Guild Wars 2

Your incentive to kill them are Key Parts, and of course the Spores which are tradeable for recipes, etc.

I do see a LOT of people just running off, pulling everything. I then pass them later on while they lie dead on the floor waiting for a res. If you find yourself with a little ad-hoc group of people it takes seconds to kill the mobs. Really might as well. Kill mobs, get loot, ascend the tower.

Nilkemia.8507:

ElenaDragon.8401:

What I am looking forward to is Wintersday, and I really hope the devs learned from Halloween that they can’t just repeat a bunch of old content for us to be satisfied. They need to add new stuff. And no ridiculous grinds please.

After what Halloween became during Blood and Madness, I’m not hopeful now.

I’m with you. 100,000 snowflakes for just the design for a weapon, anyone? Y’know, with an 80% snowflake drop decrease on last year.

Half the mini-games we had last year also removed? Seems legit too.

Wintersday is my favourite holiday since we’re not seeing any Canthan New Year. They’re GOING to break it after Mad King’s Day.

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).
- New skills and traits. (We’ve had existing traits changed and one new skill so far.)
- New map types in sPvP.
- The ability to gain Legendary weapon skins in PvP.

I don’t think tomorrow’s update includes any of this stuff, and Wintersday will take up at least one update

Well, part of me thinks “Maybe this stuff will be included in the Wintersday patch as a Wintersday gift to us all”. Maybe the last load of living story patches have been so light because they’re gearing up for a massive update at the end of the year.

You know what really irks me, though? All that time and effort spent on the new WvW map. Sure, it looks awesome, and I’ll have fun playing on it, but I’d dearly love to be able to explore more of the existing Tyria. I had so much hope last November when, only a few months into the game, we got a whole new zone: Southsun Cove. Sure, it was small, and the lagfest at the time was a real killer, but it smelt of promise. The last year has been a bit of a letdown for those of us who love exploring.

I’d like to issue a warning, for what it’s worth, to ArenaNet – anyone who happens to be reading this, if at all. DON’T DESTROY WINTERSDAY LIKE YOU DID MAD KING’S DAY. I’m talking about leaving out entire minigames “just because”. I’m also talking about not reworking holiday-themed items such that they are insanely grindy to get, especially when they were originally not so. The whole Candy Corn Cob fiasco was a total killer for so many people this Mad King’s Day.

There are a few holidays which need to be kept relaxed. Trying to grind up enough money and/or materials for limited time stuff completely obliterates the fun for so many people. Just stop it. Mad King’s Day and Wintersday certainly fit into this category of holiday events that need to be kept relaxed. If we get Cantha sometime, I’d also throw the Canthan New Year in that bundle too.

I’m talking to myself, I know. This Wintersday the only thing to be added will be designs for weapons requiring 100,000 snowflakes, and of course, snowflakes will drop 80% less than they did last year just to add to the lunacy. It all only serves to line the pockets of those players who have already spent a year fiddling the trading post, being banned, and somehow getting reinstated, with, no doubt, no penalty to the gold they made illegally. Sad times.

lordkrall.7241:

You get them based on the standing at reset (winner 3 chests, runner-up 2 and third gets 1)
These can be viewed on the Rank and Abilities tab of the WvW window and are rewarded when you rank up (on per rank, so if you get the 3 it will take 3 rank-ups to get them all).

Ahhh, in which case, I do recall receiving some of these. Maybe an odd way of rewarding it. Thanks for the clarification!

Also, sorry for posting this in the Living Story forum. Could have sworn I’d gone into the WvW section. :s

So I load up the midseason report and see this:

" Get up to three chests every week for fighting for your world’s glory."

Wait..

what?

Either you need to spend 24/7 in WvW to qualify, or I’m completely missing something. This could also be inaccurate or just plain misunderstood by me – it wouldn’t be the first time.

What are these “weekly chests”? Where are they/how are they delivered? This is the first I’ve heard of this.

Presumably they’re not Rank reward chests, and they surely can’t be the achievement mini-chests as there are not three-per-week for the length of the season there even if you fudge the numbers and average it out!

Serpent Slaying Modifiers. Sigils and Potions, if potions even exist. Do these work against Glowing Toxic Alliance Krait?

