Guild Wars 2

Cody Crichton.7516:

Thank you for the reports.

Worry not, I assure you that we’re still in the process of making further optimizations to the audio engine.

Also, for the record, the sound card hasn’t got much to do with how sounds are cached and processed. Actually, that’s what the system memory and processor are for! The sound card merely facilitates playback to your listening device (speakers/headphones), and what receives input from a non-USB microphone if you’re using voice chat. Unless something is seriously wrong with your sound card, upgrading it isn’t going to help, and it definitely isn’t going to allow for more sounds to play or improve the results of how the audio engine handles individual sound files. That’s just not what sound cards do.

EDIT:

I appreciate that you looked for results on multiple machines, Alad QB. This not only helps you troubleshoot the problem, determining that your hardware isn’t to blame, but also helps lend credence to the fact that there are indeed still more optimizations to be made with our engine.

Thanks for acknowledging the problem. I really hope you can fix this very soon.

I also noticed many times a sound “fade-in” effect: you abruptly arrive at a battleground (perhaps via a portal, or logging into a character who happens to be at the site of a battle) and sounds only gradually appear. Or you approach the battle while running, and the sounds only phase in after you’ve been in the middle of it for some time, not at all proportional to your distance from the sound sources. It’s quite obvious the fade-in is artificial, or simply too long. Why is that necessary? Fade in occurs naturally via the 3D effect processing, doesn’t it? Is it possible that this artificial fade in is cutting out some sounds for a lot longer (minutes) than necessary?

Is “sound culling” being used in the game (other than the expected distance-related volume adjustment)? (whether locally or from the server)

Also, could you please explain what the sound settings in the game actually do? Perhaps there is a setting that can alleviate these problems for some of us.
- Are the volume sliders just that, or do they also serve to filter out (cut out) some sounds?
- What does the Sound Quality slider do?
- Can the buffer size affect sounds being cut?

Thank you.

Cody Crichton.7516:

If what you are describing continues to happen after today’s release, we would love to know.

It is still happening. Examples:
1) You map to an area like LA and suddenly everything’s very quiet (no music, no ambient sounds, no footsteps), only some sounds playing low.
2) Player nearby gets buffed and shouts on of those cries, and the sentence is cut, they don’t finish it.
3) You’re fighting with 50 others and you can’t hear your own combat sounds.

It seems as though you’re culling the sounds at the source (server), and also that there’s a bug in the client too.

PS:
Can it be a sound setting in-game? How do those different sound settings affect sounds? (Not explained anywhere, apart from “volumes” which I’m assuming are really just volumes, not culling sliders)

Yes, I confirm this missing audio problem still exists. In fact, for the first time today, I even heard a line of audio being CUT. A character saying something like “nothing can bring me down”, being cut mid-sentence. At first I doubted my brand new sound card, since this problem wasn’t so obvious in the past. Then I tried my old PC and the new one with another sound card, and the problem is always there: missing sounds, whether combat effects or voiceovers, conversations between npc’s… ALL sounds are affected. The worst and most noticeable defect is when you can’t hear your own combat sounds, or hear parts of an npc conversation, or see a huge effect for which there is no sound.

Please stop the sound culling !!

These sound problems need to be fixed as many players (all) consider sound as a very important part of the game.

That nerf is unjustified. And exaggerated. Assuming simple people who don’t have access to all the fancy buffs could get about +60% karma buff, they used to be able to get the equivalent of 4500×1.6=7200 karma per day from the pots. We’ll assume normal players can get on average about 2000 karma per day from events, so that’s a total of 9200 per day, on average. Getting 252,000 to just be able to buy a set of exotic armor from the Orr temples meant grinding the dailies for about one month. That’s not a short time, nor is it ridiculously long either; just the time to get close to level 80 for normal players. I have friends who have been playing casually for more than 6 months and aren’t even close to getting their karma armor, and even less trying to buy it with gold.

If you want to get the jewellery from the temples too (12×42=504,000 karma), it would require about 55 days, which is about the time a regular player needs to get to level 80.

With the daily karma changed to 600, it will now require 194 days! (504,000/2600) That’s 6.5 months! Just to get exotic armor, at a time when ascended equipment are being introduced.

I pity new players, and feel sorry for my friends who will have to grind gold to get their gear. That is if they continue to play this game.

Serenity.6149:

While I agree that you shouldn’t have to rebuild your stacks every time you do a weapon swap, your logic that the sigil does nothing after reaching full potential is absurd. +250 power is a much bigger buff than +5% damage, and the tradeoff rests in the stack-building requirement. If someone downs soon after reaching max stats, the sigil would still be comparable to a +5% damage sigil, and if you can maintain your stacks well enough, the added power is already its own reward.

