Guild Wars 2

Actually, one of the Dredgehaunt Cliffs vistas is at the END of the jump puzzle. You’re forced to do the jump puzzle to get the vista — it’s about 10 feet past where the puzzle mob spawns.

I have no problem with vistas, even if they require a bit of thought to figure out how to get to. What I dislike is requiring an elaborate jump puzzle (where you can fall to your death with one misclick) to finish a zone. Adding jump puzzles for BONUS achievements is perfectly fine. But REQUIRING them is, to me, annoying as all hell.

It’s fine that some people like them. As I said, more power to them, if ANet wants to add tons of them all over the place. Just as long as they’re BONUS stuff. Not REQUIRED.

Okay, this is something of a rant, because I’ve spent the last 45m trying to finish two jump puzzles in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, and I’m honestly to the point that I’m NOT having fun with the game anymore, and have logged out in frustration.

Devs, for the love of god, if you want to put jump puzzles into the game, that’s fine, but don’t make them REQUIRED to finish a zone. Not everyone enjoys playing “guess when to tap the space bar” in order to finish a zone. I like to challenge myself by taking on multiple mobs, big mobs, soloing champions, and the like. A “challenge” to me is not figuring out when to hit the flipping space bar, with a misclick resulting in a fall to my death.

If people enjoy jump puzzles, more power to them. But please, DO NOT make them mandatory.

I don’t really have a singular ‘themesong’ for any of my characters. I really do like Snow Patrol’s ‘The Lightning Strike’ as a general-purpose song for traveling/adventuring though.

It’s most notably humans and norn that have the old-voice-young-body syndrome. There are a pair of women talking in one of the towns in Kessex Hills (I think that’s it) and one of them sounds like she should be in her 70’s. Old, quavery voice. I heard her talking and looked around to find her, and she looks about 20. Youthful features, long dark hair (probably dyed!), in the typical “summer dress” outfit.

They have a couple of old lady npc models. You’d think they’d just use them, since they reuse all the others.

Lorana.2468:

it is designed this way to prevent exploits of pulling mobs, jumping up a cliff, remember mobs cant jump, and then just sitting there whacking it without it having any chance of fighting back.

City of Heroes solved that problem (flying blasters/defenders shooting ground-bound mobs) by giving every mob a ranged attack, even if t was just “thrown rock” or something.

The annoying part about it in this game is that the mob quite often won’t go back to being attackable until it’s healed up to full and you’ve jumped down and stood in front of it for 10-15 seconds. Heck, I’ve had mobs go invulnerable because they had to drop down a 6-inch step before, and heal back up to full — I didn’t, of course, because the game thought I was still in combat with them.

Seems about the same as it ever was to me. Maybe even a bit less. For a good 4-5 hours I didn’t get a single dye to drop, then I got about 4 in the next 30m. Then nothing for the new couple hours.

Skritt! Skriiittttt! <threatens to hold her breath ‘til they’re playable>

I know they most likely won’t be, but dangit, they’d be so fun to play!

One With Air works fine for me. I use it for running around all the time, and I zip around pretty fast. If I’m not fussed about combat (like killing random mobs that aggro me, or are in my way) I’ll just kill stuff with lightning whip and ride the lightning and keep running around at high speed. The speed boost seems to come back much faster than 30 seconds, too, once I switch back to air for running around.

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it or not, but One With Air works fine for me. I was running along next to someone last night in earth attunement, and we were the same speed. Switched to air, and started pulling ahead of him quite rapidly.

Dibrom.6408:

1) My PvE friends are PvEing on their server. I’m with my PvP friends on their server.

Just as a question, what’s stopping your PvEing friends from PvEing on the server that your PvP friends are on, or vice versa?

There are several champions (most notably in the “group event” DEs) that seem to have literally millions of hp. The one in particular that I’m thinking of is the centaur champion that you take down when the Seraph attack the centaur camps in the Harathi Hinterlands to try and take them over.

I’ve seen fights where there are literally 15-20 people beating on him, and he still takes a good 5m+ to take down. His only real attack seems to be to throw out these huge-damage aoe spells here and there. Other than that, he just stands there letting you hit him.

The encounter was interesting the first time (at least for the first 2 minutes or so, then it became “jesus, why doesn’t he just freaking die already?”), but at this point I leave the moment the encounter reaches his stage. He’s just not interesting or fun to fight. It’s not even really CHALLENGING. Just a tedious beatdown of a mob with ridiculous amounts of health.

