Guild Wars 2

Mine’s the Charr with the cow-catapult you use to get to that one Vista in one of the lower-level Charr zones.

“The cows seem to lose bowel control when launched. I consider this a feature.”

I was answering some questions for a new player in WvW and said “yup” three times over the course of the conversation. All of a sudden I go silent and he starts apologizing for annoying me and I can’t even respond with a “lol, it’s no problem.”

Now there’s a new player out there afraid to ask questions. /facepalm

If you want to compare to GW1, I feel obligated to point out that GW1 had much less in the way of skins, at least on a per-profession basis. Without any expansions, you had 13, and that included five fancier “elite” versions of basically the same skin. GW2 already has a lot more variety in the looks. You’ve got several different crafted looks, five different cultural armors, several types of karma-only armor, dropped armor, and finally a ton of dungeon armor, and most of them look amazing. Plus, with the vastly improved dye system, it’s a lot easier to mix-and-match pieces and have it not have it look cobbled together due to different color maps.

Whatever else you think, they did an amazing job on the art.

Since my previous post saying exactly what I’m about to say was infracted, allow me to rephrase it in a more constructive matter.

Say you don’t like PvP, but want a Legendary weapon, would you then demand that the Badge of Honor requirement be removed from them because you don’t like to PvP? Conversely, should a PvP player be excused from gathering the money, crafting materials, etc. because they dislike PvE? No. It’s completely optional content. If you want it, put in the work. If you don’t, go without. It’s as simple as that in my opinion.

Warlordx.8062:

To answer your question Revenant i play this mmorpg because i love the rpg aspect but dislike the mmo part. I love the crafting system and i enjoy farming for hours making something and selling it, maybe strange to others but its what i enjoy. I also enjoy completing achievements but this is the first case ive came across that an mmorpg forces its player to do pvp to complete an essentially 80% pve game.

Well, if you consider it an 80% PvE game then it seems that actually completing it should require more PvP.

Warlordx.8062:

Archer.6485:

I remember when being a completionist used to mean something. When people would go above and beyond to get that 100%.

This is like a Pokemon player complaining they don’t want to trade with other people in order to “catch ’em all.”

If you’re not willing to do what it takes to get that 100% map then you don’t deserve to have that star above your name, it’s that simple.

Your kinda right i wouldn’t want to trade with other people in order to “catch them all” i would rather go to the lands they are and catch them myself but instead run into an army of evil breeders locked up behind a wall guarding em unable to get them unless other breeders band together

My gaming pleasure shouldnt have to rely on other people.

Then would you mind explaining to me why you’re playing a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game?

Warriors can keep 33% swiftness up almost permanently with signet of rage if they have +swiftness duration runes and the trait that reduces signet cooldown. Furthermore, the greatsword spin and charge attacks increase your speed while they’re in use, and this speed is affected by swiftness. I have outrun many a centaur.

No, they won’t stack. However, there are multiple minor rune types that in some cases affect similar if not identical stats, and those will work. The effects stack as long as the rune is of a different type.

Scepter’s kinda borked because the attacks are slow and easy to dodge. I use Staff for ranged. Line of Warding’s great for ruining people’s days when they try to play peekaboo at doors, the #2 and #3 skills are decent for attacking siege on walls (nowhere near perfect or even “good,” but every little bit helps), and the are heal/might is awesome for large groups. The auto-attack’s even good for keeping enemies back from the door since it’s basically a ranged melee attack, and can actually do some excellent DPS to mass groups, especially with a crit build and a flame blast on crit sigil.

So I hit 80 a few weeks ago and I’ve been working on my slayer achievements. Found camps for pretty much all the mobs… except giants. Currently at 5/5000 for them from doing the Champion Giant DE in Plains of Ashford. Found Ettins, Jotuns… but no giants save for that one guy with millions of HP and an insta-kill PBAoE if your dodge key sticks =p

Anyone found where these guys live?

Except that the meat of the Guild Wars franchise has always been PvP. Be glad they didn’t require it to advance in the story like in GW1.

All the more incentive to work together in PvP and take objectives.

And yes, in fact, there are issues in PvE that prevent you from completing maps. The bugged skillpoints in Orr kept me from 100% completion for a lot longer than the WvW POIs and Vistas, let me tell you, and the bugged SPs are still there.

