Guild Wars 2

Define “successful”. If you mean “it will get published, distributed, and get a GOTY” then yes. If you mean “will last for 10 years” . . .

We’ll see. I’m not very optimistic.

Wanderer.3248:

That doesn’t explain how she lost her title, unless her father sold it to pay debts.

If it’s anything like European nobility you don’t technically need to be rich to have a title.

It’s not like that at all, it’s like Krytan nobility. You’re only a noble until someone decides you’re not. Then you’re a walking target.

. . . gods I miss Ascalon. Insane rambling kings, rocks for breakfast, but at least you knew who was a noble and who wasn’t.

Sometimes I lose myself trying to figure out if it’d be child abuse or abuse against the disabled to punt Taimi when she is being an insufferable know-it-all.

Instead I go punt an Inquest.

Shriketalon.1937:

Mechanically, you are absolutely right. The NPCs in the instances are basically there to act as failsafes to revive you if you’re downed and meatshields to take a few hits.

That also which is nice, but really they’re there in case you need a meatshield, or you need more help, or whatever. Really, they’re there so you don’t need a party. Mechanically.

But it’s the narrative and thematic hook that I would assert is the core of the discussion. The story being written depends upon who is pushing the buttons, pulling the levers, finding the clues, networking with allies, and moving the plot forward. As long as the Biconics are the main party, they’ll be writing stories exactly like everything in Season 2 thus far. And while it is only my opinion, I really don’t want to see that happen for Seasons 3, 4, 5, and 6.

And I submit it’s not that bad if they set it up properly instead of doing what they did with the PS and rushing through the plot points rapidly and not setting up the development very well. They can, if it is properly done, share in the spotlight and move in and out of it as they need to around the player character. The problem is not centered in the existence, or the writing of the biconics.

It’s in the way the story is paced and yanking you around by the short hairs to get you through all the necessary plot points without letting any of them really seep in and make an impact.

Now this? This is an excellent point.

You are absolutely correct, we aren’t building a support staff. We can’t keep stumbling into every single situation and hoping we luck out with a random person onhand who can decipher what is going on. We need proactive information gathering, scouting, research, a bit of skullduggery, and perhaps someone very good with a billy club in back alleys. We should be making friends with smiths and engineers, allying with commanders and centurions, extending our feelers into numerous pies across Tyria.

But to do that, we’ll need storytelling time. And coincidentally, we’d probably get it if we broadened our character horizons just a bit by widening the lens…

We really do need more work done to add . . .verisimilitude (your big word for the day, folks) to us being important. Rather than us being important because shut up.

I don’t think the lens needs to be widened. I think the lens needs to be cleaned, polished, and focused more. Wide angles are beautiful, but it’s just a tool in the toolkit for how to do your film, to extend the analogy. Sometimes you want wide angles. Sometimes you don’t.

In this case, I think the story would suffer if it was widened out – it’d pick up too much extraneous threads and collapse. It needs to be tighter, paced just in the right beats, and let us grow to like the characters instead of "oh, sure, we’re friends . . . I guess? . . . "

Vayne.8563:

Chaos axe was a symbol of what? Anyone could buy one. It’s not like they were soul bound. People used to sell them in LA and later on in Kamadan.

They were thus a status symbol of “I have money and need to spend it on something shiny”.

I never loved how crafting worked in any game, really. It always seemed that by the time you could make something, you wouldn’t need it anymore. There are two exceptions in the games (not just MMOs) which I have played.

Firstly, Ultima Online. Because what good is a massive castle (which in itself says “please come steal my house key”) if you have no furnishings? And the only way you got furnishings? Get a player who made them. Tables, bookshelves, chairs, et cetera . . . all of these were made. Sure, later on you “quested” for fun stuff like from shipwrecks but the majority? Crafted stuff. And crafted weapons/armor from grandmasters was generally as good as low-tier magical gear . . . meaning it was probably more wise to get that sort of gear as opposed to scrounging for special super-awesome deadly halberds of vanquishing. (I think I remembered the prefix and suffix right.)

Secondly . . . Final Fantasy 14. No, the current form of it. It’s neat, it keeps you engaged rather than “press button, get result”, and once you know how to play with it you can get “high quality” rather easily. So far, it’s been less tedious and more interesting . . . even if I run into “I can only make items I no longer need” like I did before.

Beyond that, I liked EverQuest’s . . . in the theoretical. In practice? Horrible waste of time and money for 90% of it, unless you knew what sort of food you really wanted . . . then it was 88% a waste.

I really never liked the chaos items in GW1, as they looked exactly too lazy on the first glance. Afterwards, I thought they must have taken some time but they still never “wowed” me.

