Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Confirmed… Evon would have saved us all… screwed over by Kiel voters once again…

I hope this comment is sarcasm..? “Ellen boasted they could handle another attack, but I get the impression that Evon would have responded with as much strength as he could muster,” says GW2Hub article. Is this what you’re referring to? Because it sounds like 100% conjecture on the writer’s behalf and is not quoting a dev at all. The only thing a dev said was that the two (Ellen and Evon) would have played different roles (because, you know. They’ve had so much influence on the plot up to this point /sarcasm).

…and I don’t recall Ellen “boasting” that. But what I do recall her saying is that she kept trying to rally the council to action but they wouldn’t do anything. Her exact words were, “I’ll make sure the city isn’t totally unprepared,” which is more than anyone else did.

My boyfriend is in the same position for Juggernaut. He even had a character at a certain level that he’d leave at the end of certain jumping puzzles, hoping the chest would drop them for him, but he got nothing. He did that each day for a month. I don’t know what to tell you, except that it seems like one of the hardest high level mats to get your hands on.

inazuma.7021:

Besides, what’s Gnashblade gonna do? Bribe the Krait? Neckstab the Marionette? Those are pretty much his only skills. Fleabag is useless.

#TeamKiel

Boom. I’m so excited to fight by her side and see what she’s prepared for the invasion (see: her latest dialogue). She has tenacity and conviction, plus abilities to research and organize talent. “kittenes get stuff done” never felt more applicable. Can we recall the rest of the LA Council after this?

And… I think Gnashblade isn’t totally useless. Just not useful in this particular situation. He could hand out free supplies to the citizens, but we’ll see if he’ll let his empathy win out over his desire for coin. But of course that’s not the kind of nuanced argument the Kiel vs Gnashblade topics embrace so. Rawr, down with the opposition?

I agree with so many of the above, but I’ll try not to repeat them. -quietly +1s-

Achievements need to show which paths/locations/whatever are complete. “1 out of 4” is meaningless to me. If there are things meant to be a surprise and they don’t want to spoil it, then let the description be ambiguous or “Hidden” until players complete it, at which point it becomes a more useful description.

eta: …and of course Soronthar beat me to it ;)

The consensus in my household is that burning away all the wooden ships will allow for each race to have a stronger influence, and instead of being a ~humanity’s hope~ city, it’ll be a ~united Tyria’s hope~ city. I want to see way more Asura and Sylvari architecture — the Norn could remake the bank in a similar style but more exaggerated, the Charr could rework the crafting and the TP area (because Gnashblade). I mean, the boats are mostly resting on natural rock formations, so the main structure of the city will still be there.

Considering that a central hype to GW2 was Lion’s Arch, which emphasized the care they took in designing its districts and laying out the city, I have a hard time believing they’d scrap all that work permanently. And as others have said, you’d have a multi-city holiday dilemma. This works in GW1 because the holiday cities are on different continents, but it might feel clutter-y in GW2. Or it might be cool! I don’t know, I just think it’d be a waste if it was never reclaimed. Especially when our characters have taken down Zhaitan. We can take down an elder dragon but we can’t organized for a counter-attack against Scarlet’s little minions? I don’t believe it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I’ve said before that Gnashblade is like Steve Jobs.

This makes perfect sense. Both Evon and Steve were innovators. They brought out products that were useful for millions of people: Evon with his Watchwork pick, and Steve Jobs with his iPhone.

There’s one big difference though. Evon is a hero who’s not only a smart business man, but is also a trained warrior that protects the city. We can be proud of a charr like him.

There’s another difference between the two. Steve Jobs and his wife gave away tens of millions of dollars during his lifetime to hospitals for AIDS research. Evon Gnashblade’s selfless acts of charity amount to … … … IDK, he gives away a freebie in the BLTP every other month, I guess, but even Apple is more generous by giving away new free apps/music through Starbucks each week. And I guess he’s a warrior? But the only time he’s canonically fought was for control of the BLTC. I can’t come up with an example of him “protect[ing] the city” beyond that.

Meanwhile, Kiel went above and beyond in Southsun, not just doing her job and finding the wildlife attacks’ source but also getting all those poor refugees out of their unfair contracts with the consortium, which is not so much in her job description.

lakdav.3694:

You know what would be epic? A stand your ground defend event to keep the Forge being overwhelmed. If your group wipes completely, you see the forge getting destroyed, and the exotics and legendaries fly out. If you respawn, the loot its gone. It was there just to tease you.

Because if a Djinn is an a*hole for so long, he stays that way even in death.

Hahaha, this is wonderful. My boyfriend and I talked about a stand your ground event there last night, so this thread is A+. Maybe if Zommoros can’t appear/project his appearance, he can give out boons for defeating certain waves etc. Or at least project out witty dialogue during the fight. Maybe increased chance for a precursor at the end? I doubt it, but. Cries to self because mystic toilet.

I’d love to fight beside Miyani and the other citizens. I want this so bad. Maybe that Skritt would take me to his new home in the sewers. I wanna live there too, little guy.

Healix.5819:

PNG screenshots is a Mac thing.

For Windows, you can save bmp screenshots by adding -bmp to the shortcut.

Thank you, Healix, you are my hero for today! And lo the internet said: Let there be lossless.

PNG is a lossless file format, so I’m not sure why you think that’s the reason for the horrible resolution. JPG is lossy, and makes smaller files than PNG due to that. Besides that tidbit, I’ve got no idea why it’s saving that way. Maybe it’s a Mac Client thing, idk.

ETA: I would actually be interested in the opposite question. How do I get my JPG files to save as PNG instead?

Absolutely money well spent. While others have offered you some great practical advice (seriously: learn to dodge now, not later, and the wiki+Dulfy are the best bastions of knowledge), I have a small, heartening observation I want to drop. What the devs are doing in GW2 is pretty unprecedented, as far as this “new content every 2 weeks to tell a story” thing goes. I’ve been here since the preview weekend, and each release keeps improving. The devs clearly learn from the bumps and feedback in each patch — this is what keeps me hopeful for the future.

If achievements for the Living Story ever seem out of reach, for example, one of the improvements in the last year is adding the ability to earn LS achievements through doing a LS daily activity. Currently, it’s attempting the Marionette or the Jungle Wurm once per day. Not winning, just attempting. That counts for both your daily AND a LS achievement.

The last LS release really shines as an example of this. I’d encourage you to try and level up to 25 and get yourself to Lornar’s Pass to participate in the Twisted Marionette fight. Others may throw shade at this suggestion because you won’t be a maxed character and this fight is going to be really tough for you. But 1) most dedicated players have earned their achievements and the event is far less busy than it was last week, so you probably won’t succeed anyways and thus should yolo as hard as you can and 2) this release might be gone next Tuesday, so you should at least get a glimpse of what it’s like before then. It’s one of the most exciting fights to date. Maybe read the sticky on Marionette tactics and watch some youtube videos so you don’t feel totally overwhelmed. The fight occurs every even hour (according to PST). It used to be that there was one LS character at the end of each lane to talk to, but they’re gone now and replaced with generic NPCs. Attempting the boss (not beating it) used to allow access to a story instance in Lion’s Arch that would have been a fantastic introduction to the LS characters. Maybe you can find a video of that. I would also recommend jumping into Edge of the Mists. At the very least, you can linger around the waypoint you loaded into and listen to Braham and Taimi to get a feel for some of the story elements.

