Article reminds me: Will DX11 be supported by launch?
The only word is that GW2 will support DX10, but that info is quite dated as far as statements go (2009 I think). Whether DX10 will be in by launch, I don't know. Presumably they could add DX11 in the future but I don't think they have said anything about DX11 at all.
FYI, for anybody who was afraid of the perma cloak and dagger thief build, ANet nipped it by making it so whenever you use any ability from stealth you get a debuff called revealed that makes you unable to stealth again for I think about 3 maybe 4 seconds.
So even using cloak and dagger, and the traits that give you initiative when you stealth and all that, you can't just perma stealth. I actually really like it, because in my build, I still have several ways to stealth, but I use it tactically, and not always just to set up backstabs.
FYI, for anybody who was afraid of the perma cloak and dagger thief build, ANet nipped it by making it so whenever you use any ability from stealth you get a debuff called revealed that makes you unable to stealth again for I think about 3 maybe 4 seconds.
So even using cloak and dagger, and the traits that give you initiative when you stealth and all that, you can't just perma stealth. I actually really like it, because in my build, I still have several ways to stealth, but I use it tactically, and not always just to set up backstabs.
It's still not really nipped in the bud entirely, because you can run multiple thieves with high damage openers from stealth, they evade twice, use a leap backward ability then restealth. You'll never kill them, and they'll drop you pretty quickly.
Tough on the game, but fair, in all honesty. I don't exactly agree with some of the complaints here, but that's personal preference. I love Eurogamer to pieces, and I definitely respect their opinion.
I think the emphasis on the starting quests being incongruous with the role of your character is out of whack. In all of the quests mentioned none of them were as dainty as it was made to seem. Yeah you could collect eggs from the ground, or you could kill Skelks to get eggs back and destroy their home, and it was all in the name of the Raven deity ( which shows it's powers in that event when the Raven disciples turn into giant ravens and kick some butt ). Also the "grub problem" was of the 100 foot, house eating kind.
On a totally different subject, for those of you who've read Dragonlance, do the sylvari sound eerily similar to the kender to you all as well? Because they sure do to me.
Despite the kick start of knowledge from the dream they still seem naive as there are some matters which seem beyond their comprehension. Emotions and tact, in particular, are difficult for them to grasp, so often a sylvari will state out loud something which would normally be politely avoided by other races. Death as well is still not fully understood, but it is viewed as something to be embraced and wholly understood - this creates an acceptance and fascination of death which the other races can find disturbing.
A bit, but they lack the signature Kinder traits, and Kinder did not exactly embrace death. They simply ignored it as a possibility due to their childlike nature, and Tasselhoff certainly was effected by it in a fairly normal manner after seeing it quite a bit.
The zerg tactic is a real thing and it's when the vast majority of one side moves as a single mob of people.
We call that an army.
No, you call it a lynch mob, but I was trying to be politically correct.
An army would include some sort of leadership, and it sure as hell doesn't move as one unit. Only stupid AI in strategy games ever tries to move as a single whole. Every army you've ever heard of used tactics to enact a grand strategy, because the ones you don't hear of weren't worth hearing about.
Here's how my ideal WvW army would be set up
Recon: 1-3 player group. multiple groups
Fast moving, small number of players who can look at a target and locate where the enemy is. Also able to set off false attack alarms by riling up the enemy NPCs in areas. They need to be wide spread to be able to see and hit different areas. They can pick up stragglers and fold them in as they wander the battlefield picking off random, weak targets and then vanish.
Supply: 1-3 player group. small number of groups
Similar role to the recon groups but their job is to work behind the main army collecting supply, protecting caravans, and allocating it to where it needs to go. There were plenty of places in the borderlands that no one was going to bother threatening but had full supply. All someone had to do was collect it and deposit it in another fortification that needed it.
Main force: 15-20 players. multiple, dedicated groups and the main force
This is where the majority of players go, they split off into groups with no more than 30 players in a group. Each one hits different targets. By that I also mean that they have different objectives even if they're assaulting the same target. One could collect and bring siege weapons to the fore, while another keeps the defenders on the wall, another attacks the same gate, and yet another assaults the opposite gate.
This is very different from the standard mob. It's organized, capable, and able to move easier than a zerg/mob, which requires copious caps and lots of repetition. This unit requires the use of people who know what they are doing, what needs to be done, and do it. A small PvP guild could easily, and quickly, fill this position on the battlefield. Basically, these are your elites.
