Guild Wars 2

Condi specs are largely in favour now due to less risk associated with using them. It’s not like the zerker meta was back before HoT where conditions were literally pointless outside of solo play. Is that my poison on the boss or another player’s? Power builds are not pointless they just aren’t in favour and to play them successfully at a high lvl requires a lot of risk, skill, and a healthy dose of good luck. While power builds could use small changes, too much will put them right back where we were before with zerk only.

This is actually something that bothers me in many MMORPGS. They are so desperate to give you a generic label because they can’t really say your character name if they want the line VO (and they don’t want too many VO so no racial or class differences) that it just ends up being really impersonal. Add that to the issue with MMORPGs where you have to have all players have (mostly) the same story experience and it becomes even worse.

I don’t really see Kasmeer et al as “my guild” I have one of those. They are more friends or acquaintances and getting called “boss” or “commander” is annoying. Commander worked okish for the original story now it’s just… NPCs don’t really need to be saying “hey boss/commander what are you doing here” when they could cut the title altogether and just sound, well more like they actually know me.

To address the OPs concern about feeling more like an errand boy, I’m afraid that is literally what RPGs are if you distill them down. It’s all fetch and carry and kill ten rats – even if it’s dressed up as something more exciting.

Liked mounts. Concerned some players are getting motion sickness as I tend to be sensitive to it myself. Worried other mounts might make me ill.

Raptor jump doesn’t appear to have the glider opening issue that plagued me at HoT launch, good job.

Please however start testing content at a 400-500ms variable ping. The chef MP was cute but frustrating as my client clearly indicated the ingredients had hit but the server wasn’t registering it at all, or not registering it till the last minute.

Twilight Contingency.4610:

Lady Lozza.9670:

Anet however could do with testing their content on variable pings the size of what Australian players are getting though.

While I do agree with this in terms of approaching things like interrupts and precision dodging (from thief and co.) in sPvP, it isn’t necessary to test for ping in relation to PvE content, as tolerances are made for exceptionally bad/poor reaction times for players with decent ping, this creates a relatively generous margin for Oceanic players to play seriously, so that things like open world bosses ( for things like break bars), fractals and raids can be participated in by competent Oceanic players, rather than the vast majority of under competent Oceanic players.

And while I have absolutely no clue what Anet’s testing into cross-server play entails, I’m surprised that in small instance interaction (Where ping matters most, in things like fractals, raids and sPvP matches), the server isn’t hosted locally, with a push and pull mindset in regards to accessing character data. Where data is stored temporarily on the server where the instance is hosted, and that when a character updates their inventory/skills etc. that a push is made to the character server, then the instance pulls into a temporary local cache/buffer for calculations purposes. This means only a very small infrastructure is actually required to host the relatively few instances that are actually in existence at any point in time, and doesn’t require the setup of a different region.

All that would be required is a way for players to define what region they would prefer to connect to. Or another approach like with many FPSs to date, you will, 9 in 10 games, play a local game, but sometimes there just isn’t anyone to play with so you end up in a NA match.

The game feels quite smooth given I’ve a 400ms + connection most of the time which is why it’s really weird when I hit patches where lag appears to really mess with the game.

JPs for example I will literally hit patches of the puzzle where I will make a jump then keep warping backwards, either to platform before or some weird midpoint (and then fall). I don’t rubberband much at all in the game so doing it on JPs is frustrating.

Sanctum Scramble is another example – I had to be 4s ahead of the timer because the gates take 4s to activate after I passed. Add that to the fact that the movement skills failed to execute 50% of the time I used them and getting bronze for one of my specialisation collections was nearly four hours of frustration. And I wasn’t doing this during a peak play time. I haven’t finished leyline run for the chrono shield for the same reasons.

Mad King’s clock tower I could probably do with my eyes shut but I’ve never got to the end due to 100% guarantee of rubberbanding back through the final jump. 50% of the time I get frozen right at the start of the clock tower because the game doesn’t seem capable of registering I moved at all.

In the recent PoF preview a mastery point required finding items and throwing them at the chef. They need to hit him to count. My client gave every indication that they hit but the server clearly didn’t get the message. Or they hit but don’t count as hit till the last possible second giving me less and less time.

Gliders at the start of HoT were a nightmare, sometimes they’d take ages to open. It made certain paths to content impossible. Then they fixed it.

Bosses can be anticipated if you play the content enough. Getting hit even though you dodge is annoying but you can recover from it. A 4s response when passing through gates is much longer than the 400ms I play at. (On the plus side during the PoF preview I did not have this issue and was actually capable of winning raptor races against many other players.)

While a lot of this content is optional, more and more vistas and MP and HP are being hidden behind content that is difficult to reach because I can spend four hours jumping only to keep consistently rubberbanding in the exact same location. If the rubberbanding was variable it might be pointing to packet loss somewhere on the route however it isn’t. It’s very specific locations and very specific skills.

On top of all of that try to use Battleping or similar to get a better connection and you risk a false positive ban and it takes several months to get your account back.

WoW is the only MMORPG that has local servers (local to ANZ) so saying GW2 is the only large game that doesn’t have them is very misleading. Games like MOBAs and FPSs are a completely different kettle of fish to MMORPGs like WoW, GW2, ESO, SWToR, FFXIV, WS, Rift, etc.

