Guild Wars 2

Adjusting the scribing costs to something more reasonable is certainly a good idea.

Though I have to agree with Stormdancer.4972: it should have been quite obvious from just looking at the numbers (and the way how the materials are used) that the current system would result in way too high prices for scribing related materials.

But the damage has been done, for sure a lot of confidence in your design teams has been lost on the player side. So it is about time to change things. Some suggestions that came to my mind:

Pigments
The general idea of high-tier inks including lower tiers is actually good. Kind of like expanding a palette.
The main problem is that to craft a higher tier decoration, you often need to craft lower tier decorations first. Which might require decorations from an even lower tier.
As a result, the lowest tier of pigments becomes the most valuable, especially since the amount of pigments is the same at every tier.
Suggestion: make lower tier inks require less pigments. E.g.:
T1: 2 brown
T2: 3 red
T3: 4 yellow
T4: 6 blue + 6 orange
T5: 8 purple + 8 green (Yes, green, not yellow again!)
T6: 10 black + 10 white

Sand
Just look at a simple example: Guild Decoration Merchant 3 requires 300 Sheets of Extra Coarse Sandpaper. That’s 3000 Piles of Coarse Sand, or in other words: 30.000 Piles of Silky Sand. According to the Wiki, the chance of getting Coarse from Silky Sand is 70%, so you’d actually need around 42.857 Piles of Silky Sand – that’s 171 stacks.
If your develpers did not see this in advance … I feel very sorry for you.
Suggestion: simply devide amount of coarse sand required for all types of sand paper by 10.

Linseed Oil
It is probably an easy fix to add a recipe for the oil to the scribe profession itself, solving the minor of the two problems here.
Again, the numbers involved in creating this oil are rediculously high. A single character gets around 12-14 Flax Seeds from an 8-node Flax field, or in other words: not even enough for a single vial.
And now please consider that it is not only the scribe himself that needs the oil, but you also need tons of it for the guild hall (either directly or through kegs).
Suggestion: 1 Milling Basin + 3 Milling Stones + 5 Piles of Flax Seeds = 2 Vials

Flax Fibres
Lowering the amount for the bags required for WvW schematics from 25 to 12 was a good idea, even though something in the range of 8-10 would be even more reasonable (or make Flax Fibres a common drop from WvW synthesizers).
But you might want to look at the Linen Rope, too. 150 Flax Fibres? It is a simple intermediate item, not even a decoration! You might want to remove the 0.

Resonating Slivers
Including materials that can be earned via guild missions is, at its core, another good idea. Unfortunately you forgot to include new guild missions with HoT, so people have to do the same old guild missions again and again. As far as my own guild is concerned, typical participation in guild missions has declined from ~25-30 at the start of HoT to 7-8 players at the moment.
And the output of Resonating Slivers from the missions is too low.
Suggestions:

• Reduce upgrade factor (Slivers -> Fragments -> Cores -> Lodestones) from 3 to 2
• Increase Sliver rewards from guild missions (min. 5/10/15 from low/medium/high difficulty)
• Exhange the single Sliver from the Guild Trader with “Bag of Slivers” (5 Slivers) in exchange for a single Guild Commendation
• (long term) add more guild missions (especially Guild Puzzles)

Guild Decoration Merchants
Some of the lowest level scribe recipes require base objects that you can only purchase from the level 3 merchant. So you first have to upgrade your guild hall with three levels of totally overpriced GDMs before you can craft some level 25 decorations?
Suggestions:

• All level 0-200 items should be moved to GDM1
• All level 201-400 items should be moved to GDM2
• Remove GDM3 and refund guilds that already have it.
• If you want to keep GDM3, consider reducing upgrade costs by at least 50%

Paper
The conversion rate of wood planks to papers is terrible, further increasing the already high trade value of wood (thanks to ascended material crafting and the huge amount of wood required for the guild halls).
Suggestion: 2 planks per sheet of paper instead of 5

Buff Items
The scribe’s buff items suffer in two categories: they are way too expensive (thanks to requiring pigments and Resonating S/F/C/L), and they are inferior to basically any other “tool” type consumables. They need some functionality change and a complete overhaull of the crafting recipe.
Suggestion for basic changes:

• Reduce life threshold to 50% (or maybe 75% for Writs and 50% for Thesis to follow the general idea of a Scribe supporting others/ his guild more than himself).
• So far we have recipes for precision (claws), condition damage (venom) and power (blood). Add more variety by using other fine crafting materials, too: healing power (totem), toughness (scale), condition duration (bone), ferocity (fang)

Recipe revamp suggestion:

1. Use bronze/silver/gold ingots (T1+2/3+4/5+6) and dust to create thin/thick (T1,3,5/2,4,6) sheets of magical metal foil. 2 ingots + 1 dust for thin, 5 ingots + 2 dust for thick sheet.
2. Combine 1 magical metal foil with one pen and one fine crafting material to yield 5 writs (making in comparable to weaponsmith, etc. output)
3. With the increased output of writs, use 10 writs for one thesis, replacing the scribing kit with 1 or 2 dust.

Miscellaneous

• Make items like book covers, etc., tradeable. There is no reason to have them soulbound.
• The Scribe was a good chance to increase the trade value of silver and gold. You completely missed that chance.
• Consider refunding scribes (based on their level) when reducing the costs.
• Consider adding a “Can upgrade decorations” guild permissions, so that leveling the Scribe does not depend on the “Use Placeables” permission.
• Consider adding a “Scribe Material Storage” option for the guild bank (maybe replacement for GDM3?) which works similar to the Treasury: players can deposit scribe materials here, which can only be consumed by scribes who craft at the guild’s scribing station (Priority would be: player inventory > Guild Scribe Material Storage > player’s personal bank > player’s personal material storage).
• Base decoration cost at the GDM needs to be drastically lower (5s instead of 50s)

Feedback from a PvE/WvW player’s perspective:

Enhances Squad UI
Looks nice so far, and a good addition to the SUI.
But the updates lacks two important bugfixes:
- Squad Leaders currently cannot pass leadership to someone else in WvW
- Squad Leaders cannot change tag color while in a suqad

Gliding in Central Tyria
Nice change, there are some nice places in Tyria where you can enjoy gliding.
But it would have been nice to have at least some updrafts in central areas of the maps.

Lunar New Year
A festival that seems to be rather Dragonball Arena -centric. So I don’t really care.
And having an account in the “very unlucky” area, I’ve learned not to waste my money on those envelopes.

Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club
Sorry to say this, but this looks a lot like “Let’s think of a way to make players log in at least once per month so that we can claim to have an active playerbase.”

Balance/B-Fix/Polish

General
Support counting to event contribution: great.
Option “Show All Usable Objects”: great
Lots of new keybinds (including Squad UI here): I’m running out of keys…
Adventure “Haywire Punch-o-matic Battle”: I have done enough adventures to get my mastery points, so I’m done with adventures (except maybe some collections forcing me to do that s..tuff)

Fractals
Some good changes and bug fixes.
What fractals needs next is a rework of the instabilities.

Items
Still no QoL update for the Mystic Forge for using the same fixed recipe repeatedly (WvW siege upgrade, mystic clover, amalgamated gems…)

Profession Skills

General
The changes to finish/rez make sense IMO.
Waiting for the profession specific decals … even though I cannot see a necessity for those.

Elementalist
Still not seeing any reason to play scepter.

Guardian
Sounds nice.

Dragonhunter
Piercing Light: Good for WvW (and probably sPvP), bad for PvE.

Mesmer
Chaos Armor: PvP oriented change? Blind was OK for PvE.
Still no attempt to fix the disparity of Confusion between PvE and PvP

Chronomancer
Alacrity nerf might be needed for some areas, but there should be some sort of compensation for the Chrono (additional effects/reduced base cooldowns).

Necromancer
Quite a bit of boon corruption, good for WvW/PvP and a certain (bad) Fractal instability.
Completely useless in PvE, as most mobs do not have boons.
Maybe your mob/map designers should consider using boons to make content more challenging instead of always using massive amounts of CC to make content annoying? It would be an improvement, and boon corruption would actually make sense in PvE then.
Chilling Darkness: ICD still too long IMO.

Revenant
Looks like it is time to use more than just autoattack
The class still needs proper underwater combat, though (because underwater content is still part of the game, as you might know).

