Guild Wars 2

timmyf.1490:

Sounds like you got your money’s worth. One cent per hour. Perhaps the best value in all of entertainment.

lol…exactly. whether you like the direction of the game or not, that is a bargain.

still, game needs a BIG shot in the arm….hopefully the extreme lack of new content this year means a expansion is in the works.

you don’t need a populated instance for it to still be good/profitable…you only need 5 -10 players to efficiently run door events and a few more players to handle the non-Lich bosses (can even do lich if all know how to pull/stack it and to strip boons off skeleton adds).

and honestly anything much above 20 players becomes a lame zerg.

problem is…if no one sees a commander tag, they tend to leave the map.

Xiem.4719:

45k bags since halloween day 1….

how and why?

nice compromise by anet.
addresses the desire of those who missed out on those skins to get one, but won’t shock the market value or “uniqueness” of the highly desired skins (GS,shield,staff) the way putting them back in BL chests or as earnable rewards would.

its actually kind of shocking, as reintroducing the 2012 skins to BL chests would earn them a killing in gem sales.

not really needed…..since its really hard to flat out die 6+ times unless you are for some reason trying to solo bosses or too many mobs at once. use one of the countless repair canisters you’ve probably accumulated, if dying becomes that much of a problem.

just an awesome thread. much appreciated, John. such a cool way to interact with a playerbase.

Fernling.1729:

Not sure it’s been posted. This is the most relevant comment I have ever seen on this.

Colin: Currently, no. Interesting statistic for you – every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. We have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is, and what the stack is at. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. So, we could say that you could have infinite stacks. Number one, that becomes really imbalanced. But number two, it’s really expensive for us on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of backend server issues that can help make game design decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

which is why you would, as game designers, push out more PvE group content that rewards using a condi spec vs. using a zerk spec.

yes, it will upset the current speed runner min/maxers…..but oit would make for a healthier game.

the problem was addressed by the community almost immediately after launch……no excuse for ignoring it so long…..and i have no expectation/faith it will ever be addressed by Anet beyond PR forum posts (much like precursor hunts/crafting).

“we’re looking into it and discussing many possibilities…..but you must understand it effects many facets of the game”.

i could say that about all the systems they’ve changed this past year that no one asked for.

for as little as they released this year, it’s almost certain they are either releasing an expansion, or going full fledged cash shop(P2W stuff like more powerful gemstore-only sigils/runes, VIP perks (like they have in china version), and a business model where all new content is bought via cash in small increments very infrequently).

i hope its the former.

RollingBob.8502:

Or here’s a thought, create a mystic forge tier of skins that doesn’t take a ton of mats. No need to add effects, just unique and original skins. This would have been a great intro for such a tier. Perhaps at a tenth of the cost in materials/points.

good idea going forward (too late for the reaper of souls though). they already have a few that would qualify like the Rusttooth, or slightly more expensive stuff like corrupted/destroyer skins.

you should pick now….it’ll likely be removed from the vendor altogether (no tab for BL tickets or event tickets).

yes, since they will be removing the items from the merchant altogether.

it’s because of the race-based personal story.
personally, i think a blatant warning that you’ll end PS progression and will have to start over, both before you buy and before you use it, would be fair enough.

nothing i want more than a race-change item….but i don’t expect it.

still under the cap (i think), so don’t know

i really like the skin…..but not for what it costs to make. if it was also the first step in crafting something a bit more “shiney” (love the blood slash suggestion), that would make me happy.

i’m actually not disappointed at all, despite the same events………because the rewards in the labyrinth are incredible. they tweaked the drop ratios to make getting all of the unique “cob” rewards attainable even for casuals.

one or two hour with a decent group (knows how to pull and stack Lich) of 10-20 players nets you 150+ ToT bags (more if you get mostly “foes remaining” door events), 10-ish boss bags, tons of t-5 bones/venom, 10-20 t-6 bones/venom, etc. aside from the money you can make, you get about 2-3 cobs worth of candy corn.

