Guild Wars 2

Nuka Cola.8520:

seen it when it had 303 views. His review was solid but he clearly haven’t played the game long enough to notice there’s no end game and other than wvw there’s nothing to do/

The video was around early after launch. Also, he has other games he plays so he probably doesn’t actively play Guild Wars 2 as much as people might think. Remember, he still has videos to produce on newly released games so he must be playing those . . .

Bhargo.5306:

Dialogue and voice acting is so bad that you have to will yourself to make a connection with characters (except Tybalt, love that guy). Toss in the disjointed story telling and sectioning off important storyline info in dungeons people may miss due to lack of a LFG mechanic, and the storyline falls flat.

It could be I’m used to really stilted, unnatural-sounding dialogue from games but I didn’t think this was that bad off. Again, it seems really hard to get natural dialogue to actually work well in a game . . . much as it is terribly hard to write a natural conversation as it would happen in real life.

(It was a writing exercise I had to do. It stunk.)

The piecemail storyline is something I do agree with enough to voice a mild complaint. The first mentor you have, the member of Destiny’s Edge, disappears as soon as your Order chapter begins. And you only hear from them through mail and have them show up at the end. I get the idea of being interested in what’s going on should lead you to the Dungeons but I haven’t found all that many interested in doing some of these places story mode.

I’d wish there was the story stretched to fill two more chapters and some effort put into transitioning through the first act (Your personal story acts one through three), into the second act (the bit centered on your order pre-Pact) and again into the third act (where the Pact gets moving). Putting one chapter between each act as an interlude to allow some development and introductions to take place would have been good. Heck, you could have small dialogue events such as Trahearne being present discussing something at your order headquarters so you could meet him before he “just shows up” as people put it.

(Yes, that is a real issue for everyone but Sylvari.)

Heck, you could be recalled home to deal with a minor issue based on your first act events. Say you’re human and you find out that something happened which means you get to come in and take action.

Bhargo.5306:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Worst storyline?

Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft. Both have worse storylines than this game.

If you limit it to games which actually possess more of a storyline? Final Fantasy. No, the first one, not the series.

BLASPHEMY! Dwarf Fortress story lines were randomly generated with each world creation, and could lead to some mind splinteringly awesome shenanigans going down. Like that dwarf king that bit of the leg of a colossus, or the queen that personally killed over 2000 enemies!

I’m sorry . . . I’m so, so sorry. But randomly generated “mad libs” type assemblies are not very good stories. This is why I don’t think we have the means of “procedurally generated storytelling” the same as we can generate content.

And this is coming from someone who played Gnomoria and had an awesome story unfold over six years of gametime which turned fun to write for after year two and then turned boring as heck in year seven.

Zaxares.5419:

And here I thought the code phrase was something involving apples, judging from the number of shifty-looking NPCs who are always asking if I want to buy apples. XD

. . . no, apples are code for something else. Remember not to light your torches near the apple barrels in Lion’s Arch.

1. About how long would it take for a new gw1 player to get a decent amount of points? Is it gonna take a while? Say 30 points.

Well, let’s go to the calculator. Merely having your accounts linked gives you 3. Doing anything to give you 10 statues will net you another 6; this can be anything you feel like doing but if you all the missions with full bonus on both hard mode and normal you can net 10 statues. Every 5 statues after that is 1 point. Minimal effort earns you about 10 points here.

Minis will get you up fast IF you get a Black Moa Chick which will count as 2 points. (Note, it is easier to get the pieces yourself and find someone who can run you to do the last part than to pay the price for it.) A “Rare” mini may run you some coin but you can do it. This will earn you 3 more points. You’ll need to get 20 minis to get another point and every 10 minis after that will earn you 1 point until you hit 50. Minimal effort will get you 3 points here. Buying cheap “common” miniatures will get you to 20 minis fast so maybe 4 points before you are looking at expensive efforts.

Get “Charm Animal” and pick up the following animals: Phoenix (end of Factions campaign), Black Moa (quest line in the Kurzick territories of Factions), Black Widow (Underworld quest spawn), and any other level 20 pet. Add MOX for a 5 points total. Getting special hero armor for heroes will allow you to add another to this monument for more points. Minimal effort gets you 5.

Resilience will be costly since you need special armors, and if you can get: Vabbian, Kurzick/Luxon, and any other 3 armors you will earn 6 points. Vabbian will be expensive but do-able. Kurzick/Luxon will take some Faction-based PvP but you can do it. Don’t . . . don’t try for Obsidian Armor unless you hate your life.

Valor requires weapons. This can be expensive. You need either Destroyer, Oppressor, or Tormented weapons. Tormented will be expensive to buy the token for, Destroyer will cost a lot of rarer materials, and Oppressor requires you finish the “War in Kryta” content, which can be really tough for your average player.

