Guild Wars 2

We’ve had 3 weekends already. One left. Either do it or not, but with the huge karma from it, even if you hate wvw it’s worth toughing it out for 50 kills.

My monthly kills this month came during a blow-out week, and it didn’t take too long to get 50 kills, even while there were very few people on the maps.

It seems like making a game that doesn’t run in linux doesn’t actually cost you very many customers. Too many linux users have dual-boot option already.

Couldn’t have come too soon.

My guardian has already suffered multiple nerfs to PvE prowess to balance sPvP (yet still a bunker-build is on every competitive team).

The mesmer remains the strongest 1v1 AND by far the most useful utility (for Kylo if nothin else), despite having its already weak pve-solo capacity diminished.

Skilled pvp is a completely different game. It’s absurd to think you can balance for it and not disbalance pve/wvw.

My understanding is the items have been found by a code-sniffing fan website.

Coming Soon™!!

The title of the thread and the OP don’t match imo.

The title seems to say there should be more or better loot drops.
The top post talks about how the player doesn’t really need anything more in game, and seems to be full of ennui about gear or wealth.

More/better loot would just speed the player toward that ennui faster.

On the other hand, the stuff I get cheap off the trading post seems to be dropped loot, either from other players or gold-farmer bots.

/shrug

They should be yelling “Train to zone!”

Yeah, it’s a little rude. The other thing I’ve seen is people waiting and running behind you if there’s a crowded bit of mobs, like I’m their personal fullback for blocking. It’s the way of the world, everyone sees themselves as a privileged quarterback.

I like Guildcast at gamebreaker tv for wasting time not playing GW2

Welcome to GW2

Thiefs are fun. Tend to be squishy. Not the fastest killer in the game, but they make up for it by being the fastest runners.

One thing to consider, you can go to the Mists with any character and have fully lvl 80 with all the skills and free gear. There’s target dummies and simulated opponents so you can get a feel for how it’s gonna feel before you commit to leveling.

Isn’t there something like this in game already, that when you transfer you don’t get the WvW buff bonuses for awhile?

Knote.2904:

Speaking of WvW and Spvp.

Would anyone else love a fusion of the two?

DAoC style battlegrounds anyone? >=]

I don’t get what you mean.

I do wish we’d have some maps that aren’t all just like Khylo/Capricorn/FoeFire/the-unpronouncable-one.

whiran.1473:

I don’t quite understand this. As people level they move through the zones and then are, more or less, done with them.

Merging servers won’t change that people have leveled beyond particular zones.

In WoW, at it’s height of 12 million accounts, I started a new character. As I leveled up I barely saw anyone in the zones. But the game was healthy, busy, and it was a full server.

Important to note the vast majority of the WoW accounts don’t play on NA/EU servers. And WoW server capacity is certainly no greater than GW2.

I personally much prefer the design of the lowbie zones. But it’s expensive to just go out looking for stuff, and you don’t get any loot. Well of course you do get loot, but not in comparison to what you’d get playing your level.

Don’t run around alone. A warrior usually should beat a thief 1v1, but not in WvW. You did the right thing. The other thing is to pop your 100 blades, or some other area effect. You’ll see where the numbers are for the damage you do, which will tell you where the thief is.

But mostly, don’t run around alone.

Any big-damage thief goes down very fast to a group or even just a duo, so you’ll scare them away by walking with a friend.

Most of last week there was no better than a dozen Yaks on a map, ever.

In the N.A. we wanna be on the winning team. Win or don’t play at all.

Yeah, and to make it worse, guilds are practicing the group stealth techniques with their mesmers to be able to invisi-explode on the enemy. It’s a good effective tactic, but gives that cheesy not-fun feel.

hmm all I’ve heard is that it’ll be easier to get karma.

What’s the nerf? (understanding that nerf here means buff, right?)

At some point, some contraction will be helpful. I don’t think we’re there yet.

In the meantime, hey server transfers are free. Bounce over to one that’s listed as fuller during the times you play.

