TP updates are nice, but they are missing the single most important thing to make it an auction house and not a stock market.
Real price histories. Not GWspdr pseudo info that is only about buy/sell orders. But a real graph of daily median (not mean) prices (like the Steam market) and at least a list of the last say 10 actual transactions for an item.
Okay, with all the slow-roll nonsense I couldn't actually remember what all the announced changes were. I decided to put together a summary that would condense 3 weeks worth of announcements into one list. As it turns out, though, it's actually pretty long, so instead I'm breaking it up into 1 list per week's worth of announcements. I'll do a genuinely short version later, but I wanted to have a complete version first.
I may have done some slight editorializing here and there. Mostly there, since it got worse as it went on...anyway, enjoy!
Week 1 Announcements:
Announcing the Guild Wars 2 World Tournament Series
There will be an sPvP Tournament called the World Tournament Series with a grand prize of $50,0000. The tournament will be held in early December in Beijing.
The Tournament of Glory is a qualifier for this, but everyone can enter, with signups starting August 20th. This tournament will award unique pvp armor skins and a Mini Llama.
PvP Visual and Reward Updates
Standard Enemy Models: you can choose to display your enemies as a standard human model with standard armor and weapon models. The option will only be available in Team Arenas and Custom Arenas that allow Tournament Commands (so, not in hot join or WvW).
PvP-exclusive armors:
Glorious Armor: all players can earn via a new reward track, which will have similar rewards to existing region tracks and will award one piece of armor per track completion.
Glorious Hero's Armor: a top tier reward for competitive tournaments, starting with the Tournament of Glory described above.
Balance Changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack
Elementalist:
Reworking utility skills that aren't cantrips, such as adding conditions to Glyph of Storms.
Reworking grandmaster traits.
Making changes to Tornado and Fiery Greatsword elite skills-- this includes the great FGS Nerf of 2014.
Engineer:
Improvements for less-used kits and non-kit utilities.
More functionality for elixirs, such as Elixir R which will now also remove immobilized.
Some gadgets updated as well.
Guardian:
Improvements for less popular utility skills.
Spirit weapons getting support functionality, such as Spirit Bow's area heal becoming targeted.
Tomes being improved.
Mesmer:
Improvements to the new grandmaster traits.
Changed scepter skills to be more condition-focused.
Improvements to offensive mantras and a rework of Mimic, which will now copy all boons on your target to yourself.
Necromancer:
Improving survivability through utilities and traits.
Dagger auto-attack will now hit 2 targets.
Ranger:
Rework of Signet of the Beastmaster, which will be replaced by a new trait entitled Predator's Onslaught. Signet of the Beastmaster's effects will be rolled into the baseline signet skills.
Updating Beastmastery traits to remove pet specificity.
Updating weapon skills to improve base functionality and responsiveness.
Thief:
Improvements to the new grandmaster traits. For example, Venomous Aura will now use your own stats rather than that of your allies.
Dagger auto-attack will now hit more targets.
Small range increase for pistol attacks when using the Ricochet trait.
Warrior:
Changing how adrenaline works:
Lost if you miss with a burst ability.
Drains slowly when you exit combat.
GS adrenaline burst ability changed to a cleaving, execution-style attack.
Adjusting adrenaline-gain abilities.
Updating multiple skills and traits.
Big Changes are Coming to the Commander System
Commander's Compendium is now an account-wide unlock
Total of four icon colors (red, yellow, purple or blue) that you can choose between on the fly.
Price increased to 300 gold.
Existing commanders grandfathered in.
Announcing the World vs. World Fall Tournament 2014
WvW tournament starting September 12th
Four weeks long. Swiss-style tournament, no repeat matchups.
No transfer lockouts.
Achievements:
Weekly.
They will be simplified and less specific than in the past, rewarding any kind of participation.
Meta-achievement for doing all 4 weekly achievements, awards the title "Mist Treader".
Rewards:
Weekly.
1st place: 200
2nd place: 150
3rd place: 100
Talk to Battle Historian NPC during the following week.
Time limited! MUST claim during the rewards by the following reset!
Rewards purchased with tickets as usual. For example, the Mistforged Hero's Weapon is still 300 tickets.
