Guild Wars 2

In addition to what I posted above, I want to recruit about a dozen skritt to work with Taimi. She seems open to new and possibly terrifying ideas, as long as they get results, and their way of thinking is different enough from hers that they might think of things she’d miss.

I also want to recruit the Windmill King, but NOT to work with Taimi. I just like the poor guy.

Rytlock, Rox, and Taimi get re-invited. I don’t think I need to explain why, we all know them.

Lord Faren: I’m pretty sure he’s only playing the part of the clueless noble. You try wandering through VB in your underwear and see how long you last. He’s far more skilled than he lets on.

Riot Alice: In the human street rat storyline, you advise her to get out of the gang, and later she thanks you and tells you she’s taking your advice. But… you were under Countess Anise’s illusion when you gave her that advice, and she actually started to see through it. Later, she must have realized what she was really seeing, if she knew it was you. No training, and she sees through the Countess’s illusions? With skill like that and a good rifle, we need her on our side.

I’m sure there are plenty of other characters I’d love to invite, but I’m having a hard time thinking of some that are not part of the Pact or Orders (prior commitment), or possibly dead depending on the paths of the personal story.

To be fair, without Taimi or someone playing that part, we’d be just another moron trying to hack away at an Elder Dragon with a sword. We’d be as stupid as Braham, maybe even worse.

We need someone providing the tools and information we need to take down our targets. Yes, they rely on Taimi too much as a plot device, but who else could we turn to?

And it’s not always Taimi. In HoT, who was smashing down the living barriers to clear a path for us? Rytlock. Who gave us a way into the dream? Trahearne. Who saved Divinity’s Reach from the White Mantle attack? Queen Jennah. Walked back into the jungle to rescue Garm? Rox. And so on.

Yes, Taimi is used a lot, and part of that may be called lazy writing. But she doesn’t do everything, she’s just the one that’s still there for us through everything so we get more of her. But if you want to do the research some time, I’m sure ANet can come up with a LS chapter where we keep repeating the same lab instance, doing minigames to simulate working with machines and performing tests on dragon energy.

Skipping Stones.

Arden.7480:

Rox- we don’t know she is working for us or no. Is she really on our side? I have some doubts.

Taimi is the character most loyal to the Commander, but Rox is the character most loyal to the group.

You have to remember that Rox lost her entire warband in a moment. That was her family, all wiped out before she knew what was happening, and she was the only “lucky” survivor. The group has become her new warband/family, and she’ll do whatever she can to keep them all safe. If that means disobeying us, then she’ll disobey. But she will be right there, trying to keep us all alive while doing so.

Who went back into Maguma to find Garm? Rox did, even though Braham or Caithe both could have (and should have) done so. And now that Braham’s acting stupid, she’s sticking with him to try and keep him alive. She trusts the rest of us to keep ourselves intact until she can return, and she’s passing news to us when she can.

If we ever have to order her to abandon us and run, she’ll disobey. She won’t run. Any of the others we could convince if the need was great enough, but not Rox. So, there’s her loyalty for you.

Psientist.6437:

I should have been more explicit and asked asked for compelling ways for our characters to continue in Tyria as gods. (Please accept this as a jest made possible by your signature.)

Compelling? It’s a bit far into the story to start to ask for that level of writing, isn’t it?

Still, I guess that if we get the power of a god, we could always make GW1 players happy by going off to beat up Kormir before a plot reset of some kind.

Mahou.3924:

As for Braham: He’s obviously too volatile so far. His reaction in Episode 3 was disuscussed/raged at ad nauseum, so I won’t go further. But if he’s in Dragon Watch in the future, something needs to happen. Jormag-related or the Commander smacking some sense into him in a “formal” duel or so. Both of them talked past each other in regards to the Commanders idea of showing respect to Eir with Dragon Watch and Braham’s idea with keeping the name of Destiny Edge.

