Guild Wars 2

No forge, but Rata Sum has the rest in a pretty tight proximity (Accountancy Waypoint). Ebonhawke in Fields of Ruin has crafting stations, TP, and bank really close together, too.

I prefer Rata Sum. If the forge is really a dealbreaker, you’re SOL, since they’re only in LA and WvW.

The meta is changing at an alarming rate.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Spectral walk also lets you completely negate falling damage if you use it shortly before hitting the ground (jump down > nearly hit the ground > spectral walk > instantly press the button again for spectral recall > falling damage has been reset > land softly on the floor, like a feather)

I heard this was nerfed in the last patch. Can any of you poor necro lovers confirm/deny?

Oh, the kittening irony of this thread getting locked: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Once-again-Communication-issues-guys

With no comment. Less then a week after I get tempbanned for mentioning that it’s helpful to have comments on closed threads.

That one hadn’t even gotten off-topic or unconstructive, f//fs.

Thanks for the constructive post! Feel better now?

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

New Vegas was better. :v

Better, but buggier :P

Actually, I don’t think I could say which was better. They’re both so far above…well…any other games in my opinion, the differences between them don’t matter.

I have a feeling the influence vendors will start selling favor after the patch, so you can probably still save up gold to get the hall without doing a lot of missions.

Clearing the hall should also be scaled to the number of players in the instance, as they’ve done for other variable sized group content.

These are assumptions on my part, but they seem obvious enough that I’d be really surprised if they didn’t happen.

Lord Kuru.3685:

On the other hand, Anet’s communication is just horrifyingly bad. They really could use a major rethinking of how their community relations is run.

On that note, I’m really not sure why I waste my time anymore. I honestly expect these threads to have no effect, yet I keep trying. WTF is wrong with me :-/

Neither, play Fallout 3 instead. Get hyped!

:D

We were just talking about the guild missions thing in our guild.

Even as a pure-PvE player, the thought of grinding Langmar Estate for a guild hall sounds worse than a gear treadmill, TBH. I really hope that they have some new missions on the way, the existing ones are incredibly uninteresting for long-term players. It’s hard to get people to even show up for them anymore.

maddoctor.2738:

different players have different ideas of what “hardcore content” means. I think the content is fast-paced and stressful only if you want it to be. If you don’t want to follow the blob that goes from event to event, then don’t do it.

+1. Best response so far — don’t let how others are playing dictate how you have fun!

I’ll quote a guildie in response to that, because they nailed it:

Don’t you know…if you disagree you’re just a stupid hater, elitist, entitled brat, and if you agree you’re a fanboy, Blind Supporter, drinking the ANET kool-aid. No one’s opinions are valid when everything gets dismissed out of hand ad hominem.

There’s so much hate being thrown around that reasonable discussions are very difficult to have, because people like to put others down to get a nice ego boost and feel superior — on all sides of the issue.

Funny how people can call for ‘more reasonable’ and ‘less vitriolic’ discussion, and then turn around and start ranting about ‘fools having nervous breakdown’ and passing out passive aggressive snark and insults at the ones trying to discuss things reasonably.

Perhaps their arguments would carry more weight if they’d set an example instead of acting in the exact way they’re complaining about.

Just my 2c.

A Hamster.2580:

TL;DR: 2 months old customer already lost trust in the company.

Welcome to Tyria.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Less-hard-core-content

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

ANet has a major problem communicating, but I strongly disagree with the OP about what it is. I wholeheartedly approve of them rarely releasing details of what they are working on until it’s ready — there are just too many players who can’t accept that plans can and will change, depending on planning and programming issues, changes to the game environment, etc. People still try to hold to the letter of high level goals offered by ANet before GW2 was announced.

So, I think the communication issue is that ANet does not really know how to hype their own product. They over-market minor things (e.g. home instance portal) and downplay huge things. They announce GW2/HoT the same week they are going live with the biggest rebalance the game has seen to date (arguably bigger than anything that happened during GW1 days), affecting all professions, all trait lines, etc. They chose prices and tiers for HoT that invite controversy, diminishing the big news…that the game’s first expac is on sale! (Worse, nearly any poster to these forums could have told them that, fair or not, those tiers/price points would create insanely distracting controversy.)

tl;dr Yes, ANet communicates poorly. I think the OP has it wrong, though: the type of communicating advocated wouldn’t have changed what happened this week.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, I do agree with your points. Perhaps my message was unclear in the OP, but I didn’t mean to suggest that announcing all of the details of the expansion would have prevented the kittenstorm. I believe it would have mitigated part of it, but there were a lot of complaints coming together at once and the lack of details was only one piece of the puzzle.

