Guild Wars 2

Yes, please change it.

There’s nothing wrong with aiming for more feminine armor styles, but overly sexualized armor is absurd, especially when it doesn’t respect the established lore for the races. (Why not armor that shows off the sexy ears or big-brained forehead for asura, or actually respects the charr tail, ie. the easiest sexually dimorphic trait to pick out in charr?)

Not to mention, those particular boob cups on charr and asura look ridiculous (wear ‘em and grow boobs when you didn’t have any… wut?)

Good morning everyone, I am the author of the blog post being linked here (much appreciation for the linkage.)

In the interests of TL;DR, what we are talking about here is equivalency.

An on-level character appears to be significantly stronger than a downscaled 80 at around level ranges 40 and lower, due to changes in how Power is downscaled and how Precision converts into Crit Chance.

(At 50-60, a downscaled 80 is stats-wise a little weaker, but between trait synergy on the 80 and leveling characters often falling behind in gear, it is arguably more or less equivalent. At around 70 and up, the 80 is likely to be stronger if traited well, as the stats didn’t change much between old and new downscaling.)

It is possible that a good traits selection on the 80 can make up for this, but then this does reduces the diversity of “viable” builds if so.

If stats are stronger on the low level, then as long as the low level gets enough hero points to recreate a similar build, that low level will still outperform the downscaled 80.

Makes sense? I’m not sure. You tell me.

Furthermore, we may want to consider that the more OP builds of this new patch may be brought back in line down the road, which would make the disparity more noticeable, if not highlighted now and adjusted at the same time.

I am having the same issue, it just started today. Running Windows 7, 64 bit, 4gb RAM. Graphics all lowest, no shadows.

So far, I’ve managed to consistently trigger it about 3 mins in by loading into a crowded TTS map and being on Teamspeak at the same time (tested x10), lasted about 10 mins in a TTS map without Teamspeak running, and have lasted 30-45 minutes sitting in Lion’s Arch before the whole computer freezes (x2) and taken all from the TP once, collecting a whole bunch of sigils, upon which it froze (barely 2 mins into loading into LA from the last hard reset.)

Feels like some kind of memory leak maybe?

Went for Jennah first, playing a charr = don’t let the human leader die because of anything you called.

Intentionally left Smodur for last because a) he’s a charr like me and can take care of himself, and b) was being a little dismissive during the summit of the threat Mordrem pose – nothing like actually fighting Mordrem wolves and thrashers and leechers to rapidly revise that opinion.

Cleaned up around the Pale Tree area after Jennah, sort of helped Knut though he seemed to be doing fine also, norn warrior/hunter culture and all, and then in the chaos Smodur actually decided he was done and bailed with one husk left (yeah, well, evidently he’s not condi and decided it was a waste of time)…

…then I looked around and realized I’d actually missed Phlunt because his delegation was cowering so far away and they were so short. So he got saved last. Not really intentionally, but I’m not losing any sleep over it. No sirree.

Rather than have Anet spend developmental time on building a whole sequence of tutorials that may end up outdated as the meta moves, I’d humbly suggest that that one’s tendency to verbosity would be put to better use writing guides.

OP’s username reminds me of City of Heroes, so I’d make a reference to its forums, which had a gigantic list of guides written by players, for players. I recall when I first came in cold to the MMO genre, -that- was how I learned, perusing all the beginner guides I could get my hands on, applying that in-game, then going back and reading up on more advanced ones.

Let us not forget the role of player interaction in an MMO. Players can help each other and teach and support, both out-of-game and in-game. It’s lazy of us to assume that Anet should magically fix other players for us with better game design, when we could very well take some time to teach, or at least say something, hopefully in a non-accusatory, non-negative tone. (But even an angry one-liner from a dungeon player taught me how to take more care to not place banners underfoot, whereas I might have never learned if he said nothing.)

Yes, overlapping particle effects are confusing and conveyance and telegraphing could be better in some cases, though they’ve gotten better with the bright orange circles recently. It’s not all on Anet’s shoulders to fix or force, though.

Perhaps even teaching and learning the lesson that it is ok to search for outside help is a valuable one for players who think that everything should be done in-game. The /wiki command opens an outside browser after all – we have the wiki, forums and Reddit and other social media, Dulfy websites and GW2spidy and various build sites, all at a player’s disposal.

Also, GW2 is known to be a friendly and helpful community, and just as in education, maintaining a supportive environment makes it easier to ask questions and admit ignorance. That onus is on us to make sure it remains that way.

What this adds to is the social and multiplayer aspect of an MMO, rather than playing a singleplayer game. We learn gradually and organically, accruing bits of information at a time, from listening in on mapchat, from hearing other players over VOIP, whatever.

Nor would I underestimate the power of Google and a good guide, posted somewhere accessible – on these forums, Reddit, a blog, etc. (I run a very modest one and I see spikes in my stats every Living Story from people googling for help or basic guidance.)

Not everyone seeks out the information, but enough do, and these people are meme-spreaders, and can in turn teach others they encounter.

The top 5% must reach out to reach the other 95%. We are fortunate that in this community, enough from that lofty height do try. But it doesn’t stop there. The top 25% should reach out to the other 75% and so on.

And guess what, these may be different people good at different things. A great WvW zerger may not be an expert 1vs1 sPvPer. A great commander and teacher of many may himself not know something until he reads it from a guide or learn it from talking to someone, but he can convey it to a multitude of people in turn once he knows.

That is how we all learn and improve, through the works of those who theorycraft and post their findings, through those who make sites like GW2dungeons.net and post dungeon soloing videos online (which I personally would have thought unthinkable and undoable, until one watches what they do), on and on till it reaches the humble person standing next to another in-game who decides to ask “what is a combo and how do I do it?”

TL:DR: Complain less, teach more.

Liadri too OP.

PLZ NURF.

:P

Flexibility means I don’t have to beg my WvW guild to do Tequatl with me.

Separation by interests is useful. It would be even more useful if I could actually hear guildchat on all of them at the same time though.

It’s really about finding the right guild(s) for each player. I personally have two medium sized ones for the two major timezones I play in – making it a point to attend the events they run leads to the same fellowship and stability among the core, while still being welcoming to those who have more limited time to play or rep.

Add on TTS as a cross-server community that shared the same major world boss downing interest and the only thing I still lack is a regular dungeon/fractal guild, except I’ve had to open two bank guilds to offload the junk I collect, so I’m right out of guild slots.

I can see other people enjoying the freedom to join a coordinated WvW guild that does large sized fights, plus another smaller one for roamers, etc.

phys.7689:

another factor i havent seen people mentioning, is bonus exp. essentially the longer enemies have been alive the more exp they give. With bonus exp from kills, given by food and oils, (20%) it can be really large.

