Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s a lot of communication here. It’s just that it doesn’t always entail what people want to hear (e.g. Release dates, what’s being worked on, etc) which Anet has stated numerous times that they do not provide those details until it’s nearly completed.

Thank you. That is precisely right. Nearly every comment, request, complaint, or discussion point about communication comes down to, as I said earlier tonight, “Tell us more” or “Tell us when.” And there are many, many times when we’re simply not going to do that because, to quote Mike O’Brien, “it’s nice for you to have presents to unwrap on release day.”

To read all of Mike’s comments, please see the AMA thread. And in the context of this thread and on the topic of reddit as opposed to the official forums, believe me, no one is sorrier that the AMA couldn’t take place on our official forums, but I think I’ve explained why that is so. To answer the question of whether we’ll someday have software to host something like an AMA, let’s just say I very much hope and believe so but like SAB, that’s “someday” not not “[this day].”

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Thank you, Gaile. Now back on topic, here is my comment on communications: there is one question I think that needs answering and it’s a simple one that’ll potentially do a lot for customer satisfaction in the player base.

From what I’ve read, Colin promised the return of SAB and the return of our original visuals and aurus, as well as settings to let players control the quality of the visuals. The question is whether these promises will still be upheld in his absence? This is not an enquiry about release dates or exact plans. All that’s required is a simple Yes or No confirmation. Were Colin’s promises official policy or just talking out of his hat?

SAB – yes. Mike confirmed, and for what it’s worth, I confirm too.

Visuals – I honestly didn’t know that Colin had said something about visuals. I’m not being disingenuous, but can you link me to a post or other source? I’d really like to follow up and get that information, but it would be marvelous if I had a post or a blog entry where those statements were made. Makes it “fast and easy” to then pursue an answer.

Donari’s response is pretty accurate, but I’ll try to explain a bit more.

Let’s say I belong to two guilds in game: “Faren Well” and “Quaggan’s Folly.” Both guilds have the guild workshop upgrade “Lumber Synthesizer 1”. However, Faren Well owns the Gilded Hollow and Quaggan’s Folly owns Lost Precipice.

When I travel to Faren Well and harvest from the lumber synthesizer node, the game registers that Lumber Synthesizer 1 has been harvested. When I then travel to Quaggan’s Folly in the Lost Precipice, the game sees that I’ve already harvested from Lumber Synthesizer 1 that day and the node will appear used and will not allow me to harvest from it.

Now we hop forward a few weeks and Faren Well has purchased Lumber Synthesizer 2. When I go to Faren Well and harvest the node, the game registers that Lumber Synthesizer 2 has been harvested from. Then when I next travel to Quaggan’s Folly, the game allows me to harvest from the synthesizer there because Quaggan’s Folly still owns Lumber Synthesizer 1, and sees Lumber Synthesizer 1 has not yet been harvested that day.

Each Synthesizer Node Upgrade has its own node. The location of the node does not play into the allowances; only the upgrade. You can only harvest from a specific upgrade node for the appropriate number of strikes per 24 hours. The nodes are not specific to a guild, nor a guild hall’s map.

I hope this helps clarify things!

Edit: doh! In the time it took for me to write this, the answer was confirmed through experimentation and experience. Sorry about that.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Gaile Gray.6029:

this was not intended to be a dialogue about communication.

I hate to be that guy but… from your original post here….

Gaile Gray.6029:

This thread is intended to allow the continued discussion of communications

It seems to me now that you might have meant this as a discussion between players not between players and anet – but that is exactly the point minbariguy is making. This thread comes across, unintentionally or not, as a fly-trap. This is not only unnecessary but frustrating for players. There has been sufficient discussion between players on the subject of communication. Players are seeking discussion with anet. I just think we have a chance here to make this thread about communication actually mean something. Or if not this thread, then maybe another which explicitly states that it is a discussion between anet and players.

