Guild Wars 2

I can understand why people wouldn’t want such skins to be tradable. When they spent real money or gold trying to obtain a ticket, it was directly stated that the skins were exclusive, limited time items. ArenaNet has clearly listened to player feedback on this issue and has changed their stance, which I think is a good thing for the game and the community. But I also think that punishing people that supported them isn’t the best way to go about making that change. Providing a mechanism that lets players remove the account bound status on unused skins is, imo anyway, a must.

morganabanana.3517:

This announcement made my day.

Will this include Pristine Fractal Relics?

I would assume so. It’d be a strange oversight not to include those since they’re a type of currency.

(ArenaNet: “Oh #@$*! Quick! Add those to the list!”)

^ Support might be able to refund laurels and destroy the ring that Empire purchased (skeptical that they’ll do much). And ANet should probably clarify what “unique” means in-game. However, you cannot equip two of the same items that are stated as being unique. This isn’t a bug. It’s the design of the “unique” tag on items.

If you want to wear two ascended rings/trinkets with the same stats, you can accomplish this in two ways. Infuse one of the rings (as Jeffrey mentioned above) or wear one of the alternative rings with a different type of infusion slot (i.e., buy a ring with an offensive infusion slot and one with a defensive infusion slot). In this case, the Crystalline Band (defensive infusion slot) and Red Ring of Death (offensive infusion slot) would accomplish this. Both rings are power, precision, crit damage and have the same stats.

Buttercup.5871:

The whole thing makes no sense, a skin is a skin, this is probably the only time in my history of 10 years of MMO’ing I’d encourage people to do it. And I am strict on following the rules, more than anyone probably.

I agree. I’m generally someone that’s incredibly strict when it comes to following the rules in online games. I refuse to exploit to beat bosses in dungeons/fractals and I intensely dislike other exploits, much to the annoyance of some fellow gamers.

Moreover, I have not seen anyone from Anet stating this is an exploit, and I cannot imagine they will as there is no way to enforce it (benefit < manpower). Never issue a warning you can’t enforce. The lawyers at Anet will know this adagium all too well.

Well, I didn’t actually receive a warning. My posts referencing the “exploit” were simply deleted along with other people’s. That was the reasoning given for the deletion even though it hasn’t been officially stated as being an exploit. On one hand, I can understand why it might be considered an exploit. It’s clearly a game bug. And yet at the same time it’s so stupidly easy to do and can even be done by mistake because it’s a game feature. And to make matters even more muddled, there are literally no differences in the descriptions of the items to suggest that they’re different. The only difference is one still has an account bound flag set and the other does not. The former doesn’t even say “account bound.”

It’s why I’ve stated that I’d like to see a developer supported method for updating existing skins rather than this, “sorry but you’re screwed if you decided to buy a skin before August 20” approach. It makes absolutely no sense.

For the record, I haven’t done this myself, but I may consider doing it in the future.

I admit that I’ve done this but it didn’t even occur to me that it might be an exploit. I simply wanted to sell the skin because it was just sitting in my bank and thought it’d be better in the hands of someone that actually wanted it. I did the same thing with WvW blueprints because it was more efficient than using and repacking over 100 of them.

An unused skin is an unused skin. The artificial distinction being created is beyond absurd.

Completely agreed.

Josh Davis.6015:

Only newly obtained skins in select sets are tradable. In the past, we intended those skins to be account-bound and not tradable. After the change, these skins will remain account-bound and not tradable. We will continue to monitor the value of those skins, but at this time, there is no plan to make tradability retroactive.

Wow. I really didn’t see that coming. This makes absolute NO sense whatsoever. People that decided to use their tickets are punished and those that decided to hang onto them (for whatever reason) can make a nice little profit. That’s just perfect. I’ve been highly supportive of ArenaNet for years and this is something I simply cannot support. At all. All along these skins have been account bound and there was no indication that this would be changed for older skins. Changing this without warning is highly unfair. Not making it retroactive is just ridiculous.

It feels like little more than a giant “screw you” and that is not a good feeling. At the very least we should be able to trade our existing skin(s) for a new copy of an identical skin that can be traded.

Having ascended gear will definitely improve some of the numbers but it isn’t necessary to hit high DPS. Is it necessary to hit the highest DPS? Yes, because it has the highest stats.

