Guild Wars 2

Looking at Guildwars 2 and thinking all the current mobs are just standing around in the same not doing anything just waiting for us to attack then.

I remember a old interview where it was stated that world mobs wouldn’t be standing in the same spot waiting for players to come and kill them set on respawn timers.

And yes this is exactly what happens in the game and thinking about it its kinda disappointing to see.

Is there any way the mobs can be patrolling like what was stated to give some randomness to the maps making them more exciting and unique.

Currently the way it is I could point map every single mob on a map with all their details etc which some people may have done already or are doing.

I don’t want to just see static mobs doing absolutely nothing waiting for us to come into their aggro range, I want to see mobs doing things instead and going about there business etc.

Its something Anet said they wouldn’t do and would be different from other mmo’s.

Josh you talk about engine limitations quite abit being a issue for 90% of ideas etc.

If the engine designers can add more features and fix up the game engine not only will that benefit your SAB project but it will allow allow for new and exciting game mechanics in the core game for future content.

Its a win-win situation for benefiting the overall game and the SAB which everyone soo much loves.

The amount of feedback and community love the SAB is getting from players and the frustrations means that these engine limitations if looked on by the engine team would be development money well spent as I read the pax notes and O’Brian said char wasn’t updated etc because of lack if interest and that affects how much resources are allocated.

With the SAB there’s a massive interest in it and game engine improvements from the community from what I am seeing so with soo much interest it it would be well spent money as mentioned anet could add the mechanics into other areas of the game.

Imagine seeing logs floating down rivers in the normal game playable zones etc or more real time combat mechanics against mobs and other players in WvW Mists, etc.

Imagine the possibilities to enhance the core game to breath a newer life into it as well as your project.

Josh I love your level designs start of world 2 was very fresh with the frogger style things and river ride absolutely beautiful stuff to the point I was giggling with tears in my eyes how great it all looked.

Also love the direct inspiration from the old style Zelda games etc.

Don’t give up because of the difficulty the ideas are great etc but can be improved as yes its crazy hard but that can be dealt with without sacrificing anything special as I outline below.

The level designs are tops but mechanics are frustrating and just too darn hard that w2 I ended up having to checkpoint my way through 80% of it all till where we couldn’t proceed without the upgraded torch, here are some mechanic changes that would make w2 more rewarding and more normal to those that have played such games on the N64 and prior like I have.

Combat: this is simply too hard in my opinion, I’m going out of my way to buy a Razor Naga 2014 mouse next week, specifically to get better access to pressing skill buttons.

I get hit and lose a heart or die before I can launch a skill most of the time which is not fun.

If its the game engine causing that because of the different combat mechanic in SAB its not a good thing and needs to be tweaked go back look at zelda and compare how hard combat is there to SAB, it is allot more forgiving in Zelda due to the engine of the game being more fluid, hard still yes but more forgiving.

SAB needs better combat responsiveness and more fluidity for how its designed if you can achieve this its a big plus to how it plays and will change everything combat wise.

The water area world 2: the constant rapids and bad ragdoll is not fun at all this needs to be fixed as no matter what once you fall off a spout or anything you’re dead regardless.

The way I would address this is if the engine allows it, a push backwards in the water for the currents soo you can still get out and retry that area a bit back without losing a life, not the crazy health loss and immobilization ragdoll that kills you currently.

This is how the other games work on N64 Zelda etc and how I expected it to be in SAB the instanta death in water is not good also heath degradation should be doubled or tripled for length in water so it takes longer to die allowing you to get out safely and continue on.

Air: While air has insta death I think a better option is instead falling into air you should lose 1 heart instead and if you fall 4 times you loose a life its more forgiving this way to the players but still is a thing you don’t want to do.

Mario had mushrooms where you fall you lose the bigger mario and any Mario upgrades like fire flower and go to small Mario, then if you fell a second time you lost a life, if you were on small you lost a life also lives were easier to get in Mario than here.

Zelda you lost a heart each time and you appeared next to where you fell open world or start of the room in a dungeon when you fell so you didn’t have to do it all again starting from the beginning, which I expected this to be as its based allot on Zelda.

Torch upgrade: we simply had no idea this was needed as we couldn’t even the gibberish’d npc talk to know what we needed to do, in the end I had to google it after we sat there for 40 mins trying to work it out.

More dialog in the SAB is needed in telling us what we need to do if it’s an Asura learning center then we need to be learning with hints and messages not left to work everything out ourselves.

This SAB really feels like buy a gem store item to play and progress as mentioned above, if this is how you guys at ArenaNet are planning to take the main Guildwars 2 game them we as players need to know that Gem store items are mechanical advantages in the game in order to somewhat progress which the infinite coin is to SAB.

Sure I could purchase the coin and made back the 31 gold I spent on it instantly, from opening my Scarlett stash and gearboxes from doing those events but other people allot of other people wouldn’t have that luxury of having soo much gold from doing game events etc as I have.

These things alone would really change peoples opinions on SAB and the difficulty without sacrificing your great game work and mechanics with the spouts etc which I absolutely love.

I know what I mention is probably engine limitations as you touched on that already, but if these things can be achieved and finer tuned would make it alot better overall.

After everything had about 25 stacks of 250 in the end saving all that stuff and guild is going help me level up stuff from guides etc.

Selling to vendor I’m getting a better return than the toilet and sure everyone else would be also.

You can toilet them yes all I got back was the same green color out of 4-5 attempts.

Edit: an attempt then I got a yellow back.

So you can upgrade them to yellows in the toilet.

