The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Sentinel]

Tbh with the recently announced NCSoft layoffs/mass restructure, I'm expecting ANET to go through some serious trouble.

I grieve for GW1 only.

 

[ADL]

https://steamdb.info/app/3231530/
???

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

https://steamdb.info/app/3231530/
???

Could be a mobile game or a TCG spinoff. Or some VR thing.

 

[Drakortha]

https://steamdb.info/app/3231530/
???

Could be a mobile game or a TCG spinoff. Or some VR thing.

Planetside Arena

 

[Caim]

https://steamdb.info/app/3231530/
???

Could be a mobile game or a TCG spinoff. Or some VR thing.

Or the fortnite mode. Grab weapons and gear that give you specific abilities, then fight until there's only one left.

 

[Caim]

Next tuesday: Godspawn

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/studio-update-wrapping-up-2024/



A sneak peak at Klobjarne, the new legendary spear. It has a very bone and feather kind of look. The new raid is going to take place in the place as the Convergence, which is aslo visited as part of the main quest. So they get triple use out of the same place. And guess who are back as bosses? That's right, Greer and Decima, the duo you fight in both the main story and the map meta that's already out. There's also a slew of new WvW updates as well.

As of right now both the Extra Life and last year's jump start events are ongoing as well, meaning both PvP and WvW get a 63% increase to reward track progress. Through that second event you can get another piece of Daydreamer gear, an Exotic weapon that levels with your character up to level 78. Just make sure you get the box on the right character to get the right weapon.

 

[Caim]

More footage, but it's not a lot of new stuff. The mountain changing looks through the convergences is nice though.





Game's on the Epic Game Store as well now, with a trailer that's MUCH better than the Janthir ones:

 

[Shurakan]

I logged in once again after trying TnL and getting incredibly bored. Guess I just wanted to scratch the MMO itch. I tried PvP once again and after 10 matches landed in platinum with enough score to qualify for the top 60 (if I had the prerequisite # of matches). I played with and against several players in the top 50. Me, who was unranked and haven't seriously played in years. I also played with the same people, over and over and over again. I consider this a sign of a dying gamemode, but what do I know. I figured I was playing at a good hour but maybe I wasn't. The state of the game seems abysmal. Last I heard, they wanted to reel in the batshit insane pace of the game but it seems fucking everything blows you up instantly if you don't have good reflexes and massively outplay the button mashing monkeys. I saw that every class now has spears (which I don't have) and on some classes they absolutely fuck you up. Instead of bothering to waste more time on SPvP, I now focused all of my attention on WvW.

And to my massive surprise I actually had fun. Being able to actually customize your stats the way you want them feels great. Even the zerg battles were fun. Every run was a new adventure where I didn't know what I'd find. I mean, except for the fotm classes. I don't think I've ever seen so many guardians (on willbender of course). Many of which are so dumb they'll blow all their cds on your defensives and then promptly die, even to a guy with an unoptimized build like I had. Then again, I was playing ele with exotic celestial stats. Even though I don't have the meta spec of catalyst, good old f2p ele served me well. It also seems much easier to acquire ascended gear than ever before, with weeklies and dailies just granting you 3 armor pieces and 1 weapon for free. No real grind for gear, I can just hop on and do whatever I want, don't even need a guild to zerg since you can just follow a tag... I'm beginning to see why this game has survived despite all its massive flaws.

While I did have some fun, I've got Anet blacklisted and will never spend even a single penny on any of their shit ever again. But I do think the WvW is good enough to log on and do some random fights for an hour or 2. The combat in this game is without question much more engaging than what I saw in TnL.

 

[itsme]

Are those two dykes still present in the latest story developments?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I played with and against several players in the top 50. Me, who was unranked and haven't seriously played in years. I also played with the same people, over and over and over again. I consider this a sign of a dying gamemode, but what do I know.

Yup. Been that way for years. The strat for ranked PvP is to add the other good players in your bracket to your friends list, and watch your friends list to make sure that they are in a match (or offline, or not in the PvP lobby and doing something else like a meta event map) and to then queue for rated PvP so you don't get matched up with them. Also, there was a discord leak a few years ago that confirmed that there was win trading happening.

 

[Caim]

Are those two dykes still present in the latest story developments?