Of all of that list of similar games only WoW has servers in Australia and they were added with WoD – so a recent development. SWToR began by having Australian servers but they also began by locking Australians out of the US servers completely and releasing the game three months after it was released in the US. Those who didn’t use a VPN to get around the purchase restrictions simply cancelled their pre-orders so SWToR is hardly a great example of an MMORPG which put servers in Australia. Unsurprisingly sales for the game here were poor leading to them closing the Australian servers less than six months after they opened.

The problem with GW2 is not that it’s a US server but that US infrastructure is poor. If I can connect to a game server on the east coast of the US at 200-250 ms why is my connection to Texas (which is physically closer) 400-500ms. Many Australian players of any MMORPG have learned to deal with the triple digit ping and we wouldn’t trade the around the clock population for anything – and that’s before you take into consideration many of us have made friends all around the globe and US servers are typically used for international gathering being the mid point between Asia/Oceania and Europe.

Anet however could do with testing their content on variable pings the size of what Australian players are getting though.

I’d like to add my thanks to Anet for these additions too. I worked so hard to get the original faces to try and look decent with dark skin but the weird lip colour always bothered me. Now my necromancer and guardian look much better.

Zaklex.6308:

Adding OPTIONS for those that have issues is a good idea, making changes to solve those problems does nothing but appease those with problems while irritating those that like the status quo, and hopefully you’ve learned from past experiences when making changes as opposed to offering more options(obviously more options is always the better choice but I also understand that sometimes you’re unable to offer options due to potential limitations of the engine or other underlying factors).

Zaklex this isn’t about appeasing people who complain about an irritating problem. This is about a mechanic which is required to complete the story that is physically causing players to vomit. Your statement might have merit if mounts were not compulsory, however from the small amount of what we’ve seen of the preview not using mounts will lock you out of the story and exploration/map completion, and by extension any events/activities that require a mount to get to the location.

I want to keep the raptor as is too. I suffer from motion sickness in many games, the raptor is not causing me issues and there is a very real chance that changes to how it moves may cause me to suffer while fixing the issue for others. However leaving it as is is not acceptable for a compulsory mechanic. I don’t have to do the noble’s shooting gallery adventure in VB – the action cam makes me ill and I avoid it. There are plenty of other MP available from activities I can complete. Mounts are not in the same league as this, they are a necessity.

Anchoku.8142:

… and add feedback from others about your own performance to determine an overall score. .

The feedback portion of your score should be quick, easy, and voluntary.

• People who flame may be singled out for a down-rating by others in your group.
• People who kick others may receive a downgrade by the person kicked
• People who grief, troll, or otherwise give excessive negative feedback and vote opposite to the majority of the group may also be tracked in the servers and receive warnings or suspensions from raiding.
• People with low technical scores may receive reduced rewards and may have to wait longer to be assigned a group sure to win even if one person is less capable.
• People who are polite, knowledgeable, and helpful without kicking or rage-quitting may receive a lot of positive feedback from the group, leading to higher scores and an increased rewards.

Those who make raids unfriendly or are a drag on the group should receive fewer rewards. Internal metrics, combined with negative player feedback, should give lower scores that equate to less loot and slower progression. They can keep practicing to get better, or not, but a scoring system should ensure their reward is appropriately low and the group they are matched with can make up for their deficiencies.

Automated matching can work. This game already does that in WvW and PvP. PvE already does scaling, which is another knob Arenanet has to turn.

Will you lose your static? Yes.
Will you still be able to raid with friends? Maybe, if you all join the queue together.
Will you care if you can still raid successfully? You decide.

I’ve cut the post up so the quote isn’t so long including the items I think are most important to my response.

Firstly I don’t think that statics should be changed at all. As far as I’m concerned if people want to get in a group and do their stuff more power to them, especially if they are keeping their bad attitude from impacting other players. I do however feel that it should be an all or nothing system, not a 8 man static with two pugs for instant.

Secondly I feel player feedback is typically a nightmare scenario. Unless Anet limits how the feedback is given (and even then it’s still likely) players will find a way to abuse it, and abuse other players through it. Hard numbers collected by the server is better and allow for the system to ignore people who are blacklisted so abusive players will never be grouped with those who don’t like their attitude.

Let me explain this with a real world example, many years ago while I was studying my marks were good enough to be recruited as a tutor for students in lower year levels – this included marking papers. Subjects with group components to it had a group feedback section – feedback was anonymous and was used to attribute grades to the individuals in the group. It was very common that I would read things like “xyz was bossy” from three individuals, and then from xyz “other students wouldn’t participate in collation, had to do all the editing myself”.
XYZ may well have been bossy, but it was also likely that the three other group members weren’t pulling their weight. To make things worse it was hard, even impossible to know how much and who was the problem. Even when they started asking students to rate the others in their group. XYZ could get a 1/10 from three members, who rated the others as 10 and XYZ might rate the three members as 1 themselves. The thing with this situation is that it was very common and that both sides can be right. XYZ may have done all the work, and may also have been bossy to the point of being a real pain to work with.

Almost always I had to ignore the “group” component to the marking because I was either getting groups where they all gave each other 10 or groups where one or two members were terrible to work with (usually “bossy”) while those one or two members probably did all the work.

