Guild Wars 2

Aren’t the cores needed to go from exotic to ascended? That’s my understanding. Color is just an added benefit of it being ascended.

I’m referring to his post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/To-Merge-the-Personal-and-Living-Stories/first

If you haven’t read it, please do! Some excellent humor there, as well. And the best Scarlet meme you’ll ever see.

Shriketalon.1937 does it again! If anyone here has not read his ideas on PS/LS, you need to go to those old posts and +1 them so Anet notices. Seriously, Mike O’Brien needs to give Shriketalon.1937 a job at Anet.

Konrad Knox.5162 wrote, “You have all these villages. Shaemoor, Beetletun, Fort Salma, Claypool, god, every map has a dozen of camps and hamlets. Imagine if all that was player controllable, guild-owned, possible to fight for, and taxable from all transactions.”

GW Factions did just that.

kimeekat.2548, your post (which I +1’d) reminded me of dialogue from an NPC that has heard of your toon but never met your toon. I think the NPC is in Hoelbrak, but I cannot remember. During your interaction, you can choose the dialogue, “I’m (character name).” And the NPC responds with some line like, “Ha! No, (character name) is taller and better looking.” I have a screnshot of it, but then I have 3 full screenshot folders to look through to find it.

Rising Dusk.2408, how can you tell the difference just by looking at the timer? Have you visited each server that has Teq active? If you do, as I have while looking for a server that does it, you will find, as I did, that a majority of servers do not do Teq. Only 3 servers (those listed as “full”) regularly do Teq, and even then, if you are not on at the right times, you can visit one of those servers, not get tossed into an overflow, and find no one in that section of the zone while Teq is up. You can visit 2 other servers every 24 hours, so please start with those not listed as “full”.

Back on topic, leave the starter zone boss alone. What is it about “starter zone” that OP doesn’t understand?

It would have been nice to have a note about Weyndt’s JP entrance. Several forum posts so far, and it was never mentioned.

Tried multiple times- you can’t get there because it hasn’t been programmed in yet. You get an “edge of the world” type thing. Still fun to run around and try to not be seen by the bandits there.

A general rundown can be found here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release

Veron, I gave a +1 to each section of your post. I REALLY hope the same oversights are not made in season 2. Immersion breaking, indeed.

Yes, putting the F&F dungeon (or a small portion of it anyway) in Fractals was a good idea. However…

Player 1: Let’s do the Flame and Frost dungeon!
Player’s Party: Yeah! One of us never got to see it, so let’s do it!
Party enters Fractals, gets Aquatic Ruins, Snowblind, Volcanic, Solid Ocean Fractal.
Player 1: Let’s do it again and do the Flame and Frost dungeon!
Players Party: Umm… that took us almost 2 hours, and we didn’t get the F&F dungeon. But, ok, one of us is new and never got to see it.
Party enters Fractals, gets Swampland, Urban Battlegrounds, Cliffside, Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal.

Five hours after the party had the desire to do the F&F dungeon, and they never got to do it. Colin, could you explain, please, how this is a good idea?

LS happened too fast? I beg to differ. Scarlet’s story actually began with Flame and Frost at the end of January 2013. It took over a year to complete! Heck, they spent 4 months on F&F alone. It took 8 months to reveal Scarlet.

But I agree it was a disappointment. What shocks me to the core is that no one at an Anet LS planning and implementation meeting ever asked, “Why should the players care about Scarlet when they have no connection/history with her?” I hope they’ve learned their lesson with this. Remember Tybalt? Everyone loves him. Why? Because we were involved with him (and he was well written). We were never involved with Scarlet (and she was poorly written). Yes, one is a good guy and one is a bad guy, but its the level of involvement here that is the key.

I hope the writing team is scouring the TVtropes website and looking for any tropes in LS season 2 and fixing them before implementation, and looking to the forums as to what rewards we, the player base, feel would be adequate rewards for season 2. If not, I’m afraid this game will lose some of its base. Honestly, I have to admit that the poor implementation and RNG reward system (i.e. you may get a reward, you may not) have reduced my incentive to log in to the game. The only thing that keeps me logging in currently is that I have a crop of friends from GW1 that I play the game with (since 2006).