To pose a counter-argument to the whole “but I don’t wanna go to the WvW maps, mommy!” thing, how about this? I like to PvP, but have no interest in going through the Human/Sylvari/Asura/Charr starer zones on my level 80 Norn to get 100% completion. I did, though, even though there was no reward in it for me except the map completion itself. That’s why it’s called 100% completion, because you did everything whether you liked each little bit or not. If you don’t want to go to WvW to get map completion, why should I have to spend hours clearing starter zones? What makes your desires more valid than mine?

My advice, deal with it. You might even enjoy yourself.

Yeah, I think it’s funny how it’s your “personal” story and you feel like an Ancillary character while Salad-Man is actually the protagonist.

As for the invasion of Orr, I think that was supposed to be covered by the Invasion DE chains in Straits of devastation. I’ve honestly never done them though, as all three invasion chains were broken when I first got to the Straits. Since then, there’s usually been at least one broken every time I go through, except for one time when there was just nobody else in the zone to participate, leaving me to try to fight off 20 risen simultaneously after the dozen worse-than-useless pact troops in the event get wiped out by one risen plague carrier. /facepalm

Caused a major disconnect in my story.

Was trying to get a group together for a dungeon. Posted an LFM message 3 times at 5 minute intervals and got hit. That was literally all I said in mp chat for those 15 minutes. Filter hit, and I couldn’t talk to anyone. Waited another 5 minutes but still couldn’t send anything in chat. Ended up having to relog.

I agree, Kim, but the “get it out the door and fix it later” is pretty much industry standard now. Happened with Mass Effect, Skyrim, TSW, SWTOR… maybe not as bad as this, but still.

Short of getting all gamers to boycott the entire industry until this changes, we’re just going to have to grin and bear it.

Did an experiment. Took my power/vit/tough Guardian and switched her into green +healing power armor… the healing difference was literally a couple hundred points on a skill that heals for almost 9k.

Broken stat is broken.

I miss capes, and the backpacks look like crap, but I’m all for them sorting out the clipping issues before implementing them instead of tossing them in half-assed. The Charr rail issue’s not that bad since every charr has them, just make the cape shorter or put a center slit in it, but making it work and not look horrible with dozens of different armors, weapons, shields, etc. is just nuts. Still, I hope for capes.

Just wish that you could get a better back upgrade than the level 80 Green from the story outside of a Guild. Rares/Exotics?

I like it. It forces you into the PvP zone, even if it’s just for a little while, which is good for PvE players. You might actually enjoy it, and never would have found out otherwise.

If it’s not your style, you can just wait until control shifts a bit or your matchup switches. If you find out you actually like it, then storm dem keeps!

Had almost the same thing happen to me. The knights started out red, then turned yellow. Then, halfway through killing them off, the cutscene just started. Quite odd, but like Snoflake said, at least it didn’t block progress.

Hmm… sounds like a random issue then. I’ll just make sure I’ve always got a few silver on me at all times then =p

Well that’s good to know. Never happened to me, but I guess the guy I ran into had the same bug silencer had that one time. Can you remember if it was a mob death or a falling death? The guy I ran into fell, might have something to do with it.

Zero money to do anything is the problem? I actually had a similar problem… had 0c left on me from crafting myself into bankruptcy and couldn’t sell any of the stuff I’d made on the TP because of the listing fee. Just walked my way out into the nearest zone, killed a couple mobs and sold the drops to a vendor.

I definitely didn’t have it as bad as a guy I ran into today though… died in the middle of an empty zone without enough money to go to the nearest WP. Felt so bad I ran halfway across the zone to rezz him.

I actually think the Heavy armor is the best-looking armor class in the game. As far as the worn armors go, they do in fact have slightly different meshes than their regular counterparts as well as the color differences. On top of that, the dye areas are different as well if I remember correctly.

My main’s currently rocking a mix of Arah legs/boots/gloves, Cursed Shore chest/helm, and Vigil shoulderpads skin-wise, in midnight fuschia and blood. I look like a humanoid GW1 Jade Armor.

That’s odd, I’ve always been able to transmute self-crafted armor, both with HoM skins and transmutation stones. Both Heavy Armor from Armorsmith and Medium from Leatherworker.

Did they add a timer to turrets? Because when I rolled an engie at launch I would plant a Thumper/Rocket/Rifle/Healing turret cluster in the middle of a big mob spawn to farm materials for crafting skills, and they stayed up pretty much indefinitely with the turret auto-repair trait healing them between fights. I’d be there pitching in with my rifle and drawing mobs to the cluster, but if I had to get up for a moment to use the bathroom or grab a drink they’d hold their own.

