Guild Wars 2

Actually, i’m pretty confident it won’t be the end of gear treadmill. Why becuase Arenanet have introduced a gear treadmill in all but in name.

So ok, let’s say I get a nice lot of Agony protected gear. 6 months down the line we get a new monster condition called say Ouch. This now means I will have to grind an entirely new set of anti-ouch armor just to get through any gear checks. A few months after that, we are told of brand new exciting creatures who now inflict a new monster condition called Wobbly Knee. To do this I need to grind….. you get the picture

For sure the basic stats can be the same level, but the gear grind has moved to the buffs needed to progress in the content.

Ok, let’s say for example there are no more new tiers added. The basic stats stay the same for the next 5 years.

BUT we now have a new stat to add into the equation, it’s called infusion insignia. Now, reading the blog post we are told “Ascended gear has Infusion slots, and rarer versions of the items also come with additional Agony Resistance built into them.”

We are also told that more content of this nature is being planned. “As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game.”

Lipstick on pig

There’s an awful lot of negative community backlash against the idea of an additional weapons tier so i’m hoping this will give some constructive ideas on how it could be done. While the patch is set for this Friday there is still time to change the basic stats on the items themselves.

But anyway onto the sugesstions.
1. Keep the item color, but like the example give them the boss’s names that drop them to give them a rarity value. Also make these items tradeable and not account/soul bound.
2. Make the basic stats the same as for exotics
3. Leave the infusion stat in, but this time have it to a set type and to replace the gem slot stat
4. Allow all exotics to accept an infusion stat
5. Make infusion types craftable/drops and mystic forge recipes.

Basically, for those who remember GW1’s green weapons. Do that. Green weapons in GW1 often had unique skins, had the best stats(but not better than the max available elsewhere). The only limitation was that you couldnt change the stats/upgrades on a green weapon.

For many, many months green weapons in GW1 gave people a reason to do the content. Not because the stats we’re better but because of the cosmetic and prestige differences in having them.

I’m sure it’s great fun to ‘tease’ people with snippets like the tweet. But over such a big basic thing as this it would have been better to give a proper official forum blog, along with a don’t worry FAQ.

Never leave announcements of potentially explosive or easily mis-understood news to a third party.

People need to read the statement before jumping off the cliff in rage.

There will only be a couple of Ascended quality items available initially, but some of the rarer Ascended items will also feature a new Infusion slot that will make players even more powerful so that they can tackle new challenges that ArenaNet plans to throw at them as they continue to expand on the dungeon over the coming months and years.”

The use of THE is critical. It means singular, not every. Not also it means they intend to expand the content of this dungeon in the future.

Because of the ‘THE’ it strongly indicates these new items will work ONLY in THE new dungeon and any advantage will be negated elsewhere.

We’ll just wait and see, as I personally do not believe Areanet would allow this gear to work everywhere and thus introduce a gear grind. Especially when the statement above says otherwise.

you can already hide it, just disband the squad in the options. I leave mine off until I need it due to the reasons you say above.

Agreed. The forum is littered with posts mentioning this bug which has so far not been fixed for weeks. Server after server is reporting the same thing. It’s ok after a new build but soon bugs out.

I do like the idea of people fighting for contention of way points but please, not the one that people need to complete their personal story.

In my view your personal story should rely on your actions(the clue’s in the name) and should never rely on the actions(or inaction) of other players to start it.

Just remove the contention part until it can be fixed.

It’s gone on way too long.

The commander title allows more than just WvW, a large squad size is a huge boon for guild events and PvE stuff.

What does need to be changed is the functionality of the title as well as how it’s procured.

I have quite a large followers list, and there is no way I can tell who is in my squad, where they are or to be able to sub-divide them into seperate teams(That i’ve found)

Personally I have no intention of turning mine on in WvW until I know i’ve learned enough to give anyone in my squad a decisive advantage.

Also, contrary to popular belief you can turn it off and should do so until you are actually using it.

IMHO Access to your personal story should never be down to the actions or otherwise of other players.

I’m on Gandara too, we currently have a couple of guild members who are sacrificing their main chars to hold station between the instance and the locked gate just so guildies can go get their personal story done.

Getting beyond a joke for people to have to do this

zortek.9607:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Sorry, but this does nothing for the PvE players [snipped]

Two points…

1. Activity of a server (whether certain individuals participate or not) in WvW expresses itself server wide in the form of bonuses that are material to the entire server community.

World Bonus’s dont really matter to me if I can’t get to do the content I wish, with the people I wish to be with.

