Guild Wars 2

You unlock the specialisation slots at 21, 45 and 71.

In order to unlock Traits for these specialisations, you spend Hero Points that particular track.

You’ll get enough points by level 80 to unlock all skills and traits, but completing Hero Challenges – formerly known as Skill Point Challenges – you can unlock things sooner. So yeah, if you’re level 80, you can unlock everything straight away.

VOLKON.1290:

Is there a current expected list of changes? I see people mentioning changes to traits and all that… I’ve been away awhile.

• Specialisations
• New Trait and Skill Unlock System (changed so that everything can be unlocked by level 80)
• New Lion’s Arch
• Ascended Stat Change capability
• Skill Points are getting converted to Djinngots Spirit Shards.
• Level rewards have changed (For example, weapon swap will be unlocked 5 levels earlier and all weapon skills and underwater weapons unlock at level 8 according to released notes).
• Condicap increase to 1500 and changes to how some conditions work in terms of stacking (Burning stacks intensity, for example).
• Wallet changes to UI, with Geodes and Bandit Crests being added.

This happens with pretty much any MMO that releases paid expansions.

Veteran players who want to play straight away will usually always spend more than players coming into the game at a later time.

For comparison, look at WoW:

Let’s say, on average, the base game and every expansion cost £30. This means that a veteran player from the very beginning that bought the expansion straight away has spent £180, while a new player coming into the game will only have spent £40 (£10 for all previous expansions + £30 for the current one).

Lustre Of Havoc.9173:

What this address says to me:

Veteran players have to pay full price for an expansion every time.
New players will always have the cheapest deals.

And how is this different from any game ever exactly?

My friend bought all of the GW games as soon as they come out, whereas I picked them all up for around £20 a year or two before GW2.

http://www.twitch.tv/chemsorly/popout

Need to click the links in the blogpost

In which case, do you know the names of the items your after? The only other way I can see is searching for the item.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Renown_Heart

Just select the map on the right, and that will take you to a list of Hearts and their vendors for that map.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Other games give you an exciting homepage to explore if they are announcing an expansion, with Heart of Thorns we get a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there, and if you are not interested much in one of the tiny bits, you have to wait at least a week to maybe get some more information on the stuff you want.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t most companies revealing an expansion spread out the reveals of features and such over time?

Kalifas.3465:

warbignime.4610:

It’s not going to happen any time soon. Port pc game to console is huge work and they are busy working on HoT. I’d rather they work on more content.

True it is huge work. Well, the thing is if they get more players that equals more money which they could put back into developing more content faster and larger.

This is only true if the money coming in exceeds the money invested in changing over to console and maintaining updates for the console version.

Gray.9041:

TheDaiBish.9735:

TurtleofPower.5641:

Yes. It’s not just price or something, it’s the whole direction is shifting to ultra casuals, not even doing dungeons/raids, not caring that their “expansion” doesn’t seem to have lots of zones or an epic world-spanning feel.

Have they confirmed there’s no instanced content then?

I believe their dungeon team was disbanded a while back, and there’s been no mention of any instanced content – excluding Guild hall capturing and story missions

At the same time:

• They haven’t discussed what the challenging group content is.
• They’ve explicitly said that the open world isn’t what they mean by challenging group content which kind of leaves instanced content.

TurtleofPower.5641:

Yes. It’s not just price or something, it’s the whole direction is shifting to ultra casuals, not even doing dungeons/raids, not caring that their “expansion” doesn’t seem to have lots of zones or an epic world-spanning feel.

Have they confirmed there’s no instanced content then?

Shalloe.4867:

i think 2 new maps are known off but have no idea where ppl get only 3 maps from but keep seeing ppl claim its only 3.

The PC gamer article about the pricing did mention this
“But we don’t know how big the expansion will be. When I asked Colin Johanson this, after the expansion was announced, his reply was that ArenaNet wanted to “do a smaller sized area for total scope, and focus really on depth.””

which does kinda confirm the expansion will be small as in the amount of new maps.

It was more a comment on how the guy I was quoting seemed to think the xpac only consisted of the assumed 3 new maps.

In terms of known maps, I thought only Verdant Brink was known of?

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I love every aspect as well all 3 explorable zones of it but only for $30 or less.

Is that all that’s in the xpac then?

nexxe.7081:

It’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a lot of events in Verdant Brink. From what i played in beta, even Orr had twice as many.

“Why make a comparison when we don’t have the information we need to compare yet?”

The other argument could be, “Why prepurchase if we don’t have all of the information yet?”.

