Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Edge-]

That's fair. With how it was worded I assumed that most seasons were completely gone, the same way Bungie vaults their old stuff in D2. I guess now that they brought back the first one it was a good time to start the game too, I can just go straight to that.

As far as I know Bungie-esque "vaulting" isn't a thing at all, at least outside of S1 which was never intended to be permanent/replayable content and was handled very differently (they were still releasing updates every 2 weeks, which was nuts).

Core story should sorta kinda go straight into LS S1, then you've got S2 which leads right into HoT. I think S3 is HoT, and S4 is PoF, with Icebrood Saga being the "it's like an expansion!" non-numbered season leading into EoD.

I'm very curious to see where the story picks up in EoD. Still need to finish these last few episodes (almost done with E4 and the bloody tower, at least everything it much easier than I remember now that I have a functional build with proper gear) and then get back to taking my engineer through HoT to get the final chievos while I replay through everything on that character for some achievements and shit. Mechromancer is still hilariously OP and makes everything super easy, but man is holosmith still my much preferred build. Really like managing the heat mechanic, just wish there was a better offhand weapon for damage than the shield (nice CC, but otherwise meh)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

We know season 6 will be set in Cantha, and there are a couple of plot hooks in EoD. Minister Lee sent men to Drowned Kaineng to open up the old palace, which is filled with a lot of Risen zombies. EoD also retconned the Deep Sea Dragon that drove the Quaggan and the Krait out of their homes into being two different creatures, so we'll probably get an episode about fighting that sea monster. Hopefully it'll be an underwater map. Also, looking at the map of GW2 Cantha, there are a couple islands we could go to, including one that looks like the skeletal remains of a humongous creature (a previous deep sea monster?).

[Edge-]

Minister Lee sent men to Drowned Kaineng to open up the old palace, which is filled with a lot of Risen zombies.

I totally forgot about that after his arc wrapped up. Either way they've got plenty of space on the map for the next season.

Just...please no water zones and minimal water combat. Even in a game where underwater combat was intentionally designed it's still trash. Less bad than most other games, but it still functions exactly like combat above ground and doesn't really effectively use the Z axis at all...it instead just causes problems as a mob swims right on top of you and slightly behind you so you have to continually swim backwards to keep them in line of sight.

[PACOX]

Black Friday sales are live. Same discount most places - 20% EOD, - 50% HOT/POF, - 30% for all 3 expansions, -20% for everything including living story.

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I totally forgot about that after his arc wrapped up. Either way they've got plenty of space on the map for the next season.

Just...please no water zones and minimal water combat. Even in a game where underwater combat was intentionally designed it's still trash. Less bad than most other games, but it still functions exactly like combat above ground and doesn't really effectively use the Z axis at all...it instead just causes problems as a mob swims right on top of you and slightly behind you so you have to continually swim backwards to keep them in line of sight.

I know some people who are really into the lore who think Anet will bring back the human gods. There's a little bit of foreshadowing in EOD. Seen some people thinking they will do more stuff with 'The Mists' as well (kind of related to the gods).

I think they could do a story about the 'reunification' of the world. Advanced Cantha mixed with more magic reliant core Tyria. Canthian supremacists not wanting to integrate/try to strong as the 'Tyrian savages'.

Hell it could just be a 'vacation arc' for the player character where you hand things that aren't existential crisises.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just...please no water zones and minimal water combat. Even in a game where underwater combat was intentionally designed it's still trash. Less bad than most other games, but it still functions exactly like combat above ground and doesn't really effectively use the Z axis at all...it instead just causes problems as a mob swims right on top of you and slightly behind you so you have to continually swim backwards to keep them in line of sight.

Would you be fine if most of the content took place inside breathable underwater bubbles you could walk around in, and the water dragon/monster stuck their head through the bubble so you could fight it while playing your class normally?

[Edge-]

Would you be fine if most of the content took place inside breathable underwater bubbles you could walk around in, and the water dragon/monster stuck their head through the bubble so you could fight it while playing your class normally?

I mean, if it's "underwater" like the reactor in New Kaineng is then that's cool, because it's still ground combat. I don't mind bits of underwater combat here or there, but a whole zone of it is just...deeply unappealing.

[Geckoo]

I personally enjoy underwater combat, but my main character is a guardian and both weapons for that class are pretty good underwater and i usually play firebrand, so my usual abilities work too... but part of the whole issue is precisely how unbalanced things are, some professions are great underwater, others are trash with weapons that don't sinergyze at all with specializations and a bunch of mechanics that can't be used underwater.

Even if they fixed all that stuff and every spec worked well underwater, it would still be a very divisive subject, because not everyone is comfortable when fighting on that kind of 3D environment. That's why i don't think that an underwater zone is happening, although something like Val's idea could be cool. Personally all i want is a legendary breather, just to have all my gear legendary.

