Guild Wars 2

Twice today I’ve experienced the fractal host leaving right after the boss dies, resulting in the whole party getting kicked out to the observatory and nobody getting any chests, dailies, or scale progression. There was no leave confirmation dialog. Half an hour wasted because one person wanted to save 5 seconds.

I thought dungeon instances weren’t tied to the opening player anymore, but what else could cause this party kick?

It happened in both Solid Ocean and Uncategorized, so I don’t think it’s some kind of crash. What I can be sure of is that the party had fewer people after the kick. The remainder did Uncategorized again, and I begged people to not leave early. We got our loot the second time and the proper leave dialog.

Here is a static image of the Mists with the desert borderlands for those who cannot use the tile service in their apps.

Captured from http://gw2.chillerlan.net/examples/gw2maps-gmaps-simple.html using Map Grabber.

1/4 scale JPG – 4096×3136 – 5.11 Mb

v1/wvw/matches is 2.6 kb. A single request of v1/wvw/match_details.json is about 3 kb, and v2/wvw/matches is 3 times that. If you are making anything resembling a live map, the bandwidth usage imposed by getting match ID (which you can cache for the rest of the week) is the least of your worries.

If you are able to use regular expressions or something similar, you can use the regex I use in my WvW app to resolve the match ID from a world ID in one pass: (Sample ID is for Tarnished Coast, 1017)

(?sU)(?=\{[^}]*:1017).*:"(.*)"

It finds the world ID then backtracks to the match ID using the curly brackets as a boundary.

Breakdown and example

All the models can be datamined from Gw2.dat, so what you’re asking for is already possible. There isn’t a need for an API to provide those large files.

See that_shaman’s datamined model renders.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Yeah, my WIP endpoint includes the level ranges for each potential achievement. I’ll make a PR on Github later today — it’s pretty close to the OP but uses two separate endpoints.

Woo, glad to see that implementation is already underway!

This is my proposal for a dailies API.

Justification

A dailies API has been suggested before, but that was when dailies followed a rigid pattern. Now, after many months of tracking, an exact pattern still has not been found. Even if a pattern were to be found, it could change at any time, and require another several months of research to find again.

Pros

• It would make a nice sidebar for the wiki (just like the GW1 wiki) and fan/guild websites.
• It would allow for nice apps and websites that would see very frequent use.
• It would be very light on server processing.
• It would alleviate the author of timer.silversunshine.net from having to populate the daily world boss manually.

Cons

• Some players may choose to check an app or website instead of logging in. This is unlikely because such players who would check apps every day probably also want their login rewards.

Example Format

Following the structure established in the wiki:

{
    "PvE": [
        {
            "type": "gathering",
            "name": "Daily Kryta Miner"
        },
        {
            "type": "simple",
            "name": "Daily Mystic Forger"
        },
        {
            "type": "event",
            "name": "Daily Bloodtide Coast Event Completer"
        },
        {
            "type": "challenge",
            "name": "Daily Megadestroyer"
        }
    ],
    "PvP": [
        {
            "type": "task",
            "name": "Daily PvP Defender"
        },
        {
            "type": "task",
            "name": "Daily PvP Rank Points"
        },
        {
            "type": "profession",
            "name": "Daily Warrior or Necromancer Winner"
        },
        {
            "type": "profession",
            "name": "Daily Thief or Mesmer Winner"
        }
    ],
    "WvW": [
        {
            "type": "simple",
            "name": "Daily Master of Ruins"
        },
        {
            "type": "simple",
            "name": "Daily WvW Big Spender"
        },
        {
            "type": "structure",
            "name": "Daily WvW Tower Capturer"
        },
        {
            "type": "structure",
            "name": "Daily WvW Objective Defender"
        }
    ],
    "Special": [
    ]
}

“Special” is for special events like Halloween.

Edit: Gathering is a consistent PvE category.

It’s not like anything I’m suggesting requires new tech. Selectable stat gear exists. Items that bring up a menu for choosing other items exist, such as ascended chests.

