Guild Wars 2

I don’t know that I would personally use arenas, or watch the fights, but the Guild Wars 2 novels have arena-style matchups happening in Lion’s Arch – it’s where the Edge of Destiny guild came to be…

So since it exists in the game lore, it seems like something that ought to exist in the game itself…

In addition, you can “guest” to other worlds (but not across the EU/NA boundary). This won’t let you play in WvW on the guest server, but you can do all the PvE content there. That might help you choose what server to transfer to, as long as it’s an EU server you’re considering…

Technically, the upgrades aren’t “gone”, they remain (along with any unspent influence) on the original server. Anyone in the guild who doesn’t move, or anyone who moves back to that server later, will find them still there.

Guesting won’t give you access to the original server’s bank/upgrades either. You keep access to your home world’s stuff while guesting.

You start on the new server with no influence, and no upgrades, and no access to anything from the other server.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Sadly, when I defended LA against the risen wave, I made a mistake by clicking on helping the Charr Engineers instead of Norn Gladiators.
The “X” icons was total misleading, I tought I’m going to leave conversation without choice made

How can I backroll this choice? I WONT help the chars.

While you can’t revert that change, you can view it as convincing a bunch of Charr to go get themselves killed against the Risen and Zhaitan, instead of fighting humans in Ascalon…

However, given that the whole point of the Pact is to have the races put aside their differences in the face of the greater threat that is the elder dragons, this isn’t the last time you’re going to be faced with Charr allies in the personal story.

So you’re going to have to find a world-view that accepts that, or you’re going to have to abandon the personal story.

I’ve sympathy for the “Charr are just plain evil” sentiment, as it was pretty well ingrained in GW1 which I played for many years. But that was then, and this is now, and it’s not the direction the game (or Tyria) is taking.

They’ve said on more than one occasion that the ability to change your race is not something they’re planning on implementing.

So don’t hold your breath.

You can level another character to 80 via crafting, which you can use gold converted from gems to buy all the materials for, so that’s the closest option currently available.

Another option is to guest to the Jade Quarry server. You won’t be able to do WvW, or receive guild benefits from Jade Quarry, but at least you’d be able to play with your friend…

You can check a character’s fractal level by attempting to enter the portal to the lab in the mists.

Sadly, I’m unaware of any way to determine which Story Mode dungeons you’ve done. I think adding a pane to the Hero window with that sort of information would be an excellent idea.

The only circumstance I can think of when the game will take money out of your bank is for res/waypoint costs if the character has no money in their inventory.

Any chance that’s been happening? (Seems unlikely, but you never know…)

How I would have done the Personal Story from the get-go is one thing. How I’d “help” the current implementation is another. Anything done to it would be a lot of work; Work I’m not sure wouldn’t be better spent elsewhere, more the shame. But here’s what I’d do, given where we are now.

I’d make the Pact weapons exotic. The reward for Saving the World™ really ought to be a weapon you would actually use at level 80. If you don’t already have one, getting an exotic weapon would be spiffy. If you do, you might not have all your weapons exotics, and if you’re already fully-equipped, nothing short of a precursor would do, and I think that’s probably overkill.

I’d have the current choices you make have a prominent, visible impact in your home district. Did you save your sister? She ought to be there. She ought to have some text to say to you, commenting on the things you do. These don’t have to be voiced cutscenes – but they’d go a world towards making you feel like your choices meant something that you did have an impact on the world.

Finally, I’d extend the early arcs by another 10 levels. The racial story should overlap the order story, and the order story should overlap the Pact. This would go a long way towards alleviating the feeling that the earlier arcs “vanish” – Dealing with the Nightmare Court, the politics of Divinity’s Reach, the Inquest, or Charr Legion intrigues while you “come up to speed” with your order would be great. As would dealing with the aftermath of the Battle for Claw Island on your Order as the Pact comes up to speed.

Given the amount of work that would be, I really don’t expect it to happen. But at unlike the suggestions of scrapping the story and starting over, at least this one wouldn’t remove any content from the game. They could start with the three Orders, and then move back to the earlier stories on an incremental basis.

You can do this if you have another character on your account who’s joined the other order, but it’s a bit fiddly.

