Guild Wars 2

The “thump thump” and “jump” reminds me of the shockwave mechanic from the bosses. That plus all the foreboding ~Lion’s Arch is ripe for attack with Scarlet pulling everyone to the far reaches of Tyria~ dialogue we get from Evon at the moment makes me think of earthquakes in Lion’s Arch. But maybe not?

If it’s Primordus stirring up trouble again, the secrets below could be, besides the obvious “bad guys” answer, the Asuran tunnels or an artifact inside them ala the Tomb of Blimm.

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.

Doing guild missions for the first time, meeting up at Fort Marriner and a guildie bowing down before my epic firey Norn to propose on sight. Telling him “I’m more into the destruction than creation end of things”. Realizing that casual roleplay would be well and alive in the game.

Making my first (and only, so far) legendary :3 And map completion.

My first time inside the treasure room in Angvar’s Trove, first Tequatl take down, first successful Arah.

Finally getting to some of the harder to reach crystals in the Labyrinthine Cliffs, getting to the diving goggles there and just generally that whole zone. I loved it there.

Every time I get to level a character 1-30ish because Personal Story.

I love getting to tell someone how cool their character name is in-game. I love seeing groups that have a gimmick — dancing asura, the Sailor Moon guild, etc — and are nice to people about it.

But my most standout happy memory is probably going into The Grove for the first time. My first character was a Sylvari, and I just… ran in circles for probably an hour doing map completion. I think this was a more childlike moment of awe than the legendary because I didn’t have to grind for it… I just had to look and explore. It was so beautiful. I still get overwhelmed by the pretty in the lower levels there.

ETA: Anytime someone in guildchat says “THIS WON’T END WELL.” Thanks, Trahearne. Also, hearing the Galaxy Quest joke in Lion’s Arch so often (“By Ogden’s hammer, what savings!”)

I love what you wrote about how difficult it is to type in the middle of a dungeon. I know Tabula Rasa was only a hit with a small segment, but one of the things it absolutely did right in my mind was squad voice chat. For PUGs who might all use different 3rd party chat systems for their server/guild it just makes a whole lot of sense. I love taking newbies through things, but it involves long periods of us standing there while I try to find the right words to explain, whereas voice chat gets me instant feedback and hearing your party all shout “DODGE! MOVE!” to eachother is it’s own kind of high.

And I also love what you wrote about the personal story. The PERSONAL story is what really excited me about the game. I like interacting with NPCs and having them remember me, or having them reference something we did together. But I’m worried that with the Living Story, it’ll never be like that again. I hope they prove me wrong, because as much as I am digging the progression of the Scarlet storyline (though I loather her), there’s something about quieter moments of character development and comraderie and hometown joy that I really treasure in any story. The more we move to fighting world-level evils, the more I’m concerned they’ll forget where our characters came from.

<3 good luck with wherever you end up, Soa.

Gulesave.5073:

It wasn’t the mere presence of Asian content that would have been offensive. It was the juxtaposition against other cultures, such as in the prototype Divinity’s Reach. Consumers in their Asian markets would have been disgusted at seeing their culture “dirtied” by being muddled with Western and African elements.

Keep in mind that racism is still pretty well tolerated in most of Asia.

The irony, of course, is that GW2 isn’t even out in any Asian markets.

Wow, I can’t believe this comment was (approximately) correct. I had to listen to the podcast where this was all explained to see exactly what was said, because though I’ve read the wiki comments regarding the great collapse area, I never really understood the explanation. I’m hugely disappointed in the choice to listen to those voices. GW2 mucked about with Scandinavian culture pretty intensely in its re-interpretation through the dwarves and Norn, but somehow this confusion/blending of European cultures and fantasy is different because…?

Dondarrion.2748:

To be honest, I don’t see why the Asian market wouldn’t feel honoured that a game had a huge part of its world inspired by Asian themes, in addition to Western and African. You’d think they would feel discriminated if “their” culture was the only one left out…

Yeah, I’m not sure about feeling “honored” about getting pretty basic representation in western fiction, but fear of offense seems like a very flimsy reason to keep the game so white-washed. The Tyrian continent pulls from European cultures for inspiration. We’ve at the least got Scandanavian architecture/culture with the Shiverpeaks/Norn, and some medieval-ish England+France (?) with old Ascalon/Divinity’s Reach. The real-world cultures have not been translated to fantasy faithfully — nor should they be. Games as the ultimate self-aware melting pot is a beautiful concept to me. This is probably the difference between where we commenters are coming from vs the feedback the developers got: We want more diversity, we want it blended, mismatched, rearranged or however we can get it, while the feedback was concerned about cultural preservation/purity. I would think that, as an increasingly global community, we’d be interested in MORE varied representation in fantasy, not less. I would think that, versus a film like Lost in Translation with a setting in a real place, explicit fantasy is the place to blur our preconceived notions of cultural and national lines as a message of how arbitrary the distinctions we place between us can be.

I just remember playing the Factions and Nightfall expansions and feeling like they were strong stories in their own right. There were varied types of cities in each culture, varying factions and complexity. Nothing was simple. It was never “aw, look at this backwards continent, so inferior to Tyria…” it was like “wow, look at how all of our problems are connected or paralleled, how our choices ripple, how people and nations adapt and thrive under different circumstances”. I was overjoyed that the casts were ethnically diverse with little to no comment on the matter (except the Kurzick vs Luxon cultural clash which was a major part of gameplay. Genius).

