Guild Wars 2

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

It would be okay if it was a toggle as has been suggested. however my reason for it being a toggle is different then the ones mentioned.

Sometimes when farming stuff we are farming to sell, not keep. It’s preferable to keep this stuff in inventory so it can be sold directly, instead of needing to go to the bank to collect it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

It’s not the new system that’s the problem. It’s the fact that they took away any way for the individual to contribute as an individual.

A single player cannot really contribute on a regular basis in a meaningful way towards the main currency (favor). Everything favor related pretty much requires a group.

Previously, with influence, any player was able to contribute towards the guild they were representing simply by playing the game “their way”. This was done specifically so players didn’t feel forced into any specific mode of play. Yet this has been forgotten and taken away. Players must now participate in specific events, that guilds will host at specific times, that will be in the GUILDS preferred mode of play.

Good bye player diversity.

Guilds are supposed to be a united group of individual players, not a mindless hive mind mob. Yet they removed any aspect of the individual in guilds. The mix of individuals is what makes a guild what it is. Removing that removes the spirit of the guild, and makes being in a guild a job, instead of a joy.

I actually thought originally when they discussed adventures that they would be in Tyria Proper, and not just in HoT.

I found myself to be quite disappointed that they were not. I also thought the Outpost Event system was going to be out in Tyria Proper as well. Again disappointed.

I should just stop thinking! :P

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I feel like all the posts so far on this thread have been a little one-sided, and I have an urge to offer a dissenting opinion. Maybe I’m just a masochist.

I’ll keep it brief. There’s nothing wrong with your arguments, and you deserve the immersive, connected collections you desire. But given that our definitions of terms like ‘immersive’ and ‘connected’ are subjective, and that we’re each trying to play as we like, it probably won’t surprise you that I like collections that you would deem divorced from the game’s lore/urgency. I am one of those ‘gotta-catch-em-all’ collectors one of the posters mentioned above. I like the scavenger hunt that isn’t directly connected to the lore, like jar collector. Or finding all the lost coins/badges in sw/dry top. My friends and I, who live geographically far apart, enjoy spending time together by taking part in events, fighting bosses and otherwise engaging in the lore – but we also enjoy taking a time out and exploring together, helping each other find those badges or whatever.

So, basically, collections don’t disengage players from Tyria. Your engagement is whatever you want it to be, and takes a form that is entirely subjective to you. Collections are just another avenue to play the game, and I want more, especially dive master. There are so many awesome spots to dive from. I wish they could be added to that achievement (or maybe Dive Master II) and that you could somehow capture and replay those dives.

My response is specifically about the Dive Achievement. It has brought an issue to light for me.

Some achievements, such as Dive Master, that require multiple steps or locations or such, don’t actually track which ones you’ve done. It would be nice, if when I clicked the Dive Master achievement, there was a list of diving locations, in which the once I have achieved show up, and I can click on them and it shows them to me on a map. Where as the ones I have yet to find are “locked” and do not show the location, or tell me where it is (though I’m okay with hints, some people are not and I know this.) I just really want a way to track what I’ve done and what I haven’t. I’ve been diving in a lot of places, however many of them were prior to the diving achievement, so I have NO idea which ones I’ve completed for the achieve and which ones I have not.

Being able to track actual progress towards an achievement is important to me.

Maybe not everyone, but the option would be nice.

When GW2 came out, something that was an issue for me, was that there was no real direction.

For example, if I wanted to make a Legendary weapon, it involved lists of things to gather, where to gather them, how to combine them, things I needed to earn vs buy, and so on. In the end, the list was so huge and unorganized, I said screw it, and just decided to act like legendaries didn’t exist. For me in game, they didn’t really.

There was no direction. There was no journey. There was no way IN GAME to know what to do, where to do it, or even what I needed!

Collections, in some ways, have addressed this problem. Recently with the new release I feel like FINALLY, GW2 is providing some direction for players in game, instead of having to refer to a wiki every 5 seconds simply to find something to do that had some purpose.

There are some ways I feel that more direction could be added to the game, without shoving tons of data into the face of players who don’t want anything to do with those goals.

I use legendary weapons for my examples because they are the most well known, and most complicated journey you can make in game to earn something, but my examples below could be used for any journey a player can make in game.

Example: My character decides they want to take on a new journey. (I want to dedicate myself to earning something.) I’m not sure what kind of journey I would like to take on, so I head to my Order’s headquarters. Surely someone there will be able to tell me about journey’s I could take.

Let’s say my character is a member of the Vigil. I go and I talk to the Vigil historian and tell him about my desire to do something meaningful with my life. He offers up some information about Legendary Weapons that I might be interested in. At the end he also says that The Priory and The Order of Whispers might have some journey’s that might interest me, (but of course getting the cutting edge of weaponry is most important, you are a part of the Vigil after all!).

I decide I want to make Bifrost. The historian notes that while I can start my journey for Bifrost with them, because of the elemental powers that it is imbued with, my journey will require me to work with both The Priory and the Asura to obtain everything necessary. Not to mention the amount of time I will need to spend to obtain everything needed to make the physical staff itself, and the training, provided by The Vigil, needed to use it to it’s full potential in battle.

I explain to the historian that this is indeed what I want, and so he sends me on a journey. The first part of my journey, the physical collection for the base weapon prior to imbuing it, is what he gives me. He provides a list of things I will need to collect, and gives me access to The Vigils Hall of Records (or something similar), in which previous members of the Vigil recorded where they got the necessary components. Should I forget where or how to get anything on this part of my journey, I simply return to the Vigil Headquarters and refresh my memory by reading the Records.

Once this is complete, he offers me the recipe to craft the base weapon (also known as a stage 1 precursor!) I craft the weapon. He then says that this is where his knowledge ends and I will need to visit the Priory Archives to continue my journey, then tells me he will see me back for training during the last phase of my journey.

I go and use the Priory archives and talk with one of the Priory’s top enchanters, as well as one of their Scientists. After I complete this phase I am sent to the Asura to do an elemental imbuing required to complete the Precursor. I complete that phase, and am sent to LA to complete a dedication before The Vigil will train me in using my staff and completing my journey. To test my dedication LA sends me out to collect rare and legendary materials throughout the world. I then am directed to take these materials to the Mystic Forge, where due to my dedication Zymoros will finish the conversion of the Precursor into the Legendary Weapon. For the last step I am required to take my weapon back to the Vigil, my own order, to train me in the use of the Bifrost. At this point I complete a simple “training instance,” with Bifrost, after which time Bifrost is permanently unlocked for my account, however I can only have one Bifrost unlocked via this method on my account at any time.

IE, if my Elementalist has Bifrost, but I want to use Bifrost on my Necromancer, I’m required to remove it from my Elementalist prior to using it on my Necro. However by completing a shorter journey, I am able to get additional Bifrosts, all of which are account bound.

Now if a player doesn’t want to do all that, they can always make it the old way. But if a person wants the additional direction, they can follow the “quests” available in game.

