Guild Wars 2

I don’t know at what point in the cycle they decided to name the thief specialization daredevil, but it would be extremely unimaginative at best to straight up copy a name from another intellectual property, and that doesn’t sit well with me at all. Of course, it’s entirely possible that ANet came up with the thief specialization’s name before the Netflix show aired and gained popularity, but then the timing is just unfortunate in making them look suspicious.

Daredevil is obviously a legitimate word in the English language, and it’s not like it legally can’t be used in other contexts, but the fact that it’s a word that rarely appears in everyday usage outside of references to the currently popular Netflix show makes the copying seem intentional. I mean, as stupid as it sounds, imagine if they called the engineer elite specialization the “iron man” spec and made the announcement right after Avengers 2 came out. That’s how this feels to me. Granted, if they did that and threw in a flying iron man suit for engineers to replace gliders, I might be able to get on board with that idea.

But even if this was not just a clumsy attempt at piggybacking off of the show’s success, I also have bad memories of the Affleck movie, so I’m not a big fan of the name in any event.

The floating shoulders are also a problem on norn. The design looks great, but floating armor is unfortunately distracting. Given that this has been a problem on norn armor since release, though, I doubt that particular item will ever get changed.

I’m on my third round of the LS to get the three shoulder skins. The first time I found reading through the lore fairly interesting, although it took a long time to get through it all. The second time I skipped anything that could be skipped and got through it pretty mindlessly while watching streams. However, the third run on my mesmer in exotic assassin’s (compared to my first two runs in full ascended zerker on my guardian and ranger) felt pretty excruciatingly slow on the mid boss because I couldn’t use phantasms. I didn’t feel like things took too long when I was in ascended and had a lot of personal DPS at my disposal, but it felt like my mesmer just tickled the boss and the mechanics had gotten stale.

It’s just another example of time gating (make the fragile buff/crystal spawn faster, darn it) for fear of alienating players with any sort of skill check. High HP boss fights are usually only fun and exciting if the mechanics are interesting, and these are decidedly not. This alone kills any replayability for me, and the fact that they continue to design content that makes certain class mechanics worthless isn’t a good sign either. I continue to view GW2 as “MMO lite” so I don’t really mind the lack of any skill requirement, but the decision to replace it with intentional tedium of any length is unfortunate. This would not be as big or noticeable a problem if the LS was meant to be played once and only once, but meting out the skin rewards one by one means that many people will, like me, go through it multiple times.

So I would agree partially with both sides here; it was interesting for one playthrough (at least for me) due to the new lore and story, but any more than that is really not too enjoyable because the actual gameplay is rather uninteresting after you’ve done it the first time. I just wish the shoulder items didn’t cost so many badges or you could unlock all the skins after finishing the episode once.

Morsus.5106:

spikyblackhair.4951:

Yup, Anet’s RNG at it’s finest. After harvesting ~30 nodes without a drop,

I got one on my second tree, and haven’t see one since. I’m just gonna get it as more players give up and sell theirs.

Indeed; especially for those of us with some gold earned from investments, it just doesn’t make sense to slave away during our leisure time doing the gw2 equivalent of cotton picking, as crude as that sounds. Anyhow, even if one wants foxfires immediately, it’s infinitely more productive and entertaining to just do a 6 minute CoF run and buy some off the tp, so to anyone reading this thread, I’d recommend you go that route.

Yup, Anet’s RNG at it’s finest. After harvesting ~30 nodes without a foxfire drop, I’ve decided not to waste any more of my life running up to virtual trees and pressing interact; I have plenty of other more entertaining and/or productive things to do with my life, tyvm. I’ll let others do the dirty work and just buy them off the tp when the price drops in the future.

Not that I’m complaining, because it’s not a very important item… but with this being basically the most tangible reward (besides the equally RNG kites) from this entry to the LS, I think I’d rather work through my massive backlog of steam/ps3 games during my leisure time. Hopefully others will have enough fun clicking tree slot machines that the price will have plummeted by the time I come back to the game.

