Guild Wars 2

Does this mean we get to send them one on the basics of writing a plot?

Before I get to the main post, I would like to say that this thread isn’t for those that feel that GW2 does not need saving. If you think the game is more or less going well, then this thread isn’t for you. Feel free to read (naturally), but I do ask that you not derail the thread. (I can do that myself, thank you.)

Now, for those of us that feel that GW2 is headed in the wrong direction, I have a couple of questions. The first and most obvious is: “Can it still be saved?” If it can’t, then there’s really nothing to do but get what enjoyment we can out of it, and wait for the next good game to come along.

If you think it CAN still be saved, then there’s a second question. And to be honest, this is the real question here. “Is it our job to save it?” Is it, in any way, our job to try to convince, cajole, or force the devs of ANet to make the changes we think they need to make to save this game?

I’ve seen a lot of posts and comments from people saying things like “Until they fix (Problem X), they’re not seeing any more money from me.” And if that’s because you simply don’t like the game enough to support it any more, that’s fine. But if it’s to force the developers into changing the game, then I have to ask if it’s worth it. If spending a bit of money in the gemstore will make your game time more enjoyable, is it worth denying yourself that in order to attempt to sway ANet’s decisions? In a year’s time, will you even care?

I’m a casual player, and yes I like to get some things from the gemstore or use gems to buy gold to speed things along for me. Never in huge amounts, but it makes my game time more fun. And after the big “feature” patch, I declared no more money for ANet until they apologized for wiping themselves with town clothes, and undid the damage. But then I realized something, I really don’t care. Yes, it matters to me right here and now, but not in the long run. There’s a couple of games I’m waiting for, and I’ll be dropping GW2 the minute I can go to what I feel is a better game. I’ve given plenty of feedback, as have others, and ANet has made their lack of interest in both the feedback and certain kinds of players quite clear. I’ve done my part, there’s little point in making the game worse for myself in a clearly futile attempt to make a point.

I guess what I’m trying to say is if you don’t think the game can be saved, or you feel you’ve already done your part, then stop spoiling the game for yourself. Enjoy what parts of it you can, buy a few gems if they’ll make the game more fun for you. Just do it knowing that the game is what it is, and when the time comes we’ll all be playing other games.

It’s not our job to save ANet or GW2. Don’t throw away chances to have fun trying to do so. And if, in a few years, GW2 crashes and ANet gets wiped off the map? That’s really not our problem. Give feedback, yes, but beyond that we’re here to enjoy ourselves, not to keep them employed.

Thelgar.7214:

Is there a balance issue if Elementalists have the option to pick two weapon sets and designate which of them is used with each attunement? So if you equip daggers and staff, you could designate staff for water and fire and daggers for lightning and earth. So you’d still change attunements, but sometimes that would include a weapon swap. If it is a balance issue, is it an insurmountable balance issue?

I love that idea, and something similar could be done for Engineer kits. However, that would require some hard work on ANet’s part, and I honestly don’t see them being willing to bother with it.

As for the main topic of the thread, it seems some people are missing the main problem the OP is talking about. So, think about it like this:

You have a warrior running Greatsword/Greatsword. On one, they have a Sigil of Bloodlust. On the other, they have two other Sigils. They can use the first Greatsword to build stacks of Bloodlust, and then change to the other Greatsword and get the benefits of both of those Sigils, without losing the stacks of Bloodlust. All classes can do this kind of trick, except for Elementalist and Engineers. Is this an intended imbalance, and if not how can it be fixed?

Mishee.5719:

Everything is relative…soon two years in and no new class or weapons. Seems like the “SoonTM” is here. =)

Again, consider that China is now their big money making market. How long has the game been out in China? Nowhere near that long. They would be shooting themselves in the foot to bring out a new race right away.

Swish.2463:

I’m sure no one from Anet can honestly answer, But what about you guys. What do you think the true cost/legacy of LS1 was? and do you think Anet has learned anything from it to help avoid a second year and a half long neglect of every other aspect of the game?

The cost? Some of ANet’s dignity and a large chunk of their reputation. Did they learn their lesson? I doubt it. They may think they’ve learned, and they may take a few steps in a better direction, but I don’t think the people in charge there see the real missteps yet.

GuzziHero.2467:

You have to remember that we in the ‘old world’ (US/EU servers) are yesterday’s toys now. We have to think of what China wants/expects.

