Little red Lioka
It would be a cool piece.
Still that costume is what you get when you have float designers work on a costume.
“Wait you mean to tell me that a girl is gonna wear it and not a Buick? But we already spent half the budget on it.” “Put the girl in it anyway”
Little red Lioka
Dungeon mobs chasing you to the ends of time has been a thing since WoW to prevent players from skipping all the trash mobs and running straight to the boss. It is at least how its supposed to go. So long as you don’t aggro them they won’t chase you though.
I agree on the reset thing. If you attack the mob while it tries to reset it should forget about resetting and attack you.
Invulnerable for mobs that can’t get to you/hit you has also been a thing since WoW. It’s there to prevent you from outsmarting the mob with a good position they can’t reach to keep challenge. Imagine if you can get on top of a rock and blast a dragon with ranged attacks just cause it can’t figure out how to climb the rock to counter attack. How stupid would it look? “Hi im Zaitan and im gonna stare at you while you slowly shoot me to death with 10,000 arrows you somehow carry.”
Some games will have the mob be able to impossibly climb obstacles to get to you (think final fantasy does this). I’ve seen it here in GW2 as well. It’s done to get around limitations in AI programming and keep the challenge up. Things that may appear to make sense to a player may not make sense to the AI. A well written AI wouldn’t need these “cheats.” An AI that can’t overcome the problem needs these “cheats” to keep the game interesting. That and the terrain design needs to help the AI as well. It seems to hinder it more here than help it.
Little red Lioka
I’ve been in a guild much like the OP description. I’d think you can find that but it won’t be common. It takes a lot of dedication from the guild leaders to run a guild like that and often time external resources (teamspeak, guild forums, etc) are paid for out of the guild leader’s pockets.
I’d think a more common occurrence is that you find a guild schedules a time for a specific event (WvW, Missions) and otherwise doesn’t have internal interaction. Some may have a website, most won’t (guild admin has to run it after all). Some may have a TS or use the server’s TS with a private channel.
On the part about required builds. At one point i was in the leadership of that guild that had all the scheduling and website. I personally am too lazy to do admin. Anyway the thing about required builds was that nobody wants to be required to do anything in a guild (at least the ones I’ve been through). This even though having set builds and teams would benefit the gameplay significantly.
I suggested it several times and each time i had players revolting against the idea. They would claim I didn’t trust them to come up with a build that works (this was WvW guild). It wasn’t just trust, but I was trying to build a strategy for the whole team that I thought would work. I could never get the puzzle pieces I needed to build it cause the pieces refused to fit.
I think you’ll find the use of required builds in the harder core guilds but the average guild, even one with strong admin leaders, will shun this idea in favor of having more players and free will for them to choose.
Overall GW2 is bored and lazy now. It’s an old game. HoT is supposed to drum this up a bit and may do so for a while to come. Even then it won’t be as exciting an atmosphere as launch. The guilds you find will be as lazy as the game itself is now. Good luck finding a guild you want.
Little red Lioka
It’s quite simple.
Trebs take more time to take down a structure, giving them time to rally a counter attack. This attack ends up succeeding and half your zerg goes back to the silverwastes cause the karma train stopped, effectively ending the train completely.
That’s why AC’s are hated. They break fast karma trains. Combine this with counter trebs and trebs in keeps that can cover the nearby towers.
Little red Lioka
It should be like that laser lightning experiment they do in new mexico. Shoot a laser into a nearby storm cloud and send lightning screeching back, doing the effects this skill was supposed to do.
Little red Lioka
If a server holes up in a tower defending it they surrender all the surrounding territory to the attacker. All the attacker has to do is setup trebuchets. If they have a counter treb in the tower you build two trebs on opposite sides of the tower. One counter treb can’t defend against that.
The attacking force has the advantage of being able to resupply while keeping the defending force inside the tower. You don’t send everyone to get supply. Keep it to 5 people max per run and prepare the treb spots to counter rushes against them, positioning the main force to respond to either treb.
Anyway now that ANET did this they need to make tops of walls safer by implementing collision detection for AOE hits. Any AOE cast against the side of the wall should never damage someone on top of the wall. Projectiles at targets on top are fine.
Little red Lioka
1. Improved music system. It doesn’t have to go too far, just add the half steps to the F keys now that F1 through F5 are control keys. Add this for existing instruments and bring the instruments into the same key (so flute and trumpet can play with harp and bass). Some things I’d want to see out of it
- toggle “music mode” to change my keyboard to music mode. This allows additional keys to be used for music.
- Instrument use no longer times out.
- Fill out remaining octaves in all instruments: Add the low octave to the flute and the high octave to the magnanimous bell.
2. New WvW system. I know you guys don’t like to touch WvW much but it could be one of the most powerful features in GW2. I proposed a system before for this. Take wvw out of the 4 map system and put it into a large continent with multiple territories. Each server starts in a citadel on 3 corners of the continent and fights the other servers to control territory on the continent. The continent could be composed of random tiles even to change up the map each match.
- Server bonuses are based on the number of territories your world controls
- Some territories allow access to special raids (like having the old hall of heroes allowed access to UW and FoW)
- The current supply system stays. Supplies are fed from territories with camps. Supplies travel from these to frontline keeps. A smaller server could hamper a larger one’s efforts by controlling the supply lines. More territory to control spreads out the coverage of one server
3. Goes with the music system: Asuran Synthesizer instrument. Add an synthesizer instrument with 5 octaves and some different sounds (selected with the qwerty keys)
Little red Lioka
Saw the talk about Charr vs Asura tech…
Computer tech the Asura win hands down. They have stock tickers in the market and particle accelerators in the field.