Braham is part of the reason I want to keep Rytlock around. He and Caithe are actual members of Destiny’s Edge, and they have every right to smack him down for trying to steal the name. I don’t think Caithe would, but Rytlock? In a heartbeat.

Psientist.6437:

New Rule!

If you bring up “Being Kormired” you have to explain how our characters could continue playing as gods in Tyria!

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Version 1: A great amount of magical energy is stored within the character, but it’s far too much for them to access safely. Instead, they form a “seal” on it, becoming a sort of living bloodstone. This gives us time to deal with the magic safely and leaves the player character more or less mortal, while still putting the power into them. It would also draw threats to them, as any other would-be gods or Elder Dragons try to kill them to get at the power.

Version 2: We don’t keep the power, we spread it out across the known world. Maybe even across all of Tyria. Everybody Ascends, and everybody is just one small step closer to godhood rather than just one person jumping straight to the end. This also opens us up to taking a few more steps along that path, knowing that we’ll never have to worry about reaching the end by the time GW2 ends.

Marjory becomes goddess of Tactics and Combat.

While I do agree that they needed race specific dialogue in here, has anyone else considered the fact that this might be a rogue avatar and not THE Balthazar? It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

It makes me wonder why the writers decided on this direction if they’re going to spread everyone so thin and make it feel like a two member guild.

Ever play Final Fantasy 6?

If you didn’t, here’s a short plot recap. Long after the “War of the Magi” wrecked the world and appeared to wipe out magic, it is once again on the rise in the world. One empire has learned of this, and has taken steps to harness it. You go on a long and convoluted journey to stop them, building a large team of quite respectable fighters and adventurers on the way. You finally confront the main bad guy in battle right at the source of all magical power.

And you fail. Miserably. The bad guy pretty much becomes god, reduces the world to ruins, and the party is scattered.

The second half of the game resumes a year later, with just one character left. You have to explore the now ruined world, and slowly regather your team before you can finally confront this newly empowered “god” and try to end him once and for all.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it should. I think it’s safe to say that ANet has more than a few fans of this game doing the writing for this story, and that “rebuild and regather from the ashes” idea is what we’ll be doing in the expansion. They didn’t raise the level cap, so our character isn’t getting much stronger. Instead, they’ve scattered the team, FF6 style, and we have to rebuild our team’s strength instead.

Now, with all that said… Can we please ditch everyone but Taimi and the two charr, and rebuild from that? Please? With the current crew, Dragon’s Watch feels less like a guild, and more like an extended escort mission.

I don’t think Braham will be joining Dragon’s Watch at this time.

Story-wise, the expansion is fast approaching. We’re headed off into a new area, and I doubt it’s going to be north. (Yes, I know about the leaks. But I trust them about as far as I can comfortably spit a live rat.) So, Braham doesn’t come with us at all.

When the expansion ends, we need something to draw us back into the main world some. That “something” is going to be Braham, who’s been up to his own thing while we’ve been gone. He will be the source of the problem that we have to suddenly address, either by finding it or creating it, and that will drag us back to central Tyria.

I think it’s more that the expansion will be make or break for the identity of the game, rather than the game itself.

If it throws more HoT level challenges and meta events at everyone trying to do the story and explore, then any pretense of this being a casual fun game goes out the window for most people. If it softballs it, then the dreams of a far more challenging game for those that one one wither and die.

It is possible that they’ve listened, thought things through, and made the main paths easy while putting some challenging stuff in an optional map off to the side. But… I’ve seen no evidence of that at all, nor do I expect them to actually do it.

I could see a mechanical reloading crossbow as a new skin for a rifle, with a new sound and projectile effect. Smaller ones might even work for pistols. But on its own, a standard crossbow is very clunky and slow compared to what you can get with a normal bow or firearm (as they’re shown in this game).

There is a simple katana skin in the game, it’s just not for player use. I think some Tengu use it. There’s also a whip in one of the sylvari personal stories. Between that and the Lightning Whip of a dagger/ Elementalist, I guess they’ve shown they could make more whips, but in another game I played the Developers stated that whips were REALLY hard to get right and after briefly touching them they swore them off as too much effort. Dunno if that’s the case here or not.

