Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the advice. Just filed the ticket.

Really hope I get some usefull response. Not entirely because of the lost bags but because the whole incident really confuses me.
If this is a bug it is like the strangest bug I experienced so far.

If I messed up myself I might want to see a doctor.

I was just doing some silvewastes chestfarm. I was leading and logged in the whole time. After the first hour I had like 100+ champion bags from the chests in my inventory.

Then, as the run went on and I was checking again some time later I was back down to 10. The stack was still at the same spot.

There is a slight possibility, that I accidentally deleted my stack instead of some ascended materials AND clicked yes on the confirmation window AND the next champion bag I looted landed on the same spot in my inventory as the old stack was. But I kinda doubt that explanation.

Feeling kinda confused and kittened. Anyone else experienced something similar? Any chance I get my bags back? Already filed a ingame report.

Time to carefully necro this thread.

Partly because I want some more feedback and partly because I might be adding some more concepts to it soon. Stay tuned.

I thought it would be much safer this way.

Invisible walls or physical obstacles could produce all sorts of bugs.
People getting stuck between spawning crystals.
People getting stuck under spawning crystals.
People exploiting mechanics to jump over them or end up on top of them.
Etc.

I thought more of a mine field maze than a maze with high walls.
This also ensures, that someone from far away, the cannons for example, still has a good overview of the maze.

About the Unstable Crystals. Someone had a problem understanding them earlier.

So, just to make it clear. They function the same way as the spikey fields in the Super Adventure Box hardmode did. If you come near them you get killed.
This is just to ensure, that players can’t just jump through the maze.

I’m not sure what trolling potential you mean there.

Maybe I will edit those changes into the concept if I find the time. Right now studying is keeping me busy.

Also, I would love to hear more critique, feedback and suggestions from everyone here!

See, now we are discussing the concept and possible mechanics for the Shatterer.

As I see it you have two concerns.
One is Crystallization not providing something for the players to actively counterplay.

The other one is the maze phase not providing enough ways for the players to participate in the main mechanic i.e. the shooting your way through the maze.
On a sidenote you voiced a concern about Chaotic Cascade. Let me answer to that first.

Chaotic Cascade’s sole purpose is to get players away from the area where the maze will spawn. I know the main problem will be people that can bypass that mechanic via stability or mesmer portals.
However I think there is an easy and a not so easy fix for this.
As I already wrote in a different post Chaotic Cascade can last much longer and even, as you suggested, knock players back. There are immunity and stability skills, but none of them lasts longer than some seconds as far as I know and chain immunity is not possible.
This would be a easy fix against players trying to stay at the boss.
The not so easy fix would require a slight overhaul of the phase.

Alternate Maze Phase

The Shatterer lands and starts to cast Chaotic Cascade. Then he starts to cast Crystal Cascade and the maze begins to spawn.

Players can damage Unstable Crystals but deal reduced damage to them.

There are five packs of powerful branded enemies defending Huge Resonating Crystals around the maze. Players need to defeat the packs to gain Resonating Shards and Resonating Crystals. Resonating Crystals need to be brought to the cannons as usual. They deal increased damage to crystalline structures. Resonating Shards can be used by players to also deal increased damage to crystalline structures.

Once all the Huge Resonating Crystals are destroyed Chaotic Cascade ends.

First priority is to end the Chaotic Cascade. Second priority is to shoot a way through the maze. Players need to coordinate to not waste shards or crystals.
The tricky part here is to balance the number of shards and crystals. Players should need to work together in order to reach the Shatterer. There should be enough shards and crystals for about two ways through the maze. If people try to build more ways they will fail to reach the Shatterer.

As for the problem with Crystallization I actually like your idea.

Alternate Crystallization
Crystallization stacks much slower. Skills like Breath and Impale apply stacks of Crystallization. Players will still be most likely caught in a prison if they don’t fight in front of him. But, if they avoid all additional stacks players will only have to get them removed once or twice a phase.

What do you think about those two alternatives?

BlindGirl.3428:

Its essentially like having Teqs fingers shoot irreflectable instagib fields in terms of counter play.

Crystalline Prisons only occur once a player has a certain number of stacks of Crystallization. There is nothing instant about the whole mechanic.

BlindGirl.3428:

This is also the first time in your concept you want the few cannoniers to have total control over how the zerg works out. If the canons fail to shatter the crystals, its all over.

If the Cannons fail to shatter the prisons or the pulsing crystals it is not all over. It is just a massive damage spike due to Chaotic Pulse that will most likely kill a few players.

