Guild Wars 2

I’d love to see a continuation of the personal story, myself. The living story is fine and dandy, but for players like me, who have only recently started playing, there’s a massive disconnect between the end of the personal story and the start of the living story

If BLC’s were legally classed as gambling, every single MMORPG on the market that uses chance based items (ie, practically all of them) would be regulated as such. Why is this still being debated?

Warlords of dreanor doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’d never re-sub to WoW. it’s like paying someone to do work for them. WoW is such a tedious and boring grind. I love how open and flexible GW2 is. it caters to the hardcore players and the casual layabouts equally.

set the topic to Q&A mode and mae Gaile’s first reply the answer so people can find her main response more easily

Yes, black lion chests are a form of gambling, though likely not in the legal sense.

Most “chance based” items like this feed on addictions. You see it in “gatcha” boxes in 99% of MMORPG’s. The Black Lion Chest is GW2’s gatcha box. Some people will spend a huge amount of money purchasing keys to get that rare diamond in the desert reward, though ANet is much kinder in their application of the “gatcha effect” than other games, by allowing players to obtain keys in game though various methods, rather than making the key gem store exclusive (which, realistically, would probably net them a lot of money. most MMORPG profit is from “gatcha” items and fashion)

misterman.1530:

I love this idea. Though, there would have to be other classes that could use this new weapon. Thinking maybe Ele. Not sure what the skills would be, but I love the concept…and the well thought out weapon skills. Good job.

I doubt it will ever happen, though, but good job.

mm, I was thinking it could be a melee slasher weapon for another class (similar to how elementalist takes the melee dagger and makes it ranged) but couldn’t think of things to fit.

My idea with scythe necro is to give necromancer the supporting skills it severely lacks right now

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.

I take on board some well-expressed comments here. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how it would work to say “Yes, we’re aware of XYZ.” Those who say “We just want to know you’re aware” are terrific. But we all know that there are others for whom that wouldn’t be satisfactory. “We want to know you’re aware and we want to know what you’re going to do about it” can even become "We want to know you’re aware, we want to know what you’re going to do about it or [insert something here, from “I’m taking a break” to “I’ll never buy another gem,” to “I’m encouraging my entire gazillion-member guild to jump to Game Z].”

Please understand I’m not dismissing the desire for the first level of info, not at all! But can you see how the outcome can be unpredictable and how, no matter the question or request, there is no perfect answer? Further, can you see how “We’re aware of this and we plan to [whatever]” can become “Ok, you said you were aware of it three days ago, where’s the fix?”

I’m sort of writing to think, but I’d like to understand what truly reaches the point of “I’d like more info, but I’m satisfied with what you’ve been able to tell us right now.” Can you give me a few examples, where players would really like to know everything, but where there is a level of disclosure that meets the basic info request?

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

For me, (as I’ve not been around long) long standing issues like the Necromancer’s state of pve health could be one thing to address. Something along the lines of “we know necro isn’t doing so well in pve right now, we’re aware of it and have a long term plan to make some changes about it, though we can’t give an exact date, we can give you an update in x monthscloser to the time”.

even ambiguous acknowledgement of issues is a plus. I know I’d much rather know something was happening about a certain issue without any solid dates or hard facts about what’s going to change than just not know anything at all until a few weeks/days before the change happens.

Two handed offensive weapon

Classes: Necromancer, dervish pls anet plsplspls

Necromancer

1: 1a.Reap – Sweep your scythe in a wide arc, releasing a wave of darkness that damages and torments enemies (targets: 5 range 600) 1b. Harvest – swing your scythe back, attacking all enemies in a wide arc and granting random boons to yourself and allies in the attack range (Boons possible: might (1 stack), protection, regen, retaliation, all 5s)

2: Reaper of Grenth – deal damage in a cone. damage increased on injured enemies and enemies afflicted with conditions (targets 5, range 600, damage amp 10% per condition + 10% per 25% max hp loss of enemy, CD 8s)

3: Rigor Mortis – unleash tendrils of darkness in a cone in front of you, damaging and chilling enemies and granting 2% life force for each enemy hit (targets: 5, chill 5s, cd 20s. AoE aoe style similar to range axe 2 – splitblade Combo finisher – projectile (20% chance per tendril))

