Guild Wars 2

shava.3502:

So, I’ve been running my druid for days, and have her trained up to the point where she only requires the last two skills in training — so she was set up in her spec to everything but the last tick of her specialization.

Then I went to the PVP lobby, and was a kitten and didn’t think about the fact that I would have to respec for PVP and found myself with a staff in inventory, and thought, ok, no problem, my mistake. And it was late, and I was frustrated, and died a lot, and I logged out in the PVP lobby.

This morning, I log back in, and I’m still in the PVP lobby. I bop back to LA, go to kill the Wurm in Caledon, and I can’t arm my staff. Nothing is working right. I change my specialization to another specialization thinking, maybe if I refresh it back to druid, I will be able to re-arm my staff? (but Druid wasn’t showing as an option on my Build screen, so I was wondering wtf?)

Well, I am still showing as trained in everything. But as soon as I took away my specialization from my Build screen, my utility skills from Druid disappeared, Druid still wasn’t available as an option on my Build screen and I was down to 5 possibly specializations, despite being trained in six.

And yes, my paper doll now says Ranger again. Despite training through Glyph of Equality.

Completely exited client to check that too, so it’s not that. Deleted cache directories. No go. Noticed that although I had recently learned scribe, and it had asked me if I wanted to unlearn huntsman, on my login screen I am listed as Leather/Huntsman/Scribe. I am…worried.

I am concerned that my character record for my main has become corrupted.

DEEP SIGH.

Druid is interesting, I’m not sure it’s where I live all the time — it’s much more interesting for fractals and dungeons, and group PVE in the new zones — all of which is very useful. This is to say, I’d rather use it against AI, because it’s pretty fragile against smart players, and it’s not so hot for soloing since the damage output is pretty sad.

But now I’m finding of course that I am going to miss it if I can’t have it, so help?

Horione, Druid and Scribe of [LIFE], Yak’s Bend

Partly solved, in that equping the trait line in the third place allows me to equip Druid (this is broken UI design, IMO, but whatever — a guildie helped me out). However, I still have three crafts showing on my character, which is a bug, and traiting was hella confusing so I’m going to leave this here.

Horione

So, I’ve been running my druid for days, and have her trained up to the point where she only requires the last two skills in training — so she was set up in her spec to everything but the last tick of her specialization.

Then I went to the PVP lobby, and was a kitten and didn’t think about the fact that I would have to respec for PVP and found myself with a staff in inventory, and thought, ok, no problem, my mistake. And it was late, and I was frustrated, and died a lot, and I logged out in the PVP lobby.

This morning, I log back in, and I’m still in the PVP lobby. I bop back to LA, go to kill the Wurm in Caledon, and I can’t arm my staff. Nothing is working right. I change my specialization to another specialization thinking, maybe if I refresh it back to druid, I will be able to re-arm my staff? (but Druid wasn’t showing as an option on my Build screen, so I was wondering wtf?)

Well, I am still showing as trained in everything. But as soon as I took away my specialization from my Build screen, my utility skills from Druid disappeared, Druid still wasn’t available as an option on my Build screen and I was down to 5 possibly specializations, despite being trained in six.

And yes, my paper doll now says Ranger again. Despite training through Glyph of Equality.

Completely exited client to check that too, so it’s not that. Deleted cache directories. No go. Noticed that although I had recently learned scribe, and it had asked me if I wanted to unlearn huntsman, on my login screen I am listed as Leather/Huntsman/Scribe. I am…worried.

I am concerned that my character record for my main has become corrupted.

DEEP SIGH.

Druid is interesting, I’m not sure it’s where I live all the time — it’s much more interesting for fractals and dungeons, and group PVE in the new zones — all of which is very useful. This is to say, I’d rather use it against AI, because it’s pretty fragile against smart players, and it’s not so hot for soloing since the damage output is pretty sad.

But now I’m finding of course that I am going to miss it if I can’t have it, so help?

Horione, Druid and Scribe of [LIFE], Yak’s Bend

@Illconceived: It’s not that I don’t like the very idea of the policy. It’s that I want to understand why a policy exists, if it has consequences. I was raised that way IRL, and it’s why I went into public policy in my RL career.

People who don’t understand the policies they live under start thinking of the governance they live under as alien to their own interests. I rather like living in a democracy where I can at least pretend that a lot of the people are working toward the common good, even if at cross purposes and incompetently at many times.

But it’s important to be able to distinguish normal muddling along from real idiocy and greed in your environment, and in the leadership you are subjected to. This is a lesson from game environments we can take back to real life in our jobs and in civic life.

Sometimes it means you change organizations — sometimes it means you step up to change things yourself, or sometimes you jump ship. But it’s important to do whatever you do well informed. Otherwise, you just carry your own problems with you, because they are probably just…you.

