Guild Wars 2

Serval.6458:

TWMagimay.9057:

O.O When I enter it, I end up with no weapons equipped and some toy related weapons lying on the floor… Did I miss the actual entrance or something?

You’re entering Toypocalypse, go to the “other” one; I forget its exact name but it isn’t bell choir, winter wonderland or snowball mayhem.

Where is the entrance? I looked around, but didn’t see anything else.

O.O When I enter it, I end up with no weapons equipped and some toy related weapons lying on the floor… Did I miss the actual entrance or something?

I remember seeing somewhere people saying they solo’d the achievement(can’t find the topic and search can’t find it either). So, ammm, is it possible(still) and if yes, how?

Ticket: 235962
Last reply: 5 days ago

Also:

217896 – As previously explained, the account owner needs to contact Support. We cannot address an issue with someone else, for security reasons. Thanks for understanding.

Excuse me? The account owner did contact support in that ticket. 3 times over 7 days. Support replied with an automated msg and a “rate our support” e-mail. Are you mixing up ticket numbers or something?

Hmmm, isn’t that a bit…dangerous? If somebody gets access to such an account, they literally take over your entire life… Yes, I’ve grown paranoid over the last few days.

On the paranoid note: Support decided to mail my new log in address to the old e-mail. I deleted it roughly 3h after it arrived(I sleep at night), didn’t seem to have been touched… Should I be worried?

Gaile Gray.6029:

So let me be clear — you had not had a single human response (just the “got your ticket” auto-response) and then a survey? I’m thinking that the access to your e-mail account may include someone deleting our responses, but could you give me this ticket number, please?

I don’t like to think we’d say “How’d we do?” until we, you know, did something.

Ticket is 217896. It’s a windows live mail so I get a very loud ding every time I receive a mail(and it’s been open since the whole thing started). I’m more thinking it’s that mails not getting delivered thing since I made a new e-mail last night and the issue got almost resolved in about 3h(I’m still waiting to hear about whether restoration would be possible or not because your guys just sort of ignore it every time I bring it up, that ticket is 235962).

Oh, btw, in that “reminding you what the ticket was about”-part, it has only my writing in it…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You already got your once-only account rollback, so farming mats and keeping them (or sending them off) shouldn’t be a problem.

What can I say…I’m an optimist. Until support tells me “No!” I’ll pretend it can all work out.

PS: I think they closed my old ticket just for funzies. Since I got a reply to the mail from this evening. They reset my password. Adorable. facetail

Brother Grimm.5176:

What kind of passwords are you using? If they are guessing it (or you are using one you have used on another website in the past), then by all means make a LONG password of 4 to 6 unrelated words you can easily remember. An 8 character long password (with letters, numbers AND punctuation) can be guessed in less than 24 hours by an i5 computer. A 16 chracter password of just lower case letters would take hundreds of years to guess.

The last password was 12 letters and numbers, I have never-ever used it before. I’m the typical noob who has 1 password for everything and changes it like once every 2-3 years, GW2 is forcing me to come up with new passwords that I can never remember. Funny thing is, my usual password never lead to account issues(my fiancé still uses the same password that’s tied to about 5 e-mail accounts, countless forums and games without an issue -.-), it only started after I used my first GW2-specific password…

PS: I finally created a new e-mail and mailed them from it to request a change. That was 3h ago, I didn’t even receive an automated msg…

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

It’s hard to know, but if you have not heard anything specific back, just the automated response, it’s likely they are still working on it. If it’s been more then 72 hours since the last response, you should post your ticket # in the thread below.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-3-days-and-older-merged

I did that…yesterday… I’m usually very patient with support requests, have been known to wait for a month before making any fuss about it… But I was recently in an accident(2 days after the incident) so now I literally have nothing to do. Just sit on a chair and refresh my e-mail… I finally understand why people complain about long support wait times…

On a side-not: If I were to play GW2 and just mail my farmed stuff to my fiancé every day…and then get that account rollback…will we get in trouble?

So, new e-mail it is…

You seem fairly familiar with this stuff… Question: I just received a mail to my ticket to rate the support. The only response to my ticket was the automated msg and now this. Does that mean they consider my issue resolved in which case should I mail them back and politely tell them they are idiots? Or is it just a random mail and I should sit tight so I dun get pushed back in the queue(if that even happens in GW2?)?

Gkitten24:

After having my issue sorted and then being asked to provide an opinion on your customer services (which I duly complied with) – you have now sent me another email thanking me for my ideas and stating that they were best shared on the forums…

Not only that, you decided to reset my password!!

Hey, look on the bright side. At least you got your issue sorted before being asked to rate support. Me, I got the “rate the support” e-mail just now without ever receiving a human response to the ticket. As in, I was expected to rate the automated msg…or my own ticket writing skills? Not really sure…

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

So you are saying you have your fiancé’s login and password in your email account? That is not a good idea.

Well, I don’t have my password in my e-mail either. My e-mail contains the exact same amount of information for my account as it does for his(well, did, I moved to paper copies out of the boredom the last 6 days).

You are making a few incorrect assumptions. Only 1 email address is associated with an account. A serial code is not needed to change a password, all that is needed is the old password.

Oh…I just always use the “forgot password”-option. In that case, how do they get passwords that I’ve never used in my life and don’t even know myself the next week?

First, you should make sure your computer is secure. Then contact support and ask them to change the email account associated with your GW2 account. The new email address will then be your new login name. Use a secure password and be sure to setup email authentication at the very least. Also, NEVER use the same password for both your email and GW2 account.

