Guild Wars 2

Nebulus!
That was what it reminded me of!
Click for history.

Mostly, my determination to beat all jumping puzzles that they throw my way, but it also reminded me of an incredibly old platform game from the Eighties on the Sinclair Spectrum. For the life of me, I can’t remember its name, but it was exactly the same concept: jump from platform to platform around a rotating tower.

I’ve found recently that non-Steam games have a tendency to drop out your library quite frequently, but I’ve also found that pinning them as a favourite in the Steam right-click quicklaunch seems to prevent this.

Just in case you don’t use Steam the same way I do, I launch GW2 (and all recently played or favourite Steam games) by right-clicking Steam’s quicklaunch icon in my taskbar and clicking GW2. I’ve pinned it to be permanent by clicking the pin to the right of the game in the list.

I personally think it’s developer laziness. There are ways around this, but they require more work from the art department than simply removing a character’s hair.
The best implementation would be independent models including the headgear for each and every hairstyle in the game.

Of course, there is also the issue of displaying more unique assets in the game, but when compared to how customisable each character is by default, this is really a non-issue and wouldn’t greatly impact performance.

But there’s signs of this kind of laziness throughout the game, such as all classes in a race sharing the same voice actor, lack of unique situational animations for cutscenes and other related scripted events, unfinished emotes, dance animations being restricted to race where they were divided by sex and class in the first game, etcetera, etcetera.

I love the game, but there are so many areas like this that just stink of shoddy workmanship.

I got 2 exotics with plain skins in a row from the Champion chest in Mad King’s Labyrinth before they nerfed the drop rate.
I got exotic boots for all 9 of my characters doing the Clocktower.
Oh yeah, no MF. It’s a junk stat.

Regen shout warrior is good too.

I’m quite happy that titles are less in your face than they were in the original game; eventually, the entire focus of that game became titles, so I wasn’t enjoying the multitude of content, just grinding out the same stuff over and over again.

I do like the little explorer’s star against my name though

Eh, them’s the breaks.
Personally, I don’t load the game up to “work hard”.
I load it up to play.

I’m guessing the content was released this way to drain some gold from people who have acquired their riches “unfairly”.
We all know that those with hundreds of gold pieces likely acquired them by running dungeons when exploits worked and through abusing various other loopholes before ArenaNet closed them.
Releasing desirable skins early on that require huge investment insures that only those who can afford the materials invest in them.
Hopefully, tactics like this go some way towards balancing the economy.

On Friday after release, this puzzle drove a friend and I to distraction, and yes, the Norn and Charr characters doing the puzzle did aggravate things, but we never voiced our anger.
Partly because it’s very hard for larger characters to judge jump distances, particularly Charr and their all-fours lope; partly because we knew we had characters of a similar size.

Yet on Saturday I cracked it, then proceeded to take all 9 of my characters through, even doing it first time on two of them.

What I found more than precision was that it came down to timing; my fingers eventually trained themselves to know what to press when, and it became easy.
It was simple muscle memory pattern training, and once my brain had the “template” remembered, I could do it on any character, no matter their shape or size; after all, they all move at the same speed and jump the same distance.
The trick is realising that and separating the visual cues from the rhythmic ones.
I’m guessing Guitar Hero players were probably some of the fastest people to crack this puzzle.

When I got shrunk, I expected a pitch shift on my character’s voice to make him sound all squeaky, but alas, no.
What a shame

Yup, I can’t believe this wasn’t coded from the beginning, much like other features that were added to GW1 through its lifetime such as the makeover NPC or story rewards (which they’ve just added but again are underwhelming).

Wow; I admire your dedication, but rather you than me

The only thing I can think that comes even remotely close to what Zenyatoo is going on about is Agent of Entropy, but to get that requires salvage kits and things to salvage, the first of which requires cash, the last of which requires going out and getting, therefore not standing in one place.

However, I am interested in how you got those points; I’m guessing dungeon farming, as your medals are the same as mine, and I don’t even have over 3000 points yet.

The thing is, this fee is completely pointless.
I am a master crafter, yet I’ve spread my crafting skills amongst my characters, meaning I simply have to log the right one to make something. It’s a minor inconvenience, yet it completely saves me spending silver, making the so-called “money sink” irrelevant.
If it’s irrelevant, it’s not doing it’s job, therefore GET RID OF IT.

