Guild Wars 2

The reason players don’t know is because testing doesn’t produce reliable results.

If, as in the above example, you have a bleed for 6.5s, sometimes you’ll see 6 bleed ticks, sometimes 7….and sometimes 5. No, I have no idea how that happens either. No amount of mental gymnastics can explain when you get one more or one less tally mark in testing than any logical explanation can account for.

Protection, and other stacks-in-duration boons/conditions are easy. They last as long as you’d expect them to based on the math. So, if you have 16.6s of protection based on boon and boon duration%, you’ll see the boon icon for 16.6s.

Khyber.2693:

Did the achievement today, walked past a bunch of stormbluff isle people who let me pass and I got it. A lot of these people are decent human beings. Try it before crying please.

I have the achievement too. Only, I didn’t have the luxury of the bad guys letting me pass. I actually had to be sneaky and work for it.

Also, I had to walk ten miles to get to the jump puzzle. Through twenty feet deep snow. Uphill. Both ways.

Anyway, I suspect if those Stormbluff Isle peeps decided to make you their sugary marshmallow female dog, you might be thinking different about the appropriateness of sticking an achievement that has nothing to do with PvP in a PvP zone.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Xavori.3768:

2. Move the cache to the start of the jump puzzle. It’s not like Obsidian is actually that challenging. The only tricksy part is the dark room, and you kinda get the same experience in Sharky’s in LA. So it’s not like you’re really letting people that much off the hook.

Seriously? Not challenging? That is one of the harder and longer jumping puzzles in the game. Sure with practice everything gets easier, but the first time I had to do that JP, it took us forever.

But I do agree that putting the cache at the end of such a long JP makes the players extremely reliant on a kind opposing team. Fortunately that was the case with the German players on Aurora Glade last night. Everyone just left each other alone, so everyone could get the cache.

I’ve done all the jump puzzles. Trust me, Obsidian is in the easy category. and none of the jumps are all that tricky. Even the shortcut mentioned in another post isn’t all that tricky although it does require swiftness (the 25% signet buff just isn’t quite enough).

Sure, it’s a bit long, but compared with collecting energy orbs in Orr, Obsidian is much shorter.

As a non-recovering altaholic, I’m completely cool playing whatever build the team needs.

As a former West Point cadet, I guarantee you won’t be able to say anything that’d actually upset me.

I’m looking for a serious team, and it sounds like you’d be a good guy to run with. If you want me, send me a line.

Cuz I’m bored just before bedtime…

Let’s say you are an awesomesauce yak killing machine. You make it your entire focus to kill those furry burgers-in-waiting. Even still, you’re stuck with only a handful available for roadkill at a time which means that even a bovine mass murderer such as yourself is prolly only going to get 6 per hour (some hours you’ll get lucky and get a bunch of camps with two yaks just waiting for you, some hours, you’re awesome server will own so much of the map there just aren’t any yaks anywhere). 6/hr is being hypergenerous.

So, 6/hr.

Let’s also say you are a no-life loser living in your mom’s basement able to play GW2 for 12 hours a day every day. The rest of your time is divided between sleeping, eating pizza, and posting on internet forums about how the latest popular cutie doesn’t meet your exacting standards for a relationship because his/her knees are too sharp, chest is too flat/not flat enough, hair is too blonde, whatever.

So, 6 yaks/hr * 12 hours a day = 72 yaks per day.

You need 1,000,000 yakburgers.

1,000,000 / 72 = 13,888.8 days

13,888 / 365 = 38 years

I’m not gonna be holding my breath waiting.

marnick.4305:

Astralporing.1957:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

PvP in a PvP area is not griefing.

PvPing PvE players wanting to do a PvE content is.
And if the game intends you to grief, then it’s a problem with the game (unless it is a game purely for griefers, of course, but GW2 is not one of those).

PVP content in a PVP area is not PVE content in a PVE area.

Wanting to play PVP content as PVE content does not make it PVE content. Can’t get slayer or yakslapper achievements through PVE either …

You can’t get yakslapper period

At least not in a normal human lifetime…

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

PvP in a PvP area is not griefing.
it is called playing the game as it is intended.

achievements are not entitlements.

Okay, I need to clarify griefing as it pertains to my post.

I don’t mean PvP in a PvP area. That’s perfectly acceptable. If this was about fighting for control of the map, your comment would be relevant.

That’s not what’s going on. There are people camped in the jump puzzle who care not a whit for PvP. All they care about is getting in the way of people completing the achievement.

They are deriving their fun not by the fighting or or challenge or whatever (cuz 20 vs 1 is just not fun via competition). They are deriving their fun entirely based on the knowledge that they are juvenile felining over other players. That’s griefing. And that is what is happening.

