Guild Wars 2

I don’t think it will be any different than it is now. Players already do everything they can to skip mobs and get to the end reward, even if there is more incentive to do it (you miss out on champion boss loot bags, but those sound like run of the mill RNG so I suspect they will be like Dragon Bash chests, you can get cool stuff but you will get trash instead). Honestly, I don’t think the community could be doing more than they already are to skip dungeon content. I doubt this side of things will change at all unless they scale the final reward based on how many mobs you killed, and that seems unlikely given ArenaNet’s apathy to skipping.

Rainu.6871:

An assassination attempt on the queen? Boring.
A kidnapping of the queen? Boring and unimaginative to the point that the writers should be forced to have a tequila session each morning.
An uprising by the people, demanding a governmental system based on the votes of the population rather than an archaic system where the ability to rule and lead a nation is purely dependent on your patents? Inspired!

I’d love that. Why do pirates have election in Tyria but the humans just mindlessly worship the monarchy? Something is wrong with your leaders when the pirates are more democratic than you are.

ViolentMuffin.9573:

blakkrskyrr.7413:

what weapon is that that the guy is holding? the one that looks metal and is in the back. I don’t recognize it.

Looking at this robots artificial body features, I’d say it’s a woman, not a ‘guy’.

Why did they take the high road on the female charr and make them look almost identical to males but give sylvari and that robot boobs? I know the sylvari were explained as the tree making them in the image of humans, but the robot is confusing.

Isn’t that how all great empires fall? They grow fat, lazy, apathetic and party all the time.

I love how Rox is the epitome of controversy in GW2 aesthetics. First it’s her eyes and now it’s her concept art. No wonder girls have self-image problems.

Can anyone remind me where Canach is?

Gabby.3205:

@Shiren
That’s what I think about the Queen, too. I blame her and only her for Snaff and Glint’s deaths and the whole fiasco. However, she is crucial for the peace between charr and humans. But one could think that Trahearne and The Pact would be enough, maybe…

Anyway, Caudecus is a villain.
He tried to kill his own daughter! He sent his guards to capture OR kill Demmi. That's pretty evil.

Even more reason for Caudecus to not be involved. If Demmi becomes involved (and I'd be surprised if she passed up the chance given her comments at the end of that storyline), that will give us four human female leads (in addition to Mai as a villain). Did GW2 turn into a Japanese harem game when I wasn't looking? Caudecus could always claim he sent the guards to "rescue" her and they went rogue, or that he had no involvement whatsoever, I don't think he's been caught out yet.

All of HotW should be three gold. A single boss in there has more health than every mob in CoF combined.

Vayra.3290:

zeromius.1604:

StinVec.3621:

Pro-RNG VS Anti-RNG
Charr VS Human
Male VS Female
Evon VS Kiel/Trahearne 2.0
Abaddon VS Reactor
GW1 VS GW2

All of this will end very, very badly for many players and for ArenaNet. Many players have such strong feelings toward some of these issues that there may be a portion of the playerbase that are so dissatisfied with the outcome of this election, regardless of who wins, that they actually quit playing due to how it might sour the game and it won’t be fun for them anymore.

Even still, there are the “Temporary Content VS Permanent Content” aspects of this event and many others I’ve not touched onto here, as well as the “Bugs Fixed VS Bugs Created” aspect of more frequent Living Story updates.

I just cannot believe that someone at ArenaNet thought any of this would be a good idea for events, let alone all of them at the same time in the same event. This wreaks of being a horrible idea in all possible ways. Unless you want to risk losing your job, your customers, your friends, or a few teeth, it is just accepted that you do not involve two subjects for discussion: Religion and Politics.

Not to put down the seriousness of all the aspects I’ve mention, as they are all of a pretty serious nature for the future of the game, but anyone want some popcorn?

I guess this is ArenaNet breaking the fourth wall in terms of storytelling. In none of the past updates have there been this much discussion on the living story. In this case it’s more like heated debate. It does seem that many players are taking this election very seriously because it will supposedly determine the direction the game will be going on. I say supposedly because I doubt that, outside of incorporating player feedback, ArenaNet will decide the future of the game based on a virtual election that not everyone takes seriously.

