Guild Wars 2

No it’s not an exploit; every time u die u lose durability, and pay waypoint fees… All for a few lousy green/blue items…maybe a rare worth 25silver…

What you call an exploit I call a gold synch for the stupid….and I’m ok with it (even if it is technically a pay to win scenario).

You’re also forgetting that there’s a respawn delay just for such things.. (At least when the new tequatl came out it was there)

I don’t think wp cheesing is as prevalent as you think and most glass cannons learn to stay alive or adapt to the fight difficulty with different gear (I.e get better or get Knights)

Some of the living world achievements are horrible in glass.. But add some dolyak runes and a little pvt gear and they become much easier…but if someone can stay on their feet in glass why force them into gear that doesn’t jibe with their play style? What’s the point of making them tanky so they can take a hit if they can avoid getting hit in the first place and dump more damage out in the process? The way it is now generally rewards skilled play, but also is horribly unforgiving of mistakes in glass gear.

I’ll bite,
it kind of depends on what you consider prestigious? (most $, hardest to get or rarest game drop?)

For medium: Stalwart’s Armour (or heritage armour) with Wintersday Shoulders and celebration hat /(maybe wurmslayer’s pieces)

back: Mawdrey/mad Memories/Toy maker’s bag /Molten Jetpack/ Storm Wizard’s/ or wings of the sunless

2H Sword: GreatSaw (eternity is overdone + hello fricken chainsaw!)

Staff: Nevermore (it’s really a cash item…)

Bow: Storm Wizards /Toads/any SAB skin (seriously who can get this now beyond buying?) or Sunless bow or Mistforged Heroes…. or Kudzu, (the dreamer is seriously overdone as well)

echo.2053:

I was indeed trying to lag my connection by streaming 8 videos while playing the game. It was not normal for music to start 31 seconds after hitting play whcich at that point you’ll also note that the level stopped and then suddenly loaded at once. When On the big peppermint one player was running to the right and then snapped back to the center. Classic symptom of lag is when you see everyone else running in a line.

I tried to remain with the group but even I was in disblief how all of them were killed at the same exact point. Almost died running off that end thinking that didn’t just happen.

Internet connection has absoluetly zero impact on Fps. If your having fps drops your playing at a graphic level higher than your cpu/gpu handle. Just because there is a highest setting availabledoesn’t mean that’s what you should click.

My normal ping without music is 70, with music is 80-90.

Just for fun I loaded into the puzzle with maxed out graphic settings (i.e. the appearance setting vs. performance in the graphics options.) I could barely mouse turn fast enough to get past the first set of snowflakes.. the mouse response was so slow I couldn’t run the puzzle…
I wonder how many people are having problems simply because of graphics performance.
Interestingly enough when I changed my graphics settings to best performance, it actually reduced some of the options lower than I had previously run it (the snowflakes lost their colouring and became a dull matte).

Anyone that’s having problems should probably change their graphics to performance while inside the puzzle because it’s not the same as when in town.

lag can totally affect your graphics display, I’ve seen it happen in bell choir where all the notes get drawn at once or notes are drawn out of sequence…Not sure if streaming multiple videos at once can cause upload packet problems which the server would use to verify your position and keypresses about the only way to test that would be to route traffic through a second server PC and lag it out (still might not drop packets)

the worst case of lag on the jumping puzzle I found was when I got out of sync and was waiting for the next snowflake to show up and the server decided that I was much further behind on a snowflake that had popped (I can only assume that a few position update packets got dropped and never made it to the server)… so while waiting for the next snowflake I simply fish flopped on my current snow flake (the knockdown when the presents pop) until the snowflakes caught up and broke underneath me…

echo.2053:

chemie banger.9624:

Totally agree.
My ping is hardly ever under 400 . Timed jumping puzzles and avoiding are two things I suck at. They don’t fit an online game.
There needs to be an alternate route.
I’m hitting the wall at the JP, mastery (Don’t knock yourself out) and PVP.

Interesting so I shouldn’t of been able to complete the jp while purposely trying to lag myself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_eOEh4Zd_Y

Contrariety to popular thought process no you SHOULD NOT receive a trophy stating great effort when your team came in last place with you in the outfield playing with the bees.

I had the misfortune of doing the puzzle in an area with high latency internet connection and there’s some big differences between your connection and what I saw.

For example, I often had the snowflakes being drawn 1 at a time, whereas you look to have them drawn in blocks of 4 (could be my graphics card).

The boulders were moving very smoothly (they were very jittery where I was doing it).

Other players were also hopping around a lot (I didn’t see lot of bouncing when you where in a group, not that you were in a group very often)

It wasn’t impossible to do, just less tolerant of timing errors (for example the snowball at the end often pulled me off because of rubber banding)

not sure if trying to lag out your connection is the same as having a bad connection (looks like you had a normal ping around 200 or so) Your framerate doesn’t look to have suffered due to lag, whereas I found the framerate drop to be pretty annoying (much better now that I’m back home)

If you have the winter shoulders, you can lag out your framerate by hitting clear preview in the preview panel (the snowflake pattern gets bugged and draws multiple sets at once… which is a cool effect and can also massively drop your framerate) If you really wanted to test what a bad framerate can do to you….

I expect that they are just going to add gliding to Orr and other level 80 areas (this is a level 80 mastery after all).

Biggest complaint from most PVE-ers is that Orr is stuck in a pre-Zhaitan mode.. might mean that there’s an update to the zone (yay!)

Dry top and silverwastes would also be pretty neat with Gliding (specifically the dry top jumping puzzle.. anything that reduces the corpses at the bottom of the cliff can’t be a bad thing) It might be interesting to see the interaction between the jumping crystals and the glider.

It is a big carrot to try to get people to buy HOT, it brings interesting gameplay to the original zones for those that aren’t impressed with the design direction of the new zones.

I would expect that it’s a new mastery (Tyrian Gliding mastery) that you’ll have to grind out like the original one. Hopefully there’s new mastery points added to the zone as well (this will probably screw up map completion for non-Hot players though.. so not sure how they’re going to handle that one).

Obtena.7952:

You know, I like GW2 but I don’ t believe another Hot-like expansion and LS free content is a realistic goal for Anet … right now.

