I’m having a hard time determining what makes a mob suddenly go Invulnerable. I have figured out the following circumstances cause Invulnerability reliably:
- The mob can’t find a path to reach the player
- The mob is running to the DE they’re intended to be in
- The mob has been pulled too far from their spawn point
- The mob is being sniped at from a different Z level
These are all understandable. 3 and 4 are a bit irritating sometimes but I can understand the mechanic. However, I have also had mobs go invulnerable on me in the middle of a fight, usually a long fight, with no apparent trigger. This is especially annoying since it will continue fighting and damaging me even though I can’t damage it (although sometimes I can kill it by inflicting conditions, which makes no sense). My wife has experienced this as well.
Does anyone know what exactly triggers this and how it can be avoided?
Saying “oh, but WoW has a FOV of 75” is not an excuse.
Particularly short-sighted in this case, as GW2’s stated goal is to break out of MMORPG conventions. To see a GW2 employee then go and use the archetypical MMORPG as justification for maintaining the status quo simply beggars belief.
It should be free to waypoint to any location that can be reached free via portals. This would include all major cities.
This seems like such an obvious oversight that I can’t help but wonder what I’m missing. Arenanet doesn’t employ idiots. What CAN their reasoning be here?
Jon, your points about artistic integrity and performance are condescendingly transparent at best if not outright disingenuous.
A quick look at some video on Youtube of GW2 played with a wider FoV (provided in-game during some large boss fights, by window-stretching or even by 3rd party tools) shows quite clearly that the the art of the game does not suffer a bit from a slightly wider FoV. And as many have pointed out here, performance issues are dependent on the hardware of the user, and the game already has numerous options for dealing with that.
Your last post implies it is a massive undertaking to alter the FoV of the game. Why, then, is a 3rd-party tool written by one or two talented amateurs able to do it without any of the negative effects you are talking about? Sure, you have to run changes through QA and the amateurs do not, but is it really so onerous a task that you can justify alienating a portion of your player base because of it?
I am not usually mindful of settings like FoV, but even I have been aware of the tunnel vision that routinely distracts me from just playing the game. I have to swing the camera around to take in scenes I should be able to see at a glance. I constantly find myself wishing I could just zoom out a bit more.
While I hope you are correct in your assertion that the camera movement fixes will address the motion sickness many are experiencing, there are many other reasons for allowing the end user to adjust the FoV, not least of which is the fact that there are already methods for doing so, both with and without the use of 3rd party tools.
Your response here is going to make a lot of people unhappy. I suspect this problem is not going to go away, and is instead going to drive greater and greater numbers of your player base to use the 3rd party tools you are so keen to avoid.
If you find you continue to receive complaints about motion sickness after your camera fixes go live, will you please consider revisiting this issue?
(edited by Verteiron.8734)
Human blacksmiths have hair on their arms, and it’s generally still there after they get done working, either because of protective gear or simple care and expertise. Working near a forge is not like standing in a bonfire. And as Danikat mentions, sparks in fur mean nothing more than a frizzled spot and a terrible smell.
What about REALLY massive heat, like blast furnaces or the huge pit of molten metal in the Black Citadel? Well, very furry creatures are susceptible to heat stroke, yes, but there are many ways to mitigate that. Water comes to mind, as do fans.
The long claws are tricky, sure, but the artwork makes it clear that even the tip of the thumb claw is still opposable to the tips of the fingerclaws, so they can still grasp. The claws would be less sensitive to heat and cold, but presumable they are enervated with a “quick” similar to other clawed mammals, so they have pressure feedback to prevent them from accidentally puncturing or crushing objects. And when it comes to small, delicate work, whatever makes you think that humans use their bare hands for that? A jeweler uses little pliers for almost everything. Depending on how sharp those Charr claws actually are, they might not even need as many tools as a human would…
Have a hard time working tiny controls with your claws? Don’t build machinery with tiny controls. You could build devices only a Charr could operate (easily) by making recessed controls with narrow openings.
And all of the above works without magic even entering the picture. Once you remember that in this world, magic works and magic users are everywhere, many many more answers become apparent. Too hot? Try some water magic. Need to heat up some metal without creating sparks? Channel some fire magic into it. It’s extremely obvious from Asura tech that there are many ways to use magic that our playable characters never touch on.