The people I play most often with haven’t logged in for over a week, busy with other stuff (i.e. bored of the game). I bet the holiday event thing will bring a lot of bored people back.

The point is all the content except for dungeons is so easy that you don’t need a group. Especially the story-quests, which are supposed to have this grand epic save-the-world heroic destiny feel to them, but are easy even for one person, let alone a party.

You can bring a group to personal story, and I frequently have grouped for them. But it’d be really cool to have some more very optional content that actually requires a party. Cuz that’s where other game developers come up with stuff that’s truly interesting and engaging.

Right now I think the only benefit of grouping is a little bit more influence for your guild, no loot, no xp, no nothing bonus. I’m ok with that. Just want something more interesting in the game for people who do like party play.

Good luck w/ the project. Remember to bring cookies to your stats professor. I believe he really likes ’em.

That ranking question threw me off too, wasn’t sure if 6 was most or least on the 1-6 scale.

I thought there were going to be tiers to it. I dunno, I’m a lowly deer, haha!

Is it hard to find teammates for sPvP? My guild is kinda casual and doesn’t like skill-focus things I guess, so not a lot of us do pvp in GW2, mostly focus on WvW. So I’ve only done half-pug free tournaments so far.

Yeah, actually it’s in the news. More karma easier to get.
New DEs & Jumping puzzles. I think the DEs are chase-the-baddy format.
New mini-dungeons, not that anyone ever does the other mini-dungeons — I have to confess I only know of one.

Hush or they’ll start charging to go from Mists to LA. :p

I think travel either to all main cities or the nearest main city for free makes sense.

Well if you want to pug, there’s free-join games, like usual.

I can’t really see having tournaments for pugs only.

Kimbald.2697:

tpvp’s biggest shortcoming as a design, aside profession balance, is the fact pugs have to face premades. Something no real pvp game would allow.

What they’ve said is that paid tournaments will not form PUGs for you, only the free tourneys like we have now.

For WvW, I’m pretty sure once they get guesting and the party interface functional, they’ll start charging gems for transfers.

Well for WvW I think their top priority is getting it ready for launch, hopefully not more than a few months too late.

Getting the current game to where it works needs to happen first before you talk about “meta” and whatnot. Besides that, from the start they said the fair-balanced-administered pvp is sPvP. WvW is not for balance, just a big sandbox-like play field.

But in sPvP, you get almost nothing for a team win – so if you’re sucky you’ll rank up very slowly. What is it, 5 glory for the win? Your real glory points come from earning the team points.

With respect to costs and WvW — we’re already suffering bot trains taking up our WvW queue spots. If there’s no cost at all, it’ll be the top earning place to go. The WvW mobs are super easy compared to normal lvl 80 zone mobs, yet drop the same stuff.

I imagine they could drop the repair costs if they also would stop having any loot drop from pve mobs in WvW. That’d remove the incentive to go there for botting up gold-sellers.

DEs are the one place where character abilities don’t matter much, so you want something that’s AoE and no cast-time or cool down. We shoulda all been engis

You can be a really crummy player, just a button-masher type, and do very very well in WvW.

You can also be extremely good at your class and get nothing accomplished in WvW.

Not so true for sPvP. They’re really different games.

WvW is not intended to be balanced or progressed.

There’s a pvp system if you want progressive.

WvW queues remain bad, but only while the match is competitive. My world pwned the map last week and two weeks before — you could get in anytime you wanted. This week = big queue times.

The big trouble with the queue is they aren’t first-in/first-out. So your waiting time is variable based on random luck. Not cool. And then there’s the crash-on-waypoint and other bugs that’ll drop you right back to having to queue. Frustrating!

Rendering is still a problem in my home (I7 + good graphics, RAM, etc). Maybe it’s ping…

The profession problems (e.g. thief) that I see complaints about I think really are because WvWers haven’t done enough sPvP. If you eat big damage from pistol-whip, it’s your own fault. Unless of course the trouble is the thief remains stealthed because of the rendering crap.

