Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

Based on the evidence at hand, these non-public test servers are not getting the job done.

Even if they had these PTS and spent months testing every single patch issues that turn up specifically on the live servers would not be found. That is the key here. “Turning up on the live servers”.

You can never get a testing environment that is completely identical to a live one. And as such issues that turns up on the live server but not on the test servers are basically impossible to find before they go on the live servers.

Perhaps not. But with a Public Test Server and actual players logging in, you can get much closer, and your customers can decide for themselves if they want to beta test your latest patch.

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

And yet it is quite likely that most of these issues turned up on the live servers while not existing on the test servers (they do have test servers after all, they simply not public).

Based on the evidence at hand, these non-public test servers are not getting the job done.

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

I have played multiple games with PTS, they also have bugs when release comes to the live servers.

PTS does very little to fix bugs.

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

Found it, but to do so I had to go deeeeep (like page 7 or 8 of General Discussion) to find another (locked) bug thread with the following link within:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bugs-from-16th-Patch

I think there’s a thread already doing this around here somewhere, but I can’t find it. :-o

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

Same thing here. Win XP also. Have to force a shutdown and then restart the PC to get back to Windows. Gonna try the -windowed thing.

Okay, that worked, as far as getting into the game. But now when I try to chat with my guildies it says I’m not in a guild. :-(

Someone in map chat said, in regard to the guild chat thing, set your online status to invisible and then back to online. It seemed to work – but then my guildies were gone and the game crashed.

Anyway, hang in there everybody!

Shiren.9532:

A new race seems unlikely for GW2.

Well, just because someone at anet says that adding new races wouldn’t add anything to gameplay doesn’t mean that it’s true. It just means that they’re wrong. Again. ;-)

Largos and Tengu (and Centaurs and more) can’t get here fast enough.

Blaeys.3102:

It makes sense that a druid would have an animal companion. It really depends on how different the mechanic is from the one currently used by the ranger.

My hope is the mechanic involves some kind of spirit bonding or linking between the druid and its companion – and that the nature of that bond differs based on the class of animal you have slotted (bird, canine, feline, spider, bear, etc).

Why would a Druid (outside of D&D 3E) have an animal companion? I’m looking at the Druid info on Guild Wars and GW2 wiki sites and don’t see any animal connection. There’s evidently a sylvari connection, but nothing about animals.

Rytlock needs a good bonk bonk on the head. When Big K did his infamous flyover of Ascalon, how many charr caught in his flight path resisted becoming branded? Only one that I know of: Almorra Soulkeeper.

How many sylvari exposed to Ol’ Mordy resisted his draconic influence? More than one!

So, what race is it we can’t trust around dragons?

/e bonk bonk on Rytlock’s head

Removing WvW from world completion is a return (although probably inadvertent) to the way things used to be:

“The Mists is not located on any continent and does not contribute to any Cartographer and Vanquisher titles.”

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Mists

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

People like that are not worth getting upset over. I would have just laughed and said “u mad bro?”.

“I got an Oontz necklace of the cat your argument is invalid, later fellas! "

“Oh, is it something good? I already have an ascended amulet with better stats so I salvaged this one for the mats. Got three ecto!”

How about this thing?

abbetd.5912:

Halvorn.9831:

Apart from a few new animations: what would 2H axe add to the game that isn’t already there? I mean, do you see a missing mechanic due to 2H axes not being implemented?

I’d use a 2h axe if it were available just cause they look cool. No other reason, purely cosmetic. Don’t really think devs should waste any time implementing them though.

I don’t think it would be time wasted. I think it would add to the game.

Wanze.8410:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Carlin Sanders.3587:

so it would be awesome to see them have a great-axe as one of the features for the next xpac. (and no i’m not going into ‘double torches’ or ‘double warhorns’ as that would be utterly silly even for anet. and double shields has its own argument line.)

Double torch? So a bonfire on a stick? I dunno that sounds pretty awesome.

Double Torch is awesome in a circus but sucks in the rain.

