Guild Wars 2

just play unranked for now. It’s the same gameplay, just no ladder. I understand for strictly competitive players this will be unappealing, but it’s better than waiting for ages for a probably bad match up.

To put it in perspective, many of us older (25 here) gamers used to play CS, quake, and unreal tournament when hotjoin was the only option and ranks didn’t exist. I just kind of reminded myself of that and realized I wasn’t really too worried about rank or ladder since at least I can enjoy the game and earn more spvp rank points and rewards.

Not trying to apologize for the problems here, but providing some alternative insight to the situation.

I’d love it personally. It would really be like WoW style arena which is the one thing I miss about WoW. Currently courtyard becomes a kittenshow where whoever wipes first gets wrecked out of the gate. I have had some awesome back and forth matches on it, but if it was set up like this I’d bet it would be a lot better. I’d kill for some 3v3 no respawn courtyard (5v5 is fine too though).

tl;dr rewards need to be evened out to preserve both competitive play, and ease beginners or casual players into the system. Keep spvp about fun and or competition and let the rewards flow naturally.

Why? because it’s ruining competitive play. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited with this recent patch and I love that spvp has rewards now, and of course I’m happy that it brings in new players. The problem is, those rewards, especially in team arena, are probably given out too easily. I don’t mind the easy rewards and I haven’t done an in depth number crunch, but it seems that other than maybe for armor set pieces, you can get rewards even faster than running the dungeons now from spvp. Especially if players are incompetent at dungeon mechanics and take spvp for the easy path.

Digressing from the dungeon competency aspect, the real issue at hand is, spvp rewards are way out of line in the different brackets. Before bonuses, the win points are as follows, hot join: 500 pts, solo arena: 1000 pts, team arena: 1500 points. Losses are about 1/3rd of those values. Of course is it doesn’t make sense NOT to queue for a team arena because of the reward values.

Ideally, hot join would be for testing new builds/professions or casual fun play, solo arena for solo competitive, and team arena for competitive play queuing with any number greater than yourself. Because of these rewards though you have completely incompetent builds and players running around in team arena. Now sure, you and one friend might queue up with other randoms and get smashed by a full pre-made team. Not always fun, but acceptable given the situation. What ISN’T fun is having completely incompetent people ruining the experience for others.

I’ve had too many completely one sided games on both the winning and losing teams that just aren’t fun due to lack of competition one way or another, and I’ve literally had players with the attitude of “i don’t care, just want rewards”.

In the end, as amazing as it is that spvp has grown so rapidly due to the updates and reward tracks, but at the end of the day, spvp should be a competitive and enjoyable experience for all, not forcing newer players into brackets they don’t belong in or ruining the competitive nature for the pvp veterans.

P.S. Just because you don’t do this or think this way doesn’t mean many, many others don’t. People will always gravitate towards the highest rewards. It’s human nature.

Wow, this is really, really terrible to see. Coming from WoW, as most of my friends that play GW2 with me, we all LOVED that spvp had absolutely zero grind or gear differences. It was purely for skill, and the prestige of looking cooler as you obtained skins.

I actually have two friends that just recently picked it up for the sale, and mostly just spvp as well. For those new players going from being able to test any class, any play style right off the bat to needing to amass and then dedicate and extremely sizable chunk of gold is quite disheartening. I mean sure, we earn some gold (not sure if we’ll earn more post patch?) but this amulet change seems quite unnecessary and wont do much but turn people off of spvp in general.

Bumping for support. It’s been over a week that I haven’t been able to play the game and still no help at all. This is getting ridiculous.

Bumping for support. It’s been over a week that I haven’t been able to play the game and still no help at all. This is getting ridiculous.

Xbon.9086:

I was just in hearts of the mist, and I got kicked out mid game and now can’t log back into the game, before then I was lagging a ton during chat, could barely chat to people, guild chat wouldn’t show up at all.. i think something’s goin on right now.

Sorry to hear it. It’s been over a week now since it first hit for me. I’ve given up troubleshooting the problem already. Really a shame since this patch had made spvp extremely enjoyable. Hope we can get an official ANet response soon.

