Guild Wars 2

zaced.7948:

it’s not about fun but presents per hour. other people lower my progress towards festive imbiber per time unit.

I think you don’t understand the spirit of the wintersday.

If they were ruby gems. Red. ohhhhhhhh

Eh, I like the green gem(s). Adds a little variety to the weapon beyond just “ICE ICE ICE ICE”. And I’m a sucker for slow pulsing effects, so I like that they also pulse a glow.

I wouldn’t mind if the shade were a bit darker, though. Maybe a bit more of a turquoise than the pure green they are now. Might “fit” better.

But they almost never change a skin once its in-game, for good reason (people who like the current version would be upset if it got changed). So I’m certainly not holding my breath.

Was playing the Snowball Fight with my friend earlier. we were in a party together. Seemed every time it reset we were on opposing sides. Most times one of us was able to swap. I’d be fine with it being random at reset but thought it would be better to keep parties together, well unless it is 9v9 and when we join so the only places we could have would be on opposing teams. Or if a lot of the people playing are part of groups so one needs to be split.

I’m a Mesmer in a guild that likes to help people with portals for the Daily Jump Puzzle. We both advertise ports, and like to talk with those we help. Also, we guide new players on how to reach jump puzzles, show them that they are part of an Achievement, etc.

But too often we are suppressed for “excessive” chats.

Anet, can you please liberalize your policy with regards to chatting?

while not being able to join for a while was annoying it was so much nicer having your own instance at some point. this jp is so annoying with other people in it.
give us our personal instances back pls.

Gerrand.3085:

I like that they put these old things into GW2 but requiring the skritt contracts (which require petrified wood) for farming it seems overkill.

Had the rock been a random drop, this would have been awesome. Had the skritt contract been a map unlock instead of the karma unlock (with stacking daily contracts allowing for more rubble searching which would return a large batch of karma instead of small amounts from kills) I would have been fine with it too.

It just seems silly to make the act of farming this ring so unbelievably inefficient as opposed to other methods of obtaining ascended rings -.-

True that. Not only does it cost petrified wood, but also a decent amount of karma. 980 karma + 1 petrified wood per skritt contract. If we take wiki droprate research into consideration, then it’s roughly 1 strange rock per 1000+ stashes. You would need to purchase 1000 skritt contracts, and therefore pay 1k wood + 980 k karma. That seems to be a bit much for a simple ascended ring with a vague lore reference. That’s the point. Makes no sense.

I like that they put these old things into GW2 but requiring the skritt contracts (which require petrified wood) for farming it seems overkill.

Had the rock been a random drop, this would have been awesome. Had the skritt contract been a map unlock instead of the karma unlock (with stacking daily contracts allowing for more rubble searching which would return a large batch of karma instead of small amounts from kills) I would have been fine with it too.

It just seems silly to make the act of farming this ring so unbelievably inefficient as opposed to other methods of obtaining ascended rings -.-

Lonami.2987:

I’m not angry about the money I spent, but I’m angry at ArenaNet’s reaction, or lack of thereof.

They hyped a thread where the main speculation was “it’s a legendary”, all over it. And what did they do? Nothing. They sat down and watched the world burn. The hype is our fault, yes, but ArenaNet could have tried to calm things down, instead of throwing more wood into the fire. They made the wrong hype grow harder.

You are overreacting. Read what Lynsey wrote — she didn’t hype it at all; she did exactly what she did with every previous comment she’s ever made on the topic, which is that everything we needed to know shipped with Strange Rock.

They threw no wood into the massive bonfire that the folks in the most recent thread; some of the participants in the reddit thread kept throwing kindling in, while others commented that it wouldn’t end well (except for speculators).

Rurik’s Engagement Ring shipped with the strange rock; we were just slow figuring out what to do. All ANet did was … nothing at all, except to verify that everything we needed to know or do or have was already in the game.

Please stop blaming ANet for your disappointment.

I think no one of strange rock owners is really raging (like some people make it out to be). Except maybe for people who paid 600+g for this thing.

It’s what Malediktus said, total lack of logic in this case.

Think about it, an item has a low drop rate. So low that people (who did research on wiki) opened 5,8k skritt stashes and found ONLY 5 strange rocks. It makes you think it is something special.
Also when the exploit with skritt stashes was found, anet quickly went to fix it so you couldn’t abuse it. So they wanted the drop rate to stay low.

This ring has 4 stages of evolving. The only items in the game with a similar system are legendaries and few ascended backpacks (spinal blades, mawdrey), all of which have visual effects to them. So it is only logical to assume that something like that is more than just an ascended ring. (Also note that no one can see the ring but you, no visual effects whatsoever).

Also the text it came with. ‘This strange rock appears to be humming with magic’. How are you supposed to figure out you should throw it into lava? What does humming magic have to do with all of this?

No one figured it out because there are no clues, you should just stand in a small specific spot next to lava and hope the dialogue window will trigger. It also gives no indication where to go next. And if 4-stages pictures were not datamined, we would not even know there are 4 stages, so you could run around the map forever trying various things.

I still see no reason to lock a simple ascended ring behind all of this. It gives 0 ap (not even symbolic, like 1ap for example), doesn’t unlock any achievements, has no aura, you can only select stats once. If you salvage it, it only gives matrices back.
There are plenty of ascended rings in the game, they drop all the time in fractals. Pre-HoT people were asking to give them an opportunity to salvage ascended rings because it was getting too much. So there was clearly no supply shortage.

It just makes no sense. Yeah, you could say it’s a nod to GW1 lore, but the whole treasure hunt gives no additional lore, just you,rock, and lava. No dialogue, no story.

People got hyped because there were a lot of indications it is more than just an ascended ring. Even if it was not a legendary, they were at least expecting an aura, or SOMETHING.