Another point on grouping by metrics though is that players who are continually grouped with low performing players may get stuck in that band, even if they themselves are improving. This is quite common in matchmaking metrics already. Players have to improve a lot more when constantly grouped with under performing players to break out of the “under-performing” tier, than they do when grouped with more averagely skilled players.

Matchmaking in my mind isn’t a bad idea but it absolutely does need to be implemented carefully. And for the record, WvW rewards are more about participation than skill. Trust me when I say you max your participation much faster in a zerg that is moving around taking objectives than you do as a roamer killing small groups say as a 3 on one where skill strongly comes into play at least for the outnumbered player.

xarallei.4279:

… And I’m betting they reset daily so you have to do the heart every single time. The joy. I am so looking forward to that. /s

At least at the moment they do reset daily. I don’t mind hearts. Some are better than others, and some are zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The reset issue annoys me because it either forces me to redo hearts or it forces me to race to get map completion so as not to repeat the hearts.

Personally I like meta event maps like Orr, Dry Top, SW, and HoT maps. Stuff I can jump into whenever – I think though they need to fix the reward pacing more so that jumping in and out whenever isn’t as damaging. HoT maps right now are a scramble at 10 mins to the start of the main meta with nothing happening before hand because the main event is so much more rewarding.

xarallei.4279:

I don’t agree with this. Not the idea of Anet building in a dps meter. That’s actually not a bad idea. Especially, if they give us proper combat logs that we can upload to a WorldofLogs type site. But I don’t agree with this whole turn off the meters thing. I like my meter and I should always be able to see my own personal dps at the very least.

My point regarding the on off switch was specifically aimed at other player dps in a group. Either everyone sees everyone meters or no one sees anything but their own (if they want). That way no one can say “oh you aren’t pulling your weight” because the whole group has access to everyone’s numbers or they don’t have anything but their own.

I don’t personally agree with dps meters. However I understand why they are used. The fact that Anet has now said “go right ahead” indicates to me that they feel they are needed, therefore they ought to be providing them.

Gamers will always find a way of discriminating against other players. However with a tool everyone has access too there is no way of players hiding their own inefficiencies when they start to accuse others of not playing properly. Right now in order to counter these types of issues players have to go out of their way to download a tool that might be currently approved (but could change to being a bannable offense in the future) and might, depending on the tool and site downloaded from, contain malware. Unsurprisingly there are probably many players who would simply give this a miss. Hence my view that if Anet wants dps meters to be ok they need to be providing them.

Nightrous.6732:

…Beginer mode raids would be good for casuals to learn the mechanics and decide if raiding is something that interests them to skill up at. I have killed only one boss (to open raid masteries) but i would love casual raiding when the mood stikes me. Then i would maybe see the value of meta if i wanted to do intermediate mode raids.

This is the thing though, people in MMOs (not just GW2) lean on dps meters because of the general lack of feedback the game gives as to what is going wrong with group play. In solo instances it’s all you, in groups though it can be hard to tell where the issue is.

However the use of dps meters to kick someone who presumably has neither agreed to have their dps taken nor aware of what the meter was actually reading is problematic. For all the OP knows the group was after someone who was the top 0.1% because the rest of the group wasn’t quite up to scratch either. Here in lies the trouble. If Anet wants to allow the use of dps meters they really ought to build them into the game outright. Then allow switches in pugs that either the whole group gets the dps meter or no one does.

So long as there are many more MP than are needed to max out masteries, I don’t care if some are hidden behind adventures which I will never do.

I’m not happy specialisation weapons appear to require adventures again though. Sanctum Scramble was nearly the end of me, needing to be 4s ahead of the timer because that’s how long the gates were taking to register I’d passed through them.

Honestly I felt this was a bit much. Before anyone yells omg no it needs to be harder, I had to do this multiple times because throwing the ingredient apparently didn’t hit – despite my PC giving me all the visual signs that they did. My only guess at this point is lag, Anet needs to test some of this on an artificially inflated and fluctuating connection at 400-500ms. Unlike many games GW2 is super responsive even on clients connecting internationally but every now and then you get to event/activity where everything seems to work but the flag isn’t hit on the server side, leading to failure on failure and just getting frustrating. (Like the three hours I spent on sanctum scramble because I needed to be 4s ahead of the timer because that’s how long the gates were taking to activate – and I was playing in non US peak a fair while after HoT launch.)

Unless they can fix this issue a better way of doing it would be a smaller (few ingredients) MP, then an adventure that others can enjoy and challenge themselves on.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’d like to ask how many people have had similar issues with the Bobblehead mode, if they have. Sounds like it might be similar; not motion sickness, but something else that’s kind of odd…

Now days they are calling it VR sickness or simulation sickness (not simulator sickness which is different again). The long and short of it really though is that it has the same causes as motion sickness and is seen as a sub set thereof. Basically multiple senses are feeding the brain conflicting information and the brain can’t handle it. It can often feel more nebulous than motion sickness because people will get sick from one game but not another similar game, making the cause hard to pin down, however this negates the fact that not everyone suffers motion sickness in the same way – put me on a car, train or bus for more than an hour and I’ll be sick for the rest of the day. But I have never had an issue on aeroplanes or on boats. Plenty of people get seasick but have no issue with other modes of travel, etc.

