Guild Wars 2

When will GW2 be released? The answer was always “when it’s done”… The state of the game at release (and now) would be ok for PvE/WvW but sPvP clearly looks to be far from even 50% finished. It lacks just so much basic stuff, most already mentioned in this thread.

Personally I think the 8-team tournaments are fine BUT they are and should be the LOWEST competition level (only above the hot-joins). There’s a need for higher level tournaments, like Daily, Weekly and Monthly, with “Swiss” system (like GW1 ATS) or at least a “double elimination” structure and of course much higher profile rewards.

I also think it is very important to completely rework the rewards on all levels of PvP play. I also think it really should be a normal thing to earn wealth (things usable/sellable for a PvE player) just like you can from playing other game modes. PvP shouldn’t depend on anything from other game modes but some rewards from playing PvP should be useful elsewhere and be sellable. For example, salvaging the PvP reward gear could in addition to the usual stuff also give some PvE materials (including a chance for ectos or other rare mats, higher chances for higher tier items). Some sellable rewards are needed on all levels of PvP play to make PvP more attractive to players who mostly play PvE/WvW.

But there’s also a desperate need to make the game and it’s rewards attractive for the e-sport players. In the current state it isn’t at all. They demand serious tournaments with real world prizes and/or other long term goals, they need a reason to spend hundreds of hours to master this game. GW2 desperately needs infrastructure for third parties to organize such tournaments and a meaningful ranking system. Also, more communication from Anet – no communication for many players means no hope for the future of GW2 PvP, so they quit or don’t even start for real.

This case was not that much of an “exploit” as an unintended market rebalance that happened suddenly and some players were able to profit of.

Note it wasn’t a loop generating value out of nothing but converting finite resources into other finite resources. The market found new balance where repeating the loop made only a small (around 10%) profit margin. If more people knew this method the prices would move further, past the equilibrium, to a point where this loop would be causing an actual loss.

Example equilibrium – 0% net profit from the loop:

Mithril Ore = 85c
Snowflake = 28s
Ecto = 23s

(assuming return rate of 90 ectos per 100 salvages with Master’s kit)

We were pretty close to these prices.

Would it be called an exploit then at 0% margin? And at negative?

Did you know this is how it worked during betas?
[img]http://i.imgur.com/3ZGWM.jpg[/img]
Hovering over this purple tower icon showed your world’s current bonuses from WvW. It was later moved from there to the top to reduce the effect monitor clutter. Personally I didn’t like seeing it down there all the time so I think it was a good decision to move it.

While this would be a very small and easy to do change I think it’s not really worth it.
I’d much rather like Anet to create better additional incentives for WvW participation, for example opening some special PvE content (mini dungeon?) for the winning world for a week (of course make players who switch worlds not eligible to this reward).

Hyde.6189:

mulch.2586:

Amonde Daneren.2380:

mulch.2586:

Amonde Daneren.2380:

Pizza doesn’t cost much, buy one every day and they add up.
Play only one character ever, moving forward, you won’t have to grind much for Ascended.
Play one of each profession and you could end up doing nothing but chasing the carrot forever.

But this is neither here nor there. As for people who are saying the Ascended increase is negligible…

Rings only: 0.85% damage over someone in Exotics
Greatsword only: 6.48% damage over someone in Exotics.
Greatsword and rings: 7.19% damage increase over someone in Exotics.

It shouldn’t be too hard to see what the difference becomes when you add up all the gear, and then with infusions on top it gets even higher.

Don’t make up pretend numbers…

Actual numbers, a ring will be less than that. Of course it depends on build and all, but getting all 3 ascended items will be around 1.25% increase in damage if you’re going power-style.

There is no ascended greatsword, and we’ll have to wait and see if/when ascended weapons are added.

For the time being, if you do or if you don’t, doesn’t very much matter.
Using actual number for actual items in game — We’re looking at shaving a second or two off a two-minute boss fight.

Ha, I love this kind of kitten. Take two characters, give them base stats, add the stats from rings and the greatsword they accidentally released, then run the damage formula (you can find it on the wiki). Ascended versus Exotic. My numbers will come up.

Whether it’s +5 power or +15 power is not the issue, the question is how much damage that translates to, versus someone in exotics.

