Guild Wars 2

Evans.6347:

So I would like to say too. Syryn. However, if, and a surely hope not, but if Mordremoth is behind Scarlet’s actions then we need to look at the warning the Pale Tree gave her in that light too.

That warning being “In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them.”

…please let it not be so.

Which could exclusively mean those who experience the Dream, and not Sylvari as a whole. As far as we know, only the Pale Tree that births player Sylvari is connected to the Dream. We also know it is not the only creature in Tyria connected to the dream. So, when the Pale Tree mentions the “forces that shape us”, she could be referring to dreamers and not Sylvari.

I’m not particularly tied to Lion’s Arch (everyone should live in Ebonhawke and make charr-human babies together ¹), but I think it’d be a much more interesting event if Lion’s Arch was set into ruins and then the beginning of season two was reclaiming ² and then starting the slow process of collecting resources and such to build it up again. Hopefully nothing as bland as donating resources to the rebuilding effort with a little meter that goes up, but instead actually doing events related to delivering resources, protecting escorts from bandits, hammering bolts, etc. Overtime as these events are done cross-servers and overflows, Lion’s Arch would slowly start looking like its old self on all servers within the same regional data center, maybe with some modifications to architecture to look like it has actually undergone a rebuilding… I mean we can’t exactly find the same broken ships and such… can we?

¹ – Awww
² – Of course, depending on what we’re reclaiming it from this could, and should, be a very long process.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

While not outside the realm of possibility, it does raise a few questions. Why is there no historical mention of them? Why is there no memory of this previous set of sylvari in the Dream? Where did they go, and what became of them there?

While the first question is what casts the most doubt on this hypothesis. The answer to the second is that Sylvari from this Pale Tree are unique in that they are connected to the dream, but previous incarnations while still having dragon immunity, were not connected to the dream like Malyck.

Are Sylvari a possibility? Not because they are dragon minons, but because they seem to be a type of “immune” response to the dragons. I haven’t seen much in game to suggest that they are a cyclical race that awakens every time an elder dragon rises then dies off after their job is complete, but we do know that the Pale Tree seeds have existed for sometime prior to the dragon’s awakening. However, you’d think they’d get a much better mention in the historical record due to their immunity, if they existed during the prior awakening.

Still looking for people to help organize on Fort Aspenwood. We’ve got many people researching strategy, but need the numbers to show up before the events start so we have better organization during the event. Give us a whisper or in game message!

It says the coast is clear of jungle wurm attacks. Isn’t that the successful condition, not the failed one? I’ve failed a good number of jungle wurm attempts in my time and have never seen the coast clear =D

I would! Posting so my full usename is visible. Mine is fairly unique, but I think reapex may belong to multiple users.

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

That’s exactly what international means. They are shared between (inter) nations. The term you mean is global, I think.

You are correct. Thanks

KehxD.6847:

SirMoogie.9263:

Crimson is the hardest from a coordination aspect. What are you thoughts on assigning people to prioritizing delivery of a colored phytotoxin instead of a free for all?

The thing is, going through more than one cloud while running to a generator gives you a small time bonus. Assigning people to special colours would prevent them from running through 3 clouds and then just to the 3 generators. Instead they would run to the cloud and back and forth an back, which costs more time, since you had the chance to actually gather 3 clouds without going back an forth. ^^

I did not know of the time bonus, thanks. I was thinking that having more time spent running with buffs gives more opportunities for them to be removed by wurm attacks (they do that right, I ’m not hallucinating here?)

Crimson is the hardest from a coordination aspect. What are you thoughts on assigning people to prioritizing delivery of a colored phytotoxin instead of a free for all?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

While he makes mention of Underflows, you have to consider the problems I stated. You merge people from different servers into a single map, you have the positive outcome of a more populated map. But when more people log in on off-hours, and they want to play with their friends in the same map, you get the problem of trying to fit more people into a map that’s full of people from multiple servers.

I can see the problem, but I think it’s solvable. One method they could take is to treat world choice as only mattering for WvW match ups. In this scenario if a player enters Queensdale they get placed into “Queensdale – 1” with other players until it reaches capacity. Once it reaches capacity “Queensdale – 2” is created and players are placed into that. If players wish to join another underflow because their friends are there they can join in. There would no longer be a copy of each zone for each server (i.e., “Queensdale – Fort Aspenwood”) . In this situation zones now operate much more closely to their GW counterpart, districts and guesting is irrelevant.