“deeper delivery of existing systems” is just a vague way of saying things like:

1. Ascended Jewelry crafting
2. More mastery lines (some people don’t even have the points to pay for the current ones)
3. More Legendary gear (we already know this and the requirements to obtain)
4. Gliding in Core (we have hints of that but that shouldn’t really excite anyone that much)
5. another Elite spec (I’m doubtful)

I’m hope I’m wrong but I don’t expect to see anything surprising from these mystery deep contents and I certainly don’t think Anet can afford to give them away for free and uncoupled from story.

You’re forgetting :
6. Gem Store Updates

If Hot was an expansion with the entire years worth of focus.. how will splitting the attention between the next expansion/core game yield better results?

Personally I’d like to see them work on improving the core game experience, balance and making the expansion experience more fun.

I just completed this achievement last night.

I originally started the achievement without looking at the imbiber portion.. once I had sunk a large amount of resources into the shoulders, it turned into a “oh know what have I done…” I realized too late that I’d have to do some serious grinding to get it done (yes there where spreadsheets, jumping puzzle analysis and math involved.. again something that shouldn’t be needed to play a game….).

I would like to add that the level of grind kind of ruined my gameplay experience on the jumping puzzle and bell choir.

Some background:

I have never participated in the wintersday puzzle beyond the first year where it was too buggy to work (snowflakes broke under me too fast due to lag)

I have loved the bell choir and played it each year.

This year I had to learn the jumping puzzle, and it took me quite a bit of time.. however once I had a pattern that could yield reasonable returns (about 8-10) my progress on the puzzle stopped. For example, I saw a few nice moves where people would dodge roll on the final section to get past the last boulder by racing to the last peppermint, I even saw someone inner corner jump by the blowing snowman to get around a boulder and I was thinking “wow I should try that”.. but then the grindmonkey on my back kicked in and my play/experimenting with the jumping puzzle took a back seat to taking that safe/predictable path to get my set # of presents if I was going to have any chance at getting the achievement.

I gave up looking at other paths, learning neat “tricks” and what I would consider playing/refining with the puzzle just to slog out the presents I needed…

Bell choir became a similar thing… I typically try to get as close to perfect as possible and there’s one or two spots in the songs that are weird and I always get wrong (even though it looks right). This year it was more about getting through the content and not perfecting it… I gave up caring (in fact I left the sound off when doing the bell choir.. because it made the slog easier and less chance I would screw up by an audio miscue.. again the whole grindmonkey on my back) It no longer became an attempt to get as close to 600 as possible, I was content to run with barely enough crap to get through (the huge amount of grind/time I spent on it meant that at some point I just stopped caring about playing the thing and just wanted to get it done…).

I finished last week with about 5K drinks (which the achievement tracker cruelly noted as being 90% complete… HA! lies!) … so I had to grind a lot this week to even have a chance to make it.
I spent most of this week every evening (around 4-6 hours) grinding the jump puzzle, bell choir and orphan running to get the gifts/karma I needed. About the 3rd day in it became more of a chore than a pleasure ( my middle finger was actually getting quite sore holding down the mouse look button)

I know if a similar thing presents itself I won’t do it again. (presents HA! Pun-ny!)

I left a different MMO for this type of no-life grinding and this experience just served as a reminder of why I left those games…

I did spend currency (about 90 gold + an ascended shoulder’s worth of cloth I sold on the TP to get drinks to try to catch up when I fell behind..) so I had to give up on some long term goals to make this one happen… I can always grind the cloth again… but not before a long break from this game…

All in all I would say it wasn’t worth the aggravation.

I would just like to add that I caught an anet tag (gogo shazbawt!) entering the jumping puzzle tonight) maybe another nice YouTube video will surface!

Thanks to anet for cleaning house; given how much work I’ve put in to mastering the puzzle, it’s nice to know they’re trying to not invalidate that effort by rewarding cheaters

I foolishly decided to try for this achievement…

since I’m at 90% I’ve been stuck at the imbiber achievement…

I mastered the puzzle so I can do it almost by memory, but I switched my PC to a place that has a much greater latency.. and because of that the two events are almost unplayable… (especially at prime time)

Jumping puzzle: (to summarize: so troll)

The snowballs are not where they are drawn on my computer and I’m not where I think I am in the puzzle .. (hiding on the peppermint I’ve had myself ripped off of it by a passing snowball on multiple runs or even snapped back off the last candy cane at the exit because I’m not really at the candy cane…the server decided I was under the snowball instead…)

I’ve resorted to dodging the snowman even when the blowing animation isn’t drawn (because half the time it’s there even when I don’t see it).
because of the lag/latency I’ve had a mystery bug which decides that I’m not where I should be in the puzzle and it body slams me (the knock over effect when the presents explode) This knock over persists until the snowflakes melt underneath me.. leaving me flopping like a fish to watch the snowflake catch up and kill me..

I’ve had a lovely graphical bug where everybody jumps, falls down off the snowflakes and bounces back up to magically snap to the next snowflake (position update not as good as the graphical drawing update so the physics engine assumes they are falling off and corrects itself every jump) tell me that’s not distracting to watch everyone around you yo-yo-ing.. from death to the next snow flake…

needless to say the delay makes it unplayable.. even playing it safe (always dodging the first snowman, waiting at every peppermint for snowballs to pass…) I can manage 1-3 times every 30 minutes.. max. i think I could at least double that with a better connection…

Bell choir: (the consolation prize for gift generation)

I’ve gone from 500-600(nearly perfect) to 200 a round due to latency… since I know the patterns almost by muscle memory I’ve been able to fool the system by ignoring the graphical display and just keying the right sequence in time..(which works unless there’s a delay of my key getting to the server.. than every keypress is wrong)..

I’ve had bugs where the latency has been upwards of 1 second (in other words.. play it before it gets to the circle.. cause its too late at that point) to a hang where the bell choir shoots all of the notes at once in a mad burst to catch me up and outs me from the ring (because in that 1/10th of a second I didn’t play all 10-12 notes).

I’ve also seen notes vanish before they get to the white circle and notes come out of sequence (I only know this because I’ve been grinding the patterns over and over and over again..)

