Guild Wars 2

Somewhat inspired shdowmyst’s recent post regarding his entries into GameSkinny’s costume contest, I thought I’d share some of the photoshoped screenies from my entry too

Click here for the imgur gallery!

Hi there,

I really hope someone can shed light on this.

I have had the name “Grey” for my main toon since launch. It’s an awesome name, and one that I stayed up hours for, during pre-launch, because I knew it would be popular.

I’m currently unable to log in to the game on this character and get the following error message:

‘Inappropriate name. “Grey” contains words or partial words that are not permitted. Please select a different name and try again. (Code=31:4:5:2643:101)’

I really don’t see how “Grey” is inappropriate in any way. Until this is resolved I can’t log on to my main character, as I don’t want to change the name and lose access to it later.

Any assistance on this would be much appreciated. [Incident: 130611-002058]?

Thanks to everyone who turned up this week. We helped a few guests get their weekly Guild Bounty commendations, and then had some silly fun with a costume brawl. Good times!

Temple has been reclaimed! Anyone need access to the Balthazar vendor, feel free to Guest over to Gandara

Will be starting in around 15 mins

I always find it interesting to see other peoples keybinds. Personally I made a concerted effort to move away from modifier keys in GW2. For me at least, they tend to restrict movement.

I wrote a long post on our guild’s forums about keybinding for which I made the following image of my current setup.

On Sunday the 3rd of February, DVDF will be organising a strike force to liberate the Temple of Balthazar on Gandara. With guesting being implemented in the January patch, we’d love to encourage our non-Gandaran friends join the fight, kill some Risen, and maybe meet some new friends too! If you’re the silent and deadly type, that’s cool – just stab/shoot/fireball the undead until they die and then rush the vendor (who sells Obsidian Shards and Power/Vit/Toughness karma armour)!

We’ll be starting around 4PM (GMT/UK time) and will be announcing in Lion’s Arch, as well as bumping this thread as the time approaches.

[Edit] This should read Sunday the “3rd” of Feb, but can’t edit the title.

Just read the Zam interview… Not what I wanted to hear at all :S

As I said on our guild’s forum, It’s a matter not of difficulty, but of priority and management. Those are things that, as outsiders, we have very little understanding.

However, there must be solutions to this problem that don’t involve restructuring their entire network. My hope now, is that ANet at least acknowledge that playing with friends in another region is a problem they recognise and want to solve in the future. If they put their minds to it, I have no doubt that they could make it happen. What worries me, is that they might not see it as a priority, or even a problem at all.

Regarding your suggestion Shan, what happens if your loyal server gets too full?

Waraxx.4286:

i still need data as i am only in lvl 29 fractal as of now. and i try to make progression with the formula but i need data to be able to check with stats. apparently at lvl 40 every tic insta downs. so i have data that contradict each other. i really want people to confirm the actuall values.

and the "minimum amount needed for each level is commonly known as
0-9 = 0Ar,
10-19=5Ar (10 helps alot)
20-29= 15AR (20 is recommended)
30+ = 25 AR
at lvl 40 you get instagibbed nomatter what so it doesen’t matter (if sorces are correct)

it’s simple math, yes, but thats not the reason why it’s geeky.
the reason why it’s geeky is because this is quite irrelevant since everybody knows the recommended values at each levels anyway. so a formula is actually quite usless for now. but i did because i like math and i’d like to do something for the communty and if more AR is to be added in the future they will know what levels of AR they will need at certain levels in advance. but meh, it’s still not really useful. it’s mostly for fun.

there is a few things i need to verify.
1. does the agony dmg increase with each fractal or is it only every 10th fractal witch it increases it’s dmg and if the case is the first id like to see some values. ( i will most likely do this my self when im at a lvl 10-20 fractal and remove all my gear and see on the fighting chat and see how much dmg the agony deals.
2. at witch point does the agony become 1tic=downed and one more tic = death. as this is a very important breaking point.

Excellent, thanks for your input. Just from personal experience, I think that the damage scales per level, not just per “tier” or level range. I will try and confirm with some hard numbers later today, and will post the data I have available

I’m in the process of writing some guidelines for minimum AR at various Fractal levels for my guild.

So far, the formula above seems to be the closest match to my experience up to fractal 34. I wondered if you had made any more progress in regards to the formula, or if you still needed specific data from certain levels.

goldi.3129:

Vol.5241:

Yeah, it’s like what I see in baseball.