Weekly scans got that covered. I got e-mail authentication set-up, I just don’t seem to receive mails from it(now that you mention it…could it have been turned off?). I never had a matching password between my GW2 account and my e-mail. The last game to use the mail password closed servers 5 years ago and I haven’t used that password for any accounts in the last 4 years.

The problem is that I don’t actually know what the problem is. My best guess would be a secondary e-mail associated with the account(because if my e-mail was compromised it just doesn’t make sense that they’d arbitrary choose to take my account and ignore the second account info). And since they are changing my password, they should have my serial code as well, no? I was going to slowly request changes to my account until the issue is resolved, but yesterday saw they offer 1 rollback per account. I like GW2 just enough to consider starting over for the second time, but I definitely don’t like it enough to keep starting over every 3 weeks. Since their solution is “change your password and don’t share it with family”(obviously not working), I guess I’m looking for changes to my account that’ll plug all perceivable leaks. New e-mail, new password(that I’ll probably forget again so I guess the forum will be out of the question…), new…what else?

On an amusing side-note: My fiancé mailed them last night to ask what the puppy is happening and why aren’t they replying to my 6 days old e-mail. He got a response this morning. I’m still waiting with only an automated answer to show for it….

kippey.9860:

4) That THAT response was also a booboo on support’s part; they can’t roll an account back 6 whole months (I didn’t think that they could!)

Mine was allegedly rolled back 11 months…

Antonio Cappello.1806:

-snip-

First of all, simulated randomness =/= true randomness. If there is an algorithm deciding on an order, then, by definition, it’s not random. No matter how random it might appear.

Second, of course they aren’t connected and the dice doesn’t remember the previous roll. However, for the expected result(what probability tells us) to be close to the real outcome, you need to observe events on a large scale thus connecting separate events. That’s why your chance of rolling a 20th tails in a roll isn’t 50%.

Lastly, a large part of Bayes’ theorem relies on guess work. You assume certain conditions to be true and calculate the probability based on that. That’s far from accurate now, is it? The rest of it relies on extensive testing. Sure, if somebody was to run thousands of fractals and collect the data from those, the resulting distribution would be rather accurate. Except that’s not how people make the game forum probability calculations. They go off of the assumption that the data is pristine and fair. I’m not saying it’s not, I’m saying we don’t know whether it is or isn’t. Which is why those calculations are ultimately pure speculation and waving them around saying “you had enough time this maybe correct maybe very wrong probability calculating post says so” is puppy.

Ticket: 217896
Account restoration and changes to prevent further problems. No answer since the original submission on 31.12.2013.

Rajani Isa.6294:

Where did you get the IP from?

Probably from the account page, where it shows the IPs currently logged into your account and the IPs authorized to log in your account.

I have a different question: Did you remove the IP from your account before contacting them?

PS: Consider yourself lucky, you are at least getting answers. I’d love to even get a “we can’t restore” so I can move forward in some way…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure how anyone adding you as a friend gets 50% of your log-in information. Your display name has nothing to do with logging into your account. One uses the Account name to log in, not the Display name.

When you have your account restored, they ask you 4 question to prove you are the owner.
1. Display name(the blabla.1234)
2. Name of a char on the account
3. Creation time with 3 days error margin
4. Serial code

When you add somebody as friend, you get 1 and 2. That’s half the proof of account ownership.

SandraSolace.7682:

Looks like it’s not the game that is the problem but your email account isn’t save.

As long as that isn’t secured you will keep getting these emails and that is how they get your account info.

But my e-mail has 2 accounts’ infos in it. Why is only mine getting hit?

Also, is there a way to change the e-mail?

So, I was reading the Mike O’Brian article…and got annoyed by it.

story time A while ago me and my fiancé bought GW2 and started playing(2 accounts). We were both using the same password that we’ve been both using since we met. Then came the blacklist and the “please, change your password”. I, being a good girl, did exactly that. When I told him he should, he looked at me and told me they can go puppy themselves. I had a bran new GW2-approved password, he didn’t. Roughly a month later I received 15 authentication e-mails in 2 days. All Chinese IPs(we live in the Netherlands). Mailed support, got another brand new password. Got banned for RMT 2 days later. Mailed support again, proved it was me, all good. Few months passed, I got bored of GW2 and played a different game for 10 months or so. Upon returning 1 month ago, I found my account banned for botting. Went through the usual support fun, had my account restored, got yet another brand new password.

It was at that point that I noticed how anybody who adds me as friend(which I don’t need to agree to) automatically becomes the owner of 50% of my account(he has the log-in name and a char name). Then I listed to my fiancé talking to people about how long they’ve been playing GW2…anybody in that conversation was 75% account owner of each of those accounts. Disturbing, right? Back to the story…

31.12 I woke up and tried to log in on the forum. Wrong password. I got yet another new password and found yet another Chinese IP authorized to log in my account. There was no trace of the password change or the new IP in my e-mail… I’m still waiting for support to respond in any way end story

So, here’s the problem. My PC undergoes weekly full scans. No threats found. My e-mail holds 2 serial codes(for me and my fiancé). I followed all their security instructions while he ignored them completely. I lose my account on a monthly basis. His is intact, never even attempted to login. What can I do(apart from unistalling GW2 and never looking back) for this to stop happening? I sincerely regret changing my password last year…because that’s when it all started…should’ve known better, I guess…

Ayrilana.1396:

It was stated that fractal selection is random. Random means well random. If it was influenced by something then it’s not random. If you knew about probability then you’d understand and wouldn’t be asking for proof. So you think that what one groups rolls affects another? Do you also believe that your loot is impacted by what others get as well?