4. Offering to Grenth – Sacrifice all of your life force to grant might to allies around you (4 stacks per 25% of life force pool available at time of cast (ie, 16 stacks for 100% life force depletion from full LF bar). Targets 5, Might duration 10s, CD 25s, can’t be cast while below 25% total life force)

5: Grenth’s Mercy – Cleanses conditions, grants regeneration and stability to allies and powerful boons to allies close to death in the targeted area (Targets – 5, duration: 5 pulses over 15 seconds, CD 60s, possible boons: might, protection, swiftness. Ally below 10% max hp: invulnerability (2s) Combo field – darkness)

I personally like the TP interface, myself.

What’s the better option to have in my secondary weapon slot, and why? I mainly ask because I see many warriors with bows, and many with rifles. There doesn’t seem to be a huge bias one way or the other

I personally would buy some skins. As a scrubby noob, I only have access to a few skins, and 99% of my equip drops are iron or soft wood

A war torn world faces moral dilemma every single day. The choice is in your hands. Do you take the easy yet brutal route, or the route that requires more effort, but is kinder?

In war, black and white is more often than not just shades of grey.

an account backpack would be awesome. no more losing my salvageomatic and gathering tools

I was just wondering why ArenaNet offers no transparency in the development process. I know it’s your policy, but my question is: Why is it your policy? So many people I talk to in game feel so very jaded by anet’s lack of communication with regard to their plans, and I have to admit I’m more than a bit disappointed after having trawled through the forums and not seen any mention of what’s in the works for the game’s future.

Most developers I’m aware of for MMORPG’s go out of their way to show off upcoming content for their games, yet everything for GW2 seems to be totally under wraps. It seems horribly counter-productive to me to just stonewall your customers.

All of my characters are human, with the exception of my engineer, as it just made sense to me to make him an asura

No real need for dicerolls in a game where everyone gets character-specific loot drops

My personal theory is a long term expansion project. Rather than lots of little content updates, they’re working on one huge (ie, expansion sized or better) content update with a large amount of new content.

Shadey Dancer.2907:

A while back, going through metrica, cant really remember why i was there, nothing special, just bumbling around, during Halloween. Came accross two or three NPC’S talking about the Mad King, so stopped to listen. One of them , if memory serves had an old style gramophone, and was on a low built stage.
It kind of blew me away, that very few people would ever see it as it was in a not much frequented part of the map. So will be popping back to try and find it this year ^^.

(just barely qualifies on this topic, but was in the mood to share )

I’ve also learned to appreciate the little things, like poor gravedigger Dumpy, who wanders around the shaemoor graveyard nattering to himself (and replying to himself!). It’s fun to find all these hidden details in places you wouldn’t expect

Guhracie.3419:

I really like Wizard’s Fief in Kessex Hills and Coddler’s Cove in Timberline Falls.

How do you get to wizard’s fief? I’ve tried swimming there, but it always mentions a strong current, and doesn’t let me get out there

talking of graveyards. I had an event once in shaemoor where I had to escort a woman who then transformed in to a woman in white and tried to eat my face but I’ve never managed to get the event again

So, as those of us hunting for POI’s know, Tyria is stuffed to the brim with hidden little nooks and crannies. What’s your favourite hidden gem in the world?

I’ve only discovered a few so far, but my favourite at the moment is the Togatl Grounds, in Kessex Hills.

I’d be a quaggan any day.

I’m in full berserker exotic gear, but I have yet to put any runes in my equipment. what should I add for maximum damage?

I dislike norns.

Those tree trunk necks

I’m with you on the symmetry. Annoys the hell out of me that most of the sets are “wonky” in that aspect

nice video, found the text very tedious to trawl through though, do you not have a microphone to talk through the build?

The amount of strawmanning in this thread could protect several acres of fields from crows.

Dump your ideas here.

