Guild Wars 2

pmnt.4067:

With “how to read tooltips” I also meant “interpreting them right”. There’s only one tooltip highlighed – the one with the ingredient you actually added. Just ignore the additional other tooltips.

The wiki also does not state that the 3 ingredients go into the first three slots – it is just a list of known working recipies. Just add a frog, a sparkfly and eagle feathers (in any order) to your potion, let Cesselia mix it and use it on the spider. Congratz, the first quater of the heart is done.

Problem is, when you add frog legs, it goes into a potion slot with ferns, with which it isn’t compatible. The things that go into the slots with sparkfly essences aren’t compatible with them. You can’t predict which slot new items will choose to go, and you can’t take out the incompatible items. All of the things tell you that they have already been added, even the first time you add the first item.

If you tried this inside the game, I think you would come to one of two conclusions: either you see behavior completely different from the behavior I see (I think the first toon you take through, at least, sees the simple behavior; or maybe it’s a server problem), or it is broken. I would not be surprised or upset if you told me you were seeing different behavior—EVERY DE that is broken shows behavior different from normal.

Incidentally, I originally filed this post in the Bugs forum. It got moved here, which may have subtly changed what it appeared to be, from a bug report (“this is broken”) to a rant/complaint (“I just don’t like this”). Although admittedly it had a lot of rant in it.

From an interface point of view, if I am making the potion, I get control of my hands, which means I choose whether to work on one potion at a time or five. And I get to choose which slot an ingredient goes into. Any deviation from this requires a good explanation from the game, and a clear and logical connection between what I am doing and what the interface shows.

I’ve already listed the things I thought should be changed, and I think maybe the pre-existing, undeletable items are a bug, but just for grins I’ll assume the behavior I’m seeing is just poorly designed, and I’ll describe what I’d do to make it work.

First, change the added message from “You’ve already added X” to "X has now been added to potion slot Y. If other ingredients are present, add “this is [In]compatible with the existing ingredients.” IF a player tries to an ingredient twice, and if the designers don’t want to support the complexity of multiple quantities of the same ingredient, then add a message “You’ve already added X to potion slot Y, we don’t need any more of that ingredient there.”

Second. Highlight the potion slot into which ingredients will go, in some way. Perhaps change the slot pictures to show four of the slots as having vials with closed tops, and one of the slots as having a brighter vial with an open top (that vial being the one into which any new ingredient would be added). And, very importantly, let the user click on another potion slot and select that as the slot into ingredients will go. For example, slot 2 is highlighted, so potion 2 will get anything I pick up, but then I click slot 3, and now all ingredients will go to potion 3. Tooltips show all ingredients, as they do now. By default, if a player hasn’t even talked to Cessellia and clicks on an ingredient in that area, as almost every player will inevitably do, it should go in potion slot 1. Or, put up a message saying “This is a potion item. Cessellia should know what to do with it.” and let the players check out a potion kit from Cessellia in the same way you get disguises and special weapons from other NPCs.

Third. If you want to start players out with potions that have existing ingredients, EXPLAIN that clearly through the npc and the tooltips on those items. “I [Cessellia] have already started these potions, and unfortunately these ingredients seem to be stuck to the vials so we can’t get them out—can you find compatible items to finish these potions?” “Undeletable item—see Cessellia for explanation.”

Fourth. Never, never, NEVER, can adding one potion ingredient to one vial mess up all the potions. Unless you also add the possibility to throw out the whole potion set (including any fouled-up pre-existing undeletable ingredients), and start with a new one. Certainly if its very presence anywhere ruins everything, you cannot just remove it from one vial and fix all of them.

Really? I’m not reading YOUR post? That’s funny, I don’t think you’ve read or thought about MY posts. For example, you said “if you know how to read the tooltips” but if you read my original post, you will see I list ingredients in the potions which I could only get by reading the tooltips. Of course I saw the ingredients which are definitely wrong, but what good is that? I didn’t put them there, I can’t take them out, and I can’t choose to put my ingredients into slots where they don’t conflict with pre-existing items. See the post about mushroom spores and ferns…can’t get there from here. After RE-reading your post, there is nothing helpful in it, nothing I had not already seen and done and even included in the first post.

You suggest I just go kill undead, as if that thought never occurred to me, when in the original post, I said “the best option is to go kill some Risen and be done with it.” So thanks for that helpful tip. And, in fact, that’s what I did. But that doesn’t solve the bug, or the horrific interface. Those don’t get fixed without being reported. These wheels are squeeking loudly.

Don’t be patronizing. Some deity did not appoint you the fixer of all problems, and if you don’t want to actually try to reproduce this, then don’t respond. Don’t assume that the problem is my ignorance before even reading and thinking carefully about the problem I described. If Anet IS employing you to see that problems get fixed, then get off your a$% and test the problem with the parameters I specified, instead of posting that I need to learn to read.

