Guild Wars 2

Upgrade extractors cost more than just about any upgrade so (apart from superior sigil of generosity and karka slaying). So yeah, it’s there but it’s neither practical or viable in most cases and if a solution is impractical then it’s not a solution, IMO.

I’d agree fully with Chameleon Dude, I’d like to be able to salvage karma armour and weapons for the runes and sigils at least. That said, getting the regular mats from salvage wouldn’t be a bad idea either as the game could use a few good karma sinks.

Thank you so much to you all and especially to Zach and Tyler, it is truly, deeply appreciated.

Noah.4756:

Week 2: A Fresh Start

Our second week of September 2014 Feature Pack reveals is focused on improving the Guild Wars 2 experience for new and veteran players alike!

Anyone have any clue what this could be? It’s pretty vague and it looks like it encompasses general changes to the game that affects all of us. Perhaps something guild related?

I would guess some kind of… thing… a change of some sort… to the… erm… maybe?

It is very vague, “improving the Guild Wars 2 experience for new and veteran players alike” could mean literally anything but I’m hoping it’s LFG tool improvements, in game timers (hopefully including some kind of temple alerts) and so on.

Having gold or lacking it says nothing about someone’s ability or inability to lead, the two are completely separate.

That said, I’m not getting into the direct cost of getting a tag I would just like to say that the ability to change the colour of your tag should not cost more, it should just be a basic part of the commander system.

People will want to change their tag colour (and should also be able to change the commander symbol) to make it easier to communicate with and organise players in both WvW and in PvE, those who are willing to devote time and effort to herding cats – I mean players – in this game should be thanked, it should not be reduced to a fashion accessory or status symbol. Charging people gold to “unlock” colours does nothing other than prolong confusion over which commander is which and possibly cause friction.

The ability to hide a given commander’s tag either for a day or forever would be a nice feature too.

RedStar.4218:

What kind of friend do you have ?

I suppose he may have one who may be clueless, or careless or otherwise just plain dumb. He may be a friend of a friend, or a clan-mate from another game or a friend on some social media site, as in not a real-life friend but someone you kinda know who asks you for a trial invite.

Anyway, that’s not the point; the point is that people shouldn’t be held responsible for other people’s actions.

Poledra Val.1490:

I sort of agree on that score the duration in world 2 was a little excessive, I think if they found a middle ground between W1 and W2 it would be about right the length and challenge for all players.

Yeah, I’d agree with that. You could remove a lot of the empty space in W2’s zones and keep the trickier jumps and it would be better IMHO, just cramming “more” in a game isn’t necessarily better. It messes up the pacing.

Take HL2, for example, I love the way that game goes from corridor to open area to driving to “puzzle” section and so on, I feel the changes keep it fresher than a lot of other shooters. If every corridor in that game was 10 times as long, with 10 times as many enemies would it be better or worse? Some would say better, but for me, those sections would just become a slog. There would be no real change in the challenge, that challenge would just be more drawn out.

I still love SAB warts and all.

Ayrilana.1396:

The zone length was fine. Some people just wanted to be able to speed through a zone without any challenge in a matter of minutes like in world 1.

No, it wasn’t, it was too long. Outside of endurance races or some kind of survival or “horde” mode, I don’t think duration itself presents that much of a challenge.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Well, if you look AT THIS FORUM, which is what A.Net could judge by, There are more NEGATIVE and nasty threads than there are constructive or complimentary. What do you expect then?

Are there? The majority of threads in a game forum will be about problems or issues or a suggestion that people have, I don’t think they are “negative” or “nasty” because they are about a complaint. A couple of bad posts should not mark an entire thread as “negative” or “nasty”.

There will be very few threads set up because something went well, if things are going well, you hear very little that’s just the way it is, for example, no-one phones their broadband support-line to say “thanks, everything’s OK.”

The Planetside 2 roadmap is a good example of the kind of thing I’d like to see from them. Planetside 2 is a different beast but I’d like to see roadmaps for WvW, sPvP, open world PVE, dungeons and fractals.

