Guild Wars 2

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

Yes, but you’ve altered the dynamics of the demand. Before, someone who already had a ticket—say, someone who had a ticket drop, or who has a stockpile—who didn’t want that skin—but who did like gold—could trade the ticket for the skin and put that skin on the BLTC. Then someone who wanted that skin could come along and buy that skin. Easy peasy.

Now, with account bound skins, that can’t happen. The person who isn’t interested in the skin is still going to have a ticket. The person who is interested in the skin is going to have to purchase BLKs until they get a ticket. The number of overall tickets earned (whether they are used or stockpiled) goes up, as does your revenue.

As an example—my boyfriend and I are playing, and we’re each interested in one of the Privateer skins. If we each buy five keys, it’s possible he’ll end up with two tickets, and I’ll end up with none. If the skins could be redistributed, the total purchase of 10 keys would be enough for both of us to obtain our skins. If the skins can’t be redistributed, then the 10 keys would not be sufficient, and I would need to buy more keys in order to meet my goal. Three tickets would be required where two would be before. Multiply this across an entire player base, and you’ll see where I’m coming from. More BLK purchases will be necessary in order to slake the demand for the Privateer skins than would be the case if the skins were account bound.

Not acknowledging this is incredibly disingenuous. No one is saying that you’re increasing the price of Black Lion Chests—they’re just saying that you’re requiring more people to buy them.

That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

Those who had stored tickets would have had those tickets anyway. You’re not really rewarding them. In fact, if these individuals would prefer gold to these skins, you’re actually limiting the benefits of the ticket.

Moreover, it feels awful to go through RNG with real-life money. For those who don’t have money to burn, it’s especially annoying. I can grind out keys—one per week—until I have enough tickets. I can’t budget real-world money for it, as I have no idea how many chests it will take. I can make a guess based upon reports of people opening chests, but that’s by no means binding. If it were available in the store for a fixed price, I could at least go, “well, I can save up X per week/budget this amount, and definitely meet my goal.”

It just feels crappy, particularly in a game where cosmetics are a big part of the endgame.

I remember when the first Dragon Bash happened, and all the weapons came out. My partner got four tickets. I didn’t even get one. He didn’t care about those skins, but couldn’t give me the tickets or skins so I could have one. The entire thing was awful enough that I nearly rage-quit the game. The same thing happened with the Sclerite weapons. He got a ticket, and I didn’t. He didn’t care about the skin, and I did. Nothing he could do.

I thought you’d learned from that. You made the skins tradeable, which meant that if I really wanted a skin, I could buy gems, trade to gold, and then get the skin I wanted without the constant disappointment of getting booster after booster after merchant after revive orb. And even then, I sometimes did buy the chests, ’cause it was a fun gamble.

Making them—and the RNG contained within—the only way to obtain something is a really good way of killing the fun. It feels like an utter money grab, and it makes the game feel cheap. I don’t want my GW2 to feel cheap; I want it to feel fair and fun.

I don’t think that they can reconsider at this point. You can’t push up a deadline that much, and I doubt that decisions regarding content releases are decided with less than a week of lead time.

That being said, the lack of new and dynamic content coupled with the no-longer-regular release schedule make this game significantly less compelling than it was a year ago. This isn’t good news for the game, and should probably be taken into account when making future development decisions. The lack of transparency isn’t helping, either. WoW might go for a few months without delivering new content, but they’re very open about what is coming. We’re not so fortunate. There’s nothing to anticipate, other than some vague, nebulous conclusion.

The same thing is happening to me. I’ve never had this problem before. Windows 8, Comcast connection, central IL. No problems with any other programs/downloads.

I don’t think that the event is as bad as people think it is. It could be awesome with some coordination. However, from what I’ve read on Reddit, the rewards for gold aren’t all that much better than the rewards for bronze. I’m all for trying something with challenging coordination, but I want some kind of meaningful reward. If Reddit is correct, and gold is four champ bags, a green and a yellow (plus scraps, etc), then it’s really about the same as playing EOTM for five minutes.

