Guild Wars 2

Seems like the same “Logic” that keeps them from making Tier 3 armour exotic.
I really don’t get what’s going on with ANet. One minute they’re talking about how they eschew the traditional MMO gear treadmill and that grind is for aesthetics, the next they pull something like this.

Actually, I do get it.
It’s to drive players towards the gemstore.
These skins will probably be desirable to a large portion of the playerbase. They’ll want to use them on high-end weapons. That means they’ll need Fine Transmutation Stones, and the only ways to get those (aside from stockpiling them during story quests) are by buying them directly from the gemstore, or from Black Lion Chests, and good luck getting a key to drop (I’ve had 2 drop since early access).

And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, and they have to make money somehow, but it still feels like a swift kick to the nadgers after the amount of time it takes to play through the PS.

Oh, as an aside, I finished my ranger’s PS last night and interestingly enough, directly after killing Zhaitan, I got a yellow commemorative hat. Shame it looks like every other pirate hat out there.

If I recall correctly, my build is currently something like 25/0/25/0/20.
Traits are:

Predator’s Instinct
Piercing Arrows

Expertise Training
Off-Hand Training

Master’s Bond
Rending Attacks

I use a Lynx and Jaguar as my land-based pets, and a Shark and River Drake underwater.

Mostly, I’m using sword & torch, swapping to shortbow when things get a little hectic in melee range.
My gear’s all Carrion (Power, Vitality, Condition Damage), with Superior Runes of the Undead.

I use “Throw Torch” while charging to apply burning, then “Serpent’s Strike” when in melee range to apply poison. My pets all apply bleeding with at least one of their attacks, and if I swap to shortbow in group situations and get behind the enemy, I can add further stacks of bleeding on auto-attack as well as poison with “Poison Volley”.

In melee groups, or when “Throw Torch” is on cooldown, I use “Bonfire” with its extended radius thanks to “Offhand Training”, followed quickly by a 2-stage “Hornet Sting”/“Monarch’s Leap” to activate “Fire Shield” as it’s a Leap finisher.

I get a lot of condition damage with this build and can handily take down multiple Orrian mobs in all three ending areas, plus, it has over 23K hitpoints, which is great for survivability.
One thing: try not to drop “Healing Spring” in the same area as “Bonfire”, as the Water field effect from it overrides the fire one of “Bonfire” resulting in no Fire Shield for you.
You do get a nice heal from Leap finishing in “Healing Spring” mind you

Mine’s called Barry.
Yeah, that’s my sense of humour.

So bots stay on the same path, killing repops and automatically picking up the stuff that drops.

Wouldn’t it be great if players could drop things in the path of these bots with no value that filled their inventory slots?

…and report him for botting?

I’ve just done Claw Island on my second character, and the realisation that from now on, it’s the Trahearne show, is really getting my dander up.

Oh, also?
Having done the personal story once already and losing Tybalt, it was blatantly obvious that the same thing was going to happen to Sieran, yet here it felt even more ham-fisted.

I think one of the most revealing things I’ve seen regarding the GW2 personal story recently has been this picture.
It shows exactly how lazy and uninspired the personal story gets after Claw Island.
This can only further contribute to the frustration players feel with Trahearne, and severely limits Personal Story replayability.

“Splish splash, 4 Norns in a bath” is of course a reference to Bobby Darin’s song, Splish splash, I was taking a bath.

I’ve levelled a warrior to 80, followed by my ranger. I have an engineer at 20 as well as a mesmer.

Warrior I absolutely love, but you have to make sure you change it up frequently and experiment with different weapons and builds. I started out, as so many do, a fan of the greatsword, but now I love hammer and axe/warhorn. There’s a lot of depth to warrior that it’ll take me a long time to explore.

My ranger I knew I was going to like, but for a while, between say 30-60, it got a little boring.
But once I specialised her build and went for conditions and vitality, she became incredibly fun to play. She’s 25/25/0/0/20, which sure, is probably complete pants for dungeon play, but with my favourite weapons being sword & torch / shortbow, she absolutely annihilates general PvE mobs with insanely high DoT from her conditions, especially when backed up by pets that also cause bleeding.
Adjusting to a ranger that is primarily melee has definitely taken getting used to, but it’s so fun

I’ll also add that I found the longbow pretty uninspired and flacid, both on warrior and ranger, much preferring the rapid fire rate of the shortbow on ranger and the punch of the rifle on warrior.

