Guild Wars 2

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Necromancer

Savroula.4803:

But you learn how to play properly and make personal progression following a bad commander.

Are you commanding tonight Sivaas?

Ironvos.9014:

warriorjrd.8695:

Wow, a great push from FSP, looks they want to still be in this matchup Hopefully they have enough steam to go the whole week so it’s an actual fight to win.

If you honestly still believe that you havn’t been paying attention the last 2 months.
Tuesday at 7 am is when the matchup ends and deso starts pulling ahead 15k per day.

To be fair, we lacked a lot of coverage last week after the league had ended (and the achievements were gone!). Id imagine its the same for your server too, but we dont have the 50 people zergs on every borderland that we had during the league anymore :P

goldibird.6375:

Ty for a fun night Deso

We will pay you back during the week. I promise

On the subject of Commander Visibility: I like everything suggested except for one thing – please do not make the commander tag colour/shape be tied to WvW rank. There are plenty of new commanders out there that are intimidated about the idea of tagging up for the first time and they dont need the pressure of being singled out as a “new” commander.

Commander tools:

1. Very important. If I send a snipe squad off to cap a supply camp, I want to see whereabouts they are on the map. The suggestions look fine but I would remove the ability for commanders to make announcements by way of a large message appearing in the middle of the screen. Its too open to abuse and spam. If you absolutely must do it, make it limited to WvW only.

2. LOVE the idea of an event style system for building siege. However I would like to point out that its only a good idea if the system is limited only to commanders. Too many randoms drop siege in places where siege is not needed, wasting supply.

If you do raise the cost of becoming a commander, I would ask that you give several weeks, if not months, notice. 100g is still a lot of money for the majority of the playerbase and those patiently saving their money deserve the time to work on getting the commander tag at the same price as the rest of us.

The ability to purchase a commander tag should not be limited by any factors other than currency. Whether this becomes a simple gold price, or a combined gold + karma price I will leave in your hands as I believe both those suggestions have merit. Just dont make it require WvW badges or a particular WvW rank. Not every commander buys their tag to use in WvW.

3. Guild gating is an unfair system. As stated, it would require people to be in larger guilds (If smaller guilds can obtain commander tags, then larger guilds would be able to obtain them at a rate that would make them far too prevalent anyway) and even if you were in a bigger guild, the decision to become a commander is not yours alone. The decision to become a commander should be the players, not a committee of players.

I like the suggestions so far, but I just want to reiterate that I feel its a bad idea to start tacking on experience/rank/rating requirements to a commander. I get that they need to be less common (Lions Arch sure does have a lot of commanders that you never see anywhere else these days) but artificial gating isnt the answer.

DevonCarver.5370:

So, let’s say we’ve handled the commander side of it for now and just focus on a squad system. If we added a system for squad management, what are the top 3 things you would want it to do? Examples: Show squad position, allow for orders to be sent to individual players, provide health status of all squad members, etc.

This is a much larger project, but getting a sense of what people would want it to do can help provide bounds for the work.

As Ive said previously, I tend to do the vast majority of my commanding over teamspeak rather than using ingame chat, so I wont really comment on issuing orders to individual players etc. But these are some features Id like to see:

1. The ability to “tag up” a number of players in my squad. What I mean by this, is that I can assign them a sort of “mini commander tag” that only people in the squad can see. This will enable me to send somebody to cap a supply camp or focus on capping bloodlust, whilst giving a visible marker for others to follow. However people outside of the squad would be unable to see these tagged players, unless they join the squad. This would prevent any new joiners or non-squad members getting confused as to where the main zerg is.

2. A squad member counter. Pretty simple, but would let me know how many I have with me. It could be tied to the automatic supply counter UI element that the community seems to have set its heart on and provide info on how many squad members are in range of you (say 3000 range to allow for people trailing behind)

3. An auto invite feature for the commander. Make it so that I can press a button and every player in a range of 1200 is invited to join the squad, assuming they havent joined it already. Give it a cooldown of around 3 minutes or so to prevent it being spammable, but that allows me to persistent enough to get people to join the squad. Right now, I have no real reason to get people to join the squad, but with the afforementioned changes, I feel this could be an almost essential addition. Definitely so in the early days of the changes. Right now, squads are basically irrrelevant. You just follow a commander tag around and listen to him over VOIP, but joining his squad grants you no real benefit, other than hiding any other commander tags that may be present on the map.

NvN.4321:

EB keep defended against all odds in this early morning. Was fun.

