Guild Wars 2

Actually that’s a really good idea. I’ve already become afraid to even equip my staff in some parts of Verdant Brink. I’ve gone flying off a few cliffs already because my character wasn’t facing exactly the same way as my camera. And no, I’m not about to keep the camera fixed, either, it makes me dizzy when it whips around all the time.

Ah, thanks for the link. Should have checked General before the bug forum.

With the wiping of the beta characters, I was going to create a new character in my regular open slot this afternoon to reserve my name and play around with looks & such for my future Rev. But after the update today, I’m not able to create a character even though I have an open character slot. There are 4 open beta slots as well, so I’m assuming it thinks I want to create a beta character even though I double-click the open standard character spot. The error message reads as follows:

“That content has been temporarily disabled. Please try again later.”

Working as intended?

I submitted an in-game bug report on this topic, but can’t seem to find if it’s a known bug here on the forums. I might just be searching for it wrong, so I apologize if that’s the case.

But all mail I receive keeps replacing punctuation like hyphens and parentheses with the “&Acedil;” character (A cedilla). It’s not a game-breaking issue, but it can make NPC mail a bit awkward to read. Just wondering if this is an isolated issue that I can fix on my end or if everyone sees this and I’m just not seeing the bug listed here in the forums.

I’m attaching a screenshot in case it helps explain what I’m seeing better.

I switched from grenades to FT/Elixir Gun for PvE. AoE from 1 & 2 coupled with static discharge is great for DE’s & farming if you know the positioning. I’ve also found success with tank/support in dungeons using the same 0/30/0/20/20 build just with a couple major trait swaps.

However, it’s still a huge pain in the kitten for mobile fighting. Moving while auto-attacking = automatic miss on targets – for the full duration of the skill.

supergica.8652:

Don’t forget to go to WvW on a low populated bordeland to get the out-maned buff. You get 33% more karma.

/facepalm

Why didn’t I think of that? I just downed a bunch of jugs last night to finish my temple armor on my engineer. Oh well, now I know for the next alt… and knowing is half the battle!

I will say I agree with the repeating “one time” event scenario for a 24 hour period. We kill the Shatterer, Claw of Jormag and Tequatl every 2-3 hours every DAY and they’re only slightly less work than Ancient Karka was (at least for the final boss fight itself, which was all that was required for the chest). I can think of a couple other scenarios that may improve the gameplay for events like this in the future.

Scenario 1: I would disagree with you, however slightly, on the once per account bit. The only way to support an event of that magnitude 8 times in a day (every 3 hours) would require a pretty large group of people. If a majority of players did the event in the first couple play-throughs, you’d lose a lot of that server’s population during the last event or two of the day and the event would have a chance of failing. Without the rewards, not many people would spend 2 hours in an event chain for the 1 silver and 360 karma we got for the reinforcements and again for the boss. However, I don’t think the chest has to be quite as rewarding after the first play through on one account.

Let’s say the first run through on an account gets the big badkitten chest with 2 exotics, 2 rares and the unique event container (karka ring & bag). Subsequent runs can simply treat the chest as a normal splendid chest and drop the unique event container again. The contents of the container are account bound and not game-breaking by any stretch, and pleny of people were able to run this event multiple times and probably have a full set of 20-slot bags for one character and enough rings for 5 alts. But in this case they also got a ton of guaranteed exotics along with it. In a proper all-day repeating event scenario, SOME reward will help encourage folks to keep running it to make sure it succeeds, but doesn’t have to guarantee the phat loot every time. And a splendid chest every 2-3 hours isn’t much different than farming Tequatl/Claw, but with the added bonus of account-bound event loot.

Scenario 2: The primary problem with scenario 1 is the issue of overflows. When an overflow instance gets created 20 minutes after a main server starts the event and gets overcrowded, the event on the overflow ends 20 minutes after the first one as well. This leads to opportunities of running a repeating event constantly throughout the day if you’re lucky enough to have friends spread among the overflow instances.