Just tonight it crashed my game twice in a row when closing the instance for a new one… some nights it’s stuck at the wintersday loading screen for DR for upwards of 10 minutes….or until I end the process…

Since I’ll be returning soon to a better internet connection (yay) I’m hoping I can grind out the 8K+ presents needed (in 12 days.. I’m kind of doubtful)… but I can see why some people find the events unfair and unplayable… and beyond those two events there’s not much you can do to actually obtain presents in the quantity needed to complete the achievement

it’s kind of sad that the most efficient way to get the shoulders is not to play the events… but farm gold for those that can farm the events…

it’s far cry from the first halloween backpiece ……. I guess instead of commemorating 2015 wintersday with a skin I can always enjoy the carpal tunnel it caused… that’s a gift that keeps on giving!

TheBlackLeech.9360:

There is a bug where each server space reserved for the Wintersday JP can be occupied by a map with only one person on it.

There is no more room for new servers, and the servers in use are either
Filled to the brim
or
Empty except for one person.

That… in combination with the jp being the most efficient way to earn gifts… creates a problem.

I was in one of those instances which dropped everyone but a handful of us after the timer went up.. everybody else traveled on in time.. we stayed in the old instance without a 30 minute timer (because the new instance was full we stayed put).

The JP isn’t the most efficient way to earn gifts unless you can run successfully for 6+ runs in the 30 minute interval (which based on the scores I’ve seen is only a handful of people with most people around 5-7.. or 1-2)

Bell choir is equivalent to 54 presents in 30 minutes… lower than a perfect 140 gift run in the jumping puzzle, but a lot less prone to RNG and hectic players of the puzzle. (mind you there are old pros that can run it in their sleep.. for them it’s definitely the most efficient method.. I haven’t cracked it beyond 5 yet so I’m losing efficiency but in theory I’ll get better…)

Baconomics.8674:

I usually find myself with about 10 ticks left when I get to the checkpoint platform.

As for Dulfy, I’ve used her videos a couple times when I get stuck on a jp. To be completely honest though, I wouldn’t say she is an excellent jumper. But thankfully you don’t need to be for most(if not all) jump puzzles.

I do have windows 10 and the xbox game dvr that comes with it, but I haven’t tried recording gw2. It can make some games really framey while its running. I guess I could try if people really wanted me to, but I’m sure there are plenty already out there (including the Dulfy one which you cited)

I’m going to assume that’s the snowman path…( can you confirm that you’re just running the snowman path)

I did the gingerbread path and cleared the first stage on the third attempt at the puzzle (the present jumping part was proving to be a bit of a frustration.. I actually caught my run speed dropping when I jumped so wasn’t up to full run speed when I made the max range jump.. wondering if a tick of frostbite put me into combat briefly which dropped the jump speed down… might explain why some people fail while others succeed )

I actually had lag rubberband me under a snowball at the last leg of puzzle.. (from the last candy cane before the puzzle exit to bounce back under a snowball .. so much troll)

given the easy success on the gingerbread path versus the failure of the quaggan path I can say that quaggan is definitely a slower path.

I generally could get to the checkpoint using the gingerbread path with 1k -2K health left, the gingerbread path has a series of straight paths whereas the quaggan path is a mouse turn left/right for every jump.

I’ll try snowman tonight, but if you are truly getting there with 2.8k health left that implies that you’re taking 1.1 seconds/jump on average…or 45 seconds on the puzzle (I have to say I think that’s an exaggeration… if you are please share what race/size you’re running with… I’ve often suspected that there’s a difference in jump speeds between character size/models and I’m running a max size Norn)

Action camera is a no go (apparently without heart of thorns you don’t get action camera).

Dear Professor Butterlegs,

You have 55 seconds (56 ticks @ -288 health/tick) to complete the first leg of the journey or you’re dead

Looking at last years jumping puzzle videos from Dulfy’s site, how many jumps and how long she took to complete them:

Puzzle Path | | #of Jumps : #Time to complete

Gingerbread| | 51 (path seems easier, less repositioning): 51 seconds
Quaggan __ | | 53 (two new riskier jumps to save 2 hops): 58 seconds
Snowman | | 51 (more straight, but more positioning): 55 seconds

This assumes Dulfy’s skill is average between all paths (I think they’re spread across multiple years.. so it might not be true.. but it basically breaks down to about a jump a second..)

If she performed exactly the same this year, she would fail 2 of the 3 paths. (!)

All paths are not equal..
probably the best chance of getting the puzzle is to go gingerbread.

Judging from the amount of people running the paths last night I think a lot of people have come to the same conclusion, while I’ve been stubbornly running on quaggan.. I run it relatively alone with a sea of red all over the gingerbread path…

I’ve love to see any videos of you completing each path this year!
Any chance you put your skills on-line for all to admire ….

I’ll give the action camera a shot, but I find the mouse rotation makes or breaks some of the jumps..

Just comparing winter wonderland puzzle between this year and last… yeah the frostbite leaves you with next to no health at Tixx… I get that there’s a reset there to get you back up to full health for the next part, but there’s little to no breathing room for mistakes on the jumping puzzle.

(also wasn’t last year starting at 17000 health? I’m at 15920 or something like that… and frostbite is ticking for twice what it did last year… )

The puzzle already punishes mistakes.. so you’ve taken last years puzzle and made it more of a pressure cooker.. wow.. gratz on that.

having run the quaggan path a lot I generally get to Tixx with about 1-2 ticks of frostbite away from death and that’s basically going space-turn-space-turn-space-turn.. if you stop you’re dead, I’ve made it a few times where I’ve had to re-position on a snowflake, but that generally gets me dead or within a tick of dying at Tixx.

I normally have to do two quick jumps off the peppermints to avoid dying.. I’m sure with time I can get more efficient at it, but compared to last year the puzzle has been made a lot harder.. (but also a lot less buggy and smoother… thanks for that)

Also waiting for the candy cane beams of death to spawn, or waiting for the puzzle to spawn the next snowflake seems a little unfair if you’re going to time constrain it like that. I’ve tried pushing the envelope.. and nope.. the candy canes aren’t there.. so I have to wait for them meanwhile my health is ticking down… (didn’t the candy canes used to be permanent?)

I would suggest toning down the frostbite a bit to give some breathing room.. I’m sure some people have no problem with the puzzle, but its definitely harder than last year (next year you’ll have Grawk’s snowballing us while we’re jumping).

I just read the thread.. I’m surprised there was no complaint about the shackles of madness having rigid chains…

solution = Salvaging Kit

I too suffer from pack rat syndrome… but junk is junk…

if it’s white, blue, green or yellow it’s generally not worth keeping unless its better than what you have.

