Guild Wars 2

How about some “Did you know?”s during loading screens? If you’re going to have so much arbitrary stuff in the game that makes absolutely no sense then you should probably inform your players.

Did you know?
If you used an ascended salvage kit on ascended jewellery and received an ascended armor or weapon chest with a stat that you don’t like that you should probably not salvage it and instead convert it to stats that you do want? #themoreyouknow.

Well golly gee willickers, no! I didn’t know that! How the kitten would I!? Why would that question even enter my mind?! “Hmm, I for some reason wonder if I can change the stats on my ascended gear somehow even though I can’t do that for any other armor in the game.”

Yeah, that’s something that I’m going to wonder (sarcasm). Or maybe you can change the stats on your exotic armor and weapons? Hell if I know!

No, when I get a heavy ascended shaman stats legs, I’m going to say, “Ugh. 5600+ hours played and this is the ascended item that I get? I guess I’ll salvage this since I remember reading some bullet point somewhere that says you can salvage ascended items now. Nice! 20G from salvaging it, not bad!”

Fast forward a week later when I decide to finally go for ascended armor. “Wait, what does this youtube video that I randomly somehow stumbled upon say?! I COULD HAVE CHANGED THE STATS ON THAT ASCENDED ITEM?!!?!?!” Hue hue hue, Anet! That’s so funnay!

It’s so obvious! You just have to talk to this NPC that you never talk to and buy this random thing and combine it with this exotic item and globs of ectoplasm because…… ECTOPLASM!!1! and combine all of this random stuff with your ascended item! How could you not know this, Zed frost? Mayn u dumb.

Did you know?
If you combine 17 mithril ores, 3 globs of ectoplasm, a fish and a dark stained claw on an anvil that you get 2 cooked cheese sandwiches? #themoreyouknow.

Uh… no… I can also neither prove nor disprove this, either, UNLESS I WIKI IT.

The crafting in this game has never made sense to me in the years that I’ve played it. I probably made a set of steel armor in RuneScape like 14 years ago and I know that steel armor required steel bars and that you need to use an anvil. I also know that using a raw tuna on a fire creates a… you guessed it! A cooked tuna!!!!

What do I know on guild wars 2? I know that if I want to create a bowl of mushroom stew that I need to open google chrome and visit wikipedia to figure out wtf I need to do so. I also know that I have to go to some random guys house in the game and cook everything at his house.

I also (don’t) know that to cook eggs I probably have to slay zhaitan to get the recipe to learn how to cook eggs.

Did you know?
That the only place that even tells you that you can type /wiki to find out information about our game whilst in-game is on wikipedia itself? #themoreyouknow.

Well, that’s awfully lazy now, isn’kitten Pretty sure most MMOs have information in their own game. If wikipedia was deleted tomorrow how kittened would this game be?

Did you know?
That there are like 23 currencies in the game and that some of them are stored in the wallet and some aren’t? #themoreyouknow.

Yes and that’s confusing to veterans and new players alike.

Did you know?
If you create a new character and level it up to 80 with tomes that you have to accept all of the garbage the game gives you and then delete it all to get rid of that icon at the bottom right of your screen? #themoreyouknow.

Oh yeah… I know alright.

Did you know?
If you use a projectile finisher through a combo field that it will create a combo finisher? Try using a projectile through a fire field! #themoreyouknow.

Well now. This type of did you know would help the average player base to not suck so bad.
_________________________________________________________________

KK. That’s my post.

How about some (read: all) of the games information being inside the game. Also, give me some gold back for wasting (salvaging) my only ascended armor piece in 5600+ hours instead of changing the stats for it because there is no way I could possibly have known that I could have changed the stats instead, considering you couldn’t do that since they came out until some random update happened.

Alternatively, don’t give people ascended shaman stat drops.

I remember getting that drop. “OMFG FINALLY! ASCENDE-. Oh it’s shaman stats -.-. shoves into bank for 2 months Kewl game.

Yes. I knew about the ability to change stats on ascended armors. I read it in the patch notes.

