Guild Wars 2

My experience is that this is a problem that exists under the current system. At a lot of levels the disparity in item, trait, base stat curves leads to some really rough transitions. Every ~5 levels you can get a new set of max gear, every 10 the base stat curve adjusts. The last time I graphed it, traits were an every-level thing but had a disproportionate effect around level 40.

This was a real balance issue based on the math. The pinnacle of raw strength hit at level 39.

I haven’t looked at the numbers with the new trait allocation, but I have a feeling that all of these changes combined do a better job of scaling the stats as you level so that aggregate strength has a smaller variance.

Apologies if this has been covered; my searches turned up nothing useful.

That said, when I saw the new stat “bundle” system, my mind immediately started wondering if this is to remedy the issue with how items are affected by level scaling. For those not in the know, under the current system, your modified stats are scaled by the ratio of your base stats at your current level to the base stats at your scaled level, meaning that a level 20 that is in full greens that levels to 21 is weaker since there is no level 21 masterwork gear (except maybe a few karma pieces).

While an Anet response would be awesome, anyone else want to speculate in the absence of confirmation (or want to point me to where this discussion is already happening).

Grumpdogg.6910:

If TotalKarma = TotalKarma – 750 THEN
Give the dude his daily
ELSE
lolno
ENDIF Kthx

That condition always evaluates to false, so it could be summarized as “lolno” since the other branch will never be taken. See? This isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is.

I’m guessing that to implement the daily originally they added a hook to when a player’s karma decreases to add daily progress. Since karma now belongs to the account’s wallet and not the player, somebody forgot to move the hook and on the test server that daily quest didn’t come up during testing.

That’s just a guess, but they fessed up. Thank you for that, by the way. It would be nice to have a confirmed “nobody can get that daily and we will patch it after it is no longer a daily” but I’m happy with the response.

Referencing what a previous poster commented on, the rapid release rate hasn’t really increased the bug count. Most of the old bugs are so minor in nature it is an effort/reward calculation, not a risk/reward. New features introduce new bugs, but if you consider all the skill points that were bugged around release, the events that bugged, and so on… the bug count has really dropped when you filter for gameplay-impacting bugs. I, for one, would not want new content withheld because it might have new bugs; I’d rather have a rocky first week of that content that still allows me to enjoy 99% of everything and have it fixed in short order.

I’m getting the same, but my family members do not. I’d say it is a hardware compatibility issue, but my wife and I have identical computers and she has no issues. Same video settings, pc temperature is fine… but I can’t keep a connection for more than a minute or two.

I’ve seen similar bugs with certain effects not being counted—in those cases logging to character select and back in resolved the issue; all boosts and buffs were accounted for.

Laurelinde.4395:

Agreed…I actually think a WvW map based somewhere like Obsidian Sanctum could be really interesting, with the traps and such. The trouble is, OS doesn’t really feel or act like a WvW map. There are no points to hold or defend, no supply, nothing in common with the regular maps. As it stands now it exists in a weird halfway-between world, part ordinary jumping puzzle, part pvp arena.

I’d like to see those two aspects split: no JP chest, or the puzzle itself moved into the PvE realm with the chest, and keep the map, with some reworking, as PvP or WvW zone. That way the JP-ers get their puzzle and chest, and the PvP-ers get their PvP, without either getting in each other’s way.

Exactly! How awesome would a jump puzzle that connected all the keeps and towers be? Take an enemy tower and you have a shortcut underground passage to their keep—without one of their towers, you could still take the JP route in, but it would be longer and harder. A JP is very easy to defend, but without a presence, or people running supply to it (to fuel traps) from the other maps, it is a back door inside the walls for an intrepid mesmer or havoc squad. This would make it WvW-ey.

Or how about making a sPvP map where the first team to get everybody to the end chest gets a nice reward and wins the round. This might work out better if the three teams didn’t start out right next to each other, but the idea of a 3-way PvP match is not unsound… I seem to recall something like that in GW1 that was pretty popular.

Those would be fun implementations that align with established content types. As it stands, it isn’t very WvW-ey and asking the entire PvE community to queue up for a single zone strikes me as a bottleneck to frustrate the regulars more than an opportunity to lure in newbies. OS shows people the worst that WvW can offer; if you want to attract people, you show them the best; you show them organized sieges, you show them large-scale, epic battles, you show them strategy and teamwork. You don’t drop them into a meat grinder. Indicating that the kite is intended to be a lure means that Anet wants PvE-focused players to attempt it; this is a good idea, but OS is not the place to demonstrate what WvW is all about.

In all the people that assume I suck at WvW, that I hate PvP, that I simply can’t hack it and feel entitled to this achievement….

Nobody has addressed the fact that the JP has no relevance to WvW; it doesn’t play like WvW, it doesn’t affect the scoring of WvW, it plays more like a sPvP map than WvW.

If the goal of putting an objective in WvW is to get people to participate, why not put 3 kites, one in each borderlands. Pick a tower and drop it in all 3; these are attainable goals and actually encourage people to WvW, not sit in a JP and gank people. That tower will suddenly become a hotspot for the week and will probably result in some of the most epic battles WvW has seen in a while.

As it stands, putting the objective in the JP does NOT further the stated goals because the player experience is not indicative of what the dev has very clearly stated they are supposed to experience. THIS is the meat of the argument; that what Anet has done is add a “griefer” playstyle to the list of endorsed play styles because this is the only justification for the chosen layout.

Maybe I am just stuck in the good old days where WvW was competitive but civil; when Yaks Bend let Sanctum of Rall take a fully-upgraded keep unopposed so they could reclaim an orb that had been stolen by a hacker, then SoR let them take it back. That, to me, is the spirit of WvW; competing without resorting to dirty tactics, fighting to win and prove that you are the best, not making people’s lives a living hell so they never want to come back.

I’ve done my achievement; I did it again for my spouse, and I’ll do it again for my kids. It took me 4 hours of waiting in the EB queue for one of those attempts, and a total of about 12 hours. While I was in the JP, I experienced no content that was even vaguely reminiscent of WvW; it had far more in common with playing WoW on a PvP server.