Downscaling is one of the best features of Guild Wars 2, yet I feel they could afford to be a little more aggressive with it. My main warrior has exotic Knight’s armour, trinkets and weapons, and I can comfortably stand right next to the fire elemental in Metrica province and not die, all the while dishing out the hurt. I was very happy to discover this when I tried it at random the other day, but it would be nice if there were still some challenge involved.

Still though, it really is fantastic fun to see everyone saying how the fire elemental is trouncing them and that they’re racking up the armor repairs only to swoop in and pound it down, saving the day

See, that’s just the thing, I was more than happy with the cash shop model the first game had, and never once regretted spending money on things I could buy through it, yet the current shop implementation is leaving an increasingly nasty taste in my mouth and is probably turning out to actually be worse than Diablo 3’s RMAH. At least players can make real world money with Blizzard’s version!

zogrim.6925:

“With a sequel, I expect all of the convenience options of the previous game to at least be included from the start.”

I can’t understand this view. It would be nice, yes. But to demand, that every little thing that’s only for convenience, be included in a software. That just sounds ridiculous.

I work in support of professional editing software, and with every release, as well as adding features, they retain old ones and even improve them.
This is standard practise.

I understand GW2 is a completely different type of game compared to the first one, but all of these convenience services really should have been included. I would also include things like the stylist at the Temple of Balthazar in this list as well as name changes.

They know these are things people want; they implemented them after popular demand in the first game. To chop them out of the second is either ignorant or negligent, or possibly both.

That’s interesting, but it’s still not going to convince me to buy one.
With a sequel, I expect all of the convenience options of the previous game to at least be included from the start.
Otherwise, that’s just forgetting lessons learned in the past, and a sign of shoddy workmanship.
This was in response to Eivene.

If you don’t understand my second point Kareth, you never played the first game.

And saying skins can be bought from the trading post… have you even seen the prices?

The Halloween event, while fun if a little confusing, has raised my hackles with a few things.

Why are outfits now bought on a per-character basis and not account-based?
Why are there no NPCs who allow you to choose what skins you want when you want them?
Why are certain desirable items only available through random chance instead of having a guaranteed acquisition path?

In GW1 if I bought an event outfit, all of my characters would have access to it. The same thing happened with hats acquired from events.
Even better, I would not need to have them cluttering up inventory space, as free-to-use vendors would be in every major city that could give any character who wanted it a copy of any hat or outfit I’d unlocked any time I wanted it.
For desirable items, such as celestial minipets, while there was a chance they’d drop in the world, there were also guaranteed ways of attaining them, such as grinding out tokens then trading them in.

I hate to grind this axe, but I suspect this is purely a monetisation issue, with ArenaNet really looking to mine the wallets of their customers.
Individual character costumes means potential multiple spends.
Cosmetic items occupying inventory space means people are forced to buy gems to expand storage and bag space.
Low random chance drop rates means you end up with people spending ludicrous amounts of real world money on gems to buy keys.

But you know what this has done for me?
It means that I’m never buying gems with cash again.
I didn’t buy any for the event, and after experiencing it and seeing the soulless grab for cash, I won’t be giving ArenaNet any more money unless it’s for expansion content.

So instead of providing an incentive for me to spend money, ArenaNet have actively driven me away as a customer.

Finally, while I would never spend 50/80/100 dollars on keys, I can completely sympathise with those who did spend that much and got few if any rare skins.
Shame on you ArenaNet.

This also harmfully contributes to “Training”. Eventually, people give up fighting the mobs, as they’ll only immediately respawn, so the only way to actually get certain places in the game if you’re not fully geared yet is to run and train the mobs.
Hell, even when you ARE fully geared, this can still be a problem.

Look, the particular character that mispronounces quay is Sylvari. The Sylvari are supposed to have British accents. There isn’t a single British person who would pronounce quay as kway.
It doesn’t matter if the game’s produced by an American company, if your voice talent are trying to impersonate British accents, they should use British pronunciation.
I’d say the same for centaur, but as the majority of characters using the word are human, and American accents are the norm for Tyrian humans, I’ll take the mickey out of the pronunciation, but accept is as correct for the accent.

The real travesty is Trebuchet. Seriously, NO-ONE pronounces the “ch” and final “t” hard.
It’s treh-boo-shay.

If they add new professions, I hope they don’t do so in the same manner they introduced them in the original game.
With Factions and subsequently Nightfall, while each introduced two new professions, they also introduced more skills for existing classes, but did not make sure that the new classes had the same amount of skills as the old ones, meaning that in the end assassins, ritualists, dervishes and paragons had less total skills than the core 6 professions.
Whether this was by design, lack of development time or just laziness, I do not want to see the same happen again.
I would say that they’re probably best off not introducing any new skills for existing professions with expansions if they introduce new ones, but this would probably cause massive outcry in the community.
So please ArenaNet, if you do decide to add new professions with expansions but also choose to add new skills to old ones, make sure they have as many total skills as the original professions.

