Guild Wars 2

I assumed that completing all the achievements for each chapter would result in two Sinister accessories (one defensive and one offensive) and two rings (ditto), much like how the Nomad accessories were handed out, but with this third chapter we’ve received an amulet instead; so does anyone know what we’ll be getting for completing the achievements in the final chapter? A Sinister backpiece? A ring and an accessory? A legendary llama pet?

Yes, you lose 15% of the price to TP taxes.

Shemsu.8721:

Does nobody pay attention to dev interviews? It was explicitly stated that they didnt really see any need for another class multiple times.

On the other hand there have also been interviews where new professions being in the works has been brought up:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/18/guild-wars-2s-colin-johanson-outlines-big-plans-and-course-cor/

Although Johanson couldn’t commit to a timeframe, new weapon types and expansion of current types to more classes is absolutely in the works.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”

Immediately recognized this as not being GW2 for one amusing (and somewhat disappointing) reason: the blacksmith looks like a blacksmith.

While it’s a minor detail, NPCs in GW2 generally don’t do anything to indicate their profession (except for Orrian farmers, they actually farm), you have to identify them all by the icons above their heads; blacksmiths don’t bang away at anvils all day, merchants don’t have stalls displaying examples of their goods, farmers don’t do anything other than stand around and die to bandit raids, guards rarely kill anything without player assistance (are they guards or walking target practice dummies? You decide!), etc. etc.

To be fair GW2 isn’t a sandbox MMO, so you can’t really expect that level of detail either.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

and here’s a good example of why Anet can simply never win with the community.

this is something that a lot of people complained about before.. that “nearest” shouldn’t depend on which direction you’re facing, that nearest should literally be the nearest enemy, period.

they’ve now fixed it so of course people are now complaining about wanting it reverted.

I don’t really have an opinion on which it should be.. but it’s important to remember that for every complaint you have about the game, there’s plenty of people that want the very opposite.

It’s a terrible example, actually. This is an interface issue, not a content issue (which is frequently subjective), so it’s entirely possible to satisfy differing opinions by having options. A proper fix would be to implement a dropdown box in gameplay settings for targeting preferences with the following (but not limited to) options:

• Target nearest from center of screen.
• Target nearest from character (on-screen only).
• Target nearest from character (all).
• Target nearest from cursor.

It’s not a revolutionary idea, I’ve seen other (older) games that have done similar, and it’s one that would step on the fewest number of toes.

I would much rather they just enable dyes for glowing armor skins (radiant, hellfire, toxic, etc.) instead of releasing yet another dye that you have to pay for the pleasure of gambling for (seriously, RNG dye kits for special dyes is just a low blow).

If nothing else it’ll let people match toxic shoulder and glove skins to Mawdrey.

If you don’t know how to vote, remove the /r from the url, that’ll send you to the actual voting page and not the results page.

While trading for GW2 gold is out of the question, I’m sure you can find a guildie or two who would love to get an easy 30/50 for the skin unlocks in exchange for helping you with some GW2 goals

strifer.7986:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Splitter

Er, those don’t work anymore, they just turn into five transmutation charges.

Behellagh.1468:

Mystic.5934:

They did? I just got a Zenith skin this last saturday.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement_rewards

I think he’s talking about all the PvP skins we use to get pre wardrobe.

Oops, yes, I meant those skins.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

At the time, PvE players hated those drops: they took up room in inventory (since one tended to get a lot of the same) and had no value for PvE. Oops.

That’s the funny thing, the Wardrobe update gave value to those unlocks for PvE, that was a solution to one of the complaints, but then turned around and removed the unlocks completely, which is no solution at all.

I’m afraid it’s your class/build that’s giving you a hard time, OP.

When LS2 first started I tried running through it with my thief and warrior, both of which had an incredibly difficult time because several mechanics crippled their builds: the thief relies heavily on on-kill effects to keep her health and vigor up, which none of the story mobs trigger, and the warrior was melee-oriented, which meant he either spent his time chasing bosses that wouldn’t stop moving or running away from bosses that dropped PBAoEs like it was going out of fashion.

