Guild Wars 2

onevstheworld.2419:

You could also go to a friend’s place with a portable HDD or USB stick and copy the .dat file. Your exe should recognize it and any further download should be fairly small.

I think that’s the OP’s original plan. The question they have is: when should they be at their friend’s? I think they were hoping to pick up as much of the patch as possible on the Tue or Wed before launch.

Ohoni.6057:

I tend to think that playing those maps, without those travel methods available to you, would really get people excited about actually buying them.

My guess is that would lead to people complaining it’s pay-to-play, rather than feeling that they were getting value added for their gem purchase. Plus it’s almost certainly simpler to design the system to have one clear gate (unlocking the story) than to try to establish locks at the mastery level.

Glad to hear it. Thanks for letting us know.

There’s a couple of different ways to look at this:

ANet’s Point of View

• ANet needs to pay for new content, so they charge a nominal amount for LS chapters, $US10 max (for all chapters & maps in LS3), same as the cost of a new character.
• To make the cost more attractive, the maps are also gated (along with different local map currencies that offer various benefits).
• ANet would like to reward loyal players and one way they can do so is by making the LS chapters free for those who logon just once during the release period.

New Player PoV
For a new player, it can be difficult to see the logic: “I bought the game, why don’t I get the entire game?” And to be fair: the distinction is a bit arbitrary.

On the other hand, when you buy either HoT or PoF from ANet, it’s made clear that there’s an extra cost for the LS.

Alternatives to Charging for LS & Maps
The alternative is that ANet charges more for the base cost of the expacs — that doesn’t go down well with veterans, who probably spend the most RL money on gems, one of the major sources of revenue for the game.

In the end, ANet needs to accept that they are going to alienate a few people by gating maps behind the LS (& its costs). At the same time, players are going to have to accept that ANet is a business — they have to charge for more things than we’d like.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Lost City of Arah, Caudecus’s Manor and Twilight Arbor have been ditched upon death stuck behind large groups of mobs. If you haven’t successful gotten past the boss before the secondary waypoints are unavailable. Teq closest waypoint contested. Repair is a good distance off.

Don’t know when it changed or maybe I was unaware that items damaged aren’t penalized. So no there’s not anywhere I could name dying eight times.

Yeah it’s pointless.

Since before launch, damaged gear works the same as normal gear; only broken gear provides no value. Thus, the same character must die 8x in a row before it matters that there isn’t an immediate repair available. And even in the dungeons with the most inconvenient WPs, it’s possible to get repaired (especially since the 7-in-a-row grace period allows one to unlock the next WP).

That explains the disconnect. I’ll have to remember that the next time this sort of request comes up — that’s probably why some people are so adamant that the game is missing something.

PS for Teq one of the two closest WPs has a nearby repair, tucked into a Quaggan hovel. It’s not worth the detour imo (for reasons covered above).

Parking a toon in a safe spot near the desired event is a great idea (whether for VTP or any other target).

joneirikb.7506:

Even if I have to agree with Illconceived Was Na’s post as usual, I still really hate that I can’t turn of shoulders on outfits!

Yeah, it’s a shame, but the very thing that makes outfits cheaper works against having any options.

Given that, I wish they were more consistent about the dye channels. There are so many outfits I won’t buy because contrasting colors stand out too much. I’d like to see one color as the main, one for trim, one for decorations, and one for things that reflect… or something along those lines. As it stands now, if you want red buttons on the ‘blouse’ or ‘shirt’, you sometimes end up with red trousers, too.

That’s about the only one that is quest-related directly. Other skins are available from heart vendors or via collections. The early-Halloween back item Mad Memoires had a quest to unlock it (I’m not sure why they haven’t brought it back yet).

TheGrimm.5624:

kharmin.7683:

I would like to think that we got the bulk of it with the demo weekend?

I am hoping this is so but at $15 per GB overage rates would prefer to see if we can get any guidance.

There’s going to be several more updates between now and the 22nd. The actual final patch will probably occur sometime before then, but I doubt ANet could make any promises to us about when the last patch will roll. Plus, I’m sure there will be 1-5 patches in the first few days. A lot of stuff can get tested, but we players are too clever and we’ll find all sorts of ways to break stuff.

So do your best to find an unmetered connection that you can use 1-2 hrs before launch and something similar for the weekend if possible.

