Guild Wars 2

So… my newest level 2 Warrior..
Name: Commend
Armor:
Order of Whispers chest, boots
Arah Gloves
Human Cultural T2 shoulders
Vigil Legs
Weapons: HoM Wahorn & Fiery Dragon Sword, Ebon vanguard Sword
Dyes: White Gold, Gold, Earthen

SSalp.6423:

Kelmen.3896:

the problem is without the proper skill, players will just keep knock out of the platform and die.

That’s the whole point of this mechanic. Get the proper skill. Fractals aren’t meant to be overly easy.

The issue with that is that it makes certain classes necessary to do fractals in general, since you can not pick what fractal you get. So doing fractals without either group stealth or stability or some other mechanic that can counter that is a completely nonviable way to go about Fractals as a whole, not just that specific one. :o

^This sort of goes against the tenets the group system in this game was founded on unnecessarily marginalizes certain players for a preferred play style.

Blackgate does him almost every time he shows up, in my experience. He’s insanely easy as long as you have a few competent necros, and everyone gets sort of close to him. His two signatures are spawning a bunch of adds with Retliation, and having a ranged life steal. If you stack on him and strip his boons asap, he melts.

tl:dr

>want content update per month instead of bi-weekly with more content
>want Tengu & Dominion of Winds to be introduced in new story step that includes the deep sea dragon somehow
>wants new permanent dungeon where we kill champion of deep sea dragon

I enjoy contrast. Here’s my first 80, Online.

New character!

Level 12 Asuran Elementalist

Exalted Coat, Pants, and Boots
Sorrow’s Embrace Shoulders (Light)
Head: Seer’s Circlet
Country Gloves
Dyes: Abyss, Apricot (Starter)
Crucible of Eternity(Inquest) and Citadel of Flame(Molten) Daggers.

New character! Level 12 Elementalist! Attunement: Fire! Member in good standing at the College of Dynamics :-)

Exosferatu.2961:

The Elder Dragons can’t come near Black Citadel to devour Bloody Prince Thorn. They will get torn to smithereens by Charr siege weapons.

This is a gross overstatement of Charr siege weapons. If they could kill an Elder Dragon by themselves, they wouldn’t have signed a truce with the humans. The only reason the Elder dragons hasn’t wiped Tyria out over the last year is because ArenaNet cannot develop at a pace, with any kind of quality, the events one would intuitively think an Elder Dragon would force on the world.

Krlkatorrik alone is supposedly many times the size of the Black Citadel. The city is only the size of his neck, let alone the rest of his body. And just by flying through the air, he created a battlefront not seen since the Wall of Ascalon built by the humans over 250 years ago.

I just spit out the coffee I wasn’t even drinking. Thanks for that! I reached my laugh quota for today.

spoj.9672:

Its not scarlet. Its obviously the krait witch or something doing the narration. Sounds nothing like scarlet.

In the video, they mentioned dark allies, which is why I don’t believe it’s just the krait

Tree.3916:

I still don’t see how Scarlet fits into the lore. A sylvari graduating at all asuran colleges? wtf

I don’t think there’s anything particularly offensive about that more than there is the fact that they just pulled her seemingly out of nowhere. It was a bad way to plug her in but now that they’ve done that, she’s here to stay.

Atleast she’s the glue that bound all the other random events in Tyria together through the living story prior to her official unveiling, so I’m tolerant on this fact alone. Because we’re watching her rise to power right now and the Krait are seemingly now a part of her army. I could be wrong, but with the new Aether path and now this, it seems they’re writing her to becoming a real threat because she can smash her way through event the most fanatical of lore subjects.

Invictus.1503:

Nothing has been said yet, but the wording they use “seed” “nightmare” etc. seems to hint that the Nightmare Court may have something to do with helping the Krait. I wonder…

Scarlet just got through with screwing around in Twilight Arbor, so… no surprise there. :p

I’m pretty sure with the Scarlet voice over, the plant-like apendages that’re twisting out of/into the structure, and the “monument to fear” thing, Anet managed to shoehorn Scarlet into an update that many thought would focus moreso on the Kraitt.