plus, love the female Hex Outfit (just wish i could make that helmet as a separate head gear skin)

it really is fantastic looking……it’s a shame it comes from a gemstore that now has a dishonestly altered conversion system that will leave me with 100 spare gems that are completely useless to me unless i buy more gems.

why would they ask for feedback on this? its designed to make the conversion work against the player so that they have to buy more gems, unless they want their excess gems to sit uselessly in their wallet.

this was a high-level company directive to get more gems.

glad i got mine during the first halloween event……..also prefer it to Final Rest (sometimes simple is better)

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

Never understood why people keep giving money to a company that doesn’t care. Even if they reverse the change, the damage has been done.

exactly. they showed their hand…..even with a a revert, there is no reason to believe they won’t do this type of shady dealing again.

silly Anet….you didn’t have to rig the conversion system.
if you wanted us to buy more gems….you just could have given us better cosmetic gem store items.

wow….will curb language in order to not be infracted:

there is no one who believes this change was done for simplicities sake….if you ask for our respect, don’t disrespect us by lying to our faces. in no way is entering a number too “complex” for any player of this game.

this is simply to “entice/compel” players to buy greater numbers of gems so that they their excess isn’t sitting in the wallet wasted. this was a dishonest and shady move by your company.

it’s bad enough, that you’ve just lost a fairly consistent gem purchaser (with real money)….whether you revert the change or not.

poor showing Anet. very disappointed (and feel bad for Gaile)

they don’t seem to increase ticket cost until the next BL ticket skin is introduced….so it depends if they have a unique BL halloween skin for all weapons, which is unlikely. more likely Nov. 4

as for the main point of the thread…..“excited” would be a bit too strong given its the same content (and likely same rewards), but i’m definitely looking forward to a few of the returning events (especially that survivalist pvp “hide-and-go-seek” game from last year….just a really fun and cool change of pace).

Liewec.2896:

Gaile Gray.6029:

“Refreshed rewards” seems to suggest something new or something much loved that is returning. In either case, it sounds good to me!

noooooo! that last bit scares me!
don’t devalue the 2012 skins!
(speaking as someone who dedicated months to farming to pay for the greatsaw under the impression that it was unobtainable and as such, worth the farming!)

they won’t bring that back…..too valuable and desired (i feel the same way about my 2012 scythe skin…not that its valuable, but that so few use it it feels genuinely unique).

they will simply bring back last years skins, with new ways to get them (some form of token collection and/or rng bag.
if we were getting “new” ones, they would have said “new”. “refresh” was carefully chosen.

if they are now doing changes every 2 months, i’m ecstatic….even if its only a case of “less changes more often. over more changes less often”.

for pve:

i’d say either d/f or d/d, with an edge to d/f because i enjoy the active defensive skills the focus brings.

staff has all the tools to be as fun in its various elements, but staying in one attunement (fire) most of the time is far more rewarding than actively swapping between elements.

hate scepter….so i don’t use it unless i’m built for d/x and need to range. doesn’t feel fluid and is far too “single-target-oriented” for my taste.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Lil Puppy.5216:

The 5-10% thing listed in that article for example I find it applies more directly to if you have ‘tagged’ the monster in question DURING that 5-10% of his health, not DONE 5-10% damage to him.

Ulgoth champ dogs for example: If I tag one one time between the first hp and the 5% threshold I will get the champ bag no matter what character I’m playing or if I’m grouped up or not. However, if I happen to not get my first hit in on the champ in time for the 5% threshold then I am completely out of luck on that champ bag.
I have been testing this theory for the last couple months of WB train and find it to be accurate.

Your experience meshes up with what I posted above, though the conclusions you drew were a bit different. It’s not that the first 5% of a champion’s health purely determines if you get loot or not, it’s simply due to that “first-come, first-served” restriction when a large number of players are involved. If it’s only the first thirty players who get loot (I’m making that number up because I have no way of knowing the actual number, but it likely falls between 25-50), in a world boss situation there’s going to be thirty people hitting the champion within that first 5% of its health. But against, say, the Champion Spider at Almuten Estate in Gendarran Fields, you can arrive at the fight when it’s at 50% health and still get loot credit, because only 5-10 people might have been fighting it at that point.

