Dolyak Delivery - 15 October 2012

First up is a post discussing Commanders and how seeing 9 in a single location (when really they should be in World versus World) is A) Rather annoying and B) Undermines the entire purpose of the Commander title. Personally, I think it's one big waste of time and money and ArenaNet desperately need to pull their socks up to make grouping for guilds in WvW functional.  Provide me with squad functionality to a maximum capacity of 100 and I would be happy.  If you have to, make guilds use influence to obtain the perk.  As it currently stands however, the party structure in WvW and the use of Commanders simply isn't fit for purpose and I think ArenaNet could do well in taking a look at Warhammer Online in this area.

Halloween is upon us very shortly and while we English don't celebrate it as heavily as our American friends it's a festival I absolutely love in video games.  ArenaNet go to great effort to make holiday seasons fun and visually stunning and I've no doubt that this piece of art will be realised.  On closer inspection, I do think it looks like a screenshot but I'm not 100% certain.  Anything close to that image in game however and I'll probably spend the duration of the festivities in Lions Arch taking screenshots. You can find the Reddit discussion here.

This article ties in quite nicely into my complaints of the Mystic Forge.  Unfortunately I still don't see this as a viable solution as it's simply adding another layer of unnecessary gameplay in order to facilitate a precursor weapon.  What we need to do is acknowledge that the Mystic Forge is a bit of fun and shouldn't be used as a fundamental game mechanic.  Instead, we need to really look at Legendary weapons and their construction.  Surely it would be more fun to have a wild-goose-chase of puzzles and clues to gather for those willing to spend the time. 

This is an interesting little post, mapping out a Historical Guide to Tyria. I absolutely love the historical referencing between both games and if nothing else, its an excellent excuse to really take in the stunning world.  You can use the map by hitting the ‘Online zoomable version’ within the Reddit post.

I love a good complaint thread and especially in forums where people take it upon themselves to claim the sky is falling while making spurious claims about this or that.  This forum post is no exception although from what I can see he’s only complaining about some elements in WvW, the downed state and the price of the Commander tome.  If that is cause to quite, I wish the original poster the very best of luck in other MMOG’s. On that note, there still seems to be a lot of complaining about the downed state and yet I think it’s one of the best mechanics in the game.  My only issue with it is that not all downed skills across the professions are anywhere close to equal.

If you haven’t already read Sardu’s article on magic find, I really suggest you do as it’s packed with interesting information on the subject.  Over on the official forums, Karina raises some statistical analysis on magic find and how really, it’s pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things.  I think what many fail to realise is that magic find only increases the base drop rate of an item and if that is already incredibly low (1%), having 300 magic find will barely increase that.  Have you had better luck with it?

The topic of a single universal Token for dungeons keeps rearing its head over on the official forums.  I would have thought the reason for not doing this was relatively apparent (people would just run the quickest, easiest dungeon) and yet the community continue to bang this drum. Having ran most of the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 I would honestly say that not only are they too easy (staggeringly easy) but they are so quick to do (as little as 18 minutes for some routes) that the thought of a universal Token makes me cringe as the token system works fine, it’s the tactical depth of the dungeons that needs some work.   

I remember when Thiefs weren’t wanted, everyone said they were underpowered and that they brought no utility to groups.  Here we are in launch and every other day the sky is falling at how overpowered they are.  While they might be able to hit like a truck, such builds also tend to be incredibly fragile.  With that in mind, there’s a good discussion topic on Backstab over on the forums.

Lastly, Ravious has posted an interesting article about those wordless relationships that form as you encounter a stranger in the world. I’ll freely admit that this is also one of the reasons why I play MMOG’s, to forge those impromptu friendships.  What has surprised me however is the fact that strangers generally don’t talk in Guild Wars 2 as the game merrily rail roads you to the next heart or waypoint. Unlike in others MMOG’s there’s no necessity to say “Shall we go here?” as players already know the next location.  Is this a good thing? I’m not so sure.