This type of collection I think would be beneficial to the game, and the players by allowing them to learn about collectibles they might not have known about, and by allowing them to collect them using information provided directly by the game instead of a wiki, out of game. Thus allowing a player to remain immersed in the game, and inside the story the Journey has created for them. Every Legendary would have a different journey, requiring you to visit different Orders for various reasons, and maybe a race or two which would be contributors to making it.

I think it’s The Moot(?) the disco ball, that would make a great journey learning about and collecting artifacts pertinent to the history of music and dancing in each race. Maybe including things like visiting the piano in Ebonhawke.

Things like the jar collection could be given to you by an Asuran who likes to collect specimens in jars or something. But initially your characters Order, or a Journeyman in LA or any of the starter cities, would provide you with a “rumour” that would send you in the right direction to start the journey you want. Imagine a Krytan based collection, the LA Journeyman might have heard a rumour that The Journeyman in Divinity’s Reach had recently finished a collection of Krytan Historical artifacts and that a Collector had given him a handsome reward for adding to his collection of Krytan artifacts.

TLDR: There are endless possiblities in which Collections could be completed by Journey’s in game, without requiring the extensive need for wiki usage. If a player ever got lost, they could simply return to the last step, or their starter step, and receive a hint or clue as to where to go next. The clues don’t even have to be all that obscure. “There is a skritt in Queensdale that has been rumoured to guard Place of Power. This place of Power can be used to fuse Bloodstone dust into Charged Blood Shards.” So you go and find the hero point in Queensdale guarded by the skritt, and commune with it to charge some bloodstone dust into a shard. If you need multiple shards, then maybe you make 3 of them, one a day for 3 days.

This game is about the Journey of our characters, maybe actually adding real journeys which we can choose to go on would provide the direction some people (many people) need.

Back when it first came out, I had actually stopped playing because I felt like there was no direction in which to go in. Sure I could do anything, but none of it MEANT anything. There was no purpose. Journeys provide that.

I’m about 10 shy from the math I did. I submitted a ticket and was told to file a bug report….or post on forums, where this issue has yet to be acknowledged.

Okay a few things.

I’m in a small guild. I’m leader of said guild. I’m open to basically anyone joining that guild if they understand it’s a CASUAL guild. Frankly, that’s not what most people want. If it is what they want than play times, contributions and ability to do guild quests is unreliable at best. Not saying that as a bad thing, it’s just how casual gaming works. People play when and how they want. Whether thats once a week, a few days a month, only WvW solo or w/e. If they are friendly and nice, I will take them no problem.

I in turn, will not turn running the guild into a job. Everyone who plays is responsible for themselves and I’m not going to dictate, when, where, how or how much they play or do anything. If I want something in the guild, such as a hall, then I personally will put in the money and effort necessary to get it. If that means recruiting some helpful people for something, in my guild or otherwise, then I will do so. But ultimately I do it because I want it.

I understand that as a small guild, and as the type of guild leader I am, that I will be putting in the work for anything I want. I know it will take me longer than a guild larger than me, and often times even guilds of our size, because I don’t make my members do anything they don’t want to unless it’s for something THEY want. (If they want it, they can work for it, or they don’t get it, just like me. I will usually help them though if they are doing the work.)

However, building things on the guild bases is already time gated. This was done to keep large guilds from instantly doing all the upgrades and being done.

There is no need to have more than one set of time gates. If you have already gated it, then gating it again serves no purpose. It’s redundant.

Should materials and gold be required to build or purchase things in the guild hall? Yes. Should this content be so drastic to be another time gate in it’s own right? No. There is no purpose to that. What it SHOULD be, is purposeful to the upgrade.

I also advocate for there being 2 ways to complete every upgrade.

Example: Guild wants a tavern.

Tavern Build:
Step 1: Retrieve necessary materials from the world. This would be anything necessary in actually building or restoring the physical tavern. Wood, Metals, even some cloth for banners, curtains and the like. These would be refined resources, so would need to be refined through crafting. Guilds who don’t want to put forth the effort of collecting and refining the materials could buy them on TP.

Step 2: Build the Tavern with said materials. Either the guild can build it on their own, which would take time and interacting with Tavern site. Or they can hire a construction crew for gold, food, and drinks. If they choose to build it, then it would be a setup where crafting disciplines were needed. A level 250 Weaponsmith or Armoursmith for example would have the skills necessary to build the walls. Which would require them to interact with the wall area, and perform a series of crafts. Each thing would take X amount of time to complete. So it might take 5 hours to complete the floor. You would do the initial starting that action. Then go do things. But you couldn’t build anything else that required the floor until that action was done. So 5 hours later you could start building a wall for example. And every piece of the tavern would require that action. Using a construction crew might take 24 hours total, but doing it yourself might take a week, or more if you don’t get on regularly as a guild to build it.

Step 3: Stock the Tavern. This would require crafting furniture, collecting various liquors and foods, and Finding NPC’s to work for you. If you don’t want to do all this, you can buy the materials on the TP, hire woodworkers to make the furniture, and hire an NPC through the guild initiative. All of which cost more, but are more efficient and quick.

Each step had 2 options. One to be done by the guild, which would take more time and effort. One to be done by paying the Guild Initiative to hire people to do it for you, and buying the needed materials from the TP. Guilds could use any combination to do this as well.

It would make materials collection more realistic as well. Maybe for Tavern Level 1, the materials needed to build it are low level mats. Low level Crafting Masteries would be required. Foods and Drinks would all be ones you would make at low levels or sold by NPC’s in low level areas. To make the Tavern Level 2 you would have to get higher level materials and so on.

In this way as well, individual members could help your builds. Since people could build parts of the buildings on individuals basis, then every person can contribute something.

TL;DR By changing how upgrades are done, they can provide more playstyle options, while maintaining the original time gate requirements, and allowing all guilds a chance at stuff, if they are willing to work or pay, regardless of size.

I’m not a WvW player. However I do think that over time you should have a way to get hero points by playing WvW. Maybe you already do and they just aren’t fast enough for you. Like I said, I don’t WvW.

But what I do know is that working for them in PvE actually serves a purpose. It makes us play the content. Which is kind of the point of the game…you know, to play….

And if we have to work for it, WvW should have to too.

And we SHOULD have to work for it. I remember spending time just going through all my weapons learning all the skills for each weapon so I could use it when I needed it way back when. Much less the unlocking skills people mentioned earlier. I remember being 80 and still having 2 elite skills left to unlock. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m glad they took us back to that at least a little.

Everyone says it’s a grind.

It’s only a grind if YOU make it a grind.

Seriously guys. None of the content requires you to grind for hours and hours to get something you need to complete something else.

If you need things for the HoT area, then just complete as you go. If you just play it (instead of rushing through skipping absolutely everything you can to make it further than everyone else) you will have what you need at the next area to continue on. If you don’t want to play the area, then you don’t need the things that make you able to play there!

If you want things in Tyria, cuz lets face it, none of it is content that you actually need. Then you can easily earn masteries and the like by, oh I don’t know, playing the content!

