Guild Wars 2

I’ve noticed that another layout is available in the game even though I don’t have it in my windows language options, but it doesn’t get activated for me automatically.
Can you swap back with Alt+Shift?

Hello, sir.
Thank you for your inquiry. The skill challenges that you’re trying to access have been locked for your current level. It is quite clear that they would have confused you, had you been able to activate them. We like to keep our game as intuitive as possible. Please return to this area, that you’ve already completed, and try again when you’re level 13.

Swizzle.7982:

Lishtenbird.2814:

The main problem is that’s unintuitive.

This. There are 8 notes to press. So you use keys 1 to 8 right? NOPE

There should be 9 bell skills, so you’d assume, the devs not being kittened, that they’d ignore skill 9 and you’d press 1 through 8 for the 8 notes that light up. But instead, you press notes 1 to 4, then notes 6 to 9, because they got rid of note 5 from the middle, though not the 5th note along on the board.

So for 1 on the board you press 1, 2 press 2, 3 press 3, 4 press 4, 5 press…wait there is no 5.. press 6, for 6 you press 7.. for…

What the actual kitten.

If this bothers you a lot you can always remap the keys.
Personally, I just place my fingers on the relevant keys from the start (1 hand on 1-4 and the other on 6-9).

You know that scene in Return of the King when Frodo and Sam are standing in front of the dragon mans tower and it shoots this greenish light/fire into the air? They should do something like that whenever someone gets banned. Make it visible from the entire map if you look up.
That would be neat.
And it would show the players that they’re actively banning these kittens.

(1:35 in this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heomQFE9ALk )

4. Corrupting plague – add boon removal to your plague.

That would be hilarious.

Perhaps someone took it?
The timer is still 1 hour as far as I’m aware.

Straegen.2938:

Zerging: Having come all the way here, I had to try the zerging. Wowsa. If you like zerg on zerg action, this is the place to be. I am pretty sure half the players in the T1 zergs are running a necro build. The fights are like watching paint dry though.

Were you in Teamspeak with your commander during this? That’s probably the single thing that makes the biggest difference to the experience.
Not being on voice comms with your group not only makes fights dull, there’s a good chance it also makes your contribution completely negligible. This is more true than ever with the current necro bomb meta.

Something (x s cooldown)
Shatter target clone and do something.

I don’t even care what it would do. I just want something that lets me shatter 1 clone of my choosing, preferably with a little box that lists my active clones and their health and lets me target them.

Edit: actually..
Kill clone (10s cooldown)
Kill target clone (procs on-kill effects/doesn’t count as a shatter).

ProtoGunner.4953:

I liked the skill huntin in GW1, but there were two points which made it fun instead of tedious and frustrating:

- you could do it on your own (no group content)
- you could do it AT ANY GIVEN TIME <—- THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep.
I think most of my issues with the trait unlocks can be summed up to lack of availability of the required tasks. Whether that be because you need a group or a zerg, or need to zone in at just the right time (or wait around for hours), or the events can’t even be completed (which is still a problem with several of them).
I could even suffer through the ridiculously long and mindless map completions if only I had the possibility to do any unlock when I need it /have the time.

WalkinGoon.2408:

I say this because, to me, they are instances with a focus on story more so
than gameplay.
(…)
And while the writing’s not terribad, it’s only lukewarm at best.

The above sums up my feelings about the LS pretty well.
I’m not a big fan of the concept.

I’m pretty indifferent about this. I don’t mind the extra rewards I’ll be getting for no additional effort, but I do think that it’s a bit of waste of resources considering all the things I would rather they work on. I also doubt the rewards will be anything to get excited about.

I find the log-in rewards amusing. My initial association when reading it was to the desperate measures that facebook games and the like employ to get people to stick around.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I think the last thing we will ever see from future content is new player classes (and I could be totally wrong).

I think the Dev team learned a lesson with the introduction of new classes with GW1 and that situation will not be repeated.