I challenge ANYBODY (Including an ANet representative) to explain why the Obsidian Sanctum should be considered a part of WvW. Start with explaining how it affects the WvW scoring, or WvW strategies, and so on. Keep in mind that awards of badges and siege weaponry blueprints can be acquired without ever setting foot in WvW (my daughter has both from achievement chests and yet she has never entered WvW) so that alone is not a justification. The fact that the entrance is located in EB is likewise not a justification because I can enter sPvP from anywhere, or WvW from Lion’s Arch, but those zones are not part of the respective content types.

Anybody that quotes or references this post without either supporting my rationally-established and justified perspective or attempting to address the challenge in the prior paragraph is trolling; I’ve given reasons why I view the content a certain way, you cannot disagree with me without establishing that my basis or trail of logic is flawed; this is how logical debate works. Anything less is trolling.

I don’t think that a lot of the WvW community understands what PvE players go through or why they look at this as an obligatory objective. This achievement is as fundamental to the PvE completionist players (a group which probably outnumbers the WvW community) as the acquisition of siege blueprints and supply is to WvW. Imagine having to run for 3 hours across an empty PvE map to get to a dungeon where 90% of the time the last boss has a permanent invulnerable buff. Only if you manage to kill that boss does the siege vendor and supply point spawn. That is what PvE completionists face.

Also, the only reason this is called a WvW map is because it is accessed from within EB and uses server alliances. It has no strategic value, follows none of the design principles of other WvW combat, and the events in the JP have no bearing on the WvW score or strategy. This is not a WvW zone, this is a server-aligned team PvP zone, which is NOT part of the PvE experience by any rational measure.

With the addition of achievement point rewards, this latest one is 20 points—4% of a chest. That is a significant amount to me as a completionist. In terms of actions→physical rewards, this is only available for a limited time and is more rewarding than escorting 10,000 dolyaks, but less rewarding than escorting 100,000 dolyaks. It falls around 34,000 dolyaks worth of reward, but the key aspect is the time-locked nature—this has to be done in a certain window or I will fall behind. This is the mindset that WvWers don’t grasp; your content is always there, but for players like me, these limited opportunities must be completed or I have failed and may as well just stop playing altogether, because I can never succeed once I have failed.

Monsoon.2589:

Don t get me wrong I love wvw because I can be in control of what is happening. In the EB JP we have JQ camping…and they camp for one purpose only: To block PVE players from completing their meta.

You want to make people do JPs for the metas? Fine…just don t force them into a pvp jp being a loot bag cow.Just like why you would not force wvw players to watch hours of cut scenes and dialogues to do pvp

It is also worth noting that, in WvW, you can die and say “I helped tip the scales” or “That objective is out of our league, lets hit something else.” The jump puzzle is linear and objectiveless. It lacks the defining characteristics of WvW combat.

Simonoly.4352:

Devon hit the nail on the head with his comment. Also, don’t forget that this is an MMO and therefore full of people who also want to help you. If you’re not used to PvP or holding your own against other players, ask for some help in EB (or Lion’s Arch) before you venture on. I, like many others, enjoy ruining a ganky badge farmer’s day with some swift smackdowns ;-)

The queue time on my server during my play times tends to be several hours. Just getting to the JP alone is an accomplishment, let alone finding 40 volunteers willing to wait through that. While the helpful people exist and the overall goal is attainable, the game design is such that it is not plausible.

If I wasn’t unemployed right now, I would have given up hope on these altogether. When I had a job, there was no way I could even fathom attempting these.

Groonz.7825:

It’s no different. “Oh this monster hits hard and uses a powerful attack, I should dodge that.” “Oh this monster has knockdown attacks, I should use stability” the same can be applied to PvP. If those people are just constantly zerging mindlessly to the end and constantly getting killed without thinking of ways to prevent it, they can’t be helped. I bet if you asked one of those people “Why don’t you change some of your traits or carry some different utilities?”, they’d probably ask “Why?”, such a player would never be able to stand in WvW or PvP.

It is different. We’re not talking about participating in a fight that is designed to be won by the player, we’re talking about fights where the adversary has stacked the odds against the player.

• These are not simple avoid-the-red-circle fights, these are a dozen rangers cycling through barrages at key points in the JP where it is difficult to establish LoS to the player—impossible to do so without leaving yourself prone to the rest of their allies.
• These are fights where, by virtue of map design, the entrenched defender has an easier time reinforcing their position than the attacker. This is different than all other WvW combat where the attacker has the advantage.
• These are fights where the grief-ees are often outnumbered (formerly outmanned) by very significant margins.
• This map offers no strategic advantage to anyone participating in WvW. It clearly has no place in regular PvE; it exists for the sole purpose of facilitating griefing.

I just want Anet to admit openly that they either screwed the pooch on these last two pushes by putting PvE objectives in there or fess up that they want to support the griefing community. There is no other explanation for what has happened.

DevonCarver.5370:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

While I agree with the sentiment that this is WvW and if you don’t want to fight don’t come here, getting their rears handed to them by ‘griefers’ is in no way shape or form going to encourage anyone to stick around and play WvW. Just the opposite I think.

There is definitely some amount of truth to that, but I’d hesitate to say that much of what is going on in the JP is griefing, it is more that people unused to WvW are coming into a much deadlier map than they are accustomed to. That is the risk you take.

My guild is small, but we do WvW. We know what WvW fights are like. What is going on in the jump puzzle is 100% griefing. Sure, there are some honest fights, but we’re talking about portal-supported forces camping out in a fortified position for the sole purpose of killing anyone that approaches. The time-efficiency of this endeavor is so low that the motivation is clearly not material gain, it is to inflict mental anguish on the opposing players. This is textbook griefing, and putting PvE achievements there is enabling it. Don’t forget to re-watch that manifesto for a refresher on the core philosophy on enabling griefing.

