Guild Wars 2

Aren’t giver weapons still broken in that the two handed weapons have the same condition duration as the one handed ones? Unless you craft one handed weapons, you aren’t missing out on much.

I can see it now, the Queen’s Gauntlet will return with an infinite ticket in the gem store, every Living Story update will be accompanied by a mini-game (or it will be a mini-game) with a tedious entry requirement conveniently negated by a gem store item.

I dunno, I vastly prefer laurels, pristine relics and guild commendations. Crafting is an awful experience and having to buy hundreds of mats constantly keeping track of it all just to acquire your weapons… I hate that they’ve forced crafting on us this way. It’s so much work buying and refining, all to accomplish essentially what laurels does far more easily without forcing players into the terrible crafting system.

Eluveitie.1290:

I take back on Queen Jennah’s speech part due to this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-message-from-queen-jennah/

(Though it breaks inmerssion it isn’t in-game and still we were fooled with the “she’s gonna make a huge announcement” part)

The Queen’s Speech was just an excuse to give Scarlet a festival to crash. That’s the kind of plot we are dealing with here, the heroes throw a party simply because the writers want the villains to crakitten.

Tom Gore.4035:

You included new PvP arenas for GW1 but didn’t bother listing them for GW2?

The new arenas in GW1 were new formats. They weren’t just new maps with the same objectives, they had entirely new dynamics and objectives.

The devs want to push the “daily log in” metrics. They have boasted that figure in interviews and press releases. They use it as a way to measure the success of the game. ArenaNet as company seem to value everything with quantitative measurements and not qualitative measurements. They seem to think the healthiest thing for the game is to push a two week Living Story cycle which pushes out lots of hoops to jump through to keep players returning regularly (in interviews they boasted that this improves the number of people logging in regularly , seemingly how they measure a healthy community) but they also heavily push the time gated stuff. This prevents you from progressing too much in one day but also discourages you from being away for several days. It’s not designed around what gives the player a better experience or freedom of choice, it’s designed around what creates the most regular recurring log ins. It doesn’t matter to them if those players would be happier without time gates and daily hoops, they can say to their investors, producers and marketing team that they have players playing every day. That’s the priority.

Don’t worry, those of us who were here for all of it are also confused by it.

You can use stockpiled dungeon tokens (assuming you weren’t running around on the zerg train prior to this update) to buy exotics and salvage them but the drop rates are incredibly low.

fey.5438:

You can’t sell ascended weapons
Also 50g is not much for best stats and awesome skin.

You could get best stats for 1g prior to this update. The moved the goal line, they didn’t give you something new.

It’s been over a year. Do you guys honestly think this is going to change? For 12 months pets have been insta downed in WvW and several dungeon encounters (the same for spirits) and they’ve not fixed it.

Does anyone honestly think after all this time it’s going to get better?

It’s not welfare when the rune costs 5+g.

Log into the game and open your mail. You will find out.

neekaneeks.3865:

They stated a few times those were only from the first SAB and would not return with the second. You can still buy them on the auction house though.

There was no official confirmation, just speculation. They never said for certain they wouldn’t return, only that they probably wouldn’t return.

This is not how you report an exploit.

It’s the war on alts. ArenaNet gets more and more aggressive every patch. Soon they will prevent you from logging into more than one character a day.

It’s because they changed the rewards. The old rewards had karma juggs, the new reward has karma juggs and I believe luck items (to boost your account MF). Players who completed their monthly early would have missed out on the new rewards.

Worst case scenario, a bunch of people (3 days into the month, not that many) will get a few extra achievement points and a few extra laurels.

DevonCarver.5370:

bradderzh.2378:

We, the people of lower tiers, don’t mind testing our metal against tough odds. We do however mind it when the servers with the most players and best coverage gets the best rewards purely for the numbers reason only.

But as you said in another topic, wvw isn’t fair. All rank 12 has to do is throw enough matches to drop to rank 13 and get the best rewards.

So, as I’ve said before, we are still looking into ways to try and alleviate those problems, but that is also what WvW is like right now, so while this season will create new rewards and new incentives to play, it isn’t as though this is a brand new problem. We want to make it so that skill is more important than sheer numbers and we have some ideas. None of them are so easy/safe to implement that they are going to happen in the near-term.

I hear you saying that you want skill to be more important than numbers but I see you implementing a league system which gives you more incentive to be on a server with more numbers (provided it’s one of the top ones).

League rewards are going to make the problem worse.

DevonCarver.5370:

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

Why would anyone leave a top two (or three) server (that is almost guaranteed to be in the running for top placement in future leagues) to move to a lower ranked server, which will be unstable and possibly not even win a silver or bronze league, or if they do, could move up a league the next match up and thus place last in the tougher league getting poor rewards? This gives incentive to players on middle-low ranked servers in a future league to move either up or down (any server currently ranked between 4 and 10 in NA is very unlikely to get a first place finish in either of the NA leagues and the players on them would do better to move to another server).

So you are punished for being the 7th best server in the gold league (a server which would be rated higher than the 1st place server in the bronze league) and rewarded for being conveniently placed in the bronze league despite having a weaker server?

