Guild Wars 2

So now, every two weeks we have new contents. Good! I like it. It’s happening soon enough everytime and we can play it as we want.

However with the new achievement rewards, I feel like we don’t have enough time between releases to complete everything. Why, because it takes time and dedication to properly get all the achievements and therefore the points to progress. Some people can do it in two weeks. Some other not. Me, for instance, it takes time before I get immersed. I do the achievements only on week-ends and well, in two week-ends, I don’t always have the time to make all achievements.

So could you have a new release every 2 weeks, yes, but remove it only after 4 weeks, having an overlap between two stories for 2 weeks?

Thanks for considering this

It’s the worse requirement of all. I always have troubles with those groups: they can’t play. What this requirement means is “you must have played enough LS to play with us”. Now, do you actually need to play LS to be good at dungeons? I don’t think so.

I remember, regarding AP, that in June/July, the first guy ever to get 250k kills in WvW was a guy with barely 2k AP, and he was part of the (probably) best WvW guild in GW2. So there are absolutely no relation between being able to play and AP.

Same for PvPers. They don’t have a lot of AP yet they are very good at playing PvP.

AP is just a short for “Living Story involvement”.

All your actions since the launch of the game have been to move from soulbound to account bound.

Come on, you just have one last step to do: remove soulbound entirely from the game.

There is just no point in keeping any soulbound stuff anymore.

ArenaNet,

We would like to “gather some feedback” from your part. Can you please explain us how you think this release is a big success or (potentially) a big failure?

Since you last posted in this forum, nearly two weeks have passed. So… what do you think about the release? Is it a big win? A big failure? What are the top points from your perspective and how do you think this release made Guild Wars 2 better?

We would really like to hear from you regarding this release. You have been unusually silent on the matter. And we would really appreciate if you gave us some feedback.

Thank you very much!

What the hell is this solution?

You prefer that I don’t see people talking in some languages rather than tune your algorithm to allow me to play with more people sharing my language?

ArenaNet, have you really thought this through? Really?

What we want is to be able to play with people! More people sharing the same language.

When I switch language in my interface, it’s to change the language of the interface, not the language of my communication with others!

You have about zero clues regarding what your customers want. All you see is your money going to waste with too many servers and can’t think of what is good for your customers!

Where did I really chose a language for my community? Where? When I selected a server! Not when I selected a language for my interface!

You’re doing it wrong. Completely wrong.

Yeah, don’t rejoice: the new runes are basically toughness, condition reduction… Not really the kind of runes you need in fractals.

ArenaNet,

On June 3rd, you released a patch. This patch included several dungeon changes, all of which do not fix exploits.

So why are those changes absent from the patch notes? How come you decided to write down only one change in the patch notes, but released over 10 actual changes? Yet the patch notes contains 4 pages (on my screen) of nearly irrelevant skill-facts changes.

It is not the first time that non-exploit-related changes are missing from the dungeon section of the patch notes. For us, the dungeon community, the patch notes are more and more becoming a big joke. I don’t like to say this, but it’s really how we feel.

Changes in the dungeons are actually welcome. I only wanna know about them, so if you make changes (that do not involve exploits), please, write them down in your patch notes. Always.

Thank you!

BillFreist.1527:

The decision to throw cooldowns on them were for server performance/stability as the patch notes said, not for balance. Period.

Get better servers? Improve your algorithms?

BillFreist.1527:

Think of it this way: Between the embers and whistle, those items were effectively doubling/tripling the amount of players active in a map.

Yet ranger and minion master exists. Maybe we finally have a reason why they are so bad: having too much of them would impact the performance ? On the other side, you have no problem throwing 200 more mobs and their AoE on us for the new events.

TL;DR: performance is not the real/only reason.

Could I play with my friends please?

We enter LA and we’re all scattered accross overflows. The time for us to confirm that we’re all on overflows. We select one of us and everybody tries to join that overflow. Full. We try with another one of us. Full too. All the overflows were full. So we did the event everybody separated.

This is not friendly. At all.

I implore you, find a way to make your overflow mechanism friends-friendly.

