Guild Wars 2

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

lordkrall.7241:

I would say that the pain of loss is a very good opportunity in the coming chapters, and that will be much stronger if there is an actual partnership between the two characters, and there are already hints that something will happen to Kasmeer.

It’s anet, when you start to like a character, they kill the character off.

You mean they hired George R.R. Martin?

warllockmaster.1379:

Wait-they are lesbians?
i was pretty sure that they were just good friends,which who tagged along well together teasing one another, while being on a case, while Majory wish for Kasmeer to go back home, and she rufeses since she knows majory, wishing to stop her from doing anything foolish.

Honestly, it doesn’t surprise me this reveal happened, but it also doesn’t make me twitch with “blatant fanservice”. We’ve seen Lady Kasmeer before shutting down Lord Faren so it was kind of hinted at way ago.

Also, I really hesitate to call any sylvari relationship one based on gender. Sylvari have genders but it’s nothing like what we have as humans. If anything should get people upset, it’s not “lesbian relationships” it’s a race of entirely potential bisexuals.

And no, I’m not one of those people, I don’t care one way or another what two NPCs do when I’m not around. Unless that thing results in one of them getting a precursor.

juno.1840:

timmyf.1490:

I was maybe not clear: if your build means you die a lot, that’s fine.

But you should not have access to SECRET ROOM A because you chose Rabid gear or Jewelcrafting.

Your build should affect your performance and play style, not your options.

I’m not aware of any situation in GW2 where your access is prevented based upon build decisions. Can you provide a specific example? Otherwise you are ranting about nothing.

He’s not ranting about nothing, he’s replying to some ideas about “maybe there can be side paths which open up or let people through if you have X criteria not based on combat”.

Devata.6589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

timmyf.1490:

This discussion brings up something I think should be a rule: your character decisions and build should not determine your ability to progress or the paths you choose through (non Personal Story) content.

I respectfully disagree.

If someone decides to build to where they can take damage all day long and has their output of damage severely mitigated, I would expect them to have severe problems trying to take a path where it’s expected they have four more people with them.

I wonder how you would implement any of this without almost unding the whole current system.

Everybody already has a lvl 80. Image that now suddenly people need to start ‘leveling’ it again.. Build leveling then.

It would be nice if it was in the game at release but adding it in now will make many people very unhappy I am afraid.

I really don’t know where you got that from my post, but it’s not in relation to what I said or suggested. Though I’ll note -

A portion of people will still complain they’re being forced into horizontal progression no matter what we do. Even if it’s an NPC you go to and get it handed out, it’s going to get complaints. That’s just how it is.

It’s just an unfortunate truth. There isn’t step forward on any of these matters which won’t send a bunch of people to the forums or elsewhere decrying the changes.

timmyf.1490:

I was maybe not clear: if your build means you die a lot, that’s fine.

But you should not have access to SECRET ROOM A because you chose Rabid gear or Jewelcrafting.

Your build should affect your performance and play style, not your options.

Sure, you should be able to access a “secret room” from choices or various things. What it should not do is grant you an advantage over those who haven’t got those things or made different choices.

timmyf.1490:

This discussion brings up something I think should be a rule: your character decisions and build should not determine your ability to progress or the paths you choose through (non Personal Story) content.

I respectfully disagree.

If someone decides to build to where they can take damage all day long and has their output of damage severely mitigated, I would expect them to have severe problems trying to take a path where it’s expected they have four more people with them.

Vayne.8563:

Halvorn.9831:

Matisse.9356:

Why should the glass be half-full, when it is so much better half-empty, is it not?

Why would you accept a half-full glass when you can ask for a completeley filled one?

There’s no such thing as a half full glass. It’s always all full—half water/half air.

Or half water, half oil.

Nike.2631:

In some ways its just a matter if looking at all the numbers on your character sheet and all the ways your character can interact with the world and using those to create new gates. Imagine people’ surprise when someone realizes a Warrior Knight guard along a dungeon path will simply bow and stand aside (change to a green nameplate) if the first person to approach him has a WvW level of 100 or higher.

Interesting idea, but could lead to problems

“GLF2M, characters with 100+ WvW and/or Jewelry 300+ desired for shortcuts.”

Like this one right here.

I really like the idea of there being options to roleplay your way through things, or use backdoors or secrets if X or Y. I don’t so much like the idea of them being useful enough to where they’re a required thing by groups and filter people they’ll take along.

souless.1935:

In this case I think it’s all in the way which is where the bow comment came from. It seems very logical and concise. I’d love for some criticism.

It could be the toxin episode is more related to the pale tree and the little secret unshared that Scarlett knows about which is an unrelated affair but that is where I would start stretching. I simply don’t see the fit yet In that regard but everything else makes sense

Okay, well here’s what I see in the picture as a whole.

Disclaimer: I did not take part in Twilight Assault or Fractured due to RL time constraints at the time. I cannot and will not offer conjecture towards Scarlet’s influence in these two things other than this:

It’s apparent her appearance in Fractured was a retelling and not riding into events like our characters were through the Mistlock. It’s also apparent her involvement did not cause the accident, and it became an intriguing thing to her.

Ceara started out curious about the world and how things worked, despite the Pale Tree trying desperately to tell her to not push too far. Mostly because it was never about the knowledge as a whole . . . it was always about how useful it was to her. She did not respect any of the knowledge she was given, or the people giving it to her.

This brought her to the experiment which drove her to face up to . . . something . . . which broke her inside and drove her to call herself “Scarlet” instead of Ceara. After that she had a different goal in mind – trying to find answers for a different problem.

The Molten Alliance took the dredge’s mechanical prowess and married it to the magic of the Flame Legion, which allowed her to see whether the two could mix in ways other than how asura worked. She got her answer, and only kept the Molten Alliance on for use as a big stick to hit people with if she needed it.