I run this puzzle almost daily and usually I’ll see maybe a half dozen other players total in the thing. Right now in my Obsidian, you’ll see about 40 from one server and 6-7 total from the other two. I’m fairly confident it has absolutely everything to do with that achievement, and nothing at all to do with WvW.

(side note: I have the achievement. I am a very sneaky thief)

I’m going to preempt all the L2P (cuz I have more game experience than all but a select few other players), go away carebear (I have several thousand badges I have no idea what I’m going to do with), etc. I do know how to play. I love WvW and sPvP.

That said, as soon as I saw the dungeon on the achievement list, I knew there was going to be a problem…specifically because I do love WvW and I know that dungeon very well. However, I held my tongue because I wanted to make sure I was right before giving feedback (I’m weird like that).

Obsidian is built for small groups to be able to hold strategic locations against much larger enemy forces. The map is littered with choke points and knockoffs. There is no L2PNUB that’s going to overcome that. A small group of good players getting into the dungeon can make it impossible for anyone not on their server to get past.

Within every group of gamers online, there is a tiny, tiny percentage of griefers. There are also players who are normally decent human beings, but when beaten over the head with an easy opportunity to grief, will take it. ANet didn’t just beat them over the head with the chance, they lit it up in neon and promised an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet with your choice of free drinks and a nice after dinner mint to cleanse the palette afterwards.

So that’s what’s happening. In some cases, it’s not even that small of group. Given that WvW almost always comes down to population (be honest), and the shiny new code that pits slightly lower pop worlds against higher ones, and it’s not just difficult, it can become flat out impossible to get the achievement.

Now, you’re prolly thinking, “You don’t need them all to get the <insert name of shiny here>,” right? Except what if that shiny is completing every single achievement? Just because you might not think that has value doesn’t mean the other million or so players concur with your assessment. I know I don’t. I like knowing I have more worthless achievement points than all but a tiny percentage of the entire playerbase. I like having my achievement page tabs completely filled out.

Luckily for me, I have a tank thief who can sneak to the fountains and from their sneak through the dungeon. Oh, ya, also helps that I know where the fountains are. Also, while my world is currently getting splattered in this week’s matchup, I have hope that we’ll get something a little more even Friday. I’m patient.

But there are players who don’t have my knowledge of the map, a handy thief, nor any chance that their server won’t be running the jump puzzle with the outmanned buff. They’re juvenile felined.

Now, I’m not big of complaints without suggestions for improvement, so here goes a few:

1. Never, ever put a limited time achievement in a WvW area again. Seriously. This problem should never have come up if any of the devs had thought through even a few of the “what if” scenarios.

2. Move the cache to the start of the jump puzzle. It’s not like Obsidian is actually that challenging. The only tricksy part is the dark room, and you kinda get the same experience in Sharky’s in LA. So it’s not like you’re really letting people that much off the hook.

3. This is from another thread, but put an NPC that gives an invuln buff. Players who take the buff cannot remove it except by leaving the puzzle entirely, and players with the buff cannot open the final chest.

4. Turn off the PvP in the map for the duration of the event. Hey, y’all screwed up sending PvE players here, might as well let them play the way they get to play the rest of the game.

5. NEVER EVER PUT A LIMITED TIME ACHIEVEMENT ON A WVW MAP AGAIN. I don’t think I can stress that enough.

I built a shadow tank rogue with healing specifically for new dungeons. He’s excellent at getting team members back on their feet while not getting beat up himself.

Oh, one other thing…

Pay attention to conditions on your toon. The golems have confusion, and it’s really embarrassing if you kill yourself.

Tactics:

DO NOT TRY TO DODGE

Dodging is about moving quicker to stay away from the beams. It’s next to impossible to time dodging through them.

First phase is obviously easy. Just beat the juvenile feline out of stuff.

Second phase starts with a single low beam. Circle near the outside of the area. When the beam gets withing 45 degrees (think of the whole thing like a circle) jump up on top of one of the oh-so-obviously-important stacks of stuff and let it pass harmless under your feet. While doing this, stay well away from the golems any time you need to get up on stacks. This is where you’ll use movement or dodging to get some space. Repeat until golems are dead.

Third phase is a high beam that bisects the circle as it rotates. Again, move around near the outide. You really need to keep moving and again, using dodge and movement abilities to stay away from both the beam and golems so they can’t pull you into a beam. Also, staying to the outside is a great benefit to your teammates if they have to rez you and rezzing someone near the middle is nearly impossible as the beams cover a good bit of that area at all times.

Last phase is a combination of the previous. You’ll still have the high beams rotating around forcing you to rotate with them. You’ll also have to pay attention to the low beam and jump up on the piles o stuff when it comes around. Since the high beams and low beam are at different speeds, it’s just not possible to do this with circling only. However, once you get into the flow of moving, jumping up on the piles, and such, it’s a pretty smooth fight.