The point I was attempting to make was that the distrust of the company makes it easy for things like the HoT prepurchase fiasco to spiral out of control. Things like ignoring large defects/issues in the game (broken dungeon waypoints, broken bosses, out-of-order and plothole-laden personal story, horribly broken PvE balance, Ogre Wars, …) for months or years on end without really acknowledging the issues or showing that they have any actual interest in fixing them…that sends out a negative image of themselves.

Combine that with the content drought, history of underwhelming living story content, and nearly complete lack of developer/community interaction and you start to foster a very bad reputation among your customers. We will be significantly less forgiving of errors as a result.

There’s a big difference between asking for story spoilers and asking ‘hey, this changed and wasn’t in the patch notes. Is it a bug, or is it staying this way?‘. Or saying ’hey, your main story line is out of order. What’s up with that?’ and not hearing a response for months — if at all. A company that can’t even bother to offer that basic level of customer support does not have my respect, and I’m not going to view them positively or give them the benefit of the doubt when they slip up with something like what happened this week.

I don’t view ArenaNet as a team of designers and developers who are in touch with their players. Rather, they present themselves as uninterested in what their players desire and are ‘above’ keeping us pesky peons informed about the product they’re producing. Speaking personally, my attitude towards them would be significantly more positive if it were the other way around.

Xenon.4537:

dlonie.6547:

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

This, I believe, is nothing but misinformation regarding the Love and Lash post on Reddit. There hasn’t (to my knowledge) been any harassment toward individual artists or designers at Anet. In fact one dev has denied ever claiming that, and that their tweets were taken out of context.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3aamx8/gw2_lash_and_love/csbep7t

Thanks for the info. I suppose that’s why the article has since been edited — I sincerely hope that there was a misunderstanding and that those devs/artists were not caught up in the mess, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had.

I notice they didn’t mention anything about new guild missions, just changes to how they’re started and unlocked…please tell me I missed it?

Keep it up, Colin! thumbs up

shiney.4629:

The community after the way its responded this week, doesn’t deserve any better IMHO than total silence..

Then they can expect the resentment, frustration, and hostility to grow.

The error in this line of thinking is making the assumption that everyone in the community is reacting poorly. There are a lot of reasonable people trying to spark reasonable discussions with ArenaNet. Just because some people are being loud and ridiculous doesn’t mean ArenaNet should permanently circle their wagons and neglect their players.

dobri.7820:

Yea…. You are so missing the point

I think you’re missing the point. This change would do nothing but enrage the community.

You’ve never even said why someone joining the game three years after launch should be able to catch up in AP. There’s no reason for it. You have a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Lord Kuru.3685:

A dev has already explicitly stated that they were not working on any more dungeon content and had no plans for any more dungeon content in the future. There was a thread about it in the dungeon forum a while back. If you ask in the dungeon forums, someone will be able to dig it up.

You rang?

Betcha didn’t know I made house calls, too.

Here it is: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Very-disappointing-news-for-you-guys/

Edit, aww DaiBish beat me to it.

So….ArenaNet is the dark side?

idk man…in this economy, people are just happy for work. I hope that the people receiving hatemail can separate themselves from it and realize that the anger is really aimed at their employer. Still, its gotta be heartwrenching. That picture of the asura & charr….

And Jay, I feel the same. It’s going to take a lot to repair it, and so far we’ve seen very little willingness on ArenaNet’s side to do so. As long as things like the Necrid Bolt bug thread are ongoing (where it’s a simple situation that warrants a simple reply), I don’t see things improving.

Thanks for letting everyone know!

Basandra Skye.4031:

Maybe there IS a release date? Ever think of that?

The issue, as I understand it, isn’t whether or not a release date exists. I think we all assume that a tentative launch date is known internally at ArenaNet.