In baseball, statistics are heavily relied upon and you can generate a ton of analysis based on that data alone. Some people make their own analysis tools that profit of said data.

But the data is owned by the league, and as such anything that profits off of it starts to enter a dangerous area.

Like stated thats a great comparision.
The spreadsheats and the research may be the product of that site- but the access to the information was originally tolerated by Anet for gw2spidy, probably with the terms of making a nonprofitable site (except small scale advertising).
So I’d assume best case that site gets mail by Anets law department or worst case they shut down the availability of the interface so noone tries to profit that directly from their (virtual) belongings.

That’s my worry. I love the work that’s gone into spidy, and the openness of its API has lead to some really interesting options for market enthusiasts. I would hate to see ANet tighten up the web access to the TP, thus killing spidy, because of sites trying to profit directly from that information.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

GW2Spidy is getting their information by using the “non-public” API provided by GW2DB…which is a Guild Wars 2 Guru run website. They are simply repackaging some of the information and allowing the public to use it.

The real problem with GW2Spidy’s data is that it’s delayed. Although, markets don’t move THAT fast to make a 30-60 minute delay much of an issue. I know it’s not an issue for me because when I’m doing my trading, it’s mostly an overnight thing. Place buy orders before I go to bed, then pick the items up when I log in the next day and do whatever voodoo I do and sell them.

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that GW2 spidy got it’s TP data via it’s own scraping (using a live account to access the data via some kind of web interface). I know there is now integration between spidy and GW2DB, but I thought that came after spidy’s initial design, and was mostly for providing item information and stats. In fact, I thought that GW2DB used Spidy for all it’s financial data.

I don’t doubt the usefulness of the tool, indeed I’ve built something similar (though on a much smaller scale) for my own personal use, using Spidy’s API.

What I’m worried about is the legality of it, and whether ANet object to it. It’s an interesting and fine line to walk.

One thing I really would hate to see, is gw2spidy being punished in some way, simply because it’s providing the data via it’s API.

A new website has popped up in the last few days which is using GW2spidy’s API to build a data set, and then offering users tools specifically for maximising trade profit. So far so good, I’ve actually been waiting for someone to release such a tool.

However, as per the quote below, they’re charging for it:

[…]susbcription is $15.00 for a 3-month subscription ($5/month), $27 for a 6-month subscription ($4.50/month), or $50 for a 12-month subscription ($4.16/month).

Really I’d just like to hear everyone’s thoughts on this, as it strikes me that it could well be against the EULA or the like.

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

Or why don’t you all transfer to one server now while it’s still free? Guild influence is not that hard to get.

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

I’ll explain my situation and disappointment, if only to give you a perspective:

I play on the EU servers and this is where the majority of my friends and guildies are. Personally, I don’t have “so many” friends playing on the US server, I have only 3. However, these are close friends who I’ve been gaming with for nearly a decade, who have since moved around the world.

Just because they’re my friends, doesn’t mean they’re all friends with each other. Just as I had to make the choice to join a server where the majority of my friends play, so did they.

It is unrealistic to expect all your friends to roll on the same server, especially if they’re in a different part of the world and spend most of their time playing at different times.

This isn’t a feature that will make me quit the game and I’m not screaming about the sky falling, but I believe it’s perfectly legitimate to express disappointment in a polite and constructive manner.

For those of us with friends in other regions, this solution is actually worse than the current free transfer on a 7 day CD. I am very disappointed with this implementation and hope that at some point we will be able to play with our friends, no matter where they live.

I think the suggestion of allowing us two home servers (one on each region), with free transfers between just those two, seems like a nice compromise. Especially if it is kept on a 7 day cooldown.

One of the best aspects of GW1 in terms of community involvement was the ability to join any of your friends anywhere in the world through use of the international districts. Different game, different infrastructure I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept a big step backwards in regards to connecting with our international friends.

Event is a GO! We’re forming up at the Rally Waypoint as I type

Technically it’s not needed. Since the last round of fixes, the temple has been easier to win back. However, having a larger group gives us a much better chance at success, and makes for a fun community event

Also, approx 6 hours until we start!

It’s that time of the Month again! For those Gandarans needing access to the Temple of Balthazar vendor (who sells Obsidian Shards and Power/Vit/Toughness karma armour!), I’m looking to organise a large group of people to complete all the event chains to liberate the temple from the evil Risen.

