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Guild Wars 2 |OT3| Two Week Updates, One Box, Zero Subscriptions

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S

shysaursoft

Member
Fularu said:
I've been playing WoW since 2005

I stand by my statement. Outside of queues, xpac launches are smooth since WOTLK..
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That selective memory. Either that, or I really rolled on the shitty servers when I played WoW, because xpac launches were *never* ever smooth. Server crashes, rollbacks, hour long queues...

Sometimes I wish I had the luck other people do when it comes to this stuff, because it sure seems like everyone else has it way easier.
 
C

Ceres

Banned
Nemesis121 said:
FUCK FUCK FUCK, i redid my Char Warrior last night and now we have new hair styles boooooooo.
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lol. Was thinking of using one on my necro last week. But I'm liking that 3rd female norn hairstyle. Might use that one so I don't have the same cut that seems like 90% of players choose for female norn. I think I have 2-3 hairstyle kits and 1 full makeover kit from BLCs still.
 
P

Proven

Member
Kos Luftar said:
So, totally new events in LA?

Are all the WPs uncontested now?
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Yeah, all the waypoints are uncontested. They're also free again while in the city.

Mr_Antimatter said:
Asura...with dreadlocks? Spiked Mohawks?

I may have to pick up one of these kits...
Click to expand...

I've been saving a makeover kit in my bank for my Asura whenever I bother getting him to level 80. I've become convinced that Asura are more interesting when they're made to have creepy and contrasting looks.
 
S

shysaursoft

Member
I noticed the only remaining vendor in the refugee camps actually sells Scarlet Alliance slayer potions.

I've already seen much complaining about this patch adding nothing to do (oh, NOW you want more Living Story), but personally, I like the downtime and the "quiet after the storm". Good content is about varying intensity. You can't be dialed to 11 all the time, and not have it become mundane. LA being dead quiet, nothing to do there other than wander around looking at the aftermath, is rather well executed to me.

c57HdOM.jpg


PR78m3D.jpg
 
T

Trey

Member
Retro said:
Also, story Spoilers:
Marjory's sister is going after some black market traders, obviously the bandits in Brisban Wildlands. There's our point of entry into a new zone, I imagine.
Click to expand...

After multiple gay couples and a physically limited genius, Anet turns its progressive pen on body image issues.
 
R

Retro

Member
Atrophis said:
Holy shit, if people though LA was in bad shape before...

That missing persons board :(
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All of the names listed were actual NPCs, including the Death notices. Maybe the most noticeable of them was Doc Halvern, the trader who was always advertising his Krait Oil near the bank. The owner of the little bar on the beach, Trader Vikk, is also gone. Not sure if anyone ever hung out there. The only one that doesn't have a page on the wiki is Voppa, on the missing person's board.
 
S

shysaursoft

Member
It's another piece from the Breachmaker, one of the fins, that got flung out. I wonder if you can see it from Bloodtide side.

EDIT: Nope, pity. :p
 
M

Mxrz

Member
If we head into the jungle, I'd like it to be with some new NPCs. Tyria is a giant world full of awesome. Don't really want to keep hanging around the same couple of people all the time.

Miktar said:
I'm glad I sat on my paltry cores. They're shooting up in price.
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I hope so. I screwed around and wasted 25g this morning on them. Be nice to make that back.

Retro said:
All the people on Reddit / Official Forums who said "LOL, it'll be back to normal in a couple weeks" can suck it.
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I still think its coming back.
 
S

shysaursoft

Member
Boss Doggie said:
What happened to raisin asura
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I think the kids made it out alive. "The bank kids are at the refugee camp near the Vigil Headquarters." says, someone. However, "It's like a little raisin" Charr might be dead.

Boss Doggie said:
Also when did dreads become a thing in hairstyle
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Culturally, 15th century and earlier, if you go by the Maasai oral history. Lots of it in ethnic African history. Then there's the hindu angle as well.

Became popular in the west in the 70s thanks to reggae. Now thanks to YouTube, it's having a wider resurgence.

Also, this video is awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZDn-rmN_K0&feature=youtu.be

All Lion's Arch Vistas, Before, Under and After the attack by Scarlet Briar.
 
