Guild Wars 2

Altruistic Healing: Just look at the name and the description. In no way should it work that we can heal ourselves by applying a boon to ourselves.

Altruistic definition: Unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others.

So it’s basically saying; helping others helps ourselves, that’s the crux of this trait. Furthermore it’s how guardians work (in principle). But that is not how it works now.

In truth I think Anet is a little hesitant to fix it though because so many guardians use it. In it’s current state it’s fairly wonderful. Additionally, if one’s smart fixing the trait will not change the effectiveness too much of us using the skill when in groups/others anyways. If we’re smart about it. After all, there’s plenty of opportunity for us to apply boons to allies throughout any length battle.

I’d suggest just browsing these forms. Guardian builds are – not surprisingly – the most common theme here. There’s plenty to choose from. Just remember; what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. Just letting someone else do the work for you (e.g. copying their build verbatim) will rarely work for you in the long-term. Use one you like as a blueprint sure, but build on it and tweak it yourself to your own style, anything else and you simply won’t be realizing you character’s potential.

I’ve never understood the attraction of Divinity Runes. +60 points across the board and +12% Crit is hardly exciting, personally.
I personally go with +boon duration, which I find works great both offensively and defensively for us.

Torch is great. But I’m always confused about the consistency of the two skills.

If by using #5 we cleanse others’ conditions with our flames, then
why don’t we cure our own (or at least one) with #4 when we set ourselves a light?

Very strange…

There’s also an apparent bug with it (skill #4) not applying fury when you light yourself on fire and have the appropriate trait (Radiance line) active.

If you’re looking for a material rewards all the time you’re playing the game wrong.

You should think of them as a nice bonus, nothing more. Focus, as Voonith said above, on the actual content.

I enjoyed this puzzle, but I can understand people’s lament. A friend of mine has a similar problem limiting their ability with the timed puzzles.

Additionally: My first four times I jumped through the open present at the end I just got teleported back to the start of the puzzle again. That was a little frustrating and I thought I was doing something wrong, but it turned out it was a bug shrugs.

These pictures are great, well done all!

Garreth MacLeod.4158:

Defora.3694:

Lovely pictures people.

I only have some LA pictures.

How did you get those without your character being in the middle of the screen? Those are nice pictures.

I can’t be sure how Defora did it, but I know personally I /sleep and then zoom in just enough so my character cannot be seen. It makes it a little restrictive but works well enough.

My character’s a norn.
No other choice would’ve suited her (RP wise), really.

My crit base is 51% percent and I’ve found my vigor’s is active far less. Still I can understand the change, as before I would sometimes get vigor stacks up to ~30 s, and I don’t think the developers intended that to happen.

Many know that this whole build is built upon a bug to do with the Altruistic Healing trait.

Just enjoy the build whilst it lasts. I’m sure the developers will fix the trait so it works as intended one day.

Azzan.1650:

I am glad that yours builds are not destroyed. Heavy crit builds are now useless. I play AH sword/GS with High crit rate and my setup is entirely destroyed. Thanks Arenanet for destroying builds based on crit. So now we can just use the same spec/builds/gear.

Just to provide balance:
I have a build based highly on critical hits (60-80% chance) and it is not destroyed at all.

Totally agree!

Why we can’t have an option; if in a group, to enter into our own zone (just like dungeons) I don’t know.

All in my guild think the same thing: The events are great, but who wants to play them with a bunch of strangers?

I don’t know why, but multi-player games are turning from games where you play with other people to achieve something, to games where you almost always do your own thing you’re just in the presence of other players.

It would be nice if we ended up in the same instance (or a new one of our own) as the other members of our group for such events at Bell Choir and the like.

These events are great on their own, but really, being in them with a bunch of strangers lessens the enjoyment significantly when compared to doing so with a group of friends/guild members.

I know my guild continually gives a collective ‘sigh’ of ‘not again’ when we have hopes we’ll all be able to share the fun together, but in the end it never happens.

kuscheldrow.6415:

There IS a permanent one, I was lucky enough to get it.
But PLEASE Anet, remove the 30 secounds timer, PLEASE!
Either make it longer, or simply remove it at all.
Playing the bell is sooo entertaining, I really enjoy it, but the time limit ruins every song because of the sudden abort. ^^"

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE _

I believe it’s so you can’t just stand there and continually ring it around the bank, or the like, and annoy of everyone.

That’s what Legendary Weapons and their obscene effects are for.

Thanks for the info, neon. Some interesting ideas and techniques here.

I try to report any bot (or anything else that’s in the game that’s bugged) when I can. After all, we’re helping ourselves by helping the game as a whole.

Botters (exploiters too) can end up ruining a game’s reputation and balance, so I think we’re all wise to help out when/if the situation arises.

