Showing Posts Upvoted By shadow.6174:

Path of Fire Stress Test September 7

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Ester Sauter

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Ester Sauter

GW2 QA Lead

Why run it when most people are at work for the NA?

Because that is also when we are at work

Path of Fire Stress Test September 7

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: PookieDaWombat.6209

PookieDaWombat.6209

No, thank you, I shall not participate. I am just a client, not an employee.

Well, since its usually CLIENTS who perform stress tests of software being delivered by a company, your comment makes zero sense. That’s ok though. One less person might make this one easier on my connection and I’ll be in town for this one.

I’ll try to jump on and see what, if anything, breaks.

[OTR] – Greck Howlbane – Guardian
Soraya Mayhew – Thief
Melissa Koris – Engie – SF for Life!

Path of Fire Stress Test September 7

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Malerian.8435

Malerian.8435

I will be at work. But that is ok. I can wait for the PoF release.

Path of Fire Stress Test September 7

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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most ppl are done at 17:00, they are not home till 18:00 at least.
first you ppl do it when ppl go to bed and then do it at the time ppl are not even home, good timing Anet -_-

We conduct stress tests when the developers are able to participate. This is not a preview, this is a test with a purpose. We’re fully aware that not everyone will be able to participate, and we’re sorry. But asking the dev team to time-shift to work during night-time hours for a stress test would be counterproductive.

We thank those who choose to and are able to participate and we look forward to seeing everyone on September 22nd when we launch the game!

I will be at work. But that is ok. I can wait for the PoF release.

Thanks for being so understanding. The game will be better for everyone with the help of those who are able to participate, and I appreciate your positive attitude!

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

Path of Fire Stress Test September 7

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

Your loss. I look forward to free advance opportunities to play. I never seem to encounter any real bugs, or other stressful situations.

Thanks for the information and opportunity. =)

Preview Weekend Live or Ephemeral? Ans: Eph

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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I hope you can join us for the Preview Weekend. I can’t wait for you to see the Crystal Desert and have a look at some of the starter content!

Will we be able to preview the elite specs in anyway during this be it in heart of the mists or the starter map?

Check out this blog post, where you’ll see that players can experience and experiment with the new elite specializations in a second weekend event on August 18-22.

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

Preview Weekend Live or Ephemeral? Ans: Eph

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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That’s a fair question. The Preview Weekend is a chance for anyone to experience the first part of Path of Fire. Even if they’re not a Guild Wars 2 player, they can dive in an see how things look in Tyria. However, the Preview Weekend is not an early start or anything of that nature, and naturally attainments and acquisitions will be wiped before the launch of Path of Fire on September 22, 2017.

I hope you can join us for the Preview Weekend. I can’t wait for you to see the Crystal Desert and have a look at some of the starter content!

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

Best item ever put in Gem Store

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Zeivu.3615

Zeivu.3615

Honestly, I think an account should have at least one level 80 before it unlocks as an option for gems. If they are going to sell them as is, then they should undo all the level gating design changes they implemented in fear of ‘confusing new users’.

Best item ever put in Gem Store

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Sina.7350

Sina.7350

It’s a standard item most other MMOs (especially NCSoft ones) have, so they had to add it. It won’t affect people who have been playing for years and may have stacks of tomes or birthday leveling scrolls. Great for new players who want to be confused though :P

Best item ever put in Gem Store

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: usnedward.9023

usnedward.9023

Now the new people will buy them and complain they don’t know what to do :P

I think it’s over due BUT I think there should be a limit per account.

Granted Death – Necro
Consumed Hate – Thief
Unlucky Scrub – Ranger

Returning player, and I am lost

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Thaddeus.4891

Thaddeus.4891

There is no profession that are useless. You can do pretty much any content with any profession. But when you talk about end game like raid, there is composition, build and profession that are better than others. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do the content with any profession, but some group will want to be as efficient as possible. The thing is that what is the most efficient change over time and depend on what content you want to focus on. So unless you want to do raid on a regular basis or make speed run you shouldn’t worry too much about that. Pick the profession you like the most and you will be alright.

Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD

Catmander tag

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Pifil.5193

Pifil.5193

Someone should totally sue . . .

That’s the only reasonable response…

Mind you, if you’re suing for your gold back then you’ll have to sue them in Tyria and I heard that ArenaNet totally control the courts there.

Catmander tag

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Sina.7350

Sina.7350

SO, people who already have a commander tag it costs 150g. Those people already spent 300g to become a commander.

