Guild Wars 2

No.

Conner.5803:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They said there will be more elite professions later. You’ll need those Hero Points then.

Wouldn’t be surprised to see anet reworking how to unlock future elite spec’s in a way where no extra heropoints are required, but totally forgetting old heropoints exist ;3

Honestly, they should. They can do better than the current system.

Well, they DID say they wanted HoT to have a “Metroidvania” like style to it.

Kattenpootjes.4291:

It’s more the people behind it that I hate, Gw2 started so good, the betas had such amazing content and since release they kept removing more than that they added, the game slowly became just as generic as all the other mmo’s {snip}

Apologies for cutting the quote a bit short, but I’ve had a few too many infractions for honestly lately.

Still, this says something important. The things that made GW2 special are dying. They’re fading away to be replaced with generic MMO fare. And I can see why. I’m sure the common wisdom is “This is what the players want”, and “This is what works, this is what sells.”

But if you’re like the other games, then why not play the other games? GW2 offers less and less that can’t be gotten by jumping over to another game.

No, I don’t have to be level 90 to get into the raids, level 80 is still the level cap. Oh, wait. That’s level 80 PLUS several levels worth of EXP dumped into the Mastery system, so instead of being level 90, it’s level 80 + 10.

No, the gear you get in HoT isn’t numerically stronger than the gear you got in the main world, but the way the stats are assigned in the new gear may help you refine your build more, so that you still become stronger and better able to face what’s ahead of you.

No, you don’t have to raid to get that Uber Sword of Uber, or that Sparkle Pony Armor of Spar… well, I guess you DO have to raid for that one. But not for the Uber Sword! Right?

I want them to return to making Guild Wars 2, not Generic Warcraft 2.

Okay, story time leading up to a question:

Last night, I decided to take my turret engineer (yes, each of my many characters has a style they focus on, rather than changing all the time) into VB. I don’t like the HoT zones, but I need mastery EXP, and thought that maybe it would be a good idea to use him to defend areas in the meta event.

At one point, I wound up setting my turrets up near some NPCs and fighting a couple of things that had latched onto my trail as I got there. When those targets were destroyed, the turrets did what they always do, looked for a new target. And they found one, one of the red frog people. A bit to my dismay, they opened fire at this thing walking around on the edge of their range.

And… it didn’t notice. Rifle shots and missiles were launched, but each and every one missed without this thing even trying to dodge. I checked the description under its health bar, and saw that it dodges ranged attacks. Without trying or entering combat, it was dodging all my ranged attacks. As an engineer that didn’t have the points to unlock Scraper even if I wanted to, I was pretty much helpless against this thing.

So, the question here is what was the reason for putting something like that into the game, when some of the classes can actually be locked out of having a melee attack? Yes, I realize that AoEs will hit it, but AoEs tend to be harder to come by due to cooldown timers and other costs. Giving players a blanket “immune to ranged attacks” ability would be overpowered, so why is it not seen so with an NPC?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Palador.2170:

I feel I should point out that you can glide into some of the home instances areas from outside. I’ve gotten into the charr and human areas so far, and I’m pretty sure I can manage the sylvari one if I find the right place to start from. The norn one is pretty small and flat (and inclosed), so only the asura one is really lacking.

Are they still an instance when you get into them by an alternate route though? Or are they the regular map that the instance normally sits on top of? Alternate routes were the way guilds and role players used to get into Salma for larger than parties of 5, before ANet added more walls around Salma.

Regular map, so that’s useless if you want to glide while harvesting. But, if you just want to glide around that area, it’s still useful.

I feel I should point out that you can glide into some of the home instances areas from outside. I’ve gotten into the charr and human areas so far, and I’m pretty sure I can manage the sylvari one if I find the right place to start from. The norn one is pretty small and flat (and inclosed), so only the asura one is really lacking.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Is it just me or is gliding disabled in home instances? And why?!? They’re just instanced sections of cities we’re already gliding in. Why can’t I glide between my candy corn node and my wintersday tree?

I bolded the important word there. “Instanced”. Gliders don’t work in instances of any sort, unless they’re set up for it (HoT instances). Sorry.

Azure.8670:

Rubi I absolutely adore you but we’ve been asking for feedback on about 20 other topics for months. I think this may be the only thing we currently don’t care about as the expansion is already released and it seems no new content is around the corner.