Whee!

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

And we have lasers, energy weapons, flamethrowers, chemical dispensers, gasmasks, rifles, cannon, sniper rifles, tanks and helicopters, submarines, flying gunships and robots in this game and you think a tactical nuke is way overboard? If you listen to the Golem Mark II, it’s dropped from ORBIT! Just so you have an idea…

Don’t forget long range holographic communications. But no radios or walkie talkies.

“It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!”

Too bad we don’t have a handy dandy petless ranger build we could use in such situations. Or in any situation, for that matter.

Haven’t perused the thread in its entirety, I suspect it has backwashes and eddies and deadly undercurrents, but in response to the title question, yes, I think GW2 would would have been more successful with the so-called Holy Trinity.

Or the Divine Quaternity we had in City of Heroes: tanker, blaster/scrapper, defender, controller. Yeah.

Sariel V.7024:

Shaaba.5672:

Malkavian.4516:

Besides, the main head of the story dungeon is treated as the main character.

Thanks for reminding me of another thing that bugged me. I am supposed to be the star of the show, not whoever happens to start the instance. Another reason it should be soloable.

You’ll like Living Story then. The characters still have most of the focus, but they can’t do anything without you taking the charge. And they always refer to you as The Boss.

If only we had a telecaster…

It’s funny, I was thinking just the other day that, considering how things have been going, particularly over the past year, and with the potential for massive disappointment seeming less like potential and more like reality with every new snippet of HoT info released, it might be time for someone at anet to go. To take on the role of sacrificial lamb. Scapegoat. Fall guy. I thought it might be someone higher up, but with a title like ‘Director of Design’, Mr. Whiteside certainly seems an appropriate candidate.

We can already see the results, right here in this thread: the notion that whatever was wrong, it was probably his fault. Now that he’s gone, maybe things will improve.

And if HoT flops, well, there you go.

Alternately, perhaps prolonged exposure to the forums forced him to flee, lest he lose his last few remaining sanity points.

Disclaimer: not even opinion, really, but rather mere conjecture, half-baked theory (bunnies!), idle rambling.

Interesting. Especially the new faces, since I just happen to have a total makeover kit handy.

Astralporing.1957:

Tachenon.5270:

Nowhere in all that do I say those classes WERE a trinity or were CALLED a trinity by the players of that time. I do say they were the origins, the source, the template, even, of that which (note this word carefully) eventually, as in, not back then, but later on, came to be known as the Trinity.

Except they really weren’t. The concept of the Trinity is completely unrelated to DnD at all. You can draw analogies and point to the “point of origin”, but it doesnt change the fact, that all that is extremely superficial (like in your hunter/gatherer example).
To make it short: Cleric can indeed be considered an origin of the Healer part of the trinity, but the Magic User was not the origin of dps (it could hardly be, the concept of more firepower is much, much older), and the origin of tank didn’t exist at all, because there was no such concept in this game. The templates for the trinity came much later. They were indeed attached to the already existing DnD classes, but they did not come from them.

Well, here, you can argue with yourself:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on, but in a very indirect way.

I’m done.

/e bows out

PookieDaWombat.6209:

@Tach: No, they are more like tigers with wider shoulders and longer front limbs. Just from the pics you posted you can see the major difference in spine curvature.

Like this?

For GRRRREAT Justice!

Kodan have that wacky neck thing going on, too, though. Just not as bad as the charr.

Astralporing.1957:

Tachenon.5270:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on,

That’s what I said. ;-)

Not really, because the idea came much later and was not really dependant on how those classes were depicted in DnD. The idea of Trinity was an outgrowth of primitive mechanics of first multiplayer online rpg games (MUDs), not of archetypal concepts of DnD classes.

I get the impression you’ve not read what I actually wrote. Here, I’ll quote myself.

