Guild Wars 2

I’m grateful for the honest and open communication.

In a sense, it doesn’t really affect me, but the reason it doesn’t affect me would have been “solved” by completing a full series of new legendaries.

I often joke with my friends about how bad thieves have it when it comes to the first legendaries. I’ve mained Thief since 2012 and have never once taken an interest in the hard work needed for legendaries. I’ve always incorporated Pistols in my builds, but it doesn’t get more “joke weapon” than something named “The Quip”. I want my character to be cool and impressive, not pierce the heart of my enemies with sharp confetti. The shotbow has always been decent in WvW, but that route means shooting freaking unicorns and rainbows. The Incinerator is a genuinely cool weapon, but it is fire themed, and guess who absolutely never inflicts Burning? The sword has never been satisfactorily Thief-like for me and not enjoyable, so I don’t use it. I don’t remember what the underwater legendaries are, of course everyone wants water combat to be reworked, but that probably can’t be much of a priority until 2020 or so.

I don’t mind joke weapons being made, but Thieves have it too rough. But I’ll gladly sacrifice plenty of interesting content if it means any better progress for WvW. Cosmetics don’t mean a thing if I’m not playing.

Mike O Brien.4613:

We’re investigating whether to fix or revert DBL. They’re both a lot of work. These next couple days will be your last chance to give feedback before we make a decision, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

I haven’t really been a part of this discussion since I’m among those on a break, and before that HoT baited me into PvE. I missed the peak activity in the new borderlands (if there was one, at least the first day presumably).

As a solo roamer, I have actually very much enjoyed the new borderlands. The layout and mechanical themes. The battles not so much. The sense of size and sparse population generally means I can solo too many things with very little response from the enemy, and I cannot respond to enemies taking our objectives too easily.

I think the design is overall good, the population vs size problem might be related to there being 3 of them. It’s design seems suited to EBg style battles, which only can happen on one central map. I think this new borderlands should be reduced to only 1 instance, with the “Home” world on rotation. Maybe rotate after the home-world earns a certain number of points from the map? Daily rotation would be too fast. Though if scoring is dismissed as irrelevant, no fast-rotation would be fun enough.

Here I am juggling my inventory at every Noxious Pod angrily staring at every regional key and regional trophy I’ve been holding, saying I wish my beloved Anet “would stop selling inventory space so hard”. I was already progressively buying inventory space with the core game, then they started making me hold keys and shovels.

This high price shows intentions too blatantly, and it sucks seeing greed.

The junk we’re forced to carry is not fun, every thing should be a mechanic in the pursuit of fun. But these keys and trophies are clearly a burden to fill up inventory space so we buy space sooner.

derekgrant.6504:

F1 = Steal. Alt + F1 = F2 bind.

I didn’t think of this, a simple modifier key will keep reaching low. Thanks for the solution.

I like this, but with Thief main and Necro secondary, I’ve always been well off with Profession Ability 1 on my Mouse 4 (thumb) button. Guess I have a new excuse to get a better mouse.

Plenty of cool devs already come by Fort Aspenwood, and I don’t think I’ve seen you come by yet. Lawton came by as Helga. Devon is pretty much a regular as Citizen Snips. Even Gaile has been on FA a little bit.

Though in all honesty, I’d be just as happy to see you visit YB or SoS. I haven’t gotten to assassinate a dev yet. (Does the Anet tag show to enemies in WvW? I think I’ve never seen it on an enemy.)

I just skimmed through multiple sections of the legal stuff, and I didn’t quite interpret anything to cover WvW spying conduct. I discovered my formerly favorite commander has resorted to spying with an alternate account, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to report that or tolerate it.

I’ve enjoyed the trap, but it definitely is rare that I actually choose the skill. I’d think the most natural use of it would be to place it on a road near a tower, then head to the other end of the tower to take care of other things, but it simply does not work this way. If it were a pure teleport I’d carry it far more often.

Turk.5460:

I see you took my advice!

To that end, I approve of the pessimism. Meanwhile gotta keep discussing it as the changes approach.

