Guild Wars 2

gennyt.3428:

If they add an actual GvG arena, the WvWVW maps would probably be overtaken by tumbleweeds.

A lot of guilds do zerg smashing a.k.a. raiding. There is still plenty of reason to do WvW apart from GvG (e.g. insane amounts of junk loot for your essences of luck).

Lord Kuru.3685:

The quicker Anet realizes and accepts that sPvP will never become an esport the quicker they can move resources to WvW — the player-preferred method of PvP in GW2.

Not specifically WvW; more-so GvG. If they can add spectators and that sort of goodness to GvG all the better.

While I don’t actually care to participate in GvG it’s blatantly obvious that it is already the start of a eSports scene – and is a pretty entertaining one too.

The thing about eSports is that it very often comes out of games that had no intention of being an eSport. Look at DoTA 1, Starcraft 1, Warcraft 3 & Audiosurf. The developers of these games never intended for them to become eSports – the fans identified the fun (to play and to watch) bits in the games and set up the eSport scene themselves. That’s the thing, I don’t think there has ever been a eSports scene come from a dev saying “we are going to set up eSports in this game with this mode.” It simply doesn’t, and will never, work like that.

So when we get to the acceptance stage maybe we will see a GvG map in sPvP (or something, ultimately I think the only thing holding GvG back from really taking off is the lack of spectating features) – we are getting close with the hints of a “GvG area in WvW”. If ANet ever want to see eSports come out of this game though they are going to have to do a 180 on their perspective toward GvG – sPvP simply isn’t working out.

There is progress though – it looks like we are at a “90 on their perspective.” I’m starting to see acceptance here.

Sounds awesome!

One thing I noticed is that when the Scarlet events released I didn’t have any skill lag in the Scarlet events (WvW remained much the same). It looks like you’ve already finished with this thread; still I am interested to know whether WvW and PvE share the same server architecture and whether you have thought about capitalising on any of the improvements they have clearly been made in PvE.

Voland.5862:

Does Arena-Net have any intention of investing in upgraded (Newer/Better) Server hardware and related solutions?

Not all problems can be scaled vertically – quadratic problems like game servers are particularly poor candidates for vertical scaling. This is because, e.g. if you double your CPU speed you will only get a 50% speed improvement instead of the 100% you would expect. To compound the issue it may not even possible to get a system that is twice as fast as the current ones (because they might be close enough to the bleeding edge that only, say, a 0.3ghz jump is possible).

Not everything in WvW is quadratic, but “skill lag” is the symptom of one area that it is (everyone dropping AOEs) – so pulling out the wallet and improving the hardware would probably only make a marginal difference that us players wouldn’t really notice.

The best thing to do always is to improve the efficiency of your algorithms (or I would rather say, decrease the inefficiency). At the time you would hypothetically get more hardware you would have more bang-for-buck because of previous optimizations.

This is completely made up and has absolutely no evidence backing it.

Dragon corruption cannot affect the innocent. The corruption, like a vine, needs something to grow on within the person (such as guilt or sin). People that are free of guilt have nothing in them that the corruption could grow its roots in. This also neatly explains why the Pale Tree Sylvari are immune to dragon corruption – and may also make it plausible that the nightmare court and SB are not entirely immune.

Yeah Kentrey the fun vs. serious problem is interesting. Your “pro” players all start as casual players – you somehow need to cater for both.

You might find that a balance change, game mode tweak or a new game mode makes the game more fun – but that change could severely impact the serious “pro” side of things.

Great idea! One problem I could see with it is one of the problems not listed:

- Coverage wins PPT.

The scenario I am thinking is that in matches where 1 server has night-time coverage and the others don’t, that one server will completely obliterate the other servers.

I think it’s really important for defense to be important for PPT. So one addition I would make is: the amount of points for holding a position decays the longer you hold it.

Currently the keep contributes 25 points per tick. That’s 5% of its initial supply capacity (25/500) – let’s say that after 5 hours (20 ticks) that should decay to 3% (15 points). That means it decays at 0.15% per tick. HOWEVER, capturing the keep is seen as effectively upgrading its supply from 0 to 500. Each upgrade would add PPT at it’s own decaying rate.

