Guild Wars 2

Yes, I have checked the spam folders, and yes, I am sure it was the correct email for the account. I will put in a support ticket. thank you for your response

So I put in my pre-purchase for Path of Fire yesterday, and paid etc. I got given an order number and the screen said that I would get an email confirmation. However neither the email confirmation nor the game has been updated to my account.

Is there a backlog of orders, or has something gone wrong and I should re-purchase? It has been at least 12 hours now since I put in the order.

I have been getting significant lagg spikes lately, but it does not always happen after a long time in the game. I was in for perhaps 45 mins today and got a massive lagg spike that caused me to disconnect back to the character select screen.

Before the big patch (19th April 2016 one I think) I never had any times when lagg really affected me, however after the patch I have been getting them on a very regular basis, at least one time per day, usually more. Sometimes the lagg spikes will resume play without disconnecting me after a few long seconds, but other times (like just now) it boots me right out.

It doesn’t always happen during combat either, but even just running around gathering stuff. Whatever has been changed from before, it is certainly affecting me when it shouldn’t, and didn’t before.
Location: Scotland using EU server Ruins of Surmia
64-bit client

Home ping: 8ms
Home download speed: 107.33 Mbps
Home upload speed: 6.29 Mbps

Lions Arch FPS: 83-103 (depending if I am running around or not)
Lions Arch Ping: 38-50 (Avg: 43)

Computer
Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
Installed memory: 16.0 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Disk type: SSD

Huzzah! I have ton’s of airship parts, and there are lots of pact supply crates, but alas, I have no crowbars! Nevermind, thought I, and went to the vendor to buy some. But what is this? No pact crowbars are being sold?

Each Maguuma Wastes and HoT map has a currency and chest unlock type:
- Dry Top has Zephyrite Lockpick for Buried Locked Chests
- Silverwastes has Bandit Skeleton Keys for Lost Bandit Chests
- Verdant Brink has Pact Crowbars for Airship Cargo
- Auric Basin has Exalted Keys for Exalted Chests
- Tangled Depths has Vials of Chak Acid for Crystallized Supply Caches
- Dragons Stand has Machetes for Noxious Pod

However while there are vendors sell all the other key types, there is no vendor that sells Pact Crowbars.

Is this a deliberate oversight for reasons that I have yet to understand, or did they merely forget to add them to the vendors? Either way, please add them to a vendor Anet!

I thought I remembered playing it with a friend before, but figured I was misremembering. All I know is that as it currently stands where party members are not joined in together, it isn’t really that enjoyable and far more difficult to get a group that actually stays for the entire instance.

Oh That’s rubbish

Sorry if this is repeating in another thread, couldn’t find one.

Basically when a friend and myself try to enter toypocalypse together, even though we are in a party, we get put in separate instances with strangers. We wanted to do this together, possibly 2-man should we feel like a challenge, but we can’t even get in the same instance :/ No matter which one of us enters first, the other doesn’t get asked to enter as well, and if we enter separately, we get put in separate instances. Not fun!

Verdant Brink scaling:
Having the raid entrance in the Verdant Brink map is causing issues. Not only is it filling up the map with people not taking part in events, but it is also scaling individual areas nearby.

The rally point east of Jaka Itzel is a prime example of this. It was myself and perhaps two others that were working on building up the defences of it, and yet when the attack came, it was an influx of elite mobs that we had no chance of taking down. Most waiting for raiding were afk or not interested in taking part, and yeah, death happened. This isn’t fun, and just creates frustrated players.

Exalted Mastery Vendor still not acknowledging Mastery requirements.
Many items require the second tier of Exalted Mastery to unlock. I have the Mastery track fully completed, and yet it is still acting like I don’t have the second Mastery line of Exalted.

As of the patch notes today

Shimmering blotting powder no longer requires resonating fragments to craft.
Luminous blotting powder no longer requires resonating cores to craft.
All tiers of scribe-crafted paper are no longer account bound.

This should help a little, but it really doesn’t go far enough to sort the problems I have been encountering with the system unfortunately.

I wanted to post some feedback on the Scribing profession and the Guild Hall Decorations because it was, and is, something that I was super excited about for HoT, but I feel it has fallen short of its goal in some aspects.

Scribing was meant to be a crafting skill that was, unlike other crafting professions, one that players would learn to help other players, not themselves, by making decorations for the guild hall, and consumables for the guild, such as WvW blueprints, guild banners etc. This was an excellent idea and one I was both happy and excited to hear about.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that the resources required to level this crafting skill are based, not on an individual’s resources, but on the fact that your guild will help you attain those resources. This makes Scribing horrific for an individual to learn alone, or indeed someone from a small guild. Not only are the resources required to learn the craft so hefty as to be a miserable grinding experience to get them, but it also requires many Guild Hall upgrades that a small guild will struggle to ever attain.

To make a fancy chair, the cost for making one chair is, at the current prices (crafting everything that can be, and using order prices, not buy-instantly prices) around 8 gold 86 silver, as well as 2 crystalline ore which are account bound. That there is a hefty price, since it would take a player few hours to make that much money, or longer, depending on what they are doing.

Consider then that this is just to craft one chair. How many chairs and other items will the scribe need to create in order to level up the craft? Can a small guild really expect to fund such a thing, let alone an individual? Clearly not, or at least not without vast amounts of money thrown at it. The cost just does not correlate to other crafting professions. A weaponsmith, for example, only has to fork out under 16 silver to make an item of the same crafting level, that is over 55 times less than that of scribe.

Does Arenanet then consider that there should be 55 guild members all helping to fund this craft? And if they do then that is a slap in the face to small guilds, but there is also the problem that having a guild-funded crafter causes. Unlike the guild hall treasury, there is nothing stopping a scribe levelling up his/her craft via the guild if they are so good as to throw vast resources towards them to do this, and then merely leave the guild. The crafter might also just end up having things to do in real life and leave the game for extended periods of time. Without the craft itself being tied to the guild, like the hall upgrades are, it is open to exploitation or merely just non-function.

These problems aside, to even be able to craft this one chair, the first decoration item that is available to scribes to make (skill 25), the guild hall must also have built:

Tavern Restoration 1
Mine restoration 1
Aetherium capacity 1
Workshop Restoration 1
Market Restoration 1
Guild Hall Decorations Merchant 1

To upgrade these buildings and merchants in order to make the chair, it cost us around 668 gold 62 silver (crafting everything ourselves etc). If we were to purchase the items at current instant-buy market value, it would cost hundreds of gold more.

