Guild Wars 2

*reads thread title

Now that Wintersday and the New year have been made primarily human festivals set in Divinity’s Reach, and now that we have SAB as an Asuran right of passage event, would it be possible to make events for the other races? Could Meatoberfest be expanded with competitive games and such in the Black Citadel? How about some sort of festival the multitude of animal spirits in Hoelbrak. A spring festival in the Grove might work, perhaps as an aspect of The Dream.

Even half-kittened festivals for Quaggans and Skritt (they are trying so hard to be taken seriously) would flesh out Tyria very nicely. Skritt toss anyone? I like this game world. I want to see it grow.

Since I’ve seen threads lately on people saying it’s impossible for newer players to get into raids, I’d thought I’d share my story and provide a checklist for what newer players or players new to raids should do to maximize their chances of getting a raid kill.

I bought the game when it first came out, then set it aside basically until about a month and a half ago because I raided in Star Wars the Old Republic. Once I quit that game, I wnt fullspeed into GW2, and got my elementalist from 40 to 80, started learning dungeons, got him full exotics and weapons with the right runes and sigils, got my ascended trinkets and built my ascended staff.

I wanted to get into raids. The guild that I rep has wonderful knowledgeable people, some of whom have killed the bosses in the various wings, but doesn’t have a static raid group and isn’t raid focused, and I wanted to try the raids. So I kept LFG open for a while, and I found one that didn’t specifically list kill experience required. I had read guides and videos ahead of time and checked leading raid guilds’ websites to learn the loadouts elementalists use on Vale Guardian. I watched Fennec’s video on the dagger/warhorn rotation to learn it the best I could get. I did all this before stepping into an LFG raid.

Before I joined that raid’s squad, I whispered the person advertising the raid and let him know that I knew the strat, was properly geared, but had never actually been in there before. I asked for the opportunity, but said it would be no hard feelings if they didn’t want to take me. They took me, I joined their teamspeak, I said thank you, I learned, I died too much, but I learned a lot and seeing it that first time helped a great deal. I repeated this process a few times that day and the next. I watched some more VG videos from an elementalist perspective. On all my attempts I was stocked with the best in slot food for my class.

On day 3, I felt confident enough to post in the LFG “LFR VG exp tempest.” I felt that after 30 or so pulls, I could post that i was experienced, because I knew the fight, knew what was required for my role, even though I hadn’t actually killed it. There was a separate squad that was looking for a tempest for VG but wanted 10 LI, and I purposefully did not join that squad because I didn’t have what they required and I didn’t want to try to be someone I wasn’t. It turned out that that squad saw my entry in LFG and invited me. I joined, but said immediately, “Just so you know, I didn’t join you in the first place because I don’t have the kill and want to be honest here. I’m properly geared with proper food, know the fights, know my role, but I don’t have the kill. No hard feelings if you want to kick me.” Then the group was looking for a voice chat. And a conversation ensued. They asked me if I was running dagger/warhorn meta build. I said yes. They asked me if I had at least exotic gear and ascended trinkets. Yes on both counts. So I offered to host the group in my guild’s teamspeak if they would take me, but said no hard feelings either way. So the commander said ok fine, your job is damage and don’t die, so let’s give it a go.

The group was obviously experienced. We wiped a few times at first, and fortunately the mistakes were unrelated to my role, and the leader noted the dps was fine, so no one dwelled on the fact I hadn’t killed it yet. Between pulls while people were discussing, I asked if anyone noticed anything I could do differently, and asked a few questions about parts of the phases. After a player or two switched classes, and about 6 pulls total on that run, I got my first VG kill. I was so excited that I forgot to friend everyone before they quit the squad and left teamspeak Was I helped by an experienced group? Absolutely. Did I make mistakes? Sure. Did I get lucky? Somewhat, but I did things to make luck possible, and that leads me to the checklist for people who want an experience like mine.

