Guild Wars 2

RoyalPredator.9163:

So basicly we can macro a 10click/sec button as long as it just clicks (one action)?
And the minimal we can’t do is to put W and D to one button so we can run in circle?

No, you aren’t allowed to macro that way. One single macro execution may trigger one single action (be it by click or key).

In other words, it must perform only one single action, one time and then wait for the player to manually execute the macro again.

Ishmel.1308:

Skritt is the new shiny. Shiiiny!

Of all the races mentioned I think I’d get the most fun out of the Skritt.

As someone who was diagnosed at a young age with what I would come to call ‘Attention Deficit Oooh Shiny’, I second this! I could pour all of the hyperactive things I’ve trained myself not to do into a Skritt.

Azreell.1568:

Moving one dead area to another makes it more alive for you?

If so – then I apologize as my version of alive and yours are obviously very different.

In the end all they did was swap one area for another.

When I played World of Warcraft, one of the most common complaints was that for a game with ‘warcraft’ in the title, there sure wasn’t a lot of ‘war’ involved.

Nothing ever changed. You’d hear about these huge conflicts, where the Horde and the Alliance were pushing their fragile truce to its raggedy edge, but you never saw or particpated in any of it.

It took Blizzard ten years to do anything drastic — ie, the Cataclysm — and then, after that huge step forward, the world was frozen in time again.

That’s what I like about the Living Story, and especially the razing of Lion’s Arch: I was there. Instead of being locked away and unable to interact, I’m an active participant in the events that shape the world.

Platforming.7102:

In that case, what do you suggest?

I would appreciate more constructive feedback. Did you enjoy any suggestions?

Stacking bleed as you suggest is impractical, for several reasons:

First, it would trivialize combat from the get-go, because the target would be deluged with 150+ bleed conditions from every party member that was capable of bleeding a target.

Second….do we really need 150+ tall stacks of bleed on a target? Just get in there and hit the kittening thing!

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

You are allowed macros but you are not allowed macros…..

You’re allowed macros that take one action per use.

To my understanding, that means:

— Automation via macros or scripts is not permitted.
— The script or macro must be manually triggered on each execution.
— It must not trigger more than one action at a time (ie, it can’t make your character move forward and harvest a resource node, unless the two actions occur on separate keypresses). <— correct me if this is wrong.
— Macros and scripts cannot be used to operate multiple accounts or characters (the example given elsewhere was ‘if you press a key to walk forward one step, a single character on a single account may take one step forward’).

Happy to clear it up.

Hawke.9013:

It works. I don’t mean to burst A-Net’s bubble with the whole, “ground shaking” idea of removing the trinity, but there’s a reason why every MMO uses it. It’s not as frustrating as every mob being uncontrollable; since, with no tank I guess that’s what A-Net wants. As a thief, it is very frustrating to have a boss turn around and one shot you in a split second. Everything PvE oriented is uncontrolled, and very badly structured.

Removing the ‘Holy Trinity’ is, from a long-time MMO player’s perspective, a good thing on several levels:

1) I’m not sitting around outside a dungeon constantly searching for a healer/tank/mage.

2) I don’t have to spend seven hours grinding dungeons just to make myself useful to a group, only to get bumped when a ‘better tank’ comes along.

I agree it’s frustrating to be one-shot by a mob; it’s frustrating in any MMO. Mobs, however, are far from ‘uncontrollable’. Every class here has some form of crowd-control — it’s just a matter of learning how to use it effectively.

Bagel.4598:

It’s the same as the PvP community who rightfully complained that they couldn’t acquire Legendary skins through PvE alone, they are forced to do PvE if they want that exclusive content, and lo behold a update of PvP is on the horizon to fix this issue.
Why? Because it’s not right and Anet are aware of that.

(emphasis mine)

That’s right . Exclusive content. By the above logic, someone who buys the standard game rather than the Collector’s Edition should still be given the CE’s extras (it’s exclusive to the Collector’s Edition, after all).

Believe me, I see both sides of the argument, and there are some good points being made. Perhaps the Fractals could use some more adjustment; maybe the Ascended gear needs to be more readily available.

