Guild Wars 2

Just making sure I understand.

I have a stack of salvage items, let’s say amber.

I program my mouse to left click 250 times instead of once when I left click.

I select my salvage kit, activate my macro, and salvage 250 amber.

Is this allowed or disallowed?

If this is disallowed, are their plans to reduce clicking or mouse movement for inventory management? If not, how you you plan to combat wrist health concerns?

Khisanth.2948:

Kerithlan.1659:

Irukandji.4521:

Some buddies and I were doing jump puzzles in Tyria and I was frustrated because my glider kept popping out if I held the spacebar for too long and it made me miss some tight jumps. I would appreciate if the glider was changed to double-tapping the glide key and not just holding it down, since some jumps the game requires you to make are sensitive to how long you hold down the spacebar.

Gliding is activated by tapping not holding space. You hit space a second time to release it and stop gliding.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glider_Basics

“To glide, jump from a high place, and then press the jump key again while falling.”
— In game description

Currently both work. Holding is a bit better for things like deploying at maximum height from a launch pad.

On the other hand jumping cares about the movement keys rather than how long space is held.

Well yeah they both work, in exactly the same way that holding down the V key to dodge works when really you just need to tap it. Holding V longer doesn’t make you dodge longer, it just registers it as one long key stroke inputting one command.

People holding down the space bar to glide are doing themselves a disservice as the amount of pressure applied to the bar (due to the sheer size of it) fluctuates as you tap other keys and your hand moves around.

A space bar still has one input like other buttons, it’s just that the button is supported by a long single or double bar to distribute the pressure from, say, the side of the button towards the middle, where the actual input lies.

If you hold down the space bar off center to the left with your thumb while controlling with WASD, you will invariably change the pressure on the bar, and as the lever is so long, that will occasionally cause a second input to occur as pressure is lost and regained.

I mean you’re not wrong, but you’re not helping. Holding it down to “help” at maximum launch pad height only helps because you’re able to fudge the timing window the game requires. That’s a bandage on the server/client latency issue, not an actual feature of the game.

Irukandji.4521:

Some buddies and I were doing jump puzzles in Tyria and I was frustrated because my glider kept popping out if I held the spacebar for too long and it made me miss some tight jumps. I would appreciate if the glider was changed to double-tapping the glide key and not just holding it down, since some jumps the game requires you to make are sensitive to how long you hold down the spacebar.

Gliding is activated by tapping not holding space. You hit space a second time to release it and stop gliding.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glider_Basics

“To glide, jump from a high place, and then press the jump key again while falling.”
— In game description

Khisanth.2948:

Kerithlan.1659:

• No way to disable command tag and simultaneously lead a squad. This causes unnecessary map pollution and draws unwary players into guild activities they may not have real interest in (e.g. seeking events and finding a guild rush in progress).

This is actually achievable. Create a squad. Commander leaves the squad then one of the people in the squad reinvites.

It’s not achievable in that in such a setup one cannot make use of the new squad commander markers, as there is no way to have lieutenants without a commander.

Edit: “Leading” a squad, by the game’s mechanics, is having a tag up. Without that tag you have no access to the new advanced squad resources. You’re a glorified healthbar viewer.

GENERAL

Positives

• Squad changes are overall great. Lieutenants are useful for large maps and the tags are helpful for coordination. Having location and object markers share tags is a positive.
• Brew of the Month Club is an amazing (if simple) addition to the game, I have no complaints.
• I now care about vigor.

Negatives

• Squad changes don’t address major quality of life downgrades compared to the old system. Commanders can not enter LFG mode, forcing the use of the mentor tag for such action. How to join a squad and use squad chat still aren’t transparent, and building squads for open world content proves difficult.
• Gliding in Core Tyria seems unfinished. Beyond the new Shatterer fight, it seems trivial in the greater picture. Is this really an improvement, or is it just something that the team thinks is cool?
• Too many holiday events are focused in Divinity’s Reach, no other capital cities have as much exposure. Why should we visit e.g. Hoelbrak?

PROFESSIONS

• Elementalist: Almost all elites suck. I’m forced to play as a Tempest because “Rebound!” is mediocre/average. I shouldn’t have to choose between an elite spec or racial elites for most scenarios. Glyph is basically just a bonus health pool that isn’t always effective, and FGS is temporary mobility.
• Engineer: To play the engineer “well”/“effectively” I must place the health of my fingers/wrists at risk due to how much kit juggling is required. I do not enjoy having sore hands and these changes do not do much to improve this.
• Guardian: All positive buffs, but don’t really address core problems with certain weapons/lack of build variety.
• Mesmer: Overall positive changes for overall game balance. Chronomancer might rely too heavily on alacrity.
• Necromancer: Reaper is an already strong elite spec. These changes diversify and improve the core necromancer, but at the risk of over-tuning the reaper.
• Ranger: Polish and buffs, but the same pet system makes customization difficult.
• Thief: Running out of initiative is now much harder than the sneeze it was previously.
• Warrior: Rifle buffs are good, but losing piercing on auto-attack reduces the weapon’s overall usefulness outside of 1v1 or 1v2 situations. Previously, skillful play would allow for a more rewarding experience; this is diminished.

GUILDS

• Guild halls: some upgrades are unrealistic objectives for smaller guilds.
• Guild halls: lack of ambiance/lack of variety causes stagnation in interest.
• Guild halls: too many “required” upgrades before selective upgrades become available. Punishing for smaller guilds.
• As someone with grandfathered upgrade statue decorations, this is a poor way to handle these. Lack of creative selection when only one of each exists.
• No way to disable command tag and simultaneously lead a squad. This causes unnecessary map pollution and draws unwary players into guild activities they may not have real interest in (e.g. seeking events and finding a guild rush in progress).

Behellagh.1468:

They couldn’t keep all the plates spinning while hot fixing, no pun intended, so they got to bring it all down.

Isn’t this a first? I can’t remember when the game was totally offline.

As far as I can recall this is the first time that the game has ever actually been DOWN for more than 5 minutes at a time, and 5 is being generous.

sirsquishy.8531:

This turns much into an ERP system outage, if the ERP is down the business makes no money.

ERP = Exotic RolePlay

I am not sure if Ancient Karka Shell sexy time will help the situation, but it might make some money if we spin it the right way.