I can see how a fantasy interpretation of your culture being shoved off onto another continent/part of the game might seem “othering” but wasn’t that part of the point of originally having quarters dedicated to diversity in Divinity’s Reach? I love that. The idea that nothing truly stays separate, even when the continent tries to wall itself off. We know some Canthan refugees call Tyria their home — so where are the trappings of their culture? Did they not bring/build anything? Was their homeland really so meaningless to them that they don’t try to share it with their Tyrian neighbors? I don’t think so. This is why it truly bothers me that the Canthan section was removed from Divinity’s Reach.

Basically: I loathe the removal of influence from African and Asian culture from the game. I understand if developers need some extra time to flesh Cantha and Elona’s stories out in the time gap between GW1 and GW2 but I don’t see how the complete exclusion of their people and cultural trappings is anything but harmful in the long run, especially in the context of Divinity’s Reach and its immigrant lore. I’m hoping the Zephyrites bring us to Cantha as we help them try to make Glint whole again, or that the Asura tunnels take us there. I’m hoping fear of offending doesn’t keep us from even attempting a more diverse Tyria.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: hands down my favorite mini game. I also have the flute, and am just generally really supportive of expanding the musical element of the game. Isn’t working together with others to create a complete song one of the ultimate forms of coop play? If we could get some form of this year round, with expanded in-universe songs, I would die of happiness. It’s cool to hand people instruments, it’s even cooler to show them how to play them.

I wonder if they could make a bard-type class out of these gameplay elements, or if that would be too nightmareish to figure out. I’ll keep dreaming Thanks for the instruments, ANet.

Just moved servers to one higher in WvW standings and boy is it ten times better. Organized Teq kills, constant Balthazar runs, players in Orr just in general (gasp). IMO, they need to find a way to fix the server population indicators. It’s completely useless to have only two labels ("High"vs"Very High"), especially when those labels don’t take account activity into consideration. My old server is marked as “High” but there’s hardly anyone in LA and my old maxed-out guild had a seemingly endless list of inactive individuals (a story I heard from multiple people in LA when I’d engage them about why they’re looking for a new guild/why they were about to bounce to a bigger server).

As a side note, it’d also be great for the guild roll to show not only members’ names, but also something about their frequency of play/last log in.

Basically: you need to switch servers. I don’t like it, I did it as a last resort because my server was deaaad, but it’s the only real solution I can see atm if you’re anything above a casual.

DaShi.1368:

Crab Toss is my least favorite of the activities. I love the holiday activities, because then I never have to do it for the daily achievement.

Gods, yes, THIS. The holiday activities (clings to bell choir) are so much more rewarding and less upsetting. Crab toss… I get my grubby hands on the crab and lose it almost immediately. Usually don’t even have time to read the skills I get from the crab before someone’s knocked me on my face or stolen it with the fishing rod. If I get into a game halfway through it’s a relief to not have to play as long but it’s also upsetting because I hardly ever break 20. As much as I drag my feet about southsun survival, at least there I feel like there’s more time to read skills and gather — and even if I lose via dying, there’s still ways for me to efficiently “keep in the game” points-wise. I’m not ready to just sit my character down halfway through.

… that said … I still feel like OP is complaining about the game working properly. PvP is the worst.

I want to especially shout how much I love, love, love the camp dialogues/scenes. Party dialogue is always my favorite, as it can do so much for creating life and pushing character. Even the Norn who has written dialogue re: Scarlet’s mysterious time on Hoelbrak + the asura revealing the council’s plans to monitor/experiment on Sclaret were such breaths of fresh air. This is what I really wanted out of a living story — a reveal of the logic behind actions that seemingly come out of nowhere in these releases. That was a delight to find implemented. Thanks for that I just hope the wonderful workers at the wiki manage to get all the dialogue down before it disappears! I wish there was some log where I could revisit it all in-game.

skullmount.1758:

He still laughs/giggles doesn’t he?

Victims of assault often laugh nervously as a subconscious attempt to diffuse the tension. Doesn’t make them any less victims ;) See: Nervous Laughter

Absolutely agree with OP! This would be really cool. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that “Apprentice” is gonna be the rarer, prestige title in the future when all the new kids will be “Grandmasters” or what have you.

This topic has had like 40+ pages written about it, though the forum search button is completely useless, so I’m not surprised you couldn’t find the threads. :)

People did not pick the race of their characters based on the original medium and heavy armors. The problem wasn’t that the light skin resembled the original. It was that the armor the light skin resembled too much was cultural armor. So, no? I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think they have a problem with the armors closely resembling normalish armor so much as armor that caused you to make a racial decision you can’t undo.

Of course, I would like to see more creativity than these skins showed, but otoh I have no problem with having a variety of versions of the same skin because it means a greater variety over all. It’d be cool of each armor set had a few different versions to pick from, in the future. Seems like a smart way to get people spending gems instead of just gold for Anet -shrug-

It’d be cool if she epically messed up and summoned a dragon/woke something terrible and/or unintended. I’m not sure humility is in her character, but maybe being slapped in the face that her own cleverness on its own isn’t as clever as the universal alchemy/the brain+brawn of the protagonists would motivate her to offer/accept outside help / not be such a self-centered crazyface. Either that or she dies. I’m not sure if I see her being hybridized by dragons or if she just disappears forever. Any of the above would be satisfying to me.

