Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

Thats not lag. Thats a delay when you come out of rush and so on. Happens to everyone. You learn to get around it.

How is this not lag?

1) Stand on top of the Crab Carrier
2) Press skill 1
3) Wait 2-4 seconds to see the skill go on cool down
4) Miss because the Crab Carrier got 2-4 sec to move away

It happens all the time. I’m aware of the delay after a rush, which pales in comparison to the lag on skills really.

Skill lag kills it for me as well. Even with only 3 players in the game. It’s totally ridiculous. How can a silly game like this produce more skill lag than a 70-man blob in WvW. I’ve never seen skill activate sooner than 2-4 sec after pressing the button.

Anyway, I recommend people to stay away from it until ANet sorts their stuff. The way it is now, it’s 90% luck and 10% skill. The one with the least lags wins always.

frostshade.3617:

Morrar.1764:

VOLKON.1290:

Note: Traps are relatively expensive. Once that “new item smell” has worn off, you’ll see them used more tactically, learn where they’re more likely to be and adjust accordingly.

What’s with the panic over things we haven’t even had a chance to try in practice? Let’s see how they play out, then see if there are adjustments that make sense to offer to ANet.

Well people have a brain and they can simulate things in their minds. Therefore they don’t need to run their car into a wall to get some idea of what it would feel like. Given the information we have on traps, we could use that information to form an opinion on how it could affect game play. That’s what people are doing, rather than just be sitting ducks and see what comes.

I’ll ask you a question in return; what do these traps add to game play? Which problem where they supposed to fix? And will they?

Supply bombs will probably only achieve two things: a) benefits larger zergs over small groups (due to cap of 20 players) and b) someone gets sacrificed to run around like a headless chicken in front of the zerg (fun game play huh?).

With regard to anti-stealth bomb; some will deploy it to troll thieves, they are basically free (badges and karma are useless). Is that fun? I have a thief, but also 7 other professions so I care little, but I don’t see the fun in that. Also note that thieves can troll your zerg much harder now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv4P-kTBzE0.

Others will argue it will de-stealth hiding portal mesmers. Will it? The trigger area is small and it needs to be triggered by an enemy. Hiding mesmers stand still in a corner, so you’d basically need to drop the trap under their feet. Alternatively, you need to drop a lot of them on fleeing enemies. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just provide a sweep upgrade to keeps that people can activate once?

In any case, I fail to see the fun of traps and the problems they are supposed to combat. For some it’ll just cause silly game play (more zerging, running ahead) or better solutions can be provided. Judging from the post above, they don’t seem to be used much as a result.

Its more meant to counter veil bombs and portal mes running past a chokepoint second the supply one is meant to help prevent overly drawn out sieges I presume and btw most people who actually wvw use their badges on siege

I got 1K spare badges only casually playing WvW (to rank 22 + some alts). I can make 20-40 or so an hour tagging along with a zerg. Far more than I’ll ever need for buying siege.

Also how’s a 4 second cast gonna stop a veil that lasts roughly as long? On top of that you need to predict where it’s coming from… So that leaves choke points only.

As for the supply one; it’ll be used for trolling (see the linked video) and I bet it’ll either be removed in days or changed so that you can’t put it down in stealth (after which no one will care for it anymore).

VOLKON.1290:

Note: Traps are relatively expensive. Once that “new item smell” has worn off, you’ll see them used more tactically, learn where they’re more likely to be and adjust accordingly.

What’s with the panic over things we haven’t even had a chance to try in practice? Let’s see how they play out, then see if there are adjustments that make sense to offer to ANet.

Well people have a brain and they can simulate things in their minds. Therefore they don’t need to run their car into a wall to get some idea of what it would feel like. Given the information we have on traps, we could use that information to form an opinion on how it could affect game play. That’s what people are doing, rather than just be sitting ducks and see what comes.

I’ll ask you a question in return; what do these traps add to game play? Which problem where they supposed to fix? And will they?

Supply bombs will probably only achieve two things: a) benefits larger zergs over small groups (due to cap of 20 players) and b) someone gets sacrificed to run around like a headless chicken in front of the zerg (fun game play huh?).

With regard to anti-stealth bomb; some will deploy it to troll thieves, they are basically free (badges and karma are useless). Is that fun? I have a thief, but also 7 other professions so I care little, but I don’t see the fun in that. Also note that thieves can troll your zerg much harder now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv4P-kTBzE0.

Others will argue it will de-stealth hiding portal mesmers. Will it? The trigger area is small and it needs to be triggered by an enemy. Hiding mesmers stand still in a corner, so you’d basically need to drop the trap under their feet. Alternatively, you need to drop a lot of them on fleeing enemies. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just provide a sweep upgrade to keeps that people can activate once?