Of the two twenties I’ve got, engineer & mesmer, engineer has caught my attention more but still seems to be lacking a certain something I can’t quite put my finger on.

And mesmer is so completely different to the mesmer I played in the first game, I’m having real problems liking it. I think that may be down to the class performing best when you know there’s a real person on the receiving end, and I’m not really comfortable taking him into PvP quite yet.
I also find illusions fiddly and irritating, and to have them be the major focus of the class is a bit of a letdown. It’s a great shame the Domination line from the first game hasn’t translated to GW2 in any meaningful way. Mesmer was best when wrapping the enemy up in a trap of their own creation, and I just don’t get that feeling in GW2.
That old “Darned if you do, darned if you don’t” attack of Feedback, Wastrel’s Worry and Wastrel’s Demise just doesn’t have a GW2 equivalent.

Do world exploration and salvage anything under 60 copper as you go. Hit all the harvesting nodes you can. Take part in any events that cross your path. You’ll have a great time and chances are, by the end of it you should have enough stuff to level a craft to 400 and make yourself a decent set of armour and weapons.

Dostoev Sky Peak made me start looking around for a skritt NPC called Ratskolnikov. I didn’t find him, but then I’m not sure I really wanted to.

I’d like to know why we can’t craft something for this slot

Yeah, not a great one either, although it goes quite well with the high end banded set.

Edit: Actually, here’s my warrior wearing the guild armour chest piece mixed with Banded:

I seem to remember having just over 7g at 60, allowing me to buy the book straight away.
I haven’t had as much gold at once since. I’ve spent lots, but not managed to save much at all.

DCUO does this fantastically, allowing you to change appearance on the fly and making different styles rewards for quests etc.
Being able to “Unlock” a particular look for weapons and armour and then being able to change to it at will would be fantastic. Okay, I know that transmutation stones are a major form of monetisation for ArenaNet, so make every style change use a stone.

People asking for this just want to gank unsuspecting players going about their business.
It’s a valid game model, but it’s not what Guild Wars 2 is about.
Also, the way experience systems have been coded, along with instanced nodes, shared events, etc., it would require an awful lot of coding to implement for little reward.
I’ve played on PvP servers, and it all comes down to getting the occasional cheap kill on someone else or griefing, no debate.
Frankly, if you want to do that, go play a game that allows it. I’m glad you can’t do it here.
Age of Conan is great for this type of play, with an unbalanced class system supported by tiered gear allowing 3-hit kills of unsuspecting players.
Go, knock yourself out.

Alucardrx.8930:

Defensive posts like that is what shows who you are. You could have just stayed quiet and nobody would notice you. But you decided to step up and defend yourself.

See if you were not doing anything illegal you wouldn’t bother. Don’t need to be Freud or Sherlock Holmes to realize that.

Wait, are you calling me a gold seller/buyer?
Is it not possible to posit ideas without being personally attacked now?

Gods, I hate to say this as the concept of Blizzard’s RMAH nauseates me, but you’re never going to beat gold selling, so how about legitimising it?
The Gem store is half a solution. The flow of real world money is one-way; into ArenaNet’s coffers.

If they offered a way to reverse the process and change gold into gems and subsequently real world money, you’re a good way towards legitimising gold selling; gold sellers would have little reason to practise their trade illegitimately going through official channels instead, whereby ArenaNet could skim a tax off the top of every transaction.

I’m not going to pretend to even understand the complex economic problems faced by such a system, with the most obvious of which being that in the game, wealth is essentially created from nothing, but you’re never going to beat gold sellers, and it’s morally dubious whether you should be trying to; a lot of these gold sellers are very poor people in real life and there’s no actual real world laws against what they’re doing anyway (account theft notwithstanding).

So why not join them?

They’re undercutting ArenaNet, offering a better product.
Offer them a way of doing so with no risk associated, along with an in-game gold seller’s advertising post to keep spam out of chat and mail.

Crazy, but it might just work.

The Gem store concept implies ArenaNet have been thinking along these lines anyway. Just flesh it out completely.