TL;DR

1. Prepare in advance as much as you can by helping yourself as much as you can. There a lot of resources out there. Learn what gear, weapons, runes, sigils, builds and food are best in slot for your class and role for the specific boss you want to kill and get them. No excuses. Have at least exotic gear and weapons and ascended trinkets. No excuses. Have the right food and enough of it to last a couple of hours. No excuses. Watch the videos and know the strategies ahead of time. No excuses. I used qT and LoD’s websites and DeKeyz’s videos to learn the builds and other videos to watch the fights.

2. Attitude. There are always jerks everywhere, but as a whole this community is awesome compared to other MMOs. Clarify with your group what they want you to do and do it. If the raid leader tells you to do something, do it no questions asked. It’s his/her raid and you’re a guest. If you want to ask about why, save it for after the raid. This leads to a related point which deserves its own number.

3. Raids are about the team, not about you. You don’t get to play how you want, you must play in a manner that’s best for the group to get that specific kill. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run a certain build, equip certain weapons or to slot specific skills. It can obviously be very helpful to understand why a certain loadout is the best, but the time to get into those issues is not during the raid. Talk to people after the raid or PM them later. Or better yet, look in the Players Helping Players subforum, look for the sticky, ask to join the guild called “Noob” as a student. Then reach out to the class specific mentors (who at least for elementalist are awesome), ask them about tips for your class before you even get in a raid, and ask them why a certain build is used. The raids have been out for a long time and people have spend countless hours testing everything out. That time and effort must be respected if you’re new to raids. Just run the meta builds until you’re experienced enough to know when to tweak them. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run them. No one should be required to discuss this with you or argue with you about it during a raid.

4. Have voice chat programs and use them and get a headset and a mic. You at least need to be able to listen. I get that people are shy and don’t want to talk, but it would be best if you could actually talk because typing during a raid is a pain and takes too long. In my case, having a teamspeak that others could use was likely a factor in my group taking me in the first place.

5. Don’t misrepresent what you have done and what you haven’t.

Hope all this helps. Yes, you will have to work, spend a lot of time in LFG if you can’t find a dedicated raid training guild, and make a dedicated effort. It all depends on how bad you want it. But with a right approach and the right attitude, it’s all within reach. If you have the right approach and the right attitude, I think you’ll find the raiding community as a whole to be accepting of you. It just happened for me, it can happen for you.

Look, I’m on EU, I opened the LFG tab, and this is what I see.
Why don’t you give the circled one a try

Thanks for the help mate.

Kitiara.2706:

Everything requires 10 brown dye!

Plenty of brown dyed undergarnments in raids these days, should be enough to go around.

I try to not qq or anything, like pitching middleground ideas, and can sympathize with gamedevs because I’m aware of how the industry and fans can be towards the creators. That being said, I was a bit irked today about something. inc rant

Little Electric Wyvern is potentially the most obtusely hidden pet for rangers, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. I was surprised glancing through the topic names, none seem to reference it. When I first heard about their location being on the last map, I figured it was just being treated as an end-game-expansion treat. As I finally finished Dragon’s Stand while preparing to do the end of the story, my mate as Druid went to get a Wyvern. Now I’m rather peeved because I know those who designed this stuff are better than the padded gates and artificial time limits involved.

¹ Actually reaching the region in Dragon’s Stand involves having a map set up enough to complete the meta-event. If you don’t have a good map, you’re stuck spending time surfing lfg and getting lucky with getting into a good map. Key word being luck, because the player has little control over this. What doesn’t help all Dragon Stand maps are in synched timers, so if it takes too long for them to get a good map and it’s too tedious, might as well just wait for the next cycle… in two hours.

² Once you get in a good map, you now have to run with a zerg down the lane and see the event through to the end. From my experience, it took about an hour to reach the final area. I believe that’s considered average. So now in addition to getting a good map, you’ll most likely have to be on that map for another hour and hope that the groups suddenly don’t suck somehow, your client crashes, or disconnects. Even if you have a party friend to bring you back, you’d now have to fight everyone else on that instance and it’s lfg slot competition all over again.

