Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[ryanmahaffe]

I went ahead and reinstalled the game just to try the new story and see if I can get into the game for the 40th time since release.

From my understanding the game runs on megaservers correct? I am told that servers don't really matter but in my case that sounds bad because even the new zone seems almost completely dead with at most like 3-5 people actively doing an event and on average maybe one other player. I am on Eredon Terrace but damn it just feels so empty. I know the game is in no way dead so it's just confusing to me.

[Edge-]

Finally played the new episode.

It was shorter than I thought it would be, but overall I liked where it's going...even if it's more dragons. There was a distinct lack of Taimi though, they need to fix that ASAP.

New masteries: Hate the idea of them, reminding me of the nonsense Aegis system from TSW and seems like it'll be more annoying than interesting/fun. Haven't unlocked them all yet, but we'll see how it plays out.

New zone: Not in love with the design, feels a bit too corridored to get from one area to the next and there's not as much fun verticality. Haven't seen too much even variety yet, but the events seem alright for the most part. New strike was confusing, and I'm not sure what exactly the mechanics are, but was fun enough in a pug.

I need to spend more time to finish unlocking masteries and explore some more, but thus far this gets a 6.5/10 from me. A bit above average, but nothing to necessarily write home about. At least we didn't have to wait long for it, but it makes me wonder what kind of release schedule they'll have for the remaining episodes and how big they'll be.

- - - Updated - - -

I went ahead and reinstalled the game just to try the new story and see if I can get into the game for the 40th time since release.

From my understanding the game runs on megaservers correct? I am told that servers don't really matter but in my case that sounds bad because even the new zone seems almost completely dead with at most like 3-5 people actively doing an event and on average maybe one other player. I am on Eredon Terrace but damn it just feels so empty. I know the game is in no way dead so it's just confusing to me.

What time were you on? I was on during primetime and events were pretty busy (mostly the bigger events with better rewards), finding the apple/commanders on the map can help with that as there's often a mob following them. Played a bit on off-hours and it was much slimmer pickings, may be that the instance version you're in was an "overflow" instance that wasn't fully populated yet.

It happens sometimes. It's frustrating when it does because you're sorta screwed out of completing a bunch of events, but that's the downside of a public event based system : /

[PACOX]

I went ahead and reinstalled the game just to try the new story and see if I can get into the game for the 40th time since release.

From my understanding the game runs on megaservers correct? I am told that servers don't really matter but in my case that sounds bad because even the new zone seems almost completely dead with at most like 3-5 people actively doing an event and on average maybe one other player. I am on Eredon Terrace but damn it just feels so empty. I know the game is in no way dead so it's just confusing to me.

If there's only 3-5 people on a map then that instance or the map will close. There's like 5 events going on at a given time (on the newest map). People are probably spread out or afk in the little outpost.

- - - Updated - - -

Supposedly this new episode and map are pretty dynamic. Anet says there are things you'll only see (mostly ambient) once you beat the story.

They said the the episodes are supposed to be shorter with small incremental changes in between each episode (the 'current event' updates they used to do before the layoffs or subtle map changes before a release like during ls2).

I'll just post the full 'Guild Chat summary from reddit:

Hello, I've made some notes for our wiki and decided to share it here with all of you, sorted by topics (some of the topics overlap, though, like Lore and Q&A). The thread by u/buildaworld contained only some answered questions, but this one goes into details about pretty much everything they've said.

Note: I suck a bit at Reddit formatting, so forgive me that.

Lore

Boneskinner was originally called Wendigo

Norn culture, Jhavi - again more important in the future

Braham - he's growing out of his emo phase, but it is not complete yet

Rytlock & Crecia - Asking who is Ryland as a person

What happened offscreen in EP1 - will come into play later

When Jormag speaks through the fraenir, Debra (Jormag) and Fred's (Fraenir) voices are mixed

This season, hidden agendas everywhere: Jormag, Bangar, maybe even Ryland, others that we don't know yet

Jormag's way: "getting what Jormag wants is to persuade you that you should want it too", not by force

Meta event: some of the battles are loops created by the Fraenir, if you repeat them, some characters will be like "Wait, did we do this already...?"

Jormag whispering to keep you "doing your things, staying in this little corner"

When doing some of the events outside your story, the npcs (Marjory, Braham,...) will be replaced by a different group (new tech!) who also experience time loop

Braham fights something that resembles his dad, Jory fights Belinda > messed her pretty big

Marjory + Kas - more this season, they both more matured, changed: they wanna synthesize these changes with the gameplay, not just show it

The unknown whispers confirmed to be Jormag's

"Almorra's" call by Jormag: didn't want the sound make too obvious, added some hints (static, disruptions), "zombie Almorra using the comm, Jormag controlling the hands

Essence manipulation: connected to the spirits, kinda haunting, disturbing

Asura who tells you about it: feels like he went to dark lengths to manipulate the essence, killing creatures and putting their essence into the pillars, you absorb it

When you see the Boneskinner stalking you, and then it disappeares, it disappears only for you. Other players may still see it

Jormag is still struggling a bit with the power to control bodies, that's why the fraenir is moving the way it does

Q&A from players

Frost: they don't want to hinder gameplay but still want the player to feel claustrophobic, anxious, not to completely see where the enemies are coming from,

there is special audio associated with the freezing effect

Will strike mission keep getting more difficult?

