Guild Wars 2

MithranArkanere.8957:

Hand health.

The same reason why the mystic forge and discovery panels should work with a single click instead double, and why stacks of containers should have an “use all” context menu option.

I just want a godkitten 50 or 100 Superior Siege Schematic recipe already.

Pretty good article. Even has a decent shortlist of how to fix Scarlet. Make her Asura rather than Sylvari and show-don’t-tell; the second of which is writing 101.

I don’t think this is the case. If they want to beef up the Q4 results, surely that would mean that they’re pushing out content too early. However, I don’t think the art is bad because of potentially being rushed. It’s just bad because it’s bad and has nothing to do with ANet trying to meet a quarterly goal. Purposely saying “hey guys, make this armor look like rubbish so we can get MONEYS”?… The transmutation stones are worth nothing, compared to what it costs to skill up and produce a piece of ascended gear.

I also wish that they’d used Trickster’s/Phalanx/Viper’s gear for the Ascended gear because they actually look pretty nice. If anything, look there; those sets look pretty kitten neat.

Garrisyl.7402:

The most infuriating thing is the usual lack of official responses.

I personally really wouldn’t be too worried. If they’re going to make any changes, they’ll only actually occur in something like 3 months/half a year.

WoW went well-ish simply because there’s a whole bunch of people (or there was). Really, though, pushing to turn something into ESPAWTS just doesn’t work.

Make a fun game.
Make a balanced(a component of fun) game.
If ESPAWTS happens, then so be it.

Strali Astralis.4570:

Adding my agreement that that was an awesome and very satisfying cutscene, as well as a fun instance to play and figure out Great job!!!
Also the NPC conversations in the camp afterwards are brilliant and hilarious! I highly suggest everyone go hear them!

“You mean you’re naked?”
“Yeah. That a problem?”
“…No.”

Jeez quit beating around the bush and bang already

I kind of wonder if pre-loading piercing killshots before taking a mesmer portal would be a servicable idea. Complicated as all hell, I’m guessing, but it might be interesting.

Do we actually have confirmed material requirements for ascended armors?

A little about you? Half of your rant is about you.

You spent a lot of mats on stuff. Yep. Not seeing how that has anything to do with warriors.

Dolyak Stance, Balanced Stance and Last Stand don’t work properly? Uh. Pretty sure they do. Might have something to do specifically with the tower.

Why are you playing with a two-decade old machine? If you like it and want to keep it for nostalgia’s sake then go ahead and keep it, don’t throw it out, but if you want to run new software then you’re gonna need new hardware to match. :x

If the gear drops, then I’ll wear it. Not crafting a thing- too expensive.

selan.8354:

im still laughing at the reward. at least we got dolyak pets. can we get a mini thief to gank it for next season?

That would actually be pretty cool.

I reckon the chest was fine. WvW itself should be rewarding; the season should be icing on the cake.

me fix death shroud

Regeneration, heals, and lifedrains will function properly in Death Shroud.

me done

I mean really let’s just make it work properly before we go about making crazy changes. If we want to make crazy changes, then let’s play around in the Death tree to make it kinda sorta worthwhile for anything other than MMs.

Katran.9186:

How many “good” male characters do we have from LS? Braham? Oh shi~

Moto.

But yeah this story’s pretty rubbish.

So far, I would probably say no. We’ve gotten, what, one new zone (a few temporaries), one new dungeon (after DELETING one of the old ones), a few fractals, and system additions which are the usual for an MMO’s first year. There is a lot of systems work that’s been done, but not much content.

Even considering that, if it counts as an expansion, it’s a bloody rubbish one. You need to actually have some kind of cohesive story and preferably one that I care about.

I think that the Living Story as it stands is a pretty broken system and directly undermines an MMO’s strength. WoW is strong because it has had, what, eight years of building up content and not throwing it away immediately afterwards.

biofrog.1568:

To me:

• “light armor” would put it in the leather class (or bone, animal skins or scales etc).
• “medium armor” is scale plating, light steel or some actual protective but restrictive sets
• “heavy armor” is just that. Big heavy plated chunks of steel that might allow you to take a beating, but just as equally make it insanely hard to swing a sword around.

