Guild Wars 2

Well, I think the Pavilion looks great, and the loading screen is nice.

This is my third Wintersday, I think. I rather enjoy it. Will last a whole month, and I always do a few things every day for the whole month. Not a whole lot of holiday things around me out in the real world, so this is kinda nice.

Thanks again, as always.

Many developers were moved to Healthy and Appropriate QA.

Throwing away pieces of the original designer and developers’ work doesn’t just happen, it takes person power.

Side Note: As a joke, I had posted a cardboard robot pic as what our characters would eventually look like, to make sure we weren’t offending anyone and we were all taking part in raising everyone else’s children for America and NASCAR, and they quite literally made a tonic that turns us into…a big box. That’s awesome.

Post Side Note: Having said that, I’m still more or less enjoying the game. I just ‘really’ don’t like this one, over reaching, heavy handed direction that pulls out visual aspects of the game I really enjoyed for the first 14 or so months of the game (running animation, idle animation, original clothing system). The changes all seem to support a common theme. I’d still like them to just admit it, if nothing else.

I see a ‘nearby event’ in Divinity’s Reach. Maybe ‘under’ the center area, somehow?

Is that a bug, or is there a way to get there and actually do … something?

Astralporing.1957:

notebene.3190:

ColinJohanson.2394:

nekretaal.6485:

Does this mean that we only have until Tuesday to finish our monthly?

You will have till the end of December as normal to complete this months before the monthly system is retired.

If your overall monthly is completed for this month, but you still have an individual step that isn’t completed (you don’t need it for the meta, but you’d like to complete it for the individual AP), will the patch see that my meta is completed and decide that I’m done with the last grand-fathered monthly and not let me complete that step, or will I still be able to finish that step up, even though my monthly meta is done?

As i understand, they are leaving currentl monthly system (whole, not only the meta) till the end of December. So yes, you should be able to do monthlies even after you have done the meta.

Thanks, hopefully that works out. I’m at 27/40 on skills, and while I have skill scrolls that I could just burn, I like to get as many as I can from ‘Leveler’ or the 3 pt skill achiever one when it comes up. If I happen to have any left before the end of the month (which I don’t), then I could use the abundance of scrolls to fill the gap.

If they ‘were’ going to shut off doing any more achievements for the rest of the month if you have completed the monthly meta already (I’ve seen them do stranger things ‘mid stream’ with a mid-month update that affects daily and monthly quests), then I’d just eat scrolls before the update and be done with it.

Which, I guess I may just do anyways, since it’s only 13 and I just don’t trust them to not do some weird over thinking like, “Well, you completed the monthly, so you don’t need any of those on any more, so we shut them off for those people! Because immersion, healthy and appropriate!” :|

Thanks again folks. Yeah, in hind sight, it was a silly question. It’s been awhile since I’ve bought anything other than shards and realized there really is a lot to buy.

Lishtenbird.2814:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cloth_Crab_Grabbin%27_Gloves and MF to linen.

Regardless, 750 karma is about 3 silver in gold IIRC. You can just buy stuff and trash it.

That’s true. I guess I could just buy a weapon skin I don’t have from one of the cities.

Thanks.

So besides having to sacrifice my first born child (<- fun with hyperbole) to buy a waypoint ticket to Orr to maybe pick up an Obsidian Shard, is there anything that is reasonably close to the center of the world (no waypoints and a short to medium jog is a bonus) that I can buy with karma (750 or more) that is relatively useful that I might not have considered? And obsidian shard is the only thing I use from time to time that I can think of that uses karma.

I do have a 79 that will need an exotic back piece soon, and I usually get those with karma, so I suppose I could do that, but she doesn’t have any of those way points open so I’d have to run all the way there, which I’m not feeling up to today.

ColinJohanson.2394:

nekretaal.6485:

Does this mean that we only have until Tuesday to finish our monthly?

You will have till the end of December as normal to complete this months before the monthly system is retired.