But its not going to move the excess from tp thats already there due to how poor the toilets return rate is.

Ok we had a fix for all the blues/greens on TP going at vendor prices being essence for MF which I love the idea of btw.

My other thread was about excess in mats as a result of salvage ok that’s been sorted with new recipes to keep those flowing.

Now what about green runes?

There already at vendor value on TP and cant go any lower, theres thousands that the market is flooded with them, I get more profit 1c extra per sell selling them direct to vendors.

They come from nearly all greens at a 3/5 salvage ratio or so.

I’ve already sold 4-700 runes straight to vendor last night because you cant sell them and there’s a overstock already.

Everyones going to be junking runes at vendors from now on its going to be the whole new version of the blue green flip everything to vendor thing.

Anyone have ideas on this or what could happen to make these items more valuable now and reduce the amount on the market?

Were runes the only thing overlooked by anet when wanting to reduce the blue green stock and the effect on materials salvaged from them becoming more of a influx?

Cheers for letting me know that there are uses for mats now.

Going to make another thread about runes for a discussion on that.

Ok Anets solves the too many blue/green item thing by making us salvage for essence for luck instead of vendoring the items.

Sure its a short to medium term solution until everyone gets 300% Account MF then were back to there being no use for blue/greens again.

Only problem now is the influx of mats from those salvaged items into the economy which wouldn’t have been there if they were just vendored.

Tonight I have just seen prices fall by as much as 20-40 copper on some basic mats within the space of a few hours and many thousands of new mats have just entered the economy.

Now people are uploading stacks of 250 mats sometimes 400+ of the same mat to tp like I am salvaging blue/greens from boxes for essence.

Are there going to be extended use or something to use the basic mats now, seeing more will be salvaged from blue/greens so we can avoid a buildup of excess mats?

I have 30 inv slots full abouts of the stuff.

I want to offload it to TP but its account bound

As above would have been better if the drops was lower and conversion was better that way it would be the same ratio for conversion but more reasonable on space requirements.

I’m kinda forced at some stage very soon to just start destroying it.

Even just let a vender give me something for offloading it to them like a couple silver for a stack of 250, if you don’t want the stuff on tp being abused.

We all know about Mike O’Brien’s interviews about world changing stuff and how our actions change the world regularly etc.

our first goal with Guild Wars 2 was to make a truly dynamic world where the actions of players change the world around them.

Yet while I see small outposts in zones nearly always contested etc because no-one does the dynamic events and change based on zergs we don’t actually see any world wide changes as a result.

Also most dynamic events are on rotation and not statically changed by players on a server or battles etc.

In Guildwars 1 we had originally the hall pvp where if you win you would active the ToA statues so you could go to UW/Fissure and all the temples around the world, which you could use while out doing things for buffs etc, in the end due to lack of interest in guildwars and a dwindling population for things and how unfair that was in EU apparently that was revamped to meet a certain number achievements per hour. In comparison that makes what we have here like a toy or something.

I was thinking what if we had stuff like that in this game not necessary based on pvp but one’s servers own pve actions to affect pve as a whole.

Where the temples in ore if you had control would activate stuff in all zones or managed to do something in pve something else in all the zones and towns would become be active or taken away if you lost.

Like if you win a scarlet invasion when its on its rare event after this event it would grant the server favour or something for a day or something.

Each server would not be connected and its own system so stuff on one server wouldn’t affect others etc.

Its stuff like that I want to see in Guildwars 2 and what makes a world changing by players action game.

Random stuff not too frequent events that can give or take away server wide benefits and things based on events of players not just per zone or mini area.

Like if people in pve got together and did something may be a small buff in pvp etc or something or unlock a special area in LA etc that sells special buff potions or something that the rest of the server can access if certain world wide conditions are met.

Even things like getting your server to activate say 5 temples scattered all round the world within a certain time grants a world wide benefit.

One of the things atm I really want in a api using the authenticated system is a achievement tracker.

Much like what you see in game where it fills up and shows you in real time your progress.

This is because I’m currently opening my achievements panel every few minutes to check progress of my dailies etc.

I have a Nexus 10 and was really looking forward to the extended experience Anet promoted around the time of game launch but it seems that project has been discontinued for various reasons and we have this small api thing instead.

One thing I would love to do is use my Nexus 10 as a extended interface allot of games on the xBox One is going this way to have extended interfaces in their games like battlefield and stuff. Even the xBox One interface itself is getting it built in and you can already do something similar with the 360 and the xBox smartglass system.

I know its a long shot this ever being included into the game or the api’s are made to allow the community to do this even though the developers did show there extended experience at one stage.

I’ve been waiting for the extended interface for many pc games for ages to be able to interact view live progress etc all from my nice tablet and with the xBox One games doing it its a nice start but pc needs some lovin to as its going to become a common thing eventually.

From what I have seen allot of people seem to be pretty rude and I thought a couple times whether I want to keep playing the game or not.

They either tell you they don’t want to hear it if its general chat about anything pick at you for grammar and just correct everything you say on every sentence or will tell you to kitten go and google it or something.

Or they will be smug and say something like ‘thats good ’for you’’

I try not to talk too much anymore over it and mostly had enough of it and in other games also.

Could be a very good reason why people don’t talk in chat because there’s always someone willing to annoy and troll, rip etc on that player.

Also a reason I don’t really join guilds and usually find I end up playing all by myself despite wanting to do dungeons and fractals sometime, because of other peoples attitudes etc.

This is the thing some if you are fine with walking so this wouldn’t affect you the other majority of people love their fast travel to the point this is a obvious not wanted feature by many as thats why areas are empty too much fast travel.

