Guild Wars 2

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

From my understand and how I would interpret the developers opinion and decision.

Again I know what it is, I know what the differences are between the Living World and Personal Story and how ArenaNet have designed them to work, I’m just making a suggestion about a change I’d like to see.

Now, I fully understand if you like the way it works already but this is a suggestion that I think would improve the game.

Coquette.2753:

As a person with light armor, I probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Some light armor is already pretty much the same thing as running around naked. I’ve always wanted the option to hide gloves though. >:

But… you already have the option to hide gloves. Its what the tick box is for.

My only regret is that I have but one +1 to give for your suggestion.

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

Living Story is supposed to be different from the character Story.

It was introduced to slowly apply small permanent changes as well as leaving some items to the players testing new features in short time watching for opinions of the players themselves.

“Living Story” means it’s a story that is progressing in “live time”.
If you miss something you obviously missed it usually for forever.
If you miss a certain event near you then you missed it.

It’s Living World not Living Story.

I know all that I acknowledge it in my post. This is a suggestion about changing it to build up content that can be enjoyed now or years into the future.

Firstly, it’s important to point out that as it is it’s not Living Story, it’s Living World, now before I get blasted for being pedantic let me explain why I think the distinction is important.

With the Personal Story the idea was to track and guide you through a particular story and that worked well because you were in control of progression so you obviously had to be present for every step of the story and as a result you couldn’t miss parts of your story.

With the Living World it carries on regardless of what you’re doing and doesn’t wait for you to be around, you can miss whole sections quite easily (if you’re away for a week or two because of work, for example).

Now, ArenaNets intention is to give us a reason to log in now, not next week or next month and that’s not a bad goal, the more people playing the better, but it doesn’t do much to entice people back, it’s been said many times already but if someone were to log in now what would you see in the living world? A few festival events in the “Living World” and enough “Living Story” to take about an hour. You would even miss some previous parts of the story (like talking to the councillors) already before it the event actually ends. I think this is too much miss-able content.

In order to “fix” this I would love to see them split the whole Living World concept into two sections, Living World and World Story.

• The Living World would be the events and activities that come and go, the holographs, the pinatas, the effigies, all that stuff. This is the account wide, temporary content that you log in now or miss. This would typically run for the duration of the release and would not tend to contain very limited time content.
• The World Story would be handled like the Personal Story. ArenaNet would take the story elements and handle them like they did the Personal Story, adding more steps so that it would tell the story in-game rather than through the website or through the emails or heralds, this would run alongside and separately to the characters Personal Story. Like the Personal Story this would be permanent, one-time per character content. This could either run from the very start to the end chronologically or be organised into it’s natural story arcs.

This way the amount of content available constantly grows and so if someone either joins or rejoins the game in a years time they can play through both their Personal Story and their World Story.

I started playing Guild Wars about a year before GW2 launched and the amount of content in the game was fantastic because it had seven years of content added to it (including the campaigns and expansions of course). Now which would be better, if in seven years time someone joins GW2 and sees seven years worth of World Story content and the current Living World content or someone joining GW2 and seeing that months Living World content with no way to experience all that had gone before?

Being told you missed great content is a poor alternative to actually playing through that great content on a character.

I’m not thrilled with the content so far but not surprised either as it’s basically the same kinda “busy-work” tasks we’ve seen in all previous events (carve x pumpkins, kill y molten invaders, build z snowmen and so on) it’s just there to give people something to work towards over a few days so I don’t mind. I’m glad I finished the tasks though.

I suspect it will take off properly with today’s release and I’m looking forward to that.

Woljnir.7810:

Person 1: I bought the wrong thing and there was no confirmation so I lost 30 Laurels.

Anet change it!

Person 2: I’m tired of having to confirm all my purchases!

Anet change it!

I sympathize with game developers. There really is no pleasing anyone.

There’s a massive difference, as I’m sure you can tell, between spending 5 trakittenems to get a consumable and spending 30 laurels to get an ascended item. If you and I can see it then I’m sure ArenaNet can and can put in place a sensible system that is capable of being turned off on certain vendors (i.e. vendors like this one).

Ashley Segovia.8276:

I don’t have an ETA for any kind of status update.

