Guild Wars 2

There should be 30s check for turrets skills. If you are not using any skill within 30s you get booted. I also see idle players parked on the turrets and that automatically means failure.

I wouldn’t mind having a few minutes added to the timer but in essence I agree. There are just three dragons so the rest of the world bosses are still fully doable with any sort of set up.

I’m fine with them changing all the dragons. Just remember to leave some of the less “epic” world bosses still doable.

Also please don’t do the hp boosting. If an encounter was boring before HP boost it’s certainly more so now. If your option is to do a hp boost or rework the encounter please do the latter. If you can’t do it now just leave the encounter alone until you can. Many fights haven’t changed at all other than now it takes annoyingly long to destroy the foe. You can still autoattack them to death.

Once you start reworking other world bosses (the easier ones) make them encourage mobility and add a few side requirements. Don’t merely boost the hp. Just don’t go over the board with those.

Oh and please don’t boost the world boss HP to annoying levels… Oh wait. I have a feeling I mentioned this already.

I recently had roughly two weeks break and I don’t feel like I missed anything except a few achievement points.

I don’t mind releases like SAB but I’m sort of wondering what happened to the open world and story of the elder dragons. The world does not seem to progress at all. Instead of that we get a lot of stuff that feels very disconnected from the rest of the game. After a few weeks it’s gone and nothing significant was left behind.

I’m not entirely sure why you guys don’t focus more on developing the zones and connect the living world to those through events. There hasn’t been anything that has improved playability of the events and zones themselves. In fact the latest changes (i.e. champion loot) have further driven focus away from events.

Failure of Southsun Cove and the “event updates”

I recall a developer citing that Southsun Cove was a sort of failure and another mentioned that no one even noticed the new events they added on some update.

Southsun cove failed because there’s nothing truly desireable that is exclusive to Southsun Cove or that can’t be gotten easier from some other zone. Once the temporary content was over there was no reason to go there. Karka Queen is much harder than other world bosses so why bother when you can kill multiple bosses in a time it takes to defeat her.

The new events failed largely because of the same reason. Especially since level 80 players have few reasons to go back to do lower level events just for fun.

What I would like to see

Basically: focus on persistent changes to zones and make it worth to go there other than for farming champions. Make things exclusive. If something can be gotten easier from somewhere else that’s where players go. Below is an example of what I mean:

Thematic area: Maguuma Jungle
Thematic meta event: Rise of Tequatl the sunless
Thematic merchants: asura, sylvari
Buildup zones: Caledon Forest, Metria Province, Brisban Wildlands, Sparkfly Fen, Mount Maelstrom
Event monitor: Tool that shows how near completion the meta event is

Doing events in maguuma area reward player karma, gold, and deadly bloom(s) or knowledge crystal(s). Each area has a merchant which sells asura or sylvari themed gear, minipets, thematic items, crafting components in exchange for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals. These merchants must be unlocked for example through a reputation system. They sell weapon skin and other unique stuff that can’t be gotten anywhere else!

Once the build up events are done Tequatl assaults one of these zones with multiple hotspots for activity. Completing the event in any of these locations earns the final reward.

Goal: Players want to go to Maguuma areas for deadly blooms and knowledge crystals as an alternative to dungeons. They also want to earn the exclusive skins and other rewards that can be bought only with blooms/crystals.

Natural completion of these events spawns a world boss (Tequatl) instead of everyone swarming him based on a timer. Allowing him to appear in multiple zones makes it more interesting. Especially if each zone has unique defeat mechanic. Adding multiple spots that need to be simultaneously handled splits the players and reduces lag.

Finally you can tie living world achievements and temporary content to zone overhauls allowing you to tell stories and introduce new enemies while still leaving behind interesting persistent content.

Risk: Players may decide it’s more worthwhile to farm TA or CoE.

Same on Piken Square. I checked the map and it doesn’t show overflow so either it means that a) overflow display is bugged and it’s past 10 maps or b) the event is bugged.

My problem with culling is that it seems to cull wrong things from my point of view. I seem to be often get hit by invisible effects (though this may be a graphics card issue since it happened before culling too). I can’t see the skill animation but I can see the hit FX. I.e. someone throws a fireball at me and I can’t see the fireball trailing at me but I can see the flame burst FX once it actually hits me.

Actually would it be possible for a culling option that removed only the hit FX from any attack that is not targetting me or where originator is not me? Big boss fights are mostly problematic because of those hit FX effects. Not because of the skill animations themselves.

I.e. you fight the statue of dwayna and it’s constantly covered in massive hit FX soup. I’d rather them be toned down than the meteors, projectile trails etc that are part of the skill animation itself and help me to judge what my allies are doing. I don’t need to know if they actually hit the target. I mean identifying a single effect in large scale battles is pretty much impossible now anyway. Also seeing when enemy is about to execute power attack is very hard now as well. This is all because of the hit FX not because of any skill animation.

This would also be very helpful in WvW… which I promised never to touch again but seems I’m there. I blame my friend who asked me to give me real WvW another try after I loudly complained about the stupid jumping puzzle kite hunt (which I never wish to see again).