I’ll be starting around 4PM UK time, and will be announcing it in Lion’s Arch, and bumping this thread as the time approaches.

I’ll be there, mingling with the well-dressed crowd of awesome people! ^^

I want to make love to a warrior and have a sweet baby “wasmer”, Illusionary Hundred Blades and Portal Banners for everyone!

Because it’s relevant to this topic, here’s an edited version of post I made for my guildies, including an example of my keybind setup

In my opinion Guild Wars 2, like most MMOs has poorly optimised default controls. By taking a long hard look at the way you interact with your character at the most basic level, you can vastly improve your responsiveness and character performance in all aspects of the game.

Situational Awareness
This is a broad term that I use to describe a player’s ability to analyse what’s happening on the battlefield. This is a huge subject which could be written about at length, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll just say that the less time you spend thinking about movement, targeting and activating your skills, the more brainspace you will be able to dedicate to analysing your current combat situation and options.

Targeting
It’s one thing to identify a pack of enemies and mentally decide which one needs to die, but it’s another to actually target them. I think it’s vitally important to become comfortable with targeting a specific enemy in a group quickly, being able to call targets to a group, and being able to follow called targets when needed.

As with keybindings, there are many different opinions and preferences for targeting, personally I have set up my targeting system to resemble other MMOs I’ve played and was comfortable with. As such, I have turned on “Promote skill target” and use a combination of “Target Nearest Enemy” and “Target Next Enemy” keybinds, combined with occasionally clicking the target if they’re within a large group.

Movement
I believe the optimum movement scheme is to steer using mouse-look, while moving forward and strafing with the keyboard. When I started playing SWtoR, I re-evaluated how I used my movement keys, I removed the keybinds for turning and backpedaling, prefering to use a combination of forward movement, strafing and mouse control. This forced me out of some bad habits that I’d built up over years of other games and I noticed a marked improvement in my PvP performance because of it.

Using Mouse buttons for Forward Movement
I think some players overlook the ability to move entirely with the mouse by using L+R buttons to move forward. In combination with mouselook, autorun and keyboard strafing, you have the ability to remain constantly mobile while still activating all your abilities.

Dodging
I highly recommend disabling “double-tap to dodge” and instead bind it to a key that you can reach quickly on reaction (I use one of my side mouse buttons). This will make your dodges faster, more reactive and will also help you avoid accidentally spending endurance because you meant to inch forward, not dodge-roll. It will also make jumping puzzles far less stressful!

Skill Usage
I try to set up my keybinds so that I can activate any of my skills quickly and easily without having to stretch or click skill bars. With practice, muscle-memory builds to the point where targeting, movement and the general mechanics of combat are subconscious. Now, more time can be devoted to surveying the battlefield, looking for incoming AoE, avoiding telegraphed attacks and generally thinking about the fight, rather than your controls.

My Keybinds
See attachement.

Summary
I certainly don’t suggest everyone starts using my keybinds, they’re based on a combination of personal preference and optimisation built up over years of playing MMOs. Everyone has their own playstyle and preferences, however, I think the theory behind the keybinds is something that all players should consider. Trying a new keybind setup is not something to be taken lightly, it can take weeks to become comfortable with a setup, especially if you are used to a previous configuration. However, if you have never seriously considered which keys are easiest to press for you, which skills require the fastest reaction times and how you can combine the two, I highly recommend it. If you have never considered how much time you spend targeting the right mob, how quickly you are able to move your character in a pinch, try thinking about the basic mechanics of your control scheme.

TL:DR / Quick Tips

• Think logically about which keys you find most comfortable pressing quickly
• Re-bind Utility, Profession Elite and Heal skills to those comfortable keys
• Make sure you have “Call Target” and “Take Target” bound to comfortable/accesable keys.
• Experiment with different targeting options and keybinds – practice visually acquiring a target and then selecting it as quickly as possible without clicking it.
• Bind dodge to a Key, turn off double-tap to dodge
• Try steering with the mouse, not the keyboard.

Thanks to all those who turned up and helped us successfully liberate the temple! Big shout out to the guys from Eden, who helped organise a second strike force

http://i.imgur.com/67NKG.jpg

The brave souls of DVDF and their friends will today be attempting to liberate the Temple of Balthazar from the clutches of the Risen. If you’re on Gandara(EU) and need access to the Karma vendor for Obsidian Shards or Armor, we’d love to have you by our side.