This. I keep trying to tell people that killing mobs, especially the yellow ones that everyone never seem to see, is absolutely worth their while.

One mob alone may not seem to make a dent in the bar, but it adds up, especially if you can kill fast or AoE them down. It’s like not noticing how much fast attacking sustained damage can add up versus one big channeled attack giving huge damage numbers, in terms of xp/hour.

And to make it not feel like grinding, just do it while going to your intended destination, which cycles you around to different areas to encounter more bonus xp on the mobs.

But no, folks are convinced that killing mobs gives you measly xp and a big waste of time. Welp, that’s why we have such delicious bonuses on them when those not following the herd come by.

Lostyus.4250:

If you talk to these people they will tell you about the quest and what needs to be done. Yeah, it takes longer to do that, but I actually prefer it instead of just traipsing from one fight to the next.

Do you all seriously -not- do this on a regular basis? Not trying to be sarcastic here, but more of struggling to understand the issue that some players are facing.

(Sometimes, I kinda want to be a fly on the wall and follow some of you having this “underleveled” problem to see what exactly you’re doing or not doing…)

When I first leveled and went through zones, I talked to every NPC that gives me an F option, for example. Every heart NPC I chatted with, to get a sense of what they wanted me to do. Every NPC that flagged me down with a hail or an emote, I talked to, and they pointed me right to the nearby ongoing dynamic event. (Which, by the way, is how you can find them fairly easily if they didn’t show up on your minimap by proximity.)

Only on alts, since I’ve read the text before, do I just ignore them.

mosselyn.5081:

Personally, I level like a Skritt. “Oooo, shiney!” I’m always veering off randomly for a heart, waypoint, PoI, vista, gathering node, dynamic event, jumping puzzle, or intriguing looking cave/ruin/hole in the ground. I usually out level a map long before I “complete” it.

Pretty much this, has been my own experience.

For example, OP, have you done the Shaman’s Rookery puzzle in Wayfarer Foothills? Gone to the Forsaken Halls in Dredgehaunt Cliffs? Followed the Night Warband event chain to overcome Incendio Templum, and then from there, head into the Font of Rhand and defeat Rhendak the Crazed? (This is my absolute favorite adventure to have.)

I suppose part of the problem might be the whole Norn and snowy zones thing. Norn stories are very individualistic, all about being hunter-y and drinking beer and mead, so in their zones, it’s mostly small groups of them versus wildlife and neutral races of all kinds. It’s no wonder they seek fame and fortune by heading all over Tyria if their home is so boring. :P

theo.5214:

I guess the main core of my problem is that I’m used to zone-wide narrative. I’m used to zone questing as a story device and not just merely a way to get experience. In other words, my preferred method of leveling in a game like this is to experience the story. I don’t see any of that in GW2.

Ah, now that’s different. Each zone is pretty much a snapshot/narrative of a world as a world, and yes, we as player characters are not the center of it. We exist on the periphery, mostly, with whatever reason for getting involved on the onus of each player to concoct for themselves.

If you’re looking for a linear story experience, I would advise following the personal story and forgetting map completion. That is, do personal story up to the point you’re no longer within level for it, then just do neighboring hearts and map complete just enough of the map to get to where you can do personal story again.

You can also decide to forgo waypoints for a bit and physically travel to the next personal story location – doing hearts and events along the way, thus creating a more logical narrative than rounding each map in a completionist loop.

theo.5214:

I’m asking why there isn’t enough in a zone to get you through the appropriate range in the zone. What I’m saying is that, in a zone makred 40-50, there is not enough content in that zone to get you from 40-50 at all in the slightest.

There’s definitely enough content per zone to get you through the stated level range. BUT you have to be willing to kill every red and yellow mob in front of you as you meander from heart to heart, POI to vista.

Taking the time to do so will also keep you in the zone long enough to see events pop, which can be followed as a chain, spawning even more mobs for kill xp along with the event bonus.

If one is just going to run past monsters and race from point to point, one will be missing out on the lion’s share of xp from kills and events, and I’m not surprised that one will find themselves underleveled as a result.

Also having this bug lately.

From testing, the game client only allows right-click to be held down for 3-4 seconds, after which it brings up the mouse cursor on its own. This is not an issue with the mouse itself as it is capable of holding down right-click in other windows and on desktop for an indefinite amount of time.

This is very disorientating for people who hold down right-click to turn as the game will decide on its own to release the right mouse button for you, even in the middle of a turn.

Go to the Trading Post, search for blue or green gear your level, buy the stuff that has +Power on it.

Do a search for “minor rune of” and buy 4-6 different kinds (depending on if you can wear helm or shoulders at your level) with +10 Power on the first rune. Put those on your armor as you level.

If your weapon doesn’t seem to be very effective at killing, switch weapons. Try shortbow or greatsword for rangers, for example.

The last thing to bear in mind is that the planned leveling speed at the very beginning was about one level per hour or 1.5h, so you may already be doing fine at an average clip.

Explore and learn/enjoy the game, especially when you are new, rather than watching the xp bar like a hawk. The game doesn’t start at 80. There is no need to rush, and your time is probably better spent familiarizing yourself with zones your level so you don’t feel or get lost, not to mention your pets and utility skills.

What I’d suggest is to have combat log running in a chat window and avoid anything that does damage coming from the Prime Hologram. (That’s the rectangular laser AoEs and the AoE blast in the center when it floats up.)

That seemed to do it for me.

Also with the new Aetherblade laser preventing AFKing by the doors, I’d avoid getting hit by that source of damage as well.

I’m not sure about the last phase and if taking any damage from the Ultraviolet Prime Hologram would screw up getting the achieve – but the way to avoid the unavoidable lightning strike is to kill all microprimes before the Ultraviolet Laser charges up. The unavoidable lightning strike is essentially a group penalty for failing that.

Concept-wise: 9/10

The first day of the patch was really enjoyable when multiple overflows were filled with excited people dashing around doing champions, exploring the new mechanics, learning the fights. It was fun, and more importantly, inclusive and rewarding, when the zerg developed a casual effective strategy of zerging down the knights in sync and being rewarded with 15 champion bags for teamwork. The stronger players in the group of 100-150 people helped to cover up for individual weaknesses that start showing up in smaller sized numbers.

I thought the hologram fight was nice in that it showcased the capability of the event system to create raid-like mechanics, but tuned at a level for an average casual player, with lots of room for stronger to carry weaker players (when everyone was still doing their best to contribute.)

I thought it was very clever for the final instance to be solo or small group, so as to convey the storytelling better via NPC dialogue and cutscenes, and it was immensely cathartic to FINALLY spike Scarlet. The cinematic cutscene at the end was awesome, intriguing, and provoked thought and discussion for things to come.

