Guild Wars 2

So, Tarnished Coast player here who is relatively new to WvW. Am I to understand that we have a reputation for doing nothing but running ‘massive zergs?’ I find that confusing, especially after this past weekend where it seemed like every battle I was in against CD they had us outnumbered (which made for great fun!). I even noticed a mention in one thread of the idea that ‘TC has 24×7 queues?’ I certainly have not seen that. I think I’ve only ever queued once, and I play primetime EST and weekends. So am I misunderstanding, or have I got it right and this is the overall impression our opponents have?

@BTIGER, sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for here. I wish you the best of luck in your next game.

As to my thoughts on being able to solo dungeons, I don’t honestly think a lot of time and effort should be put into scaling the dungeons, but I don’t see any reason they shouldn’t be opened up to smaller team sizes, or even soloers. I have a couple of friends who I’d definitely try to 3-man (or 3-woman) a dungeon that was intended for 5 with. Maybe we’d get our butts handed to us, but that’s on us if it happens.

I am intrigued by the idea I’ve seen some people float though of adding henchmen to dungeons to fill in for missing team members. They had talked about a companion system when the game was in development. Not sure if it ever got as far as implementation, but maybe they have some framework in place that might make this feasible. (Note that this wild speculation on my part. I have no special knowledge of the GW2 codebase. For all I know scaling dungeons might be much easier than implementing a henchman system).

Having said all that, despite being a mostly solo player, I really don’t see any necessity for 100% of the game’s content to be soloable. The only really glaring error I think they’ve made in that regard is making the last mission of your personal story be a dungeon. That makes no sense to me, conceptually. But that’s also a different topic.

Map travel was one of my favorite features of GW1 and I’m very glad they implemented a means of long-distance, instantaneous travel in GW2. I explore as much as I want to, and if I don’t care to take the scenic route, for whatever reason, I have the option to shorten the journey. Seems like a no-lose situation to me. That said, I’m entirely ambivalent about the addition of mounts, so long as they were added in addition to, not instead of, waypoints.

In no particular order…

• jumping puzzles
• cooperative PvE
• WvW
• vistas
• my server ( Tarnished Coast )

- Synchronized dancing
- Other players who make me laugh (with them, not at them). Like the player who typed out “Breath, kitten you! Breath!” as she was reviving me in WvW. Actually, had she really said “kitten” that would have been even funnier. :-)
- Hydro’s Engineer inadvertently launching herself over a cliff and exclaiming “Feel the fury!” just as she faceplants on the ground.
- Swimming through seaweed beds
- Running through those patches of grass (wheat?) that are taller than most of my characters.
- Figuring out a jumping puzzle on my own

I like it quite a lot. I think it has some problems, but it’s also brand new, so perhaps problems are to be expected.

I’ve noticed what feels like an increase today and yesterday. More drops in general, a lot more greens than I’ve been seeing, and even a couple of golds. Champs are still dropping nothing, but that’s an acknowledged issue (at least, I take the fact that they tried to fix that as an acknowledgement). But, random is random, and it look me a lot longer than two days to really start to feel like something was wrong, so I’ll reserve judgement on whether anything has changed for the better for a while yet.

Reaver.9256:

Not one of my friends and I played gw1 for over a month because there wasn’t a thing to do after you hit 20 and got a few skills.

Reaver, I don’t understand this. Most of the game happened after you hit 20, especially in Factions, where you could hit 20 in a weekend (or a long weekend, if you needed sleep). I’m not being argumentative here; it would be silly for me to disagree with an experience you had. I genuinely don’t understand and am curious. Can you tell me what it was you were looking to do that was lacking?

Sorry, I know this is a bit off-topic, but that statement leapt out at me and really got me curious.

