Guild Wars 2

I really hope he drops Tequatl tokens you can exchange for his unique drops instead of it being a RNG fest though.

This probably won’t actually work.

RuneScape actually uses a system like this, where certain items can be crafted through ‘borrowing’ other people’s skills. But it ended up being a case where crafters actually ended up looking for people they could help for free because of the free experience. JaGex (guys who made the game) eventually just settled with the system we have now where the best items aren’t tradable.

If you removed the experience gain, people would just ask their guildies to help them for free. There has to be some sort of a ‘cost’ involved in doing it, either the opportunity cost of making your own (ie, time-gating it) or another resource (e.g. using skillpoints as an ingredient).

I’d want them to make you use up more skillpoints and karma in crafting ascended stuff and just not time-gate it. Then we got a way to use our massive piles of karma and SPs.

My jaw dropped when that huge tidal wave came along. Can’t wait to try this.

But, a bit of a suggestion for future bosses revamps though, I can see why Tequatl can’t move much because he needs to be surrounded by Hylek cannons and the Megalazer needs to be pointed at him, but with things like the Shatterer, can you guys make them move around the map a bit more?

Also, this does bring up a few concerns. Although Tequatl is aweosme and worthy of being a dragon champion now, he does seem harder than the other dragon bosses now. If they all dropped the same stuff, wouldn’t that mean everyone would go to the other bosses simply because they’re quicker to kill? I mean, not everyone wants the mini.

@ahuba

that’s what MMOs are, constant change. Nothing is actually perfect on release and even if they are, down the road content tends to get revamped to make them fresh.

@poster above last I’d say it really depends. I remember sometime at the start of the invasions, around midnight one day we at UW had an army rampaging around the Gandara (I think) home world taking every keep as if they’re champs because everyone was playing the invasions.

Was good cos that’s how I got my WvW map comp

And it’s a good solution for PvE I think, because simply that there isn’t a better one as people always respond to rewards.

As for WvW, it’s a good response but personally I think anything PvP-related should be always focused purely on the fun factor rather than rewards, because the moment you put rewards in it, exploits arise and out goes the fun factor.

I’m not quite sure what you can do about that, you can’t come up with a design to ease everyone. I suppose they can come up with 6 different designs for each legendary and let you choose.

And tbh, I’d say it’s actually quicker and easier at certain times to take a keep than kill a world boss (in terms of time) or do a temple event, so rewards should be adjusted accordingly.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Xae Isareth.1364:

snip… Oh, it comes from taking castles and keeps in WvW as well. Let’s hope people don’t come to interserver agreements to exploit this.

Judging from the amount of keeps I come across that are neither protected nor upgraded in WvW there seems that there’s already an “unwritten rule” among some servers that only do perpetual flipping for WxP. This update changes nothing really, only adding a crafting mat that will be farmed in both WvW and the open world (PvE) on the same bosses that have, until recently, been farmed to death (pun intended) anyways.

Thus far, it’s still contained enough such that WvW is still competitive and commanders still ask for status reports on keeps. Now imagine if after the update:

Player A: our garrison is under attack! Last gate on 30%.
Commander: oh, we got an agreement with them to farm d ores, attacking their unguarded garrison as we speak.

If I was the dev and saw that, I’d just take the ascended rewards out of WvW and go ‘see? we tried and look what you guys did.’

As for boss farming. That’s why I pointed specifically to Dragonite ore. Last time I was at Jormag, the map chat was actually lining with complaints that we need to bother with Jormag before an invasion could start and I raise my eyebrows whenever I see a temple actually uncontested.

If they do, the WvW crowd would just be stabbing themselves in the back proving that you cant add anything of value to WvW to make it ‘on par’ with PvE without people exploiting it.

All those months of complaints can then be just thrown out of the window.

I like how the white one looks but …. They do look quite lacklustre in general.

As you probably know, crafting Ascended stuff requires a resource called Dragonite ore which comes exclusively from Temples in Orr and world bosses. Thank goodness for that, because maybe now people will actually bother killing Tequatl and doing those Temple events which I’ve always wanted to try but have never come across people that bothered with them.

I was hoping Balthazaar would have an exclusive drop that rewards how difficult that event is, but this will do.

Oh, it comes from taking castles and keeps in WvW as well. Let’s hope people don’t come to interserver agreements to exploit this.

GW1 was good, but I don’t thInk it would survive the market if it was released today. GW lore was always really shallow for me (say, compared to Warcraft lore) so I can’t really see much of a difference in that.