This is the oldest dungeon scam, but it was interesting to see in action yesterday evening.

Two guys complete legit a dungeon path (AC p3, in this case) except the boss of course. One of the guys stays at the entrance (level 80, probably the instance owner). The other switches to a low level thief and stands not far from the boss. This adds credibility.

Then they lfg-sell for 4g and the scam begins. As soon as someone enters, the thief says “gold to me” and people do so then get kicked. This made it look very credible as the thief was near the boss and the other one was standing exactly on the spawn spot.

I was made aware of that situation when I checked the LFG for AC p1 to buy: lots of lfg saying “AC P3 4g is a scam” or “<thief name> is a scammer”. I checked the lfg in question and knew I wouldn’t buy it. I entered and immediately said I’d pay, gaining some time to rally other players at my cause. I then proceeded to vote-kick the thief (and said “he’s a scammer” in /s so the thief wouldn’t see it). I saw the Plains of Ashford screen I expected to see and laughed. Yeah, it worked. Then I saw I wasn’t in the party anymore. Weird. Actually they had kicked me. I checked the lfg and it was still present. I regularly saw it popping it on and off as new players entered, but one aspect remained unchanged: two players were always the same, the thief and the guardian (probable opener). That’s when I got it. There wasn’t one scammer, but two. This was confirmed 10 minutes later when I checked again the lfg tool and my screenshot: the main party was the same.

Well played. You had me trying to get you out.

Nevertheless, as I understood the complete scheme, I reported both players both ingame and by e-mail.

Good luck getting gold when you’re banned guys

Smitty.9432:

They start auto attacking the giant and we kindly ask them to stop and farm with us for awhile or simply hop to another server if they’re looking to do Arah. But no, they instead tell us to kitten off and continue killing the giant.

Oh poor boy. You exploit and when people want to do it straight you blame them?

Smitty.9432:

So it goes both ways. We realize that this event more than likely isn’t meant to be farmed and that people want to complete it. But at the same time we’re the ones putting all the work into setting it up for us and others who want to farm. The giant will die in time from the NPCs attacking it, stray AOEs, and so on. Just give us our hour or two of farming before that happens

Good to see someone with balls: you publicly admit to Anet that you exploit despite the policy about exploits. That’s indeed some balls you got!

In a role-playing game, you shouldn’t have to roll those numbers. Dice were added because table-rpg needed some random factor and computation had to be made to check wether you succeed or fail.

The problem with CRPGs is that they still haven’t removed that stupid concept of levels and they still don’t have hidden the numbers. Skyrim made some progress in that regard, but the innovative (ahem) Guild Wars 2 still shows you some stats. Ideally, if you have numbers, you should have all the numbers, that means the Hit Points and complete abilities of each mob so you can play accordingly, but no. Secrecy is the master, because numbers are all that matter.

Remove the numbers, focus on the story and horizontal progression and you have wonderful games. People would be lost at first, but they’d quickly adapt to that.

I don’t want to be in every decision.

But 10+ changes in dungeon bosses released at once and not a single word about it is not acceptable. Heck, the golem in CoE was changed from immobile to moving. Did they fix an exploit by doing that? If you really think it was an exploit, then I don’t know what to think.

Also, they said they’d give as much information as possible. Even a simple sentence like “* reviewed the bosses from various dungeons and performed adequate changes to them” would have been enough. They also said they’d never give information about exploits.

Secrecy is never the solution: communication has always been.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We could do something like this, but when ends up happening is the work involved ends up being a lot of additional work to basically build something people play one or two times and then are done with it.

Isn’t this the exact definition of Living Story/World?

Hi,

I tried calling the following url: https://api.guildwars2.com/v1/wvw/match_details.json?match_id=1 I received an error 500.

Since the match with id 1 doesn’t exist either, you should return an error 404, telling me that I made a mistake, not that you made an error while searching for the erroneous input I gave.