It’s vague for a reason. Some light armor looks like light leather, like Norn Cultural stuff, or thicker padded cloth with possibly some metal elements, like Exotic named. Some light armor’s a bikini. Some medium armor is just padded cloth, others have heavily plated elements like the Temple set.

There’s some discussion around unlocking Commander with WXP? Personally, I don’t have that big of a problem with that, so long as the standing gold system remains. More paths to commander doesn’t really hurt, and isn’t 100 world ranks just as much dedication as 100 gold, arguably even more considering the current gem-to-gold prices?

Just have one thing there. Just Commander. No further unlocks beyond that, at least for the short term. Really, I think if we get out of this

Reduced suppression
New shapes
New colors

And you can push that out by the end of the month (well, maybe a fortnight into next month, because christmas), I’d be very happy with that personally.

Carighan.6758:

Chaotic Storm, did you see the most recent Wooden Potatoes video? The argument that Scarlet is an intentional “story scapegoat” sounds pretty convincing.

To that end, the elder dragons being the focus of the story would be the last thing we should want.

That doesn’t really make sense, though. It’s not really a scapegoat, more a defensive maneuver on the part of the writers. “Let’s use this kittenty disposable character while we find our feet, rather than ruin any of the existing lore”.

I like this promotion. They should run them more often. They should run one every month.

I had my qualms about ANet giving unannounced ‘gifts’ during the Zephyr Sanctum content and that other one. This is perfectly fine, by me, provided all the promotional items are purchasable through gold→gems. Sales work; it’s a big part of why Steam is popular.

Honestly I personally reckon just giving the community 8 colors and letting them do whatever they want with them would be a great idea while the system is rebuilt from the ground up. The system as it stands is not fundamentally broken, though it doesn’t make for much of a ‘commander’; it’s just a dorito over your head. Doritos over your head are useful.

Something I’d like to see when/if you do rebuild it; have an “administrator” version of Commander for objectives. The administrator can attach himself to a tower/keep/castle, and then queue upgrades remotely, enable/disable taking supply form the structure, or possibly command the workers to repair or rebuild defenses like walls and cannons. Very lazy thought.

I whole-heartedly endorse this product or event.

Seriously though I’ve had friends who’ve accidentally deleted items, or locked items on an alt that was then deleted, etc. I would be far more eager to buy items from the gem store if I could ruse them on my alts, as I’ve got a lot of them.

Kalavier.1097:

Unoriginal? Well that’s kinda a generic statment these days. And how is their storyline “plagiarized”?

Plagiarised is a bit of a strong word, but they do take strong inspiration from Arthurian legend.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Atherakhia.4086:

The only thing left now is for ANet to make dyes account bound and I’ll be one happy camper!

Imagine if duplicate consumed dyes were just placed in your inventory… So many dyes…

I’d have like, half a dozen cocoas, lol.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I hope it works like:
Rank 200
Warrior gets 200 points to spend
Engineer gets 200 points to spend
Both can have unique set-ups.

As it reads, this sounds exactly like how it’ll be.

Elthuzar.9478:

Seriously, if you were going to make an evil genius puppet master, WHY wasn’t it an Asura? I just dislike the Sylvari in general, they are so unoriginal in design, even their personal story arc is plagiarised from Arthurian tales.

Now that you mention it, I’m kinda wondering how the story would go if was an Asura doing it. As far as I can tell, it works far better. Scarlet seems like a character that is perfectly written to be an Asura, especially with Asura being played more comedic most of the time.

Fafnir.5124:

How can you hate something you don’t even know. At most you can say is you hate her development. What do we really know about scarlet almost nothing.

Which is a big problem. She’s been an active story element since August, and a ‘passive’ one since release (if she’s apparently active at Thaumanova). How long will it be before we know anything, let alone beat her into a pulp? Years?

Carighan.6758:

Sarrs.4831:

If they do turn around and say “BUT SCARLET WAS GOOD ALL ALONG, GUYS” then it’ll just prove that this writing team has gone completely down the toilet.

Do you really perceive those things as her being an evil person?
What did she do to impact me or the world around me so that I’d consider her evil? Nothing. She provides me with nice easy loot, and at times easy achievement points. She’s Santa Scarlet, in a way.

um
what?
less silly

AKGeo.6048:

Ironic.