Why would you do this? Why would you create arbitrary rewards for an arena you said yourself is not balanced? Why would you give greater rewards to a server that is weaker than another server but because they were weak enough, they get placed in a low league (and thus a higher placement in that league) but a stronger server “isn’t weak enough” and falls into the bottom placements for a tougher league “earning” them inferior rewards? None of this makes sense. You are randomly giving rewards to servers. Some servers will get them because they have the best coverage. Some servers will get them because they are better placed in the ratings. Some servers won’t get them because none of your arbitrary criteria favours them.

How is any of this helping?

errant.9843:

Why do we have WvW threads in the sPvP forum?

Because it’s not a WvW thread? The concept of a GvG arena goes back to GW1 where it was 8v8, not 20v20. That has a lot more in common with sPvP than it does with GvG, but there are a bunch of people in GW2 who started calling guild zergs fighting each other in PvE equipment GvG with no recognition that the name is used for something else in this franchise. Now you have people discussing two different things as if they are the same thing.

As far as sPvP players going to WvW… sPvP players don’t play with food buffs (it’s kittened how much condition duration reduction you can get – that kitten is outright broken and would never get into sPvP) and the level of ascended gear available in PvP pushes stats (and stat combinations) beyond the point of balance. I wouldn’t mind betting most of the better sPvP players don’t even have a decked out PvE toon to bring into WvW (let alone one that can adjust its build to the current meta). Everyone can play in sPvP on an equal playing field in an arena designed for balance (WvW has no serious considerations for balance – even Devon even said so) without worrying about a zerg coming along to stomp them.

You wanna complain about sPvP players in a WvW forum? Blame the mod that dragged an sPvP thread over here to do it.

Akkuma.2501:

Lopez.7369:

The biggest problem with PAX is that it stalled balance changes for two months or so. I don’t think anyone quit because of the tournament itself; the issue is what surrounded the tournament.

I think the only thing that can revitalize structured PvP at this point is a solid reward structure that pulls in players from world vs. world and PvE.

Yes, you’re right it isn’t just the PAX tournament itself, but everything else that happened around it. I just wanted to clarify that he didn’t leave post PAX.

ANet will never make an esport out of sPvP by getting WvW and PvE players, but if they can accept that then that’s ok.

Why should ArenaNet make design decisions to get players to play a format they don’t like just because it’s rewarding? If there’s anything the last month showed us, PvE players will do just about anything for hours on end if the game throws money at them. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to make the driving force behind content some kind of rewards system. PvE wealth has nothing to o with PvP, you can’t use PvE gear or anything purchased with gold in PvP (unless you count gem purchases, but ArenaNet wants you to spend real money on those) so it doesn’t make sense to rewards PvE wealth for a format that doesn’t use it. In WvW you have to acquire all the gear you use, if you want apothecary stats you have to pay out the kitten for it, if you want to try a new build you have to pay every time you retrait, if you die you have to pay repairs. WvW uses all the same systems as PvE, it makes sense that there are monetary rewards for it (nothing compared to grinding some of this month’s insane farms), none of that is true for PvP.

If sPvP is getting PvE rewards then they need to start requiring transmutation stones to change skins (a luxury currently enjoyed by WvW and PvE players), paying for retraits as well as repairs. Why are these things terrible suggestions? Because sPvP is on life support and they hurt it even more. The reality is, the reward are not the problem. There are countless competitive games out there that don’t have rewards or progression yet they remain incredibly popular. Currently sPvP enjoys a lot more rewards and progression than many far more popular competitive games. Cosmetic skins and different rank based finishers are more rewards than a lot of competitive games have. Why then is sPvP unpopular despite not needing rewards? Because people don’t care about playing it. They don’t want to play it. If they did, they would regardless of what items are or are not present. It’s the wrong decision to bait PvE players in sPvP simply because it’s more rewarding. If players wanted to sPvP, they would do so regardless of the rewards. Artificially inflating your games numbers by bribing player to play content they aren’t interested in is the wrong move (both in sPvP and PvE).

alcopaul.2156:

Errant Venture.9371:

alcopaul.2156:

GvG has to level up from the outdated and ancient gvg that is of gw1. WvWvW GvG 20-20 could work if they get their own instance and side objectives.

How is going from a complicated arena 8v8 system with multiple objectives (borrowing elements from deathmatch, ctf, base defense, conquest, etc) on large maps to a 20v20 deathmatch in a circle “leveling up”?

You can call it what you want but Gw1 GvG and the zergmatchs in WvW are two completely beasts that do not share any elements in common. Comparing the two modes is absolutely ridiculous (which is why it’s ridiculous to name the format in GW2 “GvG”)

its not complicated. what made it complicated is thakittens clunky, not user friendly though there were easy to run fotm gimmick builds such as iway. not fluid. you can’t even dodge. it’s based on the olden concept of trinity. you have to spike to kill. it’s formulaic. you have to perform a certain way to win. usually those who master this becomes the top team. if you look gw1 now, it’s filled with players who have played from when the top koreans and americans left. the skill ceiling aka “wasted time to master” is that high because it is not casual friendly.

wvwvw GvG is promising because it won’t be only death match if they are given their exclusive arena with secondary objectives. it could be zerg fest. but with secondary objectives, it will be played with splits or with tactics.

They can’t even get enough people to participate in a 5v5 tournament arena to have a healthy community, what makes you think they can get 40 people at any point in time to justify a zerg vs zerg arena? That arena sounds destined to die an early death. Players had trouble acquiring 8 people to put together a GvG team, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to put together a 20 man team, let alone how unlikely it is that you would have an opponent. An arena like that would essentially be dead for half of the day the moment it launched because outside of NA or EU prime time the numbers drop off dramatically. There is already an arena in the game that allows zergs to fight each other, it’s called WvW.