This is an entirely subjective little ramble, but you know, I’m not a particularly loot-driven player. Sure, I like loot and part of the fun of the game for me is getting my characters the weapons and armor I want (which don’t always have to be top tier to make me happy). But I’ll often spend time doing things just for kicks that I know are not going to be profitable for me, but they’re fun so I don’t mind. What I’m winding up to here is that when I start to notice the lack of decent loot drops, that to me is a signal that the game must be really, really stingy. And like others who’ve posted in this thread, I do believe this is a change. I don’t recall having an issue equipping my other lowbies just from drops, but my baby Charr, at level 9, is still in mostly her starter armor. (I’ve crafted armor and weapons for her that she can equip at level 10.)

Also, on the topic of champions, I helped defeat 3 in Kessex Peak last night. Not one dropped a thing. But at this point, I think we were already sure that the stated intent that “all champions should drop something” (I’m paraphrasing from the AMA) is not in place, or not working properly.

I don’t attribute this to any malice or shenanigans on ArenaNet’s part. I really want to think that it’s not working as intended and that they are working hard to fix it, and I can certainly believe that it’s a complex issue and not a trivial fix. I do expect that some statement will be forthcoming, but I really hope it happens soon.

Dead.7385:

A dull voice acted, and poorly written character is hardly ever a good idea.

That’s a problem with the execution of the idea. The idea itself I don’t think was a bad one; I see him basically as a plot device designed to guide the PC through the epic process of forming an army and leading it to war. Setting the PC up as king-maker (to borrow Hydrophidian’s phrase), rather than the actual king, allows significantly more flexibility to the player in terms of how they want to interpret events for their character. And there were numerous allusions in the course of the story to that being the intent, but they were not executed consistently or effectively. I often got the sense that missions were being written by different people who weren’t on the same page (no pun intended), or even in communication with each other. I also, at various points, found myself longing for an author who was less of a storyteller in the ‘author’ sense and more of a storyteller in the ‘gamemaster’ sense. If I had run some of those mission scenarios for a group, my players would probably have revolted or quit.

Mala.3861:

Since Lost Shores patch I have gotten only two yellows from open world hunting and I’m not even sure if your personal story instances really counts as open world. Both of those yellows were picked up during story questing.

An outlier? I don’t think so.

That’s been about my experience, and I’ve done the Tequatl event several times in the last few weeks, as well a few jumping puzzles and zone completions. Gold items have become few and far between. Those dragon chests were mostly blue for me. I’m really surprised we haven’t heard any more on this since Chris Whiteside’s AMA.

That is some amazing work, Kestrel. Thanks so much for all the time and effort you put into this.

Gaming Background

Been playing PnP games for over 20 years now, and still play in one weekly. Played the kitten out of single player RPGs like Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1 & II, Baldur’s Gate (I recently ordered the new BD: Enhanced Edition), NWN, and then got hooked on Dungeon Siege II). Then I discovered MUSHes and did that for several years before discovering Guild Wars and City of Heroes (although it was always more City of Villains for me).

Love/Hate GW2

TL; DR Loving it so far.

I am greatly enjoying it. I would not say that it’s a perfect game, but I’m a huge fan of the setting and lore, I think it’s a visually gorgeous game, I think WvW was a stroke of genius (never thought I’d actually find any sort of PvP fun), and I like the DE system that allows you to play together without actually needing teams. I’m also kind of jazzed about the idea of actually having started playing during BWE1 and seeing how the game progresses. I started playing both GW1 and CoV late in their cycle, so I’m interested in seeing how the game changes over time. Yeah, it’s a bit painful. I find the number of bugs really distressing at times. There are a number of features that I consider pretty basic that I hope they add over time, and there are changes I’d like to see them make to existing features. Here are a few examples (not a comprehensive list). A lot of these have been discussed in other threads and recommended by other players as well.