Hey, I missed this when it was originally available, and I’ve waited for the greater part of a year now for it to come back. All I need to finish my raven shaman’s ensemble is the mini raven from this.

1. Is this item coming back in the future?

2. If not, is there any plan to release the mini raven separately?

I’m not saying that he’s impossible to beat. I’m saying that he’s unreasonably challenging due to his poor encounter design. He is more difficult to defeat than Poyaqui is.

The big issue is that the skills are character-bound, not account-bound, and that Adnul is such a waste of time. I have no incentive to unlock the skills on my other characters, which reduces the amount of access I have to playing Belcher’s Bluff.

This is a problem not because I’m inconvenienced, but because the circumstances of his encounter are so dependent on luck that the majority of factors pertaining to success or failure vs him are out of my control. It’s a problem because he’s a poorly designed element of the game, has been for 3+ years, and has seen attention only to remove the exploits people used to get around him rather than just face him.

Players have not expressed such an outstanding desire to exploit or work around any of the other masters (or really any other part of the game), only with Adnul. That’s just poor.

Re: devaluing peoples’ titles.

What player 1 does has nothing to do with what player 2 does. This is an online game based on cooperation. “Haves” and “Have-Nots” should not exist here. This isn’t like crafting a legendary weapon or getting a commander tag: both of those are directly proportionate to the amount of effort the player puts into preparing and grinding.

Adnul’s preparations list is highlighted by the phrase, “Be very lucky.” Everything else isn’t even secondary, it’s tertiary. #1 and #2 on the list are, “Hope RNGesus loves you.”

tl;dr
don’t care about 1% of players being sad that more players have their “Special Snowflake” swag

do care about the game being designed well and functioning properly

Adnul Irongut changes. Seriously the worst designed non-challenge in the game.

Players can challenge the Masters in any order they want. Imagine how many players have given up on this minigame outright because they randomly challenged this guy first.

Luck isn’t a fun mechanic, even for a minigame. We can’t play against Poyaqui until we defeat Adnul Irongut. He is a content gate. His difficulty is blocking the progression of player-driven content. Why does he have so much health? Why is he so random? Why is his ability so spammed?

Such a pain in the kitten . At one point players were willingly and literally cheating to get around him. That should raise some red flags in the design corner. I don’t really care how minor this content is, it’s also a minor fix.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Cone vs circle is a non issue.

If your gud

I’m glad we’ve reached the point in this conversation where we’re all contributing useful feedback.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Ghotistyx.6942:

Guardian shield isn’t terrible. Shield 4 has 25-30% prot uptime and a 1.0 power coefficient on a 600u cone. If you want more damage, add more power. If you still want more damage, use a weapon built for damage instead of support.

Shield 5 gives a control effect, aoe projectile defense, and possibly heals on a reasonable cooldown. Admittedly it has some bugs and QoL changes to work through, but the design itself is solid.

I mean, it’s not like people are complaining that GS doesn’t give enough Prot, instead they switch to a weapon or set up that gives them what they need.

If they want the guardian to be a Frontline support shield 4 shouldn’t be a frontal cone it should be a circular PBAoE (not even, it’d be fine if it was just the protection going in a circle). The #5 needs to not be channeled for the whole duration or at the very least follow the guard during the channel to compete with SoA and WoR, and the fact that the guardian becomes a target dummy for melee and non projectiles for the full duration of the skill kills it.

He’s gotta be the only guy in the world that doesn’t understand this. Thank you.

Staff.

Quarterstaff.

Monk’s Outfit is a hint.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Each offhand has a skill that has 1200+ range, and one that’s 600 or less.

Focus 4, Torch 4, Shield 5 all work at 1200 range
Focus 5 is 240, Torch 5 is 450, Shield 4 is 600.

Is the positioning maybe slightly harder? Maybe, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to land a 600u cone on either the enemy, allies, or both (dodge notwithstanding). Watching any form of content shows plenty of opportunity to hit allies with your prot or absorb some projectiles. If you’re not in position to assist when you’d like, honestly it’s your fault, not the skills fault. You either over extended, or got out maneuvered and out played (and I’m not taking about you specific, but rather you generic).

I mean, I’m not going to say no to buffs, but people are acting like shield is unusable, and won’t ever be usable unless x, y, and z are changed.

I’m just going to post the end of my last post again because you either misread what I posted, or decided to completely ignore all but a small portion of what I had to say, as what you’ve posted pretty much has nothing to do with my reply.

Is it hard? No, but it is an inherent disadvantage to using the skill that is not offset by either the friendly benefits nor the damage of the skill in question. The input is greater than the output. In a balanced world, every ability’s skill input should be equivalent with its reward output.

When the skill input required to have the shield function correctly is higher than the skill input required to have the focus and torch function correctly, and when the overall power threshold for the shield is significantly lower than the torch and the focus, then the shield is broken.

This is a simple fact.

To summarize, again:

Compared to the options provided by torch and focus, and compared to the ease of use provided by torch and focus, the shield requires too much for too little reward.

The shield is not powerful enough, nor does it provide enough, to compensate for the additional checklist of requirements needed to make shield function.

Ghotistyx.6942:

600u is shout range. Any instance shouts are useful, SoJ is applicable. SoA works at any range. Shield is a defensive tool, not an offensive one. Imagine you or a near ally getting focused by two LB Rangers. Torch and focus won’t save you, and trying to burst won’t fix this problem. Ultimately, if you’re in a situation where shield cannot help you and you cannot change the situation, you haven’t prepared enough and have been outplayed. Every weapon, build, profession, etc has a counter as well as a niche. It’s up to you to plan our improvise around them by using the tools given to you.

Also, just so that no one forgets, in a highly mobile combat system such as this, you can always position the enemy between yourself and your allies in order to hit with the cone. Even 90° works, you don’t all have to stack on the same side.

600u is shout range, but shouts work in a 360 degree radius around you. This isn’t even remotely comparable. I don’t need to physically reposition my character’s face in order to support allies, I just need to get decently close. This is like stating that a slice of cake has as many calories as the entire cake does simply because both are representative of cake.

Without delving into extremely specialized hypotheticals, in short, the shield is a subpar defensive weapon when compared to even the torch.