Even giving us guaranteed progress towards Sovereign skins would be something.

I was really, really dismayed when I logged in to my leveling thief. I went from having 10 in acrobatics, 10 in trickery, and approaching 10 in Deadly Arts to having…well, 2. Both in trickery. Gone is the dodge speed boost and might on dodge. I’ve been trying to get my partner tlevel up with me—he’s only got one 80—and now it’s a lot slower. The deadliness isn’t an issue, but feeling like I’m getting to experience unique class mechanics is. I don’t understand why they didn’t just keep it starting at 15, with one trait unlocking every five levels. I don’t think there was anyone out there saying, “well, I’d like to level a character, but I just have too darn many build options at low levels!”

Given that since release they’ve added an additional WvW requirement to legendary crafting (namely, rank to buy a Gift of Battle), I doubt they’re going to change this.

I just finished my world completion the other day, with EB being the final map I needed. Now, I’m just about as big of a care bear as you can find in GW2 when it comes to playing against other players. I have a high frustration threshold, I don’t like attacking players, and avoided WvW for ages because it seemed like it was mean. I dreaded doing world completion, and I was especially dismayed when I found out that Season Two was happening, and was going to take two months.

What helped me was diving into WvW. At first, I went with the intent of popping into non-queued maps, running around on the margins, getting whatever was up, and generally trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Then…well, there were sentries around, and I could solo them, so I did that when I found one. Ditto dolyaks. I mean, it’s not that different than PvE.

Camps were similar. I couldn’t really reliably solo them, but if I was running with my boyfriend, we could take it, easy. And, hey, then I could get the objective, and I got some shiny crystals! Not so bad at all. Sometimes we’d run into our zerg…and we’d follow. Because zergs take places that two people can’t. We took keeps, and towers, and…it was fun. Around this time, I started going after single players if I saw them, or pairs if I was with my friend.

By the time the season started, I had two maps completed. I also had a general idea of what WvW was supposed to be like—the strategy, the maps, the tactics. It was around this time that I revamped my mesmer for WvW (I’d been playing ranger) and started playing in EOTM…and sometimes in the borderlands…

Now I’m hooked on WvW. It’s gone from being a chore to being fun. I think that’s part of the reason this map completion stuff is required. I would’ve never set foot in WvW if I didn’t have to to finish my legendary; now I’m willing to do it on my own. The requirement is therefore a good thing, at least in my estimation.

What ArenaNet could do in order to make it a bit less annoying is to rotate colors more. Being in a position where you’re never, ever green, or where you’re always green, is really pretty annoying. The former especially; you can’t necessarily take the objectives that you need, and it could be months before, say, you have the proper Garrison. I know that on TC, it’s been ages since we’ve been green.

It seems to me that the benefits of the megaserver changes outweigh the detriments…but only if you’re part of some specific groups.

• People who are on low population servers benefit because they have easier access to populated maps.
• People in large guilds benefit from being able to trigger events.
• More serious players benefit from being able to schedule their world boss events, and by being part of larger guilds (which increases the chance of their being put in a map with guildies, and allows them to fully take advantage of event triggering)

The waypoint changes, the change to temples (I am very, very glad I’m done buying Obsidian Shards), and the dungeon changes are a bit detrimental overall, but if you’re part of one of the above groups, it’s a small price to pay.

That being said, not everyone is part of one of those groups. Speaking as a casual player on a very well-populated server (TC), the megaserver changes bring nothing to the table. Virtually every map had enough players to complete world events. I played events as they came up. I loved being able to look at one of the online timers and being able to see that Dwayna or Grenth or Lyssa was up. This allowed me to maximize the effectiveness of my limited game time.