With enough help and possibly a mentoring figure you can probably get most of this done in a month or two. And pick up other points for yourself, perhaps, but you’ll probably wind up around 20-25 before needing to expend effort.

2. Is everything a one time purchase or can I buy an unlimited amount of something?

All the skin transmutations are unlimited. Go nuts!

3. I am interested in the heritage armors. Is it a complete set or do I buy it in parts? How much points is it?

Just by linking and doing a minimal effort for 6 points, you’ll have all the Heritage armor. Get to 10 and you get the Fiery Dragon Sword. You can buy it in parts and thus apply it in parts. (Heritage medium shoulderpads are a nice exchange for some forms.)

goldenwing.8473:

Nageth.5648:

goldenwing.8473:

Lack of shoes was the second thing I noticed.

I think she’s supposed to be fan service.

(rolleyes)

You must have noticed her cat too! That is one of the most inactive cats I’ve ever seen.

Yes, and if you talk to her you find she loves it a lot.

She must have a thing for inanimate objects that stay on the floor and don’t move.

/waves at Logan.

The only times I’ve seen Logan hug the floor, Rytlock was around or I had experienced a total wipe so it was forgiven.

Wait, no, I am remembering a time revolving around Canthan rice wine, imitation red bean cakes, and the phrase “hold my shield and watch this”.

Kalibri.5861:

Okay, guys. =) I formally apologise to the community at large for mentioning it. Have a nice day, one and all.

Good luck for next month, and if you find out you need help next month, post a topic on the “Players helping players” boards and if I can help I’ll see what I can do.

. . . are we still on about the largos?

A few things brought up make me scratch my head:

- They’re not only female, there are males which exist in game. I think one of the assassins which jumped me in Frostgorge was male. Claiming they’re solely “big-busted females” falls flatter than an asuran lady’s bust. Also, the sad truth is that I don’t often see terribly ugly, overweight, unattractive people in a game.
- The wings are supposedly used for swimming help, but then again I haven’t payed them much attention. Wings on any humanoid seem really out of place if arms are also present, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.
- They’re not a blatant ripoff of drow. Anyone who actually has looked into drow culture would probably laugh that off before you finished.
- The “fetish armor” comment is very vague, because anything is a fetish. Please don’t look into where you can go from the charr, or the sylvari. That can scar you for life. I also note that there are armors for player characters which is far more fetish-ized. FAR.
- They’re not a ripoff of quarrians from Mass Effect. For one, quarrians were always fully covered. Always. It was a plot point. Secondly, the largos didn’t lose their homeland and travel everywhere in a large gathering (that we know of, admittedly, but then there’s no evidence it is so). And the largos are definitely less personable than your average quarrian – they aren’t fond of anyone unless they prove their value.
- The naming seems to follow convention of middle-eastern names, which while much like the quarrian naming is, there is a common root here which leads them to be similar. However, it’s also different enough from the other cultures’ naming conventions to stand out. Probably the intent.

Anyway. Back to the point. Make a new topic if you want to complain excessively about how the largos are trying to trap certain demographics. I’ll come over there and work harder on the point. This topic isn’t for that.

Hey, folks, can we stop bashing on this person?

OP, I hate to say it, but there’s not much fault to lay on ArenaNet here. There were five daily completions required for the Monthly out of twenty-eight days. You logging on at the end of the month to try to push the Monthly through would have been a valiant effort . . .

But you should have checked what you needed to do in full before going and spending significant amounts of coin on it, you could (though I say this with a softer tone since your “personal reasons” could be akin to one which kept me from playing for a bulk of January) . . . could have logged in once to check during the rest of the month . . .

But, alas, you didn’t. And you’re stuck. My sympathies, but if it’s not possible then the only thing left to do is decide where to go from there.

MrDmajor.7084:

“The game’s population is seriously declining”
“Nuh uh, it’s not I have 5 level 80s and I play them”

Somewhere between those 2 quotes lies the real truth.

Well, no, that’s lazy thinking that the truth has to be somewhere in the middle. It could be seriously declining, and someone could have 5 level 80s and play them. Both can indeed be true

I still think the population readings would be a waveform more than a downwards line. People come and go as they have time – that’s the benefit of it not requiring them to pay and feel obligated to log in to get their money’s worth.

Of course, it makes it incredibly hard to track via accounts existing since they might not all be active at the same time.

Sundays.2807:

So like, there is no actual way to see Anet staff posts in a thread other than by fishing through pages?

Dev Tracker on the front page will show you, but you still have to look through it.

Smelly Bookah.6957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Smelly Bookah.6957:

Caithe is a lesbian.

That was the joke.

That is NOT a joke.

