Guild Wars 2

Xenon.4537:

glehmann.9586:

(btw, it’s “My life for Aiur!” that Protoss zealots say)

I know. I was making a joke that’s rather common among Starcraft fans. Nothing against starcraft, or zealots, but I feel it’s an unoriginal name for this spec and doesn’t quite fit the bow theme.

I’m so out of touch with the jokes the hip Star Craft kids are making these days…

I don’t have a problem with Zealot as a Guardian elite spec name, but it definitely doesn’t sound any more original than Dragonhunter to me. And I agree that it doesn’t sound like something that fits a longbow and traps.

I have to disagree with you, Jaken.

They are not tied to a particular race, philosophy, or group of gods but rather to a larger concept of proactive defense, of taking the fight to a foe and protecting those you fight alongside while appealing equally to humanity’s defensive nature and the charr’s desire to rule the battlefield.
…
The Guardian also doesn’t feel particularly religious, but he does feel spiritual. What I mean by that is that the Guardian embodies certain ideals without ascribing to any one faith in particular, which is also a bit different than your typical Paladin archetype.

Quotes taken from this blog post.

Naming a Guardian elite spec after a specific religion’s ideas seems rather strongly counter to the class’ design. Guardian’s power isn’t divine, it comes from their own passion for defending their allies.

I like Dragonhunter, even if it’s not the most inspired-sounding name.

It makes perfect sense to me that Guardians, with all their focus on protection, would specialize in protecting people from the biggest threat known to Tyria. And “Dragonhunter” rolls off the tongue better than “Guardians-that-specialize-in-defense-against-dragons” does. My only real issue is that Dragonhunters’ abilities don’t seem particularly focused on dragons, at least from what I’ve seen.

(btw, it’s “My life for Aiur!” that Protoss zealots say)

RabbitUp.8294:

Leonhardt.8164:

RabbitUp.8294:

Thaddeus.4891:

RabbitUp.8294:

At least it’s not another instance of abusing “mancer”. Does anyone involved in fantasy even know what the word means..

It come from the greek manteía which mean divination. A mancer is a practitioner of a specific type of divination.

Exactly. So what do the Pyromancer, Hydromancer, Aeromancer, Geomancer, Necromancer and Chronomancer in GW2 have anything to do with prediciting the future?

It’s just a cheesy word that sounds cool and keeps being misused in fantasy settings.

Divination – the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means.
notice the second part of the definition to DISCOVER HIDDEN KNOWLEGE by occult or SUPERNATURAL means, idiot, it doesnt just mean to predict the future, which btw is very suitable for chronomancy which is specifically about TIME and SPACE, what do magic wielders strive for? to gain as much knowledge about their magic as possible, throgh various ways, it’s perfect for fantasy game, it’s perfect to use to describe different kinds of people that pursuit knowledge for what the wielder would consider ‘’divine power’’
next time look up the word so you wouldnt sound like such an idiot lmfao

You are offensive for no reason.

“-Manteia”/“-mancy” has nothing to do with hidden knowledge, it means “prediction”.

The root is ancient Greek, it doesn’t directly translate to what your dictionary of choice has as the definition of “divination” which is a different, albeit similar, word.

Keep in mind all those practices existed in real life, people studied the ripples of bodies of water to predict the future and called it hydromancy. It’s now used only because it sounds cool, not because it accurately describes what a water Elementalist does in-game.

I wouldn’t call this a misuse of -mancy, it’s just the suffix’s meaning changing, like all words do. I suspect it traces back to necromancy. Necromancy meant summoning the dead so their spirits could tell you about the future, but modern fantasy has latched on to the “summoning the dead” part and largely ignored the “learning about the future” part. This made necromancy a word meaning “magic relating to death” and thus in modern fantasy -mancy’s meaning became “magic relating to [the word it’s attached to]”.

Essentially, the -mancy suffix’s definition in modern usage has broadened from divination to any supernatural manipulation. It’s nothing to fret over, and is frankly a more minor shift in meaning than some words like “awful” have gone through.