If you consume the game like locusts, you’re always going to be hungry, just like locusts.

There is no lack of content. There is only lack of acceptance that it’s a game, and it is meant to be played.

As the the “Unfinished” part of this. It’s an MMO. MMO’s are by their very nature, unfinished, constantly under development. Just because you pay for it, doesn’t mean the development stops. As a matter of fact, the money you paid is WHY it can keep developing in the first place.

First off I’m not dismissing anyone’s issues, just to be clear. That said:

I am running GW2 HoT on a two year old laptop with an integrated graphics chip, on questionable wifi.

I occasionally(rarely actually) get some weird lag type stuff happening where it freezes/unfreezes/freezes/unfreezes, repeatedly every second or so for up to 20 seconds or so.

I have not crashed, with the noted exception of when they did the update that screwed over most everyone and wouldn’t let them load into their map. After they patched that a few hours later, I have had no more crashes or map issues.

During events like an overpopulated Maw I get about 7 fps. The rest of the time I average 30. My ping stays consistently between 50-150ms.

Noting all of this, their might be something in specific systems that’s causing it, but it’s not due to low specs, since I have said low specs and run fine.

Something you guys miht be able to do to help is to post your basic specs here, and see if the majority of you guys have anything in common. Are you Nvidia users? Are you using an AMD processor? Do use a realtek ethernet adapter? Are you running Windows 10? Are you using Avast security?

I throw out random stuff, but sometimes it’s one thing that everyone has in common but makes no sense if you are thinking about it as a cause. You won’t know if you don’t compare. Now eventually the devs will get to doing exactly that with the logs, and data you send in, but you might be able to figure it out on your own.

I personally think they will go back someday (maybe after next expac) and make the rest of Tyria glideable via an additional Glide mastery. “Free Range Gliding” or some such thing.

In theory it’s actually possible currently, the action to do so however is turned off in map rules. A few modifications would be required obviously, but they could be relatively easy.

IE: Checkpoint system for jump puzzles. Every jump puzzle could have invisible checkpoints that you pass through during completion. This means you would have to do the whole thing in order for the chest at the end to “unlock.”

Or impenetrable canopy’s could be added to open world jump puzzles. It would also add more ways to make the maps fresh, such as glide races to get from one area to another. Glide based diving locations and so on. A couple updrafts and you could have full map guild race activities in the sky and such. None of those would require any significant alterations to the existing map terrain. A few additions and some permission changes and tada. Brand new experiences (and adventures in Tyria instead of only the new maps.)

I’m going to wait on reporting it for a week or so. I expect this is an issue they are aware of and working on fixing.

When I went through and looked, Story Achieves that I have done have the Mastery point listed when you click and view. However the 3 charr ones I have not completed do NOT have one listed either on the first page, or after I click to view.

Maybe some of the story ones are borked and others aren’t? I don’t know cuz I definitely have more than 11 story’s done, so I have at least some of them. However all that I’ve gotten do show a mastery point on the viewing page.

Also I would SWEAR that there are a few Mastery Points that you can collect out in Tyria Proper. Was I hallucinating? I can’t find them on the map now…

So I went through and added all of the achievement ones up one by one by going through every achievement I have. I should have 27, but I have 17 including the 3 I’ve spent. I also know there are a couple that you gather on maps. I believe I’ve collected one of those. So I’m actually 11 shy.

Wait so how many mastery points should an account have with one level 80, full map completed (excluding Dry Top and upwards), Full personal story completed.

I have a few other toons too, 1 80 Sylvari Ele about in the 70s on her story.

I have 1 complete Priory, One complete Whispers, And one joined into The Vigil.

And a BUTTload of achieves done.

So how many should I have? Cuz I had 15 when I logged in on HoT update day.

Also I’ve perused the wiki, and I can’t find where it says we can actually get all our mastery points from…. links plz?

nvm I found the acheives with it listed, looks like 25 total for Tyria General Achieves that you can get. I haven’t done dungeons or 3 charr story’s from General so I’m 4 shy, and should have 21 from that section alone. Which makes me 4 shy right now, and I’ve earned at least 1 more if not 2 since HoT launch.

That’s not including the other achieves.

Of note. The Wiki says we get them on certain stories For Example: Blooding the Past and From Howl To Silence. However viewing these in game(I don’t have them) does not say that it will award a Mastery Point once completed. It’s not included in the list anywhere for those stories.

Our missing points are most likely from those achievements.

As of right now? Mad King’s Labyrinth. Sell your ToT bags. I can make 20g an hour or so on a map that is capped in players.

I have to say, flax is easy to come by. It’s a great source of income for those of us not using, and if you guys don’t want to, or don’t have the money to buy it, get your guild out to farm it, and you’ll probably get plenty. It is a GUILD effort after all, so having the whole guild pitch in kinda makes sense.

And if it’s a small guild, like mine, we can (or have to) wait until later due to lesser activity, lesser funds, and by that time the price will be more palatable to smaller guilds.

There is plenty of flax out there. New resources are ofc hard to come buy in bulk right after they come on the market. ANet saw this and even implementen some flax edits in that stuff specifically because it saw this issue.

Patience and money make the world go round.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

zaxziakohl.5243:

I tried this. I think I stayed for 20 minutes, half hour, something like that.

I was curious. However I do feel it’s an exploit. But hey, whatever, no big deal.

I would have rather seen tomes and writs be usable towards Tyrian masteries, than seen this be used and approved by ANet to be honest.

People who have tomes and writs have arguably earned that experience. It would certainly be more of a pay off than turning each tomb into a SINGLE spirit shard (like seriously?!) Even if it were at a reduced rate, such as 1 tome is 50% of a mastery level, I’d be cool with that too. And then all those vets who are in there farming CoF because they are bored with content they are being forced to go back to, would have a way to get those masteries earned without having to grind through old content. After all, they earned those tomes.

I ran it for about… 2 hours?.. last night. Was definitely falling alseep in my chair after the first half hour or so, but I stuck it out.

I don’t really see how this is an exploit given that all you get is xp. People didn’t consider “dungeon runs” an exploit, and prior to their recent nerf you’d get far more xp (not to mention loot, gold, and tokens) in less time, and it was just as repeatable.

This is probably gonna sound stupid, but it’s how I feel. If people actually did the whole dungeon, and finished it, I’d be less likely to think of it as an exploit.

Even if they sat there for a few hours whacking at mobs, if they then finished the actual dungeon, it would be less exploit-like in my eyes, because they are doing the content more as it’s meant to be done.

FYI I’ve never done any dungeon farming(aside from that half hour). I’ve been in less dungeons than I have fingers and toes during my 3 years in the game. Precisely because I feel that it should be run from start to finish and rarely want to tie up my time that way.

Nike.2631:

Ehra.5240:

Nike.2631:

I’ll agree that “elite” was a terrible choice of names,

Why? As I explained above, it fits perfectly with other uses of the word “elite” in regards to character abilities.

