Guild Wars 2

Daniel Handler.4816:

Europeans get to start their session at night time, and they get to end at night time. The Americans get to start in the middle of the day, and end in the middle of the day. Would it be asking so much to start the BWE at midnight on Friday, and end it at midnight on Monday?

Because right now the message seems to be that ANET does care if EU plays the beta or not. Seriously, how much feedback from EU is lost because you overlap the start and ends times with the times that people want to sleep.

So, assuming that players work a normal 9am to 5pm type of job….

EU players will get a shot at it all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and Monday evening.
NA players will get a shot at it Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday.

Oh gods, the unfairness of it all! What cruel, cruel monsters they must be!

Ticky.5831:

Yeah, PUGs are going to gate it regardless.

Oh yeah. Human nature, I’m afraid. We’re our own worst enemies at times.

Xstein.2187:

A full set of zojja’s light ascended armor costs roughly 723.85 gold
If we applied the same percent increase in price currently between ascended and legendary swords than light legendary armor would cost about 33,016.61 gold.

If light legionary armor would cost this much to make than I don’t think it would be a problem if you didn’t have to make ascended armor before legendary. However, if the price is lower (or the time needed to make that amount of money), then I do in fact still think you need to make ascended armor before legendary so that it does not greatly effect the economy of ascended armor and the materials associated with them.

I think that the price of Legendary weapons will drop once HoT hits, but I think we all expect that. Still, I think both the weapons AND the armor will be so much more expensive than Ascended that Ascended gear will remain a common stepping-stone for most players.

I’ve noticed that while they’ve said that you can gain the legendary armor through the raids, they’ve NOT said that you’ll get it directly. Or that you won’t have to go outside of the raids as well. I think we’re looking at a long, hard road to make this stuff. And if they put one armor precursor (per armor weight) at the end of each raid, we’re still looking at at least six raids just to get the precursors. That’s going to be a long wait.

So, yeah. I think Ascended gear will stay in a good place, and people will continue to make it.

Ehecatl.9172:

I do not know how you could offer good rewards for WvWvW though. Making it only available to top servers seems like it’d be unfair to people on low population servers, which is hardly their fault. I guess you could make it obtainable through a badges grind but… Eh. Grinds are the worst.

Well, I don’t do WvWvW, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but how about this:

The castle at the center of the main map can, if held long enough, spawn a special forge/node/ect that gives you part of what you need to get the W3 legendaries.

Let’s say the castle has to be held for 1 hour, and after that it spawns a “Black Diamond” node. You can harvest from this once every three hours. Each part of the legendary armor (and other rewards, if you go for them) costs you X amount of black diamonds and badges. With a recharge timer of 3 hours, it’s not really possible to pass around ownership of the castle to all three servers fairly and still get full access, so nobody would really want to cooperate to do that.

Xstein.2187:

Second: This is kind of a different topic. I do not think ascended armor should be needed for raids. However, I do think a piece needed to craft legendary armor should only come from 50+ fractals. Why? Because if people try to get legendary armor before ascended than the whole economy for ascended armor will collapse and no one will have it. By having high fractals required, it insures people are still making ascended for agony resistance before legendary.

Is it actually bad if people skip ascended armor? They can already do that with weapons, if they want, but I’ve yet to hear of that being a problem.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

The only counter I can think of is the more damage you deal, the more damage your opponent deals in all forms. Thus higher DPS builds wouldn’t really be wanted since you’d just be killing everyone faster.

How about a boss with stats based on the raiders’ stats?

Either directly (more power for the raiders means more power for the boss) or inverted (more power for the raiders means more toughness for the boss). It’s kind of a cheap trick, though…

I expect to see at least one boss where if its health drops too fast, it changes tactics to wipe out glass cannon builds.

flog.3485:

You must also understand that there is no gear treadmill in this game, it is all about cosmetics and crafting you gear up to ascended is just an objective that people set themselves (I personally have never bothered to finish the collection of ascended armors and so far I have never felt underpowered, having only one set of ascended for my mesmer)

Rather, there wasn’t one. I suspect soon that we’ll see something that, while not a treadmill, might be still seen as a grind.

