Guild Wars 2

If you’re not thinking about it in terms of time spent (which for farming you are of course), not using any Gambits nets you the same profit over the course of needing to do as many battles as you activated gambits. It costs you just as many entry tokens, and your success rate goes from anywhere between 20-70% (with Gambits) to a 100% in most cases. Gambits saves time, but it doesn’t give you any better rewards, however if you fail a non-Gambit fight you lose one entry token and if you lose a fight with 4 Gambits, you lose 5.

WyldKat.4712:

Trying to shake this feeling that lately the content has turned into busy work. I had more fun in WvW than achievement chasing.

My exact problem with these latest Living Story updates as well. Ever since they announced bi-weekly updates, I was certain it would make the game feel “way too busy, way too much”. I already enjoyed plenty of the content that’s on offer, especially World vs. World, and now they’re spitting out content update after update at a rapid pace.

With me wanting to achieve the achievements in the game, for these limited time temporary content releases, I feel very stressed and pressured for time, so I feel like I need to spend all my time doing that content until I achieve what I wish to achieve. This sucks the fun out of it for me, and I am getting burnt out, frustrated and angry because of it.

I do appreciate that ArenaNet wish to give us players new things to do at a very frequent rate. I very much appreciate that. But with the time limited nature of these things, it just isn’t fun anymore. Just as I feared when they announced them to become bi-weekly events.

Milennin.4825:

Also, it’s just an optional mini-game, it’s not like it’s required for anything.

Playing Guild Wars 2 isn’t required for anything either, but we do that because we wish to be entertained and have fun, right? Everything in the game is optional. You don’t need to gear up, you don’t even need to level up, it’s optional if you just wish to stay in a city and talk to people or play the Trading Post simulator. You may not care about the achievements as a collection, but please, try see it from the eyes of someone who does. I see the achievements as my personal collection, it’s something I like to do in the game. It’s not like you or anyone but me will be able to see (at least for the time being) what achievements I have, besides a bare few that grants visible rewards, e.g., a title we can put on, or a miniature we can summon. Yes, it’s optional, it’s not forced, but is also severely frustrating to feel so pressured for time due to the fact that it is implemented as temporary content that goes away, combined with certain achievements being very hard to accomplish. Queens Gauntlet has been stated to be something that will re-appear in the future, but will the same achievements be there? Potentially not, as that has not been clarified. If they do re-appear with the same achievements, I’m already less stressed, if not, the pressure’s still on.

To me, the way you can weasel your way up through very specific jump boosts up behind the finish line, is what I would consider a map exploit. It is something that was unlikely intended, and something they have been too lazy(?) to patch up. There’s shortcuts in the race, that’s for certain, but this one I really don’t believe is supposed to be there. You’re jumping up behind the finish line, you don’t even need to cross it.

If it’s intended, fine, but I still think it’s a cheap shortcut when you basically just need to move towards the finish line and not even cross it. I’ll happily accept it as something intended if a developer actually pops in a says it is. But I’d like to know why they think it’s a good design to have it like this if so. It feels like cheating.

If I recall correctly, there are 13 achievements, so you will need to do 3 Daily categories, over the course of 3 days, that is marked with the Living Story icon. E.g., take a trip from a balloon tower to Divinity’s Reach. It should be easy enough to spot them, as well as to complete them. You don’t need to complete a whole daily if you don’t want to do that, just a specific achievement for the daily.

Today the achievement is to participate in 6 events within the Crown Pavilion.

veasna.3675:

I enjoy achieving bragging right. Don’t you? Liadri mini is not something to which every player is entitled. It is very fun and satisfying to win what feels like impossible.

As for looking ahead, I would appreciate if Devs could add a new achievement, new title, new dungeon for Liadri and Increase the difficulty! That would be something I’d like to see in the future very much.

Anyway, I empathize with anyone who is having a hard time with Liadri. I have spent about 40-50 tickets myself. But, a big BUT, the feeling after you beat her is worth it. SO WORTH it.

I don’t particularly enjoy achievements for bragging rights. There’s no real way of showing another player what achievements you have completed anyways, so I see them as being more of a personal thing. Titles and minis can be bragging rights I guess, but I don’t play to brag. I didn’t make a legendary to be a special snowflake and be able to say “Look at me!”, I made it because I thought it was the best looking weapon for that type and I really wanted it for myself. I actually felt the win was quite hollow, didn’t even make me happy, since I know I still need 8 orbs and a kill to finish the achievements up.

I wouldn’t mind some permanently added content like this with really hard bosses and possibly even some titles/misc. rewards though, that’d be awesome. If I can have a go at it at my own leisure, I’ll enjoy it so much more, and it’ll let me do something other than purely this until I make it, getting burnt out in the process.

For temporary content, no, I don’t think they should ever repeat making something this frustrating. For something permanent, yes indeed, make it harder(!), that I’d welcome with open arms and love having my goes at.

