Guild Wars 2

Adelas.6598:

Anyway, ZeroRogue has really nailed it for me, personally, with his list of things like bank and inventory items – the only thing I don’t see in his list is achievements. Having a website or phone app that could help me keep track of achievements would be AMAZING.

I had a few paragraphs written with everything I would hope to have with an account API including achievements, but I shortened it down so it was not so “wall of texty”

I would hope to have nearly everything in game viewable in API form, but my #1 hope is to get synergy from site to game so you can plug your data into a site and get personalized guides.

On that point I do hope we have a public and a private space for accounts. Public is basic data on the account, (Character names,Professions, levels, Status, Map currently on, Achievement points, hours played?) Private is everything else and requires authentication.

The private data should be kept secure so players who like their privacy are private.

For instance a system similar to the two step authentication that we have to login. Where a player generates access keys that they give to sites that are valid only for one ip. (although this would be an issue for anyone with a roaming ip. Perhapses make an access account?)

I’ve already proposed some json structure changes for the WvW APIs, so i’m gonna link these here for now – i’ll create some PR tomorrow.

matches.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/8876102#file-matches3-json
match_details.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/8894954
objectives.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/bac2b4f87e7af128087e#file-gw2_objectives-json
(more to follow)

Thanks for the new floors.json, thats basically what i’ve proposed earlier

The trading post APIs only accept IDs, so it would make sense to have an item name search API to get that ID. Right now the only way to implement name search is to maintain your own database, which is burdensome for non-website apps.

Preferably, it would allow type, rarity, etc. filters via parameters.

Pat Cavit.9234:

famfamfam.9137:

I’m interested in plans for versioning and compat…

I’d write up your proposal in a forum post or gist, it’s too long-term of an idea for a PR to be very useful right now.

If I get a chance I’ll gist a story and proposal.

Pat Cavit.9234:

After we’ve gotten over the hump of exposing most of the useful/interesting data available I’d like to circle back around on a consistency pass that would potentially include a more flexible versioning story.

Understandable and preferred. Looking forward to auth!

smiley.1438:

I’ve already proposed some json structure changes for the WvW APIs, so i’m gonna link these here for now – i’ll create some PR tomorrow.

matches.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/8876102#file-matches3-json
match_details.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/8894954
objectives.json https://gist.github.com/codemasher/bac2b4f87e7af128087e#file-gw2_objectives-json
(more to follow)

Thanks for the new floors.json, thats basically what i’ve proposed earlier

That makes me wonder — perhaps there should be “abbreviated” mode of endpoint? (and further compact it like this: https://gist.github.com/msmolev/c22210d53d10a4edd233 ) if volume of data transmitted is causing problems.

What will be the acceptable rate of requests for v2 API?

Flip times for WvW would be great! Would solve quite a few of my problems with that endpoint.

Okay, this is actually the first time I post to a cdi, so forgive me if i made everything wrong. I just believe I speak for others with what I ’am about to say:

Guild-API
With the possibility of authentication there ought to be some guild-roster-api, but i don’t know how this should be implemented. Obviously there should be a setting in the ingame privileges tab like “API-Access” which grants those rights to a specivic guild group.
But then again, since this would be an ingame change this might not fit in here.

Now why would I love this?
Leading a somewhat medium sized guild (100+) it is getting tricky remembering all names as well as the invite date, and the date of first representation. Also this would allow to show some statistics about how much of his online time the person is actually representing said guild. Also this could help figuring out which content the guild is mostly doing. If 60% of people are almost exclusively bashing doors in the borderlands and only 2% are doing fractals every now and then, the next contest probably shouldn’t be fractals, if you know what I mean.

Statistics can help a lot achieving balance for the players.

I would like to see improved Guild API which would help make better community websites with stuff like

• Members (Representing/Not Representing/Total)
• Member Character Names
• Upgrades Queue
• Some sort of a log for completed guild missions
• Guild bank? (shouldn’t be an issue to make it public data :O )
• And maybe an extension for the upcoming expack, like .. does the guild have a hall, how does it look like
• GvG History
• Upcoming GvG Matches

I’d like to see people being able to extract pictures of their toons, or at least avatars.

I would love to see steps being taken to get back the Events API, including a way for people to PICK the server in-game (i know, i know this isn’t exactly an API request, but I’m sure you guys can bring more attention/weight to this detail than a simple user like me)

Also sPvP could see some love, by having an API endpoint interfacing with the leaderboards, and maybe even a build data (not necessary, I do see how that can be used to gain unfair advantage, knowing your enemy and all). The basics could be covered, like rank, and some achievements data, like players killed, points made and stuff like that.

BLUna.7928:

Some PvP API would be fantastic. I think it would be really cool if we could potentially create something like dotabuff but it just does not seem possible at the moment. Being able to access things like match details (kills, deaths, points, builds players were running) would be fantastic not only for match sites but also for things like post game breakdowns in tournaments.