For the record Bobblehead mode made me very ill very quickly. Didn’t touch the game till friends could confirm it was gone. I also won’t touch action cam in GW2, yet play FPS like Overwatch and TF2 without issues. Did that silly shooting challenge in VB twice trying to get the MP associated with it then gave up because I was going to puke if I tried again.

I’m not suffering issues with the Raptor though I am somewhat worried that the other mounts may be an issue.

EDIT: Right at the start of the game I couldn’t play asura in long sessions because the camera was too close to the ground. While GW2 was better than other games where I avoid small characters completely because they’d make me ill the default camera for asura was still not great. Once the additional camera controls were added I moved the far and near camera to near max and had no issues playing long sessions on an asura character. My FoV is also set about 3/4 of max, and I play with zoom about half of max.

Kalendraf.9521:

I’ve got years of experience riding a horse, and I understand that aspect of the movement.
That’s not the problem. Rather, it’s way the mount seems to get stuck on turns, or can’t pivots sometimes, and it has a hard time turning at all in some spots. It might be related to the terrain issue, and may just be another aspect of it.

The terrain stickiness issue has a very certain feel to me in game. When you hit a patch pretty much all movement doesn’t happen, I’ve found I have to jump (not long jump) a few times with the mount to get through it. It definitely needs work, and it’s not just corners or logs, sometimes it does truly seem random.

Seera.5916:

…especially since they are needed to progress in the story and in the maps.

Frankly this is the heart of the issue right here. It is very clear from the preview that there will in fact be areas of the map that aren’t accessible without a certain mount, the same extends to the story. While I love how the raptor moves and I am not currently suffering from motion illness while mounted and moving around there is no guarantee that I will remain unaffected when I get other mounts. It’s not unreasonable of players to expect tools to deal with this issue if and when it happens.

Take a pill is not a practical solution for everyone. I’ve tried medication for when I travel long distances by bus or car, it didn’t work for me.

OriOri.8724:

The mount seems clunky to me.
- Gets caught on the terrain a lot
- Tends to be overly difficult to turn or pivot
- Jumps are hard to time for me. Either I jump way too soon and don’t cross the gap, or I end up waiting too long and don’t get off the jump. There also seems to be a bug where the jump simply doesn’t activate at all sometimes.
- The opening strike thing (even with mastery 1 & 2 unlocked) doesn’t seem very useful.

I have very little difficulty with the turning, honestly it feels much like riding a horse but then I ride horses and I guess most people do not.

The jumping I’ve had very little issue with too. I feel the jumping is more responsive than gliding was in HoT, and my ping can bounce from 200-500ms regularly and I haven’t missed a jump yet. That may change on launch when the servers are more stressed though.

Terrain stickiness is an issue though that could use some work. Also trying to go though doors or “portals” while mounted is weird – the mount seems to trip the door on the other side so you pretty much instantly get transported outside.

LolinaOtone.4196:

It would be really sad to see this organic and realistic expirience gone, because of a few People with motion sickness. That said, there should be an option for the ones with MS, so they can enjoy the game too. For me even imagening the raptor moving like it does and then coming to an instant stop just makes me a bit nauseous. That wouldn’t be the solution. There should be sliders or options for those affacted, but please don’t break the mounts. It truly felt wonderful.

Lolina, the difficulty with motion sickness or simulation sickness is that the causes and effects are different on all those who suffer from it. Someone who typically wouldn’t have an issue at all can have one, and those who frequently suffer (myself for example) might be fine. Because of this the solution may also not be the same for all sufferers.

xarallei.4279:

I get that people might prefer the realistic movement and not want the instant 180, but the raptor should be able to strafe. It feels unnatural that it’s just completely unable to do this.

More than a few people in this topic have mentioned the lack of strafe. I don’t use strafe myself much as excessive use of strafe can make me ill.

Motion sickness is after all caused by our senses and brain telling us conflicting information about the environment.

Silmar, for what it’s worth I fixed the sluggish camera issue the game had at launch by turning up my dpi on my mouse. I tend to find games with mouse sensitivity settings that the settings respond oddly to what you expect, so I just manage it on my mouse software.

One of the first things to keep in mind is that motion sickness/simulation sickness is not caused by the same problem for everyone. I’ve suffered travel sickness from when I was a child, but only in car and bus travel, I never had air sickness or sea sickness.

While I am more comfortable playing games from a 3rd person view, I’ve played many FPS games without issues – however every now and then I will pick up a game that is essentially barf city for me. The Witness was one such game. I could not play for more than 20 mins without becoming ill, and then one update (that they later reverted due a reported increase in player suffering) that time became 5 mins. The recent game Yonder I also had issues with before switching to a game pad and even then I need to play in limited sessions. I’ve always put it down to how the camera floats in certain games, and it tends to be worse for me in games intended for consoles that have had kb+m controls tacked on.

I’ve done a number of raptor races so far an no sign of illness at all. For those that suffer maybe it would help for the devs to know what games have triggered the illness before in order to help nail down the issue.

Dimos & Ekkue,

For the free upgrade, you pretty much had to go via the in-place upgrade. I tried it the other way and microsoft didn’t like it. On the plus side your windows 7 key is now registered with microsoft as windows 10, on the downside a fresh install will take an hour or two.