When people bring up the release date issue in regards to the expansion, they’re making a legitimate point that there are a lot of details missing about it, including that we (the players) have no idea when the expansion is coming. Giving the climate of distrust and history of disappointing releases, a lot of people feel that asking for money for a product that is mostly vapor at this point is asking too much.

phys.7689:

Normally i would be with you but based on current events im beginning to see why they cant talk about anything.

Its not because the players are childish, its because the company has some serious problems with following through, and with long term vision.

They told people they were going to sell an expansion, and now they changed thier minds, and arent selling an expansion any more. They are selling a stand alone game. It sucks that they dont know what they are commiting to, and what they arent. But thats the reality of how the company is currently working.

Heh, not to mention that at launch they said they wouldn’t be using expansions and that all of the ‘expansion-like content’ would be coming through the Living Story. You make a good point.

Basandra Skye.4031:

You do realize that if people posted with reasoning and logic more often, they’d likely post more often?

People do make reasonable, polite, logical posts on here fairly regularly. Obviously not every post is, but there are a lot that aren’t full of vitriol.

And they still get ignored because of ArenaNet’s policies.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

That link you removed may be the one you were thinking about, as it (or it did) show how Rubi was contacted on her personal account. It seemed to indicate the contact wasn’t favorable.

Aha! So I’m not crazy!

Well, that may be an overstatement

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought for sure it was that one, but it looks like that bit was edited out now.

Sorry for all the edits. 5 minute flood control is a kitten :P

Thanks for the reply, Ranael. Just to clear up a couple things:

Ranael.6423:

“how much should the development of the game be driven by player ?”. What I mean is that we don’t boycott movies because the trailer doesn’t show the end, we don’t ask any writer to revamp the last chapters because we think the main character should not die. MMOs are a good opportunity for the player to have an influence on the development but we should keep humble and let the devs have the initiative, it is their work and our leisure.

This is a more fundamental issue in my eyes. It’s not about trying to get a story’s ending, it’s about taking care of addressing issues with your game. There is a large difference between showing a film’s climax in a trailer and telling your customers that you are aware of a defect in your product and working to correct it.

And on top of that one has to remember that devs are not paid to tell what they are doing on social media, they are not all community managers. If they do, it is on their free time… if they have some.

Absolutely! But it also appears that they are under strict instructions to not talk to us about future development of the game, and it extends to the point of not being able to give information on upcoming bugfixes (See the link to Lauren’s post in my OP). Even if they want to tell us what’s going on in their own time, they can’t.

So in the end there is a lot of pressure on the communication team.
I must admit I found the team much more efficient before launch (even though I don’t think until Gaile arrived in the team there had been so much changes in term of people) but I can only imagine how hard their task is.

Agreed. I don’t want to even imagine the frustration of having a job that centers on communicating with your customers but not having the leeway to actually give them the information they’re looking for.

They surely can improve what they do, but we can surely improve our way to give feedback other than “that is typical Anet, they are bad” or “they lied to us since the beginning” “this game is dead since XXXX”.
In other words if communication fails, it is rarely only one side’s fault… if we ask for better we should also be able to give better.

True, and I know I tend toward vitriol and snark more often than not. You weren’t accusing me of anything, but in the interest of an honest discussion: I am not innocent in this. However, I’d like to out that on the rare occasion that an ArenaNet employee pokes their head through the curtain to talk to us, my tone immediately becomes much more respectful and reasoned.

Which is sort of my point with this post. If we saw a human face on ArenaNet instead of a corporate fortress of silence that only occasionally delivers news in the form of fluffy marketing hype, I think the general tone of the player voices towards the development team would improve greatly. When we feel ignored and disenfranchised, well…that just breeds frustration and distrust.

Lord Kuru.3685:

dlonie.6547:

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

Did I miss it? Because there’s nothing in there that says people were lashing out at devs, artists, etc. in a personal manner. It says that the devs are disappointed they put in hard work creating maps, etc. only to have this thing spoil it.

Hmm, you’re right — that link doesn’t say anything about that, my mistake — I’ll edit it and remove the link.

I remember seeing somewhere over the last few days that some of the devs/artists had been receiving nasty PMs, etc, and I though it was in that article that I saw it. Apologies for my error.

