Showing Posts For Cyrus.8261:

Making GW2 the right move?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I would guess that GW1 expansions weren’t selling that well anymore, I always saw them for bargain basement prices at game stores. So to just make more of the same wouldn’t make sense.

I like the game very much, even if I do miss the strategic aspects of making team builds for me and my heroes. I like the action aspect, I like their decision to mix dps with some support instead of the holy trinity. I love the gorgeous world (like GW1 was back in the day) and the DE system where I can log in and run into some action within minutes.

Their ambitions and hype sold GW2 in great numbers, so I think they did the right thing by thinking BIG and going for new stuff.
They did fall short, with many elements being buggy or barely implemented (traits, guilds, home instances to name some), but I appreciate that they tried and now are fixing the shortcomings over time with the money they are making from the game.

Why Can't I Exchange My Gems For Moneyz?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

If gems had an actual value and if they were still considered your property, ArenaNet would probably need a banking license in many countries. In addition, the various RNG items in the gem shop might be considered gambling, requiring a casino license (or just outright illegal in some countries).

Finally they would open themselves up to lawsuits if hackers ever breach their security and make off with all the loot. They’d be insane to even consider all that.

The only option is a marketplace where one player can sell items or gold to another player for real money, while still putting in the EULA that all items are property of the game publisher and only a “right to use” embodied by the virtual item is traded.

You’d have to check the EVE Online or Diablo 3 auction houses license agreements to see in more detail how something like that is structured.

6 servers Very High, 18 servers Full

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

The fact that servers go from full to high at off-peak times strongly suggests there is a check for recently active accounts. Even if it’s “active” anytime in the the past 3 months, that number would still decrease at the end of peak-time when some people logged out for the last time three months ago.

However they can’t completely discount the inactive accounts, because some might come back at Christmas time, so those might be weighted at 25% of an active account, to make a guess.

My DUSK gone on my bag!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Your log shows you forging another sword right after receiving dusk, it would seem you threw Dusk in the forge instead of the cleric’s greatsword you received just before Dusk.

Account Restorations - Update

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

This is great news! Thank you for releasing this vital customer support feature!

There’s one thing missing in the FAQ though that makes me wonder…

Suppose I’ve been hacked on Dec 1, had my account cleaned out and have since rebuilt some of the items and wealth I had. Should I cash out everything I own before requesting a restoration and send it to a friend or Guild bank so I preserve some of my rewards from the period after I got hacked, or will that flag the receiving account as being involved with gold selling?

Accidental Salvage

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

There supposedly is a trick with a new character and transmuting the mask onto a white quality item that can go into your bank and be picked up by your original necro even though it says “soulbound”. I haven’t tested it, but seen it in several threads on this subject.

Letters with Accent Marks

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

For the players that use a US International keyboard layout (very common in the Netherlands), there is a much easier way to type accents:
Type the accent key (e.g. ` or ^), nothing will happen. Then type the letter you want it to be on. If there’s a match, you’ll get it. (so ^+ e = ê but ^+ p = ^p)

About enemies resetting/invulnerable...

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Pathing mechanics for NPCs in GW2 do seem rather basic and wonky, especially underwater which seems plain bugged.

The invulnerability mechanic itself is to prevent fights from being reduced to “find a piece of terrain the mobs pathing algorithm doesn’t know how to reach and press auto-attack to win”. It’s a decent way to implement such protection, but too noticeable in GW2 because of the crappy pathing.

If you make mobs take cover or run out of range, you don’t solve the problem, because ranged characters can then yo-yo the mobs at range by stepping into/out of a bugged piece of terrain. Trivial fights again.

An alternative would be to lets mobs teleport on top of you whenever they can’t reach you. That’d be quite painful if you are trying to run away and jump up on a ledge. Honestly, making them turn invulnerable and leash isn’t that bad an option.

Authenticator Questions/Concerns [merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

It used to be that way for a few weeks, and then ArenaNet listened to the people that prefer convenience over security and changed it so that you don’t have to enter a code when coming from remembered networks.

I prefer the old way, still hoping they give us an option for that.

Did the patch break Orr drops ?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

ArenaNet doesn’t explain or detail changes related to exploits or farming nerfs, mostly because they seem to think that it just encourages players to find a related exploit or similar farming spot.

Every farmable Personal Story quest has been nerfed so far, I’m sure this was intended. They’re just not meant for that, so I don’t mind.

Illegal Gold, Power Leveling and items

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Also, check your computer carefully after going to such a site, they usually come with trojans and crap so they can visit you after you visited them.

