Guild Wars 2

Since the patch came out I logged onto my low lvl character to check how things have changed. And I was disappointed. A lot. So were many people. Today I have looked around various forums for answers, why was it changed like that.

The first thing that is noticeable is a large amount of rage topics. These are good topics, much needed to express the opinion of public, but their vast number makes it impossible to read through all of it. Most of them contain the same idea, that the changes were not for better, mainly changes to low level experience together with some others (e.g. changes to personal story).

First place to look for answers: GW2 forums. Check the discussion – full of hate. No response from devs. Lots of speculations / disappointment from players. But overall too much spam to say something was not overlooked.

Same GW2 forums. Dev tracker (I wish I started here, made looking for answers easier).
I have checked all the responses back to the release of “feature pack” release notes.
The devs have provided no response to threads of complaint.
The only response to the complaints I have found in “Communicating with you thread”:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Many others and myself are reading the other threads. i think its best to hear all the comments and give folks more time to play with their alts before discussing so……

Chris

and this might also be related to the problem, but it isn’t very informative:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I just want to quickly add, there are some errors on this chart of how stuff is unlocking, as well as 1st character vs. account unlocks when some of these systems were carried between regions. We’re trying to identify what happened and repair those things assigned the wrong account/character fields, as well as levels.

Then again, there haven’t been any responses for 13 hours by the time I am posting this, so maybe once their new day starts, they will have something more to say.

Another place to look was reddit. Once again a lot of similar posts, that give no information. More importantly, some people who actually liked the change can be found there.

In the following link, Merryeli, a person from art department responds to cries and promises to pass information to the design team: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2g003k/ladies_and_gentlemen_of_tyria_i_think_its_high/ckef1xz

Another piece of information I have found is that the same changes existed on CH version and were disliked there, but that did not change the thing.
[No link here, many various discussions contain this]

Further speculations come about VIP. http://imgur.com/qZCwB0m
The whole thing is already on the CH version, as is supported by several screenshots in here (I haven’t seen CH server and can’t confirm this): http://imgur.com/a/k9GA4#0
It has also been told by the devs, that it will not be implemented in EU/NA.

The next link and quote is just to show how ridiculous some of the changes were:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y&list=UUB5NQwWzEkr46VF6LMOeFJw

dace.8019:

I remember the first time I saw Diving Goggles, conveniently placed on the precipice of a ledge above some water.

After the initial shock wore off, I stood staring down at them, my mind racing to comprehend their meaning, Literally a couple of possibilities swirled around my tiny brain but it was too much. Exhausted, I logged off.

I went for a walk just to clear my mind. The image of those goggles haunted me as I walked along the path, teasing me with their impenetrable puzzle. I saw the moon and the stars, and it dawned on me. Just like the endless mysteries of the universe, I was not meant to understand. In another life, in another time – maybe.

I had looked upon those goggles on that ledge like a mouse looks upon Michaelangelo’s David. They were simply too huge to comprehend, to hold their full meaning in my head would be like holding the sea in a teacup.

Sometimes I still dream about them, and the ledge. In the dream, the water below rushes up to meet me, an epiphany promised within its depths – but then I wake up, and the dream, like the answers, fade away.

And now what we as community can do:

1. Accept the change and live on.
2. Discuss the possible solutions on a single topic.
3. Stop playing the game for a while, as this should draw reaction from developers.

And what we shouldn’t do:

1. Spam the forum full of topics, as devs won’t bother reading past the first few topics (believe me, i tried to read as many as I could, and they are all the same, just worded differently)
2. Rage on forums/map chat (devs will likely ignore such posts)

Thanks to all those, who read this far, and I hope this will change the spam that discussion forum currently looks like.

Players are bemoaning the loss of the button that maxed your quantity to either the amount you have in your inventory or max stack size. Well here how you do it now.

Single click on the right end of the slider.

It’s that simple.

It works on selling.
It works on buying if you are putting in a bid.

The only time it doesn’t max to 250 on buying is if you are buying from Current Sellers because that is first filtered by max price, either entered or by fiat by clicking the sellers list. If their are only 15 at or bellow your max price, then the quantity will only max at 15.