The entire point of my argument is the reality that 600u is not enough space to reliably make use of shield #4’s cone effect as you’re a melee combatant and your allies are, in most scenarios, going to be outside of that range. You can’t just get close and hit a button like shouts, you need to manually position yourself on top of getting close.

Is it hard? No, but it is an inherent disadvantage to using the skill that is not offset by either the friendly benefits nor the damage of the skill in question. The input is greater than the output. In a balanced world, every ability’s skill input should be equivalent with its reward output.

When the skill input required to have the shield function correctly is higher than the skill input required to have the focus and torch function correctly, and when the overall power threshold for the shield is significantly lower than the torch and the focus, then the shield is broken.

This is a simple fact.

aophts.9862:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Kerithlan.1659:

I generally just hit it on cooldown. There is no situation in which swiftness and aegis are bad, except maybe if idiots are under the effects of torment and don’t know how it works.

This is wrong, the situation where Aegis is terrible is when you are stealth skipping and the guardian is using Shattered aegis. any one who steps into an aoe or gets hit by mistake gets revealed and causes anyone else caught in the crossfire to get revealed as well. Ive seen it happen in CM. It’s incredibly rare but I wanted to show you that there is an exception.

If you are playing with a guardian using shattered aegis, you should kick him from the group.

This. Shattered Aegis isn’t a particularly useful trait, especially in dungeons. I suppose I can see it working in organized WvW, but if you’re pugging or fighting dungeon bosses, it’s kind of bad.

Retreat is simply more generic/useful. You can use it with any build.

Move faster, check.
Block and proc, check.
Heal from up to 10 boons with AH, check.

I generally just hit it on cooldown. There is no situation in which swiftness and aegis are bad, except maybe if idiots are under the effects of torment and don’t know how it works.

tl;dr

It pulses twice a second up to 9 pulses. Virtue of Justice rapidly procs during this time, giving burning to many targets.

Not tl;dr but still “in short”

I think the skill should be reworked to not just remove conditions on each pulse, but to heal in a small area around the cleansed target for each condition removed. Alternatively, have it apply burning around the target if a condition is removed.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Guardian shield isn’t terrible. Shield 4 has 25-30% prot uptime and a 1.0 power coefficient on a 600u cone. If you want more damage, add more power. If you still want more damage, use a weapon built for damage instead of support.

Shield 5 gives a control effect, aoe projectile defense, and possibly heals on a reasonable cooldown. Admittedly it has some bugs and QoL changes to work through, but the design itself is solid.

I mean, it’s not like people are complaining that GS doesn’t give enough Prot, instead they switch to a weapon or set up that gives them what they need.

The problem is that it’s a 600u cone on a profession that is predominantly in melee range. The bonus effect is never going to work as its designers intended, and its damage is too low due to the presence of such a bonus effect.

In a vacuum it’s balanced. We don’t play in a vacuum.

Imagine a battlefield wherein your front line (guardians mostly play there) needs to jump to burst someone charging your back line. With a shield, it’s incredibly difficult for the guardian to achieve this in a way that is intuitive to normal play.

The guardian must either dedicate their main hand to sword, their offhand to greatsword, or a utility slot in order to teleport or otherwise close the gap. This is again okay in a vacuum, but consider that without any way to hit for 900u or more without a scepter main hand or swapping to a 2h weapon, the guardian (more than any other profession) lacks the capability to really affect distant battles.

Also consider that any situation in which moving in closer than 600u would be guaranteed suicide (such as a solo burst in a team fight, or moving out of range of a PvE effect such as Oola’s golems, etc) forces the guardian to switch weapons or to carry a scepter main hand.

None of these situations are an issue if the guardian carries a focus or a torch, as both of the other offhand options are not limited by such range issues. On top of that, each of the other offhand weapons is better at providing damage, support, and utility than the shield is.

I understand that your argument is, “If the shield isn’t the right weapon for the situation, then why are you using it?”

The problem is that, realistically, the shield is never the right weapon for the situation, and that is the problem.

They don’t have a symbol for the same reason shield, torch, and focus don’t have symbols: not every weapon needs a symbol. If every weapon did have a symbol, then more guardians would be choosing from the FOUR traits that buff symbols.

The problem is that it isn’t underrated utility, and that both torch and focus are better weapon options for a support guardian.

Blasting something out of a combo field, regardless of the effect, isn’t that great. Your knockback doesn’t do damage, so there’s no breaking of stealth. You now just have a thief in a different location that can potentially get behind you anyway.

Dropping a symbol or throwing out the ol’ snare chains with greatsword will damage the thief, breaking their stealth. This also allows you to snag them next to you and burst them down.

Both of those scenarios are infinitely better than mildly inconveniencing a thief by denying them one of their three stealth options for a minute or so. A thief can easily prolong a fight or escape if they need to, and while you’re not exactly slow, you’re still not going to catch a thief that actively wants to flee unless you snare them.

It’s not underrated, it’s just not good.

Edit: basically what I’m saying is that by taking the shield, you are actively choosing to have a #4 skill that doesn’t work as well as it should, a #5 skill with a bugged duration and no damage, and the mindset that less damage and less ranged harassment options are better for support and skirmishing.

Yes, the directional cone of shield #4 and its 600 range mean less on a messy, disorganized, skirmishy battlefield. Yes, this makes shield #4 more useful in those situations.

Yes, the knockback of shield #5 can pop people out of healing and utility fields. Yes, you can benefit from a group-wide heal if projectiles aren’t an issue.

However, shield #5 immobilizes you, while the other offhands do not. Shield #5 also deals no damage, while the other offhands do.

Compare the utility of torch #5 and shield #5.

Torch #5 cleanses conditions, pulses enough to apply burning, damages enemies, allows you to walk around, has a shorter cooldown, and most importantly has a great damage coefficient. Shield #5 has a melee-range knockback, creates a light field, heals allies with a weak coefficient, only effects 5 enemies/allies, has a longer cooldown, and more.

Remember that torch #5 hits up to 3 targets with each pulse, and that it pulses a whopping 9 times in just 4.5 seconds — that’s two pulses a second. You can direct that cone wherever you want to hit the most allies/enemies. You’re not limited to just five targets. This in and of itself is far superior to the simple knockback/heal of shield #5.

