Guild Wars 2

Also the overall skill level dropped dramatically so most mobs you encounter are literally just walking bags…. on rare occasions you might run into a group with some level of skill but not that often… that was on Mag a few months ago, but I am pretty sure nothing has changed for the better, more likely more bags and less skillz

Josh XT.6053:

A lot of his statement is based on bias here, just so you’re aware.

A decent amount of those guilds fell apart because of egos and people going to play other games for awhile. A lot of the players came back already and have reformed under different names or just joined up with other guilds.

Yes, but it’s a fact that the real issues and problems with WvW are still unaddressed and the game mode is seriously broken…. Playable but very broken.

Zetsumei.4975:

Tspatula.9086:

TorquedSoul.8097:

LoneWolfSpectre.6412:

can you post NA as well. would be nice to know who we’re working with

It looks like the top two tiers may not be effected.

nope. All the NA servers will be paired.

Baruch bay and sea farer’s rest were not paired

All of the NA servers will be paired. Reading comprehension FTW!!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Linking-Beta/first

Chris Barrett.3280:

Virtute.8251:

Okay. How are Glicko ratings for individual servers being calculated during linked matches? Some of us are wondering what the trick is to separate the linked worlds during Glicko rating calc, so that new (different) pairings can occur at each (for now 3 month) pairing interval.

Linked “host” worlds have their Glicko data updated in the usual way. Linked “guest” world Glicko data isn’t affected. It’s not yet determined what approach we’ll use for Glicko data for guest worlds when world links are changed, in the case that a guest either becomes a host or goes solo.

Wow, so you just negated the contribution of the “guest” server. If the lower tiers felt like they didn’t matter, this would prove that point.

TorquedSoul.8097:

LoneWolfSpectre.6412:

can you post NA as well. would be nice to know who we’re working with

It looks like the top two tiers may not be effected.

nope. All the NA servers will be paired.

Dopamine.7502:

I agree with others here that server paring is not a solution. It only creates several organisation problems as you are not linked to someone permanently. To me best thing is to simply merge servers. This means only one time of creating a new combined community instead of having to do that every few weeks/months.

Well, they aren’t going to repair servers more than a couple times a year, and my guess is that if this first pairing is even remotely playable that Anet will simply take the beta label off and let things ride with an eye to fine toon things in the first re-pairing many months from now.

James Asner.2597:

What about HOW the population is distributed? I’ve heard that server caps are now halved for each server. So now server 1 gets half the map population and server 2 gets the other half.

I don’t think they are talking about map limits, I think that is referring to the server population and whether they are considered full or medium or high in terms of transferring costs. My guess is the map pop caps are going to be the same, and there will be no differentiation between a person from server 1 entering versus someone from server 2 entering from a pair…

Oh I may have to log on tonight just to read the map chat… oh the egos of some of the server leaders and guilds who “run things” on their server getting paired up with past enemies or just other leaders….. The outright culture clashes are going to be phenomenally entertaining…. “Get off my map Scrub!, half my guild is in que”, “No you get off!” etc……

And I foresee Transfer Wars 2 on the horizon.

Oh boy! is tonight gonna be interesting. I have to say I am happy to be not playing at the moment. The idea that this is going to go smoothly just seems a tad unlikely for Anet to pull off. And yet, here we are. IMHO it would have been so much smarter to halt the glicko a few hours before the reset, pair the servers, let people run around, get a little organised for the reset and get any bugs worked out and then just start the glicko again…

This is just server merge lite. They aren’t resetting glicko scores, they haven’t even discussed how individual servers are going to get or lose glicko from a match up or how that might affect future pairings. They definitely have not addressed any aspect of making the glicko score or your server performance meaningful. Even with composite servers, the actual movement up or down the ladder is going to remain as slow and as pointless as it is currently. They should have gone all in with alliances, but they aren’t doing that, so server merge lite which will become server merge permanent as soon as they get tired of manually pairing the servers, which I predict will happen after the first or second round of pairings. All of the changes are reactionary, none of them is “a design to achieve a larger goal”. There is no concept other than fix the massive open wound. This is not how you revitalize the game mode, this is emergency damage control…

Forbes.1569:

ANET said that they are not releasing any details about population balance until the patch notes.

There will be nothing in the patch notes on any balance fix. There will be a post stating to the effect:

“We’re sorry. We weren’t able to get the population balance patch working to our satisfaction and so did not include it in today’s patch. We continue to work on this important issue and will release it as soon as we feel it is ready.”

Anet let the balance problem fester until it became a fully gangrenous limb, I am not sure they realize that it’s reached the torso. I guarantee they are still trying to save that dead limb which is not possible, no matter what “the community” says or Anet thinks.

