Guild Wars 2

Blackety.8047:

Do most people wait till 80 to do dungeons? Or is it like WoW which had different difficulty level type dungeons?

In the early days, ppl did them as lvlled with each dungeon having a story and explorable mode which have different minimum levels (I think the first is about 30/35 in Ascalon)

Nowadays, most players run them at lvl 80 just because it is more convenient. A decent guild will run with you regardless of level though.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Well i certainly understand where your coming from. So the other option is to run 3 on Monday and we go in knowing that we still have some way to go in terms of us all getting everything right in terms of the spirit of the initiative.

I am happy to do this to. Thoughts?

Chris

However it is done, they need to be chosen from the original vote. There’s too much stop starting, with worrying terms like “evaluation process” creeping in. It is after a video game and most of us come here to escape the everyday bureaucracy, management and corporate speak of the real world

Besides, my understanding was we’d use the first 3 in turn and then vote anew (altho I adamantly maintain that these need to be long or permanently open threads. Time limited threads shut out ppl who are busy at this time of year or future players). Using the ones we already voted gets us back to discussion quicker..

Its been live for a couple of hours (ish) and patch notes are up on the forum.

Not sure whats happening with main page tho

There’s a few threads cropping up. They are appearing all over Tyria atm. I suspect a future patch will reveal more…

Snowden and southson have reported sightings in the General Discussion forum

looks new
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Anyone-recognize-this/first#post3264777

Sounds like these are turning up in other zones. There’s a thread reporting one in Snowden and another in Fields of Ruin

A fair point, but that’s partly an issue with the CDI name. It’s a bit of corporate “tagging” where something is over titled for what it is. Renaming it to dev/player discussion board or something more appropriate or obvious would help and adding it to the top of the subforum menu so it is not missable.

Problem with the General Discussion forum is that it is just a mess right now and too many CDI threads would get lost in the clutter and confuse players/devs alike. ANd I genuinely feel these need to remain open topics for them to work and be effective.

Not sure it does, would be a useful addition though I agree

Belzebu.3912:

.. “fortnight”, a new word for my vocabulary
Anyway, we also get a new update every 2 weeks and most of the meta are only available during that time.

Ah most, but not always. Depends when it falls in the month and what is happening in the patch. Sometimes it can be a month for a meta

Ah I missed the fortnight bit.

Sound logic, thanks!

“Completing a fractal will fulfill a daily achievement each day of the Fractured! release.”

How long is the release for? I didn’t see a date listed in the notes (unless I’m not looking properly—-a possibility!)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Reesha,

So one topic per week with a process evolution thread at the end of a 3 topic cycle?

Chris

Some think like that, yes.
I don’t think the one topic at a time necessarily has to be set in stone forever.
However, I think this initiative of yours is so promising and that the collaboration aspect of it means a lot. Especially where we are right now (in the early stage).

By that I mean: I think it is important that you can focus on one topic at a time.
You mentioned earlier that you were struggling for time and saw some interesting thoughts in one topic but didn’t have the time to dive deeper into the discussion.

Maybe it becomes easier over time as both players and developers gets more experience with collaborative development topics: Maybe then it becomes easier to have several topics running at the same time. Time will tell.

And yes to the process evolution thread at the end of a 3 topic cycle as well

Some great points thanks Reesha, especially the point about the CDI evolving to the point it becomes easier through our combined experiences with it.

Therefore i think this proposal is sound and i would like to hear any further arguments against it in case we may have missed anything?

Chris

The one topic a week and then close is likely not to be a good step forward. All that does is mimic the issues with the Living Story in terms of strict timeframes and closing off opinions ahead of time.

These should be permananetly open threads for players to constantly add to including new players or when topics become more/less relevant over time as applicable.

What I would suggest is an entirely separate subforum dedicated to the CDI, with the threads open all times for you and us to discuss at each other’s leisure.
That will reduce also the worry about your time as well.

Of course these subforums would only include the CDI topics and new threads started only by devs.

