Guild Wars 2

It’s been there since launch. However, I think much like the first game, if you have “Post-processing Effects” turned off, you won’t see it.

It comes down to which one suits your playstyle the best.
It sounds clichéd, but it’s honestly true.
I have all professions at 80 except for Necro and Guardian.

First was my warrior. This was fairly easy, although certain things were harder because I was still learning the game. In particular, it took me a while to get my head around gear that compliments a build. Orr was hard because everything CCed you on release and pulled you, and I was doing it in blues and greens; let alone which, I was one of the first there on my server, so didn’t have other people to rely on.

Next up was my Ranger, who by comparison was a breeze. Survivability was incredibly high, levelling was fast, and Orr was a breeze. However, I am aware that it was made a lot easier because I understood the importance of gear second time around. Before even attempting Orr, my Ranger had a full set of exotics.

After that, I did my Mesmer. Mesmer is the first class I truly hated while levelling. Low levels were particularly problematic, as Mesmer has DPS issues early on. I levelled by crafting to 20 which probably didn’t help, and I hated the experience so much, I levelled from 60 to 80 again by crafting. The twist is that once I’d unlocked all of my skills and traits and again had got him a full exotic set, he very quickly became one of my favourite characters. Playing at top level with all the options available is a blast on Mesmer.

Engineer came next, and while he didn’t have the DPS problems of the Mesmer, I was quite bored while playing him. This probably comes down to ever-increasing over-familiarity with the levelling content more than anything else. Crafting to level has now become firmly entrenched in my playstyle, so again I crafted from 60-80. But again, at 80, he’s an absolute riot to play, especially in WvW.

Thief, much the same story as Engineer, although I was also quite shocked at how squishy he was in the open world while levelling. It would probably have been thrilling if he’d been my first character, but now it was tedious and frustrating. But again, at 80, exhilaratingly fun play, with a constant balance between risk and reward. Unlike most others out there, I also focus on Sword and Dagger, so it’s not a very spammy playstyle.

My last 80 so far is my Elementalist, and this is probably my least favourite class. It’s just so darned conventional. Sure, I know it doesn’t play like other casters in other games, but there still seems something just generic about the class to me. I also absolutely hated how squishy the class was, even compared to Thief. I can see the value of Ele in groups, but I just find it so boring to play. And the traitlines are pretty uninspiring to me too.
I crafted a good 40 levels with her.

What I take from this is that for my tastes, there are too many levels in the game; that build is too dependent on gear; and that I like a really active, smack them in the face, physical profession. Oh, and that levelling by crafting is an excellent alternative that can alleviate the boredom.

I still have Guardian and Necro to level, but I keep bouncing off of them. Let alone which, having an almost full stable of well-equipped 80s can be something of a distraction. The game’s just more fun to play at top level. The lower levels just lead to frustration at the lack of options.

Okay, if there was an exploit, fair enough, you needed to fix it. However, “Fixing” it by cutting off Guild Vault Transport for smaller guilds who can’t get Guild Merits is NOT a fix.
I’d come to grudgingly accept that guild bounties and therefore merits were probably always going to be out of reach of my guild, but now you’ve actually taken away a feature we had a use for.
You really ARE against small groups of friends playing together, aren’t you?

Edit: Oh, and I was going to buy gems for the first time since Halloween thanks to the excellent work done by the SAB team, but now?
Yeah, sod that.

I suspect this is really just a boasting thread in disguise.
Yes OP, you completed your monthly very quickly. Congratulations. Have a cookie.

I don’t understand why they don’t recycle the Unique item concept from Guild Wars 1, where almost every “Boss” had a chance to drop a maximum level, fixed stat item named after them. Hell, half the time, you’d even see said boss using that item in combat before killing them.

The only good elf is one that’s on fire.
Oh, and there are elves in tyria. See the picture below.
Still want to play one?
Didn’t think so.