And I really liked that an option was provided for those who didn’t like mass group content or couldn’t manage the hologram fight but wanted a story conclusion anyway, via the purple portal at Diverse Ledges.

Execution-wise: 6/10

Unfortunately, cracks in the seams started showing in the next day or two, when trying to fix the issue of some players not getting loot from the knights and not functioning achievements lead to one patch after another with one thing being fixed and another thing breaking.

The two achievements that encourage players to not contribute their all in order to get a ‘hard mode’ achievement provoke exactly the WRONG behavior – slacking and AFKing in corners during a fight, making players hostile and threatened by each other, and thus sending toxicity skyrocketing.

Turning off loot for the knights for a day, before papering over the fight with a quick fix that changed the established tactic, led to players feeling like they just wasted hours spending effort with no reward, and produced expected backlash and frustration when a perceived “nerf” hits. Some of that online hysteria and frustration is spilling over into random overflows as very vitriolic comments from a few players, ruining the social experience for casuals and other players that just happened to end up there.

One positive is that the fixes have been very quick to come, and some of the problems (not getting loot from knights, AFKers, zerg not splitting up) have been attempted to be addressed. I really appreciate a dev team that reacts quickly and responds fast, over one that pretends not to see an issue at all, hence my score that pushes execution over the pass mark.

Hilariously, I think the fixes are coming faster than the general populace can react to and adapt, and the learning period as people adjust is not very pretty.

I do also think that some of this increased tension is due to the perception that this round of Living Story achievements are time-limited, and a very short time limit of 2 weeks at that.

In my opinion: PASS

But for the future, better organizational tools and better direction/prompting for random overflows to organize would probably be good before trying to get 150 players to coordinate again.

My experience has been overall great because I chose to join an organized guild (TTS) and work together with coordinated players on voicechat, but random PUGing it on random overflows, with no commanders stepping up and players choosing not to cooperate, leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m not asking anyone to owe me anything. I’m not deciding for anybody anything. I’m merely expressing my opinion and providing alternative ideas. I have a right to express that.

You have a right to express your opinion.

I’m not controlling anyone, but I wonder if you’ve read your own words where you extort others to not support content that forces you to play a way you don’t like.

Ultimately, it is up to the designers and the devs to decide what systems they want to include in their game, but it is up to us to show varying perspectives of the game’s population in their forums.

I’m done as I’ve made my points and run out of constructive suggestions. Won’t be coming back to the thread, thanks.

@Yayuuu: You miss the point entirely. It is not about any one specific boss. It is about what instancing does in general to the population and the game’s culture. Dungeons and FOTM (which are all instances) contribute to an elitist and exclusive mindset where people can kick others that don’t match their criteria from their parties and increased willingness to deride others who don’t use certain builds and “strats”/exploits and speedspeedspeed = less patience in general.

That said, I wouldn’t mind other hard bosses which are tuned for numbers smaller than 100+ but larger than 5. The question is: where can we put them and how do we start them, if not in an instance?

I’ve seen this suggestion made in other posts, and it seems to be a direction worth exploring. Guild missions. They are set in the open world, still giving the opportunity to stumble across the event organically, but triggered by a guild. Guild members can qualify for rewards that other nonguildies do not get, yet nonguildies can help out alongside and get smaller partial rewards. Guilds should already have some social systems in place that make people more receptive to receiving build changing advice and so on.

Guild missions are naturally tiered, so it might be possible to choose at will scaling bosses tuned for a smaller sized guild or a larger one. (Say 8-10, 15-25, 35-50 people or whatever.)

There might have to be some anti-zerg mechanics to prevent a guild from just scheduling a mission and then inviting the whole of Lion’s Arch into their guild for the duration to zerg it down. Then again, this does take organization to achieve too. I’m sure more guilds would be prouder to take it down with their existing members (plus the odd stray or two.)

I just wanted to add another voice echoing that this is a very dangerous precedent down a slippery slope.

I would love to get the Watchwork Pick too, but cannot morally support it right now for the reasons already mentioned in this thread.

Gameplay-wise, the playing field needs to be level between those that use the gem store and those that don’t.

Having a limited time pick that gives a chance for bonus items in the gem store and no other equivalent item available is a gameplay advantage – small, almost insignificant, but it is there, and it is unacceptable.

Either solution would be acceptable to me:

• Remove the chance for sprockets from the pick and have the advantage be cosmetic and convenience only, with the equivalent item being the existing limited charge orichalcum picks available from vendors.

• Let the vendors sell a new limited charge pick that provides the same chance for sprockets, so that there is an equivalent item that non-gem store users have access to, thus keeping the playing field level.

We get impatient with players who don’t seem to care about giving it their all. Some may simply be too shy or scared to speak up and admit ignorance. Some have no clue that what they’re doing is “wrong” or annoying someone. Lashing out with toxicity or refusing to associate with them will never prompt them to change, but patient positivity might have a chance on receptive ones.

How about the lost-cause trolls that are patently out to grief others? Again, the only solution does not have to be to cut off your toe to spite your face and run off into a raid instance to get away from them. What we need then are better and more effective social controls beyond /block and /report for verbal abuse.

This I don’t have that many good ideas on, but a random possibility might be, for example… what if players had a more elaborate squad UI to join on commanders? Something more raid-framey or just the ability to see all the names of the players on your team besides 5 party members. Commander would have the right to kick people out of his squad or control certain privileges. If you are in the squad which takes down a raid boss (ie does majority of the damage or whatever), you qualify for bonus rewards, such as perhaps a higher drop rate of whatever the raid boss rewards. People who aren’t in the squad but fighting alongside would get the normal drop rate or partial rewards, so they still get something, but not as great a drop rate chance. That might provide more incentive for people to behave themselves and cooperate.

Raid instances do not have to be the only answer.

Xenon.4537:

However, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing for hardcores to separate themselves from casuals. In fact I think it’s inevitable.

I agree that there’s a strong tendency towards separation. I disagree that it’s inevitable.

Once upon a time, in more traditional MMOs, it was inevitable to look upon any other player intruding on your space in the open world as a stranger to compete with. Why not? They might beat you to the harvesting node you wanted, they might tap your mob first and rob you of xp or quest completion credit, and they surely couldn’t rez you if you died.

GW2 changed that paradigm. How? Through very intentional game design. Both players get to harvest nodes without affecting each other, both can fight the same mob and not steal xp from each other, and regardless of what class they are, they can rez each other.

This is a chance for the developers to design new innovative systems that support their manifesto, rather than fall back on the same old thing other MMOs already do, and probably do better.

GW2 is about unity, cooperation and inclusivity, not exclusion.