If your overall monthly is completed for this month, but you still have an individual step that isn’t completed (you don’t need it for the meta, but you’d like to complete it for the individual AP), will the patch see that my meta is completed and decide that I’m done with the last grand-fathered monthly and not let me complete that step, or will I still be able to finish that step up, even though my monthly meta is done?

I don’t mind it, but it the combat has to be ‘really’ easy in the first pass (non-achievement mode) because I’m not familiar with the abilities. Achievement mode is where you should be challenged to learn the abilities intimately. For someone like me who just wants to read and enjoy the story and play through it and then move on, I’ll never use the abilities again, I don’t care about them.

I just started ‘No Refuge’ and died literally only after clearing like 10%. I couldn’t deal with a simple veteran, because the heal is weak, and a long cool down, and just isn’t my character.

My staff elementalist has so many tricks, it’s pretty easy for me to stay alive and manage my health through water, cc and my healing ability. I’m quite survivable. And of course, a taunting earth elemental is always handy. Someone else might think that sounds crazy and can’t believe that I can manage fights the way I do, and can only do well as a warrior, or guardian, etc. But…that’s the point.

For that level of combat, we need to be ourselves. I’m fine with being someone else in a fight, but the fight needs to be super easy (in non-achievement; first pass mode).

The problem I’m having is that I can’t enjoy the story part when I’m then thrown into situations that are overly hard. I’m trying to do ‘No Refuge’ now and and I quite literally died after ‘maybe’ getting rid of 10% of the centaur forces.

I wish they would make the first go through, non-achievement mode, super easy and move the difficulty into the second pass when you are doing achievements.

1. Running Animation as a character attribute (i.e. hair, hair color, face, skin, etc). Bring the human female running animation back so those that enjoyed it can buy it back from the store and apply it with a kit. I shouldn’t have to buy it back, but I’m willing to accept it as a tax for being a bad person. You could even add walking animations and make more for all the races and people would gobble them up. Limping, skipping, etc.

2. Idle Animations: same as running animation, character attribute. Give me my human female animations back and I’ll by them (again, because I’m a bad person) and reapply them with a kit (which I’d also have to buy). Make each animation a stand alone thing that you can apply or remove. Add more animations. Flipping a coin? Flexing? Again…gobble, gobble, gobble.

3. With all due respect to the new Jungle Explorer…Hazmat Suit, I’d like to put my own explorer outfit back together again. I recently watched us shoot a new space capsule into space and see it fly around, achieve a higher orbit, return to earth and splash down. I don’t get the whole it can’t be done. It can be done. Anything can be done. It’s about will. I think the will was to purposely remove it, but I digress. It would be nice to have it back.

Thank you for listening.

I like all the highlighting except the ‘new’, I turned that off. I like the color outlines (which, may have been there before, and I just never knew about it?) and the salvage is great.

Instead of a glow, they should have gone with a small, glowy plus sign in one of the corners so it doesn’t disrupt the other colors.

Summary HERE don’t really feel like typing that all up again.

Basically, my Story Journal UI is left in a very confusing state. I can’t tell if I really have completed LW6 or not. It says I have, the achievements are open, yet there is a weird ‘continue’ button that none of the other completed chapters has, and the icon for it (and mouse over text) indicates that maybe I didn’t complete something?

I expected LW6 to look like LW5 once I activated LW7, but it does not.

Note: There is a link in the link above to some screen shots of what I’m referring to.

Hmm, I guess I’ll report it then. Thanks. It’s not very consistent and it’s confusing, whatever it’s supposed to mean.

Something looks off to me, or it says I completed 6, but I didn’t complete 6?

LW 5-6-7

If you look at ‘lw5’, it’s got the orange ‘you have completed’ icon, and the only button is ‘replay this episode’, and you can see the achievements unlocked.

If you look at ‘lw6’, the icon looks like I haven’t completed it, and there is the ‘replay this episode’ AND an ominous ‘continue this episode’ (i.e., you haven’t completed this yet?) button. It seems the achievements are available, which would lead me to believe I completed it.