War technology however the Charr beat the Asura hands down with the sole exception of the mega lasers.
Lioka started her career inventing a teleportation gun. She then continued to fight… with swords and hammers. Not even laser swords (light sabers) or rocket charged hammers. You know… a Hammer with a rocket thruster on one end of it. Instead i fight with medieval weaponry at its finest. Pistols? No laser blasters, only flintlock guns like everyone else. My engineer worked in the finest tech of the 1700s (irl) instead of inventing new laser guns or artillery.
Here you have a race where their technology mirrors today’s tech in a world that resembles late Renaissance tech overall and there is not a shred of modern day weaponry among it. They have computers, science labs. They have a particle accelerator experiment like the hadron collider.
Meanwhile you have the Charr whose tech resembles the late industrial period war tech starting the 20th century up through WW2. Tanks, helicopters, machine gun turrets, airships with cannons. Not only does their tech fly (with asurans it’s limited to platforms and buildings) but it has lots of artillery on it.
When (spoiler alert for 3 yr old content) I fought myself at the end of the infinity ball episode all the technology there is what asuran war technology should have looked like currently. Robotic creatures and all. What Asura have instead is a ridiculous lack of vision when it comes to applying technology to self defense. They might be “smart” but all that knowledge won’t stop the Charr from leveling Rata Sum if they wanted to.
on topic: I may have played a charr if i started with one. The area they’re in is like a trip down memory lane trying to find all the old locations. They look cool. I personally found the Asura starting more comical though.
Little red Lioka
that poor girl is smothered in 40 kilos of feathers.
Little red Lioka
So you need expansion parts to visit expansion content but you don’t want to have to get the expansion to get expansion content?
Would you be willing to buy one of the dev’s lunch for a week so he can work on the free content for you? You want the devs to give you content but you want to give nothing back?
Would you be willing to carve a wood chess set for me for free? Seems you have no trouble with someone else developing content for you so pass that feeling on. Its not like it will cost you anything beyond the tools to make it. Just go out in the woods and grab a bunch of fallen wood from trees. By the way. You’re not allowed to be compensated for your time since you don’t allow other game devs to be compensated for time.
Want to be compensated for your carving time? It’s only fair that you compensate the anet devs for their time too. Buy the expansion. It’s lunch for a week for a hungry Gaile who puts up with us.
Little red Lioka
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: lioka qiao.8734
Should someone who buys a product have rights to equity assumed by the change of that product’s price later on as sold to others?
This is what this boils down to.
I bought X 3 years ago for $60. The guy who made X now makes addon Y for X for $45. X is now free with the option to add Y for $45 so that the guy who made X can sell Y easier. Should I have rights to the price difference between X and Y because X is now free?
To assume I should is incredibly greedy. I already got 3 years worth of value out of X. That value was bought and paid for. Now I’m paying for addon Y to X so i can get more value out of X. Someone else may get X for free but I still got more value over the time I had X. I got my time out of X. I shouldn’t care about others getting it for free. Now I’m adding Y to X and I’ll get more use out of it. Y’s value is its own.
Little red Lioka
I’ll take the topic question and run with it. Starting with the buff, or the effect itself, swiftness exists to allow a player to move between point A and point B faster. It is a buff that Anet gives a player as one of many tools in his strategy toolbox. What you use it for is whatever situation you need: reduced travel time in pve, faster strategy execution in pvp, an escape mechanism when your strategy fails, etc. Anet certainly didn’t have to make it or include it in any way but they did. Speed is a thrilling tactic to utilize and adds depth to the game.
Anet also included a number of ways to get a slightly weaker version of swiftness. You’ll note that none of the passive speed buffs equates to 33% and that they don’t stack. To get the 25% speed buff you have to trade something for it:
- a skill slot
- a more powerful rune set
- a stronger trait or trait line
- a better weapon set to equip
- an elite skill activation or other cooldown
For those who use signets to get the speed boost they have to sacrifice a utility slot. What could they have used in place of their swiftness signet? Also if they activate the signet they lose the swiftness buff.
For those who traited it: A lot of traits require a specific weapon or type of weapon (Warriors need to have melee weapons to use theirs). What other weapon could they run to be more powerful?
For those who used runes for it: You can’t combine it with power runes or condition defense runes (Hoelbrak, Melandru) so you sacrifice those areas.
For those who spam their swiftness skills they lose other aspects of the cooldown they used to get the swiftness. Warrior warhorn cleanses conditions. Ranger one adds might and fury. Guardians lose an AOE dps (and forget they can aoe dps with the symbol).
Why does swiftness exist then? It’s an option a player can choose by sacrificing something else to get it. It’s a strategy they can employ correctly to achieve victory over an opponent. If they choose not to use it they can apply resources to other aspects of their character. Think about how many warriors and thieves in pvp were able to escape your otherwise certain victory because they out ran you. That’s why it exists.
Little red Lioka
This might get me playin wvw again. All the servers get assigned to a color and there are 8 persistent copies of each borderland + ebg. With a tournament like this you could even have edge of the mist become a persistent score world instead of the ktrain paradise it currently is. You don’t lose your server’s identity like you do in edge.