I really think they should be doing better. NCSoft has had other games for years (e.g. Lineage 2 from 2003) that handle mass combat without these problems.

umm kegbrawl is combat

I’m thinking of things like memory game, match the patterns, human-chess board, making music, that sort of thing.

We have jumping puzzles galore, but that twitchy style is only one way to do it.

Ummm I group to do zone completions and stuff like that, and know a bunch of people who like to do it as well (in my guild).

And I’ve never ever seen anyone suggest not to watch the cinematics, and I see people trying to stay off VoIP until the people are out of their cut-scenes.

So again, I think there really are a lot of different types of player out there. The social types tend to group together, and embrace content designed for groups. We don’t think of it as “forced grouping” but rather “the good stuff”

My top choice names (that I wasn’t able to reserve in GW1 cuz they’re 1-word) were taken by 9:01 the night before head start.

Perhaps it won’t be as hectic for released names when they do it. But prepare to be disappointed.

On the other hand, I personally know of a dozen GW1 names that are reserved by my family that we didn’t use in GW2. The names are out there…

I know my S.O. doesn’t want others to use her former names in GW2, even though she’s not playing them, to avoid mistaken identity.

sometime past 8 pm tonight

I have between 15 and 20g. I think realistically we have more wealth in our stacks of collectibles and ectos and whatnot than we have in gold, tho.

Yeah, forced grouping is a negative buzz-word.

Should call it “team-based content” or something like that.

I personally really like playing in a party. I really like content that challenges a party. I guess in a game like GW2 it shouldn’t ever be forced on you, but they certainly could have more content that requires it.

The story quests kept (and keep) having me think “This could have been really cool, ’cept they nerfed it to be soloable.” Stuff like the beach-landing going into Orr, or the invasion of Claw Island.

Instead we get watered-down story quests where we’re still forced to group, except it’s forced to group with dumb NPC to escort.

I see the point, and I like the idea. On the other hand it’s a little bit like complaining that Call of Duty games are all about shooting.

It’s the genre that we swing a sword and swing a sword and swing a sword (or cast a blast of fire cast a blast cast a blast).

They definitely did get lazy in design as the zones progressed in level. The first ones had more interesting and varied stuff.

Something I like, tho, is they put traps and puzzles in as well. Think AC where you win a fight just by pulling chains, or Arah where you’re firing artillery, story where you bombard the shore with your cannon thing. I think they stretched the standard genre without changing it too much.

I don’t see a lot “smooth or natural” about instantly switching weapon-sets, but I see your point.

Let me put it this way – if it were unlimited switching, you could start chanelling an attack and immediate switch back to your sword & mace, having the defense of the shield and ability to teleport with the sword, misleading your opponent about your abilities, able to spam 2-5 on two diff weapon sets super-fast (or all the kits for an engi).

I think you’re supposed to find it awkward having to wait to switch back to rifle, so there’s some tradeoffs. It’s why there’s only 2 weapon sets instead of 4, too.

I would support opening the thief to 3 weapon sets and/or rapid switching of sets, since they’re limited by initiate rather than cooldowns.

Transmutation stones work just as well as a single cosmetic tab does (I liked that in Rift you could have a bunch of them), and serves as a gold-sink.

Yeah looks good, despite them calling the outfits “crap”

And omg could do without the pretentious British accents!

Lookin forward to it, myself.

I wish they’d done more along those lines, too.

Perhaps they could add some group story content later/expansions.

In particular something that’s bothered me on all the lines (I did one for each of the Orders) – Almost all of the quests you have to escort some NPC. The bugs that have plagued me in the quests almost all have to do with the kitty-like behavior of the NPC AIs. And to top it off, the most hated type of quest in MMOs is escort mission. Yet every single one, we’re stuck herding kittens. Stupid AI kittens. Gawd I would so totally douse Trahearne in Round-Up™ if I could.

Would be so much nicer if we could replace those imaginary friend NPCs (who don’t ever even learn my name) with actual real life friends.