BlindGirl.3428:

Players can get immobilized and crystal-stunned while not in cleanse range? What if that happens? Is the player then supposed to just sit there and watch the rest fail without his “critical help”?

Crystalline Prisons get destroyed when the Shatterer casts Chaotic Pulse. Chaotic Pulse consumes stacks of Empowerment. For every stack it consumes it destroys the related pulsing crystal or prison.

Secondly, this mechanic ensures, that players have to fight in front of the Shatterer. If people are fighting from anywhere but in front of him they will get caught in prisons and quickly wipe the group. Yes.

BlindGirl.3428:

Also this forces the zergs to stack up even more – for an easier cleanse target.

The melees will have to move out of the cannon range to do damage and back into it to get their stacks of Crystallization cleansed. This means we will have at least two groups, just as we have it with the most common Tequatl strategies right now.

BlindGirl.3428:

Make everything invincible to player dmg and again put the main focus on the cannons… sounds like a plan… cough

Not everything is invincible. There are, as it can be seen in the pictures, groups of branded around the maze that need to be killed.

BlindGirl.3428:

Having to collect stuff while waiting is like being punished, its the same as whiping and having to run back to the teq fight – gameplay wise. (…)
You could have the cannons weaken the crystal shells, and the players then smash the weakened crystals, instead of having the zerg stand around while the canons clear the way.You could have smaller crystals spawn that the players can throw at the Crystal walls in front, in order to take em out. Just give the mob something interesting to do that has direct results, rather than indirect.

The players have to constantly collect Resonating Crystals and throw them from position to position. Every shot of a cannon consumes one Resonating Crystal. There is no waiting as you describe it. Players will have to fight champions and normal branded as fast as possible and play basketball with the Resonating Crystals.

BlindGirl.3428:

Lets assume the cannons do their job here: The zerg will happily DPS until the next phase starts, while the cannons will be pretty much invisible.

This is just like with the current Tequatl damage phase. The cannons use their skill 4 two times and do some damage. (Assuming you are talking about phase 3)

BlindGirl.3428:

You dont really get stronger from them, unless you combo with their fire, but in the zerg it wont really matter whose fire it is you just stacked your might with. All they really do is keep a number on your screen low. So the reward for being a cannon is… not there. You know you did a good job, but no one else really does.

Again I have to compare with the current Tequatl. No one knows when the Hylek Turrets did a good job. Most people don’t even understand what exactly they are doing.
Again a comparison: the Hylek Turrets just apply might directly. The fire field would force players to use the combo field mechanic.

BlindGirl.3428:

Now lets see what happens if they don’t do their job: You have a ton of frozen players that have all the time in the world to think and rage about why the canon group are brain dead monkeys. For the zerg player “all they need to do is spam cleanse” – i mean… how hard can that be, right?

When the Hylek Turrets fail to do their job we have a ton of dead players or a bone wall. However, flaming and insulting each other is not the fault of the encounter.

Yeah, I mean tbh I totally love the idea of players becoming branded and fighting the normal players. I think this was kinda hard to read from my post.

It is just that such a corruption will hardly work if the players have full control over their character. How you described it NinjaEd would be totally doable though.

Then again being branded is nothing reversible as far as I know. Now that I wrote this, it sounds almost perfect for a future story element regarding Kralkatorrik. You know, some Asura doing research on the branding etc..
I’d say the branded players should just be killed not released when their branded counterpart gets killed. (Just nitpicking at this point.)

BlindGirl.3428:

So heres my idea to this:
Thank you for working on this, honestly, you did a decent job of designing a fight, but… do we need to do this? Honestly? I don’t think so.

Let me summarize.

You wanted to write how horrible my concept was.
Then you abandoned the idea and instead wrote how useless my concept is.
Then you tell us that having ideas, sharing them and discussing them is all together useless.
All that while talking about everything but the new Shatterer concept.
To be honest I would have preferred the critique over what you wrote.

Also just two things for you:
Do I need to know how to build a street to identify a road hole? No.
And does having a certain job mean you are automatically good at it or above critique? Also No.

Thanks for the feedback again.

I have to agree. When I made the concept and checked the area I kinda had the same concern Direksone is voicing here.
We all know what we get when there are too many players crowded in a small area. In my concept a huge portion of the fight takes place in front of the Shatterer.

I think the only simple solution would be to have to defend the cannons in phase 1 against adds with static numbers i.e. add waves that don’t scale up or down and always require a certain number of players.

The problem with such mechanics is that you want to get players away from the dragon while still providing a feeling of participation. It is not impossible to achieve this, but it is very hard.

Let me shamelessly promote my thread about a new concept for the Shatterer at this point: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/The-Shatterer-New-Boss-Concept

If you are interested in Tequatl you might be interested in what I wrote there as well.

Now to your topic. I already wrote something like that in my thread, but have you guys every thought about playing the social game in order to kill Tequatl?
If we (Riverside) don’t have enough people to kill Tequatl we send people to Lion’s Arch and/or any running world events to promote. We even send people to other [DE] worlds to gather more players.
I mean, I am fully aware, that we have it easy because people know we are capable of killing Tequatl. But it’s not like we didn’t work on this reputation.
In short: play the social game, start to build a community and you will be able to farm Tequatl.

As for the rewards. I am completely on your side regarding a token system. We have one special guy that killed Tequatl about as often as I did. He got two Tequatl minis (when they were still over 100g), one ascended chest (berserker stats) and one Tequatl ascended chest. What did I get? Two Hylek minis so far. There are people out there who got nothing. And we are talking about like 50 kills I guess.
The overall rewards are okay imo. The special rewards however need a way for people to work on them rather than just relying on pure luck.

Thanks for the feedback.
I chuckled when I read Rym’s post and the part about solid german work.

I am definitely not just writing this to get the thread back to page 1 btw. :P

Silverkung.9127:

But
-Not friendly event for most random people on server.Or low number player server.
-Make it friendly way to fight love to come whatever it’s up.
“It’s challange let’s do this” , “We can try one more time” , “Shatter up jump in!!”
not “if you not on ***server forget this kitten you can’t make it” , “Try to do and forget this event untill gw4 come out” , “No core people come noone do it”.

What you posted there is very interesting. Let me explain why.

Juts today it happened, that the Tequatl farm community (as described in the first post we are 100% random) failed to kill Tequatl at around 13pm I think. We went on to kill the Karka Queen as we always do and then, almost 60 minutes before the next Tequatl, we already had around 40 people stuck in Sparkfly Fen overflow. I myself wasn’t on overflow and sent two people to Elona Reach and Abbadon’s Mouth to see if we can start a second run on either of the two worlds. I decided for Abbadon’s Mouth and we went there.
When we arrived I sent people to Lion’s Arch to promote it. Abbadon’s Sparkfly Fen was a graveyard, no people there except for us. After about 5 minutes the map was full and we successfully killed Tequatl. All this with random players some of which haven’t even killed Tequatl yet.

Why am I writing such a long post? Because in my humble opinion I think that everyone can kill and farm a boss like Tequatl or my version of the Shatterer. There are enough players out there who can, thanks to guesting, play everywhere they want. The things that prevent players from being successful at farming such a boss aren’t numbers. Such bosses aren’t killed with strategies or equipment. You actually just need social competence to kill them. And as I see it there are plenty of players out there who underestimate what they can achieve if they play the social side of GW2.

What you describe in you post is what we all know from overflow. Flaming and hating without anything productive coming from it. I just don’t see this being the fault of the boss. I see this as the fault of the players. I am not saying “L2P”. I am saying “L2Socialize”.

Edit: I hope this doesn’t come of as if I am saying “L2anything” to you or to anyone. In short I just meant that I don’t see the problems with the bosses but with the communities. I don’t tell anyone to learn anything.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

I like the idea of a shatterer rework. Personally if we could use what happened in the beta it’d be great in that dead players would come back as branded versions of themselves(complete with new skillbars) who would then have to go after the living players.

Basically dead players PvP live ones trying to kill the shatterer.

Mechanics like that would be fun, indeed. However, you need to provide a motivation for the dead players to actually fight the live ones. Just for the lulz might be enough for some trolls, but not enough for everyone.

A simple solution would be, that, like it has been done in other games, the player loses control over his character. As far as I know there is no such mechanic implemented in the game right now. (Speaking of complete control here. Think of Mind Control on WoW.)

NinjaEd.3946:

Love the game plan drawings, pictures help explain a lot better. The only suggestions I would make is not making the flying phase so similar to the tequatl flying phase and making the event only occur when enough players report it, otherwise we get what tequatl is like these days.. not enough people.. Each dragon should be unique in its fight. Otherwise loved the read ^^

You know, I see it that way: the dragons can fly so they should fly. The dragons command armies of minions, so they should command.
All the dragons have some unique form of corruption they use to create armies.

Of course you are right, every dragon deserves a unique thing to his fight. In this case I intended the maze and the crystallization to be the unique factor.

Jaya.2760:

Very nice concept. And yes – shatterer needs some love. But i see a problem with the maze-phase: a mesmer could lay a portal by the shatterer when he comes down, port to the waypoint, run to the zerg and lay the second portal when chaotic cascade ends. So, the zerg could use the complete damage-phase without dealing with the maze.

That’s what I intended Chaotic Cascade for. Now that you wrote it I checked how long the portals are standing and I kinda agree that this might become a problem.

There would be two ways to fix this.

One way would be that the maze is very tight around him. This way it would be possible to use portals, but, they would be every hard to use and the cannons would still need to destroy at least some Unstable Crystals.

The other way would be, that Chaotic Pulse just lasts longer than just until the maze is created.

Both ways would offer the portals as a clever use of class mechanics without breaking the encounter too much. As long as it doesn’t break the whole phase using Mesmers as an advantage would be okay for me.

Edit: I just had an idea for another method. The Chaotic Cascade could be powered by a fourth type of Crystals that are randomly scattered across the maze. This way the zerg would still need to gather some resonating crystals before they could use portals. This could also take enough time to make any possible portals run out.

In short. I think there are various ways to ensure portals don’t break the maze mechanic.

4. Rewards

This part is just a compilation of tips and hints for you ArenaNet.

Players want to play – Give us fun stuff. We love fun stuff. Give us a fun item that crystallizes us or produces a crystalline prison around us. Give us a everlasting potion that transforms us into a branded or makes us burn with purple flames. There is more fun stuff than just minis.

Players want loot not load – More rewards don’t mean better rewards. Don’t drown us with green stuff. Instead of 10 greens just give us one yellow.

Players want fairness – Add a daily token system to the world bosses. Players can exchange tokens for materials or currency, or, save them up for special rewards like minis or skins.

So, that’s it for now. Let’s see what you guys think.

And please excuse any strange grammar or spelling. I hope everything is understandable.

3. Cannons

Cannons will play an important role in this fight. There are four cannons in this fight that need to be operated properly.

One new thing is, that the cannons do have a method to buff the zerg, but not as easy as the Hylek Turrets could. The cannons can create a fire field that applies swiftness, but in order to gain might from it players need to use combo finishers.

In phase 1 the main job of the cannons is to destroy Pulsing Crystals and Crystalline Prisons as well as “shower” off Crystallization from players.

There is room for a mechanic, that requires the cannons to save themselves as well to spice things up. A possible mechanic would be, that the cannons can get crystallized by the Shatterer and need to be shot free by other cannons.

In phase 2 the cannons will have to do as much damage as possible to stop the waves from reaching them.

In phase 3 the cannons can support the nearest teams with damage but will mainly have to wait for the Resonating Crystals to come in. Once they shot a way through the maze, which will require a lot of communication to be effective they can support the zerg by doing damage to the Shatterer as well as buffing the zerg.

When the cannons shot a way through the maze players must use the time to damage the Shatterer as much as possible. While being exhausted the Shatterer will suffer additional damage.

Once the timer for this phase runs out the Shatterer will wake up and phase 1 will start again.

Unstable Crystals will be small and deadly. Players coming near them will be instantly killed.

Stable Crystals will be bigger and indestructible.

The third type of crystals are actually powerful branded minions caught in a crystalline prison. Those prisons will automatically burst as soon as a player comes near them, releasing a powerful branded champion with knockback attacks.

All of those crystals are immune to player’s attacks. Unstable Crystals however can be destroyed by the cannons. In order to do this the players need to gather Resonating Crystals from branded packs around the crystal maze. The Resonating Crystals will be just like the kegs in Keg Brawl. Being fast is key in this phase. The phase will have a separate timer that starts as soon as the maze is completely spawned. This means, the faster the players build a way through the maze the more damage they can do.

2.3 Phase 3 / Maze Phase

75%-xx% / 50%-xx% / 25%-xx%

When the aerial phase ends the Shatterer is exhausted and tries to defend himself with two powerful skills. When he lands the first skill he will cast is Chaotic Cascade. Chaotic Cascade deals 10 000 damage to every player in range every 2 seconds. With the start of Chaotic Cascade he will also cast Crystalline Cascade. This will spawn a maze of three different types of crystals around the Shatterer. When the maze is completely spawned Chaotic Cascade will end.

2.2 Phase 2 / Aerial Phase

75% / 50% / 25%

In this phase the Shatterer tries to let his branded do his dirty work. He sends out huge masses of minions that try to destroy the cannons and players defending it.
There will be champions, kamikaze minions and a huge load of regular enemies.

This phase requires the use of snares, cripples, walls and every skill the players have to stop the branded from reaching the cannons. If a cannon gets destroyed it will be repaired by Charr mechanics. However, this will take until phase 1 starts again.

On a side note: This works as a, as I like to call it, “soft fail mechanic”. When you failed to defend a battery or the Megalaser at the Tequatl encounter the whole zerg gets wiped. This is a “hard fail” mechanic where failing results in a completely missed damage phase and thus, in most cases, a failed fight. On the new Shatterer you will be able to do phase 3 even when you failed to defend all the cannons, if there is at least one cannon still alive. This ensures that one bad phase 2 doesn’t automatically result in a failed fight.

When all waves are defeated the Shatterer will land and phase 3 will start.

While people try to fight the slow crystallization they will have to deal with three other attacks as well. One of them is the current breath attack where the Shatterer spits fire on the area in front of him. Those projectiles will be block- and reflectable.

The current Impale will be there as well. Now that players need to be in front of him it will be quite dangerous.

The last skill he will use is Crystalline Chaos. This is a trail skill as some might know it from other fights or bosses. Players affected by Crystalline Chaos will lose stacks of crystallization and spawn exploding crystal shards for every stack lost. Those people need to run away from others or they will quickly blow up the zerg or group.

Once players have damaged the Shatterer to 75% he will lift up. This starts phase 2 and ends Crystallizing Presence. The timer for the whole fight will be paused, just as it does at the Tequatl encounter.

The real problem now is this: Crystallization can only be removed by a special attack from the cannons. This attack is Screeching Grenade. Crystalline Prisons and Pulsing Crystals can only be destroyed by this attack as well.

This ensures, that players will fight and move in front of the dragon, because as you can see in picture II and III the range of the cannons only spans across a limited area. People will have to move to pulsing crystals in order to get their stacks removed. Crystalline prisons need to be announced so the cannons can destroy them properly. If too many players move around outside the cannon’s range they will quickly end up in crystalline prisons, empower the Shatterer and wipe the whole group.

2 The Fight

2.1 Phase 1

100-75% / xx%-50% / xx%-25% / xx%-0%

When the fight starts the Shatterer will land as usual.

The most important skill is Crystallizing Presence. As it can be seen in picture I the skill’s range spans almost the entire area. The skill will have a significantly higher range as player skills have. Crystallizing Presence adds one stack of Crystallization to each player in range every few seconds. Once the stacks reach a certain number the player is caught in a crystalline prison.

A second skill the Shatterer is using in the first phase is Pulsing Crystal. Pulsing Crystal spawns a pulsing crystal at a random location in front of the Shatterer.

Pulsing crystals as well as Crystalline Prisons empower the Shatterer granting him one stack of Empowerment. Once the Shatterer has a certain number of stacks he will cast a devastating attack that should almost kill players in range. This Chaotic Pulse will on the one hand consume the stacks of Empowerment and on the other hand destroy Crystalline Prisons or Pulsing Crystals equal to the number of stacks consumed.

The Shatterer

1 General Concept
2 The Fight
2.1 Phase 1
2.2 Phase 2 / Aerial Phase
2.3 Phase 3 / Maze Phase
3 Cannons
3 Rewards

1 General Concept

The Shatterer is a powerful champion of Kralkatorrik. As his master he commands over crystals and the corrupting fire that caused the Dragonbrand. The general concept of the fight will revolve around this very corruption.
Players will face a slow and painful process of crystallization, devastating attacks of fire and crystals, waves of branded minions and all sorts of dangerous crystals.

The way players have to work together here will be kinda similar to the current Tequatl fight. There needs to be communication between different teams and positioning will be extremely important.

While Tequatl has two mechanics that require the players to defense structures there is only one defensive mechanic and a rather offensive one.

But, just like Tequatl there will be phases the players will have to survive and complete in order to win.

The fight against the Shatterer requires something around 100-150 players. The fight will involve the Shatterer, various branded minions, special branded champions, four cannons and two artillery commanders.

Hi everyone! I’m Weißer from the German server Riverside.

For the last few weeks we have been farming Tequatl pretty consistently with all sorts of people. From casual to pro, everyone is working together. No guilds, no hierarchy, no flaming, just pve.

And this brings me to why I am making this post. Ever since release people have been crying over how Guild Wars 2 lacks proper endgame content. And yes, for a long time I was on the same train. I have a history of organized raiding and while I love Guild Wars 2 I was kinda missing the feeling of achieving something with a huge group of players.

Now we have Tequatl. And let me tell you, as soon as you accept that you need to work together as a community, this boss is a hell of a fun. Guild Wars 2 needs more of Tequatl’s caliber.

We need bosses that demand communication and organization. We need bosses that punish egoism. And we need epic encounters that people will remember. The design of the world bosses, their appearance and the whole theme of fighting the dragons aims at this very thing. It is just the rewards and the encounters themselves, which need a proper rework.

One of those bosses that are severely broken is the Shatterer. I think we all know how the Shatterer is currently done. And I also think we all want something more.
So, if you have some time, enjoy the following concept and feel free to discuss, suggest or talk about it.

Edit: Made the post a bit shorter.
Edit: I thought I could add a little eye catcher. I have been thinking more about the rewards associated with Tequatl and possible rewards or reward system for the new Shatterer.
I know it takes time to make new skins. Time that is needed elsewhere. However I also think that world bosses deserve at least some skins. Not a full set maybe but some special skins spread over the various weapon types would be a nice addition.

I will add more stuff to this post or this thread eventually. For now, a concept for an axe skin.

+1 Warrior with traited Resistance (Balanced Stance on stun/knockback/etc.)

A fix would be kinda awesome. I remember that back then there was a similar bug, that caused ruined ore/logs because you drew your weapon when you were attacked. (At least I can’t remember having any traits, that activated anything back then.)

Okay, I just beat him using the very same exploit that got fixed. Maybe let me rephrase it, they fixed Mango Pie yes, but they didn’t think of another type of buffs that persist even when doing Belcher’s Bluff.

Boost your spirit and try it again fellows!

This is such a bad joke:

1. Damage bug
I belched several times below 2k or 5k life and it just did 5% dmg to Adnul

2. Critique bug
You can’t bluff even tough he doesn’t have the buff

3. Critique Spam
He spams it two or three times in a row. No matter how you play or what special you choose, this is killing you. Just do the math.

You see, I beat the Sylvari, the Asura and the Human easily. For the Charr you need the human Special to prevent him from healing. He was a joke when you have that special.
But Adnul is bugged, broken and unfair.

Every developer with some pride would at least try for himself and fix him.

Okay guys, let me rephrase it:

What is the point of running to a completely RANDOM location X to loot a generic and unrewarding chest for a bit of text to pop up and to get mini after you made enough text pop up?

My point is not about JPs being fun or not and not entirely about whether or not a mini is a good reward for an event.

My point is more about: what does running to those locations and looting generic chests have to do with the Aetherblades? I mean okay, there are like one or two of them spawning around the chests, wow. Despite that it is just some random location in random old content you have to run to.

Am I missing something crucial here but aren’t those just normal chests?
So what’s the point of having to visit all those tedious JPs again? Just for achievements to get a boring mini that is yet again just a smaller version of an existing npc?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am playing a mmo so I am basically killing time I could use to, I don’t know, save the world or feed hungry children. But “run to the other end of the world, again, and get an achievement” feels like killing my time with a rusty spoon…. covered in cotton wool….

Years ago I learned something: when the droprate for something is lower than a certain number there is no point in farming for it. When the droprate is so low there is only one group of players who have access to it. Random players with criminal luck.

Why is this a problem you might ask?

Well, lets say we have 1000 players. Out of those 1000 only 100 consider getting a legendary. Out of those 100 only 10 will actually have the endurance to make it. Out of those 10 none gets a precursor. No, the precursor randomly drops for someone out of the 900 who don’t even want to build a legendary. That person will only want one thing, profit. Since there is no way to get the precursors the price is totally random and as high as the average gold amount of the 10 people goes.
When GW2 started the price was less then half as high as it is now.
Right now as I am writing this there is one on the tradepost for 175g. A few days ago it was 150g. Before that only 120g. Before that 100g, 80g, 60g.
Gold inflation doesn’t work that fast. The reason for the price is simply greed. People want to make the most out of the “dedicated” players.

So, if the price rises and rises, there should be a point where it is better to craft it on you own. Lets say with 200g you should be able to pull one out of the forge.

Wrong. That is where ArenaNet failed. A good RNG should prevent anomalies. Like when I pull 100 numbers I don’t want to have …1 2 2 9 1 9 9 9 9 9 2 4… somewhere in there. Same goes for the case in which I pull 100 numbers and there is not a single 9 in there.
As far as my understanding of the forge goes, it is just a lazy RNG. Else I wouldn’t have pulled two times the same worthless skins before getting a different one.
I know this might be explained with different chances but somehow I think the forge is just random. I would love to hear someone from ArenaNet explain it to me and prove me wrong.

I am 100% sure that there might be people who will throw up to 500g into the forge without getting their precursor.

And this is: not fair.

My opinion is, that there should be a fixed amount of money that should grant you the precursor. Be it via recipe or other means.
My opinion is, that this recipe should be easily accessible but hard to craft. (This is just to prevent people losing money trying to find the recipe. There are no hints for what might work in the forge out in the game and as long as those don’t exist trial and error is just a lazy excuse for a mechanic)

On to the last point.

Why no quests? Why no story? This seems lazy and for a MMO released in 2012 this is actually… well, strange.
There is nothing more to add. Legendaries should have a story. They should have a background. You should know that.

I want the legendaries to be rare. I want them to be as hard as possible to get.
When I finally have mine I want to lean back and say, kitten that was hard but totally worth it to have a worthless shiny virtual blade.

But I expected more from ArenaNet. Far more.
ArenaNet and certain individuals are directly responsible for me doing what I am doing now. You guys (especially two of you) inspire me.

I want GW2 to be what you promised us. Truly unique, epic and memorable.

Now back to the gold problem and the general idea of farming/grinding.
Farming is tedious. Farming isn’t fun. The reward is the fun part. Working hard for something, grinding for nights with movies or music and energy drinks or coffee or whatever poison you prefer until you get your shiny epic reward, lean back and say something like “kitten yes, I did it”.
Some of us know that feeling. I did this many times. To be honest (and please refrain from flames) the last time I did something like this was back when I still played WoW and wanted my fox kit. When I finally saw the blue text and learned it I was so happy and all the pain was gone. That cute little fellow was a worthy reward.
As I said, some people know that feeling, some don’t. I love it and as stupid as doing something over and over again for a virtual reward might be I have fun doing it.

So what went wrong in Guild Wars 2?

First of all, grinding and farming should be specific. If I need something specific I should farm something specific.
The problem right now is that everything is substitutable. This leads to us not farming the specific items but gold. We all farm the same spots that are the most profitable. We all do the same thing for the whole grind and simply buy everything we need off the tradepost.
This leads to crowded event farming/bombing and crowded troll farming.
Why should I kill beasts for my claws if I can trade every blood I find for 10 claws?
Why should I kill elementals for my lodestones if I can farm money worth 10 lodestones before I see even one lodestone drop?
You see the flaw?

I seriously hope ArenaNet is not becoming like some other company that is making games to support their store. If I every
find out, that ArenaNet is actually keeping things just to keep the store and the buying of gems/gold running I will be done with ArenaNet just as I am done with some other games/companies.

The point about farming should be that you have to farm different areas. That you can farm where you like to be. That you are NOT FORCED to stay 24/7 in Orr.
I am 100% sure ArenaNet is aware of the community being sick of 24/7 undead and their hook of fun. I am 100% sure ArenaNet knows that we actually don’t want to do the same events over and over and over and over again.

I already saw ideas like loot and event rewards being completely based on your level. And while I know that this might lead to other problems I would actually love to farm my karma in different areas. To explore all the events I missed. To get back to Ascalon, the Shiverpeaks and all the other zones I am missing right now while staring at corals and undead.

I think you get my point, the grinding for the legendaries is not the problem. The way grinding works in Guild Wars 2 right now is the problem.

Two more points an I’ll be done.

First and finally, the precursors.
As I said I put about 90g into the forge. 90g is still a huge amount of gold. I know there are people who have far more and spent far more but I know a lot of players who did not even break the 10g since release.
With those 90g I got 5 rare exotic skins. Two of them twice. I was mad, really mad. I was mad that I lost all my gold and I was mad that I got something two times before getting something else even once.
I was mad that I know someone who threw in 4 rare greatswords and got a Dusk out of it.

Prepare for a long read.

I actually started a similar thread over at the German forum right after I lost another 70g at the mystic forge. Before that I already lost 20g. What did I try and how did I lose all that gold? Well, I tried to build a precursor.
Why am I telling this right at the beginning? Because I fully admit that I am mad. I am mad about all that gold I lost and will never see again. I am mad that if I decide to buy a precursor now I will have paid something around 200g for my precursor.
There is no point in pointing out that I am just mad and my arguments aren’t valid because of that.

Secondly I want you all to keep the following in mind: Developers are human. Human beings make mistakes. Just because someone does a certain job he is not automatically perfect in what he does and/or his ideas aren’t automatically better than those of someone who doesn’t have the same job.
There is a huge portion of the Guild Wars 2 playerbase that is playing MMOs for years now. That is passionate about it. There are creative people and clever people and for years now MMO players have proven that they are capable of helping developers making great games.
The most successful MMO in history for example actually hired MMO players to make their game the success it was.
What I want to say is this: I believe that MMOs aren’t develop-release games. They are more like a dialogue between the developers and the players. Both sides have to listen to each other in order to make a truly great game.

It is almost ridiculous that I have to write that much just to prevent all the common troll attempts like “XYdrone” “fanboyism” etc etc. But I really hope we can actually discuss the current (in my opinion flawed system) with real argumentation and without ad hominem crap we are all tired of by now.

Now to the topic.
I FULLY AGREE with Windklinge about this: the current process of acquiring a legendary is a joke, badly designed and nothing but a big endless grind for gold.
This is not acceptable for a game like Guild Wars 2 that actually advertised with being new and innovative.

This is no accurate quote but I always remember something like this has been said about legendaries: “…for the most dedicated players.” “…have to master all aspects of the game.”

“To master all aspects of the game” this is what really bothers me. Because it is actually like admitting that the game is about grinding. ArenaNet promised us no more tedious kill/collect quests and now we get Grind Wars. Why am I saying this? Because right now everything you need for your legedary except one present and two kinds of token can be substituted by gold. Some of the materials aren’t even farmable like certain lodestones so you are actually forced to farm gold to get enough of them.
And if everything can be substituted by gold “to master all aspects of the game” suddenly becomes “master the main aspect of the game” and this is: farming gold.

And before anyone starts with “but the gifts of exploration, the dungeon token and the WvW token”. Since there is a jump puzzle that gives you WvW tokens you don’t need to master WvW to get the 500 tokens. Since you only need one dungeon per legendary you don’t need to master all the dungeons. Since everyone can rush from poi to poi you don’t need to master the world in order to get your gifts.
If I asked 10 people who played GW1 if they know where Kilroy is buried I bet less then half of them could answer me right. In my understanding mastering exploration should be more than just chasing littel symbols on the map.

Same goes for the dungeons, why do you only need one dungeon for each legendary?
This is so stupid I would actually really like to know who decided this.
I mean lets compare the two options:

The gifts cost, lets say 250 tokens but you need every gift out of every dungeon to craft the “Gift of Dungeon Mastery”.

or

You have to run one dungeon 3 days for one gift.

Now my question is this: which option tells that you mastered the dungeon aspect of the game? And I am fully aware of option A being harder and taking more time but how can someone say he mastered PvE if he hasn’t even set one foot into Arah for example.

And now to WvW. I am okay with jump puzzles. To be honest I love them. But lets take a look at two options again:

You run WvW with a strong server and zerg a lot for your tokens. Then you go and jump jump jump your way with several characters to 500 tokens.

or

You actually have to defend and attack towers, kill players, destroy gates and gather tokens on top of that.

Which option shows that you mastered WvW? Of course the one where you actually have to do what WvW is about, option B.

I have just one simple question.

Why is it called “night capping” when it is daytime where those “nightcappers” are playing? That is the flaw! That is what is unfair!

The whole discussion here revolves around whether “night capping” is legit or not. Of course it is legit. It is fully legit assuming EVERYONE on the server has the same night and the same day.
This is why there are so many people defending night capping, because they are right, it is definitely a legit move.

However, and I haven’t seen any argument in favor of this, it is total bullkitten, that the servers allow people from different continents to dominate WvW by simply having a 24 hour day.

Just finished the storyline and just as it has been said here I was really excited for the EXOTIC bags and expected EXOTICS out of the EXOTIC bags because I already got EXOTICS for completing maps.
And what did I get? 4 blues and one green. One blue for lvl 26.

I feel kinda trolled.

Also, if this gets fixed and there is no way to get the bags again this will be an even bigger troll.