The only way I can see GvG returning in GW2 is if it’s done in the spirit of GW1’ GvG – smaller teams (5-10) with an invade/defend objective. The Legacy of the Foefire map just doesn’t go far enough. Real GvG has nothing to do with zerging. Best case scenario for Zerg Vs Zerg support coming to GW2 is some kind of in-game leaderboards, an actual arena (designed for 20 man teams) sounds like a disaster.

Let’s not forget, the devs aren’t able to balance the game for sPvP, WvW and PvE even with skill splits. There’s no way they could do it with a 20vs20 arena as well.

I don’t understand why ArenaNet would give players even more reason to bandwagon. You are already guaranteed easy coverage by being on one of the top servers, now you get real rewards for doing it? So if you choose to stay on a weaker server, you are fighting an uphill battle for coverage (and some weeks are complete wipes depending on the RNG) but now you also miss out on big rewards.

If you transfer now to SoR or BG (depending on which is showing as the strongest server, I haven’t paid attention lately) you stack on an already stacked server, you enjoy easy coverage and you get real rewards for stacking.

Why the slap in the face for weaker servers? Sure there might be one or two in the lower tiers that wins the lower leagues (assuming the RNG favoured them and placed them just below the higher league) but everyone else loses. Conversely, the top servers attract more players because your chances of winning first in a league are far higher on BG or SoR than they are on any other server.

And all of this is built on the fact that WvW is won by coverage. Why should any server be rewarded for coverage?

You can post an encyclopedia on how terribly designed ascended acquisition is in GW2 and every word of it could be objectively true and heralded as visionary in the MMO field and it wouldn’t make a kitten difference. The only thing that will impact on ascended item acquisition in GW2 is if people stop playing.

It’s clear that the biggest priority driving ArenaNet’s design this year is metrics. Just like how CNN will run the Miley Cyrus VMA story and give it top prominence on their site so they can boast to their advertisers and investors that they had lots of page views that day (and they milked it with an evolution of Miley Cyrus image gallery), ArenaNet will use every time gated trick in the “not fun but effective” book of kittenty MMO design to push their daily log in metrics. The two week low quality updates (some of them are great), the temporary content, it’s clear the company isn’t driven by a desire to create a revolutionary and great MMO, they want to push their metrics so the higher ups think they’re doing a good job. In ArenaNet’s eyes, 1,000 people playing the game because they absolutely love it and it’s the best experience being offered to them, that 1,000 people isn’t any where near as good as 10,000 people who may not be enjoying themselves but they are logging in every day to charge their quartz crystal or hit the “craft” or kill 10 rats for their daily.

My understanding is that a transmuted item is made up of two parts no matter how many times you transmute it. One is the skin and the other is the stats. If you preserved the legendary skin, there should be no reason why one of the two items you receive will not be the original legendary.

You can salvage your second set. Some of the crafting materials for ascended crafting are account bound and only come from salvaging exotics. I don’t think they could have come up with a more grind happy and tedious progressions system if Cristen Cox herself was involved.

Are you seriously complaining about an item that has all the cosmetic benefits prior to this update (and many new ones in the case of many legendaries) plus a huge functional benefit by giving them access to max stat versions of every ascended item of it’s type? Other players have to use up two weeks of time gated materials to craft a single stat type (and it looks incredibly expensive) yet legendary users have access to all of them.

They’ve broken then “aesthetic only” benefit of the legendary already – they are functionally superior to every other item in the game now, and you still want more?

Sins.4782:

If I may ask, Colin, is TA the highest on that revamp list? And, if not, which dungeon is?

If I had to guess, I would put CoF, SE, CoE or TA in the top four. The Living Story so far seems most closely related to the factions involved in those dugneons. The Molten Alliance touches on dredge and the Flame Legion so CoF and SE might be options. Scarlet has been involved with the Inquest in the past and asuran research is a big part of her history, so CoE could be a good fit. I only say TA because of Scarlet’s sylvari connection, she doesn’t appear to be a Nightmare Courtier but they might go down that road.

From a story perspective I suspect HotW, Arah and AC are less likely (AC also had its redesign). I can see CM as a possible option but it appears they have avoided that with the human plot so far, unless Kasmeer and Marjory get involved with that.

I wonder if they are prioritising it based on how badly a dungeon needs a redesign as opposed to how much the redesign fits in with the story they are trying to tell.

Nikaido.3457:

Why does the minority feel the need to be so vocal and invasive ? there has been many initiatives to try to get people like you to group together for these legendary no skip runs, most of these initiatives died out because nobody gave a kitten. You are a minority among the minorities, get it. The world doesn’t have to cater to your needs.

What makes you think they are a minority? The dungeon sub forum is dominated by a minority of posters and they are mostly a handful of speed clear people who consider themselves to be elite, in no way do they represent the majority of players.

