Guild Wars 2

Almost four months ago I created that thread as a suggestion in relation to character animations:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Add-character-body-animation-when-idling-and-rotating-the-camera/first#post307068

So today I launched the game for the first time since a few weeks. It downloaded this latest update and then I started playing around. I did not notice it at first glance, it took me about half an hour of doing quests around until, at some point, I went to Lion’s Arch and just looked around as I often do…

And whilst doing so, lo and behold, I noticed it, and told myself “Hey! Wait a minute! That wasn’t there before! They just added this!”.

Have anyone noticed that, now, when your character doesn’t move and you hold the right-click on your mouse to rotate the camera how your character’s head and neck also move to correspond to the rotation? In other words, your character turns his/her head to look at where you rotate the camera?

That’s exactly what I suggested four months ago!

Before this update and since the game’s launch, when you’d hold that mouse button and rotated the camera then only the camera itself would move, while the character itself wouldn’t move at all, which at the time felt – to me – rather odd.

Now, with this said, I do not know if my suggestion was coincidentally read and considered by one of the staff of the dev team at the time. Maybe this is just a coincidence after all and my thread was forgotten the same day it was created. But regardless of my suggestion itself being the catalyst of the animation update I would like to thank ANet’s dev team, or perhaps more precisely the animator(s) whom are responsible for the animation update. Sincerely guys, I am grateful!

It seems perhaps like a rather small maybe even unnoticed update (I think it’s not even listed as an actual update in the release notes!) for the majority, in comparison to the actual “game-play” related updates that were more important (with reasons, of course, not saying they were not!) but even a “small” update such as adding new animations like that, to me, greatly contribute to the level of potential immersion, not even for “role-play” purposes but even just for visual aesthetics during game-play per se, it’s just now more pleasant to me to do something as simple as idling in Lion’s Arch and making my character look at what I am looking. I feel more “connected to” my character now (I guess it is related to role-play after all!).

But, since I decided to post this within the suggestions board I would like to take this opportunity to… well, to perhaps add a little little something to my 4 months-old suggestion? Pretty please? Hehe. Well, while the animation is great I also noticed that if you rotate to a full 180º to look “behind” you then the character’s head/neck’s rotation will stop and the character will revert to “default” (looking in front) viewing while the camera remains rotated behind the character. In other words, what would be “needed” to “complete” the new animation would be to make the character itself (not just head and neck, but also body and legs) to “turn around” to look behind and keep the animation corresponded to the camera’s position as long as the right-click on the mouse is being pressed. So that if I release the click whilst looking behind then the character will automatic reposition towards that direction.

Well I’m not sure if that was clear (and, sorry English isn’t my native language, not sure if this is actually clear) but I anyway, regardless of my “suggestion” this new update is great, thank you guys at ANet!

Hi,

I just wanted to give some modest help for the GW2 players around whom happen to have low (or sudden drops of) FPS-related issues. I first made sure to read the information contained within the sticky thread provided by ANet on the subject, which itself already does a lot of the work explaining how to possibly help resolve issues in relation to low FPS (not guaranteed to, but does help in many cases).

The thread in question (just in case you miss it, but it’s a sticky so you shouldn’t!):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/FPS-and-Performance-based-issues-1/first#post338300

Near the end it specifies the following in regards to in-game settings:

3. Change “Reflections” to “None.”
4. Change “Render Sampling” to “Supersample” then back to “Native.”
————————

To add to that I would also like to point at the “Shadows” setting.

5. Change “Shadows” to anything but “Ultra”.

Because, indeed, according to my own modest tests (because I did experience low and sudden drops of FPS issues) just reducing both the Reflections and Shadows settings to “Terrain & Sky” (rather than “All”) and “High” (rather than “Ultra”), respectively, considerably increased my overall performance, as well as “smoothed out” the frames. Since, prior to the changes in question I was also experiencing what I call a slide-show when I happened to be rotating the camera, regardless of the location within the game, and literally caused the already-low FPS I had to suddenly dip to the low 10’s per second during those camera rotations.

Which is why, ultimately, I named this thread “Two in-game settings”. I did notice that the Render setting also does certainly affect overall performance if it is set to “Supersample” and should in most cases be left to “Native” (unless you have a high-end graphics card and a high-end CPU). But according to my tests that specific setting, overall, did not cause “issues” per se and I would only refer to it as a “taxing but working-as-intended” setting (with perhaps the need to be optimized a bit).

The two settings, to reiterate myself, that happen to cause most low FPS issues I had and the ones I’ve seen being described on the forums here are the maximum variables of both “Shadows” and “Reflections”. I assure you, that if other than stability-related issues your overall system is well-configured, optimized, updated (OS updates, drivers, etc) and stable (no over-clocks or third-party drivers, etc) then most likely two those settings once reduced just a notch or two (in most cases) will signifcantly help the cause and increase your overall performance.

It will of course also depend on your overall system hardware’s capabilities along with other in-game conditions (number of players on-screen, and your own screen’s resolution, and other settings too) but generally speaking I do believe that two those settings alone do miracles if you can be content with reducing them a bit from their current maximum settings, if you do happen to have them both set at their maximum settings, that is.

Ultimately I think that ANet might have to optimize their “shadowing techniques” for their “Ultra” setting, as well as doing the same for the “All” setting for their Reflection methods (since “Terrain & Sky” from the Reflection settings in my case does not cause issues then I am suspecting that in the case of "All"’s issues it might have something to do with reflections coming from other players around your own character, but that’s just my own theory). And once that is done (ANet’s own optimizations, eventually) many of us will be able to finally use those two maximum variables and have the game finally running completely “maxed out” with smooth frames (as long as the system is capable of running them of course).

