Guild Wars 2

MikaHR.1978:

Yup, i really love how it eventually turns “but its player’s fault”

No it isnt, unless your premise is that somehow ANet doesnt have control over their game.

So basically Anet should do what their tools and studies say should be best for the game and ignore players like, for example, yourself?

Chaotic Storm.2815:

and this just shows us that Anet doesn’t have a clue what’s happening with their own game.

Because Anet’s metrics and testing completely fail against our Totally Non-Ancedotal And Unbiased Eyeballs Mark I.

morrolan.9608:

Cause Carbine are being upfront about their intentions. Cause BiS equipment in Wowish games is actually easier to obtain than ascended items in GW2. Cause the game design is driven by endgame content.

Anet is big fat poopy heads for failing to be different enough, yet Carbine can outright say they’re re-making vanilla WoW and that makes them better.

That’s ‘government out of my medicare’ levels of cognitive dissonance there, but then again this thread pretty much went full of it as soon as Lanfear and Indigo left.

Vayne.8563:

Oxe.6142:

This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.

This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.

Right now, the dead horse is nothing more than pulverized bones you can fit in a shoebox. And yet somehow I can still imagine ‘manifesto’ threads here for years to come.

Some players just want to watch the forum burn.

I’m 39 and I play GW2. And I’m not alone in my age group.

Please proceed with the generalizations.

Well that escalated quickly.

Fun and community building by posting at each other over who’s really skilled or not.

Since I don’t have the skill ‘Patience To Wait Hours In Overflow To Get To TC Sparkfly’, I guess this content isn’t for me. Oh well.

Namu.5712:

Just sayin.

For all you negative nancy’s out there.

Says the person who gave up on SoS. >_>

RagingDragon.9475:

Simplicity.7208:

Let’s go do an event with a 95% failure rate that takes 1000x longer than a Queensdale event yet gives oddly similar rewards!

41 worlds, 1.5 hour respawn, he has been available for around 30 hours.

30/1.5 × 41 = 820 spawns (not counting overflows) and 5 wins. That’s a .006 win percent.

That is about the same chance of getting a precursor out of the Mystic Toilet!

I can see the nerf bat coming already, but personally I think they should leave it and make it a guild event. Though they need to add better rewards and better scaling so 20 – 30 people could do it.

Failure rate isn’t what you should be looking at.

If, by the weekend, the only servers succeeding are the high-pop ones like Blackgate and the Coast, then expect a nerf. If Ferguson’s Crossing is successfully running their own TKS parties, then there won’t be.

So how many guests can Blackgate take at once? We’ll find out after these words from our commercial sponsors…

Manoa.5897:

The point I was making was that like Teq 2.0, Hami was challenging open-zone content that required a large group of players and with good coordination. Those players initially never worked together as a large group and had to invest quite a bit of time in order to puzzle out when the mechanics were first introduced. It took time, but the players eventually puzzled it out. And when they puzzled him out, they were able to beat him reliably.

We can’t call for a nerf for Teq 2.0 when the players don’t even have a full grasp of the mechanics.

Fair enough, that’s a solid point. What I’m saying, though, is that full grasp of the mechanics or not, if its not worth the trouble its not going to be worth the trouble. And I’m not sure if Anet is willing to let Teq rot if it turns out not worth the trouble.

Manoa.5897:

You’re thinking raids WoW-style. COH Hami raids were nothing like that. Hami “Raids” were in an open zone that anyone at the appropriate level could enter. Everyone started out as a disorganized PvE mob of 50 random players (the max the zone would hold) who had to learn how to work together to puzzle out the content. Just like Teq 2.0. As time went on, those players puzzled it out, took Hami down reliably, bonded as a community and taught new players the mechanics to continue the knowledge.

Hami Raids were also one of the few ways to get Hami-Os which were the enhancement to have prior to IOs. In the last couple years I don’t recall a whole lot of Hami raids being PuGged, at least not as often as the mothership raids. Everyone <3 their IO set bonuses. And I also remember Keyes and Underground and MoM and how rarely those got PuGged before Keyes got nerfed.