Then I figured out this wasn’t the best way to farm stuff or the most fun I’d ever had in a video game, so I rolled a Guardian and haven’t touched the engineer in weeks… >.<

Speaking from personal experience, all the anti-botting measures in the world are ineffective at best without boots-on-the-ground enforcement. I’ll refer to the arms-race analogy above, where the bots and devs are constantly trying to keep one step ahead of each other. The problem is, that’s a no-win scenario, and it affects the playerbase as a whole instead of just the bots, because the botters will always come up with a better program to circumvent the measures put in place.

I was a community volunteer in Anarchy Online back in the day when it was experiencing botting problems, and that was one of my jobs. I’d get reports of botting from players, which I’d investigate. If it panned out, I’d kick it up the chain to a GM who’d then ban them. There were some server-side bot-detection measures, but the majority of the bans came from in-game enforcement. In many ways, that game was even more conducive to botting than GW2 is. For example, chat bots running outside the client for Organizations, new player help, et cetera were officially endorsed. But as far as cash farming bots went, the problem was handled with aggressive, real-time, in-game enforcement, and was absolutely crushed. Botting went from rampant to non-existent in a very short period, and I haven’t seen a bot in that game for over 8 years now.

Anet wouldn’t even need to hire many new personnel. Like in my own example, a lot of the leg work could be handled by vetted volunteers. I was recruited to help new players after being active in the new player help channels and hunting bugs on the test server. They wouldn’t even need to have any actual “GM powers,” just to be a set of eyes and ears.

The current periodic mass-banning system in place, in my own opinion and drawing from my own experiences I’ve related, is ineffective because it gives a grace period to the botters. They know that even if they’re using an easily-identifiable program, they can run it for long enough to still turn a profit, if they even bought the game to begin with as opposed to hacking an account or spoofing a code. Say the bot runs for a week and farms 100 gold or so, lowball estimate. If they can sell that 100g for $1/g, they’ve made a $40 profit for no more effort than setting it to run. However, if they have a chance of being banned within 10 minutes of starting up, they stand to lose a lot more. In short, the answer isn’t an arms race, it’s a war of attrition. The botters are running a business. The answer is cutting their bottom line and making the risk far outweigh the potential for profit.

And that, as Forrest Gump once said, is all I gots to say about that.

I have to agree, and I play a Guardian. I can take 5-6 normal risen pretty easily, but it’s still annoying, especially when those 5-6 mobs are chain pulling you one after another. The respawn rate, chain pulls, and long aggro range have actually gotten me locked into 10-minute fights to clear out a commune-type skillpoint a few times.

There’s another related situation I’ve had involving the pulling ones. I come within aggro range of it, it pulls me, which brings me into aggro range of another one, which pulls me, which brings me into aggro range of ANOTHER one, etc. Basically it’s Guardian football and the game keeps getting bigger =p

Well, tasty, the same could be said of the dragons. Not very hard, just take a while. As far as chests go, there are many types and grades of chest. Don’t think anyone’s suggesting he drop a dragon-level chest, but a splendid chest might be appropriate.

TBH, I’d be more than happy with just an HP nerf. Anet’s got a lot on their plate. Maybe down the road they could make a mini-world boss out of him or something, but I’d much rather have working skillpoints =(

I believe the Krytan Armor Skin from the doesn’t use transmutation stones. Try double-clicking on it, it should bring up the transmutation window, then just drop the armor you want transmuted in. I haven’t used it myself, but this is the way the Heritage Armor and weapons work for me, so I’m assuming all the vanity skins work the same way.

Those were in fact the good old days, Tassy. Unfortunately, most games today are aimed at Angry Birds players rather than Ultima vets.

As far as the OP’s idea goes, I doubt it will work. Passive measures simply don’t deter botting, and hurt the entire playerbase. Botters are already finding ways to circumvent DR, for example. The only real deterrent is strong, active enforcement, but that’s hard to do even on a subscription-based game. On a game that only requires an initial purchase, you really need to keep your operating costs low, which means keeping a minimum number of personnel on payroll.

Pretty much the only idea that comes to mind is to have a very strong mob spawn and attack players who stay in one area for too long. Give it powerful attacks that you can active-dodge and high HP so a player would be able to defeat or evade it, but a scripted bot wouldn’t be able to deal with it properly. Could even make gameplay more interesting for legitimate players if implemented well.

Agreed. Even if he isn’t that hard, the time investment in killing him is in no way worth the reward. Needs either a major HP nerf or a “world boss” chest drop or nobody will do it a second time, if even a first.