Nope. Secrets of the Obscure and Janthir Wilds have almost entirely new casts of characters, with a returning cast you can count on one hand if you don't count the two appearances of the new Krytan UN. SotO has one major reappearance of someone from Guild Wars 1, and a returning one from Guild Wars 2. But the former is a walking corpse and the latter ends up essentially killing herself in the story.

 

[TedNugent]

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Wonder if it will include SotO and Janthir.

 

[Drakortha]

Instead of bothering to waste more time on SPvP, I now focused all of my attention on WvW.

WvW is shittiest mode in the game. All you do is find the nearest blob and then follow it around while mashing buttons and opening loot crates.

Last I heard, they wanted to reel in the batshit insane pace of the game but it seems fucking everything blows you up instantly if you don't have good reflexes and massively outplay the button mashing monkeys

Then get good. Don't wimp out and join the mindless WvW zerg.

 

[Shurakan]

I disagree. I can't speak for PvE since I'm not gonna buy any new expansions, but as I recall it was brainless stack and deeps. But SPvP is absolute dogshit and has been for years. I can understand why some would say WvW sucks, as it is no doubt also a neglected gamemode, but I cannot comprehend how anybody would prefer the babysit the circles mode. My observations indicate that I'm not the only one who feels this way as the game seems abandoned, and not just by Anet.

Then get good. Don't wimp out and join the mindless WvW zerg.

Bizarre assumptions. Firstly, I'm in the highest current rank in PvP (only a single person has the 1800 required for legendary and it's the same wintrader who's been abusing the game systems for years). This is in spite of the fact that I haven't seriously played the game in years, so it's all intuition and previous experience from also playing at a high level during the first 2 expacs. Being "good" does not stop someone from thinking the pace of the game is bad, as the multitude of high level players that have quit throughout the years can attest to. Secondly, playing with a zerg occasionally does not preclude one from "getting good". You can join a zerg for awhile, get bored, and then switch to roaming and camp flipping. It is possible to partake both in small scale and zerg PvP at different times.

 

[Drakortha]

Then get good. Don't wimp out and join the mindless WvW zerg.

Bizarre assumptions.

I didn't make any assumptions. You said it yourself; You tried sPvP and you quit because you couldn't play fast enough and outplay the competition.

I'm in the highest current rank in PvP (only a single person has the 1800 required for legendary and it's the same wintrader who's been abusing the game systems for years). This is in spite of the fact that I haven't seriously played the game in years

Who cares about one autistic loser? Let him do his thing, it won't affect you for 99.9% of your matches unless he falls onto your team. Caring about Ranking is dumb. Just queue into sPvP, stomp noobs, and win games. That's what sPvP is about.

You can join a zerg for awhile, get bored, and then switch to roaming and camp flipping. It is possible to partake both in small scale and zerg PvP at different times.

Zerging is the bread and butter of WvW. If you aren't zerging, then you're off roaming and camp flipping pointlessly because you're 'bored'. At least in sPvP if you win a small engagement on a node it can make a big difference in the outcome of a match. Meanwhile ghost capping in WvW and winning a small skirmish does literally nothing.

 

[Shurakan]

Then get good. Don't wimp out and join the mindless WvW zerg.

Bizarre assumptions.

I didn't make any assumptions. You said it yourself; You tried sPvP and you quit because you couldn't play fast enough and outplay the competition.

You did, I outlined them in my post. Reading my post and assuming I quit because I couldn't hack it sounds like projection. You assume I'd do it because you would. But let's grant that I suck ass and am a perma bronze, it is not possible for someone to be good at the game and also think the pace is bad and overall balance ruins it? It is not possible for a skilled player to dislike SPvP, the gamemode, state of balance, etc.? If I got good, does that mean I would automatically like the game?

I'm in the highest current rank in PvP (only a single person has the 1800 required for legendary and it's the same wintrader who's been abusing the game systems for years). This is in spite of the fact that I haven't seriously played the game in years

Who cares about one autistic loser? Let him do his thing, it won't affect you for 99.9% of your matches unless he falls onto your team. Caring about Ranking is dumb. Just queue into sPvP, stomp noobs, and win games. That's what sPvP is about.

So just for me to understand: you think Anet allowing blatant cheaters to constantly undermine the rankings is not important, nor it is a symptom of how they prioritize the gamemode? If you don't care to answer that's fine, because I only brought up ranking to present that I already am playing against the strongest opponents in the game and I've managed to hold my own against them. So your claim that I quit because I'm not good enough, while possible, doesn't seem likely to me. But again, even granting that I do suck ass, why does that prohibit me from thinking the gamemode and state of gameplay is neglected and awful?

