Guild Wars 2

I think the game needs more backpack skins. The game launched with two (I think, engineer starter one and the guild backpack). Even after a year of them the diversity and range isn’t as great as armour or weapon skins. I’m still looking forward to seeing more.

Having said that, I think it’s a problem that almost all the backpack skins are temporary rewards and then gone forever. I really wish they had added them as permanent content rewards (maybe as world boss drops or similair to the dungeon trinket recipes) so that there were better incentives to run content rather than taking them away every month.

I suspect a large part of why they exist is that they are easier to make than armour sets. The weapon skins don’t equally reward all players (if it’s a great sword, it doesn’t reward elementalists) unless they give a full set or an option and it’s clear that the majority of the weapon skin resources belong to the Monetisation Team, leaving slim pickings for the achievement point rewards. They want a universally applicable carrot to get players to do the Living Story that is also themed to the content. Personally I would far rather a new back skin over the watchwork tonic or a mini pet I will never use.

Turn this around and make it constructive. If you don’t want back item skins, what do you want from Living Story meta achievement rewards?

Also… ON TOP OF THAT….the BIGGER the difference between the two…the MORE likely it is that the larger server will have had it even longer.

This is the design reality of WvW. It’s not a bloodlust issue, this is going to be the reality for everything. Should tower upgrades be removed because the strongest server will have them most of the time? What about towers and keeps? What about supply camps? You are talking about a format created on the foundation that numbers and coverage are not going to be equal. Most of what they add to the format (and everything already in the format) is going to favour more people.

If your big picture is that the strongest server in the match will, on average, hold the buff the longest, that same argument could be used to remove Stonemist or the ability to upgrade anything. I wouldn’t mind betting that same argument could be used to remove WvW ranks. The winning server probably has more WvW ranks across their player base than the losing ones.

It has the potential to make a bad situation worse, but it also has the potential to add new meaningful gameplay (meaningful to their server) for those who want to take advantage of it.

I don’t believe it’s right to attribute issues caused by population imbalances to the bloodlust buff. The buff certainly has the potential to enhance that issue, but as far as I’ve seen that’s not always the case. Just like an organised guild has the ability to defeat a zerg with more than twice their numbers, a smaller population of players can utilise the buff effectively to aid their entire server. Unlike the old orb mechanic or even tower and keep upgrades, the buff is a very active mechanic and I think that’s why a lot of people don’t like it. It often requires active maintenance and roaming to capture and maintain.

Cranbeculus.9321:

I have even seen him lead people off of a cliff.

Such a skilled server you have there.

Esuni.2498:

Shiren.9532:

Bloodlust buff isn’t technically power creep. It was in the game at launch in the form of orbs and was removed temporarily. Technically WvW was originally designed with orb buffs as part of the baseline power level.

And it was removed because it made the stronger server stronger, do your researc
It has also been spammed like 200 times over these forums in the last 1-2 weeks

That said, Anet doesn’t care about WvW, enjoy your useless mesmers and ranger pets while they increase the powercreep and make the difference between strong and weak servers bigger.

It was removed because every WvW thread was full of “Server x hacked our orb!” and videos of the orb being hacked were popping up all over youtube. The devs were unable to deal with the hacking problem (it was just too easy to hack the orb) and balance issues (this does not mean making the strong server stronger – originaly orbs could snowball because they can sit in fully upgraded keeps which was too much of an uphill battle -the bloodlust buff which has nothing to do with upgraded keeps). I don’t need to “do my research” I was around when the orb was in the game, I read the explanation of why it was removed. As far as spamming something 200 times over the last few weeks goes – saying something loudly, ignorantly and often does not make it true.

Here is the exact patch note: Orbs of power have been removed from WvW to address hacking and balance issues. They tended to strengthen teams already in the lead and were irresistible targets for hackers and cheaters, both of which could have an unfortunately large impact on any given WvW game. Orbs or some similar mechanic may return in the future, but only if we’re confident that they won’t create similar issues.

The bloodlust buff has nothing to do with power creep – it replaces a mechanic that was in the game at launch. It replaces old content, it doesn’t add new power. It would like taking DPS away from a pet and giving it to the ranger – overall the ranger does the same amount of damage, just the source of the damage is different (rangers should be happy because this is one the first buff mechanics in the game that actually benefits the pet as well as the ranger). Technically the bloodlust buff is less powerful than the orb buff because it doesn’t give a 5% boost to health.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

I think it is now time to play “Which Dev is Shiren?”

That’s a good way to participate in a constructive discussion. Do you want to bring my race, religion or politics into it as well or can we discuss the game mechanic and not the person?

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

And how does it not favor the zerg? +300 to +900 Stat Points seems quite handy for everyone. Are you saying it is because the location/terrain doesn’t favor Zergs? Here’s a news flash for ya – the population gap is so large between NA Tiers the dominant Servers can put 15 in the Ruins and still have 40-60 attacking/defending locations. The less-populated Servers simply can’t. They don’t have the numbers to fight on 4 maps. They don’t have the numbers to split their forces on a single map.

Sounds like a population issue and not a bloodlust issue. Are you blaming the bloodlust mechanic for the pre-existing population issues? Population differences sucked before the buff and they will suck if it is ever removed. Almost anything you do in WvW is going to favour the server with more numbers. Population differences are created by 24/7 matches (the coverage game) and by “transfer wars” and “diversity” in match making. It’s not created by bloodlust. I’d also like to point out that the numbers you quote are unrealistic for the majority of servers the majority of the time. A lot of the time, 15 people is close to the number of people on the map.

Adapt or die. Stacking on a single map is boring and it’s a bad meta for the game. It results in EB being the only viable place for consistent fighting… and usually that’s just zerging mindlessly usually playing musical towers, organised small guild groups end up fighting out for space against giant zergs (even in lower ranked servers EB can get a queue). Over the last two weeks I’ve set up shop on enemy BLs where I capped the spawn tower and occasionally hills while running supply camp circuits in between capping or maintaining the bloodlust buff with a group fluctuating between three and 15 people. For a group that’s not big enough to reliably make a dent in EB and a group that doesn’t want to sit on home borderlands waiting for something to happen, the bloodlust buff has added more value to being on an enemy borderlands.