The Mob: Numbers? Who the hell knows.
This is the most basic unit and the easiest to get together. Anyone who doesn't work as a part of the units above can join the mob. There's not really even any organization that needs to be done, you just roll forwards and everyone else trots along forming the mob as you go. You can't really direct them to anywhere but a general place, but you can use the Recon and Main Force units to entice the mob with the chance of fighting pretty easily. The only trouble is that once they get stuck in, they're usually just stuck there.
FYI, for anybody who was afraid of the perma cloak and dagger thief build, ANet nipped it by making it so whenever you use any ability from stealth you get a debuff called revealed that makes you unable to stealth again for I think about 3 maybe 4 seconds.
So even using cloak and dagger, and the traits that give you initiative when you stealth and all that, you can't just perma stealth. I actually really like it, because in my build, I still have several ways to stealth, but I use it tactically, and not always just to set up backstabs.
It's still not really nipped in the bud entirely, because you can run multiple thieves with high damage openers from stealth, they evade twice, use a leap backward ability then restealth. You'll never kill them, and they'll drop you pretty quickly.
I'm sure they're taking slow and careful steps so as not to over-nerf thieves unnecessarily. They'll be watching to see what players do after the revealed debuff, and whether opposing teams can reasonably react to new thief strategies. ArenaNet is always watching. (I was, in fact, asked a couple times during the press event if I was "the one who posts on the Penny Arcade forums.")
SwashbucklerXX on
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Also, a real army would only send decoys to attack the gate, they would focus the main force on a back wall. For example, the towers have a wall that can be destroyed under the tower's bridge. It's one of the weakest points in the towers because it provides cover from fire. Not all buildings have covered walls though so it's good to know where these are.
Shouldn't the WvW army have strike teams, something inbetween the recon teams and the main force, designed to go after enemy supply camps and caravans?
I think you guys underestimate the strength of a zerg. This is not real life where if the guy next to you dies to raining arrows then he is dead forever. In the game you can just pick his ass right back up, or use a skill that revives him quickly and he's back to full fighting power.
[Buffs you get from Mystic Chests] do not work in WvW
Bobby Stein responds to Personal Stories with wall-o-text
Apologies for the following wall o’ text.
First off, I’d like to thank everyone in this thread for taking the time out to post feedback about the personal story, including the dialogue and voice-over. I’ll do my best to reply to what I can. My goal isn’t to convince you to like what’s there (either you do or you don’t), but to explain why certain bits of content sound and feel they way they do.
This is a pretty long thread so I’ll hit some of the points in the order they were posted.
Wrath: “…even teen storybooks and Twilight has a better plot and script than this. Get a better writing team, more adult and mature or read R.A. Salvatore’s books. Or classics such as Wheel of Time. It almost seems as if the writing team are writing for children.”
Bear in mind the game is rated T in the US, so we’re limited in how we can present certain themes. We can’t show realistic violence and gore in combat, and we also can’t delve into some of the darker elements of storytelling. Also, it was a design decision to make the player always a heroic figure. The game’s story bits were geared around a linear, branching model where you always play a hero. In other words, we didn’t intend to build a game that lets you be the bad guy. It’s completely understandable why that would disappoint some people, but it’s not the game we set out to make. You can, however, make some personality choices in how you respond to unspoken conversation trees, including making decisions to spare or execute a defeated enemy in a few cases.
Fiona: “I found Norn absolutely mind-numbingly dull. It was also badly written. I gave up after not being able to get past Shape Of The Spirit at level 8~.
I have switched to Charr and it’s like night and day. The writing isn’t much better but the story is far more interesting. The world events and scenery are too. I really suggest giving Charr a go. Norn is absolutely shocking IMO.”
The stories and dialogue vary greatly between the racial stories. This is intentional, partially to give players some options to experience a variety of content. The dialogue was often given to people who are more comfortable writing (or editing) in that racial voice, so it’s why you may like the tone of one story over another. As you can imagine, some people really enjoy fantasy dialogue and others loathe it, so we wanted to provide options.
Wrath: “There’s no overarching story or any sense of progression and accomplishment”
There is, but it comes later in the personal story. We realized after our very first public showing that some of our 10-level arcs feel compressed. We introduce characters for a handful of story steps, and then they are put aside. This isn’t ideal, as it makes character development difficult. We tried to remedy this in later content, but there are still artifacts of this in some of the earlier story chapters.