• I’d like to see them add the ability for players to create their own channels.
• I’d like to see a serverwide LFG channel.
• And since I’m on the subject of ‘chatting’ I’d like to see the chat window made copy-able and have the ability to log chat.
• I really think they need to ease up on the gold sinks or increase the drop rates across the board, or both. This is far from a Monty Haul game; if anything, it feels pretty stingy. And having to spend a few silver to pop down to Orr, or to any other part of the world, to team up with a friend does not encourage people to play together. I do it, but every time I do, I have this same thought.
• I’d like to see traits be reconfigurable without having to return to a trainer, and have the ability to save and load them.
• I wish we had in-game support. I realize that might be a cost issue; after all, the game is F2P. But it would be nice to be able to get some timely help when, for example, you’ve gotten knocked into a piece of scenery and become stuck.
• I’d like to see the approach to the personal story missions changed somewhat in future expansions. Some examples:
  * Fewer cut scenes that put words in your character’s mouth and more dialogue options that give you some choices as to what they say, i.e. at least give the player the illusion of choice.
  * If possible, actual branching storylines (yes, I know that might be a non-starter as it would be a lot of work), but it would have been so much more compelling to be able to, for example, choose to leave Apatia or choose to stay and try to save her.
  * More acknowledgement of relevant points about the PC. Examples…
  Shouldn't my mesmer have had a chance to see through some of those illusions? Doesn't it seem likely that my Vigil character might already know Laranthir or that my Norn might know Gretchen? Just a little bit of rephrasing of the text could have covered those possibilities.
  * Some acknowledgement of when there are other PCs in the party, even if it’s just showing the whole party in the cut scene (if there is one), like they did in GW1.
  * Give the player the choice of whether they want an NCP to accompany them or whether they want them to stay behind.
  * Don’t use downscaling in the missions. Personally, I love the gameplay in the missions; it’s what I love best about them, in fact. I would replay some of them, if I could. But I know, both from reading the forums and from talking to friends in game, that there are people who do not enjoy the gameplay as much a I do. There are many people who want to be able to take their time, read the dialogue, poke around the map; people who are just more interested in ‘story’ part than the ‘mission’ part. By removing downscaling, those people who want more challenging gameplay can choose to do the missions ahead of, or at their, recommended level, and those who don’t can simply wait to outlevel them, then go in and not really have to worry about the mobs.

I know that sounds like a long list of complaints, so I’ll reiterate that I really am enjoying the game and anticipate playing for a long time to come.

EDIT: Fixed a typo that changed the entire meaning of a sentence.

I’m really not a particularly social person, except on those rare occasions when I am. I often have accepted invites from people just to team up for kicks, and I often play with my guildies. But ultimately, I play the game for the game, not for the social aspect. The best games, for me, accommodate that by giving me the choice of being social when I want to be and solitary when I want to be. GW1 and City of Heroes were both perfect, in that regard. I could join a team for a dungeon or a task force, or I could just solo missions all night. This game isn’t bad (in that regard). I like the fact that I can run with another player for a while, then we can each just go our separate ways. OTOH, sometimes the persistent world gets to be a bit much for me; I feel like I can’t escape other people and have to log off, which is ironic, given how many posts I read talking about how the zones are dead.

And also, everything Raf said.

Raf.1078:

You know, I deal with people at work all day in meetings, on the phone. etc..etc.. A regular workday. But when I get home, the last thing I want to do is deal with another group of people. I’ll group with Guildies if they need help or my wife…cause, well..its her

But most of the time I’m just happy to not have to deal with other people. The DE’s allow you to use the advantages of a group, then happily go your own way afterwards. Perfect system for my play style.

gamingtito.4709:

Hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving,

I’m new to the guild wars world and I’ve enjoyed playing with my Asura engineer over the last couple of days. However I am seeing quite a bit of negative feedback towards the game on the forum.

In all honesty, is this a game worth sticking with or is it one already in a state of decline?

Well, I hope you’ll give it a fair shake. No, it’s not a perfect game, and I do agree with some of the concerns expressed by others on the forum. That said, I’m having a great time with it. And on my server anyway (Tarnished Coast) I really don’t feel like the map chat reflects the general consensus on the forum. Seems to me like there are still plenty of people in game having a good time. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Morrigan.2809:

I bought a bank slot, the Witch costume for Halloween and some BL salvage kits, Fine Transmute stones.
I deleted my town clothes because they are hideous no matter how you dye them.
I really wanted to support this game but that was all I could realistically buy.