Authenticator Questions/Concerns [merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

It doesn’t ask for a code when logging in from IP addresses (networks) you previously set to remember while using the email authentication. If you try to log in from a different IP range, you do get a prompt for a code.

Farming the same herb 3x plus?

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

This is probably the gather bonus from WvWvW kicking in. Hit B to see the current bonuses. That % after Gathering is the chance that you get an extra gather from it.

Yesterday’s patch fixed a bug with the bonuses never working for lots of people. If you just noticed this now, you were bugged too. Enjoy the extra HP, damage, healing, gathering and more!

Transform skills - health bug 3/12/12.

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Well, it made mesmers more powerful, so it’s probably already fixed.

Or more likely, they hotfixed it on the Moa morph skills only.

Superior Runes of Balthazar Best DPS Runes?

in Guardian

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Were you trying to talk up Runes of Balthazar on the TP, Xeno?

Unresponsive Jumping @ Dec 3rd Patch

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I just dont get how they bug it while they try to improve and while im impressed by Anet’s developers/software engineers as myself one

They weren’t trying to improve it but to eliminate an exploit that involved spamming jump to wallclimb. That most likely involved extra serverside checks and constraints on the jump, one of which caused the problems.

Suggestion: Automatic undercutting

in Suggestions

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I don’t see how a quick undercut option would improve the situation compared with just matching the lowest seller now.
Sure, if you match you have to wait a bit before stuff sells, but if everyone hits undercut in a hurry, you will be waiting longer and get less for your stuff.

And really, if you’re in a rush to sell because your fractal group wants to push on, you’re not going to pick up the cash in 1 minute anyway, so why not match the lowest and pick up the cash later?

Latest patch did wonders for optimization!

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I’ve noticed an improvement in at least a couple areas. Most notably in the bandit cavern on the west side of Queensdale. I had noticed a while ago (probably sometime in October) that my frame rate tanked in the cave. I was getting 15-20 fps inside it, but 75+ fps outside of the cave, where before there was not a huge difference. This was without a driver update or other changes to my PC. It persisted over a couple driver updates, including one just last week, but today’s game update seems to have returned normal game performance inside the Bandithaunt Caverns.

I bet the bandits in the cave caused the lag with their skills. Someone “fixed” the skills and now all bandits have no cooldowns on their skills! Just browse the game bugs forum if you don’t know what I mean ;-)

If you were going to create an index ...

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

It would depend on what the index is supposed to “represent”. If it’s meant to provide some measure of the economy as a whole, then it would need to include more than just the end game stuff.

What would probably work better would be a set of different indices to reflect different parts of the economy, but I’m not sure how you’d start deciding what these parts are or which items to include in the indices.

I’d like to see indexes for:
- Gathered resources
- High-end crafting mats (globs, T6 fine mats, etc)
- Craftable high-end equipment (lower tiers are byproducts of leveling the craft so not going anywhere)
- Non-craftable high-end equipment (Precursors might need a separate index, though their low numbers might mean the volatility is limited.)

Mail Not Received

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Ask him to check the mailboxes on his characters. It seems that mail on all characters together is limited to 10, even though it shows the x/10 per character.

Bugged World Bonuses

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Checked before going to work: I’m receiving the bonus now!

Thank you very much! I’m finally going to level my crafting when the bonus peaks on friday :-)

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Stop and think: If the database had been hacked, hundreds of thousands of accounts would have been stolen. That is not what happened. Flat out not what happened. The situation has nothing to do with Lion’s Arch, or World-versus-World, or anything of that sort. These are individual cases, and we will work to help the account owners back onto their accounts.

I’m sorry but I have to disagree with your logic. If burglars had magic skeleton keys that could open any house, would you suddenly see hundreds of thousands of houses broken into? Nope, that’d just draw attention to the fact there was a hole in the system. They’d target the houses with the most loot and pick those off one by one.

Just the same, RMTs would only hack enough accounts to collect the gold they’re selling. Hacking thousands of accounts would both reveal the system flaw and hit their own customer base, when people stop playing GW2.

I’m not saying ArenaNet’s database has been hacked, just that your argument doesn’t hold water.

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

few days ago i got 3 email authentications saying that someone from japan tried to access my account wtf

You only get that email after you successfully log in to the client, so someone already has your password! Change it immediately!

Bugged World Bonuses

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

As of tonight I am getting the bonuses finally. As one of the players that hasn’t had them since launch and not server hopping, I believe it might finally be fixed.

Thanks Anet.