Fiona: “Charr so far for me seems very different due to it dealing with internal conflicts between legions, and me actually being a part of one of those legions gives a real sense of place within the story. Something I absolutely had nothing like when I was playing Norn.”
Part of that is due to the cultural differences between norn and charr. It’s also due to us learning some lessons along the way, so we put extra resources into making your warband members more memorable and the stories a little more about personal conflict and less about “seeking glory.”
Adesia: “I felt that the human storyline was a lot better than the norn one. It felt like it had more of a flow to it, personally. I’m really shocked about the norn area too…. I was looking forward to playing as a great warrior type race, but I was really bored and uninterested in the story. None of the characters were even that memorable…”
Did you find certain characters in your human personal story better fleshed out than the ones in the norn chain? Which branches did you do?
Wrath: “GW2 just feels like I started a movie 1/2 way through and have no sense of direction and there’s nobody I can ask to fill me in on what I’ve missed. Based on my character creation my sister has been killed by some centaurs and I’m seeking revenge (however I seem to always be uber noble in everything). There’s no intro movie showing me how/why she was killed and why I’m even seeking revenge. Was she killed in a random centaur ride-by? Did some insidious main bad guy order her village to be wiped out? I got no idea. For all I know she and some centaur snuck off into the woods for a midnight rendezvous and she tripped and hit her head and died and now I’m just carrying around some misplaced anger.”
Did you finish the sister chain? If so, did your questions get answered? It’s understandable that you may feel confused, since you’re essentially stepping into someone else’s shoes, potentially in an unfamiliar world. We try to give the stories context along the way, so it’s possible you either missed something, or we didn’t do a good enough job of relaying that information.
ghull: “What also causes me further disconnect from the story is the DE system. I’m walking down some path and all of a sudden a quest pops up to rid Farmer A’s property of bees. I do that and get a letter in the mail from someone I’ve never met thanking me for the help. Tough getting into the story when you don’t meet these people yet you complete their quests.”
The dynamic events are separate from personal story, so most of the time the characters don’t intersect. You can usually interact with the sender of the letter at any point in the game, so if you spoke to that person before participating in the event or at least heard her talk to another NPC, you might have a better idea of who she is. Pretty much all the important event characters have conversations on them, so I’d recommend interacting with them if you’re confused. This is one of the trappings of a non-linear multiplayer game—you can experience things out of order so it’s sometimes potentially confusing.
hellokittyonline: “Well, I find it interesting, searching for my lost sister. If everyone complain about the Norn, will Anet change the story line? that seem like a lot of work.”
Thanks for the compliment on the sister chain. I’m sure those who worked on it will appreciate the sentiment.
We can certainly examine the norn content and learn from our mistakes, whether or not we have the time and resources to make radical changes before ship. Changing the flow of a story involves almost every department in the studio, from design and writing to programming, art and animation. Simple dialogue edits and re-recording VO impacts cinematic conversations, so we can sometimes justify going back into the booth to change story elements but it’s more difficult to overhaul plot, and it also means more work for the animators.
Wrath: “Definitely will be too much work this close to release. Unless of course, they rework the beginning scenes script which seem lackluster. The events and quests can be the same, just the text / voiceovers need to be changed. But then again, highly doubt it. Probably 1% chance, this is the extent of ArenaNet’s writing department.”
We can change certain elements, but it would impact our ship date. Also, it’s not that what you’re seeing is the “extent” of the writing department (a.k.a. my team). The writing team doesn’t handle lore or story arcs—that’s the domain of the lore and continuity designers and also the story team. They determine the high level themes and plot, and how it integrates with gameplay. My team most often takes the dialogue after it’s been drafted and we make edits to make things sound more cohesive. Obviously, the more time we have to revise dialogue, the better it should sound when acted. There are certainly cases where I would have liked the edits to have been more aggressive, but that’s sometimes difficult when you have 20+ people generating content in various tones.
Samf: “I’ve only played the charr storyline. I think it’s great! Internal conflicts and all that. On top of it all, the charr are so brutal with one another. I was pleased that during the Blood Legion storyline, the player is given the choice to spare their former Legionnare’s life, or to exile him from the warband. I destroyed him of course, because charr have that ruthless tenacity in their nature that I’m just so proud of.”
Glad you’re enjoying it. Did you already know something about charr society before playing the game, or is this based on first impressions?