If you wish to do a fresh installation the very first thing I would recommend is getting an external drive and coping over files for games that you plan on installing or re-installing. This will limit download sizes and times. In the case of GW and GW2 the important file is the *.dat file. (Also save screenshots and for GW any build profiles.)
For other games you won’t find a nice neat data file that you can just throw on a disk, so you will want pretty much everything. If you have steam games steam has a library export function which works pretty well.

Ensure all personal files are backed up. I recommend multiple copies.

Download the basics that you like to work with and put them on this external disk, as an example I like chrome as a web browser. If you use dropbox or a password program I would be grabbing a copy of the installation file for that as well. Grab all driver files from the manufacturer’s websites and make sure to download the latest stable driver for your GPU. If you are running an AMD card this is not necessarily the latest driver.

After you have everything you want backed up you will want to head to microsoft’s site to grab a file that you can place on a DVD or a flash drive to use for the clean install. Microsoft’s site actually has very good instructions on how to do this. Do not go to another site for this even though it might be the first thing to show up in a google search.

Once you have your DVD or USB boot disk readied do a second, third and forth check of your files. Take another back up if you are paranoid.

(Now because I am paranoid, I usually unplug all my other HD while doing a fresh OS install, just so I don’t accidentally overwrite the wrong disk but it isn’t necessary.)

Now depending on your PC you may need to go into setup (usually F2 or ESC just after boot) to get it to boot from a DVD or USB. After doing this your BIOS will prompt you to save the settings and reboot and then windows will do its thing and install.

Depending on what version of windows you are running the first thing it will want to do after the fresh install is update. This can be fixed by pulling the network cable. If you are running Home and you want automatic updates off you will need to do some work with the group policy editor. I believe this work around works in Home only prior to the anniversary update.

If you run and AMD GPU you may want to think about turning device update off. What this means is that none of your drivers will update via windows you will need to go to the manufacturer’s website for new drivers. If you are used to Windows 7 you will be used to this process already.

Plug in the drive you put driver files on and install your drivers. The drivers will want to reboot a few times during this process. Once that is done, put on the programs like Chrome, drop box etc.

An optional step now is to purge extra applications you don’t like that windows 10 installed. Xbox, Groove, etc. You cannot do this by the programs menu, it has to be done by the powershell. Do not download programs that promise to remove these items. If you don’t know how to use powershell and still want to remove these programs PM me and I’ll give you a hand.

Now is the point to plug your network cable back in. Watch windows update like a hawk if you don’t want to get the anniversary update.

Now is time for the games. You will need to download various launchers fresh. Why? Because these things actually handle the windows registration of the installation. Some games will let you just copy the files over and be fine – however most will not. Use the launchers to start the game download then stop/pause/close. Now you can copy your game files over from your external disk to the folders on your PC (whether it’s the windows HD or not). Once that is done you will need to run the game launcher again to make sure it recognises the files. I would then personally run a repair to make sure all the files are in working order.

You now have a fresh install of windows 10. If you have any questions feel free to PM me. As an aside many SSDs start to show performance issues when less than 15%* of disk space is free. * The exact value depends on many things, but if you aim for 10-15% you should be fine. This applies to more than just the OS disk, it applies to any other SSDs in your machine.

Dimos,
Go to the main windows menu (windows key if you like shortcuts), select settings, select updates & security.

On the right there should be a vertically arranged menu with a number of options – click on recovery. The main window should then show three options: Reset, rollback, advanced start.

Obviously you want rollback. Rollback shouldn’t effect your files however anything important you have worked on in the last week or two (since the update) you should back up just in case. Rollback only works for 30 days after the installation of a new build after that windows purges the files. Something to keep in mind if you need to do this again with a future build.

Ekkue,
The new build wasn’t corrupting files so much as not executing things correctly. Honestly on the surface of it if your dat files are actually being corrupted that sounds more like a bad HD than anything else. Having said that I run a very, very clean version of windows 10. I’ve nuked all the weird apps microsoft automatically includes in windows and I’ve had very few problems with it.

A few things you may want to look at:
1a) Bing includes something calls lavasoft which apparently doesn’t play well with GW2.
1b) Xbox software can be a problem for some people though normally it manifests as network latency rather than graphical issues.
2) Your gpu drivers may be causing the problem. (I run AMD gpus so I know all about problem drivers.)
3) I get the impression from what you have written that you did the in-place upgrade and not a fresh installation. I ran with the in-place upgrade for about a month before little niggles forced me to do a fresh installation of windows 10.
4) The other issue that is possible is that the GPU itself is the problem. Electronics typically start falling apart the warranty ends. They are designed that way. The longer you have a part after the warranty has ended the more likely it is to be causing issues. So if say you’ve had that card for 5 years it may be the card itself is an issue.

Have either of you updated your windows 10 to the anniversary edition (build 1601 I think)? You said the problem started about a week ago which makes it roughly in the same time frame as my issues.

I was having not just exceptionally long load times but also massive graphical corruption. I fixed my issue by rolling back the update to 1511. I know it’s not optimal for security purposes but the new windows build was very unstable on my machine and was resulting in issues in multiple games, not only GW2.

I would definitely be in favour of this. Would be nice and easy if I just typed “food” into search and it took me to my tab labelled “food”, or had all the tabs minimised so I could just select the one that I wanted to look at. Although I’d also be just as happy to have food and other related crafting items (doubloons, dough, spices) in the materials tab.

