Actually there’s just one question left:
Why do you think that this is even needed? The Gem Store works as it’s supposed to do. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, 4 years after release, having an expansion and Anet even working on the next one.
As Indigo said, the revenue of the last quarter had its reasons, but it always worked. Why should they change anything?
Why did they even write they fixed the first time and daily reward, if it remains unchanged?
Probably because some people weren’t getting any rewards upon completion of the JP.
Didn’t read a single comment of someone getting nothing at all.
But apparently you shouldn’t get your hopes up if they fix something.
Why did they even write they fixed the first time and daily reward, if it remains unchanged?
No one will do the jp to get 5 bags.
Now it’s time…
Sooo it’s still bugged?
Recently we got this update note:
Bug Fix:
Fixed a bug in which players did not receive the intended first-time and daily rewards upon completing the Mad King’s Clock Tower.
I did the jp before the reset – got 25 Trick or Treat bags and a choice of 1 Candy Corn Cob, personalized bags or chests. An hour after the reset, I tried it again and got the usual 5 bags as it used to be. Other players on reddit confirmed that as well.
When does the daily reward reset? And what should it contain?
I read through the handful of threads between here and Reddit and I wouldn’t call it a “huge ****storm”. Just some players complaining about something which is no different than anything else. I guess those could be “huge ****storms” too. It just sounds exaggerated.
i get that you want content updates every two weeks like before, or something like that, but it won’t happen as I guess there were enough players that wanted e passions that Anet found themselves having to make them. Besides, most of the content releases were just achievement grinds.
I’ll just leave some links here for you and the devs:
reddit – The worst GW Halloween to date 940 upvotes, 418 comments
reddit – Alright. I’ll say it. 829 upvotes, 345 comments
reddit – diminishing returns ruined this event for me 325 upvotes, 225 comments
You won’t see numbers like that usually. So I don’t know if
Just some players complaining about something
is appropriate.
Some people will find something hateful even in the nicest of gestures. It is just sad that you want to tell the rest of us not to be nice for something we are grateful for.
Yes, they did increase DR. But there was always DR. Players complained about DR period.
You have to look at it as a whole: You yourself said that people always complained about DR. And nonetheless they increased it this year?
I have seen the occasional concern about no new content, but have never seen anyone complaining about no new story. Just you. Most people want to farm the Lab. They do. Mo made it better. Life is good.
People were complaining that there are still less events compared to the first Halloween. Then, they were disappointed that they didn’t even care to continue the story. They just wanted to see anything new but that didn’t happen last year, it didn’t happen this year and it won’t happen next year because Anet is busy working on the next expansion. Again.
It is nice to see people being nice to Anet and Mo for a change. Please do not ask people to be hateful and mean where and when there is simply no cause to do so.
Anet increased the thing everyone hated. After seeing tons of raging players, they decided to remove it to calm them down.
I’d take it for granted to deal with your own mistakes.
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I don’t recall there being an abundance of players asking for new Halloween content.
I farmed Lab for awhile in Guard and ran into no DR issues. Maybe XP from events dropped a bit but I was gaining loot near the end at the same rate that I was when I started. Do you have a source that they had increased DR?
You’re upset that an MMO has content gaps between expansions and other releases? Can you name an MMO that continuously releases content updates, along with expansions, that satisfy players need for continuous new content?
People weren’t upset because it’s the same events since years but there’s even less than it used to be. They didn’t continue the story and cut other events we had.
To the DR: Please, read through the threads.
To the expansions:
We’ve missed out on lots of content because they developed HoT. Actually, they never stopped working on HoT in order to deliver the content they promised at release. Again, putting everything else aside.
And now they’re already working on the next expansion?
Perhaps the OP can draw us a picture of what they had in mind?
Criticism is cheap and easy.
Skill and vision aren’t.
Don’t expect more from OP than a ketchup stain on a napkin. With a sepia filter.
You don’t have to be a great singer to recognize that someone can’t sing and hit the right notes.
Sounds like the disappointed people in a talent show demanding the judges to do it better – but that doesn’t change anything, they still can’t sing.
However, looks are personal preference and taste anyway, so some might like it and others won’t.
As hard as it may sound: could we please stop being naive and praising him endlessly?
“MO saves Halloween! Thank you for listening to the players. Anet cares for their players! That’s very generous of you Mo!”
They increased the DR this year before removing it. Why would they do that? They should know their players by now. It took them a huge sh*tstorm on reddit and the forum to do something about it.