Introducing the Megaserver System

While the new system behaves differently, it actually helps you play with slightly more people from your home world. We’ve run a number of tests with this system so far, and you can see the excellent results below:
Metric Change
Average population per map copy : +225%
Player goes to the same map as his or her party : +25%
Average population from the same party as the player on joined map : +36%
Average population from the same guild as the player on joined map : +5%
Average population from the same home world as the player on joined map : +6%
Average population speaking the same language as the player on joined map : +41%

Yeah! Magical numbers appearing from nowhere.

The only increase I see is the following:
Average outcry from the players: +9000%

Please, Arena Net, bring back the Dragon Ball mini game. This was so fun compared to other mini games. :-)

Looking Ahead: Guild Wars 2 in 2013

As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.

It looks to me like people only ever read what they want.

Hey, as stated in another topic, I love the new achievements panel.

I suggest a few modifications though as I believe it still needs some polishing:

• Order the History category chronologically.
• Allow filters on completion.
• Remove inaccessible achievements from the “near completion” section.
• Add a search tool

I believe this would make this perfect.

I played with a group of level 35-50 not later than yesterday. Except for me (6k), the highest achievement number was around 800.

We did it efficiently and had a lot of fun!

Oh yeah, only one wipe, at the spider, and Kohler died, 2 tries at the burrows.

I guess all it takes is patience from the experienced people and ability to listen for the first-timers.

If I block a player, I cannot see his LFG and I cannot join his party.

On the contrary, if I block a player, that player can see my LFG and can join my party.

When I block players it’s to not interact with them at all and make sure we don’t get in the same party ever again. So this is not working as expected.

Proposal overview
Remove the confusion from the mind of players.

Goal of proposal
This proposal is there to make sure that the players understand exactly what you mean. For instance, you meant to add leaderboards and weapon skin boxes. So far we haven’t seen any. So people speculate about whether it’s ever gonna come and lengthy discussions about it come and go.

Implementation

• Produce clear statements about what is gonna come in a release. If something is available at release, mention it. If you advertised it and did not make it happen in the end, mention it. Clearly.
• For the special case of weapon skin box, the info came on the 10th day of “Fractured” (“Fractured” was out on November 27th, the info about no skin box came on December 6th). This should not happen anymore. In the release notes, there should have been a clear mention of the absence of the skin box given that it was advertized.
• Make clear statements about the leaderboards. If you still want it, tell us so. We might be a bit harsh, but we can understand delays. Make it a goal for end of 2014 if you want, as long as we know. If you got rid of the idea, please tell us. On a personal note, I’d actually welcome that. Opacity has never been an answer.

Risks

• You might have more understanding customers instead an angry mob for no answer.

The fractals are nice, I love them, but they are poorly placed. In times like now, it takes ages to load LA screen when, you switch chars to join a group already in the fractals, when you’re dc and want to join or other stuff like that.

Izaya,

Yes, that’s the pure vision of an economist.

But you seem to forget one thing: all your argument is based on the limited supply of precursors. But in a way or another, there will be more precursors in the game. ArenaNet said it. All I’m saying is “since there will be more precursors, don’t make me craft it: make me enjoy getting it”.

Also, by playing the game, not the TP, I’m making more than 5g an hour. So your number seems irrealistic somehow as well. And taking the most expensive precursor induce flawed reasoning as well.

Foe Wig, that’s why gearcheck exists. I dislike not to be able to trust, but when I create a party of zerkers and I see 2 spin attacks on Kholer I always ask for a gearcheck. Then your lie will be out. Oh so you’ll buy zerker things to tell us you’re zerk? Good, but since you bought it, why not use it? You’ll enjoy more than thinking about “yeah, I owned this group, they thought I was zerk, but I’m not”.

#KidMentality

Victor.8327:

Spider Queen doesn’t work as intended if you stack in the corner. Why do I say that? Whenever someone moves away from the stack , it triggers the right mechanics and the stacking group gets wiped.

If we’re all in melee range while not in the corner, the AOE doesn’t appear either. The AOE is a mechanic present to attack ranged people, because why on earth would the melee guys only be attacked by a boss?

AidanTaylor.3872:

All in game reports are read and acted upon, we have GM’s that literally just sit there and watch “velocity reports” (named as such due to the speed of the reports being made).