Ghost Bear.5280:

Which one of you designers thought this garbage up? Not someone who plays thief, that’s for sure. Bottom line: NOT FUN.

I believe a part of how this issue got in is that the “Revealed” effect didn’t always exist. At least that’s how I remember it. Used to be only duration and attacking were concerns. But I don’t think the trait has been touched even once despite the penalty addition.

I almost never consider it as a mid-combat thing. The closest I come is dashing out dangerously to draw some attention then shoot it towards my tower, its delay is just enough for me to seriously distract without having to worry about targeting the standard Shadowstep.

It’s normally a start or end of combat tool, two consecutive uses of it covers distance way more quickly that Swiftness or most leaps, and you can often do a third. Lets you easily catch any fleeing opponent, or flee dangerous armies.

How I most apply it is in skipping steep hills. There are many hills that art too steep to run up, but you can easily shoot yourself up them since it’s not a pathing conflict.

Sure the threat of it probably varies with playstyle, melee is probably less likely to have an attack mid-flight than projectiles. And I believe the majority of players play with autoattack-1 on.

I’m not too supportive of Cloaked in Shadow as the alternative, applying Blind to something nearby will put you in combat even if you weren’t intending to (unless they consider changing this behavior, but I think the current behavior is appropriate).

Infusion of Shadows on the other hand does make a lot of sense as a replacement, it focuses on two parts of the profession’s core mechanics, so it compliments far more builds. The initiative-on-stealth property wasn’t anywhere in the previewed changes though, so looks like they were considering removing it. It’s of course not too late for it as far as considering changes goes.

Last Refuge

Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches 25%.

The idea of it is great, but with the way it’s implemented, far more than half the time it ends up being “When your health reaches 25%, receive the Revealed penalty and waste your next Stealth skill.”

While all the stuff revealed in the stream of the upcoming specializations is a work in progress, the Shadow Arts Adept minor trait is still previewed to be an unchanged Last Refuge. This has long needed a change, and now seems to be a really active time for changing such things.

Blinding Powder itself can sometimes be difficult to not wastefully trigger Revealed on, but that can completely be trained and controlled. The single moment of hitting 25% health is an uncontrollable event, and exactly the time you don’t want a self-inflicted penalty and when you most want to reliably land a Stealth.

Lets hear some ideas about either reworking it or what to swap it with, and what ideas work or don’t work.

The smallest change that comes to my mind for preserving its naturally powerful effect is to append “and you cannot be Revealed for the next 1 second”. Mechanically, you still will break stealth if you land an attack. But disabling the Revealed debuff enables your next stealth to activate normally (this may also imply removing an existing Revealed debuff obstructing the trait). It will have no suicidally consequential penalty, but it’ll also have no penalty at all for what is arguably one of the best minor traits (most minor traits are not about penalizing). Don’t forget it has a cooldown that can be increased if deemed relevant.

I like the idea of “Hard to Catch”, but that too doesn’t work as a minor trait for potentially being a source of death instead of helping. So automated shadowsteps aren’t quite an alternative. I’d say “gain vigor and swiftness at 25% health” to turn it into a repositioning thing works. It’s less exciting, but thematically decent and useful.

It doesn’t have to be a trait for survivability, though that is what Shadow Arts is most focused on.

This topic is the top Google result for this problem. I confirm the above information is true, the password field appears empty but clicking Login without typing works.

I’d honestly like to see this happen. The report and John following through, that is (assuming the methods are approved).

But if you ran a live experiment, wouldn’t you unfortunately have to let the accused manipulators profit in the process, as you “relieve” them of their position?

Take all loot out? Yes, I would still play. This is of course assuming that they don’t strip down content beyond a loot system, aesthetic is pretty important to me here. But I have not been playing for loot much. I play WvW nonstop because it is fun. In terms of materialism, it is very unrewarding. I even wear 50% Exotic and 50% Rare stats, the stats aren’t having a big enough impact beyond that to make me prioritize rushing to peak stats. My performance and fun are not dependent on a loot system.

