Guild Wars 2

Oh the schedule, I would recommend “doubling up” the minor bosses, so two of them always start at the same time (so, for example, Fire Elemental and Svanir Shaman could be both on at the same time). This would give people more choice about which one to go to and allow them to repeat every hour rather than every two hours and you will more easily be able to do a boss if you’ve had to drop off for a bit (but a “full run” of all the bosses would still require you to play for at least two hours).

I don’t think I like the rigid schedule for Tequatl, Evolved Jungle Wurm and Karka Queen. The problem is that it will mean that some people can never have a shot at a particular boss during the week. For example, Karka Queen starts at 3:30, 9:00 and 18:00 on the West Coast and in central Europe so it will rule it out for a lot of people because they’ll either be sleeping or commuting when it’s on.

I would recommend rotating the boss order from day to day, so that different bosses are in different time slots.

Day one: Karka Queen at 16:00, Tequatl at 19:00, Evolved Jungle Wurm at 20:00

Day two: Tequatl at 18:00, Evolved Jungle Wurm at 19:00 and Karka Queen at 20:00

Day three: Evolved Jungle Wurm at 18:00, Karka Queen at 19:00 and then Tequatl at 20:00

Then back to day one, that way people can try the different bosses at times that may be better for them.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Likes:
-No more bouncing around and using out of the game programs to keep up with events
-No more getting stuck in an overflow where the event isn’t happening
-Guilds can trigger mega events on their own time

I very much like these too, especially the ability for guilds to fire their own events off, I’ve always thought that that should have been a basic function for guilds. Well done Anet.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Dislikes:
-Can’t see dungeon and WP status, meaning we have to spend nearly twice as much money to get where we want.
-No mention of if you can still ferry people to the correct maps?

Makes accessing dungeons (and especially temple vendors) that much more of a chore. I would have thought they’d remove the requirement to “unlock” the dungeons at least, CoE is kinda time consuming to unlock for example. Still there should be a lot more people on the map so it’ll hopefully be unlocked more anyway.

However, at the moment I can guest to a server where, for example, Balthazar is open if I need something from the vendor now I may very well arrive on a map where no one is interested in opening it at all. We’ll have to see what happens there. With this in mind is there an option to “reroll” my map to go to another version?

The doubling on waypoint costs are annoying too incredibly so in Orr where you usually can’t get next nor near where you want to go at the best of times. I’d like to see them move some of the waypoints there to where they can be permanently uncontested when they’re rolling this out in Orr.

mtpelion.4562:

You clearly don’t understand what they’ve said if that is the conclusion you have arrived at.

They are designing the maps to use your guild, friend list, and server to group you with other players. You will find it EASIER to play with other members of TxS because the system will automatically group you guys together.

It will be easier to play with some other members of TxS, but not necessarily to play with an (almost) full map of them as people can do now because the game will be assigning non-TxS members who zone to Sparkfly to that same map because they fit the matching criteria (i.e. same server, same guild, on their friends list, even the same language and probably more criteria).

Again, we’ll have to see how it works in practice.

Olvendred.3027:

Actually, you’re making assumptions too – namely, that it will be easier for TTS. All we know is that, at the time you’re placed in a shard, you are more likely to be placed in the one with your guild, than the one without your guild. TTS relies on filling one single shard/overflow entirely, and they’ve made no comment about how easy it will be to do that. We also have yet to see the system in action – for all we know, it could be completely awful, despite Anet’s (historically not exactly reliable) assurances.

Well, time will tell but in the case of TTS I can see that it might not be entirely ideal for them, but it may be pretty much the same.

In the current system they join a server map until it fills up and the game creates an overflow then everyone tries to taxi into that new overflow and off they go. While this is happening the game could be sending other people into that overflow too so you will probably have a few non-TTS members there as well.

Now if they want to get the same kind of guild numbers they will still have to fill up a map until the game creates a new one and then taxi people to that new one, because the old one will contain a bunch of people from various members servers, guild and friends lists and not just TTS members. However the game will also start sending other people from those peoples, servers, guild and friends lists to that new server because the matching algorithms determine it to be a good match for them.

Hypothetically speaking, I would guess that it’d be pretty much the same as the overflow system if they’re fast enough when joining the new server but we’ll see what happens in practice.