I think anything can be done with the right writing (read: character development in-game and not on the website)… I’d just like to see her grow in any direction other than “she’s a mystery! An OP mystery! She’s been everywhere! But no one’s ever mentioned her before!”. Just gonna take some time. The LS keeps improving imo, so I’m hopeful about any and all possibilities.

Slightly related: The dialogue with characters around the camp of the Tower of Nightmares really does a lot to soothe my plot annoyances, actually. Loved the asura explaining the motivation of letting her into the colleges/the double cross they wanted to enact, the Norn saying he hated the decision to let her study etc. Big step in the right direction.

Been a GW player since launch day of GW1. Insert not so fond memories of groups laugh-crying profanities at Alesia: The Worst Healer Ever during the Fort Ranik mission.

I like that I have to keep moving… even though my build’s endurance was crap, I could make up for it a little by swapping in air signet or attuning to air and gaining a speed burst (ty adept-level Elemental Attunement and Zephyr Speed), or using the air skills on my offhand dagger (4 skill: flyfly up close! some damage! ele: in ur face “OHAI!” five skill: BOP! flyfly far the hell away as the enemy deals with a knockdown interrupt). I know mainhand dagger has a movement-based fire skill, we’ve got RtL as a utility option… even under water with the trident, I’ve got a nice flow of hit up close and move back (water three skill ice wall for the win) then kite that is quite fun. I love jumping into the melee/problem spots to swap attunements for buff bursts to my comrades (one of my favorite things!) before jumping back out and doing some long range damage. That constant movement is like playing an instrument on my keyboard :3

I love playing burst+support. My usual play style for any game is jack of all trades, even though I know that usually holds back my DPS/survivability. Getting to help heal, even if it’s just a little bit, with offhand dagger’s cleansing wave is a favorite. I love each element feeling like a slightly different playstyle, putting down a combo field for my squad and breathing fire in people’s faces before fleeing away with air attunement, like a carnie hopped up on E. It’s just so much fun.

eta: +1 to the “anything else feels dumbed down” comment. I tried warrior and even guardian and I’m kind of just… meh on the whole thing. Not my style. Boyfriend, otoh, loooves his warrior for her perma-haste and easy play. I’m just… I can’t. Leveling my warrior alt is the ultimate chore tbh. Even my mesmer feels boring compared to ele.

Oh god I hate these forums, they always eat my posts by asking me to re log-in or giving me weird errors. I really wish there was an auto-save draft feature so I don’t have to copy every response I make just in case before submitting, but that is neither here nor there. Recreation of my post that got eaten:

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but man. I had a build full of trait-line diversity. If the point was to get me out of arcana, they’ve done terribly because if anything I’m now spending twice the points in both that and water. Elemental Attunement and Cleansing Wave feel pretty necessary for me. I tried out an auto-barrier build last night, with an earth shield up at 50% health and an arcane shield up at 25% and cleansing fire going on at 3 conditions. The problem is there’s no warning and I can’t squint hard enough to distinguish the difference between 60% and 50% health in battle so I end up popping a shield before the auto shield , or the fight is running down and the trait pops when I don’t need it — only to still have it be on cooldown for the next wave and me dodging like an idiot, waiting cause think it’s gonna auto-pop when it won’t. Cleansing conditions is even worse, because even I don’t know when I’ll be hit with a third condi, so I had a few times where I cleansed about a second after auto-cleanse. Not a fan. It leaves too much up to chance, and I have way more fun actually reacting to things.

I tried to make a point about the fun of AoE buffing/cleansing (even if that cleanse only removes 1 condi vs the 3 of the fire trait) in the post that was eaten, but I can’t be bothered anymore, all the good words have gone from my brain already.

IMO, the only way to get people away from those awesome traits that got bumped to master is to give them traits that are similarly awesome in other lines and levels as a lure. Why do I give any kittens about elemental attunement cool down when most of the weapon skills are still on cd themselves and the benefits for changing attunement have been put out of reach (assuming you don’t give in like I have to a ?/?/?/20/20 build)? I feel like this trait update was just an attempt to move popular traits out of reach while not understanding why those traits are so popular in the first place. Still not really impressed with any of the grandmaster traits, tbh; I feel like it’s almost more worth it to just master a few lines instead, but I will have a good staring contest with the grands after work again today.

…And has Lingering Attunement been fixed yet? It’s been a year. I can’t believe this trait doesn’t even work but they thought it was a good idea to go ahead and overhaul the entire trait tree. Priorities.

I’m crazy excited for next year. Nothing’s been perfect, but I do feel like the teams have been listening to feedback which has paid off for them down the line. Like, less LS rewards taking up useless space in inventory (and more taking up space in your home instance), replayable story instances (Tower of Nightmares opening instance, Fractured story instance, etc), better ways of handling drop-tokens (making them combinable like the aetherblade keys, or elements buyable like the colored keys) etc. There are still things to improve upon but that’s true of everything for ever.