But I wouldn’t discount a player simply because they don’t have all ascended gear. We have no idea when the OP started playing the game or when they started working on ascended gear for this character. And whatever the case, exotic gear is more than adequate to be effective in this game as it currently stands.

So basically, it doesn’t matter what we say. Everything is a festival regardless of word definitions, real world examples, or information directly from the game itself. I get what you’re trying to say about the current living story. There’s too much focus on mini games and not enough focus on bigger events. I agree. I just don’t agree that the inclusion of mini games automatically makes something a festival. At the moment, we’ve largely seen multiple seemingly unconnected short stories.

You may want to read this interview if you’re concerned about the story (or lack thereof):
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/exclusive-interview-arenanets-bobby-stein

It sounds like they have some much bigger plans coming in the future.

This is easily the best new addition to the game in quite a while. Thank you!

I haven’t gone through every post in this thread (although I’ve read quite a few) so what I’m about to say may have already been covered.

I think one of the best ways to approach horizontal progression/cosmetics/etc. is to treat the various skins in the game as unlocks on a player’s account. Once you’ve unlocked a particular skin, that skin should always be usable on your account. You should be able to select the skin you want to use for each armor piece or weapon without having to transmute it. If there’s a small fee associated with applying the change to the armor that’s fine. It would give the choice some weight without being overly punishing.

I think the same should be true of stats with ascended gear. We should be able to select stats as we currently can with legendary weapons. Make it a reasonable Mystic Forge recipe if necessary to add that functionality to an item (by “reasonable” I mean make it so it takes a little work to do but doesn’t require stacks of hard to obtain or super expensive items). The armor and weapons take so much time and money to make that having to go through the same grind for every build you want to play is just ridiculous. I’m ok with some vertical progression (there needs to be a limit as far gear tiers go, though) but I think the current system punishes build diversity. That isn’t good for anyone and it certainly isn’t good for the long-term health of the game. It also seems to go against the design philosophy of the Guild Wars series, which has always put an emphasis on your build and your play style rather than raw numbers.

This core problem exists to some extent with every tier of gear. But it’s most apparent when dealing with ascended weapons and armor. I have more flexibility with exotic gear than I do with the super expensive high tier armor and weapons because they’re so easily obtained. Need new stats because of a major revamp in a trait/trait line/set of skills? Easy. Just craft or obtain some new exotic gear. This can be done in a matter of minutes to a matter of days depending on the methods used for obtaining it. If you apply this to ascended armor and weapons, any changes to traits or skills that render a particular build useless would require you to essentially start from scratch. You could be set back up to 25 days just because of skill/trait balances.

I think that’s a big problem. It’s needlessly punishing for players. Players shouldn’t be punished on that level for skill and trait balances. We should be forced to adapt of course but it shouldn’t be at the cost of potentially months worth of work crafting gear. That’s the kind of thing that can cause even the most devoted fans to abandon the game in frustration.

If I’ve invested that much time and money into a set of armor or a weapon, I shouldn’t be punished and lose flexibility for opting to go that route. It should feel like there’s some long-term benefit to crafting that armor/weapon beyond a marginal stat increase and the ability to put infusions on it. Being able to change its stats and its appearance at will would be a good way to accomplish that feeling without making it too easy to obtain or giving anyone too much of an unfair advantage. You would be rewarding time and effort with convenience rather than forcing people to grind just to try new things.

Last night I went around and did several world boss events (Tequatl, The Shatterer, Risen Priest of Melandru, Risen High Wizard off the top of my head) and in most cases the bonus chest appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. However, occasionally, the chest doesn’t appear at all and the item that should be contained in it goes directly to my inventory.

I hadn’t fought the Risen High Wizard in about a week and I was rather confused when the bonus chest didn’t appear after defeating him. But then I took a closer look at my inventory and there was a single rare item that wasn’t there before he was defeated.

I’m not sure how to reproduce this issue as it seems to be rather random whether it occurs or not. In most cases the chest appears as it should but every now and then the item just gets sent directly to my inventory. Other people at the high wizard event were saying the same thing has been happening to them.

This only seems to happen for the bonus chests after fighting world bosses. The other bonus chests from fractals, daily/monthly achievements, etc. always appear.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

All three of what you listed are part of living story, not just the bazaar… and yes, a bazaar is a festival.