This tournament needs to happen!
Little red Lioka
The greatest evil is invented with the best intentions. (i think that’s a quote somewhere).
If you remember gearscore from world of warcraft you’ll know why this is a bad idea. It automatically inspected gear and made it super easy to boil a person down to a number (that was almost constantly abused for raids). Gearscore was one of the reasons I left world of warcraft as it made it nearly impossible to do any raids unless you happened to find a raiding guild.
Create a tool like this and you’ll eventually end up with every guild having a requirement for an account token ID to join. They’ll keep constant tabs on you and kick you the moment you stray from their thought of success. Sure it will start with only hard core guilds but soon the concept becomes meta as meta becomes easier to enforce.
That dungeon thing will become the norm too as more and more people ask for token ids to join parties where they’ll check you out.
It basically boils down to this: A person is more likely to be a kitten-hole if it is easier for him to be a kitten-hole. This tool while released with the best intentions will be perverted into a weapon of exclusion as raids find it easier to weed out players they don’t want by reducing them to a number.
This is not a memory I want to relive in Guildwars 2. I guess its inevitable though. If you don’t do it someone eventually will.
Little red Lioka
I don’t see anything here about not advertising my twitch so here goes:
http://www.twitch.tv/xliokaqiaox
Roughly every night by 10pm edt I’m playing music on my Midi keyboard setup live in Divinity’s Reach. I recently started streaming it. Partly to record it so I can review it but also so i can share the music.
I wrote a program that lets me use a midi equipped piano to multibox 3 characters on harp. This multiboxing allows me to get around issues with lag in switching octaves on one character, providing a more accurate sound. I can do chords in any inversion (even octave crossing) as well as melody.
By using a midi keyboard I’m able to combine two hobbies, Music and gaming. I’ve shared the app on Github (there’s another thread here for it). The most recent version im still working on but its showing incredible promise. I’m planning to add a 4th character for the bass soon (possibly 5 for the 2 bass octaves) and eventually a flute broadcast mode so i can do chords on the flute.
Thanks for listening!
Little red Lioka
How would I handle the Realm vs Realm implementation in a serverless setup:
The formula is similar as previously mentioned:
Start with factions
The number of factions depends on how many players you think you’ll have in the system. Anywhere from 3 to 5 sounds reasonable. Note this number is difficult to change in the future.
Then implement a 4X game mode around it
The mists is not one map but several “territories”.
- Each faction starts at a home city on the borders of it and must fight to expand their territory.
- Territory can be accessed so long as your faction owns a territory adjacent to it. To get to the territory you use the border waypoint in it. This waypoint is only active so long as you hold the adjacent territory. A portal sits at the border to allow walking through.
- Each territory has towers and a keep. Whoever owns the keep owns the territory.
- Players in a territory who lose access to the territory (lose the adjacent territory) get an “overextended” debuff which prevents them from carrying any new supply. Note that the border waypoint also closes.
- The maximum population a server can sustain on a territory is defined by the number of adjacent territories held at a rate of 60 per territory. Players above this cap if an adjacent territory is lost randomly are subjected to the overextended buff, but also gain an “overpopulated” debuff, which reduces their HP by 40%. Players affected by this buff cannot respawn in the territory but can respawn in the adjacent territories their faction owns.
The number of territories and how they’re accessed limits the number of potential players on a map, solving technological problems while allowing ample places where they can take active effect on their faction’s progress (frontline or backline).
Territories with benefits
Some territories will have supply or fortification setups. Supply territories will generate supply lines to the adjacent territories (yakslapper!) where yak caravans drop off significant supplies to the territory keeps on the line in addition to locally acquired supplies. Supply lines will also allow the hiring of NPC mercenary armies which will defend or attack territories adjacent to the line.
Fortification territories have a large wall across them and serve as defense for the faction who owns them.
Stonemist castle
The center territory is stonemist as we know it today. Controlling stonemist attunes it to your faction, allowing access to Underworld and Fissure of Woe (which have similarly strong rewards that they had from GW1).
Gameplay features for this RvR
Players may join factions in any major city and may change factions once a week for a high ingame gold cost which increases exponentially from 1 gold to 100 gold per change. This cost decreases over time depending on how long a player is on a faction (full decrease takes about 6 months). Players’ guilds may also join factions and fight for them with similar costs to change allegiance. A player may only join a guild whose faction allegiance matches their own.
Access to wvw is gained from a PvE or PvP character.
Rewards for the gameplay
- Players gain an increased magic find and crafting bonus rate based on the number of territories their faction owns.
- The faction who owns stonemist gets access to special raids with higher loot.
- Players who participate in the acquisition or defense of territory get rewards similar to what our rankup rewards are today.
- Players may use PvE acquired equipment . Gear and rewards acquired would go to the account wallet. Items acquired can be carried by pvp characters but not used by them.
Little red Lioka
Call up Gibson (guitars) and do a playable Guildwars 2 themed lute guitar.
Little red Lioka
A wvw victory objective should be a pvp based objective cause that’s what WvW is. This idea would be fine as a map mechanic in Orr or silverwastes. The wvw version of it would be something like accessing a hidden part of the enemy’s citadel to gain a strong reward buff.