If you look at ‘lw7’, it shows normally as the active story which I haven’t started yet, but activated.

So why does my LW6 look the way that it does? Shouldn’t it look like LW5 at this point? Should I report that as a bug? I don’t recall a story chapter ever looking ‘sort of but maybe not really’ completed before?

Doghouse.1562:

OK – I’ve failed. Could some kind soul point out just WHERE I turn this off? I’ve attempted to check through the various Options tabs line by line, and I can’t find it for looking. Many thanks in advance!

Also this. I can’t seem to find it either. I’m hoping I can keep the salvage highlighting but lose the “Hey! You got a Clump of Tar!” highlighting.

daimasei.4091:

The salvaging highlighting is awesome.

The new item highlighting is awful.

Luckily we can turn it off. That’s how you do things, you offer options rather than pushing things down our throats

This.

Nifaea.9216:

Looks like Anet is catering to their demographic by not showing some ounce of compromise by keeping the animations in-game while the “fix” is being worked on.

The other thread was locked, out of sight out of mind I guess.

What’s unfortunate is they have a nice money-making solution right at their finger tips. Make running animations and idle animations something you can alter using the full make over kit. Those of us who would like the original running and idle animations can choose them. Those that do not can keep the new running animation and ‘lack’ of idle animations.

It would open up move things to sell in the store too. How about an Asuran that runs with a skip? More idle animations for all the other races and sexes? Lots of opportunities for money and control for each player.

Something I’ve been asking for since day one, and it appears as though some time recently, they’ve monkeyed with the camera settings.

I have the shortest humans I can make. I like to play on ‘one notch back’ from zoomed in as far as you can be (I have one short Norn, and play 2 notches back there). I use the “-UseOldFoV” switch to launch the game.

On that setting, the camera used to be closer to the character, and sometime recently, you increased it, and I don’t remember seeing a 1,000 page post asking for that.

At the very least, please just give us more ‘fine tuned’ options so each click of the mouse wheel moves a smaller increment.

I know some folks want camera distances that mimic sitting in the rafters in a stadium (is that the lead singer, or the guitar player?), and that’s fine, but there’s no reason why each mouse wheel roll can’t move a smaller increment.

I’ve actually always wanted one ‘between’ zoomed in and what used to be the first wheel roll out. Now, I’d actually like 2.

Seems like that would be rather easy to do. I roll the mouse wheel, and it moves the camera ‘x’ increments. Just cut that in half. Try that out. To zoom out all the way, you’d have to move the mouse wheel more, but so what.

Bonus: Put something in the UI that let’s ‘us’ change how much the camera moves with each mouse wheel roll.

Did the change (recently or not so recently) how close the camera is ‘one mouse wheel notch back from zoomed in as far as you can’ while using the -useOldFoV switch?

It seems like that first notch back used to be closer.

I have been playing a few other games, and it’s possible that has thrown my perception off. Thought I’d ask.

Don’t expect an answer, but did the change (recently or not so recently) how close the camera is ‘one mouse wheel notch back from zoomed in as far as you can’ while using the -useOldFoV switch? It seems like it used to be closer.

I was fine until they literally started taking things away from us. Fairly happy with things they have given to us.

Not entirely sure of the idea behind telling someone they are not allowed to have something they enjoyed.

I’d still be playing FFXIV if they hadn’t introduced pigeon-holed classes and jobs and an armor system where you can’t wear whatever you want. While the first iteration definitely needed polish, it didn’t need to have it’s core, open skill system obliterated. It reminded me of UO and pre-NGE SWG.

Also didn’t care much for the l33t-d00d-ification of content, especially with respect to the story, requiring party play where it didn’t used to exist.

And finally, while the world became amazing, the character level graphics and graphics in other areas were totally dumbed down so it would run on the PoS3 and below, and it took away from how well the characters looked (which are 9/10ths of the law).

Thanks. I wonder what causes it around Shat? I wonder if one of the mobs that sometimes appears around there has a knock down?