ArenaNet has a major problem communicating with their players. They act like it’s impossible to have a good relationship with their customers and keep them informed about, well, pretty much anything concerning their product. They forbid their employees to discuss anything about the future of the game (outside of fluff marketing promos), to the point that even their own employees are fed up with it. They refuse to discuss even the simplest details with us or even mention if undocumented game changes are bugs or intentional.

And then we don’t trust them when they ask us to purchase their xpac blind (on faith, with many, many details left to reveal), and blow up at them as if they were some faceless corporate entity.

Hmm….think there might be some connection?

That said — I admit I’m one of the most negative people around on the forums, but I’m really saddened to hear that people have been lashing out at the devs, artists, etc personally.

Rage at the company, rage at the policies, rage at those who set them — but the people working in the trenches are not the ones who are creating this environment of distrust and frustration.

If they were allowed to, I have a feeling the people working on the game’s content would be very excited to talk with us about their work and maybe even be open to constructive criticism and suggestions. Perhaps if they were allowed to talk with us, we wouldn’t feel this giant disconnect between them and us.

This game had amazing potential and obviously a lot of talented, awesome people working on it. It’s a shame they refuse to embrace their community and treat them as if they valued their support.

It’s way past time to lift the obnoxious “don’t talk about anything not in live” policy. The community reaction to ArenaNet’s announcements has been consistently getting worse, and this trend is only going to continue as long as they insist on maintaining the enormous divide between developers and players.

Edited to remove incorrect link

Haha, I know right? I actually just put that in a comment on the Love and Lashes post. It is disgusting that people are attacking devs personally, thought. That’s completely uncalled for.

That’s why it’s so absolutely frustrating over here. ArenaNet acts like it’s impossible to have a good relationship with their customers and keep them informed about, well, anything concerning their product.

And then we don’t trust them when they ask us to purchase their xpac blind, and we blow up at them as if they were some faceless corporate entity.

Hmm….think there might be some connection?

I think we need to replace her poking stick with a whacking stick

If that doesn’t work, we can start adding nails.

They’ll probably fix it in a few months — sit tight!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/AP-reset-idea

An excellent solution to…wait, what was the problem again?

deSade.9437:

Can anyone help me rationalise the crazy price tag in the xpac?

Rationalize? Oh, no need to rationalize, it’s obviously a no-brainer — get it now. Sure, it seems a little high, but dude — this is ArenaNet we’re talking about. When have they ever let us down before? I’m sure it will be great. No reason to think otherwise.

None at all.

Rasimir, you should check out ESO if you get bored with GW2 at some point. I play the same way (level slow, take my time, soak up the lore/stories/world), and ESO is wonderful for that. I’ve put in a lot of time on that game, and I’m only level 28 because leveling is so much fun. Plus all of the Elder Scrolls lore….its great for people like us

Jerus, sounds like you’re on the same page as me.

frifox, I thought they permabanned your account in-game too? Or am I remembering it wrong…did that get reversed too? Either way, hilarious xD

spoj, that’s the smart thing to do here.

The way I see it, unless you really just like running in circles doing the same 5 events on repeat to farm gold for shinies while rejoicing that you aren’t playing a ‘grindy’ game…it’s not a compelling offer.

Windsagio.1340:

I don’t think there really are legitimate complaints, but you know how it is, you can’t just say “Well the problem is that gamers are entitled and only think of themselves, and often lack foresight.” It’s a little corrosive to the discourse.

I was starting to reply, but then realized Brazil already said everything that’s on my mind:

In particular, “it’s not about entitlement, it’s about looking at something and knowing you’re getting kittened.”

We don’t even know what’s coming with it or when it will be here, and on top of the last three years, many of us don’t have the faith in ArenaNet required to go along with this. See Jerus’s post for a prime example of why, and here’s the red post he was talking about. It’s been over a month since that post (and more than 2.5 months since the bug thread was posted), and they still haven’t even commented on whether they are going to change it or keep it. Disgusting.

And I’ve heard plenty of rationalizations, but saying the core game was required separately, pushing it with sales, and then including it with the expansion was a sketchy move, and certainly doesn’t help build the trust needed.