Frankly, the physical aspects of the Charr race and their technology are the least problematic aspect of their background; the parts that the OP accepts without question are actually the parts that I have the hardest time swallowing. An entire race of wanna-be warriors descended from pure carnivores? You’d never have a stable leadership.
I think that the Dragons are Lovecraftian monstrosities in almost every sense. They have their own agendas and drives which are utterly alien to us. Their mere existence is completely inimical to our form of life. They were here long before the mortal races crawled out of the primordial ooze, and they expect to still be here when the sun goes out. They are in it for the long haul while the lives of mortals flicker about them like fireflies on a dark night. Or at least, they were.
The fact that the mortal races of Tyria were able to bring down Zhaitan is a wonder; imagine a swarm of gnats suddenly dropping a bomb on you. Completely unexpected, yes but now the other Dragons know we are a threat, and that we are too dangerous to continue ignoring.
I expect Zhaitan to be the easiest Dragon to take down for this reason. He underestimated the 5 races to his own downfall. The others will be expecting us.
No offense, but… asking about a Jeremy Soule track “with french horns” is a bit like asking for “that John Williams track, you know, with the trumpets” or “that one song by Kraftwerk where they play with the Moog”.
That said, I think the tune you’re talking about may be “Logan’s Journey”
I’m mostly bothered by the fact that there are all sorts of gigantic beautiful things to look at in the world, and I can’t get a good view of half of them because I’m peering through a telescope all the time. I understand wanting to enforce a max field of view for PvP and performance reasons, but c’mon at least give us up to 90 degrees! The game already changes the FoV to at least that high during some events (there’s video evidence of this occurring during the Shadow Behemoth fight on Youtube).
C’mon, Anet. Pleeeeeeeease?
Agreed. I’m a huge fan of music in gaming and not only is this not Jeremy Soule’s best work (compare the GW2 soundtrack to, say, the Nightfall soundtrack) but it is used in a very ineffective manner for the most part. No area themes, no transition themes (listen to the music after you finish a battle in Skyrim, there is always a short transition before the regular music resumes)… we don’t even get character themes!
The music in GW2 isn’t bad, but it’s not the award-winning soundtrack the game deserves.
Or at least change that humming that the human female does. It’s more annoying than “MY EARS HOW ARE YOU!!”.
Well, no, it isn’t. Nothing is. But it’s still pretty annoying.
“It’s not that the Dragons aren’t interested in negotiating. It’s that they are not capable of realizing that there is anything else in the world to negotiate with. This is their world and always has been. There are other Dragons, yes, but the world is just big enough for six. Perhaps there have been titanic struggles between Them, great cataclysms that reshaped the entire globe, but those are long past, and now there is only the ancient cycle of feeding and sleep, feeding and sleep. Sometimes, when they awaken, they find their world crawling with parasites. Sometimes not. If the parasites are bothersome, why, then they will be exterminated. But they are not a cause for concern.
Negotiate? Would you negotiate with bacteria? Millions of them may live and die all around you. You won’t even notice them unless they make you sick. If they make you sick, why, your defenses are powerful. White blood cells seek out and destroy bacteria with a single-mind obsessiveness that would appear like intelligence, if a bacterium were capable of reason. So it is with the Dragons. We are the bacteria. The Risen, the Branded, the Frozen, the Destroyers… those are the leukocytes and t-cells that wipe out the plague before it can grow into a threat.
This time, the parasites are strong. Alarmingly strong. But the fall of Zhaitan shows merely that it was careless, weak, or both. The Dragons do not care for it, will not mourn it. There is simply more food for them, now. They are stronger as a result, and they are not careless.
Sally forth, little bacteria. Perhaps they, too, shall succumb to your infection. But remember, the Dragons are not waiting for you. They have barely noticed you. But they are ready for you."
- This message from your local Elder Dragon brought to you courtesy of the Foundation for Draconic Communication and Migraine Headaches
If something on the scale of an Elder Dragon woke up on Earth, the resulting devastation would darken the skies for 100 years. Imagine the Yellowstone super-volcano blowing a huge hole in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. We’re talking an extinction-level event here, and that’s BEFORE the dragons start actively hunting humanity. I think Tyria got off rather easily with only massive flooding and a continent-wide climate shift.