1) Have your character in the other order buy the armor you want
2) transmute it to a “white” quality item – this will make it account-bound
3) put the item in your bank
4) remove it on your first character, and re-transmute it onto the armor of your choice.

Not as convenient as just having access to them all, but better than nothing.

I thought I was reasonably clear in my opinion; I disagree that it would create greater build diversity, and I wouldn’t likely take advantage of the feature were it implemented.

Therefore, I’d prefer they spend their time and effort elsewhere.

But as I said, simply having lots of folks declare they want something is unlikely to influence ArenaNet’s development priorities if they disagree with the goals of the movement.

The trading post is a good example; ArenaNet didn’t implement preview in the trading post because it was against their internal vision of how the trading post should work, they did so because the technical underpinnings of the trading post were sufficiently different from those of the inventory/hero screen/stores that it wasn’t practicable to do so before launch.

Player demand is much more likely to influence the order of things ArenaNet would do, than to add an item ArenaNet would not do on their own. The very nature of things is that there’s always more to do on a game like this than ArenaNet has time/resources to accomplish. Putting something like this on the schedule means removing something else – something ArenaNet has already decided would be good for the game to do.

As such, you’ve got a much higher bar to pass for this than we did for the trading post preview.

DreamOfACure.4382:

…
I see this as a game design flaw.

They’re essentially encouraging everyone into bunker builds and jack-of-all-trade builds.
Even glass-cannon builds spread out their points.

It is my belief that the game is limited in such a fashion simply because, like with many other features in the game, Arena Net was crunched for time and could not give the system as much polish as they would have liked.
There’s no reason to limit the builds this way, hence also why I’m making this suggestion.

I understand you deem it a flaw – I don’t believe that ArenaNet deems it one. I believe that the fact that glass cannon builds must spend points outside power/precision is ArenaNet’s explicit intent, and not the result of a lack of time and/or polish.

The reason I believe that is the limits on points as you level. You have 30 points to spend long before you can put 30 points in one trait line. If they’d intended/desired to allow total focus on one line, they could easily have allowed for it.

Personally, I believe you proposal would reduce build diversity, as “Glass Cannon” and “Bunker” builds would spend even more of their points in the “effective” traits, and what little is spent outside them would vanish. But I’ve no axe to grind here – I was trying to express two fundamental reasons I’d be surprised if this happened.

1) It’s a lot of work.
2) I think that ArenaNet doesn’t view this as a flaw.

Since it’s a lot of work, doing this would mean not doing something else. Since they don’t see it as a flaw, they’re not likely to put it on the list of things-to-do in the first place.

If you want this to happen, saying “it’s not a lot of work for an expansion” and “the current state of the game is a design flaw” isn’t likely to aid your cause with the folks who matter – the development team.

What you need to demonstrate is “Why this is better for the game than anything else you could spend this much effort on” and “this is why you should change your design goals”.

This isn’t easy for an outsider to do; You need to discover why the system is the way it is – what goals the current system meets, what problems it was designed to avert, and then you can ensure your proposal cogently addresses them.

I’ve got a lot of level 80 characters in GW2, and I’m sure I’d like to put more than 30 points in a trait line here or there (although I don’t see myself putting 60 in one spot, regardless) – but I don’t see it happening.

For good or ill, it’s a PvP jumping puzzle. There are built-in traps all throughout, and places custom-designed to allow folks to be ambushed.

There are ways to mitigate the opportunity to be set upon – there are invisibility fountains in the puzzle, which you can use to become invisible for minutes at a time (four? five?) but ArenaNet put these puzzles on the WvW maps, and gave them WvW-specific rewards. They’re not likely to remove PvP from them.

Honestly, I’m mildly surprised they removed the siege weaponry from them (not displeased, mind you, but surprised.)

Putting in a suggestion that they put a “copy” of the puzzle elsewhere without the WvW rewards might possibly happen one day, but they’re never going to remove PvP from the WvW incarnation of the puzzles.

They added the options to the existing kits. Any you have now, or purchase and save, will have the new eye/hair color options available.

There’s no way to predict what they will do in the future. If they add new hairstyles, say, to the existing kits, unused kits would get them. If, however, they add a new “glamour hair kit” for them, then existing kits would not.

Given that they chose not to make a new kit for this, I’d expect that new colors/styles in the future would just be added to the existing kits, but that’s only a guess from some random shmoe on the internets – don’t bet the farm on it.

