Guild Wars 2

thingol.8730:

I think western people doesn’t know about what NCSoft do in the Korea.
[…]
It is why I’m worried about NCSoft influence this game…

NCSoft has been involved with Guild Wars since GW1, so I don’t see a reason for concern. Regardless of what they do in other territories, or with other games, they seem to be pretty hands-off with ArenaNet. I’m not saying they have zero influence, but it’s not like they’re a new partner who’s going to rock the boat recklessly.

A lot of items in the gem store come and go. Some of them, like Raiment of the Lich, are seasonally-themed, so you can expect them to come back at certain times of the year, like Halloween. There are also times when the gem store will bring back old items for a while, although there’s no real schedule to it. March was full of short-term sales (often one-day-only,) so it might be worthwhile to hang on to some gems just in case something you want appears unexpectedly.

Of course, there’s no telling when the item you want will return, especially if it isn’t seasonal, so it’s possible to hold onto gems for a long time waiting for something specific.

Donari.5237:

~snip~

Thanks for the run-down. I was going to ask if anyone had the shirts and could speak on the quality of them, and then I read your post. \o/

There are a dozen other places to complain about medium armor. Why you had to complain about it here, only you know.

I’d be interested in seeing Cynn’s outfit in GW2, although I think it looks a lot better in that render than it did in-game. Maybe GW2 could do it more justice.

I’m hearing both “It’s not the way our guild runs, it’s how the players treat guilds in this game” and “It’s going to kill the game.”

Could it be guilds in this game aren’t exactly the same as they are in some other games, and could that be okay? Guild features got a big spike with HoT, and the multi-guild situation didn’t kill the game in the years prior to HoT.

Maybe the service you’re offering isn’t the service people want, when you’re blaming the playerbase for a lack of guild success. (By whatever measure of “success” you want to go with.)

I feel like the OP doesn’t go into enough detail about what why/how being restricted to one guild improves the game. Most of it just says how important guilds are, and I’m confused by how it robs guilds of identity, while promoting spam-y behavior.

I almost wonder if the opposite is true, since with multiple guilds you can join several very narrow guilds with strong identities (roleplayers, WvW, raids, offline friends, etc.) without having to pick whichever one can give you the most benefit, i.e., the one with the biggest guild hall.

You might not identify as strongly with one guild, since you’re not required to commit to one hyper-focused guild or one general purpose guild, but at least you’re not pushed to decide to be one type of player exclusively.

For anyone interested, Mhenlo appears to be wearing Monk/Tyrian armor, while the outfit we have is essentially Elite Woven. They’re close enough that I wouldn’t mind not getting a Mhenlo-themed set.

I’m really not sure what Cynn’s wearing, which might not be player armor from GW1 unless I’m just overlooking it.

Part of why it’s easier to make outfits than armor is because they don’t make a set for each weight. It’s doable, but I’m not sure it would sell three times as well as the single set per theme.

People already feel like they’re bombarded with new outfits, so I think making three of each theme might be a little much. They’d probably rotate the store more frequently, too, since they don’t seem to like having everything in the store at once.

If you did want the actual armor skin, it’s medium Accursed armor, which is the Arah dungeon set.

Yep, five is still the max.

Krait iss going to be everywhere now.

I was waiting for this throughout all of the March sale, but they’re on sale now. Woot!

Bought five, so I’ll probably fill them up with my three favorite tonics, a mystic salvaging kit, and…I’m not sure yet. Maybe a Selfless Potion, or some toy.

Maximus Delion.8719:

~snip – pricing schemes that don’t include the current expansion~

Speaking for myself, I would like to see expansions include all previous expansions, because I want them to build on each other. If you assume all players have access to, say, gliding, you can continue to use mechanics like that in new maps and gameplay, instead of just leaving it as a one-off mechanic that gets used in Magus Falls and nowhere else.

I’m not saying the new zones need to be littered with bouncing mushrooms, but I think there’s a benefit to knowing what people have access to, up to a point, and being able to utilize all the game mechanics they’ve added so far.

As Just a flesh wound says, it’s not the first time. Besides Halloween items, there were several available in return for Mordrem Blooms. I got my Magnus’s Eye Patch from the Memories of Scarlet box.