If you have alternatives to what would make you visit zones more please do share.

As I’m reading above people don’t want to visit zones because there’s nothing to do there, drops from events are crap etc and it will hurt them making it longer to go places so they wouldn’t go where they want to go and quit because it would be too long to travel or people are kittens and I wouldn’t want to run into them anyway.

Also the fact of anet adding events etc get ignored or go unknown to the majority of players.

Other mmo’s don’t have fast travel and have active zones and feel more immersed with bumping into players.

And what I proposed would mean those people that really wanted to could skip areas and go nearly straight to places with crafted devices or if they had enough money etc.

But this system wouldn’t be a guaranteed granted for everyone to skip everything they don’t like every single time.

Mby gen store items where you click the map and get teleported straight there would work also with this system for 400 gems for 25 uses or something.

(Continued)

The biggest thing in games I liked was being able to run through zones between 1 destination and another running into people doing some gathering and crafting on the way there and then partaking in a random event that I came across.

In gw2 the last few days I realised that while its nice to straight from A to Z via a waypoint I’m missing out on everything and meeting others thats between B-Y once I have done the trip once because there’s no need.

Other games handle the stuff with WoW griffon travel for a cost, FFXI, Ships and Airships, Lineage 2 some portals and ships etc but they all come at a higher cost than our waypoint that makes you think about if you are going to port or not and also there only to towns not to every kilometer or so of the world.

Sure I love fast travel as much as the next guy as mentioned but it can be too much to be detrimental to running into people that can help you or them on there/your way to somewhere else.

I was thinking last night as I went to bed about Guildwars not feeling much of a mmo etc like other games.

I came up with a few reasons the biggest one being waypoints.

I’ve played other games, Priston Tale, WoW , Final Fantasy XI, Lineage 2 and tried a couple others.

Granted these games were mostly on private servers but still felt more mmo and world ish, FFXI each zone is similar to ours being its own area with a load screen between them.

The biggest thing I can see in Guildwars 2 causing zones to be empty and lack of interest in Anets dynamic events which they said they added hundreds of since release that wasn’t well received are primarily the waypoints and how they’re used.

Waypoints in this game means you can instantly travel anywhere in the game to right to near your destination as there are 15 waypoints each zone or more.

What this does is eliminate the need to actually go through the zones unless you have a quest etc or doing hearts etc or are collecting certain craft materials.

The random encounters with other players aren’t there as much because why do you need to go through into a zone when you have nothing to do there or no champion etc to farm?

Point, there is no need. Because once you have all the areas you can just port right to that area like a dungeon or in this fortnights case the exact zone scarlets invasions are skipping everything between a town and that zone.

Also once you are done you can just port right back to LA without having anything else to do with that and other zones.

While I love waypoints as much as the next guy, its eliminating the need to go through zones bump into people and randomly come across things in the zone like a event or a player which you can lend a hand to and help out on your way back to or from LA etc or even do some casual gathering, mining etc as you make your way to your destination.

These encounters are what brings the main life into a mmo eliminate the need by being able to port everywhere on the map to roughly a few buildings from your destination you remove the need to run through a map bump into people and help people out and that takes that random social encounter aspect out of it.

When the game was first released no-one had the waypoints so they were all going through and doing the zones together but once they have the waypoints and areas they no longer need to return to most of the game they just port to the waypoint closest to there champ there going to farm etc or dungeon.

The cost of waypoints also once you get into the game is cheap 1-2 silver each way, a cost of about or less than 5-10 drops.

So we are seeing players port everywhere and not going back into zones unless they have to.

Another area is the fact that each area has soo many mobs and the difficulty of them compared to other games, in other games you level just above the areas level then you can gather and mine without there being too many issues.

In Guildwars 2 you are too busy to worry about the mobs to farm or craft in Guildwars 1 you could go back to ascalon at level 20 casual go through the area with no issues.

Imagine is Guilwars 1 was turned persistent where the instancing would just be modified like or zones and the Guildwars 1 towns.

It would be more filled with life in the zones out of the towns with people going through the zones to actually get somewhere than porting straight there. bumping into random encounters and making friends along the way.

Now looking at these things how could Guildwars 2 have been improved to bring life into zones and more random encounters.

.Get rid of waypoints only allow you to port to the nearest town to your destination for a fee like 20 silver free based on distance from that town, as we are between towns means easy travel and less reliance on zones.

Bring back res shrines as the new alternative to waypoints this way you spawn at the nearest shrine to your death place. -This way death is still handled in game responsibly.

Allow personal Asura portal devices for crafting and limited to a certain number of uses also make them require a fair amount of materials that way you can port to and from a certain area on a per use basis like an Asura portal waystation in that area.

Allow people o go through areas at a slightly less difficulty as you can do that in starter zones already once leveled up so roll that out more across other worlds.

Changing the game to this can be achieved in a living story avent where the Asura waypoints start failing to transmit portal and data information and become map resurrection points instead and the Asura then work out that a personal portal device would be better but comes as a cost etc.

I’m on SoS currently and while zones may have people in them everyone is all doing there own things or all at a single spot in the map zerging over and over.

Is there any server anyone can recommend I can guest and mby make it my permanent home later that doesn’t have these issues and people are doing the map and events.

Cause in the orr areas I’m having to run past all eve events run into cap a skill point as quick as I can and pretty much ignore all events and stuff going on because there’s no other people or very few and I’m by myself as I am livestreaming and this you can see if you watched my playthrough I’m by myself doe 6+ hours pretty much with only briefly running into people.