She really is lesbian.

Or at least she had a relationship with another female sylvari.

Yes. I know. I was aware of that. I had actual knowledge of that fact when I wrote that post. There was no doubt that it was true. It’s factual.

NinjaEd.3946:

Astralporing.1957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Think of how much you’d see getting done to, say, glass cannon builds if they ate 12x 25 Stacks of Bleed? Heck, even a tank-like build might be really in trouble at that.

kidbs.8920:

How is that different than being hit by 5 different 100b warriors at the same time? Why should a team of direct damage dealers be more effective and capable of dishing out damage than a team of condition dealers?.

. . . because you can dodge Hundred Blades. You can’t dodge ticks from conditions.

You can however remove conditions. No matter how many bleed stacks you have on you, one condition removal takes care of it completely. It’s as if you had an effect type that removed all damage you have received in the last x seconds.

Thats an issue in spvp, I think the main idea of this post is about stacks being capped in pve when you have multiple cond builds. PVE in world events(depending on the event) you get multiple cond builds becoming useless since the cap is reached but spvp is hardly the case. Wvw is a hybrid of the 2 so hard to approach that but I’m sure someone has ideas.

See, it’s balance of WvW and PvE I worry about. People have said in sPvP that the condition issue wasn’t as big as it was in PvE . . . but since WvW is in essence PvE with other players being targets . . .

They don’t have the same health pools as Champions or dungeon bosses, where the condition stack thing really comes into play. Just saying “oh just remove conditions” ignores the fact I can only remove conditions two ways on myself right now as a ranger. And both of them have long reset timers, to the point that the fight will be over when they’re back.

Those are my concerns about “just let more stacks accumulate”.

The idea of “oh just turn the stacks of Bleed into direct damage as they fall off for newer applications” also feels like it’s ripe for abuse in the right situations . . . which then become highly favored like what we have on the DPS side of things. That’s replacing one problem which lots of people say is an issue with another problem lots of people have been saying is an issue already.

Astralporing.1957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Think of how much you’d see getting done to, say, glass cannon builds if they ate 12x 25 Stacks of Bleed? Heck, even a tank-like build might be really in trouble at that.

kidbs.8920:

How is that different than being hit by 5 different 100b warriors at the same time? Why should a team of direct damage dealers be more effective and capable of dishing out damage than a team of condition dealers?.

. . . because you can dodge Hundred Blades. You can’t dodge ticks from conditions.

You can however remove conditions. No matter how many bleed stacks you have on you, one condition removal takes care of it completely. It’s as if you had an effect type that removed all damage you have received in the last x seconds.

Is that part of what you’re proposing, that one removal removes all “Bleed”/“Poison” effects? That’s a difference, then.

On the more visual side of things, would this mean I’d have to look at like 20 Bleed icons? :P

mrauls.6519:

How do I get it?

Short answer: Go into Fractals of the Mists, and kill things until one drops.

Septin.6487:

Well the order of whisper probaly has quite an extensive information network and i could easily imagine that our character could acces this network of information but Anet probaly got lazy on this one.

Sure there’s a network of information-gathering, and sure you can ask them what they’re up to . . .

. . . but the Order has always been real secretive. I figure they operate on a “need to know” basis. Do you have a need to know? No? Then you get something like this:

“I heard you were meddlesome, but you can relax. The Order’s on this.”

And to be honest, there is an NPC from an event clearly connected to Whisper activities who says something similar.

kidbs.8920:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

emikochan.8504:

Sigh, everyone should just have their own cap, it wouldn’t even be slightly overpowered.

I think you’re underselling the effect of every person getting 25 stacks of Bleed on their own. I keep pointing out due to how the rules work, anything done to fix it in PvE would also wind up on WvW, and while some people have condition removal all day long others don’t.

Think of how much you’d see getting done to, say, glass cannon builds if they ate 12x 25 Stacks of Bleed? Heck, even a tank-like build might be really in trouble at that.

How is that different than being hit by 5 different 100b warriors at the same time? Why should a team of direct damage dealers be more effective and capable of dishing out damage than a team of condition dealers?

In other MMOs such as WoW and Rift a person can have DoTs from multiple players at a time. It’s not like DoT damage is so much more powerful than direct damage that this should even be an issue.

. . . because you can dodge Hundred Blades. You can’t dodge ticks from conditions.

emikochan.8504:

Sigh, everyone should just have their own cap, it wouldn’t even be slightly overpowered.

I think you’re underselling the effect of every person getting 25 stacks of Bleed on their own. I keep pointing out due to how the rules work, anything done to fix it in PvE would also wind up on WvW, and while some people have condition removal all day long others don’t.