L

LiveSpartan235

Neo Member
More news on the Chinese front is theres a rumor about a GW2 CN trailer that got out and announced that on Friday the beta would be open to everyone until it closes on the 25th and the trailer also supposedly announced the price of the CN version to be 88( I don't know Chinese currency so I don't know how much that is) and that the game will go on pre order on April 2nd

I tried to view this trailer but it has since been locked behind a password.


http://news.17173.com/content/2014-03-19/20140319140747082_4.shtml
  • At some levels you get 5 skills points instead of 1 like in NA/EU or at other levels you get a big boost to your attributes or traits points.
  • In the China version story steps are grouped together so that players can complete an entire section of the story at once.
  • Dye unlocks in the CN in version are account unlock instead of character unlocks.
  • From what I gather they want to bring account unlocks to NA/EU for the dye packs.
  • The changes to to things in game such as leveling to unlock certain things were made due to NA/EU feedback.
  • They are still thinking about whether or not to bring these level unlock chagnes to NA/EU
  • NA/EU Guilds lose their stuff when moving to a different server but in the CN version it is shared across worlds.
  • The feature build will launch after CBT3 but before the game launches in China.
  • You don't have to be level 35 to enter WvW you just can't enter it through the UI if your under 35 you go through the asura gate and earn a rank up and unlock the WvW button.
  • Most of the VIP items are basically gem store items just bundled together. for example the resurrection thats mentioned in the VIP is basically the revive orb or the convenient trading is just a merchant express item.

17173：During the China CBT3, players found that there are some differences with the US version. From developers view, what changes and differences of GW2 China version in your opinion compared to the west version?

　　Mike O’Brien, president and co-founder, ArenaNet: The largest set of improvements we made was to the new player experience. We used our experience launching the game in NA/EU to identify what players found confusing as they joined GW2, and made sure to fix those things before launching in China.

　　In the NA/EU launch version, the game only properly introduced a few systems, but mostly it provided everything with no introduction at levels one and two: downed state, profession abilities, off-hand weapons, underwater, crafting, gathering, map completion, fast travel, banking, trading post, PvP, and WvW. In the China version we spread out more of these so we could provide a proper introduction of each. Note though that advanced players can still skip ahead: they can work on various aspects of map completion, travel with Asura Gates, and join PvP or WvW, before the level at which these features are introduced.

　　In the NA/EU launch version, the game introduced a new personal story step every few levels, so after completing each story step the player was expected to do some leveling up before attempting the next. In the China version story steps are grouped together so that players can complete an entire section of the story at once.

　　In the NA/EU launch version, the game provided a skill point, a trait point, and some attribute points on each level up. These were very incremental changes that were difficult to notice or appreciate. In the China version the game provides rewards in bigger batches so that players can immediately notice and appreciate the difference. For example, one level you get five skill points at once, another level you get a big boost to your attributes.

　　In addition to improving the new player experience, we also made changes that we think are right for the long-term play experience. The biggest of those must be the change to the dye system. In the NA/EU launch version dyes were character unlocks, whereas in the China version they're account unlocks. With this new system you only need to collect a dye once and you can use it on any character. This is more convenient, but it means demand for dye will go down, so we're also reducing supply. Dye unlocks now come only from crafting and from the gem store.

　　Actually NA/EU players have been asking for dyes to be account unlocks for a long time and we'll want to make essentially this same change for NA/EU. The differences will be in phrasing. In the NA/EU version players purchase dye packs from the gem store; in China players purchase dye identifiers from the gem store. Either way you purchase something and it gives you random dye, permanently unlocked for all characters on your account.

　　Getting back to the question, I have provided a sampling of changes we made for the China version but this list is by no means exhaustive. A lot of our work went into changes that seem detailed or hard to notice, but to us, those details matter a lot. We re-implemented every hint in the game. We made the game teach itself and removed the old ineffective help system. We added a content direction system so that the game always points you to something you can do next. We even made behind-the-scenes changes, like changing the way the game stores its data on disk, and rewriting critical back-end servers to prepare for launch capacity.

　　17173：GW2 China announced will sync with the global version previously but we found actually there are a lot things that do not synchronized. For instance, in the US version, the weapon skills unlock by battles but in China server this is by level. What is the reason here?

　　Mike O’Brien: We think that unlocking weapon skills by level is a better system. It's simpler, it gives players more time to learn their first weapon, and then it means that they have all skills unlocked immediately when they find new weapon types later in the game.

　　To answer your question more generally, when we talk about keeping the versions synchronized, our core concern is to ensure that players can experience every new Living World episode and every new Feature Pack when we release them at about the same time in each territory. Thus it's important to us that the territories shares common core systems so that new content we introduce works the same everywhere in the world.