I’d also recommend beginning the search for an active and organized Guild that fits your needs/personality/lifestyle. You may have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, but a good guild can make all the difference in helping you feel comfortable with more advanced content. They also open up really fun and beautiful places like Guild Puzzles and Guild Rushes, and are so much better than PUGs for fun/memories. Though, I’ve had my share of great PUGs to be fair.

Sunshine.4680:

jessiejay.3625:

@Kimmekat

Well explained and i hope there are more players out there like yourself to help tyria remain more diverse :-D

diversity is great but kimmie sounds like she’s doing it out of obligation or she’ll feel bad for playing what she wants. That kind of bothers me when people do things for “political correctness” or for some kind of “moral obligation.” People should make what they want and not feel bad even if the game ended up being 90% purple charrs.

The thing is I don’t particularly think making a white character is “what I want” to play. What I want to play is a character who sparks a backstory for me. They’ll be pretty no matter what skin color they are because it’s a video game… So why would I want to make 5 chicks of Ascalonian descent when there’s the Krytans’ and Canthans’ and Elonians’ stories to explore? It’s the same reason having only human characters when I could be Sylvari or Norn or Asura (I admit I hold a grudge against Char from GW1) would bore me -shrug-

On the other hand, I do feel a moral obligation. I think of my characters as a cast and if my Persian or Philippino or Mexican friends saw that cast… I wonder would we have the same discussions critiquing lack of diversity in comics and television but this time it’s about my characters? I don’t want that, you’re right. I like to think of that less as guilt, because that feels very different to me. Maybe the word you’re looking for is “empathy”.

I don’t make characters based on guilt. I want every one of them for so many more reasons than just their skin color. Skin color is just a low priority choice in making my new character. My firsts question is “which class don’t I have a character for yet?” Then I’m thinking “is there a character of mine from GW1 that needs a relative?” And I pull lore from there along with which personal story selections I haven’t chosen yet. I don’t see why I should just default to white when I make such an effort to create diverse characters in every other respect.

Rest assured, all my characters are exactly what I want to play, but thank you for your concern.

OP, I’m not gonna be much help to you as a white girl, but I wonder about statistics regarding racial preferences, too. This thread has been an interesting read, so ty for asking and ty to everyone who responded :)

I’m white but I have a black character (had two black characters and one Arab-inspired character from Elona, plus my two asian ladies from Cantha in GW1) who is a Norn warrior. It’s important to me to represent other skin tones in my character lineup because… I feel bad when someone says “I made the character I like to look at” and it’s white. I feel like… if I make only white characters am I contributing to a culture telling non-white people that their skin isn’t as pleasing or beautiful etc? Because it seems that way. I think about that a lot.

Someone upthread said “black norn aren’t possible” which is ridiculous because ANet wouldn’t have given us the option to make them dark skinned if that were legitimately the case. I know what the person was trying to say (it isn’t explicitly addressed lore-wise why we never saw black norn in EotN), but that just seems like a lazy excuse to avoid diversity, especially when Elona and Cantha aren’t represented in other meaningful ways within the game beyond a single random npc now and then. I choose to believe that in the ~250 years since Primordus’ stirring in EotN that either inter-species-breeding happened between Norn and Human (my Elonian Paragon spent a LOT of time in EotN and is my GW2 norn’s great grandmother or so) or else the non-white Norn came out of the woodwork/became better placed in Norn society (Norn Civil Rights Movement?).

Like others, I was trying to wait for an Elona area/story arc to be released before making dark-skinned humans in the hopes that better faces+shading will come along (along with some Elonian skins -clings to Vabbian armor-), but I couldn’t wait; my paragon was one of my 2 favorite characters and I had to represent her somehow in GW2. TBH I need them to release more classes with those areas because I have one of each class right now and am finding it hard to justify leveling any more alts without a unique class for them.

I also have a black asura, but I don’t count her. Sylvari, Charr and Asura are the least humanoid characters in game, so it feels incorrect to bring them into a discussion about representation -shrug-

I’m also confused at people who make dark skinned characters with the afro hair style, then give them a name referencing their blackness/afro (not an African name, to be clear. A name like “Pick My Fro” or something) and communicate in purposefully abnormal speech patterns (“jive turkey”esque 1970’s slang and/or ebonics, which I have less problem with because it’s more likely to not be a gimmick but actually how the player parses language). There is a specific character from Tumblr I’m thinking of here and a few people I saw on my old server. Are they loving homages to the blaxploitation genre, a critique of that genre, an ignorant gimmick by some white dude…? I have no idea. I just try to avoid that sort of thing because I obviously don’t have enough knowledge to handle it well. I’d rather make my character’s affectations reference Elona, which is a touchstone readily available and open to all players, regardless of age or culture (I think that in addition to a race gap in understanding the significance of the blaxploitation genre there’s obviously an age and cultural one, since it seems to be a western genre strongly rooted in the 1970s which was before I was even born). I don’t know… thoughts?

To be fair, my black Norn’s name is “Quoth Ze Raven” but that’s because “Quoth The Raven” was taken :\ I wanted her name to make it feel like the spirits themselves had written her into being. I love the feather tattoos norn can have, her patron spirit is raven, she has the dragon bash wings, and the Ze reminds me of Ze Frank (which in turn makes me want to say “that is how raven do” whenever she levels).

All that said, my main is still a white norn and I play her a majority of the time because she’s the character whose equipment is the best, whose class is my favorite and whose build has been perfected — so I’m still doing a kittenty job at the repping diversity thing because I have to split my daily ~2 hours between 7 characters, three of whom aren’t human and of the remaining four, only one is black.

Traveller.7496:

Rangersix.1754:

My problem with all of this is that we, the player are put into the role of an observer again. Our characters need to be hurdled into the story and not join in on the adventures of the real heroes, the NPC’s. It’s boring.

A romance storyline involving Player with Kasmeer would be much better. It doesn’t need to go into too much detail, if the writing is good and subtle, we’d care more about her character too. Watching her romance someone else .. is just not that interesting. Or watch any other NPC romance other NPC’s. (except the Quaggans.) We saw it with Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and many other games .. if the NPC is romancing you the player, it’s much more effective.

Of course you would need lots of suspension of disbelief. If you start thinking about it, Kasmeer would be romancing the whole playerbase, I mean, how loose is she? But that’s disbelief I’m willing to suspend in the hopes of a more personal storyline.

I agree, a relationship happening to the player would give greater player investment. It’s definitely an overall weakness that your character is usually silent and having things happen to them by the people around them instead of making things happen to the others.

However, this is not a single player RPG. Each player likely has a different idea of their character’s personality and would resent being forced to place that character in a relationship, nonetheless with someone not of their choosing.

…Unless you’re suggesting that multiple characters be “romanceable” the way they are in the ME & DA series which might be hard to implement but fun :) That way you could choose to be non-romantic or romantic with different LS characters not only person-to-person but character-to-character. My guardian, for example, wouldn’t be stuck romancing Braham like my ele might choose.

Of course, this would lose some of the punch of a “your romantic interest just died! Sad faces all around” moment because to do that they’d have to murder every romanceable LS character. It just doesn’t seem very feasible.

