Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to quickly post my thanks and appreciation for this event and for all the new content. I had an awesome weekend, loved every moment of it (maybe not every moment, the lag was a pain, but after Friday’s event the lag did not return for me).

I do hope that ArenaNet does not take the whining seriously enough that they stop releasing content like this, because it was awesome and a very memorable experience for me. I had a lot of fun and everyone I know had a lot of fun and the people on reddit had a lot of fun, and I thought mostly everyone would share my feelings on it… until I read the forums.

Anyway, well done ArenaNet, thank-you for working tirelessly to release insane amounts of fun content. You’ve got me hooked on Tyria.

I agree some of the zone designs in this game are borderline sadistic, but personally I think that is what makes it awesome. It almost feels like a real dungeon crawl in some areas, and I love that.

I think that by removing the orbs they are hoping that the snowball effect of one team getting out of control and taking the entire map will be lessened, since the team that controls all three orbs is usually the team that is doing this.

By lessening this snowball effect, in theory, each team might become more balanced and each get to own a portion of the map and thus own a waypoint somewhere around the map, therefore equalizing the effect of waypoints and spawning in when defending.

It might make attacking an enemy keep harder for you, but it also makes your enemy have a harder time taking your keep as well if you own one with a waypoint. This is, of course, only valid if the teams are fairly balanced, so with the orbs gone I think we shall see if the playing field levels out a bit or not… if it does level out, these mechanics might work just fine.

A system is not unbalanced as long as everyone has similar access to it… it remains to be seen how balance will change without the orbs.

On my engineer my rifle shots pierce anything that runs in front of me, even if I don’t have them targeted, and because they pierce hit multiple people sometimes in a line. I think most abilities work that way that anything in the line of fire gets hit if it is between you and the target.

Since my shots still fire when out of range of my target, in WvW I find this to be beneficial to me and my team, as I can still be effective even if my target runs out of range in the chaos. I can also just start shooting without a target and it will just hit whoever is right in front of me.

Just personal preference though I guess.

ToxicToothpick.4396:

Slovo.6140:

Anyone notice that the only ones saying that there are no issues with difficulty or body blocking issues are the ones that actually got through it?

Anyone notice that the only ones saying there are issues with difficulty are the ones that failed to get through it?

Not true… I failed to get through it thus far… failed miserably in fact and am continuing to do so! However, I am glad to see that ANet is adding things to the game that are challenging and that people have a hard time with (including myself). What kind of game is fun if nothing is hard? Not my type of game anyway. It is much more rewarding to conquer a hard task than an easy one. What are achievements worth if you can get them in your sleep? Very very little, imo.

I like a challenge for optional content such as events and achievements. Regular stuff should be balanced for the masses, and even much of the optional content, but true mastery should require at least some difficult stuff. That’s just my opinion, so take it as you will.

Tallis.5607:

Fellthar.4895:

Tallis.5607:

People of Victory.4982:

Has anyone figured out what the mystery part of the monthly achievement is yet?

A DEV officially confirmed that it will be revealed the 22nd, it’s part of the Halloween event.

Please link this, because when I finished the monthly experience survivor achievement, it turned into ? ? ? and my monthly is stuck at 80% completion – did everything else.

Sure, here is the link.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Achievement-problem/first#post468822

That kinda kittens me off that I wasted my time completing that on Oct. 1st only to have them switch it after I did it… they should have left both in. Whatever, moving on.

I am interested in whether they did this on purpose, but it certainly looked like a bug as it switched right after I completed the monthly… if they did this on purpose I am a little annoyed that they let me spend 2 hours completing this before switching it over… what a waste of time.

Tallis.5607:

People of Victory.4982:

Has anyone figured out what the mystery part of the monthly achievement is yet?

A DEV officially confirmed that it will be revealed the 22nd, it’s part of the Halloween event.

Please link this, because when I finished the monthly experience survivor achievement, it turned into ? ? ? and my monthly is stuck at 80% completion – did everything else.

People of Victory.4982:

Has anyone figured out what the mystery part of the monthly achievement is yet?

If you are referring to the ? ? ? under monthly achievement for October. That is actually the place where the monthly experience survivor achievement belongs, and it is bugged for anyone who has completed it and displays a ??? and won’t let you finish the monthly.

If you mean something else, then I don’t know.

Nalukai.8946:

i gotcha; it ticked me off because i was at 99% map and this was only vista i lacked to complete 100% topic over now; but not really.. this issue of teams putting ballistas on high vistas needs to be addressed because it is done on purpose to prevent you from getting them. it has no value at all in this game but to troll; since its within the walls and cant target anything anyways…. it has a wide area of use from at least 20m away that is why they do it because of the area you F you cannot access anything else but that.

