Guild Wars 2

I have never cared about the story of any game. I blow straight through all the lore, story lines, etc and just want to play. This is especially true in MMOs and I will admit that I always speed-click through dialogues just to get the achievements – until now. Well done, Arenanet! Give your writers a raise and keep the drama coming! The cut scene at the end was gorgeous as well. Keep those coming also!

As a now displaced member of Tyria, I would be more than inclined to purchase a Royal Terrace pass.

……wink wink nudge nudge

No one else has these problems?

As the title says, I am of the opinion that grouping needs some immediate attention. About 50% of the time when I try to join a group with /join, nothing happens. More than that, I should be able to just right click anyone’s name whether it be in chat, my friends list, or guild roster and do the same thing. If the group is full, then I should get an error message, but the option should always be there. I have also noticed that most of the time when I mouse over names, they are almost always “offline.” I know for a fact they aren’t and they aren’t set to invisible either.

I can’t imagine the programming implications of trying to deal with this with a game that allows cross-server grouping, but this is basic functionality. Please fix this as soon as possible.

havoc.6814:

What Anet wrote:
“With a blinding flash, a crackling of sound and a whiff of ozone, the Aetherblades have landed.”

OP’s reference:
“The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone and the lamp lays forth an unparallel glory”

There is no plagiarism here. Nothing has been stolen. It is not even close. Claiming this in public is defamation of character.

Eeeeeasy tiger. It was a joke. Someone has a case of the Mondays.

(inb4 stolen from Office Space)

ManiumX.4735:

I don’t know whether to congratulate you for catching that, or ridicule you mercilessly for knowing that movie so well.

You sir, are a unique and special snowflake.

The funny thing is that I can’t remember anything remotely important in life, but those kinds of details just stick out.

Ok…which member of the marketing team was watching “A Christmas Story” at work?!

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/62370/Christmas-Story-A-Movie-Clip-Ralphie-s-Dad-receives-his-contest-prize-.html

I would really like (but am not expecting) a response at least acknowledging that something is very wrong with JQ BL. Whats going on Anet?!

Yup! That’s the BL I just got kicked out of.

Reset night (5-17-13) was…interesting. I watched/listened as massive groups of people were disconnected from WvW. Some were getting error messages when their queues popped. People were just constantly cycling in and out of WvW all night long. I just gave up for the night. Today, I go into a BL with no queue, but still have lag issues in my first battle followed promptly by a disconnect. What is going on Anet!?

The more I think about this, the more it irritates me. Arenanet has said in the past that they don’t like it when players “farm” instances or content. They have gone out of their way to make goals achievable if enough effort is put into those goals. Legendary weapons are a bit over the top, but again, if you work hard enough and give it enough time, the goal is achievable. The only sure-fire option for the molten jet pack leaves a player at the mercy of the trading post. Even in Super Adventure Box, you could run the instance enough times to get the skins you wanted and if they happen to drop while running it, well then that was all the better. Why has Arenanet suddenly changed the way they do things?!

any official response on this?!…..

http://www.gw2db.com/items/77038-decorative-molten-jetpack

We only have 2 weeks to possibly get a jetpack!? Why aren’t there tokens like with every other dungeon with items that we might want for skins etc?

Getting kicked out of an instance because some idiot rage quits is beyond annoying. Please fix this ASAP!

I am hoping they announce:

“JK!…here is yer quickness back!”

Give anyone that worked on this a raise!!! It has been a blast so far!

To the OP and all military personnel in Tyria, thank you for your service to myself, my family and this country. I wish you all nothing but the best and that you find your way safely home.

fix the stupid skill lag. spamming a skill for over 60 seconds is kitten kitten

Whats going on in WvW lately? There has been massive skill lag no matter how close you are to a large group. Many players in my guild just give up after 5 minutes in WvW due to this. Also, whilst not a big deal at all, my aqua-breather stays on for at least 10 minutes after I have exited the water. When I look around, a lot of other players still have theirs on as well. Culling is bad enough, but culling and not being able to do anything makes WvW horrid.

katniss.6735:

Sounds like exploiting. There’s no other reason for a bottom rank tier to end up in tier 1.

We have people on our borderlands today buying keep upgrades 30s before an attack, then spamming the remaining supply into walls and rams. It’s cheap to cheat (it’s what, 5s for merchants? And that wastes 600 supply). It’s amusing when tier 3 servers need to sabotage. It’s like the orbs all over again. Oh, and then there’s the consumable spam.