Ray Koopa.2354:

And I actually thought those displayed texts are generated from the actual stats and aren’t free, manual text.

I think they were in GW1. I’m not sure why they didn’t design them that way for GW2, but it would be a lot of tedious (and error-prone) work to convert it now.

What has ANet said in response to your support ticket?

Rauderi.8706:

It doesn’t do anything to a Defiance bar, and the more players, the more worthless Soft CC becomes. Thus, soft CC needs scaling to keep up.

The point is that (a) it’s not worthless, just not fast and (b) soft cc doesn’t need to be scaled since there’s already a solution — use hard CC when there’s little time. Mostly, that means explaining to players before fights what hard CC is, what skills offer it, and why it’s critical to save it for breaking the blue bar.

In other words, I agree with Oji above and disagree that there’s an issue that needs to be addressed.

DivaCeryn.2673:

They didn’t have permissions to spend claimable upgrades. They did have permissions to claim objectives and tactics. so how should i word it.

Just like that

DivaCeryn.2673:

it shows in the screen they didn’t have permission’s to spend claimable upgrades.

I’d still type it out, under the “make it easy for Support staff” rule-of-thumb. Include the screenshot so they don’t have to check.

DivaCeryn.2673:

And he is no longer a member of the guild so i could copy and paste from here his comment of his guild rank.

Good idea. You have the above screenshots, which you can use to show what things were like at the relevant time period.

This isn’t point|counterpoint style of debate in which we are trying to convince each other about which method is superior — everyone agrees (even ANet) that more armor sets more quickly would be great. The problem is that ANet tied themselves in knots years before by establishing some then-time-saving adjustments to armor design, race design, animations, and so on. The end result, which critics of the status quo need to accept is that armor takes a lot longer to design, render, QA, implement and maintain than any of us think is reasonable (9 months, according to Mike O’Brien).

Despite the fact that some outfits appear like armor that has been stitched together doesn’t make them armor. Outfits use a unique ‘rig’ compared to light, medium, and heavy — a simple copy|paste isn’t possible. There are all sorts of intermediate steps (some of which are outlined by Miku above). Starting with outfits doesn’t save all that much time.

There’s no “classification” of outfits that saves time, because outfits are a fourth armor class (well, fifth, since town clothes is probably still coded in the game as the original fourth).

Thus there’s no shortcut to the process that saves time — if there was, ANet would have discovered it long ago (because this situation probably annoys them more than it does us, since it’s their responsibility to get it right the first time) and even if they hadn’t, players have had years to offer advice like the above.

tl;dr yes, we’re all (even ANet) frustrated. That doesn’t mean that there’s a quick fix hiding out there — we either wait (as we have done) or ANet has to put other stuff aside to redesign the armor skin system (which, for all we know, they might be doing — they wouldn’t tell us until it was near-ready to ship).

I don’t recommend updating the old ticket because it refers to a separate issue. And I always err on the side of making things as simpler as possible for support personnel who have a limited amount of time to begin reviewing tickets.

A new ticket, with the issue stated more plainly, will help speed up their process, e.g. something like:

a member without privileges to edit assembly queues or purchase upgrades was able to queue up several items which cost us most of our stored favor. Like most guilds, they had permission to ‘spend claimable upgrades’, which we presumed meant the ability to use already-produced ones, not to start new ones.

Can you clarify how we can allow members to spend without be able to queue changes? Or is something wrong the the privileges?

Thanks.

Attached: member’s rank displayed, that rank’s privileges, and the log showing which changes they queued up.

(Keep in mind you’ll only be able to attach one image to the initial ticket; you can send more as attachments to replies from the initial, automated email. If you want, you can combine all three screens into a single image.)

tl;dr make it easy on support to help you by reducing the text they need to read and absorb.

Check out the video at https://redd.it/6yq0w1, which compares the renegade’s F3 skill for plain weapons, bolt, and shining blade. (That skill was chose to highlight the differences.)

Bolt is a flashier sword, full of sound & fury, but signifying little when it’s thrown. The Shining Blade is a more understated weapon with more pyrotechnics when thrown. I think that makes Bolt more fun as a melee-focused weapon, so more appealing to mesmers while Shining Blade generates the better projectiles, e.g. for Renegade.