Next there were the Aetherblades, though circumstances suggest she was working these around the same time. She let Captain Mai Trin have control while watching Inquest technology at work and seeing how they had grown with portal technology. The Pact airships which had been stolen also had a use for her, but once Mai Trin made the mistake of getting caught and exposing the Aetherblades their use was also downgraded to shock troops if needed.

Now comes the Queen’s Jubilee and the watchworks, which she discovers operates on similar mechanics to something else she knows. Humans have nothing on asuran technology so it was child’s play to discern a method of stealing control and twisting them to her ends. The invasions were more to test the efficiency and effectiveness of her “troops” and she found them . . . wanting.

Comes the Toxic Alliance. She has the Obelisk Shards . . . we’re not told how . . . and returns them to the krait with the suggestion she can give them greatness they never could reach without the Shards. She takes what she has of the Nightmare Court’s botanical knowledge and fuses it into creatures to create hybrids and abominations . . . culminating in somehow taking a krait and fusing it with sylvari plants.

Now it’s on to the next experiment, and the next search for knowledge. Scarlet isn’t out to rule the world, she’s out to change it in a massive way. She’s very slowly getting pieces to put together, a theory taking shape she can use for her ends.

DarksunG.9537:

. She has about as much character as JarJar. Yes, on paper there are specific things that JarJar consistently does & owns them as his “personality”. Not too sure we can treat him as a “character with personality” like he was well executed or something.

You’d have been better off going for Neelix.

Here is a character we really tried to but some work into, but it turned out not to come off the way we expected it would to the audience. Don’t worry, we’ll keep trying to push it until it works.

And I’m usually the one defending Scarlet as a character, but I know she wears on people quickly.

Baels.3469:

Igor, bring me . . . the knife! It’s time to dissect this post. For science!

With regards to the notion of improving the feel of professions with sub classes and what not, what about a ‘weapon specialisation’ system – or something of the like. A toggle on-off ability that changes the specialisation of your weapon.

I’d just use the stuff we have already – your weapon skills get an up-arrow and you can filter in skills as you see fit. Again, difficult for those balance testers but for the players wanting skill customization on weapons? Worth it.

The issue I see with adding new weapon skills to existing weapons is the overall balance of those weapons – as they would have been carefully tuned to be the way they are.

But this is the trouble with adding any new potential to weapons. The three basic questions:

- How does this work with the general class idea? (Does it make a ranger less like a ranger to give their bow a melee-range stab with an arrow?)

- How does this work with what the class can theoretically do? (Would said arrow stab be a problem if they immediately switched to a melee weapon set and used it as a lead-off attack?)

- How does this work with what other classes can do against it? (Is this of any use at all in PvP situations, or is it of too much use?)

To put a damper on my own ‘suggestion but not a suggestion’.. The more you think about it, implementation reveals itself to be rather difficult. Weapon skill-sets are in part what separate professions. If the warrior is granted a more defensive hammer, and the Guardian a more offensive – the lines are blurred.

And it really depends on how much blurring the game can actually take before it becomes “everyone can do anything everyone else can just as good”.

I will say that weapon specialisations would be quite approachable through horizontal progression. There could be a whole line of activities (and perhaps an interesting story) involved in the learning of the specialisation.

I think we’re all in this topic on agreement this is a great PvE implementation. PvP and WvW players probably would just rather have the option of getting them without having to saddle up out into the world.

Yes, I think a little PvE is good for the soul, but it’s their choice and they have a right to complain about being forced into other play types to stay competitive. Imagine if the only way to get a Precursor was to get to PvP Rank 20. How loud would the complaining be from people who don’t like PvP or (like me) plain stink?

Where we are learning a specialisation…. (snip)

Going right back to my “order-centric” approach – this is the Vigil’s style of training. You need to get an instructor, and they set you a combat-related task. Naturally, you could approach it how you like but the general thrust is it’s going to involve confrontation.

The Priory on the other hand, would send you to investigate a Point of Interest or Skill Challenge position and report back, a slow trail of riddles culminating in calling the ghost of the mentor from the Mists to teach you the trick. Knowledge leads to power.

The Order of Whispers wants you to go investigate people who are known to be “unusual” in their styles and you are told the general whereabouts of a Whisper Agent who you need to identify yourself to with the code phrase. Then they set you to training on the use of the weapon before demonstrating the skill during a sparring match. Block it, evade it, take it, and the match ends with them congratulating you and unlocking it.

These are just one way in PvE open world to weave each of them in there.

As for how long these activities may take – time gating should be discarded on this one.

If, and this is a big if, we go by my playbook you’d at least need to be with an order before they start training you. Assumedly once you get to the Pact unification, any one of the paths is open to you.

Otherwise, I’d say allow it to happen sometime after you unlock Elite Skills.

That concludes my probably terrible idea.

Not a terrible idea.

Bezagron.7352:

That’s all of it everyone, going to take a break now.

I swear I’m gonna send you cookies if I find a recipe on my Master Chef which is worth using I might settle for ice cream.

Yoh.8469:

Yeah, one thing that constantly has to be taken into account, esp with Control, is Counter Play. Where the skill in question gives as many new (enjoyable) options to the person using it, as the person it’s being used on.

And CC doesn’t really do that, it’s just frustrating most of the time, because you can’t really do anything. Where as certain conditions, like Torment and Confusion have good counter play.

I would hazard saying Torment might, but Confusion if stacked high enough and strong enough will pretty much shut down people. Exhibit A? Level 80 Princess Dolls.

BrotherBelial.3094:

I can’t help but thing that the Devs are throwing hard work out the window with the living world. They spend months bringing us content that just disappears. The only real change to the world so far has been to kessex hills. And I love it. I just wonder if this time/money would have been better spent on replayable content than what we’ve had.