Think of how much you’d see getting done to, say, glass cannon builds if they ate 12x 25 Stacks of Bleed? Heck, even a tank-like build might be really in trouble at that.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Your analogy doesn’t work right because the devs made the valve that doesn’t work right. Which means it would be added to the list of things that needed to be done to get paid, because it is their fault it isn’t working right.

You should probably think a little more on this rather than just immediately reply. This isn’t an analogy to this problem alone, it’s just something to have you think a little.

nethykins.7986:

In light of this analogy, (it’s a good one), let’s flip it back onto GW2.
Would you consider Ascended gear, addition of FoTM, Flame and frost living story, preview in TP, of higher priority than checking overall class balance or broken class traits/skills?

Personally, All that extra content I’d consider as fluff, but it looks like it’s higher up on the agenda.

To extend it?

You’re not the only one working on the maintenance, but you’re not sure where everyone else is on their list, and some people are working on the new addition management said to put together as part of their lists.

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

That’s a very good question.

I know how EverQuest dealt with it back in the day. No conditions, just Damage-over-time effects which wouldn’t stack if they were of the same “spell line”. Which meant if you wanted to know what stacked you had to do a lot of research to figure out what would work.

I know Ultima Online only had poison, which would last X seconds and do X damage per tick. Most poisons past the fourth level of severity would kill you if you couldn’t insta-cure. Most monsters they needed challenging would inflict sixth level poison somehow, or do more base damage than players could have health.

Other than that, don’t know about how other MMOs would handle it. I hadn’t played enough of more recent offerings.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

It is really disheartening hearing that this is not even being looked into.

You’re at a job, where you work maintenance for most of the machinery in a large factory. I mean couple of city blocks big. Your boss comes up to you on the first day of the week and hands you a list of twenty items which need to be fixed that week in order for you to get paid. You’re at the fifth thing on the list when someone who works in the department you’re currently in tells you there’s a problem with a valve.

“Is it not working?”
“No, it’s just acting like it’s not open all the way even though it’s not turning open any further.”
“I’ll look at it when I have time.”

Of course, you still have fifteen things on the list, or no paycheck. Since it’s actually not outright stopped it’s lower on priority. So you move on and the next day you’re stopped by the same person from yesterday.

“Hey, you said you’d look at that valve.”
“I didn’t get around to it, I have these other things to do.”
“Whatever, you just don’t care. Lazy bum, why do you even get hired?”

Tell me what motivation you have to actually go out of your way to look into that valve now.

Gingelyr.3648:

The devastating thing isn’t what ANet is or isn’t planning on doing. The devastating thing is that they aren’t expressing awareness of the problem with condition damage in PvE.

I almost think that’d be worse, because then the rallying cry would have more power to it if an ANet dev said: “Yes we know that players have reported issues with condition damage in PvE/WvW environments. We’re looking into it.”

They mean those. Items which are one of the four necessary components to make a Legendary weapon.

Everyone is “crying about them” because there are currently two ways to get one:

- Throw items in the Mystic Forge until one falls out.
- Kill monsters and raid chests until one falls out.

And both have an utterly abysmal drop chance. So there are people who devote resources to getting them and then putting them up on the Trading Post so people can just buy them instead of going through that mess . . . but they charge WAY over what most people feel the item is worth, because it’s both rare and desirable.

The biggest complaint is that it’s so rare. The biggest complaint after that is that there’s no control on how much it can be sold for on the TP. (I honestly think there should be no upper limit on how much you sell something for, I just think people should universally stop buying them and the price should come down eventually.)

The fixes for the first problem have to take into account how many ArenaNet intend to actually be in the game and how fast more turn up.

The fixes for the second problem are social in nature and asking the company to step in and fix them is really not the best solution.

eisberg.2379:

Yup

I work 4 day weeks, that are upwards of 13-16 hours per day, I don’t play on those days. That leaves 3 days, but I go to school on one of those days from 9am to 9pm, and I do not play on that day either typically. the other 2 days are spent between school work, spending time with my wife and son, doing what is needed around or for my home, and playing PC games.

I very appreciate it that you spend time there, just going to say that

Myself? I fall into the “I’ll play for intense bursts of time lasting either days or weeks then back away to play something different” category of people.

nethykins.7986:

I think it’s a little naive to say that ultimately buying more gems will produce faster fixes. This is also increasingly difficult when people are not happy about specific aspects of the game, or when developer/staff mentality is defensive. (see: Perceived loot thread)

I think the main point isn’t bashing devs for not fixing it – I think it’s more about adding a feature in game, and then realising it’s not working as it should, and that there’s almost no room for movement on improving it – considering they mentioned it was going to be released “when it’s ready”, we’re seeing things like this pop up, because it wasn’t ready.