Case and point, they are just going to overlay the gimmicks from the desert BL to the alpine BL, the fact that they are spending even a minute of dev time porting Tactivators over to the Alpine map boggles my mind.

No, it won’t matter at all. Until scoring and population balance issues are resolved WvW is dead. After that it will still need a significant balance pass to undo the stability changes and power creep and some sort of reward structure as well. Everyone screamed murder about an alliance system, so now that is off the table, good luck figure out another way to fix this mess… There is no vision, everything now is crisis mode/scrap everything/do something now. Who thinks that is going to lead to anything good.

Naix.8156:

@Swagger and Tspatula, you guys must not be familar with Maguuma and CCCP in particular. CCCP plays wvw for the sole purpose of hardcore ppt’ing; particularly flipping empty structures and the new BL has the market cornered on empty in general. These guys go through stacks of guild catas in a matchup.

LOL, you could not be farther from the truth… Sounds like CCCP took away your cookies….

WvW Amazing Overhaul 2018 FTW!!!!!

Trajan.4953:

The fight-centric meta is gone (for now) and WvW has become, what it was always intended to be, a game of chess that anyone can join.

Sure the long time players stack EBG because its is safe and familiar and they get the fights they want but the score is not affected by that. The score has always been the providence of the Borderlands. Like it or not, you have to adapt or be left behind.

Just my own opinion.

But the score is largely irrelevant. So, yes anyone can join the “chess game” and move pieces around but ultimately to no purpose or effect. This has been the big problem from day one. Take a keep, lose a keep it’s doesn’t matter, or it matters even less now since you can’t WP enemy keeps. The stab changes that resulted in the pirate ship ( or is it space ship meta now?) and elite unbalance has made most of the stuff one can do in WvW a lot less fun, in my opinion. But there are other games to play and other things to do with ones time, and that is what I have move on to, we’ll see if the almighty overhaul peeks my interest, whatever year it is finally released….

Yuffi.2430:

Missed your post Tspatula. Not sure how much I agree, but I’m definitely not in favour of scrapping servers to make “equal-ish large armies”. There needs to be some play option for these yes, but there are players who enjoy the small group warfare and other players who prefer roaming, and some who enjoy all three play styles. I don’t want to see them forced to play in large armies any more than I wanted to have to grind PvE for my guild upgrades.

The 3 guild thing is probably arbitrary and wouldn’t be in the final implementation. Consider that you are already grouped in an large army called your server, alliances would be similar, but more like what you are talking about with renaming things, but with alliances of guilds people would have more choice and it would be easier to move from one to another….

Yes, I have to agree. I am patiently learning how to play Fallout 2 and relearning Team Fortress 2. I think I have enough patience to learn another game or two as well. As for GW2 I am done until something real happens to fix WvW.

As an aside, on Reddit someone posted that when the forums blew up with the Alliance plan to fix the population issues, Anet scrapped that idea and is starting over… Oh goodie, start from scatch… That makes sense, they seem to have zero focus or direction. Servers made WvW and Servers are a large part of what killed it. There is no future for WvW with the current server match up system. Server identity can be kept, but needs to be removed from the sorting of players into warring factions, alliances, guild groups, or however one is going to split up the WvW population into equal-ish large armies…. Unfortunately, it appears that Anet lacks the courage and most of the playerbase lack the insight to make or understand what needs to change and what doesn’t.

1)The new BL map must have taken at least 6 months to make, if you believe the Anet spin on developing maps, so that new map is an integral part of the “2016 Big O”. It was developed right alongside whatever the overhaul is, and is very unlikely to change because of that.
2) The map has been out for 4 months now. The statistics are in, Anet knows how popular/unpopular that map is, and various other metrics on the various other PvE events and gimicks. We got a couple very minor tweaks early on, and a few more with the Gianormous Jan 25th update. There are many things that could simply be removed from the map without ANY negative impact on gameplay such as:
a) eliminating the laser event
b) removing the cripple beacons and make the spring up walls permanently up
c) eliminate the stealth dust
d) eliminate the wind traps
e) reinstate usable enemy waypoints
None of these things are even remotely up for discussion with us. It is very unlikely that any of these simple QoL fixes will happen even if they were only temporary fixes to that map, while waiting for bigger changes.
3) The “Big O 2016” is more likely than not, some fix for match up/population issues, the addition of some sort of account bound map currency, and the resumption of some type of tournament. The new BL was probably the easy part of the Overhaul in terms of coding, so it got finished in time for the HoT release.
4) If Anet really cared about tweaking the new BL to make it more playable for us, they would have the devs do the same back and forth that they did with the elite specializations. If you’ll notice there has been zero back and forth, just a lot of screaming on the forums and a very slow concession by Anet to some very minor tweaks.