“Indurative observation: the origins of that which eventually became known as The Trinity can be traced back to ye olde original Dungeons and Dragons, circa 1974, with the Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes.” ~ me

2. “That’s very interesting. Nevertheless, the original D&D Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes remain the source — the template, one might even say — of that which eventually came to be called The Trinity.” ~ me

Nowhere in all that do I say those classes WERE a trinity or were CALLED a trinity by the players of that time. I do say they were the origins, the source, the template, even, of that which (note this word carefully) eventually, as in, not back then, but later on, came to be known as the Trinity.

Let’s try a similar sentence with a different subject.

“The origins of that which eventually came to be called the Full Breakfast can be traced back to ye olde original hunter/gatherers, circa late Pleistocene, gathered around an open wood fire, with a haunch of freshly-killed boar meat sizzling on a spit and a couple of moa eggs, wrapped in moistened leaves, cooking to tasty perfection in the coals.”

Which is not synonymous with, “They had the bacon and eggs grand slam combo platter in the Stone Age!”

So, yes. Really.

It’s that long neck, especially on the males, with the head thrust forward and down. It’s a chiropractor’s happy dream.

What Real Life™ mammal most resembles a charr, in terms of movement and posture? I’m gonna go with gorilla for the posture, anyway. That galumphing run is more or less cat-like, I guess. How is a gorilla’s head attached to its spine? /e google

Hmm.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on,

That’s what I said. ;-)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

1) dancing to cows: no better or worse than bowing and sitting by cows in a higher level heart in the Charr area. This type of complaint makes me think that if it was the opposite, that the game started with dancing to cows and was changed to feeding cows there would have been a storm of complaints about removing flavor in the starter area and how feeding cows is boring and insulting to the players intelligence.

I was kittening about the cow situation in Ascalon long before NPE introduced dancing with cows. The cattle-pult guy? The associated quest/mission/objectives should have been to put that maniac out of commission, likely by flinging him across Ascalon in his own catapult. Feeding bugs to cows? Tee hee. While cows surely do ingest the occasional bug, it’s because those bugs got into what the cows actually do eat: grasses and grains and other vegetation. Happy fun anecdote: I once picked up a freshly baled bale of hay that had a snake stuck in it. I must admit I did do a little dance at that moment, but sadly there were no cows nearby to be entertained by my spontaneous exhibition of mad terpischorean skillz. Ahem. That business about wearing a cow costume so that you can train cows to defend themselves? That’s just…

Cattle rancher: Oh, hey, cow. Guess what? Your time has come. Can you spell BBQ?
Cow (assuming flying hoof stance): Moo-yah!

And afterwards, there’s this whole cow revolution thing and next thing you know it’s Guild Wars 3: Chew of Cud. Which I would probably pre-order. Um. Where was I? Oh, yeah.

Wikipedia is just a click away, but research? For, ya know, verisimilitude? Bah! Clearly, ain’t nobody at anet got time for that!

Altair.8402:

Why are people so averse to doing content that involves other people in a multiplayer game?

Most people aren’t. But when it’s mission after mission after mission of a ‘personal’ story that you can do all by your own personal self and then you can’t come to the conclusion of that personal story because the last personal story mission is for an impersonal party of 5, well…

Here’s what I think happened.

Brother Dulfite.5793:

Tachenon.5270:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Tachenon.5270:

Given how long we’ve waited while anet fiddled about with the Living World and wasted all that time and effort on non-seasonal temporary content…

1. Enough of the map opened up to double the current explorable areas of Tyria.

2. Three other new professions in addition to the Revenant, one for each armor class, each featuring new weapons (also available to various other professions).

3. At least two new playable races with new starting zones.

4. Mass quantities of missions, quests, and dungeons, multitudinous new pvp maps and varieties, wvw zones that aren’t mirror images of each other but strange, bizarre, twisted versions of tyria with desirable resources for each mirror image shard to fight over. Inspirational sources: Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood.

In short, less fiddling about, more MMO.

Of course, all that would be pointless if something positive and constructive and USER-FRIENDLY isn’t done to the trait system and the parts of the game Dr. Seuss’d by NPE…

This is neither here nor there
So throw your hands up in the air
And shake your Tyrian behind
To entertain the bovine mind

That would do. For now.

