Guild Wars 2

Excelsior.

You can talk to everyone. And you should. Where is the difference anyways? You can not know if the character you talk to is just having his one-liner or something interesting. This applies to marked or unmarked characters.

Second thing is that many NPC have cool and funny voice lines that trigger only every few minutes, so if you really want to sniff in the most of the game’s feel, you have to sit down a bit. The two guys in “the human’s capital” (forgot the name. . .) right next to the Asura portal that have an argument they need more Asura gates while the other guy hates the condescending way of us is pretty funny, as well as another conversation between a plant lady and a cat guy about weaponry and equipment brought in by the Asura but the nearby smug Asura NPC calls them unworthy for this high technology. The Charr just says that he would just grab on our ears and whirl us [Asura] around.

That stuff is super hilarious. The only important things are the green star and the red and orange crosshair / cross thing which is usually a follow quest. Everything else is pure explorations.

The Ace.9105:

Mr Godlike.6098:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Here’s an article from MassivelyOP covering ESL dropping GW2 from Professional Gaming,

http://massivelyop.com/2017/04/04/esl-gaming-is-shutting-down-guild-wars-2s-e-sports-section/

perhaps ANet can reallocate those resources into making an easier Tier for Raiding comparable to Fractals T1 and T2?

So about that…money from esports where purely from marketing budget, not from developers pockets or any resources tied with game development. All money was from marketing budget.

Truth is that this anet has already money to put effort in any part of the game. Esport money pool is laughable for company big as Anet.

So now there is no esports so I guess we will see more gw 2 banners and adds around internet.

Besides as already certain somebody pointed out – there wasn’t any esport event in half an year…did you noticed any of good quality content in gw 2?

Good quality content in gw2? I have never seen that in the game. I don’t even know what it means.

And you are here why?
I’d like to hear the answer. You either post in a forum of a game that is below your standards or you are lying. In either case you are not doing yourself a favor.

On the other hand, I do not care that much..

• The HUD layout, while configurable (when not bugged like mine back then, the chat would not move into the corner^^) is needed becauese it is incredible cluttered. Just check any random screenshot. You have at least 150 buttons on-screen, the already mentioned list of enemies currently having aggro with you/r party etc. It’s full with BS. I would like to have a bar instead of health orb in GW2, but meh. Still better than FF14.

• Linkshells are just a bunch of chats indeed and are not as useful as it may sound. I have been in several at once and it became confusing who from LS wanted something and it’s distracting as heck.

No, FF14 is by far not as great as you claim it to be. If so, I would not be here. Since nobody want to read big posts nowadays anymore and I really mentioned it so much after being disappointed in FF14’s cashgrab mentality (full-price base game, full-price expansion, subscription, cash shop with stuff you should earn ingame, merchandise and in the end that money goes mostly into other Square Enix’ projects and NOT into FF14) what is better in GW2.

Our character design in GW2 is better and more diverse. In FF14, all models are humans with stretched bodies and little details changed like Horns or Cat tails. Having characters with botanical details (like big leaves as hair or branches for the males) is awesome. Cats are actually a threat in GW2 while in FF14 you have some generic loli cat girl in Japanese school uniform fighting a Primal. Geez.. Also, no kids, no elderly people. Everyone is a perfect cardboard cutout with no depth (and voice acting).

For example that I can dodge. Walking behind a wall and not behing hit a by a projectile was awesome, while in FF14 it’s like “Oh, you were in that circle, well, you are dead then”…..(waits)….(animation finally plays)….dead. FF14 is about memorizing, like the SIMON game. If I want to learn choreographies I would play some dance game.

Other details I like is that when I fire a projectile trough bushes, said bushes will move. Or other details like the floppy Asura ears while in FF14 everything’s stiff.

The classes are super cheesy. “Hey, I am a super duper black mage that manipulates the Aether to roast my enemies and I dress in all black because I am such a danger”. (changes job stone) “Oh, now I am a White Mage and hug trees and belive in the power of the Nature” or whatever. Yeeeahh, no.

We have an outstanding voice acting while in FF14, the game with the big funds, let your character just wave the arms around as if we play some drunk party game and you are literally nothing, you do fetch quests and when you do pseudo-epic stuff it’s all for some random guys like the Scions. You are literally just some contract worker instead of a hero. A black mage “Warrior of Light”, haha. No, thanks.

Also, the themes in FF14 are so dull. “Oh no, some kid is sad behind the house in Gridania? Hand her some flower or /dance”. Total Mickey Mouse BS.
In GW2 the first mission was like “The Inquest stole our stuff. Kill the Inquest, destroy their lab, get our hostages back”. Awesome.

I could go on and on but that would exceed the 17 months I wasted in FF14…

Carighan.6758:

• That options menu. You can even select which types of sounds still play while tabbed out.
• The chat interface is already a lot better than GW2’s. Although as far as copying that goes, just go for WoW’s where user mods made chat a pretty nice and convenient affair, including reply-bots while you’re in a fight and notifying when the fight ended, and other such niceties. But still, just carbon-copying what FF14 has would be a huge improvement already.
• There’s a “part of this fight”-list at the left. In busy combat (which GW2 has all the time with the amount of spell effects flying around) it helps a lot to realize just what is there to attack. Wish GW2 had something like it.
• An inventory button row which shows how full your bags currently are.
• Separate inventory (and separately limited!) for gear.
• A pop-up window for markers/signs? Instead of having to remember 20 key combinations at all times? Yes please!
• Have you seen their support for deaf/hard-of-hearing players? I was hellishly impressed, you can turn on a mode where it essentially shows a waveform pattern at the screen edges, so loud sounds make the screen “flash”, kinda. Really really good idea, and helps a lot if you have a ton of background noise, too.
• An in-UI countdown timer? Shared by party and raid?
• Linkshells, which are essentially private chatchannels.
• Fully configurable HUD layout.
• The game doesn’t run like dirt on modern hardware.