A bazaar is most definitely not a festival. It’s a market.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bazaar

All we’ve done in this chapter, excluding the trials, are festival activities. There was little to no story content at all.

Surely the election will play a role in the story at a later point?

Apparently the method I discussed earlier in this thread and in the other thread linked to is an “exploit.” Unbelievable. I had no idea that doing what I described was an “exploit.” Am I allowed to use other existing game features or will that be considered an exploit in the future too? Can I deposit items in my bank? Can I sort my inventory? Ridiculous.

If you don’t want people to use that method or sell certain skins (despite the fact that they’ve also supported ArenaNet) perhaps you should make it so you simply cannot sell any of the skins and stop promoting people getting rich off of a poor design decision and/or technical limitation. Period. Or come up with a legitimate method to allow people to trade skins that they bought before the August 20 update.

I’m normally on your side, ArenaNet, but the way this has been handled is just plain poor. Deleting my posts has just soured me even more on this matter.

I’m also having all of these problems.

And I should clarify: all of these issues appear to be visual for me. It doesn’t look like I’ve actually lost any progress. I still have access to all of my skills and traits, my achievement point total remains unchanged, I still have all achievement related titles, etc. It just looks like all of those things have been lost.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Zedd.8239:

A bazaar is a market.

If we’re talking about the Middle East, then yes, a bazaar is a market. But in other cultures -specifically american, and I believe, European cultures- it is a temporary market, a festive market, and generally comes but once or twice a year.

The concept of a bazaar is hardly unique to the Middle East. Many other cultures have their own words for this type of market. Bazaar is just a more commonly used word.

In the context of this event, it’s clearly intended to be a temporary market. The Zephyr Sanctum arrived in Tyria and setup a market to sell various items from other parts of the world. There’s no reason why such a thing can’t be festive but calling it a festival is simply inaccurate. It’s a market first and foremost.

I bought 30 of these crates and only managed to get useless candy and a single mini. If that had been real money, that would have been $35. For consumables. I love you, ANet, but this is complete BS.

I’m actually perfectly fine with the current ranged options for my guardian. The range is outstanding for 2 out of the 3 scepter skills. Both Orb of Wrath and Smite have a range of 1200. Only Chains of Light has a shorter range of 900. My only real issue is the slowness of Orb of Wrath. Other than that, I think the scepter does a decent amount of ranged damage. It certainly isn’t going to win any awards for having high, sustained DPS. However, I don’t use it because I want to do massive damage. I use it more for Smite and Chains of Light.

I get that people feel neglected because the guardian can’t do massive amounts of damage at a distance (Smite is crazy good if you have a high crit chance and can snare your target). But I think the limited ranged options says a lot about their design goals for the class.

The whole class is built around the concept of always being in the thick of battle, while buffing and supporting those around them. There are many ways to accomplish this task of course. I think giving the guardian a stronger ranged weapon would make the class way too powerful. It’s already extremely powerful.

Having said that, it would be nice if the scepter had a symbol skill associated with it. Maybe turn Smite into a symbol that has a chance to cripple your target(s) while also providing a boon for allies?

Celebratty.1632:

What difference is there to the people wanting to do the story? If they weren’t here farming, they were going to be somewhere else, not doing this event.

They’re talking about people that want to get into Arah to complete their personal story.

So now we need to grind the frak out of WvW to get the 500 badges for a Gift of Battle. Wonderful. I usually get about 2-3 badges in massive fights. The drop rate is abysmal outside of the jumping puzzles. I can’t say I appreciate this change at all.

What is the rationale behind this change, if you don’t mind me asking? I can understand wanting to limit siege blueprints since they’re account bound now. But limiting badges even more than they already are? I’m sorry but that just doesn’t sit well with me.

The problem is this isn’t actually an activity. It’s a full-blown series of instances that act more like a dungeon than an activity. I’d like to see it eventually become a permanent addition to the game but not as an activity since it isn’t really one.

Lauranda.1342:

Why does it have to be a conspiracy?

It’s how people are acting. “ArenaNet is intentionally screwing over their playerbase.” That’s a conspiracy. Why would any sane business want to do that to their customers?

How about they screwed the pooch again and it’s getting old.

That’s something else entirely, and I agree that it’s getting old. It’s frustrating as a customer. As a developer, I’m a little more forgiving given the tight time schedule they’re on to develop this stuff. Having said that, QA seems to be dropping the ball a lot this year.