Little red Lioka
I’m just thinking…
This is why forcing automatic updates in Windows 10 Home is a bad idea. Even though they’re supposed to keep your machine from being a cesspool of viruses, you get one update that shatters everything.
Anyway, I hope this gets fixed soon. I also hope that some kind of process change occurs so that this won’t happen again in the future. A little bit of QA process goes a long way to preventing issues like this from going live.
Little red Lioka
I suggested the F keys for the semitones as on most keyboards these actually line up where the semitones would be found on a piano. F3 and F4 are sightly off center tho (F# and G#). Also its fewer sounds to program for Anet than what could potentially be upwards of 14 different “keys” to program if they shifted key with F1 and F2.
Little red Lioka
Right, there is an organ in ebonhawke.
Making the semitones is as simple as doing quick notes in Ableton or whatever they use and saving them to wav files to play in game.
Tyria themed… The piano could be asuran tech, like a magic powered synthesizer.
Little red Lioka
(edited by lioka qiao.8734)
Now that we have an F5 key for skill activation it is possible to give us the semitones on instruments. That’s the primary focus of my suggestion.
The rest of this is suggestions for fixing some of the instruments.
All instruments:
- Add semitones assigned to the F keys by default:
- F1 = C#, F2 = D#, F3 = F#, F4 = G#, F5 = A#
- Note that flats are the same as sharps tonally, Bb = A#
Unbreakable Choir bell/breakable Choir bell:
- Fix the scale so it goes from C to C with 1 to 8 rather than D to D with 1-8
- Make it faster so you can play chords like the magniminious bell.
Mag. Bell
- Give it an actual high octave. The current low octave matches closer to C3-C4 and the current high octave matches C4 to C5. C5-C6 would sound good on a bell.
Horn is probably fine. I don’t remember if its key is off from C. If it is, bring it in line with the other instruments.
Drum:
- Move the loop recordings to 8 and 9.
- Replace high hit (4) with a snare hit.
- Add symbals and high hats
- 6: Symbal crash
- 7: high hat beat
- 8: rolling high hat.
Flute:
- Move it into the Key of C so it can harmonize with the other instruments
- Maybe add a third octave, but this is not really necessary.
Lute:
- Make the sound stronger/longer. It is barely detectable when in an ensemble unless playing chords. Sampling an acoustic guitar would work well. If you keep the sound the same you can add the acoustic guitar…
Suggestions for other instruments: I’d probably buy each of these.
Steam Guitar: Like the lute but louder and distorted like the Bass. This will allow some modern metal sounds. (C3 to C6)
Acoustic Guitar: Like the lute but a stronger sound. Sample an acoustic guitar from one of your interns for the sound. (C3 to C6)
Upright Bass: A cleaner bass sound than the steam bass we currently have. (C1 to C3)
Grand Piano: 5 octave range piano instrument (your character can’t move while playing it). C1 to C6
Violin: 2 octave high range instrument, good for doing vocals. (C4 through C6)
Chello: 2 octave low to medium range instrument (C2 through C4)
(Other orchestral instruments): The more the merrier (and the more profitable for you probably).
Little red Lioka
I think it was that back in 2004 Anet wanted to make a MOBA that appealed to players from other MMOs. The biggest groupings of people were called “Guilds”. Doesn’t take much to suggest to those players:
“What if you could fight players from other guilds? We’ll Call it ‘Guild Wars’”
And NCSOFT goes “Yes! Make it and sell it!”
“But what about players who don’t want to fight other players?”
“Lets hire some writers to slap together some lore and make a pve campaign on the side.”
And there you have it. Guildwars 1, the MOBA with a Pve on the side. They just use their lore as an excuse to keep calling it “Guild Wars” even though no actual battles occur between guilds, except for the stuff we make up in WvW.
Little red Lioka
Came up with another one. (its kind of a mix of other ideas here but with a theme)
Pluto week: Celebrate the New Horizons mission reaching Pluto… Lore:
The mists are on the fritz after Abbadon snuck back into heaven and screwed with whatever they use to control the mists. As Balthazar, Dwayna, and Grenth struggle to get it all back under control those who venture into the mists notice these issues:
- Everything is much darker. It appears as if all the mists battlegrounds are on another planet. There is a breathable atmosphere but it is much thinner. (space art chance for the art team). Due to the thin atmosphere shout abilities have a smaller radius.
- Gravity is reduced by 90%. This makes siege weapons (mortars and trebs especially) fire much farther than before.
- Pockets of disrupted mist appear around the battlegrounds causing a wide variety of effects: Areas of rain that make siege damage less effective, areas of warped time that make yaks and players run faster.
- The disruption of the mists has impacted the downed state and the ability to rally: Rallying will take multiple kills to trigger. Downed state skills recharge faster.
- Fully dead players should re spawn at the main spawn point as the ability to retrieve a soul by rubbing the dead body is broken. Attempting to revive a dead player may revive the player but also summon a Vengeful Aatxe or other demon.
The disruption to the mists has allowed the gods not involved with repairs to roam around the mists freely.
- Lyssa may be found at spawn points offering boons to worlds who cannot field many players.
- Kormir will appear at the citadel of a world who has lost all of their keeps on their borderland. Once she appears she will reveal the locations of enemy forces on the map for 1 hour or until the (world)server has regained control of their keeps (whichever is shorter).