I specifically entitled it “Comments about Communications.” I’m sorry if it appeared this was an offer to have a conversation for that was not at all what I meant. I was, as JaFW mentioned, separating a messy thread into two:

1. One to house dev posts brought over from reddit
2. Another to house forum member input on the subject of communications

I will be happy to amend my initial post to make that clearer. Thanks for pointing that out.

I know there are a lot of comments that basically say “Tell us more” or “Tell us sooner.” I think that the AMA went a long way towards telling more and explaining how some things are subjects we’ll not be willing to talk about in advance. If you’d like to see more of those sorts of conversations (like the AMA) let us know that. But as Mike said, there are some things we won’t be saying and I hope everyone will understand that fact, and even why that’s the case.

Sariel V.7024:

The facebook and twitter links are official channels. Reddit is not. ANet has control over what you see on the official channels.

Dang, that’s what I was going to say! But in answer to the original question, I’ll go ahead and post what I wrote, just in case it has more information of value:

Chyanne Waters.8719:

I have one question to Gaile and the Devs. Why is there no link on the GW2 page to reddit similar to the ones to facebook, and twitter at the bottom of the page?

That would make it so much easier to check the GW2 reddit page instead of having to do things this way.

Bookmark reddit, if you desire. That would be great. As of right now, we’re going to see if we can get a note from a dev if they make a substantial, informational post on reddit because we would like to bring it to this forum and localize for our global player base. (You may have seen me do that in the past.)

Please keep in mind: reddit is a third-party platform. We do not own the channel, nor do we moderate the conversations. Any employee who posts there is doing so using time that they choose to use on that site, for their own reasons. We’re not going to link off the official forums to an UNofficial forums, just as we don’t link to the dozens of fine fansite forums that also are offered to players.

Are things perfect? No. Will thing get better? I believe so, yes.

But I’m going to say this on a personal level in the meantime: I’ve been following games since the 90’s. I covered them as a fan, a journalist, and a dev. Frankly, I was just glad to have information, and I wasn’t one to grouse about where it appeared: An article on the official website, an interview on a fansite or press site, a post on a fansite forum, etc. I just liked getting info!

Having said all that, however, I do take on board that you’d like a more streamlined process, and quite honestly, I’d like that too. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can make things clearer and more easily accessed in the future!

Sariel V.7024:

Siobhan.5273:

AMA is a “Reddit” thing however, it is usually because it is done for celebrity interviews and there is a moderation element involved in the Q&A process. Since that was pretty much a non-issue here, I’m not really sure why these forums couldn’t be utilized, other than their personal preference for Reddit as has been voiced before.

Reddit is far better suited for handling a conversation of this nature. Responses are threaded individually, so bits of the conversation are easily linked, followed, and responded again to. On this board there might be 5-10 pages of posts between question and response, depending on how much attention the initial post gets..

Yes, that is correct. That is what I said on the day of the AMA and it remains true. Thanks for pointing that out.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Well, thinking back, I don’t think this thread was actually ever intended by Gaile for us to talk to ANet about communication.

As I recall the original purpose of it was to separate my Reddit thread into 2 pieces, a dev quote thread and a separate thread where she took the player quotes from that thread and put them in this one. It’s now a catchall thread for player posts on communication but it was never meant to be a ANet and us thread. Just an “us” thread. So, we should talk amongst ourselves like any other thread and expect as many red posts as any other thread because this isn’t and never was intended to be a conversation with ANet thread.

Now you’re correct. That’s not to say we won’t post here — case in point — but we wanted to offer the opportunity for people to share their thoughts and this was not intended to be a dialogue about communication.

So, good news!

• You (collectively) spoke.
• The team listened.
• Things are changed for the better, judging from the large number of votes in favor of this switch.
• Obviously, this is not all that’s coming, but it was a matter of importance to the WvW community, and it’s a good start, eh?

Thanks everyone. We’ll be moving resets back to Fridays.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Friday-Match-Resets-Starting-March-25th/

Status updates for NA reset time change.

3/25/2016 7:08pm PDT – Disabled; updating.
3/25/2016 7:29pm PDT – Enabling.
3/25/2016 7:33pm PDT – WvW is enabled again. Enjoy!