Kaineng has moved up so quickly in the ranks because several large WvW oriented guilds transferred in just prior to guesting being implemented. Draining a keep of supply before an enemy takes it isn’t cheating or exploiting either, its smart tactics. I am guessing that everyone that kills you must be cheating as well?

A few Mesmers in my guild had raved about how awesome Runes of Lyssa were in conjunction with Signet of Inspiration. Before a push in WvW, pop Mass Invisibility and the signet, and bam! – 5 people have all boons for 5 seconds for the push. Hooray! OP!

…….we still died.

I am just not seeing it. Its useful for me when I have to run into the middle of a zerg and drop a portal, but other than that, I feel as if my guild/group would get more mileage out of Runes of the Undead or Runes of the Centaur. Has anyone else had success with this? Make me a believer?

Deathspike.1870:

Correction; AION has a deferred loading system in place. The stuttering you’d experience was due to the character information packet which would cause each model piece to be selected and added to the character instance. The actual loading and combining of the model was done on a deferred basis, but that game could load a large volume of information from the file disk at once. AION also created caches for models completely decompressed and thus devoid over file seeking and decompression (as opposed to GW2). The amount of bandwidth consumed was very intense due to character states being re-send at regular intervals, which was much worse due to Chanter mantras spamming the line. In Gelkmaros it often happened that you’d encounter one another with 200 on 200 (without exaggeration, as damage tracking tools clearly highlighted) without as much as stuttering.

Thank you. I honestly didn’t know the process went that in-depth. It would also explain why AION ran much better on an SSD.

I would love to hear an update on the situation from Anet.

nudge

I am fairly sure I understand why they introduced the culling system. When I played AION, fort battles and other heavily populated events were also dreadful. In this case, AION servers sent all information about your environment to you at once and let your computer handle it. It was very processor intensive and GPU intensive depending on your settings. Essentially, instead of people appearing and disappearing, you froze for a second or two (sometimes much longer) depending on how quickly your computer was able to process all the information that was just thrown at it. This was obviously just as annoying as culling in that instead of not being able to see what was happening, you simply couldn’t do anything at all until your computer had finished figuring out what was going on around you. To ease this effect, they allowed you to turn off character rendering by pressing SHIFT-F12 and all you would see is a bunch of names running around. When you selected a target, that person was rendered, etc.

Now, this could cause problems on a few different levels for Guild Wars 2. First, the game relies a great deal on visual cues. You react to an opponents skills by watching their tells and keeping an eye on your debuffs. AION had a very intense system log that would spam written information about what was happening around you. This wouldn’t necessarily be a huge issue for me in WvW because there are so many visual cues happening that I mainly watch for AOE circles and my debuffs, but other players may not agree.

WvW was conceived as a massive battle with hundreds of players. The awe and amazement of such scale were intended to be a very large part of what would attract players to it. However, I am not so sure that hardware exists (both server side and client side) that can fluidly support such an epic vision. In the end, we aren’t seeing half of the battle as it is anyway due to culling and players are really starting to get angry when battles are lost because of it. Even worse, culling is being exploited(more or less) and even my teammates are disappearing in front of me making it aggravating to simply try and coordinate movements.

I know it isn’t the most attractive solution to Arenanet, but please give us more options with regard to character rendering. Function first – then form!

I know…yet another thread about culling. However, this issue is really destroying WvW. It has gotten to the point that teams are now exploiting culling. We are now told by commanders to keep out mini pets as this will be yet another thing which the servers have to deal with when choosing which objects to send to clients for rendering. Mass Invisibility, Veil and other stealth abilities continue to compound the problem.

The entire culling system is a failure. We should be able to simply turn off character rendering and see only names or some very low level form that represents enemy players. At this point, I wouldn’t care if the entire map was populated with stick-figures! This would provide a solution for people with low-end computers and a fall back solution for everyone in times of extremely populated battles.

This thread should be a sticky until things are fixed. I played last night during reset and it was worse than ever. As I was following my commander, he would disappear and reappear at random along with at least 3-5 other players at any given time. Members of my own team were disappearing! This drastically affects my ability to do what I need/am supposed to do when the person I am following disappears.

My understanding of culling is that local video settings do not have all that much impact. However, I took all of my client’s settings down to their lowest values last night just to see if it would make a difference. I also turned on team colors hoping that would help. None of this made any difference.

