Guild Wars 2

A symbol that lets us know those few places gliders will not deploy (certain caverns, etc.)

Celtic Lady.3729:

I don’t know that I can say I regret it yet.

If, however, a month, 3 months, 6 months, etc. down the road, I can’t get my alts through the content enough to even finish their maps, then yeah, I’m really going to regret this purchase.

To me, content is really only fully worth its money value if I can play all of my characters in it.

My thinking is slightly different for similar reasons.

I’m glad I pre-purchased. Currently … putting aside whether people have valid reasons for liking the design or not … I am playing the game as the developers intended it and playing while the maps are full with other players who are engaged – doing events, hero points, mastery points and the like.

I strongly suspect these maps will quickly empty over time and people who wait to buy HoTs will mightily struggle with unplayable content for quite some months until the expansion gets both a rethink and revamp based on the dwindling numbers.

Champion Pocket Raptors with little champion snipers riding on their backs.

Not complaining but … some damage is darn near unavoidable though. If you are in a narrow passageway with enemies that can summon minions that race around you in circles knocking you down and they have a damage aoe thrown on top for laughs , well that’s that.

I’ve just got my mind around the fact that if I’m running around solo, occasionally I’m going to die from time to time in ways that don’t always feel fair.

Enjoying the new areas a great deal. But to pretend like all situations can be dealt with by new builds and couple of extra dodges and the like is bit disingenuous.

edit: kitten filter once again.

I also play a DD. Snipers are the worst … but in a complicate the battlefield fun sort of way, not a change or remove from the game sort of way. I get sniped down on occasion. More often though when that gigantic target appears above my character’s head, I dodge a couple of times so quickly I move into some other issue or AOE I didn’t see at first.

The new content hasn’t been out long enough for me to determine whether it was made too difficult or if I need to adjust to the increased level of challenge. Could be either, and even then what is too easy/hard for me is different for someone else.

Here’s what’s interesting: every last aspect of the expansion is more difficult – the map, mob density, the things that teleport right on top of you and kill, the mobs with that have aoe poisons or adds, the near one shot snipers, and so on. When it shakes out I wonder if “average GW2 player” (“average” as in demographic, not skill) will learn to enjoy it or reject it completely. I don’t see there being a lot of middle ground.

Edit: the filter thinks the synonym for “determine” that starts with “as” is a bad word.

Cameirus.8407:

leftyboy.9358:

Maybe stupid question, but why not just run past mob packs you dont want to fight?

you cant. Most have some form of blink attack, or slow, or teleport you back…..

And often they are placed in narrow cliff side corridors. In numbers.

My issue is (and it may just be my issue) after he teleports the second time off to the left somewhere, I can see the mark on the mini map but not see clearly where he went. Standing still means death so I try moving in the general direction but just die any way. And die. And die. And die again. And die one more time for good measure.

It’s the only time in my entire life I ever rage quit anything.

If I’m surrounded by a group of players: 8

If I somehow lose that group of players: 3

So … it’s not the memory. Did the swap out thing and came up with the same results. Shame, I was kind of hoping it was hardware – that’s easier to fix. Some weird issue (potentially) in the software that effects – whatever the actual numbers are – one in two thousand or similar is likely to never be resolved.

Disabled the reboot, it took took a few hours but the system still shut down.

That said, I’m ruling out the PSU. The system shut down last night on my thief character and whenever I select it from the character screen the computer immediately shuts down again. I am, however, able to pick any other character with no problem. I am also able to go back and forth between characters without issue, and back and forth between other games without issue, but once the thief is selected again: complete shut down. Whatever that is, it is not the PSU.

I ran a memory test which shows no issues. I will now follow the suggestion of manual checking the memory sticks.

As clearly stated before, I’ve not discounted any suggestions or blamed the game. I will continue, however, to supply as many variables as needed to figure this out. I have no stake in which outcome is correct; just want to play the game.

I am not discounting any solutions until I run through them – but – just to supply more info: it’s never happened during moments where there are tons of players on the screen. It’s random. The last time was during a personal story cut scene. The time before that my character was in a near empty Norn PVE zone.

As a counterpoint, I can play through TERA, dungeons and battlegrounds for hours on end if I choose, with no issues. No issues either with the reasonably graphically intensive ESO maxed out.

