Guild Wars 2

I LOVE the purple butterflies on my Mesmer, but I have to admit that I made her a female Human purely because I thought having a male Charr or Norn with them would be too silly. I wouldn’t object to customisable particle effects, but I think it’s a low priority; since GW1, Mesmers have always been about purple sparkly effects.

Clearly, they’re actually Watchknights in disguise.

A young krait who has murdered two fishermen, but was caught?

-continued-

The Communication Policy

While I can understand why ANet has opted to take the “we’ll share news when it’s just about to go live”, I still feel they should be more open with us. One of my favourite devs at ANet is Josh Foreman, and the reason why I respect him so much is because of his openness and responsiveness back when SAB World 2 was released. He was there to listen when we had legitimate complaints about the way World 2 worked, and he gave his reasons for why they had done things the way they did. Where he could improve our experience (fixing the flowers to eliminate lag deaths, for example), he did. Where he couldn’t, he either told us why he couldn’t, or said it would be something he would look at for the next time SAB came back. We, the players, felt like being part of a conversation, that our concerns and ideas were being heard. (Whereas with most other devs it felt like we were just shouting into a black hole, with no knowledge if our concerns were being looked at or even heard.)

Josh Foreman’s communication model was absolutely praiseworthy and something that ANet should look at adopting wholeheartedly. To be fair, the decision to bring back Gaile as a community liaison is a big step in the right direction, but I feel that she lacks the kind of in-depth expertise that the individual devs to answer all of our questions. (Not a dig at you, Gaile! I <3 you! But I think you’d burn out trying to do this job all by yourself.) I really do feel that the devs should try and spend more time in the specific sub-forums relevant to their area, the way John Smith used to do in the BLTC forum, and Cody and Maclaine did for the Sound/Music forum. That way, we can be sure that our feedback and concerns are being heard by the people who are actually in a position to do something about it.

This is not a list per se, but just my thoughts on some of the issues raised here.

Ascended Gear:

I agree that the WAY they went about introducing it was flawed. However, I can appreciate that the devs grossly underestimated just how fast players would reach Exotic gear, and they needed something to keep the players who enjoy working for BiS gear happy. Ascended gear also now serves a valuable purpose by giving incentive for players to reach r500 in crafting disciplines, as well as providing a massive sink for lower tier mats that would otherwise be totally unwanted. (A very, VERY smart move, in my opinion.)

Yes, it would have been better had Ascended gear been in the game from launch, but ANet at least saw their mistake and moved to fix it.

However, I hope that ANet NEVER introduces a tier higher than Ascended. :P I would seriously consider quitting GW2 if that happened; I will NOT play a game with a gear treadmill.

Trait Acquisition

I actually support the new way that traits are acquired, but I agree that it still needs work. Often the traits are still located in maps beyond the level where you are eligible to start learning the trait, and some traits are locked behind events that have a distressingly high frequency of being bugged and uncompletable. Sometimes, the traits require players to go into game modes they really do not want to do, such as WvW or jumping puzzles.

I would actually rework the system so that it’s more generalised. Instead of events or JP’s giving out specific traits, why not have them give out Basic/Advanced/Master Trait Points instead? You can then spend these Trait points on whichever trait of the appropriate tier catches your fancy. This allows players to go specifically for the trait they’re after while still doing an activity they enjoy. (And if they have no desirable options, there’s always the option of just flat out buying the trait for gold+skill points.)

Removing Existing Content

This is probably the biggest gripe I have with ANet’s direction. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you would want your game to have LESS stuff to do, outside of seasonal content. The Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat should have stayed as permanent new dungeons, accessed via “flashbacks”. The TA Aetherblade path should have been added as a new “elite path”, rather than replacing the old F/Up path.

And the decision to cut out large chunks of the Personal Story during the NPE still makes me angry. Not only am I stuck now and unable to progress with my PS (I don’t want to proceed for fear of being locked out and never being able to see the story steps should they be reinstated down the line), but it also introduces a whole bunch of plot holes. Who the heck are Tonn/Apatia, and why does my character feel sad over the deaths of some NPCs that I never met? Why is this weird winged lady talking to me like we’re good friends when I’ve never seen her before? Why are we talking about the Eyes of Zhaitan and saying that I’ve killed lots of them when this is, in fact, the very first one I’ve killed? Just how did the Pact get hold of this blue orb and why is it so important to our attack on Orr?

There’s just so much crucial lore and backstory to the invasion of Orr that got cut out with the NPE. It would be like watching Fellowship of the Ring and then jumping straight to Return of the King without ever being allowed to watch the Two Towers.

