Guild Wars 2

I think you just nailed on what Scarlet’s purpose is: to create her own civilization, much superior to the current. I believe that the technology of Molten Alliance and especially Aetherblade isn’t for nothing. A superior race in Scarlet’s view, most likely requires superior technology. That’s where Molten Alliance and the Aetherblade comes in, since they’re created things on-par with the current superior races.

I think what you should aim for with ranks in a way achievements works.

Nothing is really tied to it, but reaching mile-stones gets you abit of a bonus, alongside the animal finisher, maybe a title and later on you could add pieces of cosmetic gear to it. Like one backpiece, a weapon set, or separate gear pieces like you do with achievement point rewards and finishing stuff such as Living Story meta.

That way, ranking up is more of a fun goal in the background whilst the ladder is focused on people’s skills. I always loved the ranking system in sPvP minus the part that all gear was gated behind it. Now when gear is more open, you can use it in the way I wish PvE levels could be used and how achievements already are.

I am going to shamelessly necro this thread.

I’ve kept myself away from playing a guardian for sometime, cause of several reasons and the aegis visual being one. I started playing one recently and really like the class, though the huge downside is still the aegis.

It’s a “papercut”, pretty much. It’s such a insignificant detail that still nags you so much cause it pops up the times you really wanna have a look at your character. In combat, I don’t care. But when I am just roaming for fun and such, it kills a part of the reason I chose an off-hand weapon or even a part of my armor.

The least thing Anet could do is give us an option to remove visual effects on our character on our screen. Everybody else sees the aegis and we see others, but we don’t see our own. I find the boon effects to be useful on my allies and enemies, but it’s only been an annoyance on my own character. Too flashy, and I already can see the list of boons on me, which in PvE is enough.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

snip

I totally agree with this post. Kudu’s to you my friend!

I personally love using shields and quite sad that both shields on warrior and guardian are weak all around. Warrior works for sPvP, but it could use more tools in PvE. Guardian’s 5 on shield has way too much gimmicks that are hard to perform or useless in sPvP. I feel the 5 on focus should have been swapped with shield, it makes more sense.

Anyway, the change you proposed on shield is nice, but should keep the healing sequence on 5. Otherwise it becomes a copy of warrior’s Shield Stance other than they can move around for 3 seconds.

Scarlet isn’t the pure reason everything is bad, she’s the target, but she’s actually keeping a rather confusing story together.

In the end, I think Scarlet didn’t turn out as Anet wanted her to be either way. I also believe this whole story arc was more focused on testing new mechanics and how they can push the LS, also testing the teams, rather than fully delivering a solid story.

It might be a ridiculous reason to go by, and something Anet wouldn’t admit, but Anet has been on thin ice lately with LS, trying stuff no MMO has ever done. They are improving and will learn from their mistakes, it’s brave of them to do these new stuff instead of recycling old ideas given that they will end up displeasing their crowd before they have the experience and tools to please us.

Well ofcourse it’s recycled content, it’s a holiday event, that’s how holiday events works in most MMOs. First Wintersday alone was huge enough.

From time to time it has additional stuff, which I bet we get in terms of story. Either way, the ascended armor, healing skills and balanced classes is enough for me as additional fun stuff.

In other words: looking forward to it! Gonna play Snowball Mayhem and Bell Choir like hell again!

Since so many has added great ideas, I just wanna add one small idea to the “Tag Scout”.

Depending on the number of people in your squad, you can tag X amount of Scouts. You need atleast 10 people in the squad to have a Scout. Those tagged Scouts, can get unique abilities for their role. None of their new abilities are able to harm or kill a player, they need to be out of combat to use them.

An example: AoE Spotter — When a Scout uses this, it makes every enemy hit by the AoE visable on the map for the whole Squad for X amount of time. It has a cast time and long range, also provides WvWXP and sometimes bag of reward depending on success.

I just wanna begin with I love the fractal dungeon, one of my favorites throughout my whole MMO experience when it comes to 5 man. You’re put the quality in it that we only see in raids (+5) nowadays. You’re especially good at making boss encounters the best.

Though the main problem I have with the dredge fractal is the first boss, also known as clown-car boss. The boss to begin with is way too close to the last boss, it would’ve been better if you had him after the first room with the switches to spread it out. The giant fractal the first boss is at the start and whilst the harpy fractal boss, Old Tom, is close, he’s got fun mechanics and the harpies after him are tough to go through.

The clown-car boss is just annoying. He has protection, regenration and another buff, alongside blocking 33% of the fight. There’s no enjoyment in a boss that has flat abilities for survival and spawning continues weak mobs at us.

