Guild Wars 2

Confirming as well. Since this patch I have tested multiple days and the Leader of the Pact III effect is not working as intended. The icon appears to show the effect is active and the speed boost visual effect also appears but the movement speed increase is not working.

Have tested this as well yesterday and today and can confirm the movement speed bonus is not working as intended.

Complete genius! I also LOVED the song! Thank you so much for the amusement and the good music! The music has definitely been a highlight for the whole game and this totally made my day as soon as it started!

+1 Would very much like to see some version of this implemented.

+1 This is much needed.

Completely agree! Love the first two ideas and the one added for the system message from MithranArkanere! +1

The main reason I am favoring the prediction system, despite its imperfections in action, is because the process for listing and buying right now uses the basis for such a notice. You get dynamic reports on what the cheapest current listing is or the highest current offer. This depends on the accuracy of those reports but if those reports aren’t accurate I am not inclined to believe a sales log suddenly would be. What would be nice would be to get this data reported to you when you’re making a listing something in the form of X% chance to sell by X hour on X date. I’m personally predicting this will be wrong a certain percentage of the time but it would be valuable for anyone not inclined to do the math to produce the estimate. It’s at least better than just crossing your fingers and hoping to be right.

If this prediction system will be included I think it should also be shown on the Transactions tab in the TP and report updates to the prediction at reasonable intervals. I’d extend this to include item sales history when the item is selected and its information is expanded.

Making the system more dynamic and tying it to the market’s condition at that moment is a better predictor than relying only on history from past sales. I updated my original topic to actually recommend both of these strategies because I think people can use both. They would both fail to predict actual market results some of the time but you can’t avoid that. When someone invents a way to accurately predict the future 100% of the time we’ll have to look at migrating that to economics. Until then you just have to use the smartest strategies available to you. This is, unfortunately, an issue of what would be the best presently available system rather than perfecting the system.

I think your alternative is also intelligent. I’m not certain the projection estimate would be that much harder to implement but I do think your thought is a good idea. I do also prefer, as you do, to make my own estimates and would continue to do so even if projections were offered to me.

Okay, here is one example…

Currently catalogued on the TP is the item Sword, level 80, rarity Basic. The TP reports in the initial catalogue window and the initial sales window that 0 of this item are available. This is not true. Selecting the “buy instantly” option reveals that 1 of these is available. It is presently listed at a price of 3s 38c. The vendor price of this item is 35c. Should the seller actually sell that item to some kitten they will make a nice profit. No kitten has yet offered to be this seller’s victim. In fact, most kittens may not even be aware the seller wants to victimize them because I doubt that many people use the “buy instantly” link to check the original statement of 0 available listed in the catalogue. In contrast, 122 kittens have offered to accommodate any seller of this item by making custom offers ranging from 36c to 38c. My projection for the sales rate of this item given those factors is “slow”. Given these factors I would vendor the item 100% of the time. I would not consider this much of a loss to anyone because you can still get the equivalent crafting supplies somewhere else and the item is of literally no significant value as a weapon. If this situation for this item continued for an extended period of time, let’s say one month, I would consider the item to function in the world most consistently as vendor trash. So now you encounter the problem that the item is marked as white. Attempting to place a bid of 1c on the item returns the comment “Unit price must be higher than vendor value”. This disallows the bid and my bid is not allowed again until I place a bid that is at least 36c. 38 of the kittens ordering this item placed that bid. 59 placed a bid of 37c. The remaining 25 were generous enough to bid 38c. What I am noticing is that the statement “Unit price must be higher than vendor value” is consistent with the thought that selling an item on the TP must be more worthwhile than selling the same item to a vendor. Maybe I am wrong about that being the actual reason for this feature but I am not wrong that the statement would be consistent with this thought. The actual listing process is not though because, as you said, there are also taxes to consider. When you say, “They want to give sellers a profit? Really? So they just, what, forgot that they charge 15% in taxes and fees?” I must concede that this conflicts with the intention I believe that they have. It does not make sense and it was half of my original post recommending that a fix be implemented to correct this inconsistency. I am giving ArenaNet the benefit of the doubt that they actually did forget that they charge X% in taxes and fees. If I do not do this then I must believe that someone at ArenaNet thinks it is funny to have the system work this way, enjoys hurting dumber players, and this situation constitutes some kind of developer on player griefing. Which is not something I think will be tolerated if this discussion is noticed.

Frankly, the main reason I believe ArenaNet must want sellers to make a profit is because if they don’t I consider this an antagonistic attitude toward their players. You can think of this less as a wish and more as a demand. I won’t be very happy if I figure out they are trying to make their players look like fools and setting them up to make a mistake in the game market. I don’t consider this funny or clever. Therefore I will prefer to think for the present that the problems with the listing price and the custom offer price constitute an accidental oversight. My reaction will not be positive if the management of the situation ends up convincing me otherwise.

Hippocampus.8470:

Would you seriously argue that therefore low-level consumables are “junk” that should be turned grey and only sold to vendors? Could it be instead that the suppliers are severely overestimating its value and as a result are putting far too many on the TP for sale?

