Guild Wars 2

I laughed way more than I should at that!

I also can’t help wondering if this would work with Kasmeer’s illusionary dress.

I suppose it depends on how you see your character/s.

I know to some people their character is a representation of themselves in the game world, so they not only play their own gender but typically only play humans (or races that look like humans) and try to make the character look and act like them.

I do pretty much the opposite – to me they’re characters in a story, no different to if I was writing a book or acting out a play. They are fundamentally not me so there’s no reason for them to look or act like me. Instead I think about the kind of person I want to make and ‘match’ everything to that. I’m equally liked to make a male or female character (in GW2 I currently have 5 females and 4 males).

My 1st/main character is usually female, but thats because she’s usually a recreation of the same character I play in all western RPGs (obviously race, class and skills will change between games but the overall theme is the same. But the only other thing she has in common with me is that when possible I give her waist length hair, but hers is black and straight instead of brown and frizzy like mine.

As for how people treat female characters honestly the most common problem I have is people assuming I’m male regardless of the character. Sometimes I correct them, sometimes it’s not worth mentioning. I’ve very rarely had anyone hit on me or otherwise act appropriately. (And once when it did happen, in a different game, I was not only playing a male character but playing an old, overweight, heavily scared guy with one eye and a grumpy expression. That was odd…dunno if they were into that or just flirting with everyone.)

Sometimes, when people tell me it happens all the time, I wonder if it’s just that I don’t try to make my female characters pretty. It was weird when I realised that – I certainly don’t try to make them unattractive either but pretty certainly isn’t my first concern (and according to my husband the results are mixed). Or maybe it’s the way I act when I’m playing them, or the people I talk to. I don’t know, but it’s certainly extremely rare for people to either try to flirt or to give me a hard time for playing a female character.

1) If you are in PvE you are not obligated to follow a commander just because one is on the map. There can be a lot of different things happening on the same map, many of which might benefit from having a commander involved – some people might be doing a guild mission, there might be champions up, one of Scarlet’s Invasions might start etc. etc.

But if you’re not interested in doing the same stuff the commander is you don’t have to follow them. You definitely don’t have to follow them whilst berating them for not doing what you want and demanding they drop everything to comply so that you can follow them around.

2) But on the other hand if you are a commander and you display your tag while on a PvE (or WvW) map you have to accept that it’s a giant sign to everyone else there that something interesting is happening at your location and (unless they’re already in the middle of something) they should come and join in. If you’re actually just playing solo and don’t want people following you around, turn it off don’t leave it up and keep yelling at them to go away.

Ok serious answer now: There’s a reason GW1 only had two new campaigns before they gave up on that approach. Possibly more than one reason but the one I heard was that in order to make it financially viable, to keep paying all the people who worked on those campaigns they had to bring them out relatively quickly. But that put a lot of pressure on not only the people developing new content but also the people trying to balance the game and keep the existing stuff viable.

That’s why (coupled with wanting some new ideas that weren’t possible on that engine) after just two new campaigns they went for a smaller expansion and then GW2.

And after some more experimentation we got the system we’ve got now. I’m pretty sure they originally planned to do mainly one-time events like the one that introduced Southsun, but that was a disaster so they re-worked it into bi-weekly temporary content, and now by the sounds of things they’re going for permanent releases instead. So they are improving, even if it means giving up on their original plans for the game.

Personally I have high hopes for Season 2. I might end up being disappointed but at the moment, especially after the CDI threads, I’m excited to see what they come up with.

Whoever decided to limit everyone to 2 out of 5 minis clearly does not understand collecting and collectors at all.

Please either let us know that in subsequent years the same minis will be available so we can eventually get them all or give us a way to get them all this year.

(Note: Throughout this post ‘you’ is used in a general sense, not referring to any specific person. Technically I should be saying ‘one’ but that sounds insufferably pretentious.)

The idea of a secure password being one that’s a mess of letters, numbers and symbols is very out dated. These days it’s relatively rare for someone to ‘hack’ your password by guessing what it is. It does help a bit by increasing the number of possible passwords, but not much.

Unless you’re using one of the 100 most commonly used passwords (like abc123 qwerty or password) one password is as secure as any other. It’s how you use it that matters.

Here’s some common ways accounts can be hacked:

1. The same email and password combination is used elsewhere.
Particularly relatively unsecure websites like 3rd party forums. Most of these use the same software (phpBB, simple machines etc.) and most of these are open source, which means anyone who wants to can look at (and edit) the code. This makes them very vulnerable to having their databases (including account names and passwords) stolen. This is compounded by the fact that most of them are run by small groups of volunteer admins who need to update the software in their free time (which is a pain in the kitten to do, especially if you’re not that familiar with the process) so they may not even be using the latest security.

If you’re using the same email and password for everything then once they’ve gotten the details for one of your accounts they’ve got them all. And often the type of site can tell them a lot about where you’re likely to have accounts. For example if they got their list of emails and passwords from an MMO forum they’ll sell it to gold sellers to try on MMOs and odds are a lot of them will work.

2. Using virtually identical passwords
If your password for one site/game is ‘mypassword101’ and your password for a 2nd is ‘mypassword102’ then you’re effectively using the same password for both. It’s such an obvious, incredibly common approach that it’s the first thing any hacker will try if your password has a number in it and their first attempt doesn’t work.

