irfaanator
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Guild Wars 2 |OT2| Funding An MMO Entirely On Quaggan Backpacks
- Thread starter Teknopathetic
- Start date
- Status
Thanks, just what I was looking for.
I put this post together because I'm seeing a lot of the same questions asked and thought it might be a nice resource. A common theme you're going to see here is "don't worry about it." What I mean by this is that a lot of what we saw in this patch is foundational. It's not meant to demand more of you as a player, even if it seems that way on the surface, it's meant to improve your quality of life as a player over time. A lot of the "but-!" questions are lifted from the official forums, so forgive me a degree of snark. This is a long post, but if you're curious for a little more insight than ArenaNet tends to give, have a read; I'll also be posting it as a thread on GAFGuild.
I. Laurels and the New Achievements
II. Dungeon Overhaul: Phase One
III. Living Story
I. Laurels
As a currency, Laurels are both insulated from inflation (unlike gold) and immune to unintentional stockpiling (unlike Karma before the addition of the new vendor items in Orr). There will always be something available for laurels that is useful to you in particular as a player, even if you have no interest in entire categories of what's for sale. The options can only increase from here.
To obtain laurels, so far:
-1 laurel per account for completing your Daily Achievements
-10 laurels per account for completing your Monthly Achievmeents (Jan. excluded)
-In the near future, a retroactive reward for your existing achievement points. It's unknown if this will be a direct laurel conversion or tie into the system some other way.
Also, note that while it has not been officially announced, I am offering you a solid Hawkian prediction that there will be more (and more) ways to obtain laurels added to the game over time. Before you ask "like what?"- I have no idea, but I'm 99.95% sure nonetheless. Consider this: when the game launched, you could obtain karma via 1) events. Now, you can obtain karma through 1) events, 2) dungeons, 3) daily/monthly achievements, and as of the last patch, 4) hearts and 5) assisting in fractals.
Also with the new Laurel rewards comes a new philosophy behind daily achievements. There are two goals here: to encourage players to head out into open world zones more intuitively, and to give you an excuse to "mix up" what you do when you log in and can't decide what else to do. That is: if you log on and say to yourself, "I'll just do my daily," it will not longer always mean doing the exact same thing every day.
So far, it appears that the new daily sets are tied to the day of the week. There is some overlap, but eventually we'll know which unique or uncommon achievements fall on which days, such that Tuesday is a "Veteran Hunt" day, etc.
When you complete your dailies and click on the chest, the laurel is automatically added to your account-wide stack.
The new achievements blow! The old ones were faster! Why should I have to rez people/fight underwater/do any crafting/dodge/play with other humans/etc.?
First off, I want you to try and consider the philosophy behind these changes to daily achievements. They're meant to reward you for the things you were going to do anyway, and encourage you to do the things you weren't. If you've been handicapping yourself by not dodging, "Daily Dodger" is a perfect reason to work on your timing. If you have nothing in particular you need to craft, "Daily Crafter" is a great excuse to grab an alt and make some progress in a new profession. It's going to be very helpful not to think of daily achievements as "stuff that every player will automatically get no matter how they play." Just the opposite: a given set of dailies might well be designed to motivate you, Player type X, to wade a very small amount outside your comfort zone, and you might find you have fun doing it if you don't think of it as "required."
Don't think of the addition of laurels as "more stuff you miss out on if you don't do your dailies" but "more rewards, and accelerating rewards over time, if you do." Laurels give you an accumulative reason to strive for achievements rather than working directly toward gear or gold.
Second of all, while some of the new achivements might seem tedious if they're outside of your daily playstyle, I want to stress how deceptively easy every single one is. Veteran Hunting is a great excuse to speak out in map chat; rallying people to open world Vets can capture a little bit of the community worldfeel that ANet is really going for. However, if you want, a single Fractal (not Fractal level, but one Fractal) will knock this out in 10 minutes or so. A few minutes in WvW will take care of it as well (multiple NPCs at a supply camp are Vets). Daily Crafter might be a good excuse to level up an alt, but if you can't be bothered, hit a crafting station and refine 10 ingots or bolts and complete the entire achievement in 5-6 seconds. Not doing a dungeon or anything that requires you to actually dodge? Every moa in the game uses screech attacks that are good for 3-4 dodge counts per actual dodge. For Daily Healer, head to Gendarran Fields and res the dozens of wounded Lionguard. Et cetera.
Seriously, they're all easy. I promise.
Laurels discriminate against players with alts. It will take me literally 18 months to gear up all my characters with the new ascended gear.
I'll stay away from how important ascended gear is or isn't to the gameplay experience in this answer, and just stress this advice: please relax. You have every reason to expect there to be more laurels obtainable in more ways, and at a faster rate, the longer the game is out. For now just think about what you want to save up for first. I'm willing to bet that by the time you've saved up for whatever you want second, there will have been more opportunities to get your hands on them than there are right now. This is just the beginning, and it's never been described by ANet as anything less. Also, it will be easier to get ascended gear without laurels over time.