Let’s say that the first raid is doable just fine in Berzerker gear. Lots of people have it, no need to grind for more. But the second raid suddenly requires you to take a lot of hits that you can’t avoid, and survive them. Do you have Soldier gear? No? Go earn a set, then come back. Oh, look, it’s raid three. Conditions rule here. Time to go out and get a set of Sinister. And in raid four, we see an area where you need buffs on you constantly. You have Boon Duration gear, right? No? Well, guess what you get to do!

This is also why I don’t think they ever adapt the PvP gear system for raids. Yes, it makes sense in a way, and I personally would be more willing to consider giving them a second look if they did that, but they won’t. Getting you to go out and do things to get additional sets of gear not only adds time, gold, and effort invested into a raid, but it also makes you want more storage for all this gear. Bank Tabs and Bag Slots, available now in the Gem Store!

(No, no tin foil hat here, really. It’s just common sense. These raids will take a lot of dev time to make and adjust, they want the people that do them so invested in them that they won’t just leave the game once they’ve done them. Getting them to invest time and effort (and maybe RL money?) into them is one way of doing that.)

The list is merchants where you can PRE-purchase HoT. Once it’s live, you may be able to buy it at more places.

Yes, you will miss out on the pre-purchase bonuses, but with luck any place that sells GW2 will sell the new version with HoT once it’s live or shortly after. There’s little reason why they wouldn’t, actually. Just make sure you get the new version, not the old.

Erebus.7568:

casual is a term for people that don’t want to put in the effort, but just wanna have fun without anything that makes them put effort into it which isnt immidiately entertaining or rewarding.
often these are grouped with exploiters, cheaters, hackers, or people that just don’t care enough for it.

hardcore is a term for people that put in the effort.
this would be meta gaming, insane amount of hours to specificly train aspects of the game. doing spreadsheets, figuring out the mathematical formula’s for ingame stuff. using the time to optimize strategise statistically (again most of that is done in a spreadsheet). etc.
hardcore players actually use very High amount of their free time(hours for gaming) planning their playsession instead of actually playing the game itself.

Excuse me?

In this game and others, I’ve known both hardcore and casual players. Of the two, in every game it has ALWAYS been the “hardcore” players that are more likely and willing to hack, cheat, and exploit.

Why? It’s simple, really. Hardcore players are more likely to be driven by rewards and obtaining them is their main goal. Casuals are more likely to be enjoying the game itself, not the rewards.

Look at dungeons. A casual may run one a few times, then move on when it gets dull. But a hardcore will find the one that’s the best for rewards, and grind on it. Hone their skill until they’ve got it down pat and there’s no real challenge left, to make sure they don’t waste time by failing a run. They run it until it becomes boring, a chore. Then someone says “Hey, jump up here and run along this wall, and you’ll glitch through and skip some of the fights!”, and that sounds good to them. They’re tired of that fight, so they do the glitch and skip it. It’s just how people work.

Gorisek.2678:

and on Oct23 we will see

Just a reminder that the first raid will NOT go live with HoT. They’ve not said how long you’ll have to wait, but there will be a wait.

I’m guessing that they want to make sure they nail down any bugs that would allow people to skip past or cheese the content of the raid, before they give people a shot at it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Palador.2170:

TheDaiBish.9735:

What about a Gambit system like in the Queen’s fights?

For example, conditions applied to you last longer, damage taken increased by x% etc.

Then, for every gambit on you, you gain X% exp, gold, karma and MF for every kill (to a cap). However, if you have a gambit on you, becoming Defeated resets the buff.

So, you’d be able to become somewhat less effective, and more of a weight to your team, in exchange for you (and only you) getting better loot?

They got rid of the old Magic Find stat for a good reason. I doubt they’d bring it back.

Now, if they added this to a dungeon, and it applied to the whole team? Maybe.

The topic is open world PvE.