-Melandru occasionally appears as a world boss on EBG or Borderlands. She hates the heavily upgraded structures of powerful worlds and will attempt to destroy them. Her power will be equivalent to Tequatl.
Little red Lioka
My engie would be happy with the hulkbuster.
Little red Lioka
So I’ve been working on a complete re-overhaul of the app to make it more professional. Here’s what the UI looks like now
http://i.imgur.com/lvN8U8S.png
My dream for this app is for it to be a full blown digital audio workstation. Im so close to completing that I’ll give you guys a crack at it:
https://github.com/michaelhester07/gw2musician/releases/tag/first
The github release tells you all you need to know to get started.
Enjoy the music!
Little red Lioka
This feature is in here because no one reads popup messages. It’s true in other programs and even windows and it’s true in game. Something pops up and the user just clicks through as fast as they can because it’s in the way.
This message is deliberately obnoxious to prevent the user from blasting through what could be a terrible mistake. If it just was a confirmation message you’d see players asking anet to restore their legendaries cause they deleted the wrong item. It was a simple text confirm like “yes i want to delete this thing” the user would just type that as fast as possible to get the message out of the way. Queue the deluge of messages to restore legendary items that users accidentally delete just to get a message out of the way.
This is also why when you kick someone from the party that it appears in the party window instead of as a popup. This makes the end user actually take part in their action rather than just get it out of the way. This way a single person cannot truly control who is in a party.
I left world of warcraft because of the community there. One person could trigger a kick from a dungeon and because it was a popup the other users would just click yes to get rid of the message. Control through apathy.
Take delight OP in the fact that ANET makes deleting important items obnoxious so that you can’t accidentally delete your legendary weapon because you wanted to get a confirmation window out of the way. They marked any item that you buy with gems and important equipment this way. Just type the name of the item in if you truly want it gone.
Little red Lioka
Sephiroth.. .gotta do it right.
Anarchy week!
- Players may damage and kill any other players in WvW outside of the spawn point.
- Players in a squad or party will not damage their party members.
- Structures are automatically claimed by the guild of the person who flips the structure. If the flipper is guildless the flip goes to their party.
- PPT for structures goes 10x toward a guild’s influence and 1 silver per point to the guild bank. Structures flipped or claimed by an individual will award silver per point to the one who claimed it.
Little red Lioka
You know.. if you think about this it’s brilliant.
With a single weekend event anet destroys the supply of omega and alpha golems on the tradepost and makes them valuable again. If players burn all their golems in one weekend they wont be able to golem rush as effectively as before.
Little red Lioka
Chilling Darkness was fine. The biggest use I got from it was to turn well of darkness into a chill effect as well. Now my necro won’t even use the curses line unless im going condi cause 1 chill every 5 seconds is worthless.
Little red Lioka
Bout time we got to storm the beaches of Normandy.
Omega golems were supposed to be a significant investment so that players don’t use them in bulk. When siege went tradeable the price of omegas dropped to where players will spam them with impunity. The result is 8 golem rushes that flip your T3 fortified keep before your server knows what’s going on. The ball is only in ANET’s court to fix this. I have some ideas for this:
1. Golem disabler trap
Cost 10 supply and deploy like other traps do. Golem disabler trap will pop a siege disabler when a golem crosses it and trigger a signal flare on the map. Golem trap will trigger other golem traps within 1500 units of it.
Golem trap will provide advanced warning of a golem attack on a structure where it is placed and also buy time for the defending server to mount a response. To prevent trolling with these traps any trap within 1500 units of a triggered golem trap will also go off.
2. Automated EMP turret (looks like any asuran turret)
Cost: 50 supply: permanent structure upgrade
Automated EMP turret will fire on golems in range and do significant damage to them, but otherwise does nothing. Rounds fired by the EMP turret can penetrate golem shields.
The automated EMP turret provides an active defense for an upgraded structure which must be defeated by player attacks before bringing golems up, once again providing a chance for the defending server to respond to the golem attack.
If your server can respond to the golem attack and then still loses then the enemy’s victory is well earned. I want the chance for a server to respond to a golem attack.
Little red Lioka
Here’s another one (one for Anet’s writers) too.
Because Scarlet had an orbital platform there is the possibility she was not actually on board the Breachmaker at the end of the first season living story, but controlling it from the orbital platform. Clone technology (specifically spells) could have been improved as well so that her clone would act as if it was a real person even in death. Scarlet was manning the orbital platform taking potshots at the heroes as they fought the Breachmaker.
An additional possibility is that the Breachmaker itself was the ship that supplied the platform and that Scarlet is now trapped on the station until her previous allies rebuild the means to get to orbit.
Little red Lioka
That explanation implies that Scarlet had space technology. The implication cat is out of the bag. There are factions in Tyria that have developed space flight technology way ahead of the time considering the rest of civilization in Tyria.
I had brainstormed the idea of making a mixup of GW2 and Kerbal Space Program called “Asuran Space Program” (lol i know its not very creative named). Taking place 100 years after today’s events. It would have been a massive overhaul mod for KSP but I wound never find the time to finish it so I didn’t bother starting.
Here’s hoping for Guildwars 3 in space.
Little red Lioka
This name i have comes in 2 parts.
The “Lioka” part was born in the first guildwars where I had to come up with a character name and stuck some random syllables together. The syllables stuck on my main character (monk) and I kept it ever since.