In the end, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Mournblade.2105:

Veteran Member checking in – I can also vouch for the settings.

It’s nice of all of you to back each other up, but it’s not necessary. No one doubts anyone’s sincerity. It’s just always a good idea to double check the obvious (I can’t tell you how many times the answer to, “why isn’t [my device] working?” has turned out to be an unplugged cable or switch turned to ‘off’)

Mournblade.2105:

Please investigate.

If you want ANet to investigate, you’ll have to create a support ticket. I recommend closing the original, since it was about where the favor went. Also, only one guild member needs to create the ticket — it only slows down support to create multiple tickets.

Astralporing.1957:

So, they are going to indroduce the traditional expansion gear grind, just camouflaged a bit.
Laaameeeee….

It’s not anything close to the same thing. Traditional gear grind means you literally cannot play certain content until you grind to get the new gear. In this case, the very worst that happens is that you aren’t as efficient as QT while you’re using your old gear.

It’s a choice to grind in this game, not a prerequisite. It might be a very hard-to-forgo choice, but it’s still a choice.

I, too, would prefer just spending my hoarded mats & currencies, without having to play, but I can respect the design choice that ANet is making to ensure that everyone starts on a less-unequal footing.

tl;dr traditional gear grind prevents you from playing new content; in this case, the worst case if playing less efficiently for a short time

Vayne.8563:

The original Zhaitan fight was a dungeon with mechanics that required two people at least, and you required more than that for most people to finish.

Hearts and minds can’t be soloed.

Did you mean, “Hearts & Minds can be soloed” ?

OriOri.8724:

So in total, with both an expansion AND 2 years worth of content we got less than 3k AP.

So I was hoping this discussion would stick to the OP’s concern (the choice or lack thereof among hellfire/radiant skins), but since we’re going over AP, here’s the break down I have as of about 4 months ago (last time I recollated the data)

• Dailies: 15k
• Core: 10k (includes activities, dungeons, SAB, general, pvp, etc, LS2)
• HoT only: ~1.3k
• LS1: ~4.7k (includes non-repeat festivals, wvw seasons)
• Mixed: ~1.5k (cross-era collections, yearly festivals counted for each year as best I could)
• Post-HoT ~1.3k (Current Events, LS3.1-3.5, new PvP)

That is, regardless of when you started the game, the biggest chunk of AP comes from dailies and the second biggest chunk comes from stuff available to everyone. A much smaller chunk comes from the 18-month-long LS1 era, which offered about 30% more than what’s been made available since.

The era that I’m calling LS1 lasted from 2012-mid 2014 (the last story launched in March, the new LS2 era began in July) and includes the third largest chunk of AP. However, only about 60% of it was from the LS itself. Some came from retired fractal chieves, some from the festivals, some from WvW. During that era, there was a ton of temporary content, that we can’t progress any longer.

The LS3 era lasted nearly exactly a year (or just over if you count from LS3.1 to PoF) and offered 1.3k, so about 60-70% slower pace than the LS1 era (extrapolating to the 18 months of LS1).

ANet seems to prefer a slower pace of adding AP than they offered at launch. That hurts veterans, as AP trickles in now, but it’s great for new players, who won’t have so much trouble catching up (even for those who don’t care about being in the top 1000, it can feel daunting to see folks with 20k and more).

So the question is: is there anything wrong with a slower rate of AP gain? if so, what?

I get that people want rewards sooner rather than later, but is that really the best thing for the game? Isn’t it better for the game to dish out AP slowly, so folks can’t really grind themselves into boredom try to get all the AP-specific shinies?

Well, maybe not, since clearly the OP is impatient to finish off the hellfire set. And they aren’t alone.

tl;dr bulk of AP is really from core & dailies. LS1 era had a much faster pace of adding AP than later eras, but it was all temporary stuff. The new pace has been consistent for a longer period of time.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing for the game? Is it more a matter of perception of veterans or is the pace of AP too slow?

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

some of us do not give a kitten about DPS stuff and some of us play this game for fun !!

Careful … everyone plays this game for fun, both people who care about DPS and people who don’t, and everyone in between.

Besides, OP’s point is about making guides more accessible. Their theory seems to be that there’s lots of information out there and lots of players who say they want access to it… but who also say they have trouble finding it. Why not offer links in game?

