Guild Wars 2

I’m ready for my garbage blues!

Archeage has some great ideas, but they bolted them on to a fairly mediocre MMO core. Imagine if GW2 had housing, farms, and other features. It would be an unstoppable behemoth.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Why are people obsessed with mounts? If they want them so bad, let’s hope ANet adds them with a few twist:
- 2000 gems per mount,
- Movement speed decreased by 25%,
- Once locked by an enemy, the mount runs away and the player has to by a new one
- Mounts need food daily, thrice a day, each time costing 125 gems.

This way, we won’t see these things around much, and those who want them will spend their time riding in Lion’s Arch.

ROFL the kitten spite going on here.

I’ve said it before, but they should do mounts like bundles. I.e. you can climb on one at a barn or stable, and ride it around, and when you then get off to do things, it either stays there or wanders off, but you can’t just resummon it out of your nether regions.

If there are player owned mounts, they would be available at stables at certain locations, like cities and forts.

The other good utility of doing mounts this way is they can replace the action bar while you’re on them. You could have some mounted combat abilities, woo! Hey you can pick up bundles that are guns, big swords etc, it wouldn’t be overpowered because you’re not using them in PvP.

One other thing. The Mursaat were able to hide themselves from the dragons. Glint saved the forgotten, dwarves, lions tigers and bears oh my etc, but the Mursaat figured out how to do it on their own. Their ability was said to be to somehow become “out of phase” with the world. What if the Dream is how they did this? What if the Pale tree is some sort of Mursaat creation, who uses their power to shield its seedlings from dragon corruption?

Ok, so the dragons are the reapers resetting technology, er… “magic” every cycle so people don’t get too powerful and destroy reality. Scarlet is Saren, the Inquest is cerberus. Now we just need to find the Catalyst! : P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Rukh.9287:

However. We know the Pale Tree’s seed came from across the sea.

Uh, no? Ronan found the seed during one of his patrols in the Maguuma Jungle.

Here’s the quote " A distant shore—and darkness. A root, a cave…you. You are the seed. What Ronan knew and never told still lingers in the Dream." From the missions with Malyck. Now it doesn’t say “A sea” but it does say a distant shore. So it could be across Janthir Bay.

If “the Dream” knows the thing, the Pale tree, or other sylvari had to have been there. A cave, seeds. It sure sounds like the pale tree’s start spot, as it refers to Ronan.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The globe in the Chantry of Secrets is a “Threat Assessment Board” with disproportioned landscapes that vary based on the Whisper’s knowledge of both geography and local threats. It holds no relation to ley lines.

Possibly, but I think we’ll find that the lines are significant. They put a lot of work in to that map and texture. It’s not just a simple prop. The thing about it though is if you just look at it, the lines and dots aren’t where they show on the map I linked, because all the textures are distorted and scrambled. Its only once you extract them and overlay them that it matches like that. Now it could be wishful thinking, seeing a line that goes through the great collapse, lions arch, and isles of janthir, but those are all significant places. We know there was a nexus under Lion’s Arch. We don’t know the significance of the great collapse, but something did cause it. And we do know that the Isles of Janthir are tremendously important, one of the more magic concentrated places in the entire world of Tyria.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Should be noted that the landscape scaling in-game doesn’t match that of the texture, indicating that the texture may be more accurate (though as we see with the lack of the Bay of Janthir, there are still some issues with the texture none-the-less).

There’s a few differences, but its clear it’s from some sort of source that’s used for the shape of places. They put in enough work to replicate all the areas from GW1 in pretty good detail.

The Inquest to the Asura are the Spectres to the Citadel Council.

The location is either going to be deep in Maguuma or the Isle of Janthir. Isles of Janthir being extremely unlikely. It doesn’t look like the Chaos Crystal Caverns nor Kralkatorrik’s brand.

However. We know the Pale Tree’s seed came from across the sea. Perhaps the Bay of Janthir is that sea. We know the Mursaat live on the Isles and these looked like possibly Mursaat towers.

