Guild Wars 2

Ashen.2907:

I honestly dont remember but could a prophecies only player unlock other campaign skills with Balth faction and then buy with tomes ?

Not that I recall, though by the time I even started doing that I already had the Whole GW1 set.

I literally bought Guild Wars w/EotN from Circuit City when it was on its last week of operation for $15. Played for about a month or two then found Factions and Nightfall at Target for $7.50 (Factions) and $10 (Nightfall). I then got my wife hooked after we met and I was able to find the full set for $20 at Wal-Mart. So neither of us would know that answer.

What they have shown us so far can be categorized into three categories:

Game Mechanics
Profession Specialties

Additional Content
Revenant
PvE Zone
PvP Map
Zone Masteries

Muddy Water
Guild Halls
WvW Map

Game Mechanics should be applied across the whole game whether or not a player has the expansion due to imbalance/grieving. In order to keep PvP balance, there would have to be a check for the expansion to ensure that all players have access to Profession Specialties which would increase wait times. No need to go over the grieving part, we all know how it would happen in LFG.

Additional Content is the common locked stuff when it comes to expansions for any game. Since GW1 shows how ANet has done this in the past, we will use it. The content that was locked out for a Prophecies player was:

Assassins
Ritualists
Dervishes
Paragons

Factions Armor, Campaign Map, PvP Maps, Skills
Nightfall Armor, Heroes, Campaign Map, PvP Maps, Skills
EotN Armor, Heroes, Expansion Map, Expansion PvP Maps, Skills

A Prophecies player could still buy dropped weapons from other players and therefore equip Spears, Scythes, and Daggers.

Muddy Water covers stuff that can cause severe community rifts (Guild Halls) or severe game mode imbalance (WvW Map) if locked behind the expansion. Guild Halls should be accessible game wide to encourage guild communities. I’m personally on the fence with the WvW Map. While I will agree that it should be locked behind the expansion, I also understand the argument that it could cause severe imbalance with WvW as a whole.

In conclusion, I personally believe that Profession Specialization and Guild Halls should be implemented and unlocked as game wide without the need for the expansion.
The rest can be locked behind the expansion as traditional Additional Content. The WvW Map though is a tough call.

So, out of seven announced features/content, I only think that two should be added to the game as a whole and not locked behind an expansion wall.

Rym.1469:

But if you’re a veteran player I just can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t buy an expansion assuming you will to play gw2 at all.

Reason why I won’t be buying an expansion if the price is too high is that I have to buy it for both my wife and I plus I was in an accident this past week.

Things that should be locked by the expansion are the new profession, the new zones, and the new zone masteries.

The moment guild halls appeared in GW1, players did not have to have Factions to go to the hall. I only had Prophecies for a month when I found Guild Wars and I had access to guild halls.

It would be a prick move by ANet to block expansionless players from the guild hall.
Matter of fact, I could almost see guilds kicking members just because they can not access the guild hall. That would be ANet adding grieving fuel to grievers.

Same for the specialties. If expansionless players can not specialize, they will get excluded from various activities. Not to mention the imbalance in Core PvP and Core WvW.

Unless certain parts of the expansion are disabled where both Players that have the expansion and don’t have the expansion, there may be problems.

Notably the new mastery system. Players that don’t have the expansion won’t have the mastery system and will not be able to bring the “A” game to the existing PvP and WvW maps. Grievers with the expansion will cause all sorts of problems.

I can understand blocking access to the new profession, new areas, and new bosses with the expansion, but the mastery system, the access to more weapons, and the guild halls are functional changes that need to be across the board.

I had a well written response, but the forum lost it.

In short, there are common aspects to games that are unavoidable to copy like cross-hairs and ammo tracking in FPSs. The way it is coded to work is copyrighted to each coding team. Quake and DOOM can be clones since they were made by the same teams under the same company. Coding is copyrighted unless it is open source.

Xenosaga was made by two different teams between 1 and 2. 2 was not allowed to copy the system from 1 even though it was the same company. I believe 3 was done by a hybrid of the two teams and therefore was allowed improve on 1’s system.

Most pencil and paper RPGs are VERY different from D&D. Expand you horizons and actually play GURPS, RIFTS, Shoadowrun, etc.

We all know why it is bannable.

The reason why it is not already part of the game is because it is a copy of another company’s Intellectual Property therefore Copyrighted.

While I loved the cut scenes myself…

I’m sure the other 6 players that also finished the LS at the same time did NOT appreciate being jumped by Veteran Teragriffs and Elite Mordrem Wolves because someone at ANet thought it would be funny to let an event hang out right there where we pop out at.

