Guild Wars 2

Agreed.

I don’t mind the implementation and the reliance on guild hall upgrades.

Those upgrades are permanent once earned, and generally have a completely reasonable cost assuming you have even a small guild contributing to guild mission completions and the treasury.

The materials cost for the thing you actually scribe however is ludicrous.

50s for basic furniture? Okay, sure, that seems fair.

Then we get in to slivers… which have moved down 10-20s since the commendation trade was added. I like the idea of the commendation trade, but its implementation is poor. Sigurlina needs to sell more than one sliver per commendation.

Then we start talking pigments. I’m already a chef, so I make my own pigments by crafting dyes. Using ten characters and gathering plants to craft dye each day to salvage for the pigments I need I end up with enough brown pigment each day to make one item.

Then we get in to such stupidity as certain items (like a “guild chair” with no guild logo on it) costing over 60 shards

And these are the same modest chairs you see in a T1 bar.

Seriously?

GIANT STATUES cost less than chairs in this system.

The value of a decoration system is in having a large variety of decorations you can use many of to customize a space.

The supply and demand economics of both shards and pigments are not temporary supply/demand issues. They are permanently gated by low drop chances or weekly cooldowns.

These two factors need to be seriously revised if you want scribing to be any fun.

If the idea is that leveling scribing still take substantial effort, that’s fine. just adjust down the crafting xp gain of the recipies while adjusting their overall cost.

I’d happily have sat at lower scribing levels for longer if it was actually feasible to craft most of what was on my crafting list.

Banners, again, are stupidly, hilariously expensive compared to their commendation costs. My guild hadn’t unlocked hero banners in the old system, and I had originally lanned to make it a priority in the new upgrade system.

Then I looked at the recipies, associated costs, and other relative benefits of prioritizing the tavern over other structures. The difference in cost is laughably out of whack with reality.

The only banners I have crafted with scribing are banners I used to level because they were somewhat cheaper than furniture. They are simply not worth the cost to craft, which is a huge problem with scribing in general, and the upgrade value of the tavern specifically.

Who designed these cost metrics? Did they forget about the guild commendation trader? Did they forget that banner buffs only last for 30 minutes?

Scribing’s primary material gates need to be severely toned down.

The idea of adding the materials to the guild trader was a great one, so lets expand on that! This gives the guild trader a real opportunity cost because of limited trades per day, encourages guild members to get in on guild missions, and creates ways for people to monetize their commendations.

How about a new, static guild vendor page with the following items for 1 commendation:

Rank 1:
3 slivers (up from 1)
20 pigments (brown)

Rank 2:
20 pigments (other colors)

Rank 3:
30 pigments (randomly selected)
Scribe supply cache (Contains at least 3 shards or 10 pigments, gambling box with chance to gain lodestones or 250 stacks of various pigments)

Rank 4:
Random daily selection of 3 basic decorations (from the guild’s unlocked decoration merchant)

RustyMech.9876:

Power.2957:

Actually, Dark is correct. When I made Nevermore I tried to see if I could make another precursor and it stopped me. It is in fact once per account. I just went back and took a screenshot for you.

Ya, I just tried to craft prototype with the required items; no go I did not see any warning the first time I crafted it though. It’s weird that the vendor sells the collection items, very misleading.

The vendor sells those items in case you mess up and open the collection chest/use recipies on the wrong character.

For instance, I’m crafting incinerator on my thief, who is not a weaponsmith. Without thinking, I used the incinerator 1 recipe on my thief because it was lit up at 450 huntsman (technically only the gift can be crafted by huntsman.)

Realizing my mustake, I switched to my warrior (which is a weaponsmith) bought the box for 10k karma, and learned the recipies on the appropriate character.

Without the vendor reselling that box… I would have had to skill weaponsmith to 450 on my thief… from zero… even though I already have a 500 weaponsmith on my account.

Sheobix.8796:

fractals reward empty boxes with green gear that ends up being salvaged/vendored for 50c… or efforts go towards making infusions and pieces of gear that cost astronomical amounts of a certain resource

What fractals are you playing? Those boxes contain, usually trash worth the 20s key it takes to open them, a stack of 5 t6 mats, trash worth up to 5g (literally a trash item that vendors for 5g) ascended breather recipies (worth less than the trash items hilariously.) keys to open more boxes, stabilizing matrices to buy more keys with, or occasionally some ascended gear. If you have the extra loot mastry, they also contain a bunch of bonus agony inscriptions. (Which, if you have the mastry, you can very easily combine and slot in an attuned ring to easily increase your AR)

You don’t actually ever loot blues or greens from the encryptions. You get them from end chests and mob drops.

If you’re doing fractals and not opening encryptions, you’re throwing away the bulk of your rewards.

I do all of six fractals a day for the daily rotation (still building AR for 50+) and generally come out 5-20 gold richer.

They’re also apperantly bumping up liquid rewards from fractals in a patch this month.

Anyone complaining about fractal rewards, I’m convinced, played like levels 1-5 and stopped there. It’s a scaling reward/difficulty system. Get in to 30+ personal scale and you’ll find the payoff in fractals is actually right up there with old dungeon runs.

The white stag “destroys my theory” just as much as Scarlet Briar destroys the theory that asura are good at magitech.

The white stag is an exception, not the rule, and is a rather famous exception at that, notable for the fact that it’s an exception. Desired by the nightmare court for the fact that’s its an exception. A risk to the dream because of the fact that it’s an exception.

In reality the white stag is a lore black hole. It’s a convenient plot macguffin that I assure you we will never hear from again, like suits of invincible armor, magical superweapons, people’s sisters, hypnotism macines, time travel devices, and a whole range of personal story macguffins that have no relevance to the primary plotline, despuite how useful they may have been in the ongoing fight against the elder dragons.

It’s not an engine limitation. It’s a design choice.

Giving people gliders creates controllable air mobility.

Giving people helicopters and airplanes gives them uncontrollable air mobility.

They specifically went with gliding so that you can’t use it to skip past certain roadblocks and generally just fly around the map, only swooping down to loot a chest or do an event.

Aomine.5012:

PopeUrban.2578:

Their intent was that by lowering liquid gold income, the value of loot across the game would increase.

This is exactly what happenned. it’s extremely difficult to simply waste your time in the game now. if you’re acquiring loot or gathering pretty much anything, that stuff can almost always translate directly in to a nice sum of gold by trading it to another player.

Contrast this with before the patch, where so much of the the economy (crafting materials) was utterly useless.

if you’re attempting to gain wealth by hoarding your acquisitions in stead of selling what you don’t need to buy what you do, you’re playing exactly the way that anet wanted to discourage. That “hoard everything and spend only liquid gold income” was exactly the economic model they intended to change.

Gold is a token designed to trickly in to your pockets enough to create a supply, but its purpose is to change hands for the things players actually need, materials and gear. The problem with the old system was that yuou could easily make enough money to buy pretty much anything without actually selling anything, which created undersupply of a lot of items and oversupply of a lot more.