2. You are uninformed as to the organizational design (specifically, the development teams supporting and expanding Guild Wars 2), how work gets assigned, and the process paths through which any concept is eventually implemented.

The premise of your argument rests on the assumption that Arena Net’s commitment in one area is mutually exclusive to commitment in another. This assumption is overly narrow and completely contradicts the express direction outlined by Colin.

I’m aware of how the team works. I would also expect there to be someone who has the final go. no go on any patch or content change. While there are seperate teams to do different stuff, these teams will often have conflicting priorities. So again these priorities need to be scheduled, assigned budgets and effort by the arenanet PMO. The underlying team structure is less important in a way than the overall programme management. Even then then the decision as to what to include or exclude is not the PMO’s call.

What I was saying, was that world transfers do not just affect WvW, but the entire game which is still having numerous issues and can only be resolved by changing server.

As someone mentioned above, the actual server you play on should be de-coupled from the world/team/faction you represent.

TLDR: The game is much bigger than WvW, and the community more varied than a single game type. That being the case, issues that are hurting the normal everyday player and stopping their progress should imho be resolved first. As someone mentioned above. Block the ability of the player to WvW for 7 days, not the ability of the player to get other stuff done.

Sorry, but this does nothing for the PvE players (of which there are more than pure WvW’ers) struggling to get by bugged content such as the Arah door, Balths temple and loads of other DE’s and Skill points across the land where changing servers is currently the only way to do that bugged content

Thanks to no guesting such people are now stranded, being unable to team with friends and guildies after being able to do what they wanted to. Worse than that, they won’t be able to take advantage of whatever guild upgrades or buffs that have been earned.

I understand the needs of the WvW players, but surely such a measure should be put into place only when the events etc dont get locked down by bugs. Most of the stuff that causes PvE players to swap servers have not been fixed (certainly as far as my server(Gandara) is concerned)

I feel a better solution would have been to.
1. Keep the RNG system for a bit of fun and for those who want to feel lucky. These items are not bound and can be sold
2. Have the items in the gem store for 500-600 gems, but they are account bound.

So. you either takes your chance and get an item you can resell on. Or you pay a flat fee and have an item only you can use.

Everyone is then a winner.

Well Everyone has now been found. Thanks so much to those who took part and who gave up their game time and donated so we could do this, our first of many events. We all enjoyed it, and there was a couple of tense vista races to see who would scramble for first prize.

We hoped all those who took part had fun and enjoyed the game,

Shan

The Bonus prizes have now gone. They were located at the Viziers tower. Grats to those who found it.

Grey (grey.7319) has been found 3 times and so has no more prizes left.
Espirit Dumont (Esprit Dumort.3109 has now been found three times, so has no more prizes.
Darith Kaulk.8960 is also out of prizes.
Tabicat (Tabi.7891) is out also
Friday.9078 is out of prizes
Simclash is out of prizes
Shanaeri Rynale -Out of Prizes

Grats to those who found them

The event has now started.

Just a reminder, the event will start in about 90 mins

Hi, The event is tomorrow at 20:00 GMT (nearly 24h from now) To give you a clue where they are add the name to your friends list to get their zone.

The in game names of those vista sitters, and the password to tell them when you find them will be.

1 Alina Kurosov -Out of Prizes
2 Darith – is out of prizes
3 Fridayn – Is out of Prizes
4 SimCLaSH -Is out of prizes.
5 Grey (grey.7319) is out of prizes

6 Arahys Kha – Bonus Prizes given out
7 Missy (Missy.7356) -Out of Prizes
8 Shanaeri Rynale -Out of Prizes
9 Medic – Is out of prizes
10 Sanura Tabicat – Is out of prizes
11 espirit Dumont – is out of prizes
12 Starry Eyez – All prizes given out

Prizes will be various rare items, dyes, materials and 3 special prizes of 1g, 50s and 25s for the first 3 people to find our bonus vista.

Once the person has been ‘found’ three times i’ll remove the name from the list so as you know not to pester them.

Good luck everyone and have fun

Shan

Stevoli.8795:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

So. why do have servers again?

You answered your own question. WvWvW. It would mean a lot more if they didn’t allow unlimited free server transfers back in the beginning.

With free server transfers every 24 hours, and the ability to right click “Join” anyone in your friends list (even people on other servers), I think the setup works great.

But on considering the downsides the server system brings, having to deal with all of those just so a single game type works. In which one in which not everyone plays, and yet that compromise affects everyone all of the time seems to me to be illogical and counter productive.