³ So you made it to the end, beat up the boss, and everyone’s high fiving and stuff. Now you have to go and actually get Electric the Wyvern. But your map did good. The boss was beaten an hour before the map is closed. But despite your map doing fine, you’re still limited with 15 minutes to get your new friend. Map completion with 15 minutes for the average player is another topic. Any rangers who didn’t look up where the exact spot for wyverns are will ultimately end up asking mapchat. The environment isn’t exactly the most straightforward with everything in sight, so you’d be flying around a lot to try and find a path to where people might tell you where the wyverns are.

⁴ Which leads to the next issue. The reoccurring Masteries gating. Due to the experience curve for higher levels in Masteries, Advanced Gliding takes a lot of labor. Even the chain events begin to feel like they’re giving mere slivers as time goes on, and nothing can even really be done about it. It is possible to bypass this by channeling your inner Mario and pretending some tricky flight and jump tricks to reach the island, but it isn’t obvious, and most likely not intended. The player still has 15 minutes every time they’re there to even have a chance.

tl;dr
Your ability to get an Electric Wyvern is gated by luck of a good map instance, staying in that map for about an hour (or constantly trying to enter a party member’s instance), and require you to know exactly how to get there due to an arbitrary 15 minute crunch time no matter how well the map performs. It also demands L4 gliding mastery which, due to the slow nature of higher mastery levels, are gated by grind. Better off to do glide and jump shenanigans to get to the island.

While I’m not familiar with the Guild Wars 2 Pokedex of locations, I feel like it’s safe to say no pet is as poorly placed as the Electric Wyvern (I don’t know if Tiger has a similar problem. Tigers aren’t as adorable as wyverns so I haven’t researched). Fire Wyvern was sensibly placed, and I personally don’t see why Electrics weren’t on another island in Verdant Brink like that. Or in literally any other area that doesn’t involve gates, timecrunches, waiting, and luck.

So to sum it all up, was this really necessary for a single pet to be so difficult to get? (reminder to designers and players alike: difficulty != challenge)

inb4 git gud

First join map do the preevent try your best to collect all the materials but dont ever submit it in. After 10 minutes when the boss is half hp, get out of combat, and port out of the map. Port back in and complete pre event and get crystalized done.

The longest worth while most difficult legendary precursor to get is obtainable. Battle against all odds my friends from ArenaNets codes, to gw2 economy, and even against gw2 players.

I’ve read each post since my last, but well, i will trying to do an overall reply.

For those who say “Get a thicker skin”, “Deal with it”,“Rudeness is part of the game”,“They deserve it for doing ranked” or defend in any way toxic behaviour against certain players, you should know the following:

According to Guild Wars 2 Rules of Conducts (click here to take a look) and refering to the text on point 1:

The rules of conduct

1. While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated

The point is that you are defending and excusing something that goes against the RoC.

Also let me say that this is not really the harsh language , but about the will to harass and hurt from others, and that may extend not only to insults and harassing, but also to AFK and losing on purpose.

So… if their behaviour is against the RoC.. why should I turn off my chat? No, the problem is on their side, and their should hold their tongues if they know what’s convenient for them because each time you insult a player, you are a step closer to the ban hammer.

tsawr.7905:

My enjoyment of the game has totally been ruined by toxic players that send insults after insults at me over the interwebs over a vidya game. Anet should totally ban all these immature toxic players, so that I can continue playing GW2 in a family friendly setting, so that all my matches are full of nice carebears.

Solstice.1097:

Too much whining. “Rudeness” cannot be policed or enforced without completely removing chat from the game, is that what you want? They don’t like the way you play, and you don’t like they way they talk. Too bad. If you want to teach people manners go volunteer to work with orphans or something.

I hear Hello Kitty Island Adventures is on sale.

Don’t get it wrong: Being respectful to others has nothing to do with Hello Kitty, ponys or fluffy bears.

Jelzouki.4128:

http://i.imgur.com/5mSr2oj.jpg

This guy proceeded to tell me that he was going to afk whenever he was on my team. I reported him but have no idea if something was done.

That’s an extreme case of harrasing. If I had been harassed that way, I would not only reported in game and blocked the guy, but also raised a ticket just to make sure it is reviewed. That sort of players are extremely toxic regardless the game you play.

