehe

(PS, I play and love my Asuran.. hehe)

I tend to prefer to operate at range, and as such I prefer the scepter. Also, I’m constantly shattering clones, so having more clones always coming up when my other skills are recharging is nice.

Besides, I really like using confusion as well, and the #2 block skill is a nice thing to have in emergencies.

Hm. I haven’t done any real pvp since beta, and I read somewhere that supposedly clone creation isnt breaking tracking… is that true? If it isn’t true, then spinning off several clones at once when your scepter makes a clone as well would be nice in adding to the, er, confusion on trying to relock on you…. I know, theorycraft since I haven’t been doing pvp, but just curious….

I love the scepter and use it more often than the sword. First of all, I like using confusion a lot, and the parry ability is nice too. Add on continually restacking illusions… the one thing I DONT like is that it might end up overwriting my phantasms.

But I’m constantly spinning out and shattering illusions, so its been preferable to the sword for me. Especially since I try to keep my distance, usually using greatsword to keep the foes off me.

Now, that being the case, if I expect to be doing a lot of close quarters combat, then yeah, I’ll switch to sword main hand. But regardless, I’ve always preferred the scepter.

Oh man….

I was running around with a Ranger friend of mine… I was set up for max survivability at the time. I was running with offhand torch for prestige and the mage, decoy, mirror images, and phantasmal… guardian? I’m bad at names, but the guy that takes half damage.

Main hand I had the scepter, for making multiple clones, plus the main hand parry… plus confusion, and my weapon switch was staff for chaos storm and chaos armor.

For traits, I had included the one that grants you a clone on dodge, and the one that grants you a clone and cloaks you when you hit 25% health, and the +33% confusion duration.

so, we were running around, and stumbled into this dredge vault area with a dwarf door; I happened to have two dwarf keys and I said, “Hey, how much you want to bet this is the door these keys are meant for?”

now, we had just got done cleaning out dredge, but they were respawning fast. We had finally cleared them out, I opened the door, and out comes a veteran destroyer troll with a handfull of destroyer crabs.

And the dredge respawned.

It turned into a pitched, frantic, desperate three way battle, and my ranger pal went down fast. Meanwhile I was spinning out illusions as fast as I could, dodging, laying down chaos storms and armor, retreating, running in, trying to break tracking off me and get them fighting each other….

Eventually, I won. My comrade sat there defeated the entire time watching.

now, with that in mind, he also does a LOT more damage than I do. Where survival hasn’t been an issue, he takes down the enemies before I can barely touch them. But where survival HAS been the issue, I’ve outlasted him nearly every single time.

Mesmers are fantastic! You have to be blindingly fast on your feet, spinning out illusions like there’s no tomorrow, but if you do it right….

And even when downed, if you get a lucky teleport with Skill #2, you might end up hidden behind a barrier and able to completely recover without them retracking on you, something that, as far as I’m aware of, no other profession can brag about.

Traffic, that’s all, nothing here to see, move along….

I just found a rather interesting game bug with an npc named Farrk. He is an npc asura at the bottom level of rata sum,. near the inquest recruitment station.

His dialogue says “AUTOEXECT”, and the two dialogue options are “IsAsura01” and “NotAsura01”

Selecting either one does get you regular dialogue after that. Clearly, though, someone needs to go change some text in the programming

I’m attaching a screen shot.