Another route they could take is arbitrarily defining a zone as underflow based on capacity (e.g., a zone is under capacity when it has 10 or less players). Upon a zone reaching this state a player entering it gets a prompt asking if they wish to move to the underflow for the zone. As underflows reach max capacity new ones are created like above. If the player’s home server’s copy of a zone goes above the underflow limit, the players get a notification that their zone is now populating and they can re-enter it. Players can always go back to main at their choosing.

Neither of these methods precludes people from playing with who they want and both solve the problems you raise.

urzen.7096:

Then come up with a solution of your own to deal with 5 servers having 10 people each a normal flow who cant see each other and therefore fail an event independently. All Im seeing is excuses from you.

Merging those 50 people onto one flow so they can help each other seems like common sense.

Arena Net seems to at the very least have this on their mind. In the recent CDI Colin made specific mention of underflow worlds.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/3468774

For the name, perhaps something Fort Aspenwood related?

My guild chose FA because we were Kurzick supporters in GW 1.

Mada.5319:

fort-aspenwood.com

use it

Still awaiting access

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

I’m not familiar with how the system worked in GW1 but from what you’re describing it sounds like the copies of the districts were specific to the respective main server,

Guild Wars didn’t have servers. It automatically placed you in a district based on your territory. For example there was an “American – English Active District” district. You were free to switch to another district, such as “Europe – English District 1” (if it wasn’t full). If a district filled up it would create another district, such as “American – English District 2”. These were not specific to a territory as anyone could go where they please.

In GW 2 we have worlds, but they function essentially the same as the named districts.¹ You can think of a GW 2 world’s zone as the named districts and the overflows as the (unnamed) copies of those districts. The major difference is that GW 2 takes a conservative approach in creating the additional copies. Rather than create a copy for each world’s zone when it fills up, it creates a shared copy that all full world’s zone redirects players to when they enter the zone. My guess is they do that to save computational resources. It’s much easier to have one copy of a zone around than, say, 15… especially when those 15 are being under utilized.

¹ – Except now there are two main data centers, soon to be three with Guild Wars 2’s launch in China, that prevent North American players from playing with European players

I think the biggest problem with the current system is that overflows are international.

They aren’t international. They are shared among all worlds that are part of the same regional data center. So, all European world’s can share the same overflow, but an North American world can never share the same overflow with a European world.

We’ve been organizing wurm runs on Elona Reach for days on overflows now (to keep people who are afk-ing from blocking server spots and to incentivise people to join TeamSpeak, if only for a taxi), but a soon as you are on an overflow, you will inevitably get at least 10 people from different servers, who don’t necessarily speak your language, don’t understand what they’re supposed to do and consequently cause the event to fail.

You can have this problem in ANY type of zone (overflow or non-overflow). Any world on the European data center can guest to any other world on the European data center. The language focuses on European services are guidelines, AFAIK, not restrictions on who can guest where. Being in a group on non-overflow does not confer understanding of the events, you can get people who don’t know the encounter in an overflow or out of one.

When GW 2 launched many people with international guilds were upset enough as is that they didn’t allow North American players to play with European players. Placing further restrictions on guesting and overflow creation would not go over well with some European guilds. It also won’t fix many of the problems you’re raising, save the language barrier one you raise; which it can only improve not completely fix.

They could possibly change the overflow creation rules to only place people from the same language focus worlds into the same overflows (or at least prioritize doing so), but I’m not so sure that’s an easy change nor one they have the technical capability of implementing at this point. I wouldn’t restrict players from guesting or transferring to those worlds/overflows though.

Savoy.6824:

Yo ANET. HELLO!!!! Anybody out there? Is this going to by like obsidian sanctum where you force people who dont pvp to go to a map where other players can attack you while your trying to complete your pve objectives. Or is there going to be a moritorium on player combat while the story is going on?

If it’s in WvW it’s not really a PvE objective, now is it? =D

laokoko.7403:

Most people are probably just guesting. The overflow are doing much better compare to some of the home server.

I think technology for single shard with district kind of like that in GW1 is a good idea. But I’m not sure how difficult it is to implement. And server transfer is one of the way Anet makes money. I’m not sure Anet would do that.

GW 2 has this. Most people who suggest the GW 1 system are under the impression that it is vastly different in GW 2. It really isn’t.

In GW 1 you had a set of named districts. These districts had a capacity that when reached a copy of them was created that also had a capacity. When that capacity was reached another copy was created. Players could not switch to a district that was full, they could only switch to another named district (or one of its copies) that isn’t.

In GW 2 you have a set of named zones in worlds. These zones have a capacity that when reached a copy of them is created that also has a capacity called overflows. When that capacity is reached another copy is created. Players can not switch to a zone that is full, they can only switch to another named zone in a world (or one of its copies) that isn’t.