This fight is all about getting into that flow in each phase. the golems aren’t particularly dangerous as they don’t hit that hard and are slow. So pay more attention to the laser walls and working on keeping yourself safe from them, and take shots at the golems as you can.

1. Overall, I rate this dungeon an ‘B+’

2. The mechanics of the first boss were awesome to figure out. Was running in a pug and nobody had a clue what we were doing, so it took a bit of time to get everyone one the same page about the phases of the fight. Pity you only ever get that one time where you’re figuring stuff out.

3. The fact that the boss fight is all about the mechanics and getting into the the flow is fantastic. MOAR STUFFS LIKE THIS KTHX!

4. One minor critique of that fight is that through no fault of your own, the lightning walls can come into being directly on top of you. If the golems are close by when this happens and go after you, you’re going to die, and there is nothing you could have done about it.

5. Moving through the rest of the dungeon had just the right amount of mobs to fight and little things going on to keep it from getting boring.

6. The final boss fight is excellent mechanics wise. Again, it’s a blast figuring these things out. I’m as big a fan of Dulfy as anyone, but I really recommend avoiding her site until you’ve gone through yourself at least once.

7. My critique of the last fight is simply that it’s too long. It’s hard to get a shadowstepping enemy to stay where you want them to, and you have to burn off 10 shields. That takes a while. Then, when she unleashes the cannon, those barrages also last too long. I swear I felt like the last one was never going to end, and it’s not like it’s scary. If you survive the first thirty seconds, you’ll almost certainly survive the whole thing.

8. Inspector Kiel should be made invulnerable. She’s not really any help during the fights, and her ‘dying’ doesn’t do anything, so just have her wander along, taking in the sights, while the players do all the work (this is exactly what NPC’s should do anyway…they’re not playing the game, we are)

9. I want dodging to be part of the dailies during this entire event. First time I ran into those lightning spamming pirates I swear I had 10 evades in the first few seconds of the fight.

10. MOAR DUNGEONS LIKE THIS! Better yet, let’s keep this one while you make more. Yes, the last fight was bordering into the tedious, but most of the dungeon was all about figuring out the fights and getting into the flow of things rather than just big bags o’ hit points with one-hit killing power. So much better this way.

Arg,

It’s going to be interesting to see how some of the changes coming in the patch alter PvP build ideas. I already had a nasty thought about how to use some of the thief changes in the leaked notes (provided they survived testing to make it to live) for a build that I think will be a devastating point assault/defense.

And no, it does not include torment which I think will likely be just as ignored by thieves as all the other condition builds are in spvp.

Build a grenade engineer. Stealth problem solved.

Like the topic says, I’m looking to join an ESL team.

I can commit to lots of hours of practice, and as a non-recovering altaholic, I’m comfortable playing lots of different builds. This means I’m more than happy to fill any role a team thinks it needs.

So, if you have a team, or know someone who does and is looking for another member, shoot me a PM.

Yuujin.1067:

I don’t think anyone will really benefit from Torment aside from Necromancers. I could be completely wrong, but the weapon utilizing torment on a Mesmer is a sword in the offhand? If that is the case, I’m unfamiliar with condition builds that utilize the offhand sword.

Illusionary Counter is scepter 2, and that’s the weapon skill that’s getting torment added on mezzies. Since scepter is already a good choice for condition build mezzies (and apparently getting better) it’s not out of the world unexpected that a condition mezzie will be able to add this in without too much effort.

For now, welcome to the age of Necromancers. Rabid gear with Undead Runes for everyone! With Signet of the Locust they were already a pain to chase down after they conditioned you up, and getting past all that toughness and health, plus the extra health bar, was just a chore. Now you can’t even get frustrated and just try to run away from them.

This is exactly the kind of post I was rolling my eyes at originally except vis a vis thieves.

No. It will not be the age of necromancers. Torment is only available to them via their new 5th death shroud skill.

Oh, and you lack bravery if you’re going rabid and undead. Much more exciting to live life as a necro running rampager with nightmare rune. Add in fear does damage and fear duration traits for lulz. Also helps to have played a burst thief and/or dagger elly so you get used to use movement and dodging for survival.

My take on his take..

p.s. (pre-script which is a p.s. that comes before the message as opposed to a p.s. postscript that would come after the message) My takes may or may not be entirely serious. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which are which.

5. The smalltime hero.

Noway would that ever happen here, not in the hardest content. I mean, just look at all the friendly, open, casual groups that want to take people through Citadel of Flame path 1 which is arguably amongst the hardest content in the game. People are so willing to take new players, and players who maybe don’t have optimum gear that it just brings a tear to my eye how rainbows and unicorns GW2 is.

4. The anti-carebear

Ironic isn’t it that the even the author recognizes just how wimpy and worthless non PvP players are by referencing them with the term carebear. A term I coined, btw, back in the days of UO, which I’ll be sure to mention again when I get to #1.