Lol, don’t exaggerate. Even WoW gave only one additional class after 5 years of release and two races.

How many new professions did Guild Wars give us in, say, a year and a half? How much new territory? How many new weapons? No new races, of course, but how many new cultures?

Gw1 was a joke in terms of development cost compared to this. This is a lot more expensive to update being an actual mmo as opposed to a , more of less, Diablo based game.

Indeed. How many people worked on Guild Wars? How many people are working on GW2?

Bonus Followup: How much developmental time and effort has been wasted on GW2 creating such things as non-seasonal temporary content, or, as I like to call it, vanishware?

Conncept.7638:

asura are in fact mammals and therefore do have breasts.

Where?

Vayne.8563:

The Silverwastes are one of the best designed areas of the game. There’s stuff there for everyone. If you want to stay there early on and challenge yourself against modrem you can. If you want to hang out for the meta event you can. If you want to run around in a train and farm chests you can. If you want to do an amazing jumping puzzle that spans an entire zone, you can.

You forgot the labyrinth. As for the design, yes, it’s almost as brilliant as one of those business cards with ‘turn over’ printed on both sides, because after a week, maybe two, that’s what it feels like.

There’s no substance to the Silverwastes. It’s a mini-game. It’s SAB without the nostalgic quirkiness. It, along with Dry Top, could have been so much more, but as presented, it’s just another missed opportunity in a game increasingly rife with missed opportunities. And these zones are ‘forerunners’ to what we’ll see in HoT. Joy.

Vayne.8563:

There are probably a small percentage of the playerbase that hates the Silverwastes, but it seems to have been a hit with players.

There’s probably a small percentage of the playerbase that loves the Silverwastes, but it seems to have become a boring grind for players.

Wait, you mean it’s not ROLL playing?

/e hides behind bag of dice

PS: apropos of nothing, I sure do miss CoH style tanking. Loved that. Sometimes almost maybe just a little kinda almost get that feeling with my #1 warrior here, but not quite. Mid-level scepter/dagger ele also kinda reminded me of a blaster, but as she hit the higher levels the damage began to feel more like controller damage…

Anyway, carry on.

Couldn’t you do both? Do a world boss circuit, then hop over to the silverwastes afterward?

World boss farm pro: see the world.
World boss farm con: see the world.

Silverwastes farm pro: stay in one place.
Silverwastes farm con: stay in one place.

silvermember.8941:

Tachenon.5270:

Patience? Heh.

Those who are willing to accept less will get just that: less. And less. And less. Is that what you want?

So what exactly are you going to do about it? Talk is cheap.

Oh? Then why do politicians get paid so much?

Ahem.

I’ll tell you what I won’t do.

I won’t buy HoT the instant it’s released. I won’t pre-order, either, if that’s even an option. I’ll wait and see what’s actually delivered. I’ll read the patch notes. I’ll read the reviews, watch the inevitable playthrough videos. I’ll talk to any guildies who get it and see what they have to say about it. Then, if it seems worthwhile and worth the purchase price, and if it suits me to do so, I’ll buy it. If not, I won’t. I encourage you and everyone else here to do the same.

Patience? Heh.

Those who are willing to accept less will get just that: less. And less. And less. Is that what you want?

Vayne.8563:

Galphar.3901:

The funny this is that at release we didn’t have those problems. These were introduced starting in last April with the Traits changes and then last September with the NPE.

But we had other problems.

Nothing major until November 15, 2012, when ascended gear was introduced. It’s been downhill ever since. /e opinion

Belzebu.3912:

Tachenon.5270:

Metrics brought us the NPE.

And metrics will make part of the NPE go away (the traits part to be exactly)

The trait system was redesigned several months before the NPE came along. It took a while to percolate up into general awareness because its negative effects weren’t evident on characters created before it was implemented. There are likely still people out there who aren’t aware of it, because they’re still playing the same characters they’ve had since launch.