The buff favours everyone on your server and that’s why it’s valuable, but obtaining the buff doesn’t favour zerg gameplay. Zergs are full of mindless players who usually can’t think for themselves. They follow the blue tag and use safety in (usually superior) numbers to fuel their karma trains. The ruins can be zerged but it will require a certain degree of splitting (need three points) and no zerg is going to want to sit around in the ruins to maintain it, so the smaller groups will take over, which is actual meaningful gameplay for smaller groups. If you’re in a situation where your server has only 15 people and the enemy has 60 you were going to get stomped regardless of whether there is a buff or not. That’s not a buff issue, it’s a population issue.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Outside of the rare semi-balanced match WvW is purely a game of numbers and coverage both tactically and strategically and a Buff that makes the strategically-stronger force tactically stronger as well is stupid if you want to encourage participation.

Are you arguing they should dumb down the arena so that strategy and tactically inept players can compete on even ground with players who are strategically and tactically superior? Again your point seems to be dealing with population issues and not the buff itself.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Buffing the Server with the largest numbers so they are now that much stronger Defenders and asking Outnumbered players to take them out while both weaker and having each Stomp put their own Server a further 1-3 Points behind is absolutely idiotic.

The buff doesn’t favour the server with the largest numbers, it favours the server with the buff. Obtaining the buff doesn’t favour the server with the largest numbers, it favours the server with the best balance between numbers and skill attempting to take the buff. You assume that the server with the most people in WvW is the one that is going to take the buff. In my experience since it was introduced that is absolutely not the case. Even in a blow out match the strongest server will frequently have situations where they are outnumbered during certain times of the day. I’ve frequently been able to take and hold the buff against enemy servers during this time. They had more people and more points, but while holding our tower, flipping hills and running supply camp circuits, we were frequently and consistently able to take and maintain the buff.

Sharpoon.8197:

The people that complain about those stuff aren’t the ones doing the transferring, just so you know. It’s the people that were already on that server…….

lolololololololol…

You think the active WvW population on BG or SoR is the same population that was on there last January when neither of those servers were tier one? A lot of the people on SoR today are the same people that were stomping SoR a year ago, the same goes for BG.

The top tiers are the same players since launch. The server changes and occasionally fresh blood gets in, but for the most part people transfer to stay on top. If you read the “tier one” threads over the last year, most of the guilds didn’t change, but the servers they were on did. The majority of guilds on top ranked server are there, not because they are the best players in the game and they are keeping server in top tiers, they are there because they are transferring to servers that are in top tiers.

Almost everyone on a top ranked server is a bandwagon player. They transferred there because that server was either winning, doing better than their current server, or the server was getting in a bunch of transfers and was about to win.

If the only people on a server that were allowed to complain on a forum were the ones that chose that server at launch/account creation without knowledge of the server’s WvW rank we’d have near silence on the forums.

Bandwagoning to the winning server didn’t start with leagues.

I really hope this doesn’t mean ranger pets will be insta downed by all the dodge or die mechanics that were in Aetherblade Retreat…

rhodoc.2381:

The buff does make no sense. You cant control the buff being on you at your wish. The buffs come and goes fast and you dont even realize even it is there. It is not different than any random code gives you between 0 to 3 buff every 10 sec for 10 sec.

It is not like " Hey we are going to attack garrison but lets cap those points first then try". Even if you cap the current map out of 3, you will lose it in not time. It has no synergy with the rest of the WvW whatsoever.

That’s fine. Don’t defend it. The buff gives players who want to play in small skirmishes and parties something valuable to contribute to the entire server. It’s an additional option that matters to everyone that is designed not to favour the zerg. It absolutely has synergy. It’s a tactical choice and an opportunity for smaller groups of players to make an impact on the overall flow of the four maps. Capturing and holding the buff on your map is contributing to all four maps. The enemy can ignore a tower at the bottom of the map, or a supply camp someone flipped, but the buff is going to impact on everything they do in a small way. Because the buff is equally available to all three servers at any point in time (there are no tower or keep walls to protect it, just an open field) it adds another layer to how you play in WvW.

Warthog.6870:

The real problem is that a lot of people don’t want the buff.
We don’t want to have it, don’t want to get it, don’t want to defend it, don’t want our enemies to have it – we just don’t want the buff at all.

Increased Yak speed, stronger gates and walls, additional workers, more supply per yak, points per stomp, all the buffs from “outnumbered” – that would all be fine.

What do people want? The numbers would tell us players want to PvDoor and karma train our way through WvW. Massing in large numbers that rarely need to use tactics or skilled gameplay to accomplish anything is the most rewarding, most popular and easiest thing to do. If that is what people want, should they just ignore it?

Most people won’t care about yak speed and that other stuff. For starters, stronger walls would be very difficult to implement for a mechanic that can flip back and forth every three minutes or so (although I guess the structural vulnerability opens the way for this to a certain extent). The vast majority of players won’t care about faster yaks – a lot of players don’t even know what yaks do or how upgrades work. Players can’t even show enough consideration or discipline to hold off on taking supply from a supply camp that needs to be upgraded once it flips, they aren’t going to give a flying hoot about faster yaks. Most servers have paper towers and keeps. Coverage differences and the ease of flipping them (especially on a home bl which often empties once it’s full capped due to boredom) is too much of a disincentive to upgrade much. The buff has to matter. Players have to care about it otherwise the ruins become a pointless part of the map. I seriously doubt many players outside of top tiers will care about faster yaks – upgrading is far less valuable the spottier your coverage is. Points pet tick is the same – few people outside of the top tiers really cares about them. With leagues and guarantee blow-out matches for seven weeks even fewer people will care about them. I doubt the outmanned buff will be enough for people to dedicate time to capping things in the ruins, it doesn’t impact on the match, it just helps farmers farm better. That’s a pretty weak motivation.

You wouldn’t complain about not getting into your home server if your home server wasn’t completing the content. What makes you any different from a person trying to guest on a winning server?

They don’t want to see suggestion threads outside of the suggestion forum. It’s not a conspiracy against GvG.

rhodoc.2381:

The buff does make no sense. You cant control the buff being on you at your wish. The buffs come and goes fast and you dont even realize even it is there. It is not different than any random code gives you between 0 to 3 buff every 10 sec for 10 sec.