You forget, when comparing the +5% to the volatile 0-250 power, that one stays on all the time even if you port to a different area, while the other one has to be rebuilt all over again, a “feature” for which there is no logical explanation, except as a nerf compounding the “lost on-down” nerf, meant to balance this buff just the way it works right now. The unjustified, easy loss of this buff, and the grindy mechanic to obtain it again, considerably reduce its value, and justifies the buff staying when you unequip the weapon. That, to me, is the compromise.

I can already hear the cries of those who, by mistake, equipped a different weapon in that slot and lost the buff just like that. Unreliable.

urieldhynne.2743:

I see a lot of bug exploiters crying, amazing.

Nah, I was laughing. I thought you were the one crying in this thread. And bug? What bug?

The full charge sigil do nothing? 250 power! what else you want? infinite stacks?

If you choose something else it means it’s worth more than that to you. Moaar than 250 power! OMG! OP!!! LOL. And yes, the sigils just sit there and do nothing. And it’s actually not 250. It’s anything between 0-250, for any length of time between 0 to a couple of minutes of combat time if you’re very lucky.

The problem is not weapon swap, the problem is unequip that weapon, retain the sigil effect you are NOT using, and GAIN another sigil effect in that place.

Used to balance your build? guess what, player who dont exploit that bug balance their build without that 250 free stats points.

Again, if they choose another sigil, it means that it’s worth MORE than the 250 stat points for them. They’re not stupid, and neither are we who like those sigils to try and balance our builds.

Anyone can do this? Yes. Anyone can hack too, right? The sigil is bugged, some players exploit it. That is the point, is not how the sigil must work, or balanced for.

Nonsense.

That sigil is not underpower, you can chose between less but secured damage (5% fixed), or more damage but with the risk you can lose it. Is fair. But who exploit that bug use “250 from stack + 5% fixed + another if offhand” to burst down enemies.

Indeed, it is fair. Do the same to them. Hmm, you certainly must be using a better sigil than that one. Since you’re complaining about it, that is…

Those stacks aren’t only used by min-maxing OP players to kill you 2 seconds faster. They’re also used by people who want a balanced build and have to sacrifice power, as a way to get some of it, hopefully, back during the fight, and hopefully keep the buff for some time. And of course, you then want to switch to sigils that actually do something after you’ve painfully gotten that buff. This game pretends it wants to encourage different builds. Taking that away will not be a step in that direction. Why not lower the stat cap while we’re at it? That way those stacks will do nothing if the stat is already too high.

LOL, I don’t agree at all. It would be a huge unjustified nerf to those sigils. Those sigils do nothing after they’ve reached a full stack. It’s just as if you had an empty sigil slot after that. Whereas other sigils continue to do their thing. Compare the constant +5% damage sigil to the volatile +250 Power which disappears when you’re down. They’re already very much uninteresting in many situations where you can expect to go down very often, including WvW. The time it takes to build up that stack in suboptimal conditions, and the uncertainty of ever getting the full stack, is the price you pay for choosing that type of sigil.

If the stack is to go away when the weapon is swapped away, then 2 things have to happen as well:
- The stack should be back when you swap back to that weapon
- The stack should not be deleted on down.

PS: The subject of this thread should be changed to reflect its content.

Mourningcry.9428:

Alad QB.8904:

It’s pretty easy to fix this:
- Every bottle of karma consumed after the patch gave 150% of its previous value
- Bottles consumed are no longer there
- People who used up Karma Boosters while drinking, lost those
So, to fix:
- Reimburse all bottles of karma consumed after the patch
- Deduct all karma gained from consuming those bottles (150% of their old values)
- Reimburse +50% Karma Boosters, bonfires and kite fortunes used up after the patch (food and banners are less of a problem).

Only thing is what about the karma consumed AND spent. Posted a bit earlier. Not trying to be a downer, but they should take into account that some players may have consumed and spent karma.

Full reimbursement in those cases is a bit more complicated. Especially in cases of consumable purchases (shards).

Not trying to be a stickler, but it’s just another complication to consider.

Well, this will only be a problem if these people don’t have enough karma left to be deducted by the fix. In that case an equivalent amount of karma bottles should be deducted (not reimbursed) – at the rate of 150%.