And no, he did not save Halloween. They did not listen to the players. There are no new Halloween events this year. There is no story at all this year.
Anet has to stop taking an expansion as an excuse for the lack of new content.
Last time it was HoT. This time it’s the next expansion. You’re putting us on hold year after year abandoning everything else. That won’t work anymore.
Wow these are surely constructive comments.
He’s suggesting to have 10 skills on each weapon instead of 5 (which are set) and let the players decide which one of them they want to use.
Similar things have been suggested quite often, in gw1 you could even choose how many weapon-bound skills you want to have in your build.
However the answers have been always the same: Balance issues, too much effort, resources and so on.
Festivals should require very little dev time, with the exception of a few new drops. Let them focus the effort toward the LS, the next raid and the next expansion.
The whole effort towards the expansion won’t help them if there’s no one left to play. exaggerated
They let the players wait for HoT. Release -> disappointment among the players. Parts of it are still missing and now they expect the players to wait again for the next expansion?
You can’t keep a game running if you sacrifice everything else year after year – in order to make a new expansion. Do they really expect us to stay interested in GW2 if they constantly use an expansion as an excuse for the lack of new content?
In fairness there really isn’t anything wrong with this year’s Halloween beyond the insane prices.
[…]
So whilst it isn’t the strongest Halloween ever, it’s hardly the unmitigated disaster many have made it out to be. Hopefully Anet will actually take on board some of the feedback about grind and fixing the Lunatic Inquisition so it is ready for next year.
I’ve heard of a quest of the first year Halloween rewarding you with an unique shield (looks like a book?). Things like that wouldn’t take too long to implement – 1 or 2 quests a year for Halloween and Wintersday should be possible. New quest every year, new reward every year should help a little to get out of a rut.
In general, I still can’t believe that they have to abandon everything else in order to step up with the expansion. At least, it’s not good to do so. Every time something’s been scrapped or abandoned, people will say: It’s because of the new expansion.
Everytime we’ll hear that, our expactations will rise – because we sacrificed so much to get it.
And if our expectations are too high, we will be disappointed again with the new expansion.
The other question I have: Is it possible to get 120.000 Candy Corn in 2 weeks? Without using the trading post?
You have 13 days to find out, and you didn’t list a first question.
I thought it would be clear, maybe I forgot a word:
Mini Bloody Prince Thorn
- Official Halloween vendor: 10.000 CC
- Sonder the Seller: 6000 CC
Why?
Some people pointed out that the price for a Mini Bloody Prince Thorn is contradictory:
- Official Halloween vendor: 10.000 CC
- Sonder the Seller: 6000 CC
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Candy_Corn_Cob
The other question I have: Is it possible to get 120.000 Candy Corn in 2 weeks? Without using the trading post?
We’ve got Mini Gwynefyrdd (110k) and the Shadow Raven (120k). How do you feel about these prices?
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As for my faith in the narrative team, I trust that they will lead us from point A to point B. I don’t need to be explained how Players X, Y and Z are already there waiting for us, when even in every other map released, they’ve had the maps populated long before our character can get anywhere near it.
This is not about the maps being populated before we arrived. If you read the first post, you’d know I’m just concerned about the geographical point.
Even Orr and Maguuma was populated with Pact members long before we were ready to go there. So no, I don’t really expect an explanation why Ember Bay was chosen if you’ve rejected all the seemingly reasonable explanations offered so far.
It’s not about the population. The order of the Maguuma maps made sense. We were going deeper into the jungle, starting in Brisban Wildlands -> Silverwastes -> Verdant Brink. Going directly to Ember Bay (avoiding the other islands) is like going from Brisban Wildlands to Dragon’s Stand, skipping every map in between. Maybe now you know what I’m talking about.
Plus, player speculation won’t replace a missing part of the story. Everyone brought up different reasons why they could have chosen Ember Bay. Is that a satisfying result? Should I accept the they-had-their-reasons statement?
I don’t want the players to find a reason, I want Anet to implement it in the story as it is meant to be.
We got there through a portal made by asura.
A group of asura that have absolutely nothing to do with us went to a place and put that gate there.
And that’s the missing part. Why did they choose the furthermost island? Why did they avoid the nearest island and made a detour that takes days to get there? Just for fun? Sure, that makes sense.
A group that has neither obligation nor the merest shred of interest in sharing anything with us.