Buying more Gems won’t directly offer up more resources in terms of “work-hours”. I gathered from some of the interviews this last week that’s one of the more difficult bottlenecks going on here.

“Somewhat ironically, the reason it’s taking us so long to fix culling and the other issues is because we actually are trying to fix the game thoroughly instead of just applying small patches to bandage over the issues.”

“Queues do indeed behave in a strange manner. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more news about that as it does boil down to resources. It’s a fixable problem, but we need some time from a very specialized type of programmer for that job and they’re all currently busy with other tasks.”

http://www.jeuxonline.info/actualite/39082/mike-ferguson-repond-questions-wvw

The picture I’m getting is not of people who don’t care, but a company which just doesn’t have the human resources to handle the problems as fast as they or the players want to.

achensherd.2735:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I know how to fix this.

Everyone log out of the forums and go play.

There, problem solved, we just increased the server populations.

In all seriousness, I still say it’s likely there are lots of other factors. That there’s no subscription fee means people can come and go if life interrupts (school, family, work) and not have to push time in. There’s also people who just log in to blow through new content as it’s put out because they don’t have time to do it slowly

Some of my guildies actually have very real time constraints on their computers. One for instance plays at an internet cafe in Asia, one’s computer is time-controlled by his/her dad, and one often goes “gtg, mom” before immediately logging off. I myself get on usually around after 9 or 10 PM (PST), and unless I’m running dungeons or Fractals with my guild, or am otherwise occupied by something (like a new event), I get off around 12 AM. What? I can’t stay up the way I used to be able to. =_=

As for getting off the forums to play, one interesting thing I’ve noticed (anecdotal, I know) is that of the people I’ve met and talked to in-game, not that many visit the forums (or know/care about them).

:|

Shrug

This pretty much illustrates enough about the varied types of people playing. They still play, just not as much as some people. I know at least two people who work on odd shifts who wind up playing at times most other people are at school/work/sleeping. I’ve actually had a job where between 2pm and 12pm I wasn’t going to get near the computer if I was working that day. And another job where I was just too plain tired to actually log on if I worked.

Players come in all types of time availability. Just cause you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t playing.

Edewen.8304:

I find it amazing that people are arguing against this fix. At the end of the day, this is primarily to help groups with a lot of conditions or large world events. Class balance is not a question here so it makes no sense to have this much opposition.

It is not about being a one trick pony, these are not players that are stacking nothing but dps, these are based on weapon combinations. Condition damage has nothing to do with the number of stacks you apply

There are a few options to fix this

they need to either make the bleeds/burns/poisons stack for the person. *boring

They could add condition specific fixes. for example, when eceeding 25 stacks of bleed, instantly hemorrhage the oldest stack for its remaining damage as it is pushed off the list.

This thread should be packed with ideas by now, not mindless banter with no real solutions. And no people, not using condition damage is not a solution.

From bottom to top:

- Not using condition damage is a solution, much like going full Berserker gear is a solution to other issues.

- Balancing ideas aren’t just for the open-world PvE where this is the big problem since WvW uses PvE rules. Anything you do to fix it must also wind up being considered for how it would work in WvW. On players. Who don’t have insanely huge health pools.

- I, personally, am not arguing against “the fix” I’m more just wary of “simple fixes” and looking at how they might actually break the game worse in the other direction. I’ve been party to some tabletop games where one rule gets bent a little in the house rule setup and abruptly I’m seeing some crazy things take place which break the game. That’s made me wary of monkeying around with rulesets blindly.

Smelly Bookah.6957:

Caithe is a lesbian.

That was the joke.

SteepledHat.1345:

Most of your influence is gained via dungeons. So non dungeon diving guilds have a lot of trouble with the influence reqs. Even a small guild can generate a ton of influence if everyone is in dungeons together.

A full guild group gets 100 Influence for a dungeon. A guild group running a chain of three events . . . say, the Cathedral of Silence run, successfully will earn 20 Influence per event, and if you start from the first part of that line you can rack up 100 Influence easily. Or storming the gates of Arah will yield 80 Influence unless I’m missing my count.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Flamenco.3894:

Guild Hall will need tier 8, which will take a year to research taking up 2 research slots

Well then they could release it now and the Halls would be ready to choose from when the research is done. Someone find this person a spot working at ArenaNet!

The small and casual guilds will take years just to reach Rank 8 at the current turn-over rate of Influence. So again, gated content at its finest. Someone mentioned a godzilla facepalm – honestly, it is will deserved now.

Also add in a “sarcasm fail”. Since I apparently did. Oops.

Yeah, I’m not going to bother really reading others’ replies.