3. The story nut.

GW2’s devs nipped this problem in the bud with their writing. Seriously, you could have had a third grade elementary class come up with more original characters and plots than anything in GW2. So no worries that someone might get offended about a major character dying. In fact, I’d go so far as to say more people are offended that Trehearne and Logan haven’t been killed yet.

2. Raiding is serious business

Again, ANet to the rescue. Just like the lack of writing, we have a serious lack of raiding. Unlike the lack of writing, I actually enjoy the lack of raiding. I’m morally opposed to taking things in a game seriously. In fact, not taking things in a game seriously is very serious business.

1. The old guard:

I started my “MMO” career in a text based MUD called ShadowMUD as a rogue named Dizzy who french kissed just about everyone he met in game. I moved on to UO as a rogue named Xavori who robbed and/or killed just about everyone he met in game. I moved on to bunches of MMO’s since then.

UO was way more casual than GW2. I could completely rebuild the skills on a toon overnight, and given my successful career path in the game, I had enough equipment to outfit an army, so finding the right gear for a single toon was easy peasy. DAoC wasn’t a grind either. In fact, I don’t really remember any of the games I played being a grind other than Everquest (which I hated because it was so obviously just a graphical dikuMUD) and WoW. I’m guessing it’s one of those two that’s to blame for the completely misrepresented view of the ‘old school’ that the author apparently has.

p.s. (this is a p.s. for post script because this time it’s coming after the body of my message)

He totally missed a huge category for one of his ways in which people take MMO’s too seriously. Like the seriousness/non-seriousness of my reply, I’m leaving it as an exercise for the reader to guess what it is. I will give a hint, tho. It’s pretty much the first word in the title of the game this forum represents.

offence.4726:

@Xavori this basically is the /thread. I cant add anything to what you said because its perfectly right.
Although im curious about the new dot condition and how it will perform in PvE with our beloved thieves.

I think it’ll not help at all for thieves. I think condition bomb necros and maybe mezzies will get some mileage out of it. But condition build thieves are just so far behind in DPS versus other potential builds, and since torment looks to be really limited for thieves on top of the lower condition dps, I just don’t see it being a part of any builds.

There are a few other changes I liked. Larcenous strikes getting a initiative cost reduction is nice for my main who runs sword/dagger. Everything getting faster will help my burst thief (this is actually true for my 20 some odd other alts as well).

I’m also thinking Long Reach getting Steal to 1500 + Sleight of Hand going to 2s stun on steal + lowered recharge time on steal might be a bit much to all pile together. Yes, everyone has access more stun breakers, and most of them will have lower recharge than Steal even after the change, but I’m betting a lot of people will keep running builds without stun breakers and much forum rage will ensue as a result.

Also, interesting that nobody is complaining about that combination of changes. Might be because nobody complaining actually plays a thief and understands just how they actually work.

Meglobob,

Nice attempt at a troll. Pity that’s not how the game works tho.

Everyone else,

The point I was making with my original post is that all of the whining about thieves and tempest is pointless. Good thieves aren’t going to use it because it will hurt their ability to do what they already excel at: winning one v one fights.

So for everyone stressing about the announcement that thieves are getting torment, don’t. That ‘buff’ to thieves isn’t. It’s just a new toy for PvE thieves to use to maybe give them some variety. However, it’s as worthless as most other conditions in wvw and pvp, so those thieves will pretty much stay the way they are.

There has been much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair about the announcement that thieves will get access to the shiny new torment condition. End of the world, sky is falling, cats and dogs living together kind of stuff.

It’s not going to be a problem.

At all.

See, those thief players who wreck you one on one while you’re trying to farm ghosts in WvW…they’re not going to be using torment. They’re running burst builds with high mobility. They’re not going to lower their alpha strike damage just so they can have a weak bleed that discourages running away. After all, they don’t need nor want conditions. They want you dead now before your friends show up. And they most certainly don’t need to discourage you from running. The only class that has a chance at running from a thief is dagger elementalist.

And the thieves that do pick up torment….pretty sure necros, guardians, shout warriors, other thieves…ya know, the classes that can shed conditions like water…will kill them long before they get in the way of you getting to that next ghost, griffon, or mithril node.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You do realize that you’re not required to complete the new achievements, nor are you required to purchase anything from the Gem Store… right? They’re all optional.

You’re also not required to play the game. This would be bad for ANet so I suspect they kinda do want to create content people want to do so as to encourage those gem store purchases you dismiss so easily.

If you’d have thought about the logical conclusion to your suggestion, you’d likely have realized just how bad it is. ANet lives and dies by creating content players WANT to do, not creating content that “you’re not required to complete”.

Aww….the poor warriors. Not.