• You need to play the type of sounds outside of the game because FF14 is full of waiting times (for duties) etc. FF14 is designed not to be played. When I was doing a relic quest I literally had to wait 45-90 minutes to wait for a fate to pop up. One of my mates was teaming up with me to spam me with chat soundeffects so I can hear when I have to tab back into the game – have you ever seen a game that wants you to tab out because you wait for everything?

• What is so special with that chat interface. It’s pretty standard.

• You mean the emnity list? The “problem” is that FF14 features a very dull and almost turn-based combat. Of course have have lists. Or you could observe the actual fight on-screen..

• The dots for each inventory slot is interesting, but what does that matter in the end?
  I see when my bag is full (red icon) and that’s all matters. When I want to check my inventory I press (I) and see it’s full or not.

• You need the armour tab because much stuff is simply tied to your account forever. I heard many people saying “Another free item to be put in the armoire” (the cabinet in your room/home instance). It’s more of a workaround.

• We have shacking screens instead which can be toggled on or off to realize when something with “boom” happened. And I really think the majority of the players is not deaf or disabled. (By the way, on the forums they even praise the sound design of GW2 over the dull and weak sounding spells… I rather have it audible than visibile ;-))

• The game ran like dirt when it came out because it was written to be server-sided at almost everything. FF14 has been rewritten from scratch in many departments and was held back by console support. While you are right with the not so great performance on modern hardware, a part of FF14’s initial fail was the clunky and slow (game) engine; something GW2 did not have to improve on in the first palce, so it’s nothing to compare. If GW2 would have had the need to be overhauled in that scale it would probably get better as well.

Excelsior.

I am very happy there are companies out there not overdoing this nonsense. April’s fool is just stupid and annoying. Pranks are supposed to be funny but enough is enough. This might apply in certain environments like schools, but when I am doing my everday’s life stuff, I do not want to read fake newspaper articles, random stuff in video games or TV programmes and such.

It’s amazing how many ressources many companies have for such a short-lived nonsense – the same companies talking about not having these ressources in the first place. April 1st is like kindergarden stuff people never grew out of for some reason and I am happy when it’s over..

Mortifera.6138:

I have a bigger problem with their bodies and the lack of slim figures. American ruggedness ftl, Final Fantasy XIV does it right.

Because Final Fantasy just has 1 player model anyways. Hyur.
Then you have Hyur with toy tails and toy ears attached to it, scaled-up Hyurs, Hyurs with pointy ears, Hyurs with toy horns attached… I think Sylvari alone took more development and, uh, "courage"* then all the FF14 characters alltogether.

(*) People like FF14 players want their young, perfectly photoshopped cardboard cutouts (have you ever seen really mean people like those pre-set Asura thieves or old Charr or kids?). But then, people want depth in their character designs, too.

Excelsior.

I had to laugh so much thoug about the first poster. Let’s face (rimshot) it: Play a Charr instead.

Excelsior.

This thread is very interesting. First of all, I also thought about that as a kid when my dad played “Das Schwarze Auge” on MS-DOS. The characters there get hungry, thirsty and ill after a while and I was confused when he saved and shut down the PC, what happens with the party still in the dungeon..

Nowadays, when I log off I make sure my Asuras are in some sort of building or other shelter. Well, ain’t I nice?

About dying, I handle it like Borderlands: The Waypoints create a copy of my DNA/body state and when I die, I get teleported back and restored to that point; unlike in Borderlands 2 where it costs me money. We have the technology, we have the abilitiy to teleport, so why not having a little device (like a pacemaker) that checks our vital states and keep us alive – but unconcious? Like tablets, laptops and such that go into deep hibernation mode.

But then, there is the perfectionist in me that needs to be clear that death =/= death.

Carighan.6758:

I mean I tried FF14 recently, and it definitely shows how their sub income gives them a lot more space to work with as developers. Which is a shame, because as an underlying framework, GW2 is worlds stronger.

Just to make it clear: I played FF14 for 1.5 years and it has been stated a lot that the income of FF14 went into a big fund of SquareEnix to be spent into to other projects. As far as I know, which also might be off, but a lot of the cash shop income of FF14 went into FF15 – not back into the game.

FF14 has a subscription fee that returns cheap dungeons as update – a bad deal. Then you got to pay the base game – which should cover the cost, just like all other conventional games did in the past 35 years. Then there is a cash shop recycling ingame content – just like with the brand new games that already have DLCs going on which could have been put in the game to achieve by playing. And then, after all, an incredibly expensive merchandise shop that rips you off thrice (!) at once: Item price, what you actually get and shipping cost (Non-Insurance shipping over €20 for EU shipping? Never! Just to artificially increase the price). And the end result is a good-looking, yet mediocre gaming experience and a H U G E copy/paste of things, the 5.000th tomestone farming and the 6.000th fetch quest.

Just to be clear: FF14 and square enix live off of their big names, NOT by their actual quality. Else, FF14 would be €1 / month because the €60 for the game or expansion is only worth it. All the other stuff inbetween is Ca-Ching for something else.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

What would be amazing after literally 4 years if the Whisper’s silenced pistol would get a silenced pistol sound. I mean, seriously. That would be so amazing. But one can dream, right?…

Excelsior.

The only problem of you I can agree to is the knockback issue. Being bounced back and furth 6 or 7 times in a row by 10 mobs that are gangb… you is very annoying indeed, but flying mounts – apart from being generic and totally out of any relation story-wise* – would totally render any danger on the ground as skippable.

(*) In HoT for example, why would you fly trough the jungle with a winged something? Isn’t it supposed to have a, uh, “depressing” feeling to you? It’s war after all. And not like “kitten kitten let’s skip all the dagner. Hey, NPCs, why don’t you do it too?”. Gliding is way cooler than I expected it to be and makes more sense, because it’s not some huge compagnon, but more a tool of yours.

Excelsior.

1) Yes, populated at every day or night time.

2) It’s like asking us what tastes better: Chocolate or Vanilla. Maybe you enjoy Green Apple?

I really enjoy my sub-optimal* and cheesy* P/P and D/D Thief/Daredevil.