Towards that end, the wiki really is the best place for that info, since everyone has access to it. People sometimes right guides that appear in their “user space” instead of a primary article… and those guides, if they are good, get linked from “Notes” or (at worst) the talk pages.

So, OP, if this is a cause you believe in, put your time where your keyboard is and

• Create an account on the wiki.
• Create a set of user pages that have links to the guides you think are excellent.
• Build up your rep as a reliable poster by linking a few of these to the talk pages of relevant articles.
• If you have extra time, you can even help write missing guides (or help edit existing ones) to be in the main space — there’s quite a large gap currently, since people seem to rely on Dulfy, [KING], [qt], and others and forget that not everyone visits those sites.

What rank did MegaSim have at the time? That’s the account that was used to queue the schematics (according to the post above).

Thanks for posting, MegaSim. I’m glad you found an explanation.

Please double-check all the permissions before assuming that this is a glitch on ANet’s end. Some settings offer more permissions that you might mean to offer and it’s not always obvious.

Based on your posts above, I’m sure you’ve given a lot of thought to ranks & roles, including who has permission to promote (and how high) and which things are offered to incoming members as well as the first rank above that. It’s worth revisiting all of that again.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Got in a successful run, only broke the bar once. Had 20+ players and the damage was able to get him down fairly well.

Awesome, glad to hear it
Thanks for letting us know.

Any advice you care to offer those who are still finding this one daunting?

There are three separate issues being raised in the thread, only loosely connected:

• Why are Hellfire & Radiant armors offered in the order they are, rather than allowing us complete choice, such as we get with the Zenith weapons?
• Should the AP rewards be revamped, nearly 5 years after their introduction? (Related: are the thresholds reasonable for the individual rewards?)
• Does ANet offer “enough” AP in HoT, LS3, Side Stories, and will they offer “enough” in PoF and LS4 (and any future side stories)? (Begging the question: what’s “enough”?)

Each of those are worthy of their own thread and I think trying to hash them all out in a single thread does disservice to each. Radiant/Hellfire can be reordered/resequenced without worrying about the big picture, but a full revamp (with moving around thresholds are rewards) would require much, much more attention. ANet could offer more AP (or less) without changing the current AP rewards and without worrying about Radiant or Hellfire.

In other words: keep it simple, let’s focus on the OP’s primary complaint, which is: why do we have to pick 2 radiants before we can get 3 hellfires (or vice versa)?

My answer: because for some reason, it seemed like a good idea at the time to someone.

I’d have no problem with ANet changing things so that at each of the six current thresholds, you can pick any of the remaining in whatever order you like. Aside from the fact that no development work is ever “easy” or “free”, this might be one of the easier changes for them to make.

It’s certainly likely to be easier than a total revamp of rewards or letting us in on their overall plans for AP in general.

tl;dr focus on the OP’s request. It seems reasonable and doable, without much dev attention (whereas most of the other ideas teased about in the thread wouldn’t be ‘easy’ including insisting that people simply go out and earn more AP).

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Only time I’ve found this a problem is usually dungeons or maps that have real sparse waypoints. I don’t die often, but when a death means you miss out on boss loot or dungeon content since the group doesn’t want to come back to get you through respawning trash it’s problematic there.

To which maps are you referring that one can miss out on loot because the nearest waypoint is too far? And how does that relate to repair?

In other words, my question remains: where is it specifically that people are dying 8 times before they get access to an anvil or repair NPC? You can die up to 7x in a row without the need to repair.

PvE players see an emphasis on PvP, PvP players worry about too much PvE focus, Wvw players complain about both. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues, it just means that it’s hard to know what is a serious critique, what’s whinging, or whether it’s something in between.

Until we can offer specifics about which skills or traits are over- or under-powered for a game mode, it’s not all that helpful. The OP at least offers some details about a couple of potential Thief issues, but it doesn’t really make the general case that there’s an issue with PvP versus PvE balance.

So skip the rhetoric about why you think ANet missed the mark and simplify the criticism to the actual issue at hand. Keep in mind that there will always be some skills|traits|buffs|condi that are more useful in one mode than another. For example, Moa Signet is a great bar-breaking skill and a useful psych-out trick against less experienced players; it’s not all that useful against skilled players or in organized zerg-v-zerg. That doesn’t make it imbalanced or inappropriate; it just means that it works best for some situations, not others.

tl;dr focus on the actual critiques without worrying about why ANet might have missed the mark

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/

ANet has a page, easily found, that tells you which retailers are authorized for each country.