As the title describes, I cannot load any of my characters in Heart of the Mists. I’ve never had this problem before, I haven’t changed my configuration, nor has anything changed with my networking. No other programs are having connectivity or other issues. I’ve tried using the client port 80 command, as well as not using it. I’ve also tried using a few VPNs as well as connecting without them. The game loads and operates fine on my other characters that aren’t in the heart of the mists, but I tried zoning one of them in and got the same problem and that character too is now unplayable. I’ve also deleted the local.dat file and completely re downloaded the main gw2.dat file in addition to trying to -repair and -verify command line arguments.
Needless to say, I’m disappointed I can’t enjoy my main characters and I’ve exhausted all options I can think of.

I also noted that the log file wasn’t registering this, if there is anyway to enable a more in-depth log via some option that would be great. Thanks to anyone who can expand on this.

Edit: forgot to include specs:
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz
RAM: 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 800MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z77-D3H
Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti (MSI) 32 °C
Storage: 1863GB (RAID 0) (2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX)

As the title describes, I cannot load any of my characters in Heart of the Mists. I’ve never had this problem before, I haven’t changed my configuration, nor has anything changed with my networking. No other programs are having connectivity or other issues. I’ve tried using the client port 80 command, as well as not using it. I’ve also tried using a few VPNs as well as connecting without them. The game loads and operates fine on my other characters that aren’t in the heart of the mists, but I tried zoning one of them in and got the same problem and that character too is now unplayable. I’ve also deleted the local.dat file and completely re downloaded the main gw2.dat file.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed I can’t enjoy my main characters and I’ve exhausted all options I can think of.

I also noted that the log file wasn’t registering this, if there is anyway to enable a more in-depth log via some option that would be great. Thanks to anyone who can expand on this.

Same problem here, no idea whats causing it but it’s been this way for a few days. Tried running a VPN, and also tried using /clientport 80 nothing works but I too can log into a character that isn’t in HotM

THIS! I’ve been sad about this since day 1. I absolutely love gw2, but I’d love to have true build diversity and a real fix for this. It’s really disappointing that it’s been like this for more than a year. Removing the trinity was cool, until you realized it was the most viable to run 5x zerkers and zerg stuff fast enough that healing isn’t necessary. I know this concept doesn’t apply universally, and I’m glad they are addressing support playstyles in the oct 15th patch, but they still haven’t even commented on conditions other than saying that it doesn’t work well because of bandwidth. Pretty lame. This would be the glaring issue that would make me give GW2 4/5 stars rather than 5.

P.S. I think a proper fix would be to simply add a VERY SMALL amount of boon duration for example.

I agree completely here. The magic find WAS the tipping point for me on the celestial type gear as I liked most of the stats but figured “eh why not. the stats are strong and I don’t have to feel bad about using this magic find actually”. I recently bought the laurel celestial rings on my guardian as well. 70 laurels is a LOT honestly. I’ll feel very ripped off to have those stats gone.

Sure, celestial still gives to every other stat, but it doesn’t change the fact that the items are being nerfed in a way that feels significant to the owners of the gear. 300% account wide magic find still doesn’t change the fact that all items with celestial gear will be comparatively weaker and less valuable.

Atherakhia.4086:

they lose magic find. Aren’t compensated at all.

well, that really is quite disappointing. Thanks for the speedy reply nonetheless.

Quick question that wasn’t addressed by the Economy Report: What will happen to the ascended items with all stats? My guardian currently has the Lunaria and Solaria rings, what will the magic find become after the change? Will it be refundable? Those rings DID take quite a long time to farm, and although they might not even be optimal, I was quite happy with them overall. It would be a massive burden to farm out those laurels again.

P.S. Nothing was mentioned at all about the “Celestial” items surprisingly. Hoping for some clarification

Please. Sorry for all caps, but this is absurdly stupid and annoying when trying to manage gear sets and items across seven characters. Especially when dual wielding. I know they had this function in beta and I honestly can’t see why it was removed unless it’s a cheap tactic to sell bag slots etc. I’m literally happy with every other aspect of the game, and the fact that Arenanet has done SUCH a good job overall, such a small yet serious annoyance is quite unacceptable as I’ve seen countless threads over the year of the games time on this topic.