Eventually perhaps we’ll have functioning party mechanics and cross-world guesting.

He could make his characters on a diff server and transfer off-peak.

In the perfect world described pre-launch, you’d be able to play together until he got on your world, too. Coming soon™

What I’ve noticed is that absolutely any time I go to one of the dragon spawns, there’s oodles of people there waiting to get their chest rewards.

I’ve had a longish period of convalescence, not working, not always sleeping, could play for short stretches. So I just parked characters at the dragon spawns and came on for them.

Primetime – yep they’re busy. 2 AM on a weekday – yep they’re busy. 6 am on a weekend – yep.

My point is, you don’t have to make up some story about how video game players are also football fans who go to church. In a game where you get a level per hour, after almost 2 months of play, most of the activity is NOT in the lowbie lands.

Witness, there’s never anymore “overflow” for lowbie lands, but there’s quite often “overflow” for Lion’s Arch.

I thought costumes would follow their usual “Mystery Tonic” or “Knavish Tonic” sort of approach, be consumables rather than equippables.

In spirit, I’m totally with you, Reclusiarh.

But the devs here have given a very strong stance that our characters absolutely must be the very cleanest of Boy Scout types (minus the homophobic/pedophilia aspects).

It’s just how they made it, as an axiomatic principle. You can dress like a pirate, but you’re always beholden to the man.

Traits and sigils, but also unlike GW1 we don’t have energy (cept the thief). So they put cooldowns on everything. It’s not really all that different, waitin on cooldowns vs managing your energy pool.

I find it best instead of wishing there were people where you are, to go to them instead.

Instead of wishing there’s people in your guild, belong to a good guild.

Instead of going to Divinity’s Reach (of all places, seriously no one’s been there since launch), try Lion’s Arch, try WvW, try sPvP, try zones where there AREN’T any hearts. That’s where the players are.

They won’t even let my thief be like a normal thief. I get coerced right away into selling out the gang and working as a snitch for Captain Logan.

And on my 3rd character now, no matter which choices I make, I get stuck as personal assistant to a flaming Veggie Tale Trahearne.

IME game play speeds up after 30. Kinda like real life
Especially for some professions.

Shinzan.2908:

ColinJohanson.2394:

And finally, make sure to be around on Sunday October 28th mid-day pacific time, you’re NOT going to want to miss it!

This implies that if you aren’t there for the start of an event you’ll miss out and it’s not simply a case of getting to do it later.

Best bet is for an event like the BWE “Hunger Games”

When they did that, it was impossible to be in game and not know that it was coming.

And yeah, an event like that is a one-off experience.

defrule.7236:

It’s amazing how much the value of gems has gone up, I bought to extra bank slots converting my gold to gems in the early days but now I don’t have enough gold to get the gems to buy more slots.

The problem I see is that even the people buying gems with real money might potentially hold out their conversion until a more favourable rate. After all, why trade in today when next week you might get a little bit more?

I don’t think there’s much need to trade gems for gold for most players anymore. We all reached a place where our characters’ gear is acceptable and our gold-income is greater than our spending. I still have some gems left-over, but I don’t particularly need gold, until such time that I’m close enough to start looking for a legendary-precursor (but I have a LOT more grinding to do before then).

The stuff to buy now are with other currency (karma, tokens, glory), and I guess fluff like dyes and minis if you’re into that.

PS: you guys are way off topic talking about real world stuff

Some misguided ideas here, but it’s interesting to see this thread revived after so long.

PvP there’s little application of aoe, ime. What is very important is control of the nodes, which constrains combat to be in a limited space. If you try to kite from outside the node, you’re not winning the point for your team.

There’s a reason tourny teams usually formed with a bunker-build. There’s a reason almost every good player has a melee set. Those weapons usually have more control and are more effective at killing, too.

Ranger short-bow is self-mobile, but its control options (the cripple #4 and the interrupt #5) aren’t particularly strong with long cooldowns. It’s a good weapon choice but not without its limitations.