“Also, an expansion needn’t exclude people who don’t buy it, you could keep the level cap at 80, but give us a story to work through, maybe it’s a story unrelated to the living world, another massive threat, or make it more personal, relating to our character and his/her relationships in a crisis. Those who don’t buy the expansion will still get the new traits, abilities and can explore the new are maybe, and those who do can get this new personal story quest, a new race and some new tier of cosmetic gear.”
You are seriously underestimating the economics of expansions. When a company invests money into developing an expansion it needs revenue from the player base. The marketing men ensure that everyone has the biggest reasons possible to buy the expansion and it is not just an optional extra. This means that players who don’t get the expansion get almost no content, nothing is given away for free between releases, and ‘must have’ content is created for the releases such as a level cap increase. Nobody in GW2 wants a level cap increase.
You might say that a release doesn’t need to be that way however the economics push releases in in that direction. As soon as you get rid of releases you get free features like the wallet and the cosmetic system, you get a shared world where all content is open to everyone, content can be released often, players can choose to pay for cosmetics in the game store rather than paying for them in expansions, and there is no need to ever raise the level cap.
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It’s probably ok to kick someone if they would kick you if the situation was reversed.
“There is literally no reason to use anything other than full DPS setups for it unless you’re roleplaying. "
Yes there is. A full dps set-up can get you killed in a poor groups where the mobs live long enough to attack back. Ok, you can rage quit and call everyone noobs, since it is obviously all their fault and if they played to your elite standard with excellent dps it wouldn’t happen, but actually swapping to a hammer in the right place can hide a lot of problems with a group quite nicely. All problems except elitism, seemingly.
Most of the points of interest are explained in game through events, personal story, or talking to the locals. It can be hard to piece it together though. Generally GW2 tends to show what is happening in the world now, such as skritt stealing from harpies, and events only give lore when it is relevant to things happening now.
The return of Lyssa runes?
This change is positive. Bad players will use any system to create bad situations, much like they do now. Good players will be able to continue their dungeons with less risk of a mishap.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the instance owner will now be vulnerable to kicks. It was always going to be a consequence of this fix.
These mobs are causing you trouble? Well they are meant to. Orr is meant to be a war zone. If you want mobs that stand and wait until you hit them then go back to level 1 neutral mobs mobs in Queensdale.
Before you complain that WoW and GW2 are making things difficult, just think back to old Everquest I. Mobs would chase players all the way across a zone, which was not only a problem for that player but a fatal problem everyone else en route. Roving high level mobs were in even the newbie zones and they could one shot any character that wasn’t watching out. This was of course well before mounts and waypoints and you had to run everywhere. Think how much fun it would be run from Lion’s Arch to CoF each time you wanted to do a dungeon. If you wanted to travel between continents you had to sit on a boat for 15 minutes and hope a bug didn’t drop you in the ocean.
Compared to that, if you have trouble traveling across GW2 you are creating your own problems. It is straightforward to dodge, use your stun breaks, clear your conditions, use movement skills, and whatever else.
Conan the Barbarian was a proper thief. No two ways about it.
I’ve nothing against thief greatswords but the graphics on some of the greatswords are massive, wouldn’t suit a thief. Offhand torch would be good but rangers and mesmers already have the offhand torch skills we want.
How many thieves would like the chance to have zephyrite aspects as an ‘off hand’ choice with the moves and leaps as part of attacks?
Is Sean Bean a thief?
“For example, I want an Olympic gold medal”
Yeah right great example. That would only be applicable if the IOC sent everyone an entry form to the competition and a pair of running shoes to get people started. The start of this task was given to everyone so everyone expects it to be relevant for them and not just relevant to Usain Bolt.
I think we can expect Caithe to be involved somewhere as all the dialogue in TA Aetherblade needs to have a conclusion. However I don’t think we can assume anything from events not happening in the story. An awful lot of things are just not covered in the story. We could suspect Trahearne for not assigning Pact airships to patrol near the Pale Tree. We could suspect the Lionguard because they were not at the meeting. And so on.
He is acting villainous because new players will not have heard of him. How can he redeem himself if nobody knows he used to be a villain?
Corrupted artifacts tend to do nasty things and attract nasty creatures. This orb seems to do none of that.
There was only one thing wrong with the Aetherpath dungeon and that was the other dungeons. The other dungeons allow speed running for better time vs reward.
The old path is forgotten (even though it would be nice to see it back sometime). Cosmetic drops wouldn’t be a problem if the dungeon was run regularly for basic loots. If the dungeon was run regularly then common knowledge tactics would soon make everything straightforward.