That’s… a pretty tenuous connection. I’m with RabbitUp on this matter.

Wing Leap is an aoe heal that you can trait for damage with an animation where you sprout wings from your back and is a class mechanic you always have access to, vs. the great sword charge that is purely an attack with an animation where a large, ethereal bird-of-prey appears above you and is only found on one of many weapons a ranger might be wielding.

You might as well say Dragonhunter is a guardian/thief combo at that point, because they both use traps, can use a bow, and Wing Leap is similar to the dagger ability Heartseeker.

Existing class design is clearly inspiring the elite specs, but they seem a far cry from literal dual-class combos of existing classes.

…Maybe it’s just because I don’t play a Ranger, but what about Rangers is comparable to Wing Leap?

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

About the new kit skins… I don’t mind at all how the engineers hold the bomb kit, but the skin…
It should look like the skill images. It’s looks a bit more like a cartoon bomb, but it’s also easily identifiable.

I admit, I’d probably use the bomb kit a lot more if I could look like a cartoon villain running around placing black, round bombs with a lit fuse.

The only reason to limit the drop to one-per-person is psychology. People will feel better if they don’t see someone with six portals, even though on the backend the system tried to give that person six portals but the last 5 times it hit the beta account flag and got rid of the portal instead.

Honestly, I think limiting it to one portal per player account is a good idea, but only because it would stop people from whinging about players getting multiple portals.

It would also require them to hire two voice actors to do all of the new race’s dialog for the entire Personal Story, not just the race-specific stuff.

So… you’re upset about having to do PVE content in order to get access to a PVE-centric beta?

Regarding the Grenades: Phil Ken Sebben’s reaction

There are still a few kit related issues I’d love to see dealt with (even without hobosacks, most of the kits don’t look particularly impressive compared to all the awesome level 80 gear, they still hide your legendary weapons and presumably legendary weapon effects), but I’m pretty kitten happy that I’ll be able to see my spinal blades as I hose my enemies with flames.

If they dedicated resources to capes without first dealing with engineers’ hobosack issues, I think the engineers in this game would riot.

I think the “new, groundbreaking” part is the fact that there will be PC voice acting in the open world in addition to story instances. Plus, it sounds like they’re making the voice acting race-specific, which is also new if they’re doing it in story instances; once you got past the racial part of the Personal Story, every race’s dialog was the same.

Most of the stuff they mentioned about the voice acting was, in fact, new, and not something we had before that they took out.

In contrast to the vast majority of responses, I would absolutely love this. It would be fantastic if my thief could actually turn to a life of crime, and I would have a blast trying to evade players interested in upholding the law.

I don’t think it’s ever going to happen in GW2, though.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Now, if they bring back the nice face-to-face cutscenes we had in the original personal story, we would be back at the beginning, which – to be totally honest – would be a big step forward compared to the LS.

Bluh, I wholeheartedly disagree. I thought the face-to-face cutscenes were really jarring and ruined immersion. I don’t think the LS text dialog is any better for immersion, but at least the dialog flows better, so I consider overall a small step forward.

I’m actually pretty excited about the announcement of PC voice acting returning, and share the OP’s surprise that more people aren’t talking about it.

I love my spinal blades back, and I recently-ish finished my first legendary, The Predator. And I hardly ever get to see either of them…

Yeah, I think they said something about considering putting the kit on the players’ hips, essentially sticking it in one of the 1-handed holstered weapon positions.

That would at least fix the issue with hiding back items, though it would do nothing about the fact that kits don’t match most armor dye jobs and look like low-level gear even if you’re wearing a full set of magitech armor.

nekretaal.6485:

I wonder what happens now when you gain a level but ont have a mastery track, now that skill points from leveling are gone.

I’m guessing that you simply don’t gain levels after you hit 80 in HoT. If you choose a mastery track, you can start getting XP towards the next tier, but it’s going to have its own XP requirements that are different from your levels (i.e. the amount of XP required to fill a mastery track is probably entirely independent of the XP required to gain a level right now).

