Tommo Chocolate.5870

I'm afraid I don't see how this links to any of the rest of your argument. Which results or techniques from complexity theory have you used to draw your conclusions? This might be clear to you, but since you haven't explained it, it's not at all clear to your readers. Without explaining your methods, your argument is unlikely to be persuasive (which, perhaps, is why so many of the responses disagree with you). These are not networks in the mathematical sense. They look more like heat maps – that is, plots of 2-variable functions – but they look to me like generic illustrative pictures of heat maps rather than actual plots of actual functions or data. When you say "the density map would look something like this", what has led you to that conclusion? What data collection and/or modelling did you do? I know that you gave this explanation: But this seems both vague and conjectural. It certainly doesn't give an indication that you looked at this "in a mathematical sense", as you claim. And where does this "at least 80%" figure come from? Note: I'm not saying that you haven't used proper mathematical/scientific methods here – just that you haven't explained your methods sufficiently.

That's all well and good, but can someone explain why Season 2 story costs 1280 gems while Season 3 and 4 cost 960 gems. The Season 2 complete package unlocks just the story, since the maps are available to everyone, while Season 3 and 4 unlock all their respective maps as well as the story. Season 3/4 has more story, more maps, more content in general, and they cost less than Season 2. It's really weird that the Season that should be the cheapest, because it bridges core with expansion content in terms of difficulty, is the most expensive. Edit: Season 2 costs 435 gold or 16$ (20$ for 1600, then use 1280 of those to buy it), both are a really high price to pay for a fresh level 80 player that just finished the personal story and simply wants to experience the content that bridges the gap with the first expansion. It's because Season 2 has 8 episodes and Seasons 3 and 4 have 6. Episodes are 200 gems each, and there's a 20% discount for buying the whole season together. I don't think Season 2 episodes have the same value as Season 3 or Season 4 episodes, especially considering the important role Season 2 plays in bridging the gap between the core game and the expansions. I don't think it makes sense either, but as far as I know that is the reasoning - it's literally priced according to the number of episodes, with no regard for what you get as part of them.They set the price at 200 gems per episode long before Season 3 started, probably before they knew each episode would include a new map. So my guess is, having set that price for Season 2, they probably felt that they couldn't raise it for Season 3 (at least, not without drawing heavy criticism), even though Season 3 episodes have more content.

Charr 5 and norn 5 are both available. They're wearing Stalker armour, and the charr has Studded shoulders.

The OP is so deadpan I can't tell if it's a joke... This is a great idea since it gets around all of the problems associated with introducing a new race! No need to remake old armour skins: oozes absorb gear rather than wear it.No need for new voice acting: oozes just gurgle.No need for a new starter zone: oozes start in Metrica Province.No need for new Level 10-30 story: oozes are eligible for the Snaff Prize.No need to retcon any of the story: it's totally plausible that an ooze would be appointed commander of the Pact, defeat several Elder Dragons and one god, get invited to Queen Jennah's parties, etc.As a bonus, there's a vast supply of lore-appropriate names! So your preferred name, 'Subject 88472', is taken? Try 'Subject 88473' instead.

A lot of the answers here focus on the lore reason behind this, and while they're interesting to read, I don't think it really answers the question – if the writers/designers had wanted to include hybrids, they would have changed the lore to accommodate that. As far as I know we don't have an official explanation as to why they decided to make the lore that way, so we can only speculate, really. I think there are lots of good reasons though, e.g. it would be a lot of work for little (if any) gain; it would dilute the distinctions between the existing races; if they were selective about which race combinations could produce hybrids (which they would have to be) they would still have to explain away those that can't; hybrids are arguably overdone in other fantasy stories/games, etc. I find it kind of weird that Final Fantasy has a race called "Hrothgar". It's like if a European game had a race named after a legendary Japanese emperor or something. I googled them and to me they look like charr if they were designed by someone who had never seen a panther and had no actual interest in animals. No, I'd argue that 'race' is the correct word here. Races in fantasy are more closely connected to classes of mythological creatures than they are to species of animals, and the word 'race' has been used in that context (referring to the races of angels, demigods, giants, satyrs, etc.) continuously since the 16th century. Also bear in mind that "correct" English is determined by usage, and basically all fantasy literature uses 'race' rather than 'species'. In the case of Guild Wars specifically, the game itself uses the word 'race', for example, asking you to "select race" (rather than species) at character creation.