We got in 2 dodges if we were lucky enough to get control of our characters fast enough, but we got 2 hit WHIPPED!

Not a very cool follow up guys.

While this would be nice for when daily PvP capture/defender are up, 5 instant votes for the courtyard TDM map is a sure fire way to spot when solo queue players are about to go up against a pre-made team.

We’re trying to get the point across to the PvP dev that this system isn’t working.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Matchmaking-doesn-t-seem-improved/first

Justin ODell.9517:

Torin.7129:

Double or tripple profession in same team: Can’t you make an algorythm that doesn’t allow to join 2 or more same profession in a team? Then can be all of the games more balanced.

Looking at the data, the system is actually really good at this, but can be over-shadowed by the new profession dailies. We do not wan’t to put a hard cap on the number because it could greatly increase queue times for the more common professions.

Doesn’t look like it to us when solo ques are going up against pre-made teams.

The worst ones to go up against are teams of Mesmers and Thieves, any mix. Then teams of Warriors and Guardians come in second.

Get rid of the Party Que for Un-Ranked PvP. Un-Ranked should remain solo queuing to prevent Pre-Made Teams from farming the solo queuing players. And then isolate the pre-made teams from the solo queuing players in Ranked PvP.

Then maybe we could ALL see the algorithm working the way you say.

Wanze.8410:

I would say that those 1% of the player base propably still outweighs Anet employees in playing hours by a margin, so they should be a considerable source of feedback.

This would an obvious clue as to why ANet keeps screwing up and listening to metrics.

They don’t play their game like we do. They get to play it privately with a few invitees to help test new content instead of going knee deep into the wild and actually playing the content. Watching it does not count.

They need to play this game in different configurations too. Some players only have a vanilla keyboard and mouse, some have gaming keyboards and mice, some have one or the other, some use Ventrillo/Team Speak, some don’t.

ANet wouldn’t need Forum Specialists if they actually played their game without their “Developer God Modes” turned on.

Chaith.8256:

khani.4786:

Isn’t that the point of their backpacks?

Quoted for truth

Last I knew the kits had different backpacks. So I second this Quote for truth.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Astral Projections.7320:

Is there really any reason to make public who the forum specialist are since they mostly are there to report back to ANet? I don’t see why someone needs a tag for that. Having a tag opens up possibilities of them being constantly harassed about being white knights and ANet toadies. Imo, it would be better not to have people publicly labeled as being “semi official” when they have no official function other than collate information and report or linking official posts (which anyone can do).

That is a really thought-provoking comment!

What do others feel about this? I’m very interested in feedback on the subject of making specialists public or not.

If you MUST have this program go forward, make them anonymous and the moment one of them reveals that they are an FS, give them a mandatory 3 day suspension from the forum AND the game then revoke their FS status.

Since they will be used to forward comms, you’re better off scraping the idea and make your own employees spend an hour or two a day skimming through their respective forums (ex. PvP Dev Team looks through PvP forum) so they can get the info instead of having someone that is likely to be VERY biased only forwarding the info THEY like.

This should be enough reason NOT to do this FS program since you will have to have someone policing the FSs to make sure this isn’t happening. I’m pretty sure a good chunk of the community is sure you got trolled HARD with your metrics that brought about the NPE and the Gem Exchange changes that got you a LOT of NEGATIVE publicity. I don’t think you want to change something and find out it was an FS that fed you only what they wanted you to see and end up getting more negative publicity. Though in this case you could sue the FS responsible for the damages caused by their bias.

The American work day is 8 hours. A mandatory hour looking over the forums isn’t going to kill the devs. Good devs would welcome that PLUS they won’t shy away from checking the forums while munching on lunch (it is what we IT Techs do) and maybe even grab a peek at home.

To Quote the most annoying NPC from Tyria:

“This won’t end well.”

From experience and from reading through here, Pre-Made groups should only square off against other Pre-Made groups no matter whether it is ranked or un-ranked. The solutions to the Pre-Made ROFLstomps in GW1 was the Random Arenas and the Codex Arenas.

I’d go so far to say that Un-Ranked PvP should be ran like the Random Arenas in GW1:

• No Pre-Made groups
• If your random team wins, you move on to the next battle together. I believe this was capped at 25 though.
• No votes for maps, you get what is next in the rotation.

It won’t be long before Ranked PvP evolves into a Codex Arena type that prevents teams of the same profession. Though full implementation of the Codex Arena into GW2’s Ranked PvP would break up a lot of the Meta builds since the GW1 Codex Arena not only prevented, for example, 4 Mesmers from being on the same team, but it restricted what skills from each profession that could be used for the day. Make those that want to move up that Ranked Ladder earn their spot. I might even join in on that just to learn the skills that I don’t use often.

