Some text back story or even an epic tale of how an Ebonhawke squad fought Shurakk would have been awesome.
That kind of lore would make a big difference for me, even a plaque explaining who they are or they represent.
As it is they’re just elaborate pinatas. Calling the flame legion one Bonfaz Burntfur might be a bit politically incorrect these days, what with humans and charr being friends (sorta), but having these bosses as big name “historical” enemies with a bit of lore would be good.
Even more so when the “holodeck safety protocols” fail and these watchwork bosses escape into the real world later on this month. cough
I wouldn’t call this the GW2 anniversary celebration. Still 20 days off, and I’m thinking they’ll do something pretty impressive. They’re very proud of their game.
Personally, I’m starting to expect a email containing some kind of account buff, consume to add a permanent 5% magic find, karma and money boost.
Killing legendary figures at Crown Pavilion with tens of players compared to this is so without substance. Gray. Dull. And what’s worst for me – I don’t fully utilise my character. I just stand behind zerg and pew pew boss and try to heal as many players as possible. There is no effort in it.
I spam 2 (for cluster bombs on my thief’s shortbow) and f to gather the loot.
I occasionally dodge and move out of the fire/artillery/other red circle but that’s about it. It’s financially very rewarding and kinda fun in a weird way, what with all the mayhem and flashy effects and so on but it’s pretty mindless fun.
I wonder what a month of a farming event like this will do to the game.
Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.
I think this is a “problem” with the dynamic event system in general, it’s luck whether or not you experience them.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen or played through these 40 events you added, I might have walked right past where they play out several times on different characters when they weren’t running and never known they exist (or rather that they potentially could occur) at all. If I did play them I certainly don’t think I would recognise them as “new” because they might have been there since the start and I might just never have seen them before.
I think that that might be why you got so little feedback on them.
Gate was open, went up and opened a chest without doing the mini-event, no credit for that balloon.
I wonder if that’s the problem? I “did” 4 towers in Queensdale and in Kessex Hills and got 3/30 towers for the achievement for one of those I just walked right up the tower. The event must have just been over but I didn’t participate in it.
Just had this issue. The chest for the western balloon in Queensdale was already open the first time I visited it. Not getting recognition for the achievement either.
Same for me.
The same happened for me too, I’ve done the towers in Kessex Hills and Queensdale twice or three times now and I still only see 3 towers visited.
Sorry I couldn’t resist posting this.
On a side note does Kiel inherit Ashford’s ship, or does she have a ship, does she get a Lionguard galleon, or what?
How often does the hologram bellow “You fools! You gullible fools!” and then break into maniacal laughter?
Prices for T6 mats and Destroyer lodestones in particular are going to crash hard. There’s so much stuff flooding the market right now. So you won’t be able to sustain this cash flow for long.
That’s good. They need to boost supplies of the T6 mats anyway as we’re going to require them to level crafting to 500 soon.
The queen’s pavillion gave me 10G in 40 minutes, not only me but also my friends. is this intended? is ANet boosting the economy or completely ruining it?
Ssssh! Give me time to get home and run it a bit before the nerf the hell out of it!
The achievement doesn’t go up with adding more gold to the wallet. It’s stuck at the level just before patch.
Then that’s indeed a bug, they said that it’s supposed to still be achievable, maybe when you get a little more gold it’ll recalculate? Otherwise I’m sure they’ll fix it.
I’m hugely disappointed that this is going away, it could remain, it should remain, I think these kind of challenges should remain in the game for more than a month.
ArenaNet you’ve had months of complaints from people not because it’s difficult (although that is an issue for many people) but because it’s difficult and gone in two weeks (edit: yes I know it’s a month this time). It’s so frustrating!
I don’t care, you can charge admission after the jubilee if you want to, you can turn off the mass events below the boss challenges if you want to but leave the content in the game!
What about the animals? They apparently are voting too. At least the owl griffons are trying to vote (only one off the top of my head that I can remember getting one).
Not just griffons, I got some from wolves at least. Presumably they’re not voting for Gnashblade. I can’t see even the most progressive canines overcoming millennia of tension to vote for a giant cat.
How the people can talk of a WvW match in EU forum if the servers talks in this forum?