*Make minions scale with stats, not just level
*given necromancers a unique condition
*Allow necromancers to deal more skill damage to conditioned targets. more conditions = higher damage multiplier
*allow necromancers to trigger their marks manually, as well as by being walked over (dunno if it’s just me, but sometimes my marks just don’t trigger)
*Allow wells to grant boons to allies, as well as debuff enemies (group support is what necromancer’s sorely lack)
*Improve minion AI (it seems, at least to me, to be super kitten y)

Note: yes, I know necro is viable in pve, but it’s the lowest rung on the ladder in terms of viability and what they bring to the table

they won’t give us anything. Unfortunately it seems that ANet is horrifically opaque in their business and development practices

there’s several thousand lines of dialogue in the game. for the entire thing to be voice acted would be incredibly expensive and a lot of work and effort that, let’s face it, most people will just skip over beyond their first time through the content.

Firstly, what is the best weapon set for a power focused necro. I’ve been using axe/focus with staff in the secondary

Secondly, what’s the best stat set for necro for general pve? I was thinking of getting the best of both worlds and going power/precision/condi instead of power/precision/ferocity

I notice my screenshots are far higher detail than my actual in game view (even with everything maxed) is my mind playing tricks on me, or does the game upscale screenshot detail?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Come on, people.

Every MMO I’ve ever played gates acquisition of game features/mechanics. Most of them spread that acquisition over the entire leveling curve. Many of them use level-up notifications. They all pace acquisition differently.

Assume for a moment that the game had debuted with the current leveling scheme. Assume for a moment that there was no prior leveling scheme to compare it to. If you can put aside that bias and look at the current state of leveling, I believe there would be two major complaints about leveling, and it being “too simple” would not be one of them.

What would those two complaints be?

• Mobs, especially early mobs, are too easy
• The tasks to unlock traits are very different in accessibility and effort-to-unlock

My concern isn;t with gating of features, it’s with the fact that the core issues that new players face (ie, the introduction of advanced game features) have not been addressed with the NPE, and the NPE is simply a large number of completely unnecessary changes when they need to actually be focusing on delivering the information new players need to fully understand the game they are playing, instead of gating access to basic features

as I have said repeatedly, the game’s mechanics do not need dumbing down, the game’s systems simply need an actual tutorial (like every other MMO does). We need tutorials for crafting, dungeons, fractals, equipment grades, downed state, combo fields, etc etc.

And before anyone says it, a 2 sentence popup on level up about one small aspect of a feature =/= tutorial.

This is why the NPE was a bad direction. The concept is a great one, but the execution was very poor on ANet’s part.

No thanks. it’s bad enough people even demand a specific number of AP for dungeon parties, don’t want people demanding a specific exact set of achievements.

I demand generally better looking male gear as a whole.

For too long have MMORPG’s catered to female characters in massive bias, while male character fashion is horribly limited.

#genderequalityeverywhere

Elementalist is the most popular, as necromancer has a large number of drawbacks in pve, however I find ele to be quite boring and simple to play. I enjoy the unique aspects of necromancer’s design

Proposal Overview

Guild Dungeons. An instance (variable, like fractals) within the guild base that can be completed by the guild as a whole (ie, the content actually requires a large number of people) for various unique rewards, such as guild benefits/unlocks/bonuses or individual rewards. Could be a weekly guild mission

Goal of Proposal
A guild instance gives guild members something to work together in that’s actually challenging (let’s face it, guild bounty/missions/etc require bare minimum effort). Should take 70-100k+ influence to perm unlock in the base via the guild menu

Proposal Functionality

Similar to instances, players can earn unique reward tokens by participating in a guild dungeon, with asociated rewards (to be determined by ANet, but something cool and unique like an exclusive skin set/mini/weapon/gear/etc that can’t be achieved anywhere else). as well as individual rewards, completing the guild instance earns the guild special currency within the guild interface, which can be used to purchase/rent special npc’s that provide various services to guild members

Associated Risks

Mass coordination required to complete a suitably challenging guild instance may be difficult for smaller guilds, perhaps make it scale based on guild membership number?

Insofar as guild halls as a whole, they should be both a social hub for guild members and a functional hub for those who wish to get things done. Guild halls should have customisable aspects, ranging from roleplay/functional buildings and npc’s to various locales and ambient life/resource nodes (unlockable)/etc.

I’m glad this aspect of the game is being discussed. GW without gvg and guild halls just doesn’t feel like guild wars to me. I was so shocked when I learned GW2 didn’t have either

Anyone else finding the absolute and complete lack of any transparency from ArenaNet a little disconcerting?