And people actually team up for that, either with actual teams or by just being in part of the group trying to take on an event.

How many people would you want running gambits at Triple Trouble, or Sunless? Just yesterday I actually saw a Shadow Behemoth event fail, too many low levels in the fairly small gathering of people there, I guess. (Yes, my character was lower level too.) World bosses are not a guaranteed “show up and win”. Events in the Silverwastes can be just as bad. HoT events may be even worse.

In a dungeon, it could be agreed on by the entire team. Shared risk, shared reward. But in open PvE, you’ll have people doing this and showing up at events, scaling them up just as much as an unhindered player. Do you want to carry their weight so they can get better rewards?

Rauderi.8706:

Faren and Kasmeer swimsuits.
That is all.

I’m going to second this one, even if it costs 1000 gems.

TheDaiBish.9735:

What about a Gambit system like in the Queen’s fights?

For example, conditions applied to you last longer, damage taken increased by x% etc.

Then, for every gambit on you, you gain X% exp, gold, karma and MF for every kill (to a cap). However, if you have a gambit on you, becoming Defeated resets the buff.

So, you’d be able to become somewhat less effective, and more of a weight to your team, in exchange for you (and only you) getting better loot?

They got rid of the old Magic Find stat for a good reason. I doubt they’d bring it back.

Now, if they added this to a dungeon, and it applied to the whole team? Maybe.

Bearhugger.4326:

I like build locking. It makes the trait choices harder and more interesting.

Agreed, but I’ve given my reasons why I think they won’t be doing it in the raids.

From the statement, I kind of got the impression that not only will they allow it, they intend for you to NEED to do it at some points.

Why?

Well, imagine a raider with good celestial gear. Average all around. But boss X here requires lots of burst damage to take down, so you need a good set of Berserker gear for him. And then you enter area Y, where it’s all condition damage time. So, you need a third set of gear. And you’re going to have to earn ALL of them if you want to be at your best in this raid.

Changing your traits is easy. But when you need to change your gear as well, then you’re looking at a time sink. A big one if you want ascended gear. Gold sink, too. This will slow down raiders and make it harder without requiring bosses far stronger than anything GW2 should have. It’s a way to turn two hours of content into dozens of hours of focused play.

We’ll be able to take our old characters into HoT. That’s part of the point of the story continuing into the new areas, we’re still playing the Pact Commander, Trahearne’s right hand and “boss” of the Scooby gang.

Windsagio.1340:

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

I’d actually like to see legendary armor have the same skins as starting armor. Then, put in a second skin not tied to legendary that can be gained normally in raids, and maybe in other (difficult) ways in other parts of the game.

But I know that’s not going to happen.

Everyone that’s been asking for raids seems to have forgotten that this is part of it. There will always be groups where the raid size is wrong, be it fixed or a range. This is a flat truth, and people have explained why there’s no good way around it.

Raiders say they want the increased challenge. Well, this is a part of it. It’s not a mechanics challenge, it’s a social challenge. Just… here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuG7mIpVFc0
Watch that. (Next two are optional.)

That should look pretty familiar to the situation at hand.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

I love how it took only a few hours for toxic raider culture to take root in the forums.

ITT: literally every reason raids have a bad name in so many other games.

Seriously. I wonder how these people managed to stay in a game for three years that according to them catered only to these casuals they obviously feel only contempt for. It’s not that there wouldn’t have been alternatives available for their taste. But noooo, they had to bring their elitism, bragging and toxic culture to the only game not having it so far. GG

Let’s be fair, some of this isn’t “toxic raider culture”. It’s “toxic forum culture”.

Enrif.7359:

4 maps over 3 levels (ground,middle,top) so 12 maps, without counting guild halls and maybe a city like area? Not bad

Just to be clear, where does it say that the 4 maps does not include the guild hall maps? We will have to fight in them to claim them, after all, and the video for them did show someone flying in one of them.

One one hand, I hate to have stuff locked away behind game modes and other (to me, admittedly) barriers.

On the other hand, I want the term “Legendary” to mean something.