Ravenmoon.5318:

(snip)
Also sPvP could see some love, by having an API endpoint interfacing with the leaderboards, and maybe even a build data (not necessary, I do see how that can be used to gain unfair advantage, knowing your enemy and all). The basics could be covered, like rank, and some achievements data, like players killed, points made and stuff like that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Proposal-Structured-PvP-API/first#post4802052

I’ll write a PR this weekend…

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Actual search endpoints is definitely something I’ve been looking into. The way we pull content data right now is to basically load stuff from the dat file — which is designed for semi-random access and doesn’t really yield itself to indexing. So I’m trying to pull all the data into a more normalized format so we can load it into search indexes and index all the things (not just items/recipes, but also future endpoints like skills and maps and whatnot). Still a ways from being production ready though ;_;

Pretty please with sugar on top! Especially a search endpoint for the maps API (POIs and stuff) would be extremely helpful to create maps for the Wikis.

So please: (couldn’t resist)

i would be really excited about a possibility to have guild chat outside of the game too, maybe somewhat like twitch allows to connect to their irc: http://help.twitch.tv/customer/en/portal/articles/1302780-twitch-irc

I would like to suggest implementation of Zone chat API. It should follow the footsteps of twitter API in terms of structure. Something like:
GET https://blahblah/chat?limit=100&zone=1

{
zone:1,
messages: [
{
“name”: “blah”,
“message”: “blahblah”,
“time”:“00:00:00 UTC”
},

{
“name”: “blah”,
“message”: “blahblah”,
“time”:“00:00:00 UTC”
}
]
}

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Divus.3175:

Either John Smith has his own server with all (I mean ALL) the data, or you have it somewhere in some form of historic tables. That’s just a wild guess.

Querying it is neither fast nor scalable, so it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to provide access to anything beyond what you can see via the in-game UI. I think the current cutoff for the transaction history is three months, but might be mistaken about that.

Would it be feasible to reduce the data to improve the database performance?

The query could return statistics for a time interval. For each item:

{
“id”: xxx,
“start_time”: xxx,
“end_time”: xxx,
“buy_price” : { “min”: xxx, “max”: xxx, “mean”: xxx },
“sell_price” : { “min”: xxx, “max”: xxx, “mean”: xxx },
“demand” : { “min”: xxx, “max”: xxx, “mean”: xxx },
“supply” : { “min”: xxx, “max”: xxx, “mean”: xxx },
“bought”: xxx,
“sold”: xxx
}

The further back in time, the coarser the granularity, e.g. for the last week/month the statistics could be stored at hourly intervals, for 1-12 months back, store at the day level, and for 12+ months back, store a weekly summary.

This would still allow users to plot a representative history, and provide enough detail for analyzing recent trends in the market history, without having to serve every individual transaction.

This would require a periodic sweep through the data to condense the summaries as they move into different level-of-detail windows, but would greatly reduce the amount of data.

Torsailr.8456:

MithranArkanere.8957:

All I want for now is just 3 things:

• Some sort of authentication, so the API can get permission to get info about an account and its characters.
• A way to get the info of all copies of a map, and the info of a particular copy of a map. Combined with the authentication and the events API, it’ll be able to tell you the event of the particular copy of the map the current character of an account is in just like before megaserver.
• Also combined with the authentication, a way to pull contact lists, and be able to pull the locations of the reciprocal friends of that account if they are in the same copy of the map.

Is it possible to take this a step further?

Be able to get a list of what events are active, or the timers on the inactive events for all instances of a given map?

IE, if I wanted to do Balthazar but I’m in Queensdale. Being able to see if there are any instances in progress or about to start would be nice. This would make it easier for people to organize on specific maps to do these events.

The inactive timer thing is probably not possible but we should at least be able to get back to how the events API worked before megaserver.

There is no way to select which instance you end up so seeing which instances have what events doesn’t seem very useful.

So let’s say I want to “opt in” to an app or overlay that allows other players to perform a gear check on me in dungeon groups. How would I do that? Would I have to use the app? Or would there be a user preference in-game (disabled by default) that shares my information for others to pull from the API?

I would like to throw my vote towards XMPP for group chats.

Something I would like to see added to the items api is for the vendors that the item can be purchased from to be included, along with the price those vendors charge. Alternatively the lowest price charged by a vendor would also be nice.

For the authenticated api, I would like to request adding the time a particular skill was last used.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Out-of-game guild chat is definitely something I want to have

that is great to hear!

Lawton Campbell.8517:

DeviantShark.6548:

With the possibility of authentication there ought to be some guild-roster-api, but i don’t know how this should be implemented. Obviously there should be a setting in the ingame privileges tab like “API-Access” which grants those rights to a specivic guild group.

