Guild Wars 2

arkenstone.7896:

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

So I caved and bought one. Mostly because I’m weak-willed when it comes to limited-time, infinite use items like this. But now using it, I can see its niche. It won’t replace the higher tier salvage kits, but it fits in nicely for getting mats off white and blue drops. It may not be economical (and I still prefer to see it improve to higher level kit compatibility) but it’s a convenience when running out of bag slots while farming maps.

Exactly.

They will prob release something for the other kits in the future, I think it’s more a business decision to keep it at the basic level so they can maximize profits.

I’m not sure if it’s any different from before, but you really really notice it if you don’t have the ingame sound on and just have your own music in the background, I only notice it when I have to turn off the ingame sound, their sound engine is really dodgy when there is alot of people around doing a big event, drops/cuts out too much – few times I actually did say to myself “wow they really turned up the screen shake dial to insane!”

I doubt it’ll past 80, 80 itself is a pretty large number for a cap, especially in the first release – they’ll prob keep with their dynamic scaling system and if an expansion does come they’ll prob follow the original GW model.

aophts.9862:

There are no breaks on the…farm train.

sometimes it can be a Congo line! yesterday it was massive and everyone had their kites and ballons out as they went to the next zerg… was pretty funny!

If you deface the queen it’s treason and could be the electric chair for you! … .well at least in the UK it is

kristof.7182:

Big spoilers from GW1 (don’t read if you want to play):

Show Spoiler

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1. We had Charr invasion and The Searing. We’ve lost everything.
2. King Adelbern exiled his son – Prince Rurik.
3. Prince Rurik died.
4. Bloodstone, White Mantle, Mursaat – omg!
5. Vizier Khilbron aka’Lich, his trick, invasion and Titans!
6. Shiro Tagachi and the Affliction.
7. Togo died.
8. War in Elona.
9. The massacre of Sunspear.
10. Kormir lost her eyes…
11. Veresh Ossa unleashed the Vortex, which lead to the Realm of Torment.
12. Abaddon’s corruption.
13. Jora and blood washes blood.
14. Gwen!
15. Dwarves turned into the stone.

This was what drawn me into the GW universe, each story step felt engaging, wanting you to see more, what happens next, some stages were really epic and unexpected, like discovering who your enemies were, and the whole thing with Rurik, his exile and his fate.

I do hope the Living Story brings back some of what we witnessed before, I keep playing in the hopes that something does (and that there isn’t any other MMO worth playing right now), what worries me though , is when another title comes out and does have the things I’m looking for I may end up pulling away from the GW universe and that would make me sad.

There are many form of nameplates, there is one in the game though its more a character identifier really, I think the OP is referring to having a health bar above the character head, that’s what I would class as a nameplate. (Or at least a complete one anyway)

Though I doubt the games engine can handle such a function right now….

Noobkaka.5067:

I dont like it, its flashy and pretty for a day or two, but after that, I really just go “meh..” and Don’t bother with most of the achievements.
The Arena we have now is especially just a circle grind for zergs.

The concept is a great idea but it lacks depth.

Right now it’s more “Living Festival” than it is Living Story

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

easily soloable

Everyone has a different definition of this this term, something also tells me that you’ve went through the story on a heavy armor class character, the light armor class is such a different take on the game where you do die so much more often in the story.

The problem is not so much with the difficulty but more with ANET’s design where they like to overwhelm you with numbers, be it health %, damage % or sheer numbers – this has existed in the original GW too.

What also adds to the problem is that in this game you never ever really feel powerful, unlike traditional mmorpgs you can over level, and in each new zone/stage you visit you tend to more powerful than your foes – with the scaling (which makes you significantly more weaker if you over level and don’t wear that current level gear), you fall over much more often and frequent that you’d expect… especially when the NPC’s call you “hero” and given you their highest rank in the 3 factions….

Gloam Drifter.9158:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Psychol.5783:

I don’t rez them because I don’t want a competition waiting in the queue, you should blame designers with their bullkitten that you have to teleport to wp instead rez near arena.

Although not very ethical, is a very valid point.

You can’t design something that will make players look at other players as competition and expect all of them to help others get ahead of them.