Part 2

4) Unified Detail. The Ascended armor does a nice job of this, but seems to sacrifice most of the other things I look for in an armor. I don’t want to be covered from head to toe, not even on my male characters. I appreciate that the option exists for light females and embrace this diversity but I feel like more armors need to find a balance. The half-circle cutouts on the feathered upper arms and legs do that fantastically (though I quibble about the frilly sleeve cuffs and the quality of the skirt). My main problem with the ascended is that it looks like detail for detail’s sake without any unifying theme or style. T3 human knocks it out of the park on this point. Also: Why can’t we just have pants? Why must pants on a female light character always have at least a half-skirt accompanying it? I wish I could get the male Ascalonian Catacombs pants on her (if only they were a bit more detailed), or maybe a shorts + high socks version, because I’m pretty tired of wanting to separate the cool leggings from the wonky skirt, which always clips with my weapons and juts out at weird angles. I like the sort of a-line 1/4 skirt that accompanies the fem light exalted armor and actually the feathered skirt isn’t the worst it just looks painfully plain but for the feather design on the back (far and away my favorite part of the feathered Flamekissed). The phoenix armor for females is another home run on this point, though I still think it’s a little frilly for my Norn Ele. The winged armor she was wearing before was a little skimpy from a certain angle but it was so unified in theme that I could put that point aside.

5) Some practicality. I especially love the armor sets with well-placed and non-bulky jars on the belt (winged, t3 sylvari med top), pockets (ascalonian catacombs light male), or bags on the belt (light vigil). It feels like my character is actually well-prepared to go out into the world. It gives ornamentation a focus beyond being purely for the cool factor. Again I point to the winged, which has beautiful detail on the biceps, the back, the “white space” areas of the belly+left leg and the tops of the gloves+boots, in addition to the bottles on the belt.

…I say all this in the fear that we’ll see a string of reskinned armors, where particle effects are slapped on in lieu of addressing the reasons they were less popular to begin with.

Thank you for your patience in dealing with this weird situation, ANet. I hope we can all avoid it in the future

It’s still some of the best armor in the game (at least for my ele) due to its particle effects, and I wouldn’t be sad if they continued offering a ton of reskins to buy. It’s optional and seems like a smart way to use limited design resources by updating old looks. The more variety, the better tbh. Though if they offered no original pieces while focusing exclusively on reskins, that would sour me. I’m disappointed so I’m going to channel that into something constructive: What I look for in armor.

My main, the character I purchased Flamekissed for, is a Norn Ele. In a MUD I used to play, there was a class called Battlemage, and that’s exactly how I think of her. So I don’t exactly envision her wearing frilly feathery human noble-esque armor that looks super tiny on her, nor do I particularly like any of the light norn fem cultural armor (ugh those bottoms). As a Norn, I don’t shy away from showing her skin but it’d be nice if not everything was quite so cleavage-centric — you’re either baring your breast gap to the world or covered like a nun, there are few aesthetically pleasing/detailed in-between choices. Human fem t3 cultural was pretty much The Dream for this character. Here’s what I tend to look for in armor in general and how/if that plays into the difference between t3 human and feathered:

Part 1

1) Detail that doesn’t cover up the skin while not leaving her largely naked. I have a norn with tattoos. I love those tattoos. The feathered excels with respect to showing skin. It shows back; the thing is held together with basically two bikini strings, which I deeply dislike, and the pants in the back actually shows some butt crack. It shows your entire belly and upper-chest, but there’s almost too much white space. You’re bare from bottom of the breast to top of the lower lady bits. And instead of filling this space with ornaments like the cool body jewelry on human t3 (dat face mask. dat top. Swoon) someone instead opted to accent all this white space at… the throat? With a choker? dnw. I thought I was going to be tepid on the human t3 flamekissed pants for covering too much, but the front-most bit with the vertical lines is eye-catching, the overlapping layers let you glimpse just a bit of skin while making it feel like actual protection, and the detail of the piece is absolutely incredible.

2) Sleeves that don’t cover up gloves. Leggings that don’t cover up shoes. Top pieces that don’t cover up leggings. Headpieces that don’t cover up hair/the face. I paid money (gold, gem or real-world) for each of these pieces and I want to see them, along with the character I spent so much time messing with in creation/makeover kits. Flamekissed Feathered only commits one of these crimes (sleeves cover gloves), but it seems like the gloves were overall skimped on in the detail department and are so tiny anyways, that I guess it doesn’t matter. A pity, since if the gloves were larger I could mix them with a top I like more and still feel like whatever portion of my money was spent on the gloves was well-spent. I was using the feathered head piece before Flamekissed was released so I would like to emphasize my thumbs up here; I’m only sad the center jewel isn’t flaming/smoldering like the belly jewelry on Flamekissed 1.0.

3) Color channels that I can change. Norn light cultural commits the sin of forced color that may not blend well with your chosen pallet. As far as I’m aware, both Flamekissed have done a good job in this area (thank you).

…to be continued…

After checking it out on my ele in-person last night, surprisingly my biggest issue isn’t the design of the sleeves at the wrist (which is still in the top 5 things I dislike about this armor set), but the bottom of the skirt. So first of all, I almost wish the skirt didn’t have the bottom half; if it ended at the winged design, showing off the leggings more (what will it take for my ele to get intricate pants without a skirt?) and presenting a sleeker back look I’d be marginally more inclined toward it. From the front, this bottom area just looks torn. Maybe I’m crazy but that area also has bizarrely low quality texture. I’m so glad someone else said it up thread. I mentioned it to my boyfriend last night (“This looks really… pixelated…? Is that just me…? -squints-”) and wondered if it was just my screen combined with my overall disappointment.

I’m still torn about asking for a refund. I like the headpiece, I guess? It’s still some of the best looking armor in the game, which is almost the most disappointing thing about this haha XD And I feel like I’m wasting money if I mix and match armor sets with this. Super first world problems. Good luck to everyone in finding a good armor/dye combo :)

Julischka Bean.7491:

kimeekat.2548:

I’m at work so I can’t see it in game on my giant Female Norn, but so far I’m disappointed. I’m trying to hold off on full on despair+refund mode until I see it live for myself and play with dyes, but I wish this had been Winged armor or something; Feathered was always one of my least favorites (except for the head piece). Wish we’d gotten to vote between a few choices. Please post more screen caps of various dyes :) maybe someone will come up with a winning combo? The wing design on the back looks cool, at least…

Hugs. Do hold off on despair until you can see it for yourself, and play around with various dyes, and maybe play the mix and match game like I did. Remember if you have a mindset that you are going to hate something, you will hate it. And about the negative posts here…remember that everyone has different likes and dislikes.

Again…Hugs.

Lisa.

Thank you :) My reasons for disliking the pieces aren’t other people’s posts, though. I’ve always deeply disliked feathered (those shoulders especially, although the fire makes them a bit more tolerable). The legs and arms don’t show off my Norn’s tattoos the way the original Flamekissed/my old regular winged armor did, the feathers look more leafy than feathery, and I loathe the top with its weird high collar and long ruffled sleeves (what’s the point of awesome gloves when you can only see 1/4 of them? And my Ele would never wear those sleeves). I’m just not a fan of the overall aesthetic of feathered. It looks like someone turned a fountain or wall sconces into armor. Compare it to the sleek, well-themed look of the winged and it just pales in comparison, imo. The more pictures I see, the more sad I become to have lost what I originally paid for. IDK, I just need to walk away for a few hours, reel in my disappointment, and check it out in-game when I have a clearer head.

