Guild Wars 2

As much as I hate the gem store, it acts as precisely the type of gold sink you’re asking for, assuming you’re trading gold for gems.

Gems either get spent on gem store items, which removes the original gold entirely, or it gets converted back into gold at a drastic reduction.

The only way the gem store doesn’t act as a gold sink is for the players who successfully speculate on gem prices.

The OP’s suggestion makes perfect sense. The reliance on API timers is all well and good, but there’s no reason why the world announcement system that tells where Scarlet is attacking couldn’t also announce the world events.

The problem is that I don’t want them all popping up in the middle of my screen all the time, so a toggle to just see the announcement in chat would be nice, too.

Matt, is it intentional that the Mysterious Gifts are not marked on the mini-map this year?

I just wish the policy on holiday skins was consistent. We have Halloween skins (both weapons and armor) that did not return, and now we have the Wintersday skins which are returning.

I’m not saying one way or the other is better, but it’d be interesting to know why the various holiday skins are being treated differently.

They updated the Light of Dwayna recipe last night in the second patch so that it shouldn’t be account bound anymore, but one of my guildies got one within 5 minutes after that same patch and the tooltip was all weird (all white text, no formatting at all), it no longer said account bound, but the game was still treating the item as if it was account bound.

Hopefully it’ll be fixed. I’m really glad these two recipes were intended to be tradable.

Completed the tower instance twice by using the correct solutions to the puzzles, and the Nightmare Euthanizer achievement did not complete either time.

It’s not punishment. If you enjoy alts, then gearing them up is always going to take longer, as that is part of being an altoholic.

You actually have the potential to get more value for your currency, when compared to a player with one ‘main’ with several armor sets, because you have the possibility of using the same recipes multiple times across several characters. The ‘main’ will only use each recipe once.

Yes, I agree that the time gating is somewhat irritating, but it seems to be ANet’s preferred method of introducing “long term” goals.

Only if it also has a text balloon that pops up and says “You’re Kittened”.

:)

I’d say leave the current end rewards the way they are, but add meaningful loot tables to the trash mobs.

Groups that want to clear everything would get additional loot that way, and groups who prefer speed running are still getting their rewards.

+1

The branded weapons could even be a re-skin of the Zenith weapons with black crystals and purple lightning and it would pull off the effect very well.

Assuming it was done well, a branded armor concept has the potential to be one of the best armor sets added to the game so far.

Side note: Personally, I really hope that any future armor sets are given a little extra effort for Charr. They get jipped with clipping and obvious, weird-looking stretching on too many armor sets as it is.

Agreed.

It’s a nice visual on its own, but when it doesn’t match anything else about your character, especially overlaying on a shield, it becomes a real eyesore.

Felbryn.5462:

Ewon.5903:

I’m not looking to make this easier, I’m aiming to shift the focus back to the “permanent” achievements.

So…why not just make the leaderboard ONLY count the permanent achievements, and ignore dailies entirely?

That would actually make the leaderboard more meaningful, IMO.

Right now, achievement scores are so diluted with tons of daily AP that the leaderboard is absolutely meaningless except as a neon sign that says “Hey! I Spend Lots of Time Farming Dailies”.

ANet saw this same problem in action back when there was no AP cap on the salvaging achievement. At that point, they changed it AND reset achievement scores to remove the excess points. The only difference between that and the absurd daily farming is the time gating.

It would resolve a lot of the issue if Wintersday (and other holidays) temporarily added the possibility of playing Snowball Mayhem and the other festival competitive mini-games through the custom arenas.

I have tried and tried and tried and tried some more to get the kitten Snowblind fractal.

I give up. ANet, this type of RNG-based achievement is frustrating in the extreme, and it one HUGE example of gameplay that goes against every design principle you claim to hold dear.

IMMENSELY aggravated right now.

I agree with the idea behind the OP, but I think the dailies should just be capped at 5AP per day, no matter which five (or more) dailies you complete. If you get less, you get 1AP per daily that you completed.

To me, that seems fair to everyone, and it takes the dailies back to the point where they aren’t a grind.

Happens to me with Ice Bow all the time when trying to quickly queue a second skill after the summon, and I first noticed the error after the big patch that edited a lot of the cast times and after-cast delays.

The league made no positive difference in how matches were played. The league did make it very clear that ANet is dead set on this awful randomized match system and it was also a direct cause of even worse server population imbalances.

In short, the league was disappointing because it made existing problems worse.

Majuub.6215:

It’s only frowned upon, if there was a way to prevent it, it would have been implemented by now.

Assuming this is discussing Bay’s water gate, all they’d have to do is add a second grate on the interior side of the two water tunnels to either side of the portal.

That would totally prevent players from swimming into the tunnel itself, and there’d be no opportunity to abuse the ability to resurrect through walls.