The only difference between the setups is interface. In GW 1 it was painless to switch to an overflow district or other named district. In GW 2 to switch to another named zone you have to log out, guest (which you’re limited in doing), and then log in. If you want to switch to a specific overflow you need to know someone in that overflow, and “Join in” their overflow. Arena Net borrowed their district technology from GW and applied it to zones. They just changed a few rules on managing them.

One possibly fix that might please people is listing the overflows, assigning each a visible identifier, and letting people join them through a menu. However, this list might be huge considering GW 2’s population and might need a search function. Even then, will it really help solve the problems players are having with grouping for empty events? Creating underflows might be a better solution though that has its own problems… such as who’s version of the zone do you copy the state of (if you even bother copying the state).

mythil.9416:

1) You are pretty much forced into letting him lead as there are no other options

That is a criticism about them not writing some arbitrary number of choices of whom the player can pick as Pact leader, not a criticism of Trahearne’s character.

2) Just dumping a character in and everyone saying “Hay that guy he’s so awesome” is not weaving him into the narrative

As pointed out you are mistaken on the everyone thinking Trahearne is awesome. As for dumping him into the narrative, I agree that was poor storytelling. This is a criticism of their choice to introduce characters and facts necessary to understanding the plot in branches of the story players will never see unless they made those choices. There are numerous examples of this, it is not unique to Trahearne.

3) He is very annoying, just mopes around and makes you do all the actual work while he soaks up the glory.

As pointed out he doesn’t just absorb the glory. He continuously reminds you how important you are. As do other NPCs. If you aren’t going to point to specific examples demonstrating your point, as I did; you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And arguing that because of it there is just one more race out there and nothing else unknown is arguing such a specific possibility that the likelihood is… slim, to say the least.

Agreed. I was not arguing that. That is someone else. I may have misinterpreted them as saying there are more races, when they meant a specific number.

mythil.9416:

He turns up half way through the story and totally takes the spotlight from you.

He turns up at various points in time based on character race. His first appearance for most players is Claw Island. He is introduced as someone well known by your mentor as a scholar of Orr. He is there for the very same reason you and your mentor are there, as he acknowledges. He then asks for your permission to accompany you. This is hardly taking charge.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Battle_of_Claw_Island#Dialogues

In the follow up mission he says some variation of, “[Player’s mentor’s] sacrifice held them back, but it was your bravery that led us to safety, my friend. I am grateful to you.”

You and Trahearne, at his request, seek help from the Pale Tree. This mission is largely about Orr, Trahearne, and his lack of confidence in being a general. Both Trahearne and the Pale Tree treat you as the player as important to reclaiming Orr. If anyone is stealing the spotlight at this point it’s that Avatar of the Pale Tree. Always building up Trahearne when he’s down and showing visions of your destiny.

The following mission has you saving your order. At the end you propose to form The Pact alliance, not Trahearne; and Trahearne agrees to follow whatever your plan might be.

Trahearne’s introduction, to most players, isn’t remarkably different from other NPCs that aid the player. It is hardly spotlight grabbing.

Everyone starts bowing down to him and following everything he does and all you have is his dirty work to do. He totally removes the feeling of being the spotlight of the story, the hero and the driving force in change and it comes out of nowhere.

To the contrary. After you decide to form the Pact and you choose Trahearne to lead it; the first mission has you deciding the tactics for retaking Claw Island and Trahearne agreeing to them. The NPCs that offer victory dialogue thank you and Trahearne. Trahearne repeats that he needs you by his side to keep the orders unified. Trahearne offers his doubts about reclaiming Orr and you give him hope.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retribution#Dialogue

In Forging the Pact, no one is bowing down to Trahearne. The point of this mission actually to convince the orders that Trahearne can lead them as they all have doubts.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forging_the_Pact#Dialogues

I could go on and look into every mission dialogue for you, but I think your should do your own homework. I think you’ll find that Trahearne gives a lot of credit to the player and that this is mostly a story about you supporting Trahearne through his Wyld Hunt. It is not your Wyld Hunt, but you play an important role in it.

There are problems with Trahearne. His introduction for most players is without much precedent, as is the case with many other plot elements (e.g., only some Auran players learn about Professor Gorr’s theory that is largely dropped into other player’s laps when it becomes necessary). He also has a very unemotional voice actor, which can be more than irritating when certain lines need to be delivered with emotion. This could be because of the writing or the actor, I’m not sure which.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Which isn’t a hint to a sixth race, but that the jotun’s records may be incomplete – as I was stating.

