Guild Wars 2

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

It’s not a bug. Low level characters will not see map icons for vistas, jumping puzzles, et al to cut down on icon overload. They will display for L10+ characters, and once any character on an account is high enough to see the icons, all characters on the account should see them.

Oh one more thing… please tell me how just 5 icons can be “icon overload”? What’s the difficulty on identifying 5 different icons? Doesn’t any child at kindergarten learn way more forms? C’mon. Also, isn’t it more confusing finding it in world and wait 10 levels to figure out what was that about? Seriously, I’m having a really big hard time to understand the NPE purposes itself than understanding the game features instead.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue in which players became locked out of their guild banks.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Escape-key-no-longer-opens-menu

Kantharr.2308:

Yeah, I know. I just want to see this fixed so we would no longer have out of date data

Hehe yeah I hope so too.

With the introduction of NPE (New Players Experience), map completion won’t show until you reach a certain level. More info here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level_rewards

(yay! d*** NPE strikes again)

lol, it’s me or their thumbs are very stretched out?

In fact, I think there could have more categories. The “General” category is too “general” and vague. But well, I wouldn’t expect anything different given they are trying to “simplify” things by removing a lot of stuff…

Yup, several threads about it on past days:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/amazing-2-year-old-bug-still-not-fixed/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Norn-Starting-area-bugged-1/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Norn-Starting-Area-Bugged-2/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Norn-Great-Hunt-bugged/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Norn-Starter-Mission-Bugged/

Vayne.8563:

But there are people with low IQs. You’re probably a smart guy and smart people don’t realize that most people are average. There’s this thread right now on reddit.

You got my point, I won’t get in discussing it and yes, I’m also average. Also, I like to help people then yes, I help them when I see someone needing help.

Vayne.8563:

These changes weren’t meant for you and an experienced player can travel through them very quickly.

That’s why I say that our feedback, saying that we shouldn’t be treated like we’re stupid..well sure, that’s what the most intelligent people would think.

How about we try to be a little more understanding to those that haven’t picked it up so easily.

So why forcing this stupidity down *everyone*’s throat? Helping people who needs help is indeed a great thing and the initiative was great. But why generalize and treat everyone as if everyone needs help? That’s the big issue with it.

It doesn’t take in account what level you are or how experienced you are. It treats everyone as starter in MMOs world. Remember, those who are new to GW2 can also be experienced and veteran in MMO games in general, then why treating them as if they never dealt with MMOs?

Options, free choice, options, free will, options and options… (did I say options?) this is what wrong with it. It feels like you are in high-school but you are forced to go back to kindergarten because they think you aren’t able enough to keep going. Stop defending it so much and analyze all facts too, also stop taking it on personal base when someone disagrees.

And excuse me but… what are you trying to say with “That’s why I say that our feedback, saying that we shouldn’t be treated like we’re stupid..well sure, that’s what the most intelligent people would think.”? Can you complete it as I didn’t get your point?

Vayne.8563:

You talk about speed of leveling. The first 15 levels are, and have always been, meant to be a tutorial. After those levels you can level as slow as you want with barely any interference at all from the NPE.

It was? For me it never felt like that, at lvl 10 i could already handle the most of stuff on my own. Also, if it’s only the first 20 lvls is meant to be a tutorial why still teaching ppl about stuff at lvl 50, 70 or even 80? Doesn’t it sound like the whole leveling process is now a tutorial?

And why forcing a tutorial down everyone’s throat, even for those who can already understand it quickly or even for those who already learned it like when making a second char?

Vayne.8563:

You can get to both WvW and PvP from level 2 if you want. On your second character after it a lot of stuff isn’t locked anyway.

And…. once again… New Players Experience should be about the first experience, first character.. why we have to deal with a tutorial again every time a new char is made? The unlocks when on a second char seems to be just a way to lessen the whole tutorial experience again, even though the tutorial is still there clearly visible, or just a workaround to give veteran players an option to do their stuff without being disturbed by the tutorial.

Vayne.8563:

As for treating me like a 3 year old, I’m confident enough to know that I wasn’t the target audience for these changes and I’m happy they help other people that might need the help.