I kinda like having Ascended gear as it gives a point of crafting and doing stuff like JPs which are otherwise dead content.

Having said that, the LS so far has been really, really, unimmersive and Im missing stuff like guild capes. Also I still don’t understand why would doing something like champion zergfarming give you better rewards than high level fractals.

Zero Day.2594:

Paponzi.1637:

Try read again what i wrote. Also, you are ovbiously talking about WvW: since when has it been balanced around duels?

I’d like anyway to see this math, for informative purposes.

Oh sorry i said something against you. Both in dungeon and WvW it will make a difference (especially when comes full asc armor), just a 10% increase in damage.

I think the thread was called Ascended Gear to Kill Builds and Alts… either way read around why people are complaining… and if anyone is really supporting their idea.

and let me restate: the time gating is just unnecessary.
what’s the point of time gating?

duels in wvw, 1v1 i agree, rarely happens… but when you run away with a sliver of health… now that sliver will drained by someone running higher gear then you.

Paponzi.1637:

Why should you have it handed to you immediately?

No, the question is:
Why should things be time gated?

It’s time gated because otherwise all the hardcore players, credit card wielders, and TP flippers would get it in a day or two and leave casuals at a massive disadvantage.

Not the best reason in the world, but that’s probably the reason.

I’m pretty fine with Ascended gear. It give people something to work for and the biggest benefit of it is that it gives a point to doing stuff like JPs which has up to this point been basically dead content.

aladore.3945:

Paponzi.1637:

Really? Skills must be used in that order, not based on the situation?
Not sure if…

Of course not.

You can always arrange every skill you’ve acquired for each weapon your class uses and rearrange them in the skills bar…

Oh, wait… Maybe not.

Wait, you mean a ‘good’ combat system should consist of going up to an enemy and rolling your face across the keys 1 to 5 in that order, every time?

I really don’t get why everyone says Legendaries having this option to switch stats is an ‘advantage’. It’s more of a compensation.

Legendaries takes around a year for the average casual to get, and the nor al player utilises 2 weapon types at most. Unless Ascended weapons are gonna take you half a year to get, I don’t really know what kind of an advantage a Legendary has over 2 ascended weapons.

And adding Ascended items isn’t an itemspiral or a gear treadmill, it’s just filling in a gap that was supposed to be in the game at launch. Now if they start doing something like raising the level cap every 6 months and bringing out new gear…. Then I can get my critic rant glasses on.

Hmm, they did say that they were against the carrot method of vertical character progression in their looking forwards in 2013 article and would focus character progression on obtaining new skills and traits rather than gear, maybe that’s a sign of them realising that the majority of players would hate a gear-level increase and it would pretty much turn the game slowly into the typical WoW-clone you see for a pound a dozen on the MMO market.

And no, history has proven you can’t out-WoW WoW because Blizzard will always do it better than you (and likely has a bigger budget to do so).

http://www.gamefront.com/guild-wars-2-level-cap-raise-confirmed-for-future/

There was one on an Anet blog as well but I can’t find it. I know it’s a third-party source but the site is quite reputable and the same thing has been echoed on others.

Personally the major selling factor that pulled me over was the promise of no fear treadmill and if you want to go hardcore on Legendaries, you only need to repeatedly slap yourself with a wet fish once instead of doing it every 3 months like other MMOs.

Anet stated a while ago that they planned to raise the level cap sometime in the future. Now, given that Ascended and Legendary gear are statistically better than Exotic stuff and thus creates vertical progression, will we have to gear grind all over again when that happens?

This is especially concerning for people going after Legendaries, which takes months and months of hard work (most of which are either frustrating or repetitive and thus anything but fun, may I add).

We’ve clearly all been turned into Risen thralls, and are being mentally subdued by a powerful Wrath by making us think we’re alive by using mesmer magic to create a virtual world around us.

The reason why he made us kill the virtual Zhaitan is to attempt to destroy any clues that this happened, the same reason why the dragons are dormant in this virtual world.

The ‘glitches’ have been seen already. For example, Rox does not know who you are despite your teamwork in Flame and Frost. This is what the LS has been alluding to all along :V

Wait, does this then make the SAB a game in a game in a game?!

I don’t support this.

The game is focused on a system of constantly switching weapons. A good Mesmer for example, would often switch weapons multiple times in a fight.

Does this mean if I’m a Mesmer digits like Bloodlust are useless to me because I wouldn’t have any stacks at all 100% of the time?

salluks.6017:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

i really wonder if u have maintained a standard answers word file on your PC, just copy and paste one every-time you have to answer something.