And this is only to get to the very initial levels of the guild hall. To actually be able to craft more and level scribing, the guild hall has to get further upgrades, and those are not only locked behind large resource walls, but also behind guild hall experience walls as well. Even if a guild only wants to focus on crafting, they will need to upgrade other aspects of the guild merely to get the guild hall experience bar up enough to unlock the option to upgrade the Workshop or Market. How much our guild will have to upgrade of things like the arena and war room that we have no interest in is not yet known, but I expect we will have to do some of these, and that is horrific for small guilds, considering the resources required.

So, the requirements for the scribe seem vastly too high. I think one of the issues is that the scribe has to make his tools every time he crafts something. This could be mitigated somewhat if the tools did not disappear after use, or even had say, 25 charges on them. This would cut down some of the cost for learning and make it more accessible. I would also question why so much level 80 zone resources are needed for the lowest end of the craft. The resources should ideally scale with the level of the craft, much like every other craft. Forcing players to use piles of coarse sand and vials of linseed oil every time they try to craft an item is just needless at the learning stage. By all means make the really good items need good resources, but surely crafting a couple of chairs should not require such vast resources when Artificers have been making wonders with wood for centuries without it.

And then there is the variety of guild hall decorations, which is sadly lacking. Hopefully vast swathes of crafting decorations will be added soon, but for the moment there really isn’t much to choose from unless you like chairs, banners or pillars. I had been hoping for items that could be used to create free-standing structures, like Krytan walls, stairs, doorways, arches, roofs, floors etc so we could build stuff for roleplay. There really is very little architecture being offered right now, and while what is being offered is okay, temporarily, it is limited in choice, and really difficult to get anything without the huge cost of upgrading the guild hall.

You see, that is the problem we were having last night. We finally managed to get enough resources to upgrade the guild hall to get the Guild Decorations Merchant, so we could learn more scribing to make guild hall items. When we looked at the amount of resources we had thrown at the guild hall, and how much we would need to put in merely to get one lousy chair, we were forced to ask ourselves if we really felt it was worth it. A vast guild, with correspondingly vast resources will have little trouble no doubt, but to ask a guild with around 6 active members to invest that much just to get the first item of decoration is so disheartening. There is no way to buy guild decorations from the trading post since all scribe items are account bound, and trading for them is so risky, both for the buyer and seller, since there is no come-back if one goes back on the deal, if indeed that is even possible.

I feel there should be more decorations for sale from the start, ones that don’t require the guild upgrades. These could be ones that cannot be used with scribing, like the holiday pumpkins, but more general, because players that are not in a huge guild will have no way to really experience guild decorating for a long time. Too long a time, especially as newer or more casual players will not have nearly as much money to throw at the guild as we have. I am fine with the guild hall being a long-term project, but I feel it is detrimental to the game to make decorating it such an unobtainable goal. Many players will spend a great deal of time and money on building vast things in the guild hall if you only give them a chance to do so, rather than making it so huge a mountain to climb that they give up before they even have a chance to start. Leave fancy items for scribing, but give players something to do with the guild hall other than throw money at it.

So yeah, I guess that is my feedback. I hope that the balance between decorations and resources needed is improved, as well as the variety. As an aside, I would also desperately wish for scaling options, non-collision when placing, and tilting like they have in other games like Rift. Rift did a lot of things wrong, but their home instance game mechanics was not one of them.

Looking forward to what Guild Halls will offer in future.

ItsFishyTricks.7316:

It’s not bugged. It took me about three events to get it to drop. But don’t get your hopes up, t3 Moot is bugged in two events been stuck there since release date :| Here’s hoping Tuesday works out for any fixes

The event to protect the quaggan is bugged, I wasn’t meaning the drop so much. Iv watched it bug out over 4 times tonight, and the times it didn’t bug, players killed the krait therefore stopping it failing.

Having watched this event over and over again over the last couple of days, I am done with it until Anet release a way to get the giant shark where you are not trying to have two events fail. I had forgotten just how much I despised camping for spawns in other games, because Anet had been really good about not having that in game. I can only hope they fix it to not go counter to how players are asked to play.

Moot 1:
I am also having issues with the Giant Shark. You have to have two events consecutively fail, which is pretty difficult to do really, and one player can do it easily enough. Also there is a bug with the quaggan quest where even if the last quaggan is captured, the krait do not always even notice him, even if led right over it.

Overall I have spent hours camping this event, at really unsociable hours so that there is a greater chance of players not completing the event (but the megaserver system sort of overrides that most of the time) and have only got the shark to spawn once, and when he did, I got no item. I have, so far, not had any difficulty getting any of the other items required for the precursors except this.

I am having the same issue. I have not had any other problems with items dropping from a boss as with this one. Somewhat disheartening.

I killed the chak before talking to braham, and he wouldn’t speak to me afterwards. This meant that the instance never completed. The overall chak killer (where you kill all of them) likewise didn’t trigger, though that might have been on instance completion, but it might not have been.

For me, Halloween is my favourite festival of the year. I was super stoked about the new halloween items this year and dutifully forked out gems for the glider/backpack bat wing. However I really wanted the bat shoulders for my rp character, and I didn’t care if they were ascended or not, I just love the skin. I was prepared to grind out time in the dungeon and Labyrinth and throw some more money at the trading post for more trick or treat bags, but I expected that, like Mawdry and other ascended backpacks, all items would be able to be crafted or worked towards. I did not expect a critical item to be a pure rng drop, and a super rare one at that.

But when people finally found out the recipe earlier today, all my hype disappeared in a black cloud of depression. Endless Batwing Brew, which has no other way of getting it other than from a very low rng drop (people have opened over 6000 bags and not got one), and the price on the trading post has skyrocketed from 80g to 549g in the past 3 days and is likely to jump higher and higher over time.

You know what? That isn’t fun for me. It isn’t about the festival any more, it is about a vast goldsink that has nothing to do with the festival and everything to do with player profit. 80g I might have paid, but not this. There should have been some way for players to earn that brew, or craft it with enough normal batwing brews that you can get from the bags. Something, some way to make that rng drop not quite as horrific.

So yeah, there goes my hopes of getting the shoulders, me and many others. Anet stated you would have to work for the shoulders. Working for a goal is fine. This is not.

Thanks for the answer. This is pretty rubbish not having a full selection on launch day. It means that we cannot work towards getting the guild hall for three whole days, and it was one of my most looked-forward-to features in the expansion.