Basically, when I look back at the last year, I think of the aetherblade dungeon, the molten facility, fighting people from my Personal Story in the Tower of Nightmares, finally feeling like I could venture into Fractals, the freaking awesome Zephyrites and their Labyrinthine Cliffs…. Some content was better than others but it was all fun for its freshness, even if only for a little while. I feel like I genuinely am becoming wrapped up in mysteries and characters, especially lately. Even the zerg-like events were fun for getting to see friendly server faces, esp towards Tower of Nightmares where it was more possible to do with just a group. And then they bring back some of those temporary elements later for fractals or as daily activities, which is even better because it still feels like past contents’ repercussions are being felt.

I’m very much looking forward to the end of Season 1 (how can I judge the storytelling of a complete story arc without it having even reached its apex yet? I admit to being a little ‘meh’ on it so far), and am throw-up excited for Season 2. If there are genuinely no expansion plans, then I foresee dragons and Cantha in the living story, which delights me to no end.

I’ve seen my old guild die off, but most of it is because 1) hardcore regulars abandoned our dying server altogether for one of the top WvW servers, and now never rep us or mark themselves as invisible, and 2) school is back in session for many of our more casual players, and they just don’t have time. Summer’s always the busy season for a big guild, in my experience.

This “feature only” release session he hints at is exciting to me, too, because after a year of story-centric updates it makes sense to step back and look at the fundamentals to make sure they’re still in line with where the game has gone. Seems like a nice counter to the sheer volume of content they’ve managed to put out.

eta: I’ll agree that I want WAY more personal story elements brought back, but I have faith that could happen over time.

Karizee.8076:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9woCZqemw

JAW ON FLOOR. This is amazing! Such fantastic editing, too. I started giggling and dancing with the Asura when it came on. Thank you so much for sharing.

I’m gonna take this opportunity to grovel for more in-universe songs for us to play and for more musical minigames like this year round. I know real world songs have licensing issues ;)

Also, this is good motivation for me to finish annotating the Sailor Moon theme for my flute-carrying Asura.

This is a beautiful thing <3 warms my heart. Lovely rhymes AND informative on Sylvari firstborn lore. Such talent. Very song. Wow.

…Y’know, at least ANet’s got me excited to take the “runt” down. That’ll be a very satisfying Living Story moment for me.

I think the t3 armor is beautiful and in fact I created a human medium specifically so one of my characters could wear it.

That said, there is something rotten in the state of some of the armor, imo. I don’t mind skimpy to a certain extent… but underboob on an armor set for females and not males is a bummer. I’d make more male characters if they could run around in as skimpy clothing as their female counter parts wearing the same exact armor. And yeah, I don’t understand why it was necessary on this piece of clothing to go up that high. Some of the light armors sooort of make sense… I mean, at least they have the appearance of some sort of underwire. I know it’s fantasy, but I’m also getting bored of pieces looking like someone had no clue how women’s clothing actually works whereas the male armor actually looks like it would protect them from something/more practical. Of course sets like the gladiator armor are the few happy exceptions. Impractical nakedness for everyone, whee!

-shrug- I don’t have more of a problem with the underboob than the extremely cleavagey light armors, I’d just like a little more parity between the sexes, which I think would lead to more options. I guess I just don’t understand why the men’s chest piece is full coverage but for the medium female it was necessary to remove 70% of the armor and throw some exposed breast in, to boot. Again, I don’t think this is a problem limited to this particular armor set.

And I totally agree about medium armor and those hideous trench coats. Let’s move away from those, please. They make me resent picking out the perfect pair of pants only to have most of them hidden from view.

I play a different part each time, unless I mess up really bad and get into a “I’M GOING TO DO IT PERFECTLY BEFORE I LEAVE” mindset. Although, if there are other people around, I feel bad hogging one particular pitch… so I’ll let everyone around me pick first and choose whatever’s left. Sometimes the scramble for a spot is more stressful for me than actually playing o.o;

Naus, I like your theories! I couldn’t begin to tell you what I think will happen; I would never have come up with Scarlet Briar in 2012, so I doubt my 2014 predictions would be much better. I’m HOPING Faren gets some kind of accolade for selflessly trying to save (what he thought was) Queen Jennah. Even just a few throw away lines about it would be nice. That seems like a pretty big character point for him and I’d like to see it acknowledged.

I’m hoping for more lore on the second pale tree and Cantha, hoping we start seeing Orr change a bit more to reflect Trahearne and the positive result of his wild hunt at the end of our Personal Story. Really, any personal story things being brought into the LS more would make me incredibly happy. I want to know more about the human gods! Will they ever return/why did they go? I want to see more about the bloodstones and their effect on dragons. I want to know about the floating Wizard tower.

But mostly I’m hoping we get to hang out with the LS characters more. I loved the interactions between Jory and Kasmeer during the toxic tower events so much that I’d idle near them when afk just to hear them. And I want to see the zephyrites again! I feel like us gathering the crystals together could mean something for reincarnating or resurrecting Glint.

They could pick any one of these things to focus on and I’d be a happy duckling. I’m also hoping they continue to improve on the home instance (perhaps putting the artifacts accessible in your hero panel’s PS tab there), as I appreciate the LS rewards that end up there instead of taking up unnecessary space in my inventory (Model of the Zephyr, Jory’s Book).