What ANet should most certainly do before rolling out the changes is to run a full simulation and look at the results to catch any bugs or aberrations and extremes which can cause unfair advantages or disadvantages to a few.

Luthan.5236:

So they reverted the change and this means lower base Karma but you can use boosters again?

Yes. See
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Karma-Changes-Temporary-Rollback

It’s pretty easy to fix this:
- Every bottle of karma consumed after the patch gave 150% of its previous value
- Bottles consumed are no longer there
- People who used up Karma Boosters while drinking, lost those
So, to fix:
- Reimburse all bottles of karma consumed after the patch
- Deduct all karma gained from consuming those bottles (150% of their old values). If the karma balance isn’t big enough for the deduction (because people also spent a lot meanwhile), reimburse fewer bottles.
- Reimburse +50% Karma Boosters, bonfires and kite fortunes used up after the patch (food and banners are less of a problem).

What happens is that the outline is removed from the selected target unless the cursor is hovering over it. When you press the mouse button and rotate the camera, the mouse cursor disappears but remains where it was when you pressed the mouse button. The camera rotates, the target is now not where it used to be, and the now invisible mouse is no longer on that target, so the outline on the target disappears. Either that, or the now invisible mouse cursor cannot highlight the target any more.

I don’t remember if it used to work differently before.

Thief’s shortbow skill, Cluster Bomb, only applies 1 bleed instead of 3.
(This is in PvE as well as PvP lobby against golems)

I still haven’t read any objections… just somewhat funny comments by people who don’t seem to care about this.

No bindings. Just auto loot. Or ok, binding for those who like to press keys, autoloot for the rest.
Besides, I definitely don’t want to use the same key as the default activation key and there’s no key left in a reachable area.
What kind of objection is there to autoloot, anyway? Even if there is one for some, it can be an option for others.

Sick and tired of getting stuck reviving an npc in the middle of a huge fight when my intention was to loot a corpse.

I’d like to know who doesn’t want to loot. Raise your hand! If they’re a minority or even non-existent, why do we have to press a command to loot? Just being in a radius of 10,000 from my earned loot should be enough! LOL. Seriously… why the kittened “press F to loot”? And what if I have plenty of loot lying on the ground but had to revive at a far away waypoint and can’t get back in time to get it? Is that some kind of punishment? For what, exactly?

Please, remove this useless command. Thank you!

One would think,
- from the “hard to catch” name,
- from the description:
“Shadowstep away and give swiftness (12s) when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knock down, launch, knock back, sink, or fear). This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.”
- and from the long cooldown (60 sec),

that this trait will save you from being disabled at most once every 60 sec. You are “hard to catch” and disable.

However, all this trait currently does is move you a very short distance away, while stunned and disabled for the full intended duration. You’re still a sitting duck, only a couple of steps from where you would otherwise have been sitting.

Utterly worthless.

Mister Mustard.7203:

First, ask yourself why you play the game.

Is it so your server is at the top of the list?

If so, for a fee, you can move yourself to a server at the top of the list. Problem solved.

Or, do you play the game to have fun when you log in?

If so, I don’t understand the fascination with what happens when you’re not online.

I think for most people, yourself included most probably, it is the fascination of what happens when you are online, and outnumbered 10 or 20 to 1, because of people from remote time zones playing on your time-zone server while your people are asleep. What do people do in such cases? They shrug and log off. Or have you never found yourself in this situation? If the numbers were small, nobody would notice them or be bothered, but they’re not. If this happens once in a blue moon, it wouldn’t be an issue.

You have to admit that, for some players, for example in the Americas, it is considered advantageous (a valid tactic, even), to play WvW on European servers while the Europeans are sleeping, don’t you think? Or vice-versa. Because you can gain points against a sleeping server. That’s the root of the problem. Like a football team arriving 5 hours early and playing the “game” by themselves, against no one.

Ok I Did It.2854:

If ANET restrict there WvW it will kill it, not everyone has a 9-5 job, some people work nightshift, some people work split shift, some people even have 2 jobs, this is a GAME,[…]

Yes, it is a game. Just like sports. If you go to play against another team and they’re not there, there is no match. No “game”.

The question is: why aren’t they there? If they don’t have enough people interested in WvW then it’s their problem and I don’t believe ANet can do anything about it except maybe try to make that server a bit more attractive. The match can proceed.

But if the reason is because they’ve all gone to bed, because all human beings do that once a day, at the end of the day, then there can be no match. The two teams are incompatible in their playing hours. And you can’t require that they go and find you people from other corners of the world to come and play with you at the hours you can play. There are other servers in other areas with people who are awake at that time; that’s the best possible place for you to play.