Place: Gandara (EU)
Date: Sunday 25th of November.
Time: 4PM GMT (approximately 4 hours 15 mins from the time this was posted)

If you need any more info, or would like to form parties, whisper “Grey” in game

This is actually a really cool idea.

This could be something very cool for the sound team too. Imagine if multiple players were all using different instruments in the same area, they could create a mini orchestra. As more players and instruments start playing, additional layers of sound are added to the track.

I did world completion quite early on, before the star/clone issue was well known. Since I’ve been working on my legendary, I haven’t spent as much time in sPvP as I thought I would, so it hasn’t been TOO bad. Hopefully it’ll be fixed by the time I get back into tournaments seriously.

I’m always happy to take commissions. I’ve got a thread over at guru for such discussions (link in my signature), but I’m also happy to talk the details over in game. Feel free to PM me to chat about art related stuff any time.

New sketch. It’s a quickie, mostly just trying my hand at charr anatomy

Updated the pic with a background and a little text ;D

If you have high precision, I’d go with an on-crit sigil (Sigil of Strength or Sigil of Earth for example). If you have low crit rate, a flat DPS boost like Sigil of Force (+5% damage) would work well.

Alternatively, if you switch weapons a lot, something like Sigil of Battle (3 stacks of might while swapping) could work.

Personally I use Air or Fire, I prefer to put stacking sigils like Bloodlust or Luck on my off-hand weapons (pistol for example) so that I can reserve my main-hand (or 2H) weapons for pure damage.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Off-topic but does Shanaeri still play?

Shan’s still playing and leading DVDF here on Gandara

Things that annoy me in dungeons:

1. People who assume everyone has the same level of knowledge that they do, and instead of giving advice, give angry commands.

2. See #1

3. Players who skip legitimate content and complain when others are specced to kill mobs instead of avoid them.

4. Players who fail to understand that not everyone has infinite amounts of condition removal.

5. See #1

6: Players who think that you need to be level 80 and wearing full exotics to clear an explorable.

7 Players who complain at others for not pulling, when they could have done it themselves.

8. Players who dictate not only their own skills, but their team mates too.

9. Lazy players who expect other professions to provide a taxi service.

10. See #1

Seriously though, when pugging dungeons you have to accept that you are grouped with players who may be there for the first time. A little understanding and support is not only nicer approach, but also far more likely to sink in. Barking commands at a player who may already be nervous about their performance, is not going to help improve it.

Everybody was a newbie at some point, everybody had to earn their first set of exotics at some point and everybody is more receptive to polite advice than rude commands and insults.

Awesome idea! I’ll join the lottery!

Congratulations to my visitors in Kessex Hills:
Cheeseypop
Amaterasu Daedra
Devkin

I think a far more likely marriage would be Logan + Rytlock, they’ve got enough sexual tension to fill an expansion ;D

I’m not sure if this will help at all, but I was in the same situation, I was sure I’d got 100% on all maps as I leveled. I was missing 1 vista in the South West of Metrica Province. Perhaps it was related to the update in which they fixed visible zone rewards, or perhaps I just missed it.

In any case, it might be worth checking yourself

Esoteric Rogue.7651:

A large portion of taxes goes towards rehabilitating those who are addicted to dye.

It all started out so innocently, I dabbled with Fluff and Mist, but before I knew it I was using Midnight Ice like it was water… Now I’m just drowning in the Abyss.

Nicely done… nicely done.

byolith.8160:

That’s beautiful! Do you happen to have tumblr or deviantART?

I do indeed:

http://greyf0xuk.deviantart.com/

Greetings fellow art-lovers. I’m a long time Guild Wars fan artist, and now that the game’s been out for a little while, I’ve finally managed to tear myself away and get a picture finished.

Below is my first finished GW2 painting: the lovely mesmer “Grey”. Hope you enjoy

Currently, many items will salvage into tokens much rarer than expected – for example a player salvages an item found in a rabbit chest, and receives a wolf token. Some players are terming this “crit salvage”.

I have always worked under the assumption that this behavior is unintended, and have reported a couple of instances in-game via /bug.

However, it has been nearly a month now and these recipes have not been changed, indeed, more are being found as players reach each new major rank. I am beginning to wonder if it is “working as intended”.