As far as I can tell, the Wiki either describes an earlier version of this quest, or never encountered the multiple potion slots behavior or locked pre-existing items or predetermined item sorting. It does not mention many of the nuisances I described, which definitely stand in the way of using the recipes it describes. However, it describes the quest as I remember it on previous toons. So, as again I posted earlier, I suspect the problem is some sort of bad garbage collector in the code, which left garbled remnants from a previous toon or another player. Or they changed the behavior in the last few patches, and it’s broken. Or the server database is hosed, and it’s attributing potion ingredients to me I never collected. That determination requires access to Anet internals.

For example, one of the good fellows around the “Respite” says mushroom spores and ferns go well together, but not with sparkfly essences or frog legs. Well, I can’t put mushroom spores together with ferns, because the spores automatically go to potion slot 2, which has pre-existing sparkfly essences—one of the things it can’t work with.

No, you can’t drop the potion with weapon switch. It still has sparkfly essences or eagle feathers or random other items I didn’t choose inside. It disappears off the interface, but the items are still in a potion somewhere out in the ether. And I can’t get rid of those. Nor can I choose to put ingredients that I know work together, together, because they go in random apparently pre-determined slots.

I could read the wiki, if I wanted to work around its bad language, poor interface design, inability to control its tendency to put my ingredients where they do the least good, but why would I want to do it? It is broken in nearly every possible way.

Cessellia doesn’t have the option which she sorely needs, which is to trash every single one of her stinking potions. Either to start from scratch, or to junk the whole thing altogether, which is clearly the better option.

I can see why this potion-making business is challenging, it adds incompatible ingredients without my permission, to slots I can’t choose, to potions I can’t see and didn’t know I had, removes items I can’t choose, or even doesn’t remove them at all, and is generally FUBAR.

I realize this is a puzzle, but it’s such a terrible, terrible broken interface it made me want to rant here rather than trying to solve it. There probably is a sequence of events that will produce a usable potion. I did it on other toons, and don’t remember it being this messed up. Probably I got really lucky. What is clear, though, is given how awful and inscrutable this interface is, and how uncontrollable and unknowable the options are, the best option is to go kill some Risen and be done with it.

What would I suggest to fix it? Don’t tell me “You already have this item” when you mean “You just added this item to slot N, but it’s incompatible.” Show all potion slots, whenever ANY ingredient is present. Really, though, who works on five different potions at one time? If I’m adding ingredients, it’s to the one potion with which I am experimenting. I’m not working on a full, balanced meal of potions, just one that works. Certainly reset all ingredients for each character, and either have no pre-existing ingredients, or mark them as Cessellia’s starter potions. Give me a choice into which slot an item will go, or tell me before/while adding it (with a plausible cover for why it must go in that slot). Give Cessellia an option to throw out all ingredients. And if she is asked to delete an item, then delete the flippin item, please. Don’t change all 5 potion icons for one ingredient, especially if that one ingredient didn’t go into all or any of the potions.

At this point, maybe for the programmer, too, it really is just not worth it for one part of one stupid heart (although they should really look at the possible leak in their list/object structure, since they probably re-use that code elsewhere). Then take it out, let the players just gather ingredients, and let Cessellia figure her own potions out.

New character. First time to uncover Rhiann’s Respite in Bloodtide Coast. Let’s make a potion for Cessellia, shall we?

Go to any random item…mushrooms, perhaps. Wait…it says I already have them in my potion? How can that be, it’s the first thing I tried? Okay, in my basic capabilities slots (1-5), I see one slot (#2) has a potion listed, and it has mushroom spores and sparkfly essence. Incompatible ingredients, it tells me. How did the sparkfly essence get in there? I didn’t put it there, I just got here. And I didn’t choose to put mushroom spores in slot #2…if it’s going to automatically put things in places, why did it choose slot 2, which had an incompatible ingredient?

No matter, I go back to Cessellia. She will take things out. Oh, wait, she will only take out the mushroom spores. Then the potion disappears from my list. What about the stupid sparkfly essences, which I didn’t even put in in the first place? Guess I can’t get rid of them. Well, let’s try coral.

“You already have coral flakes in your potion.” I do?!! I haven’t touched the coral before… Oh, look, slot 3 now has a potion, with coral flakes and eagle feathers, which it says are incompatible. Who put eagle feathers in there? And why wasn’t the potion with eagle feathers listed just a few seconds before, when slot 2 was showing? Why can’t I see all these invisible potions with items already in them, which will be incompatible with what I’m going to choose? How do I choose something without knowing which slot it will fill or what ingredients are already there without my choosing? Talk to Cessellia; she’ll take out only the coral flakes and not the eagle feathers, of course, and start over.

Let’s try that strangler vine. It goes in slot 4, where it’s listed as the only ingredient, but it’s got incompatible ingredients. How can it be incompatible, there’s only one? Okay, I get the idea, it’s not a valid ingredient, and the interface can’t tell me that properly. Cessellia takes it out.

