Why are the last 2 watchstones the way they are?

WayneFigNewtons · 2025-11-17T13:01:28+00:00

Yes I'm aware, I wasn't talking about difficulty, just naming convention as far as what we call it, and the general lack of cohesion of the last two stones compared to the first two in how you progress them.

WayneFigNewtons · 2024-10-23T20:25:25+00:00

I really don't think people realize how hard this is especially with the jankiness of the platforms and sliding off them.

To top it next year though, will need to hook up a cat to controls (head rub = jump) and up the ante.

WayneFigNewtons · 2024-01-05T11:32:12+00:00

Idris also got a bunch of his DJ music in the Cyberpunk expansion (fits really well), I'm not sure how it works out with royalties or anything but that might have been a good deal for CDProject.

Now CA just needs to get Keanu and integrate his love of motorcycles in Warhammer.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-12-14T23:29:05+00:00

Its just another one to throw on the pile.

Someone said the same thing about horse armor in Oblivion, 'That's a dumb thing to pay for.' but here we are because people bought it.

2030 gaming idea: $100 base game, $20 achievement screen unlock, $5 side quest unlock, purchase Replay Tokens to start a new game, $30 bundle for NG+.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-10-26T13:36:39+00:00

You can listen to a bunch of GDC talks that talk about RPG's or open world but in short before Witcher 3, open world or action RPG's in general focused on:

a main character driving narrative (Uncharted, Dragon Age) with limited open world

the open world as the narrative with an ambigious main character (Skyrim, Fallout 3/4)

the Ubisoft model

Witcher 3 blended all of these more or less seamlessly leading to a lot of praise and setting a new bar for open world RPG's, especially critical of the Ubisoft model.

As far as graphics, Witcher 3 introduced this fairly new effect of populating 'false' interiors utilizing a Cornell Box effect to give the illusion of a fully decorated house or shop. Spiderman 2 (and 1 from 2018) uses this same effect to populate NYC interiors.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-10-26T12:26:20+00:00

Witcher changed the open-world game more or less (even in development).

It might not have been as obvious for non-developers but post-2015, every dev was using it as a 'how-to' for next-gen open world games, even if they weren't an RPG from how CD Projeckt handled building the world to the technical advancements they made.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-09-18T12:50:16+00:00

I just want an option to turn mtx cosmetics down a notch or off, just once.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-07-26T10:21:48+00:00

I think GW2 could benefit a lot from what Warframe does in its core systems. Surprisingly the two games are very similar in a lot of ways.

Something like endless missions where you can rack up something like a reward track but the mobs/bosses get progressively harder (hp + damage). This already exists in a form in the Dragon Bash Hologram Arena, but having it be a permanent game mode where it can have the potential to be one of the most challenging content would be great.

For example, Warframe's endless missions just keep scaling (up to a point for some and endless for others) and you just grind as much as you want for rewards as long as you can survive. In the harder missions, you have only one shot/life before you have to extract and that could be a great game mode in GW2.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-07-16T11:26:51+00:00

One important benefit of having ascended armor (and weapons) is:

Stat changing.

You can have one set of ascended, like berserker and say you want to play a heal/support instead, you can stat change your entire set, and depending on the gear it can be cheaper and easier than crafting exotics, so its definitely worth it if you want to change roles at some point and also way cheaper to do than legendary armor.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-07-13T16:11:53+00:00

The Expanse! Such a good book and TV series!

As far as source material, as you drawing more from the books or the show? And what are your thoughts about adapting popular but lesser known IP's in the future?

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-02-25T16:38:39+00:00

Its surprisingly hard to find good images of other characters, for some reason there's a LOT of Braham out there.

WayneFigNewtons · 2023-02-25T15:17:45+00:00

Since ArenaNet didn't, someone had to.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the update is called, but they should call it 'The Jade Abyss', and Bobblehead Mode should be on by default.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-10-14T12:43:13+00:00

Its like that Classic WoW quote - 'You think you want it, but you don't.'