It is not like " Hey we are going to attack garrison but lets cap those points first then try". Even if you cap the current map out of 3, you will lose it in not time. It has no synergy with the rest of the WvW whatsoever.

Sounds like you are playing really poorly. If you are going to cap the buff, all you need is three people to hold it until reinforcements arrive (if necessary). You can very easily maintain the buff if you try. If the enemy takes it from you, it’s either because you didn’t try to hold it, they outplayed you or they sent greater numbers to the ruins to swamp your defenders and any reinforcements. If it’s the first, you played badly, if it’s the second the enemy played better than you and deserver the buff and if it’s the third, it means the buff distracted the enemy forces and pulled resources from within their keep to the ruins and resulted in a net gain for you.

There is so much whining about the buff based on arguments like yours and the answer is usually “you are doing it wrong”.

Oxe.6142:

A) Ruins provide rewards to those already in control.

Bullkitten. I know for a fact this is not the truth. Ruins provide the buff to whomever captures them. In my match up I frequently see the server with the highest PPT with no buff, or only one buff. I sometimes see it with three, but I very often will see it spread across multiple servers and quite often it’s the lower PPT server with it.

This is a bullkitten argument and people are spouting lies when they state this as an established fact.

Oxe.6142:

B) There is ZERO INCENTIVE for any opposing faction to claim these points.

So the buff is too OP but there is no incentive for an opposing faction to strip the enemy of an OP buff and acquire it for themselves?

People said Tequatl couldn’t be defeated and there are servers that are full that can’t get him below 90% even now. There are other servers that are killing him in in seven minutes. Maybe if players organised and had small teams committed to capping the ruins (in addition to other smaller objectives on the map) and adjusting their play and strategy to the new mechanic instead of writing a bible of complaints about the buff when they clearly haven’t given a reasonable amount of time to adjust to the meta and try to figure out how to work with it, we might not have the problems we have.

My current match is a blow out yet despite that the buff is being shared around fairly evenly. Most of the time, anyone who wants the buff is free to obtain it with one or two friends. I can accept that not all tiers will be the same (I’m currently “tier 3” although last week wasn’t much different from this week). Maybe you need to learn to play instead of post nonsense about how the buff unquestioningly favours the strongest server.

Zhaitan killed Tybalt Leftpaw. Checkmate.

I thought time gated tokens was bad (Pristine Relics, Laurels, Guild Commendations). Crafting is an abomination. So much grind, so many resources, so much tedious sitting at a crafting table going through inane discovery design to grind something useless and arbitrary just so that I can waste even more of my resources to bypass the artificial gate that is levelling from 400-500 before I can begin throwing even more resources away.

At least the token system focused on content to acquire items, this new system is just multiple layers of grind and hoops to jump through. Ascended crafting is the worst addition to the game since launch. If you love the TP and sitting at a crafting table it’s great, if you like actually playing the game outside of the city it’s awful. The worst part is, you don’t have a choice if you want the best gear.

It’s not. It’s a dry and uncreative way to artificially extend the length of content.

The devs aren’t good enough or don’t have the resources to create real content to keep players wanting to come back, so instead they time gate players to slow them down so that they don’t leave as soon. It also trains players to log in every day or miss out. None of this is happening because it’s fun, but because it’s time gated. Fun is now incidental.

I’m sick of the back items being temporary. I love that they are adding more options.

Choices create dissatisfaction, especially when there is no way to do something later to get the other options. Rooster Teeth (the company that makes Red vs Blue – the Halo machinima) talked about why they don’t do polls for merchandise in their store. If you get people to choose between two things, regardless of which one wins, there’s always going to be people who preferred the other one and will be unhappy with the end result. There will also be people who wanted both options.

There are a lot of unhappy people after Cutthroat Politics who wanted the Abadon fractal. Had players never been given a choice, there would be no dissatisfaction. Choices like that create losers, losing isn’t fun and it’s not necessary for people to be happy.

I don’t know where you’re getting that there will be a choice between the back item or the mini pet, but I don’t like that idea. Why is it necessary for your options to be mutually exclusive for them to have value? I am using the Orrian dagger skin on my necromancer right now, above all weapon skins. It drops frequently in Orr and everyone can buy it for 1 silver. In no way is it rare or exclusive, but it has value to me because I like the way it looks. I have both the Evon and Kiel mini pets. Neither has much value to me and that wouldn’t change if I forced to choose. If I want a miniature of the final boss of the new path or an exclusive back item I will never be able to obtain otherwise, it would really suck to be forced to choose. What if I want both? Why shouldn’t I be able to earn both? Why is it necessary for me to be excluded from having one or the other?

Gabby.3205:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Mainly the complaints will come from people who have a hard time doing the new content. We saw that pattern with Tequatl v2.0 last week.

Tequatl was an awesome update. I’m sure Scarlet won’t be a let down as well. And yes, these past and upcoming updates are all permanent.

Don’t forget the posts like “I am a solo player, I refuse to join a group, how am I supposed to run this dungeon? Why, ANet, why?”. Just wait.

Oh, and of course, “My party was full of n00bs, I just wasted 20 minutes! Why would you do that ANet?”.

It’s an MMO, it’s supposed to have content for multiple players. With the new lfg tool there is very little reason why people can’t get a group for explorable dungeons.

I suspect they are trying to give players a reason to kill trash mobs as well as implement something similair to fractal weapons but for other dungeons.

I’m really looking forward to the skins. I have a blue themed sylvari guardian that wears racial armour and currently uses AC weapons. Because he wears racial armour I often find non-sylvari themed weapons don’t work too well on him. When I saw the new skins I was personally very excited – they appear to have a glow/particle effects that are not on the standard version, so they are a little special, and they are coloured how I would personally want them (I also suspect blue will appeal to far more people than purple did). I can understand they aren’t for everyone (like I understood that the Jubilee weapons didn’t please me but probably pleased others) but I am very much looking forward to them and I will be playing TA a lot to obtain them. I hope they are account bound so that you have to play TA to get them, similair to fractal weapons. I also think it’s a step in the right direction by creating another reason to complete the dungeon. Having an alternate “tweaked” version of a dungeon weapon set is a nice way to make existing dungeons more rewarding without investing effort into an entire new weapon set. There might also be a lore tie-in (the website states it’s an ‘aetherised glow’ on the weapon, some kind of imbuement/enhancement to do with the dungeon to explain why it’s blue and glows now) which is kind of cool. If this patch is popular they might do a similair thing to other dungeons.