Any confirmation on this would be appreciated, if it is intentional, I’ll stop self-censoring when people ask me how certain players are using tiger or dragon gear, and where those tokens came from.

I definitely feel like the DR system is a little over-complicated. Who knows what the technical limitations are for ArenaNet in regards to managing loot drops, but a once-per-day reward system is a lot more intuitive for the average player. It also rewards players who have to leave a dungeon early for some reason.

The only problem I can see with your original suggestion is that players might farm the first boss of many different dungeon paths per day, instead of clearing the whole run. if you can kill the first boss in each path for a total 45 tokens, very quickly, that might be a concern.

Another option would be to weight rewards:

• First boss = 5 tokens
• Second boss = 15tokens
• Third boss = 25 tokens
• Full clear bonus = 15 tokens

You still get a total of 60 tokens for a full clear, you reward players who stick around longer, and you make chain running the first boss of an instance inefficient, compared to playing as intended.

All of the following runs were with the same group of players. They represent the only dungeons I’ve run in the last few days, I haven’t done any extra runs etc. For a lot of us, these were our first forays into each dungeon, so the runs were not fast at all (usually at least an hour)

• Sunday AM (GMT) – Ran AC:Explorable path one. Correct number of tokens awarded.
• Sunday (PM) – Ran arah story.
• Monday (PM) – Ran arah story (to get complete one of the group member’s personal story arc)
• Tuesday (PM) – Ran AC:Explorable path 1. Everyone else received 60 tokens, I received 30.
• Tuesday (PM, right after the run above) – Ran AC Explorable path 3, everyone else received 60 tokens, I received 15.

There definitely seems to be something fishy going on with the DR system. I just hope this can be resolved quickly, as getting 45 tokens whilst my friends got 120, for the exact same effort, was very frustrating.

Just got some results that seem to be outside the expected behavior of the new reward system (even taking DR into account)

I’ve done two AC runs today, the first one was AC path 1, which resulted in 30 tokens (the other 4 players got 60), the second run was AC path 3, which resulted in 15 tokens for me (other players got 60).

I did run AC path one yesterday before the patch, but that was more than 24 hours before my path 1 run today. Even if the CD on path one was still active, that shouldn’t have reduced the path 3 reward.

Definitely seems like DR have kicked in, but 2 AC runs in the space of around 3 hours certainly shouldn’t trigger that.

Just a quick note on the wiki info, remember it is written by players, not devs. Wiki pages are not “official” and can definitely be inaccurate. I wrote the initial entries on all the PvP crafting materials (including the paragraphs quoted above), based on knowledge of the systems at the time. From my experience and research, silver and gold chests have a higher chance to give items that will salvage into Crystals and Slivers.

Having said that, it is definitely possible (though I’m not sure if intended) that you can salvage those materials from any chest. The problem is, that without a massive amount of data, we don’t actually know what the percentages are like at each tier of chest. My personal experience is that golds gave more rare materials than coppers, however other players have told me that they’ve had good luck with copper chests.

I question whether it’s intended, simply because there are a lot of peculiarities to the PvP salvage system, including:

• Being able to salvage PvE mats from certain items (I’ve had mithril ore, and a few other high-end crafting mats)
• Getting tournament tokens from non-tournament chest gear.
• Getting rank tokens far above your level (tiger tokens from dolyak chest gear)

So right now, it’s hard to say with certainty exactly where the salvage mats are “meant” to come from, we can only go on tested results. However, approaching it logically, you can buy 5 copper chests for the price of 1 gold chest, there needs to be a strong incentive to buy those chests, and if it turns out that copper chests are the most efficient way of farming materials, ANet will most likely change the drop rates, to encourage different spending patterns.

PS. I’ve updated the wiki so that future readers will be aware that silver and gold chests are not the only way to acquire Crystals and Slivers.

The original Guild Wars has a long tradition of fan artists creating commissions for fellow players in exchange for in-game gold. Guild Wars guru’s forums have been especially popular as a gathering place for artists, art contests and art commissions.

My question is, how do ArenaNet feel about players posting commission threads here on the official forums. Would this be breaking any EULAs or ToS.

I would love to start doing commissions to get a little bit of extra pocket money for my characters in GW2, but certainly wouldn’t want break any rules in the process.

For all my fellow sPvPers, an ongoing thread collecting info on the functionality of the PvP Mystic Forge

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55030-pvp-mystic-forge-recipes/