Summary:

Split skill effects to 3 parts:

• cast visual (basically the animation your character uses when they cast)
• effect animation (fireball projectile, meteors falling etc)
• hit fx (effect tha plays on target) —> allow disabling this when the caster is not me or when I am not the FX target

Actually please assassinate her. It would certainly turn the story into more interesting direction as that action would have rather far reaching consequences considering the role she plays for humans, treaty, and elder dragons.

Assassinating her would:

• Cause turmoil in human lands
• Stress the relationships between humans and charr (especially if Charr assassin)
• Cause personal disaster in Logan’s life (seriously the opportunities here are endless – antihero, former friend turned enemy, treaty broker etc etc. He can be the new Shiro)
• Spread plot hooks to entangle destiny’s edge and elder dragons

Really assassinating Jennah would probably be the best that could happen. I mean we have celebration after celebration. We need something darker. Something that shakes the world. I mean who cares about some nameless Charr rep dying. I already forgot him (her?) but Jennah… just make us familiar with her first. Make us like her. Make it personal and not just another face we have never really met.

Btw don’t kill Logan. It wouldn’t achieve anything. So he dies. Half of the people celebrate while half go wtf. It wouldn’t even give that many good hooks since what would destiny’s edge do anyway? Mourn and then carry on in shadows like they do now. The queen would sulk and probably ask us to find the killer but beyond that it would not affect anything.

The irony here is that Destiny’s edge was supposed to be something but they really are not. I hardly know them. They could all die and I wouldn’t care at all. I care more about Kiel than I do about them (and I don’t really care about Kiel either).

I used to be a GW2 fanboy but both Bazaar and Cutthroat politics have changed that. Mostly because I believe they are signs of what is yet to come. GW2 used to be a game where builds and gear didn’t matter that much in PvE and where everyone was welcome in teams. Most of the content was also polished, well made and well tested. Living story updates changed this.

Now they are introducing content where you are forced to specific set of gear and where you are forced to turn down party members if they don’t fit into few specific roles. It’s even worse that to actually succeed in this content you need to use gimmicks (Trials) or hope the dice favors you (Adnul). The worst part is the fact that it’s temporary. If you fail to do it you will never again have a chance to get that achievement – and for an achiever like me it’s bad.

Actually the worst part is that it feels like developers are out there to punish players. “Oh so you guys can actually complete this? Better quickly add more spawns so only those who already have the achievement can enjoy it”.

All this is robbing the fun out of the game and I personally play games for their entertainment value. In fact I already made a promise that if I wouldn’t succeed in Evon T4 I would quit the game since no one would help me do it even after offering gold for it. Something I would be very sad to do considering I enjoy most of the GW2 but it’s the principle that matters. Thanks to my guild mate I succeeded so I don’t need to quit yet. These new “fixed” trials are still the worst content I’ve ever experienced in GW2.

I have mentioned before that I’d like to see more challenging content. This is not the type of challenge I want. What I mean is that I don’t want to see boring content like Shatterer, jungle wurm, mark II golem etc fights where you really have to make effort to get even downed. Compare this to for example Dwayna or Grenth which can be both challenging but they are permanent content and both are doable.

Similarly I enjoyed molten facility a lot. Unfortunately I really didn’t have time to experience the Aetherblade retreat more than once and then we didn’t manage to complete it – but it was still a fun run. Again this was not. This is as far from fun as it can be.

I’m still looking for a similar deal. I have tried map chat and here but no offers so far. Well actually one Kiel supporter offered to help and I’ll probably accept the offer if Evon supporters are not up to the task.

Same message here as Evon support thread: If someone can help me complete Evon T4 on Piken Square I’ll turn my roughly 300 tokens in for Evon (and even promise to get a support bundle). Otherwise they go to Kiel. Look up Taun Whitemane.

Edit: Also if I get a single thief/warrior running this for me I’m paying 5 gold for this but only on a succesful run

If someone can help me complete Evon T4 on Piken Square I’ll turn my roughly 300 tokens in for Evon (and even promise to get a support bundle). Otherwise they go to Kiel. Look up Taun Whitemane.

Edit: Also if I get a single thief/warrior running this for me I’m paying 5 gold for this but only on a succesful run

Nettle.9025:

Its extremely easy to cheese to win. Run out into the wilderness at the start, max your rations off the plants, then swim around in the water for 6-8 minutes where no one will find you and ghosts cant hurt you. You’ll usually outlast everyone.

You won’t get maximum score this way though… Anyhow. I have to admit I hate southsun survival. I usually like the minigames and I really like the new aspect arena.

I’m usually at least decent in minigames but for some reason I’m absolutely horrible in southsun survival. My arrows always miss and I always fail to dodge enemy arrows. I never find food. I never manage to scavenge anything without someone killing me or triggering a trap even though I try to keep eye on them.

Trying to grind towards the necessary score for achievement has been a real pain in the rear end. I can’t even seem to manage to get people kill me in a right spot so I could get as many motes as possible. I’m just so bad in it that it’s not even funny.

draxynnic.3719:

Now, you may say that Logan didn’t know all this… but the third paragraph at least is something he’d have been aware of.

Logan didn’t know all that and couldn’t have known all that. Also it still shows he is willing to place his own race above others and thinks he is important enough that he, and humanity, are the only one capable of saving the world.

Also even if slaying the dragon would not automatically cure the world (which it shouldn’t do anyway – that’s bad writing) of the effect it caused it would have certainly halted it.