It’s terrible because of the expectation of superior performance it evokes for many players. Off the top of my head in 30 seconds~

Secondary Specialization.
Focus Specialization.
Dedicated Specialization.
Alternate Specialization.

That language is dripping with choices that show the new options are not part of the core choices but also not inherently superior either. “Elite” was a poor choice and my eyebrows went up the very first moment I read that they were being called that.

How about Advanced Specializations? Still shows you have to be further along in character development and requires special skills (such as wielding new weapons) but without the expectation that they will be better than other specs.

I also thought it was going to require actually completing the mastery to get the tag. However seeing as how hard it will be to get that last tier, I could see ANet understandably put it at tier 3 or so. But right of the bat on tier one? Bad move.

Also maybe some cosmetic changing on the map tags. It is REALLY hard to see commander tags in comparison to mentor tags, especially if near eachother.

And no, I am not, nor have ever had commander tags. I speak as someone who looks for them when running trains. Most of the people running around with mentor tags up aren’t actually leading anything…. commanders are much more likely to be.

I tried this. I think I stayed for 20 minutes, half hour, something like that.

I was curious. However I do feel it’s an exploit. But hey, whatever, no big deal.

I would have rather seen tomes and writs be usable towards Tyrian masteries, than seen this be used and approved by ANet to be honest.

People who have tomes and writs have arguably earned that experience. It would certainly be more of a pay off than turning each tomb into a SINGLE spirit shard (like seriously?!) Even if it were at a reduced rate, such as 1 tome is 50% of a mastery level, I’d be cool with that too. And then all those vets who are in there farming CoF because they are bored with content they are being forced to go back to, would have a way to get those masteries earned without having to grind through old content. After all, they earned those tomes.

I’m working on the third tier of the Mentor Mastery. I did a lot of running around Mad King Lab, no one on the map having a tag. Why? I didn’t know I had said tag.

I had automatically assumed it was something you learned when you finished the Mastery line.

Seeing how many mastery points it takes to finish the fifth tier, I can see why it’s not on the 5th tier.

HOWEVER, for the love of God the Mentor Tag should be AT LEAST second tier, preferably 3rd tier.

Putting in on first tier was completely ridiculous.

You are Elite in the fact that you mastered your class enough to be able to learn how to use a weapon that is not native to your class.

In reality, it’s just another playstyle option for that class. It doesn’t make it any less elite however, seeing as you still have to get to 80 and do enough stuff in the world to actually be able to open it up and learn it.

I just wrote all this out and ran into some unknown error, so trying again.

I only have one issue with the new system.

Individuals in guilds of ANY size, have no way to meaningfully contribute. They MUST be in a group. (This might be a bit different when you get a hall, but I’m thinking favor is still required so it would still stand.)

Previously individuals were able to contribute by playing the game. Even if they played solo or with other people. This has been taken away. It doesn’t matter what I do for my guild, at least not at this stage, I cannot earn favor for my guild. It wouldn’t matter if the guild was 40 players, 2 players or 500 players. “I” as an individual cannot contribute favor. For players who get on at odd times, have restricted time limits or schedules, or simply aren’t good at playing with other players (yes there are solo players in guild for the social contact but not the group playing), there is NO way to contribute favor.

There should be a set of individual goals each week that a player can complete ON THEIR OWN, that earn small amounts of favor for their guild.

For example, lets say each week I can complete max 3 individual “Guild Initiatives.” There are 9 to select from 3 PvE, 3 PvP, and 3 WvW. This way, even if my guild is a PvP guild, I can still choose to contribute on an individual basis in whatever game format I feel most comfortable with.

Each Guild Initiative would give 5-10 favor and a small personal reward.

PvE could be things like Scout missions, Material hunting, and Making Alliances (involves currying the favor of NPC’s by completing a task for them).

PvP missions could be anything as specific as Stealth Practice (Deliver a Killing Blow while stealthed) or as broad as kill 5 different classes in X map. They could have a lot of fun with these.

WvW could have WvW versions of both the PvP and PvE Guild Initiatives and some of it’s own concerning capping, supply etc. You could even do things like Get 1 kill in Obsidian Sanctum using the floor traps.

This would give everyone a way to contribute on their on time, without making it too OP, because the weekly favor cap would still be in place.

There are solutions. But having it so that a single player can’t contribute on their own is a problem. Regardless of guild size.

Set your weekly challenges to PvE. Guild Rushes (Races) have no mimimum requirement of people and as far as I know you can recruit non-guild members to help you finish them. Even on easy, doing it once will give you the favor needed to get a guild hall.

Then it’s just a matter of collecting money, and getting people to help you claim the hall.

My opinion on this:

An engineer’s job, would be to take what it sees as the best in the classes it fights with, and find a way to make the same effects using tech/potions/etc.

Because it’s using it’s tech to try to get similar results, sometimes it will get better results, sometimes it will get weaker results, and sometimes it will get unexpected side-effects.

So it makes perfect sense to me that a well developed engineer would have a little bit of flavor from every class.

I’m also having this happen. I lost a lot of skills being open that I had already opened. And I’ve leveled from 22 through 31 and received NO hero points from levelling. I have gained 13 hero points via challenges because I needed to it re-unlock my portal skill in glamour.

So if I am missing the points, I’m missing about 40 of them from levelling.

Guilds are about building community. Splitting guild features across expansions is detrimental to that.

Guilds interested in the new content will recruit HoT users and kick vanilla players.

Guilds will become split making many guild an either/or situation. New expansion players will only want to join guilds that participate in HoT guild content.

Because so much functionality is moved out of the guild panel and to the guild bases, existing guilds that don’t buy HoT will effectively have content being TAKEN AWAY from them. All that influence, consumables, upgrades and the like are going to be applied to a guild base THEY DO NOT HAVE. Meaning they get NOTHING until they upgrade.

No guild missions, no more consumables, no wvw benefits. Nothing.

Without HoT guilds will be nothing more than a glorified chat channel.

So I have one thing that has always driven me nuts on the trading post. It’s not fixed here, even though you have added the ability to fix it.

Lets say I’m cruising through axes. I want to collect all the skins, or maybe just see what’s there.

Here is what I see:

Berserkers’ Axe
Berserkers Iron Axe
Berserkers Sharp Axe
Clerics Axe
Clerics Bribery
Clerics Iron Axe
Clerics Sharp Axe… etc

If your scanning through the entries, and there are hundreds of them, there is a really good chance you missed the Clerics Bribery. It also means your seeing the same axe, repeatedly in each stat classification.

Stats are being added in as filters. The names like Berserker, Clerics, etc are now redundant within the listing of the trading post. Add an additional filter with preset stats (such as Berserker, etc) in the dropdown. Remove the name from the main listing name.

This way you can search general listings, like Iron Axe(General), or Steel Longsword(General). In cases where the person doesn’t care what stats they get, but are more concerned with price or skins, then this compacts the Trading post, and dramatically reduces the superfluous amount of listings and makes other individual listings much more visible (like many of the special weapons and rarer skins).

