Guild Wars 2

And yet… life goes on…

Let the kitten shine!!

I have 3k gold in hand, with lots of invested goodies (back pieces, weapon skins, minis, crafting mats, etc. etc. etc….). I don’t actually have a clue as to how much my worth is – I’m a hoarder so I don’t regularly calculate everything I have in terms of monetary value. I do have a handful of wind catcher skins, ghastly shields, greatsaw greatswords (and other valuable rare skins that I can’t think of), 5 mini karkas, 4 mini karka hatchlings, 4 drakes, like 20 or so mini kasmeers, etc..

I haven’t actually equipped legendaries yet… I just sell the ones I make and I’ve made 3.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wrong again. If two different types of players have the same gear, one paid and one didn’t, it’s not P2W. I’ll explain it one more time to you:

P2W means Paying to Win. That means you pay real money to have exclusive access to statistically better gear than a non-paying player.

Paying $500 to get the same gear that someone got for free is not P2W, but rather Pay for Convenience.

I am not saying you’re wrong. I utterly agree with what you’re saying about P2W. But I’m trying to expand on that because its meaning, regardless of it being my definition or not, has enveloped the current general F2P game design. I don’t care what the ‘original’ meaning of the concept is. I don’t wanna get all philosophical with you but since you brought it up I’ll throw a quick 2-cents in. If people took the original idea of everything we have in this world and refuse to expand upon it… to grow it and mold it, we would be… Nowhere. You saying I’m wrong because of how I’m interpreting a term is really ignorant. I don’t need to be (nor am I) absolutely correct, but what I have described has merit. Don’t be so dense and completely dismiss my opinion because you’re so stuck on the original meaning of the phrase.

This is dumb. Have a good one.

Beldin.5498:

Katastrofi.5816:

There is no ‘true’ meaning of paying to win. You’re not wrong, but neither is my interpretation of the meaning.

But since you’re clearly not willing to accept any other form of argument, g’day.

What you and a lot of people here call P2W is just pay to save maybe a little bit time.
That is also called just Quality of Life (QoL) .. and that is of course a thing that they put in the Shop since those are things that DON’T give you advantage in a fight against other players.

If pay to save time is also P2W, then even buying kitten Drive is P2W because with that SSD you have better chance in the Champ Train to get a hit on the Troll, so you make more money in the same time .. ergo : SSD is P2W.

Or buying a Bankslot or Bagslot .. saves time because you don’t have to clean your invent so often .. so a simple Bagslot is alredy P2W.

Ummm… What?

It’s not entirely about time. It’s about effort. It’s about work. There is absolutely no deniability in the fact that, for a game centralized around gear in the end-game, if someone bought every piece of gear with real currency while skipping all the necessary steps (which, yes, includes some time factor) to obtain them through the designed means, they paid to win.

Yes, it’s a QoL thing. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t P2W as well.

Corpse Flakes.5369:

I re-roll classes for the keys. I find it fun and a challenge to do level 10 missions on a level 4, and seeing as I have 3 80’s I’m trying out different weapons with new professions trying to decide on my next class. It’s between warrior and Ele ATM.

How you’re able to determine a class is fun to play after 4 levels (no traits, no utilities, white gear) and doing the same thing over and over again is beyond me, but more power to ya.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Katastrofi.5816:

I cannot give you any example in this game because there aren’t any since gems can be bought with in-game currency.

Exactly. The true meaning of P2W was “Paying to Win”. Players pay real life money to have advantages over non-paying customers. Some refer to this mindset as being “elitists”, which isn’t far off. There’s an artificial barrier a game company makes that separates players who spend money, from those who don’t. That doesn’t mean the non-paying customer can’t play the game at all, but rather they play at a lower level.

Example: I can play an airplane or flying game for free with a hang-glider just fine, but if I spend $500 to buy an F-16, I can play it even better. I can fly higher, thus accessing more content. I can battle other hang-gliders with my F-16 and win every time. Etc.

There is no ‘true’ meaning of paying to win. You’re not wrong, but neither is my interpretation of the meaning.

But since you’re clearly not willing to accept any other form of argument, g’day.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Not sure if you actually read my quick explanation of what P2W really is. You should read it again, and see that every single example you posted is completely off base.

I’ll try to simplify it more by asking a single question. In Guild Wars 2, can you tell me what content, which gives large statistical advantages, is exclusive to “paying” customers over non-paying customers? The moment that you can answer this question, is the moment I’ll tell you GW2 is P2W.