3. Key loggers and other phishing software
This is software that’s installed on your computer without you knowing, often because it’s hidden in another download from dodgy websites. It tracks what you do and sends all of it (or if it’s well written the useful bits) to the person who created the program. Useful bits being things like programs and websites you log into and the passwords you used to do so.

You can protect your computer by installing and using up to date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. (Using in bold because I wish I had £1 for every person I know who installs an antivirus, disables it because it keeps saying there’s updates and then never uses it again, then blames the program when they get a virus.)

You can also protect yourself by being careful about logging in to sites and programs from other peoples computers. My mum uninstalled Spybot because it stopped her free IE tool bars from working. That was the day I stopped using her computer to log into any site where I wanted to keep my account.

4. Using the same password for your email
This should be less of an issue because most email providers are relatively secure (compared to things like 3rd party forums) but it still means you’ve removed a layer of security. If you’re using the same password for your email account and your other accounts they don’t even have to try using the ’I’ve forgotten my password’ option, they’ve got everything in one go.

I have 5 permanent characters and have made countless temporary ones. The levelling process has never bothered me.

I think a big part of that is that I’m primarily a PvE player. I enjoy playing the open-world content and I actually like doing the same parts multiple times because it’s always a bit different each time.

Which also means that levelling doesn’t bother me because I don’t look at it as a process to get out of the way ASAP so I can start playing that character. I start playing the character as soon as I create them and the fact that they’re levelling up is largely coincidental to what I’m doing with them.

I suspect that the reality is the vast majority of players are not making hundreds of gold a week, or even a month. A minority might do, and they’re probably also people who are more inclined to spend time on the forum talking about it. But if most people were able to do it the rate of inflation in game would be much higher than it is.

My solution is fairly simple: I accept that I won’t make gold as fast as some people do, and therefore won’t be able to buy expensive items as frequently, and then I stop worrying about it and get on with playing.

Most importantly I don’t care how much gold I have at any given time. I don’t try to keep a fixed amount, or earn a fixed amount per day/week/month. I’ve been playing since launch with no significant breaks and I can only remember one time when I had more than 100g, that was the 7 months when I was saving for a precursor. It might actually have happened at other times but I don’t remember.

Shortly after buying the precursor (which cost me just under 800g) I got down to literally nothing: I bought the precursor, spent almost all of what was left over on materials for an ascended coat, went to Drytop for some reason and died, and the waypoint cost took the last of my coin. But that didn’t matter either, especially because it was in the middle of an event so about 2 minutes later I jumped back up to over 1s.

Instead what I do is keep a mental list of items I want, roughly in order of priority (and subject to change at any moment) and as and when I have enough for the next one I want I buy it. It might be weeks or months between purchases, or it might be very quick (although that’s usually when something relatively cheap jumps up the list – like when I randomly decided I wanted the noble coat skin for my ranger). Buying the item might take me back down to under 1g. But none of that matters.

Spending gold on things I want is just another goal to work towards within the game. I don’t worry about completing achievements on a regular basis (even dailies), or completing maps within a certain time frame. Why would my approach to gold be any different?

(And now I come to think about it I think this is at least partially because I’m an adult, officially at least, and in real life I have to be responsible with money; making sure I can pay my bills and afford food and something goes into the savings account for emergencies etc. Games are my escape from that, where I can spend everything I have on something random and not care because I don’t need to afford food or rent or whatever.)

I think a better solution would be to prevent these items spawning on top of other interactable objects. If someone activates one in a position where it would be on top of another object it could spawn off to one side instead. They still get to use their item and no one is inconvenienced by it’s position.

I’ve actually “trolled” myself with this before. Get to a gathering node, realise I don’t have the tool I need, quickly activate the golem banker to withdraw one, close the window and realise the banker is on top of the node.

Of course in that case it takes 2 seconds to click on the node so pressing F activates that instead of the banker so it’s an extremely minor issue, but it’s still annoying.

Both of these have been suggested before, multiple times, and both have always been quite unpopular with large segments of the playerbase. I don’t expect this time to be any different.

Personally I wouldn’t mind them as long as players have the option to disable it. I do not want to be spammed with duel requests (which I would never accept so having the option is a complete waste of time for people around me anyway) and I don’t particularly want every random passerby seeing all the details of a build I spent ages putting together.

If you really want to know you can always ask.

It sounds like you just wanted to let off steam rather than ask for solutions, but here’s my thoughts anyway.

I don’t like achievements either. I thought they were a stupid idea when I first heard about them – an easy way to give Xbox players something even more arbitrary to brag about and I was genuinely surprised to see them catch on in so many games, especially RPGs which IMO already had a perfectly good quest system to cover any useful purpose achievements could have.

I still don’t particularly like them, I have no interest in collecting achievement points in any game and I’m not going to do something just because there’s an achievement for it. But I also don’t think it’s worth refusing to do something simply because there’s an achievement for it. Especially when in some games, GW2 included, that would make it impossible to play at all.

Based on that I think one thing that might help you is to try and shift how you’re thinking about it. Forget about the fact that mastery points are linked to achievements and just think of it as a checklist of things you can do to get mastery points. Like going on the wiki to find out which bosses have the elite skill you want in GW1, but in-game.

As for the actual activities involved I think the idea is they didn’t want people to be able to grind mastery points by doing just one thing over and over again. Partially because it’s supposed to be a long-term progression thing and partially because they don’t seem to like that design in general. So I think it’s highly unlikely they would make it possible to get them all through guild missions, or any other single activity. (In spite of the fact that in this case you actually seem to agree with the majority – who mainly way to complete masteries quickly and easily.)