I am not sure that I would not be arguing something like this. Although I would likely actually do something else to solve it. For example, you’re citing byproducts of crafting here. Rather than turn them gray it occurs to me that you could also make a barter system to enable trading a certain number of them to crafting vendors in exchange for crafting items that would normally require karma. This is one idea anyway. You could also add a function to the TP similar to what I suggested before and via this means you could add a column to the listing process that informs the seller of estimated projected listing time. I am actually already doing this before I decide to sell something. If I think the item will sit on the TP for an unreasonably long time before it sells then I don’t list it. This is rare but I do calculate it. Adding something that notifies the seller of this consideration would make the process a little simpler for players who don’t like to think that much. The last sentence I’ve quoted actually shows a point of alignment in our thinking. I don’t consider someone who would do this to be either very clever or very aware. This sort of thing was what I had directed my earlier comments about when it is the seller’s responsibility to be smart. I do still think though that having a massive number of these items is not a problem in itself. The problem is really the low comparative usefulness of the items. This remains something for the dev team to review and determine whether those items should be replaced or another way to use them should be added. The one thing you obviously can’t easily do is lower the number of them because crafting is what is generating them. I also don’t think you can really tell people that you can’t list that now. You could provide them a tool that advises they probably shouldn’t list it now but you can’t disallow it.

I had not been aware that all servers use the same TP. This does make it a little more confusing for me and I apologize that I don’t have the right point of reference to easily understand your concern. I’d like to but what you’re saying doesn’t have much in common with my experience. Not only low level whites sell decently well for me. Rather than exchange a lot more confusing comments on it I will go look at listings for these and try to analyze the trends to see what you’re talking about.

Hmmm, okay, your comment does appear to involve something I had not calculated. You’re saying that demand could be low, supply could be very high, the price could be at the absolute minimum, and simply due to the large numbers of items the one that you are listing would take a long time to sell?

(I’ll ask this first and continue in another comment.)

Hippocampus.8470:

None of those items are useless. They just aren’t useful enough for people to pay more than the absolute minimum for them. And that will always be the case unless they get rid of mid-level whites, blues, and greens entirely. Which seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do.

I’m confused. You seem to have directed this comment as if you were describing specific items. Were you continuing to discuss items you described as being slow to sell from your earlier posts? I was not. I was advocating a function to be added to their tracking of items in the game. If they already have something like this that would be great. I’m only saying I can see its value to the team for evaluating whether an item needs to be updated or replaced and for watching data relative to stat usage and character builds.

I’m also not sure how things are working on your server but I am doing pretty well selling white items at 2x, 3x, or even 6x profit. Blue and green items don’t sell as well but I don’t feel like I can’t sell them for profit. A few items don’t sell well because of stat combos that few players would want. I’m imaging most of the whites, the blues, and some of the greens I sell are being salvaged. There is no way that many players are visiting the TP to buy these for outfitting their characters unless you’re talking about the lowest levels. So I think the TP is benefitting a lot from crafting in the game. It will be a thing to monitor whether such items do continue to be useful for crafting. I also don’t think I would panic if they only sold for the minimum listing price. I would become concerned when they don’t sell or the demand is very low. Then its time to ask the team to look at how useful these items are. An item no one wants either shouldn’t be in the game or should be designated as junk loot.

This is all actually somewhat beside the point of my topic though because we actually have the minimum listing price now. My topic was aimed at helping the GW2 team notice there was something happening with these custom offers and the calculation of their minimum listing that didn’t fit. If you wish to argue for the removal of the hard minimum I would suggest you start your own topic to advocate that. I doubt your thoughts will get the right amount of attention while mixed with the other comments in this thread.

Hippocampus.8470:

No, all it indicates to me is the intent to prevent people from buying low on the TP and then selling to vendors for profit (though admittedly that wouldn’t justify prohibiting vendor price bids, just the ones below vendor price).

You went a step too far beyond the origin of the event. The buyer doesn’t occur first. The seller occurs first. There has to be a reason for a seller to want to sell on the TP. You’d have to count on morons wanting to sell on the TP AND tending to sell low to be concerned with this. I don’t believe a significant number of players would do this if they can more easily profit from a vendor sale. After all, the vendors are right there and you even don’t have to travel to pick up your vendor profit.

Why would they want to discourage that? These items keep popping into the world (through crafting and loot), so presumably they think it’s a good idea for at least some fraction of them to promptly disappear back out of the world, whether that’s through salvaging, Mystic Forging, or selling to a vendor. If too many pile up in the world, they become truly worthless, and no one will buy them on the TP for any price. We’d just see more and more items with ever-increasing piles of seller listings at whatever the minimum permitted price is.

Crafting, salvage, and the mystic forge make it so that items do leave the world in meaningful ways. Unnecessary vendor sales simply trash useful items. The system allows for it but clearly is not designed to encourage it. If you take the idea that an exotic item is spawned, which should have value to someone, and a scenario results that makes it in any way desirable to prefer to sell that item to a vendor then something is wrong with the game economy. It’s better to allow for or even directly cause overstocking of those items than manage the economy in a way that encourages selling them to a vendor. The example scales down as you reduce toward white items and crosses a line when you hit gray ones. Once you hit gray the developers don’t and should not care. The items actually are intended to be junk and sold to vendors.

Items are only worthless if no one buys them at all. They aren’t worthless because there are a lot of them. They’re not worthless because their price is low. They become worthless when they become useless. This is an issue to take up with the devs over the existence of an item, or its present status, given the community’s need for that item. Having a minimum listing price as suggested guarantees that they are worth at least some profit if they are also useful and therefore desirable to buy.