I’m at work so I can’t see it in game on my giant Female Norn, but so far I’m disappointed. I’m trying to hold off on full on despair+refund mode until I see it live for myself and play with dyes, but I wish this had been Winged armor or something; Feathered was always one of my least favorites (except for the head piece). Wish we’d gotten to vote between a few choices. Please post more screen caps of various dyes :) maybe someone will come up with a winning combo? The wing design on the back looks cool, at least…

Yes, this is absolutely necessary for LS, Daily and Achieves in general. My guild recently held a Dungeon Master Day in which we helped people do the paths of dungeons they hadn’t done yet. We spent the first 30-45 minutes of each regrouping summarizing paths and trying to jog people’s memories, because all their achievements say is 3/5 instead of which specific paths they did about a year ago when they had a PUG and a wicked head cold that one time.

While the skill level of hundreds of players is not something I feel comfortable theorizing about without statistics in front of me (and even then, it’s all about context), I will happily theorize that the achievements are partially responsible. Some platform achievements seem to be more difficult than others, so we have people stacking those lanes with more bodies and refusing to move because they need the achievement and this is limited-time content. So long as their chain breaks, they don’t care about the overall event success.

Those that already have the achievements have, at least in my guild, moved on to the wurms or are just avoiding the region because in addition to the usual increase of home-server players trying to get into the instance, we also have a line of guesters, some of whom make it a past time to verbally abuse our server in map chat. The last few days have been relatively easy to get into the main instance, which makes me think that many of our mvps/players with all Mari achieves have gone.

1) The conditions of the achievement should be laid out in-game on the mouseover. Having to come to the forums because you’re frustrated and think you’ve been bugged out of earning something is not ideal. Whether or not these achievements should be based on breaking the chain has been well debated here, but they should at least tell you so. At the very least, allow me to be rewarded for my singular platform’s success vs the platforms I have even less control over.

2) The “being downed takes away your achievement” thing annoys me. If someone is downed and still manages to avoid the marionette, I say bravo. I’m almost even more impressed. Isn’t your success being dependent on other platforms bad enough without this extra handicap?

3) It also annoys me that blocking the attack with a shield isn’t good enough. My ele is low on endurance so for something like this I tend to focus on shields to make up for it. The marionette’s first attack, Stomp, seems to have a shorter telegraph time before it lands, meaning that I frequently (2/3 tries last night) portal in to find myself in the middle of a giant red circle I have no way to avoid/am already in the middle of a flop. I can’t pop a shield or I lose the achievement, my dodge time is unresponsive due to lag/loading in or I dodged upon loading to ensure my safety only to then immediately find myself in the middle of a circle with less than full endurance (it takes two dodge rolls to get out of that aoe if you’re close to the center)… you’re trapped. And if your sole reason for engaging the marionette fight at that point is the achievement, you feel like you should just leave. In the first second you’ve already lost out.

I could stand there and watch the marionette go around the other platforms and look at her foot patterns (assuming I’m not unlucky platform #1, of course) but then I would be contributing far less to doing my job with the platform champ and helping to break the chain. So I feel like I’m torn between either being selfish and ignoring the champion in favor of studying the marionette mid-battle or doing my job and losing out on the achievement.

Basically: These last two problems (lose achieve on downed, short telegraph time of the stomp/no invulnerability upon portal/not allowed to use shields) are contributing equally to my dislike of the achievements for this LS. But all of them are especially problematic to me when they are not mentioned anywhere in the achievement description. I believe the description says “Avoid the marionette’s such and such attack”, which to me would mean just not taking damage from it. Isn’t a shield avoidance? -shrug-

Good luck to everyone still going for these, btw

Rufena.5671:

But after reading the comments here I got a question: Am I the only one who put off by the Kasmeer and Marjory voice acting? The fake southern vampire TV soap drawl sounds to me like chalk screeching over blackboard. I could not watch True Blood because of that. Why are you assaulting my ears with it in a fantasy game.

…woah, woah, pump the breaks, who has a southern drawl? I haven’t noticed that at all. o.o;; My powers of observation are grand, clearly. XD

I think you could just as easily ask: Why are there terrible British accents (Jennifer Hale)? Why does Sayeh have a Russian accent? The answer is, I’d assume, that it’s the easiest way to distinguish regionality or “otherness” in characters (like the Sylvari) without a Tolkienesque level of obsession over creating new dialects/languages.

Traveller.7496:

PeterThomas.7243:

Ah, they’re in love. Give ’em a break.

It still doesn’t justify the Harlequin novel / Twilight – level of writing of their whole relationship (not just in this scene, but especially there). The cheesiness and syrup is off the charts here, people! Any more and we drown in it!

I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’ve never read Twilight because, as much as I’ve been critical of the living story, the writing has never sunk as syntactically low as all that XD Otoh, Twilight managed to immerse enough people into the first person narration that they overlooked an abusive relationship and absolute lack of vocabulary variety, so it must have done something right at least on an emotional level of engagement with the reader.

The romance is a side plot to the elder dragons. Someone upthread, I believe it was phys, looked down his/her nose at the LS for daring to include such such personal elements. I completely disagree. What are these people fighting to save? What in Tyria and the drudgery of the human/sentient condition do they see as worth fighting for? What motivates them on a day to day basis, and what from their past molded them into what they are/what they’re fighting for now? These are things I want to know and this is why I enjoyed the scenes. We will always be working toward the larger goal of the dragons. Always. These personal elements should come along with the bigger battle stuff, to give me an answer to “why do I care if any of these imaginary people are killed by the dragons?” Otherwise, I would probably lose interest in a plot only about taking down the dragons, at the rate we’re doing it at. I feel like this update managed to nail the balance, including doing some deft weaving of the characters’ stories into the battle elements.

Romance is cheesy by nature. You open yourself up and create a bond with someone, and it always feels a little awkward from the outside looking in. We can’t handle PDAs, and I bet people would feel uncomfortable seeing in real time the moment my father spiritually knew he had married my mother, or snippets of the 3-continent spanning romance my boyfriend and I got ourselves into. Glimpsing someone’s unrestrained emotional response to something can be really kitten awkward, especially when the scenes we get are brief ones and we’re not surrounded by their context.

We don’t have half an hour each week to see new cutscenes to develop the characters, or 2-3 hours at a time like we would in TV and film. We have about 5 or 10 minutes every two weeks. It’s a little bit awkward but so is falling in love or opening up about an experience from your past that cut you deep and you tried to bury. I’m just glad there’s no make-up+break-up Ross/Rachel drama and that the relationship seems to be a healthy one. I like that their relationship isn’t the only thing that defines them — we’ve seen Marjory be a fantastic detective at the Dragon Bash, and Kasmeer proved herself by uncovering the Tower of Nightmares, plus she’s getting her backstory filled out. I’d be so much more willing to side with those claiming unnecessary cheesiness if these were characters left with only the little definition being romantically linked would give them, spending all their time fawning over the other person or telling their sob story over and over. Instead, they engage in the kind of intense talks you end up having when you’re really close with someone (friendly or otherwise), and have had relatively numerous moments outside of these drama-heavy ones to be work/dragon/big-bad-oriented.