As a final note, my own system consist of a Core i7 2600K CPU (not over-clocked, always running at stock 3.4Ghz), 8GB of G.SKILL Ripjaws memory at default frequencies, the ASUS P8P67 Pro motherboard (with most default factory BIOS settings, no automatic over-clock settings are enabled, to avoid fluctuations on the overall CPU frequency), and finally a GeForce GTX670 2GB graphics card (ASUS Direct CUII model, non over-clocked and regular non-TOP “DC2” variant). And indeed, it is quite a good system overall and exceeds the recommended specifications to run GW2, but still overall I did have low FPS issues, until I changed those two settings!

I hope it helps some people around!

Maybe ANet needs to think of incentives to “convince” skippers to not skip. That, or “force” everyone to fight specific mob groups within per-established areas of the dungeons, and only open the next path when the group(s) are dead.

I see so many Norn Guardians around, truly yes I think there’s many of them.

But, ironically I think that guardian does not “fit” the Norn. I see the Norn as hunters more than anything else, similar to “hunter-gatherer” shamans if you want to see it in a way. The classes I think that fit the Norn best are Ranger and Warrior. The Guardian, in my opinion, fits much better with Humans. But this is just subjectively what I think.

I do have a Guardian Norn myself, in fact she is my “main” character for the moment. Which I know is contradicting my own thoughts. But that’s because the Norn is my favorite race of the game, and the Guardian is the first class I tried, without thinking of “its place” within the Norn race at the time. when I created the character in question.

ElenaDragon.8401:

If you follow the link I posted and then click on each individual song, you can see who composed them. The Great Toymaker was composed by Leif Chappelle:
https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/the-great-toymaker?in=arenanet/sets/guild-wars-2-wintersday-2012

Jeremy Soule didn’t compose any of the Wintersday songs. I read in another post that he left ANet.

I noticed, indeed and thanks for the links by the way.

I really thought it sounded like Jeremy Soule’s musical style though, anyone else? Maybe the new composer(s) are trying to stay faithful to the orchestrated style of the overall OST but of course they had to keep the whole holiday and Christmas spirit intact for the new Wintersday music, maybe that’s why it “sounds like” Jeremy Soule’s work.

But overall the new composers who made the Wintersday music are great! I hope they make more music for GW2 in the future.

ElenaDragon.8401:

Here’s the new Wintersday music:
https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/sets/guild-wars-2-wintersday-2012

Composers are Leif Chappelle, Maclaine Diemer, and Stan LePard.

Awwww, so it wasn’t composed by Jeremy Soule then? And that might mean that he’s not the composer for GW2 anymore. Noooooooooo

But… ok, those new composers are good. I hope they compose more music for future GW2 content.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Aetra Ironbender

I like. Not sure if pronunciation is correct but I’d pronounce the first name “Eetra”, or is it like “Ahetra”? Anyway I like. The Ironbender part makes me feel it’s either a Warrior or a Guardian.

In my case I got two Norn females with whom I attempted to give a more or less “serious” name, they are:

Keeyma Ultharyn (Guardian), which is pronounced Kee-ma (‘y’ is mute) Ulth-areen.
Meirhynn Valyad (Mesmer), which is pronounced May-reen Val-ee-ad.

I do have a third Norn, Male Engineer but I couldn’t come up with something serious and I think I was tired. So I just went with something fitting for him being an Engineer and having tools with him all the time in his backpack.

So I named him Apparatus Maximus … lol, oh well.

Oh c’mon they’re freaking plants, no gender, no homosexuality nor heterosexuality.

They just happen to love one’s personality, not the gender (when it’s another Sylvari). You’re just deceived by their appearance, so if two Sylvari (two plants) love each other but they both happened to physically shape themselves under the form of a human(oid) female they’re then suddenly homosexual? Makes no sense.

And besides trying to picture their sexual “activity” is kinda creepy, to be honest. What do they do, physically shape “properly formed” or deformed reproductive organ on the fly as the intercourse occurs? Ugh…

Anyway, to “fit” and be distinguishable in the game the devs went good ol’ anthropomorphism on them with visually-apparent “gender” so you perceive them as being of a specific gender. Especially with female and male voices for the Sylvari with or without breast and more (or less, for males) “feminine” body curvatures and proportions.

It’s a beautiful fantasy world with beautiful people, let it be.

Ok ok… yeah more variety maybe, would be nice, sure (more face customization options, scars, more varied results with more sliders for different facial proportions, etc). But please don’t remove the existing ones or don’t temper with them at all (just add stuff if you want, that’s it).

No such thing as too much Norn huh?

I know the feeling.

I got a total of eight character slots but I find it very difficult to “limit” myself to not make too many Nords. To be honest, if I had unlimited number of character slots I would simply make a Male Nord and a Female Nord of each classes AND make a few other toons with Humans, Charr and Sylvari (don’t like Asura, sorry). Unfortunately eight slots ain’t enough for that so yeah… poor me limited to three Norn characters out of eight. I really like my Human Thief though I have to admit.

Any official information/confirmation about that? Link? Anything? Anyone?

:(

The “I can outrun a Centaur!” line is the audio mascot of this game. GW2 just wouldn’t be the same without it, including its frequency (just the line itself isn’t enough, you need to hear it often for it to be as significant to the game as it is now). Also, yes this is mostly sarcasm… mostly. The thing is that line and how frequently I hear it used to annoy me before, but now it’s like… I don’t know… like a reflex, like breathing… I don’t even notice it anymore.

It does sound a lot like Jeremy Soule’s orchestrated style, he must have composed it ( “The Great Toymaker” ). There’s even one very short part of it that almost sounds like a nod to Skyrim’s main menu theme (only very subtly so). It sounds great… almost better by itself than the rest of GW2’s OST, lol… almost, not quite but… THAT just shines Jeremy Soule from inside out, and I love it.