So recommend me a world I can play with others that isn’t like my streams in how areas are.

They were going to bring out their tablet app that shows what is happening in the zone on the map in real time and where players were and what events people were at.

Also let you chat on it and view it anywhere even if you’re not near a pc like on a train etc.

But with all the stuff happening at launch with the hacked accounts and black lion etc they kinda shelved the project.

This suggestion would work also but I do hope one day for that tablet app to be made.

Don’t get me wrong I love a massive world and exploring the hidden away places that not many have been to and hoped everything on the original guildwars map and this one would be explorable as I’m still hoping to visit Janthir Bay and other areas in the future, and there has been talk that bloodlands and crystal desert will come back at some stage even around Henge also.

I also like if there are frequented trafficked zones and then the outer area less frequent but very beautiful hidden away areas.

I personally don’t mind playing by myself, as I’m not too fussed about seeing people all the time, though it is nice and made the game really fun early on, but If I can’t progress because no-one is around or I’m not strong enough to be by myself and solo and enjoy the views at the same time then it sucks.

And all these nerfs are hurting that and has hurt me to the point I am spending silver after silver to respawn and repair way more than I am making it causing me to actually lose money if I choose to continue my story and zone progression.

I like to explore and do things but I don’t want to see enemies spawning behind or infront of me just as I kill the next couple or have to wait for real people all the time.

I just want to get on fight and be able to play in my own time and way.

I thought anet was going to do away with enemies standing around waiting for you to aggro them then respawn on a set timer.

They said also their dynamic events wouldn’t be static and could affect the world and all we got was a set of events on rotation timers and start triggers.

If characters were more powerful I’d be happy even if it means half the current drop and coin rate for everyone as a result and to compensate for the increase in mob killing.

At the moment I find the game too hard to play with my ele to do anything and as such I don’t play much at all anymore cause I die 20+ times in a row and just give up playing for months.

Other mmo’s you can solo and have fun and explore etc and stuff but this one just seems unless you’re with another person you cant really do much at all.

That goes against there for casual players who want to play at their own pace and skill level design.

I know I’m not the best player but to try to play casually at my own pace isn’t working out especially when they keep feeling characters are overpowered and keep toning them down.

I think allot of this stuff happened right at the beginning before the limit was – hit (came up kitten with a space between the s and h) and the month or so downtime of the TP.

As they redid most of their trade code I believe and rolled it out gradually with new features and the vender limits etc it was back then many of us suggested they cleaned out the old values under the limits and nothing was done.

Then again about that time they also started to take damage control from the many thousands of hacked accounts that happened so they were under allot of stress and pressure for a few months dealing with all that.

I would think thats a reasonable request was thinking myself about how better to punish players in all these mmo’s and removing chat rights ingame for bad mouth would be ideal.

If its a scammer etc remove their outright trade and loot rights instead of a ban that way you don’t signal to the scammer that they need a new account they login unaware then get confused when they cant trade chat or whatever it would be a bigger signal than outright banning as you waste some of their time in the process.

Black lion would be SQL id imagine as its a webpage and 404’d before and at one time you could access the actual page in your web browser and I think there was a db error popup once on it.

Also they hit the hard limit within 48 hours of release for number of items listed before having to redo the coding to allow for more items.

Well they have the code to redirect to another server.

As for me I’m level 79 got most of the levels in pavillion over the areas and the cursed shore event.

This is a thing a server can be full but its because all players are together ever in fractals (I’ve still yet to have a look) at the latest hotness event or WvW or something.

The rest of the world suffers as a result because everyone is together elsewhere.

They need to spread some towns around with gates to them for a start with unique things in those towns like one town may have a unique and cool minigame with big prizes.

This breaks the world up so not everything is at LA or divinities reach, sure keep the big events in those places but at least put some ongoing special stuff around the world with a gate to it.

Districting for zones would help to pool everyone together for a region like gw1 not separate them over servers that get full in certain areas and that was my suggestion in the first place a district type for zones but with the overflow que.

Also ongoing stuff in the world like something massive and random may happen in a zone once a week at a random time say 400 pirates suddenly spawn in a zone from a airship and go on a rampage in the zone just randomly and are persistent until they’re cleared out however long it takes with great loot etc.

They can do that on random at will in whatever zone they don’t even need to announce it in a update note just do it have people in the zone go ‘OH CRAP’ and call their mates guild wherever to bring the entire server to that zone to deal with that issue.

That will get people moving around the zones random big massive unannounced non living story like but a random living event stuff thats persistent until sorted.

They have the code to do the above look at those airships that fly around dropping people near the balloon towers that could be remodeled to drop 4-500+ persistent pirates in a zone at some random announced time.

And more stuff like that like full on military ships sailing up and unleashing loads of enemies at random and other race themed stuff.

I’m on SOS one of the highest at launch for PVE.

I did see people in some zones doing stuff with the balloons but here I’ve been at this skill point in Maelstorm for a hour or more the golum and I can only get him down 1/5th of his bar before the challenge times out or I die somehow.

Anet was going to make this game solo’ble but that never happened as they kept reducing the classes thinking they were way overpowered (which they weren’t imo) and to try to get us to work more together which didn’t really help in PVE when it was starting to get hard to find others to help with so nerfing made things worse and why I stopped playing as my ele became really crap and I was dying within 2 hits from some mobs and a warrior comes in and tanks everything without a scratch.