The way cutscene dialogue is done, it still feels like it has that ‘work in progress’ sticker on it that it did in the Betas. The way the ppicture floods the screen and the characters appear, it’s like sitting down in a theatre, but watching the rehersals not the final show. Possibly this is part of the problem.
I have found the speech bubble dialogue to be so much better, it always comes out more believable somehow, I especially liked the children you bump into before you meet with Destiny’s Edge. Their exchange actually told me considerably more about the characters than I got from watching the characters themselves conversing. It also felt a bit more real and there were no pauses between the exchanges.
In missions I prefer the speech bubble dialogue because you are actually running through a tunnel when someone says “it’s caving in… run!” sort of thing. Watching meetings between characters also feels more lively because you can see what’s going on, you can walk around the space, you can see who is talking to who and the surroundings give context to what is being said.
The way it is done currently feels like we’ve been taken out of context, and we have nothing else to concetrate on except all the things people have picked up on here.
This, this, THIS! While the face-to-face theater-type scenes have a place in telling the story, they are way overused! They interrupt the flow of missions and the dialog in scenes is very stilted, with overly long pauses between each character’s speech. Watching the dialog when a character cuts off another one is just painful.
And yet, I know the timing can be more precise than that because characters realistically cut each other off and have genuine-sounding dialog during dynamic events! It’s frustrating to know the audio engine is capable of doing entertaining dialog, but completely booches it in the face-to-face scenes.
When the scene is a cinematic, it’s GORGEOUS, and that’s exactly what the scene engine SHOULD be used for. But the simple face-to-face stuff really doesn’t need to be there at all. It could be just as effectively delivered as in-world dialog.
I lost about 60 silver in the rollback; the bags I was selling in the TP are gone, with no money waiting for me.
I’ll make it back quickly, but I hope this doesn’t become a regular occurrence.
I see Zhaitan’s undead (and Guild Wars undead in general) as being another form of draconic corruption. Think about it, every dragon corrupts the world and/or living creatures in some fashion in order to create minions.
Primordus corrupts them into red fiery things.
Jormag corrupts them into blue icy things.
Kralkatorrik corrupts them into purple mutant crystal things.
Zhaitan corrupts them into green undead things.
Presumably Bubbles corrupts things into tentacled Lovecraftian horrors (in a pleasing orange/yellow color scheme) and #6 has its own form of corruption, too, though we’re rapidly running out of distinctive colors.
If anything, I think GW2 has better justification for using undead enemies than most games; all the dragons corrupt the natural world in some way, and Zhaitan corrupts the cycle of life and death.
The real question is, can Zhaitan’s corrupting influence be the source of all undead creatures in the world? I wonder if Palawa Joko is sorry to see him go…
My guess is that the Scepters are magical artifacts associated in some way with Zhaitan, probably a piece of his body or power left over from a very long time ago. That would explain why the Scepter of Orr could command the undead… they were responding to the power of Zhaitan.
We know other dragon-related artifacts have been used, like the Cauldron of Cataclysm, which flung bits of Kralkatorrik crystal all over Ascalon. The Scepters being associated with Zhaitan isn’t all that far-fetched.
Maybe it was the massive use of the Scepter, the Cauldron, and other Dragon leavings (Asuras draining magic from Primordus) during the first Guild Wars that led to the awakening of the Dragons.
Almost anything from Two Steps from Hell’s two public albums will serve well as battle music.
The female human one is even worse… tuneless humming that’s not only repetitive, but is totally out of sync with the dancing.
“My ears! How are you?” twitch
It’s like the woman in OfficeSpace saying “JUST a momENT!”
As for the Sylvari’s Rose/Thorns line, I actually reported this as a bug in beta, not just because she says it so often, but because the line would be much more effective with just the first half. “This rose has THORNS!” wallop
One thing I noticed during the public betas was that everyone was saying the events were restarting quickly so they could be tested more thoroughly. Imagine my surprise when late tests and head-start weekend showed me that the timing hadn’t changed.
One particularly glaring example is Kol the Giant. Kol takes 10+ minutes to down, even with a large number of people. His attacks are simple and repetitive, and once you get a feel for his tells they are easy to avoid. Stomp stomp punch, roar, mega-stomp, roar, repeat. After killing him, there’s a pretty cool DE chain that leads up to razing the centaur camps. Kol is a great starter for it because it gathers a huge number of people for the subsequent ooze and centaur-slaughtering. It’s all pretty cleverly done.