Change the golem suit+spiders section in path 2 to be more reliable for players with the right tactics (rather than making every alternative increasingly punishing and annoying). The puzzles in most paths present some fun for new players and a quick bit of jumping/timing for the experienced player but the golem suit is just not fun on repeat visits.
It could be anyone. It could be anyone important from any nation and there are plenty of dodgy types in the Arcane Council, Ministry, and so on. Other random people seemed to turn up like the Quaggans. The orders and the Pact must have known. It’s even possible that the minor races got invites as well but didn’t attend.
As usual though we’ve got to go with the clue in game rather than any omission. Trahearne said it had to be someone with a very dark heart so that’s likely to be how it was (even though I don’t see any evidence for that yet).
There is merit to some of the things in this list but, to my mind, CoE is in a good state compared to the other dungeons. CoE is the dungeon I’d least like to see tampered with.
Subject Alpha doesn’t need any buffs. He can kill inexperienced groups often enough that they quit the dungeon in rage. Experienced players have to accept that perfect tactics and perfect dodges will often make bosses easy.
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If some conversation text options were put into the game so that we can pick the character of our player characters, even if makes no game play difference, then that would be a step forward. Nobody wants to look the words on screen and think “These are someone else’s words. My character would never say that.”
I think there are some popular changes for grouping:
Don’t automatically close an instance when the party leader leaves.
Party chat should remain in the chat window after leaving a group.
Blocked players should not be able to join your groups through the LFG system.
I must admit that I’m getting confused again. We know the Wyld Hunt of the Sylvari character started in the Dream when we fought the Shadow of the Dragon, when Caithe (perhaps mistakenly) said it was used to poison the Dream by the Nightmare Court. Caithe also told us that her Wyld Hunt and the player character’s Wyld Hunt ended together when we killed Zaitan. So how did a fight against Morderemoth’s Champion in the dream turn into a Wyld Hunt to kill Zaitan? Caithe and the Pale Tree know all about this peculiarity but have told us nothing and we’re now half way through LS2.
One idea I came up with was that Scarlet (yes her again) was the one who poisoned the dream with the Shadow of the Dragon. That doesn’t answer any of my questions though.
Yes the sword is rubbish for new players. Use a greatsword.
PvP players like it as the leap chases down enemies for them without them have to manually move their character (like every other class). There are lots of PvP players on the forums and they tell the new players to turn off their auto attacks and run their #1 skill manually when new players actually have enough to worry about already.
I’m not surprised. The existing dungeon paths allow speed running, essentially due to weak design. There’s no point create new dungeons with that same weakness but there’s also no point creating dungeons (like TA aether) that take longer than a speed run.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the designers create something new that is dungeon like but isn’t a dungeon. There is a need for meaty group content somewhere in LS2.
As a small solution, perhaps the skill point duels across Tyria could give a way to unlock traits. Maybe they could give a free barter for an appropriate level skill book once you have finished the duel. It’s far easier for players to travel and collect those skill points than to do mid level raid bosses, PvP, secret locations, jumping puzzles, etc.
We’ve had these threads before and there isn’t really much that isn’t covered by the classes. If you want a shadowknight type character you can already make a warrior who uses poison and fear, and so on. If there were any new ideas it would probably be better to put them into traits and utilities for an existing class. Nobody wants to level up a new character with the current trait system.
Farmers regularly look for the maximum reward for time spent, anywhere in the game. The specifically look for rewards that are out of balance with the rest of the game. When these min/max opportunities are eventually closed down the farmers complain that nobody likes them.
If the farmers don’t like their favorite sites bring fixed in patches they shouldn’t make imbalanced content their favorite sites. Unfortunately, due to the nature of farmers, that will never change.
The map is very nice but a map is two dimensional. Ley lines will almost certainly travel in 3 dimensions. They could run through air and ocean just as easily as underground.
There are two design problems on PvE bosses – defiant and the condition cap. The condition cap is the bigger problem. The defiant system is poor, particularly in scaling, but it is workable and the condition cap needs a fix first.
There are some enemies that can still be interrupted despite the defiant limit, such as the risen wraiths.
Get bezerker gear and if you need some extra condition cures, regen, or endurance then use traits to get those.
I’m guessing the main problem with using ghosts is that they persist in Tyria for a reason and that reason is nothing to do with Dragons. Existing ghosts might defend somewhere very well, but you might not get any advantage from that whilst the ghosts are there. Creating a new army of ghosts for your own purposes seems immoral, considering you might be committing the spirits to many ages of suffering and conflict against an elder dragon that could be effectively immortal.