My warrior has permafury, swiftness, and a minimum of 14 stacks of might. She can get to 20+ stacks in the first few seconds of a fight.

In fact, in my stable of alts, I have three warriors. I run them in pvp/wvw/and pve. PvE, well, let’s be honest here, you can play the game blindfolded with both hand cuffed behind your back forcing you to hit keys with your toes and still roll through most of the content. WvW, warriors are fantastic and guard clearing and getting right in the thick of things. Sure, they’re limited when they try to clear walls (espec since the hit boxes for players are too low…ie, I can see 3/4 of my target’s body but get obstructed because his ankles are behind a low ledge), but just try and have a ranger or elementalist man the rams under fire and see how pretty of a corpse they make. And sPvP…welll…that’s just a mess for most classes atm. Burst warriors can rip people up when they get them targeted, and they have enough control abilities to keep them locked down, but the trick is getting to them in the first place.

What warriors might benefit from is not some new condition that will be added to the list of conditions that warrior players don’t bother with. Instead, it’s more lunges and movement skills to make it harder for ranged players to kit them. Or, they need more defense skills so that they can stand under fire even better. Either or both of those would be of far more benefit than torment.

On the other hand, those thieves all the warriors are worried about…

You won’t see a wvw thief trying to man siege or doing much better at clearing the walls that a warrior. In fact, with only 900 range on shortbow, warrior is slightly better. Sure, you can occasionally get some lulz by scroping someone off the walls down into the mosh pit, but that’s a rare thing and on a long cooldown anyway.

You also wont see thieves punishing whole groups of attackers the way elementalists and rangers can. They just don’t have the kind of oomph in their attacks that you need to make that work. Shortbow is too slow and fires AoE attacks that are even slower.

What thieves do well is win one on one fights. I suspect Torment isn’t really going to change that. It might give them a new toy to add variety to how they go about doing it, but it’s not like it’s suddenly going to make thieves into AoE terrors, nor is it likely to be the final piece any build needs to be a fantastic duelist since again, thieves already have that down. Maybe it’ll be the piece that makes a condition build thief at least closer in effectiveness to the other two top thief builds.

This thread is a joke, right?

One of the best known figures in Divinity’s Reach walks into a seedy neighborhood bar with the intention of nobody knowing he’s been there. As a patron of many a seedy neighborhood bar, I guarantee you with the hour everybody in that neighborhood knew he’d been there.

I do agree with Logan on one bit…what the hell was a noble woman doing in a dive bar?

Then we get to the crime scene, and lo and behold our cheeseball detective has managed to bring an unusual piece of equipment that happens to be exactly the right thing. Of course, since she explains this amazing bit of foresight on her part by calling it intuition, that’s supposed to make it make sense? No. It makes insulting to the intelligence of the reader.

I’m also a big fan of noir and hardboiled fiction, and this is neither. This is a superficial take on a single hardboiled trope that is missing all the cynicism and character depth that define those two genres. Just having a detective narrate a cutscene rendered in black and white doesn’t make it hardboiled. It makes it cheesy.

Now, if they’d gone with cheese, I’d have been, “Okay. Cool,” cuz cheesy riffs on hardboiled can be fun. But nothing in this part of Dragon Bash indicated anything that the fact that the writers are making a serious effort at making a hardboiled crime story and failing spectacularly in the attempt.

I think at this point expecting the writing to be more creative or logical than what you’d get from an elementary school creative writing class is a bit much. I mean, it’s been demonstrated from pretty much day one that the writing on GW2 is just not going to be original or make a lick of sense.

The game is fun.

The writing is fun to mock.

If you don’t read her mail on the last two suspects, and instead just hit Show Me, it circles Blasted Haven in the Snowden Drifts. This leads you into a fairly large spawn of bad guys.

On the other hand, if you read the mail, it tells you to go to Lost Child’s Sorrow which is almost due north of where the circle gets drawn on the map. There is even one of those pretty yellow stars there once you get into Snowden.

Was kinda funny.

Stuff to get us back on track

I’m not criticizing the event as a whole. I’m not bashing pinatas (except that in game I did). Setting up dragon shaped pinatas around town as part of a festival and letting people bash them and having candy come out fits exactly in line with the concept of a dragon bash. Having an effigy burning ceremony where some bigwigs makes a boring speech before we have a big bonfire makes sense. Heck, you can even have your ceremony in the middle of the desert, charge insane ticket prices, set up overpriced water vendors and what not…a…Burning Man..er..Dragon if you will.

What does not make sense is telling players to burn 50 effigies when only 30 of them are actually available and are located nowhere near the celebration and that burning the effigies consists of hitting a single key that in turn makes you dance, not actually do anything that would normally be associated with starting a fire.

As for my language choice, <insert non-apology apology here: ie. I’m sorry you were offended blah blah blah>. My message was clear. To me that is more important than worrying about hurting somebodies feel-bads.

