I rather make the assumption that the number of incoming raiders is smaller than the number of casual players who left because they did not like the new direction of GW2. Anet already heavily backpeddaled with Hot and both of the new maps.
Disliking raids and disliking HoT/WvW/PvP are not the same thing. You link them, apparently, because you dislike both.
My Silver Knight and Tiger ranks disagree with your assumption that I dislike wvw and don´t play pvp. i would be superhappy if Wvw was the endgame of GW2 for example, it very much reminds me of RvRvR from DAOc, but it has some visible flaws and has always been the stepchild.
I also have to agree with Ohoni that raiding is not fun for everyone who tried it. I tried both VG and Escort to see how it is and I find both of these events already tiresome and boring for multiple reasons. I would probably ragequit if I had to face the tougher mobs and wipe even more often for nothing.
@NikeEU
Thank you for your input. I did not assume that raids did not bring in new players. I agree with you when you say that they brought in people who formerly did want nothing to do with GW2.
I rather make the assumption that the number of incoming raiders is smaller than the number of casual players who left because they did not like the new direction of GW2. Anet already heavily backpeddaled with Hot and both of the new maps.
I am a veteran of the first week of GW2, played GW1 too and even I felt alienated from the raids. So when I am not so webbed to the game anyway and I ain´t a raider, I surely would not have continued playing it if I had arrived at the game in the last year with all the drama involved if i were a new casual player.
I don’t know, I don’t think it’s unusual for the game to settle a bit after HoT, but seeing as how the biggest drop-offs came when raids were added, and this drop-off leveled out a bit after LSs3 was added, I think that at the very least the claims that the raids were good for the game are well exaggerated.
Not correct. The drop happened in Q2 2016. This was after the initial two quarters of increased revenue likely due to sales of HoT. Some of those HoT sales were to players who wanted to raid. In fact, anyone who wanted to raid had to buy HoT.
The fact is that HoT in general did not appeal to as broad a group of players as ANet might have liked. The expressed reasons included: linked core/no discount for vets; timers on meta events; HoT mob difficulty; verticality/difficult-to-navigate maps; perceived grind; no free character slot; and not enough content for the price. In all of that dissatisfaction, there were few if any statements that someone wasn’t buying HoT because it introduced a raid.
Then there was the lengthy content drought. Some people want to blame that on raids, but that’s ludicrous. A small fraction of the live team worked on the raid full time. A similar number of devs were moved to LS production from LW 2.0 production in March, and their inclusion did not advance the timetable for LS3 at all. Much more likely was that the effort needed to revamp HoT to address some of the complaints was to blame for the drought.
Your confirmation bias is showing again.
Although what you say is largely true (especially HoT being light on content, a plattformer and rushed out of the door), the part where you write that raids were only met with hoorays and cannon salut is certainly not(exaggeration of course^^) . Numerous people wrote in several hotly contested topics back then that they fled from other games to escape raids and will leave again. Wvw and PvP both tanked significantly after HoT too, as did revenue in general.
You are also right when you say that you can´t attribute the drop of revenue on raids only for the reasons you stated. But I am curious how you explain how visibly(I don´t know what happened behind the curtain of Anet of course) designing largely around content for a minority of players and only threw some morsels for all the other game modes except another minority content, ESport PvP, can lead to a growing player base? I am seriously curious about that.
Please refrain from using the many people raid approach, even the large number you can assume from Anet saying raids did well makes them not a majority of players.
(edited by Torolan.5816)
HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?
While both parts of this analysis make sense they seem contradictory.
You blame a perceived drop in player numbers on the uppermost ‘hardcore’ players finishing the raid and leaving because there is nothing else for them to do, but then say hardcore players are unlikely to spend much money anyway because they can use gold and most sales will come from casual players.
If the people who are spending most of the money are not the ones who quite playing surely people quitting should have a minimal impact?
Yeah well, it is indeed a bit weird, maybe I can elaborate my opinion a little bit beside what Astralporing already wrote.
My guess is that GW2 began to market HoT with higher danger, no slot, new class, new systems, different form of map making, gliding, the idea of the expansion itself and finally, after years of waiting for some people, raids.
*The first things (higher danger) obviously and for me personally a little bit surprising came back to kick them so hard in the family jewels that they were forced to tame HoT significantly(champs turned into veterans for example) to make it sustainable and playable.
*No slot, new class, new class system and different forms of map making are all on their own by their very nature already potential recipes for disaster and super controversial.
*Raids turned this game upside down, even raiders will agree with me on that one.
I am pretty sure that the message that raids were coming drove many people away already because they had sought refugee from said raids in the game, and some more left when the content drought hit every aspect beside raids and pvp, justified or not. The people that replaced them were supposedly neither as numerous as they were, nor did they in general need to pay real money and were as dedicated gamers probably already be more willin ot hop games and rejoin later when another raid comes in. A raider from another game also probably knows how to farm hard in a given game as efficient farming and raiding go hand in hand in most MMOS.
tl,dr: There are less raiders than casual gamers with open wallets.
HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.
I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?
We could achieve more balanced competition in a world-versus-world setting if we had more pieces to join together with the World Linking System. It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes. You may recall this initially was mentioned by Tyler a few months ago.
For example, world populations currently look something like this:
• World 1: 95%
• World 2: 82%
• World 3: 81%
• World 4: 60%
• World 5: 30%
• World 6: 10%Since our final world total needs to be divisible by 3 because we need a team for each color—Red, Blue, and Green—we either need to avoid linking any of the worlds, or link some worlds even if the result is that they have the advantage of a larger population.
• Worlds 1+6: 105%
• Worlds 2+5: 112%
• Worlds 3+4: 141%After linking, the difference in population between the highest and lowest teams is much narrower, but the third rank server still has significantly more population than the server that previously was ranked first. Also, the result of this theoretical world linking is that all worlds are now above our goal population cap, and probably have moderate to heavy queues.
