Guild Wars 2

The Captains Council gets to pick who gets to rebuild the city. It is a sham for which the council only cares about enriching themselves. They are pirates and they are acting no better than the days the pirates pillaged ships on the sea. Magnus is a sucker, and Kiel is quickly learning how to doing absolutely nothing for the citizens can maximize her wealth in her new position. And don’t count on any Sylvari architecture, I’m not even sure they are allowed to be seen carrying any tools in Lions Arch, let alone being allowed near any construction sites.

I hoped that the players of the game could have allied with several groups of craftsmen representing the different races, and we could have a living story of choosing which group to help bash in some hea… I mean persuade the council to be gracious enough to accept help from. I remember (the illusion of) player input was one of the goals of the living story and remember seeing it implemented, in game, with the captain council elections. It would be awesome if there were in game player input that could cause different racial architectures and structures to appear in the city throughout the construction process. I for one, think Lions Arch needs to be reinforced with the strength of iron and steel fortifications and would vouch for Charr intervention first.

Also campaigns with racial craftsmen can be a way to explore the racial situation with Sylvari and a post Scarlet Lions Arch. I know Anet has previously expressed an interest in this area of storytelling.

Olvendred.3027:

OP gets girlfriend to try game (with NPE).
Girlfriend still confused by everything.
Conclusion: NPE doesn’t work at intended goal.

Afya.5842:

Direction and guidance is never bad. I don’t see anyone said otherwise. The dodge guide is good, so is the green arrow thing on top right. People even request MORE guide for combo field.

People just don’t like level gated things.

There may be a problem with pacing information to the player, however, pacing is only one of the factors that can cause confusion to new players. The NPE goes to the extreme in slowing the pacing of new information to new players, yet still fails in many places. This is because the issue of pacing is overblown and overshadows other flaws in the game’s ability to teach players.

Arena net seems to have focused in only a single aspect of allowing a player to learn and seem to believe that is the only problem with the game. Pacing allows a player time to practice and learn any previously taught features, so it is important to give players time to learn one or two features, but the new NPE fails in many other ways.

One of the problems is how the game unlocks new features for the player. They are currently level restricted. Levels do not correlate with how well a player has learned the game. You can earn any number of levels, even if you refuse to use anything other than auto attack and grinding mobs. You can get to any level even if you only learned to move around and tap 1 to initiate auto attacking. It would be super slow and unlikely, but it is possible. In fact, many people jokingly say that many level 80 only know how to do this. This is an extreme example but, the point is, the level gating doesn’t cause any teaching to go on. It simply makes it slightly more likely that someone will spontaneously learn something or ‘figure it out’ before new features are given to them. Relying on people to ‘figure it out’, however is not reliable at all. Leveling doesn’t mean someone has figured something out, it just means that they have played long enough to level. Therefore the idea of pacing with leveling is foolish.

The other problem, as you may have guessed, is that a lot of the basic functionality is left to figuring it out. Compound that on the degradation of the hint system with this update (my annecdotal argument here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Leveling-as-a-Reward-Experience-Crippling/page/9#post4420522) , and the general lack of actual tutorials and one realizes the game is horrible at teaching players how to play. The hint system was not a valid tutorial, and the butchering of the hint system into level ups, not only made it worse, but it did nothing to create a valid tutorial for the game. The problem here, is that, no matter how far you spread out unlocking features, the player may never learn something, and have it reinforced, without the game actively trying to push a player to use something. No matter how much you spread it out, the amount of missed, or unlearned, details about gameplay will build up to the point that the player gets confused.

Level gating only delays the build up of missed details such that player confusion gets delayed a few more hours into the game. It however doesn’t actually prevent it from happening. The truth of the matter, is everything the NPE does, is simply slowing down the confusion, but not stopping it. The goal shouldn’t be spreading out confusion, it should be preventing it from occurring in the first place. The NPE doesn’t do anything to help new players. It just slows the game down, which might mitigate the build up of confusing aspects, but doesn’t solve the issues at hand.

There are also a couple things about the NPE that disturb my rational mind. One, they degraded accessibility to hints which makes things more confusing. Two, they force early levels (< 10) out of the linear, more controllable, easier to follow, personal story, and into the uncontrollable, non-linear open world. This is despite peoples concern that the open world contributes to confusing new players in the game. The open world is more confusing to new players, so my question is. Did Anet not realize that locking the first chapter of the personal story entirely contradicts their desire to make the early game less confusing? It is absurd to say we want to make things easier for new players, while at the same time making two big changes that effectively cripple the player from having a controlled space with clear directions to learn the game.

The two posts I’ve quoted are right on the target. The gating has failed, and the game needs to focus on guidance over gating. Everything I have said may be theoretical. But the Idea that pacing is THE problem for new players is absurdly simplistic.

Think outside of the matchup.
Make matchups unpredictable.
Break away from 4 maps for every server.

WvWvW is too limiting. I want to propose something that is difficult to implement. It may be drastic and dangerous. But is something that won’t drastically degrade the experience of playing on a map. No map cap changes. No crazy power differences based on outnumbered buffs. It shouldn’t change how a map plays, but it could have huge impacts on how players strategies and distribute themselves among maps.

Each week shouldn’t just be WvWvW. It may primarily be WvWvW. But I think each weekly matchup can have a WvAll component too.

Here is my basic idea starting with the lower tiered servers.

Not all servers can cover 4 maps all the time. So don’t force them to. Give lower tier servers EB and one borderlands to focus on. EB is the centerpiece of a matchup being symmetrical, but with a focal point. It is the focal point of a matchup and can be left alone.

