Guild Wars 2

The sad thing is it would have made Scarlet look genuinely scary if Lion’s Arch had battened down the hatches, manned the walls in double shifts, and made every possible preparation… and her forces walked over them to the exact same degree we see now.

I think it was absolutely core to the design of this new gear that you GET INTO LIONS ARCH AND DO SOME HEROING to get the shiny. The blade backpacks are for heroes, not the shopping network.

You may wish to read the first post of This Thread and then document the problem there – the Developer that handles character art bugs used to stop by regularly, though I’m less sure they do so anymore.

Discussion of leaks is prohibited. A moderator tweaked the title instead of shutting the thread down entirely. You can probably change it as long as you don’t go back to a title that breaks the rules .

That looks like a pretty industry-standard ‘missing texture’ default/warning pattern.

I’ve seen almost exactly the same thing in other MMOs but hadn’t bumped into it here yet. I like how you can plainly make out the skybox though.

“Woah, de ja vu” and then the Matrix burped .

I believe it may be a lost and ancient Skritt alphabet, with the letters spelling out the sacred mantra…

SHINEY! SHINEY! SHINEY!

…or possibly “Achoo. Hayfever kills.”

Healix.5819:

There’s a lot of things that should be given UI options instead of being useable items. In this case however, I think they would like you to be a little inconvenienced in order to bait you into buying more for other characters. Some people will do this.

True, but the account bound/soulbound shift seen with infinite tools suggests they eventually realized convenience items should in fact be convenient .

I wonder if making it an account wide buff would also let them code things so you aren’t ejected from the space upon logging in…

Certainly an opportunity to improve the product and increase its value as a convenience.

Nick.6972:

How come people no longer complain about Phalanx female armor?
You can search the forum, some of the people claimed it to be extremely inappropriate and too revealing.

Because the observation that that was mere child’s play when it comes to being revealing have now been amply demonstrated to be true by the next outrage-of-the-moment .

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

The last time I opened 15 chests I got 1 hairstyle kit and 2 makeover kits.. How did he only get 1 makeover kit out of 500? O_o

I’m pretty sure your result was the oddity.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I fully expect precursors to be upgraded to ascended when they introduce crafting for them. That’s just what I expect, no real reason.

That will have the slightly odd consequence of making pitching stuff into the Mystic Forge work differently. Throwing in 4 yellow and getting back a pink – a two tier jump in stats – would probably have to stop. I’m not sure changing the tables so that Ascended Precursors only drop from combing 4 exotic items would go over that well…

The darkest, most cynical part of my soul keeps wondering if I’ll be able to complete the “interrupt skills” daily just by pressing f2 every time it’s up in combat and sending my pet into convulsions…

Mardermann.7468:

Have you seen the balance team last time? They didn´t even know where the traits are in the traitlines… thats how good they know the ranger class…

Make no mistake, the phrase “complete absence of credibility” is going to come up in the CDI thread.

More than once.

If you have 100% crit chance I’m already a little suspicious how well you understand the game…

sorudo.9054:

oh and one question, is this armor skin a permanent item or yet another limited edition?

As its not directly linked to current events, it’s probably permanent.

You are my hero.

(and “cryptically terse” is now my phrase for day )

I think that Lovestruck Armor might actually be pretty promising.

The current list would be~

Dragon’s Jade Armor
Aetherized Armor (steampunk powered armor)
Winter’s Armor (wood with glowing traceries – could be awesome for Sylvari)
Fused Armor
Sclerite Armor
Zodiac Armor – Available Now
Bloody Prince Garb (and Chiroptophobia Armor for the win!)
Dreamthistle Armor
Lovestruck Armor

Lorelei.7809:

IF it’s dye-able, people would use skin-color which would defeat their purpose of making it blue in the first place (so that they could get away with a more risque design – note the controversy). IF it were able to be turned off, they would need to remodel it entirely as it would be too risque and not teen-rated.

Actually, if it took on the Hue of a dye applied to it but not the Saturation, you couldn’t begin to come close to human flesh tones .

“All of you beakless Aether Pirat- I mean Hu-mans look the same to me.”

((puts another arrow in you just to be sure))

I’ve burned some dust making infinite wintersday tonics…

I think the argument “Its not skin” evaporates when you look at the armor on a Sylvari – the petals/leaves texture on their skin is faithfully reproduced down to the smallest detail.

It’s not converting you to an alien being. Its not a layer of molded Kevlar in space-age new colors. It’s body paint.