If we instead had twice as many worlds, but if each had about half the population, it would be much easier to create linked teams with similar populations. This would lead to better matchups for everyone, and encounters would be less predictable. In this scenario, we would allow players free transfers to the new empty worlds for a period of time. These worlds would start out linked so that they wouldn’t begin in an empty state in a match-up. We would lower the player population cap on all worlds so that more worlds would become and stay “Full.” The result would be that guilds that want to expand would have an excellent option to do so with a move to these new open worlds.
Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?
WVW always seemd like the succesor to DAOC to me, but much better. No buff bot for us people who have only one account! Still it does not have the magic of DAOC somehow, even after i take my tinted nostalgia glasses off.
1. Adding more servers seems illogical to me as you basically eliminated a number of servers some time ago. I can understand the idea, but it does not battle what I personally perceive as the main problem:
*WvW is without consequence. There is no hall of fame for it. In this sense, and this sense alone, it is the most casual game mode ever, and there is not attempt from Anet to try to change this inmto something actually worth fighting for. As I did not play wvw in the first year of GW2, I did not even know there is bonus stuff available from the mode. Maybe it is also a little bit of a communication problem what wvw can and should do? I am not sure about the last one.
*If my wvw guild would disband tomorrow, nobody would know it. There is no place to proudly look at and say:
“Hey, I helped building this.”
*If my guild was saving the servers win for weeks, nobody would know it some months ago after we disband. A chronic of the server people, operated by volunteers maybe, would be nice.
*Having a chance to build something. In DAOC keeping a tower even costed points, but people came to defend it anyway for some reason. Without TS, we agreed via map chat with other guilds who would take the tower next when your points ran out.
Guilds need meaning except giving a +5 bonus to do something.
2. Glicko has to go in it´s current form where points are added to servers. It is easy to manipulate, but the problem is indeed very complex.
I would maybe let players do the work for you, choose guilds you know are dedicated to the game and let them form alliances(blue/red/green as now) with other dedicated guilds and recruit freelancer fighters from two pools(guild wo flags itself as wvw guild/players with no guild) of volunteers who want to play wvw for the respective alliance.
The freelancers without guild could change every month or so, and a very dominant alliance can recruit only a handful or no mercenaries at all after a certain point of success.
I still rememember how proud I was when we were invited into the largest alliance of the Salisbury sever in DAOC. There is not much room for feelings like that in GW2 wvw, sadly.
3. I am already on a small server. If the guild moves, I would probably move too.
Edit: This post would probably be better suited for the world linking topic of the op.^^
(edited by Torolan.5816)
The majority of actual raiding guilds don’t even touch the easier modes and the vast majority of players who do play the easier modes do not touch the higher difficulty modes. That’s very easy to check if you see the world first clears are on hard mode versions while the number of people who finish the easy modes are a lot more than the people who do the harder modes (no shock there).
I’m not really sure what your point is, but everything you said in there sounds really great. Let’s import that all to GW2, stat!
The point was that those who do the higher difficulty Raids in WoW do not use the easier difficulties to train for them, they just go to the higher difficulty versions directly -that’s what the world first and speedclears appearing on hard mode first and not on easy mode first mean.
And those who do the easier mode Raids do not then move to the higher difficulties but stay and finish the lower difficulty versions. That’s what the difference in audience between the easy mode and the hard mode means, easy mode has more players.
Makes sense?
And this is a problem because of? I am not really interested in easy modes, I would just like to understand the problem with them beside ressource allocation.
Devaluation of the hard raid? It is still the hard raid.
Harder to recruit? The point of hard raids is that dedicated people do them, so why would you want to include the less skilled/interested players anyway?
I’ve reached the cap and am extremely thankful that there is a cap. It means that I don’t have to chase some infinite AP source if I want to remain competitive on the AP leaderboard.
A Madonna song taught me something valuable long ago:
“Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the opinion of another.”
I don´t really see why you should be bothered by a raised cap. If you are worried about staying competitive, you have to deliver day and day, isn´t that the mantra of raiders and achievment hunters in general?
What Malediktus, you or me want should be not really important for Anet. I rank around 90th on my server and have probably played as long as the both of you did too, the difference why you have 30K+ and I have 24K is that there are things I would not touch with a 10 foot pole, so you loose some points on the way.
Many people are going to play less when they reach the cap, I have seen it happen multiple times. Of course I did not ask them all or have a fancy statistic, but you know as good as I do that it does happen. I am about to reach it soon too and I will spend probably much less time in the game then. I don´t raid, dislike PvP to a certain degree and wvw is a business that has ups and downs, so without collection,s the things to do in GW2 that are not of a social nature are pretty fast to look over.
Good call for stronghold. Skyhammer is just ugly in it´s current form, i am cautiously curious for a revamped version.
You should know by now that Anet does not really value it´s veterans and design for actual gamers. Most actual players probably have never seen any of the skins and miniatures you listed so they probably selected a few items, threw them in and were good with it.
It is also a very good idea of Anet to make some of the old rarer items loose worth on the TP by including them in the BL chests. I think it takes two to buy a skin for hundreds or thousands of gold. But my compassion for the crowd that buys, sells and rebuys again like wall street banker has some severe limits.
So Anet should have looked specifically into your wardrobe to see what you have already unlocked?
Lol.
According to your own rules of achievements being worthy or not, you did not have the luck, dedication or persistence to get the scarlet items when they were available.
Or maybe you did not play GW2 by then(I know you did, you just had bad luck with RNG probably), but the answer stays the same:
Tough luck. ^^
Technically, the pro raid group is right. raids are accesible.
You just have to people that are willing to include you in their schedule, which means you have to change your schedule, habits, maybe style of play and watch you tube videos. If you do all of this and are not afraid to ask strangers for a social place in thier group there is probably indeed a place for you.
Despite me being an adamant opponent of raids, I was asked multiple times to come along and was actually dragged kicking and screaming into them a few time by friends who raid, from VG to escort. Even when it quite bugs me that I won´t get the armor, the effort is just not worth the gain for me, but I think if you really are persistent, you will get the raid achievements one day.