It there where:
character customization.
new hairstyles
new emotes/dances
costumes/town clothes
armor skins/weapon skins
heck even player housing

People would throw money at the cash shop in a never ending stream.

I completely agree with this post. So far, I’ve bought some Fine Transmutation stones, and that’s it. For me, personally, armor/weapon skins would be the big draw. My human, male mesmer was almost level 70 before I stopped transmuting all his armor to the Apprentice look because of all the in-game armors (that he could wear), it was the only one I could stand; and boy, was I bored with it by then. Give me a wide variety of looks to choose from and I’ll gladly spend a little money. I really think all the items mentioned by Morrigan would have pretty wide appeal.

Yep, those were the ones! So glad I found your post.

I think you’re right. I’m at 173 of 174 and I’ve done Tribulation Caverns. I’m going to head out to Forsaken Halls now. Will confirm if that does it for me.

• I like the Jinx Isle area of Malchor’s Leap. Had a lot of fun exploring the waters in that zone.

• Like the jumping puzzles I’ve found so far, though I gather there is at least one I haven’t found yet.

• I’m amused by how devoid of mobs all the other zones seem after spending a couple of weeks in Cursed Shore (which is not the same thing as saying I like the mob density in Cursed Shore).

I don’t hate Orr, but I do agree with the complaints about the mob density. I find that far more tedious then I do challenging. I know how to fight Risen, at this point. Having to constantly plough through them just to get from point A to point B becomes dull for me rather quickly. Which is a shame, because I think the zones have some neat stuff. I was in a part of Cursed Shore last night that was reminiscent of the Realm of Torment for me (I think it was the giant claws), and I thought that was cool. Of course, I couldn’t actually stop and really look at any of it.

I “gave up” on it, but in truth I didn’t spend much time at it, so it was more due to a lack of commitment than it was frustration. My issue with it was the lack of instancing. I would have liked to have done it on my main, who is Norn, but I didn’t like that I was bothering other players and I didn’t like being bothered by the somewhat anti-Norn/Charr sentiment that some other players were expressing. That alone was enough to put me off of it, although it really did seem like it could be quite fun. I hope they find a way to address that next year, as I look forward to taking another crack at it.

Hmm, to me having titles for every little accomplishment diminishes the point of titles in the first place. Aren’t they supposed to be for finishing something that took a good amount of time and effort to get??

I think that’s really a matter of personal choice. Some people will want to wear titles that indicate that they accomplished something difficult. Others will want to wear titles that say something about their character (like that they really hate centaurs), or titles that they just think are fun. I’d definitely like to see title options added for more of the achievements. I’m really surprised that so few of the PvE achievements grant them.

That’s a tough call. I’m playing a Ranger, a Mesmer, and a Thief. Although I consider the Ranger to be my main, I really do love all three more or less equally. My next two will be Warrior and Elementalist (already played Ele at lower levels). Maybe I’ll try the others someday, but currently they just don’t interest me.

That last game I played implemented a server-wide LFG channel and it worked great. If people didn’t want to use it, they could just remove from their chat tab.

Note that this is not an argument against a more robust LFG tool. That game also had a search feature you could use to find or form teams. But the channel was nice for a few reasons. One was, you could be a bit wordier about what you were specifically doing or looking for, i.e. ‘running tips redside at level 28, all levels welcome.’ Another was that many people, like myself, never put themselves into search because we didn’t want random invites, but if something we were specifically interested in came across channel, we’d see it and could respond. Again, I have no objection to a more full featured search tool, but this might be something that would help either instead of, or in addition too, such a tool, and it might be easier and faster to implement (I speculate wildly here) since we already have chat channels in the game.

It’s great. I was running across Gendarran and suddenly realized I was seeing the moon at the top of my screen. Now I’ll have to head back to Orr and try looking up again when the dragon shadows fall across me. Really looking forward to this being permanent. Thank you.