Similarly, I think this set of weapons begins by looking uninspired and ends looking just as tacky as the chaos axe and gloves did in GW1. (I think they were more a status symbol, “look at me I did Fissure! I farmed components for the crafter! I spent way too much on these to look ugly” kind of status symbol.

Still wasn’t as bad as Obsidian.

Puddingskins.8412:

I have to wonder if I wouldn’t act the same way Phlunt does if I had to deal with young Asura on a daily basis.

I know I would. Even if I had to deal with adult asura on a daily basis. Why do you think they’re so cranky all the time? And why do you think Oola ran away from it all and trapped the bejeesus out of her labs?

Behellagh.1468:

This isn’t WoW. I haven’t seen many if any pop culture references in this game. Geek/Nerd culture yes.

Plenty out there, but they’re not exactly blatant. “You got your moa jerky in my yak butter.” “No you got your yak butter on my moa jerky!”

Two great tastes which go together.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Queen Jenna faces fierce political opposition for just about everything she does just because she’s in power. Smodur has a half-dozen problem fronts to keep track of and forgetting one of them has the result of endangering part of the charr territory.

. . . and that’s the normal state of things. Let alone with an elder dragon having awakened and its vines torn up the Iron Marches, Fort Concordia, and Fort Salma.

Fort Salma is a Saraph fort. The Iron Marches is territory the Charr are actively fighting to hold. Just because the queen and Smodur have several plates spinning in the air already doesn’t mean they can simply ignore direct threats to their soldiers and their people. As Clinton says, they may have lots of things they want to do at once, but they are still at the mercy of events.

You talk about political restrictions and implications of Jenna overextending, but how much worse would those be if word got out that a human fort (one that is a final-line-of-defense bastion against the centaurs keeping them out of Queensdale, and named after Queen Salma, no less) was completely destroyed, with several casualties, and she sat back and did nothing?

About as well as if she had mobilized and the Seraph unit was entirely destroyed in the face of Mordremoth’s attack. Seriously, with the opposition in Krytan politics? It’s a no-win trying to avoid contemptful oratory.

In the latest update she even talks about putting a team together to investigate this new threat (precisely what I suggested would be fairly easy for her to do), but only after you “convince” her (the PC’s arguments are hardly anything that should sway a monarch’s mind, especially one who’s lasted this long against so many political enemies).

…Why didn’t she do that immediately?

Who knows? Maybe she had to work on making sure her cat took first place again. Yes, that’s sarcasm but in all seriousness we are so much not privy to the daily politics which have to get dealt with for her. Far as I know, most of that time is spent taking audiences and then trying to get things done. And it’s probably based . . . like most things, on old Rome. Where it’s never quite clear what the Senate did other than exist and ensure it continued to exist.

Show of hands, who wants to have a team do nothing but try to construct the political landscape of Kryta, where we can’t actually do much to alter things but we get to see what keeps her and the ministers busy all the time?

But that’s getting sidetracked. The latest update has actually shown some attempt at improvement.

I won’t get to really cut my teeth on it until Sunday, unfortunately. Lots of extra stuff I have to get done with work and household matters so I won’t get a good block of time to do more than log in and hit trees for an hour.

I get what you’re saying, but a rotating cast like you describe? Wouldn’t appear that much far off from how things are happening now with other characters – they come in, they do their roles, and then leave the focus.

About the only difference is the biconics existing . . . which is largely, from what I see now, so we can have allies to do solo instances with instead of forced grouping. Mechanically speaking, of course, not thematically or narratively.

And I still hold the opinion not all the biconics are a terrible choice for allies. Braham and Rox, and to a slightly lesser extent Taimi, are actually pretty solid as characters. (Disclaimer: As solid as any other ones we’ve gotten in GW2.) Marjory and Kasmeer are the two most people seem to agree stick out like a sore thumb . . . I don’t think that’s the case, so much as they are completely out of their element and it shows.

This could be salvaged, and probably will be better once we get further along. Rox already did improve a lot from what when she was introduced, into having her own character rather than “Yes, Rytlock, sir” . . . Braham isn’t too much further off, though he’s still pretty touchy about his parents.

Kasmeer and Marjory would have been better served as a support team rather than “in the action”. Researching and campaigning for aid would have been a better niche to put them into, and probably would have made the story stronger . . . even if it would definitely have invited criticisms about females being made to be nothing but support characters.

Almost as much fun as the ones who would turn up during stuck events for Dragon’s Reach, Part 1, Day 1. Mostly to do exactly this: “Yes, we’re aware of it, yes it’s broken, you can either try to drop into a different instance where it’s not stuck or wait it out.”

I’d be all for it with some refinements.