Pretty much this. This is the first LS season for China. The very fact that it’s their first is all the “big release” we’ll get. The simple fact is, China’s a bigger market than the rest of us are. In other words:

• We are no longer who they’re aiming the game at.
• We are not important to them.
• We have already been replaced.

Always ask yourself “Is this good for the China market?” If the answer is “no”, then it doesn’t matter how much we may want it, it’s not a good investment for them. If they have a choice of two features they could work on (and let’s be honest, they’ve got far more than two to choose from), then between one that goes over well with us and poorly in China, and one that we hate but will sell big in China, they’ll go with the second every time. It’s just good business.

Putting out a new race, or anything else of that scale to launch Season 2 would be bad in the China market. They’d come to expect that, it’s their first LS season and it will be the measuring stick they use for all the ones to come. Some fanfare will happen, but nothing that big.

I expect her to return. Maybe not in Season 2, but by Season 3 I expect everyone to know she’s coming back.

Unless the ones responsible for her get shifted to other duties or fired, she’ll be back. She’s too much of a Mary Sue to not come back. Hades, she might even come back as a hero this time, and show Trahearne the proper way to steal the spotlight.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Agreed, assuming there’s not a catch of limited-time stuff.

As I understand it, any world events in the LS will still be limited time events. Once the story moves on, they no longer happen.

I just checked as well. Nothing new in there yet.

Very sloppy, ANet. Don’t advertise it as being in the game before it’s in the game, please.

The new stuff should be there.

You can always use the kit to open the menus, look at what’s there, and then back out of it without making any changes. If you do that, you keep the kit, it’s only used up if you keep the changes.

dagrdagaz.4913:

I foresee a new LFG filtering; if yer char is from after 15 April 2014, u WILL be kicked !!!

I hate how much sense that actually makes.

Riondron.1069:

So, you gave us the option to buy the Bone pick again, but only for 7 days???
I’m am sorry if I sound a bit sarcastic here, but not everyone has immediate access to either gold-for-gems, or real world money during that seven days. Some people get paid bi-weekly, or even monthly, or just simply cannot afford to drop some cash during that 7 day period. It’s things like this that make players angry and disenfranchised with the game.

They do that so you’ll keep gems on hand to buy things when they come up. Of course, having gems on hand makes it so much easier to go ahead and spend them, which means that you then need MORE gems for what you were really planning on saving them for.

jokke.6239:

They remove the gem requirement on custom arenas and your point is that they did this because they want us to buy gems O.o?
Ofc they obv want people to buy gems, since you know, it’s their income. But when they open up options to pay with gold instead of gems .. Then pls don’t complain ..

It seems I’ll have to explain this one.

Before now, custom arenas were paid for with gems. Both starting one, and sustaining one, cost a set amount in gems. To get those gems, you could pay cash for the gems or (and this is important) you could buy the gems with gold.

Now you have to pay gold to create and sustain a custom arena. You can earn the gold directly, or (and again, this is important) you can get the gold with gems you buy with cash.

In both cases, you can pay for it with either real world money or by earning gold in-game. By shifting it to requiring gold instead of gems, however, they’ve changed the direction of which gets exchanged for what. The people that were buying gems with gold for arenas will now just spend that gold and leave the gems alone. The ones that were buying gems with RL cash will now use those gems to buy gold to pay the fees.

The net result is fewer people buying gems with gold, and more buying gold with gems. This will help to shift the exchange rate. If the shift is noticeable, it will even increase the amount of gems needed to pay for an arena over time.

Right NOW, the game says the average price is 7g76s for 100 gems. Arena starter kit cost 1600 gems, for a gold price of 124g16s. New price is 200 gold. Right NOW, the game will give me 8g59s17c for 100 gems. Dropping the copper (for ease of figuring), that comes out to over 2300 gems. Again, old price was 1600 gems. And those prices will shift even more out of our favor if this has an effect on the exchange.

So, see the problem?

1. Lots of starter zone champs got nerfed into vets. I hear the Frostgorge train got nailed as well. Might be able to find something in Kessex, but not as good.