I refuse to buy any of the costume items simply because they’re single-use, and can’t be used in combat. What’s the point of buying one of the “armor” costumes if you can’t actually use it while you’re out fighting? Or looking like a pirate as you swashbuckle your way through bandits?

If they added a real “wardrobe” tab that you could toggle to adjust your appearance at all times, I’d buy a couple of the costumes real quick. But the way it is now? Heck no. No interest at all.

Kita.7819:

“Geez i really wonder why everyone makes smallest asurans in game ?”

Jesus christ this. I remember making my Asura a tick below the max height and I have never seen any other Asura as tall as mine. People defiantly do this solely for the competitive aspect.

I made my two asuran characters minimum size because they’re cuter that way. Had absolutely zero to do with any sort of advantage in pvp.

Yeah, I’ve run into this a few times as well. It’s especially bad if you’re not able to kill mobs really quickly so you can eat through the spawns in rapid order. If you have to take a bit of time to work them down (especially 2-3 mobs at once), it can be a nightmare if they respawn behind you while you’re fighting the next one(s).

I’ve run into several areas where I’ll kill a couple mobs, move forward to engage the next few, and before I can finish them off (less than 10-15 seconds or so) the ones behind me are respawning again. And if the mobs have knockback, it’s even worse — they’ll punt you into more mobs, who will punt you into MORE mobs…

ZaiTh.6378:

If they don’t create a PvP server, that makes you happy and does not make me happy.
If they create a PvP server, you don’t have to roll a toon there. You will be still be happy but I will be happy as well. Why not just help others irregardless of your opinion when it has zero effect on you?

Because it wouldn’t have “zero effect” on everyone else. The code changes requires to make an open pvp server function would require a good bit of dev time, which would pull them off of other things in order to make the pvp server workable. This would delay the release of extra content for all servers.

Plus, having to have two separate builds (one for the pvp server, one for the rest) would mean they would have to put in extra time for each game update.

While I’m all for them creating a pvp server IF it can be done in a workable manner (DEs would have to be looked at, would there be “guard” NPCs about or would it be open season everywhere, would cities be “safe zones”, would the various “level mod breaklines” be addressed to prevent ‘border ganking’, etc?), if it causes them to have to delay content for everyone else to cater to that particular server, I’m not as enthusiastic about it.

greg.3792:

I love how the question is asked why no PvP server and then all the carebears start crying – um so dont join a PvP server dumb kitten

And just to note, this is the kind of attitude/response that makes people less inclined to listen to the requests/demands of pvpers…you give us a bad name, man.

Sin.8174:

Incorrect. Played a game with OWPvP switches. Just because you have your pvp switch off, doesn’t mean you can’t be attacked.

So how would that solve DEs? You’d have to get everyone to “switch off” so you could effectively fight big mobs, and you KNOW there would be people who wouldn’t, and would laugh as they start dropping attacks on whoever has aggro. If you try and fight back, everyone starts getting flagged up as more people engage. Happened all the time in “flag to pvp” games.

You can attack anyone else with their pvp off. You just can’t initiate an attack with pvp off. See the difference?

Yeah, the problem with a system like that is it allows for the “alpha strike/flag-attack syndrome”, where someone can walk up and just open up on the person, without them having the ability to respond until the attacks are already in progress. This happened in a lot of games with the “flagging” PvP system.

It wouldn’t be as bad in GW2 as it was in other games (Warhammer, WoW, etc) that had “permanent cloaking” for certain classes. In those games it was very common for a stealther (witch elf/hunter, rogue, druid, etc) to flag while stealthed and creep up on a player who wasn’t flagged and fighting multiple mobs using AOEs.

All it took was one of the AOEs clipping the stealthed character and they’d be free to attack the other person, typically while they also had several mobs attacking them as well. It can be done by non-stealthed classes as well, though it’s a bit more blatant that they’re running up to try and get you to hit them. It was a “popular” form of griefing.

RIFT even added an “AOE attacks don’t hit people unless you’re flagged too” code to their game because people were abusing it, as I recall.

This system works well. just need the proper game for it. While it may be costly or not worthwhile for GW2 to do this, in theory it could work rather well.

Flag systems open up an entirely new can of worms in a PvP environment. While it can work, it’s a bit cumbersome, and requires even more coding on the part of devs. GW2 just isn’t set up for it, and trying to modify it to become so would be more trouble than it’s worth.