-continued-

Oh yes, I’m sure that in terms of the economy, the gold sunk by those 2 achievements is nothing compared to what the TP tax takes out every day, but I’m still curious as to what the numbers were, just to get a feel of how big the GW2 economy actually is.

The Ambrite and Carapace sets say hi.

Granted, they are locked behind a fair bit of grind, but you can’t buy them with gold, so it’s not locked behind the gemstore.

GhOst.4019:

Hotjoin win rank is 500 pts. Unranked Q loss is 500 pts/ win 1k. Ranked loss 800 pts/ win 1500. Even if you loose every ranked match you will be doing better.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. Winning Hotjoin will only give you 500 points if you joined from the start and the match goes for longer than 6 mins. If all 3 points are capped by one side, plus fights/duels from bored players go on, the match could end before that and give less points.

You also have to take into account the time lost in Unranked/Ranked by sitting in queues (an average of 2 mins waiting in HotM, plus another 1.5 – 2 mins waiting in match because there’s always some players who never ready up), and the fact that Unranked/Ranked matches last longer on average (10 mins is the average that I’ve seen).

So, an optimal Hotjoin farm would net about 500 points every 6 mins, with maybe another 1 min downtime between new matches. Unranked would give you 1000 every 15 mins on average, and that’s only if you win. On paper, farming Hotjoin is indeed the faster route, but you’re capped at 2 tiers/day if you’re doing it for the reward tracks, so it kind of evens out.

And as far as farming ranks is concerned, this is why you don’t look at people’s ranks/titles to determine their skill (the same way you don’t look at people’s AP to determine if they’re good dungeon/Fractal runners).

I wouldn’t mind the crafting stations being moved to Obsidian Sanctum (or better yet, to Heart of the Mists), although I do think they should be kept in the Borderlands as well just to “fill out” the Citadel so it doesn’t appear empty. Think about it, wouldn’t a Citadel be able to produce the food, weapons and armor its troops need?

If the crafting stations were also available elsewhere, I can assure you players will start going there in preference because there’s no risk of getting stuck in a queue trying to get in to do crafting either.

Yeah, I agree that the base WvW achieves should be scaled down to about what the EotM achievements are. They’re still grindy, but definitely achievable within, say, a year’s play if you mainly do WvW.

The Ogre Wars meta-event in Fields of Ruin is lots of fun, when it isn’t bugged.

The invasion events in Orr are also quite fun, although they’re often difficult to get going solo, since even non-group events have such high densities of enemies that they can be hard to solo.

I remember in one thread, Wanze said that he opened somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 Giant Gifts without getting a single Rebreather, so I’d say the odds are probably something like 1 in 1000, at a bare minimum. 1 in 5000 might be closer to the true chance.

Thankfully though, the new “PvP potions” do help speed up progress through the reward tracks. If you have any Birthday or Celebration Boosters, they also grant a 10% bonus towards reward tracks.

And Balthazar Guardians would probably be all about the “SMITE THE WICKED!” approach.

Glad to help! Just remember that:

1. The gate/wall in question must actually be damaged for you to repair it. Attempting to repair an undamaged gate/wall will not give you any credit. Basically, watch to see if your supply goes down when you’re repairing; if it does, you’re good.

2. Credit is awarded when the “Repulse the enemy attackers!” event completes, or every 3 minutes. If the enemy succeeds in capturing the structure before then, you will not get credit. For this reason, it’s best to repair structures that take a lot of time for the enemy to breach and capture, such as Towers, Keeps and Stonemist Castle. Again, SMC is a great choice because it’s almost always being trebbed, resulting in the “Repulse” event being triggered, but it takes a long time for a solo trebuchet to knock a wall down, and even then the enemy zerg may not attack SMC for several more minutes, allowing plenty of time for the “Repulse” event to finish.

They are very niche builds, but hilarious and fun in the right circumstances. I have a guildie who, wearing a full set of Snowfall runes and with the fall damage trait equipped, survived the jump from the top of Mount Maelstrom into the crater.

I told him to go try jumping from the top of the Karka Hive next, but no word on whether he’s tried this yet. XD

I agree that PPK is a great addition and should be made permanent. (It’s especially nice since your server score is what generates the World Bonuses for your server. PPK allows all three servers to gain points even when they’re lacking in PPT, which gives boosts to all players on your server.)

I’m not as thrilled about the lack of white swords though. I’d rather those be brought back.

