Danikat.8537

I like the story, but I don't like achievements which amount to "now do the same thing you've just done but faster" or "do it again but now the boss has more health". If I happen to get them while playing through the story that's fine but if not I'm highly unlikely to do it again to attempt them, unless I have to for some reason (like if I want the reward from a meta achievement). In most games I don't care about achievements at all because they all fall into two categories - either they pop up to tell you that you've just done what you already know you did because you were there when you did it, or they're "hard mode" versions of things you'll have already done and repeating things just to get a tick box to tell me I did also doesn't interest me. In GW2 I do pay attention to achievements because they're the main (and often only) way of sign-posting what's available to do, but even so I'm only going to pay attention to the ones which actually interest me.

I think the difference is the 'find X objects' type are just finding objects hidden in hard to reach places in a map, like the coins in Silverwastes, whereas the scavenger hunts can be much more complicated, with different requirements for each item and tend to have more of a story to them. They're some of the ones which in other games would be side-quests. For example the precursor collections are scavenger hunts and even when the items on the list have similar names they require very different things. The Dreamer III has you collecting dreams but the actual requirements range from visiting locations on different maps to completing Fractals, event chains and hearts or killing world bosses. Some of them (like the skyscale achievements) require completing other collection achievements.

I'd like to be able to dye it, but I don't expect it to happen. I don't care about variants, especially if they're based on the fractal weapon sets. Ad Infinitum is a bit of an anomaly for me because so far it's the only legendary I've made where I didn't care about the skin. I wanted a legendary backpack because I had a bad habit of thinking level 80 exotic or ascended ones are hard to come by (which was the case very early on) so I made a legendary one just after the armoury was added because then I didn't need to worry about it and could clear out a lot of bank space. I don't mind the skin and sometimes use the glider, but it's not one I'm likely to use often even if it was dyable. It would be nice to be able to 'turn down' the glow a bit by dying it a darker colour though.

Have you tried changing the field of view setting in the options menu? I think by default it's set to about 50% and that will probably make a bigger difference than an ultra-wide monitor. I suppose both together would allow you to see a bit more to either side, and maybe if an enemy was coming at you from the right angle it would allow you to see them a bit sooner than other people, but it needs such a specific set of circumstances I definitely wouldn't consider it pay to win. Also if you really want an ultrawide monitor I recommend shopping around. They were a big thing a few years ago and there's a lot available (including second hand) and some are relatively cheap. I'm not sure how much this specific model is but it's far from the only option.

If they've been there for over a week it's unlikely to be because of the Wizard's Vault, because this is the first week we've had the updated weeklies with alternatives. Also they'd only need to kill 100 bandits for that and even if they're staying in 1 spot killing the same 1 enemy when they respawn it wouldn't take that long. I'm not sure why else they'd be there, as far as I know bandits aren't a good farming target, but it also wouldn't make sense to do it that much for the WV. 'AFK' farming isn't new in GW2 and apparently it's not against the rules as long as you're not actually AFK and not using botting software to automate the process. Anet will check on farmers who are reported, but if they respond or react to the checks (some are messages, some are things like teleporting them to a new location to see if they react) to prove someone is at the computer then it's allowed.

How long is a piece of string? Some of the oldest MMOs are still going and are over 20 years old now. For that matter some of the MUDs (multi-user dungeons) which pre-dated MMOs are still going too. On the other hand there's some games which have come and gone in the time GW2 has been online and are considered to have had a good run because they lasted more than a year. The aim for any MMO is to stay online (and keep getting played and updated) as long as possible, I don't think any of them are built with the intention that after some number of years they'll be replaced or closed down, it only happens when something goes wrong. There's a lot of reasons that can happen, the most common are probably fans losing interesting to the point where it's unprofitable (especially if the game wasn't that popular to begin with) or the developers run out of money and can't keep supporting it. But all kinds of things can happen, maybe they don't have a cohesive long-term strategy, or the studio is a bit of a 'cult of personality' and when the person driving the vision leaves things get disjointed and start to fall apart. Or they get bought out (or sold) or the publisher goes under because of unrelated problems and then the new owners have different priorities, or they lose the rights to the underlying IP. You could group some of them together but in a sense there's as many reasons as there are failed games. But it's not like traditional single-player or small multiplayer games where the plan is always to make and release one, maybe support it for a few years with updates and possibly an expansion and then use the profits to make the next game. GW1 and GW2 are a bit of an anomaly in that sense. GW1 was very unusual when it launched in being an MMO without a subscription, that was almost unheard of at the time. Even then I don't think they planned to replace it with a sequel, but making and selling annual expansions proved impractical (especially when each was also designed to work as a stand-alone game). Even then according to Anet part of the reason they decided to make GW2 instead is they kept coming up with ideas they wanted to use but which wouldn't work in GW1. I'm not sure what they were but based on ideas they experimented with in GW: Beyond I suspect dynamic events were one of them. You're right, but to be fair that's partially because it's only about 25 or 26 years ago that the concept of an MMO was possible. There were some graphical MUDs online before then, but they were more like lobby games. I remember when Ultima Online launched in the late 90's and firstly the whole concept seemed novel and strange and secondly the total, global population of MMO players was estimated to be under 100,000 people. At the time it wasn't even sure the internet would catch on.

