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    Guild Wars 2 I am ready for downvotes

    October 12, 2020

    Guild Wars 2 I am ready for downvotes

    I am ready for downvotes

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:59 AM PDT

    The Legendary Bunny boss from the first beta event

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:48 PM PDT

    [Art] My Reaper Ayida, done by me

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 02:55 PM PDT

    Anet please use a video like this to promote gw2 on steam

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 06:02 AM PDT

    My best friend had my Mesmer commissioned for my birthday today and I absolutely love it!

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 03:40 AM PDT

    The Commander In A Time Of Need

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 01:23 AM PDT

    GW2 Raid Speedrun in Guinness World Records book.

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 03:19 PM PDT

    Smodur the Unflinching, Imperator of the Iron Legion (3D art)

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 08:51 AM PDT

    [Halloween] Looting the Labyrinth (Updated!)

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:45 AM PDT

    Hey there spooksters of Tyria! It's just about time for the Mad King to grace us with his presence, so I used the weekend to revisit my Labyrinth guide from last year!

    ​

    Looting the Labyrinth is a guide tailored to teaching you how to farm the Mad King's Labyrinth in the most efficient way for the highest gold/hr. It serves as a way to educate new commanders and help players understand the nuances behind the farm. It also provides a Magic Find checklist and five recommended builds.

    ​

    Changes Include:

    • Sharpened and clarified some of the text, hopefully making it a bit easier to read
    • Reorganized some of the categories
    • Added a few points that I had forgotten to include last year
    • Added a graphic for Steve spawn locations
    • Updated my build recommendations with update-to-date builds, expanded the "grading" system, added summaries, and wrote up detailed breakdowns for the methodology of each build

    ​

    I'm releasing it a couple of days early to give people a chance to read up on it and get their builds sorted. Assuming nothing changes with the Lab, all of the information should be up-to-date and accurate. If there are any changes, you can rest assured that I'll edit them in quickly! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to join us on the Overflow Trading Company Discord!

    ​

    Without further ado: Looting the Labyrinth

    submitted by /u/xTeh
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    My eyes, my eyes...It hurt. Anet, pls, stop it.

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 11:31 AM PDT

    The Weekly Map Recap, Week 28 - The Silverwastes

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:50 PM PDT

    Welcome to the Weekly Map Recap, a series where we look back at one map in the game each week. We'll look with a critical eye at how each map represents its theme, proves faithful to its lore, and implements its design. We'll see how effective its gameplay is, whether the art holds up, and the forecast for the map's long term retention. With 52 maps to date, it'll be quite the journey!

    Links to the previous entries in a reply at the bottom!

    Also, before we get to the recap, you should know that I'm currently conducting a survey on map preference. I'm currently still accepting responses - and I'll be publishing the results in a Weekly Map Recap Special article. Get in those responses while you still can! I will be publishing the results article the week of Oct 18th.

    28 of 52 - The Silverwastes - Level 80

    Through Guild Wars 2's history we see both drawbacks and advantages resulting from the game's split between multiple modes. While the division between PvP, WvW, and PvE can sometimes result in tension, it can also bring about cross-pollination. The dev's have been very upfront over the years of working collaboratively to utilize ideas from different game types to seed new ideas in their own game modes.

    Silverwastes, then, is a really hard-hitting example of that. It is clear from this map and a number of future maps that developers on PvE teams love the 'feel' of WvW. Regardless of the current state of the game mode, there's nothing quite like World vs World. Silverwastes will be the first pass at really implementing those pieces within a PvE context.

    Released originally between November and January of 2014, it had been three months since the release of Dry Top. Rumors were continuing to swirl that the team was working on an expansion in the background, but we had no confirmation. At the time of Silverwastes' release, the overall mood in the community was tense: it was unclear whether we would ever see expansion-type content in the game. In hindsight, this led some players to be more critical of Silverwastes at the time.