2. Warrior, Guardian.

3. Can’t say, I’m from TC.

4. For speed runs? From what I hear, yes.

5. Yes.

6(?). Scarlet made the pretty part of Kessex hills ugly, and then ANet had her destroy Lion’s Arch in an attempt to make her a “serious threat”. ((Translation: We all knew she was going to attack, so they simply didn’t give us a chance to stop her. No NPCs tried to stop her. It happened, deal with it.)) LA is a wreck, but rebuilding. There’s a few lingering “Toxic Spore” events that pop up every now and then, but that’s mostly it.

Welcome back to pretty much the game you left, save with more nerfs. ((Town clothes: Nerfed. Trait points: Nerfed. Trait Unlocks: Nerfed. Server Communities: Nerfed. Champions: Nerfed. And custom arenas, if you bother with them, will soon/now cost gold instead of gems, in an attempt to force people to buy gold with gems to even out the exchange rate.))

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
So if I read Colin’s writeup about the story journal correctly…

We have to log in during the 2 week time frame that the LS episode takes place in order to have access to it perma. If we don’t we have to spend 200 gems to gain access to this content.

So…I mean I hate to bring it up again, but is Arenanet moving even further away from their notion of “you can take a break from the game a come back” ? If I take a break, I miss out on all of this stuff unless I spend real money on it.

Contrasting to a sub-based game for comparison only, I have access to all content patches, zones, dallies, quest hubs, raids, dungeons, etc…

Is it a technical reason that they went this route? Or greed? I currently am not playing the game because im having a blast in Wildstar, but if I ever wanted to come back and catch up on the living story, I am SoL unless I dish out real $$. Seems pretty lame to me

Quite upset about this.

Yeah, this is pretty much greed.

This isn’t really about getting money out of old players that drifted off, though. If they didn’t care enough to log in every two weeks, odds are they don’t care enough to pay for the missed content.

Instead, this targets two other groups. The first is the dedicated player that was unable to play for those 2 weeks. Family vacation? Hospital stay? Computer broke down and can’t get it fixed right away? Time to cough up some gems to get what you missed.

The second target group is new players. This is basically a way to make them pay for the living story up to the point where they’ve joined. You can bet that, with this system in place, they’ll make it even MORE important that you play all the previous parts of a story to have fun with what’s going on right now. It may be with how they write the story, or it may be that doing task A requires item B that was in the story a month ago. So, if you want to open that new version of the tri-colored chest, you need to buy the old story parts to earn keys. Call it a reward easily earned by those that have been loyal players, and most of the GW2 community will blindly support it and call it a good use of the replay feature.

From what I’ve always understood, the dragons by themselves are pretty animalistic. It’s when they corrupt sentient beings and they become linked to them that they get smart, and pick up more evil traits.

From what I understand, the dragons themselves are not smart. Rather, it is their more powerful minions that are smart, and then that intelligence passes up the link into the dragon. That’s part of the reason why I want us to interact with minions more at first.

The dragons are rabid, wild animals. Dangerous, but not actually evil. Any evil comes from their minions, the champions and lieutenants. I’d like to see that explored a bit more in the next LS.

Andred.1087:

Well it’s a good thing they give you 2+ weeks every time.

Also, every restriction you just listed is self-imposed. If you don’t like to look things up, then it’s going to take you longer to complete the content. If you can’t play the game that much because of your job, well, obviously your job is more important to you than playing GW2. And it should be. But that’s not ANet’s problem.

Tell me, how fast can you eat a chocolate cake? And I mean the ENTIRE chocolate cake? 20 minutes? 25?

Most people can’t answer that right off the top of their head, because they’ve never tried it before. Yes, chocolate cake is yummy, but most people prefer to enjoy it a bit at a time, rather than cramming it into their mouth as fast as they can.

With that in mind, why do some people seem to feel that looking up guides on Dulfy and cramming through new content as fast as possible is somehow a virtue? Do they even enjoy the content, or are they simply getting a fix of “click buttons fast, get rewards”?

I realize I won’t change your mind, nor am I really trying to. The reply is more for the other people reading this thread, so they can at least see my reasoning.

Carighan.6758:

The thing is, the living store requires very little time per patch. Usually people finish the current content in 30-45 minutes or less.

I don’t.

I don’t like to look up spoilers and guides until I’ve given something a fair try. I like to take my time and look around. I like to be casual and play at my own pace. I also work very long hours (12+) on the days I work, meaning that on a lot of days I can’t really play any at all.