I think it’s totally reasonable to RP a human atheist. We, as players, know the gods exist, but any human character would only have ‘faith’ to go on as they (the human gods) have been absent for well over a human’s life span.

On the other hand there’s really no reason to disbelieve they exist. Things such as the presence of magic, and the norn’s ability to were-form certainly provide compelling evidence of some higher power.

Sounds like a crude type of ‘power-levelingesque function’ to me.
I don’t like it.

I can certainly understand where you’re coming from with this idea, and from a ‘helping a friend not miss out due to their level’ point of view it has potential. But it would be horrendously exploited (everything that can be, is, with today’s gaming community), and in addition, create a whole new set of problems.

I agree, especially on the former.

This would solve several separate, but related, issues to do with in-game graphics and more importantly, game-play functionality.

I like the idea of providing incentives. Unfortunately apart from point 4 in the op’s post, the other points (1 to 3) are just based solely on rewards/materials. This, personally, is a very bad idea.

The player base is materialistically obsessed enough these days. One must challenge the developers to think of different ways to to get people to realise that enjoyment in these games can be had in other ways than just the fleeting and egocentricity that comes with getting ‘loot’.

Afterall that was one of the great ‘draw cards’ of GW2 as touted by the developers in the first place: A unique MMO experience.

Dye is the answer, friend, dye. There’s more than enough in-game to make your armour style stand out.

This is a great idea, and I think would help address the reason why these things are in place: To explore and find them.

The only people who would not like this idea are those who just do things for the ‘reward’ not the experience itself. And unfortunately, that’s the majority in the game these days, so I doubt this will happen. Also it would be tough, mechanically, to put in place.

Nevertheless, I like it. It’s an interesting idea.

Condas.7056:

Oglaf.1074:

Hate to see it wasted on an Asura but…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Frostfang.jpg

Looks too close to the corrupted axe. Funny though, I also think “what a waste…” whenever I see a Azura with a legendary. They make it too small, can’t really get the full effect.

Thank goodness! There’s nothing worse than a norn or charr swinging around a Greatsword; the effects are so obtrusive and vulgar, and worse; negatively effect others gameplay as you can’t see a thing your enemy’s doing and hence can’t react to them in a battle.

Legendaries are a great idea, but their implementation so far has fallen a long way short of what they could be.

Let’s just hope Anet continues to improve them.

Good question, I’d like to know this as well.

Yesterday there were three or so in our open group at the temple of Balthazar with Legendary weapons, and it was a complete mess. With charr and norn swinging around greatswords you literally can’t see the enemy you’re fighting, or your own character, or anything (and my character’s a norn as tall as they can get, i feel sorry for all other shorter races). It’s usually pretty hectic with various players effects going on at the best of times, but the legendary item swirling and trail effects take it to a completely new level.

If people that get the items want to see all that fluff and swirly patterns that go on when fighting, that’s perfectly fine, but to impose it on the rest of us who like to actually be able to see something, anything relevant to the battle that’s going on I think is just poor design. Players should not be able to have such a visual and negative effect on another players in-game experience, one which is built in by apparent mechanics.

It would be nice if we all could have a toggle in our options which enables/disables legendary items swirly effects. I can only see this as becoming more and more of a problem as more and more people obtain legendary items.

Personally I think nothing should be marked (excluding waypoints) on any map. So no I don’t agree with this.

I like this, it has a nice feel to it which is very appropriate to the accompanying text.

Nicely done. I think they’re well framed.

chuckles
I’m not sure what Linnea and Bjarni would think of this…

This is not directed at you, but I’m convinced 90-95% of the population don’t know how to play the game in terms of events. People think that just because an event is over, that’s it, when the reality could be nothing further from the truth. The NPC world is alive and many times there’s hint/starters to events/event-chains that people never find simply because they don’t take the time to read a book, inspect an odd looking creature, talk to an NPC (even without the event marker overhead). Anet’s done a great job at providing a whole range of ways events happen, and how they’re tied into NPCs lives or the map theme. If I had a silver every time a person ran off straight after an event and missed the chest/pre-cursor to the following event simply because they didn’t take the time to listen/talk to the NPC talking to them, well I’d have enough coin for a second T2 cultural armour set.

Alternatively people seem to think nothing goes on before an event takes place. NPCs talk out loud to themselves or other NPCs (or even us) all the time and wander off and do things that will lead to an event, but no one ever seem to pay attention. I’m simply amazed.

So my suggestion: Take your time and really pay attention to the world around you. If you’re all about leveling and just play the game as a barbie doll dress-ups for little boys to show off how ‘leet’ your character is compared to others, then this will fall on deaf ears, but the world really is alive and there’s a font of knowledge, hints and insight out there to be had, all one has to do is open their eyes and ears to it, take their time, and enjoy the world.

GW2 is very different, but if you just play it the same way you played other MMOs, it will feel the same.