I dare say these ideas would be trivial to implement, and allow players to test to their fullest capacity.

Give beta characters a complete set (weapons, armor, trinkets) of legendary stat-selectable gear with ugly standard skins.

While a beta gear vendor would be an improvement over boxes filling your inventory with gear you can’t use, even better would be just one set of gear for which you can change the stats anywhere.

We also need unlimited access to runes, sigils, and maybe infusions; maybe an unlimited use item that lets you select an upgrade to add to your inventory? This is especially important for testing rune bonus interaction with new skills.

Currently, when you select a specialization, you have to reselect all your traits for it. This makes theorycrafting and toggling between 2 specializations unnecessarily arduous.

When most players change specializations (i.e. for switching between group and solo play) they will likely reuse a prior trait setup. They are also unlikely to switch away from favorite or meta traits.

This would greatly reduce both the number of clicks for switching builds and the memory burden on players with many characters.

The trading post APIs only accept IDs, so it would make sense to have an item name search API to get that ID. Right now the only way to implement name search is to maintain your own database, which is burdensome for non-website apps.

Preferably, it would allow type, rarity, etc. filters via parameters.

I’ve been told this is from touching the sides when jumping in the breach. I see that this happens to a LOT of people. It’s just more frustrating when people can’t afford to waste time ressing you so you miss out on the culmination of a 40 min event.

This was a new thing to me too since this patch. I’ve learned now that if everyone stops attacking or moving, I’ve desynced and need to relog. Happens to me at least every couple hours no matter where I am. Makes attempting things like Tequatl futile.

I’m in California, and my ISP is AT&T.

Most fine crafting materials (vial of blood, bone, claw, etc.) have lost the part of their tooltips stating what crafting professions can use them at what level. There is currently nothing to distinguish them from generic junk. These following materials are also affected:

• Mithril Ore
• Orichalcum Ore
• Bronze Ingot
• Copper Ingot
• Bolt of Jute
• Bolt of Wool
• Rawhide Leather Section
• Hardened Leather Section
• Soft Wood Plank
• Seasoned Wood Plank
• Hard Wood Plank
• Elder Wood Plank
• Ancient Wood Plank

• Destroyer Sliver
• Glacial Lodestone
• Large Skull

• Bolt of Damask

• Many gemstones

• Head of Lettuce
• Head of Garlic
• Celery Stalk
• Vanilla Bean
• Glass of Buttermilk
• Slab of Red Meat
• Jar of Vegetable Oil
• Bag of Sugar
• Strawberry
• Spinach Leaf
• Head of Cabbage
• Kale Leaf
• Almond
• Green Onion
• Chickpea
• Pear
• Peach
• Ghost Pepper
• Nopale
• Prickly Pear

• Most snowflakes

As someone who has 7 level 80s and has yet to complete the personal story, I despise personal story trait unlocks as much as map completion unlocks. Before the trait revamp nothing was locked behind PS completion, and I liked that here was one game where I really was free to spend my time as I pleased.

The major design issue with PS unlocks is that every step before that step must be completed to get to that step (if you decide to go for a trait but have yet to start the PS); no other kind of unlock has such tedious requirements given the linear nature of story quests.

Sometimes the API seems to get overloaded and returns a short error message instead of the expected JSON. The problem is these apps are assigning neutral to every objective when that happens instead of actually checking if the owner field of each objective ID exists and has changed. My Rainmeter map doesn’t have this problem.

It’s not good practice to design a network connected application around the assumption that the network connection is infallible.

Chris Barrett.3280:

Thanks Tarnished Coast for putting up an amazing fight toward the end of Round 1. We were only 1.1k behind Jade Quarry at reset, and managed to close in to less than 700 behind at one point. Those were some great fights.

This is the power of TC when we are trying.

http://i.imgur.com/Ca7IVkv.jpg

“Sufficiently high motivation is indistinguishable from botting.”