At the end of the day you’re adding 14 selectable traits (two per secondary profession) to each trait line, plus three more “automatic” traits. This is more than the 15 (12 selectable + 3 automatic) that the trait line had in the first place.

In other words, this idea is as much work as creating and balancing the traits for eight new professions.

Given that, I’d be shocked if it ever happened, regardless of the desirability of doing so.

I’d be surprised if it happened.

First, because putting 60 out of your 70 attribute points in one trait would likely lead to attribute values outside the scope ArenaNet has balanced the game for, as you could get an additional +300 to any of the primary trait lines’ stats, or an additional +30% critical damage.

Additionally, other aspects of the game lead me to believe they want some variety in the trait point distribution – the restrictions on the maximum amount you can put it during the early levels are there to ensure you “spread out” a bit, which goes against the hyper-focus on one trait line that you’re advocating.

There’s also the UI/balance work that would be required. The traits UI would have to be re-done, and the training manuals would have to be adjusted to account for the new point maximums – do you change the earlier manuals to 20, 40, 60 or does it become 10, 20, 60, or maybe 10, 30, 60? What are the balance implications?

Finally, doing so would amount to much of the work needed to make and balance the trait lines of the class in the first place. Three new “automatic” traits and four new “selectable” traits make seven of the fifteen traits they had to come up with in the first place for each line. They could add two new complete trait lines to each class with less work, and likely add more build variety to boot.

So I don’t suspect ArenaNet is looking to expand classes in the direction you’re suggesting.

There’s no way to display your guild emblem on your armor other than the skins from the guild armorer.

The guild backpacks do display the emblem. If that would do, you can use them with any armor.

Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be “fixed” per-se. You’ve stated that you don’t want to do any of the other non-story content ArenaNet has made for the game. That being the case, there’s no guarantee that anything new ArenaNet would add to the game would be something you’d like. Indeed, outside of the Flame and Frost arc, it’s quite likely that it wouldn’t be something you’d be interested in. (Fractals, Dungeons, WvW, sPvP, more dynamic events or maps not driven by a story, etc… all seem “out of bounds”)

If the only thing that’s driving you is story-driven content, then you’ll never find a game where that can be produced as fast as you will consume it. Just as it takes you less time to read a book than it took the author to write it, you’ll always be able to play through story content faster than any development team can release it.

However, since the personal story has many introductory arcs, and three order arcs, one possibility would be to create other characters and make different choices about race and the other options during character selection. I believe each race has three “paths” for the initial story arc, and then there’s the three order arcs. There are minor choices to be made during those as well, but those are the main paths. Doing this would also give you a story-based reason to explore more of the world, as the various races and orders take you to different places in the world.

Your other options are to expand your horizons of what to do in the game beyond those required by the story, or take a break from it until more story content is released. Since there’s no subscription involved, it’s utterly painless to take a break and come back when there’s more to do that you want to experience.

Your character is automatically leveled to 80 for sPvP play – no fees required.

For WvW you can use gold purchased from gems to pay to craft your way to level 80. There are websites with the cheapest paths to max the various crafts, assuming you don’t have a bunch of materials lying around from your Warrior. It’s not instant, but it’s not anywhere near as time-consuming as leveling through normal gameplay. If you do it with a crafting XP booster, and do it near the end of the week before WvW reset, you can take advantage of the buffs to speed things up even more.

While you won’t have all the traits, running with a zerg in WvW is a pretty effective means of leveling. If you play or craft to, say, level 30 or so you’ll have your full skill bar and while you won’t have exotic-level gear you should be able to make a solid contribution to the fight.

Other than that, you’re pretty much out-of-luck. They’ve said nothing about plans to allow you to buy levels directly, and it’s not a widespread practice in MMOs. I certainly wouldn’t expect it to arrive anytime soon.

Yes, you can use a transmutation stone (or a fine transmutation stone, if its going to/from level 80 armor) to copy the look of your gem store armor onto a new, better armor piece.

You can get the transmutation stones from map completion, dailies, or the gem store. the fine versions can show up from black lion chests, or can likewise be gotten from the gem store.

The lack of developer control over patching on consoles means that, even if they do decide to ship it for a console, it won’t be able to interact with the PC version – which makes it very unlikely to happen.