As for people quitting the game because the candidate they voted for lost, I think that would be taking it really far. Any reasonable person would stay with the game if they’re enjoying and leave, either temporarily or permanently, if they’re not. They won’t leave because more than half of the player base wanted something really trivial they didn’t and vice versa. I say that it’s trivial because the discounts willy only last 4 weeks and I’m sure whichever fractal is chosen will be really well done if the last two dungeons are any indication of ArenaNet’s dungeon crafting prowess. Story-wise I don’t think there is going to be too much of a difference over which candidate is elected.

I’m sure all those people that bought tokens to support one candidate over the other will be sorely disappointed if their chosen candidate actually ends up losing. It’s inevitable. ArenaNet came up with a clever way for players to part with their hard earned gold and thereby curb in-game inflation, if just ever so slightly.

Who fills the seat on the council will impact any future living story stuff that involves LA. Kiel would propose radically different measures to solve a crisis than Gnashblade. And they would also pounce on different opportunities when they arise. Gnashblade might go for things that will enrich LA, while Kiel might be more interested in things that help protect LA and the surrounding areas. And that will shape the Living Story content in the months/years to come.

When has the council mattered in anything up until now? Most of us didn’t even know it existed. I haven’t read Sea of Sorrows yet, but I suspect much of this is actually a promotional tie-in for the book. Even if the council mattered, there are several members, a single vote might not determine anything. Honestly, if the other council members are actually pirates, Kiel would likely be very useless. Evon would likely be voting the same as them. I think you are overselling how big a change this might be.

They really missed the mark with this one. One of the things about these achievements is the harder/grindier ones are really sucking the fun and enjoyment out of mini-games. Repeating them should be its own rewarding. Herding players into repeat them over and over just to grind out a poorly balanced achievement is going to get them to resent the achievement.

The worst part about it is it encourages players to play the arena badly. Stacking rations then swimming to the opposite end of the island is one of the best ways to guarantee an easy 50+ points. Unfortunately this is boring as kitten and it wastes everyone else’s time because they can’t get motes out there (nor do they even know you are there). Matches drag out and players don’t really play.

Even worse is the way that motes work. Players are farming the achievement so instead of trying to kill enemy players, they are dropping the two mote trap to max out their score. A single achievement is managing to seriously degrade the experience in this arena, both in reinforcing grind and getting players to do unnatural things for score.

I don’t think the story is going to matter much. If ArenaNet has a compelling idea for Evon, regardless of whether he wins or not, it’s in their best interest to utilise it. He might not get a vote, but most players played for almost a year without even realising Lion’s Arch had a Captain’s Council. At the end of the day, it’s one person on the council, so their voice alone isn’t enough to do anything. The reality is, Evon is probably rich enough to buy off other members if he wanted to.

Every story which focuses on the politicians is a story that’s not focusing on the action. Regardless who wins, I don’t want to be spending time in council chambers discussing things.

I know with the Molten Jetpack and the Monocle one of the devs said it’s very unlikely they will return when the dungeons return as fractals, but it’s possible they will treat mini-games differently.

It’d be cool if every mini-game had a chance to drop a unique back item. I’m sure there are plenty of norn players out there who want to acquire a keg as a back item from Keg Brawl.

It heavily depends on your groups. Some opposing teams are really good carriers and will rarely get killed. Some allies will never help you kill enemies, some enemies will jump to their deaths depriving you of your achievement. Some enemies are so bad they almost never carry the crystal.

I ended up playing about 15 games before the pool of players dropped to just me and one other guy. We ended up trading Crystal Breaker to max this achievement (I needed 7 more, he needed 13). I actually enjoyed the arena but that ahievement ruined it for me. With so much other stuff to finish I was getting frustrated with how hard it was to get kills on people carrying a crystal (usually people just fight to the death to claim the crystal). It didn’t help that very rarely would the enemy team carry a crystal. I was going out of my way to let players carry the crystal just so I could have a chance to kill them (despite all the escape skills and enemies stopping me). I was ignoring crystal captures and happily losing matches just to chase skills. Limited time achievements really kill the experience for me sometimes.