I know it's daunting to think about getting stuff with all of your alts. But I'll put it this way: if you're the kind of player who plays enough to worry about gearing up 5 or more characters, by the time 18 monthlies from today have passed I have literally zero doubt that you'll have had ample opportunity to do so.
Finally, note that phase two of the new Achievement system, allowing you to complete a selection of task categories for the reward rather than all of them, has already been announced, likely to be implemented within Q1.
II. Dungeon Overhaul: Phase One
The changes made to dungeons in this patch are probably the most controversial and toughest to understand in the short term. There are two things to consider here:
1) What does this change represent philosophically regarding dungeon design?
2) How should I adjust my play in practical terms to succeed in the new dungeons?
To be blunt, these tweaks represent the biggest "l2p" update since the game's launch. This is going to be a little difficult to explain without some backstory, but bear with me. If you're uninterested in the philosophy stuff just skip down to point 2 for pointers.
1) Despite what it may seem due to the difficulty or outright brokenness of some paths, the dungeons in this game were extensively player-tested during development. The problem is that over time, ALL of the tuning trended toward refining dungeons for the players who are already good both at dungeons in general and that specific dungeon path. They were disproportionately tuned in ways that punish players learning a dungeon and path for the first time- a design methodology completely reversed in fractals, which follow many of Valve's "learn without thinking" player-testing cues to teach you the mechanics of a given mini-dungeon quickly, then ramp up the difficulty the deeper you get.
Over time, the regular dungeon design had one positive effect and two negative effects. The positive effect is that the dungeons are generally pretty damn challenging. Challenging content is key to the longevity of an MMO, and the average explorable mode dungeon is quite tough. Some are ball-crushingly hard. From the perspective of a dungeon designer like Robert Hrouda, you have to understand that a party wipe isn't a sign of unfair design- it's cause for him to rub his hands together and laugh. His content beat your team. Of course, inordinately tough or broken encounters will be and have been tweaked, but in general, the "veteran dungeon crawler" design mindset has resulted in a lot of content that is satisfying to complete with a good team. On that note, shoutout to the GAFGuild dungeon runners- I have literally never failed to complete an explorable dungeon path outside of a small number during the first week of launch, and SE1 during the "what the fuck?" days.
The two negative effects are: one, that both newer and less-skilled players, and those that are not dedicated to learning dungeons over time (read: PUGs), will be turned off from them generally in the first place. AC Story represents this point in a nutshell. It's one of the easier paths in the game, it really is. But new groups break upon it like waves on a beach made of jagged rock. It requires coordination and continuous use of an environmental mechanic that isn't used outside of it. As a first dungeon experience it can be brutal, and painful to just sort of limp your way through with a PUG. Which brings me to the second negative effect, which is quite simple: res-rushing.
Make no mistake. None of the dungeon encounters in the game were designed with res-rushing in mind. Res-rushing is the inevitable result of dungeons that punish both a lack of coordination and individual error, but have nothing even as inconveniencing as a respawn timer to prevent you running back. Thus res-rushing allows a team that cannot, or has not learned to legitimately defeat a boss/clear an encounter to "brute force" their way through it, simply breaking upon the rocks again and again until either only the players or mobs are left standing. This is very bad. This basically circumvents the "honing your skill" aspect of dungeons in favor of the path of least resistance. It makes bizarre things- like the speed with which you can complete the run back to a boss (better bring swiftness!)- more important than either knowledge or core skill.
The dungeon overhaul is meant to address these two negatives while protecting the positive. This patch did make some inroads on the "punishing" front: farewell, OG Lovers. But primarily it was focusing on eliminating res-rushing. You're now forced, ultimately for the better, to complete encounteres the way they were intended. Tweaking those encounters will be easier over time, because dungeon data for the design team will be more "honest." Who's dying where, and how often? Is this encounter legitimatelly tougher than it should be? Hard to tell if you can waypoint zerg the boss and win every time. Try and think of things in the long term: the brief few months of the game when res-rushing was a thing will be almost wholly forgotten for the majority of this game's lifespan.
2) So that brings me to how we adjust to these changes as players. I've compiled a list of tips below. Some of these are general dungeon advice that have become more important; some are entirely new considerations.
New Dungeon Running Tips:
Phase Two of the Dungeon Overhual will focus more on the "arrrrgh" factor in dungeons- the imbalance that favors experienced groups inordinately over new groups. This will trend toward making the toughest paths easier over time, but that's alright- completing them will be more "real" without res-rushing. Now is a great time to start honing your skills- you'll be even more efficient when the tweaks come!
III. Living Story
Many people have noted that the details of how the Flame & Frost world event will unfold have been very shallow and cryptic. This has resulted in a lot of questions here, in guild chat, and especially on the official forums.