You don’t have an ETA for a status update? I can understand not having one for a solution at this time but surely it should be possible to find out when the person responsible for this will get around to at least beginning to investigate the problem and can give us some further information?

Are your software engineers busy doing non-software engineer things? Is someone actively looking at this issue at all?

Edit: for me, like others, the lag is map based, on Ring of Fire last night in both Diessa Plateau and Bloodtide Coast it was a nightmare with 5+ second lag spikes while in Plains of Ashford and Fields of Ruin it was fine.

leman.7682:

I think John is blowing the whistle.

I like how the OP doesn’t seem to recall placing the order for these shards. It’s either a joke, an effect of a hard partying or the OP should really double-check his or her account security.

Maybe ArenaNet could partner with someone to provide a breathalyser add-on as an additional security measure?

Direksone.3867:

Your majority might not be on the forums, but the ‘core’ players are.

Good point, those ‘core’ players also spread the word in-game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

This feature is still in development and will be added to the game, yes. No ETA since it hasn’t been signed off testing wise yet, but it’s absolutely still something you’ll be seeing this year. This is part of an over-all project to update reward systems across the game, you’ve seen some of the stuff already (daily/monthly overhaul), rewards for giant boss chests in the open world, etc. Some arrives next week release (rewards for WvW ranks) and the rest will arrive over the course of 2013.

As a reminder, what we’re working on high level strategy wise can be found here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

We’ll update this blog post in a few months with our status so far and the plans for later in 2013. (edited to clarify we’ll update the blog)

I think that blog post needs to be updated alright Colin, just before the “In closing” section it says:

“Just because it’s not listed here doesn’t mean it’s not being worked on, but hopefully this helps give some insight into where we’re headed in the first half of 2013.”

(My emphasis) from that quote I’ve always though that the sections of the blog post you’ve linked were referring to features planned for the first half of the year and the first half of 2013 is coming to an end now. Some of those features have been delivered and some have slipped (which is inevitable) so I know I’d love to know where you’re going now and to see a revised rough roadmap of the features you’re planning on adding.

I won’t be equipping my main-hand pitchfork and off-hand torch but I would like to see some details of what will be delivered and, roughly, in what order.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It won’t end in a dungeon. We have however included an instance that will open up that has a single player version, and a more difficult multiplayer version.

The ending is different

That is the best GW2 related news I’ve heard in a loooong time, thank you so much! Cannot wait now!

Rob.7624:

Ascended is just a change in stats too.
All we ever dreamed of ;_;

No, it’s an increase in stats.

Personally I think that armor and weapons should just be exotics that are “ascended” through the mystic forge. You put a piece of exotic armor or weapon + gemstone/rune/sigil + badges/laurels/karma + skill points = ascended armor or weapon.

Job done.

Niim.9260:

Pifil.5193:

Actually I don’t think PVE has had any new sets of armour since launch.

Apothecary

Ah, maybe I misunderstood, I thought he meant sets of armour (as in an actual set of armour) not just a different, craftable stat combination.

I don’t know if I’d consider crafting to be PVE either.

Scootus.3251:

Agreed, not getting any new sets of armour for 6 months while pve’ers get one or more almost every patch is rather annoying…

Look it up in this part of the forums and you will find threads dated all the way back asking for this stuff…

Actually I don’t think PVE has had any new sets of armour since launch.

Most of the PVE weapons and armour sets are dungeon token only too which is a shame, IMO. It’s as surprising to me to see that there’s only one non-dungeon exotic armor skin and no exotic weapons. They should introduce non-dungeon token PVE armor sets too (or just allow us to trade in our badges for karma and then switch to karma for everything in the future).

The neglect of WvW and open-world PVE players is ridiculous though. It seems that dungeons were the only thing that launched in complete and a fairly polished state. sPVP, WvW and open-world PVE are all sorely lacking in meaningful rewards for playing (IMO).

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

We’ll continue to keep you all updated on the status.

The bonfires will be returning, they are just delayed.

Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks for keeping us up to date, Regina.

Rakos.3165:

If this is in the wrong section, I apologize, but I found it to be the most fitting.