Additionally, torch #4 far outclasses shield #4 for the skirmish/harassment game for much of the same reasons. Torch #4 burns nearby foes when activated, it can be activated to throw burning and damage (with good coefficients) up to 1200 range, it has a shorter cooldown than shield #4, basically the short of it is that it is better at harassing both near and distant foes that could threaten you.

Shield #4 and shield #5 have very little trait synergy. Torch #4 and #5 can be traited and improved.

I mean I could keep going, but in every situation the torch is a better support/utility weapon than the shield can ever be in its current form. The focus is the best for such a role, but the torch far outclasses the shield.

Most importantly though, let’s stop pretending that support doesn’t include debuffing your opponent. That extra burning from torch is an extra effect that your opponent now needs to mitigate/account for, and can help push the fight slightly more into your allies’ favor. Even if it’s as simple as a dodge roll to remove it, it’s still a situation where someone is forced to use a dodge roll at a time that might not be otherwise convenient.

Support is more than just mitigating damage — it’s also controlling the field, debuffing and crippling enemies, and helping to burst down opponents’ numbers to give you the man advantage. If you cannot do at least two of those three on top of healing and buffing, you’re dead weight.

Shield is just clunky and unusable. This is coming from someone who loves the shield and uses it knowing that it is far inferior to the other options.

That’s frankly not justifiable enough of a reason when you sacrifice 1 damaging ability and 1 usable ability to do so.

Yes you could blast them out with a shield, but you could also just drop a symbol in there or throw an aoe out there and hit ’em that way, both of which can be done with a hammer or greatsword.

It’s just not worth switching to a 1h weapon in pvp unless your offhand is torch (for burning) or focus (for anything else).

Look, I use mace/shield despite knowing that mace/focus is much better for what I want to be doing. Why would I do that?

It’s simple: my guardian also roleplays as a Seraph, and every single member of the Seraph (including Logan) uses a shield, not a focus. I want my character to feel like she can fit into the world she’s in, not just use whatever equipment is most efficient at any given time.

Now, having said that, I also need to acknowledge that the guardian shield is significantly ineffective when compared to other options available to the guardian.

So what’s wrong with the shield?

Shield of Judgment: this ability basically acts as a short-range, positional cone. It deals a decent amount of damage, applies protection to those hit by it, and has a range of 600. It takes 0.5 seconds to cast on a 20 second cooldown. What’s the problem?

Well for starters, it deals poor damage for its range. Hitting 5 targets at a range of 600, it’s comparable to the staff’s auto attack, #1 Wave of Wrath. Wave of Wrath deals 60% of the damage that Shield of Judgment dishes out, but can be used more than once every 16 seconds.

The whole purpose, apparently, is to use the shield with a close range weapon. You then pivot to face the rest of your team, and can buff them with a low-moderate duration protection and deal some extra damage to help clear off whatever might be smashing them.

The problem is that the range is only 600 units, while most characters that aren’t likewise sitting with you on the monster’s face are going to be 900+ units away. In fact, most of them are likely to be 1200 units away. This difference in range makes it difficult to use Shield of Judgment properly — the guardian needs to stop dealing damage to reposition, use Shield of Judgment, and then reposition once more.

So we’ve established that Shield of Justice 1. has an awkward range for its intended usage 2. does not hit very hard compared to other support weapon options.

How do we fix this?

In my opinion, it needs to be reworked. We can make it into a new symbol, then: Symbol of Shielding.

This hypothetical ability would look as such:
25s cooldown (min 20s with trait), 1.25s cast time
Pulses 4 times over 4 seconds
Applies 1 second of Aegis per pulse
Applies 1 second of Resistance per pulse
Applies 1 second of Protection per pulse
Deals 392 (2.5 coefficient) damage
Up to 5 targets
Radius: 180
Light field

This would allow the guardian an opportunity to help fellow front-liners hold their position for a short amount of time, and with Aegis being peeled on-hit it wouldn’t make the group invincible. It’d also be more powerful than the hammer auto-attack, synergize with a ton of other guardian traits and skills, and overall be much more effective than it currently is.

Its power is low enough to not be broken by Symbolic Avenger or Symbolic Power, its size and target cap is consistent with other abilities, its casting time is consistent with other free-cast symbols, and its duration is enough that it can’t be relied upon to either invalidate fights or break pvp encounters. Traited, it has a 20% uptime, which is consistent with or lower than other symbols.

In addition, it’s enough to find use in certain dungeon and fractal situations without overtly encouraging the dreaded stack. It stands on its own in an organized play setup where each player adopts a more specific role, but also has use in the current berserker meta — this gives it both immediate and long-term usage options.

Shield of Absorption: this one is simple, just make it a blast finisher instead of a combo field, have it deal a bit of damage, and you’ve pretty much got it. Give it a bit of a light bomb animation to go with the knockback/flavor the blast finisher.

This changes it from usually-a-two-tap-heal into a functional blast finisher with utility. There’s nothing wrong with it having its current bugged/shorter duration if it’s a blast finisher, a heal, a damaging knockback, and a projectile-absorption tech.

In fact, I’d argue that you could even just remove the optional heal and only have it heal if it lasts its full duration, similar to other skills such as Shield of Wrath, Protector’s Strike, etc.

In my opinion, the big problem with shield is Shield of Judgment. It does a lot of little nice things all in one, but overall is a clunky and bad skill. It doesn’t synergize well with basically any of the guardian’s gameplay.

As it stands right now, shield is worse than torch for most applications. At least the torch has a powerful condition to spam, can cleanse the guardian of conditions, and has a 1200 range ability for pulling/skirmishing.

I found a working solution for the moment: I installed Hotspot Shield (a virtual private network software), launched the installer, and it worked immediately. Pinging confirmed that it had connected me to a different DNS.

Apparently there are no problems with the servers in San Jose, but six save us if the Chicago hub work as it should.

I’m not putting this down as a solution as it is not: it’s a work-around.

There is now no local.dat file stored on my computer.
Edit: Finally found it when looking through APPDATA on a whim. Will report back with an update.

Deleting local.dat successfully allowed the client to redownload the local.dat file in its entirety with no problems, but then towards the end encountered the “Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…” dialogue.

I’m going to leave it open and see where it goes from here… everything was looking so positive until now. Disappointing. If this is what you call a backup system, it’s incredibly unhelpful: provides no information to the end user, for starters.