Esya.3427:

Shouldn’t the roleplayers who tend to be on same homeworld and in guilds together have a better experience due to this change just like anyone else? You are more likely to be put on the same map as your fellow roleplayers.

This “more likely” thing doesn’t really make sense to me. In the current system, unless the map is full and you’re sent off to an overflow, you’re 100% guaranteed to be put into the same map as the other people in your server, guildies, friends and so on because you’re on your server’s map, there’s only one. That’s every time. The only problem was when overflows were created, now every map is kinda an overflow it’s just that they try to sort people into those maps using criteria other than purely first come, first served.

How this will make you “more likely” for RPers to be put in the same map as each other I don’t know, unless there’s an RP flag that you can set and Anet can use when doing their magical sorting.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

snide chuckle

“We don’t like the overflow system”
“The overflow system sucks and needs to go”
“We need a better way to make sure we can play with our friends”
“Guesting isn’t good enough”
“The maps are dead, fix it!”

Anet: Introducing the ’MegaServer!" To help pull our scattered population together in a more meaningful way.

“Omg no! This won’t work”
“This screws with playing on my home world”
“I don’t want to play with people I don’t know!”
“How can I make sure I’m not in a ‘noob’ map now?”

kitten ed if they do. kitten ed it they don’t.

This kind of post baffles me. If someone was complaining of freezing to death would you really be surprised if they complained when you then set them on fire?

Them putting together a solution for a problem won’t necessarily fix every aspect of that problem and it doesn’t mean that it won’t introduce its own set of new problems.

For example, they’re no longer called overflows but how are they different from overflows, especially once they start to “fill up”? We’ll have to see how this system handles a few thousand people from different guilds and different servers trying to get into the same world map over, say, a 15 minute period in preparation for a Tequatl attempt, for example.

We shall see what the next couple of posts about WvW and world bosses bring (and also dungeon and temple unlocks, presumably) but although I like the general idea here, I’m not convinced that it’ll work right.

Everywhere there was water just turn it into sand, the sharks can mutate into skelks. :-)

Surely the problems where the game becomes too complex and confusing both for balance and for new players to find their way come from the runes, sigils and the traits and their interactions with one another and not from the stats? The stats themselves are simple and self explanatory. At least for me.

Personally, I’d prefer if they left the jewels out but split the amulet stats back into amulet, rings and accessories so people could mix and match to their hearts content.

If its complex then teach people about it somehow but don’t just remove it because people might be confused. That’s a very defeatist attitude.

Behellagh.1468:

I believe they are trying to get players more spread out in the world and degenerated gameplay like champ trains and boss event trains are keeping players away from the rest of the game’s content. All it’s doing is training players to zerg en mass instead of learning how to play their profession.

I would also expect that the trait unlocks will also require players to spend time in zones and doing content rarely frequented now.

But how well this cause people to spread out? I mean, all the open world really has is events and champs, if they’re reducing the rewards for events and champs then what’s the incentive to go elsewhere for different events and champs with reduced rewards? Surely reducing dungeon rewards would be more appropriate (note: I don’t want them to reduce any rewards) if you want to reduce the gold entering the game after they remove repair costs and respec costs.

People out in the open world use more waypoints and die or respec less than those in dungeons, I would think.

Reducing event rewards makes no sense and saying that it’s to balance against free armour repairs and trait respecs makes even less.

You can easily spend days without being killed so armour repairs are not a factor there (I very rarely have to repair because of open world PVE events) and I rarely spend the 3.60 it takes to retrait.

I hope this nerf is very, very minor because if it’s as severe as the karma nerf it’s just another reason to not bother with events I don’t know what they mean by “spread out player activity a bit” as apart from events and champ trains there are no real compelling activities in open world PVE.

Thanks Shriketalon. Excellent post, funny and very informative!

I cannot agree enough with these points. Especially #13 and #14, IMO the Living World did a very poor job of actually telling a story. You can’t just scatter a bunch of events and tidbits of information into the world over the course of 15 months and hope that they can be kinda interpreted as a story. If you turn your head and squint a little. See, look over there, it’s like a story. Or maybe a cloud.