I know Anet needs money cause this game is free well they should put in hired help in the gem store for 1,000 gems for a week or something so you can have a full npc warrior following along side you for a week in the PVE zones only for 1,000 gems anet would make a killing on that.

They probably will at some stage just like they made using your alts as heroes cost real money in there gw1 DLC shop.

Anet could make a mysql script to refund all orders by cross referencing etc.

But I’m sure they don’t have time to do that.

I mentioned they should do this about 9 months ago and its still not done.

All they need to do is run a query in the MYSQL that if value field x (buy value) is below value of field y (the vender value) then delete or raise to vender value which would keep all orders placed but raise the cost of them accordingly though that may be a concern for people who placed them having there order buy price raised automatically.

So the solution would be to delete orders.

Its obviously mysql as the black lion is just a webpage which the game has a Anet made web browser in it to pull the page which could be built using html5.

Here is a way to get population up for zones by merging them.

We all know how overflow servers work when areas are full you get pooled into a out of the server pool area called a overflow server.

Ok so the solution wouldn’t be the exact reverse to a overflow server but instead areas have their own regional server and everyone in the region goes onto those servers no matter.

As we are seeing mby 5-10 people in each zone on average nowadays sometimes mby less then as soon as you enter a zone you go onto the main consolidated pooled server if someone from another home server enters the area they go onto that server and so on until its full then the overflow etc servers happens.

You then have the option of going onto the consolidated server same as always with overflow to your home.

This is kinda to the districts in Gw1 where the entire region are pooled together in towns on a district numbering system but in this case for zones.

This would be for on every zone.

From what I see I would say that the population is low enough for this to happen and efficiently without problems.

By consolidating people together from all servers for areas population should increase in the totally dead zones for what little people there are in those zones.

So I decided to login again at the Queen’s Jubilee and noticed those areas are fine but after doing some of the events decided to continue exploring zones and doing my stuff.

And I notice the areas are pretty much dead on the SoS server.

I am running past events and just doing the hearts in the basic most form because there’s no people and the chat is dead pretty much.

As a ele if I do run into people I run into worriers that can tank 4 guys and come out half health but me as a ele I take 2 hits and half my health is down.

Yes I’m running the right armor etc as I collected it doing the pavillion zerge in the bahs.

Right now I’m sitting in the inquest area in Malstrom and while I got with the event there’s no way I’m doing the rest of the event as there’s just no-one and as soon as I kill anything stuff starts respawning it happens the same all over all the maps.

In gw1 I know after a while allot of zones went dead thats why they brought in the Heroes then upped the limit from 3 to 7 in a later patch because there was no-one else to fill the other 4 places then finally they let your own alts become heroes for a cost in the store.

I think its all good doing living stories but anet seriously needs to find ways to get people back into zones by adding more content to those zones that will allow people to do the older hearts and events still.

It was great when the game first came out seeing areas packed full of people everywhere doing everything now the game areas feel like Gw1 do instanced and you hardly ever run into anyone.

For info: I’ve been writing this sitting at a skill challenge for about 20 mins now without seeing a single person I could time it and I bet it would be a few hours or more.

Anet I hope you have ways to solve this issue properly.

I do have a suggestion which popped in my head and I’ll post it in he suggestions area and I hope it can be done cause it will solve the issues for anyone no matter what server your on.

I got a gold seller message today like I do every single day but this had my username and forum code in the subject.

Usually they leave the subject blank and have reported the message and took a screenshot of it if anyone is interested.

I presume they are or have harvested usernames and forum codes that appear after the username and this is how they are sending spam to everyone.

I’m bringing it up if its not done so already to make the dev team know about this and hopefully we can get something that stops all these messages cause I get at least 1 every single day.

Looks like some good discussions already.

Have to agree with underflow server I was thinking the same thing but described it different in first post.

At the moment im playing mt maelstrom and have done other areas in peak times from 5pm +8gmt to 2am and thats after work hours and on Fridays and Saturdays allot of gamers play till 2am so not a issue with the timezone of players.

But yea the zones and events don’t scale well and players are avoiding events as I saw in Harathi as I don’t start events knowing that I cant do them alone.

When I come up to a contested town/waypoint etc I just run in grab the point and run back out again and leave it contested as theirs no-one there and nothing I can do to take on waves of mobs solo.

Last night in mount maelstrom the volcano became active and destroyers appeared everywhere in a couple of main towns, I was dead in 5 seconds as well as the towns entire npc population I was next to the repair guy and waited for 20 mins for a rez I typed the whole first post up waiting for someone to rez as well as doing other things.

Time was only about 10 or 11PM Perth time so not that late.

As a Ele I run starves as I like to hold back but may have to try daggers etc.

I know zones aren’t dead dead as I always kinda see people in mt maelstrom etc but Plans of Ashford was different, when I do its always single people running round the map or just 2 people together.

When Gw2 opened there were people spread out everywhere in the first few zones doing soo much and that was brilliant and after Ashford (the Char starting area) I went to Queensdale and it was a pleasant change to be seeing groups of 4 or so people everywhere doing everything.

Was hoping that would flow into all zones like that but server upper caps and event rewards/ interest etc just isn’t there for people to spread out.

I know Anet said each month new content will be added around various zones to keep them active etc but I doubt they will start doing that for quite a long while or its something they won’t be able to do anyway due to how much there other workloads are.

Ok I see some talk in various threads on zone population but there only small sections of what the main poster is talking about.

So here is a thread we can make 1 kinda consolidated thread about zone population.

I’m finding in PvE allot of zones while not totally empty are low population even though the server states its full.