You know what happens when you don’t res people because you don’t want them in the queue.. you die and then you are there laying on top of them.. really annoying when people do this to me.. if you had ressed me I could have ressed you and we all would live wonderful lives.. waiting a few seconds while I battle isn’t such a big deal.

Not really, probably alot of people have ressed before mutiple times during the initial stages of the event and eventually just stopped,I’m one of those people – It is very tiresome to continually res someone, when you res that person another pops out, its an endless cycle, most cases people don’t even ask you for a res and they just lay there expecting you to do it.

I res players generally when they’re in a downed state, if they’re out cold, that’s their problem.

there’s a difference between challenging and hard and I feel this content is more the latter, though I’m more specifically talking about the arena.
I don’t think this is controversial, it’s more the game’s engine lack the ability to cope with the demands of these innovations which is why there are more rage and fustration, things are constantly plagued by fps/ lag / restrictive cameras – can even say the culling too, my good the arena group events just show how much of an effect culling really has and the impact it creates, though the latter issues are more technical than creative.

Hard content is good but things just seem to be much more difficult because of the technical aspects of the game, oh and the lack of enemy cast bars!!!!

If anything I find the previous living story – the political one more controversial, politics have no place in a game world imo… (flame shields activate!)

eekzie.5640:

You get a heap of achievement points… that’s quite a big reward to me.

Achievement points is nothing special, they accumulate over time, I find more valuable a “personal” reward, and like the others posted above, a title is much more meaningful, especially since the content is made much more difficult by the mini game (and the game in general may I add) have an inherent lack of enemy cast bars, which to this day I still don’t understand the creative reason for not including them, a lot of guess work and anticipation which will be purely based on animation….

GJ to those that managed to do it.

I noticed this very exact thing, sitting around jumping zone to zone and starting to think- " why is the loading screen taking so long?! " something has definitely changed in the last patch that has caused this.

such a lack of clarity for this new daily achievement associated to the living story………

hmm this event sounds and looks in many ways similiar to the hunger games arena in catching fire… a bit of copyright infri…erm innovation? :P

Neko.9021:

Go for the +5 AR for 75 Relics.

What Neko said.

the other +5 stats aren’t worth it for the cost.

Whiztard.1728:

easy solution:
nerf crit damage

nah, increase boss hp by 500% should do the trick… whilst were there lets increase boss damage and add more spawns too. done!

/sarcasm.

i see no problem with the brute force way, a good offence is a good defence.

Namica.2951:

dronzer.8392:

Charr… Cat… who doesn’t like cats!?!

I can watch youtube cat videos all day long…

I know right! But man, the -only- armor I like for Charr is the Braham armor and the T3. Everything else just looks so… incredibly…. meeeehhhhhhhhh.

Norn though, just about everything looks fantastic.

Yep I agree with you, my charr has settled for the T3 armor, mainly because it’s armor sits correctly with the tail, where with others it just seems to clip it which is annoying.

Though honestly though I picked charr because I preferred the story from them during beta, enjoyed it much more than human which was my second choice, couldn’t stand norn story, that race doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

Charr… Cat… who doesn’t like cats!?!

I can watch youtube cat videos all day long…

DarksunG.9537:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fellow Evon supporters I know Kiel is ahead but while she has the numbers we have the determination, Join me this Sunday and lets buy, farm and steal every ticket we can and show once and for all that this do-gooder Kiel has no chance.

This aggression will not stand.

This message brought to you by Citizens of Tyira For a Better Tommorrow, Tommorrow.

The reason she’s ahead is that she’s human. You pit the most popular race against the least popular race. how is Evon gonna win?

promise you awesome and cool things and never deliver on them… luring you into a false sense of security……. like all the politicians in world currently

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Prophecies was just as bad on release, and I will continue to say it. Prophecies was such a mess of cliche and standard stuff it was the blandest of the four original Guild Wars releases.

Factions was predictable and almost boring sometimes trying to get to the part you knew was coming.

Nightfall dragged in the middle, but was really well fleshed out in between the mission segments.

Eye of the North was relatively short comparatively, despite having characters I liked almost the best out of the four sets. (Pyre Fierceshot, Jora, and Kahmu can stay. Everyone else, get back in line.)

Disagree with you completely.