To my knowledge Outlaw Slaying never worked against Aetherblades, even though they clearly were outlaws. I found that to be a bit of a shame. Does the game consider the glowing Krait, however, to be “Krait”, “Toxic Alliance” or Both?

It’ll be a new Alliance we don’t currently know exists.

Am Fah +Tengu or something. The… Windy plague alliance?

Certainly feels legit.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

Would Canthan Undead, Zhaitan’s Risen, Am Fah, Margonites, Shiroken, Afflicted and Torment Creatures all allied togather be an interesting Alliance in Cantha?

Don’t joke. Next we’ll be getting Ascalonian Ghosts and Risen: The Macabre Alliance.

Charak.9761:

They need another use for quartz.

celestial is garbage, you’re hurting yourself for wearing it.

Those of us who know what ArenaNet is like, will continue to make Charged Quartz Crystals until we have at least a stack such that in a year’s time, when some superawesomepro Legendary is released we’ll have the last laugh when ArenaNet announces that it requires a stack of Charged Quartz.

They love, LOVE reusing underused materials for stuff. They did it in GW1, they do it here even more I think. The Zephyr Sanctum will return, and with it, potentially more recipes requiring Charged Quartz. I commend them for it, really. It stops some materials becoming stale and worthless so much.

It’s not all about Celestial Stats.

I hope to god that they don’t stay in the open world. Whilst I am liking the fact that the story is involving the Krait I would rather like to think that we will be able to cleanse the spores in time.

Home Instance spores would be nice though, as I rather think – given the number required for the recipes, there needs to be some way of continuing to earn them.

We all know why you want to see Kasmeer stay around.

/wink.

Unlikely Alliance? Check.

Unrealistic, far reaching effects? Check. (Spores in the mists even, dude, wtf?)

Why would anyone suspect anyone other than Scarlet?

In four year’s time we’ll finally get to go to Cantha. Everyone will be excited, salivating at seeing what became of the Jade Brotherhood. Looking forward to seeing a Liquid Jade Sea and a statue of Master Togo in the Temple of Tahnnakai. Excited about going back to Shing Jea Monastery to see if all those Elementalists are still dancing there in their pants. Then…

Boom.

Scarlet fled here. MORE INVASIONS GUYS.

Troll…lol…….lol.

So, let’s talk Spore Cleansing.

Toxic Spore Cleanser achievement, specifically. Is this a bit of a troll by the Devs? Surely you guys know that some players are just far too trigger happy to wait for the champions to gain their toxic buff? Could you perhaps make them hit harder, such that the kitteny Guardians trying to solo them while everyone else sits around just gets killed?

I’d also like to know what prompts these mobs to gain that buff. Sometimes it happens 10 seconds after they spawn, sometimes 5 minutes. Anyone any ideas on this?

Scarlet’s Slime Squad

Katran.9186:

The kraitest alliance ever.

You almost stole the punchline from my best GW2 joke

g e o.2589:

I hope the skill will be PvE only and Toxin will be NPC only.

I think this needs to be the case with future difficulty hikes to keep PvE a bit fresher and not such a faceroll.

ahuba.6430:

hell no, underwater combat would mean i would not step in there. i don’t even know what abilities most of my characters have underwater

This kind of player is why there should be no big underwater Living Story update until Underwater combat is given a revamp.

New weapons, larger range of utilities, perhaps special underwater-only utilities and the ability to use select land-based weapons underwater also would all be great.

As underwater combat stands I don’t dislike it. It’s a bit uninspiring on some professions. Underwater areas can be rather lovely though, aesthetically.

Morsus.5106:

Don’t mock Flame & Frost. It was pretty awesome

I really liked it, actually. Over 4 months it was a bit long winded, but they seemed to recognise this. What we didn’t know, however, is that F&F was just the beginning of having very little lore properly explained. I’m still waiting for answers on aspects of it even now.

Teege.4623:

I’m guessing we go into the tower (a new zone), farm champs, confront Scarlet (who gets away), and we get a mini and backpack for our effort.

Unfortunately you’re probably not far off the mark.

Maybe the Obelisk instead of a Backpack though.

Nightarch.2943:

Have her die in an airship battle. I personally think we’re missing a huge warship event.

She wont die. She will never die.

She will always manage to teleport away at 0.01% HP.

That’s by far my biggest gripe with her. I don’t like the current information about her, but that… time and time and TIME AGAIN… that really gets on my nerves.