I notice this in Sea of Sorrows as I have been to a few zones especially in Shiverpeaks and Plains of Ashford I was pretty much just doing most of the zone myself hardly running anyone.

Some areas like skill points, veterans and event bosses I was waiting 20+ minutes for another player to show up so I could get those done.

As a Elementalist I know I can’t take on a event as a single person or allot of the skill points due to the fact I don’t do enough damage even with mistfire wolf and Glyph of elementals summoned and they automatically heal negating any damage I try to do.

Some times Ive been dead and just waited around seeing who comes past for 20+ minutes even in towns and outposts in zones even next to the heart guy.

Luckily I haven’t had a kick timeout yet as If i did I would definitely screenshot it just to show how low some zone populations are even when your in a main area.

As allot of this game relies on other people this is a major drawback as some times I feel I’m in my own instance just like gw1.

Also I feel I may have waited too long before doing areas which has been due to sleeping and how I have been feeling the last month, because now everyone that would have been doing those zones along with me like the first few zones have now moved on.

Other players I have spoken to in game also feel the same way that certain zones are getting low on people like hoelbrak.

Also another thing thats not really good is player migration in zones.

By player migration I mean a zone can have 100 people in it but everyone is all at the same place of the map.

Plans of Ashford’s dungeon AC is one place and Harathi Hinterlands at KOL chain is another place.

In these areas when I did the zones I only saw people at either the AC entrance for a good 12 hour or so straight when I was doing the map or zerging at KOL doing the quest chain loop over and over which was 90% of the zones population for 3-5 or so hours when I did the map.

Also in Plains of Ashford all I saw in the map chat for 12 hours straight was:
‘LF1M AC Explorable’ when you can memorise that from map chat as it was pretty much said over and over thousands of times its pretty sad.

I know players are going to go where they feel like they are achieving something and where other players are and not populate the zones that are either not in there interest or where no-one else is.

I can probably say that most full servers are the same with maps so one way is why not allow individual zone areas to be outsources or merged like overflow does in population instead of specific servers that way the zones can balance there populations.

So if you developers have ideas how to fix the low population zones or any feedback on this.

I know it was said wait till the population has spread out and by now it should have spread out but what I’m hearing is people just get to 80 then stay at Straights of Devastation in the zerg.

So if you all want to talk about low population in zones and servers please do so in this thread and don’t derail it so it goes offtopic and gets closed.

They also said each month there will be rotation of events in Divinity’s Reach between the districts where each month a different district would have a festival going on and then themed events as it was going to be the main town of Guildwars 2.

I guess they either scrapped all there plans or will slowly do them over the years as they ran out of time.

Or by activity’s they probably meant yes there’s activities as the shooting range and activities work how they said and designed them and working as intended.

Aka there npc activity’s you can only watch and not partake in.

So I have to say the shooting range etc is working as developers intended and activities are in the game as you an see the shooting range is working if you go there.

Same stuff was said about gw1 also like how the bridge was intractable and destructible and would collapse and change the region in kryta and your story but all we got a cut scene with the white mantle.

This is how developers and companies word and develop things unfortunately and we just need to live with it.

I see removal of IP as a massive feature for account security and not having it implemented is something that seems massively overlooked on implications especially when Mike O Brian was saying how account account security is a very important thing.

There are numerous scenarios where you would need to remove a IP.

Especially if those places have static ip’s.

RMT if someone logins you want to be sure that they cannot log back in even if they get your changed gw2 password etc as currently if they do get your new password they can get straight back on on that ip.

Public places like school/college/uni/etc networks, internet cafes that have gw2 installed etc or you use your own system on there network.

Business places if you play during your lunch break.

If you attend big lan partys a example dreamhack with 10 thousand people which are nearly all gamers or ones here in my city that are 3-400 people..

If you accidentally allow a link from a RMT then realise oh crap as soon as its done.

The fact you say they cannot be removed is you just gave access accidentally or someone who uses/shares your email has and you have realised it and cant remove that access yourself, this is a massive one right here that a few thousand people have most likely already done or will do at some stage and I have nearly done myself and creates extra support on your end when there accounts are eventually taken over which can be avoided and they need to do tickets to get the account back.

How many tickets have you had already with hacked accounts?

At least allowing removal of a IP will put some added security into players hands and reduce support requests for these accidental IP location clicks freeing up valuable time on your end.

Its just too much of a risk to leave ip’s allocated for public or not frequent locations and incidents as above.

It seems that while you guys say how much important account security is and keeping things safe there are things like this that can cause big issues and they seem to be ignored or brushed off when they are still a really big part of the picture and making sure accounts are secure.

There have been a couple other things like region blocking account logins that could be done but removal of no longer authorized IP’s you allowed in the past is a bigger one than region blocking.

dexcaliber.7481:

If Autohotkey is gonna be allowed for this then there should be no conflict with using the same app for Combat Mode either. You just can’t allow use of one and deny the other when using the same program.

From what I read combat mode changes the gameplay of the game to allow you to play in a different way.

You are NOT allowed to change the way the gameplay is done and the game is played via 3rd party programs to suit a different play outcome.

Mapping buttons as stated is just doing what the game is intended and not trying to redesign the controls or the way one plays/moves/targets etc in the game.

ArtemusHunter.9521 you are not allowed to program a chain of commands or redesign how the game is played.

What program doesn’t matter my razer mouse and keyboard can automate gameplay functions as macros and scripts to kill pickup chat etc so asking if a program is allowed is pointless as the logitech software or any other software with a persons mouse or keyboard can abuse the game if one wants.