I’m reacting against a background level of game geek chauvinism that simply needs to end. The arguments for sexy armour in games amounts to nothing more than “Women in video games are fine, as long as they’re hot”.
Town clothes, fine, do as you please.
Armour?
Yeah, stop pandering to the tastes of little boys, no matter how old they are.

As for arguing against paedophilic appearances, that face posted by Device is famously the only face that even attempts to render a realistic older woman, and even then, it’s little more than caricature.
This default face is far more representative of the human female faces, and who can honestly stand up and say that they’re not a little disturbed by it?

Blacklight.2871:

Hmm. That would hurt if I wasn’t too old to be affected by puritanical shame and guilt. I kind of shed that foolishness when I stopped attending Sunday school. Most adults eventually grow out of it. Maybe you will too?

EDIT: And I meant “sexy”. Finding it tough to say that word, are we?

Not at all, I can say sexy ‘til the cows come home, it’s just that the definition of the term in MMO land is, as I stated before, often gauche, certainly lewd and definitely over the top.
Sexy does not necessarily mean absence of clothing.
Sexy does DEFINITELY not mean almost paedophilic, which given the modelling of human female’s faces, GW2 tends to skew uncomfortably towards.

You know what I find ironic?
Fall all of its flaws, Age of Conan, a game famed for bare breasts, has some of the most reasonable, well thought out female armour I’ve seen in MMOs.

ArenaNet could learn a thing or two from that game in regards to female armour.

In closing, take a look at Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor or Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits for some very good commentary on this issue.

When it comes down to it, it’s nothing to do with “Puritanical shame and guilt”, and all to do with practicality and a lack of imagination on behalf of ArenaNet’s artists, with a sprinkling of unease at the idea that they assume that the male audience is only capable of thinking with their crotches when it comes to female representation in video games.

Blacklight.2871:

I wish anything you said here was actually true.

Welcome to the world of subjectivity and independent opinion.

Also, I’m assuming that by “Sexy” you really mean “Revealing”.
Medium armour being so would probably invalidate its status as armour, but I can assure you, there are medium sets out there that are ridiculously revealing.
Take the Order of Whispers set for example:
Click to reveal

That torso piece is ridiculous when it comes to offering protection, but probably qualifies for the younger, lustful teen audience as being “Sexy”.

If you really want your character to look like she’s out for a night on the tiles or soliciting business from desperate men, there are plenty of options out there. You just have to look a tiny bit harder, but I’m sure you’ll be doing enough of that when you finally acquire it, so doing so now shouldn’t be a laborious task for you.

Actually torbjorn, you just hit on something.
With the jumping puzzles in WvWvW, particularly Eternal Battlegrounds, we already have designs for getting one over on other players, so how about GW2 takes a leaf out of Portal 2’s book and makes cooperative jumping puzzles? Ones where you need another player or two in order to progress?
Personally, I really enjoy the jumping puzzles, and would love the opportunity to further torture fellow guildies by dragging them along to cooperate in one

I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t keep armour profession-specific, like they did in Guild Wars 1.

I also find a lot of the female armours to be incredibly exploitative, but given the stunned, pre-pubescent blow-up doll facial features and Barbie doll figures of the majority of human females, I’m not really surprised that the majority of female armours seem to have been crafted for testosterone-fueled adolescent boys or creepy old perverts. That bizarre, crotchless Little Bo Peep dress for light armour wearers in particular is like some weird fetishistic nightmare.

But I also have a good laugh at the majority of the ridiculous “Prestige” armours. Upon release of the game, my friend and I previewed all of the Dungeon armours. We saw the Cathedral of Flame ones, knew they were utterly ridiculous, but because of the absurd gamer community obsession with shiny/spiky things, we correctly predicted that every numpty and his brother would be wearing it within a matter of weeks.

Sophistication and elegance are rare in GW2, with the artists instead favouring gauche, exploitative “styles”, and it’s a massive shame.

@LanceHavenBay:
Except that’s exactly what a Diamond Aegis looked like in the first game.

I really like some of the HoM stuff personally, particularly the Icy Breaker hammer skin and the medium Heritage armour skin for females, as well as the Living Shortbow.
The Stygian Axe is cool too, and better than any other axe skin I’ve seen in the game so far, even including mystics, pre-cursors and legendaries.