If you’re 80 and kill a monster or complete an event without a mastery track chosen, I would assume the XP is simply lost.

CETheLucid.3964:

Yes, a bit like leveling up something in WvW. You still gain points on leveling.

What makes it different is that at a certain point your leveling bar will count to that end once you unlock the mastery.

That, and I’m hoping it’s not exactly like WvW, so that all the things can be realistically obtainable.

It almost certainly won’t be exactly like WvW, because you will not gain points on leveling. From what I understand, leveling will just increase your skill in the mastery you are actively training. So, if you are training gliding, then leveling will increase your skill at gliding, it will not give you more mastery points.

It’s kind of the reverse of WvW, really. In WvW you level up to gain points to spend to increase your skill in various WvW abilities. With masteries, you spend points to gain the ability to level up in that mastery. You gain mastery points by doing other activities and exploring, not by leveling.

Team up? Discussing strategies? Did I miss something? All I see is Gnashblade blackmailing Hero-Tron into spying on the Captain’s Council for him. And discussing this openly in front of Kiel and Magnus, which seemed a little odd…

I’ve had 2 gloves, 2 boots, and 1 shoulders box drop all in the last few days.

Really, getting 4 or 5 boxes of the same armor in a row isn’t that unlikely, and odds are a few players would have that happen. It’s just bad luck, not a bug.

I got my first precursor today. I had to seriously consider whether I wanted to go ahead and start working on The Predator for my engineer, which is my main character, or just go with something for my Thief alt since then I’d at least get to actually use the dang thing.

I decided to go ahead and start working on The Predator, but it makes me sad to know that most of the time it will be hidden by a flamethrower kit.

The back item doesn’t clip with my hobosack when I use skills anymore, but I did get the clipping to happen again. I’m not 100% sure how I managed it, but I think it happened when I had my flamethrower kit equipped and refunded and respent my trait points. I haven’t bothered to experiment to see if this is reproducible, though.

Add me to the list.

I completed the first back item a week ago. Kept the Cultivated Seed in my character’s inventory. I noticed that I had a Pet Seed instead after I made the Resonated Chaos Orb, Germinated Foxfire Cluster, and Pile of Crackling Ley Line Dust, though it may well have been swapped before that.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I can’t think of any obvious words to use, but if they want to introduce a little bit of personalisation they could give different names for ferocity/charm/dignity. Those are supposed to affect how others see you, so it makes sense for them to refer to you differently based on your highest rated option (and the mechanic is already there). It’s only three options as well, so not too much dialogue to record.

I would love something like that. I really wish they would do more with that system.

Thalador.4218:

Those poor souls cursed by Adelbern’s mindless hatred suffered enough. To even top their torment by making a freaking Elder Dragon consume them for snacks is just REVOLTINGLY DISGUSTING.

. . .

But what you suggest goes beyond the definition of depravity. I’d hazard the guess that the writers are psychopaths if they pull this off.

Am I just really jaded? Because this doesn’t seem remotely depraved to me. For all we know, an elder dragon consuming a ghost’s magic could even free the ghost’s soul to continue on to the mists. And even if it doesn’t, magic ghosts getting eaten by an elder dragon after centuries of torment is positively tame compared to other stories I’ve read.

Anyway, regardless, you should knock it off with the armchair psychology. If writing stories you consider “depraved” is what makes one a psychopath, then a huge swath of the Earth’s population probably qualifies; especially given how low you seem to set the bar for “depravity”.

As it stands, the similarities are that in both games you save a colleague and are given a vision about the bad guys as a result. The nature of the visions are completely different.

If instead of Omadd’s machine we interacted with some kind of magical Jotun beacon that gave us a vision that revealed the existence of the dragons where they were previously just myths, you might be on to something. Instead, we get a machine built by a contemporary Asura that gives us a vision of how the world works, which includes the bad guys in a significant role.

As it stands, I think the dragons compare more favorably to the real-world’s extinction events than to Mass Effect’s synthetic reapers, given how often they’re comparing the dragons to forces of nature and treating them as inextricable parts of the world. Really, the only favorable comparisons between the two are their devastating effects and cyclical appearances.