Hope this helps with the transition to the new TP.

If anyone didn’t know, a huge percentage of GW2 players never made to level80, they barely played a few hours.

The problem is not typical to just GW2, but many MMO’s face the same problem. It seemed the first few hours is what decided for new players if they want to continue playing the game.

Anet said they did extensive testing about the new system. I presume they found that with the new system, they are more able to retain players.

What if Anet actually did the right thing? Maybe with the new system, they were able to increase their retention rate by 10-15%? So maybe pushing back skills/utilities actually helps new players to continue playing because they aren’t overwhelmed by so many information. And it makes leveling more rewarding so they actually continue playing instead of quitting.

I personally hate the change. I think if they want to make the changes, they should consider giving veterans the option to be not included in to.

That being said, I think Anet also need to consider the number of vets that will actually quit or not level new characters because they made the change.

Easy question to answer. It’s called brainstorming.

The CDI doesn’t make choices for Anet. It gives input to Anet. It doesn’t mean that Anet automatically takes that input. It looks at the input through several different lenses (at least most businesses would) and figures out if that input works for their game, can be produced in a reasonable time frame at a reasonable cost, doesn’t interfere with other plans they have etc.

Just because you’re a minority doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas.

BTW, I don’t think that you’re the only minority. I think we’re ALL minorities.

I don’t think any group has a majority as in more than 50%.

I think we suffer from a divided player base.

To craft the new jeweler backpack you need bronze, iron, steel and darksteel ingots, which cant be refined by a jeweler.

They should use copper, silver, gold and platinum ingots instead.

Rouven.7409:

I absolutely understand that and thought of that myself. It seems I misinterpreted this post at the time two weeks ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dungeon-Instance-Owner-change-FTW/first#post4336064

Stealing instances using the LFG tool, or booting people for no reason (or to give your buddy the rewards for no work) at the end of a run are bannable offenses and should be reported.

You are probably right, sounds like “stealing” would fit more into your scenario.

Guess we’ll know for certain tomorrow.

Just to say, whether the thieves of an instance get punished or not, is totally irrelevant because the victim doesn’t get anything other than lost time.

Format: skin ID – skin name

• Hammer
  • #5898 – Mistbreaker

• Axe
  • #5894 – Mistcleaver

• Mace
  • #5937 – Mistrender

• Spear
  • #4597 – Ebon Vanguard Harpoon
  • #4984 – Legionnaire Harpoon
  • #4617 – Lionguard Harpoon
  • #5004 – Krytan Harpoon
  • #5214 – Flame Harpoon
  • #4844 – Makeshift Spear
  • #4846 – Primitive Pike
  • #4854 – Worn Voltaic Spear

• Harpoon Gun
  • #4604 – Lionguard Harpoon Gun
  • #4299 – Warden Harpoon Gun
  • #5170 – Krytan Harpoon Gun

• Trident
  • #4599 – Lionguard Trispear
  • #5167 – Gladium Trident
  • #4985 – Hawk Trident

• Staff
  • #4988 – Primitive Pillar

• Shield
  • #4781 – Dark Moon Shield

Armor

• Heavy Scale Shinguards
  Heavy Scale Shinguards (item #80941) does NOT unlock the skin it uses.

• Heavy Scale Armguards
  Heavy Scale Armguards (item #80892) does NOT unlock the skin it uses.

• Heavy Scale Helm
  Heavy Scale Helm (item #80928) does NOT unlock the skin it uses.

• Heavy Scale Leggings
  Heavy Scale Leggings (item #80879) does NOT unlock the skin it uses.

Weapons

• Bloodbound Hammer
  Bloodbound Hammer (item #77335) does NOT unlock the skin it uses.

• Corrupted weapons
  All Corrupted Weapons do NOT unlock the Etched Weapons used to craft them.

• Lidless Eye
  The skin Lidless Eye (skin #4858) is NOT unlocked from the following items:
  • Eye of Rodgort – item #31056
    The Eye of Rodgort recipe uses Lidless Eys as ingredient.