I’m also grateful the skins are obtainable in the game and not from RNG chests. I guess Cristin Cox prefers to get her hands on unique game assets and not recycled ones.

When I saw the Twilight Assault trailer this was my very first reaction. I wasn’t excited to be going back to TA (my first and favourite dungeon), I was cringing at how much they had turned one of the parts of Tyria that best emphasises that nature and magic don’t need technology to be one of the most formidable threats. And then the Living Story decided to undermine that by adding engineer stuff to the dungeon because steampunk makes everything better and Sorrow’s Embrace and the Crucible of Eternity apparently aren’t enough to emphasise the power of technology, they have to undermine Twilight Arbor’s themes as well.

The Living Story has tunnel vision when it comes to Scarlet and her engineer prodigy status. Aetherblades, steam creatures, air ships, watchwork horrors… this isn’t a fantasy MMO any more.

What’s worse is that in the Wartower interview the writers said that Scarlet, as an engineer, can do anything any other profession can do. There are no limits to what she can do as an engineer, engineering is the perfect combination of magic and technology that bypasses the limitation placed on any other profession. Why bother having elementalists or mesmers when you’re going to say that engineering is so much better?

It’s a new path for TA as well as new variations of the TA weapon skins (with a blue glow instead of purple) as random drops from explorable paths (it sounds like all paths will have a chance to drop the new versions of the TA weapons). If Twilight Assault is the start of a trend, they might be adding new paths to existing dungeons (so four to choose from instead of three, or more in the case of Arah) from now on and adding slightly altered versions of existing items as drops from the dungeons akin to fractal weapons.

There are also chests in the new path that can only be opened with five pieces of a key found in Maguuma. That must be the open world tie in for the dungeon. I suspect this part will go away at the end of the month.

Bunnehboo.6025:

I like how some of the comments in the thread and shaming the OP for being in cleric’s gear, and completely ignoring the topic of the thread just because they want to troll.
~Bravo

This is the dungeon subforum. These days it seems like it’s sole purpose is to establish how out of touch the dungeon sub forum posters are with the general masses of the game. Must melee every dungeon, must use every stacking trick available, must run zerker builds, must skip every skippable mob in the dungeon, must dump on every ranger that doesn’t run sword.

There is at least five of them, I’m honestly baffled why they are ever pugging – it seems like they prefer each other’s company to everyone else in the game. God forbid someone run cleric’s gear in an attempt to support their party instead of zerking everything down regardless of whether their allies are alive or not at the end.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Shiren.9532:

I wish the Living Story added story instances each month.

The opening ceremony for the Jubilee is the first one that comes to mind…. Flame and Frost had storyline instances. Check the other previous updates for additional examples.

These instances are used sparingly, only contain fragments of the story and don’t even come close to a GW1 mission or even the mission-like quests added for War in Kryta or Winds of Change.

I think most people would agree that the current story (Tequatl Rising) would have been much better story delivery if it starts with an instance where you see Rytlock/Warrmaster Naru briefing Rox on the situation in Sparkfly Fen followed by the scavenger hunt achievement accompanied by Rox. This could also contain exposition of the current conflict, maybe show the risen attacking the camps more frequently or have NPCs comment on how the area has become more hostile. Instead Rox and Narru sit at Tequatl’s spawn point and give you a window of dialogue and that’s it. The scavenger hunt doesn’t even have the token asuran story added to it (every piece of information you get is obtained before you find a single scale/tooth etc) it’s just an excuse to pad the content with achievement points and occupy an hour of your time.

roque.5162:

PLEASE READ IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE KITTEN IS HAPPENING WITH THE STORY.
k, now that I have your attention..
I usually keep chill when debating on forums but darn people, just please don’t post your ranting if you have no idea what you’re talking about.

On Scarlet and the chained living story:
WoodenPotatos enlightened me and made me see how amazing the living story really is.
I’ll take the Harry Potter example. There is a bunch of hints and stuff during the first books that you usually overlook until that part of the plot that BAM it all comes into place as part of a huge scheme. THAT’s what happening with Scarlet. IT’S NOT A BUNCH OF RANDOM EVENTS, there’s an AMAZING background not revealed yet that’s tying them.
Without further anticipation, here’s your answer to the whole Scarlet living story plot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiMFEqz3GQ4
Guaranteed mind blowing.

On Tequatl:
Man, I was really disappointed when I killed Zhaitan. It was so anti-climatic. I even talked to a game designer once and she agreed. But now, they are asking for a second chance. If you didn’t know yet, Elder Dragons have been killed before. What happens is that, once one of them dies, a lieutenant takes it’s place. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Tequatl Rising. I believe this is Anet’s way of making up for the fight and let me tell you it’s working perfectly. If it’s not clear enough Tequatl is turning into a new Zhaitan. By this, the races of tyria will understand how this mechanism works and will focus on killing every lieutenant before getting rid of the elder.

So yeah, I had a negative opinion about how the living story was going, but I decided not to speak up about it until actually taking my time to think. And it was worth it.

Yeah cause when has WoodenPotatoes ever been wrong… oh yeah, there was that time where he speculated that Scarlet was an alternate reality version of Ellen Kiel and the Aetherblades and Steam Creatures came from the same world as the alternate reality asuran player character.

I’ve also never heard of dragons being replaced by lieutenants. I thought they awoke, were pacified and then went back into hibernation.

Rytlock appears in Flame and Frost. He is the one who sent Rox to investigate the molten alliance. He is also a high ranking member of his legion so that would keep him busy. He also sent Rox to the Jubilee and to investigate Tequatl.

Eir appeared during Flame and Frost and had a brief discussion with Braham. Admitedly she has done very little and has no obvious reasons for why she has been doing nothing.

Logan had a cameo during the Dragon Bash when he hired Kasmeer and Marjory. He also played a major role during the Queen’s Jubilee. He has a day job as Captain of the Seraph so he is busy with that.