Ah well.

Inb4 kittenstorm on new trailer

Screenshots of beta events. :-) Was good times.

Last one was the first screenshot I ever took of my time in GW2 :o

The swiftness for Keg Brawl sporadically goes off and players move incredibly slow now in Keg Brawl even though it says swiftness is still there. It has had unenjoyable impact on the game as a result. Please fix this.

Having a commander title on one character gives commander recognition, which is more-or-less important in the casual nature of WvW at this point and boosts community as a result.

Furthermore, we really don’t need more people with commander tags. Currently, 100g is not hard to make with the very very heavy amount of reward systems that ArenaNet laid into this game.

While it’s unfortunate that those who have say, a ranger or mesmer with their first commander title have trouble leading in WvW because of lack of speed or combat type, I prefer this to the alternative.

Wow, did not know that.

You can buy as many as you want. 800 gems each. Yes, that means someone paid a lot of gems, but they used to only be ~1-2g per 100 gems closer to launch. So those who had quickly broken 100g+ could’ve afforded many many more gems than that would net you now.

Alternatively, they could just be paying $10 for each new character slot.

I have 5 80’s as well, but I also have 13 total characters, and 11 that I’ve spent atleast 30 hours on each if not more. The answer is that you really can’t focus on all of them without serious time investment. Depending on who you are, it can take a long time to master your profession, so if you wish to have many characters, there’s not much you can do about it. Especially if you have two of some of the most difficult classes to master. It’s a person to person thing, but it’s always gonna be harder to master all classes than to only stick with one.

Now, if you’re referring to gear, that’s a whole other issue. Exotics are fairly easy to obtain for multiple characters. Each one of my 80’s has at least 2 full sets of Exotics, trinkets, weapons, and all, as well as each of my lower level characters having pieces of exotic armor and weapons transmuted down for lower characters for the look. You can view my characters in my sig.

Ascended gear, however, is wholesomely alt unfriendly. If you’re planning on fully decking out each character in full Ascendeds, you’re talking about a heavy heavy time investment as well as artificially long time constriction due to the time gating and cost of leveling 1 or more crafting professions to 500, then getting the mats to get that weapon for each set for each build for each character… it’s just really not meant for you to have many characters obtaining Ascended Gear.

I think making all activities playable would lead to a higher interest in the activities because the content would be able to be enjoyed all the time. They can do this by making it so that there is a highlighted activity each day of the rotation, and then each other activity is available in the meantime though there is no daily specific reward for them.

Since there was no official explanation given, many including myself have come to the conclusion that ArenaNet installed the daily activity rotation the way it is now to avoid player dilution. That is, they do not want to spread the amount of people playing each activity out too thin or else each one would not be enjoyable.

While there is a myriad of issues with that explanation that winds up with it not making a whole lot of sense at all, it’s a much brighter version of my alternative, which is that ArenaNet is using this content as a time gate for various things associated with the activities.

The way they’re currently keeping each activities population artificially alive is by funneling in everyone to one activity per day, including people that do not like them at all. That has a ton of issues itself, but there is more on that problem here.

The primary issue is that those who enjoy any particular activity can only play them for extremely limiting times per week, especially in the case of Keg brawl which is only available once a week or 4 times a month. This goes against the nature of having mini games, which are allegedly a break of pace from the game. They’re supposed to be fun little activities done at your leisure.

I think if they kept the rotation and made it so the certain NPC in Lion’s Arch could direct everyone to the daily activity, but all the normal activity people would still be there, then we would see much higher interest, competition and social involvement in the activities all around.

Redid my Warrior and Mesmer.