I have done it with the rings, and verified in-game as well. What looks like a meaningful bump in stats ends up being almost invisible in the damage from abilities in game. Less than half a percent from a ring. Actual amount varies, cuz of course if you have a completely defensive build +11 power matters more than if you’ve stacked power.

The greatsword or any weapons haven’t been released in the ascended tier yet.

Half a percent from a single item will add up to well over 5% once they’ve introduced all the different ascended armour, weapon and jewellery pieces, which is a significant difference.

Don’t forget that only a portion of character’s stats come from gear, a lot comes from traits, skills or the mere fact you’re level 80.

Why so much fuss over a couple stat points? There hasn’t even be any real change in the game’s philosophy! Reaching the absolute top was made difficult from the beginning and this is just expanding on it so it won’t get stale. Remember Anet has to make a system that’s as friendly as possible to the widest possible audience.

Examples for you:

- From release untill the most recent updates the back piece gear slot upgrade to the best possible (rare) costed 5g – the equivalent of 2 exotic items in other slots, and it offered a few stat points advantage that was completely negligible. Most players never got it, ignored it and I’ve never heard complaints about it. Why so much QQ now when the gains are just as little?

- The Triforge Pendant amulet was always super expensive to get (costs like gearing 3 characters in 12 slots lv 80 exotics) and offered a substantial advantage for all builds that made use of multiple stats. There weren’t many complaints about it even though the advantage gain from it can be far bigger than what current Ascended items provide.

I strongly support this unique progression model where the playing field is nearly but not perfecly equal. I don’t like having to chase numbers but I really enjoy being rewarded in a tangible (not just cosmetic) way.

Players who are afraid of being left far behind the progression top shouldn’t really be – it’s almost certain that Ascended gear pieces will be getting easier and easier to get over time, and even if you plan taking a whole year break you will at worst find yourself just ~3% less powerful than someone fully ascended.

Trust me, that difference is almost impossible to notice in actual gameplay, see yourself – degrade one or 2 slots from exotic to rare at the same stat combination and see the difference.

I strongly DISAGREE with OP.

As much as I despise the gear progression models used in most mmos I think strict caps are just as bad.

Anet made an excellent design choice with the Ascended items. No insta-boring strict cap and no mandatory grind for uber power. The gains are so small they can be ignored, but it’s really good to know that I can still find a better item, even if it’s just a tiny bit better.

Of course throne knows the initial implementation is not perfect and a lot of things will need to be improved, but we already know they will provide other means of getting Ascended gear and are looking into lowering the extreme grind.

This is no fix to the very poor and primitive item system this game has, but at least it will add some more variety and depth.

Personally I’m very far from being a hardcore player, I don’t even yet have all the exotic pieces I would like and I haven’t yet made it to fractals lvl 10, I play at my own pace enjoying the game and I really appreciate that both: I don’t have to do things I don’t like to in order to be able to access content or remain competitive AND that while I’m being well rewarded I won’t run out of opportunities to progress any time soon.

Overall, the near-but-not-completely-flat progression curve is the perfect model for this game and it’s not to be found anywhere else.

There’s no problem and as such there’s no needed solution. Don’t try to fix what is not broken.

All gear bought with karma was nerfed in the first weeks of September and since then it can’t be sold or salvaged – important to know that all upgrades you put in any gear bought with karma are lost forever.

However there’s one thing you can do with karma gear – MYSTIC FORGE them!

Been reporting this bug months ago but yesterday found out it’s still there.
I was dropping some crafted green jewellery into the forge and got items in return for the 2 first tries but then on 3rd attempt 4 same green crafted level 80 earrings → nothing at all.

This difficulty scaling progression is an absolutely terrible mechanic. Basically the playerbase interested in progressing in this dungeon gets divided into a large and increasing number of small subgroups. Joining a lower difficulty group means you get no progress so it’s wasted time.

This is just the beginning and finding 5 people at the exact same difficulty level is already impossible. And soon the spread will be so big that even a cross-server worldwide automated grouping system won’t help.

I think a complete redesign of the progression system is needed. Something akin to experience bar and levels would work infinitely better – you’d gain a less % progression when playing lower levels but still make some progress.
For example:
completing 3 fractals at difficulty 1 level under your max would give 80% progress towards next level,
2 levels below your max 60%
3 levels below your max 40%
4 levels below your max 20%
5 levels below your max 10%
6 and lower 0%

The system could even give some small progress for single completed fractals in the sets of 3, for example (at your level) 1st 10%, 2nd 30%, 3rd 60% (to eliminate wasted time when crash/disconnect happens but not give any incentive to rerolling easiest fractals).