In reality though, ArenaNet seem to be making very slow progress on these fronts so I don’t see how much they can actually tell us.

Smokey.7652:

Dev Player communication is a two way street of respect, the community dropped the ball early on and now we have to deal with the consequences of that.

The community didn’t drop the ball. Some people in the community may have but they are not the community.

I hope you can see the difference and I sure expect that ArenaNet can.

elinos.7493:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Remember, people ripped into the work done for the last release to the point where the dev that designed said he’d learned his lesson in regards to pouring so much effort into it. He was really hurt by what people spit out as “feedback” for his effort, so I really wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to do anything with it for a while.

This pretty much. We say we want SAB, but we’ve only ourselves to blame for taking a dump on the second release. I wonder if Josh even wants to work on it anymore… I do hope that he finds it in his heart to forgive us ungrateful kittens. Whatever the case, I do want it to come back badly. And if it does, I hope world 3 is even harder than world 2, like it was planned to be.

I dare say that Josh recognises that he got that grief because “it’s the internet”; some people just can’t help being kittens. If not then I’m sure it was a valuable lesson for him.

The problems with SAB world 2 for me were just the excessive length (IMO) of the zones, if he had split world 2 into 5 zones or if the larger zones had checkpoints you could select then it’d be fine.

Tribulation Mode also attracted a lot of flak. I knew it wasn’t for me, but I can appreciate how some people like that kind of thing (I’m always impressed when I see some green or yellow SAB weapons around).

From the anger I can see that not everyone is able to make that distinction. Ultimately though it’s the internet, so two basic rules apply, one, most people are nice but the horrible ones stand out a lot more and, two, because it’s text quite often you’re the one who’s providing the “tone” for the posts.

Vayne.8563:

You’d be sitting there crafting or doing whatever, and some kid would come up to you and challenge you to a duel. If you don’t respond, some kid will whisper you. If you still don’t respond and you block them, they’ll follow you around and jump up and down spamming stuff, while calling you out in map chat and talking trash. I know this is what happens, because it’s happened to me before, even though I’ve had my dueling option disabled.

Since I don’t want to encourage that kind of juvenile unnecessary behavior, I’ll have to pass on dueling.

Bit of a nightmare scenario there, in 9+ years of WoW the worst I’ve ever had to do was hit decline and then ignore a whisper and that happened maybe twice.

The duellists tended to hang around outside the gates of the main cities where they knew they’d find other like-minded souls.

sMihaly.1492:

nearlight.3064:

Hello all,

I sent in a ticket and the support person said the issue would require a bit of additional investigation. The person escalated my ticket for further asisstance.

So they didn’t dismiss it immediately for sure, so I’ll report back here when I have a final answer.

Any update on this?

In fairness to ArenaNet they have always been good about refunds for these kind of things (for example, offering refunds for people who bought multiple copies of the harvesting tools once they became account bound).

If they decide they’re not bringing it back I have no doubt that they will do the same here. Of course, getting some of the higher ups to OK that may be difficult because, 1) having no plans now doesn’t mean they won’t have them later, 2) the “official” company line for just about everything is pretty much “we have people working on [feature] at the moment and we’re super excited to be able to share more information about that later on…”

I can’t understand why they can’t simply treat it as a bi-annual event like a festival though, April and September for example it appears for a month as is until they get time to add new worlds or tweak the ones that are there.

BTW, I think one of the main reasons they saw worse metrics was because they turned the chests from once per day per character to once per day per account. That and the fact that the zones in world 2 were simply too long (IMHO), if the 3 zones in world 2 were either split up into, say 5 zones, or they added checkpoints to them then it’d be a lot better.

lordkrall.7241:

There were quite some controversy back in the days when one of the users of said hidden forum did post screen-shots and quotes from said forum. Which would very much indicate that said forum did (at least at that point) exist.

