Guild Wars 2

Tovey.1283:

I’ve sent 6 e-mails over the past 2 hours, evidently, they cannot be bothered to contact me back.

(1) Please do not send a bunch of emails to Support. Every mail you send takes time to review, and I assure you, the first and only email sent will be attended to. In the meantime, the flood of mails slows our ability to help others.

(2) What is your ticket number and when did you submit the first contact?

Astral Projections.7320:

Hxcgeminix.2501:

Yeah I use yahoo as well, and after clicking “not spam”, I no longer receive the authentication mails. Only option is the remove the authentication, until the problem is fixed.

Another option is to contact support and change the email to one that’s not having this problem. That way you can keep the authentication, which is a powerful tool to block hackers.

This IS an option, if someone’s email provider is having problems sorting our mails into the Junk bin, or is blocking mails from someone you’ve intentionally flagged as “Not junk.”

I will forward this to our team to inquire about an update on this situation. I agree that disabling authentication is not an optimal choice, and that you should not have to do that to play the game. On the other hand, we cannot control how ISPs handle their mails, and can only work with them to try to resolve whatever problems they’re having on their end.

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Hi Randulf,

I agree that we should and will have a separate discussion thread for DE’s foundational design, evolution and quality. What i am interested in here however is how DE’s can relate to story telling and game play synergy and the overall evolution of Living World. Therefore within these bounds i think it is a great topic for this thread.

Hope this makes sense?

Chris

Oh I don’t disagree at all and understand totally how they synergise with the story element. I’m just worried other LW topics may get buried since the emphasis seems now exclusively on DE development. If all topics are being covered evenly, then I’ll go back to reading what is so far one of the few interesting threads on these forums!

:)

Absolutely (-:

Chris

Let’s break down this thief change a bit more so we can dispel any notions that this is going to ruin thieves.

We are increasing base regen by 33%. This is basically equivalent to a patch notes that says: “Warrior: Cooldown on all weapon skills has been reduced by 25%.”

It is an incredible buff to this profession and should not be treated lightly. To counter this imagine we took a few weapons and took away the cooldown portion of their trait. They would still be 5% better but other weapons would be 25% better.

Among the changes that is basically what it amounts to, with the exception of one change which I’ll talk about next.

Opportunist
This trait was wildly overpowered. I there was a 15 point minor for any other profession that basically read: "Reduce cooldown of all weapon skills by 33%, it would basically be impossible to run that profession without putting 15 points into that line. Because of this every thief build that is effective uses this line, which improves crit and crit damage. This pigeonholes this profession in a way that makes it frustrating for players and developers. This trait has to be closer to an 8% increase if we expect people to consider not taking 15 point in critical strikes.

By reducing this trait and improving base regen we are giving non-crit thieves 15-30 trait points back to spend where they want to. There are a lot of good traits that simply will never see play until we make this change.

Hopefully this explains, in more detail, what we hope to accomplish here.

TLDR; Thieves with 15+ in critical strikes and no other initiative traits will be slightly less efficient. All other thieves will be equally or more efficient.

Jon

I said it in he other thread but this trait has to get hit hard because it is breaking the profession. We need to push the effectiveness of this trait into base thief functionality. If any other profession had a trait that reduced weapon cooldown by 30% for all weapons as a 15 point minor we would have to balance around that. A single trait shouldn’t be holding thief balance hostage so we will steal from this trait, no pun intended, and impart the savings on to every build via base initiative regeneration.

