She doesn’t seem to saying anything new. The original game world was entirely created with that same vision. The open world events tell the current world lore. After events finish you can chat to the NPCs for backstory.
In general, it seems like we have to follow what’s specifically mentioned in the Living Story rather than follow what we’ve seen elsewhere in the game world. Malyck has been mentioned a couple of times in the Living Story so it is more than possible that he will return.
Looks like we could be playing through a flashback as Caithe. Why not I suppose if it makes a good story? It sounds like something the Pale Tree could do through the Dream.
I looks like there isn’t enough evidence about Aerin yet. Those conversations can be read either way.
Why would the Zephyrites need help? The only reason why they would take him on board in the first place would be to help their commune. They don’t want his goods, money, or anything else.
Going back to Aerin and the destruction of the Zephyrite ships, it seems slightly coincidental that Mordremoth would find a soundless Sylvari on the airships. I seem to remember Aerin demanding power (the egg?) from the Master of Peace before the crash so did Mordremoth know the egg was there already? Was there already a spy who could pass information to Mordremoth and get Aerin on board the ship?
Yesterday i joined lvl 40, second fractal they said. It was ice one.
Danger Will Robinson. Danger!
Seems like stupidity and perseverance can carry people past 30 nowadays. The res rushing used to weeded out by then. The irony is that when they’re res rushing and you’re the one taking on the ice elementals, it looks to them as if you’re doing nothing and they’re getting something done.
Mordremoth seems to tie into nightmare somehow but I don’t think it as simple as creating it when he likes. There also doesn’t seem any reason to grow nightmare creatures that have some protection through the dream when Mordy can create plenty of mordrem he can directly control.
A thought that popped into my head with the possibility of the egg being in pain- it’s been a point of speculation for a while around here whether Glint’s offspring would be minions of Kralkatorrik or not. What if it’s not an either/or sort of thing? What if there’s some sort of internal conflict, corrupted nature versus magical ‘nurture’? It’s a bit out there, and it seems unlikely given it’s a complication that wouldn’t add to the story… but then again, the last year we’ve been hearing a lot about the mental nature of dragon corruption and the presumed struggle of Ceara and possiblye Aerin against it…
If those nightmare pods mean anything I’m guessing they mean that the egg is having nightmares. We’ve nothing to suggest the pods come from Mordremoth itself and they won’t have come from the Master of Peace, or Caithe, or anyone else. If that’s the case then it suggests this baby dragon could have a connection to the dream. It also opens up the possibility that Mordremoth can mentally ‘corrupt’ other dragons and that opens up possibilities about what the Shadow of the Dragon might once have been.
My thought process is that it would allow that double longbow ranger waaayyy over in the corner to gain benefits (namely might) and give some benefits to his or her party, which would make PUGing easier. This would obviously only take effect in dungeon settings (maybe open world I guess). Let me know what you guys think!
There is a design problem that ranger longbows push rangers to long range and then rangers don’t share boons. However in dungeons you just have to accept it as the cost of safe easy play. Melee has more risk, melee gives better reward, that’s the design, and it is mostly right.
If you’re in a casual PUG group then the casual players won’t mind you using a longbow anyway. If you’re in a speed running group then it doesn’t matter what class you play you are expected to bring certain skills for high dps and the ranger is no different in that regard. If you can’t deliver the right skills/dps with one weapon then use another, just like every other class.
What else do you balance on? The suggestions I made impact pvp and wvw the least since it would be easy to make condis OP. there is no balance in open world PvE since there is no challenge. Instanced pve is the only pve worth balancing on.
Instanced PvE is fine to balance with. Speed running is not. These forums are full of speed runners. The real game has a wider variety of players who a variety of different things.
Sorry, well written post but you aren’t making the right assumptions.
1 – You can’t balance based on speed running dungeons. That is the extreme even if it seems common place for regular dungeon runners. Speed runners will always find an extreme and maximize it. Speed runners could wear any armor and tickle monsters to death with feathers and still get the dungeon done.
2- The condition cap is the problem. Whatever else you do to conditions will fail when we get the obvious problem of three condition users in a dungeon group, let alone 30 condition users against an open world boss.
3- Conditions shouldn’t be broken in PvP just to ‘change the meta’ in PvE. Conditions need a long enough duration to makes condition cures important. Condition damage is strong in PvP already which suggests it would be strong in PvE too if it wasn’t held back by stacking duration, the condition cap, etc. Fixing the condition cap is the basic change to PvE that will not break PvP.