Also there’s this:
http://www.abload.de/img/236172_oplik7q.png

Someone else overlayed them on our normal map:
http://www.abload.de/img/holes-in-the-ground_tbbx2e.jpg

What is it? The globe in the Chantry of Whispers is a bunch of overlapping textures, with resized duplicates. If you take the main world map, and the leyline map and place it over each other, this is what you get. You notice there’s a big line that runs through the great collapse in Divinity’s Reach, Lion’s Arch, and the north coast. The thing is, if you overlay our actual world map on this map, there’s actually the bay of Janthir where that coast is, and the Isles of Janthir right under the big dot.

(Also Elonia fits very well on that map, though there’s now a big lake right in the middle of the Desolation. Cantha fits perfectly on the contenent directly south though the big island (forget what it was called, didn’t play much cantha) is actually connected to the mainland.)

I imagine they’ll be more defensive. If you have a pack of wolves and you shoot one with a bow, the others are going to be cautious. They’re cunning like predators, but all animals have some sort of self-preservation instinct. If the dragons are smart enough to see civilization as a threat, they’re going to be more wary, and perhaps more subtle in their overthrow of civilization.

I believe game devs confirmed Zhaitan bit the dust.

I see it like this. The magic still exists. Zhaitan was a concentration of the magic and actively guided it, using it to corrupt things, but him being gone doesn’t make the magic gone, in fact it would be dispersed back in to the environment, making other concentrations of it, i.e. Teakettle and other undead stronger. It does however mean there isn’t this powerful force going around actively corrupting things and trying to destroy civilization. So that’s a good thing at least.

draxynnic.3719:

To be honest, I’ve generally been considering the backpack items to be of questionable lore significance. Where did that sclerite back item come from exactly again?

Of course, they’ve made waypoints canon now, so who knows?

Regarding the current examples… Konig has already pointed out what I was going to. We collected a bunch of materials from a variety of exotic locations to feed to the first backpack. It’s entirely likely that in doing so, we’ve recreated something similar to the Forgotten ritual – certainly, what we’ve done isn’t exactly easy, and there’s no indication that Ventari, Ronan, or anyone else involved in cultivating the Pale Tree has gone to any similar lengths.

Is it possible that the Pale Tree is a cleansed minion, or a descendant of same? Yes, but if so, it wasn’t Ventari that did it. However, at the moment there is, at best, no reason to think the sylvari-dragon minion theory is any more likely than other possibilities such as the sylvari having been produced as a corruption-resistant army from scratch, having naturally evolved to be corruption-resistant, or the Pale Tree having lucked out on having access to something (the Dream) that allows her to extend corruption resistance to her children.

Either way, we have the following:

1) An explanation for sylvari corruption resistance has been given – the Dream. Ronin can try to nitpick the wording of the Pale Tree’s comments on the matter as much as he likes, but the fact remains that we now have an explanation and no need to look to extreme theories to explain this.

2) That sylvari can be corrupted at all suggests that the protection granted by the Dream is weaker than the Forgotten magic, as the latter seems to have rendered the subject immune to re-corruption (Kralkatorrik was unable to simply reclaim Glint, for instance).

I agree that the backpack isn’t really a lore object. I think they just thought it would be good playwise to test out some items that take some scavenging and work to create and wanted it themed by the living story. I don’t think its much more than that. I don’t think you should read any significance to the story from it.

One thing to note- Glint was pretty powerful in her own right. Its possible she was able to completely resist being re-corrupted because she wanted to, not because she had some sort of permanent ward placed on her by the forgotten magic.

Yossitaru.3045:

Can’t really comment on the first two, since there’s an awful little to learn from the Largos and Kodan, neither like to talk too much.

But Kralkatorrik, he’s probably still recovering. Destiny’s Edge’s attempt to take him down was only eight years ago, and they did some pretty major damage, and he might be fighting two fronts. Our side of the Steamspur Mountains is already claimed by him with the Brand, so it’s most likely his primary focus. Over east into Elona, though, there’s probably border skirmishes between Branded and Joko’s thralls. Neither pushing too hard since they both have domestic issues still. Joko is still being pestered by Whispers movements, and Kralkky has all of us trying to purify his “claim”.

The Steamspur mountains? On one side you have Sparkfly Fen, which was being assaulted by Zhaitan with no sign of Kralkatorrik, and the other is Timberline falls, and I don’t think he’s there either. Closest would be the dwarves fighting Primordius deep under the Deldrimor Front. The dragonbrand goes down our side of the Blazeridge mountains and looks like most of the activity is in the Crystal Desert.