I can’t take credit for this suggestion, as I read it in another thread with an identical complaint to this one. Just quoted for its potential simplicity and effectiveness.

Talonblaze.3175:

One thing you guys haven’t taken into note is PvP.
Everything is exotic quality there. Engies and other classes having ascended damage would unbalance things too much.

Actually, if the kits actively scale to the weapon’s stats, it would auto-adjust for PvP, too. It wouldn’t unbalance anything.

veasna.3675:

Isn’t karma kind of a token already?

^ This. Karma is intended to be the unique event reward.

IMO, the problem is that since the Orrian Jewelry Boxes were added, there really haven’t been many useful updates to the available karma reward items.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

As a player who mains an engi, I totally agree that kits should scale to whatever weapon you have equipped in your main hand.

i.e.,

• if you hold an ascended rifle, kits should do ascended damage.
• if you hold an ascended pistol and an exotic one, kits should do ascended damage
• if you hold an exotic pistol and an ascended shield, kits should do exotic damage

Alternatively, ascended damage as soon as you equip at least one ascended weapon.

Agreed, although I think it would be fair if the kits averaged the damage between whatever two weapons you have equipped, so that the entire emphasis is not placed on the main hand.

I’m really hoping this is the last new stat tier we see, but if ANet implemented something like this, they should never have to worry about the kit scaling again.

The Priory or HotW chest would probably look good with that mix.

I believe ANet has said that a skin locker is being considered or may be already in the works. As with any game system, they haven’t given an ETA on it.

As raseloc said, you can preview dyes to an extent.

I wish it could be fleshed out a bit so you can preview the actual dye channels on each piece, as if you were dying pieces you actually own.

Often times, I end up using slightly different colors on pieces of an armor mix to get the colors to look the same, and it’d be nice to know that matching the colors is possible before actually buying the armor pieces. Finding out you can’t make it match after the fact is a big disappointment.

ANet set the precedent for this already with limiting the Agent of Entropy achievement so that people couldn’t unduly stack their achievement score with meaningless points.

The daily achievements are the very definition of meaningless points.

I agree that the daily achievement points should be capped at 5, and going even further, I would support removing achievement points from the dailies altogether, since they really aren’t achievements in any sense of the word.

I don’t care what armor is available to whom. Honestly, more available armor pieces makes me have even more fun making custom mixes.

However, ANet needs to make sure that IF this happens (which I find doubtful), they break the trend of not taking the time to customize the armor sets for the Asura and Charr. Those two races, especially the Charr, get the crappy end of the stick on too many armor skins simply because the skins haven’t been adapted for body scale and shape.

I just want to know if Snowball Arena is coming back. That was a lot of fun.

It’s probably similar to the Claw of Jormag model you can see when you accidentally glitch through the ground in Frostgorge.

I hope it’s there when I log in, because I want a screenshot of my Sylvari riding it.

Talyn.3295:

Lost my +5 inherent when I upgraded.

Ew…that’s a big bummer.

So that means don’t put any big +X AR infusion in any backpiece that you might want to upgrade further…

Like Mel said, it’s worth it to find out if your server has a public voice chat server. It makes things much more social, even if you’re doing completely different things in-game.

The stats of the character using the finisher skill are applied.

So, in your example, your guardian’s stats would adjust the condition damage from the confusion condition.

Adine is correct. The image is concept art, and that exact armor set is not in the game.

You might get close, depending on what armor pieces you have access to, and how much money you’re willing to spend:

helm: Icelord’s Diadem (Hall of Monuments)
shoulders: Toxic (gem store) or Twilight Arbor (dungeon)
chest: Vigil (order armor vendor) or Order of Whispers (order armor vendor)
gloves: Toxic (gem store) or Twilight Arbor (dungeon)
legs: Phalanx (gem store)
boots: Twilight Arbor (dungeon)

The Toxic skins might not be available anymore, but the TA armor has a similar look and dye effects, so you might be able to get that light blue icy look.

There isn’t really a match for the chest piece, but Vigil and Whispers seem closest, depending on which you can dye to match the TA skins. If you happened to pick Priory, the Arah chest might work, too.

It’s a shame to buy the entire set just for the leg skin, but it’s really the only skin that comes close to what’s in the concept.

You can’t see much of the boots in the concept art, but the TA boots would probably help keep a somewhat unified look with the gloves and shoulders. You might also be able to use the Phalanx boots (to get more use out of your gem purchase), depending on how your dyes look.

I can’t get into the game right now, so I’m going off of armor gallery screenshots. Hopefully this doesn’t look awful when actually previewed in the game. Make sure to preview dyes before spending a lot of money on the armor skins, too, because dyes make a huge difference in making an armor mix look like a set.