These tools have now gone away. I won’t be able to see if temples are up. I’ll have to deal with contested waypoints where I didn’t before. I’m hoping that the devs’ claims are right, and that the population changes won’t alter the culture in the maps, particularly as I enjoy RP; however, the best-case scenario here is that things don’t get worse. The solution of joining RP guilds isn’t really a solution; it benefits players who are already part of a big community. That’s not me. I like open-world RP. I’m terrified of people in guild.

I’m not saying the megaserver changes are bad; my player experience is not the same as everyone else’s. It might end up being a good change overall. I just know that I’m personally kind of worried and a little sad about it.

Did you walk past the priory prisoners? Because that happened to me last night. All I had to do was walk by them and free them, though, and the quest progressed.

The way I’ve always viewed changes is to follow the following checklist:

1.) When you paid for/crafted/acquired the item, what did you want in terms of functionality?
2.) Does the answer to number one still apply?
3.) If the answer to number two is “yes”, then it’s not a problem. If the answer to number two is ’no", then it is a problem.

If you’ve crafted two Incinerators, or two Frostfangs, you still retain the ability to equip them both. You’ve lost no functionality. Would it be easier to acquire that functionality now? Yeah, it would. That doesn’t mean you no longer have the functionality. Moreover, you still have the stat switching.

I personally bought two additional Marjory’s Daggers right before this announcement came out, because I wanted to dual wield them on my new thief (I already had one on my necro). Does this change mean that I could’ve waited a month and then gotten them without paying 1200 gems? Yes. But I decided at the time that this functionality was worth the cost. It was my decision, and for better or worse, I have to lie with it.

The same applies to crafting a legendary (I’m currently on my first, since it was never a huge priority for me). If you decided it was worth the cost to craft a second Incinerator to dual wield, then you paid your cost and got your functionality. Most stores don’t allow you to return an item because it went on sale three months later, and those that do offer it as a perk, not as an obligation.

This situation is functionally different from, say, some of the town clothes, which will no longer have the functionality for which they were purchased (and which ANet is compensating users for). You wanted two Incinerators. You got two Incinerators.

I love the wardrobe changes, but I think replacing the single-piece items with a tonic is a terrible change. I mix a hoodie, the shorts, and the riding boots on my human female guardian, and it looks awesome. I would love to be able to use that look in game.

If not…I mean, I only bought the two pieces because of how they looked together. If I can’t use them together anymore, then I think a refund is in order.

New traits are good. Having UI-based trait reset is great. Simplifying the trait points seems unnecessary to me, but I understand the idea of streamlining the game, so whatever. The rest of it, though, presents some problems, at least in my opinion. They are:

• The justification for simplifying the trait lines is a bit condescending. Yes, someone could spend 11/14 and end up with a less effective build, but someone could also spec a power weapon in a condition build and end up with a less effective play style. I’m all for simplifying redundancies, but, you know, trait lines aren’t rocket science.

• Waiting until 30 to even begin unlocking trait lines is awful. Waiting even longer to unlock master/grandmaster traits is even more awful. Some classes are just painful to level early on. Making that period last longer discourages leveling, and especially discourages alts.

• Trait unlock needs to be handled very, very carefully, as it has the potential to force people to play in ways that they don’t want in order to unlock class mechanics. This seems to go against the GW2 ethos of, “play how you want!” Forcing a PvPer into PvE, or a PvEer into PvP in order to get the build that they want kind of stinks.

• This leads into the second point: gold unlocks make things even trickier. I honestly can’t figure out what an appropriate price point would be. Set it too low, and you trivialize the challenge of obtaining the skills in the first place. Set it too high, and you end up essentially making horizontal progression pay-to-win, as you either need to be good at the trading post or spend real-life money in order to unlock the traits with gold. I honestly don’t believe that there’s a good middle point—I think it’ll be impossible to find a point where achievement-types don’t feel as though their effort is undervalued and casual players won’t feel compelled to buy gems -> convert to gold in order to unlock the traits.