Don’t be patronizing, I’m not an idiot.

You seem to be defining ‘P2W’ as a way for people to purchase exclusive items that is not otherwise obtainable by those who don’t. That is not necessarily true. Paying to win can also mean the person spending money is able to obtain said item faster or easier than someone who doesn’t. Basically it eliminates the time it takes for someone to obtain some end-game object, accelerating them to the ‘winning’ status.

So, by your definition of P2W, I cannot give you any example in this game because there aren’t any since gems can be bought with in-game currency. But if you would stop being so narrow-minded and open up to different interpretations of the phrase, maybe you can see where a lot of people are coming from when they say the gem store is P2W.

Edit:
I’ll give you a short and simple scenario:
There are two people, Jane and Joe.
Joe started to play the game and decided he didn’t want to spend a single penny on gear, so he farmed currency for the next 3 months to buy his gear.
Jane started to play the game and decided it took too long to farm the currency, so she bought $100 worth of in-game currency and bought the SAME gear.

Jane just paid to win.

Beldin.5498:

Katastrofi.5816:

To me (and a lot of people) “winning” is achieving a goal. Now, maybe someone wants to do it the quickest and do it better than everyone else, but really means “you’ve beat something or someone.” The goal in this game is to have the rarest gear with the ‘best’ skins, some of which are found in the gem shop.

Point is, yes, the gem shop is P2W in the context of THIS game. An exotic is and exotic. The value of the exotic is not the stats, but the skin.

In that case the game is and has already been P2W since start since you can buy Gold with real Cash, and it doesn’t makes any sense to further discuss if any new item or service is p2w since EVERYTHING that is buyable by Gold in any form is P2W.

Correct.

I don’t understand why it’s still a discussion.

CrossedHorse.4261:

I doubt it. And we’ve just had an announcement saying blade shards will cease to drop as of 18th March. So farm or buy up what you need/want now.

Nope.

Have you never played an online game before?

Get used to it.. There’s nothing that can be done to stop it.

I thought about this a while ago when I put some on an alt to level for the event and shrugged it off as another oversight on the dev team’s part.

Oh well.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Katastrofi.5816:

Taras.4578:

It’s sad that this generation of gaming has lost its bearing of the true meaning of “pay2win”.

So what is the meaning of “pay2win” for you?

The definition is completely subjective, and it depends vastly on the application, so go for it.

It’s actually not that subjective. P2W means paying money to win. In a PvP situation, paying for a sword that has vastly better stats over what’s available for a non-paying customer is what P2W is all about. Think of it like “paying for a guaranteed win”. Same thing if you had a game with airplanes. Paying real money to buy an F-16 to combat someone in a hang-glider.

Okay, so based on your definition, some games rank their gear based on stats. There is an ultimate end-game item that is the best of the best, and yes, if this item was on a store for money, it would be pay to win.

How about GW2? Gear is not ULTIMATELY based on the stats (yes there are different tiers, ascended being the highest, but that’s realllyyy not the point for end-game). The entire game is built on novelty/vanity items. You show off your status based on the bling you have. The value of this ‘bling’ depends on its rarity, attainability, accessibility, popularity, etc, etc. That’s why anything you buy through the gem shop can be considered a ‘win’ because the value of the item from the shop can very well fall into one (or all) of those categories.

To me (and a lot of people) “winning” is achieving a goal. Now, maybe someone wants to do it the quickest and do it better than everyone else, but really means “you’ve beat something or someone.” The goal in this game is to have the rarest gear with the ‘best’ skins, some of which are found in the gem shop.

Point is, yes, the gem shop is P2W in the context of THIS game. An exotic is and exotic. The value of the exotic is not the stats, but the skin.

“It’s the economy, stupid”

Unless you play the (economic) game, you will never be “rich.” Grinding 10 dungeons a day will get you nowhere.

Taras.4578:

It’s sad that this generation of gaming has lost its bearing of the true meaning of “pay2win”.

So what is the meaning of “pay2win” for you?

The definition is completely subjective, and it depends vastly on the application, so go for it.

Does everyone here complaining about the skins being in the BLC realize that these skins can be obtained on the TP for <100g at the moment? I really don’t understand what the fuss about it is. And, for those making the comparison to how tough it was to get in GW1, do dungeons, farm events, whatever it takes, and make the money to buy one off the TP. What the hell is the big deal?

