Guild Wars 2

+1 I couldn’t find anything to criticize with the art of this game if i tried, and I am kind of a jerk so that is a surprise.

Sylv.5324:

Still cheering for Trahearne. If you play a Sylvari, you know who this guy is and why it’s appropriate that he’s leading the offensive in Orr.

I do play Sylvaria and I’ve eaten vegetables off a plate that had better characterization than Trahearne does.

supermanboy.4592:

I agree with bluejay’s initial point. Crafting has been at least for me something that has not really required any investment. I did do one big shot where I went up about 75 levels in crafting buy buying lots of mats, but they were cheap.

I disagree with the last two paragraphs. For now, this may be the case however consider this: When people have leveled up and are either leveling another character or new craft, since they will have access to more money from end game items and events they will have much more buying power. They will use this purchasing power to buy all the mats they need from the TP and use it to power level their crafts. This will drive up the price of goods to higher levels, and make low level farming of mats more viable for new, low level or poor players.

Whenever there is a spike in a system, there are shockwave effects that take time to reach equilibrium again. The beginning of the game was such a spike, since no TP existed before then. The game is still transitioning to its natural equilibrium as players level.

I think this would have the opposite affect. If you can afford to buy all the mats to powerlevel your craft you would most likely be even more inclined to dump the manufactured goods on the market for nothing. The only affect of powerleveling crafts on alts will be to increase mat costs which is already happening.

I respect your opinion, but Timberline is my favorite zone. I wasted a lot of time just starring a the scenery. And there is an event where the entire zones weather starts to change and you have to stop mass kidnapping on top of the giant stone face which has some funny events to it.

Lots to see here.

The more I play the personal story the worse it seems to get and the more I want to use Trahearne for kindling.

ANet… let’s have a talk.

I think you do some amazing work. The world design is so well done and breath-takingly beautiful that I would really want to move to parts of your world if that were possible. The dynamic event system has revolutionized MMO’s in my opinion. My level 1 character looked more bad-* than my level 50 PVP gear equipped Jedi in SWTOR. I could go on…

But in the name of all that is interesting, hire a competent story writer next time. I, seriously, could have written a better plot using the skills I learned in the “How to Write A Script” class I took just for fun in the continuing education program at my community college.

How every other part of this game could be so well done and this part be so obviously bad is beyond me. How did you release this thinking Trahearne was going to do anything but irritate the living crap out of all the players? And what directions were given to his voice actor… “Hey, can you act like you are totally, totally bored?”

Lutinz.6915:

What if the GW1 character was female?

I don’t judge…

And I didn’t think I had to spell it out, but to make it clear the last part of that post was a joke.

The real problem as many of you alluded to is that there is substantial utility to be derived from crafting items even if you throw away the product. Between the EXP you get and and the ability to level your crafting skills as you craft, players are willing to sell the items for much lower than ‘cost’ because they are already obtaining more than enough benefit to justify their time investment just from the process of making something.

This added to the fact that raw materials essentially have no real acquisition cost — you can exp for gathering and materials drop while fighting monsters for other tasks — means that it would still be worth crafting even if you gave the stuff away.

As a result there is no ‘floor’ for prices on most goods — price insensitive supply? Then add to this that gear is so easy to get in this game and leveling is so fast that there is almost zero demand for gear — price insensitive demand?

So crafting is essentially a race to the top to be able to make the few end game pieces that there are no readily available substitutes for.

You might even be able to make profit on a small selection of goods before the majority of players level to being able to make them and flood the market, but I don’t see crafting as being a source of income for the majority of players.

I would start here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Timeline

— SPOILERS —

In a later part his spirit reveals that he did it because he was in love with her and couldn’t let the woman he loves die.

So we have the entire planet being eaten by a elder dragon versus the death of his love. Not an easy choice, but I think the fate of the entire planet is clearly the bigger ‘good’ in this case.

Of course, this entire story REALLY went wrong when Gwen married Keiran, who other than having some over powered bow was a complete tool and couldn’t even make his own freaking picnic.

If Gwen had just married your character, Tyria would be a dragon free paradise now… which would admittedly make for a very boring game.

— TONS OF SPOILERS BELOW —

Amaren.9326:

If, by some chance the writers of GW2 lost all their senses and made the Pale Tree in any way related to a dragon, then they’re going to have to explain that whole “there is another Pale Tree out there somewhere creating Sylvari that lack a dream” thing that comes up in one branch of the Sylvari personal story. The cave that the Pale Tree seed was found it was full of seeds.

I have a problem with this too. I have seen lots of foreshadowing, some I mentioned in an earlier post, that the Pale Tree is related to the dragons more so than just wanting to end their threat, but Malyk is going to be a problem for this lore element.