You don’t seem to understand that there are no EU forums or American forums. The English forums are open to everyone who speaks English, regardless of whether they pay on EU or American servers and regardless of nationality. We talk about WvW matches between EU servers and WvW American servers in the same forum all the time.
I wonder, if karma becomes account bound, will karma jugs still need to exist? They could always remove karma jugs from the game, and add direct karma points to your account.
Hmmm… that’s a good point… we could even log in that day and find that they’ve already quaffed all our jugs and added them to the pile o’ karma!
We might need to drink ’em ourselves to maximise the karma gain.
Still though, I hope they don’t remove them. I kinda like ’em. I think karma jugs and other karma items are a nice “physical” reward like loot bags.
The only thing I’m not crazy on being in it is the coins (a little ironic, I suppose, as it is a wallet ) as I find it a nice thing to keep track of how much each character has “earned” but overall it’s a brilliant improvement so I don’t care.
Pooled karma alone will make such a difference, I can just chug those 200+ karma items I have stored all at once without wondering if some other character might need them more in the future!
Seems to me that they’re moving to that, having a permanently dropping single currency for new RNG based weapon sets, and keeping them on the game permanently as well, but with a substantial discount if you get them during the apropiate event, we’ll see if it’s a one time thing or a new permanent way to get the new skins.
That sounds reasonable, I dislike the sheer scale of the price hike after 2 weeks (5 times the price is very steep) but if this is their new pattern for the future then you could keep a Black Lion Claim ticket until a set comes along with a weapon that you like and then buy it.
It’s just a pity they didn’t make the Black Lion Claim tickets trade-able instead of the skins, oh well.
If you read the patch notes correctly the answer to your first question is only from the Black Lion Chests.
That certainly seems to be the case, it does state that they have been added to the black lion chest it doesn’t say they’re only in the black lion chests. I was wondering if people got them from other sources that grant Black Lion goods, like from daily rewards, map or story completion, and so on.
Due to this release ends in two weeks I would guess the answer to the second question is no. Due to the tickets are still available after these next two weeks.
My second question was will these be replacing event specific tickets in the future, I know these tickets are staying around.
What are the sources of these claim tickets? Are they only available through Black Lion Chests or will they be dropping from event chests instead of other ticket event specific claim tickets (like the Dragon’s Jade Claim Ticket) in the future?
Basically I’m asking if there will be a single “currency” for all future skin sets?
It’ll force me to regrind all my armors, weapons and trikets, some of those ascended, all that on 5 characters. This is Bad™
No it won’t. All PvE content is doable with the current armor sets, and those armor sets in no way affect your performance against another player. There is no game mode where you are required to get this armor to succeed. You can get it to exceed your performance in previous content, but that’s your choice and nothing requires that you do so.
I think his point is that if they raise the level cap to (for example) 100 then level 80 ascended armour will be very poor compared to level 100 masterwork armour. Compare level 60 exotics with level 80 ones for example.
Also, in WvW roaming you are pretty much required to get the best possible weapons and armour to succeed, if you’re currently running around as an upscaled level 60 you will die to exotic equipped level 80s, if they increase the cap to level 100 then the same will happen to people running in level 80 armour.
legendary is a tier with unique capabilities and also the promise to be upgraded any time anet decide to step back on what they said with tiers….being Best in slot forever.
The ability to switch stats at will its not something with low impact on the game.
just think how some professions can change from roaming to siege to zerg to defence with it in www.
In fairness they’ve said that Legendaries will always be upgraded to the best tier anyway as it is they’re not better than exotic now and will not be better than ascended when ascended weapons are introduced. They’re not a new tier.
Their ability to switch stats at will is a nice to have feature but as you could buy literally hundreds of exotic weapons for the cost of a single legendary it’s hardly a huge advantage. It won’t be changed much I think but it will mean that your weapon remains useful even if you drastically change your build.
In fact, even the stat combination will change at will your sigil will remain the same so you may still be better off with two different weapons for two different roles.
well , good news .. but if they want to remove MF gear ..
for exemple :
im very curious on how they will fix my Ascended Amulet with a 20% MF infusion .. they just can’t remove it just like that
Maybe they will replace it with another infusion (+20% gold for example) or “uninfuse” it?