Also, GW1 is GW1. Yes, some things have carried over to GW2. Yes, there were super expensive gear in GW1 that showed off hard work and dedication. GW2 is a new game, aimed at a new audience, with pretty much a new player base. It has its own versions of these hard-to-get items (legendaries? ascended stuff?) so there’s no need to import every kitten novelty skin in GW1 and make it just as hard to obtain in GW2. It’s a new game people. The fact that they did reintroduce some of the neat skins in GW1 for me to use in GW2 should be appreciated regardless of how they’re obtained.

pswendel.8179:

Well, when you make $105,000.00 annually your earnings might be a bit more flexible.

I only made it a point because so many people seemed to be completely floored as to why anyone in their right mind would buy keys for BLCs.

StinVec.3621:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So basically people are still suckered into buying BLK’s… I never will understand why…

Nor I, Zudet. Though there does still seem to be a constant influx of new players who have not been burned by them yet and have to learn the lesson from their own experiences. I know there are also those who do not mind how the keys and chests work, or actually enjoy they way they work due to their desire for all those boosters that are actually of value to them. Some actually enjoy the gambling aspect of them. To each their own. Personally, I’ll continue to get my chest skins from the TP even though I know their even being available on the TP requires others to open chests. However, with so many players running the personal story key farm circuit for the sole purpose of getting these skins to put on the TP, I know that no keys even had to be purchased for them to be made available on there. Unless Anet nerfs the farming ability of keys or revokes the ability to trade the skins, I know they will always be available on the TP.

Personally, I don’t understand how people can reroll characters and spend the 30ish minutes to get ONE freaken key. Do people realize to buy one key, it costs $1.50 right? That translates to $3.00 an hour. Pick up some extra hours at work and just buy the kitten key, so that way you can actually PLAY the game… Do a dungeon with friends, events, or whatever, while earning gold at the same time! Hey! In one hour of key farming, someone gets up to 2 keys. In one hour at my job, I can buy about 35 keys (I’m not trying to brag whatsoever, just trying to prove a point). Yeah I’ll take the cash shop way.

The one thing I will not do is convert gems I buy for cash into in-game gold. My gems are strictly for special event novelty stuff and skins only through the gemstore. In fact, I don’t even sell the skins I get from the BLC; I just use the tickets I have to get the weapon skin I want from the trader. I do some TP flipping while running a couple hours of dungeons a few times a week and get plenty in-game currency that way.

Here’s something I’ve learned from being around a lot of businesses. In a nutshell:

1/10 people will voice their satisfaction about something.
9/10 people will voice their dissatisfaction about something.

This applies to pretty much… Everything. This game included. And when one person voices their dissatisfaction, 5 others will jump on the bandwagon and voice their concerns. When someone says something is good, people who read it just nod and agree but don’t necessarily add on to that.

So there you go. The devs know this. PR people know this, and now you know this and why there may be a lack of response.

This isn’t to say that they’re not taking all the constructive feedback and doing something with it. But with all of the feedback, they take it with a grain of salt.

Dee Jay.2460:

… all while seeing absolutely kitten-all because of the excessive particle effects.

That’s the only gripe I have. But other than that, if you’re moving and ‘actively’ engaging enemies (read: NOT standing there auto-attacking and then complaining that the enemy hits too hard), dodging, using skills and group abilities to the maximum potential, and knowing when to put a few seconds of distance every now and then, melee is very, very powerful.

Of course, being an EFFECTIVE melee pure zerker player requires a great deal of concentration, timing, reaction time, and awareness, and the problem is 99% of the players rip builds off of forums that describe how awesomely pew-pew these zerker builds are without the ability to handle them. Then they come onto said forums and complain because it’s not working out and they get one-shot.

I’m not a perfect player, but I’m 90% melee in every class I play and I only have zerker gear, and with the exception of a few kitten moments and occasional lack of concentration (joking around in voice chat, etc) I stay alive most of the time and actively fighting.

The knight mechanic based off my experience
-Spams a three-swing AA between larger (one dodge can evade first two swings, a slight delay after first dodge will evade the 3rd KD hit). Sometimes these come in succession for up to 2 or even 3 rounds. In this case, dodge out and pull out ranged weapon.

-Flies up in the air and comes down with a KD hit. Red circle to indicate this; simply dodge it.