All timers have a margin of error relative to their update rate, i.e. this one updates every 5 seconds by default, so its margin of error is -5 seconds (an objective could have flipped anywhere between just after the previous update and this update).

However, you can very easily make the margin of error whatever you want, at the expense of ArenaNet’s bandwidth.

In GW2WvW.ini:

[mObj]
UpdateRate=5

Unclaimed bloodlust buffs were offsetting ownerships. It’s now fixed, thanks for the report.

You should never have to restart anything except after weekly reset, just right-click → “Refresh skin” to retrieve the new match up.

I made these overlays in Rainmeter:

WvW Map

World Boss Timer (No API usage)

Gaile Gray.6029:

who want blood.8765:

would be awesome to see the old ‘dhuum’ killing players who have infracted policies be a visual reminder to other players that offences will not be taken lightly….but thats just me

I dream — DREAM, I tell you — of the Return of Dhuum™ with his Awesome Scythe of Banning© action.

If it’s too politically incorrect for lore, then any other cross-cultural, non-denominational, black-hooded spiritual entity of unspecified origin will do.

A WvW map in Rainmeter that can be used as a transparent overlay or blown up for a secondary display.

Preview | Download

Features

• Scale from postage stamp size to 4K
• Display any one or all maps
• Minimize to scoreboard
• Righteous Indignation and siege decay timers
• RI tracked regardless of displayed map
• Tooltips with guild names
• Update every 5 seconds
• Pause updates after 30 minutes idle
• Autoset self to topmost when GW2 is running
• High-res maps and objective icons

Usage

• GW2’s display resolution must be set to “Windowed Fullscreen” or “Window”.

• Scroll to zoom.
• Click scores for map select menu.
• Double-click scores to toggle minimize.
• Click objectives to copy waypoints/points of interest and RI times.
• Middle-click objectives to set siege decay timers.
• Access world select in right-click menu.
• After weekly WvW reset, right-click menu -> “Refresh skin” to retrieve the new match up.

CHANGELOG

[2015.02.19]
- Fixed to accommodate changes in API formatting.

[2015.01.16]
- Fixed map selection menu behavior on toggling minimize.

[2015.01.14]
- Fixed and future proofed API parsing.

[2014.09.16]
- Copy objective waypoint only if owned, otherwise copy PoI.

[2014.09.15]
- Added RI timer copy to clipboard.
- Optimized scaling performance.

[2014.09.09]
- Refocus GW2 on interaction.

[2014.08.30]
- Fixed ownership errors while bloodlust unclaimed.

Thanks Tiscan. You can use FontForge, it’s freeware. I was able to do this with the 2013-11-21 installer. The interface is ancient, so bear with me…

1. Element > Font Info…
2. Fix the names in PS Names and TTF Names
   - Family: Memomonia
   - SubFamily: Regular
3. File > Generate Fonts…
4. Pick TrueType, uncheck Validate Before Saving
5. Generate

Does that static maps URL take parameters to select the section of the map to render? Or do you have to run the PHP on your own server to get what you need?

Yes, but try saving that map – it’s made of hundreds of tiles.

I captured this from http://gw2.chillerlan.net/examples/gw2maps-gmaps-simple.html using Map Grabber. It is the maximum zoom level.

1/4 scale JPG – 4096×3136 – 4.75 Mb

7-Zip compressed BMP – 16384×12544 – 225 Mb

Custom 128×128 objective icons – PSD – 516 Kb

The PDF on this news page is up-to-date and decently organized.

It’s been updated!

Ah, sorry, this was deliberate to require one less step for user setup. Change this line:

In GW2WBT.ini:

   [Rainmeter]
   OnRefreshAction=!ZPos 1  <-- erase line so you can use your own setting

For an application that may potentially be run on thousands of clients, what’s a safe rate at which to call the API? I’m currently setting it to every 5 seconds, but I am considering lowering it to 2 or 3.

I will only be pulling match details that frequently.

