Guild Wars 2

Yeah, we got it, it’s a great post about how you play, but it’s totally off the topic and has nothing to do with a obviously flawed system behind.

I do not play PvP because the matchmaking is bad on paper already, 6.5 years of LoL and I have had literally HOURS of discussion why matchmaking of 5 players with dozens of factors can’t work (premade handicaps, leavers, balance, 80% of your personal rating not in your hand, etc.). It’s a number that is meaningless “matched” together with other meaningless numbers. Flipping coins is probably a safer way than this matchmaking.

As said, I do not play PvP due to my knowledge it can’t work at all. Try building a skyscraper on sand, and each story there is another problem with the statics that make it tilt left or right (reasons above, leavers, premade handicaps,…) and in the end you don’t have a skyscraper that is becoming straight (proper MMR/placing) – it’s a mess of a wonky pile that bounces you back and forth.

But back again, I just read this thread and Ensign has brought up good points at how to have a good view on the game – read as: To climb. It reads more that people want to be in their proper divisions with close games, and not being bounced back and forth with heavy losses and wins even when there is data of over 100 games provided, as read in older threads. And that is totally not the subject of Ensign’s post.

Excelsior.

The only thing I hate is the fact I have to get a group for the personal story in Orr. Since I can not and do not wish to play with total strangers (extremely bad experiences that really ruined my faith in gamers) I have no idea what happened except for some bits and conclusions I can make out when starting HoT. Suddenly, there are new characters, suddenly a fleet has crashed etc..

Do not come up with “This is an MMORPG”, yes, but in the end I have yet to find bearable people that are more than the typical “lolwtfroflcopters” folks that go rage mode when you want to talk a bit ’bout politics or economy. So far, I will never know what is going on in those missions. I am in this state since 1.5 years. . .

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

One tip would be: Stay away from the forums.
On the other hand… Nah, stay away from the forums. The amount of “This game dies”, “This class is OP”, “This game does not get enough revenue” and other drama and end-of-world scenarios here are only for the strong-minded and veterans that know it’s mostly Dolyak-dung.

Ingame, well, I would reocmmend you not looking for tips and figuring out everything by yourself. This game really gives you everything step by step. There is no need for dungeons like in other games, you do not have to socialize if you feel afraid as newbie and often you can just attach yourself to a event farming group to get a boost of insight. Else, be, what you already decalred: DIVE INTO THIS ADVENTURE and don’t spoil yourself with too many helpers already.

Excelsior.

To bring in some real-life analogies from work: I work in a grocery store and lead the wine and spirits department, my brother is banker and a stock and investment adviser. And we both have customers that act like the group described in this thread and the replies of many here are matching exactly how we both handle it.

Customer: “This is a crappy store, always is my favourite wine sold out”.
Me: “Sorry, I gotta order it for you. If you leave your phone number, I will come back to you as soon as it is back in stock”.

Customer: “This store sucks, I do not like how it looks like, the music is awful, your assortment is too high-priced, the neon light is too dark, the temperatures in here too cold, I like the other store more”.
Me: “Then go and shop there, Sir. Have a nice day”.

There are so many insults even toward me personally because something was sold out or whatever that I not only once told them to have their business with someone else their apparently like more.

My brother has millionaires as customers that want low risk, high reward, high interest investments with 100% availability and accessability. That’s impossible, just like “the” perfect MMORPG. When his customer start to yell around in the office, he told me he gets up from the chair, reaches his hand (for a goodbye handshake), says that they won’t have any business that way because he can not offer these unrealistic, one-sided things.

In both cases: People are coming back to my store and come back to my brother’s office. And it is NOT insulting to suggest to seek their best somewhere else, but neither can I change my assortment nor can my brother force the ECB and Draghi to change the interest situation. In fact, you HAVE to say things like this for credibility and honesty. (Mind: In Germany things a somewhat different from the U.S. in this matter, hypocrisy is not that much of a thing here).

The question is more: Why are the ones the loudest? I left FF14 silently when it turned into crap; here the most Anti-GW2 people are the loudest group, but what is the point of that?

Or just follow the official guidelines found in the asset kit (bottom of this page, category MEDIA).

If you download either asset kit, there will be a PDF in the main directory explaining how to do it and why. Interesting read and helped me somewhat for my wallpapers. It even tells you exactly what colour to use for the logos and such.

It really tells you everything if you want to be 100% precise with the GW2 look :-)

That’s also where I got some laughs from^^

(Blue and Red GuildWars2 logo shown.
Text reads: “Any colors that look like they are fugitives from the 1980s should
not be used.”)

Excelsior.

The font is called CRONOS and is comparably expensive (if you do not work with them).
It’s from Adobe, that’s why. But there is a free font, called “CRONOS PRO DISPLAY” which I am using for all GW2 content. I’ve added a sample of the free version of this font, it looks pretty fine to me.

The other font used for the game is called EASON PRO.

Excelsior.

The German voice acting is indeed one of the best I have ever heard. It’s the only game right now I play in German because I really do not miss something; at least the male Asura PC has a great voice (and in HoT, he has a deeper voice; you can really hear the years in his voice^^). He has so many facettes and is always so correct and polite, except when drunk (Orders of the Whispers mission….^^) or angry.

The voice actors used are well-known (German) TV voice actors, some are kinda often heard (e.g. Mr. Petruo or whatever his name was, lending his voice to Biff Tannen from Back To The Future and Plankton in Spongebob – or Trahearne. AFAIK it’s father and son, not sure who actually does the speaking).

This cost a lot. Of course they could have get some random people in front of a mic and let them talk some lines, but the quality is very high. I’ve tried the French one (6 GByte of voice packs, this already speaks volumes!) and I could not stand it that much, found it more hilarious. But oh well…

What I like about GW2 are the Asura. You either have the MATTEL-HASBRO fraction of pseudo-cute furballs or the ugly, Blizzard-games ones (Gnomes and Dwarves). I like that they are humanoid but have distinctive details on their body stature. I like that they are not kicked around like other diminutive races (looking to you, FF14!) but actually have their part and power amongst other, taller races.