Personally, I don’t see the point to going after Ascended gear. It’s not a huge improvement over the gear I already have (I mean, let’s face facts, folks: at level 80, all Ascended gear will really do is help you kill things a little quicker), and I can think of better things to do with my play-time.

Which brings me to one final note:

Whether Ascended gear is easy to get or not, whether higher-level Fractals are too hard without it or not, the only thing you’re truly ‘forced’ to do is decide whether it’s worth the time investment.

Nobody but you is saying ‘I _must_complete this Fractal for my life to have meaning’.

Bagel.4598:

Yes this game does force you to acquire ascended gear to participate in Fractals.

I’ll just step in and point out a word that’s being thrown around, in my opinion, a bit too freely:

‘Forced’.

Nobody is ‘forcing’ you to do anything. You’re not ‘forced’ to run Fractals if you don’t want to. You’re not ‘forced’ to hunt for Ascended gear if you feel the effort isn’t worth the reward.

You may want Ascended gear; if you do, you’ll have to run Fractals to get it. That may seem an annoyance, but you are not, at any point, forced to run Fractals — or do anything at all — if you feel that it’s not worth your time.

Calae.1738:

GW2 used the same strategy WoW did to Everquest. WoW made MMORPG’s more accessible by making the inconvenient into convenient.

GW2 took that strategy into overdrive by looking for and identifying every possible inconvenience in WoW and making it convenient. Look at death and travel for example. Death is so inconvenient that they added downstate and rally systems. Travel is so inconvenient that they added waypoints, health regeneration and speed boost while out of combat.

As if the secret strategy to making a game successful is by making it convenient. Lets make sure our players aren’t even using their brains. That’s obviously too much work.

Then again, designing a game for a crowd of people that just want rewards might prove to be more annoying than worth while.

Might as well just sell keys so that players can have a chance to win something cool in treasure chests. Oh wait…

Now, I have to disagree with most of this. I don’t think making a game more convenient requires that players switch their brains off; convenience is a factor that we don’t see in many MMOs.

In GW2, I don’t have to spend ten minutes on a travel route, only to spend twenty minutes going to the bank and back because I forgot to bring something. I don’t have to wait for an hour while a proper ‘healer-tank-mage’ party gathers, and then curse when everyone gets tired of waiting and leaves.

And I don’t have to wait until level 80 to be useful to my dungeon party.

In GW2, I am a participant, not a spectator.

Well, this one is exactly what it says on the tin: assuming they’re not killed, is a necromancer able to extend their lifespan via magic?

If so, how long can they keep doing it?

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

It’s still in doubt if was an April’s fool joke. Also wondering if those 8 bit games are copyrighted, clones or what. World 1, zone 3, hidden rooms, uhm…we jump.. super mario huh?

Under US copyright law, you can’t protect an ‘idea’ as intellectual property; you can prevent people from using your specific presentation of the idea, but that’s as far as legal protections go.

Thus, a platform-jumping plumber named ‘Mario’ is copyrightable, while the idea of a character that jumps from platform to platform isn’t.

Redfield.6174:

Now I want to ask you, what do you think? Videogames are art? And more, Guild Wars 2 is art or just entertainment?

What an incredibly insightful question: are videogames ‘art’?

My short answer: Yes, and no.

My long answer:

Several months ago, I purchased ThatGameCompany’s ‘Journey’ collection, so perhaps that’s a good place to start.

Journey, for those that haven’t experienced it, features no spoken or written dialogue of any kind, no ‘boss monsters’ and no combat at all; as you play through the game, the story plays out through imagery and musical cues, which creates a much a ore personal experience.

So, in short: are games ‘art’? They’re getting there.

Gehenna.3625:

1) As someone pointed out to us, gear progression was actually not part of the Manifesto. So on this point they didn’t go against their manifesto and your title is therefore incorrect. What they did talk about and did break their promise on was “my story” and " we don’t make grindy games". But those are other subjects.

That is another subject, but it bears mention.

It’s nearly impossible to make a totally-grindless game. After all, that would require that NPCs be unkillable, nodes be unlootable and quests be uncompletable.

What is very possible is to construct a game that has reduced grind, which ANet accomplishes by removing the largest potential grind-fest — the grind for PvP viability — and giving us alternate methods of leveling (crafting XP/sPvP).

