5341

Update notes are out! Going to edit my post as I read through it.

•The amount of experience given for completion of daily and monthly achievements has been increased.

Maybe it will be worth doing dailies on alts for the XP now!

•Added new rewards to the laurels vendors in all major cities.

Uh oh, more rewards. Hope you didn’t spend all your laurels. ;)

•Many of the encounters in the Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable have been revamped, including all three final boss fights.

This is a weird revamp. I’m not sure AC needed it, but hopefully they didn’t make it any more challenging.

•A new test version of our advanced event scaling algorithm has been applied to four high-level, regularly played events to help us monitor the feasibility of this system in the live environment. This new scaling algorithm dynamically increases the difficulty of events by using the current system of increasing the difficulty of existing creatures, while also adding a new system that substitutes creatures of lower difficulty with different creatures as the event scales up. If successful, this system will be slowly extended to other events across the game during 2013.

Whoa, so…events will be harder I take it? I guess we’ll see how this works out in the game, but this could be potentially really good or really bad.

•Increased the loot rewards on many world boss chests, including the chests in Orr temples and the dragon chests.

YES!!!

•Fixed a bug that caused loot chests to spawn incorrectly during group play. Loot chests are now created for items of rarity “rare” and above.

Umm, does that mean yellow items are the minimum for loot chests to spawn now? If so, that’s awesome!

•Ride the Lightning: This ability’s recharge has been increased to 20 seconds.

Ele nerf!

•Static Field: This field will now properly stun enemies that cross it rather than merely dazing them.

Ele buff!

•Players wielding Banner of Defense, Discipline, Strength, and Tactics will now strike up to three targets with their Stab ability.

Banner warriors rejoice!

•Added the Pink Quaggan Backpack Cover and the Tiger Charr Backpack Cover to the Black Lion Chest at a rare chance. These rare variations are available only through the Black Lion Chest. Black Lion Keys are needed to open chests and can be acquired from the Gem Store in the Consumable category.

Pink Quaggan is all I needed to know! BOUGHT! EDIT: oh crap, can only be found in black lion chests!? NOOOOOOOOO!!!

5342

So, with the big sale happening tomorrow, is this game still worth picking up for very casual players. Just hoping to poke my toe in there and mess about.

5343

I think the game scales well to the amount of effort you want to put into it. It’s at least a hundred hours of quality gameplay and exploration even if all you ever do is play a single character through to 80, and even then you’ll be skipping at least half the content available in the game. You could probably take 2-3 characters through to max level without really needing to grind or repeat content.

5344

I’m as casual as you can get regarding MMOs. I mostly play them as dynamic singleplayer games.

I adore GW2 as my casual go-to MMO.

5345

I looked through the update notes and saw the Elementalists took a bigger nerf to Evasive Arcana in PvP—you used to be able to get a ton of regeneration out of dodging while water-attuned, but I guess that was too good, and now it’s half of the PvE value.

5346

Yeah, I’m playing GW2 super casually as well. I’ve been playing it as a singleplayer RPG with co-op benefits and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

Also, check out the crafting. They’ve managed to make it pretty fun to discover recipes and upgrade your gear, all while gaining positive XP in the process.

5347

Thanks sounds about exactly what I wanted. Is there much of a story?

5348

Eh, there is but it’s typically not great. I think the random comments and conversation you overhear from npcs is of a higher quality than most of the story dialog.

But it’s a fantastic game to just run around exploring and just seeing the sights and events that pop up.

5349

Well, as much as any MMO has a story. There is a singleplayer personal story questline that doesn’t measure up to a handcrafted singleplayer RPG like The Witcher 2, but it’s amazing that they even have one at all.

5350

Like others have stated the single player story is meh. But the world stories are great! Want to know why a char town is bein besieged by ghosts and its a dynamic event? Turns out some town members snagged an artifact from a nearby graveyard. If you stick around they will talk about it (fully voiced) and then say they need to return it, which spawns another de.

5351

Patch is out!

And yeah, don’t buy GW2 for the story, buy it for the experience.

5352

Apparently the cat looks like this:


5353

Not really sure why you would say that it’s amazing they have one. There’s only a couple of differences between the personal story in GW2 and the questing in, say, WoW, as far as I can tell. One thing is that they sub in different quests based on character creation choices in the early going (which would be mildly impressive if it were written well enough to care, but isn’t really that different from race-based starting zones in other games), and the other thing is that it’s entirely instanced (which isn’t that unusual either).

5354

It’s amazing that they have a personal story questline that is presented like a singleplayer RPG. Conversation cinematics, a journal written in first-person, etc. It plays like a totally separate product. It’s not just the normal MMO quest that you can do solo.

Is it good or not? Yeah, that’s a debate. Hell, my own posts earlier in this thread clearly fall on the side of not being nuts about it.

5355

There’s really not the level of difference you’re making out. Everything GW2 does with the personal story except for the personalization of the opening beats of the story has been done in other MMOs, and done better.

5356

OK it’s not amazing. You win. Congratulations.

5357

It’s been done in one other MMO and I’m not convinced slogging through Old Republic is any way a better personal story than Guild Wars 2. Your mileage obviously varies, but Telefrog’s right that it’s a unique – I consider that somewhat amazing – accomplishment.

 -Tom
5358

I think the only comparable thing before SWTOR and GW2 (and to some extent TSW with its 3 factions) with this quality of single-player story within an MMO was the Tortage levels in AoC. I can’t recall any other major MMOs that have done this sort of thing as well (or at least tried to).

The thing about GW2’s sp story quality is that I can forgive it a bit, because the bulk of the MMO is of such high quality. Or to put it another way, if the quality of GW2 as an MMO had been as bad as some offerings of recent memory, the quality of the solo stories might have induced nerdrage. But it’s not, so it didn’t.

And tbqh, I still maintain that the tree huggers’ and the cat peoples’ stories are actually quite good, and the little tech guys’ has its charms too. If all of them had been at that level, I don’t think people would have noticed it as a weakness so much. It’s really just some of the human stories that let the side down.

(All the above in the context that nobody’s expecting high literature in an MMO - yet.)

5359

I have only played the human personal story so far but I find it endearing because it’s campy and very clearly doesn’t take itself seriously. As someone who plays a lot of Very Serious Games, I can have fun with something that just wants to goof around a bit. YMMV of course. I can totally understand why it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

5360

Old Republic is certainly the most direct parallel (and for my money way better written) but I fundamentally disagree with the premise that the personal story quests in GW2 are meaningfully different than the story quests in WoW, Rift, Guild Wars, LOTRO, The Secret World, etc. They definitely aren’t comparable with actual singleplayer RPGs. Except maybe Amalur, but that’s not a compliment to Amalur.