Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

All of the permanent “content” mentioned are quality of life improvements. They aren’t new things to do in the game, they are polishes done to existing permanent things. All of the new content in this patch appears to be temporary, right after a blog post you made talked about more permanent stuff. Even the press previews from Guild Wars 2 Hub seemed unhappy and confused as to why the content is temporary. Halloween makes sense as an annual festival, the Zephyr Sanctum makes sense as a returning event, the solo gameplay challenges (with an apparently high skill cap) in a permanent part of the world just seem silly to remove.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

It’s like watching someone move in two directions at once and wonder why they are making it nowhere. I’m not sold on the value of removing the instanced story content from the game. I understand the open world stuff has to go, but the instanced stuff (Rox and Braham missions, the dungeons) were no different from Personal Story or Story Mode dungeons. The only reason I can see why this stuff gets removed is to pressure players to play now instead of whenever they want, something you said the GW2 business model didn’t promote (from the “Is it Fun?” blog. "But what if your business model isn’t one based on a subscription, and your content-design motivations aren’t driven by creating mechanics to keep people playing as long as possible? ". I also like “Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content to draw out the experience?” because it doesn’t describe the snowman/pumpkin/dragon effigy/kite basket/balloon mechanic at all.

timidobserver.7925:

The Dev Post in this thread is really good. It is amazing that some people are still complaining. IMO, his post resolves the thread.

The post repeats what was said in a blog from the same dev before the contents of this patch were revealed to be temporary. Look at it this way, the guy says we hear your complaints, you don’t like so much temporary content, we are going to make more permanent content, and the very next patch is revealed to be full of temporary content.

Shiren.9532:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The Royal Terrace will be a thing, but it’s not the thing you think it is.

Sounds like a gem store/promotional convenience item intended to be used similair to how people currently use WvW. Go there to do all your banking, trading, travelling etc.

Royal Terrace

New microtransaction they are testing out. Special VIP area right next to the Crown Pavilion designed for rich folks who can afford to buy temporary passes to this area. Area has alot of convenience features such as crafting stations, mystic forge etc. Basically a place for all the rich players to hang out.

phiplayer.2865:

Shiren.9532:

phiplayer.2865:

I think, that grind problem is not game fault, but players. We have the habit to bend game rules to get max profit. Game can’t really change our characters and habits ;__;
With time we will manage to milk as much as we can.

It’s fight with the windmills.

You won’t solve this problem, as long as we won’t play fair.
People want to change the world, instead of changing themself. I think that is the main problem with todays people.

Players aren’t accumulating gold for the fun of it. Usually it’s because they want to buy something with it. If acquiring items and rewards was naturally built into gameplay instead of relying on tremendous gold grinds to acquire it over the trading post, players wouldn’t feel the need to grind. They could acquire the items by playing the game. Instead, we have RNG rare drops and crazy grinds to acquire end game items. Players don’t see reasonable pathways to acquire the items by playing the game the intended way, so they resort to grinding efficient farms to make item acquisition realistic.

The system encourages and requires grind if you want to participate in item acquisition.

I disagree. People will ALWAYS want to grind to get max profit in a lot less time then the others who plays normally. Whatever the goal for grind would be. I think you have too much faith in humanity ^^. And I don’t like your statement that it’s game’s fault. Even when there would be a game that encourages you to do events, wich gives you better rewards than grind, also blocking any exploits – it would take away freedom from players. And they would surly leave this game, because doing normal events like the others do, would be very boring for them. Just giving legendary weapon makes it not really legendary. If you are saying that way to aquire rare items it too much grinded, that let me state that if Anet would want to only concentrate on getting legendary weapon, they would make another game, based around it. Work went on other stuff. Sorry, can’t have everything.

It’s like Game Dev Tycoon. You cant have best story/engine/graphic at the same time. Something must be a bit lower then the others.

And again, game doesn’t encourages you to grind. You can play this game normally, and still get legendary. But with a loooot more time, then with grinding.

The point would be that instead of farming dungeons for gold (in which case all parts of the game are competing with each other for the best method to access gold) gold is removed as the common value item. Arah armour has a set value because it can only be obtained in Arah. You can’t run CoF or AC in the easiest path every day obtain it, you have to run Arah.

If a player is running CoF for money to buy lodestones, it would make more sense to make lodestones reliable drops from specific dungeons (or purchases with dungeon tokens) to give players a way to obtain those items as drops in the game. They wouldn’t have to circumvent the system and farm Orr or easy mode dungeons, they would be running specific dungeon content to earn their rewards. Different dungeons could possess different crafting materials and item rewards. Players who want Kudzu would be farming TA, players who want Incinerator would be farming CoF. Different paths could be rewarded differently (similair to how the gold rewards will vary based on path length and difficulty). This would spread players out across the world and give them specific content to complete to obtain items instead of encouraging them to find the path of least resistance to the most reward and repeat that until their eyes bleed. Gold could still be a lesser component of item acquisition (or an optional alternative) but it wouldn’t be the be-all end-all of the item hunt. Content itself would actually be rewarding. Generalising rewards across the game reinforces the grind the path of least resistance mentality, resulting in parts of the world devoid of players. Content specific rewards are great for reinforcing the value of all content.

Erasculio.2914:

Kain Francois.4328:

To be honest, I really want to see Queen Jenna killed because Moncarchy is stupid in modern day Tyria.

I hope you won’t go to England any time soon, I fear for the Queen.

(And yes, England isn’t a monarchy, but Tyria has a system of elected representatives as well, not unlike a parliament.)

Technically she’s the Queen of other countries as well, although similair to the UK it’s just as a figure head. Technically she has power (in Australia, her representative has to recognise the elected Prime Minister for their position to be official and when the election is called, the Prime Minister has to visit the Queen’s representative) but that’s mostly just tradition.