So save your breath about getting the Alpine map back and concentrate your efforts to force Anet to do the simple fixes like the ones I listed.

We are sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this message in error, please try again.

I think everyone, even the OP, may be missing the take home lesson here. Inviting a few guilds to beta test regardless of their play orientation is not going to create an environment where suddenly Anet Devs understand how to design WvW maps or gameplay. The 2 maps that have already been released are clear evidence of a serious lack of a fundamental understanding of how WvW actually works. There was SO MUCH FEEDBACK after EtoM was released, yet the Devs made the new BLs that contain many of the same problems inherent in EtoM. And you simply cannot beta WvW without A LOT OF PLAYERS, a lot more than a couple guilds. Anet still doesn’t realize they really have to do an open beta, and my guess is they don’t have the devs and manpower to support that…

Whoever designed the original BLs and EBG pretty obviously has not participated in the WvW design process for a LONG TIME. Those devs are either gone, or moved to Esports. And speaking of which, just take a look at stronghold… Same problem, sPvP now with more PvE added.

Just sell them to the vendor, unless you can infuse and make use of them, or I guess salvage, but I don’t have nearly enough mist essences. I find it amazing that an ascended ring vends for 5s, whereas one of the dumb spoon collectables sells for twice that amount. They really should vend for more… Yet another dangling poorly thought out thing in this game…

I am not surprised at all that they would draw on non-WvW players for beta testing WvW content. Clearly this is how we got EtoM AND the new BLs. WvW is done, toast, stick a fork in it. Anet never has and, in my opinion, never will support the way we actually want to play it.

Vinceman.4572:

2. I still doubt that NA is dead because there are so many people here from NA discussing about Mossman exploits since weeks/months and as you can see from their point of view in these discussions they aren’t running fractals in organized groups, they are using PUGs via lfg. The best thing to do is still opening an own lfg.

Well, Vince all I can tell you is that I am able to complete all the under 50 dailies very quickly. There are always copious listings on the LFG system for speed runs, and the individual dailies when I am playing. And even though I am telling you that I have logged in and run the under 50 dailies EVERY DAY with the exception of Superb Owl Sunday, for the last 2 weeks, the over 50 offerings are so limited that, again, I have not been able to run them. I have no reason to lie about it, clearly even you can admit I am not worried about saying what I think. And regardless your opinion of my posts, I don’t think you can suggest I have been dishonest in any of them.
I guess I will have to put up my own LFGs, even though I have virtually no experience with the various instabilities over lvl 50…

And I just got a headgear box in the under 20 daily chest… go figure.

Vinceman.4572:

We have to thank you. People like you are the reason why it is so entertaining here.

Oh Vince, Don’t sell yourself short…

Bad coding is bad. Not being able to rename guilds is a perfect example of poorly thought out code. Shall we next talk about how bad a decision it was to make scribing associated with a particular person/account even though it was clearly designed to be a guild wide effort, at least in terms of resources…. Bandaids on top of patches, stuck on with bubblegum, held together with rubber bands and lots of duct tape….

Well, now that almost everyone has established that ascended armor isn’t required or needed for almost anything, I have to ask, why did you spend over 400 gold crafting it? Why would anyone spend that amount of gold for something that has so little value? And I will reiterate that given that cost, it would be far more sensible to have changeable stats and sigils. But of course, that feature will be coming in the new legendary armor, and we wouldn’t want to spoil the next big grind fest, would we?

And Vince,
I honestly don’t know what to tell you, but I have been look for ANY over 50 fractal groups for 2 weeks of which I actually found and got into one (over a week ago) for irrc 55, 66, 77 and was asked to leave when I informed the group that I only had 90 AR, which is fine, no complaints there. I now have 103 which is enough for 77. And I am not complaining about the lack of LFGs over 50, I am simply stating the facts as I have experienced things. It does seem to me that the EU servers have more people running over 50 fractals open to taking PUGs based on your statements. NA servers are fairly dead and think I am looking during what would be NA east coast prime (8pm-10:30pm) time during the week. At this rate I am probably not going to bother trying to get armor from Fractals, as it appears that the drops are for specific pieces ie. boots or gloves etc… I have all the mats I need to craft the rest of my first set, which it seems, zerk is the universal set…

Thank you everyone for your “thoughtful comments”, this is an amusing subforum.

dodgerrule.8739:

Yeah dude I run fractals allot and bring in people with no ar for quite a few 50s and 60s they do just fine.

I’ve been doing fractals since they’ve released and I was a level 34 player.

I do fractals high levels on my Alts who have no ar and 1-2 pieces of ascended gear. No armor. In fact my Mesmer runs rare gear.

If you really think fractals are a mess now you have no idea what you are saying.

I think that you need to look over your prioritys of being a fractal runner and how you can contribute to the group.