There were only 2 things in the several MB hot fix yesterday and this was one of them. How did it get screwed up?

It’s possible it was included in the update notes as fixed and then removed at the last minute because it wasn’t actually fixed. Or we could go the conspiracy route and assume that ArenaNet did this to screw us over.

Faux.1937:

Do you know what an exploit even is? Your taking advantage of a mechanic that should not be used, the game wasnt made to use a dead body as a way to help you get pass a section.

Um, yes. I do know what an exploit is. I also know how basic physics works. If you stand on a pressure plate to cause a mechanism to trigger, it shouldn’t matter if you’re dead or alive to trigger it. The weight of the person standing on it is what triggers it. If you could place a rock or some other heavy object on it that would also work.

My point is that this isn’t exploiting a game mechanic to get past the puzzle. It’s how the mechanic works. It wouldn’t make any sense if a dead body didn’t trigger a pressure point in the same way as a living one. Calling this particular physics “trick” an exploit is ignoring the very core of the way the mechanism works in the first place. It would completely defy logic to not have the pressure plates work when downed or defeated. You don’t weigh any less when you’re dead.

These pressure plates should be functional regardless of whether the person standing on them is alive or dead. This seems like a fair and legitimate strategy. It may not be the best strategy since you have to die but it works. At the same time it also takes 2 out of the 5 players completely out of commission and puts the group at a possible disadvantage.

Teleporting through walls, jumping over invisible objects, climbing to locations not intended to be reachable, and stacking in strange locations to take advantage of enemy AI is not fair strategy. That is exploiting because you’re taking advantage of a game bug to progress. Standing on a pressure plate is how this particular mechanic was designed. It’s even in other parts of the game and you often need to place other objects on them to proceed. Alive or dead doesn’t matter. The plate is still pressed and the puzzle is solved.

Im saying no matter what you do lots of members of your party will die or wipe unless you have certain classes, and changed to those classes shouldnt be the only way.

The way I see it is quite simple. If you start doing high level scaling content that’s also intended to be challenging, then having to swap certain classes out to get past certain sections without using exploits may actually be necessary. Not all classes have the necessary tools to achieve certain goals.

A home console would be so full of win. I’m not getting my hopes up though.

100% agreed. It’s an absolute nightmare to kill the holo minions for the exact reasons described in this thread. They’re so incredibly easy to grief, and like the Dragon Ball food exploit that existed before the last patch, people are doing exactly that.

As cool as it would be to be able to fire light arrows from a bow, bows really don’t make any sense for guardians. It’s difficult to explain why I feel that way but bows just don’t seem to fit.

The way I see it, if you want to play a heavily armored class and use a bow, warriors provide that option.

Azoqu.8917:

Sadly I can’t agree with you on the 1h sword because I just find it totally useless along with the mace. I know some people love the mace but the only use I can find is if you’re in a dungeon with another guardian and they are using the hammer then the mace is amazing.

I use a mace/shield all the time on my guardian and it definitely isn’t useless. You just need to learn how to play with it. It works incredibly well with some builds. The survivability a mace can provide is quite impressive. I can understand if a mace doesn’t fit your play style or your build. But useless? Um, no. Far from it.

It definitely doesn’t require a hammer guardian to be effective. Having a second guardian around is always a plus regardless of the weapons you’re using. But maces don’t require another guardian to be good.

It isn’t just you. It’s price gouging. Simple as that. If you could buy a permanent version of this upgrade, I’d probably get it (provided that it’s reasonably priced). But 250 gem, single use items is absurd. It’s approximately $3.13 per USE. This is a quality of life item that shouldn’t be in the gem store. There should be an alternate way to perform this task in the game without having to sink that much gold into an item.

There’s actually an easier way to fix this that doesn’t require support at all:

https://account.guildwars2.com/recovery

Choose to unlink your old authenticator after you provide the info required above, log into your account, and setup the new authenticator app.

Google really needed to provide some sort of warning before they decided to destroy all existing account configuration. That was really quite poor on their part.

I think treating tokens, relics, badges, etc. like a collectible would be a good start. But for many (most) of these currencies people need WAY more than 250 to get anything of note. So I don’t think that would ultimately solve the problem. Treating them like laurels, gems, karma, and gold would be a great improvement. There are way too many currencies to put them all at the bottom of the inventory. Perhaps they could be added to the Hero window somehow?