Likewise, good idea. But any good idea has to evolve to maintain it’s usefulness.

The collection bank is great, but if Anet don’t continually update as they continue to add more crafting content and related items to the game, it will end up becoming a mark of poor ongoing game development/planning.

OP, why play this game? There are other games out there that seem to satisfy what you’re asking. Why not just go play them?

Please don’t try to make GW2 – which at the moment is something a bit different – just like all the other games. Many of came to play here because we want something different from a lot of the mmo trash that’s been released over the last 5 years. If you want to stand out and feel ‘superior’ to others, like I said, there are plenty of other games out there that will let you do that.

Going off the some of the in-game items which you can purchase for either coin or karma.

120 gold correlates to ~ 800 000 Karma.

My character has a complete T3 set already, but I would not mind if it there were options to purchases it either way. Looking at those numbers, to me, it seems easier to get the coin rather than the karma.

Totally agree Knyx! How frustrating is it!

Otherwise, I think achievements should be a totally personal thing. You shouldn’t have to see anyone elses, nor expect anyone to see yours. Achievements are a nice little side-bonus to the game, they’re not the focus at all.

Whilst I disagree with your drive for coming up with these ideas, I like most of them in their own right.

Anything that rewards doing things different ways, and makes the group think and take their time more than just steamrolling through content would be greatly appreciated.

I’m all for dueling and these other ideas, but only if they’re in designated areas. There’s been nothing worse than when playing previous games and you have two or three idiots dueling/fighting in the guild bank or trade areas.

Great ideas, but have them in specific areas.

That’s wonderful. Well done!

Two games that I know of have done housing/guild housing brilliantly. I’d highly recommend the team have a look at and try an emulate the quality of them, or not try at all. They are:

Everquest 2: It is so wonderful it’s a mini game all by itself. It really is amazing the detail they’ve put in to it and anyone that’s played the game I’m sure would agree it’s a benchmark.
Runes of Magic: They way they’ve made housing/guild halls functional and given them a significant use is novel.

I would like to see Anet allow classes to use a wider variety of weaponry that’s already available.

I would also like them to modify some skins. Some of the one handed swords are just so big and gaudy it’s laughable.

Zero Angel sums it up in the first line of their post.

Why does there have to be a reward?
Completing the jumping puzzle in itself should be all the ‘reward’ you want.
If people are not happy with that, then I think they’re doing jumping puzzles for the wrong reason. i.e. just for the reward at the end, not for the challenge of it itself.

I think a number of guardian traits/effects are broken right now, Altruistic Healing being a prime example. I know personally in the last couple of weeks I’ve bugged at least five things that aren’t working as they should be/their description says.

I like your thoughts though, Arch. There should be no clear cut ‘best’ trait-line. Hopefully Anet will continue to tweak with the class overtime so this becomes a reality.

Yes, it’s often impossible to see an enemy wind up for a huge hit/effect (one which will probably kill your character if you don’t make them dodge or the like) when there’s 20 other people putting all manner of burning or other effects on them. It does look great, but functionally it makes it quite impossible to fight with any sort of pro-activity.

I like this idea. Well thought!

Yes, fair enough, Nitross. I’m guessing the karma price would be in the 100, 000 s per piece if comparable.

Infact, someone could do the conversion right now – as there is already a precedent in-game where some items can be purchased for either gold or karma.

I think they should do away with map completion all together. It’s the single worst function in the game, for many of the above reasons already stated. Remove that and people would take their time more and perhaps help out and enjoy themselves.

Additionally, I like Kantharr’s idea.
Nitross’s idea about waypoints is a good one too.

I’d suggest having a ‘snare’ of sorts on all mobs, or something of the like that makes it impossible for players to drag/train/chain-pull mobs through zones.

I’d love to be able to customise the UI! For one thing I’d get rid of group names always appearing overhead: It’s so annoying!

Floating damage numbers would probably go too.

It’s a tough one. yes it’s quite tough to get. But it’s also nice to not see everyone wearing it too. There’s nothing worse in MMOs than when everyone looks the same.

MMOs are long-term games for the most part. Things take a good while to get like that. If it takes you a couple of months to save up to get the armour whilst you’re doing other things, than that’s really not that bad at all.

And as others have said, there are T1 and T2 cultural armours that are very cheap, and in themselves look nice as well.

I think keep it as it is.

Totally agree, this is a great idea. For one, I’d love to repeat some with a group of friends and see how they differ from completing them alone. Additionally I’d like to experience some now they’ve been tweaked/un-bugged.

Reliving the moment; I’m all for that!

Mounts are a bad idea. We don’t need them. At all.

Waypoints are numerous and cheap (Don’t listen to what the money-obsessed say, they really are). You don’t need to travel across any large distances in this game at all to get to where you want to go.

We don’t need mounts.