In addition to the technological hurdles (porting a PC game to a console isn’t trivial), there’s the economic one. Console manufacturers get a much larger percentage of of the sale, and they get it on each game made (not sold, but put on a disc in a box.)

So ArenaNet would make substantially less per copy on a console than they would for the PC version – and they probably can’t raise the price to compensate.

So while the next-gen (and maybe even current-gen) consoles are probably technologically capable of running the GW2 client, I’d be quite surprised to see it ship for either of them.

The current system for getting a precursor is broken, and ArenaNet knows it – thus the “scavenger hunt” that they’re currently designing.

I don’t believe the Mystic Forge was ever intended to be used in this fashion – it can be, but it sure appears that the intent was “hmm, I have four things I don’t need, and I don’t need the cash I’d get from selling them, maybe I’ll get something better from the forge?”

The whole “toss thousands of things in the forge in the hope that I’ll get X” is a symptom of the broken precursor system, not the means ArenaNet intended for people to acquire one with.

This begs the question, of course, as to how they did expect them to be acquired. They put the icon for getting one front-and-center on the login screen, so they must have known and intended for many people to pursue them, and they knew the drop rates.

As it sits, I don’t expect to ever get a Legendary, which seems a bit of a shame but I’m not going to let the pursuit of the nigh-unobtainable distort my gameplay to the point I’m not having fun anymore.

BobbyStein.2315:

The personal stories vary by playable race. If you’re not enjoying the one you’re currently playing you may want to roll a new character. Try asura or charr. You may find their tone more to your liking.

I don’t know if this will help, but the personal story has three main “chapters” or “arcs” to it. The first is specific to your race, the second is specific to your order, and the last is common to all.

Your character, and it’s voice remain the same, of course, so if that’s a concern then you’re pretty much stuck with rerolling to another race.

Also note that the Durmond Priory’s mentor is a Sylvari, and you’ll have the near-constant presence of one Sylvari in the final arc, along with the occasional minor characters here and there. If you truly dislike having any Sylvari voice-acting at all, you’re not going to be happy with the personal story.

lukemorley.8602:

Excelliate.7914:

If the drop rate is .0005%, that means it would take 200,000 chest openings on average…

yes on average! but it could come on anyone of those 200,000 average openings

If I’ve done my sums correctly, to get a 90% chance at an event that occurs .0005% of the time, we’d need 461,000 of the correct chests opened. Which still leaves the one-in-ten chance that nobody would have gotten it

(99% would be 922,000 tries…)

So yeah, not going to hold my breath…

I’m pretty sure you can order them by color, rarity, and material by using the menu off the little gear icon in the upper-right…

Judge.1327:

Yeah I can talk to Kimmes in GW2 and he just tells me about a old hero, so i guess I need GWEN, sigh another $20 I gotta spend, lol

It’s available for less than $20 at a famous online retailer who shares a name with a river…

And probably elsewhere too.

If the “lottery” aspects of progress towards a desired goal are the sole, or even primary means to achieve something the player perceives as important or necessary, then the lottery becomes un-fun.

Instead of the “oh, cool, I got a rare” when you toss four green things you didn’t need into the mystic forge, vs. the “oh, well, it was just four greens.” when it doesn’t, you get the !@&#(! mystic forge! I put 100 rare greatswords in, and still no !@#*&$!( precursor! reaction.

Anything with a substantial element of luck in it that’s required for progress on a major goal of the game (and legendaries are that – they even have their own spiffy icon on the login screen) really should be in addition to a more predictable path.

They do seem to have this figured out, as the “scavenger hunt” discussion would lead you to believe that something less lottery-like is coming, but to the extent that we’re still required to use the mystic forge’s wheel-of-“fun” to achieve things, there’s going to be dissatisfaction with the process.

BrotherBelial.3094:

… Ok I’ve just finished that step, what? I’ve got to be lvl 16 for the next bit, but I’m 14, I’ve got to go off and level, but I was told they needed me there ASAP. …

Of all the comments in the original post, this is one I think that is undeniably true. The conflict between the story mission’s frequent implications of time-pressure, and the level demands of the next mission is an all too frequent event.