I’d also like to say, as though you couldn’t tell by my defense of romance, that I enjoy how the writers seemingly dip their toes into different genres. It helps keep things feeling a little fresh. The Dead End cutscene introducing Marjory was intensely noir out of nowhere, but no one seemed to have a problem with that random tonal shift. Insert theory about “feminine” genres getting more flack here.

I’m just so surprised that I like Kasmeer as much as I do. It’s a Rose Tyler thing; I went in thinking I’d hate the character and they ended up being basically my favorite. I don’t know how it happened. I suppose the above is partially me trying to work that out, too.

Nike.2631:

I think you’re being punished for being a crappy teacher.

No one shows up with the intent to fail. But they may lack the knowledge needed to win. If you’re so certain that you’ve mastered every nuance of the fight, then you need to master one more: sharing that knowledge.

This. Ayrilana, for example, offered up the nugget that more players can make it more difficult due to the aggro spread. Maybe drop this hint into map chat before that fight/for those facing this boss, and players will be reminded to tighten themselves up a bit more if in that situation.

I’d also suggest keeping some sort of shield or defensive skill ready before you go through the portal to the platforms. This has helped save me from going down immediately due to spawning in the middle of the marionette’s AoE.

Also also, I see a lot of commanders say “I need 5 volunteers to go to lane 3” or what have you. Commanders, I’d suggest asking the players who are going to go to count themselves off in map/say chat. Just /say a number. “1”, “2”, etc. That way you don’t suddenly find yourself down 15 people and having to repeat the whole process in reverse.

This fight is not as much about the individual. Offering up helpful tactics for multiple potential scenarios to those not as familiar with the fight is on you as the self-appointed elite player. This is why good Commanders aren’t just standing there silently before the event. They’ll patiently repeat instructions and offer advice. I always get a feeling of dread when it’s five minutes before the event and the commander hasn’t said a kitten word — even more so if the commander hasn’t even bothered to offer up a lane count in map after being asked. That was the worst run I’ve been through.

TBH, when I see someone “call out” another person, idgaf about the person with the finger pointed in their face who may or may not be guilty of what the Mean Girl in Map Chat is saying. I’m more annoyed that some person is taking their usually verbally vitriolic anger out on a player who may have been under-manned or a million other nuanced situations that I can’t confirm or deny (vital skills’ cooldowns still going just as their platform peeps go down, portaled to the platform just in time to get hit with the marionette’s AoE and started off desperately trying to just stay alive, their net suddenly went down, etc). Half the time, from my map chat experiences, the Mean Girl was stony silent in map before the event began and expects perfect play from someone thrown head first into the event.

zenleto.6179:

Once the fight starts I haven’t seen a commander do a single thing other what everyone else is doing. Other than helping people find their lanes they really don’t need to do much except get on with it.

Poor Commanders must get frustrated. It’s just nearly impossible to pull your own weight in a battle and type out nuanced instructions, which is why everyone tries to do the info dump before it starts, but that still doesn’t help communicate emerging problems in the midst of it all. There have been times I’ve wanted to communicate so badly to my team, but I’m busy actually, you know, fighting. The extra lag in large events means sometimes I’ve typed half a sentence before it appears on screen, and then of course there’s a typo at the beginning – usually in the highly important “/s” channel chooser element. So I have to delete the whole thing and retype or give up or risk losing my mouse for precious moments selecting the proper place in the sentence manually and in any of those cases I’ve been standing around way too long not using my skills efficiently. Do not like.

Lack of push to talk is killer. Wouldn’t it be great to be on phase 2 and suddenly be able to push to talk with your platform? I definitely see the angle that ANet is asking a lot from us as players without giving us some of the tools required to do it. When you consider there are 3 potential voice chat systems a server or sponsored OF can be based out of (TS, Mumble, Vent), you’re asking your customers to have four pieces of software to complete 5-30 minutes of content.

Very happy to hear they’re working on ways for Commanders to communicate more efficiently. <3

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I understand, you can only use the 1 skill to repair at low health, not bring back a completely destroyed cart.

I absolutely loathe coat armor. They make me not want to even bother with sinking gold/tokens into a cool pant skin. Of my last 3 alts created so I could finally have one character of each profession, 2 are medium. The only armor I can find that’s attractive and coatless is their cultural (very nice job to whoever designed those, btw, with the exception of the unnecessary under-boob on fem hum t3).

I opted for the “awkward salad who doesn’t know human social conventions makes himself the third wheel” approach (here I especially am thinking of Harry Potter in the third HP movie, heh). Basically, I tried to make him daisy chain onto their hand-holding. Boyfriend tried to get his sylvari on the end, but he was too tall :\

Gosh, I bet Kasmeer thinks he’s super annoying.

Blackgate took her down yesterday at the 6pm server time spawn. Wasn’t around for any other fights, so I’m not sure if that’s the only time.

ETA: The outpouring of positivity and support during the event was AMAZING. I just want to thank the group of players who made it not only possible but downright heartwarming to participate.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

My ten cents?

Kasmeer’s story gave me enough feels to nearly cry a river, even if it wasn’t related it was kitten dark and tragic, and finally we get to know “who” these people are, you know what, I’m happy I got to hear that.

Also the new Asura char, loving it already.

Taimi for the win.

If people get picky about A-net actually “trying” to do good voice acting over Treesus god awful lack of it, then seriously, look in the mirror and ask yourself who are you to judge.

This was effort, not the best, not the worst, but when it came to Kasmeer talking about her back story to Marjory, that, was moving.

Taimi with Braham? Cute, adorable, funny, I liked it.

Its acting people, criticize it all you want but they are ‘trying’ even if it could still improve.

Also, id rather they over-acted, than didn’t at all, again, I remind you of Treesus wonderfully monotone voice and how little he actually said ANYTHING with feeling other than sounding like the freaking type vocal from the Microsoft word document.

Kasmeer overacting? Good, I want more overacting, I want as much overacting as A-net can throw because if its as good as that performance was then we need “more” of it.

So agree with all of the above. Kasmeer’s story was well acted, imo. It seemed a little out of nowhere, but the acting itself was what really moved me. Honestly, it’s one of the major times I can remember making an emotional connection with one of these characters. I expected to hate Kasmeer but I really love her and want to protect her as much as Marjory does. The story was good, too; it’s nice that she has some backstory and that Farren still chases her around after the other nobles supposedly shun her makes me like the scamp even more. Afterward, the first thing I said was, “Eff these random jungle wurms: Where is your jerk brother so I can give him a permanent imprint of MY FIST IN HIS FACE?”

You just can’t win. Trahearne, a more stoic and private character overall, is acted accordingly and gets called emotionless. Kasmeer, a more extroverted character telling some of her tragic backstory, gets criticized for overacting. Haters gonna hate.

The marionette is so fun. SO FUN. I loved hearing your lane’s hero in the middle of battle, that was definitely fantastic because, as someone up thread said back on the first page, the 5 minute story instance is a really small fraction of time in comparison to the fight. I was giddy the whole night to replay it, and Kasmeer’s lane with the barricade mechanic… wow, the sense of urgency was fantastic. And seeing everyone in your lane swarm back up to get into the portal and take down the platform bosses and and. I could explode with how much fun that was. So excited to replay it this week.