If you’re new to the game then don’t worry too much. By the time you get into dungeons there will be another balance patch and the top classes will have changed. At the moment thief is a middle ranked class and can do all the content.
Thieves are initially hard to play in dungeons though, quite different from how beginners learn to play in the open world. For speed running, thieves have high dps and are popular but you won’t be speed running on day one.
How about this entirely speculative and totally unsubstantiated theory.
What if the connection between the Pale Tree and the dream of dreams was created by Glint/Gleam, in secret, as a protection against dragon corruption? If Caithe knows this, could she use this new offspring to provide a link from Malyck’s tree to the dream to give it the same protection? That’s something she might take a big risk for.
Many of things you are talking about are part of the design. No healers is a positive element of the original game. It is not a sign of decline in any way, shape, or form. You can go sit in LFG waiting for a healer in a million different MMOs. Do so if you wish.
All MMOs suffer from lack of content unless they put a gear grind into place that players never finish. GW2 certainly does need new content but at least we only have to wait a fortnight instead of waiting another 9 months.
Can anyone enlighten me as to why when you speak to Logan he says that Kasmeer may be put into danger because of Countess Anise?
The bandits/ministry/white mantle will get rid of people who get in their way. If Anise puts Kasmeer in the way of those people then they will get rid of her. Anise seems to be a spymaster of sorts so she won’t be afraid of putting anyone at risk in order to protect the Queen. Now that it has been mentioned we can expect to see it later in the Living Story.
(Why a Seraph Captain on the front line of a war zone thinks it is more dangerous than fighting Mordrem is anyone’s guess).
I think it is a fair comment that when the game play in the labyrinth is so limited, moving from one flower or pod to the next, these pods should be easily visible without keeping a key pressed down constantly. Keeping a key pressed down all the time should not be ‘part of the challenge’. The game engine should show us what we need to see.
Dropping a baby dragon into a lay line nexus sounds fun. I’m sure the Inquest would try that and we’ve got an eager Asura prodigy ready to help us do it.
A “premium” subscription being added would make sense for a new game, NOT a two+ year old game. The trend is usually P2P===> F2P (TOR for example), not the reverse.
Actually a number of subscription games have gone ‘free to play’ but only the equivalent of ten levels of play were free. It was essentially no more than a demo or trial. To get beyond that you had to buy something, anything cheap just to overcome any aversion to purchasing. To get to the end game a bigger investment was still needed.
When this has been done before in MMOs, the existing accounts were put onto a mid-access model: more than what new players would get, no access lost on existing content, might have to pay for any future content. GW2 could be preparing for something similar by adding a limited access account for free players (no PvP, no WvW, no Personal Story, etc) and putting all future content into the gem store through LS chapters.
Here’s another idiot ball. The Master of Peace wanted to smuggle his shiny dragon egg through a skritt lair! Wow he must have been glad when he saw Mordrem there instead.
Well we can assume Caithe isn’t with Mordremoth since she could have just stabbed the Pact Commander (us) in the back in that Labyrinth and the mordrem would have kept the egg. I think it is reasonable to assume she has her own agenda. It could be that she wants to keep the egg safe from someone else, presumably someone in the Pact or even someone else in that chamber. I quite like the theory that Mordy has been reading the mind of the player character ever since the accident in Omadd’s device, so that’s why Caithe has to hide the egg.
There’s also Caithe’s nasty secret to consider. We never knew what that was all about and it seems equally strange that it would involve Glint’s egg.
And of course she has gone, completely gone, in two seconds. We’ve given up on finding her immediately. We’re not going to ask Eir where might have gone. We’re not going to use all the Pact soldiers to keep an eye out for her. We’re not going to question Canach who’s been with her recently. We all just assume she can go wherever she wants in the middle of two enemy armies, unlike the Master of Peace who’s dead on the floor. Time to speak to the Pale Tree, of course.
Anything that moves characters without the player’s consent is going to be really unpopular. Don’t do it. It is bound to have unwanted side effects. Keep control in the player’s hands.
There is a technical limitation in GW2 that players have only one choice of thing to do and that is chosen by the game and put onto one key. It’s a bit like walking into a supermarket and being asked if you want beans, and if you don’t want beans you can’t have anything else. This causes many of the problems with reviving since the interface only offers you one action, it might be revive or it be something else, it might be the right person or it might be the wrong person, it doesn’t tell you who will be revived by your action.