Did you have access to all of Verdant Brink in the beta, including the three biomes? I thought a lot of it was blocked off.

Entenkommando.5208:

TheDaiBish.9735:

So far we know:

• New profession (Revenant)
• Elite Specialisations
• Mastery system
• PvE Maps (unknown number of)
• Guild Halls

• New WvW maps
• New stronghold pvp mode
• Normal specialisations

(also available without HoT but technically only impemented because of it so you can definitly count it as well)

• “challenging group content” as we know for now

The WvW and SPvP maps are available to everyone, so I left them out since the OP asked what was he buying.

Normal Specialisations also come out Tuesday, and so aren’t part of HoT in that sense.

As for Challenging group content, I left that out since we don’t exactly know what it entails.

Jitsuryoku.9038:

Inshiro.3620:

GW2 actually has more than over 300+ employees as of last year.

Dev Confirmation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/What-to-buy-with-800-gems/first#post1218058

So in comparison with GW1 expansions: Almost twice the devs and about 10 times less content? Makes me wonder how big is the development team is…. Could it be that 80% of those 300 employees are making coffee for the devs?

Need to take into consideration and compare how long the content takes to produce (in which case the only thing we do know from a pre-launch interview is that dynamic events take 3x as long to produce than regular quests).

So far we know:

• New profession (Revenant)
• Elite Specialisations
• Mastery system
• PvE Maps (unknown number of)
• Guild Halls

So, there’s a lot of back and for whether HoT is worth the price it’s tagged at which got me wondering:

If you could purchase individual elements of the game (new profession, new map, Guild Halls etc), how much would you value each element at?

In terms of percieved value, I’d say it’s hard to tell without knowing specifically what’s in it and what parts will appeal to me personally.

However, the way I look at it if I can get 35 hours worth of enjoyment out of it that’s the equivalent of £1 an hour.

Considering I’ve clocked 665 hours so far and I bought the Digital Deluxe edition, that amounts to me spending a grand total of 8p an hour which, personally, I consider to be great value.

Knighthonor.4061:

Which like I said, this guild hall building features, will only be usable by a small tiny fraction of the GW2 players. That’s what will ruin this Xpac seller…

“I pulled out a random statistic that will show why the xpac will fail because I don’t like how the feature in question is done.”

Not saying that your concern isn’t warranted – it may be – but making up stuff doesn’t help your case.

If this is the case, it’s going to be a case of finding a small, accommodating guild. I can’t imagine that every guild out there will bar the lower echelons, so to speak, from contributing to the hall.

Julie Yann.5379:

how many maps? not enough for a 50 dollar price tag that much is certain.

Last time I looked, ‘not enough’ wasn’t a number.

Not to mention that you’re not paying $50 just for the maps though.

Julie Yann.5379:

instance content (like dungeons)? The is no indication whatsoever on instanced content and Anet has stated that all major feature have been reveal so the answer is none aside from guild halls.

Challenging group content was also one of the features mentioned, and they haven’t discussed this yet.

Not to mention Colin has specifically said that the Wyvern – or any of the open world for that matter – is not what they’re referring to when it comes to challenging group content, what does that leave?

Julie Yann.5379:

World boss? the rest of the game has 1 or 2 world bosses per area so educated guess is 1 or 2.

So you’re assuming there’ll only be one area, Verdant Brink?

Julie Yann.5379:

JPs? who gives a kitten about JPs? Only special people enjoy those.

Doesn’t change the fact it’s content.

Julie Yann.5379:

MiniDungeons? WTF is a minidungeon? If you are talking about caves and hidden areas within the map I sure there will some of those but since the number of maps = not enough, this too =not enough.

Again, not enough isn’t a number.

We know that there are at least 3 Masteries pertaining to hidden areas – one for each Itzel, Nuhoch and Exalted.

Julie Yann.5379:

TheDaiBish.9735:

How do you know that the amount of content isn’t worth the price when you don’t know how much content is going to be in the xpac?

Masteries are a PvE progression system; they don’t have any affect on SPvP or WvW.

Elite Specs are just another option and aren’t numerically more powerful.

There is sufficient information out already to safely make an educated guess at the amount of actual content in the xpac.

Based on this sufficient information, can you make an educated guess on:

• how many maps there’ll be?
• If they’ll have instanced content and, if they do, how much?
• How many world bosses will there be?
• How many jumping puzzles will there be?
• Will there be any mini-dungeons?

How do you know that the amount of content isn’t worth the price when you don’t know how much content is going to be in the xpac?