Game update notes: June 23rd

Added a Mystic Forge recipe to change the stats on ascended weapons and armor. The recipe is as follows:
Ingredient 1: An ascended weapon or armor piece.
Ingredient 2: The exotic insignia or inscription for the desired stats.
Ingredient 3: Five globs of ectoplasm.
Ingredient 4: An Anthology of Heroes, purchased from Miyani for 10 spirit shards.
Result: A piece of ascended gear with the stats of the inscription or insignia of the same type as the piece of gear that went in.
Example: Zojja’s Claymore + Knight’s Orichalcum Imbued Inscription + Five Globs of Ectoplasm + Anthology of Heroes = Beigarth’s Claymore
NOTE: All upgrades are lost as part of this conversion.

Now, imagine that every player doesn’t read every patch note.

Myself, I read only the balance notes. As for the average player, they read absolutely none because the the kitten would they?

And how do you propose ANet does this? A million tooltips when you hover over an item?

Yet another pop up to click through when you salvage something despite people asking for those “are you sure” pop ups to go away?

You give a problem but you don’t have a better solution for ANet. ANet’s solution? /wiki [item/place/whatever] it will open up the wiki. Because the wiki is such a good place to go for information, ANet decided that it didn’t need to devote resources to reinventing the proverbial wheel.

Seera.5916:

And how do you propose ANet does this? A million tooltips when you hover over an item?

Yet another pop up to click through when you salvage something despite people asking for those “are you sure” pop ups to go away?

You give a problem but you don’t have a better solution for ANet. ANet’s solution? /wiki [item/place/whatever] it will open up the wiki. Because the wiki is such a good place to go for information, ANet decided that it didn’t need to devote resources to reinventing the proverbial wheel.

It’s called in-game databases and bestiaries. That’s the solution. And like the topic is about, if there were “Did you know?”s for random stuff like this, it would help. That is why a lot of games have these.

And I’ll fix that for you, white knight.

Anet decided that it didn’t have to do the work if players would do it for free for them allowing them to devote more resources to making money.

I don’t think you understand the problem. For this specific problem: why would I even type “/wiki changing stats on ascended armor” ? If I don’t even know that you can do that. Why would I wiki that? You can’t do that for any other armor in the game and you couldn’t do it with ascended for years. Hence, why would I /wiki it?

But I was being serious about the alternative. Don’t give people shaman ascended drops. Let players pick their stat from the drop, then this isn’t even an issue (mostly).

It’s kind of like how since the games release you haven’t been able to combine 4 superior sigils in the forge but then one day they make an update that allows you to. Meanwhile, you’re still selling them to NPCs for silver because you couldn’t possibly know otherwise.

Sorry, But Patch notes, blogs, posts, balance notes etc… they’re there for a reason… and it’s not to make the devs happy either.. They write out all that information “for the players to read”… If you decide NOT to read the info they bring out, then that’s your fault for not knowing something that the devs put/changed in game.

Also, wiki, !google! are already out there to search in
In chat.. typing /wiki brings up.. the wiki … /wiki Stick of butter… will bring up the wiki page for “stick of butter”

Tooltips would be pointless and would be everywhere.. What one tooltip for one player would mean nothing to another.

Best solution.. Read what the devs bring out. Then you would know.. Just like a lot of players already do.

I’m not sure it is ArenaNet’s fault if players don’t avail themselves of the information provided. Choosing to ‘only read balance patch notes’ could mean missing out on important information.

I think it isn’t unreasonable to expect changes in a game that offers patches/releases, so it might be not only prudent, but helpful to research what might have changed.

Of course, each player can play the game as they so desire; with a bit more information or preferring to be surprised. I’m sure both methods have their advantages and disadvantages for some.

Zefrost.3425:

Now, imagine that every player doesn’t read every patch note.

Myself, I read only the balance notes. As for the average player, they read absolutely none because the the kitten would they?

Well, now you know. If you want to know what changed with an update, read what changed with an update in the notes they put out for you to read. If that fails, type /wiki in chat to pull up the wiki information about the game and you’ll find on the section about ascended gear.

