Guild Wars 2

I’ve got the storyline reward backpack, later got the upgrade as a story reward, but there is no upgraded skin, the original backpack doesn’t have upgraded stats, etc. I saw reports elsewhere of the same problem but wanted to report it in this thread to make sure it gets resolved.

Did the root on Longbow 2 get removed yet? Someone wake me up when that’s done and the spec isn’t soul-crushing to use in combat.

lordkrall.7241:

Xillllix.3485:

Fixing a code ain’t rocket science. They just don’t want to do it.

How much developing have you done?

“They” and “want to” are the operative things here. Product owner has to manage the priorities of the slate of work for the development team; that’s the “they.” I’m sure everyone on their teams “want to” have a working SAB. But Arenanet is not made of infinite time, money, and qualified people. They have to make rational business decisions with the tools and resources available.

I’m as disappointed as any SAB superfan that we don’t have access yet, but refactoring code is indeed an expensive endeavor.

Personal note to development team: shouldn’t the unit tests have started failing as new work was checked in post-SAB?

I feel like all I can do is read patch notes and comment every single time to remove the rooting effect from True Shot. Two out of five Longbow skills interrupt the flow of combat. I understand philosophically that you want a trade-off, but pragmatically this design choice makes combat even slower, less mobile, and less fluid.

This specialization is not fun to play when it rejects the base style of this game’s combat in favor of a hypothetical power trade-off. Stuns and roots are the least-fun elements of this game (my opinion, shared by bunches of others if the forums over the years have been any indicator) and you’ve guaranteed that 40% of the DH’s weapon uses force the player to sit and wait.

Please reconsider. I want to actually play my guardian again, and I can grudgingly accept a massive AOE requiring that I stay in place, but adding a root to the second skill is anathemic to fun.

Another person scouring the Internet trying to figure out why I couldn’t convert my booster back into Karma and arrived at this thread.

If this is a change they wanted, fine, going forward, make that change. But all of us who’ve been posting were blindsided by it, at least grandfather existing boosters in and spawn a different item going forward.

With no solution or acknowledgement of this bug, we’re moving from “really crappy move” into “asinine” territory.

Anti.9156:

phokus.8934:

BrunoBRS.5178:

phokus.8934:

We’re supposed to be a mobile class

since when? guardian has always been one of the most notoriously slow classes in the game.

Slow, yes. Mobile, no, not at all.

hammer 5, staff 4, shield 5, sword 3. Gs4
guardian has alot of rooting skills. and this is fine if the payoff is there (in this case enougn dmg)

This is true, but the problem (to me) is that 40% of the new weapon skills have a rooting effect. Rooting is one of the least-fun mechanics used in GW2. The fluidity of combat is a huge selling point of GW2, and now the newest, “coolest” elite spec for guardians forces you to come to a halt twice during your rotation.

I’m sure there’s a chance I’m wrong, but are there any other weapons where two out of the five skills root you? This is a big tradeoff; kill your flow, reduce your fun, slow down an already-molasses-slow profession because the damage will be slightly boosted based off our feedback?

Nossir. I genuinely am uninterested in a weapon set that kills the joy of combat. Two roots is too many. One is grudgingly acceptable for the payoff (large AOE, just like Staff 5 in Fire for elementalist), but two skills moves DH into the “will not waste my time” category.

Hi,

I posted my own experience that’s echoed by a bunch of posters here, specifically about rooting the #2 skill. Plenty of folks chimed in on Reddit. Please remove the root on bow #2!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3gaey2/dragonhunter_beta_sadness/

I ran my hammer rev through all the dungeons’ story modes, and in COE near the end when everything was constantly shaking I ended up getting ill, as I have an inner ear disease affecting my balance and perception. I will vomit withing 5 minutes of playing a FPS.

The brick road animation doesn’t affect me at all. The hammer #3 skill is a little nausea-inducing if I focus on the avatar itself moving. But I’ve learned to adapt by focusing on the entire screen frame instead of the moving object.

That is to say, as someone with a relevant medical condition, it didn’t happen to me, but I can completely understand that it can affect others in different ways. I’d appreciate if ANet took the OP’s feedback seriously.

Behellagh.1468:

Shadows on Ultra may be the limiting factor. That and reflections are more of CPU than GPU thing to a GPU upgrade wouldn’t impact that as much.

And you ran a GTX 550Ti with supersampling? Also Character Model Limit, the max number of other players that get rendered, does impact performance in player rich areas. That too more of a CPU issue than GPU.

Ah, those screenshots are for the new card only. The 550 Ti had much lower settings. Good to hear which are CPU issues, I’ll try adjusting those.

Second tab, cropped from dual-screens.

Take 2, with more screencropping.