In any case, I fail to see the fun of traps and the problems they are supposed to combat. For some it’ll just cause silly game play (more zerging, running ahead) or better solutions can be provided. Judging from the post above, they don’t seem to be used much as a result.

If anything, switching characters gives you the best chances. I’d also do other activities in between and not just run consecutive runs on the same character.

That said, RNG sucks. Not only for those who got nothing (this will be me), but even for those who did get something; where’s the sense of achievement when really all that matters is dumb luck? Of course some people will feel entitled regardless, but really, the rewards have no correlation to skill, effort or anything that grants bragging rights (bar perhaps your skills in playing the TP / buying gems).

Unfortunately, this issue seems rather pervasive in GW2. There’s little that can give a feeling of achievement or prestige for those who value it. The RNG is a big factor here. The broken leaderboards and kitten achievement system another.

Well the insignia’s and inscriptions can be replaced by alternatives. Rare armor and weapon drops also grant the PVT-combination and exotic gear can be bought with dungeon tokens.

The Azurite itself can also be replaced more or less by using certain runes. Although I can see the price of Azurite and the crafting items rising due to their limited nature, I think their prices will be capped by those of their alternatives.

Travlane.5948:

well lets put it this way. with multiple fields up by multiple players…..what defense will a thief then have? what role? this has to hurt their money as thieves wont spend money on a game they cant play/play well or at all :P idk

This is the real issue. A group of maybe 10 players can deny thieves access to areas by covering it with traps. The comparison to siege weapons above is irrelevant, cause thieves are also already hit by everything that hits non-stealthed players. This change specifically targets the thief’s main defense mechanism.

If their were issues with stealth, they should address them with class changes; not some lazy WvW-only fix that breaks the class. Stealth is already limited by time constraints. They could further limit it by diminishing returns on stealth to prevent stacking skills that grant stealth (just like they should introduce DR on crowd control like every other MMO, but that’s another story).

I’m not sure why ANet tries to be different than every other MMO and tries to reinvent the wheel over and over again. They caved in by limiting AOE like other MMO’s, here they should look into DRs’s. The solution with traps is just totally the wrong approach.

Not a fan of this change either. In WvW with substantial skill lag it has become very tricky to land a Trick Shot (harhar). Even firing into a blob of players, only very few arrows actually hit.

This also leads to silly situations where you specifically have to pick on immobile targets (like downed players) to actually do some damage. Since the bounce is still heat seeking, that seems the best way to go for now in a zerg.

Anyway, ANet should revert the change and lower damage or the number of bounces if it was such a big issue. However, I can’t remember seeing huge whine threads about short bow damage… Seems to me there are more pressing matters to attend to rather than nerfing the short bow.

Rezzet.3614:

Morrar.1764:

Pssst it costs initiative…. Maybe at least read up on the classes you’re complaining about?

Did you play them all in PVP? It’s not hard to just give them a test drive as you get a fully functional character right from the start. Go give all the classes a shot and then make an informed judgement on balance between them.

i have 1 of each class except guardian but i did play guardian to about level 50 before deleting him. and im not saying Thief is the only unbalanced class im saying theres many unbalanced classes/builds wich are creating bad habits of relying on classes or builds rather than actual skill , the skill i know it costs initiative but theres also several traits and even a sigil to boost initiative gain.

Well then please proceed to elaborate on which skills need balancing and why and what defines ‘skill’. Calling entire professions OP isn’t helping the discussion. I think all professions have their strengths, but certainly their weaknesses too. Thief has good burst, but little else. Besides, Mesmers can easily burst for the same amount.

Stealth is a strong defense mechanism, but it doesn’t make you invulnerable (for AoE for example). Other professions have strong defenses too, but rely on other mechanisms. Guardians have block and invulnerability and Elementalists have shields, heals, control and mobility.

Sometimes classes are very strong in one aspect (like burst) but they pay a heavy price for it. Thieves trade survivability for burst, bunker Guardians trade damage output for survivability, etc. Complaining about one aspect without looking at the trade off isn’t the way to go. In the case of thieves, once you deal with their initial burst you have a pretty good chance to win the fight.

Finally, most PVP games take a rock – paper – scissors approach; burst is most effectively countered by bunkers and the other way around. Burst versus burst isn’t balanced nor does it have to be. Same for bunker versus bunker; that’s just plain boring. However, builds don’t necessarily have to be a compromise between burst and bunker; it can also be balanced across players.

I do agree though that some professions could use more viable builds. Thief indeed is somewhat lacking in that regard.