To contribute, I’ve bought 2 weapon skins with Bauble Bubbles and had 3 more drop; 2 shields, one of which I gave to a friend, and one staff.
I’m keeping the staff & shield skins to see how high the prices go in a month or two.
So that’s about 3 in 50 for me

Josh, you seriously rock (egads, I feel like someone’s embarrassing Dad trying to get down with the “Kids” saying that).
Transparency is a wonderful thing.

I haven’t bought gems since November, but I may very well do this weekend; the only thing stopping me is the fact that there’s no way of me flagging my purchase as a thank you to you and your team.
I want to encourage more developments like yours, where things are out in the open, fun and rewarding, with no random rewards that can’t be attained through other means.
I don’t want to encourage more of the exploitative stuff like Black Lion Chests.

…is Moto in a wig.
Called it.

Yup.
I just love the attention to detail. Sure, there are a few unfinished bits in there, paths that feel like they should go somewhere but don’t.
But given the time constraints involved in producing this, it’s pretty incredible and an obvious labour of love.

I hope they will, but I had the same hope with the maps in the original game.
While they did go back and open up some areas there, there were still massive areas of all 3 maps left un-revealed.

I think they have grand ambitions prior to release that are visible to those looking for them, but post-release their work becomes more a matter of repair and maintenance rather than exposition.

I long to revisit my beloved Crystal Desert, and I’m cautiously optimistic it’ll open up some day, but there’s that devil on my shoulder telling me to look at ArenaNet’s back catalogue and consider things logically.

+1ing this, but be aware that people have been asking for this since beta.

Vayne.8563:

The information you put on that site is your character name. That’s it. The account name is what you use to log in. I said this in my response. So if you can get someone’s account name from here, how is having a character name worse?

Anyone who wants to hack an account and needs info on how to log in just needs to come here.

Honestly why ignore the part of my post when I did respond do you? As far as offensive, I’m not the one who’s calling people names.

Again ignoring the wood for the trees.
I’ve provided you with a non-standard vector of attack that is the most likely to work and WILL be catching some users of gw2lfg and you’ve chosen to ignore it.

I’ve stated how gw2lfg is a security risk. If you really want to know, read my previous post, and properly this time. If you need more information, Google phishing. I’m done here.

It has been a while since I did it, but I have found that the times I did this instance, like Capas above mentioned, some enemies would clip through scenery and thus become unkillable.

Unfortunately I think the Risen problem stems from the fact that people will probably be following their personal story as they level, and indeed use it as a yardstick while levelling. And the personal story is almost completely Risen-oriented from about level 40 onwards.
It’s no wonder people associate high levels with Risen.

You didn’t read the rest of my post, you just saw the “insult” and fired off a response.
If you’d read it, you would see how gw2lfg could possibly be a security threat.
And that spelling flame was too easy, I couldn’t resist. I was responding in kind as I found the tone of your post disrespectful and unnecessarily inflammatory, let alone ignorant.

Again, gw2lfg is a third-party site not controlled by ArenaNet. We have no idea of how secure the site is or whether it may be utilised to exploit their users. Hackers are clever if they see that there might be money to be made.

Gold sellers advertise over there, and gold sellers are proven account security risks. While some sellers out there may be “genuine”, the vast majority will attempt to steal your account if you buy through them.

Not everyone is savvy to the ins-and-outs of internet security, and I can guarantee that some visitors to gw2lfg will be clicking through the gold seller’s banner ads. At this point they’ve opened themselves up to malicious software installation.

When they get to the gold seller’s site, they will probably be asked to create an account.
A lot of people will use the same password for the account on the gold seller’s website as they use for the game. It’s a tragedy that people are still so ill-educated about internet security, but them’s the facts.

And you still say gw2lfg being a security risk is an exaggeration?

Vayne.8563:

Can you spell exaageration?

I can spell exaggeration. You obviously can’t.

And no, it’s not exaggeration. It should never have been possible in the first place.
This could genuinely balloon into online bullying and harassment, purely because players exasperated at the lack of LFG tools in game have resorted to using one outside the game and therefore out of ArenaNet’s control.