These changes introduce inconvenience, then allow you to circumvent the inconvenience through gold (leveling through crafting, buying trait books). In a system where gold is directly and officially obtainable through cash purchases, this puts casual players who can’t afford to spend cash at a distinct mechanical disadvantage. There’s a level at which paying for convenience becomes pay-to-win. When paying real money allows you to completely circumvent a particular bit of content for a mechanical advantage, I feel that line is crossed.

Game Mode:
PvE

Goal of proposal:
To allow for more flexibility in ranger playstyles by allowing those who don’t want to deal with pet AI to have the option to run without a pet, while at the same time ensuring that those who are comfortable with pet AI and playstyle to be rewarded for the increased difficulty. Also, to promote the inclusion of rangers on bosses with mechanics that make pets extremely undesirable.

Proposal Overview:
Add additional pet-slot options that are not pets, but preparations. Selecting one of these options would buff the ranger herself to compensate for most (but not all) of the lost pet damage. Each preparation would have a utility skill that would take the place of the pet’s F2. Optionally, it could also provide a periodic buff to attack, not unlike a guardian’s period burning; this would mimic the pet’s auto-attack special abilities (such as a raven’s vulnerability). The pet attribute stat would increase the buff to the ranger’s damage, but would not improve the ranger’s survivability.

The incentive to use pets would still be present, as a well-manned pet would have a greater damage potential than a preparation. Additionally, pets would retain a much larger variety of utility skills than preparations. This would keep pets desirable under many circumstances, particularly for players who enjoy the pet mechanic and/or who want to maximize both their damage and group utility.

It would not greatly alter the play mechanics outside of pet attack/passive/stow management. It would allow for rangers who are participating in an encounter where pets are extremely unwieldy (such as Marionette Warden II) to have an option to contribute without messing up the encounter mechanics. And, ultimately, it would reinforce the risk/reward trade-off that seems to be key in GW2 designs.

Associated Risks:
Care would need to be taken in order to ensure that using a preparation is not universally preferable to using a pet. This means careful balancing of the buff to the ranger, as well as improving the responsiveness of the pet’s F2 skill. This also means not putting the most sought-after F2 skills on preparations.

Idea: Include, say, three or four preparation options in there with the pets. Make them so that if a pet is supposed to be thirty percent of your damage, the preparations give 25-27% back to you. Put in an F2 skill for each of them that’s something you perform. Give players one to start with, and make the rest like the pets, where you have to learn it somewhere in the world.

This way, we wouldn’t lose the F2 as a core mechanic. Pets would provide a higher theoretical damage, allowing those who’re good at micromanagement to come out a little ahead. Most importantly, rangers wouldn’t be forced to make the choice of, “well, do I put my pet on passive and lose 30% of my damage, or do I let it out and run the risk of it screwing up the encounter?”

Honestly, I hope they do something like this soon. I just did marionette, and the amount of hate that rangers get because of the pet mechanic screwing things up is just astounding. Even when the rangers have nothing to do with it. Listening to an entire zone slag your class—even if it’s not about you—is really discouraging.

1.) Ranger.

Pets feel unpolished. Pet skills don’t always go off despite the fact that they’re supposed to be most of a Ranger’s utility. Pet names don’t get saved reliably. Pet attacks are slow and clumsy. Pets don’t die as easily as they used to, but they still die more easily than they should, given that they’re 30% of a ranger’s damage.

Sword is especially irritating. The 1 skill prevents dodging and initiating finishers. The solution given is to take it off auto attack. However, the 1 skill also has a tendency to send the ranger flying when hit after an enemy dies (I think it depends on where in the sequence the mob dies). So, you know, if you hit it an extra time (as you might if you’re not auto-attacking), you might end up falling off a ledge, or going right into another mob. The solution to that is either to auto-attack, or to be absolutely perfect in your execution. I think that, in this case, asking perfection from players is asking too much; no other auto-attack has this problem.

2.) Necro. They’re viable, but buggy.