Garenthal.1480:

I’d actually like to see Queen Jennah die. Not because I dislike her, but because the game has been sorely lacking in tragedies for quite some time now that the personal story is behind us. It wouldn’t be in the same league as seeing Ascalon be destroyed back in the original game, but it’d be a step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.

The story is becoming very predictable at this point and I’d hate to see another case of danger being thwarted.

I wouldn’t see her death as a tragedy. Logan gets all the blame for what happened during Edge of Destiny with Snaff and Glint, but I always saw it was two people involved. He would never have left had she not called him away. I was also never a fan of Salma in GW1 (War in Kryta had the same black and white portrayals of Salma and the White Mantle that we see with Kiel and Evon, it was insulting) so her line being around today kinda irked me (Livia, Evennia and Bartholos did a lot more for Kryta than Salma). Kryta seems like it could benefit from a democracy (they have robots but no elections in a world where even pirates vote?), so the end of the royal line is progress in my eyes. I also think Caudecus is much more interesting than Jenna, so if he took over I think that’d lead to more interesting stories.

I don’t think GW2 can replicate Ascalon. We all started there, so its destruction hit home and became a central part of the story. In GW2 we have the different races with different starting areas, so it just wouldn’t work.

As far as Caudecus being involved, the story was always very careful about how Caudecus was portrayed. He’s never really proven to be an outright villain, more of a shady political character. I’d be surprised if they broke that trend with this update.

They broke the trend with Kasmeer, Marjory and Kiel. I hope to god Kiel is out of the story after the election regardless of whether she wins or loses. Destiny’s Edge represented authority figures from each of the races, Braham and Rox can fill this role if they rise in prominence (we’ve already seen that happen), but Kiel is actually from Lion’s Arch, so while she is human, she isn’t closely linked to Divinity’s Reach. Kasmeer and Marjory might be a different story, we will have to see how things turn out.

Canach is probably the most interesting character in the Living Story so far, but ArenaNet tend to write GW2 like an episode of Carebears (and secondborn sylvari are also written really strangely, they all seem to have mommy issues because they aren’t as cool as the first born in the eyes of the Pale Tree). The bad guys are bad. Canach got a lot of favourable feedback on the forums, so they might bring him into the fold, but it seems like their existing plans for him were limited to “villain”.

If they are making a new Destiny’s Edge, they’re loading it with females. Rox, Kasmeer, Marjory, Kiel, compared to Braham and maybe Canach? Here’s hoping we get some more male heroes in the August update, maybe a sylvari or asuran diplomat.

Uvatha.5476:

This LS has the community more immersed than any content thus far. In the forums there are heated debates over which candidate players prefer, their concerns on the impact of the electoral choices, people actually role playing debating sides on the forum and in game, people concerned with lore past and present, and even some joking posts that just have fun with the political atmosphere (references to Anthony Weiner, candidate slam posts, speculation). We’ve even seen more devs reply to posts concerning this LS than we’ve seen with most content which also shows they’re excited about what’s happening and just as into it as we are.

Immersion is being vested in the game you’re playing emotionally, being concerned with it’s future, and caring about your character and events. I feel this time around they’ve nailed it on the head and got a great player response.

LS since F&F has been nothing but improving. I think you’re looking at Flame and Frost with rose colored glasses cause the way I remember it there was a sign fixing quest that was finished in 20 minutes in January and then no more until February. At that time people liked the idea of the LS but they gave us too little to do with enormous gaps of time between the release of more things to do in said living story. It was a hurry up and wait situation and these days it’s a lot better than Flame and Frost was.

The election is a one trick pony. If we kept having elections players would run away in droves. The interest you are talking about is a consequence of giving players a real choice over the future of the game (despite it being relatively minor). Players aren’t truly engaged by the story, they are engaged by the choice. Once they were invested in either side, other things developed around that (to the point where players were arguing for against characters not because they cared about those character but because they chose a side). Also note that this is the holidays in some parts of the world, so player participation is going to be higher this month than most.

It’s not the story that engaged people this month, it’s the choice.