So, current commanders=450g to get the catmander tag total.

People who do not currently have tags it costs 300g.

So, new commanders get to be commanders and get the catmander tag for 300g total.

How the hell does this make any sense?

Are you truly surprised at this point after five years of similar illogical decisions?

Future of Guild Wars 2

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Y’all have digressed far from the OP’s post which was asking ANet not to use recycled ideas or content. There are two problems with this request:

  • The content/mechanics of the expac have long since been determined. Even if ANet agreed today, the game could not possibly be changed to reflect that any time soon.
  • The OP hasn’t defined what they mean by “recycled content.” Or why it’s bad.

Accordingly, there’s nothing to discuss, unless the OP wants to get more specific. Right now, we’re using the first post as a Rohrschach illustrating more about our own preconceptions than offering ideas that might be useful to ANet in making choices that we like better (or worse) than the recent ones.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Future of Guild Wars 2

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: FrizzFreston.5290

FrizzFreston.5290

Gee, I thought their original concept was to be innovative. I mean, that’s what they said even before the game launched. (It’s even in the Manifesto.)

They also said they would have a personalized storyline before the game launched. (Was also even in the manifesto) =P

Though saying that innovation is part of Guild Wars 2 now is pretty much a stretch. Just some new gadgets in a map, doesn’t feel all that innovative to me. They had lots of stuff like that in the game since launch, which then got removed from starter zones because they were confusing. (??? what) And now they just add them to the latest maps without even thinking whether it might get a bit too much for some people.

“It isn’t working!” CL4P-TP
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik

(edited by FrizzFreston.5290)

Immune to Crowd Control (Bug)

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

If you watched the video…

Don’t assume that people are going to watch the video nor that those who do are going to understand the point you want to make.

I almost never watch linked videos because 9 times out of 10, the quality is bad, the video includes a substantial amount of blather (“hi guys, here’s my video”), and rarely makes clear the point it’s trying to get across (whether it’s a bug report or a training video or etc).

ANet’s no different. They are busy people.

So, please, for Balthazar’s Kormir’s sake, explain in text what you think the bug is and how the video is evidence of it.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Phishing Questions or Comments?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Frasse.7549

Frasse.7549

A effective way to protect your domains (e.g. guildwars2.com) from email spoofing etc. used in phishing, is to use SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Each contributes to protect the domain i different ways:

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS text entry which shows a list of servers that should be considered allowed to send mail for a specific domain.
Protects domain in “Mail From”.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a method to verify that the messages’ content are trustworthy, meaning that they weren’t changed from the moment the message left the initial mail server.
Protects against modified content in mail.

DMARC, (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) helps senders and receivers work together to create more secure email communications. It enables the message sender to indicate that their messages are protected with SPF and/or DKIM. And clear instructions for the message receiver to follow if an email does not pass SPF or DKIM authentication.
Protects domain in “From Header” (Sender) and more.

Recent Phishing Attempts

in News and Announcements

Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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We’re talked about account security and phishing in the past, such as in this legacy forum thread. However, because we’ve noted a modest uptick in account thefts related to phishing, we wanted to share some info with you.

One of the more common phishing attempts today is coming from within the game. The in-game message claims to come from ArenaNet or the Guild Wars 2 Team or it may be signed by someone who purports to be a member of our GM team. Some of the in-game mails may resemble a common phishing attempt we noted a couple of years ago, which you can view here.

So what can you do, to prevent this sort of thing?

  • First, you should secure your account through SMS or Mobile Authentication. There’s a good article on our Knowledge Base that will give you a lot of info about securing your account. If you need extra help with the Authentication App, you can find that in this article.

Beyond that, please heed these reminders:

  • We won’t send you an in-game mail and tell you to visit a website to, for instance, secure your account or avoid an account termination. Don’t visit those sites, and don’t let the apparent “officialness” of the linked address deceive you.
  • Always check to see if the mail you’ve received truly is from The Guild Wars 2 Team or from ArenaNet.
    • For in-game mail: look for gold text immediately above the “Reply” and “Delete” buttons that reads, “Note: This message was sent by another player. It was not sent by the Guild Wars 2 Team.” If it says that, believe it.
    • For e-mails, always keep in mind with anyone can set anyone as the “Sender” of an e-mail. (I am getting nearly daily phishing e-mails that appear to come from… me!) You might check the Properties of the mail for more information.
  • If you get an e-mail or an in-game mail, reach out to Customer Support first, before any damage is done, and not later, when your account has been jeopardized or stolen. Just click “Support” that the top of our website or forum, then click “Submit a Ticket.” (You should include the message that you received, so the team is aware of it.)