The part before him, the bomb and door drilling is also fairly annoying with the amount of dredge that spawns. There needs to be more than just throwing mobs at us. Maybe give us a wave timer or reduce the dredge and have them each more unique?

Either way, I feel the clown-car boss is what needs to be changed or removed, and possibly make the bomb/drill part a different sort of difficult. The first part and the boss at the end are enjoyable imo, cause both require teamwork, it has dynamic mechanics and the dredge aren’t a problem in the first room if you clear them.

Very true to the above, and if I got it right, they don’t catch any disease. So pretty much a superhero race.

Also emphasis on the strength they have, they are VERY strong. In the intro, a norn picks up a boulder twice or trice his size over his head. Norn are pretty much Hercules everyone of them.

The most important thing though, is that they radiate a lot of heat. The cold weather in Shiverpeaks is summer to them. That’s why they don’t wear too much clothes. They do seem to be able to adapt though. If it’s warm, they radiate less heat.

I don’t have a human, only charr and norn, but this makes me upset and afraid. I farmed my gold for the tier 3 on my charr and norn, a lot of work put into it, so I completely understand people with human characters using tier 3 light.

What makes me afraid is that Anet might continue this and do it for norn as an example. I love norn for their unique armor, I love each race for it, and I DON’T want to see the other races running around with something similar. No offence, but cultural was made exclusively and it’s what makes the races more unique.

I can’t believe Anet went or let things go so low. I really hope this isn’t Anet’s decisions and was pushed by NCsoft and whoever runs the gem store, and hopefully there’s some Anet employees who are strongly against this. Otherwise, I fear GW2’s future when it comes to armor sets.

Charr are more in line of a lion or tiger, which both purr. But know that they don’t “purr” like housecats, not lions atleast. It’s more of a soft growl.

As a RPer myself, I usually put “growls softly/lets out a content growl/a growling purr” than use “purr” alone, just to avoid giving the imagine that my charr would sound like a housecat when he purrs.

About hearing, it’s true that charr has trouble hearing humans which makes for great RP. Other than that, yes, charr most likely can hear certain things very well. I wouldn’t go so far as to hear their own race’s whisper from quite a distance, but more things for survival. I always pictured that sneaking at or trying to ambush a charr is tougher than doing it on the other 4 races.

As mostly a pro-charr player (been leading a successful charr RP guild), I’d say norn.

Without going into details and specific lore characters, an average charr soldier against an average norn hunter, whilst emphasizing on the “average”, it’s clear a norn wins.

Charr as a race aren’t known by their individual prowess, strength and battle experience. They train as a warband, fight as a warband and die as one. There are exceptions, but those pale in comparison to the “fight as a pack” concept.

So just as mentioned earlier, both races have their pros and cons. Fair duels isn’t the way charr win wars, charr fights dirty and smart. On the true battlefield and in war in todays age, charr would win, no doubt in my mind.

Agreed. Two of those hairstyles looks way beyond ridiculous. As a roleplayer, I dread the day I see someone trying to be serious with those specific hairstyles.

https://scontent-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/q81/s720x720/954823_10151761141609209_2124908028_n.jpg

https://scontent-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q80/s720x720/934010_10151761142139209_1760550488_n.jpg

I dearly hope it’s just the angle the screenshot was taken from…

Most of you guys miss the point Anet has made in their blogs about Living Story over, and over, and over, and over.

This year has been the build-up of creating holiday events that will reoccur. And also earlier this year was merely a testing ground for Living Story where they had limited time and resources.

That is why most were temporary, also the fact Anet is still working on making more permanent changes to the world after updates. They have a portfolio of events they can take back to ease things out: Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash, Zethyr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee.

All of them will come back, alongside Super Adventure Box which has nothing to do with any of them (SAB are the JP team). Now when they finished Queen’s Jubilee, they can work on permanent content and more storydriven stuff and less temporary holiday events.

You’ve already seen it with Taco update, and I remember reading on an article this TA path is permanent aswell. So far Anet has followed what their blogs have said, they haven’t backed out on any of their words. They have even admitted that what has been this year so far, is just the tip of your toe in the water. They haven’t dived into the water and splashed around yet.

Patience, read their blogs and don’t get over-hyped about anything. Judge it when it’s come.

Anet already said in January that this year, they will be working on the core of the game. Finish the annual re-occuring events like Dragon Bash, Queen’s Jubilee, Wintersday etc, and also work on all the stuff they weren’t satisfied with. Rewards, bosses, dungeons and etc.

That means they wont be adding a lot of new stuff, until the core of the game shining like a gold coin. You might think that’s useless for us who’s already played through it, but there’s tons of people who haven’t. Who? China. GW2 hasn’t released there yet and it’s the 3rd most anticipated game there.