Caithe appears at the beginning of the Twilight Assault trailer so I suspect she will play a major role in that release.

Zojja is MIA as far as I know.

As a guild they don’t appear to be doing anything, as individuals they are busy doing different things. I don’t know why the writers decided to ditch them for new characters with the Living Story. The story takes place after the Personal Story so there are no crossover issues (I guess you could spoil that they are all alive – something which is a spoiler for Arah explorable). I guess they wanted their own cast of characters to play with. They wanted to tell new stories and didn’t want to be tied down by the roles and responsibilities of the old cast of characters.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Shiren.9532:

And Ellen “Goodie Two Shoes” Kiel is a member of the Captain’s Council for the pirate capital of Tyria. Guild Wars 2 has the lamest take on pirates ever. Disney’s cartoon pirates have more edge than GW2 pirates.

What do you have against Captain Jack Sparrow?

Nothing, I happily recognise that he’s not a cartoon.

And Ellen “Goodie Two Shoes” Kiel is a member of the Captain’s Council for the pirate capital of Tyria. Guild Wars 2 has the lamest take on pirates ever. Disney’s cartoon pirates have more edge than GW2 pirates.

Isn’t the plot of TA explorable that Faolain has abandoned TA and the remaining Couriers are fighting over the Nightmare Tree? The same tree we destroy yet it’s seen at the end of the Twilight Assault trailer? I didn’t think Faolain was in the picture when it comes to TA any more.

One of the things I hate about TA explorable is that it’s essentially three different timelines from a story perspective. As far as I know, no single path can exist in the same time line as another. To me that might be the first hint that Twilight Assault is scrapping old school TA – the old “story” can’t be canon because the three paths are mutually exclusive from a story perspective.

In the Wartower interview Scott said he thinks Scarlet is too fargone to become a hero. He said the heroes might find a way to pitt her against another threat, causing her to help, but a redemption story is unlikely. This was in response to a question about Scarlet becoming too popular (lolololololololol).

I think Canach is more in line for a redemption arch. His methods were wrong but his intentions were right. Even if there was a bitter jealousy element to his actions, he was trying solve the settler/Consortium contract issues.

Not even Azula (the character Scarlet’s voice actress also played, also very similair to Scarlet) had a redemption arch and she was the sister of a main character in a cartoon aimed at kids, I doubt Scarlet will get one.

Canach fits that classic antihero redemption plot. He also has a leg up on a lot of characters in that this gives him flaws (which are more interesting that Anise being perfect, Jennah being perfect, Kiel being perfect, Scarlet being perfect – for a villain). Flawed characters make for better stories than ones that always make the right decisions and always have good intentions and never do anything wrong.

Riondron.1069:

This is all the data you need….

Yeah servers ranked 5th and 6th are fighting the server ranked 2nd (only 3 and 4 ranks above them) and the match is the biggest blowout of the week so far. Can you imagine what it will look like when the server ranked 12th is going to fight the server ranked 1st? If 5th and 6th do this poorly, what’s it going to look like for the lower ranked servers?

I don’t understand how, with the existing data, they couldn’t tell this is a bad idea. At a certain point your testing environment has to be reasonably enjoyable for players. It’s fine to test things, but some things don’t need to be tested for you to know they are going to suck. As a developer you should be able to foresee these things and ensure that they don’t happen to avoid putting your players through a kittenty situation for seven weeks. That’s not good for the players and it’s not good for the game.

No-one cares about variety when the variety presented will be dramatically imbalanced matches.

Hahahaha SoS isn’t going to win tier one. If SoS is recruiting it’s probably because they are trying to keep their heads above the water and not drown like other servers which bleed guilds. SoS can’t even win tier 2. The server is ranked 7th, which is the top of tier 3. The server stands no chance in tier 1 and I doubt many people even want to go there.

ParaldaWind.4523:

tom.7468:

These points can be capped by 1 player that give outnumbered servers a chance to be able to actually win some fights.

No, they can not. Maybe one point can, but you cannot solo cap and hold 3. They decay fast enough that by the time you’ve capped 2, the first one decaps. You need at least 2 people to cap them, assuming you encounter 0 resistance.

The points themselves are actually relatively well designed in this way, but the psychological effect of not thinking you deserve your wins, or feeling cheated out of a win in a fight — because of an unfair stat bonus — is just extremely disheartening.

Plus, the server with the higher pop is more likely to have the buffs at any given time. I’m sure small groups can coordinate to hold the buffs for a little bit, but generally the bigger servers will just recap them pretty quickly.

This is why we can’t take the buff hatred seriously. It’s a fact that you can cap and hold two ruins at the same time with a single person and run back and forth from them before they neutralise. A single person can easily maintain two ruins as long as another player doesn’t come along and neutralise one (and even then you have a window of opportunity to respond to that person). It may even be possible to cap and hold three ruins with a portal mesmer (I doubt it) but honestly, if your server can’t spare two people to cap the buff they clearly don’t care about trying to obtain it and have no right to complain about it.

There’s a lot of blind hatred for the buff and a lot of it is based around false arguments. There is a world of difference between the existing buff and the old buff and it’s clear a large number of the people complaining about the buff aren’t even trying to be smart about obtaining it.

It’s not the strongest server that gets the buff, it’s the server with the organised group that tries to cap the ruins that gets the buff. The simple fact that the meta needs time to establish around the best tactics to accomplish that is enough to put off a lot of this criticism. I often seen the buff held by the server with the lowest or second lowest PPT and my current match is a blowout.

Torasan.6029:

no stat bonus IS NOT A GOOD IDEA… haven’t you been reading the other 9000+ posts in this forum.

we want fair fights not unfair fights. that means NO STAT BONUSES whatsoever in wvw!