As much as I hate ArenaNet for this update, at least Liadri does have set patterns, on mostly everything (as long as you use the same arena dome). The clouds of doom always spawn in the same pattern, and always follow the same rotation. If you can watch someone do the fight from outside the arena, you can easily spot the pattern for that dome. Same goes for second phase, it’s the same exact pattern where it will start, and it cycles between two dangerous spots, and two safe spots, diagonal to one another. Basically requires kiting in half circles. Here’s another thing, the light fields on the ground that you need to kite the visions into, they always spawn in the same spots as well, as do the visions themselves. If you can learn the pattern, you can very efficiently, as quickly as it would be possible (due to visions movement speed), create the orbs you throw at her.

The fight itself is not too bad, the arena design is. Basically the only random thing in this fight is the gravity orbs that pulls you around. A tip, at least it’s worked for me every single time, is to rush over to the gravity orb that spawns at the start and killing it, that should be in a safe spot for the first cloud of insta-death.

A problem is also the second phase and needing five additional orbs for one of the achievements. As a Guardian, even in my DPS glass cannon setup, which melts stuff normally, I can barely get her down in time before the floor falls out below me, multiple times I just fall to my death with Liadri at 2-3% of health. I have no time to kite visions into additional light fields, I need to spend all that time attacking her and nothing else. If I were to spend the seconds it’d take to pick up the orbs and throw them, I would simply run out of time. This is where it gets frustrating. I can survive forever in there at this point, but I’m limited by a slightly too short timer that makes me plummet to my death. It wasn’t seemingly balanced for my profession to do this without some serious luck. Even if the visions at times do walk over light fields in the second phase, the kitten orbs disappear before I can manage to get myself over there without being bombarded with a doom cloud and dying.

And then you have the terrible camera that likes to showcase your behind more than anything else in the cramped arena, the horrible floor design that hides red circles (at least for those who are color weak/blind) and a stupid blind effect that probably cause seizures for some people (but that can be turned off by lowering graphical settings granted, though it technically feels like exploiting).

Unrelated to Liadri herself, there’s also stupid bugs with in example the Meatless Murderer achievement. I know, 100% that Chomper never ate any of the meat that was thrown out when I did that on my D/P Thief 9 times in a row. He never got the buff, and I always munched the meats. Still, I never got the achievement. This is just stupid and frustrating. You’re doing the criteria (unless it is explained poorly), but simply don’t get rewarded for your efforts. This event showcases everything that’s wrong with Living Story, well basically every update over the past months has shown it, 2-4 weeks, or however long they get to develop these things, are simply not enough time. There’s clearly not enough testing being done, with all the bugs going in here. The fact that there’s a arena placed over a farming area that for some people causes framerate and latency issues is poor planning. The fact that the arenas are so cramped when ArenaNet themselves have said the camera is not perfect and suffers from cramped spaces, is just plain stupid. The fact that they make really hard achievements, in temporary content, is alienating players. I want challenging content, don’t get me wrong, but I want challenging content in permanent additions to the game.

Living Story so far is like giving a lollipop to a baby and ripping it out of its mouth shortly after. We get all these fairly good content additions (a little patching there, some fixing here would make them pretty good), only to have them ripped away from us again as the two weeks has passed. It becomes stressful and frustrating, it makes me not have fun anymore. I feel like I can’t do anything else than these darn Living Story updates. I have no time to do World vs. World, sPvP, dungeons, general lollygagging and what not. If it was permanently there, and I had all the time in the world to complete everything, I wouldn’t be so frustrated and angry with the game.

As it is, Living Story is what is going to kill the game for me. The world doesn’t feel alive, it just feels like the game has a load of poorly executed events, full of frustration and annoyances.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Thanks for Liadri Anet. Games are way too easy these days.

Remember when games were hard, but you had unlimited time to master them and improve? Good times.

TL;DR: I agree, it’s beyond silly that it costs a currency to give yourself a negative effect, making fights harder, without really having rewards jutifying the risk.
_

This is one amongst several reasons this update, that has me standing at the door, contemplating quitting the game for good, taking my money with me, and saving myself further bi-weekly frustration, annoyance and anger over a game I used to love playing.

It’s beyond ridiculous that it should cost you a type of currency to give yourself negative effects, something which makes the encounters much more difficult. Sure, the rewards are increased ever so slightly, but it is also increasing the rate of failure much more than the rewards justify. The single reason I have even used Gambits, is because of the achievements, where upon using five in a third tier fight it is incredibly difficult to manage pulling off.

And what in the world was the designer(s) thinking, when they made the arenas small glass domes, in a game that already suffers from poor camera control in confined spaces. Several of these fights require spacial awareness, and the camera is working against you constantly, due to the contrained space. It’s just terrible game design. And the flooring, do you even have a single person on your team(s) that are color weak or color blind? It is near impossible to even see the red circles when trying to rely on those, instead of the camera, that’s clearly not working together with the player, but are rather spending its time, giving you bootie-shots of your own behind.

Throw in a mix of bugs, like Meatless Murderer not triggering, even though Chomper never gets to chomp up any of the meat Strugar throws out, or that two players gets teleported into the same arena. Invisible tornadoes left over from Kieldia, leftover slimes from Subject 7. The gauntlet is bug-infested, and clearly not tested properly.