Prophecies were excellent.
Factions was something completely different, felt new and fresh to the original, still just as excellent if not more so! it was my favourite chapter, the story with Shiro was really enticing, at least to me it was.
Nightfall was good, though the theme of this expansion wasn’t my thing.
Eye of the North was a sweet end to the original, returning to where it all started, the pacing of this felt a bit strange but still was good and enjoyed it.

The stories in GW1 has a better sense of scale to them, you’d slowly build to this final encounter and it would be always be something grand, didn’t get that feeling here…

All stories have cliches, in games, in movies and in real life too- you can’t get away from them, they worked well in GW1, at least more so than in this release.

Duke Nukem.6783:

i dont understand y so many nerds make this about that kinda stuff

abbadon or reactor? thats it

Kiel has been presented in the living story chapters, Evon hasn’t – players who care very little for fractals will vote Kiel purely for the above reason.

Nettle.9025:

Its extremely easy to cheese to win. Run out into the wilderness at the start, max your rations off the plants, then swim around in the water for 6-8 minutes where no one will find you and ghosts cant hurt you. You’ll usually outlast everyone.

Yep, seen this done a few times, and always see players run towards cliff edges, kittenes and just camp there, the first 2mins of a game is fun, you see alot of action, have to react but once the numbers dwindle it’s just a game of waiting for the ultimate camper to win.

yeah the wording is ……. i can’t think of a nice word here….

I don’t get ANET’s thinking sometimes, what is wrong with specifying the difficulty with the actual tier names, it’s like they want to confuse you? -.-’

Ayrilana.1396:

Tier 4 is essentially a DPS check.

I disagree with this completely, given the silly amount of vets in the encounter you can’t effectively deal with them all and take the plunders, prehaps a few here and there but as time dwindles down it starts to pile up.

I think it is more an encounter for choice and decision, knowing what to kill and what not to kill, this seems entirely more appropriate and given the tips that others have provided this seems to back this up more, killing the plunders is fine for all the classes it would seem, the problem lays with this silly obstacle course of getting to them.

To be honest, I would love to see a dev show us how to do this, and prehaps even one of their QA’s given the failure rate this so called fix has provided.

It just seems with ANET, that their solution to all their problems is quantity…. quantity over quality….

I’m pretty frustrated with this, and liked many others have tried with various alts who are decently geared and it seems it’s going to be sheer luck over skill in getting this.

is there a valid function or purpose for this? i’m all in for seeing what loot i obtain but when i’m mass opening bags or getting the reward why does the box have to cover the exit instance button? I noticed this during the personal story a few times though it didn’t bother me that much but it has become quite a nuisance during the end of the mini games.

please can this button be moved elsewhere and not sit directly on top of the loot window?

Vewen.8016:

After I logged in, everyone was cramped around the Evon support box. There were only 2 people at the Kiel support box. Yes, real even. You should just start working on the reactor fractal after Abaddon one, then at least the people who had their hopes up for Kiel shouldn’t completely feel like utter fooled tools.

Ha! I had a similiar thing when I got to the baskets, I want to vote Kiel but Abbadon fractal to me is far more interesting than the reactor, as a trend with politics in game and in real world, people flock to those that yield the most promising and interesting incentives, its definitely favoured towards Evon, the rewards are far out stripping Kiel’s.

I’d be surprised if Kiel did win overall and probably …ahem…fixed….ahem cough…. if she did…

Chopps.5047:

Really, ANET is making you work together. Working together is hard, I know. :p

It’s a silly mechanic full stop, for melee players it’s understandable they need to be there up close and personal, but for range players… forcing them to be in close proximity… what so that the harpies have a higher percentage chance to blast you and your entire team off the platform….

range players have one advantage, being ranged yet they can’t utilise that function in this particular fractal…. bad design imo!

zerospin.8604:

If you crossed the finishing line, the game should recognize it and stop bugging you with the kickout message. It’s pointless and extremely annoying.

definately agree!
it also makes me in games where i do win on a regular basis, it makes not want to leave because of the time it’ll take to start a new race to let others in the group have a chance at winning without me hogging over them…

also the game needs to not join players mid race when you start new , especially with the time to wait for a new one to start…. i don’t really understand the logic this at all.
surely it’s not that hard to write the code so that that any games in progress , no players may join, new players get queued to join the start…

the mini game is great, has it’s own issues and all but fun.. just some simple logic that doesn’t seem to be applied whether it was down to time or technological limitations.. who knows.