This was supposed to be a casual-friendly game. Measuring based on how fast a dedicated player can rush through content isn’t a fair standard.

It’s a game. Not a job. Not a race.

lordkrall.7241:

How am I missing the point? Instead of behaving like that why not explain the point you are trying to make? Because from my point of view your posts basically says that they should cater specifically to you.

I believe he wants them to state clearly what kind of direction they’re going in, so he can make an informed decision as to if this game is for him or not.

If it continues to be PvC, he’s better off leaving and letting those that enjoy that have their fun.

No.

I lost my town clothes, they lost my financial support.

I’m pretty sure they can figure out how to get it back.

I see it as being useful if you have one character with Tailor, Leather Worker, and Armor Smith all together, or Weapon Craft, Hunting, and Enchantment. In each case, each set of three share some components and recipes. Having all three on one character means you only need one of each of those recipes.

That’s totally…

pathetic.

The BLCs need an overhaul. Giving out the improved boosters would be a small step in the right direction. But this? This is like a band-aid slapped on someone’s face because they have a tooth ache.

pupi.2465:

Caithe is fine, she was just confused about “her love” in the Nightmare Court, but she offers no harm to nobody but herself, you gotta worry with Zojja, she’s the unstable mind here.

Agreed.

Caithe is being worn down by making a huge effort, and getting cut down all the time by most of DE being childish. The one person offering her comfort is one of the bad guys, but also the person she loves. If she did join them, she’d still stop short and come back to join the fight. She can’t help herself, she is who she is, even if it’s wearing at her.

Zojja is looking for someone to blame for Snaff’s death. She refuses to believe that any of it could have been her or his fault, even though they were part of the team.

Logan and Rytlock may make a lot of noise, but they both privately blame themselves for Snaff and Glint dying. You can hear it during the argument in the Dream when Rytlock says he wasn’t able to protect Snaff. Not “we” couldn’t, but “I” couldn’t. Yelling at each other is just how they deal with it.

Eir is the only one besides Zojja that I’d worry about. She too accepts the blame, but with nobody to yell at she’s turned it inwards. She’s flat out suicidal by the Honor of the Waves story, not the best mental state for a leader.

Scrambles.2604:

I can’t force my viewpoints on anyone. At best i can submit a request, to which you can accept or decline. Hmm…sounds familiar…

And when they say “no”, you politely accept their answer and move on with your life, right?

Anyone else remember when NCSoft said ANet was already working on a GW2 expansion, and ANet came back and said “no, we’re not”? I’m pretty sure someone at NCSoft caught fire for that, and I’d bet ANet did too. I think it’s not NCSoft refusing to let them make an expansion, but more someone at ANet now has their kitten on the line if LS doesn’t measure up. Thus the push ahead with LS at all costs.

As for the “evolving world”? Lots of games do it without LS tricks, even GW2 does it some. The basic idea is that as you progress through zones, going up in zone level means the story advances. In GW2, an example of that is how the pact is in the Orr zones, but they don’t exist in any lower level zones. The story advances at that point, and things change. Using this trick, if you want to put in an advancing story later, you follow the same pattern. Start it out in lower level zones, and advance it through the zones to give it the feeling of time passing.

Yes, there are flaws with that approach, but it still works pretty well if written right. ANet’s trying to reinvent the wheel. What they’ve come up with works, but not as well as an actual wheel.

DarcShriek.5829:

My position of the nightmare court is that the nightmare is just another side of the dream. It is the ying to the dream’s yang.

When talking to people about it, my sylvari has been adding a third term to it. “Fantasy.”

The Pale Tree follows the Fantasy.
The Court follows the Nightmare.
Together they make the Dream.

He finds it rather worrisome that so many sylvari embrace just one part, and believe they’ve embraced the whole. To his way of thinking, most of the race is delusional and unbalanced.

A Massive Headache.1879:

Except the sylvari don’t have any previous remnents, like even the dwarves knew nothing of them prior.

Ohh, good point on the dwarves.

Maybe the sylvari are related to the dragons, but in a different way.

I’ve seen it suggested that they respond to the upswell of magic by trees of life growing and putting out sylvari, and they may be a defensive force to fight the dragons. If so, how they evolved or who made them is a mystery. (Personally, I like the idea that someone made the tree of life seeds.)