The reason to be suspicious in the first place? If it sounds too good, it might not be true. Every consumer should always take a look at why some vendors are willing to sell for cheaper.

Only you can see what’s in your ticket. You can share the details with the guild (or here, if you think there’s something missing). You can reply to the automated email (that confirmed the ticket’s creation) to add to the ticket… or use the website.

The downed skills are pretty fair in my opinion.

• Guardian: (2) is a knockback, interrupts stomps. (3) some healing
• Rev: (2) is a knockback, interrupts stomps. (3) some dmg
• Warrior: (2) is a knockdown, interrupts stomps. (3) is a mixed bag, good for saving an ally to prevent a wipe, a gamble otherwise.

• Engie: (2) is a pull, interrupts stomps. (3) is a knockback, interrupts stomps (also aggroing everything nearby)
• Ranger: (2) is a daze, interrupts stomps. (3) is pretty cool since it can heal through a lot.
• Thief: (2) is a teleport, so prevents stomps. (3) is a stealth, so can prevent stomps.

• Ele: (2) is invulnerability and allows you to run a good distance, preventing stomps and allowing time to rally. (3) is an immobilize, so can delay a stomp
• Mesmer: (2) is a random tele, so prevents a stomp; also includes a clone to distract the unwitting (not very helpful against skilled opponents). (3) is a phantasm that… can be distracting.
• Necro: (2) is a fear, so interrupts a stomp. (3) is an aoe condi, so can delay a stomp.

Most veterans have access to (5) Signet of Agony, which is an AoE knock, interrupting stomps and other skills.

There are definitely some better (3) skills (ranger would be my pick for “best”, not rev nor necro), but there’s really only one that’s problematic (2) (mesmer, since the random destination prevents it from effectively avoiding death in a lot of situations).

All of the (2) skills avoid/prevent/interrupt stomps, which is their main purpose. None of the skills are get-out-of-jail free and all (3) have some value in at least a few niche situations. I wouldn’t agree that rev|necro are best nor that guardian is worst. The goal isn’t to allow you to personal down anything (unless it’s close to death already) — it’s to give you a fighting chance to rally, with help.

tl;dr downed skills do what they are supposed to do: get out of a stomp and give you a chance to rally if your teammates are on top of things (even if some could be a bit better or toned down to match the others).

PS it’s a poor rhetorical technique to insult the people who you are asking to change the status quo; consider editing your run-on paragraph to remove everything that isn’t about the specific requests and critiques. I might disagree with your opinion, but I’d still like to see you make a better case.

I don’t think anyone doubts that you guys are seeing something troubling. I’m not sure, however, that it helps to have additional tickets or posts, unless folks are adding different details that will help ANet troubleshoot.

We know that Support’s queue is currently a lot longer than normal, due to interest in PoF and questions related to that. Plus, people returning to the game to catch up on this or that running into issues (including account theft).

So try to make things easy on support: stick to reporting the facts as clearly & concisely as you can. Don’t create multiple tickets unless there’s something unique to offer — instead, update DivaCeryn’s original ticket whenever possible.

tl;dr it seems like there’s something going on; make it easy for ANet to help you and please be patient (it might take longer than you think to unravel).

PS I’m sure it’s frustrating to deal with this and I wish I had some ideas of things you could do in the meantime. For now, I’d continue to do guild missions and cross your fingers that the issue will resolve itself somehow.

Mesmer and Ranger→Druid are also possible support-y classes.

• Druid is more traditional, offering particular buffs and heals.
• Mesmer is more of a GW2 idea of “support” — a good mesmer handles aggro duties (balling up trashmobs), can tank, can provide evades, handles condi removal, and share buffs. It can be a difficult class to master for some people, but also very rewarding in a similar way to support classes in other games.

Dragon.4782:

I have to say I view the finale of season 3 as non-canon.

I don’t think it’s up to players to decide what’s canon and what’s not. (If it were, as the commander, I wouldn’t have bothered creating a guild after LS2 and I certainly wouldn’t name it Dragons’ Dragon’s Watch.)