When does [x] start? How do I get the achievement if there's only [x] available? How long do I have to complete [x]? Is this all there is for the event?
First, please relax. Don't worry about it. There will be plenty of time to get the achievement(s). The full scope of the event will become more clear over time. You won't miss out anything you don't want to miss out on. What's in the game for Flame & Frost right now isn't meant to impress the crap out of you just yet.
I have to tell you: it must be incredibly difficult for ArenaNet to bite their tongues in response to these inquiries. But giving as little information about these things, outside of the game, is 100% intentional.
I know that sounds a little crazy. I know that some players, even within our guild, sort of loathe the concept of not having specific dates, times, and instructions with regard to each piece of content offered in the game. I'll be frank: if I'm describing you, you're going to get a little screwed by Living Story events. You're likely best off waiting until a Living Story quest sequence is revealed to be ending soon, looking up the guides that will surely exist by that point, and getting everything done all at once.
For the rest of us, Living Story conceptually represents the culmination of a lot of philosophical ideas put forth by ANet in its manifesto.
You see: the developers of Guild Wars 2 are taking upon themselves the painful task of attempting to create what "us gamers" claim we really do want all the time in an online game: a living, breathing, changing world. The idea that things might be different than they were the last time you logged in. That you might stumble onto something in an area you'd been before that is clearly new or unexplained. That there's always reason to explore and new things to see and do should be surprising, not just a bullet point in the patch notes. If you haven't acknowledged the fact that this kind of "living world" is in direct contrast with a "tell us exactly when and how" mentality, now is the time to do so.
There will be plenty of "here's the new hotness" content too- fractals are a great example.
But Flame & Frost is, in my eyes, a prototype of Living Story content to come. It will start out being very small in scale, gradually ramp up for some time, expand in scope and progress in storyline, and eventually change the world in a permanent way. As live content, it's the antithesis of a one-time event like the Lost Shores invasion. I would go as far as to say it shouldn't even be considered limited-time in the sense of Holiday events- which is why they haven't named a "cutoff date" of any sort yet.
Living Story events are the answer to "what's going on at the moment?" when you log in. They're meant to be things you stumble onto, or get pointed toward by a herald, or overhear being discussed in guild chat. ArenaNet's approach and desire is that, eventually, when the execution is refined enough, there should always be something new, something you haven't seen yet, going on somewhere in the world. If they can pull this off, it will be unprecedented in the MMO space, and ultimately force other games to adopt more "living, breathing worlds" themselves. As unimpressive as the simple refugee trail in wayfarer might seem right now, that which it represents will be an overwhelmingly positive step forward for online gaming if it succeeds.
More from Bobby Stein on the plans for Flame & Frost.
What Does This Update Mean for the Future?
Just to summarize: take it easy. The overwhelming sense I get from this update, taken as a whole, is one of foundation. These are things that, to me, obviously represent the first steps in a series of clearly long-term plans. I have a feeling we'll look back one year from now at how refined these aspects of the game have become and generally approve of all of them in hindsight.
I. Laurels and the New Achievements
II. Dungeon Overhaul: Phase One
III. Living Story
I. Laurels
Laurels are a new currency meant to represent the consistency of your prowess within GW2. Think of it as an equivalent "stack" of stuff to Karma, Dungeon Tokens, Fractal Relics or Badges of Honor- except given out for doing the stuff that traditionally didn't give out any of the above (although achievements do now also grant karma). With Laurels you can buy a seriously extensive amount of stuff, including:
- Boosters a la the gem shop (1 laurel)
- 250-use gathering tools (2 laurels)
- A box containing a random piece of 78-80 rare or exotic gear (5 laurels)
- Standard Infusions (5 laurels) and new Utility Infusions (5 laurels; they do odd stuff like increase your Karma gain, and don't offer agony resistance)
- Every ascended amulet (30 laurels) and ring (35 laurels)
- Two unique minipets (75 laurels each)
- An endless mystery cat tonic (seriously) (100 laurels)
As a currency, Laurels are both insulated from inflation (unlike gold) and immune to unintentional stockpiling (unlike Karma before the addition of the new vendor items in Orr). There will always be something available for laurels that is useful to you in particular as a player, even if you have no interest in entire categories of what's for sale. The options can only increase from here.
To obtain laurels, so far:
-1 laurel per account for completing your Daily Achievements
-10 laurels per account for completing your Monthly Achievmeents (Jan. excluded)
-In the near future, a retroactive reward for your existing achievement points. It's unknown if this will be a direct laurel conversion or tie into the system some other way.
Also, note that while it has not been officially announced, I am offering you a solid Hawkian prediction that there will be more (and more) ways to obtain laurels added to the game over time. Before you ask "like what?"- I have no idea, but I'm 99.95% sure nonetheless. Consider this: when the game launched, you could obtain karma via 1) events. Now, you can obtain karma through 1) events, 2) dungeons, 3) daily/monthly achievements, and as of the last patch, 4) hearts and 5) assisting in fractals.