Don’t ArenaNet believe in making games, you know, fun? Why are you throwing in achievements like killing Liadri with 8 orbs, when most professions/players can barely kill her before the floor opens up below them? Picking stuff up, makes your character pause for a split second. Throwing stuff, same deal. And the five Gambits in a third tier fight is not exactly a cake walk. Perhaps for some professions it may be, but for most, it really isn’t. Expecting players to play professions they are not familiar with in order to do temporary content is just a bad design philosophy.

These achievements would be perfect if the content was permanent, and not tied into some factory of bi-weekly updates that has content that’ll just disappear again. They are challenging, which I find great, but you feel stressed out, frustrated, annoyed and angered when you have the feeling that these things are here for a limited time. I doesn’t lend itself to allowing you to enjoy other aspects of the game that you may like. Like World vs. World, sPvP and what not. You are trapped working on those achievements until you get them.

And yes, I get the people saying achievements are not required, that you don’t need all achievements for a meta, and so on forth. Yes, that’s fine, you may not care about not getting all achievements completed, but several players do, myself included. They are completionists, and wish to complete everything, in due time. That doesn’t mean they don’t wish to enjoy the game otherwise. And with these short-schedule constant updates, it’s hard to enjoy anything else, especially when they make some of these achievements so grindy (Southsun Survival, 2500 points) or frustrating (Liadri, hit with 8 orbs and kill her).

I just think ArenaNet really needs to consider what they’re doing with these constant give and take updates, instead of adding to the game and keeping content around forever. I sure don’t feel “Living Story” makes the world feel more “living”, and I almost get sad thinking about all the content we’ve had, that’s just poof’d out of existence for new players.

I get a feeling ArenaNet really wants me to quit and take my money elsewhere. Every single patch, they manage to do something that infuriates me. Southsun Survival is this something, this time around.

I too, find 2500 Points Earned to be way too much for this mini-game, especially when I absolutely hate it. Now I’m sure some people would come along and say “But you don’t need it for the meta, you’re not required to do it, etc.”, which is on the surface true, but as I am a completionist, a player that hates missing achievements, if I don’t complete a limited time achievement, I quit the game, simple as that. I know the achievement was there, it doesn’t matter if it gets hidden if it weren’t completed. I’ll finish this achievement (77%), it’s not that, but I am frustrated, bored and annoyed as I am “forced” to do the game mode over and over. 1000 Points Earned would have been more than enough, when the average you’ll overall see is 30-40 Points per match.

The game mode on paper, is a great idea, but at least in my eyes, it was executed rather poorly. I absolutely hate the ghosts mechanic. Both as a survivor and when being a ghost. As a survivor, it’s just frustrating to be hunted by 6-7 ghosts, invisible enemies. The fact that the announcer randomly pinpoints where you are located doesn’t help either. You can have scavenged up a load of items to keep yourself alive, only to be kitten’d over by the announcer telling everyone where you are.

As a ghost, especially if you are lucky/good enough to be amongst the last 3 survivors, you are stuck with not being able to do anything. All the motes has been chugged up by everyone else that died before you, making this an annoying “punishment” to the player that was otherwise doing pretty good. You are basically stuck with floating around in your ghost form, unable to do anything to survivors if you happen to find one of them, on the otherwise too big map. At that point, they don’t pick up anything, so you don’t get any motes to power your abilities or get your score up a bit.

If at least they would spawn motes from eating and placing traps, it wouldn’t perhaps be as bad, from the ghots perspective. But on the flipside, I hate the mechanic as a survivor, and this would just make them more annoying. It would have been so much better if when you die after the grace period, you are loaded into a new game instead, leaving the remaining survivors to finish their game.

Perhaps someone enjoys the ghost mechanic, I’m happy for you. I hate it.

As others said, it’s pretty obvious that the full sentence is “Dungeons should not close when the instance owner leaves party”. This is a issue that anyone that has done a few dungeons knows about, and probably gets annoyed about as well.

Whoever the instance belongs to, decides to leave for whatever the reason, right at the end of the dungeon, perhaps from rage quitting, genuinely needing to go, or whatever else the case might be. This results in the whole party being booted out, even if they wish to continue. It’s a horrible design in a game mode that is pretty obviously hosted on ArenaNet’s side (unless magically everyone that plays Guild Wars 2, have excellent connections and I’m wrong). Why are there even ‘instance owners’ in the first place?

I too have been wondering why Celestial is not available for the back slot. We can now have Celestial stats on every single slot, except the back piece. That’s not to say that all other stats combinations are covered by the back items, they’re not. But I sure hope ArenaNet can flesh out the back items stats selection soon-ish.

ArenaNet just keeps making me get more and more annoyed at the game. Really, several sets of armor/weapons where you can’t discover once you have an insignia? What’s next, crafted armor/weapons that’s Account Bound so you can’t sell them? Oh wait..

My guess would be that it goes a little bit like this:

1000, weapon skin choice
2000, weapon skin choice
3000, armor skin choice
4000, weapon skin choice
5000, weapon skin choice
6000, armor skin choice

etc.