Again, the first and best protection for your account comes through SMS or Mobile Authentication. The second line of defense is caution and care in how you react to e-mails and in-game mails.

Let’s all band together to stop phishers in their tracks!

You can share your thoughts, questions, input, tips, and suggestions in this thread, and we invite you to do so!

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

(edited by Gaile Gray.6029)

Lake Doric Change

in News and Announcements

Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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With the next release, we will be making a change to the Watchtower Cliffs (aka: the centaur stronghold) area of Lake Doric. The Harathi centaurs noticed that while those who shout “I can outrun a centaur” were not much of a threat, those who could build turrets and other weaponry were. They reached back to their command in the Harathi Hinterlands and requested support, which has come in the form of trebuchet fire aimed at enemies in their Lake Doric stronghold.

This change is intended to discourage players from AFKing in the centaur stronghold. The strikes come swiftly and carry a powerful punch – especially towards summons – while not becoming overly punishing to those who are playing through the entire area. Keep an eye out and be ready to evade the bombardments!

We will continue to monitor the centaur’s stronghold area and will investigate potential changes to incentivize intended gameplay in the area.

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

Game Update Notes - June 20, 2017

in Game Release Notes

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

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Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

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  • Laying the ground work for a native Mac OSX 64bit test client.

Lighting Issues Game Update 4/18

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Matt Anderson

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Matt Anderson

Graphics Programmer

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not a checkerbox lighting bug, but a complete darklight filter that flickers in the tangled depths. It may not be very apparant from the two screenshots, but one is darker than the other, and it’s flickering is quite headache inducing.

EDIT: I should probably specify that it changes with camera angle

Thanks for the report and posting the video. I am able to reproduce this when standing in that spot. The ever important first step to tracking down what’s going on.

Lighting Issues Game Update 4/18

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Matt Anderson

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Matt Anderson

Graphics Programmer

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Hi all. Would like to post a quick update.

There appear to be several distinct issues being discussed in this thread.

1) Issues related to new-ish hardware and shadows, like the 1080 cards. I believe this was fixed, broken again while attempting to make the fix more general, and will be sorted out soon. Thank you for your patience.

2) Issues related to lights blinking on/off based on camera angle.

Examples of players seeing this issue:

Alright two minutes after posting this I solved the problem. Starting the game using the actual .exe file found in the game directory fixed it for me. Normally I start the game using a desktop shortcut. This means that the shortcut somehow screwed the game up? I had no idea that such a thing could happen but oh well, it’s fixed for me now

This is exactly the issue I am having too.

Could it be that we just need to start from the .exe to work around this? Because that’s basically what Steam is doing for me when I log into the client through Steam.

It sounds like this only occurs when a particular render setting is active, usually set via a command line option. This is why the problem goes away for some players when launching the game directly instead of using a favored shortcut. If so, what you are seeing is the game in ‘forwardrenderer’ mode. (It is also a compatibility setting when particular hardware features are not available).

By default Guild Wars 2 uses a variant of deferred rendering. Roughly, this separates the complexity of materials (what objects look like) and lighting and can allow for more lights. This is the intended mode, what artists see when building and lighting environments. The forward rendering mode gets used as a fallback for certain cases where deferred rendering is problematic. For example, when objects fade in/out or when water shows a planar reflection. In forward mode only a small number of lights are chosen per object. As such, the lighting quality may be severely reduced, especially in indoor and underground locations where the sun is obscured and much of the lighting comes from additional light sources.

I wouldn’t recommend the forward rendering mode unless absolutely necessary to enjoy the game. But kudos to explorers of hidden features. The upside of using this mode all the time, it may be cheaper. In particular for systems where the GPU is the bottleneck. If the game happens to be CPU bound on a particular machine, this setting will reduce visual quality for no gains.

That said, forward rendered mode is expected to look worse but it is not expected to be completely unusable.

I’m looking into this now. Something to do with how a limited number of lights are chosen each frame. Newer maps have many more lights than earlier maps and are stressing this system in ways it was not exposed to when written.

3) Issues related to environment lighting.

Examples of players seeing this issue:

Uh some advice please: Running a GTX 760 with 381.65 drivers. Is this honestly what the new map is suppose to look like? None of the other maps look like this. Is this the Shadow Bug or a different one?