While there’s some truth to that, I’d really love to hear what the design teams behind HoT have to say for themselves.

That may sound a bit harsh, so let me explain. There are a lot of changes in HoT, including the monsters. I want to know WHY they thought these changes were a good idea, and just where they see the fun in fighting these new creatures all over the place. Was there perhaps a disconnect between how the creatures were designed and how they were used/placed? Were they looking for a specific kind of engagement (not fight, interest type of engagement)? Are there any “lessons learned” from HoT? These will all be important to the future of the game.

There are things that need fixed right now, yes. But I’d personally like to know the thought processes behind what they’ve done, and if that’s going to be how they work going forward.

OneYenShort.3189:

That first picture made me had flashbacks to the old 80s He-Man cartoon and the coloration of The Sorceress.

I’m glad I’m not the only one.

Aegis is balanced against the other block/counter powers in the game.

Aegis only negates one attack, but carries no penalties and always works.

Reflects work only against ranged attacks, they’re useless against non-ranged.

Blocks come in two types. One is a setup for another skill, but it only goes to that second skill if you block something. The other is a longer duration block, but those cancel if you use another skill.

Retaliation doesn’t actually prevent any damage to you, but it does cause damage to your attacker, helping you to kill them before they can kill you and perhaps forcing them to break off a barrage attack before it’s finished.

What you’re asking for is to make Aegis work more like the second kind of block, but without the drawbacks.

Daddicus.6128:

NOTE: Please don’t argue whether this actually works or not. Most everybody’s mind is already made up on that; that’s quite obvious from many other threads. Please stick with the more philosophical question of whether it SHOULD work or not.

But it DOESN’T work, and that’s why it’s not an exploit.

Yes, they can do a lot of damage quickly, but while they’re dead and/or running back from waypoint, they’re doing 0 damage. Someone with a more moderate build that can stay alive will do more damage in the long run.

If you have others keeping them alive or reviving them, then that reduces the damage output of those others as well, again coming in second to a more moderate build that can keep itself alive.

Finally, as has been pointed out, a lot of people play GC and manage to stay alive even in big boss fights. Here it’s a risk vs reward situation. The risk is dying in one hit, the reward is greater damage output. Those that can survive the risk earn the reward.

ElenaDragon.8401:

rsimoes.3851:

Rhyav.4812:

Even though I’d love to see this feature, I can’t imagine how they’d implement it. Imagine you have 250 Bandit Coin Purses and you open them all at once 90% of the items you receive would go to the “You’re encumbered!” bag and you’ll end up spending the same amount of time (if not more) clearing bag slots for the items to fill them immediately, so you’re unable to salvage until you have nothing else on the encumbered bag, which will take quite some time.
I think I’d prefer a “Salvage all possible non-rare items” option and I feel is more viable.

Actually it’s not that hard, they can easily implement a function that will check if you have any inventory space left before opening the next bag, and stop if you don’t.

Except that it’s probably implemented not to randomly generate the loot until it is opened, and the number of items you get out of a bag can vary.

It opens until it overflows, then stops. You’d only have a few items in the overflow.

No.

If they want extra money for some of their work, they need to make it into an expansion that people want to buy.

I would say more, but THEY are watching.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Orangensaft.7139:

they should build a jp on that giant unused area to the north

now that we can reach it with gliding

a jp with multiple possible ways and a hard one so we really have something to do while in queue ^^

That is a brilliant idea!

Put a chest at the end that you can open once per week, and put in it something that lets you pick one of the missing PvP skins. That way you have a reason to do it as well, but you don’t get any “value” rewards from it.

Yes, this game needs more instanced content.

The thing about the Open World is that it has to be open to everyone, or you end up cutting off parts of the game for some people. That is, in general, a Bad Thing.

Instanced content can be adjusted to the players. Instances can have limits on how many players enter, so they can focus on a narrow range of numbers more easily instead of trying to scale from 1 to 50+ players. There can be difficulty adjusters, for those that want more or less of a challenge. And they’re not interrupted by outside events passing through the area.

The open world is important, but it needs to be fairly casual friendly. It needs to be engaging in other ways, such as exploration and interesting events, but engagement by difficulty runs the risk of becoming a road block that keeps people away from everything else. An optional instance, however, can be anything from a cakewalk to “I don’t think the players can beat this, but we’ll give them a shot anyway”.

At least, this is my take on it.

Doughnuthole.2403:

I named my sylvari hound Chinese Salad.
No I’m not waisis.