No. The hard minimum is not a win for buyers. Keeping supply high and prices low is only a win if those prices are actually allowed to reach equilibrium. They never will when there’s a hard minimum in place. (And again, I think the reason for the minimum isn’t to guarantee seller profit, but rather to prohibit buyer profit by immediately vending anything they get on TP below vendor price.)

I’d still like to know where you’d get a mass of players who would list the items that would be bought up and mass sold for this exploitive profit to the vendors. Step 1 would be that a player loots the item. Step 2 would be that the player decides to sell that item on the TP instead of at a vendor. Step 3 would be that the player stupidly decides to list the item for less on the TP than they could get from selling to a vendor. Step 4 would be that another player would be watching the TP to catch this kitten decision and take advantage of it. Step 5 would be the exploitive player getting to do this multiple times. Step 6 would be that the original seller/s would never wise up.

This issue also isn’t entirely about keeping general supply high. It’s about keeping a supply of useful items higher. This is also being balanced by the fact that the more useful items are also more rare. White items are plentiful. Orange are not. The more useful the item, the more the system should encourage it to be listed with the TP rather than sold to a vendor. To encourage this action there must be some incentive and a minimum listing that constitutes at least a small profit is a decent incentive.

I’m more inclined to think that the desirable performance is rather aimed at producing a price range for TP sales. A higher supply will help push average sale prices toward the lower end of that range. This also leads me to believe that items which are more rare are therefore considered appropriate for sale at a higher price. This tends to favor the acquisition of orange items by higher level characters and scales down. These characters will also appropriately tend to have greater funds to purchase those items. This should be considered a win for buyers for two reasons. The item will tend to be affordable at a certain level range and the item will tend to be available for purchase.

I am cool with everything that’s in the game so far. What I would like is for the team to continue to add body types and character customization options. I think that it will be good to keep going and take seriously doing a nice heavier model for each race (or a few) since some people want that.

I don’t primarily play this class. I did choose to build my Guardian using the greatsword because it was very fun to play. The greatsword had a great feeling to it and very fun rhythm. When I saw these changes in the patch notes I frankly found it baffling. I still logged on and went to see what the actual effect was. There isn’t a lot to say about these changes that would be positive. Perhaps some of them can be worked out and you can do some ironing on your character to compensate but I am left with the major screaming problem that the changes made cannot have had the fun of Guardian players in mind. Of course I do not engage in PvP at all. I have no idea whether the earlier design caused problems here. Apparently it had because I see that mentioned. What is really confusing to me is that this is such an odd and irrational way to fix that problem. Why change so much? Why completely reinvent what many abilities in the Zeal trait line do? Why not just scale/change the effect of retaliation itself? This change is more like throwing a wrench in the machine. It’s not subtle and it’s not an elegant solution.

I also caution you. There is a statement here that reflects the old way of thinking in having classes locked into certain roles. It has seemed consistent to your new ideas to believe that each class is capable of fulfilling all three roles if the player chooses to build their character that way. Which should mean that the Guardian should have access to a trait line that makes them a high damage character. There shouldn’t be any way to say that if a player wants to do damage that they must play a certain class. That’s a major step backward and it is important that you stay focused and not let the lingering remnants of an outdated attitude influence you to undermine your system and reinstall the old holy trinity. Make sure that what changes you make will make the experience of the player playing that class more fun.

If it’s a problem in comparing the Guardian to some other class then I remind you that “overpowered” can be solved in two ways. You can nerf the class that’s causing the problem or you can buff the class that’s having the problem. One of these solutions is obviously superior. The first way of solving the problem causes more problems than it fixes. The second way fixes more problems than it causes. A nerf doesn’t only affect PvP. It also reduces the effectiveness of a class in PvE. A buff increases the usefulness and enjoyment of a class in PvE and can simultaneously improve PvP balance.

Hippocampus.8470:

Most of the greens and nearly all of the blues that sit there with tons of sell listings 1c above vendor price don’t sell very quickly at all. If they raised the minimum, they’d move even more slowly, with the added cost of a higher listing fee for the higher price. Now you’d have an unsellable item you paid 5.75% of vendor price to list, instead of one you only paid 5% of vendor price to list.

This is worth a special address because it is an intelligent question. My answer is that this is the moment where it does become the seller’s responsibility not to lose money. A seller should be aware of the value of the object being listed as a practical value. In other words whether someone will buy the item at any price. If you are consistently listing items that don’t sell even though you’re listing the item at the absolute minimum price then the item is undesirable and you’re trying to move a bad product. This is not something you can fix by moving the sales numbers around. What you should do is address a complaint to the GW2 team that the item has not sold at the minimum price and this probably indicates that it is not a practically valuable item. There are really a lot of reasons why the team should take note of this. It could be a problem with the individual item or it could be a problem with a stat the item possesses not being seen as worthwhile. It definitely is something that they need to know about because they’ve spawned something into the game that is not seen as useful by any significant number of players and does not practically differ from junk loot.

Actually, I am going to go ahead and add this on as a suggestion. To avoid having unmovable items on the TP, which constitutes an item which does not tend to sell even at the minimum listing, the TP should have some kind of tracking which calls for item review after significant failure. So that a minimum listing with no sale notifies the team after a certain amount of time and can be looked at to evaluate its desirability and usefulness.