You weren’t the target but you were included in it. Imagine you are at the middle school and then they decide to put your class together with a kindergarten one just for management purposes, would you like to go through all those early learning stages again just for someone else’s learning sake? What about being put there again and again and again…

Anyway, enough of pointing fingers. Let’s not derail it and focus on the subject here: issues with NPE and what can be done to solve it. Let’s stop pointing fingers and discussing what opinion matter or doesn’t. Let’s bring up more constructive suggestions instead non-sense and vague arguments.

Yay, the dumb NPE strikes again… :P Oh boy… Yes, those buttons are hidden until you reach certain level, although I thought the hotkeys would still be available. However, yes it’s still accessible through gates and stuff (that was meant for vets to still be able to access them I think).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level_rewards

Good initiative! Some compliments when due are always nice and appreciated.

Well, I don’t know what anti-virus do you use but I have had no issues so far. Also, for a better clarification, here is a list of the analyze of the most common anti-virus softwares out there about the file: https://www.virustotal.com/file/934f6b12e83c6b960ac8e3a0ffd72cdedaaa7ca3ba062e8b95257fea41ffff8d/analysis/

By the way, there are “fake” anti-virus out there that says your system has some malware (even blaming innocent and legit softwares) and then requires you to pay or do something in order to remove “such malware”, beware of not be using one of those.

After some research and a few “trial and error” thing I have came to some possible cause or at least I got some light on this. My tests were basically moving and resizing around the window and then relogging. I haven’t tested changing maps or something like. Tests were done on windowed (no border) mode in 1024 × 768 screen res. Inventory window were mostly 10 slots wide. Here is what I have noted:

• #1: While I was doing some tests I noted that if parts of the window would be hover certain areas the window would move to a certain spot after each log on. Also in these cases the window would open by itself after log on. (pic 1)
• #2: Putting the window on a certain area wouldn’t cause the window to move neither reopen itself. (pic 2)
• #3: Putting the window in a way that its borders touches certain areas would cause the bug making the window to shrink by 2 slots less. (pic 3 and 4) The last pic (5) just shows how the window looked like when the bug triggered.

I hope this can help to give some insight or some direction on where to look for a cause. I’ll try to repeat it on a different screen res at some point.

A side note: putting the window in a way that more than half of the achievement UI or mini-map gets covered (but no parts of it gets off-screen) and then closing and reopening the window causes the window to shrink to its minimal size (4 slots wide) as if it went partially off-screen.

Even though it was on a beta test maybe it would be better to report it through the email exploits@arena.net as reporting exploits through forums isn’t allowed. Also through email you are free to even give more details if needed.

Vayne.8563:

Saying something is locked, doesn’t make it locked. It’s the same with skill points. They’re only locked on the first character you level through the NPE. On each subsequent character they’re not locked.

Sure, it’s inconvenient to have to know stuff to play the game. But saying stuff is locked when it’s not isn’t great either.

Well, for the time you are leveling that first character the things are YES locked, so YES they are locked, period. In real life you don’t face a gate or door locked and say “no, it’s not locked because it will be unlocked later”, you see it locked and it’s really locked, period. And the duration of leveling a first char is very enough to get someone frustrated and quit even before they would even have the “chance” to see it unlocked with a new char.

Geekfox.4267:

The auto-focus with mouse hover in BLTC should’ve NEVER been implemented in the first place. The way it behaves now is very obnoxious. I want it disabled.

Completely agreed, unneeded “feature”. Not to mention that it accepts inputs lower than the allowed value (like 0), it’s annoying when you just want to set it to the lowest possible value, originally this new TP wouldn’t allow you to put a value lower than the minimum. But that’s another subject though.

Vayne.8563:

If 1000 old people really don’t like it but 2000 new people stay and play longer, Anet did what they intended to do with it.