This has happened at least 4 times. Logging off – back to launcher (not just to character selection) and back on has always fixed this for me.

If it was ISP fault then why the router itself stops responding to any communication (pings, etc.) when it happens?

If it was faulty hardware then it’s pretty strange 2 different routers experience identical problem with the game but work perfectly fine under other circumstances.

Malware? I really don’t think any could cause this type of behavior, but I always try to keep myself clear anyway.

I’m now looking through various router settings and will try if disabling something helps. Turned on all logging options to see if it catches anything suspicious.

A hypothesis I’ve heard from someone: GW2 traffic consists of a huge amount of little packets and it’s not the bandwidth usage but the sheer number of packets that’s causing the router to crash. Can it be true?

I’d really like a developer to comment on what feature of GW2 network traffic could be causing modem/routers to crash.

If Power Trader would be a strict boost to current situation with no downside to everyone else I don’t think it would be worth buying at all.

So I sense some severe restrictions coming to everyone, and I’d really hate that.

If a “Power Trader” item implies having a limit of up to 4 listings up to 1000 quantity that’s much worse than unlimited offers up to 250, isn’t it? If it was only about selling 1000s of one particular item it wouldn’t be a problem, but I’m afraid the restrictions may be more severe (limit buying just as well as selling, other limits to total number of different items sold, etc.).

I can’t believe I can’t find other reports of this but I’m experiencing a very serious problem with this game since betas.

For the last 2 years I’ve been using a Netgear DG834Gv5 ADSL+ modem/router.
When I play GW2 (doesn’t matter what I do, intense multiplayer action or just standing in a town) the router randomly hangs and stops responding – the only solution is power off and on. It happens randomly, once per 10-200 minutes, on avarege 3-7 times during a 6-8 hour playing day.
The router never caused any problems and works perfectly fine even under heavy load (3 computers, multiple processes using the network, downloads, torrents, watching 1080p streams, playing other games).

I’m 100% sure this happens to the router itself, not my computer or at my ISP.

So I thought it’s hardware failure and I bought a new different router – TP-Link TD-W8951ND and quickly found out it hangs just as often when GW2 is running!

After a month of testing I now know both routers work perfectly fine, 24/7, under heavy load from 2-3 computers, but running just GW2 and nothing else causes them to crash/hang pretty often. I was not able to cause any of them to hang without GW2 running.

This makes playing the game super frustrating – restarting the router, reestablishing internet connection, logging on and loading the game again takes a couple minutes.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

PS. I didn’t experience any problems with GW2 launcher/patching that some people reported, my problem only happens when the game is running.

Disagree with all 3. The effects of this would be terrible – the spreads between bids and asks would grow significantly, making it worse for most regular players.

Margin Traders / Market Makers are doing everyone a service, not only by stabilizing prices but also by increasing the total volume of trade (more gold leave the economy through the fees).

7 days is perfect, but it would be even better if a player after changing server couldn’t enter WvW until the next Friday restart.

This is super annoying and happens quite often. It was way worse in betas but problem wasn’t completely fixed. And fix is simple – just remove the part of code that turns enemies invulnerable when they decide they don’t want to fight anymore. Even if it occasionally meant an easy kill it would be way healthier for the game experience as a whole.

Apparently Linsey is right – Support confirms there’s no way to generate items and that they did not refund those dungeon tokens:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10uk5u/a_big_thank_you_to_anet_support_for_awarding_me/c6h9cee?context=3

So it’s like GW1 – in the entire 7++ years history of the game there wasn’t a single case where support was able to generate any item – because the tech to do it is purposely disabled on Live servers.

Won’t work – you can’t put even 1 backpack into the Mystic Forge (tried the rare lv 80 one).

Current system is bot-friendly — only bots can reliably sell items 1 by 1 and keep listing new ones right when the first sells.

I also really don’t think they’re saving much server resources by a nonsense system like this – if it was a proper FIFO queue they would only need to save the order of offers and a maximum of 1 partially sold offer per item.

EDIT: Also I really don’t think ENCOURAGING players to make lots of little sell orders instead of dumping all 1 giant sell. Keep in mind they store all the sales history.
It would be really nice to have this stuff implemented properely.