Now that supply/demand is more in balance across the game, the economy is healthier as a result. You aren’t forced to run just a handful of pieces of content to make decent money. In stead you’re encouraged to prioritize your goals and offload loot and mats that don’t contribute to those goals in exchange for loot and mats that do.

How’s it wealthier when ONLY raw materials are raising in price, but the source of gold and the value of EVERYTHING ELSE does not change in price/drop in price?

So we’re still getting the same crappy rares/greens that pretty much worth the same, or even less than before, while the raw materials continue to rise in price because only raw materials have value, while exotic/other 95% of loots are as worthless as usual.

Making 5% of raw materials extremely valuable and keep everything else constant is a healthy economy?

All the “cool skins” are bound to those materials, so even if you sell them, you’re not getting any closer to those cool skins. Chances are the high value materials are actually the only materials you actually need. So by dumping them, you’d have to rebuy them eventually.

You’re salvaging all that worthless loot right?

That one ingot per five blues salvaged is actually worth more than both your kit and what you would have acquired by vendoring them.

Just because salvaging got nerfed doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time.

Also, if you’re really going for liquid assets, run some fractals. I rarely leave the daily rotation with less than 5g more than I started. on lucky trash days I’ve made 25g just doing dailies from book drops and ectos.

Pocket mystic forge.
Stack of mystic forge stones (to use pocket mystic forge to make more mystic kits)
Mystic salvage kit

Zone keys (bleh)

Ley-Energy matter converter (because I don’t remember I’m out of keys until I’m out of keys, so I use it as an emergency key so I can hit that chest and then buy keys in stead of the other way around.)

“Serious” stat consumables
Other foods/consumables I pick up for when I don’t want to use my ‘serious’ ones but still want xp buffs.

Collection of res orbs/combat boosters just in case things get serious. (because having them in the bank always means not having them when I need them)

At least 100 bandit’s improvised bombs.
At least 10 ash legion spy kits.
At least 5 fire elemental powder.
All of my utility and stat infused amulets (so I can change buffs on the fly)
Backup pistol (because certain fights have shields/knockbacks that prevent properly using deathblossom, and pistol/dagger is better condi DPS than shortbow in those cases)

I used to carry around a hom portal stone, but then we got a guild hall and I didn’t need it any more.

In reference to elder dragon corruption and the inquest:

Asura in general are constantly attributed to scientific breakthroughs beyond the ken of the natural order of things because it’s a core foundation of their fictional archetype. Omadd’s machine, CoE, the fractal observatory, these are unlikely miracles of magitech that serve as plot fulcrums specifically because of the miraculous and unlikely nature of their success or existance.

I don’t think it’s at all silly to assume that yes, the inquest discovered a way to do something that the elder dragons can’t simply based upon the fact that the elder dragons seem to have no desire to do so, have never demonstrably done so, and have never once in all of recorded history been shown to have that ability. Creating virtually impossible miracles the strain the limitations of possibility are regular occurances for asura, and doing so with a malicious bent is the sole narrative mandate for the inquest as the ’evil asura faction"

While it is true that lack of evidence does not necessarily prove a point, what we do know is that

• Sylvari are minions of mordremoth.
• Sylvari are notable in the zhaitan arc as the only being that can not be corrupted by Zhaitan
• Not once in recorded history (unless your encycolpekittennowledge can find some, which would be awesome) is there an instance of any being suffering from corruption by two dragons at once, and in fact the elder dragons seem rather content to stay out of one another’s way. However, there were multiple occasions where it would have behooved Zhaitan to corrupt sylvari, and this never happenned. Not to pale tree sylvari or any other sylvari anywhere as far as we are aware. Biologically, innately, sylvari are immune to corruption. Regardless of whther they originate from the pale tree or not, unless that corruption stems directly from mordremoth.

On the subject of the dream and malyck, Malyck does not feel a connection to a dream. however, as a sylvari, he has the capacity for a dream. We know that the pale tree was capable of resisting mordremoth. We also know that malyck came from a tee somewhere.

Where is he circa HoT though? I can’t find him anywhere. Any other tree without the benefit of Ventari’s teaching would likely blindly follow mordremoth. It wouldn’t costruct a detailed mindscape specifically to instill a subconscious desire for righteousness. It would just birth sylvari so that they’re around when mordremoth wakes up. Sylvari are all born with this capacity as a function of their true purpose, including malyck. It doesn’t mean they are encouraged or taught to use it however.

Imagine being of malyck’s tree. As far as you are aware, the tree is just that, a tree. you can speak with the other sylvari around you, but you have no reason to even think about communicating mentally because nobody told you you could. However, as a sylvari you have that ability.

As humans we have the ability to run for miles without stopping. That endurance is somewhat unique in the animal kingdom. It’s a function of our evolution, and is implicit in the way our feet, spines, and musculature have evolved. When we developed complex eyes and upright posture so that we could percieve threats from far away, we evolved in such a manner that we could endure rather than outsprint predators, which are generally designed as sprinters.

However, in the modern age we don’t need to USE that ability, so many of us have never done so. Many people live their entire lives without running ten miles nonstop. However, it is an implicit human ability, and if given the inclination to do so we are unique among many of the creatures around us in our ability to develop that ability.

So too is they sylvari’s metnal connection with their trees, each other, and mordremoth. Just because it isn’t used doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Malyck and his tree were simply never encouraged to develop any sort of overt dream.

As for the white stag, that’s a complex issue that may have more in common with collective subconscious or simply another magical, psychic being with the ability to jack in to that telepathic network like neo jacks in to the matrix. It’s a terribly mysterious creature for sure.

Their intent was that by lowering liquid gold income, the value of loot across the game would increase.

This is exactly what happenned. it’s extremely difficult to simply waste your time in the game now. if you’re acquiring loot or gathering pretty much anything, that stuff can almost always translate directly in to a nice sum of gold by trading it to another player.

Contrast this with before the patch, where so much of the the economy (crafting materials) was utterly useless.

if you’re attempting to gain wealth by hoarding your acquisitions in stead of selling what you don’t need to buy what you do, you’re playing exactly the way that anet wanted to discourage. That “hoard everything and spend only liquid gold income” was exactly the economic model they intended to change.

Gold is a token designed to trickly in to your pockets enough to create a supply, but its purpose is to change hands for the things players actually need, materials and gear. The problem with the old system was that yuou could easily make enough money to buy pretty much anything without actually selling anything, which created undersupply of a lot of items and oversupply of a lot more.

Now that supply/demand is more in balance across the game, the economy is healthier as a result. You aren’t forced to run just a handful of pieces of content to make decent money. In stead you’re encouraged to prioritize your goals and offload loot and mats that don’t contribute to those goals in exchange for loot and mats that do.

I’ve found you generally get what you pay for.

Raidcall is a good low cost option, as is mumble, but a well moderated TS3 server has a lot of functionality (file buckets, logging, etc.) that extreds beyond voice comms, which is why you find that its generally a more popular option for a guild’s “official” comms.