ANet has explained why they haven’t offered this, despite their interest. It turns out they tied themselves into knots in the way they designed the races, so that it would take a lot more code (and difficult to maintain systems at that) to get each character of each race & size to sit in the same chairs.

Some players have suggested that the work required to make sitting on mounts might have included the groundwork for chairs. I’m not that optimistic, since mounts are personal and can be adjusted per toon, in a way that items static to the environment (e.g. chairs) are not.

tl;dr it’s more difficult than it sounds and that’s why it’s still not in game.

Keller.3914:

Permanent convenience items like Molten Alliance Mining Pick and Royal Terrace Pass are really cool and useful but there is no point in buying more once you already have one of each.

Maybe there’s not point for you, but there is for others. People buy different everlasting tools for the skins, not just the utility.

Keller.3914:

For instance, I’d like to purchase a Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey but since I already have a Royal Terrace Pass I simply can’t justify spending the gems.

Although I had two port scrolls (from before Shared Inventory Slots), the Mistlock Sanctuary Pass is definitely worth it. First of all, I’ve gotten plenty of use out of the the Royal Terrace Pass already, so I feel it’s cost has been well amortized. Second, the Mistlock Sanctuary has several features worth the 1000 gem cost:

• Return to your previous location — no other VIP pass offers this (and, per developers, no other is likely to in the near or mid-term future). This alone makes it worth the cost for me.
• But wait, there’s more: there are additional features that are close to worthwhile, too:
  • Ports to fractal and to aerodrome.
  • Double-clicking the pass while in the instance takes you to spawn — big time saver.
  • Vendors/stations are much, much more conveniently located. Less time spent finding what you want.
  • Nova Launch & Low Gravity make it far, far faster to reach the services you want.
  • It’s the only instance to offer all the services.

In short, it’s by far & away the most useful and fun VIP area in the game.

Keller.3914:

Maybe this would be a good way to keep people buying new cosmetic or convenience items since they would get some value (e.g. half the gem value) for trading in old ones.

Or maybe it would be something that reduces the overall RL monies people spend on gems. Let’s say they reduce the price 50%, as you suggest. Then for every person like me (willing to pay full price without the discount), there would have to be at least one person like you that wouldn’t pay full price, but who would pay half price. That’s not typically true for consumers. Plus, at 500 gems, more people would be able to convert gold to gems rather than buying gems with RL cash.

In other words, it’s probably a loss for ANet.

Of course, neither of us can be sure which it is, since we’re both speculating without access to ANet’s data. The fact that ANet hasn’t offered discounts during the last five years — despite suggestions like this — suggests that they think it wouldn’t increase sales enough to make it worth the effort.

tl;dr it’s a great suggestion in terms of player convenience. It’s probably not realistic in terms of cost:benefit for ANet, so unlikely to happen.

There’s someone at Support all the time. They are dealing with a backlog right now, due to interest in PoF, so it takes longer to get back to you. Be patient; they’ll do the best they can.

wolliemonkeyboi.6481:

How do people not understand that its not about gear or money!?!?!?

Apparently the same way you think that money isn’t a factor in ANet’s decisions about what features to prioritize.

No one denies that there are legit reasons to want a race-change feature. What folks are saying is that the cost of offering such a feature far exceed the benefits.

wolliemonkeyboi.6481:

MMOs are a huge time investment and when someone has been playing a character since launch,

Yes, and offering new features, when the game has worked a certain way since launch, is a huge time investment for the game developer.

wolliemonkeyboi.6481:

a purely cosmetic race change would not be that hard to implement.

ANet says otherwise. Race is fundamental to various aspects of the character as kept in the database. There are many systems that depend on the assumption that race doesn’t change. Now, probably ANet should have realized before they started coding the game that people might want to change race and built in the ability to swap, but since they didn’t, it’s a lot more than just changing how things look.

wolliemonkeyboi.6481:

no story change, no lore change. just change the way the character looks.

It is a story change. It is a lore change. Race is inherent to both.

tl;dr it’s a costly feature to offer, with a relatively small number of people willing to pay the high gem cost that would be required to defray some of the development resources required. That makes the cost of offering it far higher than the benefits.