Cami’s journal told us about her arrival and experiences on the islands. The crew doesn’t have to know us to explain what happened. Anet has endless possibilities to give us information. But they didn’t.
Until it’s explained in the upcoming episodes (they already checked the island, didn’t find a place to land,…) it remains being a confusing plot hole.
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Plus, it kind of harkens back to Guild Wars 1 days, where the only human outpost on the islands was Ember Light Camp in the southeastern tip of the southernmost island.
Ember Bay in GW2 is different to the Ember Light Camp in GW1 – The Light Camp was pretty much in the center of the Ring of Fire. Whereas Ember Bay (GW2) didn’t even exist back then and is really the southernmost point. They added this island afterwards.
If you’re looking for a completely intact narrative explaining all the reasonings of every character as to why they’re doing things, you’re playing the wrong game.
Wow, that’s not much faith you have in the narrative team of GW2. But again – I don’t care about which asura built the portal, which one set up the waipoints and the like. I’m talking about the basics of a story: how did we get to an unknown place, far far away from home. Every fairy tail deals with that, so I’m sure they can do that, too.
Hopefully, we will explore the rest of the Fire Islands soon, but for now, we have a stable camp and the asura gate is assembled and seemingly stable, so we can get people and supplies in and out. There was no guarantee that would happen at any other place in the chain. Perhaps the gates are much like waypoints, and need leyline magic to help support and stabilize them.
And that leads to two other points someone else already pointed out, I’ll quote the guildwiki:
- The longer the distance between the two points, the more energy required for the process.
Meaning, it would have been easier to set up a gate on the other islands because of the shorter distance.
- Because of the extreme expense and effort involved, asura gates are rarely retuned.
That referrs to the gate we went through in the dragon lab. It’s confusing how fast it could switch between the different rooms in Rata Novus and the Fire Islands (Windall coming through). Without seeing Taimi retuning the portal. Does it have multiple destinations at the same time?
Name one location where the player character arrived at before any other PC. Maybe Rata Novus, but even there, we see some stray investigators doing research on it and just happen to be exploring somewhere else while we’re turning the city back on. It’s normal for the maps to be populated upon our arrival. Just try to accept that and move on.
ps. If you weren’t the one arguing against the handwaiving of how everyone got set up on Ember Bay, I apologise. Your post was just the best at hand.
I hope you also read the initial thread, my last comment was just an example of what they could have done. I don’t need to be the first one on the Fire Islands, I can live with that.
But I can’t accept that the story as it is right now doesn’t make any sense. Taking a ship from Rata Sum and arriving on the southernmost island is completely illogical unless it’s explained in the story. The whole thread is about this one single question: Why did the asuran crew avoid the nearest island (from Rata Sum) and go to Ember Bay instead?
Once more, here’s the map: Rata Sum – Ember Bay
We already had some speculation going on but they gave us no official information.
Maybe they had a look around the place?
Do you really expect every NPCs decision to be justified and every last one of their actions uncovered in minute exposition?
In a fictional world with any verisimilitude to it at all, things happening when our characters aren’t present should be the norm, not the exception.
We’ve been over 4 years on the same continent – and then they skip exactly the part of how we got to the islands? We’re not talking about small details like Taimi wearing a new outfit. It’s a major part of the story and they didn’t explain it.
Plus, referring to your NPC’s-can-do-whatever-they-want-to-in-our-absence argument: They didn’t have to send them ahead. They could have let our characters be the first ones going to the Fire Islands (escorting the crew). They decide which part of the story is contained and how it is told. They can cover everything if they want to.
But they decided just to send us through the portal – it’s easier, faster and no one will wonder why our ship started in Rata Sum and ended up being in Ember Bay.
We are there to gather samples and information about the new destroyers after the asura already there got into trouble.
Why did the asura pick that place? I’m sure they have their reasons. Did you expect to be consulted or informed about everything?
If that’s everything we can say about it… they had their reasons. That’s clearly how to write a good story. You could expect the story departement to think of something to explain the situation.
We now know that the other islands are more dangerous than Ember Bay because Anet chose it to be the first island (they wouldn’t start off with the most dangerous island).
But how did the asuran crew know about it?
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The last time someone tried delving directly into enemy territory when dealing with a dragon the Pact got a lovely dose of surprise vines up their tailpipes. Seems reasonable that they’d avoid a direct route and get to an area closer to the outskirts. They may not know where Primordous is exactly, but they can probably guess that he’s more likely to be inland and probably closer to the central areas of magical energy than on the coastline.