For pugging though, easy access and basic comms is more important, as you don’t want to have to type in server bookmarks every time you PUG, so raidcall is a pretty good fit. A lot of people use Skype as well, now that it’s built in to windows.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Just to be clear, are we talking about one specific person and not naming them, or saying ‘that guy’ like in that Episode of Friends where they say “I hate that guy?”

It’s only one specific person.

You know.

That guy.

Log in.

Check aurillium and guild upgrades, purchase any needed mats.

Change guild MOTD to announce new upgrades or alert members to needed materials, plans, or event schedules.

See who’s online in the guild

See what they’re doing while gathering stuff for crafting.

New guild members? Make sure to go through any questions or orientation stuff.

Ask if anyone needs to do any instances or guild mission credit.

Form group for whatever content people want to do, or respond to the every day question “so what are we doing tonight?” from guild members by joining their groups.

If not forming a group, go hang out with someone doing open world stuff.

If nobody’s online, go solo Various HoT- related achievement goals.

Craft up whatever I can afford to level scribe.

Log out.

I love that guy.

It’s like a loot delivery service.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

The expansion has been pretty successful.

Can you link us up with the data to back up that feeling. Thanks.

http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/o-PILES-OF-AMERICAN-MONEY-facebook.jpg

“Peer review” sites are inherantly biased toward negative reviews because those with nothing bad to say don’t want to burn bridges, risk their career, or alienate future employers.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

PopeUrban.2578:

I must have missed something. The inquest’s multi-corruption was a fabrication, and the point of the facility. Such corruption does not happen naturally, it requires specialized equipment. Unless, you’re asserting that the crucible of eternity isn’t built specifically to facilitate unnatural uses of dragon energy, and it’s just a big building.

It is built specifically to study dragon energy and to create a custom dragon champion the Inquest (specifically Kudu) can control.

However, the notion that multi-dragon corruption is fabrication, capable only with specialized equipment, and cannot happen naturally is 100% player speculation. The only equipment we see is that of delivering dragon corruption into subjects.

So is the claim that sylvari are immune due to being dragon minions.

And to claim that the Inquest are capable of creating a multi-corrupted dragon champion but the Elder Dragons cannot is the same as claiming that the Inquest are better at corrupting than the Elder Dragons, who’s very essence is that of dragon corruption.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’d also appreciate if you could point out where it is confirmed or indicated that the dream effectively isolated the pale reavers from being corrupted by Zhaitan. The source of the Sylvari’s immunity, unless I’ve missed something extremely important, is that they are “property” of Mordremoth.

Not just Zhaitan, but dragon corruption in general.

It is, in fact, stated that the Dream is protection against Mordremoth as well.

Avatar of the Tree: There are those who reject my protection. It leaves them vulnerable in ways they cannot imagine, in ways they never were before. I shield you as best I can and will for as long as I can.
PC: You’re talking about dragon corruption. We’ve been immune to it.
Avatar of the Tree: Yes. In the past, my children have been immune. But Mordremoth’s corruption is powerful, and just as Zhaitan created the undead from so many creatures, so Mordremoth’s corruption can change you.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rallying_Call

The Elder Dragon can implant thoughts in its creations—thoughts they may even believe to be their own—and only a combination of immense willpower and the protection of the Pale Tree can prevent Mordremoth from taking control. Sylvari receive calls to action in the form of the Wyld Hunt—or the Dark Hunt, for Nightmare Courtiers—and these compulsions act as an access point for Mordremoth’s influence.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/points-of-interest-episode-18-summary/

“Pale Tree’s protection” can only be The Dream (and, indirectly, Nightmare), as evident by the fact that people can leave her protection (becoming Soundless).

Mordremoth is capable of bypassing this protection, but the other Elder Dragons are not. In the final story instance of HoT, just as in the blog post, it’s revealed that Mordremoth has a connection to the Dream as well, and that is how he’s getting at the sylvari. But as we see during Buried Insight’s side achievement to talk to the mordrem guard there, even the mordrem guard are not truly corrupted – for they are still tied to the Dream, the protection. They just gave into Mordremoth’s whispers which happen through the Wyld Hunts and Dark Hunts, showing to us that even Mordremoth cannot corrupt sylvari.

PopeUrban.2578:

The dream is a fabrication to protect their developing psyches from Mordremoth specifically.

The Dream is the sole way Mordremoth gets into sylvari psyches.

How can it be protection against Mordremoth, when it is the single reason he can attack them mentally?

PopeUrban.2578:

Again, the PC never joins destiny’s edge. The biconics join YOUR guild, of which you are the leader, and which is never explicitly named. You do in fact run WITH DE, but are not and never were a part of it. You are in fact in charge of the biconics. You lead them. they formed a guild around you and made certain not to name it. For plot purposes you’re a guild leader of at least a group of NPCs, as well as commander of the pact.

It’s stated elsewhere too that you are a member of Destiny’s Edge. The members of Destiny’s Edge treats you as one of their own as well.

The PC is a member of Destiny’s Edge. The PC is the one who brought them together again. The Pact Commander is Snaff’s replacement. The PC fulfills the role that Snaff played – the glue to keep the guild together, adviser to the guild’s actions, and effectively the strongest member.

Again, where is it stated that the player is a member of DE. This is never stated by any source or NPC in the game. You are never inducted in to DE. No member of DE or any NPC ever refers to you as such. You are an outsider responsible for reassembling them, and a close friend, yes, but you are not one of their number.

Further, The dream, or rather the sylvari capacity for that state, is of mordremoth originally. The nature of the pale tree, and the sylvari is that of mordremoth. The fact that the dream even exists is due to the sylvari being creations of mordremoth, and thus being designed with a limited hive mind

If what you are asserting is true, then the soundless would have been vulnerable to corruption by zhaitan. We know for a fact they are not, despite having no connection to the specific isolated hive-mind of the pale tree’s dream.

All sylvari are naturally part of one “dream” or another. The soundless go through intense meditation to shut it out. Other trees don’t have avatars that seem to care much about talking with or rearing their children. However, as evidenced by Mordremoth’s unfluence, sylvari are naturally psychically connected with one another, just like most dragon minions are naturally psychically connected to the dragons they serve. The dream is protection against mordremoth because the mother tree’s will stands as a bulwark between mordy and young sylvari. That doesn’t change the fact that their ability to experience it is all is specifically because they were designed with the capacity to take direct orders from an elder dragon if called upon. This communications method was simply hijacked and repurposed by the pale tree, after having been reared by ventari in the absence of an awake mordremoth.

There is no firm logical basis to assume that, given the copious amounts of evidence we have, Elder dragons are able to take ownership of anything claimed by another dragon. The only place we see it happen is in CoE, where years of research and specialized equipment to harness dragon energies without the consent of those dragons was used to do so.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Idk. I remember they said there would be new karma vendors. Are there any? If there are, I haven’t encountered them yet.

pact commander mastry unlocks the ability to use new roaming karma vendors in core tyria that sell rare and unique crafting recipies as well as an item that instantly gives you the next map reward.