A dolyak statue will be added to each citadel to celebrate the victors. On October 12th, the statue will bestow a one-time buff to visitors, granting increase XP and WXP gain for a short time. Duration of buff determined by world placement, ranging from 5 hours for 1st Place to 1 hour for 9th-12th places.
Week 2 Announcements:
Continued Improvement to the Megaserver System
Global Guilds: guilds will no longer have separate chapters on each server, all are combined into one. This means everything is combined, including the bank, merits, influence, and upgrades.
If the combined total merits exceed the limit of 250, you won't lose any of them, but you can't earn more merits until the total drops below 250.
If you've unlocked duplicate upgrades across servers, you'll be refunded the cost, with refunded merits over the limit acting as above.
Guild consumables will be combined, and the number on hand can temporarily exceed the normal limits, but you can't build new ones until you are back below the limit.
Active boosts will be returned to your guild inventory.
The guild vault with the highest number of slots will become the global vault. If they all have the same number of slots, it will pick the one with the most items. Extra items will be put into temporary withdrawal-only slots.
Guild Missions Improvement: Reservation system will prioritize adding guild members to a map. Triggered by a guild member joining a map where a guild missions is active. Only a small number of spaces are reserved, best for small to medium sized guilds.
Map Copy closing change: Instead of letting a map copy slowly die, players in a doomed map will be notified and given the option to switch immediately. Doing so will give you a new buff called the Volunteer's Blessing, which increased movement speed by 15%, karma gain by 5%, and experience from skills by 10% for 10 minutes.
Language in Europe: language chat-filtering will now be disabled by default.
September 2014 Feature Pack: Improvements Galore
Dungeon Instance Owner going away. No more getting screwed when someone DC's!
Crafting UI getting improved navigation, so you can craft subcomponents of a recipe from the top recipe's page. Yay!
Performance updates that should result in increased frame rates.
Crafting Backpacks, New Leveling Items, and More!
New Leveling Items: Adding new items below level 80 that are slightly more powerful than the existing items. Some will be drops, and some will be crafted.
Crafter's Backpacks: Backpacks are now craftable for the first time ever, meaning you can actually upgrade your backpiece as you level instead of just getting one early on and then another one at 80. Not only that, but these craftable backpieces will have new unique skins that show off your crafting discpline, and they will be upgraded in stats and apperance as you level your crafting!
Profession Loot: You will be slightly more likely to get loot you can use. This change is intended to help leveling players, but has been widely hailed as the apocalypse by veteran players who are fretting about the economic ramifications well before we have any idea of what those will be.
A Fresh Start: The New Player Experience in Guild Wars 2
A Clear Sense of Direction:
The UI in the top-right will be simplified, and provide one clear suggested location to go, along with an arrow pointing the way. One of the features of this system is that you can ignore it.
There are advanced settings that let you disable the arrow or put it in "world complete" mode to point you toward stuff you need for world completion.
Hidden things like jumping puzzles won't get arrows. Also there are bears having a picnic somewhere in this game, apparently, and no one told me. WTF?
Leveling as a Reward
New shiny level-up notification. This is more awesome than it sounds.
The new level-up screen will show you everything you get for leveling and teach you about game systems.
Some game systems, like WvW and sPvP, will be hidden from new players until they reach certain arbitrary levels (18 and 22 in this case). They won't be barred from participating, just confused and inconvenienced, since they'll have to go find physical portals or bind relevant hotkeys. Which is going to be great fun to explain to your friend who just started playing.
Rallying is apparently super confusing and will be gated behind reaching the exalted level of 5. There is also bonus health while downed at lower levels, so you have time to figure out wtf to do while you're lying there bleeding (hint: hit one of the 4 giant buttons available to you).
Skill slots for weapons are now unlocked as you level, instead of earning them from using the weapon. I really hope this doesn't mean you can't use skill #5 until level 5. But I'm pretty sure that it means exactly that.
Stats gains will come in chunks instead of gradually. This is to make the level right before you get those increases feel terrible, so that when you finally get it you're pretty stoked. You're welcome.
Item rewards are being added to leveling. Judging from the preview screenshot, this will largely be useless bullshit like crests or whatever.
Personal Story:
Personal Story will be unlocked in the Story Journal in chunks. You can play straight through the entire chapter at once when you unlock it.
Rewards for personal story are being adjusted, supposedly for the better, although there is a fair bit of certainty that black lion keys are giong to be moved to level 20 instead of level 10 like they are in the Chinese version. This will kill key farming.