Alright, so I’ve just purchased Guild Wars 2.

I log in for the first time and I’m prompted with a server (or world) list; and of course, to no surprise, the server where all my friends are is Full. So I thought to myself: “Okay, well, I’ll just hop onto Piken Square and mess around until Tarnished Coast opens up.” So I go to do that and I’m then prompted with an “are you sure?” message. Now, just to be safe, I googled to see what “Home Server” meant exactly, and I came to realize that ANet was offering free transfers within the first six months but is now charging. It seems rather strange that I pay for an online game for the soul purpose of playing with my friends and find out that I can’t, and that if I want to, I’m going to have to pay an extra $20 to do so if I want to play right now and transfer later.

One option is to wait until the middle of the night/early in the morning (when the Tarnished Coast server is not listed as “full”) and create a character then. I know that means you can’t play right now (which does suck) but you will be able to play on the server you want to soonest and without further cost to yourself. Guesting is not much of an option if you want to WvW with your friends.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey folks,

The Southsun Shore stuff will not be like the previous Flame and Frost stuff in regards to how time-spanning it was. We’re a separate team than that one, and we have been working on this content while you all were playing F&F content.
Our story will last a month and then be over with, and as a result is more condensed. We’ve been listening to the feedback on F&F, and tried our hardest to adjust where possible. So our temporary content will last just the month, but we are making some permanent changes to the island that will persist after the living story bit is over.

Does this mean that the entire storyline will be accessible from the start or will you be adding to it over the next month and introducing a “finale” that will only be around for a day or two? The adding of content that is removed a day or so later means that a lot of people will miss it.

Is there any possibility that, in future, content like this is left for at least a month after it’s added? So if, for example, the finale is added on the 14th of June it’s left in the game until the 14th of July. That way those who can will finish it on the day it becomes available and those who can’t will be given a chance to “catch up” with the story.

Leaf.3156:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The game draws inspiration from the crab guild challenge but plays a bit differently. There’s achievements, titles, and prizes for participants and winners.

Crab Toss will only be around for the duration of living story events at Southsun Cove. But don’t be too sad, as far as activities go, you might have a very exciting year ahead of you.

I’m just wondering, WHY do you keep doing this?

One of the complaints that people have with the game is that there isn’t much to do at level 80 except repeating dungeons and fractals. Some mini-games and new dungeons would allow for more variation, yet every time you add something to the world, it’s TEMPORARY. What’s the logic behind this?

Basically, the reason they’re focusing on temporary content is to make people think that “if I don’t log in now I’ll miss out”. So they log in, play the game, see the gem store stuff and maybe buy something.

It introduces a pressure to play the game now, not next week or next month, that will work in the short term. However sooner or later everyone will miss out on stuff because of real life issues and that can really irritate your customers (look at the backlash over the Lost Shores Weekend) and irritated customers are more likely to simply walk away from the game. It’s a fine line.

Ayrilana.1396:

I personally don’t see the issue over the two days that was dropped considering it was an error. This achievement barely takes any time at all and people should be able to do it in the allotted time window. If they can’t then that’s unfortunate. It’s just an achievement.

If you don’t or can’t see the issue then perhaps you shouldn’t be commenting on it? After all why should you comment on something you don’t understand? Perhaps some day you won’t be always able to jump online whenever you want to and then you may understand.

Latinkuro.9420:

Well duh, that ^^ is common knowledge.

I’m asking more along the lines of when are we gonna see a new true lv80 zone that doesn’t upscale anyone ?

Why do you want to? To feel “special” in some way because others are excluded?

Besides, you already have Orr and had Southsun before and after this event.

No surprise that there are those who are determined to defend this to the bitter end. That level of fanaticism always baffles me.

Some people would like to be able to do this but will miss out due to a variety of reasons, not everyone will even have access to a PC for the day and a half that it’s around. Some will be away from home due to work, for example, there is no good reason these events to be so short all living world content should be available for a minimum of a month.

There is no need to remove them just because the next part of the story is becoming available. I think we’re smart enough to be able to handle the idea that two stories are occurring simultaneously.