All I see hubris, ego and human centic world view. Members of other races were ready to see it through. He was not. There’s no point trying to defend him. It’s a simple fact.

draxynnic.3719:

On Logan… he was in a catch-22. He had obligations in two different places, which he could not fulfill simultaneously. He’d have let someone down whatever he did (and if you read EoD more carefully, it’s apparent that without his intervention, the Branded would have got to Jennah before she deus-ex-magica’d the battle. Not every spell is a combat spell with a casting time of seconds, after all). In fact, he left hoping that he’d be able to handle Jennah’s problem in time to return for the fight, and thus cover both.

So what? Jennah would have died and that’s it. Saving a single queen vs saving the whole world or at least thousands of living creatures from further corruption. Including humans. There should be no question at all about which is the more important thing.

It’s very human action to save the woman you love I guess but that just shows Thackeray does not have guts to make sacrifices for the common good. Queens can be replaced. Worlds can not.

I don’t hold Kiel responsible for Thackeray’s actions though. Doing so would be as illogical as the strawman argument which is summed up as “thackeray is human —> thackeray shows poor judgment --> all humans show poor judgment”.

I dislike Kiel because she is made to be the goody-two-shoes and shows a lot of elements that Kormir did. Her character is pretty shallow too. Evon is much more interesting as a character. However as mentioned since I managed to complete her T4 trial, find aspect arena more fun than survival, and mildly dislike anything involving Izzy I’ll convert to follower of Kiel.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Please don’t blame Evon for your failures in completing the trial.

Sure I do. I managed to complete Kiel trials just fine but can’t complete Evon ones after the patch. Clearly it is Evon’s fault.

Hmh. Reading all this makes me sort of happy I shelved my necro a few months ago already. I’m mostly PvE player and it seems they didn’t do anything to improve PvE experience. Plus I really wanted to use dagger and axe with necro but they are sort of meh so I mostly use staff.

I’m also wondering why people always recommend crit builds. I mean both my ele and necro use pow/cdam/vit as primary focus. Even traits are 30/0/30/10/0 so basically my crit chance is as low as it can be on the necro.

However it looks to me like devs really want us to push points into crit chance and soul reaping with additions like dhuumfire and changes to DS. Besides wouldn’t Dhuumfire be a better trait if it applies to dagger or axe only? I mean I get the impression not too many play daggers/axes…

Edit: Actually I’m not even sure why the heck I’ve put 30 points in death magic in the first place considering I don’t really even use minions…

inazuma.7021:

Of course she does. She’s a trained soldier. What’s Evon going to due if Lion’s Arch comes under attack again? Bribe his way to safety? Stab a fellow Captain in the neck and run?

I guess. Plus I mildly dislike Izzy considering I play every other profession except thief and warrior which are his favorites plus I’m mostly PvE player while he is mostly PvP. I guess GW was primarily PvP game so I can’t hold it too much against him or other devs but it’s enough to make me switch from Evon camp to Kiel camp – I think.

Go Kiel go!

Lafiel.9372:

Right now, it’s easier to do it solo and with a thief or warrior than with a group.

Those are the only professions I don’t have – though maybe I should have considering those are the professions Izzy likes most. Not that I think Izzy has anything to do with this particular change.

Hmm. I was going to vote for Evon but I can’t seem to complete his T4 candidate trial after the new patch so I guess I’ll change my vote to Kiel whose T4 I managed to complete. Clearly Kiel has better tactical acumen.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Fungalfoot.7213, PvE balance is a completely different beast, as there are insane amounts of things that undergo balance changes (Different classes of creatures, dungeons, Story instances, events, etc.).

To balance PvE, you’re essentially involving every team but the PvP team. So, when you guys talk about Profession balance, please keep in mind what areas of the game you are referring to when you post your feedback in those sub-sections of the forums.

Which brings something else to mind. The sPvP forums are specifically to discuss sPvP changes, or things that affect sPvP. If you would like to discuss PvE, please use the appropriate sub-forums.

Thanks!

Sorry but this has to be the biggest load of crap I’ve heard lately unless skills and traits are not part of PvE balance. Last time I checked Jon said ANet didn’t want to do PvE/PvP split unless absolutely necessary.

This merely reinforces my impression that all profession balance decisions are made primarily to cater PvP folks. PvP forums are the only spot where you see devs talking about class balance and we all know how the senior developers who work on professions love PvP.

I also get the impression a lot of folks follow the “PvE will always be easy enough so who cares about PvE balance” school of thought.

Now they need to make a deep purple rose with differently colored glitter around it (google deep purple rose and the second image pretty much hits the spot)

JamrilGelantara.9827:

I actually think the recent updates of adding a new event every 2 weeks is way too fast, once a month was nice enough. There isn’t the time for a regular player to finish things, and it really disappoints me cause I liked the recent Bazaar of Four winds and didn’t get the chance to finish it.

You can still do the Bazaar achievements? They didn’t really go anywhere.

Shiren.9532:

I don’t think many of us purchased an active combat MMO to play jumping puzzles either.

Actually I bought this game partially because of jumping puzzles. I haven’t really seen a mmo use them that much in the past. Even if they did there wasn’t basically no reward. I’m a reward driven player myself.

