Guild Wars 2

Human Mesmer, 6 times, no boosts. Managed to open the fake chest once before the platform got eaten.

Having a few drinks first also helps. Even if you don’t make it, you won’t care as much!

I’m not complaining that it’s hard. I can play Nintendo hard, that’s fine. But I don’t like losing to design issues.

Actually, a bigger problem than the camera zoom is the fact that large characters completely blot out the view of the edges and your character’s position. It’s much easier to do as a giant norn.

This puzzle is an excellent showcase of the camera bugs.

Often I’ll visit the forum without noticing I’m not logged in, read a couple of thread, and try to post a comment but… I’m not logged in. So I log in from the thread I’m reading and I’m sent back to the main forum index. Generally I just use the back button, then refresh, but it would be nice if this worked as expected: after logging in, I should be returned to the page I was viewing before logging in.

I’m not suggesting he’s lying. He’s a member of the marketing team, not the dev team. He could be making an honest mistake. He could be repeating an off-the-cuff comment made by a driver developer. He could be misinterpreting something else he heard. He could be just trying to get people off his back. He could be working off of old information.

Or he could be correctly relaying information given to him by someone else at nVidia. I’m saying, we’ve got no reason to take when he says at greater face value than what we hear from the ArenaNet devs, who have generally been honest about performance issues.

Perhaps one of them will chime in on this thread.

Centaurs are, as a rule, extremely xenophobic. Centaur-shaped sylvari would have a difficult time integrating with other races and would probably not be accepted by the centaur tribes. I’m sure the Pale Tree knew this and so ensured her children took on a more generally acceptable form.

… OMG SPECIES-ISM

How do you know that a random nVidia employee without access to the game’s source code, developer tools or testing environment is capable of making a more accurate assessment of the game’s performance than Arenanet?

Can you sort of sketch out the person you’re seeing, because I’m afraid I’m just not seeing it.

Also, I believe Varesh died at the scene of portal to the Abaddon’s domain in the Desolation, which would be a fair way east and south of the circled area.

WPs in cities should be free to use, wherever you are. Travel to cities is already free using GoToMists/Portals and so the cost of the WPs there merely adds an unnecessary layer of loadtime and bandwidth usage.

I feel that WP costs within the map you’re already on, particularly the nearest ones, should be much lower than they are, though travel costs to other maps should remain the same.

I experienced a bug after BWE3 much like you’re describing, but fixed it by turning off Ambient Occlusion. I still can’t enable Ambient Occlusion, but it doesn’t seem like I’m missing out on anything as a result.

Do we know for certain that they don’t? If the Sylvari are to experience the full range of sensuality experienced by the other races (and all indications are that they can and do) then they need nipples. Presumably they’re hidden under strategically-placed leaves like everything else.

I may have misspoken. According to the programming team, they want to see whether it is bugged right now before they go about actually making any design changes. Arenanet as a group seems to feel very strongly that the current FoV is entirely appropriate. A great many fans disagree, the devs have acknowledged that and are looking into it.

That’s probably all we’re going to hear about it for now.

The programming team said they were looking into the FoV issue. I’m sure they’ll discover whatever bug that’s causing it to be too narrow and get it fixed.

At least turn off the icon in towns. There were about 6 of them in Lion’s Arch not long ago. It’s not exactly a game-breaking issue, just makes for a distracting and overly busy map.

The 15-second respawn rate is pretty common near “Communing” skill points and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional there; they’re supposed to be hard to reach and hard to use, hence skill points. That said, the respawn rate is pretty insane in some other regions as well. As I’ve gotten better at killing, it’s been less of a problem, but I do think in most places it could stand to be toned down at least a little bit.

Or we could go the Final Fantasy route:
Zhaitan: Now face my TRUE FORM! turns into a pink catboy

After ruminating on this and the responses so far, I have come up with a couple of additional things to say.