(I also like Charr a bit…)

And this game is not as politically correct as all the “Actually, we are all happy and everything’s fine and dandy” nonsense games out there. War and fights everywhere when you leave your town and 5 minutes later you sit down with your photoshopped cardobard cutout character around and talk to a flying furball (I am looking again to you, FF14!). I like that this game features kids and elderly people, something games are lacking today, e.g. FF14, GTAV, Thief, …

I think I could go on and on, but I have praised this game more than enough and will do so when needed; I’ve gone trough a lot of crappy games in the past years and never felt well within a franchise, except for this one. I am too late for GW1 but as the Asura were not playable back then and they are the reason why I am here in the first place, I do not mind. If there is a GW3, I will be there!

Dragon.8762:

I agree, I see this happen all the time. It usually leads to people burning out of the game really fast due to the fact that they have no idea what to do or want to aim for once they reach lvl 80.

Exactly my words. So at least some people are really aware. All the other things you said: I can fully agree.

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

I arrived 1.5 years ago and have two characters. Each of them are levelled only by wandering around Tyria and killing everything that causes beef with me. Enjoy it that way much more than anything – not even map completition.

It takes roughly 6-8 months to get my characters to Level 80 and then I do the same in Maguuma Jungle. And guess what – that is probably the reason why I am that one special snowflake not crying about being burnt out, about how stale the game is etc. I’ve accidently used one level-up thing once and since then trashed all the 100+ I’ve received.

I know now what I can fight and what not. Because I do not have someone support me. I do not have Mesmers around me “taxi” me around, I do it myself. I am a lone wolf and that’s what I enjoy. I also would never let me get a mentor in a video game – What is that all about?

People smoke a cigar in 1 minute and then wonder where the enjoyment is supposed to be; you only get a headache and complain about the cigar manufacturer.

But this is the world of today: People rush, rush, rush and are actually sad inside, but they’ve got shiny stuff (Cellphones, cars, Segways, Legendary weapons) but do not enjoy it the slightest…

Greetings and Excelsior,
a special snowflake of genuine leveling like it’s 1998.

Djinn.9245:

Tashigi.3159:

Maybe make it a side project. But this game would be so much more awesome if there was dynamic weather.
You already have small patches of “static” weather in certain spots, those are nice but on a larger scale would be even more amazing. Specially in towns!

I vote No. You might be lucky enough not to notice that rain and snow add a lot of graphics clutter that increases lag.

So because you are running on insufficent hardware that causes “lag” by displaying (not even rendering) some snow/rain in front of your screen (it’s nothing more like that, it’s not there are 5,000 snowdrops actually rendered as polygons) like almost every other game does (and it’s actually already happening in GW2 as mentioned before) you are voting no to all users and forever? Heck, even Tomb Raider III for the PSone manages to display rain and snow – software rendered.

I took some unwanted dive near at some shore around Orr and had to swim back to get out of the water. It started to rain when I was on solid ground again, while the sun was shining trough grey clouds. I almost could smell the salty air. That was great and it happened once to me.

Weather would add to the mood so much, as well as longer sunraises/sunsets and darker nights.

Excelsior and good night.

This thread is a magnet of negativity it really hurts. No agony resistance can handle that.

DaShi.1368:

2. Reduce the XP amount for later masteries. Make them the same as getting to level 80. This game and its predecessor was never a game about leveling. It was about getting the max level and then playing the game. In fact, I was hoping GW2 would have eliminated the pointless exercise of leveling altogether.

Excelsior.

I am here and slowly making my way because I enjoy leveling. As a lone wolf, I launch up GW2 to make progression. But then I can not raid (and will not), I can not do events (I mean, I can, but they are boring alone), I can not do Fractals and whatnot (for the reason mentioned above). But minding my own business, walking around the place and get XP meanwhile is the best thing that can happen.

As a former FF14 player, the level stop let me run into a wall. All the new progression was gated behind group content. Static raid groups I have no interest in (they consume time and force me to arrange my leisure time around it instead of being the other way around) or random groups full with kitten s that hope to get carried. Both turned me off so I just sat there and basically could not do nothing, only breadcrumps of the game’s content (e.g. “hunting logs” and stuff like that). Wow. No thanks.

Here I see my EXP bar filling up while killing stuff that crosses my path and I really, really enjoy this sort of “endless learning” – as in: My character is getting better and better and not just “Here, you are 80. Now let’s get stale!”. As the world evolves with expansions everywhere, I like my character to grow as well (no pun intended, Asura ftw).

As long as the majority of the playerbase are incappable and resistant to any sort of intelligent conversation (not talking about the forums, but to people I bump into ingame) or worthwile things apart from spamming “Events?” or “Need taxi to X” and overall mind-numbing tasks they put on themselves for whatever reason, I will always be a lone wolf, and thus I need solo player progression. Done trough an EXP bar for example.

Excelsior.

Two people figured my main problem out: Super annoying CC in narrow spaces, corridors and bridges.

One of the first HoT annoyances was a steep, winded walkway up to a rock/boulder that lead to a bridge. That path was filled with like 10 caterpillar things that knocked me back and forth. I literally could not proceed there. That was one of the moments where I really yelled “Bad game design!!” at the screen and shut it down. That was on my Engineer (with Scrapper being unlocked but I hate that “Elite” trait and the Stilson wrenches – but no skill points to spend in so far as I just entered the jungle).

Not sure how that works out with thief / daredevil, but being bounced back and forth is not a challenge at all. Especially when every (!) thing is attacking you; I’d rather have mobs that decide not to attack you when you’re posing a threat to them (e.g. comparing your stats to a mob’s thresholds – numbers too high? Better don’t attack the player).

Or projectile-blocking enemies. As Engineer, trolololol. Until I could come close to them, I died already. But oh well, that is probably another “challenge”, a “git gut” problem or “trait misconception”.