I checked the ley line globe in the Chantry of Secrets. There’s clearly no ley line through Arah, Kryta, nor Maguuma. And since it’s in game, its cannon. Taimi is clearly mistaken about the caves in dry top being a ley line hub.

: P

The mists aren’t outer space though.

Another thing. Where is the cave?

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe they’re planets.

Arghore.8340:

Well, the fact that this creature is related to Shadow does offer an interesting point of view. in this thread I tried to identify the (lego) block that make up magic on Tyria, by loosy relating the Gods to the Dragons: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Perspective-Dragons-Gods/first#content

What turned out at the end was that I was mainly left with:
1. Monk/White powers: which could correspond with the white orb.
2. Shadow Powers (formally assigned to Menzies – obviously my ‘theory’ in this thread pre-assumes the Gods are pretty much gone, and so is Menzies…) …

Then if now there is ‘perhaps’ an underworld Dragon that is linked to Shadow (I would like to add that the link between dragons & orbs is still somewhat ‘in limbo’ and view on it difference in regard to the scholar you talk to, the ‘perhaps’ is a huge one, I personally am of the opinion that there isn’t an underworld dragon, but: ). Or in a sense the powers over shadow, once linked to Menzies, have now manifested itself in the underworld. As part of the breakdown of magic on Tyria during the time of the Dragons.

It was always confusing to me how the powers were divided in Tyria. The affinities of the gods didn’t seem to make any sense, nor the dragons. Its obviously not an elemental wheel.

However, there was information from GW1 that someoene pointed out to me that shined light on the whole matter. There are of course 6 affinities, and they are polar opposites along three axes.

The affinities are:
Life <> Death
Creation <> Destruction
Reality <> Illusion

However, the way the gods use these are quite varied. For instance, Balthazar is the god with the affinity for destruction however he’s a fairly honorable dude who uses destruction as the forge for glory. However, if his half-brother, Menzies took up the mantle, things would be quite different. They’d both be gods of destruction, but with much different qualities.

Abaddon was the god of reality, but he kept it hidden. Reality was in the shadow to be revealed. When Kormir took up the mantle, reality was up front. It was portrayed as the triumph of truth instead of secrets.

When you align the gods, and the dragons, along these axes, things make sense.

Something stands out to me during the Malyck storyline.

First, Malyck can’t see the dream, and the Pale Tree Sylvari can’t see “his” dream. However, during the Sylvari living story, we visit a Sylvari Seer who is very adept at viewing the dream. She says this to Malyck:

" A distant shore—and darkness. A root, a cave…you. You are the seed. What Ronan knew and never told still lingers in the Dream."

Now, how would Malyck, the seed in a dark cave, linger in the dream? When would the dream have witnessed a seed in a dark cave?

Perhaps Malyck was the same generation as the pale tree, but he hatched from the seed instead of being buried at the nexus of a bunch of ley lines?

Sylvari Engineer only.

But honestly, all of them make sense, why wouldn’t they?

I’ve been using my own naming conventions for most of my characters anyways, so it doesn’t matter what the lore version is, heh. Humans get a first name and last name. The last name is shared amongst my human characters, I guess they’re related. Although my Norn shares the same last name. Probably only half norn. You don’t want to know the details.

My char characters I keep making and deleting follow the char convention mostly. I had Soren Ashpaw, then War Ashpaw. If I made another, it’d be something similar, like Kargath Blazingtoes or some such.

Sylvari I’ve been pretty specific, using a meteorological term followed by a plant name. So far I have Moonlight Ivy and Dusk Aster. If I were making more I could use Eclipse Peony, or perhaps Midnight Orchid.

Essentially, make up your own sub-culture naming convention.

It happens off-camera.

No it actually is fairly nebulous, as different people mean different things. And I’m sorry but you just saying “nuh huh!” doesn’t change that.

The Inquest seem to have taken on mustache twirling villain characteristics, haven’t they.

Not quite the same. A dog is a species. It’s a label of a physical collection of characteristics. A god is not a species, it’s a rather nebulous label for very powerful beings. The definition is not concrete. Sometimes things that are extremely powerful are called god. Sometimes things that are worshipped. Both the humans and the Char mean it in the second way. The Asura generally mean it in the first.