Each PoI has the information, and it gets added to a journal (we can do those now, clearly) which can be reviewed. When you reach each PoI, you get the notification in the lower-right with a little page icon to let you know something’s there. It will be a picture of the area with a small paragraph of text blurb . . .

But by talking to relevant NPCs you can expand on it. Completing a PoI’s data turns the icon in the journal gold so you know you learned everything that can be learned. Give a small Karma/XP reward for doing that, or maybe an NPC who will reward you for “bring back nice stories of your travels”.

“I heard once about this human who traveled all of Tyria, and the other lands as well. A fearless, peerless traveler who would bring joy to anyone he met along the way. It is good to know there are still people like him even after the Dragons awoke.”

Also, should be noted from the article itself:

“The ranking is subject to the installed base and other key assumptions. The data may be updated and/or revised without notice. We explicitly do not make any representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the data or overview.”

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Overwolf’s doesn’t measure hours. Raptr measures by hours.

I don’t see how playing a game more doesn’t reflect on the quality of the game, though.

Well if I have four hundred hours played on Final Fantasy 9, it’s because I was playing it at a time when I would cheerfully pause the game in a menu and go make dinner or do housework for hours . . . then come back and play. Similarly, Minecraft I’ll (ill-advisedly) leave running idle.

I can totally believe both League and Minecraft have the top spots. Minecraft is played by tons of people and is . . . I think, second best selling across all platforms if you discount pack-ins like Wii Sports and Tetris. A lot of people I know boot up League just to observe matches instead of playing the game.

But are you saying, conversely, really short games aren’t any good? I can beat Morrowind in 25 minutes, so it must not be that good . . .

Instead of looking at “oooh it’s in seventh place”, what’s it under?

Minecraft and League, we discussed. World of Tanks is a freemium game which has a nice large user base. Counterstrike is still enjoyed by many people for the nostalgia of playing it, who all agree the AWP is broken. World of Warcraft speaks for itself. DOTA2 is like League, in that it’s got a huge amount of users because it’s one of the few decently built games of its type.

Strangely, I don’t see metrics on how much places are beat by, so for all we know, Guild Wars 2 is beat by a mere hundred people . . . or is it beat by six million and anything under it is barely played . . . who can tell from this article?

Shriketalon.1937:

I don’t know how others pick their teams, but this Commander of the Pact doesn’t believe in leading children to their deaths.

I would make any asura lead from the front lines, absolutely. Especially one as capable as Taimi. Those who refused would then be sent to the front lines by catapult.

For the good of Tyria.

Likewise, the rest of the team just isn’t special. They aren’t veterans of war, and the idea of constructing an elite team out of complete novices makes no sense whatsoever when we have better assets at hand. Then there’s the storytelling time issue…

You don’t say . . .

So, they’re practically comparable to the player character in all three campaigns of GW1? Fresh-faced and untried adventurers released to try to stem horrible events from happening?

Or how about most RPG protagonists ever . . . especially more than a few from “better games” like Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, arguably Mass Effect, Dragon Age . . . the Dragon Quest series . . . Adol Cristin . . .

I’m really sorry but the idea they’re undeserving because they’re not special enough makes me laugh. Our characters are barely special when we’re supposed to be taken under the wing of a Destiny’s Edge member early on, or fast-tracked to high rank in the Order of our choice. The only reason we are is because we’re the player character.

I mean, we do a lot of special things, but the plot contrivances aren’t limited to the biconics.

PopeUrban.2578:

I think the biconics can be valuable allies, but to date they haven’t been given time to stretch their legs.

I feel I must disagree completely. We have spent time with them, ludicrous amounts. All of Season 1 was spent on their rise and Scarlet’s silly machinations. We’ve done backstory work, dramatic interactions, side by side battles, inner demons, boss fights, and fireside chats. Sure, our character hasn’t had direct voiced dialogue due to technical limitations, but the Biconics have hogged the spotlight for over a year.

No, they hogged the spotlight only after Scarlet showed up and barely took center stage at all until much later in that arc. They were there, but they weren’t important or central to the focus of the story. Scarlet, on the other hand, was.

Meanwhile, the rest of the story suffers from neglect, as demonstrated by the plot threads and concepts within Dragon’s Reach that glossed over far deeper and more meaningful undercurrents of each race and the days to come.

The story’s been suffering from having too many dangling plot threads for long before this. It’s mystifying they chose to add a sixth dragon to the pile when we had two very good candidates to chase after before Mordremoth.

To echo Shiren’s excellent point, do you honestly want to be focusing on the Biconics when we go up against Kralkatorric?

No, I’d like to be focusing on why in the heck I can’t load golems into a trebuchet or use a beacon like my great ancestor did when working with Gadd, Oola, and Vekk. I’d love to drop tons of golems on tons of plant monstrosities.