I’m also a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, hence the “Qiao” part. The full name creates a third Qiao sister and my first personal fan-fic for Dynasty Warriors. I’ve kept the name since I created it. I only played out the fan fic in daydreams. I never wrote it to paper.
Little red Lioka
My thought on meta: I spent the better part of 2 years fighting the meta instead of embracing it. I came to realize that the meta exists because many players not just believe it to be the best but test that belief to back it up. They find out their belief is true.
Play as you want is generally a fine mantra for Guildwars 2. In PVE you can blend into the group and get carried by it. Your contribution is 1/50th of the group for world bosses. Its 1/5th of a group for dungeons but the AI is always the same so there is a lot of leeway for your build.
In WvW play as you want only works when your server has significant numbers advantage over the others. Your ranger will hold his own when his contribution is 1/60th of the group. You can run anything at that point. Your group’s numbers are all that matter.
In SPVP if you play practice or solo queue you can play what you want. You’re only hurting yourself (and maybe your team) if you run a suboptimal build.
Heh suboptimal. The meta decides what optimal is and anything not that is sub optimal. That’s all its about. In most of GW2’s situations you can get away with sub-optimal builds. Its the places where you can’t get away with that where you get hated for not being meta. There are 3 places:
PvE: speed runs. If you’re going to join a speed run group you need to be as optimal as possible. If you don’t want to be optimal like that running meta then make your own group and run as you want. These players made their own group and demanded that their group have the best optimal setup for running a dungeon as fast as possible.
PvP: Group ranked play. Some groups want to boost their ranks and don’t want some ele on some super experimental scepter/focus build. That build is untested and to them a weakness the enemy can exploit to get victory. It’s a slot on their team that is underutilized for the sake of “freedom of choice”.
WvW: Squad raid and GvG.
This is where i’ve been fighting then embracing the meta. The same principle applies as from the spvp group. If a player is refusing to run an optimal character build then the slot they take in the raid is under-utilized for the sake of “freedom of choice”. The raid wants to utilize a specific set of tactics which includes for example:
Guardian frontline with hammer lockdown
Necromancer/Ele midline for heavy AOEs, and Eles for recovery phase
1 mesmer for veil tactics and some thieves to pick off the enemy backline.
In this case a ranger is not an optimal slot fill. Any non -meta guardian, ele, necro build is not an optimal slot fill. Here the number of slots you have is limited by what your guild turnout is rather than hard cap from the game mode. Deviation from the meta detracts from the power your raid brings to wvw. This lack of power means you’ll wipe more frequently. This in turn leads to lower turnout. It’s a self reinforcing negative outcome caused in part by the very freedom they want to bring to the small squad raid. The outcome is otherwise influenced by how much pvp experience the guild gets and how strong the opposition is.
I’ve had to bite my tongue on this with my guilds for so long kitten many of them don’t understand why the meta for wvw is a certain way. Some simply refuse to run it for the sake of their freedom of choice. Whenever I tried to invent a strategy for my guild I’ve hand players nearly revolt for it.
I thus drive raids knowing I’ll never get my guild to attain the power it could bring. The frustration mounts every time my guild wipes to an enemy raid that does embrace the meta. Night after night I drive a herd of cats that don’t want to give the meta or my strategies for them the time of day. Getting the kittens all on teamspeak is ridiculously hard for some reason. And yet they show up and expect me to lead them to victory.
To the end of this idea I say this:
I can lead you to the victory but you have to want to win in order to seize it. This means realizing that 1000 theorycrafters vetting builds will produce a more solid build than your 2 hours of tinkering on your character page and accepting the meta. This means getting into teamspeak so I can drive the raid efficiently, rather than having to type everything out. It takes 2 seconds to say something in teamspeak that would take 15 seconds to type out not counting spelling and grammar mistakes. This also means getting some pvp practice in and showing up to training sessions.
/soapbox
The meta is about efficiency in a competitive environment. If you choose not to accept the meta thats your choice. Run with like minded people. If you choose to accept the meta that’s your choice. Run with like minded people. If you choose not to accept the meta and try to force that on a group that accepts it then expect drama, and the other way around. If you choose not to accept the meta in a situation that requires you to don’t expect to win.
Little red Lioka
I have come to an understanding that there are two types of commanding in WvW:
Strategic: deciding where to strike, what buildings to attack, when to fall back and defend. Strategic commanding revolves around controlling the current map strategy, developing plans for attack and defense and executing them.
Tactical: The art of combating an enemy zerg. Tactical commanding requires the commander to drive the fight from recovery phases to stacking might to leading the frontline hammer train or pirate ship.
Anyone can do strategic commanding. I do mean anyone. It doesn’t take a specific class to drive map strategy and this can even be performed by more than one person (though your results will probably be better with one commander calling map strategy). Strategic commanding is the first type of commanding someone learns too. Even with one map strategist the map should be driven by at least 3 commanders for your server to be able to conquer it. This gives you one group to manage each of the enemies plus one group to manage defense.
Tactical commanding (also known as Driving in some guilds) can’t be done by every class for every fight strategy. Tactical commanding is the source of this topic’s discussion I’d like to believe. I’ve seen 2 metas for tactical combat and the commander for each differs.