Also possible the interference from the magic building in the area plays a part. Even down in Ember Bay, the first thing you hear from Taimi’s krewe is that there’s a lot of magical interference in the area (rendering your communicator with Taimi inoperable). So perhaps on the more northern islands there’s even more magic at play which would render even an Asura gate useless or unstable. Which would leave them cut off and vulnerable, especially with communications down.
While there are many possible reasons to avoid one or another island, we’re still not sure which one of them is correct. And that is a problem referring to the story.
First of all, to me, it’s been disappointing to go through a portal which the crew already set up. Somehow it took away the great feeling of getting a new region – I would have loved to see our characters arriving with a ship and exploring the unknown island for the first time ever (adventure). It’s like setting the first step on the moon.
Okay, now we’re in Ember Bay. But wait – I’ll take a quick look on the map – Rata Sum -> Ember Bay. Why the heck are we here? As players, we now know that now there’s more to come on the other islands. But with regards to the story – and with the information we got while talking to the NPC’s – our characters have no clue why they’re actually there.
Sending you through a portal to a random island without any explanation why you’re there? Is that the right way? I’m sure they could have thought of something else without spoiling the complete plot of the upcoming episodes.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with Na, as there is a very good reason why the Asura might want to avoid the northernmost islands. That being that Abbadon’s Mouth, an extra-dimensional gate, is located on one of those islands. There is also a second bloodstone there as well. Without knowing what might be around it or what might be coming out of it, the Asura likely chose to avoid the risk.
I’m still wondering why we didn’t hear anything about it in the game itself. There’s only Cami’s Journal saying:
“The Ring of Fire Islands is known for its entrance to the Realm of Torment. That’s on a different island—not this one, thank goodness. I wonder if it’s still accessible. What a dig that would be!”
The Door of Komalie and the Bloodstone are both located on the island in the middle. Depending on where you are on the western island, the distance to it is the same as to Ember Bay. Also, there’s no indication of activity referring to the Real of Torment and we don’t even know if it’s still accessible after the collapse in gw1. We’re there because of Primordus and the crew couldn’t know where he is (could have been Ember Bay, too).
Plus they had a much higher risk of getting shipwrecked by making this detour around the rocky islands.
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This has been discussed multiple times, some people said there’s even some similarities to Zhaitan in Aurene’s wings.
It’s actually logical that Aurene absorbed the magic after Mordremoth died. That’s one possible purpose for Aurene – to absorb the Elder Dragon’s energy like a sponge after they died. You can see what happens if the energy is floating around in the open world – there’s anomalies showing up and the leyline events all over Tyria, so we need Aurene to absorb this energy and keep the balance.
We don’t know what consequences there’ll be for Aurene – but right now she doesn’t seem to be evil.
In Ember Bay you can see the destroyers having Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s aspects as well, so Primordus absorbed both of their energy, too.
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And if players could use all weapons then they’d be limited by the number of weapon types. There will always be a limitation. That said, the existing system provides numerous possibilities for builds with some being better than others.
The healing/elite skills are just one skill. Hardly build breaking.
None of what you mentioned hinders build variety to a degree that a player cannot have multiple build options. There is no reason why GW2 must do what was done in GW1 for the build system. I also seem to remember there being certain meta builds that people felt required for specific content. Sounds kind of familiar…
You’re just defending the point that it should stay as it is right now. But you can’t deny that there could be more. More variety. Is there any reason why they shouldn’t change it?
Limited to a hard max of two builds? Source?
Players can choose from many builds if they wish. They may not be as effective as the meta, assuming the meta build is applicable for their situation, but they can come close. Sometimes they can outperform the meta build.
Again, just take a look at the whole system which limits your build variety. 5 of your skills are bound to a specific type of weapon. Every class has a limited amount of weapons they can use. Plus there are weapons no one will ever use. Does your guardian run around with a staff in PvE or PvP?
Then there’s one dedicated healing skill and everything else you can choose from is 3 utility skills + 1 elite skill.
Is that a great way to allow a large build variety? You should be able to choose the skills you can use with your weapon (like in gw1). Plus, there should be way more skills to choose from in general.
My guess, in regards to why the Asura went there, was because it was the easiest and safest location to set up a base camp. Closer to the central volcanoes probably was already completely overrun by Destroyers. To back up my point, the southernmost area of the island appears to be the only portion far enough away from the various calderas and craters to have any greenery on it.