Now if all you’re guaranteed from Teq is the world boss rare…

I’ve found ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’ most often defined interchangeably as ‘Them’ and ‘Me’ for a varying definition of what constitutes Them and Me.

As far as who Anet is targeting, I think it has less to do with who they target then who’s been coming to the plate when the dinner bell rings. Not to mention that I believe John Smith has a bigger hand in the scheme of things than most people realize.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I would run near 300% MF before this update. Ran well over 300% during the Southsun event.

I wasn’t trying to say MF does not work. I was just simply trying to say I wouldn’t expect a huge influx of precursors because of it.

MF is worthwhile and affects a lot of smaller things more than it affects exotic drops. This adds up over time to a lot of $$.

Running that high of a MF does not make it rain rares or exotics contrary to whatever anyone else may lead you to believe. I ran high MF long enough to know that exotics are still pretty darn hard to come by with 300% MF.

It doesn’t have to rain oranges, though, not when your market size is fairly large to begin with. If the average MF goes up across the board, then the number of available exotics and precursors are still going to go up across the board even if the odds are rather finite. If demand remains steady, prices go down.

It’ll probably take a while to settle down, but I’d imagine gw2spidy should give us a good picture in a month or two.

6 out of 7 here. Only failure I saw was, honestly, due to a lack of bodies in the overflow.

E knew the Aetherblades were coming.
Evon wanted to research the history of Abaddon.

Interesting.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

I sure wish the chararacterization of Scarlet in the game matched the one in the story. In the story, she’s presented as cerebral, driven, and hungry for knowledge. That’s good, and an atypical role for a female character. But then the game makes her into just another maniacally laughing, smarmily insulting, hostage-chowder-making villain…

I like her backstory as presented. I just think it’s sad and dumb that ultimately her in-game function is to be yet another Joker-like, smugly chaotic anarchist type.

You do realize that by Seeing Forever she went mad, right?

That’s, um. Wow.

I just want to point out and thank Aberrant and projectcedric for providing good thoughtful comments amidst the usual sturm und drang.

Shiren.9532:

The Joker killed Batman’s girlfriend, an important and established character. Scarlet is supposed to be some kind of genius yet she didn’t predict the most predictable event – the mesmer queen with the mesmer bodyguard used an illusion as a body double. We had a Living Story instance which told us Scarlet is smart, but it showed us that’s she’s actually stupid.

Because Scarlet could use the bandits to subvert the Shining Blade to get the real Queen like the Joker did. This isn’t about linear comparisons.

Maybe she’s dumb. And maybe the same terrorist that gave us ‘fog and sand’ is sending a message: ‘Your queen didn’t trust you enough to show herself in person.’ ‘Your queen is an illusion.’

Namica.2951:

Well apparently everyone but our character knew about Scarlet since all the other characters talk about. The Asuran dude also keeps telling us of her various exploits. Others can be derived simply from what we’re fighting. Our characters know exactly what we the players know at this point.

No, not everyone. Vorpp. He’s the only one we meet who knew her beforehand and only because of her degrees. If we want to get into the details of the asurans keeping an embarrassment to their intellectual superiority on the down low as good/bad storytelling, sure, but Scarlet isn’t a widely known figure.

EDIT: And we only find out about her just now. Again, bad storytelling or a sign that there’s more to this than what Vorpp’s telling us?

Why don’t you pay more attention to the story before defending it.

I did. Now why don’t you stop talking down to everyone?

Namica.2951:

The thing is, people have been seeing “deeper meanings behind seemingly unimportant one liners.” since flame and frost. Eventually it needs to be realized that there are no hidden meanings, you can’t just keep going “Well eventually X may happen!” when so far, eventually, nothing is happening.

The dredge leader complained of a silver-tongued snake from the city. Mai Trin said Scarlet would be upset. Oh hey, now we have Scarlet and she has the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades riding shotgun. There are meanings, they’re not really deep meanings but they’re still meanings.