Status updates for EU reset time change.

2016-03-25 17:35 UTC – Preparing.
2016-03-25 17:59 UTC – Disabling and updating.
2016-03-25 18:35 UTC – Enabling.
2016-03-25 18:48 UTC – One-time hiccup with the time change. ETA pending.
2016-03-25 19:33 UTC – WvW is enabled again. Enjoy!

Thanks everyone who chimed in on my previous thread about potentially changing WvW match reset timing. The response was overwhelmingly in favor of bringing back Friday resets, even if that meant it being a little later in the evening for North America.

Starting this Friday (March 25th), the weekly match reset time will change back to Fridays.

• NA resets at 6PM/7PM PST/PDT Fri (2:00 UTC Sat)
• EU resets at 10AM/11AM PST/PDT Fri (18:00 UTC Fri.)

Thanks for the extra suggestion, Donari! Also, more questions for those of you who are affected:

• Are you playing on a Mac or Windows (I’m pretty sure this is both based on all of your responses but just to be safe, I’ll ask officially).
• Are you using a shader modification or a game overlay (such as SweetFx, GemFx, ReShade, Overwolf, Mumble, Steam, etc)?

Also for those of you using Windows, could you please provide us with a Dxdiag of the machine you’re encountering this issue on?

DirectX Diagnostic Tool:____________________________

• Click on the start button
• In the search box, type “dxdiag” and hit enter.
• When the diagnostic tool finishes running, hit the “Save All Information” button and save the file in an easy to find location on your computer.
• Return to this thread to make a reply.
• Go to your attachments and add the file you saved.

You should be good to go now Soulkalen.

Yeah, I think that error message gets kicked back when you’d get less than 1 gem back. I’ll try to make the error message a bit better. There’s an open issue for this on github.

Bleh, the kill/death data has been flaky since I implemented it.

I’m really not sure why the NA/EU resets are causing each other to reset — I thought I’d quashed that — but I’ll see if I can get it fixed. Re-opened the github issue for this.

There are currently no enforced restrictions — we might add rate limiting if there’s a problem. My general recommendation is sticking to 1 request/second on average (e.g., under 80k requests/day).

20,000 API calls is a lot — are these authenticated requests? It should take much fewer to get all of the unauthenticated data out.

Thank you everyone for participating in this thread! It has been very helpful to get constructive feedback from everyone about Skyhammer.

Added Never Lucky 2v2 Tournament (NA) and ESL 2v2 Tournament (EU). These events are open to all.

Up to date as of 3/20/2016.

Drat on the admin and cache clear not solving it, but it is valuable information to know the accounts may not be the issue. We’re continuing to investigate and thank you again from us to you all for your ongoing patience!

Unless it was sudden changes, this sounds like Light Adaption doing its job.

Hey Bunter,

We are aware of the issues with Lumber Synthesizers 4 and 5 not giving the expected materials and are working on a fix. Not eta just yet on when the fix will be ready.

Hey guys,

We have the issue in our system and the team is still looking to identify a fix.

An additional question for you all:

• If you have the ability to check this at a different location, does this issue happen (ie: if you have the issue at home, but then don’t at a friend’s home, or school)?
  • If it worked in a new location, were you using the same machine or a different machine?

Also, since I’ve not seen any of you mention trying a few troubleshooting things that come to mind, could you guys give the two things below a try? The guild halls use the same UI tech as the Gemstore and Trading Post. And what may potentially help is to run the game as administrator or to clear the cache for the game (in case something weird has happened to your caches).

Run as administrator:____________________________
To run Gw2 as administrator right click on the game and select “Run as administrator” from the drop down. This will open the game in administrator.

Clearing the Cache:____________________________

1. Close the game client
2. Open explorer and go to your c drive.
3. In “search local disk” search for “gw2cache”
4. When the search completes, a folder with a name like: [gw2cache-{B3601E0B-C97D-1C9C-081E-60B37DC99C1C}] should be shown (with an address similar to “C:\Users\YourComputerUserName\AppData\Local\Temp”)
5. Delete that folder in your results.
6. Start up the game and return to your guild hall to access the UI.
   I’ve tossed in a screenshot of the search part in case folks want to see the file, etc.