Why would you go to WvW for fair fights? You say that but you play an arena which favours:

• Coverage. The server with the most players playing during the most times will win.
• Levelling. Quite often roamers will be fighting sub-80 players. It’s part of their goals to pick on and kill low weaker players, even in groups. The majority of WvW players are not roamers. The majority of people I see killed in roaming videos (usually in groups) are not roamers. WvW is the PvP map you can bring your friend who doesn’t normally play PvP but suddenly can because they can have success with enough allies.
• Gear grind. Ascended gives you a distinct advantage, even exotics will. It can be quite expensive to acquire exotic level gear for a certain build (a lot of PvE rangers will never acquire gear sets that work well in WvW because they don’t cross over well to PvE, PTV is a bad gear set for a lot of dungeon warriors/guardians because it makes content harder by causing you to hit for far less).
• A reliance on imbalanced food buffs. When balancing the classes for competitive combat no consideration is made for food buffs. The condition/stun duration reduction foods would be crazy broken in sPvP. If a player can’t afford to maintain food buffs all the time they are at a disadvantage.
• Characters built for different roles. A roaming thief is almost certainly going to win against a zerging staff ele simply because of what they are built for. The ele would be far more useful in big group fights, but the thief is 100% built for roaming combat. In no way is that a fair fight. Also consider that WvW uses the same builds as PvE so quite a large number of players will never retrait when going to WvW. What’s best for WvW is almost never best for PvE.
• Lots of fights (prior to this update) revolved around defending or attacking a tower or keep. This usually gives one side an advantage over the other.

Face it, people don’t go to WvW for fair fights. That’s what sPvP is for. There is almost nothing about WvW that is fair and that was always the case before bloodlust.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Sarrs.4831:

Stormleaf.1769:

If you find WvW so incredibly unacceptable in its current state that you’re willing to quit en masse, then maybe GW2 just isn’t the game for you? Play the game for what it is right now, not for what you fantasize about it being in the future.

It was the game for them two days ago, and apparently it was the game for 99% of this forum two days ago. It was the game for a not insignificant portion of the WvW-playing playerbase two days ago, as well. If GW2 was never a game that they enjoyed, then maybe I’d agree with you, but that’s not the case.

Very well said.

There is always a danger in taking that “high and mighty/don’t let the door hit you on the way out” attitude after a large and unpopular change is made to how an MMO plays – if you don’t believe me Google “Star Wars Galaxies” and “NGE”

ANet can recover from this, but it is going to take some “personalities” on their side swallowing a lot of pride to fix things… and if you can’t figure out what I’m talking about – here’s a ball… go bounce it.

What is it they need to recover from? Why does someone have to swallow pride?

Articulate to me what the problem is and why it’s a problem without resorting to subjective anecdotes. Demonstrate to people who don’t yet believe there is an issue with undeniable evidence that there is some kind of problem here.

My experience has been that even at a time where a server has almost no coverage and an enemy server is PvDooring on the karma train, the bloodlust buff is largely ignored. The strongest server doesn’t need it and there is almost no incentive for them to slow down their karma train to fight over it.

Capping the bloodlust buff is almost as easy as capping a supply camp.

The matches are blow outs because of server stacking, transfers and the new “improved” match making system. Look at the match ups on paper and with or without the buff these matches would have been blowouts.

Currently there is a buffer to prevent zergs farming each other from getting a tonne of Wxp because their Wxp value is far less the less time they’ve been alive. This helps to keep control of how much more Wxp zerging awards as opposed to focusing on objectives or small scale play.

If you award Wxp as an item drop, zerging will not only be able to capture objectives faster, but wiping other zergs will also be far more rewarding than small scale gameplay.

Roamers and small scale players that have no chance of getting loot from 20-50 man zergs will be left behind in the dust by this.

Vetrie.7804:

I have succesfuly done it 2 times. And I love it. Will do it everyday if possible. I like challenging content that takes some preparation. And if you think it through , Taco isnt that hard as some people say. Keep up good work anet! ( just fix this overflow stuff )

It’s not individually challenging. You can do everything right, you can play flawlessly and none of it will matter if the players on your map don’t do it right.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If we look at PS loose ends we got:

• Faolain
• Caudecus
• Malyck
• White Mantle (may or may not be t ied to Caudecus)
• Wizard’s Tower
• Tengu
• Foefire ghosts
• Renegades/Separatists/Peace Accords
• Jormag/Kralkatorrik/Mordremoth/DSD
• etc. etc.

And go back to GW1, got even more… So lets hope that we either get a large break from Scarlet after October, or we wrap her plot up soon (lol unlikely).

I can live without a big focus on GW1 plots (it’s 250 years later, they want to reinvent their world and not be tied down to the human centric lore of the first game) but I think every single one of the lose threads from the ‘Personal Story’ you mentioned are far more interesting than the Living Story so far. I was disappointed when the Queen’s Jubilee had nothing to do with the Separatists, Ebonhawke or the charr treaty. I am dissapointed that the return to TA seems to center around Scarlet and not Faolain. Caudecus is a much more interesting villain than Scarlet. Even the general goals and motivations of the Flame Legion are easier to be invested in and understand.

The idea that Tequatl is getting stronger for some reason is one of the first interesting parts of the Living Story in my opinion. I really hope it has nothing to do with Scarlet or the Thaumanova Reactor. The other plot I thought was really interesting was the background plot of the Zephyrites. I don’t have an open mind about Scarlet any more, but Tequatl’s foreshadowing has potential, as does the Zephyrite link to Glint.

lordkrall.7241:

^ Most likely due to the fact that they wanted it to make sense.

A dragon suddenly turning up 50 times stronger than he was for no reason whatsoever would be quite weird.

What was the story reason for the AC revamp? What’s the story reason for why pets and minions will have 71% more health in the coming patch? What’s the story reason for why Zhaitan was much easier to kill than Tequatl? At a certain point, they will make mechanics and gameplay changes that are in no way related to the story.

I think they are foreshadowing another plot (or a thread of the current plot) that they plan to focus on in the future. To a certain extent I think the Living Story plot is partly dictated by the content. I suspect the devs were working on ‘raid like’ content and it came in the form of Tequatl. The story team were planning on some kind of plot down the road that could involve dragon minions becoming stronger, so the story team decided to work the Tequatl revamp into it. That might be why the story of this update is so thin, it was tacked onto the Tequatl update and ws never intended to be a big story chapter.