Loki.4139:

Next time can you turn off the chat bubble? in the beginning when you entered EBG. that Relkou player was just bugging the kitten out of you and the viewers who were watching. i had to stop watching and rewatch it later since he was so annoying.

He was being very obnoxious, turning off the chat bubbles would be a good idea. So would putting a fifteen minute or so delay to defeat the obvious stream chasers, why they thought it was necessary to do so I don’t know, I suspect they think they gain kudos for killing an ArenaNet employee in 20 vs 1.

Jahn.7019:

Honestly do you guys think they are going to do this again after all the hassle you gave him for one semantic error? He obviously was speaking strategically not tactically class wise.

We need developers to play the game more and give more attention to WvW, but when you guys are this rude and disrespectful when he is obviously trying to build interest it gives them no motivation to do it again.

Honestly, yes I expect them to do this again, this is the internet, they have expect some kind of reaction like this and I dare say they are not so fragile that they can’t handle it and can’t recognise that it’s coming a handful of people (while also considering that that handful may be expressing the feelings of far, far more).

Their motivation to continue is the same as the motivation to produce this first one, it’s to engage with the community so that they can both guide them, instruct them and to find out their problems so that the game can be more successful, if they just run away because “some mean people on the forum hurt their feelings” then I feel the entire exercise (and the whole game) was doomed to start with.

Isaiah Cartwright is a Lead Designer for Guild Wars 2, he’s a professional and I dare say he realises that the vast majority of complaints here are about the mechanics in the game and are not personal attacks directed at him. He would also have to accept the fact that, on the internet, there sadly always seem to be those who are incapable of not personally attacking someone.

The reaction over and focus on his comment about running from the thief and the underlying invincible perma-stealth thief problem obviously points to a serious source of frustration in WvW. Identifying the extent of that problem alone should be seen as a victory by Isaiah and by ArenaNet. Maybe the next stream can extend from this one, “how we deal with a perma stealth thief”?

I personally enjoyed the stream (well, the VoD version of the stream).

tldr: ArenaNet employees are tougher than you think, dealing with this community is part of their job, being afraid that “scary noises” will cause them to disappear forever makes no sense. They will learn from this one and the next will be better.

MRA.4758:

As much as I am all in favor for permanent content, I think we have to accept that temporary content is one of the very few dirty tricks ANet has got up their sleeves to “put pressure” on the player base to choose “play now” over “play some time later next month after I have finished Skyrim/The Witcher/Torchlight/Pokemon Black Edition/whatever”. Older MMOs applied this pressure automatically due to the subscription fee (“I have to play today or else I won’t have my money’s worth of game this month”). Since GW2 doesn’t require a subscription (hooray! free at last!) the casual player has to be constantly incentivized to come back to the game.

~MRA

That’s exactly it but there is a trade off here as this tactic can have the opposite effect too.

Personally speaking, I enticed one of my RL friends back to help me try out the F&F dungeon and he really enjoyed it and was going to try the rest of the F&F content but faced with impending removal decided there was no point. He realised that with real life pressures he wouldn’t have the time to finish it and so the fact that he’s already missed it even while it’s still in the game just discouraged him further from coming back. “I’ve already missed so there’s not need to come back right now.”

I personally think that adding it as semi-permanent content would have a better net effect on the game: have the content time out at least three months after completion, not 12 days after adding it, like the finale of Flame & Frost.

12 days isn’t a lot of time for people who are busy in the real world, busy with their jobs or families and those people who don’t have a lot of time because they’re busy in real life are, I think, more likely to spend cash in the Gem Store than those who have a lot of in-game time to make gold to buy gems and obviously people spending cash in the Gem Store benefits everyone.

Cutting them out doesn’t make sense for anyone.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The game draws inspiration from the crab guild challenge but plays a bit differently. There’s achievements, titles, and prizes for participants and winners.

Crab Toss will only be around for the duration of living story events at Southsun Cove.

Yeah that is sad, if only there was a way to make it permanent.

Oh wait, there is. No need to be sad Anthony, just don’t remove it! Wow, that was simple!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But don’t be too sad, as far as activities go, you might have a very exciting year ahead of you.

Or you might have a number of incomplete achievements and half-earned titles! Depending on time available and how long this stuff is kept around.