BrunoBRS.5178:

DraconicDak.9340:

BrunoBRS.5178:

“y so serious” isn’t an answer to “where the hell did you get space dragons from?”

It was a reference to the Reapers from Mass Effect, as the vision from the Machine has people pointing out similarities between the Elder Dragon cycle and the Reaper cycle.

well, see, not everyone played mass effect ¬¬

so in the end, we weren’t talking about the same game >.>

@Rukh – i’m talking about the stump because you’re using nicholas’ text as evidence.

“We know that there used to be a huge dead tree in Dry Top. We know that Ventari’s refuge sat underneat the roots of the tree, similar to how the Pale Tree sits exposed up in the air and the Sylvari make their homes under her.”

my point is that the “huge dead tree in dry top” has nothing to do with the huge tree from ventari’s refuge.

“And, for all we know, the stump could be another tree from even another cycle.”

or, you know, it’s just a tree. why do you jump to the most unlikely assumption? the odds of it being a normal tree over being an ancient pale tree are astronomical. in fact, the only thing that possibly hints that pale tree(s) isn’t a new thing is that it was a seed that got planted and no one knows where those seeds came from. going from that to “every large dead tree mentioned in guild wars lore must be an ancient pale tree that the dwarves forgot to write about”.

I wasn’t using Nichola’s text as evidence.

BrunoBRS.5178:

no, that’s what you’re taking from the vision. all we saw were the pale tree, followed by a bunch of orbs representing dragons and a middle orb that we don’t really know what it means. nothing about that cutscene is about leylines.

“y so serious” isn’t an answer to “where the hell did you get space dragons from?”

the book is describing the geography of dry top. dry top had a rather out of place tree stump. the book is talking about a tree stump. why would the book be referring to a stump from the tree at ventari’s refuge, which is far more to the north? also, the tree from ventari’s refuge wouldn’t leave a stump behind if you cut it down, just a look at it would be obvious.

yes, but we must make the least assumptions possible if we want to find a reasonable answer. each assumption increases the chance of the theory being wrong. as for chicken and egg, i did say conundrum, rather than paradox.

i’m just saying that if you’re gonna go all “guys, stop the presses, i got it”, then your disclaimer holds little water.

I’m not sure why you’re so fixated on this tree stump. I said there’s this other tree, its in the air, it’s near ventaris. I wasn’t talking about the stump. You were. I said no I’m not talking about the stump, you’re all NO BUT THE STUMP. Yes I know about the stump, it wasn’t the tree I was talking about. And, for all we know, the stump could be another tree from even another cycle. We have no idea how many cycles there have been. But, if these remains of pale trees are thousands of years old, they’re also likely essentially petrified by now, and extremely hard, almost like iron.

BrunoBRS.5178:

“She knew the pale tree is sitting at a nexus of the lines,” assumption with no evidence.

Its what she, and we, saw in the machine. It shows the nexus of these lines with the pale tree at the center.

are we talking about the same game?

y so serious?

actually the dead tree described by nicholas is most likely the weird tree stump that was in the original dry top. we’re not exactly close to ventari’s refuge.

Why? There is an actual tree at Ventari’s. If you look in the one single link I used, look at the picture of the refuge, there’s a tree, as I described, up in the air, just like the pale tree was, with people living under it.

why would the “guidelines” of the centaurs have to come from a previous tree? the only reason the pale tree follows those tennets is because ventari taught them to it. there is nothing that points towards a previous tree, much less one that coincidentally follows the same tennets as a race that, as far as we know, didn’t even exist during the previous rise.

That was pure speculation, but it would be a neat tie in.

as for “seed coming from another plant”, you’re starting to walk the “chicken or egg” conundrum. and in a world where “magic did it out of nowhere” is a valid explanation, you can’t just assume it’s the seed of another pale tree, especially since the current pale tree doesn’t seem to have any seeds of her own.

We make certain assumptions. Gravity works, if you slice a thing with a sword your sword doesn’t magically turn to rubber, seeds are likely from plants. Then “chicken and egg” paradox isn’t an actual paradox if a person takes half a second to think for more than a single generation. A mystery, maybe, but definitely not a paradox.

overall your theory is full of “what ifs” and hardly anything backed by the game itself.