Hey there,
I was wanting to unlock the pve missions for the guild. When I try to do so, it says that I have to purchase the upgrade from the market. Where is the market?

Overall the directions for new guild things has been confusing to me. Is the market in the guild hall? I need favor to unlock the guild hall, and as a pve guild we currently have no missions we can do until it changes in 3 days :/ Even then, I am not sure whether they will be available.

I wanted to add some feedback about the guild hall decoration system that was shown off on the livestream.

The guild hall decorations remind me very much of the system of Dimensions in the game Rift. I spent an extraordinary amount of time making little custom worlds in there, and it was the one main feature that I still miss, having left the game around 3 years ago.
https://youtu.be/7_RA1z666Mo

One thing I really hope that they have, or add, with the guild hall decorations that they had in Rift, was the ability to scale items. Not only will this make things better (after all, a norn will need a larger chair than asura), but it also lets players be far more creative with the decorations.

Lack of collision is also good, but I didn’t see it in the stream, in fact there was a lot of ‘cannot place this item due to collision’ going on. A lot of the players that spent a lot of time creating things in Rift’s Dimensions used the act of sinking one item into another to make it look like something else. Anthropomorphic design was one of the many ways that people could really make their own dimension unique. A large urn, sunk into a stone block with part of a gate showing through suddenly can be turned into a bbq, and boxes can be sunk into a bookshelf making it look like storage, rather than a library (you can see a couple of the simple things below).
Breach chamber dimension empty: https://youtu.be/lLDLIdE3Yn4
Breach chamber dimension house: https://youtu.be/tAdylfCUyy8

Another thing that occurred to me was how the items were being moved. In Rift’s Dimensions, you could place an item, and then once it was put down, you had the ability to move and rotate the item in all directions. I don’t know if perhaps I just didn’t see the full extent of the moving abilities on the stream, but being able to raise an item with the tools, rather than having to build scaffolding was really useful. I mean, sure, having to build scaffolding creates some challenge, but quality of life when building means that can get tiresome when you just want something positioned exactly right.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the guild decorations. I am really looking forward to seeing them in game, because, as I said, I spent so many joyful hours creating little worlds within worlds. Keep up the good work Anet.

Thanks everyone for your answers. I have put in a bug report about it, and those of you who have had the same issues, I would urge you to do the same so they know it isn’t just a random problem of one player and be dismissed as such.

I, like other people, were under the assumption that the recent nerf of the drop of Black Lion Keys from the personal story was only for level 10 personal story quests. However I have not done that quest for a level 10 (to my memory) for a week and a half when I made a new necromancer on the 9th/10th September, but I have completed a level 40 quest and got a key there (the first quest of the level 40 ones gives you a key). Despite this, I did not receive a key today when I made a new character when I completed the level 10 personal story for him.

This leads me to believe that it isn’t merely the level 10 story quests that have been affected, but it also includes the level 40 personal story quests. Can anyone else confirm this? What about the key at the level 60 personal story?

I am fine with it being once a week, but not if it also includes the level 40 and potentially even the level 60 quests. That is too harsh. By all means make it once a week, but it should be once a week for each teir of quests, not for ALL of them.

After a discussion with a friend where we were talking about legendarys, and were talking about the fact that although the footsteps of the legendarys were cool, I really didn’t like the weapon skin that they came with. I would much rather have my current weapon but with the footprints of a legendary if I had unlocked it.

There are several reasons I think this would be useful to have in game.
1. This would enable players to have an additional reason to get a certain type of legendary weapon that they would not have before, so they could unlock the footstep animation they like the best.
2. It offers more variety to people, and variety is the spice of life.
3. It would offer a very real incentive for people to go for legendary crafting in the mastery system.

Overall, I have had the resources to make a legendary for some time now, perhaps more than one, but I have never done so because I like some of the Black Lion Skins better. If HoT introduced the unlocking of the legendary weapon along with its footsteps so they could be used separately, I would be infinitely more likely to collect not just one, but several legendarys in the game. I think others might as well.

My feedback is likely to be much like others here on this thread.

Information is scarce:
It was only because someone randomly said on map chat that I found out there was a daily reward for doing each of the three maps. I never saw anything about this. I checked on dulfy, and yes, the information is there to, but there should have been more information in game about something as critical as this. If they had put it as a daily achievement reward even, instead of just a random box appearing, it would be more obvious. I don’t even think the bonus box was named or anything, just appeared with the other one. Confusing to new and old players alike.

Rewards:
This event is basically extremely unrewarding. You get no gold or loot for killing the mobs, you get no exp (I think) or karma or gold for completing the events. In fact you will end up spending coin just getting to the different events on the maps, and need to spend more gold getting rewards since they cost money as well as the blooms. You lose time and money doing these events, which makes these events extremely unrewarding to do. Players will not find something fun if they are not rewarded, and they are losing gold doing these. I would also say that someone can spend the full 30 minutes doing the events and still get no blooms as a result if they didn’t tag enough events. This is really awful event design. It is also the case that if someone gets disconnected, however briefly, all their stacks are gone, and thus, they get no loot, even if they spent most of that time doing events. Rage and disappointment have been rampant in chat.

Event tactics:
While I like the idea of the event, in general, I think it has been poorly implemented. Because there is the buff each time you participate in a completed event that gives you greater loot at the end, people are just tagging each one and moving on in order that they get the most blooms at the end. This leaves others to finish the events, often dying multiple times (and thus spending more money on waypoints to get back). I was once stuck at one event for about 10 minutes because people were not staying, and then others ended up just giving up because the number of people that came and went kept the spawn numbers high (we had elites and champions) but those who were actually doing the event were not nearly enough to kill them. The event system rewards players for being selfish and tagging, while those that actually try to get the events completed get far less reward at the end of the event. I wouldn’t say that is fair, and considering how unrewarding this event feels, this will only compound on people’s willingness to do more of the events in future.

Event timescale:
This has been talked about a lot, both on forums and on chat. 4 days (one of which bugged the rewards) is putting a lot of pressure on players who want another chance at working to get the living world season 1 rewards that are not on the laurel vendor. People have jobs, and families and other commitments, (yes, even on weekends), that means that they don’t necessarily have the time to spare to do all the three maps a day for the daily reward. Having the event only for 4 days is, I think, too short when there are much sought-after items. They might even have an hour to spare, but it might come when the event is taking an extended break when the mordrem withdraws. Having the event for a full week would have been a better time-scale. Enough that people with jobs, and lives and other things going on could still get a chance of something from that vendor.