You do realise that true randomness doesn’t exist in programming, right? So in this case random means “programmed to appear random while following a certain algorithm”. That’s also why it has to be 1 dice. By increasing the scale and splitting the results between multiple parties, the pattern can’t be discerned because you can’t observe all results.

You’re still missing it. Probability doesn’t stack. The last sentence is correct but you’re just not understanding the rest.

It’s the best word I know to describe it. That’s how you get higher probability over multiple tries. Otherwise your chance of rolling a 3 would always be 1/6.

A well tested theory is better and more reliable than personal experience. The human mind tends to try to make patterns out of things whether there is or not. Just look at the numerous threads about MF or the most recent ones about a supposed ecto salvage rate nerf.

Your example is misleading as it’s about emotions rather than the mathematics itself. I almost want to say it’s a borderline strawman argument.

Since I see this going nowhere, this will be my last post on this particular topic rather than repeat myself any further. I highly suggest reading about probability or even taking a class or two. It does have real world applications which makes it worth it. Anyway, thank you for the discussion.

Yeah, I’ve seen those. They tend to also have people who say “it’s all in your head”. Because, again, that’s a shared dice. For every guy experiencing a decrease in something, there is another guy(or multiple other guys) experiencing an increase. People just tend to question bad luck while embracing good luck. So when you are getting more ectos than usual, you don’t go on the forum(because, duhhh, if you report an increase they might nerf it and that’s bad for you).

No, it’s not about emotions. It’s about the difference between expectation and result. For the last time(because it seems really hard for you to understand), probability isn’t a guarantee(unless it’s 100%). “Given enough time” is also meaningless. Because “enough time” is relative. For you it can be 5h. For me it can be 50 hours. For John it can be 500h.

It’s real applications are to calculate an expected result. Nobody who understands probability, views it as a gospel. That’s why we use machines to predict earthquakes and don’t rely on the probability of an earthquake. That’s why doctors do tests and don’t go off on the probability of a patient having a decease(I almost died when a doctor decided to go with the probability, luckily my dad, the engineer, knew how ridiculous relying on probability was and got me tested). I also had a colleague, statistics major. He put himself through school with sports betting. Guess what, he wasn’t betting based on probability. He had multiple bookies and was betting on different results in such amounts that no matter the outcome, he always ended up with a profit. Because everybody knows relying on probability is literally the last resort. It’s on the same level as tossing a coin before you cross the street instead of looking at the traffic light or looking left and right.

This discussion actually helped me realise what the real problem is with these calculations. They are based on assumed values. Here’s an example: I’m holding 52 cards in my hand. What’s the probability of you drawing queen of diamonds? 1/52? That’d be the logical, simple answer. But what if I took out all hearts and replaced them with queens of diamonds? Or what if I took out queen of diamonds and replaced it with a second queen of hearts? You don’t know that. Just like you don’t know what the initial probability for each fractal is. You assume that because there are x fractals, it’s 1/x. But it doesn’t have to be. It can easily be higher for some, lower for others. Deliberate or a programming error. Point is, you don’t know. That alone makes any and all calculations made up.

Ayrilana.1396:

You don’t have it quite yet. It’s based on each individual group. An individual who has rolled swamp 100 times in a row does not impact whether or not the group they’re in will roll swamp.

What evidence do you have to back that up? “That” being that every time a group enters fotm, a new dice is generated specifically for them and rolled instead of the much simpler having 1 dice already existing and being rolled every time fotm is entered?

Additionally, if that is, indeed, the case, your entire argument is puppy. Because if there is a new dice generated for each group, each fotm entry is completely independent of all others and there is no probability stacking of any sorts. The odds for each dice roll remain 1/6 because there are no other events to influence them.

Yes, you can do 100 fractal runs and not get a certain fractal. However, the probability of that occurring is very low. It’s called probability, not practice. Whether it is a theory or not doesn’t matter. It’s a well tested theory taught in schools around the world.

And we are back to “just because the probability is low doesn’t mean the event won’t happen”. It being a theory is all that matters when it comes to the practical experience of a player. Tell a person dying of cancer that the probability of them dying was 1% and see if that makes any difference to them. (Disclaimer: I apologise about the somewhat insensitive example, but it’s the most illustrative I got in the case.) Then you can explain to them about how it’s taught in school and stuff and it being just a theory doesn’t matter….right…

Yes, there is a difference between “I failed” and “I didn’t get lucky”. Time is still the deciding factor. Given enough time, people can learn most things. Given enough time, people can achieve something that has a fixed probability.

That’s right. “Given enough time”. Except you are given a limited time frame to achieve something. And, seriously, it’s called a “theory” for a reason. You can do 100 fractals and never get fractal A. That’s called “practice”.

Ayrilana.1396:

Incorrect. One group rolling for a certain fractal does not impact another group rolling for that same fractal. Two different people rolling two dice 6 times will have the same probability rolling a 6 within that many attempts. This does not mean that both will roll a 6 in that many attempts or at all.

So, you are basically suggesting that I have my own personal fotm and you have your own personal fotm. How does that work exactly? And what happens when you and I are in the same group? Are the odds for my fotm taken into consideration or the odds for your fotm?

Ayrilana.1396:

Nope. Try again. Oh, low probability does not mean something cannot ever happen. I never said that.

What am I trying again?

See the first quote I responded to in this post.

That’s not an elaboration.

You can. If you lack the skill for something then you have to spend the time to reach the required skill level. If something has RNG, you have to spend time until you get the desired result. Time is the key element here where adaptation means you’ll have to spend more of it.