The obvious solution to make everybody happy is to keep the dialogue, but allow players to skip it if they don’t want to wait.

Manasa Devi.7958:

SnubdubLuskon.1795:

Except you don’t play your character from birth to now. You jump into a life that has already been lived for many years, has passed through any book or combat teachings, and upon starting is already more than capable of taking on dangerous enemies.

There’s a rather big difference between skipping trivial parts of your character’s life and skipping the revelation of the name and nature of a newly arisen major antagonist with apocalyptic powers who even happens to be a major part of the current story-arc.

This is like Darth Vader never telling Luke he’s his father, but everyone knowing that to be true anyway, without any rhyme or reason, from a certain point onward in the story. “Yeah, well, someone obviously found out off-camera and told everyone. They can’t show everything, sheesh!” That would’ve gone down well I bet.

Basically this. As if Luke had just randomly blurted out during his first meeting with Vader “Uncle Owen was more of a father than you’ll ever be!”

I don’t use this expression often, but everybody would be like “…wat?”

Either the OP misspoke and meant no other MMO, or they haven’t played many good games, lol.

It’s possible that the character has read about Mordremoth, but the fact remains that it comes out of nowhere, leaving us to grasp at straws for an explanation. You have to think about what Tyria is like; sure there are a good number of books and they aren’t exactly rare, but they aren’t commonplace like the world we live in, either. There aren’t any large publishing houses or even any printing presses that I’ve seen, and I would be surprised if the average non-asuran Tyrian owned even a single book.

It’s easy to see how a player who is asuran and joined the Priory might be knowledgeable about the elder dragons, but the rest? Even if we can assume the player has read up about the dragons due to the Zhaitan incident, when you introduce a new topic into a conversation, it’s usually prefaced by some kind of segue. “I remember reading about Mordremoth” is all it would have taken, really.

So yes, it can be explained by us after the fact, but in terms of storytelling, it just could have been done better. Having one’s character know things that the player doesn’t know (shouldn’t be required to read the wiki) can sometimes feel wrong if it’s not introduced well, and this is one of those times.

I still think the best plot twist would be if they made this heir business a bit of a red herring and Trahearne ends up taking one for the team. Then with his dying breath, he bestows the task of protecting the Pale Tree to his trusty number 2, the player, who must now take center stage for true (and not just with this “hey ‘boss,’ say your next line so we can give you your next mission”).

I think Jennah is shaping up to be the target, but I wish it was Trahearne. It’s a possible missed opportunity if he doesn’t die, really. If you’ve ever been in or seen a situation where a lot of people go zerg mentality and enjoy ragging on one particular individual, then that person dies (I have actually seen this happen), well, it’s a scene of shame and regret that can’t easily be duplicated under other circumstances.

I myself have only experienced that sadness firsthand through Ace Combat (Chopper, nuuuuuu), but it makes for great storytelling, even if it’s not that rare of a trope.

Of course, some people will still say good riddance, but despite his woodenness, Trahearne as a character is a bro and probably doesn’t deserve as much flak as he gets.

…I’ve never seen somebody so pleased to have their hardware show signs of breaking.

Well, by the way it’s phrased, it’s much less so argument than opinion, and one does not have to substantiate opinion. What you have said in return is similarly mostly opinion (except for the statement about speaking for the majority, which is similarly unsubstantiated).

I think it’s usually a mistake to try to argue against opinion on the internet; nothing good ever comes out of it.

Playing as TIM would be pretty awesome… convincing yourself that you’re working for the greater good while actually swaying the leaders to play into Mordremoth’s hands. If the writers could pull it off subtly and successfully pull off a twist at the end where you finally realize you’re indoctrinated, I would take back everything I’ve said about linear stories being a bad idea in an MMO. Still highly doubt it will happen, but one can dream.

Oh ok, I hear it now, thanks. My computer fans are always turned to full blast when my gfx card is under load, so I didn’t catch the growl the first time, and the clip I was watching on youtube before ended before the growl.