Gauradan.8361:

@wumpusrat.4769 That was my first thought when I heard how they’ll be handling this aspect. Wardrobes are way better. Unfortunately, I’ve no hope of such a feature being implemented. ArenaNet has shown us clear as day where they’re headed with the cash shop. Why would they implement a free (or even one-time purchase) slot, when they can make a fortune by selling stones over and over again?

Yeah, they’ll never get a dime from me for stones, though. Like I said, just make a character slot that you perpetually recycle to farm more stones — takes about30m or so to get through the intro and fully explore one city (I use the human city, since it’s the easiest for me).

Besides, what would make people more inclined to use the store? Purchasing stones to change your gear ONCE, knowing that you’ll have to get more stones to change it again, or a choice of several cool-looking wardrobe armors, that you could buy once and swap to at will? I’d be far more inclined to drop down $5-10 or so for wardrobe items that I’d always have then than I’d EVER be (as in, never) to buy trans stones, when I can get them for free.

Sin.8174:

Uh… what? No. if there was open world PvP… there would have to still be switches for turning pvp on or off.

That’s not what the OP wanted, though. He wanted a full-on, no-holds-barred open PvP world where you could attack pretty much anyone (from his OP, I think he was looking at it as race-v-race), at any time. No “flagging for pvp”.

So if you’re doing events, you can switch it off to avoid ‘accidents’ like that.

That’s not an “open PvP server” though. If you have to flag to fight, you’ll just have people who NEVER flag, and treat it like a PvE server.

As for the other scenario? So what? THat’s how OWPvP works. You PK or get PKed. I’ve been ganked. Camped. Frustrated. However! If it was an OWPVP server.. people would expect things like this. People would also be prepared. Level scaling. In WvW the concept already works. While someone already 80 with the best gear has a better advantage, lower level players still have a chance.

If it’s a server where you have to flag to participate in “open PvP”, it’s not a “PvP” server. It’s just like EVERY PvE server in WoW or RIFT (as an example) where anyone can flag for PvP and attack/be attacked, or turn it off and “hide”.

Or, given the nature of the waypoint system, people would try to duck out of combat long enough to just teleport somewhere else on the map.

Not sure what games you’ve played in the past, but those that i’ve played, that have features OWPVP, the pvp weren’t low pop. heck even look at WoW… some of its best PvE players are all on FULL PvP realms.

I’ve played TONS of MMOs. I’m something of an MMO addict. PvP servers DO tend to be the lower-pop servers. Mordred (DAOC’s PvP server) for instance started out quite solid as far as population went. But it slowly diminished as more people got tired of it. Same with Darktide in AC. Same with the PvP/RP-PvP servers I played on in WoW, etc.

Like I said, the number of changes you’d have to make to GW2 to enable “open PvP” are likely just too many for the devs to consider it to be worthwhile for such a small subset of the population.

As for guilds? They thrived on this. There were great alliances, and players weren’t afraid to attack one another. Guilds also had respect (to an extent). It always bums me out to see people going off on how WPvP is just about ganking lowbies, won’t work without factions, or will fail because people are afraid. WPvP can work with the right rule sets introduced.

The reason people tend to mention the “lowbie ganking” aspect of open PvP is because that’s what people remember about PvP servers. It’s just human nature to remember bad events more clearly. Like in WoW, people never remembered all the good, competent hunters they’d grouped with, but they all remembered the “huntard” that “ninja looted” some great item, and so ALL hunters got a bad rep.

Open PvP can work IF the game is set up to handle it. GW2 isn’t. Adding an open PvP server for this game would be a nightmare, because you WOULD have tons of gankers running around giggling and slaughtering people for the hell of it. Oh, you’re doing a DE that fails if the npc dies? Kekeke, looks like you’re gonna fail this one, cause I’m going to gank you and let the mobs kill the NPC, lolz!

And how would the “group DEs” work? If it’s open PvP, that means aoe attacks would hit EVERYONE. Heck, even single-target attacks would hit other players if they got between you and the mob. Would those events simply have to be removed from the game? They’d be all but impossible to do in an open PvP environment.

So yeah, between having to restructure the entire game to fit open PvP, those servers typically having fairly low populations to begin with (PvP servers are generally some of the lowest-pop servers), and people who would just go there to be jerks and gank everything, it would be a nightmare.

It has nothing to do with “over-sensitive gamers”. Even back in AC in ‘99 on the Darktide server you’d have the same setup. There would be the gankers, the guilds dedicated to fighting one another, etc. The gankers were just the most visible, because they’d go out of their way to harass people.

Ultimately, the main reason it most likely won’t hapkitten simple: it’s just not worth the developer time or effort to implement something that would require so many changes for a tiny subset of the population.