Trophies are quest chain items, you might have to wiki them, or alternatively just throw them out (they generally can be gotten again) and if you don’t know what they’re for… ignorance is bliss….

Food is meant to be eaten, Buffs are meant to be used.

If you’re full of mats, then sell a stack of mats and get more. (click the gear to deposit to bank… )

Turn mats into gold and then gold into gems and then gems into more characters…(or gem stores item, bags slots or other gem store items)

If it’s Bloodstone, or Dragonite ore, then consider refining them or getting Ascended materials converters like Mawdrey, Princess and the Star of Gratitude.

pfft not enough bloodstone dust :p it’s cute though.

I loved Jennifer Hale’s Cooking show, you need some gummi desserts Josh Foreman style!

Devs posting details in other media like twitter/facebook/etc. is not a new thing and it has been highly criticized in the past. (it’s crazy annoying to find crucial event details leaked on twitter when looking at the forum for info… that never gets posted because why bother.. it’s on twitter.. or there’s a blog post 3 weeks later that talks about it… it was especially annoying when there were living world forums that were devoid of living world info.)

At first I thought it was a mandated thing to get the buzz out there in modern media for the game… like they were supposed to try to use tweets etc.. but now I wonder if the process of a dev submitting a post to the forum is too onerous so they have to rely on other means…

Does nobody else appreciate the irony that people complaining how toxic and bitter the lack of communication is making players on the forums is being cited as a reason by other players for Devs not posting on the forums? I love a self fulfilling prophecy!

What with all the craziness going on right now at year end I’m sure everybody has enough on their plate without wading into the forums.. but at the same time I’m sure some people are feeling pretty left out in the cold and would like a little glimmer of hope to brighten their day, be it those stuck in tangled deaths, Legendary collectors, WvW’rs, material strapped guilds, or those without an expansion yet that are unsure if Skritta claws will bring them a shiny expansion or a lump of mordrem crusted coal.

Maybe something as simple as a Dev corner where the Dev’s can pop in point form notes of things they are currently working on, or debate who can fall the furthest in Tyria (maybe leave it locked to keep the rabble out but leave it as a window into the inner workings). I get wanting to bunker down and lay low until the storm settles; people are upset at the direction game has gone and nobody wants to turn on the Anet tag and paint a target on their back, but the natives are getting restless..

Ok… I’m going to assume you get the joke, for others… maybe give you a hint:

wolfyrik.2017:

That doesn’t make any sense, tho either. Druids were a different group from the canthan celestials. If it is supposed to be celestial based then this isn’t a druid. It’s a canthan Weh no su.

It’s like creating an elite spec for thief which uses a greatsword, wears a tartan kilt and runs into battle with shouts as a new utility and an Elite skill called “stitch this, pal!” then naming the spec “Samurai”.

You’re assuming that druids haven’t changed since GW1, times and cultures have moved on… in GW1 “weh no su” was a canthan spiritual rite, but it wasn’t locked into a role/profession (every class in GW1 could do it).

Who’s to say a druid didn’t go to study at a canthan temple? Who’s to say your druids 200 years in the past are even the same druids in GW2 today? Who’s to say the druids of today aren’t an offshoot of a Kurzick or Luxon priest sect (they trained animals too). Who’s to say an oakheart spirit didn’t travel to cantha, talk to all of the priests there and share their knowledge.

Your argument is set by a rigid interpretation of the past… Things change… engineers started as being based on char war technology, but the scrapper is now using asuran tech for their gyros…

I think Anet was going for a slightly different slant on the nature theme:

there’s tonnes of lore that could support a nature based class and a celestial based class… I think they were drawing on the GW1 Factions nature/spirit model as their inspiration (come on.. the Revenant has Shiro!)

You guys are missing the obvious attempt to shoehorn Canthan lore into the game (aka… cantha confirmed..)

Notsoperky.4291:

Have you actually played support ele in wvw? the difference in loot between that and a staff spamming guardian is crazy.

that would be because one person is playing a build to support his zerg, and the other is playing with his loot stick…

Are you saying both builds should get the same loot? (I don’t necessarily disagree, personally I think all support roles in wvw are under rewarded, but that’s not a problem with the druid… it’s a problem with wvw)

If your goal is to tags mobs for loot.. why would you bring a support build? I’ve actually done one worse than elementalist (support engineer). If loot was a primary concern you shouldn’t be doing wvw anyhow.. (it’s nice, but PVE has way more lucrative options)

pretty sure you still have a pet,

and a weapon switch..

also pretty sure the dungeons as they are now don’t need uber heals .. maybe raids/wvw/high fractals/pvp (which is something the ranger has a hard time with right now)

how is having a high healing/support role something that needs compensation again?

I for one welcome our new shadowy priesty overlords… (I miss my shadowpriest sometimes)

I do find it sad that the only way they could pull rangers into the game is to make them OP healers… it’s a clever solution to the problem/complaint that without your pet you’re a sitting duck… now you can just heal through the damage till you can get your pet back… it also widens the split (damage is the pet, druid is the support).

A guardian/druid duel would be interesting to see… for the first hour or so…

Maybe New emotes:
/thumbsup
/Thumbsdown

Would be cool for guild arena as well

I’ve been thinking about this, perhaps food with agony resistance since they’re bumping the difficulty level on fractals (might help with newer players that need agony resistance as well)
I believe some mordrem slaying recipes (recipes which help fight mordrem mobs) might be 500.
It will probably put Seymour out of business though. They might also do something like mawdrey where you needed food to complete the back piece

weird question I know, but Irenio mentioned that Gyro’s always favor the engineer… if the function Gyro is out and you get downed, could it be used to res the engineer much like a ranger pet? (I ask because ironically he’s working the ranger as well..)

I saw that Gryo’s are affected by condi’s and Boons, I wonder if they are affected by the Engi’s boon/condi duration….

I’d be curious if regen affects their “fuel” Also protection might be a thing to keep them alive.

I think the development of the Engineer/Scrapper is summed up best by Irenio himself:

“when you’re working with a bunch of junk, you can make some pretty cool stuff”

The trait lines have synergy and a common theme/purpose and true to one of the original Engineer strengths (combo field king) it looks interesting to play and not a poorly thought out hodge podge of misc. stuff that the engineer was guilty of originally.