+1 for new armour skins.

A Heavy set that’s actually … nice.

Seras.5702:

She’s a quality villian, she just needs a better delivery.

I have a hard time trying to think of a GW1 villain that wasn’t “quality”. Even Varesh was pretty cool. Scarlet isn’t even in the same league as GW1 villains. I consider her stock, uninspiring and uninteresting. When I see her name come up I want to be thinking “yay, now we get to find out something new”, but instead it’s usually “ugh, not her again…”

It’s clear that ArenaNet are holding back on many, many details regarding her and her schemes. Information as far back as the formation of the Molten Alliance seems to be missing. I don’t like so much information being witheld for “future releases”. Maybe it has a little to do with the delivery, as you say, but I’d be surprised if a better delivery made me want to see her come back again and again – and I mean – really made me want to see her come back.

I have read the short stories, and they do not help her case much. Granted, a few choice lines were interesting, but nothing to get me excited about it, like the GW1 villains always did.

One final thing I dislike about the lore surrounding the living story is that there are so many short stories online. I have no beef with there being short stories, but please… PLEASE for the love of Dwayna include them in-game…somewhere. Durmand Priory archives, a Library in Rata Sum, Home Instance… anything but making us leave the game if we want to read it.

I was waiting for the Krait to be involved at some point.

At the end of the Flame and Frost release, if you spoke to the Dredge in the Black Citadel Jail it said:

“Never again! Lying silver-tongued, snake-nosed trickster! Never again.”

Snake-Nosed immediately made me think Krait. Now, how this all weaves together, god knows, and the above quote may end up being a total red herring, and this release being a coincidence. It’s the only thing about this release that has me excited though. With the last few months of releases, I’d be foolish to hype myself up about this. It’ll introduce some new scheme of Scarlets that, no doubt, in 8 months time will still not be fully explained… cough Flame and Frost cough

Unless the release page reads “In this update you can kill Scarlet for good, such that she can NEVER EVER RETURN, not even as a ghost, oh, and everything about this storyline concludes and is FULLY EXPLAINED with non-bs reasoning” I shall not get excited.

There had better be good reasons for why the Krait are on her side. Let’s face it though, whatever those reasons are, we wont find out for maybe half a year or more. This much we know from Flame and Frost.

I used to defend ArenaNet a lot to skeptical friends, but for the last few months I’ve been unable to, when the quality of the storyline is involved. This upsets me.

TLDR: Don’t hype yourself up about this release. You wont learn anything.

in b4 zero HP and she magically teleports away.

Ykfox.3825:

This Halloween is even more fun then last years. The only difference really is you can’t get the achievements from last year.

I disagree.

Last year’s was full of theatrics. We were all waiting anxiously to see the Mad King through several acts.

I have to confess to, so far, being disappointed with this year’s event. Maybe there will be a surprise later on, but it doesn’t seem that way.

There is no harm in the community telling ArenaNet: MUST TRY HARDER. We are paying for this content though gemstore purchases, I am lead to believe. This “it’s free, just be thankful” mindset is dumb. If players don’t keep the pressure on, and keep them informed as to what we like and don’t like, and what we consider lame, then no improvements will be made.

The combat quality of life changes in this patch, however, are excellent. Really nice job done on those. Mad King’s Day itself, however, feels like it’s a much downgraded 2012 event. A much weaker story/quest chain … so far. As I say, I hope for some last minute surprise, but I doubt it’ll come.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/october-2012/

At the very end of the video, in the above link, from last year’s Mad King’s Day event there is an awesome laugh. Can we have that laugh downloadable to be used as a mobile phone message alert tone?

Lianna.6980:

1st October I first saw in map chat: “LFM WARRIORS ONLY 6+k ACHIEVEMENTS, GEAR CHECK”. The beggining of the end is nigh.

That’s just a warrior thing. It’s a wonder they don’t also post “kitten check”.

I just did a run with 2 guys with 2500 achievement points. At least one of them openly admitted he’d never been in before and couldn’t join other groups because of this. I have never met a more attentive player willing to take on advice and learn and thoroughly enjoyed the run through with them both.

That said, such occasions are rare. In general certain players, and you know who you are, type “yes” or “ok” when asked if they understand the tactics laid out in chat, only to then pay no attention at all and do whatever the hell they like, only to bother watching chat again 3 fails later.