Basically, in the long run, you can probably collect all the skins.

Last I checked, servers for Guild Wars are still up and running. With the Heroes system, it is also a very single-player friendly game, but can of course be enjoyed with a friend or more. It is honestly still a very good game, dated mainly in the graphical department if you want to pick on it for anything.

I would actually recommend anyone who haven’t played Guild Wars, to at some point, take some time to enjoy and play that gem of a game. You’ll earn some Hall of Monuments rewards, and get some additional achievement points in Guild Wars 2. And the amount of story you can learn about/experience to make you appreciate GW2 even more, is at least to me, priceless.

I do understand of course that a large majority don’t want to play the “old game”, and wishes to focus on Guild Wars 2, I completely get that. But don’t write GW off completely just because we got GW2 now. As an example, you could casually play GW a little bit here and there when you are burnt out on something in GW2. With some planning, you can get 50 HoM points in about 3-4 months when just casually aiming for such things. Look for a sale at some point perhaps?

Open your Achievement panel, in the Summary you can Withdraw more copies of the skin. Get it on the character you want it on. The one you got on a character that has no use for it, you can alternatively just make into a sPvP skin.

Really love Labyrinthine Cliffs. Excellent work to whoever on your team designed that. Love using the aspects and pulling off crazy jumps and tricks to get to hard to reach locations. So much fun.

Hunting down the Sky Crystals was some of the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. Excellent fun to do with a friend. I use fun a lot now, I guess you could summarize the content as, fun!

The Sanctum Sprint mini-game is also rather well done, but does have some issues I’d like to see ironed out. Lag mainly, and a rather disturbing map exploit available right at the end, that lets you skip straight up to the winner chest without even crossing the finish line. It also suffers from the typical instanced mini-game issue of not being able to play together with a friend unless you luck out. It would be nice to at least be able to queue up as 2 players so you get into the same instance and can play together.

I’d hope that these things are permanent, but I get a feeling that since we get the Zephyr Sanctum Model, it of course won’t be. If it was always there, why have a little model to view a (low resolution, seriously, it makes it ugly, who did that encoding, what the) video of the place?

On the negative side, I really dislike (even though I personally have no issues with it and find it easy as a WvW player) that Obsidian Sanctum was used in the achievements again. I have no issue with this. I am a WvW player, and I’ve done OS hundreds if not thousands of times. I know the quirks, how to pass choke points when under fire, and so on forth. It’s not a problem for me. But I hate it for the fact that there are those out there who are not WvW-oriented, who may be on servers that can’t keep and capture Keeps in order to even gain access to it. I just find it to be a unfair location to put an achievement in for a limited time event. Permanent stuff, no problem, limited, problem.

Overall though, this was a really great update. Well done, and thumbs and toes up, to the team that worked on this!

If you get the Aspect buff (skill 4), combining a quick 2-1 press to shoot yourself forward can result in even more distance covered than just a single press of skill 2. You can also use the 2-1 combo over some rather large gaps once you have that (or other movement speed (orange crystals)) buffs active.

phaneo.4597:

Thanks for the confirmation. But it’s odd that all skins except one got deposited. Maybe I already had that skin in my locker? :/ Don’t they stack? Sorry I don’t sPvP and never checked my locker so not really sure about this :P.

The PvP gear don’t stack, no. You can however equip whatever duplicate you get on a character that can wear that type or armor/weapon, should you have that available, or you can go to Heart of the Mists, purchase a PvP Salvage Kit (requires Glory/doing some sPvP), salvage the item in question and deposit those materials into the PvP Locker. It doesn’t need to be too much of a inventory filler.

I do enjoy the Sanctum Sprint, but it is definitely very laggy. Perhaps this is due to high demand and everyone wanting to play it. There are other issues as well, like a map bug/exploit right at the end, that some players takes use of very often. You can be first and rush up around the bend to the finish line, only to find whoever was behind you, exploited a map weakness and are standing behind the line as winners. They don’t even need to cross the line to win. I doubt that is intended.

I’ve gotten this done, but it boggles me that they went ahead with another one of these. Obsidian Sanctum is not a perfectly fine location for a limited time achievement, ArenaNet. If you are on a server, where you as a collective, are not good enough to fend of 1-2 other servers and maintain control over a Keep, you are locked out of even attempting the achievement. How is that ok? Not to forget the fact that WvW players are taking advantage of this to just grief and farm “PvE-players”. Because it’s funny or “easy kills”.

When I went in there to do it, there were two groups of about 20-30 players each, from both of the other servers, camping in specific locations. I have the luxury to call upon good players from my own guild and server, so we grouped up and went in there and killed them. But I am certain not everyone have the option to do that.

You should stop using Obsidian Sanctum, and thus, World vs. World (vs. World) for these limited time achievements. Anywhere else would of course just be like asking for the WvW crowd to get kitten’d off by queues, due to non-WvW players being “forced” to run around in the maps in order to complete an acheivement. The Cliffside achievement was a far better idea.

Paul Belz.7351:

Hey guys,

In order to earn this achievement, you will have to hit someone with the offensive skills. You can’t just fire them off into the ether willy nilly.