-Very large pull. If you’re meleeing you don’t even have to worry about this because you don’t get pulled in melee range. If you are ranging, just dodge it as soon as the red circle goes away. He follows up with some daze attack so you have to get the timing right to evade that one.

That’s literally it. For a warrior this isn’t too hard. You have a decent amount of health regen if you’re standing in healing with signet and food. Couple with some dodging and balanced stance, you can weather a coupe rounds of the AA without needing to pull out. If you run out of endurance, drop back and use your bow (slot an energy sigil so you can dodge out right when you swap if you’re out of endurance); I usually use the opportunity to stack some might with the burst + skill 3. Also, use the skill 4 blind (I don’t know the name of skills, just the numbers) when he’s vulnerable to condis – it helps to swap back to your melee and jump in right when you use it. I use a shield, so I use the block when I’m really in trouble, but it’s a last resort thing.

This is far from an impossible fight for melee. I’ve done it with a guardian, mesmer (bad dps because illusions get demolished), and elementalist and all classes are capable of surviving melee. Like I said, I’ve gotten plastered many times but that’s usually due to me slipping or mismanaging dodging/weapon swapping. Difficult? Sure. Requires a high level of skill? Yes. Standing there in his face while AAing, expecting to last more than two hits? No.

Hahahaha this is great. +1

haviz.1340:

And at the same time you don’t have to do anything except spam those buttons if you stay far away and dodge once every 10-15 seconds. That’s my problem, if anet wants to punish melee users for spamming they should also punish ranged users for doing the same thing which currently is not the case.

ranged – normal damage, almost no risk.
melee – a bit higher damage because of constant dodging and much more risk.

It’s not balanced.

Actually the damage between ranged and melee is quite significant for AA.

Ehhhh… I’m pretty sure the alliance bags have absolutely no influence on the drop rates of the RNG stuff… They don’t add to the loot table of things to roll. There are a guaranteed 5 bags for every chest opened, in addition to whatever you would have gotten.

I bought 25 keys during the discount. I got 5 scraps and an actual claim ticket. RNG is RNG is RNG.

Stability. Dodge. Blocks. Blinds (when vulnerable to conditions). I’d say there are plenty of useful tools to aid melee. These knights are probably the most engaging bosses I have ever fought. You really, really need to pay attention to what is going on otherwise you get downed pretty easily. Coupled with life on crit food, regen, and good endurance management (with energy sigils), you can get by with 80% melee. You only have to pull out when things get too dicey which is totally fine (buahaha); that’s what some range is used for. On a zerker warrior, I have done just fine. Axe/Shield + LB, heal on crit food, and healing signet + regen fields from eles and rangers and it’s a real fun melee fight. The conditions that get reflected are what really do me in though, but that’s another topic.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Katastrofi.5816:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Those skins are not the reward for the event, they are temporary RNG loot tied to the event.
Rewards are what everyone gets for playing the event and succeed.

Actually, yes, they are a part of the reward for the event. Even if it’s not a definitive reward, it’s still a reward specifically for this event that you won’t get elsewhere.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Here, I write it down for you:

To have an equivalent, the loot from the final event in LA would have had to be:

- an ascended trinket
- a 20 slot bag
- 1 or more random ascended items (armor or weapon), tradeable on the TP

Maybe some people in full ascended would have had no use for the stuff, but for most, this sounds better than a helmet skin and a lesser vision crystal.

You’re being subjective. Oh yeah, we got a trinket, but are you honestly using apothecary gear?? I’d rather have a skin that I may find works with a certain look, than a completely useless trinket that I will have 0% of ever using.

Also 20 slot boxes mean absolutely nothing nowadays. You can get them for like, nothing (all my toons have the 20 slot exo boxes from fractals and I still have more fractal relics than I know what to do with).

A lesser vision crystal, by comparison, is much more useful to me (and most people these days) than a 20-slot box. It’s essentially worth 1g in mats, plus a handful of obsidian shards.

This event has netted me about 350+g so far worth of drops, from those two rifle skins I found (which are bound to go up in price), mats to craft ascended backpiece for relatively cheap, and some misc. novelty things (angle/devil potions). What did I get from the Karka event…….. A useless exotic that I salvaged, a box that you can get for less than an hour of your time, and a handful of minis (which I admit are worth quite a bit now).

I’ll take this event over the Karka event hands down, bar none.