I would like to think that this is true but I’m not so sure. A large problem with the introduction of the 4 last professions in GW1 was that they tried too hard to make them different from the rest, and the special mechanics they thought up just didn’t mesh with the pre-existing (quite carefully crafted) ones.
They’ve done the exact same thing with GW2 from the very beginning by prioritizing archetypes (or profession “identities” if you will) over combat design as a whole.
In the current state of the game you wouldn’t really ruin the “balance” by introducing a new profession because it’s already a mess of random “this would be cool”-things.

Luna.9640:

(i’ve clearly stated that its the time spend playing the game as representation of their level not the level itself).

You have not. Using the term “level” to describe this issue was an exceedingly poor choice, and I too thought that you had some silly aversion to low level characters (actual in-game level) in your PvP teams after reading your OP.

There is a slight chance that I may have quoted the wrong post of yours.
Regardless, it should be obvious what I was referring to.

Mo Mo.1947:

Some of the trait unlocks could be more universal and less specific, but it’s not “gamebreaking” suggesting you do a little something to earn a little something.

Oh, it very much is to me. I’m dead serious when I state that this is by far the biggest kittenup of an update I’ve seen in any MMO I actively played.

I can offer some advice from a T1 guild size (~15) to full queue zerg perspective.

The wells build is the meta option and it’s quite easy to play. You’re basically a walking bomb. You’re there to drop your wells in the right spot at the right time – that’s about it.

In general, it’s very easy to stay alive in a zerg on a necro so I would definitely suggest you opt for full berserker’s gear. As long as you mind your positioning a bit and don’t get caught in a melee train, you won’t be dying – Death Shroud will protect you from getting ganked by random targets, and if you’re forced to push through a hot area Plague will keep you up just fine.

You also have access to an invaluable sniping skill in Corrupt Boon so if your guild/commander is into that kind of thing and you’re good at spotting enemy pins, you may want to run that as your 3rd utility (can also be useful when picking off random overextended targets).

In a typical fight you’ll be free casting with staff until your commander calls for wells – bomb, rinse, repeat. The condi transfer, chill and fear from your marks can come in handy but in the initial clash you’ll be okay just unloading them to tag stuff (must get bags!).

As long as your heavies do their thing properly and you make sure to stay behind them, your job is very easy. In particular you have less to worry about than Eles because you’re not watering your friends.
Many groups rely primarily on necro bombs for damage so your main worry is to land those and not blow them on random stuff. Don’t put yourself at excessive risk to get there but do try to maintain a position where you can bomb on your commander on short notice. Keep that in mind and you should be fine.

Also, all the big red numbers are pretty (drop wells and go immediately into DS to see what I mean).

Being able to see and choose from a list of open instances would be maddeningly helpful. I don’t understand why it’s not a thing.
Having some basic info about them would be good too, but hardly necessary.

But.. But.. you said you wanted a longer LS chapter * puppy eyes *.

Hamster.4861:

Between the three of them, they probably have more people engaged in WvW than all of bronze leaugue, and all of this is done under the guise of “getting people more engaged in wvw”?

I dont think so… They are literally taking turns getting first place. It could be so much fun to totally shut down a server during their “push week” but yall seem content to roll over and let the situation stagnate.

You’ve misunderstood the issue.
If a T1 server decides to “push”, they pull together a coverage much, much better than the remaining two, making it near impossible to beat them with short notice. When such a thing occurs, the server is carried by a handful of commanders doing some serious overtime (e.g. in the realm of 7-8 hours straight). This is obviously not sustainable in the long run so it’s often done for one week at a time.
Servers “push” on their own schedule. It happens infrequently enough that it’s most often at different times – this is the bullkitten part, and this is what the people in the meeting want to change to a coordinated week where everyone puts in an effort at the same time. For some actual PPT competition, which will in turn (hopefully) create more fights as well.