As for evaluating? I’m not sure this level of burearacy is needed. If you like an idea or a discussion goes well, then it will appear in the game. And thats the best possible evaluation any of us can have.

ps. apologies for typos…in pain and ill..!

edit; looks like wookie also suggested the same thing!

PVE leaderboards are pointless as many ppl know. They can also be ignored, which is what a lot of ppl will do to no negative harm. I understand the frustration ppl have for the reset of fractals lvl, I also understand why they did it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal. Just an annoyance. It is in no way the same as a full lvl reset as that would affect everyone. The ppl above lvl 30 in FOTM is unlikely to be more than a minority (altho that is speculation based on this being a casual game).

ALso, no free speech laws were broken. This is a private forum and doesn’t fall under a country’s governing free speech laws.

Knighthonor.4061:

SpehssMehreen.5897:

how can anet reveal an expansion that doesnt exist?

The Expansion does exist. Just because developers tell you there isnt, doesnt mean there really isn’t. thats how development business is handled.

Did you see all those missing zones? those are already made, and need to be developed further and polished.

No MMO developer stops at launch. Even WoW had expansions planned all the way to Cata before vanilla WoW was even launched, even tho they repeated that they didnt.

What makes you believe they are made though? Plenty of games have mapped areas which aren’t actually ever “made” or “playable”. Including GW1 which had greyed out areas on the map, but never actually made. I’m not saying you are wrong, but even if they are made, they could be slotted into Living Story chapters rather than an expac. Right now, I think they are pre=occupied in making Living Story work, hence the Collaborative Development Thread.

Time will tell I guess.

A great question – it was put forth in mutiple threads, incl the collaborative one to no answer. It would be great to know – personal play schedules are tight until xmas for me now due to increased work and it’s useful info to know.

The tyria being more like a living world at launch is prob the best comment ive read so far. There were so many stories going on and the fun was exploring and getting involved in them. The key was, what was going on in the shiverpeaks was a completely different scenario to what was going on in maguuma. Lots of unrelated stories, building gradually over time, would make just as interesting, if not more so, Living World than a singular, linear and focused storyline.

A world built entirely on ever changing events rather than a personal story Could be something amazing.

I still not sure why every content has to be 2 weeks though. It should last as long as it needs to progress the story.

For eg, flame and frost was good example of building a story. It was too long, largely because the Content was so threadbare, but a 2 week schedule wpuld have been worse as it would be unbelievable that the operation was in place so quickly.

Towers is the same. The mystery of the Tower risks being quashed too soon by going in so suddenly. It needs time to develop, whether it is one month, 6 weeks, 3 months etc. In between, we could have ever changing DE chains which build up to us getting access to the Tower. All we have is the same repetitve tasks for DEs which run out of steam too soon.

The morale from my perspective is dont feel you have to stick to a rigid schedule. Play to what the story needs and the time your players need to soak it up. Build tension, build mystery. Things feel temporary because they dont have time to outlast their usefulness to the world you are building.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Hi Randulf,

I agree that we should and will have a separate discussion thread for DE’s foundational design, evolution and quality. What i am interested in here however is how DE’s can relate to story telling and game play synergy and the overall evolution of Living World. Therefore within these bounds i think it is a great topic for this thread.

Hope this makes sense?

Chris

Oh I don’t disagree at all and understand totally how they synergise with the story element. I’m just worried other LW topics may get buried since the emphasis seems now exclusively on DE development. If all topics are being covered evenly, then I’ll go back to reading what is so far one of the few interesting threads on these forums!

:)

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Sounds server related. I’m on a medium server and all zones have people in them, bosses and Orr Temples are regularly done. It’s harder atm due to the spread – Kessex/WVW/newish dungeon/Halloween. Plenty to keep people busy in areas you might otherwise not be visiting.