Why not hide it? If it were open people would whine about not being allowed to see what was going on in there and not being a part of it and so on. It would also making quite a bit harder to hold a NDA if people were aware of which users had access and so on.

I didn’t know that (about any controversy or screenshots), must have missed it but I’d think that a lot of that controversy was the idea that some hidden organisation was calling the shots. If the group was out in the open and their dealings and feedback a matter of public record there would be far less controversy over what they say.

And who cares about any potential “whining”, there is always “whining” and there always will be, I’m sure that the guys in ArenaNet are also aware of that fact, but you don’t ignore or disregard all the good feedback because a few random people have axes to grind, you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Edit: note I’m not really convinced that an “elite council” is the best idea for GW2 either but selecting a set of representatives for various players, game modes and play styles who can feed into the design process could be very valuable if handled correctly.

lordkrall.7241:

But that is only the case because you are assuming that there are no such group. Which we already know that there at least were at one time and nothing suggests it is no longer exists.

Do we know that? If I remember correctly they once consulted with some sPvPers about skill balancing but to take that and propose that some kind of hidden council of players exists seems a bit far fetched to me. Why hide that kind of thing?

lordkrall.7241:

Fact remains that even on these forums in open threads people have been stating that they don’t have an issue with the cost. So why would a closed group be different?

It probably wouldn’t, you’d have some members saying that it was ok and others saying that it wasn’t but I think the main reason for having this kind of group would be so that this kind of discussion (and any outcome from it) would be had before the feature was implemented so that it could feed into the design of that feature. As it is any discussion or feedback is too late to affect anything now.

Narcarsis.5739:

Pifil.5193:

I think he meant that there were no news about Guild Wars 2 (as in nothing about anything new in Guild Wars 2) rather than no coverage for the tournament.

How is announcing three $50,000 tournaments not news about Guild Wars 2? It’s not the Gamescom tournament coverage, it’s a completely different tournament with cash prizing.

Because it’s not about anything new that you can actually do in GW2. Not any new plans for the game. It’s not new content, it’s not new features, it’s a competition that is great for those few players and all but largely irrelevant to the vast majority of players playing the actual game.

Well that sucks, I was hoping for a return to the SAB soon and I personally couldn’t care less about how it fits in with the Living World’s narrative. If they restrict themselves to only doing what fits in with the Living World’s narrative I think there are going to be a lot of very bored people (those who don’t care for that narrative).

Edit: also, I want my underwater SAB weapons, I use them as my Asuran “cultural” weapons.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Of course your solution would be ideal, but i think it’s difficult to make in this way.

But i’m not an anet dev, so i’m not sure about that.

It shouldn’t be any more difficult. If it was too difficult then serious questions need to be asked about their architecture.

Basically, when a player’s character pops into view in a game like this the server tells your client what they look like by sending a small amount of data that says what their race and class is and what equipment they’re using and so on. Your client will then hang onto and use that information to assemble the model for the character until told by the server that something has changed.

With the solution ArenaNet have given, one of two things is going to happen here. The first is that the server would send back “basic human, basic armour and weapons” instead of what your character is actually using. The second is that the server will sends back everything as normal and the client decides to ignore most of what it receives and to use a basic human model and will just use the rest of the information to look up the appropriate basic armour and basic weapons for the model it creates.

Instead the server could simply send back “human” for race and everything else as normal (unless one or more armour pieces are cultural in which case it would find and send the human equivalent, which is itself a trivial task) or the client could simply take the current data stream and do any “rewriting” itself – so it would change Male Charr in full Tier III Dreadnought to Male Human in full Tier III Seraph.

At the time of coding neither of these options would be all that much more complicated than the other, it’s just probably too late in the day to change it now.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Everyone must use the same everything
Otherwise there will be complaining and finger pointing
As to who had some advantage

It’s like this in any sport/competitive environment
That’s just the way that it is

No it’s not. Not at all. Do you think that all sports people use the same equipment? Do you think that Tiger Woods uses the same clubs as Rory McIlroy, for example? They don’t. Not even close.

