Adiabatik.6714

My theory is that the thing we fought wasn't really Joko but a puppet/corpse in the shape of Joko.The sinister individual is unfortunately unknown.ThEY wouldn't tell us.But we can assume an individual with a strong mesmer magic at its disposal. Maybe two persons, one with mesmer magic and the other with necromancy magic.That would make it...... A CoNsPirAcY...

I mean: We know that the real one was trapped in the mysts with no way out.The whole area leading to him was stacked with mesmer traps upon mesmer traps, while Palawa speciality is necromancyAs far as we know, the whole "destruction of dragons will lead to destruction of Tyria" is a very sensitive information probably only disclosed to a very tight group of people. Palawa Joko is not on the list.The inquest involvement with Joko comes out of the blue, in fact there is no indication that Palawa Joko empire had any access to Asuran technology at all. Even the waypoints are a scarce commodity in Elhona.For "reasons", the body of Joko was never retrieved and properly autopsied.All those elements point out toward a sinister individual being behind that case. Somebody very close to the commander might I add.The public want to know. I mean under Caudecus and the time of free press, the government would never have gotten away for hiding such important data to the public.

It seems that noone has a clear idea of what "difficult" or "hard" means for others and even for themselves.Maybe we should try to clarify the terms.There is a consensus that newer players will hit a cliff edge once beginning HoT.Climbing the cliff is difficult.Once that's done, experience players seem to say they are on a cozy plateau that offer no challenge at all.Since it is a discussion about game difficulty, we might want to focus on what the cliff is made of, and maybe extend it ad vitam eternam for those who want hard content.IMO, the main thing that makes the game difficult for new players, is that they completely lack information so everything is random to them. Attacks pattern are unknown. You don't know what the attacks are, how often or in what circumstance they occurs; the condition in which they are annoying, dangerous or fatal; how to mitigate or avoid them.Mob resistance: you have no idea which mobs must be burst to death and which will resist your burst, leaving you helpless. Especially in mixed group.Spawn points: you have no idea where/when a group of mobs will suddenly pop to ruin your day. Also invisible mobs.Misleading UI: marking on the soil is non indicative of the dangers of attacks. Some will kill you, some mark the only safe spot. They might be hidden under leafs. Also unbreakable break-bar.Confusing map: every branch is a gamble. Every path is randomly a straight path, quarter circle or half circle of random curvature. Anyway they are always looping on themselves unless you happen to notice the hidden "escape the loop" hidden somewhere on one of the way. The typical mission will be to follow a convoluted sequence of unspecified unmarked locations.Inventory death. Thinking of getting rid of that 8cp useless item? Well, good luck. Be prepared to get ambushed and killed while doing so. May involve a random (re)spawn or a random patrol of stun-locking crowd.Crowded space: random aggro range will ensure that you will more often than not be facing 2 or 3 pack of mobs. Be sure to pair that with very large deadly AoEs on the mob side.No escape route: mounts, gliders, mushrooms are for casuals. Jumping of a cliff should always be a gambit between certain death and mostly certain death. Sometime you will add an invisible wall or an irregularity in the soil that will either block you or sending you off the ledge. For tradition sake, bats should also do that as a free attack.No niceness like merchants. Those QoL elements do not apply in hard mode. It also could rob you of inventory death.Feel free to add to your wishlist of things to add for hard content. I think all these could be implemented in a dungeon randomly regenerated each week. I don't think knowledge of your build factors much in the difficulty faced by new players.My experience is that1) moving speed is very important;2) range build gives you a better view on the battlefield which gives you a better ability to learn attack patterns. You will still die a lot (melee range is sometime safer).

An elite version of base specs; possibly tied to a "Weh no su" based trial.

Since they would play on the same servers as anyone else, they should be on the same footing.

I could see a "Elite:dangerous" mode for the game. Explore, trade, build/expand underwater base and armadas.And finally send back those "Luxons" to the prehistory, where they belongs.

The feature in itself is cool and opens the door to a lot of cool additions.The price of the additions is a bit strange.For those who like trying multiple playstyle/built, they have to compete with extra character slots and should be price accordingly. As it is, there is no way they would consist a viable alternative.For those who have a main and stick to their main, that makes a little more sense, but it is still not a no brainer.IMO, they should be sold in batch of 5, with a price balanced around the price of character slots.An interesting alternative would be to allow the slots to hold an out of profession build, so the persons sticking to a main would be able to have other playstyles available, and would be able to "maximize" their main.

Sooner or later you will have to move out of windows 7 anyway. Your drivers will not be updated, your browser will go more and more out of sync with the rest of internet. You will be stuck out of the most recent hardware if you try to upgrade your PC, if you buy a new one windows 10 will be preinstalled on it with no option to install windows 7... All in all, it will be a slow unpleasant death.If it is a fast death, that will be because something very unpleasant has happened and you'd better have backed your data up.So, all in all, you'd better move to windows 10 when you have the choice instead of being forced into it by circumstances.Luckily, Microsoft seems to have gotten the hang on its new OS and you don't hear as many horror stories about it as you used to do.For those who stick with Windows 7, you should expect a very rough beginning of the year since many criminals might want to size a window of opportunity while it last. So be extra careful during those early 2020 months. At least, that's my assessment.