Elder Scrolls Online does the same, although I don't think it affects material nodes (or I've just never noticed them changing), but you see it sometimes when you're running up to an area where a quest takes place and suddenly everything will change, with enemies and even structures appearing or disappearing. That was the main point of it - so you could see areas change as you completed the quests, so it usually doesn't mess them up, but it used to be incredibly annoying if you wanted to play with other people. If one of you had completed a quest and the other hadn't (or if you'd made different choices) they'd just vanish as you got into the area and you had to move out of it to rejoin them. That also meant if you wanted help with a quest you had to find someone who was on the same part you were. It's a lot better now, they removed a lot of the phasing or replaced it with enemies just going neutral instead of disappearing but it's still weird sometimes. I agree with the people who have said it would be even worse in GW2 because so much of the open-world stuff is events and there's no guarentee they'll be running when you change maps. The pop-ups are irritating sometimes, but I'd much rather have that, and therefore have the option to ignore it, than just get dragged into a new instance whenever the game decides it would be more convenient for the servers.

I was going to say I think laurels might be redundant now (I know that's a currency, not an item), since they only come from daily and weekly achievements and achievement point chests and astral acclaim does pretty much the same thing. Then I realised the difference is we can store as many laurels as we want but only 1,300 AA (or 1,799 if you're on 1,299 and then get a 500AA achievement), so if they were merged it would make buying anything from laurel vendors annoying, even if the prices were corrected to allow for the conversion being removed. I think those can be useful for making it obvious to players they got a spirit shard. I have no idea how many I have in my wallet so if they just go in there I'd have no idea I got them unless I happen to catch the little icon at the side of the screen. But I think that's only necessary when you're buying it from somewhere - like converting tomes of knowledge into spirit shards. If they're just a drop then I agree they can go straight in the wallet.

I'd like to see a primeval warclaw and skyscale, I think they're the only ones we don't have primeval skins for yet. I'd also love a full set of plant themed mounts. Sylvari, mordrem or just generic plants. But not like the mordrem jackal where the undyable skull makes it impossible to make it look like anything except a mordrem wolf. I also like the idea of a dolyak skin. Maybe for the turtle since dolyak was suggested a few times as a 'tank' mount before the turtle was added.

Relics are the same as any other exotic equipment, including runes. You will be able to get another one in future if you want it (including the ones that initially come from achievements, they can be bought from vendors in SotO maps once you've done the achievement) so if you've got one you don't currently have a use for you can get rid of it. The only reason to hold onto ones that aren't equipped is if you think they will be useful soon. For example if you've got a character who is almost level 80 who could use it. (Admittedly I've got a bunch of relic boxes and about 4 or 5 individual relics I'm just holding onto, but that's because I haven't decided which ones most of my characters will use. I keep telling myself I'll do it sometime but I always have more interesting things to do.)

Do you have more than one character? How do you reconcile them having the same story, often with the same dialogue? I'm genuinely surprised this is a problem for you but not all kinds of other things in the game (and other games) like events repeating, visiting maps 'out of order' (like going to ones where the Pact hasn't been formed after doing the Battle of Fort Trinity). In my experience all RPGs require some degree of using your imagination and suspension of disbelief because it's never going to all fit perfectly.

Important note: The Pact has more than one commander. It's one of the top ranks but not completely unique, kind of like generals in real life. I think that's one of the reasons the player character wasn't put in charge - if you've been playing through the story with 1 - 4 other people you can all become commanders instead of one person being singled out. Although the other reason is that, just like real life militaries, the person in charge does very little actual fighting so it wouldn't work with the game mechanics. While you're playing an RPG Traherene is playing an RTS - taking a back seat to direct everything rather than fighting on the front lines. But whether it's NPCs or other players the player character's rank has never been unique. For example in Orr when you have to choose between the Priory, Whispers or Vigil plan you're told all 3 will go ahead, you're only choosing which one you'll be involved with and someone else oversees the other two. But there are also times when we get to be in two places at once - like doing the story side of the assult on Mordremoth inside his mind and the meta-event battle against his body. The canon version is that the player character wasn't in the meta event battle (and if I remember correctly no one calls you Commander during it), so for those sections you're just another soldier.