Regardless, Jennah isn’t just a figurehead in Tyria (although sometimes she could be seen as a puppet of the Order of Whispers), she has real power and she exercises it. The Queen of England is just a figurehead, the Queen of Kryta has real power. I’m not intimately familiar with the Krytan system, but it sounds like it’s similair to the American system, where the president holds the power, but there is a balance of power held by elected officials. Unlike the American president, the Krytan Queen is never elected.

Regardless, it’s bizarre that the pirates are more democratic than the human nation.

If anything, we will probably get a cinematic of the balloon landing after a loading screen.

phiplayer.2865:

I think, that grind problem is not game fault, but players. We have the habit to bend game rules to get max profit. Game can’t really change our characters and habits ;__;
With time we will manage to milk as much as we can.

It’s fight with the windmills.

You won’t solve this problem, as long as we won’t play fair.
People want to change the world, instead of changing themself. I think that is the main problem with todays people.

Players aren’t accumulating gold for the fun of it. Usually it’s because they want to buy something with it. If acquiring items and rewards was naturally built into gameplay instead of relying on tremendous gold grinds to acquire it over the trading post, players wouldn’t feel the need to grind. They could acquire the items by playing the game. Instead, we have RNG rare drops and crazy grinds to acquire end game items. Players don’t see reasonable pathways to acquire the items by playing the game the intended way, so they resort to grinding efficient farms to make item acquisition realistic.

The system encourages and requires grind if you want to participate in item acquisition.

lordkrall.7241:

And do you actually NEED these rewards to play the game?
If not I would say the issue is non-existent.

At some point you have to ask yourself what does “play the game” mean to you? For many people, the limitations created by daily mechanics, they are limiting their ability to play the game.

Kaleston.5671:

You see I don’t agree entirely. Charr were made ultimate evil wanting to destroy humans, yet now they are “friends”. Abbadon was made “an evil” god, yet he brought magic to people (sorta Prometheus style).

I’m not “current” with my Abaddon lore when it comes to his time before GW1 so I won’t comment on that, but the charr I kind of agree with. It’s one of the reasons why you won’t see me criticise the charr as a race for being boring. Unfortunately, we aren’t dealing with the charr (specifically anyway), we are dealing with Jennah. She doesn’t posses shades of grey.

Kaleston.5671:

Dragons are destruction, death etc. etc., yet in some cases they are compared to forces of nature. “Is a storm evil because it destroys stuff and kills people?”.

That sounded really cool until I played the story. Then I realised that an enemy that doesn’t think, doesn’t have motivations or reasons for it’s actions, it doesn’t have a background story to expose to understand why things are the way they are. It’s just powerful and destructive and we have to stop it… that’s not a very interesting enemy at all. Every time I complain about the Living Story having nothing to do with the Elder Dragons, the fact that they are “Forces of Nature” devoid of anything that would make them interesting villains is always at the back of my mind.

Kaleston.5671:

I personaly think, Queen Jennah is yet to show her true strength. She seem very capable politician if nothing else. If you wanna see what politicians are capable of, go watch Game of Thrones

This isn’t an attack on GW2 writing (I do enough of that) but I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to Game of Thrones. That show is known for it’s ability to be dark and gritty, with villains that become heroes and heroes who lose. If Jennah were in Game of Thrones, she would have been killed long ago. Game of Thrones has a way of making you root for or at least sympathise with enemy. Sometimes it’s not even clear who the enemy is. The closest the Living Story came to that was Canach, yet we still had to have our hands held by Kiel who makes everything comfortable and clean for us in the end. Guild Wars 2 tries to be clean and sanitised. I think that limits the stories from achieving what Game of Thrones does each week.

One of the most compelling war stories I’ve ever read had a heroic character who was leading his people in a civil war. There was a better life for them on the other side of the war, but to get to it they had to kill a lot of their country’s own people and they would lose a lot of his own allies, always with the chance they would fail. People who put their lives in his hands, who trusted him to be their saviour were going to die. One of the most interesting things the leader said when talking to the enemy general was that he was going to go to hell for what he did. He didn’t regret his actions, but his war inflicted death and suffering upon the same people he swore to protect and fight for, he considered it a sin that couldn’t be forgiven. Jennah might not be killing the people herself, but as the queen she is responsible for their deathkitten

inz.6915:

Maybe now but the treaty is still pretty fragile. Its due to both Smolder and Jennah’s efforts that the treaty is working. At best, Caudecus will leave it alone but its likely that he will withdraw Krytan support for efforts against the EDs who he doesn’t seem to consider a major threat to Kryta (so the Order of Whispers says). He would also probably start looking to building up Kryta’s military strength, self interests and be less open to negociation. This would almost certainly be looked at badly by the charr.

So who’s ruling Kryta? Jennah or the Order of Whispers? I’m obviously missing a lot of information on Caudecus because while I played the Order of Whispers story in the game (and helped Demi) I have no idea where people are getting Caudecus’s political leanings when it comes to Elder Dragons. Last time I checked, Kryta wasn’t a big player in the war with Zhaitan. It was the Pact doing all the work. Caudecus doesn’t strike me as a coward or a stupid man, he’s actually very clever and knows how to identify opportunities that benefit him. If he’s willing to work with the centaurs and the bandits, why wouldn’t he work with the charr?

Ultimately it comes down to what the writers want to write. They want Jennah to be the good queen, this much has been forced on us with convenient political alliances to reinforce that fact. They want Caudecus to be the shady villain that we can’t quite pin down. This has been one of the more compelling GW2 plots. They also want us to believe that Jennah is necessary for the charr/human treaty to take place. For as long as the writer holding the pen has decided that’s the case, it doesn’t matter that other options exist. The writer is god.