Just curious; why does he dislike Scarlet?

Why do I dislike Scarlet?

Draco.2806:

A character could still be convinced they were doing good even when committing utter atrocities.

They could be insane, in shock, misguided, blinded by strict ideology, thinking of it as a sacrifice towards the greater good or as punishment towards sinners, they could have a different understanding of morality and goodness than all other people, they could be subtly manipulated by evil forces, or they could simply be making a big mistake.

All this and more are things we won’t be seeing in Guild Wars until ANet hires a competent writer.

That’s not quite how the DnD alignment system works because it’s based around objective rules rather than individuals’ subjective view of morality, but I dunno whether we really want to get into that here. But yeah, I get where you’re coming from. Played through Spec Ops: The Line not long ago; that was a blast and a half.

At any rate, I doubt Scarlet will actually make it to trial to answer for her crimes, and if she does, she’ll just teleport out of the courtroom. LATER TATER

Draco.2806:

Incidentally, in DnD, you can very easily come up with a character who’s both a genocidal maniac and “Good”. In fact many Paladins end up this way: cross the road in the wrong place, off with your head.

Pretty neat, actually.

Depends on your GM. My GM docks points whenever you kill, so that doesn’t work out well.

I still wonder how you’d make a character who kills innocent civilians using hidden bombs could qualify as “good”.

Carighan.6758:

If anything, it confirmed that she probably won’t be “the bad guy”. She’s Chaotic Good in AD&D terms.

>good
>carried out a massive terrorist attack on DR and attempted assassination on Queen Jennah
>successfully assassinated a councilor and attempted to replace them with a puppet
>deploys biological and chemical weapons on a daily basis

If they do turn around and say “BUT SCARLET WAS GOOD ALL ALONG, GUYS” then it’ll just prove that this writing team has gone completely down the toilet.

Bojoo.7819:

DevonCarver.5370:

Agreed.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-xp-and-you/

God bless Your soul!

I have one question regarding ranks. With alt ranks joining, will we get account bound restart of used skill points so we can figure out what we want to do with specific class in wvw?

Pretty please?!

At a guess, every character will get a reset, because the game will compile points and then reimburse levels. I dunno how they’ll work it, though.

Hah! I knew you’d crack. :>

Thanks a bunch, Devon! I’ll be having a beer for you tonight.

Edit: Read it a bit more, and it seems as though you’ll be able to allocate those points differently on different characters. Not the perfect outcome in my mind, but still far better than the current situation.

TheGreatA.4192:

I don’t think you’re supposed to like the villain. Atleast it will be somewhat satisfying when you get to beat Scarlet down and never see her again.

Did you like Darth Vader?

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

If I were a writer at ArenaNet, I’d really be congratulating myself on a job well done.
People claim that Scarlet is poorly written, but the truth is that over the past decades, thanks largely to Hollywood writing, we’ve become far to accustomed to sympathetic villains. Antagonists, who are often the antithesis of the hero, troubled by deep psychological trauma, whose actions are to a certain degree understandable or at leat comprehensible to the reader or viewer. This developement has lately reached a point, where the “gentleman” villains often become the protagonists themselves (e.g. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Pirates of the Carribean etc.)
Scarlet isn’t that. She isn’t likeable, her actions aren’t comprehensible, she’s annoying because she meddles with everything and people are spewing venom and bile because they don’t like her.
Here’s an update: You are not supposed to like the villain. You’re supposed to hate the villain, hate what they do, hate that you don’t understand why or how they’re doing it and get so emotional that you call for their early demise.
Judging from the majority of the reactions on these forums here, I think ANet have done a pretty good job with achieving that.
Kudos.