What is currently being called AI doesn't understand anything. It's not true intelligence, or even a serious attempt at it - it's one part of what researchers think will be needed but not the complete process. It's basically an elaborate, probability weighted, sorting system. It's got a database of thousands of images and a text description of each one, which it tries to mix-and-match to fit the description it's given. So for example if you ask for a "huge armoured bipedal cat with horns" it will search and combine images tagged as containing armour, bipeds, cats and horns, combine common elements from each and produce... well, something like this. Stylised images of real-world cats, sometimes with horns, standing on their back legs and wearing generic armour. It's 'good at' general concepts because it's got many more examples of those to use, and makes the art look good because the people building the databases favour work with popular styles and gain feedback from which of the results are used, ensuring that in future results like that are more likely. The AI couldn't tell you why those are considered good, only that it's been programmed to prioritise those styles over others in it's database. It won't be able to depict charr accurately because there won't be many (or any) images of charr in the database to use, and the ones that are there may not have accurate tags. If they used the description from whatever site the images were pulled from it may just say 'charr', otherwise it may just say something like "fantasy monster".

Legendary bounties are designed for groups, you won't be able to kill it on your own, you'll need at least about 4 or 5 people. For that one you really need to get a group together first because there's no waypoints nearby so if you start it then ask for help it's unlikely other people will have enough time to get there and kill it before the timer runs out. There's a few ways to get a group together (although the short version of all of them is "ask some people"). 1) If you're in a guild you could ask them to help, even if they don't normally do open-world events together if you say you need it they'll probably be willing to help. 2) Put a message in the LFG menu - make sure to specify which bounty you're doing. 3) Advertise it in map chat 4) Let us know which region you're in (NA or EU) and some of us can join you Alternatively you could check LFG for other people organising it and join their group. It's more likely when bounties are needed for the wizard's vault but could happen at any time.

What are you expecting to see? It's an achievement, not a mastery track and like all achievements it's account-wide and can only be completed once, so you won't see anything when a second character gets to that point in the story because there's nothing for them to unlock, it's already been done.

It was working for me yesterday. I'd unlocked it a while ago and yesterday I was able to equip a hammer on a brand new level 8 elementalist without the catalyst specialisation.

There's no way to get it right for everyone. I know the idea behind a silent protagonist (which doesn't just mean no voice acting - it means no dialogue, including written) is that they can work as a self-insertion character because they'll have no personality of their own, but it rarely works that way because their body language, facial expressions (or lack thereof) and most importantly their actions will still define their personality. Link from the Legend of Zelda games is a perfect example. The guy has had a handful of lines over 20+ games (mostly things like "Come on!" and "I found a mirror under the table") but still has his own identity and personality. It also doesn't work as a self-insertion character for everyone, for the same reason. My first ever Zelda game was Link's Awakening and a friend told me to put my name in and pretend it was me in the game, then 'I' was told to walk unarmed across a monster-infested beach, pick up a sword and fight my way back so I could fight even more dangerous monsters somewhere else. At that point I decided this wasn't going to work, whoever this person is they're clearly not me because there's no way I'd ever do that, so I restarted using the name Link since that's what was on the box. I've used much the same logic in every RPG I've played - my character can't be me because if they were they'd stay in town where it's safe and none of this would happen to them. After that it doesn't matter if the dialogue doesn't fit me, because they're not me. Which isn't to say I never get frustrated with dialogue in games, but it's more because I have to assume every RPG character I make is very impulsive and a bit of an idiot because they'll repeatedly go along with what they're told instead of saying "This is a trap, right? I mean you're obviously lying to me, so why not just tell me what's actually going on and we'll go from there" or whatever. Also they can't talk back to people who make condescending comments about adventurers not understanding things like books and scrolls can be valuable, even if my character is a wizard or part of some group like the Priory in GW2 who obviously would understand that. I also know people who see silent protagonists as the absolute worst example of lazy writing and refuse to play games that do that. In this case I think it would also be pretty jarring to suddenly switch to a silent protagonist 11 years in, after many stories where our characters clearly have a defined personality and feelings on various topics. I think the inconsistency would bother me more than having to adjust my character concepts to fit how I know they're going to act in the story.

I agree that somewhere to store it would be useful, but I think it needs to be something that still allows it to be used for it's primary purpose, which is increasing magic find. If it was in the wallet either that would be impossible (because wallet currencies are not consumables) or it would involve extra steps that new players would likely miss, like finding a specific vendor and buying magic find. I think material storage would work though. It might end up stacking up in there before being used, but at least it could be used. Also I disagree that it wouldn't help because you can "only" store 2,500 of each item, that's still 10 stacks - 10 inventory/bank slots freed up. Also it could be 10 of each rarity, 50 slots in total.