I named mine “Fruit Lupe”.

I think “hate” is too strong of a word for how I feel.

It’s more like the base game is a decent cake, and HoT (including the changes that came with it) is a thick layer of that nasty frosting that’s mostly Crisco and powdered sugar. Yeah, the base game is there, but you have to deal with removing most of that other stuff to enjoy it, and it would have been so much better with a good frosting.

FrenzyApe.5809:

its a recipe. im working on finding it i miss 1 of the 4 ingredients

We might figure it out faster if you tell us what 3 you know, and what you’ve tried for #4.

If you don’t wish to share, that’s also fine. Dulfy will have it in a week at most, if you share or not.

I have little to no faith in GW2 as an “eSport”. It seems like a sick joke to me, or some strange vanity from one of the top devs.

What I DO have faith in, however, is ANet’s greed and willingness to forsake parts of the game that don’t live up to all their expectations. If they’re still pushing the eSports angle, then it must be giving them a decent return. Otherwise, it would be as dead and buried as the Personality system.

Qugi.2653:

When that one team rage quit few week ago during match was great PvP advertisement.

Oh, I’ve not heard this story! Please Sir, may I have some details?

Any official word on what’s going on here?

I know it’s going to sound strange, but I think the next one to get a major workover should be… the Shatterer again.

Give him a different way of fighting, different from the incoming revamp. Different attack patterns, different defenses. Smarter. Nastier. Then, have THAT version show up only about 1 in 10 times, at most.

And don’t put in any patch notes for it.

It’s only a matter of time before people learn the new fight, and it’s pretty much business as usual. But if he sometimes breaks the pattern and fights differently, then people will still get that moment of “Are we in trouble here?” when the fight starts. And if it turns out they are, then they’ll have to scramble to adjust what they’re doing and survive.

Well, I’m sure you don’t want a Necromancer that never knew his real parents, because that storyline is supposed to leave you with some unanswered questions. You don’t want to have to explain why you don’t just pull someone out of the grave and demand answers.

A necromancer wanting to join the circus, however, is interesting. It might have been a very dark circus they wanted to join, like the one from Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I can see it working.

As far as social standing goes, it seems that half the nobility in DR is some kind of magic user, with Mesmer being fairly common. I guess that goes with having the money to educate your kids in such things. So I’d say the question is how did they learn the craft? From books and tutors, on their own, or from a mentor that saw some potential in them?

Seana Of The Dawn
Seana The Flame

Of course, saying that a sylvari doesn’t have a last name is like saying that a human doesn’t have a computer. Yes, they’re not born with one, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pick one up later. Especially if there’s a reason behind having that last name, much like the norn and charr do.

Seana Brightflame
Seana Dawnrose
Seana Brokenstaff

Elementalist was supposed to be (I assume) a high risk, high damage class. The fact that they can dodge as well as everyone else means that it doesn’t really work like that, and they’ve suffered a bit because of it. I’d like to see an elite spec that addresses this.

Name: Invoker
Base Class: Elementalist
Weapon: Main hand Sword
New Skills: Stances

The Invoker is basically the Elementalist cranked up to 11, but at a cost. While they can produce more damage and healing, most of their skills also carry an Endurance cost. That’s right, Endurance, the very stuff you need if you want to dodge, so they trade survivablity for power.

Main hand sword takes this to the natural conclusion, letting them close into melee combat. Again, higher damage, but at the loss of their ability to dodge as frequently.

Their new skills will be Stances, one for each element and a 5th “arcane” stance. Each stance gives a bonus as long as it’s active, but prevents Endurance recovery until it’s turned off. Someone carelessly using a Stance may find themselves not only unable to dodge, but unable to use most of their attacks as well. Again, higher risks for higher rewards.

As someone that’s never played GW1 and wants some of those rewards… Don’t sell them.

Yet.

If GW1 ever gets shut down, then I’d consider it fair to sell them, as “buy GW1 and earn them” will no longer be an option. I wouldn’t make them cheap, though.

As GW1 IS still an option though, how would someone that’s never played it and has no friends that play it go about getting some points from that game? Where would you suggest they start, and how?

Go to Brisban Wildlands, and explore along the West side of the map.

The entry to Dry Top is in Tangle Root. The entry to the Silverwastes is in Vandal’s Claim.