If they added such functionality, I expect they could do it the same way they did white/black wings, with an NPC you talk who unlocks the glider.

Perhaps you could be lying down (in the usual glider pose) with the carpet beneath you?

I figure if they can do a bubble glider, it’s not like the glider has a clearly defined template it has to follow, animation-wise.

This also seems to be assuming no major new mechanics, like gliding. Masteries were, like specializations, built with growth in mind, so I expect to see similar things from those, but gliding was a pretty major feature. I use it more than anything else from HoT, including specializations, even in Central Tyria.

I don’t know what the next “gliding” will be, or whether there will be something comparable, but it was a revolutionary feature in my book.

Your placeholder expansion is also missing story length. Is it as long as HoT? Shorter? Longer? I know that’s a key feature for a lot of people, myself included.

To me, that’s like saying you don’t differentiate between Aetherblade Armor having three styles and the Mad Scientist Outfit only having one. One of those is obviously a lot more work than the other.

A person might be able to argue that all armor in the game should have been interchangeable from the start, regardless of weight class, so that we’d only have one “Aetherblade Armor,” instead of weight variants, but that’s just not reflective of how the game actually is.

I like the idea of SAB being temporary, but recurring. That gives people something to look forward to and enjoy on a regular basis, and it give the devs some breathing room, where they can tweak a couple things, let it go, and focus on other projects in the meanwhile, just like Halloween and Wintersday. It’s filler content, but it’s popular. Festivals serve a very practical purpose, besides just being fun.

I love the Halloween activities, but I’d certainly be less into them if I could do them all year. That’s got to be frustrating if you’re confident you could play SAB all year, but I get the reasoning behind making it temporary.

Dinks.2478:

We’ve had what 5 armor sets added to the game outside of the gem store since launch? Disgusting.

Radiant/Hellfire reuse some elements between armor weights, but have unique chests and pants, so count them how you will. Glorious Armor and Glorious Hero’s Armor are also very similar, so you can choose to count those as how you will. Same with Carapace and Luminescent. Living Story has provided a large number of individual pieces, like back items and helms, but if we’re just looking at sets:

-Radiant Light
-Radiant Medium
-Radiant Heavy
-Hellfire Light
-Hellfire Medium
-Hellfire Heavy
-Carapace Light – Luminescent Light
-Carapace Medium – Luminescent Medium
-Carapace Heavy – Luminescent Heavy
-Illustrious Light
-Illustrious Medium
-Illustrious Heavy
-Glorious Light -Glorious Hero’s Light
-Glorious Medium -Glorious Hero’s Medium
-Glorious Heavy -Glorious Hero’s Heavy
-Bladed Light
-Bladed Medium
-Bladed Heavy
- Leystone Light
- Leystone Medium
- Leystone Heavy

I’m not saying 21~27 new armor sets since launch is a good number or a bad number, but I think five is a pretty severe underestimation. The weight class variations might not feel like they deserve to be called totally different sets, but they are, especially if they’re going to be compared to outfits.

I wonder what kind of scaling abuse /zen could cause. If paused players don’t contribute to scaling, they might be able to gather around, /zen as a group until an event starts, then drop into combat against an unscaled encounter. If they do contribute to scaling, you have the same problem AFK players already cause, but without any threat at all to them.

It walks a fine line between interesting and unnecessary, I think.

“Living World” is the widest umbrella term, covering most of the major content updates, including the “Living World Season 1” and “Living World Season 2” updates. When people say “Living Story,” they’re explicitly referring to these seasons, or future ones like LS3. “LWS3” or “LW3” never seemed to catch on. I think people like “Living Story” because it contrasts with the “Personal Story.”

The term also includes festivals, although they’re frequently treated distinctly, both by Anet and by players. Living Story explicitly excludes holidays.

Complicating the terminology, you’ll also see “living world” thrown around as an ideal goal for the game, the idea that the game world should feel like it’s alive and changing. This old blog post introduces the idea of non-recurring events that permanently change the world in some way, unlike dynamic events which are on a constant loop. Nevertheless, you’ll occasionally see players complaining about how dynamic events on a loop fail to live up to the idea of a “living world,” even though that distinction is what defines living world events in the first place.