Whether HoT will bring positive and constructive changes to the trait system (or anything negatively impacted by NPE later on) remains to be seen. It would seem unlikely that a worse trait system than the one we are stuck with now could be devised and implemented, but history suggests such a thing is a distinct and disturbing possibility.

Metrics brought us the NPE.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Tachenon.5270:

Given how long we’ve waited while anet fiddled about with the Living World and wasted all that time and effort on non-seasonal temporary content…

1. Enough of the map opened up to double the current explorable areas of Tyria.

2. Three other new professions in addition to the Revenant, one for each armor class, each featuring new weapons (also available to various other professions).

3. At least two new playable races with new starting zones.

4. Mass quantities of missions, quests, and dungeons, multitudinous new pvp maps and varieties, wvw zones that aren’t mirror images of each other but strange, bizarre, twisted versions of tyria with desirable resources for each mirror image shard to fight over. Inspirational sources: Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood.

In short, less fiddling about, more MMO.

Of course, all that would be pointless if something positive and constructive and USER-FRIENDLY isn’t done to the trait system and the parts of the game Dr. Seuss’d by NPE…

This is neither here nor there
So throw your hands up in the air
And shake your Tyrian behind
To entertain the bovine mind

That would do. For now.

Lol, don’t exaggerate. Even WoW gave only one additional class after 5 years of release and two races.

How many new professions did Guild Wars give us in, say, a year and a half? How much new territory? How many new weapons? No new races, of course, but how many new cultures?

I saw the term sodapoppin in zone chat the other day. I thought it was like, ya know, a reference to some variety of tequila slammer. When I found out it was a person, my reaction was like that guy in Guardians of the Galaxy: who?

So anyway. Where’s all my free keys?

watergenji.5816:

Also. I didn’t think about this, and I apologize if someone else already mentioned this, but I think the Largos wings might also present a problem with some backpieces. Just a thought.

There’s a concept art image on the GW2 wiki that shows a female largos without wings, so maybe the wings are not permanently affixed.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Largos

Dace.3985:

So you say their base system was good but at the same time, you want them to essentially destroy the current personal story and rebuild it from the ground up to be completely different than what it was… Got it.

No, you don’t ‘got it’, but that’s all right. No point going any further with it.

Dace.3985:

Eh, that relief is a minor and very temporary fix. Your race matters for the personal story until you officially choose your Order which means until level 30-40. Most players spend most of their time at level 80 so the vast majority of a new race will be spent running the same content with just a new character model. That’s why a new race is a shortsighted fix with no meaningful gameplay. No matter the race, the gameplay is all the same. Races are only some early quests and a different skin.

Then fix that. Fix the story. Make it so that your choice of race means something, from your first quest to your last, providing ‘meaningful gameplay’ in perpetuity, in the core game, in the next expansion, and in any future expansions that may come.

Charr characters assemble a warband — and promptly abandon them to run off and join an Order. Same with asura and their krewes. I think that’s pathetic. Fix that. Fix that and fix the rest of the personal story. Add to it. Bolster it. Make it better. Add new races, with new stories, new lands, new lives. Build. Grow. Expand.

But no.

What did anet add to the story with their last ‘new system’ upgrade? Nothing. Less than nothing. They subtracted. Instead of making the personal story better and more meaningful, they ripped an entire section out, turned the latter portions into a broken and confusing mess without any semblance of continuity. Why?

Who came up that idea? Who approved it? Who tested it? We know it was tested, and for over a year. They said so. And yet, they still got it all wrong. How did that happen? Why did it take so long for them to finally decide to get around to doing something about it?

I put it to you, and to the forums at large: new systems aren’t what this game needs. Nor does need a new foundation upon which to build its future. It had a good, solid foundation — before all the new systems implemented over the course of the past 2.75 or so years all but destroyed it.

I don’t know how many more ‘new systems’ this game can stand.

Diovid.9506:

In general though, Arenanet’s stance on adding races is the following:

Shacknews: You’ve added a new profession, however you did hold off on adding a new race. What led to this decision?