But I’m pretty sure there are more mastery points available than you need, especially if you’re not worried about maxing out every single mastery, so it should be possible to choose the activities you like most (or hate least) to get them from and avoid things you really dislike doing.

rtommaso.3120:

Welcome to NCsoft games. If you want to know what I think, Id say it will only get worse.

GW1 was an NCsoft game and it was never this bad. They had a cash shop, but it was always straight sales. Any RNG items were obtained for free in-game.

Sadly I doubt the situation here will change unless and until people stop buying those stupid boxes.

You do realise there are a wide variety of real life animals that don’t lay eggs and also don’t have breasts right? (And then there’s the monotreme’s which lay eggs and produce milk for their young, but they still don’t have breasts.)

In the wider scheme of things it’s actually more realistic for the asura not to have breasts.

They also said the reason they removed stats from trait lines was so they could keep adding more, and the reason elite specs will only go into the bottom slot is so you can only use 1 at a time.

Which would be fairly pointless if they weren’t planning to add more.

I’m with the people who say you need to consider the source here – the type of people who are leaving these reviews and when they are leaving them. For the most part it’s people who have left, or are just about to leave, the company.

Maybe I have a different perspective though because I can easily compare it to my own situation, having recently left my first ever permanent full-time job. When I started at that place 4 years ago it was amazing – it was exactly the job I wanted and a brilliant opportunity to progress my career. By the time I left I was honestly glad to be out of there (and many of my co-workers who started at the same time as me are saying they wish they could leave too) and I admit I had some fairly major criticisms to make when they asked for feedback.

Now here’s the crazy part: the job and the organisation had not really changed at all in that time, and the changes they did make were mostly positive.

What changed was mostly me. A lot can happen in 4 years, especially when it’s your first 4 years with a permanent, full-time job. What was an amazing opportunity for someone just starting out in their career became a stifling environment where I was constantly frustrated by a lack of opportunity to really use and develop my skills. And having been with the organisation long-term I could see where things weren’t really working much more clearly than when I first started and it was more frustrating when I couldn’t change it.

I don’t regret working there at all, I’m genuinely proud of the work they did and that I did with them, and I’m confident they’re going to go on to do great things in future. It just doesn’t mesh with the things I want to do in the future any more.

But if I’d left one of these reviews when I left it would be very, very different to one from when I started, or even just before I decided I should leave. And I imagine the same will be true when I come to leave my current job.

Daharahj.1325:

Chronic understaffing, unreasonably ambitious schedules and product development cycles. Steady increase in number and scope of projects, and in quality expectations, but no increase in staff.

This seems to be the biggest offender, it’s also something that the community has been pointing out for a long time especially since HoT launch.

My interpretation of the communities complaints has been the complete opposite.

The most common complaints I’ve seen recently are that they should not have stopped the Living Story while developing HoT, there wasn’t enough content in HoT, they should make more armor and weapon skins to be available in-game, alongside the ones in the gem store, they should do balance patches much more frequently, they should fix all the bugs immediately (or at least before everything else), and they shouldn’t expect any more money (or any money at all) in return.

That sounds like expecting the staff to do a lot more work, in a shorter time frame, without funding for more staff.

Three reasons:

1) Having everything on there at once makes for a very long list to scroll through and fewer opportunities to announce items. Meaning people might get bored or overwhelmed looking through them all and never come to one they’d like, and it won’t be advertised on the website, Facebook etc. so they won’t see it that way.

End result is fewer sales.

2) Some people (like me) have a lot of items we sort-of mostly like…maybe for one character…but maybe it’s not exactly right. If that item is always available people might sit on the fence forever thinking they’ll get it one day and never actually doing it.

End result is fewer sales.

3) It’s possible to buy everything in the gem store with gold and even the most casual, occasional player will accumulate gold gradually. So if everything was always available people could save up their gold and buy it without spending any real money. Which results in fewer sales.

Whereas if things are only available temporarily then only people who already have the gold to hand or can make it very quickly will have that option (especially because if it’s a popular item the exchange rate will jump up). Other people are likely to use real money instead.

So whilst it seems counter-intuitive removing items periodically and then bringing them back later actually does improve sales.

(It works in real life too. For example one year Cadbury’s Creme Eggs were sold all year round – they actually sold less in total than when they were only available around Easter.)

PyrateSilly.4710:

Because Steam wants 30% (if I remember the number right) of every transaction.

That’s the reason.

It’s not just 30% of ‘box’ sales either. Every single time Steam players buy gems, or in-game upgrades like HoT (if you bought it through the game) Steam takes 30% of that as well.

It’s not a terrible trade-off if you’re an indie developer who doesn’t have any other way to get their game out there and get people to hear about it, or if you can otherwise afford to lose that money.

But for an established studio like Anet with a large publishing company (NCSoft) behind them there is very little benefit and potentially a lot of lost revenue in putting their game on Steam.

With GW1 it’s not as much of an issue because it’s not being developed any more and even their own website has discounted it. Outside of that you’re most likely to find copies in the bargin bin, if at all.

I agree.

I can understand not including temporary currencies, but the geodes and bandit badges are permanent additions to the game, so it would make sense to add them to the wallet.