I also thought they were simply going to turn culling off?

In any case, they should give players the option of turning off character rendering completely and just show names. I know this flies directly in the face of their artistic vision, but sometimes function must supercede form.

Nice job on Magg’s room. It was challenging but not impossible to accomplish without a group consisting of only warriors. The new way point mechanic isn’t even an issue if you tab around and find a mob to rally off of.

To everyone at the account support team, thank you very much for your quick response. I was able to get my account back within 24 hours! Stellar job!

I think it is time to revisit the events which must take place and be finished before certain dungeons can be entered. When addressing the night-caping issue in WvWvW, Arenanet stated that they believe a player should be able to play and experience all content in Guild Wars 2 no matter what time they were available to play. I also remember when dugneons were first discussed (amid much criticisim), it was stated that dungeons were designed for well-cooridinated groups utilizing voice communication, etc. This would mean that a group of players that works well together would need to be able to play at the same time. This is hard enough as it is. Throw in the events. I takes much more than one 5-man group to complete the event before Arah can be opened. The CoF pre-event is easy enough, but CoE can also take more than a single 5-man group. This means that now we not only need 5 people that work well together and available to play at the same time, we now need several other groups that want to do the same dungeon at the same time to help us get into the dungeon we want to do. More often than not, doing Arah or CoE never happens. Almost every time we check to see if Arah is open, it isn’t and when we go to see if anyone is doing the pre-event, we only see the local Risen. The same thing happens with CoE. CoF is obviously not as much of an issue aside from the irritation of having to wait for the event to start. This is extremely frustrating to the player or group that wants Arah or CoE gear. Could this be looked at?

I feel as if most players would agree that until culling can be completely fixed, function supersedes form. I realize Arenanet envisioned a glorious battle field with absolute chaos and epicness, but it is beyond frustrating to attempt to execute a battle plan and watch your team die to an invisible army. Even in Lion’s Arch, culling is an issue. Sometimes characters do not render until I have almost walked past them. I can run across a room and if I stop, suddenly I am surrounded by 10-20 toons. It seems like this shouldn’t happen. It takes away from the realism of things. Specifically, in WvWvW I would rather see an army of names or identical toons than nothing at all.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/mike-lewis-on-the-war-against-the-bots/

I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a bot train and the number of in-game spam mail I am getting has been drastically reduced to maybe one or two a week. I was a firm believer that the only way botting could be dealt with reliably was heavy policing of servers which of course isn’t very cost effective. No solution is perfect and I am sure there are stories of innocent players getting caught up in the mix. However, one such player that I know of personally had his account restored in under 24 hours. Again, probably not the typical, but the bottom line is that the efforts put forth by you and your teams is making a drastic impact. Bot threads in the forums are also practically non-existent. To Mike Lewis and all at the Arenanet security team, a heart felt thanks and massive congrats! Get some sleep and happy holidays!

osicat for president of teh mesmer nation…just sayin

;-)

Tallis.5607:

Selling specific dyes would be a HUGE change in their business model. Currently, they appeal to the gambling instinct of some people: people buy unidentified dyes because, hey, maaaaaaaaybe they get lucky. This appeals to a very specific type of player: the gambler. And we all know what they say about gamblers: the only one that wins from gamblers is the house.

I do not think it would be smart of them to abandon that busniess model.

But, yes, it would have been smarter to sell the keys (the item that probably sold the most) as last item.

Good point. Bad example on my part. However, I do have one more specific suggestion which is one I would be willing to pay 20 buck for. Two words – loot pet!

…the Black Lion Keys if you had sold them on Sunday knowing that the Black Lion Kits weren’t going to be part of the sale. I don’t suppose you guys could re-run that sale?!

Also, I would love to see Arenanet expand on their shop. Please don’t go crazy like other games have. However, I would easily spend some cash on skins, specific dyes, functional pets, etc. I love the game and want to contribute to its development, etc, but would only spend money on things I felt were of value and more permanent. I don’t know about other players, but spending real cash on in game currency just feels like a waste as there is nothing semi-tangible for my money. It also feels….wrong. I will do it with left over gems, but I really want to spend my money on other stuff.