Additionally… I wonder, will this newly-composed Wintersday OST remain in the game AFTER the event is over? To hear this beautiful OST only once a year for a few days in the game wouldn’t be nice. I want to hear it even if it’s full summer time with a month-long heatwave (and that would help me fight against the heat, too, just hearing it and remembering cool days of winter and snow).

I always found it fun to hear “I am the master of life!” after my male Norn cuts down a living tree. I think he’s trying to reassure himself that claiming he’s the master of life after bringing death to a tree means nothing wrong happened.

I love my Norn.

As it has been mentioned already, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins both had that feature, it was great indeed.

In Guild Wars 2 it would fit very well since there is a personality system (albeit rather minimal) in the game. If a player knows during the character creation screen that his/her new Norn [insert class name here] would have to be charismatic, he then could select the “appropriate” fitting charismatic voice style and later in the game increase charisma points for his character’s personality.

With this said, however, it does require new voice acting even if it would all be done in just a week. The developers would have to contact the voice actors and actresses again to record that new audio. I don’t think that paying them would be a problem though, but I think that they might not be available all at once.

So the developers might have to record some new voices here and there whenever the actors are available, which would mean that we’d have to wait quite some time potentially until we’d see something like that happen. But I would like to see (or rather hear) that happen in Guild Wars 2, regardless of the amount of time it would take to see an update like that, it’d be neat.

Hermes.7014:

I get combat music only while engaging more than three mobs at once. Is that weird?

I believe it’s supposed to.

The combat music specifically triggers when a number of enemies attack you at once, and indeed I think that it triggers with 3 enemies at once.

As for removing combat music, there could be a way to do it potentially, but I haven’t tried it myself. What one could do to achieve that goal at least for now (until an official in-game option to do that is created, if ever) would be to use the custom playlist feature as an indirect method.

You’d create a playlist named “Battle” (without quotes), and that playlist would only contain one single file. That file would have to be a silent audio file. Then you’d save that playlist to the Music folder, usually located under: » User » Documents » Guild Wars 2 » Music.

The folder itself named “Music” would then contain the playlist that you would have saved in it. The playlist itself should not be inside any sub-folder of its own. Just leave that playlist inside the Music folder itself. Then launch the game, and wait until you battle 3+ mobs at once to see if anything triggers.

It might “trick” the game into constantly trying to seek a track following the silent audio file, without being able to find anything, therefor remaining silent under combat conditions. But this is just a theory I haven’t tested it yet.

I usually see any sorts of naming around for most Sylvari characters I see, most of which having nothing to do with nature or foliage haha. But, one name I do remember for a Sylvari I noticed was Argyranthem I believe it was… I’m not sure if I typed it correctly but yeah.

So, that name I immediately noticed was almost identical to “Argyranthemum”, which is the scientific (genus) naming for the “marguerite” flowering plants. I messaged that player and asked him (or her, don’t know) if it was indeed based on that, and sure enough it was. He (or she) said that he wanted to use either family or genus names of flowering plants to name his Sylvari characters, which I thought was quite original.

That in itself isn’t necessarily “lore friendly” though, it wasn’t the goal either. But when it comes to trying to find “original enough” names for our beloved ambulant plants I thought that it was better than just going with “Walkingplant Guy”.

As a side note, I do not know anything about plants, but I just googled that character’s name since I thought it sounded cool, and I then stumbled upon some articles of plants and marguerite, then I figured out that guy’s inspiration for his Sylvari toon name.

I do not have a Sylvari character yet but – indeed – I keep hearing them around as I play when they get hit. They are easily distinguishable in the environment when as you play you suddenly hear the high-pitched squeaking slowly fading in and getting closer, then you (I) think “Great, can’t hear my music now…”.

«Ahw!» «Ahf!» «Ah!!!» «Yeah baby!» (seriously though…)

I usually let them go by or I move away and as they continue getting hit I hear that fading out in the distance and can finally hear my custom ambient music again. I make it sound like it’s very serious but really I’m just usually cynical (or at least sarcastic, but for this it wasn’t sarcasm) most of the time. It’s not that big of a problem, but it does annoy me sometimes.

Drinking contest for my Thief story line, with pirates, yar! I loved that scene and I laughed at the voice acting (female Human), it was well done. Actually I really like that whole story so far. That, and of course the Lion’s Arch jumping puzzle… I had no idea about it, I was just trying to get to that Vista, then awesomeness occurred.

How “good” or “bad” it looks is a matter of personal preferences.

But I think that perhaps armor variety could be higher (regardless of how they look).

I’m using a GTX 285 (released in January 2009). That card is GT200b which is technology released back in 2008, which makes my card pretty much a 4 years-old GPU. I skipped all generations and revisions since then.

With this said however I do plan on upgrading sometime early next year, around February or so, and I think I’ll then go with a GTX 660 Ti or something along the lines. While my current GTX 285 is old, my CPU and memory is good enough, using a Core i7 2600K along with 8GB of DDR3.

I do have many slow downs however, but I play at maximum settings except that I removed all shadows and the resolution is 1280×960, the lowest frames I get is around 25’ish to 35’ish depending on the areas (Lion’s Arch is the worst), but sometimes I get up to 45’ish. It’s acceptable for me.

I wouldn’t see the advantage of a dedicated server specifically for role-playing.

It could still happen within the existing servers if the game’s role-playing features were numerous and complex enough to permit it in-game other than just typing your role-play. What I mean by this, is that currently other than basically typing whatever the role-play scenario is between two characters or more there’s simply not enough that can be done to portray the character’s feelings and intentions.