So, tl;dr
1. My original post was only about effigies, not the event as a whole.
2. That specific bit of content is idiotic.
3. I don’t care if you don’t like my word choice.

Galen Grey.4709:

A lot of people will start to like the game the moment they stop threating it like a checklist imho.

Its true there is nothing exiting about walking up to an effigy and hit F but there is a journey to be had between effigies. As long as you dont teleport from one to the other and allow yourself to be distracted from an effigy to the next there is a lot of fun to be had and a good reason to enjoy multiple zones.

For me Effigies are kind like hearts just a marker to give you your exploration a general direction nothing else. Do that an Effigies become just a buff between adventures in different geo locations.

I’ve done those journeys over a hundred times at this point. How is doing it one..err two since we have to visit the same effigies twice…going to be any different?

But again, you’re not defending the new ‘content’. Because you can’t. Because it’s indefensible. It’s an utter waste of time for everyone involved, including the 5 minutes it took some dev to stick the effigies on the map and write up the script to update the character variable.

PolarisNova.3867:

I’m curious if OP would actually be brave enough to say directly to an ANet dev in person, that their content is “idiotic”. Is there not a less insulting way of expressing a dislike for content? Maybe it’s just me.

Sometimes I don’t see a direct rationality behind certain things, and there are some things I am not completely positive about, and if that is the case I either don’t do them, or just enjoy it for what it is, even if it makes little sense to me.

Ya. Actually I would have no problem telling someone to their face when something they are doing is idiotic, and I would hope that if I’m doing something stupid, they’d point it out to me as well. Things works better when honest and totally open communication occur.

As for applying tact…what word for mindless, meaningless, boring, repetitive content that also doesn’t make sense from the way humans would behave or even meet the most trivial level of common sense would you like me to have used? There is nothing inherently defensible about this bit of “content”.

Now, people have tried defending it by point out stuff they did, but none of what they did had anything to do with the content provided. In every case so far, what they’ve described is stuff they did IN SPITE OF HOW BAD THE CONTENT IS.

As for the “well, you don’t have to do it” crowd. I don’t have to play the game or pay ANet any more money either. That’d be a brilliant attitude for the devs to take. They’d have no more players left within a year if they kept making content nobody wanted to play and dismissed criticism with “well, you don’t have to do it” because eventually players agree and stop doing it…completely.

This might sound harsh, but that’s because I really do enjoy actually playing the game even though I have yet to find any part of ANet’s storytelling to be even remotely interesting. Almost every bit of writing in the game is filled with bad tropes presented with seemingly no effort.

This event also felt like something that someone put together in 5 minutes or so. Grab the effigy that the artists made for the ceremony and plunk it down randomly all over the newbie zones without any rhyme or reason. YAY CONTENT.

So ya, I’m going to be harsh. The effigy ‘content’ was idiotic. Not one single bit of it makes any freakin’ sense. And idiotic by any other name would still smell as stupid.

Tobbygnome.6793:

I kno ay, effigies are stupid, we should go around to all of the effigies and just burn them, to show that we don’t like them. Who’s with me \o/ !!

golf clap

What you did there. I see it.

Vahkris.6847:

Snate.2961:

I actually thought that doing research online was an integral part of playing an MMO. In the days of growing up on Everquest we were lucky to have online access to maps with locations and co-oridantes that we could print out. Lazy, lazy, lazy, players who never had to play in four feet of snow with a Dial Up Connection…

Same here. :P

Best we could hope way back when was EQAtlas and Allakhazam/Caster’s Realm/Lucy being accurate. I was really into doing that research. I think it’s something that all games need to encourage in some form or another, with as little pain as possible. That, and adapting to whatever the devs throw at you. :P

Bah. Carebear EQ players had it way easier than us UO players. Not only did we have dailup (for really reals), but we had people, like me, who would kill you and take all your stuff.

Or, more often because it was more challenging, “Thy gold or thy life, knave!”

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Xavori.3768:

It’d be badly abused.

Hopefully as word gets out that the dragonball achievements don’t count, and even the people who don’t hear that just finish them, the problem will correct itself.

Or, maybe instead of a kick feature, ANet could code in an anti-afk feature that after 1 minute of no activity dumps the player back to LA.

No, it’d need to be shorter. I’d say much less than 1 minute. Maybe 30 seconds. I’ve seen a lot of these afk’ers throw a ball once every few minutes and then go still again.

Also, the current kick options for groups in the main game have it to where you have to “vote” for it. I don’t see how that could be abused.

It gets abused in the main game.

Here’s what would happen:
Several people would get together and start kicking players who are better than them with the goal of eventually creating an arena they could dominate. Even if you were only allowed to vote people off your own team, they’d eventually replace all the good players with poor ones.