And in the days to come, the hunt for Jormag, the war with Primordius, the battle with Bubbles…are these five really all the story should aspire to?

I’d rather they tell the story being told than the one us players are trying to tell them to show-and-tell. Because, odds are, even if they lifted the ideas directly from our posts or emails? It still wouldn’t be good enough for the bulk of the customers, and besides would just borrow from a different set of cliches.

This world does not exist to tell these side characters’ story. Every character is secondary to the fate of the world, and when they aren’t relevant, they leave the stage and let the show go on.

Yes, but then you have a ton of characters who have no relevance and then no reason to get attached to them. You have things like the mentors who barely have time to become characters before they are ushered out by diablo-ex-machina, or Demmi Beetlestone who vanishes completely for having something of terrible and paramount importance to have a very involved field mission made up to get her safe.

I would vastly prefer a smaller cast we can relate to than a vast cast of nobodies who filter in and out a revolving casting call. Because, let’s be honest . . . that’s pretty much what our characters are anyway.

Despite all this? The world of Tyria is big enough to host a lot of different stories. Even the ones we don’t like. (cough, cough, Magister Sieran…)

blakdoxa.7520:

Holy kitten! People that actually support the new trait system?

Have you seen the traits thread? I mean this kitten Game Update: Traits. That thread right there.

In that thread there is hardly a voice, a single whimper showing their support of this horrible change (save the free respec, of course).

Oh you righteous and pious souls! Where have you been?

I don’t get involved in things I don’t have an ounce of thought about. This new trait system? I prefer it in roughly 75% of the way it’s handled. The other 25% . . . meh. I don’t find it worth getting upset about, most of those traits aren’t any good by general consensus.

I’ll eventually get them, it just takes patience and maybe some arm twisting of allies to make it happen.

GOSU.9574:

Tasty Pudding.3764:

tofumon.5924:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

Nobody should have to farm 20 SP just to unlock a kitten trait. This new trait system is terrible.

Then it is a good thing that it is only 1.5g and 10SP. You get tons of Scrolls of Knowledge from champ bags, so who cares?

This works very well….if you mindlessly farm champs in da champ train.

Well, or if you’re actively taking stuff in WvW . . .

Yeah, that seems right. Except last time I expressed the opinion of “why not tokens” I was scolded lightly over adding more currencies. Which leads to the next question:

Why not base “raids” off the existing dungeons or the storyline of said dungeons? Say, for instance, there’s a raid designed to use Sons of Svanir / Icebrood vs Kodan as the backdrop for it. The reward being the tokens for “Honor of the Waves” and new objects being made available at the token merchant.

Of course, that does mean many people could do the dungeon and not the raid but if you don’t want new tokens . . . the only other answer is “token inflation” where you give the raids a higher payout of tokens and the items meant for the raids a greater amount.

. . . or alternatively, you could attach them to Guild Commendations and make the raids available through that whole system. Especially since it should be assumed you’d need some level of organization and not simply to PUG it.

Not really a simple answer to this if the desire for new tokens isn’t wanted. And, well, from the reaction to Geodes? New tokens . . . aren’t . . . really wanted.

Baamoink.4281:

False analogy’s Sytherek.7689.

Wrong person I think?

The focus is on the Pale Tree right now because Mordremoth is a plant-affecting Elder Dragon.

Also, there may or may not be “A Very Bad Idea” in the summit being gathered right there where the only thing keeping Mordremoth at bay is the Pale Tree’s will.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Kalavier.1097:

Because they are leading nations and have very busy days.

This argument seems to crop up due to a simultaneous misunderstanding of a world leader’s role and a lack of imagination. Just because world leaders are already busy doesn’t give them license to ignore threats or developments that affect them. A characteristic of a world leader is that they have literal armies of people to delegate tasks to, and both the Humans and Charr even have formal organizations for intelligence gathering, which at the very least would be actively engaged in this matter on their own volition, provided the leadership exists at all outside of what the biconics are willing to discuss.

Also, being a former Pact commander, and especially the First Commander, even if that is the present situation, should not at all be considered a demotion in status. The PC’s role had significant regional influence, and sprawling involvement with many powerful people all over the world (read: high-level networking), as well as personal first-hand knowledge of important events. For the political power of such a person to rapidly decline within two years without some kind of major scandal or smear campaign is a contrivance that could only be imagined by a writer. People of this nature in the real world, even with far fewer accomplishments, become highly sought-after analysts, especially commercially, or go on to spearhead their own Global Initiatives.

Bill Clinton masterfully summarizes the political reality of this situation for both circumstances better than I could in just two minutes on a Fox News interview.

http://youtu.be/7DI7u-TytRU?t=2m4s

Interestingly, most people I talk to still have no idea the US President does anything in office, believing it’s just a position for the Congress/Senate to badmouth and work around. And to be honest, from the outside it probably looks like they don’t do anything about some things . . . but it’s also likely not close to actuality.