As a hamster type of player, I more than welcome the changes to BL chest. I have dozens of boosters either totally useless for me or so useful that I don´t use them often or even store tzhem away in the bank.^^
You forgot an option in your pull:
- Delete daily achievement points from the game since dailies are not achievements.
Neither are the vast majority of all the other ‘achievements’ in this game.
I’ve seen you state this many times, It’s not going to happen, nor should it.If we removed AP from every achievement that’s not really an achievement, then getting decent AP rewards would be pretty much impossible.
You are wrong. Look up the definition of achievement, even trivial stuff such as killing ambient creatures can be considered an achievement. Trivial does not neccessarily contradict the meaning of achievement. Mind you I am not against adding (more) harder achievements you can be proud of, I suggested that many times. It is just Anet that chooses to keep adding 95%+ trivial achievements. There is definitely something wrong if Anet releases a living story episode (for more hardcore people this extends to raids, too) and you can complete everything in one evening.
So doing 3 lousy little things for dailys is less of an achievement than visiting the tailor for cultural armor once?
It is actually very easy to smear dirt on most achievements:
*Raids. You got carried.
*Dungeons. You bought all of them.
*Open world: You loitered around, gave a volley with your longobw and got the kill.
*ls2. You got carried. Funnily enough, most people actually were carried to their season 2 reward in my guess.
*Jumping puzzles. You bought a mesmer.
*PvP. You got killed nonstop but captured points. Or people carried you.
*Wvw. You were afking while your castle was attacked and your pet hit an invader in defense.
There are a few of them that show both commitment and are trivial all at once, like every kill 5000 creatures with certain weapon.
Some are just trivial like logging in for a beer that is brought ot you by mail.
Doing adventures is an actual achievement by this standard because nobody can carry you and you can´t buy it if you stay true to the rules of Anet. I don´t know how many of these actually are in the game, maybe 1000 points?
Having said that, the cap is just stupid and people who had to hunt every AP of the list of dailies should probably ask themselves what´s wrong with them instead of asking for a cap to protect them from themselves.
Why does Lege armor have to be tied to Raids?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
What, and alienating every non-raider is perfectly fine? I definitely feel alienated right now. In a game that once was designed for players like me.
It still is designed for the common player.
You’ve just chosen willingly or otherwise not to do this content. Unless you’re somehow saying the common player is too inept to do basic problem solving or moving or listening, or heck just putting finger to keyboard in general.
It is not. Raids were advertised with “Buckets of tears”, I read that with my on eyes when they were announced. Some joker in higher management probably looked at stagnating numbers and convinced the other higher ups that raids were needed instead of a game for the casual player with open world updates and dungeons to get some share of the raid group. Something does not have to be difficult to be interesting, it can have an intersting background for that example. But this requires imagination, so it is of course harder to make.
Just because you are good at something you like does not mean that everyone can or wants to do it like you. Plenty of people do things they love but suck doing it, it´s just having a hobby. Most people probably have relatives or are guilty themselves of playing a sport or something like chess despite being overweight, lazy or unsuited for it and still having a blast while doing it.
If you want to be a professional in your hobby, good for you. I personally see no need to be a pro in one of my hobbies and train intensively for it.
Why does Lege armor have to be tied to Raids?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
I can remember how you defended HoT over and over again, and that always includes raids for me. Maybe not for you, fair enough. I meant to say that you are a long time supporter of the game, not exclusively raids.
But please tell me the difference between me saying that features slowly causes you to drift away from defending Anets decisions and your statement of a changing direction that does not appeal to you? Isn´t that basically saying the same?
Why does Lege armor have to be tied to Raids?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
There are people suportive or raids even in this thread saying that they should get an exclusive reward, maybe i could have indeed replaced best with exclusive. It was not my idea, but I knew already back then that it would return with a vengeance one day. and this is not only about legendary armor, there are more than enough people asking for extraordinary rewards for raids like gold.
Dispute the usefulness of legendary armor all day if you want. For you it is a skin as you can´t change runes too, for me it is an armor that has a convenience feature my ascended armor has not.
It is more of an item for casual gamers anyway until there is also a rune change, so the reason that it should exclusively stay in raids where meta and specialization is king is what again?
If it was an actual skin, you would have my support in making it exclusive to raids. But hiding a whole option of armor behind one exclusive content is just wrong. It was wrong with the ascended backpiece in fractals then, and it is wrong in raids now.
Why does Lege armor have to be tied to Raids?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
You know that a game goes on a very, very narrow path if guys like Vayne, a rather notorious supporter comes around and joins the people who think that a majority of features accumulated over time left a bad taste in their mouth.
What some people Astralporing, Ohoni, myself and some other guys I can´t remember right now have tried to tell the rest of you from the day of the announcement on that raids were confirmed and would have legendary armor exclusive to them is elitist and exclusive if you are not willing or able to dedicate yourself to raiding has now finally dribbled through to the people who it may actually concern as it went online now.
The reasoning stayed always the same however:
1. We are raiders, we deserve the best reward. I knew that this would come to haunt us from the get go, despite supporters of raids vehemently disputing it as they were looking for the challenge only. Look back a year in the forum and you will see where I am coming from.
2. 99% is casual, 1% is not. Give it to us. Ok.
3. Legendary armor is not a carrot for a game mode that can not stand on his own feet because of it´s difficulty. Even supporters are beginning to realize this now with multiple threads showing up from people that can not come into raids and others who always tell them how to comer into raids with the same idea. Most often this is very tiresome to read, but sometimes I do it just for the heck of it or because it sometimes turns outright ironically funny.
4. Every MMO has raids. I always enjoyed this the most because every MMO has also level progression and raises the level cap, why not also have this here? The outrage against this idea is always hillarious.
(edited by Torolan.5816)
Non Raiders blocked from XP bar spirit shards
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
- Out of all content in Guild wars 2 only raids are tuned to the point where people feel the need to exclude others.
I suppose you have never played in old CoF runs, or Aetherblade path runs, or the days when Tequatl and the TTW were introduced. Not to mention organized WvW zergs and PvP premades. That blanket statement you made is hardly accurate.