• Allowing portaling to fortify an entrenched force that prevents the progression of adversaries is a design flaw; it makes retaliation against the entrenched force futile since they can reinforce faster.
• Why does the stealth buff exist if there is a room dedicated to removing it and a room just past the dark room dedicated to ganking those that emerge?
• Decoupling the Obsidian Sanctum from the Eternal Battlegrounds means that people who choose to camp in the jump puzzle are not a detriment to their team, therefore there is no peer pressure to maintain a sparse presence like there is on the other jump puzzles. This is a disparity if not a flaw.

Edit: I went back and re-watched the manifesto. I was incorrect. I was unable to locate the exact tidbit I was after, but this post comes close:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success/

SynfulChaot.3169:

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

I think it’s a flaw to even assume you can draw people into WvW to begin with. Some people will enjoy PvP, some will enjoy WvW (related but not the same, and others will enjoy PvE. Some (me) like all three. My GF hates WvW though. Nothing Anet does will get her into it. It’s silly to assume you can draw one group over to another. If someone is interested they will try it out.

-snip-

I just think it’s foolish to ever believe you can draw people into WvW or spvp/tpvp. Either people will want to try it, or not. Trying to force them to mix is stupid.

And this here demonstrates the folly of putting this cache in the WvW jumping puzzle. The rest of the achievements are PvE oriented. This sole one is in WvW and the cache meta-achiev requires all caches, including this one. That makes this one WvW/PvP instead.

What motivation would they have in putting it in WvW except to draw people into WvW? To provide free kills to WvWers as some trolls have stated? That would just be cruel and were that to be the case it would cause many to lose faith in ANet. I don’t believe they are that cruel.

You yourself just stated that forcing people to mix PvE and WvW/PvP is stupid. Yet that is exactly what putting a cache into the WvW jumping puzzle is.

I don’t mind trying to push players that generally don’t think about WvW to those areas. I think the exploration and such are a good push out of a comfort zone. My issue with the Cache in the obsidian sanctum is that, with time-limited content, you are telling anyone that wants to grief players to go there and do it. For a game where every mechanic seems to be to prevent griefing from being possible, this is telling people exactly how to go about it, and as we get closer to the content disappearing, more and more people will be desperate for that achievement, and that means more and more griefers coming out to camp them. I’ve been spawn camped, pushed off ledges, killed by traps activated by my own teammates, killed in the dark room, killed in the room after the dark room… for nothing. There is no consolation prize. I’m down about 2g in repairs already. This is supposed to be fun? Who would have ever thought this was fun? I’ll tell you who: the kittenbag that is camping the JP waiting for people like me (us?) to wander in. Certainly not the person that said they wanted to foster teamwork in all aspects of the game.

All terrestial legendaries are a waste because you can’t see them while swimming.
All aquatic legendaries are a waste because you can’t see them while on ground.
All legendaries are a waste once soulbound because any attempt to recoup the cost is guaranteed to result in a loss.
All legendaries are a waste because they are so common nobody really notices them anymore.
All legendaries are a waste because the value they represent is virtual in nature.

If the size is an issue, zoom in or get the size buff from the SAB. It won’t make them any less of a waste.

FWIW, I’m working on one, and I spend almost no time in Orr. I’m just playing the game the way I want to and aggregating resources for a goal. It doesn’t have to be a grind, it can be a byproduct of natural play. I don’t need people to notice my gear to validate my playtime, I just need to enjoy that playtime.

Every patch, the level cap is increased, the salvage rate of ectos is nerfed, Mystic Clovers are rarer, and JBoots are 1% slower.</sarcasm>

Every time I have seen the devs answer questions about raising the level cap, the response is of the form “We’re not saying we won’t do it, but we don’t plan on it.”

When you consider the amount of work that is currently being done to balance traits and classes, distribute gear, etc… the chances of a change that is this fundamentally disruptive is really, really low.

This just happened to my son. My wife and I were helping him with the quest and after the guardian was killed, she and I were teleported but my son (and Trahearne) were left behind.

We hit every point of dialogue listed on the wiki. Nobody had been downed, let alone defeated. The only thing that may have been slightly unusual is that we ended up killing the guardian near the base of the stairs.

My son plays a thief, my wife is a ranger and I am a guardian—not sure if that would have any relevance, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to mention.

The objective was set to “Speak with the Pale Tree”

Sorry if there is a newer post for this one—this was the first one I found in a quick search.

The requirements for legendaries are varied; some require only top-end materials, others require T3-6 materials.

In general, you don’t need the lower end materials, but that doesn’t mean that the earlier materials are worthless; like all things there is a market for them, and they can come in handy when working on daily/monthly tasks, gearing up alts, exploiting a gap in the current market, etc.

That looks a lot like my build.

I run either Giver’s, Yakkington’s, or Berserker’s armor, depending on the situation. For dungeons, I tend to wear Berserker’s (I honestly don’t remember what runes I have in it, or if I even runed it up yet).

If you’re having trouble surviving with that build, I think it comes down more to style than the build itself.

It is hard to go into specific techniques without being in the context of a specific fight, but some of the general pointers that come to mind:

• Be mindful of where allies are. If your party is spreading out too much, you can easily be wasting shouts and party memebrs will take extra damage.
• You have a passive regeneration and that means you can soak some, but not all hits. Some hits should be taken, some dodged, some aegis’d, some blocked, and others can be invulnerable’d. Balancing all of these potential responses and picking the correct one each time is the art of the guardian.
• The spirit shield and wall of reflection are amazing in certain fights. You don’t explicitly state whether or not you use them, but if you don’t, you should. They are not everyday skills, but when facing ranged attackers, they can make all the difference in the world.
• Don’t be afraid to change your traits mid-run. Some fights require condition removal and others do not. Pure of Voice is a wasted trait in a fight where the enemy has no conditions.
• The shield can be useful for party support, but the focus is generally a superior choice for personal defense.
• Similar to managing responses to incoming attacks, cooldown management is key. You want your party to have protection when a big hit comes in, but if they aren’t hurt, giving them regeneration does no good. Similarly, blowing all your cooldowns so you can’t self-heal with AH leaves you vulnerable.