GW2 at some stage needs to get beyond that technical limitation and give a choice of two actions to a player and properly describe the target of each action (such as the player you are reviving). Other games can do this. We’re in the 21st century now and GW2 should do basic activation better.
As everyone has said, when you create a new character you want to play around with that character, experience styles of play, try out different builds, find out what a new class is like. Instead you are stuck with the chore of unlocking a massive bundle of traits and are left with a half-character at level 80, with no idea how to put any traits together to form a build except the mismatched dozen you unlocked as you leveled up.
If these are the worst issues you can find then just forget them and give the designers some congratulations. GW2 suffered a series of seriously broken rewards and currencies since launch and all your points are minor by comparison. Remember that Silverwastes could be expanded in future patches and the whole might seem better balanced.
If they went underground they’re going to be in trouble since the Mordrem seem to work underground very well. However, that does raise the question of whether the Mordrem need or use sunlight in any way? It seems like they don’t but the Sylvari don’t either presumably?
The troll in AC explorable is fine. The same troll in AC story really is worse than annoying for newbies! As far as I can remember, when AC explorable was revamped the cave troll from explorable got copied into story and he’s way tougher than anything else in story.
Has anyone put together all the scraps of clues in the Silverwastes and worked out what they all mean? There are lots of bits and pieces like the asura gate at Fort Vandal, the orders, the prisoner, armor scraps, ensignias, and so on. I keep getting distracted by fighting sadly and never put them together but I am I right in guessing that bandits held the forts until recently?
I will guess however that the White Mantle had a major base in Mordremoth’s territory somewhere and it was wiped out or isolated a while ago. This was why no orders were sent to Fort Vandal. Could this be why Anise wants Canach as an observer with the Pact? Is she thinking that the Pact will stumble over White Mantle territory, or that the White Mantle might try to sabotage the Pact before they get there?
It seems as if fractal level 50+ will be released at some point. When that happens any master tier at 50 will be problematic, to say the least. There’s no point suggestion new development that clashes with other expected developments in the future.
It’s ironic how the berserker’s stat is the only viable stat, almost in the whole game, still there’s a huge diversity of gear attributes that could enhance the gameplay quality.
Healing power is almost useless, etc.. We don’t need the holy trinity, we just need the freedom to choose how our caracter will play. For instance, I would like to be capable to heal my teammates decently with a ele, even if that meant that my dps would be almost “invisible”, or that I could do a tanky build with my warrior and in fact help the rest of the players and don’t feel useless
Thank you
Healing power, toughness, etc do work. Healing power really does pump up the size of group heals. However the big GW2 heals are group healing and these do not let you act like a traditional trinity healer – and that’s good!
The ‘problem’ is that with the correct tactics you can run the dungeons in any gear whatsoever. Any at all. So you can run them with big healing and tough warriors. You can run them with pure dps. So which are you going to choose as the best use of your time?
I think the dragonbrand will be typical of Kralk’s corruption. Perhaps when Kralk has devoured all life and magic from his domain it will all break down to crystral shards but that is a long, long, time away.
It is interesting though that Tyria has covered over almost all evidence of the last dragon rising even though relics from the ancient civilizations remain. Whatever damage the dragons do to the land can be naturally recovered, it seems.
I think the stacking is not the problem.The problem are the corners.I don’t mind to stack with the group just don’t let bosses be pulled to the corners.Make them imune or something like that if they are pulled to a wall.
What advantage do you gain by pulling a boss into a corner. Please post a specific in game example where you have an advantage. I know of one, but I want to see your idea.
There’s no need to draw other posters into an argument like that. You can make your case about specific boss mobs if you want to, with your own examples. Other people can make their case about mobs in general if they want to. You don’t have to disagree with everyone just to prove your point.
I want to like rangers. I take my ranger around open world PvE but I don’t take my ranger into fractals. Many of my worst fractal runs seem to have involved rangers. Mid level fractals with 2 rangers have been awful. Just saying.
So anyway, solutions to solve ‘stacking’ should first look at walls and corners. Players who can combine well with close play in the open field should be rewarded.
Please read what I wrote just a few posts above. The only people still using walls and corners for most bosses have no idea why they are doing and are actually just wasting their time.
Most bosses don’t need to be cornered, unless you move want to move the boss before you engage. Some bosses like Subject Alpha can still be positioned better with a wall than with skills. For trash though the corners still rule as the top method of crowd control. Trash are often more dangerous than bosses.