I’ve taken to outleveling the personal story before completing a chapter, so I don’t experience the dissonance of “hurry up! We have to do X now!” (but not until you get a few more levels please…)

There are “natural” breaks in the story at the chapter boundaries, and there could easily be more within the arcs themselves. In particular, it feels like there should be more time spent in the order before you get “promoted” – that feels like it happens too quickly. But in any case, going forward, if a story mission ends with a strong sense of urgency to complete the next one, it should not require a level not achieved by completing the prior mission.

AimForThatFace.7814:

So if a user shared his account details you’ll be banned, how would you find out if a player has been on a website and used a power leveling service unless you seen there screen when they bought it?

Also what happens if you want to share a account with a friend so they can take in turns leveling a character is this not allowed?

Sharing an account is against the terms-of-service. So no, it’s not allowed. They’ve stated that several times on the forum, look through Gaile’s post history for some of the reasons why

As for powerleveling services, they’re not going to tell you how they identify accounts that use the services – but it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with technical means that might be used to do so.

No system is going to catch everybody, and I’m sure they’re going to err on the side of letting a few slip through rather than bring down the banhammer on someone who didn’t do anything – but why risk it?

For me, the issue is that I don’t get the majority of the items for a Legendary by “just playing the game” – while it is true that most of it is purchasable for gold via the trading post, the cost to do so appears to be unattainable by “normal” gameplay in a rational amount of time – say a year?

Only by a single-minded focus on maximally-profitable activities is it likely that you can acquire the means to obtain one. For many things (precursors, in particular) the cost is rising faster than many player’s income.

Now, if I could reasonably expect that I’d have “naturally” acquired everything I needed for a Legendary after a year of gameplay not utterly dedicated to obtaining one, then I’d be willing to contend that you can get a Legendary weapon without a “grind”.

Legendaries are (or should) be a long-term goal. And if you’ve got to have one now-now-now, then you shouldn’t be surprised that the means to do so are going to be grindy, and not what you’d otherwise be doing.

However, at the moment it seems likely to me that I’ll never have a Legendary, no matter how long I play the game as I’m just not willing to ruin my enjoyment of the game in order to pursue one.

ArenaNet seems to realize this, and will (I hope) be addressing this with the “scavenger hunt” that they’ve announced they’re working on, and perhaps other future updates.

LIke any MMO, Guild Wars 2 is a work-in-progress, and ArenaNet will learn from what players do and how they do it. What they enjoy, and what they don’t. I’m not going to let the apparent unattainability of Legendaries ruin my GuildWars 2 experience, but until and unless they substantially alter the process to obtain one, they may as well not exist for me.

To the extent that ArenaNet wants Legendaries to be an end-game aspiration or motivation for me – and apparently some other players, they have failed in their purpose.

Also on Maguuma, and also having issues with Sparkfly Fen. Don’t have the problem in other areas of the game, or in other large events. I’ve been lagged out for seconds (or to the point of being disconnected) both during the dragon event, and when nearly nobody else is around the map. It does seem worse during the dragon event (the disconnects mostly happen during it), but the problem persists even without a crowd.

Out of paranoia, I tried heading there with another character, in case it was tied somehow to a specific one, but I have the same issues no matter who I bring into the area.

StealthRecon.8713:

i cant salvage it, i rater have it look good and waste one bank slot (and hoping it will be made Account bound) than salvaging it for crap i dont use :P

While it won’t save the stats, the appearance of the item can be made account bound by transmuting it onto a piece of white-level gear, and then re-transmuting it onto something useful for another character.

Small consolation, but perhaps better than nothing.

They’ve stated that they have no plans to allow you to change your race (or your class, or your order, for that matter…)

For what it’s worth, the racial skills are, in general, nothing to write home about – the profession’s own skills are usually quite superior.

If there’s something you’ve just got to have, then your only practical option is to make a new character of the race you really want.

Greyt.4815:

…but it is souldbound not even account bound so I can do NOTHING with it! …

It’s not much, but you can move the skin to another character on your account – but it’s not cheap. You need to use a (probably fine) transmutation stone to transmute the dungeon armor to a piece of white-level armor. That will make it account bound, and you can stick it in the bank.

Then, you can use another (again, probably fine) transmutation stone to move the skin to actually-useful armor on another character on your account.