There’s a lack of animations and emotes variety, and there’s no official “Inn” or base or whatever you can think of where players could meet together specifically for role-play. If anything right now you can try Lion’s Arch of course but that’s not exactly what I am referring to. I’m thinking about a specific level (doesn’t have to be large and can also be instanced to limit maximum number of players participating in it). Such a level would have new interactive environments to accommodate new animations (sitting on chairs, playing mini games like… volleyball or something, drinking animations, leaning on a bar, new dancing animations triggering on dancing floors, etc).

And creating new content (levels, environments, triggers, animations, coding… everything you need) like that is a serious time drain for any developers even if they have the all the money and manpower in the world to do it. It’s still intimidating amounts of work and testing. That would be true role-play dedicated features without necessarily having a server “just for that” as well, which itself would be quite useless.

Anyway, yeah I think it’d be fun to have more role-play-related features, but I don’t see the use for actual RP dedicated servers. At the moment whatever role-play you can actually do in the game is very meager at best, GW2 was simply not designed to allow much role-play in a “social” RP form. The “RP” there is exists in the form of playing the role of an Elementalist or a Warrior, rather than role-playing between two characters having fun at a bar and just having nice time on a dancing floor. That kind of role-play is better fitting in other games simply because GW2 does not allow that stuff right now officially. As I mentioned the only way to “do that” in GW2 is to simply pretend it’s going on by typing most of the role-play scenario yourselves with only a few in-game animations to support it visually.

Just turn the camera around and press ‘w’, done, seriously.

Also, backwards running animation would look silly, you just don’t “run” backwards efficiently, you can if you really want to try it but it’s just not efficient. If you were to face danger you wouldn’t run backwards from it, you would make your fastest ever 180º turn to face forward and you’d run for it, forward.

What a strange suggestion this is.

I’m bracing myself for some sort of a pumpkin gathering Event.

I can already imagine them Centaurs rushing in to stop us from stealing “their superior” harvest of pumpkins.

“For the Tamini!”

I hope I’m not indirectly giving ideas to the devs here

Because it’s not necessary in GW2 according to how the game was built.

You have a separate dedicated game-play mode that focuses on PvP called WvW.

In WvW even the environment mimics that of the regular PvE maps. You have mobs around if you want to grind, you have Vistas and PoI’s to find by exploration. There’s a system of supply and you can build some structures, there’s mobs waging war and you can help the ones you chose to have them at your side for a time. It’s all indirectly a form of questing in a PvE-like environment with ongoing PvP at any given moment or location, provided of course that you run into the enemy players. It is a form of “world PvP” (I.E. within an actual quests and leveling-based PvE portion of a given game) but at a smaller scale (still large enough on its own).

There’s even players whom never bothered playing the PvE portion of GW2 yet and exclusively play GW2’s WvW as a game on its own right. Additionally, there’s not as much of an actual conflict between the races as I understand it so far as it is when compared to similar games to justify (lore-wise) an open Tyria-wide conflict (which would itself justify open world PvP). But even if you do have a lore that permits that kind of constant conflict between races, it still doesn’t hold up since there already is that sort of conflict being implemented in WvW anyway. It’s there, just use that game-play mode. If not then GW2 is not the game you seek if you like other types of PvP.

Finally, as far as an actual dedicated server for PvP goes… it’s not necessary either, since PvE and PvP is already split in two effectively by having the “regular” PvE game, and the WvW portion which itself is already separated from said PvE portion.

I agree, especially so for the newer players around.

After some time you get used to it of course, but you do it that way because it’s indirectly forced. I didn’t get to know which portals go where until I figured out that you “simply” have to move close enough to see the destination’s name at the center popping up in yellow text. It would have been even simpler to just mouse over any portal’s center with the mouse’s cursor to see that pop as well.

But, anyway, something like that wouldn’t do any benefits to me now that I’m aware of how it works. But mostly for newer players it’d help.

No, it’s a good idea when balanced and fitting. It’s the case in this game because the system not only demands that but permits it for the enemies as well, so the players need to be on a competitive level and not become too restricted. Only permitting specific classes to do only melee or long/medium range attacks exclusively would only work if the enemies against which they fight can only attack in specific ways and distances.

You could argue that a “real” archer (or ranger if you want to call it that) would only use his bow (or crossbow, or whatever the ranged weapon would be). But that doesn’t work well when you have melee-based mobs coming at you. Now of course you could try to take one or two down from a distance before they come at you or before they can see you, but that practically works in simulation types (or based from) of games. Here we’re talking about quite a fast-enough paced combat system in an MMORPG.

If on the other hand you were to make a “pure” warrior who’s never going to use anything by very short range/melee attacks then they themselves would be sitting ducks against long/medium-ranged mobs. The idea of having only one type (or range) for specific classes could work on paper and in practice, but not when enemies are varied enough across the entire game’s world to do both types of attacks (ranged and melee, not always at the same time, but the fact that some types of enemies do one type of attack, and other types of enemies do the other).

Suddenflame.2601:

@Gallian If they gave me that power i would use it wisely and double check and warn each person before banning them. (give them time to respond with a human message by asking unexpectable equestions). I also would do it for free cause it would be fun literally i would do it for free and wouldnt abuse the power cause it would be fun to ban bots espically if it came with a cool special effect

I know some would do it responsibly.

That’s not the main issue, however. The problem is that even if you do genuinely manage to ban bots and you got your fix of super cool visual effects by doing so, for every bot you manage to poof out of the game’s maps two new bots will be created, or make that three or ten or hundreds, whichever way you want to look at it. The point being that such a method would not get rid of the bots completely, which itself is the ultimately goal that we bots-haters all seek out including ANet.

We have to remain realistic guys. Yes, I would like to be able to do more than just right-clicking on the bots to report them with a drop-down menu of different offense types I can chose from and cross my fingers that ANet does something about that. Yes, it is a flawed system. But no, this suggestion of granting some of the community’s members more powers to “act” about it on an individual basis won’t suddenly convince the bots makers nor the bots users that their “cause” it lost forever and that we and ANet won. It doesn’t work like that.