I’d suggest to edit that pic to censor the names since the forums are not a place to point at specific players

Prince Vingador.8067:

Ok, i want to give my opinion with out sounding to rude.
First this is an online game , and bad language is part of it, ofc when i say bad language i mean words like noob nab kitten idiot newb ….
I dont tolerate words like n………r or c……..t or any type of racism.
When u playing and u see that all team is double capping or dying to svanir or trying to stomp a thief insted of rezzing you , you know …things like that, i flame and i rage, i do the same in real life when i go see some football at the stadium.
my point is ( and this is the part that i will try not to sound too rude) if u cant handle " bad language" or being told what to do something , in a fast and more efficient way, pliz dont join a team and dont play online games, simple as that.

And I rage too sometimes at home, but I hold myself because i know it’s rude, unnecessarily and useless . Banging your keyboards to show off how bad they are, insult them in anyway and finally send them back to PvE or whatever it’s just destructive ranting that won’t simply change anything but worsening things.

As I previously said, it’s not worth the effort since you will be:
- Flammed back
- Be blocked
- Report you (even if it doesnt do nothing apparently, being repeatedly reported by different users may eventually draw the attention of a GM)

I’ve lost my temper and talked more than a little kitten from time to time.

Still, sport implies sportsmanship. If the goal is really Esports, the players will need to act like competitors/professionals as opposed to a street gang mentality.

I’ve been making a point of bowing before matches, hoping to influence the match toward a formal dueling style.

The game would be better if there were at least informal rules of etiquette.

Hi there! Today I drop here to talk about a concern I am recently having about the insane amount of Toxic Players on PvP ranked match.

By Toxic Player I mean people that behave in way that it hurts the game and even other player’s feelings. Some examples would be:

• Players who AFK because they just give up and think it’s not worth playing. (yeah, they still do that knowing that the Dishonor it’s actually turned off or doesn’t work properly). Some of them even do give advice to the contrary team!
• Players that harass, makes fun of and insults other players because they apparently come from PvE/they don’t play well enough/don’t follow their orders.
• Players who just insult and blame their teamates after/during a lost game. Very common on sore loser who think they were awesome but their teamates failed.
• Rage leavers (theses are actually punished on their leaderboard score anyway)

Personally, I both block and report those players (and even sometimes I send them a last message warning them about their rudeness).
I know that sometimes people just have bad days and cant hold their tongues. No one enjoys the taste of defeat, and I also sometimes rage too at home when I lose a match after another, but that’s not reason to behave that way or being rude. If you have nothing good to say, simply you shouldn’t say anything at all…

I am seeing that behaviour over and over is way disturbing, and I feel somehow fighting for a lost cause , and it will be always be like this until there is some action from above.
It’s not pleasant at all reading chat messages from a experienced player telling other ones to uninstall the game or to go back to PvE.

Above that, and also more disturbing to my understanding, I also noticed that some of theses toxic players are on the first page of the PvP Leaderboards (Sorry, not going to give names or hints about what region I am talking about), and well, it’s pretty troublesome that theses player are not only not being punished in any way for that kind of behaviour, but they are also going to be rewarded with juicy stuff!!

What do you think about this?

Just an update – called Optimum online support and after about 45 minutes or so they agreed that something seems up with their DNS. They are looking into it.

No love for rangers, as usual. Forever a bearbow. :’(

There was a post similar to this one near the launch of Silverwastes in which a red tag stated that dead players stop contributing to scaling after a certain period of time. However no specifics on how long it takes for the dead to “de-tag” were given, and the statement was not made/delivered with 100% certainty.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Or you could just rez them like you are supposed to…

And no. If you’re downed? Yeah, I’ll move heaven and earth try and get you up before you’re “dead-dead.” But if you’re actually full on, grey health bar, somber music in the background dead? “Ain’t nobody done kittened up but you” and I am not gunna sit there and waste valuable dps time (on a timed event no less) and/or watch swaths of players get themselves murdered because they’re trying to rez you instead of dodging red circles and telegraphed attacks.
Especially since the additions of the Hidden Depths waypoint and the Skritt Tunnels means that running back no longer condemns one to automatically missing the boss fight like it used to.