I understand that Arenanet was probably trying to go for a Lovecraft-style “ancient unspeakable evil” concept with the Dragons. I’m all for it! Ancient unspeakable evils are awesome! But they don’t make for interesting storytelling. Even Lovecraft himself had the same problem; you can see in his later works that he had to give his monsters and otherworldly invaders motivations and reasons for existing, because you can only write “… and then he went mad because ancient unspeakable EVIL” so many times.

Zhaitan, I think, could have been handled better, but it works as a storybook foe this time around. What I am aiming for, and the reason I hope the devs read this, is a different type of foe next time around. It would be nice if, instead of the next Dragon fight just swapping out Green Undead for Purple Branded or Blue IceBrood or Red Destroyers, we could also face some opponents who genuinely believe they’re on the right side of things, instead of just being evil for the sake of evil. Several of the other dragons have groups who will defend them. Jormag has the Sons, Primordus is probably the favorite of the Inquest (after all, it and the Asura have a history). I’m sure Kralky can find someone who loves him.

It even opens up new kinds of story lines… imagine suddenly finding yourself forced to ally with the Inquest, because they feel Kralk is a threat to the power of Primodus and you can’t defeat the big purple guy without their help. Or perhaps, after struggling against them for the entire game, the heads of the Sons of Svanir discover that Jormag neither appreciates nor notices their worship, and that becoming Icebrood is a hellish process. Now some of the Sons want to join you to fight their former master. Do you trust them? Do you have a choice?

There’s no reason why we can’t have Ancient Unspeakable Evils AND interesting, motivated opposition. Colors are so much more interesting than black and white.

This is an interesting idea. How feasible it is would depend on whether the butterflies are particle shaders loaded from a DDS-like format or are part of a larger art effect. If the butterflies are individual textures, then it should be possible, in principle, to use a program like the old Texmod to swap them out in memory. That probably wouldn’t allow for a color change, though.

Gargoyles are a strong telepathic race with tremendous mental faculties. The true Gargoyle civilization was underground. The ones we saw and fought on the surface were idiots who were exiled or got lost as younglings, for their race tolerates no weakness of either the body or the mind. They are driven, goal-oriented, and passionate beings but they have no interest in conquest. Their silicon brains give them a logical approach to problems that other races lack. They knew of the Dragon’s awakening long before the other races of Tyria, and set their plans into motion a thousand years before the Guild Wars. In 1185 AE, as humans measure time, the Gargoyles fled Tyria in magical spaceships to a far-off world of their own choosing.

The Asura knew about them, of course, but never mention them to anyone because they’d hate to admit there was ever a race more intelligent than the Asura.

Obsidian: Agreed on the Mursaat, they should have told the humans what was going on and sought a solution that didn’t involve sacrifice. I was just playing devil’s advocate there.

Palawa Joko, though, is (potentially) a much more complex situation. You might claim death preferable to a safe, comfortable life under his rule, but what of the lives of your children? When the river Elon dried up, the crops failed… thousands likely fled south, to Istan. Other could not, and then the Mordant Crescent came, Sunspears who now follow Joko, and they bear a message… come north to the cities of Palawa Joko, where there is food and water in bountiful quantities. Your children are starving, so you accept their offer and travel there.

It is green. It is lush. Your children grow up never knowing the life they left behind. Two generations later and it’s all perfectly normal. It’s the home of your descendants. Perhaps they know Joko is evil, that your land was bought with the blood of innocents, but life is comfortable and safe, which is all most people want.

Now a bunch of adventurers from the North have arrived on the doorstep, telling your children’s great-grandchildren about the atrocities Joko committed 200 years before, and saying they’ll have to leave forever the home their family has lived in for 3 generations… what do you think they will say?

Real-life parallels abound. People, once settled for more than a generation, are not easily removed.

The interest in the low price is exactly what they’re counting on. See, when you contact them, they’ll ask for your login, so they can “transfer to you the golds and levels”.

Now they have your money AND you’re a gold farmer/spammer.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the Personal Story actually allow you to join the “bad guys”. As cool as that would be, it’s pretty clear it would lead to an unworkable situation for an MMORPG. I’m just saying, make the choice that are made by the character a bit more, as Donari says, agonizing. Make it clear, perhaps only after we have made our choice, what the real repercussions of that choice were. Perhaps some NPCs hate us for the choices we made; show us their hatred!