Living Story will most likely add plenty of new zones and explore plenty of new things once the current stuff is up in shape. It’ll take time but as long as it’s F2P it doesn’t need to rush. I got plenty of games to play during breaks.

Just what I made a thread for, haha! More failure conditions or more things that has a penalty to it.

The Lost Headman would be quite good for a dungeon encounter, infact, might be hectic in a large group. Still, I get the point and having more events connected to the big fight should be promoted. Like Lyssa and how the Megalaser during the Taco fight works. Lyssa has some flaws tho, I feel the events are way too apart without jump pads and hard to keep track of, but the Megalaser one was a great idea.

I made a thread about having deaths count towards a failure, the Bloodlust idea works too if it can be implemented. As I said on my thread, deaths should have a larger meaning other than “Oh.. lost a minute of DPS and now I gotta run with 1 silver less.”. It should be more like “Dammit, c’mon, stay alive! Noooo! I died!”. We already have the downed state which is perfect to make deaths like a “Oh no…” scenario and more unforgiving on certain events and boss fights.

The death counter would only count people in the area where the event occurs. I see the flaw here though, but it wouldn’t count all the people in the zone.

They are doable, yes, I don’t mean to make it even harder. What I mean is that I think putting a timer on every boss as the only failure condition is boring in the long run and also promotes DPS gear over survival and support.

You can vary, some bosses have timers, some has this and others have both. This makes more encounters different. Though it’s not all about bosses, think the invasions. The timer works there, sure, but wouldn’t it be awesome to have a Ally Morale bar during these big fights where when you help a downed player or keep people up actually has a big impact on the event and how to win it, not just all about killing the mobs the quickest way?

I think that would be interesting. Anyway I am not trying to defend my idea, just add some insight to it. Everyone wont like it, just like I know some who doesn’t like timers.

It’s not just about Taco, but all bosses and even all events. It adds more flavor and makes staying a live and attempting to revive downed players more than just keeping DPS up.

It would encourage support and survival builds more than it does now, instead of focusing to nuke something down as fast as possible with plenty of deaths.

mercury ranique@ Yeah that could be something too. Nice idea!

So far, we all know the time deadline can be flawed in some events and that relying on NPCs in bigger and harder events barely works most of the time. I thought we could discuss other means that could be used in a global scale for bosses and might fit more into the way GW2 operates.

I have one idea myself, but take it with a grain of salt. I am almost certain that it takes a lot more work than how simple it might be put to it, but still, it’s worth a shot and might spark new ideas that’s simpler to create.

The idea came up when I thought of how much the game relies on teamwork but also how much an individual has a responsibility for themselves as part of the team, e.g no holy trinity breeds self responsibility instead of completely relying on a tank to take all damage or a healer to always heal your HP. I think this mechanic would promote it more, and also bring a greater meaning and penalty of what I’m to least below: character deaths.

Player Death Count
Each time a player dies in the zone of the event, it is counted. Say the maximum death count is a 100 for one event. Once a 100 player has died (not downed) the event fails. See it as a morale status for the players on larger and harder events like enemy NPCs has their morale bar.

This would change everything and actually encourage people to revive downed players. It would also encourage taking things slower and make use of survival builds. Steady and slow wins the race.

Keep Boss Timer
Whilst the above is all well, it would instead give birth to a new problem. People might even more hate zerger gear people who die and the bosses might end up taking more time to kill than planned. To tackle this, I still think boss timers should be there.

Why? Because a boss wont sit around to wait until it’s beaten. Also this gives a reason to try kill the boss within a timeframe instead of relying on survival gear completely. BUT! The timers should be increased to the double of their current amount or even more or less, depending on the boss encounter.

Death Count Scaling
The best thing Anet came up with their events, is the scaling. I don’t know if this is also possible and how easy/hard/impossible it is, but instead of just scaling the encounter, scale the failure condition on fights aswell. The timer can stay the same if the fight gets easier, but the death count would have to be decreased and increased depending on the number of participants.

Conclusion
Taco (just as an example) could have a timer of about 20-30min instead, whilst having this player death counter. You can fail either from being way too slow, or way too reckless and dying a lot.

I think this is a fair deal, to have more than just one condition of failure, but also making them not all too harsh.

Again, the player death count mechanic is something I am not all too sure how easy/hard/impossible it is to create. I know hardly anything about coding and how it works, and I could’ve missed a few points which goes to the “Sounds good on paper, but no”. Atleast I hope it might give life to additional ideas and anything that might breed something close to it.