Part of the responsibility of being a world leader is knowing you have the power to do something, and knowing at the same time you shouldn’t use that power that way.

I suspect we have a lot of blank space about what Queen Jennah, Smodur, and Knut Whitebear do with their time largely because the writers don’t have an itemized agenda for each day. (And why would they, anyway? That’s a ton of work to keep track of and it wouldn’t be seen or cared about by anyone.) But more importantly, it’s known there are actual concerns which are closer to home for each of them. Knut’s job is probably the worst – norn by their nature resist being led, we saw this personally back during the time of the Great Destroyer. Queen Jenna faces fierce political opposition for just about everything she does just because she’s in power. Smodur has a half-dozen problem fronts to keep track of and forgetting one of them has the result of endangering part of the charr territory.

. . . and that’s the normal state of things. Let alone with an elder dragon having awakened and its vines torn up the Iron Marches, Fort Concordia, and Fort Salma.

Palador, have a +1.

Palador.2170:

Oh, and one small request: Sometime down the line, have the group declared an honorary warband. It would be good character development for Rox, even if all she does at the time is break down and cry.

It would take doing something monumental for the charr to make that happen. And, well . . .

I don’t want to be in an honorary warband. I want to be in what amounts to a “troubleshooting squad” – we find trouble, and we shoot it. It doesn’t matter where or what.

We can even have a motto: “We pick up where Destiny’s Edge left off.”

Prysin.8542:

BM Ranger and support guard is the only two classes that actually BENEFIT from this set.

BM Ranger because it can actually still deal good damage while NOT having any power (all hail pets with their own stats) and because if you run x2x66 you can get massive regen, heavy pet strikes and with the upcoming change to axe auto – very good might stacking. Make no mistake, i have this armor on my ranger and it is FAR FROM a good set. Not the way the game currently is. That being said, the ranger will NOT DIE, unless the user makes several fatal errors.

Support guard for obvious reasons.

This is . . . interesting to hear and has me thinking. Not thinking I want to invest in Nomad gear, obviously – I tend to prefer my Soldier’s. But thinking the idea is it not being a ‘valid choice’ for every build.

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Zaxares.5419:

My headcanon is frequently not safe for the forums.

Can you give an example of headcanon that is actually safe for the forums?

I could give several, though that’s unfortunately so far off topic . . . well, except for one.

“The reason Rytlock won’t succeed in uncursing Ascalon is because his sword isn’t the real one but a very convincing copy. The reason he doesn’t say where he got it is because he bought it off an asuran peddler.”

Mesket.5728:

My point wasn’t that UO was better where GW2 fail. It was that GW2 didn’t bring something new by removing the holy trinity and providing players freedom to build as they want.

Well the “holy trinity” really didn’t exist in MMOs until EverQuest came along anyway. It existed in tabletop (D&D notably) but not so much in the MMOs up before EQ. Then it began to gather steam since it’s an interesting design puzzle to leave for players – “you now have to figure out how to fill your party up, but if you aren’t careful then your party won’t be as efficient or even work too well”.

It is something as old, probably older, as the example provided (UO). But, the fact that we can actually compare them and open debate on which one is better, sums up to my point… why are we comparing games almost 2 decades apart? (design wise, of course not mechanic and graphic wise)

Because age doesn’t translate to good or bad design choices purely on whether they’re newer or older? Also because I’ve been paying attention to the specific design choices of games for the last couple years after getting to talk with some game devs and hearing their reasoning for why certain decisions are made?

Or it could be because after EverQuest really put the trinity idea into MMOs (DPS, healer, tank), it’s been somewhat standard for most of them? So by talking about a game older than that, we get to something before the trinity, before the formula.

And finally, I’m not quite debating which one was better . . . honestly, neither of them gets my vote for which one was more fun to work with. I had much more fun with a WC/Krannan/Shally character than I did with my UO mage.

The world boss timers are actually fairly generous most times, even with long hauls like Claw of Jormag and potentially the Ulgoth. So, I don’t know if full DPS orientation is even really necessary . . . even in the Claw of Jormag, it’s somewhat more necessary to focus on getting the stuns to happen.

Ulgoth, it’s more a matter of “did the pre-events need to be done”.

And one more addendum – Daily Achievements can be a nice fat bonus if you bother with them too.

Ayrilana.1396:

If you do map completion for all of the starter areas before moving to other areas, you should be max level for most of the maps when you do them.

Also useful to note. Me? I was a ranger main so I spent a lot of time tracking down the various pets which meant I spent a lot of time in places just meandering.

