Guild Wars 2

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_Weapon_Box_

^ this is the one you get from Course Load.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_Weapon_Box

^ this is the one you get from the Tribulation collections.

I’m really hoping they’ll suspend living content again to work on another expansion, then try to sell it to us. It would be pretty amusing.

Unlike some doomsayers, I think ArenaNet will do just fine. Some people, like me, will pony up no matter what.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, shame on me…

Hmmm…

Step 1) Put living story content on the back burner for ~1 year in order to develop the HoT expansion.
Step 2) Make the player-base pay for the HoT expansion to gain access to new features.
Step 3) Cut HoT features in order to refocus energy on living story content.
Step 4) Profit.

It’s almost as if ANet simply delayed all content additions for a year just to charge extra for it.

Let’s not forget our gemstore purchases are the equivalent of subscriptions; heck, it’s been much more costly for me playing GW2 than other sub-based MMOs. I could only dream of paying $15 a month to have the opportunity to acquire all released content. That would be quite a deal.

Its not anet, its whether their payment processor that they use has a presence in MA (or wherever). I believe the processor is a decent size and has offices all over the country (likely incl MA)

Also, I’m not sure this is correct. The actual seller of the goods/services is not the payment processor; they simply provide the means for conducting the transaction. At the end of the year, it’s ArenaNet/NCSoft who report the sales figures and remit the sales tax collected to the appropriate local authorities. Take a look at Amazon, for instance. Because they have a physical presence in my state, they collect sales tax for any items I purchase from them; however, no taxes are collected for third-party merchants without physical presence in my state who simply use Amazon as their payment processor.

Not saying that this applies to everyone, but I would not be surprised if there was a mix-up that caused the temporary taxation. Having been in the support business, I’ve come to realize that many genuine issues are glossed over from lack of volume.

If it was just sales tax being added, then sure, maybe something changed.

However, after being suddenly charged tax on 3/8, 3/15 and 3/17, I am once again no longer charged tax on 3/31. I’m sorry, but laws and/or physical presence don’t usually change on a monthly basis…

Massive overreaction, guys. Whether it’s NPE, PvE, Fractals, WvW or sPvP… the only thing that matters, the gem store, is alive and well, and that is what keeps the game afloat. I mean, look at the GET MORE GOLD button on the Trading Post page that leads you to the Currency Exchange page, even though you can already get there with a single click by simply clicking on the Currency Exchange tab. Even the useless Black Lion Chests received priority over many needed changes.

Okay, seriously though, you realize that it doesn’t matter what you say here, they’ve already said that the forum is not representative of the entire player base. The only real way to make yourself heard is by no longer logging on and/or withholding your wallet.

OmniPotentes.4817:

It’s still possible to remove 1 by simultaneously dragging the mini and pressing the alt key. Guess they hope some will be suckered into buying more storage space. Well I’m not falling for that.

Ah, good, I’ll give that a try. Too bad I can’t stuff the other stacks back in though!

Rouven.7409:

They said that they stay in the collectibles until you take them out, at that point there is no return for the mini. Is this not how it works?

Before, when you take them out, you take out one at a time. Now, you have to take out the entire stack to take out even one, so if you had a couple you’d be saving to sell, you have to find space elsewhere for them until you sell them all, which is inconvenient if you’re the kind of person who isn’t sure if you want to destroy/unlock the mini or sell it, and want to reserve the ability to sell it later. =P

Yup, I found that out the hard way. At least they stack now, but still…

I assumed it would still allow us to withdraw one at a time until the stack was fully depleted, but nope, withdrawing one means withdrawing the entire stack.

Vayne.8563:

MoP had 1 millon concurrent players at peak and Guild Wars 2 had almost half of that. That’s the comparison.

And that’s not unexpected. WoW is the more popular of the two games. It’s had a longer time to build an audience, it’s had more money to advertise and it was in the right time at the right place.

For Guild Wars 2 to get even close to half of MoP’s concurrency numbers likely makes it the MMO with the second highest concurrency of all time.

For someone who is so strongly advocating comparing apples to apples, you may want to re-read the link you posted. The one million figure for MoP was for China alone.