You can get the non-shattered Holographic Dragon Wings from Sonder the Seller, but he wants Jorbreakers, which are nearly 2-3g each, since they can only be bought for 1,000 Zhaitaffy, a candy that hasn’t dropped since Dragon Bash. The non-shattered wings can be bought for 140g on the TP, so there’s really no reason to ever use Sonder for them.

Holographic Shattered Dragon Wings, on the other hand, were only ever obtainable from doing Dragon Bash achievements. They can’t be traded.

Aidan is talking about the /zen command, not the map closure challenge.

I think the map closure idea, while interesting, misses the point of the “volunteer to change maps” bonus. Anet wants as many people as possible on crowded maps, which is why they offer you a boon for switching maps. If they turn map closure into a challenge mode, they’re working against that goal, encouraging people to stay on increasingly empty maps for a long time, instead of pushing them to populated maps.

Mini-pet fetch does sound like fun. Might make for a cool gem store toy, especially if they include a dog-like mini that can be replaced by whatever your active mini is.

I think it would be a mistake to put the holographic shattered wings in the gem store. It’s cool if they make gem store items drop in-game for an event, but putting event or achievement items in the gem store has a way of cheapening them. Cue riots.

I’d love to see Dragonbash return, now that we’ve fought Mordremoth. They could have a new set of green wings, and I think that would please a lot of people.

thehipone.6812:

Redenaz.8631:

thehipone.6812

It is my hypothesis that nearly all of the demand for exotic weapons is to flush in the forge and the demand for the skins is relatively low, save a few exceptions like Crystal Guardian or Cobalt, so this wouldn’t tank the exotic market.

I can’t help being a little skeptical of that. Just to use your example, Al’ir’aska sells for about 3g, while there are about 25 other exotic spears that sell for 2g or less, some of which are named and some of which are “Rampager’s Iron Spear of Perception.” Prices will go up and down, but I wouldn’t underestimate the value of the skin itself. If people were just buying it to forge it, they’d probably go with something cheaper, so the number of skins whose prices are being affected by their forgeability seems pretty low. (~7 named Spears under 2g)

Um, your observation is in line with what I said – 7 out of 8 of the named (skinned spears) are at the same price as the pearl weapons and have no real value outside of forging. I chose the VS because it was a (THE?) popular GW1 skin and would be something that you might actually be excited to get as a skin drop. If you look at swords and exclude Twin sisters and crystalline blade, which are priced based on the sigil, the dropped named swords are all roughly the same price as the pearl ones. Hammers, greatswords, rifles, etc. the named weapons are all mixed in with pearl/generic skins.

I guess I’m not sure what the point of separate skin-only drops is. The prices for most dropped skins are already fairly low, making them affordable regardless of Mystic Forge demand, while the rarer ones are unaffected by Mystic Forge demand. If a player is only excited about a skin because it’s rare and has a high price, separate skin drops are just going to lower that price or else not affect it.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I’m not sure who it helps.

Clipping isn’t really the issue.

Outfits v. Armor Skins is such a dead-horse topic that I’m just going to leave it at that. See previous threads on the topic for more information.

LS1 was exciting, but it was a blistering pace for players and developers, so I don’t mind it getting scaled back. I’m hoping to see more of a balanced approach between LS3 and expansion 2, so that we don’t get the year-long gap that we got between LS2 and HoT. It sounds like they’ve gotten developers arranged in a more balanced way now, for exactly that reason, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Generally, I want to see both types of updates. I like Living Story updates a lot, but I also want occasional large, expansion-style updates like HoT, which does things that seem too large for a Living Story installment.

Felahr.9830:

Redenaz.8631:

Sounds like a bug to me, since there’s no gliding involved with those. Perhaps some wires got crossed with Shatterer’s jump pads, which are built for gliding.

Aye thats what Im hoping, because to deprive nonHoTers from the Shatt achievment/backpack is really not cool

I meant maybe Teq’s pads are broken by mistake. I assumed Shatterer’s pads never worked without gliding, because there’s nowhere you want to simply launch to.