Never look for kudzu plots when an easier explanation can suffice.

In a years worth of content, they’ve pretty much pushed the story no where. This was supposed to be a huge thing. A-net sent fan sites and some fans letters with gifts. They said that the queen’s speech would change Tyria forever.

Instead we got abunch of shoddy writing that’s being defended with “Oh well, surely it gets better…”

Yes, because bombing DR and launching a Tyria-wide invasion is such a ho-hum thing. With everything else going wrong across the continent, the powers of Tyria can easily handle another global threat. No sweat.

Namica.2951:

Actually no, considering she’s had her hand in so many places, this isn’t her first chapter at all. See, if a-net was writing a decent story, they would have built up motives and the character herself through ALL THESE VARIOUS THINGS WE’RE BEING TOLD SHE WAS PART OF. Instead she was just thrown at us, pointed at, and anet goes “She is to blame, kill her!”

You’re missing one obvious point. Everything you know in-game is everything your character has seen, heard, and or read first-hand. The only cut scene I can think off-hand that we never were personally witness to was Marjory’s, and that was told through her journal. We never see Scarlet cackling evilly before this LS because we never see Scarlet. The only people we meet that have met Scarlet either don’t know much about her or are too loyal to say anything. And, oddly enough, she left us few – if any – clues, up until her dramatic entrance. And even then we’re still left guessing.

(And if she did leave us clues, nobody would be complaining about Villain Balls right?)

I’ll try to make this quick before I dash out the door.

Scarlet is a psychopath five cans short of a six pack.
You see: Saturday morning villainy.
I see: A sylvari psycho who not once mentions the Nightmare. So, then, how did she get so bonkers?

Scarlet has an unbelievable background, like perhaps having graduated from all three asuran colleges and then some.
You see: Bad writing.
I see: Something so outrageous that there has to be more to it than that.

I also saw: Someone who literally has to die five times before Vorpp can get us into her playhouse. Seriously, you beat her to where she’s leaving enough ellipses to attract Pac-Man and yet she’s back up and shiny less than an hour later? And that’s not entirely game mechanics, because, again, Vorpp’s story requires you to do this five times.

I also saw: Someone who merged golemagical studies with necromancy. Notice the magic effects on the Twisted and how they all drop dusts.

It helps to, every so often, turn off your internal critic and take a moment to look around. You might actually catch on to some things.

Chaz.5263:

That beign said I don’t see how the story or scarlet makes any sense at all ( I guess we’ll have to wait 6 more months to have her motives and background revealed to us) I think this is a real shame, specially after watching some of WoodenPotatoes videos and realizing that the guys at Anet are sitting on a gold mine of lore and history and have a thousand things to draw from and can make very rich stories.

WP’s a great lore guy, but his theories present plot holes big enough to throw both M. Night Shalyman and Damon Lindelof through.

Shiren.9532:

Uruz Six.6594:

Atlas.9704:

DaShi.1368:

This is why I like Scarlet. She’s a fun, over the top villain.

No, you must have brooding villains that have been established from the very beginning of time.
How dare you have FUN in a game pfhah! I say pfhah! lol

And we have to know exactly everything about them in the first chapter too.

It’s not the first chapter. They’ve been telling the story since January/February.

They’ve been telling a story since January. This is her first chapter. And its definitely not her last chapter, either.

DarksunG.9537:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I’m really curious about her motives though. Assuming she isn’t evil for the sake of being evil.

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Ugh, you aren’t SERIOUSLY comparing her character to the Joker? that’s like comparing a Risen to Galactus.

What’s different between Scarlet and Dark Knight Joker?

Atlas.9704:

DaShi.1368:

This is why I like Scarlet. She’s a fun, over the top villain.

No, you must have brooding villains that have been established from the very beginning of time.
How dare you have FUN in a game pfhah! I say pfhah! lol

And we have to know exactly everything about them in the first chapter too.

For whakittens worth, on my second run last night I made it too late to get any hits on Scarlet. Yet I did get credit for the achievement and full event rewards. So while you don’t get her champ box, just being there nets you everything else?