The closest weapon sets would be the Kodan (Honor of the Waves dungeon) or Corrupted (crafted) sets.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: After previewing the set I suggested, I think you’re better off using the Phalanx boots than the TA boots.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

As for Legendary armor I asume that they’d have this option too but their base armor would be way more magnificent then any armor we’ve seen so far.

I’m hoping the Legendary Armors are actually Legendary Upgrades that allow us to make our current armor skins legendary, thereby adding a particle effect based on the upgrade recipe, the stat selection option, and giving us the ability to keep our custom armor mixes. It’d be very similar to the OP’s suggestion for cultural armors.

Otherwise, we’re going to see everyone and their pet Quaggan running around in the same legendary armor set and the entire game will look like clones even more than it does with the legendary greatswords now.

I think the decreased drop rate at higher levels for the individual skins is probably intentional, considering that they added the containers that allow you to pick which one you want. Between the two possible drops, the drop rate is likely the same as before.

However, I’ve read that there is suspicion that the containers may not actually be in the game at this point (Reddit). So, IF that is the case, the overall drop rate might seem much lower than is actually intended, and will likely be fixed when those containers are actually added to the drop tables.

That, of course, is assuming the data-miners’ information is accurate, so take it for what it’s worth.

In the meantime, if you go to the Releases page, on the right side there’s a serv-bot with a Santa hat in the ad for the Dec 10 patch. Click the image, and it brings up a preview video.

wookiee.4631:

There’s 3 per map. Why 3? No idea. But I think that if your map is accurate, and I believe it is, then I think it disproves any sort of pattern connecting these dots. It’s just 3 for every map above level 15.

I don’t think the seeming randomness disproves a ley line pattern theory.

It’s true that the ley lines don’t appear to be laid out according to a grid, but I don’t think ley lines necessarily fall into grid patterns (all we know is that they intersect, not the regularity of spacing).

Also, even if the ley lines did fall into a grid, they are going to follow the curvature of the planet’s surface, which is going to throw a wrench into trying to visualize the pattern on a flat map. The flat map would need to be adjusted similarly to our global maps are that show latitude and longitude, for example.

Unfortunately, the closest thing I’ve seen was a map back in GW that triangulated the positions of the three continents relative to one another. IIRC, even that map discovered minor discrepancies (I think two areas overlapped), despite that it was based on what was visible in-game. Other than that, I don’t know that we have any knowledge that would allow us to recreate Tyria as a planetary whole. Therefore, making that type of adjustment to the flat map is guesswork.

It’s certainly an interesting topic.

Oh…for some reason, I thought they fixed that a long time ago.

If not, I guess that mix is available to anyone.

Just looking at the individual armor pieces, you might be able to get a female armor set that’s close to the male phalanx set if your character happens to be a member of the Vigil:

Caudecus Manor helm
Invader/Heavy Plate shoulders
Invader/Heavy Plate chest
Invader/Heavy Plate gloves
Vigil legs
Vigil boots

I can’t get in-game to preview it right now, and I’m not sure how challenging the dyes will be, but those pieces should get you close.

-Will you recommend Guild Wars 2 to a friend during the “Migration” period?

No.

-Why or why not?

Based on my past experience with NCSoft, I was already hesitant to recommend any of the company’s games to my friends. Based on GW2 itself and its potential I saw during beta, and the fact that I was a huge fan of ANet from GW, I recommended this game to many of my friends. Currently, ANet has turned every single one of them off, despite how good the core game is. Not one of them still plays. I’m not even sure how long I’ll continue playing, unless something changes in the near future. Based on what I’ve seen since launch, I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone.

For example, already in beta, there were inaccessible portals and gates leading to zones that were not going to be open at launch. Obviously the portals were placed there for eventual use, which was exciting. Not one of them has been made accessible since.

As a second example, at launch, the dungeon system had a perfect reward system with tokens rewarding armor skins in exchange for a reasonable time commitment. One would expect that the same system would be used for future dungeon-like instances that were added to the game. Over the past year, however, we have seen more and more emphasis on grindy achievements (that are somehow supposed to be a reward by themselves) and, even worse, a huge reliance on the gem store instead of rewarding players for participating in game content. I hear the Home Shopping Network is free-to-play, too. If only that’s what I was interested in.

-What do you like about the current Living Story content?

There are bits of good content in the LS releases (some more than others). The instances are generally fun. The introduction of new game mechanics is very good (Bazaar, for example). Many of the mini-games and activities are fun.

Previous post about best/worst LS releases

-What do you dislike?

The content itself is not rewarded at all. Grindy achievements offer consolation prizes for those people who don’t want to be involved with the gem store. The gem store gets continuous updates that are either A ) only loosely related to the living story content, or B ) even if they are related, it is distanced by the gem store’s complete disconnect from actual content.