There are also unforeseen consequences.

This trolling is just the first example of someone exploiting gw2lfg.
Other things may follow; for example how secure is gw2lfg? What if someone was able to hack the site and link IP addresses and character names? Is there a possible account security problem here?

You can argue that people should use authentication etc. to protect their accounts, but once a third party starts handling sensitive account information, all bets are off.
What if someone manages to hack gw2lfg and have it logging keystrokes?

I could keep hypothesising for a while here, but I think you should get the gist by now.

Deposit Collectibles; man, I could never play another MMO without this.

Similarly, having access to all of the crafting materials you own while crafting without having to grab them from the bank. This wasn’t in during initial beta, but it was cool to see it get refined as time went on.

Being able to sell things in your inventory on the trading post from anywhere.

No need for parties in order to share rewards.

Player-instanced loot. This was in GW1, but still can only be found in the Guild Wars series.

The other thread about gw2lfg trolls highlights an increasingly concerning problem with the security of having your community use a third-party resource for group-finding.
You don’t have to register a name on gw2lfg, so anyone can claim to be you, resulting in trolling being very easy as people submit their in-game names to a source external to ArenaNet.
The only solution for this is for ArenaNet to implement an in-game LFG tool of the same quality as gw2lfg as soon as possible.
As it stands, there is currently a massive security hole just waiting to be abused. At the moment it’s trolling; it’s only a matter of time until it gets worse.

So as well as for customer convenience, they need to implement a decent LFG tool for the good of game security.

Of the six toons I have at level 80, I’ve crafted 4 from 60 to 80 as I couldn’t face the tedium of the Orrian slog.
In addition, my Mesmer and Elementalist crafted from 1 to 20 too, so in all they’ve had about 40 levels each from crafting.

I like the game at 80 when all options are available to me. I don’t feel as though I can properly make a build without having access to all trait points and exotic gear.

I honestly wish they’d kept the number of character levels the same as in GW1, especially when looking at Factions and Nightfall, where 1-20 was just the tutorial with the remaining 80% of the map being dedicated top-level content.

Levelling in GW2 is a chore after the first few toons.

Get all of them the world exploration star.
That should keep you busy for a while.

There’s a problem with the personal story.
It starts out great, with many options and branches, but over time consolidates into one boring storyline full of Trahearne and the Risen in Orr.
This picture shows exactly the problem.

Through multiple play-throughs with different alts, I’ve noticed other story threads that start out strong, but then peter out:

The Sylvari story thread about possible other trees.
The human / centaur war.
The Flame Legion.
The Inquest.
The Sons of Svanir.
The Skritt and the Great Destroyer.

Was the original intention to have these story threads remain strong throughout the course of the game with cross-pollination between lines?
Were these developed as potential future personal stories to be explored in expansions, a different Elder Dragon being the end boss of each line?

Or did ArenaNet just run out of time?

I think it’s a massive shame that the story becomes predictable and repetitive once the Pact is formed, and it really makes late game levelling of other characters a chore, as after 3 play-throughs, you’ve explored every last story option available to you post-Pact formation.

I can understand there were probably budget constraints meaning that while ArenaNet probably wanted to maintain the story branches throughout the game, they were restricted in what they could do. But will we be seeing these strong and interesting story-lines followed in the future?

Anybody here ever play MAG on the PS3?
After playing that, I find excuses like “to limit lag” laughable.
There you had up to 256 players in an FPS, no limit on the number of targets AoE could hit and all of this on a bloody console.

Remove the AoE limit, then let people figure out their tactics rather than having a knee-jerk reaction and neutering your game.

Make doors weaker, giving people a reason to stay in keeps and towers to defend.

Allow indirect fire, so defenders and attackers alike can lob attacks over walls.

Work on battlement collision detection and how it affects line-of-sight; Defenders shouldn’t have to jump on top of buttresses in order to get a clear shot.

