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

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At one point, we actually talked about making a GW2 Blog, just so we'd be considered 'credible press'... but then Ash would jump on the EQNext hype train, and he already has so little free time out of the pit as it is... then I'd get hooked on Starbound... next thing you know, poor Jira has to do it all by himself.

I don't think you need a blog. Your OTs are enough it just a different style. Even if you guys get caught up in those games I'm sure you all would jump at opportunity to try out new updates before everyone and make a post about it here (your audience).
 

Luigi87

Member
Experience scroll makes me happy.
Will make starting my sixth that much easier... After I finally get #4 and #5 to 80 o_o
Both at 56 and 57 respectively...
 
Ok ... soooo I guess we should all run COF p1 to hell and back before they destroy it?

Good thing I have a level 80 Warrior ... who has yet to run a dungeon <_<

Sigh, hope they leave it alone for a few weeks at least. I need to actually make use of it before they start up with w/e crud they're about to do to make getting gold harder.
 

Cels

Member
Ok ... soooo I guess we should all run COF p1 to hell and back before they destroy it?

Good thing I have a level 80 Warrior ... who has yet to run a dungeon <_<

Sigh, hope they leave it alone for a few weeks at least. I need to actually make use of it before they start up with w/e crud they're about to do to make getting gold harder.

No one even knows if getting gold will be harder.

Maybe doing arah4, ta f/u, hotw2, cm2, ac2, and se2 all in one day will be the new cof1
 

Katoki

Member
For everyone talking about CoF 1, do remember that they said these things will come in the future and not the next patch. It sounds like they have yet to evaluate the rest of the dungeons and paths for difficulty to assign the reward pay outs.
 

Cels

Member
For everyone talking about CoF 1, do remember that they said these things will come in the future and not the next patch. It sounds like they have yet to evaluate the rest of the dungeons and paths for difficulty to assign the reward pay outs.
Yeah at some point in the next 6 months. Either way I will be glad to see more people running the harder dungeons. I am sure they will do something about gilded infusions as well.
 
I'll probably still use my next set of WvW Badges for one more exo armor set for my guard, but yeah, start hoarding them from there.

Same with my current Bolt goal...will grab it since I am so close (SOON) and then start hoarding.

Hoard everything!

Really? That's what I'm hoping for, how did you get all your charged lodestones? That's the monumental obstacle that is daunting to me. Did you just buy them off the TP? Did you buy your T6 mats or farm them?
 
No one even knows if getting gold will be harder.

Maybe doing arah4, ta f/u, hotw2, cm2, ac2, and se2 all in one day will be the new cof1

I'm not a long time fan of the company or anything so I can only go off of how I have seen them "solve" or "balance" things in my time with the game... and long story short, I simply think it's best for me to get a 100+ gold asap so that I can ride into this new ere feeling sure that regardless of which way the wind blows I'm gonna be able to get at least SOME of what I want for my characters (or at least get SOME of a culture t3 set for one).

I mean, yeah ... I have 2 level 80s at this point (play one of them all the time) and I STILL have problems getting my bank gold over 4g. That's with out CoF runs, haven't done those since I started leveling my warrior. The 3ish silver to WP them sure isn't helping either.
 

Cels

Member
I'm not a long time fan of the company or anything so I can only go off of how I have seen them "solve" or "balance" things in my time with the game... and long story short, I simply think it's best for me to get a 100+ gold asap so that I can ride into this new ere feeling sure that regardless of which way the wind blows I'm gonna be able to get at least SOME of what I want for my characters (or at least get SOME of a culture t3 set for one).

I mean, yeah ... I have 2 level 80s at this point (play one of them all the time) and I STILL have problems getting my bank gold over 4g. That's with out CoF runs, haven't done those since I started leveling my warrior. The 3ish silver to WP them sure isn't helping either.

they're not going to hit every source of gold in the game with a giant nerfbat, it looks like they just want to balance the rewards for doing a dungeon so it isn't so unhealthy.

right now if you go to gw2lfg.com, there are 209 total listings, 82 of which are for cof, and most of those are for cof1. yes, that's just a small cross section of the playerbase, but it provides a good snapshot of how rewards are skewed, and that's not healthy for the game.

in any case you should have plenty of time to farm cof1 to your heart's content.

if your problem is getting gold you should be happy with these changes because there will be multiple attractive gold streams in this game instead of just cof.
 