My thread a posted as a huge disclaimed has what iffs? OH MAH GAWD! DX

PS: it’s Omadd, not Ormadd. i can’t stand that typo and i don’t understand why it’s so common >.>

I know, I do it just to bother you specifically because I knew you would read it. : ) (Thanks for the correction)

The truth is this: That big blue guy in the mists that we save is an AI construct made by the original True dragons who ruled Tyria. They had realized the certainty that at some point, living species would become too potent with magic and destroy all of creation, so they made the AI to solve this problem. Unfortunately the AI did solve this problem, in his own way, and created the elder dragons. The elder dragons come in cycles every 10,000 years to wipe Tyria clean of magic and thereby “reset” the clock, creating an artificial equilibrium where magic never gets too strong in Tyria.

Unfortunately, us, being the kittenes that we are, will fight the dragons and make it to the mist citadel to confront Big Blue (see the name was a hint that it’s an AI) who will appear to us in the form of some random kid we saw in Lion’s Arch and say that his solution is no longer sufficient.

We will then be asked to pick a new solution which is actually the same solution in a variety of three different colors.

You can stop guessing, I sat down and had a think and figured it out for you guys.

Now obviously this is just my hunch, but I think its a pretty good one. It won’t explain all the stuff that happens because it looks like Anet is going to branch out the story, as depicted by Rytlock slamming his sword in to the ground in the newest cinematic (don’t you know that’s bad for swords?)

Here’s my explanation of what we, and scarlet, see in Ormadd’s machine.

First of all, whats in the center is the pale tree, or A pale tree. All the way through the cinematic. What Scarlet saw she interpreted as the pale tree being choked by a vine. What she heard however was the pale tree saying “We must all do our part.” This sickened her. Her whole story is about how she doesn’t want to just be a cog in the machine. She wants to make her own destiny. So she was glad when she saw the tree strangled by a vine.

The most important, and most revealing information Scarlet gave was this:
“But I reject that call. I reject the notion that that I must choose the Dream or be lost to Nightmare. The forces that push us this way or that can be redirected. They can be set against one another to the detriment of both, and now I know how.”
So important they excerpted the short story around this theme.

So who was Scarlet setting against each other? Well, she knew about Ley lines. She knew the pale tree is sitting at a nexus of the lines, and she knew that the dragon could send vines of itself through the lines all over Tyria. However, the dragon wasn’t going to be awake for another 43 years or so. So her whole event was locating the ley lines so she could shock them to wake the dragon and send it searching through the lines for the pale tree.

When it finds it, it will complete Scarlet, and our, vision. (yes the orb that smashes in to the center is mordremoth, not zhaitan.)

Here’s the thing though, the order of the orbs is out of order to the awakening of the dragons. Maybe the order actually has no parallel to the waking of the dragons, or, maybe it does in a way.

We know that the cycle of the dragons pouring through the citadel gate and devouring all magic then returning to the darkness of space inbetween the galaxies is a cycle, so what if what we’re seeing is not this cycle but the previous cycle?

We know that there used to be a huge dead tree in Dry Top. We know that Ventari’s refuge sat underneat the roots of the tree, similar to how the Pale Tree sits exposed up in the air and the Sylvari make their homes under her.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ventari's_Refuge
If it really were a previous Pale Tree, it would have been dead for several thousand years by Ventari’s Refuge time. What if however, the previous pale tree taught the ancient centaur who passed their knowledge down to Ventari who passed in on to the current pale tree? Heh.

Now think about this, The Pale tree came from a seed, one amongst many that somehow had been stashed in a cave. If there’s a seed, it must have come from another plant. How did they get there? how long were they there?

Perhaps prior to the destruction of the previous tree, someone had hid them away to save them. And, perhaps the reason the orbs are out of order in Ormadd’s machine is because what we see, and what Scarlet saw, was the destruction of the previous tree. Sylvari can somehow transfer their knowledge via the dream, is it possible she had this knowledge locked away somewhere inside her? It seems like the dream could be partitioned off by the pale tree, though Mordremoth is somewhat slipping through. Perhaps mordremoth is linked to other pale trees elsewhere too. Maybe other trees have gone so far as to become completely soundless themselves, or are just completely part of the nightmare. Perhaps its not the nightmare that is the anomoly, but the part that the pale tree keeps sealed away as the dream.