I think a lot of the problem is that things just pop up out of nowhere without your involvement, direct or otherwise. From the time we got a mail from Braham (or Rox, maybe) saying they contacted the Vigil and they were attacking Molten Alliance factories I’ve been disappointed with the story telling. Leaving aside the fact that they didn’t ask the charr legions or ask me, Vigil member and Commander of the Pact, to maybe help out there it was a massive missed opportunity to continue with the story missions they had begun just a week or two before, this should have been a 4-5 mission arc involving helping Rox scouting for evidence, getting ambushed or ambushing the Molten Alliance, meeting with Braham, deciding the plan (maybe explaining why the charr legions aren’t in a position to help), getting him to Vigil Keep and convincing them of the danger and getting them to commit. Instead you log in after the patch and get a mail telling you that the characters have done a bunch of stuff off camera and now the Vigil are here. Very unsatisfactory.

Justin ODell.9517:

We removed glory and match reward chests early to prevent a flood of PvE players from coming into PvP just to fill their wardrobe. While the our team would LOVE everyone playing PvP, some super smart economist peopleguys said it would have negative repercussions on the in-game economy or something.

Realistically speaking, if I’m rank one (and I am, I’ve a 100% win record though so I know my stuff! *cough*1 match played*cough*) how much could I realistically hope to achieve in a month or so?

I mean, how far down the skins could I get? From what I can see all the first few tiers of rewards are far more easily obtained in low level PvE. So that leaves the dungeon skins and weapons for match win? I’d admit those would be tempting but still.

Either way, I don’t see how more players playing PvP for skins for a month or so would have worse repercussions on the economy than the Living Story releases did?

This seems like you wasted a good opportunity to get players involved in PvP while simultaneously annoying and alienating your existing PvP players.

Oh well, we’ll see what the new rewards system brings.

Sazune.8195:

Woah. Totally not what I was expecting but awesome nonetheless. I wonder if we have access to skins only within our professions or across all professions with the wardrobes.

Ah well, all the same, it’s a start. Now they could easily expand the wardrobe if and when they add more skins/armors/fashion items.

Well, you have access to all armour and weapons that your character can equip, so for example, your elementalist will have access to all the light armour skins that you have unlocked on any character (so that includes any your necromancer or mesmer have unlocked).

You cannot however, use a medium or heavy skin on your elementalist or a light or medium skin on your warrior.

Hope that helps.

People may still have Glory, they just can’t earn any more Glory. Getting these rewards still might give people what they need to spend their remaining Glory.

CC Danicia.1394:

Elysium.8703:

With the removal of Dye’s from the random drop table will there be any change to the requirement of 250 dyes for the Gift of Color?

Yes. We just received verification from Dev that we will be reducing the amount of unidentified dyes needed to 100.

How can people get unidentified dyes after the patch? Laurels and gem store? The only Mystic Forge recipe I can see on the wiki is an sPvP recipe (requiring glory), are there other recipes or are they adding new ones do you know?

37crystalatosAngel.7289:

Don’t hold your breath … the locker datamined show that you would have to pay through gemstore each and everytime you want to withdraw a skin …. PLUS apparently, pay also to add a skin to the locker …
This would make it pretty close to useless :/

You mean like transmutation stones? Data mined data is not live so that could change. Either way the price and currency will determine if it’s useless or not. As it is it costs people to change their skins out of PvP already; either buying the skin itself or buying crystals for transmutation or both so there’s not necessarily a change there.

Actually, I’m about facing here. These things are available on the tp right now so forget what I just said. Hell, half the winners will probably list theirs shortly after winning them. So good luck to all in this competition and enjoy your legendary, or the gold… :-)

Hidden.3975:

For those saying “they had to work so hard in PvE” I have little sympathy due to one simple fact.

If you’re good enough to win a tournament with a team may I add, then you have poured hundreds of thousands of hours together to be able to do so. You have had to build together, conquer challenges together and be able to defeat equally hard working teams.

When you think of it this way, grinding is nothing compared to the hard work and challenges associated with winning this tournament.

Stop being short sighted.

TH

Sorry but this is irrelevant. Yes they put a lot of work into being good at PvP. That work is different to the work you put into to get a legendary. The people who made it deserve it. Those who don’t make it don’t. To put it another way its value is purely based on the effort put onto it, giving these away diminishes legendary weapons.

Saying someone put a lot of work into PvP so they deserve a legendary is like saying someone put a lot of effort into medical school so they deserve a legendary.