If we did go with something like the “one chest per account” option, maybe the whole zone should be forced into overflow for the day. Basically, to account for the dwindling number of players throughout the day, if an account hasn’t completed the event they are forced into an active overflow where the event is running (preferably with npc’s that can teleport someone from the entry points to where the current action is). Accounts that have completed it will default to their own home server, but can be guested in if they just want to assist a guildie and do it for the fun rather than the loot.

I agree it’s more difficult to form a bond/rivalry with competing servers when the names are anonymous. One of my favorite parts of PvP in other games is the “friendly” trash talking. People who are going to stalk/harass will find ways to do it regardless of whether the names are hidden in the UI. I would vote to see names of opponents, as long as it won’t worsen the culling/rendering issues we have currently.

With 100% MF gear on, you effectively double the EXISTING chances of getting non-white/gray items from mob drops. If exotics have a 0.5% chance to drop from a mob, it is now 1%. It doesn’t give you 100% chance of a RARE item drop, just increasing existing chances for RARER items to drop, meaning more blues/greens/yellows than normal. With an increased chance for blues & greens as well, you’re at least not getting gray vendor trash (although no amount of MF seems to push gray/white items off the loot table completely).

Vendoring blues & greens and TP’ing blue materials is the bread & butter of DE farming for gold unless you just get extra lucky. But as another poster said if a super-duper rare thing has a .0025% chance to drop, MF may seem useless until that .005% chance kicks in and it drops for you.

Another interesting factoid on Charr names that I didn’t see posted here yet (sorry if I missed it) is the Legion primus warband names. Each of the legions – Blood, Ash, Iron, and Flame – has a primus warband that the legion is named after. This is typically a hereditary warband similar to a monarchy, but the offspring of the primus members still have to fulfill a challenge or battle for their right to bear the name. So the surname of a primus warband member from each legion might be Bloodbane, Ashwalker, Irongrip, and Flametongue.

My engineer wasn’t so presumptuous as to belong to a primus warband so his name is Vargos Grimfang, biggest teeth in the Grim warband, Iron Legion.

My warrior, however, is the offspring of a loyal soldier of the Blood legion primus warband, so his name is Vargos Bloodreaver.

Kozai.8269:

Regarding your final point, is there any evidence from the developers of the game that they intend crafting to be a money making activity for the majority of its practitioners?

This is probably the most important question asked so far in this thread. Given that leveling a crafting profession provides the average player with 10-20 levels of XP plus the ability to make gear for themselves, the monetary value of the raw vs. crafted materials is irrelevant. The monetary value of the raw materials is only high because the average player purchases them for crafting instead of farming them. The crafted items will never achieve the value of the raw materials combined because players cannot craft new items with crafted items (not talking Forge here). There is no demand for an item you made because I can make it too. And it’s ridiculously easy to do so.

Not to mention the fact that as a player of a video game, I have no cost of living to consider. The average human being in the real world sets prices or value of their goods or services based on their inherent needs to provide food, clothing and shelter for their families. Paying for all these things forces a person to strive to make the most money possible from the goods or services they offer. In a video game, however, the average player has no real ‘cost’ of living within the game other than repair bills and WP’s which are pretty cheap in general.

If my average spend per day in game is about 20s for repairs & WP’s, if I sell something I make for 1g that pays for 5 days worth of my daily cost of living. I don’t need to eat food to survive, and I can wear the same armor every day for the rest of my gaming career, so there are no required ancillary costs to consider. The fact that the materials I used to create this item for 1g could have been sold for 2g total is irrelevant. If every 5 days I can farm my own materials to make an item worth 1g, I’m covering my average cost of living. There is no incentive to charge more for that item since I’m not spending any money to make it. If I also gain XP or crafting skill points in the process, that’s simply a bonus. If it takes me fewer than 5 days in game to farm the materials I need for said item, I’m already making a profit. It is a different profit than described by the “professional crafters” whining about the price of materials, but I’ve got more money coming in than going out, so I make money. For most players, that’s a successful transaction, and they’ve made more monetary profit than you because digital items in a fantasy world have no actual intrinsic value – only the value placed on them by other players.