I do not pretend to know a better solution than the one ANet did manage to develop, but I do know that eliminating bots one-by-one even if we’re literally two hundred or a thousand of us becoming GMs with powers won’t do more than just remove that number of bots from the game. But removing 100, 1K or 10K bots doesn’t mean that those bots are gone because they were the only ones. It means that out of the 10,000 bots we might have removed maybe 20,000 new ones will be created anyway.

The process, the “method” would have to be repeated ad vitam æternam.

Their method is flawed, but it’s a method nonetheless.

You have a better solution? I’m sorry but indirectly permitting/hiring/expecting Mr. Joe everyone with sudden executive powers to punish Bots one-by-one on the open field is just as flawed as “their flawed method”.

I absolutely despise bots believe me and I do not want to sound like I am “against you”. All I am saying is that you and everyone else who hates the bots just like ANet themselves need to think twice about their so called solutions. How on Earth and in Tyria will it be possible to suddenly get rid of the bots if you and me were to be given powers to stop, punish or ban what we believe to be bots acting like a train in sync around farming mobs in Wayfarer Foothills or anywhere else.

I mean there’s no more advantages in doing that than there are disadvantages in doing it the way ANet wants us to do it. It’s about the same result. You report one bot, presuming it’s then gone then alright good, then what next, you spend how many hours doing that? Will you be content after reporting 57 Bots in two different maps? Or will you spend almost literally 8 hours every days of the week for months trying to catch them all Pokemon-style? You might as well be officially hired to do it and receive income for doing work like that.

Your reaction OP was not intended by the developers. They did not wake up a morning and thought “Ok guys by the way that name, Lenin, we totally have to not permit that one either”. It doesn’t work like that and the developers did not intentionally want to discredit, or disprove or involve themselves into past politics or “accomplishments” of past figures in the history of any given nations.

The rule is to basically restrict yourself as a player to create names of known people. You’re in a fantasy world, try to create a unique name. If not, then be vague if anything. You want to be called Lenin? Then don’t type it literally and just try to make it sound like it. Try something like “Leinyn” or “Lehninn”. You don’t have to remain completely literally accurate in the name’s spelling. The thing is that with “real names” most players only want to draw attention to them by doing so. If you were in a single-player game I guarantee you that there would be much less incentives to do things like that.

Anyway, use your imagination and type the name differently. If not, then chose another name. But to reiterate it’s not like ANet has anything “against” nor “about” Lenin or USSR or whatever. It’s merely a basic rule of character naming, but of course coincidence being that it affected you so you thought that suddenly ANet was doing that on purpose against Lenin or something? That is absolutely ridiculous.

You actually have to right-click on each and every single Bots you encounter and report them single-handedly, whatever their number is at any given location in the game’s world.

That’s how they want us to report them (bots). And in defense of ANet here, these forums are not the best place to report them nor to point at how many are located at specific locations. Just report them while in-game if anything, and that you can be sure of goes directly to the developers as a accumulated list of reported bots.

It won’t do anything here on the forums.

Maybe, but honestly if ANet hired actual activate (in-game) GMs to do that (amongst other things) it would help tremendously. But that’s only if it was done by and within ANet with their actual engine tools and whatever software they use internally to maintain “security” and fight Bots internally (within the company). As far as I know so far only us mere players have to report the bots, and then… well we forget about it until we report a new one.

But to be honest I wouldn’t trust “Mr. Joe everyone” with such powers indeed due to inevitable abuse, even if a few individuals would be willing to do it responsibly and “professionally”. I would rather want ANet to just continue to do whatever they’re trying to do to help with the bots issue.

It’s a complex problem, so even if ANet did give such executive powers to some individuals here and there then how in the world would those few selected community-based “GMs” be able to literally go around in every zone on a Bots Hunt and then take the time to make sure they’re not actual human players first, and so on, following the “Protocols” for each one of them?

I mean there’s literally dozens if not hundreds of Bots in any one map, and that number and their identity (Bot names, account holders, etc) differs from servers to servers… they don’t even connect at the same time nor do they always farm the same spots in the same maps.

It’s not practical. For every single Bot that such Bot Hunters would successfully manage to punish or ban or whatever, then two new Bots would be created. There’s no point I’m sorry I don’t see any.

I agree with this fully but I would like to add something to this suggestion. Not only allow us to let the downed player know that we’re on our way (“Hand in there!”), but allow that player to answer us as well. That way we (would-be helpers) would know if that person is willing to wait for us or not.

Yeah I agree with this idea. Additionally, I lost too much in-game money moving around waypoints to help people only to get there with no one in sight anymore. Also, a feature like that would allow me to not risk to go revive a downed bot, rather than an actual human player (a bot wouldn’t reply to my “hang in there” call).

Isn’t there a color coded presentation on the levels already?

On my Level 45 character (my highest level character at the moment) I see lower level characters’ level number being shown in white numbers… or maybe it’s grey I’m not sure. Then higher level characters for example around Level 55+ or so are shown in red (again I’m talking about the color of the level itself, not the color of the characters). Then Level 70+ characters are shown in purple I believe.

That also applies on the world map itself for each zones. Lower level zones’ minimum and maximum Levels (shown on the map as actual numbers) appear as different color-coded to determine the “difficulty” of the zone’s content (and leveled content).

But, in Guild Wars 2 hiding the actual level information is neither necessary nor detrimental, nor even positive or negative. I mean it’s pointless basically. The thing is that stats are adjusted (scaled up or down) based on the zones’ minimum/maximum Levels range already, which in itself pretty much nullifies the effect of presenting what level you are and what level the mobs or bosses are, because you already know by reflex that your stats are balanced for that zone’s levels ranges. If you do look at the level itself it doesn’t suddenly make things more or less difficult, it doesn’t change anything.