YOU WILL LEARN TO LOVE IT, kitten!

-Anet

Casmurro.9046:

Zaklex.6308:

Goose.5196:

Kitsunami.6241:

As to the people complaining about ‘lack of content’

I remind you that you have been playing for nearly two years, and that the ‘lack of content’ is not a lack of content, its that you have finished the content.

There is more than enough content here to justify the price tag.

I’d agree with you if this wasn’t advertised as an MMO.

Shall I remind you, MMO: M = Massively(no where does it say the world needs to be gargantuan, just massive, I’d say Tyria qualifies), Multiplayer-check, Online-check…looks like GW2 matches that pretty well.

I agree with Goose, gw2 is a great online game but i’m not sure if it can be called an mmo. GW2 lacks longevity, progression, it just doesnt hold the players after certain amount of time played, while regular mmos can give thousands of hours of replayability. I really hope anet is preparing something big for the beginning of next year, because another year of just living story will not hold the veteran players.

I think you’d have to concede that it is an MMO by definition. But I thoroughly agree that AS an MMO, the way the game has been handled since release does not live up to the precedent set by other games (an hence many people’s expectations) – which was also Goose’s point, as far as I can tell.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

They can’t.

It is their holy grail, a fix to a prolbem that never existed.

People buy games, they don’t like them, they stop playing. I did so too (with a whole lot of games).

For some obscure reason, ANet thought that the gameplay experience was the reason, but honestly, people won’t like it more or less with some minor changes.

On the other hand, ANet made many existing players angry. The two feature patches are a very confusing move.

I doubt that the NPE keeps more players playing GW2 than the game did the old way. The game is still, in its very core, the same game. So people who don’t like the core mechanics of the game will still not stay.

But after putting so many ressources into this stuff, ANet will always argue that it was neccessary. Changing things back is not an option. What a waste though.

I fully agree with this. It seems absurdly silly to put so much focus on trying to catch the attention of people who are NOT interested in this niche game genre.

Though maybe it’s easier to get people unfamiliar with MMOs to cough up money for gem store items?

This whole update is actually just an elaborate excuse to reintroduce Skyhammy in team arenas.

Earlier today I was porting golems around EBG.
In a 15-20 minute window I pinged my portal skill 3 times. After that I got suppressed. I couldn’t ping any skills for the remaining hour and a half I was logged on.
Either the suppression feature bugged out of it’s ridiculously aggressive.

xGraver.4918:

Who cares what happens in NA it’s all dead.

Yak’s Bend.

GSNairb.1456:

I know this means nothing by now, but my wife recently wanted to re-make her Elementalist and I was sadly pre-occupied with something else and she ended up deleting her old one (it was about 1.5 years old, so grandfathered in). All she needed was a total makeover kit because she didn’t like the face/coloring and such.

Now she has to go through some stupid trait hunt just to play her character. It was honestly better when we had to pay to re-trait, because at least then we had access to every trait to change.

I know that feeling.
Just before the update in April I filled up all my character slots with place holders – just in case. After the patch, in a momentary lapse of reason, I remade an engineer I was working on to get a different look – as of right now it’s still sitting at level 38, untouched since early May.

As far as I’m aware, none of the T1 servers have any particular interest in getting Yak’s Bend up. As long as that remains true they’ll probably stay in T2.

The WvW population has indeed been plummeting for quite a while. On JQ the most dire time zone is SEA – it’s almost deserted. Overall it’s currently the least populated T1 server, but there’s still activity at certain times.

Mostly it’s just a matter of indifference. I don’t think Anet even realizes how little players care about PPT at this point. For the majority (of T1 at least), it only serves to maintain the tier – no one cares if they’re 1st, 2nd or 3rd.
We just want to fight. Commanders from different servers arrange times to be online in order to fight each other (with guild or PUGs). This is the last bit of entertainment left in WvW and you don’t need to maintain a population 24/7 to do it.

