… New WvW siege weapon? AERIAL BOMBARDMENT INCOMING!!! MAN THE… OH GOD IT’S EVERYWHERE.
Clearly, it’s a new gathering item that’ll be added to the gem store!
Doly Grow – 800 gems each
Your own infinite dolyak crop duster and fertilizer in one!
Use on target cooking ingredient node to guarantee five successful gathers.
24h cooldown
BOMBS AWAY!
PS – This’d be my new favorite thing in the whole game. The animation possibilities would be well worth the 800 gems.
I like the Marionette fight a lot, but then I like the Tequatl fight, too.
The only issue I have with either fight is that the overflow system causes finding an organized group to become a frustrating chore. The best way to circumvent that frustration is sitting in the map for an hour (or more) before the event, and that is really not fun.
Haven’t tried the wurm fight yet, but I think it’s safe to assume it has the same issue.
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This started happening to me also after the most recent update. The bug window disappears suddenly, so I can’t even read what it says.
Yep, same here. The crash report window closes so quickly that I didn’t even realize what it was the first time it happened. Since the patch, it’s happened every time I’ve closed the game.
Time gating is there to ensure you log in every day so that doing so becomes a habit. It has zero gameplay value.
I’ve given the gating a lot of thought, because I hated it at first, too.
I agree with your assessment regarding Charged Quartz, but not with regard to the ascended materials. The major difference for me is whether or not the gated material is tradable.
IMO, there is no validity to Charged Quartz being totally isolated from every other fine crafting material through time gating. I think this was a misstep on ANet’s part, and I think they are acknowledging it (indirectly) by giving us alternate ways of acquiring CQ through other methods (like the Wintersday gifts).
With ascended materials like Damask being sellable, the idea of reducing the gap between hardcore and casual (referring to Izzy’s post on Reddit that someone else linked in this thread) doesn’t appear to be directly substantiated. However, the time gating does introduce a redistribution of wealth.
Hardcore players with excess gold can sidestep the time gating by buying the gated materials, which means they are paying a premium to have their BiS gear immediately. Casual players who don’t need or care about having ascended armor right away can sell their gated materials for a premium, making it an easy source of gold for players who might otherwise have a low income rate.
Honestly, as long as the gated materials are tradable, I have no problem with the time gating. It just makes the gated material into a more valuable market than it would’ve been otherwise. However, having the gated material be account bound is a mistake.
I like this idea every time it pops up. It’d open up more options for hybrid builds and stat mixes for support that aren’t entirely kitten on DPS.
Even in the current meta, it’d be effective. Since DPS classes tend to have a good crit chance, and the finishers determine the effectiveness of a healing combo, this idea would make healing combos more useful, since DPS’ers aren’t likely to be stacking healing power.
This idea would make healing more viable. Unfortunately, ANet has made it very clear that they don’t want effective healing builds.
I’ve never had stealth turn into what looks like a propaganda collage. lol
Maybe ANet is testing a new skill animation unlock. XD
I keep hoping that ANet will start allowing players to help design new weapons and armors. It’s been suggested so many times on the forums, it seems impossible that they haven’t seen at least one of the threads.
@OP: Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that forcing defensive stats on players without first making them useful is going to cause a giant headache for no real gain. Defense/offense mixes are already available by choosing a mix of gear types. Many people just don’t run such mixes because there’s no reason to. IMO, anything that ANet changes should provide a purpose for the stat, not just force people to use it.
@Swagg: Your idea seems to be a compromise between the current PvP stat system (very limited) and the current system in PvE/WvW (complicated). However, it also seems like a huge step backward in ANet’s concept of customization and horizontal progression. It would drastically reduce the possibilities for custom stat mixes by taking the stats on 19 separate potential gear pieces and condensing them into 4. That might seem like a good move toward simplicity, but it isn’t going to appeal to min/max’ers or people who enjoy experimenting with their gear, and it ultimately doesn’t address the issue at hand, which is the usefulness of the defensive stat types.