Edit: BTW if they created a new set of legendaries for this, not the current one that would be cool

Lux.7169:

Pifil.5193:

Super.2749:

Car Crash [CC] Will be back for this. Great Idea. Also to all the pvers who are whining.there are many pvpers who spent over 2000-3000 hours of gw2 and guess what, not a single nice skin to show off.

I would have thought that your PvP locker was pretty much full after 2000-3000 hours of playing?

Full of items you can get for 30 mins of pve play.

How about we trade you guys rewards. You get our pve lockers, we’ll take your legendaries. Deal?

Really? 30 minutes? Where can I do this? Surely if it’s only 30 mins then there’s no problem for you either? Regardless, that deal sounds good to me.

PS I don’t have a legendary and relatively few nice skins as I don’t have time for multiple dungeon runs. Also I don’t mind this so much despite it excluding non sPvPers from a chance at the reward I just fine the idea of someone having no nice skins after 3000 hours to be ludicrous.

Super.2749:

Car Crash [CC] Will be back for this. Great Idea. Also to all the pvers who are whining.there are many pvpers who spent over 2000-3000 hours of gw2 and guess what, not a single nice skin to show off.

I would have thought that your PvP locker was pretty much full after 2000-3000 hours of playing?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I hope this is a joke… you can get 10g is like 45 minutes. If it is anything less than 20g there will be no point in doing the activities since it will be faster and cheaper to just buy it from the vendor.

Master traits can be 1g, those aren’t that important, but grandmaster need to be 20g minimum or the change is completely pointless.

I would say 50g puts it at a nice price point where most people will want to go out and hunt for them, but if you are lazy you can still save up for a week and buy it.

Most people will do the events because it’s more fun and satisfying to do the events or other in game activity rather than farm gold to buy the traits (kill the priest at the gates of Arah for example). 50g per grandmaster trait for a new character is ridiculous and defeats the purpose of offering this alternative to, for example, PvPers who don’t want to do PvE for these traits.

My gold rate has never been anything like 10g for 45 mins, Anet know what most people earn in an hour and I suspect you’re in the minority there. That kind of gold rate is only possible for dungeon runners, I suspect, not everyone does that.

Ohoni.6057:

Seriously, 100g per trait…even suggesting that seems ludicrous to me. Maybe 10g a trait, max.

10g? What, are we rolling in money like TP farmers now? No, 1g, maximum, and that’s only for the GM ones. The master traits should be 25s, the Adept ones 1s. If they plan on charging more than that then they’ll need to overhaul the economy to be more rewarding for those that don’t play the markets.

That sounds about right because currently you get access to all three tiers and 60 traits for a total of 3g 10s (I know it’s not quite the same but killing the risen priest outside Arah does not have a 10g value much less a 100g value)

I love every thing I read in that post except for the delay in getting access to traits until level 30. I appreciate that they’re trying to give more of a sense of progression from level 30 to level 80 but I don’t think this is the way to do it: taking away what we already had in order to give it back “later” won’t feel like progression.

I think it’d be better to start at level 15 and give one every 5 levels like it is now. The sense of progression can come from hunting out all the traits (1 to 12) in the world. That would be cool.

I hope they reconsider.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Yes, we have tried it internally. I was not part of that prototyping, sorry I left that out.

The hint was the Ready Up schedule, which should tell you a lot if you pay close attention to it.

Now I’m kind of intrigued!

DevonCarver.5370:

I think if you examine more closely what you just said, you can see the problem. The progress was being given to anyone standing around near the dolyak when it ended its path. That is hardly accurately tracking who helped it out. Without a good way to know who actually helped, we can’t provide adequate rewards.

In theory this seems like a simple problem to “solve”. You just need to check who’s near the dolyak at a number of points along its path and not just the end. If someone is there at a certain number of points then they get credited for participation (gold/silver/bronze as applicable).

This could be done by placing a number of checkpoints along the dolyak’s route and having the game check to see who was near the dolyak when it reached those checkpoints. Or you could just check to see who’s near the dolyak every 30s or every 100m it walks or whatever.

Jski.6180:

April 2ed is a wensday unless they plan on changing the days they put things out i would not think April 2ed would be that day.

That’s right, it’ll be April 1st, April Fool’s Day, let’s hope that’s not an indicator of how we’ll feel after it.

SaltyDave.7346:

Anyone who expects an expansion type of patch with new areas and things like that, will be helplessly disappointed I can pretty much garantee that.