And because of the low droprate, it is not smth everyone can make. Once the tp supply is gone, it wouldn’t be that easy to acquire strange rock anymore.

I secretly hope it’s just a hidden precursor for a future legendary ring, but no high expectations. Because if it isn’t, then it just makes no sense. You could easily buy an ascended ring for laurels or drop one in fractals, so why get it this way. Just because it says it belonged to Rurik? O_o

This sounds more like the hungry cat scavenger hunt – which awards you cats running around your home instance – than anything that has ever been involved in making a legendary in this game.

Malediktus.9250:

I only took months to figure out because the “journey” was absurd and barring any logic. You had to find in extremly small spots in a specific order and throw the rock in yellow glowing lava (I looked it up, its about 1160°C hot). While finding a rock in a skrit stache which contained a ring still made somewhat sense, at the lava part it stops. We throw the tiny rock into the vulcano and it magically comes out cleaner than before instead of getting damaged further (1160°C is high enough to melt silver and gold, some for some gemstones).

I take it you’re also angry about the fact that we as characters can hop in and out of the same lava and not insta-die? There’s a whole slew of things in game that don’t make scientific sense. Because it’s a video game, not real life. I feel that needs to be emphasised here.

This is a perfect example of “counting your chickens before they hatch”.

Malediktus.3740:

Seriously. On average it takes hundreds of petrified wood + karma for skritt staches (it took me over 300+ staches to get the rock, other people reporting no drop in a larger amount of staches). More time to open all these staches, just to get a trophy item that leads to an ascended ring after a mystery that took people months to solve.
No aura, no achievement, it does not even have all 3 infusion slots. This whole thing must be a bad joke from Anet considering rings are the easiest ascended equipment to get.
Basically this whole item is a colossal waste of development resources and a missed opportunity to introduce a legendary ring.
I know I should have waited for other people to build this ring before I invest time into it, but this is just another example of effort vs reward not matching.

Wow, hyperbole overload here! “A colossal waste of development resources”? Really?

It’s a little drop with a simple, quick, 4-step process (go here and use the thing) that turns it into a free ascended ring that can have any possible stat combination.

The real question here is why did you think that there would be a greater payout than an ascended item? Because it took you a long time to get the drop?

This is a case of the journey being more important than the destination. Back in GW1 Rurik’s body was defiled by the Vizier and you had to fight his reanimated corpse towards the end; This was a very big deal back then. Finding his engagement ring on the very same place he was finished off and recovering it, is a very symbolic journey of cleaning up his legacy, even though mechanically you are just walking around wearing his ring and the ashes of his wife as a trophy!

I think it’s quite sweet that he kept the ring all that time, considering Althea died in the Searing and that was almost 3 years earlier. Although I suppose after the Shiverpeaks he wasn’t in a position to decide which items he would keep with him.

Here’s the thing – it’s not meant to be farmed hard core.

It’s supposed to be a random drop for people who are playing in the map – and they can up convert it to a HoT stats ring or sell the precursors.

That’s all. People just went mad with greed.

Those little secrets are the essence of video games. I’m very glad that Anet takes old gaming to heart (Triforge Pendant, SAB, JP), this is honestly what puts gw2 quite a few steps ahead of any other mmo.

The only bad joke here is you thinking this would turn into a legendary ring.

1) go to website about guides
2) read a guide
3) WEEEH THIS GUIDE TOLD ME WHAT HAPPENS, WHY DOES IT EXIST!!!

“BUT :
why are they making an achievement guide and explain everything ?!
They are spoilering around and thats boring..
Why?!"

Pro tip for the day: Don’t go to sites with information you don’t want to see.

People who spend their time cataloguing everything are extremely important to any complex game. Dulfy has done an amazing job across several MMOs, so a huge shout out to them.

As a game grows, more and more content is added. This is true especially for GW2. ArenaNet has added huge amounts of content since launch. This also means the population is more spread out – people have more to do, less people are doing the same thing. If you decide to revisit some of the older content and get stuck, that’s when Wikis and guides come in handy.

I think the large majority of people aren’t playing GW2 with a guide in hand, ticking off boxes. Most people probably look up Dulfy’s guides when they are interested in specific information – how to proceed with something you’ve been stuck on.

Keep in mind it’s an external resource, it’s not forced on to people in any way. If you want to find everything on your own, you are more than welcome to do that. If you want to play with a group of friends, you should also do that. And if you want to play the game following a guide, why not. People should play the way they find fun.

and others have taken on this subject before for some personal reason.
Why does Game Pressure, IGN and other sites too numerous to mention put out detailed game guides???? People like them or check them out if they they hit a wall.
Bottom line —if YOU don’t like them don’t read them.
BTW I agree with serialkicker.

You aren’t forced to read the cheevo guides, and many people would rather just follow a guide for the quickest (or one of the quickest) possible paths to their goal.

This is joke of the day topic, yeah?

“Illusionary Faun Pants”….. simply pans that give u the same goat-leg-look that the Lich outfit gives. But as an armour skin.

I would love to see computer controlled assistants in the game, with the following points:

• Based on your other characters, so you can put work into building your preferred team.
• 2 Assistants maximum at a time, for a “party” of three.
• Comes with some fast buttons to control them. “Go here” “Follow” “Passive” “Attack my target” and so on.
• Only used in Dungeons, Fractals, and story missions in PvE.
• Also used in a new PvP format where 3-4 players go against each other using their teams.

I think if it was restricted to dungeons or fractuals that would be great, (like only usable in a special solo mode). [Plus great way to get tokens and gear solo, if there aren’t any actual people around].

But, I don’t really want a bunch of npcs following me in open world, that would get annoying.