Excelsior.

I am one of the lone wolves mentioned, so I do not care about “teams”, since I barely meet people worth talking to or playing with (I guess the Asuran attitude fits my real character pretty well). Either the dudes and dudettes I meet are dumb as bread or nerdy-elitist that I cringe all the time in close proximity of these people.

Also, PvP is something I would like try to, but the matchmaking is already not what I am looking for on paper (putting people together even though they are not in the same skill range, but queue times, so Put X and Z together, divide by two, done; have a good guy carry bobs like me and vice versa, no, thanks, we had this in League of Legends and dynamic queue. Well, I got lost there) and I really spend much time getting into the designs of the character – just like some sort of reverse-engineering the designers minds – and, I can’t help, but I friggin love this class!

Normally I am an archer (well, short bow does not count here) in video games but after being dragged into the game after watching an Engineer, I put my Scrapper into retirement after I tasted the sweet taste of this profession. It works so well together with my playstyle, my ingame race and the overall look’n’feel, so nope, thieves are not poorly designed.

Even though I think we are somewhat below-average, but that is mostly because we can not shine and lost a big junk of our identity. Random people stealthing around like there is no tomorrow makes me shake my head. . .

Excelsior!
May I introduce myself? Zedexx, Asura thief/assassin.

Maybe I will add Daredevil stuff later..
That’s my current wallpaper of one of my PCs.

[It’s converted from a file consisting 103 different layers (12 MByte compressed ) to a cheap and ugly JPEG with many artefacts for easy access to the forums. May also be a bit dark due to different colour calibration on certain systems.]

GamerOnline.3650:

I like the trench coat on my thief. He’s worn it for years although he’s accessorized it with different head and shoulder pieces. Even wears outfits from time to time. Those black sport sunglasses and a trench coat…pure Matrix-like goodness especially with dual pistols, Trinity style.

Yup, that works pretty well. It also works on an Engineer. But I can also understand if people are fed up. But my Thief wears this since I started that character.

It works pretty well in all aspects (shooting pistols, dagger fights, etc.)
While I do not like Matrix, I still think it works good because smaller pistols (like the darksteel ones) or daggers are literally hidden.

Also many of the emotes work well with a Trenchcoat, because jumping in joy makes no sense in a heavy armor.

Excelsior.

This thread is so full of BS it’s really pure satire.
Just add “Entry of the Gladiators” (by Julius Fucik) while putting the OP in a clown costume while he his constantly sounding a horn every 5 seconds trying to convince you of this.

Excelsior.

(I do not play PvP and we all know about the below-average state of this beautiful profession)

• The lighting. It is ALWAYS from the top right. If the moon is on the left, I have two angles from which light comes. Why?

• Becoming bald with hats…

• A loading screen that, once disappeared, reveals it’s actually still loading…

Excelsior.

I only play diminutive races and these, uh, let’s call it “concerns”, are pretty common and could be 1:1 from e.g. Final Fantasy 14 with their Lalafell.

First: People very often complain about ugly/stretched design on tall creatures. I’ve figured out, Asura are downward compatible, meaning ALL designs fit on them (size-wise; sometimes we lose our ears…) but most probably not on a Charr or look awkward on beanpole characters.

Second: Why does it take “time and trouble” to zoom in?!? I play this game mostly as 3rd person game and thus peaking over my Asura’s shoulder. If it’s very crowded or needed for jumping (or when pacing trough a herd of Dolyaks which take over my whole sight sometimes; the fate of an Asura^^) I zoom out a few mousewheel clicks. I also use the V button a lot (I call it the rear-mirror) to see what’s happening. Of course I am talking about not-so dangerous moments, but nobody would check details on clothes during an epic fight anyways.

I really heard this in all games before and it’s all the same. In FF14, some outfits look hideous on a tall Elf (Elezen) due to their long legs and torso while my Lalafell (short and pear-like stature) looked nice.

But if you enjoy the look of dressed-up cabbage or want to be a generic Bookah, fine, go ahead. \( ° . °)/

I wonder what the player distribution is. I mean, I know people that do not want to play a “fully-fledged” MMORPG like GW2 but would invest in Blade&Soul. Or some people went fancy about the Steam release of WildStar.

It’s the other way around for me, I like to buy Gems to tip the developers when they did something great (e.g. the Ghostly Outfit) but actually dislike all the other games of the portfolio and would never even try them.

Excelsior.

I would like to turn back the time – to skip FF14 and dive right into this game.
Lalafell are nice, but… Asura, holy moly, someone at ArenaNet created a race and a lore about a racist, arrogant, clever, long-eared and diminutive race in a perfect virtual realm. And Zojja was even on the cover art, how could that happen that I did not notice back then??……(Also, Laptop with a GT540M)

It’s like someone built a game tailored around my wishes.

GW2 is the only fictional franchise in my life I will follow, but I joined the party kinda late… 3 years to be more precise.

I started GW2 (or the whole Franchise) at the day FF14’s Heavensward was released. I started to dislike FF14 and pre-ordered HoT on that day (June 23rd, 2015 AFAIK). It was a faithful decision for my gaming life because I never dove into a such a franchise. And I love it. I’ve really missed a lot and don’t know why I always walked past the GW2 boxes in the video game store. Probably because I expected all U.S.-based MMORPGs WoW clones in J.R.R Tolkien worlds with Dwarves and Elves. But boy, I was wrong.

When I pull out the (German) magazine PC GAMES, I discovered a preview in a 2012 issue and I often read trough this to fire up my love to this game again. All the praise, all the real stuff (5 totally different races! I mean, look at all the almost-the-same races in nowadays MMOs, often genderlocked!) – and it’s still the awesomeness it was in 2012. It does not change. People often look forward to the next shiny game, call this game “old” and stuff, but man, I could still dust off my Sega MegaDrive and distinguish a good game from a bad game.