I’m also interested in lore. How did Wintersday come to be adopted by all the races? I only recall humans in GW1 celebrating and it was a very gods-oriented holiday. Is Wintersday completely nondenominational now or are there still those spreading the word of Grenth and Dwayna? …this obviously stems from my desire to know ALL THE THINGS about human gods thanks to GW1 clings to them.

Dante.1508:

A group who paid money on an item (Virtual or otherwise) should always out weigh a group that feels their prestige was ruined, no matter what the sizes of the groups are..

Honestly the Armor should stay in game and the prestige complainers should take a good long look at themselves, its a game you play for fun.

Money is real no matter what it buys, these people paid for a service that was systematically taken from them.

I personally feel they should take it to court, these companies cannot keep getting away with these illegal practices..immoral too.

The fact people continue to play after this really is a worry to me.

First of all, money should never make your opinion more or less valid than anyone else’s. That’s a disgusting concept to me. I say this as someone who paid for the skin and doesn’t have a light human character.

So you say “complainers should take a good long look at themselves, its a game you play for fun” and then go on to threaten legal recourse when you are complaining. Ugh.

I’ve tried to stay out of this thread and responding to posts like yours that I’m never going to agree with, but I work in customer service (not for ANet, alas) and what they did is fair and awesome. I’ve been on their side of being threatened by entitled customers who have been offered a reasonable solution to a crummy situation. ANet kittened up! I work for a manufacturing company, I know how that is. There are a ton of moving parts in a company and sometimes things don’t always mesh perfectly. It’s the cost of doing business. There are always some unavoidable losses.

Someone made a decision that completely wrecked cultural armor, a system which has affected people’s choices of race at character creation. A choice players can not undo. It is not whining to say that the implication of cultural armor being made universal and improved for far less money is alienating to the very code of their game. It’s just how it is, love or hate that code. I imagine anything that would change that system would be announced far in advance and fluffed with PR to be palatable, not snuck into a random gemstore skin. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it would be game-changing. That’s not what they meant to do here.

You may not think it was a mistake, but clearly ANet does. They are redesigning the skin. At that point, you can keep the redesigned skin, getting the content you paid for, or you can get a refund if the aesthetic is not to your taste. This is exactly what any ethical company dealing with its mistake would do at this point. Speaking as someone who has watched small potatoes people who don’t understand warranties and business try to sue companies for similar things, it is my opinion that you would be laughed out of a courtroom.

I do agree with people who are suggesting that the refund plus transmutation crystals would be nice, and that there are some inconsistencies in how support is refunding. That should obviously be ironed out ASAP. However, what is stopping someone from keeping the armor AND getting a refund? So, perhaps the best thing to do is ask that people transmute their armor before gaining a gem refund with courtesy crystals. The flamekissed purchase will be obvious on their account, though I’m not sure how they verify the skin has been properly overwritten. They’ve created quite the headache for themselves, but they’re taking steps to make it up to us. That’s wonderful. I’d be surprised if they didn’t throw us a courtesy bone of some kind on top of the armor, because that’s the quality of service and care I’ve been treated with from ANet over the last year+.

Just calm down, wait for the skin, enjoy the old version while we have it and by then they’ll probably have a procedure hammered out that’ll be consistent and satisfactory. OF COURSE support is sort of unequipped to deal with this; it’s unprecedented. Give them some time to make a policy. I think the transmutation feedback is helpful, but the people freaking out and threatening legal action when they’re going to get at LEAST a full refund just makes me roll my eyes. Again, the only word I can come up with is “entitled”.

“The fact people continue to play after this really is a worry to me.” lol, I don’t want a moderator giving me an infraction so I’ll just leave the sounds of me laughing here. There are way bigger fish to fry in terms of critiquing the game (armor parity between the sexes, fractal level reset, the impending balance update…) than some random skin. If people flounce over this of all things, the community is probably all the better for it.

You’re not the only one! It’s hands down my favorite thing about Wintersday :) I love music, I love bells, I love that no one has to fail for me to succeed. It’s a beautiful thing. Maybe I’ll see you there.

“kitten” is what the forums use to replace so-called inappropriate terms. My best guess is that the number was supposed to be six-nine? I saw this a few days ago, as my main is an ele and I’m in a panic about my build for the update, and that’s all I could come up with.

eta: aw, beaten to it ;) even more confused about what the number is supposed to be, though. Not sure why four, five, s is censored o.0

I’m sorry if this has been answered, but on the main skill balance thread in the gw2 discussion forum, I see JonPeters say “Arcane VI – Arcane Resurrection. Moved to Master tier.” … except Arcane VI is Renewing Stamina? I know RS was originally to be moved to Master tier along with Elemental Attunement (cries) and due to everyone being like “wtf, I thought you said I’d feel less pressured to put points into Arcana?” they decided to only move Ele Attune (cries again). Is that a correct summary? If so, does this mean that the quote from JonPeters on the Balance Preview is just a typo, and it should actually say “Arcane II”?

Again, sorry if that’s been answered, but I’m combing through the update to head off the anxiety that’s about to set in over just how radically this will force me to change my build, heh. Thanks for your help.

PS: I just demonstrated the other day to my boyfriend how unenthused I am for decreased recharge times. Sure I can swap back and forth faster (with less effect, since the attunement traits I use are being moved up to master), but most of my weapon skills are still recharging, so what’s the advantage, exactly? Anyone have a more positive perspective they can link me to? :) ty and good luck to everyone’s new builds.