　　Going back to the example of weapon skill unlocks, it doesn't particularly matter to a player's enjoyment of Living World episodes or of a new Feature Pack release whether he had originally unlocked his weapon skills through combat or through leveling. Either way, the skills are unlocked. So we made that change for China because we think it's right for China, and we have plenty of time to decide later whether we should bring that change back to NA/EU too.

　　In some cases we have allowed the versions to diverge because there's a change we can make for China that would be very difficult to bring back to NA/EU. I'll give an example. In GW2, guilds can exist across multiple worlds. In the NA/EU version, guilds earn influence separately and spend it separately on each world that their members play on. In the China version, guilds have a single pool of influence, and the upgrades they purchase with influence benefit members on all worlds. Obviously the China system is better, but it's not easy to take a system like that back to NA/EU where guilds already have different unlocks on different worlds.

　　In some cases we couldn't allow even a temporary divergence without threatening our ability to ship new Living World releases and Feature Packs globally. I'll give an example. At launch in NA/EU we had long queue times for WvW, and WvW is only getting more popular over time, so we expected very long queue times in China. It was important for us to fix the WvW queuing situation before launching in China. But this was not something we could allow to diverge, so we ensured that we released the new WvW map, Edge of the Mists, in all territories prior to the launch in China.

　　Keep in mind, we'll be releasing a Feature Pack after CBT3 but before the launch of the game in China, so you'll see more of that type of global change then.

　　17173：Besides the above questions, others like WvW, in the US server, a new player can directly enter WvW at level 2 through the WvW icon; but on China Server this needs level 35 without WvW icon and playeres have to run in it. What’s your consideration here?

　　Mike O’Brien: In China also, players can enter WvW at level 2. We don't think that's a very good experience, but it's there for advanced players.

　　You're seeing a partially implemented system in CBT3. Here's how it will work: the WvW button will appear at level 35 or when any character on your account has earned a single rank in WvW. So if you want early access, you can use an Asura gate to travel there at level 2, earn a single rank, and all of your characters will get the WvW button.

　　17173：KongZhong once said there will be no VIP system in game, but in the CBT3 that the Royal Title system caused big controversy here as players basically regard this indeed is the VIP system. As a GW2 developer, how do you think about the situation here?

　　Mike O’Brien: As developers, the important thing to us is that we hold true to our standards of what should be and what shouldn't be purchasable. You may have read my 2012 blog post on this subject. For those of you who haven't, I'll summarize. We think it's right that players can spend money on items to provide visual distinction or customization, and can spend money on account services and time-saving conveniences. We think it's right that players can trade gems for gold and vice-versa, such that players can keep up with other players and be on a level playing field, whether they use their time or money to do so. But we think it's never ok for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases. And we think it's never ok for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who spend time.

　　These are our guiding principles. They're obviously different from what you see other developers doing. Particularly in China it seems common for games to have VIP systems that make characters more powerful than they could ever be without VIP. That's not a level playing field; that's "pay to win".

　　We believe the royal title system in GW2 is absolutely not a “pay to win” system. It certainly is a loyalty system: it gives you a reusable package of convenience items, plus gifts, plus discounts on everything else in the gem store, and the more you play the game the more convenience items you get. But the things it gives you are almost all things you could purchase with gems anyway. And they're convenience items, not power. There's no "pay to win" here.

　　I know that players everywhere are skeptical of microtransactions after having seen them abused in other games. So I wouldn't ask you to take my word for it; I ask you to see for yourself. In talks with KongZhong we've decided to expand CBT3 and allow players to experience the game soon without a CD key. I hope to see you there.
Click to expand...
 
S

swnny

Member
I'll definitely try to play it, even if I do not understand Chinese at all. :) But it would be interesting for me to see first hand how the two versions differ, what and how they implement and to see the overall direction they are heading with this "new user experience" thingy.
 
K

Kos Luftar

Member
Sounds like the feature patch we will get will probably change the way the game is played for new players so the game can be taught better and we are getting account bound dyes.

I know ANET has been trying to teach the game to new players because of the data they received after game launched where they found stuff like people never swapped weapons, never allocated their trait points all the way to 80.
 
Boss Doggie

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
swnny said:
I'll definitely try to play it, even if I do not understand Chinese at all. :) But it would be interesting for me to see first hand how the two versions differ, what and how they implement and to see the overall direction they are heading with this "new user experience" thingy.
Click to expand...