Hardcore-casual has never been a binary thing, but more a spectrum from ultra casual to ultra hardcore. Separating into strata that refuse to interact with each other only creates tiny insular communities, distrust and scorn, that make it hard for a player to cross over between communities, should they have the desire to.

Leaving these world bosses in the open world allows for people to chance across organized attempts and be left positively influenced by the interaction, perhaps developing an interest in joining the community they just met.

Instances simply provide a way for players to NOT have to talk to each other, save only for the few that meet their criteria of worth. We need to find solutions that don’t simply resort to “I don’t want to play with you, period.”

Because what we are doing in that situation is making things difficult for ourselves in the long run, by shutting out and shutting down the potential pool of people we can stand to play with.

And when we run out of those, we run out of social connections and lose interest in the game. We might even end up quitting, and a game shuts down when it runs out of a critical mass of people.

So what are some other possible solutions? More brainstorming:

We get frustrated when we cannot get into a full map. This is not something an instance will solve. Every encounter is tuned for a set number or range of players, and once you hit the limit, that’s it. What we really lack is sufficient leadership to organize a viable fight for more followers in another server map or overflow. That’s not something devs can address, but more of players stepping up.

We are terrified of losing connection and losing our spot. Possible solution: Allow 5-10 minutes for your spot to be reserved, allowing for re-logging without losing it to another player in the queue.

We are tired of having to wait for 1.5 hours to fight a hard world boss. Possible solutions: Shorten the timer, or allow players to start the boss themselves when they are ready – perhaps by doing an event chain that last 30mins or whatever, thus fighting it on demand and shortening the time between repeat learning attempts, similar to how one can just choose a dungeon and go.

We have to beg people to get on a voice program for communication, or are frustrated when they don’t seem to respond at all or communicate during the fight. (Bear in mind how ridiculously active GW2 combat is, and how hard it is to type communicate while fighting.) What we might need is are ways that players can more easily communicate, such as different target markings or a radial click menu for quick gestures and short pre-recorded commands “attack this, stop attacking, cc that, use range, use melee, stack” whatever.

We get irritated with players who are resistant to changing their build. Again, bear in mind that to change their build, they have to gasp leave the map they may have taken a while to get into, or buy a gem store item to retrait. Every single retrait right now involves individually clicking every trait from an obtuse sequence of roman numerals, and individually swapping pieces of equipment. Some of my alts have to carry 36 invisible bag slots to hold 3 gear sets plus jewelry (and a few minis for fun before they changed that) and I have to refer to a post-it note to remember my WvW, fun open world PvE and dungeon builds.

One possible solution: Template builds that can be saved/loaded/shared among players so that with a few clicks or copy-pastes, they can be switched into and out of more easily. I’m sure at least a few more players would be more receptive to build swapping if it weren’t so annoying to do right now.

I’ve run the wurm multiple times with TTS and I’d have to disagree on being able to set up private raid instances.

Instances foster further exclusivity. Given a chance, as an above poster mentioned, the most hardcore will try to separate themselves and as they do so, it’s easy to cultivate an elitist mindset that looks down on others that are at different points on the learning curve. It generates a culture of toxicity and makes it harder for new players to penetrate and be welcomed into the game. It goes against what Guild Wars 2 is supposed to stand for.

Instead, I’d hope we could try to brainstorm other less obvious things that could help besides the already tried solution in other games of private raid instances.

• Off the top of my mind, a way to automatically queue up for a full map or overflow that your party member is in would be less agonizing than having to spam right-click and join on a party member.

• Better organizational tools for commanders such as differently colored tags or whatever else might be helpful.

• A way to SAVE/LOAD builds as in GW1 might go a LONG way towards getting those resistant to change their builds to do so.

And so on…

Sharing a rough quick reference guide to the Twisted Marionette’s AoE attack patterns for those of us who think better with pictures and need a memory jog before each chain.

It’s not 100% accurate and always going to be a little work-in-progress, but sharing in the hopes it helps someone and increases everyone’s success rate just a little more. We all need those chievos.

http://whyigame.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/gw2-visual-guide-to-the-twisted-marionettes-aoes/
or
http://tinyurl.com/phase2aoes

drkn.3429:

and i cannot influence the outcome of others platforms’ fights.

I just wanted to tell a little story about how I got the Marionette Muter achievement today:

TC had failed boss 3 a number of times in a row and everyone was fighting madly to stop champions reaching the portal. With no chances left, one lane finally got it down, the next lane pulled off chain 4, and then my lane was up for chain 5 with reinforcements rushing in. Mapchat was ablaze with short advice repeating “stack” over and over.

I zoned onto my platform first, saw the warden against the power generator and rushed up to it, /saying “stack” to my team zoning in.

Almost everyone but two (and they were at mid-range only and possibly still zoning) rushed up and backed the warden into the edge of the power generator. Much AoE cleaving ensued. The other two must have come up behind us when they saw no wardens had escaped the stack.

Before you know it, our power gen was down, and I wasn’t at -all- touched by the Marionette’s AoE as planned.

Looking over to the other platforms was more worrying. Folks were scattered all over, not stacked on the power generator as I’d hoped, chasing after wardens, though they did seem to be trying to stack together.

Keyed to a fever pitch, terrified that the time would run out or the lane would leak, not sure when the stars would ever work on in my favor again on a chain 5 try, I typed in /mapchat, “Stack on the power generator, all together. The wardens will leap to you.”

I honestly do not know how many people read that, but I did see more movement toward the power gens together on the other platforms.

In the next 10 seconds, all wardens died, the power gens shattered, and TC won. By the skin of our teeth.

Marionette Muter dinging on my achievement UI was never so sweet. Someone else on my platform also got it too. You’ll be surprised what influence a little communication might have.

Most Favorite: Labyrinthine Cliffs / Bazaar of the Four Winds

• Introduced a new zone
• Insanely gorgeous visuals
• Catered to exploration via the sky crystal hunt (which included extras and did not require a slavish following of a third-party guide)
• Made references to GW1 lore
• Introduced a new skill mechanic of movement (though latency-related issues could be better improved)
• Had dynamic events in zone for a group zerg to travel up and down
• Had separate spawns for lone farmers to peacefully farm by the shoreline
• Had related mini-activities such as an in-zone jumping/race DE to contribute to the chain and Sanctum Sprint
• Instances were soloable or groupable, with adjustable difficulty up to four tiers (rewards could have been better improved)
• Eventually led to a player’s choice/vote scenario that affected future development of the game (though consequences should be more obvious and not so distanced by time and other updates)

Least Favorite: Lost Shores

• Waiting. Unpredictable amounts of waiting for a one-off event to start, at possibly different timings in different overflows. (Tequatl waiting and other spawn camping like krait blood witch come in as close seconds.)

• Not crash-proof. If you crashed out of one overflow, you could turn up somewhere else where the event was completely over.