Captain Unusual.9163:

I just miss the early Charr stories, where I was addressed as Legionnaire. It seemed most fitting. All the other titles felt awkward and forced (Savant, Slayer, they all felt really awkward.) But the military titles felt like they fit well. I’m hoping we get back to active duty with the Pact soon, so I can have my proper rank and title back.

I feel the same way; most of the personal story subplots flew by too quickly for your titles to feel genuine, but with Charr society set up the way it is, being addressed by rank felt natural. I actually enjoyed the starting Charr experience the most out of all the races because of this. It’s just too bad that most armor sets look terrible on them and their starting city is pretty much a junkyard.

Eh, I was pretty sure she was going to be offed as soon as she reappeared in the last episode and Marjory said she wanted to spend more time together, so her death didn’t even register a shrug from me. It did happen earlier than expected, but the overall effect was more of a “lol, so they didn’t even bother to try to get us to care” rather than real surprise.

Do want that sword skin, though.

I assumed that each orb represented a dragon, but when my character flat out said “I saw a dragon,” I was like… huh????

Watched it on youtube again and still don’t see it… maybe I’m just blind?

I actually hope the writers make our characters go insane. There’s a lot of potential for interesting storytelling there, and if they’re going to take characters out of the players’ hands and write our personalities for us as they have done so far, they might as well go all the way with it.

Our characters probably got 99% of their lore knowledge from the wiki, just like us…

chemiclord.3978:

I can’t say I’ve ever went through a story in an MMO that made me go “Wow.”

And… I still haven’t. I can’t say I’m “blown away” or “amazed” or all that particularly immersed.

But ya know what… I’m also not rolling my eyes and reluctantly pushing through the story to play more of the game. It’s doing the job decently of keeping me logged in. I’m interested to hear more, but not to the point that I’m eagerly waiting at my computer for the update.

And ya know what else? It IS getting better. It IS getting more engaging (there were many points in Living Story Season 1 that I really didn’t give one tenth of one kitten about). And that’s okay. And I hope it continues.

This is pretty much how I feel. I have to admit that seeing people comment about how they LURRRRVVE XOXOXOXO the living story has left me kind of baffled… but I do think it’s an improvement over the last season. And I suppose if there are people who give even Transformers a 10/10 on review sites, there’s a perfect audience for everything.

I totally agree that it feels cheesy. Seems pretty much like the direct result of previous complaints on the forums that some people didn’t feel like they were the center of attention in the story.

But in general, as I have said a few times before on the forums, I don’t think these stories work too well in an MMO setting. I would rather write my own story through my choices, so to speak, than have all new content be a single linear quest chain where everybody is called a special snowflake even though it is abundantly clear that it isn’t the case in MMOs. I’m sure some people will be pleased by the sudden flattery (even if it comes out of nowhere and is still more of a nominal thing than fact), but it just makes me cringe. Like really… do we have to be coddled this much? It feels so out of place that it’s just puzzlingly sycophantic on the part of the NPCs and patronizing on the part of anet, if you ask me.

But, as other people have pointed out, it is easier for the writers if they can call us something, so meh. I’ll just try my best to ignore it and let the people who are willing/able/eager to accept it have their day in the sun.

This might actually entice me to play my ranger.

I just assumed the point was to add one more stat combination option to the pool of existing ones.

The OP’s scenario actually sounds fun in a masochistic sort of way, though.

I’m not sure whether the fact is greater commentary upon our lack of true hatred toward enemies in a game or the yearning for greater customization options in fashion wars 2. It’s probably equal parts both.

From an RP perspective it doesn’t make sense to wear the exact uniforms of the enemy, but from a player’s perspective, I do love my aetherblade pants since there are practically no other good skirtless options available.

Dondarrion.2748:

And in the next post you went up against a guy offering some piece of life advice about getting an attitude, and that was different from your opening line against me how exactly?!

Apologies if that’s how you took that line; I don’t expect anybody to read through pages upon pages before entering a discussion on the internet, so I didn’t mean it to come off as condescending. After all, who has the time for that? However, I should have phrased it better, because ambiguity on the internet is a dangerous thing, and that is my fault.