Reducing the dungeon tokens down to a single currency would kind of defeat the purpose of the unique tokens for each dungeon. I don’t think it would make sense to be able to get armor from the Ruined City of Arah, for example, by doing Ascalonian Catacombs.

These achievements are pretty reasonable. There are lots of options to choose from to max the meta achievement. You aren’t forced to gamble or do any sort of PvP. PvP doesn’t even count toward the meta achievement.

I’m not sure what rich coffers/chests or real money have to do with achievements. You don’t need either to complete them.

I’m actually hoping it is a component. I have 54 charged quartz sitting in my bank doing nothing at the moment and it’d be nice to be able to put them to use on something other than celestial weapons and armor that I don’t currently have a use for. That doesn’t mean it needs to be a huge component of course. It should be reasonable.

The problem is not all elites have the same function. They can’t really be directly compared to each other. Many are situational. They’re “elite” because they provide some powerful functionality that other skills don’t provide. Or they’re more powerful versions of existing skills.

Having to manually use skills after using a tome makes the skill more powerful in some ways since the player gets to choose when to use the abilities. It gives the player choices. In the hands of someone skilled and experienced, that’s a very good thing. It’s up to the player to make the elite powerful by how they use it.

Something like Renewed Focus seems rather mundane at first glance but it greatly depends on the traits you’ve chosen. If you choose the right traits, it’s extremely good.

I think people are confusing “in-game cinematic” with “game trailer.” The video shown at the end was a trailer for Heart of Thorns, not a game cinematic. It was a preview of what’s to come. The living story episode ended before the trailer was shown. The episode ended with…

I don’t really see how this is an issue. It was a great surprise for those who played through the episode and it was a great way to get the news out about the next big GW2 thing without spoiling the surprise for people playing.

I agree. This has been bothering me for a while.

DR makes sense in many of the areas in the core game since events are spread out enough that you have to really jump around and do a lot of events to get it to trigger. I rarely ever see it trigger. But it doesn’t make any sense in the newer areas like the Silverwastes, Dry Top, and all of the HoT areas. It’s absolutely absurd to be playing in the new areas in the intended way and getting punished for doing so.

If the DR code absolutely has to stay, then it needs to be relaxed significantly in the newer areas where the intention is to have players do tons of events. That is the entire point of every new area added to the game since launch except for Southsun Cove. Punishing people for playing as intended doesn’t make any sense.

Banned? Um, what? I did this puzzle last night and I haven’t been banned. I consistently fell through the platform and died and had to restart the puzzle each time. But I wasn’t banned.

Obtena.7952:

Shiro Tegachii.5619:

after about 11,000 hours in Anet’s game. my money seems to be more important then my satesfaction for them….

Is this serious … you played 11000 hours and you don’t think you got your due satisfactions from the price you paid?

#unreasonableexpectations

Assuming that the core game was bought at full retail price and that HoT was also bought, that works out to about $0.01 per hour. That is rather expensive… (sarcasm)

I ran into the same issue. The first thing I did when logging in after updating was go to the vendor in the Mists to buy the new cleric’s rings and infuse them for my guardian…only to be met with this issue and disappointment.

Thankfully, they know about this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/New-ascended-rings-can-t-be-infused/first#post1518460

In the meantime, you can still get infused versions of the new rings from Fractals of the Mists as part of the daily reward. I’ve seen people link infused versions of the rings in map chat a few times. You won’t necessarily get what you want of course but there’s a chance.

Corvus.5430:

I’m starting to wonder if it’s not ready yet. It’s sure easy to put loads of pay content on Gem store yet when it comes time to something already paid for POOR service!

Putting content in the gem store isn’t remotely the same as fixing bugs in the game itself. Have some patience. They’ll fix it. There are plenty of other things to do in Heart of Thorns in the meantime.

ArenaNet’s service for Heart of Thorns has been incredibly good so far. The speed at which they have been fixing bugs is impressive and so is the smoothness of the launch.

The amount of negativity in this thread is pretty ridiculous. You guys realize that this is intended to be fun, right? This isn’t an election for the leader of a real country or even the leader of Kryta. It’s for a city council seat in Lion’s Arch. Whoever wins will no doubt have an impact on where the story goes next but it isn’t like we’re determining the fate of the game or something.