Speaking of GW1, one of the things that kept me going in that game (besides the awesome story lines) was that I knew what reward I was chasing when I was completing the game. That “end game” skin was a badge of honor, showing others that I had reached the end of the campaign. What did we get for the LS? Well, a VERY small percentage got some Scarlet rifle skins, but the rest of us got some greens and blues, maybe a rare, and some obsidian shards. Compared to my Deldrimor Sword, that’s just junk. You might argue that achievement points are some type of reward, but that will get you laughed at in some circles.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Action-Figures/first#post3292111

I was hoping they’d do something similar to what Shriketalon put together in this post (which, imho, is EPIC, and the game I thought I bought):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/To-Merge-the-Personal-and-Living-Stories/first

Taimi’s golem Scruffy is standing at the door to the Dead End. Unless you turn around upon entering, you’ll miss it.

Have you been to the Dead End and talked to all the characters? Even after you think it’s over, it’s not- there’s still more dialogue available from each. SPOILER They mention we’ll have to fight that bandit camp in NW Brisban to access their asura gate and get into the wilds on our way west.

Doesn’t Rox use “kitten” once or twice in the story?

One of the things I learned from Zig Zigler a long time ago is that 10% of people retain the right to be idiots. This is true of commanders as well. While most are good, a few are down right rotten. I related a story in the Players Helping Players forum about a commander at the Shatterer telling people to AVOID the mortars and turrets while I was encouraging them to man them. I’d beaten Shatterer with 6 people (4 on mortars, 2 in melee range) before, and this particular commander, by telling people the mortars were useless, caused the event to fail with over 20 people present and fighting, with only me on a mortar.

Remember the names of the good commanders AND the bad ones. It’ll help you out in the long run.

I made a similar post quite a while ago and someone responded mentioning “that other game’s” available figures. I think Anet is totally missing out on a money making opportunity here. DCUO has collectible figures, too. The Rytlock figure was nice, but I didn’t want the other stuff that came with the special addition so I didn’t get it. The charr plush just isn’t my style (me being an over 50 yr old player). I still have my Master Sargent figure near my monitor, even though I haven’t played Halo in years. I’d love a Vigil heavy armor figure, maybe an Avatar of the Pale Tree, or some of Destiny’s Edge or the B-iconics. C’mon, Anet, call up Todd McFarlane and get busy manufacturing so we can throw our money at you!

I liked Braham from the minute he said, in the F&F dungeon final boss fight, “Oh, we’re so dead…”

Had they handled her introduction in the same manner that they handled Shiro in Factions, it would have been a lot better.

Thank you, Xyvol, I went and got that one last night. Not as cool as I was hoping it was, like some of the others, but at least I got screenies for comparison.

I think it’ll have something to do with the Breachmaker- have you noticed that the drill bit is no longer visible under water? When the patch first hit for Escape, I took my main to get the PoI there and looked at the giant drill bit spinning away. I took an alt in 2 nights ago for the PoI, and not only could I not get as close as I did with my main, but when I did get close, the current tossed me out of the water (from about 20 game feet below the surface) and 100 feet or so in the air. I laughed as my toon hollered while falling back into the water. But the drill but was buried into the bottom of the bay, no longer visible.

That one was tough! Difficult jumps for sure. I helped someone acquire it the other night, but it was still frustrating for them. The one I’d still like to get just to compare before and after screenies of burning LA is the one that was on the bridge. Its now at the end of a long pole, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get up to it.

As a side note, its rather frustrating that you cannot follow the word “get” with the word “it” without the censor giving you “gekitten”. (rolls eyes)

I think the problem is that Anet wants EVERYONE in LA to do the knights when they come up. 50 per knight = 150 players (zone cap). Want to gather heirlooms? You CAN’T! THE KNIGHTS ARE UP!!! If you gather heirlooms, the event FAILS!!! Oh no!!! (rolls eyes). You really cannot give players several options and expect everyone to pick the same option at the same time. That’s just bad design. IMHO, it would have been better if they made the knights need 25-30 players per knight, not 50. Then the AFKers and heirloom gatherers and JPers and vista lookers wouldn’t cause the event to fail. “Play the game your way,” and listen to everyone beg you to help at knights.