Have fun with your useless trinket and 20-slot box…. Oh wait, you uninstalled. kbai.

Have you been around?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ancient_Karka_Shell

Looks like celestial gear to me, which seems pretty popular. You are mixing up the LS with the live event.

And back in the days, a 20 slot box was only available through crafting. God forbid, that 16 montes later, something is more common…

Put things in context, noone would have salvaged exotics they could sell, only if they were soulbound or had divinity runes, otherwise it was a stupid move.

I smell a made up story in the quoted text.

Fair enough; I was thinking about the apothecary rings and crap that dropped from mobs. Yes, I salvaged them, because they were pretty worthless. I still don’t use celestial gear so that shell thing is stashed around somewhere gathering dust.

And uh… Have YOU been around? FoTM was added during or around when Lost Shores was released… So….. Yeah.. 16 months is a bit of an exaggeration. Those boxes have been around for quite a while now.

Didn’t you uninstall? What are you still going on about?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Those skins are not the reward for the event, they are temporary RNG loot tied to the event.
Rewards are what everyone gets for playing the event and succeed.

Actually, yes, they are a part of the reward for the event. Even if it’s not a definitive reward, it’s still a reward specifically for this event that you won’t get elsewhere.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Here, I write it down for you:

To have an equivalent, the loot from the final event in LA would have had to be:

- an ascended trinket
- a 20 slot bag
- 1 or more random ascended items (armor or weapon), tradeable on the TP

Maybe some people in full ascended would have had no use for the stuff, but for most, this sounds better than a helmet skin and a lesser vision crystal.

You’re being subjective. Oh yeah, we got a trinket, but are you honestly using apothecary gear?? I’d rather have a skin that I may find works with a certain look, than a completely useless trinket that I will have 0% of ever using.

Also 20 slot boxes mean absolutely nothing nowadays. You can get them for like, nothing (all my toons have the 20 slot exo boxes from fractals and I still have more fractal relics than I know what to do with).

A lesser vision crystal, by comparison, is much more useful to me (and most people these days) than a 20-slot box. It’s essentially worth 1g in mats, plus a handful of obsidian shards.

This event has netted me about 350+g so far worth of drops, from those two rifle skins I found (which are bound to go up in price), mats to craft ascended backpiece for relatively cheap, and some misc. novelty things (angle/devil potions). What did I get from the Karka event…….. A useless exotic that I salvaged, a box that you can get for less than an hour of your time, and a handful of minis (which I admit are worth quite a bit now).

I’ll take this event over the Karka event hands down, bar none.

Have fun with your useless trinket and 20-slot box…. Oh wait, you uninstalled. kbai.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Southsun:
Bad and buggy event -> good rewards

Speak for yourself, the rewards for many people weren’t all that good.

Battle for LA:

Bad and buggy event -> bad rewards

Stomping Scarlet finally was its own reward.

Everyone that participated got:

A free 20 bag slot
A free epic trinket
A free epic item with chance of a precursor.

That sounds like good rewards to me. What did we get this time? Some ugly skin for a helmet?

Stomping NPCs instead of fighting them? Sounds like a great accomplishment.

Actually I also got Scarlet’s Kiss and Scarlet’s Rainbow. Count me extremely lucky, but these two skins are pretty cool.

Fenrina.2954:

Katastrofi.5816:

The AFKers are STILL there, but now they’re constantly just dying. Now the NPCs that rez downed players are permanently trying to rez them over and over and over again. Please just eliminate this safe zone altogether… Please?

I’d hate to see the repair bill after that.

Honestly, the fact they’re dying means that isn’t a safe zone. Either people will pick up on it soon or well… they won’t.

Unequip armor?

And if not, 11 silver (or whatever it is for full broken armor) is less than negligible amount of coin. It’s… literally next to nothing. That’s not gonna discourage people who want to get their achievements. Hell, in the Wintersday event one of the achievements was to pay like, what was it, a gold?

I appreciate the team’s attempt to fix the ’AFK’ing issue for people trying to get the achievements in the Scarlet encounter, but in adding the lasers and forcing them to die, you’ve actually made the situation worse.

The AFKers are STILL there, but now they’re constantly just dying. Now the NPCs that rez downed players are permanently trying to rez them over and over and over again. Please just eliminate this safe zone altogether… Please?