I highly doubt ArenaNet has stacked anything in favor of Evon Gnashblade. They’ve presented two characters with strengths and weaknesses and they’re leaving the outcome to players. Just because devs have stated that they favor specific candidates doesn’t mean they are trying to get players to vote along with them. And so what if they are? The last time I checked, they play and care about this game just as much as us (if not more so since it’s their creation). They can’t vote or campaign along with the rest of us?

If your preferred candidate doesn’t win, are we going to be having threads about recounts, voter fraud, and so on? I really think people are taking this way too seriously. Support who appeals to you more and just have fun with it. The gem store will make ArenaNet money regardless of who wins. Enough with the conspiracy theories.

Farzo.8410:

Eh… Pretty lame. I’m all for finishers but it just becomes too lame if they try to make hip and silly finishers.

The SAB music interest me though…

They’ve had “hip and silly” finishers for quite a while now. I mean, is this really much sillier than a cow landing on someone? Or a snowman landing on someone?

I’m really glad that a fix for this is in the works. It isn’t a game breaking issue but it certainly is annoying. Thanks for the update on this!

AysonCurrax.3254:

that is, if there is actually a version control software being used, which i dearly hope so… otherwise i dont know what i am supposed to think of this anymore.

ArenaNet is a multi-million dollar game development company. The Guild Wars 2 source code is hundreds of thousands of lines (that’s a conservative estimate, by the way). No one does serious software development with millions of dollars on the line and teams of programmers without version control. Even open source projects use it. ArenaNet is using version control. It’s absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that they might not be.

And while it might be easy to figure out where something went wrong in a small code repository, when you have a game as large and as complex as Guild Wars 2, it isn’t just a matter of using a diff command or examining every single line of code that’s been changed. For starters, there are likely way too many changes to go through them one at a time unless you know exactly which system the problem is occurring in.

Without knowing exactly what’s causing the bug, it’s also impossible to look at code changes and expect to see something useful. Sometimes if you happen to look at exactly the right section of code something might stand out to you as wrong. But if you’re dealing with a very large program (e.g., such as GW2), that isn’t the most efficient approach to solving the problem. The various subsystems in GW2 interact in very complex ways. Extensive testing needs to be done to isolate the bug first. Then the code can be more closely examined and a fix can be written.

If you don’t do that, then you run the risk of breaking even more stuff or not truly fixing the bug you set out to fix. And then you’ve just wasted valuable programmer and QA time accomplishing nothing particularly useful.

Firefly.5982:

Honestly…if you go to low lvl zones to have an easy farm, you better be competing with hundreds of people. Move to high lvl zones, barely anyone around there and most people that are, are actually waiting a little before activating. So – maybe instead of QQing about the system, you should think about finding your own solution?

That’s a good idea…except that it doesn’t work because the same exact problem is happening in obscure zones as well.

Breaking news: Every drop in this game uses RNG. There’s a chance to get a precursor from a world boss chest. There’s a chance to get a tier 6 crafting material from risen. There’s a chance to get a rare drop when fighting any enemy in the game. Need I go on?

The monocle sounds more like the jet pack from the Molten Facility dungeon than the weapon claim tickets. It’s a drop from the dungeon, not an RNG box. I’m not sure what the big deal here is. The only issue I can see is it will require you to play the dungeon if you want the item. (I know. How dare we have to play the game to get something? What kind of backwards concept is this anyway? /sarcasm)

If it isn’t account bound on acquire, then you’ll be able to buy it on the TP if you don’t get lucky. In that scenario, people that can’t get it as a drop will be happy and those that don’t want it will be able to sell it. I’m having trouble seeing what the problem is in this case. What you’ve quoted isn’t the same thing as the dragon coffers. Like, at all.

Alleluia.1320:

I haven’t actually been able to get in game to do these yet, but from what I’ve read here, can’t you all just ask to group up with the ppl already camping and agree to take turns killing the holograms? Or coordinate your attacks so you hit them together?

That’s a good idea in theory. The problem is all it takes is one person to not care about anyone else in the area and kill them before you have a chance to tag the enemies. They drop insanely fast if you have a high damage build. It’s griefing akittens finest.

Edit: Why is a swear filter being applied to my post? The word “at” followed by “its” is swearing? lol

Being able to get the toy frames and glue/stuffing/cogs would have been a great thing to keep. It’s really quite odd that it wasn’t kept.

