Guild Wars 2

Azure Prower.8701:

Paying $600+ USD for a virtual item that instantly becomes valueless the moment you leave/stop playing/servers shut down in Guild Wars 2.

I don’t call that winning.

I call that a bad investment.

If you’re willing to throw away money that easily. Give it to me. I assure it will be better spent.

Why does everything have to be an investment?

I wouldn’t pay $600 (I wouldn’t even pay $60) for a legendary… but if someone has the money, and wants to do it, why not?… why is it worse than spending that kind of money in a fancy liquor bottle that becomes valueless once you drink it?… or in a night (or week) clubbing that becomes valueless the morning after?… or gambling in Las Vegas in a vacation, just to name some examples?.

If you want to see it as an investment, they do get their return in the form of fun… just like in any of the examples I gave.

As I said, I wouldn’t spend it… but don’t really see any wrong in someone that has the means to do it if they want to.

I really like the largos as an NPC race, but don’t really think they’d work too well as a playable race.

A big part of the largos’s coolness is because of how mysterious and secretive they are, to the point where we don’t even know how they look like since we’ve never seen one without the mask. Problem is… once you make largos playable, you either have to give them a face and get rid of the mask, or rework all head armor in the game around it. Once you can see their faces, their secretive mysterious aura gets diminished a LOT.

On a related note, another big part of their coolness comes from their sets of armor they wear, always dark to contrast with their blue skin and white hair… but would you want to see a largos with a bright pink armor, for example?… you know there are people that would do one (I would)..

Also their culture seems to revolve around being stealth assassins (their whole race motto is “track it, kill it, and bring proof” according to the wiki)… which means they’d fit perfectly the thief class, and maybe the warrior a little bit, but not as much any of the other classes in the game.

Their enviroment is sure to be VERY underwater heavy. While I do believe it would be incredibly cool to have a huge underwater city and new areas to explore, I’d rather them have a heavy revamp of underwater combat before it happens.

As I said, Largos are very cool NPCs, but at the moment I don’t think they’d make good playable. They mostly seem to have one aspect to them, the sinister dark brooding type of character that usually becomes one of the most popular in different media… but I think that a playable character shouldn’t be so extremely tailored to one specific style or mood, but be more customizable to fit all kinds of styles the players would like to use… which is why I think Tengu fits the bill for new playable race much better, also better than my favorite to become new race (the kodan).

That said, if they ever make largos, I’m going to make one dressed like this (in those same colors)..

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/human/human-light-karma-temple-female.jpg

This thread reminds me of this comic:

http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?comic=012113

Basically a no classes system is what The Secret World attemped to do with some success, the way it works is that you pick two weapons which define your “class” (though you can equip other weapons at any time). Every time you “level”, you get skill points, much like in GW2, and you use them to buy weapon skills. Each weapon has a DPS tree, and another one that depends on the weapon (swords have tanking skills, for example, and shotguns have healing ones and so on), you can pick where to purchase skills from with the only limit that you must buy the previous skills as well (to get sword tanking skill 4, for example, you’d have to buy 1, 2 and 3). The role your character does depends on which weapons and which skills (7 active and 7 passive) it has equipped. It works nicely, of course there are “classes” (specially at end game you see asking for a blade/chaos tank for one dungeon, or a hammer tank for another one, for example), but since there’s no limit to how many skill points you can get, eventually you can just be a skill/weapons swap from becoming a different one.

The images they use for the backgrounds are concept art. Usually when you make concept art there are two kinds of art done (well, simplifying a LOT), one of the kind you use to pick how something will look in the finished product, and then used as a guide to make the real version. Usually things like these:

http://media.guildwars2guru.com/wordpress/wp-content/gallery/guild-wars-2-concept-art/gw2_dragon.jpg

The other kind is more artistic stand alone pieces. They don’t need to be accurate, heck, sometimes they don’t even resemble the finished product at all or might even look like they’ve been made for something else (or maybe using older versions), these are done mostly as a way to get the general feel of whatever is being represented (character, location, and so on) and do things like playing with colors, lighting and the like. These are the ones used on GW2 splash screens.