Maybe, but nobody says any of this hard work is wasted. Code which works is never wasted, it’s put to use the next time it’s needed. Similarly with basic ideas forming the Living World.

Would it have been a better choice to have some of the living world as part of your personal story?

No.

Lots of people don’t bother with it, and there are pages of people who promise to never continue the Personal Story because of something. Tying the Living World story so it’s part of the Personal Story?

Like a big giant middle finger to the people who opted to leave it alone.

So you could have relived some of it with an alt, instead of it just being something you’d forget about by this time next year? I’m not sure once this living world story is over that the whole thing will be classed as a success. Do you feel that maybe this has been a wasted opportunity?

I think “Guild Wars Beyond” was a better envisioning of it, but at the same time it was clunky or poorly balanced in places. I also think their first year of the Living Story has been better than other major MMO’s attempts at the same (Everquest, I’m looking at you).

And before anyone mentions it, no, Ultima Online didn’t do much better. Events tended to just be for the top percentile of the servers . . . because as soon as it was in a combat-open zone they’d be the ones either eviscerating the content or ganking players who got something sweet they wanted.

souless.1935:

Your statement has no examples….expand? How does it fit less and less outside the one example? I am proposing all things are linked sub super adventure box and sub an explanation for the tower.

A lot of things are linked. By a single thread: Scarlet.

I’d need to really stop and dive into minute details on the matter, but I missed some of the stuff firsthand so . . . I can’t be entirely sure it’s accurate. It’s why I’ve stayed largely out of nitpicking.

All theorycrafters should be aware, though, of one very important thing: Occam’s Razor. If you’re going out of your way to explain something, maybe it’s something simpler.

DarksunG.9537:

thank you Tobias! I find it offensive when people try find a way to invalidate an opinion because they don’t like how something was said rather than look at the actual content which tends to be far more of a contribution than critiquing someone’s delivery.

Delivery is as important as the message. If you’re being a . . . well, female dog . . . about how you tell someone something is wrong? They’re not going to take it seriously. Some maturity is required to temper the edge lest the message be lost in the reaction of “this one’s so rude”.

Ideally? It wouldn’t matter. But reality bows to psychology and how our brains work when receiving attitudes we don’t like. And if you ignore that reality when you present your case, I don’t have much sympathy if you get pushed out the door while proclaiming the roof is on fire. (Even if I’m the next one out the door.)

That said, I think I agree with your points. I’d also love to see even more attempts to move away from stat progression. I think there is a tendency to forget the only reason stats were ever made up in the first place back in the D&D era was because it was the best thing they could think up at the time.

It was based off wargaming, where most things we think of these days as essential to RPGs didn’t exist. And it still exists in some form because “that’s the way it’s always been”. Though recent editions have tried to staple over it.

But the core concern on that front is: “Sure we could do better, but would it still be the same game?”

I also think Shakkara’s point about too much narrowness in combat style is not a good thing either. I think a major issue with people not feeling flavor/focus is due to the ineffectual nature of Control & Support. Honestly the current control is almost completely useless in PvE & even when it is actually functional it’s so quick & uninteresting that it’s totally unsatisfying. Really, why would you ever have a control ability that puts on a 0.5 sec root? I mean really? Roots don’t even prevent mobs from turning like they are supposed to.

I was about to discuss this with some people off this CDI thread because frankly, it’s WAY off topic for here and deserves its own CDI thread. There’s a lot of problems with Control and Support but they boil down to requiring a heck of a lot more finicky details in code than DPS and they all may break at any point, making it a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I’d love Anet to play Neverwinter. The Control Wizard has to be the absolutely most fun control class I’ve ever played. It’s amazing. Compared to that, GW2 essentially has zero control whatsoever.

I play D&D 4th edition, where a Wizard properly set up can control the battlefield so elegantly and completely the GM pretty much doesn’t even need to be at the table sometimes. I mean, unless they take specific steps to prevent it but that’s a different thing entirely.

Another thing which is fun? Magic The Gathering with a control deck. Especially early ones where a good Blue player would have his opponent asking every action: “may I?” . . . these days it’s almost bad enough you might possibly get it to a point you can control what it is they draw and actively prevent them from having a chance to beat you.

Want to know a secret? Those things are not fun to the person on the other side. So, don’t forget that. There is nothing fun being on the receiving end of a stun lock or other sort of lockdown complete enough to keep you from doing anything other than taking it up good ol’ Talus Chute.

We really need to think about that. As much as “we should be able to do X”, following with “and if X was done to me….”

Yoh.8469:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Well, I guess it depends on where your control would be coming from. If you want One Stat To Rule It All, I would probably say Condition Damage/Duration. In GW1 it was easy as each skill ran of an Attribute, here not so much.

If you had to really sit down and work on it, it would take ripping out the statistics system as is and tinkering with it. Which makes me pine for the simplicity of how Ars Magica handles this sort of thing, or even the somewhat-clunky D&D3.5 method . . .

Both of those things, of course, highly reliant on an actual living person however, rather than code. Sigh.

Ars Magica? I’m not familiar with it, how did it work?

Semi off-topic, semi on-topic. It was a tabletop RPG which revolved around the concept of each player being a magi/wizard in Mythic Europe (basically “All Myths Are True, in a fashion” in Europe Middle Ages). The magic system allowed a lot of creativity but relied on the play group doing a lot of work interpreting things.

Horizontal progression met vertical progression in the sense of each magi had five basic prefixes for spells (create, destroy, control, change, see) and ten basic suffixes for what the effect was intended for (earth, sky, water, fire, senses, mind, human body, animal body, plants, and magic itself). You study to get experience points raising your potential with these so you could generate bigger effects – but smaller ones are incredibly important as well.

There are skills for things not magic which scaled on a different rate of learning and effectiveness, and you use experience points for those. Things like languages, liberal arts, knowledge . . . that fall under the skills.