The map reward items, once you collect a bunch, are a pretty good but time gated way to spend karma.

Mid-craft cooking/scribing materials.

Why can we put ingots and processed leather in the materials page but not, like, balls of dough, sandpaper, or pens?

Lets not forget:

• Appearance packages – Because your ten bucks isn’t good enough and you need to buy a bunch of bundled stuff just to get the one thing you want. This reeks of profiteering. These are not bundled deals. They are bundles specifically designed to make the things in them derive a higher amount of cash per purchase.

• Glider skins – Despite the fact that gliders are one of the major features of the expansion, at launch there were literally zero ingame ways to obtain skins for the glider. Now there are a few legendaries and a MASSIVE number of gem store skins, several of which were sold in the gem store on the day of release This is like releasing a new weapon type with only one skin. It’s frustrating in a game where stat acquisition is the primary reward model, but absolutely intolerable in a game where the primary reward model is cosmetics.

• Revnant – Revnant is an excuse to add a bullet point to the expansion, despite adding nothing compelling to the game. The rev’s legend swapping mechanics create a class that flies directly in the opposite direction of what players wanted from GW2 by creating a new class with even less build customization options than existing classes. On top of that it is used as the platform for several tech upgrades for new skill types, and includes a bunch of mechanics that would have added a ton of value if they were in stead utilized and deployed as second elite specs for existing classes. Legend swapping is a horrible mechanic that plays like bashing an elementalist over the head until he forgets half of his class mechanics. its is overly limited and the copious amount of recharge times on the skills and the refill of energy on legend swap make the energy mechanics pointless. Revnant is a poorly designed class with some cool abilities. Revn needs at least twice as many legends, baseline, to come close to the build diversity of other classes, and needs a complete overhaul of its energy mechanics if they’re meant to actually make the class feel different to play.

• Elite specs – Elite specs are designed to be horizontal and choice based, however that horizontal choice based system doesn’t work when there are not choices. Elite specs are a great design for further content, but absolutely meaningless in function when their initial release doesn’t include at least two.

Well done. It is fixed!

I must have missed something. The inquest’s multi-corruption was a fabrication, and the point of the facility. Such corruption does not happen naturally, it requires specialized equipment. Unless, you’re asserting that the crucible of eternity isn’t built specifically to facilitate unnatural uses of dragon energy, and it’s just a big building.

I’d also appreciate if you could point out where it is confirmed or indicated that the dream effectively isolated the pale reavers from being corrupted by Zhaitan. The source of the Sylvari’s immunity, unless I’ve missed something extremely important, is that they are “property” of Mordremoth. This is why there are no sylvari risen. The dream is a fabrication to protect their developing psyches from Mordremoth specifically. As we’ve seen, sufficiently strong-willed sylvari were able to resist his call. How the Soundless and other sylvari from other trees fare, or if they’re able to resist it unclear.

Again, the PC never joins destiny’s edge. The biconics join YOUR guild, of which you are the leader, and which is never explicitly named. You do in fact run WITH DE, but are not and never were a part of it. You are in fact in charge of the biconics. You lead them. they formed a guild around you and made certain not to name it. For plot purposes you’re a guild leader of at least a group of NPCs, as well as commander of the pact.

because you applied one +1 infusion from a stack of 9 of them.

You had 9 +1 infusions, you put one of them in the ring.

You did the same thing as attempting to apply a stack of 9 runes to one armor piece. You just took one off your stack.

If you want +9 AR, you need to start combining those +1 infusions to make higher level ones. You can not add a stack of infusions to a ring just like you can’t add a stack of runes to a single armor piece.

The reason you get so many +1s that you have huge stacks of them is that you should be combining them either with an artificer or at the mastry merchant, to turn those stacks of +1s in to smaller stacks of +2 or +3, and those in to +4 and so on.

Think of the +1s as “ore” you can use to “refine” in to infinite higher level infusions by combining them over and over.

I am absolutely NOT stating that she wants to do turn anything in to a crystalline world full of crystalline people, nor did I ever do so.

What I’m calling “benevolent corruption” or “innoculation” you are calling “sharing energy”

It is a purely semantic argument. The ideal is simple. Beings and area “touched” by one elder dragon can not be “corrupted” by another. “Corruption” is only so because the elder dragons are of malicious intent and actively seek to enslave other beings and have no concern for their individuality

You’re entirely too hung up on the literal meaning of the word “corruption” which is why I made certain to place it in quotations every time I used it as it is the closest corollary.

I’ve made the why quite clear. The how and exact what is pretty fluid and I’ve had a lot of fun revising it based on your information.

As for your argument that “you can dye stuff” I’ m not talking about your personal customizations. I’m talking about the default appearance of the gear.

It is painfully clear that these crystals are linked to glint’s legacy. let’s say they had nothing to do with the eggs. What then is their purpose, where did they come from, and most importantly why are they growing?

My extremely simplified version of this theory, stripped of all sematic arguments, is that the crystals are growing specifically because glint’s egg is maturing at an accelerated rate, and that their purpose is to assist the occupant of that egg in “sharing energy” as you like to call it, with the world to protect it from elder dragon corruption.

Forget the egg angle or the vaguaries of why or why the crystal’s activators are if it makes you happy, it’s immaterial to the central theory here. However you’d be a fool to suggest anything other than that those crystals are tied directly to glint’s plan, whatever it is.

You seem to have this idea that the world is somehow fundamentally changed by this “energy sharing” and you’re correct. It is. however it’s changed in a way that is virtually imperceptable because Glint’s agenda is to protect what is, not to mold it in to an image that mirrors her own.

Unless of course you’re asserting that doing so is actually beyond the ability of a dragon. Which, honestly, seems silly. If you can subugate and transform, surely you can simply gift and not alter. We’ve seen nothing to suggest the elder dragons are unable to use their powers in a benevolent and nontransformative fashion, simply that they have no desire to do so.

What we do know is that the only thing that can absolutely prevent elder dragon corruption is another elder dragon. Anything else is up to some combination of science, free will, and plot convenience.

Also, destiny’s edge is never your guild according to the story. DE is their own guild, whom you happen to meet. DE isn’t out claiming halls because they’re either dead, captured, or have more important things to do by that point in the time line.

Attempting to attach the “logic of multiplayer” to the plotline is a road best not travelled because the game itself doesn’t attempt to travel it. What the game does do however is make sure it can assume that any person that interacts with, lives nearby, or otherwise has access to those crystals… is also the commander of the pact, egg bearer, slayer of mordremoth, and the most important person in the world… just like everyone else.

Corruption != monstrosities.

We’ve seen on several occasions completely or mostly unaltered early stage minions of several elder dragons. We ourselves experience it when we bond with the egg during HoT. We’ve seen norn who give themselves to jormag do not immediately become hulking monstrosities. That takes time, and presumable effort on the part of Jormag or his agents by proxy. It seems only logical that if the aim was not to create grotesque weapons of war, but a simple “inoculation” against outside corruption this would be well within the sphere of ability of any elder dragon. Most choose not to do so as their mandate is conquest, and thus they have no interest in preserving those they corrupt.