Small consolation for the wasted dungeon tokens, but it may be more of a use than salvaging them would be for you, if the looks were the primary thing you wanted from the armor…

Oh, and be careful to pick the right skin while transmuting

Just a note; The other teams in WvW maps can’t see your chat at all – so regardless of their linguistics skills or attitudes, they didn’t even get to read your plea for tolerance.

The jumping puzzles in WvW maps are part of the PvP experience there; some folks like the smaller-scale PvP that happens, or just like hiding (invisible) and ambushing folks. While I’ve seen truces in the puzzles, it’s not the default to “let people be” in there.

There are fountains (at least, in the eternal battlegrounds puzzle) that give you invisibility for several minutes, as long as you’re not engaging in combat. Check the wiki for how to find them. That can help you avoid other players, if you can get there…

Generally, sPvP doesn’t reward things for the PvE game. You don’t earn XP, get karma, coin, or PvE-usable-loot in sPvP, so why would you get laurels?

Technically, however, if they eventually hand out additional laurels for achievements beyond the monthly/daily, you might get some laurels for PvP achievements (you might not, too – they could well exclude the PvP-only achievements.)

Sure, they could add new borderlands to WvW, and even use existing maps as the basis for them. But you’re not likely to get the spontaneous fight-someone-on-the-way-to-a-random-quest type of encounter in GW2.

First, because there aren’t natural lines to divide the player base into. Charr, Humans, Sylvari and Asura are all allies at the moment, and – barring the unexpected early demise of several elder dragons, aren’t likely to begin warring anytime soon.

You could do it on a guild-by-guild basis. But that would be a major system addition, akin to adding another game mode ala WvW to the game, with a whole new level of complexity (how to handle changes in guild-hostility while the game is live. Is guild-relations a server-tied entity akin to influence? If so, what happens when guesting?)

The upshot is that I think it’s going to be more work than it’s worth, even if ArenaNet wanted to do it. And If ArenaNet had wanted PvP in the main game world, too many decisions would have been made differently than they were made.

WvW is clearly their focus for PvP in an environment where PvE events also occur. Unlike sPvP, you keep your stats/build from PvE when playing in WvW. There are already champion-level PvE events on the eternal battlegrounds (it’s the Grub!), and things like the Quaggans on the borderlands.

Adding a Frostgorge Sound borderland where all three servers can fight each other and the Claw of Jormag for glory, match-points, and (badges of) honor would be doable (and sounds pretty cool – WvW siege weapons vs. the Claw, anyone?)

Or have a dragon invade Stonemist Castle if it’s held too long in a match? But none of that sort of thing will generate the sort of ad-hoc encounters you get with genuine open-world PvP. For good or ill, I don’t see GuildWars 2 evolving into an open world PvP game.

They can certainly add PvE events and content to either new or existing maps in WvW, as that provides the natural faction split for players, and they might – but to the extent they do, there will be cries of “foul!” from folks who don’t enjoy PvP in the least, and want to experience that PvE content without being killed by an invisible thief just as they’re about to complete something. The vistas/pois/jumping puzzles already in WvW generate their fair share of protests, and that’s a pretty minor set of PvE content.

So I wouldn’t expect substantial PvE style content or rewards to creep into WvW, and thus I don’t think you’ll ever likely to be going about your PvE questing and get surprised by (or surprise) another player and have a fight over something in GW2.

Adding borderlands/events to WvW that encourage/reward/require smaller-scale PvP is another matter entirely, and I’m sure they’d love to hear ideas about that. But it’s not going to be the same as open world PvP.

Due to the nature of the open world dynamic events, I find it highly unlikely that we’ll ever see open world PvP in the “main” maps of the game.

The game is fundamentally designed around players cooperating in the open world. There are no “sides” the players naturally align with that would be in global conflict, and if it’s everyone vs. everyone, then the whole open-world event system just completely falls apart.

They could certainly add factions to the game, and allow players to align with one or another, and then add maps which were built from the ground-up for that sort of environment. Oh, wait… That’s pretty much what WvW is.

Expanding WvW seems likely. Retrofitting the existing world for PvP? Not so much. The effort required to add it would be substantial, and likely better spent improving/adding to WvW, which is their concept of PvPvE.

Of course, that means you can’t take a bunch of level 80s and march into the low-level zones and wreak havoc. If that’s what you’re looking to do, then I think that GW2 is never going to be your game, because that’s not ArenaNet’s vision for it.