Also, to answer your earlier question of why the BLTC rare minis sell so easily at 2-3 gold if they aren’t popular, don’t forget that 1) price is not solely a factor of demand, but the combination of both demand and supply curves, and 2) a lot of people (incl me) buy said minis up for the sake of profit alone (off the resulting MFed exotic minis), and yes, that profit again takes us back to point #1.

At least you can sell. My client crashes every time I try to get to the sell tab. =P

But yes, what you said. The new TP is so sluggish and inefficient. Gotta love the constant DB queries both before you perform a search and while you’re navigating the categories.

This has been a long time coming.

Positives:
- We can finally filter by profession!
- We can finally filter by back items!
- We can finally lose useless filters for gathering kits and toys?

Negatives:
- I have a feeling basic actions will take more clicks to get to.
- Not sure I understand how removing something entirely is an improvement over simply fixing it (i.e. projected profit).

While this is probably an improvement over the two-year old beta TP, I’m relieved but not jumping for joy for a “feature” that should have been released at the very latest months after launch. I’m sure the new design has more “improvements” than what we had been asking for, but it really isn’t that hard to change a web-based front-end to perform a different set of back-end queries. I have to wonder why they waited 2 years to release improved/relevant filters that would take a fraction of a day to code. If a car design forgot to connect the wiring for the button to open the trunk from the driver’s seat, you’d fix that ASAP, not wait two years to release the fix along with improved driver seat cushions and blinky LED lights (which I’m sure are very nice). =P

Nobody can really say whether (or in what way) the forum represents the overall player base, so while it is generally true that those with complaints will always tend to be more vocal, it is also generally true that those who still play the game will tend to be a happier subset of the overall player base. It would be erroneous to assume that the large majority of GW2 players are happy with the game. Just as happy players may post less on the forums, players who have been so unhappy as to completely leave the game are unlikely to post here either.

This is purely anecdotal of course, but from my personal experience in various guilds, a very small minority of hardcore players from beta or launch remain in the game. The level of attrition has been truly saddening, as I’ve watched every single guild I’ve been in die due to general dissatisfaction with the lack of investment in the game’s core aspects/mechanics. The majority of players who are still “active” are those who have not been playing on a consistent basis since launch, mostly new players or people who come back for a few weeks just to disappear for months again. I’m hoping for a turnaround but I’m not holding my breath.

If you don’t believe that GW2 has suffered major attrition, you only need to take a look at the Achievements leaderboard at leaderboards.guildwars2.com. While the top of the leaderboard does continue to progress upward at a seemingly healthy raste, the top 10 percentile has barely budged over the last year. A year ago, I think the cutoff for the top 10 percentile was ~3100 or so, and now it’s ~3500.

The top 10% of all NA accounts have between ~3500 and ~24000 AP.
The next 10% of all NA accounts have between ~1870 and ~3500 AP.
50% of all NA accounts have less than ~700 AP (maybe ~600 AP, but the leaderboard is returning an Internal Server Error so I can’t be more specific right now).

The 80th percentile and 50th percentile marks have also barely moved since a year ago. It’s pretty clear that the players who are still pretty active are a subset of the 90th percentile, not even the entire 90th percentile as those at the fringe have barely progressed in a year.

I don’t remember ever using any of the blue/green/yellow drops on any of the 12x 80s I leveled. Either the gear was not sufficiently superior to waste on soulbinding instead of selling on the TP and buying minimal cost blue/greens, or you were better off just buying blue/greens off the TP at vendor (or salvage) cost.

Despite the overabundance and uselessness of the drops, now we’re being told that as part of the great feature pack, the drop system will be modified in a way that will either be 1) noticeable yet have no real effect on drop variance, or 2) too subtle to notice yet worthy of development man-hours. Add to that the reality that is GW2 leveling (i.e. you effectively out-level your gear in an hour or two) and I really wonder why, of all things they could choose to improve, they decided that this is what GW2 truly needs to shine.