Strange that they’ve decided to build their base camp on an island with multiple huge volcanos then. With the greenery argumentation, the most likely place would be directly south of Dragon’s Stand. There’s no craters or volcanos anywhere near that coast and the green parts of Dragon’s Stand are almost connected to the island. It would have been much, much easier to get there from Rata Sum, too.
As to why the Asura didn’t stop in a northern port of the Fire Islands… I agree that’s an unnecessary gap in the plot. I’m sure that it’s something like what UnbentMars suggested (no safe harbor available), but how hard would it have been to tell us that?
As you said they could have let some NPC’s talk about it or the like. Maybe even Taimi herself.
In Rising Flames, Taimi told us there’s already a crew on Ember Bay. They set up an asura portal which we then used to get there. But something strange happened:
- The asuran crew started in Rata Sum – Phlunt organized the operation. Plus, they had to carry an asura portal with them
- They most likely took a ship to get to Ember Bay.
Now take a look on the map:
Journey to Ember Bay – Updated
Ember Bay is the furthermost island from Rata Sum. So why are we there?
The red line shows their possible route – if they made a detour to avoid the dangerous lava-spitting-volcano-area. But why should they go all the way down to Ember Bay in first place?
The green line shows one of the shortest and easiest ways from Rata Sum to the Fire Islands. There’s no known reason why they didn’t go there.
Why are we in Ember Bay?
Edit – updated:
- Seis mentioned west as a general direction to the Fire Islands
- Updated Map: the gw1 layout of that_shaman waa added to the image.
- We can now see the location of the Bloodstone, Door of Komalie and the old Ember Light Camp.
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How do we know that people complaining about RP are the majority?
The amount of people complaining about RP could be less than actual roleplayers.
And if 99% of the normal playerbase don’t care about reading RP in their chats, why should they change the game (for 1%)?We don’t know, but we do know that the majority of players do not RP, the minority of players does RP. My question was more general, the person I quoted stated they disliked the idea because the majority of player base was forcing the minority to change. You took what I said out of context to the discussion that was being had ^^;
Yeah sorry, it helped to explain my post (just to get the opposed statement).
However, as long as we don’t know that the majority of players feels disturbed by roleplayers, logically they shouldn’t change anything. That’s how it’s been with the last dozens of requests and that’s how it will be in the future.
Just to play devil’s advocate, are you saying the majority of players should change their gaming experience to accommodate the minority?
How do we know that people complaining about RP are the majority?
The amount of people complaining about RP could be less than actual roleplayers.
And if 99% of the normal playerbase doesn’t care about reading RP in their chats, why should they change the game (for 1%)?
People are always claiming that ‘resources could be used better for other things’. So it would be good to check how many people are affected before assigning a developer to change things.
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Guild Wars 1 is a CORPG, or Competitive/Cooperative Online Role Playing Game.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG.That doesn’t work here. Stop using comparisons like that completely out of context.
Yes it does. I didn’t use anything out of context.
Gw1 was basically a singleplayer game with co-op and interactive lobbies. Guild Wars 2 is a full on MMO. Different business models for different games. Period.
What do you mean by that? The business model remains the same, both GW1 and GW2 are multiplayer games, buy2play with add-ons. They could have continued earning money with GW1 as well as GW2 can do in the future. Also, we do know that this is not the reason for GW2.
GW:Utopia has already been in developement.
So? As Just a Flesh Wound already stated, anet wanted to do more than gw1’s engine could handle, so they cancelled it and incorporated several of it’s elements into gw2.
That’s exactly what I said in my last post.
Now, as you read it you might see that GW2 is still running on a modified GW1 engine. One day, the same thing will happen to GW2. There are limits. The engine is more than 11 years old. No one knows when it’s time to end it and start all over again.
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They scrapped gw1 because they wanted to do more than what the game engine could do.
That’s right. As you might know GW2 runs on a heavily modified GW1 engine. There are lots of limitations we’ve got in GW2 because of that. Sometime they’ll just say:
the engine can no longer do what they want it to do or if they decide to make a totally different gw and if they’re wiling to take a drop in income for the years necessary to make this new game, then if these are true maybe we’ll see a gw3 announced in production.
But don’t hold your breath for it.
Guild Wars 1 is a CORPG, or Competitive/Cooperative Online Role Playing Game.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG.
That doesn’t work here. Stop using comparisons like that completely out of context.
GW:Utopia has already been in developement.