Well, maybe they should have thought of that when they were doing in-house testing instead of patching holes with lazy game mechanics…

No camps full of normal giants? Dang, this is gonna take a while… XD

I logged in to GW1 to get some more HoM rewards… I swear for about half an hour I was trying to dodge-roll in every fight. One long string of facepalms XD

Game’s fun, though the number of bugs and broken content has definitely fazed me. That’s not really Anet’s fault though, it’s the state of the industry.

Overall, definitely have gotten my money’s worth. Looking forward to future improvements. Good job, Anet.

That event’s actually pretty easy if you’ve got a “tank” with good dodge timing. The giant’s attacks are slightly slower than standard dodge recharge, so you can keep him trying to hit one guy in melee who’s dodging all his big AoEs while everyone else pours on ranged DPS. Even better, pull him outside the town and get somebody on one of the Charr cannon turrets. Done it with 2 people that way… in about half an hour XD

Definitely agree that it needs a MAJOR reward boost though. Excellent dodge training, at least…

By the way, I’ve got almost all my Slayer achievements maxed, but so far he’s the only giant I’ve found… so I’m at 5/1000 for that one. Anyone know where to find more of these guys or do I have to kill him 995 more times? >.<

I don’t even buy Karma/Magic Find boosters anymore because I always hit the cap long before they expire, so it’s a waste of money. Since these are two of the most popular out of a handful of gem store items that people actually buy on a regular basis, it seems Anet’s only hurting themselves on the micro-transaction front.

Yeah, I pretty much only spend karma on Blue armor that I like the skin of. Can get Greens, and with the stats you want, for a silver or two right up to level 80.

ituhata.6830:

Khaldar.7486:

Dynamic (regular) Events were done in Rift on Day 1 – well before GW2.

Only they weren’t exactly dynamic. Open a rift, kill stuff, rift closes. Life goes on.

Nah, Rift had plenty of wandering bosses, camp defenses, etc.

Meh, if they wanted to make legendaries harder to get, maybe they should have made challenging content like in GW1. Have no trouble clearing dungeons with pickup groups 99% of the time and everything outdoors is soloable and laughably easy at that. Some parts of GW1 were nintendo hard, though.

I’ve now got the image of Rosie O’Donnel running around in plate armor swinging a sword. Thank you for that XD

Meh, I think they could fix it by adding in a fee for unsolicited mail, ala EVE. That, or an option to only receive mail from people on your friends list.

Well, to put it in perspective, I played Anarchy Online for 8 years straight without ever getting bored, then had to quit because I went off to college. When I get bored with this supposed “Next-gen MMO which will redefine the genre” after a couple weeks, then yes, I think there’s a problem.

On top of this, the fact that there are a couple dozen “We don’t need an endgame! Here are some asinine self-imposed challenges and/or grinding experiences to keep you interested after you’ve completely exhausted the content of this game!” threads a month after release. Case rested.

The fact that topics like this even exist, much less make up a significant portion of the posts on this forum, really only reinforces the fact that this game’s lacking in content…

Well, allow me to rephrase:

On MY server, I run into more broken DEs than working ones and there are as many zones I can’t complete due to broken SPs/etc. as there are ones I have completed.

Better?

Please, indulge me with more of your smug pretentiousness.

Music’s also quite nice. I like how they included the whole GW1 soundtrack, brings back memories.

So… roll a new character of a different race… and replay all the same content with a slightly different looking avatar you play in a slightly different way. It’s like a veil has been lifted from over my eyes. Thank you!

Yeah, you’re adding a lot to the discussion. Thanks for that.

Erm, lemme step in here for a minute. I’ve been playing a new character, and I can say with absolute certainty that I’ve come across more bugged/stalled DEs than working ones from level 1-40. Also 5-6 bugged skillpoints or other objectives that worked fine my first time through, which have me sitting at 98% completion on literally half the zones I’ve cleared on that char.

I’m not going to say that it’s unreasonable to have a bug or glitch here and there on release, but I feel like I paid $60 for a beta test. Now surely the OP could have expressed himself in a more civil manner and whatnot, but when I see hordes of people coming into topics like this flaming the tar out of anyone who dares to mention that the game’s got a lot of broken content… I’m half-tempted to say “fine, have it your way, game’s fine as it is. Leave it all broken, these guys seem to love it well enough.”

Shifting from destination to journey’s all well and good, but when the journey takes a casual player a week or so to complete, then there just ain’t enough journey. You can roll a new character, but then you’re just repeating everything you’ve already done.

The selling point of MMOs is infinite replayability. Not seeing it, and it’s a shame.