Guild Wars 2

Once again, it’s patch day, and once again, my fiber-optic connection feels like an early cable modem. Speedtest.net consistently tests my download speed (from Austin, TX- same city as the GW2 servers, I believe) at 41 megabits, which should translate to over 5 megabytes per second. Steam downloads at over 6 megabytes per second, so I think my fiber is doin’ me pretty good here. Yet, even when there’s no other network activity, my GW2 launcher is getting a peak of around 200 KILObytes per second when downloading patches lately- 1/5 of a megabyte per sec. This is absolutely pitiful. I should be playing already, not still downloading.

Please tell me I’m not the only one with this problem. I know it’s not my computer. I doubt it’s my ISP. I’m gonna ask some guildies if they have the same experience when I finally get in… however long that takes- the patch download keeps stopping.

The NPC finisher crap has to stop NOW. I’m getting really tired of having to stomp everything in sight. I’ve already either sliced it to pieces with a greatsword or filled its face with arrows, so it should be dead the moment it hits the ground – I shouldn’t have to run up, press F and wait while there’s other stuff going on around me. I can understand the point of the downed state for players, but NPCs do NOT need it. It only serves to annoy, and to get in the way when I’m trying to revive other players.

Agreed. Also, if you switch characters, you should retain your slot on the server for at least a few minutes. EDIT: I just got screwed out of my server’s first Teq kill because I thought A-net might have been at least this thoughtful- I retain my slot in a party, why not my slot on the server?

AND KICK THE AFK’ERS! Nobody should be hogging up spaces in Sparkfly Fen that are better reserved for people ACTUALLY FIGHTING!

Getting almost a scam a day this week, all trying to get my GW2 password. Hafta say, it may be a good sign in a way- only a successful game would see its playerbase get scammed so hard. I certainly don’t get any phishing attempts on my old PWE account, but I still get spam regarding WoW, and I haven’t played that in years.

I am curious how they make the sender address appear genuine. I’m worried if I block them, I won’t get e-mails from the real thing…

Yeah, that looked fairly convincing- URLs and everything looked fairly legit. I was even nervous using my regular bookmarks to come to the forums.

Will change my password, tho, just to be certain.

So I’ve got two stacks of some types of siege sitting in my bank wasting space, because for some reason siege is soulbound to each character. This not only wastes storage slots, it kinda limits the stuff’s usefulness when I wanna hop on a different character. Making siege account-bound would solve both of these problems.

Even better would be to not bind siege at all, to account OR to character. I could then donate that siege to my guild bank, where the commanders who call for it could easily access it. They both need and use more siege than I could ever provide, since I mostly run with what I can win in the jumping puzzles.

I know about the ability to drop siege kits and let other players pick them up, but this is cumbersome and prone to griefing. I’d like better ways to manage and distribute my growing pile of siege.

Way to kill the momentum. Trying to win a war here and a PATCH interrupts the fight. I’m all for festivities, but DON’T push this stuff thru when EVERYONE is in WvW fighting for a head start.

Looks like the wing issue is gone now, as of the Dec 5 patch. A thankfully short-lived bug; I like my hawk…

So yeah, my ranger’s hawk has spawned a second set of wings with the latest patch. As have my raven and eagle. Oddly, my owl’s DNA is unaffected by this strange mutation.

Anyone else seeing this?

@ hobbes: When CD had SMC (for all of maybe a half hour… tops), I saw E.Bay in one tunnel and Maguuma in the other, so no alliances in this fight yet. That castle kept flippin like a supply camp, tho, epic fighting all around.

The main issue I’ve been having with FOTM is the respawn system. Half the time, after you take a fall, it returns you to the checkpoint stone-cold DEAD. Not downed state, DEAD. Then when people come back to rez you, THEY CANT SEE YOU TO DO IT! The ‘Restart from Checkpoint’ button needs to pop up WHENEVER SOMEONE DIES, not just when the whole group dies. Or at least have an Asuran waypoint at the start of each fractal. Mass suicides to rez a single player are NOT fun.

Also a huge pain having to do all three fractals in a level over again when someone leaves. I don’t think any other dungeon has such issues with finding replacement players. Six of seven fractals for the monthly so far, and most of my runs are ruined by glitches and crap that waste what time most people have for playing. People end up leaving, and then you’re back to square one.