Pulse Reaction: “I don’t think ANet’s writing team is the problem – the heroes (and here I mean the actual A.I. heroes) of GW1 had great characterization. Master of Whispers being one of my favorites. Somewhere along the line they decided to call every player the “HERO”, but we’re not in 2002 anymore, no need for that. And mature fantasy becoming more and more popular just makes GW2 storytelling look even more off.”
Again, this was a design decision to make the player a hero, so while you start out small in your story, you’re always driven to do the right thing (and everyone tells you about it). Totally understandable why that wouldn’t appeal to some people—it’s predictable.
I think the lesson we’re learning here is that people, including the dev team, are ready for something a little less sanitized. We can’t make radical changes to the story structure at this point, but we can certainly take this into account for future content.
Dhivuri: “TL;DR: I like the story so far.”
Thanks for letting us know.
Xriot: “The Great Hunt? Really? I just played SWTOR with the Bounty Hunter and the first 20 levels of my character were focused on the exact same thing, “The Great Hunt”!! Someone on GW2 team should have noticed this and thought it might immediately devalue (and make cheesy) the GW2 story-line for Norn. I had an immediate distaste in my mouth. Very un-orginal.”
The Great Hunt has been in Guild Wars 2 for about two years, so it’s not something that we shoehorned in to pay tribute to another game. That stated, my first thought after seeing it in TOR was, “Damn, they’re doing this, too?” Granted, there are differences between the two, but the fact that they’re called the same thing was a little concerning but not enough to overhaul what we’d already built.
Xriot: “The great hunt lasted 2 quests. Really? Nothing “Great” about that. I killed a boar, and then fought a giant worm, during which I layed on the ground fighting for my life and not attacking until the other folks surrounding me took the worm out. I’m a hero!”
The Great Hunt in GW2 is mostly limited to the tutorial/intro. It gets you going but isn’t the focus of your personal story.
Brimwood: "The story lines do seem to widely differ in terms of the quality of writing and in how engaging they are. I started as a Human Noble and actually found that one really enjoyable. The characters are enjoyably posh and, I thought, quite memorable. "
Lord Faren is one of my favorites.
If you feel the content varies in tone and quality, I’d put that up to different people handling different content in different voices. It should all be of high quality, so if some folks aren’t happy with what they’re seeing then we have to understand why they don’t like it, and go from there.
darkace.5182 said:
And the pacing doesn’t give us any chance to develop these relationships. I understand that a lot of players (too many) don’t care about story and just want to hit stuff with their sword, and lengthy dialogue can bore these players. But as someone who enjoys a good story, regardless of the medium through which it is delivered, I’m disappointed when a game cuts important character development in favor of getting to the action.
A few missions in the home instance without an actual fight (or any kind of event at all) just talking to the people whom I’m supposed to be friends with (aka, care about) and my neighbors, just getting to know the world to which I’m supposed to feel a connection, would have gone a long way.
Excellent points.
Stencil.9483 said:
I think Bioware could learn a lot from the way Anet handles criticism.
It’s important that we understand people’s expectations and tastes. While it’s sometimes painful to hear that some people are disappointed with something that we as a studio worked on for a long time, we can’t ignore feedback. We have to learn from everything we do.
I’m not familiar with how Bioware handles criticism, but I will say that I highly respect the people at their studio.
We’re still reading, so thanks for all the feedback.
I should mention that we’ve been identifying parts of the personal story this past month where some additional VO and unvoiced conversations would help develop certain characters. The final game will have some new lines added where we think they’re needed. (Actually, they’re already in the dev client but are missing from the BWE build that you all played last weekend.)
Again, I’d like to reiterate that feedback is great. We might not always agree with what changes can or should be made, but it helps to understand player expectations.
One thing I’d like to mention is that we’ve seeded the world with lots of ambient scenes and conversations that should give people a sense of context. It’s entirely understandable how newcomers to Guild Wars don’t have a real sense of the lore or themes if they only sampled bits of the personal story over a weekend. There’s a lot to digest (five playable races with multiple friendly and hostile factions in each), and much of the information is contained outside the personal story content.
1) what will the guild situation be now that we have a 100 member limit, will se++ and g&t split into two guilds?
2) how are officers being chosen for guild?
This confirmed as being the actual limit? If not, I'd say it's a bit too premature to start planning this yet.
We were able to reach the limit at 100 during the beta. Not sure if you were able to get in, but if you couldn't that's probably why.
Of course, it could just be a beta limit and they might have plans on upping it in the future. I really hope they do this, though, because it would suck having to split the guild.