Personally, I found crafting to be a hassle until I was already level 80 and had enough resources to just power through it. If you craft as you level, you’ll have the best gear possible at each stage, but you outgrow it quickly enough that I quit bothering after a while. I didn’t have the best gear, but my inventory wasn’t full of items I was waiting to level into, I didn’t have to keep returning to a crafting station every 5-10 levels, and I don’t think the story is hard enough to require the best gear, anyway.

Opinions clearly vary, however, which is a good thing. Whether you decide to craft gear or just pick it up as you go, you should be fine.

Sounds like a bug to me, since there’s no gliding involved with those. Perhaps some wires got crossed with Shatterer’s jump pads, which are built for gliding.

I don’t have an opinion on it, but I’m happy you’re asking for player opinions on the matter! Thank you!

Like the other say, story and level-up rewards should get you class-relevant equipment, and you should definitely check out karma merchants, who are available when you fill up their yellow heart on a map.

You level up fairly quickly, so it’s okay if your gear is a little scattered, but between story rewards, level-up rewards, and karma purchases, you should be able to keep yourself geared reasonably well. What class you are has no relation to what item drops you get, so you may or may not get relevant gear from loot.

Welcome to the game!

I won’t say yes without knowing more specifics about price, length, subject, etc., but I’d be interested. Perhaps they could do something like the old Mission Pack, or the LS2 missions where you play as Caithe. There’s no shortage of characters and incidents I’d be interested in learning more about.

thehipone.6812

It is my hypothesis that nearly all of the demand for exotic weapons is to flush in the forge and the demand for the skins is relatively low, save a few exceptions like Crystal Guardian or Cobalt, so this wouldn’t tank the exotic market.

I can’t help being a little skeptical of that. Just to use your example, Al’ir’aska sells for about 3g, while there are about 25 other exotic spears that sell for 2g or less, some of which are named and some of which are “Rampager’s Iron Spear of Perception.” Prices will go up and down, but I wouldn’t underestimate the value of the skin itself. If people were just buying it to forge it, they’d probably go with something cheaper, so the number of skins whose prices are being affected by their forgeability seems pretty low. (~7 named Spears under 2g)

Looking more closely, I’m mistaken about Deldrimor Steel and Elonian Leather, which seem to be fine. Right now, Spiritwood and Damask are losing money, so it’s possible that fluctuates.

I’m still a little surprised by how weak Damask is, compared to the other two, but the situation isn’t as severe or strange as I thought.

I’m still a bit bummed that new outfits don’t come with toys. I have the Mad King, Witch, and Pirate outfits, and I can’t help but look at toy-less outfits like I’m getting less bang for my buck. (Even if I can use the non-toy components of outfits themselves on multiple characters, which wasn’t the case back in the day.)

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone use the Sonic Tunneling Tool, and the Magic Carpet is uncommon, if not unheard of. I never really got the Riding Broom, which is just a worse version of the Witch’s Broom.

Edit: I miscalculated the craft-sell margin for Deldrimor and Elonian Leather. The margin for Damask is still lower than I would have expected, even non-profitable, but the situation isn’t as strange as I thought.

For a while, ascended materials like Bolt of Damask made for profitable crafting, thanks to high demand and the time gate. Even when Bolts of Damask were super expensive, they were still profitable, but nowadays, it seems cheaper to just buy it, and the others are cheap enough that you can save money by crafting, but not enough to make it profitable to sell.

—Bolt of Damask
=Deldrimor Steel Ingot
=Spiritwood Plank
=Elonian Leather Square

I must be missing something: What turned conventional wisdom around like this? I would have assumed Raids would increase demand, so even if HoT increased supply of raw materials, I would have guessed the crafted materials would stay profitable. Is something dropping crafted materials in enough supply that people have more than they need, and therefore selling them at crafting-cost prices?

I thought maybe lower-tier crafting materials might be used for something else, like Scribing or Precursor Collections, but I wouldn’t expect materials like Damask to sink to such low prices even so, without either a severe drop in demand or an alternative source for crafted materials.

I’m not especially into the game economics, so maybe I’m overlooking something obvious, but I’ve been scratching my head long enough that I have to ask: What’s going on?

