3341

Goddamn, I really wish they would put some patch notes. What does significant update mean?

3342

One thing I’ve noticed is that while, when you’re in the very early starting areas the DEs just seem to repeat, but as you move into the game, there’s more “dynamic” to them.

I think what’s happening is that in the very earliest starting zones the initial stages of the DEs are getting zerged so they don’t “get going”, as it were. But as you move into the game people are more spread out, so things don’t always go so well, and you start to see some real changes, like friendly areas changing hands for a while. I don’t know if that was what Warhammer had, but Tabula Rasa certainly had it and I used to love that, and the pitched battles that would ensue to take the spot back (only problem with the version in TR was that there were less teleport spots, so it could be a PITA if you just wanted to sell and repair).

I noticed this today twice, once in a Norn 1-15 and once in Sylvari 15-25. It’s like there’s a natural “cycle” that’s balanced between friendly mobs and enemy mobs, that is going to happen. At any point players can pertub that cycle and it leads to a different result in the game world - i.e. players have changed the game world. It’s the closest a themepark can come to a sandbox, I reckon (obviously it has to be a loop, so it’s not open ended like a sandbox, but the player has a somewhat similar feeling of being able to affect things in the game world).

Also, it’s quite a bit more heroic and exciting when you come across an event and you’re the only one doing it. You might be the only one there but so long as you try, even if you fail you get a “gold” reward, which is nice.

Also, today I beat my first event where you have those boss mobs with the cow skulls patrolling around with a couple of cronies - and I beat her! Goddamnit I actually beat the bitch!

Further on that slow running thing that was mentioned in the QT3 podcast: I can really see the rationale for the slow running and lack of “mount speed” now. They want you to explore and enjoy the world, not just mindlessly run through it to get from one spot to another. If you want to mindlessly get from one spot to another, you teleport (and there’s an abundance of teleport points), so ultimately you aren’t desensitized to and annoyed by having to go get to roughly where you want to be in world by any speed less than instant. Any time you are actually moving through the world itself, you are moving at a natural pace that gives you a sense of being there.

The whole thing is just a wonderfully intermeshing work of genius. Everything has a reason and purpose, nothing seems to be thrown away or put in just because it “has” to be there for some abstract reason (by the numbers). Everything has been gone through with a fine tooth comb to ensure that it all fits together and makes sense, not just as gameplay, but wrt to the virtual world.

And merchants dying and needing to be rezzed! What a great touch!

3343

Oh, and I also found some information of mystic coins. Not sure how accurate, but whatever.

3344

I was exploring the pirate zone way south of Lions Arch. I stumbled across a battle on an island between a couple of players and an invading undead force. The two players were barely holding the choke point which gave the only access to the camp. I joined the fray and for the next 10 mins or so we held the point. No other players joined as I guess the zerg masses had not reached that fairly high level zone yet. The invaders were over my level.

It was exciting and tested all of our class skills to defend the camp. Even so we lost quite a few NPC defenders. Ultimately we survived the onslaught and reaped the rewards and bandaged up the NPC’s. Good times!

3345

They have daily “State of the game” updates where you can see what their are doing.

3346

State of the game just lists the broad category they are working on. I would really like to see more detail like “fixed path finding on ranger pets” “modified utility skill x to y”

3347

I think I found one of these mini-dungeons in the Norn lands the other day. Totally unmarked on the map! Loads of fun - full of interesting gameplay challenges and flavour.

3348

I wondered about that too, and I have a suspicion it may be related to the forum outage. I don’t believe a word of their excuse, I think it has been quite a deliberate policy to keep the forums closed during the launch period.

MMO launches have fallen into a pattern these last few years, especially the ritualistic fanboi/hater/troll dance, which I think has done nothing but harm for all those recently-launched MMOs. I think Arenanet have deliberately sought to break that pattern. Having the official forums closed down allowed that noise to be dispersed amongst the various forums on the net, and meant the developers didn’t have to hear any noise while they were fixing the early problems.

Even the format of the forum as it is is kind of uninviting, with all that arty empty space. It’s not like a jolly, rumbunctious standard forum format. It’s got a certain psychological distance. Again, I think deliberate.

So the lack of info re. the updates may, I suspect, be part of an overall modus operandi here.

I sometimes wonder whether the intimacy the internet promotes between creator and consumer is necessarily a good thing all the time. Perhaps the distance and mystery we used to have was better in some ways. Of course the intimacy is great when it comes to marketing and reassuring your fans that you are cool, but in terms of actual opinions offered by hoi polloi, usually it’s a bunch of shit that developers would be better off not heeding at all. There are always some great insights here and there, but the super-forumites who do that for any given game (and include the all-important number-crunching) can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

3349

It bothers me that ArenaNet are apparently good at EVERYTHING.