Now, I kind of doubt they’ll see the destruction of the pale tree through, there’s way too much base story stuff that would need to be changed, but I think a major part of the series will be saving the Pale Tree from Mordremoth.

It’s obvious E is Trahearne. Moving on.

Zaxares.5419:

I like the Fractal Sword and Unspoken Curse, personally. I even have a little RP history written in for the latter, since that was the sword my GW1 Warrior used. It was passed down through the generations, and is now wielded by my GW2 Warrior.

Unspoken curse isn’t bad, at least it has a plausible blade which is saying a lot. I wish they toned down the crossguard just a bit, it looks like you’d constantly be poking yourself with it.

I don’t necessarily want realistic, but I do want plausible. I want things that look like deadly weapons. Twin Talons sword? Doesn’t look plausibly deadly. Its a bad model. On the other hand, the ascended swords are likely far too wide to be a decent weapon, but they look plausibly weaponlike. Then there’s things like the Chiroptophobia, and it’s like wtf were they even thinking? its so gaudy over the top mode. Sword themed like a bat? Great idea! But please at least give it a normal cutting blade.

Been playing some Archeage, hmm?

Well, its not as bad as WoW, but I agree that GW2 is slim on good looking weapons. Armor is a bit better but still not perfect.

I do LOVE the idea of having content contests for GW2 though. Weapon designs armor designs, heck, mini lore story chains to add in to flesh out areas? Why not?

Zaxares.5419:

I wouldn’t mind seeing more ability to customise the Home Instance. More harvestable nodes, for example. Somebody once raised the idea of creating your own “garden plots” where you can purchase 3 – 9 spots and plant a cooking ingredient of your choice in each one, harvestable once per day.

I’d also like to see those little mementos you get for completing the Personal Story get displayed in the Home Instance, and maybe more NPCs show up whom you can talk to once a week/month to receive little bonuses. “Hey <X>! How’s the Vigil working out for you? While you’re here, take this. It’s a little extra cloth that I made for you. Hope it keeps you warm on those cold nights in the wilderness!”

One thing to remember is that unlike many games, we don’t have one home instance, we actually have five, and they’re very different from each other. While humans essentially have their own district that’s bigger than some towns out in the world, sylvari essentially have one large building, norn the upper floors of a very large building.

So with that in mind, there’s a few ways of going about this. So far, when they added the nodes, they added them to all the instances. I think this is the wrong way. If they want to add something significant, they have to match four different areas. It’s quad the work.

On the other hand, what they should do is keep the four separate. Each improvement you get is applied to a specific location.

Say you join an order and in your human district you get a museum of history. This museum later is improved with lore objects you get for completing certain achievements in the world relating to ancient races and lore.

When you get your first achievement point out in the world, the hoelbrak instance gets a shrine of honor, that gets improvements for completing certain out of the way honor challenges in the world.

Your char instance receives a shrine of conquest, which displays certain pvp and wvw rewards.

When you join an order, you get only one building, incentivizing people play through more than one character to unlock the other buildings. An archive for the priory which stores tomes you read in the world, a forensic lab for the order of whispers that gives little-known facts and backstory, and an armory for the vigil which displays certain hard to get skins on mannequins.

This method makes a whole slew of opportunities to add content to the game. Content that would have a lot of variety because of the different types of instances, and wouldn’t be hard to make the assets for.

Well they need to do something. Guild wars 2 is the most feature-poor game of any modern MMO out there. Even WoW decided they couldn’t just survive on combat ’n questing anymore and has added garrisons, and they already have mini pet battles, mounts, farms, raids, etc.

Curunen.8729:

My god this is fantastic.

My god its full of stars!

But why on earth would you want to make it?

I think someone should start a google doc of the last 4 digits on people’s accts that have unearthly good luck. Maybe track a few other things if we can find it like the day of the week they made their account etc.

There’s been times in games before where some bug caused drastic different results based on some innocuous profile property.