So long as it requires heavy investment throughout the game, and not just in raiding… I think I’m okay with having an important part of the quest for legendary armor (or weapons) involve raiding. As some others have said, legendary crafting should be a journey, forcing you out of your comfort zones.

(I really don’t like saying that, as it goes against a lot of my personal feelings. But there it is.)

Wildkitten.3872:

And since you are requesting that they spend many times more time on every single outfit, how many outfits are you saying we should see LESS of or game content we don’t receive so they can spend time catering to less than 1% of the population?

Ummm…. huh? Wait, I think you missed what I’m getting at here.

Okay, let’s start with humans. We have both the Noble and Exemplar outfits which are basically human culture-based “fancy” outfits. No problems with these, right?

What I’m suggesting is that they do an outfit like that, but based off of charr style. Then one off of sylvari, and so on. Each an outfit unto itself, just like the Noble and Exemplar outfits were. No more work than they were per outfit. The added benefit is that, thanks to the styles and cultures of the other races, they might satisfy some of the players that want a bit of the unusual in how their character dresses.

Wildkitten.3872:

Except then people would complain that they couldn’t look how they wanted on the race they wanted. I mean when you have people trying to equate not being able to cross dress to being discriminated against then Anet is already in a no win position.

We’ll never make everyone happy, no. But there’s nothing wrong with coming out with outfits that might serve more than one purpose, right?

And just to be clear, I’m talking about outfits that all races can use, not just the race it’s based on. Any race and any gender.

((Also, I’d like to add in a suggestion of formal attire based on the Tengu. A bit of draped cloth, ornamental feathers, and plenty of large jewelry.))

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Same sex weddings don’t imply cross-gender-stereotypical clothing.

However, in this situation, it’s a question of resources, not intent: looks that can be worn by both genders require twice as many resources to set up (not to mention some effort to figure out the user interface: do you sell two different outfits? do you create new toggle for the one outfit?) and wouldn’t have twice the appeal, i.e. ANet isn’t likely to sell twice as many outfits (if they ‘unlock’ the stereotypical models for each gender) as they do now.

Thus, the effort far exceeds the value to the community (or at least as it exists in 2015). Since ANet is in business to make money and not to bend people’s minds, I don’t see it likely that this sort of thing will get a lot of attention.

Well, that MIGHT depend on how they do it.

Let’s say they make race-inspired formal clothes. The charr outfit could look the same on male and female, and be more masculine in nature. No skirts, just good sharp lines and a functional design, including pants. The sylvari outfits, however, might be flowing and flowery on both genders, even though this is a bit more “feminine” seeming it would still fit. The norn outfit could be kilt-based, which creates a “masculine skirt” profile for both genders. I’m not sure what the asuran outfit would look like, and we’ve already got a couple based on humans.

If they took this approach, then I think people would buy them and be happy with them because they’re very fitting to the game lore.

videoboy.4162:

This is a horrible reason.

While I disagree with you and others have pointed out why, I can give you another reason.

The range of weapons available to some classes (and the restriction of weapons available to others) is a part of class balance. If they were to add more and more weapons to all classes, the ones with the larger starting pool of weapons would soon run out of new weapons to gain, and then slowly lose that advantage as the other classes catch up to them. (And the more limited classes would slowly lose that disadvantage.)

By limiting the new weapons to being tied to an elite spec, they avoid this problem while still being able to bring new weapons to all of the classes. Engineers will never have all the weapons at once, they’ll have their current three picks plus one from the elite. The “plus one” can change, but they’ll never be on par with warriors or thieves.

Peech.3587:

A little worrying for the future?

Maybe, maybe not. The wording of it has nothing to do with GW2 directly. I’d say it may hint at them coming out with something else that’s not GW2. It may tie in with it, but I very strongly doubt that this is for GW2 directly.

I’m sure that if it’s a move to subscription, we’ll hear about it at this Saturday, right?

videoboy.4162:

Nike.2631:

videoboy.4162:

You just made my point for me. You’re not required to use it, so why is it locked?