The number of players is the key to this. The loot restriction that keeps players beyond the current allowed number from getting drops needs to be lifted.

this is absolutely true.
anyone who has consistently done mega-blob WB events has experienced this. its been this way even before megaserver (once the zerg hit 50-60 players)….but now that most WB events have 100+ players, its far more noticable.

any claim by a dev that the only loot restriction is simply how much damage you do to the champ is false. it may be intended that way, but it isn’t working that way at all.

MasterMc.7543:

+1 Billion on the hint anet. Also the option between a black and maybe a white pair.
( or if you really want us happy introduce them as dye-able)

probably won’t happen………..but would love both black and white version as earnable ascended back skins (or even just simple recipes like dwayna and grenth skins).

Zaxares.5419:

to maybe 50+ players, plus event completion. And that’s just one World Boss.

yep….and that’s a low-ball figure. i’d LOVE to find a world boss event even during off-hours that only have 50 people. nearly everything is a 100+

next feature patch…….gotta spread those “features” out (puke).

its not that loot is bad, or events/instances are unrewarding………its that its unexciting.

you simply don’t get usable/cool endgame equipment as loot…………….you take all your unexciting loot and salvage/sell them, and then buy what you want on the TP. aside from gold from speed clears or champ trains, mats add up (selling your t1-6)……….so does salvaging rares (70-80). make a mystic salvage kit and salvage every rare………….sell the mats/ectos and then gamble the runes/sigils at the MF (and then sell the good ones).

really wish they’d up the “fun factor” of loot and increase the exotic drop rate to that of rares (though not the unique skin ones)……..but currently the only think that isn’t really attainable w/o crazy grinding or using RL money are precursors (and a few very rare unique skins like chainsaw GS). Until they actually decide to make one earnable without RNG, this is probably how it should be……….legendaries should take forever to get (the fact that they were so much easier to get on game launch has twisted our perspective).

armor requires more work…so we will almost only get outfits from now on.

very lame….but is that even surprising? this game is in “lean operation-mode”….what’s the least effort it will take to produce the most things to make it seem like we’re offering a lot, so we don’t have to make significant expansion-worthy content, yet claim that we have.

i don’t blame the dev’s though….anyone who’s worked in a creative corporate field knows what its like when the company is in cost-cut mode…..none of us like it.

pretty lame looking….

a dye-able effect isn’t going to happen.

personally, i think this one looks fantastic……….but i’d rather they just release all “effect” colors at once (red/green/blue/yellow/magenta/white)

juno.1840:

Tachenon.5270:

That thread about the future got me wondering…

After all this time on hiatus, will the next chapter of the Living Story be commensurately HUGE, full of new and exciting stuff? By which I mean, stuff that would be new and exciting even if it wasn’t bundled with the LS?

Avast, there be the possibility of Spoilers beyond this sentence!

How much more of Tyria will become accessible?
Will there be any new skills/traits/weapons?
Who will we want to kill this time for being mean to Taimi?
Will some wacky asura scientist devise a way to put Belinda’s ghost into a remarkably life-like golem?

What, o fellow forumite, do you expect?

Same size and scope of content that was delivered for the fist part of LS2. Anet has yet to deliver much for any LS. How this equates to an “expansion worth or content” is beyond my reasoning.

if LS 1 content was permanent (replay-able), that would have been pretty substantial.

LS 2…if it ends before next year, will likely be very underwhelming by comparison.

i would expect more of the same (solo-able instanced content w/ more of drytop opened up)….which i’m fine with…..until the last (or last couple) episodes, where their will be larger scaled instanced content (based around 10-15ish players)…..a precursor to raids. if they add larger scale instances, it can’t require too many players, or late-comers will never be able to complete them.

honestly, i thought most of the early GW1 armors looked absurd/ugly (in Nightfall, they got much better), and there was far less variety in that game and its expansions than this one.

that said, they really need to add a few new ARMOR skins to the game that are not gem store-based.