So player behavior has absolutely NO impact on ArenaNet’s decisions? They just make their decisions in a vacuum to screw over players and to prevent us from making money? I find that very difficult to believe.

Erasmus:

The bad thing about smite is that it’s short and, like most AoE skills, the enemy can just walk right out of it.

Assuming that you don’t take any steps to ensure that the enemy stays in the radius for as long as possible, then yes it’s bad. But that isn’t exactly what I’d call a smart use of Smite. It works great with AoE chill skills (like the ones elementalists have) and there are other AoE snare skills that it works well with too. It doesn’t mean it isn’t viable or that it’s worthless. It just means you need to be smart about how and when you use it. At the very least you can use Chains of Light on your target first and immediately hit them with Smite. It isn’t perfect since it isn’t snaring more than one target. But it can still do massive damage if you use it right.

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re in a group with a single other Condition player though then you might as well just go AFK. Conditon damage is fine for solo PvE but it’s horrible for Dungeons (and I say that as someone who loves Condition builds in theory and wishes that they were viable).

Condition damage is “horrible for dungeons?” Really? Then I must be playing my conditions elementalist “wrong.” I also must not have been nearly as effective as I thought I was in a level 42 fractal run last night either.

Conditions are incredibly good for dungeons. It isn’t all about critical damage. Perhaps they aren’t as effective for some classes in dungeons. I don’t know as I only play a few classes. But saying they’re horrible in dungeons isn’t remotely accurate. With the right builds and play styles they are extremely effective. Not everything is about raw damage in dungeons.

Alleluia.1320:

Take away the “a” in the beginning and notice what is spelled. lol

Oh geez. lol

And I still think that simply talking to the campers will help, at least in many cases. Or camping a spawn yourself and then offering to group with people you see around. If you want community, it just seems you’ll have to put some effort in to it this time instead of just the passive sense of community that occurs with, say, dynamic events. At the least, don’t just assume people camping the spawn points are going to be jerks about it before you even bring up the suggestion of working together. Talk to them, give them a chance. I find life tends to go easier that way.

/2cents

In many cases I think that’s fine. The issue is the random person running up, activating the holo emitter, and then killing the mob before anyone can say anything. I’ve had people repeatedly do that to me. Talking to the people that do that has usually resulted in a very rude comment. It’s people like that that this needs to be changed for. Most people are fine with it. It’s just the jerks that run up and steal the kills that are the problem. This is really like resource nodes in other MMOs. Guild Wars 2 is above that kind of approach, IMO.

I think this is a really good idea.

Other than the change to scepters, I don’t think these changes really impact my support build that much (if at all). The change to Mace of Justice is certainly quite nice, though. Overall, a pretty underwhelming list of changes.

I bought a few costumes in Guild Wars 1 outright because I knew exactly what I was getting for my money. I’m willing to do the same in Guild Wars 2 to support ArenaNet if I know exactly what I’m getting/what my odds are. For example, I bought one of the panda hats. And I’ve bought the unlimited harvesting tools. Personally, I’d rather just buy an item I want directly and not have to put up with these RNG boxes that only have a “rare chance” of getting me what I actually want. If I’m paying real money for something, I want to know what I’m getting.

These RNG boxes have really soured my opinion of ArenaNet. They’re nothing more than a scheme to make a quick profit. It’s a really poor business model for the long term. In the short term it’s probably fine since there will be people that fall for it (hell, I fell for it initially and I feel terrible about it). In the long run, I think this strategy is going to hurt sales more than help them. At the very least it’s going to create a lot of very disgruntled customers and that is NOT good for the health or longevity of a game.

I think Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet, and the living story are all great. But this RNG weapon ticket strategy is something I simply cannot support. I think it’s rather dishonest and it does more to hurt the game/community than it does to help it. I’ve read so many posts about people getting tickets and not even caring about the weapons while people that really want them have spent tons of gold/real money and farmed an ungodly number of hours just for a chance to get them. Yet they haven’t found a single ticket. There’s something seriously wrong with this, especially if real money is in play. It isn’t rewarding for players who genuinely work at obtaining something to repeatedly get burned over and over again. It damages player morale, it isn’t fun, and it ultimately just lowers player opinion of ArenaNet.