Guild Wars 2

Dustfinger.9510:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charr

Well, yes, that’s there. But I didn’t know that when I started. =P

Thanks for posting the link.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However since China is going to be involved, I highly doubt that’s feasible. Sadness

Wouldn’t say China’s going to hold back level 80 zones. They’re probably already 80, anyway. =P

If we do see new zones, it might be 35ish through 80. I’d prefer to see more 80 content as well. Though, I think we’re all still waiting to see what’s behind those big walls around Dominion of Winds. If they add Tengu, we’ll likely see a full 1-80 spread (with hearts).

Hah, I had a similar quandary when slotting some of my first Charr into legions.
My warrior for Blood was an obvious choice, though he takes the role of rallying war leader over bloodthirsty frontliner.

My mesmer for Ash is likely somewhat typical, but what I do for him as personal canon is that he’s more of a diplomat, charming and deceiving his way into places he shouldn’t be. Ash and Order of Whispers were natural choices for that particular “Prince Charrming.” (I had the pun of the name until I remade him. :P)

The odder choice was a thief for Iron Legion. Turns out he’s something of an overachiever. Builds guns like Iron, fights as well as Blood, and sneaks like Ash.
I changed his original trade skills to include Huntsman, since the Iron storyline deals with the Ghostbore musket. Couldn’t be happier with him.

Le sigh. Ended up retiring my old Forge warband concept/character, but was morbidly curious about the new player experience. So, Garus Trailforge is kicking back whiskey in that Black Citadel in the sky.

But, after much thesaurus.com searching and trying to find a good warband name for Blood legion, I stumbled on Thunder.

And so, Eidol Soulthunder, ranger and ghost-hater extraordinaire!

Myself, I love(d) the game and played since launch, but the luster’s fallen off. Since I’m an altoholic, I worried less about the “endgame” and focused on learning to enjoy each class and dig into the personal story paths.

But half of an MMO (if not more) is in its endgame. Less so with GW2, since seasonal events and story threads have targeted (nearly) the entire player base. Previous Living Story content occurred on a temporary basis, so the challenges and rewards were accused of being shallow. And they were.

Especially the rewards. If there was a single, greatest criticism of GW2, it’s that gameplay time doesn’t really match the rewards we see. Seasonal/Living Story events have been meta-achievement/token grinds. Ascended and Legendaries are unnecessarily long grinds. “They said there wouldn’t be grinds.” But every game has them. Challenges are limited in the game, and where there are challenges, the rewards are “two blues and a green.”

That’s the major source of the hate. Which is a shame, because I see so much potential for GW2’s style of gameplay, but the devs seem to be designing for older MMO models, not the one GW2 was built on.

CureForLiving.5360:

Repeatable hearts, would address that issue.

Huh… Have to wonder if there’s an expansive idea in that. Repeatable hearts after 80.
Maybe not infinitely repeatable, but what if the vendors gave better rewards for finishing them a second time after hitting 80? Extra cash drops, new karma items, collectables, access to challenge bosses, etc.

Extra PvE padding, for sure, but if the rewards are interesting, that’d justify it.

Yeah, those suck, not gonna lie. :\

I’m experienced enough to know usually which tasks produce the best renown output, but it still leads to waiting. I usually just trot off and kill stuff while I wait. [/shrug]

I can understand the need for soulbound in most games. There wouldn’t be much of a gear market otherwise. People would go to the trading post to buy gear instead of crafting it, use it, then sell it back or hand it down to characters for later. (Which you can do with whites and blues, but who uses those? :P)
Basically, you’d be renting gear and very little of it would leave the economy.

Similarly annoying as it is, karma-purchase items not being tradeable or salvagable is meant to keep people from turning karma into gold. So, the crafting mats are account bound, and armors are soulbound.

Not entirely “realistic” in an economic perspective, but.. it’s a game. Expect illogic now and again. =P

For most of the renown hearts, just tag team the necessary kills. You and your friend get the credit, and the creatures die with no threat. (Which is kinda boring.)

And if you chance on an event that happens with it, even better, since you get event credit and renown at the same time.

Got a few more than 8, so I know your pain. >_>"

To the OP’s idea:

I know, right? I. Want. My. Warband. Back. I hand picked those surly furballs, and I miss them.