You people call yourselves developers? You don’t even have a public playtest server like EVERY OTHER MMO OUT THERE, so you end up tossing players headlong into half-baked content. IMBECILES. I’ve half a mind to demand a rebate, so I can go buy Skyrim like I should have when I had the money.

Amen and Amen to the OP!

As to the folks thinking they should do w/e they want: that mentality, spread over a sea of rookies and fools, can lead a realm to ruin. I’m all for playing your way, but WvW is a COOPERATIVE activity. When one steps thru the portal, they should be ready to COOPERATE with those trying to lead their realm to victory. If you’re an achievement hunter like me, at least wait til Friday and run the puzzles then.

Might I add:
Thou Shall Not direct others NOT to take supply from a camp. Your upgrade attempt is futile; the odds dictate that camp shall flip- at least once, perhaps twice- within the next hour, and your time and money are better spent defending and upgrading the keep or tower down the road.

Its not just Cursed Shore, its half the game. I’ve determined that Arenanet is a company of sadists who hate their customers, because they’re constantly trying to give us headaches by making us grind against hordes of mobs that respawn almost as fast as you can kill them… if you CAN kill them.

Was trying to get to the skillpoint near Blighted Arch in Malchor’s Leap today, and it’s impossible to even get to the statue alone. Enough mobs to make SURE you’re dead on top of the statue constantly stunning you. I believe the statue’s stuns are linked to the Legendary Priestess of Lyssa nearby, but I’ve never seen a big enough group doing the event.

Hell, even some of the storyline quests seem to require groups. Waves of over-armored undead slaughter the useless NPC ‘backup’ in no time at all. Try to rez the NPCs, and you get eaten alive by unfought mobs, so you’re stuck with a very aggravating grind in half the quests.

Another observation- I used to be able to solo most veterans, even on my semi-squishy engi. Some where a bit of a challenge, but most were definitely doable. I even two-manned a champion the other day with a random ranger while exploring Dredgehaunt; again, a challenge, but an enjoyable and still-winnable one.

This new island? I just saw an entire group- five people- slaughtered by a SINGLE VETERAN KARKA. The regular mobs are bad enough- five stacks of confusion from a single drake, regular karka hitting like bricks, not to mention whole PACKS of them being thrown at you in events- and Ive heard the champions are even worse; having seen the opening event and how long it took for the zergs to bring the big guys down, I’m inclined to believe that. I’m loathe to even GO to the island, because I spend more on repairs than I make doing the events. If I were earning endgame-level rewards in exchange, I wouldn’t mind, but as we all know, Anet doesn’t do rewards very well.

Seriously, Anet, what kind of sado-masochists do you people employ? I generally enjoy a challenge, but this is no fun at all. Keep us soloists in mind next release…

So when people said they wanted some end-game challenge, I don’t think they had getting insta-gibbed in mind.

Yesterday, it was the awful jumping puzzle in Lornar’s Pass- I’ve had to put up some fights thru a few puzzles, but falling nearly to your death only to get finished off by a griffon is rage-inducing. And if they didn’t kill you, they’d definitely break the stupidly fragile bomb you’re supposed to carry to the end, so the cycle just ended up switching between being griffon food and simply being screwed.

Today it’s the new island- if the first untouchable underground worm doesn’t kill you, it’ll snare you so the next one DOES kill you. Downed state is a joke, because their buddies are gonna swarm all over ya- I often wish there was a ‘Just END It’ button in downed state. Then there’s areas you can’t even RUN thru- the regular mobs will tear you to shreds with ranged abilites. I’m used to running Orr- hell, I’ve gotten pretty good at dodging over-armored zombies. I even kinda take pride in my lil Asuran engi’s running ability. But this place kills me with minimal effort.

These aren’t the only places. And I know I’m not the only one with this issue- several reviews I’ve read have complained about the game’s many one-shots or no-escape scenarios (every time I run into an accursed thief in WvW, for example). Being insta’d in a dungeon is annoying enough, even when your party has your back; it simply shouldn’t happen in world gameplay, where you are often going solo. I, for one, want REAL challenges, ones that at least give me a fighting chance before killing me, not impossible headaches. NONE of this content is worth the lousy rewards the game currently doles out, and even WITH good rewards, it still wouldn’t be what I call fun.