Stacking isn’t itself a problem. If players were using mobility and skills to put enemies into specific positions so nearby players could share boons, banners, etc then it would be good play. Players could then decide to reposition to avoid aoe circles and aoe frontal attacks. Players would have to keep using skills to maintain positioning.
The problem comes from walls and corners. Walls and corners are better than skills at controlling the enemies position. Corners also give missile defense. Since no control skills or mobility skills are needed we get the pure dps philosophy. Good teamwork becomes trivial repetitive stacking. There is no variety in combat. The bad camera positioning near walls makes the game unpleasant to play.
So anyway, solutions to solve ‘stacking’ should first look at walls and corners. Players who can combine well with close play in the open field should be rewarded.
Sorry. I just think the whole PC Wyld Hunt thing had been badly done. In game play terms it has just been Caithe telling us that it is finished, if we bother to talk to her, and Trahearne telling us it has started again, if we bother to talk to him. That’s it. The Wyld Hunt makes no difference to anything whatsoever, seemingly. It should be more important than that. It should be more important than everything!
How does he know that? Why can’t our character realize a momentous change in destiny without being told by Trahearne? To me that is still bad story telling even if that is how the story continues. As I said, I was prepared to be disappointed.
My point would be that you cannot ‘misunderstand’ the purpose of the Wyld Hunt in that fashion. Wyld Hunts are meant to be a reason for living and not some quest to pick up 12 helmets from dead orcs. When Caithe says that both Wyld Hunts are finished then the player character should know, absolutely, within the heart, that is true. Trahearne has just told the player what his completed Wyld Hunt feels like too so there should be no doubt.
Anyway that’s my personal opinion and it may be that I’m going to be disappointed. Lets get back on topic.
Why not now? Fateful beings tend to know when things should happen, even if they’re not hatched yet.
There’s also the view that nobody can do anything in this Story without the player character present (especially Rox, Braham, Tiami, Kasmeer, Jory), so the egg probably needs us to arrive and then it can hatch.
It seems that the PC’s Wyld Hunt wasn’t “kill Zhaitan” but “kill the Elder Dragons as they actively invade” (only Zhaitan was actively spreading; Jormag was second most spreading, but this seems to be more the work of the Sons of Svanir rather than Jormag, so the Wyld Hunt wouldn’t trigger on Jormag, apparently).
Personally, I hope that isn’t the answer since it is not what we are shown in the Personal Story.
There is the unresolved question however of why the Sylvari PC fights the Shadow of the Dragon in the dream and this turns into a Wyld Hunt to kill Zaitan. If the Shadow of the Dragon shares something with both Mordremoth and Zaitan then this question has the beginning of answer.
Enough with the Living Story stuff for a while, and put some of those minds into making the gameplay better and more fun for the players.
Most players are screaming out for new content, lots of new content. They have been asking for more zones and the Living Story has given Dry Top and the Silverwastes, both well designed zones with better game play and some fun to be had. (Dry Top is one of the best MMO zones I’ve ever seen for casual play). I’m guessing that players want more regular content of that standard rather than the return of “Fire and Frost”.
What’s your argument for why Asura science/philosphy is not good enough to explain the All?
Let us suppose that nothing is impossible within the All. Anything can happen if there is a will to make it happen. We don’t need to know who or what can make things happen, but anything can happen. This means that anything that quantifies the All could, on occasion, be wrong as it is possible for any alternative result to happen. The more that the Asura quantify the eternal alchemy the more possibilities for error they create.
The defensive benefits from stealth come from shadow arts. Blind on stealth, and so on, are perfectly good traits but many players want pure dps from their traits instead.
I am glad to see the books but I would like them to be better written. They did not seem realistic to me as the writings of great scholars, great historians, great poets, or anyone else of note.
We are forced to play speed run Dungeons and Fractals, to get decent amount of income.. I’m just sad we are forced to do boring stuff instead of enjoying awesome PVE content…
Standing around with a shovel isn’t awesome PvE content. People would still be standing in the same spot they were yesterday, with their shovels, if it really was awesome PvP content.
I detest all these spurious excuses from people who like farming. Farmers are there for the easy loot and when the easy loot is gone the farmers are gone. End of story.
I just don’t know why MMO concepts can’t have FUN+GettingGOLD at the same time any more..
Try playing for fun instead of standing around with a shovel. You will find that you do actually make some money. You might claim that you’re not making more money than everyone else, but why should you (playing for fun) make more money than someone else (playing for fun) if you’re not prepared to play challenging content?