Thanks for reading, feel free to comment and post your ideas on how Anet could make boss and event encounters more interesting and add more event failure mechanics!

Taco the Sauceless!

Joke aside, nice post. I found his name impossible to pronounce until I heard his name instead of reading it. ^^

All Shatterer really needs is some sort of aura around him whenever you stand to the sides of him like Claw of Jormag has. Then add some mechanic to the cannons and tweak a little, and tada! He’s fixed.

Truly, all they gotta do is fix so that standing on Shatterer’s sides will be more an risk than actually standing infront of him. Shatterer has a lot of cool spells and such. Look at the demo video when people first fight Shatterer and no one knew you could stand on the side. It was chaotic and looked fun.

I remember reading from the GW2wiki about Tequatl, that was probably announced at the twitch stream, that each 25% HP drop, Tequatl drops a chest you can loot. At the end of the fight, you get the big bonus chest for completing it.

So in a way, if you just get him to 75%, you’re still rewarded.

I love this Josh, never change your mindset for difficulty! I love the JPs in GW2, but I’ve beaten almost all of them without a problem. Eternal Battleground and Metrica JPs are my favorites, and the Clocktower from Halloween makes the list. I really hope that it’s not made easier, but perhaps given a easy and hard mode.

Speaking of easy and hard modes, a lot more content could use this dose. Personal story, dungeons, etc, like SAB will get and FotM has. This ensures casual people can still complete the content, but there’s always something higher for the people who seeks the thrill of challenges.

I’m looking forward to try the tribulation mode. Hopefully will give some nostalgic trips to the old games. :p

Then you’ll be happy to know that it looks like they are going to release Braham’s armor and give it a horned helmet. ^^

Set C – Human http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ic1kl/new_armor_models_from_the_dat_file/

Horned helmet item icon – http://raidwarning.com/guildwars-2-election-banners-armor-weapon-skins/

I don’t mind the temporary content, but what I do mind is how quickly they are removed.

Why not have the temporary content be removed after half a year or even a few months/weeks after it was released? That way, we can still experience some of the previous released content and do the new one.

That will make the content almost semi-temporary due to its long lifespan and give more people time to breath and experience things in their own pace.

Anet has done a great job so far and apart from most seemingly, I understand that this concept needs time. It’s a almost completely new concept and idea to bring forth content, another example they gave is Runescape. Whilst not perfect, it still lives on and is fully alive today because of their continuous new content.

I love the Living Story and what it brings, I have nothing against the temporary content very much, as long as it expands on the permanent department. To me, the Living Story is only getting better and better and that clearly shows that Anet is gaining experience from something they once had no idea of.

Aeolus@ With that said, whilst I doubt there’s a code to whom wins and voting doesn’t matter, there’s enough evidence that shows that we get different kind of content. Kinda like saying “Which content do you want see us release first?” which is a smart way.

About living story not truly being living cause players don’t really affect it, I sorta agree and don’t. It’s hard to make it too personal, cause that just splits it up. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to make something server based unless you’ve planned the different outcomes in advance. Even then, the ending and what continues might not go back to it. It’s a lot of wasted work in my opinion which is expected in single player games, not online games. In essence, it’s not truly “living”, but compared to what other MMOs offers, it makes the world of Tyria a lot more progressing and living.

Yet I do hope we will see some sort of similar things to the election in the future as Anet progresses.

If you read early on what Anet first wrote about Living Story, is that they will introduce a nemesis we’ve “probably met before”. So the part where we’ve probably never met him/her/it is quite unlikely. Don’t believe me? Just go back to one of the first articles where they sum up everything and Anet writes that.

My guess is that it’s Livia aswell. I have no idea what her plans are, but I might be guessing she’s held onto the Scepter of Orr long enough to succumb to its true powers and potential. Maybe even trying to help the Elder Dragons succeed in their goal to destroy the races because all she’s done so far is made alliances with races that opposes the superior races.

Probably not indirectly working with the Elder Dragons, but using them to further her own goals. We’ll just have to see!

This is what I would do:

• As the content is released, players can read the story on their Hero’s Panel and what’s going on.
• There, you’ll have several objectives like “clear these story missions”, “complete this dungeon” or other objectives which replaces the same things achievements has now and instead give achievements more unique and fun things to do.
• E.g: “Run this story in <insert time and time frame>.” “Find the secret <insert item or area> in the story mission.” “Defeat this boss without <insert mechanic to avoid> in the dungeon.”. You can still have achievements for completing a set of missions and the dungeon, but they shouldn’t replace the Hero’s Panel, its reward and telling the story of the content.
• At the end of completing the Hero’s Panel mission you gain a temporary special reward (instead of putting it into achievements, add something else, like minipets and such, tho not gear).
• The Living Story content is temporary, but instead of disappearing once the other story content releases, it’s there for half a year before it disappears.
• When it disappears, dungeons are gone and put into Fractal as a separate dungeon from the original (so players can fully experience as they wish) and added as a fractal to the original, story mission icons disappears out in the world and all events and outside world changes reflects the outcome of the event.
• But! Living Story instanced missions can still be replayed and played for the first time by those who missed it by simply visiting the Hero’s Panel, accepting the mission and going to the location it played out previously. A lot like Personal Story. The special reward is gone, and instead you get gold for completing it the first time.