The fact that the trait line synergizes with a kit (flame thrower), but isn’t built around kits (technically built with hammer/ gyro’s in mind) is a welcome change…
Addressing the class weaknesses (conditions, easily focused down) has a lot potential (I would expect as a melee class that the engy would have to have his survive factor beefed up and it looks like they’ve done that)

One of the things about the engineer that always bugged me was the overemphasis on having to context switch to stay alive that some classes had completely passively…. (i.e want a decent heal?… better stop what you’re doing, stand still, drop a turret, overcharge a turret, blast the turret while that healing signet warrior is wailing away on you….. or stay put inside that shield field while that zerg wails away on you… that gives you an extra 3 seconds to contemplate the life choices that let you end up in this miserable predicament before you die….)

I like that gyro’s attempt to reduce the context switch load of the class in areas of control/survivability but allow for some cool multitasking. For example the function gyro allows you to multi task ressing/stomping while you can either keep doing what you’re doing or work on another target, you get rewarded for splitting that focus a little bit, as opposed to having to split all your energy just to get a stomp off.

Healing needs a little work, I like the concept of a passive gyro healer, but I’m not sure it’s going to be enough.

The hammer implementation looks awesome with the mixture of offense/defense to the weapon, I’d be interested to see how it plays out in PVP however since it looks like there’s a lot of powercreep in the other classes that might leave the implementation weak/flat.

Thanks Gaile,

I have a modest set of suggestions in regards to closing out the event and moving on from here:

Phase 1
1- leave the vendor at the Durmond Priory forever
2- Make the Mordrem Blooms a tradeable currency on the trading post (much like other event tokens are)

This would allow people who have leftovers to sell them for some cash, and those who really wanted that one item to buy the blooms they needed to get the prestige item. (You can leave the crazy gold cost in at that point.. since there’s no time constraint in raising the funds to afford the high end skins/tonics it becomes a lot like the racial armour set skins)

Phase 2
1- Add Mordrem Blooms as a drop from the silverwaste Keep bosses (Maybe make the blooms drop more from the Blue/Yellow Keep etc. to balance the costs of staying at the further outposts)

Phase3
1- Add Mordrem Blooms to the seed pods in the pac-man event. (this makes the item farmable eventually. This benefits the event by encouraging people to collect the seed pods, maybe make it a phase II or III drop to limit the amount that flood the economy etc.. )

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hello,

I asked the head of the GW2 Design Team about whether we would be making changes and rerunning it, extending it, or repeating it as it currently is designed. At this time, we are not going to extend the event, nor do we have plans at this time to repeat it, either amended or in its current form.

The Mordrem Invasion event will run through its allotted time. It ends at 9:00 AM tomorrow, Monday. As explained in my earlier thread, no changes will be made to the event beyond the fixes that were made on Thursday and, of course, the distribution of earned rewards for those who were impacted by that bug. (The bug ran from 9:00 AM until about 4:00 PM Pacific time. If you earned blooms during that period but did not receive them or received fewer than the intended amount, they will be sent to you via in-game mail. NPCs will remain in place — particularly in the Priory.

I hope this info is helpful to you. And thanks to those of you who provided constructive suggestions about the event — your thoughts are very appreciated. What’s constructive: “Rewards might be [this]” or “I like the rewards in [that] and suggest you adopt that system for this sort of event.” What’s not constructive: “Rewards are bad” (with absolutely no suggestions for how they might be improved).

I think you guys get it, and I understand that some of you are pretty “hot under the collar” about the event. But please try to give us ideas we can work with — that’s to everyone’s benefit.

Thanks for the feedback,
I think this is a mistake from a player retention perspective, but can understand wanting to let the event slide into obscurity (much like southsore..)

The rewards weren’t bad, just unbalanced for the amount of gold/time and the event blooms too low to make the event rewarding. (more blooms/faster events/lower price etc would have made the event a little better)
I would point out that a masterwork essence of luck at 10 blooms (i.e. one half hour event, plus an hour wait max) assuming you get to 10 stacks of the buff, is pretty stingy.

Perhaps a rare or exotic version would have been more optimized for the opportunity cost. (seriously, for the wp costs to get those 10 blooms you could buy blues to salvage and get a better return… I assume it was a way to help new players max out their luck and was accidentally undersized)

In terms of the daily rewards, a more targeted reward choice (more chests with fewer option inside) might have helped people, expecially with at most 12 chances to get something from the rewards chest.

Just another quick one:

Don’t design the mobs to go after the guy in the catapault. While it makes sense, most people wait for the mobs to kill the poor soul manning it so they can get a shot off to get credit for the event… (yes I’ve seen this happen and it is going on… crowds waiting for the mobs to finish off the guy in the catapult so they can get their turn at it… or get credit for repairing it) if the guy in the cata is left alone, he at least stands a chance of getting credit for completing the event vs the people that leave him high and dry.

I’ve also seen people intentionally pushing exploding mobs into the kill zone around the vines so they can get the explosive charge, or die trying… (how does that mini-game even make sense btw??)

Personal Opinion the Events:

- The events are lazy copy pasta from various events of the past (stolen graphics from silver wastes, similar design to original scarlet’s events with the Kessex hillls blooms from tower of nightmares type mini-game design. Not what I was expecting in terms of an invasion event… (expected a wave of mob type invasion where we repel groups, not mini-games)

- No attempt was made to place these events in a well thought out way.. (in the middle of other events) which is either a big oversight or just again lazy design.

Rewards:

- The global achievement buff doesn’t work; a simpler solution would be blooms/gold/silver/bronze event (why did you try to bypass the existing system?)

- Breaking the events into phases with increasing rewards would promote staying at events and discourage tagging.. people have to move the event forward to get the better rewards and the faster they move the event the greater the rewards. (you guys had this figured out in the Scarlett events.. did you forget?)

- Speaking of rewards, they are terrible (the level of grinding needed to get them in 4 days is obscene) The rewards of 2 chests with everything possible in them is pretty RNG, so the assumption is that you’re going to turn this into a long term event where the RNG isn’t so obnoxious and someone actually has a chance at getting what they need/want eventually. (personally I was hoping to get the last set of knight cores I needed for my back piece, but given the amount of junk in the chests I doubt this will happen and I’ll have to hit the TP) I assume since the tricolour chest is in Lion’s Arch that this will have a permanent fixture in the game somewhere.