So you can complain all you want about other people “being stupid” with their “money,” but for the players that focus on PvP, fighting monsters, exploring caves and teaming up in dungeons, the fake money they earn on the TP doesn’t matter very much to them and likely never will as long as they can cover their average cost of playing. Video game economics != real world economics due to the lack of scaling of cost of living. If you can make more money selling raw materials, and your primary goal in the game is to make money, use all your “business savvy” to realize you should be in the raw material business rather than complaining that your crafting business is not profitable. Or spend your time finding the few crafted items that ARE craftable and shift your focus there.

Even though we technically battle in the mists for Wv3, for example, Tyrians are the ones who presumably built these keeps & castles to defend their world from invaders. Why wouldn’t they look like other Tyrian architecture? Even in sPvP, we are merely placed into arenas built by Tyrians to test the mettle of teams of combatants in the Mists. I wouldn’t assume these structures were already there. When we go to the mists for the pvp lobby, it has that otherworldly look you are referencing, but they send us to arenas that were built to represent significant moments in Tyrian history just to add some flavor to the skirmishes.

The arenas in the Zaishen isles in GW1 were presumably constructed the same way if they were all to exist on the islands themselves, we weren’t ported to areas of Tyria that already appeared that way. One would assume that even though we lost contact with the Zaishen Order during the awakening of Zhaitan, combatants from around Tyria remembered how we held tournaments previously and decided to build new arenas in the same fashion, even though they actually exist in the mists.

As for the old PvP areas like the Hall of Heroes in the Rift, the only known location to access it outside of the Zaishen Isles lore-wise was the Tomb of Primeval Kings, which is in an area not included in the current GW2 zones. It may be possible that there are still adventurers in that area fighting in the Hall of Heroes, but it lies pretty much at ground zero for where Kralkatorrik landed at the end of the Dragonbrand, and more than likely collapsed the entrance when he did so. I expect we’ll see some industrious asura krewes or Priory teams digging it up in a future expansion as we go after another ED.

With the emissaries & avatars of the gods falling silent and not actively participating in Wintersday with humans, one could assume the holiday simply mutated much like Mad King’s Day stayed around without Thorn showing up in the mortal realm. The candy & costumes still obviously persisted without him.

One might also assume that the less god-centric Wintersday became over the centuries, the more the general public embraced it as simply a festival to celebrate the changing of the winter season. Even in GW1, while the Norn & Dwarves accepted the human gods in terms of their existence they were not worshipped as such. But that did not stop them from joining in the festivities.

I think the charr can find reasons to celebrate Wintersday as the different races come together and the human gods are no longer directly involved in the holiday. That’s why I wouldn’t expect to see Grenth vs. Dwayna like we did in GW1, but I’m sure it may be replaced with something just as silly but still represents the “fight” between winter & spring.

The only other madman that comes to mind with the power to oppose Thorn would be Menzies. Given that he was thwarted at his attempts to usurp Balthazar as the keeper of the Fissuer of Woe, maybe he thinks the Mad Realm to be an easier target? So why, then would we be helping Menzies who was previously allied with Abaddon & Dhuum?

In GW1, whenever the player was only given options to help one evil or another, we chose the seemingly lesser of two evils, such as aiding Joko to stop Abaddon. But we’ve also been known to unknowingly support the bad(der) guy due to deception, such as with Vizier Khilbron. What if this time around the ‘rebels’ are not simply trying to dethrone Thorn, but help Menzies usurp the throne instead? So now we’re actually helping the worse of two evils, but unwittingly so.