The egg is important to this plan specifically because Glint isn’t around to facilitate that role. The crystals were important as there was no guarantee any one egg would survive, thus spreading and hiding them throughout the world in such out of the way places.

As for who built the structures in lost precipice? Could have been anyone, but if it was in fact the forgotten, then I ask the same question you asked my about them. Why don’t they look like other forgotten structures? More importantly, why are they filled with human statues and imagery not directly related to the gods?

It seems obvious these were at some point in the past human settlements, either indigenous humans or refugees from the war in kryta. We didnt see similar structures during GW1 in the region, but at that time most humans were relatively new to the region, and largely consisted of soldiers and merchant caravans.

These crystals and their pink/white sheen are absolutely related to glint. they share the same appearance as the crystal bits we find on “arbiter” armor, her egg, and the crystal bits of the herald’s gear. nowhere in GW2 can I recall seeing remarkably blue crystals unless you could the obviously blue zephyrite ones (which come in multiple hues for readability)

There is only one egg bearer. However, any character who can interact with that crystal is likely treated by the plot as both pact commander and egg bearer. Just like the game treats YOU like the commander for the purposes of open world storytelling and everyone who isn’t you as other pact personnell. This viewpoint extends to guild halls. YOU are the important character when the plot and gameplay systems demand it. In this case the person activating the crystal. Just as there can’t be seven thousand pact commanders, there logically can’t be seven thousand people activating the crystal. It’s a slight plot hole for gameplay purposes necessary to tell a story in an MMO.

Indeed glint’s plan extends beyond the egg. The theory I posit is one explanation for that plan. Benign “corruption” which requires glint, or one of her offspring to function as a central controlling factor in the same manner that the other EDs must exist and be alive to effectively corrupt new minions. By caliming and holding these locations player guilds (and NPC organizations for any non-hall apperances of these crystals) are “protecting it all” with the obvious super important centerpiece being the plot-specific singular egg bearer and the singular location of Tarir, right?

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I was really excited to hear Rytlock went into the mists with his sword to stop the Ascalon ghosts at the end of LS S2….. yet the ghosts still persist after the release of the expansion.

It would have been an excellent addition to the HoT release to see the ghosts taken out once and for all, and have those areas reworked.

In GW1, they overhauled almost all of factions, replacing most of the afflicted with Ministry.

We won’t get that sort of treatment for GW2 tho it would seem….

more missed opportunities to make the game really great….. and instead its just mediocre.

Rytlock went in to the mists because the ritual to banish the ghosts failed, and in stead attempted to swallow the sword, so he went after it. The ghosts were never banished. He just tried and failed to do so.

That said, Arenanet tried for an entire living story season to do massive permanent map changes, and people hated it and complained about removal of content.

I’m convinced we’ll see what an Orr on the mend looks like in the future, but it’ll be on a new map in some of the unexplored area of Orr, likely as a staging point on our way to the fire islands. Anet took an obvious direction in HoT of placing zones at specific points in time, just like GW1, and making the story move you through the zones in chronological order. Now that core tyria and it’s multiple optional zone paths for leveling don’t need to be a thing any more, I’d expect future releases to follow the same strictly linear time scale.

you have to hit R20 to go ranked, so if you’re playing ranked matches you can be assured that the people around you are most likely not just PvE people on their first match ever. They’ve had at least a few days of practice.

That said, i think the system needs to be more tolerant when team members leave, and more severe when you leave a match.

Has anyone tested rank effects from leaving? IMO it should instantly knock you down a pip not matter what.

I have a theory, which konig has been generous enough to poke many needed hole in, over at the lore forums about this very thing

It seems they do in fact grow with either guild level or time.

Interesting stuff Konig, thanks for correcting my timeline!

Let’s toss out a lot of assumptions and inconsequential theory here and get straight to the core question, as I feel we’re becoming mired in minutiae and really losing the focus of discussion.

What and why are these crystals?

I am not making the assertion that these places were created to guard the eggs. They were converted from existing settlements, by the forgotten and their natural inhabitants, and in most cases were only marginally changed simply to suit the placement of the crystal itself.

I also made no assertion that these locations house ley line energy, or are designed as hatcheries. Tarir is designed for that purpose, as an incubator.

However these other locations I envision as safe houses. Literally a way to avoid putting all of glint’s eggs in one basket. Whether at the urging of glint, or of their own volition, the forgotten establish, as they later do with the exalted and through dwarven proxy the zephyrites, a series of orders charged with safeguarding the eggs.

They aren’t all indicative of forgotten architecture because they are not all forgotten settlements In fact, however many of these places may exist in the world, each may have been originally constructed and inhabited by any number of different cultures or even races. What they have in common is, simply, that they were approached by the forgotten or other agents of this “people’s dragon” agenda and convinced to take up the mantle of safeguarding an egg with the help of these crystalline structures.

The crystals themselves may have housed the eggs given their general size and shape, and their power did not derive from ley line energy, but rather from Glint Herself

Glint’s death was the catalyst that caused them to fail, and, being reliant upon these devices, their defenders may have quickly found themselves unable to prevent becoming overrun, despite their convictions or other martial preparations. The two such places we know of are both well within mordremoth’s realm and overrun by mordrem. Sensible, as even without the energy they derived from glint, it is conceivable that these crystals were still of a magical nature, and thus of interest to various elder dragons and other parties interested in such things.

Tarir, looking at your revised timeline, is either the centerpiece of this plan, or its last resort. In either case, Tarir, and the exalted for that matter, are significantly different in purpose. Tarir was designed for the expressed purpose of incubating a dragon, not simply protecting a dragon egg.

The basic premise here is that The crystals existed to help house and protect eggs until they could be incubated either naturally or artificially in Tarir and _spread wide enough about the world that they could be later used as focal points for these crystal dragons to corrupt, and thereby safeguard the surrounding land and people from the other elder dragons for the rest of time

Furthermore, as to the timeline, we just don’t know where the expeditions sit. You can’t quite ascribe narrative flow to map connections simply because maps are fixed in time, but often connected in bizzarre ways. Vale is connected to Verdant Brink, despite being clearly places after Dragon’s stand in the time line.

As for the guilds angle. Simply put, I can’t really believe Anet would write a narrative system that assumed only certain players were ‘special’ enough to activate/bond with these crystals. The guilds angle assumes that a single person, generally one in a leadership role, is fit to activate/bond with the crystal. However, that person is not uniquely special among his peers (guildmates) aside from the fact they have chosen to follow him.

Either anyone assumed to have made way through the appropriate story steps has the ability and the “leadership” requirement is simply a convenience for gameplay purposes, or arenanet actually wants to codify, in lore, that leading a guild makes you magically special. I’m guessing the first is true.

I mean that’s all I have for you really, a theory, based upon observation and revised with your impressive historical knowledge, but I refuse to believe these crystals aren’t somehow connected with the overarcing emerging plotline of glint’s egg. Their appearance, prominence, and very existence is simply too well placed to be a coincidence.