Its locked for the reasons I mentioned and your desire to use it or not doesn’t override that consideration.

Actually, no. Your reasons only addressed the reasons for locking Elites, Heals, and Utilities behind a spec (and I totally agree with that). You didn’t really give a good reason for the weapon being locked, which is the only thing my posts refer to.

To continue with my Tempest example, if I want to use a Warhorn (and none of the other new skills) alongside my Dagger or Scepter, I’m forced into an entire Trait Line, for two weapon skills. That’s ridiculous.

Obviously, if I want to use all the new stuff but not the Warhorn, that is completely doable. It makes no sense.

Okay, here’s a reason why:

Let’s continue to use Tempest as an example. Let’s say that in a year’s time the devs finally admit that the elite spec is a soggy pile of dog excrement. And, they actually liked the idea people had for having the horn call up storms. So, they want to try again.

New elite spec called “Stormcaller” is made. It too uses the warhorn, but this time it has entirely different skills on it.

Now, if weapons are not tied to the elite specs, there’s a problem. They can’t make the second spec use warhorn, because the game will not know which set of skills to give you. With them tied to the specs, however, then the game knows right away which set you get.

Now, this may not seem important to an elementalist, but consider a class like warrior for a moment. They already use most of the weapons, and it’s a natural that some of their elite specs will be about using old weapons in new ways. The only way that’s doable is if they link the weapon to the elite spec.

Kamikazi.5380:

Lmao and what weap were you expecting? Pistol?

Actually… yes.

Rytlock has run around with a sword and an offhand pistol for years now. It’s been his thing that normal warriors can’t do. With him changing to Rev, it seemed like a good time to let that move on to other warriors.

maddoctor.2738:

You know players that do high skill content can also be very good people.

Ah, but I never said otherwise. My remarks were about those people that want exclusive skins so they can parade them around as some kind of demonstration of self worth.

You see, I don’t mind the idea of harder, optional content. In fact, I welcome it. I may suck at it, but sometimes I get the urge to try something and I may surprise myself when I do. Lots of genuinely good people like harder content.

It’s the exclusive rewards and the people that value them so highly that I feel are the problem.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Palador.2170:

If Caithe didn’t kill him (and I suspect that she did, especially now that we know what she knew about the sylvari), then she likely went after their pale tree with some kind of poison or something. So, he could be a bitter survivor, not under the dragon’s control, but out for vengeance in his own right. Someone out to repay Caithe in kind.

That would be remarkably bad storytelling, to have such incredible events happen entirely offscreen.

While they did happen offscreen, there are hints of them if you play through the right parts of the storylines. And we could still find Malyck’s dead tree or something, and get flashbacks to explain the story.

A small word to those that want exclusive looks as rewards for harder content:

I will not respect you for having these “rare” skins. I will not bow down to you, treat you any better than any other player, or even assume you have actual skill at the game. I do not care if you have the PvP wings, raid-only boots, and the kitten less chaps of WvW domination.

However, if I see you wearing all of the above, I’ll know you’re a clown that can’t dress themselves. That you’re someone shallow enough to think that such things should be important to how people view you. And that you’re someone I’d prefer to avoid, if not outright disrespect.

My respect goes to those that prove themselves to be good people. That know how to make a good looking character. That I’d actually want to be around. THESE are the people that make a good community, rewards don’t do that.

I don’t want overly locked or “high skill only” skins, because that can cut them off from a lot of good players. I want those good players to be happy and stick around. But when such exclusive skins do happen, I don’t cry too much about it. It’s just another indicator on my “worthless player” check-off list.

If Caithe didn’t kill him (and I suspect that she did, especially now that we know what she knew about the sylvari), then she likely went after their pale tree with some kind of poison or something. So, he could be a bitter survivor, not under the dragon’s control, but out for vengeance in his own right. Someone out to repay Caithe in kind.

Klocknov.8219:

Remember the first question after creating content that has to be answered in most all game design is “Does this content offer appropriate or proportional rewards to effort and time spent?”