Packmang.5649:

I do have a ticket open and I’ll re-post any fix that works.

Thanks, I’ve been completely unable to log in for two days now with zero problems in connectivity to any other game or application.

I have to say magic find as a budgeted stat is just a terrible idea that rewards players for being selfish. They are a directly harming the group for their own gain, sure I’m speaking in very harsh terms here, but they are slowing down the run, or evening being the last straw so to speak in a wipe. It’s a greedy mechanic that people really dislike because it forces us to either be like every other kitten, or be the ones taken advantage of.

That being said I have seen some excellent points for it remaining in certain forms. The best idea I have seen is to have some type of magic relic or crystal in a dungeon that charges with each event/boss completion for better magic find (the whole relic charge idea was to keep some element of lore tied to it as opposed to just “hey, free magic”) as this will encourage people to complete content rather than speed run things like crazy.

At the very least, we need some inspecting feature. While i really disliked the gear emphasis and inspecting approach WoW has, if a player is at liberty to take a stat that benefits him or herself at the cost of everyone else in the equation, I should at least be at liberty to choose not to play with said players. Even if a full blown inspection isn’t a good idea, or a feasible addition to the game (I can see the “full exotics only” posts incoming, and I agree that could be detrimental), we at least need SOME way to identify or broadcast someone’s magic find as it is the ONLY budgeted stat that has no effect other than to increase personal gain at the cost of the other people involved.

tl;dr I honestly don’t see how anyone who isn’t currently being an MF leech to be opposed to a system that broadcasts (via inspection or simply showing a buff with the total value) a players MF%.

This update really messed up this and striking off the chains. Striking off the chains will actually bug if she gets a single summon as the adds will pull the npc you have to rescue out of the cage. interrupting a veteran wasn’t a problem though. The problem is this champion which has defiance. As a tanky hammer guardian I just don’t have any way to stop that summon more than once, and then she simply has too many adds and they destroy my party. Really frustrating to have to deal with these changes which seem like they weren’t tested at all causing extreme difficulty spikes. I’d be fine with it if it was intended to be a group event, but it’s not.

Lord Oubliette.8014:

Same issue, Warden Hywell isn’t there & cannot continue with personal story. A MAJOR bug which should be fixed ASAP. The comment from designer Jeffrey Vaughn regarding no ETA is totally unacceptable. Get it fixed !!!

Agreed. If it were a visual bug or an inconvenience it would be understandable, but this directly impedes story progress, a MAJOR element of the game. Absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

Tyr.7890:

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

If you’re a necromancer, and you join another necromancer, and you both have exactly the same build, and both depend on the condition damage, that’s kind of your own fault, and regardless, the rest of your team can carry you.

If you have five people, all conditions builds, you’ll find it a bit harder, but you can still eventually complete the dungeon. Again, any trouble you have from building terrible teams is your own fault, and no reason to change the game though.

Although it may be your fault in the current system, that’s no excuse for the terrible bleed system in place and more so completely goes against Arenanet’s thesis of breaking the trinity, having many viable builds, and allowing the players to play whatever style they wish to play. It is simply undeniable that the current bleed mechanics go against that.

Direct damage has no limits to being on a target. Why should condition damage? Before people being up the usual ignorant arguments, let me address them here.

1) armor is ignored by condition damage, it’s OP!

Direct damage has three stats to increase its output. Precision, power, and crit damage. If you choose to go glassy, you can scale very well. You can also go more balanced at the cost of damage. This is the same for condition damage. Condition damage can grab more precision if they wish for crit proc effects and such, grab more power for the direct damage components of abilities, or balance survivabity as well. Condition simply doesn’t have the excellent scaling potential of power, prec, %. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and conditions ratios are fine all stack and cap issues aside)

2) it would be too strong in Pvp and stack too high

There is so much condition damage in Pvp it LIKELY wouldn’t be an issue as one condition removal would remove every single stack of bleed assuming bleed is the targeted condition. I would be fine with a hard cap in Pvp if it was an issue.