You can’t really compare the two like that. Different business models/rules for different genres. MMORPG’s generally run a lot longer, and they should considering it takes a lot longer to ‘complete’ it.
You’re using generalizations to justify your argumentation. The business model remains the same: buy2play + add-ons. There are no rules for how long a game of a certain genre will be developed. And there are no general statements on when a game is ‘complete’ as you said or how long it takes to do so.
Edit: mixed up quotations
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In case you didn’t notice the OP said he had came from WoW and I was pointing out that WoW, which is a much older game and a much more dated game, doesn’t have plans to be remade. This game isn’t even 4 years old yet and there are posts asking for it to be essentially abandoned by the Devs
With that argumentation you could also ask why they’ve abandoned Guild Wars 1 and started GW2 instead of releasing GW:Utopia. They decided to put parts of that into EotN while adding other parts to GW2 (asuran regions) or HoT (chronomancer).
GW1 has been 2,5 years old when they released the last part – EotN.
and for us all to be sitting around with no expansions or major content additions for who knows how many years while they make another game.
If people didn’t ask for an add-on we wouldn’t even have had HoT released. That request lead to a rushed concept, cutting content and a the ‘half expansion’ many people called it at release.
It’s both an annoying post as well as a pointless one as the Devs aren’t going to drop this game and the income from it to chase after another version of gw while this game is so young and they are still working on improving it.
Again, GW1: 2,5 years. They scrapped the last campaign Utopia and started GW2. So it happened before.
I have 4 months playing guild wars 2 and I think I can make an opinion of it.
I’m sorry, but I think this game is very simple to me.Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Game has literally endless possible builds at disposal
That’s not just his opinion. If there’s one thing missing from GW1 then it’s build variety. Now you’ve got 5 skills on a weapon which can’t be changed (not every class can use every weapon) + 1 healing skill.
What’s left is 3 utility skills you can freely choose from + 1 elite skill.
Try to get a few useful, unique builds with that.Every profession has multiple weapons that can be switched in many cases, you pick any combination of 3 from the given traitlines, and then on top of all that there is very large gear/rune customisation. Just because something carries label ‘meta’ doesn’t mean that everything else is bad. Nobody will ever put ‘meta’ label on some obscure build, but that build might be perfect for a certain tasks in WvW for example.
The whole talk about meta builds is really pointless. Not all meta builds are equally effective. Some are op and other are very situational. So where does one actually draw the line what qualifies as meta and what doesn’t?
Runes don’t add anything to a build but increasing your stats. You don’t have a new build just because you changed runes. Traitlines are complementing your build which is in fact a form of customization.
But I’m talking plainly about the skills you’ve got in your skillbar. There are several skills which no class ever uses because they’re completely useless. The same with weapons. Some are just extremely slow or don’t have any use at all – you won’t use them either because it’s not fun to play.
Put everything else aside and do this:
- Pick a game mode (WvW, PvP, PvE)
- Create multiple unique (useful!) builds
- Compare them to the meta builds
- Look if they’re still unique
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I have 4 months playing guild wars 2 and I think I can make an opinion of it.
I’m sorry, but I think this game is very simple to me.Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Game has literally endless possible builds at disposal
That’s not just his opinion. If there’s one thing missing from GW1 then it’s build variety. Now you’ve got 5 skills on a weapon which can’t be changed (not every class can use every weapon) + 1 healing skill.
What’s left is 3 utility skills you can freely choose from + 1 elite skill.
Try to get a few useful, unique builds with that.
It’s been a huge disappointment to see the real fight after the trailer of Rising Flames.
Vermignus had the potential to be a new world boss. But it ended up being a lame defense event.
The Molten Dominator isn’t challenging as well, considering he’s a champion of Primordus. Then there’s the sloth queen – you’re not even able to be there on time because it’s gone so fast.
In the making-of video of Rising Flames they were talking about the deadliest map in Tyria. While the Fire Islands were pretty deadly in GW1, this is not the case in GW2. Maybe there’s still more to come. But Ember Bay was ridiculous in terms of difficulty.
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The second example that springs to my mind, unfortunately, would be Season One of the living story. While I understand the complaints about temporary content, I think they did a good job with that narrative in open world.
Outside of those, my favorites, that are still in the game, are the progression through Fireheart Rise, building up defenses against the Flame Legion – and supporting the Dredge rebels in southwestern Frostgorge. While both are dated and could be deeper, they were engaging the first time through and something I like to revisit from time to time.