I'm a bit confused about what's being proposed here. I assume "original sylvari concept" means the original elf-like design, before they were redesigned to look more like plants. But the Wardens from Echovald Forest don't have anything to do with sylvari, and they're nothing like the old elf-like concept either. We don't really know where the Wardens came from, but we do know that they're ancient – whereas sylvari are the newest race in Tyria. I mean, I see that there are visual similarities, but I don't see how they could justify making them a "sub-race" of the sylvari. So perhaps I'm misinterpreting the OP. Interesting, do you have any references? (e.g. reviews where someone said this?) To me, the "ugliness" of the GW2 races is a real strength of their design – many other games seem to go in for races that are essentially just different-coloured humans with some animal features (horns, tails, fur, etc.) tacked on. To be honest, even Rox is a bit of a step too far towards "cute" for my taste...

I partially agree with the OP. I don't think crafting requires a guide (by which I really mean I personally figured out how to craft weapons and armour without a guide), but I do think it's utterly tedious and unfun. Before the game was released, Mike O'Brien condemned other MMOs because they "feel like you're playing a spreadsheet", and yet crafting in GW2 is about as close as you can get to a playable spreadsheet. Not only is it dull, but you have to get through way too much of it before it also becomes useful. Unless you want any of the crafting-exclusive skins, there's no reason to craft anything until you're level 80. Once you are level 80, if you want to craft a full set of exotic gear, you have to grind through 400 crafting levels in at least three different crafting disciplines in order to do it. As for interaction with drops, yes, technically, the drops you get give you a lot of materials used for crafting level-appropriate items - but there's no reason to actually craft those items because you can (and will) obtain equally good items through other much easier means anyway. Personally I much prefer the GW1 crafting system, where you only have to craft things you actually want, the materials used actually bear some relation to the item, and you never have to craft any intermediate items that can themselves only be used for crafting. Ascended are far better than exotics, i know people suggest otherwise but Ascended blow exotics out of the water in stats.. and no its not 5% you add weapons and armor up and Ascended are like 30% or something better..I assume that most of the people who claim ascended gear is 5% better than exotic are just parroting something they read online and haven't actually bothered to check. From the item stats, I can't figure out why anyone would make that claim in the first place, but it's complicated even further by the fact that the question "how much better is ascended gear than exotic gear?" doesn't really make sense on its own. How much better at what? For the question to make sense you'd have to pick a particular attribute combination and a particular thing that you care about comparing. Since most people seem to use berserker gear, to me the most pertinent question seems to be: how much more (direct) damage do I deal in ascended berserker gear than in exotic berserker gear? As far as I can tell, the answer is just over 13% more - so much more than the 5% that most people claim, but nowhere near 30%. (Working in spoiler below.)

I agree with the OP, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. GW2 has a pretty inconsistent track record when it comes to faithfully recreating creatures from GW1. A few creatures in the core game kept similar designs, like grawl, ettins and raptors, but a lot of them had substantial redesigns. Trolls, skelk, skale, tengu, kraits, drakes, and even norn look quite different. The expansions are probably even less faithful. In HoT, saurians were redesigned so heavily that they don't even have the same species. In PoF, a lot of the Elonian wildlife from Nightfall was removed and replaced with completely new creatures, while djinn and hydras look completely different. I don't think this is bad necessarily - in fact, I think many of the redesigns are improvements - but I don't think we can really predict what creatures will be in Cantha, or what they'll look like.

Judging by the amount of visual noise in the teaser, that must be gameplay footage... right?

Posters on this forum have a habit of shouting down any and all opinions, and I'm somehow unsurprised that some of them have now taken to shouting down facts as well. I agree that this is potentially misleading or confusing, and should be fixed. Haha, yes, . You realise this makes it worse, right?

I agree about Kessex Hills. It's probably my least favourite map in the game because of the mess they made of it. To me, the ruins of the Tower of Nightmares are actually the least bad part of the Season 1 leftovers. The Toxic Alliance events annoy me way more - aside from being overtuned for a map of that level, they're given no context and the rest of the map behaves like they aren't there, as if the map is stuck in two points in time rather than one. It feels like the kind of mistake one might expect in a fan-made map, like "this level isn't hard enough so lets randomly scatter some tough enemies around, let's label them as 'toxic' and give them a green glow so the players know they're baddies". Didn't stop them from doing it before, core GW2 needs to be updated to keep pace with the current game.Which maps (excluding LA) have been updated?I think I must be misunderstanding the question, because the answer at least includes Kessex Hills, Iron Marches (Mordrem events, anomaly events), Queensdale (Bandit bosses - you know, Vic the Butcher, Kenny the Ripper, whatever they're called), Gendarran Fields and Timberline Falls (anomaly events). Presumably those aren't substantial enough changes for you to consider them 'updated'?