There might not be a corruption problem with the ghost themselves but if ghosts are tied to a place, artifact, or person then the dragons can certainly corrupt those.
Go to the mists. That’s where you are the bad guy who can steal the keeps from the good guys, if you want to see it that way.
If you want a detailed storyline with many actions and consequences then don’t play a PvE MMO. MMOs are about repeatability and shared environments. Repeated consequences are a bit contradictory and although every player wants their personal impact upon a shared environment it is hard to deliver.
To be fair to Konig, if it turns out that the killing of Zaitin was not the Wyld Hunt of the Sylvari player then it is inexcusable storytelling. This was given in the dream even before the character was born into the world, it is meant to drive the character’s purpose in life, and if the character doesn’t realize what it is and can’t tell when it is finished then it is no more than an ephemeral visage. Wyld Hunts are meant to be more than that, particularly when it involves the killing of one of the most powerful beings in Tyria in a pivotal moment of world history.
It may be reasonable to say that a Wyld Hunt is extended over time, or that a character gets a new Wyld Hunt, but that should also be at the center of the story and well known to a player character. It should not be secondary to visions given by asura gizmos or even the Pale Tree.
You seem to have contradicted yourself there. You say that players will inevitably create their own timelines through play. Then you complain that the timelines bear no relation to the story. Exactly!
It is a fair complaint that Mordremoth has not been shown as ‘the most dangerous dragon’, but that’s true whatever timeline you want to give it. Clearly there are problems with the way Mordremoth was introduced but that is mainly poor writing. We know from LS1 that we can’t draw conclusions from anything we are not shown in the story, so drawing assumptions from a timeline in LS2 is unlikely to work either.
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Does it really matter that the official timeline is weak? I don’t think so, as long as the timeline is plausible. When the story is written the release dates cannot be set in stone, so the timeline is always going to be flexible. It is still convenient for players to match game time to real world time. Most players are used to repeating content in a way that would be impossible under any real timeline.
Living Story 2 was delayed for the Asia launch so that messed up the timelines. Seems like a reasonable business decision to me.
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I wouldn’t hold too much sympathy for the dragons. The elder dragons are called devourers so I’d guess that Snaff’s vision into Kralk’s mind, an insatiable hunger, will hold true for other dragons as well. They seem to care for nothing but themselves. They destroy and corrupt everything. They bend life, earth, and magic to their will. From what we see of dragon minions, there is not just disdain for life but an absolute hatred. I would assume the minions get that hatred directly from the dragon, where else?
How do you start negotiating with a dragon when you have nothing to offer it that it cannot take, the dragon’s hunger only grows, and it desires to corrupt and control everything? Absolutely, totally everything.
Is there any more lore behind this thing? It’s floating in the air, showing the area with golden light that has covered the nearby plants with metal. It is free from Dragon corruption.
Could this be useful against Mordremoth? Is it similar to the blue orb stored at Ft Trinity that dispelled the miasma? It is likely to never be relevant to anything ever again but who knows?
How about another view of this. We were told that Scarlet was able to find out secrets, specifically Caithe’s secret but others as well, and it was never revealed how. Caithe tried to find out but seemingly got nowhere. We now get another secret, this leader’s summit, that was known by Mordemoth (I think it was too big a secret to hide but if the story says it is important then it is going to be important).
Perhaps there is a method of finding information that is unique to Mordremoth and he shared that with Scarlet. I like the idea of Mordemoth having cute little flowers everywhere that are all eavesdropping for him, but it could be more elaborate such as sensing along ley lines or delving for knowledge within the dream.
Clues to future stories are often put into previous episodes. As an example, Trader Aerin was talking to the Zephyrites before anyone cared who he was. Similarly the Master of Peace gave supplies to Lion’s Arch and I bet nobody thought much about him then either. Barbara’s ghost could well be in a future episode.
Generally we only find out a villain’s name in GW2 when we’re about to fight them. This even applies to Elder Dragons …
The Asura value education and intelligence, so the obvious stupidity of the skritt annoys them. To make matters worse , as soon researchers try to prove their superiority over these brainless rodents the skritt outsmart them and steal their lab equipment. Precision engineered magitech gizmos are smashed to bits just so the shiny bits can be put into pile. How can this be possible in the eternal alchemy! Arghh don’t you fell the hatred too?
I think we have to assume that Anise intended us to overhear her conversation with Canach, but it still doesn’t really make sense. Why would anyone, i.e. the Vigil, let someone like Canach into a Pact fort if he’s not there on Pact business? It’s clear from the player’s characters dialog that Canach is not welcome.The Pact might let him in if he was given official duties, but Canach is Anise’s indebted criminal and he is not a member of the Shining Blade or Seraph.