You know, it’s people like you that makes devs want to stay away from gaming forums. I genuinely feel sorry for them every time I see crud like yours.

Not constructive. Not informative. Offers nothing but a sour taste in one’s mouth.

I’d say currently entire classes are PvP-specific.

I don’t think you can actually have a system which has skills that work exactly the same in both PvE and PvP, as they both have different focuses and needs.

Take Confusion as a condition for example. Its a condition which forces you to make a split second decision on whether to attack and take noticae damage or stall until its gone. In PvE, this entire concept just doesn’t work.

1. Enemies don’t make decisions, they just attack. So this condition then turns into a copy of bleed or torment.

2. In PvP, the damage it does is considerably significant because of the low HP pools players have. In PvE where enemies have huge amounts of HP, with bosses having astronomical HP totals, that couple hundred damage it does is rendered into insignificance, especially because enemies attack less frequently than players.

You can’t just up its damage to make it useful in PvE, because then in PvP, it would end up destroying players.

I think there’s plenty of stuff besides the dragons which they could cover. There’s the gods for a start.

I think they should be account-bound period.

Takes a casual player about 7 months to a year to make one (or, you don’t play the TP, you dont hardcore farm and you play a hour or 2 a day), so any arguments about how it would be unfair since lower tiered weapons aren’t account bound goes out of the window.

Why would a legendary weapon show up on the TP? Would you one day go to your local bazaar and then bam! Excalibur’s on sale at one of the stands?

Heck, just make a gemstore item which costs 100 gems and turns a Soulbound legendary or ascended weapon account bound. Anet gets their profit, players gets less frustration. Win-win

Bump for great justice!

I don’t have a problem with the rate of content, as I know people who literally gets everything done in 2 days then get bored. Also, you don’t even need to complete every minor achievement to get the main reward like the Watchknight mini, as dailies count towards that too.

What I do have problems with is the quality of the plot behind those updates and the fact that what I consider to be the core of the game, stuff like DEs, are being ignored. You go to a zone other than CS or FS, and basically nothing there actually gets done, they need to fix that and give us a reason to care about those events. Also, we havn’t had a new dungeon for a long, long, time.

On a side note, what do you guys actually grind for? I don’t think I’ve ever actually grinded at all and I don’t feel behind the curve at all.

They should just treat WvW like a separate game in these instances and make some an Ascended set which can be obtained by BoHs that’s only usable in WvW.

Its being introduced because of all those people screaming there’s no character progression. Well here you go guys, progress.

I think they promoted the update the wrong way around.

To me, Legendaries update and 500 crafting is the big update, and SAB is the ‘in other news’ kinda update.

I’m actually not quite sure. I just do whatever the heck I feel like doing, which seems to always start with speedrunnning CoE like a madman.

I don’t think any game I played actually had immersion for me since RuneScape. But that’s basically because they all had classes of some sort which broke it as I keep thinking why can’t I learn to be a Mage as well as an archer.

But the Guild Wars universe was always rather shallow in terms of lore for me (why are the Elder Dragons destroying the world for a start?) and the LS has no depth whatsoever, Scarlet makes Trehreane seem like an ocean of depth.

But they are learning from the LS.

Chuo.4238:

Touchnshuv.2790:

So, back to point on my original topic. I know I’m nowhere near alone on this feeling. The Anet we know from GW1 wouldn’t do this to us. The Anet from GW2 is lacking PR and seems to just think that releasing a new area (then removing it at any time) and making nerf/buff adjustments every 3 months is adequate.

My original point was that the birthday gifts feel like someone who doesn’t like you showed up to your b-day party and gave you a gift because their mother told them they had to. Granted they didn’t “have” to do anything and I’m well aware, and this game still far outweighs so many and will for years. But in this instance we feel like we our characters are like children of Anet and woke up Christmas morning just to find that our parents didn’t want to take the time to get us anything but a couple pairs of socks.

You’re not the only one who wonders who these people are, and what have they done with ArenaNet.

Guild Wars was special. GW2 is just another game. For many, many reasons, most of which have nothing to do with this birthday present thing. I am seriously on the lookout for a new game to play. Once once catches my fancy…I’ll be there. And that never happened to me during my Guild Wars years. I’m sure I’m not the only one, and there’ll be a sharp drop in playerbase once something good releases.

I really think that’s something quite subjective. I liked Guild Wars in the same way I liked Pokemon Red. Great game and special and all but I wouldn’t go back now and play it again.