This is frustrating. I came up with a very nice algorithm to make sure my password was 100% UNIQUE (exclusive to GW2) and the algorithm is also the means to remember it. Because of this, I’m going to have to come up with a new algorithm. Merely slapping on one new character would be more difficult to remember than sticking to the method I setup…

Unless Anet were to say this is because they were in fact breached, I find this very unreasonable.

Bluesavanah.8562:

I generally make money I dont need in every MMO i’ve ever played, usually because i play too much. But GW2 is slightly different as theres not really that much you can buy with your wealth after a certain point. Eve there were always bigger and better ships, WoW there were elusive mounts and pets, but here after gear and a legendary on every character what does actually motivate people ?

ps you could of answered my question about the gold cap

The game’s age plays a role in this. Of course a game that’s been around way longer is going to have more content for you to spend on. Currently there’s only one generation of legendary weapons, there will be more to work for in the future.

The addition of more Karka Shell recipes and my disinterest in collecting them myself has highlighted one newly appeared monetary burden. Though all in all I’m not on the same page with this topic, as all the towers I upgrade and siege I place in WvW has me wondering how people can have trouble with too much money.

I have to point out, as a player who doesn’t do dungeons (well, Fractals I did a fair bit more, but still isn’t my focus) that this news is rather attractive to me. I didn’t find dungeons to be too hard, just too centered on high numbers and consequently mundane. Hearing that the challenge will be increased makes it sound more interesting, starting with increased value for one’s life. But until they address the balance of boss mechanics and HP, I’m not exactly expecting a thrill.

Indeed they’ve tried to make it clear that this is one part of a greater set of changes. Here’s a quote from a few days ago with some relevance:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I do intend on putting more waypoints into dungeons, but due to the work required for this upcoming patch we didn’t get enough time to make it happen.
I’m not a fan of “punishment running” wherein your punishment for failing is having to run a long distance back to the fight. To discourage res rushing potential we went initially with fewer waypoints. Now that we are implementing a new tech, I would like to add more to reduce the time spent running back to an objective.
We have more info coming soon to how the system will be working.

DeathPanel.8362:

You may argue over the merits of the difficulty increase but my point is this will just ailenate more casual players and make team setups alot more restrictive and discourage pug play.

Do keep in mind that this change isn’t the whole of all changes. The need for a Janurary patch combined with all the things that had to be done I suppose is why this incomplete state is the result. A quote I just fetched for a different topic but still relevant here:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I do intend on putting more waypoints into dungeons, but due to the work required for this upcoming patch we didn’t get enough time to make it happen.
I’m not a fan of “punishment running” wherein your punishment for failing is having to run a long distance back to the fight. To discourage res rushing potential we went initially with fewer waypoints. Now that we are implementing a new tech, I would like to add more to reduce the time spent running back to an objective.
We have more info coming soon to how the system will be working.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I do intend on putting more waypoints into dungeons, but due to the work required for this upcoming patch we didn’t get enough time to make it happen.
I’m not a fan of “punishment running” wherein your punishment for failing is having to run a long distance back to the fight. To discourage res rushing potential we went initially with fewer waypoints. Now that we are implementing a new tech, I would like to add more to reduce the time spent running back to an objective.
We have more info coming soon to how the system will be working.

One of the devs said not too many days ago something along the lines of: when originally designing, the number of waypoints had to be limited to discourage using them over staying together, and now that a new solution is in place, the devs want to take another look and increase the number of waypoints.

It’s already in their minds.

A clean installation of your drivers is your biggest hope, but incidentally I just had this problem myself recently (although I was mostly seeing those glitched squares when not in game). I went on to try various benchmarking software to test for hardware problems. “BurnInTest” was the most useful such software, and sure enough it showed that my video card’s memory was corrupted. My video card was as good as dead. I had to buy a new card.

That was a Radeon HD 5770, and was just over 3 years old. Judging by number, I’ll guess that yours potentially might be of a similar age. If trying driver solutions doesn’t work for you, it may be the same issue. Be attentive to your card’s warranty in such a case.

I don’t think Trahearne’s acting was bad from the start. I think it got worse as time went on, and of course more recent memories are easier to remember.