Attribute change
The prefix attributes on ascended armor can be changed by combining the armor in the Mystic Forge with an Intricate Gossamer Insignia of the desired prefix. All upgrades (i.e. runes and infusions) are lost in this process.

HardRider.2980

The stuff that the devs write is in site for maybe a week. Especially patch notes. You’re assuming everybody plays this game often enough to read while the information is available. And no, telling people to read the patch notes when they come back isn’t an option.

What if they come back in a year? They’re going to have no kitten idea and they certainly aren’t going to read the patch notes.

Zefrost.3425:

The stuff that the devs write is in site for maybe a week. Especially patch notes.

What?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates

I can guarantee you, as someone who writes instructional documentation for a living, that even if ANet provided all of this information in-game, people would still be too lazy to go read it. :P

A lot of what you mentioned actually IS taught to the player via those lesson tips that pop up whenever you gain a level. Of course, if the player is, as you say, simply grabbing their rewards and closing the window without reading any of them, they’re not learning this information.

I agree with OP to a point that there is no way one could know certain things unless they wiki it or spend a lot of time trying things out…

Some of the mmo’s i’ve played, and one in particular (an OLD one compared to GW) had this nifty little thing :
you went to an npc (a crafter) who told you what you needed in order to craft an item. No need to look it up in some confusing way, no need to discover how to make it.
Select a piece of gear in the npc’s inventory, drop the items he requires in it, and bam…your item is made, with the stats you want.
You want to salvage an item ? Great, drop it in and he gives you exactly what he says.

One shouldn’t need a ‘manual’ like the wiki to play a game. It’s not like fps or mmo games have you look at a wiki in order to find out how to kill a certain boss, oh wait, this one does.

It’s called in-game databases and bestiaries. That’s the solution

Even a 12 year old mmo has that inside their game. Type a word and it shows you all the references to that word. Like “Ring of Talos”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Online , released in 2004. Outdated game, but it already had the things we can dream about. And the best PKing ever in an mmo.

I’m with you on some points. I found out about the wiki command from other players. I learned about the puzzle piece effect on combo fields through third parties. I’m still learning what stats for mesmers will and won’t transfer to their illusions. However, if you choose not to read the patch notes, you deserve whatever fate such ignorance brings. It’s one thing to get on their case about things they don’t tell you. It’s another when you refuse to read the information they make available.

Honestly, I think the OP has a point. I’ve been around long enough to /wiki anything I didn’t know and look up dulfy periodically for summaries of updates, but a decade or two ago if a developer put out a MMO and expected everyone just to “metacrawl/google it” whenever there was a question, they would have been bashed for laziness.

Now I’m not saying ANet is being lazy, it’s just the game isn’t designed to be self-contained. What traditionally would have been handled by an in-game journal with bestiaries, entries on prominent NPCs, quest logs, etc. has been replaced by the wiki; about the only thing we don’t need to alt-tab out to look up information on are gem store promotions.

Relying on the wiki and social media as the primary source of information is very… modern, I suppose, but I don’t think I’ll ever really be used to the idea of the idea that the game also encompasses things outside the actual game itself.

/me waves walking cane, mumbles something about walking uphill through snow to look up Dungeon & Dragon magazines for game hints back in his day.

Amazed at the number of people who missed in the OP’s first sentence, where it clearly said “How about some “Did you know?”s during loading screens?”

The problem with this, IMO, is the people who read patch notes and use the wiki are also the people who would look at the “Did you know?” messages in the load screens. And the people who don’t read the patch notes and wiki are probably also not going to play attention to any fun facts displayed on the loading screens.

I like the idea, but I don’t know that it would be all that beneficial.

I was half expecting a list of redundant and simple well known facts that may as well be common sense.

Slightly disappointed.

Sthenith.5196:

Even a 12 year old mmo has that inside their game. Type a word and it shows you all the references to that word. Like “Ring of Talos”…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Online , released in 2004. Outdated game, but it already had the things we can dream about. And the best PKing ever in an mmo.

kitten ! i found another ex-KO player. first is in reddit, now here lol

i agree 100% that KO is the best PKing, especially in colony zone, i even have weird fantasy that in the future KO got reworked

@OP , i agree, but thats to much of work for Anet, well we know how anet handle things right ?