There is also the issue of condition damage not affecting structures. That certainly needs to be adjusted.

#1: There are many viable builds, and you can play however you want. That does not mean you will always be doing as good as people who play better than you. I’ve done dungeons in pugs with a shortbow conditions ranger, a couple conditions necromancers, a domination/dueling/illusion mesmer, and a fire elementalist. It’s possible to complete all game content with horribly built parties, you’re just not going to be as fast or have it as easy as people who put together builds specifically for the task at hand.

#2: Condition damage has limits because as shown in my post right above you, it would get out of hand, to thousands of damage per second, incredibly quickly if the OP’s suggestion was taken.

In PvP especially, this suggestion would be an issue, as it would cause rapid, harsh changes to how much damage each tick of bleeding was giving you. If one stack does 300 damage, but two stacks does 1600 damage… You can see how that would be a problem.

The current system, while not perfect, only really shows it’s flaws in massive unorganized fights that would be impossible to balance, and horribly made teams, that should never be as good as well made teams.

I agree that a well made team should be better than people simply playing whatever they want, and it certainly is. The two glaring problems are simply how much more powerful entirely uncoordinated direct damage is than condition damage, and condition damage being entirely non-effective on structures or objects.

I only stress the point that people should be able to play the game the way they want as that is the mantra arena net emphasizes. Also, while on this topic, 5 warriors in a party vs 5 necromancers. Neither qualifies as “well made and properly thought out group composition” yet there will be a MASSIVE difference in the effectiveness of both. I’m not asking for overpowered never ending condition stacks, I’m simply asking for some system where there can be a bit of a common ground between the two, and players aren’t punished for playing with friends and others that share a common interest.

P.S. this actually exists in the current group of friends I’ve brought to the game. Two play GS warriors and never have a problem ever, the other three play condition damage classes and aren’t nearly as effective when together.

Woogie.9127:

I get to the top of the tower, fight the veteran that’s up there, and then Warden Hywel disappears, leaving me unable to free him and complete the quest…

Same problem here. Such a terrible oversight on an already annoying mission.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

If you’re a necromancer, and you join another necromancer, and you both have exactly the same build, and both depend on the condition damage, that’s kind of your own fault, and regardless, the rest of your team can carry you.

If you have five people, all conditions builds, you’ll find it a bit harder, but you can still eventually complete the dungeon. Again, any trouble you have from building terrible teams is your own fault, and no reason to change the game though.

Although it may be your fault in the current system, that’s no excuse for the terrible bleed system in place and more so completely goes against Arenanet’s thesis of breaking the trinity, having many viable builds, and allowing the players to play whatever style they wish to play. It is simply undeniable that the current bleed mechanics go against that.

Direct damage has no limits to being on a target. Why should condition damage? Before people being up the usual ignorant arguments, let me address them here.

1) armor is ignored by condition damage, it’s OP!

Direct damage has three stats to increase its output. Precision, power, and crit damage. If you choose to go glassy, you can scale very well. You can also go more balanced at the cost of damage. This is the same for condition damage. Condition damage can grab more precision if they wish for crit proc effects and such, grab more power for the direct damage components of abilities, or balance survivabity as well. Condition simply doesn’t have the excellent scaling potential of power, prec, %. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and conditions ratios are fine all stack and cap issues aside)

2) it would be too strong in Pvp and stack too high

There is so much condition damage in Pvp it LIKELY wouldn’t be an issue as one condition removal would remove every single stack of bleed assuming bleed is the targeted condition. I would be fine with a hard cap in Pvp if it was an issue.

There is also the issue of condition damage not affecting structures. That certainly needs to be adjusted.

Kicker.8203:

In sPvP it’s not 5v5 most of the time, but more like 2v2 and 3v3.

All they did in wow, was to forbid the usage of very long cooldowned skills(like 10 min), so I don’t think it would be a problem for GW2.

That’s true. I could see with elites disabled and any if the revive signets or other spells disabled it could be a lot of fun. I would love if they did ranked ladders for this. Hell, wow was terribly balanced and it was still fun for the most part.