HiddenNick.7206:

Sigmatics.7056:

Elbegast.6970:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Before you assume that you won’t be fighting horses of monsters or face difficult challenges, I urge you to try the content when it releases. Just because its a festival doesn’t mean we’re telling the same story or using the same type of content.

You don’t tell stories. You mumble half sentences that lack context and punctuation.

Why would I want to give this festival a chance when I have been severely let down by every single content patch thus far?

Then don’t try it if they’re letting you down so much. There’s seriously something wrong with you if no patch so far was compelling to you, maybe this isn’t the game for you.

Dude… They tell their stories on a… WEB SITE! They expect us to spend time searching for kites and holograms! And reward us with cakes and fireworks… More then half of their content has NOTHING to do with the game mechanics. All of this must be considered a let down given the fact that the game suppose to be about fighting dragons!

Your blind…

I think a lot of the “content” that has nothing to do with game mechanics are symptoms of pushing out updates every two weeks but not having enough time to design something more substantial. A dungeon like the Aetherblade Retreat or Molten Facility required a lot more time to make than randomly placing “press ‘f’ key” objects around the world and tacking on an achievement for them. I bet a lot of players spent far more time pressing the f key next to holograms than they did in the Aetherblade Retreat.

It’s also why we are getting so many jumping puzzle and mini dungeon achievements. They create the illusion of more content despite not adding anything new.

You can update it yourself.

tencoderiot.6430:

But the trials only started a week ago which means it will only be playable for two weeks. This is the issue I have with some of the updates. We got 3 mini games and 2 weeks to complete them all if we want them.

They should have a couple of easy to achieve mini-game achievements during the event and keep the more hard core ones as achievable at any time when they return on rotation. I think this month was definitely a mistake with three mini-games in one update. It pushed players too much to get them all before the update went away. It often feels like you don’t have time to do anything else.

Honestly, my big issue with the release schedule is the temporary nature of content. If more of the content was permanent players wouldn’t feel so rushed and it would alleviate a lot of issues for people.

Most of the content completionists are struggling with is the grind achievements, which are unnecessary imo.

lordkrall.7241:

How many books show you the exact connection during the first chapters?

I don’t read a book or watch a TV show for 6+ months before it gets good. That’s what a hook is, it’s something that makes you want to get through the exposition, setting the scene, the background to the big tale beyond. We have been at this Living Story stuff for half a year and it hasn’t gotten good.

I don’t need it to be like the game where you fight an giant earth elemental, big robot, giant ghost statue, plant dragon or frozen wurm, but within six months I want something compelling. I don’t want to play through a series of seemingly trivial and weakly connected side stories only to have an “Oh kitten!” moment later on when they actually decide to tell the story. It’s a cheap reveal (it’s not “surprising” because it’s clever, but rather because they simply didn’t tell us anything about it) and it makes your actions for several months at the time feel meaningless.

They said they wanted Living Story to be like your favourite TV show. I wouldn’t watch a TV show for six months if it all the compelling information was revealed later on. We don’t need all the information, but we need enough to make us want to know more and the inconsistencies (which a lot of players are going to miss) they’ve given us are not enough.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

Are you going to delete all the extra gold you have obtained through the gold find infusion in the days/weeks/months you had the infusion equipped?

I didn’t think so. So what makes you think you’ll get a refund for something you’ve already used and benefitted from?

What about people who bought them in the last week or so? Those people are down a significant investment. Laurels are a limited resource and 20 laurels is a lot. The only use for this infusion was boss drops in dungeons, no-one would use 20 laurels for random PvE gold drops (most direct gold comes from sources unaffected by gold find, such as events). The only part of the game that made gilded infusions worth 20 laurels was the dungeon boss drops. Even in Southsun Cove players ignored the gold find because open world gold drops are terrible.

A 20 laurel price is a long term investment. It’s completely fair to say that this change devalues that investment to the point where a person with knowledge of this change would never have dropped 20 laurels on that infusion.

We wouldn’t need fixes on the CoF gold farms if gold wasn’t the be all end all of item acquisition in this game. Allow players to earn their rewards through tokens and reasonable soulbound/account bound drop rates and you will see players actually playing content instead of targeting the next generic gold farm.