It just doesn’t seem necessary to me. You can cram a little extra information into the thread title, but it’s still up to the OP to write a thought-out first post, and if they couldn’t provide enough detail to determine what game mode they’re talking about in the first place, they’re unlikely to clarify it with a tag. If someone is just reading the title and skips the OP, title tags aren’t going to make up for it.

I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t see it making a significant difference either way, especially when PvP and WvW have their own boards already. Edit: This makes more sense in the context of profession-specific boards. My bad.

I guess you could restrict who younger players could whisper or mail, but you could hardly block parties without blocking a lot of other content as well. Naturally, gem store purchases would be controlled somehow. There could also be less obvious controls, like a maximum amount of game time per week or set offline hours.

I don’t know that GW2 needs such features, but I can see where they might come in handy for a parent. Obviously, knowing what your kid is into online is the best protection, but other tools can help.

Danikat.8537:

It’s rated 12+ in Europe and I was under the impression the US Teen rating implied a similar age but I’m not sure about other regions.

In the US, we have E10+ for 10-12, then Teen for 13+. It can be a pretty hazy line between E10 and T—Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl were both Teen, for example, while Smash 4 is E10. Guild Wars is pretty good at keeping sexual content and language down, but the more realistic violence (rather than cartoon violence) and lots of alcohol got it a Teen rating here.

It’s not high into the Teen rating scale, I’d say, but it’s not really comparable to other E10 games here, like Pokkén Tournament or Ratchet & Clank.

Not that I’m aware of.

I feel like Stormageddon’s use of that quote is misleading without context:

GB: Trading items for gold might be less of an issue for team PvP — where all players get bumped to 80 with standardized gear — but what of the implications for world-versus-world?

O’Brien: Before even answering this question, I want to point out that in Guild Wars 2, being competitive isn’t all about having the best gear. It’s not like you’re going to go into world-versus-world and get smoked because someone else has a godly weapon that you can’t hope to acquire. We’ve always been against that kind of thing.

Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.

To me, it seems pretty clear that, in that specific instance, “we don’t make grindy games” refers to games where you have to grind to compete with other players. In fact, that same paragraph explicitly says that they’re okay with ultra-rare items, so long as the difference they provide is mainly cosmetic.

Say what you will about GW2’s development, the manifesto, or whatever else, but that specific snippet of article seems perfectly in line with what we’re seeing.

They didn’t do another visual gag like Bobbleheads or Aviator’s Memory, but they did bring back Super Adventure Box! (There’s also a pretty hilarious set of patch notes on the forum from April 1st.)

They’ve announced that SAB will be a recurring festival, but it’s unknown whether that will preclude any other new jokes in the future. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Danikat.8537:

Question for both of you, just out of curiosity: What’s the reasoning behind keeping a fixed amount in reserve?

Part of it is just in my nature. I’m the kind of player who ends an RPG with a pile of gold and two dozen elixirs, and then I don’t use them on the final boss. Whoops.

Truth is, there’s not a lot of super-expensive things I want that badly. When I farm, it’s more for fun than for gold. I really want to build Kraitkin, but it’s hard to commit to that over just making small upgrades to my account, like buying more character slots, outfits, etc.

There’s also the chance that something will come out that I do really want, like a Black Lion weapon, or Winter’s Presence. (Of course, I was too cheap to shell out for Winter’s Presence, so maybe I’m just a dragon who likes to sit on piles of gold.)

WAIT NO NOT A DRAGON PUT DOWN THOSE PACT CANNO—

Just a flesh wound.3589:

About 1100 gold. I try to keep 500 gold minimum and I buy gems when I get above 1000 gold and drop back down to 500.

That’s roughly what I do as well. I occasionally think about saving up for a legendary, but that would wipe out the vast majority of my resources for a while, and it’s not very alt-friendly, so I end up buying another character slot or outfit instead, and that knocks me down below 1000g.

So are we talking about SAB’s future, or the possibility of a GW2 tie-in game in general?

It’s not an unusual strategy nowadays, although how often it pays off is more debatable. GW2 actually had app plans waaaay back before launch, although those have been long-since scuttled. I believe those were more along the lines of a guild chat app, friends list, etc., things that would keep you engaged in the game even when you’re not in the game.