Some examples, the splash screen of hoelbrak in the background you can see contemporary looking buildings and even what looks like a construction crane, looking like a post apocaliptic setting… yet it captures the general feel and athmosphere they were looking for there.

The classes I have at 80 so far.

Guardian: Give them a better ranged weapon. I think a bow would work with a guardian, making it fire magic arrows or something like that. Scepter isn’t bad, but really guardians are at a major disadvantage compared to other classes when it has to attack ranged.
Runner up: Give us a way to disable aegis!!!… it ruins screenshots with most shields!!!.

Engineer: Make it so that using kits don’t make our back skins dissapear. Make it an option to have the regular back kits, or alternative looks for it (grenade/bomb kits would be different grenades/bombs hanging from the belt, flamethrower make it so it only has a smaller fuel tank low in the back or to the side so it doesn’t clip with the back armor).
Runner up: give engineers hammers… an engineer with a giant hammer makes much more sense than one with a shield, plus it’s a crime that engineers can’t use these!!!:

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/gw2-mecha-anchor-hammer-champion-weapon-skin-51.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/gw2-aetherized-hammer1.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gw2-adamant-guard-hammer-21.jpg

Mesmer: Pistol for main hand.

This is mine, I have a microsoft mouse with two buttons on the sides.

WASD as usual for moving forward/backward and strafing (I turn with the mouse).
123 for the regular 123 skills
Q and E for the 4 and 5 skills (on the sides of W so I can hit them easily with W, and since I can also move forward by pressing both mouse buttons, no need to stop moving to hit them)
ZXC for the 678 skills, I can hit those with the thumb or any of the fingers I have on ASD without lifting the hand.
The two extra mouse buttons are for healing and elite skill (I mapped them to 4 and 5 as well just in case)
F1-F4 for class mechanics (I can easily reach those as well)
F for interact, V for AoE loot, I can reach both easy (F being to the right of D, plus it has a small grove on most keyboards so I can reach it by feel easily, V just by moving the finger down from F)
< (to the left of 1) for weapon swapping.

Nick.6972:

Yeah. I want to buy a new armor set but I can’t find one I like.
I’d love to get Aetherblade Pants (Heavy) but I don’t want to waste 800 Gems for a single piece.

Same here, I don’t like spending full price for a single piece. I bought the primeval armor, for example, but ended up using 4 of the pieces between two characters (guardian got the chest, which is what I got it for in the first place, and warrior got pants, shoulders and gloves).

Maybe an alternative could be made for those of us that like to mix and match armor pieces. For example, each of the gem store sets have been released in groups (primeval/profane/krytan – aetherblade light/medium/heavy – phoenix/magitech/braham), maybe add an option where you still pay the full price (500 gems for the first group, 800 for the other ones) but can choose 1 piece of each kind of armo for the whole group.

For example, I wouldn’t pay 800 gems for phoenix, magitech or braham’s armor… but I’d certainly pay 800 gems to get the magitech coat and shoes for my engineer, phoenix shoulder and gloves for my mesmer, and braham’s helmet for my asura warrior (I love those huge horns on asura)

RedCobra.7693:

a lot of speculation went into this, it would definitly make up the 3rd heavy armour role, and would give the evil, neutral and good slots completion,
medium = ranger good, engineer neutral, thief evil, light amour = elementalist good, mesmer neutral and necro evil, then for heavy = guardian good, warrior neutral and then shadow knight evil.

Note, though, how they seem to be going out of their way to avoid the “good-neutral-evil” thing regarding to classes. For example, Trehearne is a necromancer, yet he is the epitome of the “goody two shoes” hero, and in the first novel (Ghost of Ascalon) there was also Kileen, a sylvari necromancer, that was basically a very sweet and nice character. She became a necromancer because she was curious about death (since sylvari don’t know if they can age and die of natural causes), and was rather unsettling for the other characters to hear her ask with a smile if they minded if she reanimated their corpses in case they died.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

Great that you’re not taking out the stories, I enjoy reading them, but I do agree that they should also be in the game. The memoirs quest in the 2012 halloween and the suspects interrogation would be a good model to add them as well.