So as a “battle log”:

• Keep is captured. Contribution from capture = 5% * 500 = 25 PPT
• Cannons are ordered.
• Point tick happens – team gains 25 points.
• Keep points decay. Contribution from capture = 4.85% * 500 = 24 PPT (24.25)
• Cannons complete. The increase the capacity by 100 supply. Contribution from cannons = 5% * 100 = 5 PPT
• Point tick happens. Team gains 24 + 5 = 29 points.
• Keep is not upgraded for 20 ticks. PPT = 3% * 500 + 3% * 100 = 3% * 600 = 18 points.
• or Keep is fully upgraded. PPT = 0.3% * 1600 = 48 points.

This creates an incentive to continuously upgrade the keep (valuing defense) while not creating an outright snowball if the keep is never turned into paper because there is nobody to capture it. In addition it adds interesting meta around the upgrade meta.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Yeah, that and it isn’t remotely realistic to invest the resources to develop several more game modes that you then just throw away.

You might have missed the point I made about the LS. That has been money “thrown away” (which it really wasn’t: it’s called market research) that ANet were happy to do. Notwithstanding that I mentioned that they have made throwaway PvP modes in the past: Dragon Ball, Reaper’s Rumble. I’m not sure if you ever played them, but they were PvP (your UI switched to the PvP UI).

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Don’t just blast a shotgun into the sky and hope a bird falls down.

Which is exactly not what I said. Releasing 5 game modes at once is spraying and praying, gathering metrics is not – it’s called market research through rapid iteration. Currently conquest is simply not working out. Will it ever be done really well? How do you improve it or replace it with zero evidence of what improvements your player base enjoys? Unreliable or emotional verbal player feedback? Or involvement statistics gathered from monitoring how many players play game modes from short-term experiments.

I said, or implied, all of that already. Exemplifying my point about the questionable value of verbal player feedback. The point I made about “1 game mode at a time” might have been missed, as well. But that should have been obvious when I mentioned the LS release system.

It’s very hard (or possibly impossible) to do A/B testing in a PvP environment, but the LS type of release system comes close. Is that the idea behind the LS, to find out how to evolve PvE in the long run? Possibly. If people give up on TA very quickly, for example, ANet learns it was a bad idea because it’s not popular. If people give up on Reaper’s Rumble, CTF or whatever they learn that those modes are not popular and come out with a better understanding of their market (which is money well spent).

Edit: Every time game modes are mentioned people start theorycrafting about what game modes would work and which ones wouldn’t. Players also theorycraft about what improvements to conquest could be made and which ones would be more fun. Truth is nobody knows what is more fun because there is exactly zero research behind what’s fun and what’s not. Our ideas are just as bad, if not worse, than ANet’s – the only way to change that would be proactively find out what people enjoy and what they don’t. That’s not saying that ANet have done a bad job, realizing the opportunity for change is a good thing – failure is part of success.

This is hindsight, I also want to see more modes.

Here’s why I think why ANet aren’t adding more game modes. It would fragment PvP which already doesn’t have enough players as-is. In that way it makes a lot of sense to consolidate the community into one game mode. This begs the question though: would adding another game mode possibly attract more players?

I think one way to do it would be to, say, each month release a new game mode (and remove the previous one, similar to the LS release system). This way they could gather metrics on which mode attracts the most players without risking fragmenting the community. At the end of the run they could chose one or two of those modes based on how popular they were and make them permanent.

Pros

- It would be a big draw into the PvP community because PvP would be getting “new shinies”.
- The developers would be able to experiment with fresh ideas without too much risk much in the same way as the LS.
- They do have some existing modes from previous LS updates. Dragon Ball, Reaper’s Rumble, Aspect Arena come to mind. This is some free development that has been done in the past that they don’t need to worry about doing from scratch.
- Reaper’s Rumble would probably be one of the permanent game modes :P

Cons

- There would no doubt be loads of QQ.
- It would alienate the existing players who enjoy the current zone control mode. The zone control could thrown in the middle though to get its votes (but it would probably do artificially poorly because it’s not new and exciting).
- The current maps may become useless. That’s a lot of money to throw down the drain.

style.6173:

Not to mention that attacks slow your run and jump speed. An interesting idea, but not one that should be implemented.

I think you are missing the point here. Attacks should instagib you. mwahahahaha If you watch a decent trib mode player they are long gone before they draw aggro, probably because they know the jumps off by heart from doing them so many times.

Love the idea.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Because of her help to the GW2 community… geez bro hate much?