EDIT: I don’t want to say this is the case everyone. I can tell from reactions to this thread that there are also people who see right through what is actually happening here. But there are far more people on these boards who claim to be disinterested in the Scarlet story-arc, yet the emotionality in which their posts are usually written reveals that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Geez how do I tackle this

1. People do not hate Scarlet for what she is doing. People dislike Scarlet because she does not make sense in the context of the story.
2. ‘Villain’ or ‘antagonist’? (Also, which villain/antagonist character becomes a protagonist in Pirates of the Caribbean?)
3. By saying you are supposed to ‘hate’ the villain/antagonist, you are writing off a huge amount of villains who do not engender hate. A narrative causing an emotional connection with the player is good.
4. With Scarlet, we are not being angry with the story, we are being angry at the story.
5. The game is not a murder mystery. It does not invite us to solve the mystery it lays out, and it does not have the tools or build-up to do it. If it is trying to do that, it failed spectacularly as soon as Scarlet was introduced. Scarlet is no longer a useful tool for the narrative; she may as well be thrown out.
6. People are emotional because they like the game, think it has great potential, and it’s being spoiled on this muck.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

HI Folks,

I just posted this on the PVE forum. I am keen to finish of our current phase and get going, so let us know if you agree with this proposal:

’So Izzy has joined in on the WvW thread and would like to discuss Commander Functionality which impacts WvW and could potentially be used effectively in PVE content. I therefore propose the following:

1: We work on one topic at a time (for the time being). In a rotation of WvW, PvP and then PVE.

2: The WvW topic will be Commander functionality.

3: We will also discuss potential Commander functionality as it relates to PVE.

4: The discussion will be housed in the WvW area.

Unless we have major disagreement then we will go ahead with this.

Tomorrow i will summarize our actions for evolution of the CDI process and on Monday our next topic will begin.

Quite honestly i am looking forward to getting back to topic discussion (-:

Note: New topics will be chosen during the CDI Process Evolution phase once we finish the next topic rotation.

Chris’

Chris

The main concern I have with this is that you might go for topics which cross over like that, while they don’t all necessarily cross over nicely. Say, if the sPvP folks really really want to talk about sPvP maps, that doesn’t really cross over well into pve or wvw.

I do like the idea of a 2-3-day vote, 1-week discussion, though, and if it doesn’t adequately explore everything, you can always extend it or continue the discussion elsewhere.

GW2 PvP should not be taken seriously, IMO. It’s fun, and you can definitely feel like you’re improving at the game, but it’s not something you should get worked up over, mostly because the balance isn’t quite there yet.

However, it should be taken more seriously than PvE.

-XP/Gold/Karma/Material gains from sPvP
-Build templates
-More build variety
-More weapon/utility skills to help with ^
-More game types
-More map sizes (like, all the way up to 20v20)

Morsus.5106:

Did you watch the twitch preview? They directly said each one is set in stone. The 31 one is always the same, the 32 one is always the same, the 33 one is always the same, and the 39 one will always be “Last Laugh” in which the enemy explodes on death.

Nah, I hadn’t by then. I don’t keep enough of a track on the twitch videos.

At any rate, bummer.

Zaxares.5419:

I’m inclined to think that there are 19 different instabilities, but which one you get from level 31+ is random. As you increase in levels, more and more instabilities get applied. So maybe from 31 – 35 you get 1 instability, 36 to 40 you get 2, 41 – 45 you get 3, and 46 – 50 you get 4 instabilities at once.

To keep players from simply restarting a Fractal until they get "good’ instabilities, I say randomise the instabilities with each separate Fractal.

I initially thought this would be the case. Not sure, though. I really hope that they are randomised- I think fractals will kinda lose their charm if they’re less randomised.

Morsus.5106:

The 39 instability is enemies explode on death. Anyone with ranged attacks (non-guardians) will be taking extra damage here. The main person this affects is Guardians, as their main ranged abilities are Scepter and Staff.

Source? I was under the impression that they’d be randomized; a bit like a randomly picked Gambit, or an endgame map in PoE.

Cynz.9437:

now i have to grind my way back (through probably even harder maps) just to have chance for weps back?… great…

Doesn’t everything from FotM drop from 26+? I’ve gotten a Fractal Shield from 26, and I’m fairly sure that’s the Infused Ring cutoff point.

Really, that grinding will be no different from the grinding you’re doing already.

CuRtoKy.8576:

ZilentNight.5089:

Good luck getting past +10, also the above is true if you hold on to all your infusions. If you use any of your infusions, you will have to most likely start from scratch unless maybe the auction house splitter works on this. oops maybe i gave them an evil idea, sorry folks =/

Can’t you simply just replace the infusion like how they work now?