Gameplay:
I am in two minds about the gameplay. On one hand I think the idea of having mordrem sprouting around the place is a good one. Its good to give players a taste of what the new mobs are like. When I was in a bit of the map late late last night when there were only a few people around, it was fun! We did the events together, maybe about 5 of us for a couple of events, and it was good. But the whole zerging thing? All I am worrying about is whether I get to the event on time to tag something if I am just getting there (often I miss it, especially if I don’t spend money on waypoints), or if I am there doing the event, its a real struggle because the zerg scales the mob but doesn’t always finish the event, or sometimes it does, but its just such a mash of people as to be annoying.
Bomb event: This one is okay I guess if people know what they are doing (instead of, say, knocking the mobs back into the aoe). It can be annoying to finish quickly, and if it doesn’t, people tend to move on.
Catapult event: This one is the one that people tend not to stay around for, in my experience. This makes it the most annoying in some areas. Other areas it works fine though.
Bloom shield event: I like this one the best, mainly because its the quickest and easiest to complete. If anything, it should be a little longer maybe to put it on par with the other two.
I suppose I find them a little boring, but that could be because nothing about these events is that rewarding, and that makes me bias.

Overall opinion:
I think its fairly safe to say that there is much that could be done to improve the event. Some of the game mechanics for loot have encouraged selfish behaviour, frustration and disappointment in many players (if not most of them). The way most things in GW2 that work in some way encourage players to help each other, but in this event, that is meant to be showing off stuff from heart of thorns, it is the one time that it doesn’t. Players are encouraged to selfishly tag events merely to get -some- reward, when no other behaviors really do so, and indeed end up costing them money. I think it is an extremely poor example of what GW2 has to offer as a game, and that is disappointing since it will put both new players and veteran players off the expansion if they think this is the sort of thing that can be expected from it. I didn’t enjoy Silverwastes for this sort of relentless events and I am not a fan of zergs. Even I, who have been fairly hopeful for the expansion am beginning to worry about what it is going to play like.

I agree that having materials like cloth, which are already in massive demand (since there are so few ways to get it) being included in these upgrades just gives me the cold sweats. It is difficult enough getting enough cloth for armour, nevermind something like this for a small guild. Worried. Very worried.

It wouldn’t be so bad, I suppose, if the ascended crafting was not so utterly reliant on cloth for ALL the types of armour. To make Ascended Heavy Armour set, I believe you need 25 bolts of damask (due to the insignias needing 18) while you only need 16 Deldrimor steel. If the crafting was more balanced in terms of cloth needs this wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but that is indeed another discussion.

I am generally worried about being able to upgrade a small guild. It is slow at the moment, but at least you could help gain influence with gold donations to the guild npc, and use laurels as well. In the new system, I am not sure how the small guilds will fare. At least the guild merits will no longer be around, which is good for small guilds since without them you cannot fully upgrade, but in general.. I am worried about the costs of upgrades for small guilds.

I have also felt this. I am fairly sure I remember hearing that unlike the silverwastes events, the effect of having set up camp and completing event chains would have far longer-standing effects than it did there in order to give the events far more meaning. And sure, the event doesn’t trigger right away, but the whole chain just repeats and repeats and repeats. Once you know the quest chain, you know where the events are, and its just grind. The events don’t have enough significance longer term and its entirely predictable. Boring. Grind.

Another issue I had with the events was that, especially on the nobles side of things, they were tactically terrible. Why would any group of people decide to set up three or four different areas for flimsy tents that could not be even nearly adequately defended. They have the pact commander and other people there to advise them, they are in fear for their very lives, and yet the placement of the tents is not in line with either people in fear for their lives, nor for safety. If you are stuck out in the jungle trying to survive, I can’t see this being realistic, even for nobles.

Saying that, I did very much enjoy the story behind many of the quests here. I liked the dialogue a great deal, showing the different characters’ personalities. The storytelling is good!

I wasn’t bothered about getting the mastery points on my main. I just wanted the achievements all filled up, nice and neatly like the others

I have to say that coming into this beta, I decided I was going to spend some time doing the events despite the fact I had previously avoided beta so as not to spoil things. Why did I do it this time? To get the beta achievements. I don’t think I am alone in this.

I have to say I am vastly disappointed and indeed annoyed, that it seems not to be account bound. I went into this beta, pretty much spoiling part of the game for myself on release, just so I could do those achievements. And now I find, upon logging into my main character, that the achievements were not account bound after all.

I know that it makes sense to separate the characters because of the inventory etc, but to have a beta achievement list showing on the main characters that you cannot actually complete, but have them on the beta character that means nothing and will be deleted after the beta is over.. it just seems wrong. I thought the whole point of the achievements was to encourage people to test the specific content the devs wanted tested, and the achievements gave the players an historic achievement to remind them of the beta and some extra AP. Now it seems more like the achievements are just test achievements for content in the expansion.

Not happy. In fact I am pretty kitten annoyed.

I really don’t like the art for Lions Arch because of this. It looks badly photoshopped, unlike other art in the game. I wish they would change it or redo it or something.

Mostly from enemy mob drops. The chances of getting higher rarity drops increases if your magic find is higher. It will also depend on your level since you cannot get rare items below a certain level.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s a bit late now to be proposing this sort of thing. Most veterans have at least one map 100%. Many have multiples. Will those people be getting retroactive rewards? Especially since they had to do WvW as well as the PvE maps so they did more that the new 100%. Will they get more for doing more? Unless this has retroactive rewards to all the people who have already done it there will be a lot of unhappiness about this.

I don’t think it is ever too late to be considering this. Games should always be looking to improve and something like this is programmable.

I was thinking that it would be retroactive, linked to whether your character already has the world completion star. If your character has the star next to their name then they would trigger the mail to give them the new reward item.

But that aside, come on guys, surely you have some other ideas for rewards you might like to see for this sort of thing? Get creative!

I only recently started doing Teq again, and always go on Northern defense nearest the water. The only time I have had it fail lately was when I tried it during the early evening, when people didn’t seem to know what to do as well. That was a bit of a disaster.

I usually always do Teq when the daily resets (he spawns 1 min after reset), having logged in there maybe 20 mins before then. At this time of the night people always seem to know what they are doing, and just get on with it. Its pleasant enough and runs fine. I haven’t witnessed any shouting at turreteers or otherwise, perhaps because people that log in for this one know its going to go smoothly like always.