Masteries are a PvE progression system; they don’t have any affect on SPvP or WvW.

Elite Specs are just another option and aren’t numerically more powerful.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Think of it this way HOT is not $50 it’s only $16.66 for each of the as many as 3 new explorable zones included in this ripp-off also known as Living Story 3.

Because that’s all that’s in the expansion…

lordhelmos.7623:

When you play games that have class dependencies, you tend to respect your healers, tanks, or people good at their roles because you aren’t clearing content without them.

I know this is anecdotal, but when I played WoW and pugged, I’d find that at least one person most groups I was in would shout at the healer or tank for the smallest slip-up even if they were in the wrong. As I said, it’s anecdotal and you may have had a different experience, but I didn’t find that to be the case in most of my groups.

Shimmering and Tenebras

Dulfy is a one-stop shop for things like livestream notes.

There’s an official wiki here as well.

Valmir.4590:

Yargesh.4965:

They just released two days worth of info on guild halls. People are fixated at the moment. I hope it turns into something worth reading soon as well, but the forums have not been worth participating in for me for quite a while now.

Except that only a minority of players care for the sorry excuse of content which is called Guild Halls.

You’ve conducted a survey?

I’d wager it carries over, since the skill challenges are also part of world completion.

On the weekend?

I think you’d have an easier time asking them to plan a manned mission to the sun.

On another note, have they said that we’re getting raids?

HawkMeister.4758:

This is getting downright hilarious.
After half a dozen blogs and a long POI I still have no clue what will happen to my personal guild stash when I don´t buy Hot, heck or even IF I buy it.
Or did somebody notice something I missed?

Devs seem to have more important things to do it seems, though it would be rrilli grreat to finally have some closure on this “unimportant”(+3.5k views) question. O_o

The Guild Initiative thing is in Lion’s Arch, which non-HoT players have access to.

Previously unlocked stuff (such as your vault) will be grandfathered to this area in Lion’s Arch, allowing you to access it

Palador.2170:

Question: From what we know so far of how you claim a guild hall, would you consider that to be a raid?

There are two possible hall locations. If you claim the second, you lose the first and would have to retake it to get it back, back and forth. It should be possible to make a guild just for this, even, if the mission turns out to be fun.

I thought the progression saves?

You have Fields and Finishers which are more interactive.

More specifically:

• Blasting Fire Fields gives Might (and potentially Fury if you’re an Elementalist).
• Depending on what you do to Water fields you can heal and cleanse.
• Blasting Ice Fields gives Frost Armour (10% damage reduction).
• Laying down a Dark field gives allies the ability to Lifesteal while Blasting Dark Fields inflicts Weakness.
• Smoke Fields can Blind and Stealth, as well as projectiles passing through them miss.

scerevisiae.1972:

oi, it’s also about the money… expac is pretty kitten thin for $50… all you get for $50 is:

• a new class
• a new PVE zone

specialisations, WVW map and PVP game being rolled out before expac.

How do you know that’s all you get?

Not to mention you forgot about the Elite specs.

I think I read somewhere that non-HoT players could be invited into the guild hall.

I wouldn’t quote me on that though.

Lord Kuru.3685:

A dev has already explicitly stated that they were not working on any more dungeon content and had no plans for any more dungeon content in the future. There was a thread about it in the dungeon forum a while back. If you ask in the dungeon forums, someone will be able to dig it up.

That is for sure. “Challenging group content” I’m not 100% sure about, but I think that refers to VW-type content.

VW-type content?

Also, I think the tread you were referring to is this one, in which case they said they wouldn’t be doing large scale reworks like TA, not that they wouldn’t be creating new dungeons:

Q: When will we get more dungeon, fractal, any kind of dungeon related changes? Like another question is hardmode for dungeons.

• Hardmode is something we’re staying away from at this point.
• Thrown around ideas to increase longevity of dungeons without doing major reworks like Twilight Arbour.
• Twilight Arbour was a pretty serious amount of work. Not necessarily something they want to commit to at this point (Aug 22, 2014).
• Fractals are flexible; allow to add smaller chunks of content without the work required to redo a dungeon.

Source

TheRandomGuy.7246:

You can switch between 2 guild halls. Maybe you will have to do fighting part every time you do that.

According to the blog post, the progression is saved and carries over when you switch between the two.

Celtic Lady.3729:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Nike.2631:

Because “we’ve revealed all major features” and “they’re hiding a dungeon from us” go together so well…

One of them major features was challenging group content, which they haven’t gone into detail about.

Why would dungeons be excluded from that?