Experience points are not an open pool, they are accumulated by practicing or studying what you wanted to raise. Wanted to get better at fire magic? Go study it, but while doing that you’re not studying how to create things with magic. How to defend yourself? Sure, but you could be using that time to study writing in French instead…

It is incredibly complex to handle the information and keep track of it, which is why a lot of play groups I was in called it “playing a spreadsheet”. And on top of that, it wasn’t a very active game since you could very easily get sick and die, or get injured and the injury festers into a fatal condition. Or you just fail at magic so hard you wink out of existence.

If you want to look at a skill-oriented game? This is a good choice since your skills and how you make use of them, how you sharpen them, define your character as much as “he only has one eye and walks with a limp” if not more.

Kiof.5710:

I’m admitting that since I didn’t buy gems according to the terms of their promotion that I don’t get the mini.
I also think it should be fixed for future promotions so this doesn’t happen again. Until then I don’t wish to spend money on gems.

I don’t see why both statements can’t coexist.

The odd thing is I did get the backpack skin but not the mini despite $85 in gems. $35 and $50 posted one day apart. Go figure.

See, that’s a better phrasing than above.

I don’t think there’s any way they could fix it without basically throwing out the boundaries for these promotions. There has to be a hard delineation between “in promo time” and “out of promo time” if they’re going to do these things. Either that or cheat and say it’s for December and just give it out to everyone who bought Gems ever. There’s always going to be a guy in your situation just outside the cutoff point who feels they got shafted.

Also, weird, there was a mini involved? Huh.

Kiof.5710:

I know that it was my fault but still terribly disappointed.

I’m not spending another dime on this game until things get straightened out on their end.

Much as I agree it sucks and they probably could have communicated better? These two sentences in the same post kinda sorta suggest even if they do fix it there’s going to be problems in the future.

You can’t fix something if the person goes “I know it’s my fault, but it’s your fault too because . . . ponies.” The most they can do is shrug, pull the lever and dispense you a Quaggan pack, which won’t fix the next time someone does something similar . . . which is again their own doing and not Arenanet’s fault.

Really the only fault I see is they didn’t go “oops, here, have it anyway” after verifying the gems were bought mere days before. Which is less of a fault and more of a case of procedure working correctly.

Yoh.8469:

The question then becomes: What stats would function for control?
I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear yours first.

Well, I guess it depends on where your control would be coming from. If you want One Stat To Rule It All, I would probably say Condition Damage/Duration. In GW1 it was easy as each skill ran of an Attribute, here not so much.

If you had to really sit down and work on it, it would take ripping out the statistics system as is and tinkering with it. Which makes me pine for the simplicity of how Ars Magica handles this sort of thing, or even the somewhat-clunky D&D3.5 method . . .

Both of those things, of course, highly reliant on an actual living person however, rather than code. Sigh.

Kiof.5710:

I am very unhappy with the outcome of the December gem promotion and would like to offer a suggestion so that others, such as myself, won’t be screwed in the future.

I found out about the promotion mid month and remembered buying a lot of gems recently. I checked my bank statement and saw a purchase posted 12/02 for $35 and another on 12/03 for $50. Great I’m covered for both the back pack and the mini.

Wrong!

Turns out that I apparently purchased the gems at the end of November and it didn’t post until then. I even bought $50 more in gems just days before I got the backpack skin and not the mini in the in game email.

Well no more. Until some way can be found to track gem purchases in game I see no reason to purchase more and miss out the next time you run a promotion that we don’t know if we made the cut or not.

Thank you.

Could always buy a smaller amount safely inside December like I did? I think I forwent a trip to Subway in exchange for it.

Or you could do what every banking institution has told me with regards to overdrafts: keep closer track of both when your purchases are made and when they clear.

No, it doesn’t sound like I’m being supportive, and I suppose they could track things better. Well, I suppose you could set it to have a record visible from the Gem Store (“See recent purchases”) but that might not also work if your bank is crediting the charges days after the purchase, it still wouldn’t look like it meets up properly and thus might cause a different set of issues.

“ANet, your system says I bought gems Aug 26th which is before my credit card cycles in finance charges but it got billed after on the 28th and now I’m over the limit because your system lied to me.”

Yoh.8469:

So there are ways to do it, but it’s going to take a fair bit of creativity on Arenanets part.

It will, but it will also take some collaborative behavior of players actually using this stuff instead of going “frick it, Zerker gear”.

Yoh.8469:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

Ah, true true.
But it was a factor. And it did give the game another dimension to work with, one that is now lacking.

And I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing, especially if they were aiming at trimming it down to something more accessible to new players without bogging them down in unnecessary minutae.

Yoh.8469:

But your right about GW1, it did have a lot more options when it came to control, largely because of Energy. Energy denial and manipulation was a huge part of control in that game, heck it even was a part of support by being an energy battery.

Energy denial didn’t matter as much to some classes, from what I recall. Warrior could in theory run without Energy at all for a time until they busted up whatever was denying them and could recharge. Rangers didn’t need a lot of Energy in most builds due to Expertise mitigating their usage (lack of said Expertise made it somewhat questionable to employ Ranger skills outside of the class though).

DarksunG.9537:

How about we just respond to his points? I think he makes some good ones & as far as i can see that’s very useful.

Let’s see?

Shakkara.2641:

The fundamental problems I see with the current mechanics are a very long list but here are a few:

• Levels – the problem with levels is that characters cannot explore the whole world from the start, each zone has a level check. Unlike GW1, Leveling takes a very long time and there is almost no level 80 content. In GW1 Factions and later, only the starter island was low level, the rest was max level content.

Not an issue which was solved by GW1, as GW1 Factions and later was rather heavily gated so one must progress in order to see more of the games. In short, it was also locked by vertical progression through the story.