It can be both, right? I’m not sure if we’re talking passed each other, or what you consider a “hint”. As a statement in game it is indeed a hint that the records are incomplete. However that it is a hint for that is not contradictory with the hypothesis that it is also a hint at more than five races. If we are including authorial intent, having the player character ask “Only five races?” is an interesting choice of phrasing to further the dialogue. The player could have asked, “Are the records so incomplete?”, or"How fares your task?" So many choices to further this conversation, yet the author chose, “Only five races?”

I’m part of a small guild and I’ve been speaking to others interested in forming a team of Fort Aspenwood players looking to learn and do the harder encounters regularly. I think our largest handicap as a server has been getting the organization going early on, which let people see little progress in the event and have thus abandoned it seeing no positives from the encounter. This is actually opportune as we can get players that actually want to learn and succeed in the event together in main.

I’m not interested in forming a guild for this, except maybe for organizational purposes. If we did it would just be one that doesn’t require representation and be FA only. I like my tight-knit small guild; but I would also like to see FA organize for these events and become a server people consider guesting to because we do these events.

Add me to your friends and I’ll add you. I’m not available much on weekdays.

I think by “hints” zamalek is referring to the lines:

Player: “Only five races?”
Scholar Trueclaw: “That we know of. […]”

This is not “in game” evidence of more than five races, as it’s just a statement of what the Priory knows. However, it is curious as a piece of writing. This line was written for a reason. It’s already established at this point in the dialogue that there are five races and other dialogue by the player could have furthered the conversation on why no helpful information is coming forward.

I’m not sure where you stand on including authorial intent in your model of Tyria. I think it should at the very least contribute some probability to a hypothesis about Tyria as what and how a writer chooses to present information is evidence about a writer’s intent, which directly affects what is true of Tyria.

Father Grimm.8467:

I know some are hung up on winning the achievements, but I think they need to face that in an MMO, some achievements simply must rely on the cooperation of others. That’s what a community game is all about. Besides, the meta achievement is ultimately achievable without the help of others, anyway.

To some getting everything is necessary. I don’t hold this “collector” mentality myself, but I can understand it. The game helps to foster it now that AP is a type of reward and recognition. As such many players look for every opportunity to collect it. When they are prevented from doing so they get frustrated, and lash out at the game for being unfair or their fellow players for being “noobs”. I really don’t think most players are incapable of learning these encounters, so I’d rather place the blame on myself when they fail. I could be doing more to secure a win; such as nabbing a commander’s tag (I did) and organizing my server into a fighting force (I’m trying, but my game time is limited on weekdays).

- Re: Bloodtide wurms:

This really seems to be geared only to very large guilds. Getting 120+ disciplined players together at one time to pace three separate kills appropriately is not going to happen with a pickup zerg.

Oh? I wasn’t at the two desolation kills, but I imagine this wasn’t a pure effort from one guild, but multiple people from a variety of guilds coming together for the events. I surmise this as it wasn’t done in overflow (AFAIK), so the huge lines of people trying to get into main (especially on the second attempt) would prevent any large guild from getting all their members into the main attempt. Pick up zergs have been organizing successfully since this game launched… in WvW.

These events don’t need large guilds, they do need a player base genuinely interested in success. A player base interested in success will be interested in making multiple attempts and willing to accept failure as people learning the encounter or not having the right tactics, instead of blaming others or the encounter for being too hard. It will have a handful of people (not necessarily the same people each time), willing to strap on a commander tag and going through the process of organizing people into groups instead of letting them sort themselves; and then after doing so organizing people on site of the wurms into appropriate roles for the event. This organization need not be done through voice comm asthe game gives ample time before the wurms to do it.¹ It will require people to listen and sometimes accept that they are better suited for other tasks (e.g., if you lack toughness/vit/heal gear you’re better suited outside the wurm’s belly preventing husks/wurms from destroying people with the Wurm Attractant buff).

¹ – Tequatl desperately needs more events/time before his arrival.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Timers create a different type of pressure than something like the Marionette’s mechanic. They are both equally valid ways to pressure players and create difficulty, and both have merits in different scenarios.

I agree, but there is a psychological game here as well. Short timers seem to get the blame for a failure, instead of player skill when timers are involved. While in the marionette event player skill seems to be blamed more for failures; rather than minions running too fast or them providing too much energy to the cannons.