Imagine there was an pvp mastery that required you to get to the legendary league – that wouldn’t be fair either – indeed it would disrupt genuine pvp players. Likewise with raiding.
I would not carelessly throw around absolutes so casually with assumptions. In my opinion, that sounds like it could help add more pvp players to the gamemode.
You are right with CoF and old PvP, both were sinkholes of fun for the largest majority of people. Skyhammer for example is just garbage for most people, even dedicated PvPers scoff when they have to play on it.
And look how popular aetherblade path is today.
The early Tequatl was as much a slaughterhouse as the early TT worm. Pros were yelling and stomping their feet, but it was to no avail as they simply did not know how it worked themselves in the early days or were so bad at communicating it that it took whole guilds of like minded people to break it. Beside ls1, this was the glory area of GW2 in my opinion.
Nobody can stop you from following an organized zerg around in WvW. They can scream and yell at you, but they can´t stop you following them.
I won´t ever be able to reach legendary level in pvp if not all stars align for me or I train train and train while throwing all my hotkeys around. Being unable to reach something at your own pace is not as satisfactory as you may think.^^
Pretty much what Ashen said. If you are neither into jumping puzzles or exploration in general, every map of HoT is a pain with tangled depths being the worst offender. I don´t know how many times I ran around looking for this or that hero point or mastery point despite standing only a few inches besides them. Plain disgusting. Using a guide helps, but i don´t think it is a good design of a map if you have to seek outside help to actually complete it.
I don´t despise her for stealing the egg, I despise her for being a muppet in ls2, I find it nearly inexcusable what she did there.
I don´t trust morally questionable people to safeguard something of great value in general, and she is clearly the mentally weakest of the known firstborn.
But in another threat someone speculated that Aurene as the probably new plant greater dragon can command/influence her anyway, so her guarding the egg is ok as long as the Luminate stays close to shake her head and walk in if Caithe wants to teach her shady ways to Aurene.
@Ardid
No Autobot would trust Starcream carrying a white flag. Strange enough, Optimus Prime always looks to redeem Megatron despite knowing that he probably won´t have success. If I would have to relate her to a Transformer, she would be Jetfire on the good side or Lockdown on a more neutral/evil side.
In Gargoyles, I would set her close to Xanatos or MacBeth. Both are basically honorable persons but know it alls.
My commander would let her stay close to Aurene…because if Aurene is the new ‘master’ of the plant type magic, then technically Caithe would be under her control anyway.
That is acutally a very good argument I did not think about, although I would still feel better if I knew that the Luminate and the best exalted guards are also closely guarding the Dragon instead of floating around somewhere in Tarir, it´s their job to look out for Glint´s legacy after all. There should be much less attacks on Tarir at this point, the enemy is disorganized and lacks the motivation of it´s dragon leader.
A totally unregulated market leads to many people living in the streets or working on low wage jobs, a dwindling middle class which clings to their last shreds of dignity while a chosen few soak up all the wealth and barricade themselves in their ivory towers.
Luckily this is just a game here.
Edit:
I want to apologize to you, Mr Smith. It was not my intend to insult you or your knowledge of the craft of economics in general.
(edited by Torolan.5816)
So Chak can consume, filter and kind of purify magic. Wouldn´t that mean that they can supplement or even replace the elder dragons? And that Chak are competing with elder dragons for magic? A chak potentat alone may not be the equal of an elder dragon, but a whole swarm of chak with many potentates?
I would like to see a plot where a dragon simply cannot attack the other races because it is plagued or has to actuaslly defenditself against Chak. ^^
I don´t know if it is possible or makes sense, but I would welcome a slightly greener Orr with different quests, Risen driven back from Caledon(not vanished, driven deeper back) and some Mordrem replaced with Mushroom, Itzel, Chak, Inquest or Nightmare court in areas that are not vital for the metas.
I mean just look at the escort event in Orr. This event is made to fail on purpose for years now. That is neither heroic or replayability, it´s a farm.
I loke your idea in general. The last thing PvP needs is an AoE finisher though. There are already more than enough ways to finish people without much danger for various classes.
@CETheLucid
You claimed that she had apologized. I point out that she has only apologized for taking the egg, not for the other things that she did. Her apology fails to address her greatest crimes.Killing of Wynne: That’s been argued before in this thread before. The point is that Caithe had the choice to stand up to Faolaine and defend Wynne. She didn’t. She went with killing an innocent instead of standing up to a torturer/murderer.
Slaughter of Centaurs: So you just let that… go? And mock the idea of justice as cover ignoring it?
1.) Wynne expressly asked Caithe to kill her, both so that she wouldn’t suffer and so that the secret would not be known. I highly doubt that Faolain would let Caithe dissuade her from torturing Wynne.
2.) I seriously cannot believe that people blame Caithe for the deaths of the Centuars. Did we play two completely different versions of the game? Sure, the game makes us fight them, but look at the facts: Caithe accompanied Faolain to the camp, but she had no idea what was going to happen. Then, while she is preoccupied, she suddenly hears Faolain cry out, and sees that she’s being attacked. Caithe had absolutely no idea what happened. Whatever it was, we all know it was Faolain’s fault, given the type of person she was at that point. Caithe jumped into action thinking that she needed help. Then the Centaurs escalated the situation by increasing their attacks. Caithe was not there with the intent to murder! She was thrown into it and didn’t know what truly happened. Needless to say, I’m sure she was upset about what happened.
Ok, let´s review that:
*So is Caithe now strong minded or not? What is her aganda? The other firstborn have agandas, quite powerful ones to be honest. She obviously is just the pawn of Faolain in ls 2.
*Caithe and Faoalin act exactly the same way as the Asura that tortured the Sylvari. Faolain thinks she is superior to a tribe of stinking centaurs from the get go and Caithe does not protest that.