Week 3 Announcements:
Miniatures and Finishers in Your Account Wardrobe
Improvements to the Wardrobe:
Search features added to Wardrobe and Equipment sections of the Hero Panel.
Outfits moved to their own section and given their own contextual advertising!
Finishers Now in the Wardrobe, with search and preview functionality.
Miniatures:
Mini-equip slot in the wardrobe.
Minis can be account-unlocked to add them to your wardrobe.
Search, equip, and preview minis from wardrobe.
Show/hide your currently equipped mini. When shown, minis will follow you from map to map without having to resummon them.
You can still use them as inventory items and summon them from your inventory. This does not count as "equipping" it nor does it unlock it.
Minis will no longer have their own section in the bank. Once you remove them from your bank, the slot for them will disappear.
Minis of the same type will stack in inventory.
New achievements for unlocking all the minis from each series.
Minis can now be previewed from the Trading Post, inventory, and chat links.
Introducing the Collections Achievement Category
Item Collections: new achievements for collecting items.
Some achievements are hidden.
All have rewards in addition to the achievement points. Example: new Spirit Crafter back item.
Unlock Types: automatic, discovered, and unlocked.
Automatic are the base collections that are visible by default.
Discoverable are not visible until you have collected an item from the set.
Unlocked are not visible until you unlock them by using an item. For example, Rednax Youngblood in Lion's Arch can provide you with a Collectible Spoon Box to start you on the dark path toward Koutalaphilia. Yes, really.
Collection Types: bound, used, unlocked
Bound means either soulbound or account-bound.
Used means used, like consuming a drink. Not retroactive.
Unlocked means wardrobe unlocks, like skins and minis.
Logging in after the patch will be like Achievement Christmas. Everything you've ever bound or unlocked will count toward stuff, and it'll be like BAM, congratulations! Except "use" stuff. You'll have to run around shoving things in your mouth again. But you do that all the time anyway, so it's probably fine.
To avoid name confusion, the Collectibles tab of your bank is now the Materials tab. Collectibles henceforth and forevermore shall refer to all this achievement business, not blood and fangs.
The Achievements UI is going to be shuffled a bit. You probably won't notice since you have no idea where anything was before anyway. Also the UI itself will be different? I guess.
Spoon collection is not the last innovation you will see in the realm of Collections. Soon they will have us collecting all kinds of shit. Just wait, we'll be frothing over stamps or whatever. Why does Tyria needs stamps when everything is delivered by bird? I have no idea, maybe the birds eat the stamps or something.
Introducing the New Trading Post
In what is being hailed by Sage as the second coming of our lord and savior, Treesus Christ, the trading post is finally getting some amazing functionality.
The UI is totally different!
You can finally search by profession! WOOOOOOOO!
You can search by attributes, like power and precision!
You can search by crafting discipline and level!
You can pick up your items without losing your search!
You can see what your actual profit will be after the TP tax!
It's going to be faster! Like, new-browser-engine faster! It's all optimized and stuff!
Changes to selling stuff:
When you sell stuff, it will be sorted by where it is in your bags rather than by name.
You can filter by bag.
You can do real-time text filtering of your inventory when selling items.
So yeah, like I said, shorter version later.
+1
LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
Chrome's translator does a fairly decent job on this red post from the Spanish forums - seems to note at least once that the build templating system is definitely under development right now.
At the very least, AI that knows how to decluster itself and isolate weakened party members (like saving its CCs for people who are trying to revive downed allies) would go a long way toward improving combat against the NPCs.
My totally off-the-wall fantasy was bot players for WvW that would fill in for absent player population.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Okay, time for some even shorter versions of the announcements. Also reordered for how personally excited I am about them.
TL;DR version:
Introducing the New Trading Post
New Trading Post UI, with advanced filtering and searching!
Search or filter by profession, attribute, or crafting discipline!
You can pick up your items without losing your search!
You can see what your actual profit will be after the TP tax!
Introducing the Collections Achievement Category
Item Collections: new achievements for collecting items.
All have rewards in addition to the achievement points. Example: new Spirit Crafter back item.
Logging in after the patch will be like Achievement Christmas.
The Achievements UI is redesigned and reorganized.
Spoons.