• Character Stats – Totally uninteresting way of developing a character. Currently, stats > skill (both player skill and the kind of skill you use). Fundamental problems with stats and stat scaling include the dominance of Power as most important stat and the fact that hybrid characters and skills that have both direct damage and condition damage are inherently kitten, as you need two different stats to use them.

Agreeable in that it’s totally uninteresting to develop a character this way, something which D&D has been fighting for ages longer than its “vertical progression problem”. The problem is how currently DPS without conditions is sufficient to do anything while Condition damage just won’t cut it often enough to substitute.

Given it’s been said elsewhere they have something in mind to try to broaden this, I’m going to wait and see.

Also worth noting, GW1 had issues with this too. It was just far more efficient later to go for specific quick-kill built heroes than to bother doing anything yourself. Really got to a point where the player just needed to flag his heroes right and watch the fun . . . let’s not go back there, please?

• Skills being cooldown-based instead of resource based (I play Thief as they’re the only exception). This is going to be a very big problem, as it severely reduces tactical and build choices when they’re going to add more skills. And ensures that almost all the skills they are ever going to add are those with ridiculously long cooldowns.

Assumptions in future design choices, and also forgetting the shenanigans with Energy management and getting around recharges/durations in GW1 left some things really . . . interesting. Not always in a good way.

• Lack of synergy between skills. Skill categories not being used much. No clever skills like Keystone Signet or “On your knees!” that interact with a skill category to make an interesting build with. This is also a problem with the lack of interesting elite skills.

I’m not quite sure how they mean “lack of synergy”, if they mean obvious skill combos (Spirit Shackles + Mind Wrack, Spirit of Failure + inflicted Blind…) or things to load up to smash face with lack of danger (55 Monk)? Yeah I don’t miss those things in regards to any PvP interaction. There were some downright evil things which couldn’t be taken care of.

If talking about them just not quite working well together? Ranger sword can be incredibly useful when utilized by someone paying close attention, and harmonizes well with dagger off-hand I’m told. Warrior Mace/Shield combo worked pretty well for me to tank things I really probably couldn’t have normally.

I don’t know if it’s a lack of synergy or the narrowing of choices down simply making them feel there’s nothing there.

As far as the elite skills, there’s only one or two interesting/useful ones for classes/races and the rest are kind of dull or less useful.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Uh oh…. what other horrors lie in those depths he comes from? Is he another ‘Stripe’?

Where else do you think those ones in Arah which harass the airship come from? Huh? Huh?

Back on topic, my nephew is thinking of getting the game as soon as he has a rig good enough to run it so it’s pretty.

I find a Mac Mini on Bootcamp will handle it fine. And that’s two years old, so a newer one might actually make it look nicer

Name: Garah Emberbane
Affiliation: Blood Legion
Rank: Legionnaire (Temporarily Reassigned)
Age: 22 years
Profession: Warrior

Appearance: A striped pelt with black on tawny fur, Garah resembles most charr males from a first glance. However, closer examination shows his build is a little broad in the shoulders and agile compared to other members of Blood Legion. He has a burn scar on his chest which he sustained during sparring with his former warband, and refuses to discuss how he got it. He favors either colors of the Blood Legion or simple earth tones for his clothing, rarely seen without his armor or weapons at hand.

Training: Garah’s training seems standard for a charr, including sharpshooting skills with a rifle and suppression techniques with a longbow. However, he seems to favor a shield and sword or mace over other equipment. Garah’s position as a Legionnaire has allowed him to call on Blood Legion support from time to time, and they are understandably a cut above others in potential. It should go without saying Garah Emberbane is a force to be reckoned with, though among charr he is not particularly remarkable in skill.

Personality: Garah is brash, a little boastful with a tendency to make bold claims of skill. However, he can back most of these claims up and has of late started to mellow out on the boasting. For most choices he is handed, he will tend to favor forceful solutions; however, it should be noted these solutions are not simply throwing overwhelming brute force at a problem. Rather, more than once they have been calculated to use minimal actual force in a more precise strike.

Friendships: Despite having a sire who was held in high regard inside Blood Legion, Garah has held himself mostly aloof from his warband. The only notable exception is the elementalist Eurayle, whose irreverent behavior managed to strike a chord. The two supported each other well when it came to it, and after the dissolution of that warband Eurayle was among the first to be recruited by Legionnaire Garah Emberbane. Tribune Brimstone also has been seen supervising the young warrior closely, showing an inordinate amount of interest.

Assignment Record: Garah has been assigned as liason to the Vigil, and as such Eurayle has been given a temporary promotion to Legionnaire in his stead. Before that, it is known that Garah acquited himself well in numerous skirmishes with the Flame Legion in the Plains of Ashford. Specific commendations are difficult to obtain, but there is talk of events around the Facula Castrum near Lake Feritas.

Current Assignments: Currently Garah is a liason to the Vigil and is investigating matters concerning Citadel security and the Risen.

Shadow Phage.9084:

Hammerguard.9834:

Those were good times. The whole build was focused on the pet and the player was basically playing the pet.

Always was funny to just run around with a couple defense skills and auto attack while my Dire Crab mauled someone to death just as fast as a war could. Plus, the selection of pets was awesome. I loved my dire rat and crab. Not to mention the huge-kitten Rainbow Phoenix.

My Hearty Wolf I never stopped having until the Menagerie. I tamed it back in Pre-Searing Ascalon and it was the constant companion for my ranger. Any other pet didn’t really feel . . . incredibly nice to me.

I did eventually run around with a Black Moa when I got my Black Moa Chick for pure redundant moa-ness. To me the pets in GW1 suffered from no real identity other than appearance.

It’s more fun than Starbound, not as engrossing as Minecraft (“Wait, is the sun coming up?!”), but holding my attention better than Christmas purchases.

Also cheaper than “cardboard crack”, that is Magic The Gathering, where I wind up planning every Friday for the usual sad end.