“Knowing is half the battle” is a fallacy

Another reason I don’t favor timers is that they are immersion breaking. I’d like GW 2 to move to a more organic experience, like the one EQ Next is promising to offer. In such a world enemies actions will “make sense” form a lore perspective. From a lore perspective it doesn’t make sense for Tequatl to flee a battle he is winning. What would make sense is for him to have the destruction of the weapon that’s killing him as his focus (i.e., the megalaser), and if that is destroyed then the event fails. The multitude of failures in the Marionette encounter demonstrate that minions getting to an objective can cause failure. After Tequatl wins it also doesn’t make sense for him to flee either. He needs to stick around and attack the zone. I’ve described such improvements to the encounter here

Moshari.8570:

Now Teq and Wurm on the other hand I think are completely wrong for the open world and wrong for the majority of the player base….they cannot be accomplished by a group of players who just get together and talk over the strategy in the map chat….those require experience with the fight…multiple experiences with the fight in order to learn…and that is something the “average” player will not have without doing the fight multiple times.

I don’t see anything wrong with this. If events can be failed, and their failure leads to different world states, I think it makes the game more interesting by adding a sense of life to the game. All of a sudden our capabilities as heroes of Tyria matter to the world. If all encounters could be beat the first time without practice, then it wouldn’t matter if events had these fail states as they would never be possible.

I don’t think the game is in this state yet. The consequences for failing Tequatl, the Wurm, and the Marionette are mild at best. The consequences for succeeded are equally transparent. However, should Arena Net carry through with the suggestions made in the Living World CDI, then events that are challenging and capable of failure are necessary for giving player’s actions a sense of purpose in the world.

I think going forward events like these should have their failure conditions moved to things players feel like they have more control over. They should also have a means of easily gauging progress toward learning the encounter. Timers are a poor means of communicating challenge as it feels like skill is not the determining factor in winning the encounter just DPS. Though this is just a feeling and not actually true, the Marionette offers a better mechanic for a challenging encounter that can fail through the minion waves. Under the hood it is still a DPS race vs a timer (as you must kill the energizing mobs before they reach the end of the lane). However, you as a player have more tools to control this failure (e.g., cripple, chill, immobilize, walls).

Dott.5672:

Someone please explain to me why Scarlet is suddenly in the Mist.
It’s bad enough that we have to deal with her faffing about in the Living Story, but now she’s been thrown into WvW as well. Just… Why?

It’s not so sudden. The probes have been in the mists for sometime now. And then there is this:

“She saw Tyria and the Mists; she saw the insurmountable challenge of the future and her people’s part in it—the sylvari of the tree and the Nightmare Court, Caithe and Faolain—all part of a grand design.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scarlet_Briar

I’m not sure where the wiki got that from as that claim isn’t sourced. I suspect the Tower Talk interview (which would be unfortunate if the case, as that kind of information needs to be in game). As for what she is doing there, I imagine that will be part of the next release.

Also, where does she get the manpower to simultaneously invade about 80% of Tyria AND the Mists?

Don’t mistake in game mechanics for lore. Invasions are not representative of her forces, but of content designed for hundreds of players.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The timers and mob HP were balanced and rebalanced several times in an attempt to find a sweet spot that would ensure people couldn’t faceroll the event, but wasn’t so difficult that no one could do it. Everyone’s mileage will vary. And as with any group activity, virtual or real life, there is luck inherent in that. Some people hate that dynamic and some love it. If someone has an idea about how to ameliorate the inherent luck factor in group events, please speak up!

I’ve suggested this elsewhere, but you should scale the events (and rewards) not just on player size, but also server success. If a server consistently fails an event, then it gets easier (and the rewards drop). If a continuously succeeds, the event gets harder, and the rewards greater. Unfortunately, I see no easy way of carrying this information over to an overflow as overflows aren’t tied to servers. Perhaps averaging the successes/failures of each server in need of the current overflow would work, but may not be technically feasible.

digiowl.9620:

If skill is involved, why does there need to be DPS? Unless the person is out to troll by stalling progress, winning should be more than enough indication off skill as long as there is no way to 100% insulate the character from damage via passive measures.

I’m kind of puzzled by your question. I think you might have meant, “why does there have to be time constrained DPS for victory?” To that I agree that there doesn’t have to be. I wasn’t defending its inclusion, to the contrary I think they should drop the timers (as explained further up thread). All I was saying is that it isn’t true that the timers aren’t a skill check as one has to be alive to damage the boss, and to be alive one must learn the boss mechanics that cause death or prohibit damage from being done.

If you were suggesting they remove the doing damage aspect entirely, that would mean many of our skills are essentially useless for the fight and players would rightly wonder why give us weapons or skills at all if they aren’t relevant to the battles we are having. Even the Marionette Phase 1 requires that we do damage in a limited amount of time. We have to do damage to the minions to prevent them from reaching the end of the lane, and not doing enough of it will fail the event. The difference between this and timers is that you can extend the time you have to burn down the mobs through some abilities, in particular control abilities that slow down the minions extending the window you have to kill them.