Well I don’t see a very significant increase in buy orders, looking at the graph at: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24289. Granted, buy orders don’t provide insight in direct buying but it could be somewhat indicative. I’d say that not too much has changed on the demand side.

Well as you can see on gw2spidy, for example, supply dropped tremendously around april first. My guess is that ANet banned some of the thousands of bots that where farming Krait in WvW. Helped WvW queues, but also decimated the supply of armored scales.

Pssst it costs initiative…. Maybe at least read up on the classes you’re complaining about?

Did you play them all in PVP? It’s not hard to just give them a test drive as you get a fully functional character right from the start. Go give all the classes a shot and then make an informed judgement on balance between them.

Not sure if a bug, but adding to this as it’s the same boss: the shock waves don’t seem to hit you when you are right under the boss.

Not sure if intended, but if you stand exactly under the Charr boss, the shock waves won’t hit you at all it seems. It kind of negates the whole mechanism to be honest. Not sure about the flame waves, I mostly just jump those. Jumping them is easy anyway, but it seems silly that being right in the center is the safe spot.

Charr and shields are horrible… Just got the Fractal Shield on my Guardian. Not even gonna use it… It’s in the center of my arm and clips tremendously through my gloves and even shoulders (see attachment). Was going for Flameseeker Prophecies, but the preview of that was horrible too.

I guess Charr aren’t meant to wield shields :-S Hope they will look into it someday though, kinda ridiculous you can wear weapons that bug your model.

John Smith said there will be no news about precursors, because that would affect the market. I don’t have a link, but that’s ANet’s stance on the matter. So don’t expect news at any time until it is implemented.

If it’s ever going toe be implemented… My guess is that there will not be a scavenger hunt for the current legendaries. It would simply cause too much whining from those who already have one.

With a future expansion, new legendaries will be introduced. Those might have a different system for the precursors that relies less on RNG. Because the system involves different legendaries, owners of a legendary might tolerate such a system.

Meanwhile the demand for current legendaries might drop when alternatives are introduced, lowering the price of these items. In addition, ANet might slightly increase drop chances for precursors as they did with the daily chests from world bosses.

Those are just my 2 cents by the way…

Had this too when moving the installation folder after upgrading and reinstalling my PC. For me it turned out that installing the latest version of the graphic card drivers fixed the problem. GW2 doesn’t seem to like being copied over from one PC to the next.

Also make sure that GW2 can write to the folder it is located in and that your firewall gives it sufficient network access.

Yep, same here… Sometimes it’s worse than others and it seems to depend on which PVP server you pick. Tried everything on my end; drivers, reset router, change router settings, etc. Nothing really helps…

Switching server sometimes does, but it’s not a real solution. PVP is unplayable with these extreme lagspikes. Skills take 3-4 sec to activate, can’t even swap weapons. Game freezes and then speeds up 400% to catch up.

If this game is ever to be an esport, ANet better get their infrastructure sorted cause this is a joke.

Ursan.7846:

Hey guys,

It is legally gambling only if you can cash out. With actual money, not virtual skins.

Since all virtual items in-game are legally owned by Anet, so no, legally these chests are not gambling.

It is not so simple. In a earlier case where virtual property was stolen from someone in an MMO called Runescape, the judge ruled that virtual goods are equal to actual property.

Now I’m not sure what the EULA of Runescape looks like and whether it states that all items remain property of its publisher, but it could very well be the case. If so, then it could mean that items in GW2 should also be treated as property, which changes the issue. The property then may also represent actual value.

That the key is a guaranteed return on your investment is true, but the same could be said about a lottery ticket. If it’s sole purpose is to engage in gambling, then it really is a means rather than an end. However, you do get guaranteed stuff out of BLTC chests (boosters etc) so there is some return on investment.

Finally, no one is thinking of taking things to a court Buttercup. It’s just a theoretical discussion to which you unfortunately didn’t contribute even though you have a background in law. So please share your insights on why there is no issue rather than state that it’s practically not feasible. Also, be aware that different laws apply to different countries.

In the Netherlands we have strict laws forbidding (online) gambling. Outcomes that are purely determined by chance (and not by skill) are considered gambling. For example, online poker counts as gambling, but also promotion campaigns such as an online quiz. Generally, you’ll need a permit to organize such activities in the Netherlands.

I have also wondered how these BLTC sales relate to these laws. It definitely seems gambling, but there are some legal conditions that seem to apply:

First, one should determine whether gambling can be considered the core business of the company. In this case one could argue otherwise, although the gem store is quite a central part of the games revenues.