Well, you never know. Rata Sum has the Polymock Atrium in it. There’s a guy behind it, working on it. Saying that though, I do believe he has been there since the game opened haha.

Rasimir.6239:

I did my first 100% completion back in 2013, and I don’t remember getting anything other than the two gifts of exploration back then either. Maybe you’ve mistakenly mixed it with the map rewards you got for your last completed map?

Yeah, I probably was. I just feel that while yes, you do get stuff for every map area completed, there should be something more than just the legendary gift item as a reward for the full completion. It’s like, you get used to thinking: ‘I finished the map, I can’t wait to see what I got!‘, and it makes you expect something a bit.. more, for getting them all done. It should feel special and rewarding, and to me, it just doesn’t.

Even the new daily log-in rewards offer something other than merely legendary crafting items. You get the choice. Perhaps there should be a choice for this as well, so that people that don’t want yet another bundle of gift of exploration can get something that they would value more.

I like the idea, but I am not sure that it would be implemented since it would cut down on the amount of crafting in the game, and ascended items are pretty much the only reason to do crafting. In short, I think it would damage the game economy massively. Still, it would be awesome if they found a way to do it.

So what does that leave us with in terms of options?
1. Unique Armour / Weapon skins
Pro: I love armour and weapon skins. I want them all!
Con: Finding a balance for the number of skins vs number of alts and players feeling they are more pressured into doing something just for that skin would be tricky.
We have something similar with the Pact weapons given at the end of the personal story. They used to be account bound, but eventually got changed into normal weapons that could be traded. I would not be in favour of having any weapon/armour skin gained by world completion being tradeable. Something more like the Hall of Monuments/luminescent skins (1 armour skin for all three types) would be better.

2. Account-wide upgrades (like +magic find +gold find etc)
Pro: This would make it useful all around
Con: Unless it was significant enough, it would have to be an addon with another type of loot.
We get these account-wide upgrades already with achievement chests, although I would argue that some of the increases for those (specifically magic find) are not really that high compared to just consuming essences of luck. On its own, I don’t think it has enough of an instant reward sort of feel to tip the balance, but with something else that does, it would be good.

3. Ascended Chest
Pro: This is an item that is already used in game for achievements
Con: Useful, but boring?
It used to be that getting an Ascended item was pretty rare, but it is far more commonplace now. Ascended items can drop from bosses, and you get them for achievements. Some are more rare than others of course (like the Sunless ones), and I think that considering the amount of time it takes to do a map completion, having it be a standard box is just a bit dull. But I am also having to remember that the map completion also gives the Gift (even if I can’t use it).

4. Hero Points
Pro: Hero points are going to be useful for Heart of Thorns Masteries since they are account bound, so if a significant amount were given for completing the map, this could be good.
Con: Might be a problem though if some players had maxed out their Masteries. Also, not that exciting.

5. Tyrian Explorers Society Writ of Travel (soulbound item that gives free waypoint usage)
Pro: I would love this. Waypoints can get costly if you travel a lot, and having the waypoint cost nullified would be awesome.
Con: I am not sure how much gold the waypoints add into the game economy, but this might disrupt it a little, at least temporarily.
I really like this idea, perhaps because it also goes with the theme that you see running through the map completion, with all those mails from them. I like the fact that it would be useful on a daily basis, and not overpowered, but also not just more of the same things we get for rewards elsewhere. Rewards should feel unique if its for something significant.

So yeah, there are some of my thoughts on the reward for map completion. My ideas are not that extensive, and there is plenty of room for other ideas out there of how it might be improved. I just hope it will be improved :)

On the wait for the expansion being released I, like many other players, have been focusing on getting achievements and other personal goals completed. One of these was of course getting world map completion on a couple of my alts who were nearly there.

So I finally managed to get it on my engineer tonight, after several hours. It had been a while since I had done this the last time, and I was looking forward to a juicy reward. I didn’t remember what the reward had been before, other than the Gift, but with the changes to the levelling system and suchlike, I had hoped that there would be some extra loot or even some extra hero points we could put to use once the expansion was released.

Imagine my disappointment then when the only reward you get for total world map completion are the two Gifts of Exploration

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a need and a place for them. Legendary crafting is, and indeed will be, a large part of end-of-game prestige goals for many players. However I do see some problems with it, and not just for myself:

• Not all players will want to craft a Legendary, so there is nothing for them in this reward.
• Crafting a Legendary weapon is a very long term goal. Even if a player is currently saving up materials to craft one, that may not happen for a long time, meaning that even if the Gift of Exploration is useful to them, they cannot use it right now. There is a lack of reward that is instantly gratifying or useful.
• Although you get a little star next to your name, there is really no incentive for players to try and get map completion with their alts unless they desperately need more gifts for crafting a legendary weapon.

I have been trying to think of different things that might be put into the loot, or added to the account that would make world map completion more of a viable goal for people with alts. I wouldn’t want it to be too overpowering a reward, because then players might feel that they really -have- to do it on alts, and I know that many players can find map completion a bit boring.

On the other hand, if we look at open world boss fights, dungeons, or even the chest farms in the Silverwastes, it becomes clear to me that ordinary loot really won’t cut it. There is ample opportunity for players to get vast amounts of loot in a short space of time from participating in different events daily, so just giving a few champion style chests added into the reward really would be as much of a let-down.

A staff member recently replied to a thread about this issue here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Instant-God-Walking-Amongst-Mere-Mortals/page/12#post5237935

Hey guys!

No release date yet, but it looks REALLY promising right now. Not for next release though, I don’t want to get your hopes up and dash them on tuesday.

FWIW the programmer doing the fix is extremely meticulous and wants this to be 10000% right when it goes out. It is not an easy fix and it has been being worked on since it broke.

If we can all be patient just a little bit longer then we will have more Gods Walking Amongs Mere Morals in the future… but sadly one of them won’t be me.

Energy Expulsion
This is the Elite skill of the Ventari legend. It knocks back up to 5 enemies, destroys the tablet and leaves behind energy fragments to heal allies. It costs 50 energy and takes 2 seconds to cast.

I am really not convinced about this elite skill. It is far more like a normal skill than an elite to me. I feel like it offers little more to the skills than the others of that legend, less if you take into consideration the cast time and cost.

It costs half of your energy bar to activate (then you need to use 10 more energy to re-summon a tablet, and then another 10 if you need to move it somewhere), and instead of an aoe heal on people that needed it in the area, the people have to actually go and pick up the heals themselves. Nice idea in concept, but the heals these fragments give is so negligible as to be pointless. It barely gives any more healing than the moving of the tablet through people would, less than the staff skill 4, and the fact that people need to take critical seconds to go and pick up the heal make this even worse. The healing fragments really don’t hang around either, since they only last 5 seconds, so it isn’t like they can be left for a while by players until they are needed.

The other problem I see with it is that it is a 2 second channel cast, which can be interrupted. If you are playing ranged character, you would want to use this skill to blast away foes from you and escape, but the fact that the melee characters can interrupt you means that using the skill is really difficult to do in that situation. It is another example of how the ventari legend is more about other protecting other people than helping you survive to actually do that task.

I have been trying to think of things that might make it better. Any one of the things listed above could be altered to make it more useful, but even if one was changed, it would still only put it to around the usefulness of the the other normal skills. I think it would need to be two of the issues I mentioned in order to make it into something that felt elite. My choice would be to make it a very quick cast time, like the other ventari skills, and either increase the healing or duration of the fragments.

General Ventari impressions
Overall I quite like the skills that are offered, but I really feel there needs to be more that players can choose from.

For instance, right now the Ventari legend is all about healing and supporting, but I was struggling to keep myself alive at times because there was no large personal heal that could could save me from imminent death. I was having to cast ventari stuff then change legends, pop the Dwarf heal, (thus losing all the ventari tablet heals in the area) then swap back, and recast the tablet. Messy and unnecessary.

I would have another Heal skill that could still be to summon Ventari’s tablet, but instead of that second click moving the tablet, I would have it yank the tablet back to you (if it was away) and absorbed, giving you a personal heal that is significant. If Ventari is about healing, let people channeling him heal themselves better.

The second variation I would like to add to the healing skills is one that would summon ventari’s tablet, and have the second click for this (since it is likely to be used in melee context) might be to give some damage mitigation, block or something for a certain amount of time.

After some consideration, I feel it might be better to have the movement of ventari’s tablet actually be a skill, rather than only linked to the heal skill. Moving ventari’s tablet could be a skill, as it is now with the extra healing, and a second new skill could be to have the tablet come to you and follow you, possibly with a related buff or something. I think there might still be a place for the current Healing Skill as it is, but I think that having the other options added as well would give a better variety of gameplay than there currently is with Ventari.

In general, once I got used to playing Ventari, it was good fun, but as other players have mentioned, I am concerned about how much credit people are going to get in pve events using Ventari, because at least half their skills now are healing, which gives no credit. My other concerns are mainly about how the tablet has taken away proper heals from the Revenant using that legend, which is really strange considering the legend it is based on. Adding the skills mentioned would sort that though, as would making the heal skill more useful for melee players.

So there you have it. Congratulations if you reached the end of this lengthy essay. I wanted to do a proper beta test of the character. I didn’t touch on the traits or on the other legends because there are others that are far better equipped and knowledgeable to feedback on those.

Ventari Legend
Project Tranquility:
This summons the Tablet, and once it summons it, it will then move it. It has a passive heal every 3 seconds, and will heal allies it passes through. All other skills are based on relative distance to this tablet. It costs 10 energy to summon, and 10 energy to move. I have some issues with it.

1. There is at least one trait you can take that grants a buff when you use a Healing skill (Invocation: fierce infusion), but summoning the tablet does not count as a healing skill, only moving it does. This makes no sense to me. The heals you get, or indeed the trait buff of fury, are small and don’t last long at all. Why it doesn’t count as a healing skill is baffling.
2. In a situation where you are moving a lot, it can be really annoying having to either constantly move your tablet with skills and wait for it to turn up, or just leave it and summon another one only to have to immediately move it because it dumps at the place you started the cast from. I feel there should be some way of picking it up, making it follow you if directed to, or destroying the one you have in order for a faster placement when you get to a better location.
3. I am not really sold on the requirement of the skill to move the tablet in order to get the better heal on players. If the players are clumped together, as they often are stacking at boss events etc, then they are already in the best place, but sometimes you just need more heals. A good healer would be balancing using the burst heal, with the passive from the tablet along with the movement of the tablet, and I was just finding that annoying to do. In an event like Claw of Jormag where players are taking a lot of damage you want to be able to focus heal a bit more, while actually doing some attacking yourself (otherwise you will get no event credit). Trying to do that while also shifting the tablet back and forth over the same clump of people is just really annoying to me. I ended up scrapping doing the movement and just letting it do its passive thing most of the time along with the ‘Natural Harmony skill’. I don’t feel the movement heal does enough of an impact to really justify the annoyance of constantly spamming moving the tablet.
4. Lastly I think that in general moving the tablet when playing in melee is a lot more difficult to really utilize to its fullest, so there maybe needs to be other ways of gaining benefits from the tablet without moving it.

Natural Harmony
This skill does a delayed heal to up to 5 targets after a 2 second delay. It costs 35 energy.

Overall I am fairly happy with this skill. It’s simple (which I like). Although the cost is heavy on the energy side of things, it is an more substantial heal, which is good. Using it tactically to heal different groups up quickly is a great asset.

My only criticism of this skill is it’s cooldown. As the main healing skill of Ventari, you will likely be using this a lot and spamming it two or three times when you do, until your energy runs out. I mean, its great you can do that, but it means you are using the skills more than you might in the other classes. Really nit-picky, I know, but I would rather that this skill healed more but had a longer cooldown.

Purifying Essence
This skill removes up to 3 conditions from up to 5 targets, and heals the target for every condition that is removed. It costs 35 energy.

Like Natural Harmony, I liked this skill. It is simple and easy to understand its place in the game. Unlike it, I don’t think the cooldown needs to be changed, because its unlikely you will be needing to spam this skill.

Protective Solace
This skill creates a barrier that destroys enemy projectiles for 20 seconds, or until you deactivate it. It has no activation cost, but will degenerate your energy by -8 (per second?).

I found this skill really useful, and I like the fact I was having to balance the energy usage of the skill while fighting enemies, and using my weapon skills to fill in the time when I couldn’t have it up.

(continued in the next post)

Mace and Axe
The mace and axe are both melee weapons and seem very geared towards gathering enemies together and doing condition damage.

Overall I think the skills offered in the mace and axe are varied and interesting. I can see them being used a lot by players both in pvp and in pve since they are so versatile. There is nothing that jumps out at me as being too wrong with it, but I am not used to playing a melee class and could therefore be missing something really obvious in that regard.