It might be nice to have a few “home dailies” that bring back your old life-path buddies. I’m buzzing with the idea of a new zone with a “settlement” instance that functions as a new home instance.

Draconic heavy helm. Keeps my horns, then gives me two more! I figure if I can get eight, I can just claim the position of Imperator.

It’s little confusions like this that make me wish MMOs, not just GW2, had brief culture guides to their more unique races. I’m a stickler for getting a naming scheme right, and going into a new game makes that impossible, unless you have a way to scout the field first.

For FF14, it was … kitten near every race. Lalafell, Roegadyn, Miqo’te… All with unique and interesting patterns.

For GW2, Charr carry the most weight. Their names actually tell a bit of a story, but I had no idea what they were about at the start.

Miroe.2054:

Because your other chars don’t wanna eat what you main has touched. Have you ever seen a character wash their hands after leaving the black citadel?

Hey, hey! My catdemonbull dude is still a cat. …ish. He’s very clean. Unless he’s up to his knees in dead bodies and gore.

…Maybe I’m glad that my chef is an Asura. Techies tend to be particular about dirt.

Shatterer is definitely a “farm” fight. Go there, maybe take out some crystals and slap some adds, but there’s very little risk.

He doesn’t even turn around. >_>

If it’d wingslap or tail whip some people, that’d at least keep people attentive.

Re: “right paw”… What is it with these big bosses and only having 1 to 3 specific hit areas? They’re huge. I should be able to ker-stab Shadow Behemoth right in the jimmies (and risk a kitten-ton of damage) to get my hits in, not wah at him with range or wait for his face to grace my sword with its presence.

I find it quite the opposite! In addition to bank tabs (which still hold my cooking leftovers >.>), the collection expander gives me lots of extra room to hold craft materials. And I still end up overflowing.

Tolmos.8395:

If it were me, I would handle megaserver for RP server as special cases. The other servers all do what they do, but the RP servers are isolated to themselves. Basically, the RP instances would be crammed full of RPers only.

They could probably pull this off if they included a ‘server preferences’ area somewhere with the character. Add a sorting box for [RP] as a tag and get deferred to an instance of the zone for RP groups.

Scrambles.2604:

I really miss /inspect from WoW because i could check out random people’s gear in my downtime, or anytime i saw something cool or different i didn’t recognize.

/inspect is a harmless tool for new players and for scoping out different players “under the hood,” if you will.

Again, then why not ask them? Start a conversation. Might even get someone to add to your friends list out of it.
Just the other day, I had someone ask about my mesmer’s Desert Rose back piece that I got from Sanctum Sprint. Didn’t lead to much else in that case, but I was glad to answer the question. Heck, it reminded me that I’d even done the content.

And because chat linking is available, excluding groups already have an appropriate tool for their purposes. There’s not much sense in adding development time on it.

Why didn’t ANet add it from the start, or why would they be wary of including it? Mostly the potential for abuse. [shrug] It’d probably be rare and limited to restrictive groups (dungeon/fractal PUGs, guilds), but I don’t think ANet wants to encourage that kind of mentality.

Sooo.. my “no” stance is really more out of lack of necessity and somewhat mild concerns about jerkface. If /inspect did get included, I’d shrug and move on. Eh.

Bri.8354:

Personally I’d like some way to test damage dealt, healing applied, damage evaded, ect, for my own personal use. Without them it’s difficult to tell the true strength of what you’re using, which is very important in a game based so much around fine tuning the slightest things.

This is about where I am on the topic. Sometimes I want to check the effectiveness of a build, but enemies out in the wild often die too quickly or take too long, and it’s hard to test things scientifically. It’d be nice to have a test dummy that gives choices for low/moderate/high toughness along with a dps meter. It’d be even better to have a training ground in the home instance that we could use to test builds against various kinds of creatures with measures of kill time and survivability.

But, I really doubt ANet will ever commit to such a thing. Even other major MMOs I’ve played don’t have actual dps meters. That has always been left to the mod community (Recount et al. for WoW, for example).

As for Inspect, no. If I’m not trying to be rude by sneak-trolling into a zerkspeedrun, no one needs to be investigating my gear. Honestly, I’d rather they ask and start a discussion on gear, build, and tactics, instead of making snap judgments based on how my gear does or doesn’t match what they read on some forum.