3.) Engineers. The mechanics are clunky, and the kits/ascended thing is an issue.

Honorable mention: I play a warrior. I love my warrior. However, the damage/survivability curve on them seems a bit too forgiving.

Race: Human
Gender: Male
Class: Ranger
Issue: I purchased the Dreamthistle Longbow. When I got it, it looked great. I’ve been alternating between it and my Fused Longbow, so I hadn’t looked at it in a little while. Today, when I changed my dye job, I switched back to the Dreamthistle Longbow, and I noticed that there’s now this weird, detached, floating bowstring. It only appears when the weapon’s equipped; it doesn’t appear at all in the preview window. The effect is not good; the transparent nature of that segment of the bow makes it look like the bowstring is some kind of weird prim artifact.
The way it looks in preview (which is as it did before) is great. Can it be changed back, please?

Ranger. The option to work without a pet. As it currently stands, Pet AI is problematic in PvE content. I’d love to be able to use my ranger as my dungeon toon, since he’s my favorite out of all of my characters, but the pet is such a pain that it makes doing so unfun. If this isn’t feasible, then making the pet immune or highly resistant to AoE.

Engineer. Get rid of the stupid backpacks, or at least make them optional. The look of the class keeps me from playing it.

Mesmer. Make Mantra charges carry across zone changes. I run a mantra build where having prepped mantras increases my DPS. Having to remember to recast all of them whenever I switch zones is a pain. It would be a small QoL increase, but it would make me so much happier.

As others have said, I don’t think the problem is that there’s a hard encounter; I think the problem is that there’s a hard encounter that took the place of an encounter that a significant portion of the community enjoyed as-is and replaced it with a hard encounter that a different portion of the community enjoys. It was then branded as “new content” and given its own release period.

It’s only new content if you enjoy the harder, raid-type encounters. If you don’t, and you liked the old version, then it’s a removal of content. The proper thing to do would have been to design a new encounter in a relatively unused area, or to instance the content. There’s a reason that, generally speaking, WoW raids have been, you know, raids and not open-world content.

One of Guild Wars 2’s strengths was that it wasn’t WoW; it wasn’t focused on difficult end-game content and a gear treadmill. It was that kind of spirit that got me into the game when WoW proved too time-consuming to play properly. However, the recent moves within Guild Wars 2 have represented a few steps towards more WoW-like content. Raid-type encounters and ascended gear are frustrating for me. I like being challenged on an individual basis; I like trying to solo things I shouldn’t be able to solo. I don’t, however, have any particular inclination to join large, coordinated groups or to spend large amounts of time grinding crafting simply to get better gear. The grinding isn’t particularly challenging (and feels needlessly time-consuming), and the large, coordinated groups leave too much of my success or failure up to chance.

I wouldn’t say the community’s gone downhill, exactly, but the latest content is bringing out some of the worse aspects of people. Until the last two patches came out, almost everything in open world was set up so that one person couldn’t easily rob another person of their opportunity to play as they want to play. When such a conflict did occur—such as deliberate event failing in order to farm spawns—Anet stepped in to correct the situation.

With the latest two patches—and particularly the last one—that’s changed. The goals of farmers are at odds with the goals of completionists. While farming the Aetherblades doesn’t guarantee the event will fail (depending, of course, on the percentage of people who are farming vs. the percentage of people who aren’t), it does make it a heck of a lot harder. This is especially frustrating for those who have limited time to get an achievement, whose playing time is restricted, or who aren’t easily able to use alternate achievements to get the meta. For those individuals, failing to complete has a high cost in that it may keep them from getting a time-limited achievement and the associated cosmetic reward.

Yet, on the converse side, the monetary rewards for farming Aetherblades are much more lucrative than those for killing Scarlet. Additionally, with the change to magic find coming, greens are suddenly in high demand. Greens take up a lot of bag space, though…unless they’re in a champion box. Similarly, the introduction of ascended crafting materials means that a lot of people are trying to hoard the champion boxes so they can open them once today’s patch goes live. For these individuals, failing to farm has a high cost in terms of lost (potential) revenue.