Wow. That is so very, very wrong. Not saying you’re wrong, just the statement is.

The first question should always be “Is this fun?” If rewards are the main reason you’re doing content, and not because you enjoy that content, then maybe there’s something wrong.

As for exclusive rewards for tougher content? I think it’s a mistake to put anything cosmetic or “in world” as such a reward. Casual players should always be able to earn it, but it’s okay if hard-mode players earn it faster. Things that are not “in world”, such as badges or titles (they show on the user interface, yes, but they’re not actually a part of your character) are fine as hard mode rewards.

But if hard mode is to mean anything, then it needs to be HARD. Bugs need to be fixed, exploits need to be punished. And if it becomes too predictable, it needs to be changed. Hard mode should NEVER become a farm, it should result in party wipes and failures. If it’s not truly hard, then there’s no need to even pretend that it should have some kind of increased rewards, exclusive or not.

Templar.3418:

What other reasons do we have not to slaughter the other?

Okay, yeah. I’ll tackle this one.

Let’s start with a little non-GW2 thought game. Let’s say that some mad scientist in the real world has made a mind transfer machine, and uses it on an average human and a cow. The cow now has the mind of a human, and the human now has the mind of a cow.

So… which one is a PERSON?

Yep, it’s the one with the human-level mind, even though they have the body of a cow. The body shape and DNA don’t matter, the important part here is the MIND. It’s not “human” that’s important, it’s “person”.

Now, let’s head back to Tyria. It’s easy to see that all five player races are people. They’re not all human, but they’re mentally on-par with human. Love, hate, regret, sympathy… they feel all these things. They all come to realize that some day they will die, and they all have to find a way to deal with that. Charr, norn, sylvari, asura, and even others such as the tengu and kodan, they’re all people. Not animals. Not beasts. People.

This is why they should not be hated or killed. Human or not has nothing to do with it. Being human isn’t what makes someone important. Being a person is.

Healing power IS in a bad state in this game, and it does need to be fixed. However, I can’t think of a really good fix that belongs in GW2. Too many of the fixes would require huge overhauls of parts of the game that, quite honestly, are beyond the scope of what this game can and should do.

If I was to suggest an “easy” fix, I’d say to make some kind of “overflow” health bar, that active healing (not regeneration) can push you into. Have it drain quickly, so you don’t stay there long, and have it do … something. I’m not sure what, but it would have to be useful without being overpowered.

HamHat.5201:

SkiTz.4590:

There is already WvW… go have at it. that’s as close as you will get to open world pvp.

And to say it wouldnt take much resources to implement is absolutely stupid. You have no idea how much that work it would take to make ALL the PvE maps into something thats totally open world PvP..

WvW is a joke, and you obviously don’t understand the point of flagging up, it would be a skill you have that lets you fight other people, making new skills isn’t a year of work. So it is you that is not understanding.

Oh, it’s a skill? Can we make it a healing skill, in slot 6? That would be fun! You can flag, but no healing while you’re doing it!

Or do you NOT mean an actual skill that will take a slot in your skill bar? It’s safe to assume you don’t, so it’s not actually a skill. So, it’s an option somewhere you turn off and on, right? Well, that means there will be some time spent making a spot for it in the UI, but I’m sure that can be done.

Now, let’s talk about who can damage who. In PvE, you have two “teams”. Players + Allies, and Enemy NPCs. Pretty easy. In PvP, you can have three teams. Red team, Blue team, and Enemy NPCs (if you’re on the right map). Each team can hurt the other, but it’s still not too complex yet. Head over to WvW, and you now have four teams. Red, Blue, Green, and Enemy NPCs. Four teams where the game has to track who can affect who and how.

Now, let’s say we have open PvP flags, and 10 people in a PvE zone turn them on. (We’ll call them 0 – 9.) You now have the normal Players + Allies team, ten PvP “teams”, and Enemy NPCs. Suddenly, it’s getting more complicated, but that’s not the worst of it. Let’s say that some normal players are fighting a boss (“Ralph”), and Player 4 is helping them. Player 7 comes along and wants some of that action, so they drop a Lava Font into the fight, and follow it up with a blast finisher.