After switching to a zerk ranger I’ve been able to do every chapter and get every achievement (except Dancer in the Dark, did party up for that) solo and with relative ease. I suspect this will be true for any high DPS ranged build as well, so give that a try even if you don’t have a ranger.

Arcangel the Reaper.9418:

Pandaman.4758:

Golems.

Different body types for different models (D-Series, 7-Series, Siege, Watchwork, etc.), decal patterns (racing stripes!), and various accessories (antennas, horns, wires, etc.) for the head. Weapons will be mounted on the forearms instead of held and armors will just add distinctive plates/panels to their respective regions.

No good reason for suggesting golems, just the idea of a D-Series Mesmer amuses me.

That would be interesting. A result of another Great Golem Uprising? That could be a result of Inquest tampering. Where would you think the Golem Cultural home would be?

Well, wasn’t a serious suggestion, but they have the convenience of being able to have a cultural home pretty much anywhere with the simple handwave of “abandoned Inquest research facility”. Given how eager the Inquest are at working with criminals/outside legal boundaries, they could have bypassed blockades and established facilities beyond the Silverwastes or Crystal Desert.

Or pretty much anywhere they could reach by accessing one of the old (still functional) Asura gates, provided they were willing to brave the destroyers.

Beldin.5498:

So you really think the average ganker cares about things like a story ?
All they need is a bush to hide behind and somebody who runs by so they can jump
them from behind

Of course not, I don’t think the average ganker cares much for anything beyond their own borderline sociopath tendencies, but that wasn’t the point :p

Golems.

Different body types for different models (D-Series, 7-Series, Siege, Watchwork, etc.), decal patterns (racing stripes!), and various accessories (antennas, horns, wires, etc.) for the head. Weapons will be mounted on the forearms instead of held and armors will just add distinctive plates/panels to their respective regions.

No good reason for suggesting golems, just the idea of a D-Series Mesmer amuses me.

HeadCrowned.6834:

Personally I think the racial choice has been too minor in this game yet, so yeh, any person of your race as ally would be nice in my opinion.

If GW2 started with all the races at war with each other then I can understand it, but it didn’t; trying to impose racial factions like that wouldn’t make any sense, particularly when both the personal story and living story is all about uniting people to fight a common threat.

Alienmuppet.1942:

When people talk about PvP in PvE, they instantly talk about the carnage it would cause. But what about dueling? You have to accept duels, you don’t have to do them..

If that were the case why even bother talking about bringing PvP to PvE? You can duel in the Heart of the Mists by inviting someone to an empty, non-standard (no rank progress, nobody crashes those) map; there will be less lag than dueling in cities, standardized gear, standardized stats, and no targeting interference.

It would be a completely redundant system and a waste of resources.

Vieux P.1238:

I dint like the grind but somehow i’m thinking if it was implemented in the game, i might not mind as much. I mean we grind for skins all the time. & in the end..the feeling of it is just, meh!

Let me just bounce this back at you:

When Anet came out with the idea of no gear grind & everybody would be on the same level on GW2, i fell in love. The idea was in theory… Revolutionary! Finally no more long hours of grinding for the best stats & gear. No more being gangked at every turn by other players cuz they have better sets then you. & for a time it was good. Skill vs skill. But after a wile, the feeling started to turn stale & ppl started to be less & less exited.

You might enjoy having vertical grinding introduced to the game, but do consider:

• You grew tired of the grind for horizontal progression despite it being something new and fresh to you.
• You’re will grow of the grind for vertical progression (that’s even assuming you’ll somehow like this new grind more than the old grind, of which there’s no guarantee), because it’s already something old to you. Repackaging a tired mechanic to make it briefly more interesting isn’t going to change the fact that it’s still the same tired mechanic.
• You’re still going to get ganked in WvW, there’s no way gear will be introduced that can make you so OP as to allow you to fend off a zerg or team of roamers.
• You’re still going to get ganked in PvP, because gear stats are normalized in PvP and it won’t change the aforementioned imbalances between characters you mentioned.