Roofs on rams has been mentioned before, but yeah, this. Give the roof a health pool so that it has to be destroyed before damage can be done to those operating the ram.

Additionally, there should be locations that defenders can attack from where they also have protection above their heads.

Re-add body blocking from GW1, both friendly and enemy, so that it becomes impractical to have too many people squeezed into a small area.

I’d even say add friendly fire, but there’s too many opportunities to grief with FF turned on.

If all of your drops were ones you could use, you wouldn’t be selling or salvaging anywhere near as much gear.
I do agree that it can be frustrating to never receive equipment relevant to your profession, but unfortunately that’s the nature of the random number generator.
It is however possible to “Weight” the RNG so that it spits out stuff your profession can use more regularly than the other stuff.
However, I can’t honestly say whether ArenaNet have implemented such a weighting system or not.

I’ve been chasing crit rate recently on my warrior, and it has raised some interesting points.
I use all Knight’s gear, only exotic trinkets and a rare PVT backpiece.
I’ve seen my HB crit for over 16,000.
The precision rating on Knight’s is higher than on Berserker’s, so you crit more frequently. In group situations with the right utilities, my crit rate is almost always over 100%, and this is without precision enhancing runes. I do use a Superior Sigil of Perception on my rifle to optimise crit rate however.
The difference between Knight’s and Berserker’s top end damage isn’t massive, but with Knight’s you’re likely to crit more often with more survivability.
This is why I have little to no interest in buying a Berserker’s set of gear.
With the nerf to Quickness, I think I’m going to replace my melee weapon Rage sigils with +5% precision ones.

Good suggestion, +1ed.

Especially if they made the Top Hat wearable in combat

Here’s a quick and dirty mock-up to show what I mean:

Thanks Wolfheart, that gave me a giggle. I immediately pictured plastic snakes with “Made in Tyria” on their bellies, much like the plastic spiders from Halloween

You know what would look really good?
If you look at Final Rest’s main staff body, it has a lovely black and filigree silver pattern on the shaft.
Without the gargoyle top, that would make a gorgeous staff, very reminiscent of the classic magician’s wand with the black shaft and two white ends.

Sokar Rostau.7316:

What a crock. The primary thing driving sales of Transmutation Crystals is the simple fact that everybody gets to level 80 and needs them unless they want to be stuck wearing one of the same 3-4 skins from crafting and the dungeon of the month. The T3 sets are a blip on the radar in comparison.

Reading comprehension failure alert.
Notice I used the qualifier one of.
I didn’t say it was the primary thing.
Please, stop pouncing on everything in an attempt to make other posters look stupid and consider what you’ve written before posting.
You only end up looking aggressive, hostile and antisocial.

The only thing is, it can look a bit too bulky on larger frame humans males, making them look a bit tubby. I love the design work, but won’t use it ‘cos it makes my Mesmer look fat in other words.
Surprisingly, my favourite set in place of that is the bog-standard white “Apprentice” set.
It has clean lines, well defined dye zones and a lot of subtle detail that only comes out when viewed in certain lighting conditions. A lot of the panels have a Paisley pattern on them that’s barely visible.
Plus, the shoulders are quite subdued.

The Heritage Light armour for females however is wonderful apart from the stupid bloody cut-out on the front that serves no purpose other than to ruin the dignified look of the set by flashing the toon’s thighs and panties.

It should be, but it’s one of the primary things driving sales of fine transmutation stones, so it never will be.

I was tooling around in Diessa Plateau last night, when I remembered something that’s been niggling away at my subconscious since beta.

Where have all the snakes gone?

For those not in the know, one of the ambient creatures wandering the wilds in beta was the humble snake.
To be honest, I was looking forward to fighting giant ones; it would have added a nice Hyborian feel to proceedings

My assumption is that they were removed due to clipping and animation problems on death.

Are we ever likely to see snakes in game again?
They added a lot of flavour to the game.
Tasted like chicken :P

I comes down to the amount of stuff on screen.
Generally speaking, the further you can see and the amount of scenery objects on screen causes a reduction in framerate. It takes more power to render more.