DrDivine.5378:

You didn’t like Orr? Why? xD

When it’s abandoned from people trying to do events, it’s really hard to navigate in places and some events which remain up permanently cannot be handled alone to clear them out. It makes zone completion . . .

. . . difficult

These are in no particular order.

1. The addition of Ascended gear in its fragmented, staggered system. I dislike this more than anything else about it. (Though it not being just a strict side-grade from Exotic, just with Infusion slots, is a close second.)

2. World completion requiring WvW. Some servers are destined to have to do this the hard way, others have it easier. Definitely a roadblock for many servers’ populations.

3. Being able to trade Legendaries on Black Lion. This is, in my mind, one oversight which was not fully comprehended as a potential issue until it was done.

4. Implementation of Champion Bags coming so late in the game. Why these were not thought of earlier and included, I have no clue.

5. Events with non-player input achieve a known default state, usually failure. In some abandoned zones, this becomes an issue for those trying to move around and being unable to just handle it themselves.

DrDivine.5378:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

DrDivine.5378:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Glad to hear about new players. Really hope they enjoy their time here and feel it’s worth the price of admission. Hope to hear neat stories about the two newbies and their guide.

As a reminder, please remember not to feed Tequatl after midnight.

Thanks! So far they’re really enjoying the game, we’re all college students so it’s nice to have an mmo we can dip in out of without bad que times and a whole lot of content to explore.

There’s a lot of content to explore, just don’t get discouraged. Three (assumedly) can do a good amount of open world content together until you reach Orr.

Thanks for the advice, even though I love this game, I’m aware of both the praise and criticism and told them about both ahead of time. They like that the game focuses more on the journey rather than just racing to the end.

It’s one of the things I enjoyed, too. (Except for Orr. I did not enjoy Orr. :P)

What was fun though from a Guild Wars veteran standpoint, was the nods in places to things not immediately apparent. The Ruins of Holy Demetria, for instance, was something which drew my attention. So was “Aurora Ruins” way out west.

DrDivine.5378:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Glad to hear about new players. Really hope they enjoy their time here and feel it’s worth the price of admission. Hope to hear neat stories about the two newbies and their guide.

As a reminder, please remember not to feed Tequatl after midnight.

Thanks! So far they’re really enjoying the game, we’re all college students so it’s nice to have an mmo we can dip in out of without bad que times and a whole lot of content to explore.

There’s a lot of content to explore, just don’t get discouraged. Three (assumedly) can do a good amount of open world content together until you reach Orr.

The Great Al.2546:

I also have to echo the sentiment (in my opinion, also as a software developer) that player housing doesn’t really seem ‘worth it’ to build and also, doesn’t really expand the horizontal progression ‘journey’ in and of itself.

Not at first, but it can be the starting “hub” so to speak and expanded on from there. Which honestly is how I’d work with it if I were coming up with an inclusive model for how to handle it.

Good thing I’m not.

It’s been made fairly clear by a big chunk of the community that many (most) of the current playerbase is very willing and able to spend $40 bucks for expansion content (new zones please), so I don’t know if something like player housing can be justifiable to build unless much of the content is from the gem store, which is not going to make many players happy.

I am willing, but I am unable and have trepidation going down that road again. The game already costs about as much as your average console title, the more getting added on to the “price of admission”, the more daunting it becomes to people just starting.

If given a choice between new zone content and the housing/horizontal progression? I’d probably want the new zones but accept the latter . . . because I don’t want another six months, another year, whatever listening to people bang that drum from soapboxes and how ANet is just in it for the gear treadmill.

And no matter what happens, I will still unfortunately see still more complaining about how the devs don’t listen to the players and are ruining the game. So, meh.

At the end of the day, the problem is that housing only appeals to a small percentage of the GW2 population, whereas things like new skills, new zones, and new items would appeal to practically everyone and are probably all cheaper to develop.

I’d almost stake money that’s not the case, considering the first two would take a lot of assets and time. And depending on how the housing is approached, it could be incredibly cheaper or only marginally more expensive in time and resources.

Glad to hear about new players. Really hope they enjoy their time here and feel it’s worth the price of admission. Hope to hear neat stories about the two newbies and their guide.

As a reminder, please remember not to feed Tequatl after midnight.

souless.1935:

When you think about it this theory does wrap up everything nicely into a bow. Her portal research, the reactor, if she is searching for for the lines connecting them the probes fit into it, fractals of the mists could be some test or leading spark for scarlet…the only thing that does not are the toxic part of the show.

The problem is it ties everything neatly with a bow, with at least one known exception. I figure if you look at it more closely with details, it fits less and less.

Here’s the thing, we’re solving a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces and trying to get it to make sense. We don’t have the majority of the puzzle, even. We know only so much and her goals are unknown.

While we can assume everything she does fits into achieving a goal I present there are likely some things, or maybe most things, are unrelated to her end goal and exist only to either throw roadblocks in the way of people trying to stop her OR to try alternate paths which don’t work out.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Next time you want to throw stones at people over this issue, I suggest you look at which side actually got their way and which side didn’t.

I still don’t have Ascalon back in the hands of mankind. For that reason alone, asura killing will continue until it happens. If I run out of asura, I’ll start on the quaggans and skritt.

Now on a more serious note…

I just put trust Arenanet realizes how badly this whole thing about Ascended (right now the only vertical progression anyone actually cares about) was received and cool it off. Given the tone of the CDI thread? I’d say they’re aware and really trying to figure out some way of avoiding a solely vertical progression in the future.

Did manage the dungeon instance of the Last Day solo, but it took a long time and died a lot to the Princess Dolls and Toy Soldiers. The Plush Griffons took a while to handle since I had to solo three at once in the helm area and wound up having to restart it from the bottom as they nulled all my progress in securing it when I was stuck outside the ring.