I was “leading” that zerg and believe me, the odds were very much in your favor. I was telling the ranged to keep the walls suppressed to stop you guys firing on our golems… so obviously they stood halfway down the ramp and waited for those nasty red circles to disappear. I told the melee of a safe spot to stand in and smash the door down… so obviously they went off looking around the side of the keep instead. When we finally broke the door down, I screamed over TS to focus on the siege and push you lot out of the keep… so obviously they went and stood in the lords room and died like flies to your AC fire.

Grats on the defence though. You had more siege in there than I had even anticipated and our omega golems melted once we hit the top of that ramp. Thanks for all the camps and towers though

DevonCarver.5370:

Perhaps the largest question I still have, how would everyone feel if the only changes to commander were the smaller scale ones? The other stuff is super interesting and has a lot of promise, but is also a major task and one I can’t make any guarantees about. I suppose the crux of the question is how priority is the rest of the stuff, if the smaller bits are taken care of? Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

I rarely find a need for markers to be honest. I used one the other night to demonstrate which wall we would be taking our siege golems through, but other than that I very rarely use them and I dont often see other commanders using them either.

Guild only tags are a good idea and would be worth the time I think. There are plenty of WvW guilds out there that just want to do their own thing and not get a lot of PUGs following them around, causing problems by being rallybots, just because theres a tag up.

Less suppression is pretty much a necessity. Most commanders on my server use Teamspeak for communication, but when we need to communicate via text, it can cause major problems when our communication is prevented due to anti-spam measures.

Better supply info is my number 1 desire for commander improvements. A commander that can make effective use of the supply in his zerg is a good commander, but it often feels as though the system does not give us the feedback we need. Increased range, increased visibility, more automation, etc would all improve the experience.

Grotesque.6480:

Props to Gandara and Abaddon’s last night. I was the only Commander from 23.00 GMT onwards pulling the masses trying to keep the points running. Simply amazing how you outplayed me and therefore hats of to you guys! Had so much fun!

Maybe in the borderlands, but Mkkoll was leading in EB at the same time that you were on and I was leading until about 5 am in EB after he went offline

Sorry to Gandara and AM for the cheap caps of your keeps and towers, but unfortunately your defenders didnt actually defend (Except for about 10 AM at Aldons who put up a truly heroic defence of that tower. Took us over 30 mins and about 8 catapults to finally drop the wall) and most of your siege had decayed, so it was a little too tempting not to take them all.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Seems like people really enjoy answering questions so I’ll throw out a few more.

How big do you expect a squad to be?
What kind of content is a PvE commander most useful?
Is money a good enough gate for commander tags?

I expect a squad to be bigger, the better the commander is. The squad should be capable of supporting at least 30 people though, as this is the size of a decent zerg in WvW. Most people these days dont even seem to join squads anymore, they just follow the pretty blue tag. Which reminds me actually… how about an auto invite feature for squads? I press a button and every friendly unit in 500 range gets an invite to join my squad. Was discussing the route we were going to take to get some omega golems into a keep last night before discovering that all my drawing on the map was useless as only about 10 people had joined the squad.

PVE commanders have been most useful for the Queens Jubilee event. They were fine for the Scarlet invasions, but they really shine when you need somebody to lead a large group through a large quantity of very powerful enemies. Outside of these situations, they are little more than markers on the map that people may find it useful to head towards.

Unless you create seperate PVE and WvW commander roles, money will have to be a good enough gate. 100g, whilst not being the huge quantity that it was at release, is still a sufficiently high enough sum of money that it keeps most people away. People that tag up in WvW generally do so because they genuinely want to command, not because they had some money spare and want to troll.

Victory.2879:

Now if only people could remember to refresh siege…

gidorah.4960:

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Soulbound or Account bound commander tag? Players do not follow character, they follow a player. Therefore I really like to see a commander tag to become account bound.

people don’t always know a commanders alt’s

If I add them to my friends list, it doesnt matter which character theyre playing, I can see if theyre online or not and where they are. There are a few commanders I follow around and theyve been added to my friends list for that reason. Likewise, I know Ive been added to a few friends lists by people who wish to follow me when Im commanding in WvW.

Point is, we can see if somebody is on their alt.

I think that the system, by and large, works pretty well right now. Most of the changes we need would come in the form of functionality rather than increased “power” or communication.

1. The option to change commander tag colour. This is not a vanity option, but is a functionality improvement. With different colours you could have a commander running defence, another running offence and still allow room for smaller guild groups to run sniping teams. When Im commanding, I would rather people stay with me rather than running off and following any other commander that tags up, but thats their decision, not mine.