Probably not going to be an in-game opt-in for this. Anyone in the guild can already see the roster in-game, so it doesn’t make sense to hide the roster from them out-of-game.

quenoz.3859:

i would be really excited about a possibility to have guild chat outside of the game too, maybe somewhat like twitch allows to connect to their irc: http://help.twitch.tv/customer/en/portal/articles/1302780-twitch-irc

Out-of-game guild chat is definitely something I want to have, but we haven’t really settled on a protocol for it yet. XMPP, IRC and “something custom with HTTP+SSE” have all been tossed around as potentials but it’s not immediately clear which is most advantageous to implement. As far as interoperability with existing clients, IRC’s probably the winner (though it’s a horrible mess of a protocol).

Go with your own protocol. People are doing chatrooms with Node.js and socket.io ever since it released. WebSockets is a nice TCP/IP wrapper and is supported on all major browsers. Its easy to write against it so I can see client apps being developed around it too. If you limit the messages to 128 bytes, you won’t have to ever implement the protocol chunking, which saves you loads of work.

IRC is older than me (I’m 24 years old), it is time to let it go xD

WebSockets usability info: http://caniuse.com/#feat=websockets

Ravenmoon.5318:

IRC is older than me (I’m 24 years old), it is time to let it go xD

This is actually an advantage to using IRC (or another off-the-shelf technology) — existing chat clients already understand it and third party apps can use existing libraries since the protocol has had time to gain acceptance.

IRC has some cobwebs for sure, but everything understands it

Not to mention that it will only require them to develop an interface layer between GW2 chat and IRC, rather than build (and test and maintain) their own protocol/server implementation.

Gah. Now I sound like my boss does when I get carried away, wanting to rewrite everything myself. kitten I hate the real world >.<

I’d like to see a flag for waypoints in keeps and SMC in WvW as they are visble to every player by looking on the map.

I would like the API to provide location coordonates of players. If I would be able to see my guildmates location on Tyria map in a web app, there would be more collaboration.

Also, another suggestion for the API is 3D asset streaming. Currently, only 2D assets could be displayed, such as items. What I suggest here is 3D asset streaming.

This could be done in multiple ways . I’ve linked here a PDF called 3D mesh streaming based on predictive modelling :
http://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/jcssp.2012.1123.1133 (click read full pdf)

What I suggest is something like this: Let’s say we have a 3D model of a lion statue from the submerged Lion Arch. That statue is isolated, and more photos are taken around it, at different angles and zoom levels. The photos are stored on the server, associated with the respective asset. API users could request various photos. On the app side, the images are combined in spherical shapes ( think of Google Street View), with different sizes, based on zoom. So, that asset could be viewed in 3D inside the app.
I would suggest png format streaming, because it supports transparency. This could also be done for animations and particle effects.

mahri.8410:

I would like the API to provide location coordonates of players. If I would be able to see my guildmates location on Tyria map in a web app, there would be more collaboration.

I believe this can be done with the mumble API. It includes your coordinates, plus other information (such as the direction you are facing, etc). Others have created apps where you can track your own movement. Building on this, you should be able to centralize this information and display it to any users you wish to convey the information to.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Whether or not that’s something we can provide is a question that’s above my pay grade :P

Even if you could decide that – you shouldn’t do it. There are already copy-paste low budget games out there that simply copy the Guild Wars 2 UI. Throwing out models and textures in a convenient easy-to-use format would only extend this content theft to all kinds of assets.

Edit, to avoid double post:

ClockworkUnltd.2690:

mahri.8410:

I would like the API to provide location coordonates of players. If I would be able to see my guildmates location on Tyria map in a web app, there would be more collaboration.

I believe this can be done with the mumble API.

Yep. Markers can already do that, although it would display your guild members on the ingame map instead of a web app. However, as soon as the current update is finished (features, performance, stability… ugh, I hate JavaScript) I’ll get in touch with the creators of various map-rendering projects to achieve interoperability. I’ll probably be able to provide a simple JavaScript wrapper that handles communication with a share server and spits out information about player positions and so on.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

You’d go to the app’s webpage, which would redirect you to the official sign-ins. After signing in, you’d be presented with an authorization prompt telling you what permissions the app is requesting. Clicking a “accept” button would send you back to the app and give the app a token they can use to make authenticated API requests on your behalf.

So, an example app, “pingyourgear.com”, might allow you to list your party members by name. You could them send them to the app — they’d log in and grant the app access to view their equipment. The app would pull their equipment and update it on your screen. The app could additionally save authentication tokens (with the user’s permission) so they’d only have to opt-in once — so any party members you add who’ve already used the app could have their current gear appear immediately on your UI.

Makes perfect sense. Thanks so much for the very thorough walkthrough of the typical usage model!