Continued Improvement to the Megaserver System
Global Guilds: guilds will no longer have separate chapters on each server, all are combined into one. This means everything is combined, including the bank, merits, influence, and upgrades.
Guild Missions Improvement: Reservation system will prioritize adding guild members to a map. Triggered by a guild member joining a map where a guild missions is active.
Map Copy closing change: Instead of letting a map copy slowly die, players in a doomed map will be notified and given the option to switch immediately. Doing so will give you a new buff called the Volunteer's Blessing.
Big Changes are Coming to the Commander System
Commander's Compendium is now an account-wide unlock
Total of four icon colors (red, yellow, purple or blue) that you can choose between on the fly.
Price increased to 300 gold.
Existing commanders grandfathered in.
September 2014 Feature Pack: Improvements Galore
Dungeon Instance Owner going away.
Crafting UI getting improved navigation, so you can craft subcomponents of a recipe from the top recipe's page.
Performance updates that should result in increased frame rates.
Miniatures and Finishers in Your Account Wardrobe
Finishers Now in the Wardrobe, with search and preview functionality.
Minis can be account-unlocked and there is a mini-equip slot in the wardrobe.
Show/hide your currently equipped mini. When shown, minis will follow you from map to map without having to resummon them.
Minis can now be previewed from the Trading Post, inventory, and chat links.
Crafting Backpacks, New Leveling Items, and More!
New Leveling Items: Adding new items below level 80 that are slightly more powerful than the existing items. Some will be drops, and some will be crafted.
Crafter's Backpacks: Backpacks are now craftable for the first time ever, meaning you can actually upgrade your backpiece as you level instead of just getting one early on and then another one at 80. Not only that, but these craftable backpieces will have new unique skins that show off your crafting discpline, and they will be upgraded in stats and apperance as you level your crafting!
Profession Loot: You will be slightly more likely to get loot you can use.
A Fresh Start: The New Player Experience in Guild Wars 2
The UI will now include an arrow to point you to content. You can disable the arrow or have it point only to stuff you need for world completion.
New shiny level-up screen that will show you everything you get for leveling and teach you about game systems and give you item rewards.
Some game systems will be unavailable or hidden from new players until they reach certain levels.
Skill slots for weapons are now unlocked as you level, instead of earning them from using the weapon.
Stats gains will come in chunks instead of gradually.
Personal Story will be unlocked in the Story Journal in chunks.
Rewards for personal story are being adjusted. Key farming is probably dead, based on how this works in China.
Announcing the World vs. World Fall Tournament 2014
WvW tournament starting September 12th. Four weeks long, no repeat matchups.
Weekly achievements that are easier to do and less specific about how to do them. Weekly rewards you have to collect by the end of the following week. Rewards are still tickets, and even losing every week you'll have enough for a weapon.
Complete all 4 weeks and get the meta to earn the title "Mist Treader".
PvP Visual and Reward Updates
Standard Enemy Models: you can choose to display your enemies as a standard human model with standard armor and weapon models. Only available in sPvP team arena/custom arena.
PvP-exclusive armors:
Glorious Armor: all players can earn via a new reward track.
Glorious Hero's Armor: a top tier reward for competitive tournaments.
Announcing the Guild Wars 2 World Tournament Series
There will be an sPvP Tournament called the World Tournament Series with a grand prize of $50,0000. The tournament will be held in early December in Beijing.
The Tournament of Glory is a qualifier for this, but everyone can enter, with signups starting August 20th. This tournament will award unique pvp armor skins and a Mini Llama.
Balance Changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack
Fiery Greatsword being nerfed. Most other changes are buffs, although GS warrior is maybe being nerfed a little. Also, daggers will no longer be single-target damage weapons for necros and thieves.
STL;SDR (Still Too Long; Still Didn't Read) version:
New Trading Post UI, with advanced filtering and searching! Search or filter by profession, attribute, or crafting discipline!
Item Collections: new achievements for collecting items, such as spoons. These achievements will give rewards.
Global Guilds: guilds will no longer have separate chapters on each server, all are combined into one.
New reservation system for guild missions will prioritize adding guild members to a map. Triggered by a guild member joining a map where a guild missions is active.
Commander is now account-wide, costs 300 gold, and give you 4 colors to choose from.
WvW tournament starting September 12th. Four weeks long, achievements each week. Easier than before with better rewards, but with only a week to grab them.