MadDemon.7548:

she could be someone who is being controlled by an outside force, possibly another dragon, and is responsible for her knowledge, powers, and insanity. I am pretty sure there are several entities in Guild Wars lore capable of doing this, just don’t know which ones…

/e looks up from his light reading in the hunting lodge basement. “Ah, cooooould beeeeee….”

Evans.6347:

Or she just didn’t include them.

Bingo. We have a psychopathic sylvari who, on the surface, isn’t Nightmare. As Artie Johnson once opined, “Verrrryyyy interesting.”

Cliff.8679:

I’m really, really hoping that there’s a good explanation for Scarlet’s outrageous and unrealistic backstory. I’m having trouble coming up with one myself, though.

“Wanna know how I got these scars?”

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

There’s something there that even the asurans are flabbergasted over, we’ll just have to wait and see.

BobbyStein.2315:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

…I think we still have much to find out rather than “we know all we will ever find out”.

There is a lot more to come. The Living World story is paced very differently than other content in the game, partially due to the nature of how we build and release it. I won’t spoil anything other than say that we’ll reveal more in time.

So there’s more to Scarlet than what we’ve seen and heard so far. I kind of did have a double-take at the whole genius bit, I’m curious to see where this goes.

P One Gore.2304:

Nerf?

The amount of karma granted from consumable karma items has been increased. Karma boosts no longer affect the amount of karma gained from consumable items.

Seems like they made it so that you don’t need to use a karma booster when using the consumables anymore. I’d call it a buff if anything.

A buff if you never/rarely used buffs. A nerf if you constantly used buffs.

Like Obi-Wan said, its all from a certain point of view.

Today I Learned: That trying to complete the event gets you labeled a ‘troll’. And those of us who might want to actually use the flippin’ waypoint as the quick route to the Cathedral, Promenade, and Hallows, well, too bad or something.

But, hey, Anet will Do Something like probably nerf bat the champs to vets and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Too bad, so sad. I lost my sympathy here.

“… their fast-talking friend from the city.”

Scarlet’s (presumably) Sylvari. … What city? She sounds like she’s missing too many of the wrong marbles to qualify as a fast-talker.

Mai Trin then? But she didn’t seem like much of a fast-talker either and pirates aren’t exactly what you would initially describe as city-folk.

There’s something here I’m missing. Like why Scarlet is chugging the haterade for Divinity’s Reach, and just how she planned to profit from having only one Lion’s Arch captain’s chair…

ADDED: Crossing out Scarlet, who’s from the city, a fast-talker, (presumably) female, and with the resources to take advantage of the Molten Alliance tech?

… I think I have an answer and I’m not liking where its going.

Nettle.9025:

Iconik.8712:

Not that difficult.

;)

http://i.imgur.com/DDiEz3h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GYHu50N.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QpcDjby.jpg

Because he’s the hero Orr deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So the zerg will hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A Tyrian knight.

Let’s turn one of the Orrian lighthouses into an Iconiksignal. Who’s with me?

1. Post multiple game-related videos on YouTube.
2. Get videos upvoted by Reddit.
3. Get myself an in-game NPC.

Woo, sounds like a plan. I should get started on this right away.

I just hit that event yesterday. My five foot tall sylvari comes up to her hips.

draxynnic.3719:

Really, there are things that need to be explained in both cases. If Miyani is locally-born, then her speaking of going ‘back’ to Elona is a incongruity (albeit a minor one, because many people do speak of going ‘back’ to a cultural homeland they’ve never been to) as is the question of how she came to be Zommoros’ keeper (possibly inherited from her parents). If she’s Elonian-born, however, then either she’s over 50 and incredibly well-preserved (or herself not human – djinn can appear as humans, after all) or there’s a story behind how she got out of Elona since Palawa took control.

Personally, on reflection, I’m inclined to think she is Elonian-born – she speaks of travelling with Zomorros, so she certainly hasn’t been in Lion’s Arch all her life, and there’s relatively little opportunity to travel within Tyria (especially pre-treaty).