Maybe it has an english version with broken english.
 
P

Proven

Member
So, I've been watching streams of Heroes of the Storm. After the first day I said something along the lines of, "Heroes of the Storm looks like what you'd get if you asked the GW2 developers to make a League clone." I meant it as a compliment too.

Watching the streams also made me remember the roles of most multiplayer RPG designs and how they fit together. Then I opened up notepad and made this stream of consciousness:

CC > Damage > Support > CC

CC beats Damage
Makes damage not happen
Damage characters tend to be low on health/defense
CC tends to be somewhat tanky (bruiser)
Snares/Kiting usually counts as soft CC. Condi characters are often Snare/Kiting characters.​

Damage beats Support
Support loses in attrition to high damage, especially if spiked
Doubly so if most healing is over time.​

Support beats CC
Support skills grant immunity to/negate both hard and soft CC
Higher health/defense than CC means they can tank through CC damage.​

From tanky CC and/or Kiting condi characters (Bomb/Nade Engineer, Dhuumfire/Terror Necromancer) to direct damage heavy hard CC characters (Hammer/Longbow Warriors), we arrived at the current meta. For the rest of this post/argument/whatever I'm going to use CC and Kiting interchangeably as they both lead to preventing damage. A Blind is usually on par with an Aegis.

If the meta was to naturally take its course, we'd need to have some other support specs brought up. As it is currently, the best classes at group support and self support, Guardian and Warrior respectively, are already heavily represented. Damage is almost only represented by the Apex Assassin, Thief.

You can see this actually right now, with builds like Minion Necromancer that became a big thing in hotjoins and solo queue because it had the CC + Support to deal with Hammer/Longbow Warriors. For an anecdote, after the December patch the build I had the most fun and success with in solo queue was an Assassin's Reward + Deathblossom Thief. It was filled with major self-support, minor group support, and options for both CC (Cripple and Sleight of Hand) and Kiting (being a Thief). I used it primarily as a bruiser/backpoint bunker.

You can also see this in what most players ask for in the other common burst classes: more sustain (read: self-support) to deal with Thieves and the rest of the meta combined (conditions), when honestly they just need more kiting options (or for Thieves to have some of their chasing options reduced).

If I had to go through each class and what they're good at building...

Warrior Damage > CC > Support
Guardian Support > CC (still pretty low) > Damage
Ranger CC > Support > Damage
Engineer CC > Support > Damage
Thief Damage > CC > Support
Necromancer CC > Damage > Support
Mesmer Damage > CC > Support
Elementalist Damage > Support > CC

Again, CC includes both ability to Snare/Stun, and the ability Kite. Likewise, Support is accounting for both the ability to help allies and the ability to heal up or clear conditions after damage is taken. These are primarily PvP focused observations, and some could be wrong because of unfamiliarity with certain classes or biases towards builds on classes I use. For example, Support and CC might be better swapped for Engineer, and Damage and CC may be better swapped for Mesmer.

Other issues: Warrior really is really really good at all three metrics. Part of the issue is that each part of the dominating build is nicely situated in completely different systems, so you can't get by easily from shuffling things around. They don't want to completely kill the build like they did when they wrecked Bunker Elementalists in the past. Healing Signet is only getting a shave because any healing-over-time abilities need to have a base level of healing during battle for them to be worthwhile. Look at Necromancer's Signet of Vampirism to understand what I mean. The traits are also in the same boat as Cleansing Ire is fine in a vacuum. CC is also currently weapon based and barely influenced by traits, if at all (Hammer, Mace and Longbow have baseline great CC, Greatsword and Sword both have good Kiting and Snare abilities). If it was me, I'd move more of the performance of the build into traits (mainly the CC) to make it harder to take Burst Mastery. Possibly raise Cleansing Ire to Grandmaster too if they had really good ideas and positions for new traits.

Support in this game is very lackluster. Most Bunker builds in the game are self-sustain builds with minor group support. Guardian is the best class at having self-sustain along with group sustain, and I'd say it's too good at it in comparison to everything else. The next closest are Warrior, Ranger, and (I've heard) Engineer. Elementalist sounds like it'll be buffed back up to this level at the very least in the next patch. Hopefully it'll be bumped up to Guardian levels just to have more diversity there.