Second, the prizes arguable are too small to matter. By Dutch law the maximum is 2300 euro for an online quiz. Although it’s hard to put a price tag on these skins, I doubt anyone would be willing to pay that amount. So it may be perfectly fine to have this sort of gambling in game.

In any case, it is an interesting question and I think ANet is in a moral gray area here. Especially given that minors (12 and up) can play this game, it’s not a pretty system. I too hope that they move away from it in the future; it also doesn’t seem generate a lot of goodwill among there players to be hones.

P.S. I’m absolutely no lawyer and my legal knowledge is limited; I only recapped what I could find online on the issue. I bet ANet’s lawyers have sorted this out way more thoroughly. Furthermore, I didn’t buy any keys and thus have no personal stake in this matter at all

Well, yesterday I ran Fractals level 30+ for the first time after the patch and loot was fine again; i got 7 or so rares from mobs and a ring at the end. The weeks before the patch it would be 1-2 rares tops.

To me it definitely seems some kind of DR system is affecting drops, at least from the mobs inside fractals. Would be nice to get some sort of official statement on this matter, because with the small sample sizes it’s just guess work.

Hmm I haven’t tried this, but as far as I remember transmuting two items creates a new unique item. This could mean 2 things:

a) You can no longer infuse the back item
Search for the thread where someone wanted to forge Eternity from Dawn and a transmuted Twilight. As the transmuted Twilight was no longer the original Twilight item (different item ID) the player wasn’t allowed to use it in the forge. The same could be true for transmuted back items.

b) It will work and you get the infused item without the skin
When you infuse items with an upgrade, the upgrade disappears. The Mystic Forge returns a completely new item (as if you looted it). By analogy, this would mean the skin is also removed.

I’m not sure what would happen, but I don’t think you can keep the skin. Either the forge won’t accept it or you loose the skin…

I don’t expect there to be one for the current legendaries. They dubbed with the idea, got some feedback from the forums and maybe they will implement one for the next set of legendaries. That way people will be able to get a legendary while those who already have one will not complain about how it became “easy” to get.

All the posts on the scavenger hunt were just to get some feedback on the idea, rather than signalling the intention to actually implement one for the current legendaries. That’s why they have also toned down the announcements on the scavenger hunt; it’s not coming.

Meanwhile they keep adding more and more reward chests that provide a small chance to get a precursor. In the end this should lead to a gradual increase in the number of precursors available and thus a steady and controlled decline in their prices. This is the strategy ANet seems to prefer, so I wouldn’t wait for a paradigm shift to be honest.

Did you run the different levels on the same character?

I also noticed better drops on lower levels, but I also often run the lower levels with different characters…

Not sure what’s going on, but something seems a bit fishy here. Would be nice to get some official response, but I guess that won’t happen…

AC is hard until you find out about the boulders. Boulders just cheese all the boss fights in there. Use them to stun lock all the bosses and you’ll breeze through this dungeons. One person should be throwing boulders full time while the rest can deal damage without any risk. Apparently, such ‘creative tactics’ / gimmicks / silly design is considered fun by ANet.

Furthermore, it all has pretty much been said already. Avoid damage, keep moving, get stun and condition removal. Match the amount of toughness + vitality with your skills in avoiding damage.

Yeah the game isn’t all that alt friendly. Probably a result from code protecting against parking characters at major events (especially since that’s the best way to get loot now, bar farming COF:1). ANet only gave contradictory remarks with regards to that issue…

Which in my opinion is another huge problem; it’s entirely unclear how DR works and what it does or doesn’t affect. ANet hides behind “we can’t tell because then the botters will know too”, but that’s just bollocks. Bots don’t farm events, dungeons or fractals, they teleport to nodes or grind mobs on the map. Besides, botters have so much data they can detect DR patterns within a day.

In the end, DR is just a way of keeping player rewards in check and to slow grinding. Apparently ANet want rewards based on RNG rather than effort. It’s a shame, but hey there are far more rewarding games out there. Just switch to the next MMO if you don’t like playing the casino game.

Yeah also getting crap loot from high level fractals… I’m lucky when I even get a single rare now. Lower levels definitely award better loot when I run them on my alts. Could be a level scaling issue, could also be due to some system that reduces loot if you repeat the same activity on a single character.

With my Guardian I only run fractals and that seems to affect drop rates negatively. When I switch to an alt that I normally only use for farming, fractal drops seem to increase again (like 4-5 rares and sometimes even exotics).

I guess that’s the kittenty thing about those DR systems… You can only guess what involves DR and what is bad RNG luck. Unfortunately, ANet doesn’t seem to have a clue either and on top of that the system often bugs too… DR for me is the number one reason this game feels unrewarding; RNG is one thing, but RNG that has been tampered with is just appalling.