2. Increased range on the /supplyinfo command. I can call for people to stack on me when Im on Teamspeak, but not everybody uses it. Even when the call is made in text chat, people still stand too far away. Give us a range of roughly 800-1000.

3. We do not need a breakdown of who has supply and how much of it. Break the command down into a more simplistic report, such as:

“250 supply in range.
7 people have 0 supply”

Giving us the report on a by character basis is unnecessary, as I only want to know how much I have available to build siege and when I need to go on a supply run.

5. In addition to the /supplyinfo command, give us an additional UI element that refreshes the amount of supply around the commander. To avoid any additional strain on the servers or clients, have this update roughly once every 10 seconds, leaving the commander with the option to use /supplyinfo if they need a more immediate update. Obviously, this UI element should be enabled only in WvW and not PVE events.

4. Make tags account bound. With WvW exp becoming account bound, it gives us the option to play different characters in WvW if we wish to do so. However the lack of a commander tag means we have to go back to our mains if we want/need to tag up. Alternatively, I wouldnt mind paying a reduced price (say 10g?) available to any account that already has an existing commander character.

I also want to shoot down a couple of ideas that have been raised in this thread:

Commander ratings – A new commander deciding to tag up should not be punished for doing so. A commander on a poorly performing server that tags up during primetime should not be punished for doing so. A commander should earn respect based on what they are doing at that very moment. A normally well respected commander that is performing poorly should expect for their zerg to leave him. An unknown commander performing well should expect their zerg to grow.

Server wide broadcasts – Worst idea Ive heard in a while. Open to all kinds of abuse and basically unnecessary anyway.

Great start to the week! As stated above, the positions for the season are all but set in stone, so theres little to play for other than some quality fights. We had them in abundance in EB tonight. Looks like we are going to have a very entertaining week!

msalakka.4653:

Great duel w/ a formidable Deso ele @ Bauer’s Estate, Gandara BL. Thank you!

The week is off to a great start, very interesting skirmishes. If it stays this close all week it will make for a hectic reset….more so.

If youre a warrior, Im pretty sure that was me (I did a /bow at the end of the fight). If it was, it was an excellent fight sir!

A new dungeon added to a game such as this is a hugely important content update. The new dungeon may suck, or it may be the greatest bit of content created for any game ever. You cannot write it off before you even know anything about it.

Youre getting new content patches every 2 weeks with no subscription fee and youre still somehow managing to find something to complain about. A lot of work goes into these patches and youre not going to get what you want every time. Learn to accept that youre not always going to be happy with a content update.

Clearing the cache worked, thanks very much

Will keep that quickfix in mind for future use though Kylla, thankyou.

I thought Id update this with a couple of screengrabs to illustrate the issue:

http://i.imgur.com/y2gDMII.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/v7wMXuc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LRcVXyk.jpg (Highlighted gems in inventory and as listed from the BLTP window to show the discrepancy)

http://i.imgur.com/uyEjog9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/O6H78RU.jpg

Last night whilst playing, I noticed that I was suddenly unable to access the BLTP or the gem store. I can open the panel, but I am unable to see any information within the panels. I cannot view any deals on the gem store, I cannot view current values for gem to gold conversion, I cannot search for anything on the BLTP and I cannot see my currently listed items. Interestingly, one of my listings sold and I was able to collect the money with no issues.

I have relogged multiple times, I have restarted my PC and I have repaired the client with the -repair switch, but I still cannot access anything within that panel. As far as I can tell, everything else is still working fine.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

People are rightfully upset, and we have the best tech-priests on this side of the Imperium, and we’re all working to resolve this thing ASAP.

Id like to award you 10,000 nerd points, but the diminishing returns system is malfunctioning and only awarded you 4. Sorry about that.

I love running dungeons with people. I love being tested and having to figure out how to do some of the really difficult events and bosses. The last thing in my mind is gear, I just want to have fun, which is why when people ask me if I want to do a speedfarm, my answer has always been no.

I understand that other MMOs like WoW are all about the shiny gear and how to get it as fast as possible, but this one isnt and Im just enjoying the journey.

Clarty.9864:

When I was a student my programming tutor showed us a v simple assembly code infinite loop that accelerated and eventually cooked the CPU. It made real smoke!