PR (i.e. how the event was sold):

- This event was sold as a good time to be in a guild and was put in starter zones for the new players…
No starting player is going to have 10 gold, and will not have the gear/stats to do enough damage to tag the mobs or survive the events easily, or enough spare change to hop waypoints. If this was the design goal the event was supposed to be created for, then the event design is a horrible failure.
- the event doesn’t reward Karma, Gold, Loot, Experience.. this isn’t an event for a new player, but some older players that can farm the ignorance of newer players sticking to the events while they tag multiple events for better rewards for themselves. (seriously sticking an event to the end will yield 1-4 stacks of the global buff, while not having the waypoints means that they’ll have to run from event to event… so not only are new players penalized via unachievable rewards and less chance of getting credit, it’s also impossible to get better rewards by the fact they can’t hop events as fast as older players )
- There’s no guild benefit, other than organizing to hop events to get 20 stacks of the buff… which a new player wouldn’t benefit from.

- I can see how new players would find the event frustrating.. running to the event to only find the event done by a zerg and having to run to another one only to find the process repeat, or have the zerg bail on the event from tagging and get squished.
- the mobs go down awfully quick, which makes getting credit difficult so not only are the events over quickly in a zerg scenario, but the number of people that can get credit is small.

- What the event was sold as (new player/guild experience) vs. what it actually is (a massive grind/money sink for older players) is what I think most people are offended about.

MAGNETS: why don’t they work?

because Engineer has never been an attractive class from a dev/bug fixing perspective….

Seriously though I’ve always found magnet failed when there was too large a height difference… if you’re higher or lower than your target it doesn’t seem to work too well (i.e. I could never pull up/down a hill/stairs very easily). If you’re having problems on level ground something has probably broken.

You probably stand a better chance of getting a non clipping version of the armour set for your charr in that image than you do the weapon skin…

Seriously though.. the most inventive thing you want for the mortar kit skin is a sharp broken tree stump with chains? It really only fits a Charr and maybe a Norn archetype engineer.. imagine an Asura with that broken looking thing? Even the conquest Lord has a slicker looking shoulder cannon than that beast…

To be fair, I mean the whole engineer design was lazy from the beginning, so why buck the trend?
Elites: copy pasta from other classes or turrets from other skills (ooooo!)
Kits: Modified bundles (the ultimate insult was when the flame thrower bundle on Claw of Jormag did more damage than the engineer kit version).
Half of the rifle kits in the game are the engi rifle…
Even orbital strike is just a scaled down rehash of the animation from Sky Hammer (I’m surprised nobody noticed the inside joke yet…)
I do give them props for trying however.. but I’ve come to expect it.. although I have high hopes for the engineer in HoT.. but if it turns out to be a bunny thumper clone I’ll probably turf the game for a while…

When leaving the water on an engineer, Turl’s rifle (which is an equipped bundle) drops when leaving the water.

I’ve tried unequipping both weapons to convince it to stay, but it vanishes into the aether when I leave the water, regardless of what I do.

makes the Skritt rowboat karka pretty much impossible for an Engineer character.

(I’d love to submit this in-game but ironically every time I open the bug interface the game drops me….)

Actually it was a glitch on the gw1 server side…

Your blame is misplaced, it’s actually the keymaster’s fault…

if they’re adding tools to add/delete titles that is kind of interesting and opens up a bunch of neat ideas…

I’m surprised they haven’t reworked the whole hom interface.. It feels a little shoe-horned into the wardrobe system……….

I wonder if the xunlai chest will ever do anything….

I agree key farming is frustrating.

I will freely admit to taxiing out of them.. after repeatedly trying for a few hours to move events ahead only to watch a swarm of commander tags run by doing nothing to help it’s pointless to try… most people that check the LFG tool that have a percentage will get people trying to move events.. those posting “bring shovels” will get chest farmers…

crazy thought: what if bandit chests were like event daily chests(once/day)? That might make a dent on the chest farm.. (profitable, but not infinitely repeatable)

I don’t see how people can get enough crests to run key farms for the length they do… I wonder what they are planning on using all of that dragonite ore/imperial fragments for..

As much as the OP’s scenario sucks:

3 of the 5 people felt that the OP was being enough of a jerk to deserve a kick (without knowing the details of the convo I can’t judge… it is extremely likely the OP was trolled but some people can be sensitive and may have been inadvertently offended).

3 of 5 people also felt that the OP’s friend was enough of a jerk to deserve a kick later in the instance… if they were just trolling, they most likely would have kicked both at the same time .. so clearly there’s more to it…

Hindsight:

Finishing a dungeon to Lupi; it would have made more sense to add guild members to the party (at least one, or someone from their friends list that they trusted) and recruited two more pugs max.. (I would consider it a lesson in GW2 street smarts)

Does the dungeon kick system need to be overhauled?

Possibly, but I can see potential for abuse/elitism if the dungeon owner retains instance possession as well… right now the benefit of the doubt is given to the party (i.e. majority rules) as long as everyone plays nicely together and tries to get along there’s no issue..

Also if I put out a LFG “3K+ AP, heavies only, experienced, link Achieve” and I got a group of elitist attitude dungeon runners in my party.. I would expect they would be looking at me with the same lens I applied to them (i.e. they would want to know my gear, AP, expect me to play dungeon spec only and be wearing zerker exotic gear…rightly or wrongly they would be judging me by the standards I set for them..)

If one of them found out I was wearing greens/blues, or did something that might be noob worthy (even if it was an honest mistake).. a kick might not be unexpected if they had quorum..

given the anniversary of the game, I went back into Tyria v1 ( the one that included Elona and Cantha…) to check things out… turns out I had enough pet presents to finish off one more achievement point in HOM and farmed sahlahja to get my Balthazar Bracers (something I had originally tried to get before GW2 launched, but fell short of..)

I can equip the title, but not being able to unlock the bracers/pet is pretty sad (also, it’s a shame the title wasn’t “wen no shu”… )

Going back and playing…. the number of times I double tapped in Sahlahja probably means my visits there will be few… (gw2 has ruined me for all other non dodge games)

LCV.7245:

I feel that it would be a massive limitation and discontinuity if Anet didn’t allow head gear of our choice. Enforcing strictly blindfolds is an imbalanced limitation that is seen on no other professions. The introduction of the Revenant was to eliminate the imbalance between weight classes and to freshen up the game as a whole. Limiting these new character to only one type of head gear seems to be fundamentally against their goals.