I’m sure they all have a similar picture next to their desk.

“luck” streaks are part of randomness.

If you have 1 chance in 1000 of X happening, after X happens, you still have 1 chance in 1000 of X happening.

Also, the one guy that tries again and again to have X happening will have more chances that X happens than the guy that makes 3-4 tries.

People just don’t understand how probabilities work and make kittenumption that the RNG is fair. RNG is random. Randomness is not fairness.

Please mods, sticky this!

Zerker will more than probably still be the top dps armor for most classes, including Ranger which is your main.

Why would you expect a refund?

Smitty.9432:

It’s not really an exploit.

The first defense line of any exploiter. So let me get this straight. The definition of an exploit is the following:

You see a strange behavior happening giving you profit beyond what is normal. You observe that you can repeat it. You repeat it to get profit beyond normal. You’re exploiting.

Prove me that you are not using this pattern to the letter in your case and I’ll withdraw that accusation of exploiting.

Rama.6439:

So, my suggestion is to the players, if you don’t like bad language, use what Anet has given you and quit crying.

So, my suggestion to you, if you don’t like not swearing, stand by the T-rated game Anet has given you and quit swearing.

nightly.2761:

AND make the precursors ACCOUNT bound! not tradeable.
And please no quest of : kill 100 of A and 175 of B.
Make it more like e.g.: You go lornars pass, find a NPC that knows about some treasure but doesnt have money to buy a proper coat to go into the cold. You kill 100 enemies with fur skins. Get those skins (50% chance to drop) and get to a crafting station to make coat. bring coat to te NPC and instance start to escort the NPC so open world cant make it to easy. In the end the treasure is a weird recipe to make 1 piece of precursor, or magical token that turns an exotic weapon into a piece (1/4) of a precursor. Or just the part of the precursor. This can be 1 of the 10 different tasks you can complete or every quest gives specific part of one precursor?

Just a tought on a monday afternoon so its not that great but more fun as craft this, craft that..

What you suggest is another way of farming and crafting. But using new components. If you’re serious, then I’m afraid WoW did too much damages already.

No: we want something in the line of the personal story, minus Trahearne, plus difficulty.

There you go. Already one of the 5.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spear

Hey, let’s make our characters sellable on the TP!

In this game except for lore and personal preferences, there is no reason to play anything other than a human for a guardian: Prayer to Dwayna is the single most powerful healing skill in the game for that profession.

All classes have a healing strictly superior to Prayer to Dwayna except Guardian. What helps me say that? Math.

Let’s consider the two cases: 0 healing power and 300 healing power (full line for that profession).

When I speak about hit points per second, I speak on an average if used one right after the other. Also, I will consider self heal only because I’m selfish; so if a skill heals other players I will count only what happens to me. Also, a dictionary:
- “hpow”: healing power
- “hp”: hit points
- “hps”: hit points per second

Guardian

Healing Breeze recharges for 40 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 6525 hp = 163.125 hps
- 300 hpow: 6825 hp = 170.625 hps
Shelter recharges for 30 seconds:
- 0 hpow: kitten hp = 151.83 hps
- 300 hpow: 4765 hp = 158.33 hps
Signet of Resolve recharges for 40 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 8150 hp = 203.75 hps
- 300 hpow: 8525 hp = 213.125 hps

Human

Prayer to Dwayna recharges for 30 seconds:
- 0 hpow: 6520 hp = 217.33 hps
- 300 hpow: 6775 hp = 225.83 hps

One could argue that those guardian skills are useful! Yes some are, but Prayer to Dwayna is the best. Period.

- Healing Breeze: sorry but this skill shouldn’t even exist. Everybody should provide his own heal. We all have a heal slot, I see no reason that I should take waste this slot so that people don’t get killed. I provide enough boons as a guardian to be egotistic on this one. If it were a shout I wouldn’t mind, but it’s not. The heal over time is comparable to Shelter. A bit better, but not that much. Anyways it’s unusable as you have to manually target the guys you want to heal. Just no.