Especially when there are alternative systems that could have been used that would remove all the disadvantages at a single stroke.

A better question would be why did Anet create servers at all..

GW1 had a serverless, district architecture. Servers, even as implemented have a number of disadvantages all of which has (IMHO) negativley impacted the game and the community.

• The game can shrink and grow without the users notcing. No need for server mergers and the bad publicity and feel that entails. Not to mention the complexity of merging servers themselves both from the player and Arenanet.
• MMO’s are moving away from servers, if servers are such a good idea why are games moving away from it?
• Players can go anywhere they like, with no restrictions on needing a friend or having to play
• Guilds Influence buffs no longer need to be restricted to a server.
• Friends, guildies and players are seperated and split up across the game.
• You have no easy way to meet new players outside of your server, as you need a friend to guest there
• Players can choose where to meet up (‘Anyone who wants CoE, come to CoE waypoint, AM2’)

Now ofc we’ve been given the ‘we want server pride’ answer but there are imho better ways of creating pride than that. How?

Quite simply the player chooses a ‘team’ to play for. Said team has all the restrictions we have today. All that happens is that teams fight each other in the mists instead of ‘servers’. Everything else stays the same.

In other words you de-couple your WvW team from where you play the rest of the game. I realise pride is important, but surely pride in your team is as good as, if not better than server pride. After all the whole of sports generates a huge amount of pride in your (insert sports) team. I would argue sports team pride transcends nationality and patriotism.

By de-coupling where you play the rest of the game from WvW and using a district style system you get rid of all the downside mentioned above in a single stroke.

Let’s look at what systems are in place that would help go to a serverless way of playing?

Players can already go from server to server in a matter of moments. Substitute the word Server to District and the mechanism is the same

Load balancing already happens in terms of the overflow system. Simply allow the player a choice of ‘Overflow’ to go and we’re most of the way there.

All servers share a central DB, otherwise guesting and the tradepost would not work.

As for the technical side of server load etc we cant tell for sure, but it would be logical to assume that if one physical hardware server can say handle 1000 users at a time then it does’nt matter if users are organised into server or districts you’ll still need the same amount. We’ve already seen about stuff auto load balances and shares the same Databases.

In short Anet have based the entire game’s way of playing, socialising and community around a single game type. One which, although fun is not where the majority spends it’s time.

So. why do we have servers again?

Hi.

DVDF invites you to a Gandara server event on the 13th of October at 20:00 GMT. The aim and theme is a simple one.

On that date and time several DVDF members will be standing on vista’s throughout the game. Simply run up to them, whisper a password and the first three will win a prize.

To help you find them, i’ll post a list of names and adding them to the friendslist will show you the region in which to look.

The vistas will be a mix of easy and hard with the prizes matching accordingly.

So to sum up

• On Saturday 13th October at 20:00 GMT Various DVDF members will locate themselves at a vista.
• The first 3 people to stand at the vista with them and say a password to them will win a prize.
• Names will be posted closer to the time
• Members will not be in overflow areas
• Once 3 people have been up to the person, they will turn themselves to invisible setting and leave the vista.

This is our first small scale event, and once guesting is in place and we’ve ironed out any kinks we plan to hold many, more events for as many servers as we can

Enjoy

Shan

Last logged in is really essential for any guild of more than about 50, GW1 had it so GW2 should have had it.

I’d also add a revamp of the roster screen to make it look it less like an excel spreadsheet and more like a guild roster.

The guild roster is in serious need of revamping to be anything other than barely functional, and I would argue its not even that.

I would have it laid out as such

MyGuild:nnn/guildcap, xx online, yy representing:

Leader 1/1
Shanaeri Rynale
Senior officers 5/10
XXX
YYY
…
ZZZ Last logged in 2 hours ago
Members 145/260
…
hfhf Last logged in 4 hours ago
wewq Last Logged in 2 days ago.
So and so last logged in 10 days ago.

Tbh stuff like crafting level and achievement points mean nothing to me as a guild leader.

While i’m at it. Adding the option to see when guildies login and logout in guild chat would also be fantastic.

Just a FYI

Had an email that mentioned mounts and stuff like that. Using a non GW2 installed computer I went to the link # content removed for security reason #

It’s a mock up of the GW2 main page, clearly designed to trick people into entering their email and password details.

If you get the mail, report it for scamming and pass the message onto your guild and friends.

Yes it’s pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people fall for it

Really essential for any guild of more than about 50, GW1 had it so GW2 should have had it.