ANet has not ruled out retired gem store skins ever coming back. If I recall correctly, despite being removed in September, the Winter’s weapon skins were briefly brought back for Wintersday (alongside the new Wintersday weapon skins). I would fully expect other themed sets like the Lovestruck weapons to make temporary returns for Valentine’s Day, for example.

An amusing (if dry) read.

The Court also notes that the plaintiff’s injuries could be remedied simply by “dying and respawning”.

I do wish they would stick the Bleeds back on, say, Volley. That way those of us with Exotic (or worse, Ascended!) rifles that are condition based can still get some use out of our weapons.

I have a “healer’s” armor set just for laughs when I’m doing guild dungeon runs. Cleric’s with Superior Monk runes, and a Staff with Sigil of Battle/Renewal on it. Switching to Water Attunement is a pretty big heal boost in itself, and throwing up Geyser + Arcane Brilliance/Arcane Wave can make for a big AoE heal blast in tight pinches when the party is stacked up.

You’ll still want to switch to Earth (for Protection) and Fire (for Might stacking) on a regular basis, but you can think of yourself as a healer/buffer in that regard. Don’t forget to summon your Earth Elemental for more Protection spamming in boss fights!

Wanze.8410:

How rich are those poor people of Divinity´s Reach by now?

I would be curious to know just how much gold was taken out of the GW2 economy via the “Golden Generosity” and “Silver for the Season” achievements too.

Wanze.8410:

Thats an interesting question. As mentioned before, i trade alot in recipes and also do it for the newer ones that got introduced with recent updates in season 2.
In particular the feast/pot recipes for the nopale/cactus food from DT and the bountiful/furious nourishments from SW.
Those are still farmable from chests but as most of the playerbase moved from DR to Halloween, then to SW and now to Wintersday, daily supply diminished quite alot, even though SW recipes still drop more frequently than the ones from Dry Top and their prices might fall again, coming next week as people revisit SW.
However, prices on all those recipes have risen due to several buy outs but it gets harder to manipulate those prices.
But on the flip side, it makes revisiting DT more attractive now because average loot obtained there rose in value, so I dont think its a bad thing and it all will balance out again.

So it was YOU who kept pushing up the price of the Bountiful/Furious recipes back when I was trying to buy them!

Prices for SW recipes will almost certainly tank in the coming weeks. (The one recipe I was after, Verata’s Wand, dropped from an average of 2g to about 50s.) We can expect a flood of players back into SW when the Living Story resumes, and by this point I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of people who wanted the new recipes have already got them, meaning a lot of new supply of recipes from chests will have a very small buyer’s market.

I feel I should point out that while Necros aren’t considered a “top tier” profession for dungeons, only the speedclear/zerk/meta groups will have an issue allowing one in the party. For the vast majority of dungeon groups, as long as you are level 80 and/or know what you’re doing, they don’t care what profession or build you’re using. (Trust me pon this. I use a condi-minion hybrid build on my Necromancer in dungeons and Fractals ALL the time. I’ve never been kicked. Ever.)

As such, don’t let the belief that “Necros are an unpopular dungeon/Fractal class” discourage you or your wife from trying one out if she likes the feel of the profession.

I believe that Anise can be trusted to always do what is best for Kryta (and to an extent, Queen Jennah). In most cases, this means she is firmly on the side of our allies, but at the same time, should there ever come a time when she must choose between friends or patriotism, she will choose patriotism every time.

This is what Logan was trying to warn us about if you talk to him with a human character in Camp Resolve. She may be helping Kasmeer now, but you can bet that Anise’s gifts always come with strings attached, and that Kasmeer may one day become an expendable pawn in Kryta’s service if circumstances call for it. (Anise will do her best to avoid that happening, of course; she doesn’t waste personnel needlessly or maliciously. But if it comes to it, pawns will be sacrificed for the greater good.)

It’s unknown, but I’d lean on the side of “no” due to it being seasonal content. To be safe, I’d definitely get the collection completed before Wintersday ends on Jan 13th.

After I finished grinding out the parts and crests from Seeds of Truth, I HAD to take a break from Silverwastes to avoid getting burnt out. >.< Here’s hoping the last 2 armor pieces won’t be TOO much worse than the last one. (My biggest fear is that the body part needed for the chest piece needs THREE parts.)

I think my longest losing streak in Unranked was 7. (This was when I was grinding the Wintersday track something fierce to get the Rime-Rimmed Rebreather.) I played some stacked Hotjoin matches after that just to feel better. :P

I would say that this is an exploit. Unlike a Mesmer portal (which requires a player to have successfully breached the objective before and then remained undetected), this method allows enemies to gain access to the Keep even without prior access at all. Thus, there is no way to “counter” it, whereas you can do sweeps of the Keep to flush out hiding Mesmers. (And it’s your own fault for not sweeping properly if you lose the Keep via Mesmer portals.)