When they click the listing they are then prompted to buy the cheapest Iron Axe regardless of the stats.

People who are looking for specific stats have filters that enable them to do so. So the general view isn’t necessary for them.

If necessary this could even be added as a poweruser/filter feature. “Non-Stat sorting” which would allow you to see/buy general categories.

I HATE going through 1000’s of entries when 500 or more of them are basically duplicates. At least in skin/material/level.

Reconstruction does occur in various ways throughout the game. It is substantially slower than destroying things, which lets face it, that’s the nature of destruction. It’s fast, furious and unavoidable. However no real importance is placed on the reconstructions. They are occurring around us, but because no emphasis is placed on it people don’t notice. I notice because I play spuriously. However if playing consistently, it’s like watching a flower bloom. While a beautiful sight, it’s boring and no one is going to stick around to watch, they are going to come in and see the after-effect. That’s if they aren’t distracted by something else (like the entire rest of the game) and miss it entirely.
Possiblities to fix:
Reconstruction events-Occur after construction. They, just like their destruction counter parts, would have set goals and rewards. They would run concurrently with destruction events.
Example: d is destruction, r is reconstruction
Week 1(d)- Giant dragon wipes out huge swathes of Metrica Province.
Week 2(d)- A formidable force has been gathered and has attacked the dragon. In retaliation and fear he moves out of Metrica Province and makes a home on top of Rata Sum causing citizens to flee the city in fear.
Week 2®- The dragon has left Metrica Province and efforts are underway to clean up and reinforce it in case the dragon comes flees from Rata Sum and comes back. Actual damage would remain, however debris and such would be picked up and new structures for defense against the dragon would be placed.
Week 3(d)-The players have taken a stand against the dragon. It looks like victory will be soon. As the players attack, large parts of the city are damaged/destroyed. But ultimately the players beat the dragon.
Week 3®- Players are providing reinforcements in Metrica Province. Battlements have been created, and supply areas for weapons and fighters have been established for easy access to Rata Sum. This bolsters the (d) effort, ultimately allowing for the win. During this time many new structures are finalized, and many old structures have been changed to accommodate new defenses and housing for the fighters/refugees. Small side events occur that include bringing in food and supplies from other provinces, and garnering assistance from other maps.
Week 4®- Week four solely focuses on reconstruction. During this time the goals are (1)to finish the cleaning of Metrica Province such as replanting, removing any remaining destroyed buildings/rebuilding them, possibly adding new additions, (2) to pick up debris and get Rata Sum Merchants/NPC’s and citizens back into their city, even if not necessarily in the same place, blocking off destroyed areas, and adding Air Defenses to the city to prevent any further dragon attacks.
Week 5- New living story begins. Same cycle as above, however the reconstruction of Rata Sum and Metrica Province continues on a smaller scale through this week and next week.

This means that at any given week you’ll have 2-3 choices of how you help change the world. A setup like this not only caters to various playstyles, but it makes it feel more congruous.
Upgrade Events- These events would not be on a schedule and they would be interspersed within living stories as variety. For whatever reason existing structures would require modification/upgrades.
Example: LA is in disrepair so players are making home in The Grove, Divinity’s Reach, Black Citadel, Hoelbrek, and Rata Sum. To accommodate this the 5 cities have made a pact to help construct a main market in each city where major NPC’s will be hired so that all the major NPC’s are in one area, as well as a small monument to LA in each area, and the moving of that city’s Asura Gate to the new location. Each city is given 5 days of construction assistance before moving to the next city to build their new area. This would be relatively casual, and would last for 25 days. Rewards would be appropriate to the event/city being fixed and include construction tokens. On the final 5 days of that month, A Completion celebration would be held, 1 day per city, where party events are held and you can redeem your construction tokens for uber special prizes like a back piece or maybe a special weapon or armour skin specific to the city.
Even though it changes the world, it’s not included in the story unlocks. Instead it’s treated as a celebration, with the same 5 days of the following year seeing events to allow for old or new skins to be unlocked.
Construction- This one is kind of obvious, but basically something new needs built for whatever reason. In this case I’m thinking of, Zephyr Sanctum wants a home, so they go back to where they used to park, and a new Permanent Zephyr Sanctum is born. This is very similar in nature to Upgrading.
Players always want options. Making new things gives a different sense of comraderies and unity than fighting with your allies does. Some people crave that, even if it’s from NPC’s.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

nethykins.7986:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

Good point. So for me immersion breaking would be a pop up appearing after an event completes or following beating a dungeon. But you raise an interesting point with LFG. Perhaps (and i am just brainstorming here) it could be a tab that you can open up to give feedback.

I will think about it some more. Keep the ideas coming.

Chris

Send a mail after a player has completed something that is under evaluation. The mail system is immersive itself, and the questions can even be phrased in an immersive way.

Example: Tequatl battle- You can either fail, or succeed during the event. Upon failure the player receives a mail, and upon success the player recieves a different mail.

Failure mail- Hello! This is the Asuran Statistics Task Force! Word of Tequotl’s success has reached us and we would like to ask you a few questions concerning it. Are you going to come back and try fighting him again? Do you feel that he is worth your time to fight? Do you hate teq because he’s an evil dragon, or because you know you’ll never beat him? Answers to these questions will help us build our task force, as well as give us more statistics. We always want more statistics here at the Statistics Task Force! With enough information, we will be able to do the complex math involved in deciding whether or not we might help you with future encounters.

Success Mail- Congratulations from the Asuran Statistics Task Force! News of your victory has already reached far and wide. We have a few questions concerning your encounter with Tequatl that will help us decide whether we want to help the community with more encounters in the future, or leave you to your own devices. Do you feel that Tequatl was worth your time? Will you fight him again? If you had to change one thing about the encounter, what would it be? Your answers will go into our complex algorithms, and that will help us decide if we will assist with future encounters, or leave you to your own devices. Thank you for your participation.

Granted I’m guessing ANet could come up with better names/questions/and style of writing, I just wanted to show that it is possible to ask for feedback without breaking immersion.

ChimeraMethod.5498:

Okay, so, since WHEN are the Living Story events over before the bi-monthly patch? I was relying on the boss daily tonight to get my Teq wings because I finally had TIME to do so, and I feel like I’ve just been slapped in the face because I didn’t have time to play every single day for completion.

Scarlet lasted through the following day’s patch. WHY is this event different?

Exactly. I am 1 daily achieve away from my wings. And now screwed because they removed the daily Boss Week.

Dizza.8104:

That’s because that boss week is over 2 hours ago

Nope, I just finished my boss week collection of dragon clues in Blazeridge. If I can still do that, then there should be a Boss Week daily.

So after the rollover today there was no bossweek daily. Now it’s still September here, and this is the LAST achieve I need (or can get) to get my wings….and you guys conveniently left it off?

Gee thanks.

That’s all I have to say.

Edit: Considering this was the only reason I even logged in, or will probably log in until the Halloween event, I’m kinda unhappy. Screw up the last patch, give us jack for the next…yeah I think I’ll wait till Halloween.