The borderlands, however, can be made more exciting. It is asymmetrical, therefore, you may ask, how can you balance it, if the low tier servers only have one borderlands. Who gets the Citadel spawn and who gets the border spawns? They all get a single borderlands with which they get the Citadel spawn, but, the people they fight are not from the core matchup. Instead they are mini-matchups with other servers, (that have more than enough people to fill extra borderlands).

My Idea is that the borderlands are not just an extension of the same 3 servers fighting each other in the EB, but they are shorter termed matches that contribute to the main match’s PPT but involve facing servers from other tiers. These mini-matchups are rotated so that any advantages based on the differences in the other servers capabilities are averaged out.

On the converse side. Higher tier servers get more than the EB and 3 borderlands to spread their forces out on. They will have those 4 maps, but they will also have extra borderlands (participating as the attackers with the border spawns) for fights with the lower tiered servers. Not just 1 extra borderlands, but they may be involved with 2 or 3 extras depending on the need to keep the queues down and the time of day. Just like in the low tier matchup, these borderlands contribute to their score, so they will have to invest and spread out players to these matches in order to sustain the maximal PPT. No longer are Tier 1 people capping maps and throwing zergs against zergs, they will have to choose between sacrificing some borderlands and zerging others or risking everything and spreading themselves thin.

The main point is to have as many borderlands as needed to match the WvW demand for each server and every time of the day. NA oceanic have fewer players? well give them fewer objectives to cover by eliminating most of the mini-matchups. Need to fit more players, schedule and create more borderlands to meet the demands. Every server needs to have the number of objectives adjusted so that every objective gets equal coverage capabilities, and for the most part, balanced maps.

The biggest risk is that matches won’t be fair. Some servers may shift their populations around these mini-matchups in an un-equitable way. Maybe even in ways in spite of one particular server. The rotations of server playing each other may not be fair based on who fight which server more during prime time and what server more during off times. Great care will have to be made in deciding on these borderlands mini-matchups, and imbalances could still occur. But you know, turbulence in fairness is a good thing. Because if we believe that capability should always, always, determine the outcome of a match 100%, then we will simply have more of what we have now. We will have matches that are so predictable that they are primarily pre-determined. You can’t have upsets without a little luck or other unforeseen kicker.

Here are a few more things about this hypothetical system.
Won’t lower per map caps.
Won’t merge/break servers.
Can be tuned to adjust time of day coverage issues too.
All servers get to see and fight each other, and sometime even have level playing fields with servers in vastly distant tiers.

I may be crazy. But here is my idea anyways.

I tried the new player experience. Initially I didn’t even realize the level up screen is now what is tied to all of the hints in the game, so I looked at the level up screen and dismissed it. After a while, I was like, hang on a minute, did Anet remove the hero/inventory screen tutorial?

I restarted the character and that is when I discovered that that tutorial is a part of the level 1 level up screen. It is hidden and easy to miss now. I guess it isn’t all that important for new players to learn how to change equipment or manage their inventory. That is why it is skippable. Also, you can’t re-visit hints. So if you did miss something, well, that is your fault for missing it, and you can’t have a look at the tutorial again.

Seriously Anet, you took the fairly well functional tutorial system and hid it inside a non-repeatable easy to dismiss dialog…

I also found that the charr starting area is a bit lacking in order to get you to level 10. I followed the quest guide. (didn’t go back to the black citadel so I didn’t run into the bugginess of telling you where not to go). I found that I almost immediately was forced to do hearts and events one level ahead of me. I was left by the water and submarine area (level 11) at level 9. Then I finally achieved level 10 so that I could start the personal storyline. I also noticed that at one point, there is a scout, who shows level 6 hearts, but is surrounded by level 8 enemies…. that was not fun place to go to at level 6.

Any ways, these level up ‘rewards’ are not rewards at all. They are just an overly drawn out tutorial sequence integrated with bad UX and design decisions.

Another note. Harmonious Mantras are also affected by this bug. It seems that level scaling acts as temporarily un-slotting these traits. Causing things like your minions to die with flesh of the master. With harmonious mantras, you lose your extra mantra stack when scaling.

Do you run Flesh of the Master?
I believe it is related.

I noticed that, when using the Flesh of the Master trait, my minions die when my level changes due to scaling. I don’t understand why that happens if minion despawning is only affected by adding or removing that trait. But I have been able to consistently repeat this bug running between level scaling zones.

Don’t know if it is related to any of the other issues with minions, but this one is easily reproducible.

Esplen.3940:

biofrog.1568:

The only solution I see here is if the kicked person(s) were placed into their own instance in the exact same position/state they were from the first instance.

ie: Don’t kick them back to the world map. Kick them to their own copy of the dungeon/fractal.

Technical difficulties will, no doubt, intervene.

Run Arah to boss. Kick players, invite guildies, kick players, invite guildies, kick players, invite guildies.

???

Profit.

Fix the reward system.

It is not a short term solution, but the rewards should not dictate how the game must be played. Playing the game should grant rewards.

Also, you misuse the ? profit meme.
The ? Is meant to be some unexplainable, impossible to comprehend for the common mind, step of extraordinary mental gymnastics that lead to profit.
In your case, the ??? is clear and mundane.

The proper solution, is the nobody should EVER be removed from an instance because of other player actions. This will be the only way to prevent malicious use of the partying system, and give everybody a fair chance to play how they want.