That these two goals are at odds with each other puts the community in conflict. Yesterday, my boyfriend was trying to get the Scarlet Scrambler daily in order to complete the meta (which he wasn’t able to dedicate much time to earlier due to work). When he asked map chat for help in doing it, he received enough abuse that he nearly quit the game. (He ended up getting the meta ‘cause he and I were able to do the Faren speed run). Now, this is someone who’s probably bought about five copies of the game in order to bring in friends. For someone who’s put that large of an investment into the game to consider quitting is indicative that something is wrong.

It’s not the farmers’ fault. It’s not the completionists’ fault. It’s the fault of a system that puts them at odds when virtually every other aspect of the game is strongly cooperative. I think a lot of it will die down after the new patch drops, and the invasion events become rare.

Tarnished Coast. Two runs, neither of which defeated Scarlet. Attempts to nicely request that others help complete the event rather than farm in order to get the daily achievement to count towards the fast-closing meta were met with abuse.

I like the invasions. Participating in them is fun. However, the conflict between farmers and achievement-seekers is poisoning the community. Everything else in Guild Wars 2 is built so that one person isn’t going to lose out on a reward because another person is there. This event is an exception, and as fun as it is to participate in large-scale events, I will be very, very glad when the invasions become rare.

I don’t have a dog in this race, having happily used every skin I’ve acquired, but this really sounds like a lie. It’s almost completely arbitrary. The only thing that I can think of is that they’re looking at down the line, when it might be possible to separate stats from skin; in that case, yeah, the stripped skins should be account bound. But this is a completely arbitrary thing that’s going to unfairly affect a tiny number of players. Neither the skin holders nor the ticket holders had any reason to expect to be rewarded. Rewarding one without rewarding the other is just baffling and dumb.

My ranger (who’s my main, yay!). Davan Storm of Tarnished Coast. I tried to reflect his noble roots in his outfit—he is, after all, a gentleman hunter, albeit with an unhealthy love of fire. His loyal raven Bran is beside him.

I loved the cutscene. However, it would’ve been nice if my human noble character had expressed some sort of reaction to his demise. I mean, this guy came to visit me when I was unconscious; obviously we’re pretty close. You’d think I’d be angry or sad or something.

I really, really hate the implication that those who voted for Kiel are stupid, swayed by waypoint costs, or voting for boobs. In my case, none of those things are true.

I voted for Kiel because I didn’t think that a fractal would do a god’s fall justice, and because, from my character’s perspective, I’d rather have a good guy gain power than a plutocrat consolidate it.

I couldn’t care less about waypoint costs versus Black Lion keys, and, unless it affected me on a subconscious level, I couldn’t care less about the character’s race. Human, charr…it’s all just pixels, anyway. However, I will say that the amount of rabid, obnoxious support that I saw from Gnashblade supporters on the forums turned me off to his candidacy even further than I otherwise would have been. Calling Ellen “Traherne 2.0” and talking about her boobs as though they’re a deciding factor…yeah.

Yeah. I want the rapier/pistol for my mesmer. Right now I’m scepter-torch/staff, but the GW2 build system is flexible enough—and my attitude towards min/maxing casual enough—that I’ll go where the shinies go. It’d be nice if I could get them.

But, yeah. Rare chance? Time-limited? I hate this. I really, really hate this. If it’s BoE, I’ll happily buy gems; my time is more valuable than my money. If it’s BoA? Then it’s the Jade weapons all over again. Some people get tons—my boyfriend has four of them from 20 Rich Coffers—and others get none. And while I can schedule time to earn something, I can’t block off two weeks of solid playing just so that maybe-possibly-if-I’m-lucky I’ll get a rare drop. It’s just not worth it.