*Caithe, Faolain, and a crew of basically unknown to Caithe Sylvari which Faolain introduces as friends that helped her when she needed them are out to track another Sylvari that does not want to talk to them but fled from them. Some people would already have backed down here from the fact that Wynne obviously does not want to talk and how that should be respected.
*They invade foreign land. I am sure nor many tribes would react very kindly to that.
*Centaurs sepratate Faolain and Caithe because Caithe is not showing aggressive behaviour. Point for the Caithe fans, ok. Then she storms out and does not even ask what is going on but begins to slaughter the Centaurs who defend their land and their guest. It´s like the invasion of a country to kill a whistleblower after you were made an ambassador.
*You can speculate that if Caithe had not interfered, the Centaur Champion would have been able to drive Faolain off or hold out long enough to allow Wynne to escape. He was a quite accomplished spellcaster and had home ground.
Caithe was in the wrong and brought all of the misery she had to endure later with Faolain down upon herself. I hated every second of that episode to be honest.
Non Raiders blocked from XP bar spirit shards
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Torolan.5816
I stil did not raid and don´t run out of shards. It´s a minor symptom of a much bigger problem though. If you want at least all the Mastery Points of HoT, you have indeed a lot of boring options.
You can:
a) make boring adeventures
b) get grumpy in jumping puzzles or jumping puzzle lookalikes in tangled depth
c) bore yourself to sleep for battling the same mob for hours and hours
d) wait until a new ls story comes out and store excess points
Of course you can argue that there is lots of choice, but why are most of the choices so close together in intend? You can avoid the most boring stuff until you reach around 120 MP, then you have to swallow the toad and start to do stuff like that.
Yeah well, but Ministers will be forced to take a side. A minister can´t just barricade himself in his palace when the Seraph and Ministry Guards clash in divinitys reach and just order his personal guards to protect him.
If Caudecus wins, the minister is not seen as loyal from him and will probably be executed. Caudecus is a fanatic at this point from his own words, either you are with him or against him.
If the crown wins, the minister is also branded. He probably won´t be executed, but his days as minisiter are probably over,
In this scenario, I am pretty sure that most fence sitter ministers would choose the old order, because this is what feudalism/a republic is all about. An uprising shakes both orders massively. through the living story, especially the party in ls2, you can see that many ministers are shown as fence sitters who dislike/distrust Caudecus on a personal level but don´t want to lose the benefits he grants them. There is enough example of Caudecus cutting people who fail loose at any cost, so loyality should not be very deep there.
What I find quite funny is that Caudecus fears Logan. Why? I don´t get it. He is the gulliest dupe around and Caudecus made a fool out of him multiple times storywise, basically putting him a sign on the back stating that he is a traitor and Logan can do squat against it. I would be more concerned about Anise if I were Caudecus.
Thinking about your argument for the ministry guard:
In urban combat, you may have a point that the Ministry guards are equal oreven superior to the Seraph, but I also think that the common people would come to the aid of the Seraph in Divinity´s reach.
The Seraph are the fighting people that protect the homeland from Centaurs and Bandits, the Ministry Guard is a bunch of snobist guards of the rich.
(edited by Torolan.5816)
The selfish fool in Destiny´s Edge is indeed not Caithe, that´s the job of Logan.
Caithe is the only firstborn that started out as a muppet as it seems. Everyone else has goals and personality.
Even Canach has much more of a personality than she does at this point, he early on reflects what has happened to him and he still does not become a nightmare court follower or sympathizes with them.
Caithe is just the left arm of Faolain. She only develops a personality after Faolain basically forces her to show her colors. I could understand if Caithe and Faolain hated Asura from that point on (I certainly did even more than I already did at this point^^), but the secret is totally unrelated to the events in the experimentation chambers and Caithe would probably understand at this point that Faolain gives no rats rektum about the wellbeing of the other Sylvari and just wants herself to be in command and right.
This either means for me that Caithe is the youngest of the firstborn or something is severely wrong with her.
I see a lot of ministry guards either defect or declare their allegiance to their minister if he is loyal to the crown to avoid getting spoken guilty of treason and hanged. Even in modern societies treason is a crime that brings you many years in prison or a walk on the green mile.
From the information available, the ministry guard is not a fighting force like the Seraph are, there are more than enough commanders in chief in divinitys reach to effectively combat the flattery attention of Logan. It is instead a very loosely knit mercenary unit that probably cannot withstand the military might of the Seraph of things get rough.
Canach was not exactly a small villain. Also not a supervillain, but the plot around him was pretty big. He is also one of the rare (former) villains that make constant appearances now, not even Evon Gnashblade and Mai Trin have his prominence.
I would also like Lazarus to be sincere, at leat up to a certain point. Maybe he wants to hope that he can see the death of the elder dragons before he perishes in his quest to destroy humanity once and for all. Maybe he even gives the commander the opportunity to live in peace if he does not interfere. We of course interfere and have to kill our staunch ally Lazarus. That would make me quite sad.
I personally think the commander is much too soft with Caithe and should dismiss her at every opportunity. She can stay a shadow and help from afar, but not close to the commander.
Why?
Unreflected:
She let her sister get killed by her lover. Neither wise nor very strong willed, no other known firstborn is of that mindset. I don´t buy either “I killed her to keep the secret” and “Oh, the Centaurs that did nothing to Wynne for months attacked Faolain all of a sudden” rationale.
Secretive:
She stole the egg and never said why until lately. Trahearne at least was very honest with his wild hunt and was basically dragged kicking and screaming into the whole afair. Staying cryptic is not helpful if you´re a confessed murderer of your own close kind.
Probably very far fetched, but maybe Gleam is the deep sea dragon? 250 years does not seem to be much time for an elder dragon to arise, but his last awakening is not recorded, and true heroes like the commander or the hero from GW1 may have slain the sixth dragon in the past hidden from the world and then Gleam took his place like Aurene now takes the place of Zhaitan or Mordremoth.