A Rainmeter skin styled to blend in with the game interface, transparent until moused over.

Preview | Download

Why Rainmeter?

Rainmeter is a lightweight, customizable widget platform. Rainmeter skins are easily modified scripts, and their .rmskin installers can be opened as zip archives, making them more trustworthy than executables.

Features

• One-click waypoint link copy with boss name and countdown
• Countdown and local time
• Mini mode with next standard and hardcore bosses, with countdowns on mouseover
• Normal mode with current and next standard bosses, and next hardcore boss
• Long mode with infinite scrolling
• 4 size settings corresponding to GW2 interface sizes
• Mark events as done
• Automatically reset done status at daily reset
• Activate audio alerts for events

Usage

• GW2’s display resolution must be set to “Windowed Fullscreen” or “Window”.

• Left-click to copy waypoint link to clipboard.
• Middle-click to toggle event done status.
• Double-click to toggle audio alert for event.
• Use controls on bottom bar to change mode/size.

CHANGELOG

[2015.10.25]
- Changed font to match GW2’s typography.

[2015.01.17]
- Minor aesthetics: aligned T+ times with T- times.

[2014.09.09]
- Refocus GW2 on interaction.

[2014.08.20]
- Autoset self to topmost when GW2 is running.
- Removed topmost toggle button.

[2014.06.19]
- Added a button to toggle topmost position.
- Fixed mini/normal mode displaying incorrect hardcore countdown just before daily reset.

[2014.06.18]
- Updated boss rotation for June 17th patch.
- Mini mode now shows next standard and hardcore bosses.
- Normal mode now shows current and next standard bosses, and next hardcore boss.
- Long mode shows standard and hardcore bosses together, arranged by time.
- Long mode now scrolls 2 lines per step.
- Scrolling now supports arbitrary step sizes.

[2014.06.15]
- No longer sets self to topmost on refresh.

[2014.05.30]
- Fixed mini mode not showing next boss if switching from long mode after scrolling.

[2014.05.29]
- Added date check to reset done status in cases that skin was not active at daily reset.
- Default position on refresh is now topmost instead of stay topmost.
- Fixed mini mode boss name not updating, broken in previous update.
- Fixed alert/done erasing that could corrupt storage of those values.

[2014.05.28]
- Added a “+” next to T+ times.
- Normal mode now shows current and next 2 bosses.
- Fixed rare possible incorrect sign on copied countdowns.
- Fixed a Lua stack overflow.

These are the fonts for the forum, but they do not resemble the font in-game for chat, achievements/events, etc.

And if this font is not available, what fonts are the closest match? Menomonia is used for the map and trading post, but it is not the font the rest of the UI uses.

Also, I downloaded menomonia.ttf from https://d1h9a8s8eodvjz.cloudfront.net/fonts/menomonia/08-02-12/font/menomonia.ttf for offline use but it is an invalid font file.

I would run around on ele and machine gun arcane wave/blast everything to death.

It should only take 1 click to move between equipment, wardrobe, and dye panels, not 2.

The new rank chests are literally nothing to cry over.

Just go to your home borderlands for now.

Yeah, it forgets my size setting every time I switch characters.

Kal Spiro.9745:

There are two reasons. The story instance has no achievement associated with it, and it’s gone for the same reason Destiny’s Edge 2.0 isn’t hanging around the Marionette anymore. They’ve moved on to the new story parts for this update.

The story is Living, meaning it continues to move forward even if activities remain behind to entertain us.

I am sure that if there was an achievement tied to the instance, they would not have removed it regardless of the flow of time, to avert the impending outpour of player rage. But since there was no achievement, they were kind of like, “meh”. But I heard it was some seriously quality exposition, and am sad to have missed it for once. At least someone’s put it on YouTube.

2 weeks ago, I had no clue where to go to access it, only a letter telling me to go to LA, at which point nothing happened. Today I ask around about if there some spot I go to interact to get in, and there’s nothing where they said it would be.