Yeah i just died over and over and over again on estate of decay with Mouth of Zhaitan and i had to wiki the kitten thing to figure out what to do lol he was being feed and rehealed throughout the whole time…

Did you know: that a plead of ignorance about the rules , laws, and operations of things you take part in has a 100% fail rate in courts?

You should be able to right-click on every item and open the wiki page associated to that item from in-game. Would make so much sense.

did you know that in life and games especially complex game systems like GW2 crafting their is a concept called due diligence ? when the sum of all mankinds knowledge of just about any subject that can be imagined is a google query away from anyone , when M.I.T. offers any course in their catalog for free it isnt too much of a stretch to assume that people can find out anything they want if they but try. the wiki for this game is actually very in depth compared to alot of others and with Dulfy and 10 ton hammer having great crafting guides, there really is no excuse for not knowing everything about the actions you are taking in this game. not being bothered to read patch notes in a complex game is on the player not on Anet, if you have been gone a year it behooves you to find out what has changed in that time from an update stand point and a mechanics standpoint ie; it makes your life easier,cheaper and allows you to get back into the game with minimal frustration. you can type into google search GW2-anything and in point 7 seconds you have a list of the thousands of pieces of info about whatever you want to choose from
so continued ignorance is actually self imposed and alt+tab is pretty easy to do

side note I just started playing Neverwinter last week, I have read every patch note and available Dev post with player feedback since its launch, I have researched the combat system, the crafting system( which is far more complex than GW2), encounters, different dungeons that I will eventually be doing, and the leveling system so that I can have a basic understanding of the game system I am playing in, precisely for the reason of not making costly mistakes that I won’t even know are mistakes until 70 levels down the road, so I dont salvage(refine) valuable gear, so that I dont play as a complete noob at others expense in dungeons and skirmishes. yeah its some work and time to read it all but it is part of the due diligence necessary to get the most out of a complex gaming system and not waste mine and other players time

Zefrost.3425:

Seera.5916:

And how do you propose ANet does this? A million tooltips when you hover over an item?

Yet another pop up to click through when you salvage something despite people asking for those “are you sure” pop ups to go away?

You give a problem but you don’t have a better solution for ANet. ANet’s solution? /wiki [item/place/whatever] it will open up the wiki. Because the wiki is such a good place to go for information, ANet decided that it didn’t need to devote resources to reinventing the proverbial wheel.

It’s called in-game databases and bestiaries. That’s the solution. And like the topic is about, if there were “Did you know?”s for random stuff like this, it would help. That is why a lot of games have these.

And I’ll fix that for you, white knight.

Anet decided that it didn’t have to do the work if players would do it for free for them allowing them to devote more resources to making money.

I don’t think you understand the problem. For this specific problem: why would I even type “/wiki changing stats on ascended armor” ? If I don’t even know that you can do that. Why would I wiki that? You can’t do that for any other armor in the game and you couldn’t do it with ascended for years. Hence, why would I /wiki it?

But I was being serious about the alternative. Don’t give people shaman ascended drops. Let players pick their stat from the drop, then this isn’t even an issue (mostly).

It’s kind of like how since the games release you haven’t been able to combine 4 superior sigils in the forge but then one day they make an update that allows you to. Meanwhile, you’re still selling them to NPCs for silver because you couldn’t possibly know otherwise.

No system is going to be perfect.

Even your solution wouldn’t be a good one for the changing ascended stats one as you apparently don’t read patch notes so you wouldn’t think to go look into the in game documentation to see if you now can. Because you already read up on that when ascended armor came out.

If you don’t know something exists, you can’t exactly go searching for it. And there’s no way for ANet to fix that problem without being way too blatant/obvious/annoying for the average player to my knowledge. So please, tell me, how could ANet have fixed your problem in such a way as to not annoy veterans of the game?

