Showing Posts For Stooperdale.3560:

Nightmare Within-Constructive criticisms/Pros

in The Nightmare Within

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

It’s interesting that the development of villians has been so poor in GW2 that are allies have to double up as enemies in the nightmare chambers.

What is the purpose of blinding?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Blind works for enemies without defiant. It is theoretically comparable to an aegis boon that blocks one an attack, a brief protection boon that reduces damage by 1/3, and regeneration that needs many ticks to heal one hit of damage. Since it is a skill based defense, it works well for high dps characters that can kill an enemy quickly before the skills expire.

Theorycrafting on Scarlet

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

So aside from this personal story diversion in the hallucination chambers, what did we actually learn about Scarlet in this update? She’s pulling the strings on the alliances – ok we already knew that. She promised the krait a new prophet so now one out of the 6 allies does/did have a reason to follow her. It’s still not clear what the nightmare court want but a nightmare toxin looks like a good asset for them. We still have no named enemies apart from Scarlet.


At the end of the story instance Scarlet tells us that she’d got what she wanted, but this surely wasn’t the hybrid thingy that we kill? Was it really a plant+fish hybrid?

Living Story/Personal Story/Lore

in Living World

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

The GW2 game world and the portrayal of the world through events is great.
The GW2 lore with the elder dragons and Orr rising from the depths is fine.
The personal story fits well into the game world and game lore but it is weak as a story.
The living story is awful and has no connection to lore and little connection to the world.

Unknown hits you for 50k+ using Explode

in Dynamic Events

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’m guessing that would have been a (illusionary) champion risen plaguebringer and yes it should have a combat log detail. They are a pretty stupid mob to scale into veterans and champs anyway, and a pretty stupid mob to spawn in the middle of an event with virtually the same appearance as the other mobs.

More Character Progression

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Characters have no progression in the living story. This is deliberate since it allows new players to enter the story with exactly the same progress as everyone else, no progress at all.

Inside the tower

in The Nightmare Within

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

If people were going up the tower in groups and meeting up for champion events then yes it would be fun. But after the first day players won’t do that. Solo players will see all the elites wandering around and stick to the zerg, and be in big trouble if they want to split from the zerg. The zerg will rule as the events will not scale up in a challenging fashion.

Thankfully lots of players seem to like following zergs.

Amazing Update - I'm Genuinly Shocked

in The Nightmare Within

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

The Labyrinth is going to have exactly the same problems as the Mad King’s Labyrinth. It’s fun to wander round solo while there are plenty of people around. As soon as people realize it is dangerous the zergs form. The zergs rule the place and the only skill is spotting the animations of creatures buried in a haze of spell effects. Without a zerg people die far too often and eventually stay out. Mixing solo, group, and raid content will always fail since the zerg will take over.

Having said that, it was quite fun to scamper round in small groups linking up with people as you go. That’s the newbie way of playing it so it won’t last long.

Cliffside fractal, cages

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’ve been put into the cliffside fractal cage about 40 times in the last two days in two runs. I said it was happening too much and someone else in the group agreed with me, saying that he was often put back into the cage as soon as he was out. Only fractal 10-20.

Is there a new bug here?

Defending Scarlet's Legacy

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I think you are reading too much into Scarlet’s conversation with the Pale Tree in “What Scarlet saw”. Firstly, Scarlet may not have talked to the actual Pale Tree in same way that I would not talk to the real Marilyn Monroe if I dreamed about her. Secondly, if Scarlet’s vision was connected to the mists then it possible she saw a representation of the Pale Tree rather than the real thing. Thirdly, the Pale Tree may have some empathic communication with the Sylvari through the dream of dreams whenever they are in a dream-like state, regardless of asura magi-tech experiments.

We haven’t been told yet what the Pale Tree knows about Caera/Scarlet. That’s a big missing piece of the jigsaw.

(edited by Stooperdale.3560)

The design of ranged weapons and dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

There’s a whole lot of factors involved here and there’s no point treating it simplistically. The design of melee applying more damage than ranged is good. It is inevitable that the best players will have enough skill to apply melee all the time, but it seems as that skill floor is too low at the moment. That skill floor relies too much on class (warriors, one guardian protecting a group) rather than personal skill.

If you want more ranged fights with mobility during the fight then we need wider ranges on player aoe skills to cover moving players and moving enemies. Character skills need to be as effective as corners in controlling enemy movements. Penalties for bad melee need to be harsher. Camera work and targeting need to improve . Etc.

(edited by Stooperdale.3560)

The impotence of casual players

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

“There are people who have time and money to spend on the game in high quantity, and people who don’t have this opportunities. So what I’m saying is: create a way to make possible even for this people to get those items. I’m not saying it must be easy, nor immediate, just not so hard or RNG or grindy like it is now.”