I would think that Trehearne had the most lines of any single character (not sure, the Player Characters obviously have a lot, but they have fewer lines as the story progresses into Orr). So I imagine the voice actor was getting rather fatigued, that’s what the tone sounds like to me.

That aside, I look forward to future lines. It was explained that there’s an aim to add more dynamic events so that they can reduce the recurrence of current ones and make events feel increasingly unique. I hope the same plans exist for ambient dialogue, plans to increase the quantity to reduce repetition.

Q1: Are there any new interfaces in the works to help coordination in WvW?

Q2: The Quip is quite a quip, but I really want to be able to pursue a legendary. Are second-generation legendaries currently being worked on?

“All you guys looking at this thread” is because of the lousy undescriptive topic title. Dunno why I hoped to find thread content meaningful to me when the topic title is not meaningful.

Point: make good descriptive titles so that you can help people help you.

Now that I’ve said that, last I saw “Venomous Aura” trait was a common preferred focal point for shortbow builds. But in WvW that mainly works well when sitting on and defending a wall, which I don’t think I would want to do (doesn’t seem like a good use of Thief, but it can work) (anything works in PvE, so no comment there). I myself want to find a good build for shortbow, but I personally gave up, I felt its skills weren’t as exciting as the other weapons.

I think taking advantage of poison is a better focal point than Venomous Aura (of course, if you choose the Shadow Arts line, Venomous Aura is still a reasonable accompaniment to Spider Venom even if you equip just the one venom skill).

February is supposed to be bringing a major PvP update, and the impression have been given there will be many helpful changes to WvW. Exactness of February is rumor, I don’t think it’s been more accurately promised beyond “soon”, but such details originate from devs.

Commander status has been long discussed, and it is pretty unanimous that 100 gold =/= ability to command. Because this has been the most widespread opinion for a very long time, I expect that ANet has already decided upon a change for implementation in February. While I agree on “revoke and refund current commander status”, there’s a possibility they may leave that in and try to instead put more emphasis on a new type (maybe a different color icon?).

Personally I would like for it to not be “bought” at all. In the current implementation of Badges of Honor, it is possible to be a poor commander and earn many badges, or a good commander and earn few (relatively at least, examples being chasing kill targets more than objectives vs organized support-build leader).

I personally would prefer no permanent commander status (although maybe earning some sort of qualification status at least) and otherwise implement a voting system where you can regularly give or take your votes. I’ve seen that work great in a particular RTS/FPS game where the top-down perspective player gets voted in (and typically accompanied by some chat discussion). But my hopes aren’t up for this, I think ANet would still want it to be relatively easy to claim.

I do not advocate removing it from PvE I’ll add. Commander status is great in Orr, and may get more useful with time (perhaps starting in the WvW update, surely we’re getting a proper “squad” interface).

It is the community’s responsibility to manage more “structured” tournaments, and to that end I do not see your desire as being impossible. However from other competitive gaming I’ve watched (with opponents not meeting in person), I have not seen a player be punished for repeated negative behavior. They merely gain a negative reputation while acknowledging whatever skill they have.

If GW2 becomes the type of competitive game that is regularly broadcasted on a relatively large scale, it most likely won’t be ANet doing the broadcasting, with ANet instead focusing on giving the means to do so. The built in tournaments being more to enable players to get exposure and reputation, and if there’s ever any “lets get all the powerful players together for an intense tournament”, that would be put together by the community. Thus with that balance, I would expect any conduct-enforcement to be the responsibility of those hosting the more serious things.

Well, of course minding some conduct parameters are outlined in the ToS, for which the report tool is the means of enforcement.

titanlectro hit it on the spot. You’re not supposed to “lock-down” a borderland. It is originally designed that the neutral state of it be that each server own one keep and all have a similar share of territory across all borderlands. In the new form of play, the event doesn’t disrupt your gains particularly.

If a breakout event happens, you STILL have the greater quantity of territory, and the event only gets the enemy one single outpost. Also I’ve fought and held off the breakout event, and found it wasn’t as hard as holding off a zerg-scale assault under the same circumstances. The NPC commander is tough, but balanced by the lack of intelligence.