And Donari’s right. It would be one thing if these were more fire weapons, or another iteration of the standard high-fantasy-anime-mega-swords, but they’re not. They’re a unique type of weapon meant to match a theme that they’ve been heavily pushing, both with the story and with gem store outfits. Pure RNG doesn’t seem to fit here.

That being said, we don’t know everything yet. But, man, I’ll be disappointed if dumb luck is the only way to obtain them.

Lots of people have reported this. There’s an ongoing thread that dates back to when a similar bug occurred a few months ago. It’s been a month, no fix.

I’ve found that Starry Night and Redemption pretty much always look great together on medium or heavy armor.

For a while, I was running Pine/Remembrance/Patina on my male human ranger with the T3 coat.

Sincerity and Mithril work very well on my guardian (I’m wearing the gem store armor with T3 human shoulders). The main part is Sincerity, and the pattern is in Mithril.

On a side note, certain dyes have very contrasting accents. I read about it on some forum somewhere, and tested it out in world. Patina and Heirloom are the best examples of this; one has green highlights, and the other has sort of orange-gold highlights. Wintergreen and Pine have it too (green/blue and greenish-brown/green, respectively), though they’re much more subtle. The effect is especially obvious on the T3 human heavy shoulders, which will fade from one shade to the other towards the tips. This effect also makes Patina in particular good for small highlights, as the green will make it pop.

Also, I’ve noticed there are certain dyes that aren’t Frost/Fire dyes that still have a lot of contrast. I’ve found that they seem to be named after virtues and sins. So, Sincerity, Illumination, Remembrance, Redemption, Wrath, Pride, Arrogance, Forgiveness, and (if I remember correctly) Spite and Envy all have more contrast. When possible, I try to use these dyes over other, similar options, though that’s not always possible.

Can verify that this happens with my male human, medium armor, boots. The daggers are red. I’m fortunate in that it doesn’t ruin my fire-based color scheme. It is, however, rather disheartening that the only response we’ve gotten in the past couple of weeks is thread deletion. I don’t think people would be as likely to start a new thread if they didn’t think that the old thread was being ignored.

I went with the torch. I figure because it’s an off-hand, not as many people will go for it. Also, it has a blue flame; the only other easily obtained ones that have that are the steam brand (sort of—no flame, just that blue spark) and the Sylvari T3 cultural one. Neither of those really fit my guardian. This one does, though.

Directly from that subreddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1h6g2k/clearly_something_is_wrong_with_the_metrica/carfeax

There is dev acknowledgement, and they’ve corrected the issue, and are working on correcting any banning errors.

I imagine this has got to be annoying for rangers. I mean, not for me—I run mostly longbow, not BM build, and I run birds because that’s what fits the character—but I’m pretty sure I was in the minority. Everyone else seemed to run BM/cats, and got hit with the nerf hammer pretty hard. I’m not sure that it was necessary to nerf pets so hard—but, then, I’m focused on the PvE side of things.

Other than that, I run condition thief, axe warrior, and sword/torch guardian. It’s a pretty good day to have an off-normal build.

I swear, if those items aren’t behind ridiculous RNG, I will be making a second thief just so I can take advantage of those pistols and that sword.

I really, really loved the cutscene. I wish I could rewatch it; I want part of it for my desktop so badly…

Make them trade-able. My boyfriend got four tickets in twenty rich chests. He doesn’t want four Jade weapons (or the Sclerite one he got from a Southsun crate drop). I, on the other hand, want the longbow for my warrior.

If we could trade, the problem would be solved. I mean, you could keep the rate exactly as it is. People would still buy the chests in order for a chance at the ticket, either to use for themselves or to sell for a crapton of gold. That would allow people to honestly evaluate the cost of the skin.

They wouldn’t need to touch the odds one whit. ArenaNet would get their RNG revenue from people who think they’re lucky enough to beat the odds, and from people who want to try to make a quick buck. People who really, really wanted a skin could get one from the people who’re lucky enough to get ones that they don’t want. As it stands, my boyfriend’s probably going to sit on at least one or two of the tickets. It’s just a waste.