Shaaba.5672:

ugh – ok. That is crappy, but whatever. Thanks for the responses. Completely not clear. I guess I don’t get the logic of not being able to access a guild vault while guesting. I get not being able to access it while not on that world, but … yeah. I just don’t get it.

There’s two possibilities here, given that guilds exist as separate entities on each server.
1) When guesting, you accrue influence on your home world, and have it’s bank.
2) When guesting, you accrue influence on the guest world, and have it’s bank.

No matter which option they chose, they’re going to irk people. If they choose path 1, they irk people who started a guild and then moved – thus losing them access to the old server’s benefits.

If they chose path 2, they then irk guilds who haven’t moved, as any players who are guesting lose access to the guild bank and benefits from their homes. This will also likely confuse players “where’d the bank go?”

Long-term, they’ll irk fewer people with path 1 than path 2, and they don’t want people refusing to guest because they’ll not be representing their home-world guilds while doing so.

Making guilds not tie to a given server at all would have caused issues with their tie-in to WvW, so that probably wasn’t ever an option.

While it’s short-term annoying to have lost the stuff in the move, it would – I think – have been more annoying over the long haul for everyone to have it work the other way. Sucks, though, for guilds who move after having gotten a lot of influence.

Another possibility to “rescue” the contents of the old bank is to find a trusted friend on the old server, invite a character of theirs to the guild, and have them send it along. But if all your friends have moved with you (which may well be the case), that isn’t going to help.

Ansultares.1567:

synch.2980:

Well, it’s only a bit less than four months as the monthly achievement will award laurels as well – 10, last I saw. But the overall point still applies; The account-gated nature of laurels is a considerable disincentive to players having more than one character.

Buy some extra character slots and go level some more alts?

I mean, there’s so much to do in the game, right?

Oh, I have I have… um… Nine level 80 characters. So I certainly feel the pain of the OP. And I have enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) the rest of the game. I have ambitions of seeing all the personal story paths.

What I don’t have is a burning need to get ascended gear for all of them ASAP – but I do want to do it eventually, and I don’t think it should take me nine (or ten, or whatever it is by then) times as many calendar days. I’ve no issues with it taking me nine times as many hours-in-game, but the calendar-time gating is irksome.

Well, it’s only a bit less than four months as the monthly achievement will award laurels as well – 10, last I saw. But the overall point still applies; The account-gated nature of laurels is a considerable disincentive to players having more than one character.

kRiza krimos.1637:

If you want 8 chars to be fully equiped you can expect it to take time. Afterall they didnt level themselves in 3 days either.

This – while I, as a fellow altaholic sympathize – you can’t really base the grindyness of a task on “having” to do it for every character.

And in all honesty, completely equipping a character with exotic weapons and armor at level 80 in a month of doing Ascalon isn’t too grindy – especially as it’s ignoring all the other rewards from the dungeon, which might well allow you to purchase gear from the trading post and avoid some of that.

And since you don’t “need” a complete set of exotics for any of the regular content in the game, there’s no great rush there, either. Run Ascalaon with a character whenever you feel like it and since the tears are account bound, by and by you’ll get full sets of armor/weapons for everyone, and it won’t be a grind.

If you feel you’ve got to rush through and get them as quickly as possible for all your characters, then yeah, you’re going to be doing a whole lot of whatever the “optimal” thing is for quite a while, but that’s your decision – the game doesn’t seem (to me) to be forcing it on you by making your character unable to participate unless you do so.

I don’t believe you’re going to get what you want. Furthermore, I don’t believe you should.

First, the amount of effort it would take to manage the “fix your skins whose name has changed” could be vastly more profitably spent on nearly anything else in the game, from adding preview to the trading post, to fixing any number of actual bugs, or adding new content/features.

Second, the world of GuildWars2 (and GuildWars1 for that matter) contains societies that, to some degree at least, mirror aspects of cultures that exist (or existed) in our world.

That being the case, literal sameness of all dress for all races and genders would be both undesirable and unrealistic. Most, if not all, cultures on earth have (or at least had) rather strict differentiation of dress across genders.

If we add the fact that the costumes for each body model are new work, not simple “copy-pastes” from each other, the end result of your demands would be a vast lowering of the visual diversity in the game. Instead of both sets of Acolyte armor, we’d only have one.