• Lag-ridden and unplayable. Bags of ridiculously high hp. See champion karka phases where everything came together for 45 minutes of horror – single-digit frame rates and skill lag with too many people together, champion karka with two layers of armor to break through for three separate hp bars per mob.

• Only catered to one playstyle. In this case, zerg everything. Nothing for other playstyle preferrers. A little bit of something for everyone: zerg, 2-5 man groups, solo is nicest.

• Permanent fork-in-the-path choices. Continue with Ellen Kiel or go escort a group of asura to a side outpost. This event plays once only and you can never see what happens on the other side. Players should be at least able to experience everything for the duration of the update (or flashback via a memories system) before the opportunity is taken away by the passage of time and further updates.

• One-time only. (Dynamic events, update, etc.) If you missed it, for whatever reason, you’re screwed. Recurring seasonal content works better for me personally – catch it within this season, or else wait for the next time it comes back. More permanent content to be played at one’s own time is best, of course.

1. PvE Skin Locker/ Wardrobe Management
- not tempted to collect new skins if they cannot be reused, so much inventory space taken up

2. Living Story
- moving forward to create change, while being able to flash back or view historical events

3. Guild Features
- being able to view multiple guild chats, more guild missions, etc.

I think the tragic consequence of having Teq strive towards “raid-like” difficulty is how it’s pulled players away from their home servers, leaving those open world instances of Tequatl barren.

Apparently, there just aren’t enough players interested and with sufficient dedicated time per server to form server-based Teq communities, except for the most populated ones.

For more populated servers, they probably still can manage an unscheduled kill or two at daily reset, or a more scheduled/organized kill at a certain time or day if guilds coordinate, but between the difficulty and ridiculously long and unpredictable wait time for him to spawn, impromptu kills are no longer possible, especially at less populous timezones.

Conversely though, a few cross-server communities have sprung up around killing the new Tequatl, which would not have been created or organized without the revamp. The experience of killing Teq with TTS in an overflow is something that did not exist in GW2 before and quite exhilarating. If you haven’t tried it, you should.

A cross-server guild is also more inclusive than an instanced guild raid would be, which makes it more uniquely GW2 in style.

Is it worth the trade-off of losing a world boss that previously more people on each home server could gather at, socialize and have easy fun on a punching bag?

That I don’t know. It goes both ways.

I’ll tell you what you probably did wrong.

Oozes – if you are somehow killing the oozes or other things by accident, that suggests you don’t have control over or a good understanding of your weapons and attacks.

One, pick a weapon that doesn’t produce clones or bounces, such as greatsword, and be sure to position yourself such that your attack in a line doesn’t cross an ooze. If you do produce clones and want them gone without doing too much harm to mobs, a possible option is to use F4 Distortion to explode them without doing damage, or maybe F3 Diversion to merely daze them.

Two, turning off autoattack (ctrl+right click your first skill) may help, or learn to detarget swiftly by clicking anywhere on your screen that isn’t a target, or bind a key to holster your weapon quickly.

You could also have contributed by volunteering to lead the oozes instead as that does not require any attacking, just collecting the plant pheremone on you, then moving around the path slowly to guide the ooze instead of standing there letting other people do all the work – which would immediately mark you as more inexperienced than others.

For the holograms, the mechanics are such that they need to be killed near the generator to produce an electrical discharge which damages the generator.

That warrior rushing in was hoping that everyone knew to stack behind the generator, line-of-sighting the hologram mobs, so that they will all come running towards you and killed there swiftly, exploding the generator in short order.

If the party fails to stack and instead backs off, leading hologram mobs away, it takes ages longer as it is fairly useless to just autoattack the very heavily-shielded generator – you barely do double digit damage. I suspect your party’s failure to stack caused his death and subsequent ragequit.

I’ll also tell you that your teammates failed to communicate just as terribly. Two words do not an explanation of mechanics make. A little more clarity of explanation would probably have gotten your party moving to address the encounters with better strategies.

Target the Risen Krait Hypnoss first, and try to persuade one or two others to do the same.

They are essentially mesmers, and only bronze status. 1-3 zerkers diving deep (or ranging) and prioritizing them takes them down in a hurry, and a decent amount of their surrounding krait summons will go up with them.

This tends to leave only one veteran krait nimross hanging around with the non-krait Risen. It seems to help the rest of the group focus fire the wave down because there’s less targets of opportunity with the krait “clones” out of the way.

Also, whack the Finger that spawns in between the turrets as a very high priority. Turret gunners focused in on their own survival and cleansing often are not looking at Teakettle. Dump feedback/wall of reflection/smoke screen, anything projectile munching onto it while taking it down.

There are also two nearby Fingers that probably do reach the turrets, and it’s good for 1-3 guys each to advance up (so that when the fingers fire, they don’t fire on you standing in between the turrets) and eliminate them too.

Scan the turrets on a regular basis and repair as needed. They usually need repairs if a big green poison cloud from Tequatl’s fingers just landed on them and was left to pulse without interruption.

Honestly, I think you only have a few options by this point.

1) Join an organized Teq killing guild, wait/pray/help to organize sufficient Oceanics/Asians to take him down on a regular basis at a timing more friendly to us.

2) Wait for the weekend and hope enough insomniac NA and EU are hooked on the fight to stay up and provide the necessary critical mass.

3) Set an alarm clock and develop your friends network on a high pop server. Schmooze your way into their main Sparkfly, preferably 1-2h before server reset because the zone might hard cap close to the time, and then do your best to join that server’s VOIP, listen to their commanders and be a valued contributor to the fight.

Healthy? Not really. I wish there was some way of calling Teq up under player control, it’ll put a stop to all this crazy camping and help organized efforts in scheduling a lot more.

Dear Josh and the SAB team, I would like to thank you first of all for the close attention and frequent responses to this thread, as well as constantly and actively working to make the SAB better. It really helps players feel their concerns are being listened to.

I greatly enjoyed the SAB when it came out in April, especially the discovery and secret stuff aspects, and was initially quite dismayed when World 2 came around, between the bauble dig location nerfs, lethality even on Infantile (unfamiliar mobs with not yet upgraded weapons, rapids, dart traps, knockback off cliffs, etc.) and length of each level.

The 400 bauble torch roadblock and presence of the Infinite Continue Coin in the gem store were salt in the wound moments for me.

Having slowly ground baubles for said torch, then subsequently chain-sticks, mob fights are now feeling a lot more reasonably balanced (with better reach and faster attacks) than trying to poke them with a slow pointy stick.

I’ve been going through World 2-1 on Normal Mode and generally feeling the difficulty is now manageable in most places (if still time-consuming. I can spare the time, but perhaps others cannot) and enjoying the discovery aspects.

