Guild Wars 2

Professor Sensei.2941:

maxinion.8396:

inb4 lore reasons

holy crap dude good call LOL

But who gives a hoodle about lore. GvG and guild halls made Guild Wars amazing.

Yes, good call, since that’s pretty much the right answer. Just as if someone answered with inb4 2 on a thread asking what 1+1 is.

RedCobra.7693:

Im sick of hearing this lore reason, yes it is behind lore, however the title is the first thing a consumer see’s it is a given that the title is a marketing double entendre and is meant to ensue the Guild element, to deny this is ludicrous

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a MMORPG having one of their features as a title. World of Warcraft, you can craft wars? Tera Online? The Elder Scrolls Online? Neverwinter? The Secret World? Wildstar? Etc etc. As far as I know there aren’t any MMORPGs called 80 Men Raid Online or Massive PvP Battles the Game. So it’s a pretty weak argument, non-existent even. Ignorance is no excuse either.

Just give bannerskills a chainskill that summons/respawns the banner back into your hands.

I don’t see a problem with conjured weapons though, the ele already gets one for its own use.

Would be nice to get some info on this.

Shouldn’t you be playing that game or did you run out of stuff to do already?

From the info I’ve seen this seems like a step forward and another one back.
I think implementing channels and the ability to switch whenever would be a more user-friendly option than relying on these ‘metrics’.

I’m also curious about waypoints. Currently if you’re in an overflow you can see certain waypoints contested on a different map even though your home server’s map doesn’t have those contested. The reverse is also true, you can waypoint to an uncontested waypoint and suddenly it’s contested when you load in the map.

It’s a minor detail, but I can see this becoming quite a nuisance.

• Will we be able to reacquire old PvP skins like dwayna’s longbow, plated sniper rifle and runic blade in this new patch?

• Could you tell us a bit more about acquiring skins in PvP that aren’t related to a specific dungeon?

Lol at the PvE rage. You can only have one reward track active at a time. So if you want to PvP for 1 dungeon set , you only need to run that particular dungeon’s story once (assuming the dungeon isn’t on the bi-weekly rotation). Barring Arah, that’s like 30 minutes work and you’ll unlock it permanently.

It’s 50-80 PvP games for the final reward (1 single dungeon armor piece) of a track anyway, so you won’t be switching back and forth continously.
I wish I could unlock rewarding PvE stuff by PvPing for 30 minutes.

I’ve been wondering this as well. Curious if it’ll still be possible to get Runic Blade and Dwayna’s Longbow too.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

How is it going to stop new players from making bad builds? If players don’t know what stats are, removing the jewel isn’t going to help them figure it out either. You know amulets always had a default jewel equipped right? Players didn’t even have to learn about it.

When I started PvP, I didn’t even know you could equip different jewels. When I found out about it, it just opened more variety in builds. Like you guys are trying to do with new traits!

Maybe you guys should make a tutorial for these players, instead of dumbing down everything? Besides that, learning should be part of every game(mode).

What about skins like runic blade and dwayna’s longbow? Will those be obtainable in PvP again?

What are these PvP tokens you’re talking about?

BeardRex.6739:

Truthbearer.9708:

So now we have to pay to change our PvP skins. Great feature.

If sPvPers want to be focused on, then they have to be willing to become a serious source of revenue beyond custom arenas. Arenanet is not a charity.

Doesn’t mean every single thing has to be monetized. There’s also cash shop armors and weapons that can be bought with gems.

Besides, they could have implemented the wardrobe in a different way. For example, using transmutation charges to unlock skins in the wardrobe to use them freely. They could up the cost for this as well. And this is just an example.

Also, horrible reasoning you’re using there. As if customers that paid for the game and mainly PvP even though they spend money in the gem store, have to somehow pay extra to get updates.

So now we have to pay to change our PvP skins. Great feature.

The removal of armor-repair-costs seems like an excuse to nerf rewards from champ bags and events.

And why does Anet act like this is a “feature”? This will just lower people’s gold income moving forward.

Guess what will happen with the people farming champions. Will they help killing Shadow Behemoth for a 0.00000001% chance at a good drop or continue farming and get steady rewards? Take a look at Scarlet Invasions and Escape from Lion’s Arch and rethink your post.

xantosnightwish.5438:

New rewards are coming “soon”. They are “being discussed”. They’ll be released “when theyre ready” in a “feature patch” at “some point”.

OH and watch Ready Up this Friday!