You’re not arguing with me over this. The minimum listing price directly indicates the intent to require buyers to bid high enough for sellers to make a profit. Actually, it is worse than that. You would be making a profit by selling the item at any price that is higher than the listing fee plus the taxes because the item you are selling did not require (yes, you can buy it off the TP first or buy crafting mats and this would constitute that) any overhead. You can simply loot something in the world and sell it on the TP. So the intent is not only for the seller to make a profit. It is for the seller to make more of a profit than they would make selling it to a vendor instead. It is ultimately ONLY the seller’s option to not profit and you’re right that it is their responsibility to avoid a loss, not the buyer’s. I don’t disagree with this and would understand if the system were designed to encourage sales at a loss. It isn’t. I believe there is a very good reason why and it seems like you probably missed this. Any item that appears in the world and is looted by a player and then sold does one of two things depending on where it is sold. If it sold to a player then the item remains spawned. If it is sold to a vendor then it despawns after the player has elected not to buy it back. This reduces the overall availability of items of all types if selling to a vendor is the most frequent decision. So there are two things that this system has done to discourage the loss of useful items to vendor sales. One is the existence and designation of junk loot. They have even included a button for you to sell these all at once during the transaction. It is my strong belief that this is the only kind of loot that is being encouraged as a vendor sale transaction. Loot is also and will always be the main source of item transactions in the world. It is the fundamental step before you have crafting or player trades. So you notice that the game does not even give you the option to sell junk loot on the TP. Pretty much anything else but not that. On the vendor you’re encouraged to sell that and must make a conscious decision to sell anything else. Then you go to the TP and what do you get? There is a control in place to prevent listing an item at a loss versus a vendor sale. Hmmm. Why would that be there? It’s because they want it to be desirable to sell even white items on the TP. I do this. I sell everything from white up. This means that items that I loot stay in the world. They go to someone who has a use for them. From the seller’s perspective this is the more desirable course of action because you make more from selling to a player that wants the item than you do to a vendor who just eats it. From a buyer’s perspective this is also desirable because the system keeps supply higher and thereby balances out the high potential price any seller could ask for the item on the TP. That is why buyers should be and are required to bid high enough for sellers to make a profit. It lets sellers profit, it keeps the average price of items lower by increasing item supply, and it keeps useful items in the world for players to experience and enjoy. Win-win-win.

I am grateful to be informed that the 1c offer can no longer be made. Thank you. Now we simply need to have all of those 1c offers cleared out and have the minimum listing and offer process reflect including the fee/taxes and the system will have been corrected.

Many items on the TP are receiving offers from players with a custom value of 1c. No seller can match these offers. The game will not allow you to list an item below a slightly flawed calculation of the vendor sale equivalent. Which means these orders will never be filled. Please review this and consider adjusting the TP’s listing and custom offer settings to reflect that buyers are intended to pay at least the vendor equivalent price. Also consider that the minimum custom offer for any item should include repaying the seller for the listing fee and taxes.

Something like: vendor equivalent price + listing fee + applicable taxes = minimum custom offer/minimum listing price

UPDATE: Thank you to ArenaNet for removing the option to post 1c custom offers. Some additional problems have been noticed in the discussion about this (special thanks to Hippocampus for his feedback and dialogue helping to reveal these) and the problem of having the minimum listing & custom offer prices not include all taxes and fees remains. Please update the listing process to reflect this error in calculating the +vendor value as soon as possible.

Additional issues include,
1) The 1c custom offers must now be cleared from the TP.
2) Removing these may cause a problem for some players who previously used the 1c listing to make bookmarks for purchases. Since this was widely done it would seem advisable to investigate including an item bookmarking feature for the TP.
3) A number of items are reported as selling very slowly due to a very high supply and a very low demand. Multiple suggestions have been made to improve this. An item sales history feature to help players avoid market flooding or an estimate of the projected time an item will list could improve this.
4) It is becoming questionable whether some items have much practical value in the game. These items are not presently designated as junk loot and players would therefore experience confusion and frustration when they are ultimately not more useful than junk loot. It has been suggested that a process be implemented to monitor whether items of white rarity or higher are being sold to vendors or experience a very low sell rate on the TP.
5) If any item of white rarity or higher is found to be of little use to players it is requested that these items be updated by adding alternate means of use, a special vendor, or otherwise improving their value to help avoid their practical use as junk loot.

+1 And looking forward to seeing these transactions in the Gem Store as soon as possible!

I consider your point valid MithranArkanere. Would you still object if it were something that expired and went on cool down after a certain period of time? The main thing to me is that it last a bit longer. I don’t personally require it to be indefinite.

Splendid chests should consistently contain worthwhile items. They should consistently be linked to challenging encounters and rewards for completing a challenging encounter should be significant to the participant.

Tactical positioning is a realistic tendency. Players will tend to engage in it. Many abilities in the game literally require it. Examples: Ranger’s +damage with longbow at greater range, Elementalist’s/Guardian’s/Etc. ground targeting abilities, multi-player combos that require you to be aware exactly where another player placed a combo field. This is not only a completely reasonable request it is actually built into the overall game design now and having this anti-exploit feature work this way defies that. This is a cheap way to solve the problem. The mob should move. If the mob cannot move then it should be considered at the same disadvantage as if a player, or multiple players successively, strategically used immobilized commands on it to pin it in a certain area. Including crowd control abilities in a game in which crowd control tactics are discouraged – you can immobilize but you can’t ambush – is a severe logic break.