Thanks for the suggestions. My PSU is 875 watts which I thought would be good enough. I just had all my memory replaced along with the motherboard and SSD about four months ago (which doesn’t mean there can’t still be a bad stick, so I will keep that solution in mind).

In any case, I’ll shut off the auto-reboot and see what happens.

Periodically, without rhyme or reason – sometimes after two minutes, sometimes 2 hours – my computer will shut all the way down and reboot.

• The only time this happens is playing GW2. I can play all other type of off and online games on max settings for hours without issue.
• Nothing shows in the event log.
• Temperature is fine during play.
• When playing, I shut down all non-essential programs.
• I had my hardware recently checked over by a technician because I thought it was a hardware problem. No issues there at all.

Specs:
NVIDIA Geoforce 780 Ti
i7 -2600K CPU @ 340GHZ
16.0 GB RAM
Windows 7 64 bit

Guns and Giblets.9308:

As for the sample size, you can obtain a good confidence interval/level for 300,000-500,000 (or more) players with a survey of 359.

Yes, true. But not if the participants self select themselves into a survey, which is the case here. Tons of articles out there on self selection bias.

If cauterizing a wound, I walk.

If just for travel purposes, run then jump.

8/10.

Why? Personal taste, why else!

My mesmer. First real character which wasn’t a Norn.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Arsenal.2601:

“Ruined” is a bit strong for me, but I certainly acknowledge GW2 as being (in my mind) the leader in the genre.

I’m currently playing through Rift to see what the Storm Legion expansion has to offer. Even in a game as exceptionally well made as Rift, full of dynamic events and innovative approaches to grouping (such as instant adventures, invasions and rifts) I find myself wishing it elements of GW2. The game does much to hide the static nature of its combat, but it is static nevertheless.

I enjoyed Rift for about a month. Then I got frustrated trying to get credit for closing Rifts. The high level folks would shut the rifts down in the low level lands to recharge, and all the low levels just wasted time and got zero reward. It also mattered who you were in a party with, although a whole party of low levels couldn’t compete with one high level coming through and closing the rift. I really love the way GW2 handles participation in events, and I really like the level scaling, so that at 80 I can do whatever content I feel like it without completely screwing things up for lower level folks.

I also found the dailies in Rift tedious. For some reason, I don’t feel the same pressure to do dailies that I felt in Rift (or SWTOR for that matter), and I’m not sure why. Maybe because there is only one daily quest in GW2, and I don’t have to wander around chatting up various NPCs to get it. I really like that I know immediately that the daily has reset if I’m logged in.

Well …. the exact opposite is true now … although not necessarily for great reasons. I am told everyone is on the new expansion continent, but I’m still a little bit under-leveled to go there and see for myself. Accordingly, the lower/mid level zones are fairly devoid of life – a player here and there from time to time*. So, if you want a rift closed, you’re closing it solo. Since most of the repeatable quests basically revolve around closing rifts and killing creatures spawned from rifts or invasions, one can hit that goal without even trying.

Rift remains a solid game. And Trion is a solid company. The thing is, because of GW2 (and to an extent, TSW and Tera), it feels like a game from a previous generation. The enjoyment I derive from it is that of visiting an old favorite, as opposed to a game where I will invest large amounts of my future time.

*the very lowest level zones containing the free to play players, do have some people.

“Ruined” is a bit strong for me, but I certainly acknowledge GW2 as being (in my mind) the leader in the genre.

I’m currently playing through Rift to see what the Storm Legion expansion has to offer. Even in a game as exceptionally well made as Rift, full of dynamic events and innovative approaches to grouping (such as instant adventures, invasions and rifts) I find myself wishing it elements of GW2. The game does much to hide the static nature of its combat, but it is static nevertheless.

TSW: another very good game. I enjoy the combat, build system, quests and the pulp novel feel of the the cut scenes and the world. But I find the frequency of combat and enemy density (combined with lots of knock down mechanics) to be a bit too unforgiving, particularly for ranged weapons. Getting to objectives can be outright frustrating at times. But there’s nothing out there like it, so its refreshing even so.

Tera: Excellent combat. Beautiful vistas. Mind numbingly meaningless and routine quests. And it is entirely possible to play the game without reading one word of text. You kill X of one kind of monster, turn in your quest, and kill X number of slight variation on the monster you just killed. It never varies. And depending on your viewpoint the female armor (not to mention animations) is the best – or perhaps worst – thing in all of games.