It will. We just don’t have any idea when, since ANet doesn’t have a fixed schedule for returning items to the gem shop. Nearly everything that has been offered once has been offered multiple times, including the SFSoM. Just keep an eye out.

One of the wiki editors has been doing their best to track previous sales, but past performance is no predictor of future offers:

• Current Offers
• Archive of Previous Sales

According to them, Silver-Fed has most recently been offered:

• 20 Jan 2017

Prior to that, redditor u/Delsea periodically published similar lists on Reddit.

• 17 May 2016 no notes about Silver-Fed (means it wasn’t on Delsea’s radar and wasn’t available at the time)
• Visual Version of Similar Data

I am really hoping that ANet does completely away with underwater breathers — we don’t need them to breathe and all they do is force us to worry about a 7th rune, that might not even be useful for underwater combat.

In this scenario fantasy of mine, they’d turn the rime-rimmed effect into an aura that could be applied in some other way, e.g. via an infusion slot (and perhaps maintain the “only underwater” aspect, too).

I’d share the screenshot with support if you want to get someone to take a closer look in the near future and help out [AW] sooner rather than later.

While you’re waiting… is there any chance that someone cancelled the queues (if that’s even possible) or that the banners completed that quickly? The logs sometimes don’t update immediately (which is probably more of a synchronization issue rather than a ‘bug’ in the fundamentals of guild processing).

I’m not in game at the moment, so I don’t have a chance to look at processing time or what the log displays before|during|after.

It’s a text anomaly. The API shows that the EOJ grants +25 precision, not +25.

Hopefully they can fix it the next time they do a passthrough on descriptions. (Which FYI: might not be for a while.)

Tumult.2578:

Ok, my bad. Did this change, or did I misunderstand it from the start? I don’t remember it being an option when the game started, when I did most of my WvW.

It’s changed multiple times since the game started. Originally, you needed Badges of Honor, which seemed hard to come by. ANet boosted the drop rate in a number of ways (I remember running the puzzles multiple times in order to get an extra 10 badges… whereas now we get 10 if we sneeze too hard in WvW).

For a while, people used the badges they had from AP chests, which were plenty to afford the GoB. ANet tried to nerf that cheeze by adding a rank requirement (which, btw, also cheesed people off at the time). That, too, was easily bypassed, since for a while, there were consumables available that offered liquid WXP and could be purchased for badges of honor.

ANet finally plugged all the original loopholes by turning it into a reward track.

However, there remain a couple of minor, new ones:

• Spend 25 badges of honor when Big Spender is a daily — never set foot in WvW. I estimate that takes a maximum of 40 months and probably a minimum of 16-20 months (depending on how often that daily shows up).
• Do the PvE-ish dailies. You do need to set foot in WvW to cap points or kill NPCs, but you don’t need to confront other players, depending on when you go for them. You can easily finish the GoB track within 2-3 months max.

I just tried a couple of different attachments and I’m not able to include a screenshot either.

@DC: you can try uploading the image to some other public site and linking it, for now. It might be that ANet disabled attachments for some reason or that something is borked server side.

I’ll report the issue as well. Hopefully someone can take a look.

The OP is asking for ANet to ignore the easier bits of creating a new race and focus just on the more difficult parts… as Danikat said above, that’s more work, not less.

If ANet wanted, they could do something like they did with parts of LS2, in which the player is forced to act as a nominally non-player-character (Caithe), with fixed skills and a fixed storyline. That eliminates nearly everything that makes a new race more time consuming: no special armors or animations, no additional need for background or local color, only one voice actor per language is required (instead of two), and so on.

Unfortunately, that also removes all the really exciting things about a new race and it forces everyone to play exactly the same way, regardless of which character. It’s everything I disliked in LS2 and GW1 bonus mission packs.

tl;dr there’s no shortcut to adding new races. If ANet is going to add them, they’re going to do them “right”, not watered down.

Glad that it’s working for you. (And yeah, I’ve learned from experience to double-check NumLock.)

The point is that you don’t need the skin at all, since it’s hidden. Replace it with any mantle of the same rarity. There’s zero need for ANet to create a new item and force people to pay even lower price or for them to redesign it.

It’s just one of those anomalies in design that doesn’t have a great reason for existing and that isn’t worth addressing, with so many other design issues & suggestions that have more impact on the community.