Boneskinner is the hardest, it doesn't have wipe mechanics but things will progressively gets harder if you dont coordinate/do mechanics

Will the map keep expanding? Yes, in ep2. Same as Dry Top.

If you complete the map now, you get the complete reward. If you wait for the map to expand, you'll have to do the new things as well

Essence manipulation mastery increase - yes, in ep2. After that, they don't know yet (if this mastery re-appears)

why can't you mount in Darkrime Dvelves? Reducing clutter so that players do not stand over Almorra.

How Svanir got their raptors? Did they purchase PoF?

They didn't purchase it. Jormag's possibly lured, persuaded some mounts so they would want to be ridden by Sons of Svanir. Some of them had mounts before they defected. It looks cool.

Do Jormag minions conserve free will? Tom: "Great question" "what you mean by free will?"

Influence of Jormag: sometimes you don't notice Jormag is influencing your thinking, sometimes you can hear Jormag's voice in your head saying things (reasons why this vary in next ep)

tricky part: you may feel it is your free will, "Absolutely arguable that Jormag is actually acting always in good faith in terms what Jormag wants in the world."

Elder Dragons tend not to care for the mortals (generally speaking), except Aurene, and also not entirely true for Jormag as well

Key question: Who is Jormag and what is Jormag doing.

Will we see more of the Boneskinner later? Yes.
General stuff

Showed Aurene and Joko Funko Pops, coming in January 2020

Episode was shorter - hopefully shorter times between eps, more frequent releases

Fraenir - voiced by Fred Tatasciore

This season: suspence, discovering secrets, full significance of things to appear later

Episode 1 - Setting questions, tone

Some of the golden path storytelling (main story) is in the open world

During open world story, your Braham shows to other players as a raven

More player specific dialogue in the next ep

"we have little tiny prop changes, little tiny dialogue addition, as the weeks roll out. Keep an eye for that." (thanks to u/edpedrero )

Behind the scenes

Chapter 1 - Audio embed got scared by the jumpscare

Boneskinner sound design: Toothbrush's vibration and box lid = "Perfect"

video 1, video 2

Favorite things to work on:

Tom: being a part of the process of creating how the characters are manipulated by Jormag, watching writers coming up how Jormag's influence manifests itself; being in VO sessions with Debra (Jormag), Fred (Fraenir), Courtney (Almorra)

Clayton: ch1 - setting the tone, flow, creepiness progression; the hunger collection + Samantha; Asgeir's Legacy; watching the team work on the map

Joseph: "lame answer but everything"

Jessica: mocap for the trailer

Chelsey: working on the boneskinner's sounds

What you struggled with when creating the episode?
Clayton: Adding horror elements

Tom: not having all tools for storyteling as in linear games

Joseph: boneskinner chitter was map wide at 1st

Making of the trailer: Horizon Zero Dawn, Vikings (main inspiration for Jessica)

1:26:36 - final cinematic (Rubi punning: "It's chilling)

intent: "walking away with maybe Jormag is right?"

Chris: music conveying that Jormag is right: "everything's okay, everything's cool"

Chelsey's cat provided some voice for the cutscene video

Chris's friend's dog provided some teeth clicking video

Easter Egg: there's a hidden message in the Jormag/Fraenir speech: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/...sage_that_was/

When Jormag says "I want to help her", Fraenir's voice says "I want her"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/..._full_summary/

Also if you don't do any endgame content for whatever reason I would recommend doing the strike mission on the map (it's a lot better than the one from the prologue).

Its good a look at mechanics you might find in fractals/raids without being overwhelming for people who only play open world stuff. Supposedly the other other two bosses are slightly more challenging (bosses changes every week, should be week 2 as of this post).

[ryanmahaffe]

What time were you on? I was on during primetime and events were pretty busy (mostly the bigger events with better rewards), finding the apple/commanders on the map can help with that as there's often a mob following them. Played a bit on off-hours and it was much slimmer pickings, may be that the instance version you're in was an "overflow" instance that wasn't fully populated yet.

It happens sometimes. It's frustrating when it does because you're sorta screwed out of completing a bunch of events, but that's the downside of a public event based system : /

I have played prime time, early morning, night, mid day, whatever. Usually the same situation though prime time usually does have maybe a dozen people doing an event, but even then it isn't that common.