I’d like to see people who seem astonished here, what they would do if their neighbor came to their house to play after they went to bed for the night. Sure, you’d get up and play with them, right? Every night, right?

Indeed, not everyone has a 9-5 occupation and some are awake at night. The solution is simply to play with that area of the world where people are also awake and playing.

Here’s one last suggestion:
At night, the WvW maps become PvE. Players can train to play (against the guards and mobs), but gain no points.

There are other aspects of this suggestion that I find interesting. In sports, the opposing teams can talk to each other after the match. Congratulate each other. Learn from each other. Perhaps this can happen in WvW during the night…

Here is a proposition that can go nicely with the night-closing WvW:

Divide the world time zones into 3 areas of approx 8 hours each, each closing at night, local time. If a player cannot but play WvW at night, they can choose to play either in the area to their west (where it is afternoon), or to their east (where it is morning).

For example:
Americas: UTC-10 to UTC-3 (Hawaii to Brazil)
EMEA: UTC-2 to UTC+4 (Mid-Atlantic to Oman/Western Russia)
Asia/Oceania: UTC+5 to UTC-11(+13) (Pakistan to New Zealand)

It is possible that French- and Spanish-speaking servers will have to be created in the Americas area (which makes perfect sense given the population), as well as English-speaking servers in Asia (I have no idea if GW2 already operates in Asia; most probably yes).

mechanizeddeath.3127:

That having been said, getting kicked out of WvW at any time would be unacceptable. From the sounds of it, I’m not even logging into Guild Wars 2 until the original poster is sound asleep.

LOL

Seriously, I have nothing against people who play at night. I do too. And a solution should include all time zones, obviously, and not exclude anybody. But the problem is caused by ArenaNet’s WvW schedule and server “locations”, not by my supposed “selfishness”.

Master of Timespace.2548:

The correct way to “fix” night capping, (if you consider it an issue) is to alter the point gain in the following way:
potential points = normal potential points * (current wvw population / average wvw population of the week)

There are several problems with this formula:

Current WvW Population (meaning the opponent’s current population):
Measured over what time period? The last second? 10 sec? 10 min? Is it a moving average or an instantaneous number? A very short time is unreasonable, whereas a long time would still allow many points to be obtained. What if opponents log in after you’ve breeched the door and are fighting the keep lord, but they are still too far to get to you? Do you count those too?

Average WvW Population (i.e. the opponent’s average population):
What is that number at the beginning of the week? Is it last week’s average? What would happen when whole guilds move to another server as we have been seeing recently?

A better formula would be:
Your points = Normal points * (Opponent’s current population on that map / Your current population on that map)

But even then, what about the people who are there just to get map completion, or crafting, or browsing the TP, vendors, etc…? Do you count them or not?

And the same problem with “current” population exits: counting over what time period? Say it’s 10 mins. Say you log in to WvW with 50 people and there are 3 opponents. If 5 people can take a site in 10 min or less, you can possibly take 10 sites or more in those 10 minutes, with 50 people. Then log off and wait till the counter has reset, log back in and repeat. Ridiculous, yes, but just as ridiculous as PvD and it’s being done all the time.

Oh, and what Devon hints at in that same paragraph in his article, about sites reverting somehow (automatically?) if left unguarded, and about gaining points for taking a site, will only benefit such a strategy. Come back later and get it again.

Here’s another formula:
Your points = Normal points * (Opponents in the fight / Your players in the fight)

What’s “in the fight”? Players within a certain radius? What if a couple of opponents are just passing by? Do you get more points by jumping them because then they’ll get counted as being in the fight?

In summary, I feel that you can’t use formulas to make up for the effective absence of a match, while pretending that there is one taking place.

Well, another solution would be to prohibit WvW play across time zones of more than, say 3-4 hours, based on IP location compared to the WvW server local time.

24/7 for PvE is fine, but doesn’t make any sense for player matches if the other team is asleep.

It would also make sense for ArenaNet to allow players a one-time server switch in case of such changes, to accommodate those players who have to play at night.

Devon Carver:

Right now our game […] overwhelmingly favors the last server to log out for the day.

I’m glad there is finally an official statement regarding this. Everyone knows this problem is especially related to players from different time zones playing while the locals are asleep, particularly across the Atlantic. The proper way to solve this problem is by recognizing, as the above quote from Devon Carver does, that there is a time for sleeping — an “end of the day”.