I usually see it when there’s a zerg standing around kitten or Claw. I don’t recall if I’ve experienced it anywhere else. I’ll just be standing around, maybe even just waiting for the event to start (in the case of Shat), or getting ready to start shooting at Claw at the beginning of P2, and ‘someone’ has the ability to knock a bunch of us down?

Is that an ability that a class has, to just knock everyone down when they feel like it? Maybe some item that is doing that?

Just happened to me standing on ‘The Rocks’ waiting for kitten during the “I bet I’m more racist, sexist and angry than you” festival, was curious as to how people are doing that.

Thanks.

I hope you get your wish, to have more choices and options that suit you without taking away any choices and options that others currently have.

Unfortunately, the direction the live team has taken slowly over the last year is to address inequality by not making more choices and options available for those who don’t like some of the existing content the original developers created, but by taking things away from us and telling us the only possible way to solve the other people’s issues with choices and options are to take yours away from you.

1. Some of the town clothing (and the town clothing mix-n-match mechanic in it’s entirety, and no, I don’t believe the spin on how it was impossible to convert).

2. Human female running animation (never did get an explanation on this).

3. Human female idle animations (yes, I know, not appropriate in LS cut scenes, but sure that could have been solved differently).

If they were interested in providing choices and options for everyone and not undoing and scrapping the work the original developers did that many of us enjoyed, they could have approached some of these from a completely different angle.

Instead of scrapping the old running animation after drawing up a completely new one, why not make the running animation a character attribute, like eye color or hair? Let us choose which animation we want? They could even create ‘more’ running animations for different races and sell them in the store! Which would boost full makeover kit sales! A skipping Asuran, for example!

Idle animations? Why not add a flag where some of them aren’t done during the cut scenes rather than pulling them out? As the case with running, why not let us choose which ones our characters have, and sell more in the shop? Not too different that finishing moves, after all.

I don’t know what to say about town clothes, but I lost a lot in that, and they could have made anything work…if they wanted to.

So while I hope you get what you want, history shows that they don’t seem terribly interested in solving inequalities by adding content and systems to give choices and options for everyone. They will solve it by taking away more things from us.

Dailies. Few world events. Make sure I’m caught up in the story (just achievements). Maybe play a little holiday stuff, if it’s up. Remember how my characters used to be and feel sad. Log off and play something else for a little bit, or read some, or sleep.

For me, it’s the Healthy and Appropriate vibe that is chipping away at my characters. I don’t care about them much any more. It doesn’t feel like it’s so much about being equal as deliberately having something taken away from me. Guess choices and options are only extended for some things.

I had created a jungle outfit. It’s no longer in the game.

When they started saying “healthy and appropriate” in response to changes, but it was more of an, “oh…wow…”

mjasa.5821:

As I posted in another thread
Kill the summoning mini, get color on your head, get the clear “donut” first then go into the color vortex, then kill vortex. Then the big boss should get out of middle. Damage him until mini comes out. When the little summoning minis come always kill them and repeat the above until boss is dead.
Never walk into red circles

Got it, thanks again.

Thanks additional folks!

My problem is all the donuts they were giving me were in red circles, and I’d die trying to get them, or almost die sometimes, so it made me think that wasn’t the right way to do it.

I finally got some donuts that were right next to the thing, so I could get both at nearly the same time and I could destroy it.

So all that time was just me trying to get past the red one. Not sure what I did in hind sight to get past the other 2 colors? I must have inadvertently did it right without knowing what I was doing.

Thanks again, that was a bit maddening.

Finally, I got it! Thank you!

I wasn’t getting the part to attack the actual color vortex to destroy it so it moves to the next part.

Sorry about that folks, and thank you again!

Ayrilana.1396:

notebene.3190:

Ayrilana.1396:

You have to get both the colored buff from killing the facet as well as that other debuff (fragile). You go to the vortex with both to damage him.

When you say ‘go to the vortex’ do you mean walk into the circle and try attacking him? Or run up to him?