As far as where the story could go i think it is a great chance for them to have a less 'important' kind of thing, just some cool contained story for a cool map, not tied to anything big but simply moving some stories forward for 1 or 2 chapters before starting to build up the next big thing, that in my opinion is going to be related to the gods, to Lyssa to be more specific. When it comes to zones, i'm pretty sure that old kaineng and the old imperial palace are going to be one of them as well as a jade sea map, although the second one is more of a personal desire as an old luxon player.

[Lotus Victoria]

I'm totally out of the loop on Dragonflight. How are the new mounts compared to ours?

[Geckoo]

So basically, dragonriding (that's how the call it) has two abilities: a speed boost forward and a updraft boost. Each ability consumes 1 'energy' and you have 3-4 energy that recharge at a very slow rate. That resource only recharges if you are on the ground or flying downwards, it also has a small talent tree to improve those rates and some other things.

It can be compared to riding a griffon with some of the skyscale mechanics, but more stiff and limited. It's fun to use, but at the same time the whole game lacks the dynamism and smoothness that Gw2 has when it comes to moving around between different mounts and gliding.

Something like instantly using your skyscale to get to the top of a mountain, then launch yourself into the air with aurene's skill, glide a few seconds and then using your griffon to get across the whole zone in a matter of seconds going up and down at top speed. When we translate this into WoW... well, if you use your dragonriding mount to get to the top of the mountain you'll probably have to wait a minute before being able to do anything else, gliding is not an option, not even for the two classes than can actually glide and since the mount has a cast time, neither is instantly summoning it mid-air.

But again... it is really fun to use, but in my opinion it's still very far from what Gw2 accomplishes and what makes it the king in terms of mounts.

[Edge-]

I'm totally out of the loop on Dragonflight. How are the new mounts compared to ours?

From everything I've seen...it seems nice, but the movement system seems fairly "fake". It's hard to describe, but when you see/fly around on gryphons the momentum feels natural and like it's part of a complete system built to support just that type of movement. Things flow naturally and how you'd imagine, with smooth transitions between speeds as you dive/ascend.

DF seems a lot more "fake", in that there's no actual momentum system but it's simply taking the existing speed boost system and slapping on a ton of "breakpoints" to mimic actual momentum. I haven't played and I'll have to ask a friend once he gets his hands on it. Still seems fun, but it'd take a lot more work for WoW to bring the system up to snuff with gryphons, especially with all the official and unofficial races people have created for them over the years.

[Xilurm]

One of the only annoying things I've encountered so far is the "contested" travel points or dungeon entrances.

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Just finished the main story.

I got confused at the start and thought the final instance is actually the dungeon itself, so as usual I set up a party because I didn't notice the story marker was just outside the dungeon, and not the dungeon itself.

One other guy joined me along with someone who was high geared. Turns out he needed help because he was having trouble with one of the bosses inside, so we entered and he kept skipping cutscenes. Due to me not wanting to be rude I kept going with the hope that it wouldn't clear the story for me, because on top right corner it said it was his story. Turns out it asked me if I wanted to complete it so I just pressed cancel lol. I'll know better next time.

I'm glad it let me do that, was afraid I'd have the same experience as when I played FFXIV the first time and the final two MSQ dungeons for ARR were a complete mess.

Well that aside, we kinda zerged through the instance when we were together, but it also wasn't too hard when I did it alone. I was worried the Mouth of Zhaitan would be hard because the high geared player said he had trouble, and that's also where the other guy was stuck, but it turns out it's not even about the gear. All you have to do is evade and make sure to throw the fire bombs at him when he is using vortex. It was cool, gave me the feeling of playing a single player game.

I appreciate the Zhaitan fight being cinematic, but at the same time it required barely any effort from me. It felt like he was easier to kill than any of his minions. It also felt like I killed a beast, not something with intelligence. It was visually cool though, his design was cool. Actually his design kinda reminds me of Yunalesca from FFX. She also had those tentacle mouths like Zhaitan and they were both of the same "decay" element.

Spoiler: 

Always nice when an ending of a story rewards you with a beautiful song.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Arah story dungeon is quite the spectacle, riding the airship and seeing the zombie dragons dance around your airship and seeing the other Pact airships fighting zombie dragons in the far distance. It's a shame, however, that the actual final boss of the game boils down to mashing 1 while on a turret. It would be cool of Arah had been reworked into a meta event, with different groups of players on different airships. Zhaitan is the only one of the six Elder Dragons who is not fought in a meta event at all.

[Xilurm]

Well the Dragon Champions felt harder than Zhaitan himself.

What's a meta event? Am I not going to fight the other ones in the story or something? Please don't spoil the fights themselves if possible.

I hope that doesn't mean I missed them or something.

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Oh something else I forgot to mention.

I'm glad I went through all the dungeons alongside the main story. Made me appreciate the story of Destiny's Edge way more after seeing them in the final battle. I assume that would've been confusing as heck had I not done them prior.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What's a meta event?