Anyway honestly I’m not quite sure if I did get this right, but from the way I understand what you’re asking OP then this is what I think. Please do tell me guys if I’m off the track here. But anyway yeah I think that removing the levels (to hide it) wouldn’t change anything due to the autmatic scaling of said levels, it is almost as if we already had no levels per se. Almost… I know we do have levels, but the effect of scaling makes having levels or showing them much less important or dramatic as it could be in other similar games.

Not sure if the dialogue only happens in Divinity’s Reach but so far I only heard it there. It happens when two female NPCs speak to each others. I can’t recall the script by heart but one of them talks about a meal, and she says to the other girl:

“I would kill for one”

(moment of pause and uncertainty from the other girl, and then that same girl says again…)

“…I bet you think I’m joking.”

The way she says that, her voice tone, the seriousness of it, she totally sounds psycho and sounds literally like she’d torn someone to pieces if she spotted one with that meal around. It’s just that very specific line that gets me every time.

I agree.

But to do that the devs would have to re-work through each and every single Events in the game and basically recode the whole stuff, they might even have to change the terrain layout in some situations if for example it wasn’t “meant” to support big battles that would suddenly have to include siege machinery on the field, not to mention modifying pathing code on the terrain for new A.I. routines (new Centaurs behavior for example).

Technically, purely saying on paper, yes it could happen but… the amount of time, coding and testing necessary for something like that would be intimidating just to think about it. Maybe they could do that for a very few number of very specific (and very popular) Events at the very least, but don’t hold your breath for something like that to change most or all of the game’s Events (as amazing as it would be).

I think (not sure of this, but it’s a possibility, a coder from the devs could confirm surely) that the problem is because Events du not adjust spawn rates dynamically in accordance to the number of players present with the occurring Event’s own “range”, often (if not always) seen on the map as that semi-circle or oval-shaped orange contour showing the Event’s circumference (or its “range” in other words).

If that is the case (if there is no dynamic system within the Event as it occurs to balance difficulty according to the number of players present) then it would explain why things like that happen all around the game’s Events regardless of the zone or the Event’s actual difficulty (linear difficulty, excluding mob and bosses’ own levels, or excluding potential bugs that would spawn multiple overlapping mobs).

To “fix” the problem (and again, if that is the case as I describe it) then a dynamic system should be created. So that for example any Events which include spawning mobs (be it neutral or hostile mobs) should dynamically adjust the spawning frequency and the mobs’ numbers (but mostly the frequency).

Let’s say… the Wasp Queen, in the Queen’s Forest as an example.

Going by conditions (and in simple terms, not actual code):

If (within the Wasp’s own maximum range for navigation in the forest as part of the Event’s range): 1 to 3 players are present, then: Wasp Queen’s baby wasps spawned equals minimum of 3, up to maximum of 4 spawns.

If: 4 to 6 players are present, then: Wasp Queen’s baby wasps spawned equals minimum of 4, up to maximum of 6 spawns (when the gap between minimum and maximum spawns is higher than 1, then randomize the number of spawns, but never below minimum nor higher than maximum).

Et cetera…

When it comes to regular mobs within an Event that spawns “waves” of them to attack a camp, or just an area where they spawn to replace dead mobs without necessarily going on the offensive against any particular locations (I.E. when the players themselves have to attack the mobs on location) then the principle is the same.

The developers (coders) would create lists of conditions and possibilities of mob spawn numbers and frequencies with some randomization thrown in (minimal, only concerning the number of mobs between minimum and maximum limits), and then the dynamic system would pick up that code to make Events more… well more dynamic and the result would be that if you’re alone then you’d be certain that at the very least you’d be playing the “easiest” (or call it perhaps more “balanced”) iteration of the Event. But if you still die… then… well the devs did their part and then maybe that time around you need to check your character’s build.

Human Thief seems natural to me. A Sylvari would fit better in my opinion as an Elementalist or a Mesmer (regardless of racials).

I like the Thief class a lot, but I don’t like the Shortbow’s main attack, it should be a single target attack in my opinion. At least we do have Pistols for pulling single targets from a distance (although that distance is quite short, I would expect a better range from a pistol).

I tend to agree to some extent with you Animus.

But… just one thing. That manifesto line stuff, that’s business talk to try to convince people to buy a product, it has nothing to do with what they literately will do, or have the intention to do, either right away (during development) or later on via updates. In video games that happen to be supported (by the devs) via multiple patches especially for MMORPGs, or just generally games that are on-line there’s never any guarantee that a class, or a game feature will be or will stay the way it was intended to be, or any guarantee it will stay the way it was in its early (or “Vanilla”) days (or weeks, or months).

There’s always change coming up and when players over time “get used to” specific ways to play according to how the class is built and balanced then inevitably when patches modifies that play style the players themselves find themselves confronted with a forced re-adaptation of particular skills or the whole class (which is more rare, but can happen). It sometimes happen that whatever amount of adaption is needed you still feel convinced that something is wrong, that’s fine, then you point at those aspects of the concerned skills, spells, or class. But more often then not the developers went through that with their testers (I’m not saying it’s always the case, but usually it is) and they actually expect the first waves of reactions to be negative because the players reacting to the changes were not the testers whom had the chance for some time to try out the changes internally.

But… anyway, there are of course situations when you are genuinely certain that something in the patches went wrong, again I’m saying that’s completely fine, so voice your opinions and perhaps offer your own modest solutions as feedback/suggestions to the issues. So while I do agree with most of your points regarding the Guardian changes for the GS I still think that starting to support your own points with that manifesto line was about as cheap of a move as it was cheap to start with from ArenaNet to pretend that the combat in their game would be as dramatically different when compared to other similar games. But in favor of ArenaNet despite me not liking it when companies do that (to try to create hype) I have to say that ultimately they are a business and they need to do their job… I.E. try to sell a product, therefor try to come up with some one liners like that manifesto to make it look like their game (or, in this case the combat… or at least when it comes to swords being swung over and over again) is Oh So Superior to others.