As someone that mains a staff elementalist, this makes it extremely difficult to land Static Field in creative and skilled ways. I really do not like having to guess where I think the perimeter of the field will be every time I go to cast it.

I would go so far as to say that this provides some players with an unfair advantage over me.

Hey guys,

Whenever I launch the game client, it immediately goes to 0kb/sec and freezes there. Sometimes it’ll start at around 30kb/sec and start to peter off, but it hasn’t collected more than 300kb of total downloaded data yet.

To clarify, this is not at the phase where the patch is being downloaded. There’s no “1 file remaining,” as I’m not even at the point where the launcher allows me to log in. It’s the step right before that.

This has moved beyond an annoyance, and beyond an inconvenience, and is now entering the realm of torment. I’ve spent a solid 8 hours researching this over the past four days, and have very few conclusive answers.

I have not been able to reach the login interface since Tuesday night. I work from (adjusted for server time) 5:30am until 4pm and get to bed around 8pm every night, Monday through Friday (plus 5:30am until 2pm on Saturdays), and have very limited time to play the game. The fact that I have spent 8 hours out of my 20 free hours is infuriating, and I am at the point where I am not sure why I’m bothering.

Like many others with this problem, I am located in the midwest (northwest Chicago suburbs). I have tried adding instructions to my system32 hosts file, I have tried repairing the launcher, I have tried instructing the launcher to use an EU download server, I have tried everything except for deleting my local.dat file. None of the solutions offered work, but I did find something interesting.

There is now no local.dat file stored on my computer.
Edit: Finally found it when looking through APPDATA on a whim. Will report back with an update.

I just recently installed the game on my girlfriend’s laptop, and during that process she encountered this error while trying to install. I know for certain that as of two weeks ago I had a local.dat file because one of the tips for getting around it for installations was to copy/paste the file to the target PC.

What bothers me the most about this is that I was able to play late on Tuesday night, and spent about 30 minutes blasting through the personal story in order to avoid the new build releases. As soon as I completed The Mystery Cave and watched the cinematic, the game kicked me out of the instance and exited to patch for the new build. I’m more agitated about this than normal because I wasn’t even exiting the game on my own terms, and still have yet to claim my rewards for finishing the personal story.

I’m extremely hesitant to reinstall the game (as it took waking up at 2am, launching for install, and leaving it open overnight to get it to work before), but need to find a solution to this. It’s ridiculous, it’s directly a result of the new build throwing me to the curb, and it has not only denied but interjected itself into my play experience.

I’m begging for advice at this point, as if I do not get it working tonight it will likely be another week before I am able to log in again.

Here’s the real solution:

Get rid of party kicks.

Sounds radical but solves the problem. I’m positive that someone could come up with a solution to solve the handful of new problems that crop up from this (idling, disconnecting, etc).

The fact of the matter is that under Asuran law she answers to the council, not to the pact.

Taimi is a minor and a student under the protection and care of the College of Synergetics. Councillor Phlunt is a high ranking official in Asuran society who agrees to assist Taimi under the stipulation that a recently-demonstrated, volatile, dangerous device that she has created be turned over to the College of Synergetics for study/research/improvement.

Think of it this way.

Let’s say that you are friends with a twelve year old in the real world. This friend is very smart for her age, but is sickly and spends a lot of time in the hospital. Despite this, she is incredibly intelligent.

This friend of yours somehow gets her hands on hospital materials and supplies, and tinkers about in her spare time until she creates a device that can potentially cure let’s say ebola. Now let’s say that the device has a 12% chance to mutate ebola into an extremely virulent strain rather than curing it, causing more damage.

Would you, in good faith, allow your friend to cling onto this device simply because she devised it; or in the interest of the greater good, allow the CDC to snatch it up for it to be improved upon by experts in the field, potentially creating a permanent cure?

Taimi is a child who has a solid idea regarding what it is she’s doing, but no reasonable way to actually understand the ramifications of her work, let alone the potential consequences.

She acted like a child because, shock, she’s a child. I was angry at her the entire time she moaned and furious when she ran away. Rather than being proud of her work and its role in saving the world, she decided that if she couldn’t have it then no one could. That’s just immature, which again is her character.

Don’t defend that behavior. I know I’m glad that my character didn’t. Taimi needs to grow up outside of Asuran society and learn lessons like this so that she can eventually make that self-righteous mess of a society better as an adult.

spoj.9672:

If you play games for visuals etc you are probably better off watching films. Just saying. I dont think anyone buys games purely for visuals. Gameplay is important. And that usually involves some form of challenge to make you interact with the game. Obviously they are nice additions and make good games better, but the reason way play games is to play something interactive. If its not challenging then that interaction is somewhat numbed and the play experience becomes dull very quickly. You need challenge to increase the longevity of a game.

This is why most of us dungeon runners are now thinking of moving away from the game. With the announced no work being done on new dungeon content. The game looks like it is wasting its combat system and new content with high replayability is not a priority for anet. The games longevity will suffer in the longterm if this isnt revised. Unfortunately its too late for most of us. Which is a shame because the combat system is amazing and really suits challenging combat perfectly.

Case in point re: visuals. I don’t care how epic an encounter looks, I care about how epic it feels. Most players do.

I liked this part of the story. At first I was a bit confused and frustrated by the fight, but the initial shock of a sudden, challenging encounter spurned me on. Yes, it was foreshadowed earlier, and as a Sylvari I enjoyed having everything in my personal story up until this point tie together so nicely.

However, I’m not entirely sold that this is the right way to go about things. I enjoy the continuity, and I enjoy the challenge, but the problem is that the mechanics of the fight are thrust upon the player suddenly.

They’re not difficult once overcome, but the problem is that this is meant to be a story telling device. It’s not a dungeon encounter. This isn’t something that people are going into expecting to die a few times figuring out how something works, or going into expecting to spend a good 10 minutes stalling in order to feel out a fight before really diving in.

It’s the same problem that players had at the game’s launch. ArenaNet over-tuned the tutorial boss fights to the extent that new players were spending much of the fight on their back or simply in a defeated state, and that isn’t exactly the best way to be introduced to a new game.

What we’re seeing here is a well-designed mini boss that’s been poorly placed into the world. If we had seen some of these mechanics in recent fights (such as by battling Mordrem Drakes with a forward cone attack, or something similar to the claw attacks and stomps), then combining them all together into this encounter would have made much more sense to the average player.