For example, the “what scarlett saw” story (NOTE; spoilers ahead if you haven’t read it, read it first here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-what-scarlet-saw/ ) could have been added to the game by having the players go to the grove to talk to mender Serimon to talk about scarlet awakening and eventual leaving from the grove, then Beigarth in Hoelbrak and Asagai in the Black Citadel, then to Rata Sum to talk to the headmasters of the colleges, then to the Michotl hylek (you could find out she went there if you get the information on Rata Sum that she was sighted near there), then to talk to the Pale Tree about what she saw inside Omadd’s lab, and then maybe have someone in rata sum tell you about some security camera tapes (or crystals?) they found hidden that show how she killed Omadd afterwards.

Just to use that as an example.

TBH, right now the best way to kill him is not to guest on a specific server but to join one of the tequatl killing guilds. In NA check the TTS ones:

http://www.ttsguild.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1opapd/tts_the_truth_of_what_we_are/

Found it:

http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/anet-blog-mmo-manifesto-reactions/

Eric: Thanks, Dave. Yeah, in the video Ree is speaking about the player’s personal story, whereas Colin is talking about dynamic events. We like to think of personal story choices being permanent and dynamic event choices being persistent. The difference being persistent choices will remain until something comes along and changes them. So for instance, in the personal story you may choose to let an NPC die, that NPC is likely to be an important story NPC that the player feels some attachment to, their death will be permanent and will have repercussions on the characters story. This would be reflected in instances. In the persistent world a dynamic event might result in an NPC being killed. This will be a more generic NPC like a merchant or a soldier who will likely be replaced once some other event takes place.Colin: Right, when Ree refers to, “players will kill a boss and they won’t re-spawn 10 minutes later,” she is saying when playing through your personal story line if you kill a boss, that boss will stay dead and your personal story will reflect this. It’s not really physically possible to make each dynamic event permanent, because the game needs enough content for everyone to play, and we don’t have 10,000 people making content for Guild Wars 2, event chains need to cycle and events need to repeat to ensure players have enough to do in the persistent game world. Our goal with events is to ensure that when an event ends, you feel like it actually has some sort of outcome on the game world for all players, if even for a short period of time, where traditional MMO quest in persistent areas generally have no affect on the world.

Even anet themselves said that the manifesto is more of a design guideline that changes over time and shouldn’t be taken literally by now (I’ll try to find a source)

But going by that particular point, they clarified few days after the manifesto was first released (and long before the game was released) that the “bosses don’t respawn 10 minutes later” bit refers not to the open world but to the personal story. Unfortunately that was in an old interview and is gone by now.

You can also go to queensdale and join the champion train. Each champion killed counts as an event, so it should give you a fair share of XP to level up (actually I heard of people leveling up characters to 80 without leaving queensdale.. I guess they see it sort of like the old leveling up in old ascalon in GW1). This picture should give you an idea of where to go for each one called on map, and the order they’re killed:

http://i.imgur.com/AX8eI0c.jpg

November 11th.

EDIT: Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/bam/Event-length/first#post3031435

Rachael Augg.2379:

Blood and Madness will end November 11th.

Brother Grimm.5176:

atheria.2837:

I am griefed every time I say I am a Ranger – 99% will ask me if I ‘have another character’.

The sheer meanness of some people who want to control others is just getting awful.

You do realize they have a legit reason to have doubts about taking a Ranger into a Dungeon area, right? Dead Pets do not make for an optimum group and even the BEST Ranger player will agree it’s a disadvantage to the overall group effort.

That being the case, I also play a Ranger, so I know the grief you are speaking of but it’s much less the “controlling” attitude (I just ignore that) than the rudeness and mean spirited comments that are totally unnecessary. There are far to many players out there that equate being uncompromising in who and how you will play to having no time for ANY form of manners at all. Not having time to be nice does not mean you NEED to be rude.

Just want to point out, hopefully an anet’er reads, it’s harder to report someone when your party chat is wiped out when you leave a party (get kicked out).

I find it an annoying detail that for over a year has not been addressed.

This is a very valid point. I don’t think you can attach an existing screenshot to the report either (you have to generate the screenshot WHILE the report window is opened (or did I just dream that shortfall of the report system?)).