Can I blame people for wanting to weed out inexperienced players? Not really, sometimes time is too short to spend 90 mins on one path. Sometimes though, it’s worth it, like my run tonight… you meet some great new players and have a great time.

dhupp.8103:

We’re all new to this but I would go ahead and assume not. There will probably be an all new category of achieves though!

I’m assuming yes, to be honest. No reason why they shouldn’t be, with added achievements for “any new stuff”.

I, for one, don’t really want to have to walk around carving over 9000 pumpkins. I did that last year, and it’s not new and fun for me. Don’t see why they can’t be available for newer players though.

Zackie.8923:

make the platforms invisible.

Love this one. Have invisible spikes too so you never know where the edge of them are.

Oh, randomly chosen insta-deaths… just ’cause. Maybe with a gemstore item you can buy to prevent it.

We will likely find out during the story event. That said, if the Scarlet Saga is anything to go by we still wont be any the wiser in 3 years time.

It wouldn’t be far fetched to summise that he is the “bloody” prince because he murdered many people. As to which people, and why, time will tell.

It’s likely all the events will get a little bigger year on year. Each year will add a little more content to the base. This is an echo of Guild Wars 1, where the number of Mad King’s Day and Wintersday quests/rewards increased year on year, and you still had access to past quests.

No Backpack?

THANK GOD.

Can just carry around a stack of Grandmaster Trait Books with you instead of buying this.

The Living Story spent too much time in it’s infancy pandering to lowbies, always being set in starter zones and up-scaling non L80s. I’m glad we’re seeing more solid L80 content now.

Amazing how ArenaNet post in the thread about how good Scarlet is, and never in the threads about how terrible she is.

Aden Celeste.3650:

Hmmm, Anet needs more talented writers it seems…

They don’t, they can write very well.

Scarlet doesn’t lend herself to a good story though, in my opinion. She’s, so far, very shallow. Too many conveniences in the storyline. Way too much of “suddenly, a Wild Scarlet appeared to tear Tyria a new one”.

Why’s she doing it? Wait an undisclosed amount of time to find out.

Don’t like it. Want rid of her.

GW1’s Vizier Khilbron was an amazing villain. You knew he had a very defined goal, even though it wasn’t disclosed, and I enjoyed the fact that he didn’t disclose himself as a villain to the player until very late in the story…even though we all had his cards marked as evil by the end of Sanctum Cay.

In GW2… I love Faolain. So what if she’s more-or-less only made much of appearence in Twilight Arbor Storymode? There is intrigue behind her. Some mystery surrounding her relationship with Caithe, and why she turned to Nightmare. There are aspects of Faolain that remind me very much of Vizier Khilbron. Equally with Caudecus. We all know Caudecus is dodgy as kitten, and he’s sitting there, ticking over in the background being all mysterious. These are the kind of stories I like, but I recognise they’re maybe not for everyone.

Scarlet is too brash. So what if she’s attacked a lot of people and places. That doesn’t make her a “good character”. I feel that if there’s more to her than just someone who makes Chaos and starts fights, then we need more information on this…. something to make me care about wanting to see the next installment. At the moment, I do not care, and when Scarlet is announced to be in the next living story patch my heart sinks a bit. I couldn’t wait to get to the next mission in each GW1 campaign. As for this Living Story, so long as it’s about Scarlet, don’t care – don’t want it.

Too many people love RNG but hate to admit it.

I’ve opened about 10 Aether Chests and got nothing but greens. Certainly not received the only item anyone really wants.

I don’t care though, on this occasion, as they are buy-able on the Trading Post. Thank god they chose not to account bind them.

Jables.8130:

Why all the hate towards the ONLY villain with an actual personality and interesting background and story?? (not counting the Mad King here)

I say “YAY, Scarlet again”

Very little of her story is told in-game though. ArenaNet seem to be holding out so long on releasing many details. Sure, Scarlet’s back-story with that written story was interesting. There seem to be no reasoning for what she’s doing though. I’m interested to see this update – I doubt it will give us much more story, as is the theme with the Living Story these days….and to think it started out with so much promise with Flame and Frost.