Except the time it takes you to reach the skilled level depends entire on you. The time it takes you to reach the RNG level depends entirely on outside forces that you can do nothing about. You can spend 1000 hours in fotm and only then see fractal A. Only, you don’t have 1000 hours, do you? And there is a difference in the feeling between “I failed” and “I didn’t get lucky”.

Think about it. How many movies feature the frustrating event of “I can’t finish this project in time because I’m bad at my job”? And how many movies feature “puppy it, I finished the project in time but now I’m stuck in an elevator because an out-of-the-blue lightning hit the power lines”? Why do you think that is? Knowing you could’ve done something and not being able to do it due to forces outside your control is far more frustrating than simply not being able to do it. It’s also why players generally hate RNGs in games. When somebody complains that a dungeon is too hard, you see a lot of “learn2pay, puppy” replies. When somebody complains that it took them 500 tries to get 20 clovers, you see mostly “oh, yeah, i know exactly how you feel and it sucks” or “woah, i’m lucky!” Nobody tells the clover guy to go puppy himself and virtually everybody sympathizes with him.

Once again you’re still missing the key difference that I mentioned many times.

I’ll throw you a hint by using an example:

Suppose you have a six-sided die. What is the probability of landing on either of the sides? What is the probability of landing on a particular side within 6 tosses?

Oh, now I know what you mean. Here’s the real issue. You aren’t the only one tossing that dice. There’s 200 other people taking turns to toss it. That’s what makes the chain probability inapplicable to such events and they should be viewed as individual for each player.

elaborating Let’s say you want a 3. You toss the dice and get a 4. The chance that the next dice toss will be a 3 is higher because the probability needs to be reflected in the big picture(basically, out of 600 tosses, 100 have to be a 3, 100 have to be a 4, 1 4 is already gone, you know what i mean). But then somebody else tosses the dice and gets a 5, then somebody else gets a 3, then a 2 etc etc. By the time you get another turn, 50 3s have been tossed in 200 tries. Your odds at tossing a 3 are thus lower even though you weren’t the one who got those 50 3s. Fotm is a dice shared by all players, not your personal one. That’s what makes a chain probability calculations simply wrong in this case(and quite a few others) and independent odds are more reliable. /end elaborate

Oh, about RNG’s impact. It’s everything. RNG is the thing that decides on what you are getting. You don’t even know how the fotm RNG works(unless you designed it). For all we know, it can be based on time frames. So, if OP plays at the same time every day, he’ll be getting the exact same fractals every day. Which is something most working people do due to having a schedule. You can’t say what impact RNG would have on somebody’s experience without knowing how that RNG works…

Ayrilana.1396:

Exactly. Nothing is guaranteed. That’s essentially what probability is. Doesn’t weaken my argument though.

Actually, it does just that. Probability reflects the expected result, not the actual outcome. Saying “it has low probability so it can’t happen” is puppy. And that is what you are trying to argue. But at the end, probability is irrelevant. What matters is the outcome. And in this case the outcome for some was not completing the achievement despite a reasonable amount of attempts.

Nope. I suggest that you research more into probability. You’re making the same mistake that I said many people do.

Care to elaborate on what that mistake might be?

The RNG is very minimal when it comes to fractal selection. Having 14 days was more than enough time.

The RNG is absolutely everything when it comes to fractal selection because fractals are, most likely, selected by an RNG. Otherwise there would be a discernible pattern to it.

Oh no I saw what he was saying. I still don’t see an issue. Some achievements require skill (liandri), some to grind out a number of tasks (50 Toypocalpse waves survived), and some are tied to RNG (moa betting). The RNG associated with the living story achievements was more than reasonable. If someone is trying to get all of the living story achievements then they should be capable of adapting to get it whether it’s because it’s RNG or they lack the skill for something that requires a higher skill level.

You can’t really adapt to RNG. It’s, by definition, out of your control. You can adapt to a skill-based activity by increasing your skill level, looking up how2-tips, practising the fight until you build up reflexes for it. You can adapt to a limited amount of repetitions by knowing how long it would take you to complete the task and putting the time(+ a grace period) aside. The only way to somewhat adapt to RNG is by increasing the amount of tries into infinity(aka, until its done). However, when that RNG comes with a time stamp, you…can’t. You can’t infinitely keep doing fractals because you only have 2 weeks to complete it.

Soooo, ammm, how would you feel about something like this:

A ghost of stories past. An NPC that, for a fee, allows you to unlock an old LS achievement tab and, in certain cases, open an instance that you can join with 1-5 people to get said achievements. For example, if you want to replay the Fractured! part, you pay xxx gold and when you do fractals you get achievements from it. If you want to replay the Nightmare Tower, you pay yyy gold to unlock it and then another, say, 100 gems to enter the instance(per person). The gold for unlocking can be based on the AP of the achievement category. Like, if there’s 50 AP total, you pay 50g, but if you already have 40 AP, you pay 10g. It can be like going on a trip with different packages(basic: you get to complete the achievements without any rewards cause you are staying in the cheap hotel, special: you get the APs as well and premium: you get all rewards related to it, 1 time only for, ofc, more gold and gems).

I guess it’d be too much work though…

Ayrilana.1396:

With a known probability, you can calculate out over however many attempts it would likely take to get a certain fractal.

“Likely” being the key word. Not guaranteed.

Sure there’s always that probability that you will not get the fractal within those attempts but it gets lower the more you do. I also want to point out that there is a difference when I’m discussing probability of a single run (doesn’t ever change) vs the probability over a number of runs. Many people often get confused by this as the difference is subtle.