Regarding the OP though, yeah, it’s a shame that the jellyfish looks identical to the blue one, but still, having quick access to two of the jellyfish F2 attacks is pretty awesome

Just wish the Heritage heavy set offered better coverage of arms & neck and looked a bit more like the Knight’s set from the original game.

Immersion’s a gaming community buzzword that’s been incorrectly adopted.
There are numerous arguments about how ridiculous the term is, but again, it’s used in lazy arguments and essentially means nothing. I can immediately and effectively dismiss your use of the term by pointing out you’re applying it to a game with a third person camera and dragons, things which break “immersion” just as much as instant travel.

Regarding point two, all players have to activate waypoints the first time, so the chances of them missing dynamic events they haven’t experienced before are slim.

And “simply don’t use them” applies to friends as well. Look at it democratically. If your friends all want to use waypoints, yet you don’t want to, who’s going to be left out in the cold?

And again, the use of the term “casual player”. Lazy and ignorant.
Someone with a high degree of skill who enjoys playing a particular piece of content and utilising that skill does not want to have to trudge through the stuff that doesn’t necessarily float their boat. Waypoints allow them to get to the content they actually want faster.

Also, “easy mode” is another memetic slur propagated by gamer communities and thrown about with wild abandon.

Stop using such lazy linguistic shortcuts and you may realise that people are different and want different things.
ArenaNet have cast their nets wide and have done a very good job in pleasing a large amount of people, which is no mean feat.

It’s not that, but the fact that you implied people with opinions other than yours are someone worse than you, and that’s simply wrong. They enjoy the game the way it is, and if you change it, you’re changing it for the worse for them.
You have the choice of ignoring waypoints and not using them. Please go ahead and do so.

dimgl, you really have no right branding people such as myself as “Casual sauce”.
I’ve put more than 500 hours into this game, which is likely more than you, and I believe waypoints are essential to Guild Wars 2.

Ye gods, I hate this lazy gamer categorisation that insists on dividing players into “Hardcore” and “Casual”.
It does the community a disservice, and simplifies the degrees of participation to obscene, insulting levels. It’s bigotry and elitism by the back door.

Just because they’re there doesn’t mean you have to use them.
Go pootling about the world at your own pace, but please do not presume to petition to have waypoints removed when other people feel differently.
Personally, I only use them when I know I can afford to and when I need to get to guild members quickly (they cost too kitten much for my liking), but having them there when I need to use them is invaluable.

But of course, these complaints are from yet another person using WoW as a point of reference.

Both Guardian and Warrior already have some nice control skills to keep enemies in range, particularly when talking hammer skills.

Guardian in particular has Ring of Warding which prevents mobs trapped inside from leaving the area.

Warrior has the burst skill Earthshaker, which if you build properly, can be activated twice in quick succession, as well as Hammer Shock for a cone of cripple.

There’s other skills that can be used to control mobs effectively as well, such as a Ranger’s Entangle.

Hate or whatever you want to call it always feels incredibly contrived whatever implementation is used. I much prefer having to think about how I’m going to prevent mobs losing interest.

I have also noticed a severe drop in the amount of gold spam emails, however, the number of bots I’m encountering in the world is rising dramatically fast. In fact, on maps with active bot populations, I’m experiencing real bad connection lag; not sure if it’s coincidence or not. I’m on Ring of Fire.
Regardless, keep up the good work Gaile & crew.
I know it’s unlikely given the necessarily fractured nature of the game, but I hope to see you in game come Halloween
Maybe you could exploit the overflow mechanic and create something reminiscent of the first game’s International District?

Oh yeah, and as it disappeared quite quickly, let me further posit my suggestion that in order to combat farmer bots, you should give players the ability to drop a no-value item in front of bots that expands to fill inventories on pick-up

Also, the mentioned Asura gates are currently only one-way. I’m not sure if this is intentional or a bug, but you can only go from Fort Trinity to any one of the order HQs; you can't make the reverse journey.

Be wary of Mystic Weapon costs; they’re not as cheap as it would first appear. 50 skillpoints is a LOT of skillpoints, basically another 50 levels for someone who already has their explorer’s star.
I used 200 of mine to buy the Bloodstone Shard, and getting together a further 50 each time I want a new weapon is not trivial.
In the time it takes to grind out another 50 levels (probably 3 days if you’re really going for it, doing nothing else except grinding out XP), you could hit loads of Orichalcum / Ancient Wood nodes and gain enough karma to potentially buy another one or more pieces of Orrian karma vendor gear.
This is even before taking into account the Mystic Coin cost, 30 for a normal weapon, 50 for a sword. I had the maximum Mystic Coins of 93 when I bought my Mystic Rifle yesterday. In theory that gives me enough coins for 2 more normals or just one sword.