The equipment restrictions were because SteelSeries co-sponsored the tournament, they won’t want people to see the players using their competitor’s equipment.

Narcarsis.5739:

Romek.4201:

Was Gamescom a success?

i guess not
i dont care bout e-sports and i did not watch tournament but gamescom is all about NEWS
Devs present their new shiny games or extensions and in all gamescom news on all websites i did check on the weekend i found absolut nothing about Arenanet and Guildwars 2. No News. Noone care bout them. So NO i dont think it was a success.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=World%20Tournament%20Series%20Guild%20Wars%202

I think he meant that there were no news about Guild Wars 2 (as in nothing about anything new in Guild Wars 2) rather than no coverage for the tournament.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Acrisor.8097:

Let’s say I have a human character, with some design selected by me and my favorite PvE ascended armor. Will my character and armor be standardised for the enemy team even if it is human?

I think yes, probably standardize model will cover everything if the option is enable.

Btw it could be good compromise, if u are a human character, standardize model doesn’t cover your character, weapons and armor.

I’m increasingly thinking that this standardised model feature should only change the race. The weapons and armor should remain the same (any cultural armour should just be converted to the equivalent human cultural armour, so Tier III Asuran Heavy Armour would be converted to Tier III Human Heavy Armour).

I’ve said this before but I think that this situation highlights again the flaws in ArenaNets development process: they do all the design and implementation behind closed doors and present it when it’s already finished a couple of weeks before it’s released and as a result it feels (to me at least) like it’s never quite right and there are a flood of good ideas that are simply too late to be taken into consideration.

I’m a software engineer and I have to say that the idea of implementing a solution before you actually check that it meets the customers requirements is madness. I think presenting the proposed solution earlier and getting feedback when it would still be useful would be a whole lot better.

Instead we have a situation where the horse – repeatedly – bolts and then a bunch of us tell them what kind of bolt they should have used and how they should have fastened that bolt.

Oxidia.8103:

In my opinion, i respect you OP, but…. prestigeus PVE armor? I tought ascended armor was prestigeus PVE armor. And i think PVP deserves armor on their own, there is plenty PVE armors in game. How come nobody rants about that weapons wvw players got for playing wvw?

Ascended armour is not PvE armour. It’s crafted so anyone can make it, crafters come from all areas of the game.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Pifil.5193:

Dusty Moon.4382:

BUT, what armor does PvP have exclusively? NONE!! They have one now and that is for people who are putting in the time and playing the sPvP tournament. I say good fro them. I will cheer them on!!!

Actually, it has at least two, tribal armour (light) and stalwart armour (medium). The full set of stalwart was only attainable in sPVP but you can get a couple of pieces of stalwart armour from the personal story. Mind you, both have been effectively removed from the game since the wardrobe was introduced (if you don’t already have it now you can’t get it any more).

Sorry – since the advent of the Wardrobe, there is NO PvP EXCLUSIVE SKIN. It is obvious you have bot been in the game since then.

I did say that in my third sentence. I’m amazed that you apparently didn’t read that far.

kiwituatara.6053:

As a colorblind, this is gonna be so frustrating.

Imagine two commanders. One with a blue tag and the other with a purple tag (I have trouble with the two colors).

Me: Hey, can you change your tag color? I’m having trouble distinguishing between the two tags coz I’m colorblind.
Commander: Sorry man, thats gonna cost me 300g.

Thats absurd.

PS. Still having trouble seeing red AOE circles. Still no colorblind assist option 2 years after launch. Thanks.

Different shapes instead of just colours would be a good idea, I guess there are no colourblind people in ArenaNet, it’s the reason the guys in Blizzard went with different shapes and colours for their raid target icons.

Dusty Moon.4382:

BUT, what armor does PvP have exclusively? NONE!! They have one now and that is for people who are putting in the time and playing the sPvP tournament. I say good fro them. I will cheer them on!!!