Knuckle gauntlets and other punching weapons, though? If they came as a pair (basically, a two handed weapon), then I would LOVE to see them show up. Some of the classes practically beg for that kind of fighting style. (Equipping them to both hands avoids the messy animation problem of having each weapon skill involve only one hand, such as how a warrior with two swords still uses only one in their auto attack.)

I think that the real problem here is that the devs don’t understand WvW players. They thought they did, and when they tried to give them what they believed they wanted, it went sour very quickly.

This is akin to petting a cat, and getting your hand burned. It’s painful, and more than a little confusing. It makes you reluctant to try it again, because you’re not sure just how it went so oddly wrong, so you don’t know how to avoid it happening again.

Just a reminder that a lot of players didn’t like the HoT maps and getting around in them. For those players, it’s safe to say that they don’t have all the HoT Hero Points claimed on most characters.

It would be a bad idea to set up the next elites to require people to go back into HoT for more points, and I hope it’s safe to say that they won’t do that. So, no huge cost to the new elite specs in that way.

What I expect is for them to add in a new “Expansion 2” style of HP, that can be used for the new specs, and then if you have the first elite fully unlocked you can use left over “Old” HPs at an exchange rate that will give you a jump on unlocking the new one, but still come up short.

Okay, I’ve seen it in game now. I waited, gave myself time to think it over.

The only, ONLY thing I can say good about it is that I admire the team for the epic level of trolling that is the Medium armor’s ability to go from “Finally, not another longcoat” to “Oh, look. Longcoat after all!”

The rest of it is just ugly, overdone, and counterproductive to the most basic functions of what good armor’s supposed to do/not do.

I think this is a case of everyone involved being so close to the issue and so invested in it, that nobody can step back and take an objective look at things any more. Actually, I think this is a reoccurring problem at ANet, and this is just the latest example.

Honestly, I think the time and effort would have been better spent getting capes to work. Sorry if that seems harsh, but it’s my honest opinion.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Indeed. As much as I find Taimi an annoying twerp, at least she has been loyal and present the whole time.

And this episode had stopped her Mary Sue tracks in their, well, tracks.

Agreed on both counts. I think it’s safe to say she’s been shaken by how close she came to dooming everyone. Plus, her ‘secret’ lab is no longer a secret. We’ll see what that does to slow her down.

If anything unleashes a lot of magic, the two dragons can awaken once more very quickly. I would say it’s on pause, so we can fight something other than a dragon for once, but it will return.

Oh, forgot something! Why no juvenile animals on the map? There were plenty of places it would have made sense for a few to show up, but… nope! As someone that sometimes plays a ranger, it’s annoying. As someone that understands how life cycles work, it’s immersion breaking.

(Mind you, it’s not just this map that does this.)

Map: Good, but too confusing at first. Relies a bit too much on old masteries for travel, punishing ones jumping in late.

Story: No racial script changes? And you’ll never address the fallout that should happen. Pity.

Combat: The two big fights were overly cluttered, making it easy to lose a target. Otherwise, fun. Good extra skill use.

Other: New tonic is awesome, thank you! New mastery is fun, just make sure it appears outside of this zone, now.

The new tonic works just like the mini tonic from the last LS chapter. 15 minutes isn’t forever, but it’s good enough.

It’s being talked about in the Living World part of the forum.

VentiGlondi.9830:

What if it’s actual real Lazarus and that’s why she’s surprised

Lazarus: “You just won’t believe me, will you? You just won’t take my word for it that I am who I say I am, just because I’m not all ‘Grrr, I’m evil!’ Well, fine! If that’s what it takes, then that’s what you’ll get!”

— 20 minute cutscene where he slaughters hundreds of innocents —

Kas: “No, it can’t be! It’s really him!”