Chris Starflame.1023:

The clockworks are going to attack everyone. But, it’s not gonna be an accident. Who is currently staying in the castle, and hates the queen? Caudecus.

Almost a year has passed. Is he still in the castle?

If the robots are attacking, terminator references are inbound.

I’m going to benefit in multiple ways. Stacks of not only tokens, but also karma. I keep all my karma jugs so that I can transfer karma to other characters later if I want to buy one of the few weapon sets (or rare skins) for them. It doesn’t happen often, but it was useful enough to save my portable karma so I could transfer it whenever I needed it.

Now I can just blow through my stacks of karma on anyone without worrying about wanting to buy something on someone else later. I’ll probably get three bank tabs out of this update.

Sounds like a really convoluted way of implementing a system which is worse than karma vendors. Karma is almost useless as a currency and the inability to spend it on consumables like this (assuming it’s a consumable) is part of the problem.

Why add such a powerful skill if you don’t plan for everyone to be able to access it?

I’m still unclear. Does the recipe produce a consumable that creates a portal, or a consumable that unlocks a portal skill?

In another thread along a similair issue they said the achievements are specific to the content update. They wouldn’t be around when the mini-game returned.

It would be a good idea, but ArenaNet has a thing about temporary content and rewards. One of the devs said the two returning dungeons in the form of fractals will likely never have the rare loot drop items (jetpack and monocle). They also said the achievements are specific to the events, so any mini-game achievements need to be obtained during the month the mini-game is introduced.

inazuma.7021:

My best guess is Logan will run off at the worst possible moment.

He runs to Jennah. So for the same events to repeat, he would need to tell her he’s about to take on an Elder Dragon with his team and Jennah would have some kind of personal emergency which causes her to ignore the mission she knows he’s on and call him back to her side.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Those weapons are part of the new champion loot drops which include a bunch of new skins like the one in the picture. Also the rapier.

The Sovereign set is completely different, and available from the vendors inside the Crown Pavilion.

Are the new drops specific to the champions similair to Final Rest and the Shadow Behemoth? So say only troll champions drop a certain weapon, only Flame Legion champions can drop another? Or are all champions basically sharing the same skins in an RNG lucky dip?

Electro.4173:

VitalSuit.1980:

sonicwylde.2906:

that looks like Braham but htat isn’t Rhox

Um http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/GW2_Rox_Story_Guide_17-1024x640.jpg

That’s very clearly Rox just a different artist.

That was concept art for Rox most likely done before her in-game appearance was finalized. It makes sense that it looks different. Braham looked very different in his concept art as well.

But she has a finalized appearance now, so current art should reflect her in-game look accurately. Braham’s does, looking at the QJ art that looks just like Braham. But Rox’s (if that is indeed supposed to be Rox) is pretty different. Which is strange.

OMG people! It’s Rox!!! We even have a dev saying Rox is coming! Braham is there beside her and you can identify several features of Rox regardless of the shape of her head! Why is this even a discussion? It’s concept art, not a screen shot! It doesn’t have to look exactly like her.

We could have spent a couple weeks discussing why Rox was involved in Kryta. Instead we have circular discussions about the anatomy of concept art when anyone really paying attention could tell it was Rox.

No, it sounds like a PvE only utility skill that has a very difficult way to acquire it. Once you learn it, it can be slotted in or out for any other utility skill and has a cool down and functionality similair to the mesmer portal.

It’s basically allowing multiple classes to do the same thing as a mesmer, but they need to grind and RNG to do so. Things like the CoF boulder room are no longer mesmer specific challenges if a player is rich enough.

Gotta say, I’m not a fan of incredibly powerful skills being locked behind RNG and item grinds. It’s very different from an rare skin or even ascended items.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

nexxe.7081:

Rewards

The current rewards are underwhelming.

Titles, karma jugs, silver/gold, blue & green quality items, etc., just doesn’t cut it. Almost all these can be obtained in game already via normal gameplay without Living Story.

The only worthwhile items are minis and back-slot items, but seriously, is that all there is to look forward to in GW2 from now on?

Why do we only get one item per Living Story dungeon? A pair of gloves? Really?
Gear obtained via Trading Post? Really? Let me earn these via in game dungeons or world events instead.
Aetherized Weapons? Okay, finally something good, but where are the new armor sets?