Doing the right thing, making sure you’re on the right side of history isn’t always easy.

A place I feel that presents a real opportunity for this sort of ambiguity is Elona. Those of us who played Nightfall know what our characters had to do to save the world. The Movement of the World has shown us a small facet of the results: the Desolation is now a green land, with abundant water. Joko has built a verdant kingdom in the desert and rules it as a benevolent dictator. He now has a living army in addition to his undead one, and people have been living in his oasis for over a hundred years. These are ordinary people with families and homes, not monsters. Refugees from Vabbi and Kourna live in Joko’s kingdom, too.

Joko isn’t stupid: the happier he keeps his people, the more entrenched he becomes. He has an entire army of undead slaves that he can use to construct almost anything: irrigation systems, viaducts, palaces, roads, housing and more. He has every motivation to make his land as peaceful, beautiful and rich as possible.

Of course, this idyllic kingdom was purchased with the blood of Elona; he had to redirect the river that fed the entire continent to get it, and he kitten sure didn’t do that for altruistic reasons. As a result, it would seem our goal is clear: destroy Joko and restore the Elon to its natural state. But at what cost?

The final battles against Joko and his army would take place not in the oh-so-typical desolate, other-worldly landscapes so typical of the genre. We would fight him in green fields and vibrant orchards, in palaces made colorful and vibrant with fine things, both made by native artisans and plundered from other kingdoms. We would bring war to a true tropical paradise.

We would have to fight in cities filled with 3rd-generation refugees, where the people may not like Joko, but can all agree peaceful life under his is better than the alternatives. Of course, war tends to be bad for civilians; as you pursue Joko in your quest to rid the world of evil, you have become the invading force. Joko taunts you, pointing out that you’re destroying the lives of these innocent people, just as he destroyed so many lives generations before. He would rally his people against, you, and they’d probably follow him! If you wade the tides of blood and defeat him, what is the cost? What have you actually achieved? What of the Elon? Do you destroy the dam, eradicating the oasis of paradise forever and making all those people refugees once again? Or do you acknowledge the world has changed forever and the cities that Joko built deserve to remain? What would you do? What’s the right choice?

What is your story?

In Guild Wars 2, we have straight-up good versus evil: the Dragons seek (or at least are indifferent to) the destruction of all life on Tyria for their own inscrutable purposes. That life is now struggling for survival. As the Sylvari keep telling us, “All things have a right to grow.” That’s the setup.

Zhaitan is not misunderstood, indifferent, or power-mad: he is eeeeevil. You can tell he’s eeeevil because he’s ugly and slimy and made of dead things and glowing green and stuff. His minions are eeeeevil, too, you have only to listen to them say things like “DEATH GOOD!”. I mean that’s EVIL!

In fact, the evil is so eeeeeeevil, I have a hard time taking it seriously. Hear me out. Guild Wars 1 spoilers ahead.

In Guild Wars: Prophecies, there was an interesting facet to the storyline that many people either missed or just ignored: the mursaat, for all that they were murdering innocent people, were in fact saving the world from a still-greater evil. The souls of the humans they sacrificed were used to power the Gate of Komalie, thus barring the Titans from destroying Tyria. The mursaat did, in fact, turn the tide in the Charr invasion of Kryta.

Of course, we destroyed the shield they used to keep out the Titans, thus resulting in the Titan invasion and the genocide of those mursaat that remained.

Were the mursaat wrong in using human souls to prevent the massive devastation (and loss of many more human lives!) the Titans could have caused? Even if they were, does that justify the nearly-complete annihilation of their species perpetrated by humanity (and the Titans) afterward?

In GW: Nightfall, we had to return Palawa Joko to power in the desert in order to save the world from an insane god. We know that he became a major force for chaos and death in Elona. But the choice was simple: risk Elona later, or watch the whole world be destroyed right now.

End GW1 spoilers.