As such, WvW should close down at the end of the day, local time. European servers should close at night, European time (e.g. CET), for 9 hours, and so should the American servers, at their local time.

Edit:
I’m expanding here by adding further suggestions I made below in this thread, to clarify.
_____________

Here is a proposition that can go nicely with the night-closing WvW:

Divide the world time zones into 3 areas of approx 8 hours each, each closing at night, local time. If a player cannot but play WvW at night, they can choose to play either in the area to their west (where it is afternoon), or to their east (where it is morning).

For example:
Americas: UTC-10 to UTC-3 (Hawaii to Brazil)
EMEA: UTC-2 to UTC+4 (Mid-Atlantic to Oman/Western Russia)
Asia/Oceania: UTC+5 to UTC-11(+13) (Pakistan to New Zealand)

It is possible that French- and Spanish-speaking servers will have to be created in the Americas area (which makes perfect sense given the population), as well as English-speaking servers in Asia (I have no idea if GW2 already operates in Asia; most probably yes).
____________

Here’s one last suggestion:
At night, the WvW maps become PvE. Players can train to play (against the guards and mobs), but gain no points.

There are other aspects of this suggestion that I find interesting. In sports, the opposing teams can talk to each other after the match. Congratulate each other. Learn from each other. Perhaps this can happen in WvW during the night…

The gem/gold conversion factor is determined artificially, obviously, either manually by an employee, or using a formula which can be tweaked at will. The only way an exchange rate can be market controlled is to have buyers directly talking to/negotiating with the sellers, which is not the case here. Or at least have a TP offering to buy and sell gems like any other game item, where you can see individual prices and quantities offered for sale or purchase by players. Seeing the exchanged volume move up or down (even though you may trust those figures), by itself, does not determine a price, only a direction.

So, yes, gem prices are indeed already regulated, and the price increases are intended by ArenaNet, for obvious reasons.

OK, sorry for the delay in responding.

The game loads textures/graphics and the delay is noticeable (even though I use an SSD). They do “pre-load” a lot of stuff and put that in memory. My question was, which memory is that placed in? If I increased either the system RAM or the GPU RAM, would the game not use up more of it to pre-load graphics and hence reduce the graphics lags?

I’m not talking about culling, but about the delay that the game creates by loading graphics on demand, rather than pre-loading them.

Is it a question of CPU speed (that loads the graphics to whatever memory)?

Because if I now have RAM that the game isn’t using, then it’s not doing everything it can to reduce the graphics lags.

Sure, we’ll see in about a year (or two) when my guild will have gathered enough influence to open up guild bounties.

Go troll on someone else, mate.

@Heijincks: A bug can be a design bug or miscalculation as well, not just a bug in implementation. If anything is not working as intended, it’s a bug. Please stop talking beside the topic of this thread.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Alad QB.8904:

How does that stop the gold sellers? The vault transports are just more difficult to get now for large guilds, and impossible to get for small ones.

How is it impossible for small guilds to get guild merits? you only need 5 people in your guild to unlock and complete Bounty, Trek, and Rush. They also added training missions to make it easy for you to obtain the required influence.

The cost in influence (and then guild merits too) of opening up those features which earn merits is simply prohibitive for small guilds. Plus we not even have 5 people there to kill one of those mobs.

It still doesn’t change anything. Just closing the exploit should be possible. And again, stop assuming things, they didn’t say what the exploit was, and will not talk about. I don’t give a hoot about how someone is exploiting anything.

The issue here is that small guilds will lose yet another game feature.

I’m not here to think of solutions to exploits. And neither should you. Exploits are the result of bugs usually and the devs are the only ones who know exactly how a situation is being exploited. They should take care in closing just the exploit cases and not collapse the whole roof on everyone just to kill a bug in the house.

How does that stop the gold sellers? The vault transports are just more difficult to get now for large guilds, and impossible to get for small ones.

Latest update says:
“In order to address certain exploits, the following changes have been made to summoning Guild Vault Transports:

Guild Vault Transports are now unlocked with Economy level 5 instead of Economy level 2. The cost has been increased from 50 influence to 1 Guild Merit and 50 influence.

Guild Vault Transports can no longer be summoned in instances."

Are you certain all of those changes are needed to stop the exploit? or are you just being extra careful and covering any unforeseen cases?

Because requiring 1 guild merit is like condemning small guild, who will never see a guild merit in their lives, to losing out on yet another game option.

When you want to stop an exploit, make sure you do just what is necessary to stop the exploit, especially making sure that you won’t carelessly change things for thousands of people who are not exploiting anything.