I’m glad, however, that the typical ANet doublespeak is alive and well. A while back, it was living story content that is both fun and interesting, yet unimportant enough that you could miss it and not miss a beat, and now we have this feature pack change that will provide classes with more of what they need but will be so subtle that it ultimately won’t change the distribution of materials you end up with. This is something worthy of a ninja hotfix, not some grand feature pack announcement.

In before the obligatory “GW2 is healthy and will continue to be healthy without you” reply.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to fit in the awesome second birthday gift I know you’re all asking for within the narrative structure that we have now, so for this year’s gift, you will receive the following:

- 100 Piles of Silky Sand
- 1 Exclusive 100% Speed Booster (Duration 1-Hour)
- 1 Experience Scroll (Level 20 Max)
- 2 Fine Quality Items
- 1 Masterwork Quality Item

And because I’m sure everyone would be terribly disappointed if they received yet another Mini Queen Jennah, this year’s birthday mini will be Risen Priest of Balthazar!

Note: The exclusive 100% Speed Booster is capped at 33% bonus movement speed (same as the swiftness boon) when out of combat.

chemiclord.3978:

Serenity.6149:

Also, this “entitled” argument is such a straw man. The community is obviously not entitled to get everything it wants (especially since players want different things), but I do not understand this obsession with needing to be okay with being fed dog poop. If you’re okay with it, Arenanet has trained you well and that’s your prerogative, but if people are unhappy with the direction of a product they had high expectations for, it’s their prerogative to voice their concern as well. If you want everyone with a complaint to leave the game, you’re no less selfish than the people you accuse, and you’re going to be left playing a pretty empty game.

I don’t think you’re quite getting my point.

It has nothing to do with “being okay with being fed dog poop.” It’s that Arena.net is GOING to feed you what you think is dog poop, no matter how much you whine and cry on their official forums. Their entire motivation is doing what they think will get the most people spending money on their game.

Because they don’t owe you transparency. They don’t HAVE to give you the roadmap. The only thing they HAVE to do is keep hitting the monetary goals NCSoft has no doubt set for them.

And they aren’t wrong. As much as the forum has railed against multiple changes, the money flowing in suggests that Arena.net ISN’T struggling and apparently are hitting their goals every single time. Until they don’t, I wouldn’t hold your breath on them worrying too much about making the forum goers happy.

Considering I did not quote your post, I don’t understand your “I don’t think you’re quite getting my point” statement, as your point is not the only one to get.

That said, there has been a very distressing “if you don’t like the game, go elsewhere” mentality with the game’s most ardent supporters, just as there’s a very distressing “the game is free, so you have no right to expect anything” mentality (erroneous as it may be). You can feel free to take or not take this as pointing at you as well.

My favorites:

“But, off the record, there is nothing we can say at this time.”

Why do you need to go off the record to say nothing?

“it’s difficult to fit [SAB] in within the narrative structure that we have now and I think that makes it very much less likely that it will appear in a Living World season going forward.”

How did the Torment skin set fit within the narrative structure? Yes, some might argue that cash shop items don’t count because they’re not actual content, but in a game that boasts “horizontal progression,” wherein that progression is achieved more through the cash shop than PVE, cash shop items are indeed content.

They may as well have just said, “it’s difficult to fit [SAB] in within the revenue structure we have now,” because fact of the matter is that SAB only had the already controversial Infinite Continue Coin as a cash shop item, and that’s a one-time purchase. All other SAB content (i.e. skins) is achieved via “PVE”, which makes SAB an ugly stepchild in a game that has increasingly misconstrued “horizontal progression” to mean skins released in the cash shop, with a few back skins awkwardly thrown in here and there as an award for completing certain LS/achievements.

Also, this “entitled” argument is such a straw man. The community is obviously not entitled to get everything it wants (especially since players want different things), but I do not understand this obsession with needing to be okay with being fed dog poop. If you’re okay with it, Arenanet has trained you well and that’s your prerogative, but if people are unhappy with the direction of a product they had high expectations for, it’s their prerogative to voice their concern as well. If you want everyone with a complaint to leave the game, you’re no less selfish than the people you accuse, and you’re going to be left playing a pretty empty game.