Despite you seeming somewhat rude in your earlier posts, I did read through the thread anyway and I see your point.

I’m not sure I agree with it though, but that is just my opinion. I think that putting siege weapons up on a vista to prevent enemy players seems like a legit way to distract the enemy and make them waste time and resources to knock those siege weapons down, even if it is kind of cruel (and kind of funny).

If they didn’t want players to fight over stuff like this in WvW they wouldn’t have put it there. I’ve had the other team place siege engines in the jump puzzles, especially the EB one, and our team has wasted tons of time and resources destroying those to get the jump puzzle back, only to find that the enemy has taken a couple towers while we did this. It was frustrating, but a solid tactic it did seem to be, and I had to give props to the other team for it.

This is only my opinion, and I leave it up to ANet to decide whether they think this tactic is legit or not.

If the OP was talking about a bug, then I mis-understood and I retract everything I said.

The enemies in this game don’t have true AI, that is just silly nonsense.

However, the AI seems smarter than in your average game, even if it is all just an illusion due to the randomness. Enough monkey’s jammin’ on keyboards and eventually the Complete Works of Shakespeare pop out, right?

I’ve noticed on my engineer when I pop Elixir U giving me quickness, but also making me more vulnerable for the duration, I’m often stunned by the Veteran I’m fighting. I don’t pop my cooldowns at the start of battle, so that isn’t it, but again, it could just be coincidence.

I’ve also noticed that I’ve often been rooted after dodging more than once in succession simply to make space cause I’m fleeing desperately. Again, this could only be coincidence and due to me noticing such irritating events more than the ones where nothing notable occurs, but still, it gives the illusion of the enemies knowing what they are doing, if nothing else.

In other MMO’s, most enemies have pre-programmed timers to everything they do, and very little is random. You can time your heal to right after a certain ability, and you know everything will go smooth because you know the sequence that will occur. That doesn’t seem to be the case here. The NPC’s constantly alter the deal, and we pray they don’t alter it any further.

Now for aggro… that’s just one big mind-kitten here isn’t it? Coming from WoW, aggro in this game is like greek… and so far I like it. Some days it seems to make sense, others it makes none… but it keeps things interesting. I would love to fully understand the mechanic, really I would, but I also fear that would take some of the mystery out of it and make the combat less dynamic and more dull. Only time will tell I think.

@Wargrimm: Actually, I understand your point, it just doesn’t coincide with how I feel about the game. No reason that we can’t have different opinions on the issue though.

I prefer the way the grouping is in this game vs. a game like WoW, for example. I have been in large raiding guilds, in fact I was a raid leader and then a guild leader in Wotlk during the Ulduar/ICC days that raided 4 nights a week. In my experience, the sense of camaraderie in WoW is overshadowed heavily by the sense of competition for gear drops, that very often turns ugly and causes a lot of drama among guild members. I’ve had my fill of that type of environment, so I am happy that GW2 removes a lot of the drama and when bosses are killed we all can rejoice that we did it together, not fight over loot.

In addition to all this, I actually like the setup for guilds in this game. You get bonus influence for playing PvE and WvW together as a guild or group, and the rewards from influence have been useful to me, if even they could use a bit of work. I like that the game encourages guilds to play together in other environments aside from raids, like in WoW, which really only encouraged raiding as a guild and little else (until the raid finder came and ruined even that).

GW2 isn’t perfect but I think it is pretty great. Perhaps still ArenaNet will find ways to make grouping even more fun for people, and make the social environment more… social. I think there is always room for improvement.

Anyway, this is just my opinion on the matter, and I am in no way trying to say I am right, just that this is how I feel at this point in time.

Wargrimm.5973:

When you hit lvl 80 and see how things are going on, the game feels more like a single player game, where you go from 1-80 and there is nothing that requires a need for group nor guild, I know the game is still young and needs time to develop but at the moment I think the philosophy of ArenaNet is not so good especially regarding to PvE….

There is a lot of content that is available for the solo player. This includes things like hearts, many dynamic events, exploration, jump puzzles, crafting/farming, and just the general leveling experience.

However, there is a lot of content that is only available to players that want to either group or work collectively together. This includes things like group dynamic events, zone event chains with world bosses (dragons, balthazaar type battles, even some of the lower bosses like the shadow guy in queensdale), 5 man dungeons, spvp, and WvW (well if you actually want to accomplish anything in WvW that is).