I wish the Living Story added story instances each month. Basically GW1 missions, one or two a month. It would be a good way to tell a story that develops a strong narrative from one chapter to the next, add some gameplay and avoid the pitfalls of relying on pumpkin carving, snowman building or kill x of y mob in zone z achievements to tell the crux of your story. I think they are trying too hard to tell the story in the open world and that’s a really poor medium for story telling. I don’t think a few snippets of text from the NPCs in Sparkfly Fen is a very satisfying story. I’d rather something like the instances from Flame and Frost with Braham and Rox (without removing them once the event ends), especially if they work on the gameplay.

I’m OK if they utilise existing maps, I really liked the content added to GW1 with Guild Wars Beyond. The quests added to the game were fun and challenging. The token system used by them also ensured that they were rewarding and the story being told by them was a lot more interesting and better communicated in my opinion.

I don’t want the Living Story to end (although I look forward to Scarlet’s story ending) but I would like to see some changes made. I also wish they would stop focusing on new things (Scarlet came out of nowhere and she advances none of the existing plots) and utilise the interesting parts of the world and story they’ve already created.

They shouldn’t move these threads to the ranger forum. It’s not just a ranger issue, it’s a design issue with the new content. If the people responsible for working on the ranger aren’t implementing the tools to keep pets useful, the people designing the content to to account for pets when designing it. This is a design issue as much as it is a ranger issue.

Corvindi.5734:

I’m glad there finally is a dungeon finder, but since I’ve never done a single dungeon I’m now too shy to use it. Maybe eventually I will try it anyway. I wouldn’t worry if there were roles, I’ve always been a good healer, but since there aren’t, I’m afraid I’ll screw up big time and wipe us all if I just jump into the lowest level dungeon and go. Of course that is what youtube videos are for, I’m sure I can look some up before I give it a try.

Don’t be put off. A lot of the people in this thread (and the general dungeon community )just have bad attitudes when it comes to pugging. In general the LFG tool has a lot of inexperienced players trying the new content and lots of experienced people willing to bring them along. The elitist attitudes some people put across are harmful to the game, especially when it pushes people away from trying content for fear of a bad experience from these people, but so far the good experiences outweigh the bad ones.

Because the tool isn’t giving people the tools to monopolise it with some elitist attitude (the ability to outright reject people who want to join, you can always kick but that’s extra effort) the path of least resistance is to accept everyone (I’ve only seen people kick non-80 people – regardless of what the post said, and I left those groups immediately) and this is resulting in it becoming easy to find groups and participate in this content.

If it’s a speed clear group you will generally want to avoid them. They are usually the groups with the least pleasant players and the most elitist attitudes. The funny thing is they are quite often some of the worst groups you will ever be part of, most “speed clear” groups are people who are average players and think if they write “speed clear” some magical thing will happen and they will get their loot faster. Let your party know you are new, most dungeon paths have been trivialised by AI and mechanics exploits, if your party knows what to do and has decent builds you can auto attack your way through a lot of dungeon content.

The lfg tool is full of people like you, the only way that will change is if you let the elitists intimidate you from participating.

I think the forgone conclusion that the orb buff benefits the strongest server is a snowballing myth that people keep parroting without supporting experiences. In my current match up the orb buff is won and lost by a handful of people. Zergs aren’t taking it – they are largely ignoring it. The orb is always being capped by small teams, I’ve personally capped the orb several times with just one other person (I’m talking the current “tier 3” match) and it was the same last week (which was a more balanced match up). I’ve run into teams of three to five players who are running around capping the orb and that kind of open field, smaller scale combat is a lot of fun and it’s something that WvW needed.

It’s got nothing to do with the strongest server or the one with the most coverage, so far I’ve seen the orb decided by one thing – the server with the best/more committed small ops teams that want to take it. It’s playing a very similair role to supply camps before the patch – if you don’t have enough guildies to zerg or capture a tower you can fight over the orb and get some actual open field combat in an environment that was really well designed. I’ve seen a lot of clever use of the new environments and I’ve personally enjoyed WvW a lot more as a result of this change. It’s nice to know that even if you aren’t papering an entire borderlands, having a small presence on there holding a tower and capping the orb to help out the entire server makes spreading across multiple borderlands much more rewarding – something WvW needed badly.

I’ve seen situations where one server had 10-20 people across the whole map and the other two servers had 40-50 people each and the one with 10-20 people were the ones with the orb. I’ve seen situations where one server was karma training and papering every tower and keep across three maps and they had no orb buff, while the other two servers held their own and the strongest server’s orb. Usually I see situations where all three servers hold their own orb, or one has two. Whenever I see a server with three orbs, it’s usually because the other servers aren’t even fighting over the orb. I have seen situations where one server held all three buffs, but the honest to god truth is those situations are basically 100% PvDoor karma trains even before the orb buff existed. Those situations were never fun, it has nothing to do with the bloodlust buff.

It’s not a forgone conclusion that the bloodlust buff will be held by the strongest server with the most coverage, it’s a myth.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I think he meant “Zhaitan was the first to make a massive attack” or it was just an utter slip – it happens.

I’m not sure where you get the “every two years” bit – but if so, then we’re stuck with Scarlet for another full year… ugh.

Scott: Scarlet is definitely contemporary with the player. Zhaitan has been defeated. And I think that this was part of the structure both, I mean outside the game we have releases scheduled for every couple of years, but also the structure inside the game, we want to have a story that progresses, that doesn’t stay still.

I think he’s saying that generally they don’t want to tell the big Zhaitan level stories all the time, that roughly they expect that kind of story and content will happen every two years, give or take, rather than having elder dragon plots back to back without a break. The rest of the comment goes on to talk about how the Living Story fills the time between the Elder Dragon plots rather than simply having “dead air” between expansion like content. Because they don’t want to tell elder dragon stories all the time, they have the Living Story which allows them to focus on other things.

I doubt we will see another year of Scarlet but I think it’s reasonable to expect up to another year of Living Story (it’s possible the Zephyrite connection to Glint and the recent Tequatl plot are a new story unrelated to Scarlet which will take the spotlight once Scarlet is dealt with, they are just foreshadowing early on) before the story directly focuses on another dragon.

So there has been a lot of discussion and confusion about the Living Story and when it takes place in relation to the Personal Story and the chronology of the rest of the world. In a recent interview with Wartower (link: ) I think this was cleared up. Here’s a transcript of the relevant part (it starts at the 40 minute mark). This is a repost from another thread, but I figure it’s probably worth its own thread.