Good points SaltyDave, this feature patch could be a massive disappointment to many people who are expecting more than it will deliver. This is partially because expectations aren’t being managed so people are assuming a lot, that’s human nature I think.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll go into more detail soon, just to re-iterate so it’s clear:

“The next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.”

A feature release is not an expansion, it’s a release focused on game features. Examples of game features we’ve done in the past would be: guild missions, account achievement system, spectator mode, new pvp maps, daily world boss chests, removing culling and giving visibility options, the WvW WxP system, etc.

I’m wondering two things now, how long a break should we expect and just how much is in the really big feature patch (for PVP, WvW, PvE, Dungeons)? It’s better to start managing expectations very soon rather than continue to let speculation spiral.

From the eurogamer interview linked above.

“When [Living World Season One] ends [on 4th March], we’re going to take a break for a little bit and then we’re going to do one really big feature patch that is more akin to what people see from some of our [MMO] competitors,” said Johanson, "where they bundle a lot of features together into a really big patch every now and then.

I’ve kinda given up already, I have the meta award and banging my head against this particular buggy brick wall for an achievement that is not reflective of an actual personal achievement (because of the other 149 people it requires) seems kinda pointless.

I do think that they need to test and balance these events better (for “average” servers not “good” ones) and some of the types of achievements that they’ve added here would be far better suited to permanent content, “Six Minutes to Knightfall”, “In Tune” and “No More Tricks, Scarlet” are examples of good, permanent achievements, something to work on, rather than something you can reasonably expect to get during a two week event.

Edit: Oh and can I please ask that in the future if we’re being ported up to a fight that we’re ported into a safe place? Maybe a ledge or some other safe zone that you spawn on before dropping down into the fight.

Flytrap.8075:

I like how ANet sets balance patches aside for over three months in favor of Living Story updates and then calls the PvP community “short-sighted”.

That’s just rich.

I love how they call (well, really it was just one Dev) the community short sighted when the only reason we can’t see far is because they tell us nothing: you can’t be the reason that people are the dark and also moan about how they can’t see the big picture. That’s just silly.

Refusing to talk about, to give details about, anything isn’t the same as managing expectations, it causes its own problems, people become disillusioned, they don’t see the devs as doing anything to address their concerns and so they feel increasingly ignored and marginalised. Telling people who feel like this to hang in because you have great things coming that you’re not ready to talk about is going to do nothing but further alienate them.

Maybe tomorrows preview of next weeks patch (if they do one) will have some indication of what they’re actually going to do regarding rewards in sPVP and give us a timeline of roughly when they will be arriving because at the moment it seems like they’re removing the current rewards and will at some undisclosed stage in the future be adding in something to replace them.

Leaving a game mode without any real rewards (while working on new rewards) seems like a poor idea to me.

shrach.2587:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Youtube link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srIg7bLSmFQ

This link makes it pretty clear (3mins20+) that gaining glory is being removed but that you can still spend it afterwards. One of the devs is mistaken, probably the one pasting the link and talking in this thread.

Yes, I’m assuming (hoping) that Allie is incorrect and they’re just removing the ability to gain glory on the 18th as they stated several times in the past. Has that changed?

What, if anything, they are replacing glory with at that time is another question that they have not answered time and again. I dearly hope they’re not planning on leaving sPVP with no (or reduced) rewards until some unspecified future patch which will add apparently amazing things.

To be honest, ArenaNets’ policy of telling us nothing except “we have great plans that you’re going to love!” doesn’t do much for me when they don’t share any details of those great plans .

I’d love some of these skins, the axe and shield especially, but I won’t buy expensive keys to open chests that normally contain just junk in order to hopefully get them.

That’s my feedback, them effectively putting their new weapon sets in the horrendous Black Lion Chest lottery again means that they won’t be getting my money for them again. If they had just added them to the store directly they’d have it now.

According to the patch notes:

“Aftermath
A small release will be available on March 18, which will provide an epilogue to recent events.”

As I’m away for that entire week I’m wondering if anyone can tell me how long will this aftermath be around for?

YonFork.8341:

No one knows of a list somewhere?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_store

This is the closest I’ve seen to such a list. From what I can see Armour Skins, Consumables and Boosts are all single use.

Most of the Services are permanent unless they state single use or have a duration “(2 weeks)”.

The Upgrades are all permanent.