Dungeon Instance Owner going away.
Crafting UI getting improved navigation, so you can craft subcomponents of a recipe from the top recipe's page.
Minis can be account-unlocked, equipped from the wardrobe, and will be automatically re-summoned when you zone.
Backpacks are now craftable, with new unique skins. They are upgradable as you level your crafting.
New items below level 80 that are slightly more powerful than the existing items. Some will be drops, and some will be crafted.
The UI will now include an arrow to point you to content. You can disable the arrow or have it point only to stuff you need for world completion.
New shiny level-up screen that will show you everything you get for leveling and teach you about game systems and give you item rewards.
Some game systems will be unavailable or hidden from new players until they reach certain levels.
Megaserver change: instead of letting a map copy slowly die, players in a doomed map will be notified and given the option to switch immediately, and will get a temporary buff if they do.
Finishers will now be in the wardrobe, with search and preview functionality.
Fiery Greatsword being nerfed.
Key farming is probably dead.
Standard Enemy models in tournament pvp.
New unique pvp armor skins.
There will be an sPvP Tournament.
ETWTL;SS,PJGMOSTR (Even That Was Too Long; Seriously Sage, Please Just Give Me One Sentence To Read) version:
You can collect spoons while sporting a purple dorito.
Hey guys and gals. While I'm looking at CoF stuff (still wondering if y'all can show me the ropes to that dungeon), is CoF Light armor the only one that gives charr the burning tail?
'Coz, you know, this is important to me. For reasons.
0
ZoelI suppose... I'd put it onRegistered Userregular
. . .
You can collect spoons while sporting a purple dorito.
Jeez, some of us have jobs and lives, could you please summarize this sentence for me?
Arenanet is down to spoon.
I'm happy we're getting a new trading post and everything, but the feature patch didn't really address the core issues the game is trying to overcome right now. I've gotten back into the swing of zerging and newbie training, and I'm learning that... well. New players don't usually stick with this game if they're only interested in WvW. They get all into it then find out that they have to do a bunch of PvE to get even the basic build and they're like... nope! Find something else, thanks. Out of genuinely new players in Wîtches, (which I believe is a significant portion of the new players on FA), almost all are PvX. Players who focus entirely on WvW hit a power soft cap and just quit.
Zoel on
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
I went through the twitter histories of Dave Mark and Mike Lewis, because they mentioned vague hints and someone asked me to see what I could find. Some very interesting and ominous-but-vague statements made over the past 5 months while they've been working on GW2 AI. Some of it is definitely GW2, others seem telling about the way he thinks.
Here's a sampling, there's a bunch more if you guys are interested:
If this guy can rein in Anet's "giant HP sponge" habits that alone'll be worth his salary
This would be amazing. The one thing I am not a huge fan of in GW2 are the dungeons. They are very long and the boss fights can be a bit difficult if you are playing to have a good time and not practice your super awesome attack-analyzing-dodging and keyboard acrobatic skills.
I used to run dungeons in Wow all the time and it was fun and not usually as difficult as GW2. I wish I was able to run more of them in GW2.
So, if anyone's like me and have been kinda wanting to play the first Guild Wars and don't have a copy, GW Trilogy (Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall) as well as Eye of the North is Steam's Daily sale today (which means it's on sale until Noon CDT on Sunday.) It's about $25 for the whole thing, which is half of what you'd normally pay for something which is almost never on sale.
GW1 is really great. I was playing it a bit recently for HoM points and while I am mostly done with the game (after hundreds of hours) it still definitely holds up in my eyes.
Worth noting (though I doubt most in this forum will mind) it is less casual-play friendly than GW2. Builds require a bit more thought as they are free-form and can not be modified outside of cities. On top of that, death is significantly less forgiving. On the flip side of course, you get more of an accomplished feeling when you get through tough areas.
. . .
You can collect spoons while sporting a purple dorito.
Jeez, some of us have jobs and lives, could you please summarize this sentence for me?
Spoons! + new dorito flavours!
Vanderbrent on
+1
ZoelI suppose... I'd put it onRegistered Userregular
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am rank 1314.
One more and I have all the wuv wuv traits. All of them. Except the new golem traits but that means I'll have to give up ballista mastery (how awful.)
Will hit it tonight and then party like I'm rank 665.