This is moral ambiguity, and it is sorely lacking in the story of Guild Wars 2. Almost every “dark” faction has a believable subtlety to it, generally revolving around personality flaws that suit the species they’re associated with; this already sets them up to be more interesting opponents than the dragon hordes.

• The Inquest takes Asuran arrogance to an extreme, believing they can exploit the power that flows from the dragons and that ethical concerns are secondary to their own pursuit of knowledge.
• The Nightmare Court is infused with hedonistic sensuality and psychopathic sadism, what you might expect from children born into powerful adult bodies.
• Sons of Svanir seem to think the dragon’s rise is inevitable and want to be on the strong side, the winning side. Fits right in with the Norn culture of might-makes-right.
• The Ministry is officious, bureaucratic, corrupt and greedy, epitomizing the all-too-human weakness that allows us to commit atrocities in the burning belief that it is done for the greater good.
• The Flame Legion, of course, echoes the religious mania and bigotry found in our own world.

The dark factions can provide moral ambiguity, real ethical questions, enemies with solid motivations and goals. Any of them are far more interesting and convincing foes than Zhaitan and the Risen are.

Or at least, they could be.

Right now they are mostly portrayed in the same two-dimensional, ham-fisted good vs. evil manner as Zhaitan itself. But with a little work and some clever writing, Arenanet can turn these conflicts into a real, engaging story, where difficult choices are made that leaves the player questioning… did I do the right thing? Did the end justify the means? Did I really join the right side?

A bit of moral ambiguity makes for a more memorable, engaging story. Let’s see some real interesting villains with believable motivations in future content!

I’d love to see this. I mod Skyrim extensively and have often gazed longingly at the GW2 engine and dreamed of the content I could create with it.

That said, I’d place this at the absolute bottom of the “likely-to-happen” list. MMORPG + User generated content = … well, have you seen what flies around the sky in Second Life?

That said, one thing that might be doable (and pretty cool) would be some kind of home district customization. Even a trophy case you could show off to other people would be something…

What features of DX11, specifically, do you feel that GW2 should be taking advantage of?

I think a lot of events don’t get seen right now because the chains are stuck halfway through, too. For example, the Ettins you’re supposed to herd into the pen in Timberline Falls were stuck, unmovable, about 20 yards from the pen. They remained that way every time I happened past them for 3 days. I’m sure something interesting happened once they were herded in, probably 2-3 DEs in a chain, but there was no way to find out.

Stuff like that is everywhere, missing NPCs, bosses stuck in walls, bugged events, etc. Until Anet can get all these things straightened out, I suspect there are a great many events that are rarely, if ever seen.

Also, they turned your leader into an undead boss in the original Guild Wars and probably didn’t want to be accused of re-hashing their story lines.

I hate to say it but I have to agree here. I know Arenanet worked really hard on these scenes and hand-placed a lot of gestures and expressions to make them enjoyable, but most of the time they do exactly what OP said: break the immersion.

GW2 has an beautiful game engine. Use it to tell the story during a mission. You can even pause the action to do custom camerawork and still preserve immersion (just make sure the minions aren’t beating up Shiro in the background, Factions players will know what I mean).

Save the storyboard animations for major exposition, it’s PERFECT for that, absolutely brilliant. But if it’s just talking heads in the middle of a mission… skip it.

Noticed this myself yesterday. Definitely a new bug, though I’m not sure exactly when it got introduced. It seems like the NPC is repeating exactly the same sound on every single hit that deals damage (Chaos storm didn’t cause it, but Mesmer Staff 1 did).

Headhuntar.5367:

so i was farming cursed shore and killed a brood mother and http://i49.tinypic.com/33cvlg1.jpg

HAPPNED!

so its kind of what u talked about killing monsters and having a chance at precursors!

This would appear to be the first concrete evidence I’ve seen -anywhere- that precursors drop from monsters. Thank you for posting it!

Remember, the idea here is NOT to change the overall drop rate of Precursors. The idea is to hide the random number generator behind activities that feel like you are accomplishing something. If at the same time, player effort can be redirected into a wider variety of areas and tasks than Orr, all the better.

ajpearman: I think more gear/armor sets would be awesome, but creating new stuff requires artist resources, which I’m sure are occupied with creating other new content. A good long-term goal, sure, but my original suggestion could be implemented without taxing the art teams Agree with you on the gold race, though.