Yeah, but you’re potentially losing hundreds of +1s by overriding a high-ranked AR infusion. Using the upgrade remover will save you a lot of time and effort. I don’t think I like that. Personally, I think it would be simpler to understand and more user-friendly if it operated similarly to MF, and the Infusion upgrade is either removed, or left as-is.

Chrispy.5641:

And one more thing. What do you think Guild Wars 2 is rated? Oh yeah, its rated T for Teen in America. Now, I might not have been a Teen for 6 years, and I am still a fan of many shows and comics that I grew up with, but I think its more Absurd that you guys are Expecting, worse, Demanding, a M for Mature story on the level of Game of Thrones instead of taking it for what it is. That’s actually moving away from Absurd, and more towards “Then why the kitten are you still playing this game? Its obviously not sophisticated enough for your palette?”

A children’s story which cannot be appreciated by adults is not a good children’s story at all.

-I think it was Mark Twain

I’d be willing to accept the story if the basics were at least right. There was a post earlier in the thread saying that Scarlet is better than Trahearne; Nah. Where Trahearne is Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’s Qui-gon, bland, devoid of emotion and sometimes a bit of a poor decision-maker, Scarlet is Jar Jar Binks. They’re both rubbish. “One is better than the other”? Pishposh. One character being terrible is no excuse for another character being slightly less so, but still terrible enough to earn the quantifier. That just means you have two rubbish characters.

Prysin.8542:

Stability, how to counter it: spam immobilize
Result: a zerg rooted and ready for bag-picking

EDIT: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilize
Here is a list of all skills that apply immobilize. Now you can find a profession with the most effective spammage of this condition and stop the zerg entirely. Personally, i bet the ranger will be your best bet (Krytan Drakehound, Muddy Terrain and Entangle… in theory that should root 15 people max)

Don’t forget that every Human has access to Entangle through Avatar of Melandru.

I’m inclined to say they all have their uses, but that either Thieves or Elementalists are the lowest value. They do perform great in their respective avenues, roaming and open field respectively, but that’s about the extent of their strengths. Other classes have a wider spread of roles.

Mind, this is very much IMO; I have nowhere near enough experience to say definitively.

At the moment, I find stat building in PvE to be perfectly fine. There’s a huge number of spreads you can take. sPvP? Yeah, you’re right.

I’m not playing at the moment, mostly because I’m kind of tired of the game. Nothing new’s been added after, what, 14 months now? No new content, except for the Living Story, which spends most of its time depressing me because it’s temporary. No new weapons, weap+class combinations, skills, WvW maps, only a few sPvP maps and the last one was released something like four months ago.

Seriously, how many new things have been added to sPvP? 3 maps, a stat gem, a few models that already exist in the game, and the gem store armors and weapons? Nothing that changes the fundamental flow of the game, adds to possible build variety, gives new toys. It is, more or less, the exact same game as it was at release- That’s pretty boring, for a game that’s so proud of offering its fortnightly update schedule.

Bhawb.7408:

If they keep buffing reanimator till when it procs at a decent rate (which it still doesn’t, it needs a 10 ICD and to proc on more than just enemy death), it will give good benefit to every build.

If they try to push it up so it becomes useful for everyone, then chances are good it’ll be utterly insane for any MM build. Whether or not that’s a good thing, I’m not sure.

Personally, I think it’d be easier and much less of a headache to just change Death Magic’s minors.

Bhawb.7408:

All traits have disproportionate benefit to certain builds.

Yeah, though I think “makes a decent body-block if you kill someone and down a second target against whom a body-block will be actually useful” is kind of stretching it as far as disproportionate benefits go.

Draehl.2681:

Overkillengine.6084:

If they truly want us to be attrition; they need to do something sufficiently constructive in Blood and Death to give us access to the sustain needed to stay alive and do our jobs.

Agreed. A simple change would be to make blood the “sustain” line and Death the anti-burst line. By buffing lifesteals some more and perhaps giving Death a new Grandmaster trait- “Your life force depletes 90% less from damage for 2 seconds after entering DS” A pseudo block, which won’t stop conditions from coming at you, but can help with our lack of vigor/multi target defense.

IMO move Death Nova to Master, remove Death Chill, and add a new Grandmaster trait along these lines.

Why not just have Death Shroud give Aegis on activation/exit?