You can join a zerg for awhile, get bored, and then switch to roaming and camp flipping. It is possible to partake both in small scale and zerg PvP at different times.

Zerging is the bread and butter of WvW. If you aren't zerging, then you're off roaming and camp flipping pointlessly because you're 'bored'. At least in sPvP if you win a small engagement on a node it can make a big difference in the outcome of a match. Meanwhile ghost capping in WvW and winning a small skirmish does literally nothing.

You've shifted the goalpost. You asserted that if I'm in WvW, I'm joining the mindless zerg. I demonstrated that's not true and now, instead of accepting you said something stupid and wrong you try and claim small scale activities arbitrarily don't count. Of note is that you can, in the same post, assert that I shouldn't care about wintrading or rankings, but I should care about whether my fun fighting small scale fights affects the overall WvW skirmish outcome. Incredible.

 

[Drakortha]

You did, I outlined them in my post. Reading my post and assuming I quit because I couldn't hack it sounds like projection. You assume I'd do it because you would. But let's grant that I suck ass and am a perma bronze, it is not possible for someone to be good at the game and also think the pace is bad and overall balance ruins it? It is not possible for a skilled player to dislike SPvP, the gamemode, state of balance, etc.? If I got good, does that mean I would automatically like the game?

You outlined several reasons why you left sPvP and went to WvW, and you not being able to hack it was one of those reasons. How am I projecting? I quit playing GW2 not because of the state of PvP but because the GW2 community is shit and I don't enjoy playing games with shit people. And on top of that, Moderators that ban you for speaking up about the toxic behavior on their forums. I actually like sPvP. So you see, I'm not projecting anything onto you

So just for me to understand: you think Anet allowing blatant cheaters to constantly undermine the rankings is not important, nor it is a symptom of how they prioritize the gamemode? If you don't care to answer that's fine, because I only brought up ranking to present that I already am playing against the strongest opponents in the game and I've managed to hold my own against them. So your claim that I quit because I'm not good enough, while possible, doesn't seem likely to me. But again, even granting that I do suck ass, why does that prohibit me from thinking the gamemode and state of gameplay is neglected and awful?

Anet are shit, we can agree on that. But I don't care about ranks at all. Yeah, the gamemode is neglected but it's not why I quit GW2. Go read their forums if you want to see why I quit. The community is filled with white knights who will attack anyone who makes any criticism of the game all the while patting themselves on the back and calling themselves "The Friendliest MMO community". They are completely and totally delusional about themselves. GW2 community is filled with gay losers. I hate them with a passion you will NEVER understand.

You've shifted the goalpost. You asserted that if I'm in WvW, I'm joining the mindless zerg. I demonstrated that's not true and now, instead of accepting you said something stupid and wrong you try and claim small scale activities arbitrarily don't count. Of note is that you can, in the same post, assert that I shouldn't care about wintrading or rankings, but I should care about whether my fun fighting small scale fights affects the overall WvW skirmish outcome. Incredible.

But you did join the zerg. If you're haveing fun mashing your buttons and following a commander tag, more power to you, I suppose. Different strokes for different folks. Maybe you enjoy dick, too? It would explain why you're playing GW2.

 

[Shurakan]

You did, I outlined them in my post. Reading my post and assuming I quit because I couldn't hack it sounds like projection. You assume I'd do it because you would. But let's grant that I suck ass and am a perma bronze, it is not possible for someone to be good at the game and also think the pace is bad and overall balance ruins it? It is not possible for a skilled player to dislike SPvP, the gamemode, state of balance, etc.? If I got good, does that mean I would automatically like the game?

You outlined several reasons why you left sPvP and went to WvW, and you not being able to hack it was one of those reasons.

I'm reading my posts and can't seem to read where I said that.

How am I projecting? I quit playing GW2 not because of the state of PvP but because the GW2 community is shit and I don't enjoy playing games with shit people. And on top of that, Moderators that ban you for speaking up about the toxic behavior on their forums. I actually like sPvP. So you see, I'm not projecting anything onto you

I can't verify why you quit. Maybe you quit because you aren't good at the game. I can, however, agree that the community and moderators suck ass and are indeed good reasons to quit the game. Hypothetically, of course, since in your case you left after people in the community refused to enable your furry erp fantasies and hurt your feelings.