First consider the precursor; which price is it at now and can you buy it right away?

If the answer is no, are you willing to farm for it? This includes asking yourself if you are willing to spend hours on the Trading Post (best way to make money) or running dungeons like COF path 1 a few hundreds of times. You’ll have to stay ahead of the curve and farm faster than the price increases on the precursor (Quip isn’t too popular, so that’s a good thing).

If not, ask yourself if you have the nerves to battle the terrible RNG of the mystic forge. It could literally take hundreds of tries with rare pistols, but you could get lucky and get it on the first go.

If you dislike either of the above, forget a legendary and just enjoy the game. As it stands now, the precursor is the only barrier to getting a legendary and it involves either grinding money or insane RNG.

The rest of the legendary is peanuts to get in comparison, just get a shopping list from the wiki page on Quip. Lodestones maybe somewhat of a grind, but at least you can steadily work towards getting them. Clovers is kinda bad too, but also allow you to gradually progress and provide you with T6 materials.

Ursan.7846:

Geikamir.6329:

If I was awarded $1000 for a halfcourt basketball shot but the person behind me was awarded $10, that would be unfair.

If we both took the shot again, suceeded, and were awarded $500 each, then that attempt would be fair.

But then Person #1 would cry foul. Why am I suddenly getting rewarded less? Other person be kitten this isn’t fair.

Though I’m afraid we’re starting to argue about subjective interpretations of the word “fair” which won’t have a conclusion at all. I wanted to keep this discussion objective, but I obviously failed miserably in my original intentions. It’s good to know that you’re passionate about your opinion and willing to articulate it though.

There’s perfectly sound research and theory on what is considered ‘fair’ and what’s not. In this particular case, equity theory would be most relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_theory. In general it is considered fair when the ratio between one’s inputs and one’s outcomes is the same for all actors.

This applies pretty much universally by the way, however, there are contexts where other fairness norms may be adopted. In close relationships, for example, need-based fairness norms may be in place (i.e., we look at each others needs to determine who deserves something).

In any case, fairness isn’t all that subjective. Equity is pretty much the default norm, but in specific contexts people may deviate from this norm. Also note that the equity norm includes equality.

Recently I seem to be coming across quite a number of teleport bots; bots that teleport from one resource node (mine, tree, herb) to the next. They spawn at the node and seconds later they are gone again. It’s hard to target them and even harder to right-click their portrait to report. They often teleport out of range before I am able to report.

Sometimes there is time to read their names though (while mining or chopping trees), so would be nice to have some other option to report this kind of bots. I think banning them is crucial as their numbers seem to be growing (in fact, they probably are the reason the mithril market crashed).

Anyway, I’d happily help out with fighting the botters but seem to be lacking the means to do so at the moment. Obviously, fixing movement code to disable these teleport hacks would be an even better solution. But in the meanwhile, I’d love to be able to report fro example using a /report <name> command or so.

Magic Find works for drops, can’t really deny it. I only ever used it for farming stuff in a group in Orr. You want to be in a group for tagging, because MF gear will gimp you to the point where you will have a hard time tagging. Your damage pretty much goes down the drain.

And this is the biggest gripe with MF gear; it’s completely opposite to Anet’s goal of rewarding playing cooperatively. Many people -even guildies- run an MF set in dungeons and fractals, yet you can’t even check whether they are. But yeah, if they have 7-10 rares and 1-2 exotics after each series, while the rest got greens and blues it’s pretty obvious.

Unless they remove MF gear or share the bonus across players, we’re in a really bad situation here.

Seems clover drops got a hard stealth nerf a few weeks ago, even though ANet will never admit that.

We have several folks doing clovers, including myself. Although one could argue that it’s still a small sample, the difference between now and a few weeks ago is marked for at least 10 people. I used to get around 1 in 3 tries as also noted on the wiki. Now it’s more like 1 in 6-8 tries.

Which recipe you use seems to be quite irrelevant, both have similar returns.

It’s been said already, but providing information now or implementing the change at a later date will both affect the markets substantially. Most economists would agree that markets operate best under perfect information, so why not provide more information? Bubbles in the market are caused by a lack of information, whether it’s new internet technology, extremely complicated financial products or the direction a developer wants to take their MMO. In this regard, ANet really has to figure out whether they want Legendaries to be the result of luck or trade-post wars, or of being proficient at the game’s content.