Palador.2170:

Okay, new question:

Would any of the people wanting to do open world duels be interested in costume brawl “toys” that are made to look like real weapons and have serious looking attacks as a way to duel? Say, “Dueling Pistol”, “Dueling Rapier”, and “Dueling Wand” for the set?

Yes, that means that everyone would have the same skills rather than using class abilities, which I realize misses part of the point. But it also:

• Uses an existing system, minimal work needed to add it to the game.
• Bypasses class balance problems.
• Has a clear path to profit for ANet.
• Makes it entirely about skill, rather than class balance or gear.

Would this be enough to make you happy? And would this be okay with those against in-world duels?

And remember, costume brawl no longer requires costumes. You’d still be in your normal armor or outfits for this.

That actually sounds fun, and I don’t even like dueling. =P

Not against dueling overall, as long as there are controls. The opt-in buy flag also sounds like a solid idea, either as a gem store item, or a gold-sink pay cash per use item.

So long as I don’t get system message spam about winners and losers. That gets irritating as kitten in Goldshire and Orgrimmar, and I really don’t need to see it elsewhere.

Xenon.4537:

If open world is the whole point of gw2, then why do dungeons and personal story exist?

Problem is, they don’t really support their dungeons, and Personal Story got the boot the moment it was released. After Zhaitan, that’s it. Trahearne’s the hero, and the player’s the plucky, useful sidekick.

Granted, I can forgive the “personal” story bit if Living World season 2 is what the rumors say it’ll be. Here’s to hoping. It might even lead to new 5-man dungeons.

Draknar.5748:

…most solo/duo roamers are strictly looking for easy/vulnerable targets that are low risk.

If by “targets” you mean vistas and POIs, then guilty as charged. =P
…Does WvW even have “rewards” for the risk? Not counting the season stuff, since an individual player has .0001% agency in it.

Jerus.4350:

And the level 15 is welcome (it can still be beat with plenty of upscales), maybe he’ll learn a bit of how GW2 works, including how scaling works instead of just learning to be a zergling.

And sometimes, the level 22 in all whites is the only one left standing at Sparc after he explodes a platform. =P

Clyan.1593:

If success in any kind of quest relies on the chat window, the game is not doing its job correctly.

This.

This is something other MMOs have learned about encounter design. They give sufficient information to tell the player how the battle dynamic has shifted. In some I’ve delved deeper into, the player can tell from status icons and chat tells what happened, even after the fight ended.

Big Bad Kitten bares its [Claws of Death]!

Basically, like that. :P It’s accompanied by sound and visual, multiple channels of communication to replace the tiny bits we can’t see past an ectoplasmic blob of effect particles.

In GW2, we might get a tell from a slightly longer sword swing that is otherwise indistinguishable from the boss’s autoattacks. Or he takes a pose that we can’t see past the effectblob.

It wouldn’t take much for GW2 to catch up on this, either. More obvious visual tells or a set of catch phrases that precede an attack would help loads, especially in larger battles.

… >.> And that has very little to do with scaling. Then again, these issues are hardly ever simple.

Celestina.2894

Make an asura, finish Rata Sum in less then 10 minutes.

Bam, charge.

I was being silly, but that’s a good tip! You can even add on, “finish lowbie personal story, get Black Lion key” to it for additional freebies.

Aidan Savage.2078:

It was a conscious effort on the part of Anet to introduce more content where the mentality of “ZERG THE kitten OUTA ALL THIS kitten” leads to failure.

And it kinda worked. The 20-50 man zerg-a-boss-at-a-time strat takes upwards of half an hour. I’ve sat through that, and never want to again.
Flipside, I’ve been in a map where the commanders were very concise about their requests, leaders communicated with themselves and the rest of the players. 1 gold and 2 very close silvers, before I had to scoot off. I could’ve burst out into song, I was so amazed at how well it worked.
And I giggled as my inventory ’sploded with loots. (Mostly greens, but hey, that salvaged into some good T6 mats!)

tl;dr the rest of it, but might as well re-hash some of the stuff that’s been around the forums:

Caveat: People will always go toward the most optimal gear. For good dodgers who are familiar with dungeons, that will be Berserker. Or PVT if they’re running world bosses.