…and pause a bit…

You created an awesome game – one that I plan to be a part of for a really long time. The Halloween event was a blast and there is still so much to do and so many projects that I want to work on. However, judging by the reaction on the forums I think its time to step back and admit that maybe you have bitten off a little more than you can chew. I will admit that I have no idea how or what is involved in running an MMO or designing one, but at this point things just feel rushed and unpolished. Furthermore, and I think a lot of players would feel the same way, I would have been more than happy to spend some time on a test server trying out this event before it went live. I would be more than happy to do that for anything that needs testing! I was kind of shocked that we were already getting new content of this magnitude considering the game launched only 2 months ago. It just seems like simple logic to realize that it would be a bad idea to implement new things that could cause problems before old problems are fixed first. Take a breather!

Is anyone also having an issue with doing zero damage?

I have been an active player since launch, and one of the most impressive things Arenanet did in the first week of the games existence was the “State of the Game” updates. I think everyone can remember the first few days when we didn’t even have a trading post due to unanticipated problems, but Arenanet kept us as updated as possible. It seemed like they knew that the first week of a game launch was crucial to keeping players and made it a priority to keep them informed.

I strongly urge Arenanet to reimplement this.

Arenanet launched a massive game all at once. Huge maps with tons of dynamic events and several dungeons along with a level cap of 80. Obviously this is a massive undertaking. As a gamer but also a programmer, I can barely imagine the amount of gliches, bugs and problems that can come from throwing something this huge onto a total of 52 servers spread all over the globe. I would set my hair on fire. I would hope Arenanet hasn’t but I am sure a few employees have pulled some out, overdosed on caffiene and started nervous twitches.

At this point in my post I want to say – to all Arenanet employees, developers and designers, I give you epic kudos and a heart felt thanks on an amazing game!

That being said, I know and I believe most players know, that bugs and hiccups are going to occur along the way. Solutions will be easier for some problems compared to others and may not come as quickly as we would all want.

We all know that the culling issues in WvW and bugs in some of the dynamic event chains are a few of the items frequently mentioned in the forums. I would love to see what Arenanet considers its priorities and which fixes are on the way. I know that a time frame can’t be given because its just impossible to accurately predict such things. I would also like to know the things that Arenanet doesn’t necessarily consider a problem and why. I really want to see the awesome communication efforts Arenanet put forth in the first week after launch. It was because of those efforts that I told my friends that “this company kitten rocks.” “They even stopped selling the game until they could make room for all players wanting to play!” “Not only is the game ‘that good’ but the company behind it is even better!”

@Osicat
First of all – unreal man. The videos are awesome!
I do have a question, though. I noticed you spend most of your time in videos in small groups going against small target groups. Do you stick to this kind of pvp mainly? Do you ever help siege a keep or a castle? The reason I ask is that I tend to use a focus for my off-hand for two reasons. I like the extra swiftness ability and I like to be able to pull idiots off of walls and down into whatever zerg I am a part of. In other words, I didn’t know if you tended to switch off-hand weapons depending on what you are doing at the time.

This is just a question and not really a complaint. But why has Arenanet chosen to do updates, patches, etc during prime time gaming hours? It doesn’t affect people that are in instances, but definitely affects those that are fighting world bosses and those in WvW. I was just curious as to whether or not there is a specific reason.

I had problems with this again last night and this time it was in Lions Arch when there were not very many people around at all. At this point I have done everything suggested by technical support – updated all drivers, reduced settings, etc. Can we get an update from someone on this issue please?

TL,DR: Please give us the option for a FOV closer to that from the Mad King Instance!

After playing some WvW and doing some events with the gliched FOV from the Mad King fight, I must say that I will cry when it goes away. I know that not all people have computers that can handle it. I KNOW it will cause an influx of tech support tickets when idiots insist on the maxed FOV without the hardware to back it up. However, (as stated in a previous post) if you also give them the option to turn off character rendering it should help alleviate some of that.

The bottom line is that with any FOV increase, you are also going to take a performance hit. There is just no way around that. Its simple logic. Asking a computer to render more of a three dimensional world will require more time to do so. This means decreases in FPS. I would make players aware of this. Give them options (like no character rendering or decreasing textures) to offset the increased FOV and keep them closer to a desirable FPS. When all else fails, have that form-letter response ready to go for the tech support staff!

In all seriousness, I implore Arenanet to give us an optional FOV closer to that of the one allowed in the Mad King Instance. It is absolutely amazing to be able to play the game this way.

Can we have this FOV?!