I’m a special sort of person when it comes to doing an area. As in slightly OCD special. I’ll clear an area by doing map completion, and maybe stick around for some event chains I really like if there’s enough people doing them.

I recommend gathering from every node you find, never passing on an event if you can finish it, and if you have any XP boosters then you should use them. (Seriously, there seems to be a lot of them from Black Lion Chests.)

Vayne.8563:

You have to understand, that after years of seeing the potential of the MMO genre for someone of my playstyle, and never having seen a game cater to it, this game feels like a good fit for me. It still has some glaring flaws, but for my play style those flaws don’t particularly affect me personally.

That’s about where I am, personally. It’s exactly the kind of game I can enjoy, rather than feel pressured about whether or not I’m doing X or Y. I departed a lot of games because I just couldn’t spend the time.

The game needs more viable builds. The professions need to be brought more into line with each other as far as capability, and we need more skills, or at least more attributes to shake things up. Or more weapons. And I wouldn’t say no to an expansion or even mounts. Actually I quite like mounts.

I don’t know about “viable builds” since that’s really an issue I can’t attack so well – anything is viable currently except for “naked” when it comes to PvE so long as you have the damage output to get credit or the skill to solo things.

I don’t really agree with “new skills/weapons/attributes” because I don’t think they would be as useful. All those skills of GW1 and most people maybe used only 25% of them at all during their play. I am not sure if reaching that level of skill diversity is worth the energy.

I heartily agree on class balancing. I don’t know how it can be achieved, but I think some nice ideas got thrown around in the CDIs for them to look at working with.

I’m not sure if “expansion” is enough of a magic bullet to “fix” anything. I also have little faith in ArenaNet to put together an expansion which would make everyone asking for it sit down and applaud. On the contrary, I expect if they spent substantial energies on an expansion and it was hyped even a little bit, we’d see “six months for an expansion and all we got was this garbage?”.

I’m okay with mounts so long as they’re cosmetic only and we don’t have massive stat boosts associated with them.

These stances may or may not change without warning.

But I’m convinced that if Anet communicated more, that we wouldn’t see quite the amount of negativity we do on the forums.

I’m convinced if they did, we’d see Abashi and Absor all over again.

sirflamesword.3896:

No different from you being part of the Anti- ANYTHING RESEMBLING CRITICISM towards GW2, you, Vayne and a half dozen other individuals destroy threads left and right by picking a single piece of information out of someones post and derailing a thread by bringing it up OVER AND OVER.

Oh, please. Go on. I criticize this game a lot, mostly about how they handle their story. I don’t criticize what I don’t have enough experience in (PvP, or class balancing) because I have a tendency to not like going out on a limb for things I don’t really care about or know enough about.

But then, that sort of just vanishes when people need to bring up how I’m a “white knight”. No. I enjoy the game, and I have fun playing it. It could be much better, but I don’t necessarily agree with many of the suggestions.

I know Vayne isn’t an Anet employee, and the ones who actually believe he is are way to cynical, but to not be able to see how insane some of you defend everything Anet does is sad.

Everything?

Heh. No, please, continue.

Mesket.5728:

It was the first game to use the term MMORPG in 1997 (same year I started playing it).

Doesn’t matter, the first MMORPG by the definition of the term came before UO. Richard Garriott coined the term, but others existed beforehand. I played at least two of those.

Of course the 700% skill limitation won’t let you use every single skill in game and exceed on it, but having no “classes” (and leaving tradeskills aside) made it for everyone to follow the same road soon after (old school min maxers setting “opitmal” builds, is as old as playing RPGs, specially for PKs like myself, oh man i miss it). In UO you still had full mages and full warriors a bit apart from each other or like you said, treasure hunting required someone trained in something else than fighting bringing at least 1 other role to the table but here… oh man…

Treasure Hunting really, reliably, needed three people minimum at third-rank. At fifth rank, four or more was better.

And while there were no classes, there were “archetypes” which people fell into. Mages, Halberd warriors, archers, tamers, and some blurred hybrids where skills got swapped to try to do something unexpected. But it was rather the same when it came to PvP – always have your Magic Reflection up, and hope you got the drop on someone rather than being dropped on.

As for the PvE play, it was even more anemic than what anyone claims GW2’s is like. When I can watch someone no-risk kill balrons in a minute . . . there’s something wrong.

the encyclopedia of GW2 class builds is a one line book.

It’s still better than UO, though not as fun to experiment with.

Hey look, it’s the anti-Vayne crowd in again to push a derailment. And then further to push the agenda of witch-hunting on people who actually like the game and are willing to admit it.