Wouldn’t a better description of the Achievement be;
In Sanctum Sprint, hit other players with every possible pickup item at least once.

“Let’s take a moment to appreciate.. how cheap Adnul is.”

He starts the match with his Critique. Once the 3 blocked Bluff buff has worn off, he does Critique instantly again, this repeats until I’m defeated. I can never Bluff. There’s absolutely no logic at all to when he is going to use Water, so Belch’ing it is a hit and miss. This is not fun, ArenaNet. This is just infuriating and frustrating.

It feels like this NPC is reading my inputs, and if you actually programmed him to do that, that is seriously not ok, ArenaNet. I don’t get why he always blocks my first Bluff, no matter when I do it. I can start with it, he blocks it, I can do other things first, then a Bluff, he blocks it. Only times he can’t block it is if it should be on a cooldown on his side. And he’s never done it when I just drink.

More “junk” a good chunk of us wouldn’t even want, so the chances at getting what we actually want is lowered and lowered over time, as they add stuff like this. Oh well, it’s not like I want to spend real money on random chances in the first place. I’ll give you money, ArenaNet, on stuff where I know I get what I pay for.

I’m all for hard achievements, if you have endless time to complete them.

When you are given pretty challenging achievements, on top of a decently challenging dungeon (when focusing on these achievements anyways), with a rather limited time to complete them, you just create a recipe for stress, and that ultimately means you are most likely not enjoying the content you’re playing.

I sure did not enjoy hunting these achievements and was borderline ready to quit the game if I didn’t get them. (That may of course seem silly to some people, but as a completionist, having a hole in your achievements will irk you endlessly for the future, and I figured it’d be better to quit than to be in a sour mood every day I log in to play.)

I also really hate the fact that they are saying they’ll pump out these Living Story updates every two weeks, since to me it feels like that’ll just make it a large headache, at least when combined with hard achievements like this.

It leaves nearly no time to do anything else in the game, when you got to focus so much on these updates, that on the bright side will keep you busy, but on the downside, way too much. I applaud that they want to give us things to do, I do and I appreciate that, but every two weeks seems like it’ll be a bit too much. If each segment starts every 2 weeks and last for a month, overlapping eachother, that’s something else, but it doesn’t sound like that from what they’re saying.

An “easy” way to get the achievement for 4 out of 5 party members is to have 2 thieves, one with Pistol off-hand and one with Shortbow. Decide who is going to be the person that’ll be the target of the barrages and (most likely) forfeit their chance at the achievement for that round. This person would ideally have the achievement already though.

When Mai calls out for the barrages, the other 4 players runs to one side of the arena and the thieves take care of stealthing everyone (Shadow Refuge (both) + Cluster Bomb (Shortbow Thief), Blinding Powder (both), Black Powder (Pistol off-hand Thief) + Cluster Bomb (Shortbow Thief)) through the entire phase. The person that was decided upon for being a target, sticks to the opposite half of the arena, avoiding getting too close to the rest of the team.

Rinse repeat every 25% of Mai’s health, and you will pretty easily get 4 of the 5 players in your group the achievement. Note however, that you can’t stealth up the entire group, or Mai will just reset, so this is why you need one brave soul that is good enough to stay alive and avoid the majority of the barrages. It helps if you have, e.g., a Guardian and/or Elementalist in the group as well, since they make for decent healers for the player running around taking the hits.

Remember to lower Horrik’s health to about 5-10% on the last 25% of Mai’s health, so you can finish him off quickly once she is defeated. Also, it helps if you decide where the 4 players will be and where the barrage target will be ahead of time, so that when Mai is about to call for the barrages, you can try keep the 4 that should be stealthed near their side of the arena, and the barrage target on the other side. Barrages occur at 75%, 50% and 25%. You got to be quick on stealthing up, to avoid any barrages getting shot in your direction instead of the barrage target.

Tip: For the 4 that should be stealthed, if you have a Commander in the group, have them turn the tag on so you can play “follow the Commander” for better co-ordination. Alternatively you could call target on a designated “Commander”.

At long last, the weapon I’ve desired the most since my first steps taken in Tyria, is clenched firmly in my hands. (Now if only the Aegis effect could get a bit of a redesign, so it doesn’t completely ruin Flameseeker Prophecies, then I could pursue that..)

It seems to be a bug related to overflows. When I got into Lion’s Arch on a overflow map, the Achievement just ticked as completed and gave me the reward. I haven’t opened it myself yet, as I like the idea of witnessing the firework finale before I do actually open it (and it takes up 1 inventory slot instead of 3), but that’s why plenty of people has the helmet(s) already.

It may be worth pointing out that all levels can’t perhaps reasonably afford the 50 Silver cost that’s been slapped on bets for the Moa Racing activity. That part of the event seems a bit more tailored to the rich/higher levels.

Category: Weapon – Effects
Item: Bolt – Transmuted, not Transmuted
Race: Checked w/ Human (Male, Guardian), Asura (Male, Thief), Norn (Female, Mesmer)

Noticed somewhat recently that a “duplicate” Bolt spawns at your feet for every footprint that is created when moving around with it equipped. It flashes there for a split second, creating a flickering look when moving about. This is very visually obvious on sloped terrain (see attached screenshots), but also on flat surfaces.