I merely meant to express the assumption that you were new to the LS forums, an assumption that I made because there have been some discussion in the forums since the LS2 release where people have voiced disappointment about the features you mentioned in your first post. My intention was to paraphrase some of those threads.

And on a more general note, I will say that I am certainly as vulnerable as the next person to becoming more cynical as a forum conversation goes on due to some of the crazy things that go on here, but I try my best not to let that chagrin blossom into outright hostility or lose sight of my own rationality. My post regarding the other gentleman/lady was expressed with more honesty of feeling than I would like, but I am regrettably still far from immune to troll bait, and let’s just say my cheek will often not be turned the full 180 degrees when responding to the most blatant of internet provocateurs. It’s a work in progress, and I readily admit that I have far to go yet.

Very well, agree to disagree. I won’t try to argue the logic of it with you, because I don’t think either of us is likely to make any headway.

But I will just make one final remark, not directed to anybody in particular, that I am not one of those who goes to the WvW forums and calls PvE completionists carebears simply because I enjoy WvW, and I find it extremely regrettable that those types of people exist both here and there.

Filaha.1678:

People who just don’t like jumping: Also don’t respond. I don’t like PVP, but was forced to WvW to get my map completion. I don’t like dungeons, but am forced to to get dungeon skins. I don’t like farming, but need to if I want to make Ascended gear. Before you try to get sympathy because you don’t want to jump, you should go fight for WvW to be removed from map completion, which should be an entirely PVE aspect of the game.

In essence, you’re implying here that people who don’t like a specific aspect of the game have no right to speak up about it unless they champion every single other person’s cause as well. Either that, or you believe that because the devs didn’t listen to people’s complaints about WvW, we should not voice any other complaints about the game… either way, I hope this helps you see that it is not the best line of reasoning. And if it doesn’t, then we just have to agree to disagree, because I believe that everybody should have the right to voice their opinions as long as it’s done in a civil manner.

It’s funny that you chose that particular jump as an example, Xenon. On just the second time when I made that jump using the lightning tether, it inexplicably stopped traveling halfway across the gap and dropped me to my death. So perhaps that will help you see why I find gw2 platforming to be needlessly annoying. Simple as point and click? Ideally. But the implementation is poor.

But I stand corrected with regard to the OP of this thread, he/she did have a bad attitude. Also, it’s somewhat unfortunate that your pro-jumping thread got merged into an anti-jumping one.

To Equilibriator:

Some people will come to the forums and issue ultimatums or make demands; there are always unreasonable people like that. I think we can agree that those people are ridiculous. Others of us, however, are just here to voice our opinions in a place where Anet is more likely to see them. Those of you who enjoy JPs are completely welcome to voice your opinions as well, and in the end, Anet will choose to do whatever they decide is most commercially expedient for them. The only problem comes when one side actively tries to silence the other through shouting them down rather than reasoned debate, which I think we can all agree is not the way things should be done in a civil society.

I welcome the opinions of anybody who enjoys JPs; what I do not welcome is people who use ad hominem attacks and offhand dismissals in an effort to disgust the opposition to the point where they don’t bother coming to the forums anymore, thereby creating a “safe” community where everybody thinks alike and there’s no pressure for improvement or change in any area.

As to the restaurant metaphor, I am inclined to agree with Arnaas in my vision of what I think a fantasy MMO should be, but I think at the end of the day we can all agree that it’s really Anet’s show, and whether they want the restaurant to be vegetarian or a steak joint is up to them and how they think they can make the most money. Whatever they decide, some customers are going to be happy, while others aren’t. Rather than just silently vanishing into the night, however, I think all old regulars of this restaurant have the right to voice their pleasure or displeasure with the management in the hopes of swaying things their way.