I think of it this way: If you were a djinn with Phenominal Cosmic Powers, how far would you go to keep alive your only remaining link to your lost homeland?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

My personal theory is that the Nightmare Court are being manipulated by Mordremoth via the Nightmare. Not corrupted, just manipulated.

Keep in mind that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption – rather than being corrupted, they simply die. The reason for this is unknown, but we know that dragon minions are not immune to other dragons’ corruptions. So we know for a fact that the sylvari are not dragon minions – given this, Malyck, and the nature of how sylvari are made all being different.

I’ve actually come to the belief that there is a reason why the sylvari are immune to dragon corruption. And it does fit the Court being manipulated over corrupted. Here’s what I have, let me know if I’m out in left field or on to something:

Eleven thousand years ago, the dragons were running rampant. The Nightmare is Modremoth’s specialty, the darkness inside the shared consciousness of all of the elder races. The brightest minds of race ‘X’ turn the Nightmare back upon the dragon by creating the incorruptible proto-Pale Tree. It cleanses the Nightmare into the Dream and, over the span of a couple centuires, uses the knowledge it gleans from race ‘X’ into creating the proto-Sylvari race ‘Y’. Race Y is just as incorruptible and becomes the front line fighters in the war to finally put the dragons back to sleep. Something happens to the proto-Pale Tree, however, and so a stirring Modremoth is just recently able to restart the Nightmare fresh. Fortunately, there are seeds from that proto-Tree that are still in storage…

Now I have my suspicions over who is race X, who is race Y, how Ronan came to find the seeds, and how the Dreamers, Courtiers, and Malyck’s people all came to be, but I’ll leave that for later.

DarksunG.9537:

Uruz Six.6594:

$20 of gems to gold gets you 1173 dragon coffers. And that number’s going nowhere but up.

Um, yeah, I think I know what the smart plan going forward is.

actually, based on the number ppl reported, you’d have to open around 5000 to have a decent chance at one.

Guildie got hers in 450. RNG is RNG.

Saldonus Darkholme.5680:

Uruz Six.6594:

Personally, I’m just entertaining myself while I’m out of game.

You know, it’s very illustrative of the situation when you have people who’d rather post on the forums than play the game.

I’m not sure how it works where you live, but my employer tends to frown upon people playing MMOs from work.

Eridani.8317:

£10 a month is nothing. I would rather pay that than have this gem store infecting every aspect of the game.

If £10 a month is nothing, then why is the subscription model on life support?

It might be nothing to you, but to a lot of gamers that’s a good chunk of change.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/43357

Sell price is at 4s 55c and dropping. Gems to gold is at 2g 67s and rising. We’ll stick with those numbers for now.

$20 of gems gets you 20 rich dragon coffers.

$20 of gems to gold gets you 1173 dragon coffers. And that number’s going nowhere but up.

Um, yeah, I think I know what the smart plan going forward is.

displacedTitan.6897:

This is a month long event and you are all crying about not instantly getting the rewards on the first day. These coffers are crazy common and there will be thousands upon thousands on the TP for super cheap in a few days.

This. At this point, I’m convinced the far safer bet is to wait out coffers coming down on the TP and go for broke there, skipping the rich ones altogether. I’m not entirely sure if Anet thought their cunning plan all the way through.

alcopaul.2156:

the fact that it stressed out “those who bought gems SINCE THE BEGINNING” is what infuriates me even.

u mad over bonus gifts

… I don’t think I can add anything to that.

Geotherma.2395:

Imagine their horror when opening a free checking account that has the free gift.

A toaster? That’s all!? If you truly valued me as a customer, you would include a bread maker and butter churner as well!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Additional ways for other items like lodestones will arrive later this summer, there part of a much larger reward overhaul (outlined in very high level detail here) we’ll go into more low level detail when we update the status of this blog: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

Well what do you know. OK, consider me intrigued!

Something to look forward to once I’m done patching. Well, next to the Dragon Bash. Thanks, Anet!