Are you getting more health now in LA compared to LA overflow? I’m asking because I’m not totally clear on where the HP bonus should take effect, in PvE or only WvWvW.

For me, it’s still the same everywhere, overflow or not.

Hypothetical Question

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

If you tried that and news got around, the hoarders of GW2 would come crawling out of the woodwork and restore the market in short order while making a tidy profit.

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

@ Cyrus

On Monday my HDD blew up, i have a fresh install of Windows AV and all sorts of protection on my PC, believe me i am very secure with it as being disabled gaming is my life and only hobby. Kinda makes me want to go find another game to play even tho Guild Wars is something i love, just the prospect of having to explore everywhere again, do all the crafting let alone getting my legendary back… its kinda disheartening

I didn’t mean it as an attack on your security, but as a point you might want to take up with ArenaNet’s support, because they seem to say only your own IP address was logged, so it wasn’t hackers that did it, it was you. My point is that that isn’t necessarily the case.

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

If you live alone and nobody else has physical access to your computer, I would guess that you have a trojan onboard that can function as a proxy for the hacker’s GW2 client.

This was the obvious avenue of attack as soon as “remember network” was added to the security system and if this isn’t an example already, it’s going to happen sometime soon. I hope ArenaNet considers the possibility and doesn’t just leave you in the cold.

Are we not allowed to earn gold?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I’m a casual player. I will buy gems for conveniences and fun stuff (skins etc) if I’m enjoying myself. I will not buy gold with gems and if I stop having fun in the game, I will just quit. Also I will not gamble, but that doesn’t go for all or even most casual players.

Are we not allowed to earn gold?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

That’s a very good description of the progressive nerfing of any faster than basic gold income. I really wonder whether it was the extra gold income or the repetitive grinding that ArenaNet cares so much about.

You are however writing from a hardcore player’s perspective: you will do whatever nets you the best g/hour, for hours at a time if you have to. Casual players (like me) are lucky if they can scrape together 1g per hour in open world play.
That kind of income leaves us perpetually broke, playing for a month to craft only an exotic set of armor maybe, and forget about outfitting alts.

I dare say that it’s just NOT FUN playing with such incredibly poor rewards from dynamic events, loot and such. If a decent income could be had from DEs and exploring in different zones, I bet a lot more people would not be speedrunning dungeons. Now, they rightly feel they have to in order to progress.

Colors don't match b/w sets. Brightness?

in Suggestions

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I’ve seen dyes not giving the same color/brightness even on pieces of the same set (heavy Heritage armor among others). The differences are slight, but annoying to me.

Unfortunately, a brightness slider would make 90% of the dyes obsolete, so I don’t think it will happen.

Getting bombed underwater?

in Suggestions

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Most pirate areas have cannons or gun turrets that have a very long range. Next time it happens pop out of the water to see if there’s a giant barrel with a gun pointing at you :-)

{HoM Help} Trying to get from 25-30

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I’d go for Fellowship, the challenge missions are fairly quick to grind out some hero armors, certainly compared to vanquishing all of Elona.

Also, if you’ve saved up Zaishen coins, you can unlock a rare pet like the Black Widow Spider at the Zaishen Menagerie.
Btw, doing the Factions campaign should get you near both the Black Moa and the Imperial Phoenix, making them easy points.

For more points, the Asura/Norn/Monument armors are the cheapest to get.

Blocked/Suspended/Terminated -- Player Comments

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Nov 8 rings a bell, you should do a search in this forum, there were lots of people complaining about the exact same issue.

So if this trend continues..

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Makeover kits have been released. That’s where people are spending their gems now.

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

You are right, I never get asked for auth codes anymore, but managed to grab a different IP address using my phone and it did ask for a code.

Character Transfer

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

What MKKR said. ArenaNet doesn’t transfer characters from account to account.

The trickiest part will be the name. If she wants to keep the same name, you’ll have to delete her character (best at off-peak time) and make the new one exactly 24 hours later when the name gets released.

Unable to verify email address

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Did you check the spam folder?

High Ranked players & Commanders hacked [Merged]

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

If you have spyware on your PC, it’s probably gonna log the game authentication too. If the forum is using the same authentication backend, which it probably does, this is purely a frontend problem which can be solved for the most part by using TOTP two-factor authentication, which definitely everybody should do. It seems reliable considering it has been available for a longer time now and I haven’t heard of any fundamental issues with it so far.

There is a big issue with the two-factor authentication: You don’t get prompted for a code when you log in from an authorized network. You don’t need the two-factor to authorize a network. That makes it easy to bypass when the hackers manage to change your email address, which appears to have happened in the cases in this thread.