Also with the new Laurel rewards comes a new philosophy behind daily achievements. There are two goals here: to encourage players to head out into open world zones more intuitively, and to give you an excuse to "mix up" what you do when you log in and can't decide what else to do. That is: if you log on and say to yourself, "I'll just do my daily," it will not longer always mean doing the exact same thing every day.
So far, it appears that the new daily sets are tied to the day of the week. There is some overlap, but eventually we'll know which unique or uncommon achievements fall on which days, such that Tuesday is a "Veteran Hunt" day, etc.
When you complete your dailies and click on the chest, the laurel is automatically added to your account-wide stack.
The new achievements blow! The old ones were faster! Why should I have to rez people/fight underwater/do any crafting/dodge/play with other humans/etc.?
First off, I want you to try and consider the philosophy behind these changes to daily achievements. They're meant to reward you for the things you were going to do anyway, and encourage you to do the things you weren't. If you've been handicapping yourself by not dodging, "Daily Dodger" is a perfect reason to work on your timing. If you have nothing in particular you need to craft, "Daily Crafter" is a great excuse to grab an alt and make some progress in a new profession. It's going to be very helpful not to think of daily achievements as "stuff that every player will automatically get no matter how they play." Just the opposite: a given set of dailies might well be designed to motivate you, Player type X, to wade a very small amount outside your comfort zone, and you might find you have fun doing it if you don't think of it as "required."
Don't think of the addition of laurels as "more stuff you miss out on if you don't do your dailies" but "more rewards, and accelerating rewards over time, if you do." Laurels give you an accumulative reason to strive for achievements rather than working directly toward gear or gold.
Second of all, while some of the new achivements might seem tedious if they're outside of your daily playstyle, I want to stress how deceptively easy every single one is. Veteran Hunting is a great excuse to speak out in map chat; rallying people to open world Vets can capture a little bit of the community worldfeel that ANet is really going for. However, if you want, a single Fractal (not Fractal level, but one Fractal) will knock this out in 10 minutes or so. A few minutes in WvW will take care of it as well (multiple NPCs at a supply camp are Vets). Daily Crafter might be a good excuse to level up an alt, but if you can't be bothered, hit a crafting station and refine 10 ingots or bolts and complete the entire achievement in 5-6 seconds. Not doing a dungeon or anything that requires you to actually dodge? Every moa in the game uses screech attacks that are good for 3-4 dodge counts per actual dodge. For Daily Healer, head to Gendarran Fields and res the dozens of wounded Lionguard. Et cetera.
Seriously, they're all easy. I promise.
Laurels discriminate against players with alts. It will take me literally 18 months to gear up all my characters with the new ascended gear.
I'll stay away from how important ascended gear is or isn't to the gameplay experience in this answer, and just stress this advice: please relax. You have every reason to expect there to be more laurels obtainable in more ways, and at a faster rate, the longer the game is out. For now just think about what you want to save up for first. I'm willing to bet that by the time you've saved up for whatever you want second, there will have been more opportunities to get your hands on them than there are right now. This is just the beginning, and it's never been described by ANet as anything less. Also, it will be easier to get ascended gear without laurels over time.
I know it's daunting to think about getting stuff with all of your alts. But I'll put it this way: if you're the kind of player who plays enough to worry about gearing up 5 or more characters, by the time 18 monthlies from today have passed I have literally zero doubt that you'll have had ample opportunity to do so.
Finally, note that phase two of the new Achievement system, allowing you to complete a selection of task categories for the reward rather than all of them, has already been announced, likely to be implemented within Q1.
II. Dungeon Overhaul: Phase One
The changes made to dungeons in this patch are probably the most controversial and toughest to understand in the short term. There are two things to consider here:
1) What does this change represent philosophically regarding dungeon design?
2) How should I adjust my play in practical terms to succeed in the new dungeons?
To be blunt, these tweaks represent the biggest "l2p" update since the game's launch. This is going to be a little difficult to explain without some backstory, but bear with me. If you're uninterested in the philosophy stuff just skip down to point 2 for pointers.
1) Despite what it may seem due to the difficulty or outright brokenness of some paths, the dungeons in this game were extensively player-tested during development. The problem is that over time, ALL of the tuning trended toward refining dungeons for the players who are already good both at dungeons in general and that specific dungeon path. They were disproportionately tuned in ways that punish players learning a dungeon and path for the first time- a design methodology completely reversed in fractals, which follow many of Valve's "learn without thinking" player-testing cues to teach you the mechanics of a given mini-dungeon quickly, then ramp up the difficulty the deeper you get.