Whether that offends you or not is between you and the programing your upbringing instilled in you, but don’t pretend its anything other than each race’s default bump map on display.

Behellagh.1468:

Law of Big Numbers when dealing with RNG should show a greater tendency toward actual odds. So 500 chests gives us a practical number of 14 tickets. That’s much lower than I inspected. The 1 in 5 for scraps is close to what I expected but the 1 in 125 for an actual ticket is much lower than I expected.

The Law of Humans Aren’t Random strongly suggests that the drop rate for tickets is probably 1 in 100 and this sample deviated a tiny bit to the low side .

I think you could hit most of the high notes with just two extra modes:

“Random Finisher” Picks one at random from all the finishers you own.
“Random Infinite Finisher” picks one at random only from your pool of infinite finishers.

You have to wonder if after releasing the Zodiac Armor, is ArenaNet seeing an up-tick in Black Lion Weapon tickets being cashed in for Zodiac Weapons? With the implication they may sell more Black Lion keys to put those weapon tickets into play.

Would you look forward to more sets of armor themed to go with the other weapons available at the Black Lion weapons vendors? Dragon’s Jade Armor, Sclerite Armor, or maybe a full set of Molten Armor to go with the existing weapons?

Its not even a rumor. It’s daydreaming.

If this game were about to receive something as big as a new profession – ignoring the fact they’ve told us they’ll do new weapons for existing professions first and probably new races before a new profession – there would be so much hype about it for months before it actually hit that you have no need to EVER worry about one sneaking up on you .

“Butcher everything that’s not us”

They’re following Captain Magnus’ instructions to the letter.

Chuo.4238:

Anyone get a repetitive motion injury from spamming 1, because you can’t even move the skill on your bar?

Erm… I set mine to auto attack. I only have to press it once each time the enemy I’m focused on dies. One of the advantages of Ranger-tagging over Guardian-tagging I guess.

I prefer Ranger Axe #1 myself .

Weapons scale wildly differently in the hands of Norns than they do in the hands of humans. This is an attempt to convey that not only are Norns big, but they also have vastly greater proportional strength – its an entire race of ’Hulk’s basically. However, the way they did this was to scale up the weapons in all threes axes (rather than only making them wider and thicker), and so the tips drag the ground in almost every case for 1-h swords. Only suggestion I can offer, having wrestled with it myself, is there is a craftable Dredge sword that is stumpy enough that when it goes through the distortion its remains short enough to be hung from the hip without dragging in the dirt . The two gladius-like exotic weapons are also pretty passible post-distortion.

There are stories of data-mining revealing new elites. Stories deserving a fair bit of skepticism.

Either way, don’t expect features to show up until the features patch following the conclusion of the current Living Story arc. March 18th at the earliest.

Nike.2631:

Demanding that everyone have read and compared every post to their own position before making their proposal is simply not a reasonable expectation.

ilr.9675:

I fail to see what’s too “hardcore” about this. In fact I’m frankly getting very fed up with people who just burst into on-going discussions without even understanding the most basic principles of what’s being discussed, then expecting their words to carry more “weight” just because what they say is more redundant.

It’s not an issue of hardcore, its observable reality from basically every CDI thread so far: Its not a closed meeting room where everyone needs to be settled in their seats by 5-after-the-hour and then we talk things out as a fixed and finite body. Its not a Player Council. People keep coming in. For WEEKS. And we leave the door open for them and actively invite them in.

If we want that to be true (and I think we do) then we have accept demonstrable reality that some of the people strolling in are going to look at a 20+ page count and reject the notion of even a quick scan through the thread entire, read the first post (even though it’s now wildly out-of-date because of three rounds of new Developer questions), and spout something that makes the most ardent Day One-Hour One participants roll their eyes, if only in private.

Its a price we pay for openness & deliberately setting the barriers to entry fairly low.

Its also why I keep harping on using the Q&A mode and editing/updating the initial post rather than in-line bumps. The first couple of posts are all we can rely on people having read, and the Devs adding new questions mid-thread without updating the first post is the single largest cause of the narrative fracturing. Mid-thread announcements of “I have updated the first post” would be bloody brilliant compared to trying to pick them out of the stream because you know its in there somewhere between pages 34 and 37…

Summaries are important – there are people on the cusp that if you give them a 1-4 page way to catch up on a 20+ page shambling behemoth, they’ll absolutely jump at the chance to feel well-informed and more confident in their contributions. But the reality is this is a game, and people have limited time to volunteer. If we don’t take these steps, summaries out where people can find them and initial posts that stay relevant through editing, there WILL be more “I haven’t read past the first post, but here’s what I think” non-sequiturs scattered like birdshot all through the meat of the discussion.