Nice work, @Risingashes. Now get some sleep!

Actually, a friend of mine tried to report a player the other night by choosing ‘report’ and found that ‘griefing’ is not listed among reasons for reporting. That seems like a significant oversight.

…fluffs my kitten.

That made my day. :-)

And so as not to derail the thread, I’ll just add that I don’t see any reason to make all the major cities free but travel from anywhere to Lion’s Arch for free would, in my opinion, be a significant QoL improvement.

defektive.3540

- Add Object fade for non-colliding obstructions (trees, bushes etc.)

Oh that would be amazing! Without a doubt the second worse problem I have with jumping puzzles (the first being my own impatience), is the difficulty I have getting my camera to juuuust the right angle so I can actually see the jump I’m making. I’m thinking of moments like trying to see through the leaves in Dark Reverie. And that’s on top of the issue of trying to see anything when you’re close to a wall or other object. I posted in another thread about how I can’t even complete Troll’s End on my Norn due to being unable to see where I’m going, and the feeling of motion sickness I got from the way the camera was moving in the tight tunnel area.

I do hope we see some improvements in the camera, and soon. As for the question regarding FOV affecting the integrity of the art, I do think this is a visually stunning game, just as GW1 was, and I can absolutely empathize with an artist’s desire to have his art viewed as he intended it. But frankly, when the look of the game begins to negatively impact the playing of the game, then I think there’s a failure there that has to be addressed.

I’d just be happy if more of the missions acknowledged that there was more than one player involved, even if it was just by, perhaps, showing the whole party in the cutscenes rather than just the mission holder, the way the GW1 mission cutscenes used to do.

Some of the story missions do seem to have methods of acknowledging this built in. For example, in missions where you need to duel an NPC, the other party members get ‘audience skills,’ which I think is great. And in one mission, both myself and my friend were turned into minotaurs, which was also very cool. I’d like to see more of that. But, I fully expect that the personal story missions will get gradually tweaked and changed, or perhaps more paths will be added (at least, I certainly hope so), so maybe we’ll see more refinement in the future, or improvements to them in expansions.

And if I may briefly go off on a tangent…
I suppose we can write this off as a psychological quirk on my part, but I find Trahearne enormously annoying when doing the missions with another person (one of my characters is part of a duo). When I'm alone I can accept the idea, albeit sometimes grudgingly, that his help might be valuable. But to have him effectively tell my partner and I that "you two can't possibly succeed at [insert relatively minor task] without my help" is just obnoxious. But at least we have a good time roleplaying our responses to him. ]

Edit: Grammar…and spelling…

Hi. I had thought the camera collision issues were fixed in a recent patch? Last night I tried to do Troll’s End on my Norn. I had previously done it on a human character, and it had been difficult to see all the jumps sometimes when I was very close to walls, but it certainly wasn’t insurmountable.

This time, when I got into the narrow tunnel, not only could I not see where I was going most of the time, but the way the camera started moving made me nauseous, so I just waypointed out. I’ve been know to experience motion sickness in some games (example: In GW1 I could not do the mini-games with the ‘drunk’ effects enabled). But this is the first time it’s happened in GW2. Anybody else experiences this? Is this still a known issue, post patch, or is what I’m describing not actually what was supposed to be fixed? Thanks.

I’m also on Tarnished Coast and it’s been great so far. I fully expect to have the occasional bad experience, but it hasn’t happened yet. People have, for the most part, been friendly, helpful, and pleasant.

I had no problem buying the book at 60 on my main, but I’ve spent a lot more money on my 2nd character, so he might have a little trouble getting there (he’s 56 now). I’ve sunk a lot more into his crafting. It’s not something that worries me, really; I’ll find a way to get it for him or just wait a bit until he has the coin.

Question, for anybody who’s tried it. Can you buy the Grandmaster tome if you haven’t bought the Master tome, and will it unlock the whole tree for you, or must you buy all three tomes to unlock the entire tree?