Warrior: Approval
Sclerite karka Shell (Back)
Arthropoda (Longbow)
Chiroptophobia (Greatsword)
Heavy Island Shoulders
Plated Boots & Gloves
Norn T3 Cultural legs (Heavy)
Gladitator Chest
Dyes: Refresh, Graphite, Shy Violet

Mesmer: Plant
Holographic Wings (Back)
Super Sword
Asuran Cultural T3 focus
Sylvari T3 Cultural Shoulders and Gloves
Sylvari T1 Cultural Chest and legs
Twilight Arbor Boots
Dyes: Midnight Violet, Evening, Tarnished Silver, Glory

PvE:
1.) Vertical Progression
2.) Guilds (interface, tools, missions, mission rewards et al.)
3.) Social tools (capital cities, activities, emotes, gem store, joke items, et al.)
WvW:
1.) Commander UI (customizable visibility, raid frames of some kind for squads, et al.)
2.) WvW exclusive rewards (armors, titles etc.)
3.) New maps

The way I equipped my character was gearing her to the weapon she’s holding for the most part.

Level 80 Norn Warrior
Name: Approval

Recently redid my mesmer for zerker gear in dungeons. Also working on two new characters.

The only thing that’s really stopping me from moving on is that I’m running out of visual accessory items to bring my characters together. Backpieces, and weapons mostly. So it’s hard to find a distinguishing look that I want. That being said, I still wanna do something with the Sclerite set.

Your analogy to running naked is completely without merit because it assumes that running with what is currently perceived as the most efficient gear for running dungeons and running with no gear have the same implications, which for obvious reasons, they don’t.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Having an /inspect feature puts more emphasis on gear than it does player skill, especially when it comes to efficiency, which is what the majority of those who runs dungeons a fourth, eighth, or twelfth time would overwhelmingly prefer. So it’s a little disingenuous to claim his statement is “asinine”.

However, slightly more on topic, I don’t think an inspect for cosmetics is a good thing either on similar principle. If you want to know, you should definitely ask. I don’t know who gets angry when you simply ask them what the name of their gear is, where they got it or if they could ping it for you, but that’s definitely got to be uncommon because it has no rational explanation I can think of, lol

Speak for yourself.

haviz.1340:

Dual.8953:

My concern is the ratio of elitist to casuals. Lets say the game community is 90% casual, 10% elitist.

You are either a casual or elitist? There’s nothing else beside that?

I think casual/elitist in this sense can be better explained as either being the type of player that would take negative action (kicking from dungeon, making negative comments, etc.) on another player based on their choice of build, play style, or gear (within reason) or being the type of player that will not, for whatever reason.

Anet can’t even get the TP to filter armor types or back items. There’s no way they can bridge the game between games working on different servers, and also on different engines.

Zacchary.6183:

I have another one…

I like this one. I think it might go over people’s heads though…

…

badumtssss

This is really awesome. I’m just dropping by to commend you for your amazing & generous work for others. If there’s a highlight reel for the GW2 community, this thread would surely be on it.

Definitely! It’s the only way! I’m working on the other two now.

Haha, yeah, it does. My ranger (Charr on the right) got a haircut from hitting the top of the screen, she was so big. lol But I like that they’re big for the picture because I like to overemphasize the physical size of Charr & Norn to bring them in line with how I really envision them, which is being titan-esque.

spiritus.7983:

mehh, I got excited for nothing, I like all my charrs

If you have a mildly recent version of MSword, you can drag a screenshot into it, and remove background from it in the format panel. It’s really cheap & easy but a really unorthodox way of doing it since it’s a text document editor and may result in funky resolution quality similar to what’s seen above.

I was actually going for pirate hooker assassin…, but as her SS was taken from character select, there’s no back piece, weapons, or mini peggelleg to complete the outfit. Also, you can’t see the hat feather cause I used Microsoft Word instead of a standard photo editor.

Hehe.

All I really do now in this game is make new characters and try to find unique looks. This is 11 of my 13 characters total, and only 5 of them are level 80 (feel free to take guesses!) I don’t really know where to put this since it’s not any one character in particular, so… whatever. Enjoy.