You can’t if you do the report in-game, you can if you do it with the website (guildwars2.com – support – ask a question – report a violation).

You can, but you need an intermediate step first.

Buy vigil armor with character Y, buy low level white armor from vendors in starter areas, transmute the vigil armor look into the low level armor (it’ll now become account bound), place it in the bank, withdraw with character X, transmute its looks to a piece of armor with the stats you want.

From the data mining description, they seem to be gem store exclusive, so we’ll probably see them shortly, maybe on next tuesday or the one after that.

He’s directing the Kraitt to build him an obelisk that will serve as his throne room once it’s revealed that he’s the one pulling Scarlett’s strings..

The armor is mixed pieces of heavy armor:

“Dark” helmet
CoF shoulders
Temple armor chest.
CM pants
Draconic gauntlets

Not sure about the boots.

The dyes I’m not sure, but probably something like midnight red for the black parts (or even just black, depends a lot on the enviromental lighting). You can go to the heart of the mysts, preview with those armor pieces then open the trading post, search for dyes and start previewing to see how they look.

Priam.8079:

DusK.3849:

I honestly find it difficult to believe you’re a “twelve year MMO vet” when you’re saying stuff like “I rarely see anyone in the zones I am adventuring in”, as if that same problem doesn’t exist with just about every MMORPG out there.

Hi Dusk, you are right in that population at lower levels is not specific to GW2. However I have not seen anyone today in Brisban Wildlands, no one.

I am trying not to be negative (not coming across well I know). I want to like the game because it is honestly challenging.

To answer everyone else’s question. I have a Mesmer at 20, an Engineer at 25 and a Guardian at 31. Saying that, maybe I am playing too much.

I stopped playing the Mesmer at 20 because I was just running in circles and dodging every opponent I faced. Watching some videos on strategy and build, they were still running around in circles at level 80.

The Engineer is fun, but I stopped at 25 because I kept dying over and over and I felt that I was missing some tactic. It felt lost.

The Guardian has more durability, but I still feel like I am missing something.

I am not giving up, but I am frustrated. Trying not to quit.

Both the mesmer and the engineer are considered very weak at first. Some tips for them (I have an 80 of each).

Mesmer: You basically described the mesmer gameplay. A mesmer is weak when being hit, so you’ll want to basically run around while you popup clones to shatter and/or phantams to attack, your key word with this one is mobility. Some skills you might want to get as soon as you can to help with survivability would be decoy (creates a clone and stealths you), blink (teleports you a short distance away) and mirror images (creates two clones, good to quickly get your clone count up). This one is a kittene to use at first, though, they start to shine at level 40 or so IMHO.

Engineer: Get the 3 kits unlocked as soon as you can, flamethrower, bomb kit and grenade kit. Flamethrower is great for medium to short range and hits several targets, plus have throwbacks that can help you survive better, grenades are great all around, but no autoattack so you have to manually fire them, and bomb kit is great for kiting enemies (specially melee ones)… just get their attention and start running away in circles to get them to follow you while you keep dropping bombs, they’ll run into them.

Guardian: This one was the first one I leveled, and still my favorite class. I generally liked it all around (I usually like magic using melee characters in most MMOs), but I found I had the most fun, at least while leveling, with the hammer. I just felt it very satisfying when I sent a character flying backwards with a solid hammer hit. Also try to unlock the spectral weapons, specially the sword and hammer. I don’t use them much at 80, but loved them when leveling, the sword gives you some extra DPS, while the hammer helps keeping the mobs off your back by whacking and throwing them away.

What class are you playing and what level are you?. Some classes, like the mesmer and engineer, are weaker at first because lots of their power and versatility comes from traits and skills that you’ll only get later on. If you keep dying over maybe try to get some gear (even white gear from armor vendors) with stats like toughness and vitality that will help you survive better, or if you’re finding the area you’re playing at a bit too hard, explore other areas. If you haven’t already, as you say you’re new to the game, you can go to your race’s city and there you can find a portal to Lion’s Arch, and from there to all other cities. Also try the personal story, that will level you up a bit and will give you some nice gear in return.

Hope you end up enjoying the game, or if not (hey, no game is for everyone), that you find one more up to your tastes.. have fun..