I love my engineer. Then again I picked what I “think” is an uncommon build. I haven’t exactly gone hey, what’s the most common builds to find out, but it’s not one I hear about much. I’m bomb/heal engi. I HATE changing my tree because it’s by far the most survivable class/build combo I’ve tried to date.

Mastruq.2463:

Most of the damage done is to people’s entitlement, which is fine by me.

People claim that the game can have content for every kind of player, and now that the content addition this week is for a different player then they themselves are they pout and whine.

I dont enjoy SAB, so I just dont do it. I didnt complain that the update two weeks ago didnt bring anything for me. If you dont enjoy this version of Tequatl then just accept that and leave it to those that enjoy it.

In a way this is true. In a way it’s not. See we DID kill Tequatl before this update. So they are taking content away from us. It would be a WHOLE different ballpark if they added in a new boss, or instance like this. I would have NO ISSUE if they made a large scale instance where people who liked this stuff could go, but don’t take away our existing content to do it!

It would be like if you played SAB and you could do Infintile and Normal, then on the next release they REMOVE Infintile and Normal and say that Tribulation mode is the only way you can play SAB. What about all those people who enjoyed it before? What do they get? The short end of the stick….

THIS, is part of the problem. This content is dividing the community. Not uniting it. It’s NOT a good thing when a game makes you hate the place you’ve been happy with. There is no reason that people should feel like they HAVE to transfer to be successful! Yet this content does exactly that. NO ONE likes to fail repeatedly. Sure the success when you do finally succeed is amazing, but a person is automatically more likely to go where success is more likely. That means depriving EVERYONE, their server, the home server they are guesting to, of something so that their chances can be higher. THAT is not a good event. A good event is one that brings each server together, not sends them hightailing it just so they can complete an event.

Note: I was the first person in the Teq success thread to admit I was guesting to another server (Blackgate) because I’d already been on for 8 hours doing teq and failing repeatedly. Miserably. It’s not fun when all you see is failure. Mind you I never made it into BG main, and never completed a successful teq run. I finally gave up, and I haven’t done it since. The waiting, the failing, the everything…make me not even want to log in.

Lostwingman.5034:

zaxziakohl.5243:

Maybe he just went to help Tequatl, after all he knows Teq is now having all the fun beating us repeatedly

Sounds like he guested to another zone….

zaxziakohl.5243:

5. LFG option. OMG something positive incoming. Awesome idea. My only complaint here is that it can’t be tested if no one is using it.…hint hint people!

It IS being tested. Read the patch notes. It is getting a gradual release to test it with different numbers of people using it.

My comment here is more that I got access to testing and found NO ONE was using it. This comment was aimed more at players who aren’t testing what they have access to than ANet.

Edit: It’s nice to know that people agree with me I honestly expected the die hard players to be the only people posting, bashing that I’m not trying hard enough or all I do is QQ lol. Which in itselkittend of shows how much content like this divides the community instead of bringing it together….

I understand the purpose of overflows…HOWEVER, the WvW maps can handle 1k per map, the other maps should be able to as well, however they are cutting off us WAY below that…

then remove overflows on the maps that have it. Seriously. If you are trying to get people to work together, then don’t punish us by moving us into smaller groups, when we were willing to do so.

Or do what I’m doing. Guest on Black gate, stay in Sparkfly and wait for travel

So I definitely have problems with this format, but I LOVE the idea of making it so that bosses etc aren’t loot pinatas. Here is my suggestion for a possible format for future boss encounters.

PvE siege.
You already have locations set out that we must gain control over, so use this to our advantage and set up a WvW type format for bosses. Example:

The Shatterer-

Setup an “Attack Zone”: Anything in those zone is subject to the effects of the event mobs. Aka, NPC’s can be killed and need to be kept alive, etc.

Setup 3 outposts (there is already one): Each outpost gives out a set amount of weapon supply. However you must maintain control of these outposts to have access to that weapon supply. If you lose an outpost, the supply is destroyed and has to be replenished after you retake it.

Make 3 Supply “Trains”: These are escorts that bring supply into the Outposts, one Escort per Outpost. They bring the Supply in from outside the Attack Zone, and must be defended so they can reach the Outposts.

Have prebuilt weapons that require supply placed in strategic spots. If damaged, they must be fixed, or rebuilt using weapon supply. Also these weapons would consume supply when used. Make it so there are a LARGE NUMBER of these weapons. These would be the primary source of damage to The Shatter. Lets face it, when he SHOULD be able to snuff you out with a flick of his toe, then running up and hitting 1 repeatedly probably shouldn’t work, ijs.

Have some boss mechanics that endanger local zones. Instead of mechanics targeted at killing individual players, have mechanics that target the necessary establishments. Dragons in particular are supposed to be smart. They would just send out waves over and over, they would try to hit where it counts. Sending earthquakes to damage weapons. Breathing fire at the Outposts… things like that. With this kind of mechanic, it wouldn’t even need to be in a static position! You could have it flying, making the weapons work more enjoyable….

Using this format:
Several people would be able to do damage (via weapons)
Coordination would be required.
Small teams could protect Escorts.
Medium to large teams could protect the Outposts, and protect the weapons and the players manning them.
Individuals could man the siege weapons, and protect them. They could also run supply from the outposts to the weapons.

Since a large part of the event would be protecting things from the Shatterers minions, it would be entirely scale-able, so that either large or small groups could do it successfully, but that all groups regardless of size would need to be coordinated in order to keep supply coming in, and keep the weapons working.

Killing super large bosses should never be about how much damage YOU can do to the bosses toenail. It SHOULD be about how well you work as a group. No war was ever one because one person had the best gun. Wars are won by completing a bunch of tasks as a united force.

The Fire Elemental event goes through, but when we get to the room the graphic for the boss is there. Once he finishes the cleanup, it skips the spawn boss phase, and goes to Rooba is getting ready to start cleanup efforts. So basically he doesn’t spawn.

Don’t know if the mini-patch fixed this. Isle of Janthir.

15 minutes is way too short I have to agree. Now I’m not saying it’s impossible, cuz I’m sure it’s possible to do in 15 minutes, HOWEVER:

IF there is an overflow, they don’t stand a chance in hell.
On smaller population servers there is NO way that there will be enough people on to do it every time he spawns. This means that if someone can only log in between say 6am and 4am, then there is a VERY good chance that during that period, there won’t be enough people. This can even apply on larger servers.

Frankly, I dislike a lot of the new boss mechanics changes (and I was excited when I heard.) But there are fun changes, and there are changes that cause insta-down and insta-death. Insta-anything bad is a recipe for insta-frustration. This means people will not want to do it. I like that they are trying to get more people to do these, however if it comes down to where there are only 5-10 of us to do say the Elemental, then we might be screwed. That’s not fun.

Also sidenote: Elemental is broken….so can’t do it anyway.

Back on topic. Either increase the timers, make it so the stupid damage dealer things arent insta-down/death, or add a number 6 skill to turrets that rezzes everyone in X area…

Wow. The comments here kind of surprise me.