Jon

October 29 Content Release Notes
LIVING WORLD
Tower of Nightmares
What happens when the evil agendas of the krait and the Nightmare Court align? The answer can be found around Viathan Lake in Kessex Hills, where a dreadful tower has risen to spew poison into the sky. It’s causing hallucinations and illness in all who breathe in the spores. The malevolent forces behind it have Tyria’s subjugation in mind.
Story

• Track down Marjory Delaqua and Lady Kasmeer Meade in Kessex Hills, and help them investigate the sinister nature of the massive “Tower of Nightmares” in the waters of Viathan Lake.
• When entering Kessex Hills, players with an actual level higher than 25 will automatically be redirected to a story instance.
• Players level 25 and under may still opt to play the story instance by speaking to Marjory in Kessex Hills.
  • This solo story instance will introduce players to the new threat of the “Toxic Alliance” between the krait and a faction of the Nightmare Court. Players will encounter the Toxic Alliance’s unique and deadly skills firsthand as they battle their way to Marjory and Kasmeer.
  • Players may leave this instance without penalty, and they may retry it at any time by speaking to Marjory in Kessex Hills until the instance has been completed.
  • Once the instance has been completed, it can be replayed by another character.

Open World

• Kessex Hills
  • Kessex Hills has become even more of a war zone than usual! The Tower of Nightmares has completely changed the area around Viathan Lake, spewing toxic pollen and gases into the air, turning the sky a dark and sickly hue. The Toxic Alliance, flooding from the monolithic tower, is working to cement a foothold in the region. Seraph forces are trying to stem the tide, but the tower itself appears impenetrable and is surrounded by a wall of suffocating toxic gas that prevents entry.
  • The Toxic Alliance appears to be here to stay. They’ve been taking territory from both allies and enemies alike, from Mudbay Digs to Greyhoof Meadows and all points in between. As players battle through a variety of new dynamic events, they will wage war on this new threat on multiple fronts around the base of the Tower of Nightmares.
  • The Tower of Nightmares is also creating smaller offshoots of itself at several locations around the map. Players must aid the Vigil, the Order of Whispers, and the Durmand Priory as they attempt to destroy these toxic offshoots with siege weapons.
  • Marjory Delaqua, an expert in poisons, is working hard to formulate an antitoxin from a camp at Thunder Ridge so that the heroes of Tyria can enter the tower and take the fight to the Toxic Alliance on their own turf. Players can help Marjory’s research efforts by bringing her Pristine Toxic Spore Samples, which can be found by completing related events and destroying Toxic Alliance enemies.
• The Toxic Offshoots aren’t just limited to Kessex Hills. The wind has carried these vile blooms into the neighboring zones of Caledon Forest, Metrica Province, Brisban Wildlands, Queensdale, and Gendarran Fields. They have even been spotted in the Eternal Battlegrounds!
• The Durmand Priory has been investigating the involvement of the krait, a normally xenophobic and hostile force. They are convinced that the krait have been gifted with something very important to their culture: shards of one of their great obelisks. Krait obelisks factor heavily into the krait religion, so Priory Arcanist Dolja will task players to find and transcribe the energy signatures of 24 of these obelisk shards across Tyria.
• The Toxic Alliance is the toughest force yet, and their arrival brings with it the debut of the elite species type. With its difficulty level situated between a veteran and a champion, elite enemies are designed to challenge small groups of players outside of group instances.
• Blood and Madness content and achievements will still be available to play until November 11, including decorations, activities, Haunted Door events, and story instances. Also, a single Halloween-themed daily achievement will be available.
  • Mad King Thorn will visit Lion’s Arch between 9 a.m. PDT on October 30 through 9 a.m. PDT on November 1. During that period, the Mad King will tell jokes as he wanders the Mystic Plaza and play Mad King Says in the Grand Piazza. This is the only time players can gain the A Royal Tradition achievement, which awards successful players with the Mask of the Night Skin.

Rewards

• Finishing the Tower of Nightmares meta-achievement will reward the player with a personal Krait Obelisk Shard, a place of power for their home instance. It can be used to obtain a skill point and to charge Quartz Crystals once per day.
• Finishing the Toxic Krait Historian achievement will reward players with a Scroll of Knowledge, which allows them to obtain five skill points.
• Marjory Delaqua will accept extra Pristine Toxic Spore Samples as trade for various new crafting recipes and a new heal skill at the Thunder Ridge Camp in Kessex Hills.
  • Antitoxin Spray: This new heal skill is usable by all professions in PvE and WvW. Players can use the antitoxin to heal themselves and nearby allies while also removing toxic pollen, poison, torment, and confusion.