Conclusion: This not only allows people to replay what they have experienced, but for new players to experience the same content without it interfering with the story being alive. The world outside still changes and reflects the outcome, the events and NPCs that was around out in the world are gone and you can no longer do these side things for achievements.

You can still do the dungeon though in Mist of the Fractal and you can still do the story missions through Hero’s Panel. Some rewards are temporary and can’t be gained again and will still make this event special.

Event Name: High Legion Friday
Date: Reoccuring Tri-Weekly (Every 3 weeks) on Fridays
Time: 20:00 CET (GMT+2)
Location: New events posted at http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/forum/m/2737230/viewthread/5108588-7th-june-high-legion-friday

Introduction
An event held tri-weekly on fridays, focusing on promoting charr-oriented roleplay. It’s inspired by Tahira Razorstride’s Warband Wednesday. Credit goes to her and Razor Warband. Recreated on EU server Piken Square and hosted by Numinarus Howlmane and Shattersteel Detachment.

OOC Description
High Legion Friday seeks to bring all charr roleplayers together to form bonds, create alliances, experience what the great race has to offer and just generally having fun. Though military is the theme, everyone’s skill set is useful from Iron, Blood or Ash and even someone from outside the Legions. Socializing both during and after the event is highly encouraged as well. A mature and respect approach to whoever is leading the event is expected, and to remain In-Character at all time.

The event is a cooperation between all three legions to secure areas and answer threats inside and outside of charr territory. Warbands and lone charr gladiums are all welcome — it’s also possible that travelers and adventurers of other races can partake in form of allies, though a warming welcome is not always guaranteed. Level, class or affiliation, none matters. Bring your roleplay spirit and be ready for charrs!

[b]IC Description
With the recent leap of changes with allies in most corners of the world, not to mention the treaty with humans and the raging war against the Elder Dragons; the charr works at their best to be steps ahead in military might. As such more joint operations between the Legions are seen for ultimate success, utilizing charr’s cunning and might to full extent. The Shattersteel Detachment is one example of such, detached warbands joined together to fight where the high command sees fit. Under the Detachment’s support Smodur the Unflinching and the Tribunes have agreed to test upon a new way to deal with certain threats and missions.

Event Examples

Scout & Patrol Zones
Fight Specific Threats (E.g: Ascalonian Ghosts, Flame Legion, Renegades, Separatists, Risen, etc)
Roleplay Objectives (E.g: Destroy, capture, kill, repair, escort, protect, assault etc & among more complex objectives)
Dungeons & Dragons Storytelling Variant (E.g: Using Commander /squad for Dungeonmastering)

High Legion Structure

Warbands are flourishing and the High Legion event will go back to its roots. Frontline Force, Support Force and Recon Force are removed. Instead, objectives will be laid out and performed by suitable warbands and bandless charr/gladium squads.

Warbands – The core elites amongst the force. Always led by a Legionnaire or another respected band member. They will mostly be trusted with the important objectives.
Gladium Squads – Those that either lack all their warband comrades or are gladiums (without any warband) are put into squad/s. They are led by a suitable appointed Captain that serves as a squad leader. A gladium squad is nothing like a warband and therefore will get lesser tasks to perform.

Chain of Command

In the midst of warbands and gladium squads, there’s a chain of command during these missions. Ignore it and you’ll be prohibited from taking part in the current mission.

“Brevet Centurion” – Leads the whole force of warbands and gladium squads. The rank of Centurion is only temporary hench “Brevet”.
“Legionnaire” – Each warband is led by one or an acting “Brevet Legionnaire” should the warband’s actual Legionnaire be absent.
“Captain” – Each gladium squad is led by one. They act as a Legionnaire but are not equal to them. The rank is temporary throughout the mission.
“Warband Soldier” – Follows their Legionnaire in their respected warband or in a gladium squad should they lack present members. A warband soldier is always regarded higher than a gladium.
“Gladium Soldier” – A soldier who lacks any warband. They are at the bottom of the rank chain, and should follow their chosen squad Captain.