Lutinz.6915:

Wrong. Destiny’s Edge were on a mission to kill Glint because they had been informed that she was trying to awaken Kralkatorik (They were obviously wrong). Logan never had left to fight a ED. He’d left to fight a Dragon Champion. She had no idea he or any of Destiny’s Edge were planning to ambush Kralkatorik or that they had Glints aid.

Infact, considering Kralkatorik had woken up it could be strongly argued that their actual mission had already failed.

It’s been a long time since I read Edge of Destiny. Fighting an Elder Dragon’s Champion isn’t much better than an Elder Dragon, the end result is still Jennah calling him away from his team when she knew they were in the field of battle (and I could be wrong on this, but didn’t Kralkatorrik fly past Jennah and in the direction that Destiny’s Edge was known to have headed to take on Glint?). The stakes might be lower to just kill a champion (and I’ve personally fought Glint, she’s not that hard) but it’s still a big deal.

Lutinz.6915:

Kralkatorik’s death would have just as likely lead to the races dismissing the threat of the Elder Dragons. Considering that Logan and Rytlock had already made great fame killing Dragon champions.

Also your ignoring who would replace Jennah and even if the Charr did suddenly turn around and favor peace with the humans the humans certianly wouldnt be looking for peace.

The Pact and the Vigil would also have had a hard time forming. For a start, even if the Charr leadership still supported the idea of a unified approach to the EDs (after all if 7 people could kill and ED, why would the Charr need extra help to fight them) theres very little chance that Kryta would except them setting up anywhere near human territory, particularly with a charr in charge.

I don’t buy that. The only reason Destiny’s Edge had a chance to kill Kralkatorrik was because they had Glint’s aid. It wasn’t seven people, it was seven people and an ancient and powerful dragon champion who was intimately familiar with her opponent. The whole point of Destiny’s Edge is to show that the races working together are stronger than them working alone. It seems crazy to me you would argue that a mixed racial group succeeding where entire racial armies failed proves that the races don’t need each other.

Lutinz.6915:

Jennah’s importance isnt only what she offers Tyria, which is a lot, but also who she keeps out of power by holding the throne. She is what keeps the kryta supporting the unified approach which was hard enough to organise as it is. Its why the Order of Whispers is so interested in protecting her position of power from her rivals.

Jennah’s replacement would be bad news. Certainly the Order of Whispers thinks so (including Caudecus’s own daughter).

I’m not convinced Caudecus is as bad as people think he is. He may be corrupt, he may be shady, but this is politics, not a teddy bear picnic. Someone willing to sacrifice his own people to get into power ain’t the kind of guy I want leading me, but most of the Caudecus accusations are never confirmed are they? You also have to consider than Jennah’s decision to hold onto the throne instead of handing it over prolongs the conflict. She could surrender the monarchy and step aside (or run for government in an election) but she chooses to stay in power. As Queen she is responsible for the lives lost during her rule, especially when she is able to do something about it but doesn’t. Maybe Kryta needs a ruthless leader to win the fight against the dragons? He may not come off as a heroic leader, that’s not to say Caudecus won’t be the most effective leader. If what you say is true about his undermining Jennah, he’s actually more effective than her with less political power. If Jennah was out of the way, the conflict within the Krytan government would be resolved. People view Caudecus as the thorn that needs to be pulled because he’s portrayed as a villain (his physical characteristics alone tell you he’s the villain when juxtaposed with Jennah), but the truth is either party can be removed to end the conflict.

They both have their issues. I think revenge motes are too scarce and the scoring system is really bad. It’s also disappointing that you can swim to the other side of the island and hide until everyone starves. The scoring system needs a serious rework, it rewards being a ghost and dropping alarm traps more than it rewards aggressively killing players. The mote scarcity is also pretty lame when only two survivors are left and no-one scavenges anything.

Like almost every mini game, the experience dramatically varies based on your allies. Sometimes you get an aggressive group that will stay around the supply areas and fight it out. Those matches can be really fun. Other times you get those one or two killjoys who swim across the map or hide on the hill in the trees and eat for 10 minutes.

Hunger Royal was a poor experience for a lot of people. The map was far too big. If anything, I wish the map for Southsun Survival was smaller. I had fun in Southsun Survival but like all mini games, is has some flaws.

Zylonite.5913:

Another question I have: How was GW1 handled in terms of contents? did it have this kind of LS or any expansions. unfortunately I never got to play GW1 and don’t know the details.

It didn’t have a Living Story equivalent until they began development on GW2 (and ceased expansions for GW1). It was called Guild Wars: Beyond and it had three chapters, the first one was set in Prophecies (the first campaign) and basically placed Queen Jennah’s ancestor on the throne. Basically it established the human story to lead into GW2. The second chapter was a love story resolution for a popular GW1 character and Kieran Thackery, Logan’s ancestor. The third chapter took place in the second campaign (Factions) and tied up the lose plot threads there, explaining how many Canthans became refugees to Kryta and set the events in motion to tie it off from the world. More stuff was planned but development stopped when they moved the team onto GW2 to prepare it for launch.

In general, the content was a lot better than the Living Story. The story took existing and relevant plot points in the world and took them further. Players already cared about the conflicts because they were the ones we dealt with during the main story of the game and it paid homage to many of the character we had grown to care about (the final chapter, Winds of Change, has a mission where a character that been with you since Ascalon makes a surprise cameo). They also had strong relevance to GW2. The gameplay was a lot more challenging than existing content (the player base 5+ years after launch was fairly elite in terms of skill at that point) and the item rewards weren’t monetised (although there were costumes, similair to gem store armour sets or town clothes in GW2) so the content felt rewarding instead of simply grinding for achievement points and looking at the RNG box skins you will never get.

The update pace was tediously long. It usually took an entire year for the releases to come out. This was the worst part. They had a small team, and although the story was good (Winds of Change was a lot better than the War in Kryta), the gameplay was challenging and fun and the scope was epic (the final fight in Lion’s Arch is one of the more memorable GW1 experiences for me) the updates were sometimes months apart.