On the subject of the Personal Story, I think they did a good job. It’s not perfect, obviously, but meh. ANet still managed to craft a story around the individual, in a genre that is by definition intended for multiple players.

In short, ANet is trying to break out of the form-fitting ‘Kill X rats’ mold that has dominated the MMO genre since the earliest days of Ultima Online. I look forward to seeing how they’ll challenge the preconceptions of a largely carbon-copy industry in the future.

I was thinkin over a few ‘gee, what if’ ideas earlier, and one has stuck in my mind: what if, at some point, the charr and/or the humans actually break the ceasefire?

I mean, things aren’t particularly stable between them right now — they’re in a detente, there are overtures of peace being made, and the only thing keeping them from leaping at each others’ throats is their respective internal problems.

So. That being the case, I would be quite interested in a storyline, somewhere down the road, where the charr and the humans go at it again, with the world going back to the status quo ante of the first game.

Of course, it’d have to be done carefully, but it would add some flavor to the world.

Opinions?

Thunderbrew.7034:

Title says it all. Last few patches have had changes not
shown in the patch notes, and it seems to be a normal
occurrence.

Can we get every change detailed in the patch notes?

So, the patch notes should say things like:

‘Changed shade of tunics from #FF000 hex to #FF001 hex’
‘Turned the staff models 90 degrees to correct clipping issues’
‘Changed network architecture to solve issues with client-server packet transfer’.
‘Replaced hard-drives on three server clusters’.
‘Ran anti-virus and defrag on server systems’.

Why would we need to know all of this stuff, again?

[quote=1306722;Emunator.537
If that is true you lose all credebility.
You should be 100% sure before any release or dont release it at all.
We are not your Q&A, your Q&A should have tested everything already.
And dont tell me your Q&A is testing till 1 hour before release, else you couldnt even set a date.
[/quote]

Two things:

First, Al Lowe (a former Sierra Online programmer) said a long while ago that he would often be working on features and alterations right up until the discs went for printing (and sometimes during the process itself). Sometimes, a feature has to be removed at the last minute.

Second, I’ve been an EVE Online player for several years; the biggest fiasco CCP ever faced occurred when they promised features they were unable to properly deliver; two hundred people lost their jobs because of the negative backlash from upset fans.

It’s better that ANet doesn’t say anything until they know they can deliver.

Solandri.9640:

Galrenmar.7025:

On the topic of passwords, though:

I did a security test with a friend not long ago; within ten minutes, I’d accessed her three e-mail accounts, her Twitter and Facebook accounts, four MMO forum accounts (yikes!), and two chatrooms that she regularly visited.

They were all set with the same password — which I got from the first e-mail account I tried to access just by clicking on the ‘Forgot Password’ link and guessing her secret question.

What email service was this? So I can recommend my friends to stay clear of it.

Any good service does not store your password. They store a hash which was created by running your password through an encryption algorithm. You type in your password, they run it through the same algorithm, and if the result matches the hash then you must’ve typed the correct password. That way even if someone hacks the server and gets a copy of all the hashes, they still don’t know what the passwords were.*

So if you click the “forgot password” link and guess the secret question, all you should be able to do is set a new password. It’s impossible for a good service to show you the old password because they don’t know it. Only the truly bad services store your actual password.

Using a single password for everything is still a bad idea though. Many of the recent online gaming hacks stem from people using the same password. Anet can have the best security in the world, but it’s useless if you’re using the same username and password on a different site that has no security. Or if you click a link in a phishing email and enter your login and password thinking it’s no big deal because it’s for some junk forum you once signed up for but never visit. Forgetting that it’s the same username and password you use for your banking.

If you tend to use a single password, I’d suggest using a password manager like KeePass.

(* There are tricks to get around this too, and tricks to counter those tricks. But that discussion falls outside the scope of this topic and forum.)

I should elaborate — the first account I accessed used a ‘view password hint’ method rather than a ‘reset password’; her password hint was relatively obscure, but anyone who could get her talking in the right direction would know what it meant in a few minutes (strike one).

From there, I moved to her primary e-mail, which allowed her to either reset her password (by way of the Secret Question) or have it mailed to her at an alternate address — which turned out to be the e-mail I already had access to (strike two).