Survival is all that matters

You reading comprehension could use some work, I don’t think you understand anything I have posted so far, regardless of how ranty any of it was. But thank you for whatever your comments mean.

Vinceman.4572:

Tspatula.9086:

However, on the above comment, for my playtimes which are usually weekdays 8-10:30ish est and weekends mostly early during the day

For the weekend I don’t know but on prime time in the evening from 8-10:30 there are many groups for champ chests.
If you have meant morning, then wow dude. It’s a game played by kids who are going to school, students that are either sleeping or going to college, university and the majority of older people is going to work in the early morning. Are you really surprised then that there are only few groups. In EU there are guaranteed groups for the higher daily fractals from noon till midnight.
It’s getting more and more hilarious!

Could you translate that for me, you know, into really dumbed down terms because frankly, I have no idea what you are talking about. Also you do realized that YOUR timezone is only one of many, right? That’s why when I specify a certain time, I also provide the timezone with which it is associated. That way, those who read my posts can understand when I am refering to. But I certainly take your point, whatever times you are able to play this game, it is much better for you than for me in terms of finding groups for over 50 lvl fracts. I salute your ability to choose the best playing times, of course I am unable to do so, as I have a job, and a wife and a real life outside this game.

Currently, right now 2pm Est there are absolutely no over 50 fractal groups listed and I have been checking periodically over the last couple of hours. It is indeed hilarious that you are unable to comprehend that not everyone has the same experience that you do. Please continue to educate me. I need it so.

Vinceman.4572:

Stuff and you know, and stuff….

There are enough groups for fractals 50+. Most often you will see 56-67-77 because that are the easiest for the majority of players.

Vince, you really aren’t getting my points here, just sayin. However, on the above comment, for my playtimes which are usually weekdays 8-10:30ish est and weekends mostly early during the day, there really haven’t been any >50 fractal LFGs or LFMs or whatever you want to call them. I’ve run the adept and vet chests pretty much every single day for the last 2 weeks, not a single champ chest. I usually log in, wait 10min or so for a listing… none, then do the vet (there are always groups), then spend another 10 or so min waiting for a >50… none, do the under 20 and then wait another 10-15 min for a champ run…. none. After that I log. During my play times there are pretty much zero open champ chest runs… OK, so now all of you can tell me how I’m wrong, doing it wrong, thinking about wrong. Clearly I don’t know how to look for groups or use the LFG system, right? Bring it on.

savacli.8172:

Tspatula.9086:

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/30/gw2-ascended-gear-will-be-needed-in-raids/

Seriously? Your defense is a tweet from September when the raids were still under development? They hadn’t even had their Beta weekend at the point to have open player involvement (aside from the 2 guilds invited for testing). Also not a very convincing statement given that she uses terms “can prob be” and “should be” in regards to the requirement question. More convincing evidence would be from a dev post-deployment of the raids declaring the raids mechanically cannot be completely without top tier gear which we already have proven otherwise many many….many times.

If you need higher tier gear as a crutch to build up skill that’s one thing, but a hard do-or-die requirement is another. In regards to raids, groups are using gear as a crutch for lack of skill and/or experience (again, free damage from better gear). Once you have a couple kills under your belt you can walk in with lesser grade gear and barely notice the difference.

Ascended gear doesn’t keep you from getting teleported in the VG fight. You don’t magically gain the ability to dodge out Gorsy’s slam attack or avoid eggs with better gear. Certainly, the cannons on Sabetha don’t spontaneously explode upon sight of players with top tier armor.

As far as increased costs on ascended material? Supply and demand. If you need material, you’re at a disadvantage if you’re starting from scratch. The contrary is true as well. If you’ve saved up your materials (which you indicated you have) you can sell away your excess/unused material for better prices than what it originally cost your to craft it.

I am sorry but none of your arguements with regards to needing or requiring ascended armor/trinkets are generally valid, everything you are suggesting is very situational, which is absolutely fine for you, but not particularly applicable to anyone else. And as to the various attack dynamics that you say ascended doesn’t help with, again you are wrong, faster defeat means less time avoiding damaging mechanics etc… Nice try tho…

savacli.8172:

I would love to see the exact statement where this was claimed regarding the gear requirement. The increase in material cost was both due to new stats but, more importantly, was driven by precursor crafting which make heavy use of ascended material.

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/30/gw2-ascended-gear-will-be-needed-in-raids/

Increased crafting cost are due what you are talking about, which by the way, doesn’t matter, increased is increased. but also, leather was added to some of the recipes, adding mats adds the cost of the mats. It just simple maths.