The voice acting certainly has it’s corny moments. That said….

This game has a lot of content and depth that a 12 year old wouldn’t get.

Someone mentioned childrens books. Ever read The Lorax? I loved it when I was a kid. Did I really understand it? Not so much. The full meaning of the book didn’t sink in until I was much older. This went even further when I started reading teen books (loved Animorphs.) Going back as an adult, there is SOOOO much that I didn’t see. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I loved it. It doesn’t even mean I didn’t understand it! I did! I just didn’t see the depth that was there. Honestly, it had very little to do with me being young, and more to do with me not having life experience, which gives us that ability to read into things more.

Anyway…continuing on. Guild Wars 2 HAS that depth for me. YES a 12 year old can play it. But if you are understanding it in the same way that a 12 year old does, than either it’s a very smart/jaded 12 year old, or your choosing not to read into it more.

You go to the pale tree and you pick out your deepest fear. A meaningful deep heartfelt fear. As part of your wyld hunt (lets face it, they are all on a journey with destiny) you are going to come face to face with your fears, and your hardships. The only way for you to endure, and win in the end, is to win against those fears and survive. You can’t reach your end goal without those.

12 year old version: I had a partner to fight with. We killed lots of mobs to the top. We were kinda successful, but she got left behind. Now we tried to rescue her, but we failed, and now she died.

Deeper meaning: To be strong enough to face Zhaitan, destiny would put hardships in my path to prepare. One of these is facing my deepest darkest fears. I have no issues hacking down enemies, and coming out on top. I’ve done it again and again. THAT I’m good at. I’ve been through pain, I already lost my first partner. They showed me the true meaning of sacrifice for a greater cause. Now I have a new partner, and it’s my fault. My biggest fear come to life, they die, because of me. It’s horrible, it’s tragic, but I survive. And am stronger to beat Zhaitan because of it.

If you guys aren’t seeing the deeper meanings, then maybe you aren’t looking?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Reason for calendar change ~snip

So your problem here isn’t that it’s being changed, but that you know why. As long as it makes sense in the lore it doesn’t really matter why.
Mismatched dates: Christmas:
Earlier Christians celebrated Christmas Jan. 6th/7th as a general rule. When they switched to the Julian Calendar, it was celebrated on December 25th. However the actual birth of Christ is speculated to be in September, at the very least between spring and fall. That’s a deviation of several months. Happens IRL too. You don’t like the reason, but that has nothing to do with the game. If you aren’t interested in learning the reasons behind the decisions, why read things from the devs? Skills are based on game practicality just as much as they are the lore. The way events are hosted is based more on practicality than the lore. Lets face it, if Scarlet is going to attack a map, she’s wouldn’t do it on the hour every hour. To make sure all can access the content, some continuity of the story is lost. That’s how it goes. If you don’t want to know the reasons behind it, don’t look for them.

Dev’s ignoring GW1 lore~snip

Have you stopped to listen to the randomNPC convos? There are references to the past and old lore. They are very similar to convo’s people have IRL. The one that comes to mind is a conversation in DR about the 6 gods. Guy asks do you actually believe in them? Girl responding says something to the affect of:Of course, we see things the 6 gods do daily, the blessings they give us etc. Guy then expresses a disbelief about how someone can have faith in something that has never been seen, proven, and obviously hasn’t been around to help. He gives a dismissive snort, then the conversation ends. (I don’t have quotes, this was back at launch, I do not know if this convo was affected by the DR changes. Feel free to look.)

Noting that there ARE conversations like this one in there if you look, then no, the developers have not ignored and dismissed the old GW1 history. It’s 250 years later. The people you encounter in the world currently generally; only have a mild inkling of the meaning behind that history (like the trepanning),they are believers on blind faith, or they don’t believe at all. NONE of those lend themselves to the devs being able to throw in old lore content, if the characters don’t ACTUALLY know anything about it. The best they MIGHT be able to do, is stash a collection of historical Chronicles (done by humans no doubt) at the priory to read. The Chronicles would be biased, and considering the current state of the world, would probably be considered myth, not fact. The closest we ever get to actual old lore is with the dwarves as they are such an old, aged race. However they are so rare, and so far and few in between, that they probably don’t know what you want to know anyway. It’s not really realistic to expect a world with a destructive war-filled past and dragon filled present to have that kind of knowledge, nor believe it if they did. Imagine the CENTURIES of knowledge lost during the dark ages.

Charr paranoia ~snip

This one I think is more of an interpretation difference. I feel that their trust is extremely limited. The most Charr-like example of this I can give, is that I may trust my war-band with my life, but I don’t trust them with my gun or knife. They ARE militant. Your completely right on that. But they are NEVER above believing that someone has betrayed them. To be instantly capable of believing that, is to mean you never fully trusted them to begin with. It means that thought was always in the back of their mind. They could betray me/us. It’s a part of their culture. There is no, OMG no way, they can’t do that, they WOULDN’T do that, I trusted them! It’s a resolute, they betrayed me, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure they don’t do it to anyone else.

This property of the Charr is part of the reason it took me so long to play one. I play MMO’s to relax. The story, and the culture of my characters if very important to me. That lore based immersion, is important to me. It was very hard for me to do that with a Charr and maintain that relaxed feel while playing. They are ever vigilant and always wary of anyone. None of the legions trust each-other. Half the time, members of their own legion have no trust for each-other. There is always a traitor, a spy and it could be you. It’s exhausting. But at the same time I LOVE the complexity that the Charr have. As a culture freshly out of a war, they are changing, rehabilitating and amazingly complex. As you play a Charr, your interpretations and experiences might be very different. No matter what, when we play, the game will be tinted by the glasses of our real lives. I feel personally that there isn’t a clash of the statements considering their fear of magic. To me, as I’ve immersed myself, it makes perfect sense.

When I chose my Charr character, I thoroughly inspected both male and female before making my choice. I went female.

I am a female player. I do make male characters (my ranger is male…sexy sword anyone? Oh yeah….he’s purely eye-candy.) If guys can do it why can’t girls….Anyway….back on topic.

I enjoy the fact that the female Charr have this ferociousness to them. Honestly, most of the male Charr I see, look like kicked puppy dogs. (This could be my ferociousness talking)

I do have some issues with the armours. However, I don’t think traditional female(aka girly) armours would be appropriated for a Charr, because lets face it. If I’m looking for a male mate (sticks tail in the air) he’s probably gonna think it’s more sexy if I can handle his bazooka, then if I can um, feed six kits at the same time, if you catch my drift. Not to mention, unlike humans…he’s been weaned, so skimpiness isn’t necessary. BTW, I meant the real bazooka, as in goes boom and blows the opposition to smitherines. :P

I might add as an ending note, that Charr was the last race I chose. HOWEVER, this was NOT due to the male, or female models, nor the crappy armour selection (frankly I pretty much hate medium armour on MOST races). It was because I play games to relax, and wind down, and the Charr are a very conflicted society. All that fighting put me on edge by default because I want to BE my character when in game. I’ve sense gotten over this (to an extent) and don’t really have issues playing her. However if I’m already kind of stressed, she’s NOT the first I’ll go do. So it does make for slow going on her as a character, since the story lines are very important to me.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

For me, it was more in how it was done and why it was done, then the in-universe reason for it.