The entire Malyk plot line has more holes than Swiss cheese and I wouldn’t be surprised if parts of it just don’t fit into the lore at all. As I posted in an old thread…

“Why is Malyk humanoid? I get that the Sylvari are human because the Tree absorbed the remnants of Rowan’s slaughtered people, and that Ventari and Rowan unknowingly ‘guided’ the tree in its formation, but Malyk is from an entirely different, unrelated tree. Was that tree ALSO planted on a pile of dead people and guided into existence by a human and centaur philosopher? "

Having one of a group of similar beings be good when the rest are evil is a VERY common lore technique in fantasy fiction (heck even in Mythology you find examples of this, like the myths of Prometheus).

— MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW —

Another example of some possible foreshadowing in the game that the Pale Tree is related to the Elder dragons… In one of the Order of Whispers missions, the Pale Tree warns of the attack on the Order’s home base, and one of the questions you character can ask is ‘How did the Pale Tree know of Zhaitan’s plan to attack the base?"

- Skill Point
- Blood Tide Coast
- Beach Near Mournful Depths
- Two-Eye Ignatl does not spawn
- Kaineng Server

Any word on this?

Actually I think it would be cool to have a story where you are NOT the hero but the guy behind that scenes that made everything happen — as long as it was done well. Unfortunately I don’t think you could describe GW2’s personal story as having been done well.

It is not just you. There have been at least 5 threads either on this topic or that mentioned this topic along with other plot hole. A lot of people were put off by this.

Unless you plan to buy materials, level alts, or have help in gathering resources — like a guild — you might run into problems if you pick skills with overlapping material requirements and try to level them both at the same time.

For instance, Leather working and Huntsman both use the same ‘blue’ drops (ie… tiny totems, tiny scales, etc…) for most of their recipes.

The drop rate on these items is sufficient to level 1 craft, but if you try to pursue both you will often run out before you ‘clear’ a tier of recipes and move to the next ‘level’ of blue drop items.

It might be best to focus on one skill initially and level the second later when your characters has access to more resources. Alternatively you can pick cooking as a second skill. Cooking does not use resources that are used by any other skill — though the skill is considered ‘advanced’.

Some points to refute the OP’s complaint:

1. I don’t believe that ANet said any where you should be able to craft at your character level. There are MANY MANY ways to get good gear in this game, so no one has to craft to stay competitive.

2. The drop rates seems adequate to level 1 craft at a reasonable pace. Two weeks out and many of my guild mates are already at 400 / 400. I am at 250 / 150 and I haven’t really been trying.

3. You even get experience points and levels from crafting, so even if you can’t craft gear at your level you still get benefits.

4. Crafting doesn’t even require that you level your characters. You can actually be a level 1 character and craft at 400. Very few crafting related items are soul bound (there are a few which I hope Anet will fix).

I am ok with this. I think its fine having items that only a few players will ever get. It is not like anyone needs a legendary weapon or that there is nothing else to do end game. In GW1 there were many players that did not get Obsidian armor, and many that did so only after years of playing the game. I played GW1 for years and never got Obsidian because it was too freaking expensive to waste my time on. I did have 7 other rare armors though. I never felt that I missed out.

If getting legendaries was the only thing to do end game, then it would be a problem that it takes this long. If everything end game took this much effort it would also be a problem. But there is plenty of end game content for casual players. The hard core players need something to shoot for too.
I am impressed that you guys figured this out so quickly, but I would not anticipate seeing many players get one of these until the game has been out a year or more.

Yeah, this has been commented on in several other posts. ANet completely ignored the starting race and everything that came before it when writing the story of the Order of Whispers from level 40+. Basically after you join the Order the story is the same regardless of your starting race.

…Talk about the death of immersion. This is an almost unforgivable mess up on ANet’s part. And you know they knew about it and just decided to ignore it.

Even as bad as some of the voice acting in GW1 was, the story line in GW1 was much better than what I have seen from GW2.

I would have been sad, because he was one of the few decent characters in this entire game, but the way he went out was so blatantly stupid I actually started laughing at how bad the plot line was rather than feel remorse at his loss.

I have a 670 running 306.02 on Windows 7 and I have no frame rate problems and absolutely no crashes.

If you combine a long cool down with something that can’t move in a dungeon environment that requires constant moving from area to area you can end up with the fact that spirits are not really a viable support option. At most they might have some use in boss fights which are typically confined to a small area and are long lasting.

You can trait them to move but it seems somewhat a bad idea to make support utility for an entire class dependent on one high level trait. Even beyond ‘moving’, spirits have other issues that make them not viable.

I am not saying Rangers are weak. There are builds that are very viable, but they are limited in number and pretty much completely DPS oriented. The Ranger class — and Thief class as well — does not have the flexibility that most other classes do.

The holy trinity might be dead but some classes were left behind at the funeral.

I don’t think we know what the soft caps on attributes are yet so everyone is probably just experimenting at this point?