…And more of us “hardcore” participants rolling their eyes .

Cush.4063:

You’re definitely a minority. People like large weapons. Roll an asura.

It’s a bigger minority than you might think .

I blame it on miniatures games – where the weapons have to be ridiculously oversized to have enough cross section to keep from snapping in a passing breath of air, much less being picked up or touched by their owner.

lnguy.5127:

So lets go back in time when they announced it. They said legendaries will have:
1. Special animations
2. Foot prints
3. Auras
4. Changes the way your skills look.
5. Changes the way your armor look.
6. Especial sound effects.

Link please? Because I sure as hell don’t remember them ever saying or even suggesting all of them would have all of these things and that they’d all be exactly the same in their snowflake-like specialness.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Keep in mind their is a difference between summary’s and the final CDI proposals. Summaries are the collated idea and discussion points every 3 pages and the CDI Proposal appears at the end of the whole thread and puts forward the CDI groups focused proposal for the team at Anet.

Hmm. At one point we had some mighty summaries being delivered in a second parallel player-created thread (marked with a red balloon since a Dev stopped in to post ‘thanks’). Maybe if there was just a pointer to a thread housing the summaries instead of cramming them in-line in the main thread we could cut down on the bloat. Can we trust that anyone interested enough to read a summary is willing to click a link to get there? (I’m not sure we can, honestly.) Aaaaand, (to beat a horse that’s wounded, but hopefully not dead yet) if the threads were put into Q & A-mode the summary or link to summary thread could be stored in the Answer post and held neatly at the top of each page without adding to the page count at all .

Just wanted to clarify for the purposes of our current discussion, which by the way I am enjoying very much.

Having a shared language for elements of the process can only help. And now I have a mental note to add a glossary to the tutorial, since the question “What does ‘CDI’ mean?” continues to pop up from time to time (as it should since we continue to attract new participants ).

Mikuchan.7261:

Not saying that no posters could make unbiased posts. But the one reading the summary would not be sure if it’s biased or not unless the poster of the summary has an interest in being unbiased and the reader knows that.

I go back and forth on this. Its workload, and if that workload can be shuffled off to a reliable volunteer from the community, that frees up the Host to spend more time interacting rather than summarizing. If a chronicler is recognized by the Host, I’d like to think they’d be motivated to do the job well (and receive the accolades and continued recognition in future threads) over distorting the process to advance their personal agenda.

I’m probably a hopeless romantic in this regard, or just don’t see how anything going on in an MMO is worth the breach of integrity involved in deliberately biasing a task taken on willingly.

Psientist.6437:

I think the responsibility of summary should tend to fall towards the owner of the thread. Maintaining an unbiased summary is work and demonstrates a commitment to the topic.

The downside is ‘Proposals to forward to the ArenaNet team’ constructed by Devs have been misconstrued in the media as definite plans of action. Sort of a super-early “what’s coming soon for GuildWars 2” when that is most definitely not the case.

Having tried it once and collaborated on a second attempt, I certainly agree its work. I don’t think the unbiased part is all that difficult – you don’t have to agree with an idea to record it faithfully. Hitting the right micro/macro tone is the part that’s proven… let’s call it "challenging"’… for me .

They also went from one for the entire cluster of episodes to 10+ per 1-hour run.

That they share an icon is about the ONLY thing they have in common.

Atherakhia.4086:

Everything I plan to contribute to the thread originally I have discussed before in numerous other threads.

You and me both. My plans start with digging out my old posts and polishing them.

I still think it’s going to be hard to really contribute to the official CDI thread unless ANet starts it off clearly stating what their expectations are and what they feel confident they can tackle. Especially where the pet is concerned as we have some people trying to suggest things to make pets a positive impact for the class as if they worked correctly to begin with. We have others making suggestions trying to work around the issues that were brought up in the last balance patch thread. And we have others who are making suggestions as if the pet aspect of the class will be phased out.

Honestly speaking I find all 3 approaches valid given what we’ve seen over the past year.

Sounds reasonable to me. I hope the follow through on having a Primer at the start of each thread, because we are really in the dark on why some things seem to be such intractable problems.