I really want to come back to GW2, but everytime i do, i don’t feel rewarded for doing so, and then i stop playing again.

It’s not called Living Rewards. Play and enjoy the story and entertainment

There are more rewards than content in most patches. Most patches have the illusion of content through lots of recycled achievements and grind achievements. Then they get you to repeat a mini-game several times. The story is minimal.

Can you imagine if the dungeon reward buff came without the wallet? People would be building stacks of random dungeon tokens and running out of space at a dramatic rate.

Vahkris.6847:

It feels more like an in-game excuse for the GW2 anniversary than another festival.

I doubt they’re going to have every release be the third act of a Michael Bay movie.

When was the last time a release was a Michael Bay movie? We just spent a month wasting time with an election.

Yeah, we already have far too many human females, hopefully this chapter can introduce a compelling asuran or sylvari character (or Canach comes back as a sort of antihero – it would sure beat most of the other “heroes” we are stuck with). If Rox and Braham are acting as diplomats of some sort, or are just pulled to Divinity’s Reach for the celebration, it’s possible a new sylvari or asura character is in the same boat.

I don’t think ArenaNet considers fractals a dungeon. They don’t count towards the daily. Fractals don’t share a reward system with dungeons so I wouldn’t be surprised if they stayed relatively the same.

Kimhyuna.1035:

Will the end-dungeon reward be account based or character based though. This could stuff with people who have multiple alts.

If you have multiple ults you may as well uninstall now. ArenaNet has been systematically waging war against alts with almost every single patch since launch.

Lucky.9421:

Lost in Hyrule.2963:

What is WRONG with those horns?! Tell me, how could that Charr be physically possible? He’s facing perfectly to the left, showing his profile. That means his right side horns are roughly a foot further forward than the left ones?

The loading screens have all been a little hurf-blurf since Kekai Kotaki left. Anet needs to bring him back, and Daniel Dociu for landscapes AND Horia Dociu for those sweet cutcenes. Sigh… so much talent drained.

Good artists have high value.

It’s just concept art.

Three cheers for the story abandoning Kiel and moving away from Lion’s Arch! It will be great to see a charr and a norn back in the story, I’m looking forward to whatever they get up to.

Esplen.3940:

Ashadow.6874:

Esplen.3940:

Evon is an Ash Legion charr, not a pirate.

What do you call a ship Captain, who finds lost treasure and instead of returning it, plunders it from the ship wreck and uses it to finance his own causes?

A pirate! Evon Gnashblade may be an Ash Legion, but he is also a Pirate.

First off, Evon doesn’t captain a ship, second off, if you want to be technical, neither of them are pirates…

pi·rate
Noun
A person who attacks and robs ships at sea.

However, Kiel was born to pirate parents and would have been a pirate if not for Magnus.

We aren’t talking about the Royal line here. It has nothing to do with a birth rite. Next we’ll have people claiming that you can’t be a thief unless your parents were thieves.

If Kiel is a pirate then ArenaNet has done something that’s very difficult to do and managed to make pirates boring. It baffles me that Kiel can find a crashed ship full of treasure and, as a pirate, makes a Love and Justice speech about how puppies and kitties will be sad if she takes the treasure for herself.

God help Lion’s Arch if Kiel qualifies as a pirate.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

As for the rest of your post, it’s worthy of thought but the problem? I don’t know how everyone seems to think one either must be masculine or feminine when you can just be someone. A strong female character doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate femininity, to be a strong female character. She needs to be a strong character, who happens to be female.

Does a character’s race, gender, sexuality (or lack thereof), rank, job . . . do these have to define a character, and are they required to be present for a “strong” character? Or do you just need a personality, a set of morals they follow, and some really good writing?

When I’m talking about strong female characters I’m talking about characters with a backbone, with conviction, characters that can hold their own in the world and specific to this case, a character that is physically tough and can fight on the front lines. I’m not talking about a character that has strong writing (you can be weak in a story but be written very well). You don’t have to be feminine to be a strong female character, but GW2 too often takes it the opposite way, to make a female character a tough warrior that can fight on the front lines, they remove femininity from them. “Strong” and “feminine” are not mutually exclusive but GW2 too often treats them as though they are. Several of the characters you listed are quite feminine despite having their own strength (whether it be physical strength or strength of character) that lets them hold their own in the world around them.