The weak link in the idea that he is still a villain is that he gives us time to analyze and outsmart him if he reveals himself to us. Before we met him, we only know of of how the Mursaat were a race of powerful casters with powers basically unknown to man today. He could have just remained in the shadows and watched the commander from afar to find out who he is and what he is capable of. This would have made him even batter as a anihero, the silent guy that anhilates a key foe then and when and learns from watching the commander what heroism and team work is like, slowly adapting his ways.
He probably already knows how to be a clueless dupe, so he can´t learn something form us regarding Caithe.^^
If he wants to make a spy out of Marjory, why do it in front of the commander?
Caudecus does not have the power to defeat Divinity´s reach in my opinion.
*He is a human supremacist, meaning he can not gather much direct support from non human races without angering his core followers.
*With guys like Bauer in command, you can´t win anything, people won´t flock to a ruthless guy like this in a regular battlefield environment. His type is basically the Logan Thackery of Caudecus. You want a Rommel, Napoleon or Leonidas at the head of your army, not a Nero, Gracus or Paulus.
His only chances are probably the ghots of Ascalon.
Lazarus states that he had time to think over his actions. It is also pretty obvious that the mursaat lacked a person like the commander in their own ranks to unite the races. We are basically taking the plan of the mursaat, we are just better as they were in executing it.
I am a little bit concerned about his appearance in part 1 in regard to that theory though after doping it again yesterday. There, he is every bit the arrogant overlord creature everyone expects him to be. He simply anhilates the white mantle knights that stay at the side of Caudecus and does not really give them time to come to a decision. He also quickly claims his claim of leadership over the white mantle and his own supremacy.
A redeeming feature for him is that he is looking for something more noble to do, but what is noble for him? He also does not attack us and simply vanishes, but that could be for other reasons too.
Xera and Matthias are obviously true devotees of Lazarus, so they went to find him. I guess they were the hardiest bunch in the fens and the best Soldiers of Lazarus, so he should be a little bit concerned that a group of alliance members was able to slay them on their own turf and nearly halt his rise.
The guys staying behind at the Fen are the megalomaniac Bauer Nr. 9 who has no conscience at all from his diary and is simply an evil overlord general, Adrienne who is a confessed Caudecus supporter from her own words, the amoral but rather clueless scientist wizard stuck in a system of seniority and the apprentice who does not realize when it is best to shut up or who has never met Bauer face to face and has to pay the price for that. All pretty typical bad guys who I would set into the Caudecus side if there really is a Caudecus faction.
New mastery = meh. It looks nice, but is just a cost free teleport on roids for 3 points better used elsewhere. 6/10.
Walls. Literally everywhere in the heartland. Beach areas are nice. 6/10.
NPCs, stories and hearts are nice. 9/10.
Worms just stink, they already stink in the leveling areas. Dive mechanic and crippling are a lethal combination for boredom. Other mobs are good. 6/10.
The map beside the wall thing itself is well thought out. 9/10.
If not for the continual jumping against walls until you have the tubes, i would rate it better than the Fen, but so it is on par and so an improvement to HoT content.
I will always despise Caithe after the death of Wynne. She is a muppet and a smarty pants all at once, a combination I never liked. Canach at least is upfront and much more likeable for me. Not that i think she is evil, she just is not a good ally and I would not want her beside me.
I don´t think Marjory will betray us. She had our back multiple times and fought at our side for years now unlike Caithe who was more often on the run from us than actually helping us in HoT.
Everyone except me loves Rytlock, so I guess he will simply resign from being a Tribune, come back and that´s it. End of story.
Don´t know and don´t care about Braham and Rox to be honest. Braham stopped being interesting after Eir died, and Rox never was interesting to begin with. They both have parent issues, but the mother of Braham was at least likeable and did not have to be a blank shot range to give in to being a parent.
Dwarfs in GW1 were already a divided and dying race, didn´t they even kidnap or kill their own king(can´t remember that good)? Just because they choose to fight Primordus at the end and you did some missions with them, many people tend to see them as heroes. I remember that best too, but they also had their fair share of villains. You had to fight through them on the other hand if you wanted to go over the shivering peaks.
Jotun are fully degenerated except for one in the home town of the norn if I remember well, and that guy is not the brightest light either. I don´t know if they did that by choice or just had to hide so long that they forgot how to be civilized and someday found themselves out in the cold with a glowing sword they did not know how to name but how to wield. They obviously still know how to fight from their movements and actions though. I am not sure if they were a noble race or not.
I am entirelly clueless about the motives of the seers right now. I always pictured them as the neutral o even good guys. In GW1, I considered both of them ancient races fighiting their last battle over principles.
It is possible that Lazarus had a change of heart. Or maybe he is just a clever guy who wants to see the world burn, but why not kill the commander on the spot then? It is heavily implied that Lazarus would be able to kill him from the talk after the fight and just take the dragon with him. Why fight the destroyers and not leave to commander to rot while disposing of the chosen and steal the dragon when the shileld is down?
*Maybe he thought things over and realizes that the seers were right all along.
*Maybe he is impressed by the uniting abilities of the commander who already brought down 2 of the dragons without the help of the mursaat by doing something the mursaat failed in, unite the races in a single fighting force together with Trahaerne. This gives him so much hope to destroy the thread of the elder dragons that he even abandons or stalls his revenge for later. He probably has no reason to hate the alliance members Norn, Asura and Charr anyway and may lack a reason to hate the sylvary now after Mordremoth is gone.
*Maybe he is so afraid of even a baby dragon because of a mursaat primal fear that he simply did not dare to attack the commander in it´s presence and bids his time now.
*Maybe he thinks Caudecus has taken over his organization and wants to use the enterprising commander to find and then slay him.
The whole realization that the Dragons adapt (taking in some of the skillsets of the last) makes me wonder. This probably means Kralk will be the last which is a bummer because I’d have liked to see Primo be the one (he’s the one with the most lore centeralized with him – Alpha and Omega per se’) to last out of all of them. Guess it’ll all depend on how we end up encountering Jormag.
Perhaps Episode 3 will feature Braham breaking the tooth, signaling the end of the Ice Dragon.