And before anyone starts in with “but, but, but the waypoint and the tunnels close!” You know what a real team player does? 10-25% before the breach a team player opens their map, checks wether Hidden Depths and/or the Skritt Tunnels are open, and if they’re not they go do the events to open them specifically so that people who get themselves killed during the Breach fights can get back quickly and easily.

That’s team play. Not lying there on the cold ground yelling “Rez me! Rez me!” luring people into insect swarms or poison volleys or terragriff roars like some Siren luring sailors to their doom in The Odyssey.

The whole thing was a cover up. He no longer desired warfare and had to escape so he could settle down with his human lover. Not sure who she is tho…

Patch has been deployed 2 days ago and things are not working out according to plan. This is indeed very scandalous, because in software engineering, everything works perfectly from the very first second something new gets released. I mean what are they thinking? It’s their job to work around the clock to appease spoiled teenagers sitting in their basement playing games all day.

Sorry for the antagonistic comment, but in our times it seems, people really need to relearn empathy and patience.

When signing up for a Multiplayer environment the enjoyment of all people in the environment depends on the people around them. Thats how multiplayer works.

If one person decides to que for a player vs player match at that moment its no longer about one person. There are NINE other people whos enjoyment of the game depends on that tenth.

If you cant handle that. Then you shouldn’t play multiplayer games. Becuase otherwise, Everytime someone chooses to let there boredom take over while there in a que and they wonder off somewhere or whenever someone ques and “just doesn’t feel like it” when the que pops, they are damaging the quality of gameplay for the other nine.

Dont PvP if you can’t handle what that involves. Dont que if your not ready to play.

Hi.

In before more than half of the rewards go to:
-People with less than 100 games played.
-People with less than 50% winrate.
-People with 0 wins in the past 1 month to 1 year.
-The “I’ll wait til I decay off the leaderboard and then play 1 match to go higher in ranking” person.

My record in NA Solo Queue is currently 1560-854 (64.62% winrate). I realize the great possibility that I will not attain any reward.

From your news, it says:

For your efforts, we’ll be awarding a piece of Glorious Hero’s armor to the top 20 players on both the solo and team arena leaderboards. The top 100 players on each leaderboard will also receive a mini llama. The cutoff time for the current leaderboards is 2 December. At that point, the new build goes live and we transition to the new system.

you know anet, people’s rank in soloq fluctuate a lot, becuz it is yoloq has too much luck factor (i would say 50% luck 50% skill)

For me, yeah, i hit the rank inside of top5 more than 3 times during past 5 months, but usually rotate rank within top100. because sometimes i play carelessly Becuz i love to drink and play and do chatting rather than playing. There is no point you reward only current top20 people. Personally, I was even be able to keep myself always within rank 20 by playing just one round per 2~3 days for more than a month before. i just found no point of doing it, so just stopped doing it, and played just alot as much as I wanted to play rather than one per 2~3 days. I think many top-tier soloq PvPer would do it (playing just lot as much as they wanted since realizing keeping soloq rank is meaningless) unless he is just very crazy at keeping high rank only. And that’s why people rotate certain range bracket a lot.

For soloq you have to reward all top100 people a piece of glorious armor, and reward all top200 people mini-malla. or just reward any1 who hit top20 once, you can get data from following website: gw2score.com/PvP

You will see a bunch of people, who haven’t played for a while since hitting high rank just once, playing only one match to get back to top position at the date you reward those things, which is definitely terrible.

I think the biggest problem is how easily the soloq lb can be abused. People that haven’t played in while can wait until the last second, play one game and shoot to the top.

A better choice in my opinion, would be extending the range to the top 50, and then changing the reward to the Hero’s armor you get in the reward track, and you can also throw a llama in if you want.

I don’t even bother replying to anyone who sends rude messages to me in PvP. If it gets bad enough, I block them. They are literally not worth my time.