• Ralph is hit by all the attacks, and can hit anyone.
• The normal players are immune to the Lava Font, and get might from the blast finisher. They can buff each other, Player 4, and Player 7. They can’t hurt Players 4 & 7.
• Player 4 is hit by Ralph and the Lava Font and blast, does NOT gain the might from the finisher, can hit Ralph and Player 7, and can buff the other Players.
• Player 7 is in much the same state as Player 4 as to who they can affect and how.

Do you see where this is starting to go bad? Each PvP flagged person is kind of their own side in the battle, but ALSO sometimes part of another side. It’s no where near as simple as a flag or switch, or even as simple as the normal PvP codes. In fact, it can quickly become a huge mess, and if the game was never made to sort this stuff out then we’re talking about a TON of code work. Code that places an additional strain on the servers when it’s run, I might add.

Legendary back items were talked about in two places, the recent news about the fractal updates, and the news about the PvP leagues. It’s not clear if they were talking about one item or two separate ones, though.

Behellagh.1468:

Okay, I’m confused here. Are we waiting to be invited to use 2-tier authorization rather than just do it? I pretty much read their announcement as “here, please do it, we have an exclusive mini …”.

From what I understood, you have to wait to get the voice phone call version. But that wait should be up tomorrow, right?

I’ve not gotten it yet, and I don’t have a smartphone (or cell phone of any kind, actually). When I go through the security options, I’m unsure if a standard land line will do for the voice call option there or not. So, I wait.

Sadly, I think you’d be better off trying with Medium armor.

As far as making that with Heavy, Commander’s Footgear skin (human cultural) may give a better “folded top” look.

Ayrilana.1396:

Palador.2170:

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Sarcasm aside, it has nothing to do with lowering expansions. Expansions are not strictly content only and can include other things such as QoL updates.

In a normal game, they’d put the QoL updates for the whole game out at the same time as the expansion, but for the whole game. Not just for those that buy the expansion.

However, I’ve forgotten something important. The goal of putting the QoL stuff out for the whole game is to make the base game more appealing, so you can get more people trying it and hopefully buying the expansions as they get into the game. ANet’s not going that route, they’re making it so all new players will have the expansion anyway. So, I guess they don’t see the difference. There’s a flawed but understandable logic to that.

It still locks the QoL improvements away from veteran players that do not buy the expansion. And telling new players that they have to get to max level and THEN grind to unlock the improvements really defeats the idea of the journey to 80 being important and enjoyable.

Shinzan.2908:

So we are not getting any actual news this week? Guess it’s offset by the beta weekend but still, would have liked another profession reveal.

I think that tomorrow (Friday), we get some more information on the main-game area Mastery tracks.

Ayrilana.1396:

Maybe you don’t understand that this is common in expansions?

I guess I don’t. In my (admittedly limited) experience, CONTENT is locked behind the barriers, and QoL things that improve the game as a whole are not.

I’ll try to remember to lower my expectations when it comes to this game.

Ayrilana.1396:

phokus.8934:

Auto-loot should be standard and not tied to a mastery.

Why? It’s a QoL upgrade that you earn.

It’s a QoL upgrade locked behind a pay wall AND grinding. In fact, it sounds as if that whole mastery line is QoL stuff. Some for the player, some for those they interact with.

Is this what we call content now? Locking QoL improvements behind pay walls and grinding? Is that how they intend to sell new people on trying the game?

“You don’t like missing loot? Well, all you have to do is get a character to 80, then use them to gain a bunch of mastery points, and THEN grind out a bunch of extra levels in order to level this mastery, and you can finally have a looting system like any decent MMO has!”

You’re taking a bunch of Quality of Life features designed to improve the game, some for the player and some for those they encounter, and locking them not only behind a pay wall, but behind level grinding as well.