Parts of the map not revealing when I go in them

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

The area you walked in, was it a cave? I noticed caves sometimes have their own layer on the map. If so, try to find a way to enter the area above-ground and see if that makes a difference.

Friend got ban for afking

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Was he in a party with you, in the area of the event chains? That might have caused him to gain XP/karma while afk, triggering bot detection.

It’s a weird situation but your friend should’ve logged off to the char selection screen when going for a nap, really.

Your play schedule and what you do in-game?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

About 6 hours a week, divided into 1-1.5 hour sessions.

- Complete the daily PvE achievement on the alt I’m currently leveling.
- Log out to the char select screen because I have to take care of something irl.
- Log to my main, continue completing the level 70-80 zones, joining any events and chains I come across.
- Log out to the char select screen because I have to take care of something irl.
- Run off to explore whatever catches my attention.
- Try to farm T6 scales, give up after 10 kills when I decide it sucks to have to farm.
- Check the TP, curse loudly when I see prices went up more than I gained gold. Apologize to wife for startling her.

My objectives:
- Collect the gold/resources to craft Exotic armor set.
- Complete more zones, try more jumping puzzles.
- Level my favorite alt of the week.
- Explore the awesome world of Tyria and try to solo everything I come across, be it DEs, skill challenges or champion mobs. (tends to be a bit expensive now at 80)

Skill being used without input.

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

It sounds like you hit Ctrl+right-click on weapon skill 3, activating auto-attack for that skill. It will then fire whenever the cooldown is up if you’re in combat and in range.

Ctrl+right-click it again to disable auto-attack.

It could be that Ctrl+shift+3 counts as ctrl+right-click+3, so you’re activating it by accident when you have ctrl pressed too while hitting your skill.

Forum Infractions "Meaningful Contribution"

in Forum and Website Bugs

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

You don’t get banned for posting on the forums unless you repeatedly ignore the more serious warnings that you’re breaking the code of conduct. From your description, you got an infraction but it most likely didn’t carry any “points” that could eventually lead to suspension or a ban.

“Horror stories” usually come from people that have the urge to test the limits of the rules moderation because they consider cursing, flaming and such trivial and want to “win” by having their way. Their trivial probably wasn’t anywhere near most people’s trivial if they got a permanent ban.

(edited by Cyrus.8261)

Total Makeover Kit Live @ BLTC Gem Store

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Hmm, I wonder whether that’s intentional or not. My money is on it being pulled again within hours, just like the last time it went “live”.

Are guild upgrades server-bound?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

When you go back to the old server, your guild will be there with all upgrades intact.

Superior rune of the soldiers underwater bug

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

Just to check: do you have a rune of the soldier on your aquatic helm/breather too? If not, you’re down to only 5 runes as soon as you enter the water.

Cultural armor on a different race?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I don’t think it’s possible, because there most likely are no models and art for the items on another race. Even if you could somehow bug the cultural armor by transmuting it onto a white item or something like that, you’d most likely get a naked toon or a crash when putting them on your other character.

If you could add one weapon to each class

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

A one-handed hammer for Engineers. I guess that might be a mace, but they need to add hammer-looking skins then.

Let's figure out how log-in influence works!

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

I’ve been experimenting with that too, since it’s the main way to gain influence for my personal bank guild without spending.

I noticed the following, logging in each alt in turn:
- The daily count shows the total you gained, but doesn’t add points of its own (on a single-player guild). When the count resets is a mystery, since the hours don’t match at all.

- I got 10 influence per character when logging in, but NOT if they logged in on a map that another alt already logged in at. So if I had two alts at LA, only the first would get 10 points.

- I got an extra character slot before names were released, but haven’t ever seen “6 characters logged in…” despite my best attempts. In fact, it seems to randomly list 4 or 5 characters per day where I got 5 consistently before. Alts beyond the first 5 may not count or even substract from what you can get per day.

-The day after the Ancient Karka event I got “26 members logged in for 230 influence”. My best guess is that all the overflows keep their own count and I got a side benefit from getting disconnected so often.

(edited by Cyrus.8261)

Fastest way to level up to 80?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Cyrus.8261

Cyrus.8261

If you are prepared to spend quite a bit of gold, you can level 7 crafts for 70 levels, I think. It sued to be very cheap before all the bots got banned, but now some points along the way to 400 are a bit painful.

For a cheaper alternative, you could level any combo of crafts (Jewelcrafting combines well since it doesn’t use the fine mats) until you reach around level 40, then go do the dungeons as they become available.