Unfortunately I missed the first season of the living world.. What I heard about it (despite of some negative aspects) sounded interesting and I wish I could play through it, too. Maybe I’ll find some videos of certain events.
I’ve played through the events in Fireheart Rise quite often, they seem to be linked together well. However I’m a little upset that the majority of events in other maps seem to be way more shallow and also often too short to get into the story.
Everytime new players ask about traditional quests, people suggest them to do the events of a certain map to experience the story. They’re often considered to be the equivalent to quests.
I’m not sure about that in terms of the story, how do you think about it?
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What are the deepest, most interesting storylines you’ve experienced while doing events?
Non Raiders blocked from XP bar spirit shards
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Tekey.7946
Imagine there was an pvp mastery that required you to get to the legendary league – that wouldn’t be fair either – indeed it would disrupt genuine pvp players. Likewise with raiding.
[…] In my opinion, that sounds like it could help add more pvp players to the gamemode.
And that is exactly the mindset of Arenanet right now in terms of raiding. There were people who asked for raids, so let them have fun with raiding. Maybe some players who didn’t ever think of it before might also try it out and have fun. Why is it necessary to ‘add more players to the gamemode’?
Forcing players into a part of a game won’t bring more people into it.
People who ‘have’ to raid in order to unlock their masteries will certainly not come back again after they’ve unlocked them. Some might also buy a raid if they’re not able to succeed. So what’s the purpose of that?
Also, the new maps such as Ember Bay are also affected. They’re considered to be part of the ‘Heart of Maguuma’ so they’re still locked for xp. Of course the current living world season is part of HoT, but lorewise and in a geographical point of view it doesn’t make sense at all.
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To the raids: they were already talking a little about it in April (AMA):
“We are actively discussing an alternative mode for raids (easy / hard), but we have not finished our investigations or finalized any decisions.” But we didn’t get an update on that yet.
I’m not sure what they said about fractals though, how long it would take, etc.
The new raid portal in the aerodrome made me think of our 5-man group content. Personally, I prefer smaller groups as they’re easier to organize.
What do you think, how often will we see a new fractal being added in the future? Every 6 months? Every year?
Another thing to think about: someone on reddit suggested a 5-man mode for raids. I don’t know what it would look like but it definitely sounds interesting!
Something to keep in mind: Since Elite Specs are so far above traditional specializations, that means that they factor the heaviest (i.e. the primary limiting function) into player choices for builds. Secondly, since there is only one Elite Spec per profession so far, that limits choice simply by being there.
When the next expansion comes out and round 2 of Elite Specs are released, I’m betting we will see a ton more variety as the new Elite Specs are highly likely to fill roles that 1st round Elite Specs do not, in the same way that 1st round Elite Specs dramatically altered how most classes worked in comparison to traditional specializations.
Maybe a second elite specialization will change something, I’m already curious about the next ones.
Same with why everyone is in condi and zerker builds; if you are skillful enough you can go through most of the ingame content without needing tanky stats, and being able to kill things fastest is a large part of that. The introduction of raid mechanics into the open world PvE and the increased difficulty level of enemies overall starting in HoT has been fantastic, but not to the point where generic content requires alternate builds to succeed. I think making room for tanky builds and healer builds is great, but by design both are group-centric and work best with group content rather than the solo content that open-world stuff is focused on.
How would you solve the issue at hand?
I don’t know how we could handle this, nothing came to my mind as I thought of it. But I completely agree with the last part of your post, as you say with HoT the difficulty was increased but it didn’t change anything at all with regards to berserker and condi builds.
In addition to that, the new map Ember Bay is the complete opposite in terms of difficulty. The sloth boss takes less than a minute to kill and isn’t challenging at all, same with the Molten Dominator and the giant lava wurm is a common defense event without having any mechanics to it.
You’re right, it would work best with group content, so if we got some new dungeons, they could implement mechanics where different roles had a greater importance again, but that won’t happen. I think that raids will be the only place where roles are important..
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When I first started playing GW2 I liked the idea of every class being able to ‘do everything’ no matter which class you played.
However, the more I play the more I miss the synergy of the different classes in the open world (pve). Did you ever see a tanky guardian taking the damage of a boss in order to protect other players? And give them the opportunity to show their strengh while being more vulnerable – to finally defeat the boss.