Lets also not forget that that earlier Taimi let the name of the Deep Sea Dragon slip (I assume anyways) with the letter “S”.
So it seems at the end of this all, that little baby dragon Aurene is going to turn into an Elder Dragon comprised of all the Elder Dragons. Turning into Guild Wars 2’s very own Veeshan (EverQuest nod there). But it also means whatever Dragon is left standing before that, will be composed of all the other facets. This also hints at looking back at Subject Alpha in Crucible of Eternity to some capacity.
I thought that it was just a joke with S. Devs read the forum, and the dragon is know here and there as Steve because no clue is mentioned about it´s name.^^
If Lazarus wanted to betray us, whay not just do it? He is obviously more powerful than we are, and we cannot except any help. The only reason for me would be that maybe he is innately afraid of the dragon and dares not to attack it, depite logic and common sense saying it. Primal fears are very strong, and the wipeout of a whole race should dig deep into that. Maybe he actually is sorry and has learned from the mistakes of the mursaat as a whole.
That a significant minority of dwarfs could be betrayers does not really surprise me. They betrayed their own kind and weakened an already weakend and dying folk even more with an uprising. They enslaved the dredge. I never had much sympathy for them until they went underground to fight Primordus.
The Jotun are a surprise for me however. I rather pictured them as a race that had been King of the mountain for a long time in a time where the others were weak and then fell from grace because of degeneration or something, but I would not have expected them to be head to head with muesaat, seers and dwarfs.
On the other hand he tells us that the white mantle is basically done. Caudecus commands a force of white mantle that is now divided and was too weak to attack Kryta from the get go while Lazarus holds the rest of the white mantle in his hands and wants to make them the honorable warriors many thought they were before the first betrayal. Lazarus obviously has no interest in the throne of Kryta and seems to be unable to find and kill or somehow dispose of Caudecus, so either his strength is vastly overestimated or Caudecus strength is vastly underrated.
I hope that Jormag somehow survives. He is my favorite dragon and his approach to get power is the most logical for me. If Lazarus can turn around, a dragon can maybe too.^^
HoT is like a wine for me.
When it is fresh, it is pretty bland and annoying. You can´t do anything significant, stay in front of walls and have to do minigames.
As it matures, it gets better. You understand which food is best with it, and you don´t drink from the bottom of the bottle where the leftovers collected over time.
Sadly, it is not harvested from a prime grape and stays a through and through average vintage at it´s peak, despite Anet attempting to put sugar in it over and over again.
But wouldn´t that have left Zhaitan in a very insecure position?
Let´s assume it is so that he wants to take territory first and collect the scrap magic later, taking only the choiciest bits right and and let the morsels where they are until the land is blight.
What prevents for example the Hylek, Centaurs or Krait to evacuate their magic elsewhere like the Kodan also did? All three races are aware of the dragons power and probably realize when their cause is lost. Trolls, Spiders and Drakes would unwillingly buy them time against the risen when they flee. This strategy only looks promising if the hunted run out of places to go, but they have places to escape to like fortified cities that are defended by siege weapons and armies. The worst scenario is if they settle in a realm held by another dragon to die there because they are weak. He would have probably fed his neihgbors in this way.
And why deplete your food source? Orr is totally devoid of people until the pact attacks. Wouldn´t it make more sense to keep sapient being alive and devour them only when he is actually hungry?
Primordus on the other hand does not use minions as the other dragons do. Creating destroyers is probably costing magic instead of raking in magic. So he either has large quantities of magic to spend, or he may be the physically most imposing dragon or the actual master of his prime domain no dragon dares to attack.
Jormag also has a quite interesting approach I find more compelling than Zhaitans. He has icebrood as his own troopers and the sons of Svanir who retain their intelligence. He has forces deep in his enemies territory but does not directly scare people off. Quite the contrary, he injected himself into the culture of his prey.
I am a little bit curious about some things:
Why do elder Dragons take a territory? They eat magical energy, so they do not need to hunt. Risen in general have no order to steal things as it seems, so they probably do not collect a hoard. Megalomania only? A classic dragon has a territory bcause he´s a megalomaniac, needs to hunt then and when and wants to find treasures to add to his hoard.
Holding a territory for the sake of holding it seems a pretty worthless thing for an engine of destruction with the knowledge and the patience of thousands of years. The only other creatures it has to fear do not rise over the count of probably 20, and many of them know that attacking an elder dragon can easily result in the own destruction.
It makes sense to have some powerful enforcers, bodyguards and researchers to outmaneuver or battle the few foes that actually are there or buy them time if they have to flee from one of their foes. But the need to have a grunt army is pretty strange for me, yet every dragon has one. Even in the deep sea where a territory is the most worthless thing to have with wandering fish and not much plant life in general, the dragon drove out the Karka and Krait.
Why hatch secret plans? Why don´t they swoop in or dig under a city and gorge itself at the leyline magic if there happens to be a city in the way and leave if they are sated?
If confronted, it could just say:
“You are nothing compared to me. But I spare your city if you do not disturb me and buzz off right now.”
So either the gorge takes too long, makes the creature vulnerable or sleepy or something.
I believe that Primordus realized, maybe through spies or my magical devices, that something big has happened in the fen. The dragon closest to the bloodstone has been vanquished lately, so there should be additional attention on the task at hand. White mantle is also on the rise, and that could mean a mursaat or a mursaat artifact return(like return of the Sith). Maybe unlike the Jedi who sat there with their fingers in the ears all the time, Primordus learned from the mistake of his two slain fellow dragons and did not send a soso champion but is on the way to investigate himself and destroy the mursaat threat in one way or the other. Maybe he also wants to be the fly on the wall and see who is the ant that led to the death of two other dragons by commanding and army and winning key battles against them and now wants to see how he fares against a powerful mursaat.
Maybe the Sylvari would have just retreated into the Grove after learning that they are a breed of Mordremoth? Or launched a full brunt assault against Rata Sum with the aid of other pale trees or other races who had to suffer from Asura hands? Their direct neighbors were not exactly friendly to them, I still don´t know why they are not at war right now. The council of the Asura has a seat for the Inquest, so they are obviously backing them up at least politically and have not accused them of Genocide.