I wish there was some official info on alleviating DR. Like, can I level an alt for 30 min and come back to my 80 to farm labyrinth/MK dungeon? Or is it character based, and my 80 needs to do something else for 30 minutes to remove DR? And is 30 minutes even enough?

I don’t mind there being anti-farming returns on things, but I’d like to know some parameters on how Anet would like me to play my game.

You CAN buy it from the gem store. Buy gems, convert to gold, buy on TP. If you’re gonna spend $100 on gems for keys why not just make sure you get it for that money.

Loved it. For all the whiners who complain about it, I don’t know why they feel that everyone deserves to complete it. I don’t have enough consecutive play time for dungeons, but I don’t complain about not being able to get the achievments for them. My wife despises PvP, but she doesn’t feel she should be able to get the achievments for it anyway. This game has so many different things to do, I’d be amazed if anyone truly loved every single part of it on the same level. If you don’t like part of it, don’t do it.

Oh, and for those complaining about not being able to see around a charr, try jumping as one. The jumping-on-all-fours almost takes more getting used to than the puzzle itself. My charr is an engi and 99% of my time I’m running upright with a kit active. It was weird losing my weapon/kits for that puzzle, since every other puzzle I’ve done I jump like a humanoid when my kit is equipped.

Lantyssa.6723:

Darkness – Zhaitan – Grenth
Chaos – Kralkatorrik – Lyssa
Knowledge – Deep Sea Dragon – Kormir
Nature – The Nightmare – Melandru
Strength – Primordius – Balthazar
Light – Jormag – Dwayna

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who attributes chaos magic to Kralkatorrik. I understand the argument from a scientific perspective that crystal = rock, like a quartz or diamond. However, what if what you see as a crystal is merely an illusion? A coating of chaos magic covering a formerly organic object that now makes it look as if it’s made of crystals. And what better way to distort what you see than through a crystal that refracts & bends light to its will?

When you fight my mesmer’s illusions, they very much look real but in fact shatter like glass (or crystals) when destroyed. Just as when you fight a branded charr, there is nothing inherently “charr” left to fight but an illusion of a charr. Granted they’re more tangible than my mesmer’s illusions, but they are still created with chaos magic. Not to mention mind control & domination are often attributed to chaos magic as well.

In terms of the lightning or fire associated with Kralk, my mesmer shoots lightning from her greatsword and can harness fire with her torch. But they are merely chaos magic spells giving the illusion of another element. Chaos storm looks like lightning, but is actually chaos magic causing confusion rather than air damage. My staff shoots little fireballs that are actually made of chaos magic causing random contitions.

I think it makese sense that the DSD is associated with Abaddon/Kormir given that abbadon was the keeper of secrets, and the DSD is fairly secretive so far. Kormir may be the goddess of truth, but in keeping the ultimate truth from the denizens of Tyria she is keeping just as many secrets as Abaddon did. Not to mention they are both associated with the spirits, and we may very well be fighting the spirits from the depths of the ocean rather than creatures actually made of water. Which begs the question of whether the DSD is more present than we think with all the Ascalonian ghosts wandering around.

My only real hangup in this list is the Jormag/Dwayna/Light & Existence connection other than they’re the only ones left to match up if the sixth dragon is, in fact, plant based and correlates with Melandru. Maybe Jormag is rejecting his light nature in that light=heat, and ice is pretty much as un-hot as you get. However, ice & snow are typically very bright and reflective when the sun shines so maybe he is embracing light more than we know.

That’s just freaky. I did the same thing. GW1 mesmer since launch, but I went engi when GW2 launched because the new mesmer ‘just wasn’t the same.’ Now my engi is boring and my new GW2 mesmer is almost 80 and way more fun.

What if the sixth dragon is, in fact, nature-centric but because of her love for nature and balance, defected from the circle of elder dragons who seek only dominion? In Prophecies, the game was built around humans and their six gods – one of whom was cast down and rejected the other five for being a jerk. Since the remaining five gods were more or less benevolent toward the human race, the sixth was considered evil and must be stopped (and ultimately replaced, I suppose).