The entire interface can be hidden (look under your key mapping options) and I am actively playing with it this way. The main issue that I have is that there is far less of a visual damage cue. You get decent audio cues like the character reacting to states, nearing death, etc. but the game doesn’t have enough blood to show enemy damage. I would personally prefer a series of progressive animations that show a deteriorating state in my opponent. My character experiences these animations with limping, stumbling, dazing but the mob I am fighting basically acts the same no matter what.

As far as hiding or unhiding the UI, I am very much in favor of being able to selectively display all UI elements. I am also in favor of dialogues that literally require visibility popping up automatically when called by the player’s action rather than forcing me to unhide the entire UI.

I’ve modded UIs in the past and enjoyed it very much. I do think the UI in this is decent and I am a fan of the style and some ideas. Quest tracking and achievement tracking are very solid. I’m also, this time around, playing without any UI because the game has a very good implementation of that. However, I am very much in favor of expanding the ability to customize the UI in general, move elements, and provide us with the ability to selectively display various elements. Please consider adding in more options and giving more customization of presently available features.

I like the idea of this and am really a fan of the idea of tying such a class to spiritual powers. It’s a very clever concept. I hope some version of it would become available when they are thinking of expansion content!

Very much in favor of this and would like to see it implemented as soon as possible! +1

+1

In favor of providing toggle abilities that produce the effect. I’d like to see this restricted to the people who have unlocked the related skill though and only to Norns. I definitely prefer the town clothes idea over the tonic.

I am in favor of coming up with smarter encounters rather than longer ones. Please consider significantly reducing the HP of bosses and some mobs and replacing that experience with something more engaging, fast-paced, and clever. I feel more like I’m mining while chipping away at a boss than I do when actually using a pick on a rich deposit!

+1

Would love to see this. If it is coming I would really appreciate some official response on when we’ll see it. Please include a comment in an upcoming developer’s statement about the state of the game regarding character customization.

I support the designation of RP servers. At least one each for US and EU. The obvious choices being considered as the prime candidates (Tarnished Coast, Piken Square, and Drakkar Lake).

I support this. I’m also a player who plays without any visible UI. There are many things in the game already which help with this and I applaud the team for coming up with those solutions. The sound and fx feedback are very useful! However, I do think it would work better to allow the elements of the UI to be selectively hidden. I also think that access to stores, mail, contact list, and other things should become visible if called by a player action. They have no audio parallel as events. Having to unhide the UI in order to shop is inconvenient and the action should be understood by the game automatically. Just need a way to temporarily only show the relevant window and then close.

Suggest putting all important UI elements into an option list and with a check/uncheck selection for showing the ones a player prefers to keep.

I support all efforts to increase the ability to customize character appearance according to the player’s preferences. +1

I would like to see the respawn rate be reasonable but I’d prefer to see the mob density reduced. There are simply way too many areas in the game where moving just a short distance in any direction necessitates dozens of combat encounters. Please consider changing one or the other. +1 for reducing either the respawn rate or the mob density.

+1 Please make the hide commands globally effective.

I support this and would love to see more work done to expand the roleplaying and non-combat side of the game. At least one pretty cool idea already made it in for music but I’d love to see much more of it.

Of course this concern already prompted ideas of server transfer in order to avoid or circumvent the problem more easily. The big issue with that is that this solution is really similar to an exploit in my opinion and I’m not inclined to use it. The other is that it does not really solve the problem. There are two things I can think of that would. One is the creation of a PvE-only server where the WvW zones are repopulated with monsters in place of the players. You could even use player classes and AI clones for this as far as I am concerned. My only interest is in not fighting other players. I don’t care how hard the fights are or how many enemies I have to kill for completion. I just don’t want to have to fight players. I would be happy to simply try to run through the zones and not fight back but I have a negative prediction for the success of other players understanding that I am not there to fight them. It does not seem to occur to people that I don’t want to defeat them any more than I want the inconvenience of being defeated by them. An entire server that works like this is a good solution and not difficult to produce. It should be understandable to ArenaNet that there would be people who really do not want to engage in WvW or PvP. However, you would also have to change the way that the achievements system works along with this fix and that would make it more difficult to do both than to just change how the achievements system works. I do not care if there are separate achievements for PvP. I only care that the PvE and PvP achievements are mixed together. I will not pursue any goal that requires you to do both.

There was already a thread about this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/100-Map-Completion-Requires-PvP/first#post164375

There were 9 players in that thread with the same sympathies as the OP in this one. This thread just added 3 new ones. There are 4 people who seem fairly neutral with both threads taken together. There are only 3 people directly opposing the OPs with both taken together.

I would like to have real numbers on how many players would focus on PvE and ignore PvP if they are able. You’re always hearing that PvP players outnumber us and I see the large groups of people that are preparing to WvW at any given moment. I just want to know whether we constitute 1% of players, 5%, 25%, 50%, or (dare the thought) 51%?

Because, you know THIS: http://www.asuralabs.com/serverPoll.php

…Makes it look like we might (?) not be so outnumbered after all.