    These days, I think we can agree that if nothing else the map is a core pillar of GW2 map design. It represents a clearly articulated vision for WvW in PvE, and a meta map that was all-encompassing. Until this past year, no map tried to bring these game modes together in quite this way.

    Theme/Concept - 6/10

    Silverwastes is all about mystery and castle warfare, with a smidge of horror thrown in for good measure.

    This is a landscape with a lot of unexplained features - even to this day. The ruins that dot the landscape here, along with Verdant Brink, were not built by any culture that we know of. Or at least, we have no confirmation of their origins. The last remnants of the great centaur tribes of the Maguuma used to roam around here, until they were exterminated in the LWS2 story. Throw in a connection to Heart of Thorn's Exalted and the Forgotten, and you've got a recipe for secrets.

    Then you've got a real feel of a battlefield, in a way that I'm not sure any map had captured up to this point. Seeing the great vine tendrils stretching across the landscape, or siege plant giants bombarding castles, really makes the battlefield feel more intense than anything we'd had yet. Camp Resolve is really well executed as well: it comes across as much more real, in a way, than any major ally base we got in Orr.

    Finally, we've got some horror elements. We'll see a number of these return in the future: the labyrinth beneath the Silverwastes resembles a number of elements we can find even leading up to recent Icebrood Saga releases.

    All of these pieces had been done before Silverwastes. We had battlefields with fort-to-fort sieges. We had little bits of claustrophobic horror. We had great mysteries. But I don't think those pieces had ever been put together in this way before, and certainly not with this level of polish and weight. Silverwastes really feels like we're on the front lines, and that this fight matters.

    Lore - 4/10

    Silverwastes doesn't have a lot going in terms of lore. Especially in hindsight, there are a number of elements on this map which are curious.

    In the first Guild Wars, Silverwoods was one of those out of the way maps which didn't particularly matter. Perhaps the most that could be said for it was that it was home to a great number of the Maguuma centaurs - and we can see remnants of them present here in the story today.

    But in the story itself, there are a number of pieces that are interesting. First and foremost, we have a cave which is tied to the Exalted and the Forgotten, and happens to be gold for some reason. There's a closed door here, but it's not really clear where it goes - it's never visited again in the Heart of Thorns story. What was this random cave doing so far from Tarir? What connection does this have with the forts all around? Perhaps the most sensible connection we could make would be that either humans with ties to the Forgotten or the Forgotten themselves once populated the forts around here, and then left to Tarir and closed the door behind them. But that would be a lot of humans, given the ruins underneath the surface as well. Regardless, we don't get that story.

    Additionally, it's unclear what's really going on with the labyrinth underneath the Silverwastes. Why is it there? If this is standard Mordremoth operating procedure, why don't we see it again?

    We also get the first hints of the more aggressive hylek sun-worshippers on this map, but I would have appreciated some dialogue or text explaining why they're so much more intense about their faith when it doesn't seem categorically different from the hylek to the southeast.

    Perhaps the best lore here has to be a fantastic snapshot of what the Pact is doing post-vanilla. Seeing Trahearne comfortably in control of the organization - combined with what seems to be better voice direction - ameliorated a lot of players to the necromancer.

    Design - 8/10

    Here's where we get into the good stuff. The structure of Silverwates is more 'inspired-by' WvW rather than a direct implementation.

    The focus is placed on four color-coded forts, and a large cycle of 'attack-defend' events and associated minor events. Supplies move back and forth between the different forts, making things easier if a map can hold on to multiple. The more forts held, the faster the bar progresses to mini bosses followed by the map-wide boss, the Vinewrath.

    After the boss is defeated, we have something that's going to become a mainstay of map design moving forward: the off-meta boss train. Following the defeat of the Vinewrath, champions spawn and the labyrinth activity is unlocked - lasting until the start of the next meta. This is going to become the default structure of meta maps going all the way to today.

    Now unfortunately, this design is not foolproof: since the original release players have been fairly determined not to play the map as intended. It was quickly discovered that the high-reward buried chests only required one shovel to make them available to all players nearby. Chest trains quickly started, avoiding the gameplay of the map as much as possible to focus on running around and grabbing loot.