Now with the dragons, however, the 5-on-1 scenario may still hold true except the odd-dragon-out seeks balance in all things and understands the need for both good and evil to coexist in Tyria. So this sixth nature-based dragon is saddened by the destruction the other dragons begin to cause, and her tears become seeds that pool up in a cave that Ronan finds and plants to become the pale tree. The essence of the sixth dragon creates the race of Sylvari, which would essentially be her ‘minions’ or followers.

Now consider the fact that the other 5 ED’s seek only dominion over all things (presumably even each other). Their minions fall into the ‘hive mind’ concept where the dragons make all decisions and orders pertaining to the actions of said minions & champions. But what if that is an active choice on their part? I know if I wanted to rule the world, making everyone act solely upon my will would be an extremely easy way to accomplish that. But the sixth dragon understands the need for free will in order for good and evil to coexist. The magic used on Glint by the Forgotten can’t be unique and may have even been bestowed to them by this benevolent sixth dragon who, until now, sought refuge and isolation away from the destruction wrought by the other dragons. But she finally sees she needs to take action and form her own plant-based dragon-immune race of Sylvari to have a shot at "restoring balance to the force. "

They don’t act like true minions because she granted them free will. She knows something like the Nightmare Court must exist even within her own ranks because there can be no force for good without an opposing force for evil, but hopes that by joining forces with the “good guys” from the other races that the scales can be rebalanced again – even against the other elder dragons. And the details of her existence are only marginally known due to the fact that she hasn’t caused any catastrophic destruction to make a name for herself. But maybe somewhere along the way she created precurser minions with sylvan hounds, oakhearts and ibogas that just weren’t quite right for the job but may prove useful later in the fight against the other dragons. And maybe with a victory over Zhaitan she’ll reveal herself to the lesser races and help in the fight against the other ED’s and become our new “Glint” character.

I’m just waiting to see more ‘contribution measurement’ come from buffs, debuffs, rezzing and heals. I was hoping to level my Elementalist alt as a pure healer/support character and it works great unless I’m doing a DE. If I spend more time healing & buffing everyone than dps’ing I end up with a bronze. It seems as though “play your way” also means, “hit hard or get no credit.”

Even in a dungeon, if I’m not doing decent damage to everything around me, I don’t see much in the way of drops either. If we’re in an actual party group, and my party kills something while I kept them from dying, why shouldn’t I get loot too? How does supporting my allies equate to not actually participating? But if we don’t have someone playing a support role, the dungeon just takes longer due to wipes.

I’m sure there’s an argument for DE’s where people could just spam AoE heals & buffs that may be unnecessary and still get credit. But as long as those heals & buffs are applied to those doing all the damage, how is that not ensuring the success of the event group at large? Or what about damage-prevention debuffs like blind & slow? If my engineer throws his flash & freeze grenades and the wave of mobs is dead, I got no loot for keeping them from hitting anyone or holding them in everyone’s AoE. I’m left just spamming my 1 key to do enough damage to get credit while some poor dagger thief gets his face smashed in.

I was just in Orr last night and actually heard someone in local chat say, “It’s not every day you see warrior with a shield equipped in Orr. Did you just get here?” And it’s ultimately true. You see so few support weapons/builds being used in Orr its no wonder so many people get defeated during events. It’s even less of a shock that nobody revives them. I love the concept of playing world events with groups of strangers and friends, but it just seems people get less and less helpful as you get to level 80. And I can’t get upset with the player when the game doesn’t recognize helping other players as a form of participation when players who want to play support roles need gear just as much as the burst dps players. It’s ironic, really, for the players wanting to play a support role that they have to play burst dps builds to earn their support/healing/tanking gear.