My most un-favorite NPC thus far is Minister Cadaceus. Or Faolain. I’m not sure which one I want to punch through a wall more, the smug superior “you can’t prove anything so you can’t touch me” son-of-a-moa or the “come with me and I’ll make you never care about anything again beyond how loud the screams are” tulip. Honorable mention goes to Tybalt “go drink with the pirates, this is the most awesome plan ever” Leftpaw. Not because I hate him, but because I wanted to swirly his head after he admitted he wasn’t an experienced field operative. After the mission where I trusted his methods.

My most favorite is probably Eurayle.She likes setting things on fire or blowing them up. A close second is Mangonel Gearstrip, the charr who can’t hold his mead and lost a fight with a tree. Honorable mention goes to Rytlock or Logan with the condition neither are in their moody teenager phases.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

I think it has exactly as many major arteries as a rock made of ice. I don’t think it bleeds blood, which is weird when you think about it. I can “bleed” an Earth Elemental somehow. (Oil? Dirt? What the heck is bleeding? And HOW CAN I POISON IT?!).

Conditions are so abstract in this game. Remember when you couldn’t bleed/poison undead or elementals?

Fine, let me change my answer:
I think that a giant has a lot of arteries to cut. And a lot of blood to bleed.

And yes I remember that, which is also why I’m glad they had enough sense to at least allow most things to be affected by the short list of conditions they put in, since they apparently realized how it would be even MORE broken for condition builds to have random enemies be immune to your conditions (though not entirely, since Destroyers and Embers are still immune to burning which completely kittens a condition spec guardian or to a lesser extent a condition elementalist).

My reply was made partly in sarcastic jest anyway. I could explain why it’d be harder to actually bleed a giant but that gets into fuzzy science, the cube-square-law and lots of research I’m not even sure would actually apply anyway in Tyria.

Also you forget – earth elementals have permanent Stability too. And sometimes can turn on a reflection field. My ranger weeps when confronting them, because I really only have one melee weapon and I rarely have a need to pull it out.

Flamenco.3894:

Guild Hall will need tier 8, which will take a year to research taking up 2 research slots

Well then they could release it now and the Halls would be ready to choose from when the research is done. Someone find this person a spot working at ArenaNet!

Namu.5712:

If I can bleed a rock element/ or ice why the hell cant a mound of dirt be bled!

I’m more worried about how you’d poison it, as the more I think on it the worse it gets.

Borikitty.1302:

I’m almost scared to find out what the requirement is going to be for guild halls (something already officially discussed is coming).. a precursor? a full legendary? Maybe a certain amount of people in the guild? All the trees maxed? Yeah.. I’m not feeling it either.

Architecture 5. Or higher if they add another rank.

What, that’s the logical place they’d put it. And I can even guess the logic which led them to put Bounty in Art of War. (Note, making a new tree probably would have gone over much better.)

“So, we need to attach this to an existing tree, but Politics doesn’t quite make sense. We can’t stick it in Economy, what does that have to do with hunting down things . . . wait, we have this whole tree about battling! There, it wrote itself!”

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

I think it has exactly as many major arteries as a rock made of ice. I don’t think it bleeds blood, which is weird when you think about it. I can “bleed” an Earth Elemental somehow. (Oil? Dirt? What the heck is bleeding? And HOW CAN I POISON IT?!).

Conditions are so abstract in this game. Remember when you couldn’t bleed/poison undead or elementals?

achensherd.2735:

On one side you have those claiming GW2 is dying because there’s no one on, and on the other side you have those claiming GW2 is doing swell because there a lot of people on, both sides telling the other that their claims are anecdotal and so don’t have much/any credibility. You also have those that stand by ANet’s claim that the playerbase is steadily increasing, versus those that suggest ANet’s lying and that external sources like Xfire paint a wholly different picture, both telling the other that their sources are biased, fallible, or inconclusive.

We all can see how this isn’t going to go anywhere, right? :P

I know how to fix this.

Everyone log out of the forums and go play.

There, problem solved, we just increased the server populations.

In all seriousness, I still say it’s likely there are lots of other factors. That there’s no subscription fee means people can come and go if life interrupts (school, family, work) and not have to push time in. There’s also people who just log in to blow through new content as it’s put out because they don’t have time to do it slowly

Focksbot.6798:

People complain about Trahearne because the game expends so much effort trying to convince you you’re somebody special and then pulls the rug out from underneath you. Instead, a game should make you feel you have a vital part to play in events, but not that you’re some generic chosen one who everyone loves. I mean, why would a thief character want to be famous for their good deeds in the first place? Or a necromancer?

Really, you are still someone special even when Trahearne is standing next to you.

- You are the Slayer of Issormir, and have completed very impressive hunts afterwards. And Eir Stegalkin vouches for you personally.

- You are the Hero of Shaemoor, and one of Captain Thackeray’s/Countess Anise’s prospective recruits. You serve the good of Kryta, be it with the Queen’s wishes and blessings or not.