And those 2000 will one day become veteran players… and if they start seeing it as we see it now at that time… well, who knows…

Vayne.8563:

I’m simply saying that to me it doesn’t much matter. It doesn’t change the game for me. [..]
I particularly don’t see it as a big deal because the first fifteen levels pretty much fly

So why do you insist to reply to every and all posts disagreeing with it if you don’t mind with it? Let it for those who care :P

AidanTaylor-3872:

World Polish

• Harathi Hinterlands
  • Fixed a bug that would occasionally prevent “Defend the skritt thieves while they steal harpy eggs” from advancing when the Harpy Matriarch was defeated.

Incantus.8960:

Update my ticket? I was only told to contact them again, which I have done, but since it took them 3 days to just reply last time… It doesnt exactly fill me with hope, cant they just enter my account and remove the character? Its completely naked and has nothing of value on it…. Since I apparently cant do it.

Yup, reply to that email and update them telling that you are still having issues. Replies to already answered tickets usually are replied faster than new ones. Also, about they entering your account: actually they can’t, in other words, they prefer not do… at least not without your approval and they would only ask for it if really and strictly needed (I’m saying it based on what was said in a red post a while back).

Also, if your ticket is taking to long to get an answer you can post about it in that stick thread Tickets for Review (or something like that), that one is very frequently checked and answered by mods.

mjasa.5821:

if the reason for this was the key farming they could so easily just move the keys to level 20 in the story. They just ruined the flow of the game.

I was just going to say that.. :S

In fact, at first there wasn’t any banker NPC at that area, actually, in any of the crafting stations at starter areas. But in a patch a few months ago (not sure if early this year or later last year) they added them.

I also think it’s redundant since crafting stations already has that feature. It’s even weird at other maps, like Wayfarer Foothills where the NPC is pretty much over the crafting stations (literally one or two steps). I admit I was amazed to learn that you can access bank through crafting stations when I first found it. Having such NPC just delays such discovery or even prevents it, since players would get used to use and seek a banker NPC to that purpose.

Well, it doesn’t surprised me to see such NPC added, since NPE (yay NPE… >.>) the game seems to deal with new players like they are kindergarten child with so many hand-holdings…

Anyway, if that NPC is going to stay I’d also agree with the suggestion of putting it in that building. I also had noticed that building a while ago and even was wondering if it was supposed to be a bank or something with those signs and decorations (it reminded me of the old banking place at former Lion’s Arch), it even seems to have a vault there.

@Must Kill.3826: in your case the number on Hero panel is being showed in green, what means it’s being affected by some buff or bonus then it wouldn’t match with the other value anyhow. However, in these cases it would be expected the number on Hero panel to be higher than the one on Achievements panel (your normal MF plus buffs or bonus). In this case, yes something seems to be wrong.

And btw, one of the dumb NPE features is causing more trouble than it should: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Skill-Bar-Bug

Yup, it seems like there is a pattern here. Once again after a black screen the last items in the log shows “Auth server returned response 14”, differently from the whole log that now and then shows “Auth server returned response 0”.

Corana.9837:

[sip]

At first I didn’t get what you meant with the Improvements part, it seemed as you were talking about improvements brought by the new system but then I saw you were suggesting improvements, hehe. And again yes, the initiative behind it was good but the way as it was implemented was bad.

I liked your idea for Beginning Personal Story Area, it’s something like a few has already suggested like a “tutorial instance”. I feel it would be a lot better to give the player the chance to learn the mechanics freely within a instance than being pushed to learn it through 15 or even 80 levels. Rushing doesn’t help with learning and not everyone are equal, each one has their own pace.

About your suggestion about a re-playable Personal Story, when Story Journal came out it already had been announced that’s a planned feature but without an ETA for now.

Gaile Gray.6029:

shadow — You are right, there haven’t been a lot of updates on this topic since the OP. I just wasn’t sure if you’d see the “We’re aware of these things” part. If so, my apologies. And yes, for the most part, changes to NPE are still on the “to do” list. But there’s no lack of understanding by the devs. For instance, our narrative director, Leah, posted about changes that need to be made in relation to the Personal Story.

Farm Flats and Havoc — Have you posted in the Traits thread? You’re welcome to add your thoughts there, as well, if you care to do so.