Naw, he’s just…

Blood and Madness

the Mad King isn’t the only one breaking through the barrier between realms

Note the wording: “not the only one.”

Blood and Madness

He’s controlling the undead armies in the Mad King’s Realm, while his father retains command of the plastic spiders, candy corn elementals, and other festive frights.

Kline.9561:

1. Video Channels. […]
11. Streams, and replay. […]

We need a decent spectator system. Maybe not 100 000’s of spectators, but even starting off at 20 or so would be a big boost. This would encourage the community to livestream/commentate/YouTube games. This post comes to mind:

Dirame.8521:

Centrix.4065:

Too bad it’s only 8v8[…]

[…]Could have done 10 v 10 but need space for people to cast the tourney and mod.

That’s getting in the way of people creating an eSport community. Replays are nice, new maps are nice, however, live spectating should be one of your biggest priorities.

I’m not 100% on-board with ANet putting up videos (class+build showcases are fine, but, e.g. the HoN ones never got many views). Nearly all of the eSports commentators I have watched (SC2, Dota 2, HoN, etc.) set themselves up within the community with no involvement from the developer. While it would be nice to see the developers getting involved with the bigger personalities once they are established; these people must be allowed to set their own scene up without involvement (or more specifically, tampering) of the developers. At some point getting too involved or “pushy” will just scare people off. You have to make a good platform and let your community run with it.

If you want to incentivise players getting involved with PvP you could also go the Dota 2 route: rewards for spectators. I might even go as far to say very rare drop chances of PvE aesthetic items from spectating PvP, and obviously PvP weapon skins, glory boosters, etc. That would be a big draw on your PvE community and it might generate a lot of interest in the game mode.

Edit: In hindsight I guess why we don’t have different game modes is that there aren’t enough PvP players – adding more game modes would merely fragment the limited playerbase. One interesting release mechanic would have some form of LS for PvP: release a game mode every month (only one mode available at a time) and see which gets the most traction from the playerbase.

I have noticed a significant buff to loot quality. However my perception might be skewed and having never run MF gear in WvW the new account MF might be increasing the loot quality beyond what I am used to.

Yaro.3251:

Btw I’m still interested what specific actions you have in mind when asking about “how far we can go dealing with them”?

Exactly, I try to be a nice person in the game – but if they are going to “all is fair in war” into WvW as a saboteur does that give me right to act as, say, a general would in real life – which as I said would likely be torture (verbal in the case of a game). The other option would be to appeal to authority – but that only works if the authority you are appealing to agrees that sabotage is unwelcome. Unclear.

Spies are one thing: if you suspect you are being followed you can feed false information to the enemy. You can’t exactly feed false supply to the enemy in the case of a saboteur.

Thanks for the thoughtful response though.

sostronk.8167:

I experienced a pretty hardcore troll on Jade Quarry earlier this year.

Thanks for the post, but I’m not really referring to trolls (even though I do feel for you guys). Your point is valid though. Reporting spies/saboteurs will probably achieve nothing – if it takes months for the reports to be acted on, the match will be long in the past and their mission would have succeeded.

I guess the ultimate solution would be to “repay in kind.” Camp outside their spawn for hours, form an alliance – play absolutely dirty against that server and make their game so unenjoyable that they don’t attempt to plant players again (or deal with the rogue element themselves). That is certainly in line with the CoC.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Or, more likely, this is her secret. And we know Caithe’s been keeping that from Faolain, erased all knowledge of that from everyone, leaving only 4 individuals to know about it – herself, the sylvari PC, Trahearne, and Amaranda.

There is the possibility that Caithe and Scarlet were affected by the other tree in some way. That would explain their common unique Sylvari personalities or mindsets that are in some ways similar to Malyck’s.

We do know that both Caithe and Scarlet come from the Pale Tree (given that Caithe is a firstborn and PT was able to interact with Scarlet during her encounter with the Eternal Alchemy). Maybe the other tree freed them from the whole Dream/Nightmare situation.

Yaro.3251:

BTW I do not agree with that. Because switching servers is out-of-game experience, it is closer to cheating than RP (is anything).

It’s hard to say without official word – I was trying to apply what ANet have said in the past though (e.g. they encourage forming alliances), but could obviously be completely wrong.