    Within the last couple years, this has morphed into the RIBA farm - focused on a train between different forts to get loot. This is still not the map gameplay as intended, but at least isn't actively avoiding engaging in the core structure of the map.

    This map would start a persistent love affair between the player base and breaking meta maps as much as possible to maximize loot. For several years, the shovel chest train is going to be the undisputed king of gold/hour.

    There are several minor gameplay components that are unrelated to the meta. The Far Silverwastes area has one or two events and little else. A couple bandit camps are often ransacked for bandit keys as part of chest farms, and to open the jumping puzzle.

    That JP is a marvel of design, and stands as one of the greatest in the format to this day. It's definitely not for those without patience for a long puzzle: it takes a great deal of time to work your way through and has room for error. But it was the first time a 'checkpoint' system was implemented in jumping puzzles. This puzzle would form the blueprint of a number of puzzles in the future - but notably not all. Many puzzles in Heart of Thorns and PoF choose to highlight their unique gameplay mechanics (gliding, mounts) instead. Living World jumping puzzles will much more closely resemble this Silverwastes one.

    If you're looking for an exploration style map, this one is not for you. Dry Top covers that - it has a map-wide meta as well as a great deal of variety, nooks and crannies, and traditional dynamic events. Silverwastes is much more the blueprint for the Heart of Thorns meta map: everything here revolves around it.

    Gameplay - 8/10

    If you play five to twenty-five rounds of the Silverwastes meta, I think you'll have a blast. There is just enough variance and variety to encourage replayability, and while cooperation doesn't have to be as precise as Dry Top (not since power creep, anyway), it still engages the gray matter.

    The trouble comes when we get to the hundredth run of the meta, and when we take into account the RIBA or chest farm maps.

    You see, Silverwastes was the last new content for almost a full year, barring the LA remodel, until late October of 2015. In that time, most players had more than their fill of Silverwastes - and then some! Remember that it was also the absolute fastest way to make gold during this time. Combine those two circumstances, and the community hated Silverwastes during mid-late 2015.

    I've observed that since that time, many players have come around on the map. There are still those that are sick of it: in our survey it has a high 7% that dislike both it and Dry Top entirely. But it has close to 60% that favor it over Dry Top - and a handful of players have named it as their favorite map in the game. Whenever a player cited it as their favorite, they noted that they loved it because they farmed there so much.

    This is actually going to be an interesting key element moving forward: in Guild Wars 2, familiarity does not always breed contempt. Many players fall in love with the maps that they spend a great deal of time farming: we can even see that with last week's Dry Top. But it will be especially strong with Auric Basin, Bitterfrost Frontier, Dragonfall, and a number of other maps in the future. Those that a farming map doesn't turn away get attached.

    Art - 7/10

    I think Silverwastes might be underrated in its appearance. Especially after we've had so many desert maps in the last five years, it can be difficult to see how revolutionary Silverwastes' art was at release. It took Dry Top's assets and arranged them more organically, more openly. It created a much more naturalistic landscape that played with scale and a contrast between quiet desert landscapes and siege-ridden battlegrounds.

    We really get this sense of scale with the underground skritt ship: the vessel itself is very large, but small in comparison to the cave around it. It's so much space. This of course presages the vertical spaces of Verdant Brink and Tangled Depths.

    Perhaps the key area where Silverwastes lets down is variety. While Dry Top has a range of environments all packed in a small amount of space, Silverwastes has one environment spread out over a large area. While that environment is gorgeous, it doesn't help the sense of sameness after grinding for 100+ rounds of the meta.

    Long Term/Retention - 10/10

    Silverwastes has shown a surprising amount of resiliency as the top gold farm in the game. Every time it seems like another map will dethrone it, it manages to evolve a little bit and retain some of its player base.