I bought this game to play with a RL friend, but then he got a job and I’m trying to make the most of this with my current guild. And the (lack of) balance between challenge and reward is only ONE area of concern/annoyance. PLEASE, Anet, give me a reason NOT to regret blowing $60 of birthday money on this crap when I coulda gotten Skyrim.

Blizzard, Cryptic, even SOE had testing servers for their games- WoW, Star Trek Online, and Star Wars Galaxies respectively. Arenanet needs to take some lessons from these long-time game makers, and actually have people test stuff before releasing hordes of bugs into the live servers.

And its not just the bugs, either. It’s the nonsense gameplay decisions- like getting nearly insta-gibbed by mobs I can’t even/barely have a chance to attack. Yesterday, it was the horrid jumping puzzle in Lornar’s Pass- you fall almost to your death, and then one hit from a griffon ruins your run, either by killing you or destroying the stupidly fragile bomb you’re supposed to carry to the end. Today it’s the underground worms in one part of the new map- they hit you for nearly all your health, then you get locked in place so the next one can finish you for sure. And there’s plenty of other situations where players can get ganked sumtin’ fierce, or where the mobs are just ridiculously tough. I mean, seriously, does Anet hate its own customers or something?

Being insta’d is no fun in a DUNGEON, let alone in a world map. Don’t put this kinda crap in, Anet- we want CHALLENGES, not headaches.

Server transfers are killing WvW. After two weeks of being hammered by Tarnished Coast zergs, I was hoping Crystal Desert could have some actual fun. But barely one night in, and it feels hopeless. It’s no fun being in one of the only guilds left on the server that does organized WvW. All because the sore losers can just wander on over to a winning realm every week.

It’s been long enough for people to get to the same server as their friends. Kill the free transfers NOW.

Every other MMO I’ve played pushed their updates when very few people were on, like around 3-5am in whatever time zone the server was in (this window could be broadened to, say, 2-6am on multi-coast/multi-time-zone servers). You’d start up the next day, download a patch if available, then game on pretty much uninterrupted.

This game? Just when people get to some serious playin’, POOF- a patch. A rather rude buzzkill, whether you’re in the middle of a dungeon, doing some questing or crafting, or trying to bust down the walls of a keep in WvW. And that’s not to mention the server strain of every active player trying to download the same patch- this time around, it took five minutes just to get a semi-stable connection; took five more for my DL speed to peak. Wasn’t my end- played some music, browsed the web just fine. So I can only assume the Anet download servers were having a bit of trouble.

So do your servers- and more importantly, YOUR CUSTOMERS- a favor: schedule these updates better in the future.

PS: Instead of kicking everyone in a WvW match out to LA, maybe kick them to their racial hometown? Sure, I know, warp to the Mists ’n all that. But there were a few shutdowns when I barely had time to get the teleport in before being spat out into the PvP courtyard in LA, alongside 100+ other players…

While having the chat panel off looks nice, it can be hard to read text over certain textures. However, that button is rather tiny, and rather annoying to fumble for while running or fighting, and the panel takes up a fair bit of space, so I don’t want it always up.

My idea- an option to make the black panel pop up on mouse-over (also, while/after sending a message) and then fade out after a few seconds. Just a bit of UI convenience to make a nice interface even better!

How can we be burnt out after a matter of weeks? I played WoW, Oblivion and Fallout 3 (among others) for MONTHS ON END without ‘burning out.’

The OP is right, all that hype and excitement and there’s no friggin’ reward. Three weeks of glitchy quests and excessive mob density to 80 with a bit of alt-ing mixed in and all I get for my effort is a low-paying grind. And you all know full well it’s because A-net wants us to buy gems and spend them on in-game gold. The game didn’t even ship with enough bank space for ONE character, let alone five. And it SHOULD have shipped with EIGHT character slots, so I can try out ALL of the different classes. It feels like I spent $60 of birthday money on a ‘free-to-play’ game when I should have bought Skyrim after all.

So I’m finding that in WvW, my rig can handle being in a massive group on the move, but the moment any action starts and the spells start flying, my framerate dies a horrible death, even at minimum settings. The same thing happens when I go up against dragons like the Shatterer and Tequatl- my framerate is fine until the fight actually starts. Later on in Lion’s Arch, tho, big crowds of people get together for Pink Day, and again my computer is just fine.