Dual.8953:

I think I’ll restate my point. What these players want is not necessarily trinity. They want to do things like like run support traits in Shadow Arts on a Thief and be considered an asset instead of a burden for it. They also likely despise the fact that the optimal way to play PvE in GW2 is to stack in a “safe” spot, as Dalanor’s videos demonstrate. They crave Active, Dynamic and Frantic combat and the game gives them the tools for it, unfortunately the enemies are too stupid to provide the challenge necessary.

^

This. Every fight boils down to stack on a point and dodge. The game has very high potential combat mechanics, but the fight design has been terrible. The sad thing is too many people still have trouble with the current fight design so I do not foresee the community reacting well to actual challenging content. Right now, even fights like Tequatl and Triple Wurm are not actually difficult; they’re just artificially difficult due to not being able to control who is (or isn’t) participating.

Not sure if this has already been posted, but this idea that GW2 was doing away with the Holy Trinity was just marketing BS and semantics. Anet specifically said in the beginning that GW2 would be focused more on 1) damage, 2) support, and 3) control, instead of the traditional trinity. Yes, it wouldn’t be the Holy Trinity in the traditional sense, because instead of needing a dedicated healer, you’d have support roles providing valuable boons, and instead of face-tanking damage, the focus would be more on controlling the mob, as well as dodging any uncontrollable damage output.

The problem isn’t that there’s no Holy Trinity in this game. The problem is that the core game design has removed the need for support and control roles in PVE. The one truth in GW2 is that damage trumps all, and that’s what makes it boring. I have and will keep creating support builds, but I am not kidding myself; I have yet to see a single fight where bringing my support build would actually help rather than hurt the group. If you know how to position yourself for each fight, are able to read enemy skill telegraphs, and know how to dodge, the only thing you ever need is damage. Anything else is just making the fight longer (and in some cases, that means failing the fight) to satisfy your own ego (i.e. that your build can’t be sub-optimal because it is optimized to your play style).

TL;DR: The game isn’t boring because it doesn’t have the Holy Trinity; the game is boring because it’s turned into the Holy Unity (i.e. damage).

Rennoko.5731:

Serenity.6149:

@Rennoko:

Technically you can. You can acquire armor/weapon tokens by salvaging armor/weapons, but let’s just say that the chance of acquiring a token via this method is pretty low.

But… Won’t that process just generate more crafting materials at a rate more often than tokens, causing me to net more crafting materials and not enough tokens?

Yes. I just salvaged all the gear I didn’t care to have unlocked from my PvP locker and acquired even more mats and no tokens. Oh well.

@Rennoko:

Technically you can. You can acquire armor/weapon tokens by salvaging armor/weapons, but let’s just say that the chance of acquiring a token via this method is pretty low.

It’s amusing that they first encourage us to spend all our glory, and then they tell us crafting materials will be removed. Had the latter been known prior to the former, our spending decisions may have been just a tad different.

So if we used gems on Black Lion keys and received Glory Boosters as a result, we’re SOL huh? Typical Anet, but at least this is even more reason to never buy another key again. I never thought the boosters from the chests were that useful/valuable to begin with, but now we know they have even less value!

Saying that we had advance notice to use them up is not good enough; anyone who has them realizes that’s an near impossible feat. They could have offered an X:1 swap for a different kind of booster, or at least provided them with some merchant value.

Someone mentioned it already. It’s not to make less money; in fact, removing them will create the urgency that will drive sales toward the lower performing gemstore items.

tolunart.2095:

Behellagh.1468:

Remember, a lot of the “helpful” items at the shop is for those players who don’t have the time to play as much as the “hard core”. Therefore items like the extractor or selling gems for gold is there.

Exactly… imagine you have a well-paying job IRL but only get a few hours on the weekends to play. So you have a lot of cash to spend but not much gold in the game. Would you rather spend all weekend grinding gold to buy a new item, buy gems then convert them to gold to buy a new item, or buy this and recover your old upgrade? It trades time for money, which is part of the purpose of the cash shop in the first place.

Not saying that the price is perfect, but if it’s too expensive for you then it’s probably not intended for you.

Not “exactly”, unless you were being sarcastic.