I think it’s balanced, and with it at least I know what I’m watching for from the enemy (though I wish I could approach enemy spawn and see an event marker since I can’t really look in).

I’m not sure I personally understand the problem. Why do you want the difficulty of an achievement toned down? If you get it from … doing nothing specific, it’s hardly interesting. An achievement you have to actively focus on and carefully pursue makes for a more genuine and literal “achievment” in my opinion.

I personally liked it when it was a monthly achievement after I “understood” it (minus it not scaling to level, making the difficulty relative to player level). Though the end result of the long-term one is that I still wound up completing it without focusing on it. I believe I got it in Straits of Devastation no less, not even a full lv80 zone (if not, then it was Malchor’s Leap).

I like the current implementation (though I do agree with taking it off the Monthly despite me having liked it).

Personally I haven’t figured out countering portals yet. I assume the main method would be to see it before it happens, but I’ve found that to be really hard. Nevertheless, I don’t mind their current implementation.

I don’t want to question their balance until the culling bug is fixed.

rhonyn.6810:

Server dynamics (barring large population shifts) dictate that TC will continue to win, and arguably TC’s actions have more to do with FA and YBs placing/scoring then FA and YB do themselves….that last point is the potential issue.

I’ll just have to point out my opinion, I really think being concerned with the status of “win” at all is going to heavily hinder your ability to have fun. The ONLY tangible reward for WvW is the Power of the Mists, which is something that can only go up. And with how close our scores are, all three servers are pretty equally “winning” the Power of the Mists.

SMC has changed hands many times, and all sites in general have been contested multiple times. The end fact is that the scores of all of us including TC are far closer together that the majority of matchups we’ve had otherwise. The fact that we’re not having to communicate “Use the side exits of spawn!” (nor our opponents) makes this set up preferable to me. Even battles are more fun than “stomping” anyone or locking in ownership of SMC.

Thanks for the additional information about the GODS situation. Sounds like it could be a few or many days before the end result is quite clear.

Tallis has pretty well hit upon the point that I would like to emphasize. Please don’t just lump all of them together in one massive hopeless group.

It is my duty to gather intelligence and provide information to help people make judgements about situations. That usually means calling out “22 TC headed east, colliding with 28 YB” and such. But for the goal of helping people make better judgements, that means responsibility has to be taken up at the lower levels too.

When I was first playing WvW, well, which was actually at a time most people equally didn’t know what was going on, when declarations of “don’t take tower/keep/castle supply” started arising, I was confused. Remember there are no formal explanations for the fundamentals of WvW. My practical knowledge back then told me “Why is that? Isn’t it’s primary purpose for weapons and repairs? More is on its way anyway.” But if I don’t understand why something is being declared where I am new, I comply, but you can’t expect every person to be like that. A part of the delay in my understanding is because there was no way I’d touch upgrading at that time, I was poor and new.

So, simply, there is no way to know without VERY blunt explanations. So you said don’t take SMC supply? Did you answer the “why” part? No? Then please understand that practical knowledge won’t have reason to comply, understanding upgrades isn’t easy for someone inexperienced with them.

On a daily basis, often multiple times a day, I have to explain to people WHY they need to not take supply. I do not tire of it, because it is the ONLY cure, and I want it solved. If you do not take up responsibility for what won’t happen on its own, then it is really improper to complain about it.

With my role being in intelligence, I’m having to also track people. Distinctly the MAJORITY of these newbies are not repeat offenders when I observe evidence of them comprehending english. And those I do see as repeat offenders I think genuinely do not comprehend english, or have chat fully turned off. But they are no majority.
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As for the other topic, GODS I’d say is an on-topic matter since it affects many here, and there is no sub forum more appropriate.

So if I’m understanding it correctly: GODS (Rise of the Omnipotent) are moving from FA to TC, HOWEVER the peak “officialness” of this is no more than a spontaneous move by the leader. Discussion wasn’t formalized in a guild-wide organization?