As a player who disagrees on game-play mechanics, or do not like how newly a specific class or particular spells or skills were balanced, changed or modified, then “our job” is to merely point at it/them and explain why it might not be a good thing to do. But quoting one liners when you know as well that it was said prior to the game’s release is cheap, at the very least, but also naive.

I agree.

My highest level character so far is Level 41 and already I “feel” (rather, I see it) that most leveling zones are not as crowded as they should be considering how most of them are so big and contain so many Events on their own. It does feel like one or two zones (Maps I should say specifically) for maybe Levels 75 to 80 are just siphoning most end-game players off of the lower level maps.

It is very difficult to balance end-game related content in lower level maps however, and that goes for almost any MMORPGs following a similar mechanism of leveling through zones of specific levels. You could for example have each and every single maps containing one or two areas (in each maps) where mobs and/or bosses and/or Events are Levels 75 to 80 (yes, within a map that overall would be for Levels 1 to 15). So that of course characters of such levels and mostly end-game players wouldn’t mind to venture around the world maps here and there to play, rather than being stuck in one or two areas overall.

The problem comes in the form of balancing such content for (or against) the lower level players in a map in which content for end-game players is present. How do you restrict it, if any restriction exists, and if not restricted then how do you make sure that it is not being abused (or “leeched”) by lower level players whom would inevitably abuse the system to level up or get rewards from such content (not everyone would but you know like me that it would happen anyway).

You can of course scale up or down lower players’ stats so that they would have “a chance” to at least participate (same method as WvW), but then do you give them experience as well during or after the Events are completed? If so, how do you make sure that they don’t abuse it? Or, on the contrary do you permit them to participate in such higher-level Events if they chose to without any forms of diminishing returns, or restrictions or punishment? And if that’s the case then how would it be perceived by the end-game players themselves? Indifference as long as they get their rewards? Or frustration in the realization that some players “leech” off of such a system while you might have spent time and efforts to get where you are?

There’s couple of things to consider, but yes I do agree on the fact that content for end-game players should not incite such players to stay in one or two areas in a big world like GW2. But, frankly, this problem related to end-game content is a plague and has spread out to almost all MMOPRGs to date. It is as if the very genre itself demanded that such problems exist, it’s part of it (as if). Even if there is a solution out there it looks like not one developer out there ever really managed to figure out something that would happen to be balanced enough for everyone, or at least the majority.

So, to reiterate, I think that finding “a solution” is possible, the real problem is how do you balance it to make sure that end-game players enjoy it, as well as ensuring that the system/solution is not abused at same time.

No trinity system allows and to some extent justifies (and accentuates) individualism. There’s no need for specific classes, and most of the content in the game can be completed solo, so there is almost no incentive to team up. It’s the nature of the game and one of the consequences of removing the trinity system (I.E. actual “real” focused classes for tanking, healing and DPS’ing).

I am certain that they (developers) intended to do that, but they realized how much of a coding nightmare it is and resorted in a more “safe” and stable linear approach. As of now and I think as it will most likely always remain the “dynamic” events are linear in the sense that they start from the exact same trigger event that causes/precedes it, and what occurs during those events in terms of enemy types, numbers and their spawning locations remains the same every time. That’s the linear part of it.

What I know is not exactly linear is only when any of that starts, but when it does start then I already know what, when and how to expect the Event to unfold. I know that the Queen Wasp and the Giant Boar always spawn from the same very enclosed area in Queen’s Forest (just as examples).

Keeping most of the linearity but adding randomized aspects to known Events could help, however. For example, what could be randomized would be the number of enemies involved (perhaps depending on, and dynamic to actual players present within the Event’s “range” to aid for the difficulty as well), the types of enemies (variants of enemies, or at least using different weapons, some enemies being veteran variants, different skin tones, different voices, using bigger weapons or weapons with specific particle effects to distinguish them from others, etc). Additionally, spawning locations for enemies, as well as enemy spawn frequency randomization (or not randomized, but dynamically adjusted as the Event progresses in accordance to players attending the Event).

We could have linear Events but within them having more randomized and/or dynamically adjusting elements and aspects of them. That way, you wouldn’t “break” the pillars of the current game mechanics or how each maps contain their sub-zones for specific events. For example, the Wasp Queen, in Queen’s Forest, should and could remain in Queen’s Forest and remain at her usual spawning location… BUT… her adds (extra wasps mobs she spawns) could spawn randomly, in different numbers, and at unpredictable frequencies, etc.

There’s a lot of potential for the Events in this game. But I’m sure that the developers know, they might only be intimidated by the amount of coding randomization requires (and testing, too).

Well yes, but for both extremes.

I would like more options to tweak for better performance at the price of image quality and overall details. But I would also like new options which would provide better-than-current-highest settings provide (higher resolution textures, shadows, more diverse particle effects, more detailed bump mapping, etc).

Accommodating both extremes, and thus more players, therefor more happy faces!

I would disagree with that feature, even as an option.

To each their own, but to me, it is clear, inspecting “brings” nothing to the game-play and is not necessary. As an option there will be players around telling to those whom chose to disable inspecting that they did so to hide their “crappy” gear… mark my words.

No to elitism, please, we have enough of it in our every day life.

Why not, it wouldn’t harm anything in the game nor would it “remove” anything from it. All the development team have to do is… well make those parts dye-able. I’m sure that if they wanted to they could do it, the question is do they want to? Hehe, time will tell.

Thanks a lot for the guide, everything works for me.

