[HoT jungle maps appreciation]

Verdant Brink is where I really fell in love with this game. The brutal enemies, incredible scenery, the mind bending map design... all of it. It's where Guild Wars really clicked with me.The map actually changed the way I look at MMOs.

After doing the Jungle Anomaly on the new map, I find myself wishing we could get a new LS map with the same quality set in Maguuma.

[[Bug] Storm Tracking Issues [Resolved]]

Devs said on reddit a hotfix for this is comming. Until then, dont follow the green arrow, stick to the right side of the map

[Hearts and Minds: What were you thinking?]

@Menadena.7482 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:Gamers in 1998: "The boss is super hard, does anyone have any good strategy to beat it?"Gamers in 2018: "The boss is super hard, so the developers are sadists"

Gamers in 1978: "The boss is super hard, guess I will change the code." :)

Gamers in 1958: "Can someone take this lawn dart out of my foot?"

[Hearts and Minds: What were you thinking?]

@Wyrd.1432 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:Gamers in 1998: "The boss is super hard, does anyone have any good strategy to beat it?"Gamers in 2018: "The boss is super hard, so the developers are sadists"

This is not a thread for the "muh challenge" crowd.

This is a public post in an open forum.

You will find a fair number of people who will argue against calling difficulty a design failure.

Better get used to that.

[Hearts and Minds: What were you thinking?]

Gamers in 1998: "The boss is super hard, does anyone have any good strategy to beat it?"Gamers in 2018: "The boss is super hard, so the developers are sadists"

[Mythwright Gambit Raid]

@Randulf.7614 said:An odd choice for a raid subject at this point. Thought they might try and tie in with PoF/LS4 themes

You know where the lair of Zomorros is, right?

[Any plans of new musical instruments? What would you like to see?]

The game has cows.Many cows.What we need are cowbells.

More cowbell.

[Suggestion: Make PoF Metas that reward Amalgamated Gemstones.]

@dani.4398 said:

@"Linken.6345" said:

So how should someone take being called a "brainless farmer" when playing the game the way they like if not as an insult?

Man, you are more than welcomed to feel insulted if it suits you. I'm not trying to insult, I'm just saying that you can literally watch TV while doing those profitable metas.

Calling people who's playstyle doesn't align with yours "brainless" is absolutely insulting.Backpeddaling now does not make it less so. If you were not trying to be insulting, you certainly would have chosen a different word.

[Rifle skills slow and low damage output both Warrior and Engineer.]

Hasn't rifle Holo been meta since PoF launched a year ago?

yeah you are right, better buff that.

[Make Choices in Character Creation Great Ag... Still]

@"Ashantara.8731" said::+1: That is true, but I have been feeling some distinct improvement in that department lately. Haven't you?

It depends on what you mean by "lately".Since Core? Absolutely.The story, it's dialog, presentation and flow started improving around HoT. Season 3 was uneven, but the heights of it (The Lake Doric episode and some of ep6) were actually quite good.

Path of Fire continues this uneven cadence, with the instance in Kormir's library, Vlast's sacrifice, or the cutscene in Kesho being among the best moments this franchise has given us. Other parts, like the calls to Taimi, the plot line involving Rytlock and Balthazaar, or the story of us "tricking" our way into command of Joko's army, being some of it's worst and most cliche'.The rest of PoF was so good that the uneven story got a pass from me.

Since PoF?No.The three LS3 episodes we have been given have been technically excellent, but the story and dialog gets objectively worse with each part. The world building has been a genuine step above anything we've got since all that passion was poured into the world at launch. But the story?Ep3 left an unqualified bad taste in my mouth. I won't remember it for the new mount, I won't carry memories of the new map. I will remember it for how the main villain for the past year was reduced to corny dialog, how our victory taken from us by bad writing and the burp jokes after the deus ex.

There's been a real increase in quality of the delivery, absolutely. You just have to compare the final fight of the personal story and the fight against Joko at the end of the last LS episode. The actually fight we got was so much better.But that's the delivery.The story itself and the dialog especially, is objectively poor. It's propped up pretty heavily by the map designers and the art department. The story mission devs are doing an incredible job, the artists are at the height of their game delivering some of the best content in the industry. Anet is killing it these days and it makes me happy.

But the story is still not something that can be recommended, and I think the quality varies so heavily from episode to episode that it's not really fair to say it's getting better.The product as a whole sure is, though.