Very important :: The drop rates for the rare permanent tools should be made public – this is gambling with real money and I’ve seen reports of players opening lots and lots of them (one man on Reddit opened over 400 – over $500) and I haven’t seen anybody getting the win. Are we expected to drop over $500 and still likely getting none? That’s absurrrridiculous.

It was always 50%, reported by many players doing tests.

You feel scammed? It would be a scam if it displayed a HIGHER than actual value, but it showed a lower one so nobody was tricked into buying it for that value.

New items? What new items? Even if not perma, do tell about any new findings!

The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<→gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.

I still don’t see how account bound tokens solve anything. It is a positive change but doesn’t touch the real problems. Real problems with dungeon rewards:

1. Rewards being useless unless a player sticks to one dungeon and works it over and over. Players doing a few runs of each dungeon are basically wasting time.

2. It feels like work much more than a game: Do your job, get paid a fixed salary. Then again, and again and again…

Good solutions to both have been suggested a few posts above.

Fully agree with Elthurien’s post. This touches a different problem than I did a few posts above, but is nearly as important.

The current setup where you receive a fixed number of tokens per run and getting the dungeon gear requires doing a pre-set number of runs makes it feel more like WORK than a game about hunting for rare virtual treasures. The anticipation of possible awesome treasure at the end of dungeon run is something many players love but it’s gone from this game, replaced by a fixed “salary” for the completed work.
I fully understand the tokens are good for ensuring players wouldn’t be left at the mercy of RNG and that no completed run can feel like a waste, but I think a hybrid system would feel way better.

This sounds like some good improvements BUT I think they don’t touch the real problem much.

The real problem is that you have to stick to the same one dungeon and run it over and over and over again so the rewards you got can be of any use. A player who ran the same dungeon 80 times gets the real mean rewards, another player who did 80 dungeon runs in different dungeons gets a bunch of different tokens which are (near) useless unless he does a huge lot of runs in each of those dungeons (ridiculous).

Possible Solution suggestion:

Add a conversion mechanism: 1 specific dungeon token -> 1 generic dungeon token (also account bound).

Then let us pay up to a certain part of a dungeon gear piece cost using the generic tokens.

For example: require a minimum of 1/3 tokens from the specific dungeon and up to 2/3 generic tokens. This way having dungeon gear still means you have ran this specific dungeon a significant amount of time, but you never feel not properly rewarded if you go to a different dungeon for a change.

If you’re not interested in 42k karma exotics or any legendaries then you can only either use it as a way to save some gold by buying gathering/salvage tools or buy green gear and drop to Mystic Forge to create sellables (might need to mix with a sellable green as 4 karma greens have created another unsellable karma green for me).

Wazabi.1439:

Also there’s NO WAY direct trading option would have any impact on the global economy.

Yes there is actually. TP is a form of gold sink to control inflation. Adding P2P without cost diminishes the inflation control mechanism. Adding a cost to P2P makes it no difference than TP.

If someone wants to sell a very rare or buy a very rare item, they can post it on TP with no risk of scam, and get done with it. Everyone can see it, and anyone can fill that order even when you’re offline. The alternative in P2P is you’ll have to advertise your intention with WTB/WTS in chat actively. TP seems more efficient and easy.

It can’t be that – trading by mail is also getting around the gold sink. A direct trade interface would be simply a safer way to do that. I’m sure that over 99% of trade volume would still happen on the TP anyway so the effect on the economy would be completely negligible.

About the rare items you can’t be more wrong. Have a look at the top exotics, some of them aren’t available for sale at all, and some have gigantic spread between top buy and sell orders. Putting an item on the TP does NOT guarantee a sale! Often you’ll end up being undercut over and over again and lose a lot of money on reposting or wait for days and see the price drop.

Current state of the game is ridiculous. I stand near a person who has something that I want and I have something he wants but we cannot safely exchange the items without RISK!

DusK.3849:

Yawg.1294:

As far as I know ALL the +10 exp food are actually +10% and it’s just wrong description. Having tested a bunch of them they clearly increase the base exp by 10%, no matter if the 10% is more or less than 10 points.

If this is the case, filling out a bug report on it wouldn’t be a bad idea. I think there’s a section in UI for spelling errors.

This is the case and I have reported it during beta, then again a month later as it wasn’t fixed.