After that, it was either all the same password, or she’d used the answer to her Secret Question as her password (strike three — yeeeer OUT!).

Minalt.6089:

I don’t even own windows 7 plus that isn’t the problem. It is the processor I believe or compatibility on ANet side.

Acutally, it’s computers in general, and Windows in particular. The total RAM that a standard Windows system will recognize is ~3 gb due to the way that the memory is addressed. There’s nothing much that can be done (it’s a design limitation), but switching to a 64bit install of Windows might help.

If that doesn’t fix it, the only recourse, I’m afraid, is to see if there’s a BIOS update available, or….look for a newer computer.

hithlain.4385:

Just wonder… How people can hack account with the “new place confirmation by mail” or the authenticator? Does it mean the hacker hacked your IP too? (The place we start the game is by IP, right?)

It means that most likely, the hacker gained access to an e-mail account, so he could intercept a verification message. The authenticator, I’m not sure about.

On the topic of passwords, though:

I did a security test with a friend not long ago; within ten minutes, I’d accessed her three e-mail accounts, her Twitter and Facebook accounts, four MMO forum accounts (yikes!), and two chatrooms that she regularly visited.

They were all set with the same password — which I got from the first e-mail account I tried to access just by clicking on the ‘Forgot Password’ link and guessing her secret question.

Change your passwords, folks. Security is only effective if you take the threat seriously.

CoRtex.2157:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

more stuff for the sake of more stuff just makes it harder for them to balance everything.

what ppl forget about gw1 is that while there were a lot more skills, a huge portion of them were downright awful. What they’ve tried to do by reducing the number of skills is remove the potential for builds that are much weaker or much stronger than the average build.

I know that they say that… but GW1 was way more fun with all the skills also i think it was pretty balanced and you even had dual professions, so it must not be so hard to balance GW2 with more skills. Keep in mind that every profession was used in PvP in gw1. So you can’t really say it wasn’t balanced if every prefession/class was used because it had it’s purpose. Also in PvE all professions had something they were good at, some more than others but still..

It was very well balanced, but with the sheer number of skills (at last count, there were 1300+ available), adding and balancing new skills, and making sure that each skill was sufficiently ‘unique’ to a given class, was a huge task.

Personally, I like the number of skills we have currently — it’s enough to be going on with, for the time being, but not so many that any particular class feels ‘samey’ when compared to another.

The toxic community has largely been created by anets own actions. The ascended gear fiasco, the karka event, DR, fractals, now aoe nerf, the list goes on. The toxicity only reached the level it has after these were all botched up by anet. A lot of it from GW1 players who feel betrayed.

The ‘toxic community’ is really caused by conspiracy theorists that shout loud and long about what they see as a ‘rip-off’ when no such thing is actually occurring. They log in, scream that they’re not getting their way, and leave in a huff when nobody takes them seriously.

For cryin’ out loud, this game is only six months old! The sky, Chicken Little, is _not _ falling.

I’m sorry I’m contributing to the toxicity; I’m just disgusted, because I’ve come to realize that no matter what an MMO developer does, everyone complains and moans and is generally ungrateful for what they do get….

Disig.7169:

So, what I am getting here is, you want the end story to be in the story (which is your own private instance), with your friends with you, killing Zhaitan…that’s um…that’s a dungeon my friend. Unless you don’t want your friends with you. I don’t see Zhaitan being defeated with just you, I mean, I for one expect other players to be needed to take him down. What is the difference between a private instance and a private instance that happens to be a dungeon?

Sighs

Okay…

To me, the difference is that every other boss-hunting instance in the Personal Story could be done with the help of the NPCs. I did it with Two-Blade Pete, I did it at Claw Island, I even did it with the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan.

I didn’t have to run Caudecus’ Manor to kill Two-Blade, I didn’t have to go to the Ascalonian Catacombs to defeat the dragon at Claw Island, and I didn’t have to go into the Crucible of Eternity to squish the Sovereign Eye.

So, why, all of a sudden, do I have to run through a dungeon before I’m allowed to face Zhaitan?

Larkir.6502:

So the whole goal and point of the second half of the personal story was to kill Zhaitan, and you want the actual “killing Zhaitan”-part not to be part of the story? What if an expansion releases and the NPCs talk about you having killed Zhaitan even though you never did, would that make sense?