You don’t directly attack him. You damage him like you did to the facet of darkness which was the one with the circle of like 20 vortexes. If one of the vortexes has a colored aura, kill the facet to get the colored buff as well.

Ok, in the ‘donut fights’, you get a donut, you walk up to a thing, it steals the donut, you blow it up when he gets close, he gets damaged.

Problems:

1) There is only the one Vortex, the colored one.

2) If I try to take a donut to that to have it steal it, it bounces me away (whether I have it’s shield or not)

3) Even if I managed to get it to steal the donut (which I can’t, that thought had occurred to me to try), the big guy is far away and I don’t see how it would damage him.

So how do I get the red vortex to take a donut and damage it such that this ends?

[alt tab…]

[heal; alt tab]

Tried a second time. He doesn’t budge.

Just tried a round of that, that didn’t work, and killed me or almost killed me? I’m not really sure what happened. I almost died, then all my health was back.

At any rate, picking up the red shield and a donut and walking into the middle made no headway at killing Malevolent Memory.

Ayrilana.1396:

You have to get both the colored buff from killing the facet as well as that other debuff (fragile). You go to the vortex with both to damage him.

When you say ‘go to the vortex’ do you mean walk into the circle and try attacking him? Or run up to him?

I’ve been at 20% on Mal for a little over an hour. The little Facet doesn’t hurt me that much, so I’m alt tabbing out to type this and tabbing back to heal.

I’m on the red color. I kill the facet. I get the red shield. I go in the middle and attack the boss. He keeps knocking me down. I do like 20 pts of damage here and there, maybe 5 times, then I have to leave and do it again.

I’m stuck. I can’t finish.

I’d really, really like to know what I need to do to just finish this thing. I promise I won’t bother trying to do the achievements. I’m just running out of time and need to make dinner shortly and don’t want to have to do this all over again. I’m close. I’d just very much like to finish.

Thank you.

TKIB.9061:

seriously?
There is no difficulty here, it is a corridor like map, you can’t get lost…
It is not difficult at all to understand the mecanics from the boss…

I like this kind a mecanic where you have to find your boss weakness.

I’m on, presumably the last boss, at 20%, red light ,can’t finish.

I’m letting the facet beat on me and alt-tabbing back as I search around trying to determine what the answer is.

I’m glad you enjoyed it. I don’t so much. I won’t go into my feelings as to what level of difficultly should be in the story portion and what portion should be buried in the achievements.

So there we are. It’s been over a week. It’s presumably not a secret at this point, but I am having difficulty finding any sort of guide. Dulfy has some nice information on the achievements, but it doesn’t seem to really just cover the basic mechanics of the thing. I found a few videos, but they aren’t really helpful because they don’t talk about anything. It’s just 20 minutes of watching someone run around and talk to his buddies about nothing on a head set.

[alt tab; drop heal; alt tab]

So yes, I’ve got Malevolent at 20%. I’m on the red color thing. I can’t seem to do any damage to him. I kill the little kitten boy, I pick up the color, I go walk in the circle, and I can’t damage it save like 20 points here or there.

[alt tab; drop heal; alt tab]

Then dive out and do that again. For the last, oh, hour now.

There’s the vulnerable bulbs, or whatever they are called, but those are only good when it’s not in this phase, it would seem as picking those up in this phase just gets me killed (about 10 times now).

[alt tab; drop heal; alt tab]

So any help for the last 20% would be wonderful. Thank you.

[alt tab…]

Could anyone point me in the direction of a full walk through just to get the story completed? Non-achievement related?

Razamatazz.9628:

notebene.3190:

Question. I haven’t started the new story yet, but will the behavior that is happening prevent me from completing the story? Blocking achieving some other non story or post story achievement?

I wouldn’t say it will block it per se, but it can make parts a bit more difficult. Certain bases don’t receive much support if a lot of the people on your map are at the base where a lot of chests spawn. This delays your ability to complete some achievements faster.