So what do you want us to do with this thread? Do you want us to post some of the things we plan to discuss in the official thread? Because I’ve already formatted about 4 pages worth of stuff that I’m ready to post once it’s started and would love to hear how terrible my ideas are before things get started

Sure. Basically I’m think of the practice before the debate in debate club. A combination of offering editing suggestions to make the text stronger (and usually shorter…) And some non-hostile criticism. Not “that’s just dumb” but “heres why the Devs are going to ignore that or classify it as un-workable…” A chance to have the flaws pointed out now so they can be fixed or acknowledged, to give the Dev reading it the fewest possible reasons to discard the proposal in the live CDI thread.

GuidWars 1 makes a little announcement every hour that you’ve played in your current session (and suggests you might want to go out and have a life on the second full hour ).

Maybe this is some sort of holdover from that? An hourly gong tied to when you logged in rather than the top of the hour, server time, or something similar?

Chidori.9483:

I do not pretend to know your schedule, however, since things typically come up on patch week (that I can tell) would it be a good idea to have a policy of starting CDIs on weeks there is not a patch?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

That is indeed a good idea. Patch weeks and the beginning of the year (-:

That might work out very well with the idea of having the threads run around 2 weeks.

Patches and CDIs on alternating Tuesdays. Two full weekends snared in each cycle.

I’m going to separate these out a little then look at them. I’ve also edited them for clarity.

Pets should mimic their master’s build and reinforce their chosen role. Pets deals poor damage for Rangers in a dps build and too much damage while in a tank build. Change the Companion stat-bonus of Beastmastery from + 10 to all stat per point to 2% of all the master’s stat per trait point (max 60%).

I like it. I also like the way you’ve scaled it as a percentage, which will automatically reflect the Ranger acquiring Ascended tier gear over time. However, there are people you use their pet as a complimentary choice rounding out their abilities, rather than reinforcing their main role. I think for this to work we would need for our pets base stats to be might more strongly aligned with a role. For example make the base stats of Bears so ‘tanky’ that they will still provide a reasonably solid blocker for Rangers in Support or DPS builds.

Pets should not die constantly from map-covering AoE damage or other boss mechanics which can be dodged by skilled players. Pets can’t dodge but their masters can. Add a Beastmastery Trait that pets are considered evading/blurred when their master dodges.

Another simple, potentially very helpful change. There is already a Trait that when a Ranger dodged, their pet gains Protection. Maybe that trait could be reworked rather than adding a new Trait?

At this point I’m basically planning to tackle the topic on4 fronts and in four posts (not chained together into one massibve wall – over a day or two as I polish each thought).

The four areas are~

Weapon Skills. A hard look at how each weapon interacts with the character’s stats, and what is the actual role intended for ach weapon.

Healing/Utility/Elite SKills. What’s going on in our right-hand tray. A look at each fo the Ranger’s skill tags (shouts, traps, survival, etc.) and getting them to play nice with themselves and each the other lines.

Traits, Trait Lines, and Stat Bonuses. What’s the emergent gameplay for each of the 5 trait lines, and how the hell are we supposed to gear competitively?

Core Class Mechanic. Its the elephant in the room (or moa, or pig…) and there’s no ignoring something ain’t right. A look at several strategies for making our beloved fluffy an asset instead of a vulnerability based on things we can see the engine is already capable of.

Each of these lines of thought will have to look out at the others ocassionally (by the Six we have a LOT of traits that hinge on our class mechanic…) but I think I can keep most of my ideas neatly boxed under one of these headers.

Any thoughts on problems, concerns, or issues that fall outside of these areas?

So, first off, it looks like the official CDI won’t come before Monday

You may want to take a minute and look at what’s being discussed for suggested formatting to maximize your chances of getting your ideas lodged firmly in a Dev’s brain .

Finally, we have a little time to practice our technique, and a number of posters have volunteered to provide critique and commentary outside of the formal threads to help get proposals whipped into fighting shape before putting them up on stage in the spotlight of Developer review.

I have a Ranger, and I enjoy playing on it, but I’m really concerned with how shoddy the treatment of the profession has been since launch. Hopefully we can work out a little of the frustration ‘in private’ with threads of our own before diving into the CDI clearheaded and calm, ready to make compelling proposals for how things can be made better for the Profession and the game as a whole.

Let’s talk.

timmyf.1490:

Nike, don’t take this too personally, but I’d like to call you out on this – there’s this attitude that permeates these forums that is some variation of:

“DON’T TELL ME HOW TO X” – play, post, farm, etc.

I don’t take it personally at all . Have no doubt that I thought carefully before pressing ‘reply’ on my post. It was aggressive. But the fact is this ENTIRE THREAD is about adding more rules to an environment that already has been troubled by its restrictions. I’ve already had to argue the subject passionately and I feel like we’re going backwards.