Creld.8702:

To be an advocate for anet, it does seem like they want to stay consistent with what they’ve said in the past regarding kits, namely the backpack is supposed to be a tell for what kit the opponent has equipped.

To a regular player, it seems dumb.

Agreed. I cannot think of a single time I’ve needed to try to make use of the backpack to identify a kit.

Rashy.4165:

I’d also be open to buying Trait manuals, but in the following format:
- 5 Adept manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Master manuals, one for each trait line
- 5 Grandmaster manuals, one for each trait line.

I think this is one point they’ll refuse to change.
Their primary motivation appears to have been some misguided idea that awarding traits individually encourages players to learn them better (I assume this is what they refer to when they state that they think the trait change was successful in some respects).

Mezz Murr.2648:

I usually count in my head to gauge portal range. I use travelers’ runes in wvw and can count to about 12 (straight line) before I’m out of range. Turning, Swiftness, and blinking will of course alter your count. As others have said, you’ll get a feel for range as you practice more.

As far as time until exit, I use either a skill cool down timer (mass invis), or the countdown clock for ppt (wvw). If you get in the habit of glancing at either of those when you lay the entrance down, you’ll have a good guess of when you have to use the exit.

To expand on this:
Standard movement speed is 294 units/second. With swiftness it’s 391 u/s. Thus, to reach a range of 5000 you need to run for 5000/391 = 12.8 seconds. Make it 12 to be on the safe side. You can cut this to 10.5s if you blink at 900 range, or 9.7s if you blink at 1200 range.

Timing can be useful but I find it easiest by far to gauge distance with the mini-map. Zoom all the way in, put a personal waypoint where you place your portal, allow the mini-map to rotate and move until the waypoint is at the edge.

A few weeks ago we were attacking some close towers on EBG with a rather big pug zerg when a mesmer started dropping portals for us. First tower, we figured he had just been hiding in there. Second tower (enemy held for 3+ hours), not so much. Everyone on teamspeak got kittened and moved on but of course we couldn’t stop the pugs from flipping it. He did it on a 3rd tower before we could spot who it was, after which he left. No one saw how he got in, but it obviously wasn’t legitimate.

No pants, no care.

You’re deluding yourself if you think that the combat system in GW2 has any potential to maintain a competitive community large enough to warrant that kind of monetary reward.

#elepocalypse .

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Today i ran out of gold

No problem. Anet will happily sell you some more so you can continue this joyous adventure.

RemiRome.8495:

Suspicious part is it’s usually not the entire game. I’ve only had lag in sPvP once. openworld almost never and most often in dungeons.

Yesterday was unplayable except in my homeinstance where I spent 20 minutes enjoying zero lag. sPvP was fine too.

Same here. The only times I ever get disconnected are in dungeons. And it happens frequently.

Yojimaru.4980:

You want to know why they always use buttcapes, skirts, and trench coats so much? Because it gives them design real estate in which they have room to add in differentiating patterns and details. The argument could be made that the Anet art team relies too much on having that additional space, but there really is only so much you can do with a pair of pants.

That hasn’t stopped them making a ton of them for the human medium weight.

phys.7689:

I agree, but i notice many people dont understand what he means.

He means essentially, any outfit that creates a skirt after the waist.

he doesnt mean what we think of as skirts today. (usually what women wear, no pants)
but closer to “: the part of a dress, coat, etc., that hangs from the waist down”

put it like this on male or female charachter, how often could you see their pants pockets(if they had some)

I get the overall feeling that the people in charge of armor/costume design have a distaste for butts (in pants). Sometimes it seems they go out of the way not to show it.

I think it’s an attempt to differentiate profession looks through armor. Human medium has lots of actual pants, while human light literally doesn’t have a single pair (gypsy doesn’t count!).
Personally, I find the armor selection for light human atrocious and this is a big part of the reason.