I dearly hope that ArenaNets PVE plans for the future aren’t going to revolve around miss-able content as one of the benefits of the persistent world and persistent characters in an MMO is that you can have long-term goals that you can work on at your own pace.

I wish they actually showed what they spoke of in-game. Telling us about what the story was in a video on youtube makes no sense.

For example, when speaking about Rox and Braham Angel McCoy says, “over time they become very good friends…” Really? I didn’t get that at all, they were just there in the dungeon when I arrived. I got no sense that they were very good friends at all. I got no real sense of what the nature of the alliance is between the Flame Legion and the Charr. I got no real sense of what was actually going on at all.

It’s nice that they have 2013 planned out but will it be coherent? As an actual story this was an absolute mess. I mean you shouldn’t just email us to tell us that stuff happened and now there’s a dungeon, you should show us it happening, include us in the action, basically have it happen in-game.

I had huge hopes when the missions appeared in March that there would be an actual storyline in-game, I think that there should have been a number of additional missions between Cragstead and the Molten Facility, missions involving tracking down, discovering and scouting the molten facility, Rox and Braham teaming up, getting help from the Vigil and so on, these missions that would have added so much to the story.

Katz.5143:

In regards to the ticket for the molten gauntlet.
The character I want them on is only level 8. Can I wait until I get her to level 80 to claim them or is the ticket use limited in time?

Rather than take a chance, why not claim them now? You won’t be able to wear them until level 80 but the gauntlets take up the same inventory space as the ticket does after all.

lordkrall.7241:

And yet that would make one of the few (there are currently only 2) pure level 80 areas a level 2-80 area, and for all we know the living story arc will stay for MONTHS which would completely remove Southsun from the “end-game”.

It’s hardly much of an end-game area as it stands, there’s only six or seven basic events there, but it would go back to being a level 80 zone when the event ends.

Besides isn’t it ArenaNets stated intention that the entire world is as much end-game as these zones. Jealously guarding these zones as if they belong to level 80s and must be protected is unnecessarily confrontational and makes no sense.

lordkrall.7241:

One of the main issues would be that there is a guaranteed spot for Orichalcum which could quite easily be abused if every single player could take all their alts and park it at that spot.

All their level 60+ alts you mean? After all, an Orichalcum Mining Pick requires a level 60 character to use. Unless they’ve bought Molten Mining Picks for all their alts but even if they have it’s not much of an issue as the Champion Karka does a pretty good job of defending that spot against low level characters.

Finally, there’s a simple solution, they can remove the node for any character that isn’t level 80. They might be removing it anyway.

lordkrall.7241:

Pifil.5193:

It up-levelled everyone during “The Lost Shores” event so I would guess they would do it for this one too. No doubt they will remove the up-levelling again after the event ends.

Quite different though.
This seems to be part of the Living Story, so will most likely stay for quite some time, while the Lost Shores event only lasted a few days.

If the only difference is the amount of time the content will be around then it’s not really all that different at all.

The reason for up-levelling everyone during the Lost Shores was to ensure everyone, not just level 80s, could take part in that time limited content. It’s how they work, they up-level people, they did it in the Molten Facility dungeon, in Halloween, in Wintersday and in WvW.

It’s established practice at this stage, I would be amazed if they don’t do it here.

Whattman.5841:

All I can say is that I am glad that the non-dungeon people seem to be a distinct minority. If you want a game that you play by yourself, then by definition an MMO is not for you. Play a single-player game like the Witcher or something. I hope they have a dungeon in this storyline and all of the others….the more the merrier.

What makes you think they’re a distinct minority? I don’t know what gave you that idea. Wishful thinking I suspect. Only ArenaNet will know if they’re a minority or the majority as they’re the ones who have the figures (or at least I hope they have).

If most of the people who completed the previous part of the Living Story completed the Dungeon then that’s fine but if most of the people who completed the rest of the Living Story didn’t complete the dungeon and most of the people who completed the dungeon didn’t complete the rest of the Living Story then they would do well to ensure that any future dungeons are not required to “finish” the story or if they are required that they scale or at least offer soloable story and a five man dungeon modes. Then everyone would be happy.