Hammer Train: Consists of a heavy contingent of guardians and warriors backed up by some ranged classes. Hammer trains play aggressively targeting enemy zerg’s support classes first (eles, necros).
Pirate ship: Consists of heavy ranged class components and few to no heavy classes (guard/war). Whoever pushes into the other zerg first loses as the defending zerg bombs their feet with CCs, traps, and heavy aoe.
If your guild raids with a “come as you want” mentality then you as the driver can decide what comp you match closest and pick the driver class for it.
With that framework mentioned i can describe my commander classes from worst to best (I’ve commanded on all but engineer).
Pirate Ship 4. Thief. Thief is slightly worse than ranger for tactical combat. They’ll excel when backed up by large numbers of thieves. If you must drive with a thief then go with a pirate ship group comp. Bring your sword, pistol, and shortbow. Spec for the thief traps. Set your rangers to traps too. This will make your pirate ship effective.
PS 3. Ranger. Rangers would be great drivers for pirate ships if only they didn’t have 40% of their effectiveness tied up in a stupid ai driven creature. That said they’re more durable than a thief in the long run as a ship driver. They can do traps and longbow to stay out of main combat.
PS 2 Engineer. Engie should almost be classified as a hammer train driver especially with healing bombs but they don’t get the raw mobility of the frontline classes. With grenades, mines, and turrets they’ll make great pirate ship captains.
PS 1: Elementalist. Ele makes a powerful pirate ship driver with static field and meteor shower. They can direct the aoe drops more effectively and direct recover better.
Hammer train 4: Mesmer. Mesmers can make fairly ok hammer train drivers with sword/focus. A mesmer commander has control over his own veil and portal. That is a bout it though, they can’t really drive a hammer train beyond that with a general lack of mobility.
HT 3: Necromancer. Necros form more of a support bomb role in a hammer train and could arguably drive a pirate ship effectively. They’ll be surprisingly durable at the front of the line especially specialized into siphons (definitely after tomorrow!).
HT 2: Warrior. Warrior is a heavy class and gets durability even in full zerker gear enough to drive a hammer train. Pick a weapon (greatsword, or hammer) + sword/horn or go with the metabattle builds for them. Warriors have the mobility to keep up with the hammer train and drive it effectively. They lack in the pure lockdown capability of a guardian though and don’t have the ability to broadcast stability. This imo puts the guardian at HT1.
HT1: Guardian. Greatsword or hammer, makes no difference. Guardians have the best frontline mobility and lockdown necessary to make a hammer train effective. They lock the enemy in while necros and eles bomb them with AOE. Even after stability stack changes Guardians are the best commanders for a hammer train.
Little red Lioka
On the topic of pants… we need more skirts for girls. I’m tired of having to fake skirts with the magician leggings. And fix the colors on the starter skirt so they’re not dulled.
Little red Lioka
Rata Sum could go with a decent repulsor field failure so it crashes into the jungle. Have Mordremoth suck up all the mana/magic from the power grid going there. That will be enough.
I never understood why the Asura don’t have combat technology that matches their computer tech.
Holographic displays,
Robots (golems), and..
I’m fighting with bows and arrows and swords instead of laser guns. I didn’t build a 50 meter tall mechanized dragon to fight the other dragons with (or to parade around queensdale blasting ACDC’s “Thunderstruck”) in my lab. My valet golem isn’t even near Jarvis level AI.
I wouldn’t believe the Asura have the capacity to destroy divinity’s reach as they have a massive lack of vision toward military technology. Even the Inquest lacks the vision (I wish i could have joined them).
Little red Lioka
Crash a drill into it!
(wait you already did that)
Have more death from underneath like when that hole opened up on the west side. Doesn’t matter. Divinity’s Reach will burn in the future doom!
Little red Lioka
I’d like to think of the opportunity of 25 rangers stacking all flame, spike and snake traps in a door now. Instant huge stacks of condis to whoever hits that.
Little red Lioka
Looks like my heavy siphon wellomancer is gettin a big buff.
Little red Lioka
This feature was in Guildwars 1.
GW1 also had alliances, factions, and guild halls. 1 down 3 to go i guess.
Factions for wvw instead of servers, alliances so that guilds can band together without losing their identity. Build saving for everything from pve to wvw to loading up the latest metagame builds (you could share your saved builds from GW1 too).
Little red Lioka
There is nothing wrong with using macros or scripts to play music in game. I think its slightly cooler if you can play it by hand. A live performance if you will.
Its why I wrote a midi keyboard interface for myself to play music better in game. The link is in the community creations section if you wanna try it (app’s fairly buggy, fair warning, but it works well). I want to add composing capability to it when I get time to (with recording). I just added multi box support so you can use the bass range on the keyboard to play a second character’s bass. (shameless plug, but its for the music).
It is true that a lot of the coolest songs are not playable in game. The recent instruments (harp, guitar, bass) give you C or Am keys. Anything else has to be transposed into those keys.
Any song that changes key can’t be played properly. When I do those songs I have to stop at the key change. This cuts short a lot of broadway stuff as the key changes are ways to indicate a change in a character’s mind during the piece.
Any song that uses accidentals can’t be played properly either. That leaves out quite a lot of Michael Jackson stuff. “I cant stop loving you” and “Thriller”, which would make you a rock god in GW2 if you could pull em off, can’t be played cause they start in one key but accidental into 2 others during the verse.