To Xenon:

I won’t speak for everybody in this thread, but I didn’t find the jumping very hard at all, because I agree that it was pretty easy. Yet, neither did I enjoy having to do it. And what I am personally concerned about is not so much the current level of jumping as that this jumping trend will increase in the future, as past releases have suggested that at least some people at Anet love it to death. If jumping worked perfectly with 0 latency when you hit the spacebar, if this was being played on a platform where system specs were the same and lag/frame rates were a non-issue for everybody, and if lightning tethers didn’t drop you halfway across a gap at random times, I would say fine, I’m okay with playing a jumping MMO. However, I just don’t think it’s implemented well enough to be continually leaned upon throughout the course of the LS, and for the sake of future releases since Anet needs to hear things months in advance, I am voicing my concerns now. If it works great for you and you don’t mind it or even love it, that’s great. Please tell Anet.

What I really find disgusting, however, is that there seems to be a disproportionate amount of pro-jumping advocates who choose to forward their cause by insulting and attempting to drive away the anti-jumping camp, while I don’t as see much of that the other way around. Perhaps it’s just confirmation bias, but I can’t recall seeing an anti-jumping person insult someone who loves the mechanic simply for that fact alone, and I find that kind of behavior extremely distasteful. Insulting someone for not enjoying platforming makes about as much sense as claiming that if you didn’t like L4D it must be because you’re afraid of zombies or that if you disliked CoD: Ghosts you’re an alien sympathizer.

I would have had no objections at all to playing second fiddle to Trahearne if his voice acting hadn’t been so wooden (pun not intended, but perhaps apt nonetheless). I can only surmise that the VA decided the Sylvari should be placid at all times, but it really deadens some of the high points of the story for me.

ugdup.2371:

You guys are the minority.
Most people loved this new content.

If you don’t, there’s nothing stopping you from switching to another game.

Or you could take some time and actually learn how to jump properly.
It’s actually not hard. At all.

Love this new map. I hope we get alot more like this.

This probably won’t help, but just as a piece of life advice, getting an attitude just because people disagree with you leads to stagnation, not improvement.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

You can tell that some people have never had any difficulty jumping, and just cannot comprehend our point of view. Additionally, some of them are unwilling to accept another point of view. And some of them just come here to be argumentative. These are people we cannot reach, or convince to consider our point of view. They are not receptive, and we should not waste our time(and thread space) responding to them.
We need to respectfully, make our issues known in a clear, concise manner, for the people who are willing to consider another point of view.(hopefully the Anet dev staff) Anything else is a waste of time and effort, and is just cluttering up the thread.

+1… there are people who are for some reason unable to envision any reality that they have not experienced personally. “I’ve never had any problems with jumping, so you’re all noobs using lag as an excuse.” “My graphics card works fine with this particular game, so it must be only you.” “I got a precursor on my tenth try, so the mystic forge works great.” I shudder to think of how they apply this kind of ill-founded “logic” in real world situations. Convincing them is almost always more trouble than it’s worth; fortunately the magic of forums means we don’t have to interact with them at all.

And more to the point of the thread, it’s nice to see that others share my doubts about jumping in gw2. As I’ve stated many times in other places, I just hope the devs eventually come around to recognizing that online 3D platforming with MMO controls and camera schemes presents challenges that make it significantly less enjoyable to many people than the offline 2D games of our youth or Assassin’s Creeds and Uncharteds of today.

I have not had a lot of trouble with the platforming in this release personally, and I’ve completed every JP in the game including the clock tower because I’m an achievement kitten, but it’s just not enjoyable, and it’s not what I want out of an MMO. I respect that some people like it, so I don’t want to see it gone entirely, but I definitely don’t agree with it being tied to living story progression, as the LS will be the core of the game moving forward.

Dondarrion.2748:

seriously, why is everybody always after rewards? There’s a new story, map, content, try playing some of it for the fun of it and listening to dialogues and exploring stuff.

You don’t seem to have read through much of the forum, so I’ll sum it up quickly. To the points you mentioned, the new map is small enough to explore thoroughly in less than an hour, the dialogues are randomly cycled instead of activated so you are forced to stand in the same spot doing nothing for an extended period of time to hear it all, and many people are not too thrilled with the story so far. Lack of meaningful rewards and the jumping gripes are only two pieces of the puzzle. It’s great that this bit of content puts you over the moon, but I and some others just don’t see why.