Linken.6345:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

MASMY.1659:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Start by asking ANet support. I doubt they will choose to make that happen, but if they do, it would be a lot faster than waiting for a major mechanic change.

The problem is: the reason for binding gear is to sink materials and gold from the economy. Allowing people to unbind would defeat that purpose and create an entirely new market, in which people would sell stuff that had been bound.

In other words, hard to imagine ANet would think this is good for the game.

ikr, but if the item to undo / reverse the “account bound on use” item is expensive (example 8000gems or 16000gems) people will thinking to spend gem on it right? Only people who Really Really Really Need those wil buy it (i guess). Or Anet can make it available only in certain period of time. (the item must only available for Account bound on Use. Not Account Bound when Acquire.) Atleast there is possible way to resolve the issue or probably someone who “accidentally double click the item to be account bound without their intention”

1600 gems is currently about 440 gold, that’s a lot less than most precursors, never mind any legendary.

If you accidentally bind and ask support for help, they can often help out — that’s not the issue in the OP. In that case, the OP wants to move an item from one account to another; that’s an entirely different situation.

You missed a 0 in your calculation so it would be 2200-4400 gold.

Oh, you’re right. OP said 8000-16000 gems, not 800-1600. I didn’t miss the zero in the calculations — I missed the zero before even starting them

In that case, the costs are still low for some bound items, but they are too high for ANet to invest in changing the mechanic. People already balk at paying 2000 gems for various bundles (with 2500-3000 gems worth of contents). I can’t imagine more than a tiny number of people being willing to spend 8000 gems on anything — that’s not enough to make it worth ANet’s time to discuss the feature, let alone design, QA, implement, and support it.

MASMY.1659:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Start by asking ANet support. I doubt they will choose to make that happen, but if they do, it would be a lot faster than waiting for a major mechanic change.

The problem is: the reason for binding gear is to sink materials and gold from the economy. Allowing people to unbind would defeat that purpose and create an entirely new market, in which people would sell stuff that had been bound.

In other words, hard to imagine ANet would think this is good for the game.

ikr, but if the item to undo / reverse the “account bound on use” item is expensive (example 8000gems or 16000gems) people will thinking to spend gem on it right? Only people who Really Really Really Need those wil buy it (i guess). Or Anet can make it available only in certain period of time. (the item must only available for Account bound on Use. Not Account Bound when Acquire.) Atleast there is possible way to resolve the issue or probably someone who “accidentally double click the item to be account bound without their intention”

1600 gems is currently about 440 gold, that’s a lot less than most precursors, never mind any legendary.

If you accidentally bind and ask support for help, they can often help out — that’s not the issue in the OP. In that case, the OP wants to move an item from one account to another; that’s an entirely different situation.

In the last five years, I’ve seen at least a dozen distinct ideas for dealing with managing builds (including offering multiple gear slots in the hero panel, something that was suggested in BETA during 2012).

It’s clear that they know we want it because individuals at ANet have said so, multiple times. It’s also clear that they, too, want this (for their own gaming, as well as to improve the game). It’s further also clear that they have discussed different mechanics and have identified potential issues and benefits.

What isn’t clear is why they haven’t moved this to the top of the QoL priority list nor why they haven’t prioritized “good enough for now” workarounds (e.g. just snapshotting builds, letting us manually recreate them).

There’s still utility in posting about the issue. I just wouldn’t worry about whether there’s “community support” (there is in general for just about any idea) or whether ANet is listening (they are). We’ll just have to be patient while they figure out what they want to do.

Plus, even if they were 80% close, we probably wouldn’t hear about it until it’s nearly ready to ship.

Glass Door isn’t a good place to go to get an idea of how well a company is doing. It’s a useful tool to use before accepting a job, to help you with due-diligence of vetting your potential employer and finding out what key questions to ask.

However, most people who love working at a company don’t bother posting at GD — just the malcontents, who might or might not have good reasons to be dismayed. Like any of us, posters tend to focus on on perceived issues more than on actual ones, on the personal rather than the systemic (or by turning personal into systemic without being able to see the bigger picture).

For the OP: the surest metric we have that the company is successful is that they have doubled down on their monetization of the game using the same strategy of Expac + Living World + Gem Shop + No-Subscription. A failing business couldn’t afford to do that.