As it currently stands, you can get a precursor through sheer luck from the mystic forge or chests, or buy one from trading post. The first route involves zero skill in playing the game. The second method involves the only real player-versus-player the game has to offer; outsmart your competitors on the trading post. It certainly involves skill, but economic skills rather than skills associated with playing an MMO (i.e., knowing your profession, coordinating with others, knowing tactics, etc).

I think many people would like Legendaries to be the hallmark of being proficient at the game, rather than just the economy of the game. I know one guy who got two precursors in the first few weeks of the game; he’s quit by now because he hated the low correlation between effort and reward. Another guy crafted two Legendaries; although he likes the status it gives him, he too feels awkward about the process involved in getting them. Legendaries should feel rewarding in my opinion and the current systems seems to be lacking in that regard.

ANet has to decide how they want to handle this part of their game. This involves more than the price of precursors on the trading post and it is not a call John Smith can make. It’s a broader design decision and whatever the outcome will be, the markets will simply follow. My guess is that ANet hasn’t made a decision yet and is in doubt how to handle precursors (hence they have no information to share); making them more associated with the content on the one hand and keeping them highly rare on the other. They also have to deal with the fact that some people have already invested tremendous amounts of effort into their Legendaries and may feel treated unfairly when major changes are made.

Jerks will be jerks…

Sorry to hear your story, it is the reason I rather stick to guild groups because it’s old news that PUGs can be a royal p.i.t.a.

Also nicely illustrates that legendaries above all signal time and money invested and are hardly correlated to skill in the game.. :-)

All in all, I’d advise you to search for a good guild and run your dungeons with them. This game does an appalling job on the guild front, but there are good, social guilds out there. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Good luck!

Honestly, the usefulness of such ranking lists is only very limited as they are overgeneralizing and highly subjective. I have played 7/8 professions to level 80 and working on the last (elementalist). I would never even dare to make such a list, cause you need to play the professions extensively before making a good judgement call on their strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think many people will have that kind of experience yet (I certainly haven’t), especially in both WvW and PVE. Getting to know all the skills and all the trait builds just takes a huge amount of time.

On top of that, in PVE (dungeons) it is much more about synergy between professions rather than the individual professions by themselves. In a group context with other professions present, you may find that some of your strengths or weaknesses are already covered by others. Therefore, bringing 5 guardians (your top tier profession) will be less effective than bringing a mixed team for sure. Even though some combinations will be more successful than others (for example, bringing multiple condition-builds hurts the party), you cannot simply say that one profession outshines the others in every regard.

In conclusion, it would be much better to discuss specific strengths and weaknesses of the professions rather than making rank lists. I do agree, however, that some professions have very strong (maybe even too strong) mechanics and that some can pull them off more easily than others. However, such discussions would be better suited on the respective profession forums in my opinion.

Your issue doesn’t relate to the kicking system (which is bad in itself), but to the fact that the entire party gets booted from the dungeon when the “party leader” leaves. The party leader is the person who enters the dungeon first and thus starts the run.

I agree that this system is quite lacking; I have booted my entire (guild) party once accidentally, because I wanted to log to another character (thought my guardian might contribute more to the group)… It needs to change to a system where the instance gets reassigned to another player when the leader leaves or is kicked.

With regards to the kicking system itself; it’s bizarre that 2 people (a minority) can decide to kick someone, but that’s a whole different issue.

I think Ensign’s analysis hits the nail exactly on the head! Comparisons with real-world economies are quite futile, given that important factors in real economies are missing in the in-game economy.

I too think that massive information asymmetries are at the heart of much of the ‘market manipulation’ (although I do think that some market control is at work too). The game really does an appalling job at providing information and one needs to consult the wiki pages at the very least to get some decent information. In my opinion this is simply bad game design.

A large culprit here is the mystic forge; which has many recipes but no information about them in game. Good money can be made of conversions unknown to the majority of (casual) players. It would be better if some recipes were removed from the forge and given to the crafting proficiencies (i.e., upgrading crafting materials, forging weapons, boxes of armor recipes, etc).

Another source of income are the TP fees that the majority of (casual) players seem to have a hard time understanding. Many people seem to think that they don’t pay the taxes when selling to a buy order. ANet could do a far better job at showing the profit made by selling on the TP. Displaying the projected profit on the UI was a good first step, but it could be more prominently displayed and explained.

Like Ensign, I too think that the reward system needs upgrading. The difference between exotics and legendaries is too large and the ascended gear did little to improve this situation. The named exotics are not so well-known it seems, but could also be part of a solution.

Finally, the quest for a legendary seems to rely heavily on grinding. It’s all about getting large quantities of the same materials (i.e., 250 ore, 250 trophies, 100 lodestones, etc). Since people loathe doing the same (simple) content over and over again, they start looking at the TP instead. Making the quest for a legendary more varied and more fun would probably lower the amount of complaints (including those about the TP and the people playing it).

