Guild Wars 2

Taunt reminds me of the Sinister Triad over at Brisdban Wildlands. The “tank” has this annoying ability to yank your attention and force you to run to him for a few seconds, which is a good demonstration of how ham-fisted and inelegant taunt abilities are in games with Trinity.

Makes me sad that it sounds like we’re going to get them as abilities now.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Just like on the current professions, you will start at level 1 when you create a new Revenant character. We want it to be easily accessible for anyone with Heart of Thorns which means not putting it behind unnecessary content gates.

Aw man, there goes my thought experiment, though the overwhelming reaction to it range from “no” to “hell no”, so it’s not like it really sparked much of a discussion.

Nebulous Prime.2073:

1. Basic Principles of the Code[…]

None of which apply to this case since it’s a matter of an unintended error (as evident by the fact that the name of the product is “booster bundle” and not “heroic edition”), not false advertising (of which that was none, there was no sale advertised or any sort of promotion made). ANet is only obligated to refund you or credit you a booster bundle, nothing else.

It’s akin to a price tag that reads “Chips 16oz $4.00” somehow winding up on the shelf for stereos and you’re that litigious customer who’s demanding a stereo for $4 or he’ll sue.

If you’re experiencing lag during your prime time (not US prime time) and weekends only then it’s possible your ISP is throttling traffic. The Guild Wars 2 servers listen to port 80 (HTTP) and 6112 (standard for online games), so what you can do is add “-clientport 80” or “-clientport 6112” to the end of your GW2 shortcut to manually tell it which port it should use (otherwise it chooses automatically).

ISPs that throttle international traffic tend to target 6112 because it’s an easy target: customers will suspect traffic or faulty servers before considering their ISP is throttling them, especially if said customer notices that nothing else on their connection is slow (“If I have bad lag in game but no lag in anything else, it must be the game’s fault”). This is what happened to me until I learned of the -clientport command and I’ve been able to play lag free during prime time and weekends ever since.

GiraffeRampage.6420:

They should remove pug leader having the ability to kick, and replace it with a group based vote.

How did this comment go by seven hours without anyone correcting it? It is a group-based vote: one person calls a kick vote on you and a second confirms to finalize it. ANet has been trying to raise the threshold (to require two confirmations), but there are reports it isn’t working as expected.

Astral Projections.7320:

I admit I don’t have firm evidence for this theory, but their refusal to offer profession changes and their inability to change the hero panel leads me to think this is correct.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time ANet has revealed it coded itself into a corner (like with how they set up incompatible dye zones and bones across armor weights).

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Won’t work for the reasons in this topic, but also your argument is invalid: imagine a character is level 80 but has barely done anything with their personal story (I have lvl80 characters who are only at the beginning of chapter 2), they could easily become a Revenant and still go and kill Zhaitan.

I addressed that with:

• It establishes a narrative where no Revenants could have been created before the fall of Zhaitan – so even if you do the personal story and slay Zhaitan as a Revenant, you’re simply reliving a part of your life prior to becoming a Revenant.

Yes, you can play the story out of order, but if you look at your personal story’s entries there’s a clear chronological order: you start adventuring sometime in 1325 AE and kill Zhaitan that same year, Heart of Thorns takes place in 1328 AE, so if you can only become a Revenant during Heart of Thorns then – from a narrative perspective – you couldn’t have been a Revenant when you killed Zhaitan, thus Rytlock remains the “first” Revenant.

I’d suggest getting laurels instead since those are time gated, whereas tomes aren’t (sitting on 300 from PvP rewards).

Carlin Sanders.3587:

honestly the one thing that convinces me revenants will start the same way and play the same way as every other profession:

Look at the PS post claw island right now.

It’s not only mixed up, but skips ‘greatest fear’ and often contradicts itself. you talked to most of the others as you cleanse orr but next mission you’re now doing the temple of the forgotten god and Sayah has completely forgotten you or has short term memory loss. This among many other issues.