Tribune: That’s why I think this should be a feature in addition to the MF, not instead of the MF.

Brave Sir Ryan and Ampris also have good ideas for alleviating the Mystic Forge frustration, and that could work with my idea, too… make those same tokens a rare level 80 drop from world bosses or long event chains.

Suddenflame.2601:

Verteiron.8734:

Suddenflame.2601:

They already randomly drop from monsters (the precursors). Its extremely low drop rate but its there.

Are there any screenshots or dev statements to that effect? Rumors have real staying power in MMORPGs, but that doesn’t make them any more than rumors.

No but do you have any screenshots or dev statements to say that they are not?

Pretty sure there’s a logical fallacy there, but nevermind, nevermind.

Even if what you’re saying is true, the end result is the same: no one is out killing world mobs or doing DEs with the serious hope of getting a precursor. Either they don’t drop precursors, or they do, and no one has gotten one that way yet and posted about it. Either way, it’s not sufficient incentive to get people out doing non-Orr DEs.

I just want to clarify something here, too, with everyone: I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not posting this because I’m angry about not getting a precursor. I have so little time to play that my main hasn’t even hit 80 yet, despite getting started on day 1 of the prelaunch weekend. A Legendary weapon, even with the system I’m proposing, is so far out of reach that it will be years before I can think about getting one. I’m taking it slow. I’m still having lots of fun with the game just as it is.

I posted this thread because it’s clear that people are angry and frustrated about how the MF/Precursor system works, and I think I can see an opportunity to alleviate that while also adding value to the rest of the game, in the form of getting high-level players out of Orr and back into the rest of the world, doing the DEs and playing in all the content that Arenanet has worked so hard to create.

Suddenflame.2601:

They already randomly drop from monsters (the precursors). Its extremely low drop rate but its there.

Are there any screenshots or dev statements to that effect? Rumors have real staying power in MMORPGs, but that doesn’t make them any more than rumors.

Celeras.4980: Let me show you how your post could have looked, had you chosen to be helpful instead of smug and condescending: “Arenanet said in some of their prelaunch presentations that they are deliberately avoiding putting named bosses at the end of Dynamic Events. Why not make the named bosses spawn at long interval on maps, or just apply the idea to DE chains without using named bosses?”

Those are great ideas, Celeras! Thank you for being so helpful!

Everyone else: I hear your objections that the game is already grindy, that the MF serves as a gold sink, and that Legendaries are purely optional. And that’s all true.

Right now, however, and probably for the foreseeable future, there is a huge demand for Legendaries and thus, for their Precursors. Right now, all that demand, effort, and player time is being sent down the toilet of the Mystic Forge along with the gold.

ArenaNet has an opportunity to turn that demand to more productive ends, such as repopulating the emptying zones, getting high-level players playing across the entire game, not just Orr, and in general mixing things up a bit. Just because Legendaries are completely optional doesn’t mean that going after them should be pursued in the most boring and aggravating fashion imaginable.

Can’t you bind a key to “Sheathe weapon”? I believe that restores your speed, provided you’re not being affected by Crippled or something.

Fozzik.1742:

Who is to say that precursors don’t already have an extremely slim chance of dropping in the open world? Maybe they do, and most people just don’t know it yet.

If one dropped for you from a mob, would you tell everybody?

Whether I would or not, don’t you think someone would have said, at some point, “HOLY KITTEN I GOT DAWN FROM THIS SKELK OMG GUYS”. Millions of players, billions of mob kills, and not one person has said anything? I don’t buy it.

Zyreon.9130:

+1
I’d like an alternative to the MF, but i think there already is. I’ve heard talk about someone finding precursor in big reward chests in the Temples of orr Events, aswell as those of the 3 big dragon events.
I’m not sure how much of this is true though.

If this is true (and, like the previous quote, I have my doubts), they should expand it to ALL big reward chests, provided the player is level 80.