Lazarus: “FINALLY! It’s about <bleep>ing time! Now, can we cut the <bleep> and get on with killing some <bleep>ing dragons?”

Feanor.2358:

Thao.3947:

Then i would prefer no legendary armor.

Raiders are a minority in GW2. And I think not all of them will go for these armor. So all this massiv work (read blogpost) for a part of a minority of the community … well done anet.

Raiders are a minority, but they are a minority of dedicated players who spend way more time in the game and, consecutively, they probably spend more money on it. Don’t forget this game is a business and aims to create profit. So targeting these players is actually pretty sound idea from business point of view, don’t you think?

When you compare money spent vs. content consumed, I think Role Players offer the highest return on investment, but ANet has no idea how to deal with RPers. So, they’ve gone for an easier target to understand.

Miellyn.6847:

The actual point is, would we ever have seen legendary armor without raids? If the answer is ‘no’, there is no reason to cry it is raid only.

But the answer is “Yes”. If there are legendary weapons, it logically follows that there can be legendary armor and trinkets as well. The basic idea was already in place when the game launched, well before raids were added.

Raids are not the reason we have legendary armor. They’re just the reason it’s earned as it is, and that it looks like … that.

That’s actually kind of awesome.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that still uses turrets. Good to know that they’re still being put to good use in the game.

PS: This is a zerg, not just one person. It’s just a very well planned and organized zerg that are using their abilities to full benefit. Nothing wrong here.

There is a random factor to the damage each time you hit. This is used to simulate slightly more or less damaging hits that would occur in combat.

It goes back to Pen and Paper RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons. Once you confirm that you’ve hit a target, you roll a dice and add in any modifiers to see how much damage you did. If you’re lucky, you’ll roll high and do more damage. Unlucky, and you roll low, doing less. While it usually averages out, a run of good or bad luck can sway a battle, sometimes to the point of making an “impossible” fight winnable. (Or, of course, the opposite can happen.)

Personally, I think it’s Kralkatorrik.

I’d be fine with it in HoT, LS3, and any newer zones. But the older zones are (and I HATE to say this) fine as they are. Yes, it’s annoying that they can hit you while you can’t hit back, but you’re dealing with targets not designed for dealing with gliding in the first place. If you can fight them from the air, they’ll be painfully outclassed and in need of reworking/rebalancing. We simply can’t do that for the entire old world area.

Now, with that said… It’s really mindbreaking that we can’t fight from the air in most areas. Let’s be honest, what’s the first thing a charr or asura would do once they had a glider? Right, mount some kind of weapon onto it. Humans and norn wouldn’t be far behind. And you can’t say it’s too difficult to glide AND fight when we do both in other areas.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m looking forward to you guys seeing it fully, after which it’ll be great if you share those impressions as well.

Oh, have no fear. We’ll say what we think of it. The question is, are you guys ready and willing to hear it?

Susy.7529:

Zaraki.5784:

Just a question: will it have any footstep/aura effect?

I really hope so, a legendary is not a legendary without footsteps (backpack excluded sadly).

I doubt they will.

If they had footsteps, it would interfere with the weapon footsteps.

I just want to point something out.

Creating the armor has been a very long and intense process; we’ve never produced any armor set as complicated as the legendary armor. A key original requirement was that the armor should animate. However, when we started digging into what that entailed, it soon became apparent that this wouldn’t be simple: for us to accommodate that design vision required multiple engineering changes to the underlying game engine.

Now, instead of doing all that to create armor that relatively few players will get, wouldn’t it have made more people happy if they had put that work into capes that everyone could get?

Harper.4173:

Palador.2170:

For those upset that the medium is another trenchcoat, let me ask you this: How much of an uproar would there have been if the Legendary Medium armor had come out looking good and NOT been a trenchcoat?

Relatively few people are going to get this armor. If they gave us a good non-TC medium and locked it behind massive raiding, non-raiders and even casual raiders would have had a meltdown.