Warrior
Increase in healing looks OK.

IMO the only way to ever achieve acceptable balance is a split of PvE, WvW and PvP balance. Everything else will inevitably fail.

World vs. World

Automatic Upgrade Update
The base idea was good, the execution is terrible. Who came up with the idea to put the same values on all objective types? Or was it just laziness?
SMC should take longer than keeps to upgrade, keeps longer than towers, and towers longer than camps. Especially because very often more dolyak routes lead to a keep than to a tower.
On a side note: this made the easy Guild Mission “Capture & Hold: Camp” basically impossible to complete.
Also, it is still an automatic upgrade when the map is uncontested (read: Nightcapping). Upgrades should require a player to activate them once enough dolyaks have reached an objective.

PpK / Reduced Rally Cap / Combat Revive Change
Nice additions.

General
Also some nice changes.
But I still believe that Proofs of Heroics should be account bound.
And Keep waypoints are still a mess, especially on DBL. They should only show up once a keep reaches T3, and should be usable by the faction that owns them.
Banner changes: absolutely necessary!

Still looking forward to your “big WvW update” … even though I’m afraid the time is running out.

Guilds
More decorations … I’d be happy, if it wasn’t for the overall cost of decorations.
At least festival decoration is cheap (if only by comparison to normal decorations).
The re-evaluation of scibing costs you announced is really necessary (including guild upgrades that require scribe items).
Actually, I do not even understand how someone could look at the amounts of items required for the most basic things (sand, pigments) and think that would be OK.
If I had to fire one person at ANet, it would be the one responsible for those numbers.

Shatterer
Nice improvement of a world boss.
I am very happy that you did not turn this into another “challenging encounter”.
The height gained from the jump pads could be increased a bit (+50%?).

Yes, the lack of a recipe for Resonating Fragments is one of the major issues with the Scribe crafting discipline at the moment.

Then there is the bug with guild mission rewards. How are we supposed to get a sufficient amount of Resonating Slivers if some guild missions do not even give personal rewards to the majority of the participating players?
And even if the upgrade ratio from Slivers to Framents is just 1:1, a small guild is heavily restrained to crafting only a handfull of items per week even at this low crafting level. But knowing ANet I’m afraid it will be at least 2:1 or worse

Also, the material costs for some things are quite unbalanced. As a small guild we are currently unable to get the Decorations Trader 1 simply for lack of Coarse Sand. Maybe the developers should keep in mind that players do not have dev commands available to simply create materials. Do you really consider it fun to spend hours/days in Dry Top or Silverwastes just to farm Dust Mites and Twisters for sand?

Same for pigments. Currently, the only relyable source for pigments is dyes since pigment output from plant nodes is almost nonexsistant. Which is why prices for brown dyes exploded on the TP.
I understand that the TP economy is quite chaotic at the moment and will become stable at some point, but I have the feeling that the level it will stabilize on for dyes will be rather high.

I also noticed that T2 Ink not only requires its own (red) pigment, but also the T1 Ink. If this system continues throughout the different tiers, then the T6 Ink will require 10 each of six different pigments. The idea behind this seems obvious: the value for each pigment color will be roughly the same once everybody has reached L400 Scribing. But again, with dyes as almost exclusive source for pigments this will put even the basic dyes at a relatively high price level.
As a result, e.g. WvW Upgrades and Tactics will end up being very costly. How are smaller WvW guilds supposed to handle those costs with (financial) WvW rewards being another thing that is basically nonexsistant?

All in all I have to conclude that a) the Scribe has been neither fully implemented nor material-wise balanced yet and b) the whole guild system is not oriented on guilds of 10 people (as ANet claimed) but rather 100+.

So I’d say the following changes should be considered:
- implementing Scribe crafting beyond level 125/150
- increasing pigment output from plant nodes significantly
- decreasing amount of pigment used per ink
- reducing the sand cost for sand paper and/or increasing the sand output from fine sand
- fixing guild mission rewards
- increasing Sliver rewards from guild missions
- adding Resonating Fragments/Cores/Lodestones to the reward table for guild missions (Cores just from medium/hard difficulty, Lodestones only from hard difficulty)

Reset at lunch time? Really, ANet? Head → Wall

And splitting the weekend in half for the matches? I think it was Colin who in one of the recent streams said that you guys see the problem of nightcapping and are thinking about how to solve that problem. And now you make a change that actually strengthens nightcapping servers? Taking away the chance for non-NCing servers to build up a buffer (and the motivation that goes along with that) over a complete weekend?