Over time, the regular dungeon design had one positive effect and two negative effects. The positive effect is that the dungeons are generally pretty damn challenging. Challenging content is key to the longevity of an MMO, and the average explorable mode dungeon is quite tough. Some are ball-crushingly hard. From the perspective of a dungeon designer like Robert Hrouda, you have to understand that a party wipe isn't a sign of unfair design- it's cause for him to rub his hands together and laugh. His content beat your team. Of course, inordinately tough or broken encounters will be and have been tweaked, but in general, the "veteran dungeon crawler" design mindset has resulted in a lot of content that is satisfying to complete with a good team. On that note, shoutout to the GAFGuild dungeon runners- I have literally never failed to complete an explorable dungeon path outside of a small number during the first week of launch, and SE1 during the "what the fuck?" days.
The two negative effects are: one, that both newer and less-skilled players, and those that are not dedicated to learning dungeons over time (read: PUGs), will be turned off from them generally in the first place. AC Story represents this point in a nutshell. It's one of the easier paths in the game, it really is. But new groups break upon it like waves on a beach made of jagged rock. It requires coordination and continuous use of an environmental mechanic that isn't used outside of it. As a first dungeon experience it can be brutal, and painful to just sort of limp your way through with a PUG. Which brings me to the second negative effect, which is quite simple: res-rushing.
Make no mistake. None of the dungeon encounters in the game were designed with res-rushing in mind. Res-rushing is the inevitable result of dungeons that punish both a lack of coordination and individual error, but have nothing even as inconveniencing as a respawn timer to prevent you running back. Thus res-rushing allows a team that cannot, or has not learned to legitimately defeat a boss/clear an encounter to "brute force" their way through it, simply breaking upon the rocks again and again until either only the players or mobs are left standing. This is very bad. This basically circumvents the "honing your skill" aspect of dungeons in favor of the path of least resistance. It makes bizarre things- like the speed with which you can complete the run back to a boss (better bring swiftness!)- more important than either knowledge or core skill.
The dungeon overhaul is meant to address these two negatives while protecting the positive. This patch did make some inroads on the "punishing" front: farewell, OG Lovers. But primarily it was focusing on eliminating res-rushing. You're now forced, ultimately for the better, to complete encounteres the way they were intended. Tweaking those encounters will be easier over time, because dungeon data for the design team will be more "honest." Who's dying where, and how often? Is this encounter legitimatelly tougher than it should be? Hard to tell if you can waypoint zerg the boss and win every time. Try and think of things in the long term: the brief few months of the game when res-rushing was a thing will be almost wholly forgotten for the majority of this game's lifespan.
2) So that brings me to how we adjust to these changes as players. I've compiled a list of tips below. Some of these are general dungeon advice that have become more important; some are entirely new considerations.
New Dungeon Running Tips:
- Protect yourself first. Support builds are incredibly valuable in a dungeon party, and having two good support characters can make you feel almost overpowered in some encounters. But even support characters need to think about keeping themselves alive before the needs of any other character. Yes, this is completely antithetical to traditional MMO design. But it takes all the pressure off of any one player from being responsible for the rest of the party. If you die, you need to come to grips with the fact that it was almost definitely your fault. Consider what happened and how you can improve your character to compensate. Maybe more vitality would do you some good. Maybe add a skill with protection or a block to your build. Staying alive in dungeons is more important than ever.
- Reconsider your skills and traits. No matter how good you are at staying alive, you and your party members will occasionally slip up and go down. Now's a perfect time to take a look at the loadout you bring into dungeons and consider any traits or skills that give you benefits while rezzing. Note that these apply both to rezzing downed and defeated players, and rezzing defeated players is something you'll be doing a lot more often.
- Forget about "the run back." This is my favorite part. Were you taking any swiftness or other movement speed boost specifically to help the run back to bosses? Boom. Free skill or trait slot. It's completely pointless now. Unless you rely on swiftness for kiting, it has instantly become the least useful boon in a dungeon.
- Master the "team rally." Pulling off a "team rally" is an incredibly important part of advanced PvE play that the game does absolutely nothing whatsoever to explain to you. It's pretty simple: when your team has been fighting a few mobs and you see one or more teammates go down, call target on any mob that has low health and kill it as quickly as possible rather than rezzing any player. This seems counterintuitive because rezzing speed is fast, but if you pull it off, 1) all downed players will rally at the same time, completely turning the tide of battle, and 2) you won't have put yourself in the vulnerable position of rezzing. This is really important to get good at, moreso than ever now.
- Consider a tactical retreat. No res-rushing doesn't mean you have to wipe to retry a boss. If your team is getting crushed (typically two dead and one downed player is a good signal to the other two), don't hesitate to type "retreat!" and run the fuck away. When you get out of combat, everyone can res- no death penalty for those who managed to survive.