Thank you all for your patience while we try to hunt the cause of this issue down!

Step.1285:

Thanks a million for showcasing my music at the start! I was there watching the stream and just had the widest grin on my face.

I will definitely consider making more Guild Wars 2 arrangements in the future if time permits.

It was our pleasure — it’s a great piece! Don’t you worry about my “Make more!” comment — I’m just an enthusiastic supporter of your craft.

This sounds like a great initiative. I encourage guilds who have the expertise and interest to expand the offer to include people from around the world. Not only are you helping players get into great new content, you have the chance to make a bunch of new friends and potential guild members, too!

Thanks to those of you who have stepped up. I hope this grows into a major project with lots of participants of all skill levels!

I will be passing this thread along (again) in my weekly report to the team!

Danikat.8537:

Well you have to remember not all of that is profit.

Even Evon Gnashblade has to pay his staff, all those TP locations are manned 24/7 by 1-3 agents, then there’s the weapons specialists (and anyone with specialist in their job title is going to be earning more), the Armor and Weapon traders, and that skritt who’s sorting the warehouse.

Plus they’ve got to feed the pigeons, and now parrots, ravens, griffons, quaggans and who knows what else. (They’re probably getting a good deal on the ghosts though, I think they feed mainly on despair and inconsolable rage so a few minutes of free time to hang around the Mystic Forge probably does it.)

Precisely! It’s not all party time and endless profits. There are many ’spenses to pay!

Hi all,

We discovered just yesterday that there has been an issue with Communications Team members not receiving e-mails and tickets. This problem seems to impact both individual mails sent to Forums@Arena.Net and responses to moderator messages to which a player would respond directly.

We apologize to anyone who has written us who has not received a reply. We respond to nearly every e-mail that we receive — well, except for those offers of herbal remedies or announcements of strange inheritances from distant princes.

It’s our objective to be as communicative and responsive as possible, and the current e-mail issue may have prevented that in some cases. Our objective is to answer questions and investigate appeals when they are submitted to us. Appeal reviews are conducted with care in order to confirm that the moderator decision was sound or to reverse it if the decision was made in error.

Both our IT and CS Teams are looking into the problem. We’re not sure if it stems from the e-mail system or the Zendesk “ticket” system because they are somewhat interconnected. However, we’ll get to the bottom of this issue so that future mails are answered as promptly and thoroughly as possible.

Thank you for your patience while we get this addressed!

Hello, the blue/green texture indicates a failure while creating the texture. Here, the failure is likely due to trying to create a texture while the DirectX device is lost. The game usually handles this but in some cases it does not. Other failure cases can also result in the blue/green texture.

We are investigating the reports of the game becoming unresponsive while in the loading screen. Unfortunately, the commonly suggested work around of pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del to bypass the stuck loading screen also has a side effect of hitting the texture problem mentioned above. We’re looking into that too.

Thanks for the report. I sent a link to this thread so we can look into it.

I am sure I recognize that bear, too.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the show. YouTube can be found here.

We had a blast, and honestly, I think the art variety and choices just keeps getting better and better! We are truly grateful for everyone who submits on Tumbler (#GW2FanSubmission) and here on the forums — you make doing the show possible, and we in turn love showing off your work!

I like that a lot!

This is a great topic and I’d like to hear what other ideas people have that could incentive league play in a system where division matches skill level.

Hey everyone,

Time for another recap and a few questions!

• Most of you like periodic secondary mechanics that remain “secondary” and don’t try to overtake the conquest part of the maps.
• We also would like the secondary to be more of a swing mechanic rather than a snowball mechanic
• Tons of awesome ideas for reworking the Skyhammer to be more of a periodic mechanic and some general ways to improve it.