ThiBash.5634:

I’d be perfectly happy with no spoken text in the entire game at all.

If it allowed for deeper and better polished quests, I would be too. Wait, Anet hates that word. I meant events… but there’s the problem, isn’kitten Anet hates traditional quests that require reading, so they have chosen to go mostly with voice acting. And that’s great in one sense, but it’s also extremely limiting in how much content they can actually produce, as well as how well they can tweak content to be better after it’s first implemented.

As for the OP, I agree, it’d be great if the home instances were more than collections of mining nodes. It’s just another feature in gw2 that has the potential to be great, but has sadly been ignored thus far.

Wanderer.3248:

Alex.9567:

movement on the vertical axis is an obvious next step for mmo’s as a genre, .

MMOs should take a look at games like Uncharted or Assassins Creed. Forget this bouncing along like a maniac on a pogo stick, and put in some actual climbing.

My feelings exactly. I’m not a fan of platforming in general, as I feel like it’s more tedium than rewarding challenge, but if they’re going to force us to do it to experience the new content, I wish they’d do it well. The aspects were one original attempt at implementing a better system, but having somewhat “sticky” walls and climbing mechanics, or even ladders, would make the platforming far less aggravating in a medium that is heavily susceptible to latency and lag issues.

I liked 2D platforming back during my childhood as much as anet, but that was because there was no needless frustration from lag, suboptimal camera angles, etc.

It wasn’t the most boring release I’ve ever seen, but neither do I think it was amazing. The zone was too small to make me excited about exploration, there is little challenging tactical content (Teq reboot patch was still my favorite in this game), and a whole lot of gw2-style grind, but virtually no chance for anything amazing, as usual.

But really, these are gripes I have with the LS and GW2 design choices as a whole, most of which run counter to my personal preferences. I prefer expansions over LS, I prefer the trinity (yes, the trinity) over zerging, and I prefer difficult raid content with loot tables where at least someone in your raid is basically guaranteed to go home happy, rather than everybody having the same .000001% chance at something remarkable and all leaving empty-handed as a result. Consequently, I don’t log in for much longer than it takes to do the daily anymore. The greatest redeeming quality about gw2 is that I see a lot of potential in the lore and story, so I’m keeping one foot in the door, but I’m not holding my breath.

Why? Because I don’t think MMOs naturally lend themselves that well to good scripted storytelling, although I never played SWTOR. All the LS does is makes me feel is that my character has been taken out of my own hands, which would be fine in a single player game where the characters are written for you and sometimes written very well, but in an MMO it doesn’t sit well with me. There aren’t even any meaningful or humorous dialogue choices such as those in most Bioware games, and neither is there a robust faction system to make you feel that the world distinguishes you in any way from the other players (the orders and original charisma/dignity/ferocity systems had potential for this, but one has virtually no impact on your experience and the other has already been dropped from the game). When I have to choose a dialogue option (the only one available) that is written completely differently than how I would like my character to express itself, that takes me more out of the experience rather than immerses me. TBH, and I know some people will probably disagree with me, I would much rather have the PC be a silent protagonist or have to actually type out sentences containing key words/phrases (EQ style) than just be forced to click a prepackaged, prewritten sentence to advance the story.

The lines where the PC is made out to be the best at everything such as explaining things to super-detective Marjory or Marjory calling the PC “boss” are especially eye-roll inducing. Yes, it’s nice to feel like the hero of a story, and many people have complained about this in terms of the personal story and LS1, but IMO it should be something that is built slowly and earned through trials and adventuring instead of suddenly stuck into the dialogue in a manner that makes the NPCs around you suddenly seem uncharacteristically ingratiating. Not once during LS 1 did I feel like I was leading the group or being built into a leader, and to suddenly be in charge of DEv2 is jarring and feels entirely contrived and artificial.

Basically, all the reasons I typically play MMOs aren’t present here; there’s little sense of exploration, little reward, and little challenge. So here’s wishing the writers the best of luck in proving my expectations wrong and coming up with something great with the story, because that’s the biggest draw of the game for me at this point.