This, this here? This is why I really think ArenaNet will never find someone willing to do the job Vayne asked for, for the amount of money they’d be paid to do so. I know even if they tripled my current wages, I’d still not touch it with a standard ten foot pole.

Mesket.5728:

Yes it does. First MMORPG ever, Ultima Online; already had this concept. One character could do anything if trained properly. He could heal, buff, be a warrior a wizard, all in one. It was changed for the sake of team play. GW2 just went 17 years backwards in game designing.

Not the first MMORPG, but we’ll agree that it is for the purposes of the argument. Which is still erroneous, since one character could not do “anything” if trained properly . . . he could use the spells (heals, buffs, travel) but that used up one of seven skills you could master. IF you wanted to add combat to that, there were three more skills, leaving three more for “whatever”.

Which means it was unlikely you could do everything, since there were more than three major tradeskills, and taming already took three skills.

Also . . . and finally . . . there was always value in “team play” for UO rather than just being a lone person. Even before they added the strange raid mechanics, there were the Treasure Maps which demanded at least two people to do them properly. And the higher ones? Bring friends.

If you want to go back further to the first MMORPG, though, it was a design decision in that one to prevent anyone from realistically mastering everything, and at most there was a total mastery of two skillsets and a splash of a third.

So, no, it’s not quite “seventeen years backwards” by virtue of UO or earlier allowing people to have multiple roles on the same character. It’s shorter than that, since technically you could do that in EQ.

My brother one night passed out drunk in the middle of watching a movie, and proceeded to be out cold for twelve hours sleeping on the couch. We couldn’t get him to stir short of picking him up and dropping him on the floor, which he wound up to himself doing anyway around hour eleven by rolling over.

When he woke up, the first comment out of our father’s mouth? “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty, you’re lucky you woke up before the prince we called made it to kiss you.” And we all had a laugh.

This is contrary to what I witnessed one time at an amusement park where a staff person found a child who had wandered off from his mother . . . and after she hugged him she slapped him across the face hard enough to be heard fifty feet away where I was waiting for the restrooms.

For some people, and in general, the relief when something potentially bad has passed leads to joking. Because you need to bleed off the tension somehow.

For other people, it works other ways. I’ll take option A over option B.

FF14 also has had a major patch recently, and another content update on the way Soon™.

Of course it’s up. GW2 probably was up too when LS2 kicked off.

Zygomaticus.7469:

is there a MMO that has an “end game” that you wont do things “over and over and over and over” again?

No, not really . . . not to mention sometimes needing to do things over and over and over again just to get everyone you need into the endgame, so you can farm that then.

Shiren.9532:

Filaha.1678:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Becka Williams.4978:

Belinda’s death didn’t do it for you?

That was only tragedy for the weak minded who didn’t instantly realize upon her introduction that her purpose was to die “tragically.”

You’re suggesting that when you saw her in the bar, your immediate thought was “Yep, she’s dead”?

For a lot of people it was when Belinda said she was going to Brisban. You can look it up in the threads from back when she was introduced, it was pretty firmly believed that Belinda was going to die soon.

I pegged it, personally, at “this is my sister, Belinda Belacqua”. I was like ‘well she’s dead’.

KarlaGrey.5903:

What does your personal choice whether you stop to rez or not have to do with the fact it doesn’t reward you towards the action you were performing before you stopepd to rez.
Basically, what Ashen posted some time ago (bolded part by me):

At least in the open world content I play GW2 is far more competitive than cooperative. Helping another player means potentially not getting credit, or at least not full credit, for the events I play. The game punishes me for stopping my DPS to rezz another player. Conversely the game will reward me for ignoring players who need my assistance in order to maintain maximum possible damage output.

It didn’t used to be like this…or at least not to this degree. I think that the Megaserver is a net gain for the game, but it needs tweaks to prevent some of the current situations where it makes the PvE game more competitive and less cooperative.

Also, if there are about 50 people spanking a mob, 2 or 3 of which stop to rest, that kinda boils down to ‘most don’t bother’… naturally, many don’t even notice, and some can’t because they might die in the process.
I myself rezzed when I could, but that is beside the point.

Because there’s not much difference in Gold vs Silver rewards? Far as I’ve seen the only people who risk not getting a reward are those who get Bronze . . .

And don’t throw Tequila at me – most people explicitly are told to WP and run back because resurrecting is too dicey to do there. Along with some other high-level world bosses, where sitting about waiting to get picked up is worse than just standing there not doing anything. (At least if you’re standing there people using the “F” key to do stuff won’t accidentally start resurrecting you.)

Fiontar.4695:

Sorry, but most lapsed players and potential new players did not know about this in advance. Why would you give people late to the game or taking a tentative peak back due to the buzz a very real reason to take a pass? It makes no sense at any level.