You’re missing one aspect of cosmetics. Rarity makes them valuable. If everyone in Lion’s Arch was wearing one you probably wouldn’t want it. You would take it for granted and want something else that was still rare instead. In fact you have already taken exotic items for granted, because they are easily available and everyone has them, and chosen to want rare cosmetics as well.

(edited by Stooperdale.3560)

Malyck And The Riddle Of The Trees

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

A sci-fantasy discussion of memory might be relevant to Malyck.

Humans acquire memories with a variety of associations. If we remember someone like Hercules we might also remember a picture of him, or a story, a film, a book, a poem, or a statue, and also times when we came across him. A computer memory will hold information with no knowledge of how that information came to be within the memory. A computer might have data about a book of classical stories and know that Hercules was a classical hero, but be unable to connect the two.

The film Bladerunner considers the creation of androids that believe they have human memories but in fact have a sophisticated computer facsimile of memory. I don’t think the Malyck situation is as complex. Malyck only needs to have gained pure information whilst he developed, with cognitive learning once he was separated from his tree. This seems a reasonable explanation if Malyck comes from a tree without empathic ability.

Dagger #1

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

If you need cleave then use the sword for that fight. If your build can’t suit both dagger/x and sword/x for PvE then have another look at it.

23/24 obelisks

in Tower of Nightmares

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

This seems like really lazy design to me. There are a lot of scavenger hunt achievements in the living story where the designers have seemingly just dropped a dozen items onto a map and tallied up each one as you find them- that’s it. Nothing connected to the story. No clues to find, no puzzles to work out, no other aids (such a proper log). No significant outcome. Mostly finished using web spoilers since there is no challenge other than to invest time in the search.

The hunt to find all the balloon towers was better since they could be counted easily (2 per map), out of game spoilers were unnecessary, there were associated events, they were visually impressive, and they fitted into the story. More like that please.

Hard to catch

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Bad camera positions make unintentional movement even worse.

underwater combat

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Thieves are situationally perfect and more often awful underwater. Balancing is mainly done for SPvP so the awfulness of thieves in some PvE settings is not going to happen soon.

The Gw2 dungeons again....

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

“Yep, that’s how it’s suppose to work and when all the players in the party know what to do it’s easy. But this isn’t the case.”

If your group plays badly then you wipe. I don’t see a trinity problem there. If you’re suggesting that a group of idiots can go through a dungeon in other MMOs and survive just because there is a tank and healer in the group … well you can go back to other MMOs if you like.

The Gw2 dungeons again....

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

“Your party gets killed really fast, so you want to tank. But you can’t because mobs don’t have a threat list and you can’t tank even with the best “tank” builds. Arena put some kind of tanking kills on the guardian but again they didn’t get it right. You can try to heal, well not with all the cool-downs(the old story with pvp balance). Again they tried to make Elementalist and Engineer healers but again they failed.”

If you try to play your party as a trinity then it will fail as the trinity is not there. Experienced GW2 players make it work because they play their own characters and make it work. Dodging is the best defense in the game for all players to learn and it does not require a trinity. All classes can bring missile defense and the individual players can decide whether to use it and when/how it is best used for the group.

Scarlet, Slayer of Lores.

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

My opinion is that GW2 tries to show the current game world through events and dungeons, rather than showing historical lore. The current events will be the lore of the future. I’ve got no problem with that. However if the Scarlet storyline is going to become the lore of the future then it’s not going to make much sense, given what we’ve seen so far.

Dynamic Events/OW-Y it failed

in Dynamic Events

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I think you’ve got slightly the wrong interpretation. New players have always been able to see and play end game content (world bosses). That is not the same as every bit of content in every zone being end game content. Some zones were clearly meant to be played more than others. Cursed shore is the obvious one with the Arah dungeon relying on a sufficient population running events in cursed shore to open the gates (CoE and CoF can be opened by a group).

In fact, if you spread players across the whole game map by designing every event in every zone as part of the ‘end game’, then major events will be short of players. Many people think the Karka Queen event is broken since it is so rarely done but the only problem is that there are not a critical mass of people to get it started.

Dec 10th thief changes

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Sanduskel you’re now up to 16 posts in this thread, none of which have said anything more than the first. Give it a rest.

Theorycrafting on Scarlet

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

“I predict that Scarlet is breeding her own version of the Pale Tree. A sort of nightmare tree. But I’m just guessing here.”

She already created her electromechanical version of the Nightmare Tree in the TA dungeon. The court wanted the Nightmare Tree to replace the Pale Tree, so it is easy to envisage Scarlet replacing the Pale tree with her mechanical nightmare trees that can create mechanical/holographic/steam soldiers for her.

They kick three of us Just to sell the slot

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Don’t put the complaint on the forums. Don’t put the names on the forums.

Send a ticket to support with the names. Tell them what happened. Kicking is ok. Selling is ok. Kicking to sell the spot is not ok.