Kaldrys.1978, I’m on EBay, and last night we had a hard time getting everyone at ONE night, let alone all 3. We had over 20 at the blue knight and when the time ran out, it was still at 25% health. I’d love to know how on the Six god’s green Tyria you could possibly do it with 5-10 players. Everyone have ogre pet whistles/fire ele powder/seed pods?

Morfedel.4165 said it first, and it’s been echoed many times in this forum. A Black Lion Ticket (or two) would have been the best reward. GW1 had a similar reward system, as many have pointed out. And tbh, even that would have generated complaints. One or two tickets is not enough to get a skin. But would that encourage purchase of keys from some of the player base? You can bet your cat it would. Missed opportunity by Anet, imho.

Elrey.5472, you can guest to a server where the Temple of Balthazaar is open and spend that karma on shards. I had over 5 mil karma on Ebay and guested to another server and bought 3 stacks of shards with my karma for ascended crafting. Still no precursor, though, and no way in hades I’m gonna buy it off the trading post. Check gw2stuff.com to see where the temple is open.

Yes, please! When this game was in beta, I asked for it on every evaluation. I love the 1st person view in GW1- it lets you see things closer than what we have now. And with all the beautiful LITTLE details in this game, many go unnoticed unless you stand “butt to butt” as Behellagh.1468 pointed out. I’d read here on the forums what Mystic had mentioned and it REALLY got my hopes up. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that after Anet gets this game fully optimized, we get it with the mouse scroll, like in GW1. This game is too beautiful to not have it.

Psychol.5783, your pic looks like “High Noon” in burning LA- you and an Aetherblade.

I wish I could remember the posters name, but there’s a youtube vid of a solo DD ele just PWNING a large group in WvW.

Yup. Get a good graphics card, and there’s no more beautiful game on the market, imho. Makes me want 1st person view (like in GW1) even more.

Too funny- I started my reply when no one else had commented, took a break to feed the cats, and posted to see all the Hirathi comments.

BRIA!!! Totally forgot about that VERY cool DE! Glad you brought it up, Lambent!

Hirathi Hinterlands, north part of the zone, leading up to the spawn of the zone boss. Lots of DE’s on the way, and you cover a lot of ground.

Also, the Cursed Shore event chain that has to do with the asura and the golem. Plinx, I believe is his name. Haven’t done it in a while because no one is in the zone when I’m gathering.

These, however, are not soloable, as they end in Group Events. A small group can do Hirathi, however.

Don’t miss it at all. If you want a “holy trinity”, I’m sure there are a lot of churches in your area that can give you one.

Good lord, THREE pages? I laughed my kitten off at the comments on the first page alone. I did, however, like the comment about a buff for the warband. Our charr PS sort of leaves our own PS warband in the dust- NOT what a charr would do. Bonus buff if all toons in the party are charr and in the same guild. Maybe a ferocity buff, when that arrives. But then, of course, we’d hear all the “not fair!” comments from other races. Krewe buff? I’d be good with that, too.

LOVE the dragon in Orr idea!!! I have to admit I expected a dragon event in Cursed Shore when I first went there. They’re ALL OVER the sky… but they never land to feast on we players? Why the heck not!?!

I am of the firm opinion that people want an “expansion” of the game we currently have because of the lack of new areas to explore, new playable races, classes, weapons and skills. The Temporary Story concept (a.k.a. LS) actually CAN be used to deliver that type of content, but so far hasn’t (unless you count Southsun Cove, and many have already pointed out its faults, whether you agree with them or not). I sincerely hope that in Season 2, the story will lead us to areas of the map that we are currently unable to access. As a GW1 veteran, It KILLS me that many of the areas I enjoyed in that game are not developed in this game (yet). I’m not sure how many here that are crying for an expansion played GW1, but would those of you who who are be happy if Anet opened, for instance, Maguuma in the next LS and gave us new areas to explore? If we were to find, say, some sylvari dude in Maguuma from the sylvari PS (trying to avoid spoilers by being vague) that introduced us to other NPC’s that showed our toons some new weapon skills and utilities to help us explore the new area, or how to craft armor and weapons with new skins, would that satisfy your craving for an expansion? I’ll wager the answer is yes, as long as it is PERMANENT content.