Congratulations for further destroying WvW through unneccessary changes.

A) In yesterday’s Guild Chat you shared some information about the Scribe. I noticed that the scribe is yet another crafting discipline that uses (low tier) cloth.

Looking at the tradingpost and comparing prices of cloth tiers (cotton/wool/linen vs silk) or cloth-based items vs metal- and especially leather-based items (Damask vs. Mithrillium / Elonian Leather) one can clearly see that there is a huge imbalance.

Having another crafting discipline based on cloth (instead of e.g. the undervalued leather) will increase this imbalance even more.

How will you adress this imbalance?

B) Each guild hall will have its unique set of guild weapons. You already explained that one can obtain both sets by using the multi-guild system or simply by visiting a friend’s guild hall.

Could you provide some more detail on this topic (e.g. which GH level and structures are required to access the material for these weapons)?

Technically speaking: you are the leader, you own the guild

Less technically speaking, everybody who helped building the guild by representing it and creating influence did contribute to what the guild is today. Those “friends”, going by what you say, did not really contribute to the guild during the last year, whereas you did. So if you view guild members as a sort of “sharholders”, you own the majority of the shares … and in such cases the majority makes the decisions

Personally, I would be so kind as to refund them for their investment in the guild (I think it currently costs 1g to create a guild, so I’d give each of them 1g/(number of founders) as compensation) and kick them.

Same here. Every Hero Point = crash.

It would indeed be nice to get more information about the guild halls. Not only in regard to the mechanics for upgrading, etc., but also to get more visual impressions from them.

There was one PoI where we got a look at one of the halls, but little is known so far about the other one. So maybe if you do a PoI about guild mechanics, do it in the other guild hall.
After all, guilds will have to make up their minds regarding which hall to choose some time soon.

Of course the best thing would be to give players access to both guild halls during the next BWE. A possibility just to visit both halls, like we had in GW1.

I’ll just list the main problems (from biggest to smalest) I see with this even without reading through all these pages.

1 Reward System
It is, quite frankly, an absolute failure. It promotes anti-social behavior. People only run from event to event to hit some monsters to get event credit, then run to the next. Downed players are left on the ground to die, because rezing would take so much time. Catapults are built but then left for others to use, because one “has to” run to the next event.

Therefore, the reward system needs to be changed completely. A suggestion:
a) Event reward is given only to players who are in the event range at the time it finishes. (Rewards: 5 Blossoms, Karma, XP, Gold)
b) Events occur in waves (every 5 minutes) at a limited amount of locations. There is a timer for the event (4 minutes), if it has not been completed by then, it fails.
c) At the end of the 30 minutes, every player who has participated successfully in at least one event will receive a bonus reward depending on how many events have been finished on that map by all players together.

Additionally, event mobs should give loot and XP like any other mob.

Sidenote: This kind of anti-social behaviour is also observable in the Silverwastes, where players run from event to event (without really helipng to finish them) in ordeer to obtain as many Bandit Crests as possible.

2 Mordrem
It is understandable that you use Mordrem in an event that serves as a sort of prelude to and time-filler for the time until the release of HoT. Unfortunately, the Mordrem mechanics are ill suited for this.

Quite honestly, the Mordrem with their mass-CC are neither interesting nor fun. They are simply annoying. Just like the undead in Orr used to be, until their mass-CC got reduced (thanks to player feedback). Thankfully, so far the Mordrem were mostly confined to the Maguma Wastes.

Putting these kind of mechanics into starter areas is certainly not going to help promote the game for new players.

And I guess it’s too late to ask for improvement of the Mordrem, so I’m not really looking forward to meeting these un-fun monsters in HoT.

3 Server Performance
Having multiple events at different parts of the map in order to spread out the players on the map certainly helps to improve the performance of the servers. But the impact of this many players was still noticable. Not as bad as in WvW, but still.
Funnily enough, it got slightly better from the first day (when most people where still trying to do events properly) to today, with everybody just running around the map to tag as many events as possible.