Voted meh as well, but that’s not to say that I didn’t see any improvements. The overall LS system has moved a huge step forward with the permanent replayability/journal feature, and I also like the fact that they’ve continued to expand the world with the introduction of another zone. The Zephyrite storyline has reasonable potential, although I’m keeping my expectations low.

However, that said, I ultimately found certain aspects of the plot to be somewhat banal. At this point, any calamity that occurs in Tyria has almost no chance of eliciting excitement from me because of the frequency with which they occurred during season one. The Zephyrite crash, therefore, feels just like business as usual; “here we go, another disaster site to clean up.” The characters don’t seem to be growing much beyond Taimi getting a little crazier(?) for Scarlet’s legacy and Marjory’s sister becoming more central of a figure, both of which seem more like plot devices than character development. It’s not that the writing is bad, but with the LS format I feel as if they have their hands tied in some areas by needing to fulfill certain requirements for gameplay purposes. It must be difficult, and it may speed up from here, but the story just hasn’t gripped me and left me wanting more yet.

In terms of gameplay, again, not much has changed. More platforming (if I wanted more of it I’d play something like Assassin’s Creed where the implementation isn’t as clunky due to MMO controls and lag), some decently implemented achievements, but also some random collection quests/runarounds that are much more tedious than challenging, and still some buggy implementation with achievement completion.

TL;DR
The good: permanent content system, a new zone, llamas, possibilities inherent in gw2 lore means story could potentially be great
The bad: imo the writing has to be truly amazing (or they need a lot more resources) to squeeze great storytelling into the LS format and gameplay could benefit from an end to this strange love affair with platforming; gw2 doesn’t do guitar hero nearly well enough for it to be a core mechanic, and the same feels like it should be true for platforming. Keep it a side diversion please, and leave mandatory platforming to games designed around it.

I have encountered a related issue; I completed the daily while doing the Halloween Inquisition (was at 4/5 and jumped to 6/5 with daily activity completer and the inquisition one) and didn’t get a chest.

Update: Well, I afk timed out of inquisition while making this post, and when I logged back into LA, I had my daily chest there. Go figure ^^

I’ve also completed the dungeon about 8-9 times now without getting this achievement, and am fairly certain that something is bugged here. I’m usually kiting the ooze while dropping reflects though, so I wonder if it would be easier taking on one of the simpler roles and just focusing on kiting/killing eles.

If there is a bugged spot somewhere around the beginning, for example, then an ooze kiter having to constantly run back to that area to pick up fresh oozes would almost certainly step on it, while people who just run once to the end might not.

My guess is that it’s most likely just another case of graphics not quite matching the actual AOE similar to Teq’s tidal wave, the foreman’s axe circles, etc.

Edit/Update: Just got the achievement by going left side and not kiting the ooze ^^

Trogdor, the reason people got upset was largely not the fact that the glitch occurred, but rather because all it would have taken was a very simple acknowledgement from ANet to spare hundreds of people wasting their evening guessing at what was going on with the timer.

The first major MMOs fifteen years ago had 24/7 support staff to address this kind of thing, so I hope you will agree that it is not entirely unreasonable to expect ANet to have somebody on hand in case of instances like this. The message could have been transmitted through several channels: a twitter post (albeit this is unlikely because of bad publicity), an in-game rep checking it out, or a forum rep saying something like earlier today.

I hope nobody is blaming individual ANet employees for being at home in time for dinner. The problem is that the personnel who should be on hand to address this sort of issue when it occurs apparently do not exist, and I hope that this will change in the future.

Yeah, that’s why this strat worked so well; the slicks only build up when people aren’t kiting them properly or when you are so spread out that the kiting distance gets too long. Staying together and all acting like you’re kiting takes care of that pretty well.

Here’s something to try if you’re having trouble: stick together and have all members act like they’re being chased, that way the oil slicks aren’t too spread out and you can clear them quickly. Ranged DPS on sparki first, then slick. It’s slower, but it worked for my group. Good luck, all!

Hmm.

Your first point is that we chose to do one thing, so there is nothing else we could have used that time for.