The reality of a dungeon pug is that once a single person initiates a skip, the vast majority of the time either the whole group skips or the group disbands. Even if 4/5 people didn’t want a skip, unless it was strictly agreed upon (and even then not always) the whole group will skip or be left behind. No-one wants to be the 1/5 guy that didn’t run with the rest of the group and now they can’t make the run so the whole dungeon run stalls. The best way to avoid that is to skip with everyone else (and once two or three people have chosen to skip, you are looking at either creating a new group or you are skipping with everyone else). The fact that a dungeon group skips content is in no way an endorsement of the decision to skip.

I dislike how this Scarlet story seems to built around something that conflicts with the characterisation of the sylvari.

From the final part of the White Stag part of the personal story:

<Character name>: I’m honored to meet you, Mother Tree. I knew I had to protect the stag-I saw it my dream. Is that because of you?
Avatar of the Tree: No, dear heart. I do not control the Dream. I am simply it’s caretaker.

The same point is raised a couple other times in Caldeon Forest if you talk to all the other named sylvari NPCs. The Pale Tree doesn’t control the sylvari, she guides them. If you don’t want her guidance that’s a choice your free to make. There is another sylvari who talks “passionately” about the sylvari’s focus on the Elder Dragon, questions why they don’t focus on the immediate threats to the grove. The player character suggests to them it may be their Wyld Hunt to fight the immediate threats to the home of the sylvari. Freedom to choose what you do is a strong theme in the sylvari characterisation.

There are also sylvari who have disconnected themselves from the Dream – the Soundless. They too are free to make that choice. Apparently they can reach a state where they don’t even hear the Pale Tree any more.

Even the Nightmare isn’t it’s own thing, it’s just a part of the dream – it’s the name the sylvari give to the “darkest” parts of the dream.

The illusion that the sylvari live predetermined lives is just that – an illusion. I have no idea why it’s supposedly a big part of Scarlet’s characterisation (I assume I’m misunderstanding the short story because it seems at odds with what the game told me of the sylvari). I honestly don’t know what Scarlet’s goal or motivation is, but it’s not to free the sylvari from a predetermined destiny – they already have that freedom.

Atlas.9704:

locoman.1974:

Well, there’s also the soundless, a group of sylvari that decided to separate themselves from the pale tree and the dream but without succumbing to the nightmare (and actually, some choose to do that because they fear the nightmare that sometimes creeps its way into the dream).

True but currently the Soundless, to me at least, are the ‘weaker’ faction within the Sylvari. They do tend to go their own way and that is admirable, but they are also constantly harassed by the Nigthmare Court more because they are that vulnerable.

At least that’s what I took away from it within my time in the Forest doing hearts and talking to the NPCs.

Scarlet’s actions could be lumped in with the Soundless, but in a more aggressive manner. If anything she could recruit them because you can fight the nightmare and go your own way without succumbing to it.

The soundless aren’t weaker, they are just more vulnerable. They are born into the world with the same advantages as other sylvari (they still dream before awakening) just they choose to go out on their own. The Weeping Isle where they live is outside the borders of the Warden’s protection. The Soundless aren’t protected by the other sylvari and that’s why they are more vulnerable (it doesn’t help that they are so close to a Nightmare Court encampment). If the Lion Guard keeping the trade routes in the area had finished building their haven, they’d have more time to protect the area and the Soundless. The Soundless live on the front lines and so they are attacked more often, to call them weaker than the sylvri in the protection of the grove would be like calling the humans that live in Kessex Hills weaker than the humans that live in Divinity’s Reach.

The Soundless remind me people who move out of home and live without the support or aid of their parents compared to those who still live at home.

Uther Deathhand.1570:

timidobserver.7925:

I am tired of the time gated crap. Why do they keep coming up with ideas that nobody likes….

Cause they have to keep us playing the game for a long time. Some people just want to get the highest level stuff and usually burn themselves out. This way people don’t burn out. So you can always go hit up WvW which is basically my end game.

Then make a game that players want to play because it’s fun, not because there is some time gated mechanic holding them back or temporary content they don’t want to miss out on

Respect your consumers enough to appeal to them through good gameplay, not manipulative design mechanics which encourage them to play for the wrong reasons.

Quality doesn’t matter. The metrics matter. They can have players running around doing tedious “press f” achievements every two weeks and incentivise players to participate in content not because they enjoy it, but because it’s temporary, and that will boost their weekly log in metrics a lot more easily than trying to make top quality content.

A lot of days it feels like making great content is incidental to keeping the players on the hamster wheel. It’s great if it happens and a lot of the devs are striving to do that, but the biggest priority is to time gate things, to create filler content and time sensitive content to keep up that weekly log ins metric.

They’ve put out a lot of content this year but how much of it makes you as excited about the game as you were before launch? How of much of the content this year made you want to tell someone who didn’t play “hey look at this cool thing Guild Wars 2 just released, you should join me”. I think to a certain extent SAB did this (while ironically not being a fundamental part of what an MMO is), but aside from that most of the excitement about this year’s releases was over the quantity, not the quality.

Uther Deathhand.1570:

Nar.8327:

Grump.7069:

Sorry but ascended weaponry will be a requirement if you don’t wanna lag behind others in WvW… It’s already bad enough you can feel slightly hampered being in exotic trinkets if your enemy has ascendeds… Imagine if the gap is enlarged by weapons as well which are the biggest chunk of effectiveness when it comes to gear.

I have eight characters with multiple weapon sets. Even if I were to fork over 50 bucks for enough transmutation crystals to keep their looks (which I’m not happy about), the time-gating component means that it’s going to take an eternity just to get my characters up to par again.