So I’d say you either need to reduce the map cap a little further or invest into better servers.

In comparison to the Reaper, the Chronomancer felt much more complete and was really fun to play in PvE.
As far as (large scale) WvW is concerned, however, I do not really see myself using wells or the shield, unless the new maps bring changes that drastically change the current way of playing WvW.

I really liked the Reaper as far as the idea and the graphics are concerned, and I was really looking forward to play it in the beta.

However, it was a bit of disappointment when I really played. A lot of points have already been mentioned in this thread, so I will concentrate on the topics that bothered me most:

Shouts
The new skills may be named shouts, but at 3/4 casting time they do not feel like shouts. They are more like PBAoE spells. The casting times are simply far too long.
I also tested the Tempest ele, and the 1/4 cast time used for the ele shouts is probably the maximum cast time that should be used for something called a shout. Though, honestly, I’d think a 0 would still be much better in case of the necro.

Greatsword
Slow? Yes.
Menacing … erm, no? The damage output is far too low to be somewhat near menacing. And even though the necro has a high lifepool, there should be an incentive for a scholar armor class to go melee, especially if you look beyond PvE.
And even in PvE… think about all those new high-mobility NPCs charging around the area (Stomeheads(?), the shadowstepping “Revenant-Mordrem”, good old Terragriffs and Thrashers…) … who would want to play a slow, low-armor class in melee without dealing much damage?
I tested the GS for quite a while, but then I simply went back to the staff.

RS2
While most of Reaper Shroud felt nice and fitting for the Reaper, the no. 2 skill was a bit of a letdown.
Considering that RS4 already has a whirl, it might be better to replace it with a direct shadowstep to a selected target, inflicting chill on impact.

Same problem here.
The boss is only moving, but not fighting, As a result not only the achievement is unobtainable, but it is also an easily earned champion loot bag.

Elanesse.4310:

Will you be able to play 22 vs. 11 soccer matches if ArenaNet will ever develope a football game?

You are aware that there is a limit to how many people a map can hold?

So it’s more like this: It’s a soccer match which allows each side to have 11 players, but the game will take place even if you bring less – for whatever reason.

Well, as Chris Barrett wrote, it’s just a hot fix, i.e. they simply removed the locks from the achievements.

The new matchup (and thus season 1) HAS started in the EU.
And lots of players are getting their achievments already. It’s only some players who, for whatever reason, do not get them.

For me the “WvW Dawn of the Season” achievement is not activating, and thus all other Season 1 related achievements are locked even though I went to WvW right at reset, killed 20+ opponents, capped 2 towers, etc.

So while everyone around me is happily commenting on TS on piling up achievements I get nothing.

Well, in a matchup like this, fresh air and sunbathing is probably the best FSP and DL can do.

40 chests → 2 rares → 0 ecto

Thaia.5146:

What the hell is this???

That’s the sad reality of the new system:
- single strong server gets the chance to steamroll two weaker servers.
- players on strong server lose interest in WvW because it’s too easy
- players on weaker serveres lose interest in WvW because they don’t stand a chance
- glicko systems says: Hey, strong server didn’t steamroll the others enough, so let’s decrease their ranking and increase the ranking of the weak ones

Guess what matchups you’re going to see next week

Well, the first night of this matchup is over, and it looks like it is going to be even worse than last week.

So let me be the first to congratulate PS on their clear “victory” this week.

All that is left for us is trying to have as much fun as possible and getting as many lootbags as possible from them – and hope that ANet finally starts to see that the only thing their oh-so-great new matchmaking system does is driving people on the lower side of the ranking table out of WvW.

JonSnow.5610:

I have to ask

What do you germans do when you’re sitting in the keep waiting on people passing through your AC fire?

tell jokes?

People from AG complaining about other servers doing soemthing AG is also doing all the time … funny.

That’s ANet’s new random matchmaking system :P

Ya, L79 green items! Exactly what I was hoping for when they talked about additional rewards for WvW.