I also came here to post a similar suggestion. I would like to see the option added to stop XP gain across the board; I don’t really see any reason for specific activities that grant XP to be singled out. On the one hand, I love the great variety of methods through which you can earn XP in the game. On the other, the leveling progression is so fast that it can be difficult, as others have pointed out, to stay within the levels of the zones you’re currently exploring.

Additionally, leveling in concert with another person becomes problematic when neither of you can do anything, such as craft or look for mats, without leveling.

Also, while I like the automatic down-leveling system, I absolutely do think that higher level characters trivialize quite a bit of the lower level content. Sure, there are outlier situations, and it’s still possible to be defeated as a higher level character in a low level zone or mission, but my experience so far has been that it doesn’t happen often, and the presence of the higher level character removes much of the challenge that the lower level characters would typically face.

Two suggestions:
* Add the ability to copy from the chat window. Seems like I can paste into the chat bar, but can’t copy the contents of the window.
* Add chat logging (if this actually exists, and I’ve missed it, can somebody tell me how to do it? )

And, although I’ve posted this in another thread already, I’ll just throw in here again the suggestion to allow players to create custom chat channels. Because it can’t be suggested enough. :-)

Edit: My apologies, I posted to the wrong thread. Nice suggestions though, OP.

I completely agree that there should be some way to be truly hidden from your contacts list and guild roster when online, especially since people have the ability to add others to their contacts list without approval. I also think this might belong in the Suggestions forum.

Last night while roleplaying I suddenly got a warning that I would be logged out in [a periodically decreasing number of] seconds if I did not “resume active play.” The player I was RPing with also got this warning. At no point had we been idle for any significant length of time, but had been typing more or less continuously. Is keyboard activity not factored in when determining if a player is idle?

Still having a blast and I anticipate continuing to have a blast for quite some time to come. Yep, the game has its flaws, but so far it’s been mostly a very enjoyable time.

So I’m not alone! I get so many little thrills from things like this, and finding that old crystal again was a big one. My character was standing there looking down on it from roughly the same spot that her namesake had, 250 years before. I just thought that was cool.

I actually came here to post this very suggestion, so am glad to learn I’m not alone in this desire. I would love to have the ability to create channels so that I can communicate with a specific group of people regardless of what guild we’re each in. This was a widely used and extremely popular feature in the last game I played, City of Heroes, and I think it would be just as applicable to GW2. The ability to join multiple guilds, while wonderful, does not really address the same use cases as private channels.

I agree with the OP and most of the posters so far that I am somewhat dismayed by the ‘whiting’ of Kryta. But it’s not just a matter of ethnicity. It feels a bit as if the Ascalonians took over, also, in terms of dress and overall style. Divinity’s Reach and Queensdale and Kessex Hills feel very ‘traditional northern European/British Isles game-setting’ to me, which I associate with Ascalon. In GW1, the Krytans were a dark-skinned people living in a sub-tropical climate with a very distinctive look; I could tell an Ascalonian NPC from a Krytan simply by what clothes they wore. Certainly, over the course of 250 years, some merging of cultures is going to take place, but when you factor in that you also had Elonian influences, and that there are still those of Canthan descent living in Tyria, I would not have necessarily expected to see the Ascalonian culture dominate. But that is how Kryta looks to me; as if the Krytans, Elonians, etc. were largely subsumed by the Ascalonian culture.

I know you already got your answer, Jen, but just to add to it, I run into people roleplaying all over the place on Tarnished Coast. And just overall, it seems a pretty friendly place so far.

While doing the Artist’s Workshop mission, my friend and I were both downed, but not defeated, by the enemy. We fought it until it turned green, but that transition did not rally us. Instead, we were stuck in a downed state until our health ran out and and we had to checkpoint. I’m not sure if this is a bug or if it’s WAI, but I very much hope it’s a bug. I would have expected that if you successfully fight an enemy to the point where it’s no longer an enemy that you would rally, just as if you had fought the enemy to defeat.