Edit:

• The Mace has healing and blocking capabilities the sword lacks.
• The hammer will help you maintain protection, but that isn’t necessarily the problem with your survivability. 33% reduction in damage is nice, but it restricts your mobility to maintain the bonus.

Ballads.2509:

Welcome to Daily Speed Wars 2. A net has created this artificial time race meta. Well they didn’t create it but pushed it a little farther then other games. Now all my time in game is to Completing my 1/days. I can not waste my time on trash mobs, because if i do i will fail to get one of my daily rewards.
Daily checklist -
Daily achievement pve
Daily ^ pvp
Daily fractal
Daily t6 harvest main/alt/alt
Daily Mega event boxes (timer dependent)
Daily Dungeon main/alt/alt
Daily SAB main/alt/alt/alt/alt (i also skip trash here.)
Daily JP’s Main/alt/alt/alt/alt
ect
By the time i get to dungeons yeah im skipping trash. Id love to say brake it down to one night concentrating on each area but A-net will punish me for doing so (punish/not reward depends on your PoV.) So each new day is a scramble to get as much done after work/before sleep. Some nights i have fun others it seems im just trying to make some quota i must or fall further behind those that do. I really hate the fact there i snow ay to play catch up in gw2. You either did you 1/days or your kitten out.

I wear full exotics/ascended, have a reasonable pool of money, and access to all content.

I don’t play this way.

How am I being punished? I am wanting for nothing in-game. Sure, I could have more money, or rarer skins on my gear, but that is a reward for doing more than I have elected to do. You can inflict this regimen on yourself, but it isn’t necessary to experience all that the game has to offer; it may, however, be necessary, to meet personal objectives. That being the case, you have chosen to engage in this behavior and have nobody to blame but yourself.

It does serve a purpose; it informs anyone that looks at your character that you have Aegis up.

This may not seem like a big deal to you, but in a competitive setting, it matters, and when I’m running dungeons, it is a clue to me that indicates whether or not the person about to take a cave troll to the face can take the hit.

A lot of people ignore visual clues, but this doesn’t make them valueless.

You can also draw on and/or ping the map for each other, set personal waypoints.

You can call targets (ctrl+T) for your allies to target with the T key.

In some events where there are a lot of participants, being in a party helps to give you credit for some kills you might not have gotten solo.

You don’t need to be in a party, but if you do events together, your guild will recieve more influence than if it was done alone.

Parties also are the basis for dungeon groups.

Parties do a lot, and all of it is helpful.

Calae.1738:

I’m not generalizing. Its a fact. MMO’s are not appealing to younger audiences. They might buy the game; play it till level 10 or 20 then quit.

It probably has something to do with how the younger generations seek something for nothing and are too impatient to work towards something. The entitled generation. The ones that grew up with credit cards, smart phones and google.

I have 3 children with ages ranging from 2-14. They all love Guild Wars 2.

My son has an 80; he plays a lot, and isn’t that bad.
My older daughter doesn’t have an 80, but she enjoys fractals and dungeons—she does very, very well there.

The 2-year old, well, she likes running around, jumping, and helping mommy and daddy get the bad guys. She doesn’t have her own account, though… but soon.

The fact that all they did for all of spring break was play Guild Wars 2 tells me there is some degree of appeal.

So your “fact” that MMOs don’t appeal to younger audiences is completely wrong, and I have proof. Unless you were just generalizing and want to assert that my family represents statistical outliers.

Game Over

I love the content; it is an absolute blast and I want to do more.

And that is why I want it to go away. Not forever, but until next April, when it comes out again, possibly with additional weapon skins, new enemies, and other changes, maybe even taking on a different facet of old games.

By taking it away it is something special. It is something to be cherished and appreciated while we have it.

If it never goes away, it is just another thing to do, like keg brawl, spvp, wvw, farming orr, shadow behemoth, claw of jormag, etc. Eventually, there are more things to do than time to do them. By making it a transient event, people are forced to make the time, or live with the consequences.

Deception.8197:

I would like to know why we need a different currency. Don’t you think we have enough already????

It is a mandatory facet of lateral progression.

If they didn’t introduce a new currency, then the new content would be built on top of all prior progression. They may not have stats associated with it, but the weapon skins would have absolutely no connection to the content aside from release date without creating a new progression path.

Currency is the tool that is used to measure your progression down that path.

It would be nice if they identified it as “Supports 1-5 players, with difficulty scaling accordingly.” I’m conditioned to ignore recommendations and just jump in anyway—ANet has a good history of providing accessible content.

Personally, I find it most rewarding (financially) when I run it solo. I suppose duoing might also be decent, provided my partner is good at jump puzzles.

Running as a 5-man, however… was an absolute blast of nostalgia and fun. Almost every death resulted in a “That was just like in <name of 20-year-old-game>” comment.

I had forgotten how evil Ninja Gaiden was. Actually, “blocked out” is probably more correct than “forgotten.”

I have had the loss of momentum in midair bug a few times, only once that resulted in a fall.

But I have no idea what you are talking about Dim. Charr, norn, human, sylvari, and asura, I have no difficulty with jump puzzles. It jumps when I tell it to and I land where I expect. I can easily gauge the distance and height. Sure, I miss jumps, but that is my own failing, not the game’s. The couple times the loss of momentum thing happened, well… I can deal with that, but I suppose I cut my teeth on games like Ninja Gaiden where you just learned to try again until you got it right—a single, rare glitch is not enough to convince me something is broken.

You suggest changing it in almost every way with no actual statement of the problem, simply that you don’t like it. Maybe it is a latency issue? I have no idea since you haven’t said what is wrong with it.

Ilmatar.6709:

Maybe I did misunderstood at time, what they said in Guild Wars 2 Manifesto, starting 01:22 to 01:42. They are talking about how they are against of grinding in Guild Wars 2 to get fun stuff. That they are doing Guild Wars 2 game totally different way, and players dont need to grind in the game. I know, it was just a marketing speech and they don’t need to keep their promises about the product.