If they don’t encourage this type of behavior a system like yours could work; although you would still have the throwaway accounts like scootshoot mentioned. A possible way discourage that would be to have either a 1-week long debuff applied to players who recently transferred (similar to dishonorable discharge, but less flamboyant – this would allow commanders to use different tactics in the presence of a spy/saboteur) or disallow transfers to play WvW for 1 week.

Either way, I am more interested from an official standpoint if sabotage is allowed, and if it is, how far we can go in terms of retaliating against it (without being reported and banned ourselves).

PhoenixDown.5467:

Maybe give the ability to ‘take out’ your siege supply with 20% loss?

Good idea – although I think I might have seen it before and it was (obviously) ignored. I’d still like some sort of indication as to how far we can go to deal with these guys if undoing their sabotage isn’t a reality.

Zackie.8923:

all’s fair in war

I never said “it shouldn’t be allowed,” what I said is “I agree this is viable gameplay” and want to know how dirty we are allowed to play in response. Try actually reading the OP, before replying.

zamalek.2154:

I applaud inserting saboteurs into your enemies’ ranks – it’s exactly the type of dirty play that war is supposed to be about.

Peetee.9406:

Got some high class trolls over there on the Euro ladder. Our just drop 20c ballistas.

xD

As I said, we are not exactly sure if it is a troll (a troll being someone who’s home server is AG who is maliciously doing this) or a saboteur (being someone from another server who transfers over for the match).

Trolls can be reported, saboteurs cannot – at least according to what I see as the current interpretation of the COC (war is a dirty business: form alliances, back stab, sabotage are all acceptable behavior).

It seems as though we might have a saboteur in AG from another server. Last night I lead a “why not?” attack on SM just before I had to flag off. Once we reached the inner I put down the usual 2 sup rams. Almost as soon as I did this a golem was placed behind me (90% of the force were pugs and were not in TS, so obviously everyone used their supply on the golem instead). As soon as I asked them not to they placed another one (and I did ask nicely). We had 1 ram built, 1 50% ram build site and 2 20% golems. I’m not sure if 2 rams would have gotten us in – but it was a close call.

Someone in TS mentioned it wasn’t the first time it had happened this week. So either AG has a new/fresh troll (in which case, we simply wait until next week, see if it is a troll, report and move on); or, we have a saboteur from another server.

According to the COC this is probably allowed, and I applaud inserting saboteurs into your enemies’ ranks – it’s exactly the type of dirty play that war is supposed to be about. The problem is that pretty-much all of the ways you can deal with a saboteur are reportable behavior (essentially making them feel unwelcome) – in real life you would torture them (or kill them), neither of those options are open to us. The only way to “torture” them would be abuse via map chat – and it would probably have to be very extreme verbal torture (racism etc. comes to mind). That is very clearly not in line with the COC.

So how are we allowed to deal with them? Or are we going to see a firmer stance on sabotage (essentially saying that transferring to a server is pledging allegiance to them)? Or am I going to be making siege ram art in keeps during the tournament?

Treeline.3865:

There is no “RNG death” in this dungeon.

Multiple player getting the pheremone during Slick and Sparki + the plant during that sequence not working as expected = RNG death in pug groups.

slinkiestyew.6823:

What’s WRONG is the community.

I’ll quote a good man here:

ilr.9675:

Uhh…yeah actually that’s EXACTLY what they’re working really hard to create. Look at any of J-Sharps more longwinded schpeals on why they won’t do Skill Splits. They’re definitely working as hard as they can to put all their effort on eSports while classes like Ranger, Engi, and Necro constantly take back seats to War/Guard/Mes. ….A lot of it feels more like they’re only working on excuses, but there’ a lot of skill changes getting cranked out along side that too. So they’re obviously doing a lot of work to foster this community to specifically expect the Worst from these subpar classes joining them in Pugs.

The community acts this way because the content is fostering that type of behavior. The whole gearing is our natural tendency to attempt to blame things (sometimes people get blamed, other times gear) – people are bad at figuring out what causes their frustration (in this case it’s RNG death, not gear, not other players).

Some players think that 10 000 AP means they are better, it does not – it means the are supposed to be above that type of childish behavior because they have been through a lot of this type of the stuff in the game and therefore you should be able to expect a certain level of maturity (or frustration condition resistance/cleansing xD) from them.

ilr.9675:

They’re definitely working as hard as they can to put all their effort on eSports while classes like Ranger, Engi, and Necro constantly take back seats to War/Guard/Mes. ….A lot of it feels more like they’re only working on excuses, but there’ a lot of skill changes getting cranked out along side that too. So they’re obviously doing a lot of work to foster this community to specifically expect the Worst from these subpar classes joining them in Pugs.