What about this was supposed to be fun, exactly?

I know alt-aholism is a terrible disease to have in this game. Just another update that shafts us…….. if you want we have meetings in LA. The Tyrian AA, that being alt-aholics anonymous.

Now I know what ArenaNet means when they say GW2 is a AAA MMO. It’s Alt Aholics Anonymous. An MMO where the developers design so aggressively to punish you from playing alts, playing it for any period of time will cure you of your desire to have multiple characters.

Ascended items are increased grind/progression for the game. It exists to create the illusion of more content and to wedge in a new tier of gear that is time gates. They want to make players feel like doing something they’ve already done is a new or rewarding experience. To do this they create repetitive grind to acquire ascended items. To prevent players from working hard to acquire them and possibly being done with the game sooner, they time gate them to draw the process out as much as possible.

Agony is for fractals, not ascended items. Agony resistance could have been added to anything.

Sieg.8439:

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

How dare ANet bring back SAB for those who loved it! Grab your pitchforks, folks!

This.
Jesus, ANet brings back what is probably the most liked piece of content, updated with new rewards and people still complain.

I’m going to put on my super negative kitten hat for this one (it’s a notch up from my usual negativity).

Guild Wars 2 is a current gen, “AAA” active combat MMO that boasted dynamic events and challenging combat and an epic story. The fact that people are saying that an April Fools joke piece of content which is a rip off of 8 bit graphics and yesteryear Nintendo games is the most liked piece of content, that’s a truly pathetic reflection on the quality of the Living Story (I don’t believe this is the case). I don’t agree that it’s the most liked piece of content, it’s the most polarising and the most flamboyant, but I don’t think it’s the most liked. It’s unusual and thus draws more attention and it doesn’t compete with superior existing content (nothing else in the game is like it, so when people have a bad experience with it they don’t have superior exisiting content to compare it to, the rest of the Living World is competing with existing content, a lot of which is a lot more polished).

This is an MMO. This isn’t the new Legend of Zelda RPG, it’s not the latest Mario Brothers, it’s not Banjo and Kazooie 3 – if you want to play those type of games, they exist in other genres. It’s an active combat MMO. There is a place for SAB in the game but if SAB ever becomes the best piece of content GW2 makes, somewhere along the lines people forgot what GW2 was supposed to be.

If SAB is the best content the Living World has put out, it’s time for them to do some serious thinking about what it is they are doing and the kind of game they are trying to make.

codingCaptor.9428:

I’d personally rather have a villain or enemy that is pseudo relateable, vs. the “oooh we’re big and dark and scary because that’s just how the world works” That is the dragons.
Scarlet might fit that, if they continue with the backstory they posted for her. Or she might just be lame. I’m waiting to see.

As for this content… It’s 2 weeks of SAB. I’m willing to put the story on hold for 2 weeks for more jumping and fun themed content.

I mean, people want more SAB, so they have to find some time to release it. Now is as good a time as any. Serves as kind of a breather episode between major plot points.

I would argue that Ceara is the character in the story. Once she takes on the identity of Scarlet she seems to lose a lot of what makes Ceara an interesting character. Ceara is searching for something, Scarlet has seen the Eternal Alchemy. She isn’t searching for answers any more, she thinks she has found them and they appear to have made her crazy.

I think Clockwork Chaos should be the indicator for most people. That’s the level of story telling they want to put forward, that’s the type of characters and consequences they want to have. They set the bar. They could have killed a major character and raised the stakes, instead they killed some nameless NPCs. Whatever you think of Scarlet, it would appear she is the nemesis.

I think at this point, for your own sanity, it’s probably best to accept that the standard we’ve seen so far is where the Living Story is aiming at. Some people like it and are happy, some people are not (there are a lot of people who like Scarlet and the events happening in the Living Story). I doubt the Living Story will deviate much from we’ve seen so far.

Molch.2078:

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Maybe anet should just GIVE ascended weapon for you?

Yes. Why not. I don’t want to work in a frigging game to play the actual frigging game.

Emptying out your bank of materials and syphoning your gold into the TP to sit at a crafting table every day isn’t my ideal version of playing the game. Unless ascended crafting utilises completely new crafting resources that are unrelated to existing ones (and it’s possible this will be the case as far as I know), this goes against the stated design of ascended gear “to ensure we have a proper progression for players from Exotic up to Legendary”. It’s not progression when the resources are the same, that’s competition. Players pointed out that the ascended back item recipes directly competed with legendary acquisition and one of the devs commented that they agreed and were looking at that. From what I’ve seen, nothing has been done about that.

Let’s be honest here. You aren’t going out to slay a dragon here. You’re not exploring some dark dungeon or uncovering lost treasures. You’re standing at a crafting table every day. Obtaining the materials might involve playing the game (it’s been stated that jumping puzzles and mini dungeons will award the new crafting mats – you can do this for a level 400 recipe though), but actually levelling up a crafting profession doesn’t add gameplay, it just gates you from level 500 and drains resources on the way there.

What items of value will you be making between level 400 and 500 that justifies adding 100 new levels? Is it really just for a time gated levelling process? What gameplay experience does that add to the game?

It’s also sad to see that ArenaNet have abandoned the “play how you want” model. Exotic gear was obtained from the TP, purchased with karma, dungeon tokens or badges and you could even craft it. You could opt out of any of those methods and still obtain your equipment (accessories were the exception for a long time). Now, if you want ascended weapons, you have to craft. There doesn’t appear to be a way around it.