Vinceman.4572:

Yeah, ok, I got the OP now. He is complaining about everything around fractals. So here is my advice:
Stop playing them!
At first you are complaining about the asc droprate, then about all rewards together calling them nerfed while it is the opposite around in terms of gold. You gain much more out of fractals since ever. The amount of gold is almost ridiculous and just capped by the 3 dailies or everybody would run fractals to farm gold and silver wastes would be empty.
And in the end you are whining about AR which is posT-HoT not a real problem and can be achieved easier than ever before.
I really really recommend you to let fractals go. You should be happy because fractals are so much more casual-friendly nowadays and there are several veterans that are not content with this issue. Fractals are the new dungeons.

No, you have pretty much everything wrong. I may not be expressing myself perfectly so here in a nutshell:

Ascended armor is now for all intents and purposes going to be required for raids which is the only real endgame content we have (until WvW gets really fixed which I am not hopeful about). Yes, you can have one or two people in your party with exotics, and at least one elite group have done exotic only runs to prove it can be done, but even they don’t recommend it. And for the record, until such time as new fractals are added to the game, I personally don’t consider them endgame content, they are loot farming.

The cost of making ascended armor whether before or after the patch means that for a very large percentage of the playerbase, only one ascended set is going to be practically attainable in a reasonable timeframe. This means that no matter what, most players are locked into a specific armor class and specific armor stats. Many of us have at least 2 sets of exotic armor per toon with different runes and stats to allow for some situational build diversity. Reduced build diversity is not good for anyone.

The new raid changed ascended from an option, to a requirement as stated by the main raid dev, Ruby. The only real change made to acquiring ascended was increasing some mat requirements for certain types, and reducing the silk cost by 1/3. So, an increase in cost overall.

I do agree that fractals are a lot easier to manage now that you can pick and choose, many of my guildies disagree that the drop rates are the same as before, but the points made here are reasonable to suggest that drop rates are similar to before, I can accept that. And yes, the gold is not bad to very good. If you find a group to run the over 50s, which based on the in-game LFG system is very hit or miss. But that aspect of this conversation has NEVER been a point of contention or complaint by me. There are lots of ways to obtain gold in this game, many for far less effort… although perhaps at the cost of brain cells…

AR is a ridiculous system. It serves absolutely NO PURPOSE other than to allow players to rerun the same fractals but get more ascended drops. SO it’s magic find pure and simple. Explain to me why it’s bound to individual pieces of equipment? How exactly does that make sense? Well, prior to HoT AR drove the desire to attain more ascended armor, we all know we aren’t after it for the looks, right? AR has no other function, NONE. It is 100% magic find for grinding the same fractals over and over. Which is fine, but why isn’t it account wide, like magic find?

I’m not a big fan of hamster wheel game mechanics, which is why I have always prefered WvW. I’ll think about crafting a legendary if a precursor drops, I am not going grind out a thousand this and thats and dump hundreds of gold to get one. I think it’s wrong that after spending the time and or gold to craft or acquire ascended armor that it should be a limitation on how I would like to play GW2. You are fine with it, ok. You probably already have a lot of ascended gear, so this conversation is largely irrelevant for you, except you might think my idea would devalue your multiple sets of ascended armors…. it’s tough to be the 1%.

Thaddeus.4891:

Tspatula.9086:

how do you explain my guildie who is essentially zero for 20, according to Kings numbers he should have 2 ascended armors or weapons from the champ chest?

What you just complained that 771 isn’t a big enough sample size to draw conclusion, but then you talk about your friend with 20 as a sample size.

Anyway, there is two things here.

1) Does the kings numbers are precise enough. With 771 chest i believe it is, but otherwise we can wait 3-6 more months to have even more precision on the numbers. I doudt that the percentage of 12% could vary form 6% to 17% tbh. 771 chests is a decent sample size. Not the best, but decent enough to think that at worst the percentage will only vary of maybe 1%, not much more.

2) In the end of the day it’s still just probability. Even if the droprate is 12%, you could still get no chest in 1000 daily in a row. It’s just that the chance of that happening is pretty low.

Look, I am not a statistician, but I DO KNOW that any number like % droprate has error bars, and that 12% number has error bars much larger than 1%. The ONLY thing one can definitively say about that data is champ chest have a better chance of dropping ascended armor and weapons, the 12% part is essentially meaningless at that sample size. I don’t have a problem with that and you are very happy with it, good on ya. Equipping ascended is absurdly expensive and has always been counter to the original idea that grinding in this game was only for cosmetics….

To be honest, prior to HoT upping the baseline requirements to include ascended for anyone interested in the end game content, I found the entire fractal agony system rather inane. Do fractals to get more AR to do more fractals, to get AR, to do more fractals, to get AR. AR is just a secondary magic find only useful in fractals… useful mostly for ascended grinding, which I never found important. Now, as I have stated, Anet has changed the baseline, so I now grind fractals and AR….