Another question of course is what happens to Explorer’s, Traveler’s and Wayfarer’s armour and the equivalent gems, the various runes and sigils and so on? I’ll be interested in seeing what they do here alright.
Yeah, but I was after the MF bonus more than the Celestial stats.
I have both a set of Carrion (maybe to be replaced by Rabid in the future) and Soldiers’ (maybe one day Sentinel’s) for my condineer. I don’t think I need a Celestial set, on its own.
You may as well make your Celestial armor anyway, the quartz isn’t worth much so make it and enjoy the MF while you can, the MF changes could arrive in December for all we know.
As for this blog post, I love what I read there, I really like the direction they’re taking the game at the moment.
Its been a bit rocky at times in the past and I’ve been critical of them at times but I really think they’re getting into their stride now, well done ArenaNet, keep it up!
Ridiculous. Your “hybrid build” would be better served by a combination of current available gear. Go on, tell us your build so we can prove how your “highly” Celestial gear is bad for it.
Lets not deviate from the point of the thread. This thread isn’t about critiquing a build or whether or not Celestial is a good stat combination on armor. It’s about this crafted gear being account bound and how it is an unnecessary and undesirable limitation for crafters and players who want this armor and sets a bad precedent for the future.
I can’t understand them gating it so harshly, a month to craft a set of exotic armor is a ridiculously long time (and the armor is account bound, soulbound on use so you can’t even buy it from the trading post to speed things along).
I originally thought that each insignia or inscription would need 1 charged crystal (which requires 25 quartz crystals) which would mean that you could make 1 set of armor in 6 days. This just drags out the process making it painfully slow.
(BTW I only want it for my elementalist at the moment, I don’t think it’s the best for every profession, but that’s beside the point).
Uhh no. I saw it earlier today, it was the 2nd chest in line. Right now is technically the start of the 2nd day .No zenith skin.
Fudged yet again.
It was second in life because you already got the 100 point chest by the time you saw the line, you get one chest for 100 achievements, one for 500 achievements and tomorrow you’ll get your 1,000 point chest and the skin.
The dungeons are “locked in time” so lore-wise they have long since happened.
The majority of the living story does however take place in the open world, which would make it more or less impossible to use the same kind of logic behind it.
Logic doesn’t enter into this at all.
The start and end dates are decided by ArenaNet for real world reasons (i.e. they coincide with patch days that are on Tuesdays) not to fit into any in game logic there is NO logical reason they have to start or end at any particular time.
There is no logical reason why these cannot be left for a month or two so too because there is absolutely no logical reason why the world cannot have more than one story going on at any given time.
For example, Kiel is standing by in Lions Arch at the same time she is in dozens of Aetherblade Retreat Instances. There’s no logic needed there it just the way the game works.
If you wanted to you could even replace Kiel with a generic Lionsguard Captain if her being in two places would shatter peoples worlds.
When first announced I thought it might be adding full sets (infernal being heavy, celestial being medium and so on) instead it’s just three armour pieces that look the same for all three armour types. Like this it feels cobbled together or half finished.
The weapon skins are better at least.
content every two weeks…what do you expect
I expect better; these pieces weren’t designed in two weeks any more than the full sets of Aetherblade armor in the gem store were designed in two weeks. So I expect them to look better and be complete sets.
Ok im more than sure ill get bombarded with comments akin to “ungrateful insert swear” but seriously?
We get 2 armors, 2 armors which are blatantly heavy sets.
How does either of those two fit on a Necromancer, Thief, Ranger?
I dont see it being all that good looking on a Mesmer or Engi either.
It is disappointing.
When first announced I thought it might be adding full sets (infernal being heavy, celestial being medium and so on) instead it’s just three armour pieces that look the same for all three armour types. Like this it feels cobbled together or half finished.
I’m all for the two week release schedule but content has to be doable for a longer period of time. Two weeks is far too short a time to leave the temporary content around.
I think they should overlap the content, so that the content is available for at least a month after being added.
Keep it on the quiet by all means but I don’t think the players would be too upset if, for example, the Aetherblade content was left in the game for a couple of weeks after the Bazaar of the Four Winds arrives. I certainly wouldn’t mind if there were, say a few Aetherblade holdouts left scattered around the maps for people to kill for their achievements.