Might be worth looking at what server you are on and guesting to higher population ones

I’m not against the idea..as long as it doesn’t become too gimmicky/cartoony. The finisher animations are already borderline this atm.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Randulf.7614:

I empathise with the immersion breaking comment earlier on. It just doesn’t feel right and fit right with the game in pve. Unlike in pvp, the mob is still dead – it isn’t going to get rezzed by anything nearby so it serves no purpose. If the mobs could rez down allies…then we could have something more interesting.

Actually I did see them ressing each other. And I’ve seen them crawl back up when they didn’t get finished.

I’ve only seen it mentioned once in this thread, but they are dodging too. Not a lot, but enough to surprise me – nearly got ganked the first time I saw that, was too shocked. ;-)

The strategy of adding unique PvP/Character-type skills in certain PvE mobs (Enemy and perhaps Ally) seems to be a sound one. With any luck it will mitigate the ever increasing ‘trash mob / huge HP mob’ problem seen in dungeons and replace it with smaller, more integrated groups to fight.

Yep, didn’t notice this at first. Could be interesting if developed right. Still feels a bit out of place, but it’s now a more interesting concept

I do it from time to time, esp on a new toon where I swear not to over use waypoints (I succumb eventually because I’m weak!!). Although I tend to fall into the easy trap of ap farming, the trek mentality is far more fun and rewarding

I imagine the main content stay, which is fab because the concept im enjoying a lot. Its just the ap stuff which is uncertajn

I don’t know the answer, but I wanted to reassure you that you are not alone in really liking them. I have the dagger and focus for my ele. They are excellent skins imo.

One useful thing on a slight side note, but also related to Living Story, is to give clearer indication of when content/achievement metas end. There was a great deal of discussion about the TA meta leaving early and many were left confused by its early removal, but B&M patch notes then had really clear, informative dates for start and end for everything. It looked like the feedback had been taken on board (even though there was no reply to the TA queries) and in the right way. With Tower, we’ve gone back to not knowing when it will end, but we are clear on when WVW meta will end.
It’s just a bit confusing for us atm.

If the 2 week schedule is set in place, it would be helpful for us to know how long we have to complete said achievements so we adjust play time accordingly if need be. The patch notes would seem the ideal place to put this info if it can be arranged

Seconded. Twilight Assault caught a lot of people out when it ended before time/ Blood and Madness has a clear start and end date and details exactly what is starting and ending when. Would be a useful addition to update patch notes for Tower to reflect the same info.

Ema.4953:

Thanks
Celestial gear huh? I should look at that too I guess. So is Zerker gear still the only real option?

The only real option is the one that suits your style of play. If that is zerker..so be it. If it is not, then there are plenty of combos and options that exist. The fun is in experimenting and finding what is best for you in dungeons or solo or pvp

Whilst I understand that, it inevitably will happen anyway. If we speculate that one day Elona and Cantha are added to a fully mapped Tyria…the population will spread out anyway. It’s extremely difficult to manage traffic – players don’t generally like being managed. They want the feeling of being able to go where and do what they want.
GW1 added massive amount of content and although it’s a diff game and ppl were more city confined for congregating, it didn’t suffer as they added more.

Also, keeping the content in game is a good way to retain and more importantly attract more ppl and thus balance out the population a bit. I’ll prob get flamed, but GW2 has a strong amount of launch content – if it kept everything that has been released over the year – incl the dungeons, SAB, Bazaar…it would only enhance the product as a marketing. Not only are they busting a gut to get content out every 2 weeks, but hey you get to play it whenever you want!

Festivals and competitive activities are the exception – in fact the rotating activity was the best way to handle those.

I’m not against the Living World, but I prefer to see things like the way Tower and TA were handled (ie changes) than the way Bazaar, SAB, F&F were handled (ie removed)

Great update Bill and really reassuring.
And thanks for using non-tech/corporate speak so people like me can understand

It was good fun last year. Would be happy with the exact same, maybe a few new rewards thrown in too. And no grind like the Halloween items. Fun before economy – it is just a video game after all

Blood and Madness will continue until the 11th as per the patch notes.