- - - Updated - - -

If there's only 3-5 people on a map then that instance or the map will close. There's like 5 events going on at a given time (on the newest map). People are probably spread out or afk in the little outpost.

- - - Updated - - -

Supposedly this new episode and map are pretty dynamic. Anet says there are things you'll only see (mostly ambient) once you beat the story.

They said the the episodes are supposed to be shorter with small incremental changes in between each episode (the 'current event' updates they used to do before the layoffs or subtle map changes before a release like during ls2).

I didn't say 3-5 people per map, I said per event, which still feels pretty low even if there are 5 events going at a time.

[PACOX]

]

I didn't say 3-5 people per map, I said per event, which still feels pretty low even if there are 5 events going at a time.

3-5 people is a good number for events outside of the meta events/chains though.

Then you have the ones that are only tied to story progression that most people run past.

[Svifnymr]

It was shorter than I thought it would be, but overall I liked where it's going...even if it's more dragons. There was a distinct lack of Taimi though, they need to fix that ASAP.

I did love the final cut scene, quite well done I thought.

New masteries: Hate the idea of them, reminding me of the nonsense Aegis system from TSW and seems like it'll be more annoying than interesting/fun. Haven't unlocked them all yet, but we'll see how it plays out.

They just seem, mechanical, I guess. No flavor to them, just there. Plus, while I have a bunch of Mastery Points for PoF, which worked last season, now I need to earn Jormag Mastery Points, because Gating. Meh on them.

New zone: Not in love with the design, feels a bit too corridored to get from one area to the next and there's not as much fun verticality. Haven't seen too much even variety yet, but the events seem alright for the most part. New strike was confusing, and I'm not sure what exactly the mechanics are, but was fun enough in a pug.

Haven't tried Strikes. As I mentioned before, I don't like zones that are densely packed. Especially when there's just the one waypoint. It's not horrible with mounts, but sometimes I'd like to be able to stop and do something else without being attacked.

[Thelyron]

Like the new zone and story, dislike the new masteries, hate the zone meta achievement.

Edit: Also, regarding the new strikes. Tried one, wiped, people left, i left too. Went back in and... it's the same id? Do they really have traditional id's now?

[Edge-]

If they have shorter episodes that are more frequent that's fine...but I hope they don't have new maps for each one, then. That's just going to spread out the playerbase too damn much. I like new maps, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather see older zones updated with new mechanics/events/content or to have zones rolled out in stages so that we all stay together in the overall area but can dip in and out of what we want to play.

[Sweetdeal]

Is GW2 actually still a Thing? I Just hear it dies, people Just Rush episodes and then log Off.

Dunno how true this is. I Always wanted to start GW2 but Always scared to end Up in a dead Game in EU.

[PACOX]

Like the new zone and story, dislike the new masteries, hate the zone meta achievement.

Edit: Also, regarding the new strikes. Tried one, wiped, people left, i left too. Went back in and... it's the same id? Do they really have traditional id's now?

If you do public I believe you get an assigned public ID for the day. Premade groups work like raids, I think, where you have your own progress but can only see the bosses that the instance opener hasn't killed yet.

[Zmagoslav]

Played the episode yesterday; damn that was short and actually easy. compared to previous episodes stuff just dies so much faster. (might be some influence of my having ascended gear now; but i doubt it makes so much difference)
Had no idea the boss at the end was actually the leader of all the sons of svanir...

It would have been nice if they'd mentioned it ahead of time, so you could work on the 250 while doing other stuff.
For myself, I was lucky enough to have a team of alts to ride the daily hearts and buy the stuff I needed, along with some of the home-nodes for stuff. So it took 2-3 days to hit the 250's.

Well the new map has a vendor that allows you to trade in 25 of the map currency + some unbound magic into 10 of any of the previous map currencies, making them farmable (except trade contracts, but those were always easily farmable via treasure-hunting anyway)

[Lazuli]

If they have shorter episodes that are more frequent that's fine...but I hope they don't have new maps for each one, then. That's just going to spread out the playerbase too damn much. I like new maps, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather see older zones updated with new mechanics/events/content or to have zones rolled out in stages so that we all stay together in the overall area but can dip in and out of what we want to play.

Its an issue with new ANet that has been a thing since GW2 launch. They have so many great assets to reuse but they rather waste a fuckton of time making new shit that people will only experience ONCE. And hella fast, at that. Take the new story.. its a joke really, in terms of content. And the whole pokemon red blue green shit like come on its clearly just a retarded WoW style gate to open chests, it doesn't even matter if no one has the buff the bosses still die albeit a little slower.