Complistic

Member
I run cof often, but no one in their right mind is going to say it shouldn't get nerfed.

* so long as other new opportunities to earn gold open up.
 

Saprol

Member
I mean, yeah ... I have 2 level 80s at this point (play one of them all the time) and I STILL have problems getting my bank gold over 4g. That's with out CoF runs, haven't done those since I started leveling my warrior. The 3ish silver to WP them sure isn't helping either.
Do you get the daily chests from world event bosses? I often TP all the rares for cash and that's where I've been getting most of my gold. My friends opt to just dump most of theirs into the Mystic Toilet though because omg precursors.
 

Retro

Member
The topic of Chinese game development attitudes came up tonight in Guild Chat, had to dig up an article that soured me on the entire asian games market;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/25888/VGS_09_Game_Designers__Everything_You_Know_Is_Wrong.php

Basically a very cold, calculating approach to game design. Not surprising there are so many MMOs released in that market; they're all trying to scam as many people out of their money as possible before they catch on. Reminds me of Zynga.
 

Jira

Member
Was talking to Colin in guild chat and he mentioned a few things:

  • Roughly everyday there's a new MMO coming out in China.
  • 120 Million MMO players last year in China alone.
  • GW2 is the most anticipated game on their entire gaming index right now.
  • Chinese government will likely enforce it so the entire Chinese playerbase is separated from ours.
  • No timeframe on Chinese launch until they create a better tutorial system.
  • The blog post from today was only half as long compared to what he wrote.
 

Ashodin

Member
Was talking to Colin in guild chat and he mentioned a few things:

  • Roughly everyday there's a new MMO coming out in China.
  • 120 Million MMO players last year in China alone.
  • GW2 is the most anticipated game on their entire gaming index right now.
  • Chinese government will likely enforce it so the entire Chinese playerbase is separated from ours.
  • No timeframe on Chinese launch until they create a better tutorial system.
  • The blog post from today was only half as long compared to what he wrote.

WHERE IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE EVIDENCE LIST
 

Slightly Live

Dirty tag dodger
Finally got that 40 crystal thingie cheevo. Never again. I lost count at the amount of times I splatted hard on the ground from falling.

Was actually quite fun despite all the dying, but certainly a do it once and never again type thing.
 

Sophia

Member
No timeframe on Chinese launch until they create a better tutorial system.

All this talk about a better tutorial system is kinda interesting to me. Normally I'm pretty opposed to the idea, as I've seen a lot of misguided developers in the past nearly ruin their games by trying to include "everyone", but the differences in Guild Wars 2 compared to other games in the genre means I think the game would benefit from a better tutorial. Specifically, right after you finish the initial part and get into the game world proper could be improved upon.

Finally got that 40 crystal thingie cheevo. Never again. I lost count at the amount of times I splatted hard on the ground from falling.

Was actually quite fun despite all the dying, but certainly a do it once and never again type thing.

Ha! Yeah, I'm glad achievements are account wide. As fun as it was, I don't want to do it again. It was great XP for my Guardian and I gained 10 levels VERY quickly doing all the events while searching.
 

Lunar15

Member
The topic of Chinese game development attitudes came up tonight in Guild Chat, had to dig up an article that soured me on the entire asian games market;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/25888/VGS_09_Game_Designers__Everything_You_Know_Is_Wrong.php

Basically a very cold, calculating approach to game design. Not surprising there are so many MMOs released in that market; they're all trying to scam as many people out of their money as possible before they catch on. Reminds me of Zynga.

There's no way that stuff lasts. Look, I understand the power of data driven games. Even Guild Wars 2 is largely data driven. But at a certain point, one would have to hope that people just become immune to that stuff and the bubble pops.

Although, when you think about it, what actually happens is that data driven games all converge on a single concept that becomes cookie cutter. Then it takes some actual degree of creativity/artistic design to break the mold and attract users. This is EXACTLY what happened with Zynga. When all you're making is cheap, data-driven, easy to re-produce slot machines, it's really easy for someone to take the top spot from you. If the market's too risky, companies will sit out. That's how bubbles pop.
 