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
... Looks like I need to do a shitton of work just to unlock one build's traits. Including the goddamn Grub.
1. Do the grub now - we're blue this week, but season starts next week, and colors may be unpredictable - you may not get another chance for a while.
2. When I first heard that killing the grub was a trait prerequisite I seriously thought it was a joke. You have to kill a mob with a ludicrous amount of HP, which is in a pvp zone, and has a 2/3rds chance of being right next to the enemy keep. It's honestly like the worst trait unlock task you could even think of. I'm struggling to think of one that would be worse.
So, I've been playing GW1 since I got it on sale off Steam, been kinda fun, and I feel like I'm learning more about the lore (and what gets people raging about it in GW2).
...including the lore of my characters. Apparently, My Engineer was a Dervish in a past life:
...or at least had a Dervish ancestor. One that sounded exactly like her, since the VA for female PCs for the Nightfall is the same for Human Female PCs in GW2 (or at least, sounds a lot alike.)
It's actually kinda creepy, I'm not sure if I can stick with that look, might have to change the hair style at the very least.
What a coincidence! I've been playing GW1 as well lately, just to see if my criticisms of GW2's system and nostalgia for GW1's design hold up. Sure enough, I do actually really prefer the skill design from GW1, but damn. Those missions are pretty much fighting the same clusters of mobs fifteen times in a row, then fighting a big mob with a lot more HP who's surrounded by the things you've already fought fifteen times, at least in Prophecies. What a slog.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
0
LuvTheMonkeyHigh Sierra SerenadeRegistered Userregular
Yeah I'm burning my way through Prophecies as well. 20/25 missions done with the bonus objective. Once I finish this and Nightfall (don't need bonuses there thank god) I'm done with story missions. After that I just need infinite money.
What a coincidence! I've been playing GW1 as well lately, just to see if my criticisms of GW2's system and nostalgia for GW1's design hold up. Sure enough, I do actually really prefer the skill design from GW1, but damn. Those missions are pretty much fighting the same clusters of mobs fifteen times in a row, then fighting a big mob with a lot more HP who's surrounded by the things you've already fought fifteen times, at least in Prophecies. What a slog.
It's the combat pacing that really does it. Fights in GW1 are noticeably slower than they are in GW2, or most games like GW1 and 2 for that matter.
For PvP, it's great. That plus the skill bar turns matches against other players into something more like a game of speed chess; It's not about who can pull off their skills faster, but anticipating what you're opponent will do countering it with the right skills to throw off everything, and it gives you the time to respond when that happens to you. It adds a tactical depth that most gamers (that aren't at the highest level of play) only experience in armchair theorycrafting.
In PvE (Or at least PvE as far as I've gotten in the Prophecies campaign) that much tactical depth isn't needed. What you describe isn't really that unique at all, I'm pretty sure the majority of GW2's personal story missions did the same thing only shorter and flashier. But the extra time you take fighting mobs because of the slow pace just exasperates the drudgery of any filler content.
So.......remember how I said that the patch tomorrow is Achievement Christmas?
Turns out it's more like Achievement Christmas-pocalypse.
There are collections for exotic weapon skins. No big deal. But there's also collections for BLACK LION WEAPON SKINS that award BLACK LION WEAPON TICKETS.
Oh, and there's an achievement collection that awards a TREASURE CHEST that you can open every day in your HOME INSTANCE. Here's the catch: the collection is a bunch of random hard-to-get items, like the exotic version of Ulgoth's Tail (which has already shot up from 5 gold to 198 gold on the TP) and Infinite Wisdom, which is gotten randomly from chests and the Mystic Forge (shot up from 6 gold to 60 gold already).
So....tomorrow's going to be NUTS you guys. Nuts I tell you!
So.......remember how I said that the patch tomorrow is Achievement Christmas?
Turns out it's more like Achievement Christmas-pocalypse.
There are collections for exotic weapon skins. No big deal. But there's also collections for BLACK LION WEAPON SKINS that award BLACK LION WEAPON TICKETS.
Oh, and there's an achievement collection that awards a TREASURE CHEST that you can open every day in your HOME INSTANCE. Here's the catch: the collection is a bunch of random hard-to-get items, like the exotic version of Ulgoth's Tail (which has already shot up from 5 gold to 198 gold on the TP) and Infinite Wisdom, which is gotten randomly from chests and the Mystic Forge (shot up from 6 gold to 60 gold already).