Just a survey — I recently returned to the game after some long absence, and joined a guild, which I rather enjoy, that demands 100% rep, or you get booted.

Now, I used to play Eve Online, and there, I was an Alliance Political Liaison for The Merchant Marines <TMM> (and yes, you’re ancient if you remember this…) — and in Eve, there’s a kitten good reason for knowing who someone’s alts and alt accounts are, and you won’t if they don’t want you to. And there can be severe consequences.

But in GW2? Not so much.

So after I’d logged into an alt slot I have only for the extra pack space, and got tagged from an officer the second time that we are 100% rep or be booted, I asked (being a political animal obviously) why we have that policy.

The answer I got, rather circular, was because it’s too hard to keep track of everyone if they aren’t 100% rep. Well gosh, guys, if you don’t worry about it, you don’t have to keep track.

So from other folks — why is being 100% rep enough of a big deal in this game that people make it a litmus test to conform or be booted? I just like to think that there are rational justifications for rules with harsh consequences. I’m 100% rep on all char slots now, even the one stuffed with festive items that don’t go in crafting storage. But it just puzzles me.

tia!

I think this would put an unreasonable development load on Anet, if nothing else.

But I do have my ranger run the mini version of whatever pet I’m running, if I have it. The baby-in-training.

I love the line about “being a mesmer makes it easier.” Although some people seem to find that objectionable and respecting their feelings, a bit of magic IRL might make life all around so much easier, really. GJ folks!

Sometime back (retired now) I was the VP of Marketing for an entertainment marketing group. Just to do some mindreading here, having pondered this most of the day…

HoT is be offered in these packages for pre-purchase, and they are taking great pains to differentiate this from pre-order, in that you get the benefit of your order within hours of your purchase. As a marketing type, I read that as a signal that later they will come up against a similar furor as we’re seeing today when after HoT is released, they drop the price for the expansion only, and say “Well, we said that was the only pre-purchase edition, and it was.”

So it’s likely they will just ride this out and ride out the storm later and the people who buy now will be smug now and kittened off later. And Arenanet will get everyone’s money, and from some of us with multiple accounts, multiple times — and they will be the only ones living happily ever after.

This is why they run a company, and we spend all our time playing games.

At this point, you can get a full download Heroic Edition license for GW2 for US$20 on Amazon.

Lopping that off the tiers sounds fairly reasonable to me.

Asking me to pay for a full game key when I have spent years paying for not only my license but a regular trickle of what amounts to hundreds if not a couple thousands in gems is insulting.

But, that’s what monopolies do. We can kitten till our throats are scratchy, but what it comes down to is there’s only one provider and they don’t have any real incentive to be responsive because we aren’t unionized. It’s an interesting concept, but it will never happen.

Seera.5916:

shava.3502:

But linking two accounts to one verified US/EU human with a history of purchases in the game, say, is low risk, unless the accounts get stolen, at which point you have the same issue that your debit or credit card company has of triggering heuristics when your spending goes nuts when you move cross-country or visit Paris.

So the gold sellers and spammers just have to buy a few more accounts and make some legit purchases on their stolen credit cards to make their accounts linked. Your solution doesn’t solve the reason the “problem” was put in place in the first place.

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of accounts with a year or more history of normal behavior of gem purchasing and such. I have maxxed out, for example, my storage on one account, have a bunch of alts, and have spent more money than I want to think of (from before my rather involuntary medical retirement after a stroke, but at least now I have all this set up) on various frills and conveniences and skins and frippery in the game.

A gold farmer is not going to have accounts that are multiple years old with a premium customer rating unless they are stolen. And then the “trip to Paris” heuristics kick in, if they are stolen. So I don’t think your objection probably holds.

It would require the definition of a favored class of customer, and that might be distasteful to the community. That’s a marketing/PR/diplomacy problem.

Actually having retired from a career in (among other things) computer security and social engineering, and having been CEO of an indy game company that did work with virtual world events and security, I know a little about griefers, exploit sellers, crackers, and goldfarmers.

But there are heuristics for differentiating those things. We can debate and elucidate if you wish.

And, to my understanding, my GW2 accounts are linked in the support/account database, if not in the Hall of Monuments sense. The last time I spoke to support they had me as owning all three accounts in their database, likely correlated by FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME, BIRTHDAY, PAYPAL or some similar matching system. Naturally, if you give them variant info, ymmv.

It’s quite possible they do this precisely as a way to forstall banhammer reruns and other such griefing. But such a system could also be used for good rather than just to slow down evile.

BTW, not all goldfarm accounts are stolen, although many are. But obviously, with a game such at GW2, the initial key purchase is low enough on discounted periods and can be bought with untraceable gift cards, etc. — and the farmers make enough per account — that they can buy the “box” without risking getting the account shut down due to being a stolen account. It’s organized crime.