When I play these games I find myself missing innovations found in GW2, but rarely is the reverse true.

Leonard.2867:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t think it’s “you people”. I think it’s a small knot of very disgruntled fans. This is the same kind of mentality as fans who will throw stuff on the field of a ball game when their team is losing . . . causing the game to be ended prematurely and with no chance to recover.

Those fans you are referring too are the fans who have either played GW1 and know the philosophy, or the fans who have accepted the GW1/2 Mission statement.

“Read my lips. No new taxes”
-George W. Bush

[pedant] George H.W. Bush. That’s Senior’s career killing quote [/pedant]

The tone has changed radically since the weekend and, as I see it, for the foreseeable future. Here’s my take, as generalizing and speculative as it may be:

The developers/public relations people presented Guild Wars 2 as a true alternative to what many acknowledged as a tired genre. And they were right, the genre is tired. Many disaffected players were looking for just this kind of game and embraced this one whole-heartedly. It was a relief, a refuge. And, as a rule, innovative products that work well have a tendency to create a particularly evangelical, deeply committed form of fan who will defend it to Earth’s end, warts and all (for reference, see: Apple) .

The flip side of this is obvious. Betrayal (real or imagined) of this group is an usually nasty business. Especially when it looks as though the people who bought into GW2’s well documented philosophy were scorned for the very people they’ve spent the past few weeks defending this game against. And, warranted or not in this case, betrayal is something that elicits a very strong response.

The real problem is not just the forums, although they are a real problem, but the very real chance this bitterness may begin to leak into the game itself affecting the majority who do not frequent forums. Again, a nasty, nasty business with relief nowhere in sight.

“Look at me everyone! Look over here! I no longer wish to play a video game! Now let me spend 2000 words to tell you why!”

They serve no purpose except to embarrass the author, if the author were self-aware enough to be embarrassed. They are generally long winded, hang wringing, self absorbed autobiographical tales taking us from the author’s first checker game as a youth all the way to the current game they are quitting. These posts bring nothing new to the discussion, and, by their nature elicit the type of responses that are particularly unhelpful.

In short: it’s cheap manufactured drama tainting all legitimate criticism by association.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Arsenal.2601:

Question: if someone were to run a number of fractals with a number of characters and lose count, where would the “fractal level” information be found, if anywhere?

When you chose the level by stepping through the portal to Mistlock.

Thanks. Gave it test. It would be nice to be able to check somewhere other than physically going up to the portal (hero panel maybe), but that’ll do.

Question: if someone were to run a number of fractals with a number of characters and lose count, where would the “fractal level” information be found, if anywhere?

I was taken out by crab leech creatures, actually. They covered my guardian head to toe all the way to the grave. Gruesome, sure, but amusing.

Some scenery …

A post got skipped. Let’s see if I can fix this …

Beyreva.8769

Male warrior: Eric Bjornson (Eric, son of Bear); Guardian spirit: Bear.
Female Ranger: Gunnr Ulfrdottir (Gunnr, daughter of Wolf); Guardian spirit: Wolf.
Gunnr is also the name of a Valkyrie in Norse Mythology.

Solid names. I particularly like the Female Ranger’s name – Gunnr Ulfrdottir “Daughter of Wolf” seems a particularly fitting Norn name.

Ok, now someone comment on:

Asmodal.6489
hmm i like norna but for a female char…
Asmodarl Stronghold

I enjoyed the article purely because it defines a type of gamer that lies somewhere between the so-called “Casual” and “Hardcore” – “Dedicated.” There is nothing casual about spending an hour or two every day playing video games.

Look, I enjoy reading page after page of wailing and teeth gnashing as much as the next person. I’m only human after all. And panic based on trickles of information reported from largely secondary (even if reliable) sources is an age old and cherished tradition. I’m not suggesting for a moment anyone take that sacred right away.

And, yes, November 16th is long way away -but imagine how much more righteous the anguished howling could be, if you wait until you’re actually holding a piece of this fallen sky, and you know what it actually looks like.

I am having an issue where certain things I’ve crafted, specifically certain insignia, are not showing up in my Discovery Panel. I’ve attached a screen showing the items in my inventory, but not being available to craft.