Where does that happen?

This isn’t just 8-bit music, it’s Adlib/OPL2 FM-Synth music from the earliest Sound Blaster cards, I think. Cool to hear this ancient music again. Reminds me of Monkey Island.

I don’t know who I’m writing this for more: the players or the devs. I hope it finds a home with both.

One of the major differences, if not the major difference, between GW2 and traditional MMOs is the fact that PvE is totally cooperative, with 0 competition. You don’t race to kill a mob to get credit for it, you don’t race to farm a node before the other one gets it, etc… This is one thing which is a total success. Everybody enjoys this and nobody has ever complained about it. Great innovation!

Almost all features being requested and proposed by players have to do with established ways/methods/mechanics/content of MMO’s: gear progression, raids with leet loot, more grinds… This game is not that. And the constant focus on established type of content by the players, is making the developers lose sight of the “revolution” they sought out to create, and keep on introducing long term content that is making this game more and more similar to what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

It seems as if a completely different group of people designed the content we had on release, and we now have traditional MMO designers creating all that is new. Thinking out of the box requires some effort. The moment you rest on your laurels you’re back in that limited place again. And players demanding things they’re used to in traditional games, aren’t helping. I wish the devs would continually ask themselves: “Is this that different from what the others have made/are making?” And only go ahead if it really is.

Cooperative gaming is simply contrary to any sort of grind to obtain combat enhancements; that’s competition. Because everybody is entitled to a full-stat character. Content of varying challenge level is fine and even necessary for people to improve, but it should not reward stats or competitiveness in PvE.

As for lack of content, this game already has tons of it! If players were encouraged and rewarded for playing different classes and experiencing the game differently each time, they would perhaps get the feeling of accomplishment and rewards and variety some mono-class players may be missing. You learn; you improve; all the time! Sure, some or event most mono-class characters master their class and get enjoyment out of it, but they shouldn’t pretend that there’s no content left if they chose to leave out all the rest of the fun stuff. And those who choose to focus on PvP and one class shouldn’t complain about lack of PvE content, obviously.

252,000 karma to get the level 80 Exotic armor, and about 20-30g to get jewelry and weapons, for each character, is a good enough effort which gives the feeling of having earned and accomplished something. The problem is that this price is still too steep, prohibitive even, if you want to try other builds, meaning changing your stats and having to get whole new sets because of the choice of attaching stats to gear. But having to wait a full month to get one piece of ascended is utterly ridiculous when you have multiple characters. You also see people nowadays who just log in to do the daily and loot boss chests once a day. Something is going very much the wrong way.

The economy is also utterly broken. You do need gold in order to equip your characters. Crafting will not save much, if anything. The declared “hope to maintain a high level of equality” end of August 2012, is a total failure. I’m almost certain that today, 85% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the players. You cannot start to make money to get gear except by farming for hours a day. Impossible to leverage the effort and time you put in crafting, for example. A virtual economy can never be realistic, simply because the actors are either too ignorant to survive in a real economy, or don’t have much to lose by acting contrary to their interests (witness the prices). It should be regulated in order for it to make any sense for everyone, not just the handful who spend hours grinding or farming.

In the end, the only sure way to stay true to the original plan is to create new content (even paid, of course) of the same original quality. Bring back the people or mindsets who designed that. Not stat grinds which break the core concept of this game.

Oh, and please continue to believe in what you sought out to do, because what you were able to do then is indeed enjoyable and revolutionary.

Vayne, I don’t have Ascended gear and don’t intend to get any. (I believe the true wealth of real content in this game is in the variety of playing the different classes and revisiting the vast and varied world content with each class and in WvW.)

And I haven’t done any comparisons recently (shows you how much I’m interested in Ascended stuff), but I don’t believe the difference in stats with Exotic is just 10% as it was claimed. The OP, Skylightmoon, is demanding “hardcore content with proper rewards”. I’ll let you guess what “proper” means to him, and what it’ll mean to you and me if that gets implemented.

Also, from a certain chat with the devs that occured a couple of months ago, I was left with the impression that Ascended gear was not going to remain just a requirement for FotM. Can you imagine all that variety of ascended gear right now, with more introduced on a regular basis, just to be used in one dungeon? Do you really believe that?

They said there won’t be another quality of gear (higher than ascended), but did you look at the infusions? +4 Power?? Do you honestly believe they intend to keep those upgrades like that? Of course the players will ask for more, and then they’ll comply, with a good excuse. When the infusions start giving 3×50 stats, will you be sitting here saying you don’t feel you need Ascended gear?