You misunderstood them.

You can play the Super Adventure Box without any need for grind. In a similar fashion, the gating mechanism for dungeons is quite shallow and devoid of grind (you have to do a single story to unlock explorable, or leech off someone that has). You can do fractals at level 1, or hearts, exploration, jump puzzles… You can do all the fun things without grinding.

What you don’t get, however, are rewards. There is a difference between the person that looks at content and the person that masters it. The person that masters it gets a badge to display that they have invested effort into mastery (or repeated failures and consolation prizes). That badge is cosmetic—a rare skin, tchotchke, or similar reward.

If you enjoy the content, it isn’t grind—it is a reward for playing the game and having fun. Since you seem to ignore the fact that you can get bauble bubbles through means other than getting 250 baubles, the assertion that you have to grind out 12,500 is a straw man argument. I had a couple hours to sink into it and chose a very non-optimal path (I explored and had fun). I ended up with 10 bubbles. If it takes me 10 hours to get a skin, that is no worse than getting a dungeon weapon.

So yes, you misunderstood because you heard what you wanted to hear, but they followed through on what they said they wanted to create.

My sylvari guardian is my main; I have 4 sets of armor, a healthy selection of weapons, all skills, full set of bag slots, etc.

I started a human warrior because I really liked the look of the human cultural heavy armors and there was more that I wanted to do with a guardian than was reasonable on a single one; I already have 4 sets of armor—adding at least a 5th and 6th, and new weapons with alternate stats, coupled with needing to pay to respec back and forth as my desired role changes… It was just easier to make a new character.

On a related note, I also have 2 rangers and 2 warriors—although one of the warriors is doomed to relive the same life over and over to farm black lion keys.

Personally, I find hanging out in an area where I can talk to and meet new players and help ease their transition into Tyria to be very rewarding on its own.

Dungeon runs won’t complete my dailies most days.

I find speed runs to be the dungeoneering equivalent of toilet humor; it may entertain some but it is hollow and base compared to what I enjoy.

I play the game to have fun, not become an e-millionaire; yes, by my standards, standing around in a swamp is more fun than doing dungeon speedclears.

darkace.8925:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think the folks that take up cooking for the fun of it are vastly out numbered on the forums by the folks that do it to level quickly.

Sadly, I get the same feeling every aspect of this game, from crafting to exploring, is viewed as a blur to be blown by on the way to “end-game” by the majority of players.

Majority of the vocal players, perhaps.

The people that enjoy playing the game spend more time in-game than on the forums. The people that want the game to be something different come to the forums to gripe.

I’m only here because the alternative is dealing with my boss—once I go home, I log in and forget about the forums.

In my house, when I ask the family what they want for dinner (or when I am asked that) the response is generally a link to a recipie on the GW2 wiki. Krytan Meatball Dinner is a family favorite.

So take heart that you’re not alone. The forums, however, aren’t always the best place for such activities. Fan sites might have a better turnout.

(for what its worth, I didn’t reply because I wasn’t as active on the forums at the time it was posted)

I realize the conversation turned away rom this a while back, but I have to point out: the damage reduction numbers people are holding up as evidence of dysfunction are wrong.

Assuming a level 80 in exotics:
Everybody gets 916 Toughness
If you spec for it, you can have +300 Toughness from traits.
Toughness on gear:

• As a major stat on all your gear: 1003 toughness.
• As a minor stat on all your gear: 698 toughness.
  Armor:
• Heavy armor will contribute 1211 defense.
• Medium armor will contribute 1064 defense.
• Light armor will contribute 920 defense.

Traits, food, runes, etc. can add more. We’ll limit the consideration to these stats (numbers taken from the wiki) since looking at the absolute maximum ignores the realities of needing to divert effort to supporting a build—a 6-piece rune bonus may not be plausible to maintain the correct boon duration.

Tankiest:

• Heavy: 3430 = 1211+1003+300+916
• Medium: 3283 = 1064+1003+300+916 (95.714% of heavy)
• Light: 3139 = 920+1003+300+916 (91.516% of heavy)

So the tankiest light armor wearer still takes 9.2% more damage than the tankiest heavy armor wearer. This isn’t entirely correct (it ignores defense on a shield, for example) but is a good approximation.

Squishiest:

• Heavy: 2127 = 1211+916
• Medium: 1980 = 1064+916 (93.089% of heavy)
• Light: 1836 = 920+916 (86.319% of heavy)

At this end of the spectrum, a light amror wearer takes 15.8% more damage than the correspondingly-speced heavy armor wearer.

The difference is not tremendous, but anywhere in the range of 9.2% to 15% is still significant.

But these comparisons are not what people always allude to when they talk about hte advantages of heavy armor.

• The natural health boost a warrior has certainly augments their ability to take hits—the numbers may not be very different but the effect on their health bar is. Just because people are misinformed doesn’t mean their observations are incorrect; the heavy armor warrior appears to take considerably less damage.
• Any guardian that is trying to take hits has protection up. While the warrior has a nice boost to health, the guardian has a boost to normalized health—the perception is still that heavy armor makes you take a lot less damage.
• Guardians block. A lot. The relevance cannot be discounted.
• Anybody that is speccing for defense can do a good job at it, the math says as much. The reality is that people that want to play defense-oriented roles tend pick heavy armor wearers and spec into defense, whereas people that want to play damage dealer take lighter armor and don’t spec; squishy light vs. tanky heavy is almost a 1:2 ratio—and that is before counting aegis and protection.

A 9-15% difference in damage taken is significant, and the perceived difference is far more. In either case, the difference is far more than the 5% that some poeple would like to believe; 10% extra damage taken at 80 means that every time you are reduced to triple-digit health as a heavy wearer, you would be downed as a light-wearer.

Poverty.2675:

Warrior banners are utility skills, where Strength In Numbers is a trait.