Actually, it has at least two, tribal armour (light) and stalwart armour (medium). The full set of stalwart was only attainable in sPVP but you can get a couple of pieces of stalwart armour from the personal story. Mind you, both have been effectively removed from the game since the wardrobe was introduced (if you don’t already have it now you can’t get it any more).

Anyway, looking at the main game “modes”:

• sPvP has the two sets mentioned above (for those who already have them) and will have two new exclusive armours sets: Glorious and Glorious Hero, Glorious Hero is top-end tournament only, but some people seem to forget that the other will be available to anyone who plays sPvP through an sPvP track, you won’t have to play well to get this, just play, although good players will obviously have an easier time of it. I think this is great news and I’m really happy about it!

• WvW has unique light and medium skins but the heavy skins are also shared with PvE.

• Dungeon PvE players have their dungeon sets shared with sPvP.

• Open-world PvE players have a partial armour set in the Wurmslayer armour. Open world PvE players also have karma armour (temple armour sets and other, non-exotic “levelling” sets). Any karma armour is readily available to both WvW and open-world PvE players as it just requires karma.

• Fractal players have no exclusive armour sets.

• Crafted armours including ascended armour are available to players in all modes (although open-world PvE players definitely have easiest access to mats). Crafting is not PvE, it’s PvBankBalance.

The skins for all non-exotic karma sets and any other blue/green/yellow/exotic equipment that drops from mobs can be bought from the TP so they’re available to anyone who wants to get them.

That’s the current state of play, I’m glad to see them adding these sets of armour to the sPvP area of the game but I hope to see the gaps in this rest of the line-up addressed in the future. New WvW sets for heavy armour at least, a set for fractal runners and a prestigious set for dungeon runners which perhaps requires a lot of tokens from all the dungeons and can only be obtained from a vendor at the end of a dungeon. I’d also like them to add at least one open-world PVE set, for helping in certain areas, not for karma but for some other method of marking contributions.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think a fractal armor set (maybe having similar looks as its weapons) would be a good idea.

I also agree that wvw needs a couple more ‘exclusive’ sets as well. Something to work towards, to make badges worthwhile, etc.

I don’t disagree with the OP though, pve would need its own ‘exclusive’ set as well. That could come in the form of legendary armor, the return of FoW armor, harder world bosses getting a full set of droppable armor (like wurm slayer, but being a complete set, which anet could still do), etc.

Then each mode, or major game play component, would offer something “worth chasing.” (Theoretically) Just as we once desired to chase FoW armor, or Vabbian armor, etc.

This is a very reasonable position for this forum.

I don’t understand why people feel the need to turn this into another “us vs them” war, I play all modes (badly) and I don’t begrudge sPVP getting an exclusive set of armour but the “exclusive” PVE armour sets were the dungeon sets which were always accessible through sPVP. So them adding sPVP armour is a good first step but I think they really should add additional “prestige” sets for WvW, PVE and fractals. Which they may be planning on doing in the next few feature packs. (I’m still kinda hoping we’ll see a WvW exclusive set this feature pack though).

jheryn.8390:

And you could be right as well. But we don’t know if you already have a tag that additional colors might be at a reduced price. I don’t know of anyone that would pay 300g for just being able to change colors. Surely they are smart enough to see that as well? Maybe they aren’t, but I just hate the whole ‘crying wolf’ thing.

Oh I agree and I’m not beating my chest in rage or anything.

I just think that the idea of selling different colours is daft to begin with, I personally had hoped their revamp would just make the tag account bound and allow commanders to select a tag from a drop down list (blue dorito, green triangle, red circle and so on) and maybe the option to show your guild symbol. This seems insane.

jheryn.8390:

You really didn’t burst my bubble at all. Yes it does say you have to purchase each. But it says nothing about what a color may cost beyond the first. Again this is just speculation right now. It may indeed cost 300 per color but we don’t know that. All it says is that we will have to purchase each color. Not what the final cost will be. Again, wait and see what happens. Outrage, uproar and threats before you know something is 100% the case is dumb.