Thaddeus.4891:

Tspatula.9086:

This is the real problem with very small population data sets like the King data, which is basically less than 1000 chests. To be really representitive it needs to be something like 10,000 or more, all from the same account ideally.

771 chest is pretty good if you ask me. Sure it’s not perfect, 2-3k would be ideal if you ask me. But at the same time it’s the best source of data by far. And asking for 10 000 chest from one account is just stupid. That’s 27 years of fractal dude.

In two months there were able to get 771 chest result. So it probably gonna take another 3-6 months to get 2-3k chests. But even then, I don’t think the % will change that much tbh.

Well, I am pretty sure that 771 means the the error bars on that % droprate are quite larger probably +/- 5% or more and how do you explain my guildie who is essentially zero for 20, according to Kings numbers he should have 2 ascended armors or weapons from the champ chest? The problem with considering % chance with RNG is that you can flip a coin and have it land heads 20 times in a row, yet the next flip is still only 50% that it will land tails. Each roll on the RNG table is independent, they are not additive so even with a sample size of 771 the results can be very difficult to translate into a practical drop rate…

It the same thing with precursors. They drop for some, and others of us, myself included, never… well never so far.

Quarktastic.1027:

After the Fractured update, I ran scale 30/40/50 fractals daily. In 6 months of fractal running, I didn’t get a single ascended box or fractal weapon. I started running fractals again 3 weeks ago. I’ve received 4 ascended boxes so far.

This is the real problem with very small population data sets like the King data, which is basically less than 1000 chests. To be really representitive it needs to be something like 10,000 or more, all from the same account ideally.

A guildie of mine has been running the champ daily and all the other dailies pretty regularly since the patch, let’s just say that’s 4 runs a week for 5 weeks, so roughly 20 (as a lowball estimate) of each chest. He has gotten 1 armor chest and 1 weapon both from the veteran chest, nothing from the champ chest.

Everyone I know who used to run fractals feels like the drops are still significantly lower than prior to HoT, again impressions based on very low sample sizes so basically irrelevant…

However, the initial rewards settings were dramatically worse than before, so bad that even Anet had to do something about it. Of course, Anet says that it was never intended to be worse, but look at the game-wide gold and reward nerfing and massive gold sinks that came with HoT, I find it hard to believe they nerfed fractal rewards “by accident” and I also don’t believe they returned things to the pre-HoT levels, regardless of the King data. Anet wants gold removed from all aspects of the game. Look at the HoT maps, the main rewards are now account bound map currencies… not gold.

People will pull more than one precursor in round of throwing things into the mystic toilet, others will do the exact same thing many times over and get nothing. RNG makes low number sample sets very biased to “luck” or “unluck”

Cyninja.2954:

…stuff and things and stuff…

Now please stop embarrassing yourself infront of people who have played this content for over 3 years. I’m not even going to comment on the entire LFG thing. I’ll let others educate you on how viable certain classes and item stats where pre HoT.

Good good, I don’t actually need any powercreeper posts about the LFG thing, seems pretty obvious to me. And yes, I am truely embarassed, mostly because you say so, you do seem to know what you are talking about, so I am just gonna run with it.

Oh and by the way, did you notice that I used the exact same time estimates that you did for calculating the approximate completion times for 3 over lvl 50 fractals. Uncanny is it not?

savacli.8172:

Do you know what us Fractal veterans had on day 1? RNG. You had to endure the agony (literally) of level progression and hope you got a ring in your drop. On top of that you were extremely lucky to get a ring that dropped in the stat combination you wanted. We didn’t have Pristine relics, and Guild Commendations and Laurels didn’t exist. Nowadays, you can walk into Fractal for your first time ever and already have a full set of ascended gear head to toe.

This forum is fun! I too remember having to walk 10 miles in the snow to get to the fractal entrance… or you guys do… I guess. I believe the appropriate response from you was supposed to be “get off my lawn”.

Thaddeus.4891:

Wait what???? Ok first why over 60?

Obviously a typo, but feel free to continue to pile on, you do seem to enjoy it.

Cyninja.2954:

- pre HoT the possible chests from difficulties 31-40 and 41-50 would end up with a higher total chance of getting a chest for that day (while taking substantially longer than fractals now)

Don’t you really mean similar amount of time? The data is from daily chests which require 3 fractals so marginally faster… And given the mistlock instabilities are a limited set of, what I understand to be, the least fun of the lot from pre-HoT, looks like the overall effort turns out to be the same.. but that’s just an opinion from a newb like myself. I’m too green to understand anything about this very complex game….