Luna.9640:

When you will finally address this MAJOR issue or you will keep ignoring it forever and still say you make stuff for hardcore groups in future ?

How do you propose they address the issue?

digiowl.9620:

Meaning that the success or failure of the event depends on the performance of the players, not some timer ticking down in the background.

I sympathize with removing the timers, but I would go so far as to say timers don’t depend on player performance. They are both skill and DPS indicator. For Tequatl you need to have the skills to avoid the waves and other hazards to DPS him and beat the timer. For the wurms you have to have the skills to deliver bombs and phytotoxin to DPS him. I support removing the timers for more interesting failure conditions that make sense (does Tequatl have an appointment to make?)

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

I like the challenging open world bosses, but I wish you’d borrow more from the marionette fight when designing them in the future. I have not completed the marionette or the wurm, and have only beat Tequatl once by guesting to a more popular server. I think why I like the marionette better is the event feels like it is more in our control as players to succeed, and less to do with beating some arbitrary timer.

I understand timers are a check against skill and DPS; as one must deliver the barrels, phytotoxins, etc. with skill in order to DPS wurm; but it stills feels different when you fail because a timer elapsed. Thoughts like, “We removed so many of the wurm’s protective shields, yet only got it down to 75%, there isn’t enough time!” are routine after a failed wurm event; instead of thoughts like, “We need to practice more of the mechanics to succeed”. I think the reason why is the mechanics are easy enough to pick up. The wurm has shield and the shield needs to go to damage the wurm, but failures still occur. Since timers cause failure they are the immediate thing to blame; not one’s skill. The marionette on the other hand has feedback through the event that your using your skills poorly. Is the charge meter filling too fast? It’s your defense that is lacking. Are you failing to cut chains? It’s your offense.

Apart from these mechanics issues, I don’t like timers as they are immersion breaking. I like my open world to make sense within the confines of Tyria’s lore. It just doesn’t make sense for the wurm or Tequatl to leave after 10 minutes. Is Tequatl late for a pedicure? More events that chain into each other and affect the world based on player participation, and less of this predictable world where everything runs on a timer would improve immersion.

An answer from players playing the release would now be appreciated =D

g e o.2589:

Because its permanent, however low lvl ppl did miss out on the wings and achis

Don’t care about the rewards or achievements, just the experience. The wurm is also a permanent addition, but the marionette is not. So, if permanency is the determining factor we should expect any Living Story instanced storytelling to be upleveled, Bloodtide Coast to remain as is, and Lornar’s Pass to have upleveling.

Oi! They should just uplevel everyone everywhere and let us explore the world how we’d like to

An answer from Arena Net would be appreciated on this topic.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

kitten it, wrote up a nice response just to misclick and bam, it’s gone. sigh .

Depending on browser, the Lazurus plugin will help you out here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lazarus-form-recovery/loljledaigphbcpfhfmgopdkppkifgno

It can’t recover anything you wrote, obviously; just what you’ve written after installing it.

Will there be upleveling for these events? I have a friend who just started playing and he probably won’t be the recommended level 45 for Bloodtide Coast.

Luquatic.3825:

That’s because the living story takes place before the pact was made. This to prevent spoilers for new players who haven’t played their personal story yet.

Except when it doesn’t… but we’ve tread the kerfuffle that is placing the Living Story chronologically before.

RyuDragnier.9476:

My money is on the April Fool’s Joke, or for it being exclusively for Korea/China. Because it sounds like things they usually do with MMOs over there.

I’d think if it were for China and Korea it’d be localized for them and not be in English.

I received a replacement Green Quaggan backpack set from GW2 support, but never contacted support for this item or any other item. I’m afraid they missed their target. I hope whoever requested the replacement gets theirs.

To answer a question posed earlier in the thread before the topic shifts. I’m not a fan of vertical progression, but when a game does have it like many RPGs I always appreciate when it comes along with an element of choice. The traits serve this purpose, partially; but the important ones come fairly infrequently (every 5 levels) and when you reach the max level you no longer have choice in your progression. The game becomes mostly just getting better stat gear through exotics/ascendant items, which I find disinteresting to the point I haven’t bothered pursuing ascendant gear. Systems I’ve enjoyed in the past that offer choice include:

- Final Fantasy 10:The sphere grid was an excellent system for choosing how to grow your character. It pigeon-holed characters early on, but eventually they could grow in ways you wanted. Kimahri was a good example of a character that could grow in many ways you wanted. This system has been done better in the recently released Tales of Xillia and Path of Exile

- Final Fantasy 10: The items you equipped taught you skills. You could make a choice between permanently learning a new skill or swapping to a more powerful weapon with a different skill. I think it’s the permanency of acquiring a skill that makes this interesting, something gear lacks as it feels like one has to constantly “keep up”.

