Guild Wars 2

Do you have an official source for that?

Because if that is just the experience from people, who have purchased HoT after the episode started, then it might just be, that the episode did not actually unlock for people without HoT.

I know that the episodes should be unlocked without Heart of Thorns but not playable ¹.

But it very much seems like it is not unlocked on my account, seeing that it tells me, that I cannot purchase it (see attachment).
Does it look like this on other accounts, that do not have Heart of Thorns?
Is the episode unlocked on my account?

¹https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2s-living-world-returns-on-july-26/

Nretep.2564:

Luthan.5236:

I’m fine without fast ground targeting – just because I can’t aim cause I find it hard to guess the max distance. Now an option like this would be nice… would make me use fast ground targeting.

as the TS said … just press the button twice. So you can control to either fast cast (pressing twice) or “slow cast” press once and use your mouse.

But if you’d use the “pressed down <> pressed up”, you’re force to release your spell (unless you keep your button pressed for the whole time).

As I have said, in medium-casting a ground-targeted skill should be aborted if between the original “button down” and the original “button up” there is another skill “button down” or “esc down” or a secondary mouse click (or any other action that aborts ground-targeted skills in slow-casting).

Your suggestion to use slow-casting is not very helpful, since that is obviously what you should do in the absence of better alternatives for you.
But my medium-casting is a suggestion for such an alternative.

Also I am not suggesting to replace fast- or slow-casting but adding another alternative, since I can see advantages and disadvantages in all three modes.

You on the other hand seem to be arguing against my suggestion, because you do not want to use it and there are workarounds using slow-casting. But these workarouns are worse than an actual medium-cast mode.

Nretep.2564:

Luthan.5236:

Also I’d like(even for non fast ground targeting) an option to see the max range of skills – like in an RTS. For all skills.

Make an “eye” button(very small) above your 1-5 – default on 1 autoattack showing a circle around you.

Especially important for other skills that are ground targeted(at other slots or 1-5 especially if you use grenade kit).

This should show where you can move your mouse max… meaning if you move your mouse to the circle(max range) it will still hit a bit further cause of the AoE radius(but that is not a problem – knowing how big the radius is is much easier).

A easier-to-implement, less visual-disturbing and for other uses would be to display the range from your target (to you) as number.

The problem with that is, that you would have to select a target to display a range to it.
But what Luthan apparently wants is a way to see how far a skill can get in all directions at all times without having to select a target or moving the mouse there.

Also all suggestions like that should be viewed as optional, with an option to enable them in the options menu (and in case it is not clear yet: the key word here is optional). So arguments like “I do not want to use this” or “that would be visually disturbing” are meaningless since you would not be forced to use these options.

I think that is a good idea Ratty. This cross hair should have an option to be turned off and on and I think it should be visible even if the pointer is invisible, for example when you are moving the camera with the mouse.

So, we have “Fast-Cast Ground Targeting”, where a ground-targeted skill is immediately activated on “button down”, and normal ground targeting (“Slow-Cast Ground Targeting”?), where on first “button down” a ground-targeted skill will go into an aiming-mode, with a highlighted area of effect, and a second “button down” (or alternatively a “mouse down”) will activate the skill.

I would like to have a “Medium-Cast Ground Targeting” option, where on “button down” a ground-targeted skill will go into aiming-mode, and on “button up” the skill will be activated.

Why? Because I like to be able to aime ground-targeted skills with the highlighted area of effect, but this way, I would only need one keystroke to use a ground-targeted skill.

This, of course, would require to replace the checkbox with a drop-down list for all options.

Also it should work like the “Slow-Cast Ground Targeting” in that a skill has to be in aiming-mod when its button is released, to be activated, and not when it was somehow aborted beforehand.

If there already is a way to do this, without scripts, could someone explain to me how?

I think i know what you mean, and I thought about that too.
At first glance, this seems to be a nice idea, especially because it would be something different, but also complicated to understand.
But I see several problems with that.

First we know, that there are at least three spatial dimensions, so we assume that in two directions space repeats (= flat torus) and in the third it does something.

If there were something above Tyria, that is as big as Tyria in one of the repeating directions, it would span the entire sky in this direction (and there could be nothing bigger than Tyria in one of these directions). So if we see spherical stars in the sky, especially the sun, then they would have to be extremely small and bright floting orbs, much smaller than Tyria and very close to Tyrias surface. But even if we do not see anything span the entire sky, we should still see things repeating in the sky, especially the sun, and we do not see that.
Also it should easily be noticeable if the stars were small and close.

Another problem is, that there would not be a horizon. So a sunset in this flat torus world means, that the (extremely small) sun crashes into the planet at some place and later emerges at some other place at sunrise. And this is something, that probably would be known.

Also this would probably cause several problems concerning gravity and light et cetera.

I wrote about this in some length some time ago here and am still interested in it, but I have not seen any new information concerning the shape of the world since then.

Somewhere someone suggested that the texture simply got “cut off” at the wrong position, but this seems pretty unlikely to me, because there is no mechanic, that should do something like that accidentally and also there would be a seam on the texture, if this was the case.
And my asumption still ist, that someone simply did not know, what they were doing, when they created this texture.