There, no dev response needed

Beautiful. Although you forgot to tell him how “very excited” we all are for this upcoming patch.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Hope that helps

Thanks dude, you’re a hero. I’m actually looking forward to this feature patch now.

I wish your co-workers would be less shy and communicate more with us

As with most content patches, there will be a new meta with a new set of achievements. The big reveal in terms of rewards is what Mike called a big, uber chest at the end of this content that will reward players well. It is rewarding you for the culmination of this patch, the finale of season one. Mike didn’t spoil anything specific, but made mention of rare items, crafting materials and tying back to previous releases.

From: http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=33929

It’s the same way in Gandara at every spawn during the day. At least there was a guild (DV) that used to try it on saturday evenings, but haven’t seen them there since Wurm came out.

Sadly, joining TxS isn’t really an option for me. Just from reading posts from the recruiter on reddit, I can tell that’s not a guild I’d like to be in.

Having someone in Desolation’s Sparkly Fen main map is pretty much our best bet.

What if Scarlet just wants revenge for the bad salad joke?

And all this build up and amassing armies and weapons were just to get back at that Asura?

It’s been over a year since we encountered Scarlet’s creations.
It all started when Norn and Charr settlements were attacked by the Flame Legion and Dredge alliance. After much damage was done and countless innocents were killed, we destroyed the Molten Facilities eliminating the Molten Alliance’s asrenal (misspelled to counter the catfilter) in the process. A bittersweet victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Some time later, Dragon Bash came around. We saw a murder happen in front of our very eyes, without being able to do anything about it. We discovered the Aetherblade hideout, with their captain Mai Trin. We took care of all of them, including Mai Trin and neutralized their base. A great victory, for the Aetherblades had been dealt a great blow. They had lost their captain and their base, sadly at the cost of an innocent life.

Later on, we finally encountered Scarlet, during Clockwork Chaos. We learned she was the one behind the attacks of the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades. However, she also took the opportunity to take the Watchworks as her own, while we could only watch. Finally knowing who’s the one pulling the strings, we could finally focus on taking her out.

Scarlet’s army, now enforced by the Twisted Watchworks, rampaged around Tyria and we chased after her. After defeating what seemed endless waves of enemies, we finally got her attention. We defeated her, but just before dealing the final blow, she teleported away. We also chased her down to her playhouse. Again after multiple face-offs, she managed to teleport away every single time.

Due to all these failures, my character developed a gaming addiction in the Super Adventure Box. Thankfully Moto helped out with the therapy (tribulation mode).
My character ready to get back in action traveled to Sparkly Fen, not only to find Tequatl still alive (or undead and active), but also powered up. Hopefully this time we killed it once and for all.

Returning to Scarlet’s story, we found out about the Aetherblade factory in Twilight Arbor. We raided it, shut down the facility, destroyed the Aetherblade airships and got rid of their officers. Yet another crippling blow dealt to the Aetherblade alliance.

Just when we thought we were done with Scarlet’s minions, another alliance shows up. This time she managed to group up the Nightmare Court and the hard-to-reason-with Krait. After quite some Norn farts and towerclimbing, we encountered Scarlet again. This time she didn’t even bother fighting us, she just teleported away. We took care of another creation of hers and took down the tower. However, the damage was yet again already done. Kessex Hills got ruined by pollution and apparently we made Scarlet an even stronger poison. So not only did we fail in stopping her, we actually helped her.

Looking to the next living story release, it seems Lion’s Arch will be attacked (and destroyed) by countless fully equipped Molten, Aetherblade and Toxic Alliance members. Even though we took care of the Molten weapon facilities, even though we took care of the Aetherblade base and factory, even though we took care of a Krait “prophet”, Scarlet’s army appears to be at full force and more loyal than ever.
And there’s nothing our character can do to stop the destruction of Tyria’s most important city. Stopping Scarlet’s marionette and figuring out she’s going to attack Lion’s Arch thanks to all the clues we discussed with Marjory didn’t help contribute at all either.

We failed to stop any part of Scarlet’s plan. Why can’t our characters do anything right?
Seems to me Tyria would’ve been better off had our characters not try to go after Scarlet.

Thanks guys, this helped a lot.

When I did Arah with guildmates a long time ago, I found p3 to be the easiest. But yeah, it’s very unlikely that I will PuG that dungeon, since it’ll be like playing russian roulette.

I’ll give these other paths a try soon. Some of them I already did before, but it’s been at least a year, so I wondered how they compared to eachother. These lists will help me get back into them.