I’m one of those people who would rather spend cash than waste time farming gold in the game. Let’s compare. You don’t want to waste the rune/sigil already on the item, so you:

1) Buy gems, convert to gold, then either retain that gold value or use it to re-buy the lost rune/sigil to place on a different item.

2) Buy gems, purchase Upgrade Extractor from store, then use the Extractor to extract the rune/sigil to place on a different item.

If you’re simply trying to retain your networth in the game, choice #1 is far easier/quicker than choice #2. If you’re trying to re-use the rune/sigil, neither is clearly easier/quicker than the other, yet choice #1 would almost always get you the rune/sigil AND leave you with extra gold value to use on something else, which in itself would save you time or money. That is the point people are trying to make. Right now, the only times the Upgrade Extractor would be used would be 1) for items that cannot be bought with gold, and 2) by people who lack rudimentary math skills.

That said, I’m not arguing for the price to be changed; I don’t care if it stays the same. It’s just another item I won’t feel the need to buy.

Banono.4597:

You’d think something like this would be corrected or addressed…

Typical ANet customer support. Rest assured, they read all our concerns; they just don’t answer the ones that are 1) legitimate and 2) time-sensitive, especially if it results from an error on their part (i.e. what is likely yet another lack of attention to detail typo). Or maybe they just don’t know the answer themselves!

Logic would dictate that the season ends tomorrow at its normal time, because that’s when WvW matchups end, but unfortunately, logic cannot be relied upon. It has happened before where an event was listed as ending on a certain day, but in actuality ended at some random time the day before. I would finish it asap, simply because logic won’t offer much comfort when you miss the achievement.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Not to mention that there is absolutly no inflation in GW2.

You’re kidding, right? Perhaps sarcasm that didn’t really deliver?

Kimyrielle.3826:

SHM.7628:

You’re right. In the end I think they’ll favor the players most likely to use the cash shop. Probably the hardcore.

Mind you that casual players outnumber hardcores by at least an order of magnitude, so guess where the money really is?

Myself, I am a casual attitude player playing a hardcore amount of time, and I don’t think ANet can complain about my cash shop revenue. shrug

What is true is that it’s a myth that a game can cater to both casual and hardcore players in the long run with any hope to satisfy both. It can’t. More likely it’s going to turn into an equal opportunity offender this way, satisfying neither group. Ascended gear is an example of that. Casual players mind it for being gear progression in the first place. Hardcore players mind it for it not being needed in any (challenging) content in the game.

In the end, GW2 needs to decide what it wants to be.

^
Truth.

If you look back at what they said they wanted for this game, and compare it to how the game currently is, you’ll notice that they are actually not delivering on what they advertised. The elephant in the room is actually GW1, not WoW. Yes, GW2 and GW1 are two different games, but GW1 epitomized the horizontal progression that GW2 had aimed for. GW2, instead, has horizontal progression in the sense that there is little to no truly challenging content, while throwing in pointless vertical progression (ascended armor, anyone?). Ascended trinkets were probably a mistake, but they could have just left it at that and focused their attention on adding more challenging, permanent content instead of compounding their mistake by adding even more half-efforted vertical progression.

1. More than just Warriors can make the jump. You can also Guardian Greatsword #3, Engineer Rifle #5, Elementalist Lightning Hammer #2, etc., to name a few.

2. Guest to a different server?

+1 to your entire list, though without your confidence. =P

Zaxares.5419:

Underground feels longer than it needs to be (I think they could cut out the bomb/turret section altogether), and the devs did say they were possibly looking at it. However, it’s still likely to be up with Cliffside/Volcanic fractal as the 3 choices for the 3rd fractal in the rotation.

My guess is that the order will be:

1. (Easy) – Swamp, Aquatic, Snowblind
2. (Medium) – Urban, Uncategorized
3. (Hard) – Cliffside, Underground, Volcanic

No idea where the Molten Furnace and Aetherblade Fractals will fit into this.