Seriously, we might as well start complaining that Guild Wars 2 is ripping off all the stories that go with a “hero’s journey” narrative.

What, 9000?! There’s no way that could be right!

Snowmoon.1758:

I think it would be very mature of Anet to introduce a storyline where the mother has to learn to accept that her daughter is gay.

I mean, so many videogames proclaim to include gay characters just for the sake of including them, but none have really tried to tackle the real world issues of conservative parents vs their gay children, and the sometimes very real anguish that develops. Not even Bioware has the balls to do this.

Will anet tackle this issue via a good “Acceptance” storyline?
Probably not, but it would be very gutsy of them to try.

You should check out Gone Home, it’s entire story revolves around that.

That doesn’t look like scales to me at all, it looks more like rippling magical energy, or maybe vines. People keep talking about it being an eye, but aside from it being a large orb it doesn’t look anything like an eye to me.

I would be endlessly amused if they fixed hobosacks and called them hobosacks in their patch notes.

Ulyssean.1709:

Tamias.7059:

There was no alliance between centaurs and Kournans, only slavery. In fact, this was the entire plotline between centaurs and Kournans. So it is impossible to allude to it without talking about the slavery aspect.

While there have been problems communicating what is exposition and what is NPC perspectives in the past, this is a clear-cut example of the latter. Why would Varesh admit to slavery herself?

Ulyssean.1709:

Belzebu.3912:

Those are the words of Ossa, not the developers.

Bobby Stein said last week that the words of the developers are ‘malleable’ ie ‘subject to change’ ie ‘unreliable’.

This is a barefaced lie.

Any sources of lore not in the game Guild Wars 2 are ‘malleable’. This includes the words of the developers in their interviews, the short stories, the novels and even the game Guild Wars itself. Just saying it is a lie does not make it so, unfortunately for us.

Did you continue to follow that thread, or did you just see Bobby Stein’s one comment? Because they added clarification later that pretty much invalidates most of what you just said.

Yes, I was referring to humans as the ape race. Complaining about Kodan being around polar bears is about as silly as complaining about humans existing in a world with chimps. They have about as much in common with polar bears as we do with various other apes.

I went to the Greyhoof Camp waypoint last night.

Seraph: Help! We need your help!
Me: Yes, I can see that! There’s a huge vine grappling with the Asuran waypoint here!
Seraph: What? No! There are centaurs making trouble, we need you to deal with them!

Eggman.1405:

• It seems silly to have a polar bear race in the same game as polar bear animals (and on the same map even).

Completely ridiculous! Why, that’d be like having an ape race in the same game as ape animals!

I hope this bit of thread necromancy will be forgiven.

Is the information regarding display name changes Gaile posted at the front page of this thread still valid?

I ask because I foolishly used my first initial and full last name as my display name. After reading Gaile’s post, I figured that would count as using your real name and tried contacting support to get it changed. However, they simply told me that they couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t tell me why use of my last name doesn’t qualify when I asked for clarification. I don’t want to keep bugging busy support people when all I want is clarification, so I figured I’d ask here.

Are display name changes no longer done for any reason, including use of one’s real name, and this thread’s information is now out of date? Or does my first-initial-with-last-name display name not count as using my “real name” and thus I can’t get it changed?

Xar.6185:

So all lore is malleable. It can and will change to suit the needs / desires of the moment regardless of what has come before.

Welcome to all fiction ever.

I’m utterly flabbergasted that people are reacting as though this wasn’t already an assumption. Frankly, I’m surprised Bobby Stein was willing to imply that in-game lore isn’t malleable. Lore will change to suit the needs of the story in pretty much any piece of fiction out there, but especially with something as broad as game worlds.

Hopefully, any lore that’s revealed in the official content (games, books, etc.) that has to change will be handled in-universe in a way that makes sense and isn’t simply a retcon (e.g. humans’ perspective in GW1 was incorrect). If it’s something you get in an interview, you’re pretty much getting a peak at the lore’s basic outline, the rough draft. I’m honestly impressed that the lore from interviews appears to have changed so little thus far.