A meta event is a huge, 2 hour long event chain, usually climaxing in a big world boss battle. Technically the first one in the game is in Cursed Shore, which climaxes with fighting hundreds of Risen on the Steps to the final dungeon, but nobody really cares about that except for people farming exp for Tyria masteries. Starting with the Silverwastes meta event, the meta design starts becoming more sophisticated, with players needing to be distributed across 3 or 4 different lanes across the map and succeeding at their local objectives for the overall event to succeed.

Am I not going to fight the other ones in the story or something?

You still get to fight Elder Dragons in story instances. Lorewise, the story instance where you fight an Elder Dragon and the meta event where you fight a dragon coincide at the same time.

[Xilurm]

A meta event is a huge, 2 hour long event chain, usually climaxing in a big world boss battle. Technically the first one in the game is in Cursed Shore, which climaxes with fighting hundreds of Risen on the Steps to the final dungeon, but nobody really cares about that except for people farming exp for Tyria masteries. Starting with the Silverwastes meta event, the meta design starts becoming more sophisticated, with players needing to be distributed across 3 or 4 different lanes across the map and succeeding at their local objectives for the overall event to succeed.




You still get to fight Elder Dragons in story instances. Lorewise, the story instance where you fight an Elder Dragon and the meta event where you fight a dragon coincide at the same time.

Oh ok, good to know. For some reason I thought a meta event meant like a timed event that happens only once or something.

Cool, thanks. I'm off to start LW Season 1 then.

[Edge-]

Oh ok, good to know. For some reason I thought a meta event meant like a timed event that happens only once or something.

A lot of them are on timers and there's a Wiki page to track it all (meta events and world bosses): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers

[Xilurm]

A lot of them are on timers and there's a Wiki page to track it all (meta events and world bosses): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers

No I meant timed as in events like WoW pre-patch events where they happen once and that's it.

Thanks for that page though.

[Edge-]

No I meant timed as in events like WoW pre-patch events where they happen once and that's it.

Thanks for that page though.

Ah. I don't think they've had any "one-off" events like that since S1 (which was supposed to be one-off), everything else is very repeatable. "Meta" just references that it's zonewide vs. a local event.

And that link is super handy, GW2 wiki is great and the fact that you can access it in-game ("/wiki WHATEVERYOUWANT") and it'll pop open the wiki page for it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This week's WvW Alliance beta... *sigh*

The beta was announced on the WvW subforum with 2 days notice.

2 days.

Most GW2 players don't visit the forums, let alone visit every day.

Naturally, the beta event came as a complete surprise to many people, and whoops! Many people in our guild hadn't found out about the event and didn't tick the correct guild they wanted to play with in time, so now they got sorted to random teams playing with random people and can't play with us. A lot of people just gave up and decided to sit the beta out rather than play with strangers.

I was one of the few who got notified just in time to tick the right guild to play with. At primetime, our 50 man squad formed up, and we spent 10 minutes trying to get into EBG, trying to get the bugged out WvW menu to work and pressing F on the gate to EBG. We spent 2 hours in EBG and didn't find anyone else to fight.

It was primetime, and there was no one to fight on the most popular WvW map in the game. People on the other maps were saying there was no one to fight on the other maps either.

People were cracking jokes in chat about how much content there was. Then people logged off.

Anet says they care about WvW as a cornerstone of the game, but they don't mean it. No new maps in 7 years. Rewards haven't been updated. The current WvW game design is still vapid. No one defends keeps, escorting supply caravans doesn't matter. It's just people flipping the same camps over and over again and two zergs playing whack-a-mole. Taking over the map doesn't mean anything. Matchmaking is terrible. I don't know why it has taken 4.5 years and a dozen betas and Anet still doesn't have a decent matchmaking system yet. It reallys feels like these WvW exp events are only trotted out to get PvErs to dabble in WvW for a little bit to get Gifts of Battles for their legendaries, and maybe buy a $20 Warclaw skin off of the cash shop.

[Poppincaps]

Been getting really addicted to Guild Wars 2 recently. I've been holding off on getting into the game until Living World Season 1 was fully released, but now that it has been I finished the Personal Story, S1, S2, and I'm at the start of Auric Basin in Heart of Thorns. Honestly I've been putting the story on the backburner to get hero points to unlock Untamed on my ranger and doing meta events.

So far I think this game is phenomenal. The level design is leagues better than any other MMO on the market, the story isn't anything crazy, but is overall enjoyable, and there are so many cool elite specializations that I can't decide which one I want to main.

I will say, I did do a little bit of WvW because I want to unlock the Warclaw since I only have the Raptor right now and the game mode is pretty confusing. If there's a commander, it's simple enough to just follow him around and capture keeps, but if there isn't one then I just kinda end up wandering somewhat aimlessly, grabbing camps by myself. Also had someone berate me because he was fighting someone and I tried to help. Apparently they were dueling, but I don't know how tf I was supposed to know that. Also had someone whisper me to yell at me because I was afk in the pvp lobby. He called me a bot despite the fact I had a normal name and a gem store outfit on. I've heard the Guild Wars 2 community is friendly, but so far that has not been my experience. Hopefully it improves when I delve into more end game content.