Information is a valuable commodity, not to be chucked around freely. There exist business models, I’m certain, where free exchange of plans with the customer base is advantageous, but I don’t feel games are one of them. There exist, as touched on, proprietary issues. And, additionally, because of the trial and error nature of game design, it does no one any good to promise things or reveal things that later can’t be delivered on or have to be removed for whatever reason.

Importantly, there are marketing concerns; concerns of timing. There is a balance that is struck between giving out enough information about an upcoming product/update/whatever to keep customers interested and guessing, and not giving it all away too soon that interest peters out before the product is unveiled. The key is to build anticipation to a crescendo right before release, so that when customers are at their most excited, the product is ready to be sold.

I can only tell you how it took me. The moment I hit 80 (a couple of days back, in fact) I checked how much time I put into that character (“/age”) – 110 hours and change. At this point I still had about an hour left to finish the personal story instances and I still haven’t done the “final act” where I assume my character saves the world and Tyria weeps with grateful, coin throwing joy. And I mean it, there better be coin throwing.

For further reference, my crafting skill is at 382 out of 400, and my map completion sits at a quite unworldly 30%, so no unpacking the suitcase just quite yet.

I’ve always wondered if I was slow to 80, or if this number was around the norm.

Does sound vaguely Nordic. I like “Gelra” as a first name better than “Noar” as the last.

I have several Norn. But I’ll throw this one out there:

Anakka Svaarblade.

Lots of letters, particulary “A”

Zones are dead. Servers are dead. Game is dead, dead, dead. Only ones left playing are about 30 people on these boards and ArenaNet employees. And the employees are being made to do so against their will to make the game look like it has more people. They hate the game too. And until ArenaNet fixes the issue where Norn female hair clips through their shields when they run, people – just like every friend on my friend’s list and every guildie on my guildies list – will continue to go back to WoW.

Actually … being unable to see every zone on every server at every time of day, I can only tell you my server seems to be doing just fine, just about everywhere. I have a newly minted level 80 with just under 30% map completion trying to see the whole world, and a couple low level alts peppered across the map. So I feel confident in saying TC is healthy in most zones that I see. That is not to say the population hasn’t decreased since launch. I have noticed that at certain times, a Champion can walk about unchallenged in some places, and certain low level events aren’t swamped with people – just well attended – but that’s the only real indicator I have the pop has dropped since opening weekend.

Raf.1078:

Do you become your character or do you move the chess piece?

This is it in a nutshell.

People who play 1rst person just don’t get that a lot of us play in 3rd person.

I like my gal toons. But they ain’t me. They are cartoons in a video game.

This is the concise nugget of insight the thread should have ended on. But instead it will inexplicably stagger on until it falls down from exhaustion.

It would be an interesting social experiment to see if gender/race/profession (profession, because of the differences in armor type, and how they portray different attributes such as femininity, masculinity, strength or weakness) had any effect on how often a player was helped, rezzed or given more leeway in a dungeon.

I would suspect on some level people aren’t even aware, that it does.

The character is not a representation of me in game (which would be particularly difficult as personality, voice and story direction are decided for you). I do not “live” the game through my characters. Characters are a mechanic in which to experience content and game play.

Once that is understood, choosing a character comes down to a single factor: preference in aesthetics.

5 keys. Which, due to outrageously decent luck, yielded 50-something gold once the scythe staff and crazy looking shield that showed up in the chests were sold.

So … had a great deal of fun doing all the various Halloween things strewn around the world. Had a good laugh at antics of the Mad King and the like. Killed lots of hilarious candy corn monsters – regular and jumbo sized – along with plenty of glowing skeletons.

Increased my gold by 10 fold.

Highly successful event in my book

Munrock.3092:

Good old Mk1 human eyeball? Do some good old maths. If a human used the Mk1 eyeball to get a ban rate of one bot every 10 minutes (and that’s generous considering once botters realise what’s going on they’ll sacrifice bot efficiency for stealth), how long would it take for that person to ban 10,000 bots if they worked a 40 hour week?

I have (hopefully well placed) faith ArenaNet will sort this out. But Krimpton makes a point. Most examples of botting are not singular bots out in the world. The most egregious violators are in groups, and very easy to detect because of their half naked, circular, magic teleporting approach to mob killing.