Achievements

• Tower of Nightmares, the meta-achievement, will task players with bringing down Toxic Offshoots, gathering spore samples to complete Marjory’s research, seeking out krait obelisk shards, and destroying Toxic Alliance forces and their champions.
  • During this release, completing Tower of Nightmares daily achievements will contribute to the meta-achievement. These are earned by participating in specific Tower of Nightmares content each day.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
General

• PvP Glory and Rank rewards have been revised. Personal score no longer grants rank. Instead, there are now flat bonuses for playing and winning games. Games lasting less than 7 minutes will have proportionally downscaled rewards.
• The Special Event UI has been updated to help direct players through Living World releases.

Items

• The crafting recipe for Bolts of Silk now requires 3 Silk Scraps.
• The crafting recipe for Cured Thick Leather Squares now requires 3 Thick Leather Sections.
• The icon for the Scroll of Knowledge has been updated.
• The icon for the Experience Scroll has been updated.

Profession Skills
Elementalist

• Conjure Fiery Greatsword—Firestorm: Fixed the radius skill fact and included a duration skill fact.
• Mist Form: Added a skill fact for the movement-speed increase.
• Undercurrent: Added a radius skill fact.
• Tempest Defense: This trait now lists the appropriate damage increase to stunned and knocked-down opponents.

Engineer

• Scatter Mines: Added radius and damage skill facts.
• Reinforced Shield: This trait now indicates an increase to toughness, rather than adrenaline.
• Low-Health Response System: Added a trait fact for the health threshold.
• Napalm Specialist: This trait now displays its duration increase when used with skills that apply burning.
• Elite Supplies: This trait now appropriately reduces the recharge time of mortar abilities.
• Infused Precision: This trait now lists the chance to activate on critical hits.

Guardian

• Smite: Added a skill fact for the number of impacts, and removed the number of attacks from the damage skill fact.
• Protector’s Strike: Replaced the range skill fact with a radius.

Mesmer

• Veil: Fixed the duration skill fact to properly indicate its duration, with and without Temporal Enchanter traited.

Ranger

• Malicious Training: Updated multiple pet abilities to reflect when this trait is equipped.
• Juvenile Brown Bear:
  • Shake It Off: Fixed an issue that caused the condition-removal effects to behave erratically.
• Sword—Slash: Removed the skill fact that displayed bleeding condition removal.

Thief

• Shadow Refuge: Added a pulses skill fact.

Warrior

• Hundred Blades: Fixed the skill fact to properly update when traited with Slashing Power.

World vs. World

• Fixed an issue with a couple of dolyak caravans that caused them to path to the wrong objective in some cases.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• Three new sets of armor skins are now available in the Gem Store: Phalanx armor skins for heavy-armor wearers, Viper’s armor skins for medium-armor wearers, and Trickster’s armor skins for light-armor wearers. Each armor-skin pack is available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 800 gems.
• A new permanent finisher is available for WvW and PvP combat. The fearsome new Toxic Offshoot Finisher is available in the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 600 gems.
• Dreamthistle weapon skins are now available from Black Lion Weapons Specialists and cost only 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket from now until November 25. Players can get Black Lion Claim Tickets and Black Lion Claim Ticket Scraps from Black Lion Chests, which can be unlocked with Black Lion Chest Keys available in the Consumable category of the Gem Store.

Again, we’re sorry that we’re not able to correct the problem. If our programmers were able to do so without incurring further risk of making it worse, they would do so. The technical situation has not change since I posted earlier in this thread. Making demands will not change the technical issues involved, and given that the thread has run its course, we’ll close it.

morrolan.9608:

Tom Wolf.1340:

If you people dont take all this to heart then I dont know what it will take.
I’ve seen excelent points made so far and sugestions on how to correct them in order to set this thing straight.
Lets hope it wont just stop at “Good feedback! we’ll consider it.” and then continue on as if nothing happened.