Assuming there will be no further use of these cores and the drops are limited to this event:

The reason the prices skyrocketed was because of the bug that stopped any drops from the knights. Prices for these mats were already pretty unstable because demand > supply as with any start of a new event, but stop the supply of the mats and the prices will go crazy. Now that supply has been reintroduced, the prices will naturally drop, and when demand of these cores slow down (because people will have already crafted their backpiece), the prices will continue to drop for a while after the event ends because people are still selling them, and the “event hype” will taper off. Then they will slowly creep back up because there is no new supply, but demand may still be there (albeit a relatively small amount).

Now, if they introduce another use for them or if they are obtainable in other ways after the event, this will all be different.

You can sell them now while they’re still decently valued, but after they drop below a certain threshold (you have to decide), hang on to them and sell them later for profit (assuming the above case is not true).

Ohoni.6057:

CC Danicia.1394:

Please don’t delete them!

You can hold on to your extra blade shards, as the team will be adding something later which will allow you to convert the shards to something of value. Dev will be announcing more on that later. Thanks!

Thanks! Could we please get more clarity on these and other LW items in the future (and present)? I have tons of items in my inventory that I have no idea whether they will ever have future value. For example, I have:

Stacks of 3-7 assorted Marionette key fragments (not enough to form any more completed keys)
Powercore bits from the Marionette event
Wintersday 2012 cogs, frameworks, and stuffing (but not enough to make another mini)

And various other nicknacks that I’ve been holding on to in hopes I could eventually do something with them. It would be nice if ANet were more explicit about what items were no longer useful, like a note that says, either in game or even just in the patch notes “go ahead and delete those X if you’ve already made all the Y you might need, we’re never doing anything else with them.”

Yes please.

lordkrall.7241:

Orange.9701:

/signed.

STOP doing achievements that rely on the other people

Why?
It is a multiplayer game after all.

Should we also start demanding that they remove the need to do dungeons in order to get dungeon gear?
Or Legendaries for that matter, should they remove everything that requires playing with other people for that as well?

..What I don’t even……

You’re also missing the point.

And what the hell does legendaries have anything to do with this?

Boneheart.3561:

I thought I mashed ‘F’ enough times, I may have used the wrong finger or hit the wrong button. I looked back to make sure there was nothing else to loot before entering the room. Only later noticed my inventory looked suspiciously bare.

Participate harder so you get loot next time?

Boneheart.3561:

I like these types of Achievements, in fact I opened this thread because I thought it was a suggestion for a type of Achievement that explicitly encouraged coordination.
When I get credit for one, it feels like I contributed to a team effort and supported others.

You’re missing the point.

There’s nothing wrong with group coordination. It’s great and it’s a necessary part of the game in my opinion. When your group succeeds, you kill a boss and get loot. That’s the reward for working together.

But when you make something like achievements (and I’m talking specifically about the time-sensitive ones in living stories) based on the success of everyone around you, things are different. There are several problems with achievements that ride on the participation of others (as I mentioned earlier):

1. Some people don’t care for them so they won’t take the effort to do them. They just want loot so they’ll go around doing what benefits them more personally, than the entire group (eg now everyone just camps Blue Knight so they can at least tag a kill and get the reward, ignoring the other two that need help so people can kill them in <6 min).

2. Many people who have done them see no reason to put forth the effort in helping others do it because it was already a pain in the kitten the first time around. That, and when people finish achievements, they don’t typically return to the event unless there’s some sort of gain for them, which there is currently not. So you get the majority of the population who complete the achievements in a few days, and the rest of the people who didn’t have time during the week are left hanging because the groups aren’t large enough to do them near the end of the event.

Squee Squashington.5189:

No one in the history of ever has enjoyed or remembers how they enjoyed a game because of how hard it kicked their kitten .

I disagree. There are many games out there that kick my kitten because they’re built on that challenge. For example, Borderlands 2 Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode… Was the most difficult, frustrating, and head-beating experience I’ve ever had playing a game, but it was outrageously kittening fun and I enjoyed every second of it.

I think what you’re trying to say is “no one in history of ever has enjoyed or remembers how they enjoyed a game because of how horrible certain designs were, how badly it was implemented, and how many bugs are present.”

I’ve looted it every time.

I’ve gotten Scarlet’s Rainbow and Scarlet’s Kiss.