I love OP’s ideas so much because they tie into the lore mysteries that have kept me in love with the GW world. I don’t object to Scarlet so much as I object to the old lore being dropped like it’s hot and her being shoved in as some sort of calorie-dense but low-on-nutrition substitute. I want to know my character is actually researching things, is actually working hard to uncover things and actively make connections instead of just being called upon every two weeks by another NPC to play at being their silent sidekick while they do all that stuff. Where are the gods and why did the leave? Has no one tried to communicate with them? What’s up with pale tree 2.0? The bloodstones? Elona and the Sunspears?

OP’s first paragraph just really spoke to me, then they pulled out that magnificent chart at the end and… VigorousApplause.gif

Thank you, ANet! I don’t have a light human character and I did buy the armor for my norn ele, but I think this was absolutely the right move. If I don’t like the new design I can request a refund. Fair enough, so long as I can keep the exotics they’re on! I’d still love to hear what the rough plan is for armor in the year or so ahead, but the way you dealt with this issue <3 thank you. It’s nice when someone owns up to their mistake and fixes it for all parties.

eta: I am super disappointed to lose that awesome headpiece, but this option seems much more fair to the playerbase at large. So I’ll live somehow. My personal hope would be a modification of the Winged Armor <3

If this is part of some bigger plan by ANet regarding cultural armor/race changes, then I’d like some sort of State of the Game: Armor/Race announcement outlining what their goals are, what elements of the game are thinking of being changed/phased out/upgraded and why. At least give me a run down of what’s going on in your minds so I can make informed choices as a Tyrian consumer/real world investor of both time and money. I love, love, love the reskins but this lame move to sneak it into an update without any head’s up has absolutely killed my desire for ANY armor that costs gold. What’s the point when I can just buy a cheaper, cooler looking version in a few months and use the gold on something else that doesn’t completely undermine the time I spent to earn it in-game? Why would I ever buy cultural armor again when there’s a chance that the next day a new version will be out and all my gold spent will have been for nothing in the blink of an eye. There are a lot of negative implications for my plans for my characters here, and this even invalidates racial decisions I made over a year ago and can’t change because I’ve invested a year into these characters and they have ascended items. And WHY isn’t the flame dye-able. The design is beautiful, so of course a ton of people already have the skin and look like almost exact clones of eachother.

Please, ANet. Let us know what you have envisioned for our beloved game. People on my server were so angry that they actually started a Tyrians Against Flamekissed guild. Why did we get more communication with regards to Sylvari hair being diversified than this?

As an aside, I do want to say that the heavy flame* armor is a truly beautiful reskin, imo. My boyfriend’s female asura was rocking it in the normal style and I think the extra detail added is A+. Lovely. But I like it all the more for being a redesign of an everyday skin, not a cultural one.

It is (or was) my goal to get basically all my characters cultural armor, eventually. Luckily, I didn’t make a light human, or else I’d be really kitten ed right now :\ my condolences, guys. This is a really, really lame move on ANet’s part. Also, as others have said, pretty lazy. And why is it just light armor that steals a cultural set? Bizarre choices. It is so expensive to buy a cultural set. What a slap in the face.

I’m experiencing this, too. It happens on and off after every patch and for the last week it’s been making it so I can hardly play the game. My boyfriend is sitting on the computer next to me with no problem, whereas I am kicked every five minutes with this error code. I’m in California. I only play PvE. So. Frustrating.

ETA: My FPS is like 40-50, so this isn’t a “too much bandwidth” thing, either. At least not on my end…

Gakesupo.4152:

I must be blind or something because i just spend 30 minutes mostly looking around in kessex hills and couldn’t find any random harvest spots. walked to fort salma and all. “officially giving up”

What I found yesterday, the first time I got involved in LS this week, was that these clumps of 3-4 resource nodes regularly appear near the spore events. I don’t recall if they appear on the minimap as a node. In about 30 minutes I’d gotten 46/50 or so I need as I did events. I only didn’t get more because I didn’t realize sooner that they were a node and not some random event-related area weapon or something (I was doing the bomb event and accidentally hit “F” too many times near them and was pleasantly surprised). Take another look around, I’m sure you’ll find them Good luck

Romek.4201:

i like the armor for female – ppl dont care for robocop armors thats why noone wears t3 on human female

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. The only reason I made a female human heavy was for the t3 armor. I’ve seen plenty of ladies in it, even just within my own guild.

Durzlla.6295:

Madora.9340:

Durzlla.6295:

Really Anet? We’re going down this road now? I mean kitten i thought with all the Bad kitten heavy armor skins in GW1 (for female) that at least -some- of the really awesome armors in GW2 would be the same for females…

Nope, looks like they get chain Bikinis instead of real armor… cause that makes sense….

That being said that trickster armor is sexy as hell, i must have it!

I can’t help but agree. Chain-mail bikinis are sexy the first time around, but I’m thinking they’re way overdone now. Give us something unique to look at, both as male and female!

Don’t get me wrong, they should have chain bikinis (i mean some people like playing that berserker character who is dressed in very small amounts of armor), but if they do that for an armor it should be for both male AND female, not Male being some knightly juggernaught armor where they’re clad head to toe in 12 inches of steel, and then the females are essentially dancers for jabba the hutt.