Will revenant be a similar ‘contradiction’? yes, yes i think it will be. yes i think they’ll go through the same PS as every other profession. it’s the easier path for them to take with this profession rather than ’here’s instant 80 but you get no PS. yet you’re the guy Rox and everyone else follows now.’

Aha, that’s one reason against the idea that I forgot to list: just plain easier to shoehorn it in.

Everyone (myself included) appears to be assuming that Revenants will be a ninth class and presented in the same manner as the current classes: that is to say when you create your character you first pick you race, then class, then background, name it, and hop into the default racial starting zone. This is probably the safest (and most likely correct) assumption of how Revenants will be introduced, but then that raises concerns about the apparent contradiction of PC Revenants predating Rytlock as the “first” Revenant – which in turn has given birth to speculation about unique personal stories/starting zones for Revenants.

Has anyone considered the possibility that this won’t be the case though?

Let’s consider the following:

• The expansion profession updates are largely level 80 material. The new zone, masteries, and specializations are features you only have access to with level 80 characters.
• Our exemplar Revenant is an NPC who gave up his profession to become a Revenant.

So here’s the wild, unfounded, highly unlikely speculation I want to put forth: you can’t make Revenants from the new character creation screen, you have to convert an existing level 80 by speaking to Revenant-Rytlock instead.

It sounds crazy, but here are some supporting arguments for this:

• There’s no need to modify the new character creation system to check for race and profession when determining starting zones.
• No need to provide new character slots to players with the expansion, because we’d be converting existing characters.
• It resolves the “Rytlock came first” conundrum without having to introduce an alternate personal story chain (there will probably a new personal story where the player goes through trials to become a Revenant though).
• It establishes a narrative where no Revenants could have been created before the fall of Zhaitan – so even if you do the personal story and slay Zhaitan as a Revenant, you’re simply reliving a part of your life prior to becoming a Revenant.
• Thematically it seems more appropriate than an established hero would start to channel legends than, say, an orphan who missed their calling in the circus and just took their first step outside to poke at angry centaurs.

Now what makes it unlikely is:

• It invalidates gear. ANet has made it clear that they don’t want to do this to players, so unless there was a gear exchange system in place it would force light and medium professions to scrap their gear.
• It’s a counter-intuitive way of introducing a new class. Not many MMOs handle new classes like this (only Ragnarok Online really comes to mine and even then it’s not the same) and people generally expect new classes in expansions to be immediately available rather than grind-then-promote.
• It’s too much like a permanent, cross-profession Specialization that resets your level to 1, which might be viewed as too punitive, confusing, and/or unfriendly to players.
• It sets a precedent for other class changes, which is something ANet doesn’t want to do iirc.
• Anything you folks can think of.

Disclaimer: I don’t believe this is what will happen; it’s just intended as a thought experiment; terms and conditions apply; not available in all states; a reheated plastic tray can warp or melt… reheating of tray is not recommended; RSVP; BYOB.

Once the banker expires it stays in your inventory (just can’t be used), so if you can’t find it you probably misplaced it somewhere.

Reko.6847:

ive tried all times of day and its always full…

Try all times of the night.

No, seriously, you’re not going to get in if you’re trying to get into the server when everyone else on your side of the pond is awake. I’ve found that any time after 3am EST makes it easier to get in.

Shinya.2598:

It’s so boring when you have to press a character to see which profession it is. There’s no distinction.

How does having to look at an icon detract from the aesthetics of a character’s appearance? If they look good then they look good, things like profession, stats, rarity, etc. are completely irrelevant to that.

If you mean you want to identify enemies in PvP/WvW by appearance alone then that’s not “boring”, it’s “inconvenient”.

Yeah, it is luck based. Today I was lucky and got teamed with people who were playing to win, so I was able to win.

Yesterday I was teamed with four people who didn’t care about winning and just wanted to get Dragon’s Gaze, so they spent the entire match getting killed trying to time the kick just right.

I regularly get double digit kills, so I’m not bad at it, but I’m certainly not good enough to carry an entire team out to lose.

Shoes are just a worse version of horses!