I don’t understand why crafting is getting 100 new levels just for ascended gear. What exactly is it we are supposed to craft for 100 levels? We can already make level 80 exotics at level 400. Why is there a need for players to grind 100 more levels before they can craft a level 80 ascended item? It just seems like grind for the sake of grind.

I think the real problem is that a lot of the Living Story content is a) temporary and b) full of filler content. Running around the world to press f a thousand times isn’t content. It takes a lot of time, but it’s not content. Doing existing jumping puzzles with nothing new but a token location you have to reach (and normally would in the process of that puzzle) is filler and uneccessary. I could understand if there was a new element added to puzzles or dungeons, but they are just filler. The mini game achievements are nonsense. The Southsun Survivor high score one was absolutely silly. It was just a grind achievement – and the worst part is it was removed from the permanent rotating version. You had to complete it within the two weeks of the game being around, which is just silly.

If they removed a lot of the filler content and had a lot more permanent content the Living Story would be a lot more manageable for people. Take this current content for example. If it’s necessary for people to stop an invasion on 13 different maps, why is it necessary for people to do it in these two weeks? If the invasions are sticking around (but less frequently) why not allow them to finish the achievements any time?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Aedelric.1287:

You left your `Lord´ Faren and Marjory Delaqua.

I think these two represent the approach Arena Net have had with the two sexes in the Living Story, it paints the picture exceptionally well. Which is why we need a better more relatable male character introduced in the future.

Obviously not to take away from any female character, but in addition to them.

Really? Huh, Lord Faren was in the Personal Story (Human Noble). Disqualified, thank you

Marjory Delaqua and Lady Kasmeer Meade barely registered to me at all, but if you insist? Marjory was interesting as a necromancer investigating murders by asking the dead questions. Which seems like something you’d have seen earlier in Tyria, but . . .

Kasmeer barely registered because she’s like that vase of flowers in my front hall. Pretty, but has absolutely zero impact on anything. You might as well list one of the Vigil crusaders with a name who has no purpose other than to be a training dummy or sell things as a character in the game.

The topic is the portrayal of males in the Living Story. I don’t discount anyone for appearing in the Personal Story (or in a book) but I am specifically looking at their portrayals in the Living Story. Rytlock, Logan, Anise, Jennah and Faren all count, but I’m only considering the way they’ve been written for the Living Story. I’m also considering prominence in the Living Story (maybe it’s just a long time since Flame and Frost but I believe Logan to be more prominent than Rytlock due to heavily being featured in the Queen’s Jubilee while Rytlock has appeared a few times, it’s only as exposition). Events which take place prior to the Living Story (such as Logan and Rytlock’s relationship or Logan’s decision to abandon Destiny’s Edge to aid the queen) I will bring up but only if they specifically reflect on something in the Living Story. For exmaple, the recurring theme in Logan’s actions and decisions involving the queen which a better story probably would have shown character growth from, but the writers have the character repeat the same mistakes instead. I get that good characters have flaws, but no-one wants to see the same flaw appear and being prominently featured in significant events yet the character doesn’t grow from them.

Grey Warden.2983:

Shiren.9532:

My concern with using ascended gear as the hero to inflation is that it will exclude people who didn’t farm the gold. If the idea is that all this gold is going to go somewhere, how are players, who didn’t participate in any of the farms, going to keep up with the players who did? They are going to have a much harder time competing in the new economy.

Why are you concerned about anyone else who did not participate in any of the “farms”? If they did the gauntlet, pie chart or the invasion they participated in the farms. If they didn’t log in and play or they did…anything else, they already have a hard time in any “economy” and it is their own fault and nothing what so ever to you.
Again, why do you care?

Because I’m allowed to care about other people? Because I myself didn’t farm the events. I actively played the game during the time of all of these farms but I’m not a grinder, I can’t stand it. I got bored of the emberfarm after two runs, I got bored of the Pavilion on the first day, I got bored of the Subject 7 farm after 10-15 minutes. I made a small fraction of what people I know made this month. I dread the day I have to compete with these people for resources I want.

I doubt it. The first place achievement for Sanctum Sprint never returned so I don’t see why the dungeon ones will. They seem intent on making these things time limited to push the daily log in metrics. Do them now or never do them at all. The priority is to pressure you to always be playing, not to allow you to what you want when you want to do it.

Kagamiku.9731:

This is way less gold then what could be made with the gambit farm, and about the same as the Forstgorge champion farm. And with ascended gear (this will drastically increase the cost of t6 mats, however) right around the corner and the Gem Store sales..I doubt there will be much inflation.

Also, the champion mobs drop more than just gold. They drop T6 mats as well as rares and exotics. This curbs inflation because there is more of that stuff on the market to be sold. And judging by the market price of things, I don’t see the “general rise in most market goods” you’re talking about.

Too much farm. People complaing. Not enough farm. People complain. There just is no winning is there.

My concern with using ascended gear as the hero to inflation is that it will exclude people who didn’t farm the gold. If the idea is that all this gold is going to go somewhere, how are players, who didn’t participate in any of the farms, going to keep up with the players who did? They are going to have a much harder time competing in the new economy.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Theftwind.8976:

It is interesting to note that after reading the OP’s thread the first thing the wife said was "Why is it ok to portray all the females in the game as “battle bunnies” then? Face it in this game or any other females are portrayed sexually while males are portrayed comically. Blame it on the target audience for the game.