If you take out the extremely negative comments this is a GREAT idea!

One of the BEST things about GW2 is that it provides an MMO which can be played well by casual gamers and this is just one more way to help them!

They do this is DDO which is Waaaaay more complex than GW2 and it’s really useful, every load screen gives you a quick tip about the game.

It helps newbies and casuals without being annoying to vets.

Im surprised so many people defend this by saying lol patchnotes.

Patchnotes only really apply if you ve been playing the game during the patch.

Not saying the solution is easy, or will work on every case, but a solution is needed, more and more info becomes more esoteric as time passes.

There is a lot of things you have no ingame means of leatning about, not even clues

Pandaman.4758:

Honestly, I think the OP has a point.

snip

/me waves walking cane, mumbles something about walking uphill through snow to look up Dungeon & Dragon magazines for game hints back in his day.

I agree with your entire post, especially that last part! lol!

On a sad note, I just found out David Bowie just died.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowie-dead-at-69-20160111

69 doesn’t seem all that old these days where folks seem to be healthy and live much longer lives.. I didn’t even know he was ill.

RIP David Bowie.

How about every item gets 2 options to their right-click menue:

• How do I get this?
• What can I do with this?

This would be kinda inspired by ChickenBones Not Enough Items Mod for Minecraft. A single key-press can show you for any item how it’s made or what other items you can make with it.

While GW2’s crafting stations show you how an item is made, it only shows this information if the recipe can be crafted at that station. Especially the Mystic Toilet is a mess, as the recipes can only be found on the wiki. Or by randomly throwing stuff at it.

Tldr.: We need NEI for GW2.

Zaxares.5419:

I can guarantee you, as someone who writes instructional documentation for a living, that even if ANet provided all of this information in-game, people would still be too lazy to go read it. :P

A lot of what you mentioned actually IS taught to the player via those lesson tips that pop up whenever you gain a level. Of course, if the player is, as you say, simply grabbing their rewards and closing the window without reading any of them, they’re not learning this information.

Indeed, I have seen people asking “How to use this? [itemlink]” when literally the only line in the tooltip says “Double-click to use.”

I think this is a wonderful idea for brief tips. The /wiki tip is a good one. As is a reminder about viewing currencies in the wallet. It’s very easy for a new (or returning) player to wonder what happened to their Bandit crests, Geodes, etc. now that they’re added to the wallet.

I’d never expect to see patch notes on a loading screen, and that’s okay. They change far too often to expect the loading screens to be updated each time.

Siobhan.5273:

Pandaman.4758:

Honestly, I think the OP has a point.

snip

/me waves walking cane, mumbles something about walking uphill through snow to look up Dungeon & Dragon magazines for game hints back in his day.

I agree with your entire post, especially that last part! lol!

On a sad note, I just found out David Bowie just died.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowie-dead-at-69-20160111

69 doesn’t seem all that old these days where folks seem to be healthy and live much longer lives.. I didn’t even know he was ill.

RIP David Bowie.

Y u do dis? srsly… qq

OT: I think you need to calm down OP they can’t put every single piece of info into the game intro imagine how annoying that would be. I knew this was possible because I played GW2 before the xpac and this was one of the featured… features.

I mean before you salvage something you could have asked someone.

Xillllix.3485:

You should be able to right-click on every item and open the wiki page associated to that item from in-game. Would make so much sense.

We already have this, though it involves a “/wiki [SHIFT+LEFT CLICK]”. If you happen to arrive at a page with no information, feel free to help the community out

BunjiKugashira.9754:

How about every item gets 2 options to their right-click menue:

• How do I get this?
• What can I do with this?

We already have this via the above, Re: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Linseed_Oil .

We can’t rely on Anet to complete in-game tool-tips for every item or idea, especially as the game is always in flux and information would quickly become inaccurate. Anet would have to spend huge amounts of man power updating the in-game information instead of actually developing the game. Even the hordes of dedicated people that contribute to the wiki cannot keep up with some aspects of the game when it’s updated!