That’s normal. The first small part is when the spell “charges” and does not yet do damage. The second, larger bar is for when it actually “channels” and does damage. The change is to visualize the difference between charging and channeling so to speak :-) Not all spells have two phases though, so you may not always see a bar like that (often it is completely small if there is no charging stage).

HTH

Ask yourself if you would be happy if it read:

1 key = 125 gems
5 keys = 450 gems (28% off!)
25 keys = 1560 gems (50% off!)

That would make it clear that the reference point was the single key. So all you can really blame ANet for is forgetting to advertise another discount… ;-)

Yeah the AI in this game is pretty appalling, especially when it comes to threat mechanisms. Last night, I did Lt. Kohler on my Guardian with a group including another Guardian. Kohler would just focus on our Guardians before even looking at the other party members. There was no way for us to stay alive even after blowing all our cool downs, so we corpse ran the entire encounter. As soon as we came into range, Kohler would turn straight on us until we were dead again. The result was that we both had high repairs while the rest of the party never was in any real danger (bar missing a dodge).

This kind of stuff is highly demotivating and honestly I think its the most lazy way to program the Artificial “Intelligence”. Groups need ways to control damage and threat, so they are able to survive. Basing threat solely on a profession is completely kitten as this is something that cannot be changed or controlled during a fight.

Thanks both for your input. During the event it was too messy and laggy to actually check whether people were dead or just downed. So there is no way of telling what happened there.

In the Fractal dungeon I thought some people were downed, but there was quite a bit of damage flying around. So yeah, it may have been that they died before I could plant the banner.

This is also the reason for me posting here; I’m just not sure whether something is wrong or whether I just had some weird cases where it did actually function correctly. It is also kinda hard to test thoroughly, because you can’t really ask people to die so you can test a skill :-) And once people start dying, it gets hectic and you don’t always have time to pay attention to everything (range, dead or downed, etc).

Hello all,

Since the latest patch, Battle Standard revives seem a bit inconsistent. During the Karka event, many people died and I tried to revive them using the standard. However, only very few actually got up (even NPCs did not). Obviously, this could be due to lag or people not accepting the revive or whatnot…

Yesterday, however, I ran a few Fractals and also used the banner to revive fallen allies. It seemed that not everyone got the revive after I planted the banner near them. Sometimes only 1 out of 2 people got a revive.

Now, all these situations were quite hectic and placing the banner is somewhat of a hassle. So it could just be me, but I’m wondering whether other warriors also noticed a change in reviving with the Battle Standard. To me it seems a bit more inconsistent than it was before (to the point where it seems to revive only one person at maximum).

Any thoughts on this fellow warriors?

I think the notifications really help new players who often didn’t know how to get stuff from the TP. At least they are offered some help now.

However, the persistence of the icon indeed is rather annoying. Options to turn notifications on or off would be nice, but it would also help if simply opening the TP window would clear the icon. Now it only clears when you go to the trader and pick up your goods, which I only tend to do every once in a while. Just clearing it when players press O would help a great deal already.

Hmm this post sort of addresses two issues:

a) the relatively insane value of some items, mainly precursors
b) the way one-time events award loot

ANet has already commented on point a) that they are carefully monitoring the developments with regards to precursors. Anet agreed they were up too high (compared to other things in game) and is addressing this by introducing alternative means to get precursors and / or by introducing new Legendaries.

Point b) ties in with point a) mainly because the rewards are now so extreme that players who miss these one-time events feel left out. However, if point a) is addressed I don’t think people would make such a fuss about one-time rewards. When the rewards would only be the 20-slot bag, I guess most players could live with the fact that some got it and others will have to pay maybe 10G for it. I therefore don’t think that people have principal issues with one-time events or the fact that they reward players for attending.

In the end, I think the real issue here is the magnitude of the rewards and the fact that precursors dominate everything else in terms of value by an extremely large margin. This will be addressed though…

Finally, as also noted above, including real world currency in this discussion isn’t really helpful as you can’t convert gold to dollars through proper means.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We are aware of this issue and are currently looking into it. Thank you for reporting.

While you’re at it, can you also reimburse items, tokens, map completion, story line completions and the whole shebang? Thanks!

Beherit.9710:

not evening. morning :> what’s so wrong in turning off servers for couple of hours weekly, arena net?

Nothing. It’s again complete and utter noobishness from ANets side. Seriously, they are so clueless about handling their bugs it’s mind boggling.