1. (Easy) – Swamp, Aquatic, Snowblind, Urban
2. (Easy/Medium) – Cliffside, Uncategorized, Volcanic
3. (Hard/Long) – Underground, Molten Furnace, Aetherblade

=P

Whitey.6185:

I’d say it’s about the same length as the hammer one to be honest.

Also, what do you mean ‘clown care’ is that some given name to something I’m not aware of?

Either your groups are struggling with cliffside, or you haven’t attempted, say, level 48+ Dredge. The clown car event is too long and mind-numbingly boring. Every time, when I reach the point when I feel the endless repetition has gone on for long enough, I look at the progress bar and realize there’s still like 75% left to go. The tiered method does not solve this issue without a complete retuning of the Dredge fractal. There are super short fractals, moderate length fractals, and one long fractal. None of them are difficult, but one of them is far longer (and more tedious) than the rest.

As a general rule, you should not erase a player’s investment of time and/or effort except 1) when that time and/or effort is reimbursed, or 2) when there’s a very good reason. If #1 or #2 are fulfilled, then I have no complaints. Problem is this new leaderboard for fractals is one of the poorest excuses for a good reason. Let the competition to the top begin in earnest? You mean the 2-3 day (if not shorter) competition before the first page of the leaderboard is completely full of max levels and almost nobody cares anymore? That’s a great reason! (sarcasm)

StinVec.3621:

Josh Davis was a godsend when he came into the bug forum. He frequently responded to bug reports and discussed them with us and would then forward the bug to the appropriate department/person and add it to their tracker to be fixed. Great for Josh, but unfortunate for us, is that he got a new title and seems to strictly work over with PvP related game facets now. Good for you Josh!

Unfortunately, this puts us right back where we were before his arrival. Notice that not a single bug was listed in yesterday’s patch notes? Under “Balance, bug-fixing, polish” was just a vague statement on optimizations. The lack of attention to bugs is one of the reasons I have now decided to no longer update the Bug Tracker sticky thread and have already sent a request to Josh Davis to un-sticky it. Another of the many reasons is the lack of player interest in adding bugs to that list for tracking. Then again, why keep adding bugs to track when they no longer receive dev responses acknowledging them and sending them off to get fixed, as well as bugs on the list never really getting off the list, even after a year of being reported. Even the armor clipping issues thread is full of clipping issues that have not been fixed, despite dozens reporting them for many, many months. To be fair and truthful, I’m not saying nothing is getting fixed. I’m sure one or two have been fixed over the last 6 months. Remember the Order of Whispers boots with the red daggers taking over 3 months to get fixed despite the issue having happened and gotten fixed in a day in the past, twice? I think even the huge lighting/texture flicker in front of the TP in the Grove finally got fixed after being that way for over a year. That was actually quite a surprise to see/not see anymore on a daily basis.

Anyway, I’m just saying that I’ve resigned from trying to help out in the bug forum as bug fixing is clearly no longer of any importance, despite being only minimally important before. Why bother putting the time into something that no longer has any value or serves any useful purpose?

@StinVec:

Every time I came across your posts, I was honestly floored by the amount of time you spent keeping track of bugs for the community, despite not being an ANet employee. For that, I thank you. While I cannot attest to what happens behind the scenes, the sheer number of posts by you compared to those by ANet employees really put them to shame. I say this not as an empty insult, but in hopes that they realize they have a lot of room for improvement in this area. Bugs may take time to fix (though, honestly, they probably could fix them a lot quicker if they devoted more manpower to certain areas), but it’s not an excuse for not communicating more with the community. The most insulting aspect is the current marketing that this game is more frequently updated than any other game. While it may be technically true in regard to Living Story releases (even though much of it feels half-finished), the bugfixing, as you have yourself noted, is simply shameful, especially when there are so many that are as simple as updating a tooltip, yet have been around since release.

@Kirk:

I honestly hope those aren’t empty words, because I have seen plenty of names pop in here and there, maybe once a week for a small spurt of posts, and then are never to be heard from again. Also, you can probably understand our cynicism; we are constantly told that our posts are being read, but if that were true, why are there so many 1+ year old issues that may be as simple as changing a tooltip to reflect the correct cooldown? Surely, it can’t be that difficult to implement. Get the house in order before boasting about how often the game is updated.