What about instead of passive run speed we bring back Illusion of Haste? Removes cripple on cast, increase run speed for x duration, causes cripple on end. Spam it while you’re running down the road, get cripple on you when you finally stop using it. Wouldn’t be much different from thief signet since nobody would use it for anything other than map running. Also would require losing a utility slot and not require a specific weapon. In pvp or wvw, you’d probably rather just use curtain anyway to gain some distance without cripp’ing yourself or having to use null field at the end of the spam cycle.

I’d say mesmers are the closest thing to an engi in terms of playstyle. Phantasms=mobile turrets, and lots of trickery utility spells for messing with your opponents. Can be OP in the right hands, but takes a bit more skill & planning to execute. Much more of a small skirmish PvP class (which is what I use mine for) and group PvE play, while my engi can do well in almost all areas of play and still be as complex or faceroll as I want it to be.

I think some of it depends on what sort of squads you run with. If you focus more on siege/defense on camps/keeps, I’d side with Kodiak and go for Knight’s runes for the extra survivability. If you do more roaming & supply line running, I’d go with Centaur.

And if you’re really serious about it, get an armor set for each playstyle so you can be flexible.

In the original Guild Wars, there were several armors that would only be worn by players with tons of in-game gold to spend or enough time & the proper build to farm the high-level areas for materials. These armors provided absolutely zero combat benefit over the ones you could craft for cheap in the main cities. The fact that these GW2 cultural armors only cost gold removes the rare-material-farming restriction to showing off how much money you have in game (or possibly how much real world cash you spent in the gem store to convert to gold). Just because you can’t afford it doesn’t make it absurd. There’s a reason we all don’t drive Lamborghini’s and Ferrari’s in real life when we can drive a dirt cheap Honda. Just wait until they release some super-hard dungeon modes in the future with extremely rare crafting materials resembling pink snot globs that will end up costing about 10x what you spent on your tier 3 cultural armor.

I fail to see how players losing money by posting items at a loss compared to vendor prices based on the sales tax/fees stops you from making money by being more educated about the way the economy works and finding a way to take advantage of it. The only reason to complain about so many trash items being listed on the TP for such a low price is because you can’t sell your own trash items for a higher price. Trash = trash, no matter the price and there’s plenty of room in the endless digital inventory space for the TP to hold it all. I’m also unsure why it matters that we can access the TP from anywhere since one could simply take a free PvP portal jump to get back to town instantly anyway. There are no travel/logistics in this game to factor into TP item costs, so it boils down to a much simpler supply/demand formula. I think the time-driven sales fees (1 day, 3 day, etc) can help to force players to make more thoughtful pricing decisions, but I think that would only reduce the amount of items in the TP that nobody is going to buy anyway. For the items that are actually being bought & sold on a regular basis, it would only serve to make more money for the seller if he doesn’t have to pay as much of a fee for something that will sell in less than an hour.

Another x-factor to properly understanding the market which can tend to be overlooked in GW2 is the alternative currency purchasing power and the opportunity cost of acquiring gear. Most complaints I see from the average player revolve around the inflated material costs and the inability to profit from crafting. Keep in mind, though, that if you play all parts of the game you are acquiring comparable gear for your character through means other than the crafting & loot items that populate the TP. You can get new gear from dungeon tokens, karma points and WvW badges – all of which can be the same or similar to what you’re making with crafting. Naturally, the “supply” of gear-realated items is increased even beyond what you see in the TP.

Because of this fact, most of the traders profiting from the TP are identifying the more profitable items that cannot be purchased with alternative currency, like crafting materials and non-gear-related crafted items like dyes, food, runes & sigils. Rather than be annoyed that you are not making money from crafting, identify potential markets for the items you are gathering/crafting that ARE making money and exploit that instead. You as a player just need to decide whether increasing your wallet or your crafting skills are worth more to you in terms of how you spend your time in-game. Especially given that the size of the market just keeps increasing (congrats Anet on 2 mil game sales), it will be even more difficult to try to make a profit without a little research, math & knowledge of trading mechanics & trends.