That means, if a party is split by a kick, the instance should be replicated for the split parts.

Of course this will allow the replication of an instance that is in a desirable state, which can easily be exploited. But this kind of exploitation should be considered an acceptable and mitigatable risk.

Mitigation involves, restructuring rewards so that there is no time where an instance is in a highly preferred state. Most of the times a dungeon is in it’s most prefered state, just before the final boss as the majority of the reward is earned by fighting and killing that boss. One good way of restructuring the rewards is to distribute more rewards across the entirety of the dungeon instead loading it entirely at the end.

In the same vein, dungeon currencies should be rewarded based on the player’s actual participation throughout the dungeon (sorry to dungeon purchasers, but coming in at the final boss, and fighting just him should only be worth a fraction of the tokens. Dungeon selling is not supported by the game.). Perhaps 1/2 token for each gold medal event, and 1/3 token for silvered and bronzed events throughout the dungeon (or other fraction depending on the number of events). To reward completion, of course, these rewards would be withheld until the final boss falls (but if you are forced into a copy, your rewards follow you).

Other tools for mitigation is to apply a sort of DR and have an instance reward entropy if an instance is copied too many times. This will also add consequences for being unable to work with a party that you joined. Rewards can be docked to players who are affected by the party kicking system or choose to use it.

The solution is to simply have a game where the manager’s of the economy do not have to worry about it being wrecked because an instance’s state can be copied. Rebalancing them in this way will also be helpful in revitalizing the way in which people can play dungeons. If the designers of the game can make it so that in game economy issues are separate from the mechanics of starting, stopping, continuing, and finishing a dungeon, then, the game will have a platitude more flexibility when handling how to deal with instances along side the party systems and other potential technical and network issues.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Communication isn’t only hearing what you want to hear.

This is a super important point on both sides.

Chris

Communication also isn’t saying only what you want to say, or avoiding topics that may upset the other person. (Well as long as what is being said is constructive and not insulting).

Does the policy prevent you from talking about things for which you have stopped working on? You can tell us, if you stopped working on something, and it will upset some (like with SAB). But at least we will be informed and we will have been treated with respect instead of being ignored.

The summit became a huge advertisement for recruiting dragon killers. Trahearne should be proud, the pact will get much more attention now. He did seem eager to dismiss the possibility of finding who would have leaked the information about the summit. Also, Countess Anise doesn’t seem to trust the pact. I mean she could be sending Canach as an observer, but simple observation seems below Cranach’s skill set. I wonder what she is thinking. Although it would be silly if she is asking Canach to spy on the pact, when they are within earshot of the pact commander…

They should figure out if they can make a plugin system to allow integration with popular clients and potentially providing accessibility to chat clients without having to install them separately.

And you certainly can’t have Destiny’s Edge, whose purpose is to fight against the Dragon upstage the B-iconics in their story.

How do you make the premier dragon fighting guild of the world, not the center of attention in a dragon battle?

Destiny’s Edge may get the chance to join Rytlock, but that will create conflict between choosing to abandon him vs having to abandon Tyria in the dragon fight.

I can imagine that the B-iconics must prove themselves to Destiny’s Edge. In doing so it allows Destiny’s Edge to leave Tyria with capable heroes AND keep their promise of never abandoning each other again.

Well… Isn’t is pretty much the same thing as, because MAGIC!…
I mean, Ley Lines just answer the question why Magic?
Because Ley Lines… but really it doesn’t mean a kitten thing.

Ley Lines simply deliver magical energies to places. The answer, whether or not Ley Lines exist, is still, because magic.

About the curse… The thing is, curses are not heavenly edicts that can’t be subverted. And as far as I am aware the King of Ascalon didn’t have godly powers. Along with all the asura technobabble, one could guess that any curse is simply a sophisticated magic construct. This curse may also have a kill switch constructed into it tied to it’s legend. An Orrian sword was sacrificed to create the curse, and we know that means the sword has a great amount of magical power. One can guess that a powerful sword would have create a powerful curse.

Here is the thing though, Mordremoth is now thrown into the equation. And it has been shown that the dragon can disenchant powerful artifacts (stripping it of it’s magic). People have also speculated that Mordremoth’s presences means that the dragon it capable and planning to consume the magical energies powering the curse.

I postulate that Mordremoth’s presence means that it is already consuming the magic that powers the curse. This means that the curse is going to become vulnerable to disruption. Even if the enchantment of Sohothin prevents Rytlock from wielding it’s full power, the curse may be weakened to the point where it can be destroyed, even without all the parameters being met.

I guess this isn’t lore unfriendly, but… how practical is a norn thief?
… tallest and fattest sized male norn thief…

Canach is about to become a shining blade, and DE 2.0 seems to be on the cusp of a fight to protect the leaders of Tyria including an unknown heir to the throne of Divinity’s Reach. So, I’m going to call that their paths are just about ready to cross and it seems that Canach would have a preference to stick around with DE 2.0.

Edit: kitten gold sellers…

Well if what has been datamined is true, that Majory was planned to die by Scarlet, then… I don’t think Belinda’s death exists for emotional reasons, but to simply as a device to sideline Majory out of the living story. Majory isn’t written to be a part of the next episode so they dispose of her by saying she is grieving for her sister. They probably had to do this now, so that they can make room for the final bi-iconic.

Canach, soon to be shining blade, is going to be tasked with the delicate task of tracking down a certain locket to protect the royal bloodline. The pale tree will notify the group of adventurers about the dire danger to the leaders of the Tyrian races and specifically of the heir to Divinity’s reach. On the same trail, they will meet and Majory will be sidelined for the rest of who knows when.