For a team vs. team activity I’m actually kinda curious why it’s a “hotjoin” activity and not an alternate mode in sPvP. Having map listings, segregation by skill level, and a mechanism to balance team sizes would have been beneficial to keg brawl.

(Not saying ANet should invest time and effort to do this now, just found it odd this wasn’t how it was designed from the start)

Brother Grimm.5176:

Yes, it is more LIKELY you will get 2000 after 10,000 rolls than a single roll, but the number of rolls has NO bearing on the actual odds of each roll.

This is the basic concept of RNG that most players just do not grasp.

I wouldn’t say people don’t grasp the concept of the RNG, it’s just that it’s hard not to grouse about how inherently unfair the RNG is when rewarding time and effort (that is to say it doesn’t).

Fortunately that will be solved by the precursor crafting mastery, so people can complain slightly less about it.

Prior to the megaserver patch it was subject to the same restrictions I’ve always played with: heavy lag after 6pm and during weekends, but after the patch it’s severely lagged 24/7 regardless of performance in the rest of the game. I’ve always been irked it was never fixed, but having it available only during Sunday is just salt in the wound: not only has it never been fixed, even if it is fixed I’ll never be able to play it without lag.

Thanks, ANet.

When I first started out I had a bit of a rough time with the controls because of how awkward it was to be strafing or running while holding down W or D and trying to reach over to mash 6 to heal (and hitting 5 instead, which can potentially catapult me toward the enemy I’m trying to get away from, depending on class).

Things became a lot easier when I mapped alternate keys for the 6-0 skills: Shift + 1-5. All of my controls are condensed to the left side of the keyboard with this setup, which improves my mobility, ability to fire off the skills I want, and lets me AoE target/mouse look with my trackball instead of wasting time trying to poke at the utility bar with the cursor (which tends to get lost in the confusion usually).

xDudisx.5914:

Or you are doing Teq and another guild shows up to gank you.

Excellent argument against open world PvP, good sir!

Wait, you are against open world PvP, right?

GaryC.4897:

just a observation, we got the extra slot with nightfall and assassins both were “campaigns” and could be played independently of prophecy. when EofN came out it was a “expansion” and we got no extra slot. But I also would like to know.

Nightfall and Factions both had new classes in addition to the extra slot, while EotN had no new classes or slot.

darkm.4839:

It’s not “needlessly” restrictive, it just makes sense. There’s already race specific armor, why not have profession specific armor? It’s no different.

Norns can’t fit in armors sized for asuras, that makes sense. Cultural armorsmiths don’t make armors for any other race and don’t copy armors from other races, which explains why you can’t find cultural armor from other races that fit, which also makes sense.

A thief being unable to wear a ranger’kitten doesn’t make sense unless it’s some weird Cthulhu-esque living armor that has a mind of its own and silently judges people’s life choices.

GW1’s expansions included an extra character slot each, so it’s possible they’ll do so for HoT as well. Assuming that specializations will generate more interest in making alts one “freebie” slot would be a negligible bonus.

Failing that you could always buy an extra slot rather than delete a character. They go on sale occasionally, so just convert your gems when the rate is low and wait for the sale for maximum savings.

Malediktus.3740:

seabhac.5346:

Some of us prefer blondes?

Anyway… I like this skin much better: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Naegling

Naegling is a greatsword. This is a 1h sword with a similar design. So I am not sure what you are trying to say with this post.

He’s saying just because you like it doesn’t mean everyone else does. If almost nobody uses that skin then it’s because people like other skins more than it.

Guild Wars 3.

No, seriously, if anything will sap the core fanbase it’s a sequel.

Firelysm.4967:

Simple solutions, you unlock the skin, u sell the item and not remove it from wardrobe if you have more then one item, this is simple solution as it’s 1 simple flag to check, from programmer perspective i can tell you, that this is easier to implement then adding new skill to class.

From a programming perspective you have to consider he use cases. Say you implement a simple flag check to determine if you want to keep or remove skins, what do you think will happen every time you sell an item? After a while you’re going to lose every single skin in your wardrobe except the ones your characters are already using, which defeats the purpose of wardrobe.