But wait, I go back and get some mushroom (goes to slot 2), and then get strangler, and then grab a coral flake—that’s 3 ingredients, which go to 3 different slots, but now all of a sudden all 5 slots are full of potions. Where did those other 2 come from? Ah, I see, they list no ingredients, but have incompatible ingredients. That makes no sense, of course, but it’s at least consistent with the preceding nonsense. Why didn’t it show all 5 slots with any existing ingredients to start with?

Just to see what happens, I go “talk” to a frog and get presumably a full set of frog legs. Now all my icons for potions are green. But frog legs aren’t listed on any more of the potions. Well, still, it’s clear we need to get rid of something. Go back to Cessellia, and now she gives me a choice of things to get rid of (only the things I added, though, not the eagle feathers or sparkfly essences). Let’s try getting rid of the strangler vine. She tells me I still have incompatible ingredients, which I do in 2 slots, but 3 slots should be empty now. The green goo icons remain for all 5 (why do the 3 empty slots have that icon? either they actually are empty, or they have something that would give me the green goo icon?), and the strangler vine is still listed in slot 4 despite Cessellia claiming to have taken it away. I must have inadvertently picked the wrong item. Talk to Cessellia again, and lo! no strangler vine available as one of the choices. But it’s in my vial 4! Hmm, maybe this isn’t a puzzle, but a $#%!ed up linked list or poor item destructor or bad garbage collection? Can’t solve that without violating the terms of service.

TBC…

So you’ve got a zillion recipes you’ve learned, most of which you don’t need.

No problem, right? There’s the Down Triangle on the right side, which you can toggle to hide that category of items.

But…then you click over to the Discovery Window, or close and reopen the crafting window…and all your recipes are exploded out and maximized again.

Shouldn’t this state be remembered? If I minimize a category, when I re-enter shouldn’t it still be minimized?

Or maybe that’s too much trouble. Then give me an option to always start all in the minimized state, so I can scroll down to Refinement, which is almost invariably where I always start, expand it, and refine whatever I’ve gathered since the last time I stopped by a crafting station.

Is there an option to do this that I’ve missed?

That’s true, but that doesn’t help with the cognitive dissonance on the map, or when flipping from the map to the names back to the map.

It’s not a showstopper. I’m not threatening to quit the game, or even claiming it’s a critical bug. But I do think it was a cringe-worthy design choice.

In a game that has a zillion colors of dye, and is so sensitive to color in general, the developers could not think of a better choice of colors for the different teams in WvW besides Red and Green?

Why is that bad? Because red is heavily used in the game to denote hostile mobs, hostile players, hostile NPCs. And green is similarly used to denote friendlies. Oh wait, I’m on the Red Team…does that mean that’s the hostile enemy team, or my team? Red Team npcs are green to me and Green Team npcs are red to me.

What happened to Blue? Light Blue? Tan? Brown? Orange? Purple? Cyan or Magenta? Light Pink or Very Dark Green, even, but not the same primary-color red and green as is used in enemy/friend ID. What about Ebony / Stone / Salmon / Pottery? and all the other colors in the standard dye set?

Yes, I know, after using battlegrounds ad nauseum, this fades and you can get used to it. And yes, I’m aware of many other games that get this wrong. But it is a poor design choice. Just a little rant.

If I search for iron imbued , I would expect items with iron imbued in the name to show up first in the list. They do not…why? Why do Ironfist, Iron Ore, Iron Dye, etc., show up BEFORE the first item with iron imbued in the name? What is it about the search term iron imbued that would give anybody the idea I’m looking for Ironfist?

Is there a way to force the search to use both terms? I’ve tried for example +, but the plus character is not allowed. AND is ignored. Quotes are treated not as search term modifiers but as part of the search term, apparently. Is there some other syntax to trick the search field into doing what it should?

Of course I’m using iron imbued as just one example of any multi-word search. It is prioritizing popularity of searches or SOMETHING over the relevance of the second or additional words in the search, and it should not.

Go ahead and show me everything on the market with the word iron in it if you must, but AFTER the things I specifically searched for.

These aren’t natural language web pages we are searching for, where fuzzy results can do better than precise ones. You don’t need a web page ranking algorithm, you need a simple plain text matching algorithm.

In the Filters subpane, perhaps you could split Armor into (Cloth) Armor and (Leather) Armor and (Plate) Armor. That would narrow things down a bit.

The point of a filter is that people are NOT pleased to see 200+ pages of hit results. That’s not a successful search, it’s a failed search unless the desired result is in the top five every time.

For Rarity, it would be nice but not essential to be able to select checkboxes for “And Up” or “And Down”. So, I filter for items that are Green/Masterwork and up, or Yellow/Rare and up (Yellow and up would also include orange and red, for example). Or Green and down, which would include green/blue/white items. Because nearly every time I select a rarity, I really want “this level and higher”. My $0.02.

As far as I can tell, things like the Crystal/Onyx/Glacial Slivers (and Fragments, etc) are crafting materials.

Why don’t they store in the crafting materials section of the bank?