Really feels like they're grasping at straws at this point to prolong shit content. I mean don't get me wrong, beautiful zone, great shit. But how long did they spend designing that tiny part, cuz they refuse to reuse anything as much as WoW players complain about it, that's how Blizz can shit out 9000 mounts they're just all reskins. I'm not saying that's what ANet should do but at least reuse shit a few times instead of wasting development on new hour long content that takes months to develop.


Literally a fucking joke. And they abandoned expaNSION for this... top lulkek

But hey, if they design more than a single pvp mode to be viable, the playerbase will be split. Fucking maximum laugh reacts only. Such a bunch of fucking hypocrites who only care about pve and even that is failing.

[Svifnymr]

Well the new map has a vendor that allows you to trade in 25 of the map currency + some unbound magic into 10 of any of the previous map currencies, making them farmable (except trade contracts, but those were always easily farmable via treasure-hunting anyway)

I think it's 5 per currency per day, but haven't done it in a while, also don't recall if it's per alt. That's still 25/50 days if you go that route.
(Edit: I thought you meant the Dragonfall zone vendor, you're right that the Bjora Marches vendor gives this, so I guess you can do both.)
Most of the hearts in the respective zones give 5 per heart, 4ish hearts, 20 currency per day per alt. Plus whatever I already had. If I'd known ahead of time that I needed it though, I'd have been doing that while the main ran around the world doing all the various other things needed for it.

The Skyscale IS fun though, so it is what it is.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Is GW2 actually still a Thing? I Just hear it dies, people Just Rush episodes and then log Off.

Dunno how true this is. I Always wanted to start GW2 but Always scared to end Up in a dead Game in EU.

Yes, the game is still a thing. The bulk of the game's content is completing maps and rerunning event chains. I eventually became bored of that after a while. I did raiding when HoT came out but dropped out of that pretty quickly. Otherwise, the only thing that kept me coming back was the story, which 1. had some pretty shaky writing and 2. wasn't presented all that well.

If you want to buy, the Path of Fire expansion (which includes HoT) should be going on sale for Black Friday.

[Zmagoslav]

I think it's 5 per currency per day, but haven't done it in a while, also don't recall if it's per alt. That's still 25/50 days if you go that route.
(Edit: I thought you meant the Dragonfall zone vendor, you're right that the Bjora Marches vendor gives this, so I guess you can do both.)
Most of the hearts in the respective zones give 5 per heart, 4ish hearts, 20 currency per day per alt. Plus whatever I already had. If I'd known ahead of time that I needed it though, I'd have been doing that while the main ran around the world doing all the various other things needed for it.

The Skyscale IS fun though, so it is what it is.

Yup, i'm at about 170ish with all resources... except for trade contracts, which i farmed with treasure hunting in the highlands.
The skyscale has the same issue most of the GW2 content has; i know i want it, but for what?

Hmm is there any good way to farm achivement points? I really like the radiant armor skin, but they seem to stack up very slowly. :S

[Svifnymr]

Yup, i'm at about 170ish with all resources... except for trade contracts, which i farmed with treasure hunting in the highlands.
The skyscale has the same issue most of the GW2 content has; i know i want it, but for what?

Hmm is there any good way to farm achivement points? I really like the radiant armor skin, but they seem to stack up very slowly. :S

I actually don't get achievement points from Dailies anymore. Really you just go through all the achievements and do stuff you don't feel like doing...

The main repeatable thing is dailies and salvaging. I'm at 26,959 and need 27,000 to finally get my Hellfire leggings, then it's not the final piece until 30k. It's barely even a goal anymore since most of the stuff I skipped is because it's too irritating for me.

[Edge-]

Been ages since I played anything but my firebrand builds so I dicked around and made a berserker dragonhunter build. It's kinda silly and amuses me to no end right now, and it's definitely faster at killing little things which is nice.

Totally forgot about the Skyscale mount. Now that I've got all the new mastery stuff (IMO the charr zone > most recent one) I guess I should get around to that...so many longterm projects I've forgotten to start or forgotten about altogether -_-

[Edge-]

I forgot how much I enjoy just tinkering around and exploring in this game. Skyscale achieves are a great excuse to putter all over Tyria and revisit a lot of zones I haven't been to in ages. And it's completing some other achieves and fun stuff I hadn't done before in the process which is a nice bonus-perk.

I really should make it a habit to play more regularly and work on achieves instead of gear grinding and whatnot.

[Edge-]

New patch dropping apparently.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/disc...-3-2019#latest

Out of combat weapon swap for ele/engi seems like a nice QoL buff, but not particularly meaningful.

Dynamic UI seems kinda neato, gonna mess around with that while finishing up my Skyscale farming.

[Svifnymr]

They added a gemstore cape, which has 4 dye channels and looks nice.

They also added a guild cape, which is short, ugly, 2 dye channels, but costs 10g and 10 commendations.