However, I would like to specifically point your attention to the one part where the difficulty is out of whack, and hopefully try to pinpoint further for you an exact problematic location. Especially for people with latency problems (I play at 200-300ms ping and have been doing my best to avoid the moving rapids as much as possible.)

The aptly named Piranha Bend with multiple geysers.

I was able to bypass the first part of it by using the secret route that takes you above the river and land directly on the checkpoint. (For which I deeply thank you for adding that alternate route.)

I was able to very slowly and gradually work my way from solid rock to solid rock, using as minimal geysers as possible.

Until the penultimate jump which requires you to traverse three geysers before landing on a rock.

I tried the simultaneous or continuous jump strategy as seen on Dulfy’s website, where you wait for all three to show up, then jump rapidly from spout to spout. This -consistently- failed to work for me. (http://youtu.be/P93wyLzxlTg)

The middle geyser would disappear and I would get knocked downriver, or just get caught halfway and flung off too.

To compensate for my ping, I devised an alternate strategy of counting off, where one waits for all three to show up, then jump onto the first, counting “1, 2, jump” and doing a faith leap onto the second even before seeing it. Rinse and repeat for the third.

This at least got me close on two occasions (http://youtu.be/y0N9AdykITs) before I failed the first by missing the subsequent jump from possible human error, and the second looked like a sync error where I touched the end of the waterfall (but still contacted water) and got flung back.

Sync errors plagued the rest of my count-off attempts, where I would get hurled off when a geyser disappeared much too quickly, or just randomly flung downriver for no reason at all. (http://youtu.be/pzVNNBCCt24)

In total, I started with 25 lives and 290 baubles at that checkpoint. I started video recording at life 12 when I managed to analyze where my problem area was. I was down to life 3 and 184 baubles (just from bombing turtles) when I finally managed to luck across the waterfall.

Of the 21 recorded attempts to get past the three geysers (if one got lucky and hung up against a rock, one could managed multiple attempts per life)

• 7 can be attributed to human error and not considered a major problem (assuming I am an average or poor jumper. For reference: http://youtu.be/e5IVnAK9fIo)
• 6 were tries at jumping the geysers continuously and failing consistently due to lag
• 6 were failures due to syncing/latency issues with moving water
• 2 got past the three geysers, then failed, one to human error, the other to sync/latency

Each attempt was further aggravated by the lengthy repeat of sequences already learned, and getting helplessly knocked downriver with barely any ability to control one’s character.

I believe such a difficulty is not at all what you intended for normal mode, and sincerely hope something can be done about this spot specifically – an alternate route or longer hang time for the geysers or some such.

Thank you again for reading, and I look forward to exploring and offering feedback regarding World 2-2 and 2-3 on normal mode later. Much appreciation for your hard work and constant iterations to make the SAB a fun and enjoyable experience!

So, I recently stumbled into the Aquatic fractal and was suddenly taken aback by the similarity of the grey cliffs and green foliage with both the Cliffside fractal and Labyrinthine Cliffs.

Acting on the assumption that these three things took place roughly in the same region, but were separated by a great deal of time, I ended up scouring through both the GW1 and GW2 wiki’s for lore that took me from krait and The Unending Ocean to a seafaring people that became the Margonites who worshipped Abaddon.

The Cliffside fractal is supposedly inspired by the myth of Prometheus, a god who gave fire to humankind and was chained to a cliff as punishment.

In Tyrian legend, it is said that Abaddon gave magic to humans, which prompted many wars and eventually caused the Five Gods to seal him away in the Realm of Torment.

Too coincidental a parallel?

http://whyigame.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/gw2-the-cliffs-and-the-colossus/

I was just thinking about this, because I rather enjoy the whole process of learning the fights and understanding the mechanics and practising the execution.

And it is fascinating to me to see how different classes can use different gear and trait builds to achieve success at the gauntlet, there are so many people sharing different strats, I kinda wanna try them all!

I would love to keep learning and get better at alts that I’m currently less familiar with. Currently in the open world, there are no such bosses that use such a great variety of mechanics and gimmicks. But the cost is prohibitive given the limited time, the various penalties for failure and how much it costs to gear alts in various types of armor.

So would it be possible to create an instanced version of the Queen’s Gauntlet later on, where one can practice on the various bosses?

Story-wise, call it an elaborate mesmer illusion, a nostalgic memory or whatever.

Perhaps have it offer no or very low rewards, but take out the cost of retrying (having to pay tickets, repair costs, run back, no wait time, etc.) If one is feeling very kind, one could allow the achievements to attained there as the only reward.

In a way, this could serve as a stepping stone for more challenging bosses in the future if we could improve the skill level of the playerbase by offering them “training dummies” in a sense to learn on, without the pressure of having to do it by a certain deadline and without the punishing feel of the current penalties for failure.

Difficult is fine.

• Needing to learn a boss’ mechanics, gimmicks or pattern before being able to defeat them
• Needing to watch for particular telegraphed attacks in order to avoid being one-hit killed or severely damaged
• Requiring multiple tries at the problem
• Having to rethink strategies and change builds (traits/gear/profession) in order to succeed

Punishing is not.

• Small enclosed space and needing to go near edge of dome at times causes very awkward camera angles or sticky camera issues for characters of different races/heights.

• A zerg being directly under your dome may cause sudden framerate drops (lag at critical moments) and culling of the enemy and its animations (dodge an animation you didn’t see, or that didn’t play until it’s too late? Haha, too bad, yer dead.)

• One hit kill mechanics in conjunction with very long iteration times to get back into the fight and multiple death penalties (have to be rezzed or waypoint with cost, have to run back, have to pay a ticket that must be farmed or paid for each time AND have to queue for fight again. One would have been enough.)

• Intentionally concealing telegraphs or player vision to make things harder (Suriel’s hand wave is ridiculously understated for such a small model, Shadowfall AoE blends in with the grate flooring, orb that produces periodic blinding effects that most players get around by turning off post-processing.)

Iffy things are RNG and time limits.

• Luck based mechanics like where the rift orb chooses to spawn or where Strugar chooses to throw the meat are… ehhhhh.

Personally, with less punishing iteration times for getting back into the fight, I wouldn’t mind. With abovementioned one hit kill + multiple defeat penalties and fighting latency/lag/FPS and camera angles, it can feel ridiculously arbitrary and beyond a player’s ability to control.

• Time limits do force a player to balance survivability with damage ability.

With the current meta and one-hit kills being present though, it just solidifies the call for “more zerker all the time, just get good to avoid damage, burst the mob down before it has much of a chance to do too many of its special gimmicks.” Not sure if that is intentionally meant to be encouraged.

Also, please note:

• Picking up items is sensitive to latency.