It would also solve the really annoying problem of getting all the way out to a merchant (or happening to be near one when the items you want are available) only to realise a different character has the currency you wanted to spend.

If all the people who are simply looking for a gear treadmill (especially one requiring more real-world money than in-game activity) gravitate to sports games and leave MMOs with only the people interested in story, gameplay and emergent gameplay I certainly won’t complain. Because then the developers will likely shift their focus to more of that type of content.

I’ve never liked sports games anyway. (Unless Mario Kart counts?)

I’m surprised this game still doesn’t have colour-blind options. It seems like it should be a relatively easy thing to do, there’s 3rd party add-ons for other games made by amateur developers in their free time. Unfortunately those aren’t available for this game.

As Konig said I don’t think we have enough evidence to know for sure.

I’ve never come across a definite example of a homosexual charr, but as we rarely see couples together and they tend to use gender-neutral words (usually mate if I remember correctly) when talking about their partners so there’s a good chance we could meet a homosexual charr and not even know it.

The thing which makes me think it’s unlikely is that they don’t seem to have romantic relationships – male and female charr will get together to have cubs and then part ways at the latest when the cubs enter the fahrar with no indication that it’s anything more than a practicality.

But, falling into behavioural biologist mode, it’s highly unlikely they mate with just anyone. They probably choose their mates based on a combination of physical characteristics and personality (and quite likely social standing given the importance they place on it). Given that homosexuality can occur in real life animals where traditional (IMO somewhat outdated) biology will tell us mate selection is purely practical I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some charr find themselves more attracted to members of the same sex and choose to pursue that.

But without definite examples or someone asking them about it we can’t say for sure.

LFG is cross-server, but it can still be tricky to find a group listed. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly there aren’t massive amounts of people doing dungeons these days.

But maybe more importantly it depends on the time of day. As you might expect most players on the NA servers are in North America and most on the EU servers are in Europe. When you posted this it was 12:49pm in the UK, on a Wednesday. Which means most people in Europe were at work or school and most people in America were just getting up and going to work/school (or possibly still asleep? I’m terrible at time zones). It’s much more likely that you’ll find a group at peak times – evenings and weekends.

Finally and most importantly remember that the LFG tool doesn’t actually show you how many people are looking for a group, it only shows you how many have manually created a listing.

What’s the difference? Well you were looking for a group, but unless you created a listing no one else in the game would know that. There might have been 4 other people looking to do the same dungeon you were at the same time as you, all thinking they can’t get a group because no one else was looking. There might have been 20 of you, or 50, or 500. But until someone takes the step of making an advert on the LFG tool you’re all invisible to each other.

In other words if you’re looking and you don’t immediately see a group you want to join the very next step should be to create one.

You’re not committing to being the party leader (GW2 doesn’t have party leaders) or announcing you know how to do the dungeon or making any kind of commitment at all. If you’re worried about that the tool includes a free text field where you can write things like “first time, help appreciated” or “lf people to muddle through it with me” or whatever you want people to know about your group.

But until you put a listing up your potential group mates will all think you’re not there and there’s no one interested in doing the dungeon.

Edit: I should mention that’s not directly aimed at the OP, or rather not exclusively. I’m reminding myself as much as anyone because I make that mistake all the time. But I’m always seeing people saying they can’t find groups for things and then when I get ‘brave’ enough to list one it fills up in about 10 minutes.

The full name of support is Customer Support. Just like in any other company they’re the people you go to if a payment didn’t go through, you want a refund, you’re having trouble accessing your account or something similar. They do not make decisions about the content of the game.

The people you’re looking for are Quality Assurance (QA) or possibly the game director (who is currently Mike O’Brien) and the directors and project managers for the various releases. But in that case you’re out of luck because they will have to have approved the changes for them to have appeared in the game in the first place – the directors and managers will have agreed those changes should be made before we even hear about them (because otherwise it wouldn’t be announced) and they’ll have to pass QA before it’s released.

I know you’ve made a few of these topics but I think you need to accept that this is not your game, it’s Anet’s. They’re going to make the changes they think are good for the game they want to make, not the ones you or I or any other individual player wants to see. As much as I live in hope that one day someone will make my perfect game and I’ll love every single aspect of it I think the only way any of us will get that is if we make it ourselves.

You can of course make suggestions for changes you’d like to see or give feedback on things you don’t like, but it’s entirely up to Anet to decide whether they want to act on those or not.

So after all the discussions about item “prestige” and wanting special items to show off I thought I’d try an experiment.

I logged into my main character, opened the wardrobe and tried to pick the most prestigious – the rarest, hardest to get, most expensive etc. items in each slot. Then I added the 4 most expensive (and limited time) dyes and took a screen shot.

I went for:

• Celebration Hat (play at launch)
• Wurmslayer’s Shoulderguard (beat the Triple Wurm and got lucky on RNG from the chest
• Illustrious Guise (crafted ascended)
• Fire God’s Vambraces (30 HoM points)
• Accursed Leggings (Arah dungeon tokens*)
  *Radiant Greaves (21,000 achievement points)
• Dynamic Tempered Spinal Blades (expensive mystic forge recipe)
• Eternity (Legendary sword)
• Pyre, Deep Glacial Sky, Blacklight and Enamelled Crimson dyes

• There’s not much choice for prestigious trousers.

Obviously what constitutes a good look is a matter of opinion, but for me at least the end result is a pretty effective illustration of why choosing your skins by what you think will impress other people is a bad move.