[*] Unrelated Community nonsense opinion

You really should check what you like yourself. What do you play in other games? Or do you have to reflect your real-life attitude into the game (beefy warrior or fragile mage?). There are plenty of ways to figure out what you (would) enjoy, so we can’t help you on these totally subjective opinions.

skoobydoo.9246:

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Exedore.6320:

Why does this seem to happen only with thieves? Why not mesmer, necromancer, elementalist, engineer, ranger, or even revenant? Does every stubborn person have a thief alt “cuz stelth is cool”?

Not all thiefs use stealth. Stop being classist! :P

Also, some of us don’t have the time to learn other classes and have chosen to focus on, and get good with, just one class. Learn to adapt and deal with what comes.

this is the problem with Thief mentality[…]

Excelsior.

Don’t be silly, it’s apparently a problem of both sides in that matter. Nobody wants to switch for obvious reasons. Don’t blame it on thieves while you are contradicing yourself in your own twisted reasoning.

Excelsior,

to me it sounds more it’s based to 80% on the elitist jerks you encounter.
They are in every game. I just remember my last “raid” ever in another well-known game where I used a skill differently and we probably were 30 seconds slower because of that – it was a flame fest, that I suck, my class is kitten etc. but had nothing to do with the role I played as.

People were flat-out telling me before finally deciding for Thief, that “nobody will pick me for group content” and “If you play solo, that’s your best choice”. So if I tried, I’d probably also never get a spot in group content, even though I wonder what I am doing, because Thieves and Daredevils appear to actually use blunt force to fight their enemies – and not NERF darts and cotton balls as many, so-called meta and FOTM players describes us.

So long, change the elitism and you are fine.
On the other hand, why would you want to raid with people that dislike you?

Excelsior,

in every game, there is only one Zed(ek/ex) and it was this way since I play online games. The strong feel towards principles is too strong that I switch stuff every time.

In FF14, there were the “job stones” which was ridiculously dumb, especially since it killed immersion. "Congratulations, you are a real Black Mage now, roast people by manipulating the Aether!..Job Stone Change… “Now I am a White Mage and I heal and protect my fellow living beings”. What a nonsense.

I started the game as Engineer but hated Scrapper so much that I put up some story about Asuran twin brothers. Now there are two characters, which will be the big exception. My “second” Asura – the Thief – is exactly the way I want him to be, like an improved version. An Asura Daredevil, it can’t get better for me. Was trying hard to like Necromancer, but in the end, the weaponry of the Thief made it. I rather use cold steel (pistols, daggers, swords, arrows) than magic..

Don’t wish to play several classes, because I have my style and principles as said. Why would I pick Ranger, Tank or Mage when I am very much leaning towards Thief, Engineer and Necromancer?

Sincerely,
Zedexx (Thief) and Zedekk (Engineer)

Excelsior.

Why do you create all this mess? To be short: You do not meet the requirements of an online game: Staying online. Period. The system handing out penalties is automated and that’s the most objective way.

I play online games since 2007 and, apart from NEXON games, I do not disconnect with 2 different ISP. I always wonder what people do to frequently lose connection. Do you have contracts with phone companies that interrupt your calls frequently? Or your power supplier – two blackouts a day is okay? No?

Please, I have this in LoL enough: People play on UMTS or bad connections, bad PCs, whatever. Don’t. If you can’t play, don’t play. As simple as that. I even played from various hotels when I were on seminars all over Germany and said hotels had for example over 140 rooms and still fine connected over a far away router in the hallway 20 rooms away…

Excelsior…

…and man, Vayne, you managed to give a short answer regarding the whole thread that is also plausible yet again. Claps

Coming from FF14, I don’t like any sort of Trinity because it creates a demand on certain roles which has to be filled and also devalues other roles. I think that is a horrible thing.

I go with the FF14 example: I was a Blackmage and I loved that job. But I had to wait for duties and groups literally forever, up to 140 minutes. The tanks however can be the biggest kitten s, due to instant queues and simply a high demand they were taken everywhere. It often hurts to see people having fun but you play a job that is in your blood but there is no demand for it.

You can replace “tank” with every profession in this game. I really much enjoy Thief/Daredevil, but who would need me or my profession here in PvE? Right now: Nobody really. If these sparse spots would be replaced with Healers and Tanks (or, you name it, controllers and supporters), I would never get in any group content.

I like how it is right now, groups consist of a big mishmash of people, you see all races and professions slapping their abilities of all kind, magic, pets/summons, blades, arrows, at one foe. There is no real “kitten it, you do no DPS” or “Tank, use skill X or we kick you” sort of thing. This “chaotic”, deathmatch-like feel of “care for yourself” is probably the reason why this game has not beome stall and mind-numbing. Yet, I get a bunch of boons, so someone around me is supporting me without being told so or without queueing this way.

Forcing Trinity – even if you just add small doses of it into the GW(2) formula – would also take the game’s fun away.

Immersion-wise, well,… Standing in front, getting happily slapped by 8 meter tall creatures while healers are waving their hands while healing and DPS that just move a bit to left and right when said creature does an attack looks more like slapstick comedy than a video game. If you check the keystrokes of an endgame FF14 dungeon and a regular boss in the open GW2 world, you will see how great GW2s combat is – it’s a game, not a Simon game from the 80s to remember mechanics and else just blame tank/healer as DPS, blame DPS/healer as tank, blame healer as Tank/DPS etc..

Excelsior.

I am here since the release date of Heavensward because FF14 sucks so bad (and just right now, they made things even worse, Jesus Christ Yoshi-P!), which was June 23rd of 2015. That’s not even 2 years so I can’t tell what the identity is supposed to be like. I normally have a problem with U.S. games style-wise, I just think of horrible JRR Tolkien wanna-be worlds (WoW) and pseudo-coolness.

Being also pretty much resistant to any sort of hype, I literally stumbled over GW2 by accident (small race required). The reasons why I enjoy this game are more aesthetically:

• Different races that are really different from each other (cabbage people and cats. Compare to all the humans-with-toy-tails from other games…)
• No genderlock (Want to play archer or healer – sorry, females only)
• Different themes (Snow, Beach, Forest, Jungle,…)
• Different professions (Come on, the Engineer rocks!) off the regular Mage, Tank and Archer stuff
• Splatter art menus
• Asura!!