Every time I’ve done it though, I’ve seen people starting to ask for help bringing down Kol while I’m still killing Centaurs in the event Kol started. Spend a couple of hours on that map and you’ll see at least 10 “Bring down Kol” events. Completely kills any sense of achievement.
I did this one with my Mesmer. The early parts were easy, Mesmers are awesome at one-on-one encounters. The entire rest of the mission, from getting off the girl off the beach onward, was spent kiting and running. I didn’t kill many Risen except a couple of small groups on the way to lighting the beacons, and those groups respawned in less than 10 seconds by the clock. Finally I gave up and made no attempt to do anything in the courtyard except survive all the poisoning and apparently random hits. Somehow this resulted in my successfully completing the segment and I was then able to run to the boat and complete the mission with 30+ Risen right on my tail.
This mission tries to be epic, even IS epic for a few moments (the dragon breaking down the wall is awesome!), but the Risen need their HP reduced. I can’t emphasize this enough. The point of swarming hordes of undead is that you can slaughter them all but more keep coming. If we can’t slaughter any of them, it takes all the fun out of it. Risen should be brittle and do crazy stuff when you kill them (think of the Afflicted in GW:F), but they should BE killable!
If you want to go for the “never really dead” thing, then take a cue from Dry Bones and have them fall to the ground for a while before getting back up! At least that way we’d feel like we accomplished something!
Thank you! The friendly NPCs get slaughtered instantly in this one and my Mesmer spent the entire fight kiting and getting in 1-2 hits every 10 seconds or so. Took an extremely long time to complete.
Going back a way here, but Ragnarok Online had a fun way of handling world bosses (called MVPs there for reasons that are unlikely to become clear at the moment). RO’s MVPs spawn on a timer, but at a random location on the map. They deal massive damage to single players AND groups, and they move all over the place. Just because it spawned didn’t mean you could just run in and find it, you had to search the whole map for the thing and be READY for it.
Now RO is a terrible MMO in many respects, but this is one thing they got right. Playing on maps where an MVP lived was always a little bit tense, because there was always that HOLY CRAP moment where you ran into the MVP by accident and had to run away screaming.
I realize why the Shatterer always spawns in the same place; he’s so large, he can’t really move around the terrain freely without clipping horribly, etc. But it would be awesome to have multiple landing points for him and have him move between them every now and again. Randomly running into the Shatterer on the map would be a blast, and adding some movement to his event, even if it’s just between 2-3 locations, would make it feel a lot more “real”.
tl;dr Potatoes are tasty.
Just throwing in my “Me too.” here. I’m a human Mesmer, I took the Noble/Carnival/Whispers/Skritt story paths. The personal story lines involving the Skritt and Destroyers are uniformly awful. Destroyer Crabs use a bubbling lava attack that gives no warning, appears directly underfoot, deals a fair amount of instant damage (as in, the moment the circle appears) AND requires the use of a dodge to avoid additional hits. These enemies spawn 6-7 at a time and all use the skill at once, so as soon as they “hatch” I am at half health before I can even move. The NPCs on those missions are useless, dying almost immediately (mostly from standing in the AoEs) and dealing no damage while they are alive. There is no safe place to stand that doesn’t give you chains of “Invulnerable!” while attacking. The only way I beat one of them was by dying, which apparently breaks aggro, so I was able to rez Tybalt long enough to be a distraction without doing the Benny Hill thing. It was taking me about 5 minutes to kill each wave…
The human Carnival missions were pretty awful, too, particularly the fight with the Ringmaster. The most frustrating thing was being 4-5 levels above the recommended for the mission, but still dying repeatedly because of the stupid, STUPID level cap.
Every RPG since ever has given the player the option to, if they get stuck, just go and grind a few more levels until they can smash the troublesome mobs to bits. GW2 takes that option away. It’s really my sole source of frustration in the game thus far, and is really causing me to avoid the personal storyline quests. The simplest solution, to my mind, is to increase the level cap on storyline missions to at least +2/3 over what they are right now, while keeping mobs and everything the same.
Edit: I have /bugged all of these things in-game. Are those read by the right people?
(edited by Verteiron.8734)