• Lucky Ram Lantern
  The Lucky Ram Lantern skin is NOT unlocked from the following items:
  • Lucky Great Ram Lantern
    The Lucky Great Ram Lantern recipe uses Lucky Ram Lantern as ingredient.

• Lucky Monkey Lantern
  The Lucky Monkey Lantern skin is NOT unlocked from the following items:
  • Lucky Great Monkey Lantern
    The Lucky Great Monkey Lantern recipe uses Lucky Monkey Lantern as ingredient.

• Lucky Rooster Lantern
  The Lucky Rooster Lantern skin is NOT unlocked from the following items:
  • Lucky Great Rooster Lantern
    The Lucky Great Rooster Lantern recipe uses Lucky Rooster Lantern as ingredient.

Back items

• Mad Memoires
  The skin Mad Memoires (skin #2336) is NOT unlocked from the following items:
  • Mad Memoires: Complete Edition – item #36398

Weight specific unlocks

The following items do only unlock one of the three weights despite being the same skin:

• Monocle
• Adventurer’s Mantle
• Adventurer’s Scarf
• Adventurer’s Spectacles
• Island Shoulders
• Deathly Pauldrons
• Deathly Bull’s Pauldrons
• Deathly Avian Pauldrons
• Benethic Aqua/Water/Hydrobreather
• Consortium Breathing Masks
• Invisible Slippers/Boots/Stompers

Thanks for all the great advice, everyone.

I have looked into the name change contract and I might reconsider it. I originally had dismissed the idea as my current profession is really only good in PvE and I was looking for a profession I could play well in all modes and aspects of the game. I usually only play one character, and having one that I could play well in all modes of the game would make the level 80 redundant.

I really don’t have any mules. I have one other character I was running through the Norn story to get the achievement and will create a Sylvari to do the same thing. Other than that I really only ever have the one character that I play. The reason for my choosing to start over is to create a profession that I can play well in PvP and PvE.

Really great advice and responses though and I will think about what everyone has posted.

Thanks.

My gem buying habits is similar but it’s difficult to time local minimum without constantly watching the exchange rate. And with the rate listed on GW2Spidy being wrong for nearly a month the other external source is gw2tp which only updates hourly.

I took a page out of 401K retirement by doing cost averaging, sort of. I use 1% of my bank every day and convert into gems. Also Mondays and Thursdays I convert 5% instead of 1%, in the off chance some highly desired item gets posted the next day and the ensuing rush to buy gems cranks the exchange rate up.

Yes that means I convert 15% of my bank weekly into gems. Roughly 65% a month yet the actual amount in my bank is still going up week to week, month to month.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Like I said, timing is everything. Had you posted at a different time, without all the other posts saying very similar things, you might have gotten a very different response.

So is understanding. You can’t really demand players to understand anet, while you clearly can’t understand the players that complain on the forum.

I understand players who complain on the forums. I understand your complaint. Your complaint is lost in a sea of similar complaints that WILL blow over, just like every other major complaint has blown over. You’re attaching so much importance to this, without thinking about the bigger picture. That’s always my problem. I live in that bigger picture.

There are a lot of one theme activists on these forums. People have have a pet peeve and believe that affects the entire game for everyone or most people. One of them thinks, truly believes focus on the cash shop is ruining the game. Another truly believes that the drop rate is bugged and it’s affecting huge amounts of people. It continually comes up in their threads, because it’s the major thing affecting their gameplay.

A person who comes to the forums and responds to a single post takes that post as a single post. A person who comes to the forums and reads a lot of posts, tends to respond to each post as part of something larger.

I seriously believe that at this time when the focus on on the feature pack, this post will reach less ears at Anet. It will receive less attention and less time than if it was timed not to be in a sea of less reasonable requests. The way you phrased the title almost guarantees you’re going to get resistance on the forum anyway.

Talking for everyone also doesn’t help your case.

I honestly think you have some valid points mixed up in with the stuff that detracts from your points. I think you should continue to ask for this stuff without using contrary words that will detract from your point point.

