User:Miss Innocent

Hello, I play as several characters in Guild Wars.

Miss Innocent Lady Gaile Dragon Bloodthirsty Carmen Angeli Sister Lifesbane Pietta Seraphima Night Scent Leila Rabia Pink Gal Asaka Menduria

I like to carry my characters from game to game, since it helps them develop as people.

I like to roleplay my characters, and would have had them introduce themselves, but that seems to make Wiki readers confused. Miss Innocent is a monk (and often Ranger) who's completely friendly; the most appropriate skill for her was Peace and Harmony, back when it gave a pip of energy as long as you didn't attack. Miss is nice, but Kitty is fiercly protective of her. "Kitty is my stalker" Miss might say and grin; Kitty is a Melandru's Stalker.

Dragon Bloodthirsty is a name I use everywhere and then some; as an elementalist... let's just say he doesn't seem to know how little armor he really has (He's earned many deaths). This would be my main in the game, with 1,000+ hours of time. He also enjoys PvP, and is my only male character.

Lady Gaile is my mesmer; I liked mesmer best, and started Dragon as an E/Me going "Domination and Energy Storage" (that was so long ago there were no rune traders, so I didn't see much difference between Ele and Mesmer; runes were very scarce). Gaile is a treasure hunter, likes money, and is generally good natured, if selfish at times.

Carmen is my newest that I actually play a fair amount. She sings, she heals, she stands around with over 100 armor and, at least for now, has never "managed to die". Carmen has earned the secret title "Psychotic Survivor", which doesn't exist, but I made up because she hasn't died yet (I'll try to remember to update when she dies). She's gotten through Varesh, Vizunah, and a few other places where I swear I thought she was going to die. Since she had a "brush with death" at level 8 that left her with 1 HP, and she's been a bit more cautious. I guess I could just take her to die somewhere, but there's no fun in that. *Update* Started doing vanquishing and Hard Mode stuff, still no luck dying. Maybe when I do a hard dungeon I'll get to die. Currently at 3,181,868 XP. And yes, I still hate the Survivor title, because I never cared if I died until it was made, and I've been unhappy every time I die since.

Pietta Seraphima is my Dervish; I hardly play her. Her personality has been described as "constantly PMSing"; her battle cry is "FEAR THE LOVING WRATH OF DWAYNA!". She can usually be found running around as an Avatar of Dwayna using Irresistible Blow and standard Dervish enchantments. She got her personality when I was trying to make her a survivor, and had played her far enough I didn't want to remake her when she died. I was understandably a little upset, and went on a killing spree killing the minotaurs that killed her. That's when it struck me that the juxtaposition of the devoted follower of Dwayna and the psychotic mass murderer was both hilarious, and a great caricature of religious extremism, and that's where she sits now.

Sister Lifesbane is my necro; she needs some personality development. She seems quiet.

Night Scent is my assassin, and she achieved the Legendary Survivor title through sheer cowardice; she prefers the word "cautious". As a starving Canthan, she struggled to earn the food to survive; Assassins are SO thin, and their butts are so small I swear they have nothing to sit on, and she's no exception. Never afraid to run away, Night can be a fun character to play. I like using shadowsteps with skills that recharge quickly.

Leila is my Warrior. I don't much like warrior, so she doesn't do much. I keep trying to play it more.

Pink Gal is my worldly ranger with no sense of direction. Enjoying drunken archery, drunken games of chance, drunken... she likes her alcohol. She's also getting a reputation as a Party Animal and a drunkard.

Asaka is my friendly ritualist. She likes to let her actions speak for her, and tends to be quiet. She's got an aggressive side; her liberal and emphatic use of Vengeful Weapon and Weapon of Remedy express herself.

Gripes with the Game I mostly really, really like Guild Wars, and have played over 4,000 hours. There's a few things that irritate me.

Survivor First is the "Survivor" title. I hate this thing. It's not any fun to "earn", and even the idea of earning it is a bit of a loose concept. It encourages cowardly behavior. One of the things I originally liked a lot about Guild Wars was how death was a minor set back; at worst, you had to start over a mission, losing a bit of progress (but not any gold). The Survivor title is like making everyone play Hardcore mode, and there's no way to turn it off until you "lose". I also hate that there's no way for my old characters (who are also among my favorites) to get the title.

Survivor also fails as a title. Titles were added to give players some very long term goals. The problem with Survivor is that it's not a long term goal you can start when you get to the end of the game and look around saying "What should I do now?". You can technically start a new character, but that's not a whole lot of fun, just to earn a title. There's also the extreme frustration of losing it randomly when you hit a lag spike, or an elementalist boss looks at you wrong. The prospect of losing ~50 hours of progress isn't fun. Neither is "stand in the back, soak up XP, and try not to do too much".