(The irony of this post does not escape me.)

Good. That saves me the effort of making a snappy/snippy rejoinder .

Drat. Sorry. Reflex.

I didn’t know that you could just click the name to jump to the full post, that’s a cool feature, and thanks for pointing it out.

And another tip for the tutorial reveals itself .

mercury ranique.2170:

First off all, when quoting someone, make sure you quote fully.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

If people want to see the full text, it’s hyperlinked right here in the quote header. I’m going to continue to assume that anyone who cares that much has either already read your post in full or will look it up. I decline to spam the boards with full quotes where I don’t feel they add to comprehension.

Feel free to ignore me. Or to have a conversation as the mood strikes you. But get over the notion that you’re going to dictate terms to me on how I post.

Dave Pare.2069:

It does not correspond, that’s why I was asking if it was preferable to regroup suggestions in one post, because it is not clear in the “guidelines”, at least not for me since I’m not english/american.

Please forgive my exasperation, because you’ve actually done a superior job of both illustrating my point and of showing that people want to do the right thing.

I look forward to seeing your name again when the next round of threads opens . (Just not in the form of 22 separate posts!)

I misunderstood the part of the word limits. I thought it was related to the suggestions, not the commentary. It actually made more sense in my mind.

It’s all good. We have a few more hours to get this banged out. Maybe a full day. I’m just hoping Chris has the time to read this whole thread and digest it a little before signaling for launch.

Zatoichi.1049:

my ideas involve specific weapon, trait, and skills changes, with proper rationale for everything. If I put all these proposed changes into one post, it would certainly exceed 200 words, by a lot, so I wont do that. Ill certainly break them up the best I can…

I want you to know that I am clawing at my eyes in frustration at reading this… and it’s not your fault.

Holy (*&#^@# that “200 words limit” needs to die in a fire at the bottom of a well, because seemingly NO ONE is able to read the suggested formatting and see that its a suggestion regarding THE DISCUSSION OF OTHER PEOPLE’S POSTS.

Nike.2631:

This plan will not survive contact with it’s friends, much less the enemy .

cesmode.4257:

Im not sure I understand the last sentence.

The goal is a more useable, more productive CDI process. The method proposed is driving away some of the people most interested in achieving that because they’re afraid that what would have been a good post/suggestion shouldn’t be offered at all because its not perfect, at least in terms of conforming to format. A few will be pushed out because what started as a conversation has turned into a formal, scheduled workgroup meeting, a series of power-point presentations without the benefit of slides. Meanwhile many people will ignore the suggested format (making it wasted effort) or be lead off the trail into the bushes by misunderstanding it (making it an outright negative in reaching the goal). A few will willfully pervert it, using it as cover for their own agenda’s or axe-grinding since it lends the appearance of legitimacy to posts entirely unrelated to the topic.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please try to be as concise as feasible with your proposal. This however no suggested word count for proposal posts.

Dave Pare.2069:

Chris hi,

are you suggesting that I should post my 22 suggestions in 22 different posts? Are you sure?

How does that correspond to “concise as feasible” in your mind?

Just to clarify: I regrouped my suggestions into paragraphs, each one concerning a different subject, I formatted them to be easy to read and to not exceed the 150 words lenght each (actually the only one exceeding is 169 words long).

They’re proposals, not commentary. The suggested limit of 200 words does not apply.

Its an amazingly practical survival tactic.

But one easily made light of from any sufficiently cushy vantage point.

cesmode.4257:

While I’d agree that talking about format and structure detracts from the casual nature of the effort…

I think it borders on psychotic break with reality to think more than a fraction of the CDI contributors will give the things being put forward here any thought whatsoever before pressing ‘reply’, and that the people who are reading it are being unnecessarily stressed out by it . In essence we’re discouraging those people most interested in contributing in an orderly fashion.

…people need to realize that writing books and placing them in subsequent posts(multiple posts/pages), is not necessarily healthy for the discussion. I for one do not have the time to read those wall of texts and I cringe to believe that folks like Mr Whiteside have to read them in order to stay current.

People need to learn the art of brevity. It will serve well in many areas of your life, not just in this CDI discussion.

Two or three well written paragraphs(not 10 sentences each) is not too much to ask in order to convey a thought.

I agree with you about these goals in all aspects… except for the implementation being attempted here . Its an interesting attempt, but I think there’s exactly 0% chance we won’t be trying to rework this in the next CDI Evolution thread. This plan will not survive contact with it’s friends, much less the enemy .