Shouldn't the WvW army have strike teams, something inbetween the recon teams and the main force, designed to go after enemy supply camps and caravans?
Ideally that's covered by the Main Force units. Not only do they attack different targets in the same location, because they're self-contained units themselves, they allow the army to essentially split off into many armies at a moments notice. While a number of Main Force teams are at a specific siege or area, several can break off and assault supply points. They could even move entirely separately the entire time so long as the overall strategy for victory in the area is kept to.
The key difference between Mobs and Main Force units is communication. Main Force units have to have communication within their group to be effective. This, combined with the non-specialty combat of GW2, means that the Main Force unit is ubiquitous. They can not only lay siege, they can take supply points, raid caravans, and essentially act as a big hammer where you need them. Mobs are more of a force of nature, doubly so because they form organically in mass-pvp environments as people begin to follow whichever group they see.
I don't mean to sound dismissive of the most basic unit of pvp, but there's little communication within a Mob and it's incredibly difficult to make one mass of unconnected players do anything specific other than ebb and flow with the group. The problem is that they tend to ebb when they should be flowing. A mass of unorganized players will move back when they face someone who is doing quick damage and taking people out. They get discouraged when they see a player or group seemingly walk in untouchable and start hacking people down, and move back to hit them from afar. Only there's no limit to how far they can move back and it becomes a race to get behind the next guy in an ever faster game of "reverse leap frog". Tactically speaking they really should be concentrating on the enemy at that point because the strategy is taking the points and forcing the enemy back, not about avoiding death by swirling swords, but psychologically speaking, a lot of people are in this for #1 and in a mob you move as a mob. The mob really moves as a mass of single players, and I think the reason for this is because there's no motivation or group dynamic within this spontaneous mass of people.
However, experience in this and other games has taught me that when you pick people out of the mob and put them with people who actually have their own communication going on (tactics) and their own ability to work as a group for a specific goal that may only be tangential to the goal of a Mob (strategy), then they will perform multiple times better than they will in a Mob. Mobs are also pure chaos on wheels. Throw them at an organized group and it's like filling a knight's armor with bees, they're proper and tactical one minute and completely surrounded, fighting to survive, and trying to figure out what's going on the next.
I also think it's impractical to start identifying and defining ever more specialized groups instead of simply embracing the fact that a small grouping of any configuration of players is fully capable of doing absolutely everything and every kind of mission. If this were WoW I'd be talking about specialized units of rogues and stealthy druids. If this was SWTOR I'd be letting the enemy hit anvils of Juggernaughts with Sorcerors and hitting them with hammers of Bounty Hunters and Assassins. But it isn't. The lack of specialization (or more specifically the fact that everyone specialized into everything) means you can have a basic unit that's capable of anything and completely self-contained, but as long as they have proper communication within the group, they have a good advantage over simply using a mob of players. So, that's why the only real things I defined were a unit more tactically viable than a mob, and two pretty simple units with broad goals that very small groups of friends/guildies/whatever can form easily and still lend a helping hand to the entire group without simply rolling themselves in with a mob.
It definitely felt like this feature should already have been included in the beta, I'm glad they're working on it.
By the way, did anyone notice if there was a 'randomise appearance' in character creation process? I think this would be useful, particularly for colours.
I have always wondered why they still even have junk items. If all it is for is to literally sell to a merchant, why not just make those kills give more money instead of a junk item?
The idea that people didn't enjoy the norn story seems crazy to me, but maybe you had to have played the first game to appreciate them more. They are exactly as advertised, giant viking people that worship animal spirits and live to do heroic deeds whether for good or ill. Everything a norn does is to add onto their personal legend, for them it is in the end all that really matters since their legend is what remains once they have passed into the mists.
I think calling all the stories shit is also far too harsh, and I would have expected better explanations from some of you who've said that. Not enjoying your particular choices does not make the story line terrible.
The idea that people didn't enjoy the norn story seems crazy to me, but maybe you had to have played the first game to appreciate them more. They are exactly as advertised, giant viking people that worship animal spirits and live to do heroic deeds whether for good or ill. Everything a norn does is to add onto their personal legend, for them it is in the end all that really matters since their legend is what remains once they have passed into the mists.
I think calling all the stories shit is also far too harsh, and I would have expected better explanations from some of you who've said that. Not enjoying your particular choices does not make the story line terrible.