Jade Quarry is the biggest US server to respond to the poll and the only server besides Blackgate that responded with more WvW interest. The number of WvW players in both cases has only a marginal lead over PvE. The number of PvE players on Yaks Bend outnumber the WvW players on Jade Quarry. The combined number of PvE players on Jade Quarry and Yaks Bend together significantly outnumbers the WvW players for both servers combined. After Jade Quarry, the next three largest US servers are PvE-dominant. The EU servers tell a similar story. Vizunah Square is the largest server and it is WvW-dominant, by a wider margin than Jade Quarry. However, the next three largest servers are PvE-dominant and, in fact, only two other EU servers are (barely) WvW-dominant. Of +47000 players polled, the majority of GW2 players describe themselves as PvE players. This presently constitutes +22000 PvE players. This vs. -16000 WvW players. There are about 7000 sPvP players in the poll. If you added that number to the WvW total the two groups would split about even. There is a problem there though because sPvP players are correlating more strongly to PvE-dominant servers. This is likely to mean that the average sPvP player is actually mostly a PvE player that only occasionally engages in PvP. RP is another group that could have gone either way. You could be a PvP RP player. This is not strongly correlating to the numbers in the poll. Most of the RP players are concentrated on PvE-dominant servers. Those few servers that are RP-dominant also have higher concentrations of PvE players than sPvP or WvW. Actually, Tarnished Coast – making a strong case to be the US RP server – has more PvE responders in the poll than WvW and sPvP combined. Both of the smaller EU servers which are RP-dominant also have this ratio. The PvE players on Piken Square and Drakkar Lake outnumber WvW and sPvP players combined.

So the poll totals reflect the following trends. PvE players outnumber WvW players. sPvP players and RP players are more likely to play on PvE-dominant servers. RP players are much more likely to play with PvE players. sPvP players are more likely to overlap with PvE players than WvW players. (They do not congregate on the same servers.) The average US server has a 2:1 or almost 2:1 preference for PvE vs. WvW. A large number of the EU servers have the same tendency to produce a 2:1 or almost 2:1 preference for PvE vs. WvW. No US server, including Jade Quarry, was able to produce a 2:1 preference for WvW and Jade Quarry could not produce a 2:1 preference for PvP with WvW and sPvP combined. Vizunah Square was able to do this for the EU servers when you combine sPvP and WvW players. 16 servers presently have a 2:1 preference for PvE vs. WvW.

Now, none of that says that if the majority of players are PvE players that these have to be anti- or non-PvP players. However, I would find it difficult to believe that there are not at least as many of us as there are RP players. This has also been an important enough issue to have caused two threads asking for the same thing and 9 players to come in with the same sympathies supporting the suggestion.

I’m not getting any answers on the idea of it being PvE-only but I continue to hear the objections that caused the thought. Most of you seem concerned that this would negatively affect PvP. What if it didn’t affect PvP at all?

This game does not put all PvE content and PvP content in the same box as it is now. A level 2 character can jump right to the Heart of the Mists and receive an instanced level 80 to play with that has max unlocked skills, is handed gear, and is able to configure their traits. This is a separate instance of your character. It keeps your character’s appearance but that build will not transfer back into PvE. You don’t leave the Mists and suddenly become level 80. If the game can, and is intended, to make this logical break in order to convenience players who are not able to patiently wait until they have legitimately reached level 80, learned level after level how to play that class, and earned decent gear before being able to jump into PvP then why can’t we take advantage of that going the other way? Why can’t there be some abilities that focus on PvE play?

I am convinced that the vast majority of cries for class balancing always come from a PvP focus. I just don’t run into people complaining that someone they teamed up with in PvE was too effective and that some of their abilities should be restricted, removed, or reworked because it just wasn’t fair for the monsters. There are always two ways to look at this as well because asking for limitations on someone else’s character are probably motivated by concerns about your own character’s abilities. If all players could always detect stealth with 100% success this completely negates any advantage stealth would provide. Then, because of adding this 100% detection ability to other classes, everyone would laugh at a character using stealth because this is no advantage. Again, ALL of this only matters in PvP.

If you take the question into PvE the issue of balance for such an ability is to be measured against the abilities of mobs. There are mobs and NPCs now who have significant stealth durations. The assassination mission in the Order of Whispers quest against the Dredge allows the player to go stealth for an indefinite amount of time because of the NPC’s ability to grant that. So far this is obviously the only perma-stealth I’ve experienced (I also play a Warrior) but it is in the game.

I have been thinking about this and the way that long-duration stealth would bother me is limited to PvP. This is not because of the actual ability. It’s because I consider asking for the ability in order to achieve an advantage in PvP suspect. I did not originally react this way to the topic or its idea because it was explicitly stated that this was a non-combat ability. Then I weighed various statements from the players’ answers back and forth and have realized I would object to this as either a combat ability or an ability available for PvP reasons.

Therefore my answer is now reflecting that. If it doesn’t do anything in PvP or WvW and it has no combat effect then I am for it. I personally think this can be done. I think it would be a great thing to add for a few of the classes for PvE and role-playing reasons. ZhangoSqu, I believe you should drop any part of the request aimed at PvP or WvW. It is my projection that a significant improvement in player reaction would occur from editing the suggestion to remove this. You may even want to edit the topic title to “Add Longer Duration PvE-ONLY Stealth”. I’d also request that you extend the feature list to include ideas for other classes that would benefit from its implementation. The idea being Thief-centric and having a PvP effect appears to be what is generating so many negative impressions. I’d like to see your idea succeed. Just need to present it in a way that makes it clear this is not about griefing and I think being inclusive of a few other classes makes it seem more generous.