In terms of the animations, they aren’t too bad. Although the skill 2 is really red, very much like the hammer skill I thought was too much, I don’t think it matters quite as much here, since it is smaller and burning is in fact part of it’s skill. I think skill 5, the temporal rift needs work though. I like the idea of it, but the actual animation of the rift does not have the level of detail or depth that it should. It looks very stuck on and doesn’t really reflect what the skill is trying to do. It just looks horrible. A large black line that turns into black and red marbled effect before disappearing. Eugh.

General weapon impressions
I have found over time that having no weapon swapping for this class is really inconvenient because only your utility skills change with your Legend, not your weapon skills. If I am playing as a ranged character (Hammer) that suddenly has a group of melee around me, I cannot really do anything about it except dodge and kite. Likewise if I am in melee and there is a reason I should really get out of that position for a while (cause aoe hurts), there is then very little I can do except just stand back and use the legend skills that I should be using in tandem with the weapon. There isn’t the versatility like you have in elementalist where your spells actually change, and engineer has a variety of different methods of kits that totally change their weapon kitten nal. Because the legends don’t change the weapon skills, I think that weapon swapping is needful. Without it, the class will underperform.

(continued in the next post)

Hammer
I tested out the Hammer after the staff because it was the only option for being ranged as a Revenant, a style I am far more used to playing. The hammer has an exceedingly pleasing range of 1200.

The skill type is split into three types as far as I can see. Skills 1 and 2 are for damaging foes in a long fairly thin line going from your character, while skills 3 and 5 are ground targeted aoe skills. Skill 4 is a block projectile skill.

The two ground targetted aoe skills of 3 and 5 are combo finishers that can be used to buff allies in a field with speed (You have a field in the Dwarf and Demon legends), and your auto attack skill 1 can be used in a field to put vulnerability on foes.

Overall the hammer is a very aoe sort of weapon. There is really nothing there that will be about taking down a single foe. I think that although skills 1 and 2 are fairly similar, there is a use for them both because of the field buff of 1 and the extra damage of 2, and skill 4 is really useful when facing other ranged targets. However I really amn’t convinced over how similar 3 and 5 are.

Hammer skill 3 has you leaping forwards in mist form and slamming an area, affecting up to 5 targets with damage and a 2 second chill. It costs 5 energy and takes 1.25 seconds to cast (although during that time you are in mist form). Skill 5 is the summoning of a giant hammer to slam into an area, also affecting 5 targets, who are damaged (slightly more than skill 3) and knocked down for 2 seconds. The skill takes 1.75 seconds to cast and costs 15 energy. Both skills merely buff speed to people if its on a field, so no difference there. Both skills are basically sort of damage and crowd control. Yes, one is chill and one is knockdown, which is different, with knockdown being more useful, but its still the same sort of thing.

Another problem with skills 3 and 5 is the cast time and the ability to cast things afterwards. Ideally I was wanting to perhaps cast skill 5 at a group of foes, which would damage and knock them down, then cast 3 on the same group straight after. But there is an issue with overlap here. Until the hammer actually finishes falling and a slight delay afterwards, trying to cast skill 3 doesn’t work. It is really difficult to judge when you are actually able to cast (and have it succeed) if you have just done 5. Its clunky and frustrating and makes using the two skills together pretty impossible. Likewise, trying to do it skill 3 then skill 5 suffers from the same problem. Neither skill seems to que properly, which limits its use.

I really like the idea of turning your character into mist to do a ranged attack like you see in skill 3. But to make that really useful I think the attack would actually have to be longer. I can see this skill being potentially very useful if you, as a ranged character, were being attacked by melee. You could use the skill 3 to divert the attacking mob to an ally who can then take the agro, or into a damaging aoe or trap that would hamper it’s return long enough for you to kill it. But it just doesn’t last long enough. Its 1.25 seconds long, and the enemy has only just started to turn away to go and attack you over there when you are back to yourself again and it just turns around (usually still in melee) and whacks you.

If I were to change it, I would make the cost higher and have the skill last longer, so that maybe the character leaps into the area and starts whacking things in the zone in melee with the hammer before returning to your previous position. Alternatively it could leap forward and do the damage aoe, but if the player clicks the button again it would do skill 5 as its second attack (at the same or higher energy cost since its mist form) thereby knocking the enemies down so they can recover a little and have more of a chance to stay out of melee range. If this were the case then the hammer would have a space for a different ability since skill 5 was linked to skill 3.

In terms of the animations of the hammer I don’t have too much complaint. I think its strange that skill 2 opens up red cracks in the ground when its meant to be the mists. Although the other animations also have touches of red, I think the red in skill 2 is excessive and just looks out of place like someone dumped down a sticker onto the game screen rather than something that is actually part of the world. If anything I would rather the skill be a bit less in-your-face with its animation. It sort of distracts the eye out of immersion a bit.

(continued in the next post)

Although I am a long-term player with an embarrassing number of in-game hours behind me, I come from a position where I suppose I would now be considered a casual pve player (no dungeons/fractals). And an easily confused one. This means that my experience of the new class is likely not to be as universal, but may still be relevant to the devs since they I think (hope) they will want feedback from all types of players.

As my first time trying the Heart of Thorns Beta, I wanted to try making a healing sort of Revenant. I used to play healers in other games, and I miss that sort of sturdy support role. I used full cleric gear, and superior rune of the monk on it. My weapons were also cleric.

General Impressions
I found the Revenant to be fairly confusing at first. There is much about the class that is different to the other classes in the game, and indeed, in other games. Part of the confusion is that we didn’t get to attempt to level the character, and were just dumped with everything at level 80 and that is a lot to take in. Also, for many classes, how they function is fairly evident, but not so for the Revenant.

It took me quite a while to work out that the arrows on either side of the energy bar was only just how much energy he was losing or gaining at the time. I thought for a while it was something like a shield that was part of the class mechanics that gave him more defense when his energy was high. Yes.. I know many of you will be facepalming, but I did warn you I get confused easily :P

I have found it an interesting concept as a class, but some of the skills and animations seem to need a bit of work or tweaking. The animations in some cases seem very much reused or look too artificially stuck on which breaks immersion. Attacks, even magical attacks, shouldn’t break immersion in a game, and some of these do because of how they look.

What also needs work is the skill que system for the revenant. There have been many times where trying to do one skill after another, especially if they are both a ground target, not to work.