To get back to the topic, I have spent so much time in getting perfect shots of animations done, e.g. for my current desktop wallpapers. And I often ShadowPlayed a couple of minutes just to play it frame by frame. The animations in this game are high quality, and if the engine would not screw* it over sometimes I’d call it even top notch.

Firing a pistol as Asura frame by frame is such a thing: He straightens his arm, aiming for a couple of frames. When he is ready and pulls the trigger, the actual shot is being fired, the recoil raises his arm, he opens his eyes a bit in shock/surprise of the blast, the ears are moving like in a small shockwave and bob back and forth. Manwhile, the muzzle flash develops, blends in a big, bright explosion (good ol’ gunpowder?) into a cloud of smoke while there are 10-15 little sparks are flying in every direction. Then you have the bullet casing sound effect being played, depending if you are standing on solid ground (“ding-dingading”) or on wood (“tock-tocktock”). How often do we fire bullets during gameplay? And how much takes it to appreciate it?

Firing dual thief pistol skill #3 in SlowMo while moving the camera is a bit like Matrix: Both pistols are fired left-right-left-right with all the details from above. The bullets fly all over the place, rip apart bushes and make them move as the projectile travels trough. At the place where I have been 25 frames ago the smoke of the gunpowder fills the screen with gray. Then two bullets hit my enemy (a Dredge), he was totally obvlivious and is getting shaken by the impacts. The damage number adding up, one is a crit while my Asura still fires at this point, his ears bobbing up and down. Then I hit a beam and accidently dodge, doing nice acrobatics with the distinguive thief dodge sound. It’s also, depending on your pistols, a hell of a noise.

Many other details are done at the same time, e.g. hair moves, my trench coat flares out, my ears do move, you blink your eyes etc.

The throwing animations of stolen items as Thief is also kinda cool. I love when I hurl poison ooze into a bunch of enemies.

I could go on and on. It IS very often hidden in a very fast gameplay, some is not implemented maybe. But if you look, you will see the details ArenaNet’s guys put into this game to enjoy for us all :-)

Excelsior.

I think some more animations are available but no usable/used ingame. There is that one stance in the Asura storyline (if you chose you’ve created the VAL golem during your college times) during a cutscene where the player is being very angry, ears in tension and fists ready just like about to smack someone’s face. I’ve never seen it again so far.

Personally, I wish there would be more emotes and animations. The idle animation update a couple of months ago showed how talented these guys are.

I often go into stealth as Thief and use dagger skill #1 just for that awesome stab animation. In general, as hobby photograph, I record and then pick out screenshots to process further and the animations are well done in general, but often the engine might seem odd (two light sources at once where only should be one…????).

MrGhosty.4296:

Additionally the ultimate skill could be putting your rifle on a tripod or support and have it be able to fire a few high powered shots (thinking something as strong as the sniper rifles in the Verdant Brink meta event line)

Oh god, no. I fail hard to imagine this ingame. And how this would fit into the Thief class. We are neither snipers nor Jhin from League of Legends.

I’d like to have some focus on the basic idea of the thief class – and not driving it away like ArenaNet is doing right now by killing our profession’s identity. (Loud) rifles would be kinda off. I know the 1,200 range is for many a very important aspect, but I am not really sure about that…

Excelsior.

Excelsior.

Zedekk, long-eared male Asura with Noble Armor and (Ringmaker’s) tophat, rich light brown hair and Gentleman. As Engineer, he spends 50% his time in the workshop to build and enhance his weapons and gadgets, restock grenades and recharge the batteries; the other 50% on the field, trying out his, uh, toys. Works very well.

Zedexx, long-eared male Asura with a slim-but-fit body stature either wearing his “Thief@Nightshift” pitch-black clothes and Anonymity Mask, wielding pistols and daggers, leaving only his bright, red eyes and huge and pointy ears to be seen or, when not on, let’s call it duty, showing his styled snow-white hair and wearing aviator shades.

Both of this would NOT work as well on a female character as it does for males to me. So I am one of the “lucky” guys which have male characters that suit their (real life) character and preferences.

I think this “Because I do not want to stare at a male’s butt all day long” is just a cheap cop-out. I can’t grasp that really. But then I have my hormones under control and don’t think my (male) body in real life is something I hate so much that I got to escape from in a virtual world. /shrugs

If you play female characters for other reasons, why are you so afraid of stating so? I enjoy playing Maya in Borderlands 2 the most because I think her class just works well with her gender (a male Siren that uses magic would be off in many aspects, mostly because the male equivalent would have been designed as old, grumpy guy like “The Witcher” main character).

Apart from that I am an Asuracist, only playing Asura, favouring for them, their lore etc. (Just like in every game with a diminutive race, e.g. Lalafell or Yordles).

And both Asura genders have their own cute and interesting details and a superb (German) voice acting (of which the female Asura one is incredibly mean compared to the formal male Asura) so that there is no “disadvantage” to any gender as it may appear to other races.

That happens/ed also in FF14 by the way; “Femroes” (female Hulks) are still incredibly rare, because females are cats (Mi’Quote) in that game. It’s also 98% stereotyping.

Now a very personal statement:
From an esthetically viewpoint I personally need a match as well. A norn thief is not a thief, it’s a bandit if at all. An Asura is small, swift and sneaky. That works better. Male and female does not matter in the case of Asura (female thieves work well as well), but Asura female tanks for example are already at the very border immersion-wise.. ;-)

Excelsior!

I am not in a guild and enjoy minding my own business.
But once in a while I feel the urge to talk to people, and, despite I am a stranger talking in the map chat, I usually get reactions by some players and actually established map-wide chats that way, someting that barely worked in other games. I think in 4 out of 5 times we got some good laughs.

The overall community is very nice, but often incappable of speaking English. When I see they are stopping I usually try it with /threaten @ and do this hilarious Asura animation with shaking fists. Normally they respond with some emote as well.

The general chance for nice conversations that go further than smalltalk is pretty high.