I guess my one big question is: “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

If I have a second question, I guess it’s about the icon this mastery will give. Can we turn it off, or is being permanently branded as a stand in for a good tutorial some kind of punishment meant to deter us from taking this mastery line in the first place?

And as an off topic question, what happened to the mushroom jumping mastery? The article lists four masteries in the new HoT areas. Gliding, and three lore. The mushroom one is gone.

(Seriously guys, if this is still under development, scrap all of this stuff the article talks about, and do it right. This is NOT how you fairly improve the game.)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Malediktus.9250:

If they dont even know that it will come for sure this year, I think we should be prepared for a 2016 release.

The point is that they have definitely stated, today, that HoT will be released this year. /blinks

Thus, putting to rest speculation that it won’t be released until next year.

Did they say that it WILL be this year, or that they INTEND for it to be this year?

There is a very big difference between the two.

Khristophoros.7194:

Will it actually work once the bar is gone?

No. When the bar is gone, a preset effect will occur. It doesn’t matter what control you hit them with, it will always be the same effect.

The effect will differ from boss to boss.

At least, that’s how I understand it.

Count me as another vote for solo story mode. Not only would it allow me to take in the story at my own pace, but it would also make it easier for PvP players to unlock the dungeon reward tracks.

Explorable mode can and should be left as-is.

Mastery tracks will be part of the expansion, that’s known. No HoT, no mastery tracks.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Palador.2170:

Guild halls will be their own maps, so there’s two maps there.

That golden city may be its own map, we don’t know yet.

What we really don’t know is the number of “normal” maps where we’ll spend most of our time playing. It could still be only one map, and everything they’ve said would still be true.

Personally, I’m guessing only one map, with two more unlocking later as they let the story slowly progress.

It’s interesting how many people wish to believe that there will only be one playable PvE map at release with other non playable maps such as a city or a guild hall. Is this a common thing with other games that they only have one map when an expansion comes out, so that this theory is justified? Is it likely they would charge up to $100 for the expansion, have only one map at release, and not have an explosion on the forum and the devs are not able to forsee a player reaction like that, with only one playable PvE map after a year of working on the expansion?

From the blog post

“For example, we’ll only ever be showing the first story chapter and parts of the first map of the expansion during beta weekends to ensure that an entire world of discovery and excitement awaits you on launch day when you venture deeper into the jungle. After all, Guild Wars 2 is the game where the journey is the goal!”

That hardly sounds like one playable PvE map at launch.

Actually, it seems like common sense to me that they won’t have all the maps open to start with.

Somewhere in there is Mordremoth. If players can get to him and fight him as quickly as they clear events and earn masteries, then we’ll see reports of his death within the week of the expansion going live.

If we can get to him but CAN’T fight him for some reason, people will rightly ask “why not?” At that point there would be no reason to not be able to take a shot at him.

Instead, I expect him to be one or two maps away from where we start. This will allow them some control over the story and the speed of exploration, much as they did with Dry Top, by giving us some barrier that we can’t quickly overcome to keep us from advancing to the next area.

Second, it will give them time to see how the new class, specializations, and masteries all interact in a live environment before we face the really big fights of the expansion. Locking out further maps will give them time to make adjustments to those final parts so that they work better. The first Elder Dragon fight was … lamentable. The second needs to be good, or a lot of people may decide that it’s not worth caring about the third one.

Finally, there’s the events in the zones. ANet can either make them hard, or easy. If they make them hard, then you’ll need either the advantages you can earn in HoT (mastery tracks) or lots of help to take them on. By releasing maps in stages, they can focus players more onto fewer events at a time when they’re new to them, and the crowd will die off as they gain the masteries they need about the time that they also look to move on to a new map.

I don’t see holding back the rest of the maps until later as 100% a bad thing. And I think there will be only one PvE map to start with because… well… that’s just easier. It’s the starting point. We need a place to start where we can earn our starting masteries and skills. It’s HoT’s Queensdale, basically. A place where the new people can survive until they’re ready to move on to harder things. And with all the new stuff we’re getting, it’s ANet’s starting zone for new balance as well.