Thing is, most of the achievements are silly grinds. The Southsun Survival one is a good example. Several others have nothing to do with the new content (the kite baskets hidden in jumping puzzles or mini dungeons). If you take out a lot of the recycled content achievements and reduce the unecessary grind of the silly ones, there is very little meat to the Living Story updates.

It’s not a problem that the pacing is too fast, it’s that they’ve artificially inflated the content with grind and recycled stuff and slapped a time limit on it to make it an achievement. If they were producing lots of new content with all new gameplay achievements without large grinds to complete them I’d agree the pace is too fast. Unfortunately the amount of new gameplay is disproportionate to the amount of grind in the achievements.

I really like the Braham and Phoenix armour skins.

I think it’s time ArenaNet had an intervention on trench-coats though.

I know within the first 30 minutes of the server going live (which was before any stated launch time, you had sit and spam to log in) most of the lore abiding, one word asuran names were taken.

Things like Texx, Sokka, Vekk, Vikk, Vokk, Tokk, Tikk, Tekk etc.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Shiren.9532:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Player Character.9467:

Zenith.7301:

I know the ranger build, but can anyone link the build the thieves were using? I’ve been having the itch to use my thief but whereas I’ve never been immediately kicked upon joining as a warrior or guardian, joining a speed group as a thief is just winning the lottery with the amount of ignorance surrounding the class’s effectiveness.

I mean, there are tons of people still kittened enough that claim thieves are weak in PvE, when I consider them not only a class rivaling warriors, but with even better utility for the purposes of speed runs and skipping content. I know my 48 dailies on dredge go a lot smoother with a thief, in fact most fractals do.

Playing my thief is just so much more fun than playing a warrior ;*(.

I’d also kill to get a build for berserker ranger that can be used in speed runs/fractal 48 as well.

I mostly play warrior or mesmer or ranger.

Thief requires people smart enough to use fields and blast finishers AKA not most pug speed runs.

Stop trying to speedrun with pugs.

When these threads stop trying to change the pug meta with Build Wars set ups that might happen. For as long as people are heralding highly optimised party builds as meta changing examples of what the classes can do, people will try to speed run with pugs.

If you want to tear down general dungeon running pug builds, do it in a pug. If you want to demonstrate to the speed clearing subset of the community, be clear about the difference.

You don’t want us to try and help the community by pushing more skilled play?

What do you think skilled play is? You certainly completed this dungeon very fast, but almost every encounter was auto-attack. I understand it’s the most efficient DPS on the weapon, but it’s not skilled play. The bosses are all dieing before any challenge becomes present. It’s not helping the pug community because the pug community will never be a reliable source of the builds required to support this playstyle. The Build Wars side of this is very impressive, you guys obviously have a good grasp of how to break PvE content and what kinds of traits and optimised damage set ups are required to maximise DPS, but auto-attack the boss to death in seconds is not skilled play. I don’t say that to dump on what you did, but you’re not dodging, you’re not showing perfect use of evades, you’re not implementing clever tricks with snares, you’re simply breaking the content through raw DPS and auto-attacks.

What you are pushing here is optimised builds, which is a speed clear thing, it’s not going to be a pug thing because the reality of pugs is that you will have staff eles their first time in, bow warriors because they don’t like melee, axe rangers with boars because they like how they look and pistol thieves because they hate being glass.

Wethospu.6437:

SkyChef.5432:

Leman,

It seems you & I are talking past each other. Your new response doesn’t tell me anything new that I may misunderstood you but rather it does confirm my opinion that you are replacing one time gate w/ another time gate. Duration is changed, but it is still a time gate.
If it’s an account base, why can’t I bring my alt to play at my highest level then upgrade to my highest level? If it’s too descriptive for you, I can give u a very simple example in text, no fancy graphic needed:

1) Char 1 level 43
2) Char 2 level 1

Play char 2 at any level from 43 & above will upgrade it to level 43. Playing at any level below 43 before reaching 43, will only upgrade to that level. No time gate, no weekly gate, no nothing. Would it be a better idea?