And their megaservers that are totally not instances are capped at a certain population. They cap quickly because there other people in the zone that want to do the other things in the zone there are to do. Can’t blame them for that, but it does mean you can’t just port in a bunch of your own people if it’s capped.

Rouven.7409:

Rukh.9287:

Having crafts rely on other crafts is actually the correct direction to go, its too bad they consider it a “bug”. Its how you make an economy.

To me that only makes sense if I am not able to craft everything myself. Which I am. I could even have all crafting skills on one character and switch them for a fee.

Yeah the switch for free thing is a bad idea too.

An economy is about scarcity. People buy things because they can’t just pop it in to existence themselves. Giving people niche crafting gives a more narrow supply.

The problem with GW2 economy is they hired an economist to do it. Economists see everything as a formula and try to make it work in the most “efficient” way. The problem is efficiency is boring. This is a game. It needs to be inefficient so there are niches to exploit. We’re not trying to have our economy beat some other game’s economy here.

The thing I don’t like is it’s the usual dumptruck of crappy armor that we trash compact everywhere else too.

While its fun to get things wrecked, the world only has so many nice areas. If everything is just destroyed crap, it’s not going to be much fun. I like interesting and beautiful environments. The game needs more big fantastical cities and beautiful zones, not less.

What they need to do for these large organized events that are totally not raids is make a way to start a new megaserver which is totally not an instance and provide a LFG section for your specific megaserver which is totally not an instance. People don’t get added automatically, only by joining up with you. Of course, it needs to be a group bigger than a party. We could call it a “shmaid group” so people don’t think its one of those lamestream raid things.

Or you know, put the totally not raids in instances and let people form large parties to fight them.

Carighan.6758:

Ohoni.6057:

Perhaps, but IF that is so, then the game needs to provide a framework in which you can effortlessly choose to only associate with people who are interested in joining that challenge. If an event requires 130+ well coordinated people to complete it, and you have the desire to be one of those people, then the game’s design is obligated to provide you with those 129+ other people at your demand, otherwise it’s unreasonable to expect that of you. It’d be like serving someone a juicy steak and withholding any utensils from them.

You’re describing a single-player game. In a single-player game it’s the game’s job to provide the party / army / group / friends / whatever you need to succeed.
A good single-player game will again make you reliant on party members to a degree, but insofar that they patch up gaps in your own character stemming from your specialization (oldschool party RPGs are an example here, if a rather simplistic one).

In a social-centred game like a MMORPG, the whole point is to let players do this. Provide a world in which the players can play. What they do their is their thing. If they want to organize, they can. If they don’t, they won’t.
The whole idea behind MMORPGs was to provide a persistent world to enable a more freeform way of roleplaying. Player-driven and all that.

It makes no sense if the game then enforces more than the minimum of limitations. Although I get what you’re saying, I’m not sure the game you’ll have afterwards is still what I’d consider a MMORPG. It feels more like automated party-matchmaking, which as WoW has shown removes all meaning from the partying itself.
At that point, I really don’t get the point of even requiring a group. If it’s automatically provided for you, why even require it? But if you remove the requirement, then you no longer have a MMO.

The solution is IMO to go back to the borebones design which brought forth MMOs. To the central idea: Provide a world. Add challenges to it. Of varying kinds. Let players lose onto the world. See what they do, and sometimes adapt the game mechanics as players discover cracks in your design. But for the most part, let them create the gameplay elements from the way they interact.

The problem with WoW’s auto matchmaking is you didn’t get you decide who you partied with, you just sort of got thrown in to a group. Exactly whats happening right now with megaservers but with none of the raid niceties. Right now we have the worst of both worlds.

GW2 went the right direction with the current LFG tool. You can see who is in groups and choose to join groups.

However GW2 bit the kitten when it comes to trying to shoehorn large organized events that totally aren’t raids into the megaserver system.

Having crafts rely on other crafts is actually the correct direction to go, its too bad they consider it a “bug”. Its how you make an economy.

The quicksand in drytop moves like wet quicksand. It has water pouring in to it. It’s wet quicksand formed by the runoff.

Alex.9567:

movement on the vertical axis is an obvious next step for mmo’s as a genre

God I hope not. If it is, I’m done with MMOs.