I specifically like following features in GW2 (which all contributed to my decision to get it):

• Dynamic events (though in all honesty I’m a bit dissapointed here – still better than wall of text quests in other games though)
• Open world cooperation (no exp loss, equal rewards)
• Active combat (even if I would like to dodge more)
• Jumping puzzles/mini dungeons (especially soloable/cooperative ones)
• Ability to revisit old areas (“sidekicking”)
• Armor appearance customization (though I am still waiting for alternate armor tab and costume creator for event items)
• Level of polish and detail (sadly does not apply to living world stuff)

I’m not dissapointed to dynamic events in general even if they get a tad repetitive. I’m dissapointed to world boss events i.e. shatterer fight where you have to make an effort to even get downed because the enemy is pretty much incapable of harming you if you stand on the side. They are just boring. I’d like to see a team that fixes these.

Also I’m dissapointed that many zones just feel like beautiful scenery. They lack actual interesting game mechanics. For example I always wonder why insides of the Volcano in Mount Maelstrom does not apply constant burning or similar effect. This would make the great destroyer fight more interesting. Doubly so if you have some Asuran invented ways to counter it. Similarly if we later get a desert I bet none of the survival stuff applies there which is kind of sad considering food and drink items would finally have more demand.

Similarly why water doesn’t have deceptive currents that pull you around or why high areas don’t have winds (other than in jumping puzzles) that would make them more interesting.

They may have treated zones artistically as characters but they certainly lack any mechanics that would give them depth.

As for minigames. I’m still waiting for a less competitive minigames like fishing (which I would like to see done in breath of fire 3 style). I do enjoy games like sanctum sprint and crab toss but I don’t foresee myself doing them constantly. Pretty much same as with my PvP and WvW in general.

Also honorary mention goes to achievement system. I’m achievement junkie. Originally I was very sad to learn there wouldn’t be GW style achievement system where you would earn new skills and stuff through it. Luckily they changed that.

Edit: Also forgot to mention I bought it partially because of promise of underwater content. There isn’t really that much meaningful underwater content which has been a dissapointed… hopefully this gets better with the water dragons.

I like kitties > Evon is a kitty > I like Evon. Vote for Evon!

Phew. Here I thought I was the only one who had trouble finding the end date for this thing. Judging from the posts here no one actually knows.

Coldin.2840:

Wrong type of bags.

It’s the bags that drop in WvW that have the kite fortunes.

Ah ok. I got the (wrong) impression people were talking about PvE bags.

I doubt heavy (orrian) bags drop kite fortunes. I opened all my bags to get materials which should amount around 1000 (maybe a bit less or a bit more) and didn’t get a single kite fortune.

Either I had really bad luck or they don’t drop…

akamon.2769:

what if ANet put in super smart AI-ed mobs at the end of a JP in PvE-land and they are OP and OHKO if you’re not careful. would that be alright? i know, the heart of the argument many have is that PvP = / = PvE. at the same time, why not just treat the WvWers as said OP mobs with really high AI? XDDD you are in PvP-land after all, and most of the “mobs” are going to be your opposing servermates.

Except you would have exactly same problem as now magnified. This would be equally bad design. It is bad because as a game developer you would want to provide a challenge. Not block access. Blocking access is what happens in sanctum.

Edit: Also a single champion mob would be trivial. OS situation is more like having anything from 1-20 champions placed into spots where they can push/kill you before you even have a chance to reach them. Placed tactically into spots where they can do most harm and with ability to move around whole zone and to return camping spots at will.

Also again people who say “Lrn to pl4y lolz” are missing a point. As are those who are talking about earning the achievement. At least I never complained about working for an achievement. My complaint with this issue is that there is no work. You simply can’t get it unless you luck out or have a PvP guild backing you.

In my case I had to ask people on my server to help me. I was largely a decoration so where is the “work” for achievement there? Where’s the challenge? The only challenge was writing here and using map chat and while I may not be the most skilled typer I don’t consider that a challenge at all.

The fact remains: Obsidian Sanctum is a very bad place for the kite. Doubly so since it completely blocks another achievement. If we were talking about a single point only it wouldn’t be that much of an issue. Whoever gets to the spawn camping spots pretty much can hold them forever and deny access for everyone else, unless they luck out or superior force manages to eventually flush them out.

Compare this to Sanctum Sprint. It took me nearly two weeks to get into the first spot but I would never even dream of complaining about it. While it’s PvP it’s fair PvP. You actually have to work for your spot assuming no one gives it to you free. Everyone is equalized there. Only skill matters.

This is very much unlike OS where not only position (camping spots) matters but also gear and build – and level too. Someone with ascended gear and build focused on PvP is going to have a huge advantage over someone who pops in from PvE and is inexperienced both in PvP and in building PvP characters. Add a large group of hostile players vs solo or a small group and the issue is magnified.

If they had wanted to offer a fair playground they would have placed this into a spot where WvWvW is more natural. Stonemist castle or some neutral site. Heck they could have even placed it into actual competitive PvP zone and it would have still been a better spot.

Ok. Let’s give this a try. There’s currently a large group of jade sea campers past the dark room and on the rocky area. Could some Crystal Desert PvP guild come and kill them? They have multiple mesmers and a lot of KB skills so bring stability. I’m a bit tired of constantly getting gangraped so close to the kite.

Edit: thanks for everyone who helped to get the kite.