What I like most is the age/maturity of the community. FF14 for example has either a incredibly rude and disguting snob and elite attitude – or total mentally instable people. In GW2 however, probably because of the whole different setting, appears to be much more enjoyable. I could talk about the Brexit, economy, migration and politics. This is like the very opposite of other games where the community is either silent, totally uninterested or talking about Power Rangers and Pokémon.

The basic requirements for rich conversations is given in any aspect, not only verbal but also gameplay-wise. Ask for help, wait one minute and you get at least two people willing to help

Excelsior.

Muusic.2967:

Literally biting my tongue….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsgkRW2hDA

I am sitting here on my Surface Pro 3 and can not turn on sound right now. Also, not sure what that is about, but hey, you might instead type it into this forums if you got something to say. It goes like this: “Hey, maybe this or that might be the reason”. What do I get? Posting an external link to a Roger Rabbit videoclip.

I know that is some weird US thing to just post links to Youtube and/or meme pictures (check the League of Legends boards for this, no serious thread there, just “What if…” threads) but I am from a time where I have been taught at school to provide sufficent information when needed and possible. Maybe that is a thing from the 90s that has gone in the times of WhatsApp and such promoting one-liners.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Powerful_Blood

we literally bottle it up and sell it to each other!

Gasp You are right !
Looks like we also need to rate the red ampullas in sprinkler systems (bursting at 60°C) because we nerver know…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ranger underwater weapons?

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Piranha stuff of my Engineer, but does a very bit of gameplay actually matters for the ratings? It does not seem reasonable. It’s like saying “Strong language” because someone said “kitten” once in a 90-minute movie.

Healix.5819:

Does this count? Decapitated grub:

No. At least not that I know, blood is supposed to be red, but this maybe has been changed. Else, any splatter of coloured liquid (e.g. in Splatoon) might count, which apparently does not (“E” rating). Some games issued green blood in order to dodge ratings.

So in the end, there is no real blood ingame I guess except for the features mentioned which might be crossing the threshold for the ESRB apparently

Excelsior and good day, Sirs and Ma’ams.

Excelsior.

Scrolling down this forum will show you the ESRB rating and while I am kind of amused about the “mild language” tag which I can understand for the politically correct video games nowadays but still I’d consider as regular speech; the use of alcohol after having that drinking game with those pirates and, well, I actually tend to use my weapons to exercise violent deeds…but where is the blood?

I could imagine there might skills that pop little bit of red effects but that does not make it blood (as in: Splatters like a fluid material, coming from living beings, etc.)

Excelsior!

Thief is a wonderful profession and I really enjoy it, sending my Engineer on vacation and do not care about other professions at all because I am very happy with it.The difference is that I am doing my stuff alone. I do not bother about PvP and a lot of the horror stories above feel like being written from people that have lost any faith anyways.

I do not care that much about what FOTM is, I do not theorycraft and I really like this profession’s design. That sums up to a great experience to me. Look, when I read about “nobody uses off-hand XYZ” or “Skill ABC” then I just shake my head and don’t give a kitten . Neither should you, because if it fits your needs and you get your stuff done, what is the matter what other people want from you?

The problem with forums is the theory. If you like the gameplay, the mechanics, the look etc. that is something that can not be conveyed. Also, I see so many thieves (and Daredevils) ingame – judging from the negativity here I must be the only one in whole Thyria shrugs

Since you narrowed your questions pretty much, you got the expected answers. But to really ensure if you (dis)like a profession you simply need to play it. Normally I am the archer or the mage in MMORPGs, in GW2 it’s totally different.

Excelsior.

I usually never check the cash shop for outfits because I have my thief armor set put together and I use it from now to forever. But then I saw it and fell in love with it immediately.

Not sure why exactly. I can not dye it (oh god, the awesomeness would peak if it would be dyable), it works great as thief (and even better as Necromancer) for immersion reasons and remembers me of Final Fantasy type of design. The boots, the collar, the grasping hands, the visual effect. I think it’s worth the price!

This is exactly the stuff that can not be found by the competitors.

It just causes some funny doubler effects when in front of already distorted visuals. As Asura, we have many glass-like barriers (“windows”) in and around Rata Sum and they apparently share the same effect. So walking past such window will cause the “smoke” of the head to be me even more distored and moved a bit further away. I also like the hands just appear when standing still and the boots cover my toes.

10/10, I am very pleased. Not quite my colour sheme (usually shadow abyss and black (grey) with a hint of red), but it works very well on (my) Asura.

Exelsior!

I feel so discriminated.

No, not really.

Excelsior.

I know this is an// U.S.-based game (kitten filter) and yadda yadda yadda, but..
I do not want any more effort being put into Halloween. A big junk of Europeans* do not care about Halloween at all, and in fact, it’s nonsense and, as seen here and everywhere in the United States, just a cheap reason for commerce (Opposed to Día de los Muertos in Mexico for example, which also has a deeper meaning).

Have it some story, some “dark theme” (oooh!), whatever. But do not spend a couple of month for some trivial stuff like this. Yeah, oh, pumpkins everywhere, and bats, and music made with a Theremin. So new. This ain’t elementary school anymore.

(* Guess what, we are still here, paying in hard currencies!)

Thamriyell.5490:

Pretty Pixie.8603:

What Na said. Producing new content for a once a year festival is a wasteful use of resources, considering they have LS3 and an expansion to work on.

Square is able to […]

Square has a subscription based game, with a ridiculous overpriced cash shop (€30 for a costume/skin), charge €23 for shipping for a €65 lore book, the calendar (takes about €9 to produce) is the same price range, want €30 for the Fan Fest stream (that lagged hard on 720p for many people) and much, much more for the actual fan fest and charges you €60 for the core game and €60 for the expansion. They have cheap ingame cutscenes with you, the main character, being a mute, you have no real dubbing and voice acting, the story is awfully boring (one event in GW2 is worth 25 Fates easily, with voice acting, bits of lore and scripts) and lack so much in other departments that would cost money. But if you follow the forums, people are like “they have no moneyz for such nice things”. Of course you save A LOT of money this way. Serving some shiny treadmill for new iLevels and receive 45€ from the people meanwhile by collecting subscriptions for 3 months.