So they made the sets ugly to not upset anyone who can’t get them?

No. They made it a trenchcoat to not upset anyone that can’t get it. They made the rest of the design choices because… well… I’m not sure what they were thinking.

All I’m defending here is the fact that medium is yet another trenchcoat. That’s all.

For those upset that the medium is another trenchcoat, let me ask you this: How much of an uproar would there have been if the Legendary Medium armor had come out looking good and NOT been a trenchcoat?

Relatively few people are going to get this armor. If they gave us a good non-TC medium and locked it behind massive raiding, non-raiders and even casual raiders would have had a meltdown.

I’ve found the tonic to be great fun, and I hope that the next area has a similar tonic to make you larger.

Alga.6498:

When will we find more about Isgarren and his tower below Garenhoff’s town?

To my mind, this could actually be two questions, and that leads into what I want.

I like the mystery of the tower, but I also want to know more. But what if knowing more doesn’t mean knowing everything?

What if we found Isgarren’s crypt somewhere on/under the ground, and hints that someone else had taken over for him in the tower? We could get all sorts of lore on Isgarren and the tower as it was back in GW1 days, but still not know what’s up there now.

Or to turn that around, what if we got into the tower, only to find that Isgarren (or whoever) doesn’t actually live there, and only uses the tower as a “relay” of sorts for their magic? We’d get some answers, but they would leave us with more questions and mysteries.

Nope. It’s stuff that talks only, from what I understand. Chatter, not sounds.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Killing off characters we want to see gone is boring. Better kill someone we do care about. Someone like Aurene. :P

We’re supposed to care about her?

Finally!

Elementalist: Greatsword
As I’ve suggested elsewhere, make all five attacks auto attacks (just as spear for Rev has two auto attacks). Using them in specific patterns can add effects to the attacks.

Revenant: Longbow
Give us a Tengu archer to channel. Rev really needs another ranged weapon.

Engineer: Mace
It’s a hammer. What kind of engineer can’t swing a hammer? Make some of the attacks do extra damage against non-living targets such as walls.

Thief: Rifle
We need the sniper. The concept is too basic to ignore. Make the snipe shot a stationary charge skill that consumes more initiative the longer you charge it to build damage, and make it leave a revealed condition on the user.

Ranger: Rifle
The sniper concept belongs to the thieves, but the wandering gunman concept belongs to the ranger. Secondary weapon skills can be things like arm and leg shots, with the Grandmaster traits giving you a choice of three additional effects you can add to your rifle attacks.

Warrior: Offhand Pistol
Rytlock pulled this off for years. Well, he’s not a warrior any more, it’s time for him to give up his signature weapon.

Guardian: Shortbow
Healing arrows need to be a thing.

Necromancer: Shortbow
Arrows tipped with all sorts of nasty stuff. Because they would do that, right?

Mesmer: Mainhand Dagger
Skills 2 and 3 are up close and personal. Skill 1 is a three step attack, with the first step having range and teleporting the target to you. Because that’s how a mesmer would use a throwing dagger, right?

Lots of people seem to be having problems right now. Instances seem to be totally un-accessible to most.

castlemanic.3198:

None of those required the creation of an entire zone to accomplish, plus they were current events, not Living World Season 3 episodes. Vast difference between the two.

Ah, but the zone already exists, doesn’t it? Yes, it would need some fixing and adjusting, especially near the top, but it’s still there.

Aspect crystals? Have some asura spouting off about how his team has developed this device that can infuse you with temporary energy that functions “almost” like one of the crystals “notresponsibleforinjuriesdeathorexplosivecombustion” and you’re explaining away the movement powers without the crystals.

It would take work, but much less work in some areas than any other such addition. I mean, I’d be just as happy to see an entirely new area that picks up the Zepherite story, but why waste the work that’s already been done?