- Harvest Moon: There are are no player levels in Harvest Moon. Rather you level up your skills by using your skills. Want to be better at watering your crops? You practice watering your crops. I recall one poor RPG that did something similar, Quest 64. Cool concept but the less we speak of this game the better.

- Guild Wars: I liked seeking out skills from enemies and getting them from quests. More variety than elite hunting would have been nice, but it’s definitely better than just unlocking skills as you level.

Overall, I would prefer vertical progression stop as it’s going to create power gaps if it keeps escalating, which will make it difficult to balance the challenging and world impacting open world content I’d like to see more of.

I guess I must ask what are you looking to get that you need the meta-achievement rewards? I have full exotics, no ascended backpiece or weapons on my main. I just stopped caring about these things like getting monthlies, dailies, or achievement points. I now just log in to see what new every two weeks, which is usually less than an hour or two of playtime to see. My only loot goals are to finish my infinite light to complete my knight in shining armor look. This will come in time, as any activity generates money slowly and I’m in no rush so long as more content is released. What has burned me out is the quality of the releases, not the feeling of having to do these things (as I don’t have those feelings).

The are not reconsidering the release cadence at this time, despite a volume of people pointing out that it is hindering them in the CDI thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Living-World/3186741

Edgar Doiron.2804:

This didn’t really need to happen, since the instance was loaded when first entering the zone, so even if Marjory and Kasmeer aren’t at thunder ridge camp once you got out of the story instanced, you would meet them in the tower.

Agreed. They really need to allow late comers time to catch up. I told some friends that this release was particularly good content wise, but they can’t view the intro to it and have little context now.

I don’t think this cutscene was for people who’ve been playing since January, but a recap for newcomers and the eventual finale; which is hopefully coming soon. I agree with you that it’s disappointing we haven’t learned much about her, except through external site interviews and a short story.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought introducing champion loot boxes was meant to spread players around the world and to help out with the group events that frequently had champions. If so, this didn’t do a good job. I would rather see the champion loot boxes moved to dynamic event success with different contribution levels awarding different tiers of loot boxes. Dynamic event mobs should not drop loot.

For normal events bronze would reward fine, silver masterwork, and gold rare. For group event bronze would reward masterwork, silver rare, and gold exotic. The contents of the boxes may need to be tweaked for this to keep the economy sound. This solves the problem of getting players doing dynamic events as currently champion and world boss farming seems to be the hot activities at the moment (and coincidentally, one of the things that made me vacate the game as I saw it heading nowhere meaningful).

However, this does not solve the problem of spreading players around as you no doubt know. When people used to farm karma they were very good about finding paths of least resistance to getting the most karma for their time spent. A similar problem has happened with champion farming and would happen with this, but at least people are doing events. I know farmers hate diminishing returns, but I have not thought of anything quite as effective at moving people around than preventing them from getting bigger rewards when repeating an event. Perhaps when events have more meaningful impact on the world this won’t be a problem, but with the current dynamic event system where events recycle very frequently diminishing returns seems like the most effective way at spreading players out.

I am of course open to other suggestions on spreading players out around the world.

Edit: Like my own. How about instead of diminishing returns there is increasing returns for doing unique dynamic events. Every day at reset an account based dynamic event meter would reset. For every unique event completed the meter would grow increasing rewards on subsequent events.

ColinJohanson.2394:

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Given those constraints? I wouldn’t. However, the criticisms over the 2-week cadence weighing you down rear their head again. If it’d take 6+ months and currently you have 4 months of development time between released; then halving your release schedule to every month would give you enough time. I’m willing to be patient for releases (even 3-6 months between them) if they give you enough time to add content that allows us as players to make meaningful impact to the world as well as a world where NPCs react to the new content additions.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

That does put you in a tough spot for handling Orr though. I would think that Zhaitan needs to be defeated and Trahearne has to cleanse Orr in the open world at some point. This could be part of a Living Story arc where you transition Orr into a new state post Zhaitan and cleansing. Hindsight is 20/20, but I would have never made such an important event part of the personal story, but rather a Living Story arc. In general I find the Personal Story, like most instancing, to be an obstacle to progressing the open world. It can be done, but I think it has to be with the understanding that anyone creating new characters, or doing the Personal Story event up to and including Zhaitan’s defeat are “reliving” those experiences, even if it is the first time they as players have seen them.