I’d also add a revamp of the roster screen to make it look it less like an excel spreadsheet and more like a guild roster. The guild roster is in serious need of revamping to be anything other than barely functional

I would have it as such

DVDF xx online, yy representing out of nn Members

Leader 1/1
Shanaeri Rynale
Senior officers 5/10
XXX
YYY
…
ZZZ Last logged in 2 hours ago
Members 145/260
…
hfhf Last logged in 4 hours ago
wewq Last Logged in 2 days ago.
So and so last logged in 10 days ago.

I think most people will agree that while the idea of the commander is good, the execution is somewhat lacking.

Hopefully this suggestion will go someway to fixing it. The suggestion is to split it into two. A WvW commander and a PvE commander.

The WvW would function as now, except:
The icon would only be visible to those in WvW
Would be based on WvW achievements, so X number of kills, Y number of keeps taken and Z number of supply provided.

This would give the commander a set of experience that would demonstrate a degree of competance in WVW

The PvE Commander would be VERY useful for guild events, being able to form a team with more than 5 people is a god send for any guild trying to organise 2 or 3 teams of 5.
The PvE icon would only show up on the map for representing guild members, and would be a permission for the rank system. Further more it’s cost would be reduced to around 10g.

Basically get rid of the ‘everyone can see it everywhere’ function. Make it so only experienced WvW can use it in WvW, and reduce the cost and visibility of the PvE version to help coordinate guilds.

There are two large issues with linking WvW to, what is logically a PvE achievement.

1. It fills WvW with PvE players who don’t want to be there but have to, to get their achievment.
2. It fill WvW with PvE players who WvW players don’t want to be there because they take up a slot that could be used for people who do want to partake in WvW.

With wait times on some servers still in excess of an hour, surely it makes sense to disassociate WvW and PvE achievements(this also includes the jumping puzzle, and monthly rewards) so that the only people in the queue are those who intend to actually participate in WvW and not run around doing PvE.

For those who say “Well it’s also a PvP achievement” would you honestly still say “We want World exploration to include PvP zones” if it wasnt in there in the first place?

The other upgrades dont show until you get the next level. If it is a to be added later I’ll give it a miss I think.

My guild has maxed out all the influence stuff and we’ve only got Politics Level 5 to go. Before I spend 20K of my guildies hard earned influence on it. Does it actually do anything once I unlock it. Wiki only mentions it, and no more upgrades after it.

This was one of the things I felt most disapointed in. There was almost no change in my home instance from when I started my story to when it ended. I was under the impression that the home instance was the place where the consequences of my actions along the way was played out.

The people i’d saved, help and even some people I would have expcted to be there just was’nt. The decisons i’d made along the way just didnt seem to have made any impact on it at all.

Oh, and once you go in. You need to pay for waypoint travel to get out.

While I greatly enjoyed my personal story there was one thing that kinda bugged me.

In the choices I made it was impossible to fail the personal story, only run out of money or patience.

This is especially true of the final fight where there is an armor repair vendor in easy reach at each stage.

Now I loved to hate missions in GW1 like Thunderhead keep, Elona’s reach, Fow and UW circa 2005/6. While these were hugely frustrating at times, they gave you a massive sense of achievement when complete.

Now, both in dungeons and PS if you let an NPC die then thats fine. Just res them up and carry on.

If your team wipes, well back to the checkpoint you go and carry on.

In short I think there should be consequences for letting an NPC die, or failing to complete an object in time. In short it feels like i’m playing with training wheels on..

The whole guild roster is a complete mess ihmo. It’s so hard to get any meaningful information from it. At a minimum I think the following improvements need to be made.

Split the display by Rank, with online members of that rank shown first.

Show last login date

Allow users to see join date.

Show total numbers in each rank and the total guild cap for that guild.

E.g

DVDF XX/500 online

Leader
..Shanaeri Rynale

Senior Officers (2/10)
. Player 1
. Player 2
. player 3 last logged in 3 days agp

Member (3/350)
. Member 1
. Member 2
. Member 3
. Member 4 Last login 6 hours ago.

Atm the roster is all but useless for guild management. What is does display although kinda interesting (like crafting levels) is secondary information. It doesnt really give anything a guild leader needs to know to manage their guild properly and it looks like a poorly presented spreadsheet.

Sorry to be blunt, but it’s not really fit for purpose imho

Actually you are penalised three times.
1. Armor repair costs
2. Waypoint costs
3. A reduction in your downed state health, meaning that you are defeated muh faster next time

Algreg.3629:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Actually, if you remove the trinity you get.. the trinity. Players are sill insisting on certain class composition in groups.