The icon does appear much higher overhead if you’re a Norn or a Charr. Not sure why that is. But yeah, always zoom out to the max when you’re fighting the Jade Maw.

Mesmer is fun to play, but the skill ceiling is higher than for some other professions. They are also a lot more dependent on traits to become truly powerful, which means your wife may struggle at the earlier levels when you don’t have a lot of options unlocked. They bring a great deal of support to groups via reflection, conditional removal, boon strips and more, although that usually means you’ll need to be swapping utilities and weapons quite frequently.

By all means, encourage her to give it a go if she really likes the theme of Mesmers, but I would recommend starting off with a simpler class like Warrior or Necromancer first if she’s new to GW2 (and especially if she’s new to MMO’s in general).

I would like to see the following new ways for acquiring Fractal Weapons:

1. You get a Fractal Weapon Box for completing Fractal Frequenter (500 Fractals completed). This is a one-time bonus and is retroactive.

2. You can trade 100/250/500(? Open to negotiation) Pristine Fractal Relics for a Fractal Weapon Box. As part of this change, you can trade back any existing Fractal Weapon skin you don’t want for 100 Pristine Fractal Relics.

3. Fractal Weapon Boxes are now a very rare drop from completing Fractal Level 40 – 50.

4. A new Fractals meta-achievement is added where you get a Fractal Weapon Box for completing every single Fractals achievement (except Fractal Frequenter). (This may be a problem if ANet decides to add more Fractals in the future, however.)

What’s the highest practical AR you’ll ever need anyway? I’m pretty sure that going above 60 would be largely pointless, except for certain Fractal instabilities (but you can just avoid playing those).

All anecdotes suggest the drop rate for the Rebreather is miniscule. It might not be as rare as Mini Gwynefrydd, but it’s rare enough that I strongly suggest grinding the PvP reward track if you want one. (I did so 5 times to get my 5 mains equipped. Talk about being burnt out on PvP. x_x)

Yeah, the only 3 White Mantle who knew what really happened to Saul D’Alessio were Confessor Dorian, Justiciar Hablion and one other guy whose name escapes me at the moment. They kept the secret to themselves and claimed that Saul had perished in the attack on the Charr camp. The event in Harathi Hinterlands with the zealous White Mantle ghost guarding Saul’s “tomb” might give new players the impression that somebody had looted/desecrate the tomb at some point, but the truth is that Saul’s body was never buried there to begin with. The ghost had been guarding an empty tomb all along.

I wonder if the Durmand Priory or the Pact has been busy reverse-engineering Scarlet’s technology too. My feelings about her Mary-Sueness not withstanding, her work on the Watchwork monsters, the Aetherblade/holographic technology and culminating in the Marionette and the Breachmaker and all indicate she’s made light-years of technological progress in a relatively short span of time. The Pact’s recent new weapons might even be largely due to discoveries made by examining Scarlet’s work.

I’m all but certain that the Tengu will be the first new race introduced to the game, if ANet ever goes down that route. They have a ready-made location for their capital city, are well-positioned in lore to become an equal candidate to the 5 existing races (the Kodan are still fleeing and recovering from Jormag’s attacks, and it’s unknown what state the Largos civilisation is in), and they have a wide range of aesthetic choices for players. Male and female Tengu are also visually distinct from each other, something that is quite important to players. (Female Tengu are, unusually, bigger than the males, but have drab plumage. Male Tengu have much brighter and more striking plumage.)

Kodan are a decent possibility, but I think they are greatly hampered by the fact that there is no visual distinction between male and female Kodan, and the fact that thematically, they are too similar to the Norn. (Both races are big, physically powerful arctic-dwelling races.)

Largos would make for a very distinctive new race, but I think that making them playable may actually be counter-productive. A lot of players love the Largos for their rarity and mystery, factors that would be instantly lost the second you start seeing a Largos on every street corner. Furthermore, Largos are an aquatic race; the idea of one leaving the water far behind and adventuring in places like Dry Top stretches credulity. Finally, those wings would be a clipping nightmare for the artists; the Charr already have huge problems with their tails causing clipping with armor, and those are set low on the body and have only a single point of contact with the model. Imagine how much worse it would be for Largos!