At first I believed that it was because I had Transmuted my Bolt to Knight stats and/or that it was only on my end, but have later confirmed with friends who also have non-transmuted Bolts (Asura Thief, Norn Mesmer) that it does occur for them as well, so not only on my screen, but also on theirs, for both my own and their weapon.

This occurs while only Bolt is equipped (“naked” character), and additionally with various armor sets and other (offhand) weapons equipped.

I do think they should re-work that spell effect. To me, it pretty much ruins shields with how it clips into them, and for a Guardian, that means pretty much that their shields are visually ruined, constantly, when out of combat.

Sure, I can agree on the fact that it is a visual cue, but when an effect pretty much ruins shield-appearances while active, that to me at least, says it is a terrible design. It’s also one of the most obvious cues in the game, with other boons not being as “in your face” as this one. It blocks one attack after all, and it is possible to activate at will as well, meaning your high damage attack can still be blocked even if you were looking for cues.

I’d be fine with the effect being as it is while there’s no shield equipped to the character. But I think it could use an alternative for when there is a shield in place, that isn’t so blatantly clipping and ruining the shield models. It’s one of the things I hate the most about the game. Silly as that may sound to those not sharing my point of view.

Decurio Absconditus got himself a new toy yesterday, Rodgort.

Not sure I would say I regret making my legendaries per say. The main thing that’s bugging me ever so slightly however, is that I first now, after 7 months, settled on Guardian as being my “main profession”, so Bolt had to be transmuted over from the Thief I made it on, and I now have an Incinerator just collecting dust on the Thief. It doesn’t bother me all too much, but it still feels like a shame that I spent so much time and effort on making something, only to have it get stuck on a different character I no longer play. At least with the Bolt, there was the option to transmute it over, which I am fine with, as I don’t really want Soldier’s stats on my weapons at any rate, and if they’d be auto-scaled with Ascended weapons added or not, I would need to grind the stats I desire regardless for transmuting. Guardians can’t use daggers though, so that one I mildly regret, considering I could’ve worked on a different one if I had settled on the profession to play sooner.

I do have a Legendary-related actual regret however, which is that I equipped the Chaos Gun when I got it back in the days, as I never see myself personally wanting to make the Quip. Could rather have sold it and earned some extra Gold in my pockets, but nobody had made Quip at the time that I got it anyways, so I had no idea how “special” that pistol is. Not my taste, but I understand if others want to make it.

I also wish I had the Spear precursor on my Guardian, and not my Thief, but at least when I potentially at some point decide I want to create it, I can just give the finished product to my Guardian anyways, so that one’s not too bad.

Overall, not much of a regret in Legendary choices, as long-term goals of mine are to make a number of them over the years at any rate. E.g., most of the ones that can be used by Guardian which I like the look of. Working casually on Rodgort now in example.

Quite fond of the majority of these new dyes that was recently added. Tabard-part of the armor is using the Flame dye and the rest of it use the Charred dye. Admittedly it does look better in certain lighting than other, but that’s the case with most dyes.

SvenskNavi.9378:

WvW is casual. You don’t have to go in and stay there for hours and hours on end. For all anyone cares, you can go in, jump into a battle for 10 minutes, and leave. Sounds pretty casual to me.

Yes, and you can do the same in sPvP and PvE as well, right? You can do the same in mostly any game pretty much. If I want to race one track in a driving game, that’ll take 5-10 minutes. Or perhaps I want to clear one check-/savepoint further in an action-adventure platforming game, that’ll probably take 5-10 minutes. Etc.

Just because you can spend very little time in most games, does that really make them casual games and/or game modes? A lot of games accommodate casual play, sure, but a large number of players will probably not play them as such.

Tien.3865:

How do you get your character in that pose (5th picture, where she has her greatsword over her shoulder)?

You can bind a key to toggle walking within the game, and while the Greatsword is drawn and you are walking, the character will rest the Greatsword on top of their shoulder like that.
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On another note, Decurio Absconditus has had a minor change in appearance recently:

Decurio Absconditus found some use for these pesky Total Makeover Kit items that had been granted from the god of random reigning over the Black Lion Chests. He also decided to spend some of his savings on the Human Tier 3 Cultural Armor set.

Edit: Shortly afterwards, he also visited the barbershop to dye his hair and get a haircut.

If you mainly just want to collect Baubles, you could always start it up in Infantile Mode by speaking with the cloud once you get past Moto at the gates inside Super Adventure Box. That will give you friendly clouds that provide rainbow walkways over pretty much every single jumping element within the SAB.

Some “tips” for farming: There are certain spots that you can use the Shovel at, which will give you 20+ Baubles, try using it at different spots and if you get more than 1 Bauble/angry bunny, that spot will always give that amount of Baubles. The Whip can be used on chests to grab the Baubles inside (Edit: Fixed/Patched). Getting the Bombs (Zone 2) lets you get into some secret areas that contains 5+ Baubles, but it isn’t as effective as getting the Shovel/Whip if you only wish to “grind” Baubles. The cage-“bosses” can be easily dealt with by just strafing around the cage auto-hitting it (Zone 2 requires a bit of jumping while strafing). It may be worth picking up the Wallet upgrade in Zone 3, as that allows you to carry 500 Baubles at a time within the SAB.