Also from a networking perspective that’s an inefficient idea, because now every sell action is accompanied by the server having to check your bank and each of your characters’ inventories in order to determine if it should keep or remove a skin from your wardrobe. It’s a tiny amount of overhead for one character, but multiply it across the population and frequency of people selling items and you just introduced significant lag.

4825 hours, 0 precursors.

There is a sticky on top about mail scams.

Kartel.2561:

I’d have no problem with some sort of reputation system, even if it was actually game-effecting. Yes it would be abused, and that doesn’t concern me.

So you’re saying it’s fine to implement a system that can potentially be abused to impede someone’s gameplay because you think you won’t fall victim to it? Honestly, with an attitude like that there’s no way you wouldn’t eventually get targeted.

If there’s a system that allows players to impose game-effecting changes on others, it will be abused. All you need is a script that references an online text file, distribute it to everyone in your guild/alliance, and have it automatically fire off downvotes/dislikes/neg-rep against whoever is on the list whenever they log on – that’s virtually zero effort for everyone except the one person who set it up with the ability to potentially cripple enemy zergs in WvW (just have one spy on their server feed the list names), opponents in PvP, and anyone who happens to annoy the list owner(s).

(It’s the same script setup that allows gold sellers to quickly log into new/stolen accounts and spam people, in case you were wondering if that’s possible)

Honestly, if you don’t want to really focus on PvP at all and just want the rewards, then I’d suggest grabbing a couple of friends and looking for private maps with “daily/dailies/farm” in their name/description; go there and farm wins in relative peace, be sure to explain to people what’s going on if they come in and start behaving like it’s a normal match.

As long as you aren’t doing this in ranked games it’s not violating the ToS; also it’s preferable to have people do this in private maps than in games that people are taking (sometimes too) seriously.

Report them for verbal abuse, place them on ignore, and keep on playing.

If you’re only in it for the daily and don’t really care about winning or losing, I’d also suggest looking for one of the daily achievement/rank farming rooms. You can get your dailies done faster, with less grief (usually), and the foul-mouthed idiots in regular games can’t rage about “PvE casuals” screwing up their only form of self validation.

Just /ignore them. If other people don’t like their behavior then they’ll /ignore them too. Not everything needs to be social media and you don’t want to put any sort of power in to the hands of the player base, because it has and will be abused.

Jordo.5913:

and took them out of the reward tracks.

They’re still in the dungeon tracks, which tracks have you been on that don’t have them?

A semi-permanent solution would be for you to pick your specialization, identify (and acquire) the gear best suited for that specialization, then trash the rest of your generalist gear; you can now claim to be a specialist by dint of having removed your ability to effectively switch back to other roles.

Everyone else can continue to enjoy the flexibility and you get to enjoy decisions with weight, so it’s a win-win for all.

Only problem is that instances load the current map instead of the time-appropriate map. It was weird when Destiny’s Edge met up in toxin-and-Aetherblade-filled LA during Scarlet’s attack, think about how weird it would be to go through the last arc of the personal story with people going on about how everything is corrupted and needs to be restored… when everything is already restored.

ANet really needs to make the personal story load its own maps instead of whatever is currently live.

CureForLiving.5360:

I’m not sure how much they’d actually throw into the gemstore or bundle with HoT. If we take the Ranger specialisation Druid it sounds like something you’d only be able to unlock of you had access to Maguuma Jungle (because thats where the Druids were running around in GW1). So if specialisation are related to so sort of a quest or series of events then you wouldn’t be able to easily put it on the gemstore or make freely available.
As for WvW that’s seems like the sort of thing you’d want everyone to be able to access (you wouldn’t like to segment the WvW playerbase). The same goes for Guild Halls, it’s a pretty nice feature for the game overall, so saying “no you need HoT to join your guildies” would probably be a bit of a turn off.