As the other thread was locked, I’d like to further ask that if quality, advantage and performance are such pertinent issues, why is there a stereoscopic 3D option in the game?
Stereoscopic 3D drastically affects quality if not configured correctly and can cause headaches with prolonged use, offers significant advantages in judging distance to a minority of privileged players and can have an incredibly adverse effect on performance.
Also, if implementation of an FoV slider is difficult, surely it’s not as difficult as allowing stereoscopic 3D?
But hey, it’s not as glamourous as 3D and can’t be used to generate sales.

Also, I’m sure I’ve noticed the FoV automatically change when coming in to proximity with large world boss encounters, such as the Shadow Behemoth.
Is it the case that the game can easily change FoV when needed for artistic purposes?
If so, that’s a little hypocritical don’t you think?

souldonkey.9534:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

No sorry that’s most certainly not what people want when they talk about field of view. I want to be able to put my field of fiew to 90 or 100 which is the industry standard for PC games on widescreen monitors. Right now it’s like looking through a tunnel at the ground, even at max distance zoomed out.

Extra zoomout would not help this at all, please don’t confuse the issue. We need better FoV, not bandaid fixes or excuses.

90 and 100 are not industry standard, btw. 75 Is typically the default FOV. The only difference with GW2 is that a lot of games that have a default FOV of 75 have sliders allowing you to increase it. 90 and 100 is definitely not an industry “standard” though. There really is no industry standard, but 75 is more common, and sliders to increase or decrease are also included in a decent amount of games.

75 is only a recent adaptation, and is mostly used for performance issues. A narrow viewport means there’s less for a game to render, meaning it plays better on lower end hardware (which is why narrow FoVs have become popular with the advent of console-centric shooters).
PC-centric shooters have traditionally allowed full customisation of FoV, and 90 was the standard for a long time.

Just to play devil’s advocate a sec, Jon’s point about increasing FoV during full screen play distorting textures would be true. Windowing the game does indeed increase your FoV, but it doesn’t distort textures. Windowing is like having an Eyefinity set up proportionately scaled down. And that’s the key descriptor: proportionate. If you increase FoV without increasing the horizontal screen real estate available to you, textures and geometry become distorted at the periphery, because you’re squeezing more horizontal information into your display. You’re not proportionately increasing your view.

My point however? Competitive gamers don’t care about that distortion, and to be honest, most normal players wouldn’t notice the distortion after playing for a while. Again, why have quality sliders if you don’t want the quality of your game to be determined by the userbase?
And any performance lost by increasing FoV can be reclaimed by lowering the quality of another slider.
Finally, my machine is more than powerful enough to handle an FoV increase; it impacts performance a LOT less than oversampling. Let me choose how to use my hardware and play my game.

Sorry Jon, but I have to disagree.

I don’t have any problem with the FOV of the game, but options are ALWAYS good.
FOV performance hits are temporary, with hardware improvements over time making them negligible.

I know exactly the graphical quality issues you refer to, but let me assure you, the impact is not as great as you think. I played Quake 3 for years with an FOV of 110 along with the associated graphical foibles and performance hits, but the gains far outweighed any losses.

You’re already seeing serious PvP players lowering graphical settings to ensure top performance, so obviously graphical fidelity is not the most important thing for players.
And if you really were concerned about the decrease in quality of artwork, you’d have removed quality sliders from graphical options.

Finally, your point about positional awareness makes no sense, as a wider field of view makes you more aware of your surroundings, allowing quicker spotting of enemies. An FOV closer to that of your real life eyesight is never a bad thing and drastically helps improve immersion. You have watched all of the QuakeCon stuff regarding Occulus Rift I take it, and the work done by John Carmack and Palmer Luckey with lenses tailored to exploit the fact that less detail is needed in peripheral vision?

The Largos seem quite important. They also feel like ArenaNet have more in store for them.

I like it; it’s nowhere near as obtrusive as it was in GW2.

Full set?
So that’s an armour set of each kind, with supporting trinkets and full runesets, plus a full set of weapons?
:p

Myself, I’ve got a full set of Knight’s exotic armour for my warrior along with one exotic Knight’s trinket (one yellow, 3 greens), one sword, one greatsword, one hammer, one mace, one shield, one axe.