Bonus tip, quick 40 Baubles: If you want some really fast 40 Baubles, you can get to Zone 2, and right at the start, a tiny bit in on your left, there’s a waterfall with a rock in the water. If you stand on this rock and use your Shovel, it will spawn 40 Baubles at the foot of the waterfall. At that point you can opt to leave the instance with the House/Home icon at the right of the skill bar. Then rinse repeat as much as you want. A bit cheap perhaps, but definitely a very quick and pain free way to farm once you got Zone 2 unlocked. You can also drop a bomb down on the area on the left (between the two rocks seen in the second screenshot) for a hidden room with a couple more Baubles.

Head over to the Gate Hub Plaza (Waypoint) in Lion’s Arch, go through the south west Asura Gate (on the map), the Rata Sum Asura Gate, to go to Rata Sum, the Asuran home city. Straight up the stairs ahead and on your immediate right, is the Super Adventure Box.

Walk up the holographic stairs, a prompt will ask if you wish to Enter Story Mode (Level 1). Click this button to enter the Super Adventure Box. Note that you can quite easily solo the whole thing, even though it says Recommended Players: 5, or you can team up with other players and go through it with them, which may or may not be more fun for you.

Good luck!

It honestly just seems to be there for the fun of it. Nostalgic reasons, as a homage to the good old days. Literally every old 2D platformer had a score count on the UI. Gotten skins with nearly no score at all. It could perhaps improve the rate, but I somewhat doubt it.

Clipping usually occurs in one form or another with certain Hand Armor/Shoulder Armor. On a female Norn with the Cultural Tier 3 Hand Armor, there is a tiny part that clips through, but luckily for me, due to using the White Gold dye, it is barely possible to see it. Still, if the shields were moved out from the hand ever so slightly, it would help fix certain clipping issues, even if it wouldn’t with all the Hand Armors.

The same goes for the Super Shield when it’s on the back, if it was moved ever so slightly away from the back, it wouldn’t clip as much with at least the Norn Cultural Tier 3 Head Armor horns. Unfortunately I doubt they will ever get around to fixing how ponytails clips through these shields though, but I can live with that, though a fix would be to not animate the ponytail if it is obstructed by a shield, combined with shields being moved away from the back ever so slightly. Would love a option for shields/two-handed weapons on the back hiding the Back Item however, e.g., if I was using the Super Backpack, and having the Super Shield/Greatsword/Long Bow on the back, it would hide the Backpack until I draw my Shield/weapon.

This is another reason why I think the Super Adventure Box could be a good permanent addition to the game. A MMO that actually has a game mode that Speed Runners can compete in? I can’t recall another MMO that provides that at least.

Add a little timer under the Team Score and you got something helping promote it for speed runs, even though the sites like SRL/SDA don’t always care about the in-game timer and rather starts their run timing at specific points, like after the Intro.

It could even be added to the upcoming public leaderboards, one for Infantile mode, one for Normal mode, and the when-it’s-ready Hard mode. Most old classic games ends up being used for speed running, even the “terrible” ones that everyone hates to play. It fits right into SAB.

Adventure Time – with Fiona (Absconditus) and Jake (the shy Super Bee Dog)!

Uncertain if there are some bugs with these animated Super weapons. My shield will only play the sword smashing into the box animation, if I have my other weapon set drawn, then switch to the one with the shield. If I just draw it out manually, it spins the shield, but the sword just appear in place, it doesn’t animate smashing down from the sky. It could be intended I guess, but that seems a bit strange.

After you purchase the Continue Coin, you need to speak with our friendly NPC to use it. The reason you got sent back out into Rata Sum was because this “continue screen” has a timer on it, like the good old arcade ones. You can see how two spiked walls are trying to crush you, and molten rock are coming up below you, which is basically the timer.

I would really like to see this superb addition of content added to the game permanently instead of being something that only occurs for a short time/month each year. This game mode alone, can draw in more players. Been showing my friends screenshots of this, and they’re all saying they want to buy the game asap. to try it for themselves, as it looks amazing. Some say they worry that they won’t be able to do so early enough though, as they need a paycheck first.

ArenaNet, this is some of the finest new content you’ve done so far for GW2, although your past event additions has been very entertaining as well, this deserves to be permanent for all new and old players to enjoy as it’s hopefully expanded upon. I’m sure you can find something else to do for Easter/April each year instead.

You can do it with as little number of players as simply yourself, solo. There’s no actual requirement for how many players are needed to do the Super Adventure Box, and I’ve done it solo the whole way through a couple of times now. Checkpoint switches will scale based on the amount of party members, as do the chest key requirements. Even the boss’s health scales.

You can in other words do it with the 2-3 roommates of yours that wish you to do it together with, without needing to involve others, should you do not wish to do so.

The problem with AoE is that it chokes the server. It may not be as easy to see this on all servers, but if you’re in one of the higher tier ones these days, where clashes between 40+ players from every server in the matchup (120+ players in one location fighting) are quite frequent, you probably know how that translates into some serious skill lag. This skill lag, comes in a large part from AoE.

The more targets that are hit, the more information the server needs to relay to everyone involved. Every time you take damage, all 100 players nearby needs to know that your health went down. When 5 players take damage, that’s 5 players that needs to get told how much damage they took, and 100 players needing to know that those 5 players lost that much HP. This escalates, as AoE rarely hits just 5 specific players, especially ground field/channeled types of AoE. Not to forget the fact that most AoE also produce some form of condition, which also needs to be relayed to everyone nearby.

AoE limits are likely to be a necessary evil. The game is already fairly unplayable lately, because WXP without adjustments based on how many are involved, just made the massive-scale fighting more common than ever. A missed opportunity to at least try and give the players a good incentive to spread out more.

There’s quite a lot of things in the game I believe could be Account Bound to make it far more enjoyable and alt-friendly. “Experienced branching storylines on multiple characters, replayability, but don’t dare enjoy playing these characters, as we’ll make it punishing to play more than one.”

• Legendaries
  • The amount of effort it takes to make just one, should allow for you to use it on any of your characters as your interest likely goes from playing one profession to another, then to a third, then back to the first one again, etc. They should have a special status like Account Bound on Equip, still sellable, but Account Bound once used.
• Unique (costly) weapons
  • Certain weapons are extremely costly and/or time-consuming to make, e.g., Infinite Light. Items such as these could also be turned Account Bound on Equip, considering their value.
• Dyes
  • There is already so many dyes in the game, why can’t these just be Account Bound? I got Abyss on 2-3 characters, but I never bought them, I do not mind if I “lose” money by the dyes being made Account Bound from potentially having been able to sell 1-2 of them.
• WvW Ranks
  • I feel punished for wanting to play more than one specific character. It is demotivating me enough to make me feel like I don’t want to play at all at times. The more I play, the more I feel forced to stick with that one character, or lose all the time and effort I spent to rank up and gain traits.
• WvW Blueprints
  • Could just as well not be bound at all, as we can go into WvW and drop them for anyone to pick up.
• Ascended Accessories, Amulets
  • Unless the Laurels cost is reduced. It already takes 6 months to get 8 Amulets, and 1 year and 4 months to get 2 Accessories for 8 characters.
• Dungeon Story Mode Completion
  • It’s somewhat annoying that I need to go through the Story mode on every single character in order to enable it to start up Explorable mode (Note: I am well aware that as long as someone has done the Story mode, I do not need to have done it, in order to get into Explorable mode). The achievements already track that you’ve done the Story mode. I still do Story mode now and again to help people out, but I would just like to feel less forced to do it for 8 different characters. There’s no benefit to doing it on more than one character, unlike Fractal levels, where you can do the daily on each character you’ve grinded up to 10+ for multiple shots at rings (one of the reasons I think Fractal levels being character-based is fine).

Got to agree that they should be Account Bound.

I do, as I’ve said in the past, see the problems with purely making them AB however, as there are Legendary weapons being sold and traded on the market already. But an Account Bound on Equip status on the items, which would allow for them to still be sold, but once equipped, turn Account Bound, doesn’t seem like something that’s too far fetched an idea to implement.

When I made Bolt and Incinerator, I enjoyed playing my Thief the most, then about a month ago, I started enjoying Warrior more. I still enjoy playing my Warrior, and do use a Sword, so it “stings” a bit that my Bolt is stuck on my Thief, especially now that I’ve gotten to Rank 10+ in WvW and feel more and more punished by ArenaNet for wanting to play multiple characters.

Basically, the whole fact that these weapons are Soulbound, after switching over to a new profession as my favorite to play, makes me not want to spend any more money and time making new ones. I won’t make a duplicate Bolt in example. I’d like to make Juggernaut, but it’ll be Soulbound, so if I ever feel like switching my favorite professions to play again, that’s another Legendary stuck on a character I ain’t currently enjoying.

If they were Account Bound, I would be far more likely to spend time, money and effort into making more of the Legendary weapons. I know that I will some day want to play something other than my Warrior for a while. Just like I don’t “main” my Thief anymore. The way they’re designing the game lately however, makes this feel extremely punishing. Soulbound status on basically anything that takes a large/huge amount of effort to get (not just Legendary weapons, e.g., Infinite Light, Ascended earrings/amulets). WvW progression that’s bound to characters, and not the account. Etc.

I’m feeling less and less motivated to play every day, because it feels like whatever I do is just solidifying what specific character I must play forwards, unless I wish to feel like I am losing a ton of effort, money and/or time invested from changing to a different character.

I would like to see it added to Steam eventually. Until then, it’s not a problem to add it to the Steam Library and launch it through Steam, in order to get the Steam Overlay for easy quick browsing of the forum/website/wiki/etc., ease of Screenshots taking/uploading, and the other things that I like about Steam.