I have to admit, rezzing your pet is almost never a good idea. At the same time I don’t see any reason they should have removed it. Why remove a tactical choice even if it is a bad choice most of of the time?

If it was to compensate for their troubled user interface that would be even worse…

I am attempting to input Japanese and Korean into the chat window using an English version of Windows 7, but haven’t had much luck in getting IME to work.

When I switch to hiragana, a small hiragana ‘a’ appears in the chat window before the input box — leading me to believe there might be some kind of support for IME — but when I type nothing appears in the input box or the chat window if I press [enter].

My system is properly configured and Japanese and Korean input work in all of my other programs.

First, I didn’t really expect much from GW2 in terms of voice acting or story line. It was pretty obvious to me that ANet didn’t have the resources to pull this off. And as SWTOR proved, you can have a great storyline and top notch voice acting and still have a crappy game. BUT if we are critiquing the personal story aspects…

In general the voice acting is pretty bad and the writing is amateurish. There are a few exceptions. Tybalt’s voice acting is pretty good. Caithe is a bright spot in both voice acting and characterization. More on this under ‘Spolier’.

— Spoilers —

During the undead attack on Lion’s Arch, when you are at the fort and the female lieutenant is reporting on the total destruction of the fort and on the death of her squad… she seemed bored. This was the worst voice acting I have seen in a game pretty much ever. It came off like “Sir, everyone died, total destruction, the end of times as we know it… wait, did I turn off the lamp before I left his morning? Shessshh, I hate it when I forget to turn off the lamp, oil so expensive right now… What is up with that?”

The pacing is terrible. As an example, in Tybalt’s case, in about 5 dialogs totaling maybe two paragraphs of text he moves from a complete unknown to being your best friend of all time. I felt like my character wanted to look him in the face and say “Dude, I don’t know you that well…”

And there are lots of really goofy spots in the story line.

When Tybalt sacrifices himself… seriously, ONE PERSON is going to do anything to delay an entire army of undead, numerous undead ships full of more undead, and a dragon? Unless he is the most powerful being on this planet he would be eaten in 1 second and do nothing to aid in your escape. This plot line was not well thought out.

And Eir comes off as the dumbest person on the planet. Let me make two now arch enemies separated by betrayal and death into friends and make everything ‘happy happy’ by getting them matching swords. If she was really this stupid I can see why Destiny’s Edge failed to begin with. Maybe if the story tried to explain why getting matching swords would have any kind of real impact, it wouldn’t come off as so bad. For as well as the story explains it, she might as well have bought them matching t-shirts and called it a day.

And this is nit picking, but it bugs me… Why is Malyk human? I get that the Sylvari are human because the Tree absorbed the remnants of Rowan’s slaughtered people, and that Ventari and Rowan unknowingly ‘guided’ the tree in its formation, but Malyk is from an entirely different, unrelated tree. Was that tree ALSO planted on a pile of dead people and guided into existence by a human and centaur philosopher?

I could go on and on… there are so many examples of bad voice acting, hurried and cliched writing, and plot lines full of holes.

I agree. The Ranger class has a few good traits so it is possible to make an effective build, but the class has far fewer effective builds available than many other classes (I am looking at you Mesmer, Engineer and Elementalist) and a pet build is not one of them.

At least the Ranger class is not as bad off as the Thief class which basically has 1 effective game play style.

Long bows are awesome:
— #4 Knock back
— Range makes them very useful in WvW
— #5 decent AOE
— #3 Vulnerability debuff
— #2 Keeps DPS up until swap cool down is over and you can change back to your DPS weapon

My only real complaints are:

1. Too many useless traits. There are some really good ones, so I don’t think the class suffers that much, but we don’t have as many options for good builds as the more well constructed classes do.

2. Pets are pretty bad.
— No dodge or damage mitigation and poor AI makes them AOE bait both in PvP and PvE
— Broken F2 abilities compound uselessness
— Easily avoided attacks and survivability issues in PvP due to poor AI

Pets in WvW are actually useful as skirmisher units if your Rangers coordinate, though most people haven’t reached the level of understanding to use them effectively for that yet.

The Arctodus’ bleed and the Bear’s ‘Shake It Off’ seem to work only about 20% of the time. I have to mash it at least 5 or 6 times to get the black fade ‘ability activated’ icon to trigger.

This makes pets even more useless in sPvP than they would be other wise.

Pets Usefulness
________________________________

PvE: Damage Soak and some nice DPS with the ranged Pets like the Black Widow

WvW: Not that useful, but can be used as ‘skirmishers’ where all the Rangers send their pets in to attack at the beginning of an engagement. Helps to disturb enemy front lines and waste a few enemy CD’s.

sPvP: Utterly useless. Don’t survive long enough to do anything and are too easily countered by moving around. F2 failure exacerbates this. The AI is not smart enough to avoid AOE so they usually just almost instantly die to some Elementalist’s flame field.