I think a “tip of the day” thing on the loading screen would work. Mostly they would be stating what you already know but occasionally they would give you a “never knew that” moment.

Instead of all the “you deserve it if you dont read everything” idiots here (You seriously lack any basic empathy whatsoever in this case. It’s basically pointing laughing and saying “Haha, you’re dumb.” because someone doesn’t know something.), I think the OP has a point to some extend.

I can say in map chat, you can type /wiki searchword almost every day and find someone who didn’t know. Hell I didn’t even think of using shift rightclick to ping the item after the /wiki myself. (After 3 years)

I think a rightclick on the item, and then a menu option to “Look this item up on the wiki” would go miles.

Also a tip when destroying or salvaging a valuable item would be helpful. I think the whole “Are you sure?” thing loses its effect when you have no idea what else to do with it. Or better, instead of “yes”/“no” also a “wiki” button there could be interesting.

Wouldn’t hurt at all if there is a tooltip on loadscreen saying “did you know whatever”. Ofcourse you can read patch notes but this is something a lot of other games use and theyre quite handy.

Edit: As example; Did you know when you hold down alt npc nameplates show up? I see so many people asking “hey where is this npc” while theyre basicly standing next to it.

Zefrost.3425:

Yeah, that’s something that I’m going to wonder (sarcasm). Or maybe you can change the stats on your exotic armor and weapons? Hell if I know!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodbound_weapons

You can change its stats and it even scales with your level.

Its only rare equipment though, not exotic.

I’m just going to say , loading screen hints.

Zefrost.3425:

Now, imagine that every player doesn’t read every patch note.

Myself, I read only the balance notes. As for the average player, they read absolutely none because the the kitten would they?

Yep every player doesn’t read the patch notes. But every player who plays with any degree of seriousness probably should. Because if you don’t, you miss some important stuff.

Edit: By the way, since I announce most of this stuff at guild missions, if you’re in a community and paying attention you might have heard it too.

Zefrost.3425:

Now, imagine that every player doesn’t read every patch note.

Myself, I read only the balance notes. As for the average player, they read absolutely none because the the kitten would they?

So they would be informed about what they can do and not end up like OP?

Just a note before I begin: the GW2 Wiki isn’t associated with wikipedia itself, there are lots of different wikis for different things. So if wikipedia itself went down we’d still have the GW2 wiki since that’s attached to ArenaNet itself.

I agree with you to the point that there ought to be more of an indication that you can use the wiki to find to find information. Maybe a hint in-game that says you can type “/wiki [item name here]” to find more information on that item. While the Wiki and the Forums are both on the top bar of the main official GW2 website I get that not everyone reads that.

I personally really like the wiki. I tried another MMO recently and while there’s an unofficial wiki associated with it, it doesn’t have very good information related to the MMO and isn’t anywhere near as helpful as the GW2 wiki. The GW2 wiki is meant to be used by the players on a regular basis.

The issue is that the information you’re seeking is already out there and readily available. It’s up to the player to learn about the game, generally. And all of the information from patch notes, future plans, and current database are all on the main official GW2 website through the newsfeed, forums, and official wiki.

It couldn’t hurt to have more helpful tips here and there though.

Well, I didn’t know that you could go to the Wiki in-game until I happened to read that in a couple of posts here today.

Despite having spent about as much time reading the Wiki as playing, and having typed every possible permutation of ‘Changing stats on Ascended gear’ that I could think of, I didn’t know that you could do this until I happened to read the tool tip of one of Miyani’s items one day… when I was there to buy something else since I don’t use the Forge.

Despite having several crafting schools at max, and reading the Wiki a fair amount, it was only when I levelled my Guardian’s Armorsmith to 500, intending to make a full Celestial set for her there and then, that I found out that there was a one a day per account mat needed…kitten…

Wouldn’t have minded a few loading screen ‘Did you know…’s there.

And it’s reasonable due diligence to read the patch notes when you play, but not to have to go back through every patch note ever from before you played, or that was released when you were on a long break from the game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. I knew about the ability to change stats on ascended armors. I read it in the patch notes.