Zera — thank you and understood. The mods merged your post into the main thread to keep things tidy, concise, and easily reviewed. Thanks for sharing.

naisonod — If you did that on a phone, I’m impressed! And to your point, I can promise you that we do play our own game, so changes made are made with game experience, not on a whim or without a full view. I take on board you don’t care for the changes, but I did want to clarify that things aren’t switched by people who live in a vacuum.

And this was the last red post in this thread… 8 months ago! Gaile, talk to us pweeese? :P

World is becoming potatoed… :/

Just hover near those icons at right (where open world map button is at per example), a bar will show up and then click between the buttons when the cursors changes to a hand and grab it down.

CuppDota.6051:

My apologies. I didn’t read the sticky about searching the forums before posting so I just searched with the search bar. I’m not sure if I can delete this topic, but if it is possible let me know and I will do so.

Anyone also encountering this bug please visit the link provided by shadow.6174 and provide your details there.

Ah no worry, not your fault. Also, search isn’t working properly for a while now. And your thread was made before that one but that has more replies. I just posted it here to help mods to merge threads.

You don’t need to do it with this thread but if you want to flag a thread for deletion for whatever reason I believe you can just report your own post, just tell them the reason.

Accountzeroone.7291:

The Germans came to the conclusion that the HOT update was causing a need for more than 3GB of ram or something like that. You can find their posts with google translade just look up “1450 error nv4 mini sys”

[..]

I do hope to get no troll posts about Windows XP being ancient etc, because that’s hardly relevant.

Well, I wouldn’t say that Window XP is old and unsupported, despite several companies stopped supporting it, and as far as I can tell GW2 still “works” with Windows XP. However, all my bets would go to the fact about 32 bits. GW2 had been running fine on 32 bits systems for a long time but it seems that HoT maps requires more than 4 GB of RAM to run smoothly and, as you know, 32 bits systems can’t handle more than 3ish GBs.

As you even pointed out, the “cause” lies in HoT maps requiring more memory than 32bits systems can handle, then why they have came out with a 64 bits version recently. This had been an extensive discussion when HoT was launched and it’s still controversial in some aspects though.

A while back (that was months before HoT came out) I had been using a 32 bits system (Window 7 though) and occasionally GW2 would crash “out of nowhere” around 1 hour or so of gameplay. After some testing I noticed that it alone would be using more than 2 GB of RAM, plus then all other stuff in the system were taking around 1 GB what would get my system near the memory limit and GW2 would be the first one to suffer as it couldn’t use more memory. After I switched to a 64 bits system (still Win 7) I haven’t got any of that crashes anymore.

In fact, if you haven’t heard about the 64 bits version before my advice would be that you try it, although you may know that it would require you to reinstall your system from ground up. And if you do so I would also advice you to take the opportunity to upgrade to a most recent version of your OS. My personal choice would be Windows 7 (yup, I hated 8 and 10 :P) but if your machine can handle it you may try even newer versions (however be aware that in Win 10 it may have some issues unique to it).

For more info about the 64 bits client, check the Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/64_bit_beta_client. Note that it’s still considered “Beta” but in my case I haven’t had any issues specific to it so far.

I believe you can apply only dyes that you own. If you “copy” a dye by using the dropper tool and it’s a dye not in your unlocked set you won’t be able to use that dye.

Yes, I can’t even count how many times I cursed at it early today :S 5 attempts to grab a crystal on a platform and on those 5 attempts I fell off passing the platform. Very annoying :S

Monkey Fritz.9052:

shadow.6174:

LegallyBinding.4937:

As an actual new player I feel exactly the opposite. I am loving the game and thought the new player experience has generally been good and positive.

I think usually for a new player the system doesn’t seem that bad.

Because new players have barely any idea what traits are, or how useful/important they are to the build of their classes.

How can you miss it if you don’t even know what you are missing?

Yup, that’s why I’m curious about how would be their opinion if they heard how it was before. To make a proper judgment if it’s a good change or not a new player would need to know how it was before at least, even if they hadn’t any chance to feel it themselves.