Toxx however, was easy.

JBDanger.2603:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

JBDanger.2603:

What if Scarlet was Caithe’s evil doppleganger?

What if Scarlet/Ceara becomes Caithe’s rebound relationship and it’s Faolain who kills her?

Sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer

No, that would also include Rytlock bodyslamming Logan through the coffee table while Eir facepalms.

. . . why do I get the feeling more people would watch that than an actual episode of Jerry Springer?

On topic:

I think housing’s ETA of when it might get done depends on how detailed a process it is for the player to get involved. If it’s a simple “movie set” which is just all prefabricated and all you do is get access? Easier and sooner, but most will be unhappy with the implementation.

The modular design, or a sort where it’s somewhat streamlined so it can have effort into making it more uniquely yours instead of House 334? More time to develop and test out the various ways it could break or be broken, but you’d get more people happy.

Something like a construction kit where you can access assets and shape the house by hand in a unique fashion? Probably simple to open up but incredible amounts of time to test it and potentially support players who send in “my house is bugged and I don’t know why!” reports, in continuance. Plus side? Total freedom to work on your house for yourself!

(And it might give rise to a culture of players who master the building toolkit and give tips, acting as authorities on “how to work on your house”. Kind of like how every circle of Minecraft players inevitably has “The Redstone Guy”.)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Note I am currently waiting for Teq to spawn with my guild and therefore will probably disappear soon (-:

Chris

Remember your training.

. . . trip the charr running away next to you so you can get away.

JBDanger.2603:

What if Scarlet was Caithe’s evil doppleganger?

What if Scarlet/Ceara becomes Caithe’s rebound relationship and it’s Faolain who kills her?

Would I? I even have a four step plan.

Step 1, recover Gwen Thackeray from the Mists and get her a flute.
Step 2, tell her Ascalon City is in ruins and the charr built a citadel on top of Rin.
Step 3, . . .
Step 4, “Welcome back to New Ascalon, humanity!”

FenrirSlakt.3692:

Asura already control the world.
They shared their gates and waypoints to other races, and now that these are so deeply ingrown, taking them away would shatter the economy and cause general disruption everywhere.
Where do you think all that WP money goes (also, lorewise there’s a cost for using gates, too).

Now, they’re not evil, they just want to be on top, and from an economic point of view, they’re almost there.

Not while Captain Evon Gnashblade, defender of Capitalism, is on the case and in charge of Black Lion!

timmyf.1490:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’d love to see it too, but I’d like to somewhat avoid the glut of skills GW1 had were you could literally have 500 skills and no idea what to do with them, or any idea where to start short of trying everything and getting catcalled as you do.

This is a good point! When ArenaNet gets around to adding build templates – something I’d say we all want/need – one very useful feature would be Suggested and Popular builds. This would be a great way to help guide players toward useful builds without forcing them into a subclass structure.

It’s something I say often about GW1. The huge pool of skills you have access to offers a lot of freedom to work on what’s good for synergy or unexpected emergent build possibilities. But to “the uninitiated”, it’s an almost paralyzing breadth of choice which sometimes can lead to them putting skills which don’t work for them and thus frustration.

I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not good.

If we want horizontal progression, it can’t just be “here’s a box of basic LEGO bricks” without an idea of what can be done. I’d prefer it like modern kits I pick up, where there are sometimes two alternate sets of directions (or more) which use the parts in the box to make two entirely different things.

timmyf.1490:

I’m not a game developer, but I have experience in coding and IT project management, and what Sytherek is saying is important. I certainly would not pay $25 for housing, and I’d bet the $10-20/month I spend on gems is at the high end already. (I have ten character slots, all bag and bank slots, a custom arena, a Royal pass, gemstone armor, a Jade weapon, etc.) I buy lots of stuff from the gemstore, all with real-world dollars.

On the other hand, if I could buy a bonus mission pack in which I travel into the Maguuma to learn the fate of the White Mantle or into the Charr Homelands or north in the Shiverpeaks to fight Jormag, I’d gladly drop $25. As would, I suspect, many more players.

If ArenaNet can give us that for free, then awesome. But passing up on building meaningful content in favor of housing? That’s a scary thought.

Somehow I get the conclusion from listening to them it’s not “passed up on” so much as “not having been done yet” through their current framework.

As for “meaningful content or housing” . . . I’d like both. It’s not hard to pace if you release it in the shadow of a LS part that’s continuing past the two week window (like Tower of Nightmares did, so Fractured snuck in while it was still going on).

Also, while we’re collecting thoughts for LS story based content – I want a LS where humans take back Ascalon. Or destroyers flatten Rata Sum. Or charr set fire to the Pale Tree with ghostfire.

Never will happen but I’d have fun.

MRA.4758:

I still haven’t seen a single proposal of a subclass specialization system that actually helps to improve build diversity. From what I have seen it might be far more likely that such a system rather fences you in and forces you to take particular roles. (“hey, bro, if you’re a ranger/druid then you have to make a toughness/healing power build, everything else is just plain stupid!!!1!”)

. . . my little fragments on the topic didn’t do any such thing. It just proposed figuring out build archetypes through the five trait lines, and wouldn’t hem you in but allow you to use it as an option.

Hence, I would rather like to see a form of horizontal progression that helps to generate more viable spec combinations for all classes, instead of a system that might lock you into a fixed and/or preconceived role.
~MRA

I’d love to see it too, but I’d like to somewhat avoid the glut of skills GW1 had were you could literally have 500 skills and no idea what to do with them, or any idea where to start short of trying everything and getting catcalled as you do.

Just be very methodical and equip something with a wide swing arc.

Shakkara.2641:

Vayne.8563:

They’re different kind of games. Most of the best sandbox MMOs require a commitment most people can’t make. Take Eve for example. How many casual Eve players have you met?