If we ignore all that, one use for Canach might be as a secret bodyguard for someone, maybe Kasmeer, Trahearne, or even the player character. Could he be there to smoke out the Consortium? Does Anise think there are White Mantle spies within the Pact? Is he just there as a distraction, again? It could be anything really. My personal guess is that the Sinister Triad in Brisban Wildlands will be seen again soon, they tried to sabotage the summit, and they will strike at the Pact as it prepares to move to Magumma. Anise is interested in the bandit side of the triad.
All the choices and exploring dungeons … well you probably don’t notice the first time as you just run through any way possible to finish. Second and third time through it is great as you experiment and find new things. After a few times maybe players just take the most direct routes to the loots, as fast as they can, and everything else might as well not be there, just like the explorable dungeons we have now.
There would be nothing worse than people kicking each other from dungeons because some want time to explore and some want to speed run. Oh wait a second, they do that already even with linear dungeons ….
“Just like this backpack, they aren’t forcing people to make it. Any type of precursor crafting, just like legendries, is entirely optional. I’m sure at that point people will have a lot of forewarning about the lengthiness of the process by the community at large. If not, there will be easy to look up guides on Dulfy and the wiki showing the many step by step introductions.”
They aren’t forcing people to make, but players don’t have a valid decision whether to make it or not since they’re not told what it makes! Players are induced to make it by giving the items out as part of the living story. Once you have eight bits of questy rubbish in your backpack the natural inclination is to chase around and make it, and you only find out whether it is worth it a long way down the road.
I’m an old fashioned gamer and I don’t believe that players should have to look outside the game for information, especially when it comes to a task given to everyone. If players really are expected to use web resources then those web resources should come with the game and not be reliant upon the community.
“This is probably a precursor to precursor crafting. Pun intended. Anet is probably test driving the system with this backpack.”
If it is then they’ll have a lot of players ending up very disappointed after they invest an increasing amount of time into these quests only to see the next stage needing even more time as well, until they turn into the biggest grind in the game (to make something they might not even want).
I’m confused how this device was going to be used. Surely whoever was responsible for waypoints, like the arcane council, were always going to be the people who needed the technowhatsit? Tiami wasn’t planning to march round to every waypoint and fix them all herself was she?
The problem with this stuff is that we were all given the stuff on every character in the living story as if it is something everyone can make easily by running about. It isn’t. It is a grind. It needs all parts of the game. Anyone who put effort into making this in the last chapter will be disappointed if the recipe has exploded on them in this chapter.
The way to put these items into the game is to show people the result, give them the recipe/tasks if they want to pursue it, and then for the player to collect the bits. Giving the player the bits, sending them on a whole load of tasks, giving them an ever increasing grind of components, then only showing people the result at the end is bad design. It will always makes players unhappy when they find out they have invested their time in something they don’t want or cannot finish.
“this fight (and every other boss fight so far this season) remains, IMO, unnecessarily tedious and repetitive. More a test of patience and endurance, in the end, than skill.”
It seems like you have reached a certain amount of wisdom without realizing that all computer games offer the same thing. Once you know when to press the buttons all you do is repetitively press them at the right times. Congratulations. If you want faster reflex skills you can try first person shooters. If you want more thought then play a strategy game. If you want unpredictability then play PvP.
Just a couple of reminders. The in game story journal tells us that the Pale Tree showed us a vision of a golden land and a mysterious artifact. In the tunnel under Prosperity there is Nicholas Sandford’s journal about Dry Top which mentions “Unknown sentient beings once built fragile hillside homes high on the cliffsides. Some structures still linger …”. Could that be the city in the vision even though the journal places it in Dry Top rather than a golden land?
There is possible plot emerging here with the gambling. Minister Estelle has now been blackmailed with gambling debts accrued while gambling against ruffians (not nobles). Kasmeer’s brother (?) built up gambling debts that led to her father going to jail. Could this be an organized White Mantle/bandit operation that drags nobles into debt and then extorts favors?
Nobility can obviously vary but quite often it can hold responsibilities as well as privileges. Kasmeer’s father might not have been able to supply troops to the crown, collect taxes for the crown, and so on while he is in prison. Remember also that the nobility often used to have full legal authority over their estates, acting as judge and juror, so that would be impossible to continue from jail. Nobles could also have had legal protection even against the crown justice, such as the trial by combat in the personal story, so removing a title would be another way of enforcing the court’s authority. It is also possible that the Ministry want to remove as many nobles as possible and have their estates/powers taken over by the state.