It could also be that, if the dragons win, all that will be left is sylvari. When the dragons go back to sleep due to low magic, the sylvari cleanse Tyria (and we’ve already seen at least one sylvari with a drive to cleanse a land) before dying off, and the cycle begins again. The last time the dragons appeared, they were apparently defeated. Thus, we didn’t get the sylvari part of the natural cycle.

I think it’s better to say that you want to introduce the IDEA of the big-bad fairly early on, but that doesn’t mean they should enter the story just yet.

Let’s look at a classic RPG, Final Fantasy 4. First of all, we have Kain who switches sides back and forth as his mind is manipulated. It happens to Yang as well, making it clear that it’s not something they can control. Any darkness within them allows it to happen. Then, we also have the Fiend of Fire, Rubicante. Despite being a major boss and the most powerful of the 4 Fiends, he proves to be an honorable opponent and actually apologizes for what one of his minions did.

By introducing the ideas that:

• people can be mind controlled to do evil things
• not all foes are as evil as they may appear

they establish everything you need to know so that, when you defeat the “final” boss Golbez that you’ve been after all this time, the plot twist that follows doesn’t feel like it’s pulled out of their kitten . Instead, the reveal of the true evil flows from previous story elements and makes sense.

That’s what they need to do here. Scarlet was poorly hinted at, at best, and felt like they were just making crap up to try and patch together unrelated storylines into something epic. That’s one of the (many) reasons why she failed as a character and a plot device. She didn’t follow the rules of the story, she broke them.

With that in mind, they can start laying the groundwork for any big bosses or enemies well in advance of them ever appearing, and make it work. You don’t actually need to show them to establish their place within the story.

I started liking Trahearne a bit more after finally doing the sylvari storyline, because I was finally given a proper introduction to him.

However… it also brought it to my attention that EVERYBODY knows him, and it seems they all owe him a favor or two. Order of Whispers, Vigil, Priory, and even the largos, they all know and respect him for various adventures and feats he’s done in his past. He’s also trained up to be a powerful necromancer, AND traveled Orr (before the Pact was there to help, don’t forget) to study it and the dragon until he’s considered THE expert on it.

All in 25 years of life? While also helping the sylvari race get going as one of the firstborn? Nope, I don’t buy it.

Cormac.3871:

So, anyone have a good idea on how to make choices matter in LS? It’s a path I’d like to see gw2 pursue, but I am not sure how feasible it would be.

One of the big things they need to do is show us what happens for the choice we didn’t make.

Let’s say you have Hylek and Quaggans that both need help, and you have to pick who you’re going to race off to assist. Let us do that, and let us win, but THEN let us go to the other group, and see what happened to them. Are they dead? Corrupted? Do the survivors curse our name? Or did some other band of heroes come in and save them, setting them up as possible opponents later on when we clash with that group of heroes?

Look at the human storyline where you choose an order. At a couple of points, you’re faced with a choice. Save group A, or save group B. You make your choice, but you NEVER see the cost of that choice on the other group. You lose nothing by picking one over the other, there’s no cost to it at all. But what if you had to visit the group you didn’t save? If you saw the dead, and the Risen that you could have saved? What if you got to see your contact find someone they knew amongst the bodies? Would there be resentment? Regret?

You can’t make the choices matter in terms of game balance or rewards, at least not by much, or you’ll run into problems. So, the difference has to be an emotional one. And there should be no promise of a right and wrong choice, sometimes you don’t get that lucky. Destiny’s Edge had to make those choices (Logan: Save the queen or stay with DE? Eir: Press ahead without Logan, or pull back and lose the chance?) Now it should be our turn.

That’s why, if you look at what I’m saying I want to see, you’ll notice it’s all small scale stuff. No mention made of big battles. No mention made of massive bosses or events. The most technically taxing part would be the branches required for the choices, and they’ve already proven they can do that in the Personal Story.

We’ve got big battles in the game already, and nobody cares about what they’re fighting. They care about the mechanics of the fight, or the loot they’re hoping to get, but not about the boss itself. Nobody has any real emotional attachment to the 3-worm or Teq. But there’s a boss elsewhere that makes a remark along the lines of “Tybalt says hello.” People want that kitten DEAD. One line, that’s all it takes, because what it says matters to the players due to personal emotional investment in a character.