Thus far I have not had a big problem, but I need to kill a certain legendary boss that only spawns randomly, and only when a certain base is held by the players. The base (Redrock) seems to be the least cared about for a lot of players, at least it’s the one I see not in pact control most often. Also, once the necessary events are completed people tend to jump down into the breach event that they are at, which means that if a base didn’t have many people defending it your chances of killing the boss are diminished. Again, at this point it hasn’t become impossible yet, I’ve only failed on two bosses (one where it’s a group of two champs, we got one but not the other) and the other at the aforementioned Redrock base.

I believe the concern at this point is that as the week wears on, and we move into next week, more and more people are going to have all the achievements they need. It may then become very difficult to get any of the achievements at any base but the Amber base (The one where people are farming chests). This is by no means a guarantee, but I can see why some people are concerned.

Edit, I was thinking the achievements, not the story portion. It won’t really affect your ability to complete the story portion, more the Silverwastes achievements.

Thanks. A little bit of a bummer on the achievement side, but I only seem to get about 50% of those done anyways. Was more concerned about the story itself.

MasterKitty.8205:

notebene.3190:

Question. I haven’t started the new story yet, but will the behavior that is happening prevent me from completing the story? Blocking achieving some other non story or post story achievement?

Don’t worry, it doesn’t effect the story instances in any sort of a way. In fact, you’ll be glad by the number of groups in LFG for story achievements.

Awesome, thank you.

Question. I haven’t started the new story yet, but will the behavior that is happening prevent me from completing the story? Blocking achieving some other non story or post story achievement?

It hasn’t been a good year for me with the game personally, seeing my characters have things stripped away from them, and them being 9/10ths of my game enjoyment.

I’m just one person, and it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m sure they will do just fine ensuring they maintain money streams while making more healthy and appropriate adjustments.

I’m just ‘barely’ getting started today, and my plan is to nibble along and not move all that fast and just try to listen in chat and learn what to do, yada yada.

After doing the opening (which, was kinda hard for me and a very close call, with those pairs of super-powered Vets), I just walked into the new zone, hearing the new music, the ambient sounds of people fighting, talked to the telescope person.

I guess what occurred to me is it’s a lot like getting ‘really’ good modules from some of the better story tellers in the original (not ‘2’, blech) Neverwinter Nights game.

I used to get into building modules for my friends, and we used to have LAN parties where we’d design modules such that the story could be told with a live DM, so they were more open ended in design. Later I polished and completed some so they were playable by themselves. I got into creating my own script classes that I could apply to NPCs and give them interesting attributes based on things that were going on around them. I learned how to go beyond the base tool and learned from others how to use 3DMax to create items, tiles, etc. Started simple and created an entire copy of the docks as ‘high docks’ that would match the height of this awesome galleon someone built. Created a light house tile with a tall tower and placeable object on top with big fire and spinning mirror for the light, complete with translucent light that dispersed out into space as a cone and spun around with it. I built an ‘invisible’ set of docks with even more height variations to serve as camera dollys to do some interesting cut scenes. Good times.

But it hit me, this is all like downloading great NWN modules, and playing them through. Which, were awesome. Even some of the ‘not as good’ ones were fun enough to play, extending the life of the game. Not a knock on the developers, story tellers, artists at all! There were some really talented people making some great modules for NWN, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them went on to participate in making full games.

I don’t know, was feeling nostalgia when I was hit with the thought of “Hey, this is a lot like getting an awesome NWN module!”, and thought that subconsciously it might be why I have a positive connection to the presentation style.

Thank you for reminding me to turn it on for awhile.

I thought this was going to be about us not using our wallets. Carry on.

I like the light boots, assuming they are separate as they seem.

Sadly, there isn’t much left of the avatar to enjoy the nice things any more.

Equality through intolerance.

Sweet! (<-pun)

Hopped into the Labyrinth for like 15 minutes and came across one of the easier big named baddies after maybe doing 10% of the doors and that finished it up.

Glad I came out and asked, thanks folks. I was content to just do dailies every day and was assuming it was getting done without really looking, and had a bit of a panic when after a week I was only at 7/12.