And that make Aerin’s notes that much more mysterious.

I searched Aerin’s corpse. He was carrying a note with frantic scrawlings that said a “leader will die” and that “the rest will fall in line.” Did he mean the Master of Peace or someone else? I also found some animal hairs on Aerin’s corpse that probably came from livestock back in Prosperity. We should return there and continue our investigation.

He wasn’t looking for the Master of Peach, so he isn’t talking about the Zephyrites… The fact that the living story journal proposes Aerin could have been talking about someone else, plus his statements seem to make a strong suggestion that Aerin was looking to kill something else.

The ending tasks are a bit of padding and the ending instance is a bit long winded, I will give you that. But this is an MMO so padding, is normal. The problem is, they re-introduce Scarlet at the end of the chapter, so way too much of the narrative got unloaded after the climax (boss fight) of the chapter. The whole collection of Cerra/Scarlet’s things was a bit much. They probably should have spread it around and focused a bit less on it as this episode, of course, is about the Zephyrites.

I believe the zephyr ships cruize way above any existing combat ships in the world, so I doubt that is was hit by any ballistic fire. Another thing we should note is that golem powering magic seems to react poorly will the Zephyrite cargo. More importantly is that the Zephyrites know this. They don’t allow Taimis golem onto the sanctum at all. They know their cargo doesn’t react well to the presence of golem magic. The detonation of the cargo could have something to do with the presence of Inquest golems and magic in the Maguuma area.

But, still, they fly so very high, so I don’t see how Inquest presence on the ground could have affected them. I think they Zephyrites flew into some sort of unexpected magical interference, and it didn’t go so well with their volatile cargo. Considering the presence of an elder dragon, I wouldn’t be surprised about the interference.

What do you think the sample piece is for? I think it is a piece written for an event, something like discovering the wreck of the Zephyr Sanctum.

The first release is called the gates of maguuma, so we may only get bits of and hints of the broader maguuma area in the first release. The teaser videos shows new environments and weather effects, however, I wonder if the teaser is more of a season 2 teaser than it is a teaser for just this release.

The way Anet seems to like to trickle things in, I don’t think they will just open up a whole map at once. I wonder how they will handle the release of new areas when they get around to doing that.

Wheres Frostbite?

And that is one large boar at the end.

Well, it does make keys more rewarding! And it makes it much clearer about what you got with the key.

I’ve always wondered if champion bags actually increased the drop quantities of champions or if it (like the new bl chests) was more of a psychological trick to make champions feel more rewarding. Has someone done an analysis on drop rates from champions before an after the implementation of bags?

Hmmm, what if, F&N was converted into two global, always changeable rune slots instead?

Or what if, it was changed from time based, to an buff that lasts until defeated.

Or what if, we we where simply given two slots that allows F&N to be auto consumed when needed?

Or how about, having a hot bar that allows us to refresh or change F&N without having to open the inventory?

The thing that really should be asked, is F&N (as it currently is implemented and designed) acting as a kind of nuisance mechanic for optimizing your efficiency? And, Should mechanics, that are nuisances exist in this game?

I would say, yes, food and nutrition are kind of nuisances. I think nuisances are more of a quality of life issue than legitimate game mechanics, so I would lean towards the thought that they should be less annoying to use.

What can be done to make it more enjoyable to use and make it more ubiquitous across the player base?

Honestly, I don’t know how somebody would level more than 2 crafting professions without also leveling alts to get more of the lower tier crafting materials.

Call me crazy, but… I didn’t see anything in the game like the end of that ‘comic’… If you saw anything remotely like that, then I’m afraid you might be suffering from some sort of paranoia. I guess GW1 ending is just that traumatizing… but I wouldn’t know.

Wjerd Bladeborn

No match for the Commander, you mean. To the Dragonslayer!

Rajihd

You continue to impress me, Commander. No one in any of the Tethyos Houses has ever taken down such an imposing target. I shall be watching to see what you accomplish next.

Trahearne

The world owers you a great debt, Commander. As long as I am Marshal of the Pact, I will see that debt honored.

Static.9841:

I don’t think so much that she was ‘nerfed’, more that the 2 main annoying parts of it were dealt with this time around – the roof taken off the domes and the clearly visible AoE circles.

One thing that was noticeably changed is the shadowfall pattern. In the last gauntlet, one side of the hourglass had a much larger safe zone side than the other. Naturally you would wan’t to stick to the larger safe zone. This time around, they seem to have made the pattern symmetrical. I don’t know if that made it easier or harder though.

Anet needs to fix randomness between ‘slippery’ and walk-able terrain in general. For a game with jumping puzzles, I am puzzled by how arbitrary some of the surfaces in the game are. Too much wall humping, not enough puzzling.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

They still got a lot of the lyrics wrong, but nice interpretation nonetheless.

I don’t know what exactly you find wrong about the lyrics. But I would like to say that, especially, when it comes to song and poetry the most correct translation and lyrics would be one that chooses words and phrases that match the cadence and tempos of the music the best. You aren’t going to be able to match all of literal meaning, dialect, rhythm, and cadence perfectly a song translation, but since it is a song, you better pay the most attention to the musical components.

I don’t know why people seem to think Trahearn is such hot stuff in the personal story.