I’m really glad I tried that first, as the wurm fight was frustrating. The Amber worm had so much going on that it was overwhelming, and incredibly difficult to target the main worm if you did manage to actually retain the gun after being spat back out. I swear I was buffed and stood on the arrow but didn’t get eaten a few times, too, but there may have been an extra mechanic at play that I was unaware of. Once there are some tried and true tactics (maybe 2 commanders at amber, one to get eaten and one to kill the eggs/keep the vet wurms off the buff group) I think it’ll be easier. But the rewards are ugly (that rifle. What on earth.) and it’s a huge investment of time and energy, so I’ll probably stick to replaying the marionette and Tequatl until we’ve got some better tactics.

I loved the way they did the story instance, I just wish it had been longer. And I know the player-character is a pain to work in dialogue for because there are so many voice actors, but come on. My character is a silent, passive ghost eaves dropping on conversations. I’m forced to be an awkward creeper, until people split up and I can go get more exposition via written text, which is better than nothing I suppose.

With the amount of voice actors who had to record dialogue for the lane shouts, it might have been cool to instead record player-character voices and have them play depending on the nearest commander’s gender+race combo. idk, I’m just concerned I’m never going to hear my characters again after they finish their living stories :\

So overall, I don’t think you’re the only one who is enjoying the patch. My guildies who I partied with were all similarly psyched up after our first bout with the marionette.

I dislike this idea, but hopefully my explanation will save me from being tarred and feathered :) I’m a busy person, with things to do in the evening when I get home and obligations on the weekend. Having these events on the hour means I know I can go heat up my dinner and come back and not be dead in the middle of an event, I can do laundry without fearing that a sudden influx of players will rush along the pre-events, etc.

Would these pre-events be on a timer? If so, then what’s the difference? You’re just adding a superfluous 15 minute fetch/slay quest in for no real reason. We would all still be standing around waiting for the pre-event the same way we do for the boss.

From what I saw last night and have experienced of Tequatl, it takes the commanders 10-20 minutes to do head counts and get the lanes/wurm groups even, anyways. I think a pre-event would be way too hectic, especially for people who have never done it before and are in need of their commanders /say-ing or TS-ing the mechanics and strategy to them. Good commanders will still do this for Tequatl, even.

On the “on the hour” timing, you can hop back and forth between even and odd hour bosses, if you’re willing to give up your spot in the main/specific OF. Which is what I did last night, and had more fun than I thought possible. I never had to stand around waiting 2 hours for something to spawn because I knew something else was spawning in the off-hour.

Unfortunately, none of this helps with the “I don’t even get to fight on my own server unless I wait for three hours for a 15 minute fight” element :\ But that’s a bigger issue than the timing of the bosses in and of themselves, methinks.

Neural.1824:

kimeekat.2548:

..comments..

While your intentions are noble, I guarantee you that any sort of “karma” system that involves player interaction for status will be automatically abused/exploited to the fullest extent, putting griefers in control of the very system you want to use to get rid of them.

I thought I’d covered my awareness of that notion when I wrote: "This could potentially be abused depending on how it works… "

…and attempted to pose a solution with a weighted system, whose biggest weights were endorsements or demerits by GW2 employees themselves, with ultimate approval after a background check system by those mods. Just because a type of system yet to be designed or implemented can be hypothetically gamed doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist as a starting point for ideas. -shrugs- I’m not sure why people who can’t acknowledge a newb’s existence under normal circumstances would grief to get assigned Newbie Channel duty but there are all kinds of crazy out there.

Do you have ideas on how to improve the tone of the community, Neural? :) Share, share, share.

This is why I avoid PvP/WvW and now try to only dungeon with my guild. My gaming background is MUDs, where creators and liaisons are online a lot and can take instant action against people. When someone is banned, the creator’s reasoning for banning is broadcast TO EVERYONE as a warning to follow Wheaton’s Law or suffer the consequences. Public shaming is absolutely effective.

There also needs to be a safe space for newbies. In a MUD, new characters usually have access to a special channel when they’re certain low levels. This Newbie Channel is a safe place where they can ask questions about the game, help one another, meet people on their own play level, and not be mocked for it.

I don’t know how to institute something like this in an MMO. The newbie channel might be easy, but who mans it? There are no real community creators or liaisons as MUDs knew them; MMO creators are all in an office working on things to implement into the game, not liaising with the players which the company probably doesn’t see as profitable (so why do it, ugh).

Possible solutions? In a dream world? Have some sort of community karma system. This could potentially be abused depending on how it works, so maybe there would be a lower-weighted group of factors, like tallying up or down votes from the forums, things like tickets submitted against your account, etc. Then there could be a top tier with higher weight with input directly from ANet staff. People of certain tiers could apply to be community morale officers of sorts, doing things like manning the Newbie channel and submitting reports against offensive players. I assume they’d get a background check of posts in the forums, etc. When the report is approved by an upper-level Anet staffer or community officer, then like a MUD, it would broadcast to everyone with the chat-type selected in their chat-box, or maybe everyone locally or in that person’s guild, whatever restrictions you like, that the person has a ban and why. “MOD parts the heavens and a thunderbolt zaps PLAYER. MOD chuckles and says, ‘And that’s why we don’t _(whatever the offense is here)__’.” I would suggest a wall of shame, but permanent things like that tend to be carried around too much like a badge of honor. The community is just so big, it knows it can get away with being a kitten because the panopticon isn’t upon them. There should also be a promotion system for good behavior! Maybe this happens in-guild and then gets nominated upward to the Mod Gods that way? idk idk, just wishing on stars. This is kind of what I’d hoped Commanders would partly be.

It’s just not realistic to say “be the change you want to see”, but I’m gonna say it anyways. Call people out for their crap in map chat and teamspeak. Say thank you at the end of a successful group event (the temples in Orr, a dungeon run). Ask before a run if anyone needs to be talked through it so you can plan your stops for typing or whether everyone can get on voice chat. Start your own LFG and say that kind of behavior isn’t tolerated. Find a good guild that holds those ideals as dear as you do.

The grind is tough. People want to maximize play time with profit, and I get that, but more important to me than fake money in a game is the real person on the other end. There’s a large portion of players who can dissociate that, and there needs to be some community-based way for people to shame that behavior. I don’t know what the answer is. I wish there were some ideas from higher up here.

To be happy, I need a mix of both. Zergs allow me to hang out with my fellow server players, while instanced content is usually more story-driven (I NEED THIS LIKE AIR) and allows me to get closer with guildies. IMO, the Tower of Nightmare releases were a great blend.

Absolutely wonderful! I resented being forced to buy bags I didn’t really want or need just to have a single mini stay in my inventory. Minis are useless anyways, may as well make it less frustrating for people to show ‘em off. My alts feel like the perfect characters to have the extra minis that just sit in my bank, but I didn’t want to invest the gold just to give alts something useless when it could go towards exotics in their future.

MUCH appreciated change <3 thank you.

Angel.4581:

No deeper story is needed, rescue princess because evil dude stole her is enough. That is all the incentive heroes needed back in the day.