I've mostly ignored the Zephyr update. I got the kites, a few sky crystals. The zone is nice looking, but there just isn't that "grabs my attention" factor.

Thanks again to Anno for the help with stuff in WvW.

Quaggan Bowl 2016.
Boomer!
 

Trey

Member
I'm reading those old blog posts Retro linked and I'm getting hyped all over again.

Now, though, I can boot up the game to sate the hunger.
 
if your problem is getting gold you should be happy with these changes because there will be multiple attractive gold streams in this game instead of just cof.

Looking at their idea of "balancing" makes me say "I shall believe it when I see it".

The game has been out for a year, if they're just now figuring out a way to give more people COF levels of cash doing "other things" then I think there's more to it than the face comment that "we're making MORE fun ways to make a tonna gold real fast!! :D". Kinda like the Mesmer's getting nerfed in the "Diversity build patch".

You wanna make dungeons more rewarding, give better cosmetic skins as rewards and make them fast gold. As of right now I'm only interested in getting ... 2 armor sets from the current ones. Other than that? IDK what else would make me run a dungeon outside of cool looking gear and fast COF gold. I had a horrible first run with my ele and I still don't like them much with her. Not sure why others who feel that way should be punished in the cast of a COF nerf.
Do you get the daily chests from world event bosses? I often TP all the rares for cash and that's where I've been getting most of my gold. My friends opt to just dump most of theirs into the Mystic Toilet though because omg precursors.

I use to ... until I noticed "WOW, the cost it takes to WP all over the map with my level 80s take a fatty chunk out of TP profits ... ".

That and DR kicked in way too often. (had more than one "Oh wow ... forgot Mag was the last one I did yesterday .. soooo yeah, that was a waste of time cause now I get no chest" moments :/)
 

Levyne

Banned
Is path 2 in CM the bad one? Its the only path I've done in CM beyond storymode.

None of the cm paths are easy, and none are truly super hard, but 2 is the worst of the bunch in there. It has an annoying part where you have to time some bundle drops and a lot of high damage ranged silvers that can be annoying if you have a group without a lot of reflects or something.

Edit: I misread and see that you HAVE done it...oops. Yeah the others are not as bad.
 

Jira

Member
Looking at their idea of "balancing" makes me say "I shall believe it when I see it".

The game has been out for a year, if they're just now figuring out a way to give more people COF levels of cash doing "other things" then I think there's more to it than the face comment that "we're making MORE fun ways to make a tonna gold real fast!! :D". Kinda like the Mesmer's getting nerfed in the "Diversity build patch".

You wanna make dungeons more rewarding, give better cosmetic skins as rewards and make them fast gold. As of right now I'm only interested in getting ... 2 armor sets from the current ones. Other than that? IDK what else would make me run a dungeon outside of cool looking gear and fast COF gold. I had a horrible first run with my ele and I still don't like them much with her. Not sure why others who feel that way should be punished in the cast of a COF nerf.


I use to ... until I noticed "WOW, the cost it takes to WP all over the map with my level 80s take a fatty chunk out of TP profits ... ".

That and DR kicked in way too often. (had more than one "Oh wow ... forgot Mag was the last one I did yesterday .. soooo yeah, that was a waste of time cause now I get no chest" moments :/)

It's not a matter of taking a year to figure this out. Read this:

Honestly, it's something I wish we could have implemented sooner, it's just a matter of the fact we didn't want to destroy the CoF experience at a cost of not fixing all the other dungeons and trying to make those more rewarding. It's part of the reason why its taken us quite a while to do this to get a system in place to reward every dungeon equally. We want to ensure every dungeon is just as rewarding if we're to push people out of CoF. That is the intent - we've put a lot of thought into it. I really wish we could have done this a couple of months ago. We're expecting a few people who love doing CoF constantly - I don't imagine they love running CoF a thousand times constantly - we expect a few of them will be upset about that. In the grand scheme of things it's much better for the game and the players. To diversify content and be rewarded for it.