P.S: BTW, here’s a nice writeup about the different classes and their strenghts and weakness in case you want to start over a new toon..

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ojgdr/what_class_should_i_play_a_summary_of_each/

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-family-business/

Some background abouy the Bloody Prince Eddie..

pho.9412:

why do people wish for ascended gear? its a nuisance for those of us who do not craft or do not play the game enough to craft to 500. Because it takes around 200g just to get from 400-500 crafting. and rng sucks in this game if they do decide to make ascended gear drop.

anyways my list:

1) new 80 gears in new 80 dungeons. I do not mind if they put ascended gears in dungeons much like what they did with the exotics.

2)new places to explore or elongate the living word events to 4 weeks. because in 2 weeks, you do not get the full experience of the living word content.

3) fix rangers in pve >.>’

These are topics to talk about, not wish lists.
Maybe the people putting ascended gear aren’t happy with the ways to get them right now, or just not happy with ascended at all and want to talk about that.

1. Conditions in PvE, specifically condition caps when it relates to boss battles, dungeons and other organized group content, when it’s entirely possible for a single player to reach them on its own.
2. RNG in general, specially when it comes to the acquisition of skins with time-limited availability.
3. Reward quality when related to difficulty. Personally I feel that some hard content (for example, Tequatl) still isn’t rewarding enough, at least when compared to others much easier contents (like champion farming)

Mesmer is a hard class at low level, but it’ll get much better as you level up. Some extra options there can be to take your first 10 trait points (which you should have at level 20) in the chaos line. It’ll give you extra toughness (toughness makes you take less damage when you’re hit), 5 points into it gives you the metaphysical rejuvination minor trait, that will give you regeneration when your health drops below 75%, and you can take the illusionary defense trait that reduces the damage you take by 3% for each clone you have active.

And yes, clones do almost no damage, but sometimes can have different effects. The phase retreat clone, for example (staff 2), casts winds of chaos that applies conditions to targets, and if you have sharper images (15 points in the dueling trait line) clones also apply bleeding when critting, but in general once you get to 80 most people get a shattering build (create lots of clones and shatter often) or a phantasm build (create phantasms and let them do damage).

What mistakes you’ve seen with vistas, BTW (just wondering, I’m yet to see one, but I’m far from 100% worls completion)?

Other than that, chances are they won’t increase the level cap. So far everything they’ve talked about points to different ways to progress your character (extra skills, things like that), and well, it seemed to work for GW1 which was always level capped at 20.

I’m going to add “don’t like achievements?.. don’t do them”..

Yes, there are achievements that are VERY grindy and time consuming. The famous dragon bash piñatas, for example, very grindy, very annoying… which is exactly why I skipped them, yet I still have the meta rewards.

So far all living story have had very grindy achievements, which I don’t like and usually skip (unless it’s something I can get while actually playing, like the candy eating one on dragon bash, which when I noticed I had way more than enough to complete just by playing regularly), but also so far they’ve been optional achievements, even more with the last few living story bits that also add a daily to the achievements list.

green plum.7514:

Olba.5376:

Because you don’t need to send detailed data from those 100 mobs to every one of those 100 players. Whereas if you’re attacking the same mob, you’re required to send the same data (which updates in real time, btw) to all participants. Which can be any number from 1 to … map cap.

I think you are greatly overestimating the task. Just one byte is enough to encode up to 256 stacks. Two bytes – 65536 stacks. A brute-force (the most stupid and simple way to do it) notification for 12 conditions would thus take 24 bytes per player. For 100 players, its 2.4KB of data required for notifications. This can be reduced greatly by using incremental updates + smarter encoding. Surely the server has enough bandwidth to send a few additional KB of data per second.

That is if the only information the game has to send is how many stacks of a specific condition the mob has. Thing is, if each stack is applied by a different player with different condition damage then you also have to add how much damage each stack is doing, which changes every tick because of conditions finishing and being replaced. Add to that as well if one player had condition duration buffed, the other one doesn’t, the third one has twice as much condition duration and so on.

Pyrotek.8730:

Need a pinned glossary somewhere. I’m lost too with the lingo. Problem is it will just be filled with kittens?