This game play well and looks good, the themes are nice and not all about political correctness like new games. It’s great audio-wise. It is simply great in every aspect. The identity of the game shifted a bit, but still within the GW2 awesomeness.

I have an issue of a gaming magazine, the German PC Games, with a multi-page article about GW2’s upcoming release and reading how they are looking forward and hyping the game, I see nothing has changed from what they’ve written in the article. You’re maybe just a bit used to high quality GW2 gameplay. . . ?

Excelsior!

Nope, we don’t need GW3.

Huge franchises like GuildWars are like houses: You take ages to plan it, get the property, get all the documents and permissions, the long-term financing in place and after months you can finally move into the bare brickwork (the Alpha and Beta stadiums).

After a long time, when you put in your last furniture, installed your last cover panel over your wall sockets and outlets and finally look what you have done, you reach v1.0

Now would you immediately start to build a new house or start to finally life in this house now? I know GW2 is already a bit older, but even a 10-year old house is nothing you would demolish and move onto your next project when you are perfectly fine with a house like this.

And I can relate, I just finished a €112,000 project (buying and renovating an object) of my home in real life and I am finally beginning to rest… I could not think of starting all over again with a new project- maybe some changes here and there, just like expansion packs. Gigantic video game projects are somewhat related. It’s time to do the fine adjustments. When the game (or the “house”) is too old and can’t be refurbished to meet modern expectations (graphics), then tear it down. But now, GW2 is still very fresh and fun and anything else would be a desaster – mostly a question of money and manpower.

Excelsior.

Many things in this thread are just plain wrong or missing important information that make even the basically correct suggestions and tips useless.

The “get an SSD” is one side of the coin. I am running this game off of my HDD just fine, loading does not change that much over my SSD. If you check the low memory usage of the game I thought it’s by far not the raw data troughput many of you talk about in this SSDvsHDD conversation. But it’s not as easy as the commercials want you to believe.

The internet connection is not the reason at all, the stuff you need upon entering a map and during gameplay could probably be received via one-channelled ISDN (64 kBit/s) easily, as long as it’s fast and stable.

Seeing that basically a map takes like 500 MByte which is accessed in a couple of seconds on either [a] SSD or HDD, I just blame the game (engine). Also, many CPUs are bottlenecking. Same mass memory storages but changing from Duo Core to Quad Core or using a real architecture (AMD vs Intel) can also change a lot.

Since GW2 contains of a huge, single file that contains everything, I just assume browsing that uge GW2.dat is the real reason for slow loading times. Not sure it really works, but while it’s being super portable, having literally hundred thousands of entries within a single file can slow down compared to have it split up, but then again, I do not know how the structure exactly works. My defrag tools always have to defrag the whole GW2.dat after updates because these tools want this 34 GByte to be adjacent on the disk.

When I load Cities Skylines for example off of my HDD, it fills up my VRAM in a couple of seconds. 4 GByte of VRAM and additionally other game files to regular RAM in, like, 15 seconds. I monitor that trough widgets on my desktop. In GW2, I load 5x as slow but barely have any memory usage going up, the VRAM stays almost empty and the system memory’s usage is not worth mentioning.

But don’t worry, FF14 is the same: It loads for comparibly long time just to see a dungeon and all the memories of a major city consumed 700 MByte in total, but loaded for so much time a benchmark would load you 10 GByte. Or League of Legends: Eats up exactly 1.0 GByte and takes 15 seconds to load.
1.0 GByte in GW2 is, due to the sheer masses of assets, graphics, voice files, sfx (probably FMOD files even), textures, objects, 1 minute of loading. All of that need to be (slowly) accessed and loaded from that one bloated GW2.dat. No matter if from [a] SSD or HDD.

EDIT: This kitten filter….

Excelsior.

You should really find what you enjoy most.
Engineer got me into this game but I hate Scrapper with a passion.

Later I wanted someting that matches my real-life style, so I could not decide between Thief and Necromancer, but finally found my profession in this game. It all now works perfectly together, class, gameplay, my race, weapons available. If you get your favourite class, you can also ignore some of the minor problems.

GW2 really offers something for every taste. Take the time. When you see that you’re embracing your professions skills and an inner joy is rising while playing you’re right. It’s exactly what happened to me when I dove into the Thief profession. Everytime I dodge, the sound, the visuals, the fact I can do it thrice just makes me happy; everytime I steal from someone or shadowstep I know that I really do not care about anything else.

About my long-time goals? I am a Lone Wolf, and I make slow progress. There is more stuff added than I can complete in time. If I could finally not just glide, but also adjust the speed during gliding, that is for example something I work towards to. Else I am simply wandering around, discovering the world and try to kill anything that causes mad beef with my Asura.

In this game, you can do what you please unlike other games that force stuff on you (FF14, hello!).

Crafting in MMOs.. Not sure why developers think that is fun and mandatory. If I’d want to gather and craft, I would play Harvest Moon…

To be fair, it CAN be a fun thing to gather stuff and cook it for your upcoming guild dungeon run/fractal whatever. But then there are the people that get up, grab their weapons, kill stuff the whole day long, go to a Norn tavern, get drunk and fall asleep on the sidewalk. Rinse and repeat. Acting like “you are only worth it if you know how to stitch” is pretty odd. That is like saying: “You are only a good Formula 1 racer if you’ve built your own car”.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I kind of like the way things are being told. In real life, I know my boss’ name and what we are doing right now, but I do not ask for his vita. Same with Trahearne. Or what the “Wylda Jagd” (Wyld Hunt?) is, and I do not care.

But I understand you somewhat.

However, since I am an Asuracist, I knew what is going on in the Asura story line because I suck up all the Asura lore like a sponge – the other stuff is being explained or can be guessed.

Overall, I just “selectively care” about things. I have no idea what exactly happened to Ascalon, but it has to do with the cats. I don’t know about the guys in the Maguuma Jungle – but they accept me as their leader, so yeah… When that one cat joins the fight, I was like “Who’s that?!” but the other NPCs liked him and we are not enemies, so I am fine. Just like a new colleague from a different branch of the same company. We know our business and now let’s work together, no need to for more details right now.