The issue is the player bases, not the game mechanics. Since it’s a thought process change we’re still going to face the same issues of class exclusions/demand we had in other games.

Just look at how in demand warriors/guardians are for dungeon teams as opposed to Engineers or mesmers.

I never had any problem getting into a group as an engineer – if a group does not understand the usefulness of that class´ battlefield control because they cannot shelf me into their wow-concepts I am happy to have missed that “opportunity”. From what I have seen from terrific mesmer players, I´d say the same of them.

Oh I agree. It’s their loss. The issue then becomes one of perception in the majority of players. Which then turns into a ‘would like’ and then become a necessity and we end up with ‘must take this or that’ .

Actually, if you remove the trinity you get.. the trinity. Players are sill insisting on certain class composition in groups.

The issue is the player bases, not the game mechanics. Since it’s a thought process change we’re still going to face the same issues of class exclusions/demand we had in other games.

Just look at how in demand warriors/guardians are for dungeon teams as opposed to Engineers or mesmers.

Here is a quote from Jon Peters a while back on how they viewed death penalties in GW2 http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/07/08/to-live-and-die-in-tyria-death-healing-and-combat-in-guild/

“If no one revives you, you can spend a small amount of gold to come back at a waypoint. It’s as simple as that, and why not? Why should we debuff you, take away experience, or make you run around for five minutes as a ghost instead of letting you actually play the game? We couldn’t think of a reason. Well, we did actually think of a reason—it just wasn’t a good one. Death penalties make death in-game a more tense experience. It just isn’t fun. We want to get you back into the action (fun) as quickly as possible. Defeat is the penalty; we don’t have to penalize you a second time.”

Now the game is live we get penalized THREE times.

1. Cost of Armor repairs
2. Cost of Way point travel
3. Reduction in downed state health, so we have less time to recover each time

I wonder what changed?

Kana.6793:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

As a GW1 veteran (some 17500+ hours) there are a number of features that are in GW1 that didnt make it to GW2. Many of these features were as a result of requests from fans, lessons learned from the game or just hugely increased the community aspect of the game.

Servers are needed for WvW.

Actually they’re not. Instead of servers allow the users to select a ‘team’ to WvW for. Keep the same restrictons on changing team as now for servers (limited size, cant change more too often, changing teams costs money etc).

As for server pride, team pride is just as stong. Try telling a soccer or baseball supporter otherwise.

De-coupling servers from WvW, gets you a whole load of benefits too.

O No need to worry about server mergers/population
O Guild influence can be game wide(currently guild members only get the benefits they have earned for the the guild on their server)
O Does away with the need for overflows
O No need for friends on a server to guest to
O The game automatically scales according to population

Sure I remember what GW1 looked like when it was first out, but why throw away much of that evolution and not learn some of the lessons already implemented into GW1

As a GW1 veteran (some 17500+ hours) there are a number of features that are in GW1 that didnt make it to GW2. Many of these features were as a result of requests from fans, lessons learned from the game or just hugely increased the community aspect of the game.

I suspect the answer to these is ’didn’t make it in time’ but theres a few in which i’m curious as to why they were’nt included as they were a staple component of GW1. Such as
1. Apperance changes
2. A robust alliance system
3. Dedicated language districts
4. More information in the guild panel (last login time etc)
5. Announcement of winning teams in PvP ‘so and so has won a battle in the hall of heroes..’
6. and finally ( and most important to me anyway) why they did away with an (invisible to the user) serverless system and replaced it with a more limiting server based one(I get the server pride thing, but there were other ways of doing the same thing)

Just kinda curious as to why these were omitted or chosen in the design.

You could try doing it with someone else who is at the same story point as you. It should update for both of you, so long as they are the one who clicks on ‘start’

Just had the first run through of victory or death spoiled by a number of game breaking bugs.

1. The champion lich boss DC’d everyone in the party each time it was at 50%. We reformed the party and thus cleared the instance and this allowed us to continue.

2. Cut scenes would come in either too early or too late. Interupting the flow of battle or halting progress until they decided to come in.

3. Our Party leader DC’d just before the cutscene of the battle airship Heart of Tyria turns up. Although she could re-connect Zhatian did not spawn. We tried a number of things such as having her re-log and each of us except her doing the same. Nothing worked.

Guildies have reported that there are other bugs too, such as destiny’s edge members not following, getting level 35 blue items in the end chest and some of the bosses (the mouth of Zhitan) glitching.

It’s a real shame this mission has lots of bugs, it’s easily the most epic one I’ve ever experienced.