I think it would also help players learn the finer points in Pvp. In WvWvW and spvp there can be so much going in it can be hard to keep up with for new players. The smaller, yet more intricate battles would really emphasize each professions skills and help one to learn them through and through. Also I think a deathmatch style game could be quite fun and 2v2 and 3v3 arena (maybe 1v1 too for dueling?) would be the place for it. Spvp deathmatch battlegrounds might be a bit too clustered.

Pinder, thanks for all the excellent info here. I had one question to add to this post. I’m wondering if conditions take only the value when applied, or if they update on the fly. For example, I have a weapon with bonus condition damage and a few might stacks for 3 seconds. If I apply a 5 second burn under those conditions, will all 5 seconds receive that amplification? And will swapping to a different weapon with less or greater condition damage modify the remaining ticks? This exact area seems quite complicated, especially if you include additional people extending your buffed burn/poison.

Seraki.2753:

Yes the ground target thing is really a bummer. When I was in the pre-order beta I actually reported it as a bug because it felt like one. AE around a target would be so much better! With the AE being ether placed on the ground [eats up time and often target moves before your done] or auto placed via where your mouse is pointing [making hot bar click impossible unless you like being the target area], it makes the game look like its designed for fancy multi button peripherals for people who use mouse look as an invisible target marker only.

Bleh! So yes target as AE marker for these would be simply awesome!

I’m not sure if this is wise as it will actually teach players bad habits and be a permanent handicap to skilled play. Please note, I’m not trying to sound elitist here, I’m coming from similar feelings from past MMOs. I used to be a player that clicked the hot bar and keyboard turned. I strongly suggest you rebind A and D to strafe, and set key bindings for everything other than 1-5 (shift+1-5, shift+Q,W,E,R etc) There will certainly be a learning curve to the matter, but you will be raising your potential in all computer gaming being able to more strategically control yourself

As for needing fancy peripherals, Guild Wars 2 actually requires far less bindings and action bar management than other games (this is a good thing really). I play on a regular keyboard and a mouse with only two extra buttons (forward and back for internet browsing). Granted the two mouse buttons are amazing in almost every game and when they can be used with modifiers (shift, alt, ctrl) it really adds potential.

P.S. Trust me on this, it WILL feel wrong and inconvenient for a few days at least, but it WILL make you better at the game.

Mkalafut.1273:

Probably not a good idea to complain and say things like “This is absolutely ridiculous.”

I agree with your suggestion though. It’s inconvenient when you start getting the cooler skins and getting multiples. I’d rather not delete the extra skins I get for rare skinned items, but I also don’t have a lot of space since I use all of my characters for both PvE and PvP.

I don’t feel that saying “This is absolutely ridiculous” is out of line in this situation. It would be an incredibly easy fix to an incredibly aggravating inconvenience. I don’t know if thread necromancy is a no-no here so let me apologize in advance if it would have been better to create a new thread. Anyway, is there any word on this? It’s a problem that gets more and more annoying as you progress. Please fix this or at least grace us with an answer as to why this is intentional. Thank you.

I too would love arenas, SO LONG AS there are no specific arena rewards that aren’t obtainable via standard spvp. I love arena style gameplay, but this game isn’t balanced around that type of combat. It’s balanced around 5v5 and WvWvW. I feel that creating too competitive of an atmosphere with special rewards will create a cry for additional arena balance. Lets face it, as experienced ex-WoW players, we all know the glaring issues of balancing for battlegrounds vs an arena playstyle.

Nonetheless, I’d take arena in any way, shape, or form.

Bump. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Please make items in the pvp locker stack. It is very inconvenient to manage gear across multiple characters how it is, if I want to dual wield something and happened to get the two items on a different character I have to put one in the locker, switch characters, put another in the locker, switch characters, and take it back out again.

I think the best solution would be to simply allow stacks of items in the locker. If not, mailing items to your other characters would be okay, but that is less desirable and doesn’t really make sense as tokens and arcane materials stack so you’d think gear could as well. It also causes the issue of polluting bag space if you have skins of more gear sets as well.