And, finally:

• It’s going to be locked behind the same RNG that everything else that’s hard to get is locked behind, which means you’re probably never going to see it unless it’s on the TP for several thousand gold.

I could see this being a new PvP mode: cops and robbers. Or guards and looters, to be more thematically correct.

Guards start out in Fort Marriner, looters in Hooligan’s Run, and the goal would be to capture the enemy’s base.

I’ve suggested similar before, except called it an “Outfit Template” where each template saves one armor combination as an Outfit and it will behave as such across all characters. ANet can charge 500 gems per template with the justification that it costs roughly 180 gems for six transmutation charges, so adding the template in would bring it in line with the price of Outfits.

While that may seem expensive, the benefit of this would be that you would be able to apply mix-n-matched looks to any class – we still won’t be able to mix weights, but it will expand the available looks for all classes (although I have no idea how it would work with cultural armor, maybe ANet can start relaxing racial restrictions).

Since they removed skins from AP milestone chests, it sure would be nice if they added a couple full tickets into them as replacement.

And what’s the point of asking for a feature that already exists? If you want maps to roam with open world PvP enabled, then go to WvW/EotM.

If you want new maps to roam with open world PvP enabled, then ask for new WvW/EotM maps.

Nothing good can come out of trying to shoehorn open world PvP into PvE just because other MMOs do it.

Eight level 80s (one of each class), six have 100% map completion, engineer is at 64% and necromancer at 27%.

Both remaining characters have WvW maps completed, so I’m in no rush.

Clearly he stole all that booze from the pirates, no sourcing costs.

Rainmaker.7594:

Maybe even make reflects do half damage – you have to admit, reflects are a bit overpowered, and should be more for defense than offense.

To be fair, it’s not that reflect skills are overpowered, it’s what they’re reflecting is overpowered. Lupi is throwing out enough damage in one AoE barrage to KO himself, so perhaps what needs to be nerfed is his damage output, which could probably be cut in half and still one-shot most players.

Healix.5819:

The trail their charge leaves blocks projectiles.

That clears up so much, much appreciated.

Still wish there was a “Blocked” feedback.

Gnat.9405:

I imagine they did this because the map was dead a week after its release. This way people will participate.

It’ll still be dead a week after release, farming 2k crests hardly takes that long: two days of casually doing SW will get you 1k crests, so you’re only going to be there for four days at most.

I’m more annoyed that they have several seconds of invulnerability (not invulnerability, but all attacks do no damage – there is no “Miss” or “Invulnerable” or any feedback in the combat log, attacks just… disappear) during and after their charging attack. I’ll see them stop, turn around to claw normally at a target, and waste a rapid fire on them because there is absolutely no visual indicator that they’re still not accepting damage.

And this is why you don’t take orders from people getting their kittens handed to them.

This applies to both NPCs and terrible commanders.

Nausiation.1469:

I will buy marjory’s dagger and the katana if they ever come back, I’d buy them instantly. The whole point of a microtransaction model is to sell us skins, and yet you refuse.

But… they did come back. Belinda’s Greatsword, Marjory’s axe and dagger, Kasmeer’s staff, Braham’s mace and shield, and Rox’s bow and quiver were all available during the first week of Halloween.

They’re all discoverable recipes, if you look at a collection in the list and click on each weapon, the wiki has the recipe for them.

According to the list of collections there’s Bandit, Grawl, Hylek, Krait, and Ogre collections. There is no Dredge collection (yet).

I don’t believe any of them actually drop their respective weapons, you’ll need to craft them all (or buy the bandit ones from the WvW karma vendor).

Does it matter if the map is not full six months from now? You get crests from doing events, not just beating the Breach, so whether there be fifty of five people on the map you’ll still be able to get the same amount of crests per hour (provided you actually defend a fort with the rest of the group and not try to solo it).

Even getting the Modrem parts doesn’t require you to beat the champion, you just need to have credit for hitting it and have the extraction buff up when the Breach ends to get the extracted part bag.

Zaklex.6308:

What gives you the impression it doesn’t do anything anymore?