Okay, seriously. I know that in a WvW situation, a FOV like that would make my computer cry and bleed. However, we need to be able to see what is going on around us. From what I have experienced and read, this game was meant to be played on a massive scale with literally hundreds of players around me. The FOV changes are a definite improvement, but in my opinion, still not enough. Also, culling problems are still an issue in heavily populated WvW battles and events.

That being said, I know we can’t have it all. Trying to render characters and their skills with a massively wide FOV is just too much for most computers to handle. I get that. What I suggest are two things – allow us to turn off character rendering but still see the titles that appear above them and allow us to turn off skill rendering.

I know this flies right in the face of Arenanet’s artistic vision, but the truth is I would be willing to sacrifice those things to be able to see who I am fighting and the actual size of the force that just came through the Garrison gates behind us. I want to be able to get things done in game and nothing is more frustrating than being killed from someone I can’t see.

One final note. What about raising the camera angle? Instead of putting my toon dead center on my screen, what if he were lower? This would allow more of a view for things like the awesome dragons you guys have created. It’s really sad that, even with the enhanced FOV in the Shatterer fight, I can’t see that whole dragon.

Same here.

/15chars

I submitted a ticket and the technician had me update my graphics drivers and actually wanted me to decrease one of the graphics settings via my nVidia control panel. I did everything but decrease my graphics settings. I have an EVGA GTX 680 so I find it hard to believe the graphics card or any other part of my system can’t handle the game at max settings. However, I will say that the problem is happening much less frequently.

That being said, can we get an update from either Ashley Segovia or anyone else about the status of this issue?

I can’t help but think that this issue is also related to the “invisible armies” issue and slow character rendering issues in highly populated and active areas. Also, this issue was never apparent at launch or in beta which is really strange.

I am using a Razer Naga Epic and I never use it wireless – it is always plugged in via USB. As is stated with other players, it seems to be an issue that happens more frequently the more activity there is around me. For example, it is horrible during events and in WvW. I have tried reinstalling drivers, switching USB ports and even using an old generic Logitech mouse and I still get the same issues.

I am having issues when I attempt to right click with my mouse and pan left, right, up, or down. Occasionally, it will not pan at all which means my toon doesn’t move in that direction and I end up aggroing another 5 mobs. I have noticed this happens more right after I have zoomed in or out with my mouse wheel. I noticed in the last patch notes a camera issue was fixed. Could this be the culprit?

I am a lvl 80 mesmer. How much toughness should one shoot for when running dungeons vs pvp? Anyone figured out the exact formula as to how it works as a game mechanic?

ComeAndSee.1356:

Thanks Robert. I like your approach to giving patch notes updates. You sound more like a player than a developer.

+1

Hi all. I have been checking in on the Dungeon forums and to say the least, its a little depressing. I see a lot of people having some real difficulty just as my group is. What I am also reading is that he dungeons were designed to be difficult especially in explorable mode. I am very much up for a challenge, but for the most part, my group had been less than successful. What I am asking for is help. I want to work at it, get it done and get some awesome gear. So, lets break this down into sections.

1. Instance Name
List the name of the instance, whether its done in story or explorable mode and which path you take if done in explorable mode. Currently, the hot instance seems to be CoF, but I would like to know about any of them.

2. Group Make -Up
My group is currently a thief, guardian, mesmer, elementalist and a wild-card slot for the last space. What classes do you find work the best for whatever instance you are running?

3. Builds
I am all for resetting my traits over and over again if necessary. What builds are you finding work the best for the instance you are running? What skills do you slot? Is it necessary or helpful to purchase some rare-level gear from the trading post?

4. Strategy/Tips
This is where my group and I are still adjusting. Coming from another MMO, one is used to a dedicated tank and healer. Guild Wars 2 is obviously different and I want to know how best to get the job done for any particular instance. I know dodging is key at certain times and I am still playing around with that. What else would help? I get extremely frustrated when I get killed in one shot and so does my group. How is it best to avoid that? Obviously we are doing something wrong and we want to know how to do it right. Information specific to certain bosses and dungeons is also helpful. Videos would be great!

Again, we just want to work at this and get something positive accomplished. I sincerely appreciate any positive/helpful feedback anyone is willing to offer. See you guys in game!

I agree with the health pools, but I disagree with a boss being able to 1 shot you. A boss should never be able to 1 shot you unless the fight has been going on for an extreme amount of time or an ability is tripped or something. Dieing repeatedly and quickly is not fun. Even if there were no repair costs, it still wouldn’t be fun. Its annoying.