The content still does not change the world with any sense of permanence. This problem started at launch with Zhaitan and has persisted through most of the Living Story. The notable exception is Southsun Cove, but it is missing so much compared to other zones that it’s an absolute ghost town. The second exception was Labyrinthine Cliffs, but it was removed after its festival ended. We’ll see if the Tower of Nightmares actually does.

-In your opinion, do you like the direction of this game?

No.

-What would you like to see?

Longer periods between Living Story releases. This would give us story updates in coherent chunks. It would also not make players wait months for the supposed culmination of a story many no longer care about. If the player likes the story, they have all of the content at their disposal for a longer period of time. If the player doesn’t like the story, they can play it once and be done with it, rather than being reminded how much they don’t like the story every two weeks.

Far less reliance on the gem store. Put at least half of the stuff into the game itself to reward participation in actual content.

Permanent expansion into new zones, with the new zones designed similarly to the original zones (hearts, DEs, PoIs, vistas, puzzles, etc).

Ascended crafting that isn’t bound-on-acquire.

Revert WvW matches to the old non-randomized matchmaking system. At very least between league seasons, although I’d rather get rid of the leagues, too.

I don’t want to see any more Living Story releases that don’t include any meaningful advancement to the story. The Tower of Nightmares final instance was the most recent huge letdown.

Features from GW that are still not in GW2, such as guild halls, build templates, and large-group PvE instances that would really flesh out GW2’s core game.

Develop and polish underwater combat so that it is as fun, fluid, and varied as land combat.

-Am I being fair in my observation?

Yes.

Farzo.8410:

Obviously Scarlet pumping up Dragon magic from the earth. She’s going to create the Dragon Magic Alliance or whatever.

She’s going to use Polymerization on the remaining five dragons and create the Five Headed Dragon and become the Dragon Master Knight. DUH

Hold on, I gotta find my Exodia’s left sock…

I disagree, and honestly I would rather they make it down-level stats even more than it does now.

When I take one of my lvl 80s to play in a lowbie area, I want it to feel like I’m playing a lowbie. When I help a true lowbie character with an event, I want to feel like I’m not detracting from that player’s experience by mowing down groups of mobs just by auto-attacking. I don’t want to be running around 2-shotting everything.

Yep. They’re new. There’s one in Timberline Falls smack dab in the middle of a gathering path I run just about every day.

+1 to Iretha’s post.

Scarlet would’ve just ended up being Abaddon’s nanny or something.

Malik.6781:

…gw2 will be free to play very soon.

I’m OK with a mess of ascended materials, especially if they really do intend to release Ascended armor before the end of the year.

I hate to say it, but this was how I read the Moletariate Mad-Lib:

I, name, renounce “traditional” games and pledge my allegiance to Guild Wars 2. I likewise declare my freedom from honest and transparent subscription fees! That I turn my back forever on permanent, balanced, and rewarding content which is totally overrated. That I will take up arms to defend the gem store and crush evil with my wallet. I take this oath to Guild Wars 2 freely, without sarcasm because I am brainwashed.

I wish I didn’t feel this way about the game right now, but it is. Hopefully things will change for the better.

With Southsun Survival, it’s obnoxious enough (and already a handicap) to be put into a game that’s already in progress, let alone have something like this happen. :/

geist.3980:

my vote is for the last place gold, silver and bronze servers and their players who logged in every day and fought even tho they got [kittened] in their [kitten] for 7 long weeks in a row.

^ This, except extended to all of the non-stacked servers in each of the league tiers.

Caffynated.5713:

There should be a server wide pot based on where your server finished. The pot would be divided up among however many people finished the achievement.

So Badgegate would get 100k gold divided among 10k people.
Magswag would get 85k gold divided among 300 people.

There’s a certain poetic irony to the idea that is quite appealing.

Fortus.6175:

I would’ve been fine with getting a “daily WvW” which would count towards it, and make it so that the meta was a total of 25 total “steps”

+1

Terrahero.9358:

The achievements were chosen terribly.

There are THREE achievements for jumping puzzles. But there is not a single achievement for defending anything.

There are achievements that motivate people to waste supply on pointles repairs, or hog siege with no mastery slowing down the whole zerg.
But there is no achievement for upgrading a tower or a keep, something that is universally a good thing and doesnt detract from anything.

I say let these PvE’ers spend there PvE gold to upgrade keeps and towers. And rather then do silly jumping puzzles that contribute NOTHING and only take up space, let them escort dolyaks.

I agree with this part, although I wish there were no achievements for the season whatsoever. They’re the same as the Living Story: meaningless, grindy, and only intended to get players to switch game modes because the content doesn’t speak for itself.

Terrahero.9358:

…and we see a lot less PvE’ers in season 2 as a result.

I’m hoping there is no Season 2. Enough with the random matchmaking and get back to the solid tier match-ups that were actually fun.