Befor release anet promised mobile apps. I think its a great opportunity to rise the gaming experience. Chat, tp buy-sell, something SAB kind of game (or SAB itself) etc…
Now we only have event timers, tp price check and wiki
I realy want to log in from my mobile and enjoy a part of the game

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Also, calling IRC cobwebby is a bit of an understatement — the protocol is riddled with all kinds of undocumented extensions and it really baffles me that clients are even capable of communicating with the wide range of implementations that they do.

eh.. the extensions are either channel modes/user modes which a client is allowed to ignore, or arcane protocols for server-to-server communication. A client implementing all of RFC 1459 must work with all IRC servers, and a server implementing nothing but RFC 1459 must work with all clients. Implementing just some core functionality would be sufficient for everything.

That being said, I dislike IRC and XMPP because they’re unencrypted (or only optionally encrypted). I really don’t want external apps to start sending my guild chat unencrypted over the wire. I’m aware that all ingame-chat is fully logged by arenanet and thus should never be used for confidential information, but that doesn’t mean it should be readable by just anyone.

I also insist that it is always possible to see who is logged into the chat, including API logins. If someone decides to run a 24/7 logging-bot, I want to know.

As for feature requests: Eventually, I’d like to be able to export my character with weapon, armor and dyes in a pre-selected pose as a 3d model. You know, 3d printers. Not sure if that’s feasible (doesn’t the posing rely on vertex shaders, which are difficult to emulate on CPU?), but it’d be cool.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

This probably won’t be technically feasible. We don’t have real-time access to character data (it can be up to 5 minutes stale).

I’m confused, this is possible now with mumble tracking, can you not write an extension that utilizes that code? This seems pretty straight forward to me and something mentioned before the game launched.

munkiman.3068:

I’m confused, this is possible now with mumble tracking, can you not write an extension that utilizes that code? This seems pretty straight forward to me and something mentioned before the game launched.

I suppose mumble retrieves its data directly from client side in real time meanwhile the API retrieves its data from pre cached databases of the server. This data will be pretty fast outdated when you get them from the API.

Two very different mechanisms.

Is it possible to allow more than one value in the “lang”-parameter? Or “all” as possible value? This would allow to get more than one language with one request and would make these almost redundant requests required at the moment obsolete.

Erunno.3295:

This would allow to get more than one language with one request and would make these almost redundant requests required at the moment obsolete.

This is what i’ve requested more than once, see also:

https://github.com/codemasher/api-cdi/commit/02fd35622ef844e3d8c2d7974e462c8478f6def2
https://github.com/codemasher/api-cdi/commit/c105219b42413e047ce0e985dca93a13910c5817

Is it feasible to add swords popping on a WvW objective to the API?

Pat Cavit.9234:

Why do you need multiple languages in a single response?

I want to let the user search for items by different criterias. So my plan was to parse the data into a database and use indexes for the searches. To support several language i need to know the item names in theese languages. It is not a big problem to repeat the request and ignore everything except the names, but it would be easier to just fire one request and get everything I need.
Most of the data the apis provide doesn’t change very frequently, so imho it is feasible to cache it even without a database in the back.
The format smiley used in his pull-requests looks good to me. And if only one language is requested, it stays just like it is now.

P.S. There is a working work-around, so this is no high prio of course.

A request. I don’t do much work with api so i don’t know if this is possible. Could it either be made an api or an ingame option to track the storyline choices we have made?

say i am playing a second or third etc character of a race and i did the story so long ago that i don’t remember which missions i chose the first time. Could there be a way to see which paths we chose before. Nothing worse then either remembering wrong and having to restart. I had to reroll a charr because i forgot what legion i had made my first one and accidentally made my new one the same.

Yes i could (and had but lost)making notes as to which choices i make but with 8(and soon to be9) characters that is a lot of notes. and i could(and have) paused and consulted the awesome wiki but that takes a good bit of time and spoilers to read each mission to find out which you did before.

i saw talk here of being able to call up personal and account inventory stuff and was curious if the story and character creation choices were outside the realm of possibility.

especially if this was an ingame option(off by default probably) that showed up a little red text like when you know a recipe saying choice taken(maybe even with the number of times you have taken it) this would be great for us that are looking to explore all the various story paths and get a greater understanding of the Lore. especially since characters and events from certain arcs make their way into the LS.

yes but i mean as i am progressing the new character. I know the info is there but when i get to the end of the mission and need to make a choice i realize i have once again forgotten to write down what i have done before.

would just be nice to be able to turn it on ingame or use my phone or other monitor to quickly double check what pathes i have done with someone’s app that uses the api.

not hugely important but if the info is there would be nice to access it without having to jump on that charracter

Skills/traits – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/API-Suggestion-Skills-and-Traits/first#post4700324