Personally, I hate the idea of missing a release because it was only available for the two weeks while I was away for work.
Knowing that I can never experience something in a game does have a serious impact on the fun I have with that game.
While I don’t think the Living Story is the most amazing story telling I’ve ever seen, it sure is a lot more interesting than running around the game grinding out slayer achievements.
Not only that, but ANet has encouraged me to participate in every aspect of the story until the dungeon. I witnessed a murder, helped people to safety, tracked down the killer, defeated pirates, and got an email asking me to hunt down Mai.
The email never said, “Thanks for your help, but we will take it from here…” It said, come…capture the bad guy!
I’m now at what I’m assuming is the climax of the story, and I’m unable to progress. Sure, given enough time, I might try different builds, or even level a different character. I might try running it with a few different groups as well. If I had the time I would also run it a few more times for the achievements, and perhaps the chance at a monocle, so I can fight like a sir.
I agree, the whole “it’s not your story so it doesn’t matter if you don’t complete it” thing is a farcically irrelevant argument in their attempt to dismiss people who cannot, for whatever reason, actually see the entire story. That is the root problem and the only thing that needs to be “fixed”, people telling you it doesn’t matter if you see the story or that you need to L2P to play through the dungeon is just a smokescreen.
Of course it’s our story, otherwise why would these characters be seeking us out at every turn? I don’t know about you but Inspector Ellen Kiel has been seeking me out personally for help since I helped her with Canach in Southsun Cove. It is demonstrably our story: we are in just about every major scene, we talk to all the main characters and we do just about everything of note in the story.
Every story that our characters are involved in is our story just as much as our personal story is our story. If it’s not “our story” then why are we involved at all?
Yeah… I’ve been trying to farm Shiverpeaks Aetherblades blades all morning, and I did find some at holo nodes, but it sure as puppy wasn’t 50 percent of the nodes. Maybe one in five, if that…
There is a group of three that spawns every minute or so (or used to spawn at least, I last checked on Sunday) around the Kodan Dragon Bash representative in Snowden Drifts… that may help?
But thats just the thing: IF they lower the already low damage it will be possible to simply stand around taking the hits and still survive, which would destroy the whole point in having the mechanics at all and they could simply remove them.
Well, I think that’s taking things to an extreme.
If the damage is already low then you don’t have to lower it. If the damage is low but the problem is that you get CCed in it for a long time and are unable to avoid it then you leave the damage as is but reduce the duration of the CC and increase the cooldown on those abilities. There are many different ways to balance the numbers in an encounter after all.
Ultimately though, what we’re talking about is an easy mode, lordkrall. The point of an easy solo mode is that people can get through it more easily.
Think of it as training mode. Teach people the mechanics in an environment where they can make mistakes and recover from them without dying and resetting the entire fight and then they can graduate to normal mode where things are faster, telegraphs are shorter, CCs are longer and the entire dungeon is just that bit more unforgiving.
Then when normal mode is is too easy for you you move onto hard mode where it gets a lot more unforgiving.
Indeed, but that is just the thing. People are overall NOT complaining about the mobs, but rather the mechanics of the fights. And that isn’t something that is “stored in columns in a database”. It would require more or less completely rebuilding the whole fights which would require quite a bit of work.
Ah, but what do those mechanics actually do? Ultimately they do damage and/or apply conditions. The amount of damage, the duration and type of the conditions and so on are all numbers stored in columns in a database.
You reduce the damage, the duration, increase cooldowns and maybe even remove or replace conditions entirely. The design work is all done for the normal mode you just nerf everything for easy mode.
I think you are underestimating the amount of time and work required to scale stuff like that though.
They would more or less have to do 1 version of the dungeon for every difficulty available, which would suddenly mean that they would have quite a bit more work to be done.
And even if they did that people would complain. It would always be too hard for someone and it would always be too easy for someone else.
I think you have absolutely no idea how much work this would take, should keep that in mind and should stop acting like you know it would take so much more work. If they do it right then it shouldn’t take that much more work. After all, I don’t think that assigning stats and abilities is what takes up the time; I rather imagine it’s designing the environment, modelling the enemies, scripting the events and encounters, voice and sound work and so on.