In real life, I also do not have knowledge about every detail in history or politics. I still miss about the Hutu/Tutsi thing in ’94, even though I watched Hotel Huanda and read so much about it. Just as example.

If you are really lore-hungry and want every piece of the puzzle, you gotta get trough all stories. I, for my part, focus on the long-eared midgets and let the other stories and races be vague.

Excelsior.

I pre-ordered HoT instead of buying Heavensward and thus switched the game and dove right into this Franchise. I haven’t followed the hype and actually did not care that much because I was (and still am) busy in Core Thyria.

But whenever I enter the jungle, it’s like I shift into the 6th gear and pedal to the metal. Everything’s challenging and fast-paced, lots of stuff to do, characters developed (including their dubbing voices) and the HoT bring my i7-3770/GTX970 combo into 80°C ranges.

Excelsior.

I kinda freaked out when it happened kinda close to me, because it came from my left headphone speaker and I immediately got goosebumps all over my body.

I once shadowstepped towards it and received an Achievement point if I remember correctly. Stuff like this (randomy appearing figures) was a nightmare at my grandparents house as a kid, 25 years later I am still being haunted by it shudders

Excelsior.

I have had countless dreams about joining the Inquest…….
It’d fit me and my Asura so much more.

Excelsior.

Some “old” artwork (and with some I mean 5 files) are available as PSD in high resolution.
The Eir one need to be tweaked on 16:9/16:10 resolutions.

I am using Zojja (of course, Asura Master Race^^) on my Surface Pro 3 because of it’s High Res Display.

These files can be found in the HD Asset Kit (one file ranges from 60 MByte up to 200 MByte as PSD file that can be read by many paint programs).

The demo of the contents below including resolutions.
I have to admit that I actually like the Bookah and the taller Bookah detail-wise pretty much!

EDIT: You are right though, when I think about it, they might have all the Photoshop PSDs lying around in these resolutions as well. Maybe they could provide this in the future, which would be several GBytes for “just a few images” :-)

Excelsior.

I had a similar problem after moving from Final Fantasy 14. The problem is that FF14 is game that made me feel cosy. Everything and everyone is a perfectly photoshopped cardboard cutout, everybody looks like a Saint and pseudo-perfect.

When I left that boring nonsense and blindly (!) dived into GW2 by ordering HoT instead of Heavensward, it took me quite some time; I think 3 weeks.

Maybe it’s because it’s kitten game. Japanese games are ridiculously styled and choreographed in every aspect, just like a tour in North Korea: You just see what you are supposed to see. Here we have actual action. The topic is way darker (hostages, refugees and diseases), there are elderly people and children, there are dead NPCs lying around and the character chatter/SFX are comparably intense (especially when crippled and you still move), there are screams of pain, panic and distress at low HP – just as if our characters are fighting for their dear life. Compared to FF14 for example, where your character does say “Ugh” or “Ah.” once every hour, but permanently make annoying noises when firing arrows, this game gives way more in the sound department.

Everything is darker without being actually grimmer than other games.

I turn off the music in every game since DooM II (I love FM sound) and like the little details, such as the bullet casings have different sounds depending on the surface you stand on and the drones (deep bass) in the caves and the owls in the woods.

Excelsior!

Somewhere some farmers, a man and a woman, have a chat about random stuff and the male is always responding so passively annoyed. It’s the combination of the (German) dubbing of the guy and the context that made me wait for it to be played again.

Also, there are two male Charr in the water to fix something with ropes but fail and curse at each other.

This game has so much soul in its world compared to so-called AAA titles coughFF14cough it’s such a joy! In general, the German dubbing is great and uses many well-known voices. During the Meatoberfest that vendor is dissing that guy but the way they talk is hilarious

• It’s okay to enjoy Dual Daggers and Dual Pistols

There is so much kitten poured over DD/PP like everywhere. But since I play this profession, I could never get used to anything else. Also, staff is terrible and has nothing to do with Thief; I can’t remember robbers and burglars wielding 2 Meter staves. Also, I enjoy the look and animations of PP/DD.

• It’s okay to call people Bookah several times a day in map chat.

When they ask what that means I just feel confirmed.

• It’s also okay to call people openly and disgustingly lazy for cheap teleports to everything

“MESMER FOR JP PLOX”, “TAXI TO EVENT PLZ” etc. Step up your game, this is not the welfare office.

• It’s also okay not to revive guys and gals that repeatedly attack enemies they can’t handle and it’s also okay to watch them die on an elevated spot and retry over and over just to get blown away in 3 hits again and again

…with popcorn.

• It’s okay to say the truth and getting infracted on the forums

And I am talking about equality here that it’s still not equal to force a pride march “for equality” but no hetero march. Infracted and removed.

• It’s okay not to use a single level-up item.

Leveling my thief to 80 was around 5 months, my engineer 6 months. It was a great journey and it still goes on, thanks to the “new” EXP bars.

• It’s okay to favour Asura everywhere, including to only revive Asura NPC or even Asura players first when I have to choose

Because this form of “racism” is more like favouring a special football team. I like A more than B and this is reflected in my behaviour. Simple, is not it. (<- Kitten filter)

Excelsior.

I usually do not PvP. I don’t know, but as someone on page 1 pointed out: I am here to play WITH other classes to beat someone else. When I would get killed by someone else simply due to (this fake) balance (because I play paper and my enemies seem to be scissors) I can’t take frustration that much. I could only do this vs other thieves, simply because also in real life, I have a very strong sense of fairness going on. All the same for everyone.

When I see how imbalanced the classes in this game are depending on who is in charge of balancing and their favourites, I don’t see any fun in getting stomped by random FOTM players.

Second reason: I do play League of Legens for 6.5 years. And I have literally hours over hours debating about how bad the matchmaking is. Reading this game uses the same nonsense (80% of your personal rating is NOT in your hands, how utterly stupid is this?!) and it’s just a big guess instead of an actual matchmaking.. No thanks.