I ran into a new one in Queensland last night, out near where the troll champion is. Some skritt was stealing chickens (I think?) from a farm and running away with them, so you chase him down and capture him. He’ll randomly turn people attacking him into chickens for 10 seconds or so (gives you an achievement, hehe).

I really wish they’d just add a wardrobe tab. The current system with the transmutation stones is interesting, but clunky, and forces you to farm them (I have a character slot I just make new characters on and explore one of the cities to get 3 more stones, then delete them and start over) if you want to be able to change your look more more than a couple times.

I mean, how hard can it really be? So many other games have it. “I really like how this chest piece looks! So once I outlevel it, I’m just going to drop it into my wardrobe chest slot, and now poof, I always look like I’m wearing it no matter what actual gear I’m using! Yay!”

Hell, they could actually make MORE money doing it that way — sell really cool cosmetic gear on the store!

My charr just has a singular name: Longtalon

She’s a necromancer, so I thought it was fitting in a fashion — her reach is very long. Even beyond death.

It would be nice if there was some sort of diminishing returns, or even immunity to CC abilities after you recover from them for a time. I’ve run into several situations where mobs with knockback will punt you into the aggro range of another nearby mob with the same abilities, and it just snowballs. Or when you’re trying to get to certain areas (such as vistas or skill points) and there are multiple mobs clustered in a tight area who can all knock/stun.

I had a fight last night that was like that, on my warrior. Knocked back into more aggro, got up, dodged forward to get back into range to fight, knocked down, got up, knocked back again by the other mob, got up, snared, stagger forward, knocked back… I think I was incapacitated for 10+ seconds because they’d time their stun/knocks to hit right after the other one wore off.

Cernow.3974:

As for a change, I’d like to see less mobs with knockdowns / knockbacks. When you play melee you find this is a rather overused mechanic that very quickly becomes tedious because too many mobs have knockdowns / knockbacks which cannot be anticiptated, aren’t properly telegraphed (so can’t be dodged) or just plain don’t make sense or are inappropriate for the mob type. This mechanic has been given to far too many mobs in the game, many of them in an undocumented manner (not mentioned in the mob’s description).

I was just kvetching about this last night in map chat on my warrior.

It’s even worse if you end up fighting 3-4 mobs at once and they all have it. I’ve run into several fights where my warrior was just getting punted all over the place in rapid succession. Or stunned, and the split-second it wears off another mob slaps another stun on me. I’d end up being stunned/helpless for sometimes up to 10 seconds at a time. And worse, they seem to have REALLY short cooldowns on their moves, compared to ours…

Hm, fix ONE thing? Probably the “mob randomly goes invulnerable” bug. It happens a lot under water, but occurs on land fairly often as well. This is especially bad when you get swarmed and a couple of the mobs suddenly turn invulnerable and heal back up to full while others are still attacking you.

As far as changing, probably the #1 thing I’d add would be a “preview” function on the trading post. I still can’t believe it doesn’t allow that. It seems so basic, since EVERY other merchant has it.

Hickeroar.9734:

Sorry, but there’s nothing awful about this armor. I think you meant “Fantastic.”

The number of medium armor styles that aren’t trenchcoats/longcoats are very few and far between.

What’s wrong with a leather shirt and pants? I don’t want to have it be a midriff-baring “look at mah bellah!” shirt, or pants that are split along the sides to show off skin and be “sexy”.

I want some normal, functional-looking, utilitarian leather armor.

Rukia.4802:

Hey, at least we got human female T3

I honestly think the human tier-3 medium looks horrible. A crop-top and leather fishnets? What the hell?

I haven’t managed to find anyone else playing it yet.

I ran around doing it solo, and it looked like it’d be a blast with enough people.

Jestunhi.7429:

They’re not out of place, they cause events which if failed mean the waypoint is contested with mobs taking over the area which then spawns additional events to allow the players to recapture them.

That’s a metagame mechanic.

And the lack of a portal animation is no reason for a feature to be removed.

Where did I say I wanted them removed?

It’s nothing like seeing a car in LOTRO because it’s not against the established lore, unless I am missing something?

Actually, teleportation without any sort of gate is supposedly something that only one little krewe of asura have come up with (they show it off to win the Snaff Prize during the asura starting quests). And even then it’s not perfect.

So yeah, everyone having a personal teleporter kind of flies in the face of the lore ANet’s written.

I worry how many people use “it breaks immersion” as a catch-all excuse.