I need the rest of my trinkets to be exotic, at least one more of each one handed weapon, exotic versions of my ranged weapons (rifle and longbow) and even then I don’t see myself as having a “Complete” set of exotics. I’d like a full Soldier’s set too, the one that givers Power, Vitality and Toughness.
That’s all before runes & sigils.

You SURE you’ve got that full set of exotics?
You SURE your equipment allows a big enough degree of flexibility?

I think I’d actually play this if they added it. A nice reward would be your “immortality” upon reaching level 80; i.e, if you get to 80 without dying, you become a “normal” character.

When reporting someone, do not announce it to all and sundry. As well as being bad form, it will likely result in revenge reporting, making it harder for ArenaNet to find out exactly who was at fault.

Just to confirm, I’ve only had one key drop off of a mob, but I have had one. That was on Monday.
I think I currently have 140 BLCs on my warrior.

Too many spikes, not enough neck protection.
These are my main complaints with heavy armour.

I’ve seen far too many armchair commanders in WvWvW screaming and throwing toys out of prams in an attempt to get people to bend to their whim.
To these I say:
If you want to command respect, respect those you command.

Yup, it’s a PvP area, expect PvP.
I personally like the thrill I get from fighting during a jumping puzzle; it’s very similar to the feeling I’d get playing Demon’s / Dark Souls when someone invaded my game.

So a week or so ago I bought the heavy guild armour, rifle and shield.
While I’ve made them work for my character and bought other armour appearances that match quite well, I must say I’m a bit disappointed with the implementation of guild armour and weapons.

I was hoping to be able to place guild emblems on any given armour or weapon skin, but this is not the case.
You are limited to one design. I find this even stranger when looking at the human tier 3 heavy armour, which has a tabard that seems made to house a guild emblem.
Are there any future plans to add more flexibility to guild emblems?
As guild leader, I feel it’s necessary to display the emblem, and having only one appearance option available feels limiting, especially as the gold cost is pretty high.

It was handy while learning to play, but as it shares sounds with other skill activation sounds, can we have an option to turn off the smashing glass like sound that plays when you cancel a skill?
Once you notice it, it’s very hard to dismiss.

I’d also like to add that recycling so many of the tunes from the first game makes me immediately wonder if you decided to pinch pennies in respect to the soundtrack.
A couple of GW1 tunes are nice, but the longer I play, the more it seems that there are more GW1 tunes than original GW2 ones.

BobbyStein.2315:

Also, some of the actors would have benefited from better contextual notes, which is why some of their lines sound “off.”

Any plans to “fix” this in the future?
It’s a shame to hear genuinely talented actors like Nolan North performing so woodenly.
Compare and contrast with Nolan’s exceptional work in Uncharted or Alpha Protocol, and the difference is startling.

I also previously, during beta even, advised against the use of your current cinematic style, as it frequently crosses the line, something you learn about in your very first week of cinema studies if you’re trained even remotely in how to shoot a conversation.

Yup, I’ve found that too Samuels. I was doing the puzzle in Eternal Battlegrounds this morning when some guardian thought they’d get the drop on me and attack me from behind. I didn’t use the heal function of Healing Signet once, just let it and my other regens tick away while using my shouts for heals and buffs/debuffs. She started running when she realised what a mistake she’d made after blowing all her long cooldowns, while I was still blasting out axe chops and cyclones at full power.
That kill felt good.

Of course, it helps that I’m wearing fairly innocuous looking full exotic transmuted to look like one of the lower tier sets
The only tell-tale sign that there’s more going on than would first appear is my Pearl Warhorn…

Now I’m used to Axe & Warhorn having played it in both PvE and WvW, I’m finding it very hard to go back to any other weapon, even my beloved hammer. Warhorn is just so darned useful, both for the speed buff / snare removal of Charge and the vigor for allies / weakness for enemies that Call to Arms provides.
And Axe on its own is a fantastic weapon, with a ranged snare from Throw Axe and the regular AoE and debuff from Cyclone Axe.
On top of that, the Warhorn also has no skill that prevents movement, retaining the mobility that is the strength of the axe.
Couple that with a good shout build, with more skills that can’t be interrupted, and you have an incredibly mobile, versatile, deadly warrior. Okay, so CC leaves a a little to be desired, but that’s what the second weapon set is for, right?