Is this the first time some of you have engaged with fictional lore? Because from tabletop wargames to pen’n’paper RPGs to fiction novel series, Bobby Stein’s comment is exactly what I’d expect to see.

The Mysterious Figure may have been a placeholder while artists worked on his final design, given that players weren’t supposed to discover him yet.

I found a youtube review of the update that clearly shows no vine at the first WP on day 1. Here’s a screenshot from it.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Right now, I do not know the name of a single NPC at Dry Top, do you?
This game misses immersion. A lot.

Amoxtli
Nochtli
Riot Alice
Serene
Lucent (who has a former name he gave up when he became a Zephyrite, though I can’t recall what it was now).
Haze
Gigor

I can’t remember the name of a single renown heart NPC, though. Renown hearts felt like a mechanic to encourage players to do everything, but Dry Top feels much more organic and natural to me. I feel much more immersed exploring Dry Top and looking for events to help with than I do running around starting zones going from renown heart to renown heart.

Also, I really didn’t like the 1-on-1 voiced dialog sections. It was jarring to go from a standard 3rd-person perspective to a sudden 1-on-1 conversation with a painted backdrop. I would love for my character to be voice acted again, but I would want it to happen in-game, or in a true cutscene, not with those unnatural backdropped perspectives.

Did the Infinity Ball storyline actually say that the alternate universe PC created the steam creatures? Is it possible the alternate universe PC just took control of them?

The timing on the jumps to avoid the big AOEs gets faster with each slam. The first one, you probably want to wait a good half second before jumping (you’ll see her charging up her slam, which is a better visual indicator of when to jump than the circle if there aren’t too many players blocking your view). The second time, you might want to wait a quarter second. The third time (and fourth if she’s below 50% health), you want to jump the moment you see the red circle appear. If you accidentally jump too early on the first couple of slams you can sometimes save yourself by immediately jumping again when you land.

Also keep in mind that she always starts firing her blow gun facing to the north-east, and then spins in a circle firing either counter-clockwise when she’s above 50% health, or clockwise if she’s below 50%, and she will switch directions mid-attack if she drops below the threshold during it.

Alternatively, get onto a Tier 4 map. There’s usually enough players fighting her that she goes down before she gets to do the big slams, and then it’s just a matter of staying behind her other telegraphed attacks.

I like it. Simple, but still sounds like a Sylvari name. 8/10

My thief is Triasch. I will admit to ripping it straight out of BattleTech, from Clan Steel Viper’s Triasch Keshik.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Dabuddah.4298:

Note, they still can do photosynthesis since that’s what all plants do and that’s where the Sylvari get their energy, but the nutrients are given to them from the consumed foods.

To do photosynthesis, a plant needs chlorophyll, a green pigment. Thus, only green Sylvari could do photosynthesis.

That’s not entirely true, there are photosynthetic pigments besides chlorophyll. Plants on Earth use chlorophyll because they get enough energy out of red and blue light that wasting the green light by reflecting it doesn’t hinder them. But there’s no reason a plant couldn’t use other pigments for photosynthesis, especially when it’s a magical plant person that gets the vast majority of its energy from food where the color used for photosynthesis is unrestricted by both evolutionary history and a need for light absorption efficiency.

Edit: Also, what Zaxares said applies as well.

What happens when you wear other face-covering masks, like some of the medium-armor helms? I assume they hide your beard? I’m guessing they forgot to make the scarf and mantle hide the beard. I don’t know that I’d call it a bug, but it does seem like an oversight.

Pretty sure Khisanth is right. It’s the top rock you need to stay on, if you fall down to the second level with the air crystal you have failed the achievement.

I finally succeeded after getting incredibly lucky. Using jumps, I’d managed to avoid all her slams. Then I finally mis-time it and she hits me, but she gets defeated as I’m sailing through the air off of the platform, and I got the achievement just before I hit the ground. The timing on that was perfect!