Angel McCoy: So I think that the timelines are not actually broken apart. Can you explain why you think that is?

Wartower: Maybe because it’s just the way I, because I started from the first day on playing Guild Wars 2 so it’s my personal experience of the timeline, so I defeated the dragon first and now I have this Scarlet problem as a player. So that’s why I was asking whether you consider that as to be simultaneous time lines or not?

Scott McGough: Scarlet is definitely contemporary with the player. Zhaitan has been defeated. And I think that this was part of the structure both, I mean outside the game we have releases scheduled for every couple of years, but also the structure inside the game, we want to have a story that progresses, that doesn’t stay still. So we didn’t want to fight Zhaitan for 5 years. The overall threat, the world story is that of the dragons, the dragons are a threat to the entire world, the world needs to respond to that. The first dragon to rise was Zhaitan and Zhaitan was dealt with by the Pact. The threat of the dragons isn’t ended, but there is sort of this lull. Defeating Zhaitan took a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of people died. Before the Pact is ready to move onto the next dragon they need to regroup, they need to reorganise and they need to staff back up so they have a full contingent of troops. Like anything you can’t have a major war battle every week. You can’t fight a dragon every month of the story so we tried to find ways you can explore things related to the dragons, like Dragon Bash for an example, that would allow us to explore some of the smaller and more personal stories that we get to see with Marjory and Kasmeer or with Lord Faren and that’s where Scarlet falls. I would say Scarlet, she’s got a personality and the dragons to not. We see minions, we see dragon champions, but they’re all tied to the dragons and the dragons are themselves are this monolithic force of nature. Scarlet is very chatty, Scarlet has personality, Scarlet likes to interact with the people she’s attacking. So for the smaller scale more personal stories we are telling in the Living World that are tangentially connected to the dragons, Scarlet was a much better fit. But yeah, this is all happening at the same time the dragons are still out there, the world is still preparing for the next dragon to rise and how they are going to deal with it. But in the mean time there are other threats, there is the Molten Alliance, there is Scarlet, there’s all sorts of stuff.

It seems clear to me that the Living Story all takes place after the Personal Story. They intend it literally as filler between the major expansion-like content which will deal with the dragons (every two years apparently). The Living Story is a collection of side stories like the filler arcs from an anime.

I’ll transcribe it for you. It’s at the 40 minute mark.

Angel: So I think that the timelines are not actually broken apart. Can you explain why you think that is?

Wartower: Maybe because it’s just the way I, because I started from the first day on playing Guild Wars 2 so it’s my personal experience of the timeline, so I defeated the dragon first and now I have this Scarlet problem as a player. So that’s why I was asking whether you consider that as to be simultaneous time lines or not?

Scott: Scarlet is definitely contemporary with the player. Zhaitan has been defeated. And I think that this was part of the structure both, I mean outside the game we have releases scheduled for every couple of years, but also the structure inside the game, we want to have a story that progresses, that doesn’t stay still. So we didn’t want to fight Zhaitan for 5 years. The overall threat, the world story is that of the dragons, the dragons are a threat to the entire world, the world needs to respond to that. The first dragon to rise was Zhaitan and Zhaitan was dealt with by the Pact. The threat of the dragons isn’t ended, but there is sort of this lull. Defeating Zhaitan took a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of people died. Before the Pact is ready to move onto the next dragon they need to regroup, they need to reorganise and they need to staff back up so they have a full contingent of troops. Like anything you can’t have a major war battle every week. You can’t fight a dragon every month of the story so we tried to find ways you can explore things related to the dragons, like Dragon Bash for an example, that would allow us to explore some of the smaller and more personal stories that we get to see with Marjory and Kasmeer or with Lord Faren and that’s where Scarlet falls. I would say Scarlet, she’s got a personality and the dragons to not. We see minions, we see dragon champions, but they’re all tied to the dragons and the dragons are themselves are this monolithic force of nature. Scarlet is very chatty, Scarlet has personality, Scarlet likes to interact with the people she’s attacking. So for the smaller scale more personal stories we are telling in the Living World that are tangentially connected to the dragons, Scarlet was a much better fit. But yeah, this is all happening at the same time the dragons are still out there, the world is still preparing for the next dragon to rise and how they are going to deal with it. But in the mean time there are other threats, there is the Molten Alliance, there is Scarlet, there’s all sorts of stuff.

It seems clear to me that the Living Story all takes place after the Personal Story. They intend it literally as filler between the major expansion-like content which will deal with the dragons (every two years apparently). The Living Story is a collection of side stories like the filler arcs from an anime. I find it strange that Scott said Zhaitan was the first to awaken and the world is waiting for the next dragon to rise. I know Kralkatorrik “awoke” and flew across the land creating the Brand and I assume Jormag has also awoken considering his corruption is spreading across the Shiverpeaks. I was also under the impression that Primordius awoke. I don’t understand what he means about this lull. I assume it’s something along the lines of “Zhaitan was more aggressive while the other dragons are somewhat passive… for now”.

I listened again. The inteviewer asks about the time line and Angel asks what confused her specifically. The interviewer mentions that she played since launch and that in her experience she defeated Zhaitan a long time ago but now she is dealing with Scarlet. Because the story intentionally avoided strictly dating itself, she became confused about the time line. This is where Scott stepped in and said Scarlet is on the same page as the player in the tie line. Zhaitan is defeated.

The Living Story is taking place after the defeat of Zhaitan. I listened to the interview several times while playing. I’m clear now, Zhaitan has fallen in the time line before Scarlet appeared.

As far as the tooth/scale/shards go, it’s the easiest way to “create content” for players to grind on their achievement point treadmills. Scavenger hunts are probably the fastest to produce content they can come up with. They wanted to pad the Tequatl update with something other than the dragon fight, so we got a scavenger hunt. As others have pointed out, the story or background of the hunt is done really poorly so it’s basically just padding to tide us over. I suspect the story of this update was an afterthought. Regardless of story reasons, Tequatl was getting revamp. They are fitting the story around the gameplay content this month.

Yeah Destiny’s Edge is still around, they don’t need to be replaced. Kiel returning… what a horrifying thought.