Someone is causing problems to American servers. Not just GW2 servers either.

http://www.mmoserverstatus.com/index.html

Runes of Magic = 115 ping
Archage = 113 ping
Wildstar = 110 ping
Guild Wars 2 = 111 ping

Would just be easier to put ambient critters in the home instances.

As the Living story advances along I decided to take another character through to gauge how the Open World parts were standing up for when my wife gets done with her schooling and returns to playing.

While we can do the instances together, I’ve noticed that Iron Marches seems to have a “fail safe” in so much that the events can fail and you can still advance albeit very slowly, but Frostgorge Sound does not have that kind of fail safe and two casual players can get overwhelmed and fail Coil Watch.

Are there plans to 1) help speed along the Iron Marches open world parts and hopefully fixing the Mordrem Wolves at the end to remove the retaliation like they did with the rest and 2) put in a better fail safe in Frostgorge Sound so the Living Story can be advanced.

At this point, I’m advising my wife to ignore “Dragon’s Reach Part 1” and the rewards until the open world stuff can be re-tuned down to near solo content since many are back to the Champ Train in Frostgorge Sound and Iron Marches is returning to a ghost town.

I’ll just leave this right here for you…

I would love to see new tattoo patterns for the Norn.

If you are doing a level 50 dungeon, expect that level 50 players will want to run the dungeon.

Quit being an elitist and show players how to run a dungeon with the profession they brought in.

A little kindness goes a long way.

DCs plus the rudeness and taxiing out at the world events are why I quit even trying to do them. I’ve never even finished the three headed wurm because everyone taxis out to another map with the wurm as it starts on the map I’m in. When I have been lucky to be on a map where it is being killed, I get DCed.

Somethings are just not worth the headache.

According to the wife, she took a look at the game and found several armor skins from Guild Wars 1 actually in the game on the NPCs. She pointed out the female Istani elementalist armor to me since my GW1 Elementalist has that armor.

The Wife said she will sit down and play it when she gets home tonight and take screen shots for this thread.

The trick with the link is that my facebroke is setup to block games and I refuse to undo it to follow the link. I think it would be easier to hit Reality Squared Games since they made the game and are therefore responsible for any advertizements.

http://realitysquaredgames.com/index.php

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thanks for these notes. We’ve filed on this before and the ad was pulled. But it seems to have reappeared. If you could kindly post a direct link to the ad — not to where the ad leads but to the ad itself — we can investigate.

http://angel.gtarcade.com/

The game is also listed in the AMD Gaming Evolved/Raptr interface under free to play games. The trailer in that interface says the game is from Reality Squared Games.

Rip the bloody S.O.B.s a new one!

That some game named “League of Angels” seems to be blatantly using parts of Guild Wars 2 to promote their game?

I spotted it on a Facebroke ad.

Are we REALLY doing this AGAIN!? ROFLMFAO!

I’ll leave this right here…

Josh.5839:

-hardly any new content

-too slow to solve issues

-buggy

etc

Its obvious they cant afford a quality game with the current direction.

How about you tell the truth instead of using this straw-man argument.

You want a subscription so that the casual players quit playing and you can enjoy a game with nothing but like minded players that only play one way.

People paying a subscription fee (especially when there is an optional in-game store) are like the people that rent games over and over. When do you think you finally paid enough? I know someone that constantly rented the same game every week for 2 years at $3 a week ($312 before any taxes) and still never finished it. I bought the same game for $29.95 and I can play it whenever I want. Why pay more than it is worth?

Average subscription fee is $15 a month for $180 total a year. It is like telling people that the $50-$60 game they bought should only be played for 6 months and then repurchased.

Casual players tend to be the ones that prioritize that other bills come first and games come last. You want us gone. Plain and simple.

I’ve got Castlevania, Metroid, and Assassin’s Creed for video games if they start subscription fees.

And ultimately in the end, I have my Battletech tabletop miniature’s game for when the power is out.

The legal issues for the US resident and the age requirement is because this is an official site and NOT a fan site.

All the official forums I go to moderated by employees of the parent company in some fashion.

It is a liability thing AND it is Resume filler. These “specialists” will likely be allowed to place their tenure on their resumes as unpaid internships. Therefore, non-US citizens would likely have to get a work-visa since ANet is based in the US.

If I harvest the Rich Mithril Node on one character for the first time after reset I get all 10 strikes. I try to harvest it again on any other character within that same amount of time and I get only 2 strikes.