The only thing personality and personality-shaping dialogue did was determine which of the ten possible personality titles/icons were displayed in your Hero window, so removing that title/icon literally means personality does nothing now.

It’s true that you aren’t getting the different answer options in any of the latest updates, but that doesn’t mean it might not show up at some point, and it still is used by new characters up until level 80 in adding to the respective stats.

I think the dialogue options are only there because it’s too much of a hassle to go back through all the lines and dialogue trees to scrub personality out when it’s easier to just leave it in as flavor text. I also seriously doubt it’ll ever come back, given the lack of official replies to threads about personalities.

Since personalities have all but disappeared from the game, can we just have it reflect in our animations instead? Have a more aggressive stance for ferocious people (fists clenched, feet apart, back straight), a proper stance for dignified people (hands behind the back, feet together, back straight), and a relaxed stance for charming people (hands on hips, feet apart, slightly slouched).

Seems a bit pointless to have new characters continue to pick their personality when it doesn’t do anything anymore.

Of course I don’t expect this to every fly (since it will triple the number of idle animations and probably necessitate a mechanic to categorize animations by personalities), but just had to voice it out.

I remember back in the early days of Ultima Online people could actually be thieves by using their stealth skill to open other players’ inventories and try to take items.

Can you imagine the amount of paranoia and rage if thieves can nick your legendary out of your inventory?

That may be repetitive, but it’s not really grind, is it? You only have to hop in to play briefly as opposed to slogging through a dungeon for half the day, every day.

Your guess is as good as ours.

1) The ability to swap stats on the fly.

2) The skin, mileage may vary with this though.

3) It will always have the highest stat, meaning if they ever (however unlikely) add a tier above ascended, legendaries will automatically start using those stats.

Personally I don’t think those are compelling enough reasons for me to ever bother making a legendary, so I’m spared the anguish. Happy for people who did get their legendaries and enjoy it though.

Zaxares.5419:

Well, that there is what Mesmer players are complaining about. In order to have a “permanent” speed boost, we are forced to rely on specific runes (which necessitates having a spare armor set) and/or specific weapon/utility combos. This is something no other profession has to deal with; they all either have access to a single utility skill or trait that grants an innate +25% speed boost, or they have plenty of access to Swiftness granting skills (Guardians fall into this category, especially with the recent buff to “Retreat!”).

And the argument I’ve been making is that’s by design and mounts would run contrary to that design, which makes mounts with speed boost unlikely to happen.

I’m not saying I think that’s a good or bad design, I’m just pointing out it’s an obstacle to the goal of mounts.

It’s not even the only obstacle, people have brought up concerns about performance issues, developer time and resources, and map designs. Denying that these problems exist, demanding changes to core designs (we see how well that works for the Holy Trinity), and/or lauding the supposed benefits of the feature without proposing any solutions does absolutely nothing to achieve that goal.

Ohoni.6057:

Well, it comes from my Guardian being my second most-played character(my first being Thief) and that out of eight level 80s, mostly built for decent speed at the expense of other options, he IS one of the fastest. He has GS lunge which is up more often than a lot of other lunges and has longer reach, he has Save Yourselves and Retreat to give him 75% Swiftness uptime in two doses so he can use it more conveniently, and that’s without any boon duration increases. […]

Yes, which is the perspective I’m talking about.

Guardians really don’t have it that bad, and anyone who thinks they do really need to roll a Mesmer.

Now from my perspective Mesmers have much better access to travel speed than Guadians, because my Mesmer can easily maintain 100% swiftness with the Superior Runes of the Centaur (13s swiftness and not a terrible rune set if you’re a power build) by charging Mantra of Recovery and casting Power Return every ten seconds (punctually interrupted by a Temporal Curtain); it’s a little tedious having to spam heal every ten seconds, but in exchange I hardly sacrifice anything else in my build (and even then the cooldown on the skill is so short I can easily swap to Ether Feast before getting into a fight).

There have been some that use more words and less WoW references, but not any that are more logical in basis. They basically all boil down to “I’d rather not have or have to see mounts because reasons, so I don’t want you to have them either.”

…

Well, time for me to check out of this discussion if that’s the case.