How do you think the world took it when we suddenly found 24 more hours every for years and started having leap day? It probably wasn’t more than an article written by some scientist who wrote it in the best layman’s terms he knew. After that, it was up to the people to either adopt it, or not adopt it. Asura, being asura, and knowing that they are the most intelligent, well of course they are right, and anyone who doesn’t listen isn’t worth telling. No need for anything more than a short sentence/notice. It’s all they need to know. Now would more back-story on the discovery be nice? Hell yes, I’m not saying it wouldn’t…however, unless your in his krewe, don’t expect any major details until it’s in history books or he’s won the Snaff Prize. :P

Quote about Human history being made trivial and being buried by the new history ~snipped for length then accidentally deleted wrong quote lmao

Do you know the history of trepanning? It’s a practice from the middle ages that got the demons out. Cultures that weren’t around Anglo Saxxons (and maybe a few other select cultures) during that era won’t know of it unless they studied it. To them it doesn’t exist, and if told, the existence means nothing, as it didn’t affect them. As for everyone who has it in their history, well only those who find it interesting will know. Why? Because it’s an outdated belief that had little value. Not to say we never learned anything from it, because we did. Trepanning was the drilling of a hole into a persons skull with a hand auger when they had boils or hallucinations, as it was thought to release the demons in the persons head. In many of these cases, the subjects of this “medical” practice, were people who had things like chicken pox, and the flu. In a few rare cases, it did work. But it wasn’t because it let the demons out, it was because it relieved pressure on the brain if there was swelling or edema. Most of the time, they died shortly after due to infection from the trepanning anyway. Looking back on it, though one can see the reason for the belief, it seems unrealistic, pointless, and doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t true. It’s trivial, and our new found knowledge of what is really happening is more important, and for many people it has buried that history altogether. However there are still practices in the world in certain cultures that other parts of the world find…horrible, degrading, inhumane, and devastating, because we are living IN that world. 250 years from now, when someone reads back and sees the things that people used to do, you think they won’t laugh, shake their head, and move on because it doesn’t matter anymore? It doesn’t affect them, it’s trivial.

In that same way, many of the Human beliefs from GW1 have become trivial, and to some extent buried under a layer of new culture. There is a sadness in the way it happens, the way things lose their meaning, their purpose, with time, but it always happens. Being upset that it’s happening in a game, when it happens in the real world, doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a complex world, not everything is going to be kept, remembered, cherished, and loved for all eternity, it will be replaced.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

On charr distrusting magic – snipped again.

To be honest, from what I have seen in game, represented, the charr DO distrust everyone. Charr are constantly betraying each-other, they are always paranoid about what other Charr are plotting….They are one of the most confrontational of the races within their own culture, and much of it IS due to magic.

Would you be trustful if the people betraying you, your family, were doing it on behalf of magic, of the dragons, who give them that magic.

People do this too. We naturally distrust those that have power. People in powerful positions, people in authority. Those people are constantly mistrusted, because they very often abuse it. And power hurts when it’s wielded against you, especially when someone has access to more of it than you.

Magic would be no different! The more magic someone wields, the more damage they can do. In a race where betrayal is so common, and confrontation so frequent, kitten right I’m going to be paranoid and suspicious of everyone around me, because the chance of people abusing that power has gone WAY up.

You have a perfect example of the Vigil Leader and her Son. He wanted power. He betrayed his community, his fahrar and his family to get it. In a world where the stakes are killing your own….wouldn’t it be safer if no one had it? Yet at the same time, if only the bad guys have it, how do you defend yourself?

NOTE: I MAKE REAL LIFE REFERENCES HERE, INCLUDING RELIGION, CULTURE AND THE EVENTS OF THE REAL LIFE WORLD. I DO NOT MEAN TO OFFEND, I AM SIMPLY USING THIS AS AN EXAMPLE TO DESCRIBE OUR WORLD, AND TYRIA, AND TO SHOW HOW PERFECTION, IS ALWAYS, NOT PERFECT.

I have to say Konig’s responses rather bother me. He is automatically dismissing some things.

1. GW1 Lore was told from a human vantage point. All the lore you got, the lore you received, was from them.

2. In GW2 You get lore from the perspectives of MANY races (and not just the ones we play).

This kind of thought process is like saying:

I was raised a Buddhist.

I have now gone out into the world because of some cataclysmic event (I was being raised in a closed community). I was taught about the happenings in the world, current and past, by the teachers in my community.

I am now in the world, and these people around me keep speaking of Gods Wrath raining down on my village because we did not believe. But this isn’t what happened! The world had lost balance, and now, we are being pushed into the world to restore that balance. I know this, because it is what I was taught.

All your guild wars life (up until now) the lore has been given to you via the characters in the stories, or the game. For every character, race, religion, belief…that perspective, that story will be different.

Are the Charr going to believe what the humans believe? NO. Now, you point to contraindications in their own cultures. Tell me that we don’t do that NOW, in real life, when we do things like wage war for peace. When we make weapons we’ve forbidden others from making. When the very things we CLAIM to hate and despise, infiltrate our lives, our cultures. So yes, Charr might be distrustful of magic. I am distrustful of a gun. It can backfire, it can jam, it can hurt me instead of it’s target. If my life is on the line, I will certainly learn to use it, and do so when I need to. Those are the things that CAUSE those oppositions, those inconsistencies.

Every culture in the real world has them, yet so many turn a blind eye because they believe. Do you not think that other cultures, fictional or not, would not be the same? Full of oxymoron’s and inadequacies?

That pointed out take a different view.

Now instead of being immersed in the lore, you are an outsider, like now, reading these invterviews, these forums. What perspective would you say you have?

Who created Tyria? Who are it’s gods? Do you really believe it’s the six gods? Do you believe it was the spirits? ANet created Tyria. They have the ultimate perspective, and you are being invited to join them. It is the perspective of a god. Imagine looking down at the world you know, and seeing all these things that don’t make sense, all these beliefs that are not true. So much conflicting info….and they believe it, because like children with santa claus, they don’t know any better. You however can now see the truth, the chaos for what it is.

These interviews are done from the perspective of a god, who is not only trying to explain the truth, but the LORE that you know. The TRUE back story, and the beliefs of those in the world. OF COURSE they will conflict.

Imagine if there is a god, or goddess, or God, or Allah, or any of the figureheads(cant think of a better word sorry) of any of the beliefs out there, and they are staring down at us, shaking their head, because our world is nothing but a mess of confusion, chaos and contraindications. It’s what makes us interesting. It’s what makes us…us. We can expect no less of a fictional world. If a story is laid out in perfect detail, then you haven’t gotten all sides of the story.