So just for me to understand: you think Anet allowing blatant cheaters to constantly undermine the rankings is not important, nor it is a symptom of how they prioritize the gamemode? If you don't care to answer that's fine, because I only brought up ranking to present that I already am playing against the strongest opponents in the game and I've managed to hold my own against them. So your claim that I quit because I'm not good enough, while possible, doesn't seem likely to me. But again, even granting that I do suck ass, why does that prohibit me from thinking the gamemode and state of gameplay is neglected and awful?

Anet are shit, we can agree on that. But I don't care about ranks at all. Yeah, the gamemode is neglected but it's not why I quit GW2. Go read their forums if you want to see why I quit. The community is filled with white knights who will attack anyone who makes any criticism of the game all the while patting themselves on the back and calling themselves "The Friendliest MMO community". They are completely and totally delusional about themselves. GW2 community is filled with gay losers. I hate them with a passion you will NEVER understand.

I can attest to all of those claims. They deserve all of your hate.

You've shifted the goalpost. You asserted that if I'm in WvW, I'm joining the mindless zerg. I demonstrated that's not true and now, instead of accepting you said something stupid and wrong you try and claim small scale activities arbitrarily don't count. Of note is that you can, in the same post, assert that I shouldn't care about wintrading or rankings, but I should care about whether my fun fighting small scale fights affects the overall WvW skirmish outcome. Incredible.

But you did join the zerg. If you're haveing fun mashing your buttons and following a commander tag, more power to you, I suppose. Different strokes for different folks. Maybe you enjoy dick? It would explain why you're playing GW2.

I have joined zergs, but that doesn't entail that zerging is the only activity you can perform in the game mode.

 

[Caim]

Finished the Godspawn story bit.

Spoilered for those who care

Eh. It starts with an interesting point where a Priory researcher has gone missing, with you finding her frantic writings all over the place. This suggest that she's being possessed or has something truly important on the Titans. Sure it'd be a bit of a retread of what happened in SotO, but I'll take it. Except... she just really wanted to study the Titanspawn of Ura, and sort of forgot to tell people where she was going and lost track of time. You fight some of the new ones here, but they're nothing really special. One of the bigger ones has some knockback effects.

Then there's a big talky mission where you fight ONE enemy to halfway health in a sparring match. Despite it being very talky they didn't manage to bring in Queen Jenna's voice actress to do some lines, despite her having ample dialogue at the start of the expansion. You get ready for the trek up the mountain, that's it. The mission did bug out on me so I had to do the first talky bits again.

The proper final mission is a heavily abridged version of Mount Balrior, where you fight who else but Greer and Decima once again. This version is the easiest they've been so far, mostly because you fight them back to back and then Ura herself. Greer especially: I just stood behind him and whacked him without him actually attacking me. Ura... well, I sure do hope she bugged out on me as well or it was just the story mode, since after I gave her the Snowspeeder Special like you did with the other bosses in the campaign she just sat there and let me slap half her healthbar off with no resistance. There are some mentions in the story that suggest that the Titans can casually come back from the dead, but nothing concrete so far. Some more talky bits and a big internal reveal, and that's it, see you in February!

Honestly, it feels like this could have been the ending of the main launch. There's a proper pause for the story itself, two of your allies say they're going back home, the bear boss wants to figure things out for himself and there's a clear place to go next. We'll see if this pays off.

The achievment for the legendary spear lists a whopping 63 items. 38 Mystic Clovers, a Gift of Expertise (which is 12 Amalgamated Essences, so have fun there), full stacks of the new homesteading materials, Gifts of Research, Metal, Battle and the Mists (so have fun doing both WvW and Fractals), you need the meta achievments on both Janthir Wild maps, SIX Vision Crystals, 250 Spirit Shards worth of items, 100 Mythic Runestones and great big stacks of regular crafting materials. Surprisingly you need only 100 of the new Mursaat Runestones, because the real money hog here is... Amalgamated Gemstones. Yes, those things you could pull from meta reward boxes from ages. You need them for shards you buy from daily vendors (200 total), and to unlock sub-achievements. These include simple things like getting 250 kills with spears, doing 6 world bosses or map events (both can be done in both Janthir Wilds and in older maps)... and getting 100 completions of Convergences and Raids, with the latter giving "more" progress (they don't say how much).