The issue here is that they placed it into spot where

a) people have normally very little reason to go in groups
b) few people are able to defend against large number of people
c) terrain makes it already difficult to navigate because it’s a JP
d) a single jerk can negate a lot of your progress by pushing/killing you from superior position

Add the fact that this is part of a larger achievement where six of seven achievements are PvE only and it’s asking for trouble. Sure it’s ok if you have an entire PvP guild to back you up so you can overwhelm the campers but if you go in solo you are pretty much killed on sight. If they wanted to provide a good WvW experience they would have placed to kite into the stonemist castle or some temporary neutral capture location because they are in the area where real WvW happens. You would have had your world’s whole WvW population to assist you and camping would have been almost impossible. Unlike in Obsidian Sanctum.

Then again I doubt they really thought that much about this. I’m pretty sure the current situation won’t promote interest in WvW. At least for me it killed what little interest I had in it. Like I said they could have placed it into area where WvW actually normally happens and is fair and can be even fun.

I’m a bit confused. Why would using old concept art be a bad idea? Actually why would implementing something that was first conceptualized 5 or even 10 years ago be a bad idea?

This content release is both awesome and the first thing that has made me consider I need a break from this game.

The good

1. The new zone is awesome. I hope part of it is converted to permanent jp.
2. Lightning, Sun and Wind crystals and the powers they grant
3. Sky crystal hunt was/is extremely fun
4. Sanctum sprint is fun even if the best spot for me is still third
5. Achievement rewards

All this made first days really enjoyable. For me this shares the best content spot with halloween and christmas releases as far as temporary content goes.

The nerve wrackingly bad

1. Adnul
2. Kite in Obsidian sanctum

Seriously I rage quit more than once with Adnul before I finally lucked out. It was not because of skill at all. It was pure luck that I beat him. There is basic pattern to his abilities which allows you to easily get him down to 10-20% of health but there is also completely random aspect which is enough to make it purely luck based.

As for the kite. I have never hated WvWvW more than I do now. I went from “hey WvWvW can be fun at times” to “If I ever have to step into WvWvW again it will be too soon”. I spent hours over a few days getting repeatedly ganked and when I finally got past the dark room the game decided it was time for some balance nonsense and booted me out to LA. I still don’t have that stupid kite achievement which means I can’t complete the overall kite achievement (I’m missing the fractal one as well).

I’ve experienced bad content releases and they never gave me urge to quit. Now this is a content release I consider good in pretty much all aspects but it actually has two so overwhelmingly bad features I felt urge to actually uninstall GW2. Something I thought would never happen and over amazingly little thing. I’m sure I have cooled down already enough tomorrow but now it’s definitely break time.

ALSO WHAT THE FLYING kitten. I just finally managed to get through the dark room past all these campers and it decided to kittening throw me away from obsidian sanctum because of some balance kitten…

This after hours of trying to get there… kitten this.

Furesy.6935:

I can understand the frustration that some people get from this achievement. But really, is it so bad? The harder something is to get too, the more satisfaction you get from actually ACHIEVING that very thing.

Yes it is. I fail to see how constantly getting ganked by a superior number of players is supposed to challenge my skills? What exactly can I do to avoid that death when the jumping puzzle specifically forces you into spots that are easy to camp? Do tell me.

People speak about “challenge” and “difficulty” as if getting repeatedly killed by a group of enemies was some sort of challenge. The only real challenge in that puzzle is jumping. That is something you can control. It would also be challenging if it was 1 vs 1 PvP.

Compare this to Sanctum sprint. I enjoy it a lot even though the best spot I’ve held so far is third. It challenges me and is difficult but it’s fun. As are all PvP activities in general since they often equalize the playground by providing a) small areas, b) specific set of skills, c) teams or at least a situation where it’s one vs one or everyone vs everyone. Challenging but fun.

No amount of skill is going to let me avoid wandering gangs of enemies in obsidian sanctum sepcifically because there are spots which can be camped and which force you out of invisibility. 10 vs 1 is not challenging. It’s borderline griefing. This from a player who started with MUDs so people better not speak to me about “players these days” because I’ve played games longer than most and always thought that mindless ganking is far from challenging or fun.

I wouldn’t mind it being in obsidian sanctum if people just left me alone and allowed me to pass freely. I’m not there to fight. I’m there to get the kite. I just experienced roughly three hours of gangraping by enemy team(s) who just wouldn’t let me pass – and it’s impossible to navigate through the dark room while invis. 1 vs 1 would be fair. 10 vs 1 not so much.

I mean I’ve done this before and most of the time people from other worlds are pretty nice. No one is really fighting that much or at least there aren’t wandering gangs ganking anything that moves.

At least this experience taught me to hate WvWvW even more.

There’s also the fact that you really need to jump only for very few achievements which are lessons from the sky, pig iron quarry, spekks’s lab, and the one in griffonrook run. There are more than enough other achievements to get the 16 achievements.

Besides if we get down to “have tos”. You also have to PvP and do fractals to be able to get all achievements. What about those folks who don’t want to PvP? There are at least 5 PvP related achievements (+1 obsidian one potentially).

Anyhow. I’m going to fully enjoy all content. I don’t normally PvP at all but I have enjoyed all PvP minigames so far. Too bad most activities don’t reward glory. I mean I find the minigames more fun because everyone is equalized so you don’t have to worry about builds. Only player skill matters.