Phadde.7362:

I’ve always felt that the biggest problem with sPvP has been the lack of game modes (as having just one is ridiculous in an MMO, and it is somewhat devastating for GW2).

The game modes that you listed fairly much summarizes which ones I’d like to see added first

One of the original intentions (officially) for the single PvP mode was to unify low end and high end PvP. In GW1, they felt the large difference between the early access (RA) and the competitive (GvG) format scared a lot of people off. They also felt GvG was far too complex.
Personally, I think another part of the reason is that they quickly realized that many profession mechanics would run rampant without the necessity to stay on a node. In that respect I’ve always had the impression that they limited the game based on their profession designs instead of designing professions to fit game types.

Anyway, the reasoning was that tournaments would be more accessible to the average player because they’d be comfortable with the format if they’d played ANY PvP.
In reality, the conquest mode seems to be too complex for brand new players and boring to experienced ones.

Tage.7045:

Autoattacks shouldnt never ever have to make pressure and force u to use dodge or even waste one of ur def cds no matter with/vs what class no matter what amulet,runes but this happens a lot.

Fully agree with this. To me it seems completely counterintuitive to give auto-attacks such significant damage (even without sigil procs) when the primary defense mechanic in the game is a short-duration invulnerability (dodge).

Kartel.2561:

I didn’t expect to LOSE those things that made me so appreciate the franchise. 1st person view, multi-classing, the old skill/attribute/gear system, the rich lore, guild halls, multiple continents after multiple years, very low level/gear cap, etc, They made various design decisions to go in another direction. A more dumbed down generic “like everyone else” direction.

This always baffled me. With all their focus on being new and innovative, the decision to cut out some of the very original ideas from GW in favor of more generic systems seems odd.
I remember some statements in early interviews about not wanting to just make a reskinned Guild Wars game. I get that, but I feel like they sacrificed a hell of a lot, changing things just for the sake of being different from the predecessor.

Shpongle.6025:

Yenrah.8532:

Finally a skin that isn’t a laser show! Is not made of light, fire, is not tacky and overdone! It looks menacing, it is rusty, it’s a beautiful tool for any sadistic butcher, me included. Thanks!

What kind of a person doesn’t like colors ? I mean I’m glad you finally got a weapon you like, but come on.

I like elegance.
If by “color” you mean over the top flashy effects, I am such a person.

SmilingBandit.8079:

Gilgalas.7860:

Hello Gaile,

Thanks to you and the whole team for the update and for listening to our feedback (not that I ever doubted that contrarily to many here).

Despite what many say here and on reddit, I appreciate a lot Anet ability to listen to feedback and take steps accordingly. I can’t say so of most other studio.

Regards

They (Arenanet) did NOT listen to our feedback. They where dismanteled by the critics of major gaming sites and had to make a move not to be totally crushed!

http://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-players-angry-over-currency-exchange-chang-1649519173

http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/guild-wars-2-gemgate

The critic of tentonhammer regarding the handling of this incident is devasting, and rightfully so!

Arenanet only learns the hard way!
Cheers!

Agreed.
If your puppy does its business outside only because you consistently shoo it out whenever it tries to kitten on your carpet, it’s not a well-behaved puppy.
Same thing applies here.

Roe.3679:

Tadsoul.6951:

sadly that is working as intended
running back and forth through a wall to stack swiftness for some reason isn’t the same as standing in a symbol
however if they change this skill they will probably will have to do the same to spectral wall or maybe that is their thoughts

Spectral wall also doesn’t allow you to run back and forth through it to stack it’s boon. Not sure if it stacks with other sources of protection, though.

But that’s why it works that way, so you can’t just stack obscene amounts of a boon.

Just seems like a really lazy implementation. Surely it would be possible to give it an internal cooldown to circumvent this problem.