So because of how the community answered I would like to ask some questions about the treb in Kyhlo. It has been in ranked/competitive rotation since the game has been out, but the treb goes against the answers I got for secondary mechanics on a conquest map.

Questions:

• Kyhlo’s treb:
  • Do we consider it a swing mechanic?
  • What do we think of it being up all the time?
  • Does it need to be reworked to make it fit “periodic secondary mechanics”, and if yes how would you change it?
  • Is the treb fine as is, and why?
• Would we want to have secondary mechanics that are up all the time in future maps?

Spidermanwells — what a great project! I know it takes a lot of time and thought, but what fun!

Hahnchen — love your art! I remember that cute little Asura from Wintersday. Please feel free to share more here on the forums, any time you like! (And thanks for offering to help with the tabletop project.)

That’s delightful! Thank you for sharing.

April 2016 Episode

• Corvus
• DusK
• Mohnea
• Maguumas
• Dario F
• Legionnaire in Training
• Sanivia
• Cartoonjoe
• ask-leo-the-asura-engineer
• Artofmoh
• by-ogdens-hammer
• Duang
• Reinfrimann
• Dagos
• Guide Ranger
• Mister Catnaps
• Inkzap
• hunalicious
• notbun
• famikawe
• orcadic
• Maimaru
• Eexa
• thiefseeker
• onxeyl
• Exshinka
• Pastelmordrempup
• Shuuzaar
• Saladbros
• smudges-from-murke
• Mimetka
• nvskipy
• Julieta
• Katnaxel
• The Sylvan Hound
• artrage

As always, if the name above is inaccurate — spelling, capitalization, chosen name — please let us know by sending me a PM. Feel free to do the same if we accidentally mispronounced your name on the show.

Thanks a bunch to everyone who contributes to our community through their art!

March 2016 Episode

• Step
• Manna The Kasha
• Wilhengard
• Limliris
• Charlie Dayman
• Legionnaire in Training
• Pehntboks
• Byolith
• Done by Dani
• Brigs
• OpLickem
• Abyss Crusader
• Marshall Trahoe
• Sternentee Cosplay
• Selana Firestone
• Zlide/Z1ide
• The Designs
• Nefy Feiri
• Marie Jacquelyn
• Altoricus
• Shirosagii
• Stuffsyrdraws
• Levi (Leviathan)
• Team Paraluna
• Mohnea
• Southsun Stalwart
• Anya Tagomachii
• Zelunna Zojourn
• Ratasum Renegade
• Kyano the Pixelationer
• Darth Asterisk

A note here: If this listing is inaccurate as far as spelling or presentation — for instance, perhaps your name is all one word, or is written in all lower-case, that sort of thing — please PM me so I can fix it. Also, if we happened to mispronounce your name on the show, don’t hesitate to PM me so that we will know how best to say the name if it should arise in a future show.

Thanks again so much to all the people who contribute to our community through their art!

Pertinent information from forum members in this thread.

With that, we hope the OP has a better understanding of the system, but CS will be responding to the most recent ticket to also given an explanation.

Thanks to everyone who tried to give more information on this topic!

Guys, the devs have gleaned some really valuable input in this thread, but I’d like to ask that everyone try for truly constructive comments to continue the value-add on the commentary.

Stitch.1794:

You’ve spent points on a fractal mastery between those to screenshots. You have 2 completed in the first screenshot and 3 in the second. If you hadn’t intended to do that it could explain where your points went.

Stitch.1794:

Just checked in game, as the wiki is currently down, and the 3rd fractal mastery costs 3 points, so that exactly lines up with with the number of points you’re seeing now. It would also explain the arguments with CS, because if you’re telling them you’re missing three points when in fact they’ve been unintentionally spent on a different mastery, your number of points will look correct.

zakuruchi.4086:

Agreed with Stitch, it seems like you spent the 3 mastery points on Fractal Mastery in between the screenshots. From the screenshot the fractal mastery went from 2/4 to 3/4, it costs 3 mastery point to do that, so probably you spent it there by mistake.