It seems like everyone’s running around with berserker or condi stats no matter what – because it’s the most efficient and fastest way to kill enemies. And you’ll survive anyway as a berserker, so there’s no place for variety. The mechanics of foes simply don’t require different roles, it’s all about full damage.
There’s another thing that’s hard to describe: classes tend to be too similar. In GW1 mesmers could interrupt enemies and do some damage accordingly (Interrupts a skill, deals 50 damage to foes in the area, gain 4 energy,…). There were also hex skills and corresponding hex removal skills. You had to think of strategies on how to defeat your enemies – (also think of the different roles of enemies – which one to kill first?).
Now your mesmer grabs a sword and goes melee just like every other class.
The abilities and playstyles which made the classes truly unique are missing completely.
It’s different with regards to raids and I know that GW2 is not a traditional MMORPG (holy trinity). But GW1 did a great job on giving each class their place in the game, having their very own feeling to it. Anyways it’s just a shower thought that hit me, I don’t expect them to change the foundation of the game.
Non Raiders blocked from XP bar spirit shards
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Tekey.7946
If you’d put all this energy towards the Escort event instead, you’d already been done and over with it a long time ago.
But here’s the mind blower. How many posts have you seen of people that just raids, that they deserve to get spirit shards too cause they don’t want to do map exploring, adventures, quests, meta events, pve?
Let that sink in to you for a moment.
It seems like people tend to forget you need a raid mastery in order to do the escort event in first place. You’ll need at least one mesmer with raid masteries who’s got nothing to do but helping other groups to unlock them (+ time to do so).
Raids are not solo-able like HoT adventures or map exploration. It takes organization, time and ten people who know what they’re doing to succeed.
But the main reason why there is a problem in first place is the psychological aspect of an xp bar and xp in general. Put yourself in the place of a game designer. Now ask yourself: Why did they invent xp in games? It’s there to reward players for what they did and show them some sort of progress. Even though there are no more levels (after lvl80/ all masteries unlocked) – if you do events, your xp bar will be filled. Your reward center will be stimulated – you’ll feel good. Like a dog getting rewarded with a treat.
Why would you play in HoT maps (now even Ember Bay!) if it doesn’t feel good to you? Now why is it about xp and not about gold or karma? It would be different if we got a gold or karma bar at the bottom of our screen. And every time you kill an enemy you’d get gold or karma instead (+ notifications).
Blocking players from getting xp is just illogical with regards to basic game design principles. It’s counterproductive to the idea of making people play your game (except for forcing people to raid which many players struggle with).
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I thought we heard something about a spy of the White Mantle in the Priory. Maybe he’s the one we’re talking about, disguised as Historian Tranton to get the Shadowstone.
He could be walking around without anyone noticing (similar to the fake Evon Gnashblade in L.A. – hey you look different?) and everytime the real Historian shows up, he just hides away.
However I think the spy was more related to the Bloodstone Dust dialogue of the cook. But maybe there are several spies.
Could be an interesting plot twist.
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Update: I found the part of the last Guild Chat Inculpatus cedo mentioned.
Now here’s what’s going on technically in the Rising Flames open world story, Aaron Roxby, Game Designer saying:
- We do have the abilty to set things so that only a specific player who’s interacting with it can hear it or see it.
- As you turn off the machines – (when you go through the story) – the skulls on the central volcano actually go out one by one just for you. Depending on which machines you turned on and off different skulls will be lit on that central volcano. You can see it best when you do the circus step if you watch the skull that’s right in front of you as you stand on that cliff it’ll go out and it’ll erupt also.
- The eruptions also are only – depending on where you are in the story you’ll see different eruptions than a different player.
- When you talk to any quest NPC you should be the only one who hears it.
Now that’s exactly the technology we need in order to solve those problems. The players who didn't finish the story yet should see the egg standing in Tarir, for other players there's Aurene sitting on the platform.
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You can assume there are many in the world than the ones used in the attack, plus more have likely been produced in the year following the initial assault. Working under Phlunt, thus having the backings of the Arcane Council, you can assume the forward party had a lot to work with. They could have also arrived by ship, which was how Southsun was set up, or they could have used something more asuran, like the various unstable teleporters that have been shown off in the story. It doesn’t really matter how.
While they are many possible ways, it would have been nice if they showed it to us in the story. You can’t just say: “Oh we’re suddenly 1000 miles away from home now, deal with it”.
There are people who do care about the story and it’s hard to identify with the characters and their situation if they’re randomly ported into different areas without further explanation.