Yes please! I love this place. I love the all the wind, sun and lightning crystals. Can I make this my home instance instead of my current one… please?

Also please add crystals to the roofs! I was on my way to top of the highest mast but ran out of crystals before I even had chance to really try. Currently standing on roof and wondering where to get more jump crystals!

Hmm. Weird. I never got any of the SAB achievements because I didn’t much like it. Crab tossing on the other hand? I’ve all the achievements from it and while I can’t see myself playing it every day I still found it much more fun than SAB.

First. Congratulations for making me to spend money (100€) first time since the game release. Primarily to three molten mining picks for my three primary characters but I also bought enough keys to get two molten dagger skins. Actually I’m pretty sure I’ll get a few more picks if they stay in the store a while longer but the dagger skin hunt cost more than I expected. Split to sections:

APPEARANCE

NOTE: Do not make the items listed here town clothes if you ever get around creating them or I will be very unhappy. I never buy them or use them. They serve no purpose whatsoever.

Alternate armor tab/slots. Still on the list of most wanted. I don’t like carrying around extra armor or storing it to bank. I have currently six characters so that means purchase x6 eventually if the price is something reasonable like 600-800 gems. Think of the money!

Fire Shaman armor set and skin. Currently I have to wear transmuted embroidered pants. That’s the only decent looking leg armor for an elementalist charr. Leg slot items for casters are way too poofy. Only humans manage to have decent folding in them and that’s only for some. Flame shamans have this cool savage bare chested strapped look. I definitely want those lava arms instead of the molten bracers and I want that leg piece because it looks like it has been designed with a tail in mind and doesn’t look like a dress. I’m ready to pay up to 3000 gems for that even if it’s a partial set.

Basically (in higher quality textures please like the molten guys have):
Head armor: those glowing eyes or some flame orbital or something to that effect
Shoulder armor: the chain that they are wearing
Chest armor: make it straps that leaves most chest bare
Hand armor: those awesome looking lava/fire covered hands. No extras please!
Leg Armor: those awesome straps and the loin flap. Don’t make it poof out!
Foot armor: strapped sandals (most foot items look really bad on charr)

Flame legion “burnt/furless/scarred” skin is not mandatory but would be nice. Bonus points if it comes with “flame mane”. This is charr specific skin. However the armor set should be wearable by all races.

Orbitals: I’m a huge fan of ioun stones. I want an armor piece that adds orbitals around my characters. Especially since I like to play my elementalist. I’d prefer them in two formats: head orbitals (head armor) and body orbitals (shoulder armor or back item). These should be relatively small items. Basically the same size as the flame eye is. They could range from elemental orbs to glowing geometric shapes to floating runes.

Bonus points if you can build a set. Basically fuse them together to increase the amount of orbitals within reasonable cap (i.e. 3-5). If you buy one you just have one. Then buy second and fuse it into a new item that gives you two etc. If these each cost around 300-500 gems and you can fuse three of them it that’s 900-1500 gems for a set of three.

Alternate weapon effects: My Asura engineer has this cool rifle called super hyperbeam alpha which is basically energy weapon. Yet he shoots bullets with it. Allow me to buy “a beam weapon effect set” (comes in different colors) that can be applied to specific weapon (i.e. rifle). When I wield that specific rifle the effect changes but all other rifles still remain normal.

UTILITY

Everlasting harvesting sickle/axe in a similar manner as the molten mining pick. Thank you!

Costume creator: Store town clothes templates on this. I still won’t buy town clothes unless you can figure out some use for them. However I’d like to store my event/freebie town clothes in this manner so I can spawn them to new characters if necessary.

MISCELLANEOUS

Emotes: While I won’t be buying costumes anytime soon I’d be interested in having more emotes. Especially if they somehow utilize professions / races. For example I’d like to see a “juggle” emote. If performed by an elementalist in fire attunement it would juggle small fireballs, in air attunement orbs of electricity etc. Engineer would juggle tools. Thief would juggle daggers. Basically something that is “iconic” to profession or race.

Pokemon/battle chess pets: Not specifically gem store purchase but might make me purchase pets. Currently minis are just decorative. I’d actually like to have a minigame where you can make the mini pets fight each other in battle chess/pokemon style. Couple this with an achievement system and I’d definitely play it.

It’s not actually the spiders where the event fails. It’s the champion wraith that ends up wiping out everything once it shows up. The same thing happens in penitent events.

There is a problem with mob scaling that was introduced with the last flame and frost patch. All Orr champ wraiths have a very large pbaoe life drain attack (i.e. covers whole temple) which now kills everything within a minute because it uses it basically nonstop which makes it unavoidable. It consumes blocks immediatelly too since it concists of multiple hits.

This also happens in the Temple of Grenth event when the champ wraith spawns. Not only players die but also Jonez is dead fast.

I’m just wondering why the culling seems to be prioritizing players over enemies. Players don’t try to (hopefully) kill me in PvE while enemies do. It’s no use for me to see fellow players if I can’t see enemies.

Priority should be:
Party members > enemies > npcs > other players

FIRE ELEMENTAL

The good: It has good pre-event stuff going and it’s nifty how the matrix cube key is partially tied to it. The fight itself should offer a decent introduction to gameplay mechanics for new players.