You may be right, however as he didn’t specifically mention that additional colours after the first would be cheaper I think it’s reasonable to assume they will cost the same as the first (especially as they will more than likely be sold the same way as they are now, as a book).

Azrael.4960:

Anet would have to introduce something suitably challenging to be worthy of its own set of armour.

In GW1, there were the Fissure of Woe armour and Obsidian sets for people who tackled the high end dungeons and even then it took some doing. Arah is the nearest thing to that level of dungeon (which is being generous since FoW and the Underworld were substantially harder).

Rewards should come with rewarding content

I don’t see why that is necessarily the case. It’s important to note that you don’t have to be good at sPVP to earn the Glorious armour; you just have to play sPVP as it comes from a reward track.

Glorious Hero’s armour on the other hand you’ll have to not only be an excellent sPVPer but you’ll also have to be able to enter the right tournaments.

lordkrall.7241:

Isn’t something like this already available?

Ascended Armor sets.
They are “craftable through PVE rewards and activities” and have unique skins.

They’re craftable through PVP reward tracks too so they’re not “PVE exclusive”.

Edit: you can also get the mats from WvW.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I’ll be the Devil’s Advocate now. If you have 2 or 3 tag purchased, buy 1 or 2 more to get your full refound. Your problem is solved.

No, you will get a refund for the cost of any additional tags you bought after the first 3 tags, that is, if you spent more than 300g, you’ll get whatever extra gold back.

Think I’ll get a tag now, but I find it absolutely baffling that they’re planning on charging for extra colours though, the whole point of having extra colours to to be able to differentiate between commanders easily, not being able to freely switch colours on the fly will mean that we’ll still have 3-4 blue commanders running around maps (i.e. those who already had their tags before this change).

Blaeys.3102:

They have to standardize the armor because some racial armor wont translate to human models.

Displaying racial armour as its human racial equivalent would fix that quite easily but I suspect it’s to simplify and speed up target recognition; so, for example, when you see a male human in cabalist armour you instantly know he’s a necromancer.

Mantheren.5428:

When we turn it around.

As a pvp player that lives in the mist, to access the bank they need to go through the LA portal and then access the bank. Then use the ‘Enter the mists’ button to get back to where they were. This costs nothing in WP cost, only a few loading screens.

So why is ok for the pvp player to have free access to the bank (and return to where they were) but not ok for the pve player?

I’d just throw a bank in there and save the pvp players some loading screens.

A very good point, if you click “Enter the Mists” when you’re standing next to a bank and then click “Leave the Mists” you’ll port back to the exact same spot you were standing at before, so you’ll be standing right beside the same banker. So a player in the HotM is one loading screen away from a bank just like any players in a PVE area would be if they added a bank to the mists but the difference is you’re right beside the bank when you port.

Anyway, I fully agree, just add a bank to the Mists, place it a bit away from where you portal into the mists if – for some reason that escapes me – you want to make accessing a bank less convenient for players in PVE than it is for players in PVP but just add it. There’s no “monetising” or tokens or rank or any super-secret handshakes required.

Phaeton.9582:

Dear Devs who read posts.

Standard Models. They’re happening, and that’s cool. But as they are now happening, realistically we will need to re-roll humans because at this ‘top level’ you are alluding to, how we present our own animations matter (precast/after cast/terrain etc).

So being such a forum hero, wanted to #first asking for an option to enable standard models on allies too. Players that like to hide animations, use verticality/terrain will benefit from such transparency in what their opponents see, and I guess now’s the time to ask for it.

Thx

P

While I don’t agree that you would have to re-roll anything because of these changes it does sounds like a good idea. It’d be nice to have three options: for enemies, allies and self.

Galandil.9641:

Apparently, and finally, we’ll get it in the end.

Except… why the hell only in team and not in soloQ? Why? It doesn’t make any sense at all, you should leave the original models just in hot join.