I agree on the Norn comments. I always loved the fact that their idea of immortality and an afterlife was through the deeds they did today. I did have to chuckle and roll my eyes a bit when 2/3 of the starting options were "you got drunk and made poor decisions!"
I have always wondered why they still even have junk items. If all it is for is to literally sell to a merchant, why not just make those kills give more money instead of a junk item?
Possibly as an attrition mechanic, to encourage people back to town without giving them heaps of useless equipment.
I have always wondered why they still even have junk items. If all it is for is to literally sell to a merchant, why not just make those kills give more money instead of a junk item?
Possibly as an attrition mechanic, to encourage people back to town without giving them heaps of useless equipment.
They took them out at one point and people complained.
The answer is mostly 'flavor'.
Also to me certain things that dont have use for money should never drop it. When I kill a pig, i shouldnt get money.
I think calling all the stories shit is also far too harsh, and I would have expected better explanations from some of you who've said that. Not enjoying your particular choices does not make the story line terrible.
What is there to explain? I felt they were terrible. And not just terrible in the constant, overarching video game stories are always terrible meta sense. I mean even by video game standards they were just bad. When it wasn't being tedious, boring cliche standard 1980's fantasy drek then it was just straight up being poorly told. Any combination of bad VA, VA not working right, npc's saying things that don't make any sense at all, events being poorly explained, the list is basically endless. They are especially terrible in comparison to TOR, but even compared to what WoW has been doing in wrath and cataclysm it's just bad, and WoW's story is best described as completely embarrassing about 95% of the time. But I would still take every single one of the 1-60 zone plots added in cataclysm over this malarky.
For the record, the story arcs that I personally played through were human noble, human carnie, human street rat, half of the charr blood legion, and 2 norns that I have no idea how their story related at all to my character creation choices (though what I did at the moot did come up in the level 10+ norn, I gave up on that class though after doing a couple of the story instances for unrelated reasons). If I had to describe the quality in a pithy statement I would say that the quality of story is about what I have come to expect from a couple of my very mediocre tabletop rpg groups.
I have always wondered why they still even have junk items. If all it is for is to literally sell to a merchant, why not just make those kills give more money instead of a junk item?
Great question! Basically, it's to help encourage you to go back to sell, as well as to provide a contrast for the stuff that's NOT junk.
It also ties in to the satisfaction of looting. Without junk items, the amount of looting you'd do would go down.
Also, enemies in this game really don't drop money all that often, so junk items provide a steady trickle of cash.
I do agree the Great Hunt was anything but, however. I rolled up 3 norn (none higher than 8) and each time it was a simple kill quest to kill an easy NPC, then a crazy worm fight that 2/3 chars died to and finished face down. Suddenly, it cut-scenes over to the starting area and I'm this huge worm slayer? They really should have built it up more, it felt very weak (and VERY brief) compared to the Charr and Human intros.
I also strongly disagree on the relative and absolute quality of the storylines, but then again I tend to bristle at statements such as "it was awful" vs "I didn't like it." There are certainly paths I preferred to others, but quality wise I felt they were fine.
I really did like the norn starting area from the little I played of it. The worm fight I didnt really mind(thats fairly on par with the grasping hands thing) but the great hunt thing before it feels so disjointed. Wandering around in a small area trying to get one of those things to spawn was a pain in the ass.
Watch this. Actually listen to the corny as fuck dialogue (including the ambient speech, it is story relevant). Listen to it's delivery. If you like this then you are my mom, who also enjoyed the personal storylines extensively. She also likes the tomb raider movie.
Posts
The only word is that GW2 will support DX10, but that info is quite dated as far as statements go (2009 I think). Whether DX10 will be in by launch, I don't know. Presumably they could add DX11 in the future but I don't think they have said anything about DX11 at all.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
So even using cloak and dagger, and the traits that give you initiative when you stealth and all that, you can't just perma stealth. I actually really like it, because in my build, I still have several ways to stealth, but I use it tactically, and not always just to set up backstabs.
It's still not really nipped in the bud entirely, because you can run multiple thieves with high damage openers from stealth, they evade twice, use a leap backward ability then restealth. You'll never kill them, and they'll drop you pretty quickly.
I think the emphasis on the starting quests being incongruous with the role of your character is out of whack. In all of the quests mentioned none of them were as dainty as it was made to seem. Yeah you could collect eggs from the ground, or you could kill Skelks to get eggs back and destroy their home, and it was all in the name of the Raven deity ( which shows it's powers in that event when the Raven disciples turn into giant ravens and kick some butt ). Also the "grub problem" was of the 100 foot, house eating kind.