Thanks for the reply. GPU-Z reports PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ 16 3.0. I’ve got a 600W power supply with no other onboard cards, 1 DVD drive, and 1 SATA drive (not SSD, but that shouldn’t affect frame rate).

I’ve checked with a guild mate who happens to have the same card and a slightly slower CPU than I have, and he’s getting over 50FPS with the same test I’m using. (Standing in the grove at night, casting a spell, and flailing the camera around madly).

Hi, I just upgraded to an EVGA GTX 970 4GB from an EVGA GeForce 550 Ti. I’m not seeing any difference in-game. Keeping the same settings between the two saw no change in FPS, maxing the settings saw a drop in FPS …

I have the most current GeForce drivers from NVIDIA, I have no other graphics card or onboard chipsets, an i5 3.5GHz processor, and 16GB of RAM under Win7 (64bit).

Another game I tried (DA:I) saw instant, huge performance benefits. GW2 is quite a bit older, so I’m wondering what’s wrong.

(EDIT: and yes, I’m using the PCI-E 3.0 x16 graphics slot on my motherboard, I read the PC Performance sticky first.)

Here I thought this thread would be quoting:

Erau qssi dlro weht!

Do you enjoy dancing as a Quaggan? Were you part of #OccupySAB, standing in our long line outside of Moto’s box? How about running dungeons, fractals, wubwub, SPvP, crafting, shooting the breeze, taking a break to play SWTOR, WOW, DDO … and seeing the same quality people in those games?

Unrepentant is a socially-driven, casual guild spanning multiple games, with a focus on freedom. Freedom to play games the way you want to play. We have families, jobs, life obligations. You won’t find any play time quotas, extensive guild taxes, mandatory events, or drama-laden infighting here. However, we recognize this freedom comes with a responsibility: We are free so long as that freedom does not deny our fellow members the right to enjoy the game. Respect is our watchword.

Central to Unrepentant is our sense of community. We believe the games you play aren’t as important as the people you play them with, and to that end we strive only to admit the kind of members you’d want to hang out and have a drink with. Our slogan is “once a member – always a member”, and all Unrepentant are welcome in any game we play regardless of what game you started in.

Freedom, friendship and fun times – this is what matters to The U. You don’t have to be a good player to be Unrepentant; but you do have to be a good person to join our ranks. We don’t cheat, we don’t exploit, we don’t abuse mechanics. We’re here to play the game and build friendships.

If you’re looking for that type of community … relax, crack a beer, fire up a stogie, and get comfortable. You have to be 18+; our average guild member is around 30, our members range from their 20s to 60s. Sobriety is optional, but pants are not allowed.

It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this: http://www.unrepentantgaming.com

[PvX] Stormbluff Isle

Is this bug what’s holding up the deployment of SAB?

The patch note hints, the ANet presence in #SABorRIOT2015; the bones are saying a return to Super Adventure Box is imminent.

Warm up those Infinite Continue Coins, bookahs!

Wow, at least one person had a great solution for the poor Mastery UI design – the WvW Ability interface is a perfect fit! Scrolls, clean list, can be ranked higher, cost is obvious, committing points has a confirmation dialogue.

I found gliding activation to be unresponsive. With a 100/25 Internet connection, I frequently had to hit space twice when the prompt came up before gliding would engage. As an opinion, I’d allow the base gliding skill to be trigger earlier than the current delay.

The Mastery UI was really unintuitive. I hope it’s not the finalized interface. Finding it, the sliding up, and especially spending points are not like any other interface element in the game, nor does it improve on existing design. It doesn’t follow other software design standards either, so while I’d eventually figure it out, it should be improved to the point that I don’t need to struggle with it.

I wish I had concrete suggestions on how to do that, but I’m not a UX person.

On the positive side, the story was fun, boss fight challenging (especially as short-range melee), and the area we’re shown in the beta is interesting and well-designed. I like the revenant’s swapping mechanism, although I’m a 6 through 0 clicker. I found lots more clicking over there than my other professions. Not necessarily bad, but it afforded me less control over the camera. (Just opinion, no actionable feedback, perhaps I just need to l2p).

They seem accessible enough to me; crafting, or the ascended armor chests all have Wupwup as an option. Probably easier to get than other sets if you do level 50 fractals.

aspirine.6852:

You dont get banned because Anet screwed up something.

Tell that to the victims of Snowflakegate.

Sandpit.3467:

Guild chat still broken after fix

work around is no good unless everyone in the guild knows it and does it

You can at least whisper to guildmates what to do to resolve it. A bit of an administrative headache in larger guilds.

(To the other poster, I did software QA for 6 years; this is a flat-out bug, not user error. But the contact list workaround does work thankfully.)

The workaround is to open Contacts and LFG (Y), change to Invisible, then back to Online.