Kitten in these forums basically stands in for any profanity (with some false positives, for example, sometimes if you write the word “smash” followed by “it”, the filter disregards the spaces and replaces the last 2 letters of the first word and the 2 letters of the second with “kitten”). If you get lost with MMO lingo in general, you can check this one..

http://mmoterms.com/full-mmorpg-terms-glossary

So far the christmas weapon skins, rox’s bow and quiver, braham’s mace and shield (BTW, I disagree they were unpopular, most people I talked to loved them but very few actually bought them), 9 different armor sets + assorted armor items (the jubilee masks, fuzzy hats and backpacks, for example).

I’m of course no dev or mod or anything, but the way I understand it is just that, criticism is welcome, as long as they don’t end up being disguised attacks, just use common sense (the most uncommon of senses, sadly).

For example (again, the way I understand it), things like “I don’t like the way Anet is handling the game”, “I find this new dungeon path boring because XXXX”, “I think these armor/weapon designs are ugly” are probably ok, but things like (another example), “Anet isn’t competent enough with this game”, “Anet lied to us”, “Fire whoever designed this dungeon/weapon/armor”, “whoever designes this dungeon/weapon/armor clearly has no clue” and things like that will probably (and IMHO with reason) be considered “cleverly disguised” attacks and acted upon.

Skan.5301:

I don’t think you can return it in game. Try putting in a ticket explaining and you might get it reversed. But generally, I think the reply will be one time deal since it’s a really high priced item.

All in all, it doesn’t hurt to try submitting a ticket. The worst they can say it no, right?

Doesn’t hurt to try support, but usually the result (AFAIK) is that they will only do a one time rollback in the case that it wasn’t user error (an account hack, for example), but I’ve seen them making refunds on things that the user can’t possible use (an extra bank slot when the bank is already upgraded to the max), but I don’t think it’s the case here.

Still, doesn’t hurt to try, worst that can happen is that they say no, which you already have by default if you don’t try..

Zoltreez.6435:

Aerlen.5326:

Zoltreez.6435:

I learned to not care or barely do any LS till they don’t make them replayable its just useless waste of time while its Temp.

I guess I’m the minority. I like temp content and special little things that won’t be around forever.

I just don’t like when it’s buggy or the time frame is stupidly short.

I like it too and lots of other people too your not the minority

but we don’t like that EVERY single content they add is temp………………….

Luckily they’ve started to add permanent new content, then. Like the tequatl fight, the scarlet invasions, the aetherblade path, the aetherblade jumping puzzle (I’d have loved if they had left the aetherblade and moten facility dungeons permanently outside of fractals, though).

BTW, I’m also bummed that I couldn’t get the back item, was 8/10 when I noticed there was no daily, I tried again to run the aetherblade path (third time) but couldn’t get past the oozes.

Naming and shaming is against the TOS in this and on any official game forum I’ve been in. The reason is quite simple, while you can’t warn people about harrasing players or guilds, if it wasn’t that way it would be very simple to falsely accuse someone and destroy their in-game reputation.

However, joining a group and kicking everyone like that is considered a harrasment offense and can lead to suspensions and even account bans. My sugestion would be to file a ticket with all the information you can gather (including screenshots if you have them) using the in-game report tool or on the website – support (on top) – ask a question – violation report.

BTW, while screenshots do help, don’t worry if you don’t have them, the support team has access to the game logs so they can see what really happened.

No, you can’t. PvP and PvE weapons are completely separate entities, you can’t get a PvP skin to a PvE weapon or the other way around.

You don’t like minis, I understand that… but judging from the multiple huge threads of people complaining about how their mini collection will be incomplete because of the Mr. Sparkles mini that is (so far at least) exclusive to be given away in conventions, I’d say there are plenty of people that love them.

The only reason I can think of for the mini craze is the huge amount of younger people that grew up with Pokemon, Digimon, ect cartoons and games from the late 90s to now. I don’t know very many people who were in their late teens or older when Pokemon came out that care much about minis, but those who were in the younger teens or younger when Pokemon came out seem to love the minis.