BellatorDeus.2310:

I think that HoT has a lot of content. The 3D (adding the vertical dimension) world is pretty revolutionary for MMORPG and will be the future of these games. As for masteries they are just a way to add leveling without increasing the level cap.

It’s hardly revolutionary, and other games have done it better.

Palador.2170:

Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

I think you guys missed that line in my first post.

We have dungeons (sort of), raids, fractals, and story instances that are all… well… instances. Don’t you think it would increase the appeal and replay value of them if you could adjust the difficulty to what you want it to be?

And yes, rewards would have to adjust as well. That’s fine and fair. But how much depth and story can they put into something like raids if only a minor portion of the player base is expected to ever clear it to see it all?

This would go for future instanced content as well. With adjustable difficulty to draw more players in, it might even become worthwhile to reconsider the idea of a dungeon-like instance as part of a new area or story line.

TheBravery.9615:

I say stop with the new content until we fix our current ones

While I mostly agree with you on that, a new weapon set might allow them to try out some possible ideas without applying them to existing weapons and possibly messing up people’s builds if the ideas don’t play out as expected.

The main focus should be on making what we have work and work well, but sometimes that means bringing out something new first.

There will be no new armor sets in the gemstore, but that doesn’t exclude the OLD ones from returning.

If you’ve not gotten all of the armor sets that the gemstore’s had over the years, then keep an eye on it. They’ll likely cycle in sooner or later.

Azure Prower.8701:

Aedelric.1287:

I do not think they can turn it on till they finish working on it, it is not quite so simple as flicking a switch. We just have to be patient DreamyAbaddon.

A free to play player was able to get into it with no problems a few months ago.

Wait, what?

I don’t think we’ll ever see “Unarmed” combat, as the game’s made with the intent for you to carry weapons with stats on them.

Instead, we’ll likely see some kind of cestus, brass knuckles, tiger claws and the like. An “invisible” model would give us bare hands, though they’d still be closed as if holding something, so charr may not slash with their own claws.

Ah, Heart of Thorns. Some people say it’s too easy. Some say it’s too hard. A few say it’s just right. And what does ANet say? ANet says that HoT was made to bring in new systems to be used to make future content.

So, this leads me to the title question. Why didn’t HoT come with a difficulty adjuster? Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

No single difficulty will make everyone happy, that is and has always been obvious. And yet, we’ve still not seen any signs of the common sense solution to the problem. Why?

I kind of hate to say it, but Bearbows became known for a reason…

Rangers with bows and tanky pets allow for “careless” play. Or, in this case, play with less dexterity. Bear pets are easy to get, too. If you don’t need quite that much tanking, then use a different pet for less tank/more damage, and change to bow/Greatsword.

The biggest threat B&S poses GW2 is that people will start asking for the B&S “armor” to be carried over to GW2.

Ick.

Khisanth.2948:

Apparently no but I have no idea what the source is.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/gliding-in-central-tyria/

Second Paragraph, under “How Gliding in Central Tyria Works”.

There’s good background story to the game, but it’s not presented to you straight up. You kind of have to dig for it and make the connections yourself.

The bandits, for example, are getting support from some of the higher-ups in Kryta, in an attempt to make the Queen look bad and overthrow her.

Nightmare Court? While yes, a lot of them are just plain evil, you can find a few cases where some of them are not, and they actually have some good points to their arguments. Flame Legion? You can encounter one charr about to join them because they’ve got nowhere else to turn to, and another charr that leaves the Flame Legion and betrays them to help the other Legions.

You may have to dig for it, but there are some shades of grey out there. Not just for the bad guys, but the good guys too. Don’t let the fact that the main story isn’t the greatest keep you from seeing what’s going on in the big picture.

zaced.7948:

coso.9173:

homosexuality is just as much of a topic for kids as heterosexuality.

no, it’s not for homosexuality is a sin against the heavenly father.

I’m sure Zeus doesn’t mind. Heck, just ask Ganymede how much Zeus doesn’t mind.

Let me tell you how ANet will do this…

They will introduce a new tier of equipment. Let’s call it “Epic” gear. It’s pretty much Legendary gear in how you get it and stats, but the stats are set and you can right click it to choose “Remove Upgrades”.

Then, if you take a Legendary item, and the matching Epic item, and a few more expensive things, and toss them into the Mystic Forge, you’ll get the “Mythical” item of that type. That item will have both adjustable stats and ejectable upgrades.