YES, THIS, THANK YOU. Why can’t I put my male sylvari in some skimpy armor that shows off his glow? There’s only one light piece that does this for a male (it has an open chest front, forget its name). Get us some male 1970s basketball short-shorts up in here because, as I’ve said in the past, I wouldn’t mind designs showing off the skin if it were an option for both sexes. The male and female phalanx shoulda been two separate designs. I don’t understand how the male armor wouldn’t translate easily to a female. I saw a picture of the male phalanx armor on tumblr and nearly lost my mind because it was so beautiful and then I saw the female version and was heartbroken. I guess I should be used to this by now.

ETA: I see people are saying they like the female phalanx. Which is fine! It is definitely nice looking and I love the detail. But looks totally different than the male. Again, I wish they would have been two sets with much similar aesthetics for male and female.

I think there’s always going to be “grind”. It was an interesting play, to progress the story not at a certain date but based on the achievements. Which I don’t mind so much now that they’ve added the ability to gain these through dailies (I love, love this feature). I also really liked that they at least attempted (gold star you tried.jpg here) to link the player’s in-game reward with the plot. That makes the reward so much more meaningful. Like, I have marjory’s journal and the sanctum thing in my inventory doing nothing for …ever. I wish this were handled more like the personal story tab, with the holiday items displayed on a book-like page with a short plot summary. Just keep it out of my inventory. In this vein, good on them for the nodes-as-rewards.

So, if grind is gonna be there, we’re just talking about scale. I think the person who brought up the notion that it’s impossible to farm that much brought up a fair point. Has anyone really crunched the numbers? I assume ANET is thinking beyond just the one year – that these are prizes that could take multiple holiday events to earn (some communication on this point would be cool, but I was asking since last year whether the holiday currency/collectibles+rewards would be reused and never found a straight answer, so I guess it’s par for the course). Which would be fine if they gave us more collectible space to hold this stuff. That is the truly upsetting part, to me. Where do they think we’re gonna be able to store all the stacks? (Unfortunate Answer: I imagine they’d like you to buy bank space via gems)

Other than that, I don’t see a high-end grind here. You can do most of the achievements pretty easily, and there’s plenty of time to do it in (I say as an adult player with a full time job, family, other hobbies…). Add to that the great implementation of getting the LS requirements through dailies, and well… I just don’t see the problem. We have another half-month or so of Halloween updates, as I assume the next LS release will tie in, after which time I’ll be able to judge this more clearly. Also, I haven’t finished the last story mission due to busy-ness, though I got the mini a few days ago, so ymmv. But for now, I’d say this isn’t on the high end of the grind-scale and that I appreciate them trying to play with the LS format a little. I’d take this over the insane amount of pumpkin carving that I did last year for the title (although that turned out to be weirdly fun and I… kind of miss the rush this year? I actually feel less hectic this Halloween LS, and I kind of don’t like that).

My biggest problem so far is that there’s not a lot of incentive to do the Labyrinth after you have your doors. Not enough reason to ~grind~ I guess, unless you’re farming the nodes. Most people on my server are favoring WvW Season 1 — seems like the same problem I had in trying to enjoy the The Crown Pavilion. After the initial release, the commanders leave for WvW and it’s a ghost town by the middle-end of the LS. Also kind of a bummer to have no armor repair/merchant, but I guess it’s a way to make you use any consumables for those that you might have.

I want to thank TTS with hugs and cupcakes; got into an overflow with you lot last night and the commanders ROCKED IT. Thanks, guys. I hope to see you again. It was a pleasure. Big shout out to the turret operators who kept this ele alive in the zerg for way longer than I thought possible.

scootshoot.6583:

If you can’t see the issue of players guesting on servers with toned down world bosses, sorry can’t help ya there…

Surely if the boss is scaled, and more people arrive, then the boss would increase in difficulty, thus removing any advantage to guesting like that? I assume the devs wouldn’t put a scaled boss on one server and not on the others.

Alternately, maybe it’s time to give us an overflow list for the player’s current zone, like in GW1.

Devona’s Rest. We had three relatively organized commanders on yesterday, one on each turret and one in the zerg and we just couldn’t. Didn’t have a full map, though, of course.

Phalanix.7542:

It may be silly, but I find “bunny hopping” as the wave is coming towards you to be fairly helpful. Even got 2-3 achievement ticks per wave sometimes and got the full tiered achievement rather quickly.

Thanks for the tip!

Yeah, it happens to my boyfriend and I, too. We get hit before the wave even comes near us. Very frustrating because I actually love this mechanic.

Each night since release I’ve been on Devona’s Rest, participating in 2+ Teq fights a night. Same experience. We didn’t have the numbers tuesday, when we we were hyper organized and people were motivated to get on TS, and it’s only gotten more and more dead since then. What I gather from map/guild chat is that everyone is demoralized and trying to guest on other servers. I’m hoping the weekend traffic will make it happen but shrug who knows. I don’t think your server is alone.

Mastruq.2463:

In a few months, I as a solo player leveling in Sparkfly Fen can come across an organized group staging for this encounter. I can decide to hang around take part in the encounter, too. That’s GOOD. You wouldnt have that if it was instanced.