If you read Blood Red Arachnid’s post that was linked by the OP, there are quite a few reasons why nerfing individual stats or stat combinations is not likely to resolve the issue.
Well said, OP.
Hopefully we see some actual reworked combat mechanics instead of just messing with gear. Players are smart enough to adjust their own stat combinations if there’s some purpose to doing so.
I think the “60 years later…” cartoon and its caption says it all.
…except change it to Cantha. :P
The red and yellow tear icons both have the heart symbol in them, which is the same symbol used in the trait window for vitality. That would lead me to think that there may be new types of buffs that we can (or have to) maintain to help fight the boss.
Kinda makes me suspect there are multiple objectives in the fight, which could mean some interesting mechanics.
It would set a bad precedent. As someone who adores Guild Wars 1, I have to say that hexes were by far the worst mechanic in the game. Sure, they helped Arenanet to add depth and complexity to the game’s debuff system, but this came at the cost of them being a major source of imbalance.
A hex was little more than a much more powerful (and often long duration), SLIGHTLY more difficult to apply condition that was hilariously difficult to remove. And I do mean hilariously. Hex removal options in GW1 were far too scarce, weak, and/or conditional for how effective and widespread hexes were in PvP – particularly in RA, TA, and GvG.
While I agree with you that effective hex removal was difficult to come by, I considered spirit weapons, shouts, and the Paragon-specific buffs worse from a balance perspective, as there were no direct counters for those.
Honestly, now that I have the achievements, there’s no way I’m going to spend an hour or more of my time sitting in Sparkfly to organize with a cross-server guild just to kill one world boss.
That is a huge waste of my time, no matter what might drop out of his loot chest.
Tequatl’s mechanics are fun, IMO, but the level of coordination required to actually kill him is too high.
Who’s to say Scarlet disappears, perhaps all the thumpers were added to clear the ground work for guild fortresses, thus immersing the world into bitter combat over territory. She may very well be the patron of the new feudal age in GW2…
Honestly, I don’t care if she takes up knitting, as long as I never have to see her again. IMO, her story has been horrible, and the Living Story needs a fresh start with something else.
I understand the point of course: forcing interest. Trying to force players to play NOW… However by its very nature that leads into that rather negative loop of small peak of excitement followed by burnout/exhaustion, etc…
This is the single biggest problem with the Living Story, IMO.
I really don’t understand what ANet’s collective mental block is.
Oh, and +1 for using MSPaint. The graphic might not be high-tech, but it’s effective.
^— Agreed. IF the voice is anyone it would be the new Asura. But it is most likely just an omnipotent out of world narrator.
If that huge, deep, rumbling voice is coming out of an Asura, I will pee myself laughing.
Even if he’s using a voice changer, that’d be really funny.
To me, it looks like a molten treasure chest and design notes for the robotic marionette.
The dialogue and voice acting in the video actually made me think that the voice was warning players, and seemed too beneficent for a dragon, unless one of the six dragons is actually friendly, which seems unlikely.
here’s a chest with a mini scarlet reward you’ll never use.
I know several people who will, just to burn her in effigy.
This needs to happen. A mini Scarlet that is eternally on fire, running around frantically, with an adaptation of the toy doll scream every few minutes.
This happened to me while playing Snowball Mayhem the other day, and the thing that finally snapped my character out of the bug was being stunned by an enemy player.
Not an enjoyable bug, especially in a competitive setting.
Like the thread title says…the Guardian passive Virtue of Courage still activates Aegis in activities like Snowball Mayhem.
I’m pretty sure it was acknowledged a long time ago that this is not intended, so please work on fixing it again.
I was told that it also happened for Aion, so it seems to be an NCSoft issue, not necessarily limited to ANet.
The aegis bug is still active, too. Can’t wait until that gets fixed.
It’s still a very fun game.
I agree. I’ve never been a big PvP’er, but Snowball Mayhem has me hooked.