Suddenflame.2601:

Here we go i think i have a plan that would make everyone happy and removes the RNG from it but would create a huge grind fest and bots would win it. To get a precursor weapon you have to max (literally max) the number of kills for that weapon type and then have max kills for a specific monster type (such as centaurs). Such as to get the Dusk precursor you have to Max kill Shadow Shelks and get max kills with Great Sword. And to get Dawn you need to max kill Hylek along with max with Weapon. There we have a extremely hard to get system that would make you legendary.

That’s an interesting idea, but I would just make that an Achievement. As you say, the grindy nature of it would make it exploitable by bots and… well, grindy for everyone else. Grind flies in the face of Arenanet’s stated design philosophy (yeah, yeah, I know).

Lorana.2468:

this is already being added to the game albeit it doesnt concern the Precursor items.

see this post
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/4-hours-of-Arah-EM-and-no-shards/first#post392172

That’s a good move. Players should always receive some reward for genuine effort, even if they fail. That’s good game design.

But it is a separate issue from the ones raised in my OP.

Yes, it does, and that’s fine, really it is! I think it should absolutely remain a way to obtain Precursors. But it should not be the only way.

The other requirements for creating a Legendary are quite challenging enough without making two of the prerequisites completely dependent on chance. The Mystic Clovers already cover the luck/buy more gold element.

There are many things I miss about GW. My main in GW is a Mesmer, and I loved that class because it was complex, required tracking many different variables at once, and needed to change dramatically depending on circumstances. I had Energy to keep track of, I had to know what Hexes I’d laid on which enemies (and GOD do I miss Hexes!), I had to watch my own health (Monks make mistakes), not to mention keeping track of which enemies were safe to go after.

My main in GW2 is also a Mesmer. I enjoy playing her, but I agree with OP that gameplay overall is a much more shallow experience than in GW. I’m a lifelong action gamer, so dodging attacks and such came easily to me. Once I figured out how the mechanics work… well, that’s it, isn’t it? Swapping weapons to get at different skills and such is mildly interesting, but most of the skills feel like the ones I never put on my bar in GW… only I have to put them on my bar, because they’re all the skills there are.

I like the movement-based combat of GW2, but the Skill system of the original game was greatly superior. At the very least I feel there should be 2-3 skills selectable for each weapon slot. There just isn’t enough flexibility to provide the level of depth and flexibility that GW had.

I’m with Excelliate on rainfall in Diessa. Diessa Plateau was incredibly arid, so arid that Stormcaller brought the first rain the Charr had experienced in the two years since they’d invaded. Let’s say some combination of using Stormcaller and defeating the Titans in GW1 “fixes” the rainfall in the area.

Do you know what happens when rain falls in an arid area completely free of plants? Erosion happens. All the dust that formed the dunes and hills is now mud filling up the canyons. And that could happen with only a few days of rain! Now add 250 years’ worth of normal rainfall combined with whatever climate change was caused by the rise of the dragons, and Diessa’s new topography doesn’t seem so unbelievable.

I believe (though I can’t find any references for it right now) that it’s stated somewhere that the Jade Wind was part of Abaddon’s “gift” to Shiro.

The very first cinematic preview of the game we ever got said in the voiceover that the lost continent of Orr “rose at the dragon’s command.”

He didn’t lift it. He COMMANDED it to rise, because he’s an ancient unspeakable force of pure magic and that’s how he rolls.

I like how your characters head doesn’t completely blot out the view when you look up. That would be nice to have on a single monitor.

Dibrom.6408:

What I hate is I’ll be standing on somewhere ~2 feet high and the mob can’t hit me. It’ll turn invulnerable and I’ll realize “oh he can’t hit me up here”. But even if I come down it takes a minute for him to become vulnerable again. I’ve inadvertently caused my Ascalon Catacombs (path 1) to fail a few times due to this.

I’ve even had this happen to a ranged mob that was actually hitting me because I was standing on a spot it couldn’t path to. It seems like the game periodically runs a path-finding check on your targets, and if that check fails, makes them invulnerable regardless of their attack style.