Is it only running into walls that makes you think they’re bots? Because I do that a lot as a result of turning on auto-run and then typing in guild chat or even switching to a different window. Since I’m not in any danger as a result of hitting a wall I don’t bother to correct it until I’ve finished what I’m doing. I can imagine a lot of other people doing the same thing.

Having said that if you suspect someone is a bot the best approach is to report them and let Anet decide. They have access to a lot more data and experience spotting bots.

As others have noted Steam is glorified DRM dressed up with some ‘social’ features and shopping to make it palatable to gamers.

It is a vast improvement over some of the other attempts at DRM that were going on around the same time, but it’s still primarily for the benefit of developers (and even more so to benefit Valve since they’ve engineered it so they get paid for other peoples work without having to do anything besides provide a storefront) and like many people here I’m much happier when developers recognise they don’t need that level of hand-holding and can allow us to play their games without being forced to run additional software for no actual benefit.

I think you’re massively overthinking it, and making a lot of assumptions about what other people are thinking and expecting which may not be true, or are only true for some of those people.

Personally I think each person is responsible for deciding whether they want to follow a commander or mentor or not, and for getting the info they need to make that decision.

If I see a tag I think about what they’re doing (or ask in map chat if I’m not sure – if it’s an area I don’t normally see commanders for example) and then decide if I want to join in with that or not. That way I’m not disappointed by rushing blinding towards a tag assuming it’s something amazing only to find it’s a regular event.

Bad or inexperienced commanders leading events or in WvW are harder to identify, you may have to run with them for a while before it becomes clear they don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s the risk you take when you don’t have an established group, it’s the same with PUGs for dungeons. But I’d much, much rather have a commander who says they’re inexperienced and open to suggestions, or another person leading while they keep the tag up. In my experience those actually tend to be some of the best groups.

I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a commander who is just acting as a marker and having someone else in the squad actually giving instructions. I’ve done Silverwastes that way quite a few times and it works well. Especially because it allows the commander to be right in the thick of it where you need to make some effort to stay alive and the ‘instructor’ can be out of the way in a corner somewhere typing things out. So you have the marker in the right place and clearly written instructions instead of a compromise on both.

When I use my mentor tag (can’t afford a commander tag) I always say in map chat what’s happening and why I’ve tagged up. I’ve only had one occasion when someone complained that I wasn’t doing what they expected. That was when I was using the tag to mark the location of one of the ley line events when they were new. I actually had briefly explained how the event works in map chat, but the person complaining that I wasn’t “a real mentor” told me they keep both map and say chat off at all times so I’m not really sure what they expected.

Menadena.7482:

You do not want to fight 2 bosses at once and you especially do not want to fight 3. If you ignored the advice about skipping the viscount do the other door (if it appears) first as someone will trigger it during the fight. Also The Labyrinthine Horror appears every 20 minutes so keep an eye on the clock.

I actually like fighting the Horror and the Viscount at the same time. In previous years it was virtually impossible, now it’s the only remotely challenging fight you’ll get in the Labyrinth.

Of course I won’t say anything and I’m certainly not going to try and get them up together, but when it does happen I’m excited. Then I spend 1/2 the fight rallying downed players.

I’ve not seen the Horror and the Lich at the same time as often, but apart from lots of downed people if their big AoEs hit at the same time I don’t think it’s really that bad this year.

Free accounts only get 2 character slots, so you’d have to have 4 of them (they can’t play revenant at all) and you can’t share gold and items between them and won’t get login rewards.

Not worth it for me. I’d rather pay to have all my characters on 1 account. Although I do also think character slots are too expensive, I’ve only ever bought them when they were on sale.

Topics like this make me feel old.

Some random makes youtube videos of games he’s playing, and thousands of people watch them in spite of not playing the game themselves and will start as a result? No part of that makes sense.

Unless you’re already considering buying it, or playing and looking for walk-throughs, I don’t understand the appeal of watching someone you don’t know play games. Even with friends, when you’re in the same room, it can be incredibly boring.

I wish it would come back too.

I was away from home a lot not long after GW2 came out (combination of visiting family and work stuff) so by the first Halloween my main character was only about level 30, not enough to survive in the high level maps required to get the Complete Edition.

My guild mates offered to carry me through it but I really wanted to do it myself and stupidly assumed GW2 Halloween events would be like the ones in GW1 – with the same events reoccurring each year. So I told them not to worry, I’d do it myself the next year.

If I’d known it was only going to be available once and then never again I’d have swallowed my pride and let them run me through the maps.

And this is why developers normally avoid telling anyone anything about their products until they’re almost ready for release.

Even Peter Molyneux learnt that lesson.

I thought it was fairly obvious since launch that since the old mini pack was labled Set 1 that meant at some point there would be a Set 2, 3 4 etc.

I’ve always been sceptical that many people actually buy legendaries (or even precursors) with real money.

Sure you can do it, but unless you have money to burn in real life it’s just not worth it. Yes I know people throw around numbers for the amount you can earn per hour in a minimum wage job vs. per hour farming in game. But having worked several minimum wage jobs and now working a (marginally) better paid job I actually love doing I’d rather spend my time playing GW2 than work extra hours at any job to afford a virtual weapon.

I don’t deny that it’s a problem that they can be bought. Legendaries should be account bound from the moment they’re created. Precursors, since they’re so reliant on RNG, need to be tradable but that won’t be an issue for the new ones.