Ironically, Guild Wars Beyond was far better than the Living Story at changing the world. The enemy spawns in the “open world” of GW1 changed at different stages in the story. When the story had the White Mantle taking over Kryta, lots of them spawned through the Krytan maps. When the story resolved and they were defeated, most of the spawns changed again. In Factions there was an enemy called the afflicted, kinda like zombies. The story begins with cleansing Cantha of the afflicted and once you’re done, the spawns in the world change to show that you’ve done that. The content was also permanent. You can play it today if you want (because the “open world” is instanced, whatever stage of the quest you are on dictates what mobs will spawn in the world around you).

As far as expansions go, GW1 had full sized campaigns released after launch. I think the game was only out for 12 months when the second campaign was released. Only 6 months later and the third campaign (which was as big as the first game) was released. Each campaign was a stand alone game, with two new classes, a bunch of skills for each existing class, lots of new weapon and armour sets (none of which disappeared after four weeks), a whole new story to experience and even dungeons. It was fantastic value for money and trumps the Living Story gem store model quite easily. The game also had four annual festivals, Wintersday (Christmas), Halloween, Canthan New Year (Chinese New Year) and the Dragon Festival (Independence Day) and these were added to the game when the respective celebrations rolled around.

After September’s Living Story chapter we get a repeat of Halloween (another festival) and only one month after that is another festival (Wintersday). Hopefully they have some Living Story content planned that takes place independently from the established festivals. It really feels like the story is kinda like a cartoon show or movie used to sell action figures. Each time they come up with a festival, they write some kind of story to fit it.

I like festivals and I think it’s great GW2 has them, but I really want a lot more open world, dungeon and story content. Fighting dragons, discovering dark secrets, making new alliances, defeating old enemies. The Living Story feels like a side story.

Evon will lose the election and outright build a casino in Lion’s Arch. No more pretending, slots, pakitteno boxes, full committal to the RNG MMO title. ArenaNet wants to give Korean MMOs a run for their money when it comes to the RNG.

Kalan.9705:

If you surveyed a different guild you’d get different results, for example based on chat in my guild:

“over 95% of guildies simply delete the tokens and ignore the whole patch, because as usual it offers zero way for WvW players to get involved and requires vastly too much time away from defending our server (and providing those buffs) to bother with.”

It funny, WvW players spend so much time in WvW they think the WvW buffs matter to PvE players.

They could have tried to include WvW players in the promises. Maybe something like half price on supply or stealth traps for either candidate. I suspect the supply trap candidate would win that one, but it’s not like the election is full of lop sided nonsense.

I just saw three people get this achievement because they ended up in a map with three people without it. There were four of us and we all just let the people without it get it. They enjoy their achievement points and can also now wear the “prestigious achievement title” that comes with it. I was farming the reward tonight and ended up in a map on my own. Every finish was first place. Now if that’s how easy it is to get the achievement, I feel bad for the people who wanted it but couldn’t get it.

The majority of GW2 players live in either North America or Europe and thus are close to the GW2 servers. The latency issue isn’t a huge one (and events like Sanctum Sprint it actually benefits a lot of people) so I don’t think they plan to do anything about it. I wonder if the devs designing this content have experienced what it’s like to see your character teleport all over the place when you use the mushrooms/jump skills. Now we have them in sPvP. I saw one of the devs in an interview talk about how popular mushrooms were in SAB and they keep saying the “joy of movement” so if anything, we are going to get more of this stuff.

Puandro.3245:

Spirits
Long Duration Water Field
Entangle

This is 3 of the best things a ranger can bring to a group. If you play a signet ranger you really don’t bring much to a group another class can’t already do better TBH. I don’t think rangers are bad, they just have their moments.

I’m genuinely curious. How are your spirits staying alive in a zerg? What are you doing in the zerg that is somehow keeping your spirits alive when the zergs run through each other spamming AoE? When the commander says stay on me and move as a group, how are your spirits living through the inevitable AoE?

Honestly, the way the current higher tier zerg meta is being played (very tanky builds, tonnes of party boons, balling and running through mobs) the only ranger build I can think of which comes close to the relevance of other classes would be the trapper.

As the OP said, when you play a guardian, mesmer or elementalist and you realise how powerful these classes are in WvW, it’s hard to play a ranger and think your best performance in the zerg is going to be must ordinary compared to what other classes can pull off. Guardians have insane boons including the incredibly important stability, a spammable blast finisher, reflection skills, exclusive access to wards as well as an easy access swiftness skill on the staff (less limited than warhorn 5). Mesmers have portal, one of the most powerful WvW skills in the game, Veil, one of the most powerful WvW skills in the game and a core part of the zerg meta and Feedback. Elementalists have combo fields galore, including two very important water fields. Their AoE is easier to use and Static Field, Unsteady Ground and Frozen Ground are incredible control skills, all on the same weapon. They are more reliable than ranger for might stacking (Flame Trap requires an enemy to trigger it and the torch has a long cooldown).

If your WvW zerg guild is focusing on being completely optimised and trimming all the fat, I don’t think there is a single niche the ranger fills that isn’t done better by another class (the best I can think of is immobilise which bypasses stability but is easily removed). In less zergy tiers or against lower skilled opponents you can get away with more, but I don’t think the ranger has the tool box suited to zerging, at least not at the highest levels. Rangers tend to be at their best when they focus on solo survival, which is why so many players loved the beast master build. It wasn’t a zerg build, but it was great for roaming. Rangers aren’t bad, I just don’t see what they bring to the table at high tier zerg gameplay that isn’t done better by another class.

jcbroe.4329:

I’m with Chopps on this one, I find the sword to be one of the more interesting weapons in the game, and it works very well at what it does, allowing you to stick to a target and deal continual DPS without allowing them to escape easily.