Everybody respects him, but they do not look up to him as a hero. The most admiration he gets is for being a skilled necromancer (but clearly not a great fighter. I am not sure what the guy needs such powerful flesh golems for, but… eh I guess he practices his necromatic skills as a hobby.), and the go to guy to get information about Orr. Beyond that, he seems to have greatly helped a few people in the past. But I’ve noticed that every mention to such things are there to re-iterate that one is paying back a sort of karmic debt (most likely as a cop out to move the story along). Honestly most characters in the game simply seem tolerate him better than anyone else, rather than show much liking to him.

The only reason he can lead the pact, is that the heads of the three orders trust him just enough not to screw up horribly. That sums up his character and purpose in the game. Perhaps that is why he is so hated. Not because he takes all of the glory, but because he is mostly just a crutch to move the story along. He enables the orders to work together, because he just barely has enough respect from the order heads. Some people aid him with crucial skills just because they owe him something or another. Oh yeah, and he just happens to be the just the right guy for the ritual to cleanse the artesian wells. He is just so convenient, that it is almost absurd.

The last thing about Trahearn is that he has an extremely stoic and contemplative personality. That is how you know he can’t be a glory stealer. His personality simply resists anything that can be construed as taking or receiving glory. He is boring, emotionless, and simply not very friendly. I mean, the very reason Trahearn even participates in the final celebration is because he rationalizes that, as marshal of the pact, he needs to have the appearance of being able to be happy and grateful. I’m amazed how how well the voice actor was able to pull off the dead voice of someone who doesn’t appear to have any capability of having more than a hint of emotion. It almost seems like Anet also conveniently designed him immune to being heroic.

That is an odd one. Players decide who wins? Well, that is the point kinda. Players are responsible for playing the game and, as such, they always have influence on who wins. And as we see coordination is paramount in WvWvW. Whether it is a server fielding the best distribution of players, or if it is a group of servers that have enough discipline to get their players to work with a set of rules of engagement that are not enforced by the game.

If players have the coordination and discipline to control the outcome of the game, then they will reap the benefits of such control. That is simply the art of competitive tournaments. That is what WvWvW is about. At least that is all that really matters in the current meta/rules for this mode. All I see, are players being coordinated enough to maximize their potential outcomes. AKA playing to win.

What you describe is a symptom of fights not mattering. People playing to win, do not have to put a great amount of effort into winning fights, because good fights have a smaller contribution to winning that other, more influential aspects of the game.

Hamfast.8719:

If your town was wrecked, and the danger was past, would you go back and fix it up? Or would you spend the rest of your days in a tent outside?

No wonder it took so long for the Lion statue to get fixed after King Thorn had his way with it. Everyone in LA is an adventurer. Nobody is a carpenter.

• Step one: Put out the fires. I’m tired of all the soot and ash and ugly skies.
• Step two: Clear the rubble and fill in the holes.
• Step three: Rebuild! There is a TON of ready-to-use building material scattered all over Lion’s Arch and Kessex Hills.

If it isn’t finished by Wintersday, might I suggest Tixx and his toys perform a little Wintersday magic?

But for goodness sake, at least START!

Good point. But you know what, the Captain’s Council are really kittttteningly greedy.

Avelos.6798:

I guess that’s a better way to put it. Polygon budget. As for rox’s horns, I rather like them, haha. They could use a bit more curve though too.

My problem with those horns is they are simply shoved into the side of the face and top of the head. They don’t attach in the same way as all the other horns so they kind of do the best they can to connect it to the face without using the normal attachment points and it just looks very clunky, and bad, to me. I can understand why these horns can’t really be attached to the player character’s models very well since they are so different than the original horns, but…

They didn’t even really try to model Rox’s face and horns together (being a unique character, they could have built her face to fit the horns but they didn’t). Instead they put some gold bands at the base to hide where it should connect to the head, and call it a day, so maybe I am just a bit critical about them. Honestly, the way they sit on Rox’s head, it looks like they are prosthetics that she wears to hide some horrible accident or something. As you can see, it bugs me a lot.

That is not all that bad. And it really isn’t clunky as much as it is polygon budget.

Clunky is Rox’s horns… they are seriously bad.

Tying reward chests for playing with randoms using the LFG tool… Hey Anet thinks reward chests are the solution to everything…

hannah mee.7925:

I haven’t really looked closely at the math but because of the base multiplier of 150% isn’t the overall loss to the critical hit multiplier (for max zerker) like 2.5x to 2.25x? So yeah…looks like about 10-11% overall DPS loss.

To me, this looks like people are trying to compare the direct result of the additional bonus from critical damage/ferocity without adding the base multiplier. If you had 50% critical damage, that would actually be 200% critical damage (base multiplier + critical damage). Lower critical damage to 40% and it’s 190%, which is a 20% loss to critical damage while 5% loss to overall damage.

Maybe I’m just not getting it though.

lZoranl doesn’t know what his DPS is, because he believes that if it didn’t crit, it didn’t do damage.

RashanDale.3609:

Crit rate is not negligible cause its important for your total damage.

1000*0.48 + 2510*0.52 = 1785.2

1000*0.48 + 2140*0.52 = 1592.8

1592.8/1785.2=0.8922

thats 10.78%, which, to me, is close to 10% than your 15%

This is the correct math using the numbers from IZoranl (“Now assuming my non crits are 1000 my crits are 2510 currently. After the patch my crits will be 2140.”, “Now with your genius idea to incorporate crit rate (my crit rate is 52% btw)”).