After all, it would have been really easy to just make the centerpiece of these halls a structure, or a banner, or anything else. Anet chose, specifically, to make them crystals with a very close material apperance to that used everywhere we associate with glint in GW2, and chose to use a shape very appropriate for housing the GW2 version of what we know one of glint’s dragon eggs looks like.

I’m interested to see if you have an alternate theory, but from where I’m sitting it’s the only one that makes even a little but of sense, unless the halls really are just non-canon lore black holes, which is something anet specifically said they didn’t want halls to be.

However, using them in the context of “one place of many” allows them to attach lore significance to every guild hall, as well as establish a non-hall location for story instances regarding such crystals to be introduced. This has the effect of not making any individual hall or guild “the chosen one” but rather communicating that they’re all inducted in to a grand and heroic tradition to save the world, and one even non-guilded players can participate in throughout the stroy by way of introducing one or more such locations that are not guild halls.

I’m not really interested is catering to “fight guilds”

They aren’t WvW guilds. They’ve co-opted WvW for a self invented game type because the game (foolishly) still hasn’t catered to large scale TDM, literally one of the easiest game types to track and code.

I’m interested in WvW actually awarding and incentivizing players to play like they’re trying to win WvW.

The game only ever did that at alunch, when pve server buffs were a thing.

A criminal lack of design attention or ability from the WvW team created what we have now. A WvW where people are more interesting in bashing each other in the face in the middle of a field than trying to take or defend objectives or utilize/defend siege.

Updates to the reward system were always aimed at the wrong targets. They were always aimed at rewarding people for taking objectives and killing each other, but the basic DNA of WvW is about neither one of those things. It is about owning objectives as a team

Until WvW hands out rewards strictly on the basis of how well the team as a whole is doing, its going to continue to be broken.

Its not the new maps. The new maps are actually fun. The problem is that people don’t want to play in them because they’re built for WvW siege play in stead of being built for random kitten roaming and quick flipping.

I’d be extremely happy to see all of the people that just want “big fights” to go to EOTM where the score doesn’t matter and there’s no meaningful objective. I’d be happy to see the stupidity of “server teams” killed in favor of randomly selected teams per season for every guild to ensure more stable and even populations.

WvW is a massive and highly objective based mode. Its reward system and the server transfer model does not reflect that, and it should. If it did, more people would actually go to WvW to play WvW.

Fix the personal rewards to match the team oriented gametype and wvw will start to fix itself.

The forgotten built the structures, but I’m fairly certain Exalted Burnishers put that golden sheen on them. That is literally their only job. They make stuff gold. If there were no exalted prior to GW1, then how is it possible we see the same forgotten architecture with gold leafing?

The only possible explanation is that the exalted derive this ability through instruction from the forgotten, which supports my theory of the fogotten having a heavy hand in testing/training the exalted, and thus being complicit with glint’s agenda.

Those multiple eggs were not only housed in this one region. The core of my theory assumes such places exist all over tyria. we just so happen to have access to these ones.

Tarir, being, as far as we know, the newest of these structures was created without an egg at its heart, specifically to house the last egg which glint kept close by until she passed it off to the zephyrites. Tarir and the exalted are late comers because they’re failsafes. Tarir’s location has a lot more to do with its position as a leyline nexus. It’s a heavily fortified, leyline powered, purpose built bunker for a worst case scenario in which the outposts themselves (guild halls and other regions of tyria that include such a crystal) failed.

I’ll break it down to a simpler timeline to illustrate.

Human settlements exist.

Glint breaks away from kralk, shutters herself away in the crystal sanctuary with the assistance of a faction of forgotten.

Glint begins work on a plan to safeguard tyria from the next rise of the EDs by creating a symbiotic “corruption” of tyria. She begins birthing a massive brood of eggs.

Glint tasks her forgotten allies with establishing sanctuaries throughout tyria for these eggs so that they can mature in to her leutentants for this new plan.

The forgotten enlist the aid of human settlements, sometimes just visiting, sometimes sticking around.

A series of enclaves is established across tyira. Each is protected by an aspect or device of Glint, a crystal, and each houses an egg.

Glint, recognizing the first stirring of the EDs and realizing her plan may not come to fruition soon enough.

Glint asks her forgotten allies to seek among the places they’ve established and the heroes of tyria candidates for an elite, immortal order called the Exalted.

Under Glint’s instruction, the forgotten, with their exalted allies, construct Tarir at a leyline nexus. Its mission is to rapidly accelerate the hatching of one of Glint’s eggs so that, should Glint die, her plan can be carried out anew by one of her offspring.

The exalted in Tarir, having completed their work, go in to stasis, only to be activated by an egg.

Glint accompanies DE against Kralk, in an attempt to buy her enclaves more time. She fails, and is killed.

With Glint’s death, the crystals protecting the egg enclaves fail. They are overrun quickly by forces seeking to consume or destroy the eggs. Some of these forces are elder dragons, some are domestic. The occupants of these settlements are killed or flee.

Glint entrusts a final egg, kept in stasis in the sanctuary, to the Zephyrites. Their mission, take the egg to Tarir.

Caithe discovers this information in the Silverwastes by accident. She determines that it is pert of her wild hunt to end the dragons that she deliver the egg to Tarir.

The Zephyrites fail.

Caithe Fails.

The Commander succeeds in bringing the egg to Tarir.

The Commander undergoes forgotten tests, becomes bonded with the egg, the commander is now “corrupted” by the infant dragon within.

The Commander discovers a sanctuary, clears it of Mordrem, and reactivates the crystal.

The crystal grows in strength as the commander and the egg mature in power.

The Commander lobotomizes Mordremoth.

Tarir achieves its function, redirecting the leyline energy in to the Egg. Glint’s plan has a newfound chance at saving the world from the Elder Dragons and avoiding a catastrophic event that may come to pass if they are all killed.

The problem is that they designed it in such a way that you can ignore all the other content in the first place.

The entire idea of every HoT map (and silverwastes for that matter) is that you show up on the map and do events, and after a while you end up at the boss meta.

People learned really quick that you can circumvent the silverwastes prep phase via taxi, so anet decided to put the HoT events on a timer.

I don’t think there’s anything anet can do outside of making literally every event be a boss phase to change that. It’s really your fault, not the game’s that the only thing you want to do on the whole map is the boss event. The boss event is a very small portion of the content.

They built raids, fractals, and dungeons for people that want to walk straight in to boss fights on demand. That’s what instances are for. Content spawned just for you exactly when you want to do the content. Open world bosses are on a schedule because they’re open world zones, and thus can not be expected to revolve around your schedule.

The only problem with TD meta is that it fails so easily, not that it’s on a timer. If they simply added more time to the gerent spawn events it would be just as difficult as the other metas, requiring coordination but not instantly failing because one lane was a little light for ten minutes.

Because raids are PvE.