Leo Paul.1659:

Anet should’ve designed the event better.

That I definitely agree with, I’m hoping they see this and take it into account in the future.

AFKing should never be “profitable”, IMO, especially where it impacts on active players (in SPVP and activities are the most obvious examples).

Palador.2170:

Season two starts with Kiel and Trahearne locked in a battle to the death for who gets to take credit for it all. Evon’s selling tickets, and you can buy the “eat popcorn and watch” emote in the gemstore.

10/10 best Living World update yet!

Avascar.9237:

Chuck Norris appears as an enemy.

Kitten.

He’s gonna round-house Scarlet clean through the Eternal Alchemy and out the other side and that may not make any sense now but after he does it it will!

aspirine.6852:

No because they are not playing at all.
I do not care if you want your heirlooms, want to zerg or just want to get the vista’s. If you are doing something but standing still at the entrance I do not mind at all.

Exactly true, they’re not playing the game they’re merely taking up space in it and each person doing that that does harm the overall group effort a bit.

If it was just 1 or 2 you won’t notice them, but the more people doing it the worse it is.

Malediktus.9250:

The day they suspend me for afking without circumventing the afk timers is the day I will uninstall this game. Oh and I would make sure to ask for a refund for all the money I spent on this game in the last 6 months or whatever their refund rules are.

Who said anything about suspending anyone? Kicking is not suspending (or banning).

But I agree, shorten the AFK timer or better yet just don’t give the AFKers any reward which removes the desire to AFK completely. If you don’t actively participate in the game’s activities/events then you should get nothing.

It is a bad idea to have this kind of counter-productive search in the middle of the zone though, each cycle there must be people visiting all the rubble spots in the game and not rescuing citizens (as is their right, IMHO) it would have been better if the rubble spots were a one time thing that gave, say, 3-4 heirlooms each and the game also randomly spawned bodies near citizens that you could also loot heirlooms from.

It would have the benefit that “playing the game” (search and rescue) would be more rewarding rather than simply running around a static list of daily drop locations.

Didn’t realise that you got them from saving citizens, thanks for the information is it from actually saving them (i.e. shouting at them or ressing them) or from the bags for rescuing 100, 300 etc of them?

It probably explains why I have more than I’d expect to have at this point.

Naevius.3185:

The lasers need to zap all the AFK’ers hiding along the edges of the map.

That would be fun. If you stand around the same spot too long it starts targeting you slowly and if you don’t move and do something then bam, you’re disintegrated and teleported out of the zone to the reconstruction lab in…. let’s say Rata Sum.

Xenon.4537:

The system I’m suggesting means you would be “flagged” by a single commander as afk, after which a 60 second timer starts and if you remain inactive, you go to character select. You can log back in when you stop being afk. Your account isn’t banned. If you move your character or do something before the 60 second timer runs out, the timer goes away, you don’t get kicked, and you continue playing as normal. You wouldn’t have any actual disruption whatsoever if you are actively playing.

That’s the commander system revamp.

I don’t think that this should be part of any commander functionality, commanders are simply people who have paid gold to buy an ability, they are not any more trustworthy, better judges of character, or in any other way superior to any other players and so shouldn’t have increased powers like this.

Besides, I think most AFKers aren’t actually AFK, they can be browsing the web or chatting in guild chat they’re just not playing the game, a ping like this would be easy for them to detect and nudge the w key to bypass.

Personally, I think that being AFK is not and should not be enough to get anyone suspended ever. People have legitimate reasons why they might need to go AFK and be completely sure that they will be right back in just a minute or two but then are tied up for an hour or two (anyone with small children, for example).

The “simple” solution for this is to make sure that events in the future do not award anything to people who are doing nothing to participate in them; if you’re standing somewhere AFK then you’re not saving citizens, if you don’t save citizens then you should get nothing.

That how it works throughout the game, look at any of the other events (the defend, rescue, kill or deploy events) if they occur right next to you and you do nothing to get involved in them then you don’t get credit for them, this should be the same. This AFK leeching problem seems to be because they don’t seem to have put in a way of tracking actual participation in the main rescue event.

Aveneo.2068:

Too late now, but a possible solution might be that for people to be awarded such rewards they would need to participate. In this case they would at least need to encourage some survivors before it hits 100-300-600-900-1200. This would ensure that people who just afk the entire event get nothing and those that actively search for survivors (which is the goal for this event) get the bags as a reward for saving them.