There is a difference between the simplistic 1980’s-esque SAB story and the GW2 story of Moto, I suppose. IMO, the stereotypical damsel in distress storyline is okay for the SAB, because you uncover a plot bigger than that, which ties into the GW2 world at large (the Ketto and Yavi instance/cutscene in Ketto’s Lab). The brainless “another dude stole my chick” plot is pushed to the side when you start realizing the meta story of Moto that is being revealed through SAB play. The damsel in distress is not at all the motivating part to me of this content, as a female player in a far more complicated game in the year 2014. If I really wanted to be playing a “rescue the princess” 8bit game, I would be back to playing old SNES games. Though my statements were about loving the Ketto’s Lab cutscene, I would absolutely appreciate some other in-SAB plot being thrown in as the box expands. Or if not, I’d love for there to be something commenting on how lame it is that he’s relying on the same tired trope and then it can at least try to claim some sort of subversive angle/self critique. Maybe Ketto and Yavi hack unto him as he hacked unto them and they start glitching the box/messing with the plot.

That said, I can’t deny this implementation of an 8bit style is beautiful and fun, so that also makes it not a total point of annoyance to play. But the only reason I even tried to get as far as I did was to get to the genie for the cutscene.

Gundail.7594:

I think a more conventional return to Guild Wars lore would appeal or at least be more digestible to a larger demographic.

Magic, Monsters, Gods and Politics might seem contrite, but I’m convinced that real human stories can be told under the pretense of the Fantasy world. Scarlet fails as a protagonist for simple reasons, she’s out of place, unneeded and force fed to us.

There is already a huge, epic, cataclysmic story of the dragons, warring nations and established heros and villans in the shipped game. Scarlet feels like Deus ex Machina of sorts, some sort of hashed up supervillain meant to tie together a bunch of separate ideas. She comes off as some sort of bad storytelling mechanic and everyone knows the character has no real place in the story, but can’t really put their fingers on why.

We spent months on Kiel’s storyline, and even Evon felt like a believable foil to Kiel by extension. If there had been a good moment for a plot twist these forgotten characters would have been ideal to expand on. Instead they feel like cheap forgotten throw aways, while we slog through more “Mechagodzilla” Living story updates.

What I’m trying to say here is, use the established lore and characters. Tell mature, real, human stories the players can relate to. I’d equate the current living story more with a bad “B” Movie than Tolkien. I feel the difference here is creating interesting, cool characters people can feel engaged with instead of writing in comic book supervillains.

Remember each, and every player in your game is trying to tell THEIR story in YOUR world. Often I feel like a nameless faceless character in someone else’s story when playing through story content. Just another militia in some vast army of other players. Having key characters recognize you and your involvement seems to help me connect with the characters.

^—- This. I don’t understand the hate for the Living Story’s pace in here, though. The two week schedule has been a little bit of a pressure, but I think in a good way. As someone up thread said, it’s the main thing that keeps me returning. I have 5 lvl 80s and leveling in the same areas doing the same events is so boring — the guaranteed variety from LS is pretty awesome. This month-long Wintersday has definitely been fabulous, though. I love getting to play bell choir for my daily activity.

To answer the dev question, I absolutely would like to see more Moto story with SAB. SAB is okay (jumping puzzles are one of my biggest sources of frustration in the game, actually), but the main thing that would keep me coming back is to see his story by beating the levels I didn’t get to before. Mechanics are useless unless you make me care about them through storytelling.

To quote Jeff from Community, “We are the only species on Earth that observe “Shark Week”. Sharks don’t even observe “Shark Week” but we do. For the same reason I can pick this pencil, tell you its name is Steve and go like this (breaks pencil) and part of you dies just a little bit on the inside because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an academy award for Screenwriting.”

Make me connect. That’s the thing I’m really looking for; I care far less about how often you throw content at me.

As a character, if I were living in Divinity’s Reach, I would never want to see those monstrosities again. Of their own will or not, they committed an act of terrorism and that leaves scars/trauma. Who would give them orders? How would you know they couldn’t be tampered with? Why on earth would I ever trust them again when they’d been hacked before, or built incorrectly to begin with, or whatever their lore is? I think the Queen would have a real PR problem on her hands trying to re-use them, especially without any cosmetic changes. That would be an interesting plot-reasoning for forcing them out into the world, though.

As a player, I have no desire to see the watchknight anymore, unless it becomes sexless or gains other be-nippled forms (male). I’d rather hang out with an ~evolved~ golem (I nominate Mr Sparkles) if we’re going down the star wars-inspired droid path.

I get off work at 4 and Teq usually spawns around 5/5:30. I get home from my commute at ~4:30, run upstairs, log in to my character who I have devoted to teq sitting at the quaggan waypoint so I don’t have to waste time porting through LA -> SF and still get kicked into the overflow. Even when my boyfriend gets home right at 4 and logs me in, I’m overflowed. So my only option then is to hang out or join in the overflow until Teq goes down on my home server and camp until he spawns again (not so interested in the reward, interested in the perfect turret defense achieve). Except that I have things like dinner and the gym etc. The wait can be even worse on the weekends. And that’s assuming I don’t want my daily/can somehow get it all in SF or have the time after the battle to do it. A terribly inefficient use of my time, so I’ve been largely uninterested in teq until I got to this point of being one achievement away from my title.

Camping is not fun. I agree, OP. It’s just hard to pinpoint how to fix it/what to blame. I blame the nature of the teq encounter but I know it’s a nuanced situation with guesting.

That said, the overflows I’ve been in have been doing amazingly this week (nice work, everyone!), though my only chance at Perfect Defense will be stumbling upon TTS or somehow camping Blackgate for the ~2-3 hours I’d need to make it into a teamspeak coordinated Teq run.

Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re mistaken. -eats a piece of the chocolate teapot-

These forums need a lot of work. It’s a shame, because the search function being in working order would lighten the load of mods/cut down on repeat topic threads.

My Ele’s been my main for a year now, and I agree with CountzuCrytus. The pre-80 levels are really wonderful for trait experimentation without much repercussion. Try new weapons, try new traits (you have to buy books at lvl 40 and 60, iirc, which give you access to the higher tier traits and reset your points), learn the kind of play style you like. Read and re-read the mouseover tooltips for the skills. Learn about combo fields and how to utilize them in single PvE and more group-oriented PvE.

That said, even when I hit 80 I’m still experimenting. Sometimes a build I thought was going to rock falls flat and I have to play around with a new one. Really get your dodge rolling down and be familiar with how much endurance you have at default (eles have pretty low default endurance without traiting it up or utilizing the number 3 fire scepter skill strategically). One of the things that’s transferable from class to class is the benefit of good movement habits (barring zerg events/the odd skills that require stillness to cast). Eles can be glassy, and some of the skills (mist form, four and five air dagger skills, lightning flash) can really help you get creative in your movement style and in getting out of tough situations.

You have the option to work pretty much anywhere (d/d keeps you up closer, s/d is mid ranger to all over the frickin place, staff you wanna keep a bit more range), so it truly is about experimenting with play styles. For my build, it is KEY to continuously change attunements. I have buffs depending on which attunement I’m in, so it can be critical to get to the right attunement at the right time. I really encourage you to get used to swapping in and out mid-battle.