I chalked it up to it being a Rich node once every 24 hours per account then reverting to a normal node for all other characters for the rest of that 24 hours.

As a moderator with Battletech/Mechwarrior related forums, this program has a lot of potential for abuse.

I move that before ANY implementation of this program that the top 2 hotly debated subjects on these forums be outright BANNED first with swift disciplinary action taken against members that start these threads:

Mounts
and
Dueling in PvE

You get “pro mounts/pro PvE dueling” and vice versa into your program and I can tell you the fallout will not be pretty.

The wife and I still have our toy frames from the first Winter’s Day since we were only able to make 2 or 3 of them.

Are we just tossing them now since the mini pets are in the Gem Store or can we have a way to finish them?

I still have my Ventari and Golem frames.

I’m still targeting all the way out to BFE instead of right next to me. Even more so if I’m zoomed out.

I have to angle the camera so I’m looking down at my character to target anything close to me.

Rename the thread “Resizable Bank Window.” It sounds like you are talking about the Bank Storage Expansions.

It does suck that only the mini map and the inventory can be resized.

The Black Lion Skin collection shouldn’t even be there since it requires at minimum someone willing to buy tons of keys from the gem store. Key farming isn’t what it used to be.

I could handle it being there if they took the keys off the gem store and increased the drop rate significantly so it isn’t a bought and gambled for collection.

Michael Conrad.6704:

Well I was sort of hoping a Guru (Present Company Included) would reply. A Guru or even better an ArenaNet programmer.

How about someone that uses both?

I love it. Hit with a flame blast on one hit then follow up with a lightning strike. I did this on my Elementalist’s staff and my Ranger’s long bow. Makes for a nasty one-two punch.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

And if you consider yourself to be a casual player (Ravion Hawk) then perhaps you need to reconsider that exactly a casual player is.

No ill will intended towards you because that really did make me look like a hardcore player, but I get very little time to actually play. Once I found the “sweet spot” in both boss battles, I burned through this chapter on all my characters so I could go about my casual goofing off and enjoying the scenery. I don’t really care about the “instance achievements” or the area achievements. I just happen to get some of the area achievements done going from point A to point B.

Working on a bachelor, taking the wife to her school, going to client sites for computer maintenance kinda eats up the gaming time. What I was getting at is that if a casual gamer can burn through content meant to last 2 weeks 13 times in 2-3 days, the content is pretty sad. This chapter was not easy, it was just painfully short.

A true hardcore gamer would be able to burn through the content with a full stable of 64 characters in likely a week to a week and a half.

How about people STOP making Mount Threads and use the ones that are littered across the forums.

If they want to stay on the 2 week release model, they need to have more content. Currently I can play each chapter this season on 13 characters in about 2-3 days and while scooting from one part to another I pull off the various achievements for the area without mindlessly zerg farming.

I can do the chapter achievements later during one of the many big breaks.

But yes, these chapters are pretty short to warrant a 2 week release schedule.

Crovax.7854:

I’m using LB with axe/mace or GS in full zerk armor and completely offensive traits and died twice across all story instances since season 2 started; maybe it’s a l2p issue on your part?

Not everyone wants to or can afford to play the Zerker Meta. This is not a L2P issue since the setup worked all through the PS and in PvE. LS2 is being balanced for the Elitist that say everything is too easy yet they conveniently forget that not everyone uses the Meta builds.

You proved my point even more with that comment.

Elitist mindset is:
Full Zerker or GTFO
WP if you are Dead

ANet needs to fix this. The first step is treating big events like dungeons and get the players working together instead of WP zerging and allowing Elitist jerks to flood the chat with “WP if you are Dead.”

The only fix to the Zerker Meta would be removing the stat combo like they did with MF stat combos. That way content isn’t balanced against the Zerker and become OP against everything else.

Gaile Gray.6029:

This is an interesting idea.

Unless you all plan on removing the Way Point cost, this is a bad idea since it is catering to the Elitist Players that demand the dead to use a way point instead of helping dead players as it was originally intended.

Any serious event should be treated like dungeons and lock out way points until everyone is dead in the event bubble to further encourage cooperation and support tactics instead of way point zerg fests.

I already figured out why the armor repair cost was removed since a double Mace/Long Bow Warrior tends to die a lot in the LS2 instances since the removal. Someone knew armor was going to get destroyed A LOT in LS2 and they preempted the armor repair cost complains early.

Please do not support the “WP if you’re Dead” crowd Gaile.

Friggarn.9451:

Or wear one of those shiny metal hats.

I love it when people use the “Tin Hat” response when an attorney has already weighed in on it.