Community management, game design, art, server architecture, sound design, UI, music…

At least suck at ONE THING. Make the rest of us feel better.

3350

Properly anticipating demand?

Seriously, start selling this thing on GMG again so I can play it. :)

3351

I so agree with you.

Personally, I like not having to read the lengthy detailed patch notes. When they are there, I feel obligated to waste tons of time and study them, analyse the impact, find out how the changes affect me, etc. With the kind of high level (but daily) updates they provide now, I can clearly see they are working hard on improving the game and I see the progress they are making without being bugged with nitty gritty details.

Additionally, often patch notes do nothing but feed the flame wars on forums. “Spell X was nerfed by 5% - class A is ruined”. “Thank you for ruining the game, dear developer. My class is unplayable now!” I really don’t want that crap. Yes, I hope they will let us know if something big changes about our classes, like if some spell starts bleeding enemies instead of burning them but I really don’t want to see every little tiny detail.

Maybe I am getting old. :)

BTW yesterday was a glorious day for my character. :) I logged in and, right that second, I see a “does anyone want to do the lvl 40 dungeon?” in /guild. So I joined this great group, had lots of fun in a pretty cool dungeon, which was both easier (but not too easy, kinda hard without being frustrating) and shorter than the AC. I got 3 very cool yellow items from the run. After that I joined a friend for some regular PvE and he looted 3 more yellow items that he couldn’t use but I could! :) Then I dinged 45, bought a few awesome green gear pieces (did I mention how cheap everything on TP is?). My character is both much stronger and much better looking after that glorious day. :)

Speaking of TP. My friend and I were laughing yesterday how being an Armorsmith, it’s cheaper for me to buy new bags off the TP than to make them myself. Literally. So take this opportunity and buy some stuff you need from the TP.

One more thing. Some people were talking about gems, character slots, etc. earlier. Don’t forget that you can buy gems with the in game coin. My friend just did yesterday (funding it by selling his leftover tier 2 crafting materials) and it didn’t cost an arm and leg to buy a bag slot for his character.

3352

There are large parts of the UI that are lacking in comparison to other MMOs that have been released over the last several years. The PvE dungeons aren’t that great, largely because several core design principles aren’t that friendly to them (no aggro control, unreliable healing, etc). I don’t know if either of those really reaches the point of “suck”, though. It’s still a ridiculously good game either way, much better than a MMO with no sub fee has any right to be.

3353

I think approaching the dungeons from an action RPG view is one of the big hurdles to get over.

Also builds. The complaining I see generally coming from no synergy no vit no toughness, glass canon players.

I have an entirely different load out on my thief for dungeoning (focussing on blinds/dazed) for dungeons then I do for leveling (bleeds and burst)

3354

Not sure how many of you are completing daily/monthly achievements but I like them, they provide additional goal(s) and rewards.

One of the monthly achievements is called “Experience Survivor”. You are supposed to get certain amount (100,000) of exp without dying. However, I just noticed something on wiki and wanted to let everyone know.

Progress on Experience Survivor is reset whenever the player disconnects, teleports to a new zone, or dies.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement

This kinda sucks that we are supposed to get the entire achievement in one sitting without even changing zones. And I suppose transferring from Overflow to the main instance will count as changing a zone.

So if you want to get this achievement, I suggest you set aside a lot of time on some day, get into the zone, wait until you transfer to the main instance and start grinding that exp! I would suggest avoiding vistas and jumping puzzles if they are taking you to dangerous heights. :)

Getting 100,000 exp is certainly easier at higher levels.

3355

I suspect it’s not intended that it work that way.

3356

I feel better. But then there’s this nagging feeling that they’ve been really clever about this too, and they’d have been daft to overestimate demand…

If I had to pick out the single cleverest thing they’ve done in the game (which is hard) it might be this:

Making the “revive fallen player” key the same one as the “pick up loot” key.

That is some ninja design, that.

3357

They should allow you to dual spec traits. As someone who mostly enjoys PvP, it would be nice to be able to quickly switch over to a PvE build when hitting a dungeon. The defensive PvE build can work as well in PvP but it’s not always the role I’m going for.

3358

I use the Scepter in small WvW skirmishes and sPvP. You can dish out more focused damage than staff but still keep some distance (unlike Dagger mainhand). It’s great for soloing but lacks a bit of group utility since there are no combo fields on the Scepter.

3359

I appreciate that I can hear something like this and know that I can go find it myself, instead of thinking, “Oh, that’s an Alliance zone. Never mind.”

3360

This is sort of overwhelming. Is there a place a young, curious engineer can go to find… well, anything about different ways to build/play an engineer?