You also need to do the first story segment of HoT with at least one character to unlock the Mastery system.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Fun fact. The male charr player character can be homosexual (or at least hit on other charr males) in the personal story. In one of the early charr story missions “Rage supression” there’s this npc who you can compliment and he’ll get embarassed. Mind you, this dialogue is identical wether you play a male or female, but it’s still fun to hit on other fellow fuzzballs nonetheless, specially considering said NPC’s name is Strodum Crush maw

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rage_Suppression (scroll down to dialogue section)

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think it actually answers the question that it IS acceptable.

It’s not just that you can have your male charr make a pass at another male charr, it’s who’s nearby when you do so. Your warband, a random unlucky rancher, and Rytlock Brimstone himself.

I’m pretty sure that a newly appointed Blood Legionnaire would NOT do something socially unacceptable in the middle of a mission, right in front of Rytlock. Given that the only reaction you get is from the flustered charr you hit on, I think it’s safe to say that nobody cares.

Oh, so THAT’s why my characters keep saying it at random!

…right. I need about 30 players, all on human characters. We’ll hide somewhere on the map, and set that to autoattack with about a 1 second step between when one character activates it and when the next one does it.

I’d say to leave them as they are for now. With gliding in the core maps, we may see more people using the glider to get above a target and drop as a way to start a fight. Let’s give it a chance, and see what people do with it.

Plus, there’s the problem of running out of endurance while gliding, and dropping further than you’d like. Or dropping early to not overshoot a target. Even with gliding, some people will want a way to reduce fall damage.

[Edit] Oh, and let’s not forget gliding in the new Shatterer fight. From the sounds of it, he may be able to knock people out of the air.

So it’s more of a “Survive Traps”, then?

Until gliders, nothing in this game actually flew so much as “walked high above the ground” or leaped/launched. Your flying pets don’t even really fly as you would think of it.

With that said, the birds are animated to appear to fly. The wyverns are not because the GW2 versions of them don’t fly for long. The wyvern battles are made to mostly take place on the ground. The wyvern pets are a copy of that, and therefore they also stick to the ground.

I think part of the reason is that they want more people to play PvP. If a PvE player jumps into PvP and finds their skills work differently, that may turn them off of the idea because it’s annoying to deal with.

In theory it’s leveling gear. In practice, it’s so overpriced that you’d be better off buying new gear every few levels.

AsurasRCute.4136:

The main differences between these two examples (GW2 and Star Trek) are: reproductive viability (often the core of the morals of the day regarding sexual taboos); and ‘otherness’.

Humans, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians (etc) can all successfully breed with each other, and it’s established in lore that we’re all made of pretty much the same stuff, with only minor differences.

That wouldn’t be the case for most of the species in GW2 I imagine?

And since the ‘otherness’ isn’t that ‘other’ in ST, the different races can often look more exotic and attractive to each other (like many feel about Elves). Attractive rather than repulsive (eg Human and Charr, or Human and Asura… probably less so Human and Sylvari given the more superficial similarities, despite the greater biological differences).

Now, the likes of yourself may have overcome these parts of yourself (assuming for the sake of argument that this is a good thing), but it’s important to give a thought to why others may not be able to do so quite so easily: You’re dealing with some pretty deep and hardwired stuff here.

As for the reproductive viability, they normally can’t, that’s correct. But some of those races in Star Trek can’t either without help, and I’m sure that if a bunch of asura bent their minds to it, they’d find a way to make human/charr work.

But let’s leave humans out of it for a minute, and look at charr and norn instead. Most people have no problem with seeing norn as attractive, there’s even a NPC female voice line where she comments on how attractive she found a norn man. There are stories where humans claim to have norn blood in their family trees. And yet, norn and charr are pretty similar for the purpose of this discussion. Both evolved on Tyria, both bigger than humans, both just as alien to humans (biologically speaking). And with their culture and their gift for shape shifting, one could even say that norn can be more beastial than charr are.

The only real difference is that, most of the time, norn look more human. That isn’t the right standard to judge this by, surely.

Donari.5237:

There is a blog up about how it will work:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/gliding-in-central-tyria/

It sounds like they’re going to be okay with us finding some map breaks, as long as the map isn’t downright broken.

I was hoping for actual downdrafts instead of odd “no fly zones”, but it still works for me. I just wonder how much of Lion’s Arch will have to be a NFZ to protect the two more important JPs there.