For future reference all mount skins except the default ones have 4 dye channels, so any of them can be any colour/s you want. Having said that it's worth checking the Wiki or looking for previews because some have undyable parts (like the cannons on most siege turtles) and on a lot of them it can be hard to tell where the dye slots are from the default pattern.

I tend to work on the assumption that everything in a map is happening near enough simultaneously, so if a story leads me into a map anything in there is happening at the same time as that story and won't be a spoiler. But I do think it'd work better if you had to do specific events. For example if Ramses had specifically said you can't help search for the general because you don't know him and he won't talk to you, so you should go with the other troops who are pushing further into Nyos, clearing the way for him and his scouts to find the general and drawing attention away from them. Then the story prompt could specify the last event in the chain you need to complete. It could be annoying sometimes. I recently needed to fight Tequatl for an achievement and it took almost a week to find a time when the event was running and I could get online. But it might help ensure the open world parts tie into the story more clearly.

Would it be better if it specifically told you to do the map meta? I'm pretty sure that's the point - the meta ties into the story so it's a prompt to make sure you do both together. It's convenient that it just lets you do random events instead so you're not held up if the meta is on a timer, but if it's making the story worse maybe it would be better for them to specify which events are relevant.

Agreed, it'd be like trying to get around HoT maps without gliding. I've been thinking about this because I have a no-deaths challenge character where (among other rules) I'm not allowed to use waypoints, mounts or gliding (or teleport to friend) to get around. At the moment she's only in core maps because I haven't managed to get to level 80 without dying (I got very close, then accidentally broke the rules I'd set myself and had to restart) so I haven't had to worry about expansion maps but switching between her and my other characters gets me thinking about it and I've preemptively decided she'll be allowed to use gliding, mounts etc. once she gets to the points where those things would be unlocked, because after that the game is designed to require them. It would be like trying to get around the core game without jumping.

Don't pick something related to SotO, because it's very likely you'll want to change it again when an expansion with a different theme comes out and while customer support can change it they won't do it every time you ask. One of my old guilds ran into that, they'd changed their name at least once or twice before (same reason, to match the latest expansion) and then the leader asked to change it again they were told that would be the last time and to pick something they could stick with. They also had to submit a list of 3 names and tags and were told support would make the final decision. If you want a lore friendly name I recommend either something general related to your activities (like your current name, which I think is fine) or referencing something in the story that won't change, like associations with Aurene or the Pact. The player character isn't an active member of the Pact chain of command any more, but they still work with them whenever it's relevant and can call them in to help if necessary - they did it in EoD and offered to do it in SotO (the Astral Ward said no) and they're still known to a lot of people as The Pact Commander. It's almost certainly in use but Dragon's Watch would be a safe choice, that's the guild the player character is part of in the story (along with several other reoccuring characters). Alternatively pick something which sounds like it fits the setting but is relevant to you and your friends. I can't find a list for GW2 but here's some examples of NPC guilds in GW1. Maybe referencing an in-joke or phrase you use a lot, or do it backwards and pick an emblem first and then design a name to fit it.

I don't think a genuine maximum would actually be useful. I've just tried it out by typing numbers into the box or using the arrows to increase it (and in the process discovered in you hover over the amount it tell you what the maximum is) and the limit is literally filling every single inventory space you have (including invisible bags) or spending all your gold (or whichever other currency). For example on a character with 95g and 65 free inventory spaces I can buy 16,250 spools of jute thread (which will stack up to 250) or 65 salvage kits (which don't stack), or 6,350 thermocatalytic reagent (which would cost 94g 99s). I can't think of any time I'd actually want that much, and for other characters/accounts the limits would be much higher because they'd have more inventory space and gold. What might be useful is a 'recommended maximum' - for example 1 stack of a crafting material. That would stop me accidentally buying 2,500 because I forget that they're sold in stacks of 10 and type in 250.

Having done this I'd say it's a good choice with an added consideration: unless you want all 9 professions at level 80 pick one you find boring to level but still want to play at level 80. When HoT came out I boosted a warrior because it's the profession I find most boring and therefore the one I'm least likely to level manually, but I barely played him (mainly using him for home instance gathering) until EoD came out because I still found warrior boring at level 80 so I'd never choose to play him over my other characters. The bladesworn is the only elite spec I really like for them. I've also boosted characters (either with the expansion boosts or just using tomes) when I wanted a second character of a profession I've already got to play a different elite spec - because levelling them manually would be no different to the one I've already levelled and I'd have to go through all that time with them not fitting the theme I have in my head becaue they wouldn't have the right skills.