- Treat wipes as lessons, not failures. If your team wiped before this change, it was because you were either caught completely off-guard, or because nobody made it back from a waypoint to the ongoing fight. Now, you wipe because your team couldn't survive the fight. Your attempts to rez failed, not enough DPS, missing condition removal- what was it? Have a quick chat with your team and consider switching weapons, skills, and traits to prep for the encounter specifically once you all revive at a waypoint.
Phase Two of the Dungeon Overhual will focus more on the "arrrrgh" factor in dungeons- the imbalance that favors experienced groups inordinately over new groups. This will trend toward making the toughest paths easier over time, but that's alright- completing them will be more "real" without res-rushing. Now is a great time to start honing your skills- you'll be even more efficient when the tweaks come!
III. Living Story
Many people have noted that the details of how the Flame & Frost world event will unfold have been very shallow and cryptic. This has resulted in a lot of questions here, in guild chat, and especially on the official forums.
When does [x] start? How do I get the achievement if there's only [x] available? How long do I have to complete [x]? Is this all there is for the event?
First, please relax. Don't worry about it. There will be plenty of time to get the achievement(s). The full scope of the event will become more clear over time. You won't miss out anything you don't want to miss out on. What's in the game for Flame & Frost right now isn't meant to impress the crap out of you just yet.
I have to tell you: it must be incredibly difficult for ArenaNet to bite their tongues in response to these inquiries. But giving as little information about these things, outside of the game, is 100% intentional.
I know that sounds a little crazy. I know that some players, even within our guild, sort of loathe the concept of not having specific dates, times, and instructions with regard to each piece of content offered in the game. I'll be frank: if I'm describing you, you're going to get a little screwed by Living Story events. You're likely best off waiting until a Living Story quest sequence is revealed to be ending soon, looking up the guides that will surely exist by that point, and getting everything done all at once.
For the rest of us, Living Story conceptually represents the culmination of a lot of philosophical ideas put forth by ANet in its manifesto.
You see: the developers of Guild Wars 2 are taking upon themselves the painful task of attempting to create what "us gamers" claim we really do want all the time in an online game: a living, breathing, changing world. The idea that things might be different than they were the last time you logged in. That you might stumble onto something in an area you'd been before that is clearly new or unexplained. That there's always reason to explore and new things to see and do should be surprising, not just a bullet point in the patch notes. If you haven't acknowledged the fact that this kind of "living world" is in direct contrast with a "tell us exactly when and how" mentality, now is the time to do so.
There will be plenty of "here's the new hotness" content too- fractals are a great example.
But Flame & Frost is, in my eyes, a prototype of Living Story content to come. It will start out being very small in scale, gradually ramp up for some time, expand in scope and progress in storyline, and eventually change the world in a permanent way. As live content, it's the antithesis of a one-time event like the Lost Shores invasion. I would go as far as to say it shouldn't even be considered limited-time in the sense of Holiday events- which is why they haven't named a "cutoff date" of any sort yet.
Living Story events are the answer to "what's going on at the moment?" when you log in. They're meant to be things you stumble onto, or get pointed toward by a herald, or overhear being discussed in guild chat. ArenaNet's approach and desire is that, eventually, when the execution is refined enough, there should always be something new, something you haven't seen yet, going on somewhere in the world. If they can pull this off, it will be unprecedented in the MMO space, and ultimately force other games to adopt more "living, breathing worlds" themselves. As unimpressive as the simple refugee trail in wayfarer might seem right now, that which it represents will be an overwhelmingly positive step forward for online gaming if it succeeds.
More from Bobby Stein on the plans for Flame & Frost.
What Does This Update Mean for the Future?
Just to summarize: take it easy. The overwhelming sense I get from this update, taken as a whole, is one of foundation. These are things that, to me, obviously represent the first steps in a series of clearly long-term plans. I have a feeling we'll look back one year from now at how refined these aspects of the game have become and generally approve of all of them in hindsight.
No problemo, thanks for taking the time to read it!
Welp, it's gone. You should attend our next guild dungeon run event! I think we're overdue for an EXP Mode race...
Theoretically no. I haven't seen it confirmed in an official way (forum post, patch notes, etc.).
But I'm preeeeetty sure I heard from more than one ANet employee that it was the case. We'll know on Monday I suppose, except Combo Kills won't be there.
edit: Damnit how did I not see that was the 95th post of the page.
Sir Garbageman
Member
Awesome breakdown Hawkian, thanks.
No problem, thanks for reading. 
Guys- event this weekend, early afternoon Sat., Feb 2nd, it's time for another GAFGuild Exp Mode Dungeon Race.
For those that don't know/remember how these work:
1) Sign up on GAFGuild once the thread is up (or just show up if you want to make more work for me)
2) Teams of 5 will be randomly assigned, with one officer or proxy per team for CHEATSZORS
3) Everyone enters the dungeon lobby with their team and gets on mumble in one channel for a countdown and GO!