This.

If banners had 100% uptime and Strength In Numbers required you to forfeit a utility slot, there might be a valid comparison, but as it stands, it is like comparing apples to cats.

For an adept-tier trait, it isn’t bad. I’d like it to be stronger, but then it would probably have to be in a higher tier. You can always claim that “1.2% is too low” but you’re also forgetting a key point; it isn’t 1.2%, it is just over 2%.

At 3300 armor, +70 is a 2.1% reduction.
At 3000 armor, +70 is a 2.3% reduction.
At 2500 armor, +70 is a 2.8% reduction.
At 2000 armor, +70 is a 3.4% reduction.

For a 10-point major trait, 2% isn’t bad. Sure, 5% would be better, but lets face it, 5% damage reduction is too good for an always-on 10-point trait. We’re moving up to master or grandmaster territory for that… maybe it could give Monk’s Focus a run for its money. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.

Isaac.6041:

Level 400 jeweler can only craft exotic amulets/rings/accessories.

What’s the point now that there are ascended amulets/rings/accessories that are more powerful.

O well, you still need jeweler to craft certain legendary weapons I guess. But besides that what else is there to do with jeweler… play the market for non-max gear jewels?

Doomsday scenario much?

You can still:

1. Craft ascended gear once it is craftable—remember that it has been stated clearly and often that ascended gear is slowly being phased in, and that it will be available through a large variety of means. It was intended to be widely available from day 1 but it wasn’t ready and so it was pulled out prior to release.
2. Craft exotics that have stat combinations unavailble on ascended that are still desirable.
3. Craft exotics for players just reaching level 80 (only 20% of my characters are 80s), as well as gear for lower level characters.

I haven’t looked into this since they did a recent change to scaling, but the way it has worked since at least BWE2 (and at least until the recent change) is that your modified (including gear, food, traits, etc.) stats are multiplied by the ratio of your base (naked, buffless, traitless, etc.) toughness (or power, vitality, or precision—they are all the same) at your current level to its value at your scaled level.

Edit: As you level, the amount of stats you get from gear, traits, food, and natural progression changes. At 39, stats from traits have the largest impact, and the increased quality of gear that is available at higher levels is partially to compensate for the declining role that traits play as you advance in level.

Following events like the Shadow Behemoth, Claw of Jormag, and pretty much all the events on the popular timer sites, it would be nice if the meta would identify when the event was completed in, say, the last 10 minutes. I doubt this will stop people from asking “did I miss it?” but it couldn’t hurt.

While you might not like that ethereal field, I’ll bet the ranger and thief appreciate the added confusion.

The problem isn’t that the fields in question are useless, the problem is that your group coordinates them poorly. Somebody has to step up and say “wait for my fire field to disappear before you lay down the ethereal field and do your whirl combos.” You don’t need real-time voice chat for this, you need to understand what you are each doing.

As a guardian I lay down a lot of healing symbols at my feet; my party knows that you shoot arrows near me to remove conditions and you stand near me to heal (and take cleave damage to the face sometimes). This is not because I call it out each time, I tell my groups up front what fields and finishers I have and work out how to synergize with my teammates.

Also, when your goal is to not cause defiant stacks to appear so that you can CC an important skill then, yes, there is a bad time to stun or knockdown.

All in all, this reads like a lot of QQ over “people don’t instinctively play the way I want them to and I’m too lazy to educate them.” I understand that you are hundred bladsing and can’t chase the target, but that is because I have a warrior and have used hundred blades and recognize the animation. Not everyone is aware of this.

The other night people were getting diverted to overflow in Queensdale as Shadow Behemoth was getting ready to spawn. After the kill, as people flooded the server asking “did I miss it?” there was the inevitable guesting-bashing.

I was there for the kill. I checked guild tags. There were 3 people representing 2 guilds I didn’t recognize; the rest were natives to the server. So, at worst, there were 3 guesters that blocked access to the event. Thats a worst case; the best remains 0 guesters.

This is actually pretty common; it is not unreasonable to expect that a couple hundred server natives want to go to that event at the same time. 2 million players divided over 4 “shifts” and 51 servers, with a 5% attendance rate still comes out to 490 players trying on each server. You don’t need guesting to have this problem, and attacking guesting doesn’t mean there would have been room for all the server natives that wanted to partake.

mbh.8301:

Hypothetical:
Pve shouldn’t be separated by server in the first place. There should be districts (like in gw1) and once a district fills up, another opens. This way everyone gets to experience pve with other players in sight. If that change is implemented then dragons should just be on one big timer.

The problem with this is that there are already enough people to fill up several instances of Cursed Shore. One instance succeeds at the Grenth event while another fails. Now they are in different states. What happens to the people in Straits of Devastation? There may be more or less instances there—are their grenth temples active or not?

How long does it take to complete the pre-event for some of these bosses? Some servers are faster than others.

The other night I looked at the list of NA servers and was unsurprised to find that all were identified as “High” or “Very High” populations. I haven’t seen the metrics, but I am really curious to know from the people that have—is guesting really a problem? As a community, we’ve observed overflows for these events only after guesting was added and many people associated the two, but what really happened was several events got massive loot buffs, driving people to participate more. At the same time, guesting was added, a commonly farmed dungeon was recently buffed, and so on—the perception that guesting is at fault is based on coincidence, not evidence.

I can honestly tell you that prior to the loot buff, I had no serious interest in Shadow Behemoth. I farmed it ~15 times over this past weekend, on my home server, and did so with 1-3 family members that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. So we’re part of the problem, too, even though we aren’t guesting.

Sitael.4680:

swiftpaw.6397:

(Of course this just means more work for me to get him his silly legendary staff behind his back… at least it will be romantic right?)

lol How sweet is that! :-)

Back to “business”: I used the 10 clover recipe untill 70 clover and then the 1 recipe for the rest.
I did not make more than 3 attempts on a play day or if i got 10 clovers at the first or at the second try, i did not try it again. I don’t remember exactly but i’m rather sure i did not need more than 12 attempts to get 70 clovers. My kinmate had 8 or more attempts with the 10 recipe without any clovers at the end. All this was before Fire & Frost.