So assuming a 12% drop rate for armor that’s minimum 10 champ chest per piece, or 60 champ chests for one armor set. Assuming one can even find any LFMs for fractals over 60, personally I have been trying for the last week or so, found essentially none. Yes, I KNOW, I can put up my own LFMs, but since don’t have a lot of experience (3 >50 fractals) I feel that I should not be leading, for now, Cyninja I am sure you agree with this given my newb status.

So, lets say 10 min per fractal, which seems reasonable, plus 10 min of buffer for the set or 40 min per champ chest. For a set of ascended armor we are talking about 40 hours minimum game time which can be accomplished in a minimum of 60 days of continuous game play. Realistically, we are really talking about 90 days if you could find a >50 party every day you wanted/could run them… far longer for me based on the availability of LFMs. At least one can change the stats of any drop, and to the person who reminded me if this, are you expecting me or anyone to change stats that way on a weekly or daily basis depending on whether you are joining a raid or a high level fractal? Of course I can do the 20-50s and have my armor set in…. 600 days… not bad.

So Vince, while you state your most awesome exception to the basic rule that ascended is needed for the raid, you are awesome, but your exception still relies on others to have ascended equipment, and let us not forget that the next phases will be harder and less likely that exotics will cut it.

Prior to HoT there was no content that required ascended anything to be competitive, and I fully admit that I had spent the vast majority of my time playing WvW, which Anet let deteriorate to the point where it’s currently a pointless game mode, so now I am trying to get gear and find some other interest in this game.

Of course, all of you posting about how everything is fine already have plenty of ascended gear and are working on gearing alt #4 or extra ascended set #3 or… I realize now that I made a big mistake, playing so much WvW has left me with zilch, well 2 ascended armor chests, 4 weapons and 10 rings (not infused) with healing stats, maybe 5 or so that were useful, oh and not a single precursor. That’s putting roughly 20 hours a week.

So I get it, thanks for all the tough love here in the fractal/raid/dungeon forums. I guess the one thing that the HoT paradigm has brought is entitlement to the “haves” and disdain for the “have-nots”. Oh wait, that’s always been around… LOL

Vinceman.4572:

Snip

There are always exceptions to every rule, that doesn’t make the exception THE rule.

Vinceman.4572:

You only need ascended stuff for the highest fractals. If you had done some proper forum research, you would have read how to get AR in a smart way starting with exotics, going over to ascended weapons and finally to ascended armor. Armor and weapons drop from daily fractal boxes too so it’s easy peasy to acquire that stuff. You also have to keep in mind that you gain very much gold from the daily chests in the range 1-20 and 21-50.

Well, thank you for making all kinds of assumptions about me and what I have done. Currently, I have been running my necro pretty much full zerk. I have weapons, trinkets and a couple ascended armor pieces that are also zerk. My AR currently is 90. I’ve run a few fractals over 50 and I’ll like to start running more. The real truth is that I have been doing some research/reading and it seemed to imply that Zerk wasn’t gonna work over fractal lvl 75, so that appeared to put me in a conundrum of zerk being ok for almost everything else but fractals over 75, which I guess aren’t worth running for the most part, or I am getting that idea.

But think about it, even outfitting a single toon with all ascended gear, AR not withstanding, is VERY expensive, and/or time consuming if you rely on random drops alone. For the player like myself, semi-serious… There simply is no way that I can manage to equip more than one of my toons with Ascended gear in a reasonable timeframe, say 4 months or so. This was not so true before HoT. Fractal drops were more frequent, and crafting costs for armor were cheaper. Now with HoT ascended is less the elite, and more needed to be competitive, the raid, and the higher mistlock instabilities almost mandate it. I am now zerk and a light armor profession for all high level content end of story. I have no real other options at this point….

ANET changed a fundamental aspect of the game… Exotics no longer cut it, but ascended is out of reach for most unless you want to play the same build for everything.

Making ascended required for content basically gates build variety and content availability…

Phantom.8130:

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Time out. Time out. Time out.

The GW2 forums are two separate stories. snip

Well, to be fair, the “devs” have been fairly quiet on the PvE front as well. PvP and Raids have been getting quite a bit of attention, but given how messed up the general game is right now, they are really not saying much at all. That said, it’s even worse for WvW where we get NO interaction at all…..

yeah, probably from a straight gold point of view, WvW rewards are fair-ish. But if you are interested in anything besides blues, greens, yellows, and the very rare gold drops, WvW is terrible. Just ask anyone who runs fractals regularly, or PvP about ascended drops…. you get almost none in WvW, a ton in Fractals and quite a few in PvP….

Fractals require one set for low level a different set for high level. Up until HoT Ascended stuff wasn’t absolutely needed, now we need multiple sets AND crafting it is WAY more expensive?

I don’t even have one set of armor (I saved mats mistakenly thinking that the meta might change with HoT, instead it got more complicated and more expensive).