Having said that, GW2 could use that game’s build diversity though.

There’s a reason why games these days don’t do standard subscription models anymore. It just doesn’t work.

When every other game in competition with you does a B2P/microtrans model, you simply can’t sell the game on a subs model.

I absolutely refuse to believe she’s actually the one behind the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades. That person in my head would’ve been someone cunning, who’s always one step ahead of you, and oozes with authority.

Instead, we got this childish girl who acts in such a way that you can predict her actions down to her dialogue lines.

I think they should remove every single skill from every class, and give everyone paper mashe and a rubber chicken for gear. Then we’d all be balanced.

How much tutoring would one need though? I’m sure having a GW equivalent of Navi throwing a dozen hintboxes on your screen with every 2 steps you took for the first 5 hours of playtime would instantly make people uninstall the game.

What the heck is a Dulfy?!

The first problem with the LS’s plot is that it’s too restrictive. They need to change their philosophy on it not interfering with your PS. Kill Jennah, make Anise a villain, just forget about the PS.

Yes, it’ll change the experience for new players who havn’t done their PS, but until they do that, the LS plot would be laughable at best.

Just another thought. We don’t need to get rid of waypoints and force people to travel. We need to make people feel like there’s a point to not use waypoints sometimes.

Basically, dynamic events. The infrastructure is there already: we have hundreds of them. Anet needs to now balance their payouts. If I could get the same amount of loot traveling on foot from DR to LA than I would in that time farming champions in CS, I would travel from DR to LA anyday.

Tachenon.5270:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

ride a balloon

A balloon ride would have been cool, but we didn’t get to ride in a balloon. The game just told us we were riding in a balloon. We didn’t even get a cutscene showing us riding in a balloon. An actual balloon ride would probably have been too much like riding a mount. And we know how much anet hates mounts. Except for the concept artists…

SWTOR had a balloon ride. It was slow and boring and as buggy as any buggy content ever released into the wilds of GW2, but gosh darn it, they had it.

Here, though – hey, press F for a balloon ride to Divinity’s Reach! It’ll happen so fast you won’t even know it happened!

That’s what it’s like, living in a Living World.

The problem is, do you really want that? They could take every waypoint off the map and make you use airships which come and go every hour, and trips between Orr and DR takes a hour. Everyone would hate it to bits.

Well, you got a collector’s art book and a Rylock figure. They ain’t getting that.

The LS is pretty terrible but it’s something they’re learning from.

I don’t do much WvW at all but I can comment on the PvE side of your argument.

Difficulty: everyone measures it using a different yardstick, but you need to remember that GW2 caters to casuals, not the hardcore players. You may find the game too easy, but Im on the edge of my seat everytime I face down against Lupi and victory dance around the room when I finally beat him. And he’s not even the hardest boss in the game.

Waypoints: it’s fun travelling around the world finding stuff the first few times around, but after travelling the same road 50 times, it’s more like being stuck in the car on the way to work than fantasy tourism.

Death: this one I do agree with you on, but it’s a kitten hard choice. For example, the Karka event punished dying relatively severely, but look at how popular that event is.

Lets take that culling on particle effects and extend upon it, at least for PvE.

Make an option to cull the visual effects of all other players’ skills in PvE apart from things like Time Warp. We really don’t need to see them as it doesn’t influence the way you would fight in PvE at all and just gives you headaches from all the particle effects.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Grileenor.1497:

Vol.5241:

I really don’t see what the fuss is about.

The only difference between an expansion and the living story is how the content gets pushed out

Expansion – content comes out all at once
Living Story – content is gradually pushed out

People naturally hate change and still think of the old MMO mentality. Expansions are just as dated as paying for subscriptions.

Easy one.

Expansion = quality content coming out, when ready
Living Story = mediocre or worse content coming out due to schedule

Expansion = getting whole guilds back to the game for months
Living Story = getting less and less people back for days if you are lucky

Expansion = good advertising in the whole MMO community
Living Story = only some in Anets team and some hardcore fans really care

Expansion = Something you talk about still for years (Nightfall? EotN?) with story and immersion
Living Story = Very few updates are remebered like a halloween or winters day equivalent, but no immersion or story

Expansion = Full blown story lines in game giving rich playing experience
Living Story = some blogs on the web site for those who visit

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. LS, even when it is getting better can never hope to accomplish what good sound expansions can and will offer.

Spot on, well said and explained!