A bit, but they lack the signature Kinder traits, and Kinder did not exactly embrace death. They simply ignored it as a possibility due to their childlike nature, and Tasselhoff certainly was effected by it in a fairly normal manner after seeing it quite a bit.
No, you call it a lynch mob, but I was trying to be politically correct.
An army would include some sort of leadership, and it sure as hell doesn't move as one unit. Only stupid AI in strategy games ever tries to move as a single whole. Every army you've ever heard of used tactics to enact a grand strategy, because the ones you don't hear of weren't worth hearing about.
Here's how my ideal WvW army would be set up
Recon: 1-3 player group. multiple groups
Fast moving, small number of players who can look at a target and locate where the enemy is. Also able to set off false attack alarms by riling up the enemy NPCs in areas. They need to be wide spread to be able to see and hit different areas. They can pick up stragglers and fold them in as they wander the battlefield picking off random, weak targets and then vanish.
Supply: 1-3 player group. small number of groups
Similar role to the recon groups but their job is to work behind the main army collecting supply, protecting caravans, and allocating it to where it needs to go. There were plenty of places in the borderlands that no one was going to bother threatening but had full supply. All someone had to do was collect it and deposit it in another fortification that needed it.
Main force: 15-20 players. multiple, dedicated groups and the main force
This is where the majority of players go, they split off into groups with no more than 30 players in a group. Each one hits different targets. By that I also mean that they have different objectives even if they're assaulting the same target. One could collect and bring siege weapons to the fore, while another keeps the defenders on the wall, another attacks the same gate, and yet another assaults the opposite gate.
This is very different from the standard mob. It's organized, capable, and able to move easier than a zerg/mob, which requires copious caps and lots of repetition. This unit requires the use of people who know what they are doing, what needs to be done, and do it. A small PvP guild could easily, and quickly, fill this position on the battlefield. Basically, these are your elites.
The Mob: Numbers? Who the hell knows.
This is the most basic unit and the easiest to get together. Anyone who doesn't work as a part of the units above can join the mob. There's not really even any organization that needs to be done, you just roll forwards and everyone else trots along forming the mob as you go. You can't really direct them to anywhere but a general place, but you can use the Recon and Main Force units to entice the mob with the chance of fighting pretty easily. The only trouble is that once they get stuck in, they're usually just stuck there.
I'm sure they're taking slow and careful steps so as not to over-nerf thieves unnecessarily. They'll be watching to see what players do after the revealed debuff, and whether opposing teams can reasonably react to new thief strategies. ArenaNet is always watching. (I was, in fact, asked a couple times during the press event if I was "the one who posts on the Penny Arcade forums.")
Also screenshot dump. Diessa is incredibly pretty.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/suggestions/Sell-All-Junk-Button/page/1
Scroll down to the dev post.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
1) what will the guild situation be now that we have a 100 member limit, will se++ and g&t split into two guilds?
2) how are officers being chosen for guild?
Bobby Stein responds to Personal Stories with wall-o-text
This confirmed as being the actual limit? If not, I'd say it's a bit too premature to start planning this yet.
We were able to reach the limit at 100 during the beta. Not sure if you were able to get in, but if you couldn't that's probably why.
Of course, it could just be a beta limit and they might have plans on upping it in the future. I really hope they do this, though, because it would suck having to split the guild.
The key difference between Mobs and Main Force units is communication. Main Force units have to have communication within their group to be effective. This, combined with the non-specialty combat of GW2, means that the Main Force unit is ubiquitous. They can not only lay siege, they can take supply points, raid caravans, and essentially act as a big hammer where you need them. Mobs are more of a force of nature, doubly so because they form organically in mass-pvp environments as people begin to follow whichever group they see.
I don't mean to sound dismissive of the most basic unit of pvp, but there's little communication within a Mob and it's incredibly difficult to make one mass of unconnected players do anything specific other than ebb and flow with the group. The problem is that they tend to ebb when they should be flowing. A mass of unorganized players will move back when they face someone who is doing quick damage and taking people out. They get discouraged when they see a player or group seemingly walk in untouchable and start hacking people down, and move back to hit them from afar. Only there's no limit to how far they can move back and it becomes a race to get behind the next guy in an ever faster game of "reverse leap frog". Tactically speaking they really should be concentrating on the enemy at that point because the strategy is taking the points and forcing the enemy back, not about avoiding death by swirling swords, but psychologically speaking, a lot of people are in this for #1 and in a mob you move as a mob. The mob really moves as a mass of single players, and I think the reason for this is because there's no motivation or group dynamic within this spontaneous mass of people.