Ohoni.6057:

Speed everything. Everything that makes you faster int his game (aside from city guides, I suppose) are designed and balanced around pure combat scenarios. Any aide they give you in crossing zones a bit faster is purely a fringe benefit. So long as they remain useful in combat encounters, they remain perfectly balanced, but if they add mounts and you no longer prefer to use those options, then you’re free to swap them out.

Well, as I’ve already stated before, I believe that premise to be wrong, so I’ll just remain unconvinced.

But Guardians are one of the fastest classes out there. That wouldn’t make any sense. Surely they were talking about Mesmers. In any case, Mounts would not apply to PvP, and If they applied to WvW (they wouldn’t have to, but I’d prefer it), it would still be no different than a Mesmer following a zerg where they are all applying so many Swiftnesses that everyone is moving at the speed of Swift. Also keep in mind that if this was a year ago, they’ve already overhauled a ton of stuff, including signets and runes, since then.

No, it was about guardians (I was looking specifically for information about guardian travel speed at the time, since I was on my first character and getting frustrated at how slow the class was) and it makes perfect sense provided you look at it from the perspective of the speed balance being about travel speed and not combat speed. I’m not saying you have to agree with it, just realize the reason it doesn’t make sense to you isn’t any fault in the logic presented, but an incompatibility with your belief on how things are balanced.

It’s like how that comment that guardians are one of the fastest classes doesn’t make any sense to me, but I can understand how you would believe that if I look at it from your perspective on the whole speed balance issue.

Well, if there are arguments against mounts that aren’t “opinionated faff” then people should start posting them in this thread, because I’ve yet to see one. That doesn’t mean people aren’t entitled to their opinion, or to express it, but a firmly believed opinion is still just an opinion.

I didn’t mean to imply that valid arguments are completely devoid of opinion, my apologies for leading you to taking it so literally; when I said “opinionated faff”, I meant things like “I don’t like mounts, this isn’t WoW, go play something else” (the pro-mount counterpart would be “I like mounts, this game is going to die without it, stop being so backwards”).

I trust you don’t think all the arguments that have been made are like that.

Einlanzer.1627:

What they need to do is make the water weapons available on land as well. Why would you not be able to use a spear or a harpoon on land?

Spear I can see, but don’t be silly: a harpoon gun on land would just be a crossbOH.

Nevermind.

Playing through GW1 now for HoM achievements and as much as I prefer the writing and class flexibility, I think GW2’s combat is much more engaging, controls much more responsive, and camera less of an eyesore (especially this, I’m trying to do Heart of the Shiverpeaks right now and I can’t get the camera to look up high enough – or stop snapping back to default angle – when I’m twenty feet away to see his attack coming).

There are a lot of features in GW1 that I wish made it into GW2, but overall I think I still prefer GW2 over its predecessor.

Ohoni.6057:

If you haven’t realized it by now, ANet ONLY balances the game around sPvP. Every stat or rune or whatever was balanced with only its PvP viability in mind, that’s why there are so many things like granting small duration Swiftness for dodging, killing, critting, and other situations that aren’t usually useful for improving long distance travel.

I notice you’re trying to hammer out a lot of responses, so it’s understandable if you’re missing details because you’re skimming too fast, but I already mentioned I was aware the balance was for PvP and WvW, and because WvW and PvE share builds it extends to PvE as well.

Speed skills were designed to make some characters more hit-and-run than others, allowing them to get in and out of combat quicker, not to let players cross Kessex Hills slightly faster, so as long as mounts cannot be used in combat, their intended function would not be altered in PvP or PvE.[…]

You just introduced a bit of confusion there, did you mean speed traits and signets or speed skills? Skills (whirling blade, flashing blade, etc.) are indeed about mobility in fights, but if you meant traits/signets then – to my knowledge – that premise is wrong.

I say this because about a year ago I read a dev post stating the speed balance was to control how fast a guardian could get to a fight, because their innate boon abilities brought more to the fight than other classes; the intended function was, in fact, to control how fast they could get from spawn to a keep/tower/capture point/etc., not how fast they could move around once there.