But I’m not convinced a significant number of people actually do buy gems to convert to gold to get one. I think it’s much more likely the majority of people buying them are TP flippers, dungeon runners etc. who hate some part of the process of making a legendary so much they refuse to do it, or simply don’t know what else to do with all the gold they make.

Asura: The entire asuran lore is centred around their abilities with magic and magitech. So basically any of the caster professions (elementalist, mesmer and necromancer) or engineer.

Sylvari: They’re extremely curious and like to try and understand how the world works so professions that tie into that like elementalist or necromancer would be logical choices. I’d include engineer but apparently most of what Scarlet decided she had to learn from other races was metal working and alchemy so maybe sylvari are more interested in understanding what’s already there than making new things. A lot of people would include ranger but I’ve never bought into the idea that being a plant makes you more in touch with nature than the other races (who are animals).

You could also include guardian because many sylvari (including all player characters) are on life-long quests driven by their visions in The Dream, and guardians are supposed to be faith-driven warriors devoted to a cause.

Human: As often happens in fantasy humans are the kind of middle-of-the-road, nothing particularly special about them race, I suspect because other races are usually created by exaggerating certain aspects of humans. (In a lot of games this makes them a useful ‘starter race’ for people who haven’t learnt how to effectively combine racial and class bonuses but of course they don’t have that in GW2.)

I’m sure you’ll get a lot of different answers here but I tend to think the logical approach for a human is to go for professions that rely on learned skills rather than innate strengths and abilities. So warrior, thief, engineer, possibly necromancer. There’s a lot of well known human Mesmer NPCs too so maybe Mesmer as well.

Norn: I’d say the norn have two defining characteristics – their size and strength and their spirituality, which is very much based on nature. So anything that uses one or both of those would make sense. Warrior, ranger and guardian in particular.

Charr: Probably the easiest to answer, the charr are a highly militaristic race that (with the exception of the Flame legion) distrusts and avoids magic. They’re also ardent atheists (not in the real-world sense, I think they believe that the human gods, the spirits of the wild etc. exist and it’s a known fact that their old gods the titans and the destroyers exist, the charr just don’t consider any beings worth of being worshipped as gods).

So warrior, ranger again, engineer, guardian if you can argue that their faith is in themselves and/or their allies rather than a higher power and thief if you choose Ash legion.

But as I’m sure a lot of other people will point out you can make any race/profession combo work. For example whilst they don’t like it the charr have shown in the past that they can be extremely powerful mages so you could make a charr elementalist/Mesmer/necro and make it their opinion that it was worshipping gods that allowed the Flame legion to dominate them, not the practice of magic. Or maybe that it’s important for some charr to know magic in order to know how to fight it.

Likewise I’ve got a norn engineer. Her backstory (part of it) is that she was going to be a crafter in Hoelbrak but found herself too restless, she wanted to get out and see the world. So after a trip to the Black Citadel inspired her she combined what she knew from her artificer skills with some of what her parents had taught her about combat and became an engineer.

Are transmutation charges really that much of a barrier?

I’ve been playing since launch, had 4 characters on day 1, 9 now (including those 4) and I’ve deleted countless others. I’ve never paid for a transmutation charge and I currently have 92 of them.

Honestly most of the time I don’t think about them as something that costs money or might limit me, if I want to change my armour or weapon skins I do.

Companies don’t just pay people to think of ideas. They pay them to have the training and experience to think about it in the wider sense of what’s good for the game and the majority of players rather than what they personally would like, to know which suggestions are possible and worthwhile following up and to know how to do that.

It’s the same in any field. I’ve never worked as a games designer but I do work in conservation and people with good ideas are very easy to find. People with good ideas which are practical, cost-effective and worked out in detail are very rare.

Which isn’t to say it’s not worth posting your suggestions. Just that it’s not at all comparable to what Anet staff do on a daily basis. And that just because you think an idea is good doesn’t mean it should happen as there are likely to be considerations you haven’t thought of.

And the exact same is true of my ideas, and anyone elses. I’ve had ideas I think are great which never even got as far as the forum because I told my guild and got shouted down. Some of them I still think are great but I have to accept that other people disagree and they play this game too.

If anyone’s curious I found the Lily of the Elon (the new Royal Terrace style area).

You can’t actually get in yet, even with the pass, because it’s not possible to complete the first chapter of the story. But you can see in through the windows and get an idea of what the area is like.

In brief it’s a pair of reed barges in the mouth of the Elon river. Services I could see inside are:
1st barge

• Bank
• TP
• Teleport NPC (presumably same locations as other passes)
• Activity NPC
• Armor repair
• Black Lion Weapons Merchant
• Laurel vendor
• 2x Merchants (presumably standard inventory)

2nd Barge

• Crafting stations & NPCs
• Mystic Forge
• Guild Bank
• Guild Commendation Trader

Overall it seems like a good layout. 2 oval rooms with the NPCs arranged around the outside. Hopefully there’s enough room for the camera to move around easily, it looks ok but it’s hard to tell from outside.

Importantly for some people if you ask the guy on the door how to get a pass he says the Black Lion Trading Company sells them, so it sounds like this is not exclusive to people who buy the Deluxe edition of PoF.

I have a very simple solution for days when none of the dailies appeal to me: I don’t do them.

There’s always tomorrow.