Still, broken chat shouldn’t be broken

I still cannot speak or listen to guild chat – I’m the guild leader, as well. I get “No one hears you” and “You are not in a guild.” (I’m in 4.)

The patch notes said this was fixed. It is not.

Rich,

I have full Celestial ascended gear (even backpiece) and use Traveler’s runes. You have less stats than Divinity, but the added speed and boon bonuses are worth it to me. It usually frees up an utility slot (if you used one for a speed buff), too.

I have had no issues running dungeons, level 50 fractals, or anything else. There are some great opportunities as a support/boon elementalist with this approach.

Granted, I avoid any LFGs that want Berserker builds only, because it’s only fair to that crowd. My guild brings talented players, not builds or gear.

Just my experience. It is one heck of a grind to do this, so make sure you’ve really committed to it if you want to.

Azhure.1857:

We will continue to open the Steam Ogre chamber beforehand when its convenient for us.

And I’m sure people will continue to antagonize you and your guild in-game if you have failed to read the multitude of responses to your post.

Why even bother posting here if you’re not looking for a solution? It really does smack of trolling.

So it’s okay to be dismissive of others’ “just one loot bag” and not your “just one loot bag?” The ongoing thread of people responding to you is the word “selfish.”

Here’s a thought exercise: argue your opponents’ position here publicly for a while. Maybe you’ll see why people are irate with you. Don’t respond with “oh, I understand their arguments” or somesuch – seriously try espousing their viewpoint. Because you’re coming from a position of immense inflexibility for an issue that is ripe for compromise on your part.

(Again, not to excuse the harassment and abuse flung, but by and large you’re being told a pretty strong message.)

Rather than engaging in the pointless back and forth sea lioning here, how about simply responding to every “point” with this quote?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I find it hard to believe that an entire guild can only do Steam Ogre conveniently 5 to 10 minutes before the FE spawns… out of all the times to do it during the Boss spawn timer.

(It’s not just “Close” in the crafting interface, it’s all of the text buttons in the recipe window. The looking glass icon square buttons are fine.)

Not sure when it started, but when I look at text buttons in the crafting interface, the word is no longer centered vertically. Pull up any recipe and notice the Close button at the bottom.

Additionally, I see similar behavior in the Story Journal text buttons inside the left nav bar after expanding an option. You can see this by opening Living World Season 2 on a new character, clicking the expander, and the “Begin This Story” button has the green icon properly centered, but the text is again offset by a noticeable amount.

Oddly, the “Play This Episode” button seems fine.

I know this is a dumb nit, but I also know UX people are retentive about this kind of stuff.

This seems to have changed when they moved their payment processing to Digital River in Minnesota. When I still lived in MN after the shift to DR, I was charged tax. I put in a ticket indicating that ANet’s offices weren’t in MN regardless of payment processor, and that DR isn’t considered a “nexus” under MN tax law, therefore sales tax could not be assessed. (EDIT: Digital River is based in Minnesota, which is why all this is relevant!)

After a fruitless discussion, at some point the (admittedly minute) overcharge was reversed.

Bottom line: in some instances, ANet is required to collect sales tax on the purchase of digital currency that can be used to purchase items of value (even intangibles like armor skins in a game). And as other posters have pointed out, many states are trying to cash in on the Internet sales tax “loophole.” It’s one of those regulation failures that Amazon exploited to achieve market dominance (or conversely, it’s one of the cumbersome laws prohibiting businesses from expanding and earning higher profits depending on your POV). It’s possible that your state has laws (perhaps starting on Jan 1st) to govern Internet-based sales tax – you should look into it and petition your state congress if you don’t like it. But … welcome to the future. So much tax revenue has been lost over the past decade that I doubt you’ll see it go away.

What more fitting a tribute?

SAB World 3

/placeyourbetsnow

We’ve got plenty of time between now and expac, with no more living story. It’s CLEARLY the appropriate time for SAB World 3.

Why wait? Announce it now and the legion of #OccupySAB shall be mollified, if not grumpy at the way-lateness.

Tybalt

/15char

Gaile: I heard you already have access to the new profession:

Hype Train Conductor

Notice how there were 10 people walking up to the Mursaat in a large, open space?

Sponsored by Twitch, using a host who’s never really played GW2. That’s just kind of how it is. I know there’s no stopping the hype train, but we might as well be patient for a while as ANet does the slow info rollout.

I’m glad they’ve already done the development so they’re not influenced by the OP’s insane suggestion that we Elementalists get the worst weapon in the history of weapons (Torch).

I have been working for the Nightmare Court for some time.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4278437/Pics/khaal_drioc.jpg

“Double Belligerent-role Gear for Those Moved to Bellicose Intent”

et alt. for increased obfuscation.