Now I wish I could link this post to you, but I can’t find it right now – it’s been buried under a year’s worth of people asking the same question over and over, none of which have since been answered by said dev. I’ll understand if you don’t want to take my word for it, but do understand this is the basis of why I believe speed boosted mounts will conflict with the intended function of speed signets/traits/runes and thus contradict class design.

Do try to read the arguments, there are valid arguments against mounts that are not wholly rooted in personal opinion, no matter how much people try to dismiss them as such.

There really aren’t.

There really are. That you don’t agree with them doesn’t make them invalid or opinionated faff, no more than people not agreeing with you doesn’t make your arguments invalid or opinionated faff.

Tharomir.6985:

Has it occurred to all of you rude people that the reason people keep asking for mounts is that there are many people other than you playing this game who want mounts? It won’t break the game, it will make tedious travel shorter, and it will add more things to collect in this game and make it more immersive than waypoints.

Do try to read the arguments, there are valid arguments against mounts that are not wholly rooted in personal opinion, no matter how much people try to dismiss them as such.

Edited to be less confrontational.

Ohoni.6057:

This isn’t about the “simple” (which it wouldn’t be even if there was nothing in its way) matter of adding mounts to the game, it’s demanding the developer rethink core class designs. That’s as likely to happen as ANet implementing the Holy Trinity.

It doesn’t change core class designs in any way. Everything would be left perfectly intact, and just as viable to PvPers and those who spec for speed for combat advantage. All this change would do is free up more player options for those players who might feel compelled to spec for speed purely to lessen the boredom of jogging across a map. It has absolutely nothing to do with balance.

How do you say that at the same time you recognize that speed is an aspect of class balancing? Speed boost mounts will render speed signets/traits/runes obsolete (because there is no choice between “sacrifice a trait/trait line/utility slot/rune set for traveling speed” and “sacrifice one inventory slot for traveling speed”), so they’d would have to be replaced, which means class powers would have to be rebalanced to reach parity again.

That’s asking for ANet to rethink class design.

Additionally, traveling speed as a balance issue isn’t about how fast someone can move in a fight (that’s what teleports are for), it’s how fast they can get to a fight. ANet wants Guardians and Mesmers to take a little longer to get to a fight in WvW and PvP, but because WvW and PvE shares builds that balancing extends to PvE as well. This relationship works both ways, rebalancing classes for PvE also extends to WvW and PvP.

So not only is this PvE “option” non-optional, the changes aren’t exclusive to PvE either.

I wouldn’t mind mounts, but with how ANet has balancing set up now it’s impossible to have speed boost mounts that can be summoned from the inventory anywhere on the map without affecting balancing and it’s unreasonable to expect them to change it for an aesthetic feature.

johnnymiller.5968:

I see what you mean about this event. According to another thread the event was changed with the September feature patch release. Hence why I had not encountered all the vet, elites & champs. Get the impression this event is bugged.

Ah, I stand corrected, it was September and not April. I thought the change accompanied the traits patch, though I do vaguely recall it might have been related to the NPE instead.

Vayne.8563:

You can be completely into skins and not even think about the cash shop…except for transmutation stones…which if you PvP isn’t really a problem….or if you world complete on multiple characters.

Or have an extra character slot to create a new character for the express purpose of mapping out Rata Sum and the Grove. Two transmutation crystals for about half an hour of running around.

Ohoni.6057:

And be that as it may, it’s a BAD class balance decision.

And that, right there, is why it’s unlikely there will ever be mounts (with speed boosts).

This isn’t about the “simple” (which it wouldn’t be even if there was nothing in its way) matter of adding mounts to the game, it’s demanding the developer rethink core class designs. That’s as likely to happen as ANet implementing the Holy Trinity.

That’s pretty much the main reason I hopped on GW2, the only reason I’m replaying GW1 (as much as people love the old game, there’s a lot about its combat and camera system that drove me away the first time, but I’m willing to suffer through it for the HoM rewards), and what keeps me grinding those achievement points (although I am tempted to just give up on a full set of Radiant/Hellfire skins).