All the females? My current guild leader actually has very concealing and not sexualized armor (last I actually saw her main).

If you’re talking NPCs I’m not going to get into that, as I think Ellen Kiel in the Inspector outfit wasn’t very sexualized either.

Edit: Yeah, not really sexual

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/89/Inspector_Ellen_Kiel.jpg

I agree Keil could be more sexualised than she is, but she is wearing make up and she is fairly attractive with boob plate armour (in a sense, it was a default choice because she is a Lion Guard). If a character is going to claim he high ground in my books they need to go the Brienne route. That’s a female character that earns the right to be considered as not sexualised. One of the reasons why I like Brienne is that her gender is part of her identity and it makes her story a lot more compelling to me (this same story might not work as well in GW2). I personally would have liked to see Kiel more feminine (and said so at the time) not because I need my female characters to be feminine, but because that would have given her something. Personally I think she is rubbish and forgettable – a glorified quest giver. She doesn’t need to have a battle against sexism to be her cliché role in the story (Beckett from the TV series Castle avoids this trope fairly well), but that would have been more interesting than her “nothing” story.

I shouldn’t focus too much on Kiel though. That conversation has past and I’d just like to forget about her now.

Now I’ve learnt a lot about sexism and the fight for equality from the media I consume. I was a huge Whedon fan and the guy is supposed to be some kind of feminist so much so that when asked “So, why do you write these strong female characters?” he responded with "Because you’re still asking me that question.”. I watched Buffy and Xena, Motoko from Ghost in the Shell, Balsa from Seirei no Moribito and now I’m watching Aria Stark in Game of Thrones. Maybe it’s because I don’t subscribe to the belief of the “male privilege” or “benevolent sexism” neither which appear to be problems in GW2 (certainly not in the Living Story) and because of their abstract nature they are difficult to naturally identify. In fact, you could argue that Logan’s drive to protect Jennah, a woman he loves, is the story’s way of poorly portraying an example of benevolent sexism while at the same time allowing a woman to be successful at the same role. A belief in benevolent sexism is probably why so few strong female characters show femininity – because to do so would probably promote a kind of sexism. Too often it feels like a manifestation of a feminist agenda and not a strong, fluid and believable story. When I read the Kalla Scorchrazor story it felt like some feminist fantasy, like a mechanical construction to be politically correct. It’s as if a writer said to themselves “here is an opportunity for me to write a feminist character” and not “this is the best way to tell this story in the world I’m writing for”. The same when I read that the racial villains of both the norn and the charr are supposed to think of women as inferior. A designer doesn’t write it that way unless they want to make the connection between sexism and villains. I can understand – to an extent – the Flame Legion, but the Sons of Svanir always seemed confusing to me. Why would a faction that came from a culture that has Eir and Jora as their biggest heroes look down upon women? You can choose to believe that it’s because Jora killed their namesake (her brother Svanir) but I find it more believable that the writers saw it as another way to fit sexism into the story.

In a world where there is supposed to be little to no difference between a man and a woman (aside from biology) and it wouldn’t make sense to have a story deal with discrimination towards Ellen Kiel or Rox for fighting on the front lines, that same world sure doesn’t seem to have a problem showing sexism to be almost exclusive to male dominance over females in the form of the Flame Legion and the Sons of Svanir. Are the writers trying to tell us there is something inherently evil in men that causes them to become sexist or was it simply an oversight in their story telling agenda where they had their cake and ate it as well.

I don’t believe a story should be reduced to a numbers game. I will often argue for a sylvari protagonist in the Living Story and I will express disappointment at yet another human, not because I think the Living Story heroes need to be equally diverse but because I really like the sylvari culture and I want to see more of it. I still believe that forcing one of each race into a team simply for diversity and representation can result in a weaker story. It’s OK that there is a queen instead of a king. It’s OK that that the charr seem to remove the cultural differences between males and females (although it’s ironic that Kristen Perry argued 6-8 boobs – can’t remember exactly how many – or no boobs because it’s more believable, yet my understanding is that in nature, the female of the big cat species is commonly fairly maternal yet the charr dump their cubs in daycare to allow the females back on the front lines). It’s OK that Destiny’s Edge had more female members (Snaff technically counts but he never made it into the game, I personally see him as the character that was created to die) than male members. I understand that when telling a story, it’s more than a numbers game. I don’t think it’s OK when you have an obvious agenda in the writing, to suddenly swap everything is around. If you are writing for equality, you have to write for both genders, not just the one you’re trying to raise up. I don’t believe the Living Story is doing that.

marnick.4305:

Shiren.9532:

The Living Story is littered with female empowerment plots, unfortunately one of the most commonly used ones is the poor portrayal of male characters as a mechanism to make the females look good. I like it when stories have powerful female characters, but I resent when it’s done at the expense of male characters.

For two thousand years a book with male empowerment plots has dominated our culture. Now there’s a story with a few females in the lead, and suddenly all hell breaks loose?