I live halfway around the world from the servers, I regularly lose the F interact battle for supply at supply camps to players with better ping. I believe this makes the Strugar and Chomper fight more difficult for different players.

• Requiring dodging at precise timings is also sensitive to latency.

It can be tricky to time the evade window just right for those hovering at 300-500ms ping. Having slightly less absolutely-pinpoint-timing critical dodge mechanics would likely be greatly appreciated by those not living in North America.

An marked improvement would be to have the top half of the Crown Pavilion its own separate instance. This ought to reduce the lag from the zerg, while still keeping the ability to watch others fight.

(I am of two minds about that – on one hand, it’s nice to have privacy to learn the fights and just solo on one’s own and not have to wait for others.

On the other hand, it can provide the opportunity for community building and player interaction by players being able to talk to each other, share tips and frustrations, demonstrate strategies, have a guild outing, etc.

But it’s 50/50 in the various overflows, sometimes loners just like being loners. One possible ideal would be to leave this up to player choice and have both a private practice arena and a public demonstration/show off place.)

Knight.6914:

Unfortunately for Guardians there seems to be no way we can do it on our own, not to say I was expecting some team fight, rather than soloing it. :/

Done it solo on a guardian post-patch. You will need to invest in berserker gear though.

(Much to some personal annoyance, I preferred the pre-patch version that gave the control aspect of the trinity more importance, as opposed to the all-damage meta that already exists for dungeons. But one adapts in practice to the situation at hand.

I would have also liked to try the team-based coordinated damage/support version, but the damage was already done and PUG mindset fixed a certain way from the early days. Less than two weeks is insufficient time for the strat to evolve again and diffuse to the masses.)

Berserker everything, with ruby orbs.

Traits:
Zeal 10: II – Fiery Wrath
Radiance 30: VI – Blind Exposure, X – Powerful Blades, XI – Right Hand Strength
Honor 20: II – Superior Aria, VIII – Empowering Might
Virtues 10: I – Unscathed Contender

Use scepter. F1. Then immobilize, smite, autoattack plunderers to death. Do it only on or near their spawn points to minimize aggro. The best is catching them 1 second away from the spot where they will toss their treasure – giving you the immobilize + treasure-toss animation time to let smite and autoattack do their work.

I took either a second immobilize (Signet of Wrath) to deal with the later stage where multiple plunderers are in play, or the charr racial Shrapnel Mine for a trap-based cripple. Save Yourselves and Contemplation of Purity were used to break aggro and clear conditions.

Watch Liefbread’s video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cuVYN7TS9o) to see the range of movement you have. Mostly stick to left and middle, extending only just far enough to catch the rightmost plunderer.

Break aggro quickly, and let veterans wander to the end whenever possible. Give up the right plunderer if 2-3 vets spawn with it and you still have treasure buffer, it will be easier later if you let them wander off first – without a long range pull, guardians can pick up aggro more easily with an errant blue projectile flying in some veteran’s face.

You have two tries to get the plunderers, once when they spawn, and when they come back with treasure again, so if the first opportunity is not good, don’t keep attacking and pulling aggro.

More longwinded elaboration here:
http://whyigame.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/gw2-candidate-trials-redux-berserk-guardian-edition/

Thanks for being insensitive.

So far I’ve had an elderly relative fracture a hip during Lost Shores (-2 days of gaming time), a bad flu during Molten Facility (-6 days of game time) and another slightly more distant elderly relative pass away during the last days of Dragon Bash (-2 days for attending wake and funeral, which we did not organize. If it were our family’s responsibility, a lot more than two days would have to be re-prioritized.)

I sure hope emergencies like that don’t happen to you.

Cherrylin.5869:

Do you think using mesmer portals is cheating, or do you think it’s fair?

So… is pre-watching a video guide on how to do the Skipping Stones puzzle “cheating” or less honorable?

Or how about watching someone ahead of you (who evidently did it before and knows where to go) and stepping only where he goes, does that demean the point of the puzzle?

Or maybe instead of just being observed, that someone is actually leading you step by step?

Or maybe you feel that the actual button presses must be executed by the individual – in which case, how about a case where someone can’t manage the puzzle and hands the keyboard off to a friend or spouse to do it for them?

There’s kind of a big fuzzy spectrum all the way from coming in completely cold, doing it utterly alone with only the observation of scenery to guide your jumps to making use of a mesmer portal which is there, encompassing knowledge and execution.

Personally, as an explorer sort of gamer, I don’t like these things spoiled for me. I enjoy coming in cold, and beating my head against it and practising until I get the hang of the jumps and accomplish it at least once. I only look up a video guide if I’ve been stuck for ages and can’t figure out where to go.

But I’m not above following someone else’s lead or accepting their well meaning advice (even if I’d really rather do it myself) if they happen to be there. It dilutes a little bit of my personal fun, but I’ll compromise about it regardless, accept their help, say ‘thank you’ at the end and leave them feeling good about themselves. Why? Because I believe GW2 is meant to be, and designed to be, a social, inclusive game.

Nor will I think less of mesmer portals, because they serve that purpose. They enable a well meaning individual to help another. They engender some form of social interaction, even if it’s just an announcement and a ‘thx’ from either party.

And when you really look at it, very few people care about the process, they just want the shiny at the end. If the portal helps them get it faster, then it’s all well and good. This says absolutely nothing about the portal or the puzzle, but volumes about them and what they value – having easy and clear direction, taking shortcuts, optimizing for efficiency. There’s quite a hefty majority of ’em, really.

So whether or not a particular action is “cheating” is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. (And ultimately for ArenaNet to enforce.)

And in this case, it seems pretty ridiculous to declare portals bypassing jumping puzzles a “cheat” in order to preserve the feelings of a small subset of people who -can- jump the puzzle and value a title that’s barely even linked to it, when the overall purpose appears to be providing inclusive alternatives and options for the greatest number of players to enjoy themselves in Southsun.

My suggestion? Focus on yourself. Enjoy the process of jumping the puzzle if you enjoy it. Worry less about how other people are accomplishing the same act. What’s fun for the goose isn’t necessarily fun for the gander.

As the starting spawn in the room, there are three “Embers” and one “Champion Ember” further back, who will normally approach and spawn “Lesser Embers.”

The normal “Embers” can be focused fired and whittled down to reduce the chaos, or you could just go straight for the Champion and take them down later.

If the group ends up tunnel visioning on “Lesser Embers,” that tends to lead to prolonged mass chaos and death as the champion can put out an endless supply of them. Running into the room and spreading out is also a mite safer as the ground AoEs don’t all get concentrated on one spot.

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

I do understand that you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it. Perhaps it would help if I explained the exact situation.

In the Molten Weapons Facility there is an encounter with a Champion Ooze and large group of normal Oozes. They all have a PbAoE pull/yank/whatever you call it.