That’s pretty much what everything I’ve said comes down to. It’s not about big battles or fancy outfits. It’s about giving us a reason to care about what’s happening. I know GW2’s system can handle that. The question is, can ANet’s writers deliver it?

Oh, that was good!

Inguiomerus.1504:

We could speculate, or we could just wait and see.

I prefer to speculate. That way, if LS2 flops, we can point back at our speculations and say: “We came up with that off the top of our heads after just a couple of days. You had MONTHS to come up with your very best. And you gave us … this.”

It’s one thing to say “I could come up with something better than that!”. It’s another thing when dozens of posters can PROVE they can (and did) come up with something better. If ANet wants to impress us, we need to show them the bar they have to aim for.

Kythan Myr.4719:

What could ANET add/do for LS2 if it continues in the same format that would make it more successful in your eyes??

First, a more reasonable villain. NOT the dragon, but a dragon champion. They don’t pull resources and incredible feats out of their kitten-hole. They have people working under them, and even those people have their own plans and plots going on.

Second, a more likable villain. Not all of their underlings need to be likable, but they need to be someone we can talk to. Maybe even reason with on occasion, and they may divert us with reason as well. Heck, it would be great to get to know them BEFORE we find out they’re the Big Bad of the season. Make us, perhaps, a bit uneasy about having to face this person, because they ARE a person and not a faceless minion with a name and higher stats.

Third, the world needs to be moving outside of our party. There should be at least one other group of adventurers out there trying to do the same thing we’re doing. Sometimes we work with them, sometimes we work at odds with them. And while they’re technically on our side, that doesn’t mean they’re good. Some of them may be worse than the enemies we’re fighting, in their own way. Play with the morality of it.

Fourth, we need choices. Yes, I realize that this makes the storyline much harder to do/make, but the investment when you get to make real choices is astounding. And if they’re tough moral choices, all the better. And to be clear, the choices you face when choosing an order in the personal story are NOT important ones until the final one. Until then, every choice you make in that part of the storyline costs you nothing. Even the one moral sounding choice in the human storyline (disturb a dead person’s spirit, or infiltrate the pirates) turns out to be a case of grey/grey morality when that infiltration involves summoning the undead to attack them. Give us choices that matter, and give us reason to consider carefully.

Zomaarwat.3912:

Okay, freaking out now

I forgot to mention the final horror of it for the Skritt.

When they gather in large enough numbers, they start to remember. Not enough to become what they were, but enough that they start to realize how far they’ve fallen. How much they’ve lost. Every Skritt around them is a reminder of just how broken they are.

And so, they scatter. Rather than face the pain and sorrow, they split away from the group and set up elsewhere. Elsewhere becomes someplace happier, and when their numbers grow too high once more they scatter again.

Imagine a world champion chess player that takes a damaging blow to the head. They survive, but the brain damage is irreparable and leaves them severely limited. Most of the time, they struggle through life. But when they see a chess board, they remember just enough to know that they were once good at it. They once understood it. And now, they can’t even remember the names of the parts, much less how to play. And so, the sight of a chess board causes them to burst into tears as they realize just how much they’ve lost. THAT is the sad truth behind the Skritt.

They can’t focus too much on the Skritt, because doing so will reveal the hidden truth about them:

THEY created the Elder Dragons.

The skritt mind-link works by sound. Once, long ago, they had technology. It linked them all, one race-wide hive mind link to make them all super geniuses. They discovered that magic eventually builds up within the world, and starts to create problems. So, they created several beings that would gather up this energy, and made them capable of transforming and controlling any “problematic” life forms they happened upon while working. When their job was done, they would shut down until they were needed once more.

No one knows WHY the Skritt empire fell. Maybe they didn’t understand magic as well as they thought they did (they didn’t use it, after all), and the dragons malfunctioned when they overloaded on it. Maybe a mimetic virus spread through the hive mind, and shattered it. Whatever happened, it left them broken and scattered, with only faint racial memories of their technology to always draw them to “shiny things”, and cause them to create the same kinds of structures in whatever place they called home.

Now uncontrolled, the elder dragons do what they were programmed to do, time and time again. The skritt empire has faded into distant memory. Scraps of their machines and devices were found by a race called “asura”, who did the best they could with it, but eventually resorted to using magic to fill in the gaps they could not understand.