You can however map functions 1-1 but as said you are not allowed to program, script etc your own playstyles, modes, macro commands etc.

Anet have made it very clear on that.

Guys don’t try to twist Anets or others words around with how come this is allowed in that program but this isn’t etc its not about just blanket banning 3rd party programs as such if they did that then everything even gaming devices would be against the tos.

Its about whether you take advantage of the game and ‘scripting’ in different ways one might play the game aka combat styles, macroing skills or doing 2 commands at once etc when you need to do them by yourself and not automated or scripted as you are not allowed to change the way one plays the game, you are allowed to however change the device one plays the game on.

If people have ideas and want different playstyles as in combat modes allowing multiple skills automated then they need to get in contact with Anet and ask for extra functionality in game to allow ability to script or change the combat modes etc from the game itself.

But I presume you will be told NO as people will abuse and take advantage of the features as as people are taking advantage and abusing things now with all the threads you can see around these forums.

I tried twice second time first research team followed me but not the first one.

Tried clearing the cave first etc no luck.

Can anyone fraps/record this mission for the guy as he cant reproduce it with his team and getting a video would help him in seeing what some of us are trying to do and the order in which things are playing.

I’ve been up this mission last couple weeks but haven’t felt the best so haven’t been playing much at all.

Those guys saying use of 3rd party programs blanket is misleading and Mark Katzbach took the best response given the situation.

For example I have a razor mouse and have mapped heal, mail, hero and use to my mouse.

Now if that 3rd party program blanket response came into it what I would be doing is breaking the terms and conditions as the razor mouse software to allow me to use extra mouse buttons as keyboard presses would be configured illegal.

Especially those with a razor Naga mice with 12 extra mappable buttons.

Also anyone mapping to a gaming device would be breaking the rules.

So have some common scene as its more to do with how you use the programs rather than outright banning every single one of them and Mark got it right.

What Mark is essentially saying in basic terms is that automating gameplay outside of the game by multiple key presses to one function etc is not allowed but mapping buttons to commands is harmless.

Its not about use of 3rd party programs its all about if gameplay is automated.

Everyone’s forgot the crafting crier in the grove.

Every-time someone goes near here she runs up to them saying to ‘speak to one of our master craftsman’

Must have heard that 30+ times in the first day doing all the grove quests.

Whoever is the voice actress did that line really well and Its a brilliant voice etc but it can get abit too much to hear over and over.

I have pressed the 3rd button to access the g15 stats and its just showing a message:

‘World vs. World data not available.’

This data has never appeared on my g15 lcd and would be nice to have it.

I don’t want to get into things.

But if the cap wasn’t there then people would loose money selling it to others when the buyers make money and sometimes your not near a vender to sell it yourself when you need the space.

The ultimate question is does anyone here want buyers to profit from other people? whether its gold sellers or people who just turn around to vender stuff for copper answer is no the buyers should never be able to profit like this regardless of if you think its hurting the economy or not.

Also damages the higher up economy as stuff will be eventually forced below vender costs to meet a market.

As we have already seen the market come to parity with venders in most items with people trying to make it lower.

More and more items I go on the TP to sell are coming up below up below vender price for highest buyers.

Now I like highest buyer as it shows me how many people want items and how many they ordered.

This is good so I can tell if I should vender it or sell to them or try to sell for higher.

I’m seeing allot of items going for vender prices some with 50-a few hundred listed but are not sold because people are wanting them a few hundred or more below vender prices hence trying to force the market lower.

This is a bug when sellers cannot sell stuff even at vender prices as no one is buying as all the orders for a couple copper below.

Also it skews people like me trying to get quick instant sales on common stuff to free up backpack etc when not near a vender and also make a slight little extra from vender profit.

As I want to sell above what I can vender it for and want to see the demand of a item vs how many items are sold and how many ordered and then make a decision.

But at the moment everything is ordered for below vender cost and its getting worse to the point I cant use TP as I did a week or two ago where I cannot see if I can get a quick sale or not on salvage materials etc.

And that is the bug and hope it does get fixed as its getting worse.

Just updated to the 306.23 Official whql nvidia drivers that came out a couple days back from the 306 beta.

FPS seems to be worse in the area seeing 15fps when I used to get allot more I’m in but haven’t seen any texture rendering thingys in caves etc like betas had.

Running a: on max settings

i7- 950
GTX-590 (resolution at 6030×1200 which was great in the betas and since got worse but I also enabled ambient occlusion)
12gb Ram

There’s some work still to be done with optimizations I see.

I found a bug on the trade post that buyers are listed that are under vender costs.

There should be a scanning etc for buying vs vender then auto correct there database fields or remove them from the tp database as I have found a few items that are doing this.

Screenshot attached showing that the highest buyer is listed at below vender cost when it is the exact same.

Appears to be the listing fee as price is 18 copper on vender.

If anyone sees a item doing this please list in this thread.

I’ll start:

Metal Scrap
Frayed Rag
Frayed Garment
Strong Trident (Highest buyer is listed at 1 copper)

khaosllama.6923:

no, I didn’t buy gold but at the moment my mailbox is full of people just sending me money over and over from different names, I haven’t accepted any of it but want to know if there are consequences if I did.

Do the messages have a yellow heart infront of them?

If they do then nothing to be worried about as there npc’s thanking you for the job you served them.

If they have a white letter icon then there real people and I would be concerned about it.

I presume this guy is thinking all the rewards from npc’s are real people trying to send him random amounts of money as he said they all have different names.

Would be better not for more chat channels but separated windows and systems.