The only thing I can attribute this to is the dynamic lights cast by various spell and weapon effects. Some discussion in LA tells me that I’m not the only one who has realized this.

A simple option to switch off spell lighting (with the exception of things like the torches in the Eternal Battlegrounds jump puzzle) would likely make WvW and dragon fights a lot more playable for us min-spec people who can’t yet afford to upgrade our machines the way we’d like to.

Hologramx.6402:

Ignore mob not in combat when you are in combat might be better.

You can always click target if you really want more not-in-combat mobs to join your fight. After all, currently the auto target system is always trying to add irrelevant mobs to your fight even though there are already a few right in front of you hitting on you.

This actually simplifies what I’m trying to say pretty well. Thanks!

OK, another example of the issue I’ve been having

Doing some questing today, and Tab would choose targets that weren’t even on my SCREEN over closer targets that were actually in combat AND in view. VERY annoying, and quite dangerous when one ends up firing at the WRONG Nightmare Courtier, especially when I’m already fighting a group of them.

I know A-net can do better. Just take a look at Cryptic’s targeting systems in CO or STO for examples. And those games are hardly of the same caliber as GW2.

TheUnNamedHero.4167:

You know how you solve that problem? Situational awareness. Don’t want to attack neutrals? Pay attention to what you’re targeting. Don’t want to multi-hit neutrals? Don’t use those abilities in range of them. What you’re describing is not a problem with the game’s mechanics; it’s a problem with player micro. You are fully capable of solving that problem yourself.

While you make a solid point- situational awareness is critical, I know this from experience- better targeting system priorities would still be convenient in chaotic situations. Let’s say I’m fighting two mobs, and one of them goes into stealth or dives underground, or simply dies. I’d expect Tab to switch to the next one in the fight, but instead it cycles thru everything else in range. This is extremely annoying, and wastes time that could be spent DPSing the target I’m actually after- namely, the one currently trying to kill me.

Also, multi-target priorities would be nice when some neutral mob wanders into a brawl with actual multiple hostiles. Sometimes I do want to burn as many targets as possible without bringing in MORE pain.

TheUnNamedHero.4167:

And for people who WANT tab to target neutrals and have multi target attacks hit them so that they can get those wonderful fine crafting materials that they drop all the easier….

Then like I said, at least have it prioritize red-named hostiles over the yellows, so we can kill what’s trying to kill US first, THEN let it target neutrals. Sorry, but in the heat of battle, targeting acuity comes before crafting materials every time.

Also like Aliette’s idea- bouncing shots have tipped odds against me on several occasions. In fact, several good ideas here. Keep up the good input!

I know the game will stop auto-attacking when a new target is selected, but it’s still kind of annoying when hitting Tab prioritizes critter bystanders over the horde of Flame Legion closing in on your escort target. Either keep the system from auto-targeting neutral mobs when obvious hostile enemies are in range, or have it ignore these targets altogether- if you really need to kill that deer, then you can manually click on the poor creature.

Personally, I’ve nothing against most wildlife, but my Tab key seems to think deer and boar are the TRUE forces behind the dragons or something. On the other hand, they do seem to be watching us at times… O.o

I’m a bit of a pack-rat, so I have to agree with the title. That tiny little hole in the wall called my bank is NOT enough for even ONE character, let alone five. While I may eventually be able to expand this space thru gold-to-gem exchange, it’d be nice if I had a little more space to start with, and/or per-character storage for stuff that doesn’t need to be shared (which there isn’t much of, but still).

May hafta do the aforementioned one-man guild in the meantime.

Also, why aren’t certain rare ingredients sorted into the Collection tab like the rest? I’m inclined to hold on to these should the crafting system be improved in the future.

Just died for the second time trying to get to the viewpoint near Echoslab Arches in Iron Marches (rhymes not intended, I swear) due to a combination of mob density, patrols, and flame turrets that don’t stay dead for any reasonable length of time. And of course, you have to be OUT of combat to use the friggin’ viewpoint. Which means I have to kill everything before it comes back. VERY frustrating.

Have had this issue throughout the game, too. Barely able to kill something before the guy I killed before him gets back up. Maybe I’m gearing my engi wrong, but this still seems ridiculous.

It isn’t too much to ask that they lengthen those timers by a few seconds. Or have the system lengthen or shorten the timer based on player density- WoW did this, and this game is capable of SO much more than the game that should not need to be named.