Most of the issue here is the sudden learning curve not matching player expectations going into the instance. I’m sure that most players expected to enter combat to some extent, and it’s true that some of the Mordrem mechanics such as the wolves and vines were recycled, but it’s the introduction of the dragon boss itself that muddies things.

I personally enjoyed it, but I definitely understand why other players might not have had the best of times.

Krosslite.1950:

You had too much going on and no way to confront all the baddies at one time. died at least 25 times and even nearly became naked due to destroyed armor.

It was difficult for me until I figured out the mechanics.

I play a staff elementalist so admittedly I have an easier time surviving and kiting than others might, but here’s some advice for others in your position.

1. Stay out of the middle of the chamber as much as possible. This is where the majority of the AoE effects come from.

2. The vines phase becomes problematic about the second or third time in when the Mordrem wolves begin popping up. For this part, it’s easier to hug the wall near the Ventari Tablet or to fight behind the Avatar of the Pale Tree so that there’s less chance of being flanked. It should make dodging vine juice easier to some extent as well.

3. Try to bring a ranged weapon option along if possible. It’ll make finishing off the vines so much easier in between dodging the dragon’s area attacks.

4. This one might sound odd, but if you’re low on health don’t be afraid to die. Restarting from a checkpoint dumps you right back into the chamber, usually within a couple of feet of one of the vines. If you’re having trouble, try jumping through one of the holes out of the chamber (to help prevent armor damage), and respawn back inside.

I dropped a couple of times at the start of the encounter, but once I figured out positioning it became a lot easier.

Number 3 is just an extra step to differentiate the command icon from the squad. When the tag is active, it allows you to access squad chat, but it also puts your icon onto the field for others to see.

If you need access to a squad chat but need to be discrete/want pugs to follow a different commander, then having your pin on the field is a detriment and counter to the intended design of the commander as a way to organically organize players.

Allowing players the option to form a squad and open up a chat without toggling the tag on would allow for this. It’d also allow players to see other command badges while still participating in your squad, in the event that multiple commanders are needed.

I don’t understand why town clothes were removed instead of redesigned, personally.

Why not reinvent costume brawl?

I’ve been enamored by squads pretty much since I came to realize their existence shortly after launch. The concept of the squad and its intended use feels very right to me; it fills a need that otherwise leaves players wanting.

The problem is that squads are almost ghost entities within the world of Tyria. Even though there’s information about creating or leaving squads in the party interface, they’re not really highlighted or explained. They’re a design afterthought, and as such many players aren’t even aware that they exist.

So before we get too deep into how I feel that the squad can be improved, let’s have a small primer on what a squad is, how you can join one, and how they can be used.

While the concept of a squad is great on paper, in practice they’re not very useful. The commander is unable to control who enters or leaves the squad, and other squad members have no access to information regarding who else is in the squad or even where those people might be on the map.

I feel as though this is the biggest and most limiting factor to the usefulness of a squad — the whole idea is to get players working together, but the mechanics don’t really support that beyond a bit of yellow chat text.

I think that the biggest way to tackle this challenge is to change how the squad works on a base level. While I still believe its creation should be limited to commanders, I think that the lack of control over its members hurts it. I also don’t believe that a commander should have to pop their icon in order to host a squad chat.

With that in mind, here are my suggestions.

1.
This is the most important change: allow the commander to invite or remove members from his or her squad, and allow them to toggle open recruitment on/off. Also, while in a squad, change the party panel to reflect the names of all players currently in the squad, their level, their profession, and their location.

2.
Allow squad members to visually see each other while on the map. Similar to how the party dots work, utilize yellow dots to represent squad members on the map. This would allow better coordination and location information for things such as WvW defense networks/cap teams, Triple Trouble event information, Orr temple events, and so on.

3.
Allow the squad’s commander to disable his or her icon without disbanding the squad. Tie these two to different toggle effects. Doing so would allow for multiple commanders on a map to retain coordination capabilities without confusing players. This would benefit PvE guild commanders trying to run small events as well as WvW commanders trying to ninja towers/keeps away from the main forces.

To make #3 operate smoothly, simply give commanders three options: display icon to everyone, display icon to squad only, hide icon. Keep this separate from their ability to create or disband a squad.

I’m sure that these are not ground-breaking suggestions and that they have been suggested before, but I wanted to take the opportunity to express in my own words how I feel the squad might be improved. It’s a feature that has the potential to change the way in which GW2 is played (especially in WvW), but is currently ignored to the point that, inventing statistics, I’d say at least 80% of players are unaware of its existence.

I get that randomizing match-ups makes it so that more servers get to be more colors, but I’ve been thinking about it a bit and had a realization.

Weren’t the team colors organized so that the third place/red/weakest/smallest server had an easier time bunkering, while the first place/green/strongest/biggest server had a harder time traveling and defending?

We’re only talking about Eternal Battlegrounds here, sure, but EB is a huge part of WvW. Red gives up Speldan and Anzalia (and to an extent Mendon’s) in exchange for having a huge central defensive core. Blue has great terrain to work with/in/around and several choke points, but has to deal with Durios being under constant attack and Quentin being harassed by Hyleks. Green has a relatively even spread of everything, but has to deal with its structures being pushed way off toward the side and the terrain being low, flat, and watery.

Wouldn’t putting, say, the biggest server in a match-up in the red or blue slot weaken the other servers that much more?

Hickeroar.9734:

Toxic.4320:

Venton, scroll up. It was openly admitted that TC was spawn camping because they were bored last night.

The three other exits argument is not valid. Why? Because TC got equally frustrated when SoR spawncamped. I was there.

I don’t care if someone “admitted” to it. All anyone had to do was take a different exit and stop fighting out front. They would have just gone away on their own out of boredom.

Also: I don’t recall any QQ about SoR spawn camping TC. I don’t even recall it being mentioned. Even if they WERE spawn camping us…I would have just changed direction and headed out a different way, or left the map.

TC has been “spawn camped” by DB, FA, SoR, and plenty of other servers. It’s just part of the game…. Yeah, it’s not classy, and I wouldn’t do it, but crying about it just makes you look silly, because all you have to do is take a different exit from spawn to avoid the campers.