I think the point is to be a time gate because Anet loves that design.

Do players love it?

Vyniea.2054:

The Stealth on the 3 attack is really useful.

Today on my new ranger I soloed the Svanir Marauder (The boss of one of the 2 meta events of Wayfarer foothills). Without stealth I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it, 2 dodge rolls can’t save you forever. Bought me precious seconds while my pet switching or heal was on cooldown. Obviously was useful to put aggro on my pet (they couldn’t live long but still would allow me to cast a full barrage) or gain some distance to be able to use the 10 arrows of Rapid Fire.

So as far as I’m concerned, the stealth is a pretty kitten great addition to the Ranger’s arsenal.

And I was level 13 at the time, so no overpowered stats (level 15 event)

Any ranger worth their salt could do this without stealth.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Variety is good for the game, especially a balanced variety. If we make too much of any one type of content, eventually that type of content will become tiresome. The purpose of my reply wasn’t to naysay jumping puzzles or activities, but just to let you know that something different is coming. Personally, I’m a huge fan of epic open-world dynamic events and since I’ve had a hand or two in the upcoming releases, you should get ready.

As the late Captain Mai once said, watch the skies.

I hope it’s a dragon. A dragon attack for the one year anniversary would be really awesome. I sometimes look at the GW2 logo, see the 2 and remember this game used to be about dragons. It’s been too long.

Chadramar.8156:

What is “femininity”? And why should a world in which women are equal in every way NOT have female characters who are not constrained by real-world stereotypes based on inequality?

I want MORE female characters like Ellen. People who can’t be forced into those stereotypical boxes exist despite massive pressure (and often abuse) to conform, and they are not a iota less of a woman/man, thank you very much.

What stereotypical boxes?

One of my favourite female characters in fiction is Balsa from Seirei no Moribito. She was probably one of the most skilled fighters in that story (if not the most skilled) and not only did she stand on equal ground with her male opponents, she often defeated them. Despite this she was also an incredibly strong maternal character. She cared for a young child (that wasn’t her own) like a mother would. That gave her character a whole other dimension. I’m also a fan of Sword of the Stranger in which a man cares for a boy in a similair manner, so I’m aware that it can go both ways.

As far as I know, women might be ‘equal’ but that does not mean the same. The writers of GW2 often seem to think that to write a strong female character, they need to essentially write a man, then give them the body of a woman. Look at Eir. She was probably one of the more likeable members of Destiny’s Edge, yet she does a very “norn” thing and abandons her child to chase her own legend. It’s almost like we’re being told that being a mother, being maternal is something that strong female characters shouldn’t do. One of the most obvious ‘equal’ races in Tyria would be the charr, yet their society has children taken away from the mother’s shortly after birth and Almorra, while stating she will grieve, showed little emotion when it came to the death of her own son (he duty and mission came first). It’s as if we are being told that being a mother is a sign of weakness (despite Bear and the Pale tree being maternal, how often do they fight?). That’s just one example of an aspect unique to women which is often abandoned to make women look “tougher” or equal to men.

I’ll get away from the women in Tyria debate now because it’s highly inflammatory (as is evident in your loaded response) and slightly off topic. The core of why I have this particular issue with Kiel is that she lacks complexity or anything that makes her compelling. She’s a very one dimensional character and is almost always written as a goody two shoes with the cliché ‘tough chick’ thing GW2 does so often.

Nozzie.2067:

Azure Prower.8701:

Nikkinella.8254:

I don’t think we’ve fought SoS before, have we? Oh well, looking forward to facing you guys. And hi again to everyone on Mag.

Probably because people on Yak’s Bend quit playing WvW for the week in our last match. They like to forget it.

The last match YB had against SoS. http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/56
I think it’s SoS that would rather be doing the forgetting. But that’s old news now that SoS has been getting their act together & attracting back the likes of [Agg].

I don’t think SoS has changed much over the last few months. I don’t know why Agg came back, but I doubt it has anything to do with SoS “getting their act together”.