4) Everybody splits off into their own mumble channels per team to actually do the dungeon.
5) Each team may choose whichever path they desire, based on what they think they can complete the fastest
6) Each member of the winning team (you can prove it by all linking your dungeon tokens) receives a prize
7) Every member who attends and eventually completes their dungeon path, regardless of how long it takes, receives an Unidentified dye
Now, the question. We want to do one of the less common dungeons, and one we haven't done this with before.
Let the voting begin: TA, CoE, or HotW?
edit: PFFT look how much I nailed the "Living Story" design concept. Absolutely swear I hadn't read this beforehand: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17jm9q/living_story_content_how_it_works/
ANet higher-ups watching this thread, any job offers would be taken into serious consideration.
Guys- event this weekend, early afternoon Sat., Feb 2nd, it's time for another GAFGuild Exp Mode Dungeon Race.
For those that don't know/remember how these work:
1) Sign up on GAFGuild once the thread is up (or just show up if you want to make more work for me)
2) Teams of 5 will be randomly assigned, with one officer or proxy per team for CHEATSZORS
3) Everyone enters the dungeon lobby with their team and gets on mumble in one channel for a countdown and GO!
4) Everybody splits off into their own mumble channels per team to actually do the dungeon.
5) Each team may choose whichever path they desire, based on what they think they can complete the fastest
6) Each member of the winning team (you can prove it by all linking your dungeon tokens
) receives a prize 7) Every member who attends and eventually completes their dungeon path, regardless of how long it takes, receives an Unidentified dye
Now, the question. We want to do one of the less common dungeons, and one we haven't done this with before.
Let the voting begin: TA, CoE, or HotW?
edit: PFFT look how much I nailed the "Living Story" design concept. Absolutely swear I hadn't read this beforehand: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17jm9q/living_story_content_how_it_works/
ANet higher-ups watching this thread, any job offers would be taken into serious consideration.
No problem, thanks for reading.
Guys- event this weekend, early afternoon Sat., Feb 2nd, it's time for another GAFGuild Exp Mode Dungeon Race.
For those that don't know/remember how these work:
1) Sign up on GAFGuild once the thread is up (or just show up if you want to make more work for me)
2) Teams of 5 will be randomly assigned, with one officer or proxy per team for CHEATSZORS
3) Everyone enters the dungeon lobby with their team and gets on mumble in one channel for a countdown and GO!
4) Everybody splits off into their own mumble channels per team to actually do the dungeon.
5) Each team may choose whichever path they desire, based on what they think they can complete the fastest
6) Each member of the winning team (you can prove it by all linking your dungeon tokens
7) Every member who attends and eventually completes their dungeon path, regardless of how long it takes, receives an Unidentified dye
Now, the question. We want to do one of the less common dungeons, and one we haven't done this with before.
Let the voting begin: TA, CoE, or HotW?
edit: PFFT look how much I nailed the "Living Story" design concept. Absolutely swear I hadn't read this beforehand: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17jm9q/living_story_content_how_it_works/
ANet higher-ups watching this thread, any job offers would be taken into serious consideration.
The Blade has done it again with multiple posts!
Thanks for the write up and summarizing the changes and the possible reasons why.
As for the guild event, I vote for TA for purely selfish reasons. I need the weapon skins!
Lone_Prodigy
Member
While doing the Daily last night I was still reflexively killing different enemies even though variety wasn't an objective. :lol
Voting CoE because my wife wants to show off more hot Mesmer cleavage.
Her boobs are gonna get cut on those jaggies o.o
irfaanator
Banned
damn, not going to be here this weekend
Man, that is so cool. I'm really glad for you.
Fuck, seriously. That strikes me as the kind of thing most devs would just snicker at in the office silently, let alone apologize for, let alone promise a fix for, let alone indicate a fix was possible for within a couple days.
Yea, I'm honestly pretty surprised they even responded to the comments that quickly, let alone said that a fix was being worked on atm.
Props to ANet on that.
Well this game is kind of a "dress up barbie" game with combat and team play on the side so it makes sense to me. =x
Spoken like a true dude with multiple identical female human characters
We "barbie dress up" aficionados prefer to call it "persona development". I should have taken a screenshot of my main's bank in World of Warcraft; I was using 22 slot bags for pretty outfits.
In fact, I'm probably lucky I drifted towards a male main instead of a female one as I originally planned (and played for 65 levels before deleting). When they've finally implemented more town clothes, I would have been incredibly poor. You'd have seen my avatar in Divinity's Reach, adorned in the finest finery and the liveliest livery, holding a cardboard sign that reads "Will read the Official Forums* for gems".
* Closest thing to a shameful and degrading sex act I could think of.
Path one is totally more tolerable now except the motherfucking Butcher is maybe my least favorite boss in the game. That gimmick is fine for the CoE Golem (which itself has too much HP) but as an end boss it's just dire. Take away the turrets from that fight and we're in business. His brutal spin attack is actually fun to dodge and I like the way he focuses aggro. Just sooooooooo boring with the protection and regen.