    Back at the launch of the map, it was the home of the playerbase for a solid 11 months. Nearly everybody that played PvE was either playing on Silverwastes, finishing up Dry Top, or running fractals. A subculture grew up around SIlverwastes with its own little in-jokes.

    Today, it's still a member of the 'meta farm maps' club. Together with Istan, Dragonfall, and Drizzlewood Coast, it's been the home of gold farmers over years and years of the game.

    In terms of rewards that are unique, Silverwastes has done alright for itself - if you own Living World Season 2. The Carapace and Luminescent armor sets provided really durable rewards to shoot for - and to this day I think they were one of the best implementations of the GW2 achievement panel reward quests.

    Overall - 7.5

    Silverwastes is the ultimate 'realization' of WvW mechanics in PvE - at least until Woodland Cascades releases. It is also, then, the ultimate expression of a structure first explored in Harathi Hinterlands. If Dry Top is a vanilla map with some HoT elements, Silverwastes is a HoT map with some vanilla elements.

    Some of these elements we'll see come back again and again - the idea of a specific 'reward area' after the meta is going to become a mainstay of post-Silverwastes map design. The idea of a 'meta map' with very little traditional 'explorable map' elements is going to become the paradigm in HoT - and then reeled back by the time we get to PoF. Silverwastes is that shift. Additionally, the skritt jumping puzzle that crosses this map represents a new phase in jumping puzzle design that will last until the end of Season 2. Finally, the boss structure on this map represents an adaptation of lessons learned during season 1 and the Marionette fight - and will become the hallmark of how open world bosses should be structured.

    Odd points include the wasted story area in the north, and the fact that there are few unique rewards here if you do not own LWS2. Regardless of what you think of Silverwastes, it is a real paradigm shift in GW map design in a way that we will only see a couple of times as we continue.

    ---------------------

    That's all, folks! What do you think of today's map? Any fond memories, or strong complaints? How well do you think this map stands up in comparison to all the others? Next week, we'll be taking a look at the Map Survey! We'll get the results from over 430 respondents!

    Don't forget that survey!

    submitted by /u/Jonah_Marriner
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    Who is the games current Game director?

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 12:56 AM PDT

    I thought it was Mike O but he left and Mike Z stepped up to fill his shoes just to leave as well.
    Who's the current lead designer for Anet? Are we on Mike K now?

    submitted by /u/saDD3ath
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    I shall now proceed to HoT and experience gliding.

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 01:01 PM PDT

    Shimmerwing Descending

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 04:14 AM PDT

    Guild wars 2 on Steam, game screenshots.

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 04:49 PM PDT

    So im exited for all the new players that are gonna Join us and play gw2 when the steam release will happen at November.

    so i searched gw2 on steam and what i saw is my favorite game and all the awards the game won over the years but the pictures that they chose are kinda lame and i dont think they do justice in representing the game do u agree?

    if yes how can we change that ?

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284210/Guild_Wars_2/

    submitted by /u/Xaves8
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    [ART] A festive tonic - I drew my asura & people told me I should post her here~

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 06:25 PM PDT

    The Happy Raider's Kit V. 3.0 - a guide to raids

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:06 AM PDT

    THE HAPPY RAIDER'S KIT V. 3.0

    Hello again everyone.

    Since I took a time from the game early last year, the Happy Raider's Kit - a guide to starting raids, was left without any updates. Now that I have come back to the game, the first thing I did was to bring as much new information as I could gather about the novelties in raids. As such, this version 3.0 should cover all aspects for someone who wants to start raiding in GW2 in 2020.

    I hope you guys enjoy.

    Any suggestions you might have, please direct them to myself, or just leave in the comments.

    Obs.: the link is the same as always. If you had the old one, it still works.

    <3

    EDIT: If you would like your training discord/guild/forum/thing to be included in the guide, please reach out to me.

    submitted by /u/Tevatrox
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    If GW2 is to survive the Steam release, it is essential that ArenaNet updates the game engine.

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:25 AM PDT

    Hey!