I’d say you should have the option to use standard models in any mode.

Hmmm… they say they’ll announce when LS2 will continue after the Feature Pack arrives.

Before the last feature pack the released the last LS1 chapter on Mar 18, then 4 weeks later they launched the feature pack on 15 April, then there was an 11 week wait before LS2 began on June 24th.

I’m hoping the down time won’t be anything near as long this time around (although to be fair, they’re not going to be releasing in China again), we’ve only had 4 episodes and I feel it’s just starting to take off, it’d be a shame for it to “stall” again so quickly.

New patch increased my FPS… or maybe it was my new drivers. ;-)

Anyway, I’ve salvaged a fair few rares and exos recently and I’ve seen pottery much expected behaviour: random return, did better on the rates than the exos but got a good return on dark matter on those so I’m happy. And that ultimately is it, people don’t tend to question (or even particularly remember) the good runs, just the bad ones.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Endgame, for me, would be things (lots of them) like the Black Moa Chick quest. Or bringing back Nick’s descendant. Lol. But, see? I’m not into the whole ‘raiding’-type of content, so I’m sure I’m in a sad minority.

I’m in that same minority now, so it’s growing!

I hope the addition of things like the vine back piece crafting points to them creating a sprawling “end game” where they add lots of things to do over a long period of time, that and slow ascended crafting will be keeping me busy for a while.

That said, I can see the benefit of adding more, let’s call it tough, group content for guilds. Not for me anymore maybe but I can see why people would want it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Champion Bags only can be collected on a successful event.

I think that’s the problem solved there. Nice one. We already have events that pop up additional rewards including geodes and so on, so this would be good, I imagine it should be relatively easy to defer the dropping of loot boxes on champ kills until the end of the event.

It also has the added effect of rewarding people for “completing” the event. As it is karma, silver and xp is a bit… meh, it’d be nice to get a chest with a few champ bags too.

Personally, I think that failing any event should never be better than completing it.

I’d guess, I’ve spent about 10 or so hours on the current LS. I’ve really enjoyed it and it keeps me coming back to the game.

After finishing the story last night (it’s been busy) I’ll be playing to get Geodes and Foxfire now for the recipe. I really appreciate being able to do so at my own pace.

Personally, I’m really enjoying season 2 and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do as they continue to refine and improve on the techniques they use.

nexxe.7081:

Yeah, that was a poor way to handle that story. It tied into some of the lore though, but it was silly that these valuable pieces were just out in the open, instead of hidden somewhere deep. There should’ve been legendary champions guarding them.

By default, I don’t think there should be legendary champions defending them, I think it’s good that they are gated by non-group events, because in the future people running this story line will find that a lot fewer people are doing these events, they shouldn’t find their progress stalled because no-one else is around at that time.

That said, I like the way these events scale now, I’ve done the Rhell Crankmane event a dozen times or more (nearly always on my own before now) but last night was the first time I’ve seen it scale up to a champion, it was a nice “finale” and I enjoyed it.

I’m really enjoying the way the living world is now a mix of permanent open world and story instance.

I’d like to thank the people who take the time and effort to offer good advice on how to handle these kind of fights rather than sneering at the people having problems and dismissing them as bad players. The language being used is hugely important here, William Bradley Knight’s post above is a perfect example of a good, helpful, courteous player, instead of an inflammatory “OMG L2P wai u so bad lol” he offers clear and useful tips for players who are having troubles. We need more people like him on these forums and fewer people basically coming here to wonder out loud why people are so bad at the game because they find it easy.

In fact you could say he’s a… shining Knight, ahah-ahahah-ahah-aaah.