Yay, temp ban over. Turns out the mods throw fits and retroactively assign points to old infraction warnings when you suggest that they leave comments on closed threads. w00t.

Finally got around to watching Brazil’s video, he nailed it. I too, have already ordered FO4 — two pip boy editions, one for me and one for my wife — because it will be kittening worth it. So excited for that

And Protostar Academy is fun I’m actually taking a break from MMOs because FO4 has me so hyped that I’m replaying FO3 yet again. I’ll get back to WS after F2P, and still jump on ESO from time to time. But GW2?

Big nope. As you guys have said, the only compelling reason to get it is to keep playing with friends, but most of mine (all dungeoneers) are either long gone (because they’re smarter than me), or on their way out as we keep hearing more about HoT.

A few in my guild have apparently already bought the $100 version -_- How about you guys? It sounds like none not many of us plan to get it, at least not at this price, but what’s going on in your guilds/friendlists? Do you see many people thinking this is a good idea?

Just FYI, I’m not sure those dragon season notes are legit. The mods keep closing threads referencing them (granted, they aren’t saying why they’re closing them, but misinformation is my best guess).

Either way, I’m glad you guys are already digging into the numbers

Kordash.2197:

The nerf of IB 4 is still here right ? (didn’t look at it, so i’m really asking)

No mention of it. Hence my WTF.

It’s not so much that the icebow buffs are that meaningful, but it’s more a sign that the team is so disconnected from their own game’s PvE experience that its not even funny. It needs a nerf, but instead they buff it. WTF.

Long live the chain DF meta. Sigh.

Hopefully the buffs are to compensate for a nerf that they haven’t announced yet, but one would think that would come out with the rest of the balance changes…

do….d.d.d.do they even play their own game?

They buffed icebow…

…

…

…

.

Would it be possible to:

1) Leave an illusion to keep the boss in combat
2) Drop a portal before the terminal dies
3) Get ported out
4) Portal back in and finish Brie

I don’t mesmer much, so I’m not sure, but it seems like it should work.

At level 35, there are some rare (yellow) pieces around — I’d recommend picking up a few of them. You might be able to craft them if these are your first toons, or buy them off the TP if this is an alt. The best way IMO to get gear while leveling alts if from the dungeon token vendors — they sell rares for a modest number of tokens, but obviously this only helps if you’ve already run dungeons a lot on other toons.

If you guys are experienced with the dungeons already, a full party in DPS gear at level should be able to handle it. It might be an eye-opener if you’ve never done a lot of at-level dungeons before, but you should be able to get through it.

If the bulk of the party is not used to running dungeons, I’d definitely start with something tankier. It’s better to be too tanky while you’re first learning the encounters, especially if the entire party is new. By tanky, go with what Casmurro said — focus on power, vitality, and toughness. The rest of the non-dps stats are pretty much garbage for PvE.

My wife pointed that out to me immediately after I posted it xD

I’m not a small dog kind of guy :P

It’s an unfinished jumping puzzle:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Apolyon.6937:

Out of curiosity… the “secret” area at the end of Ascalonian Catacombs paths 1 and 3… is that a JP or is this something that was left there???

http://imageshack.us/a/img255/6805/gw013z.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img94/8276/gw015w.jpg

That one never got finished. I’m sure it will be at some point. That’s another map I worked on midpoint. Hand placed about a trillion bits of grass and detritus all along the walls, hahaha! But Aaron added the JP in the polish pass, and I guess they never got around to scripting it.

ROFL @ the bold.

Easy as pie with a d/p thief and a group that knows how the game works.

PUGs don’t do it because you still can’t rely on them to understand defiance.

Started a new playthrough of FO3 last night….super excited for the reveal tonight! \o/

So how ’bout them Yankees?

yiiiiiiiiiss

Sariel V.7024:

laokoko.7403:

If it isn’t about solos, why are people even complaining about arah.

Because bugs should be fixed. Big or small, breaking or no. Not every bug warrants the effort and cost, but ideally all SHOULD be fixed.

And for many of us, it’s not even about seeing the behavior reverted. We’d just like to see ArenaNet at least let us know if they intend to revert it or not.

This just shouldn’t take months….