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why people think every single aspect of a game needs to be able to be done by every single player in the game in the first place.

Then you don’t understand people and gamers in general, and quite frankly, you never will. And in fact, it might explain why your views clash so much with a lot of other forum goers.

Except that I’m A) not alone in my views and there are more people on the other side of the coin, who don’t play like I do that would agree with me.

Who do you think the people generally are that think that it’s okay to have ultra hard content that requires organization? I’ll give you a hint…it’s not carebears like me. lol

Speaking for myself only, of course, I’m one of those people who wanted more challenging content and the Tequatl implementation is terrible. Yes, it is a start, but at the moment it is neither here nor there. If you’re casual, the time commitment needed for such a short and unrewarding fight is unattractive. If you’re “hardcore”, the time commitment needed for such a short and unrewarding fight is unattractive, you are forced to game the overflow system if you want to minimize the number of random elements present during the fight, and you have to live with the flaws of the overflow system (e.g. Got d/c on two separate occasions during the last minute or so of Tequatl, got stuck on an overflow, and, to add insult to injury, by the time I ran back from the waypoint it was too late to even get event participation for the daily, as I had not participated in the Tequatl fight on that particular overflow, despite dedicating quite a bit of time on the original server.) It’s time to put to rest the myth that this, in its current implementation, is what us raiders asked for (though, as I speak only for myself, perhaps I’m the only raider of this opinion).

Astral Projections.7320:

Well, you can still get one achieve point on the daily ‘do Teq event’ by going there, hitting him a couple of times then go afk.

That’s something at least.

And the best part is the game doesn’t try to kick you every minute or so for AFKing, like it does when you’re waiting at the finish line for the Sanctum Sprint to end. =p

Boy have our standards dropped.

When I did this last week, the back piece became account-bound again, and I was able to re-select the prefix as well.

“to my knowledge”… “he states”…. “number I sadly don’t have”… “ask […] what actually happened”…. “I have my suspicions”…

Your post is filled with imprecise details and speculation. If you want to help your friend, you’d be better off encouraging him to pursue the issue, rather than trying to pursue the issue yourself as a third party with nothing more than second-hand “knowledge”. It’s all very sketchy.

Those who don’t know/care about opportunity cost will continue to live fully content with their decisions, and perhaps they’re better off that way. If you are unaware you made a sub-optimal decision, you won’t have to worry about regretting it. How many times have we heard how someone profited by turning X (something they acquired “for free”) into Y, which they then sold for Z gold, not knowing that had they simply sold X, they would have made more than Z…

Bezayne.6459:

Hawkian.6580:

You have correctly identified a very cogent point; it is not intended for the average player to regularly complete. It is very difficult content.

No the actual fight is not really difficult. Take this from a player who spent years raiding in WoW and some other MMOs.

The difficulty comes from having to camp overflows to be able to fill them with your guildies to be able to rely on people who will listen to commands. And from forcing people to spend like one hour waiting for the actual fight to happen.

Which has led me to forgo this fight for the time being, unless it is a weekend. I got the title, but can’t justify spending more than an hour of my precious game time on a given weekday to just stand around waiting for this boss to spawn. If it wasn’t for that, I would certainly go visit Tequatl more often, since the fight is a nice change from the usual boss fight in GW2.

^This.

It’s funny that someone thought the new Tequatl fight makes GW2 more and more like WoW, when the only thing in common is the fight requires a large group of players, which is hardly unique to WoW. The issue with the fight has even less to do with WoW (why are we even talking about WoW here, honestly?) when you consider that the difficulty arises from dealing with 1. overflow servers and 2. uncooperative players you can’t kick, both of which are unique to GW2 AFAIK.

If the fight was instanced and guilds had easier control over who attended, Tequatl would be laughable from a difficulty standpoint (or on the level of an entry raid fight at best), and a hell of a lot less time consuming as you wouldn’t be wasting most of your time reserving a spot for the fight.

kevkelsar.9507:

WyldKat.4712:

kevkelsar.9507:

We killed all but four of the crew, the four in front of him… Please, explain how that isn’t bugged.