Mareth.8659:

I hope they will put back the Lunatic Inquisition.

agree…..that was really fun.

as for topic…….i’d expect new gem store items/old skins and maybe a new story instance or scavenger hunt + most of the old events (labyrinth events & JP).

ideally, they would add another “mawdrey-like” item, but halloween-themed to go along with all the old stuff (would love it to be a weapon skins, but i’d also take an item that eats empyrean fragments).

Tron.3471:

Doesn’t spam knockbacks during group events indicating that they are not just mindlessly mashing keys….

lol…..nothing enrages me more.

Rambodacious.7495:

JonPeters.5630:

Iason Evan.3806:

Baltzenger.2467:

In my opinion, content should be designed for everyone, not just those who “you think will be potentially interested on it”, at least speaking of MMOs.

When you do that, later, you suffer from splitting your playerbase, specially when the game ages and you need to shift populations toward certain game types. Maybe Holly Homemakers should be taken into consideration when making the core of the system, but the guy that only plays fractals, will actually never try anything else, because the content will be designed to be “not for him”.

I probably didn’t explain myself well enough. If you design Guild Halls in the context we are talking about(free form object placement/design options etc.) for the person that is gonna want to spend 90% of their time in the Guild Hall then it will be for everyone because it will have more options than the person who doesn’t really care(Fractals guy) will ever use. If you design it for Fractals guy only, then the person that really cares about design gets left out.

This is precisely why the things we build take time. Someone earlier suggested to just list things that were seemingly easy so that maybe this could be a reality. I would suggest that the more innovative and compelling your ideas are the more likely they are to drive development because that is what we pride ourselves on.

Mr. Peters, I have to categorically disagree with you here. Guild Halls cannot be a bandaid for you guys. They simply can’t. You’re bleeding players and we both know it (NA and EU). If you burn massive amounts of development time on things that will be interesting for a couple of weeks and neglect the vast majority of other areas of your game, you will continue to bleed players. You’ll get the initial spike of everyone coming back to check things out, they’ll be excited for 2-3 weeks, and then the forum posts start and players start to leave again. I speak as though this is fact because by looking at the past, we can accurately predict the future. No more bandaid patches.

I’m suggesting that Guild Halls are a glue that not only ties game modes together, but would also have ways to occupy a player’s time unique to Guild Halls. Abandon spending any time on trying to make players see them from the game world, or having some scavenger hunt for GH unlocks that requires loot tables coded in and other nonsense. Unnecessary man hours, just keep it simple.

They’re airships (seems to be the consensus). They’re customizable (also unanimous). Beyond this, it gets rocky.

You know what, if I’m going to tell you to stray from this idea, I’ll give you things that will not only get players to come back to your game, but keep them as well. Just remember this when you’re looking at my resume for the designer position you have listed.

Here is a way to revamp all dungeons, make them replayable with endless variety, challenging enough to break the “zerker meta” yet not bring the “trinity” into the game AND do it all with minimal development hours:

Each type of mob in each dungeon is given 4 abilities. Whenever a group enters the dungeon and the instance is spawned, each of the mob types is randomly assigned 2 of the 4 abilities. Further, there are walls that prevent players from skipping past many sections. For the players to continue, they must kill the mobs present.

Now, the mobs have say, knock-downs and AOE bleeds. Maybe instead, it’s poison and boon corruption. Always something new. Sometimes, 5 zerks work. Sometimes they don’t.

To prevent frustration from the added time now needed to complete a dungeon, these much more difficult mobs now drop a silver each. There you go, it’s rewarding, challenging and infinitely replayable because it’s always something different to prepare for. These are what dev time needs to be spent on, not a massive scavenger hunt for GH unlocks that is a temporary time-sink designed to mask the problems that the game suffers from.