So rather than put a bandaid on CoF1, they wanted to fix the entire dungeon reward system in a single go.
 

Levyne

Banned
Really? That's what I'm hoping for, how did you get all your charged lodestones? That's the monumental obstacle that is daunting to me. Did you just buy them off the TP? Did you buy your T6 mats or farm them?

Missed this.

1.) Mostly cores -> Lodestones, a good number of CoE runs though too. Put in listings for cores. Did this once dust became cheap.
2.) About half of the T6 mats farmed (thanks SS skelk), half bought.
 
Is path 2 in CM the bad one? Its the only path I've done in CM beyond storymode.

CM is in need of a re balance, the enemies do too much damage, this dungeon is harder than TA, SE, CoF, HoTW, and CoE, IMO, and those dungeons come after CM, it's still doable but F N annoying...
 
What am I supposed to do with the crystals you get out of the kites?
I jumped on last night as ive been busy all week and I must have about 45 of them!
 

jersoc

Member
that blog post got me pretty pumped. sounds like they are gonna address some major issues i have with the game. mainly the stale skills right now and dungeon runs not really be worth the time.

if all those things go live within the next 6 months. GW2 is going to be pretty solid only a year'ish after launch.
 

Saprol

Member
I use to ... until I noticed "WOW, the cost it takes to WP all over the map with my level 80s take a fatty chunk out of TP profits ... ".
I figure the WP cost is usually covered before the guaranteed rare. Making a real far warp is 3-4 silver. One dynamic event completion gives a bit over 1 silver. Get even more if you do enough for credit in the pre-events. Vendor the blues/greens from the spawned chest / mob drops as well.

That and DR kicked in way too often. (had more than one "Oh wow ... forgot Mag was the last one I did yesterday .. soooo yeah, that was a waste of time cause now I get no chest" moments :/)

I find gw2stuff useful for tracking this stuff: http://us.gw2stuff.com/events/yaks-bend It updates boss statuses and lets you note which ones you got since the last server reset. There's an overlay version for people who don't want to leave full-screen. I just keep 3 tabs of gw2stuff open. Megadestroyer and Gates of Arah don't have a guaranteed rare, just the chest spawn.

On that note, does anybody know why the hell there's always so many people in Queensdale? Getting Shadow Behemoth near daily reset time is the most difficult event out of them all. :lol

What am I supposed to do with the crystals you get out of the kites?
I jumped on last night as ive been busy all week and I must have about 45 of them!
Once per day you can go to one of the places of power (skill points where you commune) and convert 25 Quartz into a Charged Quartz. Charged Quartz is an account-bound crafting material for exotic celestial gear. Celestial stats is basically a little bit of everything.

You can mine more quartz from the current living story zone. If you complete 16 achievements for this living story, you'll unlock a Quartz node in each of the home instances to mine from even after the event is over.
 

Jira

Member
Humans are the most played race in every MMO in which they're available hence shit tons of people in Queensdale.
 
I

Once per day you can go to one of the places of power (skill points where you commune) and convert 25 Quartz into a Charged Quartz. Charged Quartz is an account-bound crafting material for exotic celestial gear. Celestial stats is basically a little bit of everything.

You can mine more quartz from the current living story zone. If you complete 16 achievements for this living story, you'll unlock a Quartz node in each of the home instances to mine from even after the event is over.

Ah ok. Im not sure how close I am to getting 16. I do remember looking at the list and thinking "hmm I think id rather just level" haha
 

Cels

Member
It's not a matter of taking a year to figure this out. Read this:

So rather than put a bandaid on CoF1, they wanted to fix the entire dungeon reward system in a single go.

Oh, no one thinks they didn't know about it. It's just that they've known about it and failed to do anything about it for a very long time. When the game first came out and people were farming dungeons Anet was very quick to nerf dungeon rewards, introducing DR for the coin/tokens you get if you completed the same path of the same dungeon multiple times in a short amount of time. That was in the first month of the game's release.