There’s also something that other engines have suffered from in the past. I’m not privy to how GW2’s engine works, so this is pure conjecture, but maps in other games have suffered “memory leaks” from badly constructed level geometry. This gradually results in lower and lower framerates, until you either load another map or restart the game.

I doubt this happens so much in GW2 though, as I believe it relies heavily on “Streaming” of level geometry.

This is where the game is continuously loading stuff in the level into memory in an attempt to predict where you’re going next and have it ready for when you get there; think of it like a bubble whose borders extend just beyond your current visible horizon.
I’m 99% certain GW2 uses this technique, as a dead giveaway is that you have longer loading screens the further away you waypoint in the same map.
If you teleport to a waypoint that’s within sight, the load screen will be minimal, almost instant on SSD.
However, a waypoint further away and out of sight resides in an area not rendered by your streaming bubble, so the game has to create a new streaming bubble for you centred on that waypoint.

I hope that helps explain things.
And feel free to step in and correct me any game developer types with a better working knowledge of these things.

Addendum:
Also, things like particle and smoke effects are VERY expensive to render as well.
One excellent predictable example of drastic frame drop is when the Fire Elemental spawns in Metrica Province. He appears in an explosion of flame and smoke, and your machine will likely grind to almost a halt as it tries to catch up with the effects being rendered.

Interestingly, snow, while having a marginally noticeable impact, doesn’t seem to be as drastic as smoke and flame.
I’m guessing this is because it’s more of a full scene effect with minimal physics modelling happening, whereas smoke, fire and fog in this game seem to have a degree of fluid physics going on.

goldenwing.8473:

By the way, in an effort to help the community, my guild has turned off all of our titles on all of our characters. (We will no longer be showing our “achievements”.)

-something to consider

I’ve done the same. I have a LOT of titles to show too, but this is just too gauche.

Yeah, it’s way over-the top and makes everything look ridiculous.
My Mesmer runs the Ebon Vanguard greatsword skin, while my Warrior runs the one that looks like Kymswarden, as these are not ridiculous, but I would love more realistic, elegant options rather than the oversized planks and bats we have at the moment.

Definitely. At least then I’d know the person with the Legendary had put in some effort.
Additionally, I’d like to reduce the amount of pre-requisite materials used in crafting a Legendary that can be bought with karma, gold or tokens.
I’d like more components that are account bound rewards for completing long and complex personal questlines.
Most people with Legendaries at the moment have got them through some degree of grind or outright buying them for cash. Either that or early get-rich-quick schemes that are now not available thanks to ArenaNet closing the loopholes associated with them.

There’s nothing Legendary about them any more, and I see them everywhere on my server (mostly Dusk; OMG BLACK DARK GRITTY COOL SHINY).

All good stuff, +1ed.

All good suggestions. Like uknortherner, I deposit all of my money into my bank vault trying to leave characters with at least 10 silver to cover basic repairs and waypoint costs.
However, this doesn’t mean this is the optimal method for managing gold.
Your suggestion would definitely improve the game.
+1ed

Yeah, unbelievable they did this without allowing users to choose what to show.

Ack, I was really impressed when playing GW2 on release that titles weren’t in-your-face as they were in GW1. It reduced the “importance” of them, and I was sure it was a conscious change by the developers to reduce focus on them.
PLEASE allow us to choose how titles are displayed on other players.
I’m really not interested in having this information shoved in my face.

“Lip-flap has been enabled for all voiced lines on Players and NPCs in world.”

Lip-flap
Funny, irreverent description for this feature addition.
I still remember when lip-flap was added to GW1, and while it’s oddly deja vu seeing the same patch get applied to the sequel, it’s much appreciated. It’s been a minor annoyance for me for a while now, wandering past residents of LA yabbering away, yet not flapping their lips.

Bravo ArenaNet.
Long live lip flap.