You must be very happy that the game is balanced around sPvP where the sword isn’t considered a problem.

Nothing you described is necessary in PvE. If there was any weapon in the game that was a case favouring a mechanics split between PvP and PvE, the ranger sword would be it.

We need an sPvP class forum where the handful of sPvP rangers can post about how much they love using auto-attack to chase their target for them. This would hopefully stop them from jumping down threads almost always about the weapon’s performance in PvE and telling PvE players to L2P because the weapon is a crutch in PvP regardless of it’s issues in PvE. I use the sword when I do my PvP daily but I pray for the day they change it in PvE, even if it means a PvP nerf. The longbow got a PvP buff at the expense of a PvE nerf, the pet got a PvE nerf due to a PvP issue, it’s time the PvE rangers got something they’ve been asking for since beta.

Hopefully it will be repeatable like the Rox/Braham ones, unlike the Dragon Bash one. Sometimes I want to re-experience something so it’s disappointing when I can’t enter it again (even if it’s on an alt).

The problem is they won’t get the balance right on the “longer” paths. We’re going to end up with one path which will take a group 15 minutes to complete awarding 1g and a another path which takes a group which utilised the right exploits 10 minutes to complete and that path will be worth 2-3g.

The thing which is going to force players into multiple dungeons is the nerf to boss gold drops. The daily gold reward alone wouldn’t have done that.

I don’t understand why dungeon rewards are being balanced around gold. Players only want gold to obtain items, the rewards should be the items players wants, tokens to purchase them or the components to craft them in the mystic forge. Content specific item rewards circumvents the issues created by gold completely and kills the " gold farm" mentality which uses game design to herd players into grinding the most efficient gold farms to acquire items they want.

SirDrygan.1823:

Just want to ask, why do you all want the Queen to die so much? So that your Warrior Genes can snicker away with glee? Why stop there? Lets burn Divinity’s Reach to the ground while we are at it.

No survivors. Period.

It probably has to do with how uninspired and cliché characters like Jennah (and Salma before her) are written. They are like fanfiction Disney Princesses. The “Good Queen” who is a super hot babe that is fair and just, seemingly has no flaws and conveniently was one of the main forces that finally brought charr and humans together. Some people like a character with flaws and are disinterested or annoyed by ones that don’t seem to have them. Juxtapose the way Kiel and Evon are portrayed in Candidate trials, it’s like white and black (I’ll assume in good faith that their skin and fur colours are coincidences). A lot of us want a little grey in our world, not just black and white.

CETheLucid.3964:

But she’s not going to be killed off as part of the living story of this games story without some impressive explanation and some serious in-game retcon, leading into said sequel or something like that.

We can get something interesting without killing off beloved characters, calm your bloodlust. Remember Tybalt.

PS Quit hating on Traherne. It won’t end well~

It’s the Living Story, it’s not the Static Story. They talked about difficulty in telling the Living Story and figuring out where to place it on the time line with the Personal Story and decided to not be too specific. That’s why the primary characters from the Personal Story (not just Destiny’s Edge) are not central to it. Despite all of that, at some point the Living Story has to treat the events of the Personal Story as past events for the story to truly be alive. We can’t just be stuck in the past.

I think we’re approaching the point where enough time has passed since launch (almost a year now) where we can expect the majority of players who would have finished the Personal Story have done so by now, allowing the Living Story to finally progress the world beyond the events contained within it. The Personal Story is not a reason why Jennah can’t die.

I don’t think Jennah is as beloved as you think she is. She very likely won’t die this month (it’s simply not ArenaNet’s style) but I don’t see any reason why she can’t.

Shanna.4762:

Why are people blaming Queen Jennah? She didn’t know about the trap and correspondence had been a mess for a while by then, and it was a desperate situation that would have left Kryta & Humanity without their leader and a succession crisis considering she was very young and had/still has no heir. The repercussion for choosing against Jennah would have been felt for a long time, and possibly ended in all but the total destruction of human kind when you think about it. The Charr treaty, and all the other threats faced by the human race and other races now face.

Either she’s really stupid (she’s not) or she knew that Logan was part of an elite group of heroes who were on a mission to take out an Elder Dragon. She didn’t know the details but she knew he went off to fight an Elder Dragon. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that calling him away from his team on such a critical mission was going to have serious consequences for the team.

As far as Kryta being without a leakitten art of the cliché of Destiny’s Edge (and Edge of Destiny’s plot) was the theme about the races needing to come together to fight the dragons. It’s a central plot to the Personal Story and is ultimately symbolised by the Pact and Destiny’s Edge. As big a deal as Jennah may have been, consider a charr and a human working together in an elite team to be the first to ever defeat, not just a dragon champion (which was a big deal at the time) but an actual Elder Dragon? Kralkatorrik is probably the most relevant dragon to the charr, a team of a human and a charr working together to take him down is easily a stronger foothold in human/charr diplomacy, especially with Logan and Rytlock’s elevated status in their respective societies, than whatever Jennah brings to the table.

The thing about leaders is there’s always another. Jennah can be replaced (for all we know, her death could have been the rise of a great Krytan democracy, something the modern world considers far superior to a monarchy). Because this is a game, we know that one day Kralkatorrik will be defeated, but the opportunity wasted by Jennah and Logan was selfish on both their parts. As important as the unity of the humans and the charr is (and like leaders, there was more than one path to this) the first defeat of an Elder Dragon is bigger and actually set up the writers with an alternate path to a believable treaty between the humans and the charr.

Regardless of what happened in the past, there has been enough successful co-operation between the humans and the charr for their treaty to remain without Jennah. I don’t see any reason why they would kill her this month, but I don’t see why they can’t.

I understand the open world stuff needs to be temporary, but I have no idea why they removed the Rox and Braham missions or the dungeons. Those were instances that made perfect sense to leave in the game. For all of the personal story’s flaws, I don’t understand why the Living Story didn’t replicate the instanced model for story delivery when it didn’t require open world mechanics. We are now in a situation where a large number of players have no idea what happened in the story so far and they have no tools to experience it themselves.