Personally, I’ve only done this on my ele who I had just switched to staff, at the start I was fighting fairly close in so I could help with the ghosts while still but after noticing the menders pretty much fully healed and shielded the statue as soon as they reached it, I moved back towards the door they came out of and made it my mission to make sure that they didn’t even get into the room, then when one dropped I switched to drop some damage on the statue, and some healing on Smodur (although I don’t think he’ll actually go down I figured it was only polite to heal a world leader ) keeping an eye for the next mender. Once I did that, the fight was actually quite easy, at least it was quite easy at staff range standing between the door and the statue, the ghosts that spawned mostly got tangled up on Rytlock and Rox and left me alone and I could see the Spectral Flames quite easily.

In close it’s tougher as you get buffeted about by the knockbacks and it’s a lot harder to spot the Spectral Flames. I wouldn’t really like to try it with dagger/dagger.

I’d like to thank Rox for dropping what she was doing and running to res me a couple of times when I didn’t notice the Spectral flames or dodged too late. Also, Rytlock is Rox’s sire. Calling it now.

Kotone.6597:

majoho.1089:

Nope but you are ranged, the new content is favoring ranged a lot, same with the Statue thing, it’s super easy as ranged annoying as hell as melee.

Well, zerk necro is a meele class since it needs to use dagger as main hand. Yes, the fight is harder if you choose to meele only because that guy moves a bit too much (the half map charge…)…but it looks to me that mob always charge back right after the first charge…

The problem I have is that the wolf has near constant retaliation. As an elementalist there’s not much I can really do against a leaping, perma-retaliating wolf who is apparently – and maybe it’s ping times/lag – always flanking me no matter what I do. It’s frustrating.

I had a bit of trouble on my D/D elementalist (mostly zerker but with some soldier so I can remain vertical) so I switched to a S/D fresh air build and it went a lot better. Keep well away from the slime pool that appears around the boss when the shield drops! That stuff is nasty! It could be handy for a Plague Signet necro though.

Jory and Kas do have an annoying habit of leashing back to their spawn point here for some reason during the boss fight, I guess they have difficulty with transitioning them from the wall by the arrow cart to the boss area but I don’t know why. A couple of additional targets for the wolves might have made it easier.

I’d like to add my congratulations too, I love this new direction with the Living World, if this keeps up I know I’ll be enjoying (and supporting) this game for years to come!

The little touches mean so much to me, for example, Taimi and my asuran elementalist talking about the Snaff Savant prize (Edit: sorry, that was chapter one but the point still stands, great stuff!) I cannot wait to get back to the story now that you’re telling it in game!

I’m getting that GW1 mission feeling which is a brilliant thing!

lordkrall.7241:

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

From the notes:

“Characters under level 80 will be able to see the available episodes, but will not be able to play them until they reach level 80. Think of the Living World story as the constantly expanding continuation of your character’s storyline once they reach level 80.”

Do you mean that characters under level 80 can’t do any of LW season two?

Aye, seems like it.

Which is most likely a good thing, seeing as even with the scaling the things is either too hard for upscaled or too easy for natural level 80s.

LS is basically becoming the new end-game system for Guild Wars 2.

Yes, it looks that way and it’s a good thing I think, there were a lot of complaints that some of the story instances from LS1 (the ones back in Flame and Frost, for example) were too hard and I can see how they could be for up-levelled characters. Having them require you to be level 80 makes it very clear and unambiguous, it means this can be properly balanced and the challenging achievements they talk about can be properly tuned for level 80s.

I’m really looking forward to Season 2, the changes in the Story Journal seem to be just what I wanted.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

Any idea what they’re actually doing? What issues specifically are they working on?

Because if they’re just “touching up the paintwork” then that’s of little comfort, if they’re reworking the fundamentals and adding in some of the features selected here then that’s great.

The only problem I have with the front page splash now is that it says “Learn More” and when you click you… don’t learn any more.

Well, I’m assuming they’ll add to that teaser page. I’m eagerly awaiting the next updates and expect two or three new Maguuma zones over the course of the next LS.

Thanks everyone!

Edit: also for those of you who are interested, the winner of the snowman building contest was Gorglath the Destroyer of Worlds for his charming piece called “puppies in a basket”.