First and foremost, dungeons and encounters need to be more interesting.
Make it so that mobs don’t tether, thus ignoring them leads to more damage than can be tolerated.
Make mobs that attack more frequently or otherwise require more damage mitigation.
In most situations, include more than just a boss in boss encounters. Monolithic bosses are most prone to zergstack, which leads to zerk for minimum boss existence time. Mixing range and melee units in an encounter demands that players stay on the move and mitigate multiple damage sources at one time.

Of course, while that invokes more active, interesting gameplay, it does feel like a slap in the face to those who feel comfortable running an optimal damage config. And the philosophy isn’t incorrect: “Dead DPS don’t.” While that normally means dead characters don’t do damage, it also applies to enemies. Best enemy is a dead enemy, best defense is a good offense, etc.

And buff condition by increasing the cap on elite/champ/legendary grade enemies. It mostly applies to bleeding, but in groups, bleeding damage gets a huge nerf by that system alone.

As far as the original idea, I think it’d be great overall, conditionally. Random pieces would have to be diverse enough to encompass several different kinds of mechanics and environmental triggers without getting too repetitive. Rewards for completion would have to be comparable or better (greater and/or more unique) than dungeons or fractals.

And that’s part of what that comes down to, rewards. It’s a natural evolution, in many cases:
Players want loot.
Players want loot quickly.
Players find optimal paths to quick loot.
Fastest kill times lead to fastest loot.
Berserker leads to the fastest kill times due to damage calculations.
(Corollary: Defensive stats are ‘wasted’ stats if you don’t plan on getting hit.)
Zerker gears seek other zerker gears for zerker groups.
Zerker meta evolved.

And, thing is, I’m well past the point of qq’ing or being judgmental about it. Zerkers gonna zerk, and some of ‘em might even be nice about it. The gear itself doesn’t need breaking or tweaking or working around.

We just need more engaging encounters.

Maybe megaserver is the first step on the way to a district system?
…Let me hope a little. I’m passively okay with megaserver, until something horrid happens: Boss Blitz no-org zerg, questionable RP scenes, etc.
I could try to shuffle in and out, but often times, I get dumped back in the same megaserver shard.
The option to willfully move across districts would be fantastic.

Karizee.8076:

That’s like asking for a free oil change for a Ferrari.
If you can’t afford the gold for a transmutation charge, you definitely can’t afford a Legendary weapon.

Or, conversely, if you afforded a Legendary weapon, you probably can’t afford the gold for a transmutation charge. =P

Lankybrit.4598:

Rauderi.8706:

Quick note: Mark II, 5 minutes of mostly standing still with a rifle (20-25 dragonite)
Shadow Behemoth, lots of running around and trying to hit his big dumb moving head (max of 5 dragonite)

Any wonder why I’d almost never do SB, but I jump on Mark II if I get a chance?
Reward vs Risk/Investment

I died when getting to Mark 2 and didn’t get rezzed and didn’t get loot. Hence the Risk

Baaah, you know better than to lay there for a rez. For shame. :P Waypoint and dash is about 20 seconds, tops. Still, I feel sorry for those under range 1200. ;_; It’s such a hazard.

Bensozia.8071:

Districts in GW1 worked very well. It was no problem to use at all.
With districts , when you first go into a zone , you are placed in a district
selected by the software. If you needed to change districts, a drop down box made it easy.

Aha, I figured it was something like that. I suppose they had hoped megaserver could function similarly without the active component by keeping the “Join at” function for parties.

Not that it helped me last night when I really wanted to be somewhere else due to an awkward ‘conversation’ that was going on. I had to flee to Lion’s Arch. Districts could have saved my sanity!

Didn’t the last “ANet’s not saying anything” thread reach something like 1000 replies?
…and they haven’t really said much?

They don’t seem interested in communicating a vision with the playerbase anymore. With the release of LS2 looming in a little over a month, we’ll see if they were trying to keep it a quiet surprise or just trying not to set us up for disappointment.

It still feels like needless padding to a system that didn’t need it. Worse still, it actively discourages experimentation in favor of enforcing exploration. It doesn’t feel appropriate.