I honestly find the game to be the most fun when playing a build that does one thing really well, and the other two things decently well too. Too much of PvP feels like it's about being really really good at one thing, and incidentally good at the rest. Thieves and Mesmers almost only go all damage, Guardians tend to be all support. Most Elementalists you see run Fresh Air for super burst. These builds are either too good at what they do or end up too gimmicky with constant all-in strategies. The old days of Bull Rush + Hundred Blades still make me laugh.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum, where they're too good at doing two or three things. Until support options were buffed Warriors were only damage. Necromancers needed a damage boost because before they were all CC and pray. Ranger was always good at CC but it wasn't until Beastmaster and Spirit builds came out that put them over the top. How long has some variation of Bomb/Nade Engineer been in the meta? The current Decap Engineer build unfortunately swings the other way and becomes a little too good at just one thing. In general, for this case the one thing they aren't good at should be a greater weakness.

The trait system supports the kind of balance I think they should aim for. You can put 30 points into one thing and 20 points into two others. You can put 30 points in two things but only have 10 points in the others. Or you can spread the points out and not have 30 in anything. The only issue is that not enough power is tied to traits; there's a base level of effectiveness through stats, weaponry, and skill choice that cover a lot of weaknesses.

Okay, that's enough. Ignore or pick apart as you will.

Fake Edit: As a quick addendum, the biggest problem with PvE is that it's tuned too much like Monster Hunter. But Monster Hunter is more an Action game than an RPG. Guild Wars 2 needs to be more of an RPG than an Action game. The Action RPG as a genre has a pretty large spectrum.
 
S

shysaursoft

Member
So the outrage over China's beta systems was overblown. What a surprise.

Anyhoo. Since this LS update has very little in the way of carrot & stick, what's everyone going to focus on over the coming weeks? Now that I'm done with my Legendary, and Ascended Armour is off the table until I see what they do about Celestial stats in the upcoming patches, I'm going through Sylvari and Norn storylines to finish off the few remaining achivements in the Personal Story category. No clue what to do after that though. I still haven't completed Dungeon Master - I really wish the dungeon achievements listed which paths you've done and which you haven't - so I might do that then.
 
C

CoffeeMan

Member
After two hours of walking around LA and doing the dead end bar, I did COF P1, and started story dungeons with some new guild members who had never done them.

AC Story - Done.
 
K

Kos Luftar

Member
I think I will continue doing what I usually do which is, be annoying on guild chat, do dungeons with guildies, run boss trains, start getting back into WvW in prep for Spring Tournament, run guild missions and other guild events.

Getting infamous second son this weekend so will be playing that a lot.
 
H

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Miktar said:
So the outrage over China's beta systems was overblown. What a surprise.

Anyhoo. Since this LS update has very little in the way of carrot & stick, what's everyone going to focus on over the coming weeks? Now that I'm done with my Legendary, and Ascended Armour is off the table until I see what they do about Celestial stats in the upcoming patches, I'm going through Sylvari and Norn storylines to finish off the few remaining achivements in the Personal Story category. No clue what to do after that though. I still haven't completed Dungeon Master - I really wish the dungeon achievements listed which paths you've done and which you haven't - so I might do that then.
Click to expand...
Leveling tailoring and crafting a set of Exotic Celestial for my ele and deciding on a third set for him, finally getting my Engi to 80 and getting him armored. Maaaaybe consider making some Ascended weapons finally.

Also running some guild events in addition to our weekly scheduled missions :)

And lots of Titanfall :D
 
T

Trey

Member
Kos Luftar said:
I think I will continue doing what I usually do which is, be annoying on guild chat, do dungeons with guildies, run boss trains, start getting back into WvW in prep for Spring Tournament, run guild missions and other guild events.

Getting infamous second son this weekend so will be playing that a lot.
Click to expand...

I'll work on my most recent alt addiction by clearing zones. Maybe I'll get world completion on my warrior. At 45% now with plenty of WP already discovered in many zones. Only Orr is untouched.

Also, running fractals.
 
C

Ceres

Banned
Yeah, going to try to do taco each night, a little EotM, and then maybe a dungeon here and there. I personally have 4 characters somewhere in the process of getting to 80 (Necro at 65, Warrior at 35, and Engi and Thief at 20). I'm still sick so not staying up late getting as much event farming in is probably a good thing.
 
K

Korten

Banned
Hey guys, so I need an opinion on which weapon you guys think goes better:

(Note these two options are just showing GS, but also will be for 1h sword and Shield.)

Note: I already have Zojja's Ascended, I would get the new ascended just for the looks, not the stats.

YsD.png
 
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