Making a metric kittenkittenton of alternative characters to explore unique and cool character designs. I’m at 13 characters, 5 80’s. Here are my lower level characters.

Koviko.3248:

In the words of Jay-Z:

“You want my old s***? Buy my old album.”

I personally disliked GW1 but really enjoy GW2. GW1 is the reason I took so long to even try GW2.

I don’t know the context of his statement, but I assume he named his album something different. The reason your reference doesn’t hold up is because Jay Z is the brand in that example whereas, for the majority, ArenaNet is not the brand that’s being sold. If they would of made something that didn’t take place in Tyria, that didn’t use Tyrian lore, that didn’t use bs marketing to lure in fans of the original brand, then you may have a case.

@Topic, As a fan of GW1, I knew very well the differences, and embraced them because they did have a wealth of information available pre-release. But even the stuff they said would be in the game in some cases were not, so people have substantial reason to complain about this sort of clear disconnect between the devs, product, and players.

There’s a lot of stuff I’m glad they changed in GW2 and there’s a lot of stuff I wish they kept, but I’m still playing with moderate hope and an inkling of faith that this game won’t slip into a state of being completely unplayable for me.

Right, that’s what they have it the way they do in SPvP (team oriented game play). You can join in any of the public matches and you’re subject to achievements and titles but have little or no ability to pick which team you’re on, which would mean two friends joining into the same match can only guarantee just that.

Keg Brawl, being the only team activity, would have to have some sort of automated tournament or tPvP type league if it was going to go that route at all, but at the least, private instances would actually allow people to host some sort of community events, be it in their guild or on the forums/server.

However, as you pointed out, Keg Brawl would face more problems with player fragmentation, et al. This might explain why ArenaNet doesn’t have any other team activities in the rotation and why Keg brawl got the short end of the stick.

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

I don’t mind if the achievements are disabled if we do it organized. I just want to have 16 people in the same race, or 8v8 Keg Brawl, or etc.

lol, maybe then, there’ll be enough players for all the freaking kegs that spawn.

Vayne.8563:

I did read your whole post (and based on your response, I now remember why I stopped responding to your posts in the first place).

You basically have one, maybe two positive responses to this topic in days. Maybe the minigames aren’t as popular as people thought they would be…that would probably include Keg Brawl.

I’m past the point where justifying ArenaNets actions is still relevant here, you’re completely right. They might not have enough time, it’s low on the priority list, it’s unpopular, they’re doing other stuff. Whatever. That’s not what this is about.

It’s just stating thoughts about making all the cycling activities more competitive than the current system allows. And it can certainly go without your dismissive, off-topic posts.

If I could make an analogy to another part of the game, the greater World vs. World community can be explained in large part by the interactions of two intersecting groups of people. There are hardcore guilds & players, and there are casual guilds and players. (I think we can all agree that a healthy WvW systems relies on neither of those groups of people being completely removed from the game play)

The hardcore players arguably have the most direct impact on the game play. They drive the meta, develop new strategies, and provide the infrastructure (most, if not, all successful commanders in top tiers come from the hardcore guilds or are hardcore players of WvW). These are fundamental to unlocking the potential of WvW combat and by extension, more fun. (See: Hammer Train, Dirty Portal, Churn Spike)

The casual atmosphere is not just the players, but the ability for new players to continuously get involved and contribute, potentially becoming hardcore players or commanders themselves. It’s the large PvX guilds who do bi-weekly WvW nights, or the small group of friends who go in together occasionally. These are fundamental to the health of WvW.

Right now, activities and the system they’re in heavily inhibits the former when I feel like they don’t have to.

@Vayne, I feel like you didn’t read what I wrote, or simply chose not to acknowledge it.

Yes, Keg Brawl was the only activity that had blatant negative side effects because it has been the only activity to have been in a permanent state prior to the rotation. That’s not necessarily what I was getting at, though it is still relevant.