Why remove instanced content from the game? It doesn’t prevent the open world from evolving and removing it doesn’t make the world feel like it evolves.

Let’s just not have another election. There was too much wrong with this one. They had their fun, the novelty wore off, time to do other things in the game.

The worst thing that could come from this is more elections and increased prominence of the characters elected. Depending on who makes up the vote, close to half of the players in the game are going to lose this month. They voted and they lost. The person they voted for, the things they wanted, they didn’t get in. Elections aren’t fun, there was novelty value in the beginning but it wore thin very quickly.

We will never know who voted for what and why, there are just too many variables. All we can do is make educated guesses.

Anyone who thinks this election is conclusive about any of the variables is a poor researcher. It’s entirely possible Kiel is being carried by WP costs alone, with a small but passionate minority that like the fractal. We just don’t won’t know.

One of the things about choice in the form of an election is that there will be a lot of losers. Players don’t like losing. Another thing about an election is that we spent a month having an election, not fighting dragons. It’s time to get back to being heroic adventurers and not replicating one of the lamest experiences in the real world.

Remember when we used to fight dragons?

Navigating the Living Story when they do announce stuff is already hard enough for people paying attention, not even saying something about it sounds like a disaster.

There are already minor things happening behind the scenes if you check in at the Hatchery, Craigstead or the Dead End tavern. Rox, Braham, Kasmeer and Marjory all have very minor changes in their dialogue. Honestly, a lot of people almost completely missed the story in the Secret to Southsun and many players won’t ever see the changes in the Living Story “home instances” for the main characters, we don’t need more stuff people are going to miss out on.

The only thing ArenaNet needed to do to give Kiel the win was make her the hero of the Living Story for the last three chapters and portray her as the heroic archtype with an appealing model. Bonus points when her opposition was barely heard of prior to the election and was constantly portrayed as a villain over and over again. They tried to balance it by giving him the more desirable election promises but when the mass of casuals voted for what was familiar (human female hero) the tide was too strong.

It didn’t help that Evon seemed to become more and more offensive as a villain every time we were exposed to him . His appearance in the Candidate Trials was ripped right out of a Saturday morning cartoon villain’s monologue and his interactions with Kiel portrayed him as bullying someone the players had been constantly told was the hero of the story. It’s amazing that the votes were as close as they were, the election was practically gift wrapped for Kiel by the writers.

You don’t need a conspiracy theory or tin foil hat to argue that the election was rigged, just look at how the two candidates are portrayed in the game to understand why it’s turning out this way. Forum posters represent a small minority of players. Most players will never leave the game for info about the game. When all your going off of is their characters in the Living Story, it’s hard to see how Evon stood a chance.

Siphaed.9235:

Doesn’t that sound fun?
Doesn’t that sound like an epic lead up to future Elder Dragon related content?
Doesn’t that have more lore relation to GW2?

You know what it doesn’t sound like? A fractal!

Do any of the people talking about this nonsense ever play fractals? They are not story delivery devices, they are the game’s equivalent of action movies. A fun gameplay experience with a cool setting and flashy graphics. They aren’t even real events, just recreations (so fractals aren’t even canon for what truly happened – even if they were, they have minimal dialogue and picture book level of story). When did the events in any fractal lead to something outside of the fractal? You aren’t voting for a Living Story or Personal Story addition, you are voting for a fractal.

If ArenaNet has a compelling idea of how to introduce an Elder Dragon (and there are so many far more interesting threads in the world to pick up on which are actually relevant today) they will utilise that regardless of whether the fractal is made. If the reactor is truly an important part of today’s Tyria and there is a story to be told there, it will happen without the fractal.

I honestly don’t care. I think the Abaddon fractal was far more compelling but if people didn’t vote for it because they couldn’t see past Kiel then I’d rather just forget about it (and never touch on this election again).

It was never a vote for fractals. They diluted it with waypoints, keys and terrible characterisations (on both sides). People were voting for all kinds of reasons, some hated Kiel, some loved her, some wanted the reactor, some wanted cheaper keys. We will never know what the players chose with this election. Had it been one thing or another (without tieing it to terrible characters – unless the terrible characters were the choices without developer and financial consequences) I can see someone saying ArenaNet gave players a choice. Currently all we got was two weeks of nonsense on the forums and a bunch of winners and losers.

The straw man arguments and political slander (which isn’t much more fun than the real thing) that filled these last two weeks was rough to wade through, especially once the novelty wore off. I’ll take hundreds of pages of RNG hate over this nonsense any day. It probably didn’t help it coincided with holidays in the USA.

@spendingallmytime I think the truly pathetic thing is someone going out of their way to criticise players passionate about a fractal. I honestly don’t care if we don’t get it, but I’m not going to disparage the players who do. I think it’s great they care about the game. It’s certainly not pathetic.

Jennah is an Elder Dragon. The Queen’s Jubilee is her version of the Red Wedding. Catch them when they are unaware.

Sleel.8365:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Slayer Lord.5023:

Lord Kuru must be one of the nobles trying to take over the human leadership.

LOL… no, I think I’m middle/working class (?) (I have a friend who works at a bar — is that right?) and I never finished the personal story.

I just don’t like these one-dimensional characters that we have in this game. Especially when they are not believable. C’mon.. an egalitarian queen? What’s next? We find out that she was voted into office a la Star Wars Ep1?

Oh noes. An egalitarian queen. As unrealistic as a corrupt, democratically elected politician…..

She believes everyone is equal from her comfy throne with her elite guards and servants. In Jennah’s mind, does everyone get a Jubilee?