The bad: It’s very hard to dodge those fire elemental knockdown patches since you get hit pretty much the moment they appear. Adding a slightly longer delay and perhaps a bit more damage would encourage people to dodge. Dodging is a mechanic you should encourage people to learn.

JUNGLE WURM

The good: I can’t actually think anything good about this fight.

The bad: It’s just a bag of HP’s that you wail at. Its attacks never really cause any damage. Heck most regular mobs are more challenging than this one.

Suggestion: It’s a wurm. Make it tunnel around and burst from the ground in a shower of rocks that turn into husks. Give it the poisonous breath that the Arah grubs have but amp up the amount of patches it leaves behind. Make them inflict weakness as well as poison. Finally add plants that players can pick up to remove conditions. It should be relatively beningn way to teach about necessity of dodging, healing, as well as condition removal. It won’t even punish new players since they now have a way to remove conditions through environmental objects.

GOLEM MARK II

The good: Again I can’t think anything good to say about this fight. I guess the enemy looks good? I mean seriously. You made this the chest fight and not the megadestroyer?

The bad: This is one of the most tedious and boring fights in the entire game. It almost beats the shatterer fight in how underwhelming it is. It’s a massive bag of hp that can’t deal any damage to you.

Suggestion: Make us fight it in parts. Clearly it was meant for a phased fight. Basically make this a fight where it has multiple devastating charge up attacks. Since you already have that nifty announcer make them count down for these massive attacks. Then make us disarm it until finally the core is revealed. Once the core is revealed there should be a certain amount of time to destroy it before it goes boom in a nuclear meltdown style wiping out (downing actually) the players and failing the event. Finally make the chest actually appear inside the core if it is defeated before it goes boom.

THE SHATTERER

The Good: The shatterer looks impressive…

The Bad: This has to be the most underwhelming fight ever. You can just stand on the sidelines and literally never take any damage. Unless you happen to be hit by one of those falling crystals. Its heal mode serves no point other than to extend the fight slightly.

Suggestion: Make shatterer move around a bit and allow it to turn around so it can actually hit people with ground shakes and roar and what not. Change the mass crystal prison to be unaffected by blind. Blocking should be ok. Instead of healing crystals add “turret” crystals that strike nearby players with lightning that can chain to multiple players. Finally instead of randomly placing those falling crystals make them target players and ramp up the damage. This means that if all players are bunched up they will end up dead (or at least downed) because all crystals hit them. This should force people to spread out a bit.

CLAW Of JORMAG

The good: It has phases and it’s also not a total pusohver.

The bad: There’s still no chance to fail this event and like all fights there’s no real demand for any sort of mobility or tactics. As long as you keep the necessary range you are safe. The second part of the fight also punishes melee since it lacks easy access to ranged option that the first one has. Everyone will drop those bazookas anyway once rushing its feet.

Suggestion: I’d like pact weapons run by actual players to play more significant role in this fight. This might also be a good rush fight where the failure is tied to adds. Basically ignore adds and you fail should most likely be the goal with this fight. There is very large open area and thematically it fits that the claw would summon increasing amount of opponents. It would also give melee players something to do in the second phase other than destroy the crystals that block golems.

TEQUATL THE SUNLESS

The good: I can’t actually think much good to say about Tequatl fight either. It’s not horrible. It’s just not very exciting.

The bad: No chance to fail. Mediocre in general. For example those bone walls don’t really serve any purpose since no one really mans the cannons. Currently it’s just easier to keep attacking it directly.

Suggestion: I’d probably place more emphasis on the pact weapons and make this a phased fight like the claw. I mean the weapons are already usable but no one uses them. I’d probably give it some sort of very obvious damage aura that makes it really dangerous to get close to it. It would lose this aura once the mega lazer hits it a few times. Add some carryable weapon like the bazooka in the claw fight and everyone should have something to provide in the initial phase.

Here are my thoughts about big events like temple, dragon etc. My issue is that almost all of them are unfailable and some of them are safe in a sense that you never actually take damage. I’ll skip Balthazar temple one as I’ve tried it only a few times.

I’ve played these events both with melee and ranged and pretty much all of them are easier with a ranged character. There aren’t too many events in the game in general that favor melee over range.

TEMPLE OF DWAYNA

The good: I like Dwayna event chain most of all the temple events. It’s split into multiple parts that mesh well together and has actually two significant bosses. The fights themselves are longish but not ungodly long.

The bad: I’m not sure why you removed the extra spawns from the initial priestess fight. That’s pretty much the only spot where the event could fail and I’d rather fail an event in the beginning rather than the end. Especially when it’s a relatively long chain. I’d actually like to see them added back. Currently it’s way too easy.

TEMPLE OF GRENTH

The good: It’s challenging and fun. There’s actually chance to fail. This is the second best event of all temple events. Ice circle attacks and shades are a great addition. I also like the fact that pre-event is relatively short and failure is only a single step back because the fight with the priest can be quite punishing.

The bad: I thought stability was supposed to protect from launch? I’ve hit stability multiple times just when the launch patches appear and it never seems to block them. The patches are pretty much too fast to avoid without having some panic button which allows you to fully mitigate the damage. There needs to be a bit more time to react to them since there are so many of them.

The impossible: Not sure if this was fixed in the patch since I didn’t run the event today successfully. The champion wraith does insane damage since the previous patch. The life drain AoE which covers whole temple kills all players AND Jonez within a minute at most.