+1 to this, this has occurred to me as well. Chris we want to see substantive contributions by the dev team to these threads and obviously consideration being given to the suggestions or reasons why they can’t be implemented.

Hi Morrolan,

I appreciate your enthusiasm. Please do understand that we won’t be commenting on specific implementation. I just want to set expectations appropriately from the outset. There are multiple places on the forums where you can read how this initiative is going to work.

Also regarding dev contributions we have been and will continue to read the forums and as i said in my post, some of us will wait to hear the considerations of many of the community before entering the discussion. I can’t speak for all of us however.

From my previous post:

4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.

I hope this rule informs more clearly as to your expectation. Let’s not derail the thread by questioning the goals of the process please as they are already firmly stated.

I am enjoying the contribution of the discussion thus far and would like to see it evolve unhindered.

Chris

Awesome start!

I am reading the thread and will likely join the discussion tomorrow.

Chris

We have now re-opened this thread. Please stay respectful and on-topic. Any derailing, victim blaming, or off-topic posts will be handled accordingly. If you see further posts of this nature, please report them.

We have some thing that will be in the tests for the new map that will help WvW be more alt-friendly. We will talk more about it as we get closer to the test actually beginning.

Yikes! I’ve moved this topic to Bugs and am adding it on to my daily report.

Not yet, but we have a plan and, barring a setback, it will be in before the end of the year. Keep in mind, the solution we are rolling out is just a general solution to make it feasible to make them without running fractals, not necessarily a WvW focused solution.

We are aware of an issue with a duplicate achievement in the current daily achievement list. Completing this achievement will freeze the client and you will have to restart the game. Going into your Hero panel and checking the Daily Achievement category after you restarted the client will also freeze the client and you will have to restart the game. We are currently looking into it, sorry for any inconvenience caused by this.

Trick or Treat bags are a temporary reward during the Mad King festivities. We agree that it would have been better to give both Trick or Treat bags and reward chests but the system involved can, at this time, only reward one type of item at a time. We therefore made the decision to allow PvP players to participate in the game wide festivities because it is only a couple of weeks. There is an achievement that you can earn by opening Trick or Treat bags and if you take a look at this page:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-guide-to-blood-and-madness/

You will see that the contents of trick or treat bags can be used to work towards bigger rewards. Rather than give PvP players no option to work towards these rewards we decided to temporarily give out trick or treat bags.

This is by no means the final reward update to PvP. There are many things in the works regarding PvP rewards that will be rolled out over the course of several months.

I do however understand your complaints and concerns. So I’d like to offer this to you guys, if you accept Trick or Treat bags until the Mad King festivities are over, would you be happy to have double PvP reward chests for the two weeks after the festivities are over? This way those players who would like to spend their time in PvP to earn their holiday rewards can continue to spend their time in PvP and those of you who don’t want the holiday rewards can sell them on the trading post and then collect double PvP reward chests for a couple of weeks to make up for it.

Does this sound like a reasonable solution?

It’s not a bug.

The patch has been out for 2 days. There were so many changes that we really need to let things settle and let people find their way. Big balance changes like this shake things up a lot, and nobody can know how the community will adapt to the change until they adapt to the change, which usually takes longer than a couple days.

Any feedback on the changes at this point is knee-jerk, because there simply has not been enough time to gauge how things will be until it settles.

I’m assuming this is in relation to Ticket 131016-002119?

The account was hacked a year ago. It was reinstated, reclaimed, reinstated, and finally closed and refunded. Obviously, someone (bad) knows your credentials and is continuing to hack your account, even when the password is changed by an agent. This makes me wonder if your e-mail account is insecure. It would be good for you to check into that now. Consider setting up a new e-mail account and updating the ticket with that new address, so that whomever has/had access does not get access again. At some point, we’ll not be able to help.

I’m asking an agent to look at this tomorrow and I made some recommendations for whomever handles this. I am sure we can help you, but please give it some time.