Occasionally, I’ve been running CoF p1 and HotW p1 since it’s a nice way to get some quick change and dungeon tokens. Sadly I’m not much of a dungeon person, but I do like the dungeon armors.
So I’m wondering what other easy or short paths are available to do. Keep in mind this is with a PuG and most likely aren’t all full berserker. I’m also wondering what paths are the easiest/shortest (and PuG-friendly) for every dungeon since I’ve found conflicting info about this.

Not sure what your point is, looks pretty balanced to me. Ele’s and Engie’s get less equipped sigils than other classes but can proc them more often.
If your point is that every class should have the exact same stuff, then I’m not even going to go into that.

Besides, sigils are getting rebalanced anyway.

Didn’t know there was an achievement for it, but I guess that explains why some teammembers were trying to destroy the bridge while I was still on it. I thought they were trolls, but they were just mindless AP farmers.
Sure is great to have players that aren’t interested in WvW sabotage players that are.

I must be the only one that isn’t interested in the destruction of any map. Not only is it sad to see a beautiful map like Kessex Hills turn ugly, lorewise my characters would be even more incompetent.
Lion’s Arch being destroyed while even realising what Scarlet’s plans were means we failed big time, just like all the other times we failed and got used by her. So basically all this time chasing her and trying to figure out what was going on was for nothing and actually aided her in achieving her goals.

Vayne.8563:

You don’t need numbers to watch videos and know people. You may not have noticed a decrease in dungeon performance, but I definitely have.

If you haven’t noticed one, I suspect you’d be in a minority because a lot of people are talking about it. No, I don’t have numbers. It’s still a lot of people.

There’s so many fallacies in there, I don’t even know where to start.
But whatever you say, buddy.

At least the game is lag-free now, thanks to this genius fix. That’s what the whispers in the wind said to me.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t have numbers. I have a statement from the devs. THEY have numbers. Did you see me quote a number?

I know a lot of people DO use them including some people I run with. If you watch dungeon videos, you’ll often see them used.

Speed runners have the propensity to run LOTS of dungeons, sometimes all day over and over. Which means if only speed runners do it, and there are a bunch of speed runners, they’re screwing it up for everyone else. That I don’t deny.

But people use them because I see them in dungeon videos quite often.

No, you didn’t quote a number. You did however say:

It’s not a few people with Embers. People use embers in dungeons all the time as part of a strategy. People use embers in many of the big fights and take out another as soon as the first one dies.

So obviously you must have some numbers to make a statement like this, right? And good job ignoring the rest of the post.

If performance would really be such a high priority issue, then for example veteran risen acolytes wouldn’t have been buffed to summon EVEN MORE MOBS last year among other things that strain the servers.

And what about boosting performance in WvW, specifically in EB. Maybe players should get a +60 seconds global cooldown on skills.

I haven’t been with a single person that used item-pets in a dungeon since release. Maybe that’s because I don’t do any timed speedruns with the “pro’s”. I doubt the majority of the population does, though. Maybe Vayne can show us the numbers he obviously has.

Even so, are we conveniently forgetting about every other class summon? Mesmer illusions, ranger spirits + pet, necromancer minions (constant uptime!), guardian spirit weapons, elementalist summons, etc etc. Not to mention skills like warband support and thieves guild. How come all these skills lack a 30 minute cooldown? And how come Cursed Shore hasn’t crashed yet with all those minion master necromancers running around?

I’d prefer no instance either, but when people at these events start asking for (new) players on the map doing other events/map completion and playing the game as well to leave to an overflow, something needs to be changed.

Completely agree. Ever since they buffed up the risen mobs, this has become even more of an issue. Risen are supposed to draw strength from being in large numbers. When 1 risen noble can take out 5 pact members with a single attack, something is wrong and needs to be readjusted.

Just take a look at the final Balthazar escort event. Most risen nowadays have AoE attacks that can drop down any NPCs in mere seconds, from veteran acolytes that summon exploding carriers to risen nobles and their OP symbols. If you let any mob reach the NPCs, be prepared to see the moral bar drop down instantly.

So instead of fighting along the Pact as a fellow soldier, we’re babysitting some kind of delusional group that think they’re needed to defeat the great evil balthazar priest. If Anet doesn’t buff up the NPCs, they should at least change them to some kind of “explosive cargo” so it makes more sense lore wise. Because it’s pretty sad to see the Pact’s finest go down by one or two attacks if players don’t intercept the mobs.

Maybe if we compliment them, we can lure them in.