[Make Choices in Character Creation Great Ag... Still]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:I am still hoping for change, although the devs have always replied that there won't be any changes and going back to personal story choices or making personality matter again in the future. :/

The damage in the personal story is done for me. I have 18 Alts and I've completed personal story on 14 of them. You could redo the whole thing right now and slap a "GW2.5" label on it and I probably still wouldn't play it again.I'm not one of those who believes that a "Core Tyria revamp" would draw in more customers or justify the cost. I'm actually quite sure it wouldn't. The base game has an above average 1-80 experience. If you take the personal story out of the equation, I feel the base game is pretty strong compared to it's direct competition.

All that needs to happen is to find writers who are as engaged in the lore of GW2 as the world builders. Dialog that shows the same passion and commitment to the franchise as the Art department shows is all it would take. You don't have to do a cataclysm or retcon the old material.Just make the new stuff better.What we have right now is a writing team that seems to think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was great storytelling, mimicking Joss Whedon's "joke a minute" irony and self -depricating gags as if they were in some way something to aspire to.The franchise has lost it's way writing fresh and original stories and dialog, choosing instead to remix current box-office superhero movies as much as it can and throwing in nods to the original game's story as justification.It's become afraid to take itself seriously in terms of both story and delivery. It's chosen to follow the dialog stylings of the Avengers films instead of carving it's own niche and relying on itself, rather than gimmicks.

Changing that, going forward is all it would take for me to fall back in love. Show some passion and dedication to the lore, don't be afraid to take yourselves seriously once in a while and throw out the cringy jokes from Taimi every 4 lines.

Then I could tell my friends "hey the story in the base game is really below average, but you don't have to do it, and the new material is excellent."

[Make Choices in Character Creation Great Ag... Still]

@"Torzini.1523" said:Yeah, I can get behind much of that. That's why I said there is absolute loads of potential in what they could do, yet haven't done. While I agree with your assessment of SWTOR, I'd have to disagree with The Secret World because, while TSW's writing is indeed phenomenal, they don't ever give you even the illusion of choice as far as I recall (aside from initial faction choice). That's the one particular aspect that I think GW2 deserves a little credit for; most MMO storylines don't give you any semblance of choice at all, every single character has the exact same storyline full stop. While there's lots of room for improvement, I think 'definitely very far behind many other games in the genre' is a pretty big overexaggeration.

Agree about TSW, but I definitely feel that the Faction choice was far more interesting and impactful than the order choice in Gw2.

I don't think I exaggerated at all.The personal story in GW2 is so heavily marred by bad storytelling and execution that it's not a matter of me splitting hairs or being overly critical. The side by side cutscenes are so poorly made it comes off as laughable. From the poorly animated lesser species, to the same VA doing multiple important characters(the Asura chapters suffer heavily here), all spouting off cliche dialog to lead you to the exact same point...well it comes off as a bad highschool play or a child's puppet show.The meme joke writing of the LW stories has become so tired with their mandatory guaranteed chuckle every 4 lines that it's effectively left me left less interested as we move forward, not more.

The last episode of the story had us face off against one of this franchise's signature villains. The villain was reduced to a cliche with "theater" dialog. A centuries old Lich, in total control of a sizable chunk of the known world and we got lines like "It's Showtime".And then, after a hard fought victory against the Lich we have that win completely taken away from us by a "oh by the way, I'm immortal" line. You know, just to invalidate all the action before it.And what happens next?Yet another Deus Ex Machina, as our pet dragon swoops in to save the day....followed, of course, by a couple "ewwwww gross" burp jokes.

I'm definitely not exaggerating when I say many other games do it much better.

[Make Choices in Character Creation Great Ag... Still]

@"Torzini.1523" said:GW2 is ahead of most other MMOs due to having personal story choices etc, so I very much appreciate what we have already.

Only it isn't.The story choices in GW2 present the "illusion" of choice and impact on the game world.I can choose a distinct order to join and get a few different missions but at the end of the day, my mentor dies in Claw Island the exact same way, no matter who they are. That gate closes behind Sieran, Forgal and Tybalt is the exact same way at the exact same time.