You haven’t learned by now to check for loot after killing champion+ mobs? Come on…

:3

Just….. Delete them…

/thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Can-anyone-really-see-through-the-clutter/page/4

There’s a nice discussion about it. Basically it’s something you have to deal with until Anet decides it’s an important enough of an issue to figure out. So far the impression I’m getting from the company is quantity over quality. “Who cares if players can’t actually play the game as intended! Screw the bugs, the crashes, the unplayability. As long as we keep shoving content down everyone’s throat like a fire hose, they’ll be happy!”

kgptzac.8419:

Katastrofi.5816:

I keep saying LS events are crappy and discouraging for new players entering the game because 1. it’s easy to get lost and confused in the lore and what’s actually going on and 2. they don’t have the equipment to handle the events effectively.

don’t forget 3. They have missed all the “content” happened before they joined in and have no way to experience the past story in game.

ANet must be blind for not seeing Living Story hinders further influx of newer player—something that all MMO should strive for all the time. I’ve suggested that they should recreate the living story chain into personal story style missions. Of course, massive zerg and zone-wide events cannot be recreated, but they can make some changes and add friendly NPC, etc.

Thank you, yes.

I made a suggestion somewhere at some point that they really should bring back the LS stuff as some re-playable quest/story (or at least tell the kitten story in cinematics), similar to what the Scurying pool in EotN from GW1 had.

I feel your pain. Although I’m not new, I have tried to level alts in these zerg events and they are difficult depending on the class you’re playing and gear..

If you truly want to participate in the event: The problem with alts/new players is that even though you’re scaled up to 80, that’s based on the gear you have. If you’re in lvl 20 greens/blues with only 1 attribute on the item (non-power based), you’re damage output is going to be nil compared to a true lvl 80 with exotics and you’re pretty much 1-shot dead from the veteran/elite mob (which are 90% of them in these massive zergs). That makes it difficult to do enough damage to tag a mob (they die so fast already especially with the zerging) which means you get no experience or loot. The best bet is to find a group willing to accept you so that you’re chances of getting loot and exp are increased, and focus more on the events and do as much damage as possible to get the credit for an event.

Otherwise, I advise you to just try out the event so you know what the story is and what’s going on, then go do something more meaningful and come back when you’re able to do more than tickle a mob.

I keep saying LS events are crappy and discouraging for new players entering the game because 1. it’s easy to get lost and confused in the lore and what’s actually going on and 2. they don’t have the equipment to handle the events effectively.

I don’t know if this has been said, but why the hell can’t someone from Anet either confirm this is a problem, or if this elusive drop chance is working as intended? For kittens sake, with the length of this thread and all the speculation they could at least say SOMETHING.

Funkybacon.2635:

Tuesday patch day.

Does that help’?

If you even read the OP, you would know that, no, this doesn’t help at all.

He recognizes that sometimes events last two weeks, and others for longer. Patches happen on Tuesdays, but not every Tuesday. Clearly you don’t get it.

I usually take the next release date as an indication of when the current one ends, but that wasn’t always the case either… I think honestly Anet sometimes doesn’t even know, otherwise I don’t see why they wouldn’t publish that information..

I loved every aspect of SAB and can’t wait until it’s back.

There were a lot of people complaining about tribulation mode, but I accepted the challenge (sure, I nearly rage-quit several times the first few attempts) but once I learned the areas and all the traps, it quickly became a “beat my personal best.” I managed to do all of W1 in something like 15 minutes, and all of W2 in like 40 minutes, and have more weapon tokens than I know what to do with.

The rewards were definite and tangible. You beat the level? You get a token that’s a piece of a weapon. No looting some stupid chest at the end (unless you were in normal mode trying to get the blue ones) hoping for a chance for that token.

And that’s not bragging. That’s me showing off how much I loved to do it. SAB represents everything that the entire game SHOULD be. Want to do it solo? Okay. Want to play with a group and do it with friends? You can do that too. You got rewarded for completion every single time.. The achievements were based off of your individual skills and abilities, not the 100+ others shoved into the same server as you. If you wanted to do it with people, that option was available to you but in no way impacted you’re own ability to accomplish something on your own.

/signed.

There are a couple glaring flaws to group achievements (with respect to extremely time-sensitive LS achievements, not permanent ones like Tequatl or the new Wurm bosses):

1. Like most people have been saying, they depend on the competency of everyone on the map. This problem is further compounded by the AFKers, the people who are leveling alts, the new players who don’t know how to play the game as well, and many of the overflows that simply don’t have the numbers to succeed in large events. Why should your personal achievements depend on everyone else and all these variables?