Read this as you misinterpreted the meaning behind their statement of "no grind" and continue to do so https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/No-grind-philosophy/page/4#post4733273 what is your point? are you trying to imply, that runes and sigils arent gear? or, that they dont improve my stats?or that i dont have to GRIND to get them? There is gear with runes on them and those are cheaper than crafted i think medium is nika, devona for heavy and light was maybe zheds i think still many hours of work with a questionable result, no thanks. specially since i never got past the experimental stage with runes and sigils Not really those sets are really cheap. Selling amors arent really profitable crafting runes cost more than buying them. Farmers dont rule economy the tp flippers do. But honestly i think you dont want to use tp. You can buy zerker with karma even and where do the flippers get the capital to start? i am not coming back until they have made some pretty big changes.farming or grinding is one thing, but to do it for AH barons is even worse. SPECIALLY in a game, that promised to be different in that regard A game has to gave economy in this case a supply vs demand economy. Tp flipping to by something cheap and sell it for a profit. You act like earning gold is evil its not gw 2 unlike most mmos has a stable economy. stable? in the short time i was back, i literally saw the the prices of the most desired sigils DOUBLE. that aint stable, thats inflation.the one with +crit started at 3½ G, when i quit , it was at 7and i wonder how much it costs NOWSuperior Sigil of Accuracy? It currently costs about 10.4 silver. In fact, its highest price ever was about 3.5 gold; it's never cost 7 gold. (Source: price history on GW2TP.) Given that its price has been steadily decreasing for years, if you want to argue that the GW2 economy is badly affected by inflation, this isn't the item to use in your argument. Maybe you're thinking of Superior Sigil of Force (+5% damage), which has had some much higher prices over the years. But the price of that has been pretty stable for a while now, so there's no evidence of inflation there either.

I don't hate any of the maps, but here are some I'm not so keen on: Kessex Hills. I think Kryta is generally the blandest region in the game anyway, and it lacks the atmosphere it used to have in GW1. That said, Kessex Hills has some interesting features and was good on release, but now it's a total mess of Season 1 leftovers, which have no context, and feature the always implausible Toxic Alliance. I guess I dislike the current Lion's Arch for similar reasons, but at least that's sort of coherent.Grothmar Valley. I don't understand why people seem to like it so much. There's basically no combat, and to me it feels like there are too few events spread over way too large an area. I guess the event schedules are supposed to help you find the events, but whenever I've checked them the next event listed is always at least 2 hours away. The map is big and empty, and it feels either unfinished or bugged.I have mixed feelings about Verdant Brink. I think it's very well designed, but it's badly placed as the first HoT map. Exploring it is much too dependent on having unlocked gliding masteries, which you clearly won't have done when you first get there, or until you've played a decent chunk of HoT. As a result I just found it utterly frustrating when HoT was new, and even though I have all my gliding masteries unlocked now, I've never really warmed to it.

Wait, isn't this quote "Koda the judge and kodan the jury"? Or have I been mishearing (and miniterpreting) it all these years?!

Definitely vanilla for me. I don't actually think the game was at it's best then, and there've been many design improvements and quality of life enhancements over the years, but it was definitely the time I enjoyed the most. It was fantastic to explore Tyria for the first time, and the personal story - especially the level 1-30 chapters - gave a real insight into the races and the world. I also much preferred the levelling experience at release. I particularly liked learning weapon skills by actually using the weapon, especially since it incentivised experimenting with different options while levelling up. I also think part of the enjoyment of that first levelling experience came from not knowing what to do. Now I know that if I just pick the highest damage option (for gear, skills, and traits) while levelling a character, everything will be easy - and that sort of sucks some of the enjoyment out of it. I hated Season 1 though, and for me, the border is definitely The Lost Shores, and that laggy karka event in Lion's Arch. I played some of Season 1, but gave up part way through, and didn't really come back for any length of time until HoT was released. Unlike some people, I don't feel annoyed that I missed out on the temporary content (after all, I actively chose to miss out on it), but I do feel glad that I didn't miss out on the original unspoiled Kessex Hills...