I haven’t found any aspect crystals that take less than 15 seconds to respawn. And when I try collecting multiple crystals, I can’t get the timer above 30 seconds; if I collect a crystal while I have more than 15 seconds on the timer, the timer doesn’t change.

Has anyone else noticed the Asura waypoints in Dry Top flickering occasionally, as though they’re losing power or being disrupted? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it both during normal weather and the sandstorms, so it doesn’t seem like it’s weather-related.

Haaznahnuff.1907:

Names and titles

1. The Overlord
   - Who is the Overlord? / what is an overlord? A rank, the head of all the Harathi army?
   - Is he the Harathi Overlord to be killed in the nearby group event?
2. The Earthlord
   A centaur I guess…
   - Could you provide an alternate name ’the lord of the land(s)“?”of the dust"?
   - Is this a rank?

Overlord sounds like a rank or title indicating someone who leads at least the Harathi in the local area (i.e. western and maybe central Kessex Hills). The only Overlord in the area I’m aware of is the one you kill for the group event. The Harathi never seemed especially organized to me, so I doubt they have an overlord that leads the entirety of the Harathi.

Earthlord might be a rank, though it probably only applies to centaurs with elemental ability. It also might simply be a title for any centaur elementalist skilled in manipulating the element of earth (as anyone who can command earth could be considered a lord of earth). Whether it’s a title or rank is somewhat ambiguous in English. If you’re looking for alternate translations you might look at what earth elementals were translated to. Off-hand my first thought for alternative names would be “lord of stone” or “lord of rock.”

Manuhell.2759:

Zaviel.1245:

Manuhell.2759:

If it wasn’t intended, they would have changed it

They are. It was never intended, this is a bug fix and I welcome it. If you want Bloodlust just slot it in.

It isn’t a bug fix, especially since it was there since the start of the game and they never, ever did anything about it even if it was so widespread. We’re talking about 20 months here. And i can’t think of a single person infracted or banned for such “bug abusings”.
I can agree it may have been not intended at the start, but its use was widely accepted by then. Even the blog post refers to the change as them having “more strict rules”.

You’re a software developer at Anet, 20 months ago, responsible for sigil programming, among other duties. After the game launches, you notice a widespread tactic of building up 25 stacks off a stacking sigil and then replacing the weapon with one with a different sigil. “That’s not what we intended,” you think to yourself. You make a ticket in the bug tracker, but after discussing it with your peers you give it a low priority as all players are affected equally and it doesn’t really mess up the power balance that badly. Plus, you took a look at the code, and making it so the buff drops if the weapon is removed turns out to be trickier than you thought it’d be. It’d take some serious dedicated time, and it just isn’t worth it for the impact the issue has. Punishing people for abusing the bug isn’t even considered. It doesn’t have a huge impact, and tracking whether people are using sigil stacks without the sigil equipped would take an even bigger code change than just fixing the issue would.

The months roll by and you continue to fix higher priority bugs. Between fixing major bugs and developing living story content, you never do find time to fix that issue with the stacking sigils. The ticket tracking the bug still has a pretty low priority, and every time you think you’re about to find time to fix it a new, higher priority bug gets put in front of it.

Finally, March of 2014 rolls around, and your boss announces that part of the feature patch in April will be an overhaul of the sigil system. You bring up the stacking sigil issue, and are told to add the ticket to the list of tasks to complete for the overhaul. Finally, after 20 months, that ticket is going to be addressed. It’s lumped in with the sigil overhaul, so other bugs won’t get in its way. Someone with more of a mind for marketing decides it shouldn’t be called a “bug” publicly. The issue’s been ignored for so long, it’s practically a feature at this point. Better to say Anet has decided to “more strictly apply sigil rules.” You don’t really care yourself, it’s a matter of semantics. All that matters is that you finally have time to fix the problem, let the PR guys decide how to tell the players about the change.

Later, you check the forums, and see some player saying that it couldn’t possibly be a bug if it took them 20 months to address it. You shake your head, pull up the bug ticket, and get to work.