If crit rate was negligible in DPS calculation, the precision would be useless. But we know, of course, that crit rate does matter. The fact that one throws out crit rate in their DPS calculation is quite an absurd lapse of thought.

Cinnamon Goddess.3869:

I personally want Anet to stop calculating on a curve. Just show the real amount. Why should I have to get 1000 of something to get 60% of something else? And they wonder why people are confused and constantly complain and argue. They have made their build system convoluted. Plus i completely dislike diminishing returns concept. How about just make it impossible for me to put too much of something in my build instead of allowing me to create a broken build?

There are no diminishing returns with the stats and secondary stats in regards to DPS. In fact, due to the multiplicative effects of staking the 3 stats, an optimal distribution, will have multiplicative, or increasing, return by putting more into the stats. Every point you put in to the crit stats (after maxing out damage, because damage scales the best and is the optimal, but you can’t mono stat)), will have a greater effect than the last.

We know about the new wardrobe and skin system… But the SAB skins and other skins have no known ways of being created in the game anymore, and therefore are scarce. So?

Sell them? Keep them?

I think they will become more scarce when people bind/deposit them into their wardrobe. But the SAB skins are currently taking a dip in sale listing prices for the time being.

I also think that the skins being usable multiple times make them more attractive to some buyers, but we have to see how deep the reserves of these skins go before we notice the scarcity.

How do you think the current changes will affect scarce skins in the long run?

calavel.6249:

StinVec.3621:

By the wording it uses, it sounds like you must unlock dyes again after the patch goes in.

No. Read it again:

All dyes on your characters will be converted to account-wide. Any duplicates across characters will pop an unidentified dye into your inventory (for a chance at another color). Any dye used after the feature patch is implemented is also automatically account-wide.

If everything reset with the patch, it would make no sense for them to make the whole “unid dye pop into inventory” thing because nobody would ever be able to get the same dye twice.

You know what to do with your worthless identified dyes now…

Basically identified dyes between now and up to april 14 might as well be considered future unidentified dyes (april 15th) if you have the alts to put them on.

But remember, you can only convert them to unided if you have the extra alts to create duplicates. So there is a limit to how many can be converted. If you don’t dispose of them by the 15th, say goodbye to your inventory value…

KarateKid.5648:

Dude, I can see it now…

We’ll all login after the patch.

All the unid’ed dye credit bottles will start flowing into pack.

We’ll fill up our backpacks and dye bottles will EXPLODE all over the place.

There’ll be rivers of technicolor and glass shards in every capital.

Asura will drown in a rainbow and glass maelstrom!

SAFETY ISSUE: WHO’S GONNA MOP ALL THAT UP!?!?!?!

Evon should be responsible for that one.

Kalarchis.8635:

Not at all what I was asking. Let me try and rephrase it: if the Pact is made of the three Orders and is bound by a charter that prevents action unless a dragon is involved, why are the three orders not also bound by this? Any nations that have ties to the Pact through the charter have ties to the three Orders by proxy. So if the Pact interfering in LA would have ticked off the ruling bodies as a breach of charter (as is implied in this thread,) why is it fine when the Orders do it?

The Pact is just a different chain of command that the 3 orders entrust some their forces to be controlled by. Each order’s individual army report to their respective order heads. However, if a portion of the army is assigned to the pact, then those portions all report to Trahearne. If you think about it, even pact lieutenants are loyal to a specific order, so the only thing that makes the pact what it is is Trahearne being the ultimate authority for pact orders. However, Trahearne doesn’t become king of all the soldiers put under his command. Trahearne can only give out orders if the order’s conform to a set of goals agreed upon by all contributing members, that is what the charter is for. You are correct in thinking, but the 3 orders all agree on defending Lions Arch. However, they probably wouldn’t agree on bringing Trahearne into the operations in Lions Arch. Lionguard would not approve of that organizational structure either. I don’t even think most of the player base would have cared to see Trahearne involve in Lions Arch either.

In Lions Arch, the Liongaurd are in charge. All the forces in Lion’s Arch ultimately would report to Magnus. The pact exists to coordinate the cooperation of order forces, but in Lion’s Arch that job is already filled by Magnus and his lieutenants. Therefore, instead of filling pact ranks with reinforcements, then sending in Trahearne as a liaison between all order forces and the Lionguard, it is much more reasonable and efficient to simply have all forces report directly to the Lionguard. You may ask, but can’t you involve pact forces without Trahearne? No, because pact forces following orders from Magnus instead of Trahearne makes them order forces helping the Liongaurd, not pact forces.

We don’t even know the condition of the pact armies during the attack on Lions Arch. But because Zhaitan is dead, and there is no active offensive being directed towards any of the other dragons at the time, I would imagine that the order’s have returned most of their forces back under their direct command. Leaving a few forces to defend fortifications in Orr and a few others to gather intelligence on the other dragons. I would imaging that the forces actively working under the pact would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of forces that the orders brought to Lions Arch. Are we to assume that the orders would leave such an excessive number of forces in the pact that the Pact can do whatever with them? More likely unneeded resources get reassigned to more useful tasks for their individual orders.

The orders are going to be constantly reassessing and reassigning their resources depending on their current goals. They orders could have recalled a majority of their forces that where assigned to the pact during the attack on Lions Arch. They don’t need (or necessarily want) Trahearne to lead their forces in Lions Arch, so it would be logical for them to simply take them away from Trahearne. That may also be why Trahearne was reluctant to let Laranthir to go to Lions Arch after the battle. The pact may be spread so thin after troop reductions, that Laranthir would be taking a large chunk of remaining pact capabilities to go sightseeing in Lions Arch. We have to remember that Larnthir took forces to Lions Arch after we killed Scarlet and presumably the Liongaurd+orders cleared most of the remaining threats.