Goldfarming is prison labor in China. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam) Still happening at least up to recently from what I have heard.

But linking two accounts to one verified US/EU human with a history of purchases in the game, say, is low risk, unless the accounts get stolen, at which point you have the same issue that your debit or credit card company has of triggering heuristics when your spending goes nuts when you move cross-country or visit Paris.

It’s a question of whether they want to put those measures in place. Some of them are likely already there.

I own two copies of GW2 and one copy of GW with all expansions. On my second GW2 account, I log in, fiddle with dailies, do a little running around, use the extra bank space, and then send all the crafting mats to my main account where I craft in earnest.

After sending a couple messages off to my main, I get “Excessve Messaging” on the mail, and have to wait. Is it possible to have the excessive message trigger check to see if the accounts are linked? If the accounts are linked, I would think the reasons that excessive messaging would be suppressed would be moot.

Thanks for considering this suggestion. I imagine that, considering all the sales on the game “box” you’ve had, my set up is common enough that this would be appreciated by a lot of players, especially crafters — which is certainly a culture the game encourages! We buy lots of bank and bag space

Thanks everyone, some really good ideas in here. I have a necro but I think she’s in her mid 20s (but about 425 tailor at this point). My main is a sylvari hunter, Horione on TC (if server matters anymore, heh). Hunter is easier if you have low vision in my experience (my original main back in the day was a mesmer, and in other games back to EQ I preferred monks/rogues positional dex fighters but that’s right out, now.)

I think I am going to adopt some combination of solutions here and give it time. Since working with my old nostromo doesn’t help much (it’s my reaction time and ability to control how fast/hard I hit a key, not so much positional issues that make this torturous), I don’t think a naga would be better. I have a downline Logitech mouse and a Skiller keyboard, and the Nostromo available, but they don’t compensate for the failing wiring in my own bod.

I have autoimmune vasculitis, in case anyone was wondering — kind of like lupus — the inflammation throughout the vascular system messes with the nervous system, which is very oxygen hungry, and the meds to treat it are narsty. I’ve gone from an amateur interest in cogsci to my own lab rat. This isn’t “oh pity me,” just sort of an explanation of why I can adopt certain suggestions (Mesmer, and so on) and not others (Razer,…).

But thanks for the input, all!

I’m actually writing this after being stuck with Cornered in the personal story, where in Dry Top you chase someone around with acrobatics. I can’t see this as the last bit of personal story requiring it.

And of course all the goodies one gives up without geodes and so on (I’m a master crafter, working on grandmaster, so not being able to forage freely hurts too).

I just feel like the game is leaving anyone who isn’t an arcade gamer behind. I wasn’t raised on consoles, and I couldn’t play on one now. I love this game for the depth, immersion, and community — but I hate being relegated to training wheels because I’m not a SuperNintendo head.

I guess that’s just it. I’ll have to skip a lot of the content. But…sigh.

So, I returned to the game after a hiatus of some time (I was really wicked sick for a while and not gaming at all, couldn’t even sit up) and now I’m faced with Dry Top and rumors of bouncing mushrooms and gliders. My health, low vision, and coordination are such that I have never been very good at PvP (I get by) or jumping puzzles (I suck), but there is so much more to the game, I could alway sidestep most of the jumping puzzles and just muscle my way slowly through progression outside of PvE with caveats to anyone with me.

But let me tell you. I hate Dry Top. Or perhaps, Dry Top hates me. And there is not a single time I have been in Dry Top I don’t hear someone cussing in /m that they are hating their life because of the terrain.

Dear Abbies: should I just pack in the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on this game and find another hobby?

Amazingly awesome answers! I’m +1ing all of you! Thanks, I’m going to go out and grind out a bunch of practice (and die a lot — repairs are cheap right?

tyvm! Further tips welcome of course but this is great for less than a day with a question up!

shava

I hit space and W very nicely at the same time, as I would in any other game, and I don’t make the jumps. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t. Is there some secret incantation I don’t know here? I’m a new player, and this is making me a little insane (particularly with the monthly bit on jumping puzzles and the adventure box…).

I have looked at the youtube videos and I’m following the right paths. Some of the paths I do just fine, but there are nearly always the jumps that look easy in the video and I just can’t make. No matter how many times I try. Even if I just stand on the first platform and hit <space> I don’t get the vertical rise I’d need to get to the next point, so…?

Seems like I’m missing something…?

Help a noob out. Mercy! ;)

tia!

(not a noob to gaming…refugee from SWTOR most recently and LOTRO and EVE and EQ2 and SWG and EQ and various — I got range at least…)