From what I understood in the infamous Manifesto, GW2 was/is not supposed to be just another WoW. Therefore, it’s not supposed, nor was intended, to satisfy players who enjoy WoW and the hundred other copycats, but those who are, on the contrary, disappointed with that model and who are looking for something different.

The Wikipedia page on Guild Wars states:
ArenaNet believed that players would not pay subscription fees for every online game they play and that paying a fee would cause players to make a “lifestyle commitment” to a particular game, rather than the usual behaviour of playing many different games and switching between them. Jeff Strain, a founder of ArenaNet, said, “It is our opinion that the free online gaming model combined with frequent content updates is the optimum online paradigm for interfacing with consumers and creating a significant, enduring gaming franchise.”

This suggests that they’re people who know and accept that their players will not be hanging around their game forever, as is perfectly normal. It would therefore make perfect sense that they not try to create end game grinds such as FotM, or Ascended gear, or anything which requires the majority of players to feel they have to do some boring grind to not be left behind. It also suggests that they will produce more paid real content for the game on a regular basis, attracting back those players who leave to do something else. This is a game, after all, not a full time hard core occupation.

The current 180° direction trend from the Manifesto seems to imply to me that so many WoW players, or traditional MMO players were attracted by GW2 early on, and put so much demand on Anet, that they lost their vision, the one they spoke of in the manifesto and which they were able to preserve during development as long as they were isolated from those masses. It seems almost like they were overwhelmed with traditional demands, and lost hope in being able to realize their dream and promise. (The alternative would be ugly to consider.)

Now the real question is, how much has ArenaNet’s vision changed, and how satisfied are they with their accomplishment as compared to their initial goals.

Seeing characters s-l-o-w-l-y show up when I’m right in front of them (they should have loaded a lot earlier), and Habib Loew’s blog post on removal of culling in WvW mentioning this (in terms of extra stealth), I have to ask a couple of questions regarding both PvE and WvW:

- It is obvious to me that the game does this slow and very perceptible “phasing-in” artificially (perhaps in order to avoid characters just popping up suddenly), so can an option be added to remove this phasing in?

- It is also very apparent to me that a similar kind of culling is occurring with sounds. I start to fight and don’t hear my sound FX until after a few seconds (sometimes more than 5 sec). Can this be avoided with a user setting?

- It makes sense that the game is loading character graphics data late, because it can’t do it otherwise, most probably because there’s not enough RAM. So the question is, can I eliminate these problems by increasing the RAM? I have 4GB system RAM (Win7 x64) and 1GB on the graphics card. Which RAM should I increase in order to at least alleviate these issues?

Thank you.

PS: If it is relevant, I use an XFi sound card and have sounds set to minimum latency and highest quality.

No devs to answer at least some of these question?

The March 26, 2013 update added very useful information about Evade time to tooltips of some weapon skills and utility skills which mention evasion.

A few questions to the devs to clarify this mechanic:

1) This evade time, if I understood it correctly, is the earliest time you have to activate the “evasion” skill, before damage is expected to occur (because you’re in its path), in order to successfully Evade the hit. In other words it is a window of opportunity to evade. Is that correct?

2) What is the evade time for a dodge?

3) I’m wondering which other skills (weapons skills or utility skills) will result in an evade as well, but do not mention Evasion in their description. I’m thinking of any skill which causes sudden movement such as: charges, shadowsteps, teleports, leaps, retreats, pull, push, etc… I’m fairly certain some of those skills do provide evasion abilities. Can you please list them? Or at least confirm and list some of them?

4) You evade the whole attack “package” (impact damage + simultaneously applied negative effects/conditions), right?

5) Can you evade specific “pulses” in an AoE?

Thank you.

Just switched back to the game after posting this, and now the upgrade is showing in the queue. It took 15+ minutes to show up !!! That is not normal and can be a cause of unnecessary problems.

Edit: The research appeared in the queue after more than 15 minutes!

I just spent 1000 influence to research Art of War Level 2. The influence was deducted (I saw the number go down by 1000, and the log shows it). The Build Queue, however, does not show anything in it, AND the game is still proposing for me to research Level 2 (instead of the button being greyed out, or it proposing level 3).

We are a tiny guild of 5.5 players (one is Asura), and can’t afford to lose 1000 influence!
We’re already marginalised and left out of the new guild mission content, and were hoping to get some of the Bounty Training by levelling up Art of War.

Please advise what we should do!