I feel like the fight would be infinitely better if he just had less health. The mechanic does feel off, especially compared to the CoE Golem, but even if it was fixed and the fight required you to really stick to the 'gimmick', it would go on so much longer than is needed to figure out / organize / carry out the plan.
He just has too much health. It's like "Okay, we get it, and we've proven we know how to beat him, can we just get it over with?"
Hopefully Phase 2 is more Fractal and less meaty damage sponge.
That's a good way of putting it. I feel like Alpha, Lupi, the Howling King, and the COF1 boss (Something Effigy..? also, not familiar enough with the bosses in the other paths) are great examples of bosses with whom you don't "prove it" until they're dead for good, whereas with the butcher this occurs like... 1/4 of the way through the fight.
edit: Hey gaiiiz, upvote my post? It's gaining some traction
It just links back to the post here; not against the TOS to ask, right?I'm voting for CoE Path 3 only. We ran it last night and it was loooooool. Evolved Destroyer is indeed quicker now though.
But I'm prepared. I have the "Courtesan." In fact, I'm already out two 18 slot bags because of 3 armor sets and spare weapons not including the one currently being worn. I'm afraid of when they do put in proper sets of town clothes.
But I'm prepared. I have the "Courtesan." In fact, I'm already out two 18 slot bags because of 3 armor sets and spare weapons not including the one currently being worn. I'm afraid of when they do put in proper sets of town clothes.
The Searing Effigy, yeah. Have you run CoE since they supposedly tweaked Alpha?
We will see. Path 3's Alpha makes me cry but I'm just going to assume that I trigged every agro flag or something. Haven't run 1 or 2 yet but may try after I get home from work.
Was on the thief with the column spike always on me. That consistant extra damage is really annoying but I was running full glass cannon gear. It's just that I was burning all my dodge really quickly because I was getting targeted so often.
I probably could've just sat on him with a sword/sword mesmer set up.
The vigor on crit trait is what makes being a Mesmer vs Alpha easier. Constant endurance regen for dodges. I found that Alpha had less health, but the frequency of his attacks seemed to be higher. What really changes with no rez rushing is how and when or if you try to rez someone up. There's the limbs and risen mobs to rally off of, but sometimes that's not enough.
So I am getting back into GW2 again and made a new character - an elementalist - but I am dying. A lot. Really fast. I'm level 8 now and not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm going up against level 6/7 enemies, just crafted the gear I could which were improvements, but I still get wiped out real quick. Is that just part of the class at this level? Any tips? Do I just suck? (I probably just suck)
Elementalists are, in many ways, the true "squishies" of the game. They're very complex and tough in the early game, but they ramp up in killing power rapidly. Pay a lot of attention to your earth and water spells- they will keep you alive.
What weapons have you tried?
What weapons have you tried?
I was dual wielding knives but just crafted a staff through artificing. I've been having slightly better success with it but still dropping fast.
Holy crap. How many hours was it "unmajestic" for?
Love the way he put that, btw.
Stick with staff and stay FAR away from your target (it has huge range) until you feel more confident.
You need to get acquainted with the basic game mechanics- like dodging and attuning- at your level.
Nice explanation of everything by Hawkian.
There are more stats in the game beyond what can be crafted. Furthermore, stats on certain sets are different between PvP and PvE/WvW
For PvE, I prefer this wiki page http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature
(Also, there are gems/jewelry with stats that don't line up with any named stats that are mentioned in this link)
For PvP, you can use this one http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amulet
Note the ones that have differences and keep them in mind if you ever jump into PvP. Knight and Shaman have their major stat changed, while Valkyrie, Berserker, and Rampager were altered a little bit to add some Vitality.
It really gets on my nerves...
I'd also like to mention that Mesmer isn't the only one with easy access to vigor. It's not even the only class that can get vigor from crits. There are many methods, and if your class doesn't have a multitude of built in evades you'll need to look into getting vigor for a lot of PvE encounters.
There are more stats in the game beyond what can be crafted. Furthermore, stats on certain sets are different between PvP and PvE/WvW
For PvE, I prefer this wiki page http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature
(Also, there are gems/jewelry with stats that don't line up with any named stats that are mentioned in this link)
For PvP, you can use this one http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amulet
Note the ones that have differences and keep them in mind if you ever jump into PvP. Knight and Shaman have their major stat changed, while Valkyrie, Berserker, and Rampager were altered a little bit to add some Vitality.
It really gets on my nerves...
I'd also like to mention that Mesmer isn't the only one with easy access to vigor. It's not even the only class that can get vigor from crits. There are many methods, and if your class doesn't have a multitude of built in evades you'll need to look into getting vigor for a lot of PvE encounters.
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