PvE is all about the economy of getting gear, or getting multiple sets of gear, or getting legendaries.

If you didn’t need gear at all for PvE, you completely undermine the basic economy of PvE.

The easiest fix for everyone whining is for them to stop whining and recognize that raids are content designed to be literally the last thing you do, when you’re at the pinnacle of a PvE build’s power and have money to burn on extra gear sets.

Also, people could just go do vale guardian in exotics and get all their ascended easily that way for free.

I agree with this.

It took me quite some time to finish out my 5/5 set, and I actually did it for the stats, and so that I didn’t have to swap gear to go from fractals to other PvE.

Those 7 AR ones are nice, but for someone who has a set of 5/5, they aren’t really usable without spending a fortune on extractors or changing characters.

If I had a simple MF recipie to upgrade my existing 5/5 to a 7/5 that would be nice. Even if it cost a little extra.

• 5/5 infusion
• 7 infusion
• vial of mist essence
• Glob of ectoplasm

This is a reasonable recipie, the rarest bit being the vial, which seems pretty fair, as you’re probably not worried about upgrading these infusions until you’re no longer saving up the vials for something else, as you’ll get way more AR for your buck with an an AR infusion slot anyway.

I mean, top end infusions are really overpriced anyway, and are all about having something to spend money on so you can minmax with very little return on value anyway.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• Add a fifth daily to each section. This daily is a HoT-only daily. In PvE, it’s a 50% chance it refers to stuff in the Magus Falls maps.
• Add fractal dailies to the log-in screen list and the Daily section. The fifth HoT-only daily is the one requiring the mastery to unlock.
• Expand list of available dailies.

PopeUrban.2578:

They want dungeons to exists specifically for the token items at this point.

PvP reward tracks lead me to believe that they just want dungeons to not exist.

Aside from the dungeon achievements (not the collections at that), there’s no need to do dungeons. Ever.

They had a chance to make them relevant despite nerfing the rewards with the legendary precursor collections. What do they do? Fractals, fractals, same goals as other legendaries, fractals!

-_-

PvP rewards tracks aren’t really indicitive of any such mentality. They have a pretty good track record of adding reward track lines for all pve content since they invented that system. Their obvious intent is that everything but “top end” PvE rewards are obtainable through PvP.

They don’t (and rightly shouldn’t) view dungeons as top end content.

I actually really like the refocus on fractals and the new single fractal system. In theory it’s easier to push an occasional fractal more often than an occasional dungeon path due to length and expected narrative complexity. Not to mention, with fractals, there’s a shared reward pool and thus there’s no design time spent on figuring out reward schemes.

People kinda hate the system, but I rather like the structure of the new dailies and what they mean for puggable content, or quick runs without the need to necessarily “speed run” content.

Now, it remains to be seen if they actually use all the design advantages afforded by the fractal framework to produce group content or if they simply let fractals fester with no new content for another age.

• All venoms now apply only one charge when used, and share a cooldown. We felt venoms were overly complicated to use and our intent was always that the thief used them to compliment alpha strikes or as party support with venmous aura, so we have normalized them to better fit our vision and reinforce the purity of venoms.

• Removed skill recharge from Improvisation. We felt that the random nature of improvisation didn’t promote skillful play. It is our opinion that gaining extra stolen items is a more skillful feature, and so we have in stead changed this trait to grant three stolen items and increase the cooldown of steal by 10%.

I get the intent behind this change, but untargeted steal had uses. Maybe there should just be a toggle in options that applies to all targeted skills.

Shards are not dungeon tokens.

The intended method of raid rewards is boss RNG, not token purchases. The tokens are intended to be supplemental so that if you have horrible luck you can still get what you want, not the primary means of getting your drops as they are in dungeons.

Basically, you’re supposed to repeat the raid to get your desired item as a drop, not buy it with shards. The shards exist simply as a meansure to keep you from totally giving up hope if your luck is really bad.

Whether this is a better system or not is debatable, but they were pretty straightforward that this was the way they intended the system to work.

As to why, given the assumptions of this theory, you don’t see the same gold leafing in the structures in the wastes or lost precipice, I think it comes down to location.

The gold is a countermeasure to mordremoth specifically, and these locations are quite some distance from the percieved stronghold of mordremoth. It also worth noting that as far as we know that gold leafing is a product of the exalted themselves as some sort of magical constructs.

Maybe we’re looking at other orders, perhaps not proto-zephyrites, but sister orders similar to how the brotherhood of the dragon was related in purpose but not directly in lineage. These were guarding eggs in these locations, and that not all of these people were destined to ultimately joining the ranks of the exalted, it would also make sense that those settlements didn’t bear the distinctive architecture and materials used by the exalted. My house doesn’t look like a military base because it doesn’t house and equip soldiers. My house would also probably fall to enemy forces quite quickly if the protections that keep those forces at bay failed.

The exalted may have been a concept invented later on, after the establishments of these orders, specifically in preparation for when/if they fell. This falls in the timeline pretty well, and would also support this idea that the forgotten in support of glint weren’t around for their founding, but showed up later to assist and direct the exalted recruiting process.

They’re simple structures seemingly carved from local materials. I’d imagine that if you were to find such a place in, say, the fire islands, or the shiverpeaks it would also look quite different as a reflection of its local populace. They may have even been pre-existing settlements converted to glint’s cause later.

I’m also pretty sure they’re not related to the druids. We’ve seen pre-transformation druid dwellings all over magumma in GW1. Empty cities in the thick jungles, usually not too far from a few helpful local druids. You find them in exploration zones and all over the jungle, always devoid of population, unlike everywhere else in GW1 we see dwellings, which are either explained as or physically populated by npcs.

This is an attempt to repopulate WvW, and the most backward way to go about it.

In stead of giving people an incentive to play, they’re creating a punishment for playing established characters.

This is the exact opposite of the logic behind masteries.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

WvW rewards are and have always been severely out of touch with the basic expenditures required to play wvw. Your game mode can not sustain a population if it actively requires players to switch to PvE in order to play it proplerly.

The entire design of wvw rewards is fundamentally broken, and has been since launch. Every update has gone in the opposite direction of rewarding people for actually playing the game mode as intended, and has prioritized unrelated activities, creating a culture and system of pure metagaming while avoiding the very goal structure wvw was created for.

They want dungeons to exists specifically for the token items at this point.

The other dailies exist to drive people to do core tyria open world content until the end of time so the zones are always at least somewhat populated for new players.

I wouldn’t image HoT zones being on the daily rotation until hoT becomes part of the free game for that reason.

Outfits are dumb.

Armor skins are great.

Why does arenanet refuse to add new armor to the game unless it includes all three weights?

Why can’t I get an armor skin set with purchased outfits for whatever seams it matches with?

I like the headpiece, or shoulders from some skins but hate the skin. or some outfits that have a cool chestpiece but crap shoulders, pants, etc.

I would totally buy more outfits if they came with applicable armor skin unlocks. If an outfit uses the light armor seams, have it unlock a light armor skin set when purchased too! This is obviously designed as heavy armor. Would it be so awful to have it come with a matching heavy armor skin set unlock?