Huh. You have a good point there good sir. While I don’t have this problem (not exactly an altaholic but do I have them) it doesn’t stop me from sympathising with you guys. I’m very slowly starting to lose faith in GW2 PvE, which is very different from my stubborn fanboyism until quite recently.

Silmea.5709:

people need first to understand that they need a balanced team before entering a dungeon. People like to play one class but need to adapt to the need of the team

Agreed. Here’s the problem, though. The LFG tool doesn’t allow you to pick your composition. It’s completely feasible to sit there kicking, say, necromancers from your party until you get the right composition – but what does that mean for necromancers? “No LS achievement chest for you”? Is this the type of community ANet worked so hard to create? As a player is party-kicking the type of thing you want to spend a good 30 minutes doing? Is that fun?

Content should punish bad play during the LS content if ANet wants it to be hard. It should not punish slip-ups caused by the inability to effectively communicate with pugs. I don’t know how many times I explained the Slick and Sparki room to pugs via party chat and we still had people saying we “should DPS the Ooze first.”

Again, the simplest solution is to dumb it down for the LS. When the LS ends make it elite content again. Dumbing down doesn’t necessarily means “easier”. It means adding predictability to the way things work in the dungeon: e.g. the pheremone plant during Slick and Sparki should actually work (remove the pheremone from all other players if someone uses the plant). e.g. the Clockwork Heart 30-stack smackdown should be 75% of your HP, that way individuals can still make a difference if the rest of their party is aimlessly dying. e.g. Clockwork Heart should have a reliable kite mechanic. After the LS the RNG death can be added back into the dungeon.

Gehirn.8796:

Does the party still get kicked if the leader leaves?

Yep! That what I had after my first run. Party leader rage quit (as in: offline), after waiting a while we kicked him… and… boom! Thing is this guy quit on the 4th attempt and we did it on the 5th (with 4 people, not noticing he was gone – go figure).

I had my guildie open the dungeon after that, reliable connection AND doesn’t give up. 7 hours later we were forced to stop playing because of IRL commitments. We must have been through 40 or so (not kidding) PUGs because most just kept rage quitting during Slick and Sparki.

Bed time for me. Good run man! You are a legend! Maybe we can group up for another attempt some time later this week.

The problem we had was PUGs not kiting the ooze (some even wanted to DPS it after we had explained the mechanics), working alone, did nothing when they had the pheremone.

Not because they are bad, but because this content requires most importantly time and communication tools that are just not available in pick up groups. The remnants of our original group had to give up after a few clockwork heart attempts because we had job/school commitments. We must have worked through 40 or so people by the time we finished (some did just give up after failing attempts twice, but you will never please that kind of player).

I appreciate difficult content, I am in the camp that says Tequatl is fine as-is. A Tequatl fight takes, at worst, ~2 hours. This isn’t really difficult – it artificial lengthening of content via cheap RNG death (e.g. Clockwork Heart can be an unreliable kite at times). Once again: harking back to the Spider Queen in AC (which will occasionally kill experienced player because, buddy, bad luck).

Dumb it down for the duration of the LS fortnight, then ramp it up to insanely hard again for those who want to tackle it.

- The “ooze race” only needs one or two players who are proactive. It’s probably fine.
- During the Slick and Sparki fight make the Ooze prioritize the player who uses the pheremone plant. We often had situation where 2 (sometimes even 3) players had the pheremone buff (and no, that was not caused by us using the plant). That just makes the event unpredictable and annoying. The mechanic as-is marginalizes, discourages and outright punishes the act of socializing with new people for this event.
- Have Clockwork Hearts 30-stack smackdown hit you for 75% of your health. Or add some form of an acquirable resistance to that attack (maybe potions?). These are players who have never played together before, expecting them to do it all perfectly is completely unreasonable.

Overall I like the dungeon – you just need to make it more forgiving for the PUGs this fortnight. At some point I would like to do and organised run, but that has a scheduling problem and is best left to after the LS fortnight.

tenniswood.8534:

For the Sparki and Slick fight you have some one pick up the ooze attraction buff from the flower (yes you can do this, it doesn’t have to be random) and kite it.