An alternative would be a chernobyl like scenario:The land is deemed too inhospitable for settlement; as a result it is left as is.In the end, Nature takes its rights back and Ascalon becomes a "lush wasteland".The ghosts of ascalon somehow ends up as nature spirits (or alternative faery folks).They decide to hide the now mythical "lost kingdom of Ascalon" into a mist labyrinth.

Different people like different things. You want some parts to be me more challenging and other skippable, other might like the other way around.If you want more challenging combat, you can swap to lower quality gears, if you want less challenge there's nothing much you can do. Maybe it's time to ask for skippable combat phases?

Personally, I liked that scene. So far, Braham seems to be the only character to have a day to day life.In fact, having a day to day life should be the default for any character, and the crisis situation the exception.The usual goofball suddenly becoming deadly serious is often a good indication that shit hit the fan, and is in no way character derailment. Am I the only one that thinks Braham had a very good point in LS3?After all, the commander is in very poor position to call other for their recklessness.(S)he also tends to demands trust to every one else without much explanation; does not returns the favor; never bothers to explain h(is/er) plans (well,(s) he has never one), never asked for inputs or bother about other people views or feeling on the subject. In short, as a leader, (s)he has much improvement to do.H(is/er) treatment of Caith was peculiarly appealing. Calling a friend traitor and going so far as making death threats?! When it was always obvious that their goals were the same (keeping the egg safe). None of them had more legitimacy on the other on the mean to do so (one was following the the Pale tree wish, the other her wyld hunt; which might be destiny's will as far as we know).The world goes out of its way to ensure that the commander is always pinpoint correct (as long as s(he) doesn't step on the claws of Rytlock that is; but anything that inconvenience Rytlock is automatically wrong, so that's it); but the other characters have no way of knowing this and should act accordingly.In particular, they shouldn't trust h(im/er) blindly, whether they're on the same side or not.

I understand that ANet wants to go for the "their is multiple sides for every story" kind of thing.But if it is the case, where do we ever hear of the other sides? Each time this is mentioned, we never ever hear of any other alternate interpretation of history than the Charr version.There is at most musing of wether human leaders were cartoonishly evil, totally wrong, crazy, delusional or a mix of all.There is also the problem that the charr of the time weren't specially scholars or keepers of knowledge. On the contrary, there is many indications that they were on a constant streak of "cultural reformation", dark ages, book burning and "forbidden knowledge should be destroyed" movements.The very notion that historians accross the races would take their version as canon, or even seriously, is simply ludicrous. Even charr historians should be screaming about blatant propaganda and rewriting history to fit once political agenda.[rant]There might be the "written by the victors" angle to it. This cliche might have value in a successful completely totalitarian system but doesn't hold water on a world level. Personally, I feel bad for real life historians that have to live thru all the smartass people that throw that empty formula with zero regard of context and zero reflection of what it means and when it can be applied.Use "written by the survivors"; "written by those who know how to write"; "written by those who bothered to do the research"; "written by people who know you won't be bothering checking"; "written by people who understand there is no mean to check" instead.[/rant] To be clear: In this Season, we have the charr, perspective as it is seen in their homeland. It is heavily implied to be part of the official propaganda, and as such is perfectly fine.The fact that the various foreigners do not object is also find; after all they are here as kind of ambassadors. Slowly polishing angles and not being too aggressive is their role (also they probably don't want to be gutted on the spot).The problem is in the other part of the world, where the human centric view should be predominant (better documented, cross checked, closer to the fact, with physical and episcopal evidence, backed by administrative records...). Also, charr fighting ghost understand that they fight mainly against civilians fueled by desesperation. They leave on a daily basis with the consequence of the searing and should have first hand experience of how twisted their version of history is. This is never acknowledged.Saying that Ascalon was Charr territory thousand(s) years ago is like saying that the Mediterranean world was Roman a thousand years ago. That wouldn't justify Italian going all out on a conquest war, nuking whole country, enslaving and eating the survivors, replacing baguettes by pizzas and engaging in ethnical cleansing of everything non Italian.

There's a possibility that the whole thing is a plan by Bangar to get rid of the renegades from the inside.The plan would be: Round up most of the charrs extremists around a charismatic figure and then send them into an impossible fight (against Jormag). The more damage they could manage to do against the elder dragon, the better.The motivation: Bangar would have seen a new era coming, where the legions would lose their place in the society. Instead of risking a bitter transition period of years and years of charrs against charrs war, he would have opted for offering his soldiers an honorable end. And to give the more moderate elements of the society a free shot at the necessary reforms. That would probably be an optimist outlook on the character. However we know that he is a very capable leader, that Crecia do trust him to be an honorable charr, and that he seems to have given Ryland an honorable upbringing. So that wouldn't be that far fetched.

I don't know if it has been said, but more map connectivity would be welcome.I find that using waypoints breaks the game flow a little and would like to see some others mean if possible.For instance a ship or an airship line connecting Vabbi and the Lion Arch;Or a portal linking Rata Sum and the deep Maguma Jungle, which is almost canon.I find the maps that are completely disconnected from the rest of the world a little jarring.

For added challenge, you might want to stick to your cultural armor set or lower.Has anyone tried it? How did it turned out?