I’ve probably missed a few, but I think it’s interesting to observe what the +100g drops actually are. I’m not including BLTC Ticket items, items that used to drop but don’t anymore, or seasonal items.

Most of them are very rare drops from specific events, including some relatively unpopular events, like Rhendak the Crazed or In Pursuit of Knowledge. It might be surprising, but some of them are actually skin-free exotic accessories, which are used for the Treasure Hunter collection. Precursors are the only extremely valuable items that can drop almost anywhere. Aetherpath has some excellent exclusive drops, although it takes some serious commitment to farm them.

I’m surprised Jormag drops have retained so much value. They must be super-rare, or else super-popular, since people have regularly farmed him for ages.

Heart of Thorns introduced some map-specific rewards that are still holding a high value (especially those Invisible Shoes!) They might retain value better over time, compared to certain Core drops, but we’ll see.
————————————————————————————————————-
Precursors
-20 Core Precursors (almost anywhere)

Core Events
-Wintersbite (Claw of Jormag)
-Wintersbark (Claw of Jormag)
-Jormag’s Breath (Claw of Jormag)
-Jormag’s Needle (Claw of Jormag)
-Preserved Queen Bee (Vinewrath)
-16 Aetherized Nightmare Weapons (Aetherpath)
-Pendant of Arah (Eye of Zhaitan in Zho’qafa Catacombs)
-All Seeing (Cathedral of Eternal Radiance meta-event)
-Rhendak’s Signet (Rhendak the Crazed event chest)
-Ring of the Catacombs (Ascalonian Catacombs)
-Sam (Ogre Wars meta-event chest)
-Commissar’s Manifesto (In Pursuit of Knowledge meta-event chest)

Heart of Thorns Maps
-Light/Medium/Heavy Invisible Shoes (Treasure Mushrooms)
-Beserker’s Ebb (Crystallized Supply Caches in Tangled Depths)
-Beserker’s Ley Guard’s Protector (Great/Grand chests after defending Tarir)
-Endless Nuhoch Crusher Tonic (Crystallized Supply Caches in Tangled Depths)
-Dandy Buster (Noxious Pods in Dragon’s Stand)
-Beserker’s Seer’s Warstaff (Noxious Pods, Mouth of Mordremoth in Dragon’s Stand)
-Beserker’s Modrem Warblade (Noxious Pods, Mouth of Mordremoth in Dragon’s Stand)
-Beserker’s Modrem Warbow (Noxious Pods, Mouth of Mordremoth in Dragon’s Stand)
-Berserker’s Mordrem Saber (Noxious Pods, Mouth of Mordremoth, Diarmid in Dragon’s Stand)

Raiding
-Ghostly Infusion (Raiding)

I have difficulty seeing a mobile app taking off. I’m not sure how it would really even be fun—There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of 3D platformers on mobile.

If Anet were going to write a tie-in app, which doesn’t seem likely given their heavy focus on PC, I think they would do something more in line with the rest of GW2’s theme and styling. SAB has its audience, within the larger GW2 base, but would someone who finds the game on mobile be enticed to play non-SAB on a desktop? I’m not sure it would work as a promotional tool.

What are you suggesting could / should be done about it?

It might be relevant to note that there are a number of items that are time-gated, so that if you want to build the end-product more quickly, you have to buy them from other players, providing the other players with something profitable to craft. There are a number of these in Mawdrey, for instance, as well as ascended weapons and armor.

I don’t think you’re going to get a direct answer one way or the other. Hopefully, they cook up something silly and new next year, because I always enjoy the pranks, but I think it’s pretty great that they brought back SAB again, too. That seems worth another “visual filter” prank, easily.

They probably don’t even know what they’re doing next year for April 1 yet. I imagine they’ll figure that out when they see how well SAB Festival is received, then examine what resources they expect to be available, along with what people on the team want to do. From both a prank and a business perspective, it makes sense to keep it quiet for now.

Ah, that makes sense. I occasionally buy white items to skin and pass around between characters, but I forget they’re unbound, not account-bound.