Jimbru.6014

I don't mind underwater combat in this game. But I find it difficult sometimes because at least for me, it's often hard to judge my position relative to the mobs. I think I'm in melee range when I'm not, or they're above or below me in some way that's not where I can hit them, and so forth. Some of that is probably just me, but some of it is definitely the limited graphics of this game not giving me the necessary visual keys.

> @"Psientist.6437" said:

> The bottom dragon in the logo looks more like an Elder dragon, the top dragon looks younger. The dragons are arranged in a cycle.

Perhaps we are simply reaching the end of this cycle of dragon awakening. It has wrought great change upon Tyria, as all the cycles have. What future cycles will hold is unknown.

Related thought regarding Primordus: we haven't seen or heard from Primordus since LS3, and even in LS3 he wasn't a major active threat like Zhaitan or Mordremoth. If not for him being Balthazar's target -- and actually seeing him in LS3 Ep 5 -- he would have been just a bit player. Perhaps when the other EDs started getting killed and/or when the mess with Balthazar knocked the wind out of him, Primordus was smart enough to realize that the mortals of this age were a new breed. So he's decided to stay hidden underground snacking on magic and not draw hostile attention to himself, and if we did go looking for him he might offer a pretty straightforward message. "Of all the Elder Dragons, I am the one most directly tied to the physical structure of Tyria. The very ground you stand on cannot exist without me, and vice versa. You need me in the cycle of magic to continue your existence, and I would like to continue mine. Therefore I offer you a simple deal, mortals. You leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Fair enough?" That actually would be a refreshing way to deal with one of the EDs, I think.

I'm not sure where y'all are getting the Lyssa thing. She is mentioned nowhere in the video and has always been portrayed as human and female. The Voice, which is definitely male or y'all need to have your hearing checked, is the dragon that is swirling around in the video, as it comes full face with the words, "They need me." Furthermore, the Voice is NOT the DSD, since its behavior is clearly benevolent and what little we know of the DSD is not. Perhaps a scion of the DSD and/or Kuunavang would be my guess.

> @"Svennis.3852" said:

> I do hope the DSD hasn't been killed off screen though. It's been my most anticipated dragon, and missing out on the eldritch horror vibes it has seemed to exude from the little info we have, I will be sad to have that unceremoniously dumped. It will depend on the quality of the story I suppose, but it'll be a bummer.

I have a feeling that when we finally get the big reveal on the DSD, it will be the single most terrifying thing in GW2 since Scarlet's attack on Lion's Arch. Possibly ever.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > Unless the studio has embraced right wing ethno-nationalism, Cantha is no longer a xenophobic country, at least not completely. Cantha and its people are portrayed favorably. Perhaps Canthans put away their racial prejudices to face a common threat just as Tyrians did.

> I imagine that they'll still be xenophobic, but not to the point of "we will kill any non-Canthan that tries to enter". I imagine it'd be a "you're not like, but you are tolerated because even if non-human, you are diplomats from a foreign nation and we do not want open war" (unless, of course, open war is what brings us to Cantha - though given the title, I'm doubtful).

It's been over 150 years. Usoku's generation is long gone. I imagine the reactions to non-humans from Canthans today will be more like the cautious curiosity we saw in Elona during PoF. "Oh wow! Plant people! Little people! And big furry...ummm...people too, I guess!"

- Race auto-fails immediately. Sometimes it dismounts me from the advanced skimmer, sometimes it doesn't.

- When it doesn't dismount me, I can see the gates to proceed, but the fail window is still in the way of my view. So I close that window and go until the first point where I need to dive, but I can't dive. So I dismount and try to swim. I can still see the gates.

- Several of the gates are buggy and won't immediately give credit, causing me to have to circle back.

- When I finally get to the end and hit the gold gate, the race doesn't end; the lap just resets. The gates are still up, and I get no credit or achievement completion or anything.

Way to go, Anet. This is why you need a public test server.

What they're not saying is that this is likely the last expansion for GW2. It's reaching the end of the game.

As Kralk said about Aurene, "She is the first of her kind." Perhaps Kuunavang or this mysterious Voice will be the next.

Oh and by the way, I'm not counting Jormag or Primordus dead until they actually are. Jormag's motives seem to be in a really weird place right now, and we have no idea what's up with Primordus yet. Let's see how the story develops before jumping to conclusions.

Weekly. I thought we left that kind of crap behind with EverQuest. This is 2020. People want to play through and get things done. Stop creating artificial delays just for busy work, because we're not getting paid to do a job here.

After hundreds of tries, I have gotten exactly 32.000 seconds twice for the gold chest, but not been awarded the achievement. Yes, I reported the bug in game, and have opened a ticket too. Fix this, give me my achievement, and/or adjust the time so it doesn't require such an outlandish level of perfection.

> @"ErikTheTyrant.4527" said:

> I always thought Jormag was the one who corrupted our warband members. I mean Jormag managed to temporarily corrupt Crecia and Rytlock right in front of us. Perhaps our warband was weak willed.