The main thing that disappoints me is that server moving is such an extremity. I have seen players verbally harassing GODS often, but it is generally only a few players that remain as repeat offenders. I’d like to intervene when people are spewing hate as that is incredibly useless in team chat, but I don’t have a grasp of whatever seemingly irrational stuff led up to it, so the best I can do is try to diffuse the state of chat by suppressing it with usual strategically useful information. I’m not sure that leaving and intending to bring everyone with you is the most appropriate solution.

GODS is definitely the largest population guild on FA. Since they recruit anyone and everyone non-stop, it is clear that there were no goal of being known for quality, but the population itself is a significant detail. As it is, I’ve been getting into E.Battlegrounds without a queue uncomfortably often. The chunk of population that is GODS worries me, we still need regular soldiers. But seeing as that this move doesn’t seem heavily organized, I’m hoping the majority will stay.
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I also want to say I loved these past two weeks. Personally I’d enjoy another week of this matchup. Our scores have remained more even than what is the average balance. I enjoy that way more than the matches where SMC becomes pretty “locked in” to one team. Of course, facing the same people has the problem of seeing the same strategies a bit often. Still preferable over significant imbalance in my opinion.

PolarApe.9351:

Thou shalt refresh siege despawn timers* whilst passing through or by your owned keeps and other objectives.

• just quickly ‘use’ the item to re-start the 30 minute countdown to when they are automatically destroyed

This hasn’t been true since we first switched to weekly battles. I have absolutely confirmed weapons unused for 30 minutes don’t go anywhere. I’ve also found plenty of siege weapons across multiple days that went nowhere despite the unlikelihood of them being used in such cases. I think the expiration was removed entirely.

However, there is still a known bug that randomly deletes siege. The fastest I’ve had it kick in was 6 minutes.

DivineBeing.2086:

Man, we (TC) need to get more Oceanic coverage it seems.

I must remind that “nightcapping” does not equal “Oceanic” players. There’s plenty of US players in our main forces during the night.

I must note I really hope that the next FA player that comes in being accusational about 2v1 gets censored by the moderators. It’s dragging the discussion through repeated points, it’s disrespectful to this fun matchup, and it shames our server giving a terrible image. I try doing my part in map chat…

A part of the reason WvW hasn’t fully started to shine is because of the importance of strategy weighed against the vast numbers of players than don’t care for strategy.

I usually aim to be “the eyes where the army isn’t”. This has gone very well for me, and leads to a lot of successful maneuvers during my best hours. This alone already means those who say “WvW is only about zerging” is foreign talk to me. Gathering intelligence goes a great distance as it gives your team better ability to make smart maneuvers. The best way to nullify an enemy “zerg” is to know where they’re headed before they’re hitting their target. This gives your army good time to move to where they need to be, and access to siege favorably imbalances the powers.

Unfortunately, during peak noon to afternoon hours, the number of players that don’t care for communication nor strategy. In the afternoon, there is no army, only zergs.

I also want to further emphasize, that these players that don’t have respect for our opponents and whine about 2v1 are also locally disliked. I try to educate them in chat, just as I have to daily educate people why they need to not be using SMC’s supply to repair a wall actively being sieged. These are players that don’t comprehend strategy. If I were in TC, I’d only be attacking FA (reconsidered when/if YB takes SMC). If I were in YB, I’d probably be encouraging defense, coordinating strong counterattacks when a large enemy attack fails (which also points to FA from what I’ve seen). Strategically, I’m seeing attacks that I would expect. I also communicate these expectations when the signals are strong enough. Well, all this being true during hours of strategy at least.

On that note, in my opinion it’s really enjoyable to see peace in passing. Just today while passing through one of the borderlands, I was on a newer character of mine and was headed for one of the combat skill challenges. No allies were near, but an “enemy” happened to be near, who I ran up and stood next to then headed forward to engage peace mode. Our teamup made getting the skill point much easier.

There are plenty of situations where there is more to gain from instances of peace like that than what could be gained doing the opposite. In particular, “time” is the main reason I ever engage in peace. It’s pretty wasteful spending time in a battle that’s not going to lead up to your world gaining more points. I wish to be fast to get back to the real battle, and peace does achieve that speed.