The atmosphere of the activities were fine for the temporary content because everyone and everything was new, and there was a lot of being ermagerd amazed at what was going on and how much fun there is which led to inflated numbers being randomly thrown against one another, i.e. no competition for those who put in the effort. But now they’re being artificially kept in that state instead of evolving or becoming more competitive.

There’s no reason whatsoever, I feel, to invest in playing these activities because the amount of players who’re actively coming back to this content is diluted heavily by the players that enjoy them casually or are only there for the daily achievement. There’s no community of players who are enjoying these things enough to come together and put effort into seeing the full potential of what’s available inside the activities. There are no, if not, very few players who are actively min maxing the Sanctum Sprint courses and pitting their times against one another. There’s no current leader boards for the mega champion of all time crab tossing king. The only element to activities, currently, is the casual players who come and play a couple games before leaving.

*Note, I only mean casual players as it relates to activities, and mostly referring to those who play them without a competitive focus.

This is not a fault with the players at all, it is a fault with the system. It turns away players from seeking a competitive experience in a game they enjoy, which is pretty lame. Therefore, I feel like the potential for each activity (bar Southsun Survival because its competitive potential is undermined by its duality in game play) is lost, which is ultimately a bad thing for me because there’s an entire untapped part of these activities that ArenaNet, for one reason for another, refuses to allow.

Another issue I have which I’ll just add to this thread is that the activity rotation has had damaging impact on a lot of the things that I think make mini games fun.

With the exception of maybe Southsun Survival, which I never really liked, mini games offer a competitive form of entertainment not unlike SPvP, and given the right attention, the ones available now could make compelling e-sport for a niche community.

What they are now is excuses for a daily achievement. The overwhelming majority of players in every single mini game currently only play one game. And there’s a noticeable contingent of players who afk the whole game as well. I get no satisfaction out of being randomly assigned 9 other players who have no interest or investment in playing the activity well, who’re only there for the daily participation.

Almost the entire point of a race, for example, is pure competition. The goal is to win. I do not believe there is enough intermediate player agency to make up for the fact that I can smoke every single person off the line and have full minutes in front of the next guy by the time I hit the finish line, 90% of the time… it’s just not fun at that point. I’m just running a course.

It doesn’t mean that I’m particularly good, it’s just that constantly cycling in or unpracticed players without any way for players to be challenged turns off a lot of the people who would otherwise play more and get better because the enjoy the activity. Instead, in an effort to increase the overall population of people who play at least once a day, the game is actively pushing away hardcore fans that would make a community website or lfg tool or something solid to rally around, to build from.

I think for activities to be successful, they should not be purely casual in the manner they are. I will wager that the majority of people who enter activities do not enjoy them anymore than they do running around chopping down wood or rezzing NPC’s at the port in Kessex Hills. No offense intended, at best they’ll consider it neat but in no means compelling or we wouldn’t have seen such abysmal participation pre-rotation.

It is a fools errand to attempt to enjoy these mini games in the long run unless you really like beating on the weak, because it’s abundantly clear that the average skill level drops immensely when funneling tons of uninterested players through randomly matched games. There weren’t a lot of people who played Keg Brawl pre-rotation, sure, but there was enough for a game. For a GUILD, even. And the average skill level was far higher. I firmly believe this has transcended opinion, though it is still anecdotal. But now I can’t even play Keg Brawl for more than 4 games before I’m bored to tears trying to slow down and let other people enjoy the game. Otherwise, my team wins 100% of the time.

There’s absolutely no community to them whatsoever when I feel like there could be. Not even worth acknowledging in forums because no one would post on them. In a game that expressly advertised being able to always play with your friends as one of the pillars of game play that drove a lot of features like down leveling and the continued way point system as well as horizontal progression in general, I think it’s one of the only parts of the game that you can’t guarantee play with a party of your friends.