Looking at it the spear is one hell of a grind and quite expensive, but if you're a hardcore player you might go for this. But will I get this spear? The answer lies between fuck and no. I have two suffused obsidian pieces so far with a third one on the way, but I doubt I'll be getting many new legendaries any time soon.

 

[rubinstein]

whats with the voice quality in this patch. some voices are missing. some sound extremely low quality like the lines were generated by ai (...or were they?). i wouldnt mind it that much really if gw2 missions werent like 10% combat, 90% npcs yapping

e: apparently anet had a power outage lasting a couple of days, thats why some voices are missing/low quality. lmao, its 2024, fent fiends from nastiest hoods are able to record perfect quality rap in their dens, and anet wasnt able to handle it any better? did they just ask the actors to record the lines on any headsets they had at home or something?

 

[Caim]

whats with the voice quality in this patch.

Now that you mention it, I did find that some of Crecia's voice lines to have sharp snaps in them here and there. No idea what went wrong there.

 

[rubinstein]

found the reason for some VA missing: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gsx10o/comment/lxhtk6q/

whats with the voice quality in this patch.

Now that you mention it, I did find that some of Crecia's voice lines to have sharp snaps in them here and there. No idea what went wrong there.

when i played the first half of this patch yesterday, some voices seemed slightly off, but not bad enough to make me question quality of the audio in the entire patch. but today, when i heard dagda lines, it immediately hit me how crusty they sound. it was uncanny. her voice really does sound like AI generated voice based on a rather short sample length, with all these tiny distortions and noise being audible. outage or not, awful job on anet side.

 

[rubinstein]

Regarding legendary spear I am actually trying to get it, probably my last legendary item. When it comes to "Raid or Convergence Victories" its not really 100 completions, but its more like "100 points from completions", which was set for granularity reasons. I finished one janthir conv and got 15 points, i bet raid is something like 25 or maybe even more. Yes, you need a lot of amalgamated gemstones, but imo the worst thing to get are shards of the homestead. 250 of them and a single one can cost around 2 gold on TP. i hate homesteading and i feel like such requirement for a legy is extremely shoehorned. i would rather the game expected me to farm something else, something related to gameplay aspect of the expansion. shards of shore and syntri are also annoying, but mostly because they are time-gated. at least you need to asctually play the expansion to get them. good news for the impatient though, they are also available on TP.
i also expected more mursaat runestones being required, i collected 200 of them prior to the patch. good thing i bought them when they were around 70s/ea instead of 2g, but selling them for 35s/ea left a bad taste.

 

[Caim]

Regarding legendary spear I am actually trying to get it, probably my last legendary item. When it comes to "Raid or Convergence Victories" its not really 100 completions, but its more like "100 points from completions", which was set for granularity reasons. I finished one janthir conv and got 15 points, i bet raid is something like 25 or maybe even more. Yes, you need a lot of amalgamated gemstones, but imo the worst thing to get are shards of the homestead. 250 of them and a single one can cost around 2 gold on TP. i hate homesteading and i feel like such requirement for a legy is extremely shoehorned. i would rather the game expected me to farm something else, something related to gameplay aspect of the expansion. shards of shore and syntri are also annoying, but mostly because they are time-gated. at least you need to asctually play the expansion to get them. good news for the impatient though, they are also available on TP.
i also expected more mursaat runestones being required, i collected 200 of them prior to the patch. good thing i bought them when they were around 70s/ea instead of 2g, but selling them for 35s/ea left a bad taste.

I'm not going for the spear, but I did find that it's quite profitable to get the shards and sell them. They only need a pittance of karma, one of the map currency and one amalgamated stone, and there's quite a margin on them. I expect them to smooth over in the coming weeks, especially once we've hit the five week mark and people will no longer use the shards themselves. Amalgamated gemstones will likely remain up at least a bit. But yes, you'll need 1500 of the homesteading materials if you don't want to drop a premium (500-ish gold) to not be stuck behind a timegate. Then there's the special planks and alloys, which you can make yourself without a timegate, even though the materials go up to something like 550 gold.

I've checked and apparently the raid gives 35 completion on the track... which raises the question of why not round it down to 7 when the convergence gives 3, and a total of 20 points are needed. Because bigger numbers make you feel better when they go up? Seems kinda bullshit to me.