There are premade players, there are laggers, there is this atrocious class balance and class stacking, it is just a big, blurry mess of guessings. I could roll dice and have more fun than diving into a game where I know neither the company, the developers or the algorhythm work the slightest to make the upcoming game fun. It bounces you back and forth from one extreme to another because it sucks so bad. I do not need this. I can do this under the shower and turn on warm and hot back and forth if I’d enjoy this.

Too bad though: I wish I could play this game’s PvP, because a healthy PvP mode extends the game’s life by so much. But I think I could not take that I can not fight a Warrior or Necromancer just because I play “MY” profession. It feels like shooting nerf darts while the enemy gets their Desert Eagle.

Also, I have big problems playing with others since FF14. That game forced interaction with strangers onto me and it’s like waterboarding or similar torture.

I am 26 years young now, but I somehow can’t stand video game communities at all. I have yet to find people that stick to their first friendly attitude in every situation. (If Vayne reads this, take yourself out from that statement). But I have had good (virtual) friendships being ruined by a loss streak or just because I pressed one button wrong or was too slow for 0.5 seconds. Can’t take this stuff as easy as I could before. It’s probably like the real love: It happens or not. And so far, I am all alone for the 1year and 8 months I play GW2…

So, I rather steal stuff and slice throats of stuff that causes mad beef while I try to pass them.

Excelsior.

Beefing it up with certain traits also adds a very satisfying sound effect.
I often kill-steal (rimshot) random Moas just because of that noise.

Excelsior.

The UI in this game is visually very attractive, at least to me because I love and utilize splatter art a lot, so it’s matching my flavour.

The menus are simple enough to understand and not much different from other games.

The only thing I want to be changed is the HUD. The health orb for example… I’d like to have a simple bar, maybe even the same brush style bar the game uses right now. When I turn off the HUD I have the red screen borders to show my current health situation and the other stuff (cd/initiative e.g.) is something I have either in the feeling or it does not work at all. Pretty simple. But right now I have no real choice…

If they were clever, I think the engine or the base is either cappable or modifyable enough to allow updates and overhauls here and there.

I started GW2 1.5 years ago and was afraid, with all the new pseudo-shiny titles out there, it might be something like a sinking ship, but no, and I realized why. When I bought my new PC in 2013 I played FF14 until I figured out how simple, mind-numbingly boring the whole universe is. Recycled content (“fan service”), boring gameplay, lackluster story, console focus (hardware and control wise). In other words: It sucks. I had a good time there, but not because of the game. And YoshiP is probably the worst game designer ever.

The forums are already a change in every aspect, but the game, well, I am here to stay. For a long time. Finally a game that does not go either Asia or JRR Tolkien (Dwarves, Elf guys, Gnomes…), but its own way. No genderlock. Great races and lore. A real war story, not these politically correct “We love each other except the very grim looking enemy over there” nonsense and this beautiful art. The voice acting in German is fine, the male Asura voice extremely tallented and the combat is fun.

Once you find your profession and race to enjoy, the real role-playing can begin. Before, it is mostly just fiddling around.

Excelsior.

As someone who is not playing GW2s PvP for many reasons I am basically a spectator and lurker in all these discussions – but I can relate to other PvP/MOBA games I play, so I just want to add I think there are some things are missing in this discussion:

- Reaching the rank/division of players that are closer but not close – and how awkward it is around that point.

Here we have a Pro player with a skill of 10 (out of 10) that starts at 0.
He zips from 1 to 10. Great, no surprise.

But what if you are ranked at 3 but are 5.5.
Now that player won’t be there as easy because the environment in that 3 region is much, much harsher. A 10-player can easily compensate this because of the huge margin in actual skill, but the average Joe does not. So the amount of throws by his mates is much, much higher and of course leads to much, much more frustration over a much, much longer time. And that is not neccessarily the fault of that player.

The amount of Clown Fiestas in low rank games is of course higher and if you are not a pro, you will suffer a big amount of games that can and will lead said player to state that he does not deserve the place he is at.

- Some guys were saying, that, as soon you leave a certain “noob area”, you will climb easier. And yes, that is happening in another game. When I play as premade with a good player, you might think I make them lose, because I am the bar of lead on the team’s leg by being far worse. But guess what: The amount of Clown Fiesta games, troll games and simple idiots is much lower. Like breathing fresh air, that improves even the worse player’s skill. A team-mate that can think by themself or is doing one or two better decisions compared to a low-level team-mate can bring the difference.

I am in said game a Silver/Gold player, but can suddenly compete in Diamond much more often and better. You would expect my winrate drop to 30%, but it does not. Team mates save my life, and I save theirs simply because they have brain. As soon as I SoloQ and go back to my Silver rating, I have suicidal bobs – dragging me down.

In every game with a ranking the rock bottom area of said ranking are FAR, FAR worse than the actual skill, but MMR / Elo fails so much in these regions. Flipping coins is better than any algorhythm developed in certain areas. People say: “You are the constant variable, you will eventually win more games”, but we all know this does not have to happen. In said game, I had a premade troll for example and still lost. If such stuff happens more and more (and biased only on your side – which can happen, no matter how much lazy people will yell “probability theory” and “this will happen to the enemy too” – we all know it does not actually have to happen) you will get stuck and the MMR thinks you belong there.

- Did I read 80% winrate here? Seems like the matchmaking is handing out free wins; opposed side are heavy lose streaks. Sounds awful. Players should never get free wins nor free falls.

Excelsior.

Since this is not a real discussion but more a subjective personal statement, I think this game is great because of the Asura.

Yeah. Excelsior.

Excelsior.

What I really enjoyed about GW2 is something I haven’t found in other games yet: The ability to jump into the game with “low” effort and enjoy it because the game is fun to play when you found your profession to play as…

…or with “high” effort and you grind your butt off to get shiny stuff.

I take roughly 6 months to get to Level 80 because I enjoy this game. The amount of stuff to do is sheer endless, because there are always new things added. Even if they are grindy things.

Or in short:
You can enjoy this game as a quick cigarette – or slowly as a cigar. At your own pace.
Personally, this is the first game and franchise I would stick to in my life.