Is there some sort of fractal limit? Like, if you do 3 of fractal A, it won’t show up for you again until a certain condition is met(for example, server restart or you do all other fractals 3 times)? Because that is the only way probability changes over time.

Every game has RNG. You can play 99% of the game without having to rely on RNG. That seems pretty fair to me. FotM has been RNG for well over a year. The only change made was split the fractals up into tiers.

And give 14 days to make the RNG work in your favour.

Yes, I did read all of his post. I just don’t see the difference between missing one living story achievement when other achievements (daily/monthly – PvE/PvP) are missed as well. No content was really lost as you could still do that particular fractal. If it was something directly involved with a story, I could understand. However, those achievements were just busy work (filler) to give you something to do until the next update. Roughly 90% of all living story achievements are like that.

Yes, you don’t see it. He obviously does. Because it’s his personal goal. I’ll try it again:
There are different achievement categories. You don’t need to care about all of them in order to care about one of them. You can want to complete every WvWvW achievement without also wanting to complete every Slayer achievement and vice versa, right? So why do you think it’s impossible that somebody might want to complete every LS achievement without wanting to complete every daily? He specifically said that he doesn’t care about AP or achievements in general. He cares about completing LS achievements because that’s what “I did it all” means to him.

Guardian.5142:

TWMagimay.9057 – You don’t understand my post, but your wording says “I’m better than you” so I won’t waste my breath either way.

Ran out of arguments, I see. It’s ok. Happens to a lot of people, no need to make up excuses.

Guardian.5142:

I see what you mean and I understand where you are coming from. I think what people are wanting here, especially since we are talking virtual items, which can be mass produced for essentially nothing, that the rewards be more tempting.

Lets use your lottery analogy. The lottery company needs to do… a slight modification to what the boxes drop and in turn, are out NOTHING for costs and should they put more tempting items in those boxes, people would be more inclined to buy the keys for them.

Oh, the “they have 0 production costs”-argument. By that logic, they might as well just give everything out for free, right? The thing is, while the items themselves can be mass produced without increasing the cost, there is still a staff behind the game that relies on those item sales to stay employed, get paid and work on the game(be it development or maintenance or w/e else game-related people do). Prices in cash shops are generally balanced around that + profit(duhhh). So, no, it’s not “nothing” for costs.

Best thing you can get from them now is a Black Lion Ticket. At best, its time sensitive, based on whether the special weps cost 1 BLT, but it could mean either an awesome skin or… what, average of 80g if the wep is sold on the TP. So, with your lottery analogy, you buy a 10g ticket that might have a small chance of netting you 80g grand prize. Oooooo.. Spoil me.

What if the permanent hair style item came back into circulation? What if the perminant bank, TP or BL vendors came back into circulation? What if the special skins themselves came into circulation? What if currently unobtainable past back pieces and items became rare drops from BL chests? Maybe the BLTs get a bump to drop rate and be the “didn’t win, but got something for my trouble” prize and something MUCH better became the reason to shoot for them. If the RL lotto charged me one dollar for a chance to win 80 bucks and normally I get pocket change, I won’t risk buying any.

Are we reading the same topic? Cause most of the posts I see here ask for the “loser” tickets to be removed so all tickets can be winners.
Posts actually discussing the drops:
Jaymee: they are promised at least something that would deem significant to their account.
Jaymee: we would know we WOULD be getting something that would be of equal value
Kentaine: they should have something (100% of the time) that is actually beneficial to your account. (hair stylist contract, make over kits, expansion slots, etc…
Zoe: Just replace those kitten tonics with something worth having.
Tman and GoddessOfTheWinds are more reasonable, I guess. But with 3vs2, they are the minority and you said you agree with the majority. The majority wants to have only winning lottery tickets. And lotteries just don’t work that way xD

Tbh, I don’t do gamble boxes. Haven’t done it since the following happened in the other game I play: There was this costume everybody wanted. They released it in a gamble boxes. 6 hours after it showed up in the shop, they announced “oooopsies, we sort of forgot to put that costume y’all wanted inside…our bad”. There was no rollback, no refunds, no nothing. The most eager to get the item got royally puppied for 100s, some even 1000s. I’ve been terrified of RNG boxes ever since. Also, I refuse to support under-age gambling.

Kentaine.4692:

Yes, it was mandatory. If you wanted the achievement (a large part of why I’m sure you want to reroll without having to level, maybe not for the achievement but for the story connected to it) you HAD to roll that race.

Again, swapping species won’t work because of the bound cultural/order armor.

I’d rather see them give real XP boosts to those who have 80s so they can level faster than let you bounce around your 80 to each race.

Or maybe -gasp- I decided that I like asura better than sylvari. Which, btw, is exactly why I have a lvl 73 asura ele standing right next to my lvl 80 sylvari ele. Couldn’t care less about story or achievements. I’m in it for the cuteness.

Sure it does. 2 options:
- You mail support and they replace the armour.
- You suck it up as part of the cost for not having to level a new char.
Either will work just fine regradless of your reasons for changing. Unless you just wanted to see what human cultural armour looks like on a charr. Which ain’t gonna happen. It can easily be in the description.

That’d be more expensive though….

Moramoth.3965:

This situation is not analogous. You can’t compare a real life lottery where folks spend small amounts of real currency for a chance to win a very large amount of real currency to a situation where people are spending real currency for a virtual product that is worth nothing outside of its virtual domain. I believe that if you’re spending actual currency there should be at least some minimal guarantee that you’ll receive something deemed of worth by the virtual market.

I agree with the majority here — we should get more for our money. The best way to make that happen would be to continue to voice our thoughts on these forums and stop buying keys until changes are made.