You only perceive it to be that way because you’re not used to females in power, neither in stories nor in real life. Magnus is the leader of LA, and last time I checked he was still male. A lot of dungeon bosses are males (eg Adelbern). The entire Sons of Svanir plot revolves around male empowerment. Where were you with the personal story being all about males succeeding? The dungeon story is about destiny’s edge and that’s mostly about Rytlock and Logan reconciling. Logan looks far more masculine in that story while Caithe is the love sick girl. Did I hear you complain back then?

Just cherry picking a few in the Living Story doesn’t make this a bad thing. Maybe the next plot is all about a man rescuing an 8 bit princess in distress. I’m waiting for your thread complaining about that story having male supremacy themes.

So your strategy is an eye for an eye? You recognise something is bad and then do it to other people because it was done to someone else? That’s a real progressive way to think. Guild Wars has always had a female empowerment angle yet Guild Wars 2 and specifically the Living Story is taking it all the way to the extreme. You say I cherry picked examples, I think I covered every significant character in the Living Story (otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to go in so much about Magnus/Rytlock/Evon/Canach).

Evans.6347:

While objectively you have a point, I’m under the impression you’re looking too far into this.

I wrote that post after doing the Funhouse instance and watching the Logan and Anise exchange. I’ve been conscious of a lot of these kinds of themes appearing for a while now and at times I liked it, but the balance shifted to a point where I became uncomfortable about it. Traditionally MMOs wouldn’t have a female queen, certainly not born into the role. It always seemed very deliberate to me that Jennah was a Queen and not a King.

I recently watched a video interview at Gamescom with three people at ArenaNet and one of them mentioned if they had a good idea they pitched it to either Colin or Kristen. I knew Colin was important but I had no idea Kristen Perry (one of the artists) was so important so I looked it up and it turns out there is another Kristen at ArenaNet who was recently hired and she’s one of the senior producers.

She writes this on her blog:

More of the negative interactions than you care to admit are due to gender and benevolent sexism. I know why you don’t believe it now – it’s what you have to do to survive. Remember when mom said, “I can’t allow myself to think that way. It would drag me down.” I completely understand, but you will learn this eventually and once you get in a position of leadership you’re going to want to change it.

Erukk.1408:

I would like to know this as well. In between people being for or against Scarlet, and them farming champs in invasions, it would seem that most people forgot there was suppose to be an important speech in this patch. One that was suppose to contain a big surprise…

And I doubt the Queen gathered everyone together just to say, “I brought you here today, because there is going to be a Sylvari supervillain attacking in 5…4…3…2..”.

Given the way that the Living Story has been going so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is exactly the case.

No, there is just a heavy feminist (not the good kind of feminist, the kind that likes to tear down men) element in the writing team that likes to write fantasy’s about empowered women and subservient men.

Anise and Jennah are just manifestations of the writer’s fantasy, Logan’s portrayal is just a tool used to make Anise and Jennah look good.

Glad to see the dye kits make a return. If this turns out to be true, I guess when Colin says they want to protect an investment made by players (in the form of the molten jet pack or the monocle) he meant as long as it didn’t clash with their ability to make more money.

Esplen.3940:

Shiren.9532:

She seems like the typical Nightare Courtier without a respect or need for authority or a specific focus on the Dream vs the Nightmare. Aside from that, she doesn’t seem that different from the Nightmare Court. Ceara is actually a lot more interesting than Scarlet.

Ceara is Scarlet…

I know, but her identity as Ceara was a lot more interesting than Scarlet. Scarlet seems to be evil just because, Ceara had a thirst for knowledge, an inquisitive nature, a drive and her journey, the answers she was seeking were a lot more interesting than “Die, die, die, die die”. Scarlet seems like a little girl with some powerful toys and she’s chucking a tantrum. Aside from Scarlet and her minions trying to kill people, there doesn’t feel like there is anything else going on. I don’t know why they are fighting and I don’t feel like I’m stopping something bigger than a simple bandit attack most of the time.

Demented Sheep.1642:

Brutalistik.6473:

Whenever they want to focus on the asura and charr models for armor or if they got time. They really need to have different armor sets for the asura and charr females. Regardless of their anatomy it should be a bit diverse between the two genders because every other race besides those 2 have different set armors for each gender. That’s their first step into versatility and then they can focus on armor clipping issues, animation and just plain better looking armors for the 2 races.

I don’t agree, at least not where the Charr are concerned because they don’t really seem to have much difference between gender culturally. The women fill the same roles as the men and they are a practical solider race with the emphasis more on cohesive groups rather than individuality. No need for the armor to be different.

A lot of female charr players want their armour to be more feminine. It’s why you see so many female charr and asura running around in the TA armour – because the male version looks like a dress.

At some point there has to be a compromise between what is practical and what players want. There is a reason that boob plate armour exists, and it’s not because it’s practical.

But yeah, ArenaNet can’t complain about the charr being unpopular when all the armour in the game was designed for human body types. Unless you’re a heavy charr, your options are slim, and if you’re a medium charr… well good luck. Trenchcoats look awful on charr and the clipping issues show that almost no effort was put into making the armour fit the race – especially when it’s racial armour.

When new armour comes out I really hope ArenaNet stops trying to fit charr into the mold of the humans and starts designing armour specifically for the charr. If the achievement point armour is anything to go by though, it’s time to reroll. It’s going to get a lot worse from here. I recently made the painful decision to reroll my charr ranger simply because I got kitten ed off with every armour set in the game looking like crud on him and being limited to a handful of options.