So I don’t expect your demands are going to be met, and I, for one, am not unhappy about that.

I’ve no objection to increasing the diversity of styles available for races/genders in GW2 (all-trenchcoat-medium-armor, I’m looking at you…) So adding more kilts to the male armor sets, and more modest sets to the female light armor sets, to pick two examples, would certainly be welcome.

But to have a blanket statement that all armor sets now-and-forever should be the same across all races/genders, that I don’t like, and don’t see happening.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I play all the story steps as a thief, designed to be able to solo veterans. It’s based on the build I use for my Live thief to tackle skill challenges. (And for lower levels, I make sure I’m not using traits/skills I wouldn’t have access to, and I actually set my level down, I’m not using a downscaled L80.) Not all builds are going to work in all cases, we simply can’t make every story step work for all possible builds. In general, survivability > glass cannon.

Given that you can always enter the story missions “before” the proper level in order to make it more difficult, I do think you should consider adopting the same downleveling scheme in the personal story that you do in the open world – downlevel to the area + 1.

That would give folks who, for whatever reason, are having trouble with the quest the ability to make it a bit easier by getting a one-level advantage on it, without making it utterly trivial.

While for some people the game is about finding the appropriate/optimal skill/weapon/stratagy for “solving” an encounter, for others – particularly in the story areas of the game, it’s just about proceeding along the story arc with your character – who may be a ranger with a pet eagle, who uses a longbow – even though, for this particular encounter, a greatsword with a bear would be better.

If your vision of your character doesn’t fit the encoutner’s mechanics, I think reasonable accommodation should be made – especially in the personal story – for letting people experience it with their character as they want it to be.

There are plenty of places in the game (high level fractals, explore mode dungeons, pvp) where concept needs to take a back seat to effectiveness, but I don’t think the personal story should be one of those places.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—when the respawn timer hits 0, the next creature will look for an open spawn point, which might be the one that you just emptied out. This can make it seem like creatures are respawning more rapidly, but they’re really not.
…

Any chance of adding a “cooldown” to spawn points, as well as spawns? Or making it so that a spawn isn’t really “gone” from a point until 30 seconds or so after a defeat?

It really is annoying (and quite immersion-breaking) to have stuff teleport-in on top of you. Regardless of the technical means required to solve this, I think solving it should be on your list-of-things-to-do…

The only flaw in the ointment is if you have a guild you want to contribute to/get bonuses from, as all your influence and bonuses will be based on your home server, not the server you’re guesting on.

But as long as you (and your guild) don’t mind that you’re not adding influence on their home, and you don’t mind not getting the guild bonuses, there’s no other downside I can see.

Flax.4980:

jazzllanna.1278:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I thought you gain influence for your guild, regardless of server?!?

You do but it is server specific. So you will not get the benefits of the guild that it has on 1 server if you are alone on another. You would still get to see gchat, dungeons, ect but the only influence and perks you get are the ones on the server you are located on.

So basically if you’re home is just for WvW and guest is for guild you’ll just miss out on the guild bonuses when you’re in WvW.

…

No, your home server is where you’ll accrue guild influence for, as well as play WvWvW on. Guilds exist across all servers, and players accrue influence for their guild on their home server.

You will miss out on your guest-server’s guild bonuses 100% of the time.

With the arrival of guesting, you’re playing on another server but your home is still what it was before and you will earn the guild influence on your home server regardless of where you’re guesting to.

So while you’ll be able to chat with your guildmates on the guest server, and play with them, you won’t ever get any of the guild bonuses from the guest server, nor will you be able to earn any influence on the guest server as I understand their explanation of how it all works.

They’ve stated that they’re not going to offer a race-change option, and I doubt very much that a class-change will arrive either.

On the other hand, for 1000 gems, you can buy enough gold to level several crafts to 400 just buy getting materials from the trading post, each of which would get you 10 levels (more, if you have some crafting XP boosters from your old character, or your server has a boost from WvW)

If it has never worked, this may not be the issue, but the most recent patch changed the behavior of transmutation stones and equipped armor. You can no longer transmute armor while you’re wearing it. You can set everything up and the button will say “good”, but pressing it does nothing. You have to remove the armor first.