Quick note: Mark II, 5 minutes of mostly standing still with a rifle (20-25 dragonite)
Shadow Behemoth, lots of running around and trying to hit his big dumb moving head (max of 5 dragonite)

Any wonder why I’d almost never do SB, but I jump on Mark II if I get a chance?
Reward vs Risk/Investment

It’s pretty shabby how Charr get so abused on armor/costume design. :\

Palador.2170:

They’ve already said why they did it, so that it would be easier to make new outfit sets going forward. I’m guessing that means that they don’t have to worry about clipping and such between parts any more, which is technically true.

There is that, yes. Of course, now I have this idea buzzing around…

What if, after we got a full set of gear unlocked, we also got the same gear set as an outfit? For those who don’t mix and match, that’d be a godsend.

..wait, no, snag.. Outfits are usable by all armor weights. Urgh. I need to think more on this.

Aeolus.3615:

- maps and game design was not made take advantage of a megaserver system
- Overflows worked better than Megaserver yet overflow system was a pain when occurs.

i just hope that megaserver going to be dropped after some time, and this “test” and bring back the server division but with system w/o overflows.

I doubt they’ll completely move away from megaserver/overflow as a technique. Districts seem like they require a fairly active component, which I can see players wanting, so they can pick server loads, etc.

And maybe districts would solve a lot of the problems going on right now, but it would break some of the flow of the game. Each zone would have to have its own list of districts, basically. Lots more clicking just to get to a zone, but there’s ways around that too.

Ooh, I didn’t know there was a thread for it. Doubt they’ll move on it, but it’d be nice to see at least one person assigned to care.

Thanks for posting.

I’m sad for some of the town clothes/tonics. Those could’ve been turned into outfits with very little trouble.

As it is, while I find them limiting, it’s great I can change in/out of them without paying charges.

Oh, there will still be complaining. =P

They’ll complain that megaserver won’t let them play the content.
They’ll complain the content is lame and zergy.
They’ll complain about the rewards being nerfed or token-based.

They’ll complain.

What I’m hoping for is that they’ll release some patch notes about megaserver tuning, etc when the LS2 hits.

phys.7689:

I think the cash shop works in theory, but in practice, seems like a lot of resources, and things that would be more satisfying in game, go to the cash shop.

When you look at it in the purest sense, depending on how you monetize, decides what you do, and cash shop models logical conclusion is to make as much content that sells as possible, while doing as little as possible to keep people interested in other ways.

The advantage of the sub model, is their goal is to keep you wanting to pay month after month. Their primary means of monetization, is to keep giving you things to do, and keep you wanting to log back in.

The advantage of the buy2p model is you get a complete product, their goal is not neccesarrily to keep you playing forever, but to make sure you have a really good experience so you will buy the next item.
.

right now, the flaw in the GW2 monetization plan, for me anyhow, is they arent giving me enough to keep me engaged, and the stuff they are bringing isn’t really giving me a really good time.

Sad, but true. Short-sighted leadership is taking the game down a primrose path of “shiny objects” rather than content that sells the shiny objects. While I like (and bought) the latest little outfit thing, it has no context or meaning. Does it have to do with Festival of the Four Winds? It looks and feels like it’d be more appropriate for Dragon Bash.

Zodiac stuff was a WTF out of nowhere, too. I’m glad they have an eager costume design team, but this focus on vanity while we hear nothing about content is killing things. (Note: Living Story season 2 starts July 2nd. Let’s hope for the best!)

Dalanor.5387:

How surprising, that only those players complain about dungeons, zerkers, whatever, who not even have experience about the topic …
Old content get trivialized now, people run it hundreds if not thousand times and figured out fast ways to deal with said content. Both gear, traits, skills and tactics involved in this. Tree made a great post about this above.
Try fractals, you would like the Grawl fractal endboss.
Otherwise, thanks for the discussion, but leave it. Thanks!

Hahaha, no. Not that simple. First, I’m not, for the most part, complaining about dungeon content. So, missed point there. I dip into things now and again, but not enough to do speed runs or know the right sit-and-stack positions. Meh. That doesn’t negate my experience.

But anyway, yes, the content is old. Tree said that much more eloquently than I would have, and he’s definitely a voice of experience beyond GW2 dungoneering.

But again, to stay on topic, ‘zerk is fine. We just need dungeon/encounter content that matches GW2’s play style and available mechanics.

Whether or not a mechanic is trivialized, they must be dealt with. Again, just because you don’t like the mechanic, doesn’t make the mechanic not exist.