Usually a new player would compare it with other games out there or any other experience they had, then even the hated changes here could still be better than what they saw out there. Giving them chances to know how it was before would really help to evaluate how good or bad the changes were. The thing is: people adapt to things at first sight but it doesn’t mean what they got first was really the best way.

Yeah, it’s a pain to measure how far you can place it as there is not any visual feedback or indicator to tell so. Maybe a buff/boon/booster like thing (I don’t know how those icons above skill bar are called) that’s available only while you can place a portal and then vanishes when out of range? Also, why does it play the visual effect when it can’t be used? Why not just making the skill go into cooldown with no effect when triggering it out of range, or maybe denying it to be triggered if out of range? Having it to play the visual effect when out of range and unusable just fools us and leads to things like OP: first guess is it’s bugged instead that it was used at the wrong place.

It was an April fools prank.

Well.. it’s nice to read about the future of the game, what’s being planned for it and such, revising old systems…. what about revising this “all smart” NPE? It has been more than 1 year since it went live and we are still to see several promised changes to be implemented. Seriously, I still have been putting alts in hold in hope that something could be improved with this dumb system. I think there are nothing else to be said than what already was in these 36 pages of posts.

Recently I got a friend to finally try the game after trying to grab them for more than 1 year (thanks to the F2P btw). I tried to not making them to have biased opinions by not telling much in depth what I think about the system, I limited myself to cite facts about how things were before and then they would see by themselves how things are now. They kind of liked the game but what was their first complaint? “Skills take too long to unlock, it’s boring”. And then weeks later.. “I have unlocked my whole skill set, what else can I improve?” and it was annoying to tell they that they would have access to more basic stuff at later levels (side note: what’s the point of grabbing hero points if you cannot choose what skill you want, as it must be unlocked linearly?).

Well, generally speaking they thought the early levels were boring. Luckily they didn’t give up the game, however they still prefer to play another game that they played before than this one. It’s sad to see that I couldn’t build on them the same hype I had back at my early days thanks to a dumb and stupid system that was supposed to teach the basics, but instead it makes the learning and early leveling a boring chore. All efforts getting a partner to play for nothing. :/

(And yes, as I said early in this thread [and my signature shows] I’m not going to let it get buried in the depths of the forums :P)

Scorpius.4532:

I can’t see how the fix is such an amazing undertaking to be delayed this long. They aren’t giving us any other way of getting our skins/titles unlocked.

Maybe we should flood the system with tickets /shrug

As already mentioned in other threads and maybe here, the fix was already done. The issue which caused the mess was already fixed. However, HoM is still disabled because they are working on a way to clean the mess by taking any undeserved points from those who got them due the issue. This is what’s taking long because, as a dev stated once, they are working on a tool to help doing that, they hadn’t such tool yet.

Yeah, it has been broken for months (years?) now.

MilanaMill.9342:

I have spoken.

And spoken very well…. +10 to it

Yup, already known issue: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bugs-from-16th-Patch-Compiled

Malkavian.4516:

In fact, that’s the reason why I bought Guild Wars 2 in the first place. The Personal Story wasn’t perfect but I felt like I give a kitten about the things going on in Tyria. Otherwise, I’d just be mindlessly killing mobs all by my lonesome for a few months and move on to another MMO.

Yes, I felt the same way. Personal Story was one of the things that got me hooked in this game, more than dynamic events.

rchu.8945:

How about actively test your game patch before releasing, you know like every other game companies do, no matter the size of the team?

Do you really think they didn’t test it? Would you think that a company of size of Anet would be dumb enough to release stuff without any testing? Have you even worked with software programming, even complex one like MMOs?

The game is a complex thing and even doing thousands tests something could slip off when going into a different environment. Yes, the live servers are different of their test servers. It could have passed their tests in the test servers but when it reached live servers something else triggered the issue and possibly it wasn’t foreseen during those tests. Also, testers are humans, something possibly could have slipped off and gone forgotten during tests. As stated before…

Kibblet.9367:

So imagine if you would a QA member makes a mesmer, F5’s, then waits. Ability expires, rift disappears. Retest a few times to confirm the result. Bug marked as fixed.

[..] A specific bug is entered. That specific bug is fixed. That specific fix is tested.