Pictures attached showing:
- That we did spend 1000 influence to research Art of War level 2 a few minutes ago (the influence total is lower by 1000 too).
- That nothing is in the build queue, and Art of War is still proposing to research level 2 !!

This is with the March 26, 2013 patch installed, obviously.

URGENT: An option to hide player titles. Don’t need more confusion on my screen.
While you’re at it, an option to hide player guilds as well, please.

Thank you.

The keyword here being “camping”, it will always exist as long as there’s grind in the game. The only way to discourage camping is by removing the necessity to grind. When a game asks you to get hundreds or thousands of a certain item or money, or to get a rare item with a very low chance of dropping, it directly implies a grind and people will camp the source of the item.
If there wasn’t the huge need for gold or for Globs of Ectoplasm, people wouldn’t be camping the world boss encounters either.

Dante.1508:

Nemui.6753:

makes me wonder why it was introduced to PvE in the first place.

Agree i never had these issues when Guildwars 2 opened, PvE now is pretty bad with culling too, as bad as WvW..

I think some decisions were made, in the numerous “server updates” we’ve had, to switch to less costly and less powerful servers or less bandwidth, and introduce intensive culling to pve. Right now I go to where a drunken npc should be out there in some camp with some 20-30 other npc’s, and have to wait 3-5 seconds for him to appear. This never happened when the game was launched and there were hundreds of players in the area. Only reason it could start to happen now, even with the lower number of players, is due to a cost reduction decision.

Here I am doing this level 10 story quest with my low level alt. The instance was a lot of fun (giving a sniper and a mortar attack targets on a hoard of flame legions). In the end, I got a choice of 3 nice weapons. All three were really nice (Avenger’s Longsword, Avenger’s Hammer, Avenger’s Staff). Nothing fancy, just different from the ordinary looking stuff you get all the time. Makes you enjoy looking at your character. In terms of stats, those items have a lifetime of about 1 or 2 days, then they have to get replaced as you level up. But they look nice! I want to keep some of them for a lot longer!

Why do I have to choose between the three? Is it overpowered to get all three of them? Is it too generous? Does it hurt the “balance” in any way? How nice would it be to have more weapons or armor that looks a bit better than the usual trash!

Please guys, let us have all 3 of them (and the extra goodie item of course)! It won’t hurt anyone, will please everyone, and will give us a reason to use up our transmutation stones!

Thank you!

Habib Loew.6239:

One important thing to keep in mind is that this change ensures that all characters within visibility range will be reported to your client. So, even if you choose to turn the WvW character settings down to their lowest (i.e. nameplates only on most characters) while you still won’t see models for every character you will at least see nameplates. In the end it was important to us that no matter what your settings all the players in range will be visible in one way or another.

One of our goals with this patch was to turn off culling without degrading performance. We have attempted to have the default settings mimic the current performance environment as closely as possible, with options to go up or down depending on your machine specs. I strongly encourage everyone to play with the settings a bit to find out what is the right fit for you.

Hi, and thank you for this change. It makes perfect sense. I even made a suggestion to this end a couple of weeks ago.

1) I’d like to just make sure that, even though it is a huge improvement to be able to see nameplates from very far away, that we will never have to fight against a nameplate only. This would be impossible as you wouldn’t really have a sense of where the character is exactly, or what they’re doing (dodge, interrupt, …). Characters must be rendered if they’re within shooting distance (perhaps starting from 2500 units). How they are rendered, details, resolution, would be up to the player to choose.

2) Does it really save that much to render norn, human and sylvari all alike? That takes away a lot from the game, and so does rendering the same armor for all (they seem to all look like assassins to me when rendered in this way). How about making it an option to render the true race and gender, as well as the true armor, but not rendering any body details such as the multitude of colors, tattoos, face details, weapon SFX etc… (i.e. a char = real race + gender + height + hairstyle (if visible) + 6 pieces of armor + weapons with no effects — all real models already stored in our hard disks, I presume). Rendering all the same way will make particular enemies unrecognisable.

3) Lastly, I really wish you also normalised the world colors: Friendlies (we) are green, enemies are red (in all respects: name color, body color and map icon color). The other enemy has to have another hostile color, so I propose a violet tint to contrast with the red of the first enemy. It is confusing to have to look up which color you are this week (our names are green, but we are the red team… their names are red but they are the green team), and giving the 2 enemies different colors allows you to see from far away who they are without having to read the names.

Thanks.

cargan.5689:

if this was any other game would people expect to be able to raid gear all their alts?

But this is not just any other game! This is the revolution. The No Grind game.
;)