I’m gonna skip the discussion of whether a virtual reality is a reality or not since it’s only partially relevant.

Let’s say you are German and as such use Euro as your real life currency. What you are basically saying is that if you purchase a lottery ticket with euro it’s ok to get nothing in return. But if you were to convert your euro to rupees and buy a lottery ticket with those, you should be guaranteed to win something because those rupees aren’t your real life currency. I’m pretty sure you’ll disagree with that. But why are rupees any different from gems? Because the one exists in a physical form and the other doesn’t? You did spend euro on both though.
The problem isn’t with the BLK, it’s with your perception of BLK, gems and thus GW2 as worthless for being virtual. But you aren’t spending your euro on a random virtual item. You are spending them on a hobby. Just like a stamp collector doesn’t randomly buy a coin and an art collector doesn’t end up with a living horse, you aren’t a SWTOR player buying BTKs.
Lastly, back to the lottery. Just because you are buying a lottery ticket for an item with limited “domain” doesn’t mean you are entitled to winning that item or an item of higher value than the ticket. If I buy a ticket for a lottery where the grand prize is an engraved watch, am I entitled to winning something? Since it’s engraved with, say, my name and the lottery date, it’s practically unsellable. Does that mean that by buying the ticket, I should by guaranteed to win a watch that I can sell since I’m spending real cash on it and it’s worthless outside my collection?

Ayrilana.1396:

There was more than enough time to get all of the achievements for the meta. Someone did the math in one of these threads that showed the probability of getting a certain fractal during a run and the probability of not getting within a certain number of runs. The thing is that if you played it every night, you had a low probability of not having encountered every fractal.

I also disagree that luck should be any different than lack of skill, time, and/or understanding. The thing is that eventually you’re going to miss an achievement due to one reason or another. Do you do every daily and monthly achievement? Do you do all of the infinite meta achievements until they give out no more AP? If not, then I don’t see where the argument is as you’re not missing out on anything.

I don’t think you understand probability. It’s an expectation on a grand scheme. Here’s an example from my previous game: After a new dungeon was introduced and religiously ran by my team, I could swear it loved lancers. In 30 runs I saw 4 lancers get full sets and some spare items. In those same 30 runs I saw no weapon or chest for my class(got the weapon on 35th run, never saw the chest in a total of 51 runs when I gave up and crafted a better one). When those 30 runs were done and we were looking at drops, another team from my guild reported 8 weapons and 5 chests that were for my class. Their lancer was, ironically, still waiting for a lance. All those items had the same chance of dropping. And I’m sure that if you count all the run done by all the players, you’d have the expected 1/16 ratio. But for individual players or teams, some items were simply more common while others were practically non-existent. Because probability on small scale is pointless. If you toss a coin 2 times, you can have 2 times tails. If you toss it 10 times, you can have 7 times tails, if you toss it 100 times, you can have 60 times tails etc etc…the large the scale, the closer you get to the expected probability value, the smaller the scale, the bigger the chance that you just won’t get what you were hoping for or expecting.
TL;DR: Your first paragraph is basically “If you’d ran 1000 fractals, you’d have gotten it for sure so it’s totally your fault!”

The whole appeal of this game is how little impact RNG has on goals. That’s, like, the only reason I play it. Because my time, my skill and my understanding matter more than dumb luck. If I want my goals to rely on luck, there are better games than GW2.

How do you know OP was going to miss an achievement? Unless you were planning on kidnapping him for the duration of a LS, you can’t possibly make such a claim.

Did you even read? OP likes LS achievements. Not all achievements, just LS. That’s his personal goal in the game. We all have one, for some(maybe even most), it’s a different one. But that doesn’t mean his is somehow worse or should be dismissed with “it won’t kill you”. My personal goal in recent games is a BiS set. Do you know how much I hate it when people tell me that “you don’t need it, you can do everything in -insert lesser set here-, just enjoy the game”. My enjoyment of the game is based on achieving that personal goal. Not on what you think my personal goal should be or how insignificant and/or silly you find my personal goal.

I don’t think you understand how lottery tickets work. Because that is exactly what the keys are. A bunch of people buy a ticket, some even a few. Out of 100 mil tickets, 1 is the jackpot winner. A few bring a good price, some let you come out even. Most give you nothing. And that is why lottery tickets make money. If you could buy a 1 euro ticket and be guaranteed to win stuff worth between 2 and 2000 euro, the lottery wouldn’t stay in business long. Heck, even if half the 1 euro tickets brought in 2 euro winnings and the rest brought in nothing, the lottery would still die.

It tends to get grindy when you go to grind for those mats. I crafted an ascended staff last week and the grind part was gathering the soft and hard wood for it(I’m not into buying stuff from tb, prefer getting it myself…moving on..).
How did I get my dragonite ores? I stumbles across a few karkas and jourmags, occasionally checked the gw2stuff site to see if any event was up(cause I didn’t feel like anything else) and got 2 shatterer in pre or progress, camped Tequatl 2 times(want the achievements).
How did I get the fragments? Did 2 AC runs(not a big fan of dungeons in GW2 and a bit rusty so ashamed to go in a bit), took the frostgorge troll chest few times(while gathering, after train passes), did some JPs(cause I like them)…actually most of my fragments come from JPs, picked up random chests I bumped into while running around.
Voilà. Ascended staff, 0 grind fatigue.

side-note I just came to gw2 from another game. I was aiming for a BiS item there as well. Took me roughly the same amount of time to get. Guess what I was doing? I was soloing the first 3 mobs in a dungeon(3-4min to kill, 5 min cd from start to reenter so 1-2min waiting outside). Over. And over. And over. Not because I wanted to or because I chose that options from the many. It was the only option I had that provided a reliable way to get the items I needed. The only existing other option was kind of like killing all 3 dragons every day and waiting for The Legend to drop. end side-note

So, don’t tell me how ascended farm has no variety. Granted, going into a farming frenzy, stalking bosses on multiple chars and spamming the most profitable dungeons is faster. But it’s not the only option. Maybe I could get behind dragonite ore in more ways(though the world bosses are pretty varying as well), but not on champ train. C’mon, that’s just…silly. On another hand, it forces people to do different things instead of sticking to the one with the highest profit. Can you imagine if the same activity gave you all the mats you needed? Now that would be grindy.