Unlikely, they haven’t added the pack that came after the Shadow dye and that hasn’t been available for a while – it’s not even available from the black lion chests. I would like this too, as I am in the same boat as you are.

Seera, if someone were to call me c**kii c** and I told support what it meant they could confirm it with an Oxford dictionary, pretty sure Google translate could get through the majority of the rude terms. If I were to call you an “hijo” I wouldn’t be calling you a child.

Colloquially across Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and German there are many ordinary words which can be used in a very offensive manner and in many cases (like hijo) it is not immediately obvious by context that the writer is being offensive. In short in cases were translation isn’t clear it’s going to be no different than it already is and comes down to a he said-she said type argument. “I called them a child”, “No they called me ____”. With an ordinary term like hijo how does support judge it because in the context both hijo and the ruder meaning of it will make perfect sense.

What people are asking for is a QoL fix. It isn’t going to change people using rude terms in other languages only that when I read it I won’t have to read it three times to figure out what rules they have used to transliterate Cyrillic to English characters.

The ability to use Cyrillic in chat would be wonderful. The OP hasn’t really described the full extent of the confusion that tranliterated Russian can cause so I’ll go into a few details.

Russian has 33 letters, 9 are vowels, 2 are semi vowels, and a hard symbol and a soft symbol which can change the sound of a word. Compared to English which has 24 letters, 5 vowels, and potentially one semi-vowel (y). (Yes most of us were taught that y is a consonant but it frequently behaves more as a vowel.) The Russian alphabet is more complicated than the English equivalent so when it comes to transliteration you can expect it to be more messy. Consider the following:

1) The letter ya (backwards capital R) is first person singular in Russian so it means “I”. When typing in English letters some people will write ya and some will write I. (Why type two letters when you can type one?) However the letter which is the equivalent in sound to i, is the primary conjunction for Russian (the word “and” in English). Some write this as &, some as i, some as e, some as ee. It’s entirely possible that someone who chooses to use I for ya may choose to use i for “and”.

2) The letter “s” in English is “c” in Russian, Russian has no equivalent of the English “c” all “k” sounds are the Russian letter “k”. So some people transliterate the Russian “c” as “s” and some do not. To make life more fun some use “c” for the Russian letter “ch”, and some use “s” for the Russian letter “ts”.

3) The funny * looking letter in Russian is typically transliterated as zh. It’s the soft sound you get in azure and pleasure. Sometimes people choose to use the letter “j” since Russians don’t really have any equivalent, sometimes they choose just to use “z”, but Cyrillic has its own equivalent of z.

4) Cyrillic script has two letters that look somewhat like w. The sounds they make are “sh” and “shch”, some people write this in English with the letter “w”, some with “sh”.

5) b and B are two different letters, some people will use the English “v” where appropriate and some will use b for both, and some will use B as a capital surrounded by lowercase letters.

6) the soft sign (myagkii znak) and hard sign (tryodii znak) alter the sound of the word. They both look like a b. Some people use them when transliterating, some don’t. Some who don’t use them alter the spelling of the word and some don’t.

I wanted to keep this somewhat short so I’ll stop there, the simple fact is that transliteration of Russian into English letters is not something taught at schools. There is no formal way of doing it and I’ve seen many, many different forms over the years. When reading Russian written in English it may be necessary to read it multiple times to understand the rules by which the writer has change Cyrillic into English letters and it can be confusing.

This is a QoL matter. It doesn’t need to be available for names just for chat. For those who worry about people insulting them in Cyrillic, if someone reports them with a translation of what was said there is no reason why support can’t check that translation with Google (if necessary) or even employ someone who is bilingual. If they feel this is unrealistic then keep in mind that when someone calls you “hijo” in game, 9/10 they are not calling you a child, they are calling you something a lot ruder. I doubt that support has ever issued a warning for use of the word “hijo”.

TLDR: Transliteration of Russian Cyrillic into English letters is not easy and there is no formal way to do it. Cyrillic should be available for chat.

So far as QoL for the action camera goes here is my list-

1) Allow us to turn the cross-hair off. This is necessary for Norn where (even with the camera at max vertical distance) the cross-hair is in the middle of my character’s head. We don’t really need the cross-hair so give those of us who want to use the action camera to save on RSI the option to turn it off.

2) Allow the assignment of the right mouse button. I’d prefer that this works like a free camera so I can take screenies of my character from the front without exiting action camera mode.

3) I’d like opening UI elements to toggle the action camera off for the duration they are opened and to go back on when the elements are closed. I’m not sure what the default behaviour is supposed to be but I’ve had some weird issues when opening the UI with action camera on.

4) Allow the movement of the camera off centre of the character. This isn’t something that I would use but I know a lot of players would be more comfortable with an over-the-shoulder angle, give us the option to do that.

I haven’t had time to test it more thoroughly yet but firstly could you please list what client we are using somewhere ingame, maybe the options menu. I just want to make sure that what I’m testing is actually the right client.

My preliminary run through has the client reporting fps maxing out at 30. I am running a desktop, not a laptop. For the record my fps is normally 60+ and hovers around 45 to 50 during Teq on a full map. (Anything above 60 is meaningless to me because my screens are IPS rather than TN so they can’t physically display anything better than 60 without some fiddling which I’m not game to do.)