But this is just my opinion. If they do implement something like this, I won’t be complaining. I’ll just find the coolest blindfold and transmute my desired helm to it.

Ahem, and what about engineering back pieces? Not that I disagree but the precedant to force u to look a certain way already exists…. ( cough cough hobo-sacks).

I expect the headpiece is probably available for all heavy armour types… Just like the class specific headpieces for other classes and engineer starter backpack are for all medium armour types.

Still, it would be ironic to have a two year old thread of people complaining in the revenant class forums to “please fix beggar-band”

Contextually from GW1, ascended armour was prestige armour:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prestige_armor

It had no stat difference, but was a way to show you had worked a long time to get something or had the in game wealth to afford the armour (Fissure of Woe was a farmed armour… Vabbian armour was just crazy expensive).

If the GW2 ascended armour had no stat difference, then I would agree; but when they let that tiny amount of power creep into the ascended armour they muddied the waters of the manifesto (with good reason.. this was a strategic business health related decision on their part.. you can’t fault them for doing what they felt was good for their bottom line, but it was a slap in the face for some players…)

Typically Anet will introduce something that is initially grindy and then slowly ease back on the difficulty/rng over time ( tequatl for example, even the mordrem organ extraction tools are an example of them removing some of the grind/rng over time..) Initial grinders can lord things over casuals on their boss gear, but eventually the rest of the player base can catch up if they put some time in..

To characterize people as being petulant selfish children for wanting more options to get ascended armour/weapons is selfish and elitist. The game was sold on the promise that best in slot gear would come to you as you played (and there were a tonne of ways to get exotic gear across all play styles… karma being the one most people used or dungeons/wvw, crafting was always a slower path to get exotics but you had more options on getting what you wanted….)
Anet added more options over time and now exotics aren’t too hard to get and generally come form playing the game

I’d like to see ascended weapons/armour treated the same as exotic in the expansion with more options to get gear beyond crafting; some people don’t like crafting or have the time/patience to farm… that’s not their thing, no reason to punish them for playing what they like. (Mystic Forge? new Wvw map? new dungeons, hearts, mini dungeons, Karma, jumping puzzles etc. ) All of these could ease people into ascended gear much like how the exotics were done.

I’d also expect a set of prestige armour that puts the ascended armour grind to shame but is the same tier… that would probably be legendary armour…. but please don’t make it fugly…. ascended armour is over the top ornate fugly IMO. It should be distinct, but not gaudy to the point of impracticality.

Ascended weapons/armour are the best tier of gear, there’s no arguing that.

Let’s just ignore the rings for now and look at armour/weapons and sources of them shall we?

Sources of exotic gear:

-crafting
-drop (RNG)
-Karma
-Dungeons (tokens)
-WvW (Badges)
- Trading Post
- Achievements (map/zone completion etc.)

Sources of Ascended Gear:

-crafting
-drop (RNG)
- Achievements

The most reliable routes for ascended gear are crafting or achievements

I can’t take the “no grind” philosophy to heart when the only source of top tier gear is to craft it or grind it out as an achievement (or get a lucky drop)

I wouldn’t mind the craft route (which I’m doing), and that would be fine if not for these little “gems” in the building process:

- Globs of dark Matter:
Source: Salvaging exotics (RNG), account bound.

- Ectoplasm Refinement (mithrilium, silk weaving thread, elonian leather, deldrimor, spiritwood):
Source: Time Gated

- Augur’s Stone
Source: 20 skill points

for the Ectoplasm Refinement the time gating isn’t as offensive as the sheer amount of tier based materials needed to create them. if you don’t have enough Alts at a low enough level to farm the relevant tier, you’re farming for bags or buying them off the TP.

I seriously doubt anyone could deck out all of their chars in multiple sets of ascended gear/weapons by just playing the game and not having to spend serious coin obtained from farming or grinding out the mats to do it (or dropping real coin in the gemstore/TP).

if they really believed in their no grind philosophy, they would make some of the account bound stuff tradeable on the TP or available for Karma (which I would hope they do in the expansion). Or put in multiple methods to actually play the game and get this tier of gear. (WvW badges? sPvP reward tracks? Karma? Dungeon Tokens?)

I’d love to see a level 80 karma vendor selling ascended weapons/armour in the expansion area.. or even a reliable dark matter glob source from karma… till I see similar diversity in ascended as we do for exotic the whole “no grind” thing is just lip service for what is really a hugely time gated reality…

Going to add my guesses:

Warrior: Staff (there’s two heavies in the video, one I’m guessing is a warrior in Charr Rytlock armour, the other I’m guessing is the revenant with an off-hand doing the mist form shadow dance….)

Engie: Hammer (easy) but I’m hoping the floating turrets are a passive healing skill (they have different colours… perhaps to remove conditions??) They also go away when the engie goes into the combat. (perhaps it works like warrior’s healing signet… but you blow the turrets to get a damage boost/clear conditions). If I’m right it would be an awesome gameplay enhancement to the Engi.. (no micro-managing of heal skills and having to stop drop and heal)

Mesmer: Shield (If I had to guess one AoE slows opponents down (time dilation) and another skill speeds time up (instant condition damage…) )

Thief: Mace… there’s a video of what I think is a thief/guardian fighting a dragon at about 1:49 in the spoiler clip:

It’s definitely a Mace (it doesn’t look like a warrior or guard but i could be wrong..)

Also the Guardian was wielding a 2H sword (Twilight) and used leap of faith

Ranger: Staff (I think rifle would have been cooler, but doesn’t go with a druid theme)

My guess:

Item 1: “ghostly” “one quarter finished”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghostly_Doubloon#Masterwork

Item 2: reference to bay in blood tide coast and “high spirits” and zommoros likes wine

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bottle_of_Wine

Or
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bottle_of_Rum_

Pirates are a pretty relentless mob and seriouS about their liquor

Item3: vials of blood (blood tide coast, bloody pirates… Killing lots of karka… Sort of fits)

Item4:
Rune of the mad king (just a crazy guess) haven’t seen any clues yet but fits the whole blood and madness thing

Sube Dai.8496:

Ironwill.5389:

-24hr coverage
If the holding of objectives did not reward points, but the taking of objectives did, then the siege/defense dynamic would be more relevant. Off peak hours could clean out your battleground rewards, but after the map has flipped colours, the score would stagnate.