Since the last patch i have that suspicion too – as someone mentioned earlier – that some kind of “nerf” had taken place on the forge. Before the patch i got usually at least1 rare item from 5 attempts by forging level 80 green stuff. But since the patch i can do 8 or 10 tries without any rares at the end.

Since Fire & Frost I’m 100% (5/5) on clovers and looking at a 60% yield on rares from tossing 4 greens into the forge. I also broke my no-ecto streak (just prior to F&F I was 0/12) with an average of > 1 ecto / rare salvaged (somewhere around 20 salvages—I lost count).

Calae.1738:

Frotee.2634:

Seeing as my immersion in MMOs can’t compare to the immersion in a single player RPG or a good book, said MMO may as well amuse me – seeing how I have to deal with enough ‘seriousness’ in my real life.
Also, I like to laugh.

It’s childish comedy, not adult comedy.

I’m sure no one would complain if they added funny things that adults would laugh at. It’s like Star Wars episode 1 style comedy with Jar Jar Binks. It’s goofy and childish. Walt Disney does a very good job making stories where adults and childen both laugh. Their jokes target multiple demographics.

Just because you don’t get the joke doesn’t mean it isn’t there. My kids wonder what my wife and I are laughing at when they watch Disney movies all the time…

Lightsbane.9012:

1.) what made you choose and stay on the server you’re on?(other than friends)

I liked the backstory to Sanctum of Rall. At this point, if I wanted to move, I’d face ~6 months of influence grinding to get back the perks we have now (we’re a small guild, we get maybe 3k influence in a good week, and I can’t join another guild for the same effect because that guild is not my family).

2.) what will it take for the wvw players to get you into wvw?

I used to, and I will be back when I have to grind for a monthly or work up more badges. From my perspective, a far more pertinent question is “why did I stop doing WvW?”

The answer to that question has some server-specific components to it. SoR was a low-tier server and we managed to climb up to tier 1, where we sit today. Thats pretty awesome. While we were climbing, I did a good bit of WvW. It was fun. Then we got close to the top, and it wasn’t.

• People cared a lot more about success and failure—when we were “just doing our best” it was fun, but now we’re pushing to “do better than the other guy.”
• The expected level of knowledge is higher. I’m not a regular, and I can’t tell you where the “sweet spot” is for placing a catapult to be in the blind spot of the usual ballistae while still being able to lob boulders over a door, etc.
• My server has run up against the siege cap many times, and this discourages me from placing siege weapons without explicit orders—despite the fact that I carry several plans with me.
• Nobody talks. The last time I asked for the current voice-chat info (because the server, application, etc. all change depending on what shift is on-duty) I was told none-too-politely to go kitten off.
• There are a lot of inept “leaders”.
• People are cowards. It is a sad, sad state of affairs when the casual, PvE-focused members of the Fluffy Bunny Brigade form your zerg’s vanguard.

3.) wvw benefits your dungeon runs, do you not agree that helping us get the buffs you benefit from is the right thing to do?

I call straw man on this. Yes, we get benefits while running dungeons but those benefits might amount to shaving off a minute or two from an hour+ run. We’re not talking about content where a 10% stat boost is the difference between life and death. Besides, we usually play dungeons on the weekends when the bonuses are well below their peak levels.

4.)is it the repair bill that scares you out?(i farm maybe 2 hours a week and that’s a 7g profit each week i’m sorry but i can’t see that as valid. to each their own maybe)

I generally turn a profit in WvW, even with the large number of deaths I rack up. It is, however, very frustrating to die over and over because your team won’t support you.

5.) why would a risen priestess of milandru be impressed with your Legendary?

I don’t have one, and when I do, I will have gotten it because I wanted to get it and go through the journey that was acquiring it, not because I felt the need to show it off.

6.) to my GOM bros specifically, some of the PvE guilds on our server are upwards of 300+(and active), can you grasp how much of a difference just 1/10 of your guild members would make if they were active in wvw daily?

You just hit hte nail on the head, I think. WvW needs regular support. You’re not jsut signing up for a night of fun, you’re committing yourself to a regular schedule. I like PvE because I can play on my schedule, I don’t need to hire a babysitter to watch the little one while I defend the mists.

7.) World Vs. World is one of(probably the) best way for your guild to not only get recognition, but respect. if your guild is influential enough here…you get the point.

Not to sound pretentious, but my guild does not need WvW to be recognized or respected. We’re quite secure in ourselves and seek approval from within, not without. We work hard and do our best and overcome what challenges we face. There is no small satisfaction that I derive from knowing that, in another game, one of our members (Scorky) inspired an opposing faction to use “Kill Scorky!” as a battle cry, or that he was the only non-max level player to be rated in the top 20 pvpers of said game, but I don’t need those moments to be happy with my guild—I am happy knowing that we are having fun and facing challenges together.

Edit: Attempting to fix formatting

I screenshot it when I can (which is almost as often as I see it) and email that to exploits@arena.net

Sierra.6352:

I find the voice rather nice actually. Except for the shouts. (Or at least guardian shouts).

Agreed.

On my elementalist, I have no problems with the voice.

I just made a new guardian last night and took “Retreat!” as my first utility… don’t get me wrong, I think the voice acting is quality, but for a skill that I use to advance / run around cities faster… it has an inherent strain and desperation that is not at all consistent with how I use the skill.

• The perimeter of your mother’s waistline is so large dolyaks put saddlebags on her.
• Your mother’s IQ is so low she thinks a canopic jar is where you put canopic cookies.
• You mother’s IQ is so low she thinks Final Rest drops in Zho’qafa Catacombs.
• Your mother’s IQ is so low, bookah tell their children scary stories about her.

When you factor in the time to run between enemies, respawn rate, cooldowns, and so on, the difference in stats really only affects your survivability—and even then, it isn’t necessarily by a lot.