2. Once people complete their achievements, the ‘try-hard’ attitude goes away. They don’t care anymore. So if you missed the achievement hunting parties that exist in the first few days of a new release, it becomes much more difficult to obtain them because no one cares to do them anymore. This is especially a problem with people who can’t afford to play 6 hours a day but still puts in a decent amount of time into the game. This has also been seen time and time again and has happened to me – even if I spent 3 hours a night just to get one single achievement that was impossible without a large group.

While the idea of LS was a refreshing addition to this genre of games, I hated it. I along with many others feel like LS was a way to force people who care about achievements, lore, completion, etc. to continuously play the game on the company’s timeline in order to experience and obtain these things. I’ve heard the arguments that basically state “you snooze, you lose” but to wipe away the chance for players to experience dramatic world changes because of real life stuff is just a bad idea. Why can’t they keep these living story quests/achievements as some sort of ‘historical mode’ for people to go back and do? They can easily implement some sort of Scrying Pool thing like in EotN where players can go back and replay quests/activities and view previous cinematic scenes. This would also help new players to the game experience things that have molded the world to what it is so they can gain an understanding of why some things are the way they are. If I were new, I’d be wondering to myself stuff like, “why the hell is there this huge wreckage in the middle of Kessex Hills? That’s awfully out of place…”

I know I’m beating the dead horse here, but the pressure to keep up with the constant updates and to get the achievements and exclusive skins/novelty items within a limited time frame took away the enjoyment of the game. No longer was this game about exploring all the neat things that were added; instead it became a rush to get everything on this ridiculous shopping list done. In some cases, if you weren’t able to play the first few days of the new release, your chances to get some achievements done will be severely diminished because a lot of them depend on large groups to complete – and once the majority of people have finished them, they don’t ever do them again (e.g. the events in Queen’s Jubilee, a few of the nightmare/toxic group events, etc). I’ve missed a few events completely that I would have loved to experience, but because of real-life time constraints I was unable to do so, and Anet has given no indication of whether or not they’ll bring them back. Between several emails and inquiries, I always receive the vanilla “we will pass this along to the dev team as a suggestion” or ‘neither-confirming-nor-denying-anything’ replies.

And with regards to time-gating things: I can see why they did for many reasons. The one that strikes me is the economic stability. Can you imagine how much stuff like linen, cotton, and wool would be if there was no time-gating? With those drop rates, demand > supply and only the supremely rich would be able to make ascended armors and they’d have a whole new group of QQers (like myself) at their doorstep.

I’ve been away on holiday and unable to log in to get some of the Wintersday stuff from the gem store until just now… Are this year’s Wintersday minipets from the gem store no longer available? If so, why, if the event isn’t supposed to end until the 21st?

The Wintersday JP is not challenging at all, which is kind of disappointing to me. The Clock Tower was more of a challenge and even if you got proficient at it, it still required concentration. I can do 29/30 successful runs in the wintersday JP while watching a TV show on my other monitor.

I’ve farmed about 15k CC myself, but that’s combined from last year’s Halloween event, where ToT bags were in much higher abundance. I farmed ToT bags with the scanner thing (although many locations were removed, some still existed and reset like every 30 minutes) with 9 toons, and IIRC Mad King’s Clock Tower had more ToT bags as a reward (I think like 6-9 per success). I pretty much just did the clock tower between the scanner reset and managed to get somewhere like 90% success rate. It wasn’t too bad because I ended up being able to do it blindfolded – and I watched the entire series of The Office on my second monitor while I was doing it.

I saved up about 5k bags and opened them all this Halloween to get the CCs out of them (my poor wrists). This year, however, I’ve only managed to obtain like 3k CC’s as there aren’t nearly as many to go around. I’m 2 cobs away and probably just gonna buy the rest because I’m sick of farming and grinding.

Takes practice. First time took me at least an hour. But you learn the place and now I can do it in less than 8 minutes.

They didn’t bring back the SAB trio pets during the 10-day sale (they did bring the Halloween pets though). I watched for that specifically because I too would like the opportunity to purchase these again since I was unable to log in at all during the first release of SAB. They’re the only ones that I’m missing =/

Iruwen.3164:

Doesn’t make up for the borked update and continued inability to fix the game.

Way to be an epic downer. Stop playing the game if that’s how you feel, yah?