Shiren.9532:

Don’t do it. From what I’ve read about their bot ban waves (going back to my time in GW1) their methods of bot and macro detection don’t discriminate what it is you used a bot or macro for, they just ban you for it.

Programs like autohotkey, or the macro programs for keyboards and mice create inputs that are completely indistinguishable from the user pressing keys or moving the mouse because they interface windows inputs rather than sending anything directly to the game.

I’ve been using an autohotkey script since beta that allows me to hit shift-right click to create the equivalent of holding the right mouse button down. Basically, it’s a mouse-look toggle (I wish it would just get added to the offical UI). The game would be unplayable for me without it as my fibromyalgia makes sustained muscle tension extremely painful. Since it fits the one-press creates one-effect rule, and because I’ve actually posted the script and asked about it on these forums, I’ve never worried about getting banned for it, and again, I’ve been using it since release and nobody has said anything.

In fact, I’d bet that they would have no idea other than the fact I posted it since all the server sees is that my client is receiving right-mouse-down from Windows.

It’d be badly abused.

Hopefully as word gets out that the dragonball achievements don’t count, and even the people who don’t hear that just finish them, the problem will correct itself.

Or, maybe instead of a kick feature, ANet could code in an anti-afk feature that after 1 minute of no activity dumps the player back to LA.

I know the coffers will stop dropping after July 9, but will the bazillion or so coffers that will be on the TP by then still be able to drop tickets, or will they be changed to just candy?

Oh, and I’m curious if the other event bags can still drop weapon skins. I’d kinda like to pick up some of the Halloween stuff, and the bags are only 1s each.

p.s. Can we pretty please have another dozen or so characters for our subject lines?

My monthly jump puzzle achievement is stuck at 7 of 9 (which would be cool if it included a picture of 7 of 9, but alas). I’ve done a bunch of different jump puzzles since then and collected rewards, but the achievement hasn’t updated for any of them.

Gahzirra.8639:

Xavori.3768:

I’m willing to bet coffers end up 4c before this event is over. If you look at the price drop on spidy, it’s pretty steep. And the things drop like water, and we’ll have so much time to flood the market with them since the festival lasts till July 9.

The flip side is that I think coffers are replacing some T6 mat drops which is driving me crazy as T6 mats are actually useful and my poor engineer farmer is pretty much going to sit on the shelf, untouched and unloved, till the festival is over and he can go back to making me money.

Sorry not at home, but I am seeing how they made coffers harder to farm and reduced drop rate, which would mean the price should rise as lots of people still want the ticket.

I picked up 30 more coffers in kitten minutes (the time of one candy corn custard) on a new alt I’m levelling up. I pretty much ignored the holograms because as you said, they made those harder. However, all the rest of the mobs still drop them and even if they cut the drop rate in half, a lot more people are picking them up and sticking them on the tp than are buying them back.

Add in the fact that this event runs for a month, and noway do these things hold any value at all. The trick-or-treat bags didn’t have anywhere near as long to collect, and they went well below 1s. The coffers are going to go lower.

I really wish we could short sell on the tp so that you could actually make money on things like this. As it is, you just have to sell them as soon as you get them to avoid losing value.

I’m willing to bet coffers end up 4c before this event is over. If you look at the price drop on spidy, it’s pretty steep. And the things drop like water, and we’ll have so much time to flood the market with them since the festival lasts till July 9.

The flip side is that I think coffers are replacing some T6 mat drops which is driving me crazy as T6 mats are actually useful and my poor engineer farmer is pretty much going to sit on the shelf, untouched and unloved, till the festival is over and he can go back to making me money.

Wukunlin.8461:

poor thing gets mobbed by a whole pack of charrs multiple times a day

Do you think she’s allergic to cats?

Astral Projections.7320:

This raises a philosopical question. If Dulfy does that fractal and kills herself, is it suicide?

Very good point.

And, it’s not like it’s Dulfy’s evil twin since as everyone knows, evil twins always have a goatee.

I mean, I love her site. When people ask questions, 90% of the time the answer is “dulfy.net has a guide” (9.9% is “check the wiki” and .1% is “your mom”)

Yet, every time I get the burning kitten fractal, there she is bravely defending the gate by herself. And sure, standing outside the gate might not be the brightest of ideas, but I’m sure it’s just because she spent all her intellectual energy putting together her awesome site.

DeWolfe.2174:

Seems like it’s just endless running only to die in a couple of hits. Not really much skill. And, the first team to get the most power ups is just going to roll the other team.

Wasn’t the Winter one was better with the different roles in it? I dislike frenetic button mashing PvP like this.

You haven’t figured it out yet. Give it more time. There really is more going on here.

A good player will carry their team (unless the other team also has a couple good players) which makes it pretty obvious that there is skill involved. And, those good players are easy to spot because they always end up with the most kills, even if their team loses a match.