It's also a bit of a guilt trip aimed at our toons. The warband fell apart without us there to guide them.

Elexus and Yahuk were both former Blood Legion, so their choosing to follow Bangar is kinda natural.

Luccia was former Iron Legion. Iron also suffered many defections thanks to Smodur's heavy handed "leadership". Luccia also was an older Charr, possibly of the same generation as Bangar, so maybe she shared his inherited generational attitudes.

What's missing to me is that all the action with our warband happened off screen. We meet our sparring partner in the camp, the "fixed" choice for each legion defected, and the "selectable" third member is not seen; from our sparring partner's dialogue, it's likely that the last one is dead. It would have been nice if we had been able to play through some of those events, or even prevent them; the absence of our warband (and Asura krewes, by the way) is one of the bigger weaknesses of our long personal story IMHO.

But at the same time, I get why they kept that off screen, because it would kinda leave the other races out of the story.

Speaking of story, it's also worth noting that this breakup of the warband effectively frees our Charr characters from their last anchor in the traditional Charr social structure. The Commander has always been independent operative of Centurion rank, but now is also sort of a gladium. Our sparring partner is all we seem to have left. What may come from that development remains to be seen.

I don't mind being the hero. What I do mind is not being treated like a hero. After all, The Commander has "only" led the way in saving the world about half a dozen times by this point, so I'd appreciate it greatly if characters like Anise and Rytlock would start keeping their backhanded "compliments" and negative "jokes" to themselves. As Jormag suggested, it's time The Commander started being treated with the respect we deserve.

My Thief is a Charr female. I would love to have a simple dark bodysuit type costume for her, like how the Sneakthief set fits on human females; no flappy coats, nothing glowy, and so on. After all, Thieves (and especially Daredevils) are supposed to be stealthy and agile. And therein lies the problem; I can't find anything in my wardrobe that doesn't have a long coat, glowy bits or shiny metal stuck all over it. I have seen a few other Charr in game who come close to what I'm looking for, but I have no idea how they're doing it. Can anyone offer any fashion tips for how to get that kind of look on a Charr? Any help much appreciated.

Necro: Glad to see the Scourge shade nerf finally reverted. The new skills and changes to wells might bring some new build ideas; we'll see.

Ranger: Yet another nerf to Soulbeast, even after many Rangers are abandoning Soulbeast and returning to core Bowbear play. As for Druids, the single biggest thing you could do to help them is let them affect a group of ten instead of just five. Same goes for all the healing and support classes, really.

Mesmer: Thanks for past hammering of an entire elite spec and set of builds after people spent literally thousands of hours and gold building Commander's and Minstrel's sets that are now gathering dust. Not sure if these changes will help revive what has essentially become a dead class. Want to help Chrono? Bring back 100% uptime and let them buff ten people. All your changes have done is move the exclusive meta role to Renegade; same problem, different class.

Trading post is acting up, guildmates are having problems accessing guild banks, guild roster said only one member for a while...many problems throughout the game and it seems to be snowballing. Did somebody let Rikkiti try to do maintenance again or what?

Starting about an hour ago, I began getting spammed with the "disconnected from login server" popup in the game. Which is super annoying both because the popup overrides everything else on the screen, and because I was trying to do the beetle race in Snowden and the popup would break credit for the race every time. Others were having the issue as well, so it's not just me. Something is afoul between the login server and game servers and it needs fixed because it's interfering with play.

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> Dragon Bash is _boring_ except for the deco in Hoelbrak, the beetle race and the adventure. The arena isn't challenging at all (was it nerfed this year??), the stampede is stressful and nothing else, and you rarely find mates for the arena survival mode. Getting Jorbreakers takes forever if you don't grind the arena, which adds to the negative impression I have of the festival. I was hoping they would add something fun to it this year. :/

- I don't think the arena was nerfed; I think it's just that the arena isn't new this year like it was last year. More people know the mechanics now, therefore the fights are easier.

- Agreed that the Stampede is nothing but minutes of rushing stress followed by even more minutes of boredom (see post above) and the way it's designed is totally unfair to newer players who don't have mounts.

- Survival mode is not meant for just any random five people to walk in and out at will. If you want to last ten rounds for the achievement, then you need structured group composition pretty much like a raid subgroup or fractal. You need a healer. You need boon strip. You need AOE and CC. And you have to watch mechanics and keep moving or you'll be downed before you know it. This is what guildmates and LFG are for.