You’re living in a bubble or have selective memory then, that was pretty much the weekly headline. Even I remember it lol.

Avatara.1042:

Kerithlan.1659:

Avatara.1042:

If you combine SoS and CD’s numbers, you get about half TC’s.

Due to this, defend your borderlands as a priority when/where you can, and focus on TC, not each other.

I know that won’t always be an option, but if we ignore the scoreboard and focus on day to day contests it’ll be more fun.

The list I previously posted is a decent starting point — I’d love to see some objective based fights over bragging rights take place.

Or omega golem zerg brawls.

We tend to concentrate on EB. Always have on SoS, for some reason.

Also good, same relative ball of points.

Avatara.1042:

If you combine SoS and CD’s numbers, you get about half TC’s.

Due to this, defend your borderlands as a priority when/where you can, and focus on TC, not each other.

I know that won’t always be an option, but if we ignore the scoreboard and focus on day to day contests it’ll be more fun.

The list I previously posted is a decent starting point — I’d love to see some objective based fights over bragging rights take place.

Or omega golem zerg brawls.

Suggestions to make the week more interesting: Let’s see which server can complete each checklist.

Tarnished Coast:
TCBL: Do not lose either Redbriar Tower or Greenlake Tower. (FAILED)
SoSBL: Put a waypoint in all three keeps. (25%)
CDBL: Put a waypoint in all three keeps. (25%)
EB: Capture and maintain control of both Jerrifer’s Slough and Veloka Slope, fully upgrading each. (0%)

Sea of Sorrows:
TCBL: Capture and maintain control of Askalion Hills, fully upgrading it. (0%)
SoSBL: Do not lose Garrison. (100%)
CDBL: Capture and maintain control of Bluebriar, fully upgrading it. (0%)
EB: Maintain control of Veloka Slope at all costs & Capture Bravost Escarpment. (50%)

Crystal Desert:
TCBL: Capture and maintain control of Ascension Bay, fully upgrading it. (0%)
SoSBL: Capture and maintain control of Bluelake, fully upgrading it. (0%)
CDBL: Do not lose Garrison. (FAILED)
EB: Maintain control of Jerrifer’s Slough at all costs & Capture Langor Gulch. (50%)

The idea is to simply get people fighting in the same areas and to get CD/SoS not worrying too much about each other, while focusing more on TC. Eschew the need for formal alliances by participating in a friendly competition that’ll more or less keep you out of each others’ hair anyway.

Neuromancer.2148:

Here’s a crazy idea for blowout matches: focused 2v1.

Not always realistic.

50 players plus 70 players is still less than one third of 400 players. That’s the type of situation we’re seeing in some tiers this week.

Did some sloppy math for this week’s Crystal Desert vs Yak’s Bend vs Kaineng. I picked this match specifically because it’s close and will best demonstrate the fluctuations between day-to-day scoring.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/40/

Day 1
2013/06/08 19:54 -- CD: 28,620 // YB: 31,830 // KN: 30,020
CD: 0 // YB: 2 // KN: 1

Day 2
2013/06/09 20:00 -- CD: 29,810 // YB: 30,190 // KN: 31,670
CD: 0 // YB: 3 // KN: 3

Day 3
2013/06/10 20:02 -- CD: 29,700 // YB: 29,740 // KN: 31,960
CD: 0 // YB: 4 // KN: 5

Day 4
2013/06/11 19:58 -- CD: 25,160 // YB: 20,720 // KN: 23,700
CD: 2 // YB: 4 // KN: 6

Day 5
2013/06/12 19:54 -- CD: 31,860 // YB: 29,950 // KN: 28,930
CD: 4 // YB: 5 // KN: 6

Day 6
2013/06/13 19:53 -- CD: 29,710 // YB: 31,630 // KN: 27,950
CD: 5 // YB: 7 // KN//: 6

If the match-up were to have ended yesterday, then even though Crystal Desert was the highest overall scoring server at the time, they’d be moving down a tier as they had the lowest series score. Winning big toward the end of the week wouldn’t have been enough to save them if matches had ended yesterday.

Likewise, Yak’s Bend would have won the series and moved up. They placed consistently better each day than either Crystal Desert and Kaineng, and earned the highest series score. Kaineng would remain in the tier, having come in second place.

When the tiers were switched up, color placement would be randomized. Even though Crystal Desert would have moved down, they wouldn’t have been guaranteed to be the green team. Likewise, consistent Kaineng wouldn’t be guaranteed as blue, and Yak’s Bend wouldn’t be guaranteed as red.

--------------

I understand that this system doesn’t correct all of the problems that a simple winner-up-loser-down system creates, but I still feel that this is a good starting point for discussions.

Perhaps using rating to determine seed and resetting the matches every four weeks to match seed placements might work a bit better. For example, let’s say that in our first week we have 1: SoR 2: BG 3: JQ 4: TC 5: DB 6: FA 7: KN 8: MG 9: YB as our first few NA tiers.

In the first match-up, let’s say that BG and JQ double up on SoR, causing them to lose the series. Meanwhile, FA wins the T2 series and DB loses, and YB wins in T3 while MG loses. Let’s say that CD wins in T4 and moves up.

Our next week would then look like BG vs JQ vs FA, SoR vs TC vs YB, and DB vs KN vs CD. A few more weeks of match-ups occur, and we have our new seeding order. Let’s say that the top nine servers by rating now look like: 1: JQ 2: SoR 3: BG 4: DB 5: TC 6: KN 7: FA 8: YB 9: MG.

After our four weeks of series’ match-ups, our seeded matches would then be:
T1: JQ vs SoR vs BG
T2: DB vs TC vs KN
T3: FA vs YB vs MG

We’d be guaranteed a normal/competitive match-up at least once per month, with the opportunity to experience other potentially competitive match-ups. There’d be some bad ones, yes, but as we’d be collecting points for winning day-to-day we’d have a more realistic view of how servers match up.

We’re normally able to determine which server is going to win a match-up by Monday night with the current cumulative/lump-sum system. There’s not a lot of players out there that aren’t in some way demoralized by 30-50k score gaps after the weekend, and playing catch-up isn’t rewarding in that you’re constantly reminded that you’re behind/losing.