Marionette was a step in the right direction. But that’s not a dungeon encounter. And I have little experience with GW2 dungeons. I’ve been meaning to fix that, but what I’ve played so far was more irritating than “challenging.”

What GW2 lacks from what I have seen is multiple sets of mechanics to make fights engaging. And that comes from stepping away from solitary monoliths that require different attack phases (Watchknights… such a terrible thing) to generate any sort of play variability.

Yugh. Jagged horrors. I’m okay with them, but do I have to hear my necro spew off her “Whoops another one died” quote EVERY TIME THEY DIE?
Srsly, they take away my mantras, but leave that nuisance to rattle my ears. It makes minion master irritating to play.

Ah well. MMOs change things around all the time. ANet giveth builds, and ANet take them away. :P

Celestina.2894:

Garambola.2461:

They are Charr. Some people think they look like cats, some dogs and some…cows. But they are Charr, a race of beings not found on Earth.

……I have never heard any say a charr looks like a cow o_o

The number of WoW-immigrants that equate them to Tauren. …bluuuugh. It makes me want to throw haymakers. :\

Carnius Magius.8091:

Account bound I can see. But soulbound? How about being consistent with crafting materials.

I need another level of l2read, apparently. >.> I answered the header but not the actual question.

It does seem silly that bread is soulbound when karma-buy cooking items and the like are account bound.

#Accountboundbread2014

The devs are slowly coming around to better encounter design. Slowly. :\

My inclusion of the word “gimmick” was to portray that ALL complex fights have a special component that must be navigated, as a counter to an above comment. Just because someone doesn’t like a mechanic, that doesn’t invalidate that it’s still there and a valid mechanic. ( No really, K-U Yogg-Saron. I still have scars. ;_; )

Some mechanics are simple, some are irritating, etc. That doesn’t change that Xenon and many others are right. Improve the content and don’t worry about gear load-outs.

’Zerker is fine.

If you discount AC2 for being a “gimmick” fight, then I’m not sure what to tell you. (Granted AC2 is a huge gimmick fight and I loathe it for that…)

Most “strategy” encounters in MMOs usually involve managing an additional aspect of the environment or performing multiple actions in concert with your party/raid.

Since I recently raid-bombed some old WoW content with a buddy, I can prattle on about those:

Monolith A has 3 mobs that invoke different phases, provoking immunities or status effects unless the dps are positioned properly.
Monolith B creates adds that heal it if they get near the boss. It also creates a shield that damages the party if they don’t stop DPS.
Monolith C has turrets that are needed to damage it, requiring phases that protect it from a rush of adds.
Monolith D adds a special status that gets chipped away. If it breaks, the character turns hostile on the party, then dies. Meanwhile, others await the chance to dive into another part of the fight and weaken the boss.

Monolith A is a fight from WoW’s Ulduar.
Monolith B is Subject 6, GW2’s Thaumanova.
Monolith C is …no, not Tequatl, a boss fight from FF14’s Castrum Meridianum.
Monolith D is Yogg-Saron, WoW’s Ulduar. (Kitten Yogg-Saron. Kitten him in the face… -_-)

All of those fights have gimmicks: adds, adds + damage shields, turrets, sanity meters.

But they also require strategy to execute and none can be tank/stack-and-spank’d.

-_- Cash shop is not the problem. …Well, not entirely. Development will likely follow the dollars, which leads to more stuff sold in the cash shop.

The bigger problem is a lack of solid, enduring content being put out for us. Possible correlation to the cash shop, but not proven cause.

That Other Game (y’know, the one whose head-start beings kinda soon) has a development team doing what Living Story should have been. Rather than make global, disjointed events, they have a separate story track and are adding to it over time.

So, instead of downing Zhaitan as the end-game accomplishment, we should be getting more Personal Story and less Living World.

Or an expansion, we should get one of those. That’d be nice.

xallever.1874:

P3 is so awfully boring because of the long timegated event on the burrows. Setting up one trap is nothing remotely close to the dreadfully boring p3.

Truuuue. I’d lapsed on that part. A lot of standing around waiting for spawns and killing lootless trash mobs. Un-fun. (And off topic. Sorry about that. XD)

Refrain: ’zerker is fine!