Why can’t all the content of a living story persist as long as the achievements themselves do? Doesn’t that make keeping LS around for 4 weeks kind of pointless, if you can’t feel any security that you won’t miss random elements of it if you don’t log in during the first 2 weeks?

OP’s idea would work mathematically if the direct damage pulse was

damage of that condition per second/tick * seconds/ticks of duration remaining

and not just some set amount scaled with condition damage. This would also make condition damage incredibly powerful.

Yeah, brass knuckles would probably be best suited for thieves, just like Thunderfist’s Brass Knuckles for assassins in GW1.

This makes sense.

SRG.3607:

The upgrade from Basic to Master Kit hasn’t been stated in the patch notes.
The description still states that the kit as Basic functionnalities.
The functionnality and rarity (yellow border) seem now to be Master Kit.

There is 99.99% that this is a bug and that it will be soon corrected (reverting the kit to Basic functionnalities, which is exactly what you’ve bought based on the description in the gem store).

I too hope that it will be corrected : having plenty of useless runes is just boring.

Anyway i’ve just bought two of them …

Also, if it still costs 3 copper per salvage, then it is most definitely just a bug.

I confirmed that it works properly when it is above the regular equipment box. I do not recall this being an issue with the rare fractal box.

20 Slot Fractal Uncommon Equipment Box behaves like a basic bag. Weapons and armor, masterwork or not, are NOT placed in it before other bags.

Could other bags affect it? My bags were, in order:

• Starter Backpack
• 20 Slot Craftman’s Bag
• 20 Slot Equipment Box
• 20 Slot Fractal Uncommon Equipment Box
• 20 Slot Safe Box

After equipment filled the 3rd box, it started filling the 1st and 2nd boxes.

I will do more research and come back.

Clear oil slicks and kill Sparki first, the fight is easy for a party of any DPS with a little knowledge.

Can’t you just buy Adept’s Training Manual for 10s and carry that around? They even stack. Or does that not work anymore?

Edit: Just checked. They can’t be used anymore.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

TheHeap.5610:

(and I’m being extremely generous by even suggesting that the same level of care would be included in the level design).

I don’t think there is any reason for such a backhanded insult. The people on the SAB team clearly share a big love for retro games, and they clearly have gone out of there way to try and add new fun mechanics into a game that would normally not support any of it. SAB is a work of love, and they are clearly very passionate about their level design. Whether you or I could do a better job at it, is a mood point.

TheHeap.5610:

And about the length, I’m not sure that Josh knows what a level is,

And again with another backhanded insult. What for? You’ve got a passionate team being creative, and adding stuff to the game that you’d normally never see in an MMO at all. These guys and gals probably spent several weekends of their free time perfecting the levels, fixing bugs, and adding finishing touches. If anything, Josh and his fellow team members have shown a passion for level design, and a deep understanding of game design principles. Sure, in hind sight w2z2 is a bit too long, and introduces a lot of new mechanics. These things could have been spread out more. But I don’t think that’s any reason to come down on them, and attack them personally.

Instead, I think they deserve a lot of praise. There’s a lot of mechanics in SAB that would make for a great improvement to some of the current PVE content (I’m thinking dungeons here).

There’s no doubt a lot of TLC went into SAB. But they said their goal was for it to be fun for the average player, and what’s frustrating is their inability to step in the shoes of said player. Instead they made content that would be at the right level for themselves. Their analytics have given them a rude awakening, but this apparent lack of empathic intuition is what gives me doubt about their future endeavors. They can either develop this empathy, or they can continue to rely on analytics, leaving them to always playing catch up once they have 20/20 hindsight.

World 2 just put off a lot of people because of the spike in difficulty. Increasing the rewards is good for the hardcore players, but they already have Tribulation mode. It won’t get the regular players back in since the intimidation remains.

World 1 was good because it wasn’t too difficult to beat, but was still difficult for those who wanted every bauble and achievement.