You basically pay a full-price title via subscription payment just to get like two dungeons in a patch in FF14. In order to stretch that boring content even further, they cap the Tomestones and everything else. Even Yoshida himself said that people should quit FF14 in between patch cycles….(!!!) That is awfully bad. The break-even point is reached with just a few ten-thousands units sold I guess.

They also have no real customer service (which is mostly like “Deal with it”) and a stale game that is not engaging at all, being all about memorizing patterns and literally months to clear one out of 13 stages of some dumb dungeon and awful EU service in the beginning – not to mention entire FF14 failed hard at the start and now they have an excuse to collect money with things that should be friggin in the game to begin with for a subscription MMO (heavy brathing… cough cough) With this money-making machine, I could also do make some cheesy Japanese Halloween event with walking bed sheets. Yeah, cool. Not really.

Actually, I have witnessed 2 Halloween events (played from 2013-2015) and they were all as described above: Boring nonsense and recycled stuff. Have fun with it, I do no like warmed-up microwave meals – or “Fan Service” as you would call it Oh wait, you are still here, posting on the forums, so…FF14 might not be as great as you claim? O_o gasp

Now compared that to this beautiful game here. ArenaNet does a great job and easily beats FF14 if you add everything together. For literally peanuts.

Excelsior!

Just use the game’s built-in network diagnostic tools (which is actually just Windows’s tracer, ping etc. programs). No need for further tools to download.

Just run GW2.exe with the parameter -diag
The test takes a couple of minutes and you get the results in a handy .txt file.

I had random lag problems and lost 49 out of 50 packages on a certain node, as Gator above me mentioned, it was Telia. Stopped playing for 2 days and it went fine.

Excelsior!

GuildWars2 is beautiful! Especially when you checked all the other Dolyak dung that is available. All seem to fail hard in one or two vital aspects, GW2 manages all departments very well, only here and there is a thing where I go like “Meh…”.

Many people complain about “the game has gone down the drain”, but then people who disagree with this special part of the community take over their seat, just as me. If you played GTA2 you know: If you shoot the Zaibatsu, the Yakuza will be happy, the Zaibatsu will hunt you down. If you shoot Yakuza, the Loonies will like you even more. It is virtually impossible to have all the gang’s reputation maximized at once (except for that one cheat).

HoT is a blast and I totally recommend it, it’s like in this 90s SEGA commercial with that kid being blown against the wall while playing it. I usually play 30-150 minutes a day and I make slow, but fun progress. If you enjoy the game like a good cigar instead of a treadmill job, you will get the maximum out of this leisure time activity. Emphasis on the last words @ all the tryhards.

azorean.1850:

Griever.7480:

It’s only going down, i’d uninstall while you can, it’s not worth the 24Gb on your hard drive.

dude whats wrong with you? every kitten post of yours is negative.
if you hate the game this bad, wtf are you doing playing it or posting on the forum?

Check his name.

Griever.7480:

It’s only going down, i’d uninstall while you can, it’s not worth the 24Gb on your hard drive.

You’re a bit off. I love every single Byte it consumes!

EDIT: My keyboard appears to brake slowly; missing letters. Read like a Bookah typed it!

I voted for DuoQ.
The MMR can’t work with all the random factors coming into, making it more imbalanced the more players of different levels come together. I can not expect a good game with 5 people from all skills mixed together, divide by 5, yelling TADAA. The MMR gain/loss is also distorted this way, watering down the point of an MMR (winning/losing due to good premades while my personal skill is unchanged. MMR in rollercoaster mode is, as kids say now, “cancer” to the system) and in the end, the whole matchmaking is becomming obsolete, because of uncalculable premade handicaps, differently skilled players, boosted people, actually good people being dragged down, people on voice chat while your guys are not even speaking your language (on EU server with 15 different languages).

So no, the more factors (as in friends/different players) to confuse the matchmaking, the worse it is and the worse it gets in future. To make the MMR work the teams need to be exactly the same players EACH TIME they queue to get a “team MMR”, but breaking it down on invidual ratings – what an MMR is supposed to be after all – is impossible. And “personal ratings” being in the hands of others is, that will understand every elemenatary school student, plain stupid. The MMR is just a mere random number, super rawly indicating in “very good, good, mediocre, bad, very bad” sort of thing. But that’s not enough for fun games.

As seen as in League of Legends, Dynamic Queue (people queue with whoever they want regardless of skill) is right now being removed for the next season exactly for that reason. And they have had literally millions of games played to analyze and gained feedback in a measurement ArenaNet could never think of.

Excelsior.

GuildWars2 is also for me the best game for literally years. Since I can’t stand Blizzard games (art style) and I am tired of Asia grinders I had a big hole of MMORPGs to play. I suspected US-based games always to follow the J.R.R Tolkien world with Elves and Dwarves which I can’t stand – until I learned about GuildWars’ Asuran race which dragged me into this franchse………

To me it also has some sort of underdog feel to me amongst the in the meantime developed, better-loking and graphically advanced games. You know, people come and say “Who plays that old game” and I say “I do!” and smile. These people just jump from one shiny game to the next. But I am tired of this game-hopping. I do not wish to dive into new worlds every 6 months.

I am franchise resistant. Never been a loyal fan to something like other people that are into StarWars, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, etc.

But GW2 is the first one I’d think I will stuck to. All the complaints on the forums about HoT and balance is somtimes incredibly pathetic. I am playing probably the most useseless profession but I keep having a blast for months straight, so either they are wrong I am just in the right spot.

GW2 offers a beautiful palette of everything in an almost perfect quality:
Graphics (sometimes it’s the engine, not the quality. Why is the light coming from two sides, e.g. under moonshine?? Or the lack of hair when putting on hats), sound, voice quality, lore, races, profession, gameplay, combat, menus and forums (I’m a splatter art fan), long-time goals (looking over to boring-grind FF14), community, support, setting of the game.