So....tomorrow's going to be NUTS you guys. Nuts I tell you!
Posts
Real price histories. Not GWspdr pseudo info that is only about buy/sell orders. But a real graph of daily median (not mean) prices (like the Steam market) and at least a list of the last say 10 actual transactions for an item.
I may have done some slight editorializing here and there. Mostly there, since it got worse as it went on...anyway, enjoy!
Week 1 Announcements:
- There will be an sPvP Tournament called the World Tournament Series with a grand prize of $50,0000. The tournament will be held in early December in Beijing.
- The Tournament of Glory is a qualifier for this, but everyone can enter, with signups starting August 20th. This tournament will award unique pvp armor skins and a Mini Llama.
PvP Visual and Reward UpdatesBalance Changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack
Elementalist:
- Reworking utility skills that aren't cantrips, such as adding conditions to Glyph of Storms.
- Reworking grandmaster traits.
- Making changes to Tornado and Fiery Greatsword elite skills-- this includes the great FGS Nerf of 2014.
Engineer:- Improvements for less-used kits and non-kit utilities.
- More functionality for elixirs, such as Elixir R which will now also remove immobilized.
- Some gadgets updated as well.
Guardian:- Improvements for less popular utility skills.
- Spirit weapons getting support functionality, such as Spirit Bow's area heal becoming targeted.
- Tomes being improved.
Mesmer:- Improvements to the new grandmaster traits.
- Changed scepter skills to be more condition-focused.
- Improvements to offensive mantras and a rework of Mimic, which will now copy all boons on your target to yourself.
Necromancer:- Improving survivability through utilities and traits.
- Dagger auto-attack will now hit 2 targets.
Ranger:- Rework of Signet of the Beastmaster, which will be replaced by a new trait entitled Predator's Onslaught. Signet of the Beastmaster's effects will be rolled into the baseline signet skills.
- Updating Beastmastery traits to remove pet specificity.
- Updating weapon skills to improve base functionality and responsiveness.
Thief:- Improvements to the new grandmaster traits. For example, Venomous Aura will now use your own stats rather than that of your allies.
- Dagger auto-attack will now hit more targets.
- Small range increase for pistol attacks when using the Ricochet trait.
Warrior:Big Changes are Coming to the Commander System
Announcing the World vs. World Fall Tournament 2014
Week 2 Announcements:
Continued Improvement to the Megaserver System
September 2014 Feature Pack: Improvements Galore
Crafting Backpacks, New Leveling Items, and More!
A Fresh Start: The New Player Experience in Guild Wars 2
Week 3 Announcements:
Miniatures and Finishers in Your Account Wardrobe
Introducing the Collections Achievement Category
Item Collections: new achievements for collecting items.
Introducing the New Trading Post
In what is being hailed by Sage as the second coming of our lord and savior, Treesus Christ, the trading post is finally getting some amazing functionality.
So yeah, like I said, shorter version later.
My totally off-the-wall fantasy was bot players for WvW that would fill in for absent player population.
TL;DR version:
Introducing the Collections Achievement Category
Item Collections: new achievements for collecting items.
Continued Improvement to the Megaserver System
Big Changes are Coming to the Commander System
September 2014 Feature Pack: Improvements Galore
Miniatures and Finishers in Your Account Wardrobe
Crafting Backpacks, New Leveling Items, and More!
A Fresh Start: The New Player Experience in Guild Wars 2
Announcing the World vs. World Fall Tournament 2014
PvP Visual and Reward Updates
Announcing the Guild Wars 2 World Tournament Series
Balance Changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack
Fiery Greatsword being nerfed. Most other changes are buffs, although GS warrior is maybe being nerfed a little. Also, daggers will no longer be single-target damage weapons for necros and thieves.
STL;SDR (Still Too Long; Still Didn't Read) version:
ETWTL;SS,PJGMOSTR (Even That Was Too Long; Seriously Sage, Please Just Give Me One Sentence To Read) version:
Jeez, some of us have jobs and lives, could you please summarize this sentence for me?
Hey, it's me, Teldra! Did someone say "greatsword"? [Eternity]
'Coz, you know, this is important to me. For reasons.