    I think many - if not most - of us are concerned about the Steam release. We all know that a game can easily be review bombed on Steam if it does not meet the standards of people using this platform.

    As of today, GW2 uses DX9 in it's engine. For the record, DirectX 10 was released in 2007, 13 years ago. While it is understandable that a game released in 2012 was using DirectX 9, it is unfathomable that it is still using it in 2020. We all know that performance is pretty bad in-game, especially in crowded areas.

    There is a DX9 to DX12 proxy that has been developed by players that tries to fix some issues with this. This proxy is improving things, but not even close to what a proper rework of the game engine, based on DX12 would be.

    So people can understand the extent of the problem, I am going to talk about my specific case.

    My setup is the following:

    • Intel Core i-9 9900k @5.1Ghz
    • Asus TUF RTX 3080 10GB
    • HyperX Fury 2x16GB (32GB total)
    • Samsung EVO 970 NVMe M.2 (1To)

    The rest is irrelevant for our topic.

    With this setup, and the DX12 proxy, I get 40-50 FPS in Lily of the Elon. I am not using the highest settings. I am using the following:

    • Resolution: Windowed Fullscreen (3180x2160) - Mandatory for the DX12 proxy anyway.
    • Animation: High
    • Anti-aliasing: SMAA High
    • Environment: High
    • LOD Distance: Ultra
    • Reflections: All
    • Textures: High
    • Render Sampling: Native
    • Shadows: High
    • Shaders: High
    • Postprocessing: High
    • Character Model Limit: Medium
    • Character Model Quality: Medium
    • Ambient Occlusion: On
    • Best texture filtering: On
    • Depth Blur: Off
    • Effect LOD: On
    • High-Res Character Textures: On
    • Light Adaptation: On
    • Vertical Sync: On
    • Motion Blur Power: None (Lowest)

    I insist on the fact that these average FPS are just being idle, doing nothing. It is not in WvW, not in raids, open world or fractals.

    Now, of course at 4K with these settings, one should expect some FPS drop. However, I think my current computer is on the higher end of what gamers currently have (yes, you could run with an i-9 10900k and an RTX3090 or even with Quadros and such). In my opinion, performance in games, especially in old games, is critical to the game's success. As of today, it is pretty clear that the engine of GW2 simply cannot deal with modern technology and does not meet the standards of 2020.

    I hope ArenaNet fixes the engine. This game deserves a lot more praise and love and it is not going to get it if the performance keeps being this bad. Some will say "40-50FPS isn't bad in 4k". To that I insist to answer again: with some of the highest end gear you can get and being idle without action or fights taking place AND using a fan made proxy to help the game run better.

    Cheers!

    submitted by /u/SmashingQuasar
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    awesome Abyssal Infusion bug

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 10:49 AM PDT

    Need advice on crafting a legendary after another

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:21 AM PDT

    Heyo! I am so close to finishing my first ever legendary ad infinitum, my next goal would be to get started on the next legendary the shining blade then hopefully a raid armor set.

    I've realised after completing ad infinitum, I'll have next to no mats needed for my next so I'm wondering if you guys have any tips of getting specific mats to make the grind easier besides doing a few metas over and over to get money and spending it on mats to craft.

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/Argos-Age
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    How should player housing instances be done?

    Posted: 12 Oct 2020 09:19 AM PDT

    instanced housing is one of the most requested features in GW2. But how should it be implemented?

    I was thinking that there are two ways instances housing can be done:

    1) Prefab Housing- housing instsnce in which the house is already made and you decorate the inside and yard of the house. If the current housing district became a form of player housing, it would fit this category.

    2) Sandbox Housing- housing instance in which players are given the floor, walls, roofs, etc and the player build their own house and decorate the inside and yard themselves. Rift's dimensions fit this category.

    Which of these methods of instanced housing would you all prefer?

    submitted by /u/Knighthonor
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    [OC Art] Commission done for a fellow Tyrian!

    Posted: 11 Oct 2020 09:54 AM PDT
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