If you think this is wrong, then look around at the various Skritt lairs. You’ll notice they’ve got odd structures that they keep repeating in any lair where they have room to build. Why? How is it even possible that they all do it, unless it is from a powerful memory the whole race shares? And why, if Skritt are all over the place, do the dragons never corrupt them?

So, they can’t do a LS on Skritt until they’re ready for the big reveal. And it’s too soon for that.

It WILL disappoint people.

I’m not saying that because I have a low opinion of ANet (though I do), but rather it’s because they’ve waited too long and dropped the wrong hints. Simply put, unless they give us an entire expansion on day 1, people will be kittened.

Beyond that, however, there are already signs that ANet is going to make a mess of the story. We know there’s another dragon that’s active now (we don’t know if it’s one of the known ones or a new one), and we know we’ll have to find it and deal with it. So we … are set up to follow some totally new character that they kitten-pulled at the last second. NOT track down ancient records and think it through. NOT take the initiative and start looking before it finds us. No, instead a new character is once again added to the lore to motivate us. It’s quite possible we’ve met Trahearne 2.0.

We’ve once again been set up to tag along behind the real main characters, and do all the heavy lifting for them. This isn’t a problem with just GW2, CoH ran into it a lot with the villain storylines and it was hard for them to work around it, but they got better at it over time.

There’s also the fact that (nearly) everyone will descend on the new content right away, creating huge clusters of players swarming any Open World parts of the story. The Devs will either have to balance it for the uber-zerg, or balance it for the more reasonable sized groups that will come after a few days of it being out. Either way, they’ll be unbalanced for the other group, resulting in disappointment.

So…yeah. Crash and burn on day one, at least for us. The really important question is: How will it go over in China?

Malediktus.9250:

Liadri offers no prestige. I leveled an engineer with tomes of knowledge to 80, put together a bomb built and killed her within 5 tries without issues. If you want skill based rewards they need to think of something much harder than Liadri.

I hate to tell you this, but most people can’t do that.

You’re at the top. Stop climbing, or find a taller tree.

FearedbytheGods.8617:

Palador.2170:

If I see you charging into battle with the gasmask, molten gloves, jetpack, and The Moot, I’m going to think you’re a total idiot.

That’s just arguing an extreme point of view. To assume people with prestige gear will simply mash the pieces together because it’s all unique is an idiot thing to say.

You play with character models off, don’t you? Trust me, it happens and it’s ugly.

Oh god, we’ll actually have to play the game.

kitten, ANet, what are we paying you for?

..oh…right. Never mind.

Okay, new question:

Would any of the people wanting to do open world duels be interested in costume brawl “toys” that are made to look like real weapons and have serious looking attacks as a way to duel? Say, “Dueling Pistol”, “Dueling Rapier”, and “Dueling Wand” for the set?

Yes, that means that everyone would have the same skills rather than using class abilities, which I realize misses part of the point. But it also:

• Uses an existing system, minimal work needed to add it to the game.
• Bypasses class balance problems.
• Has a clear path to profit for ANet.
• Makes it entirely about skill, rather than class balance or gear.

Would this be enough to make you happy? And would this be okay with those against in-world duels?

[Edit] And remember, costume brawl no longer requires costumes. You’d still be in your normal armor or outfits for this.

timmyf.1490:

ArenaNet determined the resource requirements – whatever they are, and it’s not necessary to know for you to understand this point – were beyond what they wanted to spend.

(Edit: just a bit more color. The requirements here could be in terms of programmers, artists, modelers, or some combination of all of the above. Probably some combination of all of the above. I get the feeling that animating chest and leg pieces for all the gender/race/armor-weight combos is a substantial amount of work, so they try to stick to more universal glove+shoulder+boot+helm+back pieces.)

They’ve already said why they did it, so that it would be easier to make new outfit sets going forward. I’m guessing that means that they don’t have to worry about clipping and such between parts any more, which is technically true.

I think this is about there not being a guild bank in Lion’s Arch.

I don’t run dungeons, but I agree with his request. I’ve seen too many stories of “we cleared the entry event, went in for a very fast run, and came back out to a new instance where it’s closed again”. As I doubt they’ll undo the megaserver, they need to keep the dungons from being contested. Keep the events, just change them a little as needed.