- Shelter: A nice option. Being able to block some attacks is great in some instances. For instance, you double-dodged in front of Alpha and you’re now out of endurance. Well, you got a get out of trouble card with this one as you can regain your endurance while skill evading his attack. But the drawback is a very low heal, the lowest of the game actually if we discard the extremely rare case where a necro get downed immediately after Well of Blood or if he jumps out immediately after cast. But hey, once you can dodge properly and you only take the “normal” hits, this skills serves to nothing.

- Signet of Resolve: Another nice option. Over time, you get healed in the same range as Prayer to Dwayna. In terms of pure heal, this is the best shot for a guardian without race consideration. The big downside of this skill is the recharge time. 40 seconds, compared to the 30s of Prayer to Dwayna. As a guardian, I prefer to heal for less in one time, but having the option to heal sooner. Exactly what prayer to Dwayna does. Our alternate ways of healing are good enough to allow this. But hey once the signet is recharged, you can heal your conditions…

- Prayer to Dwayna: it’s a vanilla skill, granted. Simple but efficient. Get healed for a fair amount of life, and only 30s later that good skill is available again.

Also, for a good guardian build, the other racial skills are marginal, yes all the skills, not exclusively the heal skills. So yes, if you’re smart, you should roll a human for your guardian only for this skill. It’s sad to see, but true.

I play a Norn guardian for nearly a year now and I’m used to switch between Shelter and Signet of Resolve depending on my gameplay. I’m sooo disappointed when I face the fact that I cannot access the best heal skill available for a guardian.

Edit: fixed a math issue.

Next week we get the concluding chapter of Scarlet. Good because after that we get the so long promised “huge feature build” with “a lot of quality of life improvements”. (source)

Colin Johansson on Eurogamer

We’re going to provide that experience and have this huge feature build that has a whole lot of gameplay-changing elements, a lot of quality of life improvements, a lot of features bundled together into one big patch. And that’ll come some time not too far after Season One completes.

So what to expect, ArenaNet? What do you mean by “not too far after season one completes”? Give us dates. Is that the next patch on March 18th?

Also, bait us, give us reason to not even think about buying your competitors’ new games. You have our hopes in your hands, give us more reason to hope! What do you plan to include in that release?

darkwindwalker.2479:

Naqaj.6219:

TiF.6589:

How do you lost 35% of your dmg output?

I run full Ascended Berserker set and I only notice my damage lower by around 10% in total.

That’s because you can do math, and he can’t

I’ll break the math down for you.
old 107% crit damage + 150% base crit damage = 257% damage on crit
New damage 222% damage on crit

so 257 – 222 = oh crap thats 35% damage

As for zerker being highest dps, yes it is still highest but the risk worth the gain and after the new stats no its not (for some classes/builds).

Sorry to break it to you, but… you can’t do math.

They’re “collecting data”.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

bluestocking.6148:

Xyonon.3987:

I wondered that too. I mean everyone has their personal preferences, maybe the whole team consists of many classes but only one mesmer, and that mesmer does not like the staff for example as a weapon. So it will never be balanced, allways a tiny bit weaker etc…

Horrifying nightmares of every MMO… :s

There’s over 300 people in the ArenaNet offices. I’m pretty sure every possible race/class/weapon combo is covered.

Except that the original question is “what Developers play” and not “what employees play”

Please define “developer” then. Because ArenaNet is the developer of Guild Wars 2. Do you mean project architects/designers? Because they develop the main concepts of the game. Do you mean the programmers? Because the term “developer” is associated to them. So if you want semantics, please be accurate in your terms: developers may mean lots of things, it all depend on the context!

We really wanted to open that door!

You forgot snow. I’d put snow in short ones.

Also, I think Colossus is more of a long one and grawl a medium.

Can’t you just name the rune instead of of showing a webpage with lots of videos about lots of builds?

uknortherner.2670:

Draygo.9473:

All announced times are Pacific.

Anet launches the patch during the typical American workday on the day they announced it, so it will launch between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. pacific.

Indeed. This has always been the case. Why is the OP so surprised?