In other words, they really ought to be using the same system they did with the dyes. People would complain about the odds of getting a rare dye, but deep down, they always knew that if they really wanted it, they could pony up the gold. I don’t think it diminished the prestige of the dyes any.

Also, they really didn’t need to make “rich” coffers. It sets up a false expectation. Yes, there’s a difference, but unless you’re buying a ton of chests of both sorts and playing the odds, it’s not really noticeable. I mean, buying two tickets might nearly double my chances of winning, but I’m not gonna win the Powerball anytime soon. ANet in their description is technically correct, but seemingly intentionally misleading. Just make them all the regular coffers.

deight.2137:

Are you sure the drop rate is that low? I just bought 20 Rich Dragon Coffers and got 4 tickets…

Of course, the only skins I want aren’t for any of the classes I play, so… the tickets will probably just sit forever in my bank.

He thought he was lucky until he had to deal with an hour of his girlfriend sulking at him…

….so, people should just be quiet and let themselves get cheated out of events so that an individual doesn’t have to slightly alter their playstyle?

I mean, map harassment is wrong, but the action of bugging the event, even if it isn’t an exploit, is really inconsiderate.

Most of the time, actually, people stand on the rocks waiting for the boss to spawn. Sometimes you get people putting down AoEs, but it’s not the norm by any means. It is possible, however, that once someone starts doing it, other people join in—not out of malice, but out of a desire to get credit. It just happened to me about ten minutes ago on TC. The bug got triggered, and despite the fact that I was right there, I couldn’t target the boss quickly enough in the zerg to get credit. It is entirely possible that the OP was behaving this way in reaction to other people bugging the event.

In general, though, a good rule of thumb is to just be nice. You may not be exploiting, but if you’re triggering the boss in that manner, you are ruining other people’s gaming experience. Saying that you haven’t been told not to by a dev is absolutely disingenuous. You don’t need a dev to tell you to not be a jerk.

I don’t think anyone was asking the OP to not put down any marks at all during the event. The issue was putting down AoE stuff prior to the spawn, not for the entirety of the encounter. Playing your class to its optimum potential is one thing, but if you suspect doing so might be bugging the boss, it’s probably a good idea to stop, out of politeness if nothing else. The world will not end if you don’t eke out every last drop of DPS.

I mean, there aren’t any damage meters, you know? Putting up the AoEs two seconds later isn’t going to get you kicked from a raid or something. However, if it is the pre-spawn AoEs that’re making the boss bug, you should stop. Yes, even if it’s part of how you play your class. That bug makes it much more difficult for others to participate in or get credit for the event, and is obviously not something that’s working as intended. Continuing to trigger it after being called out is inconsiderate at best and griefing at worst.

That being said, A.) map chat harassment isn’t good, either, and B.) there’s no word from any devs about what’s causing the bug.

I can confirm that this was going on in Southsun on TC this evening, though I was not one of the people talking in map chat. The general line seemed to be that something about laying things (specifically necro wells) down prior to combat was making the Instigator scale incorrectly. While I’ve no idea whether it’s because of necro wells or any other mechanic (much less any specific player), there does exist a vast difference between when it happens and when it doesn’t.

When the bug trips, the Instigator goes down much, much faster than it does with the same zerg without the bug. Additionally, it only ever seems to happen on the Instigator by Kiel’s waypoint; the other one seems unaffected. The difference is dramatic, and oftentimes players don’t have a chance to target and tag the boss before he goes down, especially if they only get in range at, say, 50% health.

This keeps on happening to me, too. The first time, I figured it was just my internet. The subsequent times…yeah.

It’s a long quest, and I shouldn’t have to continue redoing it until I get lucky enough not to DC in the middle. This is the first really irritating bug I’ve found. Sigh.