Too late for this one yes but that makes perfect sense as a philosophy for the futre, only give credit for each “tier” that you participate in, so if you are saving people constantly then you’ll get credit each tier up to the 1200 tier easily but if you zone in, save a citizen and then AFK for a half an hour then you get credit for the first tier and nothing else.

They may need to adjust the “tiers” to ensure that everyone actively participating can get credit for them but so long as all you have to do is shout at/“encourage” scared people, help revive a citizen, heal a citizen who’s under attack or kill someone attacking a citizen then it should be possibly for everyone to get credit easily enough.

Also kicking AFKers from these zones on a fairly aggressive timer might not be a bad idea.

They might be tasty, a BSLT would be lovely.

I’m going to hang on to them just in case we use them as some kind of ingredient for runes/sigils in the next patch or two.

Laryakan.1684:

EDIT : Yes on this pic, Dwayna is wearing something close the the actual zodiac armor. But nobody is astonished ? Players looks like a GOD, but you’re saying to me it’s not lore breaking ??

Well, I’d say they look like a celestial creature, an “angel” or avatar, not a god and that’s not lore breaking, it fits the lore of the world quite well, if they looked like Zeus then it’d be lore breaking.

Anyway I think your definition of lore breaking is different from mine. For me, it fits in with the established lore because it looks right for the lore, the place you get it from (gem store) isn’t a factor in whether or not it fits the lore for the game as the gem store itself would probably be considered lore breaking by you.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Are you kidding? Predetermined outcome. Period. It would not have mattered whoever won.

Exactly, I really, really hope people don’t believe that anything would be even the tiniest bit different if Evon won because that would be very naive.

If Evon won then Ellen would be the one who “tried to warn the council but Evon was too busy playing in the mists to listen”. The result would be the exact same.

As for the OP I truly hope you don’t mean to believe that the people of LA deserve death because their leaders messed up, because that’s a hideous attitude. People warned the captains council yes (in the last fortnight or so) but even if they had listened they couldn’t “magic” AA defences into existence in Lion’s Arch any quicker than they could in the real world.

Mind you, they did “magic” a whole bunch of Asura gates into existence at Vigil keep and one at Lornar’s Pass so maybe they could but it would seem hollow to me. (I’m assuming they weren’t creating those gates before the patch hit).

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

In fact, I think Ellen “won” because of that too. Shoehorning Scarlet into an abbadon fractal would have been impossible even for Leylines McCoy, and they seem determined to rid themselves of the 6 gods and GW1 residue in this game.

Oh I think the Living Story team would have managed to fin a way to get her into that one too. The mists are only a reflection or echo after all, she can invade the mists too and could do so to perform her own research, my own theory is that the Abaddon fractal would have some insight into the entity that’s controlling Scarlet. I suspect it’s a god, possibly one we thought already dead.

Terrible idea.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Just remember, Scarlet is drilling for something. Maybe a giant monster, maybe a ley line. Whatever it is, it is going to be big and full of energy. There is more than enough room for the result of this being such massive devastation that LA is literally wiped from the map forever.

That is true, and you could very well be right, however, I don’t believe that this will be the case, I think that we’ll stop Scarlet just before she gets through to the mega-nexus of ley-lines and with her last few breaths she calls us fools and explains that she was just about use it to destroy all the dragons at once or something. Maybe she’ll wheel out a projector and bring us through a presentation.

But yeah, she’s working for someone/something so we’ll see what happens when that happens it’s possible that Primordious/Another Dragon will rise up from beneath Lion’s Arch but I suspect it’s something to do with Abaddon or the other missing human gods (because I think that both the fractal research choices from the election would have both led back to Scarlet somehow).

Edit: Oh gods no, please don’t be another “ascension to godhood” machine.

Kal Spiro.9745:

If the zone becomes a gaping hole of molten death where no city could possibly be placed, then what?

Then it’s become a gaping hole of molten death where no city could possibly be placed and you’ve answered your own question but I don’t think that’s likely to happen.

I’ll be disappointed if the Seraph, the Legions and the Wolfborn don’t swing into action to help them retake Lion’s Arch, humans, charr and norn have already suffered at the hands of Scarlet’s minions and I feel they’d be aching for some payback. It doesn’t have to be the Vigil every time.