Lucky.9421:

Portions of the crew can be defeated before engaging the foreman (aka getting Spur to turn hostile and attack), but you must avoid killing a complete row.

OK that is basically what all we needed. Thanks for the detailed response.

You left a portion of 1 row up and killed all other rows.

You missed the part where I said one person in our party got the achievement while the rest of us didn’t.

It’s bugged in the opposite (beneficial) sense: occasionally, people who do not fulfill the requirements will still get the achievement.

Like StinVec said, file a ticket.

In response to your questions, however, the unique nature of the rings is listed in the item description of the ring itself (“Unique”). While I’m sure some people not used to the terminology from other MMOs might be confused, I’m not sure what warning they can provide that would be lead to less confusion without adding a huge block of text to the item itself. They also cannot, as you suggest, prevent you from buying a second one because the items are Soulbound on Use, so some people (like myself) might buy several for different alts.

RoyHarmon.5398:

In the meantime, I would suggest this Custom Google Search Page.
The only caveat is that it also includes pages from the wiki. The user can decide whether that’s a bug or a feature.

EDIT: Here’s one that only searches the forum.

Awesome! Until now, I’ve been using the regular Google search, but this is much better!

It’s pretty comical how long the search function has either not worked properly or at all, and if anyone thinks it’s not high priority, they’re seriously mistaken. At best, it reflects poorly on the game; at worst, it seems like you’re intentionally trying to keep players from finding threads relating to their issues, so they won’t realize how many bugs still haven’t been fixed since launch.

Khaz.3165:

“I bought a ceramic soupcup the day before they released new porcelain soupcups, now I deserve to get paid back my ceramic soupcup.” This is incorrect. If you bought the ceramic cup you clearly liked it, the release of porcelain cups does not change your ceramic cup.

Sincerely,
Fenrir Dragonbone

Not a great analogy. Almost every store today has a return policy. You can like your ceramic cup the day before and still return/exchange it for the porcelain cup the next day. =P

Mind you, I don’t think a refund is entitled here, but I do agree in essence that ANet could really improve in the customer relations department.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Best of all, they don’t cost real money. Just convert Gold to Gems, and they’re essentially free.

cough Opportunity cost. cough

Talindra.4958:

:( need more SAB
my 3yo daughter & I gonna miss playing it together

I LOL-ed when I read this. As much as I don’t want to step foot in SAB for at least another six months, I will miss how much my girlfriend’s five-year-old daughter apparently loves SAB. It’s the only part of GW2 that she can’t seem to get enough of.

I will also miss sticking her in tribulation mode after hearing her laugh at my frequent deaths. =P

Kal Spiro.9745:

Actually whip attacks don’t do any damage, so it shouldn’t be possible to “kill” it with that.

That’s what I initially thought too, but try it out on the crocodiles. The whip may not do damage to other SAB denizens, but you’ll see damage figures (25 per hit) pop up on the crocodiles, so no matter what you use to stun the croc, it will eventually block progress. While it’s true that it takes a certain level of inferior player (cough cough) to trigger this scenario, the crocodiles should not be taking damage at all unless ANet intends for there to be a limit on the number of attempts possible getting across the lily pads and up the big tree trunk on Tribulation mode.

Avelos.6798:

Knote.2904:

Whoever thought of temporary content, especially for an MMO is just….. I don’t even know. There is no good reason for this to be temporary.

It’s because it’s pointless when hardly anyone goes to it like a week later.

I’m not sure which point being argued is worse: that the content is temporary, or that its ephemeral nature is due to lack of interest, which would suggest poor design.

Knote.2904:

Well, it’s not necessary to sit there spamming it in the first place, you can activate it with a simple bomb toss each time you need to go past.

Never said it was necessary, but whether it’s a bomb, stick or whip attack, the crocodile will eventually die if you need to stun him a certain number of times. That’s the issue.

(Also, not that it matters or is relevant to the issue, but by keeping someone on the inside to stun the crocodile, we were able to drop down from the ledge above to bypass the lilypads as well, thus removing an extra layer of difficulty and frustration.)