This sort of system would help solve those types of issues. Does it need work? Hell yes it does. Discuss.

lunatuna.6823:

I still don’t understand why TC is showing so poorly this week. Yes, they are T2, not T1, but they have the population of a T1 server and have been at the top of T2 for weeks. Per Devon, “servers are matched up by proximity of rating”, and TC certainly qualifies without any RNG component (sorry SoS).

TC has a very slow WvW population growth. We’re mostly PvE due to being the RP server. We’re at the top of T2 mostly because the other T2 servers fell apart or moved up to T1 already. We’re slow and steady like the tortoise — although we’re bigger now than ever before, we’re still no where near the size of JQ, BG or SoR.

As a growing server, Dragonbrand has given us a run for our money. They’re doing just as well in T1 as we’d be doing, and we’re doing just as well in T2 as they’d be doing. Having SoS as almost a non-factor in our match-up means that it’s essentially a 1v1 with SoR vs TC. SoR has much greater numbers, thus SoR wins harder. Compare that to T1 where JQ and BG are both duking it out and where DB still has a chance of fighting back, and you see a much less one-sided match-up.

Even if the same server did win every day, it’d break up stagnation by allowing servers to move more often. It’d also provide match-ups with the potential to be much more competitive, as instead of the weekend more or less deciding the vast majority of matches, we’d see servers that have strong late week presence and weak reset night showings getting an opportunity to win overall.

Right now winning on Fri/Sat/Sun usually gives you enough of a points lead that the rest of the week is invalidated. That seems a bit counter to the overall goal to me. Thursday nights are considered throw away nights in 9/10 match-ups due to this. Moving to a nightly reward system makes every day matter in some way.

Edit:
In situations where one server was winning every day, it’d make playing for second more important and a viable strategy. Gaining more points than the third place server would keep you in the tier and give you an opportunity to win again next week.

Just do it like hockey.

Keep tiers. Each week, there are 7 checkpoints. Whoever is winning after the first 24 hours wins 2 points, second wins 1 point, third wins 0 points. Repeat for each 24 hour session. After the week ends, tally up the points from each of the 7 checkpoints.

Wipe match points every 24 hours, but keep siege and claims. This means that having one or two great days doesn’t decide the entire week, and provides more opportunities for the other servers to steal points throughout the week. It also prevents the problems with daily resets and enforces the idea that a weekly communal effort is required.

Highest cumulative points moves up, lowest cumulative points moves down, regardless of color or seed number. The goal for each server is to get as close to 14 series points as possible by winning day-to-day. In the event of a tie, coin toss/dice roll (determine winner first, then minus them from the pool to determine loser in the event of 3-way ties).

This takes into account population shifts across the entire week, allowing servers to play slightly better match-ups than if it was winner-up-loser-down. It also allows players to better choose when to play and allows servers to better plan when they need to push hard, which breaks down stress and adds a layer of competitiveness.

Edit:
I recognize that this isn’t exactly the same as how hockey handles things, but a seven-series weekly contest with a somewhat Swiss-style tournament system seems a little bit better overall than random rolls, rating and etc imho.

Warlord.9074:

No one is going to transfer off of SOR. Once your soR your SoR 4 lyfe!

Completely missed the point of my post then, was just making examples.

Luvpie.8350:

Kerithlan.1659:

snip

honestly people that are in T1 will always stack so let them fight each other endlessly and complain about matchups being same. They can transfer right now if they want but chose to stay. Even if server transfers open some server like HoD or bottom server will get stacked and move up ranks kittening up matchups for weeks. I hope anet can just adjust the random rolls different for each tier so it’s harder for T1 servers to move down.

You’d be surprised, there’s tons of small guilds, solo players, etc. on every server and in every game. Not everyone that’s currently on SoR is necessarily there right now because they’re on top: they could have started the game there, they could have friends there, they could have transferred specifically to finish mapping, and so on.

Ranks getting screwed up for weeks isn’t really a problem anymore now that the match-ups are being shuffled across tiers: you’re already seeing much larger servers facing much smaller servers, so all this would do is help redistribute people across a larger surface instead of keeping them bubbled into one corner.

If 100 people (let’s say 50-60 people and one medium sized guild) want to skip off of SoR and move somewhere else, the only thing stopping them right now is the transfer fee. Maybe they’re not fully committed to grinding the cash to transfer off… maybe a free transfer option would give them the push they need?

Why might people want to leave? Also many reasons. Maybe they dislike the queues, or perhaps they’ve finished mapping? Maybe they like playing with smaller numbers of people, or enjoy a more intimate environment? Large population servers can’t cater to every player archetype as well as medium sized servers can, so shuffling some people from high population to low population servers helps make more medium servers.

A solution like this helps guys like Peetee have his concerns addressed (giving him fresh match-ups), while also allowing smaller servers (like SoS compared to SoR) gain a bit of equilibrium in the overall picture. It also helps ArenaNet reach their goal of balancing WvW a bit more and getting more population balance in order across the board. It helps to legitimize WvW as a spectator sport with actual brackets, rather than just being a list of which servers have the most populous armies.

Maybe the solution is to offer free transfers off of the top servers to specific lower ranked servers for a while. WoW had a similar system where every so often, to help balance out populations, they’d offer free transfers off of specific servers onto other specific servers.

In this case, you could do something like free transfers off of Sanctum of Rall if the target/destination server is let’s say Devona’s Rest. Have the transfer promotion stay open for a week or two, and then see how it’s altered populations/the overall health of WvW.

Now that guesting is here the only reason server populations really matter is for WvW anyway, so may as well just be honest about that and go all in on working on viable population shuffle mechanisms.

Edit:
Clarification: The goal would be to better help the even distribution of server populations for WvW. If we’re going to keep the random match-ups, then let’s work on making it so that there’s less of a population gap between each tier.

People would still be able to pay to transfer up or down, but the free transfer option would give people incentive to move somewhere that’d improve the overall health of WvW.

Sunspots.9861:

Is [CDS] a new transfer guild to SoR? Welcome to Tier 2, I wonder if we will ever see you in a non forum capacity.

If that’s Caedas, then nope they’ve been on SoR for ages.

salluks.6017:

Points don’t matter

The super server shuffle showdown is a rating reset incognito. Points aren’t going to matter for a month or so while things balance out. At least this way things don’t change too much and people still get to more or less face off with decent competition week to week.