And I think you should post in a couple of weeks after the content patch, when things calm down. Throwing out this kind of thing, no matter how reasonable it is, during a time when there are a myriad of complaints is not going to get you what you want.

available in game (Gemstore not included).

I saw many Posts complaining about how all new weapons or armor that have been added to the game have been through the Gemstore, so here I will be compiling a list of all items in-game that are there now that weren’t available upon release. Please if you have corrections or additions let me know.

1) Legendaries (I don’t believe these were available immediately, think they became available in October)

2) Halloween items (1 new amulet, 3 new semi-legendary weapons, devil horns helm skin, Witches hat, Wizards hat, Deathly Shoulder skins, Grinning ghastly shield, Gourd Rifle, Chainsaw sword, and greasword, Severed dagger, and Scythe staff skin.)

3) Lost Shores (Fractal Weapons, and a new stat type with passiflora and settlers, 2 new back pieces, Consortium axe, focus, shield, sword and helm)

4) Wintersday (Toy and Candycane weaponry, and Ascended Armor)

5) Frost and Flame (Guild weapons for commendations, Savage backpack, elegant backpack, Fused Gauntlets, and Jetpack)

6) Super Adventure box (8-bit Weapons with a variety of color options, New back piece)

7) Dragon Bash (New helm, 2 new backpacks, and a whole new set of jade weapons, polla accessory)

8) Sky Pirates of Tyria (Monocle)

9) Bazzar of the Four Winds (Three new Helms, Five new Back pieces, Zenith Weapons, Radiant Armor, Hellfire Armor)

10) Clockwork Chaos (New twisted watchwork shoulder, Champion loot boxes and the various new weapon skins that came from them)

11) Tequatl Rising (New Backpiece, New Tequatl ascended weapons, New waterbreathers)

12) Twilight Assault (New Backpiece, and New weapon set)

13) The Nightmare Within (New Back piece, New Helm, and New Aquabreather)

14) The Origins of Madness (Wurm Helms Shoulders and Glove Ascended added, Annelid Rifle Skin)

15) Escape from Lion’s Arch (Several new back items 3 when fully upgraded, Scarlet’s rainbow, kiss, and veil)

16 Gates of Maguuma till now (3 new helm skins, Ambrite Weapons, Mawdrey backpieces, and the flames of Balthazar back piece)

I believe this is most of the items, with this we can see that many weapons have been added, but not very many new armor skins available in game have been added, especially new armor for these areas Chest, Leg, and Feet are very rare.

@OP.

If someone quits the game because they feel all they want to play for is a precursor. So they quit because they cannot acquire one. What in the world do you think they will do once they have a legendary. They will quit. Because now they have nothing else they feel they want to do.

If your having fun with the game and your friends in it, you will have fun, legendary or not.

As quick fixes, I would:

1) Reduce downscaled level by one (now you downscale to level 26 in level 25 areas)

2) Increase multiplier for stat downscaling (so you would end up with less stats, to balance traits and triple stat from gear).

3) Revert trait decision (give us more trait points, etc while leveling up)

How about a “permanent charge” that you apply to a particular item skin, then that skin becomes free to apply across your account? That wouldn’t need to be so rare – it could be a gem-store item for say 300-400 gems? I’d be interested in something like that – especially for novelty/festive skins, that I don’t necessarily want attached to gear all year round.

Read this :
http://de.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2e870h/in_areas_lvl_79_and_lower_ascended_weapons_are_no/

And i just checked it .. switched ascended and exotic berserker axe and damage shown
on tooltips was always the same .. only when i unequipped 1 axe the ascended did
0.35% more damage because of the little better stats.

So outside of lvl 80 zones / dungeons its simply a placebo effect.

You can always pool resources with a bunch of people you trust, share the burden and take turns ‘holding’ the minis.

That’s what I did with my best on-game friends for series I and series II minis. We created a temporary guild for it as depositing the minis in the guild bank was a lot more convenient that mailing them all back and forth between us (which would have been a pain, mainly thanks to the ‘spam protection’…. bleurgh). I also sent some minis to some friendly forum people, and all were promptly returned.

I haven’t started working at series III at all yet, but I’d be up for collaboration.