Exploit was fixed long ago but real damage was done by the overly cautious devs – karma items can no longer be sold to vendor or even salvaged! So because of this nerf any upgrades you put on karma items are lost!

As far as I know ALL the +10 exp food are actually +10% and it’s just wrong description. Having tested a bunch of them they clearly increase the base exp by 10%, no matter if the 10% is more or less than 10 points.

SOLUTION: When a spammer gets a certain number of reports for spamming his account should be automatically muted until his case is reviewed by a GM. This way spammers won’t be having several hours of spamming action until manually banned.
Warning: abuse of this feature (reporting innocent players) can lead to your account getting banned.

The lack of P2P trading was one of my biggest disappointments about this game – such a big step back in the genre! While the TP is good enough for 99% of our trading needs it’s not perfect for everything and has many downsides (and I don’t even mean the fees).

I see NO single good reason not to have direct trading interface in this game. Just implement it well:
- make it clearly display what items are offered,
- and let us price check offered items with a single click (just how we can “buy more on TP” item in our inventory)
so there’s no possibility of doing any tricks.

Also there’s NO WAY direct trading option would have any impact on the global economy. Even if some players would waste time trying to sell or buy something locally at a different price it would be a drop in the ocean of global trades.

While I had only good experience with trading by mail, it was only very low value items so I wasn’t risking much. But what if someone has or wants something very rare and expensive? Why do we have to take risks? Even if I report a scammer I most likely won’t get the item/money back, he’ll get a couple days ban and that’s all.
Also, why have all the extra work for support team when a direct trade interface done right would be enough?

The biggest problem with Hammer has always been the lack of synergy between its skills.
While the individual skills are very powerful at what they do they just don’t work that well together. If I launch a target I can no longer hit it, if I immobilize a distant target that’s also of little use for me. These types of skills would better fit on a ranged weapon.
Of course I can imagine having an organized dungeon or PvP team making good use out of each of the hammer skills, but the lack of synergy in of itself isn’t good for solo or chaos (open word pve, wvw).

I’m not that much of an alt’o’holic to even make 1 of each of existing 5 races, but… I’d make a Tengu instantly!
Also, I’d play a Kodan over a Norn any day

Loading Screen Wars! So many portals and separate zones in this game. I’m watching over 30 loading screens each day and they’re really boring me to death. However I haven’t noticed them to get longer, they’re already very very long and have always been.
Some locations however were always taking much longer to load than others, Lions Arch is the sad winner there (I no longer use free travel to LA as a way to cut my maptravel costs, I’d rather spend 4s).
BTW, I’m strongly considering buying an SSD for GW2, does anyone have experience with that? If it cuts the waiting by half I’d consider it worth it.

OP: No, no and no! Trading Post is FAR from dead and works almost perfectly – when there are no terribad limitations it can reflect the state of the economy the most accurately. Most blue and green items are just so common that there’s no buying power in the world that would buy them no matter what. Note the market for rares looks way better balanced.

My SOLUTION is going the opposite way – allow BUYING from anywhere! Help the demand side instead of nerfing our ability to sell! I mean item delivery through mail without the need to pick up personally (just like it works for the gem store). It could also be an additional optional gold sink – let us click on items that wait for pickup -> mail to me (pay 10c, for example)

I trade a lot and gotta agree, typing numbers in the Trading Post can be quite a challenge. The interface is inconsistent, the same actions don’t always yield the same results. And some strange ‘refreshings’ of values or even changing to a different number by itself while I try to type or . It’s hard to describe but I’m quite annoyed by sometimes having to type the same number 2-3 times.

These problems appear in every number field on the TP, buying, selling, or gem exchange.

ITT: People got no idea that even if all players were fully aware of all the fees and how much money exactly are they losing it would make NO DIFFERENCE.

It wouldn’t make you able to sell your items for more!

If everyone took all the fees into consideration and even didn’t want to pay even 1c for convenience of clearing bags anywhere, they would simply list them at 15% higher than vendor price – effectively getting the same.

What’s wrong about cheap items?

Problem is the prices aren’t set by players but by an algorithm that adjusts it live based on buy and sell trade volumes, with the starting price set arbitrarily. The ENORMOUS spread (fees) results in no possibility to gain any profit by playing this market (like a stock market I mean) and overall it doesn’t feel like it was player driven at all (even if it somewhat is).