Frankly, when it comes to “zerg” movements, those assaults simply stand out more than any other type of attack. Also you’re more likely to be more “acquainted” with enemy zergs than ally zergs.

My point being I think all servers have a pretty equal quantity of zerging. Also I think all servers peak their zerging during afternoon hours, the period of time with highest GW2 population throughout which correlates to the highest raw probability of untactical players gathering together.

Things get more tactically escalated as those types of people conclude their session or go to sleep. So my favorite hours are night, when I cease referring to them as a “zerg” and conferring the term “army”. But you are right about the borderlands populations, the commanders of [PRO] are good at rallying players and bringing players with them across maps. But I’m hoping this week population will be better, and all borderlands may become more exciting.

I must note that there’s been an increase in commanders lately (again during the noon to afternoon hours), and that’s not helping strategy during those times. I saw 6 commanders at one peak, and 4 of them failed to earn any of my respect. I imagine that’s happening on all servers, as I’ve also killed players with the commander tag that were hardly coordinating strategy. But I don’t hold high expectations during those hours, WvW is still fun outside of those bits.

I loved last week, scores that close equal a good match. Especially that climax in SMC. I do hope for higher population this week and more excitement.

There’s many clues EVERYWHERE such as that west path in Sparkfly Fen: clearly Anet has some sort of master-design document for they layout of the world, not figuring it out as they go (for large scale planning).

They clearly have preestablished plans for that west path in Sparkfly Fen, as well as many other zones with similar paths.

I agree on this. While I’m standing there proud in my well-equiped high-achieving lone character of mine, I felt so disadvantaged to hear players with multiple characters could get this amazing loot with little effort, while there’s no way I’d slap together a hurried character when I want to have an attachment to them.

But then I reflected on the situation around the earlier karma exploit. Really, some of the communications going on was rather dishonest behavior regarding what was intended to be happening.

Mail was literally the first thing that came to mind when I heard some of the less sincere discussions. Mail as the medium for reward does make a lot of sense. Though there is quite an experience difference between that massive chest shining and ugly mail. But mail seems so much smoother for one time events.

First let me go over how things currently are to make sure we’ve got this accurate. Plain and simply all allies appear normally as they would in PvE. Enemy names are not shown, replaced with a title of their world. That is presumably not done for performance reasons, but to protect players from constant insults and rude behavior. Enemies each have their actual armor, so you’re clearly fighting real players with varying choices instead of generic clones. Performance was decidedly not a big issue in that design choice. Enemy colors are forced to a preset color arrangement based on their team color. Likely not a performance choice.

I want more identity in WvW, much of GW2’s draw centers around “character” and the many options, and the forced changes to players work against that when it comes to observing other players.

The issue that bugs me most is that censoring of names to “protect”. There’s a profanity filter to “protect”, I don’t want oddities in my chat so I happily opted out of that. Censoring names to “protect” I would say is the same goal, so I think it would be great if player choice was a factor. Add an option enabled by default, “Enemies see [World Name] Invader instead of character name”. There have been so many occasions where I’ve wanted to complement my opponents, yet the only option left to me is /salute, which is so little (evidence of my pursuits: ex.1, ex.2). I would gladly go into WvW with my name publicly visible to all enemies regardless of whether they opted the same, permitting the option to whisper me. Any rudeness I may incur is nothing.

Similarly, I don’t need a full color change to identify my enemies. Their red name is plenty enough for me to go into combat, and the targeting system doesn’t care about visuals. Allies colored as enemies as is aren’t confusing for me when close, and at a distance I just need to look for if their presence matches an allied dot on my map. Thus I would favor player choice for this too, let a player opt out of uniformly coloring masses of players.

I come to WvW for a good challenge, thus I have a lot of respect for my opponents that can offer that. It would be enjoyable if there were some room for socializing.

There are two things I want to remind: first, there’s actually plenty of US players fighting during those late hours. I was just playing about 11 hours since midnight Pacific (with a lunch break at one point)(wanted to put in many hours now that I didn’t need to time myself to Lost Shores stuff). I’m not doing a good job of tracking which guilds are oversea, because it looks to me like [GODS] is still the largest population even at those hours.