No reason listed for any of the odd changes in patch notes at all. Is there some sort of policy I missed with ArenaNet that they can’t detail why things are being done? I know it’s not an NCSoft thing this time because Aion and Lineage get detailed patch notes with reasons for those particular changes listed (and especially with Aion, there’s usually a lot of GM chatter on the forums regarding specific changes and their reasoning)

It’s a very popular game. Don’t forget there’s like 20 servers for EU and 20 for NA, on top of overflow maps for everywhere you could possibly go. It’s just the majority of people seem to hang around in the pvp lobbies or at dry top, rather than lurking in the cities – and on top of that we don’t really have a server/alliance/trade/etc chat, which also adds to the illusion of activity on other games

I dunno about anyone else, but I enjoy completing events. If someone cries to me about completing an event designed to be completed, I’ll block and report them.

I sincerely hope you reported every one of the people in your screenshot, OP. People don’t have any right to harass and verbally abuse people for not exploiting the system (or at any time at all, to be quite honest)

Eh, very little substance in what she’s saying. Blaming game flaws on business practice at arenanet still lays the blame at the feet of arenanet.

Her voice and her hair are also annoying, and easy to see why her comments and ratings are disabled.

It’s no secret that NCSoft are a shitstain on the underwear of game publishers, but in the end, they’re in charge and they have very little reason to change their policies and practices while they are still making a profit. That’s the long and short of it.

I love ArenaNet, unfortunately, they are owned (and likely restricted) by NCSoft, thus ArenaNet’s creativity and awesomeness that I know they have (Just look at GW1) is censored and crushed by NCSoft’s crap

I know in GW1, the game’s anniversary heralded loads of in game awesomeness, but either I’ve missed the anniversary events, can’t find them, or they aren’t there? o.o

Bhawb.7408:

1) Don’t use Blood Fiend, he’s bad.
2) The best ways to heal minions for PvE is to not heal them. Its simply not worth it.
3) The best way to heal minions in PvP is using a Cleric build with water/dwayna runes, renewal sigil on each set, and Transfusion traited. This build also happens to be the best MM build.

Blood fiend is bad?

I only really use him, because well of blood sucks kitten and he heals me for insane amounts as well as tanks for me. I don’t use any other minions at the moment, as they don’t seem to do very much in terms of damage.

really struggling with finding a decent pve damage build though. dagger dagger seems to give the most damage, but I’m way too squishy to make use of it properly

hannah mee.7925:

Staffs is an acceptable pluralization. The supposed grammar kittens in this forum are really tiresome.

hannah mee.7925:

Sounds interesting…but playing the devil’s advocate here: do you think the rise in one-time only sales would be worth the fact that nobody would actually have to ever purchase a like-item again? While there’s an argument that “you don’t have to buy more than one already” – remember, this wardrobe feature would be a convenience feature, just like having sets purchased on each character.

On another hand, we could use something like transmutation charges to unlock them on the character…but it’d have to be quite a bit in order to balance the charges.

I feel the people who would buy multiple are more those who enjoy the collector’s item aspect of it. Adding it to the wardrobe could allow you to see what other items there are to complete your “collection” so to speak

hannah mee.7925:

Staffs is an acceptable pluralization. The supposed grammar kittens in this forum are really tiresome.

The only time Staffs is an acceptable plural is when referring to Staffordshire bull terriers.

No. STAVES, not staffs. >:( fix your black lion trading spelling

McSlappy.1372:

rapthorne.7345:

I main qualm with GW2 is how ArenaNet are dead silent about upcoming features and changes.

This IS A GOOD THING!!!!!

We’re introducing Ascended gear!
We’re coming out with leaderboards!
We’re resetting your fractal progress!
Our new content is only temporary!
We’re nurfing drops!
We’re nurfing Champions!

Ask yourself do you really want them to change more?

I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here?

Things will change regardless, I’d just like a little preview/warning/advertisement before they do, like… you know… 90% of game developers/publishers do?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I myself love alts.

One thing I really, really, REALLY hate about alts is keeping track of my account wide gem store purchases, specifically my salvage-o-matics and perm harvesting tools.

I suggest adding a “Gem Store” wardrobe section, where we can withdraw infinite amounts of our gem store account purchases, rather than have to hunt around and shuffle them between alts constantly