Fair points, so it could be that the maps are free for all, but the initial specializations and Revenant will only be accessible if you have HoT; guild halls would also be free for all, but only offer limited services to people who don’t have HoT (maybe in the form of additional building options).

It really depends on how they gate the content. Just looking at how they handle the Digital Deluxe Edition, the gem store, and Season 2, I think it might look something like this:

Mastery system: free for all. The caveat here is that masteries are map-specific, Colin explained gliding would break the old maps, so they’re making different masteries for those instead. If you don’t have HoT, you’ll still be able to get masteries for the old maps, but you won’t for HoT content (which you wouldn’t be able to access normally anyway). The basis of this thought is that it simplifies the process of introducing masteries for subsequent expansions and/or updates.

Specialization system: free for all. The caveat being it’s the system that’s free for all, not the first series of specializations; subsequent expansions and updates (which may have free periods like Season 2 chapters did) will introduce more specializations. Reasoning is the same with the mastery system, easier to just enable the system for everyone and gate individual add-ons to it.

HoT Specializations: included in HoT package, gem store purchase otherwise. No idea if this would be selling specializations individually or as a “Wave 1” package.

New Revenant class: HoT exclusive. Like the Mistfire Wolf elite skill it’ll be the thing that will always tempt you to get the expansion, even if it’s not necessary.

New maps (PvE, PvP, WvW): included in HoT package, gem store purchase otherwise. This would give people the option to get to the new maps without paying the full expansion price, but at the expense of not having automatic access to the HoT specializations and Revenant class. It will let you access any LW updates there though.

Guild halls: dependent on access to new maps? The guild halls apparently will be in the new areas, so maybe you can only access them if you can access the new maps.

rapthorne.7345:

not new and as it states at the bottom of the mail it was sent from a player and the url is a clusterkitten, I doubt many people will fall for it

Sadly enough do to make it a viable scam, hence why they keep doing it. The scam site looks like a clone of GW2’s customer support page (with added fields for more personal information), so people who don’t realize that site actually ends with .xyz and not .com fall for it.

Edit: looked up the .xyz domain registrar and found they have an email address for reporting abuse. Feel free to do the same, maybe with enough complaints the registrar will blacklist guildwars2.com from being used on their site.

PorceleinEve.2973:

What you saw is what you’ll get untill the next expansion. Why would they ever, in their right minds, give you for free another 9 specs when they can package it with a few zones and sell it to you?

Nah you must be trolling us. There’s no way anyone would believe that, it’s not a realistic expectation. Check their track record.

My only hope is that maybe what someone said a few posts up is true and they’ve only been working on this expansion after the end of season 1. In which case we can hope (without evidence but hope is a very hard thing to let go) that the next expansion will come after only one season’s filler content after the expansion. So, maybe 1.5 years later, we’ll get another one. Unless of course they decide to change the framework again…

Be fair, ANet did release a lot of small content for free (or free for the first two weeks, as per Season 2). You may not have liked it or found it satisfactory, but it’s there.

Furthermore it’s possible they’ll approach Specialization releases much like they did with Season 2: release a new Specialization periodically, make it free for people who log in during the free period, and charge gems to everyone who missed it. It doesn’t have to be packaged with an expansion to be monetized.

Wox.2580:

I would guess the Mesmer special might also get a main dagger (I don’t think there’s currently any class that can ONLY main a dagger), or a mace (basically cause it’d be interesting and it’s currently only used by 2 classes). But yeah drxynnic you do echo something fairly important.

Mesmers with maces would allow them to wield the Moot.

Then we’ll have disco mesmers.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Have they committed to a date for said release? Does you or any other have any concrete evidence that such a thing will even happen? Cause I can clearly remember them saying they’ll be adding new utility skills and all we got in the past 2.5 years was a heal skill. So judging by their previous behaviour we can reasonably assume that the folks who think more will come, will be, in all likelihood, disappointing.

Rushing out? And here I was thinking they had been working on this expansion for a looooong time. The game is out 2.5 years already. The expansion will probably come at the 3 year mark. How many years them it people need to produce 2 well designed, balanced and bug free specs for each class?