I was in my late 20’s when Pokemon came out here, and while I did check the first episode (being a deprived anime fan back then), can’t say I’ve ever liked it… yet I enjoy having minis… and I know at least two guildies older than me that love collecting them all and have all the gem store ones as well..

While I am having fun in this halloween event, I also think that the previous one was better, but mainly because of the execution. Even if it has the same things I think it was the “newness” and the way they were delivered that makes us feel like that (as Mad King Thorn surely knows, the joke depends heavily on the delivery… and on how sharp the executioner’s axe is.. ).

Last year it was a gradual build up, first we got the decorations, lion statue starting to get cracked (most people just assumed it was part of the decoration) and the quest for the mad king book (lots of “is that is???” complains on forums as well)… then a few days later the doors start to show up, we got access to the mad king realm, clocktower jumping puzzle and mini games, and a continuation of the book quest, and the lion fountain got even more corrupted with light coming out of it, then a few days later the statue explodes, a giant Mad King Thorn comes out and we get access to the halloween dungeon. It was a slow build up to an awesome conclusion.

While this year is mostly the same thing but with new instanced story bits (haven’t done them but heard high praise for them from guildies), I think the execution suffered for having it all thrown in from the beggining instead of gradually like last year

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Fhaeris.9237:

Mesmer community “please fix scepter 1”
Anet “we’re reducing cd on scepter 2 and 3”

Okay.

Yep. Very silly. Scepter biggest weakness is the auto attack and for Phantasm builds the clone that is created.

Compare foer example the Necro Scepter Auto attack:

Hit 1: 4 second Bleeding 1/2second cast time
Hit 2: 4 second Bleeding 1/2second cast time
Hit 3: 4 second Poison 1/2 cast time

Vs

Hit 1: 1/2second cast time
Hit 2: 1/2second cast time
Hit 3: 1 second cast time + Clone

Seems very weak, no conditions, slower and then you have to consider the time it takes to get to the target. Just dont understand why it hasnt been fixed. I think the fact they have reduced the cool downs show they want more people to use the weapon but currently the auto attack is far to weak to make it worth using in my opinion.

I do agree it could use a buff, but whether is worth using depends heavily on your build I guess.

In my case I generally use scepter (with pistol or focus offhand), hit 3 means confusion (3s), cripple (3s) and a random condition (which can be 3s of weakness, 3×5s of bleeding or 3×5s of vulnerability) to nearby foes. The build I’m using makes clones apply all that when they’re killed, so the big value of the 3rd shot for me is not only the clone it creates, but that if I have 3 illusions out already, one of them is killed every 3rd shot, applying all that to nearby enemies.

Some tips:

- Green gear is better than blue gear (most games do it the other way around). In general the gear is white (basic), blue (fine), green (masterwork), yellow (rare), orange (exotic), pink (ascended, currently only weapons and accesories, but armor is coming soon), purple (legendary, currently only weapons)

- If you see an event or someone doing something, you can join in. There’s no mob tagging, so you won’t be stealing kills, and as long as you do enough participation you will get full rewards.

- Move!!!… with most professions you won’t be able to just sit there and go around your rotation (well, maybe at first but less so as you level up) you need to move and dodge out of enemy attacks (if you see a red circle around you, get out)

- You can’t outlevel an area (but you can be too low level for one). When you’re in a lower level area, the game scales you down so you’re not too strong for it. On the lower left area of your screen you’ll see two numbers, one is your true level, the other is your effective level that will show if you’re in an area lower than your true level. All your stats are scaled down to that level so you can’t just zip by one shooting everything in lower level areas. All rewards and most loot is scaled to your true level, so you can be a level 70 in a level 10 area, downscaled to level 10, but still get level 70 rewards.

- This one for later. There are no best in slot items, any two exotics with the same stat distribution will be virtually identical, the difference is usually only on how they look. You’ll find that the most expensive and/or hard to get items aren’t the ones with the best stats, but the ones with the (arguably) coolest looks.

- When you reach the level cap, you keep leveling up. You get a skill point for every level up (and from other sources as well), you use them to unlock skills and purchase some items later. Chances are you won’t have all skills unlockes when you reach level 80, but don’t worry about unlocking the wrong one, there’s no limit to how many skill points you can get.