I’ve been posting here to get instruments with the “black keys” so we can perform proper music. Someday maybe… somewhere over the rainbow (which is playable in game).
Little red Lioka
I didn’t really check all of the crash scenarios in it, especially with the multi-box update. My antivirus flagged it too (guess hackers use port 1337) when i used it sunday. Seems opening a server port on 1337 is suspicious activity.
Try updating it for the connect output part. I did fix that one.
Edit: I seem to have not committed the multibox changes. I’ll add those this afternoon. I improved the octave shift handling in it as well for fewer broken octave shifts (watch out while playing chords tho)
The multibox support is for 2 characters ideally setup so that one plays the harp while the other plays the bass. For multibox you’ll need 2 computers, 2 accounts, bass on one, harp on the other.
Load up both accounts into GW2. Start the midi app on both computers. Have the treble computer (harp) connect to the bass computer with its ip address. (put in the ip, then check the connect box).
Set the bass player’s app to be the bass (check the bass box). You’ll have to connect a midi input on the bass player for now as well.
When bass is checked the midi keys will map to C1 through B2 for Bass while the harp will be C3 through C6. The bass keys will be transmitted to the bass player while the harp keys stay on the harp player. Gather your two accounts in one spot and enjoy the full range of your keyboard (note your keyboard must support the described key range to play bass)
Little red Lioka
(edited by lioka qiao.8734)
I did a minion master zerg a while back with my guild.
We didn’t need rams to bust down gates.
Little red Lioka
That is correct… no sharps or flats. Since you can’t really run while playing instruments ANET can take over the QWERTY keys for black keys (they should too) as such (make it remappable in controls). Direct octave selection through the F keys would ROCK too.
Key map (it’s upside down compared to a piano but it still works out)
1Q2W3 4R5T6Y78
Octaves:
F1, F2, F3 (select the octave of choice), F4: select chord/follow along mode (for instruments that do that)
9,0: Shift octaves like currently mapped.
Little red Lioka
That last one needs Darth Vader’s imperial march playin in the back.
Little red Lioka
The forum glitched out my previous solution.
The problem with the zerker meta is that the game doesn’t punish the drawback of running full zerker as opposed to other types of damage. The solution is to introduce mechanics that do that. Before doing that we need to identify the drawbacks of the meta:
1. Durability: zerkers aren’t durable. They can dish the damage but can’t take it.
2. Condition damage: zerkers don’t condi-damage intentionally. Some skills may apply condis incidentally.
3. Healing: There is relatively no healing in a berserker build.
4. They rely on direct hits for damage.
With these drawbacks Anet can introduce mechanics into dungeons which take advantage of the drawbacks.
Mechanic 1: heavy chill effect, or new chill effect
Introducing a new chill or heavy use of it will reduce the durability of a zerker set to an extreme level. Zerkers rely on dodging attacks to make up for the missing durability. Having an effect that reduces energy for dodge rolls makes it harder for the zerker to thrive without backup from a healer or condi cleanser. A boss could use a “chemical” effect if they’re not supposed to apply chills directly.
Mechanic 2: Physical damage reduction buff
The boss that uses this would have a heavy armor look but be vulnerable to conditions. Players now have to make heavy use of DOTS while dodging the boss’s attacks. The boss should also come with a self healing effect, potentially dropping an AOE that does Heals over time on it which the players need to kite the boss out of (thinking of fights from FF14). This requires the players to break their stack and move the boss. Maintaining poison and bleed on such a boss is crucial to defeat it.
Mechanic 3: Large area damage over time
Healing sets won’t see use unless there is a pressure mechanic. The simplest way to make healing useful is to create a large area effect damage over time. Self heals would be ineffective against it while players using healing sets can compensate for it. Suddenly a mace/shield guardian in half cleric becomes effective. A boss using this mechanic could double up on it by having a debuff that reduces the effectiveness of self healing from the healing skill slot. The boss should employ some slight physical damage reduction as well (or broadcast weakness frequently) to require the use of healer/condi cleanser to defeat it.
Mechanic 4: Enhanced retaliation
This kinda goes with mechanic 2. I imagine this boss as one that has a lot of spikes on it, either in armor or on skin. The enhanced retaliation is up constantly and does a significant amount of damage when the boss is hit with a melee attack. (2000-4000 damage per hit). The boss can be ranged down and damaged with conditions. It will apply regen to itself as well on regular intervals (like a spiky skale or something).
Bonus mechanic: Enemy Gated Content
Add check points to dungeons where players must defeat certain trash mobs to spawn the content following them. This prevents the glitch/skip mentality to an extent. Bosses will protect the path behind them as well. The players must defeat these trash or bosses to proceed in the dungeon content regardless of any glitch they know.
Bonus Mechanic 2: Call to Arms
Bosses for each “Act” of a dungeon path would also come equipped with a “call to arms” skill. This skill summons trash mobs to the boss for backup which were not previously defeated on the path leading up to the boss. There may be some trash mobs which the dungeon design requires the player to sneak past but otherwise they’ll come running and make the boss kill nearly impossible.
Trash mobs may carry any of mechanics 1-4 in a reduced form to promote a balanced party.
Little red Lioka
WvW map wall poster (36×24 or 48×36) with all of the maps on it: EBG, Alpine BG, Desert BG, EOTM.
Life sized Zoja plush doll.
Little red Lioka