I missed one last item that can be helpful, and that is a stun break. I found this helpful for champion trolls and the enraged berserker who do try to stunlock you.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

I apologize for the snark too, as the OP came across as not understanding parts of GW2 that can prevent stunlocks.

Now specifically for the Champion Ooze, now that you’ve mentioned what your problem is in particular, this is what I found extremely helpful:

(And trust me, I died many times in one pull and instant hit squish to figure this out.)

Do not fight the oozes in the tunnel. In fact, don’t fight anything in that room in the tunnel. If you’re ranged or in a smaller group than 5, take a turn to the left and run into the space in the hall that was kindly provided there. That gives you more range and space to run around and kite with.

Guardians can use Wall of Reflection to reflect the ooze projectiles that will pull you. This does especially crazy damage onto the oozes if you reflect the four prong triangular attack they shoot. Traiting for Master of Consecrations can improve how long it stays up and how fast it recharges if you want it up more.

Spirit shield will absorb projectiles. Pop it and let it pulse when wall of reflection isn’t up, that will shield a good amount of the pain as well.

If you aren’t in a boon heavy melee group that can just charge in, pop stability and buffs and wail away on the oozes, then fight them at long range where you can see them shoot their pulling projectiles and run away/dodge from those.

If you’re fighting in melee, try to time Stand Your Ground to when you see the big red circle appear around the ooze as it’s going to pull in, jump up and smack right down.

Nalora.7964:

Add “Knowing every Cook recipe” to my long list of uncompleted things in GW2. I just learned that there are recipes that only drop from the molten chest at the end of the dungeon.

There’s an alternative for this, since they very kindly did not soulbind or account bind the drops at the end. Buy them off the Trading Post. I guarantee you there is a surplus of them being generated at the moment, and were going for a couple silver the last time I looked.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability
Hug your friendly neighborhood guardian today.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Interrupt
Hug your friendly neighborhood control build players today.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge
Hugging your friendly keyboard probably won’t work.

And with all that said, if you get unlucky, I concur there is the off-chance that you do get caught in a chain of knockbacks and into a big ugly ring of fire, then hug your friendly teammates who will rez you before your downed state goes into death today.

Want constructive suggestions?

1) 5-man dungeons should be optional and separated from story progress. Preferably achievements too.

That is, you can still have a ‘I am uber hardcore’ completionist title track for achievements, with the dungeon with its own achievement, but soloists should be able to pick reasonable alternatives (similar to dailies) to get a “saw the story” souvenir event achievement.

If it’s not possible to downscale the dungeon with no/limited rewards, have a soloable 1-5 man group instance like Halloween, Wintersday and prior Living Story instances that errs on the side of easy for people to participate through the continuing ‘living world’ storyline that was advertised as a feature of GW2.

The harder dungeon can be a separate bonus for people who want the shinier rewards – recipes, jetpacks, etc. After all, there’s an alternate means to attain them too, from the TP.

2) Improve the upscaling of non-level 80s in dungeons

Possibly a heavy toughness/vitality buff – can’t blame them for not having enough stats when the gear they have to work with only has one primary or two stats at most. It might be interesting, if complicated for them, to temporarily unlock all their traits and skills similar to PvP so that they have a stronger selection of utilities.

It’s just too obvious that non-level 80s are underpowered compared to a full team of 80s, which has a tendency to lead to either exclusion/elitism, or at best, kind souls “carrying” or helping one or two through, while their contribution is limited by the game mechanics.

At the moment, I got no ideas for how to support/train players with slower reflexes or non-cookie cutter builds except via having a patient community willing to teach and wait for others (where the onus is on us as players – though an imposed 10 day time limit adds a lot of pressure on achievers to go fastfastfast), or having less punishing critical timing or ping-dependent mechanics (which may not be the goal of the dungeon designers.)

But decoupling the dungeon as a critical link in the story would probably help people self-select themselves out.

Thank you for managing to separate reset times for NA and EU servers so quickly.

Dead mesmers will celebrate. Even easier to hide in keeps to get rezzed by a thief if their names completely vanish.

lordkrall.7241:

And how many of those one-time events have we had since that?

My point exactly. You wanted an example of ArenaNet not thinking things through beforehand and just going ahead and doing it. Then they receive backlash (or very strongly worded feedback) and attempt to do things better next time.

Players having been suggesting many various other compromises for this NA/EU reset problem. The ideal, everyone agrees, is to separate the WvW reset times. Failing which, a time when one region isn’t immediately locked out of participating due to work would be preferable.

Another interesting idea would be to keep changing up the reset times weekly. One week, suit the NA crowd. The next week, the EU. Another week, SEA/Oceania. That might change up the meta, so to speak, and get different sets of guilds involved for server reset each week.

But permanently shifting the WvW reset time to another time, one that has been established, -doesn’t- suit NA very well, is not the best compromise, let alone solution.

lordkrall.7241:

Please show me all these decisions there weren’t best for the most people.

One time ever event starting at one specified timing across the entire world, lasting only three days with a chance for exotics and precursors at the end of the event.

I leave out the bugs and the broken things not working because as you say, those can only be anticipated via actually doing it, because they have no public test server and didn’t want to spoil the event. But factually, the above sounds like a bad idea from the get go.

Now I’ll grant that they set up that event way in advance and did lots of pre-announcing and pre-warning, unlike this particular set of WvW reset time changes.

This change impacts NA, SEA and possibly Oceanic timezones, while improving the EU experience by a few hours. One of the above posters said it best, this is just moving the problem from one timezone to another.

Please rethink this. Separate resets for NA and EU servers would be best, but if it’s not feasible, then the compromise of moving reset to Saturday is at least more reasonable for people who have work/school on Fridays.

You know, OP, one of the things not mentioned in this thread so far is that GW2 does place an emphasis on choosing how to employ your skills at the best possible timing.

I learned how to dodge out of red circles very early on, but it wasn’t till later when I realized that certain classes (like the thief) had block=>react attacks that responded to timing my keypresses just right to counter an enemy’s attack animation. From there, I learned those normal animations can also be avoided/evaded by a well-timed dodge, along with movement to avoid projectiles.

Interrupts and blocks (I play with blinds and aegis since I main a Guardian) are also most effective dependent on timing.

Ditto boons, conditions (and their removal) involving tactical choice and input from the player.

It won’t help you in the anticipation of a big move building up aspect, as that harkens back to a more turn-based approach, and it may not make you like GW2 combat if your preference is against hotkey triggered combat as a whole, regardless of whether it stresses tactical positioning and timing.

If you just want my preference, I like hot-key combat, especially if the keypress triggers as quickly and with as much sensitivity as GW2 and WoW. It gives combat an immediacy, a very action-based feel.