Personally, I did the Molten Facility dungeon once with a guild group for the story and I felt no need to repeat it, I would have preferred if it was an optional extra or (preferably) if there was a soloable mode. And I play with others all the time, in open world PVE, in WvW, I just don’t enjoy the five man dungeon model that much.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

I apologize if I missed it; will players be up-leveled for this new content? I’m getting questions already, so thought I’d pass them on to see if we could get an official answer (or a link to one).

Thanks!

It up-levelled everyone during “The Lost Shores” event so I would guess they would do it for this one too. No doubt they will remove the up-levelling again after the event ends.

Sinbold.8723:

Grabbed a few audio logs in Wayfarer, but no collectors listed on the map, nor visible to the pixelated eye. Went to Diessa Plateau, no audio log collectors there, either. Nothing in the patch noted that I could find. What happened?

I don’t know about the others but Vigil Oudre Wraithwoe is still in Diessa Plateau, in Nolan at the crossroads in the town. Her icon doesn’t show anymore but she still collects them, I handed in some last night.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Your race’s representative isn’t present at the start of all dungeons. Plenty of dungeons have the potential to feature only character you’ve never met, if you don’t bother with the personal story.

Poor dodge though, picking a knit and not addressing my real point, which was:

“Nothing has to do with anything making sense. It’s all just a matter of game designers deciding how they want things to be.”

That’s ultimately it.

It makes no more and no less sense to have this stick around that it does to have other dungeons stick around. Saying it’s ok that the other dungeons stick around because they’re “stuck in time” as if that’s some kind of magic phrase is ridiculous.

The point of dungeons is to provide replayable content. Their existence in the world, and their repeatable nature (and indeed the repeatable nature of most content in this game), is explained by the fact that it is a game and it’s repeatable so that people have content to play through. That’s all the explanation their continued existence requires.

hedix.1986:

And why only 2 weeks for this new content? Even SAB was around for a month.

That’s a very good question that needs to be asked and answered, even if that answer is not given to the masses.

I would love to know why the teaser content put in the game in January is left there for months and the grand finale is removed midway through the month it was placed?

I understand there will be a bit of an “Ewok Celebration” in Hoelbrak and Black Citadel for a couple of days afterwards (I look forward to the charr “yub nub” song) but if there isn’t a massive surprise the day after that ends then I cannot see any real justification for removing the content.

The whole “ticking clock” doesn’t do much for me if it counts down to… nothing. Or a new clock.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

It’s not that easy, it isn’t just a numbers game. It gets quite complex when you think of all the rezzing of downed players is part of the battle-design.

Rox and Braham can and do rez too so that’s not much of a difficulty.

Thobek.1730:

see you’re exactly the sensitive type I’m talking about. Actually forcing people to work well with others can be good for people. It breaks them out of their shell.

Ah yes, the good old standard-issue, extrovert misconception that introverts are just sensitive people that need someone to come along and “fix” them, to break them out of their shell. Force people to “work” with others! It’s good for them! It’ll build character!

Extroverts tend to be confident. That’s good. That confidence leads to an inclination to think that they’re right. That can be good, to a degree, but like everyone else they’re quite often wrong. It just tends to be more difficult to convince them of that.

MatthewMedina.5419:

With all due respect, balancing content like a story instance is completely different than balancing an enhanced jumping puzzle like Super Adventure Box, so for us it just wasn’t feasible to consider doing an “easy” and “hard” mode in this particular case.

With all due respect, surely you have had enough experience scaling difficulty by now? Wasn’t feasible? World events scale, don’t they? Don’t personal story steps scale? Didn’t the previous missions scale for groups?

If you scaled the mobs down so the vets become normal, the elites become vets and the champs and bosses become elite, it would probably be enough to allow people to get through the dungeon and see the story.

The purpose of an “easy” mode isn’t to provide a challenge after all, it’s to allow people to see the end of the content. I think most people would be happy with the achievement and the same rewards they got from the previous missions (so a couple of silver and a karma reward). Leave the chests in the group, “hard” version.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Instead we focused our time and energy into making a really unique, polished and hopefully memorable encounter that enables any group of five to complete in roughly an hour. I understand that there are players who will simply object philosophically to this direction, and wish that all the content we create to be solo-friendly, but our company has always been focused around building an online world that encourages our players to play our game together.