10,000 bans is a very good start. Nice job with that. But whatever approach is being/will be taken, it should be multi-prong. And human game moderators, cleaning up particularly bad areas that impact the players, should be one of those prongs. A dedicated botting “company” may be able to implement a software solution to a software style detection system put in place by ArenaNet, but a software work around by these pirates will be harder pressed to beat someone trained to detect flagrant botting.

Bots: I’m on record in a few threads as saying I believed bots were a major problem. That said, either because of the bans, or my server transfer some time back, I’ve seen a fraction of their kind.

Racism: zero tolerance is the only answer. One off racist language is the act of a knucklehead and should be dealt with, in the manner it has been. However, giving a guild a racist name, kids goofing around or not, is an aggressively hostile act. Least of which because it involves numbers.

If I’m not mistaken, in the Norn home instance, there is a locked room at the very top of some stairs that looks – although it is very difficult to see – an awful lot like a studio apartment to me. Unless that opens up for story reasons I haven’t reached yet, I always figured that’s what they had in mind. Are the similar rooms in the other races’ home instances?

The dance? Doesn’t work for me, really. I get the joke they were going for though: the juxtaposition of a giant fierce Norn (particularly the full size males) and an awkward goofy dance.

Luckily, my characters don’t spend a great deal of time dancing.

Arsenal.2601:

Add me to the list. 4 times in approx. 1 hour 15 minutes. Started post-patch. Mobile authenticator in use.

Fixed.

2.5 hours, smooth sailing.

I’m 98 next Wednesday*. I’m vaguely suspicious of computers and am certain the Internet runs on steam. I am amazed at how many women here play games, until I remember women can do anything men can, like vote or wear pants. I’m a bit scandalized the female costume armor show more than a little tantalizing ankle, but understand you young people with your young people ways may have different morals than I. And – I’m pretty sure the nonsense words that pop up in the Chatter Text Box thing, like “lulz” or “pwned”, are the foulest forms of street urchin slang.

Even with all that, I enjoy this game greatly. With a life span that may last a few hours more, I don’t have hours a day spend hours in front of a moving picture role playing game grinding away. I like that I can get in, get out, and get on with my life. What’s left of my life, I mean.

*Not 98.

I’m still leveling characters so my plan is more or less the same.

When I start the game, I’m usually one to three levels below the next story point. I look to see where the next story instance is taking place, pick a starting point some far distance from there, and just travel in a round about way toward it, trying to take in as many events, puzzles, skill points, Vistas, and new territory etc. as possible. By the time I get to the Little Green Floating Star, both the leveling and dailies have taken care of themselves.

Let’s see … my female Norn can leap three or four meters with a much heavier hammer poised overhead and swing it down on someone’s head. She can spin with a hammer or great sword at something like three revolutions per second and still move across terrain while doing it. She can swing this heavier hammer underhand and smack a 500 pound creature two meters away. She can battle with Great Sword and Hammer for 15 or 20 minutes at a time and not look a bit fatigued, in fact, brags the entire time while doing it.

But she shouldn’t be able hold a great sword parallel to her body when she runs? Really? At 9 feet tall, 300 pounds of lean, magic laden, muscle? I was having more problems with the fact she was dragging the sword around every where.

No respectable Norn drags a sword.

Add me to the list. 4 times in approx. 1 hour 15 minutes. Started post-patch. Mobile authenticator in use.

Agemnon.4608:

Hard to find any one thing, but for starters in no particular order:

1. Camera is too low and it’s hard seeing anything behind me unless I autorun and switch the camera behind me.

This – and getting attacked from behind by mobs when I was mining, bothered me. So I key-bound the “Look Behind” command to “Z”.

MikeRocks.9243:

The ‘full’ status tends to fluctuate. If you wait until off peak hours, it’ll usually switch to ‘high’ instead and allow you to make a character there.

“Was that your alarm clock? It’s 3 a.m.! "
“… Tarnished Coast … role play … server transfer … so sleepy….”

I’m on TC. Don’t role play, but the role playing is out in force. Particularly Queensdale. If you’re into it, probably worth the move.

coglin.1496:

Man I wish this game had a cosmetic tab like DCUO did. That game was the best I ever played, when it comes to character gear customization.

Cosmetic tabs are nice. They are also at odds with transmutation stones, which I imagine make revenue for the company.