The other trees were unknown – even to the Pale Tree by all indication – until 1325, so there’d be no support. Retreating to the Grove just gives the other races a singular target to assault.
The asura haven’t committed genocide, or attempted such – not even the Inquest. And they kind of are at war with their neighboring hyleks. As for the Inquest being backed by the Arcane Council – as stated by the Head Councillor Flaxx, they support whichever krewe gives the most cost efficient advancement for the asura – in many cases this means the Inquest because they cut corners morally, but when it’s not the Inquest, Flaxx will happily toss them to the curb.
-snip bit on Caithe-
You have an odd interpretation of Caithe.
She’s ignorant of Faolain’s actions until Faolain goes overboard with torture – not killing – Wynne; the event is one of your typical ‘eye-opening events’ for Caithe. Caithe didn’t “do the job for Faolain” at all, given that Faolain was not after killing Wynne – she was after finding out that ‘secret’.
And Caithe is never really about redeeming herself for Wynne’s death – she seems, the entire time, that it was a sad but unavoidable action and while she holds guilt for it doesn’t seek redemption for it. The only time we ever see her wanting redemption is for her actions in HoT, which she is honest about.
Telling Faolain to proverbially kitten off and not interfere with Caithe again is what Caithe does in Edge of Destiny and Twilight Arbor story, when she gets tired of being chased about by Faolain.
The only ones that are all that emotionally unstable in DE would be Eir – who is suicidal because she caused the death of her good friend, Snaff – and Caithe, but only post-HoT. They all had their problems – which for most were caused by Snaff’s death and the circumstances about that – which are solved with the dungeon story mode. After such (starting when they meet up to fight Zhaitan), all that emotional baggage is basically out the window. Unfortunately, ArenaNet decided to dump DE for the second set of emotional baggage that is the biconics so we don’t see that much.
Malomedies was experimented on by Asura. He is a even Luminari and serves as Ambassador and guide, still he was experimented on by the Asura. How much intelligence does it take to understand when a plaint says to you:
“I am in pain, please stop!” ?
The living story clearly shows how a large number of Sylvari, and Sylvari only, were tortured by the Asura. Scientific curiosity was the reason for that, mixed with a healthy dose of cruelty. The asura are a bunch of people I would be really monitoring closely if I were a leader of any other race. They have good people too of course, but those seem usually not to rise very high in their government.
This even reinforces my opinion that she is a muppet.
Caithe is the only Sylvari that is amoral. Most are heroic and helpful like Trahaerne or Riannoc, Faolain is ruthless, but Caithe is the only firstborn Sylvari hat has no real opinion on her own and is bound to the other firstborn. She is not even torn to follow Faolain initially, and it took the death of Wynne to make her earnestly question Faolain. Although wiki states that all firstborn are wise, I cannot find any wisdom in Caithe. She is like Riannoc but without bravery and a heart.
Maybe the Sylvari would have just retreated into the Grove after learning that they are a breed of Mordremoth? Or launched a full brunt assault against Rata Sum with the aid of other pale trees or other races who had to suffer from Asura hands? Their direct neighbors were not exactly friendly to them, I still don´t know why they are not at war right now. The council of the Asura has a seat for the Inquest, so they are obviously backing them up at least politically and have not accused them of Genocide.
Caithe is just a muppet in my opinion. The portrayal of her character has gone from little girl that is unable to stop her beloved from not only killing her own “sister” and friendly creatures and basically doing the job of killing her for her to a girl that talks about redeeming herself but stays cryptic. You can´t redeem yourself if you are not honest. The upright thing to do would have been to face Faolain and say her that she can only go to Wynne if she is willing to go through Caithe too. If there would have been a choice, I would have abandoned her long ago and given her a warning not to interfer in my matters again. Destinys Edge in general is a medley of very emotionally disappointing and untrustworthy people, and I would not want any of them in a higher commanding position as either leader of the races.
So if you are looking for a culprint of the Sylvari race, look at Caithe and her entourage. The pale tree made some very unfortunate decisions of course, but it is not her fault that her most evil child was attempting to disrupt the peaceful start of the Sylvari.
I also agree with MMOStein. It is the best game in a sea of horrible grinders like MetinII, andf it is better than Eve Online which is more of an economy simulator and a job than a game.
As a big fan of the Warcraft games, I would have probably still played WoW instead of GW2 if I would have had a stable income to pay the sub. But GW1 was very good, and GW2 also was in its first years.
And no, you can´t have my stuff as I won´t leave right now even when I complain.^^
Beside the little towel accompanying it, the heavy armor ascended trouser is the most trouserish trouser available.^^
If you want to go down this route, the Sylvari are actually the most trustworthy soldiers now in my opinion beside the Charr. They are the only races who have outlawed their powerhungry counterpart and banished them from their home base.
Norn:
Sons of Svanir sit all smug in Hoelbrak. You basically can run into them everywhere in the city. Most Norn are notoriously stubborn and independent if I remember well, so how about your army discipline?
Humans:
A prime minister is the current villain, and the strongest human nation is run by pirates. And everybody knows how trustworthy pirates are, right?^^
Asura:
Beside being smurfs Asura not only tolerate the Inquest, they actually give them a place in their council. If you are looking for people who are willing to conduct a genocide for various reasons, look no further.
So what does stop sleeper agents from all these races to suddenly run amok in your army?
Besides, commanding people to slaughter any Sylvari would have been water on the mills of Mordremoth. Even those soldiers that would have managed to stay clear of his suggestions would have probably turned to him with the pale tree being out of action.
Just to maybe cheer you a little bit up, OP, the investment is well spent if you like to do stories over and over again and maybe not get the achievments because the boss hits you one time after a flawless fight from your side and you get zip for your effort.^^
Ls2 is easily in my top 3 of horrible things going on in Anet and makes the Zhaitan campaign look great in comparison.