We tried this. It didn’t work – others still got the pheremone and the ooze ignored the player who used the plant. Maybe it’s a bug.

Ghisteslohm.7803:

They should just disappear when the bossfights starts.
Teleportation surprised me more than once :/

*killed – I don’t know how many times. The had a knack for being buggy when I was dodging a cog tel.

I only got this brave man soloing the boss from about 12% HP – but he did do it all the way from about 25%. Mad props. He came close (0.x%) but no cake.

We had been in the dungeon for ~7 hours at this point (figuring it all out the hard way – 5 of those hours were probably spent at Slick and Sparki). A PUG (Real Menace) started along with me and my guildie and was also one of the patient ones. Overall the dungeon gave me a lot of faith in the GW2 community and was a great experience. Still have to finish it as we all had commitments tomorrow, er, today. Which means there is a problem here ANet.

The corpse video: http://youtu.be/1u8raTKPoL4

Slick and Sparki

Slick moves away from damage.

Strategy that came close: Have a warrior with a PPT+V/balanced greatsword warrior build face tank Slick into a wall, during pheremone abandon the fight to clean. The rest of the group should match the damage on Sparki, moving away from him to remove puddles as required. Keep Sparki away from Slick.

Better strategy: Have the entire team push Slick into the wall and simply DPS him to hell. Bring lots of condition removal for the fight with Sparki. Balanced builds should be able to complete the fight at melee range to Sparki with enough condition removal. Keep Sparki away from Slick.

Most of all: VOIP helps here. This bit is a hindrance to PUGs.

Clockwork Heart

Likely going to be straightforward once everyone becomes familiar with the tels. The most important thing here, I would say, is survival. You don’t need to be the quickest or most efficient party in EU/NA – continuous resets caused by rushing will take more time than just taking it easy in the first place. You have 30s or so after he gets his 30 stacks of the shield to start reducing it (before he smacks you all to the ground), plenty of time to position him perfectly. If you keep dying use your opportunity while you sit on the ground to learn his tels as your teammates fight him – failure is part of success.

http://youtu.be/twmeBmT96XQ

The ooze stopped moving and repeatedly ‘attacked’ the same spot. Needless to say we wiped. I don’t know how to repro it, but that’s a video of it looping (as much as I could grab given that I had to quickly open Fraps).

Chopchop.5629:

Will we, the people of lions arch ever be able to have an alliance with a dragon, Mabey as a supreme gatekeeper or something, or are they instinctively definetly set to kill everything?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Glint

It could happen again. I’m not sure about elder dragons though: it’s highly unlikely. They could possibly be played against eachother when more than one comes into play at the same time but I am pretty certain that they wouldn’t agree to an alliance (or be coaxed into one).

I’m more interested in his mesmer build… It looked awesome for PvE (long since gave up using my mes in WvW).

GW2 is only demanding in WvW or during mega-boss events. I can run it with all bells and whistles at 40-60FPS with:

- i5 2600k
- GeForce GTX 660Ti
- 16GB RAM (Not used for gaming, you only really need ~4GB)
- 7200 RPM HDDs

That was an upper-middle rig about 1 year ago – runs the game perfectly.

Lucky.9421:

I am not a fan of this bi-weekly randomness. Let’s have an actual story arc.

If you read into the LS, and I mean really read into it, there is a method to the madness.

Meriem.3504:

Mad King holds a torch burning event, the thing you burn is Scarlet tied to a pole, no need for hay or wood even! Just light the torch and watch her scream. The more she screams the more the Mad King laughs!

Made my day.

Sindex.9520:

Explaining her relationship with the her allies. Especially how she can convince some radical xenophobic racial factions to band together for her personal goals.

I really like this idea. It would put her into the same realm of Hitler: someone who could have done a great deal of good if they had used their talents for the good of mankind.

Invictus.1503:

I really hope English is not your first language as your grammar is atrocious. If it is a second language though, completely understandable.

• though; completely understandable.

Conversational/txt English is perfect for forums like these. That argument is completely off-topic. Moving back on to the topic.

I personally despise the blog content. Some players may be unaware of the blog, or may not be bothered to read it, and would therefore miss out on some important lore content. This is especially detrimental to enticing players into enjoying the lore.