-snowballing
Again if the scoring rewarded activity and not possession, then individual efforts might be more worthwhile… There’s little interest now in holding an objective longer than it can be locked down for a ‘tick’.
Give outmanned buff some teeth in regards to taking and holding of objectives; the risk of getting Zerg one rolled is the same; but reward factor is in favour of the underdog

This is difficult because you need to avoid the losing side just not bothering to cap anything until the last hour where they retake the whole map and win.

That would just technically zero out the gains, not get you a win; and while you’re sitting on your thumbs the other two servers are flipping objectives from each other building up their scores… You do nothing.. You get nothing.. it could make for some strategic play as well as an emphasis on maintaining possession to reduce scoring chance.. Having a third server makes it harder to game the system like you’re describing it also reduces the 2v1 effect (ideally you need to take both servers objectives to pull ahead without them flipping them back on you to keep pace).

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,
I’d like to kick of a discussion on scoring in WvW.

Here is a summary of what you guys have brought up in our previous discussions:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

These are all very much related and solutions are not just in one area but I’d like to keep this discussion focused on scoring. Also, if there is another aspect to scoring that we should consider that I’m missing please feel free to bring it up as we kick off this discussion.

We’ve had some great discussions so far and I want to thank you for keeping it constructive and friendly. I’m looking forward to what you guys bring to this discussion too.

Thanks,
John

-24hr coverage
If the holding of objectives did not reward points, but the taking of objectives did, then the siege/defense dynamic would be more relevant. Off peak hours could clean out your battleground rewards, but after the map has flipped colours, the score would stagnate.

-snowballing
Again if the scoring rewarded activity and not possession, then individual efforts might be more worthwhile… There’s little interest now in holding an objective longer than it can be locked down for a ‘tick’.
Give outmanned buff some teeth in regards to taking and holding of objectives; the risk of getting Zerg one rolled is the same; but reward factor is in favour of the underdog

-stagnation
Put a viable breakout method on the map to allow a defensible toe hold (but also the only way the overpowering force can score is to take that flipped objective) it promotes the active taking of objectives and gives a smaller force the ability to deny points while strategically picking off their own (which if stretched too thin can be reversed… And vice versa)

John Corpening.9847:

Yowzers that was a lot to read

Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

From reading through this thread I think we can agree on the following goals:

• We want a thriving and vibrant WvW community in each world. That is to say, we want people to play with and against.
• We want to continue to play with our friends and the communities that we have developed already.

There were a number of other goals but I think those are the two big ones. I’m going to combine a number of your ideas to attempt to address this problem with a proposal and see what you guys think.

First off, as many of you have pointed out, it will be impossible to create equal populations without moving people around.

This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

• Off Season
• Tournament
• Restructure
  • Create new Worlds
  • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they

Let me know your thoughts and thanks again for all the great and constructive discussion!

John

I detect a faint odour of a megaserver type system happening……or in the process of being implemented (maybe I’m just being cynical)

Dynamically allocating/re-allocating realms post tournament will help reduce the poorly populated wvw realms through merging but I don’t see how it can solve the lemming rush to first place every tournament

With respect, if the game mode didn’t so overwhelmingly favour a numbers win style game, population size wouldn’t be a complaint other than due to game performance issues

I can see this is any easy sell to management in terms of fewer servers, more efficiency etc, but I can see this ending up with a top tier alliance that stays rigid and blows through the regrouped scrubs every tournament which really isn’t much different than what we have now with the numbers discrepancy, except now you might be forced to move battle groups after getting wrecked; which is a double loss.

If such a system existed how would it handle realm growth? How would it ensure fairness and distribution of population? Would it be a hockey style draft post matchup or just dumping the remnants of a server implosion on the other competitors… I can see the potential; both good and bad but as it stands now I think there needs to be more meaningful changes to the game mode than how to stuff the bodies into a battleground before a positive change is noticed,

Tldr;

The suggested system seems to be better geared for shrinking/compressing the competitive environment rather than expanding it

Suggestion:
Increase the difficulty for higher population servers to take objectives from lower population servers;

What if the Outmanned buff allowed the following:

Determined buff to persist in objectives held by your faction (no more 30 v 1 defender being a washout)
Upgrades happen faster and take less supply
Camp invulnerability was longer
Walls and gates were stronger
Guards gain the same invulnerability buff as The Lord
Breakouts were guaranteed(siege raiser gives automatic foothold on the battleground instead of an excuse for high pop server to grind the low pop into the dirt)
Supply regenerated in objectives (a higher pop server has no problem resource starving which ruins the ability to defend at all)

It won’t prevent the Zerg from taking objectives ; just slow them down
but it would help the lower pop server to at least keep a few objectives or slow down the larger pop’s dominance (it also still allow the Zerg to curb stomp anyone caught in the open which is a big reason people Zerg in the first place)
Lower pop would have to work harder to keep objectives, but at least their efficiency would be such that they could mount a reasonable challenge

Lower pops stay low because there are no tools to counter the advantage of numbers and no way to enhance a lower pops ability to influence or change the outcome (short of flipping camps or catching a server off guard for a tick or two)

Suggestions:

-put name on siege (dual purpose people can locate troll or whisper advice to someone that poorly places them)
-allow salvaging as a high level siege mastery skill with button ( would require commander tag on and would spread the material to his group, sort of like the 5 supply bonus)
-allow owner to salvage (in case they place it poorly)

This would give multiple advantages:

Commander could whisper people that he’s tearing down your siege, report a troll, or give advice on where to place it next time

Commander could strip an objective that might have a lot of siege that he’s about to lose to recoup his losses.

Putting in a high level of wvw points into a siege mastery would have an advantage
Commanders could use siege to bank resources (building siege becomes a benefit)

To troll u would need a commander tag, a group and a fairly high wvw level to have the points to tear down siege (you would have to max out the sieges specific to what you can salvage not something people normally do) the tag makes it easy to see along with the group and once your group is full supply the commander can’t salvage anymore

Also: remove fall damage on golems, trolls can drop them but they can always be picked up and teleported back

Alternatively: allow siege to be moved (might be more trollable than existing method though)

Allow golems to be repairable with suitable golem mastery/supply