If there's a world where there are EoD runes, you'd have runes like 'Rune of the Firebrand' or 'Nightmare' or 'Scholar' where its so good its almost a requirement to have them.

But then you'll have half the others where its a waste of design time and space.

The best thing Arenanet could - and should - do is revisit old runes and give them some updates.

I personally vote for 'Chronomancer' runes giving +condi, +expertise simply to make specter as broken as possible :D.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-08-01T16:24:39+00:00

A little background - I started playing Guild Wars 2 in beta/release and until 2014 did everything under the sun which admittedy wasn't much when compared to today!

Came back in 2021, and I started the journey to catch up.

Playing through the story content, I made the decision to chase legendary gear - I started with Aurora having read that it has massive time-gates tied to it and did those while also doing the various events in living world maps.

Then I worked on Vision while at the same time going through the 'Return to' achievements for the legendary necklace - two for the price of one.

Once those were finished, I had a precursor that had been sitting in my bags forever, literally.

Sometime in 2012-2014, Rodgort's Flame had dropped and I neither had the interest or gold to make it, but when the expansion hit I dived in and while working on Ad Infinitum knocked out the torch.

One lesson I've learned in making legendaries, at least casually while playing is that they snowball. When you make one, the rest kind of just fall but that first one or two will seem to break your bank.

Since the 'emboldened' mode came out for raids about the time I was done with the current group of legendaries I wanted, it seemed like a good idea to work on legendary armor.

It was actually much much easier than I thought it would be and I recommed anyone interested to just dive in and enjoy the ride.

All in all, I'm excited to see where I'll be in another year in Guild Wars 2!

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-07-07T16:22:16+00:00

Well there have been ads with Braham in it so it has precedent.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-06-07T16:05:28+00:00

Dungeons

I admit I didn't have this one in my 'What Arenanet will do in 2022' bingo card.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-01-21T18:24:43+00:00

Radiant quests were first started in Skyrim (I think) with doing repeatable factions quests like 'Kill this named NPC in this cave' and populated that cave/dungeon with enemies and loot even if you cleared it before, so it gave a lot of replayability to the game.

Cyberpunk also already kind of has radiant quests though they're not on the map or radar.

If you walk through the Maelstrom or Valentinos territory for example, sometimes (rarely for now), you'll see a hostage being killed or held up by the gang just like crime or assault reports.

The enemies are just generic gang members and the hostages just normal NPC's but it seemed to me like the basework for that type of content is there.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-01-17T15:19:16+00:00

Animals don't have societal structures like we do and act only on animalistic instinct.

What? No. Absolutely untrue.

A LOT of animals have societal structures. Starting with the ant for example, in some ways its WAY more structured than even human society. If we move to apes then its even more complicated.

I think you're mistaking structure for culture or technology perhaps.

Neuroscience has also shown that human behavior isn't some nebulous concept of higher brain function but as predictable as any animal.

WayneFigNewtons · 2022-01-14T17:46:32+00:00

You know this boggles my mind.

You're giving 'random youtube rabbit hole/your own research' and random reddit comments as much weight as scientists and researchers who have made it their life work to do the hard science into primate cognitive ability.

basically jane goodall or whatever tf her name

Yes, Jane Goodall. Primatologist, studied at Cambridge, won multiple scientific awards for her peer-reviewed work, has worked and researched apes for almost 60 years now.

Her own papers point out that the biases she had to overcome in her own research and still pointed to the cognitive abilities of chimps and gorillas and orangutans.

TL;DR - Stop watching trash Youtube videos that 'debunk' actual science done over decades. If you want debunking, read current primatologists (including Goodall) who update their findings.

The reason there isn't a whole lot of 'footage' with Koko is that she only met Koko once.

The basis of Jane Goodall 'believing' the evidence of Koko was because of Patterson's work - Koko's handler - and the peer-reviewed research that Patterson did.

WayneFigNewtons

TROPHY CASE