… they tested a specific fix, the tests were to check if such fix worked and if it did it passed, then why it went live. Again, it’s a complex system, it’s hard to foresee what could affect whom, even worse with no much time.

Mordayn.6198:

More important than the fact it wasn’t caught when they tested it (which actually looks really bad on their part) is that it has been 22 hours and they haven’t hot fixed it yet. This basically breaks the entire class mechanic for the Chrono elite class and they didn’t revert the change. Really concerns me about the state of Anet’s priorities.

doombreaker.3710:

Guys you have killed an entire class for a whole day. This must have highest priority!

Well, they fixed it on 1 day, wouldn’t it mean it was priority? Or priority means fixing stuff within 5 mins? That’s impossible for complex systems like a MMO. See my statements above.

To summarize: Check all facts involved before doing any bs statements or demands. I know it’s a crippling bug, I also play a mesmer, but let’s be comprehensive and patient.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

• The Streaming Client feature is always on and no longer requires use of the -StreamingClient flag.

Forced streaming? Really? I mean… really?!? Didn’t NPE crap teach you anything? Forcing things and/or taking choices away from users is the worse and stupid path to follow.

Ok back to facts: it seems this streaming thing is causing some issues. I haven’t even tested map loading times yet but I already experienced some issues right at Character Selection screen. At first I got surprised that my FPS at that screen incredibly rose (usually I would get 30 or 40ish but got above 50 after patch) but then got annoyed by the stupid loading times. After launcher my screen stayed white for about 1 min (usually it was 15 secs and I play in Windowed mode), then Character Screen showed up but background stayed black with no character models for more than 30 secs. Worse of all is whenever I clicked or chose any option (opening Options, changing characters, etc…) my screen would freeze for 2 to 4 secs! Just to note, it was still downloading patch at that moment.

Thing is: give choices back to users! Stop forcing users to use it as you think they should use. Make the streaming thing optional unless it gets 99.9999% flawless and even so I would still prefer it to stay optional. Not everyone has a great connection and some could prefer downloading everything at once and not bother with it while playing than downloading in parts while playing. Better waiting and playing a stable game than being able to start it quickly but having to stumble across freezes or long loading times.

Edit: Ok scratch that, it seems the issue only occurs when it is still downloading the patch. Later yesterday I tried to play and it already was with patch fully downloaded, I had no issues and everything seemed to be normal. Anyhow, I still stand by what I said, always give users choices (like this thread couldn’t even exist if users had the option to turn off streaming).

Hey guys, let’s stop attacking each other and driving it off-topic. Let’s focus on the main subject of this thread. Arguing about someone’s post won’t help to solve anything.

Kaleban.9834:

The problem is that the NPE is misnamed. Its the “New Character Experience.”

Extremely unforgiving to alts, and annoying for people who’ve been playing since Beta and know the ins and outs of every system and skill. Its only slightly less annoying to everybody else, since the game is not that complex, and once you know how boons, conditions, skill combos and such work on your first character, you know how they work in 99% of the game, barring any profession specific stuff.

My suggestion, if the NPE isn’t fully redacted is to make it a thing for new players only, and then only on the FIRST character they create. All subsequent characters would then be governed by the original system, with possibly keeping level up rewards.

Yes, that’s the point.

OneOhOne.6083:

It basically boils down to “to level up you have to explore these things, but to even see these things on the map so you can explore them you have to be leveled up”.

Again… logic has been denied. :P

And one more report…. I wonder why they don’t change those to some other type of marker. I’m still for it having a special icon instead using the same icon as events and then causing this confusion. It’s frustrating to see that marker and facing nothing when getting there.

Also if it’s intended, why don’t show it only for those already with the Stabilizer? It gets confusing at first for those not aware about those events. -_-

It’s curious and so nice to see that mods keep merged threads while not a single dev comes up to give any news about this all. But not losing hope, they have listened about the changes to Personal Story, who knows stuff about all other NPE craps can be listened too… One can hope…

So far (at least that worked for me) the only way to finish that instance is choosing the other path. Be ready for a tough fight if you are alone though.