Here’s one interview, relevant part about specialization starts at 7:25:

Just like the progression system, the specialization system is a framework that we can grow the game on in the future and this idea of adding sorta these “sub-professions” to our professions is something that isn’t just something we’re doing just for this expansions, that is the way we’re going to build out and grow all of our professions in the future as well.

Then at 8:15:

With Heart of Thorns we’ll be shipping with one specialization for each profession, and as I said it’s a system we will continue to build on as well.

And yes, I’m assuming making multiple specializations would be “rushing out” because I believe they only started working on it after the end of Living Story Season 1 (when they took that long “break”). I base this assumption on Colin Johanson mentioning (in a MattVisual PAX 2013 interview) that they were spending the first year getting the core of the game solid before moving on to larger projects, then how it wasn’t until “somewhere along the road” of the Living World releases that they realized they needed an expansion (starting at 5:00 in the AuroraPeachy Guild Wars 2 HoT interview).

What do you base your assumption that they’ve been working on it for a long time (years, apparently) on?

Did you really have to post this twice in the two discussion forums? You’re making me a sad panda, panda.

They could be saving up writs and spamming them depending on how close they are to level.

Colster.1086:

yeah….but….as a brand new player Tome of Influence & chalice of glory quite frankly don’t mean a lot to me, the legacy Armour I can see no real reason why each new character cant have a set (after a few hours of play I had already upgraded most of it anyway). My central point here, is that as an initial experience it was disappointing, this cannot be the intent the company is trying to create, and has left me pondering whether purchasing additional in game items is going to leave me with the same experience. I like the game, I don’t want it to be pay to win, but I also don’t want it to be pay to be mildly disappointing either.

It’s actually better than how it used to be. Prior to the Wardrobe update skins were single use only, so despite potentially costing $10 only one character could wear it at a time; want a second character to wear the same skin set or even part of the set? You’d have to buy it again at full price.

Worse yet the only way you could keep the skin was to hang on to the items that were reskinned and continuously reapply them to your new gear for 1 transmutation stone (which were free from map completion rewards) per piece, but transmutation stones only worked up to level 79. If you wanted that $10 set you bought all those levels ago to be applied to a new set of level 80 armor, you’d have to pay again for transmutation crystals (which were gem store purchases only).

I mean, really, for a long while my characters were rolling in level 78~79 exotics simply because I refused to be swindled like that. You’re actually having it pretty good, believe it or not.

I, too, like to walk into a vegetarian buffet and loudly demand a meat option.

It’s likely that gliding will be similar to the travel aspects presented in Dry Top: you can still get around using waypoints (once you’ve unlocked them), but there will be areas that can only be accessed via gliding.

Also if I can use gliding to avoid a cheap death like being feared/knocked off a ledge, all the more power to it.

I doubt very much HoT will bring you back if those are the issues that turned you off the game, particularly if you feel so strongly about it that you felt the need to snipe at some random ANet employee (regarding their “ego”).

I wish you the best in whatever game you move on to, but allow me to suggest a single player game or MOBA, because any other MMO is going to disappoint you in much the same way.

PorceleinEve.2973:

What are you afraid of? that anet will listen and add another specialization and omg the sky will fall?

They’ve already stated they will be releasing more specializations. It takes time. Would you rather they rush out a lot of poorly designed, unbalanced, buggy specializations?

And no, rushing out a lot of well-designed, balanced, bug-free features is not an option. It’s never an option. People who think it’s an option are the bane of anyone who has worked in IT.

Considering how bad the AI is? I would rather solo something than have four useless NPCs scale it up and fail to contribute to anything other than provide me with reviving experience.

200-300 ping? You’re quite the optimist!

Expect 400 at best. Spikes of 2,000 on weekends, public holidays, and after work hours when you have to share the line with the rest of the expats sharing your limited international bandwidth to watch Netflix.

(I live in Hong Kong, which has better service than Jakarta, and that’s what I have to deal with on a 100Mbps/15Mbps line)