Agreed with everyone's general sentiment that the rewards for Dragon Bash are not substantial enough. If I do all the available Dragon Bash dailies every day, including whacking 35 pinatas for daily Zhaitaffy, ten rounds of Stampede for the daily bonuses, and a beetle race just for the relatively easy gold clear, I can expect to get somewhere around 80-100 coffers a day depending on RNG. That plus the Zhaitaffy translates to roughly one to three Jorbreakers per day without extra grinding, if I'm lucky with the coffers. At that pace, I'll be lucky to get both minis and MAYBE the Shattered wings this year without having to buy Jorbreakers from the TP; can't even imagine the 100 Jorbreakers for the other wings and the weapon collections. I think the rewards need revised with a model and currency exchange rate more like SAB, but YMMV.

For several days now, I have watched the Hologram Stampede consistently finish in five to seven minutes on every map, followed by eight to ten minutes of everyone standing around complaining that the Stampede events are paced too slow. I agree. I think strongly that the timing of the Stampede needs to be shortened from every fifteen minutes to every ten minutes. Doing so would leave three to five minutes between rounds; plenty of time for players to change maps, prep for the next round and so forth, without the delay between rounds being longer than the rounds themselves.

There are a fair number of MPs you can get by relatively simple means. For example, there is one for gliding through the arches in Tarir, and another just for being in the east AB meta. Look for those and other easy things on the list Inculpatus posted above.

> @"Taril.8619" said:

> Western release of Blue Protocol can't come fast enough... What with already proving to be pretty good, with Devs that actively listen to their playerbase (Meanwhile that Amazon MMO that's coming out next month looks like poop)

I had hopes for That Amazon MMO, until its development changed direction multiple times and the pandemic wreaked havoc. Now it'll be a mild surprise when/if that game comes out at all, and a bigger surprise if it's actually worth a Skritt.

- Game engine was nearly obsolete at release eight years ago, and is certainly so now.

- Servers can't support nearly the number of people on one map that a MMO should. "Full map" for a meta should be a rare problem, not the norm as it is in HoT.

- Combat is too fast, particularly given the game's technical issues.

- Too much reliance on massive overlapping "bullet hell" bombing runs of AOE as a cheap combat mechanic, compounded by points above. Too often, by the time you see the AOE render on your screen, it's either already damaging you or the lead time is too short to avoid damage. And its damage may or may not actually match the visible area on the screen.

- Too much emphasis on solo or competitive play, not nearly enough on basic cooperative PVE building a strong self-policing community. EverQuest had that much right 20 years ago.

- Too many different game modes, jumping puzzles, races, etc. This game tries way too hard to be everything to everyone. Pick something to be good at and be GOOD at it.

- Too many things that are obviously and deliberately designed to be spiteful to players, HoT and Chrono nerfs being the largest examples.

- Class balance is a joke, in great part because of GW2's silly resistance to class roles. Mesmers of all kinds and Chronos especially have been nerfed to near extinction. Meanwhile, Revenants got buffed and Firebrands are OP for every role in the game; same problem of "meta" still exists, just shifted to other classes and builds.

- The crazy fast combat system encourages glass cannon builds, but then turns around and punishes players for using those builds with massive AOE, one-shotting attacks, and timers too fast to dodge. If you want an active combat system built on player avoidance of damage, you have to give people time to actually see, react and do that. The whole combat system needs slowed down by at least a quarter second.

- Cast times on EVERYTHING.

- Too many little rocks and ledges and things to trip you up and slow you down. There is such a thing as too much detail. Especially sucks in jumping puzzles when a crease in the terrain that shouldn't even be there steers you over the edge. Nothing small enough to be simply stepped on by a normal person should be rendered separately.

- Mobs that chain long lasting CC's which you have no chance to escape.

- Crafting system is too convoluted and expensive to be helpful to players as they level up. As a result, most players don't even bother with crafting until they're already at a level where 90% of what can be crafted is useless to them.

- The "release and forget" paradigm. Any content older than the latest release is effectively forgotten when it comes to fixing bugs or the current status of the world. Too many events, auto targeting, and other things STILL broken after how many years of neglect. Mordrem still in Iron Marches, Fort Salma and Fort Concordia still not rebuilt after Mordy was killed years ago in both real and game time. Update and fix the game world already.

And you know what's REALLY sad? That despite all that, GW2 is still one of the best MMOs out there, which says a lot about the "strength" of its competition and the general state of MMOs today.

Another quality of life suggestion: could fireworks be made account bound instead of soulbound, please? So we can move them around among our characters?

A few small suggestions:

- I've had to give directions to many people stumbling about looking for the roller beetle rental NPC. She's an Asura, she's a bit far from the race start, and her title only pops up if you mouse over her, so she is very easy to overlook. It would be helpful to make her more obvious.

- Please change the moa race betting to allow betting without the need for having Zhaitaffy actually in your inventory.

- Seirian is located right next to the moa race and the roller beetle race path. Her vocal spam, constantly asking the dozens of people passing in her vicinity every minute to talk to her, is arguably a form of torture for both us and her. Could she please be temporarily moved to a lower traffic area? Or maybe just removed entirely, since she serves no useful purpose in the game?

The action cam in GW2 is terrible. The little white dot is too obscure, and the balloons move too fast.