The reason these small pvp games are working, just like Dragon Ball Arena did to some extend, that there is no build crafting going on.
Fixed that for you.
It has nothing to do with inflation. It has everything to do with ANet being able to pre-balance the builds without worrying about allowing the players to customize them, which I think was your intended point.
And, yes, this is a large reason why Snowball Mayhem, Dragon Ball Arena, and Aspect Arena were all successful.
…It would be unheard of for a game just over one year old to release a major expansion…
ANet did exactly that, twice, with far fewer people on staff than they have now:
Guild Wars was released in April 2005.
The entire continent of Cantha was released in Guild Wars Factions in April 2006.
The entire continent of Elona was released in Guild Wars Nightfall in October 2006.
As the thread has veered off course yet again, the primary point of this thread is to state that temporary, RNG-based achievements are unacceptable, regardless of an individual player’s reasons for pursuing the achievements.
Strategy, dedication, teamwork, and skill are all perfectly acceptable things for a temporary achievement to reward. RNG achievements should only ever be used as permanent achievements, which allow for a potentially infinite number of chances to succeed.
Good to hear they have big things planned.
A full expansion for free?
But the thing that many GW2 fail to realize is that we already get that. It’s called Living Story :P
The player base knows that…
…or the player base is continually told that. Some of us don’t accept that argument.
To me, an expansion is not just a certain amount of content. It implies a level of thought-out completeness and quality that the Living Story has not even approached.
Until that changes, the Living Story is not even close to the equivalent of an expansion, let alone a substitute for one.
That said, I am certainly not averse to ANet proving me wrong.
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Getting people out of the lower level zones…I really don’t see that as a bad thing. There is still good loot in the higher-level zones, it’s just that the starter zones are ridiculously easy, so that’s where most people go. I doubt the Queensdale champ train would even see much of a change, considering that running as a zerg trivializes everything anyway.
Having two people fighting a mob is enough of an advantage for people to help each other. The downleveled character doesn’t need the extra stats to make it even easier. I refuse to believe that 2-shotting mobs is how the content was intended to be played.
“Alt-friendly” is not the same as logging in and having all your characters miraculously level themselves to 80 and make their own top-tier gear.
If you’re leveling alts, you are making the decision to split your time, rather than focusing on one character. It is only logical that it is going to take longer overall to get all of those extra characters leveled and geared.
If you’re leveling alts and not enjoying it, why are you leveling alts? If you are enjoying it, who cares if it takes longer? That’s an extension of your enjoyment of the game.
Coming from someone with eight lvl 80s: YES, it takes longer than focusing on one main. BUT, having all those alts definitely has its benefits.
I would be willing to pay real money for a fully customizable housing and guild hall system. Designing player houses and guild halls could be an entire new area of the endgame.
IMO, that was my favorite part of the SIMS franchise, the best DLC for Skyrim, and it’s one of the most appealing features of Wildstar.
Even better would be a commission system where players who are known for cool designs could trade their blueprints to other guilds and players.
Talk about a fun possibility for crafting!
This game already rewards players for doing next to nothing. This would just cement how meaningless achievements are.
I think the player stats are the problem, rather than the level you’re downleveled to. When I go into an area where my character is downleveled, my stat totals still seem really high compared to when I was leveling.
IMO, if a player is scaled down to level 10, then their stats should be scaled down to be equivalent to a level 10 player wearing level 10 gear.
Invisible bags will prevent collectibles from being deposited.
I have no problem with dailies and monthlies being easy, because any game needs to cater to casual play styles to a certain extent.
I do think the daily and monthly achievement points should cap at the requirement (5 daily points, 40 monthly points) so that they aren’t grind-able.
I think the permanent achievements should require a certain amount of effort to complete. I’m not saying all of them should be difficult. I think they should vary, with the more difficult, obscure, or humorous ones awarding titles.