(P.S. To prevent players from killing mobs near the dungeon over and over and not killing a boss to allow themselves to farm high cash dropping mobs over and over, make mobs deeper in the dungeon, near the end drop 3-4 silver per mob (with great loot tables) and the ones by the door drop 25 coppers etc.)

i would actually play dungeons if your idea was implemented……fun and rewarding.

hydeaut.1758:

I´m not sure if I want raids but there are certainly a few things to overcome:

- rewards: must be worth it but should not introduce any more power creep. Would skins be sufficient?.

depending on the length it takes to do in a well run coordinated effort, i think guaranteed tokens that worked toward unique account-bound skins (like in dungeons but would require much less), along with a beefed up version of guild event rewards (maybe 5 commendations +5 to 7g and a GOOD loot chest w/ chance at unique skin or ascended gear w/ guaranteed rares…no green/blues), would be sufficient.

my two favorite bits of content have been Aetherblade Retreat dungeon (mainly for the rotating laser boss room) and Marionette (due to its multi-scale battles and the actual need to depend on others made victory sweeter).

some amalgamation of these two brilliant pieces of content would be ideal "raid " content ……the fact it would be tied to guild missions if fine….so long as smaller guilds can reasonably unlock them…..and/or guilds can invite non-members to join in.

love it for soloing…. and open world in general.
run 2/6/0/6/0 rifle/juggernaut/HGH w/ strength runes…perma 18-20 might solo is nice w/ max bloodlust stacks…allows you to wear some knight gear and not lose too much dmg:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlcTpWrVXxALseNydBB6JEgsK6Y0ic8p8B-TFCEwAJuAAwU/J1+DbVCyU5XHNEt1BA4BBQKgIGDA-w

some new “regular skins” as random drops would be really nice….agree w/ OP. i’d love more reg skins in the vein of krytan weaps (well designed, but not over-the-top),

some of my favorite armor skins are mid-level crafting/drops….would love a few new sets of those (drops).

NONONONONONONONO…unless they are underwhelming performance -wise

swiftness has to be max (33%)
we already have access to 25% through traits/skills/runes
we already have 15% gem store boosters

so if you add mounts, they can’t be more than 15% speed boost……..which makes them purely cosmetic (i’m fine with that) but completely lame and worse than what most builds can already do %speed-wise.

i’d rather they spend their time on more worth-while things

SpeedFiend.4521:

Not noticeable at all, dohoho. I’m certainly not wasting time playing until this gets removed.

its not bad enough to stop playing…unless you believe you must get 33% of each armor class

not sure why anyone is surprised……Anet cannot implement anything without it initially missing their mark or being bugged. hopefully they continue to tweak the drop distribution.

my drop spreads haven’t been nearly as bad as those posted….but the change has been noticeable (and i certainly wait longer than 30 minutes or one round of full inventory to compare). thankfully, if you do the majority of your killing against mobs that drop bags (orr for silk/goss scraps and/or lvl 50-ish flame legion for linen scraps and rugged leather), you’ll still get your hi-value cloth/leather in the end………..but it is unfair that my ele gets noticeably more light gear than my engi or guardian.

stupid thread.
they have to make money……….and outside of new players buying the game, in their pay-model, it can only happen in the gem store.

the gem store is the one thing they HAVE to update regularly. now….we can argue whether what they offer is good….but not whether they should consistently offer new things.

TexZero.7910:

Grind.

Funny though for a game without grinding to get something you sure gotta do that frequently.

meh…only if you want a legendary weapon skin. ascended armor/weaps aren’t that bad unless you want multiple sets quickly (the time gate actually makes it so you don’t have to grind for ascended gear…because you can’t).

Steel Courage.1250:

Ok so im trying to build infinite light, i tried a while ago to no avail, now they have tripled the price of lode stones making it harder, i have almost no gold, but 100g worth in charged lodes(28). I say i need to make 10g a day to make 5 lodes a day to make 35 a week to get 250 in 2 months. I didnt account for the orichalcum ore but that seems realitivly easier than the lodes. Is my plan full proof? flaws? easier way to get cores and lodes? Any tips are extremly helpful the more the better.

farm orr temple events/champ trains….i know i get a ton of charged cores from Dwayna chest (and champ bags during event chain….and in general from killing champs everywhere)….or do the world boss tour every day and sell your other cores/lodestones/t6 mats and buy what you need.