Tons of people are going to skip over this thread cause they don’t care. That’s fine, it’s understandable given the current circumstances of the game and what’s going on. I don’t need it explained to me, I just think it kind of sucks and is a farcry from what ArenaNet wanted out of them pre-launch.

You can count on one hand the number of people who will go out and do these activities because they genuinely enjoy them, not because they’re part of a daily or offer some sort of character progression. If you’re one of those, more power to you. I know I love Keg Brawl. Which is why it sucks that I can now only play that once a week per the rotation.

I’m still playing the game, living out my altaholic dreams @ 12 character slots (my second Guardian @ level 26 has ~85g worth of cosmetic stuff on her because yay me) waiting for my WvW guild to start playing again, but it’s the sort of thing that makes me depressed that I didn’t get to see, for example, Circus Charricus that was gonna be, from the description of the NPC, GW2’s version of twisted metal using the cars in the Black Citadel. And that there would be leaderboards, and automated tournaments, and a mini e-sports community based on just that because it’d probably be pretty freaking cool to watch.

Just wondering if anyone felt similar.

Example of ArenaNet’s goals for Activities and their social impact on the game pre-launch

Vayne.8563:

Nice opinion piece…which is pretty much just that. A very long opinion piece, but you blow it at the end.

You say this could be avoided,. but you don’t really know that. It’s pure conjecture. I’m not sure you’d said anything here that hasn’t been said in countless threads.

It’s just his opinion? Is it somehow worth less than any other post? I was pretty sure he made it clear this was his opinion, what with the heavily personalized introduction.

Your post comes across as solely attempting to devalue the worth of the OP.

@OP, thanks for the achievement; 20 pts closer to my new shiny helmet! But seriously, great post. As Vayne so eloquently pointed out, a lot of people echo this opinion but it’s nice to see someone who’s clearly passionate about how they feel and felt for the game over its lifetime elaborate on that in a post such as yours.

It should be noted; she’s my second Guardian and is level 25 as of this post & screenshots.

Was happening to me, was an underwater weapon that I had to change. The item will tell you when you mouse over if it needs to be double clicked.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

7.5/10 for that one,
would be a bit higher however, for the life of me, I just don’t like most of the facemask/hoods offered for medium armoured items, otherwise, its a night set of armour and weapons and looks good.

This one is my guardian, Arista Scarlett (the first name Arista was inspired by one of my favourite characters in the Riyria Revelations series by Michael J. Sullivan, and Scarlett is in reference to Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, which happens to be one of my favourite Anime’s. Both these characters use magic and swords and such, in my mind it kind of fits in with the theme of the guardians, using magic and swords alike. The colour scheme was inspired by the guild, Knights of the Blood Oath, KoB, From the Sword Art Online light novels, recently turned anime, where they wore white armour with a red trim, I haven’t found the perfect set for me just yet, but for me, this look is aesthetically pleasing.

The pieces were:
Helm~none shown (I don’t like looking at them lol)
Shoulders~Twisted watchwork shoulder skin
Chest~Vigil Chestplace
Gauntlets~Named exotic
Legs~Named Exotic
Boots~Named Exotic
Edit: oh how I would kill to be able to dye my foefire’s essence a nice red with red glow, or white with a white glow, psh, id even be happy with the option to hide aegis when not in combat :’(

I wholeheartedly agree, and for some reason you’re making that watchknight shoulder piece work, which I was never able to accomplish. Maybe it’s the angles.

I don’t know much about Sword Art Online or Fairy Tale, but I really like this armor combo… except for the greaves I’m a fan of the vigil feeties. But yeah, 8.5/10 still cause yeah, this kicks butt.

Mythical Patty Matt & Mythical Madelynn respectively – I despised the profane armor for a long time but all of a sudden I thought it was awesome and I think it really looks good matched up with other cultural armors.

So I gave it to two characters, painted them the same, and now I’ve been inspired to make a backstory behind this. -shrug-