Second thing I want to remind is that [JPN] (White Macaron) has been present in Fort Aspenwood nearly the entire time, not a recent transferal. I definitely recall them since about the second or third week of GW2’s release. And they are indeed Japanese.

That aside I’m really enjoying this match. 5am Pacific is clearly the climax of TC and YB having a population much lower than FA, but the full period of time of us pushing so far in doesn’t last all that long. Seemed like we held TC keep only about 30 minutes (e.battlegrounds).

And YB has an awesomely solid defense when it comes to their keeps. Maybe defense in general.

The scores are so close, this is the kind of match that I always look forward to. Hopefully territory will be yet less stagnant later today and tomorrow with people getting out of Lost Shores mode.

After FA took back SMC from TC, one Tarnished Coast Thief managed to stay within the inner perimeter a long time. Good job Thief of [KF], that was a fun chase!

An ally called you out earlier, but no directional clues. A lot of time passed so I figured you were “removed” by then, but I saw your Shadow Refuge. I have a stealth heavy-build, so it was a fun chance to verify I know how a good thief moves. Sure enough, you largely moved as I would, it was fun refining my guesses. I still called reinforcements, with directional clues. Nevertheless, your long survival earns my respect!

Mckeone.9804:

Can anyone explain why this is not in game or planned to be in game? I just don’t get why a functional LFG tool does not exist in this game.

Last rumors I caught, I recall that a better LFG tool is in fact planned. And rumor I cannot source aside, I would regard it as common sense that a better LFG tool is planned. Anet pushed what they had so we can begin enjoying what we do have, but Anet very clearly has a LOT more content that they want to get in where current implementations are virtually a placeholder. This on one such area.

I really dislike “lfg” chat spam, so I’ll probably promote this site (though I myself rarely party up except for more loot in events). But this site absolutely should include a listing of servers, especially if used for non-dungeons like Orr. In the meantime, I don’t think a better LFG tool should be high priority considering the other possible focuses, so I won’t actually complain about “lfg” chat spam. I know all the tasks in Anet’s queue are hard work, and I can enjoy what I do have.

About 40 minutes before the time of this post, I fought 3 from [SSS] (Nine Sisters was it?). I wanted to say I absolutely loved our battle. I hope you happen to read here so you may hear my gratitude.

I believe the 3 of you were all thieves as was I. A battle of frequent stealth and each having the knowledge of proper application of each others skills made that really exciting. Though it stated off with me downing one of you, trying to maintain that advantage during the long battle with maintaining one of you down many times, in the end you guys escaped with all 3 of you alive and I too managed to survive. With how long that went, it reached where we mutually had little to gain from victory (was it 10 minutes?). Lets call it a draw

If anyone knows [SSS], then please let them know Tera Xenphos of Fort Aspenwood thanks them.

Legendaries aren’t red? Well then I apologize, in which case their choice for for Ascended is spot-on, and I hope they maintain the consistent spectrum they currently have. I don’t pursue legendaries which contributes to my lack of awareness on that end, I’m not sure what had me retain “red” in my memory.

They are maintaining a consistent spectrum, and that’s all there is to it, consistency. Names associated to a rainbow isn’t the defining spectrum, especially with the popularity of the RGB model. Color is there for speedy recognition, so colors should be just as linear as the rarity. So I appreciate that they’ve fulfilled my request, that it is already their goal, before any room for contesting it genuinely exists.

You’re right, there’s some green in it. But I don’t think any of the colors are “pure”. Trying to assign specific names to their precise color values is too subjective. If we’re choosing whole colors, magenta is what I’d describe for between red and purple.

How would that work with items with 3 or 4 dyes?

I personally was a bit surprised to see that my faction armor would be only Rare, but I was fine with that because of the price. But the cultural armor costing many times that and being only Rare I didn’t find so justified.

Personally, I’d rather have a second tab at the cultural vendors for buying with skill points, because I can’t find any way to say “bring the gold cost down”. But I suppose I feel that should be done regardless of the tier.