As to the “failure” of the Temporary Story, I beg to differ on that definition. I’m of the opinion that what “failed” was that it did not engage OUR toons sufficiently in the story, and presented the main antagonist in such a way that many decried her as a “Mary Sue”. Had Scarlet’s introduction vested us in her development and set her up as our antagonist earlier in Season 1 with confrontations between her and our toons where she WAS NOT all powerful and possibly needed to be rescued by her minions from certain death at the hands of our toons, I’m sure we wouldn’t have seen so many “Mary Sue” complaints. Indeed, were that the case, she wouldn’t have been the very definition of a “Mary Sue”.

Spear as used in history, i.e. melee and ranged. Like the first part of this fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ62frK74u0
Warriors and Guardians, on land.

I’m with the Keg Brawl lovers here. Wish we could form teams and have a team leader board. Its nice when you get a player that understands the pass and can linger at the halfway point looking to receive a pass and make the score. Its not like you can stop to type while playing, so communication is non-existant. You have to do it with positioning, and if no one on your team understands WHY someone is positioned where they are, well… Let us pick our teams! I’d gladly wait in que for a match, just like we used to do in GW1 GvG.

Odd that the forum filter won’t allow 100% passage of the name of this dragon and wants to replace the first 4 letters of the dragon’s name with “kitten”, so you end up with “kittenterer”…

After my post on Surviving Claw of Jormag was so well received and after beating Shatterer with 6 people and failing it with 20, I felt I had to post about kitten.

First off, I was at Shatterer once with only 5 others, and while we didn’t think we could beat it, I encouraged everyone to man the mortars & turrets and fire away. 2 people still wanted to melee, a guardian and I think a ranger. The other 4 of us fired the mortars, occasionally swapping ammo to healing for the 2 melee. No one fired mortars at the adds, as that just brings them to destroy the mortars. Everyone was positive in map chat, wondering if the few of us could do it, wanting us to succeed for the bragging rights. When the mortars were attacked by the adds, we fought them off and went back to firing the mortars. We ended up beating it with just a few seconds left on the timer. With just 6 people. Six.

Fast forward a few weeks and the LS is Escape from LA. Not many people out in the rest of the world, as everyone is in LA. Shatterer pre is up on the gw2stuff timer, so I go there, zoning in just as it lands. I see no one on the mortars, so I put in map chat, “Man the mortars!” A commander-tagged toon is doing melee and says something to the effect that melee and ranged is the way to go and the mortars don’t do squat. I run up to the melee group, quick count of about 20 and they seem adequate, so I run back to the mortars, and get at least one firing. No one else mans a mortar, so I mention that I and 5 others beat Shatterer with pretty much just the mortars and 2 toons at melee. No one comments or comes to man a mortar. At the 11 minute mark, Shatterer still had 90% health. I again mention the mortars, no one responds. At the 5 minute mark, we’re still barely half way. I again mention the previous 6 man mortar win, no one mans the mortars. At the 1 minute mark, its clear we’ll be failing the event, kittenterer still has about 30% health. I say in map chat, “We’d have been better off with a full compliment on the mortars.” Obviously not happy that we’re failing the event, some wisecracker responds with, “Talk to yourself much?” Event ends a failure, and everyone starts spewing venom in map chat, blamestorming.

So…Shatterer is doable with a very small group. Just man the mortars and turrets. Please. Only go to the rise to melee/close range if the mortars are all manned.

I’d like to see new skins (or GW1 skins not already on the TP) drop from kills so we don’t have to buy them from the TP. I want to farm for a drop, not the gold to buy it. MUCH more rewarding.

“5. Maguum leveling Zones 80-90”- NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. You don’t need to level past 80. You get skill points to spend for each level past 80. I have over 400 unused SP’s, so my main is something like level 580. If the cap was increased, would my main automatically be at the new cap? Why not? (Insert Grumpy Cat face here.) Just NO. If that’s the grind you want, you bought the wrong game. Go back to WoW.

-new weapons
-new skills and the ability to change the skill set on my equipped weapons.
-Zinn’s Lab as a dungeon would be awesome!
-stick to GW1 lore and no retconning.