I don’t know, your argument doesn’t pass the smell test because there obviously was enough buzz to get you to look back at GW2, and if you had looked closer you would have seen the Journal feature remarked on with the start of LS2.

So, it’s got enough buzz for you to impulse return, but not enough for you to look at what you’d be returning to?

It would have been much better than the completely temporary content of S1. If the content itself is up to snuff and new/returning players get hooked on the new content, some will be converted into active, paying customers. Instead, it’s still “you snooze, you lose”, but only for the people they should be focused on winning or winning back.

Sure, it’s “lost”, exactly as completely as the Marionette fight (for now) which nobody just joining up will ever experience again. Except now if they want to do Gates of Maguuma they’ll need to get 200 Gems. And they still won’t get to do “Sky Pirates of Tyria”, for instance.

Sure, it’s still “you snooze, you lose”, uh huh.

I continue to be befuddled.

So do I.

. . . moa doesn’t taste anything like chicken. I’ve been lied to.

I wouldn’t worry, though if we want to insist ANet gets the verbiage exact when they say stuff, we should endeavor to do the same.

Vayne.8563:

But my point still stands. You have to troll through an awful lot of what they said about the game to get to the point where you believe there would be no vertical progression…particularly since vertical progression existed in the game at launch.

You mean “trawl” through, not “troll”.

Fiontar.4695:

Then, I turned to the Season Two living story and found the first two chapters behind a pay wall. That was the end of me giving ANet yet another chance.

Really? Because that was known before they started LS2, they were going to do that; if you logged into a character for even five minutes you got access for free. Otherwise, 200 Gems.

It’s just an illogical, completely unnecessary and very passive aggressive slap in the face for returning or new players, who might otherwise have been enticed by word of this seemingly improved Season Two.

Still better than LS1 “you snooze you lose” . . .

Guhracie.3419:

Tobias, “unique” in this instance is being used to describe something that you can only equip one of, so it only applies to things like rings or trinkets.

Thanks, I know what it means. I was saying, it’d be nice if these things weren’t the ONLY things which had that tag, and there was more exposure to it.

Though the best solution short of getting rid of that tag, is the “idiot note dialogue box” I mentioned above. Sort of like the kind you get with “would you like to format this drive?”.

. . . it might cut down on events like this one, but I must admit I’m not too optimistic on that.

Ayrilana.1396:

Or just remove the unique aspect entirely.

I’d like to see more “unique” things like special alt-color weapons/armor dropped by major events. We already have a few items only dropped during some events, just punch it up a bit.

I’d like to take a moment to point out maybe there needs to be a “common sense check” popup “You are buying another Unique item you already own. You cannot equip two Unique items at the same time. Are you sure?”

Shiren.9532:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We could have had Marjory and Kasmeer have the second LS season devoted to showing why these two are important to us.

Why? Why should any characters need to be portrayed to be important to us, simply to be important to us? That’s what’s causing these characters to drag down the story – their story and the story being told are two different things.

But they could be, and could have been. That’s rather my point. They could have been much, much better handled to give them a richer feel to them.

It’s silly seeing people insist we need several season long arcs dedicated to certain characters for us to care about them.

Who said anything about the arcs being dedicated to the characters? I certainly didn’t – I said they could use the time to let us get to know them and get used to them instead of “here’s your new buddies, play nice now”.

Tybalt was around for a handful of personal story instances and is frequently cited as one of the best GW2 characters. Oberyn was introduced in a later season of GoT and in a handful of scenes the audience was heavily invested in him.

Tybalt, I don’t understand at all since he was goofy and ill-suited to be anywhere near our mentor . . . er, as applemongers. Seriously, we had two really unsuitable mentors and one who actually took the mentoring and us seriously – Forgal. Tybalt and Sieran are just incredibly badly suited and they’re forced on us, and it’s silly to say we should feel something for them, but not for Belinda, when they were barely more to the story than she was.

The only reason people feel for Tybalt or Sieran, or even Belinda is because the story tells us we should. Similarly, Oberyn in the books we were meant to root for despite there not being much to see of him to care about . . . the show, however, I give major applause to the actor. That gentleman alone is why people cared about that character, much like how Maise Williams is why people really like Arya. (I’ll still take the subtle bits of Sophie Turner’s Sansa . . . couldn’t stand her in the books, in the show? Kinda want to give her a hug.)

Tyria is so much more complex than five recurring characters. Dumbing down the entire world so that all the important events revolve around the same five recurring characters is hurting the story more than it’s helping.

And dumbing it down so it revolves around one instance of ten million wouldn’t?

I stop to res if I am not in immediate danger, especially at big world bosses like Claw of Jormag or Temples .. . assuming those dead people aren’t at the foot of the boss.