PS : For most of the missing achievements on this old page, its because people are counting the Hero achievements for personal story as one per chapter per race, while it is only one per chapter (once you get it as a race, you cant get it as another race) as clarified by a link somewhere up there.

Thanks to Stitch and Zakurichi to making it clear this is not a game issue but is a case of user misunderstanding or user error. The Customer Support Team has worked diligently with this player, and I just spoke with the lead and they will continue to try to explain what is going on. But end of the day, this is not a game issue.

NiSHAN.4385:

Jon Olson.8439:

sparc.3649:

Yet still no word from ANET on this

.

It’s been listed on the Known Issue Tracker for at least a day.

after 8 days you finally notice !

Just because it’s not on the tracker doesn’t mean we haven’t noticed. We’ve been investigating for longer than it’s been on the tracker.

Stevala.9457:

are you gonna fix this?? I purchased with gems the ability to do the livingworld season 2 , that frustrating

It’s been on the Known Issues Tracker for at least a day.

sparc.3649:

Yet still no word from ANET on this

.

It’s been listed on the Known Issue Tracker for at least a day.

Could you post your crash details? You can find them here.

Yasi.9065:

Im sorry Evan, but if this is supposed to be where the majority of players should be, then why are at least 70% of the matches totally frustrating to everybody?

And please, tell me, why did I get to ruby on one account and got stuck there, whereas on another Im now nearly through Diamond?

Where exactly am I supposed to be now… ruby hell or nearly legendary?

Matches should not be volatile when you are in your ‘correct’ division, ideally. I think that is a definite area to improve on. As to why your two accounts are different, I can’t say without digging into your account histories.

Ithilwen.1529:

@ Evan Lesh

You are confusing elite with prestigious. The elite in this case being formed by pre made team groupies who are willing to stack specific classes and builds.

You are correct. Though I am curious to know what is bad about pre-made teams that perform well reaching the top of the ladder. When I play with friends, we perform no better than solos :P

In season 1 every match was trying to be even, but this allowed players to grind through the ladder. Season 2 is the opposite of this, but players are clearly experiencing matches that are too volatile. Once players reach a division relative to their skill, the only blowout matches that should be happening would be from people coming late to the season. I feel there may be balance between the two styles of matchmaking that maintain prestige, but avoid an abundance of blowouts.

Getting ‘stuck’ in ruby is a very important topic regarding how best league should operate. We changed matchmaking to make the ladder more prestigious and so far it has done that. Divisions are aligning with skill level much better than season 1. The product of this change is that the bulk of players who hover around the middle of the mmr curve should stay in sapphire and ruby. Win rate will level out at 50% because there are plentiful players of similar mmr in the same division.

Should average players be able to climb out of the middle divisions by grinding? This removes prestige and can make matchmaking worse within a division, but always allows a sense of progression.

Should average players stay in the middle divisions because that’s where they belong at their skill level? This retains prestige and only improving skill will allow climbing, but rewards and progression stop at some point through the season.

Is there an incentive that could be added to league games for players who have reached their appropriate division and can no longer climb?

morrolan.9608:

Evan Lesh.3295:

What would make legendary players happy to keep playing the game? Is it just quicker queue times? What if you could do other things while waiting? What if there was something other than leagues all together like unranked arena that legendary players could go to until more players make it to legendary?

How about asking the question what would make all the ranked players happy to keep playing the game, cause right now I am disheartened and completely de-motivated by the system. Its making me hate spvp.

Why are you disheartened? Is it the inconsistency of match quality?

Rylen.2147:

Evan Lesh.3295

What would make legendary players happy to keep playing the game? Is it just quicker queue times? What if you could do other things while waiting? What if there was something other than leagues all together like unranked arena that legendary players could go to until more players make it to legendary?

I honestly just wish we would get more rewards from legendary. Adding more rewards would make players still want to gain pips even though they are at the highest they can go league wise. I know I would play more than a few games a day if it meant greater rewards

Adding more rewards is easy, but getting them will still be difficult with hour-long queue times.