Mystic weapons are far from “Cheap”.

You know the really hilarious thing about legendaries?
Using the chat-link codes from gw2db.com, I’ve previewed all those that currently have a preview, and they’re pretty much all laughably bad design-wise.
I’m sure there’s going to be some people who grind them out without ever actually seeing them beforehand who are going to be appalled and disgusted at just how bad their new legendary weapon looks.

Indeed, if it’s looks you’re after, there are much better skins available through the Mystic Forge or even as everyday skins.

Still, I guess it saves me a buttload of grind.

There have been several threads about this, all of which I’ve agreed with and +1ed, so I’ll do so here too.

Yeah, it’s pretty annoying having to sift through lots of “Please keep it civil” posts and the like in order to get to the juicy stuff.

@aeonZgamer: That one’s nowhere NEAR as well hidden as the strawberry patch I’m talking about

I think one of the biggies is getting a Power/Vitality/Toughness set of armour. It’s probably the best all-rounder armour, and can only be gotten through certain very specific channels: Dungeons, Orrian Temple Karma Vendors & WvWvW.
I’m working towards a couple of sets myself through mixing all three.

A handy tip is that if you save all of your karma and do all events on your way to Orr as well as your story quests, by the time you get to the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance / Temple of Lyssa, you should have enough for 2 pieces.

I can imagine it would be a nightmare for charr or norn characters, but I can’t remember this one being overly problematic for my human warrior.
What DOES need fixing is the camera in Troll’s End for larger characters. Out of interest, I tried it with my maximum size charr the other day, and it was impossible to actually see past my character a lot of the time. I had to give up due to not being able to see where I was jumping.

I guess overall, the message is that if you want to do jumping puzzles, you’re probably best off making the smallest character you can.

Actually, you know what I really like?
Even though I already had my explorer’s star, when I played through to 80 again with my ranger, I was still discovering stuff I’d missed first time through with my warrior. And I’m sure the same will happen with the next character I take through the game

Ah, well that makes sense then.
Huh, didn’t realise the forge could be so profitable!

I like the hidden strawberry patch that the little Charr girl cub tends. It’s tricky to get to, and the strawberries are the only in-game reward, but it’s so well done and atmospheric, it is its own reward

Am I missing something here?
Surely selling those greens to any vendor would have netted you more than enough to buy a level relevant rare of your choice?
Orrian greens are worth at least a silver a piece. That would have been at least 25 silver, and you could probably buy the materials to craft a rare with that much.

Devs!
Unless some of them decide to frequent Ring of Fire, I’m not likely to see devs during the events.
It was great in the original game hopping to a district when you heard Gaile or Izzy were online and answering questions, and the inevitable conga lines that would form behind Gaile as she ran around LA were fabulous fun!

From the very nature of Guild Wars 2, I’m guessing we’re not likely to get that “Personal” touch any more, and I think that’s a great shame. Haranguing Izzy, Gaile and the Frog was fun

I have 2 male humans, one warrior and one mesmer.
The warrior’s called Beowulf Wyrmslayer.
First name is obviously nicked from the epic poem, and the second one is a melange.
I made him initially on the release of the first game. There, I’d loved the beta event where wurms popped up in Lion’s Arch and killed us all (the first public sighting of wurms in a Guild Wars game trivia fans!), but I also wanted his name to tie in to dragons, so that’s where Wyrmslayer came from.
Naturally, on early access release of GW2, I did try for simply Beowulf but was too slow. Must have been by seconds.
Still, Wyrmslayer, given the story for Guild Wars 2, is very fitting

My mesmer’s called Nexus Icon, which can be interpreted as a central figure who inspires worship, but is also the name of a song by the British heavy metal band The Wildhearts. The song is about narcissistic rock stars, which I think aptly describes mesmers.

Speaking of The Wildhearts, my Sylvari ranger is simply Wildheart. In the original game she was Wildheart Everlone (another song by the band), but I was really chuffed to get just Wildheart.

Yup, definitely. It’s about twice the size now compared to before I invested the points.
If I remember and don’t get sucked in to playing when I get home, I’ll screenshot it