Let’s see what you don’t like doing:
- WvWvW
- Jumping puzzles
- Dungeons and fotm
- World Bosses
- OW roaming for chests
May I ask…what DO you like in this game? Oh, right, champion train….seriously?!?!

Inimicus.7162:

And…yes: trading in junk ascended rings either 1 for 1 for others (via a token swap for ease) or for said ores/other bits definitely sounds fair to me.

Maybe an option to sell them to the NPC for half their fractal relic price? That I can totally get behind…

Shukay.3728:

different colors could be easy to do..

“hierarchy” no… how could you get “XP” with the commander rank?

P.S. think a way where no one could steal ar get also XP only activating his/her tag

My first though was player votes. Some commanders are better than others and that’s what such ranking should reflect.

Astral Projections.7320:

People divorce

If I’m getting divorced, I think my GW2 account would be pretty low on the priority list. Somewhere after “the house” and before “the kids”, I guess…

To avoid a support overload, they could simply have a “we are not responsible for your poor judgement”-disclaimer. Such system wouldn’t be forced upon the players and you can choose who to trust with your shineys. If you trusted a kitten instead of a puppy…learn from your mistake instead of crying to support to fix it for you.

PS: I think it should go more like this: 1st partnership – free or 100-500 gems. Then doubling the fee every time(it can be equally split by the 2 accounts, maybe 2 pieces that get forged into a insert fancy item here through a quest). Breaking the partnership should be free(in case you made a poor choice for it and you did have your account raided, you should be able to break the connection and recover instead of being doomed to a lifetime of getting destroyed).

On a side-note: You can also help your spouse with it. Craft the fancy stuff(the one above the daily item), do bosses with her, jumping puzzles or wvwvw. Play together instead of just crafting it(kind of sounds like you wanna blow your significant other off)…

Missy.6803:

I totally understand having the limit for gold sellers! I really do.

Can you explain it to me then? Because if I were a gold seller sending out spam mails or gold, I’d be using a bot to send them out at the minimum required time intervals so the excessive msg thing doesn’t pop-up. As a regular player, on the other hand, I wouldn’t have such bot and every time I try to send crafting mats or runes and sigils(my fiancé really likes putting those in the Mystic Forge to see what happens and I do FS champ train for 1-1.5h every day so that’s good 30-40 items at once) I’m doomed to get my mailing suppressed and then get increasing frustrated over it.

Anthis.5634:

It allows you to blast fields at a distance (like blasting a lava font you placed on a target). You can also use it to insta-tag mobs at range in pve. It is also more accurate at hitting several targets because you get to pinpoint the damage ‘ring’, and you can do so at a safe distance. Arcane Wave has gotten a lot more versatile in pve.

Question: Why would you want to execute a blast finisher away from yourself and deliberately miss out on the buff?

CETheLucid.3964:

Tells me to think at a higher level, complains about having to learn how to click one more time.

Way to miss the point. Nobody is having problems with the clicking. It’s the extra time needed to execute a combo. No matter how good you are, pressing 1 button is always faster than pressing 1 button and clicking 1 time. So, yeah, you aren’t just a possibly bad ele, you also fail at reading comprehension. If I were you, I’d be quiet.

I haven’t been able to make the jump to the red presents while carrying a present(though had no problem with it when I forgot to talk to the NPC)…am I just screwing up or am I missing some sort of speed boost for it?

I guess it depends on how you use it… As a damage skill it’s probably a buff(range and all)…as a blast finisher…it’s slowing all my combos down. It is somewhat hilarious when I’m running away with my staff, forget about the change and blast somewhere outside my static field… I miss having an instant blast finisher…it was much faster to stack might, easier to place heals on teammates(at least reduced the chance of them walking too far), speed buff on demand… I go drown my sorrow in a bottle of chocolate milk…

Lordrosicky.5813:

I dont PUG any dungeons because of magic find gear. You can never be sure who is in it and is thus leeching off all your hard work. Thus, I make sure to never do dungeons in PUGs. Not that I do any PvE really anymore. And that is partly, again, due to MF gear.

I know, right? And what about all those with sub-par PCs, bad connections, build and gear I don’t approve of, classes I find weak, people with less than 2000 hours online. All those noobs ruining dungeons, shame on them. They should just go to their noob corner and quit gaming in general, because they are just too noob to be allowed online. The two of us should start a petition to have them banned!

nawrasz.6219:

You both missed the point. I know it has the stats from the white item. But before when you transmuted let’s say a legendary to an exotic and used the legendary skin and exotic stats. The item would become exotic rarity in stats and color. But now it retains it’s Legendary rarity which would mean it would be eligible for the auto-upgrade mechanic that legendaries supposedly have.

From the patch notes: Transmuting weapons now preserves the higher rarity of the two items.
I’m guessing, it’s their way to let players transmute legendaries to get the desired stats without those players feeling screwed over by the future stat upgrades.