Because the recent updates, for the last 6 months at least, have been between 4 and 7 PM GMT.

With that timeframe we always had the chances to play before going to bed. With today’s time, we don’t.

Hello there,

Currently the achievement panels are a mess. I kind of like to make correct user interfaces, and this baffles me as how unusable it is. End of complain.

So, to be constructive, here’s a list of suggested improvements.

1. The categories

Put some logic in ordering the categories. Apparently the color seems to already be a logical group, why not move the categories so they are grouped together in foldable meta-categories.

The meta categories could be the following:

• Recurring achievements: Daily, Monthly, Daily PVP, Monthly PVP.
• Living Story
• Super Adventure Box (Actually, the special event)
• Gameplay: Hero, Tradesman, Fashion, Activities
• Exploration: Explorer, Jumping Puzzle
• Combat: Slayer, Weapon Master, Bosses, PvP Conqueror, WvW
• Community
• Hall of Monuments
• Special Events: Halloween, Wintersday

2. The achievements lists

Again, there is no logic. They are grouped but there is no clear separation. In the explorer panel, the fractals achievements are below some random explorer achievements. So… create subcategories.

It’s also good to remove the progress bars where they are not needed (if it’s either done or not): use the relevant representation.

Also, write the description inside the achievement zone, below the title. In smaller characters if you want, but don’t make us hover it: it’s an unuseful pain if I want to retrieve a specific achievement. If you don’t want to put smaller characters, write bigger achievement names, but write the description!

Example for the Explorer category (which is the most messy one):

• Region explorer |■■■■■■■□□□| [foldable]
  • Krytan Explorer |■■■|■■■|■■■|■| (175/175)
  • Orr Explorer |■■□|□□□|□□□| (11/60)
  • …
• Dungeons |■■■■□□□□□□| [foldable]
  • AC paths 3/4 [ clicking on it shows: story ■, path 1 ■, path 2 ■, path 3 □ ]
  • CM paths 1/4 [ clicking on it shows: story ■, path 1 ■, path 2 □, path 3 ■ ]
  • …
  • Dungeon Master |■□□□□□□□□□| (1/8)
  • Dungeon Hobbyist |□□□□□□□□□□| (requires, all paths of all dungeons first)
• Fractals [foldable]
  • Fractals Frequenter |■■■■■■■■□□| (402/500)
  • <volcanic fractal done> ■
  • <underwater fractal done> ■
  • …
  • <volcanic fractal special achievement> □
  • <underwater fractal special achievement> □
  • …
• Mini dungeons exploration |■■■■■□□□□□| [foldable]
  • Mini dungeon 1 ■
  • Mini dungeon 2 □
  • …
• Miscellaneous |□□□□□□□□□□| [foldable]
  • Legendary collector: |□□|□□|□□|□□|□□| (0/5)
  • Dive locations: |■■|■■|■□|□□□| (20/37)

3. The tiers

Simply get rid of them. Well, not completely, but show the total progression as a progress bar and put some vertical bars to show where the various tiers are located (this is represented in the section above, for instance). Also, if a tier gives a reward, show that reward on top of the vertical bar. Of course, this doesn’t work inline with the WvW achievements because a log10 scale would have to be used. But then… show the progress with a log10 scale instead of tiny progress from step 1. And there, you can add a hover to say that you use a log 10 scale.

4. Options

Please give some display options like “hide finished achievements”, “hide finished subcategories” (as defined in section 2) and “hide finished categories”. Also, a small search bar would be excellent.

Well, I hope this is something constructive and that you guys can take some of the ideas over here and implement them ingame.

More and more I see thieves selling “teach solo ac p1 30g”. I was wondering that since they “teach”, it must be some kind of exploit because lots of dungeons get soloed by people and AC p1 is the only one that has so many similar LFG. It’s the only one where people offer to “teach” and those who sell are exclusively thieves and I find it a bit strange.

So is this some kind of exploit or a totally legit service? I don’t wanna hand 30g over (or more, I’ve seen up to 75g) just to check that.

I’m fine with the fractal, except for the clown car. That’s the only thing that should be nerfed.