Johanson: For this one, we looked at what we would get out of adding a new race and what benefit it actually brings to the players from a gameplay standpoint. It’s very limited in Guild Wars 2. A new race adds a racial skill or two and a little bit of story, but it doesn’t give that much meaningful gameplay in the grand scheme of things. The race is more context for the early story that you experience. So we wanted to focus things that would provide a lot more gameplay and address parts of Guild Wars 2 that we felt like we really wanted to be able to make a better experience and grow. So right now, we didn’t feel that a new race was a key need for the game, whereas the other things that we’re adding really provide fundamental building blocks for the future.

And there’s the GuildWars2ian Knot in all its glory.

What benefit would a new race bring to the players? Isn’t it obvious? Relief is what it would bring. Relief from the same old same old we’ve had for almost three years now. Something NEW. Something DIFFERENT. A much needed breath of fresh air.

Why does it have to be ‘a little bit of story’? Why not a big, heaping helping of story? What’s going on out there in the depths where the largos live? What’ happening behind those walls where the tengu have settled? What do they DO in there? Are they at all concerned about events at large?

A new race won’t give much ‘meaningful gameplay’? What is ‘meaningful gameplay’ anyway? Evidently entertaining cows is ‘meaningful gameplay’ in the ‘grand scheme of things’, as it was something they actually implemented, ostensibly to make a ‘better experience’ — but evidently a new race just isn’t worth even thinking about, as it won’t lead to ‘meaningful gameplay’. It won’t bring growth. No future in it.

Guys…

Given how long we’ve waited while anet fiddled about with the Living World and wasted all that time and effort on non-seasonal temporary content…

1. Enough of the map opened up to double the current explorable areas of Tyria.

2. Three other new professions in addition to the Revenant, one for each armor class, each featuring new weapons (also available to various other professions).

3. At least two new playable races with new starting zones.

4. Mass quantities of missions, quests, and dungeons, multitudinous new pvp maps and varieties, wvw zones that aren’t mirror images of each other but strange, bizarre, twisted versions of tyria with desirable resources for each mirror image shard to fight over. Inspirational sources: Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood.

In short, less fiddling about, more MMO.

Of course, all that would be pointless if something positive and constructive and USER-FRIENDLY isn’t done to the trait system and the parts of the game Dr. Seuss’d by NPE…

This is neither here nor there
So throw your hands up in the air
And shake your Tyrian behind
To entertain the bovine mind

That would do. For now.

maddoctor.2738:

Tachenon.5270:

Indurative observation: the origins of that which eventually became known as The Trinity can be traced back to ye olde original Dungeons and Dragons, circa 1974, with the Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes.

That’s completely false. The “Trinity” with clear defined roles has its origins in the first MMORPGs, something like that was never a part of RPGs. A clear Trinity was never used any type of “Trinity” in any Dungeons and Dragons game, the only DnD edition that tried to “Force” some kind of Trinity was the 4th edition (had some more clearly defined Tanks and Healers) guess how the DnD community called it?

They called it WoW in DnD, and the edition failed miserably to attract older role players that didn’t want something like WoW (and its garbage trinity role system) in their RPGs.

With my many years of RPG experience, I’ve never ever created a party together with my friends with clearly defined roles. “Hey one of us needs to make a Healer and another one a Tank” was (and is) never a part of an actual RPG experience.

That’s very interesting. Nevertheless, the original D&D Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes remain the source — the template, one might even say — of that which eventually came to be called The Trinity.

I agree, GW2 needs new races, among other things, and it needs them yesterday.

I feel we should have largos and tengu as playable races right now, today. If anet had been serious about the Living World giving us expansive content, that’s what it should have done: brought in these races with new stories, new zones, and new professions.

Alas.

Anyway, yeah, I would really, truly, aw heck yeah like to play a largos (and a tengu!).

Indurative observation: the origins of that which eventually became known as The Trinity can be traced back to ye olde original Dungeons and Dragons, circa 1974, with the Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes.