Guild Wars 2

Guild Hall QoL improvements:

- Private meeting areas
- Quick teleport option as a replacement for the free pass to Lion’s Arch via PvP. Start with a UI button to enter guild hall, and one portal from the guild hall to LA. Additional portals can be unlocked, depending on how unfair it is to others.
- Low-rez World map and WvW map in-game with general member locations – light up each map area based on # of members in it, not names or even dots, just highlight the whole submap. Add a ‘mists’ section for PvP. This would be awesome as a map underneath a glass floor in the main atrium.
- Board for guild elections – simple text only would be fine. Implement voting tech for guild elections similar to Evon vs Kiel election. Report only the results, the roles could be changed manually.

non QoL improvements
- Internal guild leaderboards (I envision in-world dynamic bulletin boards, with overall standings, as well as monthly standings that the guilds could use to manually award items for contests)
– Fastest dungeon run by team (all players must be guildies)
– PvP leaders
– Achievement points
– WvW rank
– Influence points earned
- Visual piles of gold/influence meters
- Visual goal markers set by guild leaders – Need Xx for Yy

Any chance we could see additional size options for the Interface Size? (Esc ->
Options -> Graphic Options -> Interface Size) It currently maxes out at Larger, which is still too small for my laptop (Lenovo Yoga 2 w/3200×1800 display). I see on this thread a year ago a similar question was raised for a 2560×1440 display without any dev feedback:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Broken-fonts-using-the-Interface-Size-options/first#post2730480

Any updates?

The login launcher also suffers from the same problem – Could it please be updated to honor the DPI setting provided by the OS? Thanks.

As you can see by my signature, I am a definite fan of the Peneloopee and Bloomanoo storyline. I like seeing the effects of the Living Story on actual residents that we can follow if we so choose, and having those residents being non-human is icing on the cake.

Anyone having any luck finding them? I checked the most likely land and water paths and didn’t find them.

Thanks a bunch for the workshop, learned alot. I’ll have to give the DPS guard a spin and see how I do.

Multara

Zaxares.5419:

That’s basically the root cause of any complaint in a game’s economy: “It’s too hard or taking too long to get what I want!”

I’m not against making it much easier for players to get luxury items or exclusive skins, but I fear that would have a detrimental effect on the longevity of the game (as players tend to move on once they’ve accomplished their goals), and on the feeling of satisfaction players have when a goal is achieved. That said, we do need to constantly monitor the goal posts so that they are achievable by most players who set out to reach them.

Legendaries, while a hard slog, are definitely doable by a large segment of the player base as evidenced by how many we see in the game every day. I think players might just have the impression that you should be able to get them within a couple months, when they’re really intended to be more of a year (or two) long goal.

It’s trivial to limit the precursor map scraps to 1/day or whatever. I didn’t say in my proposal it had to be easy to get, in fact I stated it should be about 2-3x whatever the median is now. That would limit how much suffering a player has to endure – and believe me it is suffering when you’re in that 1% unluckiest and get to hear about the 1% luckiest in your 500 man guild who manages to get a precursor in 50 tries. (I have never tried for precursor btw, and I don’t plan on it any time soon, if ever, so I don’t have a horse in this race. I’d rather spend my time crafting ascended knowing I have a destination I can guarantee reaching) In another game a guildie had done over 600 missions on a toon and not gotten a single equivalent drop, while I did <10 on one of mine and got all three.

How much of a effect do you think flushing the toilet the 1,000th time has on a player’s enjoyment of the game, vs how many people who have legendaries and stop playing? Anyone seen a “I got my legendary, and now I’m quitting” thread?

I’d also dispute your “large segment” comment, but I’m not going to sit around Vigil Keep counting legendary footsteps – my feel is more like a “pretty small percent”; probably <5% of the “plays more that 20 hours a week” group of players has a legendary. John could lookup that info for his own information, but I doubt he would be able to share. And remember, any time you have a low-probability RNG with a population base as large as an MMO, you’ll end up with a large number of people getting screwed by the laws of statistics, not necessarily large percentage wise, but even 1% on a 100,000 trying for a precursor is still 1k+ very unhappy people.

Wanze.8410:

If you can tell me what the droprate of precursors has to do with the motion of limiting potential profits on the tp, which is being discussed in this topic, i will answer you.

People are complaining the game has a fever. You are arguing it doesn’t exist, and apparently want to argue if ibuprofen or acetaminophen is better. My point is the real problem is the TB infection in the lungs. Fixing that fixes the fever, and makes the game healthier.

If precursors were only 10GP on the exchange nobody would be complaining about all the “TP barons” profits. I’ve described my hypothesis and provided John a list of data he can look into. I’ll hold further comments until he chips in.

tolunart.2095:

moronwmachinegun.3815:

Really, the problem that needs solving is players unhappiness with their personal drop rates vs their ability to afford items. The fact is that the TP operates exactly like every other free-market exchange, with bubbles and prices getting driven up by speculative bidding of the whole market.

This is not a problem with the game or the TP. It is purely your perspective of the TP, and it purely your problem. What you are asking Anet to do is to remove the TP and replace it with a system that is more to your liking. There is no reason to do so when the TP is working exactly as intended. The problem you have with it is human nature – people want their money/item now and those who have patience can provide this service and make a profit doing so. Human nature is not going to change.

Where did I say I had a problem with the way the TP operates? I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. The TP is fine the way it is, the problem are the inputs into the TP.

Wanze.8410:

Totally off topic because it wouldnt change anything on:
gold/gem exchange rates
prices for other shinies (greatsaw skin, mjölnir, mini karka, permanent contracts)

You are proposing a solution to a completely different problem.
I guess you only read a couple of posts and saw someone complaining about precursor prices and thought to chip in…

? I guess pages of threads on gripes on precursors is only “a couple of posts”, but whatever, the same principal applies. The permanent contracts are RNG based, with the same low success rate that applies for precursors. Their prices aren’t going to get much lower until something happens to adjust that. The same speculative effect would apply once you could actually afford one – they are so expensive how could you possibly justify using one? The closest real-life market is probably stamp collecting, rare wines, or collectible toys – once the value gets above a certain amount the chances someone uses the item as-intended decrease.

And honestly, are people here complaining about permanent contracts and karka minis? You can’t easily see in game others running around with a hair stylist & dryer behind them or a mini karka. I checked on page 15, 10 and 5, and the only constant is the complaint about “TP barons” skewing the PC prices. I agree with you that the TP is working as-intended, because by definition it is doing exactly what was intended – provide a market for buyers and sellers to meet and trade items without being cheated. John has confirmed that “TP barons” aren’t skewing these markets, hence my hypothesis and notes above on how to confirm the real issue, ie are the ones keeping in inventory precursors/legendaries holding <2x the cost of the respective items in wealth?

The same goes for the gold<->gems. Now, are “super-rich” skewing the values of the gold<->gems conversion? I seriously doubt that. As John has said, they’re too small to affect the overall market, and the gold<->gems market has the natural “you’ve already bought everything in the shop” limiter built in. That hypothesis goes both ways, with “whales” who buy 10,000 gems to sell for gold unlikely to affect the market substantially due to the trading volume. John can easily verify for himself that the largest transaction is <1% of the total volume.

Really, the problem that needs solving is players unhappiness with their personal drop rates vs their ability to afford items. The fact is that the TP operates exactly like every other free-market exchange, with bubbles and prices getting driven up by speculative bidding of the whole market. What skews the TP is that the supply curve isn’t as flexible as in real life for commodities – IRL when oil prices go up, marginal wells in TX/OK/KS/rest of the world start getting repaired and turned back on, because they’re now profitable. But here as a whole I suspect that isn’t happening, and John can tell that by looking at the supply in the game. IRL experts can also find more oil with better technology, again driving the supply curve up. But in-game you can’t pay a Mystic Forge-ologist to help in a substantive way to increase your chances of a precursor(magic find does not affect the MF). And the low-probability RNG nature of the MF discourages “investment” since you would need a truly huge stake to survive any unlucky periods. As you said pointed out earlier, there are easier and less risky ways to make money. (thanks again BTW)

One way to solve it is to add a steady progress component to the RNG factor of getting a precursor (or “bad-streak breaking” as Essence Snow pointed out). Here’s a proposed solution:

Zommoros and/or champ chests reward players with same RNG items plus an account-bound “precursor treasure map scrap” – once 1,000 have been received (suggest taking median of tries to get precursor and double/triple it – Do not make it random, or at least guarantee a minimum number of scraps with a chance at more) – players make it into a precursor treasure map and earns the repeatable Precursor Map Earner achievement. Each tier up causes scrap drop rate to drop (tier 0 and 1 is 100%, tier 2+ can start being <100% to allow for 2 legendaries per account). Treasure map leads to multiple locations across Tyria with interaction icons to choose which precursor player wants to earn. Suggest using existing low-encounter out-of-the way champions and/or making it a player-startable champion map fight (similar to soon-to-arrive guild-based world champ start fights) with a special reward chest for assisting players that also has a chance at a precursor – higher than a normal champ chest by 2x or something similar, so people are encouraged to help, but not so high as to cause players to not try farming normal champs for one. This would help foster community and guilds working together to help each other earn a legendary. An alternative would be to use instances, with the player alone or in a party, but I like the idea of the whole server/map working together.

T6 mats price would endure a shock, but since their drop rates are far higher and easier for the average player to understand, the market won’t degenerate into the higher price – higher demand market we have now since players would easily be able to farm those mats. Plus as the pent-up demand for legendaries decreases and account-bound legendaries are released, their prices will recover.

Been lurking following this thread, and had some thoughts to share.

I agree with Wanze, Fenrir, and John that it isn’t TP Barons that are affecting the precursor/legendary markets, but the RNG and the structure of how legendaries are created. Everyone else is seeing the TP prices on these items rise, and suspects it is being caused by a group of privileged players with money 10x+ the prices of the items in question. I propose the rise is being caused by players who finally earn enough to purchase the precursor, but then are in a quandry of choosing between binding it to their account, or putting it back into the market. I doubt anyone would consider this group of players “barons”, so a different name is needed.

The problem is not of economics per se, but rather of the statistics involved with low-probability RNG results across large numbers of participants. This is going to be a fairly winding path, so please bear with me. Let’s propose that the RNG chance of getting a precursor is 1 in 500. This seems like a reasonable number for a dev to choose when creating the system. Now, a pure 1 in 500 chance of a PC does not mean that the median player sees a 1 in 500 chance! That median player will actually see a precursor after ~343 tries. However, the unluckiest 10% sees 1143, 1% 2309, and .1% sees 3431 tries. (Luckiest 1%? 5 tries. I can provide source code for those sufficiently bored.)

What happens is that the players who really just want a precursor, and get it early in their attempts, swap for the one they want and move on. The unlucky ones however get frustrated over time and end up grinding the gold to purchase the PC on the TP. The PC price ends up inching upwards as some of these players actually use the PC. However, since some of these players have already spent significant money on their attempts they’ve got lots of money sunk into this endeavor, and they get tempted to hold it instead. These players aren’t necessarily Barons, in fact I guess they barely have enough to cover the cost of the PC (in this sense “barely” is < 2x the cost of the PC). The low-probability RNG nature of the MF means that it is difficult to guarantee a profit, hence I doubt there are many people who make consistent money with the MF. Question – Does anyone know/heard of any players using the MF to make money?

As W/F/JS have stated, the TP rich aren’t making their money by attempting price controls on precursors/legendaries – the volume is too high for a single player to control, and there is more lucrative/less risk money elsewhere (thanks for the tip Wanze!). Rather, it’s players that end up frustrated with the whole process. And as the price keeps inching upwards, they’re more likely to just sacrifice the idea of owning a legendary for the potential gold/gems in the process. What’s more is that as the price keeps increasing, the precursors sold in the market can stop being replaced, as players hold their items waiting for potential future profits. In economics terms as the price continues sliding higher (to the right), the supply curve can actually start leveling off as hoarding takes place. Another effect is that as players continue putting gold in the MF while the price of the PC keeps going up, they see themselves falling further and further behind in saving up, so it’s possible the demand curve itself actually levels off as people give up on the MF and switch to gold grinding as the price increases.

So the TP market for precursors has reached a degenerate state where they aren’t being created (or perhaps offered for sale) faster than they are being demanded due to the above effects, driving a spiraling upwards price.

An additional tax or other modification to the TP wouldn’t work since it would not encourage production or listing of the PCs.

For John – Statistics and information to prove the situation is as above
– Creation and binding rates for specific precursors over time. Say X/week created and Y/week bound. X-Y>0 means people are hoarding them instead of using them.
– Median wealth of the owner of each unbound precursor not on the market who is not actively working towards creating their legendary. Wealth < 2x the current price of the precursor means the “poor” are hoarding them for future sales.
– Activity of the hoarding players over time – Are they continuing to use the MF, hence adding to potential future supply, or have they stopped?
– Activity of the MF-using players over time – Have the percentage of players using the MF and swapping for a precursor to bind vs stopping using the MF and purchasing the precursor to bind with gold gone up or down as the price has climbed. This one would be difficult to mine, but really is the most critical data since it shows how many players are giving up on the MF.

Automatically “take all” when leaving a Trading Post NPC, or at a minimum – when you purchase an item directly from a TP NPC, drop that item right into inventory. I still purchase things and forget to grab them before going back to the crafting station.

(tinkling sound as gems hit monitor)
Why won’t you take my money?!?

+1!

Ksnake.8097:

I thought this is basic statistics…..obvious not so much for anet.

What part of

“The confidence interval calculations assume you have a genuine random sample of the relevant population. If your sample is not truly random, you cannot rely on the intervals. Non-random samples usually result from some flaw in the sampling procedure. An example of such a flaw is to only call people during the day and miss almost everyone who works. For most purposes, the non-working population cannot be assumed to accurately represent the entire (working and non-working) population.”

did you not read?

Give more fields to ranger melee pets & increase the success rate for projectile finishers from 20% to 50% or higher. This lets" archers" capitalize more on pets engaged with enemies without having to rework the AI. Fire/Ice/Poison/Smoke fields seem pretty reasonable.

1. Ranger
2. Engineer (specifically non-grenade)
3. Elementalist

PLEASE, when we finally kill Scarlet, let her enter a downed state so we can Finsh Her properly.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Regardless of it being a small fix, when many teams try and ‘squeeze in’ more fixes, they start to go untested, missing from patch notes, and ultimately cause more harm than good.

+1 to more testing and less bugs. I have been impressed with the quality of the releases I’ve seen versus other MMOs I play.

Abaia.1365:

Second, there’s the age old fantasy rule of “No Uggoes.” In the fantasy genre being unattractive means one of two things: you’re evil or being “the ugly one” is your character type. Hence, no one in fantasy in general, or GW2 in particular, is allowed to be unattractive.

Do you pay attention to the chatter from the other NPCs around you? I know they aren’t Iconics or Biconics (Triconics? Side-conics?) but we got to see a Quaggan love story play out during the whole Tower of Nightmares saga.

True, they weren’t the main draw, but I smiled, and laughed, and cried a little watching them interact with each other (see sig). And was totally jazzed watching Peneloopee hitting on Bloomanoo at the end of the Tower saga, and seeing them together in Lion's Arch in the after-the-marionnete instance.

So yeah, there are heterosexual “normal” relationships in game. Maybe you have to pay attention a little to see them, but whatever. I sure hope the devs will let us be there when they announce the eggs! And I also hope that Peneloopee and Bloomanoo help defeat Scarlett in some small way, and get a little payback for the Quaggans.

Thanks Behellagh, that makes sense.

Just curious how the gold to gem and gem to gold conversion prices are set. In other MMOs I’ve played (star trek online) the currency conversion works like the trading post, with buyer and seller able to set a price, and if you are willing to pay the market price or the market price hits your range, the transaction happens. With GW2 I don’t see that implemented.
Does a-net use an algorithm to generate the set point for each of gem-> gold/gold->gem? What happens to the difference between the 100 gems for gold and gold for gems exchange? IE, if you bought 100 gems and immediately turned around and sold them back, it seems like you’d lose a significant amount of gold.

Crafting deserves its own CDI at some point. But my feeling on making it more relevant is to remove all the white/blue/green junk drops from the loot tables and increasing the value of the junk tokens merchants purchase. So you could still get rare on up through drops, but everything else would have to come via the player-driven economy. This would also encourage more people out into the world for materials.

Chrispy.5641:

With a House, that has a 99.9999% chance of being instanced if ever implemented, no other player except for you and your friends will ever see that house. Even if a public option is made, there are hundreds of thousands of players that would hit the private switch so no one can ever see the house.

That Progress is only for you, and for your friends to see. Using your quote from below, how is a player going to make themselves different and exclusive from other players if the other players will never see or care about your ‘exclusive’ home?

In real life, you do realize that we all live in instanced homes? But yet we still purchase items for ourselves, and display our own trophies there. I don’t wear a shirt that says “3rd place in my age group at the Burning Pine 5K”, but I do have a small trophy that I am very proud of earning on my desk, that only my family and coworkers ever see. So I don’t think that argument really holds a lot of water. There is a large segment of users who want to personalize their impact on the game – being able to visit a Monument Hall or whatever that shows what you did can bring out memories etc of those activities. It’s not all about showing off how elite you are: sometimes it’s about recalling the fun you had during that event.

And beyond just a trophy case, being able to craft furniture to go into your home instance can make a significant difference to the emotional involvement people have in the game (Ever hear of game called Minecraft?) I don’t do it myself, but I can definitely understand the motivation to spend hours working on things only a small group of people will ever see – because that small group includes themselves.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

How about this?
– Increased drop rate for currently winning server +X% vs both other servers
– Increased drop rate against highest-ranked server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place rank
– Increased drop rate against highest-scored server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place score

This makes it easier to encourage people to come out to WvW, and splitting it this way encourages the two weaker servers to band together to fight the stronger server, making for a more interesting match all around.

Chris, do you plan to come up with a single proposal from this effort, or would it be possible to do a few proposals and let the player base vote on it, similar to Evan/Eileen?

I also +1 a quaggan wedding. I like seeing the effects the LS has on the NPCs around it. I hope Scarlett show’s up and Peneloopee takes the cake knife and goes all stabbity stab.

Can we also see Katterwik memorialized somehow? Perhaps a statue and memorial plaque by her skritt colony?

Does the technology support having a statue of the PC? A memorial to the fighters who went in the tower in the nearby town would be awesome, even if it just was stone version of the current character.

Coo. You complete quaggan.

This is a feature request to update the look of the destroy item window so it looks nothing like the Soulbind Y/N window. I lost a (minor) earring when I dragged it from my inventory to the rightmost slot, and slightly missed the slot. When that happens, the UI brings up a Destroy Item window, and I clicked Yes, expecting to see the Soulbind window.

So, just to prevent a potential bigger boo-boo in the future, requesting that the Destroy Item window be made visually distinctive as possible from the Soulbind Item window. Perhaps change the YES button to Red?

Another option would be to remove the functionality of destroying items when they are released over an invalid location, but I’m sure some people are used to that functionality being there.

ObTrollResponses:
Yes, I am an idiot.
Yes, the devs have better ways to spend their time.

Obviously, the toxic potion Scarlet was cooking up was actually a l o v e potion!

So what does one buy for a quaggan wedding? Peneloopee, you go girl!

And Kasmeer and Marjory….Woo!

One concern I have about horizontal vs vertical progression, is to make sure that content can still be usefully gated by level. With the addition of the new heals, we’re starting to make characters more powerful without increasing their “level”. How will that translate to setting difficulty in the future? Will L80 content always be doable by someone with only rare equipment and challenging to someone with a full load of ascended items+legendaries? Some developers in another MMO I play have stated that developing new content is more difficult now because of the expanding gap between a freshly level-capped player and a long term player, and it is really starting to show in their mission development.

Crystal Desert
Frostgorge Sound

4 floating balloons (remnant of the Queen’s Jubilee?) are seen hovering in Frostgorge Sound NE of Groznev Delve vista.

Overhead view available at
http://hendric.smugmug.com/Junk/temp/19852747_CCmJPr#!i=2955290794&k=V5JmJDV&lb=1&s=A

From the ground, the four balloons are just floating there in the air.

Crystal Desert
Dredgehaunt Cliffs – De Molish Post (far south central)
68/Norn/Ranger

Trying to complete heart for Explorer Brokkar, killing the dredge turrets doesn’t spawn cannonballs to blow up the armory doors.

Link to video
http://hendric.smugmug.com/Other/Video-Games/21921663_M52d4H#!i=2939962696&k=DB6vv3d

I know I only break one before completing the heart, but I made my way up the whole slope without seeing any cannonballs drop.

Add 1 separate +1 indicator on forum threads for the Devs and show how many have hit it. This would easily let people see that Devs have read their post. (Next up, complaints that “Xx devs have read my post but not responded”)

How about for the second round, the devs pick the topics? And alternate it each session? What kinds of concerns and head-scratching problems are you dealing with today?

Has there been a discussion about respawn timers? I really like the hearts and dynamic events, however it makes it feel like I have less of an effect when monsters are respawning on top of me as I am clearing out an area. Maybe a distance check at the end of the respawn timer for the player that killed the monster? And if they are still nearby (say 2000), restart the timer (but this time without a distance check)? That way you can feel a sense of accomplishment for clearing out a cave or Sons of Svanir hovel, and if you’ve moved on, they can respawn for the next player or if you are taking too long (afk or whatever).

Actually, this will probably result in an uptick in their revenue. I was hesitant before to purchase a soulbound gathering tool, but now that it is account bound and can be moved from toon to toon I plan to get one. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Any chance we could see tiered pets? We have tiered skills now, it would be interesting if there was something similar for pets, with 10 or whatever on each tier, and higher tiers opening up as you claim 5/10 lower tier pets. Then higher tier pets could be stronger without overbalancing.

Or, instead of forcing diversity, allow focused training by buffing your pet with each additional animal of that type you tame – You familiarize yourself more with the species, are better able to use their abilities, whatever. That way if you find a pet you like, you can spend some time improving their performance – could be grindy though if the numbers are too high. Something like 0-5 = tier 0, 6-15 = tier 1, 16-25 = tier 2, 26-35 = tier 3, 36-50 = tier 4. This could allow for our “juveniles” to age as well.

Something else fun would be humanoid pets – Skritt, Tengu, etc companions, perhaps as top-tier pets in the above schemes. A skritt gear-lobber pet would be awesome.

The camp at the Seraph Observer’s waypoint in Brisban Wildlands is continuously overrun by bandits. There is no dynamic event listed as being active, but it looks like a broken one, with wave after wave of bandits. The locals aren’t tough enough to hold them off, and are always downed. Can be exploited to get a large number of revives.

As a related issue, the waypoint is never marked contested.

Server: Crystal Desert

EchenSketch.9142:

You cannot punish a server for having a higher population than another. Even a simple speed boost does that. The outnumbered buff is not the issue. Making WvW not a numbers game is the issue.

That’s a pretty backwards comment to make. The point isn’t to let one server steamroll over another, but rather that BOTH sides have a fun time. Letting one server LOLfaceroll doesn’t make it fun for anyone (well, maybe a short while for the winning server, but once you own all the towers and the zone is a ghost town, then what?). Giving the outnumbered server a buff that matters, lasts, and encourages people to serve in the defense of their “homeland” will only make it more fun for everyone.

Any PvP that involves dynamic team sizing is always going to be a numbers game, it’s written into the definition itself. The outnumbered buff isn’t intended to completely override that, but to give the losing server a chance at getting to an equal footing. Announcing to the whole server that it is active, and will last a significant time, will encourage players to show up.

And how, exactly do you make WvW not a numbers game? Make the population limits so low that even a disinterested server can field a team? Cut the field of battle up into zones and limit the density of players per zone? Require that the number of players be balanced within 10% and force waiting queues on the larger server until the lower pop server fills up? All of those options seem rather distasteful, and would only discourage players on the larger server, which is definitely not the way to go – we want more WvW players overall, not less.

Some ideas:

1. How about adding a speed boost to the Outnumbered stat? Something that stacks with the player’s current boosts. This would help with a couple of problems. It doesn’t have to be large, maybe 10%. Enough that someone using sigils can outrun someone using a speed booster. This would make it easier to break out when spawncamped, and give you time to race to a supply camp etc to raid it.

2. Grant extra supply carrying capacity, or make each supply count 2x as much when used. Smaller teams could then build siege faster.

3. Grant the buff with a certain minimum amount of time, with a timer requirement before applying and a cooldown when it expires. So you must be outnumbered for at least 2 minutes before you get a guaranteed minimum 30 minute buff. At the same time post a message to the server similar to the banner we get when Scarlett’s minions attack, saying that you’re outnumbered in WvW and need help. Once your timer expires or the pop limit is hit, put it on cooldown for at least 30 minutes. This would discourage servers mass-leaving just to get the buff. This would also limit the maximum the banners would show up to once per hour worst-case.

Real-life major villians don’t just pop up out of nowhere with the massive forces Scarlet has shown she is capable of deploying. Where are they getting their food, for example?

Perhaps one member of a Living Story team can be the designated “Seed Planter” to take little crumbs and put them in-game in a couple of spots (say Rata Sum and The Grove for Scarlett) ahead of the actual release? They would have to work with the previous LS team to make sure their changes mesh well together. For example

Giant meteor strikes Tyria, ends up being new Elder Dragon – have a couple of NPCs in Rata Sum 4-8 weeks before the event occurs start talking about how their astronomer cousin has found a new object in the sky, 0-2 weeks have that astronomer running around Rata Sum like a madman claiming the world is going to end.

For SAB a couple of the more obscure NPCs could easily have their dialogue updated to tell Moto’s story.

The giant tent over the Great Collapse is a great idea, but a real jamboree like that wouldn’t have been so secretive – there should have been NPCs – citizens, children, guards, etc – excited, happy, and concerned about the large event before it happened.

It doesn’t need to be a lot, with the large number of players in-game any changes would be rapidly detected and theorized.

Or, as others have said put in a “newspaper” for prior lore, and newspaper criers around the maps with suitable rumors and red herrings. Take up stories from news/fake news and put a Tyrian spin on it. I’m thinking National Enquirer meets the Onion with the occasional nugget of truth in there. Have fun with it!

Since these are simple text additions to a large update, I don’t see them as being particularly hard or requiring a lot of SQA time.

Essence Snow.3194:

Yep…makes perfect sense.

Try it this way. Think of one of those pinball-like toys where you shoot the ball up, and it drops down a series of pegs to land in the slots at the bottom (pachinco). If you shoot thousands of pinballs (dense), most end up in the center slot, with less and less as you get further away. The end slots have the least number of pinballs. In this analogy, each player is one of those pinballs. Some barely play the content at all (leftmost slots). Most did it for a short while (middle slots), while some farmed the heck out of it (rightmost slots).

Now, what John is saying, ignore those leftmost slots, those guys obviously didn’t play. Dump out those pinballs. Count all the balls that are left. Divide that by 2 (median). Now starting at the leftmost slot, start counting pinballs until you hit that number. Where that slot is located is the median. Half, of all the players who actually tried the content, made that much money or less. Half made more. We don’t know how much more, and really, it doesn’t matter because of the built-in limiters (you can only farm so much gold/hour, and only so many people can farm at the same time in the Gaunlet).

Knowing where the median is located is more important than the average, since the median is a better indicator of what the majority of the players experienced. (because of the large number of pinballs/density). Also, throwing away the leftmost slots skews the median past the top of the distribution, so the most commonly earned amount is definitely less than the median.

Leablo.2651:

Army FPS would be overkill. It could just be a SWAT commando in full riot gear. They should absolutely add that to GW2.

Hmm…

Logan Thackeray’s QUEEN’S COMMANDOS

!

Shriketalon.1937:

3) Show, don’t tell. Build, don’t force. If you want us to fear and respect the villain, have them do villainous deeds that instill fear and respect. If you want that villain to be grand and magnificent, build them up over time and use a series of events to instill a sense of grandiosity. Introducing a new character and telling us that they are important and amazing doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel real. If you show us the character being amazing and demonstrate how they interact and impact the world, it creates the persona of a grand nemesis organically.

This. With a whole world to play in and control over the whole thing, I would take it a different route. Here’s how I would imagine Scarlet being introduced…

During your tour to get map complete on Rata Sum, you see a Sylvari student in one of the colleges. Some background chatter about how great she is doing, however unfortunate that she wasted her time in Xxx college first.

A few months later, a quiet update that moves her to the portal test lab (in Brisband Wildlands is it? ) A modified event is created, where she is damaged somehow and rescued by the player.

Later she shows up again at Rata Sum, this time in yet another college, but the nearby NPCs comment how she is driven, and has an odd look about her.

Then she disappears for a few months, and is mentioned in the Aetherblades etc.

That would make her much more interesting, since we would have been invested in her to some extent, and tragic in that she was rescued by us but obviously hurt by her experience.

vgomes.7380:

At daytime the hairstyle would look as it does in the picture below, just like an open flower. At nightime those leafs on the lower part of the flower would actually cover up the whole flower (as you can see on the little sketch on the upper part of the image).

I haven’t played my Sylvari much yet, but I do know that Asura ears can go from droopy during non-combat to alert mode during combat. If they can’t implement night/day differences (and just to be contrary, there needs to be an option to have the flower open at night instead) how about out of combat/in combat? It would be awesome to see flowers fade/hide to be replaced by spikes/thorns/etc.

I would love to get a hairstyle that comes with a butterfly.

How proprietary is the economic data? A histogram would be a lot more informative than just a median.

I think this doesn’t perturb the economy, per se, because along with the gold generated real items are also injected into the economy. High-demand items would get more expensive, except more of them are also being acquired through loot. What I would expect to see is that a lot of people who were close to purchasing their want list, got just enough gold to get it, and will pop the price up a little initially, but as the event progresses the prices will drop to below the original price pre-event as people get more loot drops.

Euphelis.1084:

I played him 100 times in each trial. Results?

1. of wins without rejuv booster: 3 win % = 3%
2. of wins with rejuv booster: 4 win % = 4%
   Anyone who has taken a statistics class will tell you those numbers are exactly the same. Continue with the trial out to a million games and they will equal each other.

Actually, 100 trials isn’t enough to prove they are the same. Anyways, assume they are accurate and let’s look at it from the other side. 3 wins out of 100 clearly isn’t skill, that’s luck, unless those wins only came at the very end.

Think of it from this perspective. What is the odds of failing BB? 97%, right? What about failing it 10 times in a row? .97^10 or 74%. What about 100 times? 4.7%. Now think about that. That means that, of all the people who could be bothered to try up to 100 times, 4.7% of them failed. That’s 1 in 20. Any time a single player’s enjoyment is reliant upon such a low % outcome, there are going to be some very unhappy people on the margins.

I’m just happy the only affect is on a minor achievement. On Star Trek Online before they turned it into a grindfest, the top-tier gear was done exactly like this, very low percentage drops for character bound items. In our fleet there was one person who had run missions hundreds of times and never got his final top tier drop. One of my toons got all three of her top tier drops within 5 (yes FIVE) missions. He was a good sport about it, but that’s still gotta hurt.

Editted since Euphelis agrees this is out of line.

Incredibly easy for someone L80, perhaps. My main is currently only L22, and got pasted over and over trying to finish the story instance. Eventually some timer ran out or something and it gave me the completion. Still very frustrating anyways. All it needed was a few more defenders inside the fort and I would have been fine. How did the whole fort get populated with enemies anyhow??

How about reducing the reward based on the server population?
Large pop server grants less of a reward on a win
Low pop server grants more of a reward on a win

This would counteract migrating to a large pop server for a higher win chance.

“more” and “less” doesn’t necessarily mean monetary value. Could mean how long the buff lasts, for example. Say a low pop server gets a 1 week buff, a med pop gets a 4 day buff, and high pop server gets a 2 day buff.