You do realise that prices on the Trading Post are set by players and not Arenanet right?

Also you may not care that it’s used to craft a legendary but a lot of people do and that’s why it costs so much. People don’t buy Dawn because they want Dawn, they buy Dawn to make Sunrise.

If you just want that skin buy Khrysaor, the Golden Sword. It’s exactly the same and a lot cheaper.

Charrbeque.8729:

Michael Henninger.7451:

This is allowed behavior; as it was designed to function that way.

Unless your policies have changed recently, that is incorrect.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-an-engineer-going-AFK-with-turrets-up-considered-an-exploit/first#post337232 CC Dalmarus

Anything that enables a person to play the game without actually playing the game is a problem, such as using third party programs to automate game play.

Going AFK with turrets running isn’t technically an exploit, but players should be playing the game in good faith.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/After-reading-these-forums-slightly-worried/first#post277742 Gaile Gray

We do not consider “not answering a whisper” as an indictment. Please do not worry about this; as long as you legitimately are playing, or are not gaining undeserved rewards when not playing, you’re just fine.

This one was very clear https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Has-there-ever-been-an-official-response-on-what-is-considered-botting/first#post204144 Regina Buenaobra

Anything that automates game play to the point where you are able to not actually play the game as-intended (example: you can walk away from it) is considered a breach of the User Agreement.

Using ranger pets or necro minions to kill stuff while not actively playing the game is considered “Extended Unattended Play” and players have been suspended/banned for it in the past.

I don’t know about now, but it was a major problem in the past in Dry Top and Silverwastes. Often times these AFK players with pets/minions are using macros and/or bot programs to prevent the AFK timer from kicking in and logging them out of the game.

That last bit, which I put in bold, is the difference between the two.

Going AFK for whatever reason and leaving the game running is one thing, but when you’re using a macro or bot program to make sure you don’t get kicked (and/or to heal/pick up loot/tag mobs etc.) then you’ve crossed the line into what Anet have always said is not allowed.

I always thought it was pretty clear myself, but I know this rule has caused confusion in the past. Taken all together it seems to me what everyone from Anet has said is this: If you start up just the game on it’s own, log into a character who is out in the world somewhere and then walk away that’s fine and whatever happens is allowed.

As soon as you add the use of another program, whether it’s a script or a macro you’ve set up on your keyboard or whatever to influence what happens while you’re away, whether it’s healing you ever so often, tagging mobs or simply moving around so you don’t get kicked by the AFK timer then you’ve crossed the line into what they have always said is not permitted behaviour – automating gameplay.

(And part of the reason the first one is allowed and the second is not is that they’ve put in functions, like diminishing returns and the AFK timer, to prevent players being able to take advantage of situations like this.)

Pie Flavor.1647:

Danikat.8537:

By finding groups that couldn’t care less what sigil you’re using.

Honestly even the elitist speed run groups only advertise for experienced players using beserker gear, and maybe specify professions. I’ve never seen anyone ask for specific sigils. They really don’t make that much of a difference.

oh so you don’t know the extent of the elitism in GW2, it usually is not observed in PuGs but once again, pugs usually fail or take way too long to get anything done.

The people I usually contact with require everyone to not only have all the correct sigils, but the correct sigils for each segment of say a dungeon run, and if you don’t, they usually do not want you in the group.

Oh, I see. Thanks for that. It’s strange that I didn’t notice my dungeon runs were usually failing, but at least I know now.

And since experienced PUGs can do some dungeons in 10 minutes I’d say even if you can shave a few extra second off by carrying a bag full of sigils you could probably have achieved more by spending the time it took to get them on doing more ‘slow’ runs.

See I actually didn’t mind the panda in GW1.

I never got one, I never even came close to getting one. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen one. But because it was tradeable, even after being dedicated, I had a chance and that’s enough for me. It was possible, however remote that possibility might be, that I might one day have enough money and find someone willing to sell their panda, and then I could get it.

Whereas because Mr Sparkles is both limited to some Gamescon attendees AND account bound I will never be able to get it no matter what I do.

It’s more like if they’d had a mini tab/list in GW1 and had included the 3 frogs on it. Those minis were only ever given to Gaile Gray and she will (hopefully) never sell or give them away. No one else can ever get them. So they weren’t included in any kind of mini list, except a note on the wiki that they exist.

Lady Celtaine.3760:

Never heard of Foci before lol. But guess it makes sense I mean you don’t get Octopuses do you?

[Biology nerd] Actually that one is debatable, sometimes to the point of being quite controversial. In short ‘octopuses’ and ‘octopods’ are both considered correct. Octopi is not because that’s Latin pluralisation and the word is greek. [/Biology nerd]

But focus is latin (I think) so foci is correct.

Technically if they want to be consistent they should also change ‘forums’ to ‘fora’ as well.

Is it that time of the month again?

GW2 doesn’t need to do anything just because there’s a WoW expansion coming out. Just like they didn’t do anything in response to Wildstar or ESO or EQ Next or Neverwinter Online or Rift going free to play or Pandaria or whatever else. (And before anyone says that’s because all of those games suck and no one plays them that’s after they were released. Before they were released they were the Next Big Thing in MMOs which was going to cost GW2, and presumably every other game, their entire fan base unless they did something big to counter it.)