Now I don’t believe that the client is accurately reporting the frame rate. It definitely is not 60 I can tell, but I think it’s actually above 30. In the current state it isn’t unplayable but I haven’t been in a large event yet. Assuming it’s around 40ish (because it feels like what I get during Teq) I would estimate that the frame rate will drop to 25 or so for large scale events and this will be unplayable.

I would also be interested to know whether there are certain graphic card configurations that the 64bit client can’t cope with. I think people have asked about SLI already, I would like to know whether the game can correctly identify and use a crossfire configuration (since I run an ATI card).

TLDR: The 64bit client seems capped at 30fps in low population areas on my desktop PC, not experiencing the same issue on the 32bit client.

I’ve played on the EU server once during beta and the lag in WvW was far above what I was getting on the US servers. I understand from old friends who still play there it’s better than it was but since they are NA players playing on the EU servers I don’t know how much better it would be connecting from Australia.

The server network as far as I understand all channels through the NA server cluster, so to communicate with the EU servers your data would go Sydney→NA cluster→EU servers, and then back the other way.

Keep in mind a Sydney→LA connection is faster than the pipe that goes up through Asia Minor to the EU and historically less prone to problems.

Something like “Suspicious Dolyak” or “Nosy Skelk” would probably work.

Yeah I cherry picked this because while I like the idea it won’t really work. The zergs would just kill any animal with an adjective in front of its name.

There are a lot of things that don’t work well in WvW. For example it is rare in the games I’ve played for two servers to team together to ensure a larger server cannot win – temporary alliances yes I’ve seen those but nothing that lasts the match. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen only that this is a lot more common in warfare – banding together to defeat a common foe. In WvW there is no advantage to doing this, one server still has to “win” so most servers cannot manage the level of co-operation required. In warfare however the stakes are normally freedom, liberty, or survival.

I’m all for making certain tactics more viable, only I think it needs to be noted that the motivation to take certain risks is effectively absent from the game. Adding new game systems is great but if no one uses them it becomes a waste.

aspirine.6852:

Lady Lozza.9670:

I would have prefered that stealth in GW2 had the same treatment as TF2 spies where you can actually spot them if you pay attention – that way skill and attention on both sides of the divide are required either playing, or fighting a thief.

You mean like the predator effect or more subtle? It would be a good idea if the gfx settings would not allow people to abuse this somehow.

It’s not just an issue of graphics I think, but also perhaps of lag. I’m not sure about this of course it’s just a guess but lag might show the stealth more visibly or less visibly depending on how the graphics handled the “transparent blur” effect. Still I think it’s a better solution than nerfing stealth to the ground – it has applications outside of one shotting a player.

I would have prefered that stealth in GW2 had the same treatment as TF2 spies where you can actually spot them if you pay attention – that way skill and attention on both sides of the divide are required either playing, or fighting a thief.

I wonder how people in this thread define “casual”? If you’re a part of certain SoS guilds simply being a part of a small guild makes you “casual” and “noob” and “commanders should be able to kick them from the maps”.

Nearly a year of faithfully logging on to TS for WvW followed by a week of having to listen to the same commander belittle casuals in small guilds – clearly with little desire to understand that people have different lifestyles, playstyles, and responsibilities and cannot meet the guild requirements for the larger active guilds.

I play WvW for fun, I can put up with language, I can put up with abuse, I can ignore most of the crude sexist chat (which to be fair is fairly minimal) but listening to the ignorant harp on about how they should be able to kick people like me from the map for no other crime than because we can’t meet the membership requirements of the big guilds… My WvW time is better spent listening to music while following the blue tag. Experience, not TS, has helped reduce my deaths per session.

I don’t know how you can get people on to TS and I’m not sure TS trumps experience. But I can guarantee you that if you offer them a good environment they are less likely to find something more pleasant to listen too.

I am still flabbergasted that they put cultural armour in the store and gave in glow (regardless of how you feel about fire effects, glow/glitter/sparkle is generally how high level armours are distinguished in many MMOs).

So they take an already rare armour make it “more special” then put it in the cash shop – but only for one of the armours. While I personally like the heavy armour the heavy set is based off the heavy and medium reskins are some of the easiest to get in game – the medium is boring, with significantly less glow than the other two sets.

Anet if you needed to use re-skins to save time there were so many better ways to have done it – the OP has a nice list.

OP – yes I have wanted this hair since launch day.

A friend of mine always said how lucky I was to have female sylvari, because this “widening” issue doesn’t effect them nearly as much. On the first day of the toxic tower release I saw a male sylvari wearing medium exotic from the Orrian temples. Standing next to a human male in heavy T3 the sylvari was wider….

Let me make it clear: I CANNOT UN-SEE THAT SIGHT.

The crafted level 5-20 cloth armour is almost just as bad. I’m not sure I understand this issue. It makes male sylvari look ridiculous in 7/10 armours.

Morrigan.2809:

Thank you Kirsten
Always great to hear from you

Since I can’t draw
I will just leave some suggestions for flowery vines:
Star Jasmine
Granadilla vine
Morning Glory

For long trailing flowers maybe something like Wisteria?

Hehe, Star Jasmine and Morning Glory are drawings I started for sylvari just after Kirsten presented the redesign before beta.
Also tackled a butterfly bush. (Not sure on it’s scientific name only that my mother used to grow them when I was a child back 30 odd years ago.) They are a purple flower that grows in bunches, a “bunch” would rather suit a 1950s/1960s style beehive or afro.