And let’s be honest, we NEED to pick up that story again. We left things in such a mess for them, and … well… the story needs a few more wins for the good guys. In the Living Story, it seems like every plot ends in destruction and loss. Even our victories come at an awful cost. We’re not heroes, we’re the harbingers of destruction. Getting to reclaim a happy moment, and see something start to grow out of that loss, would be a nice change of pace. I think that’s what people really want the zone back for, it was the last (only?) area added to the game that was generally positive.

I think that, after you clean it up enough times, that character doesn’t see it any more. I know some of mine still find them, and some don’t.

castlemanic.3198:

There needs to be a legitimate reason why the commander would NEED to go back to the labyrinth for it to work lorewise, which you still haven’t provided.

I want to take a moment to target this argument and shoot it down, if I may?

Tell me, what lore reason did they give for the commander to go hunting after the stray bloodstone shards that fell across Tyria? For tracking the Destroyer movements underground? Facing the new bandit champions? Magical energy eruptions? How about the rifts?

The fact is, most of these don’t actually have a plot that requires the commander to be there. They are interesting events, and “someone” looks into them. That someone can be pretty much anyone, though. And with the Commander now trying to put together a new guild, it would be really easy for someone to show up and say that they’ve been sent by the Commander to keep an eye on the situation.

I would also like to say that there’s no reason why the Zepherites wouldn’t try to rebuild, and some researchers would consider it a challenge to replicate the effects of the aspect crystals. Throw that out as a challenge to enough asura, and you’ll have a dozen teams working on it, just to show up the others. (And may the six help them all if someone from another race manages to do it better.) In fact, rebuilding the Sanctum could lead to new innovations in the design of the next generation of Pact airships. (And I’m sure the now undermanned Pact would love to convince some of the Zepherites to train a new wave of pilots.)

Finally, as to one of the real functions of the zone… the economy. We’ve all seen some stuff that, from a player point of view, looks pretty questionable as ANet tries to balance prices. They seem to have forgotten that the Festival of the Four Winds was made to help with that, by giving new value to under-priced resources. It would be nice to see this return, instead of things like adjusting recipes to require more resources, only to have the change persist far past the point of helping.

I wonder if you can get it in Infantile mode to make this easier.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

No, really, it is. Check the shops and look for an upgrade that will let you collect more baubles at a time. There’s at least one, maybe two. If all else fails, ask around or check the wiki/Dulfy for answers to where to find them.

Good luck!

Lahemic.6097:

The only thing I’ve seen thus far that kinda disappoints me is the lack of RP that I’ve seen thus far, which I intend on remedying soon!

Thanks to the “Megaservers” system, you may have been in the right place for RP, but in the wrong instance.

If you’re on a NA server, just take a run around the lower level’s inner circle in Divinity’s Reach every now and then, and if you’re in the right instance you’ll eventually encounter some emotes from someone RPing. (Emote range is really over done in this game, but this is one of the places where that’s helpful.) I’m not sure where to suggest looking if you’re on a EU server.

To find out which specific instance you’re in, use the “/ip” command. Getting to a different instance requires either zoning in and out with some solid luck, or teaming with someone in the right instance and then using the “Join in <zone name>” option you get when you click on their party icon. It’s worth noting that the agreed upon “RP instance” (when one is needed) does change every time there’s a patch, though.

I REALLY want that pose to be used on a glider version of the Magic Carpet. Honestly, that’s the pose that should have been used for even the normal MC, but I’ll accept it on a glider.

Please!?

Ameepa.6793:

mtpelion.4562:

You can stand on land for an infinite amount of time without it dying, so we have established that it is immune to death due to exposure to air.

Eternal torture for the poor fishy, dying forever

Don’t forget that there’s an event in Caledon Forest where we see that the minis are made from oozes. They just take on the shape of something else. They don’t actually need to breathe.

Now, with that said… I do find this a bit disturbing to look at. The flopping is amusing, but the gasping is disquieting. And for an ooze to copy this shape and behavior, it has to have been exposed to it, right? So…. yeah. It’s not a fish dying, more like a recording of a fish dying. Still not cool.