However, experience in this and other games has taught me that when you pick people out of the mob and put them with people who actually have their own communication going on (tactics) and their own ability to work as a group for a specific goal that may only be tangential to the goal of a Mob (strategy), then they will perform multiple times better than they will in a Mob. Mobs are also pure chaos on wheels. Throw them at an organized group and it's like filling a knight's armor with bees, they're proper and tactical one minute and completely surrounded, fighting to survive, and trying to figure out what's going on the next.
I also think it's impractical to start identifying and defining ever more specialized groups instead of simply embracing the fact that a small grouping of any configuration of players is fully capable of doing absolutely everything and every kind of mission. If this were WoW I'd be talking about specialized units of rogues and stealthy druids. If this was SWTOR I'd be letting the enemy hit anvils of Juggernaughts with Sorcerors and hitting them with hammers of Bounty Hunters and Assassins. But it isn't. The lack of specialization (or more specifically the fact that everyone specialized into everything) means you can have a basic unit that's capable of anything and completely self-contained, but as long as they have proper communication within the group, they have a good advantage over simply using a mob of players. So, that's why the only real things I defined were a unit more tactically viable than a mob, and two pretty simple units with broad goals that very small groups of friends/guildies/whatever can form easily and still lend a helping hand to the entire group without simply rolling themselves in with a mob.
It definitely felt like this feature should already have been included in the beta, I'm glad they're working on it.
By the way, did anyone notice if there was a 'randomise appearance' in character creation process? I think this would be useful, particularly for colours.
Sweet, that's one thing I missed.
I think calling all the stories shit is also far too harsh, and I would have expected better explanations from some of you who've said that. Not enjoying your particular choices does not make the story line terrible.
I agree on the Norn comments. I always loved the fact that their idea of immortality and an afterlife was through the deeds they did today. I did have to chuckle and roll my eyes a bit when 2/3 of the starting options were "you got drunk and made poor decisions!"
Possibly as an attrition mechanic, to encourage people back to town without giving them heaps of useless equipment.
They took them out at one point and people complained.
The answer is mostly 'flavor'.
Also to me certain things that dont have use for money should never drop it. When I kill a pig, i shouldnt get money.
What is there to explain? I felt they were terrible. And not just terrible in the constant, overarching video game stories are always terrible meta sense. I mean even by video game standards they were just bad. When it wasn't being tedious, boring cliche standard 1980's fantasy drek then it was just straight up being poorly told. Any combination of bad VA, VA not working right, npc's saying things that don't make any sense at all, events being poorly explained, the list is basically endless. They are especially terrible in comparison to TOR, but even compared to what WoW has been doing in wrath and cataclysm it's just bad, and WoW's story is best described as completely embarrassing about 95% of the time. But I would still take every single one of the 1-60 zone plots added in cataclysm over this malarky.
For the record, the story arcs that I personally played through were human noble, human carnie, human street rat, half of the charr blood legion, and 2 norns that I have no idea how their story related at all to my character creation choices (though what I did at the moot did come up in the level 10+ norn, I gave up on that class though after doing a couple of the story instances for unrelated reasons). If I had to describe the quality in a pithy statement I would say that the quality of story is about what I have come to expect from a couple of my very mediocre tabletop rpg groups.
LoL: failboattootoot
Great question! Basically, it's to help encourage you to go back to sell, as well as to provide a contrast for the stuff that's NOT junk.
It also ties in to the satisfaction of looting. Without junk items, the amount of looting you'd do would go down.
Also, enemies in this game really don't drop money all that often, so junk items provide a steady trickle of cash.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Edit: Worse than flying mounts is the great suggestion that they should put the option in the cash shop to make the characters naked. . .
Edit 2: The official forums make guru look like a brain trust.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I put a suggestion for it too. I also tried to fnd if the devs ever said anything about the cap but couldn't find anything
I tried to look for a previous one. It's pretty hard to search their forum.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Watch this. Actually listen to the corny as fuck dialogue (including the ambient speech, it is story relevant). Listen to it's delivery. If you like this then you are my mom, who also enjoyed the personal storylines extensively. She also likes the tomb raider movie.
LoL: failboattootoot
Dinky. Dinky is the best. And so was the charr storyline.