I appreciate the idea of proving the lore on two different mediums as an interesting story-telling mechanic – the problem is that it just really doesn’t work in practice. I had an earful from a guildie earlier today about this exact issue (he happens to be a complete lore nut).

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Just why some mad necromancer can’t rise some skeletons? Are they can’t hold the form without some flesh?

While it’s been pointed out that one necro does raise skeletons – it might be a wasteful exercise. You could argue (in the realm of necros being like puppet masters for corpses) that you would expend less magical energy to raise dead that have flesh. Skeletons would require the necromancer to “hold” the original form (possibly to create fear within the enemy). Therefore the argument around the rarity of skeletons could be because only extremely powerful/wasteful/egotistical necromancers would bother raising them.

Again, lore projection – which is what I enjoy.

Completely plausible and a worthwhile story arc.

Only problem is, how do you keep the current Southsun Cove chronologically stable?

Another fall-out between the consortium and the refugees? The problem with that is that the community would unleash hell about more Southsun Cove content (unless it, once again, has silly amounts of champions).

Gabby.3205:

If that’s so, then we can kill her and it will still make sense.

I might have worded poorly, but that was the idea behind that theory. It’s also in the realm of a cop-out though.

The one I forgot was “players being idiots and not doing content in the right order” (like I originally did). Logically it doesn’t matter when you do the dungeon because you should know where it falls in the story – but the developer inclined the opposite (it should always be relevant).

Elder dragons are neither good nor evil. They are merely a balancing force of nature – much in the same way cyclones/hurricanes are. We can distinctly see these things (cyclones) in our world even though, in actuality, they do no exist as physical entities. The same could be said of the elder dragons – the only difference is magic is involved, just like a cyclone is the manifestation of the force of air; dragons are the manifestation of the force of magic.

In as much as a cyclone is happy to wreck your house and family, a dragon is happy to wreck your house and family.

Edit: Strangely enough both arise out of a low-pressure cell of their respective elements. This is a fact for cyclones. Logically EDs being “absorbers of magic” who awaken “when there is too much magic” are at the low-end of the pressure gradient. Food for thought.

Achievement get: started a thread about SB.

One of the questions during the TA dev livestream was “would we get to see where SB is?” The dev replied with something along the lines of “the path will always make sense no matter when you run it.”

The new path is also permanent content. This means that SB can’t fall to our swords at a later time unless there is some logical explanation for her presence:

By all means

We cannot kill her. The will be dealt with in the books between GW2 and GW3. It doesn’t hurt to make pointless theories about other possible outcomes though…

Thaumanova Reactor

At the moment we are only aware of spatial displacements caused by the reactor, we have no direct evidence for time displacements (at the same time no way to logically deduce that small time displacements are not in play). At least as far as I am aware.

Somehow TA could be tied up in a time-loop by the Thaumanova reactor, possibly by an undiscovered crystal deposit below it caused by the “pairing effect” (was it?). SB would be a mere phantom lost in time if we were to eventually kill her.

Merely a Hologram

It doesn’t matter if we kill her. She is only a hologram in the dungeon (pending people completing the dungeon confirming that theory). Her minions are unaware of her demise, her presence continues in that place forever as nothing more than an illusion and the steam machines, aetherblade and molten alliance are locked in a pointless battle for a very long time.

Mists

Drop an Asura gate into the dungeon and make it part of the mists. An outright cop out in my opinion.

Why is She Doing All of This?

At the end of the day, “being driven mad by the eternal alchemy” simply doesn’t result in her actions – at least from my perspective. Besides what drove her mad, is there some other net result of seeing the eternal alchemy? Why do we always see illusions of her? ANet really haven’t provided us with a motive (I’m not saying it’s weak story-telling, I am saying that “I am nuts” is possibly purposefully not providing a motive).

She is manic. I could quite easily imagine being trapped in the eternal alchemy would affect me in the same way as her, that giggling arising from pure frustration and boredom. So my evidence for this is psychological, not logical. Maybe she can only interact with our reality in a “illusionary manner” (except her illusions are incredibly powerful, as we have seen). Is she trying to get back (likely not a good thing)? The molten alliance and LA fiasco being desperate attempts to alter anything that is real (that us players ultimately foiled). The steam portals being failed attempts to create a portal for whatever part of her is trapped there. Is this why she wants to “play with us”?