Scientia.8924:

Often I’ll see players in PvE who appear intelligent (dodge well, weapon swap to range) but are just hilariously underpowered at their level, and I wonder if their gear is just trash or they didn’t bother unlocking (or are not even using) any of their traits

I’ve noticed this as well. I recently brought a character through 100% map completion and came across A LOT of players who took absurd amounts of time to kill trash mobs for hearts. I mostly figured they were just poorly geared.

wwwes.1398:

I mean, the real problem is that the system is intended to get users to slowly learn traits and the developers apparently think that’s how the game is actually working. But speaking from experience, what actually happens is that users look up the traits that they want, they buy them or unlock them (and only them), and they never ever experiment, because nobody is willing/able to stop and unlock or purchase traits in the middle of a dungeon or an event. I have three characters created post patch. I don’t even know what most of the traits do because there’s just no point.

I sympathize, because undoing this or making mass changes is probably a logistical nightmare. But PLEASE at least acknowledge and let us know you hear what we’re saying. Which is that whatever you think is happening in terms of playability just isn’t. Everyone looks up meta builds or asks what traits to use. Or worse, they are unaware of what to do and just take whatever they happen to get without any critical examination whatsoever.

This doesn’t lead to exploring your traits, it leads to never ever exploring your traits. On many occasions, I’ve actually just left the slot blank because I didn’t have enough traits unlocked in a line. That is absolutely stupid.

Oh, and as mentioned, even when you want to unlock one, sometimes it’s just broken. I put in a report saying that branded devourer queen is broken a week or two ago.

I’m quoting this for emphasis. Spot on.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

vana.5467:

Tulki.1458:

The juxtaposition between these two things makes me sincerely believe the new trait system was just an on-purpose gold sink to make people panic and buy gems -> gold so they can actually fill out their build without massive tedium.

This really is the only sensible conclusion. Especially considering that some of the events are either bugged out and can’t be completed, or simply pop so rarely you’d need to be unbelievably lucky (or patient – sitting around for hours is fun, right?) to catch it.

. . . “only sensible conclusion”?

I dunno, it’s more sensible to think they just plain goofed on the placement. Not like it wouldn’t be the first time really desirable things of this nature got stuck in the middle of nowhere or were incredibly frustrating to get. Go take a look at where some of the Elite Skills used to be located . . .

Specifically, “Feast of Corruption”, from what I recall . . . was really annoying to track down.

Fair enough, maybe a slight exaggeration

But if they really did just mess up the location, their failure to fix the issue is massively disheartening.
If it’s intentional, it’s a douchy move but at least it doesn’t make them come off as completely incompetent.

Tulki.1458:

The juxtaposition between these two things makes me sincerely believe the new trait system was just an on-purpose gold sink to make people panic and buy gems -> gold so they can actually fill out their build without massive tedium.

This really is the only sensible conclusion. Especially considering that some of the events are either bugged out and can’t be completed, or simply pop so rarely you’d need to be unbelievably lucky (or patient – sitting around for hours is fun, right?) to catch it.

I wonder what Anet’s all-encompassing statistics say about how many traits people tend to unlock on average. I don’t think any of the characters I’ve made since the patch (3) have more than 20 traits.

Regarding the PvP focus in the early game:

“This is what we’ve all been working for all this time. You know, Guild Wars, we built it from the ground up as a competitive game and of course this is the ultimate expression of that competition right here.” – Mike O’brien at the faction championship in 2006.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74HhIS-TS10 (43:10)

I’d also argue that when you create a game specifically to have a high skill ceiling, you’re naturally catering to a PvP crowd.

Sadly, Anet decided to go another way after a few years, and the monetary reward for competitive play dried up. I believe they could have a caught a large chunk of the future LoL players (and the whole MOBA craze) early on if they’d handled the game differently. It’s quite ironic that their later attempt at an esport flunked magnificently, when the original came so close without them even realizing.
Anyway..

As for the name, I have no doubt that it originally was strongly related to the PvP design, but over the course of many years it became connected to the game world instead. The sequel takes place in the same world. It’s only natural to use the same name.