- You’re the winner of a prestigious award among the Asura and have shown great inventive skill.

- You’re a Valiant of the Wyld Hunt and completed it successfully by playing a part in defeating the dragon Zhaitan. You also helped many brethren along the way, and enriched the Dream with your experiences.

- You are a legionnaire of a High Legion, leader of a skilled warband, and a capable warrior on the field of battle. Ebonhawke is lucky you’re not at war with them.

- You are the Commander of the Pact forces and have the unwavering devotion of many who were saved by your presence on the field of battle in Orr and elsewhere.

I know, it may not be quite as cool as the Dragonborn, the Nevarine, the Nameless One, Revan, or Defender of Tristram . . . but you still are a hero You’re just not the only one who is walking around.

Based on GW1?

When you die, if you were an exceptionally powerful and devoted servant, you go to Balthazar’s eternal battlegrounds. There you become an Eternal (a specific form of ghost) and fight the eternal war against the forces of Menzies, his half-brother.

Otherwise you go to Grenth’s Underworld until you “pass on”. Here you need to somehow earn the right to move onwards. There’s an entire village of ghosts waiting, and Dhuum . . . the old god of death . . . has servants who still plague the place and try to make it a more tormented experience.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I must be missing something in this discussion. how do 5 man guilds not have all the research done at this point? I joined a guild 2 months ago and have contributed 15,000 influence to my guild in that time. Even if you have a 5-man guild, if you formed near the start of the game you should have earned around 200,000 influence by now assuming you haven’t spent a single gold to buy any extra.

Some small guilds haven’t been around long, or are broken off from larger guilds. Some just don’t do events together and are guilds in the sense of “we are friends who hang out and /guild chatter”. Some just didn’t see a point to Art of War so they left it untapped.

(Note, all except the first describes my guild most of the time :P )

Also why can’t these small guilds join a bigger guild and do the events as a 5 man group within the big guild while they work up the research in their small guild? I mean that is the entire point of being able to join 4 guilds at once isn’t it? I’m in a smaller guild but i’m also in a 400 man guild and we have 300,000 influence just sitting in the bank. Just run with your friends in a larger guild and earn the rewards there until you can finish the research in your small guild.

It’s . . . apparently . . . not a matter of “can’t”, it’s a matter of “we really really don’t want to HAVE to”.

You know, I discovered something odd. I used to hang around in Orr a lot and help out on the events. Especially Grenth, back when people still did it. (Seriously, folks, you can’t just rush in, stand still, and tank him to death. no, we’re doing that again? And now you’re pulling him closer to Jonez. Great. And now you’re complaining in /map that it’s impossible. Sigh. I just did that this morning with four other people.)

Anyway, I discovered that after I moved back to an area I hadn’t been to in a while I was getting a lot better drops. Like, Rares and high-value Greens. I did some dungeons I never did, and likewise, I could get some pretty decent loot off the enemies.

Personal experience? Change it up for a while.

Hicci.8761:

My point is that other classes have unique abilities that have major weaknesses. Thieves have stealth where your only counter measure is to run around, blast aoe and hope you hit something.

Eh, my countermeasure is to drop a spike trap at my feet and then get a head start moving away.

bluewanders.5297:

As I’ve said multiple times… we have no problem dealing with the unique issues of being a small guild and it’s ability to generate influence. What we have a problem with is the way this content is to be introduced and the fact that there is a reward system attached to it that made some of our more peripheral members immediately announce they would be joining and repping a big guild so that they could start earning the new currency… since we wouldn’t have it available for at least 2 weeks.

Most of the large guilds they have contacted have already told them that 100% rep will be required… even ones that didn’t require it before this content was announced. Can they find one that won’t say “we cull our ranks and don’t allow leeching”? I dunno… but I honestly can’t really blame the big guild for wanting people to rep and earn influence to help activate this content…

And this is what the method of introduction and the attachment of an exclusionary reward system has created… the content hasn’t even dropped yet.

I really wish we knew more about the content and this “new currency”. Is it a currency, or is it like flags that get triggered that unlock content? “Oh, you finished a Guild Bounty! Now we can offer you a different activity since you proved you have some skill.”

Also, the exclusiveness was, unfortunately, long going on. Most advertising guilds I saw even before November wanted 100% representation. And any guild advertising active WvW want teamspeak AND 100% rep.

(I want to note, I have issues running TS/Vent alongside GW2. As in, it doesn’t work so well.)

Pirlipat.2479:

I still suspect that the pale tree sent Trahearne away to this Orr task because she finds him annoying too.