Arenanet is down to spoon.
I'm happy we're getting a new trading post and everything, but the feature patch didn't really address the core issues the game is trying to overcome right now. I've gotten back into the swing of zerging and newbie training, and I'm learning that... well. New players don't usually stick with this game if they're only interested in WvW. They get all into it then find out that they have to do a bunch of PvE to get even the basic build and they're like... nope! Find something else, thanks. Out of genuinely new players in Wîtches, (which I believe is a significant portion of the new players on FA), almost all are PvX. Players who focus entirely on WvW hit a power soft cap and just quit.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
Here's a sampling, there's a bunch more if you guys are interested:
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Sent! Also, please tell me that's a Discworld reference.
This would be amazing. The one thing I am not a huge fan of in GW2 are the dungeons. They are very long and the boss fights can be a bit difficult if you are playing to have a good time and not practice your super awesome attack-analyzing-dodging and keyboard acrobatic skills.
I used to run dungeons in Wow all the time and it was fun and not usually as difficult as GW2. I wish I was able to run more of them in GW2.
Worth noting (though I doubt most in this forum will mind) it is less casual-play friendly than GW2. Builds require a bit more thought as they are free-form and can not be modified outside of cities. On top of that, death is significantly less forgiving. On the flip side of course, you get more of an accomplished feeling when you get through tough areas.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Spoons! + new dorito flavours!
I am rank 1314.
One more and I have all the wuv wuv traits. All of them. Except the new golem traits but that means I'll have to give up ballista mastery (how awful.)
Will hit it tonight and then party like I'm rank 665.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
He hit rank 1989 on the Stream and I closed it forever.
Thanks.
Invite sent!
... Looks like I need to do a shitton of work just to unlock one build's traits.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
1. Do the grub now - we're blue this week, but season starts next week, and colors may be unpredictable - you may not get another chance for a while.
2. When I first heard that killing the grub was a trait prerequisite I seriously thought it was a joke. You have to kill a mob with a ludicrous amount of HP, which is in a pvp zone, and has a 2/3rds chance of being right next to the enemy keep. It's honestly like the worst trait unlock task you could even think of. I'm struggling to think of one that would be worse.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Im skipping the second half of LS. ill be back after when they announce something big. theres no maybe... its happening in Oct or so.
Flap flap flap flap.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I am so making myself an arbitrage analysis program.
...including the lore of my characters. Apparently, My Engineer was a Dervish in a past life:
...or at least had a Dervish ancestor. One that sounded exactly like her, since the VA for female PCs for the Nightfall is the same for Human Female PCs in GW2 (or at least, sounds a lot alike.)
It's actually kinda creepy, I'm not sure if I can stick with that look, might have to change the hair style at the very least.
Fuck.
It's the combat pacing that really does it. Fights in GW1 are noticeably slower than they are in GW2, or most games like GW1 and 2 for that matter.
For PvP, it's great. That plus the skill bar turns matches against other players into something more like a game of speed chess; It's not about who can pull off their skills faster, but anticipating what you're opponent will do countering it with the right skills to throw off everything, and it gives you the time to respond when that happens to you. It adds a tactical depth that most gamers (that aren't at the highest level of play) only experience in armchair theorycrafting.
In PvE (Or at least PvE as far as I've gotten in the Prophecies campaign) that much tactical depth isn't needed. What you describe isn't really that unique at all, I'm pretty sure the majority of GW2's personal story missions did the same thing only shorter and flashier. But the extra time you take fighting mobs because of the slow pace just exasperates the drudgery of any filler content.
Turns out it's more like Achievement Christmas-pocalypse.
There are collections for exotic weapon skins. No big deal. But there's also collections for BLACK LION WEAPON SKINS that award BLACK LION WEAPON TICKETS.
Oh, and there's an achievement collection that awards a TREASURE CHEST that you can open every day in your HOME INSTANCE. Here's the catch: the collection is a bunch of random hard-to-get items, like the exotic version of Ulgoth's Tail (which has already shot up from 5 gold to 198 gold on the TP) and Infinite Wisdom, which is gotten randomly from chests and the Mystic Forge (shot up from 6 gold to 60 gold already).
So....tomorrow's going to be NUTS you guys. Nuts I tell you!
i wonder if I still have that tail in my bank...
Adopt-A-Dev for WvW :P