Because of this, sand box games will usually have lower populations than themepark games. They’re just more demanding.

And they’ll probably all have open world PvP which a whole lot of people don’t like.

I disagree. Sandbox games can be casual and can lack PVP. Just look at Ultima Online. Everquest Next. Wildstar.

Don’t throw up Ultima Online as “casual” and “lacks PvP”, when they launched with the concept of players being able to do whatever they could get away with outside guard protection. Or the “PvP” of, oh, tamers who would tame monsters and release them on top of people to get around “no PvP”.

Its casual bits were somewhat stifled over requiring some rather immense grind to do things, and the ever-present risk of being killed getting ore to make metal to work your Blacksmithing.

Kevan.8912:

Shakkara.2641:

Vayne.8563:

All themepark MMOs are going to run into the same problem. There won’t be enough content to play, and therefore, people will have to repeat stuff until new stuff comes out. I don’t really see any way around that.

Well yes, but that’s why we need sandbox MMOs, or themepark-sandbox hybrids (even better). Games that allow the players to create the content or allow for a lot of emergent gameplay.

it’s a good “study” of the mmo situation.
maybe sandbox games appeal to a very little population, or need open world pvp, and all of this is difficult to apply to famous trademarks,

EvE Online has open world PvP after a fashion, from what I hear. It also is a game I won’t touch with a ten foot pole because it is incredibly demanding of constant attention if you don’t want to wind up dead or trapped.

There’s also DayZ and Rust shaping up to be almost like each other in the “sandbox open world PvP” matter. Quite a lot of interesting stories out of those games, but “fair” is not what those games are. I’d go so far as to say “fun” is all a matter of whether you’re victim or victimizer in them.

Shakkara.2641:

Conski Deshan.2057:

- Stats were in guildwars 1, they were very simplified but there.

No, they had an attribute system. Which is very similar to the overhaul of the trait system I propose now.

Also, stats were not on gear, with the exception of the “20% chance to get +1 to attribute x” mod on certain items.

Sure there were; what exactly do you view as “stats”? There were the +Armor mods you could get, +Damage, +Enchantment Duration, +Energy, +Health, -Recharge time . . .

It’s just that most of them were fairly small in effect, except for +Health or +Energy. There was a reason Runes of Vigor and Radiant Insignia were desired.

Yes, and I said “MOST” not “ALL”. It also had plenty of skills that had no cooldown, like adrenal skills. Or most of the assassin skills that effectively had no recharge that you’d notice, UNLESS some other skill interfered with them. Most skills had ways to recharge them instantly (Keystone Signet, Dragon Slash, “On your Knees!” or bypass the cooldown (Echo, etc).

If I recall, thieves don’t have CD on their skills now, instead requiring Initiative to use them. Also, my ranger almost never had to worry about cooldowns or energy on a couple builds Expertise could be so much fun.

There is no rock/paper/scissors, its all about how smart you are and what creative builds you can come up with. If you only use other people’s builds, yes, those are rock-paper-scissors…

There is one, and there is a “trinity role” of sorts involved in GW1’s design. Monks and Ritualists healed or ressed. Paragons could in a pinch, but they weren’t good at it. Classes alone generally didn’t have great healing for themselves, and sort of relied on someone else helping. The game was designed for a group effort of 4-12 people/characters, with a very limited option to “run solo” unless you outclassed the content considerably (Level 20 through Plains of Jarin alone.)

You got a point here. So maybe the 20 levels like in GW1, that you can play through in a few hours as a big tutorial, wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

We did discuss this. Factions could be pushed through in a few hours, Nightfall could not, and Prophecies required shenanigans to do it early. (Read: “Legendary Defender of Ascalon”).

The most important things levels were good for there were metering out how many Attribute Points you got and how strong your weapons could be. (You could not, for instance, use a Req 9 weapon/offhand by level 10 without some sacrifices in potential.)

That’s not an excuse, that only makes them either lazy or unqualified to work on an MMO.

I just have to ask as a rebuttal – if they allowed things like the 55 Monk, the Perma-SF Sin, and Spirit Tower to run rampant in WvW or sPvP now, how would we not be calling them similarly unqualified to work on an MMO to let these unbalanced options go live? I seem to recall comments similar to “they’re not qualified to be running this” every balance patch in GW1 too.

No, not at all. Lol.

Cooldown only means you cannot use particular skill X for Y time.

Energy mechanic means that you must choose to use skill X OR skill Y OR skill Z as you only have the energy to use one. Or that you can spam skill X Y times in a row but then have to wait Z time until you have enough energy to use any skills at all.

Unless you broke Energy in some ways. An Expertise ranger built just right would use certain attacks for “free” (use 2 energy, regenerate it swiftly) and could alternate them until target was dead if left alone. I may still have the build sitting around somewhere, it was a neat theory but really only worked in Normal Mode reliably against enemies.

And of course, the other side of breaking Energy was to run a denial build which would burn it off on the opponent. Spirit Shackles and other Mesmer skills were almost singularly devoted to messing with an opponent’s Energy pool.

Well that doesn’t mean that this game doesn’t have very fundamental problems. Can either fix these problems, or drop work on them completely and focus on other parts of the game.

But building on top of broken systems is not a good idea. See the post above. Subclasses right now would only result in DPS optimization, nothing more.

Your point is valid but I don’t think moving backwards to systems in GW1 is an answer. It was an entirely different style of game than this one, by intent.

Signet of Forums.4397:

Well, I didn’t think the part where you had to have the Signet of Capture already taking up the slot of one of your skills on your skill bar in advance was what I would call “elegant,” but it was interesting aside from that.

It was worse at the start – you had to use it as the skill was being used which meant sometimes you couldn’t get it if the AI refused to use the skill. It got changed later.

Though it did allow for some curious PvE work with the potential for up to four Elites on your bar if you plotted it out