In gw1 they added chat channels for selling and that was just filled up with a rolling list of items that was soo fast you couldn’t read anything as people kept pressing there up arrows constantly to send new chat to the screen to stand out and using caps etc.

Now they implemented the trade post which is a better solution less scrolling and you can actually search in your own time for items and its a global across all game servers which means it works not just to the people in your zone but the 2 million+ players at the same time.

This is how trade is meant to be but some people are refusing to use it as they don’t like the transfer costs of selling a item or have some aversion to it thinking that they would be banned for exploits etc also they try to sell higher than you can buy on tp to people who are impulsive and don’t research properly.

If the TP is a issue for you still with having access, please make a support ticket on it and let them know, if allot of players are refusing to use it and its hindering chat for others etc then thats something Anet needs to look into as tp is great and I use it everyday to sell in zones and instantly free my backpack slots.

As for guilds and dungeons, they need game wide solutions like the trade post just not a chat channel for that zone that guilds and dungeon lookers can spam.

I’m sure they are working on ideas for these but more chat channels are not the solution.

Creating designs interfaces and ways which give more power and ways people can search and be efficient are.

All chat channels will do will give people a dedicated place to sit there for hours pressing there up arrow and enter which is wasting there own time and people don’t want to see scrolling lists constantly.

Hawk.6274:

Um, that is already in existence, kinda:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

Code: “-autologin”

Cant commandline a website unless you script the browser.

Much easier on there end to code or activate the feature in whatever forum software there using or code it if they made there own forum.

I notice that every time I come back to the forum I need to login again.

Is this intentional or are there plans to code in a ‘stay logged in’ function.

As even just navigating away and and closing my browser for a few mins I need to relogin again.

• Ability to have a global wide guild listing window, soo many guilds are using map chat to spam recruit posting the same recruit line over and over in every zone they go to, cant we have a list ingame and search etc with a description, amount of members, fame etc? We want to see and search all guilds over all servers and then join what we want.

• Looking for group window that works across the entire server as I have seen all chat in certain zones is all ‘LF1M-AC-STORY MODE’ and then if I go to another zone like Lions Arch I see the same message from 20 more people allow searching and seeing groups across all zones of the game.

• News and Updates actually ingame please put a window ingame to show all the updates and news, in gw1 all we saw was people screaming in towns ‘#$% IS THIS UPDATE SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME’ from soo people every single update even when you guys started doing changelogs on your website and when you replied to these people 5 seconds later someone else would say the exact same thing, allot of users are annoyed at it in gw1 as people will not want to leave the game to see a changelog and we DO NOT want this trend to continue in this game.

• Have these forums accessible ingame please, we know that the black lion window is a webpage so we know its possible for you guys to add In more stuff and having these forums would make information on the game and chat available to allot of players as a good percentage probably 60% cannot be bothered to come here especially when there playing.

• Have the Wiki ingame also like above in its own window so people can search and get information from ingame as many people are already asking ‘HOW DO I GET TO BLA??’ this can be reduced with the wiki ingame where they can search as mentioned 60% of people probably cant be bothered to go outside of the game to get information for inside of the game and would rather ask chat and please for 20 times till they a answer.

• Server module status with the trade post and mail issues all we saw was allot of screaming filling up chat from most people going ‘WHEN IS TP/MAIL GOING TO BE BACK UP?????’ we need to see a list of features this game has and there status if there online offline etc.

This game is classed as a ‘Social’ game and as such needs to present information from both the players and developers on issues news updates to the areas that people are socialising at and what better then to have these ingame where everyone can see and read the updates news forums wiki etc as thats where all the players are.

I have linked a mockup screenshot I did a few days ago with how you could present stuff ingame on a couple things as well as map chat with the LFG messages which was the entire chat or hours straight in the Plains of Ashford zone and shows why we need a party search window.

This isn’t Anets problem Ive been getting wow account suspended emails for 3 years even without ever owning a battle.net blizzard account till Starcraft 2 was released and that is on a different email to what I get the spam on.

So yes agreed individual passwords and emails etc also blizzard got there database stolen a month ago which has found its way to the gold sellers it seems.

There is a report feature on mail.

Once you get mail from gold sellers click the white triangle with the ! icon that appears to the left of the reply button.
That is the report feature.

Ive been getting 1 mail every day from a gold seller and have been reporting them.

If I click a item so it shows the selling details box then sell another item in my inventory to the merchant or send craft materials to the bank the trading post sell your stuff screen will not refresh until I go back into it.

But If I am in sell your stuff and haven’t clicked on anything then it will refresh.

Luckily trying to sell a item still listed when not in inventory gives a error and the list refreshes

The thing is Auto Attack yes part of the game but its not Auto Targeting.

It only only auto attacks once you have actually targeted a mob either by manually activating the spell first or clicking your mouse on a mob.

Those that can try it in game you will not automatically start shooting something even a enemy unless it is targeted first.

I know that when I play my Ele that I have to target something before auto attacks works.

As once I just stood at the bridge didn’t press anything and I didn’t shoot anything.

Mostly people that get banned that you see casting spells over and over even between events have a macro spamming the 1 key constantly.

Unless your spell just keeps casting that Caltrops 24/7 when its on auto target and anytime a mob comes near you which I doubt and if it does then its a bug that probably should have be reported as you are meant to target first else it wouldn’t be casting it.

Some people yes do think that auto attack is cause for a macro I agree but there’s a difference between auto attack and auto targeting and when your afk your character won’t attack anything near you at all unless you are actively targeting different creatures or spamming the 1 key.