Heroes Ascent & PvP Is anyone else frustrated that you have to get through Random Arenas, and then Team Arenas, before you can finally join your guild for a run in the Heroes Ascent? It seems like a sorta dumb barrier to entry. I understand wanting to set up a progression from RA to TA to HA, but it's stupid and frustrating when your guild says "Let's go try a Heroes Ascent run", and there's two to three members who can't go because they haven't PvPed before. They can't even play with us in team arenas, because they haven't gone through RA. Random Arenas are truly random, and frustrating if you actually want or need to win some number of matches in a reasonable time to join up with your guild.

Sure, they could go "RA Grind", until they got through before hand but that kinda defeats the spirit of Guild Wars. Guild Wars was a fun game mainly because I didn't have to put up with the grinding nonsense I would have to in WoW et al. I don't find it exciting to kill 10,000 rats to gain a level so I can then go on and kill 20,000 rats for the next level before I finally learn a new skill.

Then, the "Team Arenas" are kinda empty a lot, or not very conducive to getting through them, not to mention not very fun. Why have I got to grind my way through a part of the game I don't like to get to the part I do want?

It's Grinding Time Last on my list is how I hate grinding. Everyone hates grinding; that why I bought GW to begin with, to avoid tedious grinding.

On one hand, I like the cute "title" linked skills as an extra option, but I hate the "grind to improve them" aspect of them. I liked the change to reduce the number of levels required to make them worthwhile, though. I like the move toward making those skills useful with low title ranks, and giving small but noticeable bonuses for higher ranks.

Somewhat related, I also hate having to slog through the game repeatedly on every character. I liked the original game partly because of how many ways there were for me to make progress through the game. The first couple times (E and Mo), I liked the quests and missions that led me around the map like a bread crumb trail. Then the next few characters, I liked running around and exploring and working my way through the map without doing the missions (like going through Iron Horse Mine instead of doing the Shiverpeaks missions). The last time or two, I just got someone to run me so I didn't have to deal with the slow and at this point boring early game. Sure, it was fun the first time, but on the eighth, it's more tedious than fun -- but I didn't have to put up with it, which is why it's still great! I don't feel like doing it, and I don't have to!

But in Factions and Nightfall, I can't do that. I have to slowly drag every character through every mission, doing them all in order, without missing anything. I'd much rather that later content be "unlocked" the way the Zaishen challenges are. I don't want them ticked off as completed, I just want to be able to go there with my monk when my guild says "Need monk for...", so I don't have to say "Oh, I'm 3 missions behind you on that character, I can't make it". Sure, I made it there on my Ele, Ranger, Assassin, and Ritualist, but they need a monk, and so I have to go grind a little more to get my monk there, too.

I loaded up my warrior not too long ago wanting to run around Vabbi, but lo and behold, she needed to go talk to Zhed, and do about five missions before then. I wanted to play my warrior, but I was sick of doing that part of the game, so what am I to do? I ended up playing something else. Please don't let this keep happening -- if GW2 is like this, I won't want it.

Worries about GW2: What do I worry about in Guild Wars 2? Well, not that for me this is mostly/all speculation, but if a Dev happens to see and take note, I won't be sad at all.

Well, first is the effect of "race" on the game. I find the current system, where I play each primary separately, a bit tedious now that there's so many different primaries. The thought of five or more races, with ten or more primaries, is just mind boggling. I wouldn't mind having one character of each race, while being able to change my class (both primary and secondary), but I'm not completely sure how that would work out. I also wouldn't mind a whole lot of content were unlocked for the whole account, so that "Asuran Elementalist gets nerfed hard" doesn't put my main character out of commission while leaving me nothing to play.

I also worry a bit about what "spawning" will do to the game. I've tried a couple other MMOs, and having one or two monsters just arbitrarily spawn on you sucks. It seems like a small thing, but when an XP penalty sets you back 30 minutes of gameplay or forces you to spend 10 running back to your corpse with a gold penalty, it's not fun because there's not a whole lot you can do about it. I enjoy pushing my limits, and I liked that Guild Wars didn't penalize me for it (I didn't get rewarded, I just didn't get penalized).

I also worry about how annoying kill stealing can be. I played Silk Road Online briefly (I was attracted to the trading aspect of the Merchant), and found the kill stealing to be annoying at best, and unfair at worst.

Hoping For... I'm hoping to see some "crafting" etc. in the game. I think that it's tedious to have to make 1,000 white shirts so that I can start making brown shirts so that.... until finally I get to the item I want. I'd rather just buy the blueprints and materials from an artisan somewhere, go collect the materials, and then just make the darned thing (with no failure chance). I also think it adds character and personality to your "character" to have them make some of the things themselves. I don't mind if making an item frequently or often lets me make it a little better, though (especially for items like the Roasted Drake Flesh et al.).

I'd also be happy to see some kind of trading going on, although I confess it doesn't seem very "Guild Wars" like. Just about anything that's not endless combat would be kinda cute, as long as I'm not ever required to do it.

I mentioned I'd like to unlock content, like I said above, rather than slog my way through excessive hours of gameplay to get my monk to a point where it's useful to my guild. If I made it to the end of the game once, isn't it kinda likely that I could do it again? Making me actually do it again just gets tedious as heck.