Game update notes: June 23rd

Added a Mystic Forge recipe to change the stats on ascended weapons and armor. The recipe is as follows:
Ingredient 1: An ascended weapon or armor piece.
Ingredient 2: The exotic insignia or inscription for the desired stats.
Ingredient 3: Five globs of ectoplasm.
Ingredient 4: An Anthology of Heroes, purchased from Miyani for 10 spirit shards.
Result: A piece of ascended gear with the stats of the inscription or insignia of the same type as the piece of gear that went in.
Example: Zojja’s Claymore + Knight’s Orichalcum Imbued Inscription + Five Globs of Ectoplasm + Anthology of Heroes = Beigarth’s Claymore
NOTE: All upgrades are lost as part of this conversion.

But… But why would you do that to a Zojja’s Claymore?

FlashAhAhh.4307:

If you take out the extremely negative comments this is a GREAT idea!

One of the BEST things about GW2 is that it provides an MMO which can be played well by casual gamers and this is just one more way to help them!

They do this is DDO which is Waaaaay more complex than GW2 and it’s really useful, every load screen gives you a quick tip about the game.

It helps newbies and casuals without being annoying to vets.

Casuals are the EXACT sort of players who would ignore something like this despite being the ones to benefit the most. As for the suggestion itself, why bother? Unless you’re on a potato with an internet connection no better than two cans on a string, loading screens for 99% of the game are too short to bother placing “fun facts.” In fact, LA’s loading screen is probably the ONLY one long enough.

Zefrost.3425:

Seera.5916:

And how do you propose ANet does this? A million tooltips when you hover over an item?

Yet another pop up to click through when you salvage something despite people asking for those “are you sure” pop ups to go away?

You give a problem but you don’t have a better solution for ANet. ANet’s solution? /wiki [item/place/whatever] it will open up the wiki. Because the wiki is such a good place to go for information, ANet decided that it didn’t need to devote resources to reinventing the proverbial wheel.

It’s called in-game databases and bestiaries. That’s the solution. And like the topic is about, if there were “Did you know?”s for random stuff like this, it would help. That is why a lot of games have these.

And I’ll fix that for you, white knight.

Anet decided that it didn’t have to do the work if players would do it for free for them allowing them to devote more resources to making money.

I don’t think you understand the problem. For this specific problem: why would I even type “/wiki changing stats on ascended armor” ? If I don’t even know that you can do that. Why would I wiki that? You can’t do that for any other armor in the game and you couldn’t do it with ascended for years. Hence, why would I /wiki it?

But I was being serious about the alternative. Don’t give people shaman ascended drops. Let players pick their stat from the drop, then this isn’t even an issue (mostly).

It’s kind of like how since the games release you haven’t been able to combine 4 superior sigils in the forge but then one day they make an update that allows you to. Meanwhile, you’re still selling them to NPCs for silver because you couldn’t possibly know otherwise.

I love this argument. People don’t read the readily available information about the game, so lets give them different readily available information they won’t read.

The information already exists. Cluttering up the game with the same information is pointless. This is a universal thing across games. The information is in the patch notes, if you want to know what’s going on you have to read the patch notes. If you don’t want to read the patch notes, then you’re going to make mistakes. It’s alright to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.

I’d also like to point out that the wiki isn’t perfect: it has incomplete information and lacks information on some subjects.

Your point about changing ascended stats is a good example I think. It could easily be more visible but it’s not. The solution is, of course, to go in and edit the wiki yourself. It’s available for everyone to edit! Since it’s run by other players I think it’s already fairly impressive but it can always be improved. The page of ascended equipment http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment does have the information for changing stats directly in the main body of the article but not in the very beginning. You could go in and edit that part yourself so people who glance at the article can get the information.

But, for example, the article on Ascended Armor only has information on changing stats at the very bottom of the page http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor and same thing with the Ascended Weapon page. If you think these pages can be improved then you can easily do it yourself! ANet doesn’t really run the wiki they just host its server. So it’s up to us to fill it out.

A huge +1 to the op – I agree with everything you wrote.