Gabby.3205:

We should do whatever we find fun.
I like letting people win, I don’t mind, really, but I don’t think people should be FORCED to let other people win or bullied if they don’t.
So many topics about this issue already… Can we just try to be nice to each other for once?
If someone is winning all the time and you think you can’t beat them, leave the race and join another one instead of being mean to the winner.
If you are winning all the time and people are being mean to you for that, report them, leave the race and join another one instead of replying harshly and giving them reasons to report you too.

I do something similar, though I try not to win these days since I’ve got the achievement, if I do find myself first I tend to let the person behind me run past the finish line first for their achievement.

At the end of the day, because of the achievement objectives associated with the content and the recent reward changes, you’re going to get a conflict of interest and there is no sure way to deal with it, why should you leave when it’s the perfect setup for you to farm? why should others leave because the winner is being “selfish” , they all have their right to be there and to do what they’re doing.

It might be more prudent to find common ground in someway, for example throw the match every now and again so someone else can come first or make an arrangement with an aggressor saying if he keeps second you’ll let him finish first.

Of course you don’t have to do that and just continue doing what you’re doing, you aren’t doing anything wrong per say.

digiowl.9620:

Twitch gamers in general seems to be favored with this one, as two thirds of the achievements demand manual dexterity and quick reflexes.

agreed, though I’m not a twitch gamer, I do agree with what you said, bit more skill and awareness involved in some of the achievements.

I can see why some people find these achievements too grindy, that’s probably because you’re trying to cram it all in, in a single session – spread your activities out over the week and just enjoy it a bit more, look at the art and environment that artists spent so long to develop.

The Sprint is without a doubt one of the best mini games I’ve played in this game.

The only thing I do disagree with is the way point cost as through trial and error you end up falling a lot getting to those crystals….

Wolfheart.1938:

You missed a very short istanced mission in LA where captain Magnus tells Kiel about the election.

Nice summary but could use a little more depth :P

Exactly.

G E O, I’ve replied to this in your other post , but to summarise it here, you also need to mention the antagonists and the roles they play.

g e o.2589:

Wait wait wait, you mean no story? Why do you think this is called living world, because ships come and go? While you’ve been too busy doing new content just for drops, or for fun, whole story slipped beside you. .

A lot of players fit into this category, the story telling needed a bit more improvement during the living story launch, Flame and Frost was more of less easy to follow but Southsun wasn’t, infact there has been threads popped up discussing this, Dragon Bash into the Inspector became more clearer esp since it is the first chapter to make use of visual aids to tell the story, something that should have been present in earlier chapters.

g e o.2589:

Let me make this clear. After we destroyed molten Alliance refugees were sent to Consortium to work for living. Lion’s Arch council was sceptic about Consortium so they sent Ellen Kiel to investigate. After showing herself in that she was invited to effigy ceremony where murder happened. She solved the crime with help of mysterious Marjory Delaqua. After she found about aetherblades she was sent to deeply investigate their facility. When she caught Mai Trin she was set as a candidate at council, so was Evon, owner of TP and rich charr. Now they are showing people who is better while waiting for elections that will occur in next release.

That isn’t truly “clear”, more a synopsis of the events so far , you failed to mention the antagonist in any of these steps and why the role they had, most can’t adequately explain the events without using google as they’ve been unable to follow it, that’s because story telling is still being improved and we’ve noticed that with each new living story chapter it’s getting better.

heart was a lame power! I remember watching this show and everytime I thought how useless is heart! that’s probably why it was the last power to be called when he summoned captain planet!!

CAPTAINN PLANEETT! he’s the hero!! gonna take pollution down to zero!!
good times…

yeah I agree, bit dodgy in places but reminded me of a Mario kart style race when I first got in and saw the power ups, though didn’t have time stop and read what they did lol!

as a good friend of mine says, this is “AMAZEBALLS!” …. probably too much empahasis on caps here but whatever!