Yet I think, that the best way to think about the texture is, that it is cut off at the wrong position, even if this was not done intentionally.
The map should probably look like this
This way the top could represent the north pole and the bottom the south pole.
Also it would fit what we know about the geography of the world with Cantha still being south of Tyria and Elona would be close to the equator.
There would not be any land at the poles, but there would be land close to the north pole.
Now, this is all hypothetical, but I think this is the best way to look at it and I would not be surprised, if they later on try to explain this texture this way.

As said before, this is not about the accuracy of the map (and thus not about which time it represents). It is more about the technical aspects of it, and how they do not fit.

Yes, many games create worlds, where the bottom and top also connect. The obvious reason for this is, that you get a flat (as in uncurved) world, which has no borders, when you do this. This is fine, if you do not represent the whole world as a sphere, but that is not what happened here.
Here we have a texture, that tiles in both directions and it does not make sense to create such a texture for a sphere.
And as I have pointed out, the texture actually repeats on the sphere, it is not just stretched above it.

And the point of
“Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.”
was to say, that actually, all parts of the globe, exept for the blue stuff, is on the texture. This texture is actually the texture used on the globe, you just have to look at it the right way.

I have heard the claim before, that there is some continent connectet to Cantha, but I have stared at that globe for a while, and I am unable to find this continent.
As I have said, several parts of the map are on the globe several times, so the question also is, which Cantha on the globe do you mean?
I was abel to match every part of the globe to a part of the texture, but I may not have seen the entier globe, so if you have a picure of the globe with something, that does not seem to be on the texture, please show it to me, so I can see, if I can match it to the texture.

But the map itself does not represent a spherical world, so under the assumption, that Tyria is spherical, the map is nonsense. The map clearly has the properties of a torus, and in dimension > 1 tori and spheres are not homeomorphic.

This topic is about the globe of Tyria in the Chantry of Secrets, the associated map and how bad they are. But it is not about the (in)accuracy of the map (so no Frostgorge Sound, Isles of Janthir,… stuff).

So first of all, you can find the map and a picture of the globe here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyria_%28world%29

About the map: The first thing you should notice is, that the left side connects with the right side (obviously) but also the top connects with the bottom.
Here is the map with highlighted borders
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/93/tyria1.jpg!
and here it is translated
!http://imageshack.us/a/img827/5418/tyria2.jpg!
And on the model the top and bottom of the texture actually connect.
In a map, where the top and the bottom represent poles, this would not make sense.
Also if the top was a pole, then the entire top would have to be either land or water, because it all represents the same point, and not some parts water and some parts land. For comparison, look at a real world map.
You will later see, that the globe is too messed up for poles anyway…
In fact, a map with these properties dose not represent a sphere at all but a torus.
I know, that mapping textures to models is not exactly like charts in maths, but if you start like that, you can only fail!
But this chart of a torus gets forced onto a sphere (the globe in the chantry) and the result is pretty bad.
So to identify parts I translated the map a bit, so that no land mass is cut and colored some parts, so we get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img607/2835/tyria4.jpg!

Now we look at the globe. The first thing to notice are the blue lines and discs, wich we later need to identify places.

Lets start with this picture to highlight the problems with the globe
!http://imageshack.us/a/img834/3332/gw011gx.jpg!
In this picture you can see two islands which are on there twice. If you cannot see them, here they are highlighted
!http://imageshack.us/a/img248/8845/gw011h.jpg!.

But lets look at that at a bigger scale.
In this picture
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/2871/gw012h.jpg!
you can see Istan in red, below that Cantha and some other stuff, all colored like in the texture above. We especially see the top part of the texture at the bottom.
Now we go in the direction, the arrow points, and get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img11/5608/gw013hc.jpg!
Now we see the top part of the texture at the top and when we go down from there, we get, as it is in the texture, to Tyria, Elona and… Istan again. But we obviously did not go around the globe. You can especially see this on the blue lines and discs, which are fixed on the globe, but are obviously in other places in relation to Istan, so this is another copy of Istan on this globe.
In fact, there is at least a third copy of Istan (and Tyria) on that globe, as seen here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img703/2551/gw014h.jpg!
(again look at the blue stuff)

But there is more. Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.
Lets take a look at the picture of the globe from the wiki. There are some parts that look smoother than others, highlighted here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img42/2116/chantryofsecrets1.jpg!
On first glance, they also do not fit the texture.
So here is this picture colored in as above with the smooth parts left out
!http://imageshack.us/a/img842/6782/chantryofsecrets2.jpg!
You can also see Istan there twice.
But the smooth parts are actually on the texture too, and here they are colored
!http://imageshack.us/a/img850/1930/chantryofsecrets3.jpg!
But they seem different than the other parts and that is because the texture is scaled up and moved like this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img811/4251/tyria5.jpg!
Apparently the texture is overlayed on itself, moved and sacaled up, thus losing detail and gaining “smoothness”.
When both is colored, you can see the purple islands are rotated about 90° and scaled up and distorted a bit
!http://imageshack.us/a/img252/2803/chantryofsecrets4.jpg!

Now you could explain all this with magic, which creates copys of places all over the planet, or that this globe is not actually a globe at all, but some kind of other representation of the world.
But it seems more like someone had no idea, what they were doing, when they created this map and globe.
So are there any explanations lorewise, or are the map and globe simply useless?