GenocideOPS.8319:

The only condition to slow them down is chill.They are immune to the rest.STACK THE HELL OUT OF CHILL!!!

That’s not quite true. I cripple, immobilize and knockback the Twisted mobs all the time, so you can safely assume the other CC works as well.
What you have probably experienced are the Twisted Champions. While they are at the start of the lane they’re vulnerable to slows and immobilizes, but after a certain time they speed up and become immune to it. Haven’t paid attention to see if chill affects them, but you might be right here. Also not sure what triggers the sudden sprint, but I assume they have a timer for it since I’ve seen Champions with different health percentages rush through.

I don’t understand how this doesn’t get communicated yet. Every release we have to guess how long it’ll be around. This even happens with a lot of sales/limited gemstore items. In other games they just state in the patch notes or anouncements how long anything temporary is going to last.
Is it really that hard to state a date at the end of the release page?

BillFreist.1527:

The fact that most of these items ever existed is just blatantly a bug. The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period. This was something that was long overdue.

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

As for the Charrzooka, I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that change was. That wasn’t part of the change to summons, or at least that I’m aware of.

The bringer of bad news,
-Bill

Doubling/tripling the amount of players in a map? So you’re telling me everyone was using this on every map? The only place I saw this happening was at Tequatl. And the cooldown won’t prevent people from summoning these pets at the same time anyway, which was causing the performance issues, right?

Also, why exactly 30 minutes? Why not 10 or 15?

I’m also curious what your stance is on Minion Master Necromancers, since the server strain is 5 times as much because of them. What would you guys do if people started doing Minion Master Tequatl runs?

So after reading all this negative feedback, I decided to watch the full stream. And wow, are people overreacting.

First of all, it’s a developer livestream, not a prerecorded anouncement. These guys are coders and such that are good at what they do. Speaking live to thousands of people is not as easy as it looks, and I’m sure most, if not everyone in this thread doesn’t do that in their everyday life. “But I don’t have to!”. No, but neither do these guys. They’re hired to do their programming and whatever else they do, not do public anouncements.

We get a sneak peek at what these guys are working on and they tell us in their own words. I guess people want anouncements that are looked over 10 times and adjusted by media specialists instead of words directly from the ones working on balancing our classes.

Their jokes at least keep the stream lively instead of some spokesperson just reiterating a list of possible changes and ending the stream in 5 minutes. I guess you could just look for a summary after the stream if that is all you’re looking for. Besides, I did enjoy the little funnies like buffing up warrior’s healing signet. These kind of jokes are often made in the community as well. But hey, it’s Anet, so it’s cool to hate!

There’s no denying there’s stuff wrong with the game and some decisions Anet has made, but I’m happy to see they actually have humans working in their company.
The only thing I found to be slightly bothersome in the stream was that it seemed unorganized at times even though they had a list prepared. They’d randomly go offtopic or move on to another topic then 2 minutes later jump back to the previous one.

GuzziHero.2467:

Something I just cannot get over regarding the Charr.

Asura have 1 known enemy in their land – Inquest.
Sylvari have 2 – Nightmare Court and Risen.
Norn have 1/2 – Icebrood/Sons of Sylvari (the two are not always in each others company)
Humans have 3 – Centaurs, Seperatists and Risen, though the Risen are small in number and far from DR.
Charr have 4 – Flame Legion to the north, Branded/Kralkybabes to the east, Renegades to the south and Ascalonian ghosts within.

So why have the Charr assisted humanity/Sylvari with destroying their dragon annoyance (Risen) when they are in full knowledge of the fact that now humans have only Centaurs as natural predators. This leaves humanity in the enviable position of holding VAST swathes of farmable land plus facing a reduced threat from Zhaitan. They could easily eliminate one of their other foes – the Seperatists – by uniting with them and turning on… the Charr.

This would leave the Charr COMPLETELY beseiged.

Fighting Zhaitan first is darned poor military strategy from a race that prides itself on being militaristic.

Lol @ sons of sylvari.

Anyway, I haven’t played GW1 but here’s what I’ve learned:
Not sure if you’ve seen the human tutorial, but the human race was pretty much on the brink of extinction. Ascalon lost, Orr lost, contact was lost with Elona and Cantha. “Only Kryta still stands”. If it wasn’t for the treaty with the charr, the Krytans would’ve been overwhelmed by centaurs, risen and charr.

Also, both the human and charr races realise the dragons are a great threat to theirselves and thus a common enemy. Well except for the separatists and renegades that is. They still believe the charr or humans respectively are the real threat to them.