It doesn’t encourage players to play the game together it forces it. WvW encourages players to play together. sPvP encourages players to play together. Dungeons require players to play together. There is a major difference between the two. I and many others object philosophically to your idea of ending what is a personal, solo-able story line with a dungeon. It’s the change at the end that’s our problem. The change from play it your way to play it our way. I hope you understand this?

Personally, I would have preferred if you’d focused your time and energy into more missions that would tell a story rather than a dungeon. As it is Rox and Brahams stories barely got going before the end, everything happens off-screen, hidden from the player.

MatthewMedina.5419:

For those of you who have taken the plunge and shut down one of the Molten Facilities, thank you so much for giving it a try and giving us your feedback. Hope to see you on the front lines!

I have tried it and unfortunately had to bail on the final bosses due to issues in real life (I could have parked my character out of the way and come back if it was soloable). It was good fun and well done, congratulations on that, I hope to get another chance at it tonight or over the weekend.

However, it doesn’t change my view that these instances should be solo-able too.

Wait, wasn’t there something about it changing after a couple of weeks? Rather than being removed?

I was trying to find it but I can’t In the patch notes it says:

“Entrances to the Molten Weapons Facility change over time as new locations are found.”

Yeah, I thought it was something about the Molten Weapons Facility becoming fixed in place after 2 weeks? I wish I could remember where I read that (IIRC that is).

GoldenTruth.2853:

Perhaps by unique they meant V/P/T gear and by replayable they meant the daily Azurite nodes?

Edit: Beaten by less than a minute >.>

It makes no sense to me to add V/P/T gear to the game in such a time-limited manner. The only thing I can think of that does make sense would be if all future Living Story dungeons will also have Azurite nodes?

Saying that that would add a load of new, unique equipment would be a bit cheap though. Kinda like if they dyed the Seraph Weapons blue then said it was a brand new weapon set!

Edit: I unmangled my quotes.

It goes away on May 12th? Really?

Dear god. That makes no sense.

Given that the stuff added in January is still there now I thought that this would have lasted until the patch at the end of May (maybe a week or two into June). Why the sudden time pressure?

I hope they have something impressive lined up for May 13th if that is the case.

Svarty.8019:

How about this condition? Gives 25 stacks each of all boons (adjust to be simply “many boons” if you prefer) to enemy until purged/timer runs out.

This gives both sides a dilemma:

1. The boons make them very susceptible to warrior boon hate/thief boon stealing.
2. Makes the enemy very very powerful, but if they cure the condition, they lose all the boons.

This condition would naturally be followed by Corrupt Boon.

Draehl.2681:

Decay: Deals condition damage every second. Additional damage is dealt to the target when a condition expires or is removed.

I like this, for a secondary effect: halves the duration of boons (by increasing the rate they decay at).

While we’re on the subject of Weapon based DS skills lets not make 5 weapon specific, lets make skills 1 and 2 weapon specific, going one step further where applicable make it so that skill 1 is dependant on main hand and 2 on the off-hand. The main reason for this is that the 1 and 2 skills have the lowest cool-down so you’d use them more in DS.

Personally, I’ve always wanted Death Shroud to act more like switching attunements so you’d get five skills based on your weapon selection but 1 and 2 are better than none.

4 patches into 2013 and no sign of it. It’s kinda sad that it takes them so long to do these things (“we’re working on it but have no ETA” is the new “working as intended”) but a LFG tool should show up sooner or later this year. Why they don’t implement a basic LFG tool and improve on its functionality over the year I don’t know.

Personally, I hope for a pain-free implementation with enough options to satisfy everyone.

Siphaed.9235:

Please, stop with this “we’re being forced to dungeon” or “A.Net forces us to do gameplay we don’t want to do” stuff. It’s nonsense. You’re not forced to do anything you don’t want to do.

(Sorry if I became repetitive in those paragraphs, but some don’t really get the point.)