IMO, it would make more sense to have it set up so that each ascended material was used in two types of armor. For example:
Light: damask (primary) + elonian leather
Medium: elonian leather (primary) + deldrimor ingots
Heavy: deldrimor ingots (primary) + damask
Making all three types of ascended armor use Damask seems like a terrible decision, no matter how I look at it.
I had the same thought with the finger prick. That whole setup seems like a Sleeping Beauty reference to me, and the fact that it was almost entirely ignored by the characters after it happened made me even more suspicious that it may be important later.
I’m really hoping the “rock Tyria to its core” phrasing means we’re going to go up against Primordus, or at least one of his lieutenants. It’s about time for something epic like that to happen.
One way or another, I just hope the Living Story actually ties up its loose ends into a cohesive story, because if it doesn’t, it won’t bode well for the future of the LS.
Why has this type of stuff not come into the game yet.
I don’t know. People have asked. I wish big events like this would be added.
I’ve even seen people ask for similar events in WvW to shake up heavily imbalanced match-ups.
I think the Scarlet invasions were an attempt to bring in large-scale events like the Branded beta finale, and they were successful at first, but have since fizzled out a bit (I suspect because they’re less rewarding and difficult to finish successfully, now).
-SNIP-
…how often would you truly spend your time there, having completed the zone?
It depends how well the zone is designed and implemented. From your examples, Harathi Hinterlands is one of the best-designed zones in the game, so I would love it if a new zone was comparable. Its dynamic events are generally cohesive, including the build-up to its world boss (Ulgoth), and the zone as a whole is fun to explore.
Obviously prioritizing new zones or Living Story is going to be a difference of opinion among players, but for me, the Living Story is the definition of tedium. With a very few notable exceptions, the vast majority of the Living Story up to this point has been nothing more than grinding achievements to salvage some shadowy semblance of satisfaction at having played the game. Heck, the majority of the Living Story updates have been the MMO equivalent of anime-style filler episodes, which always leave me wondering why I bothered.
My opinion is that toughness is not ideal for Eles in PvE, even if just for aggro reasons.
My main is an Ele, and her original support gear was toughness-heavy and she pulled aggro all the time in dungeons. I toned down her toughness, and even though she does more damage, she pulls aggro less often.
With so many people going with power/precision/crit dmg gear, they’ll have next to no toughness. If you stack any toughness on your Ele, you’ll likely end up with aggro most of the time.
If you need a stat to help with survivability, I would go with vitality instead.
Just a few comments in response to those who don’t want new maps:
IMO, a map is not “abandoned” or “dead” simply because it does not have 30 player characters AFK’ing every few yards like LA does. Open world zones should not have the same population density as the cities. It breaks the scaling system and immediately trivializes any content in the zone.
If you have the capability of running into several other players over the course of completing a given zone, that is actually a good population spread in comparison to any other MMO I’ve ever played.
Players who like high population centers (aka zerg content) have the Living Story. That will likely be the nature of that cycle unless ANet changes its implemen drastically.
Based on my own observation, with the exception of Southsun Cove, new maps introduced through the Living Story have had the most staying power out of any LS patch. The only patch that had even more staying power that I can think of was the Crown Pavilion because of the very lucrative farming. Labyrinthine Cliffs and the explorable Tower of Nightmares had a consistent player presence the entire time they were available. That isn’t to say that they didn’t see a drastic population decrease after the first 24 hours, but that has been and will be the case with any content release.
Even if the Living Story is providing all of the same content types as new maps, the major difference is permanence. The Living Story could be the best content on earth, until a new or returning player comes back to the game and can’t access any of it.
If a new zone is done properly, it would fit seamlessly with the original game zones, no matter what level it is or which region of Tyria it fits into, and hopefully it would provide multiple types of PvE content that would apply to various niches of the player base, just like the existing zones do.
All they’d have to do is have us go after Primordus next. We already know the Asura tunnels connect all three continents, and it’d be a perfect excuse to rediscover some Asura gates, too.