Also, asura have destroyers as a major enemy, so not just Inquest.

bluestocking.6148:

You don’t know whether or not the bots you’ve reported were banned or not. Bot bannings in games often happen in waves; if they ban the moment they’re detected, the bot-makers can use that information in future to try and avoid detection longer. So you might not see immediate action even if a GM reviews your report immediately.

I know HotW bots I’ve reported over 2 months ago are still doing the same thing I’ve reported them for. I always add bots to my block list so I can tell if they’re still able to log in and even see their location.
If Anet bans in waves, they don’t do it often enough, that’s for sure.

Anyway, this thread will be deleted without an answer though. The moderator’s stance here is if people don’t see it, it doesn’t happen.

I apoligize in advance if this post sounds a bit hostile, but some things I red in your post made me slightly angry.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)

Not sure where you’re getting this idea from. I’m one of those players and when I come home late during weekdays, I don’t want to spend my limited time on some kind of shopping list every single day. I’d rather do something fun like events, WvW or PvP, than waste my time on boring timegates.
However, the days I do have a lot more hours to play, I can’t catch up. Why? Because these timegates that are supposed to “help” me, are actually stopping me from progressing .

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)

What about making actual fun stuff that makes me log in? Instead of shopping lists and other psychological tricks to “make” me. Wouldn’t it be better to have players log in to do content because it’s actually fun, instead of just because it’s time-gated?
Don’t get me wrong, I like most of your content. Just not the heavily time-gated content.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. For example if there was no level cap and everyone could level as much as they want, hardcore players would be at level 4561 and a causal player would be at like 100. Once that happens, it would be very hard to make anything that both of those players would be happy about getting.

I’m sorry, but caps and timegates are hardly the same. Caps eventually bring everyone to the same level. Timegates do the opposite; they segregate more and more people unless everyone keeps up with the timegate.
An improvement to the current system IMO, would be to change daily timegates into weekly timegates. That way, players that have less time on some days and more on others, can still catch up. Meanwhile (hardcore) players with a lot of time, are still weekly capped and (casual) players playing a bit every single day can still continue doing just that.

I thought the Dark/Shadow/Death/Unholy/Black Knight was already implemented.
I see plenty of them everyday along with their Twilights.

I do PvE, PvP and WvV and I don’t think this is interesting at all. It’s different in PvP and WvW, because of interrupts and more importantly player intelligence. For example, if you’re downed attacking a downed enemy to rally or using stealth/stability to revive people.
Mobs don’t have the intelligence to do anything but stand/lie there praying the player won’t finish them. This kinda kills the pace of PvE combat imo and pressing 1 extra button and waiting 2 seconds just watching my character while I sit here doing nothing isn’t fun at all.
Imagine if every mob in PvE had this, you’d spend a big portion of your playtime watching this animation over and over again. Sure it’s fun the first 100 times, but I’m pretty sure it gets boring soon after you get your 3rd slayer achievement.

Maybe I would welcome this change if:

• Friendly NPCs get downed state as well, especially the ones in escort events that fail when they die (e. g. Balthazar Temple assault/invasion chains)
• We can use PvP armor in PvE.

But I’m guessing neither of these things have any cashshop potential, unlike finishers in PvE.

I hope this isn’t another one of those PR tricks, but I’m giving it a shot nevertheless.

The one thing I would like to discuss is the increasing grind in this game. This grind includes ascended, RNG, etc. Instead of skillbased gameplay, it’s all about doing the same stuff hundreds of times and collecting thousands of items/tokens. I don’t really understand how this can be experienced as fun and it’s the same reason I quit all the other MMORPGs and joined this one.

Another point I would like to talk about is about buffing random mobs, like for example Krait and Risen Drake Broodmothers. You create situations like the one in Caledon Forest, where the Risen Drake Broodmother in Caledon Forest (which is level 3!) is close to, if not impossible to be killed by a party of equally leveled players. Not to mention the Champion Krait Witch that no one touches anymore in Timberline Falls.

But I digress, the main thing I would like to see being discussed is the grind.
So my list is basically:
1. Grind
2. Grind
3. Grind

Since a couple of days the game’s pretty much become unplayable to me.
Like many other users here I’ve been experiencing constant lag spikes and players warping onscreen.

World: Gandara
Location: The Netherlands

Would really appreciate a post with “We’re looking into it”, “We’re working on it” or at least a “Sorry guys, nothing we can do about this one”.