WvW ascended rewards are terrible… I played that mostly over the last 2 years. So now I can craft a good set of ascended for everything except high level fractals, or I can craft a good set of that, and crappy for everything else. OR I can craft a mediocre set to do everything. Honestly, at 600-800g per armor set, how many sets am I expected to craft for one of my toons in order to play all of the content in this game…..

With the advent of HoT the new fractal instabilities and raid, ascended stuff should have changable stats, but of course that would lessen the value of the stupid expensive legendary weapons and so far non-existant armor. Anet just doesn’t want me to keep playing this game, clearly.

Dragonball probably one of the WORST things Anet has thrown at us yet.
-buggy
-no penalty for leaving early
-wins are completely random
-skills often don’t work properly… oh I aready said buggy, but is’s SOOO buggy it’s worth 2 mentions.

-Would not play again

BrickFurious.7169:

You seem to have a laundry list of things you hate about WvW, why are you still playing?

Who says I am playing that much WvW. I used to run in WvW practically 7 days a week, now I mostly just run some fractal dailies and log… Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see the game mode fixed.

BrickFurious.7169:

Do you want Anet to consult with this forum at every step of the re-design process? Or would you rather have them do the job they’re paid to do, which is to design a better game product, and then put the changes out to the playerbase and adjust them based on feedback after the fact?

As I have posted before, YES I would like them to consult with the forums at a stage where things are not locked into place and cannot be changed. You may not have noticed but there have been NO significant changes to the new BL maps, yet they are a disaster for the game mode. Anet doesn’t appear to be able to do what they are getting paid for, in terms of WvW development.

BrickFurious.7169:

Also you seem to be unaware for some reason, population balance is a main component of Anet’s forthcoming WvW overhaul, John Corpening himself said this in the stickied thread at the top of the forum. We don’t know what their solution is yet, but they’ve very explicitly said that it will be part of the overhaul.

So, what significant WvW update has been released since the beginning of this game that didn’t completely miss the mark and resulted in a negative impact on WvW in general? Answer: None of them, with the exception of the middle map ruins which I consider a net neutral…

These updates were all bad for WvW:
EtoM
Stability change
New Borderlands map
Elite specs

The seem to get QoL changes.. but all the major structural ones… Oh Boy. And if the overhaul gets released without ANY post-design feedback that has some impact on the final outcome, well my money is on “goodbye WvW”… I understand that some people remain optimistic, and I was optimistic about the new BLs when they first showed them to us, but now not so much….

I used to be almost exclusive WvW player logging in almost every day. Now I just run Fractals to get ascended gear, can’t bear WvW in the state it’s in right now.

Edit* Beta? you mean Anet style beta where they trot out the finished product and ask for feedback, ignore all feedback, release product. done. Not beta, just a preview of disasters coming…

Ayrilana.1396:

The final instance can easily be done solo with any class. The only exception is if you run into any of the bugs that make it harder, or impossible, to do. In some cases, not even having a full group would help.

OK, so how do I select the “bugged story instance” vs the “no bug story instance”? I have been playing since a month after release, I didn’t realize you could choose bugged or not bugged. Do I dodge at the same time has entering the instance? I am such a dummy. Those 5 bugged attempts… a couple hours of completely wasted time… if I had only known…

And yes you can solo the final story instance. that is if you want spend at least an hour doing basically the same things over and over and over and over and over and over and over… First suck your bad friends into the void using the same mechanic, then do the same thing again with mordy and all his aoe condies, then hope your glider opens and continue to do the same thing until you drain the massive HP sponge that looks kinda like a small Godzilla aka Mordy the HP sponge. I did that instance solo ONCE. Never again, I wouldn’t wish that overly long very tedious repetitive garbage on ANYONE.

Always get friends or pugs to help do Hearts and Minds if you value your sanity and wish to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.

NO. What Anet needs is VISION that doesn’t come from the CEO.

displayname.8315:

Tsaid they were bringing tournaments back, and WvW would be priority #1 after the HoT launch. So………..

Absolutely, WvW is #1 right now, uh well, except for Esports.. I mean that IS important right? And they do have to work on LS3… that’s critical, and HoT still has a lot of bugs and the elite specs… well even the Tuesday balance patch didn’t fix much… so that really is important.. so yes WvW is the top priority after PvP, LS3, HoT bugs, elite skill balance patches, oh and I almost forgot… THE NEXT EXPANSION cuz Anet NEEDS YOUR MONEY…

But you can tell that WvW is a big focus now… just look at all the dev posting and direct interaction in these forums, if that doesn’t show you they are focused here I don’t know what will. And the Jan 25 patch, those changes may have seemed like simple numbers being altered in a spreadsheet, but let me tell ya, changing a 5 into a 1 take a lot of focus, commitment and time.

raises claws in defiance