Many armors have clipping issues now. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea of it causing buggy textures. I would admit that’s a valid concern and would make this into more work but I have experimented with going to an armor vendor (also Cultural armor) and mixing and matching armors of different types. The armor preview has not shown any texture conflicts and clipping errors appear to be minimal or of no greater concern than with the existing combinations.

Fenlock.1405:

Ok so i have been thinking about this quite a lot since launch, and i have to say that most of my friends who i have introduced to the game are very surprised by the lack of mounts. Most people I know won’t really consider the context, GW’s history or how mounts should/should not be used. Just that riding a fictional beast/horse/dragon in to battle comes pretty much hand in hand with any major RP fantasy experience.
When i look at the areas in game, i have to consider the feeling i have when i travel through them. I am (after all) on an adventure. I am exploring the world, and uncovering it’s secrets. ANet have crafted this world for us to uncover and travel through, the artwork and detail is incredible! i think we all agree on this. But i have to wonder at the moment how much i am really going to remember about the areas, how much of that “experience” is going to stick with me in the months to come – as i feel i will never “travel” through any of these zones again.

Once i have unlocked all the waypoints, i will simply “teleport” from point to point as and when i need to. If i am farming, i will likely port myself around the map from one batch of nodes to the next. Why run when i can teleport?. But already, i feel like i will never run up the path from say Queensdale to Davinity Reach again, taking in the stunning view of DR’s gate. I will simply port right in to the city, straight to crafter or bankers NPC (or wherever i need to be). The sweeping hills and winding paths of say Kessex Hills, or Gandarran Fields.. I feel like i am never going to follow that road again because now i will simply jump around to within feet of wherever i need to be.
And after a while, Teleporting from one point to the next will all start to feel very similar.. you either arrive next to grass, trees, lake – you don’t consider where you are in the world or what the journey though that area was like when you first explored it. Now, you just click to teleport right to some random space that happens to exist next to the node or NPC you need to be at.

The shatter dragon for example. How many people now will simply portal right in to the camp every 3 hours when it spawns, instead of travelling up the ruined scar on the land, watching the dragon fly above glimpsing it through the shadowy clouds. It all adds to the atmosphere of the area, and reminds us of what a cool area that is. I believe we simply won’t remember these things. I’ll likely remember how cool that big purple dragon was, and that to get to him i had to click somewhere around the top right area of the map.
I am probably rambling now, but i think the travelling element – running/riding through a zone helps to build a picture in our mind of the area, and the adventure we had exploring it.

I would rather teleports exist at the start and end of the zone, and maybe one in the middle for some of the bigger ones. Then we could ride mounts through the area, around the winding paths taking in the landscape the way Anet intended forever more. And we can all collect awesome mounts as we go.

TLDR: Mounts help us remember the areas in game, instead of symbols on a map to be clicked on.

Fenlock has an extremely good point! Including mounts does encourage travel over and through the terrain. It encourages players to at least pass by and witness events as they ride. If we port everywhere then we are bypassing a lot of content constantly. Including mounts encourages immersion and players engaging more directly with the world.

Many of the objections I am seeing are directly related to PvP. Would it work better as a PvE-only ability? If you went with my idea of having it be dynamically tied to movement and terrain restrictions then a solution of designating all PvP areas as invalid terrain immediately becomes available. If the player attempts to use it then it would simply report failure as normal when a player wouldn’t be in an appropriate situation to use the stealth. This completely prevents anyone being ganked because of the ability. I think many thieves, especially role-players, would be happy to have it even if it meant only using it in PvE.

I would like to point out that if it were going to be implemented I think it should be given to more than just the Thief. Rangers and Engineers are also logical choices to get this. Rangers should be capable of some kind of camouflage action and Engineers should get some kind of elixir that could do it. You would probably also need to look at the Mesmer’s ability to generate some long-duration invisibility. I’d say all of these would have the same requirements: PvE-only, non-combat only, terrain restrictions, damage cancels, and probably need to make it an elite skill (skillpoint cost of 30).

Armor rating cannot reliably be identified based on the armor’s appearance. Any armor could be transmuted to an appearance with either a higher or lower rating than the actual armor.

Also, I believe the armor adding flavor to your character supersedes having the armor add flavor to a class. Characters have classes. Classes do not have characters. I can delete my character and remake it as a different class. So the important thing is to follow the preferences of the player and reflect the decisions that player would make. This also acknowledges the real game mechanic in play which presently prioritizes cosmetic value over stat recognition through the ability to transmute items of various levels and base stats into items of other levels and different stats.

You also have to consider the popularity of either side in this discussion. If those against the suggestion are the majority (presently they are the 5/4 minority) they would actually have nothing to worry about with allowing the suggestion to be implemented. If most people would be against it then it would tend not to happen and you would hardly be bothered by it. Besides this, there is no practical value to spending much time noticing a discrepancy between a player’s appearance and their performance. In PvE this would simply be a matter of another player’s taste versus the taste of the individual concerning the appearance of their character. This would not work well as a rule because it is the same type of thought as giving me the ability to prevent you from picking the face you would like during character creation. That decision is actually yours because it is your character. How I dress my character is mine. In PvP this becomes even more silly. Attempting to tell what class someone is or what their stats would be based on their appearance is mildly suicidal. Do you have any good reason to believe that I am using level 0 armor just because it looks like I am? Hadn’t you better pay attention to how I am playing instead? This does not have an equal result in reverse. If most people are for it and would use it then it is actually an important part of character creation that is being excluded by the present system. Even if a significant minority would be for it then it would still be an important piece of character creation. What is even more important is that allowing it changes nothing about the numbers game. Everything would still work exactly as it does now. In this way you can see that the issue is isolated to a cosmetic issue. From the perspective that this is only a cosmetic issue it certainly seems more reasonable to allow it and understand that taste is a personal matter. In the same way that players who would use this would have to appreciate the taste of players who would keep using appearances that reflect the armor type.