At the climax of the personal story, it's always the exact same mission, done the exact same way, with the same group of hangers-on from Destiny's Edge "helping" me.And after Zhaitan dies there is absolutely no functional difference in the story no matter what I say or do. It is very much an on-rails delivery.GW2 is years behind Star Wars The Old Republic, in terms of impact from choices in dialog or action. It is equally distant from The Secret World in terms of writing and delivery. The story, it's writing and delivery remain GW2's weakest area, and while the storytelling has drastically improved over the past 3 years, it has little do do with the tale being told getting better. It's gotten better at delivering it's below average narrative, to the point where we can actually look past some of the weaknesses.It is,however, most definitely very far behind many other games in the genre.

[slice of life inventory clearing of skins]

@koben.2654 said:i just want to get rid of skins that i don't want to use without having to type the full name out every time :/

create an alttransfer all items you want to delete to said altdelete the alt.

[Mystic Coins]

@"MauChann.3081" said:Besides that. Why does desert mastery need amalgamated gemstones, if they don't even drop anywhere in that content??

Untrue.

Amalgamated gemstones can be mystic forged from 9 T6 gemstones and one Crystalline Dust. The gemstones are pretty common drops when mining Orichalcum/Rich Orichalcum nodes... which the desert has a pretty fair number of. The Crystalline Dust is a pretty common drop from Branded mobs, which again the desert maps have an abundance of.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amalgamated_Gemstone

[Mystic Coins]

@"Quirin.1076" said:My concern is that there is so much content that locked out for any new player unless they grind for gold.

The content in this game is unlocked by:

1. Logging in and getting it for free.
2. Buying the expansions with real money
3. Buying it with real money if you didn't do step 1.

Your "concerns" are invalid.

[Gift of Battle / Gift of Exploration: A petition.]

@"InsaneQR.7412" said:I think they should reward different loot as the meta event.Like auric ingots, certain runes, different recipes etc.As you said targeted rewards. Stuff that arent really common to get.This translates into "more loot"The meta events and maps supporting them already reward these things.

Tying the gift if battle to the dungeons would actually be smart too. This would give them more population and doing all dungeon paths would probaböy a decent time sink for 1 gift.It's time to face up to the fact that Arenanet has no desire to revitalize dungeons or incentivize players to use them as a time sink. The development of more instanced 5 man content and associated rewards takes place in Fractals. The developers are actively working on them and their rewards. It's not a good idea to push players into old content that is somewhat buggy and doesn't represent Anet's current or best work anyways.

Fractals are already adequately rewarding and don't need a path to GoB to entice players into them.Besides, they are just shorter dungeons anyways.

[Gift of Battle / Gift of Exploration: A petition.]

@"InsaneQR.7412" said:I would actually lile to see a PvE reward track system. So if you cant level masteries you can choose a reward track to get certain amounts of loot.Certain reward tracks are faster filled with cwrtain activities. Like dungeon reward tracks fill faster in dungeons. Auric basin reward track faster in auric basin and the gift if Battle reward track should just be tediously slow and only get better advance by killing world bosses and legends.

Would you be willing to accept the loss to counterbalance the new rewards?Such as the Tarir meta not awarding the guaranteed amalgamated gemstone at the end and instead giving a bump to your reward track...Or are you just looking for more loot?

Reward tracks are fantastic when it comes to targeting certain rewards, but they cannot come close to the income generated by general PvE play. Even open world gathering is, on average, much more profitable than WvW reward tracks.Dungeons are already "not bad rewards", adding another reward layer on top of that would be pretty unbalancing. If you got a reward track for dungeons, would you be happy losing your guaranteed dungeon currency for path completion in favor of a reward track?

[Gift of Battle / Gift of Exploration: A petition.]

@"Etria.3642" said:Oh they have and they claim to be willing to learn and play the classes wanted...according to posts in the wvw forums.

They play on an eu server or I would have suggested some options. In this thread though they do not sound nearly as willing, no?

Hogwash.

Lets just look at this one thing for the sake of argument:

Besides that WvW players are not happy to have us pugs intrude in their squads, or play solo and flip towers, do smaller objectives, because they had some sort of idea going on and thus we're being banished from the mists that way.

So no one can play solo/flip camps towers and do smaller objectives without incurring the wrath of the gatekeepers and blowhards?Because that is what is said there.An hour or two in WvW and you know this isn't frowned on. Hundreds of people do it on every server every day for hours. It's called Roaming. It's an acceptable, valid and supported way to play the game mode. There are builds on Metabattle to support it.But the OP is pretending this isn't valid or people get yelled at for it.This, quite simply, does not happen. And that is just one of the inaccuracies in the OP.