I tend to run with my wife—I have a MF set and she does not. I hit 500 salvages last month when she was approaching 300. While not a scientific study, it is a pretty decent indicator that it works.

I want to say that, in most content that I would consider “farmed” it takes a few seconds to run between enemies and not much longer to kill them. When you factor in skill cooldowns, respawn rates, time between kills, risk of death, etc…. the kill rate doesn’t change a lot as long as you’re good with managing the risk aspect.

Gaile Gray.6028:

We will not be able to provide a new kit in order for you to make additional changes. If you used the kit, you would need to purchase a new kit, which would give you access to the newly-offered items and features.

Could you please clarify one point for me: Is the kit-with-new-eye-colors a new item, or is it the same item as was offered in the past? The distinction being that if I buy, say, 5 kits now, but only use 1, will my 4 unused kits get new options the next time the kits are enhanced or will I have to buy new ones to get the new features? I suppose that there is no way to tell for certain as future enhancements haven’t necessarily been planned, so I suppose a statement on what happened this time (as past tense obligates nobody) is the best I can hope for.

Let us not forget that ascended equipment is going to be available from all sorts of content—it isn’t right now because the supporting systems aren’t ready yet. During those 240 days of gasp playing the game and having fun and earning in-game rewards we will see developments where more ascended gear is made available through more mechanisms than are presently allowed.

They wanted it to be in-game at launch, but it wasn’t ready, so they pulled it out. They started giving it to us in Fractals, but people complained, so they eased the restrictions to make it more availble in the short term while working on an ideal long-term solution.

Honestly, exotics are nearly as good as ascended. Feeling compelled to get all ascended gear now means that you are either the type of player that chases top-shelf gear for the sake of chasing top-shelf gear (in which case you’ll just get bored when there is nothing left to chase) or you just want to gripe about the fact that, like every loot acquisition game that has come before, gear progression serves as a gating mechanism to various tiers of content which puts the alt-o-holic at a self-perceived disadvantage relative to the main-centric player by establishing a level playing field.

If you want to flesh out that oil change analogy, the situation is that an oil change is effectively free, but an oil change with synthetic premium oil that will allow your car to go 5% faster it will cost $30. This is blanced by your pay of $1/month. The person that wants 1 car to go 5% faster will be happy that, after 30 days, they have made enough to buy the upgrade that lasts forever—it is not a recurring cost as the oil change analogy implies. The person that wants 4 cars to go 5% faster, and wants the option to use either an on-road or off-road specific oil (2 specs) on-demand for each will not be happy until they have paid the $240 to upgrade them all. If you want 8 times the material value, you need to earn 8 times as much. Yes, income is time-gated because that helps level the playing field between the casual and the hardcore; of course, it is this one specific currency that is gated as it directly affects peak performance. All other equivalent-performance variations are not time gated, they are effort-gated. When you allow the community to diverge you end up with a lot of hostile factions within your playerbase making a lot of varied demands for a lot of varied content that are often contradictory—look at EQ if you want a case study of this.

There is always a chance of getting a “replay cinematic” option on that story window that, at this point, serves little purpose on your hero window. If it hasn’t already been suggested, it might be worth suggesting it in the appropriate forum. You’ll never get that moment back, but you might be able to at least get closure.

Regarding the legendary, I can sympathise with you on that (I’m going for the bubblegun on my engineer, but lament the frequency with which it will be seen). I think the big question is what is more important: getting the legendary or showing it off to people. Just because you have a kit out doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard and earn that legendary, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t pursue your self-identified end-game.

On that note, I kinda agree with what Vayne said. You’ve identified a subset of the game you enjoy. There are obviously parts you do not; you shouldn’t be forcing content you dislike on yourself to get at that which you enjoy—you might be best off finding a different game to play.

Maybe the secret is to have an alt that isn’t Arkham. One of my friends is much like you with his warrior character—he has to do everything on that one (I play my guardian similarly, but that character was just an alt a long time back that became a favorite of mine). One day he rolled an alt and he was freed from those restrictions. All of a sudden he was able to pick the “evil” choices in games, he was able to experience new stories, and he recognized that he could enjoy content that his warrior disliked. He still plays his warrior primarily, but he has other characters to take places that his warrior wouldn’t go.

I’m not sure what your beef with Fractals is, but I find it to be a fun dungeon format. It isn’t about endless grinding for treasure (your typical MMO raid fare), it is about facing varied challenges in a semi-unpredictable format. It is everything I loved about Urgoz’s Warren and the Deep in GW1, and it gradually gets harder as you progress through the tiers (Urgoz was pretty easy after the first kill—fractals get easier as you learn the encoutners, but there is enough rising challenge that it doesn’t trivialize as fast).

I think its time for an honest assessment of how much you enjoy the game and how much you play it due to inertia (your fiancee is obviously the main party with whom you should have this talk). There may be a better choice out there for you, or maybe you just need a different approach.

Personally, I’m a fan of content providers issuing PKI certs to users. A compromise of your public key doesn’t compromise your account unless they can get your private key, too. As long as we rely on username/password, the ability to harvest credentials through fraud will always exist.

That said, username/password is considered “good enough” for my bank; it is my responsibility to check the site to which I am connecting (A non-trivial task considering how often they merge and change their name).

I remember one of the events I did back in BWE1 bugged on me every time I tried it—it was infuriating. Escort NPC1 to NPC2, escort NPC1 + NPC2 back to the start—but the exit wasn’t triggering.

It turns out I was taking a path that bypassed a dialogue trigger that resulted in NPC1 being in an incorrect state at the end, which meant the exit script wouldn’t fire (or so I surmise based on the descriptions I’ve seen of how events work on the back-end coupled with my own observations). All I had to do was walk down path 1 instead of scaling a wall and taking path 2.

If you can record your play-through and share that I imagine it would be an invaluable tool in tracking down the issue (in my case, there was a very obvious missing line of dialogue). At the very least, it should be a more accurate set of steps to try to reproduce the issue.