Challenging group content could just as easily refer to guild hall acquiring and new DEs in HoT maps. Since these items are the ones revealed, that’s exactly what I expect challenging group content to mean, not dungeons, fractals, or raids.

Colin made a statement a little while ago that they weren’t referring to the open world events – or the Wyvern – as ’challenging group content:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Simply put: we haven’t announced it yet – when we’re ready to show everything about our plans for challenging content for HoT, we’ll announce it.

Though it isn’t the “challenging content” feature discussed in our announcement – I will add we want our open world content experience to be more challenging as well just in general. Though the AI was better in our CBT experience – we think we still have a lot of work to do to get our creatures and encounters even at the start of Verdant Brink up to where we want them to be. Our game has great combat, our creatures and encounters should challenge and require you to use that combat system.

More info “when it’s ready”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Where-is-promised-challenging-HOT-content/page/2#post5108382

Interview with MattVisual on the Wyvern fight

Dinks.2478:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Nike.2631:

Because “we’ve revealed all major features” and “they’re hiding a dungeon from us” go together so well…

One of them major features was challenging group content, which they haven’t gone into detail about.

Why would dungeons be excluded from that?

It might, it might not be. It is one of the main issues with this pre-purchase. Much of the reveals were without any real information. How many maps do we really get? Dungeons? Raids? Instanced content at all? New personal/living story? All sorts of ambiguous reveals or lack of information.

This is the reason why I haven’t gotten it yet.

TPMN.1483:

They have confirmed there is no dungeons in HOT – 0 dungeons.

Where was that?

Nike.2631:

Because “we’ve revealed all major features” and “they’re hiding a dungeon from us” go together so well…

One of them major features was challenging group content, which they haven’t gone into detail about.

Why would dungeons be excluded from that?

How do you know they aren’t adding dungeons?

Nothing wrong with comparing, but consider the differences in development, especially development times.

For example, we have no idea how long a GW1 map took to create vs a GW2 map.

Galandil.9641:

That’s not completely true. For example, in Italy (euro area) the VAT is 22%, yet the Standard is still €44,99. Same for all other countries, Germany has a VAT of 19%, and they still pay the same.

Hmm.

I’m at a loss then.

Gray.9041:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Well, in Britain it’s because of VAT which is 20%:

£35 * 0.2 = £7
£60 * 0.2 = £12
£80 * 0.2 = £16

£35 – £7 = £28
£60 – £12 = £48
£80 – £16 = £64

£28 in USD = $44.56
£48 in USD = $76.38
£64 in USD = $101.82

As you can see, before the 20% VAT the prices are a lot closer to the US prices.

this is correct in theory, but the maths is a little off.

multiplying by 0.2 give you 20% of the final price, but the tax would be 20% of the price before tax. as such, times by 5/6 to get the right numbers.

UK Deluxe and Ultimate then turn out to be a little overpriced, but not enough to worry over.

Oh yeah. I dun goofed.

Thanks for that.

Well, in Britain it’s because of VAT which is 20%:

£35 * 0.2 = £7
£60 * 0.2 = £12
£80 * 0.2 = £16

£35 – £7 = £28
£60 – £12 = £48
£80 – £16 = £64

£28 in USD = $44.56
£48 in USD = $76.38
£64 in USD = $101.82

As you can see, before the 20% VAT the prices are a lot closer to the US prices.

Isven.2165:

Anyway, releasing new maps and content accessible for all not at the same date as content available only after paying was a good practice. And that’s all that is to read in my post. Don’t blow it out of proportions.

So why is it a bad practice on the release of an expansion day?

Isven.2165:

I’m saying adding those should be aside from the expansion, on earlier or later date. Like the LS was. Releasing it now, after what I hear 3 years of nothing new, only states they won’t add such content if they don’t expect immediate compensation for it. At least that’s my impression.

I’m guessing you’re completely forgetting about EotM then? And new PvE maps? And Fractals? And the SPvP maps?

Regardless of whether you like them or not, these were all added way, way before ‘expecting immediate compensation’ in the form of the expansion.

Isven.2165:

TheDaiBish.9735:

You’re aware that the new WvW map will be available to those who don’t buy HoT as well, right?

And the ones to actually pay for it will be whoever buy HoT. A really bad way to introduce such content to the game.

Really? Given the nature of WvW, I’d say it’s better not to split the playerbase.

You’re aware that the new WvW map will be available to those who don’t buy HoT as well, right?

This is pretty much the reason I haven’t ordered yet.

It’s also the reason I get confused when people say HoT doesn’t have a lot of content.