Ascended vs Exotic...Where's Anet's Love?

in Crafting

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Yes some people did mention that ascended weapons would suit zerker builds more than condition builds, even before ascended was released. Nothing is going to change so don’t lose sleep over it.

Dec 10th thief changes

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Anet knows more about this class and they have much more data than we do. you need to trust them and not second guess their every move.

You’ve made a dozen posts in this thread saying exactly that. Nobody has paid more attention to the 12th than to the 1st.

(edited by Stooperdale.3560)

Theorycrafting on Scarlet

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

It appears that Scarlet has recruited five separate forces that give her troops on the ground + underground, sea + undersea, the air. We still don’t know why these groups all put their troops under Scarlet’s command or what they expect to gain from the alliances. Did Scarlet attack Queen Jennah at the request of the Fire Legion? Are the Nightmare Court hoping to creates fear with toxins that will change the balance of dream and nightmare? It is really all speculation.

I’m hoping that Scarlet’s story isn’t going to suddenly U-turn into things not shown so far in the story. Sticking to the existing story can limit the speculation on Scarlet’s goals. She hasn’t shown any indication of using draconic research so perhaps she never will and it is just speculation to link her with the jungle or deep sea dragon somehow. I expect that her ties to the Inquest and her view of the eternal alchemy will be explored inside the game itself sometime. If it is important it can’t just be a website story. Any storylines about the eternal alchemy could involve Zoija, the only member of Destiny’s Edge not to have been part of the Scarlet story so far.

It is quite sad that we don’t know Scarlet’s motives other than “lets break things”. Although she likes to cause trouble she hasn’t broken anything yet. There are an increasing number of hints towards nightmare in Scarlet’s actions but perhaps this is just the storyline of the month. I still expect Caithe’s secrets and Faolin to appear at some stage and be moderately important to Scarlet’s story.

LFG tool : Group Merging

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

The instance closing when the owner leaves is a bug in itself. If that is fixed then the merging will presumably be ok too?

Pre-500 Advice

in Crafting

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

up to 425 is refining and inscriptions
425-450 exotic research
450-470 refining stuff with new recipes (very, very slow)
470-500 exotic research

You might be able to make some cheap sharpening stones or research other recipes but to be honest you shouldn’t be worrying about coin if you’re making ascended. If money is tight then don’t do it yet. It is a big money sink, big time sink, and you’ve got to be willing to throw every type of resource into it to get things done.

Arah paths, how's p1 p4 like?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Arah 1 and 4 are a bit more difficult than the other but not significantly. The problem is getting a group together that knows tactics. Without tactics it just takes a long, long time. Set aside hours. With tactics they still take longer than most dungeons, so the PUGs don’t do them, so there are no common knowledge tactics in PUG land.

SE2 is a bit similar. Not much harder but because it is longer the PUG groups never go there and never learn tactics.

FotM Dredge path needs a redesign

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

My personal grievance here would be that the designers have taken every opportunity to make this fractal as punishing as possible. It’s fair that they remove exploits, but they have changed various parts of the fractal to prevent class skills, ingenuity, and good play from shortening the time. Adding extra dredge when the fractal is restarted is just seems like petulance from the designers, punishing players for not playing the way designers want it to be played, without actually fixing the mechanics.

Mortal powers in comparison to gods

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’m not sure why people think that holiday event characters like the Thorns and Moto are integral parts of the game world. To my mind it just isn’t relevant and you can just accept holiday content as meaningless fun.

Dec 10th thief changes

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

In my opinion Jon, thieves in this post have put into print some very concise, specific, respectful opinions about infiltrator’s strike. It is a wall of text, but only because there are hundreds of posts saying that it is a grave mistake to give it casting time.

The best suggestion I’ve seen in this thread suggested that the teleport stomping is a game mechanics problem rather than a class skill problem. The failing mechanic is that the game only checks the proximity of the players at the start and end of the stomp. If the game mechanics checked the player locations during the stomp then that would fix the issue of players not being at the down location during a stomp. Please considering deferring this change and fixing the mechanics in a future patch.

(edited by Stooperdale.3560)

'Universality' in Guild Wars 2.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Players can already have some diversity by using one weapon in hand instead of dual wielding. How often do you see it, even for roleplaying? Never. You can argue that this strictly inferior but of course if you introduce extra weapons into the game then most classes will have a few core weapon sets and the rest will be inferior.

The Norn shapechanging elites are diversity and provide fun for roleplayers but for each person loving them there are a dozen people asking why these elites are not fit for combat.