Your second point is an implication that because other games you have experienced have a similar disregard for their consumer base, we should resign ourselves to be subjected to such behavior.

I would hope that the fallacies in these two arguments should be self-evident to you upon a second reading, so I will say no more.

Thomas Kaira.7863:

Just saying this: It is currently a bit past 8:00 at the time of posting this in Seattle. Most of Anet’s employees are at home eating dinner right now.

How can they respond to an issue they probably don’t even know exists yet?

Well, as you yourself implied, not all employees will be home. Is it not flawed logic that just because not all of them know about it we should not expect a response from the few that do?

All self-respecting MMO companies that I have seen keep a handful of people on night shifts in case something like this occurs. Perhaps not developers, but certainly customer service/community reps/GMs.

Quite so, several thousands of man-hours wasted, and still no word. I would have to think that either somebody isn’t doing their job, or that the relevant community liaison simply doesn’t exist.

…now I know how the mega laser was destroyed 3 seconds into battery defense phase that one time. It all makes perfect sense…

I also like how your asura was just knocked down by the sheer awe and wonderment of the glory that is the laser quaggan.

Logged in just to +1. Love the permanent content anet, keep it coming!

As you should have guessed from the title, Teq Rising is my favorite gw2 update, and for two reasons: first, it is challenging and teamwork-oriented (real teamwork, as opposed to mindless zerging), and second, it focuses on permanent content. I have raised some concerns in the past about the heavy focus on temporary LS content and mini-game updates, so it’s only fair that I chime in once again in support of content that I enjoy.

The LS has mostly been amusing, but the majority of the time feels directionless and meandering, and its primary purpose as a series of stopgap diversions to keep players logging in is unfortunately all too obvious. Mini-games such as SAB, Southsun Survival, etc., serve a similar function, but with even weaker connections to the base lore. Up to this point, the updates that I enjoyed the most were the holiday ones, which I chalk mostly up to the benefit of seasonal cheer.

Unlike those updates, Tequatl Rising is a step toward deepening the base gw2 experience and fleshing out Tyria, and while this content update may be smaller in scope than previous updates, I am enjoying the challenge of Teq immensely. Furthermore, there is less time pressure to rush through all of the achievements and grab all of the awards immediately; this means that instead of feeling pressured to grind through the content ASAP “just in case” and then conversely having nothing to do for a week and a half, I feel like I can join a Teq encounter at my leisure, but am still excited enough about it to want to try to complete it sooner rather than later. This makes experiencing the content more enjoyable by far in comparison with the juxtaposed stress and boredom of the past. Also, if done correctly, players all across the casual-hardcore spectrum should still be able to enjoy the content, as there is still no strict need for everybody to be in an organized/prearranged group using voice chat, etc. to beat the encounter (although it is still beneficial for those who should like to do so).

Best of all, this is an update where I feel like I am actually playing the MMO I purchased, rather than the Hunger Games: the Mini-Game*, Mario, Mario Kart, or what have you. Those are certainly fun in their own way, but I have other games for that, and that’s not why I log into an MMO.

That is not to say that there are no negative externalities that may result from making boss encounters more difficult, but if the rewards are commensurate (IMO they need to be improved from what they are now, although the focus on special skins, e.g. Teq ascended skins is the right direction), I believe this could be the beginning of adding real longevity to gw2, removing the need for stopgap measures that feel more like chores than anything else. If these world bosses, then dungeons and other aspects of the game (let’s not forget about pvpers) are continually supported with these types of challenging updates, I will personally be far more optimistic about the future of gw2 than I was previously.

So keep it up, ANet; this is what I like to see!

Thanks, Zeigy, for taking the time to reply. You are right that your voice needs to be heard; I only regret that you do not grant the same respect to me.

There seems to be a bit of misplaced aggression going around the SAB forum that has resulted in some unnecessary hostility in my thread, which in turn has overshadowed or replaced meaningful debate much of the time. As such, I am going to end things here; I have put in my 2c for the devs, and see no reason to wait here for more tomatoes to come my way

Thanks everyone.