All this makes this game perfect to me. I thought FF14 would be my home and it was from 2013-2015, but it turned super stale in 2014 that I pre-ordered HoT instead of buying Heavensward. I even bought it at the Heavensward release date for ceremonial reasons^^ I could not stand this Japanese gameplay thing of “We love us each other”. The first thing you do in FF14 is: Cheering someone up with a cheesy dance because someone is sad. That is one of the first “quests”. In GW2 it was: “Inquest stole our stuff, kill them, rescue the hostages, smash their lab”. I still remember the warmth around my heart when doing this. In FF14 they say: “You are a blackmage, now do Warrior of Light stuff and be a kind guy”. That is so ridiculously stupid. In GW2 I can do what I want as Thief/Assassin without this Japanese morales nonsense, even though I can not join the Inquest…

As long as this game keeps on this way I will by my regular €20 gems every 1.5-2 months. Asura are mandatory though.

Gotta love this thread. It’s a comical, true and sad state of this profession in a nutshell.
I’d never play anything else anymore, but eh, what to do .. / shrug
Personal preferences → “FoTM big numbers pew pew pew bullcat profession” in my opinion.

Excelsior.

I think the sound design in this game is fine, at least with the stuff I work with.
The daggers sound like what they are supposed to sound like: Handy blades. When pulled out or put away, they make a reasonable sound. Not as super unrealistic like in other games where pulling a blade is like “Sha-Shing-Duing-Gongzzzz”.

The bow does … bow sound effects.

And my pistols, the dark steel pistols, make a punchy sound that go well together with the big recoil, a lot of muzzle flash and particles from the gun powder (and my Asura’s surprised look whenever he fires a bullet as if he is surprised about the power himself) and even different sounds for the bullet casings dependin on what surface you stand on.

Explosives however feel so incredibly weak sound-wise. The Engineer’s rocket goes off, travels like a real missile and then what? “Pff-tzd”. What? “PFF-TZD”?? I called it the Kim Jong-Un missile from that day on: Loud, dangerous by the looks but as threatening as a wet sponge..

Excelsior.

No, not at all. But I do not get burned out on ANY game. I do have a lot of Yin-Yang in my life. I have only black furniture – a black chesterfield sofa, black carpets, my clothes, TV racks, even my alarm clock is black. But all white floor, walls and ceiling. Do I get tired of the colour black? No not all. Even my both Asura are black and white. Because they balance out each other. I do use Davidoff Cool Water as main Eu de Toilette. But once in a while I switch it with Hot Water. After having a good Chili I want a Vanilla desert. And when I play GW2, I add in some FPS games, MOBA, no gaming at all for one or two days.

I had never been sitting there questioning if I am tired of a game or lost the excitement. There are several categories of games and I put one game in each slot. When I do not feel of MMOing today, but want to create something, I boot up Cities Skylines. When I am done, I feel like: “Man, some 3rd person real-time fighting action with my very own character would be awesome tomorrow” and there I am back at GW2. Then I want to shoot a bit and drive, I go GTAV.

Long story short: When I am rotating my games, I see the weaknesses of the other games and also the highlights. GW2 is a massive game that stands out positively of the few, but well-chosen games from the 1,000s of games on the market. I am here because I know it’s awesome, and it will stay awesome. I have no guild, I am a Lone Wolf, but I enjoy it so much, my flame for the game is basically self-igniting because I play Game A and the want to play game B grows. It’s really Yin-Yang balance. And for me it works.

I’ve been tired of FF14 though, that game turned me off. It was just Yin-Yin-Yin all day, without any Yang. GW2 offers so much for so many directions, it has a built-in Yin-Yang.

Excelsior.

This thread basically makes it clear why I personally would not want it.
The more you scroll down, the bigger the issues are getting.

Some people want it for the range, but why would you pick thief (which is more like, uh, “cloak and dagger” sort of thing) in the first place? I mean, yeah, all people maybe want to be a Swiss pocket knife, but to me it would kill some immersion, even with the sniper theme and whatnot. By design, it seems more like our class is a mix of assassin/ninja/rogue. To be agile, close to our foes (actually very close to them in order to take their stuff with F1) and all, not sniping with a rifle. I found the pistols are already at the edge, since they cause a lot of noise while daggers, swords and arrows are quiet – and fitting the theme of our profession.

How can we be agile and nimble with bulky weapons around us? I know I speak from an aesthetical viewpoint, but game design is much more of throwing skills and abilities at a profession.

The choices of weapons and what this profession is about was the reason for me to pick Thief – and I do not regret it a split second.

Excelsior!

I joined 1.5 years before but I pulled out an old issue of the German magazine called “PC Games” from 2012 and I read trough the pre-release article. It sounds so awesome in the magazine and when I look at the actual game, it really is.

I have barely any feel of “wearing off”. HoT is like the turbo mode and even when I have no time to really play I just dive into some people’s fight at nighttime to fight off some Mordremoth and save camps. There is always something to do. I never felt so good in a video game like here. It’s a blast. And it’s also a shame people rate this game by the graphic engine or the age instead of the actual gameplay value.

I think it’s sad this game does not use the advantage of huge amounts of RAM. No matter if 32-bit or 64-bit, the memory usage is quite low. I’d almost call it “efficient”, but unlike..almost every other game I know..it does not use the data that is still in the RAM (I do not know what it is actually been called, because OSX and Windows call it differently). I think it’s “inactive” data, kept in the RAM but ready to be overwritten.

Of course, certain states have to be written again into memory, but to me it feels like I am loading everything from scratch. When I join in a League of Legends game there is a big boost when the majority of the data is still available.

This thread is full of good stuff!
Of course, there is a lot of Asura within.

Excelsior.