Gandara EU open

shouldn’t this be in the tech support forum? o.O

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

I mostly play alone. I have a guild, but it’s made up of real-life friends, and for the past few months we just haven’t been on at the same time that often. Sometimes I wish I was in a more active guild, but it’s also kind of nice to just be able to pick up and play when I have a random chunk of time and not have to worry about whether my availability fits with anyone else’s plans or needs.

Same.

guild is mostly dead even though there is usually 15-20pple online during peak, just not a lot of motivation to really do anything as a team, the occasional dungeon runs go but it seems limited primarily to an “inner circle”.

I guest on another guild for the guild missions as there is no organisation in my current one despite them having them all unlocked, GW2LFG for the dungeons, join a guilds public vent in WvW and follow their commander, I’m pretty much set……

SiegHawk.7981:

Is personal story really that hard for thief? I played thief as my 2nd character and I’ve solo all of my personal story past claw island. I don’t know how hard it is for ele, mesmer, or necro, but for a thief both mission for claw island were really easy for me using a thief. he clearing the ccourtyard part was simple and easy with thief, I use duel dagger to do it. Skill 4 for duel dagger their foes the trick really well when fighting mobs. In my opinion the personal story isn’t hard for me, am able to solo them with me thief with only dying twice at max, which is rarely. =P

Elementalist is a rough experience for the personal story, at least for me, I’ve yet to finish it – lack of motivation as it’s just frustrating going into the personal story knowing that I’m going to die at least once due to the encounter mechanics, the NPC’s are mostly useless and when they die you get what seems like an entire army of mobs jumping you – the Mesmer is has a similar issue until you hit mid 40-50’s when you can start to unlock the classes true potential, until then it’s a struggle.

the OP is completely right, there isn’t just one quest that is causing the issue, it feels like the story quests are built on a generic difficulty which is all fine, but the problem lays with that not all classes are the same in terms of damage and durability, especially with the zone downscale that makes any attempts to over level completely redundant.

I’d wager elementalist getting the most effective use out of it, not really sure for any other classes, even the guardian as some stated wouldn’t maximise the use out of the all stats combo.

Like Farzo said, you gear for certain celestial pieces, not really all in – though it would be interesting to see how builds will play out if any emerge that consider using a lot more pieces of this combo.

Nurgle.6597:

People might come back if the added some PERMANENT content, i didn’t play in months, this time limited stuff is crap it’s like they’re saying “play when WE want you to play or kitten off”

Exactly! expansions is the best way to bring players back, the vast majority do not come back for patch content updates, look at the history of expansion releases and the influx of players that is associated with it.

The thing with small content updates, such as the living story is that you have a very very small window to entice returning players, and if you fail at that then that’s it, those players are very unlikely to return again, expansions give a much deeper exposure and in my view produce a much fruitful return in the long run.

Whilst I like their honesty with the expansion ordeal, I still think I’d prefer not to have heard it, I’m one of the players who are on the fence with the Living Story concept and I still believe it doesn’t really work, and their PR about comparing it to a “expansions worth of content” is…. well let’s just it’s not really convincing, cause by that definition one may have considered each of WoW’s major patch updates to be a new expansion and then some.

I’ve already addressed this in another thread but still to contribute, with each team staggering their releases, I worry that the experiences, feedback and understanding of what works and won’t work during a release won’t make it into their other teams, so it’ll feel like the improvement of this concept will be lagging behind with each new release as it’ll be too late to take feedback from current releases of other teams (especially those closer to release) into account before pushing forward.

It feels like they’re trying to run before they can walk.

Dante.1508:

Fun only lasts while players are actually doing something fun, its not very engaging, this living story episodic content honestly isn’t giving most players something to do past a couple of hours tedium..

Exactly this, to me there still seems that the living story still feels very disconnected from the game world, I don’t know what it is but it just doesn’t seem to flow or is engaging.

Right now I don’t feel this whole living story concept is polished enough for their scheduled timetable, with each team working “in the past” so they’re not always going to be able to take into account the current feedback and adapt it in time for their new releases, what they need to do is take the feedback of the current release, improve it for their next and work on it until a solid foundation is built.

As it stands it feels like it’s quantity over quality.