They won’t move Zhaitan outside of the dungeon just for you to kill him either, not now when Arah is already done the way it is. They could make story mode dungeons soloable at some point in the future I guess. Barely anyone is repeating them anyway..

Danuta.3219:

so what your saying is that you want to kill a epic elder dragon that the strongest being in all the game all by your self? well i say hold on your neither hercules neither superman

also again cuz hes so huge and important you dont expect to just go and find him that easy right? NO its cuz hes the biggest meanest boss in the whole game that you have to go thru the whole thing to get to him you cant just go knock on zhaitans door expect him to say who is it and you to answer me iv come to kill you lol

Ahem

I never said that I had a problem with being in a party, I didn’t say I wanted to tackle Zhaitain single-handedly, I didn’t say that Zhaitain should be removed from the equation, and I’m certainly not saying to Zhaitan should be easy to get to.

What I’m saying is that the mission text says ‘Kill Zhaitan’, not ‘Run through this dungeon, then kill Zhaitan’. It’s like winning a car on a gameshow, and then having to climb Mt. Everest to get the keys — totally out-of-proportion for the reward being offered.

Am I making any kind of sense?

The Order of Whispers: I liked them, mostly because my character is a very quiet person and doesn’t see the point of being the center of attention.

Durmand Priory: Not as impressed. They were far too indecisive and uncertain. I mean, they’ve admitted that they don’t even know if their MacGuffin will work. Way to inspire confidence, guys…

The Vigil…hmm…far too militaristic for my tastes. Though I can see the logic in calling for an up-front confrontation, they were just too ‘charge blindly in and hope we’re not all dead in an hour’, and that just makes them look hotheaded.

The Order of Whispers was my choice, because they struck the right balance between the three— they don’t rush in without a clear plan, and they don’t rely on untested magical devices to solve their problems.

There are quite a few places where Traherne asks you to choose a course of action. After Claw Island, you’re consulted after almost every mission.

No worries, you just clicked too fast and missed it, I think.

Amazingly enough, this is the first time I’ve ever written a complaint thread for an MMO — maybe I’m just complacent

Anyhoo…

I’m almost done playing through my personal story — wonderfully done, and I spent the entire night on Friday plowing through the last few missions so I could get to the incredibly-anticipated finale. Then I get there, the final words are spoken, and the mission appears: ‘Kill Zhaitan’.

But wait…I have to have a party to get to the Big Bad? And…wait, I have to run through a dungeon as well?? Seriously, guys — what gives???

The party aspect I could understand — Zhaitan is an Elder Dragon, after all — but the dungeon requirement really hurt the momentum of the story and killed the ‘epic hero’ feeling that had been building for the past few chapters.

Please, I beg — nay, I implore you — detach ‘Victory or Death’ from the dungeon. The player started his adventure on his own, and he needs to be able to finish it on his own — that’s kind of what a ‘personal story’ means.

Kloaked.5379:

If you look in the Wiki for future updates, it will be put in sometime in the future. Just hole on to your panties.

Quite so. It’s already been mentioned in at least one forum thread that ANet wants to make guild halls meaningful instead of ‘just another place to go’, so they’re holding off until they’ve done that.

TimmahIsASaint.3871:

I am very lost! I got my thief to level 15 clearing the starter area as Sylvia but I’m having second thoughts if its the character I want to level to 80. I’m looking at Mesmer and Elementalist cause they I really just want a burster for PvP. I’ve never done this kind of game before and trying PvP makes me nervous cause I don’t want to make other peoples games bad. Is there a matchmaking system so I won’t cause anyone else issues or a Player v Player Bots I can do ? Can anyone link any good noobie guides they found helpful ? I read the GW2 manual and I’m still kind of lost. I know there are a lot of random questions in here so tahanks for any help!

Never, ever feel nervous about making people play badly. If they get killed and blame the new guy, they’ve got a bigger problem than just a bad attitude.

GW2 depends largely on how you want to play. I’ve got a necromancer, and she’s pretty tough (some people will tell you they’re broken, or that the minion AI is crap, but I’ve never had any problems).