This topic comes up every single time there’s another game or an expansion to a popular game coming out and it always goes the same way. Someone insists GW2 are doomed unless Anet rush out a big release of their own and/or copy everything the new game is being marketed on. People debate whether that’s true or not. The game comes out and for a week or two topics crop up from people who feel the need to inform us all that they’re now playing that game more than GW2.

Then a couple of weeks later everything goes back to ‘normal’. Some people probably did switch to that game, but new people have come to play GW2 in their place, some people came back to GW2 because the new game sucked and was obviously going to suck all along, most people don’t care either way.

Then something else is announced and the cycle starts all over again.

Strictly speaking this is not theft because they were given permission to withdraw those items by the guild. It’s extremely poor etiquette but not against the games rules.

Having said that I think it’s still worth reporting them. You won’t get the items back but it flags them as a person Anet may need to watch and if they have a pattern of behaviour like this they may be warned or even given a temporary ban.

In future (and for anyone else reading this) it’s a good idea to think seriously about what’s stored in the guild bank and who has access to it. In one guild I was a member of all members were allowed to have items from the bank but only officers could actually withdraw them. There was almost always an officer on so it wasn’t a problem for the rest of us but it stopped anyone abusing the system.

There are some automatic restrictions on guild banks (if I remember correctly free accounts can’t use them, new players have to wait 5 days or so and new members of the guild have to wait 3 days even if the account isn’t new).

But I think it’s also a good idea to have one or two ‘newbie’ ranks with only the absolute bare minimum of permissions (harmless ones like permission to display the guild emblem) so that people have to be manually given permission to access the bank and other important things by an officer. That way there’s no risk of someone joining the guild, waiting for the time limit to pass without drawing attention to themselves, stripping the guild bank and leaving before anyone knows who they are.

Even my personal bank guild which only has 3 members (myself, my husband and my free account) has a newbie rank just in case someone somehow got added.

Considering the city is being rebuilt with materials provided by Kryta and the Pact rather than whatever they have to hand I think less emphasis on the ‘salvaged ship wrecks’ theme would make sense.

I also agree with the OP that it would be nice to see more influences from the different races, although I’d prefer to see it intermingled than divided into districts.

But I also think with the citizens having moved back in relatively quickly and then the slow process of actually rebuilding it shouldn’t be too neat or organised. It should look like a city where everyone just got on and rebuilt their bit, rather than a single authority overseeing a coordinated plan. This would also make it more fun to explore in future, more chance of interesting structures and hidden things.

I think you’re worrying about something that’s never going to happen.

They finished introducing ascended equipment in September 2013, when ascended weapons were added (and that was almost a year after they started, with rings in November 2012).

That was 3 and a half years ago and since then they’ve finished Season 1 of the Living Story, had a series of festivals, had Season 2 and started Season 3 and released an expansion.

If they were going to add a new tier of equipment I think they would have done it before now. But they haven’t even increased the level cap (which they could have done without adding new gear), instead they aimed for ‘horizontal’ progression in the form of new specialisations, masteries (which are highly situational) and of course new skins and stat combinations.

Edit: But also a new tier wouldn’t necessarily have to be harder to obtain. Exotics are arguably easier to obtain than rares because they’re available in so many more places. Rares are drops, if you’re lucky, or crafted (more expensive than masterwork but less than exotic) and of course can be purchased with gold. Exotics can be obtained in all of those ways but are also bought with karma, WvW badges, dungeon tokens and other currencies with relatively few other uses and come from achievements and things. They could add a new tier and make it as widely available as exotics, so players have a lot of choices in how to get it and it’s reasonably affordable.

Ascended was intentionally made harder to get because, believe it or not, that is what players were asking for. There is a significant chunk of players who breezed through the levelling process in a couple of months, got a full set of exotics and then found themselves asking “what now?” they asked, and asked and asked (and in some cases demanded) for Anet to add new tiers, claiming the game would die without it and there was no motivation to play and all the things people usually say when they want something added to a game.

So Anet responded by adding Fractals – a self-contained dungeon they could grind to their hearts content and rare, hard to obtain equipment for them to get from it. They dragged out the release: at first only rings were available, then they gradually added pieces. And it actually seems to have done the trick.

I’m sure some people did get frustrated and went back to games where they could watch their “gear score” constantly going up so the game will permit them to play new content. But a lot of people do seem to have stayed.

(And the funny thing is they then went and made ascended easier to obtain by introducing crafting and ways to buy it from vendors. Under the original system I’d never have gotten any ascended equipment I could use, as it is I’ve got nearly a full set without feeling like I had to put myself out to get it – crafting the chest and trousers was expensive but I wanted the skin so it was worth it to me.)

Well GW2 hasn’t been released in China yet, so I don’t really see how the two can be connected. If you mean since they started working on releasing it in China then you’re talking the last year or so, and it’d be pretty hard to gauge over that kind of time period.

It’s possible there has been more recently, but there’s a lot of possible explanations so without more info it’s impossible to say why. Although from what I’ve heard if there is a sharp spike in stolen accounts for a game it’s usually because a big fan site got hacked and a lot of people were using the same email and password for both that and the game.

As for replacing stolen accounts my understanding is that it can be done, although it takes a few days and Anet have to reset it to a specific point in the past so you might not get back everything. (I think it’s a bit like using System Restore on your computer, you lose all the changes since the restore point, but it’s better than the alternative.)

What are your graphics set to? The lowest settings remove a lot of the detail, and with it a lot of the colour.

With max settings I think the game is very colourful.