Rubbish. Im an A+ certified IT technician and I regularly run applications that soak test the CPU to produce as much heat as possible. The point being to test stability and the efficiency of the cooling system. Modern computers have safeguards to protect themselves from overheating (Thermal throttling, or whatever “brand” each manufacturer wants to apply to the term).

Yeah got a “network error” and now cant get past login.

Yeah I have to admit, I find Necro underwater combat to be painfully difficult and, perhaps more importantly, dull. Ive tried underwater combat with quite a few other professions and I cant say that I find any other profession bores me as much as Necromancer does.

I have to say that I spend most of my time using a spear (even as a conditonmancer) because I have more direct damage abilities available. Besides, the tridents huge aoe just ends up pulling more mobs than you want.

The asura zone boss is fine. People need to learn to get off the bridge and kill the adds. I admit, the first time I did that boss I died a lot, but I learned from my mistakes and did it much better the next time. I only died once and that was from trying to rez somebody from defeated (Again, I was still learning. I now know this isnt feasible in battle). 3rd time I did it (Had to farm that start zone a lot with the broken TP in the first week of release), I survived an entire fight without even being downed. If I needed health, I retreated across the bridge and allowed myself to recover. Otherwise I gained gold award, revived a few people from downed state and didnt get downed myself.

Is it hard? Yes. But if you do it RIGHT, its not that complex.

I also did Ascalonian Catacombs last night. Both the story mode and the “Colossus Rumblus” path in exlorable mode. I can honestly say that I loved every second. There are a few bugs of course, such as Colossus Rumblus downing me with a conal breath ability, despite me being at 90 degrees to his side, but overall I loved every second.

There was another boss (I forget his name) that had my entire group swearing at him as he pulls you towards him and then does a whirlwind that you cannot avoid and leaves you either downed or defeated. This resulted in a lot of complaining about difficulty and “kittenwhats the point in this boss?” sort of comments. That is until I pointed out that you could dodge the actual “grip” ability and as there was a pretty obvious animation to show this was coming, this was fairly easy to do. The boss died quite quickly then.

There is also a point where you have to defend two points against a graveling invasion. We failed this event numerous times, which again prompted lots of complaining and threatening to leave. That is until we sorted out defined roles for the fight (No, not tank/healer etc, but who would be targetting which mobs). After we had done this, the event was cleared so easily that we all laughed about it afterwards.

So what is my point? Yes, the dungeons are difficult. Not just Ascalonian Catacombs, but all of them. They are meant to be hard work to get through and to achieve that, you have to understand both your class and the game, whilst working as a team and communicating. Once you can all manage to do that, the dungeons really arent that tough, unless you get lazy or mess up. Arenanet want you to work hard for your gear and to improve as a player to complete these challenges and I fully approve of that mentality.

In short, sorry but you really do (along with the rest of your group) need to learn to play.

Deathfrost.9145:

Imagine any other of your favorite games tuned like this, where your characters are super weak, and everything can roffle stomp you. Its gonna get boring fast.

I dont need to imagine it, I played computer games in the 90s. I, for one, am glad to see Arenanet making dungeons difficult. Its been what, nearly 3 weeks since the headstart launched? Do you really expect to be able to do the hardest dungeon modes in the game, first time and get all the loot you want within the first couple of weeks of playing? if you do, there are several other MMOs that will be happy to cater for you. I want to feel like Ive worked for my loot and dungeon completion. If I havent had to work hard for it and improve as a player, what was the point exactly?

Yeah definitely sounds like GPU throttling. A lot of people (myself included) have a problem with this game causing the graphics card to heat up to excessive levels. Ive had to set my graphics card fan to run at 50% constantly to cope with this heat. Its loud, but it works.

Have a look in your graphics card control panel and see if theres an option to adjust the graphics card fan speed. It will probably be in any overclocking options you might have. Turn it up to a higher level and see if that fixes the problem.

Yeah its a very odd issue. The mouse responsiveness just dies off at certain times, especially during large group events and in dungeons. I have a Razer Naga and I had just put this behaviour down to Razers terrible build quality, but interesting to see other people having the same issue.

The concept of beauty is very subjective, but Ive had no problems making a sylvari that Im happy with.

Why 2 per expansion? No need for Arenanet to shoot their load so quickly. I think many of us would be happy with a single dragon and a new continent as per GW1 expansions. We already know that they never really finished what they wanted to do with GW1, as they decided to put the work into GW2 instead, so Id say we have plenty of new areas on the way over the coming years.

The short answer is no. You have to download those updates because your client version must match the server version, otherwise you will be unable to connect and play.