I would totally support the use of granadilla or wisteria…. Maybe I should draw more sylvari.

And now I can’t get a glow on T3 unless I use pastels, which is annoying because the turquoise I had mine glowing was not that bright. They should just use the slider on the character creation screen for the amount of glow. Or add a special armour one – apply it to the new cash shop sets so people can tone down the flames too!

They should just add a slider. Honestly before the first change T3 light didn’t glow and I didn’t buy it then it glowed and I wasted 100+ gold on it, now it will only glow if you apply very specific colours in very specific locations and even then you have to squint to see it.

While I fully understand why some didn’t like the first changes, there are many who did. Restricting a nice glow to varying shades of white dye is frustrating when I had my armour glowing a lovely turquoise.

Just add a glow slider or make it based on the slider at character creation. I loved the new glow, now the T3 set doesn’t look like the set I bought, I wouldn’t have paid 100+ gold on the set my character is wearing today that’s for sure.

Honestly Anet just add a glow slider to sylvari armour. Right now unless you use a pastel dye you can’t see any glow at all, it’s ridiculous. Put a slider in so those who don’t want to look like neon signs can tone it down and those who want their dark colours to glow can have them too.

Or integrate the glow slider with the glow slider at character creation – full glow = neon sign and dark colours glowing, minimum glow = the silly change made today.

At first I thought it was just the Tequatl event but I have since taken part in several world boss events and I am receiving no daily reward at all.

Doesn’t change when I use different characters, my level 80s in full exotics and ascended accessories are not getting the daily reward. The idea that I’m not doing enough damage while playing on these characters seems ridiculous. Is this a bug or has the requirement for participation been limited to players who meet an unknown set of requirements.

This isn’t just a problem with Tequatl. I’m experiencing it with every boss that offers daily rewards. Regardless of my character or setup I am not getting the daily chest for the world bosses at all.

Mercury, if the thread you are refering to is the gem store thread – these issues have been buried and forgotten by the posts from people who have successfully purchased gems but not received other items they have purchased. I should know, I’ve been posting about this issue since beta.

There are a few issues at play here first off is Anet’s descision not to accept my normal credit card due to what is an archaeic anti-fraud measure utilised by NCSoft. Their reasoning is because I’ve used that card for my GW 1 account, and my Aion account, and purchased Aion for my sister through the online NCSoft store utilising that card number my attempts to use the card on my GW 2 account (which is tied to that very same GW1 account I can use the card on) sets off their fraud measures.

The second issue here is the inability to buy gem cards in my country. It’s physically not possible. My only option is pre-paid credit cards of which finding one which will work on international websites is not easy and the stores which do sell them have operating hours more restrictive than normal business hours.

The third issue here is the temporary content in the gem store. Like many gamers I work for a living but that work takes me away from home for three weeks every month. I have no ability to buy items for my account by a phone app or a web page. So I have one week in which to attempt to get this to work, and I have to hope that the temporary content is around for a minimum of four weeks to make that happen.

At the end of the day Anet is a business. Being silent while voting with the wallet does not help them to improve the service. Anet often seem to forget that countries outside of the US do not always have access to items like gem cards or additional payment methods – and I am still shaky on the legalities of whether or not my sister in the US can buy a gem card for me (outside the US) while I use the code on it.

So to summerise old restrictive fraud techniques coupled with limited time items which are in my world very limited time and no option to buy via the web or by a phone app while having access to fewer payment methods than other customers causes me headaches. Fixing any item above would greatly improve my experience.

This seems to be an ongoing issue for this game. I get home from work, decide I want to buy some festival items only to have the system refuse me because it appears to lock my account down after I’ve used a certain number of pre-paid cards.
I only have a week off work. Pre-paid cards that work online in US dollars are not easy to come by here. By the time the card is bought and activated I typically have no more than 48 hours to argue with your support to fix it.
Honestly frustrating right now doesn’t cover it.

Just updated the first post. Flawless widescreen does not fix this issue.

Goloith, correct it’s the only way to get the 5760×1080 setup without third party software that I know of.

Raijinn, I use the chat window frequently which is the big detractor for me and the large map on the M key is practically useless. I can live with the character select navel gazing but the other two issues are what keeps me from running it across my three screens.

Alkaline, yes a friend has suggested this however given it can move UI elements around I am worried that the game will detect it as disallowed third party software – also does it fix the map? Seems that it only fixes chat and other UI elements.

Due to the game forcing a resolution change from 1980×1080 to 5760×1080 continually, the game is becoming impossible to play. Support has told me they do not support my setup an will not help me any further with the issue.

I know there are users around with a native 5760 setup – I’d like to know whether Anet supports the NVidia version and doesn’t support the ATI version. Or whether other ATI players with a similar setup are not suffering the issue I get at all.

ADDED Feb 13 2013:
I gave up yesterday after three resolution changes within seconds of each other and just started running the game at 5760, problem is this isn’t just a 1980 issue apparently – I get a blackscreen much the way you get a blackscreen on some graphics setting changes before the game comes back just fine. There are no reports of the driver crashing or the game crashing or any other error.

This is only an issue with GW2 something with this game is severely broken for my machine and support will not help me. (Repair and re-installs do not work – already tried that.)