Weapons
Staff
I started out with the staff, because I thought ‘Hey, staff is most likely to be healing, right?’. Well yes it is, but I found it difficult to utilize the Ventari Legend with it properly, mainly because in melee you don’t have as much of an overview of battle as a ranged character, so moving the tablet to the best spots for support was problematic. I would generally just have the tablet sitting at my own location as a personal support, which isn’t really how it’s meant to be used.

The staff’s auto attack creates small healing orbs around you that can be picked up by you or your allies. I like the idea but I found that the orbs were really difficult to see on some terrain. I think the graphic for them needs to be changed a bit to be more visible (without being too much). Skill 1 is also the only combo finisher on the staff, and is on the last hit, which means it only procs one vulnerability on the foe every 2 seconds, with your field on dwarf lasting 5 seconds and demon on 4, which is really only 2 stacks of vulnerability. Not that great.

Overall, the staff seems to be a bit of a mixed bag of skills. You have basic melee attacks that include up to 3 targets, your skill 2 has the potential of helping weaken your foe for 3 seconds, skill 3 is anti-projectile that will blind foes near you if it is struck by any projectiles, skill 4 is an aoe heal and condition removal, and skill 5 is a charge and knockback skill. It seems to me to do a little bit of everything, but focus on nothing. I am not at all used to playing a melee character, so I can’t really say how the staff would be best utilized as a pve character.

I like the animation for skills 1,3 and 5. 4 is a bit mediocre and seems like it was taken from another class’ staff, but skill 2 looks just like the guardian hammer skill 4 ‘Banish’ but with a mist arc. A staff should both look and feel different, completely different, to a hammer, and using a hammer animation for this just sits wrong with me.

(continued in the next post)

Esplen.3940:

Get out of your wallet and click the gear symbol.

I am not exactly sure what you are trying to get me to do. The options in the inventory has nothing to do with the UI transparency, and as far as I can tell the Options on the main menu has nothing for UI transparency either.

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

Hey guys!

No release date yet, but it looks REALLY promising right now. Not for next release though, I don’t want to get your hopes up and dash them on tuesday.

FWIW the programmer doing the fix is extremely meticulous and wants this to be 10000% right when it goes out. It is not an easy fix and it has been being worked on since it broke.

If we can all be patient just a little bit longer then we will have more Gods Walking Amongs Mere Morals in the future… but sadly one of them won’t be me.

Thank you so much for updating us on the issue. Looking forward to finally getting my GW1 rewards

I have noticed recently that the transparency of the UI windows, such as the guild window and the currency window in particular have really pronounced transparency, to the point that on the right hand side of the currency, numbers and icons are sitting on a completely transparent background.

Is there any way to change this? I see nothing in the options, and it never used to be like this.

This situation is really annoying me. I was tolerant of it for the last few months, but I have been working on getting more achievements in guild wars 1 while we wait for heart of thorns, and yet none of the items I should be able to unlock and use are available to me. Over 3 months now and nothing from Anet.

It really isn’t a good promoter for their expansion if they just leave things like this unfixed and without word. Its like they are going ‘hey, play guild wars 1 and you can get cool things for guild wars 2… except we won’t give you them.’ Doesn’t inspire confidence.

I know its probably a massive job for them to sort this thing out, but it really is grating on my nerves there not even being any word on possible fixes. I had thought it might be done with the massive patch that sorted out the personal stories, but checked again today, and yeah.. still unavailable.

Thanks for the information about the soundtrack. I do hope that they will get something sorted out for the expansion released.

For now, I shall download what I can from the soundcloud, thanks to Inculpatus cedo.9234 for that

I know that the official soundtrack was released with the collector’s edition of Guild Wars 2, but I was wondering if there would be a full updated version available for sale with Heart of Thorns?

I love the game soundtrack, and while I know I can just go and find it on youtube and listen to it there, I would rather support a great composer and the game I love by making an official purchase, as I am sure other fans would do if the option was available.

So this is a question to ArenaNet, and a hope, that this will be available in future :)

While I found the april fool’s joke amusing for the first say, 2 minutes, not being able to relog and turn it off was annoying.

I will say, in response to the OP, that I did find it in slightly poor taste considering the recent number of plane crashes, especially considering the number of insensitive comments about plane crashes on map chat I was seeing as a result of the april fool.

These events might well have been planned months in advance by the dev team, but that doesn’t really mean they shouldn’t have a backup plan. Last year’s april fool was great, so great in fact that they made an item that had the same effect. This year, I will be waiting to log back in when the event is finished. I don’t like the visual effect or the thoughtless/insensitive/nasty comments being put about in the game during it.

I agree with other posts here. I felt that this installment of the story was too short by far. It felt like we should at least have been able to go and speak to the Pale Tree after the labyrinth, but there was nothing. It felt less like a cliffhanger to me, and more of just half an episode. The fights were interesting enough, but the rewards were disappointing with the exception of the key at the very end. One of the only reasons now to redo the episode on other alts.

Like other people, I also didn’t like how few options our characters were given in terms of dialogue options. I was fairly suspicious of Caithe’s behavior ever since the very beginning of this episode due to her behavior, and as a result I would have questioned her more. Also having such conversations outside in the general public areas seems foolish in the extreme, especially since spies and mesmers have been used in the past to infiltrate.

While I initially liked the labyrinth in the open world, it soon became clear that the rewards for doing it were not worth the cost of resurrection. The little pods give very little, and its rare to get enough of the fragments in one run to get a key, and even when you do, the rewards in the big chest do not seem to warrant the cost of the resurrection costs, or all the effort. Especially after the Lost Bandit Chests, this amount of loot seems a bit mean. If you add up the time and effort required to get a map through all the pact preparations, the killing of the bosses and then the time in the labyrinth to get the greater pod.. that is a massive amount of investment for such crap loot.

I know Anet are trying to get us to play the content more, but I am also not particularly fond of grinding or random chance, and that is pretty much what the open world content is offering. Grinding to get those mordrem parts for the achievements, and the badges, 2000 of them to get the other glove skins. People just are not doing the events as much any more, and so trying to get 2000 badges and mordem parts is a pain. Games are meant to be fun, and grinding for hours and hours to try to get a random chance drop is not what I would call fun.

Overall I have not been that impressed with this story episode. I will do the story itself on alts for the keys, but I will be glad when another installment is brought out. I can only hope that the next part will be better done than this one.