My personal reason for disliking Scarlet is because every fight with her is dumb. It’s lame. You get her down to zero hit points only to have her “miraculously teleport away”. That’s not remotely believeable. Happens to her three times in Scarlet’s Funhouse, and at every successful Invasion “kill”. I’m tired of her “always finding a way out”. ArenaNet could really make it seem a bit more believeable, like having her port away through a steam portal at… 30% health. But zero health? Come off it.

I want to know more about Scarlet’s overall agenda. I want to know what I, through my character, am supposed to be foiling. So she attacked Divinity’s Reach. Anise was all over it even before it began, and the Funhouse rescue really could have been carried out by the new, shiny “Seraph honor guard”. I don’t have enough of a reason to be hounding this Sylvari. What does she want? I feel we need to know, we need to have that as a motivation to want to see her re-appear in the Living Story, and have that as a motivation to want to foil her every time.

Right now, it’s just.. “meh, Scarlet again… yawn”.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It’d be hilarious to see Scarlet, in the final phase, appear at Tequatl’s location. Would his tidal wave of death kill her?

Doubt it.

A better question should be:

“Dye-able weapons. Anet. Please? Pretty please?”

4th Glorious win for Gandara.

It has also been mentioned in a certain YouTuber’s video that sitting, waiting to play is not fun.

Sitting, waiting around to play is also what ArenaNet claims they work hard to stop happening. They always say they want you to be playing “right now”.

Unfortunately, this event’s worst feature is that it requires so much sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen.

I love this boss update, but yea, needs a lot of refinement on this aspect of it.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Why can I never make it into the victorious groups? No matter how many times I try, or how good our planning and team work seems to be…

Taujin.2475:

Again!? Come on guys your killing me here!
Gave up earlier and went and finished Tribulation Mode, actually easier than getting on home server for Tequatl at the moment!

To both of you:

It’s very annoying, I know, but you’ve gotta server-camp. Server-camp or have friends in the main Gandara server who can taxi you in before it fills to max. It’s easy for some of us to say, I know. I more-or-less sit inside Gandara’s Sparkfly Fen all day to ensure I’m not locked out of my own Server’s home map.

We defeated him twice tonight, and twice he was down at 1%. That’s pretty much almost 4 kills. With the right core of command on our server we’re fairly slick now. Good luck getting into the main server. We have more solid attempts planned for tomorrow evening, of course.

It is a little shame that this event is more of a server-camping event than a boss killing one, at times.

Many of our regular commanders guested to Vabbi only to fail at 30% when we ripped Tequatl a new one! We managed to get ourselves organised for a glorious Gandaran win even without the usual structure we’ve had.

The follow-up had us fail at 1%… which I believe is the second time we’ve failed at 1% in one day. Pretty annoying!

Edit: Gandara done it.. again again!. third kill now for us.

jucca.8219:

Gj Gandara let’s try kick his butt few more times tonight, keep it up!

We just failed at another at about 1%. Gutting!

Edit:

Aaaaaand a Third kill for Gandara.

One more win for Gandara this evening. Believe this brings us up to 2 now.

+1 on the Banner Disappearance. Quite irritating.

Today whilst playing Southsun Survival, at the beginning when all the immobilize chains are supposed to be removed, mine wasn’t.

Remained so until someone killed me, which took a remarkably long time, but meant, of course, I had no chance to play the game properly.

Screenshot attached.

First confirmed kill on Gandara!

I’d like to echo others’ sentiments on the lackluster story at the moment. It’s grinding to a halt, I swear. Or, at the very least, ArenaNet is hiding so much that they want to reveal later that it feels like it’s going nowhere.

If, whenever this might conclude, if it turns out “Tequatl is stronger now ’cause Scarlet guise” I shall be very, very…. very disappointed. Just saying. Seems to me that Scarlet could be made the scapegoat for everything just ‘cause she’s apparently unkillable if the invasions and playhouse instance are anything to go by.

I’m just going to sit here, hope I’m not disappointed, and fantasize about Tequatl having changed allegiance to Bubbles. Y’know, a story that sounds a bit legit.

There’s something in the waaaaterrrrrrrrrrr.

2.5 days in. Impressive. The community lasted longer than I thought before calling for Tequatl to be buffed!

Prepare your kittens for Best Tyrian Idea 2013.

Anyone using the word “Res” in Map or Local chat, in Sparkfly Fen, receives an automatic disconnection.

/bow.