Tower of Nightmares has no scheduled date – not sure why this has been left off the schedule after the issues surrounding the TA meta not having an end date. Assume Nov 11th as Inc says above as this will be the earliest it will be removed.

Hehe, agreed – quite an excellent post

Konig Des Todes.2086:

inazuma.7021:

kitten nic Touch.7960:

Outworld is becoming one with the earth realm. It’s time to find Tyria’s greatest warriors and unite them for Mortal Kombat!

So when your Guardian uses Pull, you have to shout “GET OVER HERE!”

No, no, no.

Thief’s Scorpion Wire. Gotta be wielding Firebringer as well, offhand dagger. With Black/yellow Duelist armor.

It can and will be done.

Oh that would look awesome if anyone can pull it off with a screenshot!!

Awesome drawing

What are the 3 little symbols towards the bottom right above the writing?

Removing elemental Attunement from adept is going to really hurt a lot of eles. There’s not a lot in the adept arcane range to entice people to put 10 in it let alone go up to 20.

I second the idea that moving cleansing wave will hurt. Condition removal is coming ever more important as Tower of Nightmares showed. Players need more access rather than less I feel since most mobs can just spam conditions without reprisal.

Mace is already feeling like the weak brother before skull crack changes. It needs to be a more viable option right now since it has such low dps. It’s better than ppl give it credit for, but when you seethat axe is faster and more dps…I’d rather have mace get some love. Maybe improve the dps to compensate?

Otherwise looking good!

What does LOD though? Ive tried it on and off – but there’s no difference at all that I can see. Certainly doesn’t affect the Dwayna problem which makes it near impossible to look at the screen during the priestess or statue phases

I’d be curious to know what you guys (anet) think have been the better LS releases so far. Or which bits have felt like have hit the nail when you have stepped back after release and looked at them. Might give us an insight on how you look at the LS/LW

It’s also part of the downside of AP. On one hand, I like the target driven content in that sense, but what suffers is the actual game itself. I found myself blitzing through the AP just to get me close to 10k Ap and thus rushing through what was otherwise an interesting new update that I would have taken time over to enjoy in its own right.

I think it’s too late to retract AP altogether, rather it needs rebalancing so that there are less achievements (maybe 3-4) and are actually achievements in the correct sense of the word. Lotro kinda did it right in the early days of deed grinding where the gameplay came first and then you could go for deeds/achievements between content updates or new areas.

Will I do content I don’t like? I loathed the TA dungeon, but I did it anyway for the story. If I ever complete it though, I will never return to it ever. If undesirable content mounts up over time, yes it would impact my desire to log in as it did with Lotro – a great game which was utterly ripped apart and destroyed. OCD for completionism wont sustain me long term over great content and gameplay. Luckily there is plenty of awesome content in GW2 right now and it isn’t an issue.

What Lanfear says about it being our choice is absolutely correct. But, it is in the nature of many of us to be completionists and game designers have the uneviable task of trying to balance this all out.

TA was one of my least favourites, largely due to the time factor on the meta. Despite a very large amount of feedback and queries, most of which were in accordance to the conduct rules laid down, no one answered as to why this meta was removed early (it said October and no end date was posted in the patch notes). This has then led on to the knock on effect of feeling like I had to blitz the current Tower meta since I wont be able to play online next week for work reasons. WHich is a shame, because I both didn’t want to miss out on the reward if it was removed again without wrning, but also wanted to play what feels like an excellent update at MY own pace.

As to my favourite? Well the early LW updates were ironically the better – F&F, Southson as we could play at a slower pace. This is crucial to myself really with time factors involved coming up. I accept you saying the 2 week schedule is not negotiable, but I’m utterly lost as to why. Firstly, there seemed to be no reason for it that I saw – were there genuinely cries for it in pre-release or later? Also if the community is universally against it (and I’m not saying it is), wouldn’t you stand back and say “hmm, maybe we should think about releasing at a slower pace”

I’m genuinely curious as to know what the reasoning behind a 2 week schedule is. I’m not aware of this ever being addressed to date. It’s not an outright stance against it, more bewilderment on my part based on how the year has panned out so far.