And every week, when one of these "PvE'ers hate WvW and we need a new path to GoB" posts is made, it contains untrue statements like this in order to support the entitlement of the gamers in question.

[Gift of Battle / Gift of Exploration: A petition.]

@"MauChann.3081" said:1: The Gift of Battle is a feared item by PvE players, because it forces us to play WvW content. Besides that WvW players are not happy to have us pugs intrude in their squads, or play solo and flip towers, do smaller objectives, because they had some sort of idea going on and thus we're being banished from the mists that way. Back in the day we were able to farm AP ( achievement points ) for our Gift of Battle and we were perfectly content with that, that way we didn't have to go annoy WvW players with questions about why we were not allowed in a squad, just to complete that reward track.

"banished from the mists"... indeed.It's clear from all of the fear-mongering in your description of WvW that you have never actually tried to play it.

[New playable race]

@JDub.1530 said:

@Xar.1387 said:New playable race like that could bring alot of new players to the game.

I'm not sure why this is an argument in every "New Playable Race" thread. It's not as if ANet will read this and suddenly go "Egads, he's right!" and get right to implementing it. I'm sure they're aware of the effect it might have on their player numbers.

@Xar.1387 said:with a relatively small amount of work.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh............

@mindcircus.1506 said:-Create 9 new cultural armor sets (3 tiers times 3 weights)-Create at least one Cultural weapon set

Would they though? If they were to add a new race, I'm sure they could force players to accept concessions, like no cultural gear.

@mindcircus.1506 said:-Create a new Personal Story (at least where the story was culturally specific) until you join an order. . . . .-Re-record player character dialog for every instance of the player speaking that exists, including Personal Story, Seasons 2-4, Path of Fire, and Heart of thorns . Twice

Not necessarily. A better story implementation would be to insert a new playable race character into current events. Yes, they would still need new personalized story, which they could use to introduce the character to the current cast of NPCs, and perhaps have you take over for their former "slain" commander, then by the end have it flow right into the current story that core race characters experience.

Not that I'm advocating for a new race, personally. Although I wouldn't say "no" if one were dropped in my lap. :D

Sure, they could also start you at 80, and bar you from playing the story in HoT, PoF, core and seasons 2-4. They could make one set only of cultural armor. They could say "you are dwarves, there aren't enough of you left for a capital city". They could severely limit your customization options for economy's sake... the list goes on.

While you (or even I) might accept a "half-baked " new race without cultural armors, a unique personal story or even integration within the current narrative, the vast majority of people who make this request are in the same camp as the OP.Do you think these players would be accepting of a limited experience for their dwarf/tengu/skritt?Or do you think the feedback they would give is "Anet cheaped out on the Dwarves. Here is a list of things I am SUPER SALTY that I can't do!!!...ANET PLZ, WHY U HATE DWAVES!!"

We're talking about people who earnestly believe this is " a relatively small amount of work" and I doubt any compromise would make them happy.

..and we are talking about a race that has been done to death in hundreds of other games.

[New playable race]

So to properly integrate a race you would need to (among many other things):-Completely model, rig and animate two new characters.-Make every existing weapon in the game work with them properly.-Rig every existing armor set to the new model-Remodel a large number of those armor pieces to suit the new player characters-Create 9 new cultural armor sets (3 tiers times 3 weights)-Create at least one Cultural weapon set-Create a new Personal Story (at least where the story was culturally specific) until you join an order-Voice all the new story-Re-record player character dialog for every instance of the player speaking that exists, including Personal Story, Seasons 2-4, Path of Fire, and Heart of thorns . Twice

@"Xar.1387" said:Adding them to the game would bring many benefits with a relatively small amount of work.a relatively small amount of work indeed.And then you could say to all your friends who don't play GW2: "Hey come play GW2 with me. They added a race you've already played in 20 other games...only now you can do it in Tyria".

I love the story of the Dwarves in GW2 very much. It's part of the lore I enjoy more than most. I would love to see more than what we have.But a playable race is not a small way to benefit this game.

[FIX SERPENT'S IRE]

Or you know... there could be some challenge left in Open World to give your achievements some value.

[Show us your Revenant]

Crusader Tookie.She's fancy.

[Can we have an honest conversation about "Outfits?"]

@"Shmanka.4628" said:Can we get a dev response? This seems to be a topic worth discussion.

No it really doesn't.It's mainly just the usual self-martyring consumers hyperbolizing choices they don't agree with as "bad for the game".There isn't much actual discussion going on.