I’m in favour for more options for every race, but currently I believe humans have the most options with character customisation.

darkace.8925:

Ema.4953:

10 years is not normally a Jubilee

And cowards are not normally celebrated as heroes, but Logan’s place in Divinity’s Reach shows us that Krytan pride doesn’t concern itself with details.

Kryta is a human nation. Logan acted in the best interests of their ruling Monarch. From a human perspective, he wasn’t running away from a dragon, he was running to the queen’s aid. I can see how the charr might see him as a coward, but to the humans he’s the guy who saved their queen.

CETheLucid.3964:

On top of that using some simple logic, we know she isn’t going to be killed. She’s an integral character to the games personal story. That would create a nasty paradox.

She isn’t going anywhere OP. Long live Queen Jennah!

Yeah, cause nothing that happens in the world can be out of sync with the Personal Story. The truth is, Jennah is only around in instances, they can easily kill her off while preserving this.

Rurik and Togo both die in GW1, that doesn’t stop you from repeating missions which have them alive. If they can kill an Elder Dragon yet have his minions and champions still appearing in the open world, they can easily take out a queen who has little to no relevance to the open world outside of minor mentions in a handful of DEs.

keenlam.4753:

@Shiren:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/dungeon-rewards/?utm_source=client
based on this, i say different champs drop differnt types of rewards and it makes sense that harder champs drop better types.
Cheers

Right, but that mentions their type, not their level. Killing a bandit champion in Queensdale wouldn’t be the same as killing one in Caudecus manor, nor would it be the same as killing one in Frostgorge Sound for example. If the champions of each type have identical drops (and drop rates) in starter areas that they do in high level areas, it’s beneficial to kill the easier ones.

The ones asking for Jennah’s death are likely not the ones voting for Kiel.

It’s a shame they don’t use a system similair to the Candidate Trials. When you kill 15 mobs there you get a special loot bag. They could do the same in dungeons. Every 15 “trash” mobs you kill drops a special loot bag with increasing chance for rare items the more mobs you tally up (in Candidate Trials, the first loot bag has a lower chance for a weapon than the fifth loot bag). This rewards trash mobs without encouraging farming the first 15 mobs in a dungeon. Balance the number so it doesn’t favour dungeons filled with easy to kill trash.

I’d love to see them implement this in dungeons.

I don’t get it either. It seems to have come out of nowhere. I understand they are under pressures due to casualties with the war on the centaurs, but the Shining Blade were one of the most interesting factions in the game (and a cool throwback to GW1). It seems bizarre for humans to get robots to fight their wars for them. The charr are the industrialists, the asura are the golemancers, robots just seems wrong. One of the most appealing things about humans as a race is their humanity. The conflict and corruption between the Ministry Guard and the Seraph, the political pressures of casualties in the war on the centaurs, the specialisation of the Shining Blade, robots have none of this.

I can see some possibilities if they are gifts from Caudecus. Win popularity with the people by saving lives because they use drones instead of real soldiers while at the same time ensuring he has an army he can control on the inside. I honestly don’t know much about them at this point (maybe less than what is known by others) but it could go in any direction.

If the election results are anything to go by, players like the bland goody-two-shoes characters.

LumAnth.5124:

How about no?

Do you realize how much strain A-net would go through because they killed Jennah?

She appears as a prominent individual in the Human Personal Story line where you must pick an order.

So randomly she is back to life in those 3 missions?

Also, she is the one who wants to have the peace treaty with the Charr.

This would be a horrible decision, Lore wise and gameplay wise

She doesn’t appear anywhere in the open world. Personal Story NPCs die all the time. Hell, a huge chunk of the open world centres around a dead elder dragon. At some point, if the story truly intends on being “Living” we need to treat the personal story as past events. They discussed how difficult making changes to orr would be for Personal Story reasons, but Jennah is fair game.

They won’t kill her, but that’s not to say they can’t kill her.

zerospin.8604:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Yes, they will also drop them in WvW.

And legendary mobs will indeed also get champion loot rewards.

Is there some sort of limit or timer? Otherwise nobody will upgrade or defend anything anymore and zergs going in a circle around the maps flipping towers will be the norm.

This is already the case. Upgrades and defending hinder the karma train.

The more interesting question is, will WvW champion lords have a unique loot bag or will they share it with other mob types in PvE?

Tom Gore.4035:

What’s her aspect then? Hotness?

Friend Zone. She is the Elder Dragon of the Friend Zone, the most evil of all dragons.

Miraluna.3627:

Chauncey? He can’t be happy with “runner-up”…

Forget Jennah’s death as the break down for human/charr peace treaty. Rox is sent on a mission for justice in honour of Chauncey. Together they both scheme to sabotage the Queen’s Jubilee in ant act of revenge.

The winner was a plant from Beetletun so it’s clear the Jennah and Caudecus are working together, conspiring against fancy cats because they remind them too much of the charr (fancy cats just can’t cut a break, poor Evon).

Little did they know Chauncey is an Ash Legion spy who entered the competition to get closer to the monarchy. The Queen’s Jubilee will be his reckoning.

keenlam.4753:

There are really challenging champs out there, u guys should explore and look for them instead of asking for buff. Try Kol Skullcrusher in Harathi Hinterlands if you think they die fast and any Krait Champ if u think you can stand in one place and faceroll.
If anything, lvl 80 players in full exotics should stay away from those starting zones and seek challenges for themselves.

I wonder if champion level effects the drop rate of their loot bag contents. I can see arguments for and against this.

Jennah won’t die… unfortunately.

It’s not actually new interest. It’s been requested by a small but passionate part of the userbase since GW1 showed promotional art of a mesmer wielding a rapier back at launch (2005). It’s crazy that GW2 didn’t have a rapier despite mesmers being given swords, but it seems like now it’s rectified.

Remember how passionate people were about Final Rest? Look akittens value now (or how many people in game you see using it). The rapier will be high demand and popular for the next month or two. Once new stuff comes out and most of the people who want the rapier get it, it will become just another weapon.