Ironic that you’re one of those who really doesn’t get the point. The point is this: IF you want to see the ending of the Living Story, content that people have been soloing so far, THEN you’re forced to group. The point is: with the switch in style at the end some people will never get to see that end.

That’s what people are complaining about. Not that ArenaNet are going to come around to their houses and force them to do content they don’t want to.

Please don’t assume that you speak for the majority or know what the majority want. It’s a complete fallacy: you’re not an expert on the matter, you have no special knowledge here, you know no more about what the majority wants than I or anyone else does. You only know what you want and maybe what some people in your guild want.

The only people in a position to figure out if this is what the majority actually want are ArenaNet, they’re the ones who could (and should) gather metrics on how many people completed the content up to the dungeon so far and how many of those complete the actual dungeon.

If those numbers are pretty close then fair enough, it’s what the majority want, if not then they need to rethink their tactics.

Josh Foreman.8250:

1. We did about half the weapon set with W1. We’ll do the other half with W2.

You have no idea how happy that has made me. Looking forward to the possibility of getting 2 x daggers & 2 x pistols at some stage in the future.

Turgon.8625:

Pifil.5193:

You simplify (“dumb down” if you want to call it that) the boss fights for fewer players. Solo becomes a casual mode, players wanting more of a challenge go in larger groups. Altering encounters like this is done in other MMOs, in wow raids, for example, they have regular and heroic modes, 10 and 25 man instances the mechanics of boss encounters change between them all.

Sounds great, I bet it has a massive development cost attached to it though.

I’m not so sure that it would have.

Imagine you have a boss who is immune to damage and must be lured into a particular area by a player so that two other players can flip a switch that makes him vulnerable so that everyone can damage him for 30 seconds. Then he becomes immune again and must be lured to a different area.

The solo version of that boss could be a boss who is immune to damage and must be lured into a particular area by a player and entering that area makes him vulnerable so that he can be damaged for 30 seconds. Then he becomes immune again and must be lured to a different area.

So in this case the complicated, multi-player part is the costly part, and the simplified solo version part is about removing some of those complexities. The scripts for the complicated version could be “stripped down” to make the simpler one.

Mobs would also have to be scaled down too, less damage, less health and so on.

Now that’s easier said than done, of course, but with a bit of planning and forethought in the design process it shouldn’t be too costly.

lordkrall.7241:

And how would scaling work if the mechanics of the boss fight is based on teamwork? (Much like the new Ghost Eater)

You simplify (“dumb down” if you want to call it that) the boss fights for fewer players. Solo becomes a casual mode, players wanting more of a challenge go in larger groups. Altering encounters like this is done in other MMOs, in wow raids, for example, they have regular and heroic modes, 10 and 25 man instances the mechanics of boss encounters change between them all.

Turgon.8625:

Expending it? Not sure what you mean.

Sociologically, I’d imagine it’s quite an interesting thread if you were examining human behaviour….

Yes, I wonder what sociologists (and psychologists) would say about people like Ouroboros whose only “contribution” is to sneer at people with different tastes in a weak attempt to undermine their position without demonstrating the most basic understanding of that position? Quite a lot I’m sure.

lordkrall.7241:

So, lets say that ever single part of the Living Story was group only would we still be having this discussion?

Of course not.

lordkrall.7241:

The living story have utilized more or less every single part of the PvE world.
Personal story, meta-events, events and now dungeon. It shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone at this point. Sure, you will have to do something that you might not like to see the end of the story, but keep in mind that people that want to group up have been more or less completely left out most of the game.
It is after all more or less impossible to find someone that want to join you in your personal story instances, most events don’t scale well for big group of people and so on.

That’s a bizarre non-argument.

• People who want to group aren’t left out of the game at all. They can do everything in the game. Wanting to do solo content in a group doesn’t mean you can’t do it solo. Finally, grouped doesn’t have to mean “in a party”, informal groups form all the time.
• People who don’t want to group (or can’t, for whatever reason) on the other hand cannot do some of the content in the game and are prevented from finishing their story arcs because they end with content that requires a group.

Having difficulty getting a group for content affects everyone.

For me it was a surprise because I thought they’d actually learned from the numerous complaints about them ending the Personal Story with a group step and especially because the previous missions were soloable.