Voila! Suddenly we have a way to sidestep DSD and access Cantha.
Each collections expander gives you an additional stack for 344 different material types, not including minis.
Assume gold-gems at 9g/100 gems (higher than I’ve ever seen it). 3 expansions @ 800 gems each = 2400 gems or 216g for 1032 additional stacks of items stored, not including miniatures.
Influence for a personal guild costs 20g/10,000 influence. For just the storage upgrades and their prerequisites, you’re spending 52,500 influence, or 105g for 250 slots.
105g/250 slots at 0.42g/slot
or
216g/1032 slots at 0.20g/slot
Seems cost-effective to me, but then I intend to do both eventually anyway.
@Chaba: lol, especially at the third one. xD
On-topic: While I don’t really have a problem with the treb defense strategy, I do think ANet could make some minor QoL changes to make it a little easier for players to defend with their own skills.
One of the biggest would be trying to fix the fact that you have to jump up on the little parapet at the very edge of the wall in order to have line of sight to target the ground below. That should not be necessary, and it causes all kinds of problems for defenders. That tiny parapet edge should not block my character’s line of sight to the ground, considering that it’s no higher than her knee.
A second possibility is allowing ground targeting through the arrowslits in the keep walls. Yes, it should have a narrow line-of-sight, but it’s the same concept as was actually done in Medieval times, and would open up defensive possibilities beyond sitting on top of the wall.
How about something like flux from GW1?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Flux
That would certainly make things more interesting. Looking through the current cycle, the Minion Apocalypse one would be hilarious in zerg fights. Talk about chaos!
Crazy Friday, each character only has one life. You die, that toon is locked out of WvW for 24 hours.
Play smart, WvW just became hardcore.
Haha. Oh the rage that would incite. That’d certainly be a big benefit to being an altoholic.
A big step toward balancing traffic for me would just be adding portals from Heart of the Mists to each of the capital cities. I would use the less populated zones if I could get there without having to load into LA anyway.
I really do hope they start expanding the dragon storyline soon. Hopefully with some new zones with the original heart/DE system (not like Southsun).
While the game does not directly confirm the jungle dragon yet, ANet did confirm out-of-game that the jungle dragon exists during an interview that Colin gave a while back. There’s a source link to the interview on the jungle dragon Wiki page.
If you look at the dates that the dragons woke up, they have been roughly 50 years apart, one after another ever since Primordus fully awoke. There’s no date given for DSD, but the time between Zhaitan and Kralk fits the rough pattern.
Kralk woke up in 1320, and the current year in-game is 1326, so it stands to reason that the jungle dragon has another 40-ish years before it fully awakens.
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I thought the body types for human males were actually pretty good, although I don’t think there were any true girth or beer belly options, if that’s what the OP means by ‘bulk’. There are definitely muscular options.
Honestly, it’s been over a year since I created my Engi (my only human male), but my biggest gripe wasn’t the body types, it was that the majority of the faces looked like child heads on adult bodies. Even adding facial hair didn’t help, as it just looked like some sort of Halloween costume. I finally managed to create a face that looked late-twenties-ish instead of barely-puberty, but it took some messing with sliders.
Anet never declared way to skip lupicus in Arah an exploit, does it make it less of an exploit?
Yes.
This is an MMO, and players are always going to find ways to bend or break the rules. If ANet chooses not to respond to a given “exploit” and either fix it or state that it is against the rules, then they are essentially condoning the behavior by not intervening.
Even though it’s off-topic: ANet did respond to the Lupicus issue. While they didn’t use the word exploit, they did make it extremely clear that they don’t want people skipping him, because they were working on a fix to prevent it.
It doesn’t bug out the reward chest for me.
I use that shortcut all the time, as I don’t consider it an exploit any more than any of the many other shortcuts scattered throughout the race.
If ANet ever declares it an exploit, I’ll stop using it, but until then, it’s a legit shortcut.