Oh, one tip: Endless running is a bad idea. You just die tired. If you have to run, run to your friends or health. As soon as you get to either, turn and fight. While fighting, you want to be doing less running and more strafing, dodging, ducking in and out of cover.

It’s a lie. It’s not actually wielding an axe.

Kryptonite.9376:

Via CoF p1. I know many of you are saying, well yeah you have to spend the money, but technically you don’t be cause dungeon is so broken.

All crafts cost about 60g total, running cof p1 grants about 4g/hour if you’re doing it leisurely. Meaning in 15-20 hours you can farm enough gold back, so unless you can level 1-80 in under 15-20 hours which is superhuman, there’s no reason to be re-exploring the open world on an alt since it’s no fun and zones are all dead. If you work your way up to level 10 at least, or 20, you can cut the costs of it dramatically by excluding one of the more expensive 10g+ professions out as well.

Pretty sure just running with the zerg in WvW is still faster. And, it’s far, far cheaper.

Oh, and while CoF p1 is pretty solid for gold, I can think of many ways that let you go beyond 4g/hour. I mean, I had to pay for three new character slots (roughly 20g each) during the sale which I didn’t spot till it was less than a day from over. I didn’t do this by running CoF p1

Sure, we get them because we bought gems, but like Gavroche says, “Something for you. Something for me.”

I just won a moa race (and got 1.7g for it), but it didn’t update the achievement. That might make it a bit tricky to complete

Since the last patch, there have been huge lag spikes reported by lots of players on Yak’s Bend’s Southsun map. At times, it gets so bad that the client disconnects from the game. Like most others, I thought it was just extra load caused by all the extra players running the events.

However, today I got sent to an overflow map. The map was still packed to rafters with players, but there were absolutely no lag spikes (fps drop during the queen fight, sure, but no lag spike, no disconnect). It was great. I happily blew up fishies for an hour without any problems. I hoped that maybe ANet had fixed the problem.

So I go back to Southsun after reset. I’m not in overflow, and it’s exactly as bad as it was before. After just five minutes, I got disconnected. I log back in in time to get credit for the queen kill but again it’s laggy and messed up. I tried logging my grenade fisherman in, but no dice. Just can’t play.

Oh, one thing that does work out in the players advantage. When the lag spike hits, if it’s not long enough to cause a disconnect, the server seems to fire off all your grenade attacks that should have happened all at once. This makes for awesome explosions and pretty much wipes out everything you were fighting. The mobs’ attacks, however, all stop. So what happens is you attack a bunch of stuff, lag spike hits, it ‘saves’ up all your attacks, lag spike ends, all your saved attacks proc at the same time wiping out the mobs, and none of the mobs ever get to have attacked you. If there was any way to predict the spikes, this could be a blatant exploit. Since the spikes seem random, it’s just luck if it works out in your advantage.

Ultimately, that’s what I ended up doing. I bought a thousand or so before posting, and when nobody immediately chimed in with reasons not to, bought a couple more thousand.

The price made it above 4s before it started dropping. I sold out just below 4 figuring the initial spike on the news was over. I’m now slowly accumulating a new pile o’ shells figuring that when the vendor actually makes an appearance, there’ll be another spike, and I’ll prolly sell again then.

Whether the prices hold or not long term depends very much on what’s on that vendor. But even if it just rehashed armor, if it’s a way for people to pick up exotics rather than straight gold, it’ll still have some permanent effect on the price. Not that I care much about that. By then some new shiny will have caught my eye and I’ll goof around with that.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xavori.3768:

Can you link the thread with that? I’d like to read the whole thing (not so much about karka shells, but other info and what brought it up). I went through twelve pages of Dev Tracker searching for Robert’s posts and couldn’t find that one.

It’s automatically linked by quoting him. Click Rob’s name in my previous post.

Ah. Thank you. Learned something new

‘Course, it doesn’t explain the fact that we already have two new back pieces and three new shoulder pieces. I’m going to be a sad panda if I have to stick the shoulder skins I’ve gotten farming Southshore next to the fused gauntlet ticket I’ve never used in the same forgotten bottom tab of my bank.

(the back pieces, on the other hand, are easy to use. The flower is an obvious choice for any Sylvari cultural or TA armor wearer. I’ve also seen some really cool uses of it with some of the other light armor female sets…and one very ‘odd’ male. As for the tentacles…I made a Sailor Moon-ish looking toon to go for the obvious Japanese school girl tentacle joke…because when it comes to actual gaming, I have the maturity of a toddler)

Also, no news on laurels for anything other than daily which makes it really hard for the altaholics here to get BIS equipment for all their toons.

Bringing this up not to threadjack, but just to point out that when it comes to followup communications, ANet has a bit of work to do.