Kinda hard for me to put a number on a rating because there were some things I liked a lot, and many things I did not care for. My biggest complaint is that we as players were not invested in Scarlet at any point in the story. Did my toon ever hear of her before Queen’s Jubilee? Why not? She’d been making waves in asuran schools and no one EVER mentioned her? None of her other teachers ever mentioned the unusual sylvari that learned their craft and then disappeared? We should have had some LS content at the very beginning that introduced our toons to Scarlet and created some sort of friction or gave us a warning that she would be up to no good.

Now that the story is concluding, these forums are STILL rife with speculation about so many story related things. A well crafted story would have given us answers and explanations for motivations, not more questions. Anet may have had a good story somewhere, but it was lost in the telling.

It’s been said before that people remember the ending most. What’s the first thing you mention about that concert you saw and loved? The encore (I bet). The bug-ridden finale has to be a large reason many people are scoring the LS so low.

Paciunek.2496, I see your point, and agree with you 100%.

I think the best thing in the whole LS was the F&F dungeon with it’s awesome final boss encounter. Great NPC dialogue, fight mechanics, the works. Its a small shame that the whole thing wasn’t saved for posterity. Sure, you can get part of it in Fractals, but not all of it. And you can’t pick that one if you want to do it.

Have you gotten into your toon’s personal story? That’s a good way to level up, and if your level is not high enough for your next story step, do some heart quests or the Queensdale champ train to level up.

Once you are higher level, you’ll be able to play with your skills and traits to get whichever part of the “trinity” you hope to play. While there is no “holy trinity” in this game, you can spec your toon for different roles. My mesmer is traited so that phantasms heal in a close radius, helping to mitigate damage to myself and my party. I can also trait for DPS or tanking. My guardian can also be traited in a similar fashion.

I’d say pick a toon you like best and level it up enough to have all your skills unlocked and play around with your traits. There are also a lot of forum posts dealing with specific builds that you could check out.

No, because she’s in the camp outside Vigil Keep asking about Scarlet. She doesn’t go to any of the final battles.

This has been used before about characters in the Personal Story, but I feel it’s appropriate here:

Scarlet’s not dead. She’s just too cheap to waypoint.

“I want pre-Scarlet LS back…” Ummmm…. I dunno how to break this to you, but “LS” was all about Scarlet, even when we didn’t know her name. Holidays, Southsun, SAB and Teq are the only LS (and are they really LS with their content?) updates that weren’t about Scarlet. Check the list at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release.

Back on topic. So, maps are capped at 150, right? 50 people on each knight means you have a CHANCE of success. Oh, but wait…. 10 are farming heirlooms, 12 are farming champs, 5 are working on dailies and killing whatever is needed there and don’t have time for the knights event, 3 are AFK and still thinking they’ll be leeching rewards somehow, 7 are still looking for Peter cuz that’s the only achievement they need for the meta, and 3 are doing jumping puzzles and vistas so they can compare screenies from “pre-searing LA”. So the Knights event is short 40 people and doesn’t scale down, leading to all the complaints above.

How to fix this going forward? Districts, just like GW1 has. Give us the ability to switch overflows like we did in GW1 events. Dwayna & Grenth had even/odd districts for Wintersday, and WE could CHOOSE which we went to. If we could switch which overflow we were in, we could find one filled with like minded people. Want to get a dedicated Knights event overflow? District 1. Farming champs only? Dist 2. Heirlooms? Commander leading a route in Dist 3. Why, after this game has been out over a year and a half, does it still lack this one little thing that could make things so much better?

Yes, sort of… “Forgot” implies I knew it was there. Never saw it because of the exact reason OP stated.

If “scaling” means that an event’s difficulty (or boss health) is increased by the number of players present, if a player is present but idle and does not contribute anything other than his/her presence, wouldn’t that player be scaling up the event difficulty? While I’m not exactly sure how Anet works scaling, I’m pretty confident that those 3 afk/idle players REALLY ARE negatively impacting the chance of success, as their presence increases boss health/event difficulty without the benefit of their DPS contribution that the game expects the afk/idler to contribute.

I won’t mention any names, but if some posters on this thread have so much contempt for this game and its players, why do you even play?