Terrahero.9358:

This is wonderful!

Someone played connect the dots and i am loving the picture he pulled out of it. It would be interesting if this is where the story is heading.

And that’s how you know it’s not where the story is heading.

That felt too snarky.

draxynnic.3719:

Since you obviously missed it:

{snip} and before you say they were only successful because of the players, keep in mind that this is an MMO and it’s a trope of MMOs that the players do everything. If we hold to that yardstick, then every military leader on our side is incompetent – and every enemy military leader is also incompetant because they can’t stop a zerg of PCs from overunning them.

Watching an NPC military do all the work doesn’t make for good gameplay, and thus we don’t see it. I really doubt that it says on ArenaNet’s character design for Logan, Smodur the Unflinching, Niamh, and all the other officers and leaders of friendly military organisations that they are all incompetent and couldn’t find their rear with both hands without the players to come along and bail them out. Rather, it’s that PC volunteers are among the resources they have available to achieve their objectives.

This is an MMO, and one of the MMO tropes is that the PCs will be involved in pretty much every significant event because it’d be less fun and interesting if they weren’t. That’s something that you have to account for.

In Kiel’s case specifically – in Canach’s lair, the contract escort, the Aetherblade retreat raid, and so on… she took the initiative. We just happened to be the best resource(s) available for the job, but we acted on her direction.

Actions, not words, make heroes.

If I wanted to see someone else do everything, I’d watch a movie or read a book. I play games so I can play the hero.

If it makes more sense that the NPC is more important than the player in the story, the story sucks. It doesn’t matter to me why Kiel is in the spotlight all the time while the player is just the gameplay and mechanics sidekick, all that matters is that it happened.

Kiel is just a glorified quest giver. I don’t see people arguing that every quest giver in any game ever should have gotten the credit for completing the quest. Why should Kiel be any different?

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Shiren.9532:

It’s not clear who will win, but to me it seems clear that Evon will only win if the majority of votes come from people who are informed on a) the limited value of WP cost reductions and b) the difference in fractals.

[…]

(it was mistake to hold an election at the same time as introducing Evon, he should have been around for a while to make it fairer). The primary appeal of Evon lies beneath the surface, will the average player look that far? Let’s remember forum posters are a tiny portion of the community.

2. Evon Isn’t Introduced now. Actually he is in game from the beginnnig. You were able to talk with him in Black Lion HQ a long before or that “living story” began. and also most of main page news about things in gem storye is “Evon gnashblade about new items in the gem store”

Yeah, one of hundreds if not thousands of NPCs in the world is totally the same as being featured as the hero of the last three Living Story updates. Perhaps I should have been pedantic with my wording, but if you honestly believe that Evon and Kiel are remotely close to each as established characters this discussion can’t go anywhere constructive.

@Chadramar

For starters, you’re missing the point. It’s not that the writers have to write her as feminine, it’s that she continues the GW2 trend of tough chicks being written without femininity. Your mention of diversity is ironic because you are approaching GW2 from an outside in perspective, but in the world of Tyria, women quite often win the numbers game. Destiny’s Edge (the heroes that show heroes how it’s done) has three females and two males. The leaders of two out of three orders are female. Of the human gods, two of six are male. The sylvari come from a tree that is given a female gender, the humans are ruled by a Queen not a King. The Living Story has had between three and five protagonists, four of which are female (three are human females). One of the most masculine races in the game is the charr where there is almost no difference between males and females (and very few feminine traits).

I’m not waging war on strong or masculine females, I’m annoyed that it’s used as a crutch to make women appear strong at the expense of portraying feminine characters as strong front liners (Kasmeer, Marjory are traditional caster females). It’s like someone is writing their own fantasy world where women still give birth (something men can’t do – that’s one of the reasons ‘equal’ is in quotation marks) and in some cases still have the physical appearance of a model yet they don’t face the realities of this. This is epitomised by Eir and charr society, where women still give birth but neither raise their children so they can continue to being equal to men. That wreaks of Mary Sue, a world where women are as strong as men, can rise to the same ranks as men, but unlike men they still give birth yet that doesn’t hinder them from showing the men how it’s done.

When discussing Kiel’s weak character, I bring up her gender because she continues a trend in GW2 story telling where strong characters can’t be feminine and because the writers have done little to take anything about her (and her gender is one possibility) and use it to make her interesting in some way. Maybe it’s because I (along with the rest of the GW2 audience) live in a world where gender matters and where equality does not mean the same. Someone’s gender is a part of their identity and it’s a part of their experiences and it’s something that I find very compelling as an element to a story. Maybe in Tyria the writers wanted to make women equal to men so they wrote them as the same, but in my opinion that removes a wonderfully complex element from the story, an element that Kiel could have (but doesn’t have to) possessed to make her more interesting than watching paint dry.

Her gender was not the sole focus of my original post criticising her, it was one of five paragraphs, the smallest paragraph for that matter. It was not my intention to put her gender under a magnifying glass but rather to list it as another element of her identity which could have been used to make her more interesting (I did dilute this point by mentioning her as a trend in GW2 writing).

Shocking. The human female hero from the last few Living Story updates is going to beat the male charr villain who came out of nowhere at the beginning of this update. No-one saw this coming.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Gabby.3205:

^ I always was under the impression that Jennah friendzoned Logan. And used some kind of spell on him, too, because she needed a hero that could outrun a centaur. She is a powerful mesmer, right?

Yeah i’m pretty sure Jennah is just using Logan.

She’s the seventh Elder Dragon.

If they did become bugged (it’d be the world’s most easily predictable bug) they would just patch it so you can get them later. I doubt it will be an issue, more than likely either they will be transferred to the wallet automatically, or as soon as you move them to a character’s inventory they will appear in the wallet instead.