- And last one… there’s no traditional end-game, the game does NOT begin when you reach level cap… don’t rush it.

eisberg.2379:

locoman.1974:

They’re adding an arena section near the entrance to the EB jumping puzzle so you can duel and do GvG fights there. We’ll have to see how it goes.

BTW, I agree on having arenas on cities for duels, there’s already one in the black citadel (The Bane, that according to lore is used by charr to settle disputes by fighting, so it’s good lorewise), and according to the novel Edge of Destiny there should be one in Lion’s Arch as well (there Logan, Rytlock and Caithe were fighting to pay off their sentence when Eir, Zojja and Snaff found them).

There is already a spot for dueling in Lions Arch ,there is a spot with a red fence around it, it looks like the Arenanet symbol.

I think that spot would be a little too small for dueling, IMHO, specially for kiting oriented classes. The way the arena is described in the edge of destiny is much bigger, with space for spectators around and even a special “VIP” area where Queen Jennah went to see Edge of Steel fight (Logan, Rytlock and Caithe), which is where Logan met her in the first place.

Ayrilana.1396:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Only if they haven’t run it before.

Getting 10 achievements is very easy in the new path though. The 6 bonus achievements at the end are pretty much a freebie.

But chances are they’ll remove the living story meta as well today. Too bad, I tried 3 times to do the dungeon, twice people left during the ozze gate, second time the gate was open already but couldn’t kill slick and sparky.

I love the new path so far, and plan on keep trying it after I get it, but I’m a little bummed that I’ll probably not get the backpack for my engineer.

Seras.5702:

skullmount.1758:

funkylovemonkey.3097:

Aberrant.6749:

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone else picture an overly-excited camel walking around yelling “Patch Dayyyyy! Yeah!”

They should have an asura riding a yak that wanders around LA doing this to help inform players.

I support this idea.

I’ll second that. Though maybe it could be a baby Quaggan on the yak?

If it were quaggan he’d be yelling “Patch DOoooooo”

And if we want a boisterous herald, it must be a norn. Riding a yak. Mug of mead in hand.

And the asura leading the yack must be riding a charr, using the horns as handlebars..

Update is launching today… that is all we know..

Zoltreez.6435:

Rift have fully animated cloaks nowdays there are some clipping issues but not too much

Rift races are all mostly human, there’s no fully hunched race that regularly runs on all 4.

Usually the only advance warning we get of patches is the in-game message of a new build being available in the next 2 hours…. followed by a disconnection to start downloading the new patch 5 minutes later.

They’re adding an arena section near the entrance to the EB jumping puzzle so you can duel and do GvG fights there. We’ll have to see how it goes.

BTW, I agree on having arenas on cities for duels, there’s already one in the black citadel (The Bane, that according to lore is used by charr to settle disputes by fighting, so it’s good lorewise), and according to the novel Edge of Destiny there should be one in Lion’s Arch as well (there Logan, Rytlock and Caithe were fighting to pay off their sentence when Eir, Zojja and Snaff found them).

The twilight arbor path, and all the achievements listed under the “dungeon” section including the meta to get the mini are permanent.

The meta achievement to get the backpack under the “living story” section is temporary and going away (when, we’re not sure, I’m hoping it’ll be at the end of the month like all living story releases that start at the beggining of the month, so I have time to get the backpack)

Patch notes usually go up the same day of the patch (AKA tomorrow) somewhere between a couple hours before it goes live, to a little time afterwards (in the case of queen’s speech / clockwork chaos, but probably that was to preserve the surprise).

A big one for me to fix underwater combat would be to allow characters to have an “underwater build”. My engineer, for example, is heavily specced for flamethrower and burning damage… problem is, since I can’t use the flamethrower underwater most of my major traits just don’t do anything. I could spec for grenades or bombs (which do work underwater) but I enjoy using the flamethrower so I don’t see it as a good alternative.

We already switch head armor and weapons when underwater… why not switch traits as well, and maybe even gear when we go underwater.

I’d buy an expansion… whether Cantha or Elona.

Actually I’d like both in time, I’d love to see the Jade Sea in the new engine, and also at the same time I’d love to have some truly desertic enviroments and maybe dervishes…