I empathise with the immersion breaking comment earlier on. It just doesn’t feel right and fit right with the game in pve. Unlike in pvp, the mob is still dead – it isn’t going to get rezzed by anything nearby so it serves no purpose. If the mobs could rez down allies…then we could have something more interesting.

I’m enjoying the feel and atmosphere of this update – it has the darkened tone you would expect for a World fighting turmoil, corruption and evil, butthe stranger finisher and banner make it too cartoony for this setting.

Quaggan are the supreme race. They are unconcerned with such trivialities and await only the right time for them to leap forward and crush the evil usurpers.

And Suwash the Pirate Quaggan

Actually..he’s one of the most heroic characters in the game!

Whitey.6185:

If I remember correct the vendor is going away when the event finishes.

The vendor is staying, but wont be trading some of the items

I’ll get it eventually. The mini isn’t going anywhere and the cobs will be obtainable all year round. I agree it is a horrible grind for a Halloween festival, but at least there’s no short window to get it I guess.

BobbyStein.2315:

Story Pacing & Continuity
There are some folks who feel that the Living World story is moving too slowly and/or that the themes and plots feel disjointed between releases. I somewhat agree with this sentiment.

We took a long time to build up the various alliances before we revealed Scarlet’s involvement. Some of this was due to factors external to the team, but some was by design. We first wanted to show changes in the open world with “teaser” content like in the Flame & Frost releases and then add the bigger content later once the teams and development pipelines were up to speed.

One of the challenges of the semi-monthly release cycle is that we’re limited in how much content we can put inside each one. This can be a good thing if the story is very focused and doesn’t have a lot of moving parts. The problem we ran into is that we needed to develop a larger cast of non-player characters to account for every playable race, and then create the content in which to put them. That sort of build up takes time and incurs an amount of long-term development debt.

The end goal was to have multiple arcs going simultaneously like on more modern television shows, but where a weekly drama might have 20 – 40 minutes of character time to get things moving, we have maybe half that (or less). So after a few releases it started to feel like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads out there and you (the player) had no way of knowing which ones would be resumed.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

The upside to all of this is that we are aware of the items that we introduced but haven’t finished yet. We’re planning on resolving as much as we can by the time the Scarlet arc concludes. (Yes, there will be a conclusion.)

Dragons
Guild Wars 2 has a dragon on the box cover. The primary motivation for players on their 80-level journey is to kill a dragon. So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

It’s possible it worth reading out the storyline as it unfolds to someone in private, much like authors do with a family member/friends. It seems what you are saying is that looking from your perspective the story meshes ( a good sign for things to come), but it isn’t unfolding that way fro us. Bouncing a chapter story off someone not involved directly with the project like a family member/trustowrthy friend for eg would help give the perspective we have without giving away spoilers for us.

Glad to hear dragons are somewhere on the agenda!

Possibly, it is however more likely reducing the sheer number of silk scraps that exist out there. If gossamer was changing, then it would probably be more directly affecting the ascended grind though

Blood and Madness has a date in the patch notes for ending, but I couldn’t see one for the Tower. The TA meta ended early and unexpectedly, so I thought I’d check how long we have for the achievements for this one (worth adding this date into the patch notes though like you guys did for B&M).

Enjoyable update so far!

Ah but with your favourite Tv show, you could miss an episode and catch up via recording, reshowing or dvd. There was never any time pressure like rhere is now.
The same with attracting a new audience. You currently have no way of doing this with the current story, yet tv shows will always get repeats or dvds to grab new watchers.

I li,ke the rpg analogy more, however it comes down to being able to play at your own pace, which any other rpg whether video or pen&paper will factor for. We are still tied to a single set pace here with no budge. Whilst I admire the Living World concept, this aspect risks stunting the growth of GW2 long term. Not so ething I would like to see.