We do NOW, sure, but originally each character could withdraw their own individual funds and carry it on their person. Lorewise, I’d presume that characters in the game still do just that. The account-wide storage of our funds is just a game mechanic for greater player convenience.

My personal explanation would be that all players (including adventurers, explorers and certain members of the military whose governments have signed contracts with the Asuran government) who use waypoints have signed up to an agreement with the Asura. They are given a magical device that allows them to use the Waypoint network, and this device is also connected to that person’s “Waypoint Account” that keeps track of how many times that player uses waypoints each week/month/year. At the end of that period, the Asura deducts that money from the person’s bank account.

Usage of the Asura Gates is different; anyone wishing to use those simply pays a fee to the operators manning the gate before going through.

I like to think that during the Escape from LA storyline, as I was rescuing him, that Norn yelled out, “BY OGDEN’S HAMMER, WHAT A SAVING!”

Going back to the original question, it would depend on the specific biological processes Sylvari use to digest their food. I would lean towards “yes”, since all animal species rely on symbiotic bacteria living in their intestines to help break down food, the process of which creates methane and other gases which is where farts come from. It would seem logical that Sylvari also have the same.

Yeah. While I still hope that Leah Hoyer and her team will look at reintroducing the cut out chapters (seriously, it’s such a waste of voice acting and existing content!), I don’t want to get my hopes up too high.

To give the Pact credit, it does seem that by the time the assault on Mordremoth begins, they’ve begun to form a cohesive organisational structure and chain of command. There seem to be ranking officers for the Pact now, as opposed to simply officers drawn from the three Orders, and they’re operating fairly efficiently with each other.

GreyShark.4293:

You need to get at least one kill XP during the defending event to be rewarded. It seems like building siege or reparing gates/walls isn’t enough.
Good luck !

Actually, no, I’ve found that repairing gates/walls is the surefire way to get credit for a defense event. When this daily pops up, I get it by going to a map where my Keeps/Towers/SMC are under attack (EBG is a good candidate for this), finding the initial breach that the attackers broke in/are currently attacking, repair it for 2 supply, and then go join the rest of the defenders.

SMC is particularly good for this, since usually it’s always being trebbed from one side, but the enemy server will not make a push for it until the outer wall is completely down. Just go dump 2 supply into that wall and then leave.

Your Keeps in EotM can also work well for this, since there’s often a big gap of time between the enemy breaching the outer walls and actually capturing the Keep.

It’s a common misconception that the Snowmen reset daily. In fact, each Magic Snow pile can only be used ONCE per character, but this limit is per map instance. So if my Warrior had gone to DR Instance #1 and used all the Magic Snow, if he logged back in the next day to Instance #1, they would still all be activated. However, if he logged back into DR Instance #2, all the Magic Snow would register as being unused.

Because DR instances have such a high turnover due to a flood of players coming in for the dailies, then leaving again, chances are you’ll always log back into a new instance, hence the perception that the Snowmen reset daily.

As Inculpatus mentioned, you can also build Snowmen in the other capital cities and out in the World Maps.

The Rime-Rimmed Mariner’s Rebreathers use the standard aquabreather skin (which you probably already have unlocked from your starter gear). It doesn’t have a unique skin.

The icy effect around your character is unique to the ITEM itself. You can wear the Rime Rebreather and apply the Benthic or Consortium mask skins on top of it, and your character will still have the icy effect underwater.

^ While that’s generally true, the devs themselves have said that if you urgently need to call a GM to the location because there’s a hack or exploit currently in progress, use the “Botting” option. You’ll be safe as long as you don’t actually abuse the report function (i.e. maliciously report someone who isn’t actually breaking the game rules). Support staff always review each and every case before handing out any bans or disciplinary action.

I would actually like to see Bell Choir made a permanent activity, to be honest. It’s my favourite of the 4 Wintersday activities.

That said, I would not be against Snowball Mayhem becoming part of the Activity rotation. However, the odds are against it happening since it’s very much a “festival event”.

Wintersday 2: The Return of Grawnk

No good can come of feeding Bloodstone Dust to living beings…

I do agree that old buy orders which are now below the minimum TP sale price should be flushed and the money refunded, as there is no way they can ever be met now, and their presence simply distorts the picture of demand that sellers are presented when they want to sell.

I do not see anything wrong with having supply being listed on the TP for ridiculously high prices that nobody would pay barring some drastic shake-up in the economy.

“Cantha is coming.”

The tunes are pleasant, but I do feel that players should actually use their own skill to play the instruments rather than just using macros. Still, it’s not a big enough deal for me to call for their removal.