If I want a Black Lion Key outside the nearly non-existent drop rate, the nerfed key farm, or from map completion, I’m safe to convert in-game gold to gems. Buying Gems with cash then spending them on the keys (or candies for Halloween) can net you jail time now for illegal gambling.

But hey, what does an attorney know?

And yes, they specified the Black Lion Key from the Gem Store and anything else that could be purchased in the Gem Store that can give you a random chance at something that can be considered valuable enough that a player could be tempted to sell for real money.

You do realize you could sell the Halloween Skins mentioned and the Permanent Hair Stylist Contract for $300 USD each and other players would pay it since it is a saving of around $50 USD in Gem purchases.

And before anyone mentions the Legendary Weapons, those do not come out of the BL Chests and they don’t come from a raffle that you can purchase “tickets” from the gem store.

Astralporing.1957:

Slayer Durok.2815:

How in any way would a County/State office see or care that you played a video game, entered a raffle that accepts virtual items, and gives out a virtual item as a reward? It’s a video game.

You seem to forget, that (due to Second Life, and WoW account sellers) there was at some time serious push to make all the virtual income taxable by the state. Yes, in US. IRS was really serious about that. It fell through, of course, but it wasn’t because “it was a video game”. Technically, a slot machine can be also considered to be “only a game”.

In this state, if there is no skill involved, it is a game of chance that you paid real money for. Already had an attorney in the area clarify what in the Gem store would constitute to illegal gambling and I avoid them unless I convert in-game gold to gems for it.

And thanks for reminding everyone about the IRS trying that stunt.

Kill low level champs without a train nearby. I’ve been able to get the lower rarity bags that way.

KOPPER.1458:

I am not sure I understand what you mean Ravion. Can you educate me on the subject? Why would this not be allowed?

Any method that a person pays money into that has a random chance of winning is considered gambling and is to be regulated by the state. Since it is known that people sell things in on-line games for real cash, any item that has random chances to get something that a player can sell for real money will fall into this category.

The state left the regulation open enough so they could tear down all the “internet cafes.” This also leaves it open for MMOs with cash shops that contain items that can be viewed as a “game of chance” that players could win something desirable enough that they can sell for real money and therefore winning more money than was put in.

Since the county I’m in IS greedy enough to pull this on people, I was advised not to buy with my own money anything from the Gem Store that would be considered as a use for gambling after they looked over the Gem Store selection and got explanations on what was offered. They even looked at the gold/gem/gold conversion rate to find out the possible going rate in cash for the Black Lion Chest Items and found them to be high enough for gambling charges to be pressed.

So, in part because of gold sellers and idiots trying to make a buck off playing video games, MMOs now carry the possibility of jail time if you buy the wrong thing from the MMO’s cash shop.

So, the Permanent Hair Stylist Contract is to blame for there being a chance at going to jail with the Black Lion Chests and the Ghastly Grinning Shield and Greatsaw Greatsword aren’t helping with the recent raffle.

Doing a search on MMO gambling brings up countries and states that consider certain things in MMO cash shops to be gambling and therefore illegal. Some even consider it money laundering and racketeering which can net you even worse charges.

Kinda bites for the wife and I. Our state’s definition of gambling was revamped after the Allied Veterans case.

We don’t dare buy (with cash) BL Keys and we definitely refused to buy the candies that gave you more wrappers.

We’ll convert gold to gems and snag a key once in a while, but those candies were toxic in this state. We could only use what came out of the ToT bags.

When will ANet learn that not all states will see their “raffles” and “RNG chests” the way ANet sees them and are considered illegal gambling in some states?

24 hours from account creation.

There is a handful of things that deal with the in-game economy that a new account has to wait minimum 24 hours before they can do it.

We all had to wait the 24 hours when we started our accounts and so can you.

Even those of us that had the 3 day head start had to wait 24 hours.

That Guy.5704:

create level 1 character, do all cities map completions = 6 charges.

Already aware of the charge farming, I left it out on purpose.

That Guy.5704:

Of course, I would prefer skins to function like dyes currently do, but I dont really see that coming.

No one thought we’d finally get the dyes account unlocked, but we raised enough hell and look at what came of it. Account wide dye palette. Now we just have to make ourselves heard over doing away with Transmutation Charges and allow us to use our wardrobes to the fullest.

It would be better just to ditch the Transmutation Charges and let us change our skins freely.

It has already been counted how many charges a casual player can possibly get without buying them or playing PvP. That is 29 at most if you never get a key from map completion per character.

Bwahahaha!

I agree it would have been great to be told we’ve been served too.!

—announcer’s voice—

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