So I was chatting with a friend of mine and our conversation went something like this,

Me: (sigh) Tell Anet to give me legendary armor recipes…
My friend: Tell Anet to give me poutine.
Me: … okay.

So I am formally requesting that Anet add Recipe: Poutine to the cooking profession. Because that would be hilarious.

<3 you guys =D

Ohoni.6057:

John Smith could tell us, but the likely simple fact, which you seem unwilling to believe, is that there are many players out there who never acquired, in any form, the amount of gold needed to make a Legendary, much less the two or three or more that some players have managed.

Oh, I believe that there are many, many players out there who have never acquired anywhere near the amount of money needed to make a legendary. The vast, vast majority of players/accounts just don’t play that much; either they played at launch and gradually faded away, or they log in once or twice a week on a weekend for a couple hours to play, or just do some living story and go do something else.

I believe there are a bunch of players who have a good number of hours but were never seriously chasing a legendary – they spend nearly all their time in sPvP, or they’re leveling a bunch of alts, or they like chatting in town with their friends. I have no problem believing that those players never could afford a legendary.

What I do not believe are that there are a lot of players who play the game frequently as a serious hobbyist (~10 hours a week), doing activities that you would think are wealth rewarding (like killing mobs, harvesting nodes, and completing events), that have not, over the past couple years, cumulatively acquired enough wealth to buy a precursor and craft a legendary of their choice. Accumulating enough wealth over that time frame does not require any sort of special knowledge or power farming of dungeons or world events or mastery of the TP; killing mobs and mining nodes at a steady clip is more than sufficient.

I think that anyone who claims to be playing frequently as a serious hobbyist yet unable to have made a legendary is either not trying very hard or has a serious saving problem.

I mean sure, there are areas of the game where you can make that much, especially if you know the best ways to parlay your drops into cash

I would have no problem extracting 2-3 gold in an hour from any zone in the game, save perhaps the starter zones, without any specialized knowledge of the maps – pick a waypoint to start at, walk in a direction, kill the mobs along your way, mine the nodes, and do events you come across. Better zones are worth well over 5 gold an hour, and you can push it much higher by jumping between hot spots.

I don’t doubt that people can make far less from that from just playing the game. I just have to question what it is that they are doing that is so unrewarding.

I mean, I just followed a random player around Iron Marches for 20 minutes, killing mobs and hitting platinum nodes and trees, and I pulled in close to 2 gold worth of mats; a whole lot of T4 dust, T4 fine mats sell for close to 5s each, a ton of platinum, some crystal shards – using the great and complicated method of salvaging everything and putting it on the TP. Sure, I probably got a bit lucky on the shard drops, but there’s no way I make less than 1 gold doing that, and this is just following someone leveling around.

I really, really don’t know what you’re doing to not have a basic income of a couple gold an hour.

Lightsbane.9012:

is there a logical reason we don’t have this?
every other mmo i’ve played has had both face to face trading as well as auction houses, so after two years i’m still seriously confused.

Is there a logical reason we should have this?

I don’t know if this is the right place for this, but I wanted to voice my annoyance that we’re able to dye the Witch’kitten but not the Wizard’s.

Sometimes the best answers are short and to the point.

BobbyStein.2315:

In hindsight, there should have been more build up or discovery before reaching that point. Lesson learned.

As I said earlier, the game has two types of players. Active players who use the TP to place sell orders and bids to sell and buy items and passive players who use the TP to sell to the high bidder and buy from the low seller as if the TP was just another NPC vendor but with better prices and selection.

You can’t have just passive players because there wouldn’t be any bids or sale orders on the TP (no supply or demand numbers). And without a history, history charts are 3rd party creations, there wouldn’t be any idea what an item is worth. So you need active players to provide guidance to passive players or they would just buy and sell from NPC vendors or be forced into an active roll and throwing numbers out there.

When an active player assumes the role of a middleman to provide numerous bids and items for immediate sale, they are called flippers and are considered by some as opportunistic scavengers rather than the players who grease the wheels for passive players to use the TP. Without them there wouldn’t be enough active players to fill the TP with items and bids to satisfy the passive players.