Well, he was in Orr for a long time before showing back up at the Grove, I think. If she got tired of it, it’s more along this:

“Look, you moved out and then you moved back in. You’re a grown twig now, I don’t have to house you anymore. Look, there’s that lovely Caithe person, she gets out now and then, why don’t you . . . no? Oh, well look, I don’t care where you go but you really can’t stay here any longer. I’m going to show you this vision to try to motivate you to get your leafy butt up off my couch and out there doing something.”

Sylosi.6503:

It comes up because it is ridiculously OP and breaks a fundamental principle of PvP – risk vs reward, there is far too little risk (at least in WvW) with the way thief class / stealth works.

I know how to handle theives, I have a lvl 80 thief, it is also how I know how OP they are in WvW and that AOE is not a counter (note a group of people AOEing against 1 thief does not consitute a balanced counter), though Ele gives it a run for its money, fo rthe same reason lack of risk vs reward, just a different mechanic, – supreme mobility, can make a bad decision / get outplayed and still get away most of the time without being punished for it.

Yeah, it comes up a lot and there are a people who play as thieves and who have come up with ways to counter thieves who have actually offered good ideas for how to counter it without changing the game.

I’m going to let them chime in though, I don’t know anything more on the topic and my experience with stealthed thieves has been covered already; I tend to eat the initial damage, dodge/block/evade the rest, and just keep moving because I don’t do 1v1 in WvW. Too often there’s more people around than the one person I can see. (NOT talking about culling, talking about that bursting thief being the one running ahead of a zerg.)

Worst storyline?

Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft. Both have worse storylines than this game.

If you limit it to games which actually possess more of a storyline? Final Fantasy. No, the first one, not the series.

Elvahaduken.3609:

The reason its not a pvp issue is because everyone and their mum has a million cond removal. Anet preach play your way but when your forced to spec different otherwise your dead weight surely there should be a huge fking uproar.

I don’t have endless condition removal, I have only a few things that actively remove it as a ranger. Signet of Renewal will dump it on my pet or shorten the duration to 10s. Using it gives it a 60s base cooldown. Prayer to Kormir removes 3 conditions with a 40s base cooldown.

So, no, I don’t have "a million’ ways of removal on myself I can benefit from another ranger’s Healing Spring though.

Flubble.8093:

how about a trait that shows a stealthed enemy to all within 600 range radius (or lower) of me or something, so instead of being completely invisible they show up like stealthed allies do (see through but you can see them) but with no name above them? would still be stealthy while giving us a bit of a counter.

Show Spoiler

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if they introduce largos as a race in the future, this could be a trait for them

A trait would be another good choice, I think, if such a thing is added? The question is where should the range be? Most thieves within 600 are already closing for the kill so you might not get a lot of time to react. And then, of course, you might not see them even with the transparent model.

You’d probably only catch the really bad thieves with this. The good thieves will still get people.

arka.8590:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The guy was also backed with materials by a guild, if I recall right. They did it largely to see if it was possible, and the end verdict was “possible, but exceedingly reliant on others”.

Hmm.. not sure what a guild has to do with this. It costs only like 60g to buy all mats and level all 8 crafts to 400.

The guild had a lot to do with it. This was close after launch so they pooled their resources to make sure the materials were there for it.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I don’t understand why certain classes can’t bring 1 type of condition that can stack to 25 and each condition has their own debuff, that way if you needed certain debuffs you would NEED those classes in your groups. its called class diversity anet …pls, I know everyone “hates” wow but pls learn from it.

That’s an interesting proposal. I don’t play WoW so i don’t know for sure how that works but it kind of also reminds me of the old EQ1 “stacking spells” conundrum. Most casting classes had debuffs somewhere in their arsenal but there was a limitation on how spells interacted. Some DoT spells wouldn’t stack, some debuffs would overwrite others (other longer-lasting or more useful ones) and in general you ran into really having to learn a lot of stuff which wasn’t really clear to players inherently.

In GW1 conditions of the same type didn’t stack, but they reset duration when a new instance of it was applied. They also functioned somewhat differently – the most health degen you could stack was -10 pips which meant anything after that was wasted. MANY groups could reach this. Many single classes could reach this if they tried hard enough, even Rangers (for a short glorious duration).

Here the issue would seem to be that in large engagements you can hit 25 stacks real fast. Even in a group where more than one class can stack Bleed/Poison you can reach it fast. And the game isn’t sorting by which effects offer what damage amount over time (so I understand anyway, I could be wrong), so if someone with less Condition Damage drops Bleed over your high-powered Bleed, it’s what’s used instead of the biggest actual number from the applied stacks.

I’ll note this really seems a big issue in the PvE side of the game and not the PvP/WvW. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but other players suffering under 25 stacks of Bleed isn’t quite the same as the Risen Priest of Grenth suffering under it.