When I logged in today, the game was, well, blurry. Like a video shot slight off focus. Which resulted in a headache after 5 min online. It doesn’t seem to be there on “best performance”(but…can’t be sure, was already feeling sick when I checked it), but, frankly, the game looks horrible like that and I want my fluff. Is there a particular tab in the options that’d focus it better?

Red Falcon.8257:

And what would exactly be this “instant party wipe mechanic”?
I’ve never had a team wipe at JS fractal, that would be very embarassing considering how terribly easy it is.

My guess would be…smb throws the last crystal and triggers the very last phase of the fight(where JS spits the green stuff and kills anybody who isn’t holding a crystal). Without crystals that results in a party wipe and reset of the boss. Due to how easy it is to avoid, I doubt it was an intentional gold sink though.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The problem is, the game isn’t very casual really. How many casual players have you seen clear Arah exp? How many casual players with a legendary? How many casual players with 4000+ achievement points?

Any casual player can get to 80, but after that the game becomes very competitive and almost ridiculously hardcore.

I don’t see what clearing Arah has to do with being casual or hardcore. You don’t need to be in a race or play 10h/day to be a good player. My best Arah party was with 3 casual players and we got p3 done in under 1 hour, Lupi killed on first try(was their first time), p1 took us 1.5h even though none of us have done it before.
Legendary is a long term goal. It’s smth a casual player sort of does on the side(as in, don’t sell the stuff you’d need for it.
Achievement points at their current state are useless and not an indicator of, well, anything. You can get all of those just from salvaging(look at the guy with 15 000+ points…).

What is so “hardcore”? Simin? Yeah, I’d give you that one if the fight wasn’t 90% luck(1 ball anyone?). Apart from that, it’s fairly easy, you just need to get lucky(which is what I pretty much hate about GW2).

What are you competing for?

critickitten.1498:

For one, their sales figures are significantly down, as they recently admitted to hitting the 3 million mark. For the record, they were at 1 million sold before the game was even released, and had passed 2 million a mere two weeks after release.

So…I should keep buying a new copy every month to prove I’m still playing? Your record is perfectly normal and in no way an indication of decrease of the playerbase since a person interested in the game will buy 1 copy on average and buy it sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, there are generally less players in many areas and servers. Some have been filtered into LA, but many others have quit entirely, as indicated by the number of players on this forum who no longer play.

Again, normal. During the first few weeks of a game, players are generally “jammed” in the same regions. Once the majority reaches level cap, the playerbase spreads. In addition to that, there is a good reason why games are normally released during o right before a holiday season. People have more free time then. Seeing less players during school time is not an indicator that the game is failing but merely proof that gamers can have other priorities.
As per your data, over 3 mil people own a copy of GW2. Compared to that, the people on the forum are a drop in the sea. In addition to that, people are very vocal when unhappy thus on the forum while the happy players are in the game. If you have visited enough game forums, you’d also know that a lot of gamers are under the impression that them quitting a game is a big deal and everybody should be made aware of it. Like everything till now, perfectly normal.

And then there’s the dozens of other resources and sites on the internet full of players who have admitted they no longer play for one reason or another. Xfire’s recorded player counts are down significantly as well.

Xfire went out of style 5 years ago. It and any other external sites are not a credible source to determine the population of the game(read above).

And of course, there’s the sudden 180 shift with regards to releases.

They listen to their players and adjust the game to cater to requests. That’s bad…why exactly?

“But that stuff is all subjective”, I can hear you saying. And I agree, it is.

It’s not subjective, it’s simply…speculation. The GW2-is-losing-players-thing has no real evidence to back it up. Just gut feeling and need to complain. The subjective part is that it’s always adjusted to match the personal crusade. Like…“GW2 is losing players, because it’s not competitive enough” or “GW2 is losing layers because it’s too grindy” or “GW2 is losing players because there aren’t any mounts” or “GW2 is losing players because there is no RP server” and so on and so on. But the fact is, there are no actual facts to back up any “drastic decrease in player numbers”. Do people leave? Ofc. Is that perfectly normal? Hell, yes.

True, we don’t have numbers, mainly because GW2 doesn’t want us knowing how they’re doing. But it’s not hard to tell, based on what we’ve seen everywhere and the sudden policy shift, that the game isn’t as successful as they’d hoped it would be, and that they’re changing strategies to try and boost player retention.

And if I made a blog and posted about how awesome GW2 is and then made 1 mil accounts to back myself up…that’d also be a credible source? Because, yes, gamers are known for agreeing with themselves(I have moderated game forums, trust me, any site that doesn’t ask you to pay to be a member…people are bound to be going for me, myself and I to make sure they are winning).
Again, adjusting based on player demands is bad…why exactly?

Good thing too, because now that other rival games are moving to F2P models (TOR and TERA), along with the announcement of upcoming games that may directly rival their own (TESO), they pretty much have to adjust their strategy to stay competitive, or they risk falling even further.

Tera is so absolutely not a rival of GW2…it’s like saying a new pacman would rival GW2. Not saying Tera is a bad game or anything,but it is very very different in almost every aspect(except pvp, both games fail miserably at it). And I’m frankly afraid to see what it’d look like with a f2p model…
They just need to keep players checking the game out every now and then so that when an expansion comes along, they’ll get to sell it to a lot of people. And that will actually be the indicator of how well GW2 is doing: How many people will buy the first expansion. Prior to that point…nobody can really tell.

PS: I know I’m rambling, 5h of learning Dutch…I’m dizzy…

Eviscera.9703:

The game is losing players drastically

And you know that because…you are part of their marketing team?