We are not told that pact resources where not diverted to Lions Arch (well pact resources are actually order resources, so there is no such thing as pact resources). But we where told that the Pact, as a force reporting to Trahearne, did not move into Lions Arch.

Wanze.8410:

If you buy the 4 specific endless quaggan tonics, you pay 4g instead of 12g for the mystery quaggan tonic. Granted, the mystery tonic saves you 3 inventory slots but if you want only 1 specific transformation, you are better off buying a specific one.

You just don’t realize that the mystery tonic has 5 transformations. Or maybe you just can’t believe it. It is too amazing for you.

VideoGamermike.5813:

The problem is, if the prices are set in stone by a bunch of precious transaction, the market is unable to change, because the people like me who aren’t comfortable with selling on these levels, have no means of influencing it.

The sell now price has no consideration for previous transactions. The sell now prices is entirely controlled by buy orders. Similarly the buy now price is entirely controlled by sale orders.

It is true that sell now, can not be controlled by sellers. Likewise buy now cannot be controlled by buyers. It is also true that the sell now, puts a floor to the offer price, and the buy now puts a ceiling to the bid price. You might not like it, but it has to work that way.

This occurs because the system must fill the highest (then oldest) bid with the lowest (then oldest) offer, and they have to be made equal, otherwise money would simply vanish into the trading post beyond the normal transaction fees.

Now, lets say we allow you to sell below the sell now price.
Some one puts 1s into a buy bid , and later it gets filled by a sale offer of 50c(after fees). So the trading post will take 1s as specified in the buy bid and give the seller 50c as specified in the sale offer. What do you do with the extra 50c simply have it vanish? Or, perhaps we can reimburse one of the parties in the sale.

But which one? The seller, the buyer, the first to put in the order, the last to put in the order? Or perhaps split the difference? Anet’s chooses to reimburse the last to place the order. Why choose that? Simple, it is the cleanest way to do it because you are only altering the newest order instead of retroactively changing a previous order.

Why is it cleaner, lets take a look at the situation you suggest you want to do.
At time 1. bid placed at 75c.
At time 2. bid placed at 100c.
At time 3. offer placed at 50c.
So we have the ability to create a match for trade at time 3. If we choose to honor the newest order a 50c offer, then how do we choose which bid to fill? Both bids meet the offer price. The bid at time 2 is higher, but the bid at time 1 is older. Choose 1 because it is older. That is not right because the purpose of offering a higher bid, is so that your order can be filled first. Choose 2 because it is higher, but actually, they are now paying less than bid 1, so why do they get to pay less and be filled first over the older bid?
Choosing either the bid a time 1 or time 2 over one another is unfair.

In no case, should an older order by modified to clear a trade. Otherwise the previous ambiguous situation can occur.

This also works in the same way for buying. If I place a buy bid of 1s but there is an existing sale offer of 50c, my bid, the newest order (the buy bid), is modified to 50c. The trading post works, by modifying newest order to equalize a trade. The buy now price is the highest possible bid price, and the sell now price is the lowest possible offer price to maintain clean transactions without any ambiguous decision making.

Technically the pact has no standing army of it’s own. All of pact participants are from the orders. So if the orders need to re-deploy assets to Lions Arch, what makes you think they are going to ask the pact to do it? They don’t need Traherne’s permission or command structure to move their troops in Lions Arch. He probably doesn’t have any experience with civil defense anyways. More than likely, in the attack on lions arch, the orders would have recalled forces from their pact deployments if they determined that they needed more forces in Lions Arch. The pact would already be suffering from a lack of people, so contributing any the few soldiers that remain under their command would be out of the question because they need somebody to watch their forts and outposts.

This is totally normal…

I am going to guess Mai Trin. She escaped to the mists and she seems to be being set up for a go at a comeback or something.

I expect the dragon arc to be a long running story, so… we will definitely hear about them, but that one is going to move slow, and probably not have a conclusion for a bit.

I do want to know how the other active dragons react to Mordremoth being handed a beneficial change in the leylines.

cranos.5913:

Also, as for one shot mechanics, do you have an idea as to how to do it better WITHOUT introducing the trinity?

If you want to remove the trinity, then you have to actually remove it. People have said that Anet didn’t really remove it, they just kind of tried to remove a focus and dependency on it.

But here is a thought. Remove healing outright, and as a bonus you take out the idea of tanking. When you do that, every single attack become deadly even if it doesn’t kill in one shot, every hit received is one hit closer to death. Therefore every hit received is deadly. In that case, you don’t need one shots to make things hard.

I think if healing was removed, it would even mean the end of zerg damage sponges. But that is just a fun thought. The game is currently designed with healing abilities in mind. The game would be something very different without healing.

Well it is just a silly thought, but reading your question just really made me want to put it out there.

There is one thing I believe has been of benefit from the living story. I think this may sound like a terrible idea. But the reason the living story, season one, has operated the way it has, is that the living story is, in fact, throw away content. In some respects, this means the whole point of the living story is to entice us to be beta/gameplay testers for Anet. These events are experiments, ways to expand on Anet repertoire of reliable and fun encounters. And you can’t make an expansion if you don’t have the means to make new an interesting content.