Stop using 5 signets, Warriors.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I do run a 3-5 signet build in dungeons and there are plenty of reasons -

1) It never completely fails so I never need to stop and rethink it
2) Stability, condition cleanse, might, fury, etc, are all there
3) It fits with cheesy greatsword builds and I don’t have many exotic weapons on my warrior
4) It has a very low skill threshold and needs little class knowledge to play
5) Its the first build I found and I stuck to it
6) It’s still stronger than my characters in other classes with better skills/traits/gear
7) It’s still performs as well as other characters I see in PUGs so I let nobody down
8) I’ll change it eventually but I haven’t got round to it yet

So take your pick but those reasons are all true for me.

Dynamic Events/OW-Y it failed

in Dynamic Events

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I think you are entirely misreading the end game content of GW2. Orr is the end game open world event area. The other zones provide activities and challenge for level 80 players but they do not provide end game rewards and they were never meant to (exception – world events, invasions, living story).

End of Scarlet Arc Speculation and the Future

in Living World

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’m assuming that Scarlet will eventually ‘wake up’ either the forest dragon or deep sea dragon and that dragon will be progressed via the living story rather than a new personal story (expansion).

Melandru. Any server with it open atm???

in Dynamic Events

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I just did Melandru tonight and there were only about three of us keeping him going for 5 minutes until the zerg arrived. No animal transformation.

Levels segregate the game world

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’m afraid Knighthonor you making a lot of unsupported statements to contradict people without offering any evidence to support your own statements. I can remember the old text based multi user dungeons that predated Everquest I and Ultima Online and the majority of them also had levels. Name the MMOs without levels that you particularly enjoyed. They were probably free form or had some alternative character develop that equated to levels, even though there were not called levels.

New players in GW2 can compete in end game WvW immediately.
New players can compete in end game SPvP immediately.
New players have end game content such as world events in low level zones.
Experienced players mix with new players for end game content in low level zones.
New players usually have access to living story content and holiday features.

This is the evidence that supports the case that GW2 does give new players the opportunity to play with experienced players. If you want the end game content with full character capability and full itemization I suggest you go directly into SPvP right now.

Karka go missing under Owain's camp

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Sometimes the karka on the seashore under Owain’s refuge can disappear. It is quite common for one of the karka to vanish each time I go by. I’ve also been ambushed, so to speak, a few times traveling near there so I wouldn’t be surprised if they can suddenly reappear as well.

One time I did have a karka targeted when it vanished. I still tried to shoot it but received an ‘out of range’ message, even though it had been in range before it vanished. The karka was still my target.

remove once a day chest limit on World Bosses

in Dynamic Events

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

The designers can’t keep solving every problem in the game by throwing more and more loot at things. It is not a good idea to put more and more end game players onto an endless world boss cycle, driven by external websites, with game ruled by spawn timers.

Suggest some ways to get notifications of events to more players so that a wider population can come to these events rather than just the same people again, and again, and again.

Not receiving Guild /Party /Whisper messages

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Fixed for me too.

Current state of warrior forums..

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Everyone plays a warrior so there’s bound to be a lot of noise.

Pale Tree Reproduction.

in Lore

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

We’ve no way of knowing but it is likely that the Pale Tree can’t easily reproduce herself. Reasons could be
- she hasn’t done it yet and it would be an obvious thing to do
- there would be no point creating a tree shaped child if it essentially a big, static, infertile sylvari.
-it may be impossible to create a new tree with not only the same empathic links to the dream, but also the ability to create its own children with links to the dream.

Dec 10th thief changes

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

As a PvE player I’m totally disheartened to see a useful skill like infiltrator’s return getting trashed to fix stomping problems. If stomps are going wrong then fix the peculiar stomping mechanics instead of breaking class skills. A statement such as “it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations” only gives me the impression that you’re trying to stop this weapon set being fit for purpose.

Forcing thieves to slot more stun breakers also seems a bad idea. Thieves already have a lot of vulnerability when maintaining dps, so adding further vulnerability will just push thieves further behind other classes that can perform better with lower risk.

Actual Thief issues vs. balance update

in Thief

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

The change to initiative seems to average out the initiative regeneration so that players who do nothing to control their initiative have more to spend, whilst min/max builds and skilful play cannot gain as much. That will prevent the thief from being such a tough class for new players but is it really a great advance for the end game?

I do agree entirely with the OP. If you were to ask 100 thieves what was wrong with the class, I doubt many would say that thieves are too reliant on traits for initiative.

Select nearest target doesn't work

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

It isn’t just champions. It goes wrong all the time anyway.

Not receiving Guild /Party /Whisper messages

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I’m not receiving any guild or party chat at the moment. I’ve rebooted the PC. I’ve tried turning my chat settings on and off.

Ranger underwater

in Ranger

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

“blood witch got nerfed significantly.. i remember times when she wiped 10 ppl easily..”

Yes that’s when i soloed her.

Ranger underwater

in Ranger

Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

Once I soloed the blood witch in Kessex I realized that rangers are pretty strong underwater.