Unless I am missing something in that screenshot, I believe this is what the new map looks like. Travelling to that area, I see similar results. And don’t see signs of the Shadow Bug or other lighting issues discussed above. As a large interior, that area is lit differently than most parts of the game. And compared to other maps, this map uses some more extreme color grading settings.

Lighting Issues Game Update 4/18

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Ester Sauter

Ester Sauter

GW2 QA Lead

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Hey everyone!

Thank you so much for all of your responses. The graphics team is investigating the different issues with the different cards. It isn’t a fast process so we appreciate your patience!

God Walking Among Mere Mortal

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Sometimes, all you have to do is close GW2 and reopen. If that fails, with GW2 closed, start any toon on GW1, close GW1, and restart GW2. (And if that fails, follow cdsmith’s suggestion.)

GW2 periodically double-checks to make sure your GW1 titles are ‘earned’ and occasionally, can’t reach the HoM calculator API to do so. If that happens, you automatically get an email saying those titles are being revoked. Sometime after, GW2 rechecks and if it still can’t verify, it revokes the titles.

Starting GW1 (and sometimes entering the Hall) forces the two games to start talking to each other, which resolves the issue… well, unless GW1 is completely down (in which case, it will get resolved when it comes back up).

tl;dr don’t panic. The problem will fix itself eventually or enter GW1 to jump start the repair.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Destiny's Edge is so helpful

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

yea, I can see the point, but there’s doing a little, and there’s doing “nothing”.
I mean.. when they stand there with their weapons drawn and do attacks like.. 1% of what I do, then they won’t do anything really, but at least visually it looks like they’re involved.
But right now, they stand there with their weapons sheathed. Meaning that whhen I look at them, I don’t think of them as weak, I think of them as indifferent, and that’s something else entirely.

What would you think if you watched a game of soccer and your team had like 5 players that were standing still in their spot. Not turning around, not taking a single step, just standing there. I mean if they at leats ran after the ball, they don’t even need to hit it, but just run

Except this isn’t a soccer team. It’s an MMO instance designed for up to five players and you (or I) sometimes choose to go it alone. The NPCs are there for lore, not to play the game for us. I’d like to see them rez us from dead (rather than ‘restart from checkpoint’) and I’d love to see a mechanic like Arkk’s from Nightmare Fractal (“Quickly, retreat inside my shielding!”).

But for now, it seems ‘fair’ that they do too little rather than too much for the sake of gameplay.

I wouldn’t mind if they did more. All the same, I think it’s fine — and perhaps even better — that they do little.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

Problems with logging in?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: atheria.2837

atheria.2837

No, that’s not an issue at all. That Level3 is a router is simply ignoring ICMP traffic. As long as the packet makes it to the final destination with a reasonable latency (64.25.40.114 in this case), you’re almost certainly fine (*see asymmetric paths below).

ICMP is very low priority (and usually rate-limited) for most routers and handled by a rather slow CPU, rather than the ASICs that handle your bog standard network traffic. Don’t expect a low latency or reliable ping to any specific network device. Again, as long as your final destination is reliable with acceptable latency, you’re good to go.

https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/tuesday_steenbergen_troublshootingtraceroute_62.49.pdf

Look at pages 33 through 36. It’s also important to note page 38, but there’s nothing you can do about the return path — it would be up to NCSoft to traceroute to you.

That said, if you contact ANet support, they’ll have you run WinMTR. They’ll base conclusions about latency and “packet loss” on unrelated network devices, e.g. Level3 equipment, but this is just a misunderstanding of the results traceroute/WinMTR is showing us. Again, as long as the final destination packet loss/latency is fine, you’re golden (again as long as that asymmetric path is a non-issue).

Anet as a whole needs to understand that having Level 3 in their networking path is a death knell for all gamers.

Period.

Not keeping all IT jobs here is a major reason IT is so bad HERE. 33y IT 10y IT Security

Server Dead ... Anyone there? Anet send help

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: aandiarie.7195

aandiarie.7195

Just 1 time ever did they have to. When in wvw something went wrong with armor binding. They did a roll back. It was 1 time in 4 years that I know of. But it’ll be okay. I have faith they can fix it.

Server Dead ... Anyone there? Anet send help

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Charrbeque.8729

Charrbeque.8729

If they can’t figure out what’s wrong then can they just roll it back?

That is very, very, very seldom necessary. But don’t worry. The team is keenly aware of this situation, and top people are working on it!

I sure hope so.

Attachments:

There’s something charming about rangers.