So lowering sound quality can help with this bug, but only if I lower it to worst quality.
To be honest, I don’t like playing this way and don’t see why I should have to.
Although majestic reports this has been a bug since release, I must reiterate that it has only affected me since the February patch.
It happens at least once a day at the moment, more on weekends when I have more time to play.
I can almost guarantee a crash during Jormag if I leave my quality set to high.
Hell, it’s even affecting WvW. I was playing some WvW for the first time in a while last night, and I had the bug during a big encounter.

So, something you did in the February patch made this worse ArenaNet.

Adine.2184:

Why are you porting from LA to Cursed Shore in the first place ? Use your orders Asuran gate to go to Fort Trinity to cut your costs in half. Its not like it takes that long to run to any of the orders HQs

…and add additional loading screens, which many people have reported take a lot longer since last update.

Sunken Droknah in Mount Maelstrom is Droknar’s Forge, just underwater and tropical thanks to rising sea levels.
Yak’s Bend is there and recognisable in Frostgorge Sound. There it’s called “Yakkington’s Toil”.
And the run from Darkwound Defile down to Wizard’s Fief in Kessex Hills should be very recognisable to GW1 players.

Osculim.2983:

Afk kill all world bosses i dont think so. Go afk during jormag and you will die thats a fact. Go afk during shatty and you will die. If your anywhere close to be able to hit the dragons you can sure as heck bet they will be able to hit you aswell.

Jormag maybe, but I’ve AFKed Shaterrer. Hit 1 at the start while standing on the ledge, went away to make some food, come back to a gold medal and a chest.
It’s laughable.

There’s someone out there with Rouge Rogue; I know, ’cos when I went to make it, it had already been taken
A lot of people are going to read that name and wonder why the same thing is typed twice

I still believe that waypoints should be completely free of charge, as I suspect most GW1 veterans also do.
But it’s stunning to see the degree to which the community has accepted these charges in just 6 months.
Back after release, and indeed during beta, this thread would have been the polar opposite, with the majority for abolishing waypoint fees.

There’s a new kind of player in town, and they like a bit of masochism.
Punishment is the new fun.

Having played a lot of world encounters recently, and seeing people complain about their ease and lack of complexity, I’ve looked at them from a different angle to try and understand why these things are so difficult for ArenaNet to create.

It all comes down to a layer of abstraction that exists between physical actions of characters in the game and the fact these actions aren’t direct interactions with targets.

When your character swings a melee weapon / casts a spell / shoots a bow or gun, the game doesn’t behave like more sophisticated game engines like those used by Crysis or Demon’s Souls.
Note that I use “sophisticated” here purely in engine terms, not in terms of gameplay quality.
The game isn’t modelling the impact of your weapon with your target. It’s playing a fancy animation that masks a dice roll.
This is horribly obvious when fighting larger world bosses like the dragons or Shadow Behemoth, where their bodies don’t hit your character and you clip right through them.
It’s magnified by your point of attack being an empty space often metres away from the target itself.

There are very good reasons why MMOs rely on abstract representations of combat instead of trying to accurately model it. The calculations involved in modelling combat as sophisticated as Demon’s Souls in an MMO would swamp connections with positioning information, collision detection and feedback. With small multiplayer games like online FPS ones, it’s less of a problem, as the numbers involved are minute in comparison to MMOs like GW2.

This is why we’ll never see truly satisfying action combat in GW2 and why large boss encounters are a nightmare to design.
It’s also why most MMO developers save the special sauce for instanced content traditionally tailored to limited numbers of people. In such circumstances, they have defined an upper limit on the number of players involved in the encounter and can therefore script according to a bandwidth limit set in stone.

So don’t ever expect massively satisfying combat from huge world boss encounters.
The enemy will never truly be able to react to a single player’s presence and will always stay in one location running canned animations that hide generic area effects.
It’s a limitation of GW2’s engine, one that is still noticeably 2.5D in much the same way as earlier FPS games; one that’s tailored to modelling abstract dice rolls rather than actual combat.

Discuss.