Excelsior.

No, because I think I have to agree to certain people in an archived thread (Asura race subforums) that Asura might not want to engage in any kind of offensive acts/wars and focus more on defense, read in: Stabilize Rata Sum.

As Asura myself, I think we are already taking Tyria over, bit for bit. Like water: It does not fight you, it does not hurt you, but it can you drown. We don’t need to reclaim Ascalon, also because a “friendly” relationship to the cats is mandatory; the other races are merely pawns in a bigger game.

Excelsior.

When I (had to) ditch(ed) my Engineer because I can’t stand Scrapper but couldn’t quite survive as “Core Engineer” I was kinda unsure which class to take; I narrowed it down to Thief or Necromancer.

And one of the first shouts in the Rata Sum map chat was “Thief when you are alone”. And welp, here I go.

Excelsior!

Yes, the AI is very buggy and I can’t remember it being this bad when I went trough the story with my Engineer. It went so badly and affects all AI involvments.

It’s downright stupid what happens, it’s like this game brought up some lost code from Alpha state. Probably someone figured out there is still a floppy in drive A:

Lame joke aside, it’s really, REALLY terrible. Not that it plays way harder this way because it is not meant to be this way, it’s also killing any sort of immersion. Trahearne is watching me fighting off all the NPC alone which are steamrolling me and I barely can manage them. When I shadow step around for my dear Asura life he just casually strolls alongside.

In that one personal story mission where that Island is being taken over by undead, it was super ridiculous as Engineer, because all the AI enemies would attack only me. I switched the game off because I literally died instantly while the other 50,000 health in form of 5 NPC are just scratching their heads 5 meters away.

This year it’s different; the main island (you know, this arena-like shaped yard) was full with undead as expected. And they all stood still, as the map designers put them into the game. I could walk past them, they won’t attack. Here and there were some guys fighting, but that’s it. Triggering certain events on my own that should happen due to NPCvsNPC fights is hilarious – especially with the epic 5,000-man clash ambient sound in the back and the cheering that “we” got the island back. With “we” they mean the 90cm midget I guess…

I could go on and on; if I would show this game to anyone I would strictly avoid any place involving NPCs right now, else they would die from laughter. Something broke, but I am pretty used to that already; have yet to see an instance that does not fail during loading (wrong light settings, no shaders, script failures) or simply just bug out. It’s a shame, and I am thankful when I can finally decide what I want to do, and not dying 4 times by kittened AI.

Excelsior!

So it does not only happen to me?
Yesterday there was an environmental obstacle (a fallen tree) flat on the ground, but I could not Shadowstep over it. I was like: “Okay, then jump over it, if the engine deems it as too high” and I eventually just could walk over it.

This gambling nonsense is terrible and I sometimes try it just out of curiosity and it suddenly works for very strange places.

But then I have mad many maps for video games and all the linedefs, Z-axis calculations, planes and stuff… I often caused bugs by mapping, not exactly the engine’s fault.

Still though, I really, really think this should be fixed, it’s just a crippled would-be cool skill; same with other skills. Someone or something just don’t want me to use my five finger discount on innocent beings I guess..

About the obstructed, well, this makes a bit more sense in many cases, even though it looks like the internal size/width of a model (e.g. a tree) is smaller than what we see, often resulting in bullets flying trough the very borders of said tree but when I fire back, my bullets hit the center and thus are blocked.

Ross Biddle.2367:

When the flaws of GW2 PvP get me down, I just go play a better PvP game on the PS4 with it’s in built chat features. That way I can at least co-ordinate my 5-man team/squad to some semblance of a victory!

The only problem I’m reading here is that you’re playing GW2

Excelsior.

This is a pretty much invalid reasoning. People who are bad usually do not participate at chats – no matter if done via written words or voice chat.

Also, this does not work on Europe, because you will end up with guys yelling “HABLAS ESPANOL?” or “TU PARLE FRANCAIS?” and even if no one responds they will have Spanish/French monologues. Trust me, I have learned that 6 years ago…

Excelsior.

Since I do not play PvP in this game for various reasons, I do in other games as compensation. And what I have seen is the attitude of certain people with an interest in a certain playstyle / characters / classes and jobs or even weapons in shooters.

This goes all over FF14, League of Legends and the generic online shooters.

For example, shotgun players will rage in close combat because their weapon implies they just one-shot you. If they lose in close-range combat, e.g. with a knive, they can’t accept they have been thrown from their throne in that department.

In League of Legends, I barely get a rage by a Lulu (cute, diminutive support lady with pointy ears), but by Darius’ (beefy, violent guy wielding an axe that gets cooldown reset on kills). They even rage more when killed by other 90cm (3ft) midgets as if that would mean anything, but hey, they play the big beefy warrior, they can’t lose to a blowpipe midget. The sniper that camps all day long thinks he can just watch and kill, but rages at you when you land a grenade in their hidy spot.

You get the point.

In GW2, I think thieve players are often thinking they are slicing throats out of the shadow and then disappear in the shadows. If that does not work, e.g. because, let’s say, the enemy fights back (duh!), they dreams are shattered.

Right now, from what I have seen and still see ingame, I think thieves have no real identity. Okay, this is the PvP section and I PvE only, but to me I think it’s the problem of many players to accept Thief is a mediocre, below-average class. I know this is a statement many will disagree on, but to me it feels like that. Every class in this game has a variety of identity-creating skills and a real feel to it. And all blend into thief. They are, design-wise, the losers.

This is really just my personal observance reading trough the forums and playing PvE. I fight an enemy, I see some other randon class joining, lighting up a firework of skills and damage and he kills it faster than me. I am very irritated by this. What are we now? Bursters? DoT-ty?Tanky? Stealthy? None of them really applies and I feel often like a toned down/neutered class that has been stolen the identity and given these to the other classes.

The reason why I love it is the very design. I can’t stand rogue classes in games normally, but here (and with Asura) it works so well and I like the weapon choises over all the other classes. But many people can not stand this and can’t get over the fact they are indeed not the 1-shot backstabbers the name “thief” and class description claims.