Those criticising regen builds, have you actually played them?
My build is very similar to what is being asked about, with all the same regen except consumables.
Further, my armour and trinkets are all Knight’s, so the only vitality bonuses I get are from the Dolyak runes.
I find my durability has sky-rocketed since adopting this build. I’m using a Knight’s axe and warhorn as my main weapons, with a rifle for range.
There’s no Healing specced in my build at all by the way, yet the heals from shouts are enough to get me and my allies out of trouble on a regular basis. The regen is just the icing on the cake. Healing signet may look a bit poo on paper, but I find the cumulative effect works well.

420 hours, no exotic drops, but quite a few from map completion.

Ye gods, no.
Forums, fine, but I’d never be able to get away with playing the thing at work, no matter how much I’d like to.

I rarely invoke the ire of other players unless I verbally provoke them through being contrary or derogatory. Something makes me suspect you’re not entirely innocent here and are in some way provoking these responses.

Chantry of Secrets, Bloodtide Coast.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention, you also need to be a member of the Order of Whispers.

Bank pick-up is shared too, so you can sell on one toon and pick up on another.

Don’t think I’m talking about Kol. I’m talking about, like I said, a “small” giant, only slightly taller than a Norn. He’s part of an event where you guide him through caves to the grave of his friend.

Edit: This guy, Fen.

There’s also a “small” friendly giant in Harathi Hinterlands. Again, not killable.
I’m not at home to check, but does anyone know what the Giant Slayer track tops out at?

Edit: oooo, good tip Painking.

So having killed lots (and lots) of risen giants, my giant kill count on the Giant Slayer achievement track still only reports one giant killed.
I am assuming that this is in reference to the giant in the Charr starter area.
If so, this could be a REALLY hard track to max…

Ranger’s also good for healing with Healing Spring and various condition removers as well as pet abilities. Heck, a bear has the Warrior’s “Shake it off!” ability, but can use it more often!

Yup, definitely a good idea. +1

My build is my build.
It’s not min/maxed, I’ve just arrived at it naturally through playing.
It keeps me alive and is great fun to play.
It isn’t insanely damaging, but has a LOT of CC.
It also has pretty incredible regen.

Build:
20/0/20/30/0
Traits:
Strength:
Berserker’s Power
Distracting Strikes

Defence:
Cull The Weak
Merciless Hammer

Tactics:
Inspiring Banners
Lung Capacity
Inspiring Battle Standard

Utility Skills:
Healing Signet
Bull’s Charge
Shake It Off!
Banner of Defence
Battle Standard

My armour is a full set of Knight’s (P/Pr/T), with 6 Superior Runes of the Dolyak.

Needless to say, I use Hammer. A lot.
When I take a lot of damage, I retreat to range to let my regen work and plug away with a rifle. And I get regen from my runes, Healing Signet and Adrenal Health, as well as any banners I have up at the time.

I rely on interrupts to spread confusion thanks to Distracting Strikes, and I rarely use my burst skill, keeping damage and regen buffs up as often as possible.
I could replace Bull’s Charge with another signet (Signet of Fury has nice synergy with my build, allowing me to use my Burst skill then immediately bring adrenaline back up to full), but I like the interrupt from Bull’s Charge.

I always try to initiate combat with Backbreaker followed by Fierce Blow. Fierce blow proceeds to activate Cull the Weak, and the Weakness debuff from it can be kept up on a target indefinitely. Let alone which, it’s a cone AoE attack, spreading the love.

I have a Sigil of Superior Rage on my hammer too, which kicks in pretty frequently; at least once a fight. Unpredictable, sure, but probably pops as much as Frenzy but without the added risk.

It’s simple enough to switch to a shouty build too, but I like how it is as it stands

So a day after patch and restart, the majority of Cursed Shore events are broken again. Boooooooo.

If I had a spare slot, I’d be tempted to make a character called “Juvenile Ettin”, get the Ettin transformation potion from the heart vendor in Lornar’s Pass, then stand somewhere and laugh at all the rangers trying to tame me