We’ll see. If they nerf him a bit (remove/increase timer or add more turrets), then perhaps. Otherwise, I’ve seen more people say “well, I’ve got my achievements, never doing that again.” I’m inclined to say it’ll be dead in a few months (heck, weeks) if it stays this way, but we’ll see

Since SAB it’s been getting worse. It’s terrible on my computer and only slightly better on my boyfriend’s. Intense skill lag and, then rubber banding, then a disconnect and this error. Everything else works great, but this game is approaching unplayable levels at the worst possible time. It happened to me 3 times tonight (two hours of play, appx). Not to count the all the moments of lag overall.

Jamais vu.5284:

takatsu.9416:

I don’t intend to be another QQ’er.

But you do QQ.
Believe it or not, but ability to coordinate in a larger group is a player skill too.
If you (and every other player present) can’t do that, you might be not as skilled you think you are.
Play some WvW, for perspective. Dodging hugely telegraphed attacks while putting out maximum DPS like you do in every other piece of PVE content is not the only measure of a player’s skill level.

My problem is that it’s a “player skill” that isn’t supported at all by GW2’s UI mechanics right now. If this is what they are actually trying to foster, they’re basically putting you behind the wheel of a spaceship and going “you figure it out. The team who built it tried and couldn’t, but we’re sure you guys can. Oh and you’ll probably need a third party program to communicate with the rest of your crew.” There’s no in-game team speak system, no way for a commander to go into a head’s up squad organization overlay and have clear lines of communications with squads. How do you account for new players? Or servers without their own TS channel? Or lone wolf players who are completely unaware that such things exist? Your whole server is brought down by these people who have every right to play that way (as newbs, lone wolfs) in PvE – but an event like this causes a lot of tension and discord in an MMO that is otherwise pretty good at encouraging cooperative play. How can you read a mapchat that has five people giving instructions scrolling eachother off the page in the middle of a battle?

I love the mechanics they implemented for Teq, I just feel like it needs some tweaking to be realistic and sustainable in the future once people get their title and stop playing it. Right now the game doesn’t really have the infrastructure to support the level of coordination they’re asking for.

I’m just not sure why they were bragging that their own in house testing teams hadn’t been able to complete the content. People who are (I assume) in the same building/room couldn’t even manage it. How… how is that a selling point to a PvE event where you know the player base will be even less organized/informed? shrug

I’m excited to keep trying it, until I have my title. But the two hours of GW2 I can manage at MAX on weeknights is not worth that. My personal cost/benefit analysis doesn’t look so great for Teq. I’ll happily eat my popcorn and keep an eye on this, though; I’d love to be wrong. I think with some minor tweaks they can make it challenging but still reasonable. Unless they don’t want to, and that’s fine, they’ve just made content I’d previously liked playing unplayable. Whee.

You might want to wait on the rally cry until people are done with their 9-5 jobs + dinner I bet DR, a North American server, will have a better chance of success after ~4 PST.

This is happening to me, as well, really badly and to my boyfriend with, I’d say, about 25% the severity. It started the day of the latest SAB patch for both of us. All other programs/games requiring an internet connection are smooth for both of us. The last time this happened was during a previous patch (I don’t remember which. Mabe Dragon Bash/first SAB). Customer service told me it was on my end, which I will continue to keep an eye on, but I really, really don’t think it is. My computer is moooore than capable of handling GW2, so this is also not a computer issue.

The game is basically unplayable. A friend of mine just joined up and I kept getting kicked every 2 minutes, so I couldn’t help her out. Very embarrassing/frustrating since it was her first log in and she was overwhelmed with everything. I’m afraid to join my guild in Dungeons and Missions for fear that I’ll end up on a completely different part of the map drawing an ungodly amount of adds and being more of a hindrance than a help. All I can really do until this is fixed is craft and try to get my daily (though, even there, the lag can be terrible. Selling things can take minutes, sometimes I’m not sure I’ve crafted what I wanted to craft until the game suddenly catches up to my actions).

The first/last time I experienced this problem, I noticed that it was fixed after my launcher downloaded a patch. I’m hopeful a similar fix is possible with this latest round of the lag beast.

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

Dresden.1736:

As a former community manager for Kabam games, I’ll tell you right now that this guy only knows half of what is actually going on. Directors and producers don’t tell community managers anything because like this guy, he posts only part of the information online and causes a ****-storm. So, take what he says a grain of salt. All we know, now, is that we will be able to switch MF gear to another kind of gear. We don’t know anything beyond that.

I’d be very, very surprised if Utility Infusions still work. A refund of 20 laurels for anyone who has one would make much more sense, and would also not contradict the ‘no more gear-based MF’ announcement.

Panic less about that Utility Infusion (also: might want to scan threads for dev posts):

Martin Kerstein.3071:

• Celestial will stay as it is minus the MF bonus on it.
• MF food will work as it is working now.
• Utility Infusion will still work.

I’m more confused about the weird discrepancies this’ll cause in ascended items/trinkets. On the one hand, I hope the double-click to reapply MF thing applies to them (as opposed to just removing it), but on the other, it bums me out that the ascendeds will no longer all be the same for everyone. Mostly mad at myself for buying the stupid armbrace of truth for the MF when I could have had a more in-character ascended.

Yup! Happened to my boyfriend last night in Blazeridge on Devona’s Rest. I’ve got some competition, looks like. -sharpens blades-