Chase.8415:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ahh yes, an MMO finally lives up to the challenge of producing content faster than players can consume it, and someone still manages to complain…

This is what happened with World of Warcraft according to the stock reports when players were cancelling their subscription.

There is a point where a game can change so quickly that you feel your effort Is worthless because you’ll know you will never achieve it.

However, I very much doubt GW2 will run into this problem.

I agree with you to a certain extent, regular releases will definitely cater to the current audience but can be a great deterrence to returning players, they get overwhelmed by new information and for some may end up being too much trouble than it’s worth to catch up.

The advertising is actually a little misleading – the release is not actually every “2 weeks” it’s more like the “new content” spans the course of a month, except the release content is “gated” so you don’t see everything all at once, take past examples of how subsequent releases has been within the same “story” before branching off to something different.

The one thing that I find really quite annoying about the living story is that it only really seems to affect a small portion of the world… I mean within the starter zones and Lions Arch…. I get the reasons why but it just seems like the rest of the world is insignificant and I’m not sure if it’s only me but at times it’s starting to feel very repetitive…. they’ll need to innovate else this is just going to be a dead end.

Draknar.5748:

Don’t underestimate the power of the PUG. Even fantastic players need to PUG. I’ve had amazing PUG groups. This dungeon is no different. First PUG we got through all up to boss fight before Kiel bugged and we had to call it.

I wouldn’t PUG with anyone under level 80, personally, for this dungeon. Having good gear makes a difference. But I would 100% PUG it again and again. I PUG FoTM as well for levels up to 30 and rarely have an issue.

I can never say that there isn’t a chance that you will get a bad PUG, but don’t discount it based on a few bad experiences.

This.

I did it with a PuG as my guild is practically dead (aside from this inner circle of friends), was a good experience for this dungeon- there will always be the off chance of a bad experience but don’t let that deter you.

The dungeon itself… it’s worth a look especially as it’s limited content, plus the artists probably spent a lot of time on it so worth visiting just to see their work.

wookiee.4631:

dronzer.8392:

Ring of fire would be good to see, Crystal desert sounds like it’ll be a rainforest.. seen enough of that.

I heard the Crystal Desert was a savannah now. I wish we had an actual desert environment, I’m not sure Orr counts.

EDIT: I know what you mean about the Rainforests. Some more environment variety would really spice up the game world.

Yeah I would definitely love to see a desert, getting there when doing the trials of ascension in GW1 was among my favourite part of the story, definitely loved how that area felt back then.

panzer.6034:

I’m not familiar wiht the lore, but is the Crystal Desert supposed to a rainforest instead of a, ya know, desert?

Maybe rainforest was a bit of an overstatement but yeah it’s no longer a desert in the lore, I remember something about a river being diverted and it changed the landscape, have to google it or maybe a lore master can chip in.

It’s why I want to see Cantha, it was so radically different to the original GW, the environments , the feel and everything about it felt really nice.

Ronah.2869:

I think 60% of the players are just casual gamer. They hit on then with “non-doable” content, with RNG boxes and Overpriced items in TP
It is enough we have Elitists in the game, now we see them in A-Net developers too
Sad but true

I think it’s okay to have them, but I’d rather they remove them from the achievement list when its over, so those that didn’t bother with it don’t have to see empty bars all the time – keeps it clean.

for those that did complete it, have the technology auto move the achievement to a new tab.. perhaps named “legacy” or something like that, far out of the way.

Keirion.9105:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

BotFW… Battle of the Four Winds? O_o

I’m thinking Beer of the Five Warriors… bar brawl finally arrives!

I bet more than half the community haven’t even participated in keg brawl nor knew of its existence… I didn’t know about it until very recently lol and still don’t even know where to go to participate in it!

wookiee.4631:

NomisGondin.4302:

Wow, so much want for a Canthan expansion to the game. While i would like to eventually return to Cantha; First i want to return to other areas that we have yet to get in game. IE: Ring of Fire, Southern Shiverpeaks, more Maguuma, and Crystal Desert.

I agree. I’d rather explore the area immediately around the main game world than go off to a faraway continent first.

Ring of fire would be good to see, Crystal desert sounds like it’ll be a rainforest.. seen enough of that.

Cantha was great, I’d buy a business class ticket to that place in a second.