Let me ask you this. with respect the open world content. If Anet focused on creating more content by making a whole bunch of content that is only a marginal iteration over the kind of things we had prior to the living story, what would the major release have comprised of? I would guess it would just be another batch of zergable content, perhaps that introduces the idea of event scaling for the first time, that we probably would have noticed only marginal differences from the original content. In other words, more of the same stuff but polished a little more.

Now, the proper way to work on improving content is the have a section of play-testers to try out this experimental content. But that would mean that the community at large will not see any content at all. I think quick throwaway content is a great idea to try out things. But Anet has been quite peculiar with how they handle it. No one should be made to feel compelled to do these events on a daily basis. No one should feel compelled to farm a single event. But that is, apparently, what Anet wants us to do. So instead we have a handful of events, some good, some bad, but all which we have burned to death farming. I think it is hard to appreciate the things Anet has put out, since we have ground it so much. Also, if Anet is looking for feedback about experimental and untested content, what good is it to have players play it to the point of uncovering its flaws, then play it 10x more? Why not, “thanks for playing living story” (aka experimental temporary content), “here is some currency, spend it on living story themed items to be spent at your leisure” (and if you don’t want to help be a tester? well why don’t you help finance our poor designers working long hours to create these events. A.K.A buy more gems!)?

I think living story can be a great way to generate new content, as long as we aren’t so burned out by it to appreciate the things Anet has accomplished with it. Unfortunately I think Anet still have a long way to go to fill their repertoire to the point of being able to create a big meaningful bag of content. And until then, I don’t see the point in trying to create expansion like content. Because doing so at this point will more than likely be a big bag of disappointment. I mean, what if we got a whole bunch of the living story style events as a big content update? What if we got a large heaping of assault knights, scarlet invasions, crown pavilion, and karka queen style events…

What I find interesting about Scarlet’s last words is the specificity of the words she uses. In no uncertain terms, Scarlet says, Tyria, all of it (although world or continent is not specific), will bow before a new Master, in the singular form. I don’t know if you care for speculation, but thats I what I want to do here, speculate on the information we have on Scarlet. Make some theories, wonder if it is even remotely correct, or just interesting to ponder.

I know the other champions echo similar words, but has there ever been a champion that phrased such threats/praise as such? Scarlet seems to know what she is saying, that is kinda her personality, I guess. And I don’t think she would use the singular form if she didn’t believe Mordre would be indeed the singular ruler of Tyria. And I don’t think anyone in the world of Tyria would be unaware that multiple elder dragons exist, all vying for portions of the continent/world of Tyria. Very unlikely Scarlet would only know about Mordre. It seems that Scarlet is extremely confident in such an outcome, despite knowledge of the other dragons.

Scarlet claims to understand some sort of grand design in the world. So I wonder if Scarlet has understands the cycles between the the days of the ‘living’ and the dragons. Scarlet is very interested in systems and cycles and the cycle of dragons and magic is one of the ‘grandest’ systems in Tyria. Is it possible that the systems, Scarlet talks about in the short story “What Scarlet Saw,” is in fact, the systems that cause the elder dragons to rise, consume magic, then become dormant? Is there any reason to believe that she is talking about anything else? Scarlets says she wants to destabilize some grand system. And in the end, we know, she has shove a huge prod at the dragons. Are these two facts related? I think so. But to answer that question for sure we have to ask, is Scarlet’s goal from Omadd’s lab the same as her goals at her very end?

So, what was her goal at the very end? Mordremoth will rule over Tyria. What was her goal at the beginning at Omadd’s lab? Some grand design will be unraveled and destroyed. Hmmm… so are those goals complimentary? I say, yes. If Mordre is to become the ruler of Tyria, something seemingly extraordinary has to happen with the elder dragons. It would have to push the other dragons out of the picture and claim all the magical energies for himself. At least, that is what I believe would have to happen. What we know, in, a normal cycle involve the dragons awakening, consume magic, then inevitably go back to being dormant. Now, I don’t know if there is much information about why or how the Elder Dragons decide to go back to sleep, but it doesn’t seem there is much room for ruling in there. Mordre may want to shake things up. If Zhaitan’s defeat is a sign of things to come, this dragon cycle has already gone awry. Probably isn’t something that the system can’t recover from, but being off balance makes it more vulnerable to being tampered with.

Mordremoth and Scarlet are aligned in objectives. That is why Scarlet is helping it. Mordre tells Scarlet, that id wants to destroy it’s endless servitude to the cyles of magic and Scarlet say, great idea! Of course, if that is indeed how Mordre presented itself to Scarlet, that could be a line in an of itself. We know nothing about the nature of Mordremoth’s minions or armies. Perhaps Mordremoth can corrupt the minds of his army through deceit and the mind, rather than physically changing them. Break people down through dreams of a horrible nature like Scarlet’s, and then turn around with an offer/explanation that bring’s it’s minions around to it’s side permanently. Scarlet may have been on to something, until she way swayed by Mordre and a false solution. Or maybe prodding Mordre with a massive stream of magic is in fact a viable solution preventing the destruction of Tyria.

Of course, there are many possible ways to explain Scarlet’s actions in relation to the dragons. Simpler ones are that she is simply becomes wholly controlled by Mordremoth with no will for her prior goals. But with how much details we have been told about Scarlet’s motivation before and after her madness. About intricate systems, and breaking them down to exploit weaknesses and destroy them. I think, at the very least, the writers at Arena Net, are at the least, setting up hints, ideas, and mechanisms for which the elder dragons, and the almost guaranteed (near) destruction of Tyria, can be stopped.