I’d say the game has a fairly good balance of solo vs group orientated play, and the experience will be as group focused as you want it to be. If you don’t want to do any of the group activities then you do not have to. However, your gear selection will be limited, your participation in pvp will be small, and you will have to flee from the hard content

The game does not force you to join a group or raid, but coordination between players is innate, it happens fluidly instead of forcing you to try to form the perfect group. You may not like this, or you might love it, but that just comes down to personal taste I think.

I eagerly await a fix for this issue. It has essentially resulted in the game becoming unplayable particularly in WvW but elsewhere too, and so I am very confident that ArenaNet will fix it soon.

I noticed the problem heavily in places like WvW, but even in Lion’s Arch with as few as 10 people around me the issue was very evident. My friend was standing in the same location as me and could see me, but I had no idea he was there until he materialized 30 seconds later. I noticed when he materialized out of thin air that the people (including npc’s) standing where I had just come from disappeared (except the icons over the npc’s heads). This issue is very easily reproducible as well.

It would seem the engine is only allowing a certain amount of character models to be rendered at once, or the radius for displaying them has become very small.

Whatever the case, this problem puts a serious damper on playing the game, and once fixed will restore this great game to its proper status. I just hope it doesn’t take long… cause ya know I gotta feed my addiction!

To Spaceman:

Your insults reveal your nature.

Regardless, trying to instigate me into a continued battle on this subject won’t work. I’m not discussing this subject or anything else with you further, regardless of how demeaning your comments are from here forth. Consider yourself essentially ignored.

To anyone else:

Does anyone have an actual ArenaNet response on whether the server status is based on total population or currently logged on population? I am genuinely curious and it would clear this matter up immediately, as well as be very informative. Thanks!

I said high or medium for all servers in NA. We can agree to disagree and if you wish to pursue this further feel free, but I think this conversation has run its course.

I don’t think you realize that whether it is morning or not doesn’t change what I said at all.

Would it be satisfactory if I referred to the time of day that corresponds to my morning as “the time of day that the servers (in NA) are all medium or high” rather than morning? It still doesn’t change anything.

Spaceman.1063:

“If this were true then the full servers would say full all the time, which is not the case at all. In reality, the status of a server changes throughout the day based on how many people are playing at that time”

This is because server transfers are still free as of this moment and people routinely jump servers to play with friends, or looking for one that hasn’t a particular skill point or NPC bugged or crashed. There are people constantly moving between servers and that’s why you see some of them flipping from HIGH to FULL, and vice versa.

The servers all say medium or high in the morning… so if it was due to transfers where are those accounts going in the morning? In the evening a majority of servers say full.

I cannot see how this can be based on total accounts. It makes no sense based on what actually occurs with the server status.

Edit: If it was based on total accounts with that realm assigned as their home, then in the morning at least some servers would say full, which is not the case. You can’t seriously think that in the morning the population spreads out that thin, and then in the evening it all clumps up, especially with a 24 hour cooldown on server transfers.

Overflow can happen anywhere of course, it just usually doesn’t anymore because the population is very spread out. I see an overflow in Lion’s Arch every evening at some point though. I’m only level 65 right now, so I can’t speak for the endgame zones, but I know the zones around my level are very populated throughout the day with people everywhere but not enough to trigger the overflow usually.

As for WvW queues, Eternal Battlegrounds takes about 1-2 hours to get into, longer on a Friday or Saturday evening, and often the queues to the borderlands are quite short if you pick the right one. I’m on Fort Aspenwood so we are not a top PVP server or anything, but we aren’t bad either.

Searias.9601:

The full servers are locked to new people. GW2 doesn’t go by how many people are on, but the amount of people that has their home server set to that given server.

If this were true then the full servers would say full all the time, which is not the case at all. In reality, the status of a server changes throughout the day based on how many people are playing at that time. My server is high in the morning and full in the evening. You can wait until a full server becomes high and then move during that time. Also, due to the overflow servers there is no queue to get into the server even when full (except WvW).

Coming from a server that is currently in position #2, I saw this weeks match play out exactly as described in this post.

We started in position #3 and moved to #2 as #1 and us started pounding on the old #2. Time and time again I wanted to make a temporary alliance between the two losing servers and go and pummel #1 into the ground… but a concerted effort like that falls apart so quickly without any form of communication between the servers.

On the flip side, if we had communication between the servers that could be easily abused, so I don’t know what the fix is. I prefer the longevity and sense of permanence that the longer matches give, but I would like to see the games more balanced.

All that being said, it is possible that the entire problem here is not the self-balancing system but rather that the teams are not yet matched perfectly (which we know is true), and so this might work itself out anyway with time in most cases.