What happens if she gets close to getting back? Do we embark on a mission to the level of the bloodstone? Something that changes Tyria and the nature of magic? For example, altering the way that the eternal alchemy reacts with Tyrian reality to ensure she stays trapped there forever.

It’s just me spouting out random thoughts and projections from the current storyline – I would love to hear your guys’ thoughts.

It may not be a retcon, it might just become historical. I have my own convoluted theory on how LS is allowed to do this without messing up chronology (which makes sense to me, it really does, but apparently not you guys xD). Some clarification would be nice.

Manuhell.2759:

As an open world eventi, anyone can do anything as long as it isn’t against the rules.
And unfortunately, not collaborating and working against the completition isn’t against the rules.

http://ncsoft.com/uk/legal/user-agreements/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct.php

Notwithstanding actively sabotaging the event, the OP indicated that abusive comments were used.

This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

In terms of the active sabotaging:

While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game.

This is open to interpretation in situations like this where both rights are being violated, one that has been seen on the past on these forums is “majority rules” (for example how the ram building trolls were dealt with in WvW). In addition Tequatl is “designed to be defeated,” all the other achievements, while possibly hindering a successful attempt, do not outright require failure (and is likely why this achievement is hidden).

I’m getting tired of “my rights are as important as yours.” The same argument applies to psychopaths – they do the right do what they want – however, we throw them into prison because they are a hindrance/threat to the general populace (a.k.a. the majority).

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division

Your post is very well worded, sincere, rational and deserves a response.

Nightwander.9638:

And succeed we did! The laser event at least….

And because we succeeded, we the commanders suddenly get called kittens, pathetic and more in mapchat, because, lo and behold, we are organizing the fight and trying to win…..

I’m pretty sure that this type of behavior is reportable – on both counts, both griefing and inflammatory chat. We don’t have any feedback from the game involving what happens to our reports, but it doesn’t hurt to file them.

Nightwander.9638:

Now a question to the community: Are we really like that? Do we really call eachother names, saboteur peoples efforts to beat the games content and ruin the otherwise great atmosfeare in the game for a hidden achievement, that doesn´t even give achievement points?

Unfortunately from what I hear: yes. There is a path on CoF (I think) that I have heard of many players deliberately throwing certain events in order to farm the mobs that spawn.

Nightwander.9638:

I have my Sunbringer title. […] We find the battle fun, and we want to help others to get their achievements and feel the exitement and glory it is to beat Tequatl! We stay so others have a chance! […] What needs to be said in the end though: I realise that most people around me wants to help us beat Teq and do whatever they can, and I haven´t forgotten you!

You are few and far between. Most players desert the fight after getting the title.

Nightwander.9638:

Thank you for reading.

For once, it was a pleasure.

What some of us have been doing in AG is finding empty overflows. That way we can at least control the type of elements that get involved in the fight. It’s sad that we have to do that because of a few achievements designed to fail the event (it’s not only one, e.g. Tail Flail). I feel sorry for the people who are not in our “official” community and who don’t get a chance to be part of the organised overflows.

In the end it would be nice to see the “dishonorably discharged” debuf be used a bit more, specifically one where you let your server down. Evidently ANet seems happy to name-and-shame PvPers in this way, it might make sense as a punishment system for behavior such as this.

Oh, one of these threads.

The same logic applies to legendaries – I wonder what people would say if you said “no legendaries in WvW”.

The current zerg meta smooths out/diminishes any benefit you get from having ascended gear. If the entire group has ascended gear then they would have an advantage – but as you pointed out this isn’t problem because ascended gear isn’t a reality for most WvW players. That is, if you exclude the ascended merchant in WvW.

dub v dub
wuvwuv

Notwithstanding that some of the NPCs in PvE do, indeed, call it “the Mists War”. The level of irrational rage that changing the name of WvW would cause would be legendary.

Lucky.9421:

I don’t get it.

Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek

We need an undead donkey mini to go with our Tequatl mini.

Mortifer.3018:

As mentioned in my other thread and to lend credibility, here’s a screen of the latest and arguably one of the fastest Tequatl kills, organized by TSS:

Thank you! I was hoping for a screenie!

Tomorrow we should see if we can get him to the first 25% in 9:30 (which TC managed, and then subsequently failed).

Their pixels would get wet and would start dripping off the screen.

Yes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1mp5on/overflow_just_killed_teq_d/

Overflows have started succeeding. Don’t give up!