Spoichiche.1290:

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s cut through the myths. PvP leagues have failed spectacularly. Deep down, everyone knows this. It’s time to be brutally honest about the PvP situation. It’s time to stop protecting it. It’s time to stop pretending.

sigh
Just because you make a billion posts about how trash the system is (which is basically the same system used by every team based competitive game), it does not make your phantasm true.

And all other team game’s matchmaking are bad to be honest, simply by design.
How is the outcome of a game able to give you an individual rating?! It’s like being fired because your workmates are too late while you were amongst the ones that showed up in time. And then your next boss is declining your job interview because you had been fired for that. And this builds up and up.

There are too many things that bother me in every game, and no one and nothing can calculate things like: Premade handicaps, impact of leave®s, language barriers (especially on EU), “lags” (which I never have, but still people feed and claim it’s their ping) and all that nonsense.

I often hear the matchmaking works, then I see games that are ridiculously bad. They swing back and forth from one extreme to another. What is that matchmaking supposed to learn from that? GAME A had a little more rating, so losing is a very tiny bit worse, but then you win super hard and all that “experience” of the system is basically down the drain? Having premades that feed but the enemy gets a 3-premade that does well – even in the games before?

All this nonsense in all the time of my PvP gameplay in my life is what really destroyed my faith in any matchmaking system UNTIL it’s either full team (and ALWAYS the same players) or full SoloQ. Everything in between contains guessing, and if you guess 500 games, you create too much of a blurr.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I was always referring to my hands as “claws”. I’ve read a lot trough the (archived) Asura forums and many interesting points came up; one speculation that we needed robust claws for the stony environment when we were dwelling below the surface and even climbing (e.g. deep chasms or whatever, even though I am not sure how this comes together with our great intellect; I am pretty sure lifts of whatever kind were also in place back then).

Checking the actual definition of a claw in German dictionaries would match what (at least my) Asura has. Together with our toes, we have nasty ways to slice people up – unintended or not.

Or to comb trough matted Charr fur without any need of additional tools. Sometimes I just can barely resist…….

Endless Soul.5178:

Ardid.7203:

They have hands. With claws. And teeth. Many teeth.

Many shark-like teeth.

[According to one of the developer interviews…]
We needed them for the awkward cave fungi to be torn apart. And I love our teeth. Grins

Actually, I love everything about Asura. They are not just small people with one or two things changed, they are great and unique in every aspect and I am very fascinated about it design-wise.

HAH!
I don’t play GW2’s PvP but MOBAS and this is what I am so mad about after a while. It’s for some reason always you. When I ask why it’s my fault people “lag”, it’s me. When people have to eat and make me lose, it’s me. And when they ragequit, it’s me.

In League of Legends, it’s even worse. They have a FAQ entry that is so contradictory that is basically always saying: “Our systems are fine, our players, too. It’s just you, only you” and usually you get thrown “Dunning-Kruger-Effect” at your head – despite the objective and plain truth-telling scoreboard at the end is the very opposite of subjectivity. Or “negativity bias” when you are on a lose streak. No, I am totally fine with a leaver in the 6th game. How could I just be negative?!? It’s a me issue as well.

It’s really just your fault. Everything. Apparently in every game.
I feel you, (s)PvP community of this game. I won’t try it – for my bloodpressure.

Excelsior,
a pvp forum lurker…

Excelsior!

This is not supposed to be harsh or rude, but the best thing would be just to take it as an adventure and dive right in. Or would you read a Tomb Raider walktrough and THEN play the puzzles?

The game really has much room to learn slowly – and I highly recommend you to do this. I did, and I still discover many things instead of being told. That’s why I play games like this and not Tetris.

A good thing to start though would be the GuildWars2 Wiki. It has a lot of lore (also sometimes linking to GW1) and useful information, but everything else should be discovered ingame by yourself.

While the whole game offers a beautiful splatter art on menus, windows and on the status bar (in combat yellow splatters, in water blue etc.) I’d wish to have a more fresh-looking HUD. I don’t want it to be crowded, just like it is right now, but this health orb looks like HeXeN or DooM from 1993. I’d prefer a big health bar in the corner of the screen with a nice “flow” effect as if the gauge is full with blood/liquid.

Right now; I can draw the status bar in paint and many people I know look at the screenshots and say it looks dull. Which is kinda right.

Excelsior.

Wait, what?
You (a good/better player) have a random amount of alternative characters on which you (the good/better player) beat other games with your obviously good PvP skills and then brag about it? Huh?

It’s like driving 5 different cars and brag how good they are for racing – but it’s still ONE driver, so you are not quite showing anything. We know you are better (from this post) but your skill is high anyways, you could have 87 characters there and that would proof nothing except of the basic conecpt of: If there are winners (you) there are losers (unsatisfied players) on the other side.

Excelsior.

I am often in Central Tyria because I like the different themes of it (when I am sick of jungle themes), the smooth performance (my GTX970 is having a hard time in the Jungle) and the hilarious NPC chatter. You will see so many people with masteries there that is a good evidence the “regular GW2” is full with new and veteran players.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I am probably too oldschool but I can’t stand this weird attitude nowadays.
It’s a problem of the smartphone society to me that is speeding up everything for no reason, have to be at all places and think they are center of the universe, always ready to drop stuff for the next, more shiny thing they see. I am somewhat disgusted by this attitude.

“Recently a friend in one of my guild has left my guild (actually she was pretty much ask to leave) because she wasn’t representing the guild. It just really sucked to see someone i know so long have to leave not because they want to, but been pressure into leaving. She was pretty depress over the situation to the point that she didn’t play the game for days.”

So she was in a guild that she apparently liked (that’s why she didn’t play for days due the impact, so she really liked it there?) and instead of representing and go like “Okay, I will do in future”, she did not bother to represent at all and would have been forced out? Sounds just right to me.

Not being forced to represent your guild is a kind of fluctuation to me. How are you supposed to be a guild with this attitude towards it? I really do not understand the support for the multi-guild feature and all the weird behaviour it comes with, as seen in the quoted part of this post.