NOT

Thrashbarg.9820:

That’s the real issue, the amount of resources/time/players it takes to counter even a few players running perma-stealth builds is disproportionate to the amount of effort required to play these builds, as well as to the effort required to counter any tactic by a similar number of players running any other class/build.

This is IMHO the key problem with stealth in WvW.

Habib Loew.6239:

WvW ranks & abilities are character based. The best way to think of this system is as alternative/extended character progression.

Please make it account bound. Think of this system as player progression.

Sabo.1485:

Oh, in the tutorial areas you mean? Like the human one where you have to fight centaurs at the gates for a little bit?

Yes, exactly. Every tutorial seems to have a similar mechanic implemented.

ANet has such a nice system in place at the very start of the game, where things run in an instance, with a “blocking” event that keeps people busy until a certain amount of players has entered the instance and then proceeds.

They should simply use a similar system for these events, and making the instance available for a certain amount of time that allows players all over the world to do it (once per account) at a suitable time.

Chiggerbite.6572:

It seems a little strange to have a completion task on the monthly achievement, but not give you a month to complete it…. wouldn’t put it past them though.

Well, considering that you never really had a month to get the Survivor either (since you had to do it in one go without porting/changing zones/getting disconnected) I wouldn’t be too surprised if they gave us a Halloween Achievement with the possibility to finish it between October 30th 11pm and November 1st 1am.

Server: Drakkar Lake [DE]

Location: Metrica Province – Loch Jezt
Skill challenge: Defeat Utcua
Bug: NPC is dead

Location: Wayfarer Foothills – Grawlenfjord
Skill challenge: Bear Shaman Marga
Bug: NPC is missing

Icewolfnector.1487:

I wonder if we will see a final fix to the skillpoint bugs in the next patch, so they don’t just bug again after some fights.

Until it is really fixed, they should at least implement an automatic reset of all Skill Chalanges every hour, so that people who are not able to play during the first 15 minutes after a patch/server restart actually get a chance to finish the areas.

Or turn all SCs into “Commune with place of power” type of SCs, they seem to be less affected by bugs.

Maybe a mod could merge this thread with this one to get a list in a single thread?

Yes, unfortunately this happens quite often.

CptJames.4281:

The first is the area right next to all the trainers, and next to the Hero waypoint I believe it’s called, there is a PoI in a building, and the doors don’t open, I think it is meant to be an instance, not sure. The second Is the place with (Home) after it, I forget the name, and inside is 4 PoI’s, I walk up to a set of gray/silver double doors with a guard outside, and they don’t open.

The first is actually inside Hero’s Canton, too. It has a total of 5 PoIs in there.

As for the gate, if you are at the right gate (somewhere in the middle between Hero waypoint and the Citadel’s exit, you should get a message on your screen, asking if you want to enter the instance.

for a future note to make sure you make a profit remember to include the 15% Anet tax in you selling prices.

Yup. As a rough approximation, simply multiply the amount of money you want to get out of the trade by 1.2

garethedwards.8145:

Gather all the mats possible and craft. Don’t waypoint, don’t zone and don’t log out.

And pray that you don’t get a network disconnect in the process.

garethedwards.8145:

This is a known bug and everyone is having to work around it.

But nobody should have to work around it. After all we are talking about a monthly achievement, an achievement you are supposed to be able to finish in the course of a month (so even casual players can get it, and not only those who can spend 3+ hours every day to gather resources for a 100k XP crafting session).

How difficult can it be to have a simple number counter variable which is stored with all the other permanent character data and which is only reset when you enter defeated state or the monthly is reset?

IMO the best way to deal with this would be if ANet removed the Survivor part from the monthly until they fix it, and credit all those who have obtained everything else with the appropriate reward.

It’s actually explained on the Influence wiki page:

However, Influence is accrued and spent separately by the guild members on each world. For example, a guild with players in Maguuma, Blacktide, and Riverside will have three different pools of Influence and three different build queues, one for each world.

So if your guild has players on world A and on world B, those on A gather influence which can be spent on A, and those on B gather influence to spend on B.

Can’t say that I really like that feature, having used my influence tome on the “wrong” world myself. IMHO the influence pool and the basic upgrades should be guild-wide, while e.g. the WvWvW bonus upgrades should require to be build on a per-server basis.