TEMPLE OF LYSSA

The good: Again I like the pre-event chain. Considering how long the pre-events themselves are I appreciate the fact that you can fail them only once.

The bad: This battle has always been long-winded and boring. Since the patch before this one it got even more so. I’m least likely to do this event of them all. It’s just so very boring.

Suggestion: Make the pre-event location defenses mandatory again. Just make sure people will earn the full reward if they stay behind. Currently everyone just rushes the priestess because that’s where the real reward is. Change the priestess fight in a way that she starts portaling out people to those defend locations when a certain number of people within the temple core is exceeded. Basically limit the number of people that are able to swarm her while funnel the rest into defend locations. At the same time significantly reduce her hp and make her own attacks more dangerous as opposed to adding gazillion champ enemies.

TEMPLE OF MELANDRU

The Good: High priest has some fancy moves…

The Bad: No chance to fail whatsoever. The defense fight after high priest is unnecessarily long and there’s still no chance to fail.

Suggestions: I’d probably roll the defend the interruptor and high priest fight into one. This looks like a good spot for “defend against increasing enemy swarms” battle. Make this an attrition fight. Instead of swarms of champion mobs add multiple easier suicide bomber mobs combined with vines and other things that cripple, bleed, and otherwise inflict conditions on players. All this while fighting the high priest should make the battle exciting.

Could we have a PvE split for Ride the Lightning? I pretty much use it for traveling around huge maps as opposed to actually attacking foes. I find it a bit strange that guardians and warriors can still leap with very short cooldowns but elementalists can not? I guess this has something to do with PvP.

I don’t like the Mist Form change. It’s pretty useless now in PvE seeing that the only reason to pop it is to heal while you are invulnerable. Well, at least I found the needed space for Arcane Shield now.

I’d probably use spirits if…

a) They persisted in world until destroyed
b) They followed you without a trait
c) They were harder to kill
d) They had some effect when they are destroyed

Current activation effects suck too as they are way too slow, small, and weak so I certainly could do without them. Essentially I would rather see them as mobile destructible AoE signets. I could use another option that benefits team and doesn’t require babysitting since I already have to do that with my pet.

I believe wiki puts Black Lion Kit to 1.5 ectos per rare. I wouldn’t recommend buying them off the store though as I believe the exchange rate favors actually buying actual ectos with gems. However those gained as a leveling reward. Sure. I use them to salvage rares.

On a side note: This is sort of kick in the head for me currently as I salvaged six rares and got 2 ectos. I wouldn’t be so annoyed if those six rares weren’t the only rares within almost two months. Heh.

John Smith.4610:

Actually about 15% of the population finds making money very fun, irrelevant of the uses of that money. Ever gotten unnecessarily rich in a single player RPG like Skyrim?

I am a person like this. Actually I’m a person like this in real life too. I like having money for the sake of having money. Most of my salary goes to savings. The other part goes to rent and mandatory purchases like food. I seldom spend my money on any “spur of the moment” purchases. Even in the game world I find it hard to spend the gold on something.

However at the same time I don’t necessarily stare at the price tag if I absolutely need something. I place convenience over getting something slightly cheaper. When it comes to games though there’s no “absolute need”.

I don’t play the “tradingpost” game though. I find it boring.

Edit: Also for OP. If you have too much gold feel free to donate some of it to me!

William Fairfield.1428:

We are currently looking into the rewards for events like this. I will post more information on this as it becomes available. Risk vs Reward is most certainly something we are thinking about.

I think part of the problem here is that you guys seem to consider blue and green items as rewards when in truth they are vendor trash. I never even place those items to trading post. I just outright merch them.

Rare is the first quality I consider as a reward because it’s the first quality that gives ectos. If I’ve a difficult and/or time consuming event that continuously rewards me with greens and blues I’ll just stop doing them. I mean sure you will do the dragon events and temple events once or twice for the cool factor but after that the only pull to them are rewards.

Dragon events themselves are boring since you have to make an effort to actually die in them. Hell I’m pretty sure I can solo Tequatl and Shatterer because they are that easy. For example Shatterer can never actually reach you if you are in the “safe spot” except with the crystal “prison” which is extremely easy to dodge. Dragon fights are just time consuming. Especially the Claw fight. As an added bonus the reward is not worth the effort. The carrot is currently enough to lure you into a fight since there’s no solid data on how bad the chances actually are, but the fight itself is boring and ends into a dissapointment almost always.

I don’t actually recall ever getting any rare from any of the temple chests. Claw also seems to be the stingies of dragons. I have actually gotten only a few rares from all Claw event chests. Heck. I’ve gotten more rares from add mobs than the Claw chest. I’ve never gotten exotic from any of the event chests.

I’d like to add that the champion mobs in Orr events still often drop nothing. I fought various champs yesterday and aside from a stray exo that was a reward most likely from the fact I hadn’t been to Orr with that char in a long long time I didn’t get any drops from champs.

Anyhow. I’d personally would like to know the chances for getting a rare or exo from chest so I can sufficiently judge if they are worth the effort. I’m not even sure why the drop and DR information is hidden because it affects my gameplay enjoyment as I’ve no idea when I’m subject to DR so I don’t know when to stop playing.