Fyrebrand.4859:

How do starting/leveling characters get access to these weapons? Why should it be more of a hassle for them to get these “special” ones? In order to justify this distinction, these profession-specific weapons would have to be clearly superior in some way — and making one weapon blatantly better than others is a terrible idea.

I’m glad you asked! And while they can be superior in some way, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be unbalanced, it just means that they have to be inferior in some other way.

Let’s say that, at level 10, you can go to a trainer for your class and they’ll hand you a basic version of this weapon. They tell you to practice with it, and come see them later. This weapon isn’t going to be impressive, but then at level 10 none of the weapons have impressive stats to them.

Then, at level 20, they’ll give you an upgrade item. That, the weapon, and two other things in the mystic forge will give you a slightly improved version of the weapon. Where do you get the other two items? Well, that’s where the fun starts. One is made by crafting, using items you can get at level 20 and a recipe you can get cheaply (free?) from a vendor in the cities. That item is account bound, so any of your characters can make it, but if you don’t want to craft there’s a mystic forge recipe that will make it for twice the amount of components.

The second item is obtained out in the world. NOT BY RNG!!! Say, a special item sold by a specific heart vendor, again in an area suited to a level 20. You get all four things together, toss them in the forge, and get your improved weapon, ready for level 20 use.

Now, at level 30, you can go back again. THIS time, they give you a choice of upgrade items. Which one you pick decides what stats your weapon will be getting. Get the two other items, the upgrade item, and toss them with the level 20 weapon into the forge, and get the level 30 version. And so on…

Now, here’s where the interesting part starts… There’s no traits to improve this weapon for your character. Instead, as you get to higher leveled versions of it, you get the option to make one with a trait-like effect built in. Maybe you go for the version that recharges skills a bit faster, or maybe you go for the one that has better range. They’re superior because you get that without spending trait points for it, but inferior because you can’t easily change that like you can traits.

If you choose to keep upgrading your special weapon as you level, then when you reach level 80 you have a weapon that’s been with you almost the entire way, and has grown with you. It’s not something you grabbed off of the TP. It’s not something you crafted in 3 minutes of clicking. It’s the weapon that YOU have put work into. In short, it’s a bit more character advancement in the form of a weapon that grows with you, if you choose to spend the effort on it.

I’d rather see a special weapon added for each class. Something they and only they can use, with special things to do in order to craft and/or upgrade it.

Mesmer: Crystal Ball
Necromancer: Scythe
Elementalist: Rune Blade
Ranger: Claw Blades (pair)
Engineer: 1 handed Hammer
Thief: Whip
Warrior: 2 handed Axe
Guardian: Flail

I voted, but there’s some stuff I’d like to add/suggest:

Rework the dungeons to be solo-friendly, at least on the story path. Then, add in difficulty adjusters for all dungeon paths, achievements for certain feats within all the dungeons, and titles for getting either all the achievements in one dungeon or all related feats in all dungeons.

Allow laurels to be traded in for 20 dungeon tokens, IF you’ve cleared story mode for that dungeon (note the previous request for them being solo friendly).

Personal and guild housing. I know it was on your list, but it can’t be said enough.

Upgradable weapons. At (for example) level 20 your character gets a “basic” sword/staff/dagger/whatever they pick. Every 15 levels or so, you get a series of tasks you can do to infuse your weapon with better stats. The appearance can change as you add or alter parts of the weapon, possibly taking it through several styles as it develops. Some of the items required are account-bound items made by crafting. You can get them in other ways (such as a more difficult recipe in the Mystic Forge), but crafting is the easiest way. This rewards you for having all crafting professions covered, as well as giving you a weapon that grows as you do.

Improved chat system and emotes. Seriously, ANet, turn down the range on both of these, and give us some chat channels we can set up and use.

[Edit] Also, chained hearts/quests. Basically, storylines within a zone that have to do with what goes on in that zone/area. Either by giving a series of quests like the personal story does, or by having the completion of one heart unlock the ability to do another, allowing you to move across the zone and “advance” events. For example, the first heart could be to protect a farm from some bandits. That leads to a heart where you fight the bandits out in the wilderness, giving you a feel for where they’re coming from. Third heart is to fight them in/near their camps, where you can hear some of them talking about “the boss”. The third heart NPC, when cleared, will sell the key to a mini-dungeon where you go to take on the boss.