You’ll want to look up different builds for your class (just search ‘[class name] builds’ on Google and you’ll turn up dozens of suggestions). Mine, for example, is a ‘minion master’ build (which relies on summonable NPC ‘pets’ for a lot of its damage), but there are lots of options.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different builds and find one that works for you. There’s no in-world PVP (other than the Mists and World vs World), so you’re not going to be in any danger from other players.

Finally, if you’re a roleplayer at all, I invite you to come over to Tarnished Coast — that’s one of the unofficial ‘roleplaying’ servers and we’re always happy to see new faces!

Good luck!

That’s it…..I’m getting a Logan pic and making ‘Ehrmagerd Thackeray’.

bojangles.6912:

speedbox.1473:

Maybe because there’s nothing to announce yet .

But according to people here, ANet is always releasing announcements and content weekly. Hmmmm.

They probably haven’t got anything to tell us at the moment.

One of the reasons (in fact, the sole reason) my friend Lauren stopped playing WoW was that the artificially-designated ‘roles’ limited her usefulness in higher-level content.

To be an effective (insert class/role here) in a game like WoW, you need the right gear — but you can’t get the right gear unless you run the right dungeons. You can’t run the right dungeons without the right group, and you can’t find the right group because nobody will even so much as glance at you if you don’t have the right gear.

Guild Wars 2 cuts out the middleman — the gear you’ve got is ‘the right gear’ for almost any dungeon, any class can perform (almost) any role, to varying degrees of effectiveness, and you don’t need to spend four hours looking for a healer because everyone can heal.

To add what Osculim said above, and provide some further information:

Yes, it’s entirely legal to ban botters. As the legal owner/operator of the Guild Wars service, they have the right to refuse access to anyone they wish.

Aside from the contractual aspect, use of a third-party program negatively impacts both technical support and account security; account thieves will often disguise their malware as a legitimate-looking product, and tech support doesn’t have time to chase down errors caused by someone else’s software.

I’m not sure about number 1, but for number 2: If you and your target die at the same time, you’ll pop right back up without having to use your ‘revival’ skills.

As for number 3, it’s a writing error rather than a software problem.

Recalibar, glancing over the error logs (and stating beforehand that I’m by no means an expert at such things), it appears to be a client-side model error. Your login shouldn’t be affected.

From what I can see, your client is trying to animate the skeleton of a model somewhere and not finding the data it needs to complete the process.

Incidentally, I’m seeing a similar issue when creating a sylvari character; in my case, the error log suggests that it’s trying to load an animation that’s not properly rigged.

It’s probably due to the image format — most of them compress or otherwise adjust the image to keep the file size reasonable.

The Flagon has been absoutely full of animals for at least two days. There’s also a pair of animals in the Maiden’s Whisper. It makes for a lot of jokes, but yeah, it’s odd.

Speaking as a hobbyist programmer, I’ve long since learned that there are two ways to tackle bugs and glitches: you can fix them piecemeal, constantly going back day after day to make relatively minor fixes, or you can wait until an opportunity presents itself to fix the bugs in one big package.

Right now, the bugged runes and spells work ; granted, they’re not working entirely properly (that’s why they’re on a bug list, after all), but they’re not causing insurmountable problems to the players.

Easier to fix the large problems and leave the small ones for patch day.

Okay, I’m going to say this as plainly as I can:

You’re taking a support caster into direct combat?

Pick up the staff again and take a look at how the abiilities are structured. Necromancers have neither the tanking ability nor the armor strength to survive up-front combat (at least, not for very long). Daggers are all good, but as a backup rather than a main weapon.

The power of a necromancer is in the support given to the group; you can slow the enemy, poison them, suck away at their health (vampimancer?), throw pets at them, make them run in fear, or go Death Shroud and pound them that way.

For your minion issues, hit your auto-attack skill a couple of times and they should run right over and start attacking.

I’ve been mostly staff/minion, but one of the better combos I’ve used is Chillblains/Reaper’s Mark. Chillblains slows and poisons, and Reaper’s Mark is good to drive the target into Chillblains if my aim is off, or if I need to distract a target from the other group members.

Part of the utility of a necromancer is in the way their skills are designed — no single skill offers a ‘perfect solution’ for every situation.