I don’t think they’ll assist you with that. Sorry for your loss, but hopefully you learn from this experience and wake up a little bit when there’s an “are you sure” message with pink or purple text in it from the sheer terror of repeating your mistake again!

Ah yeah, the rank points ones, as those aren’t awarded until match completion. Makes sense. Not sure how they could fix that to deincentivize throwing matches.

Maybe PvP missions shouldn’t have time limits, but rather match limits in stead?

So you start the mission and que, the mission has an effectively infinite time limit but automatically cancels at the end of a match?

Up to 8 players, you’ll only have one head to kill for each phase. At 9 it spawns two heads, and every ~9 players beyond that is an additional head. Additionally, more players (I don’t know the exact numbers on this) will spawn an additional boss after the head chopping phase.

The most efficient method is taking exactly 8 players, as you’ll be doing the mission with as many players possible at the lowest scale.

Just move as quickly as possible to each head, kill all three vinetenders, and then chop down the head, then move quickly to wherever the next head spawns. Ignore all of the other mobs unless you need to kill them because they’re blocking you from killing vinetenders.

After the vinetender phase you’ll have to move to the crystal chamber and kill a boss there. If you’ve ever done dragon’s stand, you’ll probably recognize the boss.

If you’re doing lost precipice, you’ll want everyone in your party to have glider mastry 2 so they can use the updrafts there to get around efficiently. if you’re doing lost precipice, gliders alone should be fine, but studying the environment to know where bouncing mushrooms are located if you fall off things or need to move up and down levels to get to the next head spawn might be useful.

What exactly are you having trouble with? I’ve successfully completed this multiple times with 3 players.

If you’re having trouble with the timers, you may want to send everyone except the guild leader to the center of your future hall before triggering the mission, as they’re statistically more likely to be closer to the first head spawn.

If you’re having trouble with the end boss, just avoid the axe lines on the floor, and take cover/get out of melee when you hear him yell “one thousand axes!”

The mission does not scale for your guild roster, only for the number of players you bring in to the instance.

Hi Solstice.

[POPE] is a small guild of roughly 5ish active players per day with more on weekends with a highly team oriented philosophy. We endeavor to group with one another as much as possible, and maintain a fairly late schedule for core members around 8PM-12-AM EST. We’ve got a fully functional lost precipice guild hall with 9% buffs for your convenience, and I personally go out of my way to provide anyo member who wants it access to their own little area of the hall for decorating.

We run largely PvE guild missions weekly, as well as team up for instances on a daily basis for everyone who is interested, though we spend a fair amount of time in sPvP and WvW when the mood hits.

We appreciate, but do not require guild hall donations from our members, and generally attempt to foster an environment of team support so that everyone can better achieve their personal goals in GW2, and run a strictly zero drama philosophy with easy communication through the guild’s teamspeak server.

If you’re running a late night play schedule in NA, feel free to get in contact with me and have a chat!

Kuya.6495:

My guild once landed in a situation where we had to throw our second match so it would end as quickly as possible so we could receive the personal score before the guild mission timed out.

Every time we’ve done score based missions, we got the personal reward chests and the guild’s mission completion mid match as soon as the requisite team score total was acquired. What mission were you doing that required you to throw a match?

The only meaningful mechanical changes as you limb fractal levels are instabilities. When I heard about new fractal difficulties, I was excited.

Then I discovered that all of the new instabilities were only extremely minor inconveniences, which didn’t significantly change the play of the encounters at higher levels.

Then I discovered that in stead of using further instabilities, you simply decided to stack two boring instabilities together.

We don’t need more “and then they got boons, or you lost a boon, or some conditions happenned” instabilities. They do nothing to change the play of the fractal, and thus do nothing to increase the longevity of the content.

We need more interesting and fun instabilities that change mob types, give them weird abilities, bomb the fractal with traps and aoes, force people to reconsider builds and playstyles, and add real meaningful variation as we progress through fractal levels.

As they stand right now, instabilities are barely noticable.

Further, using the same exact instability for 9 fractals straight is just lazy. by the time you get to instabilities in the new system, you’ve already seen the content. The same ignorable variation nine times in a row does not add meaningful replayability to the content.

I thought the whole point of instabilities was to make repeating fractals at higher difficulty feel meaningfully different, and require the development of new strategies and playstyles. As it stands, only afflicted and social awkwardness are even noticable. The rest are just boring and lazy condition or boon modifications.

Compared to the pre-HoT instabilities they’re extremely lackluster and create no memorable achievements or gameplay moments when climbing from 30-100

Why get rid of all of the interesting and fun instabilities? Where’s mossman? Where’s random lightning strikes? Frosty? Antielitism? These were game changing, memorable instabilities that really added replay value to fractals by making the encounters play and feel remarkably different. Surpassing them felt like an achievement, and they made climbing fractal difficulties fun.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I cant believe I just read all of that. Very well thought out and written, and I think you hit the nail on the head here. I would be interested to read what sorts of changes that would benefit the game in your opinion.

Easy.

Developers of games should stop designing specifically around esports and in stead design competitive games around being a fun and engaging experience for the majority of their players through compelling ingame reward structures at all levels of play and effective matchmaking algorithms.

They should support their esports community if it develops naturally, but they should stop wasting money trying to manufacture one if their game is not deemed appropriate as a spectator sport naturally by its community and the general public.

That article addresses the effect of handouts, not earned income.

Do a similar study in which everyone in the town has the opportunity to earn the money by running a specific time target in a 2 mile run, or deliver n number of a specific local plant to a central location, and study those effects as they would actually be applicable to the discussion.

Everyone has the opportunity to earn these prestige items. This isn’t the same as randomly issuing increased wealth with no basis or psychological connection with it being earned.

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Why not both ? :p

I know this is probably a joke, but it’s because thief should not have to be a mandatory pick either.

Yeah, basically, think of it this way:

You can either bring people with knockbacks for the seekers, or say you could bring a thief that can steal a “vale essence” that gives him a 10s buff that lets him destroy them by colliding with them.

So he’s not strictly better than using knockbacks, and knockbacks remain a valid strat, but you have the option of taking the thief and letting people in stead take different skills since the thief can be the raid’s “seeker killer”

Basically, you continue to design the raids around the idea of basic mechanics, but with stolen skills you provide the thief a unique role that resolves a specific mechanic for each encounter. like, say, with the guardian, give him the seeker killing buff as a steal, with gorsevol, give him an aoe buff that increases damage against walls, etc.

In this way he’s a viable pick and gets to use his class mechanic in unique ways, but he isn’t necessary to complete things. he just lets other people be more flexible in their build decisions by being there, as his role is more explicitly defined.

The idea of steal as a mechanic really lends itself to a unique class specific role for the thief, but that role should be optional. Since thief doesn’t through his basic nature have a lot of team suport, that specific stolen item defined role would make up for that, as you could give him different kinds of support roles for different encounters very easily.