I personally see more thieves than I would like. Or better: I hear them. Wandering trough Tyria, minding my own business, and I hear rapid dual pistol fire and the distinctive thief dodge noise quite often. Yesterday I even saw a female Charr thief! That was rare³!

About beginner friendly.. Uhm.. All of the game is, when played properly, beginner friendly. Fine, I went from Maguuma Jungle right to newbie areas, but when I put my Engineer on vacation and started my “career” as murdering thief with his Asuran twin brother, I never felt bad or being in trouble. It was the real opposite. I recorded several videoclips just to see my animations frame by frame, the sound and look of the dodges, I love to stab my foes with that dagger stealth attack and in general it feels just “cool” to play this class. One of the few classes that are not cheesy “ninja” or generic “rogues”, but actual thieves. So aesthetically I do not see a reason why this class should not be popular.

About the playstyle, well, I am not sure what happens in HoT-based content because it shifts up several gears and goes into turbo mode, but since we talk about beginners, it’s probably THE class to be. It has a nice mix of button mashing melee-dagger-action with stealth passages, shadow-stepping and salto-over-people’s-heads awesomeness as well as the situations where I could take out a bunch of enemies with my dual pistols from an elevated point (a rock in this case) by pumping all of my initiative into “unload”. They showed up, I surprised them with some lead, dead, repeat. After 15 seconds I paced trough a pile of Ettin corpses. It was probably the safest fight I had in days. And satisfying as hell. If I would’ve been in trouble I could’ve stealthed myself away. How cool is that?

Also the way of deciding how to use your initiative is just great. No cooldowns, so if you want to burst someone down, do it. This is giving me freedom I want and need when I play. Not every beginner is also seeking for mind-numbing gameplay.

The problem with cheesy, actual “beginner friendly” classes are that they look super boring. I saw some newbie fight in the Metrica Province and it looked so boring and spammy to press only 1 skill button that I am glad I started with Engineer and now switched to thief. Another “press 1 button” game like FF14 or your generic Asia grinder would’ve made me quit already. GW2 combat is great and to get the fun out of it, it requires a class that is fun instead of dumbing down fights with stupid pseudo-popular classes that do not show anything to new players.

I am by far not a super player. I’d say average to below-average, because I enjoy the game more instead of getting super nervous and sophisticated. But I still died only 4 times yet. And these were very stupid deaths. Almost suitable for the “Benny Hill Theme” song.

Excelsior.

What do you have in mind when you see them gliding?
Whenever I see a big cat gliding I think it looks a bit weird, but what could they do?

I have a workmate that is very tall. When he stocks the lowest items in the shelf he has to spread his legs like a Giraffe that tries to reach a puddle of water.

Certain statures – like massive Charr – look weird in certain situation. Just like Asura in heavy armor fighting 15-meter enemies…

Endless Soul.5178:

That’s because we Asura are so amazing, we don’t need another “small” race to balance things out.

Excelsior.

Whenever I see you in a thread like this I do not need to add anything.
But your way of arguing could go that far that we need Dwarves because our awesomeness is creating a dangerous instability to the balance of the universe and we need other bob races (like Dwarves) to pull it back to the happy medium

I should consult a Scholar in Rata Sum for this…

I am very happy with the playable races, we have a lot of different themes to choose from and everything is covered. I wonder why exactly dwarves?

Nemo.5609:

Greatest prison you can waypoint out of any time.

Excelsior.

When you’re waking up you’ve already been a test subject for several hours and and the Peacemakers took all your biometric data and created a felony report. The ticket and the receipt will be sent via mail later. The “prison cell” is actually an anaesthetic recovery room. That’s why we put several of you in one without any safety concerns.

Don’t worry, we keep the results and the embarrassing footage for our studies … ugh … I mean, we keep them save and hidden… cough

Then we test your Bookah level by checking how long it takes for you to leave. The more desperate you get, the higher your score. You’re free to use another great Asuran technology from now on to leave (the waypoints) whenever you want.

Excelsior dear Sir.
I know this is not quite fair because I am not a native tongue myself and my English may be wonky from time to time, but judging from your overall way to express yourself – including the very thread title – you seem to be very over the edge, you want to burn trough stuff to get fast to Level 80 without any enjoyment.

I can understand to skip the story in certain games. I did so in Final Fantasy 14 because it sucked, but that is mostly because the player is only decoration there that has no meaning and not even a voice actor.

In GuildWars2, I enjoy everything. The story is not as dumb as this “we love all each other so much Hoooray” all political correct games go nowadays (even though we form alliances) and I have choices and also I am a part of it – including a great voice actor for the German male Asura. When a new cutscene comes up I am always happy to listen and to watch the emotes (and stiff ears… Man, A-Net, please fix my ears.. Or is every Asura so excited in the cutscenes that their ears are so tensed?). Oh wait, I am derailing….

You are ramming your head trough a big wall of story content and wonder why your head hurts?

Excelsior.

nVidia settings in the system control panel can do that for each program individually. (Gamma, Contrast, Colour balance etc.)

I increased the contrast on VLC to get crisper colours only for movies (respectively to preview them how they look on TVs set on different colour modes) but everything else is kinda not-so crispy on-screen because I can’t stand to have a sun simulator in front of me.

Excelsior.

I can’t really follow the thread because it branched off into to many side-topics, but from what I have caught is that some people complain about the Gem Store – or any sort of payment. Which is ridiculous. It’s like not willing to pay electricity bills after signing the contract and being happy that you can switch on the lights and your toaster.

I would (and actually do) pay for this game via Gems and I do it because I know how real-life and businesses work. And I assume 80% of the playerbase does as well. This whining about any cost for such a high quality title like GuildWars2 is usually coming from either unemployed people or kids without legal ways of paying.

Threads are not yogurts which have an expiration date IMO.
For the people using the search feature it’s better to have less cluttered threads and threads that do not end mid-discussion. That was something I’ve observed here quite often. People do not check the date, a new discussion develops – whoops, “Moderator” closed it. Uh, yeah, back to the search feature/google again..