OK so you want new content cause max levels are leaving the game in significant numbers… I can see that. But more people are starting to get seriously put off by the way they handle their issues. Bots were a huge issue for ages, bugged events still are (I never got into Arah since pre-launch on my server), and now this again.

I’m outta here until I trust that ANet has somehow understood that they need to get it together.

Distaste.4801:

Kholer isn’t hard, but he can be incredibly frustrating with any sort of latency fluctuations. Oh to count the number of times that I’ve dodged and been yanked out of mid-dodge to insta-die. I’m all for mistakes costing you but instant death on a thrown attack you need to perfectly time a dodge to avoid is kinda dumb. I mean with the red circles it’s very straight forward, move out of the circle or die. You know where it’s going to hit and you can dodge out of it as soon as you see them. With his attack you need to time it perfectly, which is wait until you see the animation then wait half a second before you dodge. Dodge to early? You die. Dodge too late? Well you wont! You’ll be dead. I’ve killed him without dying once and I’ve killed him where every single pull gets me due to latency.

The loot isn’t worth it, the waypoint isn’t needed, and the chance you mis-time a dodge or get yanked out of a dodge is enough to seal the deal; skip him.

This to be honest. Lots of people bragging how easy he is really makes no sense. Two things matter here; 1) being able to see the warning 2) reacting on time.

With regards to 1: It has been argued over and over that GW2 has some serious flaws in this department. This also goes for Kohler; he doesn’t telegraph his move all that well. Sure he glows first and then after a few seconds he throws his lines. If you have a Guardian or Elementalist with you, however, it can be seriously tough to spot. This is not difficulty, it’s bad design.

With regards to 2: It’s a fun idea to use reaction times to create difficulty, but this strategy is flawed when it comes to online games such as MMO’s. System latencies (such as network lag, FPS) are often much larger than human response latencies. Only in the best case scenario, the two will perhaps be roughly equal to each other. If you made the dodge, it tells us more about the state of your network than about your personal skills.

In short, Kohler suffers from the two most prominent design flaws in this game. He is certainly doable, but it is not fun nor rewarding in its current state. Besides, skills like Block trivialize the whole thing, making the “difficulty” rather profession / build dependent.

John Smith.4610:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts

Thanks for the update, would love to hear more details about it (how many banned etc).

Anyway, fewer bots = more fun! Hated the bots with a vengeance.

Furthermore, notice that the prices are not only spiking, the number of sell orders also seems to be dropping quite dramatically. This seems to corroborate John Smith’s account that bots are no longer flooding the market.

Anyway, if there would be a supply problem from now on I guess ANet can always find ways to fix it (increase drop rate, create more mobs that drop them, etc). In any case it is better than having the bots around creating unfair competition for players.

Well I for one am not surprised at all if gold sellers are taking over the precursor market. We have voiced similar concern in the BLTC forum and all these posts got blatantly ignored by ANet or they simply denied that any form of manipulation was going on.

Fact of the matter is that the market for these weapons is small and easy to dominate. Gold sellers simply have enough funds now to start controlling segments of the market, eliminating competition. It’s no surprise when they have many bots running 24 / 7 for months on end without getting banned.

As for your question; if someone whispers you, you can right click their name and select report to report them. For e-mail there is a button in the lower left corner of the email (the one with the exclamation mark).

Indeed. 10 Candy Corn at 3c each, projected profit listed as 20c, listing fee 2c (correct after rounding up).

Pressed sell. 2c taken from wallet immediately, successfully sold for 30c, 27c appeared in pick-up tab.

It’s all due to the rather awkward way the system works. First off, the listing fee is not included in the projected profit calculation and so it’s irrelevant for the current discussion.

The projected profit was 20c, because that is what the worst-case scenario would yield you. If you post 10 corn at 3c each, it could be the case that they would be sold one-by-one to different buyers. In that case the calculation of the trading fee for each corn would be:

3c – round up (0.1 * 3) = 3c – 1c = 2c

Obviously, if you multiply 2c by 10 you end up with the projected profit indicated on the Trading Post interface. The issue here is that the fees are calculated per sale and rounded up. So if all 10 corn are sold at once, you pay a 3c fee, but if they are sold one-by-one you end up with a 10c fee total. This is also why the interface says ‘projected profit’ rather than just ‘profit’.

It is kind of a weird system as the buyers determine the actual fees you pay as a seller. It is clear to me why the numbers need to be rounded to the smallest currency, namely copper. I can also see why they round up, as otherwise you might get around the trading fee. However, for small amounts / cheap items the current system leads to a quite high spread in profit. I’m also not too happy with the fact that the other party determines your actual profit.