Idk, RuneScape to this day is still one of the most popular MMOs on the market, and that game never had an expansion. It had some quite amazing updates which are remembered by all players and ex-players, and frankly some of the best lore and most memorable characters I’ve seen in any game (to this day I still tear up inside at the thought of Hazelmere).

LS can also be marketed well, like what they did with the pocketwatches for this LS, and in my experience with a lot of games working on the expansions model, you get guilds back for a few weeks, then everyone leaves again once they get through the expansions content, so the LS model might actually get people to stay for longer.

Runescape is an oldschool “sandbox” mmo so it functions quite differenlty.

You’d have to define sandbox for me, because RS was for me, the most linear MMO I’ve played.

And I’m not sure how it would work ‘differently’. It still has updates, patches and works on a subs/cash-shop model, like all MMOs out there. The only real difference between it and other MMOs is thakittens got a non-linear plot (as in, several different plots take place at the same time in the timeline) and thakittens browser-based.

@above

I actually quite like the LS idea. Expansions for me was always something which could go either way. One, it happens very slowly, and often you are practically forced to get through it really quickly due to things like your guild wants to start raiding. Two, since everything comes out at once, if the design direction went very wrong at the start of the production process, the devs have no time to correct it; in a LS model, you have the chance to change the design direction based on player feedback.

Taking the example of RuneScape again, constant updates was and is one of its major sellers, and as shown by its popularity despite it being a browser game, it clearly works. If Anet plays it right, given their team is much bigger than Jagex’s with more budget, and we got a client instead of Java/HTML5, they could pull off something amazing.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Grileenor.1497:

Vol.5241:

I really don’t see what the fuss is about.

The only difference between an expansion and the living story is how the content gets pushed out

Expansion – content comes out all at once
Living Story – content is gradually pushed out

People naturally hate change and still think of the old MMO mentality. Expansions are just as dated as paying for subscriptions.

Easy one.

Expansion = quality content coming out, when ready
Living Story = mediocre or worse content coming out due to schedule

Expansion = getting whole guilds back to the game for months
Living Story = getting less and less people back for days if you are lucky

Expansion = good advertising in the whole MMO community
Living Story = only some in Anets team and some hardcore fans really care

Expansion = Something you talk about still for years (Nightfall? EotN?) with story and immersion
Living Story = Very few updates are remebered like a halloween or winters day equivalent, but no immersion or story

Expansion = Full blown story lines in game giving rich playing experience
Living Story = some blogs on the web site for those who visit

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. LS, even when it is getting better can never hope to accomplish what good sound expansions can and will offer.

Spot on, well said and explained!

Idk, RuneScape to this day is still one of the most popular MMOs on the market, and that game never had an expansion. It had some quite amazing updates which are remembered by all players and ex-players, and frankly some of the best lore and most memorable characters I’ve seen in any game (to this day I still tear up inside at the thought of Hazelmere).

LS can also be marketed well, like what they did with the pocketwatches for this LS, and in my experience with a lot of games working on the expansions model, you get guilds back for a few weeks, then everyone leaves again once they get through the expansions content, so the LS model might actually get people to stay for longer.

Having said that, I’m not sure why they aren’t working on an expansion as well, because people will pay for it. Perhaps its the cost. Also, I do agree that the current LS isn’t up to par with expansion content: the plot and lore so far has been rather shallow and the Aetherblades completely contrast with what the game’s lore and plot is about; we still lack a lot of core content updates like dungeons.

For great derail.

I kinda had an implied assumption of ‘about the the game’ at the end of the title.

List them right here! Be ‘creative’ as you can get!

Now, a lot of people have mentioned that the LS plots don;t involve Elder Dragons.

What if Divinity’s Reach is actually Kalk? Anise is actually the real Shatterer (duh of course! She’s a shatter mesmer!) and disguised the elder dragon as a city.

Scarlet and crew, along with all the ‘threats’ such as centaurs are actually just trying to destroy the elder dragon but you kept holding them back.

Logan along with everyone else you met during the personal story as a human as allies are actually just Branded in disguise, and he actually killed Snaff, because Snaff figured this out (which is how Scarlet knew, he told her when she was studying in Rata Sum).

Everything you knew was a lie. Cry human, cry.

I sure hope whatever way they implement, its going to be challenging, and not just challenging in a RNG or time-sink sense.

Something like for example, give DEs its own dungeon-like reward system. And then make some of the best skills be unlock-able by doing some difficult events like Temples to gather their specific tokens to buy them.

I don’t actually know. I don’t need the money because everything I want in the game now are untradable.

I guess sometimes I just feel like collecting stuff for collection’s sake….