It’s not a “catch-all”, but it IS a large factor in game enjoyment for a lot of people, myself included.

Dragons, magic, robot/golom things, tree people, centaurs, all kinds of weird and wonderful things are perfectly acceptable and apparently keep you immersed in the world… but if there’s teleportation it completely shatters immersion!

Can anyone explain some actual logic behind this?

Okay, let me explain my take on it.

Let’s say you’re watching Lord of the Rings. The scenery, the acting, the action, it’s all drawing you into the movie. You’re enjoying the hell out of it.

Then suddenly one of the hobbits says “Hang on a sec” and pulls out a cellphone, and orders a pizza. A few minutes later a car pulls up alongside their horses and a guy hops out and gives him a pizza, then drives off.

It completely shatters your “immersion” in the movie, right?

Another example: You’re reading a mystery novel set in the 20’s, and getting really into it. Suddenly one of the characters starts saying things like “omg then u found teh murderer hiding in teh closet? lolz!” It would snap you out of your immersion in the book.

That’s what the ability to just click on the map and port anywhere does to a lot of people. It just shoves “you’re just playing a game” in your face.

It’s not that “teleportation” ruins peoples’ immersion. It’s that it’s handled in such a way that is completely NON-immersive. You don’t open a portal via some asuran techno-magic device and get ported somewhere. You just click the map and poof, you’re staring at (yet) another loading screen.

While they’re extremely convenient, they’re a very blatant “metagame mechanic” rather than something intrinsic to the way the world actually works. The asuran portals, for instance, are teleportation devices that work within the rules of the world. Waypoints, however, don’t. The NPCs make no mention of them and don’t use them. To the NPCs, the waypoints don’t even exist.

That’s why they’re not really “immersive” to me. They’re something out of place, that only exists for the players to make running around faster.

I don’t want them removed, since I do use them to move around, but they DO make the world feel a LOT smaller.

Looking at the variety of leather armor from GW1 in that link Navi posted, I’m saddened GW2’s medium armor seems to have a serious lack of variety.

I don’t want stripper-armor. I don’t want trechcoats. Why can’t I have normal leather armor? Pants, a shirt/tunic that doesn’t go down past my belt, etc?

I would LOVE something like the krytan faction armor (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Ranger_Krytan_armor_f.jpg) or the istani armor (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Ranger_Istani_armor_f.jpg) for my ranger in GW2.

Please, ANet, no more trenchcoats.

I can’t stand the trenchcoat look, personally. In every game that uses something similar, I always end up hating it. I think the main reason is due to how the “skirt” part of the coat is handled in animations. If you’re just standing around it doesn’t look TOO awful, but the moment you start moving/fighting, it looks ridiculous.

My ranger wears the “noble” outfit right now, which looks okay when she’s not moving. But once she starts fighting? The bottom of the “coat” flares out so freaking much it makes her look like her thighs are the size of aircraft carriers. It’s to prevent clipping, yeah, but it looks AWFUL to me.

Why can’t they add some “tucked in shirt” style armors? I was looking at some scale armor I found to see what it would look like in my warrior (who’s human as well) and it looked GREAT in combination with the leather pants. Had a really nice combination of protection and mobility. Made her look like a D&D bard, which made me happy.

Sadly, ANet has a massive kitten for the stupid trenchcoat look. :/

On my ranger I have a leather tunic with blousy sleeves and tight pants tucked into knee-high folded boots. Personally, I really like the look, and I dread having to give it up, as every leather coat I’ve found so far other than that has been the leather trenchcoat style.

I found some chain armor last night and idly previewed it to see what it would look like (since my warrior is also a human), and I REALLY wish I could use that look on my ranger. A chain shirt, pauldrons, and leather pants was just such a really nice look! Reminded me of a bard.

Pity we can’t transmute appearance between armor types. Just disable it in pvp if people are worried about that.

I have kind of a ‘like/dislike’ relationship with waypoints (won’t say love/hate, cause I don’t feel that strongly about it). On the one hand, they’re nice because they allow me to jump around and turn stuff in, or hop over and try to participate in a DE that’s going on.

On the other hand, they tend to make the zones feel absolutely TINY, once you’ve wandered through them a single time. Need to go to the opposite end of the zone? No probably. Click. There.

At first I thought the world felt really huge, and I was enjoying wandering around exploring. Then after I started using waypoints, it’s as if the entire world shrunk down and is about 10% as large as I first thought.

I’d actually rather that there were only like 3-4 waypoints per zone, myself, rather than the 15-20. It would make the zones feel bigger.