I would love to see a cleansed Orr in the Living World at some point, though I understand why you’d be hesitant considering the effort put into the temple and siege of Orr events, which are really fun. How would those work in a cleansed Orr? At least with phasing you could retain those and move the Orr storyline along.

draxynnic.3719:

One thing that might help this feel more realistic, as well as prevent the map from resetting all the way to “enemy overruns everything” a few hours into off-peak time (something I’m particularly sensitive towards myself, being Australian and therefor often playing during off-peak times on an NA server) is to have the changes be something that occurs not over the space of a few minutes, but over hours or even days. Naturally, this will require them to be broken up into lots of little events, so players can be rewarded for whatever contribution they make. For example, consider a siege on a fortification – this might include events to sally forth to attack the enemy siege engines or enemy caravans bringing in ammunition, and events to bring supplies and/or reinforcements in to the besieged fortress. If, over time, the enemy siege weapons do more damage to the walls than the supply being brought in can repair, eventually the walls will be breached and the enemy will start launching assaults into the fortress until the walls can be repaired. Conversely, if the flow of reinforcements into the fortress outstrips the attrition rate, it might trigger an assault by friendly NPCs that pushes the enemy army back to their next fortress, switching the positions of besieger and besieged.

I like this idea. I think what would also help this along, and feel like we’ve made a long lasting change is if we could “train” our NPC allies to be more capable. This could be through practicing with them (increases their level), crafting them armor/weapons (increases their defenses/attack power), and furthering your supply idea, building defenses. This can be a little different for different scenarios. For example, a magic defensive ritual could require gathering specific artifacts in the wilds, or fighting the dredge might entail building resistant floor plating as opposed to more durable walls (imagine if that caused the dredge to change their tactics to a frontal assault instead of an underground one).

draxynnic.3719:

To be honest, something like this was what I envisaged back when GW2 was originally being discussed back in ’07. The dynamic events span the whole map (or even between maps, although I understand the technology at present does not allow it)

Agreed, but I’d note that the temple capture events have outcomes that span across maps (i.e., when a temple is held by us the statues across all Orr zones are no longer active). So, I don’t think it’s the case that they can’t have information of what’s going on in one map bleed over to another. There are some technical issues with overflows that would need to be worked on though. Since overflows are not tied to a server, zones created as overflow always start in the default state (exception being those created during the LS Tequatl and Clockwork Chaos content, which still start in the default state; but they get information that the overflow was created within X minutes of Scarlet’s Invasion or Tequatl starting). As a result, let’s say an invading force could push to the next adjacent maps and we were not in overflow when we lost the current zone, but when we hopped to the next zone over to help there we were placed in overflow. Now, suddenly we cannot continue aiding the fight against the invasion because overflows are not server specific.

I’d be willing to live with this temporarily if it meant we actually get effects that can bleed over into adjacent zones, but it’d be nice if overflows were tied to servers at some point. I imagine this decision to not tie them to servers is to save as much processing/memory as possible. It’s costly to create a new copy of a zone for players. It’s much less so to funnel players that need an overflow into the same one, rather than creating a copy for each server that needs one and funneling players based on their server of origin.

Fenrina.2954:

I don’t like ideas where players get benefits out of content they didn’t do. I’m also worried this will add to inflation as everyone would be getting the reward. 2g per hour doesn’t sound like much, but how many people are online per server? Hundreds? Thousands? The gold generated could easily spiral out of control.

I agree with you, but I took the suggestion a bit more charitably and filled in some gaps left unspoken (such that it wouldn’t reward players who weren’t doing events and base their reward on contribution). I also agree that we must be wary of impacts on the economy. That said I think the idea has some merits in principle. As I said in a post further up we as heroes (or Pact Commander should we have progressed that far in the PS) have very little responsibility to the world we inhabit. In some zone events remain constantly in a state of starting and then failing.. Since failure of events has little impact on the world this doesn’t matter, but if failure started to change the world to the point where even traversing some zones became difficult alone it’d be nice to incentivize helping those zones out.

Without some global system in place that measures success across the board there will be problems with moving many if not most players out of tried and true farming practices. Look at champion farm rotations. There are hundreds of champions across the world, but only a dozen are targeted for elimination by the player base. If events started to have consequences and just became more rewarding. Many players would fall into patterns of just doing certain events. that were part of the most efficient loot gathering chain.

It doesn’t have to be a reward either, it can be a punishment felt through the consequences on cities because the lands outside their borders are invaded. I made a suggestion earlier to this effect. I would prefer it be this way as it feels more organic to have some rippling effect on the world if some zone is claimed by an enemy. There are also means of creating organic rewards in such a conquest game mode. For example, each zone could have its own unique resources that can only be mined/chopped there. If the enemy controls the territory, they are no longer available. The reward in such a scenario continued access to the special resource.