I would agree with this provided it could not be cast during combat, that it could be broken by AoE/environmental damage or incidental damage if a player or monster cast in the right spot, and if you added some limit on where it could be activated. For example, make it dynamic and a state that could only be entered if the Thief is not in direct view or full light. There was a mechanic in Age of Conan that kind of worked this way and forced stealth to be used more carefully and in the right places. That would make it a tactical skill and much more difficult to abuse. You might also look into something like having it be endurance dependent. As if moving while in this state would require unusual levels of care and concentration not allowing for it to be maintained indefinitely, only much longer. This especially makes sense if the state did not decrease movement speed.

The character creation process presently allows the ability to select some special items as part of your character’s armor package. This is an interesting part of the process and I feel adds a lot to the initial impression of your character. I’m requesting that a weapon selection be added to this so that every class is able to select their initial main weapon during character creation. This is a very fluid event at the time that you’re deciding who your character is and what they will be doing. It also adds something unique about the player as they load out and may not be using the same weapon as a character of the same class standing next to them. This also lets more experienced players jumpstart their style of play without having to acquire their first copy of their favorite weapon if that’s different from the default choice. Just a small thing to speed up arriving at the first moments of a player loving their gameplay based on each individual’s preferences.

I’m thinking it might be easier to make a case for requesting new armor that is thematically similar to what you want but with an adjustment to conform it to light, medium, or heavy as the target type. I mean, not to ask to be able to to use actual heavy armor items on a light armor user but you could ask for light armor items that have a similar aesthetic or style. (I would personally be more in favor of a proficiency system that let any character use any item or gain any ability but that means throwing the classes overboard.)

It seems that there’s no prejudice against the idea of cosmetic gear because that’s what transmutation does now. There’s also no pure logic dictating gear must match class because there are heavy armors that look like medium or light armor now. What appears to be the issue is the ability to recognize a class because of its armor. This is not a strong argument. It would literally imply comprehensive knowledge of the available armor sets for every class. It also makes no distinction between classes with distinct abilities such as Thief vs. Engineer. These two classes can look virtually identical but they do not play the same way. Warriors and Guardians are not clones of each other but can look very much alike. Mesmers and Elementalists can look alike but I doubt I’d base a comparison of them on their armor. Also, the look of armor has only so much to do with its stats. My gear, with heavy armor, might still be more statistically similar to the gear of a Mesmer depending on how we built our sets. Looking at our gear wouldn’t tell you that. Looking at my gear would not presently tell you whether I prefer +toughness, +power, +healing, +magic find, etc. It would only tell you that I look like a heavy armor user. Good luck figuring out what that means without playing with me or watching me use my skills.

Then, regarding aesthetic consistency, the issue is really whether it will end up being more desirable to allow players to determine their own aesthetics or requiring them to fit a certain standard. I believe most of us would prefer the standard to that freedom if the result was going to be that a large percentage of players made their characters look ridiculous. This seems like a reasonable concern. However, I have one problem with it. The very best way to make sure that no player looks ridiculous is to control the elements from which they can construct their look. So it suddenly seems a little weird to say that a Mesmer would look bad wearing something that would not make a Guardian look bad. If the armor is quality controlled before it ends up in the hands of players then I think the odds are actually against the players being able to make a lot of fashion mistakes.

Lastly, there has long been a holy grail of sorts with character creation in MMOs. Character creation is an absolutely HUGE interest of MMO gamers. It is a really frequently voiced desire to be able to make a character that is personally recognizable. When you encounter my character in the game I would like you to note that character’s name, pay attention to the design of its features, and notice how I’ve customized the appearance of my gear. The further and further you get from features that support this ability the more dissatisfied some gamers become. I’m lucky. The art department for this game has been very good with providing me with gear I like and character creation options that fit my idea of my character’s design. I personally believe the OP’s request reflects a positive attitude toward character creation potential in the game. If you continue to expand the options for this process and provide solutions when players feel unnecessarily restricted it will surely create successful identification between players and characters. That adds so much to every player’s motivation to play their character.

Therefore I support the examination of the process for providing cosmetic armor and the extension of that process toward greater realization of each player’s vision for their character’s appearance.

In a world in which pack animals are used, the Dredge and the Charr use armored transports, and there are apparently helicopters and airships… I’m thinking cosmetic mounts are within reason. I am opposed to them being used in locations that make no sense. For example, the middle of Lion’s Arch seems like a good no-ride, no-fly zone to me. I also think you can’t practically allow them in combat with this system. There are plenty of areas where I think they do make sense though and I would personally support adding them for use in these areas and with those situations. If you add them I propose that they provide a speed boost no greater than 33% and that this not stack with any other speed boost.

Thank you very much! I was looking for this with the game launch when I was originally interested in playing. It’s wonderful to see you are working to realize it now. This is very greatly appreciated! :]

+1 ARENANET <3