The NPCs Attributes, the factors that determine their health and damage (and ultimately the difficulty of the encounters) are just numbers stored in columns in a database. Sure, some balancing has to be done to make sure that normal mode is “right” but easy mode means replacing the veterans and elites with normal mobs that do a lot less damage and have less health. At worst you make sure that it’s too easy. “Divide all damage and hit-points by five and call it a day.”
Regardless of whether or not everyone would be happy (and you can’t please everyone) I believe that a whole lot more people would be happy if they did this. Normal and easy mode are logical solutions for this, followed by a hard mode for those who power through this kind of dungeon content.
There is one thing that I’m not sure of as it hasn’t been directly stated: does this mean we’re safe to do this particular puzzle now? I mean, has the detection mechanism been fixed or disabled here or has your team been instructed to ignore hits in and around this puzzle because of the bug? Basically, can we still get banned and have to wait to be identified as the result of a false positive?
We hear you guys loud and clear! We definitely plan on mitigating the leaver issue with a form of punishment. I wont give details about what the punishment will be, but it should be enough to deter this form of behavior. Anything we add will be in addition to what happens now (loss and rating hit).
I hope this system also tracks AFKer’s because a punishment system could just mean that people wait out the match at spawn rather than leave the server so you have the same net effect (your side is down a player) but they avoid the punishment.
I think that having hard or challenging content is good – even required – for an MMO but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a hard dungeon that only lasts two weeks. I think that splitting it into a “hard mode” for groups with better rewards and “easy/story mode” for people with limited time is the best idea.
Ultimately only ArenaNet know if it’s too hard (i.e. if a significant number of people are struggling to get through it).
I like the medium armor a lot. My only disappointments is that the metal clasps and gears have their base color tuned so high that you have to use the extremely dark colors just to get something that’s not incredibly pale, and I don’t care for the helmet.
Here’s my Asura Engie sporting his new look.
Nice one! I like it a lot too, I think that the light and medium armours are almost like another set of Asuran racial armour and I plan on getting both.
specific skins only available if the boss was killed + I would add achievements for those bosses which are a requirement to be able to get those skins.
Interesting idea, so kill the Shatterer a large number of times and then you get a set of Shatterer/branded skins to purchase for a nominal fee? I like that idea.
In my opinion they should change it so that the four camps flip to be karka infested then an event chain kicks off that requires escorting an NPC group to liberate the four camps (in a set order) and afterwards the queen should spawn. This pattern works quite well in Orr.
The liberated camps should not be attacked by karka while the event chain is running and a chest of some sort should spawn in all four camps to entice people to do the pre-event (no guaranteed rares or anything just a regular chest) and not just pop to the nearest waypoint when the queen spawns.
Correct! I think some of you are making assumptions that living world means the stuff we’ve done the last few months and that’s all you’re going to see. My point is saying we’ve seen folks feedback and are adjusting that strategy to include a much larger mix of permanent updates going forward.
I look forward to seeing it. So far we’ve seen very little permanent content at all through the Living World and have been given no details about what’s coming. Show us what you’re doing and tell us the plans or you can’t be surprised that people are making, possibly incorrect, assumptions.
Dungeons will be part of this strategy, living world teams will be doing work on our permanent dungeons rather than them being ignored, the types of things you’re asking for will be rolled into living world updates to give a reason for them happening in the world. It simply means we’re going to be doing more of exactly what you’re asking for here in this thread, but under the context of a story of why it happens in the world, rather than just magically have it appear (as happened with AC).
Hope that helps a bit, I’m actually agreeing with a lot you, apparently that wasn’t clear enough!
Doesn’t that just mean that the whole process will be delayed until the Living World rolls around to it? I don’t see how or why the Living World has to interface with the existing dungeons at all: I don’t think you’ll get many people complaining if they are updated as if by magic because they’re part of another story/content that’s outside of the “story” altogether.
Edited to add: We also plan to do a lot of reward work across the board, including on our dungeons, but we’ll go into more specific detail on that in July as a comprehensive summary.
Again, this is brilliant new but I hope you give us a good amount of actual details in July about what you’re doing and when: we need to start seeing what it is you’re planning on doing rather than being told that you’re going to be doing something soon.