I run all dungeons & l.50 fractals as a Staff Elementalist with full ascended-quality Celestial gear and Bifrost with Celestial stats.

While I avoid ’zerk LFGs, I never have a problem running anything.

My guild is part of a gaming community with a particular credo: “Bring the player, not the build.” You can clear Arah 1-4 with five Hunters if people are alert and are willing to communicate. It may take a few precious minutes longer, but most people don’t care.

As in other threads, avoid the ‘zerk folks or groups with “AP” requirements. You’ll be a lot happier without them, and they will be happier without you. A little sad, but it works.

Mo Mo.1947:

You guys want to feel respected? You want to feel like your voice is heard? Dish out!

I, along with many others asking for change, have spent quite a chunk of personal change in the gem store. As for me personally, it’s easily a few hundred USD since launch. I didn’t include that in my post because I’m trying to make a more consummate point about how software development could be run more effectively, not trying to throw my weight around as someone who has continued to fund the game more than the median player.

(All of which is neither an effective debate technique, nor germane to the root problem I found reading this thread.)

I’m here because my guild of 200+ active players is now about 5. They have moved to other MMOs, console games, what-have-you. I usually stay out of forum threads because I find arguing on the Internet to be the least productive thing I could possibly waste my time doing. The experience of this specific thread, when taken as a single narrative, is telling.

I just sat down and read this thread from start to present. There is such … animus. Resentment. Frustration. There are hundreds of people trying to say “we do not feel respected.” There are a bunch of illogical things and ad hominem stuff, which I simply read and moved on. As a former community manager for a different software company, I appreciate the difficulty of the position Gaile is in, and am glad a few folks are at least trying to spare her from their venting. She personally assisted our gaming community a few times in GW1 and with a delicate problem after GW2’s launch, so I wanted to publicly affirm I have deep respect for her efforts in what others have pointed out is a “no win” situation.

Marriage counselors will tell you that the fastest way to destroy a relationship is by building resentment. The most effective way to generate resentment is through non-communication. The most passionate supporters of this game are right here, in the forums, trying to elucidate their frustrations and disappointments. The resentment is even stronger because not so long ago, the community was told (paraphrasing): “we know we need to communicate better and we will improve.”

Promoting Gaile to interact with forum users was a great first step. Now, to the management team at Anet, give her the tools to do the job effectively.

I was a product manager for a different software company with a similarly-sized user base that was just as demanding of information about updates. They also had an incessant wellspring of cool ideas (some practical, most not), and our management team worked for years to figure out how to balance being competitive in the marketplace, not over-promising, and never under-delivering. And fantastically, other companies had already solved this problem! And existing GW2 customers have been asking for it; cautionary roadmaps and development progress updates.

On a two week sprint cycle, I was able to author blog posts monthly to keep my customers up to speed on what cool things were in the pipeline. These included feature overviews and video demonstrations, even with code still in production. It is not risky. We were publicly-held and our customers and shareholders were delighted to have access to and input in the process. Customers were also able to react early when something was clearly going to miss the mark, so we had the information immediately available to pivot. (I don’t know if your team follows Lean, but it’d be the same in most Agile environments).

Our end result is that our stagnant subscriber base grew by just over 125% in the first year after moving to this method of customer interaction. The second year saw nearly 200% growth.

It only takes a few hours of competitive analysis to demonstrate the successes of game development houses that are effective in this area. In this thread, some great examples have already been pointed out by unhappy, passionate users.

Any organization can choose transparency and customer collaboration. It takes courage at the executive level to make it happen, but myself and thousands of forum posts are (electronically) screaming at you guys to take that step. You will be rewarded with happy players, a vibrant and dynamic community of supporters, and increased sales through the cash shop and people pushing their friends to return because the environment has returned to the health and excitement present pre-launch.

Add Viola, drop a Bobblehead Laboratory, then PRESTO – you have a Violin.

Because they’re the same sized instrument. Violinists’ heads are just much bigger.

Still no response? This could have been engineered, tested, committed, and ready for deployment by now.

“Ok, let’s change it back” is a 5-minute hallway meeting. Why haven’t we received that update yet?

Suggestion: allow players to enter whatever number they choose, starting at 1.

Nothing was broken. This was a (poor) solution to a non-existent problem.

There is a Business Analyst reading this entire thread somewhere in Bellevue screaming “I TOLD THEM, WHY WOULD NO ONE LISTEN” at his/her computer. Assuming said BA is either market-focused or customer-centric.

Stop faux-guessing and get in early on the REAL answer:

Infinite Continue Coin + Box o’ Fun + 250 Thin Leather + 250 Bloodstone Dust = Portable Super Adventure Box

Late to this thread … my necro joined the Nightmare Court long ago.