I know this is basically what everyone else has said, but I wanted to wish you good luck! Ele is my favorite.

My current guild is overwhelmingly female. We have a strict no-tolerance policy on homophobic and sexist remarks/behavior, which is one of the reasons I joined. I got sick of being the token female officer in my old guild with no power to enforce punishments on members making guild chat inhospitable. Even in that guild, there were female members, but in my year there I saw them all slowly start repping other guilds more and leaving due to the tone of some of our guildies (“jokingly” threatening to kitten people for poor performance, etc). I was very proud whenever a few of them would call others out on their poor behavior and I wouldn’t have to be The Constant Feminist Killjoy™, but that ~constant vigilance~ Alastor Moody lifestyle wears thin after a while. Even my boyfriend started getting frustrated and he was actually the bigger supporter of leaving that environment.

For these reasons, I completely understand why OP would want to check to see if a guild has a healthy female population. Good luck to you! Boyfriend and I so much happier in our current guild, but that’s also partly because our guild lives on Tumblr and share a loooot of interests/humor, as well as a world-outlook with a majority of our members.

I recommend finding people with really active forums or who are otherwise active on social media. Keeping in touch outside of the game is one of the best parts of finding a guild and can tell you a lot about what your experiences will be like there <3

ETA: for those insisting we’re all men pretending to be women… just stop. We chat in mumble, we read each other’s journals, meet up outside of game. Just stop. And you know what, I could care less if a male chooses to identify as female. It probably makes them more empathic to abusive language targeted to gender/sexuality which makes them a solid member of the community as far as I’m concerned.

I love this idea. My gaming background is from MUDs and user-created books were fun, helpful and an intelligent non-hack-and-slash way to earn prestige with your fellow players.

One thing I really liked about MUDs was that there were always creators/”immortals” online to act as community moderators in-game. I know it’s not feasible in a situation like GW2, but I still wish there was something like it in MMOs. Whenever someone would get even a temp ban in the few MUDs I played, it would be broadcast to the public channel with the reasoning for all to see (“The heavens part and a lightening bolt zaps PLAYER, while the booming voice of CREATOR echoes in your mind, “And this is why you don’t _______.”). But then, they’d also help lead big events and ask questions in public and be on a newbie channel to answer newbie questions away from the judging eyes of the experienced players — all of which helped the baseline friendliness of the community, imo.

Back to the point, it might take a lot more involvement from in-game mods to institute a player-written book system that included any kind of transfer of that books’ information from one player to another. If they limited it to being able to annotate/screenshot wiki pages and in-game screens only, that might begin to address the concern. It might also be something that could be implemented as a guildhall feature — that way guild mods could be responsible for inappropriate books, and any inappropriateness wouldn’t leak into the main game. It’d be cool for a ~legacy~ effect, too. It makes the world feel lived in. Gosh I miss MUDs. Maybe guild leaders of guilds with certain amounts of influence or active members or of a certain age, whatever barrier you want to introduce to keep numbers down, could nominate particularly well-written and useful books for consideration for the Lion’s Arch Library? Maybe one book nomination every few months/per year? That would, again, help to lighten the load on game mods.

At the very least, something similar that would allow players to view gw2 wiki articles without alt+tabbing outside the game to a browser window would be cool.

…Man, this really makes me wish there was a Liaison system like there is in the Discworld MUD. I would sign up to newbie-helper duty so fast.

I love this idea so much! And I agree with LordByron that lag would make this such a pain to pull off perfectly. I’ve got an in-game flute, a history of wrangling with various rl musical instruments and good intentions, though, so let me know if I can help :) Good luck

DrDivine.5378:

Blanger.3162:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Can anyone explain the mini thing to me? I got this because of gem purchases but I’ve never used a mini. How do they work? Is it a one time only thing? Can you use it over and over? Like, I have 2 of one kind, account bound of course. Is the 2nd one any good? Is it bound to the character that opens it?

As far as I know they are account bound, can be used by any of your toons, they just follow you around and look cute, can be used over and over but will go home (storage) when you WP or change zones, or when you deposit collectables, not a lot of purpose other than the cute factor at the moment but that is JMHO

Oh yea…there are minis that are not account bound that you can get that can be bought and sold on the TP, there also is AP’s for completing a collection.

Is everyone supposed to get one? I’ve bought stuff from the gem store before and haven’t got one yet.

It was a special for the month of December. If you purchased 4,000 gems total in that month, you get a Mini Mr. Sparkles. The purchase of 800 gems gained you a green quaggan backpack.

ETA: Haha, looks like I was beaten to the answer. Oh well :)

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

kimeekat.2548:

Seems like Scarlet’s taking some dragon power into herself? Destroying what she was to become a dragon puppet..? If she’s bat kitten crazy does that mean I can destroy her with my batty greatsword?

I’M SO EXCITED.

Sylvari are not able to be corrupted by the Elder Dragon’s. Or so they claim. As such I highly doubt that Scarlet Briar is going to become a puppet of any of the Elder Dragons.

…

Also, I would like to point out…. that a metronome like that could have been commissioned by just about anyone. Just because those journalists claim that they got it from ArenaNet and NC Soft, doesn’t make it true, unless NC Soft and Arena Net confirms the fact.

It’s a gimmick GW2 has done before, so. I would be really surprised if this was someone trolling. Unless you think there’s some big fan/hater snail mail-based conspiracy going on. Which, I feel like they would have debunked the first time around.

Sylvari aren’t able to have their corpses reanimated by the dragons after their death. That’s very different from being completely impervious to an Elder Dragon’s influence. On the first page of the thread, someone linked to a good reddit article+youtube video that discusses that the experiment Scarlet was subjected to might not have given her insight into the eternal alchemy because the device was only partly charged which, as we see in an Asura personal story mission, seems to tap into the wavelength the dragons’ powers are on. It’s a pretty good read and an interesting theory.

We still don’t know the true nature of the Sylvari (what is the Pale Tree? Some fan theories are that it is a dragon minion like Glint that somehow got cut off or is dormant etc), so I find it difficult to outright dismiss anything until we have more lore.

I like this idea a lot — especially if the player limitations of the original map aren’t there. It’d be great not to have to camp an event for hours just to do an event on my home server/the “right” overflow. Having the tougher mechanics be an optional “round two” would mean my alts, who may be appropriately leveled for the zone but not the boss, can actually help out if they’re in the area. Nice suggestion!

PsychoticHamster.1406:

I’d be really disappointed if it had to do with the sea dragon, that would probably mean underwater combat would be the “star” of the patch.

I actually would say the exact opposite, though I don’t believe it’ll be part of this year’s story. I saw EQNext’s double jump animations the other night and started babbling to my boyfriend that if GW2 got their underwater combat polished and dropped some really cool underwater areas, the water combat could translate relatively easily (I imagine) to air combat. So, this has been on my mind a lot lately.

If they slowly polished underwater combat over time before the water dragon appears, something they are probably considering doing anyways since the lack of desire for the current underwater weapons is a big weak spot, they could do so much cool stuff with it. Bio-luminescent flora and fauna, or areas so dark you practically run face-first into mobs. There’s a lot of freedom there and with GW2’s awesome design team, I think some underwater areas could be truly stunning.

I think it’s great if they choose to focus on fixing up a weaker point of the game to support the story they want to tell.