The only thing I noticed so far is that the tracks I have chosen for the MainMenu music is not randomized, the only track that plays there in the main menu is indeed the first one in my playlist, even though I did include a short silent audio file, so it’s probably bugged (the randomization I mean). But other than that everything works. The randomization does work for the others though (Ambient, City, NightTime, etc).

The only thing to keep in mind however is the volume of your tracks guys. The chances are that if you created a playlist of multiple tracks of all types of music coming from various sources be it direct web downloads, conversions from Streams and various formats then more often then not what happens is that not all tracks have the same volume, amplitude, etc. So in-game some of those tracks’ volume will be much louder than the default in-game music would be in the same situations.

In such cases you need to manually edit track volume individually in separate software to fix the volume “gaps” between all of the tracks in your playlist to get a comfortable lower (or higher) common denominator volume threshold.

I would agree on the principle that it could add a bit of “plausibility” or simply “add to” the world’s diversity of Guild Wars. But, on the other hand I also agree that in our every day life we see enough over-weight people. With the concept of beauty being prevalent for us humans generally-speaking (definition and perception of it varies by cultures and individuals of course) and the ability in a virtual world to create “standards” of all types, and considering that more often than not in creating video games you can usually let loose your imagination, desires and fantasies to satisfy perceptual senses of (and) pleasure then…

So I believe indeed that in most games (unless the setting requires it, or unless the developers find it necessary to do it for specific story-related characters) you shouldn’t expect to see the repetition of our every day reality but instead the realization that you can escape from it by creating what you want. So, to reiterate, unless one or a few specific characters “need to” be ugly, chubby, handicapped or deformed for whatever reasons then of course it will happen, but the rest of the game as long as setting(s) or scenes don’t require it will depict the developers’ own perception of an ideal world or species or race, or whatever can fulfill the setting(s) of the game in question.

Additionally, in terms of actual resources and time you need to keep in mind that modeling is needed, artists (and “modelers”) also need to be paid. The more models of characters they create the more time they spend working, and the more money is needed to pay them. It is possible that some departments/branches of a game’s development has a fixed amount of funding available, after which nothing (major) occurs over time expect bug fixes here and there (this doesn’t necessarily applies specifically to Guild Wars 2, but I am saying that it does exist in the industry).

More options is always better, just accommodation of more tastes.

With this said I really like the look of my Human female thief in medium armor. In most games we know what happens to female characters especially MMORPGs, they often end up barely dressed, this is nothing new. But I can understand why, so more options is never a bad thing. I for one don’t mind at all, I also made a male character which I rarely do in most of the games I play.

In fact even if he looks handsome I prefer to make sure that he is wearing something that fits not only his profession, his personality but also the environment. If I play in cold/snowy Norn territory I find it silly to run about in cloth “armor” with most of the character’s skin exposed, not to mention that suspension of disbelief tells me that wearing cloth won’t exactly do well to absorb the hit coming from any melee weapons…

But, yes, I know we all play (or role-play) differently so… sure more options would be good.

Hello.

I’m not sure whether or not this is an actual “problem” or issue, if it is merely how it is supposed to work, or if it might be related to hardware (client-side). I decided to post this here nonetheless, but I am only wondering more than actually asking for help.

What I am experiencing which I do not consider an “issue” is rather strange? Well I do not know much about hardware nor software technicalities when it comes to how a game’s engine works, or however you want to put it. But, anyway, what I am experiencing is that in populated areas for example (and mostly in) Lion’s Arch (so far, but I have yet to discover all the zones, my main character is only Level 27 as of typing this) there is a period of time of around 3 to maybe 5 or 6 seconds after my character stops moving completely (idling) before I get to see any other players around me if any.

And I am not referring to NPCs, but actual players indeed. Their own characters are literally “invisible” (to me) for about that much time (time varies, as mentioned from around 3 seconds to up to maybe 6 seconds or so). I did not ask about this subject in actual Map chat since I feared that I would be ridiculed or that players might have thought that I was complaining, so I decided to just post about it here. Is this something I am supposed to expect? I mean, is it how the engine of the game works?

For example, the period of time it takes for the players to appear around me, is that related to the amount of memory in my system? For instance either the DDR memory on the motherboard and (or) the memory that is on the graphics card itself? In other words, if I had more memory would the characters appear faster? Or would more characters be able to appear on-screen at once without much “loading” needed? Or is the engine of the game simply working that way and regardless of the computer’s “speed” it wouldn’t change anything and would still happen?

Basically I think I am asking about whether or not that occurrence (to put it that way since I’m sure about that being an actual issue) is client-side or server-side?

Oh, as a side note, as I play around in all the zones I do see other players as I move around and do my quests or participate in Events. There is no problem there. What I am talking about and I will repeat myself for clarity’s sake, is that when my character moves in a populated area (usually cities, so far mostly in Lion’s Arch) then what I see is of course my own character, the NPCs and some other players as they themselves move around. I also get to seee some idling characters but not many. When I stop and idle however (for example moving towards and then stopping at one of the profession’s working station in Lion’s Arch) then the “actual” number of players that do “exist” (server side?) around me start to appear one by one after around five seconds or so have passed.

I hope I described it correctly (English is not my native language so please do ask for more clarification if necessary). I guess that my “main” question about this entire subject is the following: Is this a normal game (or engine?) behavior? Or do I need a better computer to process the environment details around my character faster?

P.S./ I do know that having a “better” computer (faster) will indeed process the game faster and so on I know that. But formulating the question this way was in relation to the players loading around me faster, not the actual game’s frame-per-seconds which I think is alright for my tastes. Additionally, I am not crashing or lagging, I have a smooth game-play experience so far, it’s just that I thought it was strange to see players (not NPCs) around me “popping” into existence when idling (and not to see them whilst moving about).

Thank you very much for any details (and answers!) regarding this.