Meanwhile, CoF farming for the bosses' coin has gone on in much the same manner for almost a year now and Anet hasn't done anything about it. Instituting a measured bandaid to fix this (something like boss coin DR would deincentivize CoF farming while leaving other areas of the game almost completely unchanged) would have been fine and wouldn't have destroyed the CoF experience any more than leaving the other seven dungeons in their current state destroyed the experience for players running those seven dungeons. Anet even encouraged this kind of farming by adding the Gilded Infusion to the game, because dungeon bosses are the only bosses in the game that drop substantial amounts of coin. The best place to use your Gilded Infusion was an already-popular dungeon that didn't need any extra incentive to run it, and the gap between farming CoF vs other PvE moneymaking activities widened even farther. Go figure.

I'm glad to hear they will be re-tuning dungeon rewards, just disappointed it has taken so long. In any event, the rewards are just the beginning. They still need to finish what they started doing with the dungeons with the AC revamp back in February. I read somewhere they are trying to tie the revamps into the Living Story, so that probably explains why we haven't seen a second dungeon revamp in five months' time.

CM is in need of a re balance, the enemies do too much damage, this dungeon is harder than TA, SE, CoF, HoTW, and CoE, IMO, and those dungeons come after CM, it's still doable but F N annoying...

Every dungeon needs retuning (well except AC) not just CM. CM is an interesting case because it's a level 45 dungeon (good luck completing it with a party full of level 45 players) and because as you said the mobs hit like trucks. It's also hard to do CM b/c in my experience it's the least done dungeon across all explorable paths so it's hard to find a group, which is another problem not helped by the attractiveness of CoF.
 
I'm still hoping that build/equipment templets are being worked on for this year.

Why you'll bad mouthing me in front of Sir. Peck?
 

demented

Member
This is sort of what I mean when I talk about expansions hurting the community; as soon as stuff is announced people immediately switch to "I'll just wait, the game is gonna get better" mode. But in this case, all of those things are happening before the end of the year, and instead of just 'some day, all at once', they're implemented individually at different times. Waiting for the whole list to be finished means missing out on a lot when it goes live.

LFG will be in soon, definitely before the end of August, I think. If that tweet was correct, then Super Adventure Box will probably be back in September or October. The results of the election (and thus, new fractals) will probably be October or November (November makes more sense since that's when we have Election Day in the states, and that's the one year anniversary of fractals).

All of the features in that post (subject to change, of course) will be peppered throughout the next 5 months. Not to mention Halloween (which they've said will have new content) and Wintersday (Ditto). There's really no reason to stop playing and wait. That stuff is coming, and probably a whole lot more they haven't mentioned because it's not ready yet. There could be dungeon revamps in there (makes sense if they're revamping dungeon chests), more zones like Labyrinthine Cliffs...

Bottom Line: Waiting in this game means missing out. No MMO has ever been able to leverage so much content so quickly, which is going to take getting used to for people who are used to the usual 3-6 month wait for the game to be fixed and something new to do and 1-2 years for an expansion to make sweeping changes and introduce a lot of content.

All of those things happen two weeks at a time. Strap yourself in, this ride is just getting started.

Well it's true isn't it? I mean aside from doing events and living story they add you won't miss much even if you don't play and just log in for those.
I like events and story stuff and that's mainly what I do. But after I'm done with it after 2-3 days I'm out of stuff to do so lately I've been doing some achievements because I like the chests they're giving out and been having some fun until I started doing dailies again and felt obliged to do them. Gotta get into mindset of who cares if it's done and try to have some fun, but besides those events I'm pretty much out of stuff to do until new thing hits and I'll get bored of achievement hunting eventually.
And the things they announced sound great and I can't wait to play them so in a way not playing a lot these days will not make me burn out again and I'll have much more fun when they're out.
 
Only 11 fortune scraps to go.

I bet I get a 50 scraps one as the last Kite Forture :/

I realise that in order to get the achievement reward shoulders I need <200 more achievement points so I guess that's my next target.
 

Retro

Member
Ah ok. Im not sure how close I am to getting 16. I do remember looking at the list and thinking "hmm I think id rather just level" haha

Technically, that is leveling; to get those 16 you need to explore a bit, do at least one part of one Fractal, do a little WvW, bounce around the Bazaar meeting people, watch a Quaggan do a stand-up comedy show, jump off a floating airship, play a MarioKart-esque foot race for a bit...

Doing achievements nets you experience, and the Sanctum Sprint has some pretty good loot if you at least finish.

I read somewhere they are trying to tie the revamps into the Living Story, so that probably explains why we haven't seen a second dungeon revamp in five months' time.

We actually asked about this, and to our surprise there isn't actually an established "Dungeon Team". Instead, the various teams within the company decide if they want to work on a dungeon or not for whatever piece of content they're doing. They try not to put people into boxes where they're doing the same thing everyday forever. Even the Living Story teams are given a lot of free reign to decide what their content will be, from what I understand.

I'm not sure if there's a team working on the dungeon revamps specifically at this point; when we asked Robert Hrouda about it, I believe he said he was working on it, but he ended up getting pulled to work on something else (but didn't say what). This was a while ago, though.

CM is an interesting case because it's a level 45 dungeon (good luck completing it with a party full of level 45 players) and because as you said the mobs hit like trucks. It's also hard to do CM b/c in my experience it's the least done dungeon across all explorable paths so it's hard to find a group, which is another problem not helped by the attractiveness of CoF.

For what it's worth, CM is actually one of my favorite dungeons, thematically. Most game dungeons are a cave, ruins, a castle or something along those lines. CM is a lavish mansion with gardens, cellars and all sorts of hidden niches. I'd love if, when they did the revamp, they added more secret passages, hidden rooms and such.

Hell, get Marjory in there as a sort of Noir murder mystery. What would be REALLY cool is if throughout the dungeon, you're gathering bits of evidence (randomly selected each time) between boss fights. Then at the end, you have to piece together from the evidence which suspect committed the murder; you can accuse any of several guests (so if you want a specific fight, you can have it), but if you guess correctly, you get some extra bit of loot or something.

Why you'll bad mouthing me in front of Sir. Peck?

Because we like you enough to tease ya.

Well it's true isn't it? I mean aside from doing events and living story they add you won't miss much even if you don't play and just log in for those.
I like events and story stuff and that's mainly what I do. But after I'm done with it after 2-3 days I'm out of stuff to do so lately I've been doing some achievements because I like the chests they're giving out and been having some fun until I started doing dailies again and felt obliged to do them. Gotta get into mindset of who cares if it's done and try to have some fun, but besides those events I'm pretty much out of stuff to do until new thing hits and I'll get bored of achievement hunting eventually.
And the things they announced sound great and I can't wait to play them so in a way not playing a lot these days will not make me burn out again and I'll have much more fun when they're out.

Well, what I was getting at is that all of the things in the blog post aren't coming all at once at some point in the distant future. For all we know, some of that stuff could be in there next week; the releases page does look kind of thin (though I doubt it, honestly). Certainly some will be in August, given Colin's "You'll get it sooner rather than later" comment in an interview yesterday. I can certainly understand not wanting to play a certain part of the game until things are 'fixed', but waiting for 'someday' just isn't something you want to do in GW2 overall. New stuff comes every two weeks and even if it isn't the thing you've been waiting for, I have a hard time believing there isn't something interesting to do.

My point was that waiting until "It's all implemented" means missing it as it comes out at a natural pace, as well as missing out on any living story stuff. Your comment was probably more innocuous than how I interpreted it (which was "I'll just stop playing until they fix it", which doesn't seem to be the case given your reply). We've been discussing the Expansion (and lack thereof) lately and that's been on my mind. A lot of MMO developers are always working on and dropping tidbits about their expansions, to keep people get excited about the future rather than notice that the present state of their game is usually pretty stale.

You could say ArenaNet is doing the same thing with the blog post yesterday, but we don't really have any specifics from that, just lots of clues as to the general direction. It was meant as a high level preview of their overall goals. That would